Wonks R Us

Where Public Policy and Small Business Meet

Monthly Archives: January 2009

Still have the energy to talk about Sam Adams?

Then join City Club for a free, public panel on politics and ethics as part of their Agora program: Private Lives in the Public Eye: A panel on politics and ethics When: Thursday, January 29, 2009, 6–7:30 p.m. Where: UO Portland, White Stag Building , 70 NW Couch, Portland Cost: Free and open to the [...]

We have a TARP with a huge, gaping hole

Between running my business, tracking the Sam Adams story and everything else on my plate last week, I fell behind on my newsfeeds. My feeds have become more important to me because I have been listening to NPR less and less lately. I think the ongoing mantra of layoff numbers is counterproductive to economic recovery.  [...]

Justifying Mis-steps (and I don’t mean by Sam Adams)

This weekend,Winston Ross, a Newsweek Reporter, interviewed me about media sensationalism and the Sam Adams story.  He had read my previous blog post and thought I might have some insights to share.  Later in the day, after Sam Adams committed to return to work, I, naively, hoped that we would be able to put the [...]

Why Sam Adams should not resign as mayor of Portland

Below is a copy of an email I sent to Sam Adams this afternoon: I am the go-to person on local politics for Portland’s open source tech community.  I have lost track of how many times I have been asked today my thoughts on your current situation.  Given all of the pressure that is being [...]

Heralding back to a better day

January 20, 2009 was an emotional, historic and ground-shifting day in more ways that I can count.  There have been so many excellent blog posts on how it affected people (I should know, as I have many of them opened in tabs in Firefox so I can catch up on reading them when I get [...]

Addendum

The term “sea change” has been so overused that it has become almost meaningless.  However, given my last post, renaissance is probably a better descriptor anyway.  What am I talking about? In his introduction to Senator Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing this morning, John Kerry explicitly stated that global climate change is an issue of national [...]

Debating garden hoses while Rome burns

I enjoy a good public policy debate as much as anyone (ok, to be honest, I seem to enjoy them more than most), but I have been getting frustrated lately about arguing about minutiae while we (and that is an inclusive we) seem to lose sight of the bigger picture. In the past few days, [...]

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