a response to “how am I driving?”

Over

the weekend, a minivan aggressively passed me on NE Lloyd Blvd. There is a bike lane here, I was riding close to the edge of it, and the van made no attempt to swerve to the edge of his lane, or slow down while passing. In fact, he aggressively accelerated while going in the middle of the lane. I do not like it when drivers drive like this around me, and would like to advocate for safer driving on our roads which are shared between cars and bikes. Usually this is the end of the story, but this minivan happened to be one of those vehicles which has a “How am I driving?” and a phone number to call in a response. Lucky for everyone involved, I managed to get a picture of it all, and here is a summary report:

How am I driving? call 1 800 669 7874
PDX 3740
Oregon plate 655 DKG

location NE Lloyd Blvd. and NE 11th Ave. van and I going west on Lloyd. at about 12:30am Saturday August 8th 2009.

My complaint

is that driver aggressively passed too close, unreasonably close. at intersection he looked at me sort of funny, too a break from his hand-held cell phone call long enough to aggressively accelerate away from me again.

call:
It just went to voicemail, saying something about being on vacation and a few other numbers for “distribution.” I didn’t call those numbers, as they sounded less relevant to making a complaint as I am making, and I can try back later in the week. The name of the company is Tricor, which is roughly what I saw on the side of the van. I believe it to be TRICOR group but when I googled the phone number from the van, the first entry is for a Tricor LinkedIn profile, which has a web URL of TRICOR Insurance, but I think that’s in error.

UPDATE : Thursday August 13th,

I had call several times but never got anyone to pick up, but today someone did, and I reported the incident, the woman from TRICOR pleasantly took all the information including my name and number so maybe they’ll get back to me. She did take a description of the driver, so perhaps it will somehow be noted and help to prevent more cell phone using drivers from flooring it around bikers.

notes from townhall on Portland’s Climate Action Plan

At Climate Action Plan Townhall, North Portland, at University Park Community Center. July 7th, 2009.

Before it starts, I was happy that I got wi-fi for free, and I saw Jonathan Maus of Bikeportland and Mayor Sam Adams is hosting the event. The event is sponsored by Urban League of Portland.

Starting off by asking for audience input, what brought us here? What do we care about?
From the audience-
Where is improved transit in the plan? What are the keys to the plan?
What is the difference between chemtrails and contrails? Water issues? Equity and climate justice issues, specifically heat impacts on communities? Evidence that carbon has an impact on the environment? How are you going to implement this? How could city government implement such a plan? How to prioritize which actions to take first? We should distinguish between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide (this was a big question, requiring the guy to turn around and address the audience, from his perch at the front)

audience poll, via wireless responders handed out:
47 percent have lived in pdx for over 10 years.
Thought to be strongly affected by climate change
when will it affect me? 67 percent right now, 28 percent 5-10 years
how do you get around town? Sans car.
How familiar? Pretty familiar with climate change stuff.

now onto a presentation on the plan. Emphasizing this is a draft, and another draft will be out this fall.
Going over the history, from 1993 position as a national leader. Current goal 10% lower than 1990 levels by 2010. (not meeting current goal, only 1% below at present)
addressing what we are looking to do, as from the survey, that 95% of us believe in the science between climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, so don’t need to address the more basic issue of whether or not carbon emissions are in fact causing climate change.

Mayor Adams wanted to ensure the skeptics got a chance to speak, so they all had their say. They didn’t really mention Portland, but rather debated the general premises of Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Some of them also really hounded Obama and “his plans,” maybe a mention of the UN, I think. Now back to reality.

The Mayor mentions that we’re not on track to meet current goal, and there has been a slight uptick lately in CO2 emissions in the county. Michael, the science guy, is talking now, looking at the overall reductions that would be required to meet the larger goal of 80% reduction by 2050. it’s so large of a reduction and so far away, we have an interim goal of a 40% reduction by 2030. 2012 actions are what we’re actually gonna do.

The Mayor believes our efforts must be comprehensive, and not be in one area of emissions, we’ll have to make strides in all sectors to achieve the 80% goal. Now go through each of the eight action areas, and point out highlights.

1.Buildings and Energy
Provide low cost financing for home and business energy efficiency upgrades.
The city has a pilot program in the works at cleanenergyworksportland.org
goal of installing 5 Megawatts of solar, the equivalent of 2,500 home systems.
Establish a district heating and cooling system.

2.Land Use and Mobility
20-minute neighborhood,
fund next 8 miles of streetcar lines. Invest in infrastructure like sidewalks, fund the next tier of Bicycle Master Plan improvements.

3.Consumption and Solid Waste
Implement curbside food-waste collection for residences.

4.Urban Forestry
Grey to Green, more trees, ecoroofs, green street facilities.
Mayor says good payoff for investing in trees, cost benefit is in our favor.

5.Food
Create 1300 new community garden plots, she mentioned there was a waiting list this long in Portland.
Increase the consumption of local foods, less about what you’re eating and more about thinking about where it’s from. Mayor really didn’t want to offend the cattle industry.

6.Community Engagement
Engage residents, build on business leadership, “Climate Champion” recognition.
Mayor said it’s important to include the whole of the community, but this wasn’t listed as a bullet point.

7.Climate Change Preparation
prepare an assessment of vulnerabilities.

8.Local Government Operations
Capital improvement bonds. yeah and more!

Quality of Life Matters!

The Mayor now runs over the questions taken by the audience and jotted down, a pretty good effort to include all concerns mentioned. Even if he quickly answers/dismisses the concern. He readily admits to shortcomings, by saying we will address them more in the upcoming drafts.

Now some more of the audience polling to wrap things up. Overall, people seem to be pretty far along in green-living already. Which is what you may expect, also, it’s good that the Urban League or Portland sponsored this and raised issues of racial equity, but when you scan the audience, it’s mostly a white turnout. It’s also older, but there are plenty of mid-range looking people. The stat of most people living here for 10 years or more was telling. I wonder about home ownership rates? and income, I would think there should be some interesting correlations, with who’s here, who goes to farmer markets, and who doesn’t, with who isn’t here. I was impressed by the accounting aspect of the plan, they seem to have a good idea of what is going on presently, they point out how Portland lacks a baseline, of sorts, to know how to quantify improvements. And some good questions were raised, like about differing types of jobs and how they will be affected by these plans.

Afterward: a few observations:

I think this is a larger question, how will the city address low-income individuals and families going forward? I think breakdowns of emissions along those lines could help to clarify how certain areas of emissions may be more costly to reduce. Looking at the current developments along MLK Jr. Blvd., it seems green development, and general green community actions, proceed with a certain style, or attitude. While much of this is based in science of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, other acts seem to be driven by a desire to live locally, or within what the Climate Action Plan calls a 20-minute neighborhood, where you can walk and bike around to have your daily living needs met within a 20-minute radius. This is a great idea, but to me, I want to live in an environment such as this but don’t need a recognize anything about my carbon footprint to do so. I see why these ideas go together, as living locally reduces your carbon emissions, but so much of what is in this Climate Action Plan has to with neighborhoods and how we want to live, that we could call it just an Action Plan, or a City Plan. It seems talking about the scientific aspects leads to confusion, parts per million and chemtrails. Having these skeptics at the meeting didn’t add anything to our Action Plan, but it was interesting to see that even they agreed with aspects of this plan, parts that I don’t think they had read about before hand, as there isn’t a low-budget, self-made, youtube distributed, conspiracy-laden diatribe in favor of 20-minute neighborhoods.

You can download the 50 page report, or individual sections of it, here. Also at that link you can comment to the city on this draft, but only until July 13th, 2009.

Here is a video I took of a skeptic at the meeting, and another still shot, you can see two cameras, they both recorded the entire meeting.

privileged strippers

Today, while eating lunch at Muddy’s on Mississippi, a small group was chatting next to us. They were talking about various topics, like social issues, mentioning initiating a complaint against a strip club. I thought they were getting at some issue of how the club was abusing it’s role in the community, or exploiting sex-workers. However, it turned out to be that one of the women in the group worked at the club. I didn’t learn exactly what the complaint was to be about, but it didn’t seem to matter; she quickly launched into an autobiographical gossip session on how great it was to work there. The woman was plenty interested in giving the inside story, we learned the delicacies of what “no touch” means, including a demonstration of a “no touch” lap dance (I didn’t manage to turn to look. . .I was eating). She was very positive about the experience over all, and rather enjoyed her employer, to the point that she dates a bouncer there. She liked how the bouncers would kick out non-tippers, but only if they were sitting in the best viewing section.

Anyways, it reminded of critiques of sex-workers that I heard and read when OPB’s Think Out Loud did a show on the topic, here is the show page, here is related post by the show’s producer, and a single comment, which appear to be good summaries of the comments on the show page. I see a divide: on the one hand we have sex-workers who are able to enter into the field with an ability to set limits, and adequately make a go of sex-industry work as means to a living, while on the other side, there seems to be a population who become sex-workers for entirely different reasons, and have an entirely different experience, mainly characterized by a lack of choice, or agency (with sex-workers this is in reference to rape). To use the term ‘sex-worker’ for both groups is a perversion of language. A common thread in the former group is the ability to say “no,” exemplified by the stripper I heard today explain how upon being offered a job to appear in Exotica, a local adult-services publication, for advertising purposes, she declined, as she didn’t want any of this part of her life to be “permanent.”

It’s this empowerment that seems to be at issue. It’s not that some sex-workers are able to enjoy their job, and the others just don’t like what they are doing, it’s that some don’t have the choice. It’s that portraying an industry as being ok for certain people precludes an ability to recognize that it’s a sore spot in our society. Just because a particular privileged individual has the ability to dally into a industry, and come away without harm, even enjoy oneself while earning a living, doesn’t mean such experience is the norm. And I think there is a degree to which taking pride in this manner obfuscates the darker underlying reality.

in response to “What frustrates you about the Healthcare industry?”

my response:

I thought about this, but couldn’t come up with an answer. every time I had something to consider, I could ascribe it to being something besides the industry. my primary interaction with the industry was paying a bunch of monthly fees and having this “great” kaiser coverage. I (actually my employer) was paying enormous amounts each month for pretty minimal care, as I only went in for a check-up or isolated non-emergency urgent care. then a car ran me over (the driver was drunk, (surprise!)); I required ambulance transit and hospitalization, plus follow up care, which the driver was completely responsible for. however, my private insurance paid for it all. so it’s not the industry which frustrates me, it’s the system that had no accountability.

phone bills

I was reading this article in the NY Times, and then was thinking about the new Google Voice service, and thought one way to lower my phone bill, (a long-held dream of mine), would be to use a combination of land-line, or VOIP, with a pre-paid mobile plan. With a service like Google Voice you could do this with one number, saving lots of hassle.

that’s all! I’ll go back to listening to “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” I hope to blog more once I receive my new netbook computer, hopefully tomorrow.

Private Lives in the Public Eye; the Sam Adams scandal

I attended a panel discussion organized by the Oregon Council for the Humanities called “Private Lives in the Public Eye.” It was supposed to be a general discussion about issues raised by the Sam Adam’s scandal of late. It was a good exploration of ideas, with the questions by the audience the highlight. Mark Zusman, editor of the Willamette Week, seemed to be the featured guest. After hearing Mark discuss and defend the reasoning behind the Willamette Week’s decision to go to publication on Sam Adam’s relationship with Beau Breedlove, I’m glad they pursued the story to extract an admission from Adams.

The general topics covered included what it meant to make the transition from private citizen to public official in regards to your privacy, and the parameters by which the press should report on public officials private lives. An ‘generational gap’ point was made, about how to the younger generation, everything is public; increasingly, we broadcast our private lives. Of course, there is still a distinction between the public and the private, it’s just the the private sphere has shrunk over the last decades. In regards to public officials though, the press has a special relationship to one’s privacy. Blogs are watering down the specialness of this, however. There was various historical occurrences of the press not prying into politicians lives, JFK was mentioned. Mark Zusman went into details on what he would publish, he believed in a right to privacy for individuals as much as a lack of a right to privacy for government. One examples of what he meant was an un-named Oregon political official who the Willamette Week investigated on allegations he, or she, is an alcoholic. Mark said the evidence pointed to this person being a high-functioning alcoholic and concluded that it did not effect the job performance, so to speak, and hence they didn’t publish the story. (what a revelation, uh? maybe we can get some follow-up) Basically, this issue remained in the private sphere, where as Sam Adam’s lying about having a relationship with an eighteen year old crossed the line into being a public matter. In the Q + A, Mark was more or less attacked for breaking this story and the resulting scandal. His defense included saying the Willamette Week had not called for Adam’s resignation and cited three circumstances that were of public interest: the way in which Adams responded to the allegations as put forth by Bob Ball, essentially Adams shattered an opponents (Ball’s) chances to the mayor’s office. Second, Amy Ruiz getting a job in the mayor’s office that allegedly was an attempt to keep her from reporting the story. Third, Randy Leonard’s outspoken support for Adams when the allegations initially came up in 2007 getting paid off by a future appointment by Adams to Police Commissioner. I think reason number one is really the only one of interest. With the Ruiz allegations, I can hardly believe it, when Nigel Jaquiss had already broken a prominent Oregon politician on covering up a sexual relationship with a minor, if you were going to worry about anyone breaking this story, it’d be him, wouldn’t it? With Leonard, he put himself out there when defending Adams in 2007 but so long as he didn’t actually know the truth, I don’t see how him getting the Police Commissioner job could be payback for covering up this scandal.

I agree with Mark’s rational for why the Willamette Week pushed their reporting to the degree that it did. The criticism, heard in the Q+ A, aimed at the press seem misdirected towards the Willamette Week. I don’t agree with the all the other papers, The Oregonian, Portland Tribune and others that have editorialized that Adams should resign. Other questions raised issues of  Christian moralizing and ‘displaced sexophobia ‘ being targeted at Adams. Perhaps this could be levied against many of who are calling for the mayor’s resignation, but the Willamette Week’s reporting has been quite fact-based, and in my mind didn’t draw conclusions, even on some of the above mentioned points. The editorializing has been by other media outlets and in personal conversations I’ve had. Most of the people I’ve talked to, and seen on twitter, have been quick condemnations of the press and lamentations of privacy. I don’t want Sam to resign, nor do I think of myself as a starch supporter, but if this causes him problems down the road and becomes ineffective in some manner, he should resign at that point.

Robert Eisinger, a professor at Lewis and Clark, had a generalized point that he’d like more information rather than less, and information was to be desired. I agree, and apply it to Adam’s situation by saying it’s to the public benefit to know how he shrewdly dealt with the allegations he had a sexual relationship with someone under the age of consent by misleading his constituents and attacking Bob Ball. Obviously, it’s a bit questionable that the one with the allegations was his political opponent, but isn’t this the same type of criticism we should now be directing towards Adams? He lied rather than take on a difficult personal situation becoming public, for the express reason of personal political gain. Evidently, many people are not bothered by such an admission by our mayor, or are so distracted by their conviction in public officials’ ability to maintain strict private lives that they overlook the self-serving motivations on display.

One last comment, I thought the panel and moderator had dated views on blogs. To me, a blog is a publishing format, not an online subculture with particular political leanings. The moderator, Peter Steinberger, dean of the faculty of Reed College, stated “blogs aren’t journalism,” apparently due to the equation of blogs with opinion articles. Sure, many blogs are opinion articles, rather short on facts, but this is increasingly untrue. Everyone has a blog now, including most print newspapers, so I don’t see the point to attempting to relegate blogs to a lower category of media. A blogger at Blue Oregon commented in the defense of bloggers, which was nice, but wasn’t a rebuttal of the misunderstanding in “blogs aren’t journalism.”

The final question was real quick, something like: “Are you or your colleagues developing a story about Portlanders sensitivity to this so-called lie?” Mark answered, “I’m not sure I understand your question.” The questioner simply smiled and said “Oh that answers it.”

on Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove

I

‘m finding a lot of people seem to quickly support Portland Mayor Sam Adams and I’m not sure this is the best reaction. I read the Willamette Week’s coverage, going back to the original articles from 2007 and watching the press conference from this week and videos with the Oregonian Editorial Board. I find it frustrating that just when our country is taking a step forward with an amazing symbolic inauguration, here in Portland, our leadership falters. I’m not sure if Adam’s needs to resign or not, but it seems this might present a major obstacle to him being an effective leader, and should that happen, he should resign. Hearing the media ask for information on this relationship results in Mr. Adams revealing way too much information about his sex life, but this happens when public officials have such details as part of their past; it’s just too likely that one day it would all come out.
This, perhaps, is the most critical point:

Asked by a reporter if he lied to get elected, Adams said: “I definitely lied to avoid what I thought was another lie that I couldn’t overcome. So, in a way, yes.”

Regardless of what happens, it’s now confirmed Sam Adams is a normal politician; he lies for self-interest. Going forward, judging from the reports on the WWire blog, there is a lot of support against Adams continuing as Mayor. However, from twitter and conversations with friends, I hear what appears to be criticism of the press invading into what should be a private matter. I tend to agree with this perspective, however a couple of things stick out here.

First, the alleged criminal activity. If Beau Breedlove and Sam Adams had a sexual relationship, the possibility of a crime being committed is simply not very far away, from the age difference. The reporting from 2007 doesn’t make unsubstantiated claims of such a relationship, but it puts forth the meme that an illegal relationship could have taken place. It seems to be the Willamette Week continued to pursue the story, gathering evidence which resulted in them breaking a pretty killer scandal, or to be precise, prompted an admission by the Mayor of previously misleading everyone about it. The way the Willamette Week pursued the story since 2007 seems proper, they didn’t publish anonymous conjecture prior to the election, but waited as evidence mounted. Maybe they should have pushed harder, after all Adams didn’t really have much of an opponent in the campaign. Given that, it doesn’t really show political shrewdness to lie, and enter into a conspiracy, about who you’re dating. Sam’s problem were the words “legal and consensual” needed to be said for honesty, so he and Breedlove took an easier road and denied all sexual relations.

I am not sure if he should resign, but his credibility is so damaged, I can’t imagine the ‘Sam for Mayor’ administration will be nearly as effective as what we signed up for when we voted for it.

yes, that’s me

originally uploaded by bjamin.

yes that’s me shooting a gun, in this case it’s a black powder muzzle loader. it was fun. i hit the target on the 2nd try. note out the sparks flying out of the muzzle.

panopticon

If you click the pic, you can see it much larger, but it’s a  pretty great idea for the police I think.  Here in Portland, I could envision them, maybe equipped with taser darts for bikers.

Why I’m voting for Barack Obama

I’ve

been following this presidential election close enough for a while now, the exciting primary season sucked me into Obama’s momentum and I never left it. I had the initial idea of voting for the Green party candidate, as I had for Nader and Cobb in the previous two elections. I saw Cynthia McKinney give a talk in Portland before she was the nominee for the Green Party, and thought she would be a fine Presidential candidate for the Greens. But as the excitement built for Obama, her campaign didn’t seem to go anywhere. McKinney failed to get much press, which is not surprising, but I was disappointed in the web presence of the Greens, and impressed by the Obama campaign’s adeptness at using it, and how the netroots movement rallied behind Obama. A recent article by the Washington Post painted McKinney’s campaign as a scattered, almost spastic, affair. The DC Greens responded to the article in a coherent voice, one that I would have liked to hear more of from the Greens this year (and was lacking from Wapo’s account).

Overall,

I’ve been impressed time and time again by Barack Obama in his smartness, his speeches, the ground game his campaign has developed, and by the advisers he chooses. Looking back, the Democratic primary was the more inspirational period, seeing a relative outsider take on the Clinton establishment and win. The numbers of newly registered voters, volunteers, financial supporters, and the 50-state strategy actually being employed were all great developments for the Democratic nominee. Here is Lawrence Lessig talking about why he supported Obama over Hillary Clinton in the primary, I think it speaks to many of his strengths now over John McCain, even though the political talking point may have moved on:

and here is a clip from the Wall Street Journal, on the ground games:

An efficient get-out-the-vote machine has long been the hallmark of the Republicans. “It was George Bush who taught us this,” said Steve Schale, Florida director for the Obama campaign. The result: a ground force that is several times larger than the McCain campaign in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania — and five times larger in Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina than the Democrats had on the ground in 2004.

Another

aspect of Obama’s campaign is how much better is than John Kerry’s. The reason I was so uninterested in the Democratic Party had to do with the type of campaigns being run and the general lack of political fortitude Democratic leaders seem to display. I’m not blinded by the lights, and have no illusions about what will most likely happen in the upcoming years (not much) but the choice is clear, we have an exceptional candidate to vote for now, in a way that I’ve never been able to do, and there appears to be a absence of candidates such as this for quite some time. It’s an opportunity worth taking.

It’ll

be all the better if the Senate increases the number of Democrats, and for this reason I am voting for Jeff Merkley. It looks like the Dems have a big challenge to getting 60 seats, however, this may force the Senate into being somewhat bipartisan to pass key bills, at least enough to attract a few Republican votes, which might help reelection chances in 2010 and 2012, in certain states

And that is why I’m voting for Barack Obama.