Isaac Laquedem

What makes a "major candidate"?

Sunday's Oregonian included a story about the Interstate 5 bridge replacement that opened with this intriguing line: "The proposed Columbia River Crossing project is controversial in some quarters, but not among the major candidates running in Oregon's special congressional election."  The Oregonian helpfully identified the "major candidates" as Republican Rob Cornilles and Democrats Brad Avakian, Suzanne Bonamici, and Brad Witt.

The Oregonian didn't, however, identify how it selected three of the eight Democrats and one of the five Republicans as being the "major candidates."  Perhaps it based its determination on fundraising potential, in which case the major candidates aren't being identified by the media, nor by the voters, but by how well they can court contributions from people who would like their ear in Congress.

Equally possible is that the major candidates are those who support the Columbia River Crossing project, implying that a candidate who is less than gung-ho about spending $3 billion or more on the bridge, light rail, and freeway ramps can't be a major candidate.  I think I like that alternative even less than the first.

A WES-side bike path?

As I drove along Highway 217 this morning, briskly passing a WES car that was ambling along the adjacent track, I recalled that WES - the west side commuter rail that runs from a parking-free transit station in Beaverton to a relatively unpopulated part of Wilsonville -- runs only two trains an hour each way, and that only during the morning and evening rush hours.

Ridership on WES has been increasing  -- average daily ridership is up to about 1,600, compared to about 1,200 a year ago -- but it still well below the 2,400 riders/day that TriMet had forecasted when it built the line.  Because riders who ride one way in the morning likely ride the other way in the afternoon, WES is serving about 800 people a day.

Is it a transportation heresy for me to wonder if more people would use the line if it were converted to a bike path?  $160 million was a lot to spend for a rail line that serves 800 people a day.

The Multnomah County Commission sends a "gotcha" to the taxpayers -- in 1915

When the Multnomah County Commission straightened and smoothed out parts of Capitol Highway in the summer of 1915, it appointed (as was customary then) a Board of County Road Viewers to lay out the new road and assess the damages (compensation) that the county should pay to the landowners whose property was being taken.  John B. Yeon, the county roadmaster, chaired the board.  The board identified a route that reduced the maximum grade from 11% to 6% and straightened some tortuous curves.  The board also estimated the damages to the owners from whom land would be required.   Though the amounts seem laughably small in today's inflated currency, some of them were substantial in the dollars of 95 years ago.  The 6966 square feet from the heirs of Andrew Mercer were valued at $625, the 5200 square feet from the estate of John M. Cress were valued at $300, and the 2925 square feet from George W. Owens were valued at $175.  On the other hand, some of the figures seem oddly low: the 880 feet from "Andrew Sills" (who was really named John C. Bills) were valued at $1.  The 17,424 square feet from Rosa H. Webber were valued at $100.  The more than half an acre from Hosea and Edith Wood that included portions of thirty separate lots was valued at $900.

Not surprisingly, some of the owners asked for more.  Rosa Webber wanted $600 instead of $100.  John Bills wanted $40 instead of $1.  The heirs of Andrew Mercer wanted $4500 instead of $625.  Ninety-six years ago today, on September 13, 1915, the county commission denied their demand for more and approved the report of the road viewers.  Mr. Bills apparently had to be content with his $1.  Rosa Webber took her case to court, with what result I do not know.

But the county commission wasn't satisfied with rejecting the landowners' claims for compensation; it included in its final order the following sentence:  "ORDERED, further, that the values claimed by each of the claimants herein as the proper value of their property, be transmitted to the County Assessor for his information."  In other words, we're happy to tax your property at the value that you've just claimed for it, even if we're not willing to pay you that much for it ourselves.  Gotcha!

A reading for Back-To-School Day, in place of Labor Day

Labor Day does double duty in childful households of being the last day of summer vacation, the day before the first full day of school.  In past years I've marked the occasion with an apposite quotation in memory of Grandmother Laquedem, who carried her support for the working classes to the point of dying on Labor Day itself, some years ago.  (Cigarettes, rather than protest songs, were the actual culprit.)

This year, instead, I offer a passage from A.P. Herbert's essay, "What is Education?"  As with many of his essays, it's in the form of a judicial opinion set in the 1930s.  Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs, operators of two cargo boats on the canals between Birmingham and London, have been charged with not sending their children to elementary school, and in their defense they ask the question, "What is elementary education?" as defined in the Education Acts of Great Britain.  The government asks the court to say that elementary education is "education in those elementary subjects which are ordinarily taught to our defenceless children, as reading, writing, and arithmetic."  Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs argue that "elementary education" means education in "the elements or first parts to be learned of any subject which may be useful or necessary to the good citizen in that state of life for which he is destined by Providence, heredity, or inclination."  The court describes the education of the Bloggs children as follows:

Now, the children of Mr. Bloggs, though they have not attended a school, have already acquired the rudiments of their father's and grandfather's trade, that is to say, the handling of boats and the navigation of canals; they are able in an emergency to steer a boat into a lock, to open or close a lock-gate, to make bowlines and reef-knots, clove hitches and fisherman's bends, and to do many other useful and difficult things which the members of this Court, we admit, are unable to do.  Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs are instructing them slowly in reading and writing, and even, with reluctance, it seems, in arithmetic.  It is not contended that in these subjects they are so far advanced as children of the same age who attend the public elementary schools; on the other hand, the evidence is that those children are quire unable to make a bowline-on-a-bight, to distinguish between the port and starboard sides of a vessel, or to steer the smallest boat into the largest lock without disaster.

As to what the Bloggs children cannot do, the court says:

They are unable, it is true, to read fluently the accounts of murder trials in the Sunday newspapers; they cannot write their names upon the walls of lavatories and public monuments; they do not understand the calculation of odds or the fluctuations of stocks and shares.  But these acquirements may come in time. * * * As for writing, there is too much writing in our country as it is; and it is a satisfaction to contemplate three children who in all probability will never become novelists nor write for the papers.