If the only cost of your trip was the $2 for parking I'd say you made an astute transportation choice.

I believe all the next candidate for mayor has to do is find a way to cut water/sewer rates in half, cut system access charges dismantling the PDC and start fixing potholes. This could be done by eliminating a few bureaus like the Office of Sustainability, Human Relations, Housing, Government Relations, Neighborhood Involvement and Healthy Working Rivers. Any vital functions of these bureaus can be taken over by existing bureaus. The next candidate should also promise to only allow three staff members for each commissioner. A ten percent pay cut for everyone would be in order too. If this were done the city would have money left over.

It would be nice if the city would stop treating its own residents like sharecroppers on a privately owned farm, but I'm not holding my breath.

The real story is what he wrote. I have been hammered for taking the essentially identical position, based on looking at both sides, being careful to assure the authenticity of the the paper's sources. (no bogus publications please!)The conclusion I keep coming to is that while climate change seems obvious, even in a short run (micro-climates, like those in your back yard also show averages, for the day week etc., as you wish to look), exactly what direction and to what degree the long term changes are actually occurring is not obvious.

It's nice to see that I am on the right track,that is, depending on the scientific method for my source of information. (as if it ever was in question!)

Thanks for the link, Jack.

....The day is getting closer when the City of Portland will just put a turnstile on the doors of everyone's homes....

"Mom, can Johnny come over to play?"
"Sure Junior. Just make sure he has 2 quarters for the turnstile at the front door."

NOT out of the realm of revenue generating possibilities at the rate things are progressing here.

That's really neat that you don't have to pay for insurance or gas so it's cheaper to drive than to take the bus.

Figure $0.15/mile for gas, insurance and maintenance. Also have to assign a value for all the additional time it takes to get to your destination using public transportation versus personal automobile (including walking to and from the bus or Max stop both at your home and at your destination and the slower transit time while you're actually moving on the bus or Max). My time's worth about $25 an hour, so it's pretty impossible for mass transit to come anywhere near the personal automobile, cost-wise.

I'm glad I'm not the only one here thinking that the next step may be turnstiles and/or tolls wherever we go.

Best just for people to stay in the planned urban little designed cells. Stay in the little multi density communities, all provided for with no need to leave. Garden space? not possible except through the parks bureau for a fee blocks away that is if one can get on a long waiting list. Get rid of as many single family homes as possible by eventually taxing people out of them then into the "subsidized housing" agenda.

This all frees up the path for the elite to pay as they please, to go where they please and to live as they please in their spacious McMansion estates outside the UGB. They can afford all the tolls they want to go to the beach and mountains, all those wonderful places many of us could afford to go to before the $10. gas kicks in.

Thanks for the blog plug Jack. It was a great time. Yes, parking was $2, but at least the beers were only $3!

But if you bike OR take the Streetcar, your ride is free because you are making a "green, sustainable" choice.

For everyone else...pay up or stay inside.

SKA:....The day is getting closer when the City of Portland will just put a turnstile on the doors of everyone's homes....

"Mom, can Johnny come over to play?"
"Sure Junior. Just make sure he has 2 quarters for the turnstile at the front door."

NOT out of the realm of revenue generating possibilities at the rate things are progressing here.

Great example. I wonder in this new urban planning they have, is there any place outside where kids can play, just play for free, and/or be free to play?

Revenue generating does seem to be the name of the game in today's world.

I thought parking meters go unwatched 'after hours.' Anyway, beer at 3 bucks is cheap, for 'hand-crafted' ... it's twice as much east of the Mississippi. Or this weekend.

Rudie's blog needs its seasoning. More connections with 'fellow bloggers' everywhere:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11989723
fewer 'old media' O-live links to old 'global warming' ???s which are so-o-o over.

The cherry blossoms sidewalk photo is a find but be careful (Rudie) what you wish for, (dry and warming weather). My weather forecast is that the rain here ends at mid-January, then the skys clear and daytime high temperatures barely get above freezing thru Feb and March. By April 15 the hot-stove farmer talk at the General Store is going to be about 'how long' the drought will last. Answer: all summer. I say (the planets say) that the New Year brings the worst fire season in a long time; (the planet pattern reprises 1997, and 'worse' -- hot, dry, no water. The planets reprise the politics of 1860 -- the big question is 'to secede or not to secede').

-
Of course global 'climate chaos' concern is all totally bogus because Rush Limbaugh said it's bogus, (and all the Limbaugh dittodummies say so, too). Of course Al Gore is clueless and detestable because Rush Limbaugh assured the world that Gore lies to everyone on purpose, and Limbaugh hates him (and all the dittodummies hate him, too). Limbaugh said the Earth is TOO BIG for puny insignificant humans to affect it ...

... at the teeny tiny exceedingly thin layer of air supply.

And everyone should doubt that a climate warming trend is obvious ... as long as no one looks through the photos of glaciers melting ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850
... but the melting is only a local phenomenon in (photos of) the mid-latitude glaciers of the Eastern hemisphere in Europe, Siberia, Asia, Oceania, and the Western hemisphere in the Cascades, U.S. Rocky Mountains, Canadian Rockies and British Columbia Coast Range, Alaska, the Andes and Tierra del Fuego, and the tropical glaciers in Africa, South America, Oceania, and at the polar regions in Iceland, Canada, Northern Europe, Greenland, and Antarctica, so it's not like there is any visible substantive evidence of some kind of total planetary problem. Obviously.

That whole special-science thing about increasing average planet temperature is another 'fakey' fact ...
www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/2/21034/63481

... since it is only about measured ocean temperatures which hardly matters for air conditions or atmospheric high-altitude wind currents.

Nobody understands science anyway so it could all be a big profit-taking put-on scam. I mean, Rush Limbaugh knows this stuff, for sure, you can tell by his confident voice.

Back to beer, bloggers, bikes and parking meters...
.... oh, but this might be the only post in all of 2010 by that guy, without the word LIARS or Larson anywhere to be found. I guess half a dozen Rush mentions make up for the absence.

I don't mind paying for insurance, maintenance, depreciation, and gas. I do resent every single penny I pay to the Sam-Rand Twins and the arrogant children they have "working" for them.

I've been told that the real cost of a boarding passenger on a TriMet bus is north of five dollars per trip. Eight if you include the trolleys and MAX.

Tensk, your chart only goes back to 1880. Why didn't you post other accepted charts like the EPICA Antartic core sample chart going back 800,000 years that have several periods warmer than now? Or post Holocene Climatic Chart of 10,000 year with warmer periods? Or the 5 Million Year Geologic Chart that shows a steady mean temperature decline?

TriMet's FY11 budget: $866,749,000

TriMet's Originating Rides for FY10: 78,841,823

TriMet's cost per rider: $10.99 per rider

TriMet's Boarding Rides: 100,409,748

TriMet's cost per boarding: $8.63

(An originating ride counts just riders, regardless of how many transfers they make. A boarding ride is the number of boardings, of which a rider may board more than once to complete a trip - i.e. multiple bus lines, from bus to MAX, MAX to bus, etc.)

TriMet's Operating Budget: $417.35M (this excludes spending related to light rail, streetcar or commuter rail construction)

TriMet's operating cost per rider: $5.29

TriMet's operating cost per boarding: $4.16

Lest I disappoint anyone, LIARS Larson = Rash Lamebrain. Both attached at the stupidbone and dumbgut, so the first one to perish causes the other to respire ... like floors of a tower 'pancaking' together into rubble ...

... it's a joke [ba-da-boom, crash].

As for 'resenting every penny rendered unto and misappropriated by City Caesars (seizers?)' -- yes, they are fault-ridden and undeveloped mentally, (conscientiously immature), in a childish manner. But the hand that is rifling through purses and wallets has, in-behind, a monster's hand holding grip on the elbow pushing the hand that we see in the purse.

It's like a teacher sees through children's behavior and speech (vocabulary) in the classroom, just what the home life is like and can tell you all about the (ethic of the) child's parents or guardianship, sight unseen.

Slapping around the Portland Caesars and their hirelings, even replacing them all en masse, hardly brings any relief or better change for the resident citizens. Replacement Custodians would go on rifling every purse and wallet in the City in reach, pilfering every penny. We have to deal with the State/Federal monstrosity in the background; shift and topple the paradigm so it squishes the 800-lb subhuman sasquatch flat as pancake.

Meanwhile there's the wasting incompetence problem with the local personalities and pride-tangled poobahs that needs some slapping around upside their heads. (No one else believes this but I swear that the day LIARS gets perp-walked into the pokey and leaves dead air at his one small slice of the radio dial, about half of the inflammation and swollen infection is going to subside in this town ('Couver, too), and the body politick start to get better. Currently playing in hateradio's top-10 featured rotation, for instance, is hourly broadcast of the sounds of gunfire shooting up some school board meeting in Florida, past-sale-date 'news' devoid of context. Put that on the radio in 100 cop cars on the way to 'domestic disturbance' calls and watch how those end up, in percentages of results.) Patching and salving symptoms is no cure whatsoever; the diseased massmind paradigm must be pulled out at its root (behind the broadcast microphone, buried down in deathworld bunkers, heads talking where the Sun don't shine), and the prevailing sense of common people say, "we don't need no haters."

Y'know, socialism is not a bad word. Some familiarity with the concept might be a good practice -- World Socialist Web Site -- to go there. Moreover, social comity is not only a good idea, it is Nature's way of delivering Evolution and almost everyone likes more of that to continue. 'Federal' fanaticism, the 'Nationalist' zealot and unconscienced capitalism is its own defeat and dead-end demise ... at the end of our rope at the end of the Oregon Trail -- ultimately, in time and place, we have to circle the wagons and circulate amongst ourselves the gold we mine and produce out of the ground we cohabit.

BTW, during the Holidays it so happened I had a nice chat with over-loathed Commish (Commizsar?) Leonard and we exchanged cordialities -- he passes along to everyone here, incidently, his civil respects and New Year's best wishes; (I reminded him some of us are already 4 months into the New Year 5771, since Rosh HaShanah on the Hebrew calendar and he respected that; and others of us, not) -- but I forgot to mention there's raging resentment about too-many pennies he takes to pay puke City-Services punks ... alas, the thread hadn't come up then. Anyway, I gave him my issue, he took a concern, and while that's not the same as a plan working out, yet it works for me.

I still say we need to charge an admission fee at the Urban Growth Boundary to enter the Portland Amusement Park and ride the rides and ingest the concessions here -- with 2 exceptions: except at in-state (Oregon) crossing points of the UGB, and except for pedestrians, bicycles, boats trains and planes, and longhaul trucks passing through; other than that, a dollar per axle per entry. So, in effect, a toll on the Interstate and Glen Jackson bridges southbound. Apply the revenue to defray water and sewage costs our visitors burden the watershed with.

lw, why don't you post the Climatic and Geologic and Antarctic yadda yadda? Got science? Bring it or link it.

By the way, Industrial processes and -- therefor -- waste-byproduct petroleum pollutions started only about 190 years ago, circa 1820, (with the inventions of factory, steel, cylinder-piston propulsion, interchangeable parts, assembly line, hour-wage daylabor, urban-density dwelling, and so forth), and ever since things have gotten heated. As the chart shows.

Point of information: global 'warming' mis-identifies the climate chaos trouble in our future. It is not simply that weather gets 'warmer' (as million-yr-old temperature maybe was), although there is that. The trouble is more: The extremes of weather and temperature get wider-spread, wilder. Cold spells are colder than we are acclimated to. Heat waves are hotter. Snow accumulations are deeper, deluge rains are floodier. High winds are higher velocity.

In sum, the moderate zone (between extremes) is narrower, less stable. (This is the definition of 'chaos' or 'low equilibrium, massive instability' in mathematical terms.) With a bell-shaped curve to illustrate weather events, the wide low-rise central hump we know now, becomes instead a narrow central spike where hardly any 'condition' can remain in balance before it quickly degenerates 'downhill' to one extreme or the other.

It's the difference between standing sideways (naked) in the doorway of a cabin with cold rain outside and a roaring fireplace inside, (your body can 'average' the difference), or, compared to, lying sideways with your body half-buried in ice and your exposed upper half in a bonfire -- your body canNOT 'average' the difference since each extreme is lethal, there's no in-between 'moderate' zone.

It's not simply global 'warming' (but show us the ancient jungle-heat 'hothouse' charts anyway). Instead, it is climate chaos, planetary atmospheric instability.

Do you still want to talk about the record snowfall(s) being dumped on the East coastline from Georgia to Maine, where record high winds derailed a ski lift? Or the flood-threat rainstorm now over Portland?

Whoa! I'm reminded of a time from many years ago... reclining in a hot bath and reading the entire label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap.

Lot's to chew on there.

Lot's to chew on there.

...but no warning label.

Alas!

If the only cost of your trip was the $2 for parking I'd say you made an astute transportation choice.

If he'd made that assertion you'd be right.

Including the soap, iirc, jc!