As a result, transit service has been cut by 14% in the past four years, and more cuts are due beginning September.

What was revealing in the Oregonian feature was how no one was willing to accept responsibility. At any point during an 18-year period, dozens of people served on the TriMet Board or in top management positions, and they could have demanded change. But they didn’t.

Of course, leadership starts at the top, and it’s the governor who appoints the TriMet Board. In August 1994, then-Governor Barbara Roberts met with the TriMet board chair, Loren Wyss, who strongly objected to the draft contract. Instead of supporting him, she forced him off the board.

The legacy of that decision is a terminally dysfunctional business model at TriMet. Someone on the TriMet board needs to have the courage to say that. But who will do so when it’s so much easier to remain silent?

His work can be found at: http://www.creationsbyjoseph.com/

Freedom fighter Vaclav Havel’s recent death reminded freedom lovers everywhere that no matter how entrenched rulers seem to be, they are vulnerable to so-called “powerless” citizens who in fact are not powerless when they refuse to surrender their consciences. The lessons of his life can speak to us this election season, as we debate competing visions for the direction of our state and our country, the limits of government power, and what we expect of our elected officials and of ourselves as citizens.

Vaclav Havel’s perseverance in speaking his conscience played a crucial part in an awakening that led to Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution and the establishment of a free republic. After four decades of Soviet control of Czechoslovakia, and freshly released from prison, Havel gave the presidential inaugural address on January 1, 1990.

The country was an ecological mess and in economic shambles, but Havel focused his remarks on the havoc worked upon the character of Czechoslovakians themselves. He told his battered people, “I assume that you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.”

“The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities.”

Although Havel was a playwright whose first love was theater, he became “…dedicated to trying to behave like a citizen, even where citizenship is degraded.” As a master writer he had a profound impact on Eastern Europe. He quickly prepared his essay The Power of the Powerless in 1977 for a secret meeting in Poland with Solidarity activists such as Zbygniew Bujak. Bujak recalled:

“This essay reached us at the Ursus factory in 1979 at a point when we felt we were at the end of the road….We began to doubt the purposefulness of what we were doing. Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it gave us the theoretical underpinning for our activity. It maintained our spirits; we did not give up, and a year later it became clear that the party apparatus and the factory management were afraid of us. We mattered.…When I look at the victories of Solidarity…I see in them an astonishing fulfillment of the prophecies and knowledge contained in Havel’s essay.” (Open Letters: Selected Writings 1965 – 1990, by Vaclav Havel, edited by Paul Wilson, Vintage Books)

Solidarity was organized in 1980 and is largely credited with the 1990 overthrow of the Communist regime in Poland by the presidential election of Lech Walesa.

The “theoretical underpinning” of Havel’s essay is that totalitarianism is like a machine constructed with interchangeable parts: Government officials play the same roles, coming and going as the machine grinds on relentlessly. Havel told how the machine-like specter of totalitarianism stripped innocent individuals of their integrity when they complied with meaningless regulation. Thus, a master beer brewer miserably made bad beer in the state factory, students reluctantly learned Russian, writers had recourse to underground publications, and unlicensed musicians could only perform illegally.

All tyrannies seek to divest individuals of their power by imposing a wedge of tension between inner truth and outer behavior. In The Power of the Powerless, Havel’s fictitious example is a vegetable-seller, a greengrocer who was required to place a “Workers of the World Unite” sign next to his tomatoes, lest his son be denied entrance to the university.

Why would totalitarianism react viciously to the simple omission of a sign next to some tomatoes? Because, just as a child ends the entire parade by asking why the emperor has no clothes, one person pointing to truth threatens a bureaucratic house of cards entirely based on lies. Cumulative instances of honesty – genuine art, competence, trusting friendships, verified information – wear down tyranny like waves eroding the foundation of a sand castle so the whole structure crumples.

Those who survive intact morally by choosing truth may pay a price physically. Havel never recovered from the pneumonia he contracted during his four years in prison. Yet, Havel’s inaugural remarks targeted the more toxic effect lies have on people: meaninglessness, loss of genuine friendship, and so on. We lose what makes us human. Writers employ such terms as “truncated individuals,” “empty cores,” and “nobody in the building” to describe the loss of inner integrity due to complying with lies.

Vaclav Havel was as surprised as anybody when the USSR left Czechoslovakia in 1989:

“When you try to act in accordance with your conscience, when you try to speak the truth, when you try to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won’t necessarily lead anywhere, but it might.”

The challenge in dissenting from tyranny is to persevere in what we believe is right even though we cannot be sure of the outward result. There is a price to pay for standing for our principles, but the reward is the treasure of personal integrity. Vaclav Havel’s words ring true for us today.

*Susan Gore is founder of Wyoming Liberty Group and a guest contributor for Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.

Last week Booker gave an inspiring keynote address before the American Federation for Children, a national school choice organization. He said his strong support for school choice stems from the options he was afforded in his own life-  options denied to millions of children because their ZIP codes determine what schools they must attend.

A Black Democrat himself, Booker made it clear he is disappointed that “his president” hasn’t yet joined him in supporting school choice for every family, not just for those he calls “the connected and elected.”

Not surprisingly, the left was upset that Booker would speak before a group partially funded by what it considers right-wingers. Booker slapped those concerns aside in his talk, making it clear that to him school choice is not a left/right or partisan issue, but one of equal rights.

But, the heat Mayor Booker took from the left last week pales in comparison with the heat he took last month. Ignoring his security team’s advice, he ran into a burning building to save his neighbor trapped in the flames. He rescued the woman and then went to the hospital with second-degree burns and smoke inhalation.

Cory Booker is a genuine hero. Not just to the woman he saved from that fire, but to the millions of poor and minority children trapped in a life of disappointment and failed dreams by what, in effect, is our burning public school system. Booker is trying to rescue those children, too. Please join him by making full school choice a reality in your community.

We at Cascade Policy Institute fashion ourselves a libertarian think tank. This description is often misunderstood or ignored, but it is important to us because our goal is to advance liberty in the face of coercion from both the right and the left.

In this discussion Michael hopes to describe what it means (to him) to be a libertarian, how that system of beliefs differs from both the conservative and liberal worldviews, and how Cascade Policy Institute hopes to ally itself with elements of both the right and the left in order to advocate for an Oregon that is both more free and more prosperous.

Admission is free. Please bring your own lunch. Coffee and cookies will be served. Space is limited to ten guests on a first come, first served basis, so sign up early. To RSVP, email Patrick Schmitt at patrick@cascadepolicy.org or call 503-242-0900.

Dr. Conerly is an economic consultant and chairman of the board of Cascade Policy Institute. Before entering the business world, he taught economics and public policy at the college level.

Admission is free. Please bring your own lunch. Coffee and cookies will be served. Space is limited to ten guests on a first come, first served basis, so sign up early. To RSVP, email Patrick Schmitt at patrick@cascadepolicy.org or call 503-242-0900.

“From outside in the fields came a sickening smack of an axe on a tree.
Then we heard the tree fall. The very last Truffula tree of them all.”
–From The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss

This spring, a motion picture version of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax hit the big screen with a not-so-subtle environmental message about the threat timber harvesting poses to the environment. Published in 1971, the book tells the story of a business, led by the “Once-ler,” that cuts down all the trees in the Truffula forest, destroying wildlife habitat, the air, and water in the process.

The Lorax, a friendly, furry creature that “speaks for the trees,” announces what he thinks has caused this catastrophe, scolding the businessman, “Sir, you are crazy with greed.”

Forty years after the book was published, however, a different story has been written in forests across the globe. Rather than being at odds, the Once-ler and the Lorax have found a common interest in making sure forests grow and expand―and many of the world’s forests have benefitted.

In the industrialized world, instead of the scarcity Seuss predicted, forests are plentiful. Last year was the International Year of the Forest, and the United Nations offered some good news. For the last two decades, total land area covered by forest in the Northern Hemisphere―where forestry is particularly active―has increased.

Despite the implication that economic growth, or as Seuss has the Once-ler say, “biggering, and biggering, and biggering,” would lead to environmental destruction, the nations where growth has been most steady are the ones enjoying the best environmental outcomes.

Not only are nations in the Northern Hemisphere seeing forestland expand, but wood is increasingly recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly building materials.

At the University of Washington, researchers compared the environmental impact of building with either wood, concrete, or steel. The hands-down winner for lower energy use, less waste and less water use was wood. While concrete and steel can be mined only once, trees are constantly replacing themselves.

One thing Seuss got right was that once the Once-ler cut all the trees down, his business went down with them. Foresters understand this. Destroying a forest by cutting down every last tree makes no sense, and so there are more trees in American forests today than there were just a few decades ago.

Indeed, the economic value of the trees ensures forests are replanted and available for wildlife and future generations. Even companies not planning on harvesting in 60 years recognize that land with 20-year-old trees is more valuable than land with no trees at all. Replanting isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for business.

This is not to say the world’s forests are forever safe, or to dismiss the impact deforestation has on the environment. The enemy in these areas, however, is more likely to be poverty than industry. Few people realize the most common use for trees across the globe is as firewood to heat a home and cook a meal. These trees are not cut down by machines, but by people struggling to meet the needs of daily living.

It is true that government regulation of forestry is stricter today than it was forty years ago. It is also true, however, that we are still harvesting a significant amount of wood in the Northern Hemisphere, while preserving vast areas for future generations. Sawmills are making the most of every part of the tree, literally using lasers to measure the best way to saw the log. Technology has made effective regulation possible by using every tree wisely and limiting short-term pressures to overharvest.

Forty years after he sprang from the imagination of Dr. Seuss, the Lorax would be happy to see that, far from disappearing, many forests today are thriving. They are there because the real story of the forests has not been about an unending battle between the fictional Lorax and the hard-hearted Once-ler, but a friendship that understands that both benefit from healthy forests that future generations can enjoy.

Todd Myers is the environmental director at Washington Policy Center. He has more than a decade of experience in environmental policy and is the author of the book Eco-Fads: How the Rise of Trendy Environmentalism Is Harming the Environment. He is a guest contributor for Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research center.

“These laws amount to nothing more than naked economic protectionism…they have nothing to do with protecting the riding public. They have everything to do with protecting the city’s taxicab companies from competition and driving up prices for consumers.”

 
Portland has a long history of protecting favored businesses while harming consumers through such anti-competitive regulations. Hopefully, this time the courts will slap down the regulators and cut the rest of us a break.
 
Of course, the City Council can do the right thing first and repeal these regulations. Before voting for your favorite mayoral or council candidate, you might ask them whose side they’re on: favored businesses or yours?

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