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Posts published in “Day: June 2, 2015”

Heard . . .

June 2, 2015

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Political ambition over good policy?

How did the Knute Buehler bill allowing pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraceptives (patch or pill) rather than requiring a doctors visit suddenly get unstuck? And why was it stuck in the first place?

After all Knute’s “free the pill” proposal making contraceptives more readily available to all women seems like a Democratic rockstar of a bill. Now we’ve heard that the price for moving the bill was a promise by Buehler to Val Hoyle that he wasn’t planning on running for Secretary of State.

If he hadn’t made that promise, it appears Oregon Women would be waiting another two years for increased availability and affordability.

Dan not so Meek:

Because of our State constitution Oregon is one of four state with no campaign contribution and spending limits. Yet Campaign finance reform is widely popular. Particularly among the Democratic progressive base.

Pre session then SoS Kate Brown drafted Senate Joint Resolution 5 (SJR5), which would refer Oregonians a State constitutional amendment allowing political contribution limits (Oregon is one of 4 States that have no legal limits on what you can give to a political candidate). But it’s stuck in the Senate largely because of the opposition of a single State Senator.

Though it’s well known that powerful Democratic financiers also oppose any limits on contributions and spending. But now its possible that should SJR5 die, a broad progressive coalition could be ready to file a petition asking Oregon voters to amend the Oregon Constitution allowing laws limiting both contributions and expenditures. A State “Move to Amend” initiative?

First take

First take

June 2, 2015

The Huckleberries (Spokesman Review) blog polled its readers over the last couple of days, prompted by Nebraska's decision to abolish the death penalty there - the first "red" state to do tht. The question was, should Idaho do likewise? There's a growing conservative argument, developed by a number of national conservative columnists, for doing exactly that. The polled, presumably mostly northern Idahoans, were almost exactly split on the question; the pro-abolish side got just three more votes (out of 241) than the pro-death penalty side did. Maybe there's some shifting going on about this in Idaho.

In the Seattle and San Francisco areas yesterday - and evidently somewhat into today - Internet services from Comcast were widely knocked out, and scattered areas all around the west coast. Columnist Chris Carlson, who lives in a very rural stretch of northern Idaho but relies on Comcast, had his service knocked out. (TV cable apparently was unaffected.) At 11 last night Comcast sent out a tweet saying, "engineers have restored service; everything shld be working. We're sorry for inconvenience. Let us know if you need help." It's an oddity; at least one report referred to a sliced cable as being at fault, though why that would affect such widely scattered areas, or leave TV service unaffected, seems murky. No outage here at RP. Fingers crossed.