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The INDEPENDENT, October 21, 2010
The
INDEPENDENT
Published on the first and third Thursdays of each month by
The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St., Vernonia, OR 97064.
Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410.
Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net
Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net
Mentor Noni Andersen
Printed on recycled paper with vegetable based dyes
Opinion
Good candidates and…
Our editorial policy is to not make candidate endorse-
ments. We believe each voter should make an informed de-
cision of their own, not rely on what any other person or the
newspaper suggests. With that said, for the local Vernonia
City Council candidates, we are de-endorsing Mayor Sally
Harrison and Councilor Cindy Ball. The major reasons?
Both of these council members have been on the council the
entire time that the budget has gone south without notice,
yet neither ever appeared to be a bit concerned about the
city’s spending, even though they both serve on the budget
committee (as do all council members). In addition, both sat
and watched as six city administrators went through the re-
volving door of Vernonia city hall in the past six years.
This council (not including Catherine Helmer who was just
appointed this past July) has been highly unresponsive to
the community and the citizens they were elected to serve.
Council has even gone so far as to name a Hillsboro paper
the city’s paper of record, assuring that citizens have a very
hard time seeing public notices and notices of public meet-
ings.
Who should you vote for then? The sheer number of can-
didates running appears to indicate that it’s time for new
faces. We urge you choose one of these new faces and vote
against the Vernonia “lock step administration.”
Vernonia gets F- in records
Attorney General Kroger just released a report (see page
1 for full story) showing Oregon earned an ‘F’ in government
transparency. If Oregon got an ‘F’ we think Vernonia de-
serves an ‘F-’. The reason?
Public records requested many months ago were never
provided. When District Attorney (DA) Steve Atchison sent
the city a letter saying that the records requested were fully
releasable, the city still didn’t hand over the records until
minutes before the seven day deadline after the DA’s notice.
Had they waited minutes longer, they would have had to file
a lawsuit in circuit court, suing the DA instead of handing
over public records. How’s that for transparency. Oh, yeah,
and they thought it would be a good idea to have (that
means ‘pay’) an attorney review the issue. Apparently, they
don’t understand that the only authority higher on the public
records chain of command than the DA is a judge.
Vernonia flunks not only on records transparency, but
also on meetings. They did not give public notice of the
meeting this past Monday, where a quorum of the council
met early to interview two attorney firms to make a hiring de-
cision. The notice should, at least, have been in the window
of city hall for the public, but wasn’t. When this was politely
pointed out to city staff, they were obviously annoyed at the
messenger.
Out of My Mind…
by Noni Andersen
This is an interesting
campaign season, too of-
ten for the wrong reasons.
I don’t watch much com-
mercial TV so I haven’t
seen many of the nause-
ating campaign ads. I
don’t mean ads by candi-
dates or political parties,
but the ads by organiza-
tions that don’t say who is
paying for them.
One thing is clear, however: When five mem-
bers of the Supreme Court went beyond the le-
gal question in the Citizens United case and
gave corporations 1st amendment personhood,
they guaranteed that “independent” organiza-
tions would start buying elections. The purpose
of the ads, of course, is to persuade voters that
electing (fill-in-the-blank) will result in Armaged-
don, or something similar. Facts are not required.
When we know who is paying for statements,
we have more information. A good example is
when GOP House leader John Boehner claimed
that small businesses would be hurt by ending
the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. His office ex-
plained that “small” was determined by how
many people owned a business, which made
Bechtel Corporation, the fifth largest privately
held U.S. firm, a small business!
One part of current politics has been crystal
clear; after Obama won the presidency, the GOP
strategy was to block every piece of legislation
wanted by the Democrats, a strategy they loudly
proclaimed. That resulted in weakening regula-
tions on the financial industry that was hugely re-
sponsible for this deep recession, though the De-
mocrats managed to make a little headway.
Locally and nationally, the GOP opposed
loans to GM and Chrysler to keep jobs here, but
they campaign to return to the policies that give
tax breaks for taking jobs to other countries.
(Those loans are being repaid, incidentally, as
are most of the TARP “bank bailout” funds of the
Bush administration.)
So the GOP wants to extend tax breaks for
the wealthiest 2% and retain subsidies for oil
companies, while making the extension of unem-
ployment benefits either difficult or impossible.
Yes, they did more damage than that, but
those unfunded tax breaks added more to the
deficit than the combined cost of two wars. Add
to that the Medicare prescription program, which
was a present for big Pharma, with its ban on ne-
gotiating drug prices, and you may begin to un-
derstand the $3+ trillion deficit that was sitting
there when Bush left the White House.
Bush and the GOP had eight years to make
the rich richer and the middle class weaker. Any-
one who thought Obama and the Democrats
could change everything in 18 months must be-
lieve in the tooth fairy.
Chris Dudley is the same: He wants lower
business taxes (Forbes Magazine just ranked
Oregon 6th in the nation as good for business,
up from 10th last year — after Measures 66 & 67
passed.), and he wants to eliminate taxes on
Please see page 3