Tim May[SMTP:timcmay@got.net] wrote:

On Wednesday, May 21, 2003, at 02:37 PM, Trei, Peter wrote:

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May[SMTP:timcmay@got.net] wrote:

The Oregon law makes a very broad class of forms of civil disobedience--including unscheduled gatherings which disrupt traffic, sit-ins in colleges, marches, etc.--the same as blowing up buildings or crashing airliners, and carries a mandatory, no parole, minimum of 25 years incarceration. After 25 years, the possibility of being a slave laborer (in effect) picking up trash and cutting brush for the state of Oregon.

What the hell is it with Oregon, anyway? More idiotic legislation seems to come out of that state, in proportion to its population, than any other place except the District of Columbia.

Peter Trei

Disclaimer: My opinions, no one elses!

I lived there for two years, 1980-82. Intel requested that I move my lab up to where the memory division, so I went. Went I moved to a new project, they moved me back to California...and I was able to dry out.

My theory is that Oregon is a mixture of:

-- backwoods rednecks ("We don't need no stinking jobs up here...we got the mills.")

-- former Californians anxious to replicate Marin County in the Willamette Valley (the famous map showing Interstate 5 veering _around_ Oregon, and the famous saying "Don't Californicate Oregon," a slogan written by ex-Californians)

-- the most extreme of the back-to-Nature crowd (Eugene, Medford, etc.)

-- inner city ghettoes (in Portland, notably) which are the equal of any back east

The feeling I get is that Oregon combines the worst of California and the 'classic Western' states. California has a highly intrusive, interventionist government, but this is leavened by the liberalism of many of the positions it holds. Thus, while California is really bad for some individual rights (such as the RKBA), it's fairly libertine on others (such as lifestyles). In the 'classic Western' states (I'm thinking of Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Idaho, etc, and I don't claim to be really well informed on this), while the general population holds pretty rightwing views, this is leavened by a strain of semi-libertarianism in the government, in the 'don't intevene' sense. Oregon seems to combine the worst of both, along with none of the good points - a highly intrusive California style government, with very rightwing views. Peter