When discussing community projects a stakeholder is generally defined as “a person, group, organization, member or system who affects or can be affected by an organization’s actions“. This week, Ray Bucheger, a lobbyist with a firm that lists the Port of Coos Bay as a client distributed an email, evidently only to select individuals, from BS Oregon, a coalition “dedicated to self-reliance through clean energy exports”, inviting “key stakeholders” to a 9 AM meeting at the Coos Bay Visitor’s Center, to discuss how to kick-start the local economy. (Now, I could easily write 1,000 words on the incongruity of the phrase self-reliance through clean energy exports but that will have to wait for another time).
Read the invitation BS_oregon_email
Boost Southwest Oregon is a coalition of public officials, business leaders, labor groups and other key stakeholders that was created to rally this support and kick-start the local economy.
Bucheger, who is based in Washington, DC, wasn’t the only paid consultant at this meeting. Ken Messerle receives approximately $3,000 per month from the Port of Coos Bay and is usually seen at port commission meetings, (always with the same posture, body language, clasped hands and facial expression captured in this image). Also on Bucheger’s list of invited stakeholders to this very insular and secretive group, were Marvin Caldera and the now infamous bird flipper, Bob Westerman along with about a dozen active members of the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce or BS qualified “business leaders”.
Wim de Vriend has invested many years and dollars into his local restaurant which provides he and his family their livelihood. Clearly he has a stake in major community projects and how they impact his business but the local chamber leadership has become so close-knit and so insulated from the rest of the business community that he was evicted from the meeting for taking notes and because he was not an approved invitee. We saw the same exact thing with the SDAT training wherein SCDC excluded interested community members in favor of only those members close to the inner sanctum and, of course, the entire thing fell flat and failed.
This inner sanctum is so limited in its perspective and so fearful of outside influence that it suspects it has a traitor in its midst who leaked the details of the secret BS meeting to Jody McCaffree and has even threatened said traitor on this very blog. This coalition is actually rather creepy… and every single person in that room, including Port Commissioner Eric Farm, either passively or aggressively participated in further dividing this community when they evicted a community stakeholder.
Despite the lyrics in the ruby slipper music video about working together, what this coalition really wants is complete assimilation into the very structured and limited views espoused by the BS tagline – “self reliance” but only through “energy exports”. In other words and to paraphrase George Carlin again, the inner sanctum devotees don’t want you unless you wear silly hats or click your heels together three times.
No… I am saying why support something that is a farce.
If you have such disdain for the chamber then drop out.
Great PigNuts, you telling someone to shut up and keep their head down? Yer a little late to the site, eh??
If people have to hide behind doors to do their business, there’s usually a very bad reason. I hope all the “little” businesses in Coos Bay North Bend are reading this and understanding this local Chamber of Consorts is NOT working for YOU, they are taking orders from the very people you saw in these photos. Plus, of course the bait, the leggy blonde they make videos for. They do this because they know it won’t stand the light of day, and they bring outside lobbyists and pay them even more than they pay the Messerles’. What is Ken Messerlie doing for his $5,000 of OUR Fricking money? Sits there scowling, along with the rest of the Waterfront Punks? My opinions only. And thank you to Wim and M and Jody for standing up to power, as dark and nasty as that ‘power’ has shown itself to be. I get mad everytime I think about these locals sitting on their arses, smugly, waving hands and fingers in absolute disdain for a dues paying C of C member. Leaders indeed. THAT fellow C of C dues payers, is the face of why this county sits rotting except for a handful of thugs and charlatans who are sucking up The People’s Money, decade after decade. The Death Throes of a rotten group. If they had succeeded, we wouldn’t be having this fight now would we? Enough with your pipe dreams and your red-shoed bait. We in Coos County want to move forward, we HAVE to move forward. These asshats laugh at you members who still think these guys represent you, actually you’re called names. My opinion only.
Too bad there is not an eager attorney that wants to earn an excellent reputation.
The RICO statutes only require a little conspiracy and a pattern.
You would not be the first to bring up RICO during the course of these discussions. Wikipedia defines a racket as “a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist”. So the same fairy tale, comic book hero thinking that creates “the problem” now uses that problem as an excuse to sell a service that will only perpetuate the racket.
Coosbayb
With me, your comment generated two different emotions. One was sadness that an obviously intelligent, balanced person should feel compelled to remain anonymous for fear of his livelihood, threatened by the local Chamber of Commerce’s enforcers. The other, puzzlement that the enforcers should also feel compelled to remain anonymous. Obviously Bill Billichek is a pseudonym. And it’s only under a pseudonym that that particular Chamber goon feels safe threatening you, Coosbayb.
I hope that’s some encouragement. Because it does not show strength but weakness in the pro-LNG crowd, no matter how much bluster they emit or how much finger-waving they commit.
It actually gives me hope that we may soon be seeing the last gasps of the old guard that has done Coos Bay such tremendous harm these forty years. The closest analogy is the late, unlamented Soviet Union or its satellites, like East Germany. After many decades of that stifling, apparently eternal regime, the people had finally had enough, and there was nothing the communist mandarins could do to stop them. Not the guns, not the watch towers, not the barbed wire, not the Berlin wall. Our time will come too.
Being blackballed doesn’t intimidate me. The “right-thinking people” have been doing that to me for a long time. We’ve managed, and I think of my political pursuits as someone else looks at his hobbies. Going fishing or playing golf costs money, and so does my hobby of stirring the political pot. And I pay for it.
Quite honestly, I’ve had a wonderful time these last couple of days. Do the tiniest little thing to disturb the ossified establishment, and the entire odorous pig farm starts squealing bloody murder. It’s hilarious. I wake up in the middle of the night, giggling.
After many years in America I was compelled to observe that if at some point a Nazi regime took over, a surprisingly large number of Americans would stand in line to sign up. It is clear now that the Coos Bay Chamber’s leadership would be among them. At their very core, these people are unabashed totalitarians. One way they prove it is by their eternal wish for a Great Man to lead Coos Bay into the Promised Land of Economic Development. There are no Great Men, only Very Expensive Men.
Drop in at my place some time. I’ll buy you a beer, and I won’t tell anybody.
Mary, first I would like to thank you for some excellent reporting on this matter. To address the issue of “the spy within”, it was I that received the invitation and forwarded it on to individuals that I thought might have some interest in this meeting. First, there was nothing in the email to indicate that this was a PRIVATE, invitation only meeting and secondly, since I never heard of this organization before, I thought others would be interested. Silly me, I thought a meeting put on by the chamber was open to all; what was I thinking? I forget that the rules of democracy do not apply to Coos Bay.
So, to respond to Bill Billicheck, you don’t know who forwarded the email because you don’t know me. And the sad part of this, I have chosen to retain my anonymity because I can’t afford to have my livelihood taken from me as these thugs did to Charley Yates, and now trying to blacklist Wim. For your information, there are many chamber members that do not support LNG but it is obvious from attending any Chamber meeting, if you do not drink the koolaid, you will be black balled. Many of us can’t afford to show our opposition.
As a chamber member, I will say that once again, I am appalled by this groups behavior. Under the guise of creating jobs, you threaten and intimidate members into compliance. Kinda like the Borg mentality, “you will be assimilated!”
Whether Wim was invited to the meeting or not, is not the point. As a chamber member, he deserves your respect; or at the very least your tolerance. After all, your disdain for him doesn’t stop you from taking his money. The reaction displayed showed the true attitude of the chamber towards the community it supposedly represents. I am disgusted to be a member and equally disgusted that I must remain anonymous.
And Bill, if you want to throw out sexism, you shouldn’t have a video representing the chamber that is nothing short of sexist!
Thanks, Coosbayb, for so eloquently expressing the schoolyard bullying techniques employed by some members of the chamber and don’t forget, they would not be nearly as successful without their partner in crime, The World