TO AGITATE OR NOT TO AGITATE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

    Jim Hightower, Commentary, The Fourth of July Is a Celebration of Agitation, June 24, 2009
    Are you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won't leave well enough alone, who's always questioning authority and trying to stir things up.
    If so, the Powers That Be detest you — you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. "Oh," they scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until those environmental agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our workers were perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their minds."
    In each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another.
    Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen," and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
    Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders, either. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest certainly were derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic. But they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless.
    So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents.
    America's great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown.  It was only getting started — and the rebellion has moved through such great forces of agitation as the abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, the Populists and the Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New Deal, Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez — and on into today's continuing fight for economic fairness, social justice and equal opportunity for all.
    Without agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the environment, on Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across our society, democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.
    The Powers That Be — especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) — give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along — be quiet, they urge.
    Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
    July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such — but it's also a time to remember who we are: agitators!
    It's not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and you get to feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your momma, and she might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to stand up is essential if our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity for all.
    And when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out.
    PS:  Remember the American revolution was started by "agitators" who scaled a ship in Boston Harbor to throw tea overboard in protest of the British Stamp Tax.  Being patriotic is not about flying the biggest American flag around or singing God Bless America at a baseball game - it's about a life lived trying to make the American Dream "real" for the least of us.  That requires telling the truth to power not sucking up to it.   

THE PRICE OF FAILURE

    The state of Oregon has been forced by the federal government to adopt a new formula for calculating the high school drop out rate.  Under the previous benchmark the graduation rate was 84% for the class that entered high school in 2004 and graduated in 2008.  Under the new formula that rate has dropped to 64%.  Losing over 15,269 high school students along the way is not merely a lot of kids, it’s also a barometer of the failure of Oregon’s education leadership from local school boards and superintendants to the state department of education under Susan Castillo.  
    Oregon has been playing with school reform for 3 decades but nothing has really changed the results.  We are losing too many kids in the system which means that these dropouts become a kind of dead weight on our social service and criminal justice systems at a time when the budget is stretched to the max to help at risk families and children who need jobs, shelter and food.  If we cut the drop out rate, then these students would become employable and hence tax paying citizens.  They would also be ready to move on to higher education and eventually better paying jobs. But with these staggering drop out rates that won’t happen.  
    Let me put this another way.  The Oregon legislature just finished the current session.  While doing so it cut the higher education budget by 10%.  It also passed two tax bills to increase the minimum corporate income tax and to increase taxes on upper income Oregonians.  These two sources needed to balance the budget are projected to bring in $733 million dollars over the next biennium (2009-2011).  However a coalition of business interests and anti-tax advocates are launching a signature gathering campaign to put these two measures on the ballot in January 2010.  If these taxes are rolled back by a vote of the people the legislature which meets again in February will face draconian across the board cuts.  
    So who should care?  You should because without investing in our kids and Oregon families the drop out rates will continue to climb and with it increased demands on our social service system and criminal justice systems.  But at some point the money will run out.  At that point we will have more to worry about than the drop out rate, we will see as we have before in previous bad times jail birds getting out of county jails and state prisons early along and larger class sizes in schools where more children will be lost in the cracks hence becoming more vulnerable to failing in school and dropping out.  And when kids drop out of school what do they drop into?  You know the answer – the ranks of the unemployed, dysfunctional families and criminal behavior.  
    The old oil can commercial comes to mind – “you can pay me now or pay me latter.” It’s always more expensive to pay latter.  Anyone who has forgotten to put oil in the crankcase has paid dearly with a cracked engine block (yours truly included).  So while none of us loves to pay taxes, they are the price we pay to keep things moving in the right direction including helping kids succeed in school.  Now how the latter in done is clearly a mystery to the educational establishment.  But the answer is rather straight forward and obvious.  Make classes smaller, empower teachers to teach not give tests and create stable families which value learning.  It all starts with reading to your toddlers!  By the way, that’s how you save in taxes – you invest in kids now as opposed to building more jails.  Besides, jail space is very expensive while by comparison college tuition is a bargain!

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT HERE

THIS IS WHAT JEFF FOXWORTHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT 'LIVING' IN OREGON

    If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't

work there, you live in Oregon .

    If you've worn shorts, sandals and a parka at the same time, you live

in Oregon .  

    If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed

the wrong number, you live in Oregon . 

    If you measure distance in hours, you live in Oregon .  

    If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you

live in Oregon .

    If you have switched from 'heat' to 'A/C' and back again in the same

day, you live in Oregon .

    If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both

doors unlocked, you live in Oregon

    If you design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a 2 layers of

clothes or under a raincoat, you live in Oregon.  

    If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with

snow and ice, you live in Oregon .  

    If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road

construction, you live in Oregon .

    If you feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash, you

live in Oregon. 

    If you know more than 10 ways to order coffee, you live in Oregon.

    If you know more people who own boats than air conditioners, you live in

Oregon.

    If you stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the "Walk"

signal, you live in Oregon

    If you consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it

is not a real mountain, you live in Oregon.

    If you can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and

Dutch Bros, you live in Oregon.

    If you know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon, you

live in Oregon.

    If you know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Abiqua, Issaquah, Oregon,

Umpqua, Yakima and Willamette, you live in Oregon.

    If you consider swimming an indoor sport, you live in Oregon.

    If you know that Boring is a city and not just a feeling, you live in

Oregon.

    If you can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food,

you live in Oregon.

    If you never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho, you

live in Oregon.

    If you have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain, you live in

Oregon.

    If you think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists, you

live in Oregon.

    If you buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old

ones after such a long time, you live in Oregon. 

SOURCE:  My Canadian Connection who grew up in Portland. 

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE GOP?

     It seems that leaders of the GOP, as the party of "family values," have great difficulty living a life consistent with that mantra.  Governor Mark Sanford (R, South Carolina) is merely the most recent GOP star to fall from grace.  Last week it was US Senator John Ensign (R, Nevada).  But these are not isolated events.  We must go back to the "Godfather" of the modern culturally sensitive GOP, Newt Gingrich to see the total hypocrisy of the GOP's claim to moral virtue.  
    As long as Slick Willie was in the Oval Office the GOP could focus on him as the paragon of less than virtuous actions.  But the GOP has an entire generational stable of fallen ones like Senator Larry Craig (R, Idaho).  And then there are paragons of "civic virtue" such as Tom DeLay, Mark Abramoff, Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh. Why don't we add to this list the Wall Streeters whose salaries and residences mark them as most likely Republicans?   
    Yes, Democrats can foul "family values" nest too as John Edwards did but the GOP seems to have a monopoly on this game!  And the Democrats have never claimed to be the party of family values!  So with that claim of higher virtue the GOP must be assessed accordingly.  Right now they are getting an "F" grade for hypocrisy given actions unbecoming of the keepers of the "book of virtues."

“NOT SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE”

    After a six month investigation Portland Mayor Sam Adams was given the benefit of the doubt by Oregon’s new Attorney General John Kroger today who announced in a Salem press conference that there was not “sufficient evidence” to warrant criminal charges against the embattled Mayor caught in the cross hairs of a sex scandal involving Adams and Beau Breedlove.   But while Adams was given the benefit of the doubt by the AG he is now subject to the court of public opinion.  
    In a carefully crafted report the AG looked at 5 potential criminal charges against Adams – did the mayor have “sexual intercourse” with a minor; did the mayor have “sexual contact” with a minor; did Adams commit “official misconduct” by hiring a reporter to stop a story about the scandal; and/or did the mayor commit “theft or theft by deception” by making false statements about his relationship the Breedlove?  
    The AG was not able to find evidence that corroborated these allegations.  However, Adams has admitted that he did have a brief sexual relationship with Breedlove after the latter turned 18.  So while Adams has passed the AG test, the question is now will the mayor pass the public’s test regarding the mayor’s credibility since he lied about the relationship at first?
    The debate over Adams is really not about sex per se or rules of evidence, it’s about can Portlander’s trust Adams to tell the truth?  And does his admitted relationship with a 17 year old, then 18 year old qualify as a proper relationship by Adams given his 40ish age and his job as mayor – let alone how he comports himself in his private life which has become very public?  As in national sex scandals going back to Senator Bob Packwood or Bill Clinton it isn't the legalities that either end or compromise a career it is the initial lying that does.  
    So while the AG has found is no "sufficient evidence” to take to a Grand Jury as a prelude to charging the mayor with criminal offenses – the decision today will not put questions of Adams' judgment to rest, cause people to believe him nor lift the cloud over his tenure as mayor.   In politics “trust” is the coin of the realm for politicians and lobbyists – once that trust has been broken it’s hard to reclaim it.  And the AG report was so narrowly cast, as it had to be, that issues of Adams’ personal ethics and judgment will not go away.  
    So while the mayor has won a narrow legal victory now the question becomes can he win in the court of public opinion?  The upcoming recall petition process which begins July 1 requiring 50 thousand signatures to be collected in 90 days will be the first test of Adams' legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  If the recall petition process succeeds then the vote of the people of Portland will settle the issue next November.  Or will it?  Can Sam Adams really put the doubts about him away?  I doubt it no matter how this ends.  
    Minus any polling I suspect a third of Portlanders believe in Adams, another third clearly do not and the “undecided” third have not made up their minds.  The recall process will hinge upon that ubiquitous "undecided" voter.  The recall process is like an impeachment process – it’s not based on strict rules of evidence.  It’s all about how people “feel” about the mayor who has admitted lying, admitted to a sexual relationship with Breedlove and who has other legal issues including the possible foreclosure of several properties.  
    With a bad economy and debates over ML soccer is Mayor Adams really able to shoulder the burdens of being mayor or has this political circus become too much a distraction?  We’ll find out down the road.   One final question – why is it that politicians always seem to get the benefit of the doubt for acting stupidly when if you and I did we’d be fired?  Does power confer special rules for those in power?  Breedlove was questioned 6 times by the AG staff between February 23 and June 10, Adams only once on May 28 (yes, for 3 ½ hours) but is RAD alone in thinking there’s a double standard here?  
    Yes, Mr. AG you did your “due diligence” but will that be “sufficient” in the courtroom of public opinion?   And how about that missing memory card noted in your report?  Anyone old enough to remember Watergate remembers Rose Mary Woods' famous 16 minute hum!  And does City Hall have any type of security cameras which tape the comings and goings of people?  Do “security records” per se include such tapes?   Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Law & Order.  Questions, more questions.