Oregon Strategist

Reinventing the Oregon Dream

FERC Denies Jordan Cove, For Now.

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Jordan CoveOn a scale of 1 to 10 for the complexity and divisiveness of issues, Jordan Cove is off the charts. The project, a proposed pipeline between Malin in Klamath County eastern Oregon and Coos Bay on the coast, would pump liquefied natural gas (LNG) to be exported at the International Port of Coos Bay. The pipeline would be a continuation of the Ruby pipeline that stretches from Malin out to Opal, Wyoming which currently serves the natural gas needs of California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest.

On March 11, 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denied Pacific Connector’s and Jordan Cove’s proposal for the pipeline extension. One could reasonably infer that such a decision was a disappointment to those who stood to benefit from construction contracts and other employment associated with its building and operation. Private landowners who faced eminent domain and environmental activists stood in opposition.Coos.bay.gas_map

To make matters more complicated, the Coquille, Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw tribes had taken a firm position against the pipeline, despite their standing for monetary gain in the form of increased business at their Coos Bay casinos. The tribes reported confusion with government agency oversight and the need to take into consideration the cultural integrity of the lands as well as native soils and burial grounds.

Did the public interest of having a natural gas export terminal and pipeline outweigh the adverse impacts on local landowners and the community? FERC apparently did not think so and Jordan Cove LNG backers will seek a rehearing on the issue. In the meantime, environmental opponents have an opportunity to reinforce their positions as the project was rejected principally because Jordan Cove LNG backers did not substantiate demand for the product abroad – the environmental claims were dismissed as moot.

Initially, proponents of LNG pipelines in Oregon supported LNG imports to increase demand and drive down prices. However, since the United States has proved to be a producer, these proponents have flipped to pursue exporting the product.

Many factors are at play as to whether a pipeline will be built between Malin and Coos Bay. A different federal administration tied to different billionaire interests may seek to reverse the policies disfavoring the building of such pipelines to export gas and oil. Nevertheless, Oregonians have a moment to think, for themselves, about what an export terminal would mean to them and to the future of their state.

Is this a project worth the jobs, investment and manufacturing opportunities that could arise, or is natural gas a doomed product whose potential will dry up? Is eminent domain and individual liberty of the utmost concern in this matter? Or perhaps our looking at Oregon’s environmental future is most crucial. Whatever, the question, every Oregonian has an opportunity to engage, weigh in, and be heard.

Prison Reform and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

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prison-370112_960_720Our jails are a reflection of our national character and who we are as a society. There is much to be critical about when it comes to the United States holding more than twenty (20) percent of the world’s incarcerated population – manifested out of President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs in 1971.

Mandatory minimum sentences and strict drug laws have swelled our prison population, stripping our judiciary of any flexibility and discretion in doling out prison terms for non-violent offenders of the law. Context is everything in distributing justice in a balanced, fair, and neutral manner. Mandatory minimum sentences throw context out the window and leave our legal system rigid, inflexible and limp.

Currently, American citizens spend roughly $80 billion per year housing their prison population. This is approximately $260 per person per year. Ten (10) percent of this figure is paid to private prisons. Private prisons have an incentive to fill beds. Mandatory minimum sentences insulate their funding. While ten (10) percent may seem a small amount, the private prison industry wields tremendous influence in lobbying the government, even in the area of immigration reform.

Our legal system should be allowed a malleable approach to the law and its offenders. In overhauling our drug laws and lifting the bureaucratic mandatory minimum sentencing, we free up valuable resources for job training, education, and instilling in our culture a value of hard work and the fulfillment of dreams. We need not the continual drain on our human capital as we allow it to rot behind the bars of our prisons, sucking down our tax dollars and tarnishing these people with criminal histories that will prohibit future employment and positive growth. No. Our nation requires labor, ingenuity, principle and dedication to surface our debt and propel our global advantage in this century of American pride.

ODA’s Beetles Take a Bite Out of Portland

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Galerucella BeetleThe Oregon Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) latest efforts to quell an invasive species has led to a massive beetle infestation in the Sellwood and Westmoreland neighborhood of Portland. The ODA first introduced the Galerucella beetle to Oregon in 1992 and released them into the Oaks Bottom wetland ten years ago to control the growth of Purple Loosestrife.

Residents of Sellwood and Westmoreland are now experiencing a drastic infestation of the beetle in their yards. The beetle has reportedly expanded its eating habits to residents’ crepe myrtle, roses, and tomatoes.

Instead of offering an apology to residents, the ODA decided to issue a press release blaming the infestation on a “perfect storm” of factors including hotter and drier weather conditions and favorable water conditions that have led to surge in the beetle’s population. Furthermore, the ODA, in the release, redirects the public attention to the dire need for this method of “biocontrol”, claiming the Purple Loosestrife, a wetland plant with a purple flower enjoyed by bees and butterflies alike and utilized against diarrhea and dysentery for its medicinal properties, is overly abundant and that the plant would cause $28 million in economic damage if it were to spread throughout Oregon.

Tinkering with the environment has long been a pastime of state and federal regulators. They have attempted to get the proper levels of all the ingredients so that it can cement in permanency its function as an environmental arbiter. And citizens are beginning to pay attention. Environmental organizations such as Friends of the Animals are speaking out against the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (USDFW) killing of the barred owl to help promote the Spotted Owl’s habitat. The Center for Biological Diversity recently issued a press release against similar actions the USDFW was taking in the slaughter of Cormorants in the Columbia River Basin in an effort to encourage salmon and steelhead.

Few could argue that government has, at times, played an important role in reducing the human footprint. But like Mr. McGoo, state and federal regulators can also be, at times, the source of enormous disaster as we saw with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) toxic spill into the Animus River this past week that release lead, arsenic and cadmium into the flowing waters. The United States Department of Energy (USDOE) is in charge of the cleanup at the government-created Hanford Nuclear Reservation, wastes of which still gravely threatens Oregon and Washington.

A footprint is still a footprint. Environmental tinkering has an impact on all our lives. Our efforts to reduce this footprint might be a difficult pill to swallow for government and many organizations that base their efforts on reduction of invasive species for biodiversity. But reducing our footprint is simply a way of saying, we are not greater than nature but are a part of it and we accept its principles in the balance of our ecosystems, recognizing that our own tinkering can often be disruptive.

We should be focusing on how to reduce our footprint as a method for promoting environmental diversity rather than to reduce by method of death squad, the population of any over abundant plant or animal. Indeed, we would certainly not employ such methods in handling those immigrating to our state and towns, despite how many would view them as “invasive.”

For now, the ODA is literally in Portland residents’ backyards. There is no sure determination that the infestation is going to dissipate and not return next year when weather conditions could possibly be just as favorable to the little bugs.

Chemical Forestry: A Clear Cut Challenge

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Oregon Clear CutWhether you subscribe to Chemtrail Conspiracy or not, no one can deny the absolute veracity in the private logging industry’s chemical stains on our countryside. The largest offender, quite possibly, is Weyerhaeuser (a foreign – not from Oregon – corporation).

The industry cites regulations requiring the replanting of douglas fir following a company’s clearcutting as the primary reason for the widespread application of herbicides such as 2,4-D, Velossa, and Atrazine. The industry is required to harvest new trees so that after six years they are in a “free to grow” state unencumbered by weeds and brush. The herbicides kill everything but the trees. Their aerial application is simply cheaper than hand weeding.

Meanwhile, folks are getting sick.  Many are testing positive for Atrazine. And yet this practice was banned twenty years ago from public forest lands. The practice survives on private logging lands.

There is certainly an argument to be made for one’s right to exercise control over one’s property, but when that control begins to negatively impact the surrounding community and its common resources such as water, air and animals, the public has always had a right to intervene (i.e. the United States has a long history of “nuisance” law). Protection of the commons is of increasing concern as the effects of resource shortages become more real. And individuals have an increasing responsibility to protect themselves, their health, and their property from the irresponsible actions of adjacent property owners.

The state and federal government are, in part, to blame for adopting policies that, while perhaps well-intentioned, do not address the source of the problem. Instead of overlooking an ecosystem, political parties and leaders attach themselves to a single species and gauge an ecosystem’s health based upon the health of this species. As a result, the state and federal government imposes itself as an arbiter between the species, deciding to eliminate any threats to their “special” species.

With regard to the logging industry’s herbicide application on forestland, the source of the problem, if we follow the trail backwards, leads us to the practice of clear-cutting, which spurned the regulations requiring “free to grow” forest replanting, which, in turn, spurned the industry’s cheap solution.

Responsible stewardship is the answer. For those in the industry looking to improve their bottom line, people have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for products that are made with a greater eye towards responsible stewardship. A “not from clear-cut” brand would certainly raise an opportunity for a would-be purchaser of wood products.

On the government’s side, responsible stewardship arises when the effects of regulation on private industry are analyzed and changes are made to address the source. Being in a logging state, legislative leaders from Oregon, particularly those paid by the logging industry, would have a difficult time challenging the status quo for logging practices that may be harmful to the general public. Yet this kind of bold inquiry is precisely what we need to make our state more healthy, safe and prosperous.

The Bureau of Land Mismanagement

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Sage GrouseDuring the 1870s, the federal government adopted policies encouraging the killing of the North American buffalo in order to deplete the food source of the Native Americans, a tactic used to expand the government’s authority across the West.
Today, in a continued effort to promote and secure its relevance, the federal government, in breach of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, has authorized the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife to spend $3.5 million massacring 3600 barred owls in Oregon under the auspices of spotted owl protection – an animal listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The news of this federal action and the government’s “above the law” response to control natural fluctuations does not come as a surprise to many of us Oregonians who everyday perform the balancing act of providing for our families, sustaining our businesses and ranches, and acting as stewards for sustainable future use of our land. Over the years and centuries, federal responses to local issues have resulted in wasteful spending, irresponsible action, and the decimation of people and animals alike. Yet a concentrated majority in this state has decided that Washington D.C. is best suited to handling our business, ranching and local environmental affairs.
Oregon’s counties and communities face a new federal intervention: an effort to protect the sage grouse. An environmental impact statement is currently being pushed through federal court to determine whether the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) should cordon off hundreds of thousands of acres of land usually reserved for ranching activities.
There is clear consensus among the experts and the BLM that sage grouse numbers are not a problem in Oregon. The disappearance of the bird has predominantly occurred in Idaho and Utah. Many ranchers in Oregon are aware of the bird’s habitat and steer their herds clear of areas where their dwelling is probable.
Yet the federal government has advertised that it is the most effective source for balancing interests – that somehow the sage grouse’s viability must be protected at the federal level from cattle-ranching activities (which actually have a positive impact on sage grouse habitat as well through soil regeneration that aids habitat growth, much like the buffalo herds’ contribution to the fertility of the Great Plains).
Eastern Oregon, prior to the pioneers, was a large swathe of grassland. With the covered wagons clung the sage seeds that spread their roots across the land. Our ever-changing ecosystem has seen the rise and fall of species across the span of earth’s history. Yet our government is attempting to play God and legislate control over a single element to an incomprehensible equation – a futile and wasteful task that does more harm than good, as we saw from the carcasses of buffalo, and see from the slaughter of an owl.

Youth and the Republican Party: An American Recovery

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Republican Elephant and Democratic DonkeyParty warfare and polarization of ideologies may be significantly to blame for the finger-pointing and squabbling in Washington D.C. Open primaries, term limits, and policies that suspend Congressional pay if shutdowns occur are just some of the answers to questions of how we must reform the internal mechanisms of our government in order to get back on track for being a proud and confident nation.

Yet, these policies may be some time away from now until young leaders are put in power that are willing to limit their own power for long-term objectives. Until that time, we must ask serious questions about how all of us – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – can come together to help shape the new Republican Party and bring back a balance of power to the system to check the unprecedented spending and waste in our federal government.

Every dollar our government spends today is a dollar that young people will have to pay back in their future. This is inherently unfair and unjust. Entrenched leaders in Washington D.C. continue to waste the money of future generations for their own political short-term gain. Our interests, the interests of those in their thirties, twenties and younger – are not being represented.

Young people have an opportunity to take over the Republican Party here in Oregon – be you Democrat, Republican or Independent. We have the opportunity to shape the party for ourselves and take back what is our future to spend – not theirs.

And conservative and progressive values, the real kind that is (as opposed to the kind promoted by the media), may be the kind we younger generations can embrace. We know what it is like to be under the weight of massive educational debt, not to have the employment opportunities we were told would be waiting for us on the other side, and to find ourselves unable to fulfill our American Dreams.

Our current leaders have failed us. We must now take up the torch and lead with real principles. That is, with self-sacrifice, courage, and pride in a future America we can own and love.

Entitlements are wasting our money. Military ventures are wasting our money. Centralized corporate-sponsored federal programs are wasting our money. Congress is wasting our money. This is our future. We want this future to be green, healthy, productive, and local.

To get back in the game we must go to work. We must find work in any sector. If it means working in an area we perceive to be below our educational level, we must work. We must reject anything handed to us. Only then can we hold our heads high. And we must hold our heads high in order to lead.

We will bring jobs back from overseas. We will go to the ports, find out what China is shipping to us, and make those products here. We will make them better and less expensive. We will encourage entrepreneurs. We will educate. We will stockpile. Our future will be one of great influence.

We will put our money into credit unions and keep our organizations nimble, flexible and local – like Privateers. We will execute a trade surplus and pay down our deficit. And we will not be reckless with the future of our next wave of youth.

We will reform Congress. We will take only one term in any given political office and will condemn political entrenchment and the establishment. We will limit our salaries because what we do is a service to our Great Nation, not a pillage of our Great Nation. We will give back, we will pay the way forward, we will unite, we will overcome and we will live mightily on our principles, work and love.

Timothy Crawley, a native son of Oregon, is a candidate for the 2014 United States Senate seat for Oregon.

Government Shutdown: The Poison of a Partisan Perspective

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Capitol HillOur federal government has ground to a halt. Again. Republicans and Democrats were unable to meet a deadline to fund the government Monday night. While a group of “combative” Republicans are largely bearing responsibility for the impasse in Congress due to their hawkish advocacy to defund the Affordable Care Act, the reality is the factions in Congress are more varied and deeply divided than ever.

Both parties are to blame for this stalemate, and the result may very well be an ever-divided Congress where each party will blame the other for their unwillingness to negotiate. On the one hand, Republicans are claiming they want to reign in spending but are unwilling to compromise when it comes to military budgets and spending on our overseas police power – a capacity that is becoming increasingly disfavored by the public. And, indeed, the Department of Defense is, by far, the largest contingent that will be affected by the shutdown. On the other hand, Democrats spearheaded a bill that is not feasible to fund given the current economic crisis because the government is strictly not generating enough revenue to support such a program short of spending our future away.

Our government’s sole focus right now should be on economic improvement. While the Affordable Care Act promotes a noble purpose, the fact of the matter is that our government cannot afford to pay for it. Our federal programs, such as Social Security, are already failing for lack of funding and mismanagement. There is little support for the idea that the Affordable Care Act would face any more promising future.

Economic improvement will come from taking military spending and re-investing those dollars here on the home front where our infrastructure and education are sorely lacking. Economic improvement will stem from creating a positive climate for small business and entrepreneurship by removing barriers to entry and by encouraging smaller, more flexible entities. These entities will, in turn, create the types of jobs we want in our society – the types based on relationships and accountability. And, finally, at the heart of economic improvement, is the idea that we decrease the stratification of wealth in our society. Simplifying the tax code is essential for leveling the playing field for all people. Complexities in the code create the types of loopholes that allow for corporate exploitation and tax shelters for the wealthy.

There are very certain and definite roles for our federal government. The services Washington D.C. provide through the unification of essential interstate laws and international treaties should be primary but focused. We must be realistic in what we can and cannot sustainably afford at that level. And let’s be honest, Cover Oregon is doing and would do a better job at providing health care for our citizens than any federal program. If our federal government is unable to afford Social Security and Medicare, then what good will the Affordable Care Act do for us when we ultimately cannot afford to pay the doctors?

Will it take a nationwide default to provide the political impetus to reform?  That is a possibility. But blaming one party or the other is only fuel for a divisive fire. The stopgap just may be to practice viewing this shutdown from an opposing point of view.

 

A New Feudal America

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Statue of LibertyThe top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago, according to an updated study….The top 1 percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913, when the government instituted an income tax. –As reported in the on-line New York Times, September 11, 2013

I’m a Matt Damon fan, so I’m looking forward to seeing his latest film, Elysium. The movie takes place in a future time when the entire Earth has become a slum so that the very wealthy have taken up residence in an exclusive retreat in space, visible from Earth, but inaccessible and forbidden to the mass of humanity.

The irony of Elysium is that it is not really a film about the future: it is a metaphor for the present economic situation in the United States of America, a situation that should shame us. (And bravo to Matt Damon and the Elysium writers for their political sensibility and boldness!)

The idea of an America of economic democracy—not Socialism, mind you—in which middle class prosperity is virtually guaranteed to anyone willing to labor with earnest ingenuity for the fruits of modest wealth has died.  The reigning economic culture is a throwback to the late 19th century and the era of the robber barons. The rich deserve to get richer and those in the underclass must learn to accept their suffering if they have not been lucky enough to design (and patent) a jackpot computer app or a chance to buy a loaded security with adequate insurance for its failure.

Wealth is accumulating in the pockets of the corporate magnates, money taken out of the pockets of the former middle class. The very rich now do live in a separate society prohibited to the ordinary masses. Traditional means for righting the inequities between the very wealthy and the working class—such as strengthening organized labor—have fallen into disrepute. The 1990’s taught the young they have a right to aspire to great wealth before they turn 30 and if they don’t achieve that, well, they’ll have to accept that they’re just losers.

There is no longer any community sensibility advocating a continued American aspiration for the wider distribution of wealth.  Moreover, with the help of our advanced technology, the corporations have acquired and are employing the means to make its customers—us—their servants.  By reducing personal services and compelling us to accept more efficient automated alternatives to increase the corporate bottom-line, they substitute our labors for services we used to take for granted. (Consider, for example, the nightmarish recorded message option menus that now often prevent access to real human beings when we try to do business or file a complaint with a corporation or, for another example, the growing self-checkout lines in supermarkets.)

America has apparently become a new kind of feudal state: a plutocratic regime run by and for the benefit of the already rich.  What can we do about it?

Harrison Sheppard, San Francisco, CA

Tax Reform: A Simple Solution

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Capitol-SenateThe current tax code has become a convoluted knot of deductions and credits. In Tennessee this week, President Obama hinted at his interest in seeing that code change. The President’s attention to the issue immediately drew a hailstorm of debate in Washington over tax reform.

The biggest problem with our tax code is that it has been used and abused by politicians for political agendas rather than as a simple method for raising the basic revenue for the function of our state. Along this line, politicians are able to solidify their constituency by carving out exemptions for the business interests that support their candidacies. Additional deductions, credits and rebates have added to the size of our nation’s operating costs for reviewing increasingly complex tax returns.

This is one place where our system is broken. President Obama and Congress are offering only more of the same. Conventional attitudes have proposed that any future solution must address income tax reform separately from corporate tax reform. In order to mediate a solution between Democrats and Republicans, tax reform must be dealt with as a whole. Parsing through the code in a piecemeal approach will render a piecemeal solution – not a holistic solution.

Any tax reform solution must occur at the highest level with a complete overhaul of both income and corporate taxes.

Currently, our society has awarded size of institutions rather than innovative, low-impact operations that encourage accountability. Because of the deduction maze, overweight entities can hire a legal tax team to navigate the tax return process, find loopholes, and increase profit margins. These tasks are disproportionately expensive for smaller businesses. The problem with overweight corporations, their ownership over the federal government, and their propensity to promote wealth inequality and waste may be solved through a proper corporate regressive tax.

A corporate progressive tax would tax revenue, not profit, such that the tax would be more akin to an income tax. Moreover, the tax percentage would increase as a corporation expanded revenue. There are a multitude of reasons why corporations deserve a progressive tax.

Corporations are considered by law to be fictitious persons. However, persons cannot balloon to the size of the moon; corporations can. A progressive tax ensures that as corporations expand, their exponential use of resources, amplification of waste, and propensity to marginalize labor comes with a higher price tag to be paid to society. As shareholders in our nation’s resources, we should all be paid when a corporation is able to capitalize clear-cutting a copse that provides us air, shade, food, and a nice view. It should not be allowed to deduct its way out of this cost.

Finally, a corporate progressive tax would be a treatment for the problem of growing wealth inequality in our nation. A large corporation or bank would not have the luxury of paying a windfall to its board and officers, particularly when such an entity is provided an incentive to remain smaller and more nimble.

Income taxes, however, should be flat. Unlike corporations, human beings have a maximum capacity for productivity and waste.

The answer to tax reform is simplicity. Deductions and credits create complicated arrangements where certain industries are rewarded and certain industries are punished – often for little reason other than politics. Simple solutions with simple revenue projections will make the function of our federal government more clear and concise.

And ultimately, to prevent politicians from usurping the tax code once again for their own political gain, Lawrence Lessig and David Segal’s suggestion to convene a modern-era Constitutional Convention would have to occur. Short of that, we would only see more of the same.

The Morrow Pacific Project: Killing the Columbia

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BargeJobs that promote the destruction of our environment are not jobs for the future. Jobs that fit us into a more rhythmic balance with nature are integral for our future. The Morrow Pacific Project will further entrench the barging industry and create further dependence upon the dams that block our most precious river. The proposal is a proposal that runs counter to the interests of our local communities and the Native Americans.

The Morrow Pacific Project, a proposal to transport coal from Wyoming and Montana to Oregon for shipment to China, Korea and Japan, must be altered. The coal would be shipped via rail to Boardman, Oregon where it would then be loaded onto barges for transport down river to the Port of St. Helens. The project would result in an additional 12 barge tows on the Columbia. Such a proposal would further entrench the barging industry and make them all the more powerful in a bid to keep dams operating on our rivers.

About two hundred dams (http://www.psmfc.org/habitat/salmondam.html) were built along the Columbia between 1930 and the late 1970s. This helped foster the barging industry that used the slowed river to advance goods up and downstream and created an artificial reliance upon this form of shipment. Since then, the industry has trucking and training beat for offering the best prices on shipment of goods and has boasted that its power blocked proposals to lower the river to expose the beauty of Celilo Falls.

Oregonians face an uphill battle to alleviate the strain upon our river systems. Bonneville alone is a behemoth that no one really believes can be broken. However, Congress authorized to build the Bonneville dam in 1930, emphasizing the “taming of the Columbia.” This dam will soon run its lifecycle. In order to replace a dam of this size and magnitude with low-impact technology that leaves the river partially open for fish passage, effort must begin now to build awareness regarding Oregonians and Washingtonians’ options.

For those seeing such an effort as a lost cause, it may be helpful to think about how large corporate interests can also be on the side of freeing the Columbia. Oregon company and outdoor recreation outfitters Columbia Sportswear, among others, would benefit tremendously from a river that teemed with fish and rapids.

Oregon must put in place leaders in Washington willing to promote the proper industries to make this dream a reality. Additional rail lines are needed to support a shift away from barging to carry wheat and other agricultural products across the state to Portland.

The Bonneville dam and many others on the Columbia River including the John Day dam are referred to as “run-of-the-river” dams, meaning that they do not back water up to create a reservoir. If electricity can be generated in such quantity from these operations, how could “run-of-the-river” technology be utilized to construct dams that do not impeded the full width of the river?

Portlanders have the option on their energy statement from Portland General Electric to source their energy from Green Source and Clean Wind resources. See www.greenpoweroregon.com. Choosing these local options is the first step. Putting the right folks in Washington D.C. is the second step.