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Want to Run for the Oregon State Legislature?

I've been given an e-mail address you can write if you know anyone who should run for the Oregon Legislature.

Here in the magic confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean we have three seats currently held by Democrats.

I've been asked to request that you let your interest, or your interest in someone else, be known.

If you know of someone who you think should run for the Oregon Legislature, or you think you'd be willing to run for office, you can e-mail clatsoprepublicans@gmail.com with contact information.

There is a filtering operation that will take place, so submitting obviously stupid names isn't going to work.

But the names will be held confidentially until contact is made by a candidate recruiter. There are a lot of robust opportunities in the state. Fortunately for us on the Oregon North Coast, all of the current Democrats are vulnerable. And having spoken with several important organizers for both Republican and business organizations, the chances for a sweep in 2010 are looking good.

Debbie Boone? Brad Witt?

Betsy Johnson?

Why is it that we have the worst roads, the highest unemployment and the least investment in the state?

Good, if in fact accurate, questions.

Yannow what? None of it really matters. Clatsop, Tillamook and Columbia counties have each to each struggled against the smothering of economic development by the State.

Remember the Big Look? I was there in Tillamook listening to folks like Brad and Debbie and Betsy tell us that they were looking out for you and me.

That was before the last session. The result? Nothing.

Between the environmentalists, the no-growthers and the Leftists, those of us who live in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook aren't having our voices heard. But if you have paid any attention at all to the elections that happened on Tuesday, I'm just telling you, there is a lot of pent-up anger at the way our state elected officials have continually sold us down the river for the Enviros and the Leftists.

Right-wing anger? You bet. As more and more builders and contractors go out of business...as more and more loggers find themselves unemployed...as more and more fishermen find that they are being regulated out of existence in favour of sports fishermen...as more and more businessmen find that they can no longer meet payrolls...

The dreams of the radical Leftists must need come to an end.

We aren't an Ectopia. We are a state, large geographically, small in population. Stopping growth and development isn't just stupid, it should be criminal.

But the Democrats write the laws.

It's time to end the dominance of rural Oregon by Leftist Democrat politicians.

Affordable housing? Won't happen under the Democrats. Job creation? Unless you buy into the fantasy of Green jobs it's not going to happen. (And even if you buy into the fantasy of Green Jobs, it isn't going to happen.)

Better schools? Are you kidding? If the State, through the office of the State's Superintendent of Public Schools is any indicator, we're years away from fixing education. Supplementing union dues? Yes. Fixing schools? No. No way. Nope. Ain't gonna happen.

Roads, housing, health, business. All these are being killed by your current Democrat politicians. And I don't want to hear about how "Brad intervened" or "Debbie intervened" or "Betsy intervened."

That politicans have to stand between you and state law is indictment enough. They wrote the laws. They are responsible for the laws.

It's time for a change. Not so much a change, but a return to the values that once made Oregon a great place to live, a great place to have children, a great place to invest.

We've tried being trendy. We've tried being a state where "we do things differently." Now we find out that all of this is fraudulent. The Governor lied to the Legislature, but you know what? Some legislators, like State Senator Betsy Johnson, had no reason to work for you and me...she was too busy making sure that her family ranch was protected from job creating investments in Josephine county.

You've heard rumours of State Senator Betsy Johnson's corruption before.

What does it tell our children about us if we allow this type of corruption to continue?

Needing A Different f-stop

It’s a serious question.

How, among the mix of all possible alternatives, do you arrive at a solution to this question? How does one set one’s aperture?

It’s obvious to me that the Governor operates as if the decisions made by our political class—legislators, administrators and bureaucrats—are macro-economic decisions.

State governments do not deal with macro questions. They clearly operate on a smaller, or on a micro-economic level. How else would one explain the plunge of our state into its policy-setting based upon macro-economic issues? Global warming? Green technology? The Western Climate Initiative?

If you were building a house, how much money would you spend to build your “perfect” house? And how could you gauge this perfection?

Let me suggest that you are worried about macro versus micro environmental impact. You are an environmentalist, and your goals are directed toward environmental goals. What are your goals, exactly?

What is an environmental impact? What is a normal impact? What is a micro impact? And what is the difference between a macro-environmental impact versus a micro-environmental impact?

I’m not an environmentalist. I’m a human. I live in my world. Plants and animals die to sustain me. Trees have died to house me. Petroleum and rock have been mined to provide me with a roof and a driveway. Land is planted with cotton and fed with phosphates in order to clothe me. Water is diverted from natural rivers to water the crops that I wear, feed my dogs and provide for my napkins.

Yet I’m an environmentalist because I’m aware of how much I derive from the world around me. I’m a human. I recognize that the plants and animals that I consume need to be replaced. If I had lived in earlier times I would be willing to go to war for an increase in the natural resources that I held power over. In earlier times, I would be willing to go to war over views and opinions that didn’t match my views and opinions.

We only move so far away from war.

Building a house shouldn’t have to involve such questions as environmentalism, the consumption of natural resources and war. For the naive young couple beginning their lives, their expectations surround them; a new home, a new family and new lives.

It’s difficult for me to corrupt such a romantic view of life.

But your government is changing the rules surrounding your hopes for a better life for your family and friends that it is worth noting.

Aspiring to something better for yourself and your loved ones is no longer operative. Today, we deal with monolithic disaster.

Rather, monolithic disasters.

The beauty of a monolithic disaster is that there is no gray scale. When your child gets hit by the drunk driver of a car, there is no gray scale. When you find out that your teenaged daughter is pregnant, there is no gray scale. Monolithic disasters attempt to achieve this gray scale importance. Polar bears, spotted owls, haze—all of these have attempted to achieve lack of gray scale, that is, to assume monolithic disaster proportions.

Sure there is an un-logical delineation between monolithic disaster and disasters. A monolithic disaster would be something like a meteor a thousand miles wide hitting the earth at near to light speed.

Devastating.

We can, a priori¸ believe that getting such a hit would put some down and dirty hard on all of us. Living through the eruption of Mount St. Helens while living in Astoria gave me several insights into the world of catastrophe. One is catastrophe is cool. Second, people die. Third, it isn’t as bad as we were told it would be.



People dying? One old guy knew what he was doing. He made a choice. He chose to live his own life. Choosing how to live your life is an important choice.

Choosing how to die?

Anybody who “chooses” to die is obviously a “sick” man. (How do you do the “sarc off” thingy?)

Recently, I watched a woman talking about an issue that has infected our national cultural psyche: optimism.

I don’t agree with all of the statements of the author. But I don’t expect you to walk in lockstep with me. What I do appreciate is that there is a culture of “don’t think” that has invaded our ability to perform critical analysis.

Dying sucks. Learning that you’re about to die sucks even more.

Why should we be worrying about how we “feel” about things when structurally we know that “things” are getting fouled up?

Micro versus macro.

Do you know what that delineation means?

You prolly don’t.

It means, drawing a line.

There is a difference between describing economic activity as a small, or microeconomic activity and a large, or macroeconomic activity. Well, duh. Big things are harder to describe than small things. Or, small things are harder to describe than big things.

Both require a different f-stop.

If you’ve ever owned a camera and took the effort on how to use it you’ve learned about the f-stop. When you reduce the size of the aperture, you gain perspective. When you increase the f-stop, you lose perspective.

When it comes to viewing our current national situation, one might say that the discussion centers around our own, personal f-stops.

What is that at which we are looking? Are we looking at “it” (our object) in a one-to-one real time view? Or are we distorting our view by choosing lenses that filter what we choose to see? And, are we allowing enough light in to allow us to take the picture we hope to take?

What happens when we apply the filters of a political ideology that promotes outcomes, rather than processes? I can’t think of a lens that applies to the Right. That is not to say that some who consider themselves as members of the Right assume so without merit. Belonging to the Right has certain “first things”, or priors associated. On the Right, a priori thought becomes more important than a posteriori thought. Not that both don’t have a role to play in the game of life…it’s just that thinking things through before you act is more an impulse of the Right than the Left. It is a function of the f-stop to limit the aperture of the lens that you choose to view the world with.

How you choose to view the world is the province of the photographer. It’s your camera. Those are your lenses. Do you need a strobe?

Photography is an art. But practicing an art without training requires a lot of experience. Training replaces a lot of experience by sharing analytical information about the task in advance of your setting out upon the road of adopting the tasks of being a photographer. Still, there is nothing that replaces the experience of taking snaps, developing your snaps and printing your snaps. It is honing your art. Taking the mathematical problems of lumes and setting up your shot. Why do you have more than one camera hanging off your neck when you shoot a wedding?

The camera that you choose to take a particular snapshot is pre-set to give you a certain aperture. Depth of field. Macro versus micro.

Hence, this question of macro- versus micro-economics.

One of the fundamentals of Keynesian economics was the question of scale. Or the range of view that we choose to take pictures. The aperture. The opening with which we choose to view the world.

I’m the first to admit that I take a macro-economic view too easily. Why not, it’s the stuff that Masters of the Universe is based on.

Or, more curiously, I take the micro view too easily. It is, after all, where I live. It is where I work with my clients. It is where decisions are made in terms of what products end up moving out the door. It is the relationship between retailer and customer.

The curious question is that we’re currently having a question about scale today. That is the essence of the question asked when someone says, “too big to fail.”

What could this mean on an ontological level? As students of history we’ve gained a viewpoint about the largest failures in history; the fall of the Grecian Empire, the fall of the Roman Empire, and recently, the fall of the British Empire.

And all the collateral empires you wish to bring up; Aegean, Persian, Mesopotamian, etc.

Micro versus macro.

Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, dear reader.

Marx argued in Das Kapital that everything was economics. We’re living in a time that will disprove Marx’ argument. Economics is a constant, and market forces are greater than political forces, but societies rely upon more than economics.

Societies rely upon law. So a question might be, what view do we take of the law, do we take a macro view or a micro view?

If we need to do some remedial reading, let me know. The formalized structure of societies and the law are long, large and arduous. If you don’t have a clue about how societies have been created—through the words of the men and women who lived in these antique societies—drop me a line. You’ve a ton of reading to do.

A small digression.

Most of us have not either a scintilla or a shred of how our society evolved.

End of the small digression.

American society and American politics is the latest innovation in modern thought when it comes to “revolutionary” thought in the syllabus of political thinking. All other forms of thinking are either derivative or re-statements of disproved political forms. There isn’t anything new in believing that we need to have a political diktat that allows us to either do or not do a thing.

Liberty is, in fact, the latest new idea of political thought. Or is it justice?

Liberty. Or, justice?

If you’ve read my posts, I do believe that there are consequents to any action. When you tell someone that they cannot do a thing, the consequent is that they either will or won’t, and those things that you outlaw will still occur, but at a great cost either to the individual or to the society.

Ed Burke wrote about such things.

Ed is dead.

But the thousands of years of what we refer to as history are just as alive today as it was “way back then.” What Edmund Burke realized isn’t news. What is important is that most political writers have never heard of Ed Burke. So, man bites dog.

I heard something the other day that should cause you to pause.

It was late in the evening, when signal strength of AM stations start to get weak. I can’t tell you what radio station I was listening to, but I can tell you what I heard.

What I heard was basic economic theory stood upon its head. The question was one of taxes. And I heard this moderator explain that if taxes were at the 90 percent level, the high rate of taxation would remove the seduction of economic activity of higher risks. His reasoning? If we had higher marginal tax rates, the smartest, best and brightest of us would not take higher risks of return since the after-tax earnings would be structurally reduced by the tax code.

It should be an eye-opening time for you.

There is a movement afoot on the Left that excoriates the private sector. Unions particularly work against the best interests of us all on the basis that any return to capital is a reduction of the return to labour. The f-stop of organized labour is set on a very small number.

Our state has become fixated upon macro-economic issues because they are large, monolithic issues of such complexity that almost any policy chosen can work…because no policy chosen can be shown to have failed.

Reading the luminaries of the Left is arduous at best. There is this constant shuffle between aperture settings. It is a form of equivocation. This is best understood by reading Chomsky. It would be hell to be a student of his, since his reliance upon equivocation lies not so plainly in the mere shift of meaning in his words, but upon the focal length of his argumentation.

But it is surmountable. One must remain focused, though.

The Left chooses large, monolithic and more importantly, macro-economic issues and advances its campaigns in order to slay these dragons of unknown complexity. With micro-economic tools. The Left has dialed in the aperture of our public policy apparatus that sets state policy on a track to deal with macro-economic issues. And even in the face of the failure of these state policies, there are no negative consequences for the State’s political class, because the issues that these State policies are intended to ameliorate are simply beyond the power of the State of Oregon to have any impact.

Did you know that the State has a policy for reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere?

Think about it.

Where does our atmosphere come from? None of the smart and intelligent people in Salem seem to have thought that question through.

So the State has embarked upon a journey to make the State of Oregon a “leader” in environmental issues; Green tech, carbon, blah, blah, blah. Without a scintilla of evidence that any actions taken by the State “can” have any impact on the issues they state they are addressing.

Build a new coal-fired electrical generating plant in Oregon? No. Carbon, particulates, etc., blah, blah, blah. So the plants will be built in Idaho, or Nevada, or Montana, but guess what? We don’t have the transmission facilities to get energy from there to here. So we go short on electricity while our public school teachers are teaching our kids that we need to have electric cars because oil exploration and extraction are “unsustainable.”

In Oregon, making electricity is unsustainable. Sure, we’ll throw hundreds of millions of dollars at Green technology and still fail to see what is obvious about this “new” tech. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work affordably and it doesn’t work in a scale that allows us to capture any return on our State’s expenditures. It’s failing in plain view, but because of the aperture settings of state government we don’t see it.

The Governor believes the state is too big to fail. And yet it is failing every single day. Rather than placing a focus on the micro-economic policies that would allow the private sector to expand and invest, Oregon’s private sector policies are harshly punitive to the private sector.

You want to live in Ectopia? It’s going to cost a lot of money. And money spent for results that never pay off. Simply because the focus of state policy has completely gone off the rails.

Asperger's and District 23

Last night I watched the Jerry and Jerry Show.

Between Gerri and Gerri was the candidate.



Let us not parse.

"Abraham Lincoln had a nervous breakdown, and before his election to the presidency in 1860, he lost eight other elections (Botham, 2006, p. 4). Asperger’s is often first misdiagnosed as depression, anxiety, bipolar, or a breakdown and running repeatedly for office may be indicative of perseveration, ritualistic need for routine even when it doesn’t appear to be working, and rigidity"

When I watched, live, the video above I wondered about the value of televison versus books.

This isn't the first time that we've had to deal with the horrible nature of television. There is no cushion between the object and the viewer.

I don't think my background or experience is far different than that 0f President Lincoln's. Tonight, when I came home, there was no argument, no sense that I had let anybody down. But I'm a divorced old guy.

And the candidate, after examining him from a prism of experience, seemed less dorky than would be the conclusion of a neophyte. Just because you act as if you have a pocket protector in your shirt pocket doesn't mean you don't have a pocket protector in your shirt pocket.

I'm going to give you a lecture.

This lecture is in the form of a conversation, held between Temple Grandin and her interviewer.
There is a real question that is asked about Dr. Grandin that needs be asked; is affect a discernable break from what is admirable?

And more importantly, what is true?

Truth gets short shrift today. One of the reasons why God gave you a pallette is for you to choose your colours. But did you ever wonder, what colour is God's favourite?

We, as people, come in all kinds of flavours and colours. What we learn through examination is that no matter what our choices are, or, what our priors might be, we have not greater or lesser claim to political right than anyone else. If you don't believe in God, the idea that God created you with no more or no fewer rights in His eyes may be a misplaced idea.

But, if you are a reductionist, there is no moment of logical irreducibility that allows you to conclude that any human's thought has less validity than any other, simply through disagreement.

Not agreeing with the man or woman you're talking with--or arguing with--is not simple proof that they are wrong. That is baby logic. "I want this outcome. This argument stands in the way of this wanted outcome. Therefore, this argument is wrong."

God.

As if.

And yet we hear too many arguments based upon this weak assertion.

Health care!

Well, duh!

Cadillac!

Erm...that's selfish.

Health care!

Yeah!

Imagining an outcome isn't a policy. But, in Oregon you'd never think it.

Oregon Butt of National Abuse

You can read about it here. You won't be reading about this in your local newspaper.
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Payback

The language here isn't safe for work. Or, for teh kids. And if you watch both, its fifteen minutes you'll never get back.

This was prompted by recent union news.

Seems Ford made money without a federal bailout. Result? The UAW is looking for a pay increase for its members. We can't be having profit. It's too corporatey.

My question is, how do you negotiate with a union that owns your competitors?

And my thoughts and prayers are with the folks in Washington who are driving Boeing to the East coast. The machinist's union, doing the work that no one else is willing to do.

An Outline of the Far Right

I am a member of the far right.

As I've written before, there is a difference between the Left and the Right. And it is an issue of who makes the decisions in your life. You, or someone else.

I am a member of the far right.

This means that I believe that there are plenty of times when I will succeed and I will fail. And that my success is the product of my ideas and hard work and that my failure is also the product of my ideas and hard work.

Sometimes, I'm just dumb.

And at those times I'm simply the unwilling tool of my own stupidity. But I have tended toward being more successful than I have been unsuccessful. It isn't random. It isn't because of some sort of outside intervention. My success and my failure is simply a product of good ideas and good ideas that didn't pan out.

I have given some paradigms in the past of my beliefs. I didn't really start blogging until I got tired of merely commenting on others' blogs and decided to try my hand. If you were to go to my earliest posts and then, read through those posts, you would decidedly see that I've changed both my voice and my interest. I write to you today as me. My earliest posts were undefined, between the voices of the first and third.

It is true that I still suffer from voice confusion.

But as I've matured as a blogger, I've removed most of the third party voice and replaced that voice with my own. I'm writing to you. You are the object. I am the author. I really can't see doing "Dickens" in this space.

So I am telling you that I am a right wing blogger. A conservative, right wing blogger.

Far right.

So, if you're on the Left, I'm scarey?

How did that happen?

As a Right Wing, ultra-conservative, Republican, how is it that I can be a threat to you or to your personal freedoms? When all I want from you is a respect of my own ability to make my own decisions, own my own property, raise my own children, pay my own bills?

It must be the selfishness of my ideology. My own freedom. My own respect. My own decisions. My own property. My own children. My own bills.

Me, me, me.

It's all about me.

And my hope is, that if you think about your life, your children, your job and your children and friends, it's all about you.

This is the ideology of the Far Right.

Me. Me. Me.

What is disturbing to to those on the Left is that my "me-ism" really doesn't have much room for "them, them, them."

When I wake up in the morning, I don't think about the poverty in Africa. My bad.

When I wake up in the morning, I don't think about what I can do to help inner-city kids getting a balanced, non-fat, non-sugar filled, racially tolerant breakfast.

This is the ideology of the Far Right.

What I do think about are the things I need to tackle, overcome and create during the day facing me. As a member of the Far Right, I don't spend time thinking about social justice, the failure of the Bush Adminstration and Hurricane Katrina, whether or not poor folks are poor because they don't work, or whether or not my health care is dependent upon a lack of government involvement in health care.

I gear up to tackle the prospects of this day.

How different the problems of the Left.

I begin my day with a consolidation of the prospects for that day; what I need to accomplish, what I want to accomplish, and what I am able to accomplish.

Far different from the Left. What are they doing, why are they doing it and what can I do to make sure that I receive a part of that which they do?

The Right, especially the Far Right thinks about self. It is, after all, a selfish ideology. The Left, being kinder and more advanced, thinks about the Other.

Having read Sartre, Jung, Kierkegaard, Kant and Chomsky I'm well equipped to advance the notion that the Left worries more about what the Right is doing than what it is doing, itself.

Existentialism, nihilism and post-modernism aren't really good prescription for self-analysis. But they are perfect for examining the other. In the po-mo world, the Other becomes the enemy. That which is not Us. The Leftist view of Hemingway is one of alienation, being apart and negation. The Right's view of Hemingway is of concision, brevity and thought.

The Right and the Left are served differently. The Right--just as I begin my day--is aware of choice and the choices I will make during the course of my day. The Left looks at externalities; how others will reduce my ability to self-actualize, constraining my ability to achieve perfection for myself and those around me, to limit me to concreteness--that my dreams are only my dreams, and that my dreams are ridiculous.

The Extreme Right believes that I am responsible for my choices. The Extreme Left believes that I am only encumbered from realizing my own, personal goals by others.

Quite a dichotomy, neh?

Me, me, me. Versus you, you, you.

I do not believe that the greatest good can be achieved by denying the least among us of his or her political rights. That the best law serves us all, equally, without privilege or rank. This makes me an Ulta-Conservative Rightest Nut.

This is my code. My trust, faith and belief.

On the other hand, there is the Left. And I frankly can't find any center to the beliefs of the Left.

Because the Left has no center, no belief.

Other than "you, you, you."

There has to be a modicum of understanding of the pure language that we speak. Do you take responsibility for your own actions? Or, do you seek to make others responsible for your actions?

If you are responsible for your actions, chances are you're an Ultra-Reactionary Right Wing Conservative.

If not, you are a Democrat.
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Hoople

A Theory of LIfe, versus a Theory of Death

What positive moments do you have in your life?

Choice. The freedom to make a choice here and there. The freedom to make a series of stupid choices. The freedom to be bull-headedly stupid in the face of "conventional" wisdom.

The freedom to be wrong.

Thanks to our smart and popular legislators, our freedom to be stupid and make our own choices is on the line.

Imagine a country where people chose whether or not to buy insurance against sickness. This was the same state we found ourselves in earlier, mebbe ten year earlier, when our state legislators found that we should, no must, provide ourselves with automobile insurance. Until then, the provision of auto insurance was just as much a choice as health insurance is today.

Why would you choose "to not" buy auto insurance?

Can you think of a reason?

And why, after coming to a rational conclusion of why one wouldn't buy auto insurance, would the converse seem equivalently rational?

A cocoa nut is a cocoa nut.

But, insurance isn't insurance. Who cares if the Left tells you the truth? If you think that all self-insurance is the same as any other kind, well, you're a newb.

There are reasons why we buy insurance, just as there are reasons why we don't buy insurance.

Imagine if we were required to buy loss of continuity insurance.

There are insurance purchasers who look for a beta that approaches zero.

Fine.

Won't happen in the real world. Even with the appropriate legislation.

Again and again I've told you, markets are bigger than governments. If you haven't figured that out yet, you will.