The Wandering Eye

The Daily Beast blog has ranked the 50 states and the District of Columbia in order of corruptness, and Oregon came in at a respectable – well, pretty respectable – 35th place.
The Beast looked at data going back a decade and weighed five factors on a per capita basis in determining each state’s rank: public corruption (convictions of public officials), racketeering and extortion (organized crime convictions and investigations), forgery and counterfeiting, fraud (arrests for false statements or documents) and embezzlement.

Bob Tiernan, the Oregon Republican Party chairman, invited all the Republican aspirants for the governor nomination to a “unity lunch” on the Thursday after the primary.
Bill Sizemore's response, in essence: “Shove it.

According to Net Applications’ May 1 report, Bend ranks fifth in the nation in iPad ownership – a fact that seemed to completely flabbergast Philip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune magazine.
The five US market areas with the heaviest concentrations of iPads are, in descending order: San Francisco, CA; Grand Junction, CO; Santa Barbara, CA; Honolulu, HI, and Bend, OR.

Oregonians agree their state has a financial problem, but they don’t agree on what to do about it. In fact, some of their opinions contradict each other.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Chris Dudley thinks Oregon should consider adopting a draconian anti-immigration law like Arizona’s – or at least that’s what he seemed to be saying when he appeared on the Lars Larson show the other day.
According to a transcript posted by Kari Chisholm on the Blue Oregon site, Larson asked Dudley whether “when the cops run into somebody that they think that they have reasonable suspicion to believe is illegal, should they … find out whether the person is [illegal] or not – and then take them into custody or not?”
Dudley’s response: “If they have reasonable suspicion, and I think that is probably the key word here, is, uh, then I think they should be able to, to look into that – um – and I, and that’s, uh – it’ll be int … – obviously the courts are gonna take a look at how the Arizona law has been written.

Cutting the capital gains tax – or, better yet, eliminating it – has been a cherished goal of Republican politicians for decades. Now John Kitzhaber, the once and maybe future governor of Oregon, is embracing it – but with a twist.

Is there something about Bend that generates weirdness? The air, the water, the altitude? We’ve had the Pregnant Man, the Lawn Chair Balloonist, the Clothesline Lady – and now, the Mad Poop Bomber.
Melinda Hoffman, a Bend entrepreneur whose company, The Bomb Squad, is in the business of removing doggie doodoo from people’s yards, got mad at a customer who owed her $150 and retaliated by dumping 30 gallons of canine excrement in front of the customer’s house.

Should a family living below the poverty level have to pay state income tax? Most states say no – but Oregon says yes.
According to a report released yesterday by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the income tax in this state for a family of four kicks in at $19,800.

Oregonians in Action, the “property rights” group that brought us Measure 37 six years ago, has come up with a new bright idea – and it’s a real doozy.
OIA wants Oregon to emulate Utah, whose legislature in its 2009 session enacted a law that supposedly gives the state the power to use eminent domain to seize land held by the federal government.

The Bend Chamber of Commerce did a survey of its members and – surprise, surprise – most of them thought the city should be doing more to help people like them.
According to The Bulletin’s account on Tuesday, about 64% of those responding to the on-line survey answered “no” when asked if they thought Bend was friendly to business.