Isaac Laquedem

Measure 50 (the tobacco tax) outsmarts Isaac

I became a nonpartisan in the cigarette tax wars when Venerable Mom and the Aunt of the Left gave up smoking a few years back, so I didn't pay much attention to Measure 50 (the proposal to raise taxes on cigarettes and use the revenue for two public health programs) until I noticed the anti-50 radio advertisements. They had three themes. First is that Oregon's constitution is too sacred to be amended for a mere product tax. Second is that the legislature might spend the revenue on something other than health care. Third is that the revenue from the tax hike won't be enough to support the two health programs.
The first one merely amused me, as it would anyone who's actually read Oregon's constitution. (Ask your lawyer friends if they've read the constitution all the way through. They'll most likely admit that they haven't.) The fact is -- and I mean no disrespect to the folks who gathered at Champoeg wth some foolscap and a copy of Indiana's constitution -- that it's been amended over and over. It has, in fact, been amended so frequently that Article I alone has almost as many amendments -- nearly two dozen -- as does the entire United States Constitution; and it's been amended so carelessly that Article I has two sections 36 and one section 36a, and Article VII appears in two different forms, because revised Article VII didn't repeal the original Article VII. So I don't put much stock in the first argument.
The second argument against Measure 50 is that the legislature might spend the money on something else. I read the text of the measure and I don't see a lot of wiggle room: the funds are to go to low-income health care and smoking prevention programs: nothing in there for OHSU, OMSI, and other sneezy-sounding organizations.
I couldn't see why R.J. Reynolds (the lead contributor to the anti-50 campaign) brought up the third argument at all. Reynolds was saying, "The tax isn't high enough to do everything the proponents want to do, ' which sounds to me like an argument to raise cigarette taxes even more, so that the tax can pay for the entire program. That argument backfires.
Anyway, I ended up voting for Measure 50 on the theory that if all the tobacco makers can muster are these three weak arguments, the measure's probably okay.

The Times inspires me to try to do two things at one time

The "Career Couch" column in the November 4 New York Times, written by Eilene Zimmerman, deals with the interruptions of e-mail, and has this innocuous snippet:

Some workers maintain that they can work simultaneously on e-mail and other tasks. But in fact, "our brains aren't able to do two things at one time," said Kathleen Nadeau, a business coach and clinical psychologist who specializes in attention deficit disorder and time management.

At least, it was innocuous until I edited it, and then the second sentence became:

But in fact, "our brains aren't able to do two things at one time," said Kathleen Nadeau, a (a) business coach and (b) clinical psychologist, who specializes in (i) attention deficit disorder and (ii) time management.

When I made that slight emendation, the sentence struck me as hilariously funny, but then, almost anything amuses me.