NEW S
ACTIVIST
SECRETIVE TRANS-PACIFIC
PARTNERSHIP REVEALED
LERT
• The Eugene Food and Ag Forum is the local
version of InFARMation and meets on the first Sunday of
each month from 4 to 6 pm at Cozmic, 199 W. 8th Ave.
The next forum will be Jan. 5.
• Sen. Lee Beyer and Rep. Phil Barnhart will host a
series of “listening sessions” from 7:30 to 9 am starting
Monday, Jan. 6, at Randy’s Main Street Café in
Brownsville, then at Nana’s Cafe inside the Coburg Pizza
Company in Coburg; then from 5:30 to 7 pm Thursday,
Jan. 9, at Aunt Dings Restaurant in Walterville. RSVP
at 607-9207 or by email at rep.philbarnhart@state.or.
us.
• Public hearings on Eugene city budget options
have been scheduled for 5:30 pm Tuesday, Jan. 21, at
Harris Hall and 5:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 29, at the
Eugene Public Library. Community members will be
asked to respond to a list of Budget Committee options
or suggest their own. Five of the six current options
being put forward present different combinations of
service reductions, while the sixth option calls for a
citywide across-the-board reduction of 2 percent for all
departments. See eugene-or.gov/budget.
• Springfield Mayor Christine Lundberg is kicking off a
campaign to raise money for the construction of an
additional three Conestoga huts in Springfield. The
campaign is in collaboration with the Springfield Shelter
Rights Alliance, St. Vincent de Paul’s overnight parking
program and local churches. Each Conestoga hut costs
about $1,200 to build. Donations can be mailed to CALC
at 458 Blair Blvd., Eugene 97402, and designated “SSRA
Conestoga Huts.” Donations can also be made at
calclane.org.
POLLUTION UPDATE
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) announced on Dec. 20 their intent to find that
the State of Oregon has failed to submit an approvable
coastal nonpoint pollution control program (required by
the federal Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization
Amendments of 1990). The agencies specifically
propose to find Oregon’s program deficient with regard
to new development, onsite sewage disposal, and
forestry. Public comments on the proposed finding are
being accepted through March 20. The agencies are
also accepting comments regarding the adequacy of
agricultural measures in Oregon’s program to protect
salmon spawning, rearing, and migration. More
information about commenting can be found at goo.gl/
ISc0mi.
Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project
CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS
We ran a wrong date in Biz Beat Dec. 26 for a free
legal clinic for veterans that will be held at 5 pm on the
last Wednesdays of the month. The next will be Jan. 29.
See Biz Beat this week for updated information.
lighten up
BY RAFAEL ALDAVE
Looking for a needle in a haystack is
like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Are you listening, NSA?
8
January 2, 2014 • eugeneweekly.com
OMEN ANSWERING
SMALL BIZ HEALTH
CARE QUESTIONS
Health care insurance has long been confusing, and the
troubled rollout of Cover Oregon hasn’t clarified much. But
Jan. 10, the Oregon Microenterprise Network (OMEN) will
visit NEDCO offices in Springfield to listen to small business
owners and help answer questions about buying health care
for employees.
“Our goal is to help our members understand this pro-
cess,” says OMEN Executive Director Marilyn Johnson-
Hartzog, adding that the free session is open to all. She says
the small business portal of the Cover Oregon website, which
is not yet functional, is designed to let employers make ap-
ples-to-apples comparisons of different health care plans and
lower administration costs.
The Affordable Care Act doesn’t require organizations
with fewer than 50 full-time employees to provide health in-
surance, but some do in order to reduce turnover and for ethi-
cal reasons. Buying through Cover Oregon also makes small
businesses eligible for the Small Business Health Care Tax
Credit. The tax credit’s maximum raises in 2014 to 50 percent
of premium payments made by small business employers.
According to the IRS website, smaller businesses generally
get a bigger tax break.
“The ship has not sailed, it’s just that the business owners
have been put on hold,” Johnson-Hartzog says. She notes that
even OMEN is affected by Cover Oregon’s technical difficul-
ties. “We renewed the current plan that we had,” she says,
but OMEN will cancel its coverage and buy through Cover
Oregon when it becomes functional.
Michael Cox, a communications specialist with Cover Or-
egon, says there’s not yet a target date for releasing SHOP, the
small group portal for buying health care coverage.
The session will be held at NEDCO’s offices at 212
Main St., Spfd., 1 to 2:30 pm Jan. 10. OMEN asks for
RVSPs to the event by Jan. 8 to taylor@omenetwork.org.
— Shannon Finnell
The Trans-Pacific Partnership sounds like a conspiracy
theory. The TPP talks about a trade deal that will govern
40 percent of U.S. imports and exports as well as affect
copyrights, pharmaceuticals and more are being conduct-
ed in secret, and only a few portions of the agreement and
memos about it have been leaked. Congressman Peter De-
Fazio says he vehemently opposes the TPP.
The TPP is being negotiated between the U.S., Canada
and about 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region including
Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New
Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It does not cur-
rently include China, but DeFazio says that could change.
The TPP has been under negotiation for nearly a decade,
but is only now coming close to being voted on by Con-
gress. An end of the year deadline for a final version of the
TPP has passed.
Despite the fact that Congress will vote on the deal,
DeFazio says the TPP secrecy extends even to Senate and
House members. He says in order to view what’s in the
TPP document he would have to make a special appoint-
ment, with no staff present, not take notes and then not
talk about what he saw. He says he did not look at the
document and instead has reviewed the leaked portions.
According to memos about the TPP leaked in December,
the agreement would give new political powers to corpo-
rations, increase the cost of prescription medications and
restrict bank regulation. It would possibly outlaw his pro-
posed Wall Street transaction tax, DeFazio says.
A chapter of the TPP
on intellectual property
released by WikiLeaks
in November, shortly
before the TPP talks
in Salt Lake City, con-
tained wording that
according to the Elec-
tronic Frontier Founda-
tion, “carries draconian
— CO NGRESSMAN
copyright enforcement
P E T E R D E FA Z I O
provisions that threaten
users’ rights and could
stifle innovation well
into the 21st century.” DeFazio says that it looks like the
TPP could make much-needed pharmaceuticals more ex-
pensive for developing countries.
The secrecy about TPP is allowed because under presi-
dential authority such agreements that are said to possibly
affect national security can be made classified, DeFazio
says. However, he says that one power that President
Barack Obama does not currently have is the “fast-track”
authority that former President Bill Clinton had when
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was
put in place. Fast-track authority means Congress would
have an up-or-down vote, and it forbids amendments. “It
doesn’t matter who is president or what they said as can-
didates, once they become president they start saying free
trade agreements will benefit Americans, and time and
time again it does not,” DeFazio says.
According to the Sierra Club, the TPP would give “cor-
porations the right to sue a government for unlimited cash
compensation — in private and not-transparent tribunals
— over any law or regulation that a corporation argues is
hurting its expected future profits,” and allow attacks on
environmental laws.
DeFazio and others call the TPP “NAFTA on steroids.”
DeFazio voted against NAFTA, which he says cost the
U.S. thousands of jobs. The congressman says an “unholy
alliance” of Democrats, Tea Party Republicans and “Re-
publicans who actually care about the economy” could
make sure the TPP does not get fast tracked in Congress.
DeFazio says the TPP is “informed and manipulat-
ed by corporate interests” and if the public knew what
was in the classified document, they wouldn’t like it.
— Camilla Mortensen
‘The Trans-Pacific
Partnership is
informed and
manipulated by
corporate interests.’