So, of course recessions will hit the poor to moderate income folks worse, but it begs the question: were they really doing that much better during our years of supposed economic prosperity?

Not according to the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

Some key points:
For 2000-2007, Oregon’s economy grew 4%, compared to a 2.5% national average. Yet, not all Oregonians profited equally. 60% of workers saw their wages decline (adjusted for inflation) in real value, and more experienced losses in overall health coverage.

Locally, Lane County has a much higher than average fetal and infant mortality rate (a measure of basic population health because carrying babies to term and raising them through the first year is a basic function of any organism — if we can’t do that, what kind of place do we live?). Oregon’s rate is higher than the national average as well.

Oregon’s 1500 wealthiest households make as much as the lowest earning 450,000 households.

OCPP recommends several strategies, such as raising the corporate minimum tax (a popular item among many), and investing in public projects, infrastructure, health insurance and unemployment (to name a few). My favorite is increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit at the state level (currently a pittance).

I am interested in your comments — both on what we should do to move out of recession at a state or local level, but also some analysis of why we haven’t done a better job of at least maintaining the distribution of income, if not improving economic equality, over the last decade.

This is adapted from work by Cheryl O’Neill, Executive Director of Womenspace by Marshall Peter, Executive Director of Direction Service

Invest economic stimulus dollars in human-service non-profit agencies because:

• These programs are flexible, nimble and designed to respond quickly to funding changes. Unlike infrastructure spending, we can begin injecting money into local economies tomorrow.

• These programs are significant employers in every community in Oregon. America’s nonprofits employ more than 9% of the nation’s workforce – which is more than all of the employees working for the finance, insurance, and real estate industries combined. Adding the value of volunteer labor, the economic impact of America’s nonprofit sector skyrockets.

• These programs infuse money into local communities. For example, last fiscal year alone Womenspace and Direction Service injected more than 3 million dollars into the Lane County economy – every dollar benefiting local businesses and the community. When magnified by all the other (local, state and national) non-profits the economic impact is staggering.
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Hello blog kiddies!

This is your old friend Robert Wilkinson. I was dispatched by some politicos to come back to Eugene from my re-enforced bunker somewhere in north-north Dakota to cover the local elections. Due to my lack of a Garman I was diverted to San Louis Obispo where I was privy to a great election results party held on a small private beach filled with fire dancers, chainsaw jugglers, and one strip dancer who seemed far out of place.

After all that commotion I needed to get back to my assignment in the Emerald City we all know and love. I hopped a train and found my way to The Davis on Broadway. There I encountered a large group of what I assume were vehement supporters and constant volunteers, people who sacrificed their personal lives daily to make sure their candidate was the one waving the flag of victory. Of course I don’t know if any of this was true, they like me may have been freelance journalists who were lured here by the promise of free food and a large selection of beers on tap. Speaking of which somewhere in the middle of all the speeches, patting each other on the back and celebrating I developed a longing for a smoke break.
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The Lane Bus was honored to back Kitty Piercy as mayor and put our resources behind helping get her elected. Hours of phone-banking and canvassing proved that a movement can overcome a heavily financed campaign. We were thrilled to get the thank you note from Mayor Piercy and we can all agree it was all well worth the effort!

Dear all,
The Bus Project was an amazing partner in winning my re-election as Mayor. Thank each of you and all those bus canvassers who knocked on so many doors – truly democracy in action! And you had fun doing it.

Just a couple thoughts to share with you. Prior to the beginning of the election cycle, my public approval rating was around 60%. The huge and heavily funded negative ad campaign took it’s toll and eroded my support to a point where JT could have won the race. Without you, I doubt that we would have made it all the way back from that point. It took a tremendous effort.

So it’s good for us all to remember after a full year of attacks, smearing and misinformation, I have my work cut out for me. I think it is all worthwhile so that we can keep Eugene a great place to live. Times are tough and many are struggling. It will take us all working together from the national level on down to the local to get through this period, rebuilding our economy, ensuring people’s human and civil rights, protecting our natural resources, ensuring our education system is supported and that we finally move toward meeting the health care needs of the people of this country.

Thank you Bus Project for being so committed to getting people to vote for a better future for us all. Keep on going. I am with you.

Kitty

We now know that the election, both local and national, tipped strongly towards the progressive side of the scale. Counting up the votes tells one story, but what happened on the front lines to make those numbers happen.

* We know that our volunteers have been absolutely priceless this year. Definition of priceless? Worth a lot, and not for sale. An example of their dedication - check out the “glowstick phone bank” (maybe you missed it on the 10 o’clock news last night). When a power outage shut off the lights and the phones at Bus Central last night, 35 phone bankers found cell phones and leftover Halloween glowsticks, and kept right on calling to get out the vote.

* We know the Bus Project Foundation registered 23,000 new young voters this year, increasing the Oregon youth electorate by 7 percent.

* We know that Bus Project volunteers have changed the face of Oregon politics. 9 of the 10 races the Bus worked on in the 2002/2004 cycles won their seats and helped turn the Oregon Senate to a progressive majority. In 2006, the Bus won 9 of 10 races, helping to turn the Oregon Legislature to a progressive majority.
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Pretty quiet around here after a stunning and thorough sweep for progressive politics in Oregon and Lane County!

Share your thoughts, share your stories, share your hopes for change!

The end of a campaign brings new beginnings. This birth of hope will redefine and redesign the systems that were built for a past era. With what is today, how would we build those systems for tomorrow? The systems that we choose to construct will be the backbone of the United States in the 22nd century but the difficulty in sketching tomorrow’s government pales in comparison with the challenge of uprooting what lies beneath. Powerful views of groups and groups of views bind status-quo and blind the potential of change’s influence. The web of context frames our system as a series of battles that led to its current being, and frame change as deconstruction. And that fear of deconstruction prevents the reconstruction we need.

This newly awakened hope untangles the context of the past allowing a united focus. And this focus requires a genuine cooperation and acceptance of opposition, a true curiosity of disagreement’s origins and a solution of compromises; all without principles compromised. The love of thy enemy is not enough. We have no enemies. We have those in our world with different values and disparate beliefs on how best to achieve those values. Simply put, that credo provides better results.

It truly is, the dawn of a new era.

Or at least the impatience of a two and a half month wait.

Speechless. Enjoy the day and hopefully have a VERY happy tomorrow!

This election in Oregon, which includes two proposals that would change our election systems, reminds us to think seriously about what election reforms we truly need.

There is no real value to Measure 64 save its naked purpose: weakening organized labor–which has the primary funding opponent to Sizemore’s initiatives in the past–along with the consequence — unintended or otherwise, or limiting some nonprofits’ ability to be heard. Whatever one thinks about the role of organized labor (I, for one, am a fan of the weekend…even if I rarely take full advantage of it), Measure 64 is not “Campaign Finance Reform” by any justifiable definition of any real campaign finance reformer. OLCV offered an interesting take. And of course the no campaign has a website: with more data than I have: www.NoOnMeasure64.com. Sizemore is using a political line to fool those in favor of real campaign finance reform into voting for his measure, and we shouldn’t let the brand of an important movement get sullied by clever word play.

Measure 65 is a closer question. Frankly, I don’t think any of the proponents or opponents can be sure it’ll play out. On the good side, I can imagine a shaken up political conversation which might shake loose some cross-cutting innovative policy. On the bad side, I can imagine more expensive campaigns, informal smoke-filled pre-primaries, leading to even greater influence from the folks who typically pay the freight.

I haven’t taken a position on Measure 65, and the Bus has had different board members weighing in on different sides. We’ve fostered debate about the issue, and hopefully the current debate will be a beginning of a redesign of voting systems, rather than the end. (For my part, I don’t think we’ll fix much until we engage more people in the process and address the money stuff a bit; the influence of interest groups doesn’t come primarily from the order of the primaries, but from the resources they martial.)

There is real election reform needed. The massive participation of small and mid-size donations to Barack Obama reminds us that the best election reform is an active, engaged democracy – which includes lots of people donating and lots of people volunteering. At the same time, the vast bulk of candidates at various levels haven’t written bestsellers, been on Oprah, or spoken at a National Convention.

We should recognize that a critical progressive priority is opening up access to the levers of political power and democracy, and there are real ways to do that. They include:

Voter Access: Democracy works better if more people do it.

* Same Day Registration: The data shows that it’s the best way to increase voter participation, and both Blue and Red states have seen participation growth from it. This should be promising to Oregon, which in 2004 tied Kansas for the nation’s biggest gap in voter turnout between older and younger voters. The Oregonian recently editorialized in favor of it, and it’d be the single biggest thing we could do for voter access.
* Online registration: it might put some on-the-street registration programs (like the Bus’s) largely out of business, but it’d almost certainly be good for participation. Washington State has enacted it; this election will offer us some results.
* Dumping double majority rules: The current ballot has a good proposal – Measure 56 – that moves us to a simple majority rule for passing local levies. We should pass that and get back to good ol’ democracy.
* Automatic registration: Minnesota has instituted automatic “opt out” registration, where people get registered automatically upon getting a drivers license or state I.D. Double majority rules are a disincentive for automatic registration; we should dump double majority rules and institute automatic registration.

Real Campaign Finance Reform:

* A mechanism for public finance – “Patriot Dollars.” Coupla Yale Law guys with the most innovative idea on campaign finance around.
* Limits? Oregon is one of the only states in the union that has no caps on political contributions. And while the wrong sort of cap creates challenging rules that only political elites can navigate, surely some limits could be sensible.

This is not a call to “get the money out of politics” — indeed, the system needs money to communicate message. Think about how much Coke spends to sell a sweet drink, which you can buy at any time of day, during any time of year, in millions of locations, and it gives you a sweet taste on your lips. Voting, on the other hand, must be done at a specific time, generally in a select number of places, and for most it offers no sweet taste. How much should we spend to market that? Rather, we need to be careful about the sources of that money, and what it’s buying.

If we want our public conversation to yield the public interest, there are real reforms to push. Let’s have this election cycle remind rather than distract us from that goal.