Guest Commentary

President Obama would be proud of Bend for the vision it has shown on issues like the original cash for clunker program with our junk busses, massive debt being incurred at Juniper Ridge for no benefit to the public, bailouts for BAT, gross overspending on employee health care, new taxes on water and sewer during a severe economic downturn, and urban growth expansion designed for the big money in town. Let's examine these issues in greater detail.
CITY COUNCIL
The “Bully Blockers” rode into town on their black stallions early this year to facilitate those with money and influence. Following a coup to fill a vacant position with an old crony who possesses serious conflicts of interest, another councilor called the back-door deal “crap” giving us a second faction of “Crappers.” A third Councilor rolled over in support of the bullies which demonstrates that “when money talks, ideology walks,” creating a 3rd faction of “Floppers.” The only things that they seem to agree on are higher fees for utilities and massive debt at Juniper Ridge.

In the September 24 issue of The Source, “Off Target: Conservationists' opposition to hunting wolves is wrongheaded,” Mike Medberry criticizes conservationists for filing a lawsuit to protect wolves, while portraying himself as a pro-hunting conservationist. To extol the bloodshed and death involved in hunting under the guise of conservation is a popular but absurd paradox.
I have taken the time to meet face-to-face with the hunters who have the most bloodlust in this current debate, and I can tell you they have not lost an ounce of the fervor it took to quarter wolves for fun a century ago. These are the people Medberry directly or indirectly supports by saying it's time to hunt wolves.

The early stunning vistas of beautiful America gave rise to some of the best known and most evocative writings, song and poetry of this wide and sweeping land, a land to the earliest of inhabitants and those who came after, of wildness, diamond-blue skies and waves that tumbled onto golden, unsullied beaches.
“America the Beautiful” contains some of those soaring words:
“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties,
Above the fruited plain!”
The Wilderness Act of 1964 recognizes wilderness, “.

Opinion and conjecture abound on the prospect of changing how to pay for medical care in Oregon and across the U.S.

For better or worse, “Leap and the net will appear” is an adage I can live by naturally. Most recently, this took me to Chile with the intention of making a film about homeless dogs.
My inspiration for “Lost Dogs” came from a YouTube video that shows a dog on a busy Santiago highway as he risks his life to save another injured canine. The clip prompted my research into the estimated 250,000 dogs that live on the streets of Chile's capital city.
Once I had my concept – to look for the “hero dog” and while I was at it, film his 250,000 friends – it wasn't long before I took the plunge, arriving in Santiago with my Spanish vocabulary of five words, video and stills cameras, tripod, 50 hours of tape and clothes for any eventuality over the next two months. A couple of days behind me was Chris Mortimer, a photographer introduced to me only two weeks prior as someone crazy enough to accompany me.

Editor's
Note: The article referenced in the following column was not an editorial, but
a recent opinion piece penned by Source
columnist Bruce Miller and represented his opinion, not those of the newspaper.
The Source  has not taken a
position about downtown loitering and panhandling. The Source has
and always will be a major supporter of local, independent businesses and a
vital downtown core.

What does The
Source have against downtown merchants?
I'm writing
in reaction to your latest negative editorial about downtown Bend merchants.
Recently, you derided our complaints about panhandlers downtown, now you've
done the same regarding our problems with "kids." Why are you even writing
about merchant complaints when you deem the complaints so unworthy? Could it be
because you feel you have to stand up for absolutely anything you call
"alternative," even when alternative means hurtful, disrespectful, threatening
or even criminal?

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of columns about Central Oregon's economy. See the first two installments of series at tsweekly.com under the opinion tab by clicking Guest Commentary.
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

-John Greenleaf Whittier

On Thursday July 23, the Board of Deschutes County Commissioners and the County Planning Commission are scheduled to meet to discuss what the agenda lists as "Destination Resorts." On Thursday, August 27 the County Planning Commission will hold a work session on the County's Comprehensive Plan Update. Economics, as we hope all the commissioners know, pervades both topics.
Imagine two paths of economic growth for Deschutes County. One-the Better Path-has more and better-paying jobs than the other-the Worse Path. Based on its current plan and policies and especially its record of applying and interpreting them, we think the County has chosen the Worse Path.

Except for only very few readers, here's a sentence that will prompt yawns: On Wednesday July 15, the Deschutes County Commission plans to hold a public meeting on a proposed amendment to the County's land-use code allowing commercial wedding events on parcels designated for Exclusive Farm Use. Yawns all around, perhaps, but we three economists think that on this issue, the County is doing neither the right thing nor the thing right. And we think these two wrongs matter.

Some context helps. The Deschutes County Commissioners are nearing the end of the period for public comment on their update of the County's comprehensive, land-use plan. Coincidentally, they're nearing the end of their deliberations on the commercial wedding-events matter. What bothers us about both the big thing-the update of the comprehensive plan-and the deceptively little thing-the amendment to allow more commercial enterprises on EFU land-is that the County's land-use planning proceeds as if economics isn't relevant. In the March 12 meeting of Deschutes County's Planning Commission, for example, Planning Commissioner Chris Brown, addressing the commercial wedding-events issue, argued that economics has no bearing on land-use issues. Incredible.

Monday, June 22, the Oregon House of Representatives passed legislation that would ban destination resorts in the Metolius Basin. It had already passed the Oregon Senate, and by the time you read this, Governor Kulongoski likely will have signed it. Opponents have branded supporters as, among other things, anti-growth. They're wrong. And their error stems in part from failing to see that the issue involves more than growth; it also involves equality, conservation and sustainability.

We three know enough economics and enough about Oregon and Deschutes County to know why they're wrong. Ward is a 4th-generation Oregonian, has a doctorate in economics, and just finished teaching a term of labor economics at the U of O. Whitelaw is a 13-year resident of Deschutes County and 40-plus-year resident of Oregon, also has a doctorate in economics, began teaching at the U of O in 1967, with classes focused on the economics of the Pacific Northwest, and in recent years on economic growth in Deschutes County. Kenny-will graduate soon in economics from the U of O, has fallen in love with Oregon, plans graduate school elsewhere, and sees himself returning to Oregon for many of the same reasons the other two of us are here.

We students wait for word from the West. We know the mainstream media want our movement to fail, but our telephone service provider doesn't care one way or the other. Ring-ring. News: Students at a prestigious western university are on strike. The tide moves eastward; hours later, we learn of a massive demonstration at a campus half a country closer. The baton of uprising has been passed to us. Will we have the strength and unity to meet the challenge, knowing that our local reaction will shape the response of other students on other campuses further east?

I am not referring to the Iranian university students that I and so many other freedom-loving Americans have come to so immensely admire over the past week. Rather, I reference students at universities such as the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and at scores of other U. S. campuses more than 40 years ago, when my generation of American university students rose up against the same sort of oppressive power elite that our Iranian counterparts now confront. Images of the Iranians' bravery and determination against a potentially mass-murderously repressive power structure take me back to my own student days, a year before I went "Clean for Gene," nearly a year before January '68's Tet offensive, March '68's announcement of President Johnson's abdication, April's assassination of the Rev. Dr. King and on and on that apocalyptic year.