Friday, June 15, 2007

A quick peek into the psyche of Oregon's GOP ideological "braintrust"

Heh:

"We are attracting (to Oregon) a lot of young, enthusiastic people who aren't particularly well trained and who aren't bringing a lot of human capital to the region."

"The bike lane thing is just a manifestation, and a relatively minor one, of another problem: Why are we trying to build an economy around 1880s technology? We are spending a lot of money on MAX, which has almost no patronage and which cannibalizes the use of bus systems in order to achieve that level of patronage."

"I am wary of some of the underlying science in the whole global warming argument."

"There is basically no inventory of industrial land ... We turned a perfectly good rail yard into the Pearl District."

"We chased off the forest products industry. We have trampled all over property rights."

"We don't have a welcome mat set out for businesses."

"My model of Oregon politics is that it's captive to two forces: the public employees union and the teachers union. Ted Kulongoski -- there's a reason why his chief of staff is the former union head. It's payback for his handling of the pension reductions. Now it's payback time, and that's why you've got $300 million going into K-12. That may be money well spent, but I suspect we'll have no accountability."


These are quotes from Randall Pozdena..here is his bio courtesy of that bastion of conservative "thought", the Cascade Policy Institute:

Randall J. Pozdena, Ph.D. is a consulting economist in Portland, Oregon and Managing Director of ECONorthwest, an economics and financial consulting firm. He is also President of QuantEcon, Inc., and Flash Network Services, Inc., Oregon-based research and Internet technology firms. Dr. Pozdena is an academic advisor to Cascade Policy Institute and has authored previous Cascade reports on K-12 and higher education, Social Security, Oregon government spending and health care.

So what we have here is a guy who believes that Oregon should be a state that considers their people "human capital" and that infrastructure changes which enhance sustainability and liveablility are a blight on the region.

Your GOP thinking at work, folks.