PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The Department of Bits and Pieces is one of three departments I run with a free hand to do what I want to do and say what I want to say. The others are the Departments of Pet Peeves and Just saying. So, her goes with Bits and Pieces, which, among other things, means that I just want to cite the point quickly, make comments, and move on without writing a lot.

PURDUE UNIVERSITY REFORMS: President Mitch Daniels is receiving a number of plaudits these days for his initiative to reform the way the university does business with its customers – read “students.”

Among his initiatives – he is a former federal government budget director under President George W. Bush, so he knows what he is doing when it comes to budgets – are efforts to reduce the huge debt load that students often incur to complete a higher education degree.

One example is a plan to link what students owe to what they will make when they graduate.

Not surprisingly, from higher education’s ivory towers, Daniels’ initiatives have come under criticism from faculty members. This from a letter to the editor from a Michigan resident that appeared in the Wall Street Journal:

“University faculties possess an ingrained suspicion of, if not disdain for, any president who isn’t a ‘club member,’ meaning a lifelong academic. On top of being an outsider, Daniels is a conservative, a toxic mark in academia, where an entitlement mindset prevails that keeps delivering to insiders without any need for demonstrating sensitivity to ‘customer’ costs.

“More than a mere cost-cutter, Daniels has enhanced Purdue’s reputation as a top-tier university and has been a determined champion of free speech on campus. His model of leadership ought to be emulated at colleges across the country to return savings to students. Yet, despite these accomplishments, be assured most university presidents and faculty yearn for Daniels’s failure and ignominious exit.”

Comment: Daniels deserves high praise for bringing a sense of financial discipline to Purdue. His approach ought to provide lessons for other presidents around the country.

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN DEPARTS: Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan never explicitly mentioned President Trump in remarks to mark the end of his, Ryan’s, term. But he bemoaned the divisiveness that has been a hallmark of Trump’s relentless, bitter denunciations of his political opponents, almost always on Twitter.

“All of this gets amplified by technology, with an incentive structure that preys on people’s fears, and algorithms that play on anger,” he said. “Outrage has become a brand.”

He said combativeness “pulls on the threads of our common humanity in what could be our unraveling,” and he conceded that he didn’t know how to fix the problem.

Comment: Ryan deserves substantial credit for his three years as House Speaker, though he admits that he didn’t achieve many of his hallmark initiatives to reform entitlement spending. He came into the Speaker’s Office with a laudable record of advocating such initiatives from cogent public policy perspectives, but, when he came up against Trump and an ever-changing Republican party, he couldn’t get done what he wanted to get done. His job was a lot like herding cats.

HEALTH INSURANCE DEBACLE: A key element of the current legal fight surrounding the so-called Affordable Health Care Plan is the individual mandate, which requires Americans to acquire health insurance.

Under the original law, those who failed to comply with the requirement would have faced a tax penalty. But, in 2017, Congress passed a law that revoked the tax penalty, making the individual mandate essentially toothless.

Texas and 18 other states then sued, arguing that the revised law was still unconstitutional because of a legal principle called “inseverability” — the notion that some parts of a law are so intrinsic to other parts that invalidating one invalidates the others. Sixteen other states intervened in defense of the ACA.

Then, last week, a Federal Circuit Court judge ruled that, if the mandate was not in force, the entire law had to go down the drain.

Comment: Stupid decision! I suspect it will be overturned somewhere along the line, but the decision left health care policy in this country in limbo – again, or perhaps still.

As I wrote in a blog earlier this week, my proposal for health care reform would start with an individual insurance mandate. Without that, no insurance pool would work.

Think of it like car insurance. It you drive, you have to buy car insurance. In the same way, if you live, you should have to buy health insurance.

SPEAKING OF STUPID: Past and probable future Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi uttered an incredible sentence when the Affordable Health Care plan was under consideration in the House she led in 2010.

Her quote: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Comment: Who knows what new bill Pelosi will want to pass without reading it.

OREGON GOVERNMENT SPENDING: Secretary of State Dennis Richardson showed up this week with a proposal that he said would avoid the need for new taxes for the 2019-21 state government budget, which will be the responsibility of Governor Kate Brown and the Oregon Legislature.

According to the Oregonian newspaper, here is a summary of Richardson’s proposal:

“If Oregon had used a web-based procurement program in the last biennium, it could have saved more than $1 billion, a state audit has found.

“The state’s purchasing system for goods and services consists of paperwork and old computer systems, which auditors said resulted in inconsistencies and “does not adequately analyze state spending data.” Of roughly $8 billion in spending per biennium, auditors said the state has data on approximately $1 billion or 12.5 per cent of the purchases.”

The auditors estimated Oregon could have saved $400 million to $1.6 billion if it had a modern procurement system in place during the 2015-2017 biennium. For example, they said, the state paid 17 different prices for one type of multifunction printer and 131 different amounts for surge protectors.

Comment: Good work by Richardson and his auditors, even as, publicly, he continues to fight a brain tumor. I continue to hope that, instead of just turning to new taxes, the state’s political leaders, including Democrats in the Governor’s Office, the House and the Senate, will look at current spending and find places to cut or operate more efficiently.

It should not be just tax and spend. It should be, review spending with a critical eye, then and only then, if a consensus can be produced, impose new taxes.

The e-government purchasing deal is exactly the kind of initiative frugal spenders ought to employ.