Why does Vicki Berger score slightly better than Sen. Frank Morse? What bills was this based on?

Chamberlain and the AFL-CIO really have sunk about as low as one can get with this:

The Oregon AFL-CIO will provide a breakdown for individual lawmakers who ask how their scores were computed, but otherwise that information won’t be made public — just the final scores for each legislator

Sorry, but if they won't publish their criteria, it is quite appropriate to be concerned that legislators who got a high rating are hopelessly corrupted and indebted to the AFL-CIO (we know the phone-banking and other work they do.) Certainly no reason based on this to believe they actually are good for working people.

The AFL-CIO in this state is doing damage to workers and the progressive cause with this kind of juvenile, sleazy tactic. I say to them: Put up the criteria to allow us, the voting public to judge for ourselves whether YOU are actually defending the interests of working people.

I'd argue what the AFL-CIO has done is given those they endorse a moral choice: They should now demand the AFL-CIO make the criteria public, or repudiate this disreputable event. If those they support don't make that demand or make the criteria public themselves, we just learned something about their integrity (or lack of it). I'm particularly interest in what quid-pro-quos were involved in a high rating.

Interesting. Nice to see that Jeff Merkley got a high rating from the AFL-CIO. As I know that he was from a working class family, and that he has tried to help working class families, it is great to see more corroboration. Especially corroboration that comes from analysis of a person's actions and history, not just statements.

And in response to What A Crock, they released their methodology. They said that whether or not a candidate voted in accordance with the Oregon AFL-CIO and whether he or she co-sponsored a bill (or did some other act to merit "bonus points").

Seems pretty straight forward. They tell you what they were looking at when examining people. But if that doesn't satisfy you, then I guess what you're wanting is not just the basics of their methods, but all the nitty-gritty detail, the actual numbers for the positive and negative extras. Such as how much does a person get penalized for voting against a particular bill, or how much of a bonus does a person get for walking the picket lines versus lobbying in favor of a bill.

You would have to be pretty interested in discrediting these results to want to dig that deep. Do you honestly think that the AFL-CIO is going to be incredibly inconsistent in their scores? That they are going to play favorites with one person over another, and pull some shenanigans with certain votes or actions over others?

Who knows, maybe they do weight walking the picket lines with members of the AFL-CIO fairly high. However, I'd be willing to bet that a person that was willing to walk the lines would also be in agreement with the AFL-CIO in a number of other categories, and so most likely not generate any inconsistencies in the results.

You would have to be pretty interested in discrediting these results to want to dig that deep. Do you honestly think that the AFL-CIO is going to be incredibly inconsistent in their scores? That they are going to play favorites with one person over another, and pull some shenanigans with certain votes or actions over others?

A statement that packs as much ignorance in just three sentences as this one does can't be quoted enough as an advertisement for Blue Oregon.

A statement that packs as much ignorance in just three sentences as this one does can't be quoted enough as an advertisement for Blue Oregon.

Nice attack. Just call me ignorant and be done with it. Simple, but makes you feel good.

According to you, because the AFL-CIO isn't releasing the exact system, it must be a load of garbage. I can see that perspective, transparency is important.

And while you may not be satisfied with this, votes are a matter of public record. True, that's not everything that went into the system, but the focus of the AFL-CIO release was on the laws themselves, with other bonuses being applied. Not as easy as with complete transparency, but there should be enough to go on so that one could compare a legislator's record with how he or she ranked, look at the trends, and decide for yourself whether the system as they applied it was horribly corrupt and incorrect.

I'm not saying that's a perfect method of verifying, but it is one that is easily accomplished with public records. And hopefully that's enough to keep the AFL-CIO honest.

That's what I believe anyway. But maybe I'm just ignorant.

There's a ton of info on our web site

I wouldn't call that a ton of info. It's just a run-down of the theory behind your rankings, without actually providing the detailed data behind them.

I think the AFL-CIO should have enough faith in us to be able to assess their rankings on the merits, rather than just asking us to assume they've done a good job. A case in point that's not relevant to these rankings but would have been to past rankings is the PERS reform litigation. The AFL-CIO opposed that reform, so voting for it would have been a negative mark against the representative. But a lot of progressives, including myself, believe that the PERS reform was absolutely essential because the benefits really had become ridiculous compared to the retirements of the taxpayers who were funding them. The whole system was destroying people's faith in their public servants, as well as sucking money from education and health care. I respect labor's opposition to the reforms -- they were a direct financial hit to their members -- but I also disagree with them.

My question is, what are the specific bills that the AFL-CIO viewed as positive, and those they viewed as negative? I suspect I agree with them on most things, but probably not all. By not releasing the specifics, it looks like they don't want me to make my own judgment. And that's disappointing.

Sargent, the stuff you are pointing to has no relevant specifics: You're pretending to make quantitative assessments of who supports your interests. That only is credible if you release the full quantitative methodology because that gives us an accurate picture of what these legislators are actually supporting. You'll forgive me if after this arrogant statement from your own website :

The Oregon AFL-CIO will provide a breakdown for individual lawmakers who ask how their scores were computed, but otherwise that information won’t be made public — just the final scores for each legislator

and the vacuous babbling you point to as an explanation if I don't take the AFL-CIO's word you actually have the rank-and-file's interests at heart.

Hayes Ingraham:

And while you may not be satisfied with this, votes are a matter of public record. True, that's not everything that went into the system, but the focus of the AFL-CIO release was on the laws themselves, with other bonuses being applied. Not as easy as with complete transparency, but there should be enough to go on so that one could compare a legislator's record with how he or she ranked, look at the trends, and decide for yourself whether the system as they applied it was horribly corrupt and incorrect.

Why should I, as a responsible voter, go through this amount of work based on no facts? If the AFL-CIO wants me to vote for people who support them they had better be falling all over themselves to give me all the information I need to see it their way.

In the meantime, as a responsible voter I have every reason now to count this AGAINST these politicians because the AFL-CIO refuses to disclose the information that allows me to judge both their goals and the character of these politicians in supporting those goals.

I could care less which legislators the AFL-CIO leadership says are the biggest suck ups. I want to know what specific bills and other event the AFL-CIO leadership wanted legislators to suck up to them and on which issues each legislator did so I can decide for myself what that means.

Take a look at how the ACLU does their ratings and you'll see a credible rating system in which the numbers actually mean something:

http://www.aclu-or.org/site/DocServer/ACLU_scorecard_2007.pdf?docID=2401

Since I know the issues and the politics behind them, I can actually determine something with accuracy about the character of these legislators. For instance, I notice that Westlund has a 50% rating and Brown has a 56% rating - and why we will be better of with these two poor excuses for leaders out of the Senate, as well as why I should vote to end Westlund's political career in the SoS race. Bates has a dishonorable 56% rating and we'd be better off if a real Democrat took his place too. For a guy who tries pass himself off as a progressive, Merkley clocks in with a truly shabby 75% for a couple of really bad votes, so I'll seriously consider voting against him unless Novick says something worse in the campaign.

Finally, since I believe the ACLU actually has working people's real interests at heart as much or more than the AFL-CIO leadership does, I have ample reason to believe the AFL-CIO ratings are at best a measure who is a spineless suck-up.

My mistake on Westlund, I was reading a couple of things at the same time and didn't give the side point much thought..

This also isn't about the characteristic "look at me" spin you and several here put on it or "street cred":

And why should anyone trust you when you're using a pseudonym that's never before seen here on this site?

And it's not about whether the AFL-CIO can "trust" anybody with their secret formula of how to best suck-up. This isn't an industrial trade secret, it's about political advocacy in a representative democracy. As I pointed out:

If the AFL-CIO wants me to vote for people who support them they had better be falling all over themselves to give me all the information I need to see it their way.

The AFL-CIO put out what appear to be numerically precise ratings without the numerical details of their methodology. That's a standard propaganda tactic for swaying the credulous masses. It's not at all surprising it would fly here.

The only person a voter needs to trust in this case is her or his self. Do you vote for people because someone else tells you to, without giving a real explanation why? Are you happy to be a lazy, uninformed voter who is content to be led by the nose?

Or do you think for yourself? Do you want to be an informed voter that requires people who advocate that you vote for a position or candidate lay out the specific reasons why?

If someone puts out their reasons, you don't even need to know who they are. That's what people so often claim they want, factual arguments based on the issues, right? Anybody who accepts this kind of advocacy really indicates they are afraid to think for themselves. Sadly, they probably can't, and don't, truly think at all in all too many cases.

While I can see why Merkley's "Look who likes me, they really like me" campaign is popular with that certain group of people who apparently appreciate being told who they should support to be safe and popular, like the AFL-CIO has done in this case, that kind of approach to polititics doesn't and shouldn't cut it with anybody who claims they are doing their job as a voter in our representative system.

What A Crock, you write: "Why should I, as a responsible voter, go through this amount of work based on no facts? If the AFL-CIO wants me to vote for people who support them they had better be falling all over themselves to give me all the information I need to see it their way."

From this paragraph, I understand that you expect the AFL-CIO to explain to you exactly how they want you to vote, without expecting you to do any of the analytical work on your own. I see this as a conflict with your later statement, in which you claim that "The only person a voter needs to trust in this case is her or his self. Do you vote for people because someone else tells you to, without giving a real explanation why?" Frankly, I don't think a voter who choses a candidate based solely on AFL-CIO rankings is making an informed or balanced decision, regardless of how well that voter understands how the rankings were calculated.

I understand your basic premise, I think, which is that if the AFL-CIO wants people to use their rankings as a means of deciding who to vote for, the AFL-CIO ought to provide reliable data with a replicable analytical process. I think you have a point, and if AFL-CIO rankings were the only way of determining who is the best candidate in an election, I would be in strong agreement with you.

However, the AFL-CIO rankings are <u>not</u> the only way of determining who is the best, or even a good, candidate. They're just one of many, many factors people take into consideration when looking at candidates in an election. More important, I would argue that 99.9% of the time, the people who do use the AFL-CIO number to decide to who to vote for don't actually use the numerical ratings at all. Most of them vote for or against a candidate based on the general impression they get from the rankings, i.e., "Candidate X was pretty high up in the AFL-CIO rankings, which means that Candidate X supports labor priorities." Most voters aren't looking at whether Candidate X scored 340 points versus 332 points. They're just looking for the general impression, which they put into the mix with all of the other rankings, newspaper stories, attack ads, volunteer contacts, and personal research that helps them make up their minds.

<h2>Now, I'm not claiming that the AFL-CIO rankings are perfect, or that we lowly unelecteds shouldn't get to see AFL-CIO's methodology. As far as I can tell, the rankings have at least one big flaw which is, as someone pointed out above (can't find the comment just now), that they don't appear to take into account a legislator's leadership position, or lack thereof. Legislators who don't chair committees, or who chair committees that get fewer labor bills, seem to be disproportionately disadvantaged by the ranking system (as are rural legislators, I would assume, who don't have as many opportunities to do things like walk picket lines). However, that doesn't mean that the rankings don't tell us something useful, or that we should discount them entirely because we aren't the world experts on their methodology. And we should not make publishing the rankings any kind of litmus test for legislators, who have many more important things to do than help voters fail to think for themselves. Things like, say, running a state. In my personal ranking system (which I'm also not going to divulge), legislators who legislate fairly and to the best of their ability are always going to rise to the top, no matter where anyone else puts them.</h2>