TO THE EDITOR
EXCLUDING THE POOR
Eugene is becoming arrogant. It seems to
delight in excluding the poor from more and
more activities and areas. If one cannot afford
the fee to attend Art and the Vineyard, held in
a public park, one is excluded from the city’s
July 4 celebration, as well as being outlawed
from the public park and road. I guess
Independence Day is really for the well-off.
If one cannot afford the fee for the Eugene
Celebration, one is not welcome at the city’s
annual party. It is the same for the County
Fair, and other public park areas.
If I were boss, I would take down all the
fences. It would be illegal to exclude a resi-
dent from any public park or public party
held on public property for any reason. Any
fees collected would be voluntary. If some-
one wants to have a party with fireworks and
wants to charge for it, let it be held on private
property. The Oregon Country Fair can get
as exclusive and expensive as it wants, as it
is on private property. The Art and the
Vineyard crowd doesn’t have the right to
hold a public party on public property and
not invite all the citizens of Eugene. Nor
does the Eugene Celebration, nor the Lane
County Fair, which has done what it could to
exclude the poor.
Hugh Massengill
Eugene
REDIRECT OFFENSE
Regarding Amy Gaudia’s 7/1 letter
“Stupid Articles,” I am stunned that some-
one who has worked so extensively with
sexual abuse survivors could read those arti-
cles and come away with contempt for the
author’s language choices instead of the al-
leged perpetrator of repeated sexual crimes
against multiple women. I respect her right
to feel offended by the language used to de-
scribe these allegations, but a bigger issue is
that there might be a police officer in our
community who is a repeat sex offender, and
that his actions have been overlooked by his
superiors for years. Magaña’s alleged ac-
tions against his victims far exceed any in-
sult over the words “blow job” and “butt”
used in the articles. Does it really matter
whether he demanded a blow job or fellatio?
Please direct your offense in the right direc-
tion.
Kelly Bogan
Eugene
PERVERSE LUSTS
Sally Sheklow is lost to perverse lusts.
No, I’m not referring to her lesbianism. I’m
referring to her lust to get married. No doubt
she wants an “equal helping of health insur-
ance, retirement benefits, tax exemptions,
etc.” (Living Out, 6/17) But doesn’t she re-
ally want an unequal helping of those bene-
fits — unequal, that is, to those received by
single people? Why should she (or heterosex-
ual spouses) get paid more than single people
for doing the same job?
I suppose anyone wants the financial
perks of marriage (however unfair they may
be), but I wonder if that’s all Sheklow wants.
What’s next for her? Does she want the pink
house with the picket fence? Membership in
Daughters of the American Revolution? The
vote in the Republican primaries?
There are two ways to destroy a subcul-
ture. One is to repress it. The other is to as-
similate it. Let’s hope (for the sake of
Sheklow’s column) that she doesn’t adopt all
of the values of the mainstream. Today it may
be marriage; tomorrow an SUV. Next thing
you know, Sheklow will be writing columns
deploring premarital sex.
Bruce Schennum
Eugene
UNFAIR TO GAYS
Out-of-state ex-gay political activists
tricked the EW into publishing a letter (6/10)
promoting unethical and harmful faith-based
therapies for “converting” gays to be straight.
Would EW publish a similarly offensive letter
from neo-Nazis promoting ex-Jew groups?
After all, unlike being gay, being Jewish re-
ally is a choice as was proved when the anti-
gay radio host Dr. Laura converted to
Judaism.
The writer of the letter “Being gay is a
choice” has a right to spout his ethnic hate
speech against gay people. But publishing it
is not being “fair and balanced” to gay peo-
ple.
Thomas Kraemer
Corvallis
TWO CENTS
While there is some truth to both Charley
Larson’s and Wayne Ford’s letters (6/24), I
come down more on the Ford side, especially
in these days of mass murder/suicide/torture
for fun, profit and damaged religions.
The more truth we are exposed to, the
sooner we can extricate ourselves from our
(mostly) manmade dilemmas of overpopula-
tion, over-exploitation, over-pollution and
ever more grisly wars. We need as big a dose
of truth as we can stand or else the meat
grinder of reality will chew us all up and spit
out our bones.
And to Pam Driscoll: Forget evil, it’s just
a dumb word from the past without signifi-
BY TOM LININGER
Grid and Bear It
Energy grid thwarts conservation,
invites manipulation.
T
his just in from the Bush administration: There is probable cause
to believe that Ken Lay, the former CEO of Enron, may have commit-
ted fraud three years ago when he plunged his company into the biggest
bankruptcy of all time. In other news, the Bush administration announced there is prob-
able cause to believe that the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.
The glacial speed of the Lay prosecution contrasts with the “detain now, ask ques-
tions later” approach taken by the Justice Department in its investigation of Brandon
Mayfield, a Muslim lawyer in Portland who was jailed for weeks without any indictment
until the FBI realized it had the wrong man. Why so much haste in the Mayfield case and
so much inertia in the Lay case? Here’s a hint: The Justice Department moves a little
slower when the president refers to the suspect as “Kenny Boy” (Lay is one of W’s
biggest campaign contributors).
Last week’s indictment of Lay is good news. But we need to be careful that the vilifi-
cation of Lay doesn’t distract us from systemic problems in the energy industry. Lay is
not the only reason why our energy policy is in shambles. The lack of meaningful regula-
tion, coupled with the nature of energy on the interstate grid, will cause more problems
in the future.
How does the grid work? It’s a vast network of wires that spans several different
states and connects virtually everyone — sort of like The Matrix, only less tedious. When
you flip on the light switch in your house, the power you’re using could come from a
local source or from a source hundreds of miles away.
The grid offers many benefits. It promotes competition among suppliers, and it dis-
tributes energy to areas that might not be capable of local generation. The grid is basi-
cally just a free market of electrons, and it offers all the advantages of a free market.
On the other hand, the grid invites abuse by unscrupulous energy suppliers. The in-
4 JULY 15, 2004
terconnectivity of the western states allowed Enron to ship power back
and forth across state lines during the energy crisis of 2001, jacking up
prices along the way. A recent lawsuit by the Snohomish County Public
Utility District turned up evidence that Enron made $220,000 in three
hours by shipping power from California to Oregon, masking its origin,
and then shipping it back to California at wildly inflated prices. The
Snohomish PUD obtained transcripts of recordings in which Enron officials
joked about swindling “Grandma Millie” in California. Is there any way we can
get Grandma Millie on the jury trying Ken Lay?
E
nvironmentalists worry that the grid hinders conservation by mismatching
costs and benefits. Most of the proposals for new power generation involve
burning natural gas. The new gas-fired plants can’t be built in big cities like
Portland, because of political pressure and because the air quality in Portland is barely
within EPA guidelines. So energy speculators want to satisfy Portland’s demand for new
power by building gas-fired plants somewhere else. One set of developers wants to build
the Willamette Valley’s biggest gas-fired plant near Coburg, just a few miles north of
Eugene. A state agency controls the siting of power plants, so local jurisdictions can’t
prevent the construction of a plant that sells power to faraway customers. Would
Portlanders have much incentive to conserve electricity if their power came from gas-
fired plants in other areas? Of course not, because the harmful consequences wouldn’t
be felt in Portland.
If you could eat a gallon of ice cream every day, and magically put all the pounds on
your neighbor’s backside, what would you do? You’d eat a lot more ice cream, and your
neighbor would have a lot more junk in the trunk. Ben and Jerry would become the rich-
est men in America. The president would be palling around with “Benny Boy” instead of
“Kenny Boy.”
By the way, do you know who put up the money for the Coburg power plant back in
2001? You guessed it: Enron. If the energy speculators get their way, we’ll have a $500
million monument to Ken Lay’s legacy in our backyard, even when he’s behind bars.
Tom Lininger is a law professor and former county commissioner.