Cracks of Light In The O (From Others) on Smith

We're not beating our heads against the wall yet, given that it's very early and we've only just started discussing it--but the mainstream notice of Smith's role in the Klamath fiasco has been minimal to negligent, at best. I have yet to see a single piece (link in the comments if you have) that mentions Smith's role in any way other than as passive beneficiary. That may change; we've got something to show you Monday that makes a strong visual case for portraying his direct involvement in getting the scientific conclusions overturned in favor of farm interests. And we're negotiating a chance to bring the story to a national audience outside the blogosphere, and of course if that happens we'll let you know.

OK, when I said there hasn't been a single piece that mentions Smith's active involvement, I meant a news piece instigated by reporters and/or editors. But there has in fact been a little indirect penetration on the issue, as The O allowed a regular citizen to make the case in their pages on Thursday:

Your editorial "Cheney and the Klamath salmon kill" (June 30) rightly took Vice President Dick Cheney to task for his illegal meddling in the 2002 Klamath Basin water issue. In chastising Cheney, however, you failed to even mention the direct involvement of either Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., or former Oregon politician-turned-lobbyist Bob Smith.

Were it not for the aggressive involvement of these two Oregon men, Cheney and Karl Rove would not have broken the law to supply scarce Klamath waters at the expense of endangered salmon and coastal fishery jobs.

The Oregonian too often gives Smith a pass, pointing to his occasional breaks with his Republican Party and painting him as some sort of genuine political moderate. He should not be let off the hook on the Klamath episode.

The Oregonian ought to dig a little deeper and shine the light on Oregon officials when they are playing a direct or complicit role in the Bush administration's unethical and illegal affairs.

CHRIS BECK Lake Oswego

Chris Beck, I've never met you but I think I love you. I couldn't have written it better myself. That's the rational view; also appearing in Thursday's edition was the scientific view from Steve Pederey, conservation director of Oregon Wild and an active observer during the period under scrutiny. Steve doesn't call Smith out specifically (and in fact kind of avoids it in the same way as the regular media) but he's certainly pointing at the methods Smith seems culpable for:

A Washington Post investigation uncovered Cheney's role in this tragedy, finding that he personally called natural resources managers to demand that they cut water for salmon during a drought year to favor agribusiness interests. According to the Post, Cheney wanted to reward political allies and help Republican Sen. Gordon Smith win re-election in Oregon.

That wasn't the first time politicians have sacrificed the Klamath's fish and wildlife to achieve political goals. In 2003, The Wall Street Journal found that the political motives of White House adviser Karl Rove, not science, had driven federal decisions in the Klamath. And in 2002, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden killed a $175 million restoration bill for the Klamath that would have benefited both salmon and farmers.

Today the Klamath Basin stands at a crossroads. This most recent scandal and the coming investigations into Cheney's actions are yet another example of why Congress needs to act to resolve the environmental crisis facing the Klamath. Continuing to leave the region's fish and wildlife at the mercy of politics is a recipe for disaster. It's appalling that the vice president used his influence to overturn science-based decisions that resulted in the largest fish kill in Northwest history. But it's even more appalling that five years after that fish kill little has been done to prevent a repeat.

If there's one example of Smith being a part of the effort to flip science on its head, here's a quote from the Klamath Herald News in April 2001 that we ran in our original story on the fish kill fiasco. It both sums up Smith's knowledge and support of Cheney's machinations, and actually explains how Cheney plans to use politics to trump science:

"Dick Cheney stopped that order from coming down," Smith said. "He ordered the biologists back to Washington" to see if there were some way to get around the conclusion that all available water must go to protect endangered suckers in Upper Klamath Lake and threatened coho salmon in the lower Klamath River.

And when Cheney and Rove got the water turned back on, they let Gale Norton and Smith take the credit...and Smith even bragged about the accomplishment later.

Will anyone ask him about this example of his ideological marriage to the Bush administration? Will you?

Must We Say "Told You So?"

What did we say? We said if more stories on Betsy Johnson come out without any seeming reason for their appearance, start believing that it's not a coincidence of newsworthiness that's behind it. Yesterday The O (along with other outlets at least including KATU by personal observance) ran a short brief noting that Standards and Practices agreed to conduct an investigation into the filing of Johnson's required forms; we're not talking about that--there's a completely legitimate reason to run that story. The fact that this is almost literally the only thing Johnson has admitted fault for makes it a rather unexciting story overall, but it's certainly worth reporting.

The one we're talking about is a six-page (online) retrospective and review of the allegations against Johnson, also displaying further reportage on the pass-through issue and land-sale circumstances in the context of the airport's development history. They make a new allegation--that a previous developer with a similar plan as Ed Freeman's (the Johnson buyer), had his application denied because he wouldn't play ball with Johnson in opposing a gravel mine venture on the same land she would come to sell a decade later. We'll have more on this next week, but the Johnson family denies that threat was made, and contend that the applications compared were not the same either in purpose or quality. In fact they claim the denied application wasn't even clearly aviation-related, so that should give you an idea of the quality of this new charge by the paper.

But again, pull back from the nuts and bolts of the story--if only because the various charges and deals or bills under scrutiny make this such a complex case to discuss. The O's editors are not deaf and blind; they know very well what we've written and what deficiencies we've made clear in their reporting. They also have watched the WWeek's coverage--and one theory given by a longtime Oregon political reporter is that this all started with The O's panic at being scooped yet again by WWeek--and surely saw the latest attempt to push the story retracted in embarrassment. Do they really think this new allegation, or the continued strength of the existing ones, merits six more web pages? Or is someone expressing a strong desire to see this set of non-stories continue?

Ask yourself, for instance, why reporters from The O continue to refer to a "fast $119,000," noting both some element of speed and that it was at least $100,000 that Johnson made. Now we've said this many times: the costs of rezoning, replatting and resurveying the land over the years by Johnson reduced actual profit to the $45,000 range--a little less than 6% on the sale, certainly nothing outrageous even in three months. And The O knows it too; in the broad retrospective piece the reporter mentions deep in the story the $45,000 figure. But up front, above the fold as it were, he calls it a fast $119,000.

And guess what? So did the blurb announcing the investigation, the one that we linked above. But as you'll see now, the $45K figure has been inserted there. The cached version--the one we saw yesterday--doesn't have it. Curious, that they just can't seem to remember to make that qualification so as not to mislead people. (Julia Silverman of AP can, by the way--here's her piece, and she's got both figures there.)

Oh, one other thing Silverman mentions is that "she reported the sale of the property...in April of this year," which The O doesn't seem to want to relate to people either. In the profile piece they call it "a land deal with a developer she has repeatedly aided. She then failed to disclose the deal as state law requires." Well, not quite--unless you make sure to interpret the phrase as "not disclosing it as state law requires," rather than "not disclosing it, as state law requires." Even then, the truth as we'll discuss this week is that the sale was in fact disclosed, although the holding was not at the time. And we'll also go into our discussion with state ethics employees who admit the system is extremely hard to follow properly at times.

New (and shallowly explained) allegations, rehashes of old ones, accusatory language and avoidance of exculpatory evidence--where's the line? When does it stop being simply lazy reportage, and starts becoming active attempts to fulfill and agenda?

The O's Curious Choice of Federal Rep to Fellate on Stem Cells

Seen The O's op-ed this morning supporting stem cell research? On point, there's certainly nothing to argue with:

This week, some of those scientists in other nations may have been secretly gratified, in fact, when President Bush again vetoed an expansion of U.S. funding for such research. That reaction to the veto may sound callous, but those scientists are only human. Bush's veto all but guarantees that other nations will continue to have an edge in the global race for cures.

Bush's decision in 2001 to drastically limit federal funding for U.S. research held back our own scientists, and, in effect, handicapped the global race in favor of other nations. Private foundations, companies and states are trying to fill the gap, but if they do, it will be unprecedented. Always before, it has taken federal financing to unlock a medical breakthrough.

The O's editors deserve credit for taking the smart position on stem cell research, especially in pointing out the economic disadvantage it puts the US in to block that research. But let's be real here; this is not going out on any kind of political limb to criticize the veto. And it's curious that they made no mention of the House GOP blocking similar legislation at the state level just yesterday.

What's even more curious, however, is the way The O chose to represent the concept that Oregon and its (federal) lawmakers are more in step with the electorate on this issue than the administration. They could have picked the entire group of our Representatives and Senators, because for the first time in recent memory that I can recall, ALL SEVEN of them voted against the President's wishes, Democrats and Republicans alike.

So who did they pick to celebrate as Oregon's champion of stem cells? One guess:

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., agrees that this is the best use for them. He differentiates such cells from a human life, which he believes begins with "Mom."

As Smith sees it, "If those embryos remain in a petri dish for a thousand years, they will remain cells only, the dust of the Earth. No mother is present, no life has been created."

As Sen. Smith said recently, "We cannot have tomorrow's miracles if we tie scientists' hands with yesterday's rules."

Un-fucking-believable. Not one mention of ANY of the other six legislators who back the research. No, they just happened to select the one guy who desperately needs to appear in step with his constituency, and out of step with Bush's. Hey there Stickel and Co.--I think there's a dab of semen still clinging to your collective chins. Was it good for you?