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THE BULLETIN • SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012
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The Bulletin
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Get Bend out of the spin zone
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othing will send the city of Bend’s credibility plummeting faster than treating interactions with residents like it’s a spin zone.
And that’s exactly what the city’s hiring of a public relations firm has looked like. The city has employed Oregon consultants Barney & Worth for $48,000 to help communicate the need for some of the $280 million infrastructure the city has planned. The city does have a legitimate need to ensure the public understands what it’s doing. The public needs to understand the challenges the city faces, the alternatives it considers and the choices it makes. To keep the public informed, the city holds public meetings. The city puts information on its website. The city has a public relations specialist at a cost of more than $90,000 a year. It plans to spend almost $600,000 in outreach for the Bridge Creek water project. And
now it’s added Barney & Worth. But the wrong way to fill the gaps in knowledge or answer critics is to treat it — as Mayor Jeff Eager put it — like it’s selling soda pop, rather than public outreach. The deal with Barney & Worth uses the language of marketing. It talks about branding. It sounds like selling, not like outreach. It’s spin. That language feeds into what critics of Bridge Creek have been saying: The city decides what it is going to do and wants residents to catch up. If you were going to spin it, you could argue that the city’s deal with Barney & Worth has succeeded. It’s managed to get people focused on the $280 million bill taxpayers may be paying. But it has also again raised questions about how well the city is being run.
From the Archives Editor’s note: The following editorial from Nov. 8, 1957, does not necessarily reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board today.
Get on with the anti-missiles work Soviet achievements in rocketry tend momentarily to obscure the fact that while missiles research has been pushed both here and abroad, both cold war camps have been developing anti-missiles as well. The Soviet missiles spokesman, Maj. Gen. G.I. Prokovsky, for example, said on Sept. 11 that antimissiles could be designed to halt an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the 50-second period during which it could be visible to conventional radar before striking its target. This was after Russia had announced the firing of an ICBM, but before the launching of either Sputnik. Nine days later, Gen. Thomas D. White, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, disclosed development of a powerful radar devices that can detect ICBMs at a distance of 3,000 miles.... In most recent wars, the introduction of new weapons has sometimes proved decisive, more often indecisive. The French, for example, kept their development of the mitrailleuse — machine gun — so beshrouded in secrecy that when they finally used it in the FrancoGerman war, their troops were unable to employ or fire it effectively. The Germans in World War I caught the French totally unprepared for a poison gas attack at the second battle of Ypres in 1915,
despite the fact that they were forewarned. The French troops fled, opening a gap of four miles wide in the front, but the German command had allotted no fresh reserves to follow up the attack. Thereupon, as Liddell Hart has recounted, the Germans “incurred the odium of introducing a novel and horrifying weapon� without equal profit. Only the tenacity of Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty enabled the British to develop and use the tank — a cover name for “land-ship� — in World War I. “Winston’s folly� was first used by the British in the Battle of Thiepval, Sept., 15, 1916 — and the Germans threw down their guns and fled. Gen. Ludendorff wrote in his memoirs that he finally sought an armistice because of “enemy tanks in unexpectedly large numbers.� The awful and decisive weapon of World War II, of course, was the atom bomb, but there is competent evidence that the Japanese would have surrendered even without the bombing of Hiroshima. Most threatening to the Allies was another new weapon, the V-2 rocket, Gen. Eisenhower wrote in “Crusade in Europe�: “It seemed likely that, if the Germans had succeeded in perfecting and using these new weapons six months earlier, our invasion of Europe would have proved exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible.� In any event, the lessons of the Sputniks would appear to be not one of despair but one of determination to get on with the anti-missiles work.
My Nickel’s Worth Telfer’s real record I would like to reply to Marc Miller’s letter from April 24. Miller is attempting to further distract voters from Sen. Telfer’s real record. I find it sad that he is unable to accurately defend her record. Miller incorrectly cited SJR 202 as the bill that Telfer sponsored with Democrats trying to repeal Oregon’s kicker law. In the advertisement in The Bulletin that same day, former Republican House Majority Leader Tim Knopp makes it very clear that the bill he is referring to is SJR 26 from the previous year. SJR 26 does exactly what Knopp has said. Taking half of kicker refunds and giving them to the government. I don’t think Miller has actually read the bill. If he had, I doubt he would have attacked Knopp and his own party for calling out Telfer on sponsoring legislation with Portland Democrats that would have led to further government expansion with your hard-earned tax dollars. He also would have known that it was the taxpayer defense groups who killed the bill. Rich Stanfield Bend
A wonderful community When tragedy strikes and you lose all your possessions, what do you do? 4 a.m. April 19, a tremendous natural gas explosion at 337 N.W.
Georgia rips apart a building and ignites neighboring structures. Before the fire was extinguished the Bend chapter of the American Red Cross, led by RC volunteers Roy Larsen and Carrie Sammons, was on the scene, lending assistance to whoever was in need. My son Ryan, whose house was badly damaged by the ensuing fire, was left with nothing. All his possessions were destroyed. Now he was being cared for by the volunteers of Bend’s Red Cross for which he will be forever grateful. Ryan’s known world may have been at an end but because of the Red Cross he soon discovered a new world was just starting. Through the generosity of the people of Bend, the Red Cross was in a position to supply Ryan (and countless others) with health care goods, a hotel room, a brand-new quilt created by the ladies of the First Presbyterian Church, and a promise that if he needs any further assistance he should not hesitate to call them. Here’s to the generous people of Bend, Ore. You have a sensational community of giving people, enabling organizations such as the American Red Cross to assist many people such as Ryan. Thomas O’Toole Grass Valley, Calif.
No public golf course I’ve been working in politics since 1992 and cannot count the number of times I’ve heard individuals and organizations pitch
wonderful ideas to elected officials for making a service or product more “affordable� by having the government be the provider. If you should hear such a proposal my advice is to get a good grip on your wallet. The latest bad idea comes from our fellow citizens who’d like the Bend Park and Recreation District to enter the golf business. Proponents of golf welfare contend this project is financially viable and will not leave taxpayers holding the bag, so to speak. If that’s the case why don’t they invest their own money in this great business model? Because profitable business ideas are funded by business men and women. Unprofitable ideas are funded by taxpayers. The BPRD has a legitimate and important role in our community providing parks, trails and ballfields for the recreational enjoyment of city taxpayers. But it shouldn’t be providing services that undermine the private sector with below-market prices. There is no shortage of opportunities to play golf in Bend. If there is a need for new golfing services I encourage these creative entrepreneurs to invest their own money in it. As a taxpayer I’d rather see my money funding essential city services like infrastructure and public safety. What does it say about our priorities that the city must scrounge for every dollar for roads, water and sewer while BPRD contemplates ice rinks and golf courses? Bill Robie Bend
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We welcome your letters. Letters should be limited to one issue, contain no more than 250 words and include the writer’s signature, phone number and address for verification. We edit letters for brevity, grammar, taste and legal reasons. We reject poetry, personal attacks, form letters, letters submitted elsewhere and those appropriate for other sections of The Bulletin. Writers are limited to one letter or Op-Ed piece every 30 days.
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U.S. needs campaign finance reform, term limits, voting holiday By Michael R. Pritchard he editorial pages regarding Democrats vs. Republicans show the propaganda machines of both parties are succeeding in deflecting the true cause of our financial woes. Such as blaming President Barack Obama for the job crisis. The facts are that beginning in January 2008 President George W. Bush was losing jobs at 100,000 per month — by December, 750,000. Since taking office in 2009 Obama began reversing the losses. Since January 2011, growth every month. In 2008 under Bush, the Dow went from 12,000 to 7,000. Under Obama the Dow is over 13,000. And yes, I’m a liberal, though not a Democrat. We can argue one group is beholden to this interest or that interest, which is what both parties want to distract us with, the demonization of the “others.� While making great TV (be it Fox or MSNBC), it pits all of us against our mutual interests. Our current situation is not a Democrat vs. Republican problem, it’s the
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IN MY VIEW stranglehold of the two oligarchcontrolled parties who spin their policies as being the best for the country. Big political donors have always influenced policy. But we’re living in a time where, first and foremost, our elected tax-paid “leaders� primarily serve their donors, who, along with gerrymandering, keep them in office. Our current system has created a time of unprecedented socialism benefiting corporations and big monied interests at the expense of the rest of us. Using TARP — a Bush program, as an example — our politicians socialized losses while keeping profit privatized. According to the testimony of Elizabeth Warren, appointed by the Congress to oversee the $700 billion TARP, the money was given without accountability. However, TARP is but a drop in the bucket. Instead of squabbling over blame, we should be demanding account-
Our current situation is not a Democrat vs. Republican problem, it’s the stranglehold of the two oligarchcontrolled parties who spin their policies as being the best for the country. ability for the greatest public thefts of all time. Bloomberg discovered that in 2008, the Fed actually loaned out $7.77 trillion to U.S. banks simply by printing money. This socialized the banks’ gambling losses on illegal subprime mortgages and credit default swaps which the FBI concluded were 80 percent criminal fraud originated from the lenders who then bet against the loans. In 2008, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke argued revealing to us the amount loaned may have led to more banks collapsing. Right. The two oligarch political parties denied congressional hearings on the bailout which should have considered cost-benefit analysis for public banks rather than private banks.
Had they, we’d have learned the total market capitalization of all the major U.S. banks was less than $300 billion; meaning that the government could have outright bought them all for pennies on the dollar and resold them at a profit. Think about that. Currently big investment banks borrow at rates between 0.10 and 0.25 percent. Which they use to purchase short-term T Bills which pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Then they leverage the bonds by pledging them as collateral for additional bonds. If interest rates rise even though the bonds are short-term, the price of the bonds could fall enough to make the trade a money-loser for the banks. However, as the banks remain “too big to fail,� they know
they’ll be bailed out with additional taxpayer funds by the bought-andpaid-for Congress. With such guaranteed returns, there is no incentive for the bailedout banks to make “risky loans� to regional or local banks or large and small businesses which would expand small businesses and job growth. Meanwhile, executive compensation at banks rose by 20 percent — more than $146 billion in compensation last year alone. Changing administrations, giving one party or the other control over both chambers of Congress will not create real change. I’m proposing changes I see as nonpartisan, which should return accountability to us. Constitutional amendments on campaign finance, term limits, defining money and corporations for what they are, property and man-made financial tools. Additionally, the creation of national standards for a voting holiday weekend. — Michael R. Pritchard lives in Bend.