Asking for a Testimonial

There are times when your customer is so happy, they seem to be looking for extra ways to help you. When that happens, ask them for a written testimonial. Do it in email or in a printed letter.

When I get their response, I'll rewrite their answer a bit and ask for their approval of the rewrite. Other times I'll write a draft testimonial based on the verbal praise they've already given me. I always make it clear in such cases that I want it to only say things they agree with and believe enthusiastically.

Here's a letter I sent recently. I was responding to some very strong praise I'd gotten from my client in email. Note that I simply ask for a testimonial, and offer an outline -- actually, two outlines -- for structuring the response. (This is enormously helpful to the person responding and increases both the likelihood of a positive answer and improves the quality of their response.)

Since you're being so sweet, let me ask you for a testimonial. The structure of a testimonial is often this (adapted from Kent Blumberg):

• Who are you (i.e. in what way can the reader identify with you)?

• Why did you decide to use us?
• What were your expectations, and how well did we meet them?
• What benefits did you get from working with us? (Please be as specific as you can.)
• Who should consider using us?

Here's a different outline (from Veronika Noize):

• First, why did you decide that the time was right to work with me? What situation or event prompted you to seek my help?
• Second, what specifically did we do together that resolved or improved that situation?
• And finally, what was the end result or outcome of our work together? How did you know that our work was successful?

Thank you kindly.
-Tom

That's all it took. You can do it too. And you should.

After Action Review - Oregon GOP

after_action_group
Originally uploaded by tbcox23

I recently hosted a gathering of Republican campaign managers, volunteers, and candidates to talk about our experiences in the November 2008 election.

In particular, I wanted to learn what everyone else had learned during the campaign, so we could all do a better job in the future.

I have always had good results when doing this sort of thing in the private sector, so it was no surprise that this one yielded good lessons as well.

Tom in the News

I'm getting quoted lately -- not sure why:

Forest Grove News Times
Best lines:

“I think it is a repudiation of whatever plan we thought we had before this and it’s a clear indication that we have to rebuild and rethink and take very seriously the obligation that we have now as the minority party in the state,” Cox said.

Cox hopes that the Republicans, now solidly in the minority in Salem, will focus on putting pressure on Democrats regarding tax issues.

“If you want to turn a Democrat into a vulnerable Democrat get him to vote for a bunch of tax increases in a down economy,” Cox said. “If that’s their strategy, don’t let me interrupt them.”

PolitickerOR
Best line:
“Right now, we’re losers,” Cox said. “We haven’t lost, we’re just having a bad couple of years. We behaved ourselves into a hole, and we need to behave ourselves out of it.”

WSJ Roundup: New Directions for the GOP

The ever valuable Wall Street Journal provides a set of articles suggesting ways forward for the GOP, starting with this one from Paul Ryan. Each article contains an index to all the other articles.

What Does the GOP Do Next?

• Danny Vargas: Diversity is Destiny
• Paul Ryan: Take Some Political Risks
• Henry Olsen: What Would Reagan Do?
• Peter Robinson: Put California in Play
• Richard Land: Stay Faithful to Core Values
• Michael Steele: Listen. Adapt. Be Positive.

So, which of them are right? What is the path forward for Oregon?

Your comments welcome.

City Club Post-Election Analysis

[The following was blogged during a 07-Nov-2008 City Club of Portland program "City Club Post-Election Analysis" -- all typos and errors are mine. The comments attributed to the participants are as best I could capture them at the time, and in some cases I wrote what I thought they meant, not necessarily the exact words they said. -Tom]

Dan Lavey says, the Oregon Republican Party is dead.

The party divisions are on cultural lines, not economic lines as much any more.

The obsessive Sizemore effort to put initiatives up has served to permanently organize the opposition. Each successive election has served to get Democrats ever more organized. From the Bus Project onward, these have served to help their candidates.

Democrats are recruiting better people.

All the GOP has left is ideology, not ideas. That's bad for Oregon because the only remaining debate is between the left and the far left. The political process has become much more polarized. That's driven in part by our campaign finance rules, which in allowing all your money to come from a dozen large donors, breed lazy candidates.

If Obama governs as he ran, he could be very successful.

Tim Hibbits --
The Obama margin will be probably 9 million votes. Oregon is still counting. Why can hillbillies in Kentucky get their votes counted 100% the next day, and Oregon takes two weeks?

The polls were largely right. The belief in hidden GOP support is proved wrong.

Rove has been a long term catastrophe for the party.

There was a Willy Week article two years ago suggesting that Republicans would take over Oregon in a few years. It was clearly wrong, and Hibbits refuted it at the time in Brainstorm Magazine.

The GOP's move from boardrooms to church pews has not helped. Statewide in Oregon, the Dem-GOP record is 24-3. The Washington numbers are 39-3.

Obama will carry Multnomah County by 200,000 votes. He will carry the rest of the state by 100,000. He got 60% of Washington County, the former GOP stronghold. He did well in many counties formerly strong for the GOP.

The voters voted less in realignment than in a throw the bums out fashion. There is no "permanent majority" in US politics, however if Democrats govern well they could have a good ride.

Meanwhile GOP leaders are coming to the conclusion that they aren't conservative enough, even though it's been 50 years since a hard-right candidate won in Oregon.

Mark Wiener --
would love to see the GOP move further right. He would caution Democrats on that.

Now the hard work begins. Education and how we pay for it. Our piece of global warming. How we raise money for public purposes. These changes need to be done smartly and with a lot of inclusion of voters. Dems will have right around 36 in the House, close to being able to raise taxes.

Dems should move carefully. There's an opportunity to make systemic change. It should be done in a way that's inclusive. If you leave the public behind you won't be successful.

Dan Lavey --
Reagan was successful where Bush failed. Reagan always kept the public with him, and Bush didn't do anything like that. It's more than giving a great speech. You have to adjust the content of the cake, not tweak the icing.

Republicans -- let the Dems govern, and work on regaining the majority. Don't delude yourself that you're governing. Dems need to produce. Give them their shot. Pick a few fights that go to the strength of the GOP brand and that people like about the GOP. Don't pick fights on children's health care that divide your own team and unite your opponents.

Tim Hibbits --
Sorry if someone felt bad about my comments about Kentucky. I grew up in southern Ohio and was proud to consider myself a hillbilly. I could literally see Kentucky from my house.

The new Oregon House Dems are in not-very-blue districts. A lurch left by Democrats would put those seats at risk. To stay in the majority the Dems need to avoid policies that drive voters away from them.

Dan Lavey --
The agendas of your party's interest groups is not always aligned with the interests of your party. Watch out regarding primaries that select unelectable candidates.

Questions from members
Marge Kafoury: Dan please elaborate on the Sizemore factor. Voters keep seeing the same defeated initiatives come back. How can Oregon get off this merry-go-round?

Dan Lavey: the backers need to stop funding losing initiatives. I don't understand how someone can fund a consistent and repeated failure. The answer isn't to choke off the initiative process. I think it's helping -- dramatically -- the interests of the liberal groups who have become permanently organized against them.

Wiener: and it's also expensive. The strategy may be to keep liberals on the defensive. And Dan is right. Loren Parks likes to give money because he enjoys it. But why does (some guy from) Jeld Wen fund these things? This is really a Sizemore money maker. Do the donors understand what their money goes to? Do they see how Sizemore spends it? Admittedly the opposition money is spent on people like me, so I may be cutting my own throat.

(Discussion on choking off or reforming the initiative system. Various slaps at Sizemore.)

Q2: wasteful spending and borrowing... will the American people make the necessary sacrifices for the common good?

Hibbits: I do believe the next president will have to ask for some sort of national sacrifice. We are a debtor nation. Obama will have to lay out that there are problems and we are all going to have to sacrifice. The Bush admin was unwilling to say that. Reagan was able to say that tough days today can lead to good days tomorrow.

Lavey: I think leadership finds the sweet spot between therapy and discipline. You can be an Eat Your Peas president like Carter and make everyone feel bad. Bush could have rallied the country after 9/11 -- esp. on energy -- and failed to do so. There is consensus for change.

Wiener: we are at a teachable moment. We want leadership that is honest yet not crabbed. Mondale's "I'm gonna raise your taxes" lacked the purpose of that sacrifice. Tell people, here is what you will get for your sacrifice. Let's hope the opportunity is not squandered.

Q3, Chris Smith: was there any way to avoid both 61 and 57?

Wiener: absolutely not. Without 57 on the ballot, 61 would have passed. Without the rational alternative of 57, 61 would have passed.

Q4: I did a lot of phoning and heard spontaneous complaints about negative advertising.

Wiener: Ask Jefferson -- it is here to stay. It works. The irrelevant nasty stuff does not work. Accurate yet negative ads are relevant and need to be aired.

Hibbits: negative contrast is not bad. McCain tried to scare people. Obama was more fair, that McCain voted w/ Bush 90% of the time.

Wiener: McCain resorted to actual Red Baiting, if you can imagine.

Q5: were you surprised that in tough economic times that people voted in favor of bond measures like PCC?

Lavey: Yes, I was surprised. The zoo passed, PCC passed, parks, public safety.

Wiener: Liz Kaufman has said that in tough times you have to have a tough conversation with the voters about what we want as a community. What do we want to buy? What is important to us as a community? I was not shocked by the result. Honest conversations are good. Demagoguing is bad.

Why monopolies are bad

The reason monopoly is bad in the eyes of libertarians, is because it is inherently coercive -- we as consumers don't have other options, so even if the monopolist is a "good" one, he's still holding all the cards, and we have no choice but to either buy his stuff at his price, or go pound sand.

Competition empowers consumers by giving us choices and thus power, pitting the businesses against each other to our benefit.

Businesses hate that, so they constantly look for ways to "control" competition -- usually using government mandated cartel practices, subverting government oversight agencies, or by illegal price fixing, illegal anti-competitive agreements, etc.

A free market works when it channels greed into socially positive outcomes. Greed doesn't like being channeled and will happily corrupt the government in order to free itself from the hard boundaries of the free market.

Thomas Frank under-performs yet again

Thomas Frank continues to underserve his readers. This time it's a disjointed rant based loosely on a deliberate mis-reading of a 28-year-old quote.

Wirthlin's point, that people act on their perceptions, is pedestrian, and the same sentiment can be found in the mouths of political operatives (and marketers and newspaper editors) of all political stripes.

If you view Frank's writings with sufficiently jaded eyes, it's amusing to see him waxing indignant about the Republican disconnect with Frank's version of reality -- which of course is really real.

A useful exercise might have been for Frank to engage in some, oh, let's call it reportage, wherein he could prove rather than assert that his reality is more real than the straw-man GOP version he offers.

Frank might have addressed the consistent thread of anti-Americanism that continues to dominate the far left and even the near left, such as the amazing circumstance by which the Democratic Party two years ago was in a conflict of interest -- that the worse America did in Iraq, the better for themselves -- and prominent Democrats still apparently desire American defeat in Iraq.

If you seek to read a fact-free essay that consists of a leftist agreeing with himself, Frank once again delivers. If you seek someone to challenge your thinking, or expose you to new ideas, new facts, what one might call "news" -- seek elsewhere.

Memo to the Wall Street Journal's editors: please raise your expectations of Thomas Frank to the same level you hold other writers on your page. His track record is sub-par.

A dialogue on global warmism

A slightly redacted email exchange with a leftist friend, after I forwarded this link and pointed out that the "consensus" on global warming isn't a consensus:

These are good questions. Thank you. Part of the joy of knowing you -- aside from looking at you -- is being challenged by your perspective. It's delightful.

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 my friend wrote:

The consequences of your side of the debate being wrong are far more catastrophic than those if mine are. Be prudent, darling. What's to lose?

A decent standard of living, especially for poorer people. Ask the Mexicans (among many others) who had their cost of food skyrocket because of ethanol mandates. Ask them "what's to lose?" and they'll tell you about their kids going hungry.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6255781.stm

)

The cost of global warmism is not zero -- it's quite high, especially if the "answer" is to shut down the economies of the world, or divert food to fuel. Ethanol mandates alone have accelerated the loss of rain forest as the demand for corn and other ethanol feed stocks has gone up, resulting in vast new plantings of marginal and ecologically sensitive lands.
(http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-bad-for-people-and-climate

)

Ask the extinct species "what's to lose?" when it turns out -- Oops! -- it was all a mistake, no warming, but those species are gone forever.
(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html

)

I can certainly understand the appeal to continue to live exactly as one wants to and imagine that there aren't any costs to pay whatsoever. Who wouldn't want to buy into that fairy tale?

This is an excellent point -- the same reason people ignore the looming disasters of Social Security and Medicare -- denial is so much easier than action, if action truly is needed.

What I don't understand is what "your" side imagines the appeal is to those of us who believe that behaviors must change for the planet to survive. What precisely do you think we "get" out of this? An orgasmic satisfaction for being busy-bodies?

Well, for the Watermelons -- the socialists and communists who became politically homeless after the fall of the Soviet Union -- they're just green on the outside, and still red on the inside. For them it's a perfect reason to do what Bush Jr tried to do with the war: stifle dissent, exaggerate dangers, and concentrate power. Global warmism has been the excuse for massive state intrusions into both the private sector and into people's private lives. It's the perfect excuse for totalitarianism.

And for you personally, the payoff is different, as you reveal below.

Between the high resource input demands of over-indulgent self-entitled Hummer owners and families with 7 children, and the slightly less high inputs of smug self-righteous Prius drivers with compost piles and two cats, lie people like me -- who think it's wrong to blindly deplete fisheries, dump phosphates in the water supply, pretend that oil supplies will never run out (never being a pretty ridiculous concept), that super mega-ton carbon emissions come at no cost whatsoever, or that the World will be just fine, in fact better, without all those pesky bears, condors, elephants, forests and other annoying and inconvenient flora and fauna that just get in the way of commerce.

We just don't happen to like this obsessively human-centric point of view, because we believe it's destructive, sense that the planet is telling us that, and think that (really) minor lifestyle adjustments could reverse a dangerous and perhaps life-extinguishing trajectory. If we're wrong what has actually been lost or forgone that has any real significance? If we're right, you and your offspring get to be here. Seems a fair gamble.

In other words, you get to do what Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell could only dream of -- the ability to use the power of the government to tell everybody how to live, what values to have, etc. (Beats having to persuade people, like they have to in free countries.)

Your straw man above is pretty grotesque, and typical of the hate projected by leftists onto my side -- the bizarre idea that we skeptics don't value the environment, or that we're all materialists, that we all worship commerce and cheer environmental depredations -- it's loony, yet you put it forward as only half tongue in cheek.

The reality is that the wealth generated by the free market has led to not dirtier but cleaner air, water, and soil, that rich countries protect species much better than poor ones, and that the only way to pay for even some of the interventions you want is to let my side run the economy long enough to generate the wealth to cover the tab.

Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 20th century -- they are the communist countries, not the capitalist ones. Look at the ecological disaster areas of the 21st century -- they are the poorest areas with the weakest property rights, yet global warmism deepens poverty and undermines property rights further.

I'm not the slightest religious and I don't know whether you are or not,

I'm the worst Christian I know -- and yes, somehow, still a Christian. And if you're a global warmist, then you're religious -- because it's a faith, it's not science.

but if 'god' created everything, how come most of what was created appears to be expendable, because humans seem to trump everything else? Are you more precious than a manatee in 'god's' eye?

Well, yes, actually, I think humans are more valuable than non-human animals. And I think humans have a God-given duty to protect the environment. (Hence my opposition to global warmism and its horrific costs to the poor and to the environment.)

And, as the Tappet Brothers say, I've just wasted the last hour. It's like sending an email to my brother-in-law about why he should abandon Ralph Nader -- the result will be the same.

(signed)

Wasted? Nonsense. If nothing else you've given me a wonderfully diverting 20 minutes responding to you, and deepened my affection for you. Now I have to go re-read everything I wrote to see if it makes sense from a perspective OTHER than behind my own eyes -- how could I not be grateful to you for that?

-Tom

Merkeley vs. Merkeley

Watching today's single-chair US Senate debate with Jeff Merkeley vs. the empty podium where Gordon Smith should have been, I have to call it a narrow Merkeley victory.

Victory because the world gets run by the people who show up, and Smith didn't. And narrow because Merkeley came across as a mildly clever man with a hat full of memorized sound bites.

Note to future debate prep staff: remind the candidate that a sound bite is like a spice -- use sparingly to accent the main course. Rely on them too much, and it burns the tongue and insults the palate. So too with Merkeley, who said "giveaways to the richest Americans" perhaps a dozen too many times.

Working the sound bite into one answer is good. Two can be better if they're far enough apart. Three or more answers in quick succession, all containing that same sound bite, and you sound like a performer repeating memorized lines. (Oh, and it sounds even lamer if you then stumble over it.)

Yes the room was filled with upper middle class liberals who might not have been terribly open to Smith anyway. Nevertheless Smith owed it to all the voters to show up and make his case. Had he handled himself well, Smith could have raised doubts about Merkeley's intellect (actually Merkeley managed to raise them himself, in my mind at least) and shown off the bipartisanship that has so distanced him from his own reluctant Jesus-loving base.

Grover Norquist and "StopACORN.org"

Grover Norquist enters the blogger room to give interviews to the assembled electron-stained wretches. His "Americans for Tax Reform" (www.atr.org) argues for pro-growth tax policies. See also their Tax Policy widget, here.

One concern he mentions (that many of us share) regarding the Congressional bailout of the financial markets is transparency.

Perhaps groups like ACORN should also be invited -- or forced -- to be made transparent. Right now donations and contracts are published on the web, however grants are another matter -- ACORN affiliates love to suck up taxpayer dollars to fund their efforts to move the country leftward, and doesn't want to have public scrutiny.

Transparency in government spending could help eliminate abuses.

There is a group in Maine that got government info on spending from friendly legislators and then published it on the web, exposing some irregularities. It was criticized for "inaccurate" data -- it turns out the government released bad data on its own spending. Oops.

Defending Free Markets, one rally at a time

I'm in Washington DC for a rally of free market defenders. Good energy, and a heartening mix of younger activists -- an especially positive sign.

I'd still like to hear a positive vision for government's role in protecting and defending free markets. It exists, and needs to be set out in detail.

For example, a transaction is a free market transaction only when it is a voluntary exchange, freely entered into by two parties who have roughly equal information, and each has other alternatives he could have chosen.

To quote one authority, with liberties taken in formatting:

...[T]he organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government [emphasis added throughout], for:

• the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another,
• the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into,
• the definition of the meaning of property rights,
• the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and
• the provision of a monetary framework.

(Source: Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, U of Chicago Press, 1962.)

The current market turmoil has, at its heart, the

As I wrote recently,

Shameful news posturing

I'm listening to television idiots call today's stock market selloff "the worst in history" when it demonstrably is not.

When news becomes nothing but a form of entertainment and revenue, perhaps we should expect no better.

So, here is the Dow down 777 points, or 6.98%.

The Great Depression included multiple one-day drops of 12% and 14% and the overall slide was 89%.

And here are the talking heads saying today's drop is the worst in history. History as in stuff that happened after the talking head started high school, maybe. History as in actual history, not so much.

This is not to say that everything is over or that all is well. Quite the contrary -- we may yet see much larger market drops. When the market falls 25% I'll start to worry about systemic problems.

What I see right now is a much delayed correction to the over-inflated financial markets. We have a lot to blame the US government for.

A Defense of Free Markets

This has been submitted to the Forest Grove News Times as a column to be published during the week of 29-Sep-2008.

I provide it here as I submitted it, with a link to the published version. (This will be put online only after the News Times comes out, so they'll have first use of the material.)

-----

Your true friends are those people who -- when you're suddenly unpopular -- still stand by you. I'm a long time friend of the Free Market, and I'm willing to rise now publicly to defend my friend, and to set the record a little straighter. The Free Market is being blamed for all that is wrong with America's financial institutions. Alas, a lot of the criticism is off-base, self-serving, or flat wrong.

Free markets are the ones that exclude force and fraud, and rely on purely voluntary exchanges. Every honest exchange between a willing buyer and a willing seller is a free market transaction. When you hire your neighbor's kid to mow the lawn or babysit, the two of you are engaging in a free market transaction. When they function well, free markets channel greed into acceptable forms that bring about social good. Those who take on risk get to keep any rewards and must shoulder their losses.

Free markets are the result of -- are the sum of -- all these voluntary transactions. But greed itself is not good. Greed unrestrained by law, greed unchannelled, can lead to crimes like fraud and coercion.

Fraud is a crime. When an Enron or Worldcom or Fannie Mae lies and commits fraud, that's not "Darwinian capitalism" -- it's a crime and an attack on the market. That's why it's wrong to say that government is at odds with the market -- in reality government's police powers (and private anti-fraud measures) are what enable markets to exist and function.

Fraud is not only the enemy of free markets -- it's the enemy of good government as well.

Not every market is free. Prisons are rife with black markets, characterized by both fraud and violence. Black market drugs contain dodgy and ofttimes poisonous ingredients; black market disputes are settled with fists, knives and guns. The black market for sex -- prostitution -- is a litany of abuse, disease, violence and misery.

Government plays a vital role in keeping free markets free -- through courts, cops, regulations and transparency rules. Unfortunately, government agencies can sometimes be seduced into acts that don't protect but rather distort markets, harming the many to benefit the few.

These seductions include, for example, a government using taxpayer money to fund a pressure group to coerce banks into lending money to borrowers who can't afford to repay the loans. Then either the bank or the taxpayer takes the loss when the borrowers default. Such lending under pressure may be understandable, but it's not a free market transaction -- remember the ban on force and fraud -- and occurs because the government has abandoned its proper role as guardian of the rule of law.

Such is the case today. Since 1995 the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has been used -- along with lawsuits by left-wing pressure groups -- to force banks to lend to low-income, high-risk borrowers. Any bank that resisted was subject to huge fines. That's coercion. If any private person had tried to do this, he'd have been arrested.

To answer concerns by banks that these loans were too risky, the government-sponsored entity called Fannie Mae offered to buy up all riskier loans. By 2007, Fannie Mae and CRA had resulted in an extra $1 Trillion of home loans to people who couldn't pay them back.

Fannie Mae then -- with government approval -- created "securitized" bundles of loans and sold them off to everyone under the sun. Today we're told that nobody, even the creators of these derivatives, really understands them. Selling something you don't understand, and guaranteeing something without the means to guarantee it, are both fraud. Yet the heavily regulated, government-sponsored Fannie Mae did exactly that.

Today the same people who created CRA and were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae -- our US Congress -- are telling us that the financial market's woes are caused by "the market" and by a "lack of regulation". The facts say otherwise.

It's understandable why the architects of today's disaster want to distract public attention from their role. Maybe some of them even believe it. We should not buy it.

The public should look closely at the root causes of the disaster and agree on a fix that makes things better, not worse. The root causes involve massive government meddling in the markets and rampant dishonesty. The cure being proposed involves even more government meddling in the markets and is being sold through dishonesty. The public should demand an independent investigation of Congress' role in creating the current financial disaster.

And those who took on risk with the expectation of keeping any rewards, must shoulder their own losses and not be bailed out by taxpayers.

Feminism succeeds, and Leftists cop out

I'm watching the left-wing feminists (as opposed to all the other feminists) get wigged out over Sarah Palin. It's sad for feminism when its earliest adopters, definers and defenders now pitch it over the railing in their haste to crush a powerful woman whom they disagree with on policy issues.

Feminism doesn't win by having the early adopters go further and further away from the middle (as happens today with some other socially progressive trends) -- feminism wins when the middle moves toward the formerly progressive position.

As I tell my Republican friends, you don't win the political and policy contest by just getting someone from your party elected -- you could find yourself electing a sellout who really is pushing the other side's agenda. Then your policies get even further away from adoption.

You truly win when the other side starts adopting or stealing your ideas and they become mainstream.

In this case with Palin, we're seeing both of these things: first, evidence of the wholesale adoption by the Republican base of the basic tenets of old style feminism -- that women should have the same opportunities as men, that workers should be judged on results not on their reproductive organs -- and second, the sellout of the far left from anything to do with that sort of feminism.

For example, Ellen Goodman criticizes Palin for being, in essence, a bad feminist -- because she isn't lobbying for government programs to nationalize motherhood (federal child care, federal handouts to mothers, additional federal entitlements, additional federal mandates on employers, etc.)

At this point it's no longer really feminism that Goodman (and so many others, like Katherine Marsh and Judith Warner) are defending -- it's the old Democratic agenda of ever larger government and ever more citizens, in one form or another, on the dole.

The real test of your belief in your stated position is when you have to defend someone you dislike or disagree with. The ACLU proved itself to me when it defended the American Nazi Party's right to free speech -- clearly the ACLU really does (or did) believe in free speech, even for vile speech. Leftist feminists have proved something very different: they don't care about women's rights; they only care about the big-government agenda of the left.

Privacy - or, Why we need a property right to our data

Looks like police are tracking people on almost no probable cause, and the rest of us are losing our privacy and our 4th Amendment protections in the process.

The fastest and easiest way to fix this -- I believe -- would be to establish that you have a property right in data about your location in time and space, with an exception for direct observations. In other words, if I happen to see you in a store or on a sidewalk, that's normal; if I use a GPS bug to track you without authorization, then I'm stealing data about you.

That property right also means you are free to sell your data -- such as to a traffic monitoring system that would rebate part of your subscription in exchange for you feeding the system with info about your driving experience. And the monitoring firm could be barred from reselling that data without your consent, unless it was rendered anonymous. If your stalker ex-boyfriend hacks their system and uses it to track you, he's stealing from both you and them, in addition to being a stalker -- making it much easier to prosecute him.

Police can still track people provided they get a warrant. Warrantless tracking, however, would be forbidden. (Parolees could be tracked at any time without a warrant, just as today the police can search a parolee's home at any time without a warrant -- that's part of the deal when one is released on parole.)

Thomas Frank hates Republicans, Conservatives, and workplace democracy

Frank is beginning to improve his game here. I look to him for principled criticisms of my side, and this time he's got one - the indifference (or complicity) of the federal Labor Department towards unsafe and illegal working conditions.

That's a legitimate hit, and I thank Mr. Frank for drawing my attention to it. I'll return the favor by pointing to the multiple ways he weakens his own case:

1. Unions in Mexico are so strong - far stronger than in the US - that they stifle Mexican job creation, fueling illegal immigration. In his one-sided praise of all unions everywhere, Frank doesn't acknowledge this.

2. Iowa has a labor department too, and they are much closer to this problem and have a primary responsibility for addressing it - why are they spared criticism? Is it because Iowa has a Democratic governor, and has been ruled by Democrats since 1999? Frank's silence is profound. Perhaps Frank thinks state labor departments should be abolished or subsumed within the federal organization.

3. "Card check" legislation isn't about freeing workers to unionize, it's about subjecting them to workplace intimidation and union-boss thuggery. Frank's mincing steps around this are shameful in anyone with a commitment to respect for liberty and freedom from coercion.

4. Through artful wording, Frank implies that AgriProcessors has only been fined once before - untrue. The Des Moines Register reports that "In the past, Agriprocessors has had potential fines for workplace safety violations reduced substantially through negotiations with Iowa labor officials." Furthermore, "...those cases were handled as administrative matters, not as criminal cases. Any fines imposed as a result of the alleged child-labor violations will be through a court order, since the matter is now being treated as a criminal matter."

So the supposed lax oversight maybe wasn't so lax, and the reductions in fines that Frank so craftily puts in the passive voice, "The fines levied against AgriProcessors, however, were eventually reduced...", were reduced by the DEMOCRATIC administrations Vilsack and Culver.

All in all, Frank's sweeping language and over-broad conclusions are masks for a weak argument where the facts undercut his case. I think he's right about the federal Labor department needing to be more active around workplace safety and child labor law enforcement. He's not right about very much else, and his conclusion, that "conservatism" is the root of his catalog of ills, is unsupported.

LNG and the Columbia River Keepers

Last week I was Board Host for a debate-format panel discussion at the City Club of Portland. The topic was a proposed LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) terminal on the Columbia River, a few miles upstream from Astoria.

As Board Host I got to ask the first question, and I asked one that was almost certainly inappropriate coming from the person in that role. A good Board Host question is thoughtful, balanced, and invites the audience into the conversation. It may explore ambiguities in the presentation, or draw attention to an aspect of the topic not covered by the speakers, or press on an apparent contradiction. It really shouldn't be an attack from one side or the other.

My question was partisan enough to be seen as an attack. I told the River Keepers' speaker that as far as I could tell, if LNG was kept out of Oregon, and my family ended up cold and shivering in the dark because of it, his organization would consider that a success.

This question from me, particularly in my role as Board Host, upset several of the more fluttery members of the audience.

One audience member - quivering like a drenched cat with poorly directed outrage - characterized it as "shameful". Yes, it was a lousy board host question, but that's not what got people upset. The upset ones universally were deeply in the tank for (i.e. on the side of) the Riverkeepers. Their upset-ness stemmed from that emotional attachment to one side of the debate, and my obvious disdain for "their" side.

Being in the minority is a test of one's courage. Being in the majority is a test of one's tolerance. So far I'm holding up my end pretty well, and the side of intolerant outrage is the side that could appropriately feel shame.

And my question was essentially unanswerable. The commercial firm that wants to build the LNG plant will happily jump through whatever safety, environmental, or regulatory hoops are put up, because they want to profitably supply energy in LNG form to the region. This is inherently a position of accommodation and compromise.

The eco-fanatics will happily add, move, and change the hoops to ensure that the firm cannot meet them, because they only care about their vision for the river (and restricting commercial uses of it), not about Oregon's energy needs. Theirs is inherently a position of extremism and non-compromise.

And that's as it should be for the River Keepers. They aren't the "balanced energy plan for Oregon" keepers - they are the RIVER keepers. That's their thing. If they backed off of that to be "moderate" they'd be betraying their purpose. (They can't admit that, generally.)

It's for the rest of us to be the ones with moderation and perspective, to listen to both sides and discount at least some of the eco-hysteria and the capitalist puffery and find a workable answer.

And that is a point that many of our more committed leftist City Club members don't want to hear. I made them hear it and they didn't much like it.

Tough.

Control your Inbox

From a trusted source comes this posting and link to an excellent Google Lecture on getting your email inbox to zero, and how it can boost your productivity.

The basic idea is to use your inbox as a starting point only - for each new email, DECIDE what to do with it and get it resolved, so you can get back to work.

There are only five things you can do with an email. These are the VERBS.

Delete (or Archive)
Delegate (Forward and Followup)
Respond (Reply)
Defer (Wait)
Do

I've been doing this for some months now, and it's working well. For each new email, I ask, what action do I need to take with this?

If there isn't an action for me to take, or if I've already taken the action, I delete the email.

If it's something I should delegate, I forward it, I often cc: the original person so they see it getting forwarded, and I move the original to a "@Pending" folder that I browse every so often (2-3 times a week) so I can check in with my delegee and my original requester.

If I can resolve it by responding, I do - as briefly as I can. Then I delete the original, or perhaps move it to "Archive".

If I can't handle it now and I do need to handle it, I move it to "@ActOn".

And if it involves an action other than an email reply - maybe walking a folder over to someone, or putting an appointment on my calendar, or making a brief call - I simply do it, and then delete the email.

When I left the office today my email inbox was empty. It felt VERY good.

Style at Work

In a WSJ column on workplace dress and professionalism, we read about a double standard of sorts.

I detect a double standard, or at least a mixed agenda.

Both Jim Holt and Tom Mills got taken to the woodshed for public comments about how they view workplace attire. Yet the same women in the workplace who criticized them so viciously, are complaining that they aren't getting good feedback on what to wear to look professional.

Nobody gets good, candid feedback for long if they regularly shoot their messengers.

The reality is, the opinions of senior (often male) managers matters. You can seek to learn and understand those opinions, or you can seek to shape them. You will have a hard time pursuing both goals at once - listening and browbeating being mutually incompatible activities. And those opinions are opinions - not fact, not solid, very much a product of society and of social and cultural norms, very subject to change over time.

My advice to women is, if you want candid advice, create a safe space for that conversation to happen. Otherwise you'll silence the voices you need to hear.

At the same time, don't stop agitating outside of that safe space for equality, respect, and non-sexism at work. That struggle may be eternal - it's certainly worthy.

Of course, I'm just a guy, so what do I know?
-Tom

Thomas Frank: Sad Little Progressive on WSJ

I'm trying to enjoy Thomas Frank's leftist columns in the otherwise right-libertarian Wall Street Journal. This latest one just makes it harder.

Frank starts off with a wonderfully useful premise, that Conservatives really blew it while in power in the Congress over the period 1994-2006, and are now busy failing to learn from it. His quotes of the architect of the Republican sell-out to power, Tom DeLay, are hilarious. (DeLay tries to paint himself a pure conservative who is pained by the Republican fall into corruption, rather than as one of the leaders of the plunge.)

And he's right to skewer those who define "conservatism" as being inherently incorruptible, meaning that all "those" corrupt Republicans are of course "not conservatives" - the sort of cute verbal trick I usually attribute to the Left. Conservatives who so embraced DeLay so long and so strongly need to answer, why they didn't reject him before he got caught.

Unfortunately, Frank's column quickly falls apart.

He tries to tie Republican corruption in Congress to the basis of conservative ideas. He wants us to believe that conservative ideas are "bad ideas" that naturally and inevitably led to "disastrous consequences."

Here he offers nothing but 'proof by blatant assertion' - no analysis, no explanation. He doesn't even bother to list what ideas he means, other than 'true conservatism is opposed to "big government."'

Had Frank offered some real (or imagined) link between corruption and the values of limited government, personal responsibility, individual liberty, and free markets, then he would have done us a favor. Instead he merely asserts that conservatism is somehow inherently bad - a logical fallacy also known as assuming your conclusions.

Here's hoping we get a better column from him next week.

Two Scenes from Election Night

I got to see two sides of Portland yesterday on Election Night.

The first was a Multnomah County Republican gathering at the Grand Central Bowl, an upscale bowling alley and restaurant. We took over the upstairs and actually filled it with over 100 Republicans. Who knew we had those numbers?

What struck me was the mood - reflective and even up-beat. There was the usual ain't-it-awful complaints that I've heard so often before. Perhaps it's denial. Or maybe it's a corner being turned - maybe we're ready to start doing the things we need to do to start winning. Like stand for something worthwhile.

The second was the tail end of the Sam Adams victory party, in a tent behind a hotel near 9th and E. Burnside. It was the usual mix of donors, volunteers, activists, and interest group reps common at victory parties, and they all reveled in the cheer of a winning race.

I had to wear my "Tom Cox - Republican" name tag on my dark double-breasted suit. You know - fly the flag, smile, see how I got treated.

Alas, not much happened. Everybody was talking with their friends in little groups, the light was low, and few cared to look at name tags. Of those who did, a few opened their eyes wide, one looked at me and asked "Really?" (Yes, I said, and got a nod in return) and one big smile from a spouse who leaned in close to say "I thought I was the only one here."

That alone made it worth while.

The mood there, at least for the little while I was there, was upbeat yet a little odd. I got no sense that there was an agenda or a mandate - it was more personality driven. What does Sam Adams now have a mandate to do? I have no clue. Maybe he does.

Maybe the funniest thing about Sam Adams as mayor is that he's a little less wacky leftist than the average Portland voter. He actually once voted to lower business taxes. It may be the most unpopular thing he's done, in their minds.

On negotiating - Conservatives get it right

Experimenters discover that empathy isn't as useful as understanding - at least if you're trying to achieve a win-win outcome.

Subjects were instructed to take one of three approaches:

• Get inside the other person's head - try to understand what the other party is thinking; what is his interest and purpose?
  
• Get inside the other person's emotions - try to understand what the other party might be feeling; what emotion is he likely experiencing?
  
• No guidance (the control group)

To the surprise of few conservatives and the likely bafflement of most squishy elite liberals, the thinking (or "perspective-taking") strategy outperformed the feeling (or "empathy") strategy.

In an experiment between a buyer and seller of a business, the perspective-takers were half-again more likely (76% vs 54%) than the empathizers to reach a deal.

In a further experiment between a job-seeker and a recruiter, the perspective-takers were twice as likely (40% vs 22%) than the empathizers to reach a win-win deal.

Worse, the empathizers actually under-performed even the control group when it came to protecting their own interests.

...[I]n terms of an individual gain, the perspective-taking recruiters did far better—pushing the empathetic recruiters into last place.

What this shows is that even with one negotiator having perspective-taking abilities it can produce a better overall outcome for both sides. "You want to understand what the other side's interests are, but you do not want to sacrifice your own interests," says Dr Adam Galinksy of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois. "A large amount of empathy can actually impair the ability of people to reach a creative deal."

I believe that's a continuing problem for liberal-socialist, empathy based approaches to public policy - especially foreign policy. Those who take an emotion-based approach - even those who aren't blame-America-first types - still risk sacrificing America's interests.

Nothing is Certain

From the Wall Street Journal's Science column:

Not everything in the solar system adds up, of course. The moon's actual orbit is off its calculated course by about six millimeters a year. No one knows why. The standard yardstick for length on an interplanetary scale, the Astronomical Unit, grows by about seven centimeters a year. Scientists have yet to agree on an explanation.

I'm not sure which surprises and pleases me the most -

1. Scientists can measure the moon's actual orbit to a precision of six millimeters
   
2. Scientists can measure that and still not know why
   
3. Scientists are willing to admit freely that they have observed something they can't explain

I really like the honesty of having an observation and saying "we don't have a clue why this is" - it's refreshing. Why can't politicians do that?

Quotas Suck

I've been active in the City Club of Portland (CCOP) for a few years and just got recommended as a possible member of the Board of Governors. This is the text of my reply to a friend, regarding whether the Club should use quotas as part of any "diversity" effort for either Club membership or Board membership:

I'm actually in favor of both outreach and metrics. I'm sour on quotas in part because they've often been accompanies by lowering criteria (far more minority law students fail law school when admitted under "affirmative action" criteria that include lowering admissions standards), as well as other ways of gaming numerical systems.

I think the way to get (say) more black members is to go find groups of black people and invite their members to join, and do it in a way that makes clear how the CCOP addresses the things they already care about.

Jaime Escalante managed to get a record high number of poor and minority students to pass AP Calculus by starting with elementary school teachers to build a pipeline of students who would be ready for harder math by the time they hit high school. It was an eight year process. (The movie "Stand and Deliver" completely ignores this part of the story.)

There was no lowering of the bar, no "affirmative action" of the quota type. This was real engagement addressing real root causes - my kind of change.

I cringe at the idea of CCOP setting a numeric quota, then looking superficially at the "usual suspects" for dark skin (or whatever attribute we're looking for) and stopping as soon as the number is reached - no true outreach, no true attempt to make CCOP relevant to groups who may currently be detached or alienated from us, no long term attempt to bridge any gaps we find.

Quotas suck.

Having said all that, it may be that CCOP is naturally going to be attractive to (say) rich intellectuals with time on their hands and pretensions of good citizenship. And that group may demographically (around here) be disproportionately white liberals. And if that's the case, we should continue the outreach while accepting something other than numerically precise demographic balance.

I'm very clear on the fact that I'm being proposed for the Board because I'm a wacky libertarian, and there's a quota for wacky libertarians. If there were great riches associated with Board membership, I'd be suitably chastened. Quotas still suck.

Ethics End-Around

I've been trying to get my fellow Republicans to marginalize our loud, small minority of anti-gay activists - and here comes Rep. Galizio with the perfect tool for furthering that worthy goal.

Now that Galizio is dating a union lobbyist, he's announced that whatever they do together is "private" - so the union can pay for meals, gifts, trips to golf in Hawaii, whatever, and Galizio doesn't even have to keep records of it, let alone report it.

It's the "we're on a date" loophole to the new ethics rules (SB 10).

Now, fast-forward a year. Republican lawmakers go out to lunch with lobbyists, and don't want to report it. Bingo! "We're on a date. It's our personal lives."

Once we see male and female Republicans going out on "dates" with both male and female lobbyists, it'll be even more mainstream to be tolerant and inclusive of all sexual orientations and lifestyles.

My hat is off to Larry Galizio. He's playing a very deep game, at some personal political risk, to move our society towards greater tolerance and inclusion. Bravo.

Toll Road Offers New Jersey a Fiscal Test Drive - New York Times

Toll Road Offers New Jersey a Fiscal Test Drive - New York Times

Some pros and cons around leasing toll roads to private operators.

'A Glorious Mess' - WSJ.com

'A Glorious Mess' - WSJ.com

In an otherwise reasonably good editorial, the WSJ's editors wrote a hideous sentence:

Mr. Dingell was perhaps overstating his case when he said it had "the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all industry and all economic activity and growth," but not by much.

Quick review: the position of emphasis in a sentence is at the end. This sentence ends with, and emphasizes, "but not by much."

Without looking back, what was the thing being modified by "but not by much" - was it the "shutting down or slowing down" of the economy? Oh, well, then nothing to be worried about - the economy might take a little hit, maybe it'll be slowed, "but not by much." Sigh of relief.

Uh, oh. That's counter-intuitive. The WSJ wouldn't make that point. Look back... oh, it's Dingel, who is either not overstating his case at all, or perhaps overstating it, "but not by much."

With bad editing and bad sentence construction, the WSJ manages to take a crucial point, and suck all the energy out of it.

Word to the wise: put your modifiers near their modify-ees, keep your points clear, and remember that the end of the sentence is the position of emphasis.

Gotta brag - I bagged a drunk driver

I feel good enough about this to brag - on my drive home tonight, I noticed a driver ahead of me driving erratically. I was worried enough to call the police - the driver could be drunk, or suffering a seizure, or need insulin... or just be distracted. And the police are well trained to handle any of those - I'm not.

So, I called in, and our highly professional Hillsboro police responded quickly and pulled him over, and took my statement. Afterwards one officer said the driver definitely seemed intoxicated.

Score one for the good guys.

The GTD Cult

I finally tried out the material in David Allen's 2001 cult classic book, "Getting Things Done" (widely known as "GTD").

I'd had plenty of infected cult members try to turn me before - I always resisted.

What finally did me in - what allowed me to listen with an open ear - was a 2007 scholarly paper by Francis Heylighen and Clément Vidal, "Getting Things Done: The Science behind Stress-Free Productivity".

Turns out that Allen's ideas and methods mesh very well with the science of cognition and research in knowledge-worker productivity. Indeed, Allen's GTD seems to naturally guide the user into a state of "Flow" - the optimal balance of challenge vs. skill where we feel highly productive and "in the zone".

As Csikszentmihalyi, Abuhamdeh & Nakamura describe it, "Flow is a subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in something to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself. It is what we feel when we read a wellcrafted novel or play a good game of squash, or take part in a stimulating conversation. The defining feature of flow is intense experiential involvement in moment-to-moment activity. Attention is fully invested in the task at hand, and the person functions at his or her fullest capacity [emphasis added]."

The preconditions for getting into a state of Flow are

1. A sense of control
2. Clear goals
3. Match between skill and challenge
4. Feedback on progress

Turns out, GTD helps you gain a feeling of control, helps you see your goals more clearly, encourages you to pick your challenge of the moment based on your circumstances (including skill), and helps provide you feedback.

There's more to it, of course - I encourage you to read the paper. I still haven't read Allen's book, however, I did order a copy yesterday. Actually, five copies.

On Forced Union Dues and Political Speech

I attended this year's annual Dorchester convention and on Sunday I spoke on this resolution:

RESOLVED: Oregon law should prohibit persons or entities from using money for political purposes if collected with government resources.

This was generally taken to mean that union members could not be forced to pay dues for political activity with which they disagreed.

Looking now at my notes, I believe I said:

We must be cautious when adopting any measure under the guise of freedom, when the undeniable effect of that measure is to provide us [Republicans] with a political advantage.

If we were proposing here that union members be muzzled - be prevented from participating in politics - then that would be a reduction of freedom.

If we were proposing here that union members be prohibited from spending their own money on politics - then that would be a reduction of freedom.

If we were proposing here that union members be prevented from associating freely with each other for political purposes - then that would be a reduction of freedom.

This resolution does none of these things.

We must remember the plight of the union member today who is forced against her will to subsidize public political speech with which she disagrees. Her right of dissent - the sacred right of every minority, to be free from the tyranny of the majority - her right to be free is currently crushed by the self interest of the union bosses. Every worker has both the right of free speech and the right to refrain from paying for speech with which she disagrees.

This measure may benefit Republicans incidentally. It benefits union members profoundly. This measure advances the cause of freedom. I urge you to vote "yes" on this measure.

The measure passed by a 20-to-1 ratio.

The Professional Sales Call

I gave this advice to a client and afterwards realized it was good enough to blog about. She's a professional who goes on site to provide a free estimate. It's part of her sales process, and it's a good idea. The question is, how do you make your sales call a high-impact one that wins you the business?

First, you have to be offering value - lots of it. Way more value than you're charging. A good ratio is 5:1, though 20:1 would be better. That means you should offer $500 worth of benefit for each $100 you charge, and $2,000 of benefit would be better.

Second, your client has to more than see that value - she has to feel it in her bones. That benefit has to be more than merely intellectual or hypothetical, it has to be so real she can taste it, feel it, see herself enjoying it daily.

Third, your client has to believe that you can deliver it. By the end of the visit - or by the end of the next day (see below) she should have complete confidence in you and your ability to deliver exactly what she's now envisioning and hungering for.

So, how do you do all that in a site visit? Here's my formula, and the reason for each step.

Step 1 - Get the Appointment
Only go on the site visit after you have established that the prospective client is:

• Able to buy - has the money
• Empowered to buy - is the decision maker
• Wants to buy - has a legitimate need you can meet
  

The best way to find this out is to ask. Ask "Who is going to make the decision on whether to move forward?" and then ask "Who else needs to approve of this decision?" Often a spouse, boss, or co-worker will have an implicit veto power that you need to know about in advance.

Step 2 - Arrive Prepared
When you arrive, you want your every action and word to convey that you are a professional in whom the client can safely place her trust. That means you have everything you need - business cards, samples, order forms, testimonial letters, etc. etc. Create a checklist of everything you will need to take on the call and prepare it the night before. Each time you find yourself wishing you'd brought something, add it to the list and bring it next time.

From the moment you arrive, you are creating the image that you are fully capable of delivering the value that you'll be discussing. That means (based on my coaching of prior clients):

• No silliness
• No self-deprecating humor
• No nervous humor
• Nothing that insults you, the client, or third parties - no negatives or criticisms of any kind
• Only say and do things that a consummate professional would say and do
• Strive not to be liked, but to be respected

Step 3 - Follow your Script
For a professional services call, start by understanding the need, and the pain behind the need.
Envision yourself as being a really good doctor with a lot of time. For a one hour meeting, use your time like this:

• 2 minutes - small talk and bonding
• 8 minutes - recap of what she said prior to the meeting, and what you want to cover. "I would like to make the best use of your time by asking you some questions and understanding your situation."
  
• 10 minutes - investigate the need and the pain that will be alleviated by solving that need - use a written questionnaire or other tool, and make notes. Don't try to memorize or wing it. The more thorough you are here, the more you come across as an expert.
  
• 10 minutes - develop a thorough understanding of the need and the pain, and how the client's world would be different in the presence of a solution.
• 5 minutes - ask the client to relate a recent experience where the solution might have been useful. Your goal here is to get her (in mild form) to re-live the emotions of that experience. This step is crucial. You can say "Tell me about a time recently when you wished this were solved."
  
• 1 minute - ask "If you were to have the opportunity to purchase a product (or service) that would fix this problem, would it be worth your while to buy it?" This may seem uncomfortable. It is critical. If the answer is no, you're not going to get a sale. When a client says "yes" she has passed a crucial mental milestone in preparing herself to buy a fix for her problem.
• 14 minutes - relate specific stories of past clients where you have solved this exact problem for others. Only use examples that apply directly to her needs. This both builds your credibility as someone who has been successful with others, and builds her belief that her own situation can improve - she can identify with the people in your stories.
  
• 1 minute - close with a request to work on a proposal and submit it the next day.

This is 51 minutes - so you've over-delivered by having a meeting that ended early. Always over-deliver on promises and expectations.

The emotional resonance you want to create during the entire interview process is a sense by the client that you know what you are doing, that the interview is progressing in a specific direction, and that they are taking part in a well defined process.

Step 4 - Deliver the Proposal 24 Hours Later
I'm a big believer in waiting 24 hours before providing a proposal. It gives you time to really work on it to make sure it fits, and it gives the client time to build a sense of anticipation. (Providing a detailed proposal too quickly can make the client feel that you're offering something rote or canned or off-the-shelf. This can damage her belief that you've crafted something to specifically address her needs.)

When delivering the proposal, either by phone or in person, walk the client through the cause-and-effect chain. Suppose the client interview uncovered a need for a benefit Y and a desire to stop feeling a painful emotion Z. You could say: "When we deliver X to you, within five days you will start to see benefit Y, and the next time you close your books you will feel the absence of Z - indeed, you'll feel its opposite." Make explicit use of the interview work you did.

If appropriate, remind the client of your warranty or money-back guarantee - which I believe all professionals should offer.

Latest Publication

Finally, the publisher released this book, to which I contributed half of Chapter 6 (or rather, Dr. N. VanDerHeyden and I co-authored all of Chapter 6):
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/bookdescription.cws_home/713754/description#description

Why shouldn't Jose Padilla sue John Yoo? - By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine

Why shouldn't Jose Padilla sue John Yoo? - By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine: The author, admittedly a friend of the litigants, can't understand (or pretends to be unable to) why it's wrong to criminalize policy differences.

Here's the short version from a less credulous perspective:

1. Lawyer named John Yoo working for DoJ is asked - as part of his job - to give a legal opinion. His bosses want to know how rigorously they can interrogate suspected terrorists without going over the line into torture, which is illegal under US and international law.

2. Said lawyer follows his bosses' instructions and gives his opinion, in the form of the "Torture Memo". The result might be good, bad or ugly - folks disagree on that - but it seems impossible to hold that he didn't (a) follow his bosses' instructions and (b) do his job.

3. These same bosses take his work, combine it with other considerations including political ones, and pick a course of action for the armed services and other parts of the executive branch.

4. Jose Padilla gets arrested, gets treated as an "enemy combatant" and eventually gets treated as a criminal defendant.

5. Jose Padilla gets convicted - in a regular criminal court, by a jury - of engaging in a conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, etc.

6. Activist lawyers at Yale decide to sue the lawyer from items #1-2 above, personally, for doing his job, using the Bivens precedent.

Here is where I think the Democrat/Liberal approach is tremendously dangerous.

Bivens is for getting relief when an executive branch agency violates your Fourth Amendment rights (and presumably other rights). Whether it's a rogue agent, or his boss issues wrongful and unlawful orders, or whatever, if you have your rights violated in certain ways you can ask to have the wrong-doers held accountable.

So, who should be sued? Everybody in item #3 above? The people who put Padilla in the military brig? The contractor who built the brig? The maker of the car used to transport him? The secretary who filed the lawyer's memo, made copies and faxed them?

If the Left really wants to make the specific treatment outlined by John Yoo illegal, they control Congress - they can PASS A LAW making it illegal. But they can't or won't. So instead they want to intimidate people who really are doing exactly the job they were hired to do, for the crime of not thinking like a Leftist.

Slate's writer, Emily Bazelon, commits a serious sin of omission, claiming that Yoo isn't facing much risk: "It's also worth noting, in this context, that Yoo isn't facing financial ruin or even risk: Following Padilla's wishes, the suit asks for damages of exactly $1. And DoJ has to offer to provide and pay for Yoo's defense."

Bazelon fails to mention that, if Yoo loses, he has to pay the $1, PLUS the other side's legal expenses, which DoJ will NOT cover. Why would they? If Yoo is guilty, then by definition he was acting outside his official capacity (even though common sense says he was). That will be millions of dollars. Oh, but "Yoo isn't facing financial ruin or even risk" - right.

The real lesson here is that the Left will go to any lengths - even destroy the inner workings of government and create new Thought Crimes - even criminalize legitimate policy differences - to win a political struggle.

The Yale lawyers in question should have their case thrown out with prejudice and have to pay Yoo's and DoJ's expenses.

DHMC | Center for Shared Decision Making

DHMC | Center for Shared [Medical] Decision Making

Sponsored in part by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, this site makes me want a similar service in my home town. This is geared towards empowering the patient and family with information AND with guidance for structured decision-making. Wow.

Cherry Garcia and the End of Socialized Medicine by Peter W. Huber, City Journal Autumn 2007

Cherry Garcia and the End of Socialized Medicine by Peter W. Huber, City Journal Autumn 2007

A long and winding essay that covers in detail the history of some of medicine's old breakthroughs, and predicts how the new ones - such as chemicals and molecules tuned to specific conditions, including genetic ones - will provide pressure against socialized medicine.

Not sure if I buy the prediction -- the history alone is fascinating and well worth the read.