Isaac Laquedem

It doesn't take an Einstein to know how to make a proper bagel

I'd like to propose that our next attorney general take a few moments from investigating fraud and corruption, supervising charities, and advising state bureaux to submit an amendment to the Oregon Unlawful Trade Practices Act that would prohibit a grocer or restaurant from passing off as a bagel any bread item that has not been first boiled and then baked.  

The Laquedem Plan to Help the Susan G. Komen Foundation Live Up To Its Rules

The Susan G. Komen For The Cure Foundation (I think that's its current legal name) took a beating today in the court of public opinion after it told its local affiliates that it would prohibit its local affiliates from issuing grants to Planned Parenthood to conduct breast cancer screenings.  The stated reason is that the national organization has adopted a policy under which neither it nor its local affiliates may give money to any organization that is under federal, state, or local investigation.

I noted earlier today, not too explicitly, that in 2009-2010 the Komen Foundation gave substantial sums to other organizations that are under federal, state, or local investigation.  It occurred to me that the trustees of the Komen Foundation may need a helping hand to be sure that they don't inadvertently fund an organization that's being investigated by the authorities; they fund so many groups, and there are so many law enforcement authorities, that the trustees may be funding targets without realizing it. 

Won't you help them out and play the Laquedem Get What's Komen To You Game?  It's easy.  Here's what you do.  First, pull up the Komen Foundation's latest Form 990.  That's the tax return that the Komen Foundation, and other tax-exempt organizations, have to file every year.  In it they list their grants of $5,000 or more.  Here's a link to the return for the year ending March 31, 2011.  Go to pages 47 to 59, labeled "Schedule I."  These pages list the organizations to whom the Komen Foundation gave $5,000 or more.  Pick three of them, and Google them (or Bing them, if you're Microsoft-inclined) together with the words "federal investigation" or "state investigation." See if anyone's investigating the three organizations you picked.

Did you get lucky and find three that are all under investigation?  Congratulations!  You're a winner.  Even if you found only two, you've done well.

Now the next step:  Let the Komen Foundation know that it's promised to cut off funds to those groups until the authorities clear them of wrongdoing, and give them the names of the organizations that their new policy now prohibits them from supporting.  Here's the contact page.  

Sorry, Yale University; no funds this year from the Komen Foundation, not until the feds finish their investigation.  Even Komen's hometown university, the University of Texas, may be off the grant list; the IRS was investigating the salaries it paid to some of its top officials.

Play now!  It's fun!  It's easy!  And it's for a good cause.  Help the Komen Foundation keep its grantees honest.

Susan G. Komen Foundation takes on Planned Parenthood, and maybe a dozen state universities also

Susan G. Komen Foundation, the promoter of the heavily trademarked Race for the Cure, told its affiliates today that they aren't allowed to fund local Planned Parenthood operations that screen low-income women for breast cancer.  The parent organization didn't fund Planned Parenthood in 2009-2010, according to its Form 990, (large PDF here), which doesn't show Planned Parenthood on its list of recipients of $5,000 or more, but some of the local organizations do.

The Komen Foundation ignited a firestorm around the blogosphere and the rest of the American internet.

The Foundation's stated reason for ordering its affiliates not to fund Planned Parenthood's breast cancer screening program is that its new national policy is not to fund institutions that are under any form of federal investigation.  Apparently a federal agency is investigating whether Planned Parenthood uses federal funds for abortions, something prohibited by the Hyde Amendment several years back.  That was enough of a reason for the Komen Foundation to cease funding Planned Parenthood.

The Komen Foundation has the right to fund whomever it wishes, as long as it follows the tax laws and hews to its mission.  In using this rule as an excuse to cut off the funding to Planned Parenthood, the Foundation's trustees didn't think this one through.  Komen funds a lot of universities.  What are the odds that some bright soul (possibly even me) will discover that it's funding several universities whose athletic departments are being investigated, or even whose medical schools are being audited for use of federal grant money?  (For example, its most recent Form 990 discloses a large grant to the University of Pennsylvania.)  It's funded Columbia University.  It's funded Northwestern University.  It's funded University of California - Davis.  I'll predict that by the day after tomorrow, there will be a news report listing a dozen more institutions that the Komen Foundation has funded that are under some form of federal investigation.  Stay tuned!

How a third-party candidate with a sense of humor might have won the First District

One of my pastimes, which I occasionally put to practical use, is to design political campaigns, not the lawn signs and the bumper stickers, but the overarching theme for the candidate to push: how the candidate can explain his or her cause in just a few words.  The Knower of All Things likes to repeat a saying he got from a political eminence grise of the past: "If you can't explain it in two sentences, they won't vote for it."

Although I support Suzanne Bonamici in her race against Rob Cornilles, I've amused myself by working out how a third-party candidate with little funding and no name familiarity might get his or her message across to the voters.  What do you think of this?

"The two establishment candidates and their parties are spending millions of dollars telling you why you shouldn't vote for one of them. . . . and they're right!"

It's interesting what a four-function calculator can tell you about the Convention Center Hotel proposal

Professor Bogdanski's recent post on the renascence of the proposed headquarters hotel for the Oregon Convention Center caught my eye last week, not so much for his views on the hotel (long negative) but for the financial data in the report to which he linked.

Metro operates three visitor venues: the Oregon Zoo, the Oregon Convention Center, and the Expo Center.  Metro also operates a collection of performing arts spaces under the umbrella name of Portland Center for Performing Arts (PCPA): the Schnitzer, Winningstad, Newmark, and Hatfield theatres, and the Keller Auditorium.  Each year Metro commissions a study of the economic impact that the three venues and PCPA bring to the area.  It's the numbers in the study that fascinated me.

In fiscal year 2010, the Convention Center lost $10 million, the Zoo lost $5.4 million, and PCPA lost $3.5 million.  The Expo Center made $244,000.  The outside economists figured that the Convention Center supported 4,260 jobs, the Zoo supported 760 jobs, PCPA supported 640 jobs, and the Expo Center supported 380 jobs.  These include not only the people who work at the facilities (direct jobs), but also people who work at hotels, motels, restaurants, and suppliers (indirect jobs).

So (I asked myself), what does each job cost Metro?  It's a simple calculation: divide Metro's loss on each venue with the number of direct and indirect jobs that the venue creates.  It turns out that each job created by the Zoo costs taxpayers $7,105, each job created by PCPA costs $5,468, and each job created by the Convention Center costs only $2,347.  The taxpayers actually make a little money on each job created by the Expo Center.

When last discussed, the public subsidy for a headquarters hotel was estimated at $160 million.  Assuming a capital cost of 5%, that equates to an expense of $8 million/year for the carrying cost of the subsidy.  If that $8 million/year will be as efficient as the current subsidy to the Convention Center and generate 1 job for every $2,347 of annual cost, then it needs to create 3,408 permanent jobs.  A 600-room full-service hotel will itself employ around 400 to 600 full- and part-time workers, leaving about 2,800 to 3,000 jobs to be created by enticing more conventions to town.

If the Convention Center creates 4,260 jobs now, then to create another 2,800 jobs (not counting the headquarters hotel) it will need to increase its visitor count by 2,800/4,260, or about 65%, if the new visitors have the same spending habits as the current visitors.  The Convention Center had 548,260 visitors in fiscal year 2010, so to attain this increase the headquarters hotel will need to attract an additional 360,000 conventioneers a year, or about 1,000 every day of the year.  That's a lot of people to squeeze into a 600-room hotel.

How to make lemonade out of the Lake Oswego Streetcar lemon

The Lake Oswego streetcar proposal was an interesting if expensive way to provide some rail service to an underdeveloped part of Portland's richest suburb.  Now that the Lake Oswego City Council has killed the $208 million (today's dollars) Portland-Lake Oswego streetcar proposal, Portland and Lake Oswego need to move promptly on what to do with the right-of-way.  Major portions of the right-of-way will revert to the adjoining landowners if railcars cease to use it.  (The last few freight customers who used the line were driven off about 20 years ago.)

The logical course is to condemn the southern portion of the route for a bicycle and pedestrian path.  Whichever agency took this project on would have to condemn the route from central Lake Oswego north past Fielding Road, then through the Elk Rock tunnel and north to where the track crosses Riverwood Road.  From that point north to Powers Marine Park the bicycle path could follow Riverwood Road and Riverside Drive (Highway 43) and the railroad could be abandoned altogether.

The bike path would then enter the park and rejoin the existing track.  The bike easement would have to be condemned from the Sellwood Bridge north to Willamette Park.  At the north end of Willamette Park it could join the existing public path along the Johns Landing waterfront, which runs north to a point near Richardson Street from which the rail right-of-way could again serve as the bike path.

This reduces the number of homeowners through whose yards the path would run from three dozen to six.  Several of those six might be willing to grant an easement for the bike path in exchange for the rails going away.

very rough calculation is that the cost to acquire the right-of-way for a bicycle path will be about $2 million.  The cost to remove the rails and pave the path should be about $2 million.  The unknown expense is the cost to light the Elk Rock Tunnel or to build a trestle around Elk Rock.  It's still a project that can be done, if it's done now, before the landowners catch on and sue to enforce their reversionary rights.

Trains are worth more than streets - just ask the City of Portland

Appraisers will tell you that valuing property is an art and not a science.  What a piece of real estate is worth depends on who is asking, and when, and on many other factors, including most notably the definition of value that the client gives the appraiser.

The city values the track and right-of-way for the proposed Lake Oswego trolley (an old Southern Pacific line that runs along the west bank of the Willamette north from Lake Oswego to a point near downtown) at $97 million, or about $16 million per mile.  Interestingly, the city values its 4,000 miles of paved streets at $5 billion, or about $1.25 million per mile.  (The unpaved streets are apparently free.)  The city thus views the railroad right-of-way as worth 13 times more than the same amount of public street.

This may explain why the city can't find the money to repave its streets -- they aren't worth the trouble.

Millard Fillmore on foreign policy

To mark the 212th anniversary of the birth of Millard Fillmore, what better than to revisit his policies?  Here is a bit from his second State of the Union address, in which President Fillmore describes his view of American foreign policy:

Our true mission is not to propagate our opinions or impose upon other countries our form of government by artifice or force, but to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice the blessings of self-government and the advantages of free institutions. Let every people choose for itself and make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience.

Our addiction to changing the forms of government of other nations hasn't, on the whole, worked out very well.  We've provided some excellent training to our military, but we haven't been exemplifying "success, moderation, and justice."

Isaac greets 2012 in rhyme

January marks the time
To greet the coming year in rhyme,
This easy task I can't abate,
For I last did it in '08.
Let's cast a final look behind
At what the old year brought to mind.
Korea lost its Kim Jong Il
Who left some awkward shoes to fill.
None know much of Kim Jong Un,
Who is for now the rising son.
We note the loyal opposition;
To defeat Obama is its mission.
Its candidates, though, don't seem to last,
Gaffes from the present and the past
Tore through the field, raising Cain
Just to knock him down again.
Paul and Bachmann had their say,
And took their chances out of play.
One candidate escaped unhit,
The one the rightists won't adMitt.
Obama still remains on track
To bring the troops home from Iraq.
His critics said he'd let them stay
Too long.  But as we near the day
For their return, the critics same
Gleefully assign him blame
For bringing them back home too soon;
Peculiar how they've changed their tune.
Close to home, a House seat came
Up for grabs.  We're going to name
Bonamici or Cornilles
To fill it.  I believe Suzanne is who
Will win the votes to follow Wu.
In Portland, one event astounds:
The Sellwood Bridge has broken ground!
Dow Walker, may he rest in peace,
Would rue that this time no one's fleeced.
From City Council two depart,
I wish you well with all my heart.
R. Leonard, thanks for stopping by
And for your thoughts concerning my
Escapist fancies on the law;
Sometime we ought to sit and jaw.
And to the people of our nation
I wish from war a long vacation,
With no military operations
And no news from K. Kardashians.

Do you have to pay the leaf removal fee if you have no trees?

A friend of a Laquedem sibling queries whether he can avoid paying the roundly-scorned City of Portland leaf removal fee.  He missed the deadline for applying for an exemption, and asks if he has to pay the fee anyway.  His reason for not wanting to pay the fee is not that he will remove the leaves himself, nor that he objects to the City charging the fee on constitutional or statutory grounds.  He points out - reasonably, I think -- that his street has no street trees and his front yard has no trees, so he isn't contributing any leaves to the street.

If he does get stuck paying the leaf removal fee despite having no leaves to remove, I've wondered if I can bring him some of my leaves.  It seems a shame to pay the fee and not get the service.

Boxing Day (United States version)

I've always liked Boxing Day (December 26), because it exemplifies how the New World has adapted a tradition from the Old.  In England, householders mark Boxing Day by giving small boxed presents to the people who have served them through the year: originally to their household servants (back from the days when households had live-in servants) and then to the dustman, mail carrier, and so on.

We've adapted that tradition in the United States, with our own mercantile twist: on Boxing Day we do not give boxed presents to our servants (for most of us have none); rather, we box up our unliked Christmas presents and take them back to the mall to exchange for something that we do like.  Or, in verse:

On Yule, the English eat and drink their fill,
Next morn, they give to those who do their will.
They think our Stateside customs rather strange,
One day we give; the next we all exchange.

Macy's offends Venerable Mom for Christmas, but saves her 30%

The centerpiece of the Laquedem Christmas celebration is only nominally the dinner (two dinners today, actually).  Most years the stage is stolen by Venerable Mom Laquedem's recital of her recent correspondence.  Today VM was in rare form as she griped, in good humor, about being turned down for a credit card.

When VM approached the register at Macy's this month, the clerk told her that if she applied for a Macy's credit card, she could save 30% on that day's purchases.  VM revels in thrift and signed up at once.  Last week she received the bad news that Macy's had turned her down, giving the reasons as her high level of installment debt and her history of delinquent credit accounts.  This puzzled her, as her installment debts total $576 -- not per month, but her total balance, which she pays off every month -- and her most recent late payment was in the Eisenhower or possibly the Truman era.

"Could it be her credit score?" I wondered.  Venerable Mom showed me her score, which was well above 780.  So it's not that either.  Perhaps, Mrs. Laquedem suggested, Macy's simply doesn't like issuing cards to customers with perfect credit and no debts . . . if they're octogenarians.

Far from feeling discriminated against because of her age, however, Venerable Mom was oddly pleased.  It means that next year she can again shop at Macy's, apply for a card, and get a 30% discount, and repeat that money-saving effort year after year -- as long as Macy's continues to turn her down for credit.