And don't ever shit in them.

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:42:23 GMT

I love my new job, I get to spend tons of time listening to people discuss public policy. But once a week there is a particularly great presentation. Last week it was a presentation on how courts interpret legislative intent and this week it was a presentation on how bond markets work. But alas the legislative session only lasts six months.

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:35:01 GMT

As some of you may know I am looking for a room in Portland. If you know anyone who is looking for a roomie give them my email address.

An update

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:21:18 GMT

Now that I am unemployed I can finally post on my lj again. Turns out the caucus threatened to fire anyone who blogged and while I didn't believe them, I decided not to take a risk. First things first: we won. At this point I am comfortable calling it a thrashing. With half our district reporting we are up 57-43.

The last six months have been exhausting. I've take a grand total of ten days off. Things that happened over the campaign:
-I got propositioned at the door
-I petted my first horse
-I knocked 4500 doors
-Strangers offered me cake, candy, vegetables and soda
- I've had beer with complete strangers in their garages within minutes of meeting them (twice!)
- Knocked on doors that have never been canvassed (rural areas even Jehovah's Whiteness don't consider dense enough)
- I've gotten to see the debate over land use planning in some communities (Damascus)

Yet the most rewarding aspect of my work was the conversations. Thousands of people who had no idea who I was took the time not just to listen but to talk to me and that is pretty damn cool. Also, holy shit a black dude whose middle name is Hussein just took 52% of the vote.

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:57:50 GMT

Ugh, I am burned out. 18 days sounds like an eternity.

Feelin' Groovy

Sat, 24 May 2008 04:39:45 GMT

So I just came in third in the 2008 Oregon punditology game. 257 readers predicted the outcome of 28 races and I came in third(correctly predicting 21 of them). But alas, Ben DuPree won.

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:31:52 GMT

I am looking for a dresser. So if you have one you no longer want or know someone with one I'd be interested.

Exciting post!

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:22:36 GMT

Dear Reed friends,
I am looking for a place in SE for the summer or the rest of the 2008 calendar year. Rent can't be higher than 325 a month. Please let me know if you have something that might work out. Email: allenc@reed.edu

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:23:05 GMT

I'd forgotten how much I love poetry.

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:06:07 GMT

Sometimes when I am disappointed by my lack of eloquence or intelligence, I think about how RFK was originally a shaky speaker or how Barack Obama was once shy and I start feel better. Not that I want to run for president, it is just good to remember that my idols are humans too and that they also had to work at building their arguments and rhetoric.

Edit: I wasn't referencing public speaking as such but just the ability to move people to action in general. I am not particularly good at getting people involved in the process, even though in the long term that is the most important thing for our movement and that makes me a little sad.

Why I sometimes wish I could marry Ezra Klein

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 04:09:14 GMT

And here's why: It is actually counterproductive for insurers to compete on giving us the best care. It's not simply that they're not doing it, but given the structure of the marketplace, they shouldn't do it. Imagine insurer X creates the best damn diabetes protocols in the country. And they begin advertising this fact. What happens on Day Two? Well, they're flooded with individuals suffering from diabetes, or individuals who fear they will one day be suffering from diabetes. These people, in the current system, are a bad deal. Not only is it near impossible to insure them at a profit, but pooling their costs (which is what insurers do, after all) raises premiums for all the insurer's other customers. When the average customer of an insurer gets sicker, prices go up for all their customers. So the healthy folks contracting with that insurer quit the pool, and go find a cheaper deal, which forces the insurer to raise premiums again, driving out more healthy folks, which forces them to raise premiums again, which drives out more healthy folks, and so on. It's what we call an insurance death spiral, and it ends with the collapse of the insurer.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&year=2008&base_name=why_insurers_suck_and_five_way#104425

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:03:40 GMT

This is an interesting post. Two reasons:
1) the suggestion that the obesity epidemic stems partially from low food budgets is interesting, though I have no idea about its accuracy
2) I might actually take the food stamp challenge, though certainly not for six weeks. This of course would mean that I couldn't use the scrounge (good) but it would also basically mean that I eat PB sandwiches all week long.

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:50:22 GMT

One thing that attracted me to Obama is his unwillingness to attack, he'll make contrasts with his opponents but he won't accuse them of eating little babies. This made sense to me, if you just discuss differences in positions, then your opponent looks bad when they start the attack ads. However this article suggests that said strategy might not work. The article was originally under the header "Could Clinton-Obama fight hurt Dems?", notice the word "fight" and how it suggests that both are attacking each other. Yet the article doesn't list one instance of Obama attacking Clinton because there have been none, for example Obama's campaign never said anything about Clintons' MLK-LBJ comment.

I think ultimately this primary will tell us if this type of no attacks candidacy can work or if they don't. These types of primary stories don't make me optimistic but maybe voters will see through it.

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:51:36 GMT

I just learned that Reed is bringing in Harold Ford Jr, head of the DLC, to speak during Black History Month. I am tempted to ask why he thinks it is helpful to say that Harry Reid is stabbing the troops in the back when he says we are not winning in Iraq. He is pro-life, voted for the Iraq war, the bankruptcy bill, the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and blag burning. Isn't it hard to believe he is a Democrat? Man I love the DLC. However I suspect he will discuss race relations instead and that would make bringing up his political record tangential.

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:37:12 GMT

A post from tpm about Gordon Smith's recent remarks on the Lott resignation. Back in the day he supported Lott's resignation after Lott stated that he thought Thurmond's presidential run would have been great for America. Now he calls it a "great wrong" that has been righted since Lott regained a leadership position. Just more proof that he is a compulsive flip flopper, as if his eight different positions on Iraq and the minimum wage weren't enough. When people don't pay attention he votes conservative and when they do he becomes a moderate.

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:25:12 GMT

This Saturday the infamous Jon Tester (D-MT with two fingers on his right hand) will be holding a fundraiser for my man Jeff Merkley. I just got an email saying tickets are 15$ for students, if I were still here I'd go cause that is mighty cheap for a newly minted US Senator.

Update: The Politico reports that the IRS has received several complaints from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State about political activities of several churches on behalf of Mike Huckabee. The pastor of one of the churches, Rev. Wiley S. Drake, of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., "responded [by] urging followers to pray for the deaths of... the Americans United officials who filed the IRS complaint." The Lord was not available for comment. (from TAPPED)

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:15:13 GMT

I was cleaning out my office today and it was sad. As excited as I am to go out and getting involved in politics, the idea of leaving the bubble is scary; building a new relationships is difficult, particularly if your going to be working on a campaign.

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:51:58 GMT

Most of you know that I love the American Prospect: in fact I just renewed my subscription for a two year period. So I'll give you a fucking important link to their group blog.

So the National Intellegance Estimate states that Iran discontinued its nuclear program in 2003 and probably hasn't restarted it. Best part, the AP article about said relevations is entitled "US : Iran Still Able to Develop Nukes". Damn liberal media. Vomit.

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:15:40 GMT

I've spent the last two hours in bed reading political blogs. No one should be surprised, yet it has been a fascinating two hours. I've ordered even more books for my vacation, so I'll have six non-thesis books with me over vacation (3 health care, 3 miscellaneous current event books). I thought I'd share two of the highlights of my blog surfing:

- Earlier this week the British press broke some startling news: the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA), has issued a report that claims there are no long-term benefits of ADHD medication for hyperactive children. Report co-author Professor William Pelham of the University of Buffalo, is quoted in the British press as concluding that ADHD medication is, in the long-term, all risk and no reward.

“The children [on ADHD medication] had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren't growing as much as other kids both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight,” he says. “And…there were no beneficial effects - none.”

- Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) – WellCare Health Plans Inc., the U.S. health insurer under investigation for possible government overpayments, rose the most in two weeks in New York trading after an analyst upgraded the company.

“The analyst, Carl McDonald of CIBC World Markets in New York, called the probe ‘limited’ and raised his rating of WellCare to ‘sector outperform-speculative' from ‘sector perform.' WellCare rose $2.38, or 6.8 percent, to $37.39 at 9:40 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after touching $38.14.

“A U.S. government raid of WellCare's Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Oct. 24 yielded thousands of records, including papers pulled from a shredder bin and files on offshore bank accounts, according to court filings. McDonald said the filings suggest the probe is focused on Florida's Medicaid program for the poor.

I think it is absurd that an analyst would upgrade the rating of a company under federal investigation and the market wasn't smart enough to ignore it. The invisible hand indeed. Hat tip to the Health Beat.

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:15:21 GMT

A couple of comments:
-I have 32 pages to write over the next twenty seven days.
-I was disapointed when Hilary came out against raising the ceiling on payroll taxes.
-Wolf Blitzer asking the Democratic candidates to give a yes or no answer to a question about giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens is moronic and an example of how the media trivializes politics. It is a complicated issue and candidates should be allowed to discuss it at length.
-Does Lou Dobbs really think he should run for president? He is already a failure as a public commentator.

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:11:42 GMT

1) I think that my interview with FuturePAC went well.
2) Ronald Reagan sucks.; did anyone ever question that? I can sympathise with his comments that the Voting Rights Act was offensive to the South thoug. Oh wait, maybe not.
3) A great article. about the best argument against health care reform. I think it is a pretty fair article.
4) I learned from Carear Services that Earl Bluemauer will be at Reed within the next month, presenting us with a perfect oppurtunity to speak to him about birth control on college campuses. Plus the guy is just plain cool and smart so I am excited.

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:09:46 GMT

I am ashamed to admit that I haven't put that much time into thinking about why I believe in a woman's right to choose. Actually I'll take this back; I haven't thought about it much recently. While browsing tapped I found the following argument, which I think is right on:

"In itself, this new "informed consent" provision is mostly silly; it's not as draconian as, say, the proposed Idaho law, and aside from giving anti-choice prosecutors a basis for harassing abortion providers it's not clear what the practical affects of the new provision would be.

What it does is provide another example of the fundamental sexism that runs throughout the American pro-life movement and the irrational regulations they favor. Ob-gyns, of course, are not required to obtain "informed" consent when carrying a pregnancy to term, although it is, if anything, more likely that this would be the result of coercion. We don't have such regulations about women who choose to become mothers because it wouldn't make any sense; absent physical coercion, we should assume that adults are capable of making their own judgments. Rather, the assumption is that women are defined by being mothers, and that a woman who chooses to end a pregnancy therefore can't really understand what she'd doing. Hence, the extent to which abortion laws (up to and including excluding women from punishment for what is allegedly a serious violent offense) simply assume that women are not rational agents, and the fact that they might have different values than James Dobson can be adduced as additional evidence of their irrationality."

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:37:12 GMT

Jeff Merkley who is running for the US Senate in Oregon will be in the SU on Friday at noon. Pizza will be there and it is a Question and Answer format. So please come.

Edit: About Jeff. He was the executive director of Portland's Habitat for Humanity. First elected to the Oregon state house in 1998, in 2003 he became the head of the House Democratic caucus. Latter in 2006 when the Democrats took control of the state house, he because the first Democratic Speaker of the Oregon state house since 1990. The man knows a lot about public policy and as far as I can tell does not focus exclusively on one issue. Grill him about issues you care about.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:42:57 GMT

Is any one here decent with graphic designing or know someone who is? I have a friend who is running for the state leg. who needs a basic logo. I suspect you could negociate some type of remuneration.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:04:16 GMT

Writing my historiographical essay is kind of dissapointing and scary because it reminds me that there is no debate about my thesis topic (only one book has been written on the subject). So if the archives have nothing, I have nothing. Scary.

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:34:00 GMT

OMG Paul Krugman at the Bagdad on Nov. 3!