Happy Columbus Day! And to our friends at the Longhouse, Happy Indigenous Solidarity Day! The Ol’ Dirty had an article focusing on today’s event put on by the Native American Student Union and the MCC. For some reason Chuck Hunt is speaking at it.

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The zany lefty union-funded group “Our Oregon” is getting an uncomfortable amount of coddling from Oregon Executive offices. Our Oregon is known for, among other things, being union thugs who run campaigns to create a bunch of tomfoolery in areas where petitioners are trying to get signatures. An example of a such person is Jeanne Berg of Oregon, who was hired to block petitioning in Oklahoma by libertarian activist Paul Jacob, who was arrested last week on charges of conspiracy to defraud the state, which was caused by the state’s vague description of “resident.” (see www.freepauljacob.com for more info).

Berg’s understudy is Patty Wentz, a former reporter of the Willamette Week who went on to take charge of Our Oregon, and who was recently hired as Governor Kulongoski’s interim spokeswomen while his press secretary has a baby. My point to all this comes from this report by Richard Leonetti. He discovered that Our Oregon did not file any campaign contribution and expenditure reports with Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

Oregon law clearly requires that any person or entity that accepts money (“contributions”) to be used in a political campaign must register as a political committee (ORS 260.005(16)). The law also requires every political committee active in a general election to file at least 3 contribution and expenditure reports in every election year (ORS 260.073). Apparently, “Our Oregon” disregarded the law, never registered, and never reported its contributions.

Leonetti filed a formal complaint in January, 2007, but no action has been taken and Leonetti predicts that Bradbury is ready to let Our Oregon off the hook. If Our Oregon is allowed to get away with this, it will set a precedent for this loophole where anyone can form a non-profit, collect unrecorded contributions from unknown donors, and then shuttle that money into candidates or measure campaigns under the name of the non-profit.

President  Frohnmayer stuck it to the state Board of Higher Education yesterday, saying the state should either more adequately fund the U of O or grant it greater autonomy. Compared to several other states with “flagship” universities, Oregon is rather miserly with its higher education funding. Frohnmayer basically said its time to cough up the money or let the university do it on its own. From the Register Guard:

He closed his board presentation with a choice for higher education officials to ponder: “Fund our mission” or “create a governance structure that lets the University of Oregon succeed.”

Asked by a board member to elaborate, Frohnmayer offered his “blue sky” ideal. It centered on autonomy from legislative and systemwide board oversight, with a UO board of regents exercising authority that would require both legislative and constitutional changes. Key elements included:

• Freedom to set tuition rates higher. The rates “might seem exorbitant,” he said, but would be offset by the resulting financial aid for most students.

• The right of the UO and other state universities to retain the interest earned on student tuition. This interest, which comes to millions of dollars, is controlled by the Legislature and spent on an array of education and public service programs.

• The ability to sell bonds or otherwise borrow for capital projects, without going through the Legislature, the governor and the statewide higher education board.

Not to make a shameless plug, but this article from Thursday’s News Register will be interesting for you stoners out there. Oregon’s many narcotics teams are honing their skills of busting DTOs (drug-trafficking organizations); plant seizures are up 85 percent in the state from this time last year. State agencies believe they are slowing the surge of growers who have ventured north from California to Oregon, where the soil and weather are primo for growing grass and there is lots of shade to hide under.

California growers are feeling the heat, so are moving north. The push began several years ago in Southern Oregon timber country, but has begun to move on north into Oregon’s Coast Range timberlands.

Well, yesterday was everybody’s favorite day of the week, Thursday, and you know what that means: new Eugene Weekly! And you know what that means: crazy letters to the editor. Yep, when it comes to wingnuttery, kookery and moonbatiness, few publications can hold a candle to EW’s readers.

On a side note, it turns out EW is turning 25 this year, just like the Commentator. We’ll let you, the reader, decide which publication has had a more prestigious and honorable history. Just for comparison, though, EW caused a big flap when they ran bare breasts on their cover; the Oregon Commentator caused a big flap when they ran a big, hairy ass on their cover. We report, you decide.

Anywho, on with the letters. Here’s a small taste of what awaits you after the jump:

I don’t mean to be mean or impeach the impeachment movement, but constitutionally you can’t impeach someone who is not legally in office. I wonder if the court can indict itself for failing to uphold the law of the land.

Wait, Bush isn’t legally in office? Jesus, why didn’t someone say something!? You’d think at least one of the country’s great legal scholars would have caught this after nearly eight years. Man, this is going to be embarrassing! (more…)

Last night’s meeting was an interesting foreshadowing of this coming year in student politics.

I just have a few things that I want to clear up, though…there has been a lot of crap going on behind my back regarding me and writing for the Commentator. I’m not trying to piss anyone off (although it seems to happen quite often) and if anyone has a legitimate concern or complaint, I encourage you to bring it up to me. Otherwise…well…I guess you’re entitled to your opinion.

For the record, I intend on covering ASUO as non-partisan as possible, with a slight bias towards the senators that advocate more fiscal responsibility. However, I won’t hesitate to label anyone or call them out.

The most interesting part of yesterday’s meeting revolved around the appointment of Senate President. It’s clear that Sen. Jones has drifted to the middle of the table and possibly even the other side, although she came in with the Campaign for Change. Some of the senators were getting annoyed at the partisan tensions at the table, but Sen. Warnecke brought up a good point: politics is about debating and the battle of ideas.
He took the awards for “Senator with Most Common Sense” and “Doomcloud” of the meeting.

Other awards of the meeting worth mentioning:
Sen. Boye for “Let’s Just Stop Fighting”
Sen. McKenzie for “This Partisanship is Getting Annoying”
Sen. Rajabzadeh for “Quietest Senator”
Sen. Wilsey for “Most Mind-Controlled” (I have an illustration to go along with it, too…) – By popular request, I have added the illustration:

Sen. Brown and Sen. Gulley tying for “Loudest and Most Talkative”.

Senate should not be afraid of engaging in discourse. Frankly, I believe that it takes that pulling and pushing of different interests to make politics work. The dynamic of the table is now more balanced. With about a 5-6 senators from the ‘programs’ side, a similar number advocating fiscal responsibility, and the rest somewhere in between, there is potential for progress.

But deep down inside, we all know that this is just playtime for the student senators, and whatever goes on the inside…no one cares.

Portland has been regarded by many as an example of what a clean and green city should be. But some are opposing this belief. OC alum Tyler Graf wrote an article for Portland’s Daily Journal of Commerce (we can’t believe someone hired him either) highlighting the criticism of Cato Institute bigwig Randal O’Toole:

“What I see is a sorting of the population,” O’Toole said from a Cato Institute-sponsored conference. “Higher educated people live in the city, while less educated, less well-off people are pushed to the suburbs.” According to O’Toole, this marginalizes suburbs and exports crime to peripheral neighborhoods.

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Senate President: Athan Papailou

Senate Vice President: Donnie Kim

Senate Ombudsman: Patrick Boye

Senate Treasurer: Kyle McKenzie

Papailou beat Sen. Kate Jones 9-8.  Sen. Kim ran unopposed as did Sen. McKenzie.  Sen. Boye defeated Sen. Karen Trippe.

The Student Senate has already racked up a $186,870 budget surplus this year, thanks in large part to unspent money by student groups from the last fiscal year.

This number is likely to grow because of the glut of incoming freshmen. (That means more students to pay the incidental fee. Cha-ching!) With all this extra dough floating around, you’d think the ASUO budget would be adjusted accordingly, wouldn’t you? For example, with the surplus and all the new freshmen, wouldn’t it make sense to lower the incidental fee next term? And didn’t we vote in a bunch of bright-eyed, reform-minded senators last year? This is it, kiddos – time to make good on all those campaign promises. Hopefully you haven’t all become jaded and corrupted over the course of two weeks.

UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention that the money gained from extra freshmen will not go into the surplus fund. The surplus fund is only money that rolled over from the last year; the money from extra freshmen will be put into the over-realized fund. My bad for getting all of the ASUO’s various piles of extra money confused.

President Frohnmayer sent out this mass email earlier this evening, informing the University community on the progress of the new arena:

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In a show of truly great journalistic solidarity, the Ol ‘ Dirty printed the word “fuck” in huge type in their opinion section today. The editorial board made the decision to run the piece to show support for both their brothers and sisters at Colorado State as well as the always handy First Amendment.

The Colorado State editorial board came under fire recently because they wrote “Taser this…FUCK BUSH” in response to the “excessive” force used by officers in restraining a man at a John Kerry event. (more…)

Reason Hit & Run has posted a great news clip from Texas showing floor votes in the Texas legislature.  In the era of hanging chads, dead men voting, and lost absentee ballots, it seems that politicians in Texas just don’t seem to understand what “one person, one vote” means.  It’s worth a watch.

Despite our best efforts of being drunk every night and procrastinating our assignments, the OC staff presents its annual Back To The Booze issue under two weeks of the release of the Summer Issue. For those that think this is a sign of more responsibility and less boozing from this year’s staff, we assure you this is not the case. Enjoy.

And it’s already been sent to the printers, so you find any errors, we don’t care. Cheers.

A group (of white guys) has been distributing (actually selling for $10 a year) information regarding race tensions and social injustice in America. They had a number of provocative posters regarding political issues one of which read, “Free the Jena 6”. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

I walked up and engaged two of them in conversation:

Me: “So, what are you guys all about?”

Young Angry Kid: “Ending the social injustices of America and supporting black people in their plight.”

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OC mascot Sudsy O’Sullivan was spotted today in Tienanmen Square protesting the totalitarian communist government of the People’s Republic of China. Along with students, labor workers, and intellectuals, the protests were calling for democracy and more freedoms for the people. The government response was to deploy military forces to quell the demonstrations.
In this Robert Capa Award-worthy photo, Sudsy is seen bravely standing his ground against a column of tanks. Brave Sudsy. There’s a reason why students love beer so much.