The Wandering Eye

The US Senate has been described as the world’s most exclusive club, and like other exclusive clubs it has its own peculiar customs and rituals – some of them charming, many of them the opposite.
One of the least charming ones is the “secret hold,” a rule that allows any senator to block action on a piece of legislation simply by objecting to it – and he doesn’t even have to reveal his identity.

On Wednesday The Bulletin printed an “In My View” piece by Greg Macpherson, a member of the state Land Conservation and Development Commission, defending the state’s land use laws and the LCDC’s decision to send Bend’s proposed Urban Growth Boundary expansion back for a do-over.
This morning The Bulletin printed Macpherson’s piece again – not because they liked it so much, but because they wanted to sneer at it in an editorial.

The Oregonian’s Steve Duin had a cleverly crafted column this morning about the Randy Guzek case. It brought back a flood of memories.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski gave Oregonians an ugly surprise last week: There’s an unexpected $570 million hole in the state’s budget for the next biennium.

Bend racked up another dubious distinction this week: As reported in The Bulletin on Wednesday, we led the nation in declining home prices between the first quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of this year.
Over that one-year period, home prices in the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area fell by almost a quarter (23.

There’s a new poll out this week that contains good news and bad news for Oregon Republicans.
The good news: The poll shows their candidate, Chris Dudley, leading Democrat John Kitzhaber by a one-point margin.

Oregonians who like to get angry at their state government should aim some righteous outrage at this: According to a story that appeared in Saturday’s issue of The Oregonian, “tax scofflaws and assorted deadbeats” are cheating the state out of $2 billion a year in revenue.
A 2009 report by the Legislative Fiscal Office said the annual amount of uncollected revenue has doubled over the past eight years.

The voters gave The Bulletin and the Source a smack upside the head on Tuesday, rejecting their and our editorial recommendations to re-elect veteran Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan and instead replacing him with Patrick Flaherty.
The Source’s editors took the rebuke calmly and quietly.

If you want to get conservative rural voters riled up, nothing works better than warning them of an impending “government takeover.”
The 2nd District’s own Rep.