The Boot

Here's a dilemma we'd love to have: Say the state has put a machine in our home that spits out money at the rate of $70,000 a year. But later the state tells us it's strapped for cash and can only afford to let the machine dispense, say, $64,000 a year.

“If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards” makes a funny bumper sticker, but it's a rotten way to run a public education system.
For some years now, Oregon's public schools have not been a shining example of educational excellence. Early this month, 71 Oregon schools – a record for the state – were identified as “inadequate” according to the standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
For the past 10 years, Oregon also has been issuing its own “report cards” on schools. When the 2008 report cards came out, many of them were the kind that, in the old days, would have meant a trip to the woodshed for the kid who brought it home. Two-thirds of the state's biggest high schools got grades of “satisfactory” or “low,” the equivalent of a C or D. A record number of 12 schools were graded “unacceptable.”

When you give a three-year-old a present and he angrily stamps his feet and says he doesn't want it, then changes his mind five minutes later and demands the gift, it's predictable. But you expect somewhat different behavior from a group of grown-up businessmen.
To fill in the back story: During last winter and spring's legislative debate over a bill to protect the Metolius Basin from destination resort development, legislators offered a sort of “consolation prize” to the two would-be resort developers, Ponderosa Land & Cattle Co. and Dutch Pacific Resources.
Ponderosa, which wanted to build a vast resort including a golf course, was

The acronym “BLM” stands for “Bureau of Land Management.” After looking at what the BLM did in the Steens Mountain area last month, maybe the name should be changed to “Bureau of Landscape Mutilation.”
For reasons as yet unclear, the BLM took a backhoe and other heavy equipment and plowed more than 14 miles of roadway. According to the Bend-based Oregon Natural Desert Association, which is suing the BLM, the work involved “construction of a newly-bladed two-lane road into the area as well as road construction into the Steens Mountain Wilderness along the Donner Und Blitzen Wild and Scenic River. The development uprooted hundreds of junipers including several old growth trees,” as well as moving boulders the size of cars. The affected area “contains important habitat and breeding territory for Greater sage grouse,” currently being considered for endangered species protection.
ONDA provided before-and-after photos of one stretch of Burnt Car Road, a remote, virtually unused track that runs along one edge of the Blitzen River Wilderness Study Area. The contrast is – without exaggeration – shocking.
The “before” photo shows what looks like a meadow with sagebrush and wildflowers and two barely visible vehicle tracks running through it. The “after” photo shows something that looks like an attempt to recreate the New Jersey Turnpike. The natural vegetation has been obliterated; in its place is a two-lane scraped swath of bare dirt.
Picture 14 miles of this beautiful natural area being raped in this fashion and it's not hard to see why ONDA is furious – and why it's hauling the BLM into court.
A short stretch of the Burnt Car Road “improvement” extends into the Steens Mountain Wilderness Area, a clear violation of law. The BLM says this was done by accident and it's sorry.
But it will be harder to claim that the rest of the 14 miles of road grading was just an “accident” – and to justify why it was done in apparent violation of federal law.
Make that “apparent violations of laws” – ONDA in its lawsuit charges that the BLM broke a slew of them. Among other things, the suit alleges the BLM failed to give public notice of its planned road work and disregarded laws “expressly prohibiting off-road vehicle use and creation of new motorized vehicle routes within the CMPA [Steens Mountain Cooperative Management and Protection Area] and prohibiting impairment of wilderness values” in Wilderness Study Areas.

Deschutes County already has far more destination resorts than any other county in Oregon. And according to calculations by Paul Dewey of Central Oregon LandWatch, if all the destination resorts now on the drawing boards statewide were actually developed, the number of units at such resorts would triple.
Meanwhile the county is stuck in the deepest, darkest dungeon of the deepest, darkest economic depression to hit the US in 80 years. Resorts that by now were supposed to be covered with golf courses and multimillion-dollar custom homes remain covered with sagebrush.
So what, in light of this situation, does Deschutes County think we need? More destination resorts, of course.