Jack Bog's Blog

Have a great holiday weekend

Posted at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Stop the presses! Breaking News! OMG! etc.

Posted at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Everybody feels the wind blow

Former Trail Blazer and lifetime Jail Blazer Zach Randolph has apparently been traded again -- this time from the ~~Knicks~~ Clippers to the Grizzlies.

Posted at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

26 years of student loans

This guy's a little behind on his $435,000 of education debt.

Posted at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Can PDX get by on one runway?

An alert reader writes:

PDX has been choked down to one runway for the last several weeks. Well, 1¼ if you count the Dash-8s using the cross-wind runway to fly to Seattle every half hour.
Have there been any delays? Have airlines had to cut flights? The place doesn't look like it's all that choked. Maybe we can get away with just one.

What? Stop building unneeded stuff at the airport? Surely the reader jests. The third runway may be off the table for now, but come some full moon, it will rise from the grave. The West Hills construction Mafia gets powerfully hungry sometimes.

Posted at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

What exactly is going to be done to PGE Park?

Photo courtesy Miles Hochstein / Portland Ground.

As the Portland City Council rolls like lemmings toward a no-bid deal with Little Lord Paulson on the conversion of PGE Park to a soccer-only stadium, nobody's seen any plans, or even descriptions, of what the work is going to entail, or what the finished product is going to look like. It's been announced that anyone who thinks the project ought to be put out to bid has only until next Wednesday to say so. But how can anyone make a meaningful argument about that when, despite months of discussion, not a single drawing or set of specifications has been made public?

And how can the city commissioners have any confidence in the $33 million projected price tag for the renovation, if they aren't going to be given a reasonably detailed idea of what the work entails? Just one of the many mysteries about what's going on in that smoke-filled room.

Posted at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Your tax dollars at play

The City of Portland's building permit bureau (whatever foolish name it goes by these days) is laying off dozens of people. But it still has resources to publish this thing. Meanwhile, as the water bills continue to rise, we still have staff time and bandwidth for this.

Are we spending too much time on public relations and not enough on public services?

Posted at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

No Canadian bacon and pineapple!

Hedo Turkoglu, a highly talented pro basketball player, originally from Turkey, may wind up playing for the Blazers next year. He'll be in town today to check things out.

If you bump into him, you'll know. He's 6 feet 10 inches tall. In the NBA, this makes you a "small" forward.

My friend and fellow pie judge Dwight Jaynes, who's my go-to guy on pro hoops matters such as these, is skeptical that the Portland team and Hedo would make a good fit for each other. If he came here, several current Blazer players would likely be sent packing.

Word has it that Turkoglu likes to eat pizza before games. Let's hope that if he decides to sample the local fare, the team steers him to one of the better joints. Some Portland pizza is enough to make the guy sign with Toronto.

Posted at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Keeping them in their place

Get this: The Vatican thinks that American nuns are getting too worldly. So now here comes an investigation that will no doubt try to force them back into convents and habits.

I wish the nuns would start their own church. I'd go.

Posted at 2:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Another area mayor in default

You wonder why our government is broke? The people we elect to govern us have a hard time managing money.

Posted at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Bureaucrats and reporters

Both seem to have too much time on their hands.

Posted at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Cell phone driving ban works

Up in Washington State, there have been plenty of tickets issued, and lives saved.

Posted at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Blog post for a beautiful day

Radio Gretchen pens a fine appreciation here.

Posted at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Paulson stadium scheme will still be a no-bid deal

When the fix is in with Fireman Randy, it stays in. Now that the Paulson stadiums boondoggle has dropped from one stadium to two, we've been wondering whether the City of Portland would continue to try to make the development a no-bid contract. When there were plans for two gigantic wastes of money instead of just one, the city said that the unique position the Paulson family was in as owner of the two tenant sports franchises was part of the justification for not putting the deal out for bid.

This morning, the city announced that even though there's only going to be one stadium project now, with only one of the Paulsons' two teams occupying the finished project, it will still be a no-bid deal:

The award of a Predevelopment Agreement to Peregrine should be exempted from competition requirements of state law and City Code on a sole-source basis because Peregrine is the only entity that holds the MLS franchise and is the only entity that will renovate the MLS Stadium and is the only entity other than the City that will incur predevelopment costs. To the City’s knowledge, no other entity exists that is willing to split predevelopment costs with the City.
The award of an Operating Agreement to Peregrine should be exempted from competition requirements of state law and City Code on a sole-source basis because Peregrine is the only entity that holds the MLS franchise. In addition, the current Operating Agreement is held by Shortstop LLC. Shortstop LLC and Peregrine operate under similar management and Shortstop is agreeable to a revision of the Operating Agreement and with the assumption of Peregrine in its place therefore making a smooth transition to Peregrine’s new management. In addition, Peregrine would not be interested in making a contribution toward renovation or public improvement costs if it could not also operate PGE Park. Thus, while there are potentially other companies that could operate PGE Park, there is no other entity that will operate and also make a contribution toward construction costs at PGE Park.

It seems pretty clear that the contractor on this job is already picked out. Does anyone know which of our construction company overlords is vacuuming us taxpayers' wallets on this one?

Of course, they time the release of this document to coincide with Fourth of July weekend; if you want to challenge what they're doing, you get to not have your holiday. The deadline for protesting is next Wednesday. The creeps.

Hey, Commissioner Fritz! Is this good government? Just asking.

Posted at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (38)

No fireworks in the 'Couv

It's making the national news. This story indicates that people may be going to Washougal instead.

Posted at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nutty buddy

Is the guy who's posing as mayor of Portland still talking about a Convention Center hotel? If he is, he's verifiably out of his mind.

Posted at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Q3 '09

It is hard to believe, but 2009 is just about on the wane. Given the big odometer turn for the millennium, the decade change that's about to come with 2010 has been sneaking up on us.

Posted at 7:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Oops -- they did it again

Found in the fish tank today: another 30 or so baby guppies:

The grownups must be Catholic or Mormon.

We now clearly have too many of these little folks on our hands. Free to good homes!

Posted at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Metro Y is no more

Word is that the space, next to Duniway Park at the foot of Terwilliger Boulevard, is being taken over by a private Seattle-based fitness outfit. We've blogged about our issues with the Metro Y folks here before; it is not surprising that they're having to fold.

Posted at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Another Paulson shot deflected

I'm not the world's best person to ask when it comes to the status of legislation in Salem, but if I'm reading this correctly, the Paulson stadiums tax bill -- the one that would subvert income taxes on soccer players' salaries to pay for yet another remodel of PGE Park -- died in committee in the state Senate.

If so, good.

Posted at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

Bloomin'

We've had a couple of folks asking about the banner currently sitting at the top of this blog. Here is the original photo, which we goofed around with using Photoshop. It was taken by a friend of ours last week with an iPhone from the eco-roof of the Multnomah County Building at Grand and Hawthorne in Portland. The place is open to the public.

Posted at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Crammers' best friend

We just completed an annual ritual -- lecturing to folks who are preparing to take the summer Oregon bar exam -- for another year. Sixty hours of tax law talk boiled down into four -- or just a little over four. Three times a summer, and up and down the valley.

Now that we've got the usual customers caught up, maybe we ought to head into overtime and give this guy a call. He looks as though he could use some brush-up work.

Posted at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

For bottle return mess, a new idea

Some big grocery stores out in Gresham are proposing to shift their deposit bottle return operations away from their store locations and over to a centralized redemption center. The retail chains in Oregon have performed miserably in this arena over the last two decades, getting worse every year. No wonder -- there's nothing in it for them, while the politically powerful beer distributors apparently make out like bandits on the current system.

Critics are understandably looking at the new proposal with a high degree of skepticism. One of the complaints is that a redemption center would require customers to make an additional stop beyond their grocery shopping stop, and that will discourage recycling.

I don't know about that. If given the opportunity to drive to a reasonably clean, well functioning redemption center with two halfway intelligent workers on hand, I'd gladly take it. That would be a vast improvement over the current situation at the bigger grocery stores in our neighborhood. That is, filthy, slow, ever-malfunctioning return processing machines, usually with no one around to service them, and an endless wait for some sullen, clueless teenager to come around and get them going when they stop, which nowadays is every time you show up.

The Gresham experiment is worth trying.

Posted at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (44)

Money in the bank -- sort of

The increase in America's "savings" rate apparently just means that people are paying off old debts while the retail economy shrivels up.

Posted at 5:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

High school dropout rate takes a leap

It all depends on how you count, but the latest news from Oregon's schools is not good.

Posted at 3:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (40)

It could be curtains for Yao, y'all

The big guy's foot may be shot.

Posted at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Whatever, kids

The Portland "creative class" people have their own website now. As one might expect, it's fairly obnoxious. It's got a definite "Randy Gragg tries to be funny" vibe.

Posted at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

I can't go for that

I will miss Michael Jackson, but not this much.

Posted at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Green: the new rose-colored glasses

I'm all for doing the right thing by the environment, but the "green" hype has gone far beyond the pale:

Construction, wholesale and retail trade and administrative and waste services were the industries that had the most green jobs, about 47 percent of the total, according to the report.
The five occupations with the most green jobs were carpenters, farm workers, truck drivers, hazardous materials removal workers and landscaping and groundskeepers.

Yes, nothing says "green" like building a condo bunker or driving a truck.

It's good that reports such as these come out, and that the public gets to dissect them. It's just a matter of time before the average person sees the absurdity of all the greenwash.

Posted at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

Guess who (cough)

Multnomah and Washington Counties are among the Top 10 worst locales in the country for airborne risk of cancer, according to this list. The official data on which the article is based can be found here.

Posted at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Keeping news secret

So secret that it wasn't even on Wikipedia.

Posted at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The City That Rolls Over You

They close one neighborhood's police precinct, then steal another one's parking.

Go by streetcar!

Posted at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seven out

It appears that Putin is getting Russia out of the legal gambling business.

Posted at 4:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Thursday, July 2, 2009