The end and a new beginning are so close

In four days everything will change. For the past eight months we’ve been on the campaign trail. It’s like a job interview that lasts way too long. On November 4th there will be no employer who will say, “Rick we’ll call you in two weeks”. Instead, the voters of Oregon will say yes or no. There’s something very comforting about that. Four more days.

I’m so frustrated.

This has nothing to do with the campaign, the election or anything anyone has said. I’m angry because someone broke into a garage down the street from our home and ripped off my son and his friends’ quad and motorcycle.

They snuck into the barn section of this very secure garage, cut a hole in the roof, climbed in and took the boys bikes. They used gloves to prevent anyone from finding fingerprints.

Jess worked hard for the seven thousand dollars it cost him to buy and beef up his quad. That piece of machinery was everything to him. But someone thought it was their right to have it.

Jess is heartbroken. Some will say “there’s always a lesson to learn”. I don’t buy it. What lesson does Jess learn when he works his butt off to buy something and someone decides they can take it.

I look at my son and feel so bad for him. He had about 7,000 of his own dollars into that bike. He worked long hours to get that bike and he had it just the way he wanted it.

Jess will survive. He’ll work hard again, and buy another quad. The reason; he’s a good kid.

I wonder what the thieves are thinking tonight?

Register Guard: OEA Slimes Measure 65

The following is an editorial of interest from the Register-Guard.

OEA slimes Measure 65
Open-primary proposal falsely linked to Sizemore

The Oregon Education Association has every right to oppose Measure 65, the open primary initiative supported by a bipartisan lineup of political luminaries, including former Oregon secretaries of state Phil Keisling and Norma Paulus and former governors John Kitzhaber and Vic Atiyeh.

But the state’s largest teachers’ union does not have a right to lie, and that is precisely what it has done in its campaign to defeat the proposal to change Oregon’s current partisan primary system to allow universal participation.

In a recent mass mailing, the OEA knowingly and falsely linked Measure 65 to controversial initiative petitioner Bill Sizemore, who had nothing to do with the measure. It did so by urging its members to “Vote No on Bill Sizemore’s Measures. No on 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65.”

Sizemore is the author of Measures 58, 59, 60, 63 and 64 — all five of them, true to Sizemore form, poorly worded, ill-advised and loaded with unintended consequences. But “Bad Penny Bill,” as the OEA mailing calls him, had absolutely no involvement in Measure 65. Nor, for that matter, did Sizemore have a hand in Measures 61 and 62, which were sponsored by former state legislator Kevin Mannix, although both Mannix and Sizemore do share the financial backing of Nevada millionaire Loren Parks.

It’s no secret why the OEA wants its members to believe Measure 65 is authored by Sizemore, who is to teachers and public employees what Hannibal was to ancient Romans. By smearing Measure 65 with Sizemore’s name, the union hopes to persuade members who don’t know better to regard the open-primary proposal as automatically suspect and deserving of a “no” vote. To put it another way, the union is engaging in guilt by false association.

It’s also no secret why the OEA doesn’t like Measure 65, which would create an all-comers May primary that would be open to all registered voters and would send the two top vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, for all legislative, state and congressional offices to the general election. Under the measure, Democrats and Republicans would no longer get to pick their respective candidates, leaving nonaffiliated voters shut out of the electoral process until November.

It would be fundamental change that would diminish the control of the major parties over the nominating process — and, by extension, diminish the control of interest groups that heavily influence those parties. Measure 65 would empower voters, especially independents, and would reduce the powerful influence that the OEA and other major labor unions have on a Democratic Party that in recent years has dominated Oregon politics.

The OEA has violated the trust of its members by resorting to deception instead of engaging them in a straightforward discussion of the issues.

Perhaps that is because they know they are unlikely to prevail in arguing against a measure that promises to reduce partisan polarization in Oregon politics and to draw more than 400,000 independent voters — including, yes, members of the Oregon Education Association — into the primary elections from which they are now unfairly and unwisely excluded.

Lost Art

I was talking with some folks, about politics and had this sad realization. We as a culture really don’t know how to communicate. We talk at each other rather than really listening. We start a conversation, acting as though we want answers, but really we’ve already formed our judgment long before the questioned passed our lips.

What happened to the art of Communication? In it’s place we’ve gone to persuasive argument. We get into these conversations, and say we are looking for answers, but instead spend the whole time trying to convince the other person “we are right”. No wonder there is so much gridlock in Oregon.

I had some students yesterday, trying to convince one of my staff, that Rick Dancer is “Too Conservative”. Funny, coming from people who have never talked with me face to face. I had to smile. Many in my own party think I’m too liberal. So, which is it?

The best thing I’ve learned in politics is to find out what you believe, be flexible, but don’t worry what people say. The “Experts” only have as much credibility as you give them. One more thing, when you get into a conversation, if you really want to learn something, “Check” your motivation at the door. I used to tell kids, if you are thinking of the next thing you want to say, while the other person is talking, you aren’t listening.

Zach’s Post

I was wondering what I had been missing lately and I suddenly remembered I have not posted anything at Rick’s site lately. Anyway I was looking down at a recent newspaper on the floor at home today and I saw your quote saying apathy is the enemy. It occured to me then “that is why Rick gets such a kick out of my political antics…I have not even a molecule of apathy in my body”.Someday I will have to gain a little ,though, to rest. The debate at the city club was very moving for me-listening to you surge past political mumbo jumbo and speak to the people. It drives me almost to tears listening to you talk to them. Tonight I thought to myself “Rick Dancer…breaking the sound byte barrier”. The media love to get lazy but you cause them to think, and write better articles. Perhaps some of them will someday feel they have a hollow profession and strive for some higher calling. I have never seen decent political articles on the front page of the local paper. You are changing that. Also your detailed understanding of the plight of our endangered species-the fisherman at the coast. Pork barrel renewable energy spending is not as important as our quiet heroes who risk their lives in this overlooked profession. Thank you for understanding “sanctuarys” may not be so wonderful as the universities and non-profit industrial complex(and the governor) would have us believe. Usually I read the Register Guard with disgust as they cry chicken little over global whining junk science. Lately you have stirred some of their coverage into what really could happen in politics. I do not know how things will all turn out but I do know your future in Oregon is going to be huge-like that sneaker wave. And when it breaks business as usual types better not have their backs to it or God help them.

Remember “Service”?

When I was a kid I remember you couldn’t pull into a gas station without having the attendant wash your vehicles windows. That was just the way it was done. It was part of the service at a service station. On a recent trip to Lakeview, Oregon, this man in the picture above, said those same words. I said I wanted to take a picture of him washing my car window and he said to me “that’s just part of what we do”. I’m not trying to knock service stations because most don’t do that anymore, not at all. But this got me to thinking. Do we even understand what the term “Service” means anymore? I wonder.

Take for instance “Public Service”, that should mean to serve the public right? But instead today that service is not about the public but instead about serving special interests, different groups, parties or platforms that really don’t mean all that much to the “PUBLIC”.

Wouldn’t it be nice to pull up the gas station again and have someone wash your window? Wouldn’t it be equally as refreshing to put someone in office who cared more about what you think than what the “Groups” think?

I’ve got a crazy idea. Maybe it’s time for the public to redefine what it sees as “Public Service”.