Kulongoski issued a press release today saying that he would veto any use of the rainy day fund for this year, and he also asked teachers to work for free in order to avoid shortening the school year.

I'm not a big Gov. K fan, but he's doing the right thing here. Use of the rainy day fund now, before we know where the bottom of this recession is, would be foolish. It can only be used once, and if you blow it in order to save 5 days of school, you may be looking at cutting 2-3 WEEKS next year. Yes, it's raining, but it could be flippin' pouring next biennium. We have a very small umbrella in this state, and if I can only use it once, I'd prefer to keep it for the really heavy rains.

As for teachers working for free, it will be interesting to see the response. I respect public employees tremendously, and wouldn't blame them for refusing to go along. Still, it looks like they'll be taking a pay cut regardless. In addition to sacrificing pay, should they make the additional sacrifice of working for free? Hard call, but I suspect most teachers will say yes.

As for new revenues, bring them on, but it will be difficult to raise revenue for this biennium. That has to be a piece of the puzzle, though.

I think some are missing the point. There are TWO reserve funds in Oregon. The Rainy Day Fund created last session with corporate kicker revenue and the Education Stability Fund created by voters and filled with dedicated lottery revenue. The education stability fund can only be used to shore up schools so the debate about using it or not has nothing to do with throwing grandma under the bus. It is irresponsible for the Governor to shorten the school year and break promises to kids while $370 million sits in the bank (we can fill the education hole with less than half of that).

There's been an interesting conversation going on about anonymity - or rather, pseudonymity - on blogs. Over at the San Francisco Chronicle's blog, Mark Morford argues that anonymous comments have destroyed meaningful online dialogue: "Thoughtful discourse? Humorous insight? Sometimes. But mostly it's a tactless spectator sport."

Sorry, but nothing about attaching one's name and face to commentary guarantees that such commentary will even be polite, let along thoughtful. This is not only true on blogs--anyone could cite examples--but also, far more obviously, in the right-wing hate-broadcasting business.

IMHO a significantly greater problem is the strong tendency for any given blog to turn into an echo chamber, with uniformity of opinion being enforced either by fiat (banning by moderators) or by dissenting voices simply getting fed up with being targets of abuse. Blue Oregon is actually one of the more broad-minded progressive blogs, from what I've seen, with a pretty high tolerance by the editors for a wide range of opinion, and banning only as an extreme measure for serial abusive postings.

"Some may argue that it's only a few days, but every single one of those days make a difference in the eyes of a child"

..not only that, ther are some colleges that will not admit a student that has not undegone a set amount of days before they accept them to their campus. Plus, there are some districts that still need to make up the days lost due to the December Storm. It's not a good thing right now.

Maybe we should cut some administrative salaries and some of thier perks as well and siphen that to the districts. Put the money into the school coffers instead of into the wallets of the administrators.

Three times this week, the points on blogging have been the dinnertime conversation. The question being asked was, "has the quantity of trolling made blogging qualitatively different"? The answer was a reluctant "yes".

It's amazing it's been sane as long as it has. Politics gets people hot under the collar. What would you expect if you had a town hall meeting with your Senator and people were allowed to talk out of turn, wearing a bag over their head?

I can empathize that it's easier said than done. As soon as you can identify people, you have to ban people or incur liability. That's the wisdumb, at least, though I think it's overstated. It would be nice to have a medium where ideas could be exchanged without policing it. Unfortunately, American politics is dysfunctional. Dysfunctional situations breed violent, rude behavior, which is why the cops get called to the scene of so many marital disputes. It's the same question that one would ask the bickering couple. "Can't you discuss this civilly, respecting the other party?" The answer is the same too. "If we could do that we wouldn't be dysfunctional!" I agree with Joel's logic, but think that attaching a validated name does make a difference.

Ditto Mr. Parker on the school considerations.

I am acquainted with Peter Buckley and the image of him as a tight fisted screw the proletariate pol is ludicrous. I can only imagine the anguish this analysis he's made brought him. Some of you may find me being in complete agreement with Saul odd, well he's right. So that's how that goes...

The dems wanted a majority and now they have it. Gov K is MIA yet again (just like 2002) and refuses to take any leadership. The schools are unstable TODAY. The funds should be released to stabilze NOW.

If Representative Buckley refuses to support the people and children of Southern Oregon he should be voted out next election cycle. He specifically ran against party politics and promised to do what was in the best interest of his constituients. Apparently he has already forgotten.

Releasing education Stability Funds does nothing to harm the elderly, infirm or other needy groups. It was put into place for exactly the calamity facing Oregon public School Districts over the next 4 months.

Dems, get a grip - the Gov is alame duck do nothing. Either force movement in response or someone in the state will file suit in order to force it to happen. If they do dems will get punished at the polls two years from now.

I feel the same about random anonymous blogging and commenting on other blogs. There needs to be the development of a forum for well-rounded, well educated individuals to exchange thoughts in openness and without the depravity of the faceless masses to screw it up for the rest of us.

Until such a forum is developed, there is no hope for future generations to find true expression of thought.

who the hell is Young Oregon Moonbat? i go by "t.a. barnhart"

That's pretty harsh. How does it feel?

We all agree on the simple case. There are a lot more cases, though. What about the person that is naturally shy and has to don a persona to have a say? Johnny Carson- a lot of comedians- were/are like that. They have to have a safe, comfort zone, then they have something to say. Sometimes the alias is the reality. My first blog post was 10 years ago on the aforementioned Chronicle blog. I used the name Abby NORML. When I moved here, I stopped looking at it. Something came up a few months later and, when I went to look at the postings, there was a new Abby NORML! Since the persona has migrated to NORML, and shows up here from time to time. I don't know how many people are Abby NORML. We all have said the same things, in the same spirit, so, in a sense we all are. It's a multicorporeal persona. As T.A. points out, the moniker can be part of the message, too.

My boss used his real name on his first post here, and, kid you not, had to retain a lawyer before the week was out to file restraining orders against everyone that used the info to harass him. Maybe it's my rejection of moralistic, holier than thou thinking, but I really don't care if the person is chickenshit, shy, a war criminal or stoned. The comments are what matters. I see no reason why blog editors can't simply apply the same standards that they would to print media. Change the legalities. Own the comments, don't allow them to be retained by the authors. Once they are yours, you can use them how you like. If you're too draconian, people will walk.

It's also real chutzpah considering the worst troll on here has to use "billy" because BO added his real name to the spam filter!

@TA Barnhart

Your point is well taken about hiding your identity on forums such as these. However, there are valid reasons why some commentors choose not to reveal their identity and being an a-hole is not one of them.

My example is as follows: I lived in Phoenix for 4.5 years and was a reasonably successful business owner there. About two years ago the issue of E-verify and requiring businesses to screen employees took over center stage in the business community. I took the unpopular position of supporting the proposed law. Most of my customers took the opposite position. I was very vocal in blogs and other online forums about this issue. I used my real identity. As a result, I lost approx. 25% of my business. I know for a fact that my position was the reason as I was told to my face it was. I sold the business last year and returned to my home state of Oregon.

If I were to be forced to comment with my real name, I would no longer post here. Sure, no great loss to Blue Oregon, but a great loss to me.

When administrators in public schools are working days for free, then we can talk about the teachers.

When Kulongoski is taking the equivalent hit to his salary that he's asking teachers to do, then it's a deal. Let's start with the people at the top, okay? When a starting salary for administrative staff is 80-90k, and a starting salary for a teacher is 30k, then maybe we need to do some thinking about which one is going to make more of a budget impact by missing a day of pay. Throw in administrative perks that the teachers and other staff don't get (in some districts, anyway, not all), and it's worth a good hard look. Some administrators put in the hours that justify their pay, but how many don't?

Shoot, upper levels of private industry could stand the same level of scrutiny of their perks as well.

For that matter, to what degree are elected officials feeling the pain in their own salaries and budgets, as far as perks and who they're hiring? You want a bunch of us to take a hit in our paycheck, then bloody well lead by example.

Mark Morford, SF Chron said "It's about being seen, about out-snarking the previous poster, about trying to top one another in the quest for... I'm not sure what.

If you want to see why this blog is a good one and what it could become, just look at one of the worst blogs on the planet, thinkprogress.org

jrw: I believe the Guv included in his announcement today that he was indeed cutting his own salary and directing that the money saved by his reduction be instead deposited to the State School Fund to "lead by example" as you suggest. He also cut state management service (non-union) salaries as well. By the way, how much do you think the people of Oregon pay our CEO? Did you know that our statewide elected officials (except judges) have had their salaries frozen since 2003 when they were reduced during the last recession? It's almost embarrassing that we pay our district court judges and our AG less than run-of-the-mill law firms pay their first year associates. The legislature just passed a bill to cut 25% of the remaining budget for our branch, including freezing our own salaries and freezing salaries for legislative staff (no COLA's, no steps). The dollars aren't big compared with the funding crisis we face in state services, but yes, we do believe Oregonians have a right to expect us to take the first cut from ourselves.

Mary Nolan:

If the Gov. had asked school administrators and teachers to work days for free, that would have been great.

But many of us in districts where school administrators (esp. at the asst. supt. etc. level) make more money than the Gov. are angry about those salaries (and a car allowance besides!) and don't think teachers should work for free if the higher paid management doesn't do the same thing.

And if anyone brings up "the private sector", our local paper put everyone on furlough days. When I tried to email the editor of the local editorial page, there was an "out of office" reply stating that no work email would be read or answered until ___, the date when this person's furlough days ended.

"When administrators in public schools are working days for free, then we can talk about the teachers."

For years, I have been telling you all that we need to cut the salaries of administrators. Why? There was a report not too long ago that said that Oregon spent almost the most in the nation per student, yet we were having trouble with that money. The simple explination was that we pay those administratorts way to much. The money that we cut from their salaries need to go back to the school they are taking from...pure and simple.

Add to that the fact that those administrators have no union, it is much easier to cut thier salaries without having them bitch at us about those cuts.

Right now, those administrators need to cut back as much or even more as we, the common folk, need to cut back.

Bottom line - leave the teachers ALONE, and FORCE the administrators to work for free. If those adminitrators don't like it, then they have enough money to persue court action. I would rather see an administrator give up that nice Lexus than have a student give up days in their basic education that will hurt them in the future when applying for college.

I live in the UK and blog a number of sites that have markedly different national mixes posting, and, frankly, this seems to be an American problem. I've been on the internet since the late 1979, and it didn't used to be like that. Those posters were always around, but whatever board it was would immediately turn, as a whole, and silence the offender. The biggest difference is that these people, the board community, are much more likely to respond in kind now. The BBC, Times online, and Guardian blogs are very good examples of blogs with heated debates, but you can still tell the American trolls.

Frankly, this started when conservative talk radio became popular in the US. That isn't a part of my world; I had to check before posting to see if Limpbaaa Humbug was still on the air, and I find today's news is that RL said that understanding progressive, left wing Democrats was just like trying to understand a murderer or a rapist. Oddly, he finished with a point that I think explains why this is so irritating. Clarifying his remarks he said, over and over, "I don't want to understand them; we just have to stop them". That's the essence of trolling. They aren't participating in the conversation, they only post to stop what you are saying and trying to accomplish. Conservatives have a big advantage that way. They don't want to accomplish anything. Like Rush said, they just want to stop progress. It is much easier to rain on someone elses parade than to organize your own. In the UK, his show would be a crime. The world is starting to say, "Freedom is wonderful. What are you doing with it?"

I agree with the post that says editorial policy can handle this. Looking at the current posts, this WunderBlunder is a good example of comments that should be deleted. The person makes sure they shout out first, are never responsive to the point, always same the same thing, and are generally rude. You just delete that. Some, like me, take its remaining on the thread as a sign that such behaviour is OK. Looking back at the archives, it looks like that anti-socialist rhetoric started at exactly the same time conservative talk radio started using the word. If some rude adolescent hears a rump fed runyon rant and thump his chest about an issue, and you present an anonymous forum for commenting on that issue, and the kid is afraid to try his social dominance behaviour out on mates, what do you think will happen? That's not the kid's fault. He's young and stupid. It's the fault of the editorial policy for making it so easy to do so and not providing aid and comfort to the legitimate conversation.

Posted by: mp97303 | Feb 19, 2009 7:50:50 PM

If I were to be forced to comment with my real name, I would no longer post here. Sure, no great loss to Blue Oregon, but a great loss to me.

I have to strongly disagree about the loss bit. You can count on one hand the number of people you will meet in a decade that are logical, have business experience, are progressive, take the time to have a conversation with the great unwashed masses, and do it with personal honesty and intellectual integrity. For those that notice such things, your posts are positively bodacious (and I don't mean the bull)!

The most disrespectful thing is the editorial policy that let's an obvious troll post the same, exact, topic-unrelated spam at the beginning of every thread! Calling that indulging free speech is more insulting to the considered opinions of the others than the troll is. Do any Americans do their job?

OK. No need to waste more time with this one. 90% of the people on this blog look at who posted an article to decide what they will read/respond to, and the tone. It is literally impossible for certain persons to make statements which contradict (or appear to in the feeble minds of those that think this way) previous statements, because the identity is more important than the message.

The message is clear. If you want the message to be heard, instead of a bunch of petty "everything I know about life I learned in high school" types judging your character, you had better use a different moniker every post. Use the same email for Kari, but don't give the superficial, in-group/out-group judges fodder for their tiny minds.

Since no American is fit to judge anyone's character, this "troll marking" must be compensation behavior.

Comments on this from regular article contributors are vapid. You're usually writing from a personal point of view. Duh, yeah, you have to use a name, and, wonder of wonders you use it when you respond to a post. What does that have to do with what a typical blogger responding to a thread chooses to do? You judge them by what you would do? There's a wake-up call that someone lacks perspective!