Local
Vocal
and
HOT AIR SOCIETY BY TONY CORCORAN
70 Ain’t Old (If You Are a Tree)
IS AGE-ISM WOKE, LESS WOKE OR UN-WOKE?
I
finally made it up to the state Capitol in mid-May
for the first time this session. I even found Magoo’s
Sports Bar, my favorite top-secret unofficial
senate caucus office in Salem. I had a 70th birthday
beer with two old contract lobbyist friends, one a
Republican and the other a Democrat, and I tried
to get a sense of the legislative pulse this session.
They both groaned simultaneously. “It’s as bad as it’s
been since you left the building, Tony.” I reminded them
that was 16 years ago. They asked me if I missed the
PERS debate. Some things never change.
Turning 70 was a sweet birthday for me. As the Irish
say: It’s better to be seen than viewed! I only bring up my
age to address today’s prevailing question: Who do you
like in the Democratic presidential primary? And who
won’t you vote for? And why?
We have 23 announced Democratic candidates,
similar to the circular firing squad that arose amidst
Republicans who were defeated ultimately by Trump in
their 2016 primary. According to the National Review
the ages of the various official candidates in 2020 will be:
Bernie Sanders, 79; Joe Biden, 77; Elizabeth Warren, 71;
Jay Inslee, 69; John Hickenlooper, 68; Sherrod Brown,
67; Amy Klobuchar, 60.
RUFKM? Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory
Booker will be in their 50s. Beto O’Rourke and Julian
Castro will be in their 40s and Pete Buttigieg will be in
his 30s. Trump will be 74.
To get a sense of the generational difference when Joe
Biden was first elected to the Senate, Buttigieg, Gabbard
and Castro had not been born yet and O’Rourke was two
months old.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were 46 and 47 when
elected. Polling today shows that 37 percent of all
Democrats, Republicans and non-affiliated voters won’t
vote for a 70- year-old.
But I wasn’t in Salem to see if anyone up there had a
clue who might get elected in 2020. I was there to attend
an annual training conference hosted by the Oregon
Judicial Department.
For the past 13 years I have served as a volunteer on
an Oregon Citizen Review Board (CRB) in Lane County.
This CRB is a program within Oregon’s state court
system that reviews the cases of children in foster care
and reports our findings to the juvenile court judges.
Currently, there are 62 boards in Oregon’s 36 counties.
Lane County has nine boards.
There’s been a big controversy over recent out-
of-state placements of foster children and “hotel”
placements as a substitute for traditional foster family
“homes.” A renewed $24 million class-action lawsuit
filed against the Oregon Department of Human
Services (DHS) and a report on the conditions of foster
facilities in Utah are the latest in a growing set of serious
allegations against the agency. And there’s a bill before
the Legislature to deal with “congregate care” facilities
— group homes or institutions providing 24-hour care.
I’ve watched Oregon’s foster care system for 30 years.
I started life in an Irish orphanage, described as a “work
farm for unwed mothers,” for three years. I’m interested
in other states’ best practices and how we do business.
I represented child protective service workers for 20
years as an SEIU union representative; prior to that I
was a rank and file member, a state worker doing welfare
fraud investigation. I served 10 years in the Legislature
and 13 years with the CRB. Which proves nothing more
than that I am very old and apparently can’t hold a job.
Here’s what I learned at the CRB conference: 7,500
kids are currently in the system, 76 of them are being
held out-of-state, some of them in congregate care.
These 76 kids are housed out of state because we do
not have enough beds for seriously mentally ill children
or children who pose serious physical or sexual risk to
other children, adults and animals.
If the governor’s budget were adopted tomorrow with
an additional 100+ case workers right now, we would
still only be at a 67 percent staffing level, according
to Child Welfare’s Program Administrator Marilyn
Jones. That’s the point I always make: This is a 30-year
underfunding problem in the making.
Putting kids in hotels was inevitable. Sending kids
out of state was inevitable. Lack of resources is not a new
issue in the foster world. Understaffing and caseload
size have been a problem for a long time. The governor’s
oversight commission is a good first start. I hope they
listen to frontline workers and supervisors.
Stay tuned.
Former state Sen. Tony Corcoran of Cottage Grove is former legislator
and a retired state employee.
VIEWPOINT BY CHUCK AREFORD
Green New Deal is a Must
CLIMATE CHANGE IS A DIRE EMERGENCY
mericans are waking-up to the existential
threat posed by climate change. Polling
shows concern about global warming
spiking
among
Americans
while
Democrats push the ambitious Green
New Deal. Remarkably, surveys indicated
strong support for key components of the Green New
Deal, even among Republicans, when it was introduced
in December 2018. Washington’s Gov. Jay Inslee is
running for president on a climate change platform, and
the CBS’s 60 Minutes featured the Juliana “climate kids”
lawsuit. Doubtless this is in response to the dire urgency
of the climate crisis and creates hope and opportunity
for saving our Earth.
The latest climate change science is grim. Global
warming is happening faster and thus is far more
advanced than previously thought. The current heat
retention from greenhouse gases is estimated to be
the equivalent of 400,000 nuclear bombs (the size of
the one dropped on Hiroshima) exploding every day.
A 2016 Scientific American article states that oceans
have absorbed 93 percent of this heat, otherwise
the atmospheric temperature would have risen an
unimaginable 97 degrees Fahrenheit. The laws of
physics are real and immutable.
Over the past 542 million years, there have been
at least five mass extinctions, and they all closely
corresponded with sudden increases in atmospheric
A
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
carbon dioxide and ocean acidity. Atmospheric CO2
is rising one hundred times faster than any previous
natural increase and oceans are acidifying faster than
anytime in the last 300 million years. We are either at the
beginning of or in the midst of the sixth mass extinction.
The current concentration of atmospheric CO2 has
historically led to an increased temperature of 7 degrees
Celsius, which could happen before the end of the
century. Such a temperature increase would be beyond
catastrophic, as vast regions of the Earth would become
uninhabitable.
The good news is that if we act quickly and decisively,
the worst outcomes from climate change can probably
be avoided. The only way to save our Earth is to rapidly
reduce greenhouse gasses, as outlined in the Green New
Deal (HR 109). We can then resume our role of global
leadership, convincing the rest of the world to follow
suit. We have no choice.
The struggle also involves environmental justice. We
must ensure that minorities, indigenous communities,
working people and those who live in rural areas do not
bear an inordinate burden of the cost of the transition
from fossil fuels.
Critics of the Green New Deal offer intense resis-
tance, saying it is too expensive and unrealistic. It is the
climate deniers, however, including our president and
150 members of Congress (all Republicans) who are
seriously deluded, living in a fantasy world deep in the
pockets of the fossil fuel industry. They insist it is too
expensive to save our planet, which is not only absurd,
but untrue. An investment switching over to clean ener-
gy now could save as much as $26 trillion do by the year
2030. Legitimate criticism says our current levels of
consumption are simply unsustainable, even with clean
energy, and the Green New Deal will not solve all our en-
vironmental problems.
The Green New Deal will pass if ordinary Americans
heed the call to mobilize like we did in World War II; it
is a global emergency. In addition to working with our
elected officials, we can go to rallies, lectures, workshops,
marches and protests. We can talk to our friends and
neighbors and dialogue with those who disagree with us.
The 350 Eugene Calendar and other progressive sites
offer climate-focused events, usually several times a
week. We can enrich our lives while finding the courage
to leave our comfort zones and do something truly
extraordinary.
Historical research by Erica Chenoweth, political sci-
entist and professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy
School, tells us that is only takes 3.5 percent of the citi-
zens in a country engaged in active and sustained non-
violent resistance to change any but the most ruthless
government. Trump may veto the Green New Deal but
we the people have the power. The Green New Deal is
right in front of us, we just have to reach out and grab it.
Chuck Areford is a retired mental health professional. has been a
Eugene resident for 30 years and volunteers with 350 Eugene.
J U N E
6 ,
2 0 1 9
49