Oregon’s US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR3), the author of the original rider who then lobbied Medicare to cover the service, claimed a victory with the publishing of the regulation. Republicans accuse him of trying to slip one past them. Again, we have a case of where the Republican Party wants to politicize the minutiae of every health care provision out there.

In face, I am still confused as to how allowing patients to discuss their end-of-life wishes with their doctors (and having the visit covered by insurance) constitutes a “death panel.”

Is the problem that it is uncomfortable to discuss our eventual demise? We will all die someday. I certainly want to live as long as possible, but I have no desire to be hooked up to machines for the sole purpose of keeping the fluids running through my body a little while longer. Is it not reasonable to discuss this with (and ask questions of) my doctor so that I can make a reasonable medical choice?

Or is the problem simply an objection to having the insurance plan pay for such a visit? Is that what this is all about?

In either case, where does “Obama Care” talk about a panel of people deciding our fate? Where does it talk about people making decisions as to whether we live or die? If we are talking about a question as to whether or not the insurer will pay for the procedure, then the insurance system we have now already has “death panels.” Frankly, if we object to this, we should be doing something about that situation now.

It is disingenuous to complain that the insurance plan does not cover every possible medical procedure, then to complain that a plan with such complete coverage would cost too much. And then to complain about “death panels” being formed when the reply is that we will cut costs.

Sarah Palin and her ilk are great at coming up with catchy marketing phrases to communicate their displeasure with a proposal, but are completely and thoroughly unable to formulate a reasonable proposal that would satisfy them.

Each time an issue like this comes up, it just reinforces how ill-equipped the Republican Party is to actually govern. I have to compliment them on their ability to market themselves well to the masses of people who do not follow politics closely. They send a message to those who are not paying attention, yet deserve to be treated better. Too bad their message does not accurately reflect their agenda.

Perhaps are government is not doing as well as it should. There is certainly room for improvement. Yet it would seem to be the height of foolishness to put the people in charge who are openly trying to destroy us. Why can’t the Republicans discuss the issues rationally?

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In the meantime, Adams has been, among other things, coming up with a list of five proposed new laws that would attempt to give law enforcement some tools to work with to help keep the situation under control. As reported by The Oregonian, here are the five proposals he made, with my comments below:

1. Would amend city’s curfew law, adding a 9:15 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for minors who have been found by a court to have possessed, bought, used, transferred or transported a firearm unlawfully. (Current code sets a 9:15 p.m. curfew on weeknights for minors under age 14 who have not started high school, increasing it to 10:15 p.m. when there’s no school the next day; and a 10:15 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for children 14 and older, extended to midnight if there’s no school the next day.)

In a way, the city curfew for minors has always seemed so 1950′s, but is a tool that can be used to help get kids off the streets and back where they belong. Despite the whining of the gun lobby, does it really seem so unreasonable that a 16-year-old that been in trouble with the law previously be in the house or with a parent or guardian by 9:15 on a school night? Or on any night? This would be an inconvenience to a few people, but seems like the kind of thing that can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It amuses me to see the folks advocating for kids to be out all night.

2. Creates new city crime, endangering a child by allowing access to a firearm, and sets a sliding scale of penalties involving jail time and a fine, dependent upon danger to community. An adult would be guilty of the crime if he or she failed to prevent access to a firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, to a child without permission, or the permission of a parent or guardian. The penalty increases if the child carries the firearm off the gun owner’s premises. And it reaches the most severe penalty if the child carries the firearm to any school, school-sponsored or school-related event. The penalty levels haven’t been decided. It would not apply if a child obtained a gun through illegal entry to a home, or if the gun was locked away, secured or inoperable, or the child discharged it in self-defense.

Again, it amuses me that the gun activists can be so blind to not permitting any firearm regulation, that they can be in favor of allowing people to give firearms to kids, unsupervised, with no consequences. I have been taught since I was young to lock up the guns, to keep them away from children, and to treat all firearms as if they were loaded. Is it different now? Are we not responsible to do these things? It should be OK now to hand a child a gun, or to allow them to take it, and leave the house with it? Nothing here prevents a parent or other responsible adult from using the guns as they were intended, or allowing them to be used properly, even by children. It does make it a crime to let them take it to school. I don’t really have a problem with that.

3. Creates new city crime: failure to report theft or loss of a firearm. A gun owner would have to report a theft or loss of a firearm within 48 hours of learning of a theft, or misplacement of a gun, and provide its description and serial number to law enforcement. If not, the owner would be subject to a $500 fine. If an owner reported a gun stolen but didn’t provide the serial number, he or she would face a $200 administrative fee.

While I am not violently opposed to having some sort of gun registration system, I do understand that the registration process is not really worth the time and expense that would be necessary to implement it. It does not particularly bother me that we do not have lists of gun owners, although I do sleep a little easier knowing that people need permits to carry concealed firearms and that there is a system in place so that criminals and the mentally ill are not buying them (as much as possible, anyway). However, it does not seem unreasonable that if someone has their gun stolen, that they report that fact to the police in a timely manner. You can bet that if someone is going to steal a gun, they are not doing it so they can display it on their mantel for its beauty. They may be stealing it to resell, but it is more likely than not that the gun is being stolen so that it can be used to commit a crime. Heck, we report cars that are stolen voluntarily, if only so that we are not stuck with the parking tickets that the thief might run up. It doesn’t seem the least bit unreasonable to report the theft of a gun. At the very least, it would put law enforcement on notice that the owner isn’t the criminal if the gun is used for a nefarious purpose.

4. Increases penalty for existing city crime: possession of a loaded firearm in a public place. The courts would impose a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days for someone convicted of carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle, including a transit vehicle. Right now, the court has discretion to sentence a violator for up to six months in prison and face a fine up to $500, but it’s rarely done. This would not affect those with concealed-handgun licenses.

Yes, probably not as effective an idea as it seems, but notably, it does not affect anyone who is carrying a firearm legally. Really, if I have a good reason for carrying a loaded weapon on my lap in the car or on a bus, why can’t I get a concealed weapons permit to do so? Maybe there is room to improve this before it becomes law, but on the face, it is a good idea. But the gun activists are right in one way. This one, by itself, won’t make the difference.

5. Designates illegal firearms use hot spots, valid for a three-year period, and gives the city the authority to exclude gun offenders who are on probation or under juvenile authority from entering a public area or park within the designated hot-spot locations, unless they live in the area, go to school, obtain social services there or travel through it. The hot spots would be areas where gun crimes or illegal discharges are significantly higher than that for other similar-size geographic locations.

OK, even I had to laugh at this one. The city experimented with “drug-free zones” and “prostitution-free zones” and everyone knew that these were the best places to buy illegal drugs or hire a streetwalker. I had a problem with the concept of exclusion zones, simply because it did seem too restrictive to ban someone from a certain part of town for 30 to 90 days. While it seems like this might be a good idea on the face of it, even if the goal is to exclude the gang member from access to their gang turf, I just don’t think this one should be the law. If a legal restraining order is called for, by all means get one. Use it. But this should be a case-by-case situation decided on by a judge, not an administrative process.

In the end, it is clear that Mayor Sam Adams is on the right track for trying to clean up some of the gang violence in Portland. It is clear that there is still much work to be done. This is a good start toward that goal.

It also amuses me that the some of the same people who complain that Adams is not doing anything to solve the city’s problems, while he is at work on solutions to solve them, are among the first in line to decry him when he presents his proposed solutions. If someone can do a better job, let them step forward and make some suggestions. (Just remember that “do nothing” or “lets stop and study the problem some more” are not practical suggestions.)

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Her world had been turned upside down when it was discovered that her original immigration paperwork had been done incorrectly. Despite assurances from Multnomah County adoption authorities that everything had been done correctly, she was not officially a US resident or citizen. When this was discovered, it was feared that Blanca, who knew only the US as home, who did not realize there was a problem, who had no connections to Mexico, and who did not even speak any Spanish, could be deported to Mexico and not allowed to return to the US.

I am happy to note, from recent reports, that this story will eventually have a happy ending. While the process will not be immediate, the Federal Government has seen fit to allow Blanca one of the rare visas that will allow her to stay in the US as a permanent resident. The now-19-year-old will not be able to apply for US citizenship for another 8 years. In the meantime, she will not be able to pursue some of her original goals. She is now working toward saving money for college to become a dental hygienist. Of course, she will not be eligible for financial aid because of the recent problems with her immigration status. I have confidence that she will make it work.

I know that this young lady will be able to overcome all of this and be able to grow up to do whatever she wants to do. It is unfortunate that our system is not flexible to respond when it is clear that a mistake was made, whether that error was on the part of her parents, the County, or the Federal Government. It just seems that we have become so short sighted on the whole subject if immigration that we cannot do the right thing, even if the right answer to the situation is obvious.

It appears that there is clearly some room for improvement.

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SPOKANE — There won’t be any endangered species protection for the Giant Palouse earthworm in the immediate future.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week affirmed a lower court ruling that found there is not enough evidence to prove the worm is threatened.

The appeals found that virtually all information about the elusive worm is limited and inconclusive.

In April, living specimens of the worm were captured for the first time in two decades. Environmentalists have filed a new petition seeking endangered species protection.

– The Associated Press

The Giant Palouse Earthworm is an annelid beast that, until recently, was thought to be extinct. Recently, while digging around near Washington State University, researchers found some examples of what could be the elusive worm. Through DNA testing, they were confirmed to be of the missing species.

This brings up some interesting questions. If we really did think that these worms were extinct, and they now do exist, then wouldn’t they by definition be endangered? Probably. Yet, giving them the “endangered” tag would mean that farmers would have to do (or not do) something to protect the species. Somehow, that just doesn’t seem right to me in this case.

The court found that there is not enough evidence to prove the worm is threatened. My initial reaction is to protect them. But my next reaction is that perhaps, if they have been hiding all this time, that there could be a lot of them hiding out there in the vast and hilly fields of the Palouse.

Yes, I worry that we don’t do enough to protect endangered species. Deep down, I worry about the worms. On the other hand, common sense tells me that if the worms have survived that long without our assistance, and that our current farming methods have not killed them all yet, that they may have a penchant for hiding and for survival that we might not quite understand yet.

Let the farmers do what they will for now. The worms will get by. I doubt we will not kill these particular creatures off any more badly than we think we have already. I celebrate that they are not dead yet.

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This is certainly a major spill going on here. I wouldn’t object too much to oil exploration, if there were a way to do it safely and without considerable environmental damage. This incident has proven that, at least for now, we do not have the necessary safeguards in place to avert disaster. So, for now, I will object to any drilling of oil off of our coasts, whether they be the Pacific Coast off of Cascadia, The Arctic Coast, or anywhere else. However, I am a reasonable person. If the necessary safety measures can be put in place, then we can drill for the oil we seem to need until better sources of energy are available.

In the meantime, here’s to hoping that inkblot on the map doesn’t get any bigger.
If It Was My Home .com

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An estimated 10 to 15 percent of our population is homosexual.  It would be expected that a similar percentage of the members of our military is homosexual.  This is going to be the case, whether or not those individuals actually declare their sexual preference in public.  Despite the claims of some of those who wish to see discrimination continue, hiding the matter will not change it.  Besides, the homosexuality itself is really not the matter, is it?

A few of our military leaders claim that “unit cohesion” will suffer if it were known that homosexual people were among the members of the military.  The fact is, they are already there.  They have simply been ordered not to “come out of the closet.”  These people do exist.

Some leaders claim that homosexuals would sexually molest their comrades or partake in inappropriate displays of affection.  In fact, it seems quite unlikely that gay service members would do this with any greater frequency than would heterosexual service members.  While such cases are not rampant, it is certainly not unheard of for a heterosexual service member to sexually molest a colleague, or rape a local resident after an off-base drunken night on the town, or to partake in inappropriate displays of affection themselves.  I have yet to see any evidence where a gay person would do so any more frequently than a straight person.

No, this is all about hiding blatant discrimination.  There will be no problem with gay servicemen serving with their straight counterparts, since they do already.  They would simply be able to do so without being required to lie about it.  Until 1948, servicemen were segregated by race in their units.  At that time, there was pressure from a few military leaders that if the services were integrated, it would cause a loss of “unit cohesion.”  Today, the US Military is a better force with all of it’s members working together.

The issue here is not so much about discrimination.  Americans have been successfully able to serve in the US Armed Forces regardless of their race, gender, or religion.  Certainly, we can allow all to serve regardless of their sexual preference.  No, the issue here is that the military requires some of it’s members to lie about themselves.  However, if they are caught telling that lie, they will be discharged for lying.  This is no way to run a military.

We do not need to take more time to study this issue.  The time to end this policy is now.  If not now, then when?  We will have the courage to do the right thing.  We were wrong for a while, just as we were wrong to segregate people by race.  We can get over it.  We just need to have the courage to make the change.

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I usually go about my day not worrying one way or the other about the race of the people that I interact with.  We all live in this world, we all look a little different, and sometimes it is easy to forget about what some others of us have to deal with every day.  Perhaps, after a while, it becomes easy to believe that all of us are treated on an equal basis all the time.  Clearly, this little experiment highlighted how this is not the case.

Of course, as all know that racism is still a big problem in our society.  Despite all the work of civil rights leaders past and present, despite a growing integration of all of us into general society, and despite the fact that “nobody talks about it” as much anymore; racism is still prevalent in our society.  If we had somehow kidded ourselves into believing that the issue was going away, then we are sadly mistaken.

The issue then becomes what to do next.  Certainly we could propose newer and different laws and regulations. But really, we already have a lot of laws and regulations in place to address the issue.  We can, in fact, easily identify the current laws that were violated in this case.  The ultimate solution is something deeper.

There seem to be two kinds of people.  One includes those who truly believe that all of us are equal as people, those who see each other as individuals, rather than as outsiders with a skin color or family history different than their own.  The other group includes those who are somehow either afraid of people of a different race, or those who feel that their generalized group of people are overtly superior to other generalized groups of people.  We are never going to be able to legislate against fear.  Changing deeply seated false beliefs will be incredibly difficult.

In a way, we have made it socially unacceptable to discriminate against others due to their race.  For most of us, discrimination is just not done.  There is no need to do so.  But this has not convinced a significant portion of the public to accept all as equals.  What it has done is to simply hide the problem.  The bigots talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk.  This test only highlighted that fact.

Every time that I hear someone say that we are beyond tracking people’s races on census forms, or that we are beyond anti-discrimination laws, we can also point to where something like this comes up that shows us we still have a problem.  The law keeps the bigots from saying that they discriminate, but the law can never stop it from happening.

Now, the only question:  How do we solve this problem once and for all?

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Now that this minor detail is out of the way, I need to tell you about something that I feel rather strongly about.  The new year is 2010.  That is pronounced TWENTY-TEN.  I know that most of us have not been calling the last few years twenty-oh-nine and so forth.  We have used two-thousand-and-nine.  Yes we have.  But now that it is 2010, it is time to get this right.

I understand that the year after two-thousand was two-thousand-and-one.  I said it that way too.  Do you know why?  Because Arthur C Clarke wrote a book in 1948 that was later turned into a movie.  You know the one.  2001: A Space Odyssey.  It was good enough that we all called the year two-thousand-and-one.  And that’s OK.  But it is time to grow up now.  The year 2000 is not some futuristic date in the future anymore.  It is so ten years ago now.  It’s time to say it right.

This year is twenty-ten.  Next year will be twenty-eleven.  It is so much shorter and concise than the two-thousand-and-ten that I keep hearing people say.  We have been using it already.  Every reference to the 2010 Olympics (coming to Cascadia!) has been twenty-ten.  When we speak of the upcoming Olympics in London and in Rio de Janerio, they have always said twenty-twelve and twenty-sixteen.  In most future references to these dates, we have tended to use twenty-something, rather than two-thousand-and-something.

We should also follow the conventions that we have always used.  I was born in nineteen-sixty-two, not nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-two, nor in one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-sixty-two.  Why did we change?

You don’t believe me?  Well, here are some dates that you learned in school:

• The year of US Independence?  Seventeen-seventy-six.
• Just to be equal, the Creation of Canada?  Eighteen-sixty-seven.
• Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock?  Sixteen-twenty.
• Columbus “discovered” “America”?  Fourteen-ninety-two.
• World War II?  Nineteen-forty-one.

So why shouldn’t the year coming up be pronounced twenty-ten?  Oh, wait.  Do we think it is different in years divisible by ten or something?  Then how about this (if you were really paying attention in school):

• Leif Ericson and the Vikings really discover America?  Ten-oh-five.  1005.  Back in school, we never said one-thousand-and-five.  Ten-oh-five.

So, with all of this precedent, would it be too difficult to start saying the date correctly as twenty-ten?  Every time I hear it said the other way, it just makes me think that the speaker doesn’t know how to say it right.  So, please say it right.  Twenty-ten.

And, happy new year!

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The details of the crime have been widely discussed in the news media and elsewhere.  It was truly a horrible incident, a fact that no one denies.  Now that authorities have identified the suspect, the talk has moved to why he did it.

Some will argue that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was trying to get out of being deployed to the Middle East.  Some believe he was making a statement.  Some are more charitable and believe that he may have reacted abnormally to the stress of his personal situation and cracked under the strain.  Not defensible, but a possible explanation.  The truth is that we may never know the real reasons for what happened on that day.

The explanation that really bothers me is that because this man’s name indicates a background from a Muslim country (it doesn’t, he’s from Virginia) and because we know that he is a Muslim, then that must have something to do with why he committed this atrocity.  It does not.  But judging from the reaction from radio talk programs and online commentators, you would think it did.  I believe this shows just how intolerant we still are as a society.

One comment by an anonymous radio commenter seemed to sum this up for me.  The question up for discussion was whether it was pertinent to the story that he was a Muslim.   Many argued that it was not, as we don’t usually mention the religious preferences of criminals.  Some thought it was, as part of a total picture of who this man was.  One person, however, went even further.  He suggested that the US Military should pay particular attention to its Muslim members, especially those who chose to pray every day.  Could that really matter?

I would imagine that in the US, a great number of people are Christians.  If the man who had done this act had been a practicing Christian, would that fact be discussed on the news so widely.  More to the point, would someone have come on the air to say that the US Military should keep a closer eye on the activities of Christians, especially those who choose to pray everyday?  Of course not!  So what makes this case so very different?  Nothing.

It saddens me to observe that religious bigotry is still alive and well in the US today.  Our constitution has always guaranteed us the right to freely practice the religion of our choice.  In practice, it has allowed us to freely practice any form of Christianity that we choose.  Besides, I could even argue that those rights are somewhat abridged; as the followers of the Catholic, Mormon, or Jehovah’s Witness faiths can attest to on a historic basis.  This is hardly the lack of religious bigotry that we pretend to hold out as one of our basic truths.  I am ashamed of us.

One of the biggest problems we have as a society today is intolerance to those with legitimate but “minority” beliefs.  unitl we can get beyond this bias, we will not truly live in a “free” country.  The need is not to stop those who say these horrible things from speaking.  It is to educate them on the need to treat all of their neighbors with respect.

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I do recomment reading the article, but to make it short, as an infant, Blanca was abused by her immigrant parents and taken into custody by the State of Oregon.  She was adopted by a local family who has raised her since.  At the time of the adoption, the parents and the workers at the Oregon Department of Human Services both thought that her citizenship paperwork had been filed properly and that she was now a citizen, as is routine in adoptions.

In hte meantime, she is raised in Portland and in Vancouver.  She has grown up and been raised like every other American kid in her neighborhood.  She has done well, and it is time to go out into the world as an adult.  When she applied for financial aid to attend college, it came out that her paperwork had not been actually processed correctly when she was young, and was not officially a US Citizen.

So the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services is threatening to deport her to her birth-parents country, Mexico.  While Blanca was born in Mexico, she was never there since being a few months old.  She has no connections there.  She speaks very little Spanish, just what she picked up in high school.  But the US INS says that if she doesn’t go to Mexico immediately, she will be sent there and not allowed to return to the US for at least ten years.

This is simply a travesty.  Certainly, there is a need to enforce our immigration laws.  This is not really a case of someone trying to get to the US illegally, though.  This is the story of someone who had truly been led to believe that she was a US citizen, had been raised as such, and had little reason to believe otherwise.

So, the parents are suing the State of Oregon for a large sum of money.  Blanca is wondering how her life will change.  All of the parties are entrenching for a fight.  The answer seems so simple. though.

It is reprehensible that there are some in our community who are treating Blanca Catt as an outsider who doesn’t belong here.  She is as much an American as most of us are.  In most cases, our ancestors immigrated to the US a relatively few number of generations ago.  More importantly, this is all simply a paperwork error.  It should be an easy fix.

If there was ever a time or place to simply push the paperwork through and do the right thing, this is it.  We are not trying to sneak someone into the country, the state believed that she had been processed properly.  She was raised with everyone “knowing” that she was a naturalized American citizen.  If the Immigration Service cannot make what should be an automatic decision for them, whether it be for legal or political reasons, then this is one of those situations where one of our US Representatives should step in and make it right.  There IS an easy solution for this, and the proper government official should make this right, right now.

Is this not a great example of why our elected representatives have offices to serve the public?  It is time for them to serve Blanca Catt.

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