Oregon's proposed new class of terrorists

[Tim May]

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

>> May[SMTP:timcmay at 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.