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Oregon Daily Emerald Friday, April 1, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR IARED PABEN AY1SHA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGHANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH BALINGIT AMANDA BOLSINGER ADAM CHERRY EMILY SMITH EVA SYLWESTER SHELDON TRAVER NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR AMY L1CHTY SENIOR PULSE REPORTER JOSHUA LINTEREUR PULSE REPORTER CAT BALDWIN PULSE CARTOONIST AILEE SLATER COMMENTARY EDITOR (ABE BRADLEY ANNEMARJF. KNEPPER CHUCK SLOTHOWER IENNIFF.R MCBRIDE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR lAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER ERIK BISHOFF KATE HORTON PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURTWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST DUSTIN REESE SENIOR DESIGNER ELLIOTT ASBURY WENDY K1EFFER AMANDA LEE IONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY JEAN N1E EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKF1ELD PAULTHOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS GREG B1LSLAND AMBER UNDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR WEBMASTER (541)346-5511 JUDY RIEDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY (CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER LAUNA DE GIUSTT RECEPTIONIST IERED NAGEL PATRICK SCHMERBER HOLLY STEIN PETER STEPHENS JANA SWANSON ROB WEGNER CAROLYN ZIMMERMAN DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CALISCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE KELLEE KAUFTHEIL MIA LEIDELMEYER SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES CLASSIFIED (541)3464343 TRINA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KORALYNN BASHAM ANDO KAXY GAGNON KER1 SPANGLER KATIE SrrRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541) 3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT SABRINA GOWETTE JONAH SCHROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday through Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private property Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. ■ In my opinion Tipping the wage scale Nobody plays a funnier April Fools’ joke than the restaurant in dustry. In fact, I’m sure Oregon min imum-wage earners are laughing their aprons off. It must be hilarious to try to feed your kids while the Oregon Restau rant Association pushes business friendly legislators in Salem to freeze the minimum wage for workers who earn tips. The restaurant industry has been fighting this battle for years. Restau rateurs hate the minimum wage, they hate increases in the minimum wage and they hate not being able to factor tips into the minimum wage. The battle has intensified since 2002, when Oregon voters approved an initiative that raised the mini mum wage and tied annual increas es to the Consumer Price Index. Ore gon now has a $7.25 minimum wage, the second highest in the na tion only to Washington. The minimum wage fight boils down to a political boxing match. In one corner stand Republican legisla tors, who control the state House, with the restaurant industry playing the role of trainer. In the other cor ner stand Democrats, who control the Senate and governor’s office, with labor unions cheering on their pugilists. Rep. George Gilman, R-Medford, has thrown a right hook with HB 2409, a bill that would freeze the minimum wage for workers who earn tips. Gilman apparently thinks all those working mothers earn too much money — all those hard-working CHUCK SLOTHOWER TAKING ISSUE waiters and waitresses who place lemon slices in your iced tea, fetch you an extra stack of napkins for a messy burger and offer you cof fee refills. One might jump to the conclusion that Gilman, his House allies and the Oregon Restaurant Association want to screw over the working poor in exchange for campaign contribu tions and higher profits. No, ORA spokesman Bill Perry said, restaurateurs simply want to pay higher wages to their untipped employees, such as cooks. “We’re not saying that the servers don’t de serve their tip income,” Perry told The Associated Press. “The question is, how do we get a fair wage to the back-of-the-house employees?” Of course. The Oregon Restaurant Association has been pouring cam paign contributions into Republican coffers for years — to the tune of $147,680 in 2004, according to The Institute on Money in State Politics — in an altruistic campaign to raise wages for cooks. Now that’s a good April Fools’ joke. And it’s on Oregon’s working poor. Amusingly, if Perry were honest in the quote above, the bill would adhere rather closely to socialist philosophy. Think about it: a government plan lowering wages for one type of worker in order to give more to an other type of worker, leveling wages all around. One wonders if Gilman’s constituents in the Medford area elected him to ease class divisions in the restaurant industry. Gilman, a longtime dairy farmer, might not have read a great deal of Karl Marx, who with Friedrich En gels described the essence of the minimum wage more than 150 years ago in “The Communist Manifesto.” “The average price of wage labor,” they wrote, “is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely req uisite to keep the laborer in bare ex istence as a laborer. What, therefore, the wage laborer appropriates by means of his labor merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare exis tence ... under which the laborer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class re quires it.” Gilman has done the job of a good Republican, submitting to the bid ding of the latest industry to whine about the cost of doing business. Simultaneously, he has proposed to shift the cost of paying waitstaff from employers to consumers. One hopes he gets a nice campaign contribution. One also hopes that Democrats have the wisdom to block this shameless bill. chuckslothower@dailyemerald.com ■ Guest commentary World Bank should lay off dam On Thursday, the World Bank dis cussed whether to fund the pro posed Nam Theun 2 Dam in Laos. As American students studying de velopment in Northeast Thailand, we have seen first hand the devasta tion hydroelectric power dams have on local villagers. These villagers have depended on the natural cycles of the Mun River for generations. The Pak Mun Dam is a well known example of a failed development project, and the World Commission on Dams has acknowledged it as such. The Nam Theun 2 Dam prom ises similar consequences to an even larger degree. Pak Mun Dam failed under a relatively stable Thai gov ernment, while the strict Communist Lao regime doesn’t allow villagers to protest or voice their dissent. In a cost-benefit analysis, the 25 year lifespan of this dam will in no way offset the permanent loss of sustainable livelihoods, natural ecosystems and endangered species unique to the area that would be de stroyed if the project passes. Ninety percent of the electricity to be gener ated from Nam Theun 2 Dam will go to Thailand, which ironically has cheaper, renewable energy alterna tives. The World Bank’s mission statement is to lift people out of poverty. This cannot be accom plished through the destruction of the natural resources that citizens depend on for their livelihood. This project is unnecessary and destruc tive. It does not fulfill the World Bank’s criteria for decision-making. We have the potential to harness real sustainable energy. It is time to put away the notion that hydroelec tricity is a harmless and sustainable option. There is too much at stake to remain idle. As citizens of a connect ed world, we all have a duty to stand up for the oppressed Laotian vil lagers and demand that the World Bank learn from its past mistakes and deny funding for this devastat ing project. The Council on International Educational Exchange Students are currently participating in a study abroad program in Khon Kaen, Thailand INBOX Legislators must repair Measure 37's ambiguities The Oregon Legislature needs to act decisively to address the many prob lems with Measure 37. Measure 37 is not the solution to whatever problems Oregon’s land use system might have. Measure 37 has created a mess of the state’s property law system that will take too long to resolve in the courts. It is the responsibility of our legisla tors to preserve the land use system, and resolve the legitimate concerns of citizens. So far this session, legislators have invoked the “will of the people” as their reason for leaving Measure 37 alone. This might be a valid argument if Measure 37’s effect could be objec tively understood; however, this is not the case. Among its many ambigui ties, Measure 37 does not give guid ance on how land should be valued, where the money for compensation should come from, or what remedies exist for neighbors harmed by a suc cessful claim. Legislators should provide guid ance in this area by introducing legis lation to clear up Measure 37’s ambi guities, and remove its most prob lematic provisions. At the least, leg islators should institute a moratorium on Measure 37 claims to allow policymakers and state agen cies a chance to catch up and do a better job of implementing the law. If nothing is done, Oregon’s property system will grind to a halt until the courts can create workable rules to navigate the mess that Measure 37 has made. Jason Hartz Eugene ■ Editorial Some news events find their own April fools In light of April Fools’ Day, the Editorial Board would like to present a summary of re cent news events we wish were jokes. The crap's out of the bag On Monday night, a San Diego woman expe rienced a harrowing mugging while walking her dog, according to an Associated Press re port. Unfortunately for the criminal, the bag snatched from the woman’s hand was not full of money; it was full of her dog’s droppings. Criminal recklessness indeed. It pays to be a Trekkie This week, “NBC Nightly News” ran an in teresting story on lesser-known, alternative scholarships available to graduating high school students. Noteworthy awards include: $500 to language students from the Klingon Language Institute; $1,500 from the American Sheep Industry; and an award to the University of Chicago if your last name is Zolp. X-graded On Wednesday, a California State University fraternity was suspended after members admit ted to acting in a porn film, according to an AP report. They knew something was odd about that Film 101 class. The real labor of birth An Ohio woman failed to get to a hospital to deliver her baby Hiesday and ended up parking at a local gas station to give birth in her family van. The AP reported that a customer at the service station called police with the woman’s license number and explained the situation; however, a mix-up occurred, and officers set out looking for the woman’s van as a stolen ve hicle. Luckily the mix-up was set straight, but before officers could reach the woman, another caller mistakenly reported that someone was trying to throw a baby from the van. In the end, several officers ordered her out of the van at gunpoint, at which time the whole situation was quickly resolved. Selsun Blue: pollution prevention A WebMD news article suggested Thursday that especially in the winter months, dandruff, dead skin cells and other similar cell fragments could account for notable air pollution and cli mate change. When the court starts a-rockin' The Michael Jackson trial took an intimate turn Wednesday, according to MTV News, when witness Cynthia Bell was asked about her definition of cuddling. Bell offered to show the court instead, and prosecutor Gordon Auchin closs was allowed to approach the witness. However, before things could get too hot and heavy, the witness chair collapsed. It's in the punch line Earlier this week, the AP reported that a New Orleans family discovered two bricks of cocaine in its used car. The drugs had most likely been strapped to the car’s fuel line since the family purchased it in 1997, eventually resulting in an ironic deceleration of the vehicle’s speed. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Editor in Chief Ailee Slater Commentary Editor Steven R. Neuman Managing Editor Shadra Beesley Copy Chief Adrienne Nelson Online Editor
