A "progressive" educator

While I was in California the Oregonian had a news story about a former Portland schoolteacher who won some award for teaching about social justice. His name is Bill Bigelow, and I could be more specific about the award he won if the Oregonian search utility was not so horrendous. (It was a feature story just a few days ago, and entering "bigelow" in the search engine doesn't cough it up.)

Anyway, I've known about this guy for a long time. In the proud tradition of "progressive education," he used his position as a "global studies" teacher in Portland School District to indoctrinate the little schoolchildren in his anti-capitalist viewpoint.

The interesting thing is that these people think they are doing nothing wrong, and so they openly discuss what and how they teach kids to be budding socialist/activists.

I first heard of this guy when I bought a book from Powells titled "Teaching for Social Justice." which was a collection of essays from public school teachers about how they go about promoting social justice in their classrooms.

The title of this book is offensive in and of itself - and it also reveals how little its authors understand the appropriate role of our public schools. They actually believe it is their privilege to use the schools to re-shape society according to their values. And so they find nothing particulary remarkable about openly proclaiming that they "teach for social justice."

How about teaching math and science?

Anyway, Bill Bigelow has a chapter in this book in which he describes one of his favorite lesson plans in his Global Studies classes.

He plops a Nike soccer ball on the table and tells the class to write a paragraph or two describing the ball. Of course, the students write physical descriptions of the ball, and he reads a couple of them outloud.

Then, he tells the class about a "deeper social reality associated with the ball." He explains all about sweatshops and 6 year old children stitching soccer balls in Pakistan and the evils of global capitalism that exploits third world laborers....

and then asks the students to "resee the ball," and again write a "description" of it. He tells them they can write a poem, or write from the ball's perspective, or anything else they want.

Magically, the students, thus "enlightened" by Bigelow, give him what he is looking for. Such as:

"Number one in moneymaking.
Number one in sweatshop, overworked, and underpaid labor.

Increasing prices of products.
Increasing the number of factories.

Killing new styles promoted on TV.
Killing Pakistani kids' lives producing those products.

Eager to be paid milions of dollars.
Eager to be paid to survive winters and summers."


Bigelow, thankfully, no longer works at Portland Public Schools. He took early retirement, enjoys his PERS pension, and works for an outfit called "Rethinking Schools," which tries to teach educators all over the United States how to do what he has been doing.

Terrific.

Great headline on the front page of the Oregonian

"Payday lenders lose interest in Oregon"

The heck you say? They "lose interest" when the do-gooders pass laws that make doing business unprofitable? Duh!

Talk about softpedalling the fact that the legislature basically euthanized a legal business, which by the Oregonian's own count has resulted, days after the laws took effect, in the closing of sixty stores. How many jobs did they kill?

Sure, there is something unseemly about the whole payday loan business. But the fact is, they are a source of liquidity for some people who have no other option, who might otherwise lose their lease or face some other significant difficulty if the source of quick credit is closed off to them.

But the purpose of this post isn't so much to debate the pros and cons of the payday lending business - it is to point out how the Oregonian constantly tries to obfuscate the reality of the effects of the policies they cheerlead.

To say payday lenders have "lost interest" is just laughable. Maybe they were trying to make some kind of cute double entendre, meaning they literally lost "interest" in the sense of the interest rate they could otherwise have charged.

In any event, why not be honest.

"Sixty stores close as new payday loan regulations take effect."

Haitus is over

I took a break from blogging during these mid-summer days, as I focused a heck of a lot more on summer baseball than on matters of politics. My son and I went to California for a week so he could play in a couple of baseball/college recruiting events.

He's entering his junior year in high school, and wants to play baseball at the highest level in college that his talent and skills will allow. That means there is only two more years for us to enjoy watching him play high school ball, and so we don't want to miss any of it.

That's why summer, for me, is far more about baseball than blogging. That said, I will be commenting again on the political goings on around here. But the break was nice .... it is not health to stay annoyed for such a sustained period of time.

Stranger than fiction

What the Beavers have done this year is almost unimaginable. Honestly - if you wrote this script it would get laughed out of Hollywood:

Reigning National champs lose 3 of their 4 top pitchers and 6 of their 8 position players to the draft, go 10-14 in their conference, finish 6th in the PAC-10, and barely get a bid to the 64-team NCAA post season, based on their good record in a strong non-conference games and a gutsy series win against a very strong UCLA team in the last series of the year.

To qualify for the World Series they would have to travel to Virginia, where the ACC champs, UVA, and the Big East champs, Rutgers stood in their way of advancing to the next level.
The Beavs beat both of them twice to advance.

But danger was ahead. The Beavers' bracket meant they would probably have to next go to Nashville to play the #1 seed in the country, Vanderbilt, who had the #1 draft pick, pitcher Mark Price.

But Michigan upset Vanderbilt. So the Beavs had to travel to Michigan, right? Nope! Michigan did not put in an application to host the "Super-regional" tournament, because they were renovating their stadium. So the best of three series would be played in Corvallis.

To say this was a lucky break is to significantly understate the reality of the situation. The difference in a three game college baseball series in the middle finals week between sleeping in your own bed and travelling across the country and playing in someone else's house is immense.
Michigan was a very good hitting ballclub, and in the first game, their pitcher almost threw a no-hitter! OSU had a freshman on the mound, who threw a brilliant game, but the Michigan pitcher's game was even better. The score was 0-0 in the bottom of the ninth, and not a single OSU batter got a hit.

One man walked, who got to second on a ground-out, and with two out, Joey Wong slapped a single to right field.

Here is where the serendipity strains even the smarmiest Hollywood producer. A runner on second will score from second base on a lot of singles. The third base coach’s job is to decide whether to send the runner to home or not. He judges based on a whole host of factors: where on the field the left fielder gets to the ball, whether his momentum is going right at the plate or at some oblique angle, what kind of speed the runner has, how big a secondary lead he got on the pitch, how hard the ball was hit (and therefore how fast it got to the left fielder,) how many outs there are, what the game situation is, and what he knows about how strong the left fielder’s arm is.

A rule of thumb I always use is – unless the ball is fielded deep, if the left field gets the ball at the same time the runner touches third, the third base coach holds the runner.

On this play, the hit was fielded in shallow left field, and the left fielder ran directly to it in line with home plate. All of his momentum was going straight to home. He got the ball slightly before the runner got to third base.

No way should that runner be sent. Unless … unless they knew something about this left fielder. Unless they knew that he couldn’t throw well because of a shoulder injury that he was not yet recovered from.

The third base coach sent him, and the throw was weak. It bounced twice before arriving late at home plate. The throw itself could not have been more than 150 feet. To put this in perspective, nearly every HIGH SCHOOL left fielder could make this throw with ease. The throw from home to second base is 127 feet, and catchers at the college level routinely make the catch and throw in 2.0 seconds. It takes the fastest runners about 3 point something to run from 3rd to home. Under normal circumstances, a runner sent home in that situation would be out by 8 feet.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. The Beavers are a team of destiny. The Baseball Gods decreed that the one hit the Beavers would get that day would happen with two out in the ninth inning with a man in scoring position, and it would be hit to the one guy in division one college baseball who could not make the routine throw to get the baserunner out.

And that one run would be enough to win the game, because the OSU freshman pitcher, who nine months before was pitching for his 200 student high school team in central Washington, shut out the big-hitting Michigan team for the first time all year.

Are you getting a sense for how improbable this title defense is? It’s even better than that. The Beavs’ pitching staff was worn out in the weekend in Virginia because they had to climb through the losers bracket after losing to Virginia in 13 innings in the second game. One day in Virginia tournament was rained out, and so the combination of the extra innings game plus the extra games they had to play due to being in the losers bracket combined with the extra day from the rainout meant that the Michigan series would start before the Beavers’ pitching staff would have enough rest. They really needed some another day or so.

The Baseball Gods delivered. The first game against Michigan was supposed to be Saturday. But that was Rose Festival Parade weekend. ‘Nuff said. No game. Another day of rest. (I drove to Corvallis with my son, drove back.)

So they played that first Michigan game Sunday, rather than Saturday. Monday, they sent Michigan home with a terrific pitching performance by Mike Stutes, the Beav’s #1 pitcher, whose dad is a good friend of mine. They were headed back to Omaha for the third straight year.

And now they are one win away from defending their national title. One win away from consecutive national championships.

They shocked the baseball world last year by being the only northern US school in fifty years to win the national title. They did it in the most improbable way – losing their first game, winning SIX STRAIGHT games that they had to win or go home (which had also never once been done in more than 50 years.)

Now, this Beavers team now simply has to win one of the next two games to REPEAT as national champions.

Incredible.

I don’t know if you are a Beavers fan, but I can say one thing for sure:

God is.

How to Destroy America

Many of you may have read this before. It's a speech that former Democrat governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm, gave to a stunned audience a couple years ago.

It reminds me of a famous line that came out of the "Nation at Risk" report about the education system in 1983, where they concluded:

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. "

The same thing applies to what the multiculturists are doing to America.

Here's Dick Lamm's speech. It is nothing short of chilling.

How to Destroy America

If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'

Here is how they do it.
1) Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way: 'The histories of bilingual and bi-cultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.

2) Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that the Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds.

We could make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: 'The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved! Not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.'

3) I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities.

4) Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school.

5) My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.' I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

6) My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity! Unity is what it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games.

A common enemy Persia threatened their liberty. Yet all these bonds were not strong enough to over come two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. Greece fell.

E. Pluribus Unum — From many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the 'pluribus' instead of the 'Unum,' we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.

7) Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits ~ make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'x! xenophobes' halt discussion and debate.

Having made America a bilingual/bicultural country, having established multi-culturism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of 'Victimology,' I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra: That because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good. I would make every individual immigrant symmetric and ignore the cumulative impact of millions of them.

8) Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

A tenured radical

Today I was surfing the net, doing some research for my next BrainstormNW column, and I ran across this education professor's web site.

Incredible that taxpayers pay for this kind of dolt to indoctrinate those who would teach our kids. Read his site - find anything there about teaching kids to read or write or do math? Nope.

For him, being a teacher is all about changing the world, eradicating capitalism and establishing "social jusice." Can't be bothered with teaching kids to read when we have a higher calling.

On one level it is very amusing. The guy is almost a caricature of a moist-eyed, dreamy ivory tower professor. But on another level I just get angry. Guy's like this pervade the colleges of education. They have a virtual monopoly on the supply of people certified to teach in our K-12 classrooms. They act as something of an ideological screen for entry into the teaching profession.

I read a few of his writings and wondered: if this guy wasn't employed by a state institution, safely ensconsed in a tenured position, what would he possibly be qualified to do for a living?

Oregonian hypocrisy

The Oregonian's business section is so often laugh-out-loud funny because it puts on display for all to see their complete ignorance of and hostility to the private sector.

Like the day a few months ago when the global stock markets were down sharply - the biggest one day drop in years - and the across the page, above the fold headline on the business page shouted that the metro area real-estate listing database now indicated which houses had "green" features!

Well, Friday we were treated to another typical Oregonian business story. The paper took aim at one of Oregon's few recent economic success stories, and tried hard to find something negative about it - Bandon Dunes.

Bandon Dunes is the world class golf resort that a Chicago businessman Mike Keiser built on the southern Oregon coast. It is truly a marvel. People travel from all over the world to play these courses, that have rocketed into the top ten lists of great courses.

Keiser took undeveloped coastal property in a remote, economically depressed area and turned it into a world-class resort that people literally travel from every area of the globe to come to. He singlehandedly revived the economy of the southern Oregon coast.

The Oregonian's take: "Subsidies underpin Bandon golf resort."

The article goes to great length to identify ways in which Bandon is being subsidized by the taxpayer. What is funny is that right up front, they acknowledge that the entire construction phase was done with no subsidy whatsoever. The subsidy they find is all for infrastructure that the local area wants to create to handle the crush of visitors that want to come to the resort!

So the airport upgrades, which is paid for by a tax on commercial flights and by lottery bonds, is mentioned. But the funniest part - where they are REALLY showing their vigilance as tax-subsidy hawks - is where they try to impute the tax treatment subsidy of corporate jets that fly to Bandon and pin that on the resort as a subsidy!

Huh? Ok here's their argument, as far as I can understand it. Corporate titans who get flown by their Gulfstream to Bandon don't have to pay their companies back for the cost of the travel. Rather, the value of the trip is added to their compensation. The Oregonian claims that results in a $12 million subsidy from taxpayers, which, presumably results from essentially being able to pay for the trip with before-tax dollars.

That is really scraping the bottom of the barrell to make a case that the resort is highly subsidized. That is like saying we subsidize Office Max because when I drive there to buy office supplies, I can deduct my mileage cost.

What makes it even more laughable is that I've never seen a similar article by the Oregonian scrutinizing the subsidy on other developments where the subsidy might be just a little more direct. For instance: South Waterfront!

Bandon Dunes was built with no subsidy at all and is a fantastically successful enterprise that has created jobs, opportunity and economic vitality in a depressed area of the state.

South Waterfront is being built at huge public expense, and has already failed with regards to its central economic premise - attracting a biotech industry to Portland. Yet the Oregonian never once writes an article scrutinizing the billions in public subsidy thrown down the rathole to feed Homer-The-Rat.

Unbelievable.

Del Monte raid

There's one angle of the whole illegal immigration issue that the amnesty crowd such as the Oregonian editors and Mayor Tom Potter never seem to mention.

In the Del Monte raid news accounts and the followup editorial in the Oregonian, everyone was quick to mention that the folks who trafficked in fake federal documents should indeed be arrested. "That's a crime," said Potter, and the Oregonian.

Well, guess what, guys? Using a stolen Social Security number is also a crime. And I'll bet that 100% of the people arrested at Del Monte had fake SS#'s. Isn't that a crime?

What would happen if I gave a fake SS# to my employer? Would they just look the other way?

OK, I realize this will be perhaps the most unpopular post I ever made to this blog.

Honestly, I understand. I didn't want to wipe the beautiful visage of my daughter off the top of my blog either. That's one reason I've not posted anything since.

I mean really - put yourself in my shoes. People wander to the blog from one place or another and see my daughter's picture. They'll probably hang out awhile. I'd rather look at her than read my stuff too. But the blog must go on. Sorry. I gotta bump her picture down.

So,what is so darn important as to take precedence over my beautiful daughter? Nothing. This post won't bring up another topic - that will be for tomorrow.

This post is just to warn everyone that you will no longer be greeted on the front page by the beautiful face of Jessica when you come.

To Jessica

Today my daughter Jessica graduates from high school.

Yesterday, she was in diapers. It's a cliche to say how quickly it goes - I guess cliches are cliches because they are true. That one is certainly true.

Seventeen years ago, when Jessica WAS in diapers and we were expecting our second child, we decided to get off the treadmill of our big city finance industry Chicago lifestyle and move back to my native Portland so we could have a more family-oriented life. We literally quit our jobs, sold our house, and moved. No job waiting for me here. Mary wanted to be a full time mom. I figured I'd be able to make a living somehow.

We left behind in Chicago a life pathway of almost certain wealth - but a lifestyle which made it 100% certain that we'd barely see our kids on weekdays, would have full time nannies, and would not be there for baseball games and choir concerts and all the other associated youth activities that accumulate to make up childrens' childhoods.

It was an easy call.

Their childhood goes fast enough as it is. You can't slow it down, but you CAN make sure that you don't miss it. I will never, ever regret our decision to quit our jobs in Chicago. My beautiful and talented daughter is reward enough.

Jessica is a dream. Years ago she decided that she was going to make things easy on mom and dad. All the prototypical adolescent girl difficulties - the defiant stage, the eye rolling stage, the boy crazy stage - she decided all that wasn't for her.

She is a musician - her voice is her instrument. Ever since she was small, she sang all the time. We could tell, even with our own amateur ears, that she had talent. She sang in school choirs, in the Portland Symphonic Girls Choir, took voice lessons, did singing competitions. I love to hear her singing spontaneously around our house - I will miss hearing it when she is off at school this fall.

She won a $1000 scholarship in a singing contest two years ago, where the three girl final was judged by audience applause at PGE Park during a Rose Festival event. She sang twice at the Rose Garden to kick off KXL's "Talk Fest" events, as I stood backstage with Tony Snow, watching her lovely face on the big screen video feeds that bookended the stage. She sang many solos with her various choirs.

I was able to be there for virtually all of them.

Woody Allen once said that 90% of success in life is showing up each day. I think that is very true about parenting. Let's face it - none of us really know what we are doing. We are just winging it, dealing with all the various issues, situations, conflicts and decisions by making day-to-day judgments about what seems right. Showing up - being there - doesn't take any particular genius, but it just might be the most important part of parenting.

There isn't any magic formula. Great parents can have kids who stray. Lousy parents can have great kids. Bottom line, we do what we can, and we are all hoping we get lucky.

Well, my wife and I got lucky. But we did show up every day.

To my daughter: Jessica, you are the light of my life. You are beautiful in every way. I am more proud of you than I can tell you. You bring joy to everyone you know.

You graduate today, and at the end of the summer, you'll start a new chapter in your life, largely removed from your mom and me. We are in no way anxious for that to start, but the job of a parent is to work your way out of a job. It is bittersweet, however, because we like this job!

Your talents and spirit will take you wherever you want to go, and I am eager to watch your journey. Wherever it takes you, whatever you do, your mom and I will still show up every day.

Hard to kill a Beaver

Update: 12:15PM

Beavers Win!!!


If you're not following the Oregon State Beavers baseball team, you should be, because it is one of the best good news stories to come out of Oregon in a long time.

Last year's improbable national championship was incredible enough. But that team lost nine players to the Major League Draft, and all the smart people thought it would be a rebuilding year for the Beavs. In a pre-season poll of the top forty teams, OSU was not even listed.

Then they ran out and won about 25 of their first 30 games, getting ranked as high as second in one poll.

During Pac-10 league play, they stumbled. But a gutsy road series win against a good UCLA team in the last weekend of the season secured them a berth in the regionals, which is at UVA.

The playoffs work like this: there are 16 regional sites, each with 4 teams who play a double elimination tournament to get the field down to 16 teams. The next weekend, those 16 teams are matched up into 8 three game series, and the winner of those 8 series go to the College World Series in Omaha.

This weekend the Beavers (who were seeded #3 in the four team regional at UVA) beat a good Rutgers team, then lost a marathon 13 inning game to UVA. That put them in the losers bracket, where in order to win the regional, they would have to beat the winner of the game between the two first round losers, then beat UVA TWICE.

The first two of those games were supposed to happen Sunday, but it rained all day, so the team had to sit around. They played them yesterday. They dispensed with Rutgers again, then in the afternoon came back from a 3-0 deficit in the 8th inning to take the lead 5-3 and win the game.

That forced the final game, which starts about an hour and a half from the time I write this.

This team showed so much heart yesterday. Their pitching staff is weary, but the team just won't go down easy. Just like last year in the College World Series when they won SIX elimination games on their way to the national title. That had never been done before.

If they win today, they will make it to the "Super-Regional" round for the third straight year. And the good news is that the series will be in Corvallis! That itself is serendipitous: The Beavs thought they would have to go throught the #1 team in the country, Vanderbilt, at the Super-Regional. But Vandy got upset by Michigan, and Michigan did not put in a bid to the NCAA to host the Super- Regional, so it goes the Beavs!

Think how key that is: not only do they NOT have to play the #1 team in the country at their place, but they get to host the series!

Starting to look like another Cinderella story - but can the reigning national champs be a Cinderella story?

Win or lose today, Coach Pat Casey has established OSU as one of the elite college baseball programs in the country. Not an easy thing for a northern school to do. Better yet- he's done it with a lot of northwest talent.

It's a great story, and it's great for Oregon.

Distraction

I've been distracted from blogging for awhile, because this time of year I have so much fun watching my son play baseball. He is a sophomore at Lake Oswego High School, and plays catcher.

Their season just ended in the second round of the state playoffs, where they lost 4-2 to North Medford (who will play in the finals this Saturday.)

This picture is his second at-bat in that last game. He hit this pitch - a high curve on an 0-2 count - for a double to left field.

Summer = Baseball

I didn't see my choice listed

Over on Hillary's official campaign website there is a contest to vote for Hillary's campaign theme song.

I don't see my choice.

Maybe we can do a write in campaign.

What he learned in school

Did you see the story about the graffiti artist on the front page of the "In Portland" section on today's Oregonian? He can't restrain himself from tagging every building he sees, so he is going to jail for a couple years.

Explaining how he justifies defacing private property with his spray paint, he said:

I was taught in school how buildings produce pollution and damage the land. So painting them is no concern for me."

He can probably barely read, but he has the environmental agenda down pat.

So much for the consensus

Looks as if a whole slew of climate scientists and researchers are changing sides on the man-made global warming question.

Take a look at this list, just the tip of the iceberg of the many scientists who bought into the alarmist side of things, only to see that the science is simply not there, so they have become skeptics. It's quite a list of heavy hitters - I can't wait to read how each and every one of them was seduced by big oil money.

This of course won't stop the shrillness we hear from the Al Gore crowd - if anything it will get worse as they try to drown out the growing opposition.

The O helps Bradbury secure speaking arrangements

In the Science section of today's Oregonian there's a full-page story with color pictures telling us what a great guy Secretary of State Bill Bradbury is for touring the state giving Al Gore's global warming propaganda.

The story itself is precisely what the Oregonian has been offering for years now: one-sided, agenda driven, and almost wholly without news value.

The centerpiece of the story is a picture of a laughing Bradbury on stage, with a huge blue earth on a screen in the background. The picture is surrounded by a list of all the places that Bradbury has given the presentation, and then a helpful caption telling us how we, too, can book Bradbury for our group.

Of course what is missing is any real critical analysis, perhaps of why our Secretary of State is spending his time doing this in the first place. Is this what he was elected to do? It would be interesting to at least ask the question.

The money quote from Bradbury, talking about opposition to the global warming agenda: "What is it that people really want to refute? I'm mystified..."

Oh, gee, I don't know Bill. Maybe the fact that you and Al Gore are trying to scare people with over-hyped cataclysmic predictions so we will accept a draconian controls on energy consumption so that government types like you can control things?

Maybe the fact that every key point of the presentation you are giving has been refuted in the scientific literature, including the claim that CO2 is actually at record highs in the first place?

Of course we can't expect our daily newspaper to really do any good faith investigation of these things. No, their idea of balanced reporting is to quote Lars Larson.

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky. It's the day after election day - otherwise I am sure this would have been front page "news."

Election Day

I opened my ballot this weekend to cast my vote. After scanning it, I realized that there was absolutely no reason to vote this time around.

I'm usually very conscientious - I may have missed a vote here or there over the years, but I almost always exercise my franchise. But this time around there really was no reason to do it. It would have been a waste of 39 cents.

I live just outside of Portland in unicorporated Multnomah County. My ballot had a grand total of two contested races, both for Multnomah County ESD. Every other race - local school board, fire district, water district, etc. - was either blank or had one candidate.

It simply doesn't matter who in on the Multhomah ESD board. ESD's shouldn't exist in the first place as a seperately funded governmental entity with an elected board. The board position is simply a stepping stone into elected office for wannabes, or a place for busybodies to feel as if they have some power. I know zippo about any of the candidates and there is no reason at all to spend any time to learn about them, because the ESD board position has no policy-setting impact at all.

So, for the first time in my life, I decided NOT to vote.

How to be the toast of the Oregonian

Did you catch the not-so-subtle propaganda in the Saturday Oregonian, in the nauseating article about the Willamette University graduate whose legacy at the school is the volunteer bike repair shop she got started on campus?

The article breathlessly reports how the young lady wants to change everybody's lifestyles so that they don't use cars. And her aspiration is to go work for a local government so she can do so much good using the coercive powers of government to change people's behavior.

From the article:
Selser wants to make mass transit -- buses, trains, streetcars, subways -- sexy enough to make Americans drive less. If that doesn't sound sexy, listen to Selser.

"It's so much more than putting a (transit) line there. It has to be planned well. There have to be workplaces along the lines. You have to make the stops attractive. . . .

"It needs to be a lifestyle change. For people to change their lifestyles, they need to have the infrastructure."

Her post-college aspiration?

She would love to work for the city of Eugene or the Lane Transit District, "where I can actually start doing something," she says.

I shudder to think what it means for this young woman to be "doing something."

Can you imagine the Oregonian ever writing such a fluff piece about a young college graduate whose aspiration is to start, say, a manufacturing company and employ people?

The house of cards revealed

The global warming hypothesis is that increasing CO2 levels causes increasing temperature. The IPCC says that average CO2 concentrations have risen from about 280 ppm to 385 ppm. All their models predicting catastrophic results of warming use the 280 PPM as the base CO2 level.

But wait a minute - what if the average pre-industrial CO2 level was higher than 280 ppm? A new study shows that the IPCC faked the data by cherry picking the CO2 data they got from the various ice core samples.

The real pre-industrial level is at least 50 ppm higher, and there were three periods since the year 1800 when CO2 concentrations were higher than they are today!

Uh, this pretty much decimates the whole anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

Is $700K higher than $0?

The Portland School District closed the Smith Elementary School last year, and the building has stood vacant ever since. It's a georgeous facility in a great little SW Portland neighborhood.

Parents whose children went to Smith decided to start their own chater school. Portland denied the proposal, but they appealed to the state, and a week ago the State Boarad of Education approved the school.

The charter school made an offer to the district to lease part of the vacant school building for just under $700K over five years. The district rejected the offer as "not financially sufficient."

Huh? They are getting nothing from the property now, and they have to still maintain it. Another rationale was the bureaucratic runaround that they've given for years: they want vacant space on hand as they see how all their recent school reconfigurations hash out.

This is the same song and dance the district has done virtually since the charter school law passed. While the district is closing schools, charter schools are opening, yet the district refuses to lease any of the vacant school facilities to the charter schools.

The public should be furious. The district should be required to GIVE the schools to the charter organizations. These are public school facilities paid for by the public for the purpose of educating public school kids. Charter schools are public schools, and their students are public school students.

By what moral standard does the district let a facility sit vacant rather than allow it to be used for the purpose that the public paid for and built it?

I have asked this direct question to current board members and to Vicki Phillips, and none of them could answer it. Truly, there is no answer, other than the obvious:
The district views charters as competition, and they don't want to help their competitor. It has nothing - zero - to do with the kids. They could care less about the kids.

The back story of how Kulongoski got re-elected

I heard this story from someone who is in position to know....

During the governor race, shortly after the primary, when Ron Saxton was looking very strong, the public employee unions had a little pow-wow with the Governor.

Remember, they backed Jim Hill in the primary, so peturbed they were about Kulongoski leaving the plantation on the PERS reforms and the pay freeze for state workers.

They said to the governor: We want to support you, but we don't trust you. We have a $3 million check here for you, but this is the way it's gunna be - we run the show. When you win, we put our guys in place and you do nothing without their approval. [This, of course, is a paraphrase.]

And that is how we got Chip Terhune and Tim Nesbitt as the top dogs in the new administration. They call all the shots, because that is the deal the Governor accepted.

So now, the unions directly run the executive branch of Oregon state government, and the Democrats run both houses of the legislature.

God have mercy on us.

Good news on SB 621

It appears as if, at least for now, the union-backed bill that would have significantly harmed the charter school movement in Oregon is dead.

In its original form, SB 621 would have required all teachers in charter schools to be members of the union and licensed by the state. In addition, the bill restricted how many students could cross district boundaries to attend a charter school (a way to stifle the competitive effect of charters) and it would have capped, at 10%, the number of students in any district who could attend charters.

In the Senate Education Committee hearings, charter school supporters objected to all of these provisions. The Chair, Senator Walker, listened to the reasoning behind the objections, and got the OEA to withdraw most of the offending provisions of the bill.

The part that survived was the teacher certification requirement, although it was scaled back from 100% to 65% (charters are now required to have 50% of their teachers hold a state license.)

Senator Kruse, who sits on the committee, was able to get a minority report out along with the bill. The minority report kept the licensure requirement at 50% and kept some other stuff in the bill that was acceptable to everyone.

The bill was sent to the Senate floor last week, but instead of getting voted on, it kept getting held over to the next day - a sure sign that they were having a hard time lining up enough votes to pass it. Three times it was held over, and yesterday it was sent back to committee - which, at this stage of the session, means it is likely dead.

There are a few very interesting elements to this:

1) Charter schools are now in the mainstream of public education in Oregon. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. If the teachers union is not able to muster enough votes on the Senate Floor, with a 19-11 D/R advantage, to pass a relatively modest re-regulation of charters, that means that Democrats no longer consider charter schools to be a partisan issue.

Why the change? My guess is that most of these legislators have charters in their districts, and know that the people in them are hardly the right wing. Most charters are run by liberals/Democrats! And that is wonderful. I have personally assisted on many charter school projects that have a progressive theme as part of their founding principals. So I think that Democrat legislators see that charters are not a partisan issue, they are an economic issue for an interest group. And they were unwilling to turn their backs on these schools, even at the behest of this economic interest group.

2) This marks the coming of age of the charter school movement as a political force in its own right. With 70 schools and 8,000 students, a fairly large army of foot soldiers can be assembled when legislation is proposed that puts them in peril. For the first time this session, these soldiers were mustered. We filled hearing rooms and overflow rooms, and we filled e-mail boxes. We rallied at the capitol with 500 screaming kids. These voices were heard.

3) The Democrats in the Senate are not robotron union shills. This is really good news. I think the argument of "what problem is this bill trying to solve?" made sense to them, and there were not enough of them satisfied with the answer the union gave.

4) Senator Vicki Walker, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, is a thoughtful, reasonable, and honest person. She listened to testimony by opponents of the bill and made changes to the bill to correct problems that the testimony highlighted.

Although I still opposed the bill after the changes, because it consitituted a net loss for charters, the fact that Sen. Walker treated the issue with such fairness and responsiveness needs to be pointed out. She is nobody's tool and nobody's fool. She is tough, fair minded, and has a maverick streak in her that I really appreciate.

Though I disagree with her politically on most issues, I have a ton of respect for her, and personally, I like her very much.


Lastly - nothing is truly over until sine die. So even though this bill might be dead, that doesn't mean something similar might pop up in the waning days of the session. So we can breathe a sigh of relief for now, but until that gavel comes down, there will be no relaxing.

The "How Dare They" campaign

I listened to a good part of the floor debate on HB 3540-A, which asks voters to completely gut Measure 37.

I won't go into all the ways in which the bill is a radical departure from the intent of M37. Others have done that in a comprehensive fashion, far better than I could.

But the Democrats, who voted unanimously for the bill on the House floor, are claiming that the bill is a "clarification" and a "fix" for M37. What a pantload.

The only thing they are fixing is an artificial problem they caused while trying to torpedo the measure. The Attorney General has decided that, unlike virtually any other development right a landowner has, the M37 rights do not survive transfer of the property. So a landowner who files a M37 claim can't sell the property until the development on the claim is finished.

Why would this be? If a landowner files for and is granted a variance to a land-use rule, it survives transfer. Same with a conditional use permit. Why would a M37 claim be treated any differently?

Duh - because the ruling elite of this state want to do anything they can to stop Measure 37, and if that means cheating, just like they did when Measure 7 was thrown out in court in a conspiracy between the Governer and the AG's office, so be it.

So with great fanfare, the Democrats all talked on the floor of how the bill "fixes" the transferability problem. Gee thanks.

Of course it also exempts Metro rules from M37 claims. You know, the Metro that recently put an environmental overlay on the region that said all treed areas were protected. And the Metro that cooked up the "Healthy Streams Initiative," that restricted what you can do with your property if you live within 200 feet or so of a stream.

Here's the good part of all of this: The Democrats have overreached big time.

There is an article in the Oregonian today that anticipates the campaign for this referral. It says both sides will run a campaign that tries to "tug at voters' heartstrings."

Wrong. The campaign to defeat this measure should not debate the issue - we already had that vote twice and won it both times handily. This campaign should be a referendum on a legislature that will not listen to the voters, and is so arrogant that even after voters tell them they want something TWICE, at an increasing volume, they give voters the middle finger and ask them one more time.

If I was designing this campaign, I would find all sorts of clever ways to make that point, and do it in a way that pits the voters against the legislators who made this happen. My imagination spins with how many clever and pointed ways yo can get this across in radio or TV ads.

Call it the "How Dare They" campaign.

HOW DARE THEY ask you one more time if you really want Oregon's land use system to be fair.
HOW DARE THEY stick their finger in the eyes of 1 million Oregon voters.
HOW DARE THEY tell Oregon voters how stupid we are.

Etc.

And the good part of it is, there will be a spillover effect on lots of legislative seats with an incumbent democrat whose district voted 65-70% in favor of Measure 37.

This could be the ditch they die in.

Why is it still OK to be a Marxist?

In the shadow of May Day, the Portland Tribune publishes a story about the work of a proud Portland Marxist who has just published a book that chronicles the radical movement in Portland circa 1930s.

Whenever I read some puff piece on a local Marxist/communist (which really are not all that uncommon) I wonder why is it that it is still considered socially acceptable to be associated with an ideology that resulted in the government-sanctioned murder of 100 million souls?

Can you imagine how outraged people would be if any newspaper published a glowing story about "Portland's last Nazi?" Can you imagine joking comments about how one of our prominent local colleges is a bastion of Nazis, and indoctrinates students in that ideology?

Well, when it comes to government sanctioned murder, the Nazi's were just pikers compared to the Communists. So why is it still considered OK to be a Marxist? Why is being a Marxist still considered to be quaint and charming? It is the most murderous ideology ever to darken the globe, yet guys like the one in the Tribune story are feted, not discredited.

Marxism/communinism/socialism are all collectivist ideologies. The United States was founded on the principle of individualism. The history of the 20th century can be best understood as a near 100 year clash between these two world views.

One resulted, wherever it prevailed, in totalitarian societies, devastating poverty, and mass murder by the governemnt. The other resulted, wherever it prevailed, in wealth and prosperity and freedom of its people.

Yet for some reason the people who populate and control the cultural institutions in our country - the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and both K-12 and higher education are overwhelmingly collectivist in world-view.

So the collectivist worldview gets perpetuated and celebrated, and the monumental disaster that the ideolgy has brought wherever it took root is covered up.

Read Matt Wingard's piece today at Oregon Catalyst for a good analysis of how and why this happens.

It is outrageous - and I think people who still adhere to the foundational values and principles of this country - individual, rather than collective, rights -- should be far more vocal in pointing out the disaster that was the communist/collectivist ideology.

It is about time Marxism was discredited as badly as Nazism.

Maybe teachers ARE underpaid!

After all, at almost $70K, I'd probably have to do this too.

Economic Illiteracy at the Oregonian: What's new?

You probably read the recent news about Oregon's lagging per-capita income. Despite a strong national economy, Oregonians' wages just aren't all that robust, running at 93% of the national average.

The Oregonian today explained why this has happened, and managed, in their explanation, to avoid entirely any mention of business environment, regulations, capital formation, taxes, transportation, or anything else related to encouraging and growing the private sector.

No, viewed through the lens of the Oregonian's editorial board, the reason wages have lagged is because troglodyte Oregon voters have repeatedly failed to sufficiently fund government programs (except jails, which they think shouldn't be funded.)

They trot out all the usual bugaboos as causes of the low per-capita income, and use the list to scold us for being so short sighted: Measure 5, Measure 47 and 50, Measure 11, lack of spending on higher ed and community colleges, and lack of government funded job training, plus their holy grail: our refusal to add a sales tax.

Nowhere in the editorial is there a SINGLE mention of anything that has to do with business environment. They didn't swerve anywhere close to discussing what Oregon just might be doing to discourage high-wage jobs from being created here.

It's amazing. Can they truly be such socialists?

Phillips out at PPS: one step ahead of the posse

When I heard that Vicki Phillips is leaving Portland, I decided to look back at the BrainstormNW column I wrote about her when she got here.

I've pasted it below.

Schooltalk Column, BrainstormNW Magazine, September, 2004


Portland School District’s new superintendent, Vicki Phillips, started last month, taking the reigns of the state’s largest, and most troubled school district. Can she succeed?

We’ve seen this movie before. It plays in school districts throughout the country every few years, and the story line goes something like this:

School district fraught with severe problems, some not of its making. Low minority achievement, lack of discipline in schools, out of control costs, chronic budget crises, arrogant, unaccountable bureaucracy, and a teachers union more concerned about preserving pay and benefits than teaching the kids.

Incumbent superintendent (hired amid great fanfare after national search and glowing media reports) skulks away after a few short years of missteps, political bungling and special interest infighting. No discernible improvements to schools.

After nationwide search, new leader is identified and hired (amid great fanfare and glowing media accounts. Repeat from above.

The movie is shown so often it’s almost a cinematic classic, not just in Portland but in urban districts all around the country. The average tenure of large district superintendents is under three years.

Three years to realize that the new superintendent can’t do the job that the last superintendent couldn’t do. Three years for changes the new superintendent makes to create enough enemies to erode his support. Three years for high hopes to follow the inevitable path to disappointment, frustration, and eventually, disgust.

The irony is that every time the movie starts, the establishment audience sits on the edge of their chairs as if the ending is in doubt.

“We have high hopes…” said the Oregonian of Portland’s new chief. The city, they say “is ready for Phillips to lift the schools up.” Sounds much like what they said about Ben Canada, and Jack Bierworth before him. Both failures.

Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the model is wrong?

School districts are like horse drawn carriages. Perfectly functional for a 19th century society. Pretty much anybody could be trained to steer one. They moved slowly, but the roads weren’t good enough for high speed anyway.

But just as a horse drawn carriage is the wrong model of a vehicle for a 21st century road system, so are school districts the wrong model for a 21st century education system.

If you put a horse drawn carriage on the interstate, would it go 70 miles an hour? Of course not. The model is wrong. It is structurally incapable of such speed. So why do we expect school districts, a 19th century model, to meet the needs of today’s children?

Indulge me in taking the analogy a step further.

When the horse drawn carriage doesn’t go 70 miles an hour, what should we do? Should we fire the driver and find a better, more inspirational one? That, in essence, is what we do in our holy grail quest for a superintendent who can solve the problems of large school districts.

The simple fact is it doesn’t much matter who is “driving” the school district. A school district, as a model for how we deliver education services, can no more fulfill the demands of a 21st century society than can a horse drawn carriage go 70 MPH on the freeway. It is structurally incapable. It is the wrong “model.”

What’s wrong about it? For starters, the “model” depends on an utter disdain for the needs and choices of the customer – the parents and the kids. Don’t believe me? Go tell your superintendent that you want your child to attend a public school in a neighboring school district. See what answer you get. Bureaucrats have veto power over parents’ choices.

Second, the “model” uses a political process (majority vote, winner take all) to make decisions that should never be made in a political arena. For instance – curriculum. School boards use a political process to choose which math curriculum to use, and the decision usually applies to each and every school in the district on a one-size-fits-all basis.

Political science 101: over time, political processes become dominated by concentrated interests at the expense of diffuse interests. In the micro political arena of school districts, teachers unions and ideological advocates (such as Planned Parenthood, gay rights groups, etc) find it easy to prevail. This means critically important policies are decided for reasons that have little to do with the academic interests of the children.

The result is a school system that is run for the benefit of adults rather than children. This is an inevitable by-product of our school district “model.”

That’s why I’m always amused when I see the movie start all over again, as it is in Portland. Don’t get me wrong – I wish Vicki Phillips well. I’m sure she’s a remarkable person, a good leader, an accomplished educator.

I’m equally certain that none of this matters. She can’t make the buggy go 70 MPH. The model is wrong.

Our hungry governor

Right on cue, the Oregonian splashed Gov. Kulongoski's food stamp publicity stunt all over the front page, making the point that it is hard to feed yourself off the $21 a week you get from food stamps.

The article talked about all the "working poor" who can barely feed themselves and so are taking advantage of food stamps to supplement their food budget. So I guess the message here is that we are supposed to jack up food stamp programs to feed people better. I have a better idea:

Oregon has one of the most regressive income tax systems in the nation. The 9% income tax rate kicks in below $10,000. Two adults making minimum wage pay about $1,200 a year in Oregon state taxes.

If the Governor was really interested in helping the working poor, he would cut taxes for the working poor by raising the level the 9% tax rate kicks in.

But that would mean less money for programs like food stamps. He'd rather tax the poor into worse poverty, then make them dependent on the government by encouraging them into public assistance programs.

And the Democrats are the ones who care about the little people?

I'm pretty sure this isn't legal

This story out of Baker, Oregon says several restaurants are dropping prices for women, because females make less than males in the workplace.

Of course this is a big PR stunt, on the heels of the annual release of the pay equity report that is always put out by the American Association of University Women, which is a feminist advocacy group.

But can a business discriminate in pricing based on gender? I don't think so. There are certain bases upon which price discrimination is allowed - age, for one. But I am guessing (I don't have the time to investigate - any lawyer know the answer?) that gender is not one of the allowed attributes for legal price discrimination.

That said, the canard that women make less than men make for the same job is so bogus that I can't believe people still buy it. The AAUW study said that women make 77% of what men make, but when they adjust for things such as hours worked, different career choices, sick days, etc, that the "residual" pay differential is 12%. Other studies that looked at the same thing showed a much smaller differential - 3% or so.

It is absolutely true that on a raw average, women make less than men. There are legitimate reasons for this. Men, because they don't generally plan on leaving the workforce during child bearing years, tend to more often choose careers that require upfront investment in their own human capital, which results in high income. That type of investment yields far less return if the person leaves the workplace for 5-10 years, as is the norm for women.

There are lots of other reasons for the pay differential, also mostly associated with the fact (which feminists, to their everlasting ire, have never successfully changed) that women are the ones who bear children.

The pay studies try to estimate the precise effect of all the different reasons for why women make less than men, and whatever differential remains unexplained is attributed to discrimination. This residual varies study to study, but is actually quite small.

That is why the AAUW doesn't say "Women make 12% less than men." That isn't as dramatic. They always trumpet the raw average, which, by the way, is up from 59% in 1962.

Sorry, ladies, you are not a victim here.

Sustainability and renewable energy

It is now obvious that the "sustainability movement" is basically a ruse.

On the one hand, we have politicians and gullible media folks who don't understand economics being taken advantage of by businessmen and investment bankers who understand economics all too well.

The governor wants a law passed that requires half Oregon's energy to come from so-called "renewable" sources. Of course this does not include hydropower, which is the cleanest and most renewable of sources imaginable.

To meet the goal would require long term investment in all the alternative (read: more expensive) energy sources. This will without question raise Oregon's energy costs relative to other states.

Why would PGE and Goldman Sachs be pushing this? Follow the money. An op-ed piece in the Oregonian today pulls back the curtain on this a little bit.

Goldman Sachs is trying to get the alternative energy technologies that they have invested in to be mandated by states, so they make boatloads of money. It has nothing to do with the environment.

PGE likes the bill because it gets to add the costs of the new technology directly into their rates without going through the usual rate-setting processes at the PUC. Again, it has nothing to do with the environment.

The gullible economically illiterate legislature and media think this is wonderful. They don't understand that if something costs more, that means it consumed more of society's resources to produce it. So mandating more costly energy sources actually is LESS sustainable, not more.

Oh, but Rob, the difference is the pollution caused by the traditional sources. If you add the true cost of pollution, the renewable sources are actually LESS costly.

First, that simply is not true, or at the very least it has never been proven. Our air is not polluted. Hydro might kill some fish, but I can get Salmon for $3 a pound at Fred Meyer. Doesn't look like a shortage there.

All of these energy companies that are on the renewable energy bandwagon are simply angling for a competitive advantage by getting states to mandate energy production technology that they have already invested in.

Every time you see one of the British Petroleum commercials that ends with "BP - Beyond Petroleum," it would be well to realize that BP has allowed their oil pipeline and production infrastructure to erode and decay so badly while they invested in wind power and other fads, that they are in serious trouble as a company unless they can get laws passed mandating renewable energy sources.

In effect, they are looking for a government bailout. Again, it has zip to do with the environment.

Whenever you see utilities or other large businesses pushing for the stuff, know this: it is in thier financial interests. They are not being altruistic. What they are advocating will increase their profits at the expense of you and me.

Fred Thompson

The Weekly Standard has an in depth story about possible presidential candidate Fred Thompson.

I encourage everyone to read it, even though it is a bit long. It is based on a 4 hour interview that the reported did at Thompson's home. Thompson seems like a very real, common sense, genuine guy.

If he runs and campaigns as the guy this reporter interviewed, he has a real shot.

Good news for Gordo

Steve Novick announced today that he is running against Gordon Smith for the U.S. Senate. This is the best news Gordon Smith has had since the Democrats took over Congress.

(For those puzzled by that remark: The Democrat majority in the House might prevent Defazio and Blumenauer from running against him, as both have committee chair assignments they care about and might not give up.)

Steve Novick is not going to beat Gordon Smith. Sorry, all you Oregon Center for Public Policy socialists. I know you think he is oh-so-smart, and I know you love his lefty bonafides. But he does not have the stature (no pun intended) to be a legitimate candidate for the U.S. Senate.

A couple months ago Willamette Week gave Novick their cover story to write about why he wants to run against Gordon Smith. I was amazed that WW would do such a thing - actually allow a prospective candidate to write his own story!

Novick revealed in the story precisely why he can't and won't win: he really is nothing more than a smarter-than-average flamethrowing demagogue. That is his fatal flaw, and I have seen it in him time and again in various roles around the state capitol.

I remember the 2003 legislative session when he was the legislative director for Sup't Susan Castillo. Novick knew basically nothing about education policy, but that didn't stop him from testifying and putting his ignorance on display in the most colorful of ways.

One hearing he was arguing against my bill that would require the state to contract with a testing company for Oregon's achievement tests, rather than have Oregon bureaucrats re-create the wheel. Novick actually said, in an open hearing, on the record, cameras rolling:

"Mr. Kremer wants us to let big, evil testing corporations make our tests."

This is not a serious person. I don't care if he went to Harvard when he was twelve. I don't care if every lefty in Oregon thinks he is brilliant. Serious people don't say stuff like that.

If you read the Willamette Week article, it basically consisted of a running list of Gordon Smith's positions and votes, and how Novick would demagogue each.

I'm sure Novick would get 100% of the vote from the lefty/socialist crowd in Oregon, but thankfully that is not yet a majority statewide in Oregon. He'll find, if he actually goes through with this, that a U.S Senate campaign is for big boys.

Steve Novick is not, politically speaking, a big boy.

Please tell me they are kidding

The business section of the Oregonian had this story about a bill in the legislature to solve the "workplace bully" problem.

Just what we need - another law that helps disgruntled workers sue their employers. There is actually an organization in Washington called "The Workplace Bullying Institute" that is behind the bill.

This deserves all the ridicule that can be heaped upon it.

Virginia Tech

So it was revealed that the Virginia Tech shooter was on some kind of anti-depressant drug.

I hope this fact starts a conversation as to the known side effects of these powerful psychoactive drugs. I'm pretty sure that every one of the school shooters in the last decade were either on or had recently withdrawn from one of these drugs.

Data show that kids getting off some of these drugs have dramatically increased incidence of "suicide ideation."

I think people are far, far too casual about taking these drugs. In fact, it might be the one and only thing that I agree with Hillary Clinton on.

#42

Big day in Major League Baseball, the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

Virtually every ballgame today has some kind of recognition ceremony.

It is sad, 60 years later, that so few black youngsters play baseball. There is a lot of debate in baseball circles as to why it is that so few American black youth play baseball.

I don't think it is really much of a mystery. Baseball is a game, generally speaking, that passes from father to son. Fathers teach their sons to throw and hit, and are very involved all through the youth baseball years. Playing catch in the backyard, watching games on TV, teaching all the nuances of the game.

It is a sad fact that 70% of black children are born into fatherless homes. That statistic alone, I think, explains why more black kids are not involved in baseball.

Imus

I've never been a Don Imus fan. For some reason I never really got him. I guess the combination of name-calling shock jock and political talk show didn't make sense to me. I used to call the show: "I'm an ass in the morning."

When I heard what he said last week, I thought: "Par for the course." I mean - who is really surprised? He's been trafficking in that kind of stuff for years. I guess that is why I never really liked his show - I never thought it was particularly funny or entertaining when he would go off on a name calling tirade about someone he didn't like.

So, I won't particularly miss Don Imus.

But I have mixed feelings about how this whole episode played out. There are a lot of interesting facets to this episode, which I think is why it is such a big story.

First - the double standard. Rappers can say this kind of thing with impunity, but Imus gets fired. Are we just going to accept that black people can say things that white people cannot? If so, where does it end? Do rappers get a pass, when they retail in some of the most hostile and misogynistic lyrics imaginable. Where is the outrage from black leaders about the influence of this toxic genre?

Second, speaking of black "leaders," I for one am pretty tired of constantly seeing the racial spoils entrepreneurs capitalize on situations such as the Imus fiasco. Why do Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have any credibility or standing to be out front calling for Imus to be fired?

These two guys are nothing but race-baiters. They profit from fanning the flames of racial discord. Neither one wants racial harmony - that would disempower them. Their livelihood and political influence depends upon keeping blacks and whites in conflict.

Third, it is really interesting that this story broke concurrently with the Duke lacrosse players getting their charges dropped. Weren't Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson fanning those flames as well? Have they apologized to the lacrosse players?

I mean, who was harmed more, the Rutgers basketball team or the Duke lacrosse players? It's not even close.

So, should Imus have been fired? This came down to advertisers. They abandoned Imus, and that sealed his fate. I just wish the same would happen with rap music.

For the record, my radio station, KXL, dropped Imus immediately. They did not wait for six days to see which way the wind was blowing. That said, KXL ran Imus overnight, and there wasn't much money there in the first place.

What really bothers me about this whole thing has nothing to do with Imus. It has to do with the sorry state of race relations in America, and the fact that this will do nothing to improve it.

When black people have a different standard of behavior than white people, and when white people can lose their livelihood when they make the mistake of thinking there isn't any double standard, that is not a recipe for racial healing.

Second,

Sam Adams co-hosting my show this Sunday

Commissioner Sam Adams will be subbing for Marc Abrams on my show this Sunday. Tune in to AM 750 from 9-11 AM.

He's been in the news a lot lately, most recently for spearheading the Burnside/Couch Couplet vote through city council yesterday.

I really like Commissioner Adams, although he and I don't agree on much. He is an interesting guy, and I really appreciate that he is willing to engage, explain his views, and take the slings and arrows for his positions.

We should have a good time Sunday in what I hope is a free-ranging and informative conversation.

Tune in!

OHSU Bait and Switch

Remember the rationale for the huge public subsidy in the South Waterfront District? OHSU's President Peter Kohler talked of "10,000 new biotech jobs."

Biotech was the next big thing. All the planners knew it. Biotech companies were going to line up to headquarter their research, development and manufacturing facilities on prime urban waterfront real estate. But only if there was a tram....

Five years later, the "vision" is now just a little different. Now that the deal is done, the urban renewal scam completed, the money allocated for the buildout, what is the new vision?

Condos.

Oh, and OHSU campus buildings.

What happened to the 10,000 biotech jobs that the Oregonian hyped at every opportunity as the reason we needed to spend a half a billion or so in public subsidy, draining money from police, fire, schools and other core public services?

It takes longer to get biotech ideas from patent to marketable product than for the standard high-tech products, Robertson said. That wasn't known as recently as five years ago, said Robertson, who became OHSU president last year.

That wasn't known five years ago? Why not? How long did it take Genentech to have positive cash flow? Has the life cycle of biotech products changed in the last five years? That is the lamest excuse I have ever heard.

If we were sold a huge public investment on the mistake of some planners who didn't know how long it takes a biotech product to be developed, why aren't the heads rolling?

Another hysterical part of the South Waterfront plan is the fantasy they seem to have about the transportation infrastructure. Get this whopper:

Commissioner Randy Leonard said he likes the transit orientation of the vision.

"If we are creating a community down there where a car becomes more of a liability than an asset, people can buy more of a house and have amenities that they couldn't otherwise afford," he said.

You have got to be kidding. Randy, are you gunna tell me that someone affluent enough to live in the South Waterfront district is going to not want a car? What planet are you on?

This just gets better and better all the time.

When does the RICO lawsuit get filed? Seriously!

Supreme Court decision on regulating CO2

I don't know how many times I have corrected people when discussing global warming: Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant! It is necessary for life on Earth!

But no longer. The Supreme Court has cleared the way for CO2 to be classified as a pollutant for the purpose of the Clean Air Act. This is a significant development in this saga, because once under the purview of the regulatory authority of the federal government, watch out. Half the game is over.

The whole point of the global warming issue is to regulate energy use using CO2 rationing as the proxy. Kyoto tried to do this on a global scale, and so far we've been able to stay out of this ridiculous and damaging global CO2 rationing protocol.

But the Supremes just cleared the way for the same thing to happen domestically. Now, state governments, pushed by an unholy alliance of the envirosocialist lobby and energy companies such as PGE who have hundreds of millions to gain if their investments in "renewable" energy sources are mandated for everybody, will sue the feds to force CO2 rationing schemes.

The cost of energy will go up for everybody, and the poor will be hurt the worst.

Very progressive.

Racial disparity in school discipline?

There's an article in the Oregonian today about what appears to be a substantially disproportionate percentage of black kids who are expelled and suspended from Portland Public Schools compared to white kids.

The article ponders the reason for this, and the gives us usual hand wringing about cultural bias, cultural competence training, etc.

But it never asked what I think is the most germane question: is this a question of the effect of single parent households?

I don't know the statistic in Portland, but nationally about 70% of black children are born to single mothers, compared to 30% or so for other ethnic groups. It seems entirely plausible to me that kids brought up in single parent households would be more likely to have discipline problems.

So what is the discipline rate in single parent families vs. two parent families? And among single parent families, are black kids more likely to be disciplined than white kids?

If not, then perhaps what we are seeing has nothing to do with race, but with out-of-wedlock childbirth and divorce.

Disappointing that nobody seems to be asking this question, so quick to launch down the path of institutional racism and bias.

Wanna bet this won't be picked up on the AP wire?

What happened to the Global Warming consensus?

Read this article f about a guy who headed up the International Arctic Research Center.

Talk about a "cooler head."

The only question is how long will the global warming scam keep the ruse going?

The best editorial in the Oregonian in a long long time

I've been on spring break, down in Phoenix watching baseball. My son's high school team went down to play four games against high schools from other states, and we caught some spring training games, as well as the Arizona/Arizona State college pre-season game.

I get back to be treated by this editorial written by Rick Attig of the Oregonian editorial board.

My son is just a sophomore, so he's a bit ahead of me in this process. But even if my son plays in college as he hopes to, at some point the baseball comes to an end. Attig really caught the essence of the feeling.

Give it a read.

News Alert: We Need More Roads!

We read dual articles in the Oregonian and the Tribune today that the business community thinks we have a critical shortage of road capacity, which hurts the economy by restricting freight mobility.

This fascinating conclusion came from a study that Oregon Business Council and Portland Business Alliance commissioned that looked at the cost of congestion.

The answer, of course, is to raise gas taxes to fund a road construction program.

Anyone want to guess what was missing from the articles?

That's right - any mention whatsoever of the $5 billion we have spent on light rail rather than road improvement, and whether maybe, just maybe, if all that money was spent on increasing road capacily we wouldn't have found ourselves in the situation we are in now.

Steve Clark, publisher of the Tribune, is the point person to carry the message to the public about the congestion issue. The Tribune has cheerleaded the light rail agenda virtually since its start in the year 2000.

They really think we are stupid, don't they?

CIM and CAM, RIP

There was a hearing yesterday on the House bill to eliminate the CIM and the CAM. Almost completely uncontroversial - everybody agreed that it is time to "move beyond" the CIM.

What a difference a couple years makes. I ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2002, and one of my main issues was ending the CIM. I was opposed on this issue by every education establishment group in the state.

In the 2003 session, I wrote a bill that would have eliminated CIM and replaced Oregon's tests with nationally normed tests. There were days of hearings, road shows, everybody from Associated Oregon Industries, Oregon Business Council, Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, the ODE, the OEA, the OSBA - you get the idea - were lined up against the bill.

Then Education Committee Chair Vic Backlund headed off our bill, which he knew was extremely popular with the regular folks (we had more than 3,000 signatures on an on-line petition, more than 250 of them public school teachers, school board members or administrators) so he created an alternative bill that made cosmetic changes to the CIM, and used his gavel to make sure his passed rather than mine.

I was proud to be a part of the team who helped Kim Thatcher challenge Backlund in the next primary, and partially because of Backlund's conduct on that bill, she wiped the floor with him, ending his political career.

In 2005, we again mounted an effort to kill this monumental waste of time and money. Rep. Jerry Krummell headed the House Audits committee, and he had the committee undertake a review of the CIM/CAM program. That review ended in the committee voting to recommend eliminating CIM/CAM and replacing Oregons tests with tests developed by an independent testing company.

Again, the entire business and education establishment lined up against this effort. We did get the bill through the House, but it died in the Democrat controlled Senate.

With that background, the hearing yesterday was very anticlimactic. It's as if all the energy supporting CIM and been spent. The tide had turned. Superintendent Susan Castillo was on record saying the CIM had to go, and everybody ran.

The hearing yesterday lasted one hour. Nobody spoke in support of CIM. We did hear COSA and the OEA actually claim they had supported eliminating the CIM for the last three sessions! Others said what wonderful things came from the program, so really it wasn't a waste anyway.

And it ended. Almost like the way Eastern-bloc communism fell - there was no defining battle, it just imploded on the weight of its own internal contradictions.

It's kind of eerie, really. And once again, fifteen years of wasted money and effort, supported all along by the education establishment, and it disappears with nobody held responsible.

Oregon. I love this place.

We need your help!

Charter schools are under attack in the legislature.

Senate Bill 621 is scheduled for a hearing next Thursday in the Senate Education Committee. Among other things, it would require charter school teachers to be unionized, and would restrict students from attending a charter school across district boundaries.

We have posted an on-line petition opposing the bill, and we want to have as many signatures as possible to present to the committee at the hearing.

Please take the time to go sign the petition.

Thanks!

On-Line testing suspended

I think we have not heard the whole story on why the ODE had to suspend on-line testing this year. Willamette Week's Beth Slovic has done a good bit of sleuthing on this, and it is clear that there was some kind of dispute between the testing company and the ODE which caused the whole mess.

I'll suspend judgment until more is known.

I can't believe they make this argument with a straight face

On Sunday, there was another suicide bomb in the Oregonian's jihad against Measure 37.

The argument goes as follows: When land was zoned Exclusive Forest Use or Exclusive Farm Use, it is true that people lost the ability to use their land for other purposes (such as development.) But they were compensated for that loss by having their taxes reduced.

Therefore to compensate folks again, through a Measure 37 claim would compensate them twice.

This argument is akin the government told you that you could no longer use your car, but you will be fully compensated for the loss of use because you no longer have to pay the gas tax on the fuel you would have bought for it had you been able to use it.

See why I call these arguments "suicide bombs?" They are blowing up their own credibility.

The response to Inconvenient Truth

If you have an hour and a half, watch this video.

It systematically destroys the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis, through explanations by climate scientists, many of whom are on the IPCC panel. It shows that CO2 levels to increase. (Al Gore, in his movie where he shows the temperature graph and then superimposes the CO2 graph, showing they are highly correlated, left out the inconvenient truth that there is an 800 year lag between when the warming happens and when the CO2 levels increase.)

The video shows the data on solar output cycles and correlates them to global mean temperature. Very highly correlated, with no lag. It shows how the satellite and weather balloon data measuring the temperature in the upper troposphere completely contradict what the global climate models predict. The source for this: a lead author of the IPCC reports, Prof. John Christie, who is the scientist most responsible for taking the troposphere measurements.

The video explains how and why the global warming alarmist crowd have gained such traction, and has scientists talk about how skeptics are imtimidated.

This is a compelling video, full of scientific detail, but wholly accessible for the layperson.

Wonder how many schools will show this after they show "An Inconvenient Truth?"

Congrats South Medford

What a great game. South Medford wins the state basketball title, beating Kevin Love's Lake Oswego Lakers in a rematch of last year's final.

Although my kids go to Lake Oswego, I thought South Meford would win this game because they have two legitimate division 1 players. In fact, the game was won not on the strength of the fabulous Kyle Singler, who is headed to Duke, but because Michael Harthune, a Junior, did what I thought he might: he scored 20+ points and was I think 6 for 6 from the three point range.

This kid is amazing. Lake Oswego could not defend his 23 foot pull up off balance shot that was just money.

Congratulations to South Medford. Lake Oswego lost two games this year - both to South Medford. It is not a mystery who was the best team this year!

Students get suspended for praying in school

You probably saw it in the Oregonian - the story about the students who were suspended from Heritage High School in Vancouver because they defied the administration by refusing to form a club for the purpose of meeting in prayer before school.

There were several details that the story did not answer that would be very relevant to judging whether the administration acted reasonably or not. Victoria Taft interviewed one of the students a couple nights ago, and Victoria had the sense to ask the relevant question: were the students causing any kind of disturbance or disrupting in any way the education of the other kids?

From what the student said (which has really not been contradicted by the school officials at all) there was no disturbance being caused by these kids. They were gathering in the student commons before school, and praying.

Apparently what the principal was worried about was other kids who were offended by seeing the Christian kids praying, and so they started taunting them and threatening to conduct Satan-worship sessions next to them.

Afraid of some kind of altercation, the principal told the kids they had to form a club for their "meetings," and hold their sessions in a room set aside for the club. The kids refused, took a stand, prayed in the commons, and were suspended.

Here's where the principal was dead wrong: imagine if a bunch of gay students met before school in an informal group to support each other and prepare for the day. Suppose they held hands and talked with each other about the challenges they would face that day and hoped for the strength to meet them.

And suppose some other students taunted them, and threatened to hold anti-gay sessions next to them each morning.

Do you think the school administration would respond by telling the gay students they had to form a club and take their meetings into a private room?

No way - they would deal with the taunters, and protect the rights of the gay students to associate in public, as they well should. But there should not be a double standard for the Christian students.

The district here is in very shaky constitutional ground, and I assume they know it.
Expect a total capitulation, and soon.

The energy consumption Nazis

There was a prototypically vapid article in the Oregonian today about Portland's goal of cutting fuel consumption in half by the year 2030.

It was written by Stephen Beaven, a fellow I have not met. I'm not sure where he learned to be a journalist, but wherever it was, it seems these days that the Oregonian gets all of their reporters from there.

So the City Council is going to pass this resolution saying Portland (and not just the city government - they are talking about residents too!) should cut fuel consumption in half. Now why should we do that?

The article answers: it is to "head off predictions of a looming oil shortage."

Now, if this prediction did come true, then the price of oil would go up, right? And then the consumers' response would be to consume less of it, and oil subsitutes would be more viable, and life would go on as it always has. Why do we need city government to intervene by coercing people in all sorts of ways to decrease their oil consumption?

Well, of course it is because this is another way to push the same agenda they have been pushing all along, which has not done what they said it would. For years they have tried to get us out of our cars by building light rail and making sure roads are congested. Has it worked? Nope. Vehicle miles travelled per capita is higher today than when they started.

So they have to control more things to meet their goals.

I can't believe that a reporter would write some of this stuff with a straight face. First, how do the know oil prices are going to skyrocket? Whose prediction is it? Peak oil? Wouldn't a serious journalist challenge that assertion, especially since it is a "prediction" that appears to be the basis for dramatic public policy initiatives that will change the way we all live.

But there wasn't a single word in article devoted to investigating the veracity of this prediction.

Then, the article says:
"But Commissioner Sam Adams said the future of fossil fuel requires a fresh approach."

Adams sees a bigger investment in mass transit to limit one-person car commuters. That could mean expanded streetcar lines, more marketing for car pools or more buses. It could also mean a freeway toll lane.

Portland is known for redevelopment projects that include housing and retail and thus limit driving. Adams said the city might push that type of development further.

A FRESH APPROACH??!! This is precisely what they have been doing for a couple of decades, and it has not worked as they said. Did the reporter challenge Adams on this point? Apparently not. In the Oregonian school of reporting, you simply print what the politicians say, no critical inquiry necessary.

If that wasn't bad enough, Beaven follows this up with pure editorializing:

"...everyone knows, dependence on fossil fuel isn't sustainable, especially with predictions that say the global production of oil could peak in the next 10 to 15 years."

This is incredible. Everyone "knows" no such thing. And these "predictions" are straight out of the peak oil propaganda and have nothing to do with reality. For a newspaper to print this stuff in a news article is simply stunning.

Conspicuous in its absence was any quote from a single person who might be skeptical of either the problem or the solution being proposed. So here is a major public policy initiative being proposed, one that would have significant ramifications on the way people in Portland live, based on "predictions" and policies that have demonstrably failed in the past, and the crack reporter Stephen Beaven didn't feel the story warranted so much as a single skeptical voice.

Is it any wonder why the Oregonian has become such a joke?

Sen. Morse gets it, House Republicans don't

Word is that Sen. Morse, in the Republican caucus meeting, railed on the House Republicans for their "compromise" plan that raised corporate taxes by a couple hundred million dollars more than the Democrats wanted.

The problem for Morse, as I understand it, is not so much keeping the corporate kicker. Rather, Morse's problem is the new corporate minimum tax proposal, a tax based on gross proceeds rather than profit. The proposed tax is so screwed up that a company with negative net income could find itself with a $50,000 tax liability.

This is a devastating piece of public policy for job growth and capital formation. Start-up companies regularly lose money in the scale-up years. To burden them with this kind of tax liability during their start-up years will simply make many new companies decide to base the business somewhere other than Portland.

Sen. Morse understands this because he is a businessman. I have no idea why Wayne Scott, who is also a businessman, supports it. But the real damage is that Rep. Scott is strongarming the House Republican caucus to go along with the plan, which is putting them in a horrible spot.

This plan is a disaster not just for the economy, but also for the Republican party. Where is Vance Day and the party structure? Are they doing anything to oppose it?

It doesn't look like it. I'm told the Republican Party legislative update circulated recently didn't even mention the kicker deal! Looks like the party is taking a pass on this issue.

Here's the question: will the Senate Republicans stay united and defeat this dog? Democrats need only a single Republican vote to meet the 2/3 supermajority. Will Senator Morse succeed in keeping his caucus united, or will the D's succeed in culling a wobbly Republican senator from the herd?

Stay tuned. If the Republicans allow this to go forward, we will be the minority party for a long long time.

Must see this inspirational story

ESPN ran this ten minute story about a Lake Oswego man with Lou Gehrig's disease who has become an integral part of Lake Oswego High School's football coaching staff, and has inspired the kids with his message of perseverence and hope, even in the face of debilitating physical ailments.

My son plays on the team, and I've watched as this man has taught these kids something that no one else possibly could.

If you have ten minutes, I guarantee it will be worth your while to watch it.

.... but is it a tax increase?

OK, so the Republicans went along with a "compromise" that keeps the corporate kicker for all but the smaller businesses, raises the corporate minimum tax and cuts the estate tax between the $2 and $3 million level.

Yes, they caved. Republicans should not raise taxes. First, it is the wrong thing to do, but second, it is a stupid political thing to do. Standing for lower taxes is the party's best and most popular position. We should never give it up.

So I am disappointed, although hardly surprised.

I am surprised, however, that the liberals are arguing over at BlueOregon that this deal is not a tax increase! Reminiscent of Clinton's hedging over the definition of "is," the Bloregonians are whining about FreedomWorks sending out postcards in Democrat districts telling voters that their newly elected Democrat legislator just backed a $250 million tax increase.

"Foul play!" they say. "it's not a tax increase!" "That is a juvenile political tactic!"

Huh? Informing people about Democrat positions is a juvenile political tactic? And what planet must you be from to argue that this is not a tax increase?

Here's a clue: if you change the tax code and the result is an increase in government revenue, it's a tax increase. It is really not all that complicated.