Yeah. Straight out to West Linn, huh?

Or, how about Sherwood? We could argue the color of the streetlights, forever?

Just a little reality-check...

On the other hand, there was an ode to an Oregon Wine Country town, not yet "discovered" in The Oregonian the other day. I thought it good, but it said the public swimming pool was dry. Every time we've driven by it it's been full of water and kids and family and something I remember from when I was young...

So there is something to what you're saying, Jack. But perhaps less than any of us might want to imagine, more close in to Portland -- where the real suburbs lie.

I don't see Jackbog as imagining things so much as giving us a reality check himself. That is what the "progressive" crowd says: "You are imagining things" and hammers the press with such when those so charged actually have documentation that contradicts the "progressive" sloganeering, which, ironically, is largely based on imaginings.

Beware the Government-Media Complex; far more dangerous (and insidious) than the Military-Industrial Complex

The Last Page of the “City Matters” brochure you linked in your comment, says that

“ The total project cost is about $750,000. The EcoRoof Adds about 20 percent above the average cost to replace the roof”

However when the fanfare of the project was announced in the Big O just a year ago,

Portland Building will get a 'green roof'
City life - Designed to soak up runoff and cut down pollution, the new roof has an eco-mentality

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
…….. Green roofs, also called eco-roofs, cost more, $9 to $24 a square foot, compared with $3 to $9 per square for a traditional hard surface, according to the group Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. Calculate that over the Portland Building's 15,000 square feet, and the price difference will be hefty once the city puts the new roof out to bid and figures out just how much it will cost. ……..

So, a traditional roof should have been $45,000 to $135,000

The green roof between $135,000 and $360,000 at the “hefty price premium”

Where did the $750,000 come from? Are the plants steel or tied to the swiss franc. Isn’t that $50 a square foot.

Wouldn’t a 20% premium be $9000 to $17,000 more or is my math off.

Why were we spending $625-705,000 more on plantings on a roof no one can see, when a reflective membrane would stem the heat island effect, and improving some greenspace or City Hall Roof, where people can enjoy it would mitigate stormwater runoff much more effectively.

This is so illustrative of the separate reality the City lives in, with no logic other than political and no accountablity.

"Beware the Government-Media Complex; far more dangerous (and insidious) than the Military-Industrial Complex"

Oh man, rickyragg,

I find it hard to believe the way the press will spout a government position without doing ANY legwork or research. You would have think members would have learned something when they were used as tools to usher us into the mess in Iraq. But it seems that every day, in every way, we can rely on Pravda of Portland to spout the goverment line on matters large and small. One of my obsessions, as you may know, is Multnomah County's (anti) cat law and policy. The commissioners have lots of evidence that statistics are being manipulated at the shelter. I just learned a white cat I saw out there Sunday is not listed on the county's website as being there. One woman-Gail O'Connell Babcock was basically called insane and "a terrorist" and ousted from the facility by our Margie-Goldschmidt- poking sheriff, Bernie Giusto, for trying to get to the bottom of shelter personnels' manipulation of statistics. This is story-of-the -year kind of stuff, yet Mr. New York Times, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, takes it upon himself to spin the county's line on cats rather than check out the prima facie case that something is seriously wrong. And he may not be the lead suppresser. And this when the O actually quoted former Environmental Services Director, Larry Nichols saying a "bomb was about to explode" in 1999. It has taken a heckuva long time to detonate. If there isn't media complicity in hiding reality from the public, I don't know what to call it.

That is: You would think...

By the way, I don't think it's a fake picture. If you stand in Schrunk Plaza at the bottom of the hill, you block out all of 4th avenue and it gives you the perspective that there is a grass field directly in front of City Hall.

Yeah, well, the day you see a group of little school kids frolicking out there, give me a call.

I spoke with a friend in the trucking business and he says that B99 will corrode most of the rubber seals and hoses in a diesel engine (assuming the geniuses at CoP didn't swap them all out for a more robust material).

I wonder if they'll have a press release when they start overhauling engines?