Business-friendly Portland is preparing to drive more industrial jobs out of the city in order to "protect" what they are calling an "environmental gem" - a long-industrialized stretch of the Columbia Slough.
While companies like Hanset Stainless consider the slough to be one of the last sanctuaries for industrial business in Portland, the city sees the slough as an environmental gem that needs to be protected, said Jay Sugnet, a project manager with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.
We just need a few more Starbucks outlets, and everything will be just fine.
This will come as a huge shock, but an independent panel has studied the issue in depth and has discovered- much as a similar panel discovered in the 1980's - that a new I-5 bridge over the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver is urgently needed. Oregon "governor" Ted and Washington Queen Christine have leapt into action, directing the state transportation agencies to get back to them in a month.
The bridge should have been built 20 years ago, but funds were diverted instead to west-side light rail.
They've wasted $100 million so far, just on "planning". Clearly, we have far too many "planners" and far too many layers of government. Private enterprise, left to itself, would have delivered a new bridge by now.
Next up on ethic charges is Rep. Maxine Waters, who will doubtless scream that it's all about race - it's what she does most of the time. And following in the wake of the Charlie hearings, you can bet she'll be claiming that the House Ethics Committee is nothing but a bunch of racist basts. No, Maxine - you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar.
What is it with these Democrats, anyway? William "Cold Cash" Jefferson. Charlie Rangel. Now Maxine. Whatever happened to the most open and transparent Congress in the history of the country?
Nidal Hasan has a teeny bit of trouble: he's still being paid by the U.S. Army in excess of $6000 per month even as he cools his heels in the Bell County jail awaiting inquiries into the Ft. Hood shootings.
But the banks won't take his paychecks. Bank of America closed his account, and no other bank will agree to open an account for him; greatly upsetting his lawyer, one John Galligan.
Galligan said he and his staff have tried to open accounts in Hasan's name at half a dozen banks but were turned down at each one. He was especially angry that Fort Hood National Bank also refused, he said.
Galligan said Hasan has a car payment, legal fees and obligations to family members.
President George W. Bush had it wrong: the War On Terror is a complete misnomer; likely he was hoping to defuse accusations of bigotry by not describing the actual situation. In so doing, unfortunately, he clouded the issue almost beyond recognition because "terror" is such a nebulous thing. Our enemy is not "terror", it is Sharia. This is the single common thread which runs through all of the horrors, from sawing off the head of Daniel Perlman through 9/11 and on through Ft. Hood. Those who subscribe to Sharia are avowed enemies of all non-subscribers - meaning the rest of all mankind. Much as the Nazis had the goal of ethnic cleansing in mind, so do those who subscribe to Sharia.
The reason why there is so much trouble in France and other parts of the EU is primarily because they were stupid enough to permit enclaves in which Sharia is tolerated as "law". The establishment of such enclaves should never be permitted. Muslims should be permitted to honor their prophet and to otherwise freely practice their religion, but they must not be permitted to establish religious law.
The Obama administration has embarked upon a reeducation campaign as it seeks to garner some degree of public support for its massive entitlement program. A new survey released by the National Council on Aging concludes that most Seniors are misinformedand unaware of provisions in the Health Care Act, noting that 66% of Seniors erroneously believe that the Act will result in future cuts to their Medicare benefits.
Given, however, that the Act redirects some $575 billion from Medicare toward other aspects of the entitlement program, it seems clear that most Seniors understand the impact all too well.
The NCOA appears set upon an Orwellian path in which truth is untrue and untruth becomes true.
The Left constantly refers to Tea Party folks in derogatory terms. They're "teabaggers". They're racist. They're this, they're that.
What they continually miss is that they are in fact nothing more than Constitutionalists, who believe in the founding concept of limited government. And this is where the Bama so often steps in it. The actions of his administration and his Congress have run afoul of the Tenth Amendment, and thus the great uniter finds himself ever more often in battles of federal vs. state powers.
Waste Management and InEnTec have floated the idea of turning Portland's trash into something useful.
Unfortunately, they aren't talking about Portland's pervy mayor Sham Adams nor the rest of Portland City Council. No, they're talking about building a plasma unit to convert garbage to gas, thus converting landfill waste into a profit center. Naturally, critics such as the ever-negative "Physicians for Social Responsibility" (a very thinly-veiled activist group for every cause from animal "rights" to carbon-trading schemes) are already up in arms; claiming that such a plant would, among other things, "undermine waste-reduction and recycling efforts".
Such an outcome is hardly likely, given the extensive recycling and reduction programs already in place - more likely, such a plant would function to convert hard-to-recycle products into useful materials that can be sold at a small profit. PSR gripes about everything that doesn't involve de-industrialization.
Recycling is fine and dandy, but we still need landfill alternatives.
We're running way low on places to stick landfills, anyhow. Energy is matter and matter is energy, and it makes little sense to stuff manufactured matter into landfills and wait for it to slowly decompose into energy when we can convert it in the space of a second back into both energy and usable matter.
It's also worth noting that Hawaii is preparing to start sending their garbage to Oregon. Hawaii is loaded with invasive species. I think it'll be safer all around to run it through a plasma plant than to bury it.
Portland City Council, having solved all other problems, unanimously announced last Wednesday the "Green Power Challenge", which will run for two months with a goal of getting at least 1,000 residential and business power users to pony up extra money for the purpose of purchasing "sustainable", "renewable" electricity from windmills and solar panels - hydropower, of course, doesn't count.
As Portland's pervy little mayor, Sham Adams, trumpeted after checking his fly: “I’m incredibly proud that Portland is a city where sustainability is as much a priority for our utilities as it is for our households,” said Mayor Adams. “Having customers and companies support renewable energy delivers very real benefits for our community, from the quality of our environment to the strength of our economy. Portland, and Oregon, win when we take the Green Power Challenge.”
The only reason why the utilities are interested in this junk is because they are required to be interested, by state fiat.
But the Portland City Council isn't stopping with the "Challenge", they've also resolved that plasticgrocery bagswill no longer be acceptable. When it comes to solving nonexistent problems, this brain trust really stands out.
When it comes to attracting jobs and saving money - not so much.
Where do these clowns get their whole Gaiia/Mother Earth stuff?
