Easy Sunday: Jackson County ballot measures.

The three measures try to increase citizen influence in county government.

The commissioners are defending their fortress.

The supporters of the ballot measures are trying to make the county citizen-led. In the cities elected officials provide oversight and direction to city administration. It works. These three measures would make Jackson County commissioners nonpartisan, they expand their number from three to five, and they cut commissioner pay back to a median household income. This isn't new and strange. It makes the county more like the cities, where elected citizens provide representation and oversight.

Currently county commissioners are managers with step-increases as they progress in tenure in the job. It makes the commissioner job a career position, supposedly more valuable to the organization as they gain experience within the institution. That encourages loyalty to and defense of the organization and its internal team. They look inward. They don't oversee the management team. They are the management team. They have become in effect the support staff for the administrator. Where is the watchdog function? Who is there to push back against a three-year guaranteed-income severance package for the administrator?

The measures change that. They convert commissioners back to citizen representatives of the people who supervise the county administration.

Like the wagon trains of the old Oregon Trail, the commissioners and administrator have circled the wagons to protect themselves from the public. They can run such a huge campaign because they raised money from the very people who have franchise agreements and building and paving contracts with the county. 

If people want to open up county government, they will vote yes on the three measures. They may not. The people enjoying the benefits of the status quo don't want it opened up and they have run a huge campaign.

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Reflection at the dawn of modern America

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius"
     James Rado and Gerome Ragni for the 1967 musical "Hair"

A great cultural change took place beginning in about 1964. Before that was the "pre" era, before so many things that define our current law and culture. Catalysts of change included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the birth control pill, the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr., and that huge generation of post-war babies who came of age beginning in 1964. Time magazine called us "Youth," and it called us a game-changer just by being alive in such a mass.

My age cohort, people in the front end of the Baby Boom generation, were leaving high school just as the cultural ground was changing under our feet. 

Jack Mullen

Jack Mullen graduated from Medford High School in 1965; he started college life in the pre-modern area. He had settled into college life before the changes began so he experienced before-and-after. 

My age cohort has entered a time of life where we are doing more reflecting. Or maybe the reflecting comes from the events of this moment. The political strife and division seem so familiar. We had been in a cultural revolution. Forces of resistance grew in the interceding decdades. We are in a cultural counter-revolution against changes put in motion 60 years ago. 

A reflection by Jack Mullen

Student protest then and now

By accident of birth, in 1947, I became an original member of the early class of Baby Boomers. We Boomers, who graduated from high school in 1965, had no idea we’d become a touchstone for a changing post-war America.

The University of Oregon that I entered in the fall of 1965 was similar to the University of Oregon that my older brother entered in 1957. The differences were few: His freshman class liked Elvis; we preferred the Beatles. Holden Caulfield of the "Catcher in the Rye" was their anti-hero. Ours, a little later, was Ben Braddock of "The Graduate."

Soon, ever so slowly, echoes from afar slowly swept into the lives of my freshman class. Down the road in Berkeley, the Free Speech movement galvanized the University of California campus. My freshman English Comp class studied and wrote about it.

At the same time, high school friends from Medford, those who did not possess a college deferment, were drafted and sent to Vietnam. I lived a cushy life in Eugene while they were sent away to parts unknown to them. Five members of my Medford High Class of ’65 never came home. Of those who did come home, some confided in me. I am not a gifted enough writer to relate what they experienced. I’ll leave it at that.

I enjoyed the good life in college. Oregon provided a wealth of opportunities to study in whatever field one desired. Starting winter term in 1968, I chose far east history as my major, with a minor in Political Science. Curiosity about what drew our nation to Vietnam consumed me.

The year 1968, as for many Americans, disturbed me, and the nation as a whole felt a general uneasiness. I’m sure many of our ancestors back in 1860 similarly felt ill at ease witnessing our nation drift apart. The year 2024 may soon rank up there with 1860 and 1968 as a time when levelheaded discussions about our country and the world are hard to come by.

Back in ’68, the Vietnam War tore families apart; assassins took the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy; race riots broke out across the country. Protesters' heads were clobbered outside the halls of the Chicago Democratic Convention. I was moved to join anti-war protests.

The kid who entered college in the fall of ’65 took a big leap to join in campus protests. I suppose I felt a little isolated from some friends, but I needed to put myself out there for what I was becoming to believe was a senseless war. All our protests at the time were orderly and peaceful; maybe a few hecklers questioned our patriotism, but little more than that.

As graduation day in June, 1969 approached, my roommate and I filled out applications to join the Peace Corps.

As we, class of ’69 U of O graduates, sat in seats designated in Autzen Stadium for our graduation ceremony, University President Charles E. Johnson started his speech with a Dickens quote from "Tale of Two Cities": “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Suddenly, a young graduate from the Black Student Union walked across the stage and politely asked interim President Johnson if he could say a few words. President Johnson backed up and allowed the young man to talk for five minutes. I can’t remember what he said, but it was not fiery. The young man left the stage, and President Johnson resumed his speech. At the end, the Class of ’69 did not toss their hats into the air. It was not the type of year for such frivolity.

The following Monday, President Charles E. Johnson died of an apparent suicide.

If there is one parallel today to 1969, it’s that Joe Biden, like Charles Johnson, finds himself pilloried from all sides. President Johnson got it from students, faculty, alumni, state legislators, and all the state’s leading newspapers. The only difference is that the shots that Joe Biden takes are on a larger stage.

Domestically, normal allies who would be siding up with Biden in an election year are upset and are abandoning him. Most don’t realize the long-term effect their abandonment might have.

Internationally, no Anwar Sadat or Menachem Begin type seems willing to employ the art of compromise to finish what the trio of Sadat, Begin and Jimmy Carter started at Camp David.

Through all this morass, is there is someone on this planet better qualified to tackle the challenges we face? If so, I’d like to know who that person is.

 

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Jackson County salaries

A Republican lawyer writes me with political advice:

"Peter, the salaries are the big motivator for the YES vote. Not that good government stuff like going nonpartisan, or getting better representation with five commissioners instead of three. Even Republicans with big 'NO!' signs on their yards plan to vote 'YES'to cut salaries. Don't you realize that? 

Tell the 'Jackson County for All' people to emphasize the salaries if they want to win this thing." 

I suspect my Republican friend is correct.

People are startled by the salaries of the commissioners and the county administrator.

There is a small but energized group of people who follow politics, especially local politics, closely. I am in that group. 

Over half of Americans follow politics the way I follow sports. I am aware that the NBA playoffs are going on but I don't remember any player names except Damian Lillard. Back when I worked in an office I filled out a March Madness bracket to be cordial. I knew nothing about any team. I know enough about sports to have a two-minute conversations with people who do care about sports. That is how I  understand that great block of Americans who get polled and say they are "undecided" on voting for Trump or Biden. For them, politics is a spectator sport, and they don't care much about it.

But sometimes in sports, something pushes into my active consciousness. If the Trail Blazers were in the NBA finals, I might watch a game. If the Oregon Ducks were playing Alabama for the national championship I would watch on TV and cheer for Oregon, hoping that we Oregonians would show a thing or two to that team from a state that bans abortion even in the case of rape, incest, and the health of the mother. (See? Even then, the sports event gets back to what I care about.) 

Sports help me understand voters.

Click: 30-second ad

The commissioner salaries -- plus their perks including health insurance, telephone allowance, car allowance, technology allowance, and PERS -- have an instant element of surprise when I mention them to people. It breaks through, sort of like my learning that the Oregon Ducks would be playing for a national championship in football. 

County Administrator Danny Jordan's salary, plus perks including a home loan and three-year severance package, has the same effect: surprise.

There is a single simple message that I think poorly-engaged voters (i.e., people like me with sports) get. They think the salaries are self-serving. It fits into a template of presumption that a great many people have of government. That is that politicians arrange things to take very good care of themselves if they have the opportunity. One need not be conspiratorial in one's thinking to believe that. It is just an presumption based on general life observation that friends support friends, that politicians get support from prosperous donors, and that in return politicians return the favor. Politics is a swamp. 

I think the recent action by the Board of Commissioners to vote themselves another pay raise, done in the face of ballot issues that would cut their pay, could be read as a sign of confidence that the giant campaign they have organized to defeat the ballot measure will preserve the status quo. Most voters won't know about the recent pay raise. Some of the ones who do know about it will consider it arrogance. A few voters will think the commissioners darned well ought to be paid $150,000.

That is where my friend, a Republican in good touch with fellow Republicans, thinks the commissioners have mis-calculated. The majority of voters, Republicans included, do not particularly value the work of the commissioners, he tells me. The presumption, including among Republican donors to the "NO!" campaign, is that the administrator spoon-feeds the commissioners information and they go along with whatever he says. They have to. He controls the information they get. This sets up a mutual protection system -- the commissioners support Danny Jordan and he protects them by positing giant costs to add two commissioners at half the salary.

I suspect this set of presumptions is overdone and unfair to commissioners, but that template of belief is consistent with Republican populism. That is the ascendant GOP mood. The reality of whatever happens at the courthouse is less important than the belief that politicians are no darned good. That is why opposition to the increase from three to five has political traction. Voters consider extra representation to be worthless, just "Big Government." Heck with that.

But the salary issue cuts the other way; yeah, its "Big Government." Heck with that, too.

I know that there has been expensive polling on this issue. By dumb luck, I was polled at random by the top-tier Republican-orientedNelson polling organization out of Portland. The "NO!" campaign has poured new money into its effort. I suspect that the YES people are ahead or at least close. 

I have a guess about how the election will turn out. Measures one and two, making the positions nonpartisan and increasing the number of commissioners to five, will have difficulty. Voters will have seen all the organized activity saying "NO!", and many people engaged enough to vote will go along with the consensus of all the signs.

But the salary-cut measure will pass. The same people who consider five commissioners too many will think that $150,000 for the commissioners, is too much. And so is $367,000 for County Administrator Danny Jordan.

Is that over-simple?  Is it unfair to the commissioners to say most voters think commissioners are puppets of the county administrator? The idea is out there in the political ether. I don't have any idea who replaced Damian Lillard, nor do I know who is the quarterback for the Ducks. People fill out their ballots with some generalized beliefs about government in mind. They feel grouchy about government, especially Republican populist voters.

 I think my Republican friend has it about right.

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Secreatary of State decision on Alyssa Bartholomew

The Oregon Secretary of State's office determined that Alyssa Bartholomew's Voters Pamphlet description of her job experience did not constitute a felony misstatement.

I think she mis-stated her job history. She left out the word "Assistant" in describing her job with the county. 

I described the problem two weeks ago when the Voters Pamphlet first came out. Alyssa Bartholomew, a candidate for district attorney, described herself as having been "Senior Counsel, Jackson County." That didn't sound right to me, so I made a formal inquiry with the Jackson County Human Resources Department. They wrote back saying her job title was "Senior Assistant County Counsel."

I considered it part of a pattern of resume exaggeration. She also wrote that she had experience "directing" a staff. There was an executive director to do that. She was on its board.

I did not consider these examples of resume puffery to be flat-out, red-handed, black-is-white lies. It was less than that. To my mind these are exaggerations. Fibs. Rounding up. The first of these took place in the part of the Voters Pamphlet where candidates are warned that it is a felony to be inaccurate. That was where she left out the word "assistant."

Bartholomew's response to my request for an explanation was that she was in fact a lawyer, and therefore a "counsel." And she was "senior" to one or more other attorneys and she did significant legal work including during a time when the person with the job of County Counsel, was absent. Therefore she could accurately call herself "Senior Counsel" notwithstanding a job title that called her an assistant to the actual senior counsel. 

I referred it to the Oregon Secretary of State's office to see what they thought. Was her description factual, or factual-enough? I learned that their standard leans toward searching if there is any way the words can be construed to be factual. They decided in Bartholomew's favor. 

[Y]ou allege Ms. Bartholomew made a false statement in her voter’s pamphlet statement by referring to her previous employment as “senior counsel” instead of “senior assistant counsel”. 

 

To determine whether a statement is false under ORS 260.715(1), the Division asks whether any reasonable inference can be drawn from the evidence that the statement is factually correct. The Division has reviewed your allegations and determined that a reasonable inference can be drawn indicating that Ms. Bartholomew held the position she claims in her voters’ pamphlet statement.  

The standard the office uses is whether there is any reasonable inference that the statement is correct. That means that we are obligated to stretch to see how we can make both "Senior Counsel" and a "Senior Assistant Counsel" the same thing, at least arguably. Bartholomew made the stretch. I can see the point if I squint a little. Both do serious legal work; she was not always supervised. So, arguably, senior assistants are indeed senior counsels. 

But as a voter, and a person who cares about justice, judges, and local courts, I use a different standard than the is-it-arguably-true standard. I use an are-we-being-misled? standard.

Some things are arguably accurate, but are, in fact, sneaky misdirections. Call them fibs. There is gray area in language, so a speaker's intent and its effect on people who hear the message are considerations when judging if something is honest. She had a significant early-career job and her Voters Pamphlet puffed it up a little to give voters an impression of deeper experience and responsibility. 

A District Attorney has opportunities every day to put a thumb on the scales of justice and to define ambiguities and gray areas. I don't want a DA stretching to see what she can get away with because it is arguably true when seen in the best possible light. That is what I think we see in her Voters Pamphlet. But the Secretary of State's office made its decision, and they determined she was accurate enough. She is not guilty of felony dishonesty.

I am looking for someone a little more straight-arrow in a DA.  Maybe I am naive.

I voted for Patrick Green.

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End encampment protests

Encampments are a poor way to protest at universities.

Letting vandals join your protest group is dangerous.

The Oregonian newspaper

The Oregonian reported:

Police moved in early May 2 to clear the library. They arrested 31 people, including at least six students, during the sweep and throughout the day as people continued to demonstrate.

University officials found paint splattered on library floors, glass broken, spray-painted messages covering walls and furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras had been disabled. Fire extinguishers were missing and the fire alarm system was dismantled.

I am not organizing or participating in campus protests, but I have some words of caution and advice for protesters anyway. Don't let your message be hijacked by vandals, nihilists, or lawbreakers.

Portland State University library

Universities are convenient places for protests. Universities' support for free thinking and free speech makes them a place where policy ideas are shared. Encampments at universities are body language expressing passion more persuasively than does writing letters or signing petitions. Encampments created a good visual backdrop for television and social media. Protests at universities are a natural.

The problem is that university encampments are disruptive, and not in a good way. They cross a line between free expression and compulsion. To be fully newsworthy, encampments need to block access to a useful facility, for example a library or an administration building. That means some element of compulsion. Encampments cross a line between good-speech and bad-speech, a line universities think and care about because so much of the work of a university is about the boundary lines of truth and error. Ideas are tested there, and how ideas are tested matters. Protesters are judged closely on how they protest. 

Encampments are counter-productive. Students look like privileged dilettantes, with time to waste. Parents are more likely to see campus disruption as a potential danger than they are a real-life clinic on ethics for humanities majors, or power dynamics for social studies majors, or marketing for business majors. University presidents have learned that their careers are on the line if they disappoint politicians or their trustees. University presidents are on tenterhooks.

Encampments are risky for protest organizers. Small trespasses break a boundary of lawfulness. Once an individual or group decides it's OK to camp on a lawn, it is a small step to feeling entitled to enter and occupy a building. The building is your castle now, your blank slate. 

Portland State University library

The occupied place represents the vanquished establishment. Whatever good intentions there may have been in the eyes of the protesters gets overwhelmed by the images of a vandalized building. I happily admit that vandalism images anger me. The waste. The disrespect.

Organizers cannot control the behavior of everyone who attaches themselves to the protest. Protesters get judged by the behavior of the worst people who act under the cover of the group, even if they are not in the group. Who knows which occupiers at Portland State did the damage? There is a life lesson people learn on college campuses in different ways: Toga parties with free-flowing beer get out of control. You cannot control who crashes the party and you cannot control what drunk people do. Same with protest encampments. You cannot control what people drunk with political passion do.

College classmate Sandford Borins, now an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, joined a group of other professors in a group letter urging an end to encampments at universities. He published it in his own blog, https://sandfordborins.com. It begins:

We, the signatories of this letter, believe that Universities exist to educate students and host academic research. These activities require a calm and respectful environment that promotes civil discourse. In this spirit, we oppose the movement to create encampments on University grounds. Such actions sow division and create exclusionary spaces, undermining the purpose and functioning of a University.

He continues at his site. He writes from the perspective of protecting the university. I write here from the perspective of protecting the clarity of the message of the protesters. We each reach the same conclusion: Stop the encampments. There are better ways and better places to make your point.

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It's not the crime, it's the coverup."

"What goes up must come down 

Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round 

Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin 

Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin

. . . 

Did you find the directing sign on the

Straight and narrow highway?"

      David Clayton-Thomas, of Blood, Sweat and Tears, 1968

There is a lot of reflecting going on among people in my age cohort. It's deja vu all over again.

People old enough to collect Social Security remember campus unrest of the late 1960s and see today with that memory in mind. There was the "just cause," in the form of opposition to the bombing of civilians; we heard opposition voices saying the bombing was necessary; we faulted university "complicity" with national policy; we witnessed police action that some people considered overdue and others considered excessive. 

Mass Meeting at Harvard Stadium, April, 1969

My own role has circled back and repeated. At the time, and again today, I observe that the protests are backfiring politically. A silent majority of people look at college students as naive and privileged. People who think the cause is pretty good, or even very good, question their tactics. 

The wheel spins on crimes and cover-ups, too. Fox News barely mentions the Trump business records trial. They fill news hours with stories of campus tents, disruption, and protest. They ask, Why does so much chaos follow Biden around? That is the story: Biden equals chaos, at the campus, the southern border, Gaza, grocery shelves, gasoline pumps, and even with Trump. Trump wouldn't be disruptive if Democrats didn't investigate his crimes. 

Nixon conspired with his top officials to cover up an election crime -- his team bugged the Democratic National Committee headquarters. A trusted lawyer, John Dean, spilled the beans, and there was a record of the crime, the White House tapes. Now we have Michael Cohen and the signed checks listed as tax-deductible legal expenses. Trump knows better than to tape record himself or to have email evidence, but he slipped up with hush money checks.

Now, as during the Watergate mess, critics say that the actual criminal act was a tiny one. Nixon just told a little fib when he told the FBI to drop the investigation, claiming it was a secret national security matter being handled by the CIA. That fib was obstruction of justice. Republicans back then took that seriously; I think because Nixon himself took it seriously. Nixon was ashamed. He knew it was corrupt and he knew being corrupt was morally wrong. Republican senators picked up on his sense of guilt.

John Dean, 1973

Michael Cohen testifies

Trump knows full well it was corrupt -- after all, he signed checks valued at over $400,000 to make a net payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels: an expensive way to keep a crime secret. Trump is sticking to his story, that he didn't know Stormy Daniels, that he did nothing wrong. Trump isn't ashamed. He was taking care of number one and that is what people tough enough to be president do. If Trump isn't ashamed, it must not be wrong. Republican senators are sticking with Trump, saying Trump did nothing wrong, so therefore prosecuting wrongdoing is the real crime.

The wheel spins, and we see events today through eyes that saw the world 50 years prior. I learned 50 years ago that disruptive protests are counterproductive short-term but they do change policy, as becomes apparent in two or three decades. I won't be alive to see that. Maybe there will be peace in the Middle East when everyone alive today is long dead. 

I learned the lesson 50 years ago that politicians who cheat to win an election get caught and shamed for it. That expectation causes my disappointment with the current generation of Republicans. Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie are on the outs, no longer in good standing. Now Republicans tolerate anything their leader does. People who think Trump is wrong are quiet about it, or maybe they agree with Trump. Local politicians place their field signs next to Trump's. 

This is the new normal. Young people are watching. In 30 and 40 years they will be in charge of things.

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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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