A new topic, where is Portland heading and is the US with us?
This is possibly my last post on MB for a while as my grams and moms are visiting for the next couple weeks. Plus, even if we are stoking good debates and some good fun on my posts–I’m not following the correct rules, and I don’t know if I got into writing and especially blogging to follow rules. If I wanted to follow (to me, arduous and self-selecting) rules, I would still be writing for editors of dying publications and/or working at large bureaucratic corporations as I have done in the past and still get offered.
Regardless of what I decide (or others decide) over the next two weeks and whether I will be writing in the future here; I enjoyed the meetups, being a part of this community, and being able to speak personally about my experiences and thoughts about Portland. This is not something that I really see for my own community site in the present (or in any near future(s)) as it is about events and information on happenings far more than my/our experiences and thoughts.
Thank you readers for being with me these 45 days or so even if you told me I was dumb, I couldn’t speak English, you felt sorry for me for not owning a car, or telling me what not to write. Fun times for sure.
This post is also long and I have re-read it a couple times–but I’m to have made grammatical errors or not have been entirely clear in some places–sorry, view the “thank you” above.
Julian
This post starts in two places:
1. Portland is now considered the green leader of the US by many organizations including apparently Yahoo Green (yep, just heard of this today).
2. This comment to the Tri-Metiquette post earlier from divebarwife, but also from several people that has taken the Etiquette factor out and replaced it with should we fund tri-met more? Is it Tri-met/bike paths, etc vs cars in taxes and so forth.
Here is the Comment: “If a higher percentage of taxes need to go to transit - then that may be the case (don’t know - haven’t done the research) But a higher percent of ALL our taxes, not just select groups of people.”
On the first point, Yahoo is ranking us (along with others) b/c people think it is important. They don’t think it only in a tree-hugger way; they are thinking of it in “does a city(or any organizational level such as a business or country) succeed at a higher rate if they adopt sustainable practices?” –like pub trans, biking, urban growth boundaries, and I will include-free broadband/MetroFi in PDX’s case.
Here is my response to divebarwife’s comment and the overall debate:
I agree except there are two ways to divide people based on taxes. One is wrong simply b/c it doesn’t work over the long term , and one is possible and more just, and really–smart business for our country. Our government like to (de)moralize taxes often, and those burdens are often put on lower wage-earning citizens.
Payroll taxes are more important to you if you make a certain income. If you drink beer, beer taxes could be a problem depending on your income, same with cigs, and most sales taxes.
Payroll taxes are not as important nearly as much to someone making a million or more a year. I beleive they actually stop growing at $80,000 income level, but it might be a bit higher.
For these people, income tax, property tax, inheritance (the “death”=demoralizing by moralizing) tax, and capital gains taxes is where the bulk of their tax money is going. So, our government in its infinite wisdom (of I like me and my friends to be rich, rich, rich) lowers income taxes, capital gains taxes, the “death tax”, and even taxes on luxury cars and property!
These people are the ones who can assuredly pay a little more tax to make sure our infrastructure doesn’t fall apart. The whole modern tax system, which our repub friends have been eroding (while our economy and currency has eroded with it) was based on the great depression.
A train infrastructure was fine until our economy really needed easier and more direct methods to trade inside itself. Politics of GM and Ford aside, the modern highway system built by our taxes greatly helped our internal economy grow by reducing these infrastructure “barriers to trade”.
Another main reason we needed this infrastructure was that Europe was crazy, their economies were stupid (mercantile) and feudal, and their currencies were collapsing.
So, having 70% or so of our GDP being trade with Europe (numbers are not exact, but close and 10 years later that number had flipped to our internal economy), was bad business.
Therefore, we created our highway (infrastructure!)system with our taxes–and since a gigantic part of this country was broke and in debt–those were rich people’s taxes (aka the introduction of a “real progressive” income tax by FDR).
We are in a very similar point now. This starts in two places:
- Portland is now considered the green leader of the US by many organizations including apparently Yahoo Green (yep, just heard of this today).
- This comment to the Tri-Metiquette post earlier from divebarwife, but also from several people that has taken the Etiquette factor out and replaced it with should we fund tri-met more? Is it Tri-met/bike paths, etc vs cars in taxes and so forth.
Here is the Comment: “If a higher percentage of taxes need to go to transit - then that may be the case (don’t know - haven’t done the research) But a higher percent of ALL our taxes, not just select groups of people.”
On the first point, yahoo is ranking us (along with others) b/c people think it is important. They don’t think it only in a tree-hugger way, they are thinking of it in does a green city (or any organizational level such as a business or country) succeed at a higher rate if they adopt the sustainable practices of say…pub trans, biking, urban growth boundaries, and I will include-free broadband/metro-fi?
Here is my response to divebarwife’s comment and the overall debate:
I agree except there are two types of select people and ways to divide them based on taxes. Our government like to (de)moralize taxes often, and those burdens are often put on lower wage-earning citizens.
Payroll taxes are more important to you if you make a certain income. If you drink beer, beer taxes could be a problem depending on your income, same with cigs, and most sales taxes.
Payroll taxes are not as important nearly as much to someone making a million or more a year. I beleive they actually stop growing at $80,000 income level, but it might be a bit higher.
For these people, income tax, property tax, inheritance (the “death”=demoralizing by moralizing) tax, and capital gains taxes is where the bulk of their tax money is going. So, our government in its infinite wisdom (of I like me and my friends to be rich, rich, rich) lowers income taxes, capital gains taxes, the “death tax”, and even taxes on luxury cars and property!
These people are the ones who can assuredly pay a little more tax to make sure our infrastructure doesn’t fall apart. The whole modern tax system, which our repub friends have been eroding (while our economy and currency has eroded with it) was based on the great depression.
A train infrastructure was fine until our economy really needed easier and more direct methods to trade inside itself. Politics of GM and Ford aside, the modern highway system built by our taxes greatly helped our internal economy grow by reducing these infrastructure “barriers to trade”.
Another main reason we needed this infrastructure was that Europe was crazy, their economies were stupid (mercantile) and feudal, and their currencies were collapsing.
So, having 70% or so of our GDP being trade with Europe (numbers are not exact, but close and 10 years later that number had flipped to our internal economy), was bad business.
Therefore, we created our highway (infrastructure!)system with our taxes–and since a gigantic part of this country was broke and in debt–those were rich people’s taxes (aka the introduction of a “real progressive” income tax by FDR).
We are in a very similar point now.
Look at our markets, look at what Greenspan is saying. We need a new infrastructure–a modern infrastructure. That infrastructure is free broadband eveerwhere, as best and affordable public education as we can make, and a new public transport system so that we don’t get destroyed when:
1) Pakistan erupts in a civil war or another coup
2) Nigeria has another civil war (this is our 3rd largest oil supplier)
3) Chavez goes crazier down in Venzuala and cuts us off
4) Putin continues his Cold War tactics to a new level (the largest oil and natural gas supplier in the world)
5) Do I need to even go into what (is happening) can happen in the Middle East.
6) China and India eating all available oil resources they can get and coal.
Cars and our infrastructure system (electricity, plastics, etc) system wholly (95%) based on one very unstable resource = Depression part 2 when any of the above or two of the above take place.
We better prepare. Our old-infrastructure was built for a different economy and time and resource base. . We need to rethink oil. We need to rethink the “commute”. The best two ways to prepare= very good pub transport and very good broadband so people don’t have to “commute”. Some people can afford to pay taxes more than others (most of us are barely making it as it is), and therefore if they don’t want to be jumping out windows again like 1929 for losing all that lovely stock money (and the dollar being worth crap also), they better pony up that extra tax cash.
Warren Buffet knows it. Allen Greenspan finally admitting to it in his book. Paul Krugman (Princeton, NYT) knows it, Thomas Friedman knows it (’World is Flat’) and as far as our country goes= the most of wealth-producing/new economy cities seem to know it…and Portland is number one–so let’s keep it going.
Related posts:
Amen. Only way we are going to remain competitive is to make college cheaper/free, improve lower level education, and fix our broken health care system. If we want to keep up technologically with the rest of the world, we need broadband everywhere and a real 3G cellular network. Perhaps WiMAX everywhere is the solution to the broadband question?
Wow. I’m kinda thinkin’ the metblogs drama is more exciting than the posts! Love this!
Hey there all, dieselboi here, co-captain of Portland Metblogs. I see here that Julian is disappointed that we have rules. I can read the subtext of the post and yes, he is calling us out. These are rules set forth for all authors prior to them agreeing to sign up. The two most important “rules” with regards to Portland Metblogs is A) your post should be Portland based, and B) please do not cross-post or link back to other posts on your personal blog. Of the past 8 posts Julian worked on, almost all of them linked back to pdxpipeline.com, his personal site. Further, there was actual double posting going on both sites. For us, this is about integrity. When our readers see the same stuff on two different sites, they begin to wonder.
I feel like an ass having to write this because it makes us look bad. On another blog, the post may have just “disappeared,” but here at Metblogs, we do not delete posts. Let it sit out there as a testament of how one individual decided to deal with an issue of this blog.
And my crime? I dared question the relevance to PDX of crossing the Odwalla/Calistoga streams!
But at least *I* did it privately in email, and without dumping a ton of generalizations and interpretations on top of it.
Um, until now - for point one, that is (sorry, can’t help it, have to air my unreasonable ‘please write about local stuff’ stance for all to see.
I’ll skip the retaliatory value judgments and generalizations and justifications and move to the main point here: I think we just got a passive-aggressive flip off, Dieselboi, don’t you?
I read between the lines and came back with a resignation letter, anyway…
tl;dr
:-)
wow,
Anyone want to wallow in “days of our lives” or does anyone want to actually discuss what is likely the most serious issue of our time.
As far as being “passive-aggressive flip off”–nope. Passive-aggressive is behind the scenes. My thoughts are right here for everyone to see and I welcome putting up our back and forth emails if you’d like…i doubt you would.
Sadly, the actual issue here is what shall we do with our city’s infrastructure, tax situation, future of our city/country/world…Adressed…only by “truth” as I can see.
By the way…they cut me off from blogging here b/c the rules (your advertisers’ rules perhaps) were not followed.
You want to post your rules? Cool? There are always some rules…but let’s put this BS
all in the open if you want to act you like you are “in the open”.
Dieselboi…who are you? Have you ever written something that wasn’t PDX related? You’re out…how dare you
I’ll stop here b/c I can understand if you have to hide behind what you post–but don’t call me out…If you can’t stand behind who you are, then STFUP
You accused me of writing here to direct traffice? Are you kidding me? I don’t have ads…This advertising here–do you get any of it? The other “captains”–do you? Why do you direct us to publish certain things? You direct us to publish in ways to drive hits…
Is this a forum or a way to make ad money?
You call me a splogger( and you did by saying that I direct traffic to my site, in which I also direct traffic to your site, Bikeportland, Mercury, WW, etc–and I get more traffic than you!)…who has ads? Where does it go to? To the caps?
Come on…open up…my site will have some very local driven, sustainable ads that dedicate half their money to non-profits that have been vetted. This is coming–yes. It has nothing to do with my posting here.
I try to make as much info available as possible..you want to seemingly live in a COKE vs PEPSI worls where you go here and read or there…nope…I want people to see as much info as possible…and if someone is writing stuff on my/our site and it is not here, I show them. I do(did) the same to/for you
You have “federated Media” advertising–I/we do not have ads. Where does the money go to? I’m transparent…you?
You deserve to make money, but don’t call me out as directing traffic to a site with no ads when you have plenty and no explanation as to where it is going…
Does it go to you…captains? I don’t freaking care. I did not come here for money (thanks for saying tht it will come one day after I signed up as some weird teaser to post more and then your weird e-mail about me not posting enough–should we make that transparent?)–I didn’t write here for that.
Either way, do you actually CARE about the or the issue addressed in the post–Where is Portland going with pub transit and is the US with us? It is probably the most serious (along with education and health care) issue of our time!!@!!!
Do you even care? Hey, I generated controversy for ya…I know you likes it…bleeds…leads right?
How about addressing the issue at hand…pub transport and our tax dollars before calling me out…you want to call me out…please, don’t fake this “at least I did it in email” garbage…you don’t have to…let’s put it all out here…the whole ridiculous exchange so that your future writers know what it really means
We can do it right here for everyone to see and think about whether the issues of Portland are important to you or the controversy/back-biting/ad rev is the key…
I know one thing…either way, my/our site (PDXP) will live on b/c we decided long ago that we just want to give info, no matter what, and people can take it or leave it. You went the another route and decided what was best for your advertisers/your money/”federated media” at some point.
Sean(MB creator) is an innovator…he is part of what is making right what was wrong with old media…this BS right here…it’s not issues, it’s viewers…it’s “Your kids might die, turn it at 11 to see why”
you are fighting me…that is exactly why people turn(ed) off old media…I got(get) more people actually looking here…you didn’t care b/c for you it was some battle…no battle for me…we’ll grow and with this attitude/style you will continue to lose writers and die…
julian
wow, ego much there, julian? as a former metblog writer, all i can say is that i was never lured by the promise of money or in any way directed about what/how to write on the site except that posts should be portland-based. i won’t speak for dieselboi or betsy, but in my experience they were totally transparent and up front about the expectations for the authors. and if you were a reader of the blog before starting as a writer, i think it’d be pretty clear how the blog works — it’s not about breaking news or (necessarily) being controversial, but about letting people know what you think about this town we all live in with a personal spin…not to get to hallmark-y on ya.
as for your actual post above, yeah, it’s probably a pretty relevant topic, but after attempting to get through the apparent self-pity in the first few paragraphs, i had to just shrug and give up.
Well Julian those are big questions that need real answers. A blog comment may not be the place for those answers - someone ought to write a paper on ‘green’ and ’sustainability’ as I feel that the USA is looking at the wrong side of these issues. By that I mean the USA’s ability to always come up with a feelgood answer to a serious problem. Take obesity for example - a major health care problem if ever there was one. The answer, fat-free foods everywhere, but the problem lies in calorie consumption not just reducing fat intake. Result, a population that is still obese.
Dave Allen http://www.pampelmoose.com
I never saw all this coming, too busy pondering my first comment. Blogs with rules won’t last long. The whole point of blogs is radical transparency. I run Pampelmoose.com without rules and advertising. Anyone can comment and link and trackback, that’s called a blog. Presumably MetroBlogging is not a blog it’s a financial and business operation. Fair enough, but how much do you pay your writers?
Metroblogging isn’t a blog? Now I’ve read it all…
I really hate to add any more comments to this ridiculous post, but for those of you who don’t understand how it works at Metroblogging we don’t get paid to do this. We are invited to join as writers when there is an open window, and by joining you agree to a few things: post at least three times a week; don’t cross-post to your own blog; keep topics relevant to Portland; and basically try and make your post something people would be interested in reading about.
Betsy and Dieslboi are great captains, as well as very good writers, and they aren’t in it for money, advertising, ego (unlike Julian it turns out)or any other bullshit that is being thrown out here. The other point that’s been left out is Portland Metroblogging is just a small part of Metroblogging which is an international collection of blogs. With so many writers volunteering it makes sense to at least have some sort of guidelines to make sure that things are consistent.
I think it’s really sad that Julian decided he needed to use this forum to throw a tantrum and sling mud as a final post. Anyone can start a blog. Big deal. If it feeds your ego than that’s awesome. However as you gain more writers you might start to find out that an anarchist “system” doesn’t actually work, even in the bloggy world.
The green issue is incredibly important and hopefully we can address it in a more coherent manner soon.
Good luck Julian!
Aaron, a blog is an open forum for a two way conversation, it’s not a walled garden. Metroblogging is a walled garden that charges advertisers good money and according to Kai its writers are all unpaid volunteers. Kai also says it’s a collection of international writers too. So in my everyday parlance, obviously I’m not as smart as you, I would suggest that Metroblogging is strectching the use of the term blog. It sounds more like a pyramid scheme - the day Metroblogging is acquired for the big bucks ( and this does happen, I recently sold Pampelmoose) how will all those writers feel then..?
Dave, great site. My new favorite on the toolbar. I love reading music reviews from that type of perspective instead of the industry wonks. Thanks for the comments.
Oh, and for the question of whether Portland Metblogs is a blog or not, hey, everyone has their opinions. To clarify Kai’s point, we are international in the sense that we have 54 other cities with metblog blogs. All started by blogging.la.
cheers
In all honestly, who really cares what Alan “Get an ARM rather than a 30-year fixed loan” Greenspan OR Thomas “Iraq will be won in the next 6 months” Friedman has to say about anything, at any time? They’ve been so wrong and miscalculated that should be laughed off the national stage. Along with anybody who writes for the National Review.
As a regular reader and commenter here, I have a couple of observations:
1. Labeling a few seemingly reasonable and simple guidelines as “rules” might be a big part of the problem here.
2. I assume Julian was advised of these guidelines before he agreed to become a Metblog writer.
3. As a reader, I would suggest to Julian that if his posts were more coherent and cleaner, he would get more positive reactions.
“Well Julian those are big questions that need real answers. A blog comment may not be the place for those answers - someone ought to write a paper on ‘green’ and ’sustainability’ as I feel that the USA is looking at the wrong side of these issues. By that I mean the USA’s ability to always come up with a feelgood answer to a serious problem. Take obesity for example - a major health care problem if ever there was one. The answer, fat-free foods everywhere, but the problem lies in calorie consumption not just reducing fat intake. Result, a population that is still obese.”
Wow, cool…yeah, there are some people definitely writing on that. In fact, I think that having these web 2.0 conversations has a huge correlation to sustainability. Sustainability, like the new net is a conversation, a grass roots movement and something we all work on individually and together.
I have your email, and I’ll shoot you some books that I’ve found useful and are at Multco (”Cradle to Cradle” is great–the book itself is sustainable).
There is actually a very nice sustainability conference coming to portland (bizandsustainability.org) in November sponsored by the director of my program at PSU. Take a look at that site–it’s amazing who’s coming.
On the fat/calorie issue. True, and it is said that of the thousands of scientists who’ve said this, the person who got air-time was Mr. Adkins. Yeah, you reduced your calorie intake with his diet, but now you’re killing your heart.
Puppies are cute!
I decided to post about this subject over at Pampelmoose.com go there to read my thoughts. (I’d love to post a link here but that’s against the rules.) And I have 3 letters for that, SEO, it favors incoming not outgoing links….
You can post links in the comments, there is no regulation against that. I do think the spam filter limits how many links, but links are fine.
Here is a link to Dave’s entry:
http://www.pampelmoose.com/mspeaks/?p=1011
Mmmmm… Odwalla streams.
Just finally read this whole mess. As a former Metblogger who managed from time to time to alienate all sorts of people, and one who managed to run afoul of dieselboi a couple of times (although never in a serious, grudge-inducing manner), this whole drama is at least somewhat interesting.
From what I’ve seen of Julian’s writing, it isn’t all that great. I think, in terms of the Metblog, that should be the key consideration in terms of who stays and who goes. The Metroblog, in my opinion, is about engaging people with engaging ideas put forth in an interesting, readable, and accessible way. While Julian has some interesting ideas, the writing isn’t great and it isn’t really accessible.
Add in the issue of the “rules.” I don’t think I have the original e-mail anymore, that I got with my invitation to join the team, but it made it clear that there were two conditions to being a part: everything I wrote had to have some obvious relation to Portland (this is the most often violated rule here, as some of the articles have a less-than-tenuous relationship to our city), and avoid cross-posting. It was never my understanding that rule #2 was an absolute one (that is, I never understood that you could never, ever cross-post) but it was always clear that cross-posting was and is generally frowned upon.
And, to me, the rules make sense. The first is to keep things true to the “About this Site” mission statement of sorts, available up to the right: “Written from the perspective of people who live, work, and play here every day . . . Get comfortable and have a look around if you’d like to know more about Portland, have a peek at the authors who share their Portland experiences with you . . .” The site is about Portland, by Portlanders, so posts about things that aren’t related to Portland (or are generic enough to be about any town) simply don’t belong.
And the second rule, as I see it, is intended to avoid abuse of the forum. While I never shied away from inserting a link to a prior opinion I’d written on a topic (either at the Metblog or my own blog), I understood that the Metblog isn’t there to drive my own numbers up. My involvement at the Metblog was permitted with the understanding that I was supposed to add to the discourse at the Metblog, as opposed to steering things my own way to run up my own hit meter.
Julian, I’ve never met you, I don’t know you, I never saw any of the e-mails sent your way by the Metblog crew. I do know that Betsy was always entirely awesome as a team captain when I was around. I know that dieselboi can be abrasive but has his heart in the right place with regard to the Metblog. And I know that, other than some free nachos at a Metblog round-up, I never came away from my time here with any sort of “income” other than the satisfaction of sharing my thoughts, and I never was directed to write anything except to the extent that my posts were responsive to the marketplace of ideas that is this blog, in this city.
I continue to think that the Metblog is, in general, a good thing. And part of that goodness is by having some standards in who writes for the blog. While I’m not happy to see a perspective lost, I’m happy that good writing, and coherent thought, will prevail.
I’m steering well clear of all this.