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.