Out With the Old, In With the New (Version 63.2)

At the beginning of every year, I do a quick take on the effects of major events that transpired during the previous year, and this year is no exception. The main advantage to taking these backward glances is that it helps detect emerging trends in time to avoid—or take advantage of—their consequences. That, and for the rush I get, not at all unlike the rush I got (and this harkens back to my days as a long-haul trucker) whenever I crossed a Texas border—any Texas border—and saw Texas receding in my rearview mirror.

2007 was a net loser for billions of Gaia’s children. Iraqis didn’t fare well, nor did Pakistanis, Afghanis, the people of Darfur, the US military, the American lower and middle classes, the poor of almost every nation. Polar bears, whales, seals and sea lions, salmon and many other marine species, penguins, wolves, and various other wildlife species took a big hit, too. However, the top 20% of US income earners did better than okay, and the top 1% did especially well (as they always do).

Like many of her denizens, Gaia didn’t do so well, either. Storms raged, wildfires burned, rainforests continued to disappear, ice sheets continued to melt, the global temperature continued to rise. One sick puppy, Gaia. But, like every living organism, Gaia reacts to intrusive species in ways that tend to limit the damage they can do—hence, global climate change.

If there were any positives in 2007, I missed them all. The housing market tanked, the quality of education slid a little farther down the hill, air travel got a little suckier, energy prices escalated, the cost of healthcare went up, but the availability of healthcare didn’t. Consumer prices rose across the board, the trade deficit increased, the national debt grew larger, and consumer debt reached an all-time high.

Although the competency of government leaders has been slipping for years, every year of the Bush misadministration has set a new record for ineptitude. Just when I think that things can’t possibly get any worse, they do. 2007 saw further erosions of Constitutional protections and civil liberties.

As if to add outrageous insult to grievous injury (and I take this as a personal affront) 2007 terminated some gifted writers, among them Robert Anton Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Norman Mailer, Molly Ivins, Art Buchwald—and these are only the ones I’ve heard about; no doubt there are others. The collective loss of these talented individuals impoverishes us all.

But enough about last year; it’s history. We should be thinking about the year immediately ahead, and about what role we’ll play—if any—in the unfolding of next year’s history. It helps to make a New Year resolution or two (or ten, or twenty), which are instrumental in laying the groundwork for future accomplishments. I make several every year and, surprisingly, more of them stick than don’t.

Without further procrastination and with no excuses or apologies, these are my resolutions for 2008:

• Read a little less, write a little more; (a) post to Petey’s Pipeline Blog more often; (b) resurrect Petey’s Pipeline E-zine (again); (c) finish a couple of e-book projects, one of which I started more than four years ago; (d) finish a minimum of six of the more than two dozen “flash” fiction projects that currently exist only as vague ideas somewhere near the back of my mind; (e) write more book reviews

• Ride my bike more often

• Make . . . whoa! Stop, already! Enough is enough.

If I try to put any more on my plate I’ll need a bigger plate. And we all know how that’s gonna end. Not well, I assure you.

It’s okay—good, in fact—to make a New Year resolution. A proper resolution provides exactly the right amount of incentive to help you reach your goal. Just make your resolution a realistic one if you want to keep it.

Cerebrating the Holidaze

Call me a Grinch, if you will, but I don’t celebrate Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or any other religion-based holiday); I do, however celebrate—cerebrate would be more precise—the winter solstice, the New Year, the Spring Equinox, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, the Summer Solstice, Independence Day, Labor Day, and the Autumn Equinox, in that order.

How, you ask, can I not celebrate Christmas? That’s an easy question to answer; I’m not a believer. Jesus was the Prototypical Hippie, and he died not for my sins but because he was an enemy of the State. Get over it.

Why I came to be a non-believer requires a longer answer. For brevity’s sake, suffice to say that observation and experience led me to my current belief system (if it can be called that), the influences of Christ, Marx, Woods, and Wei notwithstanding.

Still, for most people it’s the holiday season, so I’d like to take this opportunity to express my love and deep appreciation for the family and friends who have enriched my life. These include parents and grandparents, siblings, children and grandchildren, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, in-laws and outlaws, cousins, friends, mentors and teachers, associates and coworkers (damn that word, can anyone tell me what a “cow orker” is?) and others who touched my life in ways that contributed to the Phil Hanson persona. This space is dedicated to you.

Frank & Pearl
Roy & Sally

Linda & Dan, Tom, and Patti & Bob
Tanya & Jim, Mike & Terra, and Jackie & Steve
Joe & Amber, Destiny, Mariah, and Levi
Ariel, Naomi, and Michaela
Lucas and Kanen
Doug, Mo & Paula, and Jake
Marge, Bud, and Bruce
Tom & Donna
Richard & Linda
Daryl & Tori
Mac
Jim, Jim, Jim, and James
Carla
Kathy
Cathy
Colleen
Carol
Donna
Kris
Dennis and Dennis
Bill and Bill
Clark, Alan, and Dan
Tony
Mary
Ron
Ina
Ron & Irma

. . . and many others too numerous to add to this short list.

Some of these have slipped off the edge of my radar screen, and some have slipped over the edge into the Great Beyond. Regardless of their whereabouts or present state of being, I want them all to know that they are remembered. I wish them all (and you) a Harry Kwanukkahmas.

And for George DUHbya (that’s right, it’s spelled with a capital DUH) Bush supporters, global warming deniers, and oil-addicted pro-war fanatics, I wish you all a . . .

Bah! Humbug!

Now, it’s time to cerebrate. See you all next year.

Many Choices, Few of Them Desirable

Okay, okay! I’ll cop to having flip-flopped a few times regarding my preference as to who should be the next POTUS, but, hey, it’s not like numerous people far more influential than I haven’t flip-flopped on numerous issues far less important than that of electing a national CEO. In fact, one could rightfully (and righteously) argue that flip-flopping is a sign of maturity and wisdom in that it’s indicative of the flip-flopper possessing a flexible mind and a willingness to process new information as it comes to light and act—or react—accordingly.

At the beginning of this campaign I was all for Al Gore, but then I realized I was a couple of election cycles out of date. Once I got on the right page, Barak Obama looked pretty good, but only until John Edwards started looking even better. Of course, as soon as Bill Richardson’s star began to shine, Edward’s star lost its luster. But, as fate would have it, Richardson’s star went super-nova, and Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul each got a turn as my number one choice and last best hope for the presidency.

Then, a few days ago, a strange thing happened. I looked outside the circle of usual suspects candidates and found one that’s truly worthy of ascending to the office of POTUS. A former six-term Georgia House of Representatives member and former Democrat who now waves the Green Party banner, Cynthia Ann McKinney is an outspoken critic of the war on Iraq—and of the Bush administration. The few negatives on her record are relatively minor and vastly outweighed by the positives.

These, then, are the top 6 reasons why I’ll vote for Cynthia McKinney (providing she gets the Green Party presidential nomination):

1. She’s not a republican

2. She’s not a democrat

3. She’s a woman, but she’s not Hillary Clinton

4. She’s black, but she’s not Barak Obama

5. As a six-term Congressperson, she has the requisite experience

6. She opposes the war on Iraq, and has from the beginning

If Cynthia holds true to the Green Party ideals of a healthy environment, renewable energy resources, and sustainability, Americans couldn’t ask for a better candidate.

And that, my friends, is why I’m lending my support to Cynthia McKinney’s campaign for POTUS.

More Government Goofiness

Not to be outshone by the Department of Fish & Wildlife, Oregon Department of Human Services lobbed a stupid government trick of its own into the limelight. Consider the case of the Brandt family vs. the State of Oregon, in the matter of Gabriel Allred.

Steve and Angela Brandt, of Toledo, Oregon, are the foster parents that young Gabriel has lived with since he was four months old. They are the only family Gabriel has ever known, and the family that wants to adopt him. Gabe is the two year-old US citizen the State of Oregon wants to deport to Mexico to live with a grandmother he’s never met.

DHS argues that children generally fare better when they’re raised by relatives—this from an agency that regularly separates children from their parents and places them into foster care. The agency further argues that Gabriel’s grandmother is well qualified to act as his legal parent and guardian. But if one looks at the results of the grandmother’s previous parenting attempt (Gabriel’s father is a convicted drug offender and child rapist), it becomes rather easy to challenge DHS’ broad assumption and condemn the agency for its specious argument.

Local network television crews have interviewed the Brandts and filmed Gabriel interacting with the family. Gabe’s situation is well documented; by all appearances and accounts Gabe is happy, secure, well adjusted and, most importantly, loved. There is no good reason to uproot him from this environment and thrust him into one that’s far less certain.

Nor does it seem particularly fair to remove a child who’s only begun to acquire English language skills from a household that speaks only English and place him in a household that speaks only Spanish. This immediate communications gap would only heap trauma on top of trauma, putting Gabe at an even greater disadvantage.

The State’s position that Gabe would fare better raised in his own culture is disingenuous, another specious argument. Culture is learned, not inherited, and you’d think that people who are charged with making life-changing decisions for those unable to make such decisions for themselves would be smart enough to know the difference.

But the most egregious aspect of this whole debacle is that deporting a US citizen sets a dangerous precedent. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Snowball in Hell

Infinite wisdom is not something I’m inclined to accuse governments, government agencies, or government agents of having, even in best-case scenarios. In worst-case scenarios, the best I can say about them is that they’re afflicted with gross incompetence and terminal stupidity, two character traits that always seem to tag along hand-in-hand with government, going wherever it is governments go and doing whatever it is governments do. You don’t want to know what the worst thing I can say about them is. Trust me.

To make my point, let me cite a case that graced The Oregonian’s front page on several occasions over the last few weeks: Jim Filipetti vs. the State of Oregon, in the matter of “Snowball,” the deer.

A few years back, Jim found a fawn in dire need of a champion lying near the road. The fawn’s hind legs were deformed in a way that prevented it from walking. Without Jim’s intervention, the fawn surely would have died in a matter of hours, meeting its end as coyote chow (or whatever fate befalls defenseless critters that lack a means of self-preservation). Being a compassionate person, Jim did what any rational, compassionate person would do; he took the hapless animal home with him and began a long process of nurturing and rehabilitation. Eventually, Snowball became the family pet and everyone lived happily ever after—at least until the State of Oregon, in a desperate bid to retain its stranglehold on power over all creatures great and small, thrust itself into the mix.

Someone—probably a disgruntled relative—ratted Jim out to the authorities (it’s against Oregon law for private citizens to capture wild animals and hold them in captivity), and the bullshit commenced. To make a fairly long story fairly short, the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife confiscated Snowball and her two-year old offspring, Bucky, although neither was a fish nor wild.

Before the situation ever progressed to this point, wildlife officials should have asked these essential questions: Were the animals well cared for? Were their needs being met? Were they healthy? In each case the answer was a resounding yes, and authorities didn’t need to take the animals into custody to make these determinations. This is precisely the time when Fish & Wildlife authorities should have exercised a little restraint and lots of fiscal responsibility and simply butted out. Instead, they persisted in their efforts to maintain total control, regardless of the cost to Oregon taxpayers.

Some of the options under discussion by the State regarding disposition of Snowball and Bucky included putting the animals down, returning them to the wild (although neither animal was experienced at being wild), releasing them to the custody of a licensed wildlife caretaker, and returning them to Filipetti.

For a time, putting down the deer seemed to be the State-preferred option, but cooler (and presumably smarter) heads prevailed. Unfortunately, all the heads put together weren’t smart enough to do the right thing.

After much wrangling in the courts, Bucky was subsequently relieved of his antlers, given a vasectomy, and released into the wild, just in time for rutting season. It remains to be seen whether this act served the animal’s best interests, or whether it only served to demonstrate the State’s power of authority and to puff up the egos of a few bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, amid an outpouring of public sentiment, Snowball took up residence in a licensed elk preserve as Filepetti continued his fight to get her back. Finally, a judge ruled that Snowball should be returned to the Filipetti family; Fish & Wildlife immediately appealed the decision, retaining custody of the once-again hapless deer until the matter is settled in the courts.

To date, the matter is unresolved. To date, Oregon has spent more than $38,000 of the taxpayers’ money to exercise control over an animal that’s ultimately worth less than $1,000 cut and wrapped. Of course, Filipetti has invested far more than a thousand dollars in caring for Snowball and Bucky. Snowball’s vet bills alone must be astronomical, and then there are Jim’s out-of-pocket expenses for feed, and the cost of building a safe enclosure—a respectable amount of money, I’m sure, when all the sums are lumped together.

Bucky is pretty much history, but Snowball is still a ward of the State. If, as State officials claim, all Oregon wildlife belongs to the citizens of Oregon, then—barring Snowball’s return to Filipetti and family—the State should reimburse Jim Filipetti for providing, out of his own pocket, for the animals’ welfare on behalf of the people.

And in the future, Fish & Wildlife officials would do well to consider worms worthy of State protection, too—before they open another can of them.

False Assumptions

In the wake of several fatal or serious injury bicycle accidents in the Portland area during the past few weeks, bicycle safety has been a hot topic in the local media. Jonathan Maus’ BikePortland blog, in particular, not only features numerous articles regarding these unfortunate incidents, but regular readers of the blog continue to carry on lively debates about rights-of-way, who is at fault, better (and safer) bicycle infrastructure, and bicycle safety in general.

Following the two fatalities involving right-turning trucks, a preponderance of readers leaped aboard the law-is-always-right-so-let’s-blame-the-truck-driver bandwagon without giving the matter much critical thought. The notion that laws can protect us gives us warm, fuzzy feelings of safety and security, but in reality laws do nothing of the kind. It’s a dangerous mindset, and to embrace it is to guarantee future fatalities.

To demonstrate how seriously flawed this “law as protector” mindset is, let me point out that laws do nothing to prevent murderers, rapists, and armed robbers from perpetrating crimes against law-abiding citizens. Nor do they prevent motorists from making grievous errors of judgment. At best, laws provide added incentive for people who are not inclined to break the law to not break the law. They also provide employment opportunities for cops, lawyers, judges, and others who work within the legal system. In practice, laws are more effective at punishing offenders after the fact of the offense than they are in preventing the offense in the first place.

Conventional wisdom says that because bicyclists always have the right-of-way when riding in a designated bike lane, the law should be enough to protect them. Yeah, right! We’ve all seen how well that works. Conventional wisdom is seldom wise and, too often, it’s flat-out wrong. Just because the law says that motorists must yield to bikes when making a right turn across a bike lane doesn’t mean that cyclists should automatically assume that that’s going to happen all of the time—or even most of the time—particularly when trucks are involved.

Yeah, I know it’s fashionable for cyclists to condemn any truck driver involved in a collision with a bicycle, especially when said collision results from a right hook. Unfortunately, reality looks different from a truck driver’s perspective than it does from a cyclist’s perspective (neither of which squares with the law’s perspective). At best, the law offers a “one size fits all” solution that serves no one (except lawyers) particularly well.

This short rant is not intended to advocate for doing away with laws, or even doing away with lawyers, for that matter (although the latter wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing). Rather, it’s meant to advocate for improved bicycle safety, which begins—but in no way ends—with cyclists.

Cyclists who believe otherwise are living on borrowed time.

Missing in Action

The Rev. David Schwartz, and his companion, Cheryl Gibbs, died minutes after impact when their Toyota Corolla left the road near milepost 26, on Highway 26, on June 8th. A state trooper out of Astoria, responding to a 9-1-1 dispatch that bounced back-and-forth between jurisdictions (and left out some critical information in the process), checked both sides of the highway between mileposts 25 and 27 in multiple passes that failed to yield any trace of Schwartz’s car. Elsie-Vinemaple Fire Department members also checked both sides of the highway between the 25 and 27 mile markers, producing exactly the same results.

It’s no surprise that searchers failed to locate the car. In the absence of skid marks or other indicators to pinpoint exactly where Schwartz’s Corolla left the road, searchers hadn’t a clue where to look. That the wrecked car was obscured by heavy brush 20 feet down an embankment and couldn’t be seen from the road further complicated the task. A Civil Air Patrol pilot finally spotted the car from the air on Sunday, July 1st.

Family members of the deceased victims were quick to criticize the Oregon State Police, the 9-1-1 dispatchers who, admittedly, screwed up (but the screw-up had no bearing on whether Schwartz and Gibbs lived or died), the State of Oregon, and even the Portland Police Department for its (non) role in the sorry chain of events.

While I can understand their pain, I don’t understand their anger or their rush to place the blame for this senseless tragedy anywhere except for where the blame rightfully belongs. By that I mean squarely on the victims themselves.

I can hear the howls of outrage: What? Blame the victims (hey, it works in rape cases)? That’s preposterous! Yada, yada, yada . . .!

Damned right, blame the victims. At the time of this particular incident, Schwartz was in violation of at least two Oregon laws; he failed to maintain control of his vehicle, and his seat belt wasn’t fastened. He may have been in violation of others. For certain, had Schwartz been operating within the law none of this would have happened. Untold numbers of people wouldn’t have wasted untold numbers of hours conducting a fruitless search, and Schwartz’s family would have had no excuse to blindly unleash their self-righteous indignation against various Oregon agencies that—regardless of their degree of competence or total lack thereof—tried to help.

Before idiot Californians come to Oregon and do stupid things, the consequences of which they then attribute to Oregonians and the State of Oregon, they should take a hard look at their own incompetence and make the necessary adjustments. They could start by checking their stupidity at the border. If they must hold on to their stupidity, they can always pick it up on the way back.

People like Rev. Schwartz, James Kim, and the mountain climbers that died on Mt. Hood last winter put Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest to the test, and prove it every time. Evolution takes care of its own.