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Posts published in April 2006

Northwest net neutrality

April 26, 2006

Imagine a few years hence an Internet that looks a whole lot like cable TV. That your main local provider - who has gotten from federal law the muscle to shove aside the little guys - is able to limit your choices in where you can go on the web, blocking sites at will (including those it simply doesn't like, or that conflicts with corporate imperatives), or charges web providers fees (which it can set at will) for access . . . or maybe for access at anything other than verrry slow speed. Imagine an Internet no longer wide open, "net neutral," the way we've come to know it.

Sound improbable? That's exactly what the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006" (opportunity, promotion and enhancement of the telcos, that is - not for the rest of us) would do. A description (accurate in our opinion, of the measure's end goals) from the anti-COPE group Save the Internet:

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.

They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.

This site is about the Northwest, and our point here is to note that three Northwest House members who voted Wednesday on COPE in the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which passed it 34-22 to the House floor: Jay Inslee of Washington, Greg Walden of Oregon and C.L. "Butch" Otter of Idaho. Two of them have some explaining to do. (more…)

Overreach

April 26, 2006

Probably no decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has energized people across so wide a spectrum as its decision in Kelo v. City of New London (No. 04-108), holding that local governments could condemn property solely for the purpose of upgrading its economic value. Most Americans have understood that property can be condemned (provided fair payment is given) for an important public purpose. Last year's Kelo decision put property ownership at the mercy of private developers as well. In sum, this time, everyone's property is at imminent risk. (Our view is that this was one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in recent years.)

Around the country and in congress, lawmakers have been at work to keep local governments which haven't been doing this sort of thing (in a number of areas it's been common practice for some time) from starting. The Idaho Legislature was not inactive in this area: Eminent domain was a big topic of discussion last session. Lawmakers produced and passed, without a single dissenting vote, House Bill 555, which blocked Idaho local governments from doing much of what the Supreme Court had suggested they otherwise could. It set out, effectively, "to provide limitations on eminent domain for private parties, urban renewal or economic development purposes."

That seems not to have stopped, however, the backers of the Private Property Rights Protection Initiative, which is still (the days grow short: People now are being paid to circulate the petitions) gathering petition signatures to stave off the effects of the Supreme Court decision. Which would seem to have been effectively staved off already by the legislature. Or is that it's real intent? (more…)

The big stink?

April 25, 2006

Nope, somehow we just didn't think there'd be any press releases on the Hanford site about this one. And there aren't.

But the story in the Tri-City Herald is clear enough.

In the middle of the last century, Hanford was conducting an array of tests not only on generating nuclear power but also on the effects of radiation. Apparently, a lot of those tests were conducted on animals. The animals, which eventually did not survive, were buried out in the plains near the Hanford site. The radiation was low-level (mostly at least, one assumes), but now they're going to have to be dug up and re-buried in more secure surroundings.

How many animals is unclear. But the amount of waste (which includes a considerable amount of dirt) is estimated at 35,000 pounds. The project appears to be getting the nickname, "the Big Stink."

The metaphor in all this presumably needs no elaboration.

Gov/GOP again: Shaking out?

April 24, 2006

Does anyone have the Big Mo in the Oregon Republican governor's race? Doesn't feel like it . . . Though if anyone should, Ron Saxton should be the guy. He's been watching persistent stories about how Jason Atkinson hasn't been gaining big-time traction and almost no endorsements from major entities, and about a string of financial problems, including persistent debt and fast and odd financial shifts, surfacing in the Oregonian (on clockwork, as noted here and elsewhere a few weeks ago). And yet.

The well-connected Republican I Am Coyote (a strong Atkinson backer, it should be noted) at the NW Republican blog, is adamant that Saxton is stalling. Key rationale:

1) Saxton is not releasing any poll numbers. Well except for the all important Dorchester straw poll and the Portland Business Journal online poll. If a candidate has a poll that says they are winning, they release it.

2) Saxton is calling in the chits with The Oregonian. It has been a full on assault on Kevin Mannix by the "O." With two "hard" news stories, an editorial against Mannix, a nauseating endorsement and TWO hits by Uncle Dave [Reichert, conservative editorial page columnist]? If you have ever wanted to see what political mouth to mouth resuscitation looks like, well, this is it.

3) The Grand Ronde Tribe is beginning to act hysterical in their support. Hysterical in that you can almost hear them yelling "DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW THAT WE REALLY REALLY MEAN IT?! Really."

The conclusion is not that Saxton necessarily is losing, just that the primary is undecided as yet. Watch the Monday night debate, and you get that sense: A feeling that this race is very much yet to be won or lost.

Faceoff in Portland

April 24, 2006

No conclusive winners in the Monday forum for Republican gubernatorial candidates, the most widely-viewed event (on Portland's KGW TV) for these three during the primary. Comparing to their appearance at Dorchester in early March, Jason Atkinson was maybe a shade less polished and Ron Saxton maybe a little more forceful and distinct as a personality, but neither they nor their competitor, Kevin Mannix, really staked out much new ground.

They took great care not to lob direct shots at each other, but the pressure on all three must be wearing: The subtle, indirect hits were all over the place. More common than that, however, were the shots at Democratic incumbent Ted Kulongoski, who one of the three most likely will face in the fall.

Some shots hit home, as in the heavy turnover in some parts of the Kulongoski Administration. In other places, they were less sucessful; all three, for example, called for a declaration of state emergency for salmon-fishing areas of the coast impacted by a new salmon fishing ban, while failing to note that Kulongoski had earlier the day issue just that declaration.

In other places, you have to wonder about the implications. Asked about Kulongoski's stance on Iraq, for example, Saxton praised him for attending the funerals of Oregon National Guard troops killed in Iraq, then seemed to blast him for changing his view on the war from supportive at first to critical now. An Oregon governor, he suggested, must support not only the troops but also the policy - or was he suggesting that Oregonians generally should stifle their views on the war? His answer was a muddle, and something a skillful reporter might return to (much to Saxton's possible discomfort in a state which seems now to be generally anti-war).

No one ran the tables or glitched himself to death. But the odds and ends of this debate could provide some useful news stories between here and ballot mailing time.

Climate change, from the top

April 22, 2006

Via the British Broadcasting Corporation, a fascinating comparison: Oregon's Mount Hood in late summer, 1985 and 2002.

 

Yes, different years will have somewhat different climates. But this difference is more than that. The climate of the world really is changing, and so is that of the Pacific Northwest. People who have climbed Mount Hood have been saying for some time they see change. That's anecdotal; this is big-picture.

[The images were taken by photographer Gary Braasch. See the BBC report on "In pictures: how the world is changing.]

An urban water tipping point

April 22, 2006

In times of drought, city people are often encouraged to limit their water use: Wash cars less often, water lawns less regularly. Nothing wrong with that, but such advice tends to cloak the really heavy users 0f water in the non-coastal west: agricultural irrigators. In most states west of the 100th meridian, excepting the Pacific coastal area, anywhere from 80% to 90% of water used by people is used by farmers.

In places like Idaho, where water is monitored closely, the people much involved with water - notably the policy makers and water users - tend to be well aware of that, and it's lodged into practical thinking on the subject. Time may be coming, though, when thinking on the subject is due for a shift. Urban growth in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas has started to crimp water use in the southwest. And now come early signs some of the same could be happening in the Snake River basin in Idaho.

The trigger for some rethinking was the battle, over the last few months, between Idaho Power Company on one side and the state government and many water users on the other. Iddaho Power maintained that it is feeling increasing pressure as it tries to keep its power rates low in a time of growth; its traditional means of doing that is through its hydropower dams, which provide some of the least expensive juice. Its demands for water rank head first into the needs of many southern Idaho irrigators, among others.

A deal, for now, was reached on that situation several weeks ago; it calls for irrigators to pay a substantial part of the increased cost that higher power demands have imposed on Idaho Power. But a disquieting note appears in comments from Lynn Tominaga, a former state senator and now executive director of the Idaho Irrigation Pumpers Association.

Irrigators have been held to account for many of Idaho Power's increased costs and pressures. But Tominaga makes a solid point: "Do you see new irrigated land coming into production?"

He's right: It hasn't. And while a singe house uses relatively little water, the great mass of houses doing up especially around southwest Idaho - estimated at upwards of 10,000 a year over the last decade - has really added to the pressure on water supplies.

Rural legislators slowly are losing their traditional clout in the Idaho Legislature. But they may see the structuring of Idaho's water, electricity and rate system as a point to center in on when they reconvene in 2007.

Firewall

April 21, 2006

What exactly is one state legislator in Washington doing interfering in the communications of another with his constituents?

In essence, that's happening in Washington, through the intermediary of legislative staff.

All this grows out of a principle, enshrined in rules in various ways in many states, that legislators should refrain from personal attacks on each other. That makes some sense; start down that road and cooperative legislating soon becomes impossible. The imperative is to stick to the issues.

But that principle usually applies to speech and statements in official proceedings, on the floor and in committee. And ordinarily, it doesn't serve to limit lawmakers from saying what they want about substantive matters, or characterizing them as they will. Especially to constituents.

Glenn AndersonEnter a Washington legislative rule from 1998, which had bipartisan support, which said that attacks by legislators on other legislators should not be supported with state money, in whatever means. Here it starts to get tricky, because you wind up with bad cases like the one Representative Glenn Anderson, a Republican from Falls City, is contending with.

Like many other legislators, he sends his constituents newsletters. The House clerk's office has taken to editing these, to the point of insisting of what he can and cannot say about issues - because some of what he says about some issues could be taken as criticism of majority Democrats. (more…)

Jessica and Vicki

April 20, 2006

Emotion spilled all over the floor of the Oregon Senate toward the end of Thursday's brief special session. That will happen when the subject is child sex abuse.

The emotion came in part from Senator Bruce Starr, a Hillsoboro Republican, who had pushed a very similar measure in the 2005 session. "Jessica's Law" - another of those measures named for a victim of a horrific crime - is relatively narrow, and easily gets widespread support. It applies to adults who sexually molest children under 12, and requires both a 25-year sentence and lifetime monitoring, since so many such offenders are compulsive re-offenders.

House Bill 3507 passed the House in 2005 and quickly got the support of most senators, but became snared in the Senate-House cross-battles over legislation, and died at session's end. Hardly anyone felt good about that, and when Governor Ted Kulongoski ordered up a special session, Senate President Peter Courtney pushed through inclusion of Jessica's.

In the meantime, it had become the subject of a major initiative campaign which seemed likely to get it on the ballot and to pass it; Starr was much involved with that as well. And he talked at length Thursday, sometimes in circular fashion. But he sounded a grateful note Thursday - he might have understandably felt undercut at this point - as the proposal approached its final passage (30-0) in the Senate.

Vicki WalkerA rather different note came from another bill supporter, Eugene Democrat Vicki Walker.

Her story was personal. She started out withthe blunt statement, "I was raped when I was five years old," and went on from there through experiences that went on more than a decade. She warned that most child sex abusers are family, neighbors or friends of the family, and cited personal experience to back that up.

You could see the senators squirming as they listened (she acknowledged the discomfort in the room as she was speaking), but the unease came not only from her personal story, harrowing as it was, but also from her legislative point: That crafting legislation which reaches into families, which aims at holding families together while also protecting children, is a tough thing to do. She and other senators are at work on it, she noted, and noted as well that the effort has drawn concern from a range of quarters. And that battle, she suggested, hasn't even properly begun.

"I'm sorry this offended some of your sensibilities," she said near the end. That sounded almost like a warning: If she's re-elected and back in the chamber in January, that offense may continue.