Monthly Archives: April 2024

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The Horror of Sexual Violence on Oct 7. Believe It.

“You haven’t talked about this until now. Why?

I decided to talk about it only after I heard that people are trying to say that it didn’t happen….I needed to talk for women. I need to talk because I won’t forgive myself if I will still see people that are saying  those things didn’t happen when I know that they did.”  

Testimony of an Israeli victim of sexual violence on Oct 7, Screams Before Silence

A claque of 59 academics who describe themselves as “professors of journalism and scholars of news media” from across the country are in high dudgeon about a Dec. 28, 2023 New York Times story describing a “pattern of rape, mutilation and sexual violence by Hamas” during its Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Asserting there are compelling reports questioning the integrity of the story, the professors said in a letter to the paper, “We recommend that The New York Times immediately commission a group of journalism experts to conduct a thorough and full independent review of the reporting, editing and publishing processes for this story and release a report of the findings.”

Leaving aside that of all the things to complain about regarding coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, a group of academics are focusing on a sexual assault story, it will be regrettable if the professors’ complaint is used to try to undermine widespread and convincing allegations of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Don’t let it.

Rami Davidian, who rescued some people from Nova, told Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, he saw women’s bodies tied to trees in the area of the party. “There were trees on which there was one body, and there were cases in which a number of bodies were tied to the same tree,” he related. “There was a case of a couple who were in an embrace, naked, and tied to a tree. Both of them had been shot in the chest.” Davidian said he had seen more than five bodies that had been mutilated “in intimate places… their organs were cut off, damaged. There was blood from the groin… There were also shots to breasts.”

The aftermath of the Nova massacre

In  Screams Before Silence, a new documentary film from Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta, Sandberg interviewed multiple eyewitnesses, released hostages, first responders, medical and forensic experts, and survivors of the Hamas massacres..

“I’ll never forget what I saw there for so long as I live,” a witness to the massacre’s results said in the film ” I saw girls tied up with their hands behind them to every tree here…Someone murdered them, raped them, and abused them here on these trees. Their legs were spread. Everyone who sees them knows they were abused. Someone stripped them. Someone raped them. They inserted all kinds of things into their intimate organs, like wooden boards, iron rods. Over 30 girls were murdered and raped here. I had to close their legs and cover their bodies so no one else would see what I saw.”

“Every one of us, women and men, must speak up for these women and say, “We will bear your story. We will bear witness for you…what happened to you will be told.”   said Shari Mendes, an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reservist. 

Whatever the reliability of the New York Times article, the professors need to acknowledge the truth of the larger story of sexual assault by Hamas.

Never forget that..

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College Protests and the Law of Unintended Consequences

An intervention in a complex system always creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg understands unintended consequences. “[W]e all know that sometimes people mean well but cause harm nonetheless—out of ignorance, out of carelessness, out of deeply ingrained ways of thinking they haven’t examined, out of an emotional reaction that got the better of their lofty intentions, or … well, the list goes on,” she says.

There’s a message here for today’s rabid pro-Palestine student protesters convinced that their actions will bring about change.

If they are trying to emulate the protests against the Vietnam war in 1960s, the bloodiest and most dramatic of which occurred at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, they’re forgetting something. Those protests may have helped drive out President Lyndon Johnson, but they undermined the candidacy of the Democratic candidate for president, Hubert Humphrey, and invigorated the conservative supporters of Republican Richard Nixon.

In his first months in office, Nixon had the U.S. military increase, not decrease, its pressure on the battlefield and, in violation of international law, ordered secret bombings of North Vietnamese camps in Cambodia.

After he took office, another 21,200 Americans died in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, about one-third of all American deaths in the war (58,220), along with an estimated half a million Vietnamese., 

Nixon’s aggressive pursuit of the war also led to more protests on college campuses with deadly consequences. During one of those protests at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. Just 10 days later, another two students at Jackson State University were killed by police.

Paul Berman, an American writer on politics and literature, wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post, about being involved as a Columbia University student in a late April 1968 campus uprising. He wrote about how professors upbraided him, warning about the potential dangers of the protests.

“The professors were haunted by Germany and its history, ” Berman wrote.” In 1968, the defeat of the Nazis was only 23 years behind us, and the era of World War II and the catastrophe of the Jews had not yet definitively disappeared into the past — at least, not in the professors’ eyes. They wanted me to understand that Germany’s leftists in the 1930s had failed to understand Nazism’s danger. Foolish left-wing radicalism had helped undermine the German universities, which ought to have been a place of anti-Nazi resistance. They wanted me to understand, all in all, that what people think they are doing might not be what they are actually doing, and, in the name of high ideals, society might be weakened, and the worst of disasters might be brought about.”

I bring all this up to remind today’s aggrieved student protesters that their aggressive actions may not lead events to where they want them to go. 

First, despite the protesters’ assumption that their peers have their back, the annual Harvard Youth Poll, run by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard’s Kennedy School, found that  Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are not prioritizing the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

The poll found that young people are more worried about inflation, health care, housing and gun violence. The survey listed 16 issues facing the U.S., asking respondents which of two randomly paired issues most concerned them. The conflict in the Middle East ranked near the bottom at 15th.

The general public also can’t be counted on to support the protesters. Americans are actually quite divided about how – and whether – the U.S. should be involved in the Israel-Hamas war. According to the Pew Research Center, among US adults, only 22% say Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel are valid and roughly six-in-ten Americans (58%) say Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid. 

In this environment, the student protests, particularly if they continue with violent events at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, may, as in 1968, lead to a conservative backlash that helps defeat President Biden and elect Donald Trump.

For most of the protesting students, that would surely be a worst case of unintended consequences. 

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Holocaust Redux. Is That What Columbia’s Morally Bankrupt Students Want?

“Go back to Poland,” protesters screamed at a group of Jewish students on Saturday night, April 20, inside the gates of Columbia University in New York City.

The cruelty and historical ignorance of Columbia’s privileged keffiyeh-masked student protesters in this time of turmoil in America is almost too much to bear. 

When Poland was taken over by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland – more than any other country in Europe. At the end of the war, only 380,000 Polish Jews were still alive. 

Entry to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland

Most Americans think of the Holocaust as the murder of Jews in concentration camps in Germany, but on the eve of the WWII, the Jewish population of Germany and Austria combined was just 300,000. 

In other words, the horror of the Nazi’s Jewish extermination campaign, the Final Solution, was not confined to Germany; nor was it confined to Germans.

Daniel Schatz, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, wrote in Foreign policy of a massacre in the Polish Village of Jedwabne. “On a sweltering summer day, July 10, 1941, hundreds of Jews were murdered by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne, almost 100 miles northeast of Warsaw. Babies were killed. Men were tortured. Women were raped. .Villagers whose lives had not been extinguished with axes, clubs, and knives were rounded up and taken first to the market square and then to the outskirts of town, where they were herded into a barn. The wooden structure was doused with kerosene and set alight. Women, children, and men were burned alive as the jeering crowd watched.”

In the small Polish town of Ostrow Mazowiecka, the population of 20,500 included 7,600 Jews before the war, according to The Holocaust: An Unfinished History. At one point, Jewish inhabitants, including women, the elderly and children, were taken to pits outside town and shot by the Nazis. By the spring of 1940, every single Jew in the town was dead. 

In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers  using carbon monoxide gas generated by diesel engines began at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka camps in Poland. “Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children,” the United States Holocaust Museum says. 

The bodies were taken to pits where they were burned. At the height of the deportations in 1943–44, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at the Auschwitz camps near Oswiecim, Poland.

As Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, has documented, most of the Jews in Polish areas occupied by Germany were imprisoned in Polish ghettos and then deported to concentration and slave labor camps. 

How can Columbia’s protesters, attending one of America’s most selective and expensive universities, be so callous and vile as to call for their Jewish classmates to be subjected to the terror of the Holocaust in Poland? What has allowed  the hallowed halls of this Ivy League school, and others across the country embroiled in similar student uprisings, to descend into such moral aimlessness?

Never again? Maybe not.

My heart breaks.

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Rep. Suzanne Bonamici: No Friend of Working Families

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-OR, is thrilled with President Biden’s actions cancelling student loan debt. She shouldn’t be. 

Even though she has a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from the University of Oregon, it’s clear she’s no economist. And even though she’s a member of the House Progressive Caucus and tries to package herself as an advocate for the common man (and woman), her support for student loan forgiveness suggests she’s no friend of working families either.  

That’s because, for one, the billions in student debt aren’t, in fact, being cancelled. The loans will still be paid off. The issue is by whom?

“The idea that the government is footing the bill for this policy is a bit misleading,” the American Institute for Economic Research points out.   “The cost of the program does not fall on the government. It falls on those who miss out on expenditures that would have otherwise occurred, those who pay higher taxes as a result of the program, those who pay higher interest rates or are crowded out due to additional government borrowing, or those who see the purchasing power of their dollars reduced more than usual.”

Even though the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in 2022 when it announced that it would cancel up to $400 billion in student loans, Biden has since been rolling out a series of debt forgiveness alternatives using a variety of executive actions.

Biden’s ingenuity in coming up with more loan repayment exceptions seems to have no bounds.  

On April 8, 2024, the White House announced an initiative that would:

  • forgive interest balances built up to date for 25 million borrowers, with 23 million likely to have all of their balance growth forgiven.
  • automatically cancel debt for borrowers eligible for loan forgiveness under several loan programs.
  • cancel student debt for borrowers who entered repayment over 20 years ago.
  • cancel student debt for loans associated with institutions or programs that lost their eligibility to participate in the Federal student aid program or were denied recertification because they cheated or took advantage of students.
  • cancel student debt for borrowers experiencing hardship paying back their loans.

While there’s no question student debt has become a burden for many Americans, Biden’s escalating efforts to relieve borrowers of obligations to repay student loans will add to the government’s annual deficits and the national debt. In other words, current student loan holders may escape repayment, but future taxpayers will have to pay the bill since Biden isn’t proposing any new revenue collections to cover the cost.

On April 11, the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that Biden’s April 8 plans, if they are implemented, will cost the government $84 billion, in addition to the $475 billion that Penn Wharton previously estimated for Biden’s plans.

Rep. Bonamici must not care about that.  

Biden’s student debt forgiveness policies also raise serious questions about fairness. For example, according to Penn Wharton, eliminating student debt for borrowers in repayment for more than 20 years (or for more than 25 years with graduate debt) will provide debt relief for about 750,000 individuals residing in households that, on average, earn $312,977 in annual household income.

There’s also inequity in Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in interest for borrowers who have accrued or capitalized interest on their loans since entering repayment.  Low and middle-income borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan or other income-driven repayment (IDR) plans would be eligible for their entire interest balance since entering repayment to be cancelled if they make:

  • $120,000 or less per year individually or as married filing separately
  • $180,000 or less per year as a head of household, or 
  • $240,000 or less per year as married borrowers who file joint taxes.

Real median personal income in the United States was only $40,480 and the national median household income was just $74,580 in 2022. In other words, many college educated borrowers in Bonamici’s district who are eligible for relief under Biden’s plan are hardly struggling. And despite her assertion that she’s “standing up for working families,” many of her constituents with much lower incomes will end up covering the bills of their better-off neighbors.

Then, of course, a lot of Bonamici’s responsible working family constituents have probably made sacrifices to pay down their student loans, foregoing vacations, nice cars and restaurant meals. They will get no benefits at all from Bonamici’s generosity. 

Tough beans for them, I guess.

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Oregon’s 2024 Pensions Bill Shows Need for New Conflict of Interest Rules

It looks like Oregon’s firefighters got what they paid for in the Oregon Legislature’s 2024 session.

In the last week of the session, the Legislature passed HB 4045, the Public Safety Workforce Stabilization Act, by a vote of 55-2 in the House and  25-5 in the Senate.

The bill, which Governor Kotek has not yet signed, would lower the retirement age with full benefits for firefighters with five years on the job from 60 years to 55, substantially increasing the deficit of the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and increasing employer costs. 

“…we believe that public servants deserve robust pay and benefits, excellent health care, and solid retirement. However, we are concerned that HB 4045 risks making the entire system insolvent through the unanticipated consequences via well intentioned policy,” commented Hasina Wittenberg, speaking for the Special Districts Association of Oregon & Oregon Fire District Director’s Association.

Left unmentioned in most media coverage of the bill is the name of the legislator behind it, Rep. Dacia Grayber, a Democrat who represents House District 28.

Rep. Dacia Grayber

Grayber’s role is relevant when you consider her occupation and examine contributions to her 2022 election campaign.

First, Grayber is a firefighter herself, a member of  Tualatin Valley Firefighters Union – IAFF Local 1660. That means she will benefit from her bill.

Dacia Grayber, firefighter (Source: IAFF.org)  

Second, at least $45,000, a hefty chunk of contributions to her 2022 campaign, came from firefighter-affiliated labor unions: 

Contributor Amount

Oregon State Fire Fighters Council $ 10,000

International Association of Fire Fighters FIREPAC. $ 10,000

Portland Metro Fire Fighters PAC (223) $ 10,000

Professional Firefighters PAC (3219) $ 10,000

Salem Fire PAC (245) $ 5,000

In a March 4, 2024, letter to the Chief Clerk of the House, Grayber declared a potential conflict of interest because she could be impacted by the retirement age change. That’s not enough.

A May 2021 report from the Secretary of State’s Audits Division noted Oregon is one of only two states that require legislators to vote on matters on which they have an actual conflict of interest.

“The vast majority of states…either require or allow legislators to recuse themselves from voting on such matters,” the report said. “Some states go further, barring lawmakers from taking part in any discussion or action on bills in which they have a personal interest.”

The audit declared that such declarations are “a legislative loophole…(that) undermines the idea that public officials should not be involved in decisions that would benefit them, their family, or close associates.” 

The report also cited a recommendation by Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics “…that a conflict of interest is not resolved by being transparent about it…”

The audit report called for the Oregon Legislature to “…consider changing statutes and chamber rules to require lawmakers to recuse themselves from any discussions, debates, or votes on such measures.”

It’s way past time for the Legislature to do so. 

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The Oregon State Bar Should Be Ashamed

The Oregon State Bar Association is blatantly failing its responsibility to Oregonians.

On Oct. 9, 2023, I filed a complaint with the Oregon State Bar Association asserting that a number of Oregon lawyers are misrepresenting their credentials, that they are acting in an unethical manner by asserting to potential and current clients that their selection as “Lawyers of Distinction” by a Florida-based business is evidence of their legal skills and achievements. I filed a second, more detailed complaint on Feb. 17, 2023 and followed up with an email asking whether the association intends to respond.

Lawyers of Distinction, incorporated in 2014, is in fact just like a diploma mill, an outfit that claims to be a higher education institution, but only provides illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee.

The Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct (as amended effective January 1, 2024) for Oregon attorneys is explicit about how attorneys must communicate about themselves:

Rule 7.1 A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material representation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make a statement considered as a whole not materially misleading. 

Rule 8.4 It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to…engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law. 

An Oregon attorney claiming he or she is a exceptional because of membership in “Lawyers of Distinction” is clearly making “a false or misleading communication” and engaging in “professional misconduct” involving “dishonesty” “deceit” and “misrepresentation”.

The Oregon Bar Association’s response to my complaint? Nothing. Nada. Crickets. 

Here are the facts.

According to the Lawyers of Distinction’s website, a Charter Membership, for $475 a year, comes with a Customized 14″ x 11″ genuine rosewood plaque. A Featured Membership, for $575 a year, brings the plaque and inclusion in a membership roster published in USA Today, The New York Times, The American Lawyer and the National Law Journal.

Then there’s the Distinguished Membership, for $775 per year, the most expensive choice (described on the organization’s website as “Most Popular”), which brings the rosewood plaque, the membership roster ads and an 11″tall translucent personalized crystal statue.

The Lawyers of Distinction website describes the application review process as complex and rigorous.

Don’t believe it.

 It’s just pay-for-play. It’s selling badges.  It’s paying for meaningless accolades. Apply, pay the annual membership fee and you’re in. The result? People relying on the Lawyers of Distinction accolade in choosing an attorney are being duped.

According to the Florida Division of Corporations, “Lawyers of Distinction Inc.” is a private for-profit company with a principal address of 4700 Millenia Boulevard, Suite 175, Orlando, FL 32839. Robert B. Baker, at the same address, is listed as the Owner in the company’s 2023 Annual Report. 

But don’t go to the office address expecting to be ushered into a space with a clean, modern aesthetic that communicates success. The address is only a virtual office.

If the Oregon State Bar Association and its 14,000 members are honestly committed to accountability, excellence, fairness, and leadership in the legal profession, as it claims, it should insist that Oregon attorneys immediately halt falsely advertising themselves as Lawyers of Distinction or holders of other unearned accolades.

 To do otherwise diminishes the law. 

11/13/2024 UPDATE: Oregon State Bar Refuses To Prohibit Deceit and Misrepresentation By Its Members

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Apartments, Apartments and More Apartments: The Tigard Triangle Needs Public Space

The Overland Apartments, S.W. 72nd Ave., Tigard

Apartments are sprouting up like weeds in the Tigard Triangle. As one complex is finished, another is starting.

Apartments under construction on S.W. Clinton St., Tigard

The Tigard Triangle, located in the northeast corner of the city, is bordered by the roadways that surround it: Highway 99W (Pacific Highway), Highway 217, and Interstate 5.

Spurred, in part, by changes in the federal tax code, the apartments in the Triangle are driving increases in the local population. Hopeful retailers are already in the area to serve new residents, but one crucial element is clearly missing – public spaces. 

Public spaces are essential for the well-being of everyone in a community.  They give breathing room to people in dense housing, they make people feel safe, comfortable, and welcome. In addition to providing opportunities for relaxation, recreation and socializing, they help stimulate a neighborhood’s local character and sense of place. Community places instill a mutual sense of pride and ownership and help assure a commitment to an area’s continued well-being. 

Think of Portland’s Pioneer Square, Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Tualatin Commons, Beaverton’s City Fountain Park, Lake Oswego’s Millennium Plaza Park. They are all prime spaces for interaction where people from many parts of the community and diverse backgrounds meet naturally and interact comfortably.

Farmers Market at Lake Oswego’s Millennium Plaza Park

Without public spaces in the Tigard Triangle, where will parents and their children gather, where will friends be able to sit outdoors on a bench and enjoy enjoy a conversation, where will community get-togethers such as farmers markets and special events be held?  

If Tigard doesn’t make an effort to provide much needed public spaces accessible to the residents of all the new apartments in the Triangle, the entire community will suffer. Personal connections will wither and, instead of togetherness, the community will be dominated by massive shopping center parking lots and streets dedicated to moving ever-higher volumes of traffic.

What a tragedy that will be.

As naturalist John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”