Forest Grove News Times Almost Endorses Cox for Metro

This has to be the nicest almost-endorsement I've yet received:

Tom Cox, who’s run for past posts, including governor, as a Libertarian, is one of those rare government critics who shows up with well-researched analysis of the programs he doesn’t like and, in many cases, alternatives that could actually work. There’s no doubt that Cox has the brains and work ethic needed for the job.

They go on to endorse one of my opponents, apparently for spending more time in Forest Grove than I have, or at least more time in front of the editors.

Still, for not getting the endorsement, it's quite a nice bit of ink.

WSJ on Newark and Jane Jacobs

In an editorial-page article in the 11-May-06 Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Newark's struggles to grow, Paul Mulshine gives us this gem:

[Richard Florida said,] "Jane Jacobs told me the problem is that these cities [like Newark] are run by squelchers." By that she meant politicos who try to stamp out anything they can't control. They love big public projects, but private enterprise makes them nervous. Meanwhile the professional planners on public payrolls are squelchers of a different sort. They keep trying to remake cities in their past image.

It's tragic that so many "planners" claim to love Jacobs but so obviously don't understand her.

Garlynn Woodsong Doesn't Love Me

What fun.

Now that Willy Week has endorsed me for Metro, the most righteous of the left are puzzling over it. In the process, I'm learning a lot about myself, or at least a lot about what others imagine I am.

Their Imaginary Tom is quite a monster. From the Willy Week web site's comments section:



i second what another commenter said about tom cox. metro is for people who like portland the way it is, not people who want to turn it into las vegas.
Posted by "jami" | Thu, May 4 2006



Tom Cox would be a horrible addition to the Metro Council. What we DON'T need is another subscriber to the Cascade Policy Institute style of misinformation and anti-transit, anti-bicycle, anti-smart growth rhetoric. Though former Intel manager Kathryn Harrington may not have gone "beyond the usual platitudes" during her endorsement interview, I would support her in a heartbeat over somebody who would seem to be dead-set on rolling back all of the progress that has been made in the region thus far.
Posted by "Garlynn Woodsong" | Thu, May 4 2006



Cox Ain't a Thinker
You argued that Tom Cox will get Metro thinking through its decisions. When he categorizes them as "anti-car, canti-housing, anti-business extremists," thereby insulting the voters across the Metro region who elected these people, I can' t imagine he'll have a productive working relationship. Instead, he'd be a bomb-throwing hype-monger hampering the important work that needs to be done.

We've got a group of smart people on Metro -- Rhodes Scholars, Harvard graduates, etc. We need another smart someone who will truly represent constituents -- Kathryn Harrington, not a radical-fringe self-financed candidate like Cox.
Posted by "Jesse O" | Wed, May 3 2006

Faux Public Process

Anybody who's gotten politically active in the Greater Portland Area will get a chance to be involved in "the public process." If you happen to be skeptical of the official line at one of the public process events, you'll quickly see how many of them are orchestrated and manipulated. I'm starting to better understand the impulses behind faux public process.

As a colleague wrote, "One of the things regional visioning attempts to do is to overcome NIMBYism. One challenge with U.S. policymaking is that local interests have more power than regional interests and they often optimize locally, creating negative regional externalities."

One can readily imagine the dismay of an expert, laboring for months or years, ushering the public towards a good outcome, only to be stopped by a sudden NIMBY uprising at the eleventh hour. How tempted our expert must be, to avoid the resulting 'negative regional externalities' by rigging the system.

I'm told that Australia has a different approach, where random citizens in an affected region are gathered for input, reducing the NIMBY effect while allowing for real input. This differentiates "the public" from "the neighbors" - and obviates the need for orchestrating meetings or rigging events.

There's something corrupt and corrosive about pretending to seek public input and then rigging the results. It may be an attempt at overcoming NIMBYism, but it's always wrong - and damaging - to raise public expectations (i.e. that this will be a fair and open process) and then fail to meet those expectations.

In addition to the general problem of corruption, the rigged process has another drawback: you get the result you predetermined, even if it turns out it was the wrong result. Since self-selected elites seldom consider themselves fallible, they are both more likely to engage in rigging 'faux' public process events and more likely to pre-select a flawed outcome.

Would an honest public process be superior? One source would say 'yes.'

Another option would be to let elected officials decide things, as they were arguably elected to do. But the fetish for public process is strong in the Portland area, and few are strong enough to withstand it.

Anti-Growth Anti-Humanism

There is an elitist yuppie attitude toward growth, a skepticism about advancement, that seems to say that poor people should remain poor "for the good of the planet" or some such.

Here's a detailed exploration of that appalling attitude.

Perhaps This Explains the Light Rail Fanatics

One recurring theme in both politics and business is the fanatic. Alone or in groups, these are folks who are true believers. Don't bother them with facts - they don't care.

One of the differences between politics and business is, the business fanatics will, if wrong, eventually run out of money and stop. Politics is all about playing with other people's money - those fanatics can go on in the wrong direction indefinitely if not stopped.

A new AMA study sheds some light on the phenomenon. In essence, people who buy in to the initial justification for a project will actively ignore or discount evidence, however strong, that the project isn't working. Apparently there's no clear technique available to make folks get past this bias if they're prone to it. Organizationally, the only hope is to make other people responsible for vetoing the plan if certain prearranged conditions aren't met.

Why other people? Apparently, once the first group gets bought in to the project, they will find ways to justify ignoring the prearranged limits.

Hillsboro Argus endorses Tom Cox

I didn't see that coming: the Hillsboro Argus endorsed me for Metro.

Apparently being a "single issue" candidate isn't always bad, especially if it's the right issue at the right time - and if you're on the right side.

I wonder how many other candidates have ever been endorsed for being skeptical of Light Rail. Any?

Cox endorsed by Willy Week

I'm in the cover story on Willamette Week this week - and wonder of wonders, they endorsed me for Metro District 4. (Scroll down to the Metro section.)

Read between the lines and you'll see that this is due to their disenchantment with the current Metro leadership.

This is my first mainstream media endorsement. Feels good.

Delegating

I'd always assumed I wouldn't be a business "coach" -- I've long had disdain for that label, despite knowing some good coaches. Too soft for me, I thought. Too touchy-feely. Not enough measurable outcomes and results.

Come to find, my last several clients are looking for coaching. Well, I consider myself someone who's responsive to the market, so now I'm coaching three people.

One of the big issues that has come up again and again is, how to delegate effectively.

Here and here are two good articles that cover the subject well. Read them.

Paglia Puts it Well

I do love the way Camille Paglia writes:

On talk-show call-ins, I started to hear real love for Bush, a protective
desire to defend him against the smug liberal hyenas. It was a pivotal moment in
the campaign. And the righteous fury of the Bush crusaders started to sway the
undecideds. For months on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or other conservative
radio shows, I really didn't hear such great enthusiasm for Bush. But then all
of a sudden, there was a turning point. I remember sitting in my car in April
listening to Hannity -- who has become a major force in American politics and
whose talents as a broadcaster just keep getting better and better (though I'm
always wishing he had more respect for other cultures and a broader
understanding of our place in the world). He was talking slowly and thoughtfully
after hanging up with a like-minded caller, and I got really alarmed. I said to
myself, wow, here it is. It was a whole, comprehensive geopolitical picture: the
only way we can win the war against terror is to take the fight to the
terrorists abroad, America must be a beacon to the world. America has a divine
mission to bring liberty to the world. It was a view of destiny that had a
staggering clarity and simplicity.

Now if the Democratic consultants had any brains, they would have viewed all
this as an important system of ideas that needed to be logically addressed,
instead of just sneering at it. This is a war of ideas! But too many Democrats
rely on a juvenile Al Franken level of discourse -- sneer, sneer, sneer at the
benighted ones. We are all so superior in our little elite enclaves. So even if
Kerry wins the election, the Democrats have lost this war of ideas.

It's as if we have no eloquent speechwriters any longer. The Democratic Party
has become a p.c. wallow over the past 20 years -- a sinkhole of unctuous,
bleeding-heart liberalism and emotional manipulation, always using seniors or
"disenfranchised" African-Americans as convenient straw men. We're supposed to
be in a constant state of empathy, on high alert to a cosmos of injustice. And
always there are the aggrieved -- and those nasty people in high places who are
doing awful things to them! It's become a tedious soap opera removed from
reality.

The Democratic operatives, chummily clustered in their Northeastern drinking
holes, are missing the fact that most Republicans are not the top execs of
Halliburton but hardworking small-business people who lead orderly lives and try
to be good citizens. There's been a slow shift: What used to be the Democratic
base -- plain, unpretentious people going about their business and just trying
to do the right thing -- is shifting toward the Republican Party. Republicanism
is becoming populist. Republicans believe that tax cuts to large and small
businesses help growth, encourage spending and investment, and create jobs. The
Democrats have no answer to that except hysterical rhetoric. Rush Limbaugh
rightly calls it the tired old "Democratic playbook" -- more than 25 years
old.