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 politicians are bought and paid for by the various special interests, as in most places. When I was there, it was mainly the timber and fishing industries, with high tech just starting to make a big difference (the major high tech employers were Tektronix (Beaverton), H-P (Corvallis, the calculator division back then), and Intel (memories in Aloha, a couple of wafer fabs, systems in Hillsboro). Since then, the high tech industry has boomed dramatically. Oregon legislators are always looking to appear important and busy. Hence the proliferation of laws. And Portland has always had a kind of inferiority complex when it compares itself to Seattle (and San Francisco to the south). It tries to get the big conventions, but fails to. I surmise that one of the reasons for the "Be in a protest which disrupts things, go to prison for the rest of your life" proposed legislation is to make Portland a G7/GATT/NAFTA/WTO-friendly venue, which Seattle clearly was not a couple of years ago. Portland has also had a bunch of incidents where cops were on the take, where cops were rooting through people's garbage, etc. In a hilarious incident, a newspaper took the same tack the cops were taking, that "items left at the curb have been abandoned," and published the contents of the trash cans of the Chief of Police and several other burrowcrats. They were not amused and had the editor arrested. Portland is also where the cops partly finance their department by seizing the cars of _suspected_ customers of prostitutes and selling them. No convictions needed, the American way! And Oregon is where the ex-Intel software guy was busted for committing the crime of allegedly thinking about going to Afghanistan to possibly help repel the American invaders and of allegedly knowing some other Muslims who were allegedly shooting guns in the woods. (This was a Fed action, but Oregon cops helped. And certainly the Oregonians are atitter that thought criminals are living amongst them.) And let's not forget the Bhagwan, who had his Rajneeshi followers spreading biological agents (salmonella) at restaurants near his ranch. Perhaps if all 60,000 residents of Rajneeshpuram (or whatever the spelling) had been sentenced to life imprisonment under Senate Bill 742, it would have sent a message! (Actually, that happened about 19-20 years ago, so in a few years they could be on the verge of being released into the Oregon Forestry Rehabilitation Brigade. "Arbeit Macht Frei--And Our Forests Benefit, Too!") My hunch is that some burrowcrats in Salem are convinced the state is under attack by terrorists and weirdoes and that they'd better issue themselves new aluminum foil hats and pass a bunch of draconian laws to make Oregon safe for its Stepford residents. Oregon has pretensions of being an important state, thinks of itself as being a leader in all things environmental and social, but is actually the ultimate NIMBY state.