Where do they go to get their life back?

So it turns out that it wasn't logging that was driving the spotted owl to extinction after all - it was another owl, the barred owl, that was better adapted to survive in the NW forests, and the spotted owl turned up on the short end of the evolutionary yardstick.

Gee, say all the environmental groups who succeeded in convincing the government to euthanize the timber industry in Oregon to save the spotted owl. We were wrong. So sorry.

Thousands of timber jobs - gone. Entire communities - destroyed. Oregon's #1 industry - a shadow of its former self. A way of life for tens of thousands of Oregonians - changed forever.

I guess we will have to wait for the apology. Don't hold your breath.

It was never about the spotted owl, of course. Most environmentalists could care less about the species they pretend they are trying to help. They hate natural resource industries, and want to shut them down.

The Endangered Species Act is irrational, if indeed the point is to protect species that human development is harming. If they really cared about the species, they would not have made an enemy out of the landowner and the critter, which is precisely what the ESA does.

Imagine you own some forest acreage, which you cut for a sustained yield, logging about 1/50th of it each year and replanting. Then one day you run across a nesting pair of spotted owls on your property. If the regulators find out, you know what they will do - they'll prohibit you from logging your trees.

So what does any rational person do? Clear cut the whole thing before they find the critter. Or just go kill the nesting pair. Either way, the bird goes.

If they actually cared about the species, they would use a carrot rather than a stick. Instead of forcing private landowners to bear the entire cost of preserving the critter, what if the feds offered a small stipend in leiu of cutting part of your forest? Far more efficient and way more effective.

But environmentalists don't like these kind of solutions, because for them, the whole point is to stop as much logging, as much development, as much natural resource extraction as they can, and they want environmental laws that can be used as a hammer to accomplish this.

So don't hold your breath waiting for an apology from all those liberal/greenies who supported killing Oregon's timber industry. For them, the thousands of livelihoods they destroyed are just collateral damage.

The "Hockey Stick Hoax"

Here is a very interesting and easy to read explanation of the saga of the so-called "Hockey Stick" effect, which provided the empirical basis for the global warming alarmists computer model predictions about future warming.

The problem is, the Hockey Stick effect is a hoax. The data was basically faked.

Read the article - it is really interesting.

The "soft totalitarians"

At lunch today I was looking over Friday's issue of the Portland Tribune, reading two front page articles - one about the Mayor's "VisionPDX" project, and the other titled: "Wanted: More butts on bikes."

It struck me - Portland is not just an elitist town - it is actually in its own way totalitarian. The elites decide how they think we should live, and then use the coercive instruments available only to government to make us live that way.

What is the appropriate role of government in a free society? Is it to decide how it wants its citizens to behave, then manipulate public policy to induce those behaviors? Or should it be to gauge how people want to live, and use pubic policy to accomodate it, within the narrow scope of authority the people yeild to the government?

The first is inherently authoritarian/totalitarian. Just look at the issue of bikes. The elites have decided that more people should use bikes. So the official policy of government is to in various ways make automobile transportation less efficient and more costly, and make bike transportation more efficent and less costly.

The same thing is going on with the Mayor's "VisionPDX" project. I've written before how ridiculous this entire project is, at least from the perspective of a person who doesn't believe in the Portland form of "soft totalitarianism."

But if you are in line with the Sam Adams ideology, and believe in using government to induce "desireable behavior" then you probably seen nothing at all wrong with the Mayor's efforts.

After all, let's ask Portlanders what the want and then give it to them. What is totalitarian about that?

Well, a lot. There is no such thing as "what Portland wants." At best there is "what the majority wants." In truth, what gets revealed from these kinds of processes is "what the elites want."

And that is what gets forced down our throat. Look at the "Sample Goals" in the draft of the report:

• "By 2030, Portland has "complete communities" in many parts of the city, allowing people to obtain goods and services within walking distance from home." What a shock that the very first goal would re-state the New Ubanist vision. What coincidence tha 15,000 people gave input and what they came up with was exactly what the government has been pushing for for decades!
• "By 2030, Portland is carbon neutral, while achieving an average annual job growth rate of 2%. Another coincidence! Portlanders again want just what they have been served up for years!

And on and on it goes.

Turn back the clock

This is what passes for vision among our city leaders: "let's turn back the clock 80 years!"

I often joke about the centerpiece of transportation policy in Portland being 19th century technology. Sam Adams made a speech to the City Club of Portland last Friday, where he actually said:

"What would Portland look like if we implemented solutions to global warming and peak oil? It would look a lot like Portland circa 1920, a time when the main means of motion were your feet, streetcars and bikes."

That is, ladies and gentlemen, what passes for a "progressive" in Portland.

Meanwhile, the Oregonian had the most insipid apology for the planning disaster of Cascade Station, where the opening of IKEA has pretty much put the idiocy of the New Urbanist vision on open display for everyone to see.

Everyone, that is, except the editorial writers at the Oregonian.

No, the failure of Cascade Station to draw even a single tenant that meets the New Urban vision in five or so years doesn't mean that the vision itself has anything at all wrong with it. Nosirree, it's not that nobody really wants to work and live in a mixed use urban village next to an airport and industrial area; it's not that people actually want to use their automobiles, and enjoy the convenience of driving where they need to go - no that is not why the Cascade Station development failed.

Nope, the whole thing failed because of 9-11.

This is a prime example of the harm done by having a single newspaper in a single party town: they never are forced to question their ideology, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence of its failure.

Two examples of planners folly in one day!

I haven't been blogging a lot lately, but two articles in the Oregonian today were just too rich to let pass without comment.

Two different articles, both of which illustrate the folly of our vaunted land use planners when they cook up grand schemes for how they think people want to work, shop and live, and then act shocked when it turns out that people vote with their feet otherwise.

And when it happens, does it cause them to re-think their views? Not a chance.

The first one is the opening of IKEA in the Cascade Station "development." IKEA is a complete and total departure from what the Cascade Station area was supposed to be. Planners' vision was their typical New Urbanism fantasy: "The idea was, let's build an urban village next to the airport in an industrial core," said Craig Sweitzer, whose job it was to market the ill-considered development.

Just think about this - how detached from reality do you have to be to even utter those words? An urban village next to an airport? In an industrial core? Who would want that?

But the obviousness of how stupid an idea this was didn't prevent Neil Goldschmidt and his cronies from making millions on it. The money trail is very murky - Bechtel and Trammell Crow helped build the light rail spur to the airport in exchange for the development rights to the property. Who knows what those rights were worth, and how much they actually ended up paying for them? Anybody want to bet with me that the public got screwed again?

Anyway, the development fell apart from the get go. They platted the whole thing out, had all the roads and infrastructure built, the train going through it, and for several years there wasn't a SINGLE commercial establishment in the entire place!

It was actually pretty funny, because the choo-choo train to the airport, occupied mostly with airport employees, would chug through the development, and would stop. "Cascade Station," the loudspeaker would announce, and the doors would open to reveal a deserted sidewalk. Nobody would get in or out, of course. (Except once I hear a coyote boarded.)

The problem was the planners' vision did not include cars. They don't like cars. So they wanted all the commercial tenants to discourage car-driving customers. But commercial enterprises know better, and so they stayed away from Cascade Station in droves.

And the planners had to yeild. It was more embarrassing to have the thing vacant than to allow a car-oriented store like IKEA to come in and bail them out. So IKEA opens today.

I love the quotes in the newspaper:

"Planners and officials now agree that the Cascade Station vision was doomed from the start." Oh! Oops! Sorry, we were wrong.

Randy Leonard said: It didn't work out the way it was planned, but when government sets up a plan for an area, the lesson is, you need to remain flexible so the economics of what you are planning for makes sense." THAT is your takeaway from this, Randy? Remain flexible, so you after five years of bleeding money you can admit you were wrong and the whole thing made no sense in the first place? I think the lesson is to make sure that what you are investing public resources in makes sense in the first place!

And this, from one of the guys who planned the whole concept: "Sometimes reality has a different idea." WOW!

But the money quote from a Tri-Met planner, explains the whole disaster:

"Bottom line for Tri-Met: We got our train."

Exactly. That is all it was about. They lied and bribed their way to get another piece of their choo choo system built. That really is all that matters to them. Everything else is just for show.

Now, the other article is just as funny, but for the opposite reason. With Cascade Station, they invested in the New Urban vision and the market rejected it. The planners don't seem to be bothered at all.

But 10 miles south, another retail center was built that rejected every single principle of the New Urban vision, and it is wildly successful. Bridgeport Village is everything planners hate. Auto oriented, retail only (not mixed use) and proudly upscale.

It is so successful, in fact, that the planners want to now get involved. They are talking about designating Bridgeport Village a "Regional Center," which in their fantasy are the clusters of high density mixed use areas surround the Portland urban core.

The problem is Bridgeport rejects the Regional Center model, which is to combine housing, office and retail so that people don't have to use their cars. And that makes the New Urbanists mad.

Lake Oswego mayor Judie Hammerstad is one of them. She hates Bridgeport, because she spearheaded one of the mixed use developments in downtown Lake Oswego, about three miles from Bridgeport. And a lot of the office space in the Lake Oswego development is still vacant, and the retail establishments other than the restaurants are struggling.

"My original objection to Bridgeport Village was that it contained no housing and almost no office space," she said. I still feel that way."

In other words: "They didn't make the same stupid mistake we did and burden their project with a bunch of square footage that doesn't fit the development. That means I am stupid, and I hate it when my stupidity is so clearly on display."

So the planners - get this - want to designate Bridgeport Village a Regional Center, because then it would have access to all sorts of governement transportation funds so it could turn itself into something as successful as Cascade Station!

These people sure are good at keeping Portland wierd.

Strong words from Bill Cosby, the day he turns 70

Can't Blame White People

by Bill Cosby

They are standing on the corner and they can't speak English.
I can't even talk the way these people talk:
Why you ain't,
Where you is,
What he drive,
Where he stay,
Where he work,

Who you be...
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.
And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it's important to speak English...
except these knuckleheads.
Mush mouth is what they speak!
You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.
People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education,
and now we've got these knuckleheads throwing that all away.
The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.
These people are not parenting.
They are buying thing s for kids. $500 sneakers for what?
And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry
when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

Where were you when he was 2?
Where were you when he was 12?
Where were you when he was 18?
And, how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?
And where is the father?
Or who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward:
Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?
People with their hats on backward,
pants down around the crack,
isn't that a sign of something?
They're walking around with their nasty underwear showing, and
holding onto their pants to keep them from falling to the ground!
Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
Isn't it a sign of something?
when she has her dress all the way up to her panty line,
and got all types of needle piercings
going through her body?
What part of Africa did this come from?
We are not Africans.
Those people are not Africans;
they don't know a thing about Africa.
With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
Brown or black versus the Board of Education
is no longer the white person's problem.

We have got to take the neighborhood back.

People used to be ashamed.
Today a woman has eight children
with eight different 'husbands' --
or men or whatever you call them now.
We have millionaire football players
who cannot read.
We have million-dollar basketball players
who can't write two paragraphs.
We as black folks have to do a better job.
Someone working at Wal-Mart
with seven kids saying...
you are hurting us.
We have to start holding each other
to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.

It is not for media or anyone of this time
anymore to say whether I'm right or wrong.
It is time, ladies and gentlemen,
to look at the numbers.
Fifty percent of our children are dropping out
of high school.
Sixty percent of the incarcerated males
happen to be illiterate. There's a correlation.
Tell the media to stop asking me what I think about people who don't believe what I'm saying or feel that I'm too harsh or feel that I'm just running my mouth because I'm old.
Seventy percent of the teenagers pregnant happen to be African American girls.
Don't ask me to soften my message.

Bill Cosby

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.