Criminal negligence

This from the LA Times:

Weeks before the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, oil company BP and subcontractor Halliburton learned that tests had shown the cement mixture designed to seal the well was unstable, but they continued to use it anyway, President Obama's special commission investigating the environmental disaster reported Thursday.

You hear a lot about “accountability” during elections. There are 11 people dead, thousdands of livelihoods disrupted and ongoing environmental damage.

Are we going to see those responsible held accountable? I won’t hold my breath.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The candidates speak

Thursday night’s candidates’ forum at Sisters High School gave a realtively sparse crowd a chance to see the six candidates for city council in action, fielding questions composed from those submitted by the public.

I thought the candidates presented themselves well and I don’t think anyone left the auditorium unsure where they stand on the issues facing the community — the big one being Sisters’ economic health and how to improve it.

The turnout was a little disappointing, but given that the forum was going up against an Outlaws football game, an Outlaws volleyball game, a Duck’s game (if you can call it that — what a slaughter) and a baseball playoff game, I guess the forum really didn’t do too badly.

It’s always tough getting citizens to come out and engage in the way their city/county/state/nation is run. That’s why, in the 19th Century, candidates often offered free beer and whiskey. That’d guarantee a large and lively turnout...

As moderator, I was remiss in not publicly acknowledging the work Bill Mintiens put into organizing the event. From securing the venue and making sure it was set up to vetting the questions and determining the format, Bill put in a lot of work, all on a volunteer basis to allow the community an unscripted look at their candidates.

Hats off to ye, Bill.

My sense of the audience was that it was mostly composed of partisans, so I doubt the candidates changed anybody’s mind. Am I wrong? Did what you saw or heard change your vote?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

They done Juan wrong

I’m still shaking my head over the firing of Juan Williams by National Public Radio (NPR).
Williams told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News that he, Williams, “gets nervous” when he sees people in traditional Muslim dress at an airport or on an airplane. NPR apparently found that a bigoted statement and fired Williams accordingly.

Now, as readers of this blog know, I am opposed to lumping all Muslims together into the “they” who attacked us on September 11, 2010. I think the best way to defeat Islamic extremism — which I consider antithetical to everything I hold dear — is to uphold American values and ideals, to hold that torch ever higher to shine a light into the darkness that the fundamentalists would impose.

(Some of you may know that my favored tactic in the War on Terror is to bomb Islamists with Victoria’s Secret catalogs and the SI swimsuit edition. If it doesn’t convert them, it’ll at least drive them nuts. Now THAT is psychological warfare).

Upholding American ideals does not allow for firing somebody for making an honest statement, essentially about fear. Williams’ nervousness may ultimately be misplaced — the 9/11 hijackers wore Western clothes and it seems unlikely that anyone plotting a terrorist attack would deliberately call attention to themselves by wearing traditional Muslim garb. But the survival brain operates on cues from the environment and triggers a response. Simple as that.

(Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com has a great column about this here: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/21/stop-the-media-purge/).

Williams was talking about how he feels — and, if we’re honest, our fears sometimes make us think things we wouldn’t be too proud to own in the calm environs of work and home. Williams isn’t a bigot; he was just being an honest guy and he got sacked for it. That’s just plain wrong.

And his former boss said something that just blows me away:

According to the Associated Press, NPR President Vivian Schiller appeared at the Atlanta Press Club, where she said that Williams had violated NPR’s guidelines barring its analysts from making personal or controversial statements.

That’s laughable. You’re supposed to be a analyst and you’re not supposed to say anything controversial? Oh, please. What’s the point of you then?

Clearly, NPR was looking for an excuse to sack Williams because they don’t like his association with Fox News. I’m no fan of Fox News — they generate a lot of noise and heat and precious little light. But NPR’s actions are beneath them. It’s pretty sad when NPR — usually a bastion of real discourse in a landscape of noisy infotainment — makes Fox News look like the more ethical and dignified organization.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Messy, messy, messy

Mac Hay has a tough row to hoe.

It’s going to be difficult enough for Sisters’ newly-hired Economic Development manager to work against the economic tide to help the city improve its business climate. Unfortunately, Mac’s starting out dragging the ball-and-chain of a sloppy hiring process that has left many folks angry and suspicious, members of the city council divided and defensive and a large portion of the Sisters community confused.

The clumsy, opaque process that led to Mac’s hiring is a reminder that how things are done can be as important as what is done.

By farming out the hiring process to EDCO (Economic Development for Central Oregon), Mayor Lon Kellstrom hoped to keep the process at “arms length” and avoid the appearance that the council simply kicked the gig to a friend who had been doing economic development work on a volunteer basis through SBART.

It ended up looking that way anyway, with the added taint of EDCO’s unwillingness to give citizens a glimpse into the hiring process, including who sat on the interview panel and whether any were actually from Sisters. Actually, EDCO has legitimate reasons to shield interviewers with anonymity so they won’t be subjected to lobbying and community pressures.


But the Mayor and the council majority might have foreseen that taking this course would lead some people in the community — and not just those active in Sisters politics, either — to think the fix was in.

A considerable constituency is up in arms at the lack of transparency in the hiring process. It won’t be surprising to see some of those who have a dog in the fight in the campaign for city council to show up at City Hall waving the bloody shirt. Already there is a movement afoot to challenge the legitimacy of the Mayor’s actions and therefore the city’s ability to disperse the funds.

I don’t think the Mayor’s actions were taken in bad faith, but it wasn’t very well thought through, even from the standpoint of political self-interest. The council majority has handed their political opponents a stick to beat them over the head with and they’ve saddled their pick with ill will that’s going to take some work to overcome. (Mac is fully aware of that and is already reaching out).

But the hiring process itself isn’t really the biggest problem.

The City of Sisters is investing $30,000 into economic development without any metrics in place for determining if the money is well spent. If Mac lands a company or two in the next year that bring a bunch of jobs, success will be obvious. But even the most optimistic don’t expect that to happen by the time the contract runs out.

Progress is likely to be incremental and hard to define. It’s too much money to treat casually, but not really enough to get serious, long-term work done. This project is likely to take several years to bear fruit, and it’s going to have to have buy-in — in a literal sense — from the private sector. Private parties are going to have to come in with financial support to sustain the project. City taxpayers cannot and should not be expected to foot the bill on their own indefinitely.

Everyone involved needs “deliverables” in order to determine if a particular course is working or if there needs to be a change of direction — or if we need to pull the plug.

Mac is a good man, with a lot of passion for the work. He’s good with people and my last few conversations with him indicate that he is open to a wide-ranging understanding of what economic vitality means and how we might pursue it.

Hopefully he will create his own rigorous performance measurements. It’s in his own interests to do so. Without real metrics, he won’t be able to bring on more support and he’ll never convince skeptics than this project is anything more than a boondoggle pursued so that the council can say “we’re doing something!”

There is no doubt that those who are flat pissed off about the way this all went down will flog the issue through the election. For them, it is a signal example of the problems with the way the council majority operates.

But in the end, Mac Hay will be in place as Economic Development Manager and the $30,000 will be spent. It is in everyone’s interest that the project succeed. Will the “opposition” continue to stand off and throw rocks, or will they bend Mac’s ear and try to shape the direction of the project?

Hopefully, after the dust has settled from the election, Sisters’ new Economic Development Manager can start pulling people together, defining goals and get some real work done.

Jim Cornelius, Editor