The Commentator received an e-mail from Pavel Goberman, author of Get Energized! The release outlines his platform for his candidacy for U.S. Senate, as a democrat. His vague promises jump all over the place, but he seems to be banking on his persona as

honest, incorruptible (do not accept “contribution, donations”), with faith, integrity and highest moral principles and promise to support the Constitution and work for the People (how many politicians are saying that?). I have an education and successfully managed business, and had an award for this.

His website outlines Goberman the man, a health guru and quasi life coach - it’s like Chuck Norris, Richard Simmons and Dr. Phil somehow conceived a child. He claims to have written a request to President George W., asking to appoint him as a Counselor On Physical Fitness and Health, or Advisor to the President, “and I promised to save our nation at least $30 billion on the health care.” On his site, Goberman attacks the Livestrong Foundation, the American Cancer Association, the Oregon Health Science University and many more.

Got to give it to ole Gober, he has some tenacity. He was in The Red Tank Army and he called the Washington County Democrats “a gang of parasites, not convicted yet criminals in Democratic Party,” because they did not give him an opportunity to talk at a July 25 meeting, where Steve Novick was a featured speaker.

“Vote for me is investing in your-self, state and country.”

Portland State’s Vanguard reported last week that OSPIRG is no longer considered a student group on campus because its mission statement refers to OSPIRG as a corporation. The PSU chapter of OSPIRG is no longer receiving the benefits that student groups get. As for its budget, the Student Fee Committee will hear opinions from students before decided what to do with the OSPIRG chapter’s $128,000 of student-paid fees.

We hope the SFC will do the right thing here and set a precedent for OSPIRG on the state’s university campuses. Their claims as an on-campus student organization are a bunch of malarky. As Thomas Jefferson said: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

I was poking around the Internets today, doing some school work and whatnot, when I made my way to the website of Representative Peter DeFazio (of bike bridge fame). As I scrolled through, I noted a link for something called the House Small Brewers Caucus. Yep, it turns out DeFazio and Greg Walden co-chair a caucus dedicated to the advancement of micro-breweries. Most of the other Oregon representatives (Hooley, Wu and Blumenauer) are there too. The website has information on brewing and even a chart on beer and food pairings, not to mention a sweet logo. Could it be that our state representatives are cooler than we all thought? Should we send them Sudsy t-shirts in hope that they’ll wear them on the floor of Congress?

Nah, but that’s still a pretty sweet logo.

The Oregon Athletic Department has thrown a curveball to the slowly-revealed plans of the new Basketball arena. The administration and AD are seeking to pay the arena by taking out $200 million in 30- or 40-year bonds, according to an article in today’s Oregonian. If this is the case, tax payers would not pay for any of the arena. They would, however, bear the loss if the department is unable to pay off the bonds.

Oregon’s current load of XI-F(1) bonds is $178 million, with 3.3 percent of the university’s total annual operating budget being used to pay back those bonds. State guidelines recommend a cap of 7 percent, which Oregon would nearly reach if the current arena financing plan went forward.

That’s before the university launches a planned overhaul of its dormitories, which could require as much as $450 million in debt,” UO senate president Gordon Sayre said.

Kilkenny said the bonds would be paid by arena revenues, and any shortfall would be paid with money from the Duck Athletic Fund. The Legacy Fund, which was just kicked off by Phil and Penny Knight’s $100 million donation, then, would cover the department’s annual operating costs.

Kilkenny estimates the department would need $11.2 million a year to cover 40-year bonds. A 2003 report estimated a new arena would generate revenues of $6 to $8.6 million, but Kilkenny said those numbers are conservative and thinks the new arena could bring in up to $16 million annually.

The zany lefty union-funded group “Our Oregon” is getting an uncomfortable amount of coddling from Oregon Executive offices. Our Oregon is known for, among other things, being union thugs who run campaigns to create a bunch of tomfoolery in areas where petitioners are trying to get signatures. An example of a such person is Jeanne Berg of Oregon, who was hired to block petitioning in Oklahoma by libertarian activist Paul Jacob, who was arrested last week on charges of conspiracy to defraud the state, which was caused by the state’s vague description of “resident.” (see www.freepauljacob.com for more info).

Berg’s understudy is Patty Wentz, a former reporter of the Willamette Week who went on to take charge of Our Oregon, and who was recently hired as Governor Kulongoski’s interim spokeswomen while his press secretary has a baby. My point to all this comes from this report by Richard Leonetti. He discovered that Our Oregon did not file any campaign contribution and expenditure reports with Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

Oregon law clearly requires that any person or entity that accepts money (”contributions”) to be used in a political campaign must register as a political committee (ORS 260.005(16)). The law also requires every political committee active in a general election to file at least 3 contribution and expenditure reports in every election year (ORS 260.073). Apparently, “Our Oregon” disregarded the law, never registered, and never reported its contributions.

Leonetti filed a formal complaint in January, 2007, but no action has been taken and Leonetti predicts that Bradbury is ready to let Our Oregon off the hook. If Our Oregon is allowed to get away with this, it will set a precedent for this loophole where anyone can form a non-profit, collect unrecorded contributions from unknown donors, and then shuttle that money into candidates or measure campaigns under the name of the non-profit.

President  Frohnmayer stuck it to the state Board of Higher Education yesterday, saying the state should either more adequately fund the U of O or grant it greater autonomy. Compared to several other states with “flagship” universities, Oregon is rather miserly with its higher education funding. Frohnmayer basically said its time to cough up the money or let the university do it on its own. From the Register Guard:

He closed his board presentation with a choice for higher education officials to ponder: “Fund our mission” or “create a governance structure that lets the University of Oregon succeed.”

Asked by a board member to elaborate, Frohnmayer offered his “blue sky” ideal. It centered on autonomy from legislative and systemwide board oversight, with a UO board of regents exercising authority that would require both legislative and constitutional changes. Key elements included:

• Freedom to set tuition rates higher. The rates “might seem exorbitant,” he said, but would be offset by the resulting financial aid for most students.

• The right of the UO and other state universities to retain the interest earned on student tuition. This interest, which comes to millions of dollars, is controlled by the Legislature and spent on an array of education and public service programs.

• The ability to sell bonds or otherwise borrow for capital projects, without going through the Legislature, the governor and the statewide higher education board.

Portland has been regarded by many as an example of what a clean and green city should be. But some are opposing this belief. OC alum Tyler Graf wrote an article for Portland’s Daily Journal of Commerce (we can’t believe someone hired him either) highlighting the criticism of Cato Institute bigwig Randal O’Toole:

“What I see is a sorting of the population,” O’Toole said from a Cato Institute-sponsored conference. “Higher educated people live in the city, while less educated, less well-off people are pushed to the suburbs.” According to O’Toole, this marginalizes suburbs and exports crime to peripheral neighborhoods.

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An anonymous teacher in the Medford Schood District is suing to secure her right to carry a concealed weapon in the classroom. This “Jane Doe” says her life has been threatened multiple times by an abusive ex-husband; however, the teacher says she and her lawyer are primarily concerned with asserting and reinforcing the Second Amendment.

Oregon, unlike many states, allows teachers with concealed weapons permits to carry firearms, but almost all of the school districts in Oregon, such as Medford, do not. Either way the case is decided, it would apply only to Jackson County, unless it went to a higher court. The teacher’s case seems strong, especially with her personal safety at stake. This could be a good precedent for future Second Amendment cases, such as (oh, I don’t know) the right of college students to defend themselves from insane gunmen.

Colleges and universities across the nation made a show of discussing safety issues after the Virginia Tech massacre but accomplished shockingly little. In the end, it was back to “lie prone on the floor and wait to die.” The University of Oregon followed suit, advising students to call our bumbling,  klepto (not to mention unarmed) campus security. OC alum Andy Dolberg ripped the U of O’s revised “safety policies” a new one.

I know, I know. You’ve probably heard it said already. I mean, wasn’t it too good to be true? The Blazers, blessed with the number one pick in the NBA draft, did not want to repeat their infamous 1984 mistake of passing over basketball legend/god Michael Jordan for one of the biggest disappointments in NBA history, Sam Bowie. And seemingly, they did everything right this time. They took their time and held workouts with Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, but eventually picked Oden, who even seemed genuinely excited to start his career in Portland. Seeing that most Blazers don’t even live in Portland during the off season since Rasheed left town, it seemed as if the Blazers were turning a new leaf, leaving the old Jail Blazers moniker behind them.

But don’t go running to the nearest Dairy Queen just yet for your free Rip City cups; Oden, the wonder kid and personal savior of the Blazer Nation is out for the season. After dealing with mysterious pain and swelling in his right knee, doctors performed exploratory then microfracture surgery to repair cartilage, which will take Oden out for the entire 07-08 season as his knee heals.

While other notable NBA players have had this same surgery and gone on to have succesful careers, such as Amare Stoudemire and Jason Kidd, other injury-plagued NBA stars such as Chris Webber and Penny Hardaway have struggled to gain traction in the league after going under the knife.

A New York Times article about the situation quotes Oden as saying “I’m sorry” multiple times immediately after the surgery was completed. Are the Blazers going to be as sad this year?

That is, John Frohnmayer - brother of UO President Dave Frohny. Frohnmayer, who was appointed as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, only to be fired soon after for funding “obscene” art, will run in the 2008 election for U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith’s seat. But get this, he is running as an independant.

“We who have been Republicans should be weeping about the state of the Republican party,” he said. “Because the Republicans have always stood for fiscal responsibility and we have a president who has taken a $3 trillion surplus and turned it into an $8 trillion defecit in seven years.

Frohnmayer, who left the Republican Party in 2005, is a former student of the UO Law School. He currently lives in Corvallis where he is an affiliate professor of liberal arts at Oregon State, “where he teaches First Amendment issues and ethics in the history department.”

“The order of the day ought to be that partisanship ends when a person is elected, and for every minute the person is in office after that, the person ought to be doing the public’s business.”

In the right corner, the Indicator of Initiative, the Bully of the Ballots, the Cramp on Crime…KEVIN MANNIX [crowd on left boos, crowd on right hoorays, many in middle yawn]. And in the other corner, the, um, well, without further ado, the OREGON EDUCATION ASSOCIATION.

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Well, it’s that time again in Oregon - ballot season. Ever since Oregonians caught on to this whole ballot initiative business, they’ve seized upon it with the zeal of a hyper-active bonobo monkey (That one’s for you, Ted). More below “the fold.”

UPDATE: Here’s the actual legal mumbo-jumbo that Oregonians in Action filed against Measure 49. Is there anyone around here with the requisite lore to decipher such a scroll?

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Today’s Oregonian has a lengthy story about kids being kids, and the power-mad prosecutors who want to throw them in jail: Two young boys at McMinnville’s Patton Middle School were sent to jail for five days for supposedly sexually harassing their classmates, by running through the halls swatting girls on the bottom. But that’s not all. They now face the prospect of 10 years in jail and a lifetime sentence on Oregon’s sex crime registry.

I don’t think it will go that far — thanks in part to the Oregonian’s coverage of this travesty, which underscores the irksome level of stupidity
surrounding this case — but you never know. Still, I have a strong suspicion that the more explaining officials have to do, the more likely these power-hungry morons will back off.

I mean, how can you justify something this ridiculous:

Several girls told Roache and Tillery the boys had swatted their behinds on what they declared to be “slap butt day,” according to the first police report. Some girls told police they did not like it and had asked the boys to stop. But a follow-up report filed four days later by Roache makes the situation seem much foggier.

All told, Roache interviewed 14 students besides Cornelison and Mashburn. Seven confessed to bottom-swatting, including one girl who described it as “a handshake we do.” Two of the alleged victims said they had swatted boys’ buttocks themselves.

“She will touch Cory after he touches her first,” Roache wrote in the report.

This second round of interviews took place while the boys were in detention. A day later, the juvenile court held a hearing on whether the boys should be released. The courtroom was packed with Patton students and families of both boys — many were crying. The boys were there, too, in shackles and jail outfits.

Are you kidding me? Other kids took part? Then why target these kids? There really isn’t much to say about this, except that this growing trend of treating overly rambunctious children like sex offenders is extremely disturbing. Maybe I’m alone here, but I don’t see what good it does to irreversibly and negatively alter a child’s life over an innocuous and likely non-sexualized butt slap. Everyone involved in this case, on the prosecutorial end, should be severely admonished — I mean Nifong-level admonishment.

[Addendum: It appears as if the father of one of the boys works for the McMinnville News-Register, the newspaper owned by the OC’s Ossie Bladine’s family. Is this correct?]

Plaid Pantry CEO Chris Girard says he will no longer support Sen. Gordon Smith, financially or personally, due to the senator’s support of a cigarette tax increase. Girard signaled the end of his and Smith’s relationship through an official Dear John letter, lamenting thus:

“We never expected you to ‘like’ tobacco and alcohol … but we also did not expect you to abandon your commitment to small businesses, selling legal products to customers who do enjoy using these products.”

Smith is also no longer privy to complimentary hot dogs and issues of “Jugs,” and his picture has been placed on every Plaid Pantry’s ”wall of shame,” which lists shoplifters, 86′d patrons and tax-and-spend politicians. Not really …. but probably.

instead of Durant. Personally, I think they made the right decision, though Portland has been known to make some egregious draft choices.