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Tough times taking their toll?

We had dinner at one of our favorite spots in town tonight. There’s normally a considerable wait to get in – especially on a Friday night. If we can get in at all. Wait too late and they’ll tell you that they’re booked for the rest of the night.

Not tonight. There were two other couples waiting with us the few minutes before they opened, but in the hour or so we were there the place never filled up. In fact, it didn’t come close.

We enjoyed our meal and a couple drinks. When the check came, I noticed immediately that they had charged me $9.50 or my $6.50 beer. I pointed this out to the waiter and he immediately took the check away and corrected it. When he came back, I gave him cash with almost $20 change due back. A few minutes later he came back and left $9 on the table. After waiting a while, I stepped over to the register and caught his eye. I started to explain and he immediately went to the register and handed me correct change. He’s been there for years and has always been great, so I gave him the same 20 plus percent tip I usually do.

I’ve heard and read many times that tough times put people to the test. That petty crime goes up during recessions and more so during depressions. It seems to be a sad fact that folks who manage to stay honest when times are good are pushed over the edge when the economy tanks.

Of course I give this waiter the benefit of the doubt. Of course I want to think that he was just having an off night. But I’d also be crazy not to feel like I need to check the tab and change a little more closely from now on.

Phone book publishers aren't cool

Here we go again. Geoff K over at Our PDX Network posted today about the continuing scourge of telephone book spam.

I know that not everyone looks to the internet to get their information and directory services, and that there will always be people who prefer the ole book. But isn’t it time we changed it from something sent out to everyone, to something only delivered to people who REQUEST it? I’ve tried many times to opt out of getting phone books, but it doesn’t matter, they come whether you want them or not. The guys chucking phone books this morning weren’t looking at any list or checking which houses got them, they just chucked them, house after house not really caring about much (a side note, the book nearly took out one of our Halloween decorations…).

Not much more to say. These spambook publishers need to be stopped and held to account for their waste and litter.

More info on telephone directory waste

Qwest DEX telephone directories: 2,162 pages of waste

Amazon.com falsifying product returns data

There are problems in the warehouse at Amazon.com and someone is trying to cover them up. I've written a couple times lately about how Amazon.com, for years the undisputed gold standard of how to run a business right, is suddenly showing some unsightly dings in their shiny paint job.

On February 6, I wrote about how Amazon.com is making costly mistakes by failing to package products adequately for shipping. I included a photo of a box full of Christmas presents that was nearly destroyed in transit because 1) it was poorly packaged in the first place and 2) it appears UPS ran over it with an entire convoy of fully-loaded delivery trucks before deciding it was in good enough shape to leave on my doorstep.

That box was one of three or four that I returned over the course of a month or so. I just assumed that Amazon.com was so overwhelmed with the volume of orders over the holidays that they had temporarily scaled back on their packaging—a costly mistake in the end. They may save a few minutes and a penny or two worth of paper on the initial order, but what they're failing to calculate is the enormous cumulative cost of the:

1. time of the customer service rep who has to process the return
2. box and packing material to ship the replacement
3. shipping for the item being returned
4. shipping for the replacement item
5. ding on their reputation for the bad customer experience

And then there is the enormous environmental impact of every botched order essentially having to be shipped three times...

So where does the falsifying of product returns data come in? I received two e-mails from Amazon.com this morning letting me know that my returns had been received and processed. I received one a few days ago, but just glanced at it briefly. I'll go back and look more closely now. For every single item I returned, I chose, "Product arrived damaged due to insufficient packaging" from their pull-down list of options in their online product return form. Apparently someone in shipping (or higher up) at Amazon.com didn't like what that would do to their numbers.

If you click on the image here, you can view a full-size version and find that Amazon.com changed every one of my stated reasons for returning each damaged item. One of them says, "Item is defective" and the other four say, "I accidentally ordered the wrong item." Seeing as how all five items were books and that they shipped the exact same five books to replace the ones damaged in the first shipment, this shouldn't even go unnoticed within the company. Why would you ship someone a replacement for an item that they accidentally ordered wrong? If this isn't throwing up red flags all over in Amazon.com's system then they're a much less sophisticated machine than I've always thought. And less honest, as well.

Oh, and the second e-mail I received today? It was also for a book that they'd shipped the exact same way. It arrived with one corner smashed and bent. For that return, I called and spoke with a customer service rep. She was very friendly and I explained the problem and expressed my frustration with the recent trend of poor packaging. She was very sympathetic and said she'd make a note of it in the system. But in the e-mail (which you can view by clicking on this image), the reason for my returning the book is listed as: "Product became damaged/defective after arrival."

Please make OPB stop the pledge drives!

If you're a regular OPB listener like me, you're probably about ready to throw your radio through the nearest window at this point. Just when I think it has to have been a full month since OPB started what seems like their monthly "give us your money and we'll only harass you for two weeks" campaign, I turn on the radio and they're still at it! I either have the worst timing ever or they spend fifty minutes of every hour doing everything from begging to guilt tripping to barking orders for listeners like me to show my support by calling right now. Well what if I gave a week ago? Do they give me a secret, pledge-drive free frequency to which I can tune my radio to get my regular programming back? No! Even if I'd been the first person to call on the first day of the programming hostage drive, I'd have to put up with the grating mess for just as long as the last person to call on the last day of the drive. It makes no sense!

So for now I'm keeping a hold on my fragile sanity by listening online at the NPR website. I'm not getting any local news there, but I'll gladly trade that for no droning pledge drive spots. And there are plenty of other places to get local news—including the OPB website (where they should be doing their fundraising). In fact, I typically continue listening to NPR online for a few weeks or more after the pledge drive ends.

You can also listen to NPR via satellite radio (XM or Sirius), or via Rhapsody and other online music services.

Read my previous rants for more ideas on how to survive the pledge drives, and for some great feedback from readers and OPB staff:

OPB: It's time for the coercive marketing to stop

Time for OPB's Drive Listeners Away campaign again...

Local NPR stations: Drop the pledge drives

Amazon.com going out of business?

They will if they continue on their current track. I received the rest of my order that I wrote about yesterday, including the book that arrived damaged the first time around. Despite the customer service rep telling me that she'd make a note that the book hadn't been properly packaged, this one arrived in the exact same packaging. By sheer luck, it was in good shape. Not so for the other three items in the order. I received two books and a Krups coffee grinder, each in a separate package. I'm returning all three due to damage caused in transit.

One of the books was just wrapped in cardboard and one corner is completely smashed. The other book was partially shrink wrapped around a piece of cardboard in a box—and one corner is completely smashed. Ironically, it appears the corner was smashed by the shrink wrapping. The Krups coffee grinder was in a box three times it's size with one small, half-inflated shipping pillow inside that is far too small to do any good (see the photo; click for a larger view). The product packaging is dirty, but not damaged. But there's something rattling around inside.

A friend of mine who worked for UPS once told me to never ship anything via UPS that I wouldn't drop from five feet in the air onto concrete. Because it happens fairly frequently. It's not that UPS is playing hockey with customer packages. It's just that these boxes go through all kinds of hands, conveyer belts, road trips, etc. in a volume that doesn't allow for kid gloves handling. It's up to the shipper to package things to withstand the trip. Amazon used to do a great job, but seems to have completely forgotten that fact in the last few months.

I'm not going to give up on Amazon.com yet, but if I ever have to return four products in two days again I'll be closing my more than decade-old account and taking my business to their successor. There's no way they'll stay in business if they continue like this.

**************************

Update - 2008.02.07 @ 10:03pm: Since posting the above, I've received a number of follow-up e-mails from Amazon letting me know that they've already shipped all the replacement items via next day air. That's pretty impressive. Their customer service is definitely the best in the business by far. They just need to fix their packaging problems so their customers don't have to contact customer service so often.

Amazon.com is making costly mistakes

Amazon.com is cutting costs in the wrong places and likely costing themselves customers and a great deal of money in the end. I try to shop local whenever I can and have given Powell's far more money than I'd ever want to know. But I do find Amazon indispensable from time to time.

They've always been great about packaging books and other products—sometimes almost going overboard on the amount of packing material inside the box. I actually thought about suggesting to them once that they cut back for environmental reasons. Well, they've done that and then some. Since last December, I've been receiving orders from them with no packing material in the box at all. The box in the photo here arrived exactly as it's shown. I have no idea how the UPS driver thought it was a good idea to leave it on my porch in that condition! It was partly Amazon's fault too, though, as there was no packing in the box to keep the items inside from rattling around and getting covered with dirt once there was a hole in the box. All five or six of the Christmas presents in the box were damaged and had to be returned. To Amazon's credit, there was no wait to talk with a customer service rep by phone and the replacement books arrived the next day.

I received a book today that was wrapped in cardboard with no plastic wrap or anything to protect it. The back cover is damaged in two different places. I contacted Amazon and they're sending a replacement. If they're trying to cut costs by cutting back on packaging, they're getting it all wrong. If my experience is any indication, they're having to ship a fairly high percentage of their orders twice, as well as pay costs for the return of the damaged products.

Photo traffic cameras cause accidents, infringe on rights

I was driving down SE Belmont St. the other day when I was hit in the face with a flash of light, similar to a camera flash. A second or two later I was flashed again from behind. The menace? A Portland Police van equipped with bright lights on the front and back that flash in the faces of oncoming drivers and then again in the rear view mirror as they're passing. Sounds brilliant, doesn't it? It doesn't take a genius - or even much common sense - to know that's a bad idea and a recipe for disaster. But it sure sounds great if you're a lazy cop who can just sit in a van while the equipment does your work or an official who needs to rake in a bunch of money to hit a revenue target by month end. Not to mention the monolithic government contractor that is making money off every one of these devices they can sell and keep in place - and every ticket that is issued.

The National Motorists Association (NMA) has a section of their site dedicated to traffic ticket cameras. The site includes a page with links to articles from around the country showing that these traffic ticket machines cause accidents. One of the reports if from KATUhere in Portland:

...the number of rear-end accidents have gone up at intersections where red light cameras were installed.

The accidents often happen because people slam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket, leaving little time for the driver behind them to react.

The city's traffic numbers obtained by KATU News show a 140 percent increase in rear-end crashes at the intersections where red light cameras were installed.

"That's a tough one," said Elliot Eki with AAA of Oregon. "That's a tough call. You know, who's at fault?"

Eki said the data heightens the motor club's concerns that red light cameras are more about generating revenue than making roads safer.

And generating revenue is one thing these cameras do very well.

Sometimes, you realize right away that you have been caught and then comes the really fun part, getting that $237 ticket in the mail.

Rob Burchfield, Traffic Engineer for the City of Portland, told KATU News at the time the article was written: "So far, the evidence we see is that safety is improving."

Burchfield pointed out that there has been a 10 percent drop in red light running citations since the cameras first went in three years ago, from 20,000 in 2002 down to a projected 18,000 this year.

Another major benefit is fewer t-bone accidents, a few of which are actually caught on tape with red light cameras.

There are a lot of other ways to improve safety on the roads that don't have the serious side effect of dramatically increasing traffic accidents. But not only would those cost money to implement, they would eliminate the real reason for the Big Brother cameras: revenue. And I'm invoking Nineteen Eighty-Four here for a reason. From the Portland Police Bureau website:

I received a Photo Radar citation in the mail. How do I go about viewing the photo to see if it was truly me driving?

You may call USPT (the private vendor in charge of the equipment) at 1-800-799-7082 to make an appointment to view the photo. They in turn will notify the Traffic Division by sending copies of all the paperwork including the photo, and you will then meet a Traffic Division Officer at the Traffic Division at the appointed time/date to view the photo...

For a look at what this looks like, here's a sample taken from the Portland Police Bureau website:

Sample Red Light Violation Letter (218 KB PDF)

The huge, red flag for me, though, is the fact that I have to contact a "private vendor in charge of the equipment" so they can "notify the Traffic Division by sending copies of all the paperwork including the photo."

So who is this USPT that is taking and storing these photos of us and our cars, along with our exact location at that exact millisecond? What does USPT even stand for? The Portland Police website has nothing on them, so I did some Google-sleuthing. Turns out USPT stands for U.S. Public Technologies L.L.C. What kind of a name is that? It would be like Powell's being called U.S. Public Reading Matter.

[Editor's Update - 2007.11.13 @ 12:20 PM: Jim was kind enough to point out in a comment below that "Lockheed Martin sold this business several years ago to Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), who have continued the red light enforcement operation under their name," and included a link to a January 2007 WW article entitled, "Red Light District." Thanks for this, Jim! It's pretty pathetic that not only did the Portland Police Bureau fail to update their website to disclose the sale of USPT to Lockheed Martin, but they're still telling the public that USPT is the agency managing these cameras and directing the public to contact USPT - even though this hasn't been the case for years! This revelation and article strengthen my key points. ACS - a publicly-traded Texas company - is capturing and storing this information and has a vested interest not only in selling as many of these cameras as possible, but in facilitating the issue of as many tickets as possible carrying as high a fine as possible because they're compensated for each and every one! And this doesn't nullify the fact that Lockheed Martin did own and manage these cameras for the period between the acquisition of USPT and the transfer of the contract to ACS.]

As of 1998, USPT is a wholly owned part of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Yes, THAT Lockheed Martin. Lockheed's tagline is "We never forget who we're working for." You can bet that ain't you and me.

...the majority of Lockheed Martin's business is with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. federal government agencies. In fact, Lockheed Martin is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government. The remaining portion of Lockheed Martin's business is comprised of international government and some commercial sales of our products, services and platforms.

Apparently that's working pretty well for them, seeing as how they reported 2006 sales of $39.6 billion, a backlog of $75.9 billion, and free cash flow of $3.8 billion.

I don't know about you, but I don't need one of the largest players in the U.S military industrial complex storing photo evidence of me, my car, my license plate number and my exact coordinates because I was going five miles over the speed limit on an empty road. Especially when, on just one of the hundreds (thousands?) of pages on their website they say things like:

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s technical competency and the analytic capabilities of its systems engineers make it a unique player in the burgeoning new world of net-centric operations, where the rapid use of just the right information can defeat an enemy-terrorist or otherwise-before he can even react.

To address this challenge, vast amounts of information will have to be quickly and accurately scanned on behalf of multiple users in many locations. The goal will be to blunt potentially complex attacks in coordinated ways that also increase the effectiveness of individual weapons and systems. Networked warriors will have a sophisticated understanding of their enemy's goals and will expect to act inside his decision cycles. They will demand prompt answers to tactical and strategic questions of the greatest importance. They will want knowledge-not data that must be interpreted-because they'll have to act immediately.

Sun Tzu's ancient advice is being taken fully to heart: "Know your enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered."

In case you don't think their military mentality carries down to li'l ol' you and me, check out this line from the press release announcing Lockheed's acquisition of USPT (emphasis added):

For the past two years, USPT has been our strategic partner in providing photo enforcement services to a growing number of cities trying to combat aggressive driving.

They're not trying to catch people speeding or improve safety. They're engaged in combat with aggressive drivers, using just the right information to defeat an enemy-terrorist or otherwise-before he can even react.

RESOURCES:

On the Radar Screen
Motorists say that having their photo taken while speeding violates their constitutional rights.
Willamette Week - September 16, 1998

National Motorists Association: Ticket Cameras
A wealth of information about the system and how to fight your ticket

SpeedTrap Exchange
A site sponsored by the National Motorists Association that allows users to list speed traps and learn about others.

Ticket Assassin
Excellent information and references for information on photo ticket cameras; specific to California, but a great deal of relevant information

Portland Police Bureau: Traffic Division: Photo Radar

Portland Police Bureau Traffic Division: Photo Enforcement Program

Wikipedia: Road Safety Camera

 

 

How the City of Portland sold out and dropped the ball on free wi-fi

Remember all the buzz about citywide free wi-fi (wireless Internet) in Portland? How could anyone help but be excited by the prospect? Or at least intrigued. Portland was going to not only bridge the digital divide -- we were going to fill the damn divide and put a public park in its place. With a bioswale surrounding the bus stop and bicycle parking shelter. Well, it was a nice thought. Instead of free wi-fi, we got a dial-up speed advertising channel. And for many (most?) of us, those ads come crawling onto our screens at the price of a $119 Wireless Access Gateway.

MetroFi launched its network in Portland in December 2006 following a November 14, 2006 press release that begins:

Microsoft Corp. and MetroFi Inc. today announced a strategic alliance to bring locally relevant MSN® content and services to MetroFi's advertising-supported, free Wi-Fi network throughout Portland, Ore. The two companies also plan to use the Microsoft® adCenter platform to help advertisers reach local Wi-Fi users...

Clearly a network by the people for the people. Oh wait, that would be the Personal Telco Project. (Let me make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with Personal Telco and have no ax to grind on their behalf.) But I'll get to that. MetroFi Inc. has been, from its inception, a for-profit corporate entity in the business of making money. It does this by persuading cities to give it the wireless key to the city so that they can keep up with "nearly a dozen, forward-looking cities across the U.S." The only forward-looking Portland residents are doing relative to MetroFi is looking forward to MetroFi either getting its act together or getting out so we can get back to doing it right: locally and organically.

Wait... Isn't MetroFi local? Nope. They're happily nestled on Clyde Avenue in Mountain View, California. But hey, at least they're in it for the right reasons... Right? Well of course they are! Three very big reasons:

August Capital
...our partners have financed technology companies with an aggregate market capitalization of over $400 billion. These companies generate $75 billion in annual revenue and employ 240,000 people around the world.

Sevin Rosen Funds
Over the past twenty-one years, SRF has employed a unique blend of technical vision and operational expertise to identify, at a very early stage, the potential of such companies as Compaq, Lotus Development, Cypress Semiconductor, Citrix, CIENA, and Capstone Turbine.

Western Technology
Western Technology's investment team has originated over $1.5 billion dollars in transactions with more than 500 companies.

These aren't charitable non-profits. So why is MetroFi a company that investment bigwigs like this see value in? It's called advertising -- to an audience that is literally captive. MetroFi was to be Internet access for everyone. Instead, it's Internet access for everyone that has the patience to wait for Web pages to crawl onto their screen, sandwiched between and surrounded by lucrative advertisements.

From a June 6, 2007 press release:

"This is an exciting time for our Portland network," says MetroFi Vice President of Marketing, Adrian van Haaften. "We're growing and hitting milestones faster than anticipated, and are looking forward to what the months ahead will bring: more users, more advertisers, and more applications of municipal Wi-Fi."

Ah, more users. And more advertisers! Wooohooo!

So I guess that's you and me: an affluent and influential online consumer demographic. Feels good, doesn't it? To be both affluent and influential. I'm sure that's exactly who all the good souls with great intentions had in mind when they thought of free, citywide wireless Internet access for Portland. They must really be feeling the warm fuzzies now.

So just what does this ad-supported wi-fi look like? If you've been fortunate enough to not need MetroFi, allow me to give you a brief overview -- in MetroFi's own words.

First, there is the "Persistent Ad Banner." This "launches when a user logs on to the Internet within a MetroFi network coverage zone. The banner remains in the top 90 pixels of a network user's browser screen as they traverse the Internet, and advertisements rotate within it. MetroFi banner ads do not get lost 'below the fold,' and do not alter or rely upon the websites a user visits." Translation: It shows up as soon as you get on the network and never goes away.

Then there are the wonderful "Interstitials." This is a relatively innocuous sounding word which translates into normal English as "obnoxious, intrusive commercial." But let's let MetroFi speak for themselves about interstitials (emphasis added):

MetroFi also offers advertisers a highly effective full page ad placement, served as an interstitial several times per hour, per user, as they transition from one website to another. These ads can be in rich media format and generally display for at least 15 seconds, before redirecting to the user's intended web page. A great way for the advertiser to connect to its target audience!
- Rotated into network user's screen 1-4 times per hour
- Focuses consumer's attention to your advertising message

That last line has to be one of the best I've heard. Focuses consumer's attention to your advertising message. That's like saying that waterboarding focuses subject's attention to your question. Interstials were a very bad idea that every other major website abandoned a long time ago as it is indefensibly obnoxious and a sure way to drive customers away. But MetroFi doesn't have to worry about that. They're offering a free service.

So what exactly do we affluent and influential types look like? Well, according to the demographics data for advertisers on the MetroFi website, those of us using MetroFi in Portland break down as shown in the chart here.

- 7 out of 10 users are male
- over half are hitched
- we all have at least some college
- 90% of us have jobs
- almost half of us make more than $70,000 a year, with 10% making more than $150,000 a year
- the other 54% makes less than $70,000 a year

I just love that. The lowest income number they're willing to show is $70,000. Those poor folks. They definitely need the free wi-fi.

So what am I on about here? I want truly free wi-fi for everyone. Including those who make less than less than $70,000 per year. Including those who have less than some college education.

And I want wi-fi that works. I don't want people who make less than less than $70,000 per year to have to pay $119 for a booster so they can get free wi-fi so they can watch a page full of ads paint slowly onto their computer screen. I don't want the driver for free wi-fi to be the affluent and influential consumers who are worth showing ads to.

In short, I want Portland to get back to supporting the people who were doing exactly that: the Personal Telco Project. Never heard of them? Please change that now by visiting their website:

We are a volunteer group of Portlanders who believe that 802.11 (wireless networking, or "Wi-Fi") technology is both cool and empowering. We started out by turning our own houses and apartments into wireless hot spots (also referred to as "nodes"), and then set about building these nodes in public locations such as parks and coffee shops. Currently we have over 100 active nodes, and we eventually would like to cover the entire city of Portland, Oregon with even more.

Personal Telco Project

Portland deserves free wireless Internet access for everyone. MetroFi is the johnny-come-lately illusion of free wi-fi. Personal Telco Project is the genuine article. They've been doing it -- with no fanfare -- for years. Let's give them the attention and support that they richly deserve.

Katrina Recovery: This image says it all

A Google search brought up the official U.S. government page for their Katrina Recovery efforts. The page is housed within the DisasterHelp.gov site run by the Department of Homeland Security. Having attended a Katrina benefit recently, I decided to click over to see what the government is doing to help the tens of thousands of victims and remedy the nightmarish conditions that remain in many areas of the Gulf Coast.

The top page of the site summed up perfectly everything I've heard and learned about the Bush administration's complete failure around mitigating damage and then helping those suffering in the wake of Katrina.

Click on the image here to see a full-size screenshot that I grabbed on Saturday, June 2 at 3:51 PM.

The page headline reads, "Prepare Now for 2006 Hurricane Season." Hmmm... Probably just a typo. (An enormous, very embarrassing mistake, to be sure, but then that's the hallmark of this administration.) So I read further. The first sentence in the main paragraph reads, "With the latest predictions indicating another active hurricane season in 2006, now is the time for Gulf Coast residents to prepare for the potential threat of hurricanes."

I just about fell out of my chair. Not from surprise, though, but from another wave of disgust and anger at the complete, unrepentant neglect and incompetence shown by the Bush administration.

[Let's see how long it takes them to update the site.]

UPDATE - October 15, 2007: The site hasn't changed a bit! Unbelievable!

Katrina Recovery | DisasterHelp.gov

Technorati Tags: Bush, politics, Hurricane Katrina

Get involved: A comprehensive smoking ban is long overdue in Oregon

I had planned to post about this after seeing the post on BlueOregon yesterday. A post by Jeff over at Beervana today inspired me to go ahead and post, even though the topic is being covered well on BlueOregon and elsewhere.

I'm generally ambivalent about smoking bans. I have a pretty strong libertarian streak, and I don't believe in legislating behavior codes. In America, you don't have a right not to be offended.

Jeff goes on to cite another post by Kari Chisholm on BlueOregon today that gives yet another reason why we must rally to make sure this smoking ban makes it across the finish line:

But for high-school dropouts, especially middle-aged women with minimal skills, there are very few jobs out there that pay a living wage. One of the few is serving food and drinks, a job that combines the minimum wage with tips.

Many under-educated older women have very few occupational options -- and working in smoky bars pays comparatively well. Right now, we're asking them to trade their health for a living wage.

Jeff makes a great observation beyond that:

I'd add that working the late shift is good for moms who don't want to be away from their kids too long. So, on balance, I guess I'll back the legislation. Mostly I go to non-smoking bars, anyway.

Jeff and Kari are being far more logical and level-headed on this than I'm inclined to be -- and I respect their restraint. For me it has nothing to do with not having the right to not be offended. It has everything to do with what I see and smell every single day. I see one or two smokers standing at a bus stop puffing away in the middle of a crowd of ten people who aren't smoking. And then throwing their smoking butts on the ground before they board the bus. I sit behind cars in traffic where the drivers are blowing smoke out their window -- and into mine. Before they throw their butts out onto the street. I go to see bands I don't want to miss and then wake up the next morning feeling like I have a head cold -- as I take my rancid-smelling clothes to the laundry. And the list goes on. And on.

I know there are plenty of perfectly courteous smokers out there, but like so many things in society, it's the few jerks who ruin it for everyone else. And when the jerks become enough of a hazard to society, the courteous, law-abiding masses get pissed and a law is passed. Such is the situation in Oregon around smokers.

It shows how tolerant and forgiving Oregonians are that we've put this legislation off for so long -- far too long in my opinion. It's time to get the job done and get our service workers and everyone else affected by smoking out of harm's way.

I can't say it better than Kari said it in his post yesterday so I'll wrap up with that:

Time to call your State Representatives. You know they will be hearing from loads of tavern owners, and the cigarette industry will definitely pull out all the stops lobbying against this bill. Our Legislators shouldn't give another inch to restaurant and bar owners. They already get one of the sweetest and most ridiculous state subsidies ever devised (about 25% of the gambling profits from every machine), and frankly, the case that a smoking ban will actually lower their profits is flimsy.

Ban Smoking in Oregon Bars? | Beervana

Technorati Tags: Oregon, politics, Portland, smoking, smoking ban, tobacco