Oregon State Measure 60: No. School districts should be allowed discretion in determing what policies are best for their students.
Oregon State Measure 61: No. Judges should be allowed discretion in determining sentencing for crimes.
Oregon State Measure 62: No. Lottery proceeds currently fund job creation, economic development, and education. Funding those kinds of activities reduces the [...]
Archive for October, 2008
My election ballot: State measures 60-65
Posted in Politics, Portland on October 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My election ballot: State measures 54-59
Posted in Politics, Portland on October 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Oregon State Measure 54: Yes. A little bit of Constitutional clean-up that I’m glad we’re doing.
Oregon State Measure 55: No. Is pretending that the old district lines are still in force any less confusing a way to deal with redistricting than the current way?
Oregon State Measure 56: Yes. Living in a democracy has its responsibilities, [...]
My election ballot: State offices
Posted in Politics, Portland on October 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Oregon Secretary of State: Kate Brown (D). By default. Her two opponents are, respectively, an amateur and a naïf.
Oregon State Treasurer: Ben Westlund (D). Westlund’s opponent, Allen Alley, touts his business experience, but when I look at how his company, Pixelworks, was doing when he resigned as CEO—the stock price was down 80% over his [...]
My election ballot: National
Posted in Politics, Portland, USA on October 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Republicans deserve the broom.
United States President: Barack Obama (D)
United States Senate: Jeff Merkley (D)
United States Representative, 3rd District: Earl Blumenauer (D)
Bleah
Posted in Life on October 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I have had an Inspector Maigret mystery checked out but unread, in case I needed something to read while sick in bed.
Coming in handy today…
Debt is real
Posted in Commerce on October 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Most people both own and owe: We have assets and we have debts.
An important distinction between the cash value of the two: Assets are speculative. Debts are real.
We can believe we know what our assets are worth, but their actual cash value is what someone will pay for them at the time we try to [...]
Too big to save?
Posted in Commerce, Politics on October 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When enough financial institutions that are “too big to fail” totter at the same time, the government cannot save them all.
What worries me is the possibility that the federal government and Federal Reserve will sink $2 trillion, $3 trillion, $4 trillion into stabilizing the financial system and then simply run out of real money (as [...]
Why Warren Buffett can keep going
Posted in Commerce, Quotation on October 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Financial maneuvering is a form of endeavor favorable to old men: The financial brain, unlike brains adept in various other areas—for example, mathematics, physics, chess, and, quite possibly, armed bank robbery—apparently deteriorates very little, if at all, with passage of time, even in the eighth and ninth decades of life.
– John Brooks, “Spanish Privateer”, 1978
What McCain can’t lose
Posted in Politics on October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
With the tide of the campaign running so heavily in Obama’s favor, it’s fun to speculate on exactly how low McCain’s support might go on November 4. The biggest electoral college landslide that I can believe possible is Obama 461, McCain 77. In that scenario, McCain wins:
Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
Idaho
Kansas
Kentucky
Nebraska (but loses the 2nd CD)
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Wyoming
Notably, only [...]
How I know I’m stressed
Posted in Life on October 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Aside from the more obvious indicators, there seem to be two reliable indicators that I’m feeling stressed:
I don’t blog.
I don’t read.
