Net neutrality has reared its head again in the passed couple weeks, thanks both to a new piece of legislation (which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) and a lot of shotty interpretation of what net neutrality is and why we need it.
Basically, net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers, like Comcast and Time Warner, are not allowed to differentiate between types of Internet data even though it’s delivered via wires and tubes that they own. This means subscribers get the “whole” Internet, without discrimination based on format or content. Doing this prevents ISPs from charging more for certain sites, blocking sites of their choice, or throttling traffic speeds based on content, pay, or the amount of data used.
It isn’t what’s espoused by some of my colleagues, that “local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Time Warner Cable must treat [one’s] illicit video with just as much urgency as [another’s] life-saving medical data.”
It’s also about a lot more than protecting music and software pirates from legal action. The term may be new to a lot of people, but net neutrality itself isn’t a new idea. It’s a new name that’s been tacked on to describe something that’s been the norm since the dawn of the Internet until pretty recently; one that stands at the core of the Internet as the cultural driving force it has become.
Why we need an open Internet
In the early days of the Internet, it wasn’t so much an issue because the technology that allows “deep-packet inspections” – intercepting and analyzing data on that large a scale – just didn’t really exist yet. Besides, there wasn’t enough on the Internet to be worth regulating.
So all of the content that was put on the Internet was free, and open for anyone to access. All you needed was a phone line and an ISP subscription, and the entire Internet was at your disposal: a virtual wild west for information junkies.
And then there was porn. And porn meant money. Whether a good or bad thing, it drove the expansion of the Internet since the very beginning, and helped spur new advances in images and video on the Internet. Soon people were sending pictures and video to their friends, and more and more people were getting online. (Random cool fact: Even before it was possible to send images, people were sending text-generated ASCII porn to their friends. It goes that far back.)
Fast forward 15 years or so. Now we have Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, iTunes, Google Earth, and the entire peer-to-peer file-sharing universe, which with the help of others comprise the biggest library in all of human history. You can read a 2,000 word entry about the use of the umlaut in heavy metal on Wikipedia, watch old videos of Jack Kerouac on YouTube, and then download every book Mark Twain ever wrote and the entire Clash discography in as few mouse clicks to count on one hand. Am I the only one who thinks that, from a cultural standpoint, that’s pretty freaking cool?
The best part? So can anybody else with open access to the Internet. Regardless of nationality, social strata, race, religion, or any other divider, as long as one has access to an Internet terminal, they can experience just about any event they want, even if it happened ages ago and they’d previously only read about it in a dry history book.
As families come together for the holiday season, it’s important for us to remember the less fortunate among us. Even as we share in the joy and love of this time of year, there are still those poor souls who quite obviously don’t have two brain cells to rub together to warm themselves during these cold winter nights. So let us pause to remember those who, but for the grace of common sense, we could easily be this December. Like these idiots:
Airport security officers in Lafayette, Louisiana who, after seeing an “odd and not readily identifiable” package in a scanning machine, evacuated the terminal and closed the airport while they figured out what it was. It turned out to be a headlamp and some frozen chicken. Bonus points available if Homeland Security bans meat products in checked baggage. (Thanks for this one to The Daily Advertiser)
Administrators at a high school in Haymarket, Virginia who couldn’t give the same reason twice for why they slapped ten unsuspecting bros with detention and other punishments for giving candy canes to their fellow students. Their stated motivations varied from preventing litter to student safety (administrators alleged that the candy could be fashioned into a weapon.) Furthermore, one official seemed to thing that the “Christmas cheer” the students were spreading could cause other students to commit suicide. (Thanks to WUSA-TV)
The editorial board of The New York Times who proclaimed President Obama’s legislative agenda during the 111th Congress to be a rousing success. Except for the part where Congress, driven by a heavily marginalized Republican Party, basically held him at gunpoint to massively rewrite his health-care proposal, refused to pass the Dream Act, forced him into extending the vast majority of the tax cuts he campaigned against, and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” not because they wanted to, but because the Federal Judiciary was about to do so for them. Yeah, guys… quite the grand achievement on the national political scene.
St. Paul, Minnesota school officials who are apparently banning not only the sale of, but the possession and consumption of candy and other sweets during the school day. As told by The Star Tribune: “’All my friends say, ‘This really sucks,’’ said Misky Salad, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Chelsea Heights Elementary. ‘A lot of us feel it should be up to us to determine what we should do with our bodies.’” Look forward to kids in St. Paul ducking into bathrooms to “hit some M’s (M&Ms)” and sitting out back drinking Coca-Cola from a brown paper bag.
Everyone involved in the arrest of a 13 year old who was caught writing on a piece of paper with a permanent marker in class one day in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The boy’s teacher, thinking the marker would bleed through the paper and stain the desk, and citing an obscure ordnance against the possession of such markers, promptly called the police who transported the suspect to a juvenile detention facility, while taking the marker into evidence. It pains me to decide who is more absurd in this instance: the teacher who called the cops, the officer who actually arrested this kid, the police chief who had not fired that officer yet, or the local lawmakers who voted to ban Sharpies. Stories like these make me feel better about covering the ASUO because it really could, in all reality, be a lot worse. Ok, maybe just a little worse. (Thanks to The Smoking Gun)
Introduced in February’s special session, a bill sponsored by Beaverton Democratic Senator Mark Hass to ban plastic bags in most retail stores will again make an appearance in the next legislative session.
According to Hass, the previous session did not allow enough time to vote for the legislation, thus causing it to show up on the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee agenda in 2011.
In an interim committee hearing Wednesday morning, Hass said the proposed bill would ban plastic bags for “most retail stores,” replacing them with recycled paper bags at a cost of five cents each.
Recycled paper bags, Hass said, are mostly made in Oregon while plastic bags are all made outside the state.
What if the UO accidentally posted the names, grades, addresses and — for God’s sake — Social Security numbers of 40,000 alumni online for all to see? That would be a disaster, no? Well, I’ve returned to Hawai’i, where I grew up, for the break, to find the local university system did just that.
Evidently, a faculty member at the University of Hawai’i’s West O’ahu campus left the information online for about a year, having amassed it in the process of performing some sort of research. The faculty member said he believed the server he was accessing was secure, but, unsurprisingly, he no longer works for UH.
There are precious few specifics — for instance, aside from its being a “database,” I’ve not seen anything that says to what kind of site the data found its way — but at least one person is claiming the mistake cost him about $740 after three people apparently stole his identity. A national nonprofit charges that “UH has a pattern of breaches and unfulfilled promises,” according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. That article goes on to say that more than half of the Hawai’i government records whose security has been breached in the last five years, about a quarter of a million of them, have come from UH.
So there’s obviously an incredibly serious institutional problem going on here, but what surprises me is the complete lack of apoplexy over this. One state senator says she will “schedule a hearing to discuss improvements.” UH says it’s trying to figure out how not to do this in the future. Nobody seems too angry, although it also happened a couple of months ago, so maybe I just missed that.
Can you imagine how brutally the UO would be savaged if it did this, or had this kind of track record? I grew up here and I’ve lived in Oregon for the last four-and-a-half years, and I have, as yet, no insights into this.
Posted in Education, Government, Politics, University | Comments Off on University of Hawai’i releases tens of thousands of Social Security numbers accidentally, nobody seems to care.
The OSU community has seen quite a bit of action in the last week or so, here are the most notable events:
OSU closes early for Thanksgiving break. Snow? Nope, college doesn’t close for snow! Fire, on the other hand, will shut down campus. Wednesday morning the there was a fire in the underground steam tunnels causing campus to smell worse than usual, not to mention the electrical problems it caused.
“The University’s Corvallis campus is closing for the remainder of the day, effective at noon. Damage, smoke issues and other complications resulting from an electrical fire this morning in the university’s steam tunnels has caused widespread problems with electrical service, heating, smoke and network connectivity in a long and growing number of buildings. For the safety of our students, employees and campus visitors, please know that you may leave for the remainder of the day, though essential personnel are expected to remain on the job.”
Former OSU student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, attempted to set off a bomb during the Christmas tree lighting in Portland, but instead got played by the FBI (props to the FBI!).
The Corvallis Mosque that Mohamed Osman Mohamud attended was set afire. FBI presume it’s related to the attempted bombing (you think?) and are offering a gratuitous sum of $10,000 for information leading to an arrest.
ASOSU sends e-mail to students encouraging them to hold hands and sing kumbaya in these troubling times. The e-mail proceeds to say that Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s involvement with the bomb is “sad” but that students should respect each other. Hmmm, ironic that the ASOSU is trying to teach respect when the bombing illustrates a complete lack of respect…..Here’s the text of the e-mail (emphasis mine):
“…OSU Students,
As some or most of you are aware, there was an incident this weekend in Portland involving a former OSU Student and an attempt to bomb the Christmas Tree Lighting in Portland’s Pioneer Square. At 2:15 Sunday morning, someone set fire to the Corvallis Mosque, a place of worship for the Corvallis Muslim community. It hasn’t been confirmed whether this was intentional or not, but it is assumed that this arson was in reply to the attempted bombing in Portland.
We want to make it clear to each and every student at OSU we operate as a community, a community that works and lives together as one, inclusive of race, religious orientation, sex, gender, age, size, class, or any other factor that might set us apart.
We need to respect everyone’s differences and we need to realize that the actions of one do not reflect the ideals of many. While the suspected “Christmas Tree” bomber did attend the Mosque that was set to fire, that person also attended OSU. We will not place unjust accusations upon groups of people or organizations of which this individual was a member. This individual made his own choices, choices that should not reflect that of our Muslim student population or our Corvallis Muslim community and we should not be putting them at blame. When it all comes down to it, we are all students. We are all striving at the chance for an education that many people do not get. We are all preparing for dead week and finals week and the stress of tests and projects. We are all part of the OSU community and we should all stand by one another.
It is sad that a former student of OSU was involved so heavily with a bomb plot in Portland, but we will not let this rip apart the community that we have created on campus. We are still students of OSU and we will continue to respect one another despite our many differences. We will not allow these incidents to cause a rift between students because of religion or any other affiliation. We will rise above this and we will show everyone that OSU is a place of diversity, a place that respects each and every student, each and every culture, each and every difference that we all may have.
ASOSU”
President Ed Ray releases a statement, which is then forwarded to students, saying he disapproves of the arson and condemns hate crimes. Effective President Ray, Effective-because extremists and arsonists are going to change their ways due to an e-mail from you. In addition, a candle light vigil was held today, why? Who the heck knows. From President Ray (who might need to consult the ASOSU, as their e-mail was actually more inspiring):
“While it is important to note that in the American criminal justice system our courts determine guilt or innocence, it is equally important to condemn the activities described in the FBI investigation of Mohamed Osman Mohamud as defenseless and reckless and having no place in civilized society. I share the outrage and shock expressed by others that anyone might have planned to cause such indiscriminate death and destruction.
We must not compound the harm already done by this incident but rather come together as a community here at Oregon State University and throughout the broader Corvallis community. With the support of that broader community we are educating our students to be global citizens and helping students learn about cultures, languages, histories and faith practices around the world. The fire reportedly set at Salman Al-Farisi Islamic Center on Sunday is an act of hate and cowardice, and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Members of the mosque include faculty, staff and students at our university, as well as friends and neighbors and are an important part of who we are as a community. They deserve our most heartfelt regrets for this despicable act and our ready hands to help rebuild what has been lost….
There will be a candlelight vigil tomorrow evening, from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Salman Al-Farisi Islamic Center, 610 N.W. Kings Blvd. As other opportunities to support our friends and neighbors arise, we will share them through OSU internal media.”
It seems that our friends at OSU have been a little less than boring lately.
The University is building a new expansion to the Len Casanova Athletic Center, to great controversy because the process involved will be the same as that used for the John E. Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes. UO Matters posted a couple of days ago a long mp3 of a meeting at which President Richard Lariviere outlines his rationale for accepting the donation from Phil Knight/Phil Knight’s various organizations.
This is the important part, I think. The mediated form hinders the ability of those being mediated to make a considered, rational argument, so I’ll just block-quote the thing in its entirety. Emphasis mine.
It really doesn’t have much to do with the central mission of the University of Oregon. The mission of the University of Oregon is education and research.
We live in a very odd society in that every society feels passionately about sports of one sort or another. You know this from your travels internationally. Soccer in most of the rest of the world. People spend billions of dollars on that entertainment. The odd thing in this country is that some significant portion of that entertainment world is associated with higher education.
There’s in my view an unconscionable tolerance for confusion around this. All of us who know better need to be educating the public that athletics is entertainment and education and research is why the University exists.
Now, do I wish that there was as much passion and willingness to part with treasure that focused on the humanities and the social sciences and the natural sciences as there is around football? You bet I do. That’s not the world we live in.
And should we be puzzled that a family that have made billions of dollars in the sports industry and love the University of Oregon are interested in giving money to this entertainment enterprise? It’s not much of a mystery for me and I don’t think it probably is for anyone.
If we don’t accept this gift, is it likely that the donors will get out of bed tomorrow and think, “Oh, what were we thinking? We should have been giving it to promote Sanskrit at the University of Oregon”? I don’t think so.
If we don’t accept this gift, what will be the negative consequences for the University’s education and research mission? Probably not much — in the short term. But they could be really, really profound over the long term. Really profound. This is an important gift for our future. So that’s all I have to say on that.
Once, Matt Petryni, an ex-Emerald columnist with whom I used to work there, told me that if the UO would just come out and say this, he’d understand the flirtation with sportswear corporations. And we’re talking about a guy who organized a march on Johnson Hall in an effort to end the UO’s relationship with one.
There are questions raised, though, such as what kind of “really, really profound” “negative consequences”? I guess I’ll ask Lariviere next time I see him. On the other hand, nobody in a position of power has ever been this forthright about the UO’s relationship with Knight on the record, at least that I can remember.
Media digests: They’ll return once all the content for the magazine gets copy-edited.
To be filed under “completely enthralling political news du jour:”
Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney of Salem, has appointed fellow Democrat and Tualatin representative Richard Devlin as co-chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee.
Before you get too excited, the Joint Ways and Means Committee has nothing to do with joints, although it is pretty important. Essentially, it deals with state-imposed taxes and the budget. That means he’ll be instrumental in figuring out what to do about Oregon’s $3.2 billion budget shortfall.
District 19, which he represents, includes Durham, Lake Oswego, Tualatin, Rivergrove, West Linn, and parts of southwest Portland and Tigard. Devlin was born in Eugene, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Administration of Justice from Portland State University, and a Master of Arts from Pepperdine University in Management. Before his first political run for Tualatin City Council in 1985, he was a private investigator.
Devlin isn’t a surprise pick by any means. He stepped down as Democratic majority leader last week, and now he’s returning to the committee, which he served on during the 2003, 2005 and 2007 legislative sessions. (Those are consecutive sessions, lest we forget that Oregon, until now, had a legislature that only met every other year.)
His appointment to the tax committee is likely to raise some eyebrows from some conservatives, though. Taxpayer Association of Oregon, the anti-tax PAC started by Don McIntire (homeboy of nutjob Bill Sizemore) made the claim that Devlin raised taxes by $1 billion in one day. The statement is true-ish, and center around his votes on the controversial Measures 66 and 67, but it leaves out a lot of details, which are outlined pretty well here by PolitiFact.
His top contributors have been mostly from the health and labor industries, with names like the Oregon Health Care Association and the Oregon Public Employees Local 503 topping the list. He has also received support from the lobbyist group the Oregon Trial Lawyers association. Wal-Mart did too, although they contributed considerably less. There’s more info on his campaign contributions here.
There’s no word yet as to who his co-chair will be, but considering the even split in the state legislature, here’s to hoping we see some bipartisanship. They’ve got a lot on their plates, and there’s no time for bickering.
If all goes according to plan, makers of Four Loko, Joose, and others will soon be getting a letter from the Federal Trade Commission notifying them that they are in violation of federal law. Following several statewide bans of Four Loko, the Food and Drug Administration is preparing to ban caffeinated alcoholic drinks (or are they alcoholic energy drinks?) nationwide as soon as this week.
The announcement was made by Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY), who has lobbied for the banning of the drinks, and is the result of a one-year investigation into whether caffeine was a safe addition to alcoholic beverages. I could have saved you the time, guys: it isn’t. But when has that stopped anyone before?
On top of the students in Central Washington and New Jersey that we told you about a couple weeks ago, Four Loko is now being tied to the deaths of two Florida teenagers. One of them mixed it with diet pills (probably containing more speed), and the other died of an acute combination of alcoholic poisoning, caffeine psychosis, and a self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound.
“This ruling should be the nail in the coffin of these dangerous and toxic drinks,” Mr. Schumer said. “Parents should be able to rest a little easier.”
So what if Four Loko is dangerous? So are cars, swimming pools and the KFC Double Down. Is the problem here really that there’s a stupidly potent product on the convenience store shelves with bright labels that attract younger drinkers? Or is the problem that young drinkers are stupid with them? If we’re going to point the finger, there’s a lot to go around.
Why aren’t we pointing the finger at the liquor control system for failing in their quest to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, but succeeds at getting in the way at so many other things?
Why aren’t we mad that no one has ever explained to these kids what generations of recreational drug users have known: don’t mix uppers and downers?
Why aren’t we angry at the parents who can’t pull their own heads out of the vodka tonic long enough to teach their kids that just because something is legal doesn’t mean we can’t do really, really stupid things with it?
Maybe it’s easier to shake our fist at the government for not protecting us from these products than it is accept that we knowingly engage in risky behavior with full knowledge that it is. It also means that we have to hold ourselves personally accountable the stupid stuff we do. Drink too much? That’s your right, and it’s also nobodies fault but your own. It means that just because we’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, even if we end up doing it anyway.
And that’s why banning it isn’t going to solve the problem. Just taking away the product isn’t going to change the fact that a new generation of drinkers has learned that mixing speed with their booze is a whole lot of fun (until you end up in the hospital). It’s a Pandora’s box scenario. Before it was Four Loko, it was homemade legal speedballs like vodka and Red Bull and Irish coffee. We Americans are nothing if not resourceful, and we’ll find a new, better way to get ourselves puking blacked-out drunk.
That said, let’s make one thing clear: Four Loko is disgusting. It has all the flavor of codeine cough syrup with the stomach-churning effects of a shot of ipecac, and it turns people into especially irritating drunks. But banning it isn’t getting to the root of the problem; it’s a token political maneuver for politicians who want to appeal to their constituents and don’t want to deal directly with complex causes deeply rooted in our society. If Congress really wants to make some headway and look at these, I wish they’d go ahead and do it already so that we don’t have to keep defending this vile stuff.
Now that Oregon’s legislature is nearly split down the middle – 30–30 for Congress and 16-14 for Senate – they’re set to tackle one of the most influential and ignored issues in local politics and representative democracy: redistricting.
See? Even the name sounds exciting. Drawing lines in the sand might not be a hot-button issue like taxes, weed and mandatory minimum sentencing, but it matters. A lot. The average citizen might not care, but it’s so important to politicians that in some states local laws keep it entirely out of their hands, instead being delegated to outside groups who don’t have as much to gain from the outcome. Oregon’s tried to enact similar rules, but it’s fizzled out every time. Either way, it will have a dramatic effect on the political process for the next ten years.
For example, redrawing electoral district lines means an area’s Representative could change, and some incumbents will be trying to appeal to new faces in their bid for re-election. The choices that are made in redrawing the borders will shape who has an easy political battle and which party gains control of the statehouse. When it’s done for a deliberate political advantage, it’s called Gerrymandering, and it’s very illegal.
We only need to look back a couple weeks to the gubernatorial race between Governor John Kitzhaber and opponent Chris Dudley to see the importance of county lines. Dudley lost by a single percentage point, with most of it coming from the liberal Multnomah County. (Graphics courtesy of BlueOregon — LOL!)
Ever looked at a sea of red and wondered how it could be a 50/50 split?
Adjusted for population. Now imagine the effect that moving one of those borders in a densely populated area like Multnomah County. This is why it's the stuff of political wet dreams.
Redistricting typically happens after each census, with the new figures being used to redraw district lines to meet a set of criteria in Oregon law. All districts must:
– Be contiguous. (A district can’t be split in to two separate regions that aren’t connected, e.g. Palestine.)
– Be equal in population.
– Respect existing geographic or political boundaries (Sorry, Portland. Vancouver, WA can’t be counted in your district, even if it might as well be a suburb.)
– Must not divide communities of common interest.
– Be connected by transportation links.
The Oregon Congress hasn’t able to agree to district boundaries since 1981. In this case, the duty defaults to the Secretary of State. In 2001 during his first bout as governor, Kitzhaber vetoed the GOP-created boundaries, which meant it was Bill Bradbury’s job to do it. That’s the same Bill Bradbury who ran against Kitzhaber as a Democratic candidate, so some political commentators have said that the borders he drew are responsible for Democratic gains since then.
Congress is expecting the new census data sometime in March, and has until July 1 to turn in their revisions. If they don’t, the duty will fall on the current Secretary of State, Democrat Kate Brown.
Current Oregon legislative districts. Does this turn you on? If so, you might be a politician.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” will remain in effect pending a Federal Appeals Court review, thanks to a Supreme Court decision (or lack thereof) and a little gentle pressure from President Obama. Yes, the same one who vowed to end the policy on his watch is now advocating for its extension.
But why? You might expect him to be happy about last month’s ruling by district court Judge Virginia Phillips that the 17-year-old policy challenged by the Log Cabin Republicans (a gay Republican group) was in violation of the First Amendment rights of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. But instead he claimed that lifting the ban now could hurt his own efforts to study the effect of lifting the ban, and future attempts to do it.
The White House appealed, and asked Phillips for a stay in the order to lift the ban. When the reasoning wasn’t good enough for Phillips, the Obama administration took it to the Appeals Court who decided that the policy could remain in place for now. The White House also urged the Supreme Court not to get involved.
He’s swearing to push the issue on his “lame-duck” Congress, which began its session this week, before the newly elected take their seats and the GOP regains control. This puts him in a strange position of advocating a policy he is against until enough research and planning has been done to lift it responsibly.
Obama wants to give the military time and resources to prepare for the open service of gay people, such as through of providing programs for soldiers to “out” themselves to their comrades.
The military says it will comply if asked to stop enforcing DADT, but some are still worried about unforeseen consequences. Some military officials have warned that lifting the policy could disrupt operations, troop morale and recruiting, and “irreparably harm the public interest in a strong and effective military.”
Mirroring the sentiment of Obama (or is it the other way around), Sen. John McCain came out against it, saying that “Once we get this study, we need to have hearings. And we need to examine it. And we need to look at whether it’s the kind of study that we wanted.” Debate about studying a study isn’t just the bane of student government reporters; it’s also one of the pitfalls of conservative politics in this country.
It’s good to be weary of radical political change, and even better to study and flush out details of the changes before they happen – but it can also lead to stagnation, which is especially dangerous when we’re talking about the First Amendment rights of a group being systematically repressed.
Hopefully Obama is dragging his feet on making this happen because he is just concerned about doing it in the most responsible and sustainable way possible for all parties involved. Hopefully it doesn’t turn in to “I tried to stay true to my campaign promises but THEY wouldn’t let me” political fodder for elections to come. Hopefully it isn’t because lifting the ban wasn’t going to have his name attached to it if it were allowed to pass last month. Hopefully we finally get around to fixing this mess, and restoring rights to Americans who fight for them.
Measure 73, which proposed mandatory minimum sentencing of 25 years in prison for “repeat offenders” of sex crimes, passed yesterday. I won’t get into the drunk driving portion of the bill; suffice to say that throwing people in jail is not perhaps the most effective route, but I’m not as concerned with that half of the bill. The bits that got me worked up were the ones that now have a minimum sentence of 300 months in prison awaiting anybody who commits four or more “sex crimes.” The language on the measure is a little vague, but the fact that it comes about at a time when social trends, particularly the advent of “sexting,” have everybody* scrutinizing relevant laws means that jail sentence could come down in some unfortunate circumstances.
The question here is, what counts as repeat offenses? Under Oregon law, a high school senior who just turned 18 dating a freshman who is about to turn 15 will be guilty of a class C felony if the senior has sexual intercourse with the freshman. The case may be a bit fringe and a bit creepy depending on your views, but these things happen with some frequency. Let us say that these two consummated their relationship more than four times, and the senior gets brought up on multiple charges. If the case can be brought against the senior in this way, that person now faces a minimum of 25 years in prison.
Or, let us look at those darn kids and their “sexting” by playing a game of make-believe. I am now a pretty, 16 year-old high school girl** with a boy in mind who I think is nifty-keen. I decide to send him a few racy text messages, maybe snap a few suggestive camera pictures with my phone and enclose them. Now let us say that I decide to send precisely four or more of these pictures. Cases have already arisen where teens face criminal charges for sexting, and if I as a 16 year-old, theoretical high school girl can be brought up on multiple charges then I would face at least 300 months in jail for sexually abusing myself.
People should not be allowed to go a-rapin’ or produce child pornography, and it would be silly to construe opposition to laws like this as anything of the sort. When mandatory minimums are put into place it strips judges of the freedom to adjust sentences based on circumstances. In a borderline statutory rape case a judge could theoretically swing a lighter punishment based on what actually happened, but if a person is technically convicted 4+ times of some sex crime then they have to be sentenced to a big sack of jail time. Does the state of Oregon really need measures like this to ensure that serial rapists get jail time?
*No, I don’t actually mean everybody.
**When I wear the dress, I’m always a pretty 16 year-old girl.
For those not in the know, certified crazy person Art Robinson is seeking to outseat long-time Democrat Peter DeFazio in the race for Oregon’s 4th congressional district representative. The man sells and markets his own home-school system, in order to “Teach your children to teach themselves and to acquire superior knowledge as did many of America’s most outstanding citizens in the days before socialism in education.” He also founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, an organization known for promoting Robinson’s crazy home-school curriculum, and this:
Several members of the Institute’s staff are also well known for their work on the Petition Project, an undertaking that has obtained the signatures of more than 31,000 American scientists opposed, on scientific grounds, to the hypothesis of “human-caused global warming” and to concomitant proposals for world-wide energy taxation and rationing.
Totally. Nuts.
But according to internal polling, Robinson is not doing all that bad.* According to the Center for Responsive Politics (totally amazing organization, for the record), he has raised $947,640 to DeFazio’s $904,883. (Data as of September 30, 2010.) Not a big leap up, but $43,000 is nothing to scoff at.
Oh, and this doesn’t include television ads attacking Congressman DeFazio, which were bankrolled by the formerly-mysterious Concerned Taxpayers of America. As part of the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the funders of the PAC did not need to reveal themselves — until this last Friday. It was then discovered that the Concerned Taxpayers of America could only technically refer to themselves in the plural — there are only two of them, and Robinson has since revealed that he only kinda sorta knows one of them.
Ultimately, the attack ads likely have nothing to do with getting Robinson elected. The Washington Post article linked to above states that DeFazio has a feeling his congressional decisions on hedge-fund legislation have something to do with it:
“I have been one of the most prominent critics of Wall Street and tried to call them to account,” DeFazio said. “I’ve obviously made some powerful enemies.”
Robert Mercer, one of the two “concerned taxpayers” who has also donated to the Robinson campaign, is the executive of Renaissance Technologies, a Wall Street hedge-fund that has the potential to suffer in the face of harsher hedge-fund legislation.
Basically, it’s a big mess. Special interests on top of special interests, money flying from hand to hand, television ads that have little semblance of truth . . . how do you navigate through the sea of propaganda and controversy?
Friends, you have the World Wide Web at your disposal. Before sending in your ballot, go and read election endorsements (specifically ours, which will be online this Sunday), research the candidates and the ballot measures, and make your own decisions. Your television is going to lie to you every time.
*I was one of the 300 likely voters called for this Art Robinson poll. “If you knew that Peter DeFazio eats babies, would you still vote for him? Push one for yes, two for no, three if you are unsure.” I’m being hyperbolic, but that was basically the name of the game.
I love it when it’s “everyday students” who start railing against the ASUO, and not those who are watching their every move.
As an addendum to Rockne’s post below, here is the video of Amélie’s convocation speech (this is the whole convocation, her speech starts at 12:30). It is, as Rockne professed, embarrassing, and incredibly disrespectful to those who allowed her the microphone in the first place.
There is a certain level of responsibility that goes with the title of ASUO President. When you speak in public, you are speaking on behalf of more than yourself and the little office you work in. You are speaking on behalf of every incidental fee-paying student at the University of Oregon.
This poses a considerable problem when you are charged with making a speech to introduce a batch of around 4,000 brand new students to the University. As ASUO President, you have not made any headway in trying to deduce how students feel about any particular issue — mostly because students are not informed about most things happening on campus. It is for this reason that most convocation speeches (at least in the last few years) by ASUO Presidents have been largely apolitical, for fear of misrepresenting student views and being disrespectful to students in the process.
It becomes much harder when you decide to throw all of your responsibility out the window and flat out lie to those sitting before you. Amélie’s description of the riot on September 25th — that the Eugene Police Department started taking action because of one person throwing one beer bottle at one cop car — is completely absurd. The crowd was asked to disperse because they were blocking traffic and being loud, and when they did not disperse, actions were taken. And then, in a stunning display of putting the cart before the horse, she goes on to talk about arming the Department of Public Safety. What? DPS was nowhere near the incident, as it was not in their jurisdiction, and the proposals for DPS do not include arming them — at least not at the moment.
Her criticisms of President Lariviere’s New Partnership proposal were just as absurd, if not more. I’m not even going to address this one, because you can all read the white paper and see for yourself just how misinformed she is. I wonder if she’s even read it yet.
The worst part about all of this is the 4,000 freshmen who believed every single word she said. I have encountered those people, and no matter how many letters run in the Ol’ Dirty Emerald, there is going to be a large group of people who believe what she says and continue to do so throughout the year.
If any University undergraduates are reading this, please do your part to get informed about issues on campus. Especially when it comes to the ASUO, titles are meaningless. Just because a president says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true.
Then again, just because a managing editor says it, doesn’t mean it’s always true either.
ASUO President Amelie Rousseau will likely not be excited to read page two of today’s Oregon Daily Emerald. In a letter from 14 undergraduates, Rousseau’s speech at Convocation was picked apart and shamed as turning a moment of celebration and unity within the University community into an opportunity for the lowest kind of political grandstanding.
According to the group’s account of events, Rousseau first apologized for EPD’s use of tear gas during the riot of two days earlier. “She then took that moment in her Convocation speech to encourage the audience to think critically about allowing the Department of Public Safety to become a full-fledged police department, asserting near-explicitly that the result would be more incidents like that Friday’s” Between this and her comments regarding UO President Richard Lariviere’s plans to separate UO from the rest of the Oregon University System, Rousseau seemed to be doing her best to upstage the Lariviere, the keynote speaker. Come on, Amelie, you can’t beat a hat that classy. Why even try?
Headwear aside, picking a fight over campus politics with the University President at Convocation is distinctly lacking in taste. If Rousseau wanted to rake Lariviere over the coals for his planned changes, I’m sure the ODE would have been happy to provide her the column inches to do so. Instead, she decided to wax poetic about how awful DPS and the UO administration are to a captive audience of people who are hearing about these issues for the first time. A student government president’s speech to freshman should deal with what’s really important for someone about to embark on the adventure of post-secondary education. To Rousseau, that message seems to be “cops are bad.” I don’t know if Rousseau’s performance was just a side effect of being without her Political Director, Robert D’Andrea, whose resignation had been announced in days prior, or just a lack of any kind of tact on her part, but I, for one, am embarrassed. Apparently at least 14 other students feel the same way.
