Get Off My Lawn, or I Make You Take an Introductory Logic Class

This editorial by Hering is so predictable I would have only been surprised had he not written it.

It suggests all the intelligence of a really mad squirrel.

And all the critical thinking and analytical skills of a squirrel, too. I'm just going to assume that Hering did not actually write this, but instead farmed it out to a) his crack staff of trained weasels that he keeps in back for emergencies (a comment not to be construed as an insult to DH reporters), or b) he was possessed by the ghost of Lee Atwater.

Nah, this editorial is too nice for Atwater. It lacks a gratuitous shot at people of color and/or women.

Anyway.

Hering's latest waste of space - can you tell I'm annoyed yet? - is on the topic of a recent pay increase for some "60 department heads working for the state" who "will get raises of up to 24 percent."

Needless to say, Hering is not happy. On the one hand, I understand why - on its face, that's a really large set of raises, and it's public money. OK. But check out Hering's criticisms:

It’s good to know that Oregon is so flush that it can afford this extraordinary largesse. Voters may want to keep it in mind when they decide next month on a tax increase that would hit mainly the poor. (We’re talking, of course, about the exorbitant 72 percent increase in the state cigarette tax, from $1.18 a pack to $2.025.)

Manages to bash the cigarette tax hike, even though there's really no relation between it and the raises. Check.

The Kulongoski administration is justifying the whopping raises on the grounds of comparisons. It says the adjustments are needed to keep good administrators from jumping ship for higher-paying jobs in other states or in the private sector.

This is the standard drill in government on the local level too: You do a comparison. You find some reasonably comparable jobs that pay more than the ones you are concerned about. Then you say the pay needs to go up because it’s below the list of comparables.

You manage to mock the perfectly valid and acceptable reason given for the raises without ever actually admitting that you're mocking it, thereby implying for the reader that there's a problem with comparison-based raises... even though you don't ever actually say what the problem might be. (Hint: In a market economy, which Hering claims to favor, comparison-based raises make perfect sense - so any bashing Hering could come up with would problem be either inconsistent with his beliefs or very poorly reasoned.)

It would be easier to have confidence in the validity of such comparisons if they ever showed that somebody’s pay had to be lowered in order to be fair. But that’s not how it works. The comparison approach works like a ratchet — always up.

You pull some pure nonsense out of somewhere and expect it to be taken seriously by your readers, since after all, you're a big, respectable journalist. Check.

As much as I suspect Hering detests academia, I'm beginning to think even tenured professors have to work more to keep tenure than Hering does to keep his job.

Besides, getting back to that market thing: When's the last time you saw the price of something drop in a marketplace because someone else was selling said product cheaper? I know, I know - that's certainly the way it's supposed to be, but I'm just not seeing it happen anymore. Globalization and the monopolization of many areas of the economy suggest that there isn't really a whole lot of competition in the marketplace anymore. Do some research on cell phone plans here vs. plans in Europe or Asia. It's scary.

And Hering's suggestion that pay doesn't get lowered is, um, evasive at best. Of course job pay gets lowered occasionally, especially in the public sector. However, the reason is usually something besides a comparison-based setup. That would be punishing someone by cutting their pay for something they did not do.

Then there's the closer:

Lon Hoklin, a spokesman in the state Department of Administrative Services, was quoted that the state agency directors and managers “affect literally millions of people, and we need people who get it right.”

Well, if they’re getting it right already, a more modest pay adjustment probably would have kept them happy. And if they’re not getting it right, what justifies their soaring pay?

And if they are indeed getting it right, how come it takes years to get anything done in the state, anything from fixing highway bottlenecks (such as Pacific Boulevard in the Albany couplet) to getting access to a state park such as Bowers Rocks? (hh)

Hering is dishonest here again by implying that the job raises are fixed to one person. Nothing in the announcement suggests that people are any less likely to be fired. Instead, an across-the-board set of comparison raises like this suggests that Oregon is trying to attract or retain higher quality people (and that they are using a tool first perfected in Hering's beloved private sector to do it). Rather than focus on the individual in the job, the pay raises are focused on the job - so people can still be fired for doing poorly. I'd call it sloppy writing on Hering's part but I think the dishonesty through omission is intentional.

Finally, there is the unbelievable last line, the complaint about how things take so long. There is so little connection between what Hering is complaining about and the pay raises that, well, it's obvious that Hering just stuck that complaint in there as a sop to ideology. It's the sort of complaint a three-year-old makes, one that requires no critical thinking whatsoever. It assumes the state is a single, cohesive, uniform, and consistent entity, so any mistake can just be blamed on the "state bureaucracy."

Actually, now that I think about it, that sort of blaming is generally a stalking horse for right-wingers who want privatization for ideological reasons. I'd say Hering - pretensions to libertarianism aside - fits that bill.

I'm waiting for him to endorse Ron Paul, or maybe an actual Libertarian candidate.