Who, exactly, are the moral rural?

I have been a conservative reader of this magazine ever since I found out that my friend Carla is the Fellow. Even though I am ideologically at the other end of the spectrum, I know Carla to be an intelligent and fair-minded individual. Many of the articles are thought-provoking, some are insulting.

This article is the most even-handed treatment of the east-west divide I have read. I do take issue with one thing. When Carla and I were in school in our home town, we had relatively little worry about school funding. Yes, I remember the year we had to eliminate some teachers (one of my favorite had to go,) but I also remember how often the athletic teams got new uniforms and the meal money I was handed by the school for away track meets. I think it was more of an issue of priorities.

Today, though, there really is a problem of funding. After many years away, I now live in that same community we grew up in. I just registered my oldest daughter for high school. The limited class choices are appalling. There is no school newspaper, no creative writing, no Language Arts classes at all other than the required ones. The reason is the missing timber receipts.

I won't go into an explanation of the sustainability of harvesting timber for profit or how ridiculous an economy built on tourism is for us, but it is an example of the reason for the feeling of division in Eastern Oregon. We feel that not only is our way of life and point of view not understood, but that those on the west side don't even care. Until those making policy, and those who have the votes to make that policy law, show that they not only understand but care about the needs of Eastern Oregon, the divide will continue.

To answer Carla's question, the divide is real. Perhaps Western Oregonians can't see it or feel it, because they have the power to force their agenda on the eastern minority. Those of us who have to live with decisions made by people who do not share the same interpretation of a life well lived, feel it everyday.

I agree there are those that attempt to drive wedges with their definitions. Divide and conquer. But with a diverse society you are not ever going to get everyone to agree with everything. Those with the money have the power. Those with the power make all the rules. This is the essence of corruption, and if (we)weren't being fractured by (them), then together our power would trump theirs. They have to drive that wedge to survive on their own terms.

Geography, beyond ones immediate community, is an arbitrary and silly concept to organize around.

It's far better to organize around specific issues rather than arbitrary groupings like geography, political parties or alma mater.

I haven't viewed Oregon as a state for decades but rather the empire of Portland (and some other urban enclaves). The urban culture has been at war with traditional Oregon and it's natural resource-based culture and economy and the result is 30% unemployment rates over much of the land.

But hell, who cares right? Once you get out to the vacation spots, you don't see it, and you're "helping" the folks anyway...

(sitting in Springfield, eating popcorn and rolling his eyes as he watches Portland and the Vast East having one "most acid" pissing contest after another. As usual, when they spend all their energy trying to prove that the other side sucks, both sides succeed and are right.)

Old Ducker,

In the mid-to-late 80s, timber harvest rates were the highest they've ever been, yet employment in timber industries was much lower than in the late 70s. It's just not accurate to blame environmentalists for the collapse of timber employment.

In fact, environmentalists were early critics of the practice of shipping raw logs overseas, and Earth First! even did an action in Longview in protest of shipping raw logs.

Why I am looking forward to Sept. 25: "if the new tax structure imposed by the legislature is defeated in January, there will be more. "

Once the signatures are turned in, we will know the number turned in. Each measure needs over 55,000 signatures to qualify. If one turns in 60,000 and the other turns in 90,000, the second is more likely to qualify than the first. But if each just turns in, say, 59,000, odds are that there won't be enough valid signatures. We will have a hard number of signatures turned in, a fact rhetoric will not be able to change.

This leads me to another divide: those who trust conventional wisdom and those who wait for hard evidence.

I want to think Jack for his explanation of the history. Good summary.

Something to remember about Measure 5 and whether current voters would agree with it: Children born the year Measure 5 passed were old enough to register and vote for either Obama or McCain. Measure 5 is a generation old, and to say "the voters have spoken" sounds a little stale. There are young voters/activists now who grew up in the schools touched by the funding battles of Measures 5 and 47. Are they likely to look at the anti-taxers as great heroes, or the people who don't think schools deserve adequate funding?

For years it was conventional wisdom that it was OK to ignore the issues of young people because "young people don't vote". Don McIntire ran into trouble at a 2000 ballot measure debate in front of a college audience---not the sort of audience he was used to speaking in front of. And now we have all those young legislators ---the ones who have no memory of Measure 5 passing, Kitzhaber being elected Gov. etc. If we could put away the stereotyping and conventional wisdom of what happened in the past, maybe it would be easier to solve problems in this state.

There has always been a rural/urban divide in the USA and likely always will be. Why are there so-called red states and blue states? The majority of voters in rural counties across America voted for McCain. The statistics clearly speak to the differences in how conservatives and liberals think, and the differences in the values they hold dear. I happen to detest most liberal points of view, and I am going to work hard to unseat David Wu whose constituency (the only one he cares about) is urban liberal, to the detriment of ruralites ellsewhere in his district. When he came out to St Helens, only a handful of locals got in to the building because bus loads of the usual hand-wringers and teeth-gnashing give-me-your-tax-dollar-parasites from Portland and Salem got there early and grabbed the seats. He was offered the St Helens High School auditorium but turned it down. He is very ripe for a whuppin and we are going to give it to him.

Chuck Todd of NBC and S. Gawiser the NBC Elections Director wrote a wonderful book titled How Barack Obama Won. All kinds of charts with all kinds of data (the sort the late Tim Russert loved) and narrative on each state.

Which states are various kinds of battlegrounds, which are in a category they call red and blue states. How various counties were decided in 2004 and 2008.

Cecil, you might find it an interesting book.

fbear, sure. I still remember the famous words of Andy Kerr, "let them start espresso stands." Maybe part of the reason for the log exports was that most Oregon lumber mills were closed.

At any rate, maybe it would have been a better idea to address the reason milled lumber was uneconomic as opposed to shipping bark and sawdust across the ocean, and even raw logs are better than nothing.

It's not all about lumber either. Ranching, food processing, seafood processing...all have been under assault and all have declined.

Good luck eating christmas trees and landscape plants, they won't be in much demand either.

OD, the mills closed because of the severe recession in Reagan's second year, when the bottom fell out of the housing market. Many of the mills didn't re-open when cutting increased in the mid and late 80s.

Where were the Republicans calling for timber companies to mill the logs here, rather than abroad? They were quick to talk about "balancing jobs and the environment", but what about balancing profits and jobs?

fbear, thanks for the info, you're right. In addition to in-state policies, the timber industry was killed by the US govt and especially the Federal Reserve. Let's get our shit together in this state (i.e. the left/right divsions) and seceed before they kill our economy entirely.

Oregon would make a nice little, peaceful country, sort of like Uruguay. Think what we could accomplish if we got out from under the US debt load, taxes, regulations, worthless currency and imperial wars...

OD, what did the US govt do to kill the timber industry?

I'd say that over cutting did quite a bit to ruin the timber industry.

Contrary to libertarian orthodoxy, history shows that regulation actually helps protect business from themselves, partly because there are so many pressures on businesses to act in ways that may help them in the short term, but are ruinous in the long term.

"OD, what did the US govt do to kill the timber industry?"

The Fed's horrible management of the money supply during the sixties and seventies.

As for regulation, I agree it is necessary. I just don't believe it needs, or should, come from the state. Regulation created and enforced by non-profits and industry associations would be far less vulnerable to political manipulation and would be created by people who actually know what they're doing.

Jack Roberts, thank you for the clarity of your summary about Measure 5 and its aftermath.

I wanted to write an Op-Ed piece (and I'm not going to get the chance to do that now for time reasons, so if anyone else wants this idea, you're welcome) on the premise that the health care debacle and the eternal public schools funding crisis are rooted in the same problem, and that is forty years of right wing propaganda against the ideal of the common good.

During this singular, idiosyncratic time in government, it became a mark of prudence to say: we're going to make sure none of the benefits of these programs accrue to THEM (meaning, variously, young African Americans with children, undocumented Latinos, people with previous criminal records, LGBT people, etc. etc. etc.) This was identified as fiscal responsibility.

This eats away directly at the ideal of public education, which is that any advantage that my child has I am willing to pay to see that your child has also. Public education was not supposed to be about installing a floor beneath which you could not fall, but you could do better in a private school. Public education was supposed to be excellence for everyone.

Now it is not just scandalous when I go to Riverview and Liberty and Lake Oswego High Schools and see their facilities and compare them to Jefferson, Marshall, and Roosevelt. It is a scandal, of course, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that we don't find anything much wrong about it this apartheid, this separate and clearly unequal situation. The worst part is that progressives accept it as the cost of doing business.

And the same problem lies at the heart of the health care debate. We are all nervous (well, some of us on the left are nervous) as to whether Obama is going to sell us out tomorrow on the public option. Silly rabbit. Of course he is going to sell us out. Of course he already has! We're talking about comparative minutiae like a "public option," (think about what historians of the future are going to think about that phrase!) and we can't even get the head of our party to stand up and say that HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE.

Until that happens, nothing else will matter. Until the disease is addressed at its core, nothing will help.

It is very much the same as Stokely Carmichael used to argue back in the day: until you get Mr. Charlie out of your head, there's not going to be a revolution. And Mr. Charlie is definitely in our heads right now. We've become so ashamed of our own ideals that we tiptoe around them, piling euphemism upon euphemism (No Child Left Behind, Public Option) trying to express what we want to say without actually saying it.

Until the Democratic Party is willing to stand up and say proudly that we are for equal quality schools in Pendleton, small towns in Southern and Eastern Oregon, Lake Oswego, and North Portland, and we will equalize the money and human resources to do this, nothing moves forward. Similarly, we need to stand up and say we are for equal health care for everyone and we know we will have to take the profit out of the system to do this.

Forty years of unrelenting propaganda have had the effect of eroding our belief in our ability to address social injustice. But people created this injustice. People can create structures of decency and justice. We simply need to remember who we are and what we are capable of accomplishing as a people.

The Fed's horrible management of the money supply during the sixties and seventies.

So, OD, how did mismanagement of the money supply affect the timber industry disproportionately?

And your idea of non-profit, non-governmental regulation exists to a certain degree already, but is useless to stop many of the worst excesses of business without the enforcement authority of the government.

Joe Hill, Health care is NOT a right, and can NEVER be a right. Please stop mangling the english language. It's hard enough for people of different views to communicate as it is.

Carla writes, "In short, the problems that plagued my rural hometown are the same basic problems that plague the urban area where I live now. And those problems still exist in the place where I grew up."

I won't disagree with that. However, there is a certain silence about solutions. For example, I would hope that everyone in the urban areas is focused upon solving transportation problems with a combination of buses, bikes, trains, and friendly walking paths. But that will not work for where I live in the 97754 zip code. Smaller rural schools have different challenges than the larger urban schools - but we are all in the same pot for solutions.

I would dearly love for Oregon to the "one Oregon" as Carla advocates.

But oddly, in terms of actions, Carla is as radical as one can get in doing the exact opposite. For Oregon to be "one Oregon", then there would need to be a sense of equal power between urban and rural Oregon. That is to say, urban Oregon should not impose its solutions to the problems such as what Carla has noted on the rural areas, and vice versa.

Yet, when it comes to transportation, land use issues, education, and so on - urban Oregon is thrusting its unwanted solutions on rural Oregon. While the most recent example is the Metolius issue that Carla was in the thick of, we can go back in the last 20 years and find so many examples I can't write about or even remember them all.

Let's note a few: Measure 5 (passed in urban areas/failed in rural areas, shut down local control of school funding in rural Oregon); Cougar and Bear hunting limitations - passed overwhelmingly in urban areas / failed rural; fencing streams measure - came from urban areas, and failed barely there allowing the entire measure to fail; logging practices measure came from urban areas and barely failing there failed; (both of those measures would have given court standing to anyone to bring suit against a landowner thought to violate the measures); -- well those are some of the big ones that come to mind that upset the apple cart of rural living.

Carla, it is easy to talk about stoking the divisions in Oregon versus having "one Oregon", house divided against itself and all - when you sit in a position of power.

Most of the time, when the "tyranny of the majority" is in play, the majority don't recognize their tyranny. I have lived the reverse life of Carla - growing up in North Portland, living in Eugene and Concord CA, but then spending the majority of my adult life in places like Kodiak AK, Toutle WA, outside of Oregon City, and now in Prineville for 20 years. I know well that there is an attitude (you can even see it in these posts) that urban people have of the rural people in which the rural folks are seen as simple, gullible, uneducated, ill informed, and worst of all - "conservative". Yet, in many ways the opposite is true. Rural folks get all the urban media - but the urban folks do not get our local information (really - when was the last time anyone you knew in Portland read the bi-weekly Central Oregonian?). We have very similar K-12 education systems. We are pragmatic. In fact, I would not classify most rural folks as "conservative" as much as I would classify them as "pragmatic". Show rural people a solution that will work to a problem, and they support it.

For example - There is a certain urban myth that rural people don't vote to tax themselves. Yet it happens all the time. When our local school system was out growing its buildings, we went through a community process of identifying needs, and ended up with a bond measure for $20 million (in what was then a County of 15,000 people). That bond measure built a new High School, remodeled the existing High School to be the Middle School, and then remodeled the Middle School to be the third elementary school. A few years later, noting that our Library was so crowded that to put a new book on the shelf meant throwing out an old book, the County passed a bond for a new building for around $8 million.

Does that fit the sterotype? No....

And yet, we continue to hear - stupid, anti-tax, conservative, uneducated, uninformed, and so on.

Carla - heal thyself.

The GOP dominance in East and SW Oregon can be attributed to the death of the timber industry and the rise of the culture wars. The union mill worker was the backbone of the democratic vote through the 50s and into the 70s. The GOP cast blame on environmentalists for the end of the timber industry. In truth as early as the 1960s articles were appearing in the Oregonian and other publications about the shift of the timber industry to the Southeast U.S. due to overcutting, the end of saw logs, and shipping raw logs overseas. In the early 80s the timber industry collapsed with the combination of the Reagan recession and the corporate pull-out. In my home town, K. Falls, Weyerhauser promised a sustained yield that would last forever, all the while they were shipping saw logs to Japan. They abandoned K. Falls in the late 80s. The natural evolution would have been for a value added lumber industry focusing on finished products but the corporate timber industry didn't want to invest in retooling.

In SW Oregon MedCo was the dominant employer with good union family wage jobs grounded in large timber holdings with a sustained yield policy to feed several well managed mills. Until... it was bought out in a hostile takeover by a group of Texas corporate raider investors who proceeded to log every piece of company land and shut down the mills, selling off the remaining land for real estate so they could squeeze every bit of profit they could. The people of Eastern and SW Oregon blamed it all on environmentalists when it was Wall St. and corporate greed that destroyed the timber industry in Oregon. The fight over remaining and diminishing public timber was but a small piece of the pie.

Then in late 80s and 90s the culture wars were fought. When you can focus your anger on homosexuals, "libruls," and fake issues like govt. prayer in the schools, then you don't have to think about feeding your family or providing them with health care.

Now the Wendt family, owner of Jeld-Wen Co. and their holding company Trendwest Development control most of Klamath Falls and surrounding areas. There is no power base for an authentic progressive movement, and no tolerance for it from those who own the area.

Sal, any definition of rights that aren't negative destroys the entire concept. Entitlements and privileges emanate from the state, rights don't...not any that are worth the designation anyway. That's why rights are usually modified with the adjective "inalienable," you have them by virtue of existence, and it's also why constitutions "enumerate" rather than establish them.

Whether or not they are acknowledged by others is another matter.

When the right wing talks about "no right to health care" they refuse to answer the next question, who is expendable? In the People's Republic of China there is no right to health care. The result, if you don't have cash when to you show up at the hospital or the doctor, they simply carry you street or the back alley to die quietly.

The "ethos" of the right wing seems to be that you have a right to life before you are born, but not after.

But really, wingers, if there is no right to health care? Who's expendable?

Bill R., thank you for the history lesson.

"But really, wingers, if there is no right to health care? Who's expendable?"

BillR, no offense but its a stupid question. You have a right to purchase medical services from whatever source (although the state denies some options). You don't have a right to loot others whether by the five finger method or ballot box, to get it.

By your standards, how is a "right" to medical services any different from other necessities such as food, transportation, clothing or lodging?

In any society ever created, the rich will always have better of everything than the poor. The solution is to create a society that has fewer poor. I'll grant that you can do that by looting the rich, but only for so long...

Nor will that ever happen in the US anyway, the rich own the government and I think we would both agree with that. Nor do the rich that own this country have any particular allegiance to it...

Ducker, I'm surprised to see you argue that health care is not a right. It most certainly is, and most of humanity agrees with me.

From the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, to which the U.S. is signatory, article 25.1:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

With respect to the United States, I quote again FDR's State of the Union January 11, 1944, when he asserted that every American had: "The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation. "The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. "The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living. "The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad. "The right of every family to a decent home. "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. "The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment. "The right to a good education."

Simply put, health care is a public good, and not a commodity. To have millions suffer needlessly and many of these die in the richest nation in the world because simply they do not have health insurance from a corporation shocks the conscience. History will judge us harshly for this.

So, yes, we have the right to adequate health care. We suffer because too many of us do not have the opportunity to enjoy this right, in a similar way as some other people in other situations have the right to free speech, but lack the power or opportunity to exercise that right.

@Old Ducker You say: "In any society ever created, the rich will always have better of everything than the poor. The solution is to create a society that has fewer poor. I'll grant that you can do that by looting the rich, but only for so long..."

Every once in awhile here, even though this is Blue Oregon, I feel like I am talking to Ayn Rand.

To paraphrase Barney Frank, on the planet on which I have been spending my time recently, the rich have been looting society and wrecking the economic system. The Democratic Party, which is supposed to be nominally the party of the poor, has responded to this by giving them lots more money.

Your remark about "looting the rich" is a prime example of the discourse of the past forty years without any basis in reality that we indulge at our peril. The words of Balzac were never more true than they are today: Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.

Joe Hill, what we have is a failure to communicate. I agree with your last post and in fact the gist of your post is what I was trying to say in my last one. The rich are exempt. It is you who will be the lootee.

Good post, Carla. Kudos.

"Oregon would make a nice little, peaceful country, sort of like Uruguay."

If the Republic of Oregon wanted to be like Uruguay, the first thing we'd do after secession is nationalize core industries and natural resources. And then create a huge jobs program. The IMF and CIA would try their best to undermine us, but we could probably count on financial assistance from Hugo Chavez...

Joe Hill wrote:

"I'm surprised to see you argue that health care is not a right. It most certainly is, and most of humanity agrees with me."

No. The reason it's not is because health care isn't a natural resource, like air.

Health care is a service provided by an individual or group of individuals.

If you say that you have the right to have the services of another regardless of your willingness to pay for it, (and have the right to have the government enforce your right by force of law), then you believe in a form of slavery or forced servitude.

Health care can never be a 'right' in a free society.

Sal Peralta wrote:

"a right was considered nothing more than a claim to lawful title to something. "

That's correct.

And you don't own title to your neighbor's (the health care professional's) labor.

Old Ducker wrote:

"By your standards, how is a "right" to medical services any different from other necessities such as food, transportation, clothing or lodging?"

Good post, OD. You're exactly right.

"Therefore, by my understanding of the word, these things are not "rights."

That doesn't mean that, in a society that has the ability to provide these things, we shouldn't do so. That's a different subject and one that reasonable people can debate, which is what I think the health care discussion is all about.

And if other people want to call these things "rights," I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it."

There you go, Jack, being intelligent again.

I think we need to be clear about this. The people who want to go back to the days before FDR should make that clear. Tough luck if you are out of work and sick--don't go to the hospital if you are sick but can't pay the bill. Which other industrialized country allows medical bankruptcy? Is it OK for people to go bankrupt paying for medical care as long as rich people don't have their taxes raised? If only all of Hoover's ideas had been followed, FDR wouldn't have been able to say that 1/3 of the nation was ill clothed, ill housed, and ill fed?

My guess is that in 21st century it would be very difficult for anyone to get elected on that platform. I think some people are not so much "conservative" (meaning we must give up the idea we can legislate the answer to everything) as mean spirited.

Jack, thank you for an urban perspective. I see how someone who lives in an urban setting might feel that way. Just for informational purposes, most of us in Eastern Oregon hate the Secure Rural Schools Bill. It is a matter of survival.

Believe it or not, I do honestly try to see both sides and will listen when someone wants to have a dialog with me. I acknowledge that there are people here in Eastern Oregon who don't give a damn what anyone in Portland thinks, but it really doesn't matter. Eastern Oregon has no power. All the votes are in Western Oregon.

I would love to listen and be listened to. So far, though, the ones who say that they have come to listen, don't. Now, I am talking about politicians not the private citizens posting here. I obviously have never had a conversation with any of you, but this is a start. If any of you want to tell me what frustrates you about Eastern Oregon, I will listen. In return, I would ask that my issues be treated with equal respect.

Carla, you are right that Oregonians need to focus on what is important to us all and find a way to make it happen. What about the issues we can't agree on, though? Western Oregon always has a way to force its will on Eastern Oregon because of its superior voting power. Will people who live in urban areas be able to set aside firmly held beliefs and listen with an open mind?

I don't know if you have heard, but for the last few years, students from Portland Environmental have been coming to Grant County and spending anywhere from two days to two weeks with rural families. The program has been very successful. Urban kids get to see what living in a small, agriculture dependent community is like, and the community gets to hear some of the concerns of the students. There was even talk of doing the same in reverse, but I don't know what happened to that. It would have been a great idea, too. If adults would be willing to be that open, maybe we could get somewhere.

I apologize that I can't fully address the distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty (which is what you seem to be talking about) but I think I wrote something about this a few weeks ago.

Look. Let's begin with the argument from authority. On the one hand you have pretty much the entire civilized world which accepts the concept of social human rights. We could talk about how the U.S. works this out in certain truncated undeveloped ways here too (we try not to turn away people from the emergency room, we have public schools, we have soup kitchens, etc.).

On the other hand we have the Ayn Rand argument which a few people are making above, a very childish argument which I frankly am surprised to see made here in Blue Oregon. The gist of this argument is that no right can be really a right if it requires society to provide the means for its exercise. (I have stripped the argument of its foolish Ayn Rand "theft" language, as if one party "creates" wealth magically outside of society's context . . . that is nonsensical, I hope we are all beyond that. Even Aristotle saw through it!)

Any number of rights theorists have treated this, beginning with Kant (well, really, it goes earlier, but Kant is usually given as the start) and then Isaiah Berlin of course with positive and negative liberty, and of course John Rawls and Nozick and the rest of the usual suspects.

I have my own ideas but there are lots of good ideas that disagree with mine. The only nutso one, really beyond the pale, is that somehow there is this heroic superman entrepreneur who gives birth to this wealth, who "owns" it, completely apart from any obligation to the society whose game he played. That way lies anarchy and the abrogation of the social contract. Let John Gault walk the plank, naked and alone, and see how he fares, for as Aristotle wisely notes, the man who can survive outside of society is no man at all but can only be a beast or a god.

Even Locke, conservative that he is, knew this much and took it from Hobbes. He was wrong about lots of things (see his South Carolina example), but he knew that humankind was a social animal. Of course there are social human rights.

Big day tomorrow. Sleep now.

@Jane Emery I wonder if we might begin a dialog by talking about the anarchist principle of subsidiarity, i.e. that all possible decisions ought to be made at the smallest possible level.

In other words, why should Portland outvote Eastern Oregon on decisions that belong almost exclusively to Eastern Oregon? Then the discussion would move to how might we identify those kinds of decisions.

Jack Roberts said,

"And if other people want to call these things "rights," I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it."

with friends like these...

I have to admit that I don't understand the "rural" position in the rural/urban divide. What exactly is the problem?

Some smart person with the rural perspective, please write a guest diary stating, in precise terms, what you view to be the areas of controversy. What pisses you off, and why is it the fault of the people in urban areas?

Sal Peralta wrote:

"That's a bloody worldview you have, Joe"

Step away from the straw, Sal.

Slowly....

slowly....

Sal,

If your desire to have 'universal health care' only involves emergency room services, then it's 'Mission Accomplished'. We already have that.

You can stop campaigning for 'universal health care' because it's here.

The construct is all wrong Carla. The fact is that the power elit of the I-5 corridor between eugene and Portland have dictated to the remainder of the state for so long that they, themselves have created the divide. This is common in many states with relatively low population and a few larger population centers.

Those in power in the population centers truly believe that they know what is best for the rest of the state. The chasm develops and then in the ultimate act of hubris an chutzpah, the power elit then suggest that other outside forces are at work tryiing to divide and conquer the state. No, the chasm developed and was perfected from within. It is based on attitudes and idealologies that the power elite are better and know better.

An excellent example is the $0.20 bag tax recently enacted and then resoundingly defeated in Seattle. The power elite "decided" that the best way to get rid of plastic bags was to outlaw them and tax the users an onerous tax. The declaration went out and the public fought back. The tax was defeated by the people. Copare this to tiny Edmonds Washington in Snohomish County. there, they agreed that plastic bags were probably bad. the mayor and city council worlked with local retail and merchants to come up with a means to encourage a change in shoppers habits. They offered a 3% offset ot donation to charity for those who brough their own bags or recycled plastic bags. They publicized the need for change and made paper bags an option. Edmonds has fullly moved towards no plastic bags.

The power elite do not know what is best for everyone else.

I would like to support my fellow Republican commenters and support the idea that healthcare, our well-being should not be a fundamental right like it is in those other silly advanced nations. But why not stop there? Why should all citizens be able to summon the police if someone is stabbing them without having to pay a fee? Oh, now I remember, it's because public safety, our well-being is so important that we fund the police with tax dollars.

I know we like to think of Oregon as a special place with special problems, but it seems to me that the rural/urban divide we're talking about probably existed between the city of Ur and it's surrounding farmlands backing in 0-dark-thirty BC. We talk about the concentration of votes in Portland Metro/ Western Oregon, but the reality is that there is a concentration of wealth (and economic dynamism) as well, and that drives the disparity of power between the urban and rural more than day to day electoral politics. This disparity was systematized two thousand years ago in Rome and described as the contado: all the world outside of Rome was the rural area that contributed its wealth to the urbis, the center of power.

Reviving extractive rural industries won't change this since extractive industries are predicated on cheaply extracting the wealth, the natural resources, of one area to profit another. The description of the devolution of the logging industry in the 80's shows this in modern practice. The seat of agricultural power and wealth aren't individual yeoman farmers, but the agro and finance industries.

Political power follows economic power, and rural areas, with their high poverty, unemployment and limited opportunity are becoming like the urban ghettos, intractable and resistant to easy solutions. All they lack is a Moynihan Report blaming rural residents for their plight...

Carla - you can't have it both ways.

On the one hand you talk about how there just isn't a balance of power, "10 people don't have the power of 500". You ask for examples of other incidents of the "tyranny of the majority", ignoring I already provided other examples (Measure 5, Cougar/Bear Hunting, and so on).

And then you call me a "victim", and basically tell me to stop my whining.

-- What I have been doing with my posts here on Blue Oregon is highlighting the "why" of rural Oregon's reaction to urban Oregon. It's not really up for debate. It is what it is. Bill R. gives you the history about the timber wars and culture wars, and I agree with him 100%.

If you don't want to listen, why bring up the issue?

In any case, I'm certainly not a victim. I was a founding Board member of the Rural Organizing Project in the early 1990's. I am a co-founder of the Rural Caucus of the Democratic Party of Oregon. I have twice been the County Chair of the Democratic Party in my County. I have served on the Platform and Resolutions Committee of the Oregon Democratic Party, where I wrote about 20% of the State Platform in 2006. I have served on the State Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Oregon. In my community I have served on four appointed Boards including the Planning Commission. I have served on four local non-profit Boards, and three Statewide non-profit Boards.

And in the real world (not the "blogosphere") you have....

Sal, while your post isnt addressed to me, I'll respond to it anyway because your argument is a bit of a red herring. The "slave" argument doesn't really hold water unless the one presents it as an anarchist. A truly free "soverign citizen" cannot be regulated or taxed, either his person or property.

If one accepts any form of government at all, some individual sovereignty is compromised and all are part slave. It's a matter of degree. As for laws requiring hospitals to treat all walk-ins, regardless of ability to pay, whatever the merits under the current regime, if people reverted to the practice of paying for all but catastrophic care out of their pockets, as medical services used to be procured, not only would costs be less, but insurance wouldn't be the litmus test of acceptance.

Imagine how much medical care could be delivered to indigents if the amount of energy and money currently "invested" in politics were simply directed to charity...

So, when you have no answer to what I say, you just delete my comment?

Really....

Health care is NOT a right, and can NEVER be a right. Please stop mangling the english language.

It is if We The People decide it is. This should be kind of obvious to anyone not in thrall to Webster's.

"The GOP dominance in East and SW Oregon can be attributed to the death of the timber industry and the rise of the culture wars. "

Bill, I think it is more complicated than that. First of all, there was a big fight over platform language in the Democratic platforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The people who won the platform fight were the people actually in the room the whole time, not those who came and talked to "the right people" believed the "fix was in"--- and then couldn't understand why the people actually in the room voted their own way, not listening to "the right people".

A friend who was reporting on an anti-abortion ballot measure in an earlier decade went to timber area taverns to interview just the sort of guys you mention. Didn't find a lot of support for the measure, more like "Of course abortion is wrong, but if the government thinks it can make those decisions for MY wife and MY daughter, the government has another think coming!".

Look on CSPAN.org and see if you can find the Future of the Republican Party video. People who may well be in their 30s who can't understand why there are so few people their age in party politics. US Senate candidate who gave the group a talking to----they are never going to regain the majority unless they are willing to admit that Republicans aren't right about everything and Democrats are not always wrong.

Hate to say it, folks, but the "political professionals" who have prattled on for years about which districts are "winable" based entirely on the "R to D ratio" are one reason there is a Portland area/downstate divide. Just like Howard Dean's 50 state strategy doesn't say some districts are winable, that message needs to get to Portlanders.

I live in a district which first elected a Democratic state rep. in 1982 who was never after that defeated in a legislative election and eventually elected statewide. The next state rep. was probably the first Hispanic state rep. elected in Marion County, if not the state. That was in the 1980s.

That Hispanic state rep. lost a close election when a well known local retired businessman with connections and a lot of money defeated the incumbent by getting more votes in the Polk Co. section of the district than the incumbent got in Marion County, and thus became the first Polk Co. resident ever elected state rep. in that district. Since then we have had Republican state reps. But the current one has recently lost ground every year so that if 5% more voters decide against re-election, this Republican would be a former state rep.

When we have had quality candidates, were told that unless that candidate was a professional politician with fundraising connections who could have good poll numbers by a certain date, we didn't deserve caucus support. Apparently it is better to spend all kinds of money on a "chosen" candidate who loses than to spread that money around to others who might win but were not the darlings of professional staff.

Knowing how many districts have similar stories (or had a promising Democratic nominee sandbagged by out of district mailers which someone from the big city dreamed up but were offensive to some undecided voters in a rural county), I suspect that timber and social issues are not the only reason.

Linn County is not really a hotbed of Democrats. But I remember a Democratic candidate winning a county comm. race against an incumbent there. County road crews were an issue, so this guy went around and visited every county road crew, and then could say in debates, "When I went around talking to the road crews, what I saw was....".

Not a high tech campaign (it was back in the 1980s), not based on poll results or any of that kind of stuff. Just good old fashioned grass roots politics. He was called a commie by opponents. The Republican incumbent, if you ever saw Dukes of Hazzard, looked like Boss Hogg. This Democrat won that election, and I believe was re-elected.

But he didn't win that first race (margin of about 100 votes) by pandering to timber issues and social issues. He actually went out and talked to people--what a concept!

joel dan walls wrote:

"It is if We The People decide it is."

Fortunately your 'might makes right' mentality still finds itself in the minority.

Interesting, Joe, that you view democratically decided enumeration of rights as "might makes right".

Scary.

fbear, one of the things the Founders of our country thought important was to protect the rights of the minority.

Why should I have to give up employer provided coverage that I am willing to pay for simply because the President wants to use the Treasury to destroy my insuror?

Joe, you're just being silly.

<h2>You'll come around when your insurer denies coverage for needed treatment.</h2>