No big deal; it only cost taxpayers nearly $200 million to give 'em all "free" healthcare insurance.
That's on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars Oregon has spent on failed and disappointing health care-related information technology projects. Lynne Saxton, director of the health authority, trumpets the state's Medicaid operations as the height of efficiency. Oregon's network of coordinated care organizations have agreed to operate with a capped annual inflation rate of 3.4 percent, which Saxton says offers a national model for controlling health care costs.
They're really big on being "national models". It never works out, but they keep peeing money away in their continued effort to prove that they can be a "national model" for something. The main problem seems to be that other places look at what Oregon's bureaucrats and politicians do, and go "thanks, but no".
The Shire of Bland, Tasmania, has joined Dull, Scotland and Boring, Oregon in an effort to boost tourism.
Bland is named after William Bland, a medical practitioner and politician, who was transported from the UK to Tasmania in 1814 after being convicted of manslaughter. Dull is believed to be derived from the old Gaelic term for "meadow", while Boring was named after a man of that name who settled in Oregon, and whose great-great-grandson still lives in the area.
There's a road sign out on SE 82nd in Portland that reads: Boring Cemeteries, which I've always thought amusing.
Of the three, Boring is by far the largest town. Dull has only about 80 residents, but the relationship has boosted the local economy.
Speaking at the time, Mayor of Bland Shire Neil Pokoney said: "Dull and Boring basically have a tourism relationship.
"We heard about it and thought it would be even better if it became Bland, Dull and Boring.
GEARHART, Ore (AP) — A herd of elk has been a headache for managers of a golf course on Oregon's northwest coast.
The course recently deployed decoys to remind the elk of their predators. Landscape crews sprinkled coyote urine on eight plastic coyotes strategically placed on the perimeter of the 18-hole course.
Only one problem: coyotes don't hunt elk. They aren't elk predators. The occasional small deer is about as far up the food chain as they get. Wolves, which will take down elk, hunt in packs. Coyotes don't. Your small dog or cat is a perfect coyote target; elk, nope.
They will eat elk meat, but that's because the animal died from some other cause. In other words, the opportunistic canids aren't above eating some good carrion. The folks out at the Gearhart Golf Links might be good at landscaping, but they don't know squat about animal management. The only predators that elk out there might know anything about involve humans with rifles.
Careful with that sunroof, Eugene. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there have been hundreds of cases in which the thousand-dollar options have spontaneously exploded - or simply flown off cars. Although manufacturers claim that highway impacts are to blame (projectiles, etc.), NHTSA notes “The sunroof may spontaneously shatter while the vehicle is in motion or stationary.”
Class-action lawsuits against Nissan, Kia, Ford, Hyundai and Lexus are either forming or have already been filed.
So what's the problem with the sunroofs? If you guessed "interference by the federal government", step on up and pick up your prize. Manufacturers have responded to their CAFE Standards rules requiring greater fuel efficiency by using thinner materials in the glass and surrounding sunroof structures.
“The problem is that going with the thinner materials and the thinner sheet metals in the cars, you’re getting more movement. So now they’re more on the edge of what they used to be when things were heavier and thicker and more robust.”
That means that the thinner structural support for the glass is more likely to deform and fail, which can cause the glass to shatter or eject; your windshield is heavier - basically a sandwich of plastic between two layers of glass known as laminated glass. All of the other glass in the car, including the sunroof, are single pieces of tempered glass. Much lighter.
One solution offered by a repair shop owner that would at least keep chunks of glass from raining down on you from the sunroof: install an after-market tint film. It's installed from inside, and if the glass shatters, the film will hold the pieces in place, reducing the likelihood of injury.
Or, you could just do what this guy did in Britain: an hour after picking up his new $200,000 Ferrari, he lost control and totaled it.
No sunroof needed. Amazingly, he walked away with just cuts and bruises.
California has a marijuana problem: growers are producing five times more of the stuff than users in the state are consuming,and some estimates place that number even higher, as much as 12 times consumption. Now they're trying to figure out what to do with all that weed.
And you may recall that little problem with their Oroville Dam. They're still working at repairing the broken spillway, yet other problems are cropping up, in the form of a big green spot of growing vegetation:
OROVILLE — A new report from a UC Berkeley group researching what caused the Lake Oroville spillway to fail in February is concerned that a green spot on the nation’s tallest dam might mean it is leaking.
Department of Water Resources have been claiming that the big spot is due to rainfall or a natural spring, both of which the report's authors refute. They believe that differential settlement is occurring, which would likely lead to failure of the structure. It doesn't help that DWR haven't repaired the internal piezometers, which measure the pressure of water, so they don't really know what's going on in the structure.
For the first time in the United States, scientists have edited the genes of human embryos, a controversial step toward someday helping babies avoid inherited diseases.
Officials at Oregon Health & Science University confirmed Thursday that the work took place there and said results would be published in a journal soon. It is thought to be the first such work in the U.S.; previous experiments like this have been reported from China. How many embryos were created and edited in the experiments has not been revealed.
The Oregon scientists reportedly used a technique called CRISPR, which allows specific sections of DNA to be altered or replaced.
Well, they didn't create the embryos, so there's a reporting error.
Editing might be beneficial, as in the case of that kid in the U.K. that they decided shouldn't live; that was a result of genetic defects that might have been reparable earlier in his short life.
It looks like the left-leaning Snopes.com "fact-checking" site's on its last legs in the wake of a bitter divorce of the co-owners and a subsequent lawsuit by investors that's soon to get underway.
Fact-checking website Snopes is on the verge of financial collapse after its owner was accused of embezzling company funds to pay for his contentious divorce battle and lavish overseas trips with his new wife, a former Las Vegas escort and porn actress.
The company's financial woes have gotten so bad that Snopes' owner David Mikkelson started a crowd-funding website pleading for donations this week, which raised over $500,000 from generous readers in its first day.
Snopes readers tend to be True Believers. And Leftist. During the course of divorce proceedings, it emerged that Davey was accused of embezzling $100,000 in company funds, which he diverted to personal expenses and prostitutes.
Now an advertising and internet services company called Proper Media is making similar accusations against Mikkelson in a lawsuit filed in May in California which is scheduled for a court hearing next month.
It doesn't really matter whether or not Dirty Davey prevails in court (and he likely won't), when all you're peddling is credibility and you don't have it anymore, it's over.
Canada welcomes them into their Forces; Trump says they cost too much. But the U.S. military spends ten times as much on erectile dysfunction pills than they do on transgender care:
July 26 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump today announced via Twitter that he was banning transgender Americans from serving in the U.S. military in any capacity due to "tremendous medical costs."
Several analyses suggest, however, that the U.S. military spends far less on transgender-related healthcare than on treatment for erectile dysfunction -- a total of $84 million on erectile dysfunction drugs annually, compared to an estimated $2.4 million to $8.4 million spent per year on transgender healthcare.
The DOD spent $41.6 million on Viagra alone in 2014., That's well over half the cost of an F-35 fighter jet.
Personally, I think that trannies are really confused, but all I really care about when it comes to military service is: can they take out the target? That's what counts. And since the DOD's spending millions on guys with sexual issues of their own, Trump's got no case. Am I going to run out with other Portlanders and "protest"? Nope. Not into that. Keeps the ol' blood pressure down when you choose not to get involved with that kind of stuff.
Gregory Burleson, a member of Arizona militia groups who participated in the 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, was sentenced Wednesday to more than 68 years in federal prison.
He's 53. But then, on the other hand, it doesn't seem as though he'll actually be around all that much longer:
Burleson’s health has deteriorated since the standoff. He is blind, suffers some seizures, and requires the use of a wheelchair.
Things can change quickly in just the space of three and a half years or so. You just never know what's around the next bend.
A life suffused in anger and outrage is a life wasted.
It's the latest opening in park history.
Young Frankenstein.
