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WW
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letters to the editor via mail, e-mail
or fax. Letters must be signed by the author and include
the author's street address and phone number for verification.
Preference will be given to letters of 250 words or less.
ENOUGH OF THIS RAILLERY!
I would thank you to correct a misquote invented after
my 1998 Metro campaign by former reporter Bob Young, and
attributed to me after the election in the WW "Winners
Column" [Murmurs, Nov. 11, 1998]. Unfortunately, now WW
editor John Schrag has given the myth new life in his response
to Chena Mesling's June 7 letter to WW (re "Big Boy
at PDX?," April 12, 2000). I would like to finally set the
record straight.
At no time during my 1998 Metro campaign did I oppose light
rail, in general, for our region or anywhere else. In fact,
as a former 10-year resident of the Bay Area and London
I always enjoyed those cities' elevated rail and subway
systems while going to work or being a tourist. And I have
always supported more and safer bike and pedestrian paths.
In my autumn 1998 Metro Council endorsement interview with
WW political staff, I said I was skeptical of the
north-south/south-north financing plans and engineering
designs. I'm certainly not the only one who found N-S/S-N's
financing plan questionable or advocated for redesign of
its route.
After the $400 million bond measure failed in the tri-county
region in the 1998 election, the news eventually leaked
out that Congress was not going to be an easy mark for the
bulk of the additional billion bucks needed in federal funding
after all. Metro's S-N planners also changed its route and
renamed it, resulting in additional yips of protest from
residents and business owners who occupy the new "I-MAX"
route.
The shortcomings of the 1998 south-north plan were apparent
to me during the Metro Council campaign, and I said as much
to your political interviewers. I questioned its price tag--averaging
about $100 million per mile just to build it--as well as
its consumption of traffic lanes in already congested local
streets and its use as justification for rezoning residential
neighborhoods into high-density, urban-renewal strip developments.
Local light rail differs from both London Underground and
Bay Area BART-rail in that both those systems are elevated
over or tunneled under ground, thus avoiding interference
with auto and truck traffic. The local light-rail planners
designed the S-N system to cannibalize valuable surface
land--meanwhile attempting to create "instant ridership"
from new, high-intensity urban renewal to justify the system's
exorbitant construction costs. Highway "strip developments"
or "transit-oriented developments" (which locally translates
to a quarter-mile swath of high-density mixed housing and
commercial) are both equally objectionable to me.
So in 1998 I would have said, more pointedly, that the
S-N plan was too expensive and facilitated high-density
redevelopment of established residential neighborhoods,
which I believed would unfairly impact their quality of
life, not to mention the tax burden of individual homeowners.
I also remarked that political backers of the S-N campaign
seemed to mostly live in low-density suburbs, while expecting
the rest of us in the city to become crowded like rats.
As a part-time journalist myself, I particularly disliked
Young's silly pun in which he wrongly characterized my opinion
of light rail as a "vehicle for accommodating growth." It
is not something I would say, nor did I say it.
My impression of Young at the candidates' interview for
the May primary, and later the November runoff, was that
he was so busy brown-nosing his favorite front-runner in
the race that he was hardly aware of anyone else. His elections
puff piece characterizing my opponent as a politician equal
in stature to basketball legend Bill Walton showed his overblown
style in the misguided service of journalistic bias.
Years ago, when I was a PSU Vanguard newspaper copy
editor and reporter under the direction of Wilma Morrison,
one of the first things I learned was that a good reporter
never invents or edits his subject's statements.
I am glad Young has taken his weasely self off to parts
elsewhere and no longer works at WW, but I would
appreciate your allowing me to correct the record.
Liz Callison
Southwest Knightsbridge Drive
John Schrag responds (again): For the record,
here's what Bob Young wrote in our Nov. 11, 1998, edition,
under the heading of election winners:
"Slow-growther Liz Callison won more than 40 percent
against David Bragdon--the darling of Portland's liberal
elite--even though Callison had little money, no name recognition,
few endorsements and no campaign experience. She did have
one interesting argument: She was against light rail because
it was
a vehicle for accommodating growth."
A few observations:
First, Callison confirms that she opposed the ill-fated
south-north light-rail project, implying that it would force
people to live "crowded like rats." Her beef, apparently,
is that she doesn't oppose "light rail in general." Since
the South-North light rail was the line being considered
back then, I think Bob's statement, which was never portrayed
as a direct quote, is accurate.
Second, I doubt David Bragdon would consider being called
"the darling of Portland's liberal elite" as flattery.
Third, as a full-time journalist myself, I particularly
like silly puns.
Finally, I've always felt Bob was more like a mongoose
than a weasel.
COUNTER ATTACK
Mary Starrett did her duty and filled out the part of
the census form which is required by the Constitution. She
told the government how many people there were in her residence.
She's harassed at her workplace by a census worker, threatened
with retaliation by an attorney general who's prone to those
kinds of actions, threatened with an IRS audit, and you
give her the Rogue of the Week award [WW,
June 21, 2000]? The census worker is my Rogue
of the Week and should be fired immediately.
The Census Bureau claims no other governmental agencies
have access to their records. History, though, proves otherwise--as
the Japanese-Americans herded into West Coast concentration
camps during World War II can attest. The census worker's
threats of government retaliation against Starrett show
just how secret your records are, when push comes to shove.
The Libertarian Party was first among many who have taken
the principled stand that our duty as citizens is to tell
the government how many of us there are, since that is required
by the Constitution. Everything else is none of their business.
By the way--where exactly in the Constitution does it require
us to tell the government how many toilets we have, or how
long it takes us to get
to work?
Robert Hansen
Southwest Vermont Street
BAD SIGN FOR SIZEMORE
One cure for the pox of Bill Sizemore and his sick moneybag
buds (of "Who Will Stop This
Man?," WW, June 7, 2000) is inoculation, with
a deft turn of the wrist that redirects his toxic strength
back against himself.
What is his strength? Paid signature gatherers. Everywhere.
How does a deft wrist turn him against himself? Sign his
petitions.
Sign early, sign often. Sign as many times as you find
his jackals at you. Especially sign if you are not registered
to vote. Fill his forms with duplicates, triplicates, fraud
and phony names. Falsify , falsify, falsify.
Inflate his costs per valid signature. He wants beaucoup
signatures? We'll give him signatures, and each bad duplicate
costs him 400 more good ones.
Size matters, of course, but Sizemore is much less than
he says--a teenie weenie.
Wendi Meremark
Oregon City
BLUELINING
Anyone who doesn't believe that the cops automatically
side with each other should re-read Officer Hurlman's letter
(WW, June 14, 2000). Hurlman openly assumes that
anyone charged with a crime is guilty and states that to
his mind, a police report is better evidence than medical
records. Absurdly, he even argues that because he knows
the officers involved in the incidents mentioned in Nick
Budnick's WW article, he is a more objective judge
of the facts than either a journalist or a panel of citizens
could be.
Hurlman's letter unwittingly highlights the very reasons
we need a real civilian review board--like the one the Police
Accountability Campaign proposes--rather than trusting the
police to investigate themselves.
Kristian Williams
Southeast Belmont Street
NEWSFLASH: KID ROCK NOT REAL!
Well, it would have been refreshing if someone at WW
had the guts to write a favorable or even mixed review of
Kid Rock's latest offering instead of the utterly predictable
blather on display in your recent review [Record
Reviews, June 21, 2000]. How did Jamie Rich, an individual
noted for his predilection toward bloodless electronic British
bands, even get picked for this assignment?
Mr. Rich utterly misses the artistry of Kid Rock. Does
he really think that all of Rock's vainglorious puffery
and posing is for real? The braggadocio, the shit-talkin',
the fixation on ego, money and... women? Please. It's utter
rap sarcasm and kitsch filtered through some sweet riffs
and coated with the best persona in show biz since Liberace
tinkled the ivories.
If you don't get the joke, don't write about it.
Bart King
Northeast 43rd Avenue
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