President Obama visited the Portland area on Friday. He used the opportunity to highlight an American company that’s big on innovation. He also said, “America has to out-build, and out-innovate, and out-educate and out-hustle the rest of the world.” That’s the path his administration hopes will help us “win the future.”
The President also made his weekly address to the nation from Intel’s campus in Hillsboro during his visit. Let’s listen.
Companies like Intel are proving that we can compete – that instead of just being a nation that buys what’s made overseas, we can make things in America and sell them around the globe. Winning this competition depends on the ingenuity and creativity of our private sector – which was on display in my visit today. But it’s also going to depend on what we do as a nation to make America the best place on earth to do business.
That last line is an interesting one to deliver in Oregon, a state that is widely regarded as being anti-business. Many articles have been written about the topic, but I think you can boil it down to the fact that Oregonians believe in regulating business. When you fail to regulate business, the greedy bastards take down your forests, foul your waterways and lop off the top of mountains for coal and other minerals. Ask someone from West Virginia what happens when you don’t regulate industry. Ask someone from Louisiana.
I like the loftiness of Obama’s stated goals. Hustle is an intangible, and it’s something we see in action everyday, especially in immigrant-owned small businesses. Maybe we can all tap our inner-immigrant and put a bit more hustle into our routines.
To out-innovate and out-build, we first must out-educate, and that costs money. Tax money, to be specific. Going to college today is an outrageous expense. If Obama is serious about his stated intentions, then he and his team need to wrestle away money wasted on corporate welfare and put that money into our schools and into students’ hands, so they can afford to attend.
I was pleased to learn last week that the administration’s new budget proposes to slash tax credits for the oil and gas industry, a move that will save $3.6 billion in fiscal year 2012 and a total of $46.2 billion during the next decade. Naturally, the gas and oil titans have the most powerful lobby in Washington, DC and those hired hands are now busy slapping backs and lining pockets up and down the halls of Congress to counter Obama’s cuts.
Does it not boggle your mind that the forces who make so much noise about social entitlements, fight to the death for corporate entitlements? It’s doublespeak and we the people need to know and reject doublespeak when we hear it. Republicans believe in small government is doublespeak. Small governments don’t fund imperialist wars. Small governments don’t build more prisons than schools. At the same time, I have plenty of complaints against the Democrats. Democrats are not the answer, you are the answer and I am the answer. We need a people-powered movement in these states.
Personally, I don’t care what your political stripes indicate, I care about what’s in your heart and in your mind. Is the promise of a better America one you’re willing to keep? If so, it’s time to believe in yourself and in your neighbors. It’s time to think on your feet, and time to dampen all the polar language and work together to advance our common cause. It’s not an abstract concept and there’s room for you in this solution. It may mean building a business or it may mean building houses for the poor. The point is find a way to contribute.
Public transit has to be better than one’s car for it to be an option that I (and most Americans) will consistently choose.
Here in Portland, it’s not better. I can drive from our cottage to my office in the heart of downtown in 20 minutes, door to door. The same trip on on bus and train takes 50 minutes, one way. So, it’s 40 minutes round trip versus one hour and 40 minutes.
TriMet costs $2.05 each way, or $4.10 per day. Parking a car downtown costs from $6.50 to $12 per day, depending on the lot (plus gas, insurance and maintenance). But what’s that extra hour worth in financial terms? Given that I bill clients by the hour for my time, I actually know what that hour is worth.
Despite the loss of time and money resulting from the TriMet experience, we are a one-vehicle family, so I do rely on the bus and train to take me to and fro. Not every day, but often enough. Apart from my cost-based analysis, there’s also the smell to consider. The smell of urine, in particular. Like the urine smell, one is also forced to entertain a certain amount of bullshit , whether it’s a screaming kid, a punk who cuts in line or a crazy person doing crazy person things.
The point of this piece is not to complain about TriMet, or public transit, in general. It’s obvious that lots of people need the system to work, and work well. I’ve lived in cities–Washington, DC and Chicago, in particular–where it does work well. The point is that Portland’s public transit has to be a much better option for people, if lots of people are going to use it. Before it can become that better option, we need to assess what’s wrong with it and how to make it better.
For some reason, Portland gets a lot of credit (especially in the press) for its public transit system, but as I’ve outlined above, public transit in Portland is actually pretty weak. And I haven’t even touched on the short hours of service and length of time between buses, nor the fact that so many Portland communities are nowhere near a TriMet train track.
Of course, to see better public transit options in Portland, Portlanders will need to fund TriMet. The metro area’s transportation organization faced a $27 million budget shortfall during the last fiscal year.
Here’s a graph that indicates where TriMet gets its money:
Portland is pursuing elite green status as a smart growth strategy, and also as an identity for the city. I like the plan, but for the plan to become real, steps need to be taken.
Last night’s national championship game between Auburn and Oregon was a big deal for the people of Oregon, especially for those Oregonians with ties to the school, like the 500 Nike employees who attended the game.
Allan Brettman of The Oregonian reports that Nike Chairman and U of O grad, Phil Knight, displayed the “sunniest disposition in the house,” before kickoff.
While the game’s outcome was a letdown for the team, representatives of Nike and the university emphasized before and after the contest how this football season has signaled an arrival of sorts. The football team and, by extension, the university, are no longer a distant oddity to the rest of the country. And the sports equipment and apparel giant based near Beaverton contributed significantly to that shift of public opinion.
“I guess it was in 1996, after the Cotton Bowl,†Nike designer Tinker Hatfield said after Monday’s game, “we had played very well, but there was clearly a difference between the quality in terms of the size and speed of Colorado versus Oregon.
“We felt like – we, being Nike — felt like we could help the University of Oregon just improve the level and quality of athletes. It’s been a long, kind of steady build. And I think as you can see today we’re quite equal to the best in the country in terms of athleticism and it’s a good feeling to know that we had a little hand in that.â€
What I find interesting in the Nike – Ducks marriage is the fact that Oregonians are not a brash people. Oregonians are reserved, maybe to a fault. But Nike is not reserved, and the Oregon Ducks football team is not reserved. In fact, the two are about as IN YOUR FACE* as a team and a sporting goods manufacturer can be.
I’d love to know where Knight and Hatfield stand on this? Are they trying to push all Oregonians into the limelight? Do they think such a course of action might be good for business and good for morale? I do.
*In last night’s game alone, Oregon went for two and converted, not once, but twice. Oregon also executed a fake punt perfectly, went for it on fourth down and generally called unexpected plays throughout.
We rolled up on Methven Family Vineyards, south of Dayton, on this brisk, slightly wet Saturday to find an open but empty tasting room.
Will Kobyluck, General Manager, greeted us and poured us two whites and four reds, while sharing stories and generally extending a warm sense of hospitality.
All the wines at Methven are estate wines, which means the fruit is grown on the property. For me, tasting and learning about the wine while visiting the land where the grapes grow is an important part of understanding the vineyard’s terroir.
Darby and I purchased a 2007 Citizen’s Cuvee Pinot Noir and a 2006 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. Here I am trying to figure out the ’06 on camera, on the fly.
Correction: In the video, I gave the wrong price for the 2006 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. It’s $25, not $22. The 2007 Citizen’s Cuvee Pinot Noir is $22.
Representative Peter DeFazio, from Oregon’s 4th District, bravely faced down President Obama and the Republican Party yesterday. He wants a better deal for the American people and he’s willing to stick his neck out to get it.
DeFazio introduced a resolution yesterday to bring the GOP’s tax plan to a grinding halt. In a raucous meeting, the House Democratic Caucus rejected Obama’s comproÂmise with the GOP, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not bring the bill to the floor for a vote without changes.
DeFazio, in a telephone interview with The Register-Guard, said he was just trying to help the president keep his campaign promise of ending tax cuts on those whose income exceeds $250,000.
“We’re trying to give the president the opportunity to reclaim what he ran on,†DeFazio said.
DeFazio scoffed at the threat from Republicans that they would block the extension of unemployment benefits if the Bush tax cuts weren’t extended for two years. “They’re going to cut off unemployment benefits before Christmas? That’s a big bluff. If you are going to cut off benefits, hey, make my day. We’ll savage you,†he said.
The Bush Administration tax cuts are set to end by the end of this year, which means the extension needs to be approved by December 31st. This lame duck Congress is run by Democrats and they ain’t havin’ it, even at the urging of a Democratic President.
DeFazio, a native of Needham, Massachusetts, worked as a gerontologist before he took elected office. It’s safe to say he’s kicking it old school now.
“Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range … come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River.” -Ken Kesey
According to The Register-Guard in Eugene, Faye Kesey is negotiating the sale of Ken Kesey’s library to University of Oregon, where the great American writer went to school and later taught creative writing.
The typed manuscript of “Cuckoo’s Nest†is among thousands of documents from Kesey’s literary life being stored by the University of Oregon library’s special collections department while the UO and the Kesey family negotiate the permanent acquisition of the material.
“This is the guy who took us from the beats to the hippies,†says James Fox, head of the UO’s Special Collections and University Archives.
From a literary perspective, Kesey is so much more than “the the guy who took us from the beats to the hippies.” He’s a 20th century master, who wrote not one, but two Great American Novels, then followed those with Sailor Song and other works.
Bob Keefer of The Register-Guard got a look at some of the documents in preparation for his article.
A quick tour of the contents of some of the boxes produced such treats as a September 1959 letter that Kesey sent to friend Ken Babbs. That was the year he wrote “Cuckoo’s Nest,†but had not yet found a publisher.
“Thus my plight,†the young Kesey typed. “A failure at 24, impotent both physically and artistically. If I haven’t taken a Gilette to my wrists by the time you people get here in March to cheer me up there may be hope. But I doubt it.â€
It’s funny how we don’t think of our heroes or iconic Americans as people who had doubts and intense struggles en route to their success. Clearly they did struggle and did doubt. That’s the human condition, but it’s also the human condition to believe and to overcome.
A group of filmmakers from Corvallis are in production on a documentary about Willamette Valley and Pacific Northwest winemakers.
Vino Veritas: An American Wine Movie is slated for release in 2012. But before that can happen, the team needs funding and they’re using Kickstarter and local events to reach out to fans of the project.
According to Gazette Times, David Baker, an Oregon State University employee in multimedia web production, and three filmmaking friends brainstormed this summer.
We want to focus on the local level, but we also want to make it national,†Baker said. “And we’re not just looking at the wine-makers. We’re focusing on the wine geeks and wine lovers, too.â€
Darby and I attended the Cully Association of Neighbors monthly meeting last night in the social room at Grace Presbyterian Church on NE Prescott. City Commissioner Amanda Fritz opened the meeting by running down the many concerns on her plate. She said she’s working on a proposed Alcohol Impact Area in the downtown corridor that would cut down on public drunkenness, which is a big tax on city services. She also took questions, including one about the additional taxpayer burden to build a new Sellwood bridge. Frtiz said she’s happy that a deal was made because the Sellwood Bridge has a safety rating of 2 on a scale of 100, which makes me concerned to drive over it.
Good as it was to hear from Fritz, who is a whip smart City official, we were in the room to hear from John McKinney of Columbia Biogas. McKinney is leading the charge to open a state-of-the-art green energy facility at 6849 Columbia Boulevard, which is located in an industrial section of the Cully neighborhood. First, let me say that Darby and McKinney know each other from work–Columbia Biogas sublets office space from Cascadia Green Building Council in the EcoTrust Building. So, you might say we were “plants” in the audience, ready to support this important green business initiative. But I didn’t feel like a plant. I felt like an interested student. And we live in Cully.
McKinney explained his project in down-to-earth terms despite the complicated engineering at the center of it all. He said the production of biogas by anaerobic digestion of source-separated food waste is well-proven technology in Europe. His company’s proposed biogas plant in NE Portland will generate 5 megawatts of power–enough to run 4000 to 5000 residential homes. That’s a lot of power, all generated from locally-collected food waste that would otherwise go to landfills, and turn into methane gas, which is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Naturally some citizen activists spoke up with concerns about the need for industrial safety, potential environmental impacts and the cultural and historic value of the site. McKinney patiently addressed everyone’s concerns and will do so again next week in a special meeting of the Concordia and Cully neighborhood associations at Word of Life Community Church on NE 55th Avenue.
After McKinney’s presentation, representatives from Changing the Climate in Cully, a neighborhood organizing project of Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good, spoke about their program that offers Cully homeowners free energy assessments and help with key weatherization efforts like insulation, air sealing and duct sealing and hot water upgrades. They mentioned that the deadline to apply for these free upgrades is fast approaching.
Overall, one couldn’t help but come away with the impression that there are a lot of committed, intelligent people working on civic solutions in this city. With so much media focus with what’s wrong with the economy, it’s nice to learn first-hand what’s right with it.
I’m from Nebraska and I live in Oregon. And I like college football. My loyalties to the Cornhuskers are well established. Whereas my new allegiances to the local teams are still forming.
I like that Oregon has Scott Frost on its coaching staff, because I’m a Husker and he’s a Husker. But I’m not ready to swan dive into the Ducks’ pond just yet. For one reason only–the team in black and orange to the north. I like the Beavs, what can I say?
Unlike my Huskers, the Beavers go out of their way to play tough teams in September. They take their lumps, but the fact is Oregon State hung in there with TCU and Boise State, at a time when Boise State and TCU are both ranked in the top five in the nation. It sucks that the Beavs didn’t come away with at least one win, but my feeling is the team is all the more ready for Pac 10 conference play, which starts next Saturday in Corvallis.
As a football fan, you consider things like strength of schedule, offensive schemes, defensive tenacity and so on. But there’s more going on here than football–identifying with a college team is also about branding. Brand loyalty can come from having attended the school you root for, but that’s just the beginning for a big time college sports program. For instance, I didn’t go to Nebraska but I’m from Omaha, so the Huskers have always been part of my deal. I didn’t go to Oregon State or Oregon either, but I’m a fan of both schools and both football programs.
Most people in Oregon have well formed team loyalties. They’re either a Beaver or a Duck. For people who migrate to the state, they’ll no doubt be influenced by friends, by whether or not they like green and gold and countless other factors. That’s what branding is–the amalgamation of all your experiences with a company, or school/team.
