Isaac Laquedem

Endorsements III: the statewide races

Three state senators and an independent-minded Democrat want the nomination for secretary of state.  The secretary of state's main duties are to publish the Oregon Blue Book, manage elections, and register corporations.  It's not an onerous position.  The main practical task of most secretaries of state is to plan a run for the governorship.  The secretary of state is also one of the three members of the State Land Board, a position with a lot of theoretical power that's not often visibly exercised.

Any of Senators Kate Brown, Rick Metsger, and Vicki Walker would serve the state well.  I give the edge this year to Senator Walker principally because of her recent record in bringing to public attention matters that the political establishment had ignored or set aside.  She can more easily continue her whistleblowing as a statewide official with a department than as one of 30 state senators.

The attorney general's race presents two fine candidates in Greg Macpherson and John Kroger, each a possessor of a Harvard law degree.  Rep. Macpherson serves in the Oregon House and was active in promoting Measure 49.  Professor Kroger teaches law at Lewis & Clark Law School and was formerly a federal prosecutor.  Professor Kroger stresses four priorities he would have as attorney general, including most interestingly pursuing polluters.  (Have you swum in the Willamette lately?)  Rep. Macpherson's campaign rhetoric started by playing up his long ties to Oregon and his experience in the legislature and as a pension lawyer in private practice, but has been moving toward that of Professor Kroger.  (Compare their pages in the Voter's Pamphlet to see how close they have come to each other.)

Either man would serve with distinction.  I favor Professor Kroger, very slightly, for two reasons.  First is that the current attorney general has administered the office safely and efficiently, but without great flair, and I believe that Professor Kroger is better suited to "wake up" the office.  Second is that the incumbent came to the job from Rep. Macpherson's law firm, and the state is better served by having officeholders come from a variety of cities, backgrounds, and employers.  (This is akin to the concept of it being time for the Clintons and Bushes to give someone else a chance.) 

Ben Westlund is unopposed for the Democratic nomination for state treasurer.  The Republican party found only one candidate each for secretary of state and state treasurer, and no one at all for attorney general, and I make no recommendation in those races.

The Oregonian says that American landslides are less important than Chinese earthquakes

Not that the Whimperer has picked a favorite in the presidential race, but did you notice that today it ran the story of Senator Clinton's landslide victory in West Virginia not on the front page, but on the inside back page, several pages after the news from China?

The newspaper did, however, find room on the front page today to mention that Senator Obama's brother-in-law coaches basketball in Oregon.

Endorsements II, Congress: Give Senator Smith the Hook

This year Oregon Democrats face a daunting array of good choices on their ballots. One of these is the choice of who will challenge the re-election bid of Gordon Smith. Senator Smith faces only token opposition in the Republican primary (see below). On the Democratic side, Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick have credible campaigns, and they each have reasonable prospects of defeating Senator Smith in November. Despite Candy Neville's strong showing in a poll of small sample size (the one in which she finished second to Mr. Novick, and ahead of Mr. Merkley), I have a hard time supporting a candidate who missed buying a page in the Voter's Pamphlet.

I recommend voting for Mr. Novick both on policy grounds and as having the better chance to win in November. Both candidates have similar positions on the current Iraq War (we should probably begin to number them for ease of reference) and both have good track records; Mr. Merkley's is in Oregon and Mr. Novick's is mostly outside Oregon, but I pay that difference little heed.

Mr. Novick does take one bold position: he wants to raise or eliminate the cap on social security taxes on high earners. It's never popular to support tax increases, and I credit him for this. More to the point, his campaign has caught fire in a way that Mr. Merkley's hasn't, and I believe that this makes him the better nominee for the fall campaign.

On the Republican side, Senator Smith faces only one opponent, a man named Gordon Leitch who is unhappy that in 1834 (sic) the United States reduced by 6% the amount of gold in its coinage. The other 94% has since disappeared also. Republicans may confidently vote for Gordon Smith as the better choice.

Democrats have three contested House races. In the First District, incumbent David Wu faces two political newcomers. Mr. Wu, who is a very nice guy, has demonstrated modest accomplishment in his time in Congress and is a regular target of Republican campaigns. It's reasonable for Democrats to renominate him, but it's also time for him to show more concrete results in Congress or to step aside in 2010 and give someone else a chance.

In the Third District, long-time incumbent Earl Blumenauer faces two challengers whose causes and gripes don't belong in Congress. Mr. Blumenauer should be re-elected. (Winning the Democratic nomination is effectively the same thing as being elected in this heavily Democratic district.)

In the Fifth District, Steve Marks and Kurt Schrader merit consideration. I give the edge to Mr. Schrader, who has served with distinction in the Oregon House and who understands the damage that the methamphetamine epidemic is doing to our state. Mr. Marks, a policy consultant who had worked in Governor Kitzhaber's office, is a fine candidate also, but should start his elective career in a state office.

The Republicans have two contested House races. In the First District, Claude William Chappell IV and Joel Haugen each want the chance to unseat David Wu. I don't think either one of them can do it, but Mr. Haugen is the better choice and gives the impression of being willing to work with House Democrats (who likely will command a majority come January) to accomplish his goals. Republicans should vote for Mr. Haugen.

Mike Erickson and Kevin Mannix are running for the Republican nomination in the Fifth District, the seat that Darlene Hooley is vacating. Mr. Mannix needs no introduction to the politically aware; Mr. Erickson is a political newcomer. Tempting as it is to recommend voting for Mr. Erickson simply because he isn't Kevin Mannix, I suggest that Republicans nominate Mr. Mannix. I have some concerns about a candidate who, as Mr. Erickson proposes, wants to reduce taxes and balance the budget. Mr. Mannix has a long record of service to the Republican cause and understands how legislation is made. He is the better choice for Republicans this year.

Endorsements I: The Salieri of our age

Antonio Salieri, born in 1750, was a first-rate musician and composer, author of more than 40 operas during his long career.  Prominent during his lifetime, he has nevertheless been overshadowed by the younger and more talented Wolfgang Mozart, whose operas caught the imagination of the Viennese public and pushed those of Salieri to the side.

Hillary Clinton is a talented politician, who did everything by the book in preparing, over the last eight years, her campaign to win the Presidency.  Senator Clinton has nevertheless been overshadowed by the younger and more talented Barack Obama, whose campaign has caught the imagination of the American public and pushed hers to the side.

Senators Clinton and Obama don't have many policy differences, at least, not so many that Democrats can choose between them on policy grounds alone.  Throughout their battles this winter and spring, they have both handled their victories graciously.  Where they have differed is in how they have handled their defeats.  On this score Senator Obama has the decided edge; he gives the impression that he sees the Presidency as an honor to be earned; she gives the impression that she sees it as an entitlement to be ratified.  For that reason, among others, I support Senator Obama over Senator Clinton in the Oregon primary.

On the Republican side, John McCain is the presumptive nominee, acknowledged as such even by his opponents.  I recommend a vote for Ron Paul, not because of his policy differences with Senator McCain (though those are significant) but as a message to Senator McCain that he needs to focus his campaign and his message to make it clear what he will try to do if elected in November.  Though his scripted speech is sound, in interviews he contradicts himself within a few minutes and comes across as not having fixed ideas that don't involve Iraq.   Oregon Republicans can encourage Senator McCain to do better.

Another way to the Supreme Court

As most lawyers know, it's expensive to get a client's case to the United States Supreme Court, and half of the clients whose cases are heard Up There are disappointed with the result.

A more satisfying way to get there is to rent the place for an evening.  I did not know that the Supreme Court was in the catering business, and perhaps they aren't, but I (and 150 others) enjoyed a reception in the west and east conference rooms of the Court, followed by dinner in the upstairs hall outside the courtroom itself.  Security was visible, as you would expect.  A German Shepherd sniffed our bus for bombs when we were several blocks away from the court building, and we went through the usual metal detectors before we were allowed into the building.  Once inside, though, the visit was worth the minor inconvenience -- the metal detectors seemed not to detect anything and appeared to be far less sensitive than those at airports -- and we had our pictures taken in front of the courtroom.  (That's me on the left, being inconspicuous.)

Although security was relaxed, I must have looked like a suspicious character, for I ate my dinner under the watchful and unblinking gaze of this old fellow, who used his time on the court to change the institution from being an occasional arbiter of disputes to being the ultimate interpreter of the constitution and federal law.

Who keeps Mount Vernon in repair? Not the federal government

One oddity about George Washington's Mount Vernon estate is that it is owned not by the public but by a private charitable group called the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, formed in the 1850s to buy the decaying property from the Washington great-nephew who owned it and couldn't maintain it.  The Association raised funds to buy and restore the property.  In the last 15 years the Association mounted a major fundraising campaign to build a visitors' center (the front of which appears in my previous post) and make other improvements to the property.  During part of that time the head of the Association, titled as "Regent," was Mabel Livingstone Bishop, of Portland.  The visitors' center includes a 2003 photograph of Mrs. Bishop as part of a committee receiving a presidential award on behalf of the association.

Mrs. Bishop, who died in March of last year, didn't receive much notice in Portland for her service to Mount Vernon (though a careful eye will notice some other Portland names on the contributors' list incised into the stones of the visitors center), but the rest of the country, and visitors from other nations, can see the results at Mount Vernon, where the Association has preserved a part of our nation's history that wasn't important enough, at the time, for the government to keep intact.

"Yankee Doodle" at George Washington's house, but played by whom?

In many years of travel I have made it to the homes of several of the presidents: both Johnsons, Franklin Pierce, Franklin Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge among them.  This week I visited George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, for the first time.  To my delight, I arrived at the guest center to the sound of a fife and drum corps playing "Yankee Doodle."  I missed noticing that another guest appeared in the photo next to the musicians, but I did notice one more important thing that was wrong.

The 2008 races: a funny thing happened on the way to invincibility

Steve Duin, writing in the Oregonian yesterday, touched on a thought about this year's Democratic races that I've been playing with for a while.  Consider these three races:  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the presidential nomination, Greg Macpherson and John Kroger for attorney general, and Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick for the senate.  In each case the political establishment heavily favored the first candidate.  In each case the public viewed the second candidate as talented, interesting, but ultimately not actually electable.

What a difference six months makes.  Senator Obama narrowly leads Senator Clinton in pledged delegates, and they have essentially tied in the popular vote so far.  Representative Macpherson still leads Professor Kroger, but the final vote will be close.  And Representative Merkley has fallen behind not only Mr. Novick, but (according to a KATU poll released last week) behind Candy Neville, a political unknown running as an anti-war activist.

Mr. Duin looked at these three races, and at the race between Kate Brown and Vicki Walker for secretary of state, and saw a pattern: the party is sending two messages.  The first group of candidates represents the establishment, and of them Mr. Duin trenchantly says, "They are running on experience, believing most voters mistake it for competence or prefer it to creativity." 

I like that line so much that I'm going to quote it again, in color.

"They are running on experience, believing most voters mistake it for competence or prefer it to creativity." -- Steve Duin

The second group of candidates represents impatience with business as usual. 

I go beyond Mr. Duin.  I believe that the second group of candidates (Obama, Novick, Kroger, and Walker) are doing well because their opponents are overselling their message.  Until she sent her husband to the bench for a few weeks, Senator Clinton was running on the strength of President Clinton's administration, which started 16 years ago.  (In terms of time warp, that's the same as if President Clinton had run in 1992 on the accomplishments of the Carter administration.)  Because her time in the White House is what she relies on for most of her experience in government, Senator Clinton can't run as the candidate of change, and every time we see President Clinton campaigning for her we are pulled backward in time, rather than pushed forward.

I see a second phenomenon here, one that Mr. Duin didn't mention.  The incumbent president has convincingly demonstrated the perils of a large republic adopting dynastic succession to the point that the voters are impelled to vote against any candidate who looks like -- and especially who campaigns as -- an heir apparent, whether by family relationship (Senator Clinton, Representative Macpherson) or by long service in elected office (Senator Brown, Representative Merkley).  Put another way, a large part of the Democratic electorate isn't out to reward candidates for what they've done in the past, but to pick people who have a chance of doing something differently in the future.

More old news on global warming

Some time ago I noted that, despite the current administration's apparent belief that global warming through greenhouse gases is a recent and unproven theory, the magisterial 1967 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica had described the phenomenon.

I came across this interesting passage in another textbook:

The water-vapor content of the atmosphere varies and cannot surpass a certain amount.  But carbon dioxide has the same absorbing properties as water vapor, and in spite of the fact that it makes up only a very small part of the earth's atmosphere, Arrhenius believes that it has important climatic effects.  He concluded that if the quantity of it in the air were doubled the climate would be appreciably warmer, and that if half of it were removed the average temperature of the earth would fall.  Chamberlin has shown that there are reasons for believing that the amount of carbon dioxide has varied in long oscillations, and he suggested that this may be the explanation of the ice ages, with intervening warm epochs, which the middle latitudes have experienced.

So far so good, as no serious scientist doubts that the CO2 content of the atmosphere influences the climate.  (Arrhenius was a Swedish scientist who lived from 1959 to 1927, and published his theory about the influence of carbon dioxide on climate in 1896.)  The question is whether our industrial activities appreciably affect that content.  So let's continue with this textbook:

If the effect of carbon dioxide on the climate has been correctly estimated, its production by the recent enormous consumption of coal raises the interesting question whether man at last is not in this way seriously interfering with the cosmic processes.  At the present time about 1,000,000,000 tons of coal are mined and burned annually.  In order to burn 12 pounds of coal 32 pounds of oxygen are required, and the result of this combustion is 12+32=44 pounds of carbon dioxide.  Consequently, by the combustion of coal there is now annually produced by man about 3,670,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide.  On referring to the total amount of carbon dioxide now in the air, it is seen that at the present rate of combustion of coal it will be doubled in 800 years.  Consequently, there are grounds for believing that modern industry may have sensible climatic effects in a few centuries.

Two observations:  first, this is from a source even older than the 1967 Britannica.  It comes from the new and revised edition of An Introduction to Astronomy by Forest Ray Moulton (1872-1952), professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago.  The new and revised edition from which I quote was published in 1925; the first edition came out in 1905.

Second, coal consumption in the United States is now only 1,120,000,000 tons per year, about the same figure quoted in 1925.   Professor Moulton's figure for 1925 is, however, a worldwide figure, and today the world consumes about 6,300,000,000 tons of coal a year, which is about six times the 1925 consumption. 

It was warm out today, and it should be warmer tomorrow.

I look forward to paying my taxes . . . like this

I emerge from hibernation at the behest of the Trusty Accountant, who tells me to get three envelopes in the mail today.  This means that it's again time for our annual celebration of Tax Day, marked as is customary with a selection from the works of A.P. Herbert.

In this case it's from his short story "The Negotiable Cow," featuring his protagonist Albert Haddock, a British author whose long-running battles with the Inland Revenue (Britain's counterpart to the Internal Revenue Service) are chronicled in many of Mr. Herbert's stories.  In the book version, the action starts in court with a witness being asked "Was the cow crossed?" "No, my lord, it was an open cow."  [In British commercial parlance, a "crossed cheque" is a check across which two parallel lines have been drawn, which instructs the bank on which it is drawn to pay only to a bank account and not to cash the check.]  It develops that the Crown is prosecuting Haddock for failing to pay his income tax.  He had offered to pay, by stenciling onto a cow the words "To the London & Literary Bank, Ltd., pay the Collector of Taxes, who is no gentleman, or order, the sum of 57/0/0 (and may he rot!)," signing the cow, and then leading the cow through central London into the office of the Inland Revenue.  The Collector eventually declined to accept the check (or, rather, the cow) and told Haddock to lead it away.  When he took it into the street, a crowd gathered, and Haddock was arrested for creating a nuisance.

The court, after a fine discussion, acquits Haddock of all the charges, after observing that "no thinking man can regard those parts of the Finance Acts which govern the income tax with anything but contempt."   It is not for that, however, that I remember the story (except on April 15), but for this little exchange between the prosecutor and the judge  The prosecutor, explaining why the Collector had declined the check, said that first he had tried to endorse the check.  "Really?  Where?" asks the judge.

"On the back of the cheque, Sir Basil, that is to say, on the abdomen of the cow," answers the prosecutor, who continues with my favorite line in all of Herbert: "The cow, however, appeared to resent endorsement, and adopted a menacing posture."

Here endeth our reading of Herbert.  We will return tomorrow with our usual jovial support for the social welfare state.

Max Birnbach (1912-2008)

The Oregonian didn't do justice to Max Birnbach in his obituary, which ran on March 19.  Mr. Birnbach is best remembered in Portland for buying Rose's Restaurant -- the original one on NW 23rd Avenue, from which calories dripped like cake frosting -- in 1968 from its founder, Rose Naftalin, and running it until 1992 when he sold it and the two other Rose's locations that he'd opened in the meantime.

Mr. Birnbach's life story went far beyond the impossibly outsize pastrami sandwiches and towering cake slices that made Rose's famous.  He was born in Vienna in 1912.  As a young man he was sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis after they overran Austria.  He escaped to Switzerland and made his way to the United States.  He entered the restaurant business and rose to become the restaurant manager of the Benson Hotel, leaving it in 1968 to buy and run Rose's.  His was a remarkable story suitable for a movie, such as this one, called "In Vienna They Put You in Jail: The Max Birnbach Story." 

He was spry and active well into his nineties.  A few months ago I spotted him lunching in a quiet corner of the Benson's London Grill restaurant.  I think he skipped dessert.

Sho off, and polls apart

I couldn't resist the punning opportunity that nearly everyone else is succumbing to.

As the local political world knows by now, a state administrative law judge has reversed the decision of the City of Portland to qualify Sho Dozono for public campaign financing.  Mr. Dozono had applied to qualify for public financing in his race against Commissioner Adams to succeed Mayor Potter.

The reason, according to the opinion (here), is that Mr. Dozono accepted as an in-kind contribution a poll that cost $27,000.  The poll was commissioned by uber-strategist Len Bergstein, apparently as part of an effort to persuade Mr. Dozono to run for mayor, and not by Mr. Dozono himself.  The City's rules allow a candidate who seeks public financing to receive only $12,000 in in-kind contributions during the primary election period, which began on November 28, 2006, the 21st day after the preceding general election.

What would happen if Mr. Dozono should return the poll to Mr. Bergstein?  He could then plausibly argue that he's returned the contribution, just as if someone had given him a supply of stationery and he returned it.  The rub is, of course, that he's read the poll and he can't un-read it.  However, polls for candidates derive value from being secret, as the questions often reveal a candidate's strategy and the answers help candidates tailor their messages to the voters.  So let's suppose also that Mr. Dozono sends a copy of the results to all the other candidates.  Could he then qualify for public financing?  I'd like to think so; whatever the merits of public financing, as long as we have the system in place the mayor's race deserves at least one candidate who's willing to go to the trouble to qualify.