Surgeon General: So Much For Sanjay

The dreaded "personal reasons":

Television news celebrity and surgeon Sanjay Gupta will not be the nation’s top doctor, after pulling out of consideration for the post.

“Sanjay was under serious consideration for surgeon general. He told us he was going to withdraw for personal reasons. We hope he stays involved in public service,” said an Obama administration spokeswoman.

I'm not that disappointed. I wasn't that in love with Dr. Gupta as SG.

Let's get someone with a little less celebrity in there, please. Now, just who would be smart enough and passionate enough and largely responsible for the win for the good guys in the last election? It's right on the tip of my tongue ... who could it be ...

The Tweety Congress

I'll take the contrary view here.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer re-snarks Sen McCain on a tweet mocking the Oregon Solar Highway and it's a Twitter War?

There's only two remarks there. Of course, Earl's does win the "Nuke 'em From Orbit–it's The Only Way To Be Sure" prize. Sen McCain should know better than to lead with his chin like that.

But I've read the tweets from Rep Earl during the President's address to Congress and aside from the remark about Teleprompter Jindal, I found it all kind of banal.

Sen McCain's tweets, which include such semi-inscrutable awkward stabs at wit such as 150,000 for lobster research - similar to lobster managment?, see the sea turtles on your $238,000 Polynesian Voyage, and $900,000 for fish management - how does one manage a fish..., some of these bon mots separated by an hour or more, just leave me unimpressed.

Now, I don't want to be hating on Rep. Earl–I'm a huge fan. And I guess the thing about Twitter is it's all so immediate! But it just seems to be making the idea of knowing it all right now seems so pointless.

I think Twittering makes you kind of stupid.

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.