Isaac Laquedem

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) and Mark Epernay (likewise)

John Kenneth Galbraith brought wit and sharp humor to the study of economics.  Long after he retired from teaching, Mr. Galbraith, who died Saturday at the age of 97, would be brought back to the Harvard campus each year to Harvard to give one lecture to the freshman economics class.  His annual lecture was easily the most popular of the class; Mr. Galbraith would look down magisterially from his 80 inches of height and describe his theories of economics in much the same tone that Moses might have employed to read the ten commandments to the Israelites.  He slipped in a zinger every two or three minutes, in well-polished periodic sentences, and the students responded with laughter and applause instead of the notorious Harvard hiss.

The lecture for the following session was in those days given by the head professor for the class, Otto Eckstein, who would politely tell the students to study Mr. Galbraith's speaking style, but to pay no attention to the old fellow's economic theories.

I was once part of a small group that had lunch with Professor Galbraith, to hear him talk about writing.  One of his many elegant periodic sentences stuck with me.  He was talking about the use of alcohol to stimulate the writer:  "Nothing so instills confidence in the writer as a generous application of scotch," he said, following up after a two-beat pause with, "And nothing is as disastrous to the final product."

Mr. Galbaith's best-known books of the 40 or so he wrote were The Affluent Society (1958), in which he introduced, or at any rate claimed for his own, the phrase "conventional wisdom" and argued that any economic study of modern America must take into account the influence of advertising on consumer choices, and The New Industrial State (1967), his analysis and to some degree his celebration of how large corporations planned and operated.  One of his minor works deserves a moment of attention.  It's a short book called "The McLandress Dimension," which he wrote under the pseudonym of "Mark Epernay."  It purports to describe six breakthroughs in behavioral science by a (fictitious) Professor Herschel McLandress, including McLandress's discovery of the McLandress Coefficient, the average time that a person goes without thinking of himself or herself, which (he wrote) reflects the intensity of the person's identification with his own personality.  "Theater people have uniformly low McL-C's -- the representatives of Broadway and Hollywood are nearly always in the minute range.  Writers and playwrghts, though with many exceptions, have higher coefficients than actors and actresses. * * * Both Mr. Arthur Miller and Mr. Tennessee Williams have a rating of thirty-five minutes.  Mr. Gore Vidal, by contrast, has a rating of twelve and a half minutes.  Among actors and actresses, Mr. Danny Kaye is something of a theatrical phenomenon with a McL-C of fifty-five minutes. * * * At the other extreme, Mr. Mort Sahl has a rating of four minutes and Miss Elizabeth Taylor of three."

A bit later, talking about politicians and statesmen, he wrote: "[Charles de Gaulle] has the surprisingly high rating (for a political leader) of seven hours thirty minutes.  Dr. McLandress * * * suggests that in de Gaulle's case the rating is misleading.  The subject's thoughts are constantly on France and France has, in a sense, become the surrogate of his own personality.  Thus, when he thinks of France, he thinks of himself and vice versa.  Recalculated, de Gaulle turns out to have a McL-C of one minute, thirty seconds."

A few pages later, Mr. Galbraith demurely put himself in his book: "Reflecting, according to Dr. McLandress, the natural concern of the judge with the problems of other people, the highest McL-C in the Federal Government was that of Chief Justice Earl Warren at four hours, thirty minutes.  The lowest was that of Professor J.K. Galbraith, the then American Ambassador to India, at one minute, fifteen seconds.  Noting the natural tendency of people to think that a diplomat's attention should be centered on his country rather than himself, Dr. McLandress warns once more against hasty conclusions.  As instanced by General de Gaulle, there is an omnipresent tendency for people in important public office to confuse the two, and the tendency in the case of non-career diplomats is especially marked."

Mr. Galbraith was a theoretician and not a mathematical economist.  The economics papers of today are filled with equations, unlike the body of Mr. Galbraith's work, and his style -- discussing ideas instead of analyzing data sets -- is now out of academic fashion.  Allowing that large parts of Mr. Galbraith's work turned out to be wrong, or quickly became outdated, he nevertheless argued his ideas with such style and intelligence that even the bad ones could give rise to something worthwhile.  And on that note, I believe I'll lift a glass of scotch and drink to his memory.

Self-service gasoline, revisited

Oregon is one of the last two states (maybe now the last one altogether) that prohibits motorists from pumping their own gasoline.  Advocates of self-service gasoline say that gas will be cheaper if we can pump it ourselves. 

It was gratifying to see the Oregonian report on Monday that the average price for gasoline in Oregon, which has no retail self-service, is four cents lower than the price in Washington and sixteen cents lower than the price in California, even though our northern and southern neighbors have self-service gasoline stations and we don't.  Banning self-service gasoline is a cheap and efficient way to increase employment: if an attendant can pump gas into 20 cars an hour on average at a cost of $10 per hour, then the driver of each car pays an extra 50 cents per tank of gas for the service.  At one tank a week that's about $25 per year per car.  That $25 per year produces employment, with little overhead cost and no government establishment to administer it.  The next step is to bring back elevator operators. 

When is a WMD not a WMD? When it's in India

If I understood the result of the President's discussions last month with India's prime minister Manmohan Singh, it's that we will assist India to develop the technology to make better, more powerful weapons of mass destruction.  I had thought that our nation's foreign policy generally opposed weapons of mass destruction, but perhaps they're okay when built and used for peaceful purposes.

A California appellate judge socks it to an overreaching plaintiff's lawyer

Judicial opinions are usually dry reading.  Last month a California appellate judge brightened the day of everyone except the plaintiffs' lawyers when he reversed a trial court's decision on a Proposition 65 case.

California's Proposition 65, named the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, requires entities that employ more than 10 persons to post warning notices on their facilities if people at the facility might be exposed to any of a long list of carcinogens.  The Act authorizes private parties to enforce the act and recover damages and attorneys' fees if they send a notice to violators and allow the violators 60 days to post the appropriate notice.  The private enforcer must tell the state attorney general's office also to give the state a chance to enforce the act.

Two entities composed of three attorneys (who practice in the same firm) and the brother of one of them sent blanket boilerplate notices to hundreds of apartment owners and property managers, alleging that the owners and managers hadn't posted the Prop 65 notices to warn tenants and visitors that they might be exposed to a whole host of Bad Things, including (1) exhaust from cars in the parking lots, and (2) second-hand smoke from people who might smoke in or near the apartments.  The list of horribles included carpeting (might emit vapors), lawn mowers (exhaust), computers (vinyl chloride and lead), brass door knockers (lead), fertilizers (lead acetate and cadmium), carbonless copy paper, chlorine in swimming pools, soap cakes in clubhouses, and alcohol that tenants might drink.

The apartment owners eventually reached a settlement and agreed to pay $636,000 to the plaintiffs (meaning pay to the lawyers who brought the case, because they're the same people).  Then, at long last, the state attorney general showed up and objected to the settlement on the grounds that (1) the settlement might prevent other people from suing the apartment owners for better reasons, and (2) the attorney's fees were way too high.  The trial court approved the settlement, and the AG appealed.  Both the plaintiffs and the apartment association opposed the appeal.

In comes Judge Sills of the California Court of Appeal, who in a scathing opinion issued on March 24 struck down the settlement, yanked the attorney's fees from the plaintiffs, and ordered the trial court to dismiss the case completely.  Let's let him talk:

"At oral argument, Anthony G. Graham [one of the plaintiffs' lawyers] proudly proclaimed that he was a 'bounty hunter.  The statute was created for me.'  We will have more to say about exactly who Proposition 65 was created for later, but it wasn't bounty hunters."

"Almost all the allegations in the notices are so broad as to be, literally, meaningless.  They apply to every single building in this state.  * * * Dried paint.  Furniture.  Parking lots.  Wiring.  Really.  * * * It's all a matter of probabilities -- the theory is that somewhere among Graham & Martin's targets there's just gotta be an apartment that fits one of those descriptions."  [Judges don't often use the phrase 'there's just gotta' in their opinions, and when they do, you can bet they are really, really ticked.]

"This settlement represents the perversity of a shake down process in which attorney fees are obtained by bargaining away the public's interest in warnings that might actually serve some public purpose.  Thus even though Judge Dunning [one of the trial judges] (correctly) reduced the attorney fees in the second case, even that reduction was predicated on the idea that the settlement served a genuine public interest.  Given the ease with which it was brought, and the absolute lack of any real public benefit from telling people that things like dried paint may be slowly emitting lead moledules or that parking lots are places where there might be auto exhaust, instead of $540,000, this legal work merited an award closer to a dollar ninety-eight."

The entire opinion is 40 pages printed out (the official PDF is here), and has a lot more good stuff, unless you're the plaintiff's law firm.  The plaintiffs and their lawyers (who are, again, actually one and the same) are reportedly trying to get the opinion depublished.  It's a safe bet that they will also do their best to stay out of Judge Sills' courtroom.

The tram creates a new sport: 'SUbombing

For several years intrepid if not entirely rational cyclists have made a sport of taking their bicycles on MAX, getting off at the Zoo station, riding up the short hill to SW Fairview Boulevard, and then pedaling down Fairview at full speed, around the hairpin turns, then past the Japanese Garden and through Washington Park to Jefferson Street, where they can get on MAX and repeat the ride.  This sport, which I'm told is carried on mostly at night without bicycle lights, is called "Zoobombing."

A Laquedem friend told me today that he's offended that the cars on the OHSU tram, which are intended to carry the ill and disabled and their doctors, are going to (he says) have room for only one wheelchair on each car.  A few minutes later he mentioned something about sightseers not being able to ride the tram on Sundays, because (I think) it's not going to run on Sundays, and how they would have to travel by bicycle.

The light went on!   Here's another benefit of the tram: it will provide an alternate venue for Zoobombing.  The sporting crowd can drive with their bikes to North Macadam, park in the new parking structure, get on the tram with their bikes, be carried up to OHSU, and barrel down the hill past Duniway Park and back to NoMa to repeat the loop.  This daredevil stunt, which I'll call 'SUbombing for the moment, may become so popular that OHSU will open a sports medicine clinic at the base of the tram on weekend evenings.  The tram may yet serve a useful purpose.

A Laquedem thought on education

Many years ago I was browsing through the laws of Oregon and came across the list of what state law required public schools to teach their students.  As I recall, the statutory list included only three things: (1) Respect for the flag and country, (2) kindness to animals, and (3) the achievements of Frances E. Willard.  At that time (and maybe even today) the academic requirements come from regulations issued by state agencies and the federal government, and not from the law. 

This came to mind when I read the Oregonian's story from a few days ago about the small public high school in (I believe) Paisley (one of the few public schools that has a dormitory for boarding students) and how its curriculum is limited by having only nine teachers.  Shortly afterward I met a young Japanese man who had come to the United States for a year of high school with the goal of learning to speak English.  That brought to mind the controversy over CIM/CAM, the Certificate of Initial Mastery and the Certificate of Advanced Mastery, which were supposed to revolutionize Oregon education by imposing achievement standards, but have served mainly to make teachers and school districts unhappy.

We will never agree as a state on what the schools ought to teach, but we might reframe the question to be what we expect students to learn -- what they should be able to do when they graduate.  As a starting point, suppose the state said that 90% of the high school graduates should be able to do X of the items on this list: (a) play a team sport; (b) fill out a job application; (c) explain how credit cards and compound interest work; (d) calculate the areas of geometric figures and use algebra to solve story problems; (e) write a 1000-word description of a significant event in American history, such as the Revolution or the Civil War, and then write a 100-word summary of that description; (f) describe the relationship among plants, animals, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, (g) take apart and reassemble a small appliance; (h) talk about themselves in a foreign language; (h) tell what to do (other than calling AAA) when your car won't start, and (i) describe why buttermilk pancakes require baking soda as well as baking powder.  (The last one eluded me until I read an article about food chemistry in my 20s).

This is an incomplete list.  Please suggest additions.  The basic ideas I'd like to suggest are that (1) schools shouldn't be expected to teach the same things to all of their students, and (2) schools should be measured by the range of skills their students can put into use, rather than on how well they do on two or three standardized tests.  My Japanese acquaintance said that the Japanese schools do a good job of teaching children how to write English, but not how to speak it -- the students can pen an elegant essay in perfect handwriting, but can't ask an American how to get to the bathroom.  We ought to be teaching our children not just how to draw the map, but how to use it.

Your lawyer wants to eliminate bias, but not to learn about it.

Oregon's lawyers are required to take 45 hours of continuing legal education ("CLE") courses every three years in order to renew their law licenses.  The Oregon State Bar, the American Bar Association, the law schools, and several private companies offer CLE courses, ranging from one-hour brown bag lunches to three-day seminars out of town.  For lawyers with large expense accounts the ones in San Diego and Honolulu are popular in the winter.

Of the 45 hours, five must be on legal ethics and one must be on the lawyer's statutory duty to report child abuse.  A few years ago, the Bar added a requirement that three of the CLE hours (i.e., the equivalent of one hour per year) be in "programs accredited for the elimination of bias."  (See MCLE Rule 3.2, here in Word and here in PDF.)  To be accredited for the elimination of bias, a program must satisfy this requirement:

In order to be accredited as an activity pertaining to the elimination of bias under Rule 3.2(b), an activity shall be directly related to the practice of law and designed to educate attorneys to identify and eliminate from the legal profession and from the practice of law, biases against persons because of race, gender, economic status, creed, color, religion, national origin, disability, age or sexual orientation.

Many attorneys were unhappy when the Bar imposed this requirement, and several of them asked the Bar to hold a vote of the members on whether, not to remove this requirement altogether, but to provide that the Bar could not suspend or discipline a member for not satisfying the requirement to take courses on the elimination of bias.  The vote, which is advisory only, ends this Friday, and the Oregon State Bar (which is a state agency, not a private association like the American Bar Association) should release the results early next week.  Lawyers are having a lively debate about the vote.  One lawyer suggested that as everyone, not just lawyers, should seek to eliminate bias, the requirement to take the courses should be passed over to DMV to enforce:  no course, no  driver's license.  Others say that eliminating the requirement would send a bad message to minorities and disabled persons.   

Most lawyers expect that "Yes" will win, meaning that Oregon lawyers want the supreme court to not enforce the requirement.  So far the general press has ignored the question, but that will change after the Bar announces the vote next week.  And some of the lawyers who have posted candid comments on the Bar's members-only message board may discover that, as the Bar is a state agency, it's subject to the Oregon public records law, and their clients might get to read their comments.

Isaac uses the Tram to compete with the Oregon Lottery

The $15 million tram is now estimated to be a $55 million tram, with the end not yet in sight.  It occurred to me to host a contest to pick the actual final cost of the Tram, with a small prize (yet to be decided) for the winner.  Although whatever prize I decide on will be less than the $millions promised by the Oregon Lottery's Megabucks Program, I am also undercutting their entry fee by a dollar.

Here are the rules, which I reserve the right to change if I should feel like it:

1.  One entry per e-mail account.  (If you have a lot of e-mail accounts, you can enter once for each of them.)

2.  Entries close by June 1 or thereabouts.  (No fair waiting for the total to be announced.)

3.  The City's final definitive cost for designing and building the tram, hard and soft costs together, is the magic number.  I'm figuring that someone at the City will announce a number within a month or two after the tram is complete.

4.  The judge's decision, no matter how irrational or whimsical, is final.

I will start this off.  I predict that the final certified cost of the tram will be $66,241,288.

Good luck!

Why it's a Good Thing that the City of Portland "almost works"

The Whimperer ran a delightful story on Sunday, called "The City that Almost Works."  The author argues that Portland city government is dysfunctional and is airing its dirty laundry in public instead of settling disputes nicely, in private.

Public disputation is a consequence of public participation.  One characteristic of The Good Old Days is that a lot of things happened without much (or any) public participation and discussion.  For example, Tri-Met (which had the hyphen then) was created in a series of backroom discussions that resulted in some emergency legislation and an overnight takeover of the ailing private bus system.  It wasn't the result of months of focus groups (which we now call charrettes, because everything sounds better in French, like nouilles au fromage and merde du jour) and neighborhood meetings.  Pioneer Square came about through a similar process, guided behind the scenes by William E. Roberts (not coincidentally, one of the inventors of Tri-Met).  The fundraising was public -- my name's on a brick somewhere in the Square -- but the process that led to Meier & Frank selling the block to the City was not.

The closure of Harbor Drive is another fine example.  In 1968 Governor Tom McCall called for the city and state to work together to improve public access to the river from downtown Portland, across what was then Harbor Drive.  His vision was not to close Harbor Drive, but to put it underground.  (His remarks, from the minutes of an October 1968 committee meeting, are about 3/5 of the way down this PDF.)

How did Harbor Drive get closed?  Not through public process, but in the same private way.  In 1970, Glenn Jackson, the powerful chairman of the State Highway Commission, decided to close it.  (I imagine he obtained the votes of the rest of the Commission as a formality first.)  On September 9, 1970, he wrote to Mayor Terry Schrunk to say that the state would close Harbor Drive when the Fremont Bridge opened, and the city should build some alternate connections.  A PDF of his letter is here.  Almost as an afterthought, he wrote, "It is recognized that public hearings will be necessary..."  The City didn't jump on the bandwagon, but wrote back that it was premature to schedule a hearing to close Harbor Drive -- more studies needed to be done.  But when the Fremont Bridge opened, Harbor Drive closed, as promised by Mr. Jackson.

Closed-door government can work, if the people making the closed-door decisions are making good decisions, meaning decisions based on adequate information.  The City Council can get good information without holding public hearings.  The decisionmakers gain speed in exchange for giving up public involvement.  Closed-door government doesn't work if the council gets bad information or no information.  (Problem for the student: compare the process for closing Harbor Drive with the process for approving the Tram.)  The reason the City almost works (in the Whimperer's view) is that the current council is doing things mostly in the open.  We see their disagreements and we get to comment on them.  They're not going to accomplish as much as if they did everything behind closed doors, in the Good Old style, but what they do accomplish, they're likely to do better. 

Andre Citroen shows us how to pay for the Tram towers

The Oregonian printed a reader's comment today, to the effect that the Fill-to-Pill-Hill Tram has the potential to be Portland's Eiffel Tower, a landmark that signifies the city the way that the Eiffel Tower means Paris.  The reader said that the City should cheerfully pungle up the cash to finish the Ftpht, because it will provide civic value for years to come.

This brought to mind the nearly-forgotten fact that the Eiffel Tower was built with a design life of only 20 years, and as it aged, Parisians struggled with how to pay to maintain and operate it.  In 1925 they found the answer, one which did not interfere with the functionality of the Tower and which the City of Portland might well emulate with the tram.

The fabulous Andre Citroen, founder of the eponymous motorcar company, provided the solution.  He rented one side of the tower and installed 125,000 light bulbs that sent the word "CITROEN" shining over the City of Light.  (You can see what his advertising sign looked like, here, about halfway down the page.)  The tower at OHSU, the support tower near Barbur Boulevard, and the North Macadam tram station will offer some fine locations for light-up advertising, and bring in a substantial contribution toward the Ftpht's operating deficit.  I can envision Legacy Health Systems springing for a sign, maybe even at the OHSU station.