Oregon Legislative Giveaway

Look to the feds whenever you're in trouble. With a deficit of $200 million, Oregon legislators take the Bush administration's lead and start approving millions in tax breaks for profitable corporations and wealthy individuals. The Oregon AFL-CIO maintains a legislative update site that keeps track of the latest bills.

According to the site:

Last week, House members approved two new tax giveaways. In one, they adopted corporate tax cuts enacted last year by Congress and the Bush administration for federal taxpayers (HB 2542), after rejecting a more selective approach to connecting to the federal tax code that would have collected more money from large corporations. In the other, they chose a budget-busting tax reduction option for large estates over $2 million in value (HB 2629), after rejecting a revenue-neutral plan that would have eliminated taxes on smaller estates while raising them on larger estates.

The cost of these two pieces of legislation to Oregon's treasury will be $13.5 million in the upcoming budget period and $39.3 million in the 2007-09 period.

But that's not all. The House Revenue Committee is now considering several bills to cut in half all taxes on capital gains for wealthy individuals and corporations (HB 2332, HB 2574). Either of the capital gains bills would reduce state revenues by more than $300 million per biennium when fully implemented. Also on the table are new write-offs for corporate research and development (HB 2368, HB 3232).

All of these bills have the same thing in common: They postpone their effective dates and push off most of their revenue losses to later years. In that way, they avoid confronting the central principle of fiscal responsibility enshrined in our state constitution – the requirement to adopt a balanced budget.

There are no estimates yet on the impact of HB 2368 and HB 3232, but the others break down in terms of dollars lost for the next two budget terms as follows:

2005 - 2007 term

• HB 2542, -$13.5 million


• HB 2629, 0


• HB 2332, -12.3 million


• HB 2574, (similar to 2332)

2007- 2009 term

• HB 2542, -$5.5 million


• HB 2629, -33.8 million


• HB 2332, -154.3 million


• HB 2574, (similar to 2332)

Does CNN Attempt to Suppress Critics Through Viral Marketing?

Bloggers watch you asses! Go over to Nick Lewis: The Blog and read this fascinating account, CNN Guerrillas in the Midst: A Viral Marketing Campaign Exposed. Nick posted an article critical of CNN programming. Later an odd comment was posted that agreed with his position while at the same time plugging CNN programming. Closer inspection revealed an attempt at "keyword stuffing". Stuffing a website with many instances of certain keywords used to be an attempt for a website to drive up search engine site relevance, but as search engine providers got wise, they started punishing sites that did this. Therefore, it would stand to reason that a comment stuffed with keywords would probably have been placed in order to have a search engine punish the site, and drive websites with negative content off the search engine and unavailable to searchers. The article speculates on a reason for CNN doing this:

Why would CNN care about blogs? Well, first of all I cite that prior to Jordan's ousting, Jon Stuart's appearance on Crossfire. Indeed few events could have made a clearer argument to CNN that they are at the mercy of the blogs. Consider this: according to the ratings, the now famous episode of Crossfire only reached about 400,000 viewers via cable. However, the online video of Stuart's reached an estimated 5 million people - and there was nothing CNN could do to stop it. Re-read that statistic and ask yourself, "Is it likely that CNN understands the power of weblogs?"

It's a fascinating story, one that's not over yet. His evidence is compelling, and it's something that I probably wouldn't have noticed - until now.

The New Rainbow Food Exercise Bar Pyramid

What the hell is this? Believe it or not, this diagram to the left is the the NEW food pyramid brought to you by our very own USDA. Reaction is mixed, but it seems to be mostly a combination of confusion, sarcasm, and outright derision.

Remember the old pyramid with its recommendations for what foods to eat in what relative quantities? This new one is a lot more vague and less specific, as noted in the US News and World Report article, Pumped-up Food Pyramid, Is there any substance behind the food guide's slick new look?

The problem, say some nutrition advocates, is that MyPyramid (the new food pyramid) doesn't indicate what not to eat—high-fat, sugary, high-calorie foods—though this caution is spelled out in the new guidelines. "People are going to have to walk up an awful lot of steps, hours of walking up steps, to take off what most Americans are eating," says Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "USDA dodged the politically difficult question of which foods we should eat less often. It's a missed opportunity."

The main reason for this may be food lobbyist influence. From Karen Mulvey's article, Food Pyramid Scheme at Alternet.org:

What most people don't realize is that the USDA's original vision for the pyramid included visual indicators to show people how often they should eat certain foods. Pastries and donuts, for example, would be marked "occasional." But these guidelines are now nowhere to be found in the new MyPyramid, thanks to giant food corporations and their lobbyists.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of the industry's influence is the government's refusal to recommend which foods not to eat, while putting a strong emphasis on individual responsibility. The only mention of unhealthy foods in new dietary guidelines is a gentle reminder to "know the limits on fats, sugars and salts." Also missing are recommendations limiting the amount of food people eat. Considering that 28 percent of American men and 34 percent of women are obese, this omission is especially troubling.

It's no wonder considering the USDA is taking a lot of food industry influence, and that food industry advertising dollars mostly go toward high-fat and high sugar foods and alcoholic beverages. She goes on to mention that without any significant PR budget to go along with this, the food industry has stepped in to put the word out, and to no doubt put their own spin on the pyramid.

By the way, the little guy on the side? He's there to remind you to exercise.

Some are seeing a different influence at work. See New Food Pyramid is Totally Gay at Wonkette.

I needed that

Okay, that hiatus was shorter than I thought. Thanks to activist_kaza over at kazablog (check out his site) for pointing out that giving up television for 40 days definitely softened me up. It made me forget how ridiculous local news is (anybody remember Portland news stations and their all day continuing coverage of Ice Storm 2005?). After announcing a hiatus, I went looking through my old posts to pick out some of my favorites, and I realized how much I liked doing this. (My all time favorite was the lightly reported: D'OH! Murdoch's Fox Threatens to Sue Self! ). I'm back to commentary now. In light of everything that's been going on, I hope you can forgive a brief meltdown.

What really did me in was all the Bolton nomination stuff. The man is a complete psycho, but Bush put him up as the nominee anyway. With one party control and little in the way of checks and balances in our government any more, it's like Bush is mocking us or something. First, company man and butt-kissing pathological liar Condoleeza Rice, then company man who'd never bother his boss with anything as insignificant as new evidence that may exonerate a death row inmate Alberto "torture" Gonzalez, and now company man and butt kissing psychopath John "forget the facts tell me what I want to hear" Bolton. What's next? "Let me present my nominee, Mister Ted Bundy. He's a good man. He has a good heart. Senator Lugar, let's get this man in as soon as possible." At least now Bolton's nomination is on hold. I can't bring myself to rehash. Check these sites out:

• Panel Delays Vote on Bolton Nomination to U.N. from Washington Post


• Senate Panel Delays Bolton Vote from CNN


• US ex-diplomats slam Bolton nomination from Christian Science Monitor


• Former Colleague Says Bolton Abused Power at State Dept from Washington Post


• Women Peace Activists Interrupt Bolton Nomination Hearing from Common Dreams

Finally, as a nod to longtime reader and dear friend BeanLover, I've decided to once again resurrect his fervent contention that Spanish president Jose Zapatero and Mr. Bean are in fact the same person (no commentary intended). For one thing, you never hear Mr. Bean speak (he could be Spanish), and you never see the two together in one place.

This was first mentioned here in Zapatero No Coward.

Now, let's see what's been happening while I've been away.....

The Blog That Ate My Soul

It all started as a post talking about the content of my local FOX newscast. On one night on KPTV, FOX12 Oregon (Portland), there was a story about a guy who fought off some intruders, a heartbreaking story about some children taken into protective custody after being exposed to chemicals from their parents making meth in their tiny mobile home (parents and two other children missing), MethWatch, and the usual parade of burglaries, murders, and missing children including one in Florida where the main suspect was the mother's registered sex offender boyfriend. Yes, a single mother moved a registered sex offender into her home with her daughter. I found myself getting sick to my stomach and filling with a sense of sadness and malaise.

It is really not an indictment of FOX12 but of the local news in general, and I think they get a lot of criticism for their content. I was actually on FOX12 once. I was having a bite at a local restaurant, the Feng Shui Cafe which was recently burglarized. A FOX12 reporter was there to get reactions on the report that the burglar was caught, due in part to the surveillance video they broadcast the night before. The reporter wanted my reaction, and kept leading me with questions like, "Wouldn't you say that in cases like this the media plays an important role in the community?" She was anxious to get someone to say that their reporting was an asset to the community. In this particular case the community was served, but most stories are not like this, and a daily barrage of gloom and doom reporting cannot be doing any community any good.

I sat down to write my post when it hit me. I just can't do this any more. I'm going to put Media Monkey on what the networks call "hiatus". It finally occurred to me that to keep this blog going, I have to wade through the latest media issues, and I just can't live on a diet of lies, distortions, bad economics, bad science, bad environmentalism, bad religion, and above all, bad journalism. I keep watching the lies get exposed, watching the media get hammered for not getting the real story, watching names get named day after day, and still, another day comes and nothing changes. It wears down the soul.

I winced when the Bush administration proposed a "Healthy Forest Initiative" that actually claimed to save forests by opening them to commercial logging. I groaned when the Bush administration rolled out a Hydrogen Fuel Initiative to develop clean burning hydrogen fuels and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, by allocating millions to research a means of using NUCLEAR power to extract hydrogen from COAL and OIL! My God! I screamed when I found that "supporting the troops" means cutting medical and other benefits to returning vets, forcing the army to scrounge for armor, and backdoor drafts.

Not a peep from the media, the public, anyone. You win. I give up.

Time Magazine squandered it's last few grams of journalistic integrity and credibility on a no doubt publicist brokered puff piece on shrill, bitter, lying, hypocritical hack, Ann Coulter. They even put her on the cover. Hey whatever. If anyone out there still gives a damn, check these out from Media Matters:

• Coulter falsely claimed NY Times op-ed "outed" gays


• Coulter: The Democratic Party "supports killing, lying, adultery, thievery, envy"


• Coulter: "Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists."


• Coulter on 2004 Super Bowl halftime show: "simulated interracial sex"


• Coulter: "I don't really care about the electorate"


• Coulter spiked from USA Today: Why was she hired in the first place?

Enjoy this Ted Rall editorial cartoon. I'm outta here. It's been real.

Shut Up, Katie Couric

I gave up television for Lent. The question I got asked the most was, "How to you find out what's going on?" Seriously, that's what most said. Like I couldn't read a paper, a magazine, listen to the radio, or get on to that newfangled "internet" thing that all the kids are into these days. I mean really, have you actually seen television news?

It should come as no surprise to readers of this column that giving up TV for lent was a snap. In fact, I haven't gone back. For that reason, I got this next story, President Clinton Rebuked Couric for Repeating Republican Claim of Democratic "Obstructionism" of Judicial Nominees, from media watchdog website, Media Matters for America.

Never mind that NBC's Today Show is part of the entertainment division rather than the news division. That doesn't stop plucky anchors Matt Lauer and Katie Couric from setting aside cooking demos, fashion shows, and Jennifer Anniston interviews, to try their hand at a real news interview now and then (you can tell it is a real interview because they put on their "intellectual" eyewear for the occasion).

This time, President Bill Clinton was in the chair to discuss his foundation pledging $10 million to AIDS research. Katie, ever the hard hitting journalist, decided to get into politics. From the Media Matters transcript:

COURIC: Let me ask you one political question, if I could, President Clinton. As you know, Howard Dean is now head of the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. Right now it seems the most effective thing that Democrats are doing on Capitol Hill is blocking various nominations, at least from their perspective. Like, you know, John Bolton, or -- U.S. ambassador to the U.N. -- or head of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], or the head of the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]. How can the Democratic Party retool itself so they're not simply seen as obstructionist in terms of the president's agenda?

CLINTON: Well, first of all, I don't think that's fair. I don't think Mr. [John] Negroponte [nominee for national intelligence director] will be blocked. I'm not sure Mr. Bolton will be blocked. There are policy reasons on the environment and food safety for debates on the others. And on judges, that's just a hoax. I mean, the Democrats blocked 10 out of over 200 judges. The Republicans wouldn't even give a vote to 40 of my Court of Appeals judges -- four times as many, just on the Court of Appeals, never mind all the others that they wouldn't have voted. So, this image that, I'm sad to say, you know, you just perpetrated it, it's ridiculous. The Democratic Senate has been nowhere near as obstructionist to President Bush on judges as the Republican Senate was to me. Not even close.

Where was she during the time that Clinton described, and why wasn't she asking congressional members about their obstructionism? I guess she was too busy chasing down the latest on Monica Lewinsky, or the latest in the Ken Starr/Republican witch hunt, or OJ, or JonBenet, or Michael Jackson. Stick to what you know best. I hear Brad Pitt is seeing someone new. Perhaps you can get him on. You won't even need to wear your glasses.

Gallup: Most Americans Have Never Heard of Blogs

They have certainly never heard of THIS blog, that's for sure. In other Gallup news, Editor and Publisher cites the latest Gallup poll to question whether the newfound influence of blogs is overhyped. Those of us in the blog world must have a skewed view, because I certainly thought the blog phenomenon was pretty well known. The poll however suggests that 75% of the U.S. public uses the Internet at work, school, or home, but only 25% of Americans are either “very familiar” or “somewhat familiar” with blogs. 56% have no knowledge of them, and even among Internet users, only 32% are very or somewhat familiar with blogs. The largest readership is among the young and liberal.

I guess I'll take my seven hits a day and be happy.

Bush Approval Rating Lowest Ever for 2nd-Term Prez

Editor and Publisher has this article, Gallup: Bush Approval Rating Lowest Ever for 2nd-Term Prez at this Point, detailing the latest Gallup Approval Poll released April 5th, and putting it in historical context. President Bush's approval rating of 45% is at the lowest level of any president since World War II at this point in his second term. The numbers are as follows:

Truman, 1949: 57%
Eisenhower, 1957: 65%
Johnson, 1965: 69%
Nixon, 1973: 57%
Reagan, 1985: 56%
Clinton, 1997: 59%
Bush, 2005: 45%

Additionally, Gallup's survey on the state of the country finds 38% expressing satisfaction and 59% responded as dissatisfied. One in three Americans feel the economy is excellent or good, while the rest find it "only fair" or poor. For information on this and other past and current Gallup polls, visit the Gallup Organization website.

Despite the ratings, pundits and commentators still like to refer to Bush as a popular president, or to dismiss negative poll numbers. Media Matters for America has this article catching CNN commentator Bill Schneider calling the poll findings "not too bad".

Local Boy Does Good. The Pulitzer Comes to Portland

Ladies and gentlemen, journalism is not dead! Right here in Portland, Nigel Jaquiss, reporter for Willamette Week won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for his investigation of former governor Neil Goldschmidt's sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the 1970s. This is a REAL award, not one of those Bill O'Reilly imaginary Peabody awards. Those outside of Portland who haven't heard of Willamette Week may be shocked to hear that the paper is one of those independent, weekly, part local politics, part reviews and listings, and part personal ads that can be found FREE in newsboxes and at finer establishments around town. It's an impressive achievement, but then again, this series was outstanding, as is all their weekly content.

For a great example of solid investigative journalism, as well as a complete accounting of the Goldschmidt scandal, follow this link to the announcement and links to the individual articles. The executive editor of The Oregonian, Peter Bhatia, extended the daily's "heartfelt congratulations" to Willamette Week for the Pulitzer <Oregonian article>.

Nigel, you have our deepest congratulations!