Who They Should Be Quoting

Too often, when looking for expertise on public policy, the "go-to" regional think tank is the Cascade Policy Institute, which is actually sad.

The Cascade Policy Institute hates you. Typically they are for anything that give business a regulation-free hand; they dress like conservatives and usually talk like some odd hybrid of Conservative Republican and Libertarian. But they do it oh, so reasonably, so you can't just tune them out.

The real organization that the news should look to, in my opinion, is the Oregon Center for Public Policy. In so far as policies and politics popular amongst the power elite over the last twenty years has favored the powerful and wealthy at the expense of the working class, OCPP, a Silverton-based organization realizes that too few people speak on behalf of the people in our society who ussually get given the short end of the stick and are told to like it. From their core principles document which can be viewed in full here:

• Stand with the poor. We search for solutions that benefit all Oregonians, but always with a special focus on the interests of the low-income.
• Economic justice. We believe in the equitable distribution of the economy's benefits.
• Good government works.
  We believe that government plays a necessary and positive role, and we
  are vigilant and critical in pursuit of improved effectiveness and
  efficiency.

I believe as they do. And they do a hell of a good job in articulating that making sure that the counting in the poor (which, if we let things be, most of us will be soon) isn't just good sense or some form of elite nobless oblige but an ironclad prerequisite for a country that isn't rotting from the inside out (kind of like what America is doing right now, thanks to the tender mercies of the Republican party).

Any set of wonks with a good heart who comes out of a little Oregon town does just fine by me.

They're some of The Good Guys.