Growing an Organization in Stages

Something that has been on my mind for a while now is, how do you grow an organization's maturity without going too quickly or too slowly.

First, a definition -- what is Organizational Maturity?

With due respect to Terence J. Cooke-Davies, I believe an organization is mature when its ability to carry out its core functions is fully developed - meaning all its core functions are understood, well defined, documented, and its staff are trained on how to execute them. The highest level of maturity would include the ability to learn over time and gradually improve performance with careful changes and careful measurements - and those measurements have to be meaningful.

The two core concepts here are Predictability and Repeatability. When an organization is operating well, its core functions are predictable and repeatable, and its results are as well.

So, how quickly can an organization (or one of its core functions) be brought along towards maturity?

I believe there are a series of steps that need to be taken in a specific order. Rush these or take them out of order, and you will suffer a setback. (Tip of the hat to the CMMI for these.)

1. Discipline - you have to be able to Repeat yourself, to do things the same way twice.
2. Definition - you have to be able to Train others to do what you did. If you try to train without discipline, the training won't stick.
3. Measurement - only when people are trained on the process does it make sense to measure the process. If people aren't well disciplined and trained, the measurements are meaningless.
4. Management - real management can only come after accurate numbers exist. You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

As each of the above is brought to an organization, you should pause and assess whether it's sticking. If people begin to slack off on their self discipline and stop doing things in the defined manner, the numbers stop being meaningful.

Innovative Prison Cost Savings

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/suicide.html

Suicide watches by inmates benefit all

Prison suicide watches done by other inmates, instead of prison staff, reduce the frequency and duration of watches, benefit inmate observers and reduce costs, according to a study conducted by Federal Bureau of Prisons researchers that appears in the summer-fall issue of Psychological Services (Vol. 2, No. 1).

...

In this case, the medical center saved over $300,000 in overtime pay by using inmate observers for a year.

Overview of Executive Dashboards

My friend Larry asked me for an overview of an executive dashboard system. Here it is.

What it is
How to Set it up
How to Use it

An executive dashboard is not a "thing" but a system. And developing the executive dashboard system requires an understanding the business that the dashboard will reflect.

A good executive dashboard provides a senior manager with a simple, visual display of the key indicators of the organization's success.

That simple display hides separable complexity, however. Each indicator is a summary of several lower-level indicators, and it is desirable to be able to drill down easily from the high level summary to the underlying details.

I generally recommend the dashboard be in four sections: past, present, future, and quality.

The "past" section contains financial indicators -- cash flow, sales, P&L, and the like.

The "present" section contains indicators of current activity, usually on a daily or weekly cycle. These will include things like the number of sales per retail outlet, web hits and page views at a web site, number of vehicles per hour, number of widgets off the assembly line, etc. If even a single store has unusually low sales, the top level indicator should go red to signal that something needs to be looked at.

The "future" section contains forward-looking indicators of future results, such as the sales pipeline, the response rate to marketing efforts, and even industry trends.

The "quality" section contains such crucial items as customer satisfaction, manufacturing defects, collection rates, and worker productivity.

Some Assembly Required

A proper dashboard requires a detailed understanding the business, and an equally detailed understanding of the business' strategy.

This can often be a challenge, but it is a challenge well worth meeting, because it requires senior managers express the organization's strategy in operational terms. That is obviously something that every senior manager should do anyway, but it frequently does not occur. Setting up the dashboard requires that be done early, visibly, and accurately.

For example, one organization was concerned about profitability of different jobs being processed by the job shop. The dashboard process, however, require management to be extremely specific about what they wanted and expected. For profitability to be tracked, new numbers had to be gathered on the shop floor. Previously, the desire for those numbers had been resisted by lower levels of the organization. Tracking labor hours and setup time by job was considered too much trouble.

Once it became clear, however, that upper management was taking these numbers very seriously, compliance improved.

Perhaps the most powerful effect of a good dashboard system is that the numbers being collected at the front line of the organization become useful to the front line workers in gauging their own success.

Tom DeLay will Plead Guilty

This segment was prepared for broadcast on 10/2/05 but never made it on the air:

Jeff, I'm excited to bring you an exclusive scoop in the Tom DeLay case. As you may know, the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Tom DeLay of Texas, was recently indicted.

He's been charged with a single count of Conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. And under the rules put in place by the Republicans, nobody can serve in a leadership position while also facing any criminal indictment.

That means the Republican House Majority Leader has had to step down - that's a big blow to Republicans at the national level. Some fear that the multi-billion dollar spending orgy of the past five years may slow down as a result.

But the Northwest Nonsense News has received the only leaked copy of Tom DeLay's defense plans. And let me say, it's a masterpiece.

[JEFF: PLEASE TELL US ABOUT IT.]

The DeLay defense team has plotted out a stunning long term strategy that, once executed, will ensure that the public embraces Tom DeLay even more strongly and lovingly than it has in the past.

Now you may have heard that the charge here, Conspiracy, is regarded by lawyers as the easiest charge to bring but the hardest to prove. Combine that with the fact that the charge was sought by Travis County (Austin) prosecutor Ronnie Earle, who is a Democrat with a long history of indicting powerful people whom he then fails to convict.

Finally, you add in some of the confidential information that was leaked to me that demonstrate DeLay's innocence, and you'd be forgiven for assuming that DeLay was going to fight this accusation.

But the DeLay defense won't fight - they're going to plead guilty.

[JEFF: WHAT? I THOUGHT YOU SAID HE WAS INNOCENT.]

Oh, he is, Jeff. But they cannot let this opportunity go by.

[JEFF: HOW IS IT AN OPPORTUNITY? YOU SAY HE'S INNOCENT AND HE COULD PROVE IT.]

That's correct.

[JEFF: WELL THEN, PLEADING GUILTY JUST SOUNDS NUTS.]

Jeff, genius is often mistaken for insanity. Believe me, Tom DeLay's defense is crazy like a fox. Here is the timeline, laid out in the secret documents that I have obtained from DeLay's defense team.

• In late September 2005, he was indicted and stepped down from his leadership
• position.
• In mid-November, he is publicly arraigned. That coincides with sweeps week on Court TV.
• In February 2006, DeLay's deposition is scheduled.

Then, in April, he suddenly pleads guilty. There is shock and uproar. Democrats fall into a feeding frenzy. It's like Cindy Sheehan all over again.

By June, the public begins to sicken from two endless months of Democratic wailing about DeLay. The Democrats, unable to take the hint, won't shut up. And public sentiment begins to turn.

In August of 2006, DeLay completes his sentence of work-release, and goes on ABC's Good Morning America with his wife to talk about his ordeal. Following in the footsteps of Martha Stewart, he then arranges to have a series of soft interviews with the likes of Larry King and Dr. Phil. Entertainment shows talk about what model ankle bracelet he wears during his parole.

By October of 2006, DeLay is transformed into a beloved American hero and gets his own TV show. He leads the Republicans to gain several seats in both the House and Senate, and is considered a serious contender for the Presidency in 2008.

Jeff, you can't get that kind of star treatment in America by being innocent. Only guilty people get to ride that particular gravy train. And thanks to Democratic over-reaching, Tom DeLay is about to jump on that gravy train and ride it to the White House.

[JEFF: THAT'S... AMAZING, TOM. I'M NOT SURE WHAT TO SAY.]

As for myself, I plan to plead guilty to something, just as soon as I can get the Democrats to indict me. I want my own TV show. Jeff?

[JEFF: THANK YOU FOR THAT REPORT, TOM.]

Government Benchmarking

Here we go - The Business of Government, a good site for studying and measuring government programs' efficiency and effectiveness.

Here is my favorite report there - the Behn Report on 11 Better Practices.

Balanced Scorecards - some good visual examples

Two good examples of balanced scorecard visual presentations are here and here.

Public School Laundry Plan

A fourth sketch of mine. These were performed on KXL AM-750 in Portland on Sundays.


[JEFF SAYS: WE HAVE A LIVE REPORT FROM TOM COX. TOM?]

Jeff, I'm coming to you live from the headquarters of the Portland Public Schools, where the school board has just unveiled their latest new plan to better serve "the children".

As you know, Jeff, many school systems have been criticized for offering free breakfasts and lunches during the summer, even as schools complain they have no money.

Well, Jeff, those same kill joys who complained about the free food, are going to complain about this too: bunk beds and laundry facilities are being added to Portland schools.

The problem is this -- sometimes, kids show up for school without clean clothes or without having had a proper night's sleep. The answer to this should be obvious to anyone. This schools need to step up and fill the gap, just as they have with breakfast and lunch.

By the way, Jeff, I should added that the schools will be adding free dinners to their menus.

[JEFF ASKS: ISN'T THIS GOING TO COST A LOT OF MONEY?]

Jeff, why do you hate children?

[JEFF SAYS: TOM, I DON'T HATE CHILDREN.]

Oh really? Well, if you don't hate children, then why are you questioning this plan? The only people who question spending whatever money it takes, is people like you, who hate children.

[JEFF SAYS: NO, ACTUALLY, I...]

Jeff, I'm not trying to pick on you. It's just the law.

[JEFF SAYS: EXCUSE ME?]

Yes, Jeff, last year the unions got a law passed. It says that anyone who questions school spending, hates children. Face it, Jeff, nobody wants kids to show a school in dirty clothes with no sleep.

[JEFF ASKS: WHY DON'T THEIR PARENTS TAKE CARE OF THAT?]

I'm sorry, their what?

[JEFF SAYS: THEY PARENTS. WHY DON'T THE PARENTS OF THESE KIDS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEM COMING TO SCHOOL IN CLEAN CLOTHES, AND WITH ADEQUATE SLEEP?]

I'm sorry, Jeff, you're using a word that I'm not familiar with. Are you referring to the quaint 20th-century notion that every child would have one or two adults, dedicated solely to their welfare and upbringing, slavishly following them around and making sure they were clothed and fed, and giving them love and moral instruction?

[JEFF SAYS: ...YES.]

[spluttering] Well then, what are the schools supposed to do? [laughs] Teach? Get serious. The public schools haven't been in the business of teaching in years.

No, Jeff, the modern public school system exists to perform social experiments on our society's children, for example, to teach them to feel guilty about being American, and to brainwash them into being semi-literate drones who will believe people like Michael Moore and Howard Dean.

By taking over such tasks as feeding the kids all their meals, doing their laundry and giving them a place to sleep, our public schools will be much more able to perform new and more ambitious social experiments.

Eventually, the entire concept of "parent" will wither away, and children will be taken from hospital maternity wards directly to the nearest pre-preschool, to be masticated into a formless pap, that can then be shaped by the brave leaders of the Teachers' Union, into a robotic army that they can use to control the nation, and making every year 1984. Truly a progressive vision.

[JEFF SAYS: THAT SOUNDS HORRIBLE.]

You only say that because you... hate children. Jeff?

[JEFF SAYS: THANK YOU FOR THAT REPORT, TOM.]

Democrats Obstruct

A third radio comedy sketch of mine. As always, the "Jeff" mentioned is the program host, Jeff Kropf.

Jeff, I'm coming to you live from Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Portland.

Now that the session is over in Salem, Democrats are reveling in the series of stunning victories that they have won this year in Oregon.

Jeff, as you know, the Democrats nationally are a minority party, and that has left them unable to do much in Congress except obstruct. They're the party of no, nix, nothing, no way, nada, not happening, too bad. The national Democratic platform appear to have collapsed into nothing more than petty obstructionism, and a desire to figure out whatever it is President Bush wants to do, and stop it.

Sadly, the once proud party of JFK and FDR has degenerated into nothing more than a faint, negative echo.

And that is what makes the contrast with Oregon so stark. Here in Oregon, Democrats are the majority party -- they control the governorship, all the major statewide offices, the state Supreme Court, and the state Senate.

This has allowed Oregon Democrats to raise obstructionism to an entirely new level. On health-care reform Democrats brought us... nothing. On major reform for K-12 education: nothing. Economic development: nothing. PERS reform: nothing. The governor's outcome based budgeting approach: failed.

Nationwide, Democrats are looking to Oregon for a new model of how a political party can use their majority status to really make things... Not Happen.

[ JEFF SAYS - Tom, political parties are supposed to enact policy changes that they believe are good for the state. ]

Jeff, that is so 2004. Maybe back when you were a kid, politics was about enacting policies, or instituting reform, or heck, even funding the schools. Not anymore.

The Democratic Party used to be a party of ideas -- in 1965. Face it just, the last a new idea to come from the Democrat was when Mike Dukakis rode around in a tank. They haven't gotten over that one.

And so, this year they've come up with a new, better approach. Instead of developing new ideas -- which is an enormous amount of work -- they're just going to criticize other people's ideas. Instead of coming up with a political agenda or a set of policies to pursue, they're going to wait for somebody else to do that... and then stop them.

[ JEFF SAYS - that sounds irresponsible. ]

EXACTLY! That is the whole point, Jeff, is to embrace irresponsibility. It's the perfect Democratic strategy for the 21st-century. If your party is not responsible, then your party isn't at fault.

So the next question is, how will the Politics of Obstruction play out in the governor's race next year?

[ JEFF SAYS - that *is* a good question, Tom - how will the public respond to Governor Kulongoski's relative ineffectiveness? ]

Well, Jeff, the Democrats believe Kulongoski's ineffectiveness will give him a big advantage. Normally, a governor running for a second term has to run on his record. He has to explain to voters all the things he did during his first term. But Ted Kulongoski has brilliantly immunized himself from any such criticism. There is nothing for anybody to criticize, because Ted didn't do anything. His record is, that he has no record.

[ JEFF SAYS - How does that help him? ]

It's easy. Ted positions himself as an outsider, ready to sweep in and clean up Salem. Because his party stands for irresponsibility, he himself is not responsible for anything that's happened. Ted will appeal to the angry voters who feel the government has failed to do its job.

[ JEFF ASKS - But Tom, if voters are angry at inactivity in Salem, won't they blame Ted? Won't that hurt him? ]

Jeff, why would the voters blame Ted Kulongoski for anything? [laughs] It's not like he's been governor or anything. [pause] Jeff?

[ JEFF SAYS - Thank you, Tom. ]

PETA and the Endangered Tapeworm

Here is another radio commentary I wrote and performed.

[Jeff says](We have a special Northwest Nonsense News report from Tom Cox.
Tom?)

Jeff, the group PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is seeking a restraining order to prevent a 14 year old North Portland girl from being treated for an infestation of intestinal parasites. The girl apparently became exposed during a family trip overseas. The parasites, a strain of rare albino tapeworm originating in Bangladesh, was previously believed extinct. PETA is applying for an Endangered Species Act listing for the rare animal, and has asked the court to bar the girl, whose name was not released, from [quote] "Any medical treatment that might harm this rare and precious creature." [unquote]

PETA believes that humans and animals are of equal moral value.

[Jeff asks] (Isn't there something we can do for this girl?)

The girl? The girl isn't the problem, Jeff. We have plenty of those. Fourteen year old girls aren't exactly in short supply. Frankly, there are too many of them - that's why Democrats occasionally toss one to Neil Goldschmidt, it keeps him happy and reduces the excess population.

No Jeff, the problem here is, how can we best protect this precious tapeworm? The court injunction to stop medical treatment is only a first step - we need to find new hosts who can provide suitable, loving homes for these rare, cuddly creatures, and help bring up their dwindling numbers. One thought is to use the power of eminent domain to condemn and seize people's bodies and use them as hosts against their will. Another is to just slip the tapeworm's eggs into the Portland water system. Eric Sten will never notice, and Portland's liberal elite won't mind because they only drink bottled water and frappucinos.

[Jeff says](Why doesn't PETA do something?)

Jeff, PETA isn't going to do anything constructive because it's not their *job* to do anything constructive. It's their job to complain, and to point out other people's moral failings. There was one suggestion, that PETA members should volunteer themselves as hosts, but that's just not going to work.

[Jeff asks](Why not?)

Nobody trusts PETA with actual animals any more. PETA ran an animal shelter on the East Coast, and it turns out they mostly just killed the animals and threw the bodies illegally into dumpsters.

[Jeff says](That's horrible. How is that ethical treatment of animals?)

Jeff, PETA doesn't actually *like* animals. [scoffs] No, PETA just hates *people*. Oh, hey, Jeff, did you get that special bottle of iced tea I left for you at the station?

[Jeff says](Yes, it was very tasty, that was very thoughtful of you.)

Well Jeff, let me just say, now you're more than just a *radio* host. Jeff?

[Jeff says](Thank you for that report, Tom.)

Helping Katrina Victims

This is the text of a comedy radio sketch I wrote and performed recently:

Jeff, I'm coming to you live from the shoulder of Interstate I-10 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the storm-damaged state of Louisiana.  Zooming past me are relief convoys bringing needed solace to the inhabitants of this - and neighboring - states.

Now you've been hearing for many days about the usual relief supplies being brought in - the water, the food, the hygiene kits, and so forth.  You've also heard about the struggles of authorities to maintain order, and the volunteer efforts to bring help in and move refugees out, and to get them resettled.

But nobody has yet chronicled what I am about to chronicle for you now - the vital role played by the Political Left in rushing their own unique assistance to this troubled region.  The trucks behind me are loaded down with blame.

[JEFF: DID YOU SAY BLAME?]

Yes Jeff, blame.  Even before the first Red Cross trucks were being denied entry into New Orleans by Governor Blanco, the Political Left knew that these distressed people didn't need water, power, or a unified country committed to helping them - these people needed someone to blame - and the Left mobilized their armies of bloggers, whiners and Deaniacs to give it to them.

Think about it Jeff - suppose you had lost your life's savings, your home, your job, maybe a family member.  Suppose you hadn't eaten in two days or had a drink of water in 24 hours.  What would you want?

[JEFF: I THINK I'D WANT FOOD, WATER, AND A SAFE PLACE TO REST.]

Well, Jeff, that just shows how ignorant YOU are.  America's Angry Left are a whole lot smarter than you - they know what's really needed is to pour sand into the gears of the relief effort by demanding the apportionment of blame while the disaster is still unfolding. 

Nobody has done more to rush big, steaming piles of blame into the stricken region.  Nobody has done more to distract all levels of political leadership from coordinating the relief effort.  Nobody has done more to split the nation along racial and ethnic lines.  It's really time for the rest of us to take a moment, especially on a day like today, to reflect on the great contributions the Angry Left have made to our nation, and to express our gratitude.

Four years ago, our nation was attacked and we briefly rallied together under the mistaken notion that our nation needed unity.  But it was the Angry Left who revealed that - well, we were attacked because America is evil and deserved to be attacked.  It was the Angry Left who explained that, any time America is attacked, the attack itself is proof that we deserved it.

Now, in the aftermath of Katrina, it's the Angry Left who have revealed that this hurricane was under the direct control of the Bush Administration, who steered it towards black people, because Bush hates black people.  If it weren't for the Angry Left, I wouldn't have known that.

Jeff, this Republican storm has all but destroyed one of the great success stories of Leftist policy - a city mired in poverty, riddled with corruption, and racked by a crime rate ten times above the national average - the crown jewel of Leftist social planning.

[JEFF: WHY IS THAT A SUCCESS STORY?]

Because everybody voted Democrat, Jeff.    Why do you think the Left embraces these policies that drive up crime and mire people in intergenerational poverty? 

But never fear, Jeff - the Left is on the job.  You can be sure that, while others waste time bringing in water and food, or cleaning up, or maintaining order, the Angry Left is hard at work making sure America knows that we are a racist society and everything is George Bush's fault. 

Can you hear those trucks rushing by?  Stand by, grief stricken survivors!  Blame is on the way!

Jeff?

[JEFF: THANK YOU FOR THAT REPORT, TOM.]

More on Portland city council metrics

I am still thinking about the comments made by Portland city Council members at a recent City Club of Portland Friday Forum.

Sam Adams seemed to have the most mature presentation of metrics for his bureaus. Among other things, he seems to know what a metric is.

Dan Saltzman gave answers that were more activity or process based.

Randy Leonard, with whom I'm developing a deep love-scorn relationship, was the most intuitive and immature -- he will judge the performance of his bureau's by what people tell him at cocktail parties. The problem will be, getting him to attend the correct parties so that he can get well-rounded input and not the typical lefty liberal echo chamber.

On the one hand, Management by Walking Around can be very effective. On the other hand, must be augmented by meaningful metrics.

Benchmarking your Industry

Here's one way to benchmark yourself: get a third party to assemble an anonymous survey of your industry.

The Utility of Vengeance

I think this explains my campaign against Mary Gallegos in 2004.

SCIENCE JOURNAL
By SHARON BEGLEY
Vengeance Is Mine,
Sayeth the Lord --
But Scientists Differ
WSJ, October 15, 2004; Page B1

To a cynic, the good people of Florida who helped out their worse-off neighbors after last month's hurricanes were actually acting selfishly.
According to a leading theory of human behavior, they were merely polishing their reputations and collecting IOUs in case they themselves needed help one day. Altruism had nothing to do with it.
But this jaded view of human behavior hits a brick wall every time a Good Samaritan helps a stranger, waving off questions about his identity.
Such pure altruism has long defied scientific logic and puzzled evolutionary biologists, who seek explanations for how behaviors arose and persist. From a purely rational, cold-hearted, survival-of-the-fittest perspective, it makes no sense to do a good deed if it costs you time, money or your own safety, unless it enhances your reputation or helps a close relative survive and prosper. (In evolutionary theory, helping relatives is just as good as helping yourself, and the only reason that other animals do good deeds.)
"Human altruism is unique in the animal world," says Ernst Fehr, a behavioral economist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "None of our current theories can explain altruism when there is anonymity and therefore no chance of reciprocity or enhancing your reputation."
But scientists think they have discovered a plausible explanation. There are just enough people in society who are willing to punish anyone who does not contribute to the common good, even when it costs them to do so. Scientists call it "altruistic punishment." But you can think of it as righteous vengeance.
To probe the prevalence of and motivation for keeping others in line even at a cost to themselves, behavioral economists have volunteers play a little game. Each player starts with $20, and each decides, without knowing the others' moves, how much to contribute to a common kitty. The kitty will be doubled and distributed among all four regardless of what -- or even whether -- each contributes. If everyone kicks in $20, for instance, the resulting $80 will be doubled to $160 and split four ways, $40 each. These cooperators will have doubled their stake.
But if only three players kick in $20 each, then the $120 distributed among all four players will give everyone $30. Those who contributed their entire $20 will be a little better off, but the person who kicked in nothing will make out best of all, keeping her $20 and getting $30 from the kitty.
The temptation to freeload while others contribute to the common good is therefore strong. But if everyone followed this selfish strategy, no one would contribute anything and no one would improve on their $20 stake. In experiments, people seem to grasp this, and contribute about half their stake. But after a while, people decrease their contribution, learning that selfishness pays.
Prof. Fehr and his colleagues then introduced a twist: They let players exact punishment. At the end of each round, if Player A thinks Player B has been freeloading, A can fine B, but only at a cost. If A wishes to fine B $1, say, A must also pay 30 cents to the person running the game.
From a purely selfish and even logical point of view, A would be an idiot to do this. A loses money and gains nothing tangible in return. Yet most players are eager to exact punishment anyway. In fact, they exact revenge even when they have no chance of reaping any rewards personally: Players are quite willing to engage in such altruistic punishment even if the game is arranged so that A never again plays in the same group as B and therefore has no chance of benefiting from more public-spirited behavior by a chastened B.
"The punishment pattern does not change," says Prof. Fehr. "It's astonishing. Even though B makes a larger public contribution in later rounds with other players, A never benefits from imposing the fine. People do not act simply to maximize their economic self-interest. They are ruled not only by cold economic logic but by emotion and a sense of fair play."
Lucky thing, too. Groups that include a number of altruistic punishers are better able to survive disasters such as war and famine. As a result, this strategy spreads, anthropologist Robert Boyd of the University of California, Los Angeles, reported in a paper earlier this year.
"Even when naturally selfish individuals are a majority, the presence of people willing to punish freeloaders can enforce social cooperation in much larger groups," says Prof. Fehr. Would-be freeloaders get the message that, if they fail to contribute to the common good, someone out there may nail them for it.
It isn't clear why some people are prone to playing avenging angel, but altruistic punishment seems to have deep neurological roots. A brain-imaging study led by Prof. Fehr this past summer found that people who have the highest activity in the cortex's reward circuit, which fires on all cylinders when we achieve something enjoyable, are also the most likely to punish freeloaders even at a high cost to themselves. Apparently, the economic cost is more than offset by the psychological reward: It feels good.
The Lord may sayeth that vengeance is His, but when it comes to keeping our fellow members of society in line, gleeful vengeance seems to be civilization's glue. [/quote]

Democrats Ascendant

(Text of a radio segment from Jeff Kropf's show on KXL today around 12:20 p.m.)

Jeff, I'm coming to you live from Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Portland.

Now that the session is over in Salem, Democrats are reveling in the series of stunning victories that they have won this year in Oregon.

Jeff, as you know, the Democrats nationally are a minority party, and that has left them unable to do much in Congress except obstruct. They're the party of no, nix, nothing, no way, nada, not happening, too bad. The national Democratic platform appear to have collapsed into nothing more than petty obstructionism, and a desire to figure out whatever it is President Bush wants to do, and stop it.

Sadly, the once proud party of JFK and FDR has degenerated into nothing more than a faint, negative echo.

And that is what makes the contrast with Oregon so stark. Here in Oregon, Democrats are the majority party -- they control the governorship, all the major statewide offices, the state Supreme Court, and the state Senate.

This has allowed Oregon Democrats to raise obstructionism to an entirely new level. On health-care reform Democrats brought us... nothing. On major reform for K-12 education: nothing. Economic development: nothing. PERS reform: nothing. The governor's outcome based budgeting approach: failed.

Nationwide, Democrats are looking to Oregon for a new model of how a political party can use their majority status to really make things... Not Happen.

<>

Jeff, that is so 2004. Maybe back when you were a kid, politics was about enacting policies, or instituting reform, or heck, even funding the schools. Not anymore.

The Democratic Party used to be a party of ideas -- in 1965. Face it just, the last a new idea to come from the Democrat was when Mike Dukakis rode around in a tank. They haven't gotten over that one.

And so, this year they've come up with a new, better approach. Instead of developing new ideas -- which is an enormous amount of work -- they're just going to criticize other people's ideas. Instead of coming up with a political agenda or a set of policies to pursue, they're going to wait for somebody else to do that... and then stop them.

<>

EXACTLY! That is the whole point, Jeff, is to embrace irresponsibility. It's the perfect Democratic strategy for the 21st-century. If your party is not responsible, then your party isn't at fault.

So the next question is, how will the Politics of Obstruction play out in the governor's race next year?

<>

Well, Jeff, the Democrats believe Kulongoski's ineffectiveness will give him a big advantage. Normally, a governor running for a second term has to run on his record. He has to explain to voters all the things he did during his first term. But Ted Kulongoski has brilliantly immunized himself from any such criticism. There is nothing for anybody to criticize, because Ted didn't do anything. His record is, that he has no record.

<>

It's easy. Ted positions himself as an outsider, ready to sweep in and clean up Salem. Because his party stands for irresponsibility, he himself is not responsible for anything that's happened. Ted will appeal to the angry voters who feel the government has failed to do its job.

<>

Jeff, why would the voters blame Ted Kulongoski for anything? It's not like he's been governor or anything. Jeff?

<>

Links to help Build an Economic Freedom Dashboard

There are a couple of good benchmarks of economic freedom. The best may be the Heritage/Wall Street Journal index:

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/

Another, run by Canada's Fraser Institute, uses somewhat different criteria:

http://www.freetheworld.com/release.html

And Freedom House (.org not .com) is here:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2003/methodology.htm

...though they are less narrowly focused on economic issues.

I hope that's a good start. And of course there's the classic site I like to refer everyone to when working on dashboards, the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative:

http://www.bscol.com/

And lastly, a new way of managing agencies that increases accountability and results, Charter Agencies:

http://charter.iowa.gov/01_ov_overview.html

I hope to help the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission) become the first Charter Agency in Oregon.

Portland City Council: Immature

*Update: Sam Adams' office clarified that they are interested in luring the NRA convention and they and POVA are taking a professional approach, which I greatly appreciate.*

Say what you like about their politics, but three members of the Portland City Council today demonstrated that - from a management perspective - they are woefully immature.

To take but one example, when Sam Adams was asked in passing if one of his bureaus, the Visitors Bureau, would pursue the $60 million NRA (National Rifle Association) convention in 2007, he simply scoffed at the idea.

Under mature and professional leadership, any Visitors Bureau would seek out every convention of every lawful and peaceful organization, regardless of their politics. The NAMBLA convention might not fly, but the NRA convention certainly should.

But not in Portland. Rather than focus on the bureau's proper goal, of bringing visitors and conventions to the city to directly enrich the hospitality workers and thus indirectly enrich everybody, the City's leaders would much rather take a pass on $60 million of economic activity in order to soothe their fragile political egos.

Other examples come to mind, but await another posting.

Making the Homeless Comfortable

Portland is planning to license beggars and build homes for homeless people who don't want to stop drinking or doing drugs.

Why is this a good idea?

Well, it's not, not really - but it serves the hidden agendas of Portland's liberal ruling elite.

Liberals need large numbers of homeless people close by, as a constant reminder that "society has failed these people and government must step in."

See, chronic drug-induced homelessness is caused by one of two things: personal moral failure, or a "societal" failure.

If the fault is personal, then the person who can fix it is the bum himself - he has to choose to stop drinking, stop doing drugs, and change his life.

But if "society is to blame" then that opens the door to empowering government to re-program society to make it perfect, find all the "root causes" of all social ills, and spend unlimited dollars hiring reliable Democrat voters to work for the government and "manage" the problem. The more homeless people you find, the more money and power you need to give the liberal ruling elite.

So, by building a series of taxpayer funded crack houses and flop houses, Portland will attract even more of these dysfunctional human beings, who will be used as human shields for an ever-growing government class. The bums will even be registered to vote, so that they too can become reliable Democrat votes.

Call it "Project Enablement." This has been done multiple times around the US, and it always fails to help the recipients.

The only thing that will NOT happen is - no people who actually need help and want help, will get help.

Opening the Wapato Jail

My open letter to Lars Larson:

Lars, I promised to give you (and Dianne Linn) a way to open the Wapato Jail by finding $16 million in savings in the Multnomah County budget.

The bad news is, the county didn't do performance budgeting the correct way this year, which made their budget all but unreadable for my purposes. I've had to take another tack.

The good news is, I have found some ways to free up the $16 million.

The first step is to save money while IMPROVING the healthcare outcomes of Multnomah County's 4,470 workers: switch them to Healthcare Savings Accounts.

A friend and fellow consultant, Sil Pienovi, tells me he helped institute an HRA/HSA type plan at one of his client companies, and reduced total cash out by 20%. Where traditional third-party-payer insurance costs are rising at 12-15% a year, HSA costs are rising only 5% a year.

Seattle healthcare consultant Kathleen O'Connor says that fully 50 cents of every healthcare dollar spent does NOT go to patient care - so the HSA savings are NOT coming from the workers. They are coming from the insurers and from inefficiencies in the old system.

My plan is simple: Move county workers to a HSA plan, such that a portion of the saved money will go to the jail, and a portion will go into their own HSA cash account. If each one saves the taxpayer just $200 a month, that's $894,000 a month x 12 months = $10.728 million the first year.

Furthermore, healthcare costs are projected forward by the county several years - they are budgeting for that 15% increase in costs. By holding the increase to 5% we save a COMPOUNDING 10% a year.

Step two: have the police union (or some other voluntary private police organization) take over the Police Standards and Practices board, saving $1 million.

Step three: stop subsidizing tenants when leasing out county owned buildings, saving $500,000 a year.

Step four: sell off some of the unused county buildings and land, putting them back on the tax rolls and using the one-time cash to tide us over until the 10% compound growth from Step One brings us above $16 million a year.

I have a hatful of other fixes that can be used to extend the power of the county's spending on human services, but they take a lot longer to explain, and I think this does the trick.

What do you think?

Schools maliciously displacing parents

The liberals running our schools want to hook as many kids on "free" lunches for many reasons:

1. Federal and state dollars - they make a profit
2. Nannyism - they like to take over parenting tasks to make themselves feel good
3. Social Engineering - by keeping dysfunctional families dysfunctional, they increase the number of "special needs" kids pumping up their budgets, they create a generation of kids who will fail their own children in the same way, and they ensure that both parents and kids become dependent on government largesse - a near guarantee of voting Democrat.

These so-and-sos are willing to harm kids and families in order to serve their own private agendas.

No night light = torture?

In only the most recent revelation to show that the Lunatic Left is not serious about the War on Terror, and is not being sincere in its cricitisms of the Bush Administration, we find this:

The interregators at Gitmo conferred with medical experts to figure out ways to make it more likely that detainees would talk. In one case, they determined that a terrorist they were holding was afraid of the dark, so the recommendation was to place him, or threaten to place him, in the dark.

This, according to the Lunatic Left, is torture.

If we take a way a terrorist's night light, it's "torture" according to the Left. These folks have lost all ability to tell up from down, or right from wrong.

The Oregonian becomes a News Paper?

I guess someone at the Oregonian decided that they should try something new: report the news. Turns out the PERS system is cannibalizing state services.

The Libertarians in Oregon have been hammering on these topics - the cost of PERS, the Fire and Police pensions, the influence of the Goldschmidt Mafia - for over six years.

We cannot say it too often:

Spending on Government is UP.
Services are DOWN.
The difference is PERS.

Every time the screaming Liberals say "you're cutting education" it's a lie - we're spending more and more. The reason the classrooms get less and less is because of the teachers' and public employees' unions, driving up the overhead costs.

Employment needs to be a win-win deal. Back in the 80s the workers were getting a losing plan. It was win-lose, so we re-negotiated.

Now it's win-lose the other way: the public employees are breaking the bank, and taxpayers and vulnerable people are bearing the spiraling costs. And now that it's win-lose with THEM WINNING, suddenly it's evil to re-negotiate. "A deal's a deal."

Ron Saxton has it right: we should eliminate all the Tier 1 positions. Current law says PERS recipients are legally entitled only to the benefits that are currently funded. That plan will end the PERS crisis.

This is how you tell the future: see what the Libertarians are saying today.

Dashboards good and bad

I'm a fan of executive dashboards as useful tools ... but I'm skeptical of Sam Adams' plan to use a dashboard approach for tracking "economic succes."

With Friends Like These

Just when I thought I wasn't blogging, the Thousand Enemies of Oregon had to send me a newsletter touting this bit of self-referential nonsense.

The surface story here is nice: Portland, Oregon is ranked the #2 "most sustainable" U.S. city by an outfit called SustainLane. Yay us.

One problem: the methodology (which hardly deserves the name) shows that Portland isn't necessarily "sustainable" at all. Rather, the ranking was a composite of a bunch of other studies that share the same unproven assumptions of the Portland Planning Plutocracy, the People's Church of Smart Growth and the New Urbanist Evangelical Mission.

Tainted inputs include the dishonestly reported ridership numbers of Tri-Met and light rail, and of course multiple rankings from Smart Growth America.

Oh, and the definition of "sustainable"? There isn't one. Apparently it's a Revealed Truth only accessible to true believers.

I'm not saying they're definitely wrong - they don't give enough information to tell. But it clearly smacks of self-referential feelgoodism, of the sort that appeals to people who want to be told what they want to hear. In other words, the Portland liberal elite.

live or blog

Looks like I can either live my life or blog about it, but not both - at least not this week.

More on Budget Ignorance

The more closely I re-read Adam Davis' Oregonian article, the more clever it appears. Its purpose is to de-legitimize critics of bigger government, higher taxes, and more spending, and to pave the way for a tax increase, a sales tax, or both.

Davis establishes that "at least eight out of 10 Oregon voters oppose cutting services to seniors and funding for K-12 education" in order to balance the state budget. Using popularity as a proxy for legitimacy, he implies that any reduction in spending in either area is illegitimate. (This is consistent with the findings of public choice theory, that no specific cut is ever as attractive as the general idea of cuts. Davis would probably find majorities favoring protecting every area of the budget.)

Yet both "services to seniors and funding for K-12 education" contain wasteful programs that can and should be cut, in order to free up money for the programs that do work. Why is it a good idea to follow Davis' lead and assume that neither area should be scrutinized for efficiencies?

Davis then reports that random voters cannot accurately guess budget numbers. This is a surprise? And why does it rate as newsworthy? Yet Davis wants us to believe it means that cuts are unjustified.

He then flat out lies: "more than 90 percent of the state budget goes to" seniors and K-12 education. No, less than half does. (It's about 90% of the General Fund that he means, but by being vague and over-stating his case Davis again gives the false impression that there's nothing else to discuss.)

As the piece unfolds, Davis attributes all disagreement with his position to "the information gap" and condescendingly says that politicians just can't help themselves when they claim that there's money to be saved or waste to be reduced.

But any such claim is a "something-for-nothing" promise that inherently cannot be fulfilled - and if the public is cynical, it's the fault of those politicians who said something could be done to save money.

Meanwhile the responsible politicians are stuck with brutal, evil, heartless, fill-in-the-blank choices to either slash "vital" services, throw grandma into the street, or (sniff) raise taxes.

Therefore, Davis concludes, the only way to solve things is to "educate" (i.e. indoctrinate) the voters into understanding that no savings are possible, that those who disagree are ignorant or dishonest, and tax hikes are inevitable.

All in all a sweet piece of propaganda. Too bad the facts are not on his side.

Immortality is mine! I am published in the Rap Sheet!

Took me a while to find it, but turns out I was recently published in the Rap Sheet, the monthly newsletter of the Portland Police Association. Very kind of them.

Talk About Budget Ignorance

In a recent guest opinion, a man who ought to know better (Adam Davis, a partner at the opinion research firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall) commits so many blunders and makes so many patronizing comments, it's clear he's nowhere close to understanding his fellow Oregonians.

He's right that we need honest communication to rebuild public dialog and public trust. He should have set an example by being honest himself.

Here is his commentary in total, with my comments in italics:

IN MY OPINION Adam Davis

Thursday, June 02, 2005 The Oregonian

Confronting our own budget ignorance

A s a public opinion researcher, I see time and again that voters are becoming less aware of how government works and the benefits government provides them. As a citizen, I'm deeply troubled by this.
Poor ignorant little voters just don't know all the wonderful, wonderful things that Big Daddy Government does for them. Let's pat them on the head.

Our firm recently completed a statewide survey for the advocacy group Citizens for Oregon's Future ("Voters lack awareness on budget," May 18). What we learned was expected but disturbing. Oregon voters as a whole are ill-informed about what choices the Legislature must actually make.
Or, you did a set-up job with loaded questions designed to "prove" that the voters are just unaware and out of touch. Great cover for big spending politicians - I wonder who paid for it... oh, Citizens for Oregon's Future! A special interest group dedicated to growing the size and power of government. How shocking that the people who paid for the survey got the answers they wanted.

Am I being fair in my depiction of COF? Well, the founder and Executive Director is Rhys Scholes, former aid to then-Multnomah County Chairwoman Beverly Stein and frequent apologist for big government. Their Communications Director is Steve Novick, onetime head of the "Center for Constructive Citizen Action" - apparently a Big Labor front organization, though now apparently defunct.

At least eight out of 10 Oregon voters oppose cutting services to seniors and funding for K-12 education to balance the state budget. And more than half think the state spends "too much" on services other than education, public safety, health care and services to seniors. But nearly two-thirds did not offer an estimate of the percentage of the state budget that goes to those "other" services. The average answer for those who did offer an estimate was 32 percent. But in fact, more than 90 percent of the state budget goes to the named services that voters clearly support and less than 10 percent goes to "other" services.
Oooh! More than 90% of "the budget" - but of course he doesn't say "the General Fund budget" because then he'd be admitting he's talking about 90% of 1/4 of the total state budget. Wouldn't want anybody to know that.

More than seven out of 10 likely voters did not even guess what percent of school district budgets go toward central administration. The average answer among those who did was 34 percent, which greatly exaggerates what are considered to be actual school administration costs.
"What are considered..." - people use the passive when they don't want to state who's doing the deed. Davis doesn't say that 45 cents of every education dollar fails to make it into the classroom to pay for the costs of instruction.

This poll is consistent with other research. The Progress Board has found that 85 percent of Oregonians do not know that the income tax is the primary source of state revenue
Maybe because it's not - less than one dollar of every four spent by the state comes from individual income tax revenue.

and that education is the largest state expenditure.
Not even close. The biggest chunk is Human Services at $9.7 billion, then Administration at $7 billion, then Economic Development at $5.3 billion, then the State School Fund (for K-12) at $5 billion, then higher ed (colleges/universities) at $4.5 billion.

Oh, if you lump K-12 together with higher ed and "other education" you could challenge Human Services... but Davis isn't here to educate, but to obfuscate.

In the statewide Oregon Values and Beliefs poll that our firm conducted in 2002, only 59 percent of respondents mentioned education when we asked what services state and local government pays for -- which means that more than 40 percent of Oregonians did not think of education as something their tax dollars pay for.
Wow. And some 25% of Oregon households have kids in public schools. Your point?

And only 17 percent mentioned health care, which is, in fact, one of the largest items in the state budget.
Maybe because most Oregonians aren't the beneficiaries of the massive and wasteful spending of the Oregon Health Plan?

These findings represent part of the reason citizens are so negative about government. The information gap makes it easy -- indeed, almost irresistible -- for political candidates to make something-for-nothing promises that, when they go unfulfilled, only adds to public cynicism.

Once elected, politicians are stuck with the kind of choices the Oregon Legislature faces now: Do legislators reduce services for seniors or funding for schools? Since voters aren't prepared for the idea that such tough choices are necessary, they conclude that their legislators are just incompetent.
Clever! He insinuates without explictly saying it that his opponents are a pack of liars, and that budget savings are impossible.

This state of affairs poses a virtually insuperable barrier to any kind of major reform of our tax system or array of public services. Any effort to raise taxes for any purpose runs into the same problem: "Can't you just prioritize and cut out the unimportant stuff?"

I don't purport to know exactly how we can ensure a fully informed electorate.
There is a becoming level of modesty. But I suspect your definition of "informed" would actually mean "mis-informed" based on this article.

People don't trust politicians or the news media, but that doesn't excuse them from at least trying to inform voters. The "balance-the-state-budget" project that Citizens for Oregon's Future has sponsored for high school students ("On a student budget," April 18) is an intriguing long-term strategy. And nonpartisan nonprofits that benefit from public dollars might try better educating their donors and clients.

At a minimum, we should do whatever it takes to make people more aware of how politicians spend our money. That might make people more sympathetic about the tough choices they are making -- and less receptive to "something-for-nothing" campaigns. A body politic with less cynicism and more honesty is itself a worthy goal and may ultimately lead to more effectively delivering the public's most desired services.

Adam Davis is a partner in the Portland opinion research firm of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall.

At a minimum, Mr. Davis, we should do whatever it takes to make people aware of the entire state budget and the dishonest rhetoric of those paid to defend the wasteful practices of the spending class. Yes, let's all try for less cynicism and more honesty. You could even try it yourself.

What's a Good Measure of Government Results?

I've been disappointed at both the state Progress Board and even more the Portland/Multnomah Progress Board - both seem to have a strong position from which to push for government accountability and an increase in bang for the taxpayer buck, but both seem to have little taste for really driving that process.

I attribute that to the origin of both bodies. Both were born of the late 80s/early 90s desire to avoid the painful economic downturn Oregon had just gone through with the implosion of the wood products industry. The ruling class decided that a Strategic Plan (and better yet, a Strategic Planning Process) would save them, and the state Progress Board was made the keeper of that flame. That credulous view of Strategic Planning haunts both organizations, and keeps them mired in otherworldly abstraction.

Compared to what, you ask? If I were running things, here's what I'd have the state Progress Board do - some of which they are already doing; some they want to do; some they don't yet realize they should do:

1. Use consistent terminology that is both accessible to the public and precisely defined - i.e. say "measures" not "benchmarks" when the rest of the world says "measures"
   
2. Use common and accessible units of measure for outputs (or better yet outcomes) - i.e. dollars per student-hour of classroom instruction
   
3. Relentlessly purge measures of activity; replace with measures of outputs
4. Market the measures to the public, and spend at least as much time talking with consumers of services as with providers when defining measures
   
5. Make frequent apples-to-apples comparisons to other states, other providers, and the private sector
6. Create and maintan a wall between the hard numbers and the fuzzy strategic planning happy-talk
7. Distinguish between measures, estimates, and goals
8. Require agencies to report using "blessed" units of measure, or charge them for the conversion
9. Don't be afraid of an occasionally adversarial interaction with an agency
   

I wonder how many of these will be covered at the Oregon Public Performance Measurement Association's inaugural meeting next week?

Pdx in the Ascendant? Really?

In response to a posting here claiming that Portland is highly ranked on countless lists and is thus a wonderful place with little need for improvement, I wrote the following:

I recommend you read the classic book "How to Lie with Statistics" before you burst any buttons from chest-swelling pride. Many of the rankings you report are from organizations I have no reason to trust; others are directly contradicted by other established facts; still others are going to be determined by the unstated assumptions of the rankers.

To take a few: the Pearl District is also an example of taxpayer giveaways that subsidize rich yuppies. If the "Project for Public Spaces" is part of the lemming-like New Urbanist Movement, then of course they'll rate the Pearl highly - those are two aspects of the same religion.

And if Portland is the most child-friendly city, why is it also a city with few children, and that number plummeting?

As for the Tax Foundation, my initial look at their ranking system indicates they excludes fees - but Oregon rakes in $2 in fees for ever $1 in personal income tax revenue. I don't think the Tax Foundation's scoring system takes into account how distorted Oregon's fee-heavy revenue system is - and calling us "low tax" by ignoring 2/3rds of the state's take is dishonest to say the least.

But hey, how does Oregon rank on self-delusion among liberal cheerleaders? (Not you specifically, Chris - this is a common theme I've seen.) That's one ranking I'm sure we earned honestly.

Foundations and Gov't Accountability

I will be the first person to tell you how cynical I am regarding liberal foundations and their potentially pernicious effects on civic life. Certainly, the news about how a handful of liberal foundations managed to foist "campaign-finance reform" on an unsuspecting and unwilling public has only sharpened my suspicions.

Now, it looks like I will be -- in some small way -- the beneficiary of liberal foundation dollars. I am a confirmed attendee of the Oregon Public Performance Measurement Association's inaugural meeting.

Apparently, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is paying for the meeting. I hope that means nice sandwiches.

Come to find out, the Sloan Foundation has an entire program dedicated to increasing and improving the measurement of municipal government results. Where oh where have they been all my life? And can I trust them?

At least I'll get fed.

Egypt gets what the Democrats don't

From the 27-May-2005 Wall Street Journal:

Egyptian Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali could have been describing Argentina when he told us that under the traditional state system, "Government is a predator and the citizen is the prey. You pounce on him and you squeeze him all you can." Egypt wants to break with that tradition so as to attract capital and boost economic activity. Speaking like a Reagan supply-sider, Mr. Boutros-Ghali offered that any revenue loss under his tax plan to cut rates and provide an amnesty would be offset by higher growth and more taxpayers coming into the formal economy.

How well this describes Oregon's view of its taxpayers.

Daily 5

There are some remarkably good resources for managers on the web (as well as the expected crop of Dilbert-like crud).

The latest (for me) is something simple called the Daily Five Minutes. I like it.

What is Privacy?

Leave it to Bruce Schneier to send me this link to a definitive taxonomy of the concept of Privacy.

Brilliant.

Why I Love to Hate the OCPP

Before I thrash him here, I should say that I actually like Chuck Sheketoff. He's an excellent public speaker, which I like and admire. He's witty and thinks quickly on his feet. I recommended him to be part of a City Club of Portland panel, and he did very well. Sit next to him at dinner and you'll have a fine time.

But Chuck's political writing gets under my skin because his approach is inductive and emotional, and he uses that approach to gloss over otherwise troublesome facts. If you're looking to have your liberal prejudices reaffirmed, he's great. If you're looking to understand what's going on in detail, he's worse than useless.

Consider his recent [when I first wrote this] column regarding an apparently huge piece of corporate welfare, "Is Intel Bluffing?" - it's a masterpiece of the genre.

The public policy question is, should Intel get a huge property tax break on a planned multi-billion dollar investment? Useful related questions are, what will happen if they don't get the tax break, and what's the purpose of property taxes and of selective tax breaks? Is the (fairly common) practice of excusing very large capital investments from taxation a nod to the virtues of the Land Value Tax?

Sheketoff sidesteps all of that. To him, all taxes are just and good. There are no opportunity costs, and the hypothetical tax revenue is as good as in the bank - so the tax break "give[s] away $579 million of property taxes that are dedicated to funding public services."

Except of course it doesn't "give away" what it hasn't collected yet, and the whole question is, will Intel make a huge multi-billion dollar investment in Oregon if Oregon is planning to tax that investment to the tune of half a billion dollars? More pointedly, what are Intel's other options, and how likely is it that another location (Arizona, for example) might waive the tax if Oregon doesn't, and thus get the investment?

I think the whole subject of local governments competing with tax breaks and giveaways to lure jobs is fascinating. I'm convinced most of it is stupid; it's often a zero-sum game where tax dollars get spent to shuffle existing jobs between cities and states, and the firms that aren't threatening to move find that their taxes are being used to subsidize their competitors.

Here too, Sheketoff can't give us any facts, just innuendo mixed with irrelevant statistics.

[Postscript - Sheketoff won by getting the tax break killed, and Intel did NOT invest in Oregon. Perhaps that was his goal all along - to chase away those pesky jobs that make people independent of their government, and keep as many people unemployed and downtrodden as possible.]

My Soul Brother

I love this guy, Ted Hayes. Not for being a black Republican, though that's no bad thing, but for believing in personal responsibility and for personally making a difference.

Right on.

Risk and the Capitalists' Carnival

Here's a rich page I need to go back and study: Political Calculations. And another: Peaktalk on the Carnival of the Capitalists.

Potter's Dishonesty

(edited 4/27)
Potter's Dishonesty

I've asked a national security expert about Potter and his desire for a Secret Decoder Ring and a Top Secret clearance.

Does Potter actually need Top Secret clearance in order to oversee the police?

According to my source, no - in fact it is common for lower level workers to have more access to sensitive information than their bosses. There are any number of ways to maintain accountability and oversight in such cases, which Potter surely must know.

For the lay audience, try this thought experiment. Instead of Top Secret information, what if Potter were overseeing staff who spoke a language he didn't speak? What if he were overseeing people with expertise in accounting, or computer programming? Would he need to learn that foreign language, or get an accounting degree, in order to manage his staff?

No. Any time a boss has to oversee people in such cases, he needs to set clear policy, needs to require his subordinates to commit in writing to obeying that policy, and needs to audit compliance and give feedback. Period.

This "oversight and accountability" argument is a smokescreen, and needs to be revealed as such. To the extent this "pullout" affects policing, Potter is putting public safety second to political posturing.

SB 1000

Finally, the Democrats have something to offer me. Under the proposed new laws outlined in SB 1000, I can benefit personally from quotas and set-asides just by swearing I'm bisexual or occasionally wearing a skirt.

If Milton Berle can wear a dress on national TV, I can wear one on Cross Dressing Fridays to pay my bills.

I'm a size 8.

The Pope gets it Right on Socialism

It worries me when religious people embrace the thoroughly evil ideas of Socialism. So I was pleased to read this column in which the late Pope is shown to have opposed Socialism, and for excellent reasons.

Oregon Legislature to Confiscate Gift Card Value

For some reason, the Oregon Legislature wants to confiscate the unused portion of all gift cards and gift certificates in Oregon.

Gift certificates and gift card programs are not free to run (and are not always good deals for consumers), but they an turn a profit for the issuer. That profit comes from several sources.

1. Gift cards can increase total business traffic, as when you buy your friend an El Gaucho gift card and he goes to that restaurant when otherwise he may not have done so. 

2. The business gets the money up front and only incurs a cost when you redeem the card - it's a free loan to them.

3. For some - like the KFC "Chicken Checks" of the 1980s - there was a high rate of dropout - the gift was given but never redeemed.  That means the money falls directly to the business' bottom line as profit.  The industry average is approximately 15% drop-out.

On the other hand, gift cards also must be accounted for as a liability on your business' books, much as frequent flyer miles are a liability on the books of the airlines.  Since most businesses don't like to keep endlessly open liabilities on their books, expirations are a way to close those books and reduce liabilities.  If a particular gift card is still not redeemed after (say) ten years, odds are it never will be redeemed.  It was lost or misplaced years ago - you don't want to upset the accountants or investors by pretending those cards are going to all show up and get redeemed.

The Legislature is using an "unclaimed property" concept that I first ran into in the insurance world.  When I was consulting for a large insurer, I ran into something called "Escheats to the State" - when an insurer couldn't pay out a claim or refund or other money owed because it couldn't find the person, the insurer had to set the money aside into a special account.  After three years (it varies by state) the money was forfeited or "Escheated" to the state government.  This is common for unclaimed property of various kinds, but doen't always include gift cards.

That wasn't because the government owned or deserved the money.  Rather, it was a way to remove a conflict of interest.  If the insurer was allowed to keep the money, they might see an incentive to "oops" not find you when they owed you money.  Escheating is a way to ensure that no such conflict arises.  But escheating is entirely inappropriate for gift cards, where YOU control the money.

Also: you cannot offer interest on a gift card without running afoul of banking and investment laws - at that point you're really selling CDs - certificates of deposit.

Public Education's Intellectual Conformity Police

Thanks to the progressive, free-thinking leftists who control Oregon public education, you will soon be eligible to lose your teaching license if you don't think the right thoughts.

That's because - whether or not Senate Bill 50 passes - Oregon's education establishment have already decided that it's appropriate (and that they have the power and discretion) to require all licensed Oregon public school teachers to share a specific political ideology, flying under the code phrase "Cultural Competence."

I'm simple. When I see a phrase like "Cultural Competence" I assume it means things like respect. Courtesy. Not assuming your foreign-born students all know who Abe Lincoln was, or are all aware of (whatever's left of) shared American culture. Perhaps it means not demeaning their country of origin or their heritage, or becoming aware of subtle nonverbal communications habits common to different cultures.

No, ODE says "Cultural Competence" and means teachers need to think alike and share the same political values.

I wish I were making this up.

As detailed in their report, the Oregon Department of Education says they have a consensus that:

...cultural competence is more than more just effectively meeting the needs of all students by providing teachers with the requisite knowledge and skills. Rather, cultural competence entails actively challenging the status quo and advocating for equity and social justice. [p. 3]

So it's not enough if a teacher is "effectively meeting the needs of all students"? I'd be delighted if we were just doing that. But no, teachers must do all that and more - they must be required - their word not mine - required to "advocate" for "social justice".

Lest you consider me an alarmist, look at the details offered by the ODE. They want to:

· Revise rules [...] including possible revocation of licensure for culturally incompetent behavior
· Ensure licensed educators are culturally competent
· Require cultural competence for licensure renewal
[p. 9]

No big deal, right? Just gotta understand your students and teach them, right? Nope. In order to get and keep your teaching license, ODE is contemplating requiring that you "Apply competencies and believe it [p. 60]." A teacher is only safe if s/he "Advocates for social justice [p. 5]," which seems to start off with a nod to equal opportunity but quickly degenerates into economic re-distribution and Socialism Lite.

Conscientious objectors apparently need not apply. So much for honoring diversity.

Republican Utopianism

Peggy Noonan and I both feel a little worried that Bush II is embarking the US on a too-ambitious program of excessive involvement in foreign affairs. I especially liked her phrasing:

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing.

Now David Reiff agrees, writing about the possible downsides if any of our efforts to "export freedom" should fail:

But if it goes wrong, as I desperately fear that it will, perhaps John Quincy Adams's words in his Independence Day speech of 1821 will resonate once more. "Once enlisting under other banners, were they even the banners of foreign independence, [America] would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumes the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force."

I agree.

In Richland, WA

I'm staying with Mike Badnarik - literally sharing a room with him - and it's already a hoot. Mike is such a sound, decent, nice man, and so firmly rooted in love of country and confidence in liberty... and also a nice guy to hang out with and drink a beer and talk.

We're co-teaching a class tomorrow for four hours titled simply "Candidate Training", so I tore him away from the reception long enough to go over the outline one last time, talk over how we wanted to approach things, and get his feedback on my last minute addition, the Seating Plan. We'll see how that actually plays out.

Now it's time to go back out and kiss hands and shake babies.

I'm an hour from hitting the road to drive to Richland, WA for the LPWS state convention. I'll be co-teaching a four hour Candidate Training class with LP presidential candidate Mike Badnarik. More later.

Why I think the UN is dreadfully broken

Time for a Churchill quote:

"There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise."

- Winston Churchill, quoted in this review (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.meacham.html) of Ripples of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson


This strikes at the heart of my unhappiness with the UN, and my impatience with its apologists -- we keep getting asked to trust the UN do perform this or that task, and it reliably fails at the task, often with tremendously tragic consequences.

My correspondent Marty's example is perfect:  The UN makes a promise to refugees by
setting up a "safe area" -- and then fails to uphold the promise. Repeatedly.

If the UN or the individuals or nations setting up the "safe area" would just be honest, and say "we're setting up a collection point for refugees, but we won't defend you -- we're just making it easier for your attackers to find you" then I'd be much less upset.

The inability to defend may not be the UN's fault.  But the lying about it is very much the UN's fault.  The subsequent bloodbath is at least partly the UN's fault, as enablers.

The corruption of the UN's Oil for Food program is the UN's fault.

The unwillingness of the UN's apologists to be honest about the UN's flaws makes reforming the UN harder or impossible, so the persistence of these flaws is at least partly the apologists' fault, as enablers.

The UN's stated goals are in many cases my own goals or desires as well.   But if the UN as it *actually* exists is getting in the way of those goals or making things worse, then defending the UN's dysfunction is *impeding* those goals.

Honesty on this point is crucial.  No fix can occur before one admits a  thing is broken.

Secret, Top Secret, and SCI

From my expert source:

You may find this useful:

http://www.dss.mil/search-dir/training/csg/security/Contents.htm#Shortcut

As you drill down into it (all you'll need is the Overview section, I think), you'll notice that the kind of info that is classified that we were talking about is SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information).  That's sources and methods.  And that is not just SECRET or TOP SECRET, that's TOP SECRET/SCI (the black world).

Basically, once you get a TS, you can get read into an SCI level clearance -- but eventually you'll have to take (and pass) a polygraph to make it permanent.

It's not just knowing that Enemy State has an X -- that could be classified but not SCI.  It's knowing that they have it, and knowing because we have a Y (source or method) that detected it, and we also have a Special Forces SMU (Special Mission Unit) that can go and take it out because they are trained to be able to do Z (US capability).

:: Paul ::

Credit Card Fraud and Bad Databases

It's not that credit card workers are stupid. It's that their database systems are.
Had a call at the house from CitiBank, our credit card issuer. They had seen some "suspicious" transactions and wanted to know if we'd performed them or if someone else had.

One of the two was a gasoline purchase (a common ruse by thieves to find out if a card has been deactivated is to make a small purchase at a gas pump, swiping the card at the pump and avoiding the cameras in the store). The gas was purchased at "8:31 p.m." they said.

I was at home watching TV with my wife at 8:31 p.m. Yikes. Was it fraud?

Turns out the credit card employee was reporting it as 8:31 p.m. Central Time. We live in Oregon. At 6:31 p.m. PST (local) I was at the gas station buying gas.

I don't blame the credit card company's employee for reading the number on her screen. I blame a dumb database application that doesn't account for differences in time zones and doesn't report local times as such. It's a recipe for misunderstanding at the very least.

Is it any wonder we have a fraud epidemic, with rocket scientists like this designing the database applications?

B!x has Details, Lacks Big Picture

The coverage by B!x of the Portland JTTF flap continues to be excellent. That's now where I go first for background and details.

It's just a shame the author seems reflexively negative regarding the FBI, and why I have to question his grip on the idea of combatting terrorism. He seems to have a typically leftist myopia regarding anything that might look like profiling.

In this post he (reasonably) questions the credentials and expertise of apparently self-annointed "terrorism expert" Gary Perlstein, and goes on to give us this passage:

Take a deep breath for a moment, then come back and re-read the first part of that quote. ""The fact that a person was under suspicion because he was a Muslim, used a computer, transferred large sums of money, that's fine," Perlstein says in that article. "I want people to investigate that."

Abuse of innocent people via arrest and prosecution is something Perlstein apparently rejects. But abuse of innocent people by investigating them for spurious and illegitimate reasons, that's okay with him.

Sorry for the nested quotes, but here is my understanding of Perlstein, and then of B!x.

Perlstein thinks it's okay for law enforcement to go looking for people who might be terrorists, and thinks that looking for some combination of factors, including in this case (a) being Muslim, (b) using a computer, and (c) transferring large sums of money.

B!x seems to think that those three factors are the only factors present, and promptly starts to hyperventilate.

Go back to the original links on B!x's page, and you start to see that there is more afoot. If you think it's just "use a computer" - that could be anyone, and it supports B!x's paranoia. But the case at hand involved a person accused of operating web sites to support terrorism - which is a higher threshold of involvement than the generic "use a computer".

From the Spokesman-Review article:

Al-Hussayen, a UI graduate student in computer science, was the first person charged with providing material support to terrorists by operating Web sites. [William Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University and an expert on domestic and international terrorism] said the case seemed to show him as "what most of us would think of as the model for a Web administrator – you're a medium through which materials pass, you're not responsible for the contents, nor do you edit or survey the contents."

So the reality is that even being a web site operator isn't enough involvement under the law to make you culpable (thank goodness) . So, it's good that stupid provisions in the original misbegotten Patriot Act are being struck down.

As for profiling, once you get rid of race as a factor it becomes standard police procedure. Like Perlstein, I too expect the Feds to be looking for Muslim extremists who are doing some combination of things, such as (a) posting or reading extremist anti-American materials that justify terrorism; (b) transfering large amounts of money internationally; (c) attending any group meeting at which terrorism is promoted or encouraged or where potential terrorists are recruited; (d) writing or actively disseminating or helping disseminate pro-terrorist literature; (e) learning to fly large aircraft but not take off or land; (f) attending or seeking to attend terrorist training camps; etc.

Note that "being Middle Eastern" or "being Arab" aren't on the list - because the terrorists are recruiting across race and ethnic barriers.

Potter and Leonard, Junior G-Men

The Potter/Leonard flap over their desire to get themselves Top Secret clearance - and their apparent willingness to back away from the Joint Terrorism Task Force if they don't - is filled with half-truths and misunderstandings. (For a good overview see here and here.)

First, what does it mean for something to be Top Secret vs. Secret? Boiling down the explanation I got from my source, who has Top Secret clearance as part of his job, the difference is generally Sources and Methods.

It is rarely a risk to National Security to let the public know that we know that (say) North Korea has nukes. It is almost always a very grave risk to disclose the Sources and Methods by which we may know it. Have we bugged someone's bedroom where he spills everything to his mistress? Revealing that could reveal who the source is and lead to the discovery of the bug. Is all the information coming from a given source about agriculture? That could point a finger at our mole in the Ministry of Agriculture.

So, one way to take a Top Secret document and render it merely Secret (or even releasable to the public) can be to edit out all the Sources and Methods. Smart intelligence officials may even wait until they have two or three sources before revealing a fact, so the enemy cannot figure out, based on the content, who the source must have been.

(The British famously had broken the Nazi "Enigma" code and were desparate to ensure the Nazis didn't know it, lest they stop using it. During the North Africa campaign the Brits regularly sank German supply ships based on intercepted schedule information - but they always flew a recon aircraft over the ship to be targeted, waited a while, then sank it. The Germans were baffled at how good those British recon flights were. They never suspected Enigma was broken.)

Which brings us to Potter and Leonard. If you want to oversee your people, you don't always need to know all of the details of their day. You do need to know enough to be sure they're doing the right things, and you may want to have their work audited by a third party from time to time.

So, a regular summary of their work could be edited down from Top Secret to Secret, and a trusted person (say anybody working for state government with an existing Top Secret clearance, such as a judge, Department of Justice lawyer, etc.) could periodically examine the Top Secret materials for compliance with departmental policies and ORS 181, the state law that forbids law enforcement from taking part in certain kinds of domestic spying.

Not enough teeth for you? Then consider having the Oregon Dept of Justice issue an opinion on whether FBI agents could be prosecuted in state court for breaking state law or - if they instructed local cops to violate ORS 181 - conspiring to break the law. Wouldn't that be enough of a safeguard?

The Portland City Council seems unable to distinguish between what they want to accomplish (in this case oversight), and a particular way to accomplish it (Top Secret clearances and Sekrit Decoder Rings for Potter and Leonard). This mental rigidity is visible in other ways as well, I believe.