The Boot

Back in 2002, the developers of Pronghorn promised Deschutes County that – as state law requires – they'd build 192 lodging units at their swanky “destination resort” out among the scrub junipers east of Tumalo. At least 150 units were supposed to be in place by 2007.
Instead, in an event that's come to be as predictable as the crocuses popping up in spring, they've kept coming before the Deschutes County Commission hat in hand to plead for a little more time. Times are tough, they say. Tourism numbers are down. They just can't make all those lodging units pencil out right now.

Until he saw the colored flags on the trees, Jerry Gilmour never knew there was going to be a logging operation practically in his backyard.
Gilmour, who has a weekend cabin he built himself in the woods near McKenzie Bridge, along Highway 126 between here and Eugene, made some phone calls and discovered none of his neighbors knew about the logging plans either.
When the neighbors learned about the Goose Project – which, among other things, will result in the harvesting of more than 27 million board feet of timber, including trees up to seven feet in diameter, and involve building almost eight miles of temporary roads through the forest – they swung into action to try to block it.

Republicans like wars. Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and now (potentially) Iran – they've been gung-ho for 'em all. But now they've embarked on a project that's ambitious even by their standards.
They've declared war on half the population of the United States. The female half.
It started when Catholic hospitals and other institutions complained that President Obama's healthcare reform law requires them to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives to their employees. That, they claimed, interfered with their freedom of religion.

It's not often that we see Rep. Gene Whisnant (R-Sunriver) poke up his head in Salem other than to stump for the most provincial and honorary pieces of legislation. This is not a legislator who's ever been accused of having too much vision. But like a rock chuck sensing spring, Whisnant popped up a few weeks ago in the whirlwind February session to block a pair of bills that would have helped Oregon homeowners who are facing the prospect of foreclosure.
While we're usually looking for Whisnant to do more with his time in Salem, in this case we wish that he would have just kept on hibernating. After refusing to allow the bills to come up for a hearing in the House General Government and Consumer Protection Committee, Whisnant offered an amendment that proved to be a deal breaker for the bills' backers and on Tuesday Democrats announced that the home foreclosure bills were essentially dead in the waning hours of the session.

Cliff Bentz apparently thinks we can educate wolves not to prey on livestock by killing them.
“If we want wolves to serve their ecological purpose, they will eat elk, not cows and sheep,” Bentz, a Republican state representative from Ontario, said on Friday. The occasion was the passage of HB 4158, a bill sponsored by Bentz and eight other representatives – including our old friend Gene Whisnant from Sunriver.

In the foreclosure game, they call it the “spin cycle.” The name is apt: Just like the spin cycle of a washing machine wrings water out of laundry, the foreclosure spin cycle wrings the last drops of cash out of the hapless borrower who gets caught in it.
A homeowner gets trapped in the spin cycle when he's facing foreclosure and tries to renegotiate his mortgage to avoid it. Even while he's dealing in good faith and making payments regularly, the bank continues to move ahead with foreclosure – and worst of all, the homeowner doesn't even know it. By the time the bank gets through spinning him he's lost thousands of dollars – and the house.

Almost 40 years ago, Gov. Tom McCall called for legislation to protect Oregon from the “sagebrush subdivisions, coastal condomania, and … ravenous rampages of suburbia” that were threatening to blight the state. The legislature responded with Senate Bill 100, which created a land use regulation system that became the envy of the nation.
McCall's signature on the bill wasn't even dry before the development-at-any-cost bloc began plotting to dismantle it, and it hasn't stopped trying since. The opponents know they have virtually no chance of demolishing the whole structure, but that doesn't discourage them from stealthily chipping away at it whenever and in any way they can.

The Hon. Greg Walden
2182 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Greg,
We, the citizens and voters of Bend, have decided to try to reach you by letter because you're an awfully hard guy to see in person.
The problem isn't that you don't visit your home district often enough. We notice there's a neat little Google Map linked to your congressional website that's titled “Where's Walden?” (very cute, Greg) and shows all the places in the district (and many outside the district) that you've visited in the past couple of years.
Judging by all the flags and push-pins stuck in this map, you sure do get around. You've been to town halls in Mitchell, Long Creek, Rufus, Arlington, Ontario and Eagle Valley, among other places. You've found time to attend the Miner's Jubilee Parade and the Americans for Prosperity Hot Air Balloon Rally in Baker City and the Union County Business Leaders Breakfast in LaGrande. You've toured the Boise Cascade mill in Elgin, Interpath Laboratory in Pendleton and the Wallowa Lake Dam in Joseph.