Op Ed: Lacking Communication
Legislative Consensus
Killed by Confrontations

Oregon Political-Cult Protocol Prevents Essential Action.

Photo By: Tim King

(SALEM) - Confrontation kills communications, ends cooperation, and reduces consensus to complete frustration.

Close examination of the Federalist Papers and other prime materials in our earliest records for the birth of this democracy clearly shows the Founding Fathers understood that clear, open, good-faith/based communication was the single most essential prerequisite for democratic discussion.

They had their cults and cabals, it is surely true; but rise above the risible fray they surely did, too.

Community discussion leading to common-sense decision for demanded actions supporting the common welfare becomes impossible in such seductively-simple situations as those created when that true-essential is defeated and denied.

That`s why that course-of-action is still adopted two centuries after principles for effective governance were recognized -- and our once/world-leading application began.

A maxim from communications-field study states: `If we cannot communicate, we cannot cooperate." Modern research thus makes a maxim of what the Founders learned `the hard way".

Those pretending `cooperation" thus have easy access to absolute attack ending any possible political progress: Refuse to communicate, trigger off confrontation, and forever end any possible progress through consensus.

Consensus surely must be achieved for any progress in any democratic governing institution or agency; which surely depends first and foremost on communication.

Present-day Oregon politicians seem to prefer any possible public embarrassment and provocative pronouncement --obviously meant to produce problems for the opposing political-cult-- to demanded progress for the super-political purpose of the public interest.

Karen Minnis, Speaker of the Oregon House, longtime leader of one political-cult, makes crystal clear why-and-how she`s known as `Minimal" Minnis in her Op-Ed statement today (6/20) in The OREGONIAN.

Minnis makes no bones about where she stands. She clearly refuses to bar any return of `kicker"-funds to `personal" ratepayers. Note particularly the emphasis on `personal".

In her entire Op-Ed statement there`s no mention whatsoever of the most potent and painful part of the `Kicker problem": What`s to be done with multi-MILLIONS remaining still firmly credited to corporations: The same corporations reveling in the reality of reduced, often-revised/downwards or even revoked/entirely, state tax-dues surely demanded for their leading roles in that state prosperity-returning to which Minnis points so proudly.

What one wit at a Legislative window pronounced as `the minimal way is the Oregon way -- give-or-take!" He was, of course, referring to Oregon`s deep-and-dirty `corporate campaign contributions", also known as `winged" since they sometimes fly-away on the slightest provocation.

That`s the tried-and-tested national/Oregon cult-program: To pronounce one particular point as beyond price and thus never open to any differing proposal, even from a responsible source like the Governor`s Office.

Profound effort was demanded to avoid reference to the most potently powerful part of this whole problem --for all of 350 words, no less !

In twenty years of past performance, the Oregon Legislature has long ago abandoned the Constitutional imperative of political action, wisely tailored and controlled by party chieftains seeking consensus, for that overwhelming purpose of `the overall public interest".

Continued consultation, desperate efforts to seek solid consensus, and complete, abject surrender at times to the topmost perpetrator `leading" the opposing political-cult have been the portrait for politicians fronting the frantic endeavors of both Oregon political-cults.

For too long, at desperately high costs, and with deeply damaging consequences: We are in trouble if we continue to allow our elected representatives to defy, deny and defeat what communications clearly has taught us in 200 years.