Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Recruiting a New Portland Police Chief: Hair Shirt Required

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Posting on governmentjobs.com

City of Portland Job Opportunities, Closing – 6/12/2017 4:30 PM Pacific

POLICE CHIEF

“The State of Oregon and its largest city, Portland, share a history of legally sanctioned systemic racism with legally enforced exclusionary practices. Given this history, the successful candidate must demonstrate the capacity and commitment to expand on existing strategies to improve relationships with and service provision to Portland’s communities of color, ensuring that equity is a bedrock of policing in Portland.”

Now that the self-flagellation is over, here’s the job application

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Keep The Kicker

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Oregonians learned earlier today that they may be up for another kicker.  And the progressive Oregon Center for Public Policy is already bitching about “lost revenue.”

“Should it come to pass, this unanticipated, automatic tax cut would cost the state about $400 million at a time when Oregon schools and essential services are at risk from budget cuts and suffer from long-term underfunding,” the Center said in an e-mail blast.

“Lost revenue?” “Cost the state?” Give me a break.

It’s not the state’s money. It’s yours. But progressives keep finding reasons to take it away.

In 2015, when an improving economy triggered a “kicker” rebate of about $400 million, State Rep. Tobias Read, D-Beaverton, sponsored a bill that would have diverted half of that $400 million to education and half to the state’s general reserve. Fortunately, Read’s bill didn’t get a committee hearing.

According to The Oregonian, Sen. Alan DeBoer, R-Ashland, plans to introduce a bill to redirect the kicker to K-12 education. If it passes, voters will make the final decision.

Oregonians already made it perfectly clear what they think of this idea. In 2016, Oregon taxpayers were given an opportunity to donate their kicker rebate to the state’s Common School Fund when they filled out their tax forms. Hardly any did. At one point, records showed fewer than one-half of one percent of taxpayers were choosing to do so. Hardly a magnanimous endorsement of the idea.

The state got itself into a real mess with its constant spending increases and ever-expanding pension obligations. Don’t let that be an excuse for ending the kicker.

 

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What Does the Resistance Want?

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 Good grief. Another nationwide anti-Trump march is in the works.

 Indivisible, a national anti-Trump movement advocating a permanent, organized rebellion, is calling for a March For Truth on Saturday, June 3.

“Let’s rise together to call for a fair and impartial investigation into the Trump administration’s ties to Russia and demand the pursuit of truth.” Indivisible says.

Indivisible says marches are already planned for at least 50 cities across the country. Portland’s is set to take place at Terry Schrunk Plaza in Portland.

The March for Truth will follow the March for Science, the Tax March, the People’s Climate March and the Women’s March.

We’re starting to look like France, with its perpetual violent protests over such things as police brutality, politicians, labor laws, pay policies, pension reform, education reform, nurse suicides, the ruling elite and just about everything else.

But as the US progressive-led protests multiply, what exactly is the point?

“Resist!” the protesters exclaim. Resist what? That they lost an election? That the winner is not advocating the policies and programs the loser and her backers favored?

The protests may be an emotionally rewarding bonding exercise, but as a New York Post column noted, “In a self-governing republic with established democratic processes, there is no honorable role for “resistance.”

This resistance suggests progressives only support free elections if they win.

“Those who lose elections in free countries are the opposition, and can fix that by winning their next election,” the Post column said. “Instead of asking why they lost, the ‘resistance’ decided to pretend the loss of any election amounts to oppression and have adopted the language of revolution to rally themselves.”

Making things more deplorable, the principal organization behind the protests doesn’t disclose who is funding them. That organization, The Indivisible Project, is a registered 501c(4) nonprofit that says its mission “… is to fuel a progressive grassroots network to defeat the Trump agenda. “

Indivisible’s most recent Facebook post features a plea for donations and includes a lengthy explanation of its fundraising philosophy, but leaves out any mention of transparency. It highlights that a major donor has agreed to match all donations dollar-for-dollar until the beginning of Memorial Day recess, May 26th.

But at a time when progressives complain about dark money in politics, the major donor is not named.

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Shocker! Oregon Dumping Smarter Balanced Exams in High Schools

 

So much for Oregon’ commitment to the Smarter Balanced exams.

In a shocking action, after just two years of using the tests, the Oregon Department of Education has decided to abandon the controversial Smarter Balanced tests at the high school level.

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According to Education Week, Oregon will continue to administer the exam to students in grades 3-8 and 11 through the spring of 2018, state education department spokeswoman Tricia Yates told the publication. Starting in 2018-19, only students in grades 3-8 will take the test, she said.

Yates said Oregon will explore using a “nationally recognized” test, such as the SAT or ACT, for high school student going forward. The state will issue a “request for information” this spring to collect ideas from the field, and then issue a “request for proposals” later this summer, she added.

Federal law has long allowed states to use college-admissions exams in place of other summative tests for accountability, but few states have done so. The Every Student Succeeds Act invites states to use “a nationally recognized high school test” for accountability instead of state-developed or consortium-designed exams.

The popularity of the consortium tests has eroded particularly at the high school level. Trying to cut back on testing time and boost students’ motivation to do well on a high school test, states are increasingly opting to use the ACT or SAT.

Oregon’s decision is particularly significant because leaders of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium drew heavily on Oregon’s experience with computer-adaptive testing when they set out to craft the new exam in 2010, Education Week said.

The state’s decision likely has the support of the Oregon Education Association (OEA), which has aggressively opposed the Smarter Balanced Assessment tests. In June 2015, Gov. Kate Brown pleased the OEA, but exasperated and angered many school officials, when she signed a bill making it easier for children to opt out of standardized tests, including the Smarter Balanced Assessment.

 

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Why it’s so damn hard to cut government

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President Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act in Dec. 2015

Trump thinks he’s going to reduce the size of government. Good luck.

After the country had gotten along quite well without a cabinet-level Department of Education for more than 200 years, Democratic President Jimmy Carter established one in 1979.

When the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which amended the No Child Left Behind law, was enacted on December 10, 2015, a key objective was to cut back on the bureaucratic bloat in the Department of Education.

To accomplish that, the law included provisions eliminating 49 ineffective or duplicative federal education programs, required that the Secretary of Education identify the number of full-time equivalent positions associated with the eliminated programs and required the Secretary to reduce those positions by an equal amount.

But, as usual, the bureaucracy knew how to protect itself.

When ESSA became law, the Department of Education had about 4,400 employees and an annual budget of $68 billion.

Given the size and complexity of the Department, and the scope of ESSA, you’d think ESSA would have led to substantial personnel cutbacks. Ha!

The Department calculated that ESSA didn’t reauthorize only six programs – Advanced Placement, Elementary and Secondary School Counseling, Mathematics and Science Partnerships, Physical Education Program, School improvement Grants and Transition to Teaching, for a total of 15.5 FTEs.

That’s right, the massive changes wrought by the passage of ESSA led to the elimination of just 15.5 of the department’s 4400 FTE positions.

At that rate, it will take at least 283 years to eliminate the department, the goal of many hard-core conservatives since the department was created. I’d guess the department is safe.

 

 

 

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Gov. Brown’s Hiring Freeze: Too Little, Too Late

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Finally.

More than two months after Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli of John Day called for a hiring freeze in Oregon’s public sector, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown has signed an executive order imposing a hiring freeze.

But it will only last until June 30 of this year. Too little. Too late.

In deciding on a hiring freeze, Brown’s no bold innovator. She’s following what more responsible states and businesses have done before.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, in an effort to strengthen state finances, imposed a state hiring freeze last year that whittled 1,161 employees from the payroll.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, whose state missed revenue forecasts last fiscal year and is forecasting a miss again because of declines in farm income, also put on a hiring freeze for state employees. “As Nebraskans, we don’t spend money we don’t have,” Ricketts said.

Businessess pull back when they face financial challenges, too.

Macy’s, faced with unfavorable earnings, decided to shut down 68 stores and cut more than 10,000 jobs.

In December 2011, then Gov. John Kitzhaber, who was also facing budget troubles, ordered a hiring freeze. But when Gov. Brown released her recommended budget for 2017-19, she chose not to do the same.

In fact, with Oregon facing a $1.6 billion budget shortfall in the 2017-19 biennium, buried in the Governor’s initial budget was a proposal to actually increase the state government workforce from 38,737 in 2015-17 to 39,412 in 2017-19. That’s an increase of 675 full-time equivalent employees.

“Using the cost information from the Legislative Fiscal Office, this 1.7 percent increase would cost the state more than $120 million in compensation costs for the 2017-19 biennium,” according to Facing Reality, a Cascade Policy Institute report.

“A prudent step of a hiring freeze would free up resources and ward off some of the pressure to increase taxes, fees, and charges,” the report said.

An ever-expanding state is not sustainable without ever-increasing taxation.   If Oregon is to responsibly manage its finances, an across-the-board rigorously enforced hiring freeze, with stringent requirements for exceptions and restrictions on hiring contractors, should be imposed for the entire next biennium.

Surely the governor and Legislature, with a state workforce that’s already at 38,737, can find ways to meet the state’s needs by adjusting the workload and assignments of that workforce.

Take a leap folks. Do the right thing.

 

 

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Too Bad Sen. Merkley. Ossoff Bungled It.

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Why is this man smiling?

It was hard not to laugh.

I got an email from Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) today breathlessly proclaiming:

“Wow. In Georgia’s 6th District, Jon Ossoff scored a stunning primary election victory last night with 48% of the vote.”

Since Ossoff’s clear objective in yesterday’s special election was to secure at least 50 percent of the vote among 18 candidates so he could win the race outright and not have to face a single Republican in June, I’d hardly say, “Wow, what a victory.”

A much more honest statement from Merkley would have been, “Oh crap! Democrats spent $17.3 million to push this guy Ossoff across the 50 percent line and he blew it.”

Democrats across the country opened their wallets in support of Ossoff. All together Democrats donated $8.3 million to Ossoff’s campaign in the first quarter of 2017. On top of that, Center for Public Integrity’s Rachel Wilson has reported that super PACs, nonprofits and other groups independent of any candidate’s campaign spent $9 million on the Georgia 6th race.

Now Ossoff, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, will have to run in a 2-way race against just one Republican candidate, Karen Handel, in June, when he’ll lose. As Politico said put it, “The likelihood is if there’s a runoff, Republicans will coalesce around one candidate and take Ossoff down in June.”

But Merkley won’t be crying in his beer, because he hopes to raise some money for himself from this confrontation.

“Chip in right now and let’s show Trump that we’re not buying his spin—we’re in it to win it!,” Merkley blasted out in his email, urging folks to send $500 or more.

But he doesn’t want your money to go to “John Ossof for Congress”. No. That would be wrong. Instead, your contribution will go to “Jeff Merkley for Oregon.”

Yep. That’s the ticket.

 

 

 

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$17 Million Democrat Dollars Down The Drain: The #Ossoff Election

Democratic Candidate For Georgia's 6th District Leading In Polls On Election Day

Oh well. Never mind.

Democrats across the country opened their wallets in support of Jon Ossoff, a Democratic candidate for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. Their goal, secure more than 50 percent of the April 18 special election vote, avoid a runoff and win a seat that Republicans have held since 1979.

All together Democrats donated $8.3 million to Ossoff’s campaign in the first quarter of 2017. On top of that, Center for Public Integrity’s Rachel Wilson has reported that super PACs, nonprofits and other groups independent of any candidate’s campaign spent another $9 million on the Georgia 6th race.

But Ossoff didn’t exceed 50 percent. Now Ossoff, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker and former congressional staffer, will have to run in a 2-way race against just one Republican candidate in June. The likelihood is his Republican opponent will coast to a win.

So much for the Democrats’ hoped for repudiation of President Trump.

As for Ossoff. Oh well. Never mind.

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Celebrities and Politics: Why Are Voters Attracted to Shiny Objects?

What is it about celebrities?

Democrat Jon Ossoff wants to win an open primary on April 18 so he can represent Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

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Actress Alyssa Milano canvassed Ossoff’s district for him in March and offered voters a ride to an advance polling location.

According to various media, actors Alyssa Milano and Christopher Gorham‏, want Ossoff to win, too. Media tell us lots of other liberal celebrity actors support Ossoff as well, including Chelsea Handler, Kristen Bell, John Leguizamo, Sam Waterston, Connie Britton, Jessica Lange, Lynda Carter, Jon Cryer, Debra Messing, George Takei and Rhea Perlman.

I’m not sure yet where Kim Kardashian, who’s so well known for her political sophistication and deep thinking, stands on Ossoff’s race, but I’m sure the media will tell us if she ever blurts out something.

How did we get to the point where this matters, or at least reporters, reporters, pundits and political consultants think it does?

Did you know Elvis Presley supported Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the 1956 presidential election and John F. Kennedy in 1960, or that he shared his strong opinions on America’s cultural decline with President Nixon?

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President Nixon and Elvis Presley at the White House, 1970

Elvis was particularly incensed about the behavior of actress Jane Fonda, who was photographed at an anti-aircraft gun placement in Hanoi during the Vietnam war.

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Actress Jane Fonda at an anti-aircraft position in North Vietnam in July 1972

Like an updated Tokyo Rose, she’d also gone on Hanoi radio and petitioned American fighting men stationed to the south to lay down their arms because they were fighting an unjust war against the peace-loving North Vietnamese.

Did any of us care what Elvis thought about political issues? I don’t think so.

Did anybody vote for Adlai Stevenson because Elvis endorsed him? I doubt it.

How did we reach a point where the political opinions of pampered, self-absorbed, and often empty- headed celebrities influence our voting? It’s a virulent, ugly form of anti-intellectualism.

 Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

Americans are woefully uninformed about history and public policy. According to a Pew Research project, about a quarter of American adults (26%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form.

A recent Fairleigh Dickinson University survey revealed that only 34 percent of registered voters can name the three branches of government, only 69 percent know which party controls the House of Representatives and just 21 percent can name the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Hard to believe, but according to Newsweek, 70 percent of Americans have no idea what the constitution, the country’s most important historical, political, and legal document even is.

But Americans do know the names, sexual proclivities, marital history, makeup choices, fashion choices and car crash-like personal lives of celebrities and, increasingly, they pay attention to their political opinions. And the media is thrilled to offer celebrities a platform to say what they think about climate change, refugees, the electoral college or whatever, no matter how nonsensical or shallow those views are or how hyping their views is a devaluation of actual expertise.

If there’s any hope it’s helpful to remember that celebrities like Katy Perry came out for Hillary in droves….and we know how that ended.

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Senator Wyden doesn’t need your donation

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Senator Ron Wyden wants me to know he cares about “real people”. And, by the way, he wants my money, too.

Wyden, who already had $3,398,289 in his campaign account as of the end of 2016, just sent out one more of his voluminous e-mails highlighting how he’s fighting for truth, justice and the American way. He’s also pleading for donors to step up and help him with a $7, $24, $36 or $125 contribution.

This from a Senator who raised $12,628,463 during his previous term, almost all of it from big business and affluent individual contributors and just 5 percent ($664,664) from the little people, according to OpenSecrets.org.

This from a Senator who already has $3,398,289 in cash sitting in his campaign account and may not even run again. After all, Wyden’s already been a member of Congress for 36 years and is going to turn 68 years old on May 3. He’ll be 73 during his next campaign if he runs again. That would make him almost 80 at the end of that term.

Yes, I know, there are 14 senators who are 74 or older, with the oldest, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA), both 83. And the Senate is a place where politicians with high self-regard and legions of sycophantic staff can come to love living in a special bubble and can see themselves as irreplaceable.

But, is Wyden, who is wealthy and has three young children with his wife Nancy, whom he married in 2005, going to want to do his 24 X 7 Senate job until he’s almost 80?

My bet is Senator Wyden doesn’t need your minuscule individual contribution. Give your money to a non-profit that’s doing great work, instead. The world will be better for it.