
We accept advertising through Blogads. If you're interested, click the "Advertise here" link above, or go here to place your ad through Blogads. For assistance, e-mail me here; I'd be glad to help. Reach lots of viewers -- we're up to about 3,100 unique visits a day, and more than 53,000 page views a week (as of April 8). Our rates are dirt cheap for the exposure you'll get!
As a lawyer/blogger, I get
to be a member of:
Root: 1, Cabernet 2008
Columbia Crest, Two Vines Pinot Grigio 2009
Columbia Crest, Vineyard 10 White, 2008
Abacela, Grenache Rose 2009
Avia Cabernet 2004
Lemelson Pinot Noir, Thea's Selection 2007
Chateau de la Roulerie, Rose d'Anjou 2009
Casal Garcia, Vinho Verde Rose
La Ferme Julien, Rose 2008
Cana's Feast, Bricco Red, 2006
Hogue, Genesis Merlot, 2008
Owen Roe, Sharecropper's Cabernet, 2008
Kim Crawford, Unoaked Chardonnay 2008
J. Scott, Pinot Noir 2008
Edmunds St. John, White, Heart of Gold 2008
Columbia Crest, Walter Clore Private Reserve 2006
Stevenot, Cabernet, Sierra Foothills, "Stanford" 2000
Portuga, Vinho Rose 2009
Taylor Fladgate, First Estate Reserve Porto
Franciscan, Cabernet, Napa 2006
Chaparral de Vega Sindoa, Garnacha 2008
Quinta da Aveleda, Vinho Verde 2008
St. Francis, Chardonnay Sonoma 2008
E. Guigal, Cotes du Rhone Blanc, 2007
Edmunds St. John, Bone-Jolly, Gamay Noir 2008
St. Innocent, Pinot Noir 2006
Jigsaw, Pinot Noir 2007
Chateau Ste. Michelle, Merlot, Indian Wells 2007
Charles Shaw, Chardonnay 2008
Edmunds St. John, Bone-Jolly, Gamay Rosé 2009
Cameron, Willamette Valley Chardonnay
Il Valore, Sangiovese, Giovane, Puglia 2008
Duck Pond, Chardonnay, Wahluke Slope 2007
Kim Crawford, Marlborough Pinot Noir 2008
Domaine du Pesquier, Cotes du Rhone 2005
Cantina Zaccagnini, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2006
Domaine Matrot, Chardonnay, Bourgogne 2007
David Hill, Oregon Sparkling Wine, Brut
Chandler Reach, Monte Regalo 2006
Elk Cove, Pinot Gris 2008
Kirkland, Columbia Valley Merlot 2008
D'Aragon, Old Vine Garnacha 2008
Columbia Crest, Walter Clore Private Reserve 2005
Pavin & Riley, Merlot 2006
David Hill, Estate Pinot Noir, Barrel Select 2006
Castle Rock, Paso Robles Cabernet 2006
Magnificent, Cabernet, Steak House 2008
Conundrum 2008
Beaulieu, Cabernet, Rutherford 1998
Saint Cosme, Cotes-du-Rhone 2007
La Granja, Tempranillo 360, 2008
Santa Rita, Mendalla Real Cabernet 2006
Columbia Crest, Grand Estates Merlot 2006
Andezon, Cotes-du-Rhone 2007
Collegiata, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo
Troon, Druid's Fluid 2008
La Granja, Tempranillo 2008
Monte Antico, Toscana 2006
Vieux Papes, Blanc de Blancs
Beaulieu, Georges De Latour Cabernet 1995
Scott Paul, Pinot Noir, La Paulée, 2006
Woodbridge, Chardonnay
Paranga, Kir-Yianni 2005
L. Guigal, Cotes du Rhone Rose 2007
Newman's Own, Cabernet 2007
Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia Valley Merlot 2005
Monte Antico, Toscana Red 2006
Saint Cosme, Cotes-du-Rhone 2007
Vins Auvigne, Macon-Fuisse 2007
Vina Gormaz, Tempranillo 2007
Chandon, Brut Classic
Dom Martinho, Tinto 2005
Chateau St. Jean, Cabernet, California 2007
Kirkland, Napa Cabernet 2007
Revelry, The Reveler, 2007
Joseph Drouhin, Chablis 2006
Altos Las Hormigas, Mendoza Malbec 2008
Alodio, Ribeira Sacra Mencia 2007
Charles Smith, Kung Fu Girl Riesling 2008
Kiona, Lemberger 2006
Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia Valley Merlot 2005
Gloria Ferrer, Sonoma Brut
Kirkland, Napa Valley Meritage 2006
Abacela, Tempranillo 2006
Woodward Canyon, Columbia Valley Red
Santa Margherita, Pinot Grigio 2007
Mas Donis Barrica, Celler de Capcanes Red, 2005
Three Rivers, Merlot 2006
Raptor Ridge, Pinot Gris 2008
Lezaun, Rosado, Navarra
Lezaun, Red, Navarra
Hedges, Three Vineyards, Red Mountain 2005
Raptor Ridge, Pinot Gris 2008
Vega Sindoa, Cabernet-Tempranillo 2006
Inama, Soave Classico 2007
Alois Lageder, Lagrein Rosato 2008
Broglia, Gavi 2007
Marqués de Cáceres, Rioja Rose 2008
Spaltagna, Riserva Pinot Noir 2008
Portuga, Rose 2008
Warre's Warrior Port
Lange, Pinot Noir 2007
Chateau Guiraud, Le G, 2007
Falset, Garnacha Rose, Montsant 2006
Castello di Bossi, Chianti Classico 2004
Domaine Chandon, Pinot Noir, La Riviere Sonoma 2006
Brazin, Old Vine Zinfandel, Lodi 2006
B.R. Cohn, Silver Label Cabernet 2006
Casillero del Diablo, Cabernet 2007
Gentil Hugel, Alsace 2006
Mesoneros de Castilla, Ribero del Duero, Rosado 2008
Cor, Momentum 2007
Santa Margherita, Pinot Grigio 2006
Rubico, Lacrima di Morro d'Alba 2007
Gilstrap Brothers, Reserve Merlot 2003
Conundrum 2007
Chandler Reach, 36 Red
Santa Rita, Reserve Cabernet 2005
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
David Sedaris - Holidays on Ice
Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Mitch Albom - Have a Little Faith
C.S. Lewis - The Magician's Nephew
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Ivan Doig - Bucking the Sun
Penda Diakité - I Lost My Tooth in Africa
Grace Lin - The Year of the Rat
Oscar Hijuelos - Mr. Ives' Christmas
Madeline L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Steven Hart - The Last Three Miles
David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day
Karen Armstrong - The Spiral Staircase
Charles Larson - The Portland Murders
Adrian Wojnarowski - The Miracle of St. Anthony
William H. Colby - Long Goodbye
Steven D. Stark - Meet the Beatles
Phil Stanford - Portland Confidential
Rick Moody - Garden State
Jonathan Schwartz - All in Good Time
David Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Anthony Holden - Big Deal
Robert J. Spitzer - The Spirit of Leadership
James McManus - Positively Fifth Street
Jeff Noon - Vurt
Miles run year to date: 47
At this date last year: 47
Total run in 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269
Comments (27)
Do those 39 jobs pay a wage?
Recall that last fall, they were looking for for unpaid volunteers to lock and unlock the tables and chairs daily.
Posted by Garage Wine | May 20, 2009 6:29 AM
Starting the blog with the word reporter, insults those who actually source, research and write for a living...... My bad. You were referencing those who get paychecks from the Big O.
Posted by David E Gilmore | May 20, 2009 6:54 AM
39 jobs? What: one guy to shovel dog crap and 38 of Mayor Creepy's close personal financiers, er, I mean friends to "supervise" him?
Posted by Texas Triffid Ranch | May 20, 2009 7:26 AM
taller buildings than the market alone would support.
Now I understand what government is for!
Posted by Jon | May 20, 2009 7:34 AM
Hey, I am sure that's the new metric from Sam, any money spent gets translated into X new jobs and propagated / tweeted / published / blogged /shouted at news conferences / told to reporters / used as justification not to get recalled.
Of course, X is an order of magnitude larger than actual jobs. Please tell me we are running out of people stupid enough to believe this drivel.
Posted by Steve | May 20, 2009 7:51 AM
Finally, the bioscience jobs start rolling in.
Posted by Bill McDonald | May 20, 2009 7:57 AM
I'm guessing they're talking about jobs to construct the park. Of course, they aren't "creating" these jobs, they're just giving work to a local firm. Nice enough, but let's stop kissing our own butts and claiming that we're "creating" these jobs.
Posted by Snards | May 20, 2009 8:13 AM
Come on Ryan.
Did it ever occur to you that the PDC is upside down on most of their activities and hasn't the money to debt service their current boondoggle quagmire?
It doesn't serve readers very well for you to simply repeat whatever the PDC offers to tell you.
For once why don't you peel open SoWa or any other PDC flop and report the story.
PDC paid OHSU $3.5 million for parking spaces that aren't coming.
PDC paid Homer Williams $6.5 million for 100 parking spaces that are not generating enough revenue.
The Greenway, ped/bike bridge and street improvements are not funded and Mayor Creepy is about to divert $15 million from SoWa TIF money to Milwaukie MAX.
etc etc etc etc on and on.
It's called investigative journalism.
Posted by Ben | May 20, 2009 9:05 AM
I'm just going to throw an economic hunch out there:
One reason why Oregon is consistently near the worst unemployment levels during a recession, is that all this make believe, central-planning jive amplifies the effects of downturns.
If the economy is totally realistic in a free market way it never gets out of kilter this badly. It never constructs buildings higher than the market would otherwise call for, and when the "let's pretend" phase collapses - as it's doing now - it doesn't get these giant unemployment spikes that put us at the top of that list.
Just a theory. Maybe it's wrong, but if so, what is the reason why Oregon is always so high on the unemployment list during a recession? Assuming I'm remembering that part accurately too.
Posted by Bill McDonald | May 20, 2009 9:11 AM
What is so sad is that Ryan Frank knows better and knows more than what he wrote. What's the deal, Ryan? Editors? Or did the PDC write some of this for you?
Posted by Lee | May 20, 2009 9:18 AM
In South Waterfront, work has started on a new park that will create 39 jobs.
Thirty-nine people might work on the design and construction of the park, but that ain't "39 jobs".
However, my grandmother from the low country of South Carolina used to call a bowel movement a "job". Before a car trip as kids, for example, she might say, "Do you need to do a job?"
(Her euphemism for Number 1 was "make watuh".)
In that context, if this park ever gets built, it will generate a helluva lot more than 39 jobs.
Posted by none | May 20, 2009 10:03 AM
"I'm going to miss the O when it's gone."
Seriously! The Tuesday edition had the front page, Metro and Business sections all rolled into one small section.
I'm wondering when we're going to hear that the O is going to be an online-only "paper".
Posted by none | May 20, 2009 10:36 AM
No mention of how it cost $5 million and took 5 years to plan this park.
Posted by James | May 20, 2009 10:48 AM
So, why can't we roll some of these boondoggles into one? Consolidation would produce lots of efficiencies! Start by putting the baseball stadium on the poodle park site! It will be on MAX. It has lots of unused nearby parking which can be made multi-story for only a few tens of millions more to Mayor Creepy's buddies. It is already a dead zone after hours and on weekends like the stadium will otherwise make Lents! Millionaires will be motivated to purchase those unsold condos that will look down on it so they can see the games and watch the underclass come and go 35 times a years.
Sounds like a PDC multi-win strategy with lots of linch pins and knock-on effects to me.
Posted by dyspeptic | May 20, 2009 11:14 AM
If the economy is totally realistic in a free market way it never gets out of kilter this badly
Wouldn't it be nice to think so? We're seeing, though, how easily the free market system can go off the rails: trading long-term stability for short-term gain, or converting externalized costs into private profits, to say nothing of "socializing" losses when they inevitably turn up. I'm no big fan of subsidized development (beyond providing the necessary infrastructure), but I wouldn't pretend that market forces keep everything just so. If they did, we might have a solvent car company or two in the U.S.
Posted by Allan L. | May 20, 2009 11:18 AM
Right Allan, wishing doesn't make it so. When developers build for a return they feel they are entitled to because of the weasily term, "market rate", and too many of them are allowed to do it, addressing only one ideal upscale niche market then that market becomes saturated toute de suite.
The term "affordable housing" is also consistently abused and rarely defined in a sensible way.
Posted by NW Portlander | May 20, 2009 11:29 AM
I think the problem with the O is at the upper levels, although it doesn't help that we don't hear of many reporters questioning "authority". Two editors that I thought seemed to manipulate reporters: Stephen Engleberg and that hypenated public editor guy Marietta-Walden (?). something like that, are gone.
And sometimes i think the editorial page is improving. But then I'll see an outright lie in an opinion piece and remember Bob Caldwell.
I guess it is better to laugh than cry, although I am sure there are many who cry often that would be spared if the Oregonian cared about getting things right. The staff doesn't seem to empathize with humanity, but to care only about their own opinions and families. Mr. Hyphen once told me that the paper looks for those kinds of employees, the kind that, in the final analysis, only care about themselves.
Ryan could have asked questions about what "public good" is supposed to mean in this context, and there are many planners in town who could speak on the process of defining problems and analyizing alternatives. It seems to me we almost never get anything but public relations spin on growth issues. Ironically, all the hype is attracting people to Portland who want more than this.
Regarding "affordable housing": when reading about the 30% "affordable" housing rule the other day,I learned that it was originally a California provision lifted for Portland purposes. Finally, I got some insight into the 80% of median income provision. In California, during the early 2000s, people moving to urban areas (such as the San Francisco Bay Area) for jobs in Silicon Valley (let's say) could not afford to buy homes even though they were making respectable salaries. In 2003, even a house that didn't pass termite inspection in Fremont was going for over $400,000). Friends and relatives of mine in that area knew people making 50 or 60 k who could not find a house to buy. The 80 provision would help to alleviate this problem. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in the Portland market, and has nothing to do with housing the poor.
Posted by Cynthia | May 20, 2009 12:23 PM
Correction:
Engleberg and the other guy are no longer listed as managing editors. They may still be lurking around at the O.
Posted by Cynthia | May 20, 2009 1:02 PM
I noticed the story didn't dwell on the Nines Hotel disaster very long. How many people do you know that get loans that don't have to be repaid on a schedule?
Posted by Dave A. | May 20, 2009 1:38 PM
No mention of how it cost $5 million and took 5 years to plan this park.
The land alone cost $7 million. Additionally there was toxic waste to clean up, and tenants in the self-storage facility who had to be bought out and moved. I'll bet they're pushing $20 million just to get "shovel-ready."
Posted by Jack Bog | May 20, 2009 2:12 PM
Thirty-nine jobs, half of which will be filled by illegal aliens spreading barkdust and laying sod. Way to step up, PDC!
Posted by RJBob | May 20, 2009 2:31 PM
Cynthia, re Stephen Engelberg, you might peruse these grafs from the 22Jun08 Broadcasting & Cable:
“'Is it true that if you turn on your television today, your odds of hitting something investigative are lower than they were 15 years ago? Yes, I think that's true,' says Stephen Engelberg, the former editor of The Oregonian, who left to become managing editor of ProPublica.
Formed last fall and headed by Engelberg and Paul Steiger, late of the Wall Street Journal, ProPublica is an independent nonprofit newsroom specializing in investigations. It joins a contingent of journalism nonprofits currently operating, including the Center for Public Integrity, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Center for Investigative Reporting. What sets ProPublica apart is its annual $10 million budget, courtesy of California billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler.
The first 60 Minutes/ProPublica co-production, broadcast June 22, is an investigation into Al Hurra, the U.S. government's taxpayer-supported TV network in the Middle East, which has drawn criticism for broadcasting anti-Israeli commentary, among other things. ProPublica is in discussions with Frontline and ABC News about multiple projects.
'Here we are offering to do fairly expensive basic research for free, and we'll bring it to you when it's right and we know it's real,' Engelberg says. 'That's not a half-bad deal if you've been subjected to massive cutbacks.'"
Posted by Gardiner Menefree | May 20, 2009 6:27 PM
Very interesting Gardiner.
Thank you.
Posted by Cynthia | May 20, 2009 8:05 PM
Jack, thanks for correcting James' $5 Million park cost. You are very close to being correct at the $20 Million figure. It was $7.2 M for land.
Including brownfield cleanup, removal of storage co., attorneys, planners, Parks Bureau administrative costs, PDC administrative costs, design costs, etc.; and then the big cost of the debt service cost that PDC never admits, the $20 million comes close.
Plus, don't forget the numerous items taken out of the park plans to make budget (what budget?)_like no toilets. Plus the completion of the Park is three years past the due date of the few people living there.
Accountability is forgotten in our Puddle Park.
Posted by Lee | May 20, 2009 8:59 PM
I said plan, not cost. Forgive me. I agree with you, Jerry, ahem, Lee / Ben.
Posted by James | May 21, 2009 8:13 AM
You guys make some great comments, and offer a bunch of useful analysis. But why not post some of it on his article so that less-informed readers won't be misled? Yeah, it probably makes their site look more lively, but that seems a small price to pay.
I already tried to address the half-story listed in item 2 of his piece.
adéu,
Mateu
Posted by Mateu | May 21, 2009 9:19 PM
Mr Frank tries again to illustrate PDC's function:
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/05/portland_development_commissio_2.html
Posted by Gardiner Menefree | May 22, 2009 12:07 AM