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Posts published in June 2009

Numbers in decline

June 20, 2009

Washington's Economic and Revenue Forecast Council said on Thursday that revenues for the next two years have been recalculated and adjusted downward, by more than $500 million.

An indicator for around the region? Possibly. Consider that the Oregon Legislature is still around, and still working on budget bills, and still debating over those numbers.

A good rundown of reaction to the Washington revisions shows up on the TVW Capitol Report blog. The main official reaction from Governor Chris Gregoire involves a 2% budget cut from previous levels.

The budget conflict

June 19, 2009

Up to this (late) point in the Oregon legislative session, the legislature's majority and Governor Ted Kulongoski seem to have been on the same page on almost everything. But now that the last of the budget decisions are coming in, that's changing.

The school budget will either larger - because a rainy-day fund was heavily raided - or smaller - because it was only lightly raided - at the end of this. Right now, indications are that Oregon's legislators are in favor of a heavy raid, while Kulongoski is flatly opposed, to the point of veto. The full scale of the conflict is likely to showdown next week.

Who prevails? No certainty, but legislators are likely, for now, to reflect the difficulty of making the more conceptual case for a low raid. It's a good case. But harder to get through to people on a gut level, at a tough time, just after a string of tax increases already have been approved . . .

From the wreckage of the New Carissa

June 18, 2009
New Carissa

New Carissa/Wikipedia

Some before too long, someone will write a history of the Pacific Coast - not the land side, but the water. Many things have been happening there in the last few decades. Populations of marine life have risen and fallen. We've seen dead zones, and unusual swirls of high-motion water. There's a whole natural story out there awaiting the telling.

Soon, we'll have many more of the pieces of that story. Oregon House Bill 3013A, which just cleared the Oregon Senate (of 90 legislators, just three voted in opposition) and likely will soon be signed into law by Governor Ted Kulongoski, sets up two "historic reserves" in areas off the coast, and a process for evaluating four more for inclusion. Each reserve would be thoroughly studied. Much of the money for that (you were wondering, weren't you?) will come from funds paid in after the grounding of the cargo ship called the New Carissa, just over a decade ago near Coos Bay, spilling fuel and causing other damage.

Senator Joanne Verger, who is from Coos Bay, remarked that “Our community endured a lot when the New Carissa ran aground in Coos Bay. It started out as this huge hassle, eventually it became a great tourist attraction, and then it was taken away over our objections. I am glad this Legislature has recognized the nexus between the damage that was caused and the need to use the money for the betterment of our coastal resources.”

A description from the group Our Ocean:

HB-3013A describes the plan for establishing marine reserves at Otter Rock near Depoe Bay and Redfish Rocks near Port Orford. It also lays the groundwork for a set of community groups to evaluate marine reserves proposed for Cape Falcon, Cascade Head, Cape Perpetua and Cape Arago.
This effort could not be more timely: the ocean faces growing pressure from climate change, pollution and a variety of other human impacts. In May, delegates from more than 70 nations at the World Ocean Conference urged concerted action to address threats to ocean health, and 400 scientists signed a consensus statement describing marine protected areas as part of the solution.
With the approval of HB-3013-A, Oregon is poised to join California and Washington in science-based ocean protection using marine reserves. In total, 22 U.S. states and 29 countries around the world use these proven tools to safeguard the long-term health and productivity of the ocean.

Plenty of eyes will be on the process, and whatever it comes up with.

From the Northwest forests

June 17, 2009
Tidwell

Tom Tidwell

The Northwest pulled in another upper-rank person in the Obama Administration with announcement today of Tom Tidwell as chief of the U.S. Forest Service - a very big-deal agency in the Northwest.

Tidwell has been a career Forest Service employee, and described now as a "Montana forester." But areas to the west of there have a fair claim on him too. From the USDA press release:

Tidwell has spent 32 years with the Forest Service in a variety of positions. He began his Forest Service career on the Boise National Forest, and has since worked in eight different national forests, across three regions. He has worked at all levels of the agency in a variety of positions, including District Ranger, Forest Supervisor, and Legislative Affairs Specialist in the Washington Office.

Tidwell's field experience includes working from the rural areas of Nevada and Idaho all the way to the urban forests in California and the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in Utah, where he served as Forest Supervisor during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

He seems to have navigated the rugged resource waters with some efficiency; offhand, no major squabbles from his years around the Northwest come to mind.

A nativist backwash

June 16, 2009

The strands of neo-Nazi activity running around in the Northwest have become well-known, famous even, mainly because of parades and a long shut-down Aryan Nations compound in the Idaho Panhandle. Probably less well known are the many linkage and contacts, formal and informal, they had around the region and around the country.

These days, the anti-immigrant nativist extremes may be the best place to look for a counterpart. It is less visible in the Northwest than the white supremacists once were, but it's there.

The Orcinus blog (writer, Dave Neiwert) at Seattle today provides a fascinating runthrough of how some of this works, detailing many of the ties and links between anti-immigrant activity in the Northwest and some chilling crimes further south.

From the post: "the recent arrest of Minuteman offshoot leader Shawna Forde for the murder of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter -- part of a broader plan to rob drug dealers and use the money to finance their Minuteman operations - has ripped the veneer off the fake walls these nativists use to pretend that they have nothing to do with the racists who seem to swell their ranks as though they belonged there naturally." The Northwest connections include a Yakima meeting (caught on video) featuring Forde. There are even links running back to the Aryan Nations.

Useful reading.

Meaning . . . kicked out of the party?

June 16, 2009
Walsh

Maureen Walsh

It's been around a while, but we just ran across the paperwork - formal verbiage - and it seemed worth reprinting here. Not for the basic point being made, which isn't that unusual in Republican circles, but for its down-on-paper explicitness.

The trigger was a vote by Representative Maureen Walsh, R-College Place (near Walla Walla), this year's session in favor of the bill expanding the reach of domestic partnership law, the almost-marriage bill. As you might expect, that didn't go over entirely well with all the Republicans back home, but many weren't especally upset.

Some were. The blog McCranium (hat tip here) reports that a "source tells me it was more like mob rule than a meeting when a group consisting largely of evangelicals led by Nicole Prasch and Brenda High (complete with a area representative from Focus on the Family) pressured for a censure vote."

What they passed was reflected in this press release, posted on the Franklin County Republicans blog:

On April 21, 2009, at the Franklin County Republican Central Committee meeting, the Committee overwhelmingly voted to censure 16th District Legislator, Maureen Walsh, for her sponsorship of the recently passed HB 1727.

HB 1727 inserts the following language in nearly 200 different places within its text:

“The terms spouse, marriage, marital, husband, wife, widow, widower, next of kin, and family shall be interpreted as applying equally to state registered domestic partnerships or individuals in state registered domestic partnerships as well as to marital relationships and married persons …Gender- specific terms such as husband and wife used in any statute, rule, or other law shall be construed to be gender neutral, and applicable to individuals in state registered domestic partnerships.”

Despite all her rhetoric otherwise, it has become indisputable to the Franklin County Republican Central Committee that Rep. Walsh is actively working to incrementally legalize gay marriages. As early as the 2006 legislative session, Rep. Walsh was working to expand the jurisdiction of the Human Rights Commission to include cases of discrimination because of a person’s sexual orientation with her co-sponsorship or HB 2661. (more…)

Idaho Fry no, Boise Fry yes

June 16, 2009

No doubt to the relief of the Idaho Fry Company's people, and to their customers (they produce some good eats), that firm has reached a settlement with the Idaho Potato Commission over the disputed use of the business' name. It will henceforth be the Boise Fry Company; the IPC evidently will underwrite the name change. (For more, see our post on June 6.) Presumably, the growers and processors of the Gem State's tubers are now safe.

Considering the hailstorm that descended on the commission after word about its challenge to the small restaurant's name got out, the commission is probably just as relieved. Doubtless its people never intended to be, or saw themselves as, legal bullies. They have the (legitimate) job of protecting Idaho potato growers' investment in their good name, and that's what they thought they were doing.

But then, what we see as the key point here really isn't about the potato commission: It is about a series of interpretations of trademark and related law, from coast to coast, that amounts to a real threat to several types of liberty in this country, and that's a point we've come back to in a variety of past posts and doubtless will again. When that last post made the point that, under the commission's logic, the Idaho Statesman newspaper might run afoul of it (and maybe have to remove the Idaho from its name) if potato chips are sold in its vending machines, the point wasn't simple sarcasm: It had to do with a reach of the law run completely amok.

Settlements or not in this case, that serious point remains, with a reach well beyond the Idaho Potato Commission.

Watch not the vote, but the reaction

June 15, 2009
robinson

Melissa Sue Robinson

Provocation - getting right in your face - seems to be the point of one particular municipal candidacy in Idaho this year. Not so much city policies, the qualities of an incumbent, or anything so mundane. From the announcement of a just-declared Nampa mayoral candidate:

My name is Melissa Sue Robinson and I am a Male to Female post-op transgendered person who is hereby announcing my intentions to run for Mayor of Nampa, in the November general election. I am running because I am progressive and I feel that Nampa is a City that needs progressive people in City government. I am the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Transgendered Persons (NAATP), a transgendered civil rights organization which was founded in Lansing, MI. in 2000. The organization was put on hold due to Michigan's poor economic climate, my change of careers, and my relocation to Seattle in Jan. 07. I have not only restarted the NAATP, but have also founded a new organization (Equality Idaho), which will also focus on LGBT rights. If elected Nampa Mayor or not I intend to push for a LGBT rights ordinance in both Nampa and Boise in the near future. I am a 58 years old telecommunications worker, and a former owner of Design Masters Construction Co, Inc. (a 25 employee small business) in which I was President for 10 years.

Provocation rather than substantial candidacy, because only one sentence out of seven had anything to do with a rationale for leading the city of Nampa.

She's not been active in civic life in Nampa, hasn't been in the city long enough to get to know it, evidently lacks relevant experience at Nampa city hall . . . there aren't any real qualifications for the job here, and Nampa is a substantial city of more than 80,000 people which needs a leader with some measurable experience. (Incumbent Tom Dale, who was a city council member before his election in 2001, has gotten generally positive remarks for his two terms on the job.) She isn't a viable serious contender.

But watch the reaction of people in town - and this is what Robinson's candidacy seems aimed toward. How will they react? What response will there be?

A side note. Consider Stu Rasmussen, the newly-elected (as of last November) mayor of Silverton, Oregon, a rural city of about 8,500 a city much smaller than Nampa. He is transgender - wears women's clothes and on the same path as Robinson - and was elected with 52% in a field of three candidates, and was open about his personal transition. But there is also this: He has a long history in town, has run a local business for many years, was on the city council when he was elected last year, and in the 90s served two terms as mayor. Not everyone in town is happy with him, but the place overall doesn't seem especially shaken up.

A chicken capital?

June 14, 2009

Burley, which has seen some hard times in its ag-processing operations over the last few years, might get a break with word that a joint operation called Magic Valley Poultry International is interested in building a mass chicken farm there - about 1,000 jobs (12,000 beaks?), maybe more. It would begin operations by sometime in the summer or fall of 2010.

As the Idaho Statesman's Rocky Barker points out, there will be an ongoing challenge in waste disposal. Probably a good deal less, though, than from the area's mega-dairy operations. [Updated to reflect proper numbers.]