Salem Political Snark

GOP state legislature walkout over redistricting likely tomorrow

Oregon Republicans absolutely love to walk out of the state legislature to deny a quorum when they're unable to get their way. Which is often, since this is a blue state with Democrats firmly in control.

The current GOP hissy-fit is about House Speaker Tina Kotek changing the agreement she made with Republicans to have a 3-3 Democrat-Republican split on the House Redistricting Committee.

That deal gave Republicans veto power over maps to redistrict both legislative and congressional seats following the 2020 census. At the time I thought what Kotek did was a bad idea.

Recently I wrote a post, "Oregon Democrats should hang tough with redistricting map," expressing hope that Oregon Dems would stick with a plan that could give Democrats five of Oregon's six congressional seats. (We added one due to population growth.)

Today the state Senate approved the Democratic redistricting maps, sending them to the state House. There, Kotek undid the deal she'd made with Republicans. Good for her. 

When Republicans play fair across the nation, so should Democrats.

But red states are hard at work gerrymandering their way into what they expect will be a takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms. It makes no sense for Oregon Democrats to unilaterally disarm when it comes to redistricting, since control of the House could rest on the outcome of a few races -- like here in Oregon.

What Kotek did is described in a Statesman Journal story.

House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, reneged on a deal Monday that gave House Republicans equal representation on the chamber's redistricting committee in an attempt to pass new congressional district maps which would likely give Democrats disproportionate representation in the state's congressional delegation.

Instead of one evenly split six-member committee that has been working on redistricting since the spring, there will be two House committees for the special legislative session which started Monday: one handling the state legislative maps and the other the congressional map.

The new legislative maps committee has eight members and is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. The second new committee, handling congressional maps, has only three members — two Democrats and one Republican.

Naturally Democrats are trying to put a positive spin on this, claiming that Republicans violated the spirit of the original committee power-sharing agreement by not acting in good faith in coming up with new maps.

I'm inclined to a more cynical view, which usually is more accurate when it comes to figuring out why politicians act as they do.

Many progressives were furious with Kotek for agreeing to an even D-R split on the House Redistricting Committee. Kotek is running for Governor. Winning the Democratic primary would be tougher for Kotek if she was saddled with a soft on Republicans when it came to redistricting.

So acting tough in this special session should help redeem her reputation among the progressives who she needs to vote for her in the Democratic primary for governor.

Sure, now Republicans are threatening a walkout, which could happen tomorrow. But Kotek has given them quite a bit to ponder, walkout-wise. If they walk out, Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, a Democrat, would approve legislative maps, while the congressional map would be fashioned by a panel of judges.

The current legislative map is fairly favorable to Republicans.

Thus a walkout could lead to Fagan drawing maps for the state Senate and House that lead to Democrats increasing their majorities in both chambers. On the plus side for Republicans, the panel of judges probably would draw a congressional map more favorable to the GOP.

I think it's more likely than not that a walkout will happen. This would please the Republican base, though it could irritate independents who think GOP legislators should do their job rather than heading for Idaho when they're about to lose a vote.

As I said in my previous post, a walkout always was possible, given Oregon's crazy requirement that two-thirds of each chamber be present for a quorum. Kotek got some concessions in the last regular legislative session when she agreed to evenly split the seats on the House Redistricting Committee between D's and R's.

On the whole, Kotek has played this political game quite well.

If Republicans show up for tomorrow's special session in the House, she'll look even better. It's possible that GOP House members won't walk out, figuring they can always file a lawsuit against the congressional redistricting map, which would land it in the courts, where it would go whether or not a walkout occurs.

That could be the closest thing to a win-win for both sides. Republicans can play the Victim of Kotek game, and Democrats will be pleased that their congressional map was passed by the legislature -- even if a court later deemed it unlawful.

Oregon Democrats should hang tough with redistricting map

There are times to play nice, and there are times to play tough.

When it comes to drawing a new map of Oregon's six congressional districts following the 2020 census -- we get an additional seat due to population growth -- it's definitely a time for Democrats to play tough. 

After all, in states where they're in control of redistricting, Republicans are going all-out to draw maps that are gerrymandered to ensure that GOP candidates win as many seats as possible. Republican politicians even have said that redistricting alone is going to guarantee a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2022.  

It's great that Democrats are more fair-minded than Republicans. A number of blue states have independent redistricting commissions. If every state had such a commission, that'd be wonderful.

But Oregon Democrats shouldn't give up their political power. In this state, the legislature tries to draw a congressional redistricting map. If the legislature can't agree, then the state Supreme Court takes over. 

Unfortunately, a Democratic leader has already surrendered much of the power her party had over congressional redistricting. This struck me as a really bad idea at the time. Now that we know Oregon has earned a sixth seat in the House of Representatives, it was a really really bad idea. 

As part of a deal to avoid Republican delay tactics in this year’s legislative session, House Speaker Tina Kotek agreed to give GOP members an equal say on the House Redistricting Committee. Without at least one Republican vote in that committee, no map can pass.

Still, Oregon Democrats should do their best to get the map they've released approved by the legislature. Or at least, a map close to their proposed map. If Republicans want to take a chance at whatever the Supreme Court comes up with in the event of a legislative stalemate, fine.

I just don't think Democrats should bend very much on trying to get five congressional seats that are safe D or lean D. Speaker Kotek made a mistake in giving Republicans a veto over what the House Redistricting Committee comes up with.

It was crazy to give up the opportunity to do unto Republicans in Oregon what Republicans are doing to Democrats in states under their control: gerrymander Dems into as few congressional seats as possible.

UPDATE: Came across this tweet that makes my point. 

(All I can think of is maybe Kotek figured that Republicans would stage a legislative walkout over a Dem-friendly map, so that's why she made the deal, figuring that if the Supreme Court was going to draw the congressional map anyway, she might as well get a concession from Republicans to stop slowing down the 2021 legislative session.)

By comparison, this map released by Oregon Democrats seems quite fair by comparison, though not surprisingly it does tilt in favor of Democratic candidates.

Here's an excerpt from the OPB story.

Of special interest this year is how Oregon creates a brand new congressional district, splitting the state into six parts instead of the current five. With Democrats currently controlling the U.S. House by a slim margin, how Oregon proceeds could have implications in Washington, D.C.

Democrats’ proposal would center the new Congressional district in two areas that have seen some of the fastest population growth in the last decade: Washington County and the Salem region. The proposal would expand Congressional District 3, currently held by Portland Democratic U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, far to the east and south to encompass Hood River, Wasco, and Jefferson counties, and snatch up a portion of fast-growing Bend. It would send Congressional District 5, held by Democrat Kurt Schrader, deeper into the Portland area, and farther south while divorcing it from the coast.

And according to one analysis, the plan would be biased heavily in Democrats’ favor. A tool created by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center to identify bias in political maps based on four measures suggests the proposal favors Democrats on all four measures, though it suggests such ratings might be skewed in a state with fewer than seven districts. The analysis suggests it could lead to a congressional split of 5 Democrats to 1 Republican, a breakdown that is far out-of-step with the partisan split in statewide races. The website Fivethirtyeight concurred with that analysis.

Police officers undo GOP lies about January 6 insurrection

Deeply moving. Inspiring. Gripping. 

Those words don't begin to describe the testimony four police officers gave today about the Capitol insurrection by Trump supporters who believed the Big Lie that Joe Biden didn't win the presidential election.

Their honesty and bravery put into stark contrast the lies and cowardice almost all Congressional Republicans have been displaying since they decided it was more important to kiss the ass of Donald Trump than stand up for our democracy, which rests on the foundation of a peaceful transfer of power after free and fair elections.

But it isn't just Republicans in Washington D.C. who are going along with Trump's "Stop the Steal" madness.

The Oregon Republican Party has said that the insurrection was a fake "false flag" operation meant to discredit Trump -- the exact opposite of the truth, since Trump was the prime instigator of the violent right-wing terrorists.

Keep this in mind when Republicans seek your vote in local, state, or national elections. Whether they're running for the Salem City Council or President of the United States, every Republican needs to be asked if they believe Biden won a free and fair election.

If a GOP candidate says "no," or equivocates, don't let them off the hook. Pressure them to provide solid evidence that Trump won. Naturally they won't be able to do this, but liars need to be called out on their lies.

Over on my Church of the Churchless blog, recently I've been writing about a great book by Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.

One of the strange things about that blog is that although I'm now an avowed atheist after embracing an Eastern guru-centered spiritual path for 35 years, many of the people who comment on my blog posts are strong religious believers.

They dislike the notion of objective truth, preferring a wishy-washy subjectivism where if you have faith that something is true, that's good enough. I find this attitude deeply irritating. It allows all kinds of dangerous falsehoods to take root in human minds, such as Trump won the election and Covid vaccines don't work. 

Here's what I wrote this morning for my churchless blog. I found the honest testimony of the four police officers so inspiring, I just had to blast the relativism of commenters on my blog who don't believe in objective truth.

As I write this I'm listening to televised testimony of four police officers who are appearing at the first meeting of the Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol.

Watch it, Church of the Churchless commenters who think truth is relative, that what experts and professionals say can't be trusted, that everyone is free to create their own reality, that this physical realm is an illusion, that objectivity isn't possible, and other blather spewed from your religious sensibilities.

Watch it, because the truth is being spoken by four brave men who put their lives on the line. One truthful sentence from them is worth more than a thousand bullshit comments about the relativity of truth.

Truth isn't relative. Truth is truth. It is the most important thing in life, because without truth we're living a lie. Me, I choose not to do that. Those four police officers also have chosen not to do that. 

Take some time to watch this testimony. I'm sure it will be available on You Tube.

Those commenters who consider that truth is something to play word games with, that it doesn't matter if people embrace falsehoods -- watch the four police officers talk about how a dangerous mob of thousands of Trump supporters invaded the capitol because they believed a lie, that the election was stolen from Trump.

Lies matter. Falsehoods matter.

They lead to assaults on law enforcement officers who are still recovering from their many injuries. So think about this, commenters on this blog, next time you want to defend a "everyone creates their own reality" bullshit philosophy. That's an insult to the truth-telling police officers.

None of you would have had the courage to defend the capitol. You don't even have the courage to defend the truth, which requires no physical bravery, just moral strength. So learn from the four police officers. They have a lot to teach you.

Time to really freak out about climate change, Salemians

I'm a big believer in global warming. But until this weekend the stark reality of what climate change means for everybody on our planet hadn't really hit home for me.

Sure, last September Oregon suffered through devastating wildfires exacerbated by drought conditions and rare high winds. My wife and I breathed a lot of smoke as our furnace filters turned black.

And February of this year saw an unusual ice storm that cut off power to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. We had no electricity for eleven days and got to be best friends with our wood stove and Honda generator.

Those were extreme weather events. Neither could be directly tied to global warming, though climate change was implicated in each.

Now, Oregon is facing the hottest temperatures in recorded history. Extreme heat is to global warming as an ice cube is to a freezer: they're so closely related, seeing one means seeing the other.

Today Portland broke the all-time record for a high temperature at the airport, 108 degrees.

Today Salem tied the record for a high temperature in the month of June, 105 degrees.

Tomorrow, Sunday, it's almost certain that Salem will break its all-time high temperature record of 108.

Salem tied its record high temperature for June on Saturday by hitting 105 degrees at the Salem Airport, but the capital's all-time record for heat looks all but certain to fall on Sunday. 

Meteorologists said just about every weather model is showing Salem hitting a high of around 113 on Sunday, which would shatter the previous record of 108 that was set in 1981, 1941 and 1927.

Records in Salem date all the way back to the 1890s. 

So, yeah, it's time to freak out about global warming, fellow citizens of Salem. (I call us Salemians, because saying Salemites is just flat-out wrong.)

Rob Davis is an investigative reporter with the Oregonian. He speaks the truth. There's no denying the reality of climate change, though many people still do.

Today the Oregon Senate passed House Bill 2021. It requires Oregon utilities to provide 100% carbon  free electricity by 2040, with an 80% reduction in the next ten years. Both PGE and Pacific Power supported the bill.

Yet no Republican senator voted for it. I guess Republicans love making our planet minimally habitable for humans, something most of the rest of us think is a really bad idea.

If I could rule the state legislature pecking order, I'd demand that a bill be passed that requires every legislator who voted against HB 2021 to live in a dwelling without air conditioning.

That way global warming deniers in the Oregon legislature will have to experience what they wrongly claim isn't happening: rapidly rising temperatures and more extreme weather events.

Alternatively, they could be required to wear a heavy coat outside when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees. That's what our dog, Mooka, has to do all the time, given her coat of fur. When we let her out in the yard  to pee this very hot afternoon, she instantly laid down and didn't want to get up.

Kind of pathetic that our dog is more attuned to the reality of global warming than Republicans are.

Walkout in Texas legislature, good! Walkout in Oregon, bad!

I'm tribal. No, I'm not a Native American.

But I belong to a variety of other sorts of tribes that define my identity. Democrat, atheist, environmentalist, blogger, citizen activist, Subaru owner, Apple aficionado, author. To name a few.

It's easy for me to see when other people allow their tribal'ness to lead them into liking actions that, if an opposing tribe had done the same thing, would have been met with outrage. 

Yet when it comes to my own tribal leanings, it's more difficult for me to recognize when this happens. 

For example, on Sunday night Democrats walked out of the Texas House of Representatives to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass legislation restricting voting rights.

Democrats pulled off a dramatic, last-ditch walkout in the Texas House of Representatives on Sunday night to block one of the most restrictive voting laws in the United States from passing before a midnight deadline.

The sudden revolt torpedoed the sweeping measure known as Senate Bill 7, which would have reduced polling hours, empowered poll watchers and scaled back ways to vote in Texas, which already has some of the nation's strictest voting laws.

The move worked, because the legislative session was scheduled to expire at midnight. 

I was happy at what Texas Democrats did. Yay!

Even if the horrible legislation is brought up again in a special session, at least walking out cast a national spotlight at what those nasty Republicans in Texas are up to, perhaps spurring Democrats in Congress to pass much-needed voting rights bills.

Today, though, while watching MSNBC's Chris Hayes talk about what happened in the Texas legislature, it belatedly dawned on me that when Oregon Republicans walked out of our state legislature to prevent a climate change bill from becoming law, I was outraged.

So am I for or against walkouts in state legislatures to prevent a bill from passing? 

Well, based on my emotional reaction to the Texas and Oregon walkouts, it depends on who is doing the walking-out. If it's Republicans, I hate it. If it's Democrats, I love it.

But here's the thing. 

In 2019 I said Oregon democracy was threatened by a Republican walkout. In that blog post I argued that democracy respects majority rule. If voters don't give you a majority, it isn't fair for a minority to use a walkout to get their way.

Yet in 2021 I applauded a walkout by Texas Democrats, even though they are a minority in that state's legislature. 

Sure, Emerson said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Yet inconsistency also can be foolish. I can justify my Texas-Oregon inconsistency by the purpose of the walkouts, one noble (Texas), one horrible (Oregon). 

Problem is, Oregon Republicans believed they were engaging in a noble cause when they prevented a cap-and-trade bill from passing via their walkout, because they considered that the bill would harm already struggling rural economies. So nobility is in the eye of the beholder, even though some eyes do see more clearly than others.

I don't think we can do away with our tribal tendencies. Given the way the human brain works, it simply isn't possible to be a purely logical being unswayed by emotions and personal beliefs.

However, we can be aware when we're acting in a tribal fashion. And that produces a willingness to not be quite as harsh toward members of an opposing tribe when they act in a way that I'd applaud if my tribe did the same thing.

To offer another example, a few days ago Black Lives Matter protesters had a rally in Salem to mark the anniversary of George Floyd's murder by a police officer. After some speeches, attendees marched through downtown streets without a permit.

I thought that was great.

But when right-wing groups have done this to protest Governor Brown's Covid policies, with members of the Proud Boys militia group taking part, I was critical of the Salem police department allowing them to march in the streets without a permit.

Can't justify this inconsistency. It's just how my mind works. Which is how most minds work. (Maybe all minds.)

GOP having Oregon legislature temper tantrums

Long ago, I was the parent of a child who went though the "terrible two's." Temper tantrums were common. Crying fits happened routinely.

So I feel for Democratic leaders in the Oregon legislature. They have to deal with Republicans who are the adult equivalent of immature children.

The worst thing is, my daughter grew out of her terrible two'ness, while Oregon Republicans show no sign of acting responsibly.

Almost certainly they're going to do the walkout thing again in this legislative session, thereby denying the 2/3 quorum that the Oregon constitution insanely requires for doing the people's business in the state House and Senate.

(A majority of members present is a typical quorum requirement.)

Oregon Republicans are acting like national Republicans. Unable to appeal to a majority of voters in this state, they're choosing to behave like wanna-be autocrats instead of making their policy positions more palatable to citizens. 

Usually a minority party aspires to becoming the majority party. 

But that takes work. You have to grasp what turns voters off about your party. For example, professing fervent loyalty to Donald Trump isn't a recipe for electoral success here in Oregon.

Yet Republicans in this state are still stuck in the muck of what Trump spread during his four undistinguished years as president.

Their newest trick, which actually is an old maneuver for them, is demanding that bills be read aloud in the Oregon legislature before being voted on. I guess that made sense in the 1800's, which is why it's in the state constitution. 

However, as an Oregonian story says, times have changed. 

Oregonians who tune in to the state House’s Tuesday floor session will hear a new voice, enlisted by Democratic leaders in response to Republican delay tactics and COVID-19 cases at the Capitol.

A computer will take the place of state House clerks, who faced the task of reading bills — some of them hundreds of pages long — aloud because minority Republicans have insisted upon it.

None of the bills scheduled for a vote in the near term are hugely controversial, but refusing to waive the state Constitution’s bill reading requirement is one of the few power moves available to Republicans, who hold 23 seats in the 60-member House, as they try to change or block parts of Democrats’ agenda this session.

...The requirement to read bills aloud before final House and Senate votes comes from Oregon’s original 1859 Constitution but in practice Democrats and Republicans routinely waive the mandate in order to save time.

The full text of bills is available on the Legislature’s website, the Oregon Legislative Information System. People can also watch committee meetings and floor sessions on the website, as the Capitol is currently closed to the public.

It's amazing how hypocritical Oregon Republicans can be. The Oregonian story quotes Republican Leader Christine Drazan as saying that Democrats “do not get to control everything.” 

Well, actually they do. Or at least, should, since voters have given Democrats healthy majorities in both the state House and Senate.

In a democracy, the majority rules. So if you want to rule, you need to become a majority. Like I said, this takes work -- and Oregon Republicans aren't willing to do what it takes to accomplish that.

So political temper tantrums are the childish way the GOP is acting out in the state legislature. They're demanding that Democrats give up on progressive priorities, even though when Republicans controlled Congress, they made zero substantive efforts to reach out to Democrats. 

Likely Oregon Republicans will be walking out of one or both legislative chambers before too long. This is akin to my daughter turning over the Monopoly board and yelling "it's a tie" when I was about to bankrupt her.

It took her a while to completely let go of temper tantrums, but even so, she did much better than the Oregon GOP.

Oregon Senate Republicans walk out again

This is a political non-surprise. Totally predictable.

Today every Senate Republican in the state legislature walked out for the fourth time in two years, denying Democrats the two-thirds quorum needed to do anything.

And why wouldn't they? 

Like I said in a 2019 blog post, "Oregon Dems surrender to Republicans like scared little mice," rewarding the GOP when they behave badly virtually guarantees that the bad behavior will continue.

Every parent of a young child knows this, but not Democratic leaders. Here's what I said in 2019. The "you" refers to Senate President Peter Courtney.

The institution of the Oregon Senate didn't "work" when you and other Democratic leaders agreed to kill the vaccine and gun control bills in exchange for Republicans returning to do the job they were elected to do: take part in Senate proceedings.

Actually what happened here is that Democrats gave in to a ransom request by Republicans.

Not surprisingly, we can expect that since the GOP ploy worked, they're going to try it again.

Which Republicans did. In the 2020 short session, there was another GOP walkout in protest of a climate change bill. The only good news this time was that Democrats didn't make any deals.

The session simply ended, as I described in "Make Oregon Republicans pay for their anti-democracy walkout."

Problem is, so far as I know there weren't any negative consequences for those who walked out, failing to perform their duty as elected officials. No fines. No attempt to revise the 2/3 quorum requirement. Nothing.

Now Senate Republicans aren't walking out in protest of legislation proposed by Democrats.

They've walking out because they don't feel listened to by Governor Brown after demanding that Oregon schools open up immediately for full in-person instruction, among other Covid-related demands.

But all 11 members of the Republican caucus signed a letter to the governor in which they insisted she “immediately reopen schools because science says it’s safe” and increase the amount of COVID-19 vaccines available to older Oregonians, especially in rural areas.

“Our previous efforts to bring these issues to your attention have gone unacknowledged,” the 11 Republicans wrote in their letter. “Thus, we are protesting today’s floor session. In this show of solidarity with Oregonians who are being failed by the current direction of your policies, we hope this action conveys the importance of these issues.”

Oh, boo-hoo. 

Republicans in Oregon hold no statewide office. They aren't close to controlling either the state House or Senate. They have no real platform other than professing eternal loyalty to Donald Trump.

Voters keep saying NO to what the GOP is offering Oregonians.

Instead of changing their right-wing policies to appeal to moderate voters, which would be the reasonable thing to do, Oregon Republicans persist in acting like babies -- having a tantrum and spilling the legislature milk because they aren't being allowed to get their way by the Democratic parents who run the state Capitol.

The only thing Democrat leaders in the legislature should do in response to Republican walkouts is simple: nothing. 

Meaning, give the Republicans nothing. No attention. No rewards. No conciliatory talk. If the GOP wants to grind the legislature to a halt, fine. Have a daily press conference with a chart showing how much the Republicans are getting paid while shirking their oath of office.


"Best of my ability" doesn't mean walking out on the job whenever you don't get your way, politically. The minority party shouldn't expect to control things in Oregon. 

That's the reward a majority party earns for winning elections. Win more elections, GOP. That's the way to get back in power, not by walking out in hissy fits.

Oregon Republicans are acting like Congressional Republicans, a majority of whom voted to overturn Joe Biden's free and fair victory over Donald Trump. Likewise, our local right-wing extremists basically are trying to overturn recent Oregon elections that gave Democrats healthy majorities in both houses of the state legislature. 

As I've said before, democracy is threatened by what the Oregon GOP is doing. If Republicans cared about democracy, they wouldn't be acting the way they are. Keep that in mind, voters.

PGE's storm communications are astoundingly inept

Along with a disturbingly large number of other people, my wife and I have endured a full week of no electricity after the February 12 ice/snow storm devastated much of Oregon.

(Our dog is doing just fine.)

How much longer will our electricity be off? Starting last Monday, Portland General Electric, or PGE, has considered this to be a secret not to be disclosed to their customers. 

Whenever I log into my PGE account, I'm met with a cryptic "not available at this time" in the Estimated Time On part of our outage report.

OK, I can understand that PGE wouldn't be able to provide its customers with a valid estimate of how long their power will be off in the early days of a widespread outage.

But even after a week, PGE still won't tell people how much longer they have to put up with all the inconveniences that come with having no electricity. 

This is causing a lot of frustration. 

I know, because regularly I pick up my iPhone, click on Tweetbot, a Twitter app, and search for tweets matching "@PortlandGeneral."

Maybe a quarter of tweets with this tag praise PGE for restoring the person's power.

The rest run the gamut from mildly critical of PGE to full-on rants about how horrendously awful PGE's response to the storm has been -- both in terms of turning electricity back on and PGE's dreadful communications strategy, which seems focused on keeping customers as much in the dark as possible regarding when their power will return.

This afternoon, though, I noticed a tweet from PGE that seemed promising. 

It didn't take long, though, for me to realize that the new online map not only wasn't useful, it was less than useful. Here's why.

On Thursday, I think it was (yesterday), PGE announced that it expected to have power restored to 90% of its customers by Friday. This is what the Storm Restoration Update page on the PGE web site says.

It's difficult to tell how many customers comprise that 90%, or the remaining 10%, without knowing what "currently" means in the screenshot above.

Regardless of the number, the important thing is that thousands of customers are going to be in the unfortunate 10%, which includes me, since our power is still off. 

On that same web page, PGE described how many customers would lack power after Friday night and where the longest waits to have power restored would be.

This certainly implies -- in fact it basically says it outright -- that the 15,000 customers who haven't had their power turned on by Friday night, tonight, and don't live in the areas listed above, won't have to wait as long as the people who do live in those areas.

UPDATE: I just came across a PGE tweet that said "As of 5pm today, 54,900 customers are still without power." So unless a lot of customers got their power restored between 5 pm and midnight today, PGE underestimated how many customers would lack power on February 19 by 39,900. Sure doesn't make me feel any more confident in PGE's competence.

So, yay, I thought after reading this. My wife and I live in rural south Salem near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. We're nowhere near the areas hit hardest -- Silverton, Woodburn, West Linn, Canby, etc.

I looked forward, then, to learning from the new map when we'd have electricity again. 

That hope was dashed when I actually looked at the map. The title above the map was a giveaway: Check Your Zone. I didn't want to check a zone. I wanted to check our specific outage area, our local neighborhood which had been showing 503 customers without electricity.

This is a screenshot of the overall area, showing the Legend. Light blue has an estimated restoration time of up to 3 days; yellow, up to five days; brown, up to nine days.

The map looks much different when it is zoomed in on my iPhone. This is Salem.The whole city of Salem appears to be in the yellow "up to 5 days" category. The purple dots show individual outages. I'm assuming the mass of dots obscuring much of Salem is covering up yellow.

How useful is this information? So minimal I'd call it useless.

People want to know when the electricity for their home or business will return, not the maximum amount of time it will take to restore power in all parts of Salem, which could range from one day (Saturday) to five days (Wednesday).

Likewise, here's the screenshot for my area. Our house is a bit north and east of Spring Reservoir, better termed Spring Lake. Our neighborhood is in the brown "up to nine days" zone. Again, though, this information is useless.
Here's a zoomed-out screenshot of the brown area. It's huge. There's no way every customer currently lacking power in this area is going to wait a similar length of time to have their electricity back on.

Thus PGE has produced a map that contains essentially zero useful information. It seems to be a way for PGE to say "we're providing customers with an estimate of when their power will be restored" without actually doing this.

Also, saying "up to nine days" is meaningless. A neighbor talked with a PGE employee today who was inspecting a downed line in our neighborhood. Reportedly the PGE guy said we might have power restored as early as tomorrow.

That's within the "up to nine days," because tomorrow would be one day. But one day is much different from nine days. 

Botton line: PGE is persisting in its screwed-up post-storm communications strategy -- which is aimed at giving customers as little useful information about their specific outage as possible. I sure hope legislators and state officials conduct hearings into how PGE has handled getting electricity back for its customers.

I have many questions about this, as I'm sure others do also.

Lastly, the conflict between this map and the list of hardest hit areas listed on the PGE web site -- Woodburn, Silverton, West Linn, Canby, etc. -- is huge. Most of those "hardest hit" areas are shown in the same color as Salem, yellow, up to five days restoration time.

So PGE is saying one thing at the top of that web page, then it is saying another thing in the map further down the page. Like I've been saying, the PGE communications strategy is so bad, it would be comical if being without electricity weren't so serious.

Ice storm disaster should prompt close look at PGE

Most of us don't pay much attention to our power company until the electricity goes off. Then we realize how important the electrical grid is to daily life.

Well, "important" is an understatement. 

"Absolutely essential" is a better way to put it. Without reliable electricity civilization as we know it can't exist. And this will only become more true as the United States, and the world, steadily moves away from fossil fuels.

Electric cars obviously need electricity to function. So when the ice storm that hit Oregon last Friday cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes in our state, the ability to conveniently charge electric cars became impossible.

The widespread power outages affected most people in Northwest Oregon, though, not just electric car owners. Wells don't run without electricity. Neither do most heating systems. 

I've been critical of how Portland General Electric, Oregon's largest utility, has handled the ice storm crisis from a communications standpoint.

Along with many others, PGE's failure to provide even a rough estimate to customers of when power would be restored struck me as a serious error -- causing anguish, uncertainty, and frustration.

At a time when people were already physically in the dark, it was decidedly unhelpful for PGE to keep people mentally in the dark regarding details of how power would be restored to certain areas.

Tomorrow PGE is going to start holding daily press conferences. That's almost a week too late. PGE management should have been doing this during the entire ice storm aftermath. 

The basic point I'm making here is that while the efforts of PGE employees to restore power as quickly as possible deserve a lot of praise, this shouldn't stop politicians, state/local officials, and others concerned with how public utilities function from asking some tough questions of PGE executives.

When a mass shooting occurs in this country, defenders of the gun status quo say, "It's too early to point fingers at the cause of what just happened." 

That's wrong. Immediately after a disaster is the correct time to seek answers to questions that, when answered, can shed light on how to prevent future similar disasters.

I got to thinking about this more seriously after talking with a couple of people today about PGE.

We'd started off talking about something else, but not surprisingly the conversations edged around to the subject on everybody's mind after the February 12 ice storm hit. When will electricity come back on? 

Which leads to another question. Why did the electricity go off for hundreds of thousands of people? 

The people I talked with both had friends with some inside information about how PGE operates. Obviously I have no way of knowing whether that information is true. It has a certain ring of truth, though, and helped inform the questions that I believe need to be answered in coming months.

These aren't exhaustive. They're just questions that have been on my mind as a PGE customer who, at the moment, has gone five full days without electricity.

(1) It's well known that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events. Did PGE engage in scenario planning that included a polar vortex bringing cold arctic air into the Pacific Northwest that was combined with a moisture-laden storm moving in from the Pacific? (Which is what produced this ice/snow storm.)

(2) If "yes" to #1 above, did PGE plan ahead for how to cope with such a scenario? If "no" to #1 above, why wasn't this done?

(3) Has PGE engaged in adequate preventive maintenance, such as tree trimming/removal, aimed at reducing outages during an extreme weather event?

(4) Regarding that sort of preventive maintenance, has contracting out tree trimming/removal to private companies led to better or worse outcomes as regards storm-related power outages?

(5) PGE has reported significant damage to major transmission lines and substations during the recent storm. Ice storms are common in Northwest Oregon. Why so such damage to important electrical infrastructure from a foreseeable weather event?

(6) It appears that out-of-state utility crews weren't called in by PGE until several days after the ice/snow storm. If this was the case, why the delay when the scope of damage was evident early on?

(7) For several days PGE provided an estimate to customers of when their power would be restored. On the Monday following the storm, these estimates stopped being made. Who made the decision to do this, and why was it done?

(8) Why did PGE fail to hold any press conferences about its response to the electricity outages for six days following the storm? 

(9) What steps will PGE be taking to help assure that hundreds of thousands of its customers won't lose power for such a long time when the next major weather event strikes Oregon? 

(10) In line with #9, does PGE have plans to place electrical lines underground in areas that are prone to extreme events such as wildfires and ice storms?

Rep. Mike Nearman and Oregon GOP are dangerous crazies

Feel sorry for me.

My wife and I have the unfortunate distinction of living in the Oregon House District held by Republican Mike Nearman -- the guy who held a door open at the state Capitol on December 21, allowing 50 militant protesters to stream into the building, setting off a battle with police that led to a dozen officers being pepper-sprayed by the intruders.

Oregon, of course, was a rehearsal of sorts for the January 6 insurrection at the nation's Capitol in Washington D.C..

It's fortunate that Nearman isn't a member of Congress, or he would have been helping the Trump mob break into the Senate and House chambers, perhaps with murderous results far greater than the single police officer killed by the insurrectionists. 

Pleasingly, the Statesman Journal reports that a coalition of state leaders is calling on the Oregon Legislature to expel Nearman. 

A coalition of local and regional leaders, business owners and organization directors are calling on the Oregon Legislature to expel Republican Rep. Mike Nearman for allowing violent demonstrators into the Capitol building in December.

The growing group includes three Salem city councilors; the executive director of the Eugene/Springfield NAACP; the executive director of the Northwest Accountability Project; union leaders; and environmental activists.

The Salem city councilors are Chris Hoy, Vanessa Nordyke, and Trevor Phillips. Hopefully the three other progressive councilors will join them.

Laurel, my wife, reads the constituent newsletters emailed to us by Nearman. So far I've held off on reading them out of a fear that my head would explode from the craziness they contain. {Laurel tells me about some of the lies in the newsletter, which are astounding to those of us who embrace reality rather than conspiracy theories.)

Speaking of conspiracy theories, the Oregon GOP has covered itself in lying grime after its executive committee issued a resolution calling the January 6 insurrection a "false flag" event. Meaning, supposedly the thousands of demonstrators carrying Trump flags and wearing Trumpian clothing actually were antifa masquerading as Trump supporters.

Of course, there is no evidence of this, but little details like facts don't stop today's Republican Party from spewing out the latest QAnon bullshit. 

It's embarrassing that news of Oregon's GOP craziness made its way to Great Britain, where The Guardian ran a story, "Oregon Republican party falsely suggests Capitol attack was a 'false flag.'"

The Oregon Republican party has falsely claimed in a resolution that there is “growing evidence” that the 6 January attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was “a ‘false flag’ operation”.

The resolution, which was published on 19 January and was endorsed by the executive committee of the state Republican party, suggested that the storming of the capitol by Trump supporters was an orchestrated conspiracy “designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters and all conservative Republicans” and to create a “sham motivation” to impeach the former president.

To back up these false claims, the resolution cited links to rightwing websites, including the Epoch Times, a pro-Trump outlet that has frequently published rightwing misinformation, as well as the Wikipedia entry for “Reichstag Fire.”

On the plus side, the craziness of the Oregon Republican Party isn't going to win over the voters they need to become competitive in statewide races. So says an Oregonian story about the GOP conspiracy theory resolution. 

“It is a really curious strategy for a political party that is so weak in the state right now to try to find a way back,” said John Horvick, a pollster with DHM Research. “Republicans haven’t won the governor’s mansion since Vic Atiyeh. They’ve won two statewide races in the last two decades. They’re in the wilderness in the Legislature and they spent the summer trying to recall Kate Brown.

“Maybe this represents their base to some extent, but it doesn’t make any sense to me as a short-, medium-, or long-term strategy.”