Opinion
Posted inOpinion

Equal Rights is an Issue for Everyone

Bruce Morris: Standing up for equal rights.
Source Weekly

Thank you to the Source and Mike Bookey for writing about the important issue of marriage equality last week. I am the “big bearded dude” in the photos, writing to comment on my being the “unlikely face” of the marriage equality movement in Central Oregon. My positions with Basic Rights Oregon and now Human Dignity Coalition may make me the most visible local advocate on this issue. However, the true faces of marriage inequality in Oregon are the thousands of loving, committed same-sex couples and their families being denied the freedom to marry by the Oregon Constitution.
Same-sex couples want to get married for the same reason I did, and most couples do, namely to make that vast and courageous expression of love and commitment to their beloved. Take a moment to imagine the pain of knowing it would be illegal – illegal! – to make that expression to the person you are so deeply in love with. Now take one more step and imagine the suffering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people who remain stigmatized for simply being who they really are or for openly loving who they really love; the bewildered despair of teenagers whose parents reject and punish them and whose schoolmates bully them just for being their authentic selves.

Posted inOpinion

The Straight Poop Will Always Continue to Occupy This Space

A gathering of happenings from the past week.
Source Weekly

Monday, Nov. 7
Grope of the Week: Sharon Bialek of Chicago says GOP presidential aspirant Herman Cain put hand up her skirt in a car in 1997, fourth woman to make such accusations against him … Bad medicine: Dr. Conrad Murray, personal physician to Michael Jackson, found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for giving Jackson dose of powerful anesthetic that killed him in 2009 … Celebrity fun and games: Brody Jenner gets in brawl outside Hollywood hotel, is hit in head with beer bottle; girlfriend Avril Lavigne wades in, suffers black eye and bloody nose … Lindsay Lohan freed from jail in LA on probation violation charge, checks into rehab, must do community service at county morgue … The high cost of cleanliness: Cleaning woman at Germany's Ostwall Museum mistakes part of million-dollar art work by Martin Kippenberger for stain on floor, scrubs it out.
Tuesday, Nov. 8
Blame the victims: Herman Cain holds press conference, categorically denies sexual harassment charges by various women, says, “Someone is trying to wreck my character.” Hmm, could it be himself? … End of an error: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, quite a ladies' man himself, loses his governing majority in parliament, says he'll resign … Weapons of mass deception? Report by International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran appears to be trying to sneakily build nuclear bomb … Goodbye, Smokin' Joe: “Smokin' Joe” Frazier of Philadelphia, who knocked out Muhammad Ali in 1971 “Fight of the Century,” dies of cancer at 67 … When you gotta go: Stainless steel toilet used by Saddam Hussein while imprisoned in Iraq before his execution in 2006 to be displayed in military police museum in US.

Posted inOpinion

Riding to the Rescue of the Klamath

Congress may put a damper on Merkley-Thompson dam removal bill.
Source Weekly

October 2002 was a low-water mark for the Klamath River, in more ways than one.
In the preceding spring the George W. Bush administration had overridden the recommendations of biologists and allowed irrigators to draw more water from the Klamath. The summer was a hot one, and when migrating salmon arrived from the Pacific Ocean there wasn't enough water for them to get upstream to their spawning grounds.
Crowded into pools of warm water downstream, the fish were easy prey for disease. In the end, more than 30,000 of them died.
There was one positive thing about that disaster: It shocked people into realizing something had to be done about the mess in the Klamath Basin.
For decades, a variety of interests – state and federal governments, Pacific Power, farmers, fishermen, conservation groups and Indian tribes – had fought over the Klamath's limited supply of water. While they wrangled, the salmon and steelhead populations inexorably declined. The Klamath salmon fishery, once the third most productive in the West, had deteriorated by the 21st Century to the point where commercial fishermen weren't allowed to take any salmon at all in some seasons.

Posted inOpinion

Skate Debate Was a Long Time Coming

Bend skate park debate was a long time coming.
Intern

As the author and organizer of the Miller's Landing 'Skate' Petition, I would like to comment on the November 3 article “An Axle to Grind.” The article states, “With the end so seemingly close in sight for [the] Division Street [skate project], the recent push for a publicly funded skate park came rather unexpectedly.” The effort should not be considered 'unexpected'. The pivotal date regarding publicly funded 'skate' activities was May 11, 2011.It was the day for public comment on Bend Parks and Recreation's (BPRD) Annual Budget for Fiscal Year 2011/12.
I wrote the following in a Bend Bulletin Opinion Editorial that appeared in print on May 11, 2011 stating, “… because the development boom is now over, we must all prioritize and make some very difficult decisions… Should the district embrace nontraditional activities like skateboarding, Frisbee golf, kayaking, etc.?…” The request was then presented to the Board and Budget committee using the appropriate language, at the appropriate time, and in the appropriate place. I stated, “As a candidate of the people… , I would hereby urge the board and budget committee to take the following actions… .#4. A monetary set-aside for non-traditional recreation activities… included should be Colorado St. Waterway, Neighborhood Skate Parks… .” To date, I can find no direct budgetary allocation in the FY 11/12 budget for any of the citizen requests. Thus, a citizen petition regarding 'skate' issue should not be considered unexpected. Our community made a specific request and BPRD ignored a public call for a specific action.

Posted inOpinion

Our Office, Scaled Down: Mark Alvarado on how he reconstructed our building

Our building. For ants.
Source Weekly

One day, about a year ago, a guy walked into our office and asked if he could build a to-scale model of our building. This isn't the beginning to a bad joke, this actually happened and the guy said the model would include all the colors, details, cracks, graffiti and everything else about this 100-plus-year-old structure. We agreed to his proposal, even if there were some apprehensions that he was actually just trying to gain access to the building to search for our cache of gold doubloons.
The man was Mark Alvarado and you can see the model he built of the Source
headquarters on the cover of this week's issue. It doesn't include the scaffolding and “sidewalk closed” signs you'll find now, thanks to an ongoing remodel, but the final product is a shockingly accurate portrayal of this historic building… even down to the stickers in the window and the spray-painted alien on one of our walls.

Posted inOpinion

All the Straight Poop on Bieber's Baby and Herman's Harasses

A gathering of news makers from the previous week.
Source Weekly

Monday,
Oct. 31
Raising a little Cain: Two women said to have accused Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain of sexual harassment; first he denies it, then says charge was “baseless,” then admits paying off one woman … In more trouble for The Hermanator, a Wisconsin-based corporation might have illegally funneled $40,000 cash to campaign … Snow job: 300,000 in Connecticut still without electricity six days after snowstorm, and they're tired of excuses from Connecticut Light & Power … Everybody's a capitalist now: Occupy Wall Street movement applies for trademark on the name so it can sell T-shirts, coffee mugs and other tchotchkes … Close call: J.K. Rowling reveals she considered killing off Harry Potter's best friend, Ron Weasley, “out of sheer spite” because she “wasn't in a very happy place” in her life.

Tuesday, Nov. 1
A baby Biebs? Mariah Yeater, 20-year-old groupie from California, files paternity suit against Justin Bieber, claims they had sex backstage when she was 19 and he was 16. Bieber's lawyers say charge is false … Just slightly tasteless: Loudon County, VA Republican Committee sends out email showing President Obama as a zombie with bullet hole in his head; state GOP condemns “disgusting image” … Glad somebody's doing okay: Report by Roll Call shows total net worth of members of Congress topped $2 billion in 2010, up 25 percent since 2008 … B of A blinks: Faced with consumer outrage and loss of customers, Bank of America cancels planned $5-a-month debit card fee … Fool's gold: Goldline, a company touted by Glenn Beck and other right-wing icons, charged with running “bait-and-switch operation” in 19-count California criminal indictment.

Posted inOpinion

Facebook Finds Friends in Politics

Uncertainties for Oregon Facebook raises tax questions among politicians.
Source Weekly

Back in the 1970s, when Steve Jobs was taking acid trips in what would later become known as Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg hadn't even been thought of, the State of Oregon came up with a special approach to taxing businesses like utilities, railroads and communications companies.
Unlike other businesses, which can be taxed only on tangible property like desks, computers and trucks, Oregon says companies in that special category can be taxed on their intangible assets – things like worldwide value, brand recognition and goodwill.
And that's opened up a really squirmy can of worms for Facebook.
The social networking company got a 15-year exemption from local property taxes for building its new data center in an enterprise zone in Prineville. But last month the state Department of Revenue informed Facebook it could be subject to state taxes of as much as $390,000 a year.
As it turned out, the state had to quickly back away from that number; the actual amount of state property tax Facebook would owe is more like $26,000 a year.

Posted inOpinion

The No-Ideas Party

Republicans don’t stand a chance against Obama.
Intern

Whomever the Republicans run with next fall, Obama will clean their clocks. Why? Because it's already clear that Republicans have no new ideas about the economy, and that lower taxes for big corporations are only good for big corporations.

Posted inOpinion

Tell the Real Wild Horse Story

An open to Alex Dawson of Fish Creek Films.
Intern

Open letter to Alex Dawson, Fish Creek Films:
Dear Alex,
It is with great sadness that I viewed the trailer for your movie, Wild Horse, Wild Ride, which is set to play at our local theatre November 17. While it looks like a lovely film, there is a side of the BLM roundups that is dangerous, ugly and very sad for the horses that are in holding pens for years and are never adopted. The romancing of the mustang adoptions only lends credence to the brutal tactics of the BLM roundups and therefore misleads the moviegoers as to the negative fallout of this practice.
Would you be willing to do a film that documents the death, injury and incarceration of tens of thousands of formerly wild horses that were helicopter stampeded into submission? Foals and pregnant mares are part of these stampedes and their deaths and injuries are the result. Proud stallions, leaders of their family group, are gelded and removed from the group.

Posted inOpinion

Heed the Lessons of the Badlands

More input on the Oregon Badlands Wilderness.
Intern

Last week's “The Boot” brought to mind some of the work and opportunities offered by wilderness areas for local communities. As the article correctly pointed out, the sky over Oregon Badlands Wilderness, 15 miles or so to the east of Bend, has not come crashing to the ground, but rather has stayed above this 30,000-acre wilderness, a place now marked by solitude, serenity and silence. Oregon Badlands Wilderness was so declared by Congress, March 30, 2009, (not 2008 as in “The Boot) after many years of work from many people, including ONDA. Moving along with the concept of a Boot, The Friends of Oregon Badlands Wilderness, a.ka. The Fobbits, a completely volunteer group, act as the eyes, ears and boots on the ground, in a stewardship role, with our partners, the Bureau of Land Management.
Contrary to the statement in the article, four-wheeling and ATV access is prohibited in any wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964, and a lot of the stewardship work the Fobbits and others have done is ensuring that visitors experiences are enhanced when visiting Oregon Badlands Wilderness, such as trailhead maintenance, installation of correct signage at trailheads and minimum (it's a wilderness after all) appropriate directional signage at critical trail intersections, removing obsolete barbed wire fencing, trails maintenance and yes, monitoring and recording illegal vehicular access.

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