More on the bullying bill

I was going to respond in the comments section to some of the questions and criticisms of my post on the bullying bill, but decided to do it in another post, since it will be a little long for a comment.

First - what specific language in the bill do I find troubling, and why? The problem I have with this bill is that it would subject normal child and adolescent behavior to formal school discipline proceedings, and possibly even legal proceedings.

Here's how and why: The bill requires districts to put in place policies and disciplinary procedures for bullying, harassment and cyberbullying. It defines these terms as anything that, among other things, has the effect of

"Creating a hostile educational environment, including interfering with the psychological well-being of a student."

So here's the problem. Many commenters feigned shock and dismay that I was using such "sexist" terms when I suggested they just issue the boys pink panties. I did that for a reason.

That is EXACTLY the type of remark that would get a kid in school rung up on harassment charges under this bill. Suppose one boy says to another, "Hey you sissy, show me your pink panties." It is easy to imagine some school counselor considering that "interfering with the psychological well being" of the kid.

Perhaps you think that a boy saying something like this to another kid SHOULD be cause for disciplinary action. If so, I feel sorry for you. You apparently want us to be a nation of victims.

For almost two decades, in an effort to rid the schools of "gender bias," the public school establishment has been defining typical boy behavior as cause for discipline. A great book on the subject by well known feminist Christina Hoff Summers, called The War Against Boys examined all the different ways the feminist movement have made schools hostile to boys.

This is just another example.

Really, isn't it better to let kids figure out a few things by themselves? Sure, there is a time and place in which adult intervention is prudent and necessary when someone behaves badly toward another student in a school. But this bill would result in hair trigger disciplinary proceedings - and perhaps even criminal proceedings - for behavior that is at most, slightly untoward.

Insanity everywhere

Things are getting crazy everywhere. In the news just in the last couple days:

Anti-bullying legislation, HB2599, will be heard next week. The bill will require school districts to have policies defining harrasment, intimidation, bullying and cyberbullying, and procedures and staff in place for investigating complaints and disciplining the offenders.

What is wrong with that? Plenty. Why don't we just issue all the boys pink panties in kindergarten and make them wear them for 12 years?

Kill Connections Academy legislation, SB767 is sponsored by Senator Devlin and Rep. Buckley, at the request of the Oregon Education Association. It would remove the State Board of Education's authority to waive the "50% provision" that requires virtual charter schools to get half their kids from inside the sponsoring district. It wouin ld absolutely, positively result in shutting the doors on the state's largest public school because the teachers union doesn't like the school. THANKS, TEACHERS!

The greenest building ever built is being planned with your tax dollars. This thing will be so green it will manufacture all its own power, and reprocess all its own water. The only problem is it is very, very, very, very expensive. So what? Sam Adams wants Portland to be the green center of the universe, and what better way to show the world our commitment to being green when we will spend, say $1 million to save $10,000 worth of sewage fees. This thing they guess will cost between 12% and 52% more than the highest LEED certification building. What do they care? It's YOUR money!

The Beaverton Round goes round and round again. This is a black hole for money. A disaster from the get go. Response? Expand the project! Widen the urban renewal district around the failure so they can capture a bigger tax increment from the already developed properties, and use the dough to throw into the black hole after the millions already wasted. So typical!

Meanwhile, the stock market was down another 4% today, as anyone with remaining wealth runs and hides from our new president's most recent scheme.

A defining moment for President Obama

So far, President Obama has governed like a radical lefty. He used the Pelosi-deisgned "stimulus" bill to fund every pent-up lefty wish list item in the cupboard, and his breathtaking budget is itself an expression of a far reaching leftist ideology.

Not what he sold us, is it?

But soon we will get an indication of whether there is a scintilla of independence about the man. Will he stand up for poor minority children in Washington DC, a move sure to anger the left/union base of his party? Or will he toss these kids under the school bus? We will soon know.

As pointed out in the WSJ yesterday, the spending bill the Senate will vote on this week has language in it that will pull the curtain on the Washington DC voucher program, which is used by 2500 children from poor families to escape DC's shameful public school system.

Two kids use these vouchers to attend Sidwell, the school that Obama's own children attend.

Will President Obama lift a finger to save the DC voucher program? No way the Senate Democrats would take him on if he called them out on this. Or will Obama join most every other Democrat politician of the last 50 years and stand blocking the schoolhouse door to prevent low income minority children from entering (while Obama's own kids sit inside.)

If he lets the language stay in the bill, President Obama is revealed as just another hack, willing to sell human souls down the river for advantage with political interest groups.

Any predictions?

Why do we even participate in the United Nations?

The United Nations is proposing a binding declaration on "religous blasphemy."

They want member nations to make it illegal to criticize or negatively portray the religous beliefs of others. Any guesses as which religion they have in mind?

Take a look at this Lou Dobbs segment.

Why we don't just tell the UN to find another host nation, I don't know.

Clackamas County Sheriff's Office

I had the pleasure yesterday to spend the afternoon in the training center of the Clackamas Country Sheriff, learning about officer-involved shooting procedures and getting a look at some of the "shoot/no-shoot" training programs they put officers through.

First, I have to say that I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the people in the office. We were given training and presentations by a number of people, and to a person they were incredibly knowledgable, professional and just generally high quality people.

Sheriff Roberts, whom I have known for a year or so, has one of the most impressive track records of any executive in the state. In a state where executive and bureaucratic incompetence has become the rule, Sheriff Roberts' operation stands out as the most efficiently organized governmental operations I have seen.

I could go into some detail about the things Roberts and his chief deputy Charlie Bowen have done to make the ClackCo Sheriff's operation a dynamic organization that constantly delivers more bang for the taxpayer dollar. But that isn't the point of this post.

The point is that anybody who has ever criticised the police after a citizen gets hurt or killed in an officer-involved-shooting ought to take a look at some of the training officers are put through.

The "shoot/no-shoot" simulations are amazing. Put the gun in your hand and make that fatal split second decision of whether to use lethal force. Do you reasonably perceive an imminent threat to self or others when an agitated person fishes through his glove box, pulls out a black object and points it at you?

It is impossible to look at this training and not emerge with a greater appreciation of the fact that the shoot/no shoot decision is incredibly complex, and must be made almost instantaneously. Officers are trained to look at and anticipate things that simply don't occur to you unless you have had the training. In the heat of the moment you would be surprised at how much you fail to observe.

In the simulation I did, I didn't even see the perp's gun tucked in the back of his jeans. By the time he pulled it out, and got a shot off, my partner was down and the gun was pointed at me. I killed him, but even then I didn't realize I was shooting with my partner and an uninvolved citizen right in the background, where a through-and-though bullet or a miss could have killed one or both of them.

Next time I hear someone scream about the "injustice" of an officer-involved shooting, I will have a little deeper perspective.

This love affair is getting a bit sloppy

Hey - you two! Get a room, will you?

It's one thing when the love affair between the national newspaper press and President Obama glosses over his lack of experience and accomplishments enough to get the guy elected. But it's quite another when they resort to the most obvious lipstick-on-the-pig front-page propagandizing to keep his savior status up-to-date.

President Obama had a big week. He got his spending bill through - the biggest single spending bill in the history of the world. His young administration has been a flurry of activity, figuring out how to deal with all sorts of big problems: the banking mess, mortgage holder bailout, etc.

The markets want nothing to do with it. Every Obama success has been met with another big drop in the indexes. We are at a 12 year low.

Yesterday, Obama turned his focus to .... Deficit Reduction! And the markets plunged again.

So what is the headline and story on the front page of The Funny Paper today? (Story written by the NYT.)

"The markets look to DC and no news is bad news."

Excuse me? THAT's the problem? Not enough news out of DC?

The article tries to tell us that the markets are plunging because Obama doesn't yet have his plan in place to bail out the banks: "Analysts say that the draining cycle of losses, rebounds and more losses would probably continue until the government offered a detailed plan to bail out the banks or the economy showed some signs of stabilization."

In other words: the markets are waiting for the saviour to save us. Poppycock. It couldn't be that the markets are reacting negatively to what Obama has done so far. No, that wouldn't validate the saviour narrative. It has to be that the markets are waiting with baited breath for the saviour to save us.

And I love the whole "analysts say" device. Right, an analyst probably said that. And another analyst probably said:

"The markets are reacting to the growing evidence that the Obama administration is making things up as they go along, with no clear idea of how to deal with the banking crisis. The plunge yesterday was brought on by the abrupt contradiction of calling for a move toward a balanced budget just days after a trillion dollar stimulus bill. Analysts say such a confusing and contradictory shift in rhetoric suggests a lack of a clear organizing principle behind the administration's efforts."

But THAT analyst obviously doesn't buy into the "Obama-as-savior" narrative, so he went unquoted.

This is going to be very interesting

With the revenue forecast yesterday, the game has changed even more than expected. This will be an interesting study in special interest politics to see which group protects itself the most from the shrinking budget.

You see, Oregon's government doesn't know how to shrink. Over the last 25 or so years, despite all the times we read about the budget "crisis," the problem was always that the money didn't grow fast enough to cover the planned growth of the budget.

But the current situation is quite different. They have to make actual cuts - not slow the growth, but actually cut. And it has to start right away.

Here are some numbers. At the end of the 2007 legislative session, the forecast was that the 2007-09 budget general fund resources would be $14.1 billion. The budgets were based on that amount, even though a lot of legislators warned that the economy was headed toward recession and therefore it was likely that actual revenues wouldn't be that high.

Senator Larry George was chief among those warning that the budget adopted in 2007 was going to create a crisis when revenues fell short. He's looking pretty prophetic now, as the estimate for the current biennium which (ends in June) has dropped from $14.1 billion to $13.1 billion.

Which means, in order to balance the current biennium's budget, they have to somehow find a billion dollars in cuts from the current spending trajectory, and do it in the last four months of the biennium.

(I'm getting these numbers from page 101 of the actual economic forecast report released yesterday. They are a bit different than what I remember the general fund forecast numbers that were bandied about at the time, but the point remains the same.)

Cutting a billion out of the last 1/6th of the biennium is not going to be pretty. It would be one thing if they had to spread the billion out over the full two years. But look at it this way: Of the 14 billion they planned to spend, the state would spend about $2.3 billion in the last four months. So they have to figure out how to cut that by a billion - by almost half.

There are reserves they can tap into, but it is still a big problem.

And then there's the problem of the NEXT biennium. When the government plans its budgets, it takes the current budget and "rolls it up," - it assumes this baseline, adds inflation and other factors for things such as increased caseloads for social programs, population increases, etc, and that's what it assumes it needs for the next biennium.

Rolling up a baseline budget of $14.1 resulted in a "current service level" budget for 2009-11 if about $16 billion. That is what the government says it needs to keep things the same. But the forecast says now that 2009-11 revenues are going to actually drop a bit from the new revised 2007-09 level of $13.1 billion. So instead of the $16 billion they say they need, they anticipate having $13.05 in 2009-11.

Yeah, that is a problem. They don't know how to cut. The whole system is built on an assumption of increased budgets. The cost structure of government locks in a need for more money every biennium.

So what happens when the money isn't there? Well, we will see. But you can sure make a few predictions:

1) Screams for tax hikes. Democrats ALWAYS want tax increases. It actually doesn't matter whether baseline revenues are growing or not, one thing has remained the same. Every single biennium since I have paid attention, the Democrat party has wanted some kind of tax hike. Even in the fat times of the 1990's, when biennial budgets grew at a 20% pace, there wasn't enough to go around and they looked for ways to squeeze more out of the economy. So they will surely do it again this time around, and they have the supermajorities to make it happen.

2) Different government constituent groups will turn on each other. Teachers unions, environmental groups, social service advocates, health care advocates - they will get increasingly shrill as they all vie for a bigger share of a shrinking pie, in order to keep their constituents relatively whole. This is the part that will be somewhat fun to watch, in a macabre sort of way.

None of this is good for Oregon. I have read several times recently criticism of conservative opposition to tax hikes. It goes something like this: "Conservatives say that a recession is a bad time to increase taxes. But they also say we don't need a tax increase when times are good. So just WHEN do they think it IS a good time to increase taxes???"

Well, to put it in a word: Almost NEVER!

Why should the government EVER get a larger share of the economy? When the economy is growing, the government revenues will automatically grow along with it (although never as much as the liberals spending wishes.) When the economy is shrinking, the one thing you can do to make sure it shrinks faster is to raise taxes.

The upshot is we really should almost never raise taxes. It is short sighted and self defeating. This is the path Oregon has gone down for two decades, and look at our economy. It is in a shambles. And it is not going to get better.

To some extent the Obama spending bill will alleviate some of the problem for the current crisis. But that only delays the day of reckoning. It just artificially props up government spending in one cycle through a windfall of outside dollars, making the problem worse next time.

And the liberals always accuse business of planning short term!

I don't have any "solution" to Oregon's budget woes. Nobody does, in reality. But I think it behooves everyone to have a grasp of the underlying numbers, which is why I wrote all this down.

Jack Bogdanski at his best

Check out this highly entertaining and scathingly funny satire of how the new "Major League" soccer PGE Park remodel is going to unfold, over at Bojack.org.

This is Jack at his best. He is very talented. He and I have tangled over a few things, not the least of which is his inexplicable obsession with the Sarah Palin conspiracy theory. But this is worth the read.

One of the best things I have read in months! I would post a congratulations on his site but I am banned!

Another couple of sad ironies

Did you see that Geert Wilders, the Dutch guy who made the short film "Fitna," which showed the violence of the words of the Koran and the deeds of the Islamic fundamentalists - was barred from entering the UK to give a speech at the House of Lords.

Why was he stopped at Heathrow and turned back? Because his presence threatened "public security in the U.K," according to the Home Office.

Meaning, of course, that Muslims would become violent if Wilders was allowed to speak.

So, the fear is that Muslims would demonstrate their outrage about being characterized as a violent religion by becoming violent.

I think I understand.

Elsewhere, as reported on NWRepublican :

NEW YORK (Feb. 16) -- The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said. Muzzammil Hassan has been charged with murder in the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan.

These people are REALLY off message.

Can you lose what you don't have?

The Funny Paper reports today that Metro's auditor, Suzanne Flynn, took a look at Metro's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, and found it lacking.

It seems they are spending the vast majority of their "sustainability efforts" (read: money) on projects that have little impact on CO2 reduction, while leaving all sorts of low hanging fruit on the vine.

The Auditor said that their poor performance, Metro "risks losing credibility in the region." Was that a laugh line?

I've already heard some commentary that Metro is being hypocritical - scolding us all for our carbon footprint while not reducing its own. But I don't think this is quite right. Metro is trying to reduce its carbon emissions, but they are just going about it wrong. Spending the bulk of their resources on efforts that yield little, and ignoring efforts that could yield much.

So they aren't hypocrites. They are INCOMPETENT.

But give them a break. This is the way they have operated for years on end. Consider: for years on end Metro has spent up to half its transportation funds on systems that 3% of travellers use. So why should we be surprised that they also misallocate funds for greenhouse gas reduction?

In other news...
Funny Paper ironic juxtaposition of the day: In the story about Randy Leonard's building code hit squad Commissioner Dan Saltzman gives the effort high praise. The article reads:

"This is the model of bureaus working together," Saltzman said. "There are other areas of the city that would benefit from that approach."

Then, in the very next sentence of the story:

"Nevertheless, Saltzman said he has no idea how the team works."

Huh? You really can't make this stuff up.

An interesting conspiracy theory

If the basis for this theory wasn't a US Congressman's interview on C-Span, I wouldn't make too much of it. I'm not big on conspiracy theories.

As it stands, there are a lot more questions than answers. But it is interesting. Exactly how unusual is it to get $550 billion withdrawn from money market accounts in a couple hours? Was it thousands of accounts or was it fewer big accounts?

As the Congressman describes it, it was pretty cataclysmic. Would anyone actually be ablet to coordinate something like this? Or was it just widespread panic that happened all at once in turbulent times?

Interesting. Sure seems that nobody is trying to give us any answers though.

Democrat job killers

I couldn't believe it. I was down at the Capitol yesterday and ducked into the House Land Use Committee hearing where they were voting on HB2375.

I heard the tail end of discussion, and watched the vote. The intent of the bill was basically to kill an existing fireworks business that had existed for almost two decades, employing ten people year round and hundreds during fireworks season. It had to be killed because the company was using land designated as "exclusive farm use."

The company was granted a formal exemption back in 2003. This bill removed the exemption. Bye bye jobs.

Unbelievable. In this economy, the Democrats swerve off the road to run over a small business because it didn't use its land as they thought it should be used. Never mind that the business had a legislatively granted exemption - they just changed the rules, revoked the exemption. Sorry!

Even better: Rep. Mitch Greenlick, one of the biggest socialists in the legislature, was a "yes" vote in the committee to kill the business. But in 2003, he actually voted to grant the exemption!

What a prick. I'm sorry - in this economy, you'd think the Democrats might want to avoid going out of their way to kill jobs. You'd think they would be looking to loosen the abstract land-use regulations that have mis-zoned so much land in Oregon.

And you'd think they might realize what their action says to other businesses that are already in Oregon or that might try to grow here. The Democrats might just change the rules in the middle of the game, and put you out of business.

Rep. Mary Nolan is the chair of the committee. An West Portland urban legislator in charge of the land use committee. God help us.

Replicating insanity

So the Governor announced yesterday to great fanfare that Oregon was going to get a whole bunch of the federal stimulus money that has been earmarked for "sustainability" projects.

He said we would wow the country, and "showcase to the world our expertise in green planning and green development."  Among the big ideas he has planned, according to The Funny Paper, is to "take the solar lighting project at the intersection of Interstate 5 and 205, and replicate it all around the state. 

Great idea! The electricity generated by that project costs about 60 cents per kilowatt hour. We pay PGE about 8 cents. By all means, lets show the world how smart we are by replicating this idiocy all over the place. 

Other laugh-out-loud lines in TFP today: the lead editorial supports the idea of putting a minor league baseball stadium in the Rose Quarter. It's needed to revitalize the embarrassing dead zone in the Quarter. The planners dreamed about a robust and vital retail and night-scene around the Rose Garden, but it never materialized.  Quote:

"That was nine years ago. Today, the place remains a dead zone - the most conspicuous failure of planning in a city that normally does the job well." 

Huh? What about Cascade Station? South Waterfront? The shameful state of the transportation system? If anything, the Rose Garden is a success when compared to these other hugely expensive planning failures. At least it is busy 42 nights a year - more than you can say for South Waterfront. And at least it was mostly done with private dollars.

The Funny Paper can't admit it, though, because it has been the biggest cheerleader for these disasters all along. You won't see much criticism of Portland planning, especially South Waterfront. Do I really have to point out again that Bob Caldwell's wife is the Commissar of Propaganda at OHSU? 

Obama's first press conference

President Obama held his first press conference yesterday to talk about the stimulus package. I listened to almost the whole thing, mostly because every radio station ran it.

Here's what I didn't know about Barack Obama: he is incredibly long-winded. He only took 13 questions in the hour, mostly because he went on and on and on in his answers, sounding like he was giving a campaign speech. His answer to the very first question lasted over ten minutes!

He claimed that the package was without a single "earmark." Laughable! The whole thing is one giant earmark.

Many of his answers were standard-issue demagoguery, which was disappointing. Talking about the stimulus, he'd say things like: "They question why we have money to build schools. I was in a school in South Carolina that was built in 1860 and was so run down that...."

That's not a policy statement, it is just campaign style demagoguery, and it was disappointing.

The saddest part of this whole thing is that President Obama blew a wonderful opportunity to live up to the rhetoric of his campaign. Leaving aside the question of whether this kind of stimulus is good or bad for the economy - that is debatable, and will be debated for a long long time.

But Obama campaigned saying he was going to change how Washington operated, that he was different, that the politics of fear was over. So the first thing he does is hand off the architecture of a trillion dollar stimulus bill to Nancy Pelosi! What did the think she was going to do with it?

Then he tries to scare us into accepting this toxic waste dump of ridiculous spending programs, a good bit of which will just go directly to the federal government baseline, which will have to be rolled up year after year, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions in future commitments.

Had Obama told Pelosi "if you send me a package with a bunch of crap in it, I will veto it," he would have gained so much credibility with the American people. He blew it. Now he has this pig he has to try and put lipstick on (which what his press conference was for) and everybody knows that the Democrats just used the crisis to pass off all their spending wet dreams, and Obama went along.

So the New Politics lasted about two weeks.

The voters aren't stupid as The Funny Paper thinks

Very interesting. As pointed out on OregonCatalyst, new polls show that the public is increasingly skeptical of the global warming agenda. Not only does concern over global warming rank dead last on the list of issues in a poll done by Rassmussen, but a majority of people in another poll question whether warming is man made to begin with.

This is great news, but you can bet that it will be ignored by Ted Kulongoski and President Obama, who will shove an economically ruinous Cap & Trade scheme down our throats anyway. In political terms, however, this is good for Republicans, as long as we stay solid in opposing this stupid idea. We can hang the disaster of Cap & Trade right around the necks of all the Democrats who support this idiocy, knowing that the people are on our side.

The fact is, voters just aren't that stupid. They recognize a hidden agenda when they see one.

Ironically, The Funny Paper today once again revealed its arrogance and disdain for the public, in its editorial bashing Measure 57. They wrote something that I thought, when I readit, that they could have easily been talking about Cap & Trade:

"It's tough for voters to think much about costs and economic implications when they are bombarded with campaign rhetoric designed to scare the living daylights out of them..."

They were actually talking about Measure 57, trying to explain why voters bought it. (Because they are stupid.)

And The Funny Paper is convinced that the stupid voters will also buy their crap about global warming, since they have been trying to scare the living daylights out of them for the last decade.

Well, it ain't working. Voters bought Measure 57 because they want the government to do what it is supposed to do - keep us safe. They are rejecting global warming because they know it is just another power/money grab by the ruling class.

But if your point of departure is contempt for voters, you misinterpret both acceptance of M57 and rejection of global warming hysteria. That is where The Funny Paper finds itself now.

Time and again telling us we are stupid. Great way to build readership!

A midwinter irony

My wife, son and I stole away to Los Angeles this weekend to visit my college daughter, and watch her perform in an opera, The Marraige of Figaro.

We left a sunny Portland late Thursday morning. When we landed in L.A., the rain had just started. It rained the entire four days we were there. Hard. Flooding type of rain. So we left a sunny Portland for four rainy days in L.A.

Luckily, we weren't there for Disneyland or other outdoor stuff (although we stayed near Anaheim and saw many families with young children whose trips were pretty much ruined.) So we still had a nice time.

And I'm not an opera type - this was my second one ever. But it was great. My daughter was the understudy for one of the lead parts, and as understudy got to perform one of the nights. It was great - she was great.

Back in Portland now, reading the Sunday Funny Paper. I see they are still up to their old tricks: front page story on how will the state ever pay for Measure 57 in these budget crunching times??!!

Still waiting for the story on how the state will pay the roll-up costs that have ensued from last biennium's 16% increase that included hefty public employee union raises.

Oh well.

"That Genre"

Newsweek has a long story about how The Funny Paper once again got totally scooped by Willamette Week and Nigel Jaquiss.

The story covers the details of the SAMBLA scandal, but the real point of the story was to explore why it is that The Funny Paper can't seem to bring itself to pursue big stories about leading figures in the Oregon power structure.

A bit too cozy, the article basically says. The funniest part of the story was a quote from Sandra Rowe. She was getting pretty defensive about getting scooped time and again by a little weekly alternative rag. She said:

"Nigel has built quite a reputation with sex scandal stories, and deservedly so. He is dogged and very good at that genre."

That genre? Oh yeah, that's all Nigel does - true crime sex scandal novellas. Excuse me, Publisher Rowe - THAT GENRE is called REPORTING!

And yes, Sandra Rowe, Nigel does do it better than anyone at your newspaper.

SAMBLA gets wierder still

Could it get any wierder? It is hard to keep up with this circus.

Beau Breedlove has been offered a nude photo op in an LA gay magazine. Sam Adams accused John Vezina of raping Breedlove. Sam Adams also said Bob Ball was "vulnerable" on the issue of sex with underage boys. Mark Wiener told Sam Adams he was a "F***ing moron." Beau Breedlove's lawyer, Charlie Hinkle, also represents the Oregonian on first amendment issues. Sam Adams' current boyfriend is Oregonian reporter Peter Zuckerman.

Further, According to KATU, a close friend of Beau Breedlove says he DID have sex with Sam Adams before he was 18. According to Willamette Week, the reason Adams' spokesperson, Wade Nkruma resigned is because Adams told his staff that he never had intimate contact with Breedlove before he was 18, and then Breedlove claimed they kissed twice when he was 17. According to The Funny Paper, Randy Leonard no longer trusts Adams.

Why hasn't Leonard called for Adams to resign? He's done everything but that already, so what is he waiting for? You don't go public with a statement that you don't trust a colleague if you plan on working together in the future, so why not push Adams off the ledge he's tried to stay on for the last two weeks?

Adams resigns if his fellow commissioners tell him to. Why won't they step up? The longer they try to avoid it, the weaker they look and the more they themselves lose credibility. I mean really - Sam Adams CONTINUES to lie, to his staff, to the media and to his colleagues, and they sit silent. As far as I know, Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman are still defending/supporting Adams.

Why? What leverage does Adams have that is preventing them from tossing him overboard?

But did anyone teach them the economics?

In the "How We Live" section of The Funny Paper today, there's a story about a group of students in Hood River High School who spearheaded the installation of a wind turbine on school property. 

These kids, according to the story, have been fully indoctrinated in everything green:

 "To these teens and many of their generation, understanding and promoting alternative, renewable energy is a given. They want more recycling bins on school grounds and energetically embrace other green projects. Not to mention, they know they can play a bigger role for the environment by teaching their elders."

They got the money for the turbine from the Oregon Energy Trust, who agreed to fully fund the $25,000 installation and maintenance for the project. Now they have a turbine that feeds the grid a small amount of electricity. 

The story says the electricity produced by the turbine is 1.8 kilowatts. That, no doubt, is what it spits off when it is actually spinning, not an average of what it produces during any given year. But let's assume it is an average.

The value of that electricity at Oregon prices is about $1,261 a year.  Would you invest $25,000 to yield $1261 a year? Barely. That is about a 5% return - a 20 year payback - far less than any profit making enterprise would need to invest. 

Plus, the $25K doesn't include various costs such as land. 

So I am wondering whether, along with what these students are taught about alternative energy and sustainability, they are ever taught anything about ROI and economics. 

Any guesses?

Kulongoski's legacy - your money

Be very, very afraid when a politician wants to use your money for HIS legacy. 

Front page story in The Funny Paper today about Kulongoski's "green legacy."  The Governor wants to put Oregon "on the front lines of what he firmly believes will be the next economic revolution: green energy."

Predictably, what the fawning article never asked, was what vast experience does the Governor have in the private sector that would position him to know what the next economic revolution would be?  Did he predict the transistor? The microprocessor? The internet? 

Just think of all the money we've wasted in Oregon on some politician's claim of the next big thing? Remember "creative services?"  The Portland Development Commission just knew this was going to be big, so they even remodeled an entire office building specifically outfitted for the needs of the creative service sector (or "cluster" in bureau-speak.) The building bled money from the get-go, so much so that the PDC had to occupy it themselves, just to stop the embarrassment.

Of course then there was the "Biotech" craze. Ten thousand new jobs were coming to Portland if we just spent billions on South Waterfront and OHSU. Both places are basically bankrupt now, and taxpayers are holding the bag. So far, ZERO biotech jobs were created. (Actually, some jobs did result, which went to Florida.)

So now our Governor says he just knows that the green economy is the next big thing. Why would we put one dime of our money on his vision? 

Of course he wants a heck of a lot more than a dime. Hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize inefficient forms of energy production. A cap and trade system that will bleed tens of millions out of ratepayers' pockets to fund more of their green dreams. Mandates for "renewable energy" that drive up energy costs even further.

That is his vision, his legacy. And he pretends that it will create jobs! Oh, sure it will result in more people employed making windmills and solar panels. But far, far more people will lose jobs due to the higher energy costs in the rest of the economy.

But people like Ted Kulongoski don't have the frame of reference to understand this economic reality. A lifetime in the public sector, he literally doesn't understand wealth creation. 

But he does understand special interest politics, like all good liberal politicians. A system of energy taxes (Cap & Trade) and renewal energy mandates (25 by 25) and tax credits (BETC) will absolutely ensure that money will flow to all Kulongoski's environmental allies for years and years to come. 

And we all pay for it in higher taxes and energy costs. The net effect, of course, is that we are all very much the poorer, with a worse economy and fewer jobs. 

But the government class and their press-release publishers (The Funny Paper and the rest of the mainstream media) along with the environmental lobby will tell us for years what a success this all has been, and what a wonderful legacy Ted Kulongoski has built.

Have fun paying for it.

Great quote

From a George Will column today:

"There never is a moment when an open society that wants to remain such does not need the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

I sure do wish that the Oregon planning set understood the truth of this quote. Their hubris knows no bounds, so hell-bent they are on social engineering everything from housing, transportation and even climate.

The audacity of pork

I was down at the legislature today, and watched the Senate debate on the Oregon "stimulus" bill. It's the plan to borrow $180 million or so and use the funds for a laundry list of current spending plans.

The floor speech by Peter Courtney was classic. He's an impassioned speaker and gets pretty wound up when he wants to. He gave this stemwinder, talking about how so many Oregonians are suffering, losing jobs, anxious, and insecure. He said he would do whatever it takes to help them get jobs. He wouldn't stop at anything, so concerned he was about the plight of these poor folks. In fact, he said, his only regret is that the package isn't bigger.

I sat watching this exercise in political posturing, thinking: So you'd do anything you could, Peter Courtney? OK then, how about increasing logging on Oregon's public forests? How about fast tracking the LNG plant? How about allowing all those Measure 49 claims to go forward? How about allowing offshore drilling?

I guess he meant "I'd do anything that is acceptable to the enviros."

And then he retired to his newly remodeled offices, which cost the taxpayer $400,000 each to remodel.

But they claim that capitalism has failed

Mona Charon has a great column today making the point that President Obama never had to learn the lessons so many liberals of the Great Society learned - that government programs often have worse unintended consequences than the benefits they are designed to bring.

And she also makes the best point I read all day:

"President Bush, along with a sloppy and incontinent Republican majority in Congress, managed the feat of discrediting free-market economics without ever practicing it."

I've heard so much lately that conservatism has failed. But Bush was never really a conservative. At least he was never a limited government conservative. 

I've grown very uncomfortable with the label "conservative" anyway, because it doesn't properly describe my own ideology, which I believe is very close to that of our founding fathers: Classical Liberalism.  This was the basis for our constitution. Government limited to protecting people from each other, and from enemies foreign. A guarantor of rights - not the 20th century notion of rights, but the proper definition  - a right is something that government cannot take from you, not something the government must do for  you.

President George Bush was not a classical liberal. And he has given the left the claim that free markets have failed. 

Running for cover from SAMBLA

One of the worst spectacles of SAMBLA  (Sam Adams Man-Boy Love Affair) has been the weak- kneed and mealy-mouthed reaction from the Mayor's colleagues on the city council.

First, Randy Leonard. While it is true that he has evolved his position to a place in which he is probably more critical of Adams than any other councillor, he still looks like a complete weenie. 

Randy was the primary attack dog when the rumor was surfaced by Bob Ball. He led point on destroying Ball's reputation for "smearing" Sam Adams. 

Once Adams admitted the true nature of the relationship, Randy stood by Sam saying "Sam didn't lie to me" because all Randy asked Sam was "did you have sex with an underaged person."  

Well, that one flew like a lead balloon, and Randy knew it. So he knew he had to stake out a slightly more defensible position, and Adams made it easy, because his own story kept changing and then it was revealed that he and the boy did play kissy face while the kid was underaged. 

But Randy still has not called for Adam's resignation, nor to my knowledge has has he apologized to Bob Ball, whose story now has been proven 100% accurate. So Sam Adams totally played Randy Leonard, used him to destroy a political foe whose story turned out to be true, and Randy is STILL not calling Sam out?

RANDY! Grow  a pair!

The others are just as bad. Nick Fish hasn't said much at all. Amanda Fritz is openly supporting Adams, as is Saltzman.  

Unbelievable! By their continuing to work with Sam Adams, these folks are condoning a 42 year old man's abuse of a 17 year old boy, and on city property! They are condoning lying to suborn an election. 

As far as I am concerned, NONE of these folks are worthy of our respect until and unless they call for Sam Adams resignation and refuse to sit with him on the council. 

Obama's first week

We better brace ourselves. Anyone who believes that free markets, capitalism and limited government are the best route to prosperity and freedom is in for a long four years. Ditto if you believe that government's #1 job is to protect the country. 

President Obama signed the executive order banning "enhanced interrogation" techniques. In the Washington Post, and the again today at National Review, Marc Thiessen details how this program directly prevented the U.S. from being hit again by terrorists, and how it stopped terror strikes in other countries.  

A blogger from WashPo took him to task for the claim, saying that there was no evidence the program ever stopped any attack. Thiessen responded, making the blogger look ridiculous. He gave a detailed account of precisely how and when waterboarding and other techniques led to information that stopped several terror plots.

So now we have announced to the world that we won't do this anymore. Prediction: After seven years of no terror strikes on U.S. soil, within two years we will be hit. 

The so-called "stimulus" package is speeding through congress. This is nothing but a special interest payday much of which will not even be spent within two years. And the "tax cut" portion of it is not really a tax cut anyway. A lot of it is just another name for welfare - giving people checks who don't even pay taxes. 

And NONE of the tax cut is of a "supply-side" nature.  Just sending tax credit checks to people doesn't have much effect on the economy, because it doesn't change any incentives and it's not a permanent change in tax policy that people and businesses can rely upon and therefore change their behavior in response.  If you want the economy to grow, change the marginal incentive to make income. This "stimulus" package doesn't do this - it just doles out money we borrow from the next generation. 

The media reporting on the stimulus has been just horrendous. Last night I watched national network news and also Nightline (something I almost never do.) References to the stimulus package were repeatedly couched in terms such as "President Obama's plan to fix the economy." 

The reality: President Obama's plan to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to Democrat constituencies using the current economic slump as cover.

He's Staying!

This is going to be fun.

On my radio show today I tried to hide my glee. Oh all right, I'll stop lying. (Unlike Sam Adams.) I didn't try to hide my glee.

Honestly, this is going to be a fabulous circus. It has everything! Sex, lies, a criminal investigation, interest groups jockeying for position, politicians looking for cover, high priced lawyers - all the ingredients for a rock-em sock-em scandal! It promises to be quite a show, and to last a long time.

And the by-product is positive too. This will distract the City Council from its toxic agenda. Sam won't be able to lecture anyone on making the I-5 bridge "sustainable." Nothing will happen, which, with this crew, is good.

I still can't figure out why Randy Leonard isn't jumping up and down telling Sam Adams to take a hike. Adams played Leonard for the fool, used him as his attack dog against Bob Ball. Now it turns out Ball had it right. And Leonard hasn't turned his back on Adams?

The rest of the mealy-mouthers are hunkered down hoping the criminal investigation lets them not take a position. What a bunch of weenies! The stipulated facts of this case are plenty to end Sam Adams' career. The investigation can't make any of that better - it can only hurt Adams.

Fact: Adams lied because he figured if he fessed up, he would have lost. In the words of my co-host, Marc Abrams, he "suborned the election."

Fact: Adams enlisted Randy Leonard to destroy the reputation of a political rival.

Fact: Adams used a paid consultant to coach his boy-toy to lie to the media.

Fact: Adams was romantically interested in Breedlove when the kid was 17 years old, and met with him on more than one occasion prior to his turning 18. Breedlove says on two of those occasions, they made out. One of those time it was in the City Hall mens room.

I am SO looking forward to the next few months. Portland is circling the drain anyway. We might as well have fun with this in the meantime.

Yet another planning failure

In the Washington County section of The Funny Paper today there's a great article about another high profile planning failure - the "Washington Square Regional Center." 

For ten years, Metro has wanted the area around Washington Square to turn into one of their mixed-use transit-oriented development fantasies. The fantasy involved a "greenbelt of trails, mixed-use development featuring 200-foot office buildings and compact residential communities near the shopping center." 

Metro got Tigard to re-zone their part of the land to "regional center" designation. Beaverton lagged, and didn't do it for their territory. They were too busy with their own high profile failure-  the Beaverton Round.

So now, ten years after Metro designated the area to be a regional center, NONE of the type of development they fantasize about has happened. Oh they have all the excuses.... there wasn't the money to pay for the $200 million in infrastructure, city foot dragging - but nowhere no how do they ever suggest that perhaps one small reason why nobody has stepped up to build what Metro wants is because no enough people want to live in their little urban utopias.

Never, ever question the ideology. Despite the fact that NOT ONE of Metro's regional centers has worked out as planned. Despite the fact of several expensive and high profile failures where the planners expensive dreams were completely jettisoned - such as Cascade Station, the Beaverton Round, South Waterfront, Downtown Hillsboro. No, failure never causes these folks to question their assumptions. 

More ironic still was the fact that the nation's largest used car dealer, CarMax, wanted to develop a part of the Washington Square area to build a dealership. Nothing sends planners into a bigger tizzy than to see an automobile-oriented business try to use some of their precious regional center/transit-oriented land for a profit making enterprise.

Since Beaverton had never gotten around to re-zoning their part of the territory as "regional center," the existing zoning allowed a car lot. The application had to move forward. 

Which is another great illustration of how our land-use policies hurt the economy. Imagine! Here our economy is in tatters, and an out of state company wants to expand in Oregon. But all the planners can do is whine that the proposed enterprise doesn't fit the planners' goals for that real-estate.  The fact that nobody is interested in building what the planners want doesn't seem to matter to them.

Well, the planners are getting a respite, it appears. CarMax withdrew the application because of the economy. Now you can bet that Metro will pressure Beaverton to re-zone that land to "regional center" designation, so we can rest assured that the land will be underutilized for years longer. 

Will our local governments ever get out of the way? Don't count on it - the problem, you see, is NOT their ideology, it's that all of us regular folk aren't enlightened enough to live like they think we should.

Adams Protester!

I was surprised to see pictures of this guy on local blogs and newspapers, and then see him interviewed on network news tonight.

He's my brother-in-law! He married my sister several years ago. Lest anyone think there is anything remotely anti-gay about his motivation for staging a one-man protest at city hall, I can disabuse you of that notion.

Without going into details, I can tell you he has devoted significant personal possessions to assist lesbian couples have children. He is a caseworker in MultCo's criminal justice system.

Sam Adams, Scumbag

Or, I guess I should say: Mayor Scumbag.

Honestly, are the people of Portland going to accept this? I think this issue is a great bellweather for just how far Portland has sunk into the abyss. If Sam Adams is allowed to stay on as mayor, this city is done. Forever. 

Why do I say that? Look what this disgusting excuse for a man did:

1) He took advantage of a troubled young man who approached him for personal advice at a time of severe emotional stress, and had sex with him.  This is absolutely, 100%, completely wrong, and in and of itself should end his political career.  

2) When Bob Ball brought the story out in 2007, Sam Adams went on the offensive. He trashed Bob Ball publicly, said this was just a political smear by a would be rival, and went on to play the victim, saying that Ball's accusation played into the stereotype of gay men predating on younger men. 

How cynical can you get? Adams basically went all-in on the denial. It wasn't enough for him to just deny and try to get the story behind him, he used the story and his denial to get sympathy by playing the gay card.  And all the while, he knew that he WAS the stereotype of the disgusting gay predator. 

3) He ruined the reputation of Bob Ball. Just roadkill, I guess, on his path to election. 

4) He leveraged the sympathy he created in his denial into votes. Would he have been elected if he had told the truth? So his election is invalid.

5) It is still an open question whether Sam Adams really "waited" until Beau Breedlove was 18 before they had sex. How can we trust what he says? He is a confirmed liar.

There is one very positive aspect to this story, however. Randy Leonard has been confirmed as a buffoon. I mean really! He said "Sam Adams never lied to me." Huh? Randy says he never asked Sam if he had sex with Beau Breedlove, he only asked Sam if he had ever had sex with an underage person! As if when Sam Adams went public with his denial and trashing of Ball and playing the gay card, he was speaking to everyone in Portland except Randy Leonard!

OK Randy. We got it. Defend Sam to the end. 

I have a feeling that Sam Adams will survive this. He will be damaged, for sure. He will be a standing joke in the talk radio and blog world. But he probably survives.

A more ethical person would resign, but Sam Adams has shown us that his #1 priority is Sam Adams. He doesn't care who he destroys along the way. It is all about Sam. He will weather all the catcalls, because this is his life. He knows nothing other than a quest for power. 

And Portland will sink further into the abyss. 

Our Mayor is a child molester?

Wow. Nigel got him to confess. Nigel KNEW Adams was lying - I talked to him personally about it months ago. I even helped chase down some leads that Nigel thought might confirm it, since Beau Breedlove worked as a legislative aide in Rep. Kim Thatcher's office.

More on this later. Will Adams resign? He blatantly lied to the public, got elected, and now two weeks after taking the oath we know he is just like Goldschmidt. A child molesting scumbag liar.

Update 5:11 PM:

Oregonlive is reporting that although Sam Adams mentored this kid when he was 17, they didn't start having sex until he was 18. I don't buy it. He is a confirmed liar, and why would he not lie about this, the most damaging aspect of the story?

Plus - he was the kid's MENTOR, for God's sake! And he starts having sex with him? 

RESIGN, SAM!

Indoctrinating Education Leaders in Environmental Extremism

You gotta love Portland State University's school of education. The biggest collection of left wing clowns in town. 

They have a masters degree program called "Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning." Before I even start, let's just take a few moments and gaze in awe at this wonderful name.  What would it mean to be a "leader" in "ecology, culture and learning?" Wouldn't you be embarrassed to be at a cocktail party and tell people that you had a masters degree in Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning?

Isn't it kinda scary that apparently some people AREN'T embarrassed? And these folks are teaching our kids somewhere in some public school?

Well, take a look at some of the courses in this program.  

ELP 410/510: Ecology and Social Justice (4) 

ELP 410/510: Garden-Based Education Research (4) 
ELP 410/510: Global Indigenous Cultures: Journey into Biocultural Diversities (4) 
ELP 410/510: Learning Gardens and Sustainability (4) 
ELP 410/510: LECL Naturalist Mentoring (2-4) 
ELP 410/510: Nonviolence and Gandhi's Educational Philosophy (4) 

ELP 410/510: Permaculture and Whole Systems Design I (4) 

ELP 410/510: Permaculture and Whole Systems Design II (4) 

ELP 431U: Gandhi, Zapata and Topics in New Agrarianism (4) 

ELP 448U: Introduction to Global Political Ecology (4) 

ELP 449U: Spiritual Leadership (4) 

ELP 450U: Introduction to Leadership for Sustainability (4) 

ELP 501: Theory and Practice of Sustainability (1-4) 

ELP 503: LECL Thesis/ELP 506: LECL Culminating Project (2)

ELP 510: Ecological Education in K-8 School (4) 

ELP 510: Urban Education Farm: Food Policy, Curriculum Design, and Action! (1-4) 

ELP 516/616: Collaborative Ethnographic Research Methods (4) 

ELP 517/617: Ecological and Cultural Foundations of Learning (4) 

ELP 519: Sustainability Education (4) 

ELP 548: Advanced Global Political Ecology (4) 

ELP 550: Leadership for Sustainability (4) 

This is a masters degree in EDUCATION program! I promise - I didn't cherry pick only the most outrageous sounding courses. I just copied EVERY course listed in the program. For an even better laugh, go read some of the course summaries that describe these important and worthwhile courses. Here is the description of the first course:

ELP 410/510: Ecology and Social Justice (4) What have social classes, gender, ethnic and race relations got to do with ecology  in the greater Portland area and North America? Are there various types of environmentalisms depending upon how people concerned are situated in a particular culture of habitat and “relations of ruling? This course addresses these questions within the rubric of Earth Democracy, while expanding democracy to include intra and intergenerational democracy as well as inter-species democracy, intercultural democracy and inter-economic systems democracy. While intercultural democracy seeks equal recognition and respect for all bio-cultural diversities, inter-economic systems democracy seeks mutually beneficial exchange between producers and consumers, industry and agriculture, and rural and urban livelihoods.

Inter-species democracy? Again, I am not cherry picking. This is the very first course listed - pretty much each and every one of them has a course description which is just laughable. They actually have Perfessers who teach this crap!

Keep this in mind next time they whine about not having enough money. 

Write your own lines, Kari Chisolm!

Steve Schopp alerted me to this.

Over at BlueOregon, Kari Chisolm wrote a post about Congressman Greg Walden being appointed as the ranking Republican member on the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

He finds it ironic since Walden was chair of the audit committee of the NRCC when a fake audit report covered up a missing million bucks. And his tag line:

"In Republican circles, there ain't nothing that succeeds like total, epic failure."

Hey! Kari! Write your own stuff!

Anyone who knows me has heard me say the same exact thing as a motto for Oregon. I've said it many times on the air, and a simple search of my blog shows the times I have written it down here.

Sheesh!

Steve Novick subs for Marc Abrams tomorrow

Steve Novick, who darn near beat Jeff Merkley in the Democrat primary for U.S. Senate (and who I said all along would have given Gordon Smith more trouble in the general election than Merkley) is going to substitute for Marc Abrams tomorrow on Kremer & Abrams (KXL AM 750 from 9:00-11:00.)

If you watched the Novick/Merkley race, you saw Novick become something of a phenomenon. A very different kind of candidate, to be sure. I think he will be great on the radio, because he's unabashed in his lefty views and willing to talk/argue/disagree without taking things personally.

Hope you tune in. It's webcast at kxl.com

Learning the wrong lesson

In 2002, Metro decided that the best place to expand the urban growth boundary in order to meet its statutorily required 20 year inventory of housing land, was as far away from the major job center as possible. So they brought thousands of acres in and around Damascus into the boundary.

They were so excited. Finally, they had a blank slate upon which they could draw their urban village utopia. They started plans for 50,000 new residents, fully in their blueprint of "new-urbanism:" bike paths, mixed use commercial centers, small lots crammed with townhouses - we've all seen the drill.

Some folks in Damascus went along, seeing a big payday ahead when they sold their land. But most of the good folks in Damascus saw it for what it was: a pig in a poke. Not only was there no way in Hell that there would ever be enough money to build out the necessary infrastructure for a new city of 50,000 people (which means all their plans would sit idle, much like the Beaverton Round, the Cascade Station, and other new-urbanist wet dreams) but the folks in Damascus didn't want their little burgh to be turned into what the Metro planners wanted in the first place.

So they passed a couple local initiatives which pretty much stopped Metro in its tracks. Now, seven years later, Metro has finally admitted defeat.

But predictably, they are taking precisely the wrong lesson from that defeat.

The lesson they SHOULD learn is that people don't share their new-urban vision. For the most part, people don't want to live that way. They want back yards and cul-de-sacs, and they want to use their car to move around as they please.

But why would Metro learn that lesson now? It's not as if this is the first spectacular failure of one of their new urbanist projects. After all, when others don't share your religion, it is only because they haven't had sufficient exposure to your gospel. The fault isn't with the religion.

David Bragdon, Metro council president, had this to say about the fiasco in Damascus:

"I think this council will look very skeptically at further urban growth boundary expansions. The reality is that we need to be more efficient with land already inside the boundary."

In other words: "Fine. If you don't bend over and let us force our plans on you when we expand the boundary, we are just gunna pile everyone inside the current boundary."

It would be too much to hope for, I guess, that one of these dolts might think:

"Hey, maybe this model we all think is so cool isn't what the folks we are elected to represent actually want. Maybe we should learn from our many expensive failures, because it seems every time we try to build one of these new urban villages, it ends up a financial disaster. Perhaps what we should do is expand the urban growth boundary, and allow the local areas to decide how they want to allow growth on it."

No, don't worry. I am NOT that naive. I know that people like Peter Bragdon and Carl Hosticka and all the other central planning social engineer utopians do not consider it their job to represent the people who elected them. Their job is to establish their religion, and force it on their subjects regardless of whether they want it.

So it was absolutely predictable that the takeaway from the Peter Bragdon types would be that we can't expand the urban growth boundary. That lesson serves his agenda.

An agenda that is increasingly being exposed as one that is ruining what was once a terrifically functioning metropolitan area.

John Kroger is going to be worse than we thought

Our new Attorney General John Kroger is going to be a nightmare. Many of my friends in the conservative movement supported him, and I told them all at the time that they would rue the day.  

I realize they did it because of Greg MacPherson's work to get Measure 37 repealed by Measure 49. I get that. But Kroger is going to do tremendous harm to what's left of our economy  through his environmental activism. He can't wait to make headlines. 

Just this week he spoke at the anti-LNG rally on the capitol steps along with all the enviro-loonies. Word is the governor's office is steamed that he would basically take sides as an advocate when Kroger's office will be very involved is certain aspects of the issue. For one, the governor has indicated he will be suing FERC for its approval of the Bradford Landing LNG site license. Guess who litigates the suit on "behalf" of the state? Kroger.

How can Kroger, in his role of AG, fairly apply the law concerning the LNG proposal when he has already publicly chosen sides on the issue? He can't. 

Word also has it that Kroger marched into the Guv's office last week and demanded that he get $100 million more in the AG's budget for his enforcement division. The Guv reportedly told him to go jump. He explained the facts of life to him: The AG's office is UNDERNEATH the governor, and does not have autonomous budgeting authority. The AG's budget was proposed by Hardy Meyers, and was rolled into the Governor's budget proposal. Not only was this not the right time to go adding ANY amount to the AG budget-  but the fact is that by the time the May re-forecast is revealed, it is likely that the AG budget will face CUTS from the guv's current budget, not a $100 million increase.

And Kroger left with his tail between his Napolean-length legs. 

I'm telling you - this guy is going to be a nightmare.

Here comes Cap & Trade

The governor dropped the Cap & Trade bill - Senate Bill 80. 

It is a nightmare, just as expected. The bill itself is actually not all that long, despite the very complex nature of what it proposes to do. And that, too is a big problem.

Why is that a problem? Because what the bill does is essentially proclaim that there will be a Cap & Trade system to reduce Oregon's carbon dioxide emissions, and empowers the Environmental Quality Commission to design it and implement it by rule. 

So we will have a new, unprecedented level of power in an unaccountable bureaucracy. You think the legislature and the lawmaking process is hard to influence? Try stopping an administrative rule promulgated by a team of bureaucrats.  I've been through it many times.

Why will this be so bad for Oregon? It will be hugely expensive, directly in a higher cost of energy (with the money going both to the government and to large energy companies who have the political clout to game the system) and in reduced economic growth rates in Oregon. 

They are essentially calling for a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions by the year 2020. Which basically means they want Oregon to use 40% less energy. The easy (and only technologically proven) way to make that happen is to be 40% less productive than we are now. 

Sounds great. 

If you want to really get angry, go take a look at the blizzard of planning documents  concocted by the Western Climate Initiative, which is the multi-state group behind this whole thing.  Read some of those design drafts to get a sense of the breathtaking scale and scope of the intrusive bureaucracy they plan to foist on us. 

And the whole point is to bleed money out of the economy in the form of a hidden energy tax, so the politicians can use it for all their sustainability initiatives. 

I will be writing about this issue a lot in the weeks to come, because we can absolutely count on the newspapers in Oregon not bringing a lot of the truth about this to light. So stay tuned - this could be the most harmful initiative ever to come out of our government class in Oregon.

The Funny Paper Today

The Funny Paper was in rare form today. One article after another was laugh out loud funny - both the news pages and the editorial section.

Starting with the front page, where there's a big article on the controversy over math instruction. For years, the educrats have been trying to shove down the throats of parents and children their ridiculous theories on how kids learn math. When parents see the stupid stuff their kids are doing (group projects, math journals, spending hours on trivial problems) they go crazy. The educrats hem and haw, try to run out the clock. The persistant parents win.

Well, the article today tried to put the best face on it for the education establishment. The real story is that parents resent their kids being used as guinea pigs as the educrats try once again to pretend they have this new approach to learning (which is nothing more than the same old bullshit John Dewey "constructivism" packaged in some other shiny box) but the parents know better.

Johnny can't multiply 9 times 5 in the fourth grade, but the educrats yammer on about 'conceptual understanding."

This battle has been fought on so many fronts all over the nation, and there's a current battle brewing in Tualatin. Same story.

Then over to the Op-ed page, where there's a plaintive cry for the departure of Gil Kelly, Portland's planning director. We learn that partly because of Kelly's efforts, Portland is "among the best planned cities in the world."

Give me a break! They make a point of saying that without Kelly's efforts, South Waterfront would not have happened! THAT is their example of good planning? Wow!

Then on the other side of the page we have Ryan Deckert, along with some dude on the State Board of Higher Education, telling us how Oregon is going to have the "greenest" universities in the country by spending the governor's planned $1 billion in capital funds on "sustainable" buildings. He celebrates the fact that Oregon requires that any public building built after 2006 must have at least a silver LEED rating.

Which of course means we buy far less for our money in order to save a small amount of energy. And that is pretty much the definition of "sustainability" - spending a lot of money to save a teeny bit of energy.

It's the Oregon way - wasting taxpayer money to support the political agenda of the elites in charge. With guys like Ryan Deckert pretending to be a business leader!

We are so screwed.

First day of the legislature

I've been avoiding posting anything on my blog for a month for some reason. Not sure why, but every time I thought about posting something, I just didn't do it. I'm a pretty unreliable blogger, I guess.

The 2009 legislative session started today, and it is going to be a doozy. I heard some of the governor's state of the state speech, and it is obvious that not only does he have no clue what to do to bring Oregon out of this deep recession, but that the things he plans to do will make things worse than they otherwise would be.

He said we had to have the courage to raise revenue, even though times are tough. He asked: "If not now, then when?" How about never! We should NEVER increase the burden of government on the taxpayers. I thought his question was very funny, because clearly his answer is "Always!" he has proposed tax increases at every single turn, in good times and bad.

The most irritating part of his speech was when he talked about Oregon's new economy, how we are the unquestioned national leader in sustainability, and how that will lead us out of this recession. This is just fantasy.

The only reason we are on the map for "sustainability" is because the government is throwing dollars at every goofy alternative energy project and ridiculous energy saving scheme they can subsidize. It's wasted money. So his plan to get us out of the recession is to raise taxes and then waste the money. Yeah, that'll work.

And his biggest money wasting scheme will be coming soon, when he unveils his legacy legislation - the 'Cap & Trade' plan. I'll have much much more on this later, but it is basically a way to drive up the cost of energy and use the money extracted from energy users to fund all their sustainability projects.

It is a job killer. Why would we make energy more expensive in the middle of a deep recession?

And this is just the first day. Oh my.

Is the gig up for the global warming alarmists?

Sen. James Inhofe just released a new minority report from his committee that has a list of the growing number of scientists - all of them in climate related fields - who consider themselves skeptics of the AGW hypothesis.

The number is now 650. Many have given statements, some of which call the global warming scare a complete scam. There are Nobel Prize winners and IPCC members among them. \

Bottom line, the sham of the so-called "consensus" is being revealed. But will the alarmists retreat? Don't bet on it.

What is a dollar?

What does a dollar represent? 

It's a store of value. It represents a future claim on a good or service that someone is willing to sell for that amount. But that is obvious.

But drill down a bit further. These goods and services that are bought and sold with these dollars - what are they "made of?" All sorts of things, obviously. Raw materials, labor, capital equipment, brainpower. 

But on a deeper level, every good and service in our economy is really made of energy. Any product that has been manufactured can be thought of as an accumulation of various forms of energy that are manifest in the physical product.  The raw materials took energy to mine or produce, and the capital equipment for the manufacturing process had to be itself be manufactured, and the raw materials for it had to be extracted, processed, sold, delivered, stored until used, etc. 

The products themselves had to be inventoried, packaged, sold, delivered, inventoried again, and sold again. Every step of the way, for every material in the good, used energy as its base component.

So a dollar can be thought of as a future claim on the sum total of societies' production of energy. 

Why am I going through this admittedly pedantic and abstract exercise? Because it is relevant right now, due to the fact that so many people don't seem to understand this truth, which is resulting in some very harmful decisions being made.

If a dollar is a store of energy, would you give that dollar up for anything less than a dollar's worth of energy? Of course not - that would be stupid. It would be a waste of energy. But that is precisely what our politicians are requiring us to do. 

Worse, they are pretending that they are doing this to SAVE energy! 

For example - under the new alternative energy mandates, the state of Oregon is giving all sorts of tax incentives to stimulate wind and solar energy production. The energy produced from these projects costs as much as four times per kilowatt hour than energy produced through conventional means (hydro and/or natural gas.) 

So, by government mandate, we are spending four times as much in energy to produce electricity. That is BAD for the environment!

The very policies that the politicians and the environmentalists claim are good for the environment are actually harming it. They don't understand economics. They don't know what a dollar represents. 

The sad descent of Jack Bogdanski

I remember when I saw the very first post on Jack Bogdanski's blog about Sarah Palin not being the real mother of Trig. It was right after McCain chose her, and I was in studio preparing for my radio show with my co-host Marc Abrams.

The Bojack.org post linked to Daily Kos, which had this series of pictures that supposedly "proved" Sarah Palin wasn't the mother, but that Bristol Palin actually had Trig. I looked at the pictures, and shook my head. "Just another wingnut conspiracy theory at DailyKos," I thought.

But I read Jack's post and it looked as if he actually believed it. I showed it to Marc, and together we looked again at the pictures and read the "proof." Marc dismissed it all out of hand.

But not Jack Bogdanski. No, Jack went on a virtual Jihad. He went all-in on the Palin story, and to this very day he continues to offer up "proof" that Palin faked her pregnancy.

Now, this concerned me quite a bit, because as you may know, Jack Bogdanski had very recently agreed to be Marc Abrams' stand-in for the 30% of the time or so that he is out of town and unable to do our Sunday morning radio show. I had serious reservations about someone co-hosting my show who was so publicly marginalizing himself.

The next time Jack was on, we mixed it up pretty good. It was still hard for me to take seriously - it seemed so inexplicable that a guy of Jack's stature would so publicly lead the charge on a ridiculous theory that had such thin documentary evidence. I mean, this guy is a law professor at Lewis & Clark, for God's sake. And he has cast himself squarely with the lunatic fringe, and not at all quietly.

We discussed it several times, and I even posted aabout it here on this blog. I let Jack know I thought this obsession was seriously unhinged, such as the post in which he discussed at some length the shape and size of Bristol Palin's breasts. Creepy!

But he's gotten even more obsessed with the theory as time has gone on. I can't explain it. The most recent development was a post this week on his blog teasing a "Breaking Development"in the Palin conspiracy. A BLOCKBUSTER!

What was it? More pictures of Sarah that showed her not looking very pregnant. But she was wearing black on black, and she was posing in a way that could easily hide whatever bulge in her belly existed at the time. The photos were hardly conclusive. Some women carry children and hardly show it.

But no, for Jack, these pics are open and shut defacto proof that Sarah Palin is not the mother. And this guy is teaching mush headed liberal students up at Lewis & Clark how to be lawyers!

Well, it is sad. Jack's blog has a lot of good things about it. He exposes a lot of fiscal stupidity at the City of Portland. He is one of the best sources for that kind of thing.

I am saddened that he is destroying his own credibility with this obsession. Even his friends and fellow liberals are telling him that he's off base. But he seems so bought into the theory now, so dug into his position, that he's not coming off the ledge.

In his recent post on the issue, I posted a comment under the name "worried about jack," in which I again pointed out that he is dangerously unhinged on this thing. I of course knew that he would know who posted it - I had already on several occasions both in person sitting across from him on my radio show and on this blog commented on his flight to lunacy.

And now he is calling me a coward for not posting under my name. Whatever.

The upshot is: for reasons not wholly unrelated to this issue, Jack Bogdanski will no longer be my part-time co-host on Kremer & Abrams.

For his sake, I hope he can calm down on this ridiculous conspiracy theory in time to save his own credibility.