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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 26, 2012)
LIBERTARIAN FOREST POLITICS After EW commented on Lane County Commission candidate Andy Stahl’s connection to Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole in an April 5 Slant column, the fur began to fly. Letters to the editor, online comments and even tweets chided EW for “smearing” Stahl with the connection to O’Toole and Cato. Cato, though controversially connected to the Koch Brothers, is a respected libertarian think tank, so why the raised hackles? Possibly due to a connection to another hot-button issue — the DeFazio-Schrader-Walden forest plan. It turns out that O’Toole has been touting a timber trust plan to Congress for years. The DeFazio plan, which proposes logging on 1.5 million acres of public forestland under a timber trust proposal, is based on a plan worked up by Stahl. Environmentalists object to the plan, citing reasons ranging from the effects logging could have on Eugene’s water supply to the sheer amount of public land that they say would be turned into industrial-type tree farms. Stahl says that the intellectual inspiration for his version of the plan “is found in a number of threads stretching back many years,” and gives as his inspiration a tree plantation versus native forest split in New Zealand. He says he studied trusts in college as well. “Grandparents are fond of setting up such trusts for their irresponsible grandchildren to protect assets from being squandered,” Stahl says. O’Toole has been working on a trust plan for a long time, too. He testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in favor of a timber trust back in 1995. He suggested a trust plan again in a Seattle Times opinion piece in 1997. In 1998, Stahl and O’Toole presented the trust plan, along with several other plans to reform the Forest Service, at a conference put on by the Sierra Nevada Alliance. The plan, part of the “Forest Options Group Proposal,” is laid out on the Thoreau Institute website. Stahl and O’Toole serve on the TI’s board of directors. “It’s classic free-market libertarianism, with a twist,” says Oregon Wild’s Doug Heiken of O’Toole’s trust plan, which calls for fees on things like recreation and biodiversity. Heiken says it works better if the government owns and manages the forests to produce public goods, “which are under-produced on private lands, because there’s no profit in clean water and biodiversity.” O’Toole is the author of the 1988 book Reforming the Forest Service. He also wrote The Best-Laid Plans, in which he “calls for repealing federal, state and local planning laws,” according to the Cato website, and Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It, in which he criticizes mass transit. — Camilla Mortensen SILENCE AT TAKE BACK THE NIGHT? Eugene’s 32rd Take Back the Night (TBTN)/ Recobrar la Noche may be unusually quiet this year due to the mandatory reporting policy implemented by UO last fall. The new guidelines state that all university workers are required to report cases of sexual assault reported to them to the Department of Public Safety, with or without the consent of the survivor. TBTN traditionally concludes with a “Speak Out to End Sexual Violence” where survivors and their allies can share personal stories of assault in a safe environment. On Thursday, April 26, however, participants have been 6 APRIL 26, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY cautioned to refrain from using names or other identifying information because UO employees will likely be in the audience, says Lisa Oland, the Sexual Violence Prevention and Education coordinator for the UO Women’s Center. OSU canceled the speak-out portion of the TBTN completely. “The policy takes power away from the survivor,” Oland says. The UO student government (ASUO), LGBTQA, Sexual Wellness Advocacy Team, Multicultural Center and the Survival Center have all expressed concerns that mandatory reporting is not survivor-centric. The ASUO passed a bill in November asking for the university administration to “restore the mandatory reporter policy to its former state, and reinstate the use of anonymous report forms with renewed vigor and respect for the privacy and autonomy of reporters.” TBTN keynote speaker Megan Burke, a UO graduate teaching fellow and campus feminist, hopes that the controversy will add a renewed sense of urgency to the event. “Mandatory reporting is just a different manifestation of a culture that supports sexual violence,” Burke says. She will be addressing how sexual violence impacts women in particular, but also minority groups that are often silenced in the community. “This year will be especially important for allies and survivors to come together to show the university that we are survivor- focused.” TBTN will kick off at 6 pm Thursday, April 26, with a rally at the UO’s EMU Amphitheater with keynote speeches by Burke and Kayla, a Eugene spoken-word artist, as well as “protest and performance” provided by the Eugene Radical Cheerleaders. The rally will be followed by a march to 8th and Oak, accompanied by the 30-person percussion ensemble Samba Ja and Nicole Sanguree on acoustic guitar. It will wrap up with the speak-out at Kesey Square. TBTN is sponsored by the UO Women’s Center and Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS). — Alexandra Notman happening people AG RACE STIRS WEED DEBATE The Oregon attorney general primary race between Dwight Holton and Ellen Rosenblum is fraught with complexity and nuance, but for some medical marijuana advocates, the race has boiled down to who’s better on pot. “Dwight’s Not Right” reads the headline on a press release from Robert Wolfe of Citizens for Sensible Law Enforcement (CSLE), which is sponsoring Initiative Petition 24, which would legalize marijuana for personal use. If the initiative is approved, a ballot measure will go before voters in November. The CSLE statement says Holton called the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA) a “train wreck” and “is campaigning on his plan to gut it,” but Rosenblum “will support Oregon’s voter-approved medical marijuana program, and says personal marijuana use is the lowest priority for law enforcement.” But it turns out the two candidates are not very far apart on the issues of both medical marijuana and possession of small amounts of weed. Both candidates were interviewed by EW on this and other topics. Holton says he has called the OMMA a “train wreck” but he has no intention of “gutting” the program or campaigning on that agenda. He says he would like to see it improved. “We passed this law for very compassionate reasons,” he says. “We were trying to get relief to people who were in desperate need. That’s what the law’s about, and I’ll enforce it and uphold it.” Holton says when he was the U.S. attorney he “heard from people in the medical marijuana community that they knew patients who could not get access to marijuana, and we know from law enforcement folks that medical marijuana ends up on the black market. So if we are going to maintain the integrity of the program and honor the will of the voters then we ought to look at making it better.” “Ellen says she’ll make the enforcement of drug trafficking laws a low priority,” he says. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to telegraph law enforcement about what laws CONTINUED P. 8 BY PAUL NEEVEL TIM MUELLER A native of Appleton, Wisc., Tim Mueller spent two years at Iowa State, dropped out, joined a band and moved to Connecticut. “The band broke up when the bass player joined the Air Force,” says Mueller, who stayed on in Connecticut, found work at the post office, got married and had a daughter. After they discovered Oregon on a vacation trip, the family moved west in 1991. “Klamath Falls had the only postmaster in Oregon who would take a transfer,” says Mueller, who got divorced three years later, then transferred to Springfield. In 1997 he advertised for a housemate and found Michelle Jones, who was working with Steve Brown on their first autism retreat. “I helped because I had a computer and wanted to learn to use it,” he says. “The three of us started KindTree Productions, aka Autism Rocks.” Fifteen years later, Jones and Brown have moved on, but Mueller, now retired and remarried, remains as secretary/treasurer of KindTree - Autism Rocks. “Last summer we had 145 people at our family camp,” he says. “Every year, the magic happens: Someone has a breakthrough.” On Friday, May 4, the public is invited to The PROM, a benefit event in the Vet’s Club Ballroom, with music by Etouffee and DJ Elian, hosted by Queen Holly GoSlugly. Find details at kindtree.org Still a musician, Mueller will perform with his new band, Steel Wool, at the Saturday Market on June 23. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
