Oz Sighting #5: The $3,000 Paragraph (The Scarecrow’s Logic)
It costs $3,000 to appear in the Oregon Voters' Pamphlet.
I couldn't afford it. Seven people wanted to help me get there. Every single one of them was already stretched.
That's not a fundraising failure. That's the system working exactly as designed.
What Is Law, Actually?
There’s a saying I come back to often: If the penalty for breaking a rule is a fine, then that rule only exists for people who can’t afford to pay it.
People understand that. They may not say it in policy language. But they feel it, and when that gap goes unaddressed for long enough, something shifts. Trust erodes, not all at once, but steadily.
Who Pays When Wall Street Miscalculates? Not Wall Street.
Oz Sighting #4: The Union That Stopped Listening
I believe in unions. I still do.
But belief isn't the same as silent support.
This is Oz Sighting #4 — what happens when any system stops listening to the people it's supposed to serve.
An Oz Sighting: Senator Reynolds and the Bill That Got the Wrong Villain
"Marijuana" is not a neutral term. It was introduced deliberately in the 1930s by Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, specifically to create a racial association — to link cannabis to Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians and manufacture public fear. Young Oregonians know this. Anyone who has spent real time in the regulated cannabis industry knows this. When an elected official uses that word in 2026 to frame a policy intervention, it tells you something about which conversation they think they're having.
It's not the conversation Oregon's cannabis industry needs to be having right now.
The Yellow Brick Bureaucrat: When Government Loses Its Way
Good governance requires a brain, a heart, and courage.
This Is a Series. You Are Part of It.
I'm going to be writing about Oz Sightings regularly — moments where Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Cowardly Lion politics shows up in real systems, real decisions, real lives.
But I don't want to be the only one naming them.