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Posts published in “Day: June 22, 2011”

Farm to school

June 22, 2011
Oregon House
Oregon House on Wednesday/Stapilus

Oregon has a pretty strong culture of buying locally, especially food. But not, apparently, when it comes to schools. Schools are limited in their choices, have to work through a complex and often costly state bureaucracy, and in many cases actually haven't been allowed to buy locally.

That may be more than a little astonishing to most people who have lived in the state a while.

It may also be changing. The Oregon House Wednesday unanimously passed House Bill 2800, who provides directions and money - funds set aside - for the state Department of Education to help local districts buy locally.

The bill, sponsored by Representatives Brian Clem, D-Salem, and Tina Kotek, D-Portland, had no opposition.

What's happening there suggests there are a bunch of ways state and local governments can be gotten to operate more effectively linking to the local economy and services. All that's really needed is a different mindset.

Labrador and immigration

June 22, 2011
Labrador

Raul Labrador

We've remarked before that a subject that caused new Representative Raul Labrador some heartburn during his campaign for the job - that of illegal immigration - could be a subject on which he could make a major mark in Congress. Now the site Politico is asking, "Is Raul Labrador GOP immigration key?"

Whether he turns out to be probably depends mostly on how other Republicans respond to him - and whether they're willing to take what amounts to a centrist approach. The possibility is there. Politico reports that Labrador is "meeting with Republicans and conservative opinion-makers to try to build a “conservative consensus” to the seemingly intractable problem that defied a national reform effort nearly four years ago and still roils the political landscape on a state level."

Labrador, who was born in Puerto Rico, is an attorney who for years practiced immigration law; he addresses the subject knowledgeably. And his basic approach is similar to that proposed by both a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans: strengthen the borders, go after employers who hire illegally but also develop a guest worker program, and generally deal realistically rather than in fantasy with the reality of the situation (i.e., the idea of magically deporting millions of people).

He seems to be engaged in a long-term search for an approach that could gain support across much of the Republican Party, still a formidable challenge. But he may be one of the few people in Congress with the potential of actually pulling it off.

Carlson: It’s the water, stupid

June 22, 2011
carlson
Chris Carlson
Carlson Chronicles

With apologies to political consultant James Carville, who famously coined the expression “it’s all about the economy, stupid,” the future in the west is all about water, its allocation, cost and rapid depletion.

Scientists, naturalists, writers, farmers, ranchers, and politicians are all too aware of its scarcity beyond the 100th Meridian, as duly noted and popularized in the late 19th century by John Wesley Powell, famed explorer of the Grand Canyon and Colorado River and first head of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Lay on the issue of global warming and many scientists believe the arid west will become hotter and drier, accelerating the desertification process. Cities that had neither right nor common sense in their expansion, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, are requiring ever increasing amounts of water. They willingly pay farmers and ranchers princely sums to surrender their water rights to pipelines hundreds of miles in length to slake their thirst.

This growing need for potable water has fueled the drive for more impoundments to store winter run-off and rain. The coming conflict between agricultural use versus culinary and human use is clear. Determining highest and best use will be the marketplace, not board rooms of large corporations nor the committee meeting rooms of state legislatures.

Nor does it take rocket science to predict two major aspects regarding water and the future:

1) Those that have an abundance of water, ground water or a sizable underground aquifer, are going to prosper and those that don’t are going to flounder. Thus, 100 years from now Spokane, with the vast and so far unmapped and unplumbed Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, will be a thriving city with manufacturing transplanted from California. And Las Vegas may be a mere shadow of its glory days.

2) Congress will repeal the so-called Winters Doctrine of 1908. Why? Because Congress will conclude the Supreme Court vested too much power in indigenous Native American tribes by placing their water rights “first in time” and therefore “first in right.” (more…)