Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: I don’t care if Don Imus lost his job. I don’t like Don Imus, nor any of the breed. They have lowered the intelligence of America. While I support their right to speak, I support the right of CBS and MSNBC to pull the plug from the loudspeaker.
Is that clear?
According to one of dozens of stories, this one in the Miami Herald (read it here), Black leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton met with the president of CBS and helped get Don Imus fired for his calling a women's basketball team “nappy headed hos,” with Jackson calling the firing a “victory for public decency,” and Sharpton coming out against “commercialized racism and sexism.”
Now, let’s point out another seemingly glaring bit of the obvious. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are hypocrites. And so is every single commentator, black or white, left or right, who has clamored for the head of Don Imus while at the same time remaining silent about the violence, racism and sexism in popular Black culture.
“Nappy headed hos?” Disgusting. Racist and sexist. But the fact is, you can listen to far worse stopped at any intersection in Portland or Eugene or Salem or Bend as some bass-addled teen next you in a slammed Civic or Evo shakes the tarmac with Rap. The river of violent, denigrating, misogynist profanity coming from Rap is a far worse commercialization of racism and sexism than a two-second comment from Don Imus.
It would be far more potent for the leaders of the Black community, even tired old pols like Sharpton and Jackson, to join Bill Cosby in his disgust over the loss of another generation of young black men and women to stereotypical rage. And the right wing should remember the value of providing education and opportunity to every American, especially the underprivileged.
Here’s praying for the opportunity to vote for Barak Obama.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
OSP correction
Reporter Elizabeth Suh just wrote to say that Kulongoski had asked for $17.6 million for 139 new patrol officers over the next two years. That means our thumbnail estimate of about $24 million for 120 troopers was off by quite a bit. Well, we said it was rough.
Either the new officers are paid considerably less (with a strong union, if there were reductions in force, the most senior hold their jobs), or the overhead represents a much larger portion than the 15% we used (new troopers do not mean more command staff if the agency was "top heavy").
It may also be that when resisting budget cuts in the past, OSP decided to take the most visible off the streets, a little game of legislative extortion, and left their infrastructure intact. Agencies and unions want the cuts we impose upon them to hurt us.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I wish that info had been in the original story. How about a follow up talking about how that $17.6 million will actually be distributed, why there is a difference in per officer cost, etc. Yeah, I am a numbers guy, but we are talking about numbers, here.
And so now we have a request for an additional $17.6 million for two years, at least $87 million over the next decade. Still a lot of money (it's just the additional!) for Oregonians to get more speeding tickets, and the occasional meth bust. We would use the funds elsewhere.
Either the new officers are paid considerably less (with a strong union, if there were reductions in force, the most senior hold their jobs), or the overhead represents a much larger portion than the 15% we used (new troopers do not mean more command staff if the agency was "top heavy").
It may also be that when resisting budget cuts in the past, OSP decided to take the most visible off the streets, a little game of legislative extortion, and left their infrastructure intact. Agencies and unions want the cuts we impose upon them to hurt us.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I wish that info had been in the original story. How about a follow up talking about how that $17.6 million will actually be distributed, why there is a difference in per officer cost, etc. Yeah, I am a numbers guy, but we are talking about numbers, here.
And so now we have a request for an additional $17.6 million for two years, at least $87 million over the next decade. Still a lot of money (it's just the additional!) for Oregonians to get more speeding tickets, and the occasional meth bust. We would use the funds elsewhere.
More troopers a waste
Ladies and gentlemen, today we offer an example of government waste, Kulongoski fiscal irresponsibility, power politics, public apathy and media laziness. It’s quite the combination.
But first, a warning: the writer of this blog is snarling and biased, in need of a shower and second cup of strong black coffee, listening to hounds outside barking over crescendoes of Pink Floyd at deer far too close to the electric fence, and some time today wants to fire up 427 cubic inches of aluminum block V8 and run enough NOISE through the straight pipes to put ripples in the Pacific or shake a small slide of rock down the snowy side of Mt. Jefferson outside the door. Okay? Are we on the same page?
In today’s Oregonian (read it here), reporter Elizabeth Suh wrote that “In Gov. Ted Kulongoski's proposed budget, he recommends funding 139 more patrol troopers so that the state police can return to patrolling the entire state 24 hours a day. The Legislature's budget proposes funding 100 more patrols.”
We can’t find in Suh’s lazy little article how much this will cost, what the current staffing is, or any other meaningful information.
Instead, she mindlessly quotes the OSP, which spoon feeds her factoids: “In October, state police officials issued a report comparing patrol trooper levels nationwide. They found that with 254 patrol troopers, Oregon had the lowest staffing level in the country: about seven per 100,000 population.”
This would be sloppy journalism if it were journalism, but it doesn’t qualify.
So, let’s grab a shovel and do just a rough excavation, because this is a blog, not an article in the state’s major daily. Live with it.
The OSP claims on its web site it has 322 sworn patrol officers, 38 professional positions, for a total of 360. For the 2005-2007 biennium, patrol funds are $84,726,605 out of a total budget of $519,128,681, though the OSP reports that of that half-billion, $193,099,576 are Federal “pass-through” funds and do not support OSP programs.
So, if Kulongoski adds about 30 percent more patrol troopers, what will it cost? Let’s take the easy way out and just add 30% to the existing patrol budget. This will probably overstate the actual amount, since newly added troopers will not make (yet) as much as retiring troopers, and different shifts might use the same car. And let’s pick a number, say 85%, and say that labor is 85% of the cost of the patrol program.
So, if we currently spend $84,726,605 per biennium on patrol troopers, and 85% of that is for labor, we spend $72,017,614. If we increase that by about a third, we get $95,783,426. so we will spend about $23,765,812 more for the new patrols.
Another way to do the math is to divide the patrol budget of $84,726,605 by the number of personnel, 360. That gives us an eye-opener: $235,351 per person. WOW!
And if we again multiply that by the troopers added (let’s use 120), and mix in our 85% payroll modifier, we get $24,005,871.
Close enough. Now to the next question. What are we going to get for our fresh $24 million?
We assert the following: Nothing. Oregonians will not benefit from this expenditure. There is no hard evidence anywhere that we have been able to find, that putting one more OSP trooper on the road, let alone somewhere between 100 and 139 of them, will improve public safety.
The evidence, though awkward, is to the contrary: At the same time the number of troopers per “mile driven” has gone down, the number of accidents per mile driven also decreased. So one could argue, (we won’t) that reducing the number of troopers reduces the number of accidents. OSP has used that kind of false logic in promoting their expansion.
We wish reporter Suh had asked the OSP when they gave her that stupid report about having the lowest staffing in the country whether we had also had the lowest safety in the country. But she didn’t.
Which leads to the final issue: Where else could we spend that $24 million that would do some good? Well, the Sisters School District could use some money. A half-million would make a pretty good addition to teaching staff, and Sisters is better off than John Day or Burns or the Wallowas.
Central Oregon is going to be out of jail space soon. Gresham could use some help attracting investment to their high tech business parks. Mill City could use some help that would create a job or two. I bet Lakeview would be better able to use a couple of deputies. We need technology to get some of the slash burned along the highway east of Mt. Jefferson turned into diesel fuel. More importantly, that is at $24 million more every two years, so over 10 years, we are talking about $100 million more just for the increase proposed today.
For that, we are going to get 120 men and women in funny hats and fast cars pointing laser guns paid for by insurance companies at the license plates of citizens trying to get somewhere safely but over the speed limit.
What a waste. A waste of reporting, of government, of time, of money.
Time for coffee.
But first, a warning: the writer of this blog is snarling and biased, in need of a shower and second cup of strong black coffee, listening to hounds outside barking over crescendoes of Pink Floyd at deer far too close to the electric fence, and some time today wants to fire up 427 cubic inches of aluminum block V8 and run enough NOISE through the straight pipes to put ripples in the Pacific or shake a small slide of rock down the snowy side of Mt. Jefferson outside the door. Okay? Are we on the same page?
In today’s Oregonian (read it here), reporter Elizabeth Suh wrote that “In Gov. Ted Kulongoski's proposed budget, he recommends funding 139 more patrol troopers so that the state police can return to patrolling the entire state 24 hours a day. The Legislature's budget proposes funding 100 more patrols.”
We can’t find in Suh’s lazy little article how much this will cost, what the current staffing is, or any other meaningful information.
Instead, she mindlessly quotes the OSP, which spoon feeds her factoids: “In October, state police officials issued a report comparing patrol trooper levels nationwide. They found that with 254 patrol troopers, Oregon had the lowest staffing level in the country: about seven per 100,000 population.”
This would be sloppy journalism if it were journalism, but it doesn’t qualify.
So, let’s grab a shovel and do just a rough excavation, because this is a blog, not an article in the state’s major daily. Live with it.
The OSP claims on its web site it has 322 sworn patrol officers, 38 professional positions, for a total of 360. For the 2005-2007 biennium, patrol funds are $84,726,605 out of a total budget of $519,128,681, though the OSP reports that of that half-billion, $193,099,576 are Federal “pass-through” funds and do not support OSP programs.
So, if Kulongoski adds about 30 percent more patrol troopers, what will it cost? Let’s take the easy way out and just add 30% to the existing patrol budget. This will probably overstate the actual amount, since newly added troopers will not make (yet) as much as retiring troopers, and different shifts might use the same car. And let’s pick a number, say 85%, and say that labor is 85% of the cost of the patrol program.
So, if we currently spend $84,726,605 per biennium on patrol troopers, and 85% of that is for labor, we spend $72,017,614. If we increase that by about a third, we get $95,783,426. so we will spend about $23,765,812 more for the new patrols.
Another way to do the math is to divide the patrol budget of $84,726,605 by the number of personnel, 360. That gives us an eye-opener: $235,351 per person. WOW!
And if we again multiply that by the troopers added (let’s use 120), and mix in our 85% payroll modifier, we get $24,005,871.
Close enough. Now to the next question. What are we going to get for our fresh $24 million?
We assert the following: Nothing. Oregonians will not benefit from this expenditure. There is no hard evidence anywhere that we have been able to find, that putting one more OSP trooper on the road, let alone somewhere between 100 and 139 of them, will improve public safety.
The evidence, though awkward, is to the contrary: At the same time the number of troopers per “mile driven” has gone down, the number of accidents per mile driven also decreased. So one could argue, (we won’t) that reducing the number of troopers reduces the number of accidents. OSP has used that kind of false logic in promoting their expansion.
We wish reporter Suh had asked the OSP when they gave her that stupid report about having the lowest staffing in the country whether we had also had the lowest safety in the country. But she didn’t.
Which leads to the final issue: Where else could we spend that $24 million that would do some good? Well, the Sisters School District could use some money. A half-million would make a pretty good addition to teaching staff, and Sisters is better off than John Day or Burns or the Wallowas.
Central Oregon is going to be out of jail space soon. Gresham could use some help attracting investment to their high tech business parks. Mill City could use some help that would create a job or two. I bet Lakeview would be better able to use a couple of deputies. We need technology to get some of the slash burned along the highway east of Mt. Jefferson turned into diesel fuel. More importantly, that is at $24 million more every two years, so over 10 years, we are talking about $100 million more just for the increase proposed today.
For that, we are going to get 120 men and women in funny hats and fast cars pointing laser guns paid for by insurance companies at the license plates of citizens trying to get somewhere safely but over the speed limit.
What a waste. A waste of reporting, of government, of time, of money.
Time for coffee.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Grace-full
Elizabeth Edwards gave a wonderful gift to the country last week. Faith and courage, awareness of Grace.
The wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, Elizabeth is likely dying of metastasized breast cancer. She is handling it better than most of us.
In an interview with Newsweek, (read it here) she talked about God and dying.
“I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection.”
It is remarkable when you look at Hillary and McCain, Rudy and Kerry and the others, how different they are from Elizabeth Edwards, her husband John. There is a reality missing from the others, like “everything they say was written down before they said it.” I don’t know yet about Obama.
But in the reality distortion field that is national (and more frequently Oregon) politics, the bitter Right Wing are wringing their hands and complaining that the Edwards’ should hunker down at home with their children and prepare to meet a fearsome God. What brass! They would tell us how to live, when to die, who to love!
But Elizabeth has an answer for them:
“There's going to be a day before each of us die, and you have to think a little bit about how you want that day filled. Maybe when you're doing that judging thing, think about how you want the day before you die to look. I want that to be a productive day about which I am enormously proud, as opposed to a day where I had the covers pulled up over my head. That's unbelievably important to me. And if somebody is judging me, and doesn't hear me say that, maybe it's partly my fault for not saying it clearly and maybe it's their fault for not thinking about it.”
I think the likelihood that John Edwards will be our next president is quite small. The gnashing teeth of the grinding machine that is power politics in this country will take its due, and mediocrity will, again, be the outcome of a process that forces us to vote against, not for.
But thanks to the Edwards, we will have seen something lovely and strong, a couple of true faith facing their trials with grace, passion and integrity.
The wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, Elizabeth is likely dying of metastasized breast cancer. She is handling it better than most of us.
In an interview with Newsweek, (read it here) she talked about God and dying.
“I had to accept that my God was a God who promised enlightenment and salvation. And that's all. Didn't promise us protection.”
It is remarkable when you look at Hillary and McCain, Rudy and Kerry and the others, how different they are from Elizabeth Edwards, her husband John. There is a reality missing from the others, like “everything they say was written down before they said it.” I don’t know yet about Obama.
But in the reality distortion field that is national (and more frequently Oregon) politics, the bitter Right Wing are wringing their hands and complaining that the Edwards’ should hunker down at home with their children and prepare to meet a fearsome God. What brass! They would tell us how to live, when to die, who to love!
But Elizabeth has an answer for them:
“There's going to be a day before each of us die, and you have to think a little bit about how you want that day filled. Maybe when you're doing that judging thing, think about how you want the day before you die to look. I want that to be a productive day about which I am enormously proud, as opposed to a day where I had the covers pulled up over my head. That's unbelievably important to me. And if somebody is judging me, and doesn't hear me say that, maybe it's partly my fault for not saying it clearly and maybe it's their fault for not thinking about it.”
I think the likelihood that John Edwards will be our next president is quite small. The gnashing teeth of the grinding machine that is power politics in this country will take its due, and mediocrity will, again, be the outcome of a process that forces us to vote against, not for.
But thanks to the Edwards, we will have seen something lovely and strong, a couple of true faith facing their trials with grace, passion and integrity.
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