In a truly demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety, espe­cially one as large and diverse as Amer­ica, tow­ing the national party ‘one size fits all’ line at the local level is just plain unde­mo­c­ra­tic. Every small com­mu­nity or region has its own unique fla­vor and needs and dynam­ics and local party lead­ers should, in fact, embrace this diver­sity and build upon it and adapt to it rather than push­ing a lousy can­di­date just because the lousy can­di­date is reg­is­tered with the party.

In my per­sonal view, both of the major par­ties in Coos County con­tinue to back very mediocre incum­bents at the State Leg­is­la­ture. Why don’t the dems show some guts, for­ti­tude and con­cern for the area and encour­age the aged Sen­a­tor Verger to step aside for a true pro­gres­sive candidate?

Today, State Rep Arne Rob­lan, also a dem, demon­strated just what a mediocre can­di­date he is by grand­stand­ing on a non-issue and ques­tion­ing whether FERC was influ­enced by anti-LNG lob­by­ists. (One can’t help but won­der how many ‘lob­by­ists’ have influ­enced Arne) So, as reported at The World, Rob­lan has filed a FOIA with FERC to see if any inap­pro­pri­ate meet­ings took place.

Rob­lan said he requested a response from FERC within 20 busi­ness days.

‘Whether you sup­port or oppose the con­struc­tion of this ter­mi­nal, it’s impor­tant that we all feel like we were treated fairly and we all had our say in what appears today to be a secret meet­ing that led to a deci­sion delay­ing the build­ing of this ter­mi­nal and the hun­dreds of jobs it brings to our com­mu­nity,” he said in his press release. [empha­sis mine]

At least now, after danc­ing around the sub­ject and art­fully dodg­ing every attempt to get him to state his posi­tion on LNG one way or the other he finally, in-artfully, showed his hand. “…hun­dreds of jobs it brings to our com­mu­nity”… who’s been lob­by­ing you Arne? Just who do you rep­re­sent? Not the thou­sands on the no LNG list, obviously.

This may be a bit of grand­stand­ing, just a way to get his name in the paper before the pri­mary, but this pub­lic­ity stunt reveals just how nar­row Roblan’s think­ing skills really are AND he will have some real egg on his face when he waits twenty days for some­thing he could have just made a phone call to the peo­ple he is accus­ing to find out why FERC delayed the decision.

Thank good­ness I am unaffiliated.

Bob Main was the lone voice of dis­sent express­ing valid con­cerns about wash­ing toxic chem­i­cals both from fer­til­iz­ing the golf course and from a for­mer metham­phet­a­mine lab being washed into the bay. Com­mis­sion­ers Whitty and Stuffle­bean were uncon­cerned about poten­tial dam­age to the bay. The flood­ing is nec­es­sary for Jor­dan Cove to off­set wet­lands lost to the pro­posed LNG terminal.

The com­mis­sion­ers added three con­di­tions to the project to limit costs to the county and dam­age to the envi­ron­ment, but the three-person vote was divided. Com­mis­sioner Bob Main voted no, in light of con­cerns he said he had about pol­lu­tants wash­ing into the bay. Com­mis­sion­ers Nikki Whitty and Kevin Stuffle­bean voted yes.

Jody McCaf­free rec­om­mended an over­sight com­mit­tee to avert a sim­i­lar dis­as­ter as the Mas-Tec pipeline.

The port agreed that there should be a tech­ni­cal advi­sory com­mit­tee, such as the one it already has, includ­ing lead­ers from the South Slough National Estu­ar­ine Research Reserve and Coos Water­shed Association.

The appli­cant gets to be its own advi­sory com­mit­tee. That will be like lis­ten­ing to foxes dis­cuss how to guard the hen house.

Stuffle­bean assured every­one … “Reg­u­la­tory agen­cies tend to pick on gov­ern­ment enti­ties more than pri­vate companies.”

It is anyone’s guess where that pearl of wis­dom came from or what evi­dence there is to sup­port that state­ment but mean­while, Stuffle­bean is once again backpedal­ing on ear­lier state­ments made to the press about his bank­ruptcy. Today, a county cit­i­zen asked him why he hadn’t reported his per­sonal con­tri­bu­tions to his cam­paign that forced him into bank­ruptcy. Fail­ure to report con­tri­bu­tions is a clear vio­la­tion of elec­tion laws.

His expla­na­tion was that there were non-reportable expenses such as gas and mileage to speak­ing events. So given the cam­paign cost less than $6,000 and Coos County is not that large it would seem that it didn’t take much to tip the finan­cial scales for the com­mis­sioner. Now he has also blamed his wife’s job loss and his own, hereto­fore uncon­firmed, claim of a $28,000 a year salary cut when he took on the com­mis­sion­ers seat.

Either way, Stuffle­bean doesn’t appear to have much of a han­dle on his per­sonal finances and was irre­spon­si­ble toward his debtors if he, indeed, did take a lower pay­ing job. So why are we let­ting some­one with such a track record of incon­sis­ten­cies and poor judg­ment make deci­sions for the County?

Yes­ter­day, I spoke with Jody McCaf­free to get her reac­tion to the name call­ing edi­to­r­ial in The World. McCaf­free was just as appalled as I was the edi­tor sank to ‘kinder­garten’ behav­ior and has­tened to point out that she went to

…San Fran­cisco to attend the Inter Solar North Amer­ica Exhi­bi­tion and Con­fer­ence — July 14 –16th at the Moscone Cen­ter in San Fran­cisco (www.intersolar.us). While there I also con­nected with con­tacts I have in the San Fran­cisco area who set up sev­eral meet­ings that I was able to attend and also sev­eral events that I was sched­uled to speak at while I was there. I had e-mailed Kather­ine Hoppe, the local Direc­tor of Pro­mo­tions and Con­ven­tions in Coos Bay before I had left to see if she might have any pho­tos or info I could take with me as I was want­ing to pro­mote our area while I was there. I did not receive a response from her but took local pho­tos that I had and made a pro­mo­tional slide on my own of our area which I used in my pre­sen­ta­tion. I also took some brochures of our area that were given to me by the lady who we pur­chased our busi­ness insur­ance through. I was told after the meet­ing by sev­eral atten­dees that I should get paid for pro­mot­ing our area because every sin­gle per­son in the room was ready to come to our town and have an adven­ture when I was done.

What has Clark Wal­worth done to pro­mote Coos County lately? For that mat­ter what has SCDC done? Or the Cham­ber? Jody McCaf­free doesn’t get paid to pro­mote Coos County, McCaf­free doesn’t get paid for any of the work she does, she just cares about her life­long home. Fur­ther, after the orig­i­nal arti­cle regard­ing a res­o­lu­tion in San Fran­cisco not to accept LNG from Coos County, the reporter called her back ask­ing how she had trav­eled to SF! The reporter said his edi­tor wanted to know!

Finally, McCaf­free calls into ques­tion the claim in the edi­to­r­ial of ‘fac­tual errors’

I would like to know what about the Res­o­lu­tion the World con­sid­ers “Fac­tual Flaws” ? I would be happy to point to the doc­u­men­ta­tion that sup­ports every state­ment made. I find it rather odd that the World used the FERC FEIS to try and dis­credit the doc­u­ment but obvi­ously have never read the FEIS doc­u­ment. Per­haps the fac­tual flaws are theirs alone. One does have to read you know.

Prop­erly writ­ten edi­to­ri­als do cite sup­port­ing data when mak­ing claims that are not opin­ion. The World vio­lates this tenet again and again. Real jour­nal­ists take pride in inform­ing their read­ers not deceiv­ing them. Shame on The World!

Come on Coos County, start demand­ing excel­lence from our media, stop accept­ing the dri­vel they deliver.

Hats off to Jody McCafree and the informed cit­i­zens of San Fran­cisco for tak­ing a stand to pro­tect Coos County from the Jor­dan Cove LNG ter­mi­nal and Pacific Con­nec­tor Pipeline part­ner­ship with Pacific Gas & Electric.

Super­vi­sor Chris Daly spon­sored the city’s res­o­lu­tion after his leg­isla­tive aide, Tom Jack­son, met on July 16 with anti-LNG activist Jody McCaf­free of North Bend and other oppo­nents. McCaf­free flew to San Fran­cisco to talk to the city offi­cials and to attend a solar energy fair.

McCaf­free, who has led local anti-LNG efforts for sev­eral years, said the Cal­i­for­nia offi­cials picked right up on her con­cerns about reliance on for­eign energy at the expense of renew­able resources. She hadn’t expected them to move so quickly on a resolution.

“I was shocked,” she said. “They just under­stand it.”

Regret­tably, most of our civic lead­ers have not done any real research so it is always refresh­ing to visit other com­mu­ni­ties where elected offi­cials take their jobs seri­ously and do read and research issues before vot­ing on them. The com­ment from PG&E is pretty funny when talk­ing about liq­ue­fied nat­ural gas.

Devel­op­ing nat­ural gas sup­ply routes is part of the push for renewal energy, said Jonathan Mar­shall, a PG&E spokesman. Solar and wind energy can’t pro­duce elec­tric­ity con­stantly. Nat­ural gas gen­er­a­tors can fill the gaps.

“It’s an essen­tial part­ner to renew­able energy,” he said. “It actu­ally enables the use of renew­able energy.”

Hon­estly, the same can be said for ‘nat­ural’ coal or nat­ural’ plu­to­nium or ‘nat­ural’ … oh just read the list off the peri­odic table of the elements.

Right on, Jody, don’t let the ill informed com­ments get you down.