Option 1: No comment
Option 2: “The Governor told me he was not resigning, after which, he began a discussion about transition. This is clearly a bizarre and unprecedented situation.”
Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown, Feb. 12, 2015
Author Archives: whmacken2013
Jesse Jackson and the outrage machine: now it’s about Little League
A couple hours. That’s all it took for Jesse Jackson to publicly express outrage about Little League International’s decision to strip the U.S. Championship from Chicago’s all-black Jackie Robinson West team, and to make it a racial matter.
Jesse Jackson at a Feb. 10 press conference spoke out against the decision to strip Jackie Robinson West of its Little League national title.
Little League International determined on Wednesday that the Jackie Robinson West Little League and Illinois District 4 Administrator knowingly violated Little League International Rules and Regulations. They did so by placing players, otherwise known as suburban ringers, on their team who did not qualify to play because they lived outside the team’s boundaries.
Like the ubiquitous Al Sharpton, Jackson inserted himself into the issue by calling a press conference where he told Little League International to reverse its decision and questioned whether its motivations were racial.
“Is this boundaries or race?,” Jackson asked, before threatening legal action if Little League doesn’t rescind it’s decision.
Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest and social activist in Chicago, who joined Jackson at the press conference, also raised the race issue.
“When you’re going over to voter registration and going to birth certificates and doing all this time of hunting and a witch hunt that’s been going on for the last number of months, I can’t help but wonder the question if the same thing would have been done with another team from another place, another race,” Pfleger said.
Even a player’s parent, Venisa Green, jumped on the bandwagon. “It is amazing to me that whenever African-Americans exceed the expectations that there is always going to be fault,” she said.
Meanwhile, in the true spirit of fun in kid’s sports, Channel 5 NBC Chicago reports that a suburban coach of another Little League Team who raised suspicions about the make-up of Jackie Robinson West said Wednesday that he has received death threats.
So I guess the Jackie Robinson West kids have lost more than the U.S. Championship. They’ve lost their innocence.
The deification of the Kennedys: Act II
You’d think the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and the non-stop hagiography of the man by his admirers, would be enough. But no. Another monument to the Kennedys is going up, this one the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Given that Ted Kennedy was only one of more than 1900 Senators in U.S. history, you might expect his extended family and vast network of acolytes would have been satisfied with a Ted Kennedy Room in the adjacent $20.8 million, 135,000 sq. ft. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, all constructed with private funds.
But that obviously wouldn’t do. The 68,000 sq. ft. $79 million Edward M. Kennedy Institute, actually costing more than President Kennedy’s library and museum when adjusted for inflation, is expected to open to the general public on March 31, 2015. It will be a temple to Ted, complete with a full-scale replica of the current U.S. Senate Chamber, inaugurated in 1859.
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate
Rendering showing a replica of the U.S. Senate chamber that will be the central feature of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate
Ted Kennedy’s shrine will also have extensive museum space for exhibits, a café, classrooms, conference facilities and a gift shop. About all it’s missing is an eternal flame.
The gift shop, presumably, will not include replicas of the 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 that Ted Kennedy drove off Dike Bridge into the channel between Chappaquiddick and Martha’s Vineyard in 1969, drowning 29-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. Nor is it likely to display a plaque noting that Kennedy left the scene and did not notify the police of the midnight incident until the following morning.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s car is pulled from the water on July 19, 1969 after going off a bridge in Chappaquiddick the night before. The body of Mary Kopechne of Washington, D.C., was found in the rear seat. Her death was attributed to drowning.
Nor is it likely the Institute will highlight tales of his drinking and raffish behavior that were part of his public persona, according to the Washington Post.
The extravagant monument to Ted Kennedy is also a monument to the ability to tap into federal money, with $38 million of its construction budget coming from the federal government. Former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Rep. Edward Markey tried to get even more appropriated to the lavish project, but failed.
That was a small victory for taxpayers, but with all the more pressing priorities in this country , the whole project should have been scuttled.
Hillary & Brian: two peas in a pod
Hillary Clinton surely knows how Brian Williams feels after his lie about being in a helicopter in Iraq that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
In March 2008, Hillary tried to embellish her foreign policy chops by reminiscing about a trip she made to Bosnia in 1996.
“I remember landing under sniper fire,” she said. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
The problem was, that never happened. Instead, she disembarked without any disruptions at all, unless you consider a charming little girl greeting her with a poetry reading.
The Washington Post’s Factchecker reported that the entertainer, Sinbad, who was also on the trip, refuted Hillary’s telling of the story, saying the “scariest” part of the visit was deciding where to eat.
Hillary not only dismissed Sinbad as just “a comedian,” but doubled down on the danger she claimed to have encountered. “I was moved up into the cockpit,” she told reporters. “Everyone else was told to sit on their bullet proof vests. We came in in an evasive maneuver. Those of you who have been on a C-17 or C-130 know that one of their great characteristics is that they can take off very quickly and they can maneuver agilely to avoid incoming fire. There was no greeting ceremony and we were basically told to run to our cars. Now that is what happened.”
Not so. Further media analysis concluded that Hillary and her plane were never confronted by any security threats.
Still, Bill Clinton defended his wife’s recollections on the campaign trail, attributing her possible error to her age.
Perhaps it was age that also led Clinton to claim she was instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. When challenged and accused of substantially inflating her role, including by Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey who said her claim was a “wee bit silly”, Hillary dismissed the criticism as “nitpicking.”
Maybe Brian Williams should follow Hillary’s lead; just insist that all the uproar over his lying is nitpicking. Instead of being censured, he could end up a candidate for President of the United States.
The emerging 1099 economy: the new sweatshop
If your total income in 2013 put you in the top 40 percent of Americans, you’ve likely gotten richer over the past 20 years, according to the Federal Reserve. If you are anybody else, your income, after adjusting for inflation, has probably gone down.
This trend will likely continue if the independent contractor business model enabled by technology multiplies. The winners will be the educated, specialized elite with full-time jobs and benefits who file W-2 tax forms; the losers will be independent contractors who file 1099-MISC tax forms.
On-demand worker company TaskRabbit CEO Leah Busque told TechCrunch, a technology news website, that the company’s goal is to “revolutionize the world’s labor force.” It and similar companies relying on independent contractors are accomplishing that if you consider the revolution to be back to the future of sweatshops.
Consider that under current law, independent contractors aren’t entitled to:
- A minimum wage
- Health benefits
- Unemployment insurance
- Retirement plans.
- Workers’ compensation
- Job protections
Uber and Lyft, both of which use independent contractors, are two of the best known 1099 companies, but others are sprouting like weeds. They include Homejoy (house cleaners), Handy (home cleaners and handymen), Postmates (couriers deliver goods locally), Spoonrocket (restaurant food delivery), Washio (laundry and dry-cleaning), DogVacay (pet sitting), Zirtual (personal assistants for entrepreneurs and professionals), Kitchensurfing (personal chefs) and TaskRabbit (personal tasks).
Washio allows customers to place laundry and dry-cleaning orders online and sends “ninjas” to pick up and deliver items. Washio doesn’t actually do any cleaning; it sends clothes to third party facilities. Independent contractors use their own vehicles, and cover their own costs, to go hither and yon picking up and dropping off clothes.
Online job source TaskRabbit asks people, “What can we take off your plate?” It offers “fully vetted Taskers to get the job done”, allowing the customer to “kick back and relax” and pay the bill online when the job is done. TaskRabbit makes its money by taking a 20% service fee off the payment.
TaskRabbit makes it clear that Taskers are independent contractors and that Taskrabbit is no more than “ a communications platform which enables the connection between Clients and Taskers.”
The company reinforces that message by saying it “…has no liability regarding the Service” and “…is not responsible for the performance of Users, nor does it have control over the quality, timing, legality, failure to provide, or any other aspect whatsoever of Tasks Clients, nor of the integrity, responsibility or any of the actions or omissions whatsoever of any Users.”
SherpaVentures, a venture capital firm, predicts that so-called “freelance marketplace” or “managed-service” labor models used by these companies are poised to transform industries like law, health care, and investment banking, and that fewer people will have traditional full-time or part-time jobs as a result.
According to Sherpa, “perpetual, hourly employment is often deeply inefficient for all parties involved, with the employer having to employ long-term workers for short-term needs and the worker missing the independence and productivity that come with freelancing and make workers happier.”
Futurist Thomas Frey, predicting 1099 nirvana, asserts that on-demand work will mean freedom. “…those who master the fine art of controlling their own destiny will rise to the inspiring new lifestyle category of “rogue commanders of the known universe,” he says.
A shift to independent contracting is more likely, however, to create a permanent underclass with meager, unreliable income, no benefits and few protections.
TaskRabbit CEO Busque says future work will be more flexible and “much more in the hands of what I like to call micro-entrepreneurs—people setting their own schedules, setting their own rates, saying what skills they have and what they’re good at.”
Valleywag, a Gawker Media tech blog, puts it a little differently: “If TaskRabbit Is the Future of Employment, the Employed Are Fucked”
Republicans and abortion: a fool’s errand
Let me see if I have this right?
House Republicans exultantly voted on Thursday, Jan. 22, for a bill (H.R. 7) that would forbid the use of taxpayer funding to pay for abortion.
The House Of Representatives votes on H.R. 7
So Republicans, who routinely rant about taxpayer dollars supporting poor freeloaders with too many kids who are burdening the welfare system, want to make sure that people who can’t afford to get an abortion have more babies.
The Hyde Amendment, passed annually as part of an appropriations bill, already prevents using federal funds to pay for abortion, except in cases of incest, rape and life endangerment of the mother, but H.R. 7 would make that permanent law.
The House bill would restrict the use of federal funds to cover abortions, including through the Medicaid federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans, government-owned health-care facilities and the tax credits available to some people to subsidize the cost of health plans purchased under the Affordable Care Act.
Of course, denying to pregnant low-income women any government assistance for abortions pretty much guarantees that more unwanted babies will be born and that the mother and child will be even more dependent on government aid. In many cases, it also means that the child will be taken care of, or not taken care of, by an unwed mother, too often a teenager, that both will struggle to realize a decent life and that society at large will bear the burden of their failure to thrive.
It’s bad enough that many states, with conservatives cheering them on, have eroded Roe v. Wade by adopting measures that severely limit access to abortion for all women, including restrictions that end up constraining the number of clinics in a state that can perform abortions. That means low-income women wanting an abortion are left out in the cold because they can’t afford to travel to a faraway clinic.
The pregnant daughter of a member of Congress probably faces no such financial barrier if she wants an abortion.
After all, a report from OpenSecrets.org showed the median net worth of a member of Congress was $1,029,505 in 2013, compared with an average American household’s median net worth of $56,355. Keeping up the trend, half of this year’s freshman class were already millionaires upon their arrival.
Meanwhile, Congress isn’t the only abortion battlefield. Outside the Beltway, Republican gains in numerous states in the November elections strengthened the anti-abortion zealots in statehouses and governor’s offices.
And so the struggle continues.
Musings: cowardly snipers, Selma, the Oregon Cultural Trust and failing schools
Lot’s of random thoughts lately.
Cowardly snipers
That great progressive American patriot, Michael Moore, made another of his well-informed, well-reasoned comments the other day on his Twitter account. Speaking out about Clint Eastwood’s movie, “American Sniper”, Moore said, “My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse.”
Current and former American soldiers alive today because of the effectiveness of American snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan had no comment.
Selma
The hyperventilating critics of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s portrayal in the movie, Selma, need to chill out.
Joseph Califano Jr., a top assistant to Johnson, said, for example, that the movie took “dramatic, trumped-up license” with the truth and “falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965
It’s a MOVIE, folks, not a documentary. And, by the way, where were all you historical accuracy nuts when the idolatrous TV and theater movies about John F. Kennedy omitted scenes of his sexual escapades and the hagiographies about his brother, Ted Kennedy, skipped over his responsibility for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne?
Oregon Cultural Trust
The billboard on Broadway urges donations to the Oregon Cultural Trust. “Donate/Match, get the whole match back,” the billboard says.
The way the program works is you add up your donations for the year to one or more of the participating cultural nonprofits and then make a donation to the Cultural Trust in an equal amount. Your donation to the Cultural Trust will come back to you dollar for dollar at tax time when you claim your cultural tax credit.
In 2009, the Legislature stole $1.8 million from the Trust for Cultural Development account of the Oregon Cultural Trust to deal with state budget pressures. The Senate tried to defend itself by claiming it just took money from Oregon Cultural Trust license plates, not public donations.
Horsepucky! It was out-and-out theft.
So don’t trust ’em. If they were willing to break the public trust over a lousy $1.8 million, they’ll do it again. Don’t donate a dime to the Trust this year, or next. We both know the Legislature will raid it again someday.
Failing schools
In his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, President Obama said he wants the federal and state governments to cover 100 percent of the junior college tuition for students who meet minimal standards. Of course, the program wouldn’t really be free. Obama wants to raise taxes to pay for the fed’s share.
And the proposal ignores the fact that the biggest problem at community colleges isn’t the cost, but the dismal completion rate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, at 2-year degree-granting institutions, only 31 percent of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began their pursuit of a certificate or associate’s degree in fall 2009 attained it within three years. This graduation rate was just 20 percent at public 2-year institutions.
Portland Community College graduation
Part-time junior college students don’t do well either. Even when given four years to complete certificates and degrees, no more than a quarter make it to graduation day, according to a Complete College America report to the nation’s governors. The rest wander aimlessly through too many class choices, get committed to jobs, relationships mortgages and more and end up with nothing finished and backbreaking debt.
Of course, it’s not just the junior colleges that fail. Too many students arrive ill-prepared by their K-12 educations to succeed at higher education and channeled into remedial courses that don’t work.
Obama’s community college plan: free is a very good price
“Free is a very good price,” Portland pitchman Tom Peterson used to say in ubiquitous advertisements for his retail stores.
Barack Obama must have been listening to Tom, based on his new proposal that community college be tuition-free for students who meet minimal standards.
“Community college should be free for those willing to work for it because, in America, a quality education should not be a privilege that is reserved for a few,” Obama said on Jan. 9.
Portland Community College registration.
Of course, despite the tendency of Democrats to define things paid for by the government as “free” and spending on favored programs as “investments”, Obama’s community college proposal won’t really be free. Federal taxes and state revenue will need to pay the bill, so either something else will have to be cut or taxes will have to be raised.
All the beneficiaries of Obama’s proposed junior college program would need to do is attend community college at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make steady progress toward completing their program. What a deal.
The Federal Government would cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college and the states would be expected to come up with the rest.
How much will it all cost? Who knows? The White House said the free-for-all program would help about 9 million students each year and that it would save a full-time community college student $3,800 in tuition per year on average. If all 9 million students go full-time, that would translate into a whopping annual cost of $34.2 billion, with $25.6 billion of that coming from the feds and $8.6 billion from the states.
And then there’d be the additional facilities and teachers community colleges would need pay for to accommodate the influx of free-for-all students? Who would pay for that?
Obama says he’ll include details on the federal costs in his January 20 State of the Union address and in his proposed budget.
Whatever number he comes up with, it’s likely to grow year after year because community college costs will grow, particularly with guaranteed federal money flowing in.
Another legitimate concern is grade inflation. As noted earlier, to get the free tuition students would need to maintain a 2.5 GPA. Anybody who thinks that community college instructors would not be inclined to inflate grades, and even be subtly pressed to do so, to keep the money coming is naive.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the completion rate at 2-year degree-granting institutions is pretty abysmal. Just 31 percent of first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began their pursuit of a certificate or associate’s degree in fall 2009 attained it within 150 percent of the normal time required to do so, or within 3 years for a 2-year degree. The graduation rate was just 20 percent at public 2-year institutions.
Obama’s plan seems to assume that the main thing holding students back from satisfactorily completing coursework at community colleges is the cost, particularly of tuition. But many other factors are likely to be determinative, including poor K-12 preparation for a significant number of students and the need for remedial courses that many students can’t successfully complete. Making community college free for everybody won’t solve these problems.
In fact, without any skin in the game, students may be even less motivated to complete their studies.
Another glaring weakness of Obama’s proposal is the absence of any income qualifications for the tuition aid. Presumably the executive’s son and the gas station attendant’s daughter would both be equally eligible for the giveaway. At a time of severe budget constraints, what’s the point of that?
But why worry about the details. It’ll be free.
Let the dogs out: the assault on Steve Scalise
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA, has had a reputation throughout his political career for being open to talking with just about anybody, regardless of their ideological persuasion. Horrors!
In today’s hyper-partisan world, that’s apparently a bad thing.
“I live in a rather special world,” influential film critic Pauline Kael commented after the 1972 presidential election. “I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken.”
The provincialism and narrow-mindedness of that observation came to mind in thinking about the Steve Scalise controversy. Progressives in the media and government were all too ready to accept the controversial allegation from a left-leaning blogger and attack Scalise in a frenzy because they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, think outside their echo-chamber of like thinkers.
But consider the source, and wonder whether the media have failed the public.
The melee started when a left-leaning blogger, Lamar White Jr., posted that twelve years ago a Louisiana state legislator, Steve Scalise, addressed the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO) about a tax and spending ballot measure.
Lamar White
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA
White later said he learned about the incident after getting a tip from Robert Reed, the son and campaign manager of a Democrat who lost to Scalise in a 2008 special election to fill an open House seat in Louisiana.
White said he verified the tip by checking Reed’s source, a post on Stormfront, a race-baiting website run by white nationalists and other racial extremists.
Stormfront logo
When the media discovered White’s allegation, they leapt at the story, apparently without bothering to do much fact-checking. The progressive posse, eager to believe the worst about a conservative, went ballistic.
Because EURO was founded by David Duke, a prominent former Ku Klux Klan leader, critics excoriated Scalise for even talking to a racist group, no matter the topic, even though Scalise said he had no recollection of speaking at the EURO conference.
The national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) enthusiastically bashed Scalise, now House Majority Whip, with a guilt- by-association pronouncement.
DCCC National Press Secretary, Josh Schwerin
“Steve Scalise chose to cheerlead for a group of KKK members and neo-Nazis at a white supremacist rally and now his fellow House Republican Leaders can’t even speak up and say he was wrong,” said DCCC National Press Secretary Josh Schwerin. “Republicans in Congress might talk about improving their terrible standing with non-white voters, but it’s clear their leadership has a history of embracing anti-Semitic, racist hate groups.”
Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.), piled on, calling for Scalise to resign from the Republican House Leadership team.
Alexandra Petri, author of the Washington Post’s ComPost blog, said, “Why would you possibly think speaking at this event was a good idea? Why would you think attending this event was a good idea?”
Similarly, Eugene Robinson wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled, “The GOP has a bad habit of appealing to avowed racists”.
“Here’s some advice for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise that also applies to the Republican Party in general: If you don’t want to be associated in any way with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, then stay away from them,” Robinson said.
Robinson went on, “Do not give a speech to a racist organization founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, as Scalise did when he was a Louisiana state legislator before running for Congress.”
This has just gone too far.
Now it’s apparently not only wrong to say something that’s offensive to progressives or something provocative that might challenge preconceptions and “trigger” discomfort, but it’s impermissible for politicians to address people progressives don’t agree with.
No wonder we have political gridlock if electeds are rebuked for even talking with people who have a different point of view.
What makes this whole thing even more bizarre is that Louisiana’s Times-Picayune newspaper now reports that Scalise may not, in fact, have spoken at the Euro event.
On Dec. 31, the paper said the man who arranged Scalise’s appearance at the event he addressed now says Scalise didn’t attend the EURO conference, but rather a small meeting of the Jefferson Heights Civic Association that was held in the same hotel conference room earlier the same day.
Wouldn’t it be something if all this sturm and drang has been over nothing.
Scam alert! Want to win an award? Buy one.
You know how kids today get awards for just showing up?
Now everybody can get an award for their business or non-profit, too…for a price.
The congratulatory e-mail received by the Hillsboro non-profit where I work was completely unexpected. “You’ve been selected for the 2014 Best of Hillsboro Awards,” it said. “For details and more information please view our website…”
The website said the non-profit could celebrate its success by choosing an award plaque, an aluminum plaque for $149.99, a crystal award for $199.99, or, if the non-profit really wanted to go all out, both for $229.98.
The e-mail even came with a pre-written press release we could use to announce the award.
But the award notices are little more than extortion. They’re from an awards mill that blankets the country with similar pitches.
It’s hard to figure out exactly who’s profiting from the scam. In the message from the company there’s reference to the “Hillsboro Award Program”, which is defined as “an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Hillsboro area…(that) exemplify the best of small business…”
But the “Hillsboro Award Program” is a fiction.
I tried their Contact Us link, which offered me an e-mail form. I sent an e-mail asking for more information on the parent company, but got no response.
What is clear is that an awful lot of folks who crave praise have been duped into participating in the “Best of” awards program, or have promoted their award to dupe their customers.
Companies across the U.S. trumpet their “Best of” awards, including: Generations Family Practice in Reston, VA; Newman IT Solutions of Kalamazoo, Mich.; Christopher Styles Barber Spa of Los Angeles; Karma Dog Training of Austin, TX; and Scotty’s Transmissions of Sparks, NV.
A quick Google search found almost 10,000 announcements by companies that they had won one of these self congratulatory “Best of” awards, each company likely picked at random from a phone book or business directory. In each case, the notification came from the “ (name of town) Award Program”. No parent company that runs the national program is identified.
The company’s website says it is “D&B Rated”, but doesn’t give any information that would allow a curious person to secure a Dun & Bradstreet report on it, such as its business name and location. The website also says the company is an active member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but without a business name that can’t be verified. Repeated inquiries to the company asking for information that would allow verification of its D&B and Chamber connections were not answered.
This particular award scam is similar to ones carried out by the U.S. Commerce Association, US Local Business Association, the United States Trade and Commerce Institute (USTCI), and US Institute for Excellence in Commerce. In fact, the suggested press release, website content and other elements of the “Best of” awards are just about identical with what these organizations have put out.
So if your business or non-profit gets one of these award scams, chuck it in the trash. All that glitters is not gold.
ThinkingOregon 