*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.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
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.
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.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
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?
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?
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
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.
Monday, July 11, 2005
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 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.
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.
Friday, June 17, 2005
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."
Thursday, June 16, 2005
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.
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.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
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.
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.
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