Growing up in Oregon

In the years 1956-1974, State Government was fairly serene. What Oregon had never had before was percolating, but hidden from the eye of the average Oregonian.

The impact of the Vanport flood combined with the reduction in ship building devastated blacks in Oregon. Before WWII, blacks in Oregon were numbered in the hundreds. Due to pressures for workers in Portland shipyards, Oregon saw a rise in the black population of 15-thousand between 1940 and 1950. And close to all of those lived in Vanport by 1945, the area of Portland we now call Delta Park.

As the war ended, most of those who had moved to Oregon to work in defense industries had left. At the time of the Vanport flood, May 30, 1948, a majority of residents were white, returning servicemen and their families. In fact, whites outnumbered blacks by 4 to 1. But Vanport, which at its height was Oregon's second largest city, was known as black. And since the majority of blacks lived in the nearby Albina district in Portland, generally, the north side of Portland was "black".

If your reading this, chances are you're old enough to remember the press coverage of the "Katrina" disaster in New Orleans. Reading historical accounts of the Vanport flood you'll be struck by the parallels in the press coverage.

When you buy a home in Oregon, if you do due diligence, take a look at the property deeds that have been filed for your home. Chances are, if you go back far enough, you'll find restrictions on your deed that were put in place years ago, restricting to whom you could sell your property, based on race. Across the country, in the United States Supreme Court, a decision in the case of Shelley v. Kraemer meant that restrictions on landholders that forbade them selling to blacks, or any minority, were no longer legally enforceable. (It would take another 20 years for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968--the Fair Housing Act--and the Supreme Court in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co to end the "voluntary" enforcement of racial restrictions). But, in 1948, Shelley v. Kraemer meant in middle-class, and upper-middle class neighborhoods, words like "there goes the neighborhood" were being spoken.

Our governor, John Hall had his own issues at the time. When Governor Earl Snell died, as Speaker of the House, Hall succeeded Snell. And Liquor was the issue. So, while Portland was busy ignoring problems of housing and jobs, families in neighborhoods in the Grant District, the Wilson District were worrying about property values, the state was arguing over the Oregon Liquor Commission.

Another problem was brewing in the background.

Hall was quickly replaced by Governor James Douglas McKay in 1949. It is Governor McKay who is, was, Oregon's most important governor. The next five governors of Oregon would follow the rules of government practiced by Governor McKay. That year would be 1974, and it would mark a change in the way Oregon did business.

Reflections of an Oregon Guy

I read a lot. And have read a lot.

This has created a lot of drawbacks. The first one is I expect you to be well read, too. Not just a newspaper reader. Not just a bumper sticker reader. Someone who enjoys books.

I like blogging. Sometimes readers forget that what they are reading is a writer’s diary. Or web log. Blog is actually a contraction of “web log”, or “’blog”. What makes a blog different from a book or a newspaper article is in that private sense of ownership. This is my blog. I am allowing you to read it. It’s published publicly on the internet. And in the years I’ve spent reading blogs I’ve found blogs that I will return to on a daily basis and some that merit a look every now and then.

My blog, this blog, is my personal view on the world. I’m not going to rat on the guy down the street, or the guy working at a local government office. Because it’s not necessary. Growing up in a small town the first thing you find out is that there are people who you can, and people you can’t, trust to keep a secret. When you grow older you realize these people are talking about you.

So my neighbors generally know what I think about local issues. And I, generally, know what they’re thinking. If I had political aspirations I could spend all my time pointing out the absurdities that occur on a daily basis here in my little home town. But I don’t aspire to political office. There’s no advantage to me in talking about The Horrors that take place on a nearly daily basis.

Instead, I wanted an opportunity to point out how what passes for ideology on the left impacts your daily life. What passes for ideology on the right. Because both have suffered over the past forty years, suffered to a point where it is arguably true that neither political party has a coherent political view. For those of us in politics in 1978 we view the results of what happened in county after county around the state with a certain sorrow.

The roots of that sorrow were always there. For me. In 1964 we voted for Rockefeller because he cared enough to come. Kennedy was dead. LBJ was this weird Texas guy and he didn’t do himself a lot of favors with the dog-ear thing, or the appendix scar. Coming from what could be viewed as a classic middle-class family; LBJ’s behavior was rube, hayseed, redneck. Embarrassing for a dad, the first of his family to leave the farm and move to the big city—Portland—it was an echo of the type of behavior one would see among the hired hands. For a mother--whose mother worked as a cook for a large rancher--now living in metropolitan Oregon, it was the language of the stockhand or the roustabout.

Life in Oregon was simple. For a lot of us, growing up with nothing was a lot. Having, at last, something, was heaven. It wasn't given to us. My dad worked for it. And worked for it in a way that his dad, and his grand-dad hadn't.

My dad took risks. Imagine, being a Great Depression baby. While most of the nation suffered, up in Northern Idaho, with only the Grange to look out for you, farmers muddled through. They didn't have two cents to rub together. But they had land. And hard work.

My great-grandfather on my father's side was an immigrant. He was his father's eldest son. My grandfather was his eldest son. My father was his eldest son. I am my father's eldest son. If only primogeniture was still practiced!

My great-grandfather had the strength to leave Denmark and head west. My father had the strength to leave the farm. I, in his footsteps, left his path and followed my own. He was a teacher. I'm what as referred to as an entrepreneur. But in those moments when I gauge my life against my father's, my grandfather's, my great-grandfather's, there has always been a coherent belief in what is right, and what is proper.

For fourteen critical years I watched politics on a personal and an objective level. Politics was about individual rights posed against political posturing. From 1964 to 1978. During those years, LBJ became an icon of what not to be. Hubert H. Humphrey may have been "pleased as punch" to be here, but the slippage into personal politics had arrived. By the time the 1968 election occured, the bifurcation of American political outlook had occured. Ten years later I would begin my way into the world of affecting politics.

Some Truths Are Knowable, Even If You're a Lefty

There are times when I feel my age creeping over me. Not so much my paunch. What’s ten pounds among friends? It’s not my running that has suffered. LD guys can run, okay? It’s what we do. And I’ve gotten used to the idea that my hair will never be as thick as it was when I was seventeen. But looking at pictures, I really didn’t make good use of that feature when I could.

No, the age thing, the thing I knew was out there but didn’t know when it would catch up to me, is the whole Ernest Hemingway thing. What was the last line from “The Sun Also Rises”? Wasn’t it something like, “wouldn’t it be nice to think so?”

As the story ends, one is left asking oneself if Jake Horner is happy. There’s something in the passive voice that implies the opposite case; the not nice case that Jake was actually left with.

After all the bullfights and beers, all the wasted time filling time, there is a time when the hero of the book needs to ask some questions.

Do people really think?

When they ask a question, are they positing a reference point for inquiry? Or are they gaining something else from the noise. Is this a reduction to utterance? Or is it real inquiry, real caring? “Wouldn’t it be nice to think so?”

I tend towards the apodictic. The dialectic, which I posit is best understood by reading Berkeley’s "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonius", lends itself to creeping equivocation. Sort of like the story of the Blind Men and An Elephant. When is a tree trunk a snake? When it’s an elephant.

The beauty of apodictic argument is that it’s so easy to show what is unknowable, not just for what is knowable. For a lot of people this is a bug. Lots of people want to argue for beliefs or opinions and don’t want you to be able to disagree with them. The “bug” of the apodictic argument is that for an argument to be successful, the outcome of the premise should be “self-evident”.

For many, argument doesn’t exist as an intellectual inquiry per se. Argument is a form of communication used to express feelings or beliefs. These are people who will point out that apodictic inquiry isn’t plausible because there are no real world examples of how a premise can show a “self-evident” outcome.

The example of “2 + 2 = 4” may be true, but it’s conditioned on an artificial construct, mathematics, that doesn’t exist in terms that can be applied to the human condition.

Instead, there are conclusions that you should draw based upon arguments that describe a subjective state or perception—an outcome that should be adopted.

Here’s an example: Global warming is bad, so we should do everything we can to stop it.

Here’s a different example: Slavery is bad because people aren’t free to make their own decisions.

Can you spot the apodictic argument? Which argument best realizes the claim of “self-evident”?

So take this claim in today’s “healthykidsoregon.org” press release:

“Coalition of grassroots groups gathers to raise voices against tobacco industry”
“More than 360,000 Oregonians represented”

How do we know this is true? Because the organizers of the event include:

“AAUW of Oregon, AFSCME Council 75, American Cancer Society, American Federation of Teachers-Oregon, American Heart Association, American Lung Association of Oregon, Children First for Oregon, Oregon AFL-CIO, Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Oregon Bus Project, Oregon Business Association, Oregon Education Association, Oregonians for Health Security, Oregon Health Action Campaign, Oregon Medical Association, Oregon Nurses Association, Oregon Pediatric Society, Oregon State Public Interest Research Group (OSPIRG), Our Oregon, SEIU Local 49, SEIU Local 503, Stand for Children, and the Tobacco – Free Coalition of Oregon”;

and their members total more than 360,000. And yet I suspect that few of that 360-thousand members had the slightest clue what was being done for them, in their name.

At issue, truly, is not the tobacco industry. At issue is whether or not you support the Governor’s plan to provide state funded medical insurance to families that make up to $70,000.00 per year, or not. Tobacco is only mentioned because the Gov wants to pay for this massive social program with a tax on cigarettes.

So, see if you can find the apodictic argument here:

The State of Oregon can’t spend more money than it takes in. That kind of budgeting—known as deficit spending—is outlawed by the Oregon Constitution. Therefore, the Governor must raise taxes.

The Governor wants to raise taxes but the voters don’t want higher taxes. Therefore, the Governor will raise taxes on tobacco because few people will resist a tax increase on tobacco.

The Governor wants to raise taxes. So the Governor will increase the Corporate minimum tax, cigarette tax, and any other tax he can that won’t raise the ire or suspicion of most Oregonians.

The Governor, who wants to raise taxes, will meet with Senator Smith, who wants to get re-elected next year, to talk about “health care”. Later, they will hold a press conference. The Governor will talk about Big Tobacco, a Rainy Day Fund, Kids, Teachers, the Elderly and Government Employees. Senator Smith will act like a politician without a backbone.