Gotta love the Big Guy

A year on wheels

It was exactly 52 weeks ago today that I took my wife's ex-boyfriend's clunky, rusty, bad mountain bike for a final spin. After grinding my way over Portland streets on that thing for nearly a decade, I was pedaling it up the hill to the wonderful Community Cycling Center on NE Alberta Street.

God bless the dedicated volunteers at CCC, they take in old bikes, teach folks how to fix them and take care of them, and then give them away to deserving youngsters or sell them for funds to keep their program running. Safety is their main message, and they won't help a child with a bike unless the child has his or her helmet on.

On that March afternoon, I was donating the old mountain bike, and hoping to shop for a nice used steel road bike.

And they had the perfect one for me -- a 10-speed Centurion Omega. This Japanese (I think) road bike was at least 15 years old -- there's a parking sticker on it from Oregon State U. dated 1986 and another sticker that indicates it originally came from Tigard -- but it didn't look to have too much mileage on it, and the capable technicians up at CCC had refurbished it.

It was a big change from the mountain bike, which was never very rideable and had become highly unreliable. Not being much of an experienced rider, it took me a while to get used to the feel of my new used bike.

But since learning its ways, I have ridden many happy miles on the Omega, particularly running errands around my Portland neighborhood. This is a fantastic city to bike in -- some say, the best among all the larger cities in the United States -- and the little Centurion is all I need to get out there and enjoy it. It has the distinct advantage of being nice enough to groove on, but not so nice as to shout, "Steal me!"

As much as I bemoan the City of Portland's inclination to throw money at frills, I must confess I love what it has done for biking. No doubt this is due in large part to former City Commissioner, now Congressman and someday probably Mayor Earl Blumenauer, who has commuted on his own bike for many years.

Cycling is great for a lot of reasons. For me, it's not the ecology thing that does it so much as the psychic benefit derived from riding. Fresh air is good for your brain.

Moreover, as a person who sometimes runs the same routes as those I bike, I have come to appreciate fully what a useful invention the wheel is. You can get places and combust calories without sacrificing knee cartilage.

The $80 I dropped at CCC last year was the best money I'd spent in a long time. Plus, I now get to write off the fair market value of the mountain bike. My conscience tells me that's about a $15 tax deduction.

Welcome to our nightmare

The dismantling of government services in Oregon has become so stunning and horrifying that it deserves a weblog all to itself.

I can't bear to do it, and so I'm going to limit my posts on this subject to one a week.

Here is this week's.

Today we read in The Oregonian that the highly effective street detox program known to many as the "CHIERS van" will be lopping eight hours a day off its schedule. From now on, if there's a drunk or junkie strung out on the sidewalk in downtown Portland between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., he or she will lie there until the Portland Police Bureau gets around to scooping the poor soul up and taking him or her to jail or to a hospital. The Central City Concern folks, who run the Hooper Detox Center, have had to cut back their humanitarian, and livability-saving, efforts, because their government funding sources are drying up.

You folks out in the suburbs who oppose tax increases, remember that as your kids are stepping over these people on your way to the Rose Festival.

But even worse than that tale are the stories of the people who are dying because of the harsh budget cuts enacted at the state and local levels.

Actually. Literally. Dying. As in, today.

Friday's Oregonian carried a story about a 37-year-old patient at the Salem Hospital Psychiatric Medicine Center who smuggled in a handgun and killed himself, apparently distraught because he was losing his "meds," which had previously been supplied by the state. The dead man, Michael Shay, had his prescription drug benefits eliminated at the end of February. He killed himself March 5.

Then yesterday we read the heart-rending story of a 36-year-old seizure sufferer who lost his state-supplied anti-seizure medicine at the end of January. Eight days after his supply ran out, he suffered a massive seizure and was hospitalized. As of the weekend, Douglas Schmidt was unconscious and in critical condition at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland. A television story I saw last night said that his kidneys were failing, and that his family was preparing to end life support.

There's plenty of blame to go around for this. Right-wing members of the legislature who are determined to stick it to Portland -- they refuse to fund public services if it means a few hundred bucks a year from their backwoods constituents, who have lazily neglected to retool their own local economies. Their sage wisdom in this time of life-and-death crisis: "They stole our timber money." Also at fault are the cul-de-sac suburbanites from the outskirts of Portland who quietly support the same backward policies. And the governors, both new and old, who, when it has come to proposing a workable solution to these funding problems, have had nothing to offer.

To a large extent, all of us Oregonians are to blame. All of us. As Richard Harris of the Hooper Detox Center described it in today's paper, we have landed on Planet Stupid.

It's worse than that, Richard. We are living in shame.

What can be done? Let's leave that one for another day. For now, let me just say, Plenty. But it takes guts, which neither the politicians nor the voters of Portland and Oregon are showing any of.

Eve of destruction

The Beaver State is in trouble, and I mean real trouble.

Its court system is falling apart.

Remember what was said in your eighth grade civics course: Without three independent branches of government, the American Way won't last. "Checks and balances" are essential to the functioning of a democratic republic -- sound familiar?

In Oregon, the phrase may soon become a historical footnote. Consider the three different sets of threats to Oregon's judicial branch, all now rearing their ugly heads at the same time:

1. Starvation for funds. The Oregon courts are broke. They've laid off several dozen workers in the last year, and attrition accounts for dozens of additional lost positions. The county courthouses throughout the state are now closed every Friday for lack of funds. Courts are refusing to hear cases against those charged with property misdemeanors, because they don't have the resources to process the cases. That's probably o.k., because most county prosecutors don't have staff to handle the cases, either. And funds to pay lawyers to represent the poor in criminal cases was cut off, and then reinstated at a puny level.

I kid you not: If you're busted for burglary, shoplifting, car prowling, or prostitution in Oregon today, you will be arrested and released. Your first court date will be July 1 (when the next budget year begins), or later. That's four months from now. It sounds like science fiction, but it's the unfortunate reality.

The funding picture may change come the new state fiscal year that starts on July 1, but don't count on it. The outlook for the two-year budget cycle that begins on that date is not good. Four-day-a-week trial courts and amnesty for thieves and prostitutes may become permanent fixtures in Oregon.

2. Issue-oriented, political campaigns for judgeships. Oregon is one of 39 or so states in which judges have to run for re-election. Their terms are for only six years, not for life as they are in the federal courts. Current Oregon rules forbid judicial candidates from running for office based on promises of how they will rule on particular issues. The idea is that judges should be elected on the basis of their character, intellect, and integrity, and not financed and promoted by special interests looking for favors from the bench.

All that is about to change. The U.S. Supreme Court just last June struck down Minnesota's rule that limits what judicial candidates may say during their election campaigns. By a vote of 5-4, the High Court said the state's rule impermissibly restricted the candidates' rights to free speech. That rule banned judicial candidates from announcing their views on political and legal issues likely to come before their courts.

The Supreme Court ruling may sound good at first, but it isn't. The idea of having three branches of government is to have them balance each other off. If judges can run on issues, they will become nothing more than another legislature, jumping at every gyration in the opinion polls. Electing judges at all is a risky business. The Founding Fathers knew this, which is why federal judges -- including the U.S. Supreme Court justices -- are never subjected to a popular election, the way they are in most states. Allowing candidates for the bench to make promises to voters about how they will rule will be fatal to the whole checks-and-balances system.

The Supreme Court's dimwittedness on this issue is nothing new. Its controversial 1976 decision that campaign contributions are "speech" protected by the First Amendment has led to the intractable campaign finance mess that we face as a nation today. And under the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, there is no way out. Money talks in America, and its right to do so is guaranteed by the Court's reading of the U.S. Constitution.

Now the special interests also have been given a constitutional right to run candidates for judgeships who will publicly bow to the campaign donors' wishes. How unwise. If you thought previous Oregon judicial elections have produced some bad results, wait until you see what happens under the new Supreme Court decision. Imagine a State Supreme Court with seven Ed Fadeleys on it. It will be here within a decade or two.

3. The constant drone of anti-judiciary ballot measures. Last fall voters statewide rejected two ballot measures that would have hurt the state's judicial system pretty badly. One would have required that all candidates in judicial elections run against "none of the above," and if "none" won, the judicial position would remain vacant unless and until someone eventually beat "none" at the polls. The other measure, less pernicious but still highly disruptive, would have required the appeals court judges in Oregon to be elected by district. For the first time, every region of the state would be legally guaranteed to get a State Supreme Court justice, even in eras in which the most qualified candidates for the job might hail from elsewhere. "None of the above" was defeated pretty handily, but the districting almost passed (and probably would have if its companion measure had not dragged it down).

The campaigns for these ballot propositions were particularly nasty. Proponents of the measures, which were largely bankrolled by one rich, angry right-winger, pulled no punches in attacking the state's judges. They blamed them for all kinds of societal ills, including decisions made by federal judges regarding the Pledge of Allegiance and Klamath Basin water rights. The Oregon jurists, of course, were not organized, wealthy or brazen enough to buy ad time in their own defense. And although the state's lawyer organizations opposed the ballot measures, they didn't make much of a splash. Many attorneys are afraid to speak out in ways that might alienate their clients.

Unfortunately, the bad ballot measures will be back. For example, Sen. Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day and already nominated by me for Nitwit of the Year honors, will apparently push another districting measure onto the ballot, and who knows? Perhaps this time it will pass. And we probably haven't heard the last of "none of the above," either, not to mention other ill-advised ballot measures to which voters are likely to be subjected regarding the state's justice system.

The clear thrust of these measures has been to destabilize the courts and politicize judicial elections, and combined with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, they are as dangerous as dynamite.

In sum, it doesn't look good for the judicial branch in our fine state unless the average person gets moved off his or her couch, and soon. If we want democracy here, we need to (a) push for better funding for the courts; (b) reward judicial candidates who take the high road in campaigns, and punish those who run on particular issues; and (c) fight the ballot measures that will continue to threaten the vitality of the judicial system.

The courts of Oregon have been functioning just fine until now, and they certainly don't need these horrible changes. Quite the contrary.

Can I get a witness?