Milton Friedman's 96th Birthday

I was asked to give a speech to a gathering assembled by the Cascade Policy Insitute on the occasion of Milton Friedman's 96th birthday, which I gave today.


Milton Friedman: The most influential economist in history

I can't tell you what an honor it is to be here today, and have the chance to pay tribute, on what would have been his 96th birthday, to a man who had a profound affect on my life. Though I never met him, I always felt as if my life and career was somehow steered by the power of Milton Friedman's ideas.

Milton Friedman is my hero.

A lasting regret of mine is that I didn't make more of a concerted effort to meet him before he died. That, of course, is my fault and my loss, but even never having met Milton Friedman, he had a profound influence on my education, my understanding of the world, and my career.

As Matt said, the first time I remember hearing the name Milton Friedman was in my first college economics class, at Willamette University in 1978. He was already a towering intellectual figure, two years removed from winning the Nobel Prize in economics.

At the time, as many of you my age or above recall, the U.S. was in the throes of an economic phenomenon that was not supposed to happen under the prevailing orthodoxy of macroeconomics at the time - Keynesianism. In the Keynesian world, high inflation was always accompanied by low unemployment, and vice versa. The Phillips Curve.

The Keynesian view was overwhelmingly the consensus view among economists and policymakers in 1978. As President Nixon once famously said: "We're all Keynesians now." Well, everybody except Milton Friedman.

But in the '70s, we got "Stagflation:" high inflation at the same time as a high unemployment rate. That wasn't supposed to happen, in a Keynesian world, and nobody knew what to do. Well, nobody but Milton Friedman.

Friedman had long argued that the Keynesian policy of "fine tuning" an economy through government fiscal and monetary policy was wrong, and had predicted that the long post WWII expansion - during which time the Keynesian policies ruled - would come to an abrupt end.

So in the late 1970's, as the Keynesian world was shattered, Milton Friedman was looking very prophetic. Short term interest rates were touching 20% and inflation was in the mid-teens. Unemployment above 10% - For the first time his alternative to Keynesian macroeconomics – Monetarism - gained traction among economists and policymakers.

It was in the middle of this national debate that I started studying economics at Willamette. My economics advisor at the time had spent a recent summer at the University of Chicago, where he met Milton Friedman and learned about the "Chicago School."

As I spent my two years at Willamette, taking more econ classes and talking with my advisor, The Chicago School, and the name Milton Friedman came up time and again. Clearly, Chicago was the place to be for economics. Encouraged by my advisor, I decided to transfer to Chicago, and continue my studies there.

I came from a family of public school teachers. By this time my father was an administrator - he was a high school principal in the Beaverton School District. Both my parents were good Democrats, liberals. I thought I was too. I dutifully voted for Jimmy Carter in my first presidential year ballot. And of course, as a family, we were very pro-public education.

I arrived at Chicago in 1980, a small town boy in a big city school. I was wide eyed, to be sure. But I was ready for a big academic challenge. What I wasn't ready for, and what I certainly didn't anticipate, was to have every my every political and economic and social assumption challenged, probed, and questioned by the ideas of Milton Friedman and The Chicago School of Economics.

Milton Friedman was gone from Chicago by then - at least physically. He left the year before for the Hoover Institute. But he wasn't really gone. Friedman's shadow loomed large over the economics department at Chicago. His wit, his disarming charm, his debate style - he was legendary and we all tried to mimic him.

But his ideas: they were the most powerful. Milton Friedman was a man who cared about ideas, who was defined by his ideas, and whose ideas were so powerful, so compelling, so robust that time and again they were the force behind major social changes that we still benefit from today.

All the ideas and policies that Milton Friedman became known for had one overarching theme: freedom. Individual liberty. Milton Friedman believed individual freedom is a moral good. He once said that his main theme in public policy was the promotion of freedom. And there has never been a more articulate voice in defense of freedom than Milton Friedman.

He is arguably is the most influential economist in history in terms of providing the intellectual and theoretical basis for major changes in public policy in areas that affected - and continue to affect, every single one of our lives.

His monetarist approach to macroeconomics was adopted by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, and was largely responsible for taming the inflation monster of the 1970's. It required a temporary spike in interest rates and a deep recession, but the monetarist approach of targeting money supply rather than interest rates prevailed. Since 1981, a time when the Fed has largely pursued a monetarist approach, swings in the business cycle have been much less frequent, and less severe than the 50 years before.

Friedman was instrumental in ending the Military Draft, he argued that conscription was an immoral limitation of freedom by government- indeed, a form of slavery. He thought that an all volunteer military would be more effective anyway. He convinced Nixon to end the draft in 1973.

Friedman argued for a system of floating international currencies, and convinced Nixon to end the Bretton Woods system that pegged foreign currencies to the dollar, and the dollar to gold.

Throughout the cold war, a time when many of Friedman's colleagues we beguiled by communism, seeing it as just another valid form of political economy. Friedman saw it for what it was: an inherently immoral ideology that survived only enslaving its subjects. He was one of the first to predict that communism would fail. At a time when many of his fellow economists spoke of the efficiency and superiority of a planned economy, Friedman knew that bureaucrats were no match for markets.

Among those who Friedman convinced about this was Ronald Reagan. Reagan broughtabout the Soviet Union's collapse not through military confrontation per-se, but by putting pressure on its inherently contradictory economic system. Friedman was right: the Soviet Union economy collapsed.

In looking at Milton Friedman's life work, it is interesting to ponder just what was it about this man that made him so right about so many things? Why could he see so clearly what so many of his colleagues were blind to? How did he know that Keynesian policies would fail, that communism would fail, and that a volunteer military was superior?

I think it is because, as accomplished and expert as he was on all of the subjects he studied, his clarity of vision wasn't really because he understood the subjects better than his contemporaries, but because he understood FREEDOM better than his contemporaries.

For Milton Friedman, freedom was the cardinal virtue. He knew in the core of his being that policies, laws, economic systems, and political regimes that were based on limiting freedom were inferior, and would fail. So he didn't necessarily have to know more about every subject than others to be able to see things more clearly. (That said, he always DID know more about every subject than anyone else.)

Milton Friedman also applied his cardinal principle of freedom to education. Fifty three years ago - 1955 - he coined the word voucher when he proposed that a better way to provide education services would be through a system of parental choice.

Interestingly, as much a supporter of unfettered free markets as he was, Milton Friedman had no qualms with public funding of education. He was an economist first, and he recognized the conditions of "market failure" that justify government involvement in the marketplace.

When a cost of a product can be forced on parties not involved in the transaction - like industrial pollution - Friedman recognized that there is a role for government. He called these "neighborhood effects,"

He knew that neighborhood effects can be both negative AND positive. That is, there are some services that benefit everybody when provided, not just the person who consumes them. Friedman thought that education was one of these services. Everyone benefits from an educated populace, so there is a valid role for government to subsidize education.

So Friedman supported government-funded education. What he understood wasthat government need not be the service provider - and in fact there were very good reasons why the government, although it should fund education, it SHOULD NOT run the schools.

Friedman proposed, in 1955, parents should be given a voucher that they could use to send their child to any school of their choosing. In 1955, this was a radical idea. Dissatisfaction with the public school system back then barely registered. There were no teachers unions. Most school districts were still quite small. The education bureaucracy was a fraction of its current size.

Yet Friedman saw what would be the future of the public school system under its current structure as clearly as he saw the future of Soviet Communism: any system based on coercion rather than freedom is doomed to fail. He understood, way back in 1955, that a school system that was not based on parental choice would end up being operated for the benefit of the adults in the system, rather than the children.

This brings me to one of the enduring truths I heard Milton Friedman say, something I have always kept in mind as I’ve worked in the political arena here in Oregon. I don't remember the exact setting - it was a TV interview I saw him give. He said:

"Politics 101 tells us that any political arena will over time become co-opted by the concentrated interests at the expense of the diffuse interests."

Milton Friedman saw the inevitable path of the public school system because he understood this truth. In the political arena of public schools, the employees are the concentrated interests. They can organize easily, raise funds, influence elections, lobby the legislature and co-opt the political process. The parents and children – they are the diffuse interests: they number in the hundreds of thousands, they are not easily organized, and each has only a small comparative stake in the outcome compared to the employees.

So Friedman saw, way back in 1955, that if the public school system stayed with the model of government operated schools, they would evolve to serve the adults in the system rather than the students they were supposed to educate.

Friedman wrote and spoke about his voucher idea regularly for the next forty years, but it wasn't until 1990 that things started to happen. That year, Oregon voted on a school choice ballot measure (sponsored by Steve Buckstein - the first statewide vote on a school choice plan in the nation) That failed, but later that year the Wisconsin legislature passed a voucher plan for residents of the city of Milwaukee – the first voucher in the country.

Things took off from there. In 1991, Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law, and by the end of the decade, 80% of the states had some form of a charter law.

In 1996, Friedman started the Friedman Foundation, in order to help establish school choice programs in the U.S. (Actually, Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, started the foundation, the formal name of which is the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation. I would be remiss not to mention Rose, because she was an award winning economist in her own right. She grew up in Portland, and is still alive.)

I remember when I first heard about the foundation. Its President, Gordon St. Angelo, kicked it off by going on the Rush Limbaugh show. I had recently become active in the school choice arena here in Oregon, in no small part because of Friedman's intellectual work on the school choice.

I found the number, called and spoke to Mr. St. Angelo that very day. I couldn't believe that my hero had started a foundation to assist people like me!

I've been blessed to have had their help over the years on all sorts of issues as we've struggled to make headway on school choice in Oregon.

The fact that Friedman devoted his life's fortune to reforming the school system speaks volumes. He was the world's leading authority on monetary policy. His body of work spanned decades and encompassed dozens of subjects. But when it came time to decide on how to invest his financial legacy in the future of our nation, he chose school choice.

If freedom was the overarching theme for all his pursuits, he obviously considered educational freedom to be the most pressing issue for our future.

Since the Friedman Foundation was founded in 1996, it has made a huge difference. 14 states now have some type of tax credit or voucher program established in law, and the Friedman Foundation has been active in helping every single one since its founding.

They've helped in Oregon, too. I know they have been very helpful with Matt's tax credit project. Heavens knows, Oregon needs the help.

Can we have school choice in Oregon? Can we extend the movement beyond our modest charter school law? Can Oregon join the list of 14 states that have passed legislation for some kind of tax credit or voucher plan?

Well it took three legislative sessions to get our charter school law passed, and I remember the long odds we were told we faced when we started. But we succeeded, and now there will be nearly 90 charter schools opening their doors for school next month here in Oregon.

The "concentrated interests" in Oregon were against the charter school law from the start, and they still try every single legislative session to kill the law. And since they haven't been able to kill the law, they take aim at the most successful schools.

You've probably heard or read about the Oregon Connections Academy, Oregon's largest on-line charter school. Connections Academy has more than 1800 students, who are taught at home through an innovative combination of on-line lessons and traditional school activities. To say this school is a success is a huge understatement. They hoped to enroll 500 students in the first year, but ended up having to turn down more than 1000 applications, after enrolling 800. This fall it will have well more than 2000 students from every corner of the state, making it one of the largest schools of any kind in Oregon.

In other words, it is a very big target for the concentrated interests who are threatened by the existence of schools that they do not control. The Teachers Union is trying to shut the school down. We’ve been through several battles against the union and their proxies already, and they will not ever stop. It is their expressed intent to close the doors of the Oregon Connections Academy, and tell 2000 students, and their parents, that their choice doesn’t matter.

Can you imagine a better illustration of the immorality of a system based on coercion?

What can we do? Well, what would Milton Friedman do? Give up?

He argued for decades that the Soviet Union would fail before it collapsed under the weight of its own inherent contradictions. The concentrated interests in the education arena are no different. Their existence depends on limiting the freedom of others. They look very strong – but so did the USSR when Carter was President. A school system built on coercion and limiting choices is inferior, and will eventually fail. Milton Friedman knew this.

I believe he saw the future of the public school system with the same clarity as he saw the future of the Soviet Union, and for the same reasons. And I believe he started his foundation to help give a push, an assist to bring about more quickly what he could see was the inexorable force of history.

And so here today, we look at the political environment in Oregon and think the prospects for getting school choice – for instance, passing legislation such as Matt Wingard proposes -- looks bleak: the deck is stacked against us. The teachers unions are strong, the Democrats are in control and they oppose us, the media is not on our side.

But we have one big advantage, an advantage that I think Milton Friedman understood better than anyone, which is why he was so prescient: We are on the right side of history.

The history of humanity is the history of the extension of human freedom from all forms of political bondage.

So, take heart! School choice is just one facet of this long term march to freedom. History is on our side. Our enemy is weaker than you think. The object in the mirror is smaller than it appears.

Happy 96th Birthday, Milton Friedman.

Western States Economic Suicide Pact

OK, here we go! The "Western Climate Initiative," has released its draft plan for the regional greenhouse gas cap and trade scheme.

Mark the date in history! Years from now, when the government bureaucracy that is charged with administering this disastrous program has reached its full-grown, intrusive, stifling maturity, we can all think back to the heady days when the planners and environmentalists and power-hungry politicians birthed this mutant monster.

You really have to go read the draft to understand just what they want to do to our economy and our way of life. The details are at once chilling and vague.

I'll take a run at describing it, half formed though it is:

The arbitrary goal has been set to reduce greenhouse gasses (GHG's) by 15% under 2005 levels by the year 2020. There isn't anywhere I could find any estimate of the benefit of doing this. They say their goal is to reduce gasses enough to "significantly lower the risk of dangerous threats to the climate," which they say will actually require reductions in CO2 by 50-85% by the year 2050.

OK, stop right there. Here they are proposing a huge new tax, a huge new government program, and there is only the most vaguely formed rationale for any way it will benefit us. The documents basically assume that CO2 reduction is obviously good in and of itself, no real reason necessary to propose draconian limits on energy use to justify it.

Moving forward:

Together, the "Partner" states and provinces (OR, WA, CA, NM, MT, UT are the states) will estimate their actual emissions of the greenhouse gasses (GHG's) they plan to regulate, and this will be the "cap" in the first year of the program, 2012.

So the governments will have to try to measure the GHG's emitted by every manufacturing plant, commercial facility, the transportation sector, residential, electrical generation plants, cogeneration plants, etc. So starts the bureaucracy. Obviously the only way to do this is to mandate some system for monitoring and reporting by all the regulated entities.

Since these initial levels become the first "cap," and each of the regulated entities knows that their own baseline measure will also become their cap level upon which all future reductions are based, and since the method for actually measuring and monitoring the carbon footprint of all these different entities is subjective at best, there is plentiful opportunity and incentive for game playing, political deal cutting, and what economists call "rent-seeking."

So, once this baseline cap is set, every three years there will be a ratcheting down of the cap in a straight line until the 15% reduction is met by 2020.

Now for the "trade" part of the scheme. This is where it gets pretty funny, because they studiously avoid admitting that the scheme is basically a hidden tax on energy use, but they make all sorts of vague references to how they will use all the money they collect, because that is the point of the whole exercise in the first place.

Each state, after taking its baseline reads, will grant "allowances" to each regulated entity. This is their GHG cap. They left open to each state whether these allowances are just given to the regulated entity, or if they are 'auctioned" (read: taxed.)

This is where all the shenanigans will come. Here's the deal: the state is proposing a ubiquitous tax on every consumer and producer of energy. All these industries and firms aren't going to just sit back and bear the brunt of the new tax. But they DO see the train coming down the track.

So every single one of them are going to use their political influence to make sure the train hits the other guy, or even to manipulate the structure of the program so that they actually make money on the deal!

For instance: the timber guys will try to get tree planting programs approved as carbon sink offset programs, so regulated entities can pay them to plant trees rather than buy carbon credits on the market. But the bureaucrats know that they can't allow ALL the potential revenue to go to offset programs - they want their money! - so they will negotiate precisely how much of the carbon reduction goals can be met by carbon sinks, and how much by purchasing credits.

Yep - there it is, section 9.2 - an arbitrary limit on offsets, which they will probably set at 10%. How did I know?! Every other industry and company will be in the game, too, and there are limitless ways those with political influence can lessen the impact on themselves and push it over to the other guy.

Now, as I said, the point of this whole exercise is for the governments involved to tax energy so they can funnel the money to all their friends for the plethora of environmental and sustainability projects. But they have to strike a balance.

As I said, each state gets to decide what percentage of the "allowances" are 'auctioned" and what percentage are "granted." Essentially, this is a way to pay off the various industries so they go along. The question is basically how much wealth will be transferred from consumers to government, and how much from consumers to industry. The plan leaves that up to each state, but they are trying to decide on a "minimum percentage of allowances subject to auction by each state."

This is how they talk. "subject to auction" means TAXED. When they say "allowances" that means "how much energy we will let you use." When the talk about "the value of each partner's allowance budget," they mean "how much tax money is raised by forcing regulated entities to purchase the carbon credits."

And oh, do they have big plans for that money! :

• Energy efficiency and renewable energy incentives and achievement;
• Research, development, demonstrations and deployment (RDD&D) with
  particular reference to carbon capture & sequestration (CCS);
• renewable energy generation, transmission and storage; and energy efficiency;
• Promoting emission reductions and sequestration in agriculture and
  forestry and other uncapped sources;
• Reducing consumer impacts, especially for low-income consumers;
• Providing for worker transition and green jobs;
• Providing transition assistance to industries;
• Adaptation to climate change impacts;
• Recognizing early actions to reduce emissions; and
• Promoting economic efficiency.

Nowhere is there any talk of how much tax money will be raised through this scheme. Imagine! They are proposing a monumental tax on energy to supposedly save us from global warming. But nowhere do they: 1) estimate the actual benefit in terms of how much global warming will be reduced, or 2) tell us how much we are going to pay!

Of course, the crack journalists at our daily so-called newspaper can be counted on to drill down and ask the tough questions, right? (Insert belly laugh here.)

Yeah right - here is what The Funny Paper reported, in their single article, buried in the business section, had to say about the cost:

"State officials who unveiled the approach in Gov. Ted Kulongoski's offices said the draft strategy's mandates may push power rates and fuel prices up slightly. But Oregonians should see lower bills in the end because the strategy promotes conservation measures that should reduce energy use, they said. "

OK then! Who could possibly need any more than that? The bureaucrats say this will actually SAVE us money! No need for any other opinion on it. Good enough for us!

OK, I am running out of time here - I have to catch a baseball game. I'll probably drill down more on this later. I hope everyone can see, however, what a monstrosity this will quickly grow into.

A huge tax increase, the amount of which they will not estimate, with no pretense of even estimating how much or whether the tax would solve the problem that they claim requires the tax.

Madness!

Tony Snow passes away

What a shame it is for Tony Snow to die. He was one of the most upbeat guys in politics, and was truly a terrific guy.

I first became a fan of Tony's when he was a columnist for Detroit News, long before FoxNews started. I really liked his perspective in his columns.

In the early 1990's, as the internet was just getting going, I signed up for a AOL account, and started exploring the wonders of the AOL world. I liked to frequent a chat room, called "ACLU" which had a lot of robust political debate. Who did I see there? Screen name TonySnow.

So I emailed him at TonySnow@aol.com, asked it it was THE Tony Snow, and he admitted it was. We traded a few emails over the next couple years.

One day, shortly after FoxNews started, I was in Wash DC, and thought "what the heck, wouldn't it be cool to meet Tony?" I called up Fox, got his voice mail and explained that there wasn't any particular reason he should have lunch with me, but I was in town and it would be nice to meet him. He called back right away, couldn't have lunch because he was out of town.

That is the kind of guy Tony Snow was. There was never a pretentious bone in the guy's body.

I next met him when his radio show was on KXL, and he came to town to do one of our "TalkFest" events. He was the headliner, Lars was the warm up act. But the festivities were kicked off by my then 15 year old daughter Jessica, who sang the National Anthem as I stood backstage with Tony.

As she finished singing the song, on stage at the Rose Garden, double jumbo screens on either side of the stage showing her, Tony looked at me, kind of as a dad would who fully understood what another dad might be feeling at that moment, and just kind of nodded. He reached over an patted my back, said: "good job."

I think what made Tony so human is that he was so much more than a colunmist, a FoxNews pundit, a syndicated talk show host, a presidential spokesperson.

He was a father.

THAT was what was most important to him, and it came through in moments like the one I shared with him.

Tony Snow, I will miss you. I can't pretend I was a close friend - really just a person whose orbit occassionally crossed his. But I will miss his sunny dispostion, his upbeat views even in the face of personal strife and illness, and his ability to communicate with people because at core, he was just another dad, in love with his daughter and trying to raise his kids the best he could.

Is a narrative starting to form?

Could it be that Barack Obama's craven flip-flops are starting to create a what will be a lasting and harmful narrative that will define his candidacy throughout the fall?

I have been watching Obama's campaign - and the media's coverage of it - very closely since he became the frontrunner after Super Tuesday. What he did was remarkable. Beating the Clinton machine is a magnificent accomplishment.

But from the get-go, I was amused by this charismatic fellow. Actually, more amused by the totally credulous response he got from his supporters and the media. The guy is really just another bullshit artist - his words don't come close to matching the reality of his background and his political resume.

But so many people just lapped it up, so EXCITED about this fresh new figure who was a so very different kind of politician.

Wrong.

He's proving it now, with his sudden, shameless about faces on his Iraq timetable, FISA, guns, public financing and everything else. Just another triangulating, poll testing politician. The only sad part is he had so many people fooled in the first place.

It is the hardly uncommon for a presidential nominee to run to the center after wrapping up the nomination. For the usual candidate, it is hardly fatal. But Obama didn't sell himself as the usual candidate - he sold himself as different. The people he got excited - the new voters, the college kids - all the folks who drove the huge turnout for Democrats - they will disappear into the ether as soon as they realize this guy is just another smooth talking politician who will say whatever he needs to say to win.

And that is the narrative that seems to be taking shape in a manner that will stick. He sold himself so effectively as a different kind of candidate that when his actions and words prove he isn't, it becomes a defining issue.

Remember the Republican National Convention in 2004? I forget whose speech it was, but he was blasting Kerry for being a flip-flopper, and the crowd was ready for it, waving their actual flip-flops, chanting "FLIP-FLOPPER!"

That was a narrative that stuck to Kerry like glue. I think there may now be the same kind of narrative forming about Obama that he won't be able to shake, and that defines this yet-to-be-defined candidate in a way that really disappoints all those young, eager and idealistic voters who flocked to Obama as their political messiah.

Kulongoski, Jobs, and Gordon Smith

An Associated Press story ran this weekend that revealed my decision to not vote for Gordon Smith. Yesterday, Jeff Mapes ran a followup on his blog.

My problem with Gordon Smith is not really that he is triangulating in an election year. I expect that, and would tolerate a lot of it. I'm not really that much of a purist when it comes to electoral politics. I'm just fine with voting for people who I agree with 60% of the time.

But Gordon Smith has gone south on the most important issue of the day: regulating and taxing carbon emissions. That is when he lost me and my vote.

I'm not on a crusade here. I'm not out to try to convince others to not vote for him. I didn't make any announcement about my vote. In fact, I am pretty sure Gordon Smith is going to win, and his victory will partly be due to the fact that he has so aggressively assumed the color of his environment.

Ted Kulongoski is in the news today touting the job creating potential of "green energy." This is economic development Soviet style. Does it create jobs to give huge subsidies to alternative energy projects that don't make economic sense on their own? Sure. Just not as many jobs as the subsidies themselves destroy.

But the jobs that get killed are opportunity costs. They are diffuse. The jobs that get created are wonderful ribbon-cutting-press-release material, which makes them perfect for politicians who misunderstand economics and want to pretend they are doing something.

It's the same basic argument about tarriffs. Do import tarriffs save jobs in the U.S? Sure. Just not as many jobs as they destroy. Slapping a 100% taffiff on steel imports absolutely does protect jobs in the domestic steel industry. Those can be identified.

The higher relative cost of the steel that ends up in products produced here is spread throughout the economy, and ends up in the form of incrementally higher prices for finished products we all pay for.

It is a cardinal principle of politics that any political process will become dominated and co-opted by the concentrated interests at the expense of the diffuse interests. The case of "green energy" subsidies and import tarriffs are prime examples.

Craven politicians like Ted Kulongoski ally themselves with special interests, and help them enrich themselves at public expense. The interest groups have substantial monetary incentives to play the game - campaign contributions, public relations efforts, etc. The costs are diffused throughout the economy. Those who bear these costs, individually, do not have enough incentive to mobilize any political effort to oppose the policies that cost them, because the incremental cost each person bears is small.

And so we get what economists call "rent-seekers," who use the political process to pass mandates that enrich themselves. Kulongoski's green energy policies and Gordon Smith's "Cap & Trade" programs are nothing more than interest group subsidies.

They kill jobs. But who cares when they give politicians such wonderful opportunities for press conferences!

Here I am

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I really don't know why. Each day I wake up and by the time the coffee is made I have opinions forming.

But days and days go by and I don't post on my blog. I'm not sure why.

Any thoughts?

What does "critical thinking" mean?

Over at Jack Bog's blog, Bill McDonald and I got into a very interesting discussion about what is the difference between "critical thinking" and "logical thinking,"

I invited Bill to carry the discussion forward here, since it really isn't fair to Jack to hijack his blog. Click here for back ground on the precise nature of the question, then please chime in.

This is an interesting question and I really am interested in hearing what people think.

New Diploma Requirements

The State Board of Education adopted new diploma requirements yesterday. I saw this coming -- I wrote my column in the current issue of BrainstomNW about it.

I've pasted the column below. Yes, Oregon needed higher credit standards for graduation. But the bureaucrats simply couldn't resist packing the new requirements with a bunch of the elements of the failed CIM/CAM assessments. Here we go again.

And of course, The Funny Paper's article on the new requirements fail to so much as hint that there might be some other viewpoint. Not so much as a whisper that maybe CIM/CAM retreads aren't the best tires to put on the new system.

Column below:

Here we go again

Over eight years writing this column I have chronicled Vera Katz’s “21st Century Schools Act,” the dramatic attempt to restructure the methods and purposes of the public school system in Oregon.

As it took grip of the schools in the late 90’s, the Katz reform scheme metastasized into a bureaucratic nightmare scorned by teachers, parents and students alike. The high school level manifestation of the reform, “CIM/CAM,” was supposed to replace the diploma with a certificate that proved students had acquired a long list of important skills, such as writing, speaking, and critical thinking. The schools were supposed to assess these 21st century skills, and the students had to prove they had mastered them

But the grinding gears of education bureaucracy did its magic. They ensured that the CIM/CAM assessments were so ill-defined, time consuming, subjective, and paperwork heavy that they became a standing joke in Oregon’s high schools. Fewer than one in three high school students bothered to run the gauntlet to get the newfangled certificate.

In 2007, CIM/CAM was finally laid to rest with legislation that once and for all ended this very expensive failure.

Or so we thought.

Idle bureaucrat hands are the devil’s playground. Before the ink of the governor’s signature on the bill that killed CIM/CAM was dry, the education bureaucracy was busy resurrecting the failed experiment, reestablishing many of the elements of the CIM/CAM reform, this time under the pretext of revising Oregon’s diploma.

Oregon’s diploma requirements are among the least rigorous in the nation – in part because the legislature spent 15 years down the CIM/CAM bunny trail instead of focusing on making sure our diploma meant something. Oregon requires only 22 credits to graduate, compared to 24 in most states. We require only two years of math and three years of English, while most states require four years of each.

It’s doubly ironic that for fifteen years the rhetoric of reform told us they were establishing “world class standards” in Oregon while the same folks allowed our graduation requirements to sink to the lowest in the nation.

But it’s not enough to just raise our graduation requirements by adding more math and English. That wouldn’t keep the machinery occupied. No, they also want to establish a list of “Essential Skills,” and “Career-related Learning Standards,” that the schools will have to assess and the students will have to demonstrate that they have mastered.

Sounding familiar? Here we go again. CIM/CAM redux.

Are we ever going to learn? When you let these people define “essential skills,” you are certain to get a list of nice sounding things that are impossible to reliably evaluate and measure. That was the downfall of CIM/CAM, and they are repeating the expensive failure once again.

Here are some of the “essential skills” they are proposing to the State Board of Education. Remember – these are “skills” that the schools would have to assess and students would have to demonstrate in order to get a diploma:

“Think critically and analytically across disciplines.” I’d submit that anyone who could write such an ill-defined sentence has demonstrated he hasn’t himself mastered this so-called skill. How is “critical thinking” different than “logical thinking?” What does it mean to analyze “across disciplines? Gibberish.

“Demonstrate global literacy.” Your guess is as good as mine. They say it includes “knowledge of diverse cultural, linguistic, and artistic expressions,” but this hardly clears it up.

“Demonstrate personal management and teamwork skills.” Another entirely subjective “skill,” and one can only imagine the Orwellian “assessment” they will cook up for it.

Most of the other “Essential Skills” involve content-area knowledge, such as writing, math and reading. These things are already easily assessed by any number of ready-made tests, so there is no need to create another level of bureaucracy to make sure kids learn them.

All this stuff is moving at the speed of, well, bureaucracy. They have formed a slew of “Diploma Implementation Task Forces.” The “Essential Skills Task Force” has more than 40 members – teachers, students, community college employees, and business representatives. They’ve been meeting for almost a year. Their list of skills is already in Version 6.0, and is slated for adoption by the State Board this month.

But the machinery is grinding on toward its inexorable goal, which is to salvage all the elements of CIM/CAM they can possibly cram into the new diploma requirements and in so doing, quietly resurrect the biggest and most expensive failed education experiment of the last century.

The bureaucracy needs another gerbil wheel.

Economic illiteracy on display

Someone needs to teach Governor Kulongoski a little economics.

He was speaking yesterday to the Oregon Business Association and the Northwest Environmental Business Council Climate Conference (you can imagine what a mind-numbing confab that must have been.)

In the Governor's press release issued about his remarks, he put his utter ignorance of all-things-economic on display for all to see. This was a press-release, mind you, not some off the cuff mistake in wording.

He says:

“Any system we implement can’t be cap or trade – it must be cap and trade. That’s the only way we’ll meet our emission reduction goals and create a new economic market in Oregon,”

A "new economic market?" What does that mean? Is an "economic market" different than some different kind of market? Does putting the word "economic" as a modifier make all the numbskulls at the pretend Oregon Business Association (which has, as its fearless leader, someone who has ZERO experience with business of any type) nod in silent agreement with the wisdom of his words?

Plus: why does he make the distinction between "cap AND trade" vs "cap OR trade?" There is no one anywhere saying we should cap CO2 but not trade it, nor are they saying we should trade it but not cap it. It is completely superfluous, serving only as some phony tough guy statement to show how serious he is.

Instead, it shows troubling ignorance of this specific issue, and, more generally, economics.

Central planner's dream: no cars in the city

For years, I've been pointing out that the real agenda of the Rex Burkholders of the local political scene have a goal of banning cars altogether from the ciy of Portland. Folks don't believe it, because the idea is so absurd and stupid that they just can't wrap their minds around the notion that our political leadership could support something that is so astoundingly idiotic.

But it's true. Of course Rex and his merry band of fellow travellers would themselves deny it, because they know that telling us their end game would put at risk the incremental policies they are putting in place to achieve their goal. If people knew where they were headed, if people knew how extreme folks like Tyrant-asaurus Rex really is, they would lose all credibility, and hence, all ability to get their anti-car policies in place.

Just look at what they are doing this weekend: Spending $150,000 of your tax dollars on closing off six miles of streets in Nort Portland this weekend, in conjuncton with the "Car-Free Cities Conference," that is being held in Portland this week.

So there it is. Start closing off more and more roads to cars, in pursuit of the Nirvana of car-free cities. Be the toast of the international socialist crowd, so our politicians will remain in high demand for speaking at all their back-slapping international confabs where they give each other awards.

So do they really want to ban cars? I'm sure Rex won't admit it, but I'm sure he's speaking at the conference this week. Here is what the conference organizer, Elly Blue, said in The Funny Paper today:

"People are really ready for this idea and ready to change the way the city works and the way they live," Cars are kind of a problem around here. Cars are in the way."

European Socialism is just what we need

I was subbing for Lars yesterday, and had an interview with Svend Auken, who was in town to teach Portlanders all about the wonders of European Socialism.

Auken is a co-author of the Kyoto Treaty, and was Denmark's Minister of the Environment some time ago. Yesterday he spoke to the big planning confab yesterday at the Oregon Convention Center, about how to move toward renewable energy, sustainability, how to prevent sprawl, and how to accomplish all the other tenets of central planning utopia.

Auken was very nice, but seemed somewhat taken aback when I pushed back on some of his statements. Denmark taxes the holy hell out of energy and its use, and then they use the tax funds to subsidize all the alternative energy sources. Sound familiar?

What is funny is that he (like Oregon's economically illiterate liberals and The Funny Paper editors) think it makes sense to do this. In Denmark, there is an excise tax on new cars of more thanbn 100%! Their gasoline costs almost $8 a gallon, and their electricity is more than three times what we pay in Portland.

THAT is the future that Portland planners presented yesterday as worthy of copying, as Auken was the keynote in their conference where they were discussing the next soviet-style 5 year plan.

The funniest part of the interview was when I asked Auken about the fact that Denmark aggressively explored for and drilled for oil offshore in the North Sea, as a way to achieve energy independence. I said "you are in town to tell us how Denmark got off foreign oil. Would you propose that the U.S. drill offshore to take advantage of our known reserves?"

"Uh well, uh, ahem, well, I don't want to insert myself into decisions that are debated here," is basically what he said. "But wait - aren't you here because Denmark is a model for us to copy?"

He wasn't going to stress that particular aspect of the Danish miracle, apparently.

The Funny Paper, for its part, editorialized on Friday what a great thing European socialism is:

"Denmark does have one of the world's highest tax rates. It devotes about half of its gross domestic product to public expenditures. But before you say "ouch," remember that the Danes get medical care, free education through graduate school and customized retraining whenever they are laid off or decide to change jobs. At any given moment, about 47 percent of all Danes are engaged in some kind of learning program. "

Wow. HALF of GDP goes to the government. But they have a GREAT nanny state, so it is absolutely worth it!

Barack-Star Wins

No matter what your politics, Obama's locking up the Democrat nomination is a remarkable event in U.S. History. He's not just the first partially black candidate to make it to the "finals," but he beat the Clinton machine to get there. Amazing.

As the WSJ says today, he is really more of a phenomenon than he is a politician. I get the feeling that a lot of folks on the Obama train don't care a whit about details like how he would govern, or whether his record and background contradicts his campaign rhetoric.

They buy the Obama phenomenon. It isn't about policy or even logic. It is emotional. I can't recall any time in my lifetime when such a political meteor didn't get burned up in the political atmosphere. The Obama hasn't quite hit the Earth yet, but at this point the meteor looks plenty big enough to make it all the way.

Sorry to overextend the analogy, but what happens when a big meteor hits earth? At the very least, it creates a huge crater. But it can be much worse - by some theories, a big meteor killed off the dinosaurs. Are the Democrats the dinosaurs the Obama meteor will make extinct?

The Democrat's Vision

I only have a short time to get this started, but I'll add to it later today. But I want to get readers' take on what I see shaping up to be a rather remarkable message from the Democrat party to the American people.

Ted Kulongoski is now riding his bike to the Capitol, acknowledging it is a symbolic move, but that he wants citizens to know that "there's a lifestyle change coming."

Barack Obama stood in front of 75,000 Oregonians and told us that we can't expect to heat or cool our homes like we want, and eat whatever we want.

Really? That is their vision? An America for the first time in history that cannot grow, cannot enhance prosperity of its people? THAT is what they are selling? Are you buying it?

If we as a nation are in the situation where we have to change our lifestyle, it is because we've allowed Democrat policies to make it impossible to grow. Thanks to their policies, we are the only nation on the face of the Earth that refuses to take advantage of its own natural resources. They have largely locked them down.

And now they tell us that we have to live like the third world.

I have a better idea: reject their policies. I gotta go, will be back later.

Continuation 7:59 AM

One of the things we should reject is the ridiculous "cap & trade" scheme that the U.S. Senate has agreed to debate. This is the centerpiece of the Democrats (and gullible Republican) anti-prosperity program. It would constitute the largest tax increase ever levied on our economy, and it would do it in a way that is a politician's and bureaucrat's dream - they get to choose who pays it, who gets rich off it, and the money flows to the government.

Make no mistake, it is a job killer. They are pretending that it uses "market forces" to efficiently allocate the carbon credits. Bullshit. As George Will wrote this weekend, it doesn't create a market, it creates a scarcity imposed by government, and then enriches the government as people must pay for the artificial scarcity.

Watch Gordon Smith closely on this one. If he votes for this, I am done with him. I have tolerated his craven political manueverings so far, nauseating though they are. But this, for me, is the single biggest issue to come down the pike in decades.

More later, as I get time. But my question for now is: why do Democrats want to madate misery?

Potpourri

Short takes on a few current issues:

Obama's Portland speech: I couldn't believe that this didn't get more attention. Obama stood in front of 75,000 people and told them that they couldn't eat what they want and keep their houses at 72 degrees year round. Really? So an Obama presidency means what, bread lines? Government control over our consumption habits? The more this guy talks, the more he is revealed for the Marxist he is.

Oregon Primary: The Lindland victory was impressive. He thumped Phyllis Thiemann by 18 points. Novick ran a good campaign but the Democrat establishment was too strong. Merkley is a stiff, though, and will get schooled by Gordon Smith.

The CD 5 race was disappointing. I was against Mannix doing what he did. Not because it backfired - it didn't. He was way behind before bringing up the issue, and he lost by less than 2%. I was against it because of how I knew it would foul the waters. What of the next successful businessman who thinks about running for office? I like Kevin and I voted for him, but I care more about the party, and I thought that bringing this issue up as he did when he did would be bad for the party.

And that turned out to be true. Now we have every high profile Republican running away from Erickson, and a winnable seat now looks lost.

Portland. Good riddance. Sam Adams will accelerate Portland's economic decline. The rest of the clowns will just be along for the ride.

Good to see Sheriff Craig Roberts won in a landslide. Jeers to my fellow Republicans who pushed the charlatan La Manna.

Dave Mowry got into a runoff against Charlotte Lehan for Clackamas County Commissioner. This is a race I will be talking about. Dave is a great candidate, and Lehan is just another Metro-clone. She's a complete socialist.

Barack Obama: philosopher king

The more I watch how Barack Obama handles himself, the more I get the discomfiting feeling that this man believes himself to be some kind of transcendent, almost supernatural figure. It is getting kind of scary.

His stump speeches don’t talk of policy as much as they do about “changing the world.” He doesn’t talk so much about what his leadership will do, but rather talks about how WE must change to live up to HIS ideals.

Case in point – in Portland this weekend, he told us we can’t continue to “eat anything we want,” “drive our SUV’s,” and heat and cool our homes to our desired temperatures. Pretty chilling.

There was a revealing glimpse into this man’s soul recently when he was objecting to the Tennessee GOP making an issue out of his wife’s anti-American comments. In an interview, he said

“If they think that they’re gunna try to make Michele an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable.”

Read that carefully. He didn’t say it is wrong to go after Michele by some moral standard or ethical standard or standard of fair play. No, the reason they should stop criticizing Michele is because Barack Obama finds it unacceptable. Barack Obama, in his view, is the arbiter of right and wrong.

I don’t want to make too much of this, but I really do think it is a glimpse into this man’s Messianic view of himself.

I really do think this is scary.

Craig Roberts, Clackamas County Sheriff

My blogging has been sporadic lately. Election time is here and I've been pretty active in various races. But there is one race I have no involvement in at all, but feel very strongly about: Craig Roberts for Clackamas County Sheriff.

I wouldn't know anything about this fellow were it not for my friend Steve Schopp, who started telling me about three years ago how Craig Roberts had taken over the Clackamas County law enforcement operation and was making all sorts of common sense management changes.

Many of you no doubt know Steve. If you do, then you know: when he says something that is going on is screwed up, he is right. When he tells you something that is going on is on the money, he is right.

Over the lst two or three years, Steve continued to tell me about the things being done in Clack Co. I had occasion to get to know one of Roberts' deputies, and could tell from what he told me that what we had in Craig Roberts was a guy who couldn't care less about politics, he was just going to manage the county law enforcement operation and get the very most out of the resources he had.

A month ago or so I finally met Sheriff Roberts. We had breakfast, and talked for quite some time. Everything Steve Schopp told me about this guy was absolutely true (not that I was surprised.)

Craig Roberts is EXACTLY what we need in government. He's a lifetime law enforcement officer, but I would support him for whatever he wanted to do. If you live in Clack County and don't vote for Craig Roberts, then shame on you.

I know there is some guy running around who apparently has personal wealth and wants very badly to wear the biggest badge, and he is apparently a Republican. I don't care.

I don't know if Craig Roberts is a Democrat or a Republican, and I don't care. He doesn't manage the Clackamas County Sheriff's office as a Democrat or a Republican, he manages it as an incredibly talented executive without any political agenda whatever.

I can't express how impressed I am with Craig Roberts. If you live in Clack Co - please vote for him.

The market overruled by bureaucrats

In the real world, a very good indicator of whether or not a good or service is needed is if private capital is drawn to supply it. If people are willing to risk their wealth to create the capacity to produce something, chances are that product has a demand.

I know this is an unremarkable statement, bordering on "Duh!" But here in Oregon, our state officials don't understand even this most rudimentary principle of economics. Actually, it is more likely that they DO understand, but they pretend that they don't so they can exercise their political authority.

At issue here is the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal proposed for Bradwood Landing, on the Columbia River about 30 miles inland from Astoria. The poor company who has been trying to get the approvals necessary to bring this energy source to the northwest has gotten an object lesson in Oregon anti-business NIMBY-ism, environmentalist obstructionism, and state government bureaucratic stupidity.

The Oregon Department of Energy this week issued a study that says, basically, "We don't need no stinking LNG." Now, how do they know this? And shouldn't the fact that a private company is willing to risk hundreds of millions of investor capital on the bet that there is in fact a need for this new energy source perhaps give them a little pause in their arrogant assertion of bureaucratic certitude?

Not in Oregon. In Oregon, markets don't matter. Government judgement is far superior. According to The Funny Paper, Oregon doesn't like the federal government's deference to the marketplace:

"State leaders and agencies have decried FERC's hands-off, market-based regulatory approach to LNG terminal sitings. The [federal] agency has essentially told state officials that it intends to license all projects that meet its environmental standards, then let the market decide which projects attract financing and which get built."


That sounds pretty logical to me. Make sure the environmental standards are met, and if they can attract the investment capital, then knock yourself out.

But Oregon, things look different here. We love dreamers who dream that state bureaucrats can make better judgements about whether new energy capacity is needed than can those who put their own wealth on the line.

According to Oregon's Department of Energy:

"There is adequate gas in the Rocky Mountains, Canada and Alaska to serve Oregon's near- and long-term needs, and proposed Rockies pipelines could provide gas more economically than the LNG terminals. There is already a surplus of LNG terminals in the United States. Many can't attract LNG cargoes because other countries are willing to pay more. LNG plants in Oregon would likely be underutilized, particularly with the presence of a new LNG terminal in Baja, Mexico. "

Wonderful. It couldn't be, could it, that the DOE bureaucrats have some other political motivation for making this judgement than an honest assessment of the market for LNG? Like the fact that their chief executive has opposed every LNG proposal to come down the pike?

If the bureaucrats are wrong in their analysis, what is their punishment? Nada - in fact, whether they are wrong or right, if they are successful in stopping the plant, will not only never be known, it is entirely irrelevant, since the whole point is to use the machinery of the state government bureaucracy to stop the plant in the first place.

They are rewarded for doing the political bidding of the governor, and claiming it is based on some phony assessment of the marketplace that they are uniquely ill-situated to honestly make.

How many of these bureaucrats ever risked a dollar of their own in the energy sector? Why do they think they know better than the market if there is demand for LNG in Oregon?

In actuality, they don't. They are just doing Kulongoski's bidding. And our state's reputation as a place to do business mysteriously slides....

Lindland v. Franklin

Shortly after my new PAC, the Conservative Majority Project, got involved in the Matt Lindland race in HD 52, I started getting asked about Matt Lindland's "felony."

I was asked about it from various people, lobbyists, grass-roots coalition leaders, and even people in the House Leadership office. Clearly, someone somewhere was spreading a pretty harmful and outrageous lie about Matt Lindland.

The rumor had obviously penetrated the usual campaign noise. When Matt sat down for his interviews with both the Oregonian and the Sandy Post, he was asked about whether he has a felony on his record. That is not a normal question to be asked in that situation - I know, I have done these interviews.

To say Matt Lindland was upset about such a rumor being spread is an understatement. This guy is not just running for office. He runs a martial arts training center where he personally works with children. He promotes fight events at the Rose Garden for which he solicits sponsors. Having someone spread lies about a felony is tremendously damaging not just to his chance of getting elected, but even to his livelihood.

Telling lies about someone's criminal record is clearly slander, which is grounds for a civil suit. In fact, lying about this particular thing is considered "slander per-se," which by law means that the victim of the slander does not need to prove that his reputation was damaged, which is one of the harder things to prove in a slander case.

It didn't take long asking around to identify the source of the slander: Elaine Franklin, political consultant to Matt Lindland's opponent, and wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood.

I know Elaine casually. I was stunned that she could do something so reckless. Look, I've been in the political arena for a long time, and I am not at all naive. I've seen a lot o stupid moves. But telling bald faced lies about a criminal record is so far over any conceivable line that it was almost unthinkable that Elaine would do it.

Yet that is what I was told. By people I know and respect.

There was no proof, however. I had the word of Gayle Attebury of Oregon Right To Life, who said that Elaine told her Matt was a felon.

Then I got an email from JL Wilson, who is the lobbyist for Associated Oregon Industries (AOI) which is one of the larger donors to the campaign of Matt's opponent, Phyllis Thiemann. JL helped recruit Thiemann, and is helping strategize for her campaign.

JL wrote to complain about a CMP mail piece we sent out on behalf of Matt. I wrote back defending the piece, and mentioning that it was hard to feel very charitable about the Thiemann campaign when Elaine Franklin is out there slandering Matt Lindland.

JL wrote back: "Yeah, I'm really appalled at the nonchalance with which Elaine tagged Matt with that felony. I heard it straight from her, and I had no reason not to believe her, and then it turns out not to be true. That is BS for sure."

Well, that was the closest thing to a smoking gun that usually exists in a slander case, which inherently hinge on hearsay evidence.

Matt Lindland is a fighter by profession. Now that he had such strong evidence, he was not about to sit back and let Elaine Franklin continue to slander him. He has stepped into the ring with a lot scarier people than Elaine Franklin.

So he wrote the demand letter the Willamette Week wrote about yestereday.

He doesn't want to have to sue Elaine Franklin, but he will certainly do it if she doesn't come clean, admit what she did, and apologize. And he also wants Phyllis Thiemann to denounce Elaine, which seems perfectly reasonable. I mean: what is she going to do, defend her? Can she continue to have Elaine Franklin be her consultant after this? If so, she is not fit for office, I can tell you that.

Now, JL Wilson is criticising me for releasing his email to the media. I am sorry that he is upset by it, but I am not sorry I did it. The email he sent me said nothing about confidentiality. He expressed outrage at what Elaine did, and I would assume that anyone in his position would want to hold her accountable for her actions.

So I am a little puzzled that JL is criticising me. If it is his view that I should have kept the email secret, he must then think that we shouldn't do anything to hold Elaine Franklin accountable for what she did. In fact, he obviously knew what she was doing, and declined to do anything to expose her. Silence is complicity, to some extent.

One thing JL is criticising me for is not giving him the courtesy of a "heads up" before I took it to the media. Well, he is working with Elaine Franklin on this race. Had I notified him, it would have tipped off Elaine. Sorry, can't do it.

In any event, Elaine Franklin slandering Matt Lindland is such an egregious violation of standards of behavior in a political campaign that she has to be held accountable for it. We simply cannot allow this type of thing to tear apart the Republican party, and we especially can't allow it to go on by a person who is not even a Republican, and who has made it her life mission to purge the party of conservatives.

I hope the rest of the party - the conservative lobby, and other Republican office holders -- will condemn what Elaine Franklin did. It has no place in politics. It poisons the well for everyone, and it is morally wrong.

Obama's next problem

Barack Obama is in a world of hurt. He's unleashed Pastor Wright, who is now enjoying the national stage where he can put his kookiness out front for all to see.

So yesterday Obama threw Wright under the train. But that just creates another problem: Wright will no doubt strike back in anger. How better to strike back but to shout from the mountaintops how close he and Obama were over the years, how many dinners they shared, talking philosophy, politics, and world views.

In other words - paint the picture that Obama knew full well all about Wright's extreme views.

If a newly scorned Wright wants to take down his stray parishioner, that is all he has to do. After Obama spent the last couple days distancing himself from Wright, saying he had no idea his pastor and spiritual advisor and mentor thought this way, imagine how damaging it would be for Wright to come out and say: "Barry knew all about it - we discussed it all so many times, he never even indicated he thought my views were controversial."

And the superdelegates would flock to Hillary.

Another revealing column by Duin

I got the biggest kick out of Steve Duin's column today.

The great thing about "limited world view" liberals like Duin is that they often write from a presumptive starting point, absolutely certain that any normal reader will share the values reflected in that presumption, because, well, there are only two reasons why someone wouldn't: either he is stupid, or he is evil.

The column was about the diverging paths two Washington High grads took in their careers and their politics. On the one hand is Dianne Linn, and on the other is a guy named Stephen Bradbury, who is now an assistant U.S. Attorney General. They were great friends in high school, but now, they are so politically different!

Duin seems astounded by how someone could travel the political path that Bradbury has taken. There's lot's of wierdness in Portland, says Duin in is opening sentence, "but you'd have a difficult time topping this:"

I'm thinking, reading it: OK, what is coming? What is the wierdest thing that has happened in Portland, according to Duin?"

This Stephen Bradbury fellow, who grew up in Portland's Sunnyside neighborhood ("a mecca of social justice and progressive politics") actually argues that waterboarding is not torture, and once even worked for Clarence Thomas!

That pretty much takes the cake! How could anything be wierder than that? "It makes absolutely no sense to me," he quoted Dianne Linn as saying.

In Steve Duin's world, there is no legitimate argument about these things. That a person could grow up in Portland, have Dianne Linn as a close friend in high school, and then diverge so dramatically from the "progressive" path is just so .... inexplicable! It pretty much blows the mind. There can be almost no explanation.

Dianne Linn - she's the right kind of person. Grew up in liberal Portland, went to liberal Portland State, and maintained her liberal values. We won't mention that she is an incompetent disaster as a manager, a politician, and and in her personal life. We won't mention the Vulcan interpreter, the snow day pay, the same-sex marraige rebuke. We won't mention being drummed out of office in a landslide by the very same liberal voters in Multnomah County.

No, in Duin-world, Dianne Linn is the beacon of virtue. It doesn't matter how much of a mess she has made of literally everything she has touched. This guy Stephen Bradbury -- Stanford Grad, Michigan Law, U.S. Attorney - no, HE is the one to have scorn heaped upon him, because remember: there are only two reasons someone would not share those progressive values - he is evil or he is stupid.

Stupid is off the table on this guy, obviously. So he must be evil. And why would Steve Duin need to be fair or nice or even so much as presume good faith about someone who is evil?