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This letter is an outcry.
The most foolish move Bend could make, being $20 million in debt, would be to rush the addition of 20 years of build-able residential land to the urban growth boundary (UGB) with no planning for infrastructure.
Infrastructure was completely ignored when the last addition was made to the UGB in the 1990s.
I go through (Northwest Crossing) twice a day and also walk it at least twice a day since I work near the high school. To call it a "Cottage Neighborhood" goes way outside the imagination.
tough, but casual. They call him wrangler. They look like campaign ads, they smell like campaign ads, and they sure as hell sound like campaign ads. But Jeff Merkley insists they're not campaign ads.
The TV spots started airing early this month. In the first of them, Merkley talks about how America has mistreated veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the next, he touts the record of the Oregon Legislature, and himself as House speaker, in toughening laws against meth and child sexual abusers. In the third, he attacks wasteful spending in Washington and brags about how, as a legislator, he worked to "put the middle class first."
The ads aren't being funded by the Merkley campaign; the Democratic Party of Oregon is paying for them, using money from the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And that's where the problem is.
Federal law limits the amount of campaign money a US Senate candidate can receive from his state and national party to $485,200. Merkley had already gotten more than $386,000 from the party before the first of the ads was released. That's why the Merkley ads prompted Republican Gordon Smith's campaign to file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission.
Editor's Note: For the past five weeks we have received Upfront via email from Mick McMenaminuses. This week we received none. Suspecting another belligerent weekend as the reason, we went searching for our itinerate columnist – only to discover that Mick McMenaminuses is missing… His reporter's notebook was the only thing found, bristling in the breeze along Greenwood. Here are the stories he had compiled.
Africa Is Saved!
After a tainted election comparable to the 2000 runoff that allowed the Supreme Court to name George W. Bush president, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have at last signed a deal to end the political crisis. Faced with inflation of over one million percent - by far the highest in the world - Zimbabwe under Mugabe has issues akin to Bend under its current city council. Tsvangirai was forced to find safety in the Dutch Embassy as his followers were arrested and murdered, and the new power-sharing deal (Mugabe at least agreeing to talk about sharing power, that is) intends "to chart a new way of political interaction." Upon signing the deal, AIDS was suddenly cured, Cecil Rhodes reincarnated and returned all of the treasure he stole from the continent, and white suburban kids decided to shave their dreads.
Letter of the Week
This week's letter of the week comes in a response to our recent story about the proliferation of concealed handgun permits and the sheriff's refusal to release the identity of permit holders. Thanks for the letter, R.
We missed the column that Scoop had in the paper. We come to Sunriver several times per year and have not seen his articles lately.
I'm writing in response to the recent 'Boot' we received for the 'welfare for builders' proposal, as you describe it. You raise some legitimate concerns, which I will attempt to address below.
Kudos to those responsible for the great music line up in Central Oregon this year. For those of us who love to dance it's been hot, but confusing.
When you and I look at today's gas prices, we see empty checking accounts and impending financial ruin. When Big Oil looks at them, it sees a golden opportunity.
Oil companies have been trying for decades, without success, to get Congress to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for exploration and possible development and lift the federal ban on further offshore drilling. Now, with prices at the pump well above $4 a gallon and headed north, the industry believes it has the political lever it needs to pry all that oil and gas loose.
A group with the catchy name of American Solutions for Winning the Future, fronted by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is pushing a catchy slogan: "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less." Its website is collecting signatures on a petition calling on Congress "to act immediately to lower gasoline prices … by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries." It's collected more than 1.3 million signatures already.
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