The Wandering Eye

Things are not looking good for Mount Bachelor Academy, one of those special boarding schools for rich kids with problems. The state Department of Human Services has suspended the Prineville school’s license and told parents to take their kids away.

The pronouncements of Dr. Randall Podenza, an economist associated with the right-wing Cascade Policy Institute, usually leave me scratching my head.

I love football — have for decades. I know it’s politically incorrect (my goodness, so much violence!) but I freely admit it and make no apologies for it.

Kari Chisholm of the BlueOregon blog says there’s been speculation about whether Bill Bradbury’s multiple sclerosis will make people question whether he’s capable of handling the demands of the governorship.
“Over the last year, many people have wondered aloud – here on BlueOregon, and in hushed tones in person – whether Bill Bradbury’s health will be an insurmountable obstacle to his gubernatorial ambitions,” Chisholm writes.

A minor oversight could turn out to be a major problem for the forces trying to repeal the tax increases passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature last session.
The legislature’s tax measures include an increase in the corporate minimum tax (currently a ridiculous $10, unchanged since 1931) and in the top income tax rates for affluent Oregonians (individuals making over $125,000 a year or households making over $250,000).

If you find an e-mail in your in-box today claiming to be from Bend Broadband and instructing you to send your username, password and phone number “to enable us carryout [sic] an urgent maintenance in your e-mail account” – don’t.
“BendBroadband wishes to inform you that there is a congestion [sic] in your Chesapeake.

Last week, like all Deschutes County property owners, I received the most depressing piece of mail of the year: my annual tax bill.
This morning The Bulletin had more depressing news.

In the early 19th Century, after Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine came into wide use, the first anti-vaccination movement sprung up. Its adherents’ warnings ranged from the legitimate  (vaccination could, as they claimed, lead to serious infections, due to the unsanitary conditions under which it was performed) to the downright nutty (the vaccine, which was derived from cowpox, would cause patients to sprout cow-like appendages).

The conservative group Common Sense for Oregon is preening itself over a major victory: It’s gotten free soda pop taken away from Oregon prison inmates.
Common Sense jumped on the issue when it found out that prisoners were allowed to have free soda pop with their meals.

Got an e-mail “Action Alert” yesterday afternoon from Oregon Republican Chairman Bob Tiernan urging me to bombard the state’s Democratic congresspersons with phone calls opposing the “Obama-style health care reform” package that just cleared the Senate Finance Committee.
Tiernan waxes positively apoplectic over the finance committee bill – which in fact is a weak-kneed, limp-wristed, half-assed, token measure that fails to include any feature that would curb skyrocketing health insurance costs.