Bradbury Hypes Global Warming in MU

Bill Bradbury, Oregon’s gerrymandering, electioneering Secretary of State, has now sunk to a new low. Thursday afternoon, Bradbury addressed students in the MU Lounge on the subject of global warming. Now wait, since when is Bradbury qualified to talk about science? He’s not a scientist, he’s a former businessman turned politician.

Which is why, perhaps, The OSU Daily Barometer’s account of the event said it “echoed Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’” As noted in a Liberty Blog post on Wednesday, many are questioning the scientific validity of Gore’s data. But Bradbury quoted some of Gore’s data, made a bad analogy about an orange, and compared global warming to fascism.

Bradbury’s brand of politics as Secretary of State has been shameful. The idea that he was qualified to speak about science, more so than the well-respected science professors of all political stripes employed at this university, is political cronyism at its highest level. The Barometer didn’t indicate who sponsored he even, but those people should find remember that unless political manipulation is the goal, it’s best to let scientists talk about science.

"White Privlege" -More Like White Patronizing

Instead of hiring a writer with a differing perspective to balance out the pages of the Forum section, Daily Barometer Forum Editor Ashley Slocki has decided to hire someone who thinks like everyone else in her department. Sara Gwin recently made her debut, and her most recent column amounted to “I’m sorry I’m white”

In a nod to self-deprecating, hand wringing white guilt, Gwin takes a number of instances at McKay High School (a majority black high school with a principal who, according to a former student, recruited black students who had been expelled from other Salem area high schools for violence or weapons charges) and cobbles them together into “institutionalized racism.” Gwin also seems to feel guilty that she managed to succeed and that she wasn’t able to “deny those rights.”

Gwin speaks of “eradicating racism.” As a pragmatist, I can tell you, straight-faced, that this idea is impossible. And while we by no means live in a perfect society (as there is no such thing), the idea that a person achieved simply because they were of one race or another is entirely fallacious. Gwin makes modern American society sound like pre-WWII American society, and with the exception of a few old codgers, we have changed so much.

I think I grew up in a pretty color-blind society, and I’m glad I came to one here at Oregon State. Gwin looks for racism, even when it’s not racism, and is willing to typecast all of you as God-awful racist thugs in order to prove a point. I look around me and am sure that I did not succeed because of my race, or even my gender, but because of my merits. As I reread her article, I am convinced that one of those merits is that I am better at picking opinion writers than Ashley Slocki. The Forum Section continues to sink to new lows in one-sidedness and quality of content.

SHAB Pounces On Those Who Puff

The Student Health Advisory Board, which does not seem to be very good at publicizing it's meetings or seeking student input, has announced that it is prusuing an initiative to make the OSU campus Smoke-Free. That's right. If their goals come to fruition, nowhere on our large, scenic, open-air campus, would a person be able to have something as simple as a smoke break.

Here's a less restrictive suggestion. Take some of that huge wad of cash we, as students, give SHS every term, and commission a study to evaluate potential locations for "Designated Smoking Areas" on campus. Criteria could include areas with (curently) minimal pedestrian foot traffic, the ability for smoke to dissipate quickly, and an absence of opening first and second story windows.

Instead, SHAB has chosen to take the easy way out, as government tends to do. Government is good at two things: Banning things and taxing things. For a government, especially student government, to do anything else requires exceptional intelligence and character among the members of that government body. Let's see if the SHAB has got it.

The Baro Doesn't Like Black People?

That's the message that protesters from the Black Cultural Center tried to send to the huddled masses waiting to get into the OSU-UW football game Saturday. Standing in a "circle" (looked more like a triangle to me) and holding signs that proclaimed an anti-diversity bias at OSU's camups daily and expounded such claims as "It's not just face paint" in reference to photograph run on the front page of the Baro preceeding the student-led "Black Out Reser" initiative.

I'll be giving a full discourse on this subject in the next Liberty, but just to be clear, if one looks at historical evidence, the Baro is the most diversity friendly (in the university's definition of diversity) newspapers anywhere, not just at OSU. It would appear the the multiculturalism crowd has a "one-strike" policy on not being nice to minorities.