Dick Wendt, a great American

Dick Wendt, founder of Jeld-Wen, died today.

I have been absent from my blog for several months while my wife runs for the state senate, but I am breaking my self-imposed exile because of this news.

Dick Wendt was, quite simply, a great man. He bought some sawmill assets out of receivership in the 1960's and built a company that became the world's largest manufacturer of windows and doors. He did it from Klamath Fall, Oregon.

I had the very good fortune to get to know Dick and his lovely wife Nancy. I could write a dozen long blog posts about his accomplishments in life - many of which had nothing to do with his business success - but I will leave most of that to the articles that you will see in the coming days.

But I will mention something about Dick that most people do not know: he was basically the architect of the welfare reform of the 1990's that moved millions of people off the welfare rolls all over the nation. This is not an overstatement.

I had the pleasure of listening to Dick and Nancy tell me and my wife the story of the how he started and grew his company one summer evening a few years back on the deck of his lake cabin in the Cascade Range. There was nothing pretentious about Dick. He lived in the same house in Klamath Falls that he bought in the 1960's. He drove a Jeep. His lake cabin was just that - a cabin. Rustic, maybe 1000 square feet.

When he became wealthy, he turned his talent and treasure to making the world a better place by reforming the institutions that have failed us, such as welfare and social security.

Dick Wendt was a great man. I am lucky to have known him, and I feel a great sense of honor that he considered my own efforts at reforming education to be worthy of his support.

Huffman for Senate. Kremer for Senate District 19

I've been ignoring my blog lately. Here's why:

I am consulting on the Jim Huffman for US Senate campaign, and my wife is running for State Senate against Sen. Richard Devlin.

This has been consuming all my time that I might otherwise devote to expressing my opinion here on my blog. If you have been checking in, thank you!

I'm sorry, but my updates are going to be less and less frequent for awhile.

Where is the adult in OUR room?

This is just fabulous. Please take the time to watch this 26 minute address by New Jersey's new governor to the New Jersey League of Municipalities.

When I listen to something like this - an all-too-rare display of straight talk, mastery of fact, and laid-bare reality, I just get angry. Angry that we NEVER see this in our political class in Oregon.

Why do we get buffoons governing us, and other states get guys like Christie?

Where is the adult in OUR room?

Let's put Matt Wingard over the top!

State Rep. Matt Wingard is doing a "birthday money bomb" fundraiser for his 37th birthday - donate $37 to his reelection campaign.

He is close to his goal - please help me put him over the top. Click here to donate.

Here are a few good reasons to send $37 to Matt:

1) It will annoy the BlueOregon crowd
2) When he meets his goal he can send a press release reminding the Democrats how he beat them last cycle despite them spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the most vicious personal smear campaign in recent memory, perhaps of all time.
3) 37 is a prime number. He won't have another prime number birthday for 4 years.
4) Matt is going to be Speaker of the Oregon House someday soon.
5) If you can find a smarter, more articulate, better state representative - send HIM or HER the $37!

Short takes

• Jeff Mapes is reporting today that Bill Bradbury pulled out of a debate at Oswego Lake Country Club, and issued a press release saying that he wouldn't attend because as a good Democrat he can't justify another event at an exclusive private club when people are jobless and hurting. He is enjoying his taxpayer funded pension at what, $85K a year, and HE is going to go all class warfare on us?
• Did you see the nice coverage of the Taxpayer Rally at the Capitol yesterday, where 1500 or so folks expressed their wish that the legislature stop killing our economy? Me either! Just last week there was a nice story complete with a large color picture about the 80 STUDENTS who rallied for more higher ed spending. The Oregonian is still obviously doing its best to alienate itself from as many people as possible. In unrelated news, I hear there are more layoffs coming next week at the O.
• I must admit I am enjoying watching the global warming alarmists twist in the wind. Now Phil Jones, former head of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, the source of the "Climate-Gate" emails, is admitting basically that the whole thing is a scam! Not in so many words, of course, but read between the lines. He says that the globe hasn't warmed in 15 years, that he doesn't even have the temperature records that the "Hockey Stick graph that was central to the case of the alarmists claims were based on, and that the temperatures during the Midieval Warming Period probably WERE higher than today! And guess who has no story in todays newspaper about it? You guessed it!
  
• But the fact that the whole case for AGW is falling apart before our eyes hasn't made the true believers any less shrill. BlueOregon blogger Carla Axtman and her perpetually-twisted knickers are hammering Rep. Matt Wingard for a short floor speech he made pointing out the disintegrating case for AGW. She is outraged (OUTRAGED, I TELL YOU!) because Wingard took many of the facts he related from a published article. And HE DIDN'T mention it! Talk about a scandal! So on the one hand we have a decades long conspiracy that distorts science so politicians and bureaucrats can ration energy, perpetrated at the highest levels of government, and THAT gets no mention by our intrepid blogger Carla. But a short floor speech that doesn't cite sources? TWO separate posts on BlueOregon with 113 comments (as of this writing) between them. Convene the Grand Jury!
  

More evidence abstinence education works

I don't know how many times I have heard from educators and liberals that abstinence education doesn't work. Today a new study was published in the AMA's February 2010 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine gives very strong evidence to the contrary.

The study also showed that so-called "safe sex" training doesn't change sexual behavior one bit. The study is out of the University of Pennsylvania, and was the gold standard of such studies in its design, which used a full random assignment of the different methods studied.

There have been 15 prior scientific studies done looking at the effectiveness of abstinence curricula, and 11 of them have showed positive results.

Don't believe them when they tell you it doesn't work!

Bin Laden offered research fellowship at East Anglia U.

OK just kidding. But it IS pretty ironic that the world's most notorious terrorist has joined the AGW jihad.

He hasn't been able to bring the US economy to its knees through terror strikes. This is just a change in tactics.

So, what is the difference between Al Gore and Bin Laden? Size of their carbon footprint, I guess. Bin Laden lives in a cave, Gore in a 20,000 sf mansion.

Remember BlueOregon's attack on Matt Wingard?

Back in the '08 election, Carla Axtman at BlueOregon hyperventilated over an essay that now Rep. Matt Wingard wrote about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She was outraged because Wingard wrote that it was actually a "blessing to many" that the hurricane wiped out most of the public schools. He wrote:

In the summer of 2005, Katrina destroyed most of the New Orleans Public School District infrastructure—a blessing to many, since the district was one of the worst performing in the country. According to published reports, 73 of its more than 120 schools were considered to be “failing,” according to the state’s educational accountability standards. On one 2004 measure (the GEE test of highschoolers) 96 percent of Orleans Parish students were below basic in English, and 94 percent were below basic in math.

In the wake of Katrina, the Louisiana State Legislature turned over most of the area to a Recovery School District headed by its own superintendent. That superintendent has begun chartering many of the Recovery District schools, which in turn has attracted some of the leading charter school operators in the country. Sixty percent of schools in New Orleans are now chartered.

Carla Axtman thought that was "disgusting," and called him an "ass."

OK, fine. But guess who agrees with Matt Wingard?

President Obama's U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan! The Washington Post reported today that in an interview to be aired this weekend, Duncan said that the hurricane was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans."

Duncan apparently went on to make precisely the same point that Matt Wingard made, about the fact that New Orleans had a rare opportunity to start over from scratch with their public schools, and they are building a new system based on charter schools, choice and competition.

Gee, maybe Rep. Matt Wingard is perhaps the TRUE progressive here. He cares about how well the school system serves its clients.

It sure seems as if BlueOregon and Carla Axtman care a lot more about unions than about the kids. Gee, how "progessive."

Killing our competitiveness

The evidence is accumulating daily, so much so that it is seeping into local media coverage and even the race for Metro President:

Oregon's land-use laws are killing our economy. Just in the last few days, more stories have emerged:

• Democrat Rep. Peter Buckley from Ashland is trying to help a large southern Oregon orchard operator survive by allowing 1000 acres of its fallow land near urban areas in southern Oregon to be developed. The company is struggling under a large debt load and would use some of the proceeds to make its balance sheet healthier. All the usual land use groups oppose it. Prime farmland! they say.
• In today's Oregonian, columnist Andy Parker talks about the race for Metro President, in which all three candidates are talking about how Metro needs to do a better job of "economic development." The only candidate who really has any clue at all is former Hillsboro mayor Tom Hughes, but the other two candidates know which way the wind is blowing, so they have to recreate themselves. So now Rex Burkholder is trying to talk intelligently about job creation! (Breaking news - he can't.)
• This farmer out side of Wilsonville wants Oregon land use laws to lock down all the area around his farm for a half-century so his kid can farm it after he dies.

The common thread here is that Oregon's land use laws are killing our economy. We pretend that bureaucrats and planners somehow have superior knowledge about productive use of land than the owners. In reality, the laws just give preservationist no-growth pressure groups a legal bludgeon with which to get their way.

For years, folks like Rex Burkholder and Bob Stacey, two candidates for Metro President, have been at the forefront of this Soviet-style planning system. So it is laughable to see them now try to lip-sync a "jobs" tune.

But the real problem is the land use system itself. Pretending that Metro will somehow reshape itself to have an economic development focus is just dreaming.

Metro, and the land use system it has fed off for thirty years IS THE PROBLEM.

Will Oregon leaders ever figure this out? I doubt it. This is about world view and ideology. That doesn't change. We have competing world views in our political leadership, and one has held power in Oregon for going on three decades. The long-term damage of that view is coming home to roost.

It will have to be defeated.

Wanted: information about impact of tax hike

Do you know of an Oregon business which will have to lay off workers or might even move out of state because of the impact of the retroactive tax hike voters passed on Tuesday?

If so, please send a message about it to: ortaximpact@gmail.com. Please provide information, e.g. personal stories, news links, contact info, press releases, etc., that is verifiable and not hearsay.

Joe Rodriguez, poster child for Oregon's malaise

Today in the pages of the Oregonian we are treated to yet another op-ed piece from a fellow named Joe Rodriguez imploring us to "reform the tax code" in order to make sure there is enough money for government.

This must be the 7th or 8th time I have seen this guy's byline on he op-ed pages of the Oregonian, each and every time chiming in on supporting tax hikes, keeping the kicker, reforming the tax code, etc. I would venture a guess that this fellow has been published more as a guest columnist than any other single person over the last five years.

What gives? Who is this guy and why does the Oregonian seem to publish everything he sends to them, especially since every single piece seems to say the same exact thing: "Send more money."

Well, I know the guy. He was superintendent of Hillsboro School District, and I dealt with him on several charter school issues. He was always a huge obstacle to charter schools and school reform, and he supported all the crap like CIM/CAM every step of the way. And his district under his tenure summarily failed students of Hispanic descent - just look at the reading scores.

In other words, he is just the kind of guy who would rise in the dysfunctional bureaucracy of our public school system.

And he retired to enjoy his PERS pension a few years ago. I would estimate his annual PERS income at $120,000. Which he of course gets for life. And because he retired as a young man, we will be on the hook for supporting him this way for a long, long time.

Gee, isn't it just a tad bit self serving for this trough feeder to be lecturing us repeatedly on making sure the government doesn't have to feel the effects of the recession? I mean it is easy to sit on the lofty perch of a guaranteed $120K and tell everyone to pay more lest he have to cut back on his poolside daiquiris.

Joe Rodruiguez - you are the poster child for what is wrong with this state. Thank you for your regular reminders of just how screwed up this place is.

State of the Union

Not much a speech, really. I don't think he was very convincing.

First, stop the blame Bush already? How many times did he make some disparaging remark about the "last 8 years?" I stopped counting at 19.

He spoke about the economy like a person who thinks he is running "Federal Government Inc." Constantly said "we will invest in..." and talk about something the private sector does. His whole section on business vitality really showed his lack of understanding as to how an economy works and creates wealth.

He tried to be subtantative, but he doesn't do substance very well. He does inspiration well. So it was flat.

And he was constantly telling his lies: His health care bill will reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars and make Medicare stronger? Oh yeah we all believe that.

Some pretty questionable calls in the OT. Every 50/50 call went to the Saints, and that pass interference call was idiotic. For a ref to insert himself into that situation is just horrible. It very well might have changed the outcome, and it was not only an not catchable, but there wasn't even any contact.

But, with apologies to General Larry Platt, here is the Viking's theme song for the game:

Ball on the ground! Ball on the ground! Vikes look like fools puttin' the ball on the ground! Got punched in the mouth/Favre's helmet turned sideways. Can't win the game puttin' the ball on the ground! "

Championship Sunday Predictions

Tomorrow's games:

Jets lose badly, Vikings win in a good game.

Won't bother to explain all my reasons. Let's just do a post-mortem when it's all done.

How are banks making record profits?

I need help with this one. I have a serious question, and I think I know the answer, but I need confirmation that I am correct (or correction, if I am not.)

Commercial and investment banks are all of a sudden making huge profits, even though from what I have read, the typical lending and underwriting activities of these institutions hasn't recovered much at all from the economic crisis.

So where is the profit coming from?

Here is what I suspect: The Federal Reserve's balance sheet has ballooned, much of it due to providing massive amounts of liquidity to the banking system in order to forestall collapse. The discount rate (the interest rate the Fed charges member banks when they borrow money from the Fed) is at 0.0%.

Which means the Fed has basically said:

"The government will not let you fail. No matter how bad your own balance sheet, no matter how much your own assets have fallen in value, even if you are completely insolvent from a asset/liability standpoint, we will lend you money so your depositors know they can get their money back if they want it."

Normally, insolvent banks just fail. But in the collapse of 2008 and 2009, both Bush and Obama bought the "too big to fail" line, and the government stepped in to provide banks with the liquidity that the markets would certainly have not.

Which gets me back to my original question: So how and why are these banks making so much money now? Are their balance sheets now healthy? Are their banking activities now generating record revenue? If so, how could this possibly be the case if the economy is still so putrid?

Here is what I am pretty sure is the answer, and I would very much appreciate someone with more recent industry knowledge than myself to confirm this:

Banks are borrowing massive amounts from the Federal Reserve at zero percent, and lending that money to the ..... FEDERAL GOVERNMENT by buying treasury bonds to finance the deficit.

So if you can borrow basically unlimited amounts at 0% and then "invest" it in Treasury Notes at 2-3%, what a great business model! I wish I owned a bank. I'd think I could manage to turn a profit doing that.

So if I am right, this is just the federal government monetizing its debt, with a 2-3% leakage to commercial banks. From the taxpayer standpoint, we get doubly screwed. Monetizing the debt is hugely inflationary, but normally the government can do it without simultaneously enriching the managers of insolvent financial institutions!

So this brings me to the Obama "tough on banks" rhetoric and his bank tax idea. It is so disingenuous. Should these bank managers be earning huge bonuses? ABSOLUTELY NOT! If I am right about the above, their profits are basically just 100% taxpayer subsidy. Why should they make millions by running a government sanctioned scam in which they borrow money from the taxpayers and then lend it back to us for a 3% spread?

The structural damage this causes is almost incomprehensible. First, when does it end? If the Fed stops lending money to the banks at zero percent, or starts charging what the market would charge for banks with insolvent balance sheets, the banks would fail. So is the Fed going to continue to lend at zero until these bank assets somehow recover in value? That is just not going to happen. These sub-prime loans were NEVER worth what they were valued at, so they will certainly never "recover" to that level.

The only way the bank balance sheets can "recover" to a point where the capital markets will once again lend to them and get them off of the Fed's dole, is by either getting new capital from investors (some of which has happened, but I am pretty sure not anywhere near enough to make the banking sector's balance sheets healthy) or by the US Government taking the toxic assets off their hands at above market values.

In the case of the latter - which is what the TARP program was supposed to do - this is just another form of subsidy.

So the upshot is: Why SHOULDN'T we object when banks are now paying huge bonuses, if their profits are basically from public subsidy?

But I resent we are in this situation in the first place. It was absolutely predictable as soon as we bought the notion of "too big to fail." If we bail out the banks, they will be dependent on taxpayer largesse to survive. And that puts us in the position of either accepting whatever the bank managers want to pay themselves for the "profit" they squeeze out of us taxpayers, or start regulating the salaries of the "private" sector.

Thanks a lot, Bush and Obama!

Election night thoughts

I watched MSNBC for awhile tonight, and if their reaction to Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts is any indication as to how the Democrats will respond, this next year could be pretty interesting.

The various commentators - Keith Olberman, Chris Mathews, Rachel Maddow - all agreed that the Democrats should use any and all maneuvers they can think of to shove the health care bill through. They all said that the worst thing that could happen now is to lose the health care bill.

I hope the Democrats follow this advice.

Mapes says WSJ got it wrong, but gets it wrong

A recent blog post by Jeff Mapes takes the Wall Street Journal to task for their editorial last Friday that pointed out the insanity of a state like Oregon, in deep recession, trying to tax itself into prosperity.

Mapes said they were wrong when they wrote: "In the last budget, the Democratic controlled state legislature doled out a $259 million pay raise to the government work force, even as the state was facing a near $1 billion deficit."

Mapes writes:

That's just not the case. State workers agreed to a pay freeze, 10 to 14 furlough days and a year deferral of a step increase. It amounts to a slight pay cut over the 2009-11 budget cycle.

Mapes is wrong. The "last budget" is the 07-09 budget, in which the state was indeed facing a billion dollar 'shortfall" and during which time the governor did indeed raise state manager salaries by $259 million.

Mapes seems to think that what the WSJ was referring to when they wrote "the last budget" is the 09-11 budget, and Mapes is I guess making the point that the pay hike didn't happen in this (current) budget.

This is odd for two reasons:

1) It should be clear that the WSJ was referring to the 07-09 budget because they specifically pointed out that the shortfall at the time was one billion dollars. if they were referring to the 09-11 budget, they would have said the shortfall was around $4 billion.

2) The cost of that pay hike is still included in the 09-11 budget anyway, since they simply work from that level to create the 09-11 budget.

Pretty sloppy reporting, and even though he was corrected by a commenter on his blog, he hasn't acknowledged or corrected the mistake.

Lesson: When you point out mistakes made by others, make sure you got your facts straight!

Now, to give him some credit, Mapes does go on to point out what DOES seem to be an error in the WSJ editorial, where they give some strange numbers about the growth of government jobs vs. the decline in private sector jobs.

Well said!

This from the National Review "Morning Jolt" email:

3. Now He Gets Combative? Politico: "President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday's special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say." Well, we didn't really expect humility, did we? Great to know, Mr. President, that Iran shot protesters dead in the streets and beat the hell out of young kids, North Korea's firing off missiles so regularly you can set a clock to them, al-Qaeda tried to blow up a plane on Christmas, al-Qaeda's Yemeni branch is winning "Franchise of the Year," China's hacking Google until every search brings back at least one smiling Mao photo, Kabul's blowing up, our southern border looks like a war zone, and after a year of outreach, reset buttons, "changing the tone" and 365 days of kumbaya we finally get to see a "combative response" from you . . . to a Republican winning a race. I look forward to his Oval Office address announcing that the electorate has deeply disappointed him, and that he expects more of us.

Business Energy Tax Credit's massive budget impact

Rep. Matt Wingard points out today on OregonCatalyst that the Oregon Department of Energy approved applications for the Business Energy Tax Credit to the tune of $338 million in 2009. Meanwhile, the Democrats in the legislature forced through $733 million it tax hikes.

What's wrong with this picture? The BETC program is nothing more than a huge corporate subsidy. The tax credits pay for up to HALF the capital cost of building out a solar or wind power project. That means these projects are not even close to making economic sense on their own terms.

In other words, our tax dollars buy really really expensive energy. Terrific.

So the Democrats somehow managed to give hundreds of millions in corporate welfare, raise taxes by almost $3/4 billion, and CUT K-12 education.

Think we need a change?

Does he listen to himself?

I just turned on the TV, and caught the end of the 60 Minutes Andy Rooney segment. It was another one of those pointless chats. He was talking about how much he likes cold days, because it feels good to keep warm.

Then he says he doesn't like air-conditioned air because it feels artificial, and says that he always smiles when he sees a label on a machine that says 'climate controlled."

He finishes:

"It isn't possible to control the climate. The climate goes its own way without worrying about what we want."

Now, I know Andy Rooney is a famous liberal. I would be shocked if he doesn't buy the whole global warming agenda lock stock and barrel. I wonder if he realizes what he said?