Spanning the State: "Those three shadowy figures" by: nothstine Sun Nov 01, 2009 at 19:54:32 PM PST

Professional and serial abuser of Oregon's initiative system Bill Sizemore is facing racketeering charges again. This time, the OEA and AFT-Oregon are suing both Sizemore and his main sugar daddy Loren Parks for alleged campaign shenanigans: The unions claim Sizemore and Parks conspired to set up a sham charitable organization to hide money used to gather signatures and promote four ballot measures in 2008, including measures on teacher merit pay and public employee unions. The racketeering complaint asks for $18 million in damages, or about three times the amount the unions spent to defeat the ballot measures. It also seeks to ensure that Parks does not use any charitable organizations to contribute money to political causes in Oregon, where he has spent millions over the years. Sizemore, the author of dozens of initiatives since the 1990s, called the latest lawsuit frivolous. "It's aimed solely at keeping me from putting measures on the ballot," Sizemore said. Well, yes.  Yes, I think we can all agree about that.   Arguably, Sizemore and Parks may have erred not in operating an alleged criminal enterprise by setting up non-profits to funnel money into their initiative mill, but rather in making the paper trail far too easy to follow. If Ross Day, Russ Walker, and Kevin Mannix ever decide to offer an AP course in Hiding the Paper Trail, Sizemore should borrow the money for tuition and sign up. The syllabus could include the following topics: Week 1: Exploiting the tax code, Part I:  Deploying multiple iterations of interlocking 501(c)3 organizations (can "educate" but can't "do politics," donations are tax deductible, have to reveal their donor list), and 501(c)4 organizations (donations aren't tax-deductible, can "do politics," do not have to reveal their donor list). Week 2: Exploiting the tax code, Part II: Using the filing extension to make sure your tax returns aren't available to the public until long after the election is over. Week 3: Stonewalling: Theory and practice:  Using role-play and mock interviews, students will practice refusing to disclose the names of donors to their 501(c)4 organizations. Hart Williams, who's spent several years following the well-covered trail by which Freedomworks has been funneling money into Oregon to promote exploitation of the initiative process by the right, yesterday released the first part of a larger investigative report on how Freedomworks, and similar organizations, game the system in multiple states to promote initiatives on land use, term limits, so-called "taxpayers bill of rights" schemes, and other items on the right-wing Christmas list. Here's a teaser: In 2006, using Howard Rich and his many front groups as a front themselves, three persons or entities attempted to act as a self-appointed legislature - a political star chamber - in dozens of states, from coast to coast, California to Maine. And they spent tens of millions of dollars to do so. And we still have no idea who those three shadowy figures were. Right now, shadowy forces have decided to overturn the budget that the Oregon legislature painstakingly and painfully spent half of this year creating. The special election is in January. Perhaps it's representative democracy, but I'd sure as hell like to know WHO it is that Mannix, Walker and Day are representing. Because that doesn't seem like democracy at all. Might be worth following this series (don't know when the next installment comes out). Time to Span the State! [More after the jump.]

nothstine :: Spanning the State: "Those three shadowy figures"

--------------- Eggheads of the world, unite!  You have nothing to lose but your yolks! * When I interviewed for a faculty position at the U of O, 'way back in the day, I pointed out that the salary was noticeably less than what I was making at the university where I was working (another public university of similar size), and noticeably less than the national average for the same rank at an equivalent institution.  The fellow on the other side of the table just chuckled and said, Yeah, out here we call that the "Oregon Lifestyle Surcharge." I took the job anyway, for other reasons, and two months later Measure 5, which slashed and capped property taxes upon which Oregon public education depends narrowly passed. Years before Naomi Klein eventually wrote The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the UO administration intuitively understood that the panic immediately following on Measure 5 was the perfect opportunity to steamroll through changes that probably could never have happened where the faculty was unionized.  In their defense, I suppose, at least the administrators were pretty candid about the fact that they were indeed running roughshod over the idea of faculty self-governance. I left U of O not long after, and I was happy to read this week that the U of O faculty may finally have had enough.  Talks are in process for the faculty to seek union representation, joining their counterparts at Portland State, Western Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and Southern Oregon.   According to the Register-Guard, faculty dissatisfaction has increased in the last couple of years, and low pay and the perception of administration high-handedness are the reasons most often pointed to. The UO ranks last in average salary and in average total compensation - pay plus benefits - on a list of nine large public universities the state uses for comparing budgets. The average faculty salary is 80 percent of the average for the other eight universities, and total compensation is 84 percent of the average. Also, the UO ranks last in pay among the 60 members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group made up of many of the top public and private universities around the nation. In that comparison, the UO's average faculty salary of $73,300 is 11.5 percent below that of the second-to-last school, the University of Missouri, which has an average faculty salary of $82,600. *H/t to Adlai Stevenson. Note: This item is cross-posted at  p3. --------------- Not in our stars, but off our coast: That's where the faults lie--at least the faults that triggered a series of seismic shocks along the Oregon coast: A series of seismic faults no one knew about was the source of an unusual swarm of undersea earthquakes off the Oregon coast last spring, geologists say. The quakes puzzled experts because they appeared to be volcanic outbursts in the middle of the Juan de Fuca plate, the deep slab of the Earth's crust underlying the ocean off Oregon. Earthquakes caused by volcanic activity usually arise along the edges of tectonic plates. [...] Last year's earthquake swarm began on March 30 about 140 miles southwest of Newport. Most were magnitude 3 and 4 quakes, and none were big enough to shake coastal towns. They commanded attention because of their unusual behavior. Most earthquakes within a crustal plate start with a main shock followed by lesser aftershocks. This swarm erupted in a steady stream as if emanating from a hot spot of rising magma from beneath the crust. "That's normally what we see in volcanic and hydrothermally active regions at the edge of a plate," said William Wilcock, a marine geophysicist and professor of oceanography at the University of Washington. --------------- Oregon gas prices: Average reported pump are up 2.6¢/gal this week, to $2.747/gal. (The usually rosier AAA of Oregon report puts it up 2¢, to $2.73/gal.) Oddly, there are price wars going on at both ends of the price continuum in Oregon today--suggesting that somebody doesn't understand the fundamentals of "price war." Cheapest reported pump price (tie):  $2.49/gal at the 76 station, 30 NW Main St near NW Jorgen St., in Winston, and at the Astro Station, a block away at 171 SW Main St near NW Douglas Blvd., in Winston. Highest reported pump price (tie): $2.99/gal, at the 461 S Valley View Rd & I-5 Exit 19, in Ashland; the 76 station, right across the street at 460 S Valley View Rd & I-5 (Exit 19), in Ashland.   The Sightline Institute recently offered this interesting note on the psychology of gas prices:  During 2009, weekly gas prices fluctuated about 5¢/week on average, Sometimes they went down, but generally the trend line this year has been upward.  (For 2008-2009, the average weekly change was higher, around 7¢/week.)  Compare that to the hostility toward recent proposals for gas taxes in the region:  a "nickel tax" in Washington in 2003, Idaho's proposed (and defeated) 2¢ tax, and the 6¢ tax currently being considered in Oregon.  Given the background noise of constant price fluctuation over the last two years, Eric De Place of the Sightline Institute wonders: [I]t's not entirely clear that consumers would even notice such small price increases. (That's a different question, by the way, than whether consumers would be affected by the price increases.) I've argued before that gas prices have a bigger effect on consumption than we think. But I've also argued that not all gas prices are equal. It appears that for a price increase, such as a tax, to reduce consumption the change should be big enough to notice and -- just as important -- the price increase shouldn't be used to increase consumption. So there's probably a good debate to have about whether 3.6 cents per gallon would be enough to affect consumption, given that every week the price of gas changes by 5 cents per gallon on average. --------------- We'll forego the obligatory "spiraling debt" puns on this one: Our Attorney General has been busy again, and it's a good thing--even if it is a story that's no less important just because part of it's a little offbeat: Oregon students will receive a slice of a $113 million multi-state settlement against a Nevada-based helicopter training school that promised flight certification in 18 months. Oregon Attorney General John Kroger announced today that Student Loan Xpress will forgive $3.8 million in tuition debt for students who obtained loans to attend the now-defunct Silver State Helicopter training school in Salem. [...] The settlement requires Student Loan Xpress to forgive 75 percent of the debt held by a majority of the former Silver State students. The remaining students will receive debt relief based on the amount of training they successfully completed. --------------- Heads schools lose, tails they lose: The gaming industry will certainly be happy.  So will Oregon bar owners. I wonder if the folks in education will be? You'll have to follow the logic closely on this one: The Oregon Lottery Commission has voted unanimously to maintain compensation rates for video lottery retailers despite claims by education advocates that schools should get a bigger share. The commissioners followed a recommendation by Lottery Director Dale Penn, who said reducing payouts to bars that host video gambling machines would eventually have the unintended consequence of reducing revenues the lottery gets - which would cut the amount available for the schools. See how it works?  By giving the business owners 24¢ of every dollar lost in their machines, rather than sharing some of that cut with education, schools get less. But if schools were to get a bigger cut, they'd still get less. Is that kind of arithmetic taught in Oregon schools? --------------- StS True Animal Story:  Update: Back in the lazy days of summer, when the weather was warm and the sun didn't set at 5pm, StS featured a True Animal Story about elephants at the Wildlife Safari in Winston raising money by washing visitors' cars. This week comes the news that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking Wildlife Safari to discontinue the practice: An Oct. 22 letter from the animal rights group to Wildlife Safari calls the elephant car wash a "gimmick that does nothing to foster respect for endangered species." The letter urges executive director Dan Van Slyke to discontinue the spring-and-summer attraction. Lisa Wathne, a Seattle-based PETA spokeswoman and the letter's author, said the practice is potentially dangerous to the public, and the elephants are forced to wash cars under the threat of pain inflicted by trainers. The organization is particularly concerned with the use of a traditional elephant training tool known as an ankus or bullhook. The device is a rod with a metal hook and spike at one end. --------------- Tune in to the Morning Show on KPOJ AM620 tomorrow morning between 7.30 and 8.00 to hear Carl, Christine, and Paul match wits with TJ on the weekly Spanning the State Limerick Challenge!   ---------------

Tags: (All Tags)

Print Friendly View Send As Email