Upfront

Not afraid of a handoutA small, stoic and stupid number of Republican Governors are saying they won't accept funds from the newly passed economic stimulus bill. Seriously, the residents of Idaho, Alaska, Texas, Louisiana and South Carolina won't receive a cut of President Obama's $800 billion plan, if their elected leaders have their way. Why? Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is questioning $1 billion funding for the national census and $50 million for the arts, saying it's "not apparent to me why they had to be in the stimulus package." Maybe so — Perhaps to accurately count the number of people in Louisiana and New Orleans (which each of us now own at least nine square/sinking inches of, after evacuating and rebuilding post-Hurricane Katrina). Republicans hate accurate tallies, and the arts - we all know that - and it must be added that South Carolina is already a welfare state, receiving around $1.30 for every $1 it sends to Washington.

Finally proving that they can do the nation's business without bipartisanship or any semblance of full disclosure - having learned well from the Bush Admin and GOP - Democrats passed the $787 billion stimulus bill with a House vote of 246-183, and a Senate vote of 60-38 (with only three Republican Senators saying "Yeah, sure…"). Republicans, obviously exhausted from blowing our nation's future over the past eight years, will soon be replaced by a third-party known as "2012 Mayans and Other Loonies Enshrined Symbiotically" (acronym: MOLES). Despite a firestorm of criticism, President Obama can now claim victory, and is only eclipsed by Abraham Lincoln as the greatest president ever: Seriously, name one president who has dealt with more bullshit than Obama in his first few weeks. "Shovel-ready" projects will promptly receive funding, including $15 million to lowly Bend to widen U.S. 97. Unemployed carpenters should start digging ditches to refill, service workers should learn to gut and cook panhandlers (young bums can be rather sinewy, and older should be served well-done, to avoid ring-worm and to fully baste the Thunderbird). Meanwhile, monkey butlers approved in the stimulus bill will be arriving at Broken Top in the next few weeks.

"I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now," said President Obama during his primetime speech on Monday, given in hopes of speeding passage of the 'stimulus' bill now mired in partisanship and hypocrisy, and to set the record very straight: "The notion that I just came in here ginned up to spend $800 billion dollars – that wasn't how I envisioned beginning my presidency." Well, good luck with that… And good luck to Republicans so quick to forget that they followed Dubya into an abyss - blowing a balanced budget and surplus, ruining America's standing in the world, and leaving the new president with two wars (Afghanistan is so very Taliban right now) and a debt of several trillion. Former POW and presidential candidate, and future Geritol spokesman John McCain calls the stimulus "generational theft." Meanwhile, TARP funds from the $700 billion banking bailout (devised by Bush and zealously endorsed by both Obama and McCain) have proved to be utterly untraceable, with Wells Fargo's $25 billion buyout of Wachovia seemingly underwritten by us. US, as in you and me…

The City Standoff

Heads or tails. Upfront has been entertained by the new Bend city council's standoff start to the new year. As of Monday councilors remained evenly divided over whom to tap for the seat recently vacated by Chris Telfer, who departed in early January for the state legislature. By law councilors have until Feb. 7 to select Telfer's replacement. That person will serve out the two years remaining on Telfer's term. But several councilors who spoke with Upfront about the stand-off said they didn't foresee any compromise before the deadline, which would force the city to settle the question with a special election (estimated cost $13,000) or with the flip of a coin - a relatively rare but well established political tie-breaker. One councilor who spoke with Upfront on Monday said he thought the council would go with the later method to avoid a costly and politically divisive special election.

Not a LAHFing Matter
Breaking the law!Central Oregon seems to love Larry and His Flask, but the same can't be said for the Southern Oregon University campus security team, which sent the wheels of chaos in motion, resulting in three members of the punk-turned-rampaging-Americana act to jail for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
As the band's multi-instrumentalist Dallin Bulkley tells it, the trouble started when bassist Jeshua Marshall was approached by a pair of SOU campus security guards who told him he was banned from the campus. This was news to Marshall and the rest of LAHF, who were in town on Saturday, Jan. 17 on tour opening a show for Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band and had never been told that they were not welcome on the campus where they've played previously.

The 44th

So I'm watching the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as our 44th President, trying to calculate the number of coal-fired electricity plants and oil-burning cars, buses and planes utilized to make this day so special, guesstimating that the Earth will heat at least 1½ degrees before D.C. is done celebrating itself. It was all we expected, indeed deserved, our millions of dollars in donations ensuring that hope is still alive. And then the following happened:
Lord Cheney Not
Looking So Well
Wearing a fedora that matches his old pal and Indian-giver Jack Abramoff, former (oh the joy in being able to write that!) Vice President Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, and purposely well hidden behind bulletproof glass. Maybe there's tact in the old grumpy Halliburton hack after all: He could have faked his death months ago and we'd now be celebrating Condi Rice as our 44th - African-Americans still pleased but the GLBT community ecstatic at the thought of our first butch prez.

As noted in this week's Boot former councilor and now state Sen. Chris Telfer (R) stuck around city hall just long enough to orchestrate the installation of her hand picked mayor, Kathie Eckman. After Eckman won on a "party line" vote over Mark Capell, Telfer packed her bags for Salem leaving the council to fill the two years remaining on her term.

And if the mayoral contest was any kind of litmus test, expect a divided council to narrowly appoint another person with strong ties to, or at least support from, the Bend Good Ol' Boys Club (i.e. the builders, realtors and Chamber lobby).
Upfront's money is on Don Leonard, a former planning commissioner who ran unsuccessfully in November against Jim Clinton. Leonard subsequently filed for the position opened by the sudden death of councilor and former mayor Bill Friedman. The council ultimately filled that seat with Jodie Barram, another planning commission vet, who lost a close contest to Jeff Eager in November.

Upfront realizes that the city of Bend catches a lot of crap from the community over its snow plowing practices. If the city isn't plowing enough, they're money-wasting morons who dumped all the city's nest egg into pet projects like bridge proclamations.

Bend’s next super subdivision? Most folks have lost track of how long the Bend City Council has been working to expand the city's UGB - long enough for the anachronistic term "UGB" to actually resonate with any partially informed observer of local politics. Earlier this week the city council put the finishing touches on what it hopes will be a blueprint for the next 20 years of growth in Bend - a roughly 8,500-acre expansion of the city's geographic footprint which is intended to add more land for housing and commercial development.

By a 4-2 vote councilors opted to finalize the plan known as Alternative 4A, which Upfront likes to think of as the "kitchen sink" alternative - as in it includes everything that landowners and developers wanted plus the kitchen sink for good measure.
The plan has no shortage of critics, including some skeptical state regulators that have balked at the size of the land grab, which they see as a recipe for sprawl.

It's no trade secret that any story or report related to Mt. Bachelor, good or bad, has a built in readership in this town. So it was with more than a passing interest that Upfront listened to a recent tipster who told us that Mt. B brass were getting ready to enforce a long-posted — but never adhered to — ban on sack lunches at Mt. B's slopeside lodges. Upfront didn't wait for the receiver to cool before putting in a call to Mt. B's marketing director, Alex Kaufman, who set the record straight on sack lunches. Contrary to what we had heard, Mt. B is not cracking down on brown baggers at Sunrise or Pine Marten lodge, Kaufman said. Quite the opposite, he said, the staff at Bachelor have actually added microwaves to allow more skiers and boarders to reheat food on the lower level of the main lodge. In addition, he said Bachelor has revamped the menu at the lower level café to focus on wallet-friendly foods like hot dogs and sandwiches.

Voila PR disaster averted.