LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Bring your sickness to class

Please tell me Alexis Jewell is a comedian playing at journalism? Really? Stay home when you’re sick [“Sick and wrong,” March 11]? Who can afford to do that? PSU has 10-week terms. Two of my classes met once a week this past term. I was sick for two weeks this winter so you’re talking about missing 1/5th of the instruction I want and paid for because I’m sick? That is 20 percent of my education. Potentially 20 percent of my grade. Not going to happen because.

And here’s a little more for you to think about, good luck in the real world if you expect to stay home because you have a sniffle or sore throat. You will quickly make enemies and lose jobs if you expect to stay home from work and miss deadlines because you have a cold.

Suck it up, wash your hands, use that Purell by the elevators, get some exercise, and drink your emergen”c” Alexis. The world is a germy place and nobody can afford to stay home because they’re sick.

Nichols

Response to PBA letter

In evaluating the March 11 letter [“Letter to the editor,” March 11] from Portland Business Alliance executive director, Sandra McDonough, wherein she claims PBA supports both jobs and education: this is horseshit. Let’s take three examples: (1) PBA’s success push against poor folk and the homeless via the Sit-Lie Law, (2) PBA’s successful push (with TriMet) to [get rid of] Fareless Square, and (3) PBA’s November 2010 election victory wherein PBA successfully gutted Voter-Owned Elections (or, VOE). Do these three campaigns promote jobs or education?  Hell no!

In fact, Transit Riders Union (www.trimetriders.org) organized a 20-person picket outside PBA offices at their Market Street location (near PSU) precisely because PBA wants to marginalize and criminalize the homeless, decrease or abolish public spaces like Fareless Square, and make sure that rich folks are the ones who are “qualified” to be on Portland City Council.

At our picket, one of the chants that KBOO Radio broadcast was, “1, 2, 3, 4 — PBA — Stop the War!  On the Poor!” Nationally, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (PBA’s parent) spent $1,000,000 a day against Obama’s healthcare reform bill. In that regard, they failed. Ironically, in a liberal, progressive city like Portland, PBA has scored three right-wing, consecutive victories in a row.  This needs to stop.

Has the Portland Business Alliance, for example, pushed for Obama (or even Portland mayor Sam Adams) to follow FDR’s example for job creation during the Great Depression? FDR created 11,000,000 government-funded jobs via the Works Progress Administration (including building Timberline Lodge), Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Federal Theater Project, among other programs. No, because PBA, like the Republicans in Congress, supports Milton Friedman-style “trickle-down” economics and are waiting for Wall Street to feel safe enough to start creating jobs. At present, Wall Street enjoys a 20-year high in profits while millions of people are out of work, have stopped looking for work, or unwillingly work part-time hours.

By opposing Measures 66 and 67, PBA clearly came down on the side of cutting jobs, teachers and many other public service jobs, but claims to be “for” jobs, or at least, some “shock doctrine” theory about hypothetical jobs in the private sector, maybe, in a few more years. Or, is it decades?

John Dewey said, “Politics is the shadow cast by big business over public life.” It is the job of “nonprofits” like those of Karl Rove and PBA (especially since Citizens United nationally and the death of VOE locally) to convince enough “Reagan Democrats” why they should be voting with Wall Street, not Main Street. But where are the jobs and support for education? In Wisconsin, both jobs and education appear to be getting “downsized” by the Republican governor in Madison (like Portland, allegedly a liberal community). 

*This letter has been edited for brevity.

Lew Church, Treasurer

Transit Riders Union