The Washington Post has reported that Idaho Republican Senator, Larry Craig, has successfully eliminated the Fish Passage Center, an agency that counts endangered fish in the Columbia River. The center, located in Portland, uses meticulous mathematical methods for fish counting, but Craig claims that such methods are “data cloaked in advocacy” and that “false [...]

Our governor isn’t fairing so well amongst Oregonians, according to the latest SUSA poll. Ted Kulongoski only has a 44% approval rating. And he doesn’t fair well amongst his more liberal constituents, 32% of whom disapprove of his job as governor. Ouch. He needs that vote if he wants to win [...]

Let’s state the obvious: any charm that Bend once had is pretty much gone.
Replacing the small-town, high desert feel are row after row of big box mega-stores, from Home Depot, to Lowe’s, to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Now, Bend is just another Anytown, USA. It wouldn’t be so bad if this [...]

Over at Blue Oregon, contributor Caelan MacTavish discusses the annual “Buy Nothing Day” which falls on the biggest shopping day of the year, the Friday after Thanksgiving. MacTavish urges supporters of BND to consider an alterternative: Buy Local Day.
As a small bidness owner and a close friend of other small bidness owners, I [...]

From Oregonians In Action lictor Mr. Ross Day:

Writing good titles is a tough business!

Nothing is more instructive than when someone I really like comes up with an opinion that collides with mine. It turns my whole brain inside out because I can’t believe someone I like so much believes that. It prods me to take inventory and make sure I really believe what I thought I believed. Sometimes [...]

If you’re like myself, you’re signed up with a bunch of organizations like MoveOn, the Natural Resources Defense Council, People For the America Way… that all have e-mail action campaigns, which has the result of filling up your e-mail box with campaigns every week. With so much at stake these days, it’s certainly [...]

Over at Portland Transport, Rex Burkholder has blogged about his experience at the first national conference on peak oil, held by the Association for the study of peak oil-USA in Denver this past weekend. For those unfamiliar with the term “peak oil” it refers to the top of the bell-curve of oil production, the [...]

Congress is about to rip off the tax payers of this country by overturning a congressional ban on a little known 19th century law that allowed the sale of public land to mining interests for the Wal-Mart price of $2.50 to $5.00 an acre. In 1994 Congress had the sound mind to ban [...]

Measure 37 was not a watershed moment. It did not indicate that citizens are “sick and tired” of all the regulatory hassles of our land use system. To see that M37 passed largely due to issue framing (and faulty opposition), just look at what happened yesterday in rural Livermore, California.
There, Weyerhaeuser’s Pardee [...]