I’ve gone through periods in my life when I’ve been a total information and news junkie.  There have been times, mostly in college and immediately after, where I have been so hooked on reading news and articles that I almost haven’t been able to get anything else done.  While this can be good in certain ways (every now and then it does pay to be informed about current events), and you get to read some pretty fascinating articles (such as this one) for the most part this just absolutely kills my productivity.

To give an idea of the scope of my newsiness, it used to take me 2-3 hours in the morning to read through the articles I would get from Truthout.org (my favorite national news source), EnvironmentalHealthNews.org (my favorite non-politics news source), and The New York Times.  I guess those couple hours weren’t that big a deal when I was in college, when I had hours of random free time to spend.  But now, being self employed means that letting myself get distracted for long periods of time just ruins my ability to get anything done.

What I have done to solve this problem is to force myself onto an information diet.  Even though it sounds like it might be a negative thing, its actually been pretty fantastic.  Here’s how I went about it:

1)  I allow myself only 30 minutes a day of reading the news.

2) I unsubscribed from a bunch of e-mail lists I was on that would send random/interesting articles to my inbox.

3) I turned off the notification beep, and the little red dot that appeared in my dock when a new e-mail came into my inbox (I use the Mail program for Mac).  This way instead of interrupting whatever I was doing to go check my e-mail as soon as a new message came in, I tend to finish whatever I was engrossed in and then remember to check my e-mail.  On a normal day now I’ll only check for new messages in my inbox about 4-6 times.

What these three little steps did was dramatically decrease my distractions.  This lets me get what I need to get done sooner, and then I have more free time to do other things (which usually ends up being something not on the computer).

If you were like me, distracted by too much news and e-mail, I encourage you to try an information diet.  And you can go even more dramatic than I did if you decide you want to…

A) State Measures:

1) Oregon Ballot Measure 54:  My vote: Yes.  This is the first of several measures related to public education on this ballot.  Unlike some of the others, however, this one is pretty innocuous.  Really all its doing is cleaning up an error in the Oregon Constitution that requires voters to be 21 in order to vote in school board elections.  This is clearly an unenforceable requirement, and furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense.  (Unfortunately) there are parents with kids in probably all public school districts that are under 21, and there is no reason they should not be allowed to vote for school board.

2) Oregon Ballot Measure 55: My vote: Yes.  Another measure that more than anything just fixes something that’s wrong with the Oregon Constitution.  Basically, after the census every 10 years, the state senate and house districts are redrawn, and senators and house members are reapportioned.  This is all fine, except that the reapportioning happens in the middle of the officials terms.  What has been done to this point is to just reassign an already elected official to a new district until the next election, but this has caused problems in the past, such as when a Eugene politician was reassigned to represent a rural Central Oregon district…  What this measure will do is just allow elected officials to finish out their term representing the district they were elected in, and then in the next election a new rep will be elected from the new district.

3) Oregon Ballot Measure 56: My vote: Yes.  This measure is where things start to get more interesting.  Basically, what this measure is about is a feature of Oregon law called the “double majority.”  This is a requirement where less than 50% of the registered voters vote on a measure then all the votes are thrown out and it does not pass.  Basically, you have to have both a majority of voters voting, and a majority of those who vote approve of the measure.  What happens is that elections in even numbered years (where there are candidates for office on the ballot) usually get around 60% turnout, so the double majority rule doesn’t come into play.  Then, elections in odd numbered years (where there are only measures) don’t get sufficient turnout, and none of the measures pass, regardless of how unanimous the support was for them.  What measure 56 does is repeal the double majority rule for all general and primary elections, while leaving the double majority rule intact for elections in march and September (that usually have extremely low turnout – sometimes around 20%).  The opponents of this measure have some good rhetoric, saying that if this measure passes, as little as 10% of of the voters would need to vote yes in order to pass new taxes on everybody, but the truth is a little more complicated than that.  First of all – the extremely low turnout elections still have the double majority rule intact, so it is unlikely that a new tax would ever be instituted by only 10% of voters.  Second – voting in Oregon has switched over to vote-by-mail since the original double majority rule was passed.  Now, every single registered voter gets a ballot in the mail, so there is no excuse for those who oppose a measure to not vote no.  Finally, voters who cannot vote, but are still on the voter rolls (such as recently convicted felons and those who die right before elections) effectively are voting “no” on all the measures on the ballot.  Measure 56 removes the unfair advantage that “no” campaigns have, and puts the emphasis on participatory democracy.  And if measure 56 passes and a measure comes up that you don’t support, just fill in the “no” bubble and mail you ballot in – let the majority of those who are willing to take the time to vote make the decisions, not those who are too lazy to fill in a couple bubbles and drop their ballot in the mail…

4) Oregon Ballot Measure 57: My vote: Yes.  This one was very interesting to work through.  Basically, there are two measures (57 and 61) that are competing.  They both would enact longer minimum sentences for drug traffickers, burglars, and identity thieves, however, Measure 61 is draconian, while Measure 57 has more flexibility in sentencing, provides additional support for drug rehabilitation, and would cost the state less.  I personally would rather see neither of them pass – there may be a need for an update to the sentencing of identity theft and adding drug rehabilitation for felons is a good idea, but neither of these measures does what I really want.  That said, it looks like both measures are going to pass, and since they are competing measures, whichever measure passes with more votes will be the one that gets enacted.  While I don’t really agree wtih Measure 57, I strongly disagree with measure 61 (proposed by asshole-lawyer Kevin Mannix), and therefore I’m throwing my support behind Measure 57 in the hopes that it will pass with more votes than Measure 61.

5) Oregon Ballot Measure 58: My vote: NO!!!  This is another one of the ballot measures affecting public education.  I volunteer to help English language learning elementary school students learn to read at Pine Ridge Elementary School here in Bend through the SMART program, and I can assure you that not all non-native English speakers learn English the same way or at the same rate.  What this measure is trying to do is legislate how fast students learn English.  I’m sorry to inform those politicians who wrote this measure, but it doesn’t matter what the law is, students will learn English at the rate they are going to learn English, regardless of what is put down in the law books.  Writing a law that makes it illegal to help students in their native language for more than two years is not going to make students learn English any faster – its just going to mean that they are going to stop getting the help they need regardless of whether their English is proficient or not.  Furthermore, since this measure doesn’t bring any additional funding into the school system, its going to effectively take money and resources away from the rest of the students since schools will have to scramble and reallocate funds to meet yet another ridiculous government requirement.  English language learning students and ESL teachers don’t need more unfunded mandates placed on their heads – they need more monetary support from the state and more support from parents and volunteers locally.  Even if you don’t agree with me on some of the other issues, I strongly encourage you to vote NO on this terrible measure.

6) Oregon Ballot Measure 59: My vote: No.  This one is very easy to decide.  This measure would basically institute the Bush tax cuts for the state of Oregon.  Jeff Alworth over at Blue Oregon put it best, so I’m just going to quote him:

What it effectively does is allows the well-heeled to pay less taxes in Oregon while simultaneously blowing a massive hole in the Oregon budget.  It is a pro-rich, anti-government measure that is state of the art for the political thinking, circa 1996.

In case you needed any additional info, Chuck Sheketoff detailed who it benefits in even more detail:

Households with annual incomes exceeding $83,200 would receive 97 percent of the tax break, leaving just 3 percent of the break to be divided by those with incomes under $83,200….

If you have income of at least $405,000, you are in the richest 1 percent of Oregon taxpayers and as a group you will average $15,000 in tax savings from Measure 59. You and the others in the top income class with incomes averaging $1 million will reap almost half (49 percent) of the tax savings created by Measure 59.

With either Measure 57 or 61 potentially increasing the state expenditures significantly, a reduction in state income is definitely not what we need right now, and if we did pass this, education, human services, and public safety would all suffer.

7) Oregon Ballot measure 60: My vote: No!!  Since my girlfriend is an elementary school teacher here in Bend, I have thoroughly discussed this measure with her.  While to some, structuring pay based on teacher performance may seem like a good idea, in the end it would be extremely difficult to institute, and would hurt many of the students that it is supposed to help.  Here’s the potential problems with it:

A) How do you determine teacher performance?  Is it up to the principal?  Is it based on standardized test scores?  What is good performance or poor performance?  The measure doesn’t describe how performance would be measured, but I can see a number of scenarios – either the teachers are all trying to kiss up to the principal, or the teachers are all teaching only to the tests in order to get raises.  Furthermore, how would you compensate for the fact that some teachers have much more difficult students to work with.  My girlfriend, for example, has 14 of her 20 students that are pulled out to get special assistance for some reason or another.  Due to the luck of the draw, other teachers at her school have significantly less special needs students, and certainly the schools in more affluent areas may have none.  Would this measure simply make all the best teachers flock to the most affluent schools (already a problem) to avoid getting pay cuts?  Don’t the students from the less affluent areas already get screwed enough in public schools – do we really need to screw them any more?

B) How exactly would raises be divvied up?  Would there be a set amount of money given to each school for teachers and then would the teachers compete within the school for who gets raises, or if all the teachers do well, would they all get raises?  The former would foster a negative atmosphere where teachers wouldn’t share resources or help the young teachers get on their feet in their first year or two.  The latter brings up the whole issue of affluent versus less affluent schools again.

Its clear to me that this measure was not thought out well, and doesn’t deserve to pass.

8 ) Oregon Ballot Measure 61: My vote: No.  See the discussion for measure 57 on this one.

9) Oregon Ballot Measure 62: My vote: No.  This measure mandates that 15% of the proceeds from the state lottery be given to crime prevention.  It seems rather odd to me that one man (Kevin Mannix) has enough power to potentially get funding for his pet obsession written in to the Oregon constitution.  Mannix is also the man who introduced measure 61, and he seems to have a fetish for crime prevention measures.  Regardless of whether or not crime prevention is a worthy goal, there is a reason why we have an Oregon legislature – to decide how state funding should be divvied up, and handcuffing them by forcing a large chunk of the State’s budget towards an already well-funded area seems wrong.

10) Oregon Ballot Measure 63: My vote: No.  This measure would make it so that improvements done to specific houses and farm structures for less than $35,000 in a calendar year would not need a building permit.  While I am definitely for restructuring the way permitting is done in our state and in the country, this measure does a poor job of it.  A blanket free pass for improvements under $35,000, or $70,000 if the project spans two years, is not the best way to go about this.  It seems as though this measure was not particularly well thought out – and as a result the number of agencies and groups opposing it is staggering.  I’m going to hop on the opposition bandwagon with this one as well.

11) Oregon Ballot Measure 64: My vote: No.  This measure basically makes it illegal for funds collected from public employees (such as through unions) to be used for political campaigning and lobbying.  This seems unfair, since unions of private employees can still freely use their money for political purposes.  Why silence one group and not another?  For some more information, here’s a good quote from the Portland Oregonian:

Few other states have such a law, but since unions are the most active opponents of Sizemore’s multiple measures, you can see why he and Loren Parks — the eightysomething Las Vegas multimillionaire who finances most of Sizemore’s signature-collecting efforts — would want to silence their voices.

Of course, this would have the effect of giving Oregon firefighters and nurses less voice in Oregon politics than Loren Parks, which is not most Oregonians’ view of how things should work.  But the measure also runs the risk of badly hurting Oregon charitable organizations, which is why so many of them have raised their voices loudly in the campaign. Oregon public employees contribute to many state charities through payroll deductions, and the charities are concerned, after reading the measure’s language and consulting attorneys, that they will be banned from speaking on behalf of their clients.

12) Oregon Ballot Measure 65: My vote: No.  This one is probably the most confusing measure on the ballot.  On the surface its hard to determine exactly what its effects would be.  The basics of it are that instead of having party primaries, and then a general election where any number of candidates would be on the ballot, this measure would make it so that all candidates go on the same primary ballot, and the top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, would be on the final ballot in the general election.  While the effects on the two major parties of this are unclear, the obvious effect this would have is that it would majorly screw third parties, who would be unable to voice their concerns in the more public general election.  Since I like to support the Green Party when I deem it appropriate, I am going to go ahead and vote no on this measure, although if it does pass, it will be interesting to see what effects it has…

13) Deschutes County Measure 9-61:  My vote: Yes.  This measure would increase the tax on hotel rooms in unicorporated Deschutes county from 7% up to 8% next year, and 9% the year after.  In Bend and Redmond, the tax is already at 9%, so bringing it up to 9% for the rest of the county seems fair to me.  And 70% of the extra money would be used to upgrade county facilities that are related to tourism, such as the county fair grounds.  Seems pretty reasonable to me.

14) Deschutes County Measure 9-58 – Central Oregon Community College:  My vote: Yes.  This measure would allow COCC to issue 43 million dollars in bonds to renovate the main campus and to construct satellite campuses in Madras and Prineville.  In order to pay for the bond, the average property owner would end up paying approximately six extra dollers per year.  I am a big fan of higher education, and of spreading said education to smaller cities in Central Oregon.  Six bucks a year seems pretty reasonable to me for increasing higher eduaction.

15) Deschutes County Measure 9-60 – Bend Area Transportation District: My vote: Yes.  Without a doubt, I think that a public transportation system is a good thing.  Is using a $50 property tax increase the best way to fund it?  I’m not sure.  Former Bend Mayor Allan Bruckner makes a good argument that says that a transportation district should be funded by a payroll tax on employers in Bend, since much of the ridership is people going to and from work, and since many of the large employers in Bend (the hospital, city, forest service, and county) don’t pay any property taxes.  But there is also the danger that if we don’t pass something now, the transportation system may struggle under budget cuts from the city and will never really get off its feet.  So, should we fund it now and hope that it uses the money to grow and provide more services to the city and that any future funding it needs will be done through a payroll tax, or should we tun down this measure and hope that BAT can survive on a reduce budget until a future election cycle where it can have funding passed.  For my part, I guess I’ll throw my support behind it, but its tepid support at best…

Ok, that’s all for me.  I hope everyone who has read this has found at least some value in the work I put into researching and sharing my opinions on all the candidates and measures.

Seth,
I appreciate your taking the time to write a lengthy response to my post.  I don’t particularly want to get into an extensive internet argument with you, so this will be my one and only response to this or any future comments.

First off, Seth, I appreciate your bicycle riding.  As someone who has owned a car for just 1 out of my 24 years, and as someone who will hop on my bike to get anywhere in Bend as long as its at least 15°F or warmer, I too am a big proponent of bicycles.  Unfortunately, even if it is something I personally support, the fact that you ride a bicycle is not sufficient for me to cast my vote for you for Secretary of State.  I want a Secretary of State who is going to support the policies and positions that are most important to me, and if that Secretary of State also happens to ride a bike to work, that’s a nice side story, but little more.

Second, it appears that you think that I haven’t done my homework.  I read through your entire post on why you were supporting Brownlow, read or skimmed a number of other posts from you, and went and looked at both Brownlow and the Constitution Party’s websites.  And I did all this before I wrote my original post.

You say that you’ve met Brownlow on the campaign trail, and you insinuate that he is actually more reasonable that he appears on the web, and that abortion is the last thing he makes his stand on.  You claim that “Brownlow’s tons better than Merkley on pretty much every issue _except_ abortion,” but from what I’ve read, I’m not totally convinced.

If you look at the Oregon Constitution Party website, you’ll see things like the first paragraph of the party platform:

“We gratefully acknowledge the past blessings of Almighty God, poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Lord. We appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance, and protection. We call on all Oregonians to join us in our efforts to return American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit government to its constitutional boundaries, as we promote candidates for public office.”

Personally, I think that kind of mindless drivel is the worst thing you can possibly insert into politics.  And that’s just the first paragraph – it gets worse from there, including horribly racist and sexist rhetoric full of hate and intolerance.  If I could sacrifice the entire existence of the Green party in exchange for getting religion completely out of the two major parties, where a candidates religion is never even publicly named or recognized, I would do it in a heartbeat, and I would throw in all the other third parties as well.

Now, I know you might say “look at what Brownlow is saying himself, not his party’s platform.”  In a perfect world, that might be a nice thing to do, but whether you like it or not, Brownlow is representing the Constitution party.  A vote (or endorsement) for Brownlow ultimately legitimizes the Constitution party and their sexist, racist, mindless, and reactionary party platform.  In this world of far-from-perfect information, where so many people vote on candidates just based on party allegiance, it matters what party a candidate comes from.

Now, just for the sake of exposition, you’re right that Brownlow seems to be more moderate than his party, and that there are some similarities between his platform and the Green Party’s ideals.  He is strongly anti-war and anti-empire.  And he does a thorough job of lambasting the excessive power of banks in our country.  But the big problem I have with Brownlow (other than the constitution party and the pro-life thing) is that he is excessively reactionary.

Its basically a problem of image and marketing – the same problem that you have that made me not want to vote for you, albeit in a slightly different form.  While Brownlow may be anti-war, anti-empire, and anti-big-banks, from reading through his website, that’s all I get.  He’s just anti-this, or anti-that.  The only thing he is for, from what I can tell, is banning abortion in all forms, which I don’t support.

For example, Brownlow rattles on for almost 500 words on his website about the “American Empire,” but never once suggests any sort of action to take about it.  When all someone does is lash out and go on bitter rants about this or that thing, it does draw attention to whatever they are ranting against, but it doesn’t make me respect them at all.  By only lashing out and ranting, Brownlow is positioning himself as an attention-getter, but not actually a serious candidate for US Senate.

And this gets to the root of the problem, and the reason why I didn’t vote for you.  I want a third party candidate who shares my ideals who is also a legitimate candidate for the office.  When I go to your blog, seven days before the election, and what I see is a long series of back and forth posts about how you think the Oregonian isn’t covering you fairly, an obscure post about the condorcet method that will go way over the heads of the average voter, and then an article about how you endorse Brownlow, and by extension, the uber-conservative, racist, sexist, and extremist Constitution Party, do you see what kind of image I get of you?  When I look at your website, and the part I can see without scrolling down contains the words “legalized bribery” three times in large, emphasized text, do you see how that, along with your absurdly long back-and-forth with the Oregonian reporter over the same issue of accepting money, makes me think that you’re focused mostly on a single issue, and therefore are not a legitimate, well rounded candidate?

Look Seth, in reality, I like you.  I like what you stand for, and after reading your website more in depth, below-the-fold, I can see that you do support the basic tenants of the Green Party platform.  The problem that I have is just that you don’t present yourself as a serious politician.  You come off as a guy who is passionate, especially about certain issues, but who blogs through his campaign like he is just some average guy, who just wants to share all the interesting interactions he has with all these new and different people since he’s doing this crazy campaign thing.  You come off as someone who would be a good neighbor to have passionate political discussions with, not as someone I could actually see in office.

And that’s why I didn’t vote for you.  I saw you as a guy who is not a serious candidate, but who is running just to draw attention to a couple specific issues.  I saw you as a guy who couldn’t clearly define his message, and then stick to it without being drawn off into speculation about how voting for the Consitution party is actually going to position the Green Party better for next election cycle.  I saw you as a guy who was more interested in writing back and forth posts online about how your not getting coverage, rather than going out and doing something that forces the newspapers to cover you.  I saw you as a guy who couldn’t actually draw any serious support, except from people who would support the Green party candidate no matter whom it was.  And that’s not what I want from a candidate I’m voting for, regardless of whether they’re a third party candidate or not.

The way I see it, unless the Green Party puts forth extremely professional, serious candidates (regardless of whether or not they take donations), the best thing I can do to support liberal causes is to vote for Democrats and hope that through the success of their slightly more liberal policies, the whole electorate will move further left, either forcing the Democratic Party further left, or leading to greater support for the Green Party.

Sincerely,
-Matt

PS. As someone with some web design experience, I can tell you right now that without a professional looking website, the image you portray isn’t one of a serious candidate.  My first two thoughts looking at your website are 1) a computer programmer made this, not a web designer, and 2) this looks spammy.  As a political candidate, spammy is not what you want.  Pavel Goberman is the epitome of spammy to me, and you want to be as far away from Pavel Goberman as you can.  As a final note, I hope that you realize after reading this that I’m not a “confused” voter at all, just one who knows what I want and knows that your not it.