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Slots
for Tots It was noon on Friday, nothing was going on in the Senate. We had already taken care of the state's most pressing issue earlier in the week. We passed SB919, which "specifies titles that may not be used by a person not licensed as a landscape contractor." Yes, that's the actual explanation from the staff measure summary. This solves a major controversy in Oregon: What does one call oneself if one is a lawnmower? But remember, there is an exception: You don't have to have a license if the work you perform is "of a casual, minor, or inconsequential nature." Hmmm, do you think that was a backdoor way of exempting legislators? So, feeling that great burden lifted from my shoulders, I moseyed over to the House to watch the debate on the K-12 school budget. The session was delayed two hours for a Republican caucus; arms were twisted and the bill passed 32-26. Every Democrat present voted against the bill. Take that, you Nader purists: There is a difference between D's and R's! In the past six weeks of negotiations House Republicans have reneged on three agreements: one to fund schools at a higher level; another — in writing — regarding changes to the Oregon Health Plan; and another on spending for public safety. And for the past six weeks the speaker has threatened to form her own budget committee and put out her own budgets, bypassing the Joint Ways and Means Committee process, to punish the Democrats and the governor for not giving in to her pathetic demands. She finally pulled the trigger, ended negotiations, and chose the K-12 budget as the first product of her new committee. If this is the best she can do, we are in deep horse droppings. The speaker's bill would provide only $4.56 billion from the General Fund and Lottery; the rest is "funny money": It steals $131 million from next year's School Stability Fund, the interest of which is used to pay for low-income college scholarships for Oregon students. We can't steal this year's fund because the R's already stole that for last year's school funding. By the way, the R's got to the ambitious figure of $131 million by assuming the addition of extra video poker terminals and new slot machines in bars and restaurants. And, the bill sets up a trigger mechanism for distributing an extra $250 million in the second year: If the May 2004 revenue forecast is at least $200 million over the May 2003 forecast, 43 percent of the excess over $200 million goes to the schools. (It would take over $700 million in growth to actually get to the $250 million proposal — I don't think our state crystal-baller economist would agree with this prediction.) Of course, if revenues actually exceeded the forecast by $200 million, it would cause the kicker to kick! So, we'd be paying for the 2004-05 school year with kicker money we'd have to send back to the taxpayers in 2006! Is that a cool Ponzi scheme or what? Consensus among the Senate Democrats is that we will not go below $5.3 billion of real money for schools, a figure which School Superintendent Susan Castillo says won't even get us back to the level of funding for the 2001 school year. On a local note, Rep. Pat Farr's vote was a real disappointment. He failed his first big test as a freshman after getting elected as an education supporter. He buckled under pressure from the speaker and voted with the Republicans. His justification, that his school districts would be fine with this level of funding, was nonsense. Hell, Pat, I can take you to a bunch of small school districts around the state, even here in Lane County, that are dying on the vine. Our job is to represent all the school kids, not just the ones in cities lucky enough to have voters who were so pissed off at legislative inaction, that they went forward with their own local tax. What irritated me the most was Pat's comment to me on the House floor after his vote: "Please, Tony, fix it for us in the Senate." I wouldn't need to, Pat, if just two more Republicans had the cajones to take on their leadership. Then again, caucus politics can be brutal. And Republicans are different than Democrats. Sen. Tony Corcoran of Cottage Grove represents portions of Lane and Douglas counties in Senate District 4, which includes the UO area. He can be reached at sen.tonycorcoran@state.or.us
Changing
Lanes Ever wonder why the residents of this county spend so much time celebrating heroes like Wayne Morse and Martin Luther King Jr., without ever mentioning the man after whom our county was named? It turns out that Joseph Lane was a poor choice for a namesake. In the antebellum period, he was an ardent defender of slavery. In 1860, he ran for vice president of the U.S., losing to the ticket headed by Abraham Lincoln. So it's true: Our county is named after a bigoted loser. Joseph Lane was the antithesis of the ideals that our county now stands for. Luke Skywalker had more in common with his dad, Darth Vader, than Lane County has in common with its founding father. It was only a matter of time before someone in Lane County asked the Board of County Commissioners to find a new namesake. At our board meeting last week, we considered a letter from Peter Roberts, who suggested that the board should name our county after a different person with the surname "Lane," so we could disassociate our county from Joseph Lane's sordid history without causing too many administrative headaches. Mr. Roberts cited the example of King County, Washington, which discarded its old namesake William Rufus DeVane King (dubbed "a gentle slave monger" by John Quincy Adams) in favor of Martin Luther King Jr. At our Board meeting last week, a few commissioners expressed support for dropping Joseph Lane as the county's namesake. Bobby Green, who recently championed the effort to name a street after Martin Luther King Jr., made us laugh when he said he'd probably sit this one out, because he's had his share of naming controversies for the year. The trick is to find another namesake with the surname "Lane." Mr. Roberts suggested Franklin Knight Lane, who lived from 1864-1921 and helped to establish the National Park Service. One big drawback: He was a Californian. That might be a tough sell with my colleague Bill Dwyer, who has protested the "Californication" of Oregon. I did some research of my own, and I came up with 11 other candidates named "Lane."
1) Nathan Lane. He's an actor whose résumé includes the roles of Timon the Meerkat in The Lion King, and the role of "Mysterious Disco Man" in the latest Austin Powers film 2) Diane Lane. She portrayed an adulterous wife in Unfaithful, and she played a cop/judge/executioner alongside Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd. Infidelity and summary executions — now there are some marketing themes that CVALCO can work with! 3) Jennifer Lane. She's a rhythm and blues singer. Her songs include this hit: Ben is the Man (Doin' our Septic Tank). 4) Charles Lane. He played a tight-fisted business manager on I Love Lucy. Maybe his selection as our namesake might restore the voters' confidence in our county's frugality, so we could finally pass a ballot measure around here. 5) Roumelia Lane. She writes Harlequin Romance novels such as Tempest in the Tropics and Night of the Beguine. We'd pick up some tourist business if she would set one of her novels in Lane County (The Covered Bridges of Passion? The Tree-Sitter's Wife?). 6) Lane Shetterly. We need at least one Oregonian on the list! He's a state representative from Polk County — a nice, smart guy. The only problem is that he's a political moderate, and there's nothing moderate about Lane County. 7) The other Joseph Lane. Besides our current namesake, the most famous Joseph Lane in history is the self-described "anarchist communist" who lived in England during the 1800s and wrote An Anti-Statist Communist Manifesto. The national press would have a field day if we picked this guy. 8) Carpool Lane. Who says our county has to be named after a human being? This choice would celebrate our conservationist values. 9) Penny Lane. This classic Beatles song features the following four words back-to-back: "pouring rain/very strange." If that's not Lane County, I don't know what is. 10) Lois Lane. In later versions of the Superman saga, Clark's journalist girlfriend was a tough crime-fighter rather than a damsel in distress. Picking Lois could draw attention to the fact that Lane County boasts one of the best journalism schools in the U.S. 11) Memory Lane. There's no better choice for a county where half the population thinks that the 1960s never ended. Tom Lininger is the county commissioner for the East Lane District.
Remembering
Hiroshima and Nagasaki On Aug. 6, 1945 the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima Japan, killing more than 130,000 people. Three days later "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, killing or injuring over 100,000 people. The American public rejoiced at the news of these bombings because it meant the victorious end of a horrific war. Victory using nuclear weapons was possible then, but much has changed over the past 58 years. People now look back on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and vow "never again" — never should any country wage a nuclear war. Nuclear war is now unthinkable for almost all people for two clear reasons: First, powerful states today have hydrogen bombs, measured in megatons — millions of tons of TNT — a thousand times larger than the bombs of 1945. A single 10-megaton bomb would completely destroy a large city such as New York, killing millions of people instantly. Second, nuclear war is unthinkable because the U.S. lost its nuclear monopoly. The Soviet Union quickly developed nuclear weapons, soon followed by Britain, France and China. Eventually, powerful nuclear states became mutually deterred — they did not attack each other for fear of suffering nuclear retaliation. Today, only eight states possess nuclear weapons, defying repeated predictions of extensive nuclear proliferation. This reality has eased most people's fears of an all-out nuclear war — a fear widely shared during the Cold War. However, many people still fear a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a terrorist group. Extreme fear of nuclear proliferation drove the Bush administration's unprecedented policy of waging a pre-emptive war on Iraq. Fear also drives the new policy to create new nuclear weapons, "bunker busters," intended for use in a future nuclear war against terrorist hideouts. Fear drives the new all-out push to quickly build a national missile defense system. This system will not be good for defense since any aggressor could easily knock out its radars with a small conventional or terrorist attack. Instead, this "defense" system is planned as useful for backing up a first strike against "rogues" in a future nuclear confrontation. These policies that fearfully plan for waging an aggressive nuclear war are incompatible with policies aimed at avoiding nuclear war. Concurrently the U.S. pursues a policy called "Cooperative Threat Reduction." This program has helped Russia destroy more than 400 missile silos; eliminate more than 1,400 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, submarines, and strategic bombers; eliminate 150 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium; and support approximately 50,000 weapons scientists in peaceful research work. This is tremendous progress, but much more needs to be done. These efforts focus directly on securing the most likely source for a possible terrorist nuclear weapon — the insecure arsenal of the former Soviet Union. However, these highly successful efforts are incompatible with the plans for building and using new nuclear weapons, and waging pre-emptive war. First, these efforts compete for funding and attention, and have not fared well. Second, if the U.S. argues it has a right to wage nuclear war unilaterally and builds new nuclear weapons to do so, this undercuts arguments that nuclear war is unthinkable and nuclear weapons are not useful. Other states feel they need to respond to these policies by building their own nuclear weapons rather than cooperatively giving up their nuclear programs. In fact, today North Korea and Iran appear to be quickly building their nuclear arsenals, and it appears much of the world sympathizes with these states. Instead of condemning these states, many have quietly argued that North Korea and Iran probably do need nuclear weapons for defense since the U.S. is openly threatening to unilaterally invade them. The U.S. can fearfully plan to wage nuclear war, or the U.S. can continue to work to avoid nuclear war, but it cannot do both at the same time. Jane K. Cramer is an assistant professor of political science at UO. She teaches and does research on international security. A community gathering is planned Aug. 6 to remember the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to strengthen the campaign to rid all governments of their existing nuclear weapons and stop the development and deployment of new nuclear weapons systems. The event will be at Alton Baker Park, shelter #2, beginning with a 6 pm potluck, followed at 7:15 by music, poetry and educational presentations.
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