The U.S. has natural gas to burn.

One reason Biden is in trouble is right here, circled on the map.

That spot in the night sky is brighter than Denver, San Francisco, or Portland and Seattle combined. It's amid wheat fields in North Dakota. 

They are flaring off natural gas. It is a by-product of oil drilling and oil companies can't get the natural gas to market.

Several times a week people ask me, "How is it possible so many people are planning to vote for Trump. Why is this election even close?"

President Biden was elected as a centrist. Democratic primary voters made that choice in the spring of 2020 when they chose Biden, not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. He adjusted to try to keep the progressive left from defecting, so he is governing as an environmental progressive.

Democrats generally support "the climate agenda" when it is presented generally. But in everyday practice, most Americans are more concerned about grocery and gasoline prices than they are about climate. Climate is a theory and a mystery, and it is the future. Prices today are money out of today's billfold. Democratic climate activists oppose natural gas pipelines, chilling facilities, and natural gas terminal port developments because they recognize that these investments make natural gas more marketable. Inexpensive natural gas makes greener alternatives less attractive. Investments in natural gas pipelines have 40-year lives, so if we build out natural gas distribution, and people continue to build homes with natural gas furnaces and ovens, then the U.S. will delay making the switch toward greener energy. That is why some blue jurisdictions have placed bans on new natural gas hookups. Popular demonstrations and lawsuits by environmentalists oppose new pipelines. 

The net result is that America flares off natural gas at the pump-head. It is the result of policy. 

Biden's policy choices send a message to working class Americans everywhere. They attribute high gasoline prices to Biden. People in energy-producing areas of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and upstate New York, get the message that Biden cares more about the climate policies of college-educated liberal elitists than he does about their jobs. Pennsylvania and New Mexico are battleground states. The loss of House seats in New York cost Democrats a House majority.

High gasoline prices are practical body language. Natural gas flares are practical body language. No speech about Bidenomics or "balance" or "transitional fuel" overcomes what people see and fee.

Democrats might be stronger politically if they remembered the emotion of John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck described government policy of destroying food to meet a long term goal. People saw the waste. They saw something they wanted withheld from them. They didn't appreciate the long term goal. 

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? . . . . There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. . . . [A]nd in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

For working Americans a fill-up of gasoline -- 21 gallons at $4.85 a gallon, the current price in Medford -- is a hundred dollars, which is over four hours, and perhaps more, of work for the median-income employee. Prosperous, well-educated Democrats who perceive climate as a pressing emergency see the wisdom of making the hard choice to reject natural gas. Some of them are removing their gas ovens and stovetops. They wonder how it is possible that so many voters would choose a crazy, dishonest, would-be dictator who denies climate change and loves oil companies.  

President Biden's policies have Americans flaring off natural gas. It seems so wrong. In the eyes of working people there is a failure and the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.

"Good" may be the enemy of the "good enough" and the possible.

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Easy Sunday: So much to worry about, but let's not.

So much news.

Gaza war, campus demonstrations, local and national campaigns, inflation, Stormy and the Trump trials, Biden in Wisconsin, Kristi Noem shooting an untrained dog, prospective Vice Presidents pre-announcing they won't concede a 2024 election loss.

So much opportunity for worry and outrage.

Here is Mother’s Day present, a funny bit from YouTube. 

Patrick Stewart plays an angry British Prime Minister, outraged at the imposition on British sovereignty of the European Commission on Human Rights. What have they ever done for us?

Three and a half minutes.

Click Here

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Up Close in Paris: A Guest Post

The United States is a Republic in Peril

Exactly three years ago Steve Wolfram sent me a guest post comment that I headlined with the same words I use today. He wrote that Trump had hijacked the GOP and it was flouting democratic norms. The U.S. and France both established our democracies in the same decades of Enlightenment enthusiasm. Our democracies have been parallel, but different. He sees both.

He writes again, this time with an opinion on a problem in today's headlines: the student encampment movement on US campuses in a comparative analysis informed by how the French deal with public demonstrations. Born and raised in Texas, Steve is a college classmate. After law school at Harvard, he worked as a corporate attorney in private practice  in New York, London and then Paris. Before retiring in 2017 he worked as General Counsel for M&A at EDF, the French electric generator. Father of five children and grandfather of nine grands, Steve has lived in Paris since 1991. 

Guest Post by Steve Wolfram

The Limits of the Righteous Cause – A View from Paris on the Encampment Movement on American Campuses

"‘You must leave campus immediately’: MIT suspends protesters as encampment tensions escalate"

This Boston Globe  headline is one of many reminders that, to my consternation and surprise, we are still working through a crisis of confusion in American thinking about the scope of the rights to freedom of speech and to peaceable assembly in dealing with the campus encampment movement.*

It is not the substance of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist message of the protestors that I find most disturbing or surprising. Or even their disregard of the political counter-productivity of playing right into the electoral strategy of Trump, under whom the Palestinian cause would again count for little or naught.

On the contrary, I find the horror of college students (among others) at the destruction and loss of life in Gaza to be an entirely understandable human reaction to the death of innocents, particularly children, in the brutal Israeli response to the Hamas massacre of October 7. And, beyond Gaza, I believe that, as with the protest movements of our youth, today’s protests reflect a legitimate underlying anger with elders for the state of the world that they are leaving to their children and grandchildren, who face decades into the future of dark existential challenges with climate change, environmental catastrophe, mass migration, and economic inequality.

Rather, what is most concerning is the jarring discovery of a school of thought emerging not just among students but also among professors and administrators that the degree of freedom of expression and assembly is not fixed, but should be determined by the righteousness of the cause in question. Because our cause is righteous, the logic seems to go, the more liberty and latitude we deserve in our freedom of expression and assembly in support thereof, regardless even of the rights of others.

Beyond the plethora of tent encampments, the consequences of the flexibility in this “liberty for me, but not for thee” application of First Amendment principles are grave. I have no doubt, for instance, that the miscreants of January 6 fervently believed in the righteousness of their cause. And to them, this belief sufficed to justify their actions. In other words, that the end justifies the means. Such has been the mentality and rationale of Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin , Hitler and all other authoritarians. And of Putin today in attacking Ukraine in blatant violation of the UN Charter. And of Hamas in justifying October 7 and of those seeking to excuse October 7 or, in the parlance, to “contextualize” the Hamas attack on the innocents. 

The heart of the problem is that, if each group is permitted to act solely on the basis of its own judgement of what is righteous, we no longer live under the rule of law that is the ultimate safeguard of freedom and equality.

As one who believes that we have benefited greatly by living under a Constitution firmly grounded in Enlightenment principles, I have been shocked by the negative blowback even among educated peers to the affirmation by Harvard Professors Steven Pinker and Jeffrey Flier -- with reference to the Harvard encampment movement-- that, while in a rules-based democracy, freedoms of speech and assembly must absolutely be protected regardless of substance or virulence, these freedoms  are not without reasonable limits as to time and place designed to protect public safety and the ability of the university to fulfill its function as a forum for learning and free exchange of ideas. For ultimately this blowback constitutes a rejection of the fundamental definition of liberty ---echoed by Pinker and Flier --  spelled out in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 (Article 4): 

“Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man has no bounds other than those that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.”

In contemplating the ideological confusion in the United States resulting from the taking root of the “my cause is righteous” school, I am struck by the contrast with the relative success and intellectual clarity that France has achieved in dealing with the inherent tension between liberty of expression and assembly and the interest in public order that have allowed freedom of assembly and speech in a country where demonstrations can be considered not just a collective national sport, but a vital catalyst to vital political engagement.

When I first became a French resident 35 years ago, I was impressed with two phenomena: first, the multitude and variety of demonstrations -- manifestations or "manifs" for short; and, secondly, the invariable presence of riot police regardless of the size or cause at each and every manif.

In my neighborhood -- home to a number of ministries and the National Assembly -- I been treated to a front- row seat to manifs several times a week. The causes are immensely diverse, ranging from those related to the vital issues of the day -- both foreign and domestic – to specialized causes of limited general interest. (My personal favorite in this latter category was a small but enormously enthusiastic march I encountered one morning in support of the protection of wolves in the Pyrenees). I would indeed be hard- pressed to name a cause -- with the sole exception of a march in support of the Donald -- that has not been represented in the streets.

As to the ubiquitous police presence, for a long time I thought of it as solely an overbearing, even tyrannical menace that would be unusual in the U.S. for most demonstrations. As my experience deepened, however, I began to view police presence against the background of France’s long history of violent urban demonstrations, starting in earnest with the Revolution and continuing throughout the 19th century and onto May 1968 and beyond. Given this violent past, I now have come to view the demonstrators, on one side, and the riot police, on the other, as a neatly symmetrical embodiment of the duality of the resolution of the tension between the principles of  liberty and public safety and order, both rooted in the Rights of Man.

With the number and variety of manifs, I find it remarkable that the vast majority -- loud and rambunctious as they may be -- occur without material violence. The gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) marches every Saturday in late-2018-early-2019 were undeniably an exception, but one that I would maintain proves the general rule of orderly protest that serves not only as a healthy and effective outlet for political and ideological expression but also as an important  stimulus to political engagement  in a fundamentally democratic society steeped in constant confrontational, but peaceful political dialogue of a maturity and vigor that I fervently wish existed in our contemporary American culture. 

  
Our Bill of Rights was proposed for ratification in September 1789 in parallel with the promulgation in France of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the same year. With their common source in the ideals of the Enlightenment, there are of course many similarities. But from an American perspective, it is notable that freedom of speech and assembly in France is somewhat more limited than under the First Amendment, as broadly construed in  American jurisprudence. While freedom of expression is explicitly recognized in the Rights of Man, freedom of assembly is only implicit; and even freedom of expression is subject to the condition stated in Article 10 that “the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order.” Public "hate speech", for example, is illegal in France, with statutory prohibitions on incitement of racial violence and on Holocaust denial. All demonstrations require a permit from the authorities approving the route to be taken and measures to ensure orderly conduct, with the authorities retaining discretion to refuse such permits in the name of public safety, as recently occurred to prohibit at least one pro-Palestinian march in the aftermath of October 7. And perhaps most significantly, our First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and assembly are  limited to protection from infringement by governmental action, thus still permitting -- for example – various forms of “hate speech” that would be illegal in France.

Notwithstanding (or perhaps in some ways because of) these well-understood restrictions, the French enthusiasm for les manifestations remains alive and well and taken as a sacred right by all political classes.  Yet another French paradox? 

Granted, it has taken France over 200 years and much bloodshed to arrive at a workable and clear balance between liberty of expression and assembly and public order. And it still a synthesis that remains subject to occasional challenge, as illustrated by the gilets jaunes and the recent occupation by pro-Palestinian demonstrators of Science Po -- the elite private, largely tuition-supported college-level institution that draws heavily on relatively privileged students imbued -- like  their American counterparts -- with the righteousness of their cause.

But overall the relative clarity of thought implicit in the French experience should inspire hope that the ideological confusion in the U.S. in dealing with the encampment movement will similarly dissipate. So, while I have no tolerance for the “righteous cause” school, I am also mindful of the need for patience and persistence in order for the sweet reason of the Enlightenment ultimately to prevail.

 

 

Footnote:

 *As the First Amendment only protects freedom of speech and assembly from infringement by governmental  action, these First Amendment principles are enforced on private college campuses only insofar as they are incorporated into college codes of conduct. 

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Grass Roots Campaign

Fair is fair. 

Today we look at the contributions and expenditures of the supporters of the ballot measures. Yesterday I looked at the campaign of the opponents.

The group advocating for a change in the county charter, Jackson County for All, is an authentic, grass-roots movement.

Jackson County for All Website

Yesterday I wrote that the local good ol' boy network coalesced to oppose the charter change.  Being "good ol' boys" doesn't make them wrong. It makes them loyal to the team. Opponents of the measures have every right to use the tools at their disposal -- money -- to get endorsements and to fund a campaign. I realize it looks like a self-serving, crony situation, but that is the way of the world. It is the right of companies that have multimillion dollar contracts with the county to give to a cause important to the client. For the businesses, whether it is three commissioners or five commissioners, partisan or nonpartisan, paid $150,000 a year or paid less, is of little consequence. But it is important to the commissioners, and since they approve their contracts and franchise agreements, of course the businesses say yes if asked to contribute to their campaign in opposition.

It is the same with the county sheriff who wrote a statement saying that if the county finds office space for two extra people it might reduce the money going to the sheriff -- that in a $600 million budget. It is nonsense, but nonsense the commissioners want to hear. It makes sense for the sheriff's department to be a team player with the people who approve his departmental budget. I think the sheriff is short-sighted. Maybe with five commissioners rather than three, and with them doing a better job of getting out into the public, both listening and explaining the current jail dysfunction, they won't do what the commissioners did four years ago, when they offered up a tone-deaf 800-bed lockup facility for public vote. (The public rejected it 71% to 29%.)

The campaigns for and against the measures are very different. The supporters are a classic example of a citizen movement. The 200-plus people who gathered the petitions were all local citizen volunteers. There is no paid staff. It is reflected in the contributions and expenditures report.

The opponents' list of campaign contributions and expenditures that I presented yesterday was short and sweet. How different from Jackson County for All. Their Orestar report is cluttered with multiple donations, many of them small and aggregated. Then a large number of contributions in larger amounts -- $100-plus -- from retired people and people with no recognizable business connection to county government. There are dozens of little expenses for campaign supplies paid for and reimbursed to the campaign's manager, Denise Krause, and other volunteers. These are payments to Staples for campaign supplies, to local media for advertisements, to sign venders for those Yes! Yes! Yes! signs. Go to Orestar and enter Committee ID# 23119, and click on the Campaign Finance Transactions on the left:

This goes on for five more pages. A diligent reader will see that my name appears twice, making a total of $2,000 in contributions. I made the contributions happily and proudly. I was an early supporter of this charter change effort. My primary motivator was not the salaries, even though 44 years ago that was an element of my own campaign, when cost of living increases had pushed the salary from $28,000/year to a little over $30,000. I said commissioner salaries were becoming an issue for voters, and we ought to scale them back. Nor was it the move from three to five commissioners, although this is overdue. 

My primary motivation is the partisan issue. Local issues don't split on the partisan divides that roil the state and nation. Candidates should run nonpartisan races. I served with Hank Henry, a veteran journalist before he won election to the Board of Commissioners. He was a Republican. In two years, with perhaps 1000 votes on matters of significant controversy and substance, there was exactly one vote on which we disagreed. He and I saw eye-to-eye on local issues, although we would have disagreed on presidential and congressional politics. There is no need to bring the partisanship at the national and state level here to the local level.

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Good ol' boys.

"Them good 'ol boys drinkin' whisky and rye

Singin', 'this'll be the day that I die.'"

       Don McLain, American Pie, 1971

Southern Oregon has Good ol' boys. 

They fund the opposition campaign to the three Jackson County charter update measures.

The old school notion of good ol' boys included elements of White, Southern, racist, conservative, and male. Picture "Bubba" in a bass boat, drinking beer with chums from elementary school, complaining about politics having gone to hell thanks to uppity Blacks and women's lib. A traditional good ol' boy was friendly and unpretentious. They were noteworthy for their loyalty to the team but not for their ambition. Good ol' boys never left their small town to find work in Atlanta or Birmingham.

Oregon's Jackson County has a good ol' boy network, updated to the 21st Century. They are Oregonian, not Southern. Women are in it now, although professional women tell me the network is still misogynistic. The network includes some of our community's leading citizens and public benefactors. The local good ol' boy network retains two essential characteristics of the idea: Conservative attitudes and politics and loyalty to the other members of the peer group.

In Southern Oregon, that makes them Republicans. It also makes them leaders in the Greater Medford Chamber of Commerce, which has a PAC of its own that washes and anonymizes campaign contributions made to Republican candidates. 

The three measures are minor adjustments to the county charter. Making the commissioners nonpartisan puts them into sync with the nonpartisan judges, the district attorney, the county sheriff, and every other city and county office. Nonpartisan commissioners shouldn't be a big deal. Nor is going from three to five of them, to get a little more breadth of opinion. The current commissioner salary of $150,000/year is completely out of scale, and political conservatives would be outraged if that salary were being paid to Democrats. A few of Republicans reluctantly defend the salaries since they are going to their team members. 

There is no clear reason for local businesses to care one way or the other about the three charter update issues and I presume they don't care. They gave to the opposition campaign because a friend asked them to give. The good ol' boy circle that funds Republican candidates for local office allied with the local GOP to defend the tiny fortress of three Republican commissioners and a county administrator. There is no reason to think a larger board would end the county administrator's power -- County Administrator Danny Jordan does have that extraordinary three-year's income severance deal -- but the Republican establishment decided to nip in the bud any potential threats. The good ol' boy network went along. They are team players.

Oregon election law requires disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures on the Orestar website. Then enter number 23389 under filer ID#.  The StopBiggerGovernment PAC is the primary vehicle for opposition to the ballot measures. Here is what it reports as of this morning:

These are what we would expect. We see the husband of a GOP state representative; relatives of a county commissioner whose salary is at risk; a member of the county budget committee who approved the salary increases; the owners and managers of companies that contract with the county to build its buildings and pave its roads; the garbage and landfill company; landlords of local real estate; and the Chamber of Commerce.  

There is a small, tight group at the county courthouse allied with a cozy group of business leaders, a classic example of 21st century good ol' boy politics. Who runs things here in Jackson County and how do they retain power and influence? It is vendors showing tribute to the people who hire them. It is friends helping friends. 

Again, I am in favor of the three measures. Group-think conformity is dangerous in a board of directors. I would like more opportunity for variety. When the commissioners' office is conceived of and paid like a career position with step increases for longevity, then incumbents seek conformity and self-protection, and we are seeing it right now. It means we don't get clear, honest communication on the hard issues facing the county including funding a jail. I want to get the commissioners out from behind their locked doors and guarded offices. Let's open things up. 

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The weird "NO" campaign.

     "Peter, my friends who do business with the county oppose the ballot measures because they are afraid voters may elect someone who will challenge Danny Jordan. Heaven forbid that."
     Local businessman, whose company contributed to the PAC paying for ads opposing changes to the county charter.

The local Republican Party is against the charter update measures. They like the status quo. After all, all three current commissioners are Republicans. They allied with companies that do business with the county to fund the opposition campaign. 

The "NO" campaign mostly avoids addressing the merits of the measures. Instead, the campaign presents an uneasy message of doom if the measures pass. The photo below is not a blurry photo of a sign. It is an in-focus photo of a sign with a blurry image of someone drawn from the horror movie "Night of the Living Dead." 

Republicans want to keep a partisan label. In recent countywide elections the bright red rural areas of the county, already blossoming with "Trump won" signs, outvoted purple Medford and blue Ashland. Currently the county has a 54-46 Republican registration tilt. 

Much of the money for the "NO" campaign comes from companies with established business relationships with the county. The current commissioners back County Administrator Danny Jordan. Leaders from well-connected businesses were asked to give, so they gave. Any smart business person would try to please a large customer. It's just simple business.

Rogue Valley Times, April 24, 2024

There is widespread belief among people who follow local government that Jordan is the county's alpha-male decision-maker. He dominates a room. He manages the information commissioners receive and the options they consider. People comfortable with the status quo say commissioners take direction from a smart and reasonable guy -- what's wrong with that? They might do really stupid things if he weren't there. 

Others disagree and worry about the status quo. They consider the commissioners Jordan's lapdogs in a closed loop of mutual protection. Commissioners give Jordan fulsome praise, along with a big salary and benefits, and a severance package of three years at full pay if they dismiss him. In return, he protects incumbents by coming up with implausibly high costs for remodels of offices and meeting rooms if the county goes from three to five commissioners.

The measures themselves aren't the issue. The real agenda is defense of the status quo. The measures themselves have appeal. In normal circumstances, Republicans would be first to complain about overpaid commissioners. They would decry "big government politicians" getting paid $150,000 to do what state senators do for $33,000, and local mayors and city council members do for free. Most people are tired of partisan division. A five-person governing body wouldn't be out of scale, given that most city councils have eight members. So the opposition to the measures needed to deflect. It created straw-man arguments to attack.

I am voting yes on all three measures. I don't think it will help Democrats much. In fact, I think it's more likely to result in electing five Republicans, not three. Let the people vote. We will find out.

I would rather commissioners run as nonpartisan. I know from experience that county issues aren't partisan. 

I think salary creep has gotten out of hand. Commissioners should have voluntarily put a stop to it with pay cuts (as we did back in 1982) but since this group isn't taking the hint, the public needs to step in. 

I have been on enough boards over the years to fear group-think. I welcome more diversity and genuine debate and disagreement within a board. Five commissioners may bring more pushback and hard questioning of staff recommendations and more perspective from a wider group of citizens. The county would be better for it.

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County charter updates

Charter change proposals in both Josephine County and Jackson County face well-funded opposition. 

Opponents' ads and signs are everywhere. Their arguments are over-the-top crazy.

The two counties' charter update proposals share a common feature: The opponents predict catastrophe if the proposals pass. The supposed effects of the measures are out of all proportion to reality. The Jackson County changes are modest and incremental. They keep intact the governing structure of a strong administrator paired with an at-large policy-making body that hires and supervises that administrator. The proposals make the policy-making body a little larger and a little less partisan. The opposition ads claim Jackson County is somehow importing Portland. Opponents assert that adding two commissioners somehow requires a major remodel of the courthouse, therefore costing lots more money. And going from three to five commissioners, and paying them half as much, is somehow "Big Government."

Jackson County opposition sign

The Josephine County measures face a similar tactic of claims of doom. Lynda Demsher  was the founding member of Josephine County's charter-change group, the Citizens for Responsible Government. She lives in Grants Pass. Before becoming a high school teacher she worked in Northern California as a journalist.

Demsher

Guest Post by Lynda Demsher

Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) is still at it in Grants Pass in spite of a force of opposition trying hard to convince voters that Measure 17-116, the proposed Josephine County charter revision, is a sneaky plot by Democrats to take over Southern Oregon and turn it into Multnomah County. This opposition, basically from an extremist group within the Josephine County Republican Party, has also spent thousands of dollars trying to convince voters that Measure 17-116 will grab their guns, stifle free speech and religion, take away parental rights, allow people to run around naked, tax them to their toenails, seize their assets, allow animals to be neglected and end maintenance on the library’s toilets. Of course, none of this is true.

Opposition ad

CRG is being hammered for daring to propose expanding the board of commissioners from three full-time to five part-time members with a stipend. The savings in salaries and benefits would be used to hire a county manager. Apparently this is seen as sacrilegious by the JCGOP, which warns that approving Measure 17-116 will bring down the wrath of God. They also believe county commissioners cannot run from districts, as the charter revision proposes, because then they would be called district commissioners, not county commissioners. Actually only four would run from districts. One would have the privilege of cluttering up the entire county with campaign signs.

Voters  Pamphlet  comment

Josephine County Commission Chair John West must really want to keep his salary and benefits because he’s spent thousands of dollars on negative ads in conjunction with the Josephine County GOP and has helped finance $6,800 worth of voter pamphlet statements against Measure 17-116. His ethics have been questioned concerning this but the State of Oregon tends to let what happens in Josephine County stay in Josephine County. State officials have been warned: If you visit here and mention Measure 17-116 around West, you’d better stand back because he snorts and paws the ground like a bull with a red cape in front of him.

All this is designed to wear Measure 17-116 campaigners down but it isn’t working. They have been raising money, designing ads, distributing signs, holding town halls and meet-and-greets throughout the county, cheerfully sitting at informational tables near outdoor vegetable markets, post offices and Taylor’s in Cave Junction; holding neighborhood coffees, phone banking and canvassing with door hangers. They plan to hold a rally May 11 at noon on the courthouse steps in Grants Pass. CRG’s network of supporters has increased exponentially and events have brought out more positive than negative views of Measure 17-116 across the county.

It is hard to know at this point whether Measure 17-116 will succeed, but it has accomplished something already. Far more people in Josephine County are tuned into their county government and are concerned about its future. In addition, CRG, a non-partisan, grass-roots group of Republican, Democratic, non-affiliated and Independent voters , has demonstrated divisiveness can be conquered by working together for a shared cause. So will collapsing together with a tall one after May 21.

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Capital punishment for Dogs

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor, wrote about shooting her dog in a gravel pit. 

She wanted to look tough.

In 1982 I voted to condemn a dog to be euthanized because it chased some sheep.

I didn't feel tough. I felt bad about it.

Back in the prior century Oregon laws were written in favor of farmers and ranchers, not pet owners. If a dog chased and bit a person, there were incremental steps of fines imposed on dog owners -- not the dog. But if a dog chased livestock, the dog faced the death penalty. 

That was the law when I was a county commissioner in the early 1980s, and that stayed the law through the end of the century. There was no wiggle room, no second chances. 

 
In 1982, I was chair of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners. A county Animal Control Officer had witnessed a mixed breed dog, the pet of a young man, frightening sheep by chasing them around a pasture. No sheep were injured. The exuberant dog was having fun.The owner of the sheep had called the Animal Control Department for help capturing the dog. 

Under Oregon law, county board of commissioners must hold a hearing to evaluate whether the dog in fact had chased livestock. If so, the dog must be "put down," as the Animal Control Officer put it. The county's legal counsel advised us that the county would face open-ended liability risks if we failed to carry out the sentence. If the dog subsequently chased or killed livestock, or worse, bit and injured and scarred a child, the county could be held responsible. 

Kristi Noem wrote that she was angry with her dog. It had ruined a pheasant hunt by flushing birds incorrectly, and then she brought it to a place with chickens and her dog caught and killed some of them, she wrote. She shot her dog and a goat. She wrote that she hated them both. 

There was no anger at that board of commissioners hearing. We were reluctant and sympathetic. The dog's owner was sobbing and pleading with us to save his dog. It was a good dog and was just having fun, he said. It was his fault, not the dog's. Spare the dog, please.

All three commissioners agreed the law struck a hard balance that reflected the needs and attitudes of an earlier era, when Jackson County had an agricultural economy and vulnerable livestock. The laws seemed antiquated to us. The laws permitted landowners to shoot a strange dog on sight if it was amid their livestock, and the law required a death sentence on a first offense for a dog that caused livestock to run. But the Oregon legislature had had multiple opportunities to change the law and it had not. We voted unanimously to do our duty.

(The dog wasn't "put down." For some reason the dog was not in custody of the Animal Control Department. It was at the young man's house. After the hearing, the dog owner drove straight home and gathered his things and moved out of state, taking his dog with him. The dog was a fugitive. We heard word from the young man's roommate that neither his roommate nor the dog could be located. They disappeared. The county lacked the resources to try to find the "lost dog," so nothing more came of it.) 

I presume Kristi Noem was attempting to signal voters that she was tough-minded enough to be vice presidential material. Joni Ernst had won a senate seat in Iowa by introducing herself as someone who grew up castrating pigs. Iowa voters liked that. Noem was documenting she wasn't just pro-gun on paper. She was willing to use guns to shoot a "bad dog." She is also signaling farm sensibilities appropriate to balance Trump, a symbol of urbanity. Farmers are closer to the source of meat than are city people who think of beef, pork, and lamb as something one buys cut up and packaged in cellophane. Animal death is part of farm life. 

Oregon law changed in this century, along with the economy and demographics of the state. It is still dangerous for a dog to chase livestock, but now there are a series of progressive punishments for the dog owner. A county commissioner now has options of fines for the owner and or letting a dog owner move the dog away from livestock.

 
Kristi Noem's story is more shocking to the sensibilities of urban voters than it would be in the farm country of South Dakota. I hear news and opinion hosts on MSNBC, amazed and mocking her. She shot a dog! Wow! That reflects the cultural divide in the country. Democrats don't "get" rural America, and that is why the precinct where my farm is located -- six miles outside Medford -- votes three to one Republican.

 
Yet Noem handled it poorly, even for a rural audience. Noem was posturing. Americans love their dogs. Dogs are special. If the dog is "bad" then it reflects on the owner. There are hard jobs involving the death of animals that need to be done around farms, but they are done from necessity, not hatred or anger, and not to show off one's toughness to win votes. Farmers bring animals "to market" because raising livestock is a business. Sometimes one culls animals.   

But you don't present yourself as triumphant for shooting a dog you didn't train.

                                            --     --    --

Here is an article on the former state of the law in Oregon. Here is the new law, allowing alternatives remedies if a dog chases livestock.

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Easy Sunday: 1969

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"
     William Wordsworth, The French Revolution as it Appeared to its Enthusiasts at its Commencement, 1809

1969

We had discovered a great injustice.

We had clarity. We were sure we understood the situation. Our cause was just and the evil we opposed was so evident to us. The generation in power, having won World War II, was now carrying out an unjust war. They were lying to us. They said the war in Vietnam was in self-defense --dominos -- but they were pursuing a colonial agenda. They were wantonly killing helpless people, dropping bombs and celebrating body counts. It was wrong. And our government was trying to draft us.

Hell, no.

We could protest. The universities were close at hand and complicit, so we protested there. End ROTC! 

Many young people today think they have uncovered a great injustice and a great hypocrisy. The generation in power is allied with a country whose hands are not as clean as they had been taught to believe. Trump is hopeless, but Biden knows better and is participating in the injustice anyway, so put pressure on Biden. Protest at the universities. They are close at hand and complicit. Divest!

I do not trivialize my earnest sincerity in 1969, nor the earnest sincerity of young protesters today. I am acknowledging it. There is nothing trivial about the passion of young people to be part of something great and good, nor indignation over the hypocrisy of their elders, nor of the blossoming power of young adulthood, nor of springtime. I was there.

Everything was new and exciting. I was healthy. Women found me attractive. I was letting my hair grow longer. I could get a red fist silk-screened on a T-shirt for free at a table in Harvard Yard.  A size-medium T-shirt fit comfortably, and I wore it to classes. I was sure that the pressure we were bringing on Nixon would end the war soon. We were changing the world. It was springtime and warm after a long, long winter. Best time in my life.

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Giuliani: Life in Bankruptcy

The news was that Rudolph Giuliani would pay a big award to the women he defamed.

It isn't that simple. 

He lives well and spends money like before. He may die rich. His victims wait.

It must have seemed easy and risk-free for Rudolph Giuliani in the months after the 2020 election. Make a couple of  election workers -- Black, female, poor, unknown -- into villains. Tell the world they stole the 2020 election. Name them. Point them out. They were "nobodies" and Rudolph Giuliani was a world-famous lawyer. 

They are not nobodies. Their names are Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss. Giuliani defamed them intentionally and repeatedly. A jury found that Giuliani did them an enormous wrong. 

I asked Conde Cox whether Giuliani would ever pay a price for his actions. Cox is a commercial and business disputes lawyer. He is an expert in bankruptcies. He has been a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court for 29 years. He is the immediate past president of the Federal Bar Association—Oregon Chapter. For many years he has been rated a Thomson-Reuters "Super Lawyer" in the field of business bankruptcy. He carries out his national law practice from Ashland, Oregon.

Conde Cox

Guest Post by Conde Cox

When a company or individual files Chapter 11, all attempts by creditors to collect debts must stop because of the “automatic stay” imposed by Section 362 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. 

Rudy Giuliani filed Chapter 11 to protect his assets from seizure by his creditors, mainly the two Georgia women who only days before the bankruptcy filing obtained a $146 million judgment against him. Most Chapter 11 cases are filed to get the automatic stay against foreclosure, asset seizure and all other creditor-collection actions. For example, Texaco did the same thing to stop Pennzoil (which had a $10 billion judgment against Texaco) from using the judgment to seize Texaco’s assets. 

Although the automatic stay restrains the actions of creditors, there are very few constraints imposed upon the activities of the debtor for the first year or so. For example, the debtor may continue “to operate in the ordinary course of business.” The only constraint on his financial activities is that he can not use “cash collateral” and that he cannot conduct business “outside of the ordinary course.” In this case, there is no cash collateral, thereby allowing him to spend the approximately $40,000 every month that he collects from his monthly Social Security check, his monthly pension income, and from his regular withdrawals from his IRA accounts. The court will likely approve his use of that unencumbered cash to pay for “personal care,” household utilities, and care of his mother-in-law, considering them “ordinary course of business.” Outside the ordinary course would include such things as luxury trips, gambling, investment in some new business, or hush money payments to porn stars. This could continue for a year.

Encumbered assets, such as his townhouse (on which there is a mortgage), cannot be sold without court approval. If it is sold, the sales proceeds cannot be spent, even in the ordinary course of business.

A few months after filing the Chapter 11 case, the court will examine whether the debtor has made progress in a “plan of reorganization.” In most cases, during the year or so between the date of filing Chapter 11 and the date the plan becomes effective, the debtor can spend his unencumbered cash in the ordinary course of business.

Whether or not Giuliani plan is confirmed will depend on whether creditors would get more than they would if he fully liquidated his assets. Individual debtors can keep “exempt assets,” which generally means Social Security, pensions, IRA accounts, and some of the equity in their home. The amount of such protected home equity and other exempt property (motor vehicles, personal household assets, etc.) varies greatly from state to state. In New York, where Giuliani resides, the maximum residential homestead exemption is $150,000, which means nearly all the equity (minus that $150,000) in his Manhattan townhouse will eventually become available for creditors. 

If a plan is not confirmed in the next year or so, the bankruptcy court could dismiss the Chapter 11 case.That would permit creditors to go back to seizing assets, or, more likely, convert the case to a liquidation under Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, a bankruptcy trustee” can sell all non-exempt property he owns and creditors can be paid. He would then receive a bankruptcy discharge of all dischargeable debts. But the $146 million intentional tort/fraud-based judgment would likely not be dischargeable, which means Freeman and Moss could start chasing Giuliani again. Debts arising from the intentional tort of defamation cannot be charged in bankruptcy.

After liquidation of all of his non-exempt assets, their creditors get their prorata share of the liquidated assets. For example, if the total creditor claims are $200 million, and if there is $20 million in total post-liquidation cash, that would leave a 10% payout for creditors. Freeman and Moss would eventually receive about $14 million on their $146 million judgment. They could try to collect the unpaid balance from Rudy for the rest of this life (and against his estate after he passes.) 

There are no “public defenders” for debtors in bankruptcy cases. Giuliani's lawyers have an “administrative priority” right to be paid first, ahead of all other creditors. Bankruptcy courts scrutinize closely all fee requests filed by the lawyers.

Giuliani will probably try to drag this case out, avoid dismissal, avoid conversion to Chapter 7, delay proposing a plan, and delay implementing a plan, (because payments to creditors must begin when the plan is confirmed.) Possibly his prostate cancer will kill him before judicial process from Georgia does.

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