Isaac Laquedem

One last bite for Mr. Mazziotti

Today's Oregonian reports that on June 30, his last day as executive director of the Portland Development Commission, Don Mazziotti asked PDC to reimburse him $2,193 for the cost of a December 22, 2004 party he put on at a private club for the PDC commissioners, top staff, and their spouses.  On July 20 PDC's interim executive director rejected his request, saying that it wasn't a reasonable expense and also violated PDC policy, which requires expenses for social events to be approved in advance by the executive director.

I'm guessing that Bruce Warner, the incoming executive director, won't feel the need to wine and dine the commissioners, but if he does, he's now on notice that he needs to seek his own approval in advance and not after the fact.

I change my morning radio allegiance

For the last 15 years I've listened to the morning news on KXL (750 AM) on my drive to work.  I especially liked the business reporting of Peter Linsky and the hourly CBS national news.

Alas, the station dispensed with Mr. Linsky last year, and switched from CBS national news to something called Fox News, which I soon decided was mistakenly using the plural form.  The local staff seem fine enough but I've been getting more and more irritated at the Fox announcers.

I've switched allegiance.  I now listen mostly to 970 AM (which, whatever its call sign may be now, I still think of as KOIN, because those were its call letters in 1964), which bills itself as "Johnson 970 -- now your radio has a laugh button."  Except for a little bit of national news (no more offensive than Fox's, really), it's an all-comedy station.  I arrive at work in a better mood, and I can't say that I learn any less about the world outside Portland.

Zehnkatzen

Last week I came across The Zehnkatzen Times, a blog by Samuel John Klein, and in particular Mr. Klein's posts on the metro area's house addressing system.  Mr. Klein and I may be kindred spirits: for years I've been interested in addresses, street names, and the like.  (Trivia question: what is the shortest named street in Portland, meaning the shortest continuous public street, whatever its suffix may be, with a unique name that doesn't repeat within the City?)

I've added Zehnkatzen to my list of links; check it out for Mr. Klein's other postings even if you're not interested in house numbers.

Harry Potter in Kyoto in English; "No Trespassing" in Spanish in Oregon

I mentioned to the Laquedemitasse that book 6 of the Harry Potter series had just been released, and he asked if I would buy a copy for him.  This was as we were riding a train in Japan.  A guidebook directed me to the largest bookstore in Kyoto, a store called Maruzen.  We found the store after a little searching, behind a prominent sign that said "Maruzen" (in the Roman alphabet only, and not in Japanese).

The bookstore covers 8 or 10 floors, with foreign-language books on the top floor.  Maruzen had several dozen copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in both the English and the American versions. 

It was another sign of Japan's commitment to learn English.  Do we have a similar commitment to learn other languages?  I suppose the "No Trespassing" signs that the highway department uses to mark its turf might qualify.  They used to say "No Trapasan" until someone told ODOT that "No Trapasan" isn't Spanish.  So we still have some room for improvement.

English in Japan, continued from last year

I had written last year about how English permeated urban Japan.  This year I became aware of how many signs in Tokyo have only English, and no Japanese -- not just the advertisements or t-shirts, but signs in hotels and restaurants.  For example, the Fine Hotel in Tokyo where I stayed uses the English words "Cloakroom," "Cashier," and "Concierge" to identify those three areas, without appending the corresponding words in Japanese or any other language.  To be sure, sometimes the English is not quite right; the Able Associate once referred me to this website that collects examples of offbeat foreign English, such as this one, a sign reading "Entrance for Grope Tourists."

I asked a Japanese friend if it seems odd to him to walk into a Japanese hotel and see signs written only in English, and he said, "Not really.  Most Japanese people, except the very oldest, know the English alphabet and can read English words."  He may have been being polite; I know that I would think it odd, even if I knew the Cyrillic alphabet, to walk into a hotel in Portland and see signs written only in Russian. 

Speaker Minnis disproves the need for annual sessions of the Legislature

If I understand rightly what's going on in Salem at the moment, House Speaker Karen Minnis has been sending her Republican troops home on a series of three-day vacations, keeping them out of Salem and the House effectively out of session.  The House Democratic leadership is complaining but more or less following along.

That's good news to my ears.  I've long opposed having annual sessions of the Legislative Assembly, and the Speaker's move shows that we don't need annual sessions, not if the Legislature isn't even using all the time that it already has.

I want my insurance to cover less, not more

I noticed a quotation in a newspaper article yesterday in which the speaker said that in a few years the cost to provide health insurance to a family of four could exceed $40,000 per year, as the incidence of obesity, cancer, and other diseases increases.  I think it will be more than "a few years," judging by the cost to insure the Laquedem household, which (including the generous contributions of the Noble Employers) is about $15,000 per year now, but it's certainly expensive and accelerating.

My current complaint about health insurance, besides the incomprehensible statements of billing that put my most Delphic utterances to shame, is that I have too much of it.  My insurance covers all except the first $10 or $15 of each visit to the physician and of each prescription.  I'm perfectly happy to pay $50, $100, or more for each visit and to pay for the prescriptions, up to my tolerance for risk, and then to insure the rest, but as far as I can tell the Selfless Companies that provide insurance plans through the Noble Employers don't offer plans like that any more to groups.

That's why I grouse when I see legislators propose to require the Selfless Companies to cover more diseases, because they then say that "insurance should cover Disease X."  If the proposal passes, "insurance" isn't going to cover Disease X; the other people who carry insurance will cover Disease X.  The Selfless Companies are only the conduit.  I'd be less bothered by a legislator who said something like, "All of us together as a society, including my insured constituents, should pay the cost to treat those few unfortunates who have Disease X, and the insurance companies are the most effective way to collect that cost from the general public."  I'm not holding my breath waiting to hear a lawmaker say that, which is a good thing, because my insurer doesn't cover sleep apnea.

Ask a Japanese about Oregon, and . . .

I told a taxi driver in Kyoto this week that I live in Oregon, and he smiled and sang the theme song from the Japanese television show, "From Oregon, With Love," that ran several years back.  More surprisingly to me, a day or two before, a retired banker asked me if Oregon still had no sales tax.  "That's important for business," he said, making me think (as I've thought before) that instead of trying to adopt a sales tax and be like most of the other states, we should figure out how to use this fact to our advantage, perhaps by searching out mail-order companies to locate here.

Mirabile dictu: parking spaces that grow

Last year I suggested that the City of Portland could supplement its budget by fining downtown building owners who have striped their parking lots with spaces too small to comply with the city code.  (In general, parking spaces in the downtown lots are supposed to be 8-1/2 feet wide unless the operator provides valet parking, and then they can be 8 feet wide.)

As the Knower of All Things unsqueezed his car from its cramped downtown parking space, he noticed that some of the spaces in his office tower had been freshly restriped -- not to be even narrower (which would make the building able to accommodate only motorcycles and Mini Coopers) but to be about 6 inches wider.  I can't imagine that his landlord reads Isaac, but maybe the City is on the job of enforcing the code?

How the Democrats should respond to Karl Rove

President Bush promised that, if someone on his staff turned out to be the person who told the press that Valerie Plame was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, he would fire that person.

"That person" turned out to be Karl Rove, his chief political advisor.  Unsurprisingly, the President doesn't want to fire Mr. Rove.  Some of the Beltway Democrats are calling on the President to keep his promise and fire Mr. Rove.

I think the Democrats are going about this entirely the wrong way and should recast the debate as one of national security.  No one, except the die-hards, really cares if Mr. Rove is indicted for leaking information about Ms. Plame.  But we all care about national security.  Suppose some senior Democratic senator were to give this speech on the Senate floor:

We all agree with the President that the War on Terra requires the utmost attention to national security.  The news that one of the President's top aides disclosed sensitive information about a CIA analyst, even if the disclosure was inadvertent, has to be a matter of grave concern to everyone involved in the fight against those would destroy our way of life and commitment to freedom. 

The posters in World War II read "Loose Lips Sink Ships."  Today the stakes are far higher.  Our nation cannot afford to have working in the White House someone such as Mr. Rove, with access to the most confidential and sensitive information about our national security, who carelessly discloses information that could aid the enemies of freedom.  The President, as we all know, is concerned to the utmost about our national security, and I am confident that he will see the necessity of removing from the White House staff anyone who passes on even hints of information that could be of comfort to our enemies.  I bear Mr. Rove no ill will, and members on both sides of the aisle will agree that the President is entitled to seek political advice from whomever he wishes, but our national interests demand that known security risks be kept from the White House, and I call on the President to act at once.

And if the President doesn't evict Mr. Rove from the White House, then the leak about Ms. Plame can't be very important, and he should then see about getting Judith Miller of the New York Times out of jail.