Not only are the government's numbers cooked, but traditional information is hidden more and more. It would be illegal for a corporation to issue a financial report in the same way as the federal government. Every now and then an individual in the system howls in despair and is replaced or silenced. I keep going back to this one story I read about unfunded liabilities. At the time, it was 56 TRILLION. These are financial obligations we currently have that are not covered.
Little disasters like the Iraq War, which is also not a part of the federal budget, seem like chump change at 2 trillion compared to this. Incidentally, the Iraq War is only a disaster for Iraq and those who had to fight there. That 2 trillion is being transferred somewhere, and the oil futures involved are a lot more.
So what's the plan? The wealthy elite in this country have made an acquisition and they're selling off the valuable pieces, and transferring wealth from the future as fast as possible. At some point, the acquisition has to collapse, and then they'll be there to purchase anything worth buying at garage sale prices. It's not unlike that restaurant in Good Fellas, only instead of a restaurant, they're doing it to America.
President Bush and his handlers never have approached any problem with a genuine desire to do what is good for the country. It's all about deception - the ability to present an appearance of helping the country, when they're actually helping themselves to it. It's not about strengthening the dollar - it's about propping up the dollar. That's why bad approval ratings mean nothing to them - their clients are delighted with their performance in office. You think Halliburton or EXXON is upset with how these years have gone? The Bush administration is a criminal enterprise and the Democratic Congress is playing the role of crooked cops on the take.
America is an obstacle to Bush and Cheney - just as the Constitution is. They don't care at all if they break the country, betray the American People, and destroy the greatest form of government ever devised. Just as long as the power elite they work for can cash out.

Speaking of skewed numbers ... I've seen no discussion of the Willamette Week story a few days ago about the local paper company, Blue Heron, and its financial difficulties.
At least part of its problem stems from the material it gets through the Metro recycling program for paper. Apparently, once Metro started the comingling (not forcing residents to separate paper from other recyclables) "the scrap Blue Heron receives contains far more glass, plastic, metal and non-fiber than before."
According to Blue Heron, "residents did a far superior job of sorting than do materials recovery facilities."
The end result? "... mills saw as much as a 20-fold increase in the amount of glass, metal, plastic and other junk that came into their facilities."
So this stuff gets messed up, is unrecyclable, and ends up in the landfill. But thanks to comingling and making recycling easier, Metro's recycling rate is high ... artificially so, and at the expense of companies such as Blue Heron.
And no one has to know how much of the stuff that gets set out for recycling actually is recycled.

Be thankful you're not on social security.
Inflation compensation rose a whopping 2.3 %. Than Medicare Part B went from $93.00 to $96.40, payable by recipient Gap ins went from $55.00 to $65.00.
Plan D jumped a whopping 46%.Net Gain -$21.00in red.
As I said before I was on 2 different city budget committees and That is where I learned about the so call Independent audits required by state laws..pure B***S***. All these audits prove is that the numbers add up and are in the right columns...Absolutely no audit of embezzlement.

Jesus, Jack, where the hell are you shopping to get gouged four bucks for a loaf of bread!? Time to discover what we po folks have know about for years- the bread store. My local Williams outlet has Franz for $2 a loaf...

The rate would probably be more realistic if they included food costs in the index.

That's right. They don't include food which, as everyone knows, has been shooting up because the cost of transporting it around has gone up so much.

I think you're totally correct about the phoniness of the Consumer Price Index. It's calculated based on a "basket of goods" that don't come close to representing what most people need to buy each month. The CPI has become another federal government propaganda tool intended to keep the rabble of common folk pacified.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics website:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t08.htm

They don't care at all if they break the country, betray the American People, and destroy the greatest form of government ever devised. Just as long as the power elite they work for can cash out.

As always, the truthful comments around here come from the Comic. The Mrs. and I don't have offspring to leave the mess to, but so what? Following generations will curse us all if something doesn't change pretty quick in these parts.

Re: higher prices for food, say thank you to Randy Leonard and all the believers- in-magic at Oregon Environmental Council and Oregon League of Conservation Voters, people who thought that there was a free lunch out there to be had, just waiting for clever folks like them to notice it.

So thanks to this bunch, we don't just have Peak Oil causing the end of the cheap energy party we've enjoyed since 1945 -- now we also also get to pay taxes so that the folks in Salem and Portland can buy campaign contributions by giving away subsidies to turn food into agrofuels (while producing MORE greenhouse emissions in the process).

Food and liquid motor fuels, formerly only related through the costs of diesel for farm machinery and natural-gas derived fertilizer, are now converging in price via direct paths: farmers are no longer growing food for humans so they can use the land to grow food for cars. World grain stocks are at the lowest levels ever. Tropical deforestation is accelerating so that more hectares can be converted to making motor fuel; more species are being exterminated so that people can drive their groovy "biodiesel powered" cars.

say thank you to Randy Leonard and all the believers- in-magic at Oregon Environmental Council and Oregon League of Conservation Voters,

No, thank you for keeping a sharp focus on the trivial and inconsequential.

The CPI has been separated into two components for several decades now. The total CPI, and the "core" CPI which excludes energy and food. Monetary policy as set by the Federal Reserve is clearly biased towards the "core" CPI. There are items which haven't gone up much in price over the last few years, such as automobiles,computers, electric appliances, and clothing. These items have a lot of global competition and spare capacity. But food, energy and other commodities have little spare capacity in a global economy which has been booming for several years now. Our federal and local governments could help moderate food prices if they stopped subsidizing and mandating ethanol and biofuels, which take almost as much energy to make as they contain. The federal, state and local governments could moderate energy prices if they could get folks to o.k more drilling in places like Anwar and building LNG terminals. But Not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) is blocking any real energy supply solutions. In the last oil crisis period of the 1970s the federal government was able to put through the Alaskan oil pipeline and folks changed to more efficient cars. These changes are not happening very quickly this time around. So, I think we Americans have to make some choices between accepting escalating energy prices or giving up some of our NIMBY inspired restrictions.

"say thank you to Randy Leonard and all the believers- in-magic at Oregon Environmental Council and Oregon League of "Conservation Voters,"

So Randy Leonard is responsible for the fact that we are running out of cheap oil? When all of our garlic cloves, for example, come from China the cost of shipping them from there to here becomes a factor. Additionally let's see can we all say Iraq war disruption of Iraqi oil production boys and girls.

Biofuels may be dumb science but far more American farmers have been run out of the food business by cheap imports than anything the biodeisel movement has done. And now do to more expensive oil we are starting to reap the results of our failure to keep more local food producers in business.

Greg C

And don't get me started on the fact that like 5 produce purchasers deciding where 80% of all produce for American groceries stores are purchased.

Have had the same impulse to compose a real-person index. Just out of curiosity, I once searched up the contents of the CPI -- serious chicanery.

Speaking of bread costing >$4 per loaf... Here at New Seasons, we buy flour by the palletload for our bakery. In the last year, our flour prices have risen +70%. SEVENTY PERCENT. We just raised bread prices, but we're 'eating' most of that inflation cost for now.

Jack, thank you for highlighting how inflation is underreported and largely ignored in media discussions about the economy. With wages going nowhere, we're in deep...

A "basket of goods"? It's more like a bill of goods.

where the hell are you shopping to get gouged four bucks for a loaf of bread!?

I refuse to pay that, but that's what they charge at the two grocery stores closest to my house. I have to go to a Fred Meyer to get it down to $2.50 or so.

Bob Clark: The federal, state and local governments could moderate energy prices if they could get folks to o.k more drilling in places like Anwar and building LNG terminals. But Not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) is blocking any real energy supply solutions.

Dealing only with the supply side has proven to be a folly. It has to be a demand side solution as well, such as a much-more-aggressive CAFE standard, gas-guzzler tax, at the pump tax, etc.

Three words: M3 money supply. Why isn't it calculated anymore?

four bucks for a loaf of bread

Actually, for a local bakery product, not a bad value.

say thank you to Randy Leonard and all the believers- in-magic at Oregon Environmental Council and Oregon League of Conservation Voters,

No, thank you for keeping a sharp focus on the trivial and inconsequential.

Yeah, being priced out of food and having your state government ration access to health care by lottery while spending millions for subsidies to wealthy agribusinss is trivial. As for consequential, the consequence is the subject of the article--the sharp rise in food and energy prices.

Sorry, my sharp focus on the trivial and inconsequential made me forgot to post this link:

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=311350

The pending global food crisis is due, in part, to a rich twist of irony: One of the factors driving up the price of T-bone steak, a dozen eggs and a carton of milk is a perfectly edible vegetable, a staple of many diets - corn.

To add to the irony, we're growing more corn than ever before. We're just not eating it.

"The U.S. is now using more corn for production of ethanol than our entire crop in Canada," says Kurt Klein, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Lethbridge. "It's huge."

. . . Scores of ethanol plants are under construction and as a result, Mr. Klein predicts that the U.S. will produce 52 billion litres of the fuel in 2008. When all the plants are running, the U.S. could produce twice as much corn for ethanol than Canada's total crop production - wheat, barley, canola, everything.

This has huge implications for global food supplies. The amount of corn it takes to produce 75 litres of ethanol - roughly a tank of fuel - is enough corn to feed one person on a 2,000 calorie per day diet for a year, Mr. Klein said.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the relationship between corn and rising food prices. As corn prices rise, farmers plant more corn and fewer fields of wheat, barley, soybean, canola and anything else that sprouts from the ground. Mr. Klein, who seeded his farm to canola last year, notes that soy and canola prices have doubled in the last year and a half while the price of wheat is up 80%.

"Without ethanol, we would not be seeing this kind of spike in cereals," Mr. Klein says. Soy, for example, is used in two-thirds of processed foods. Consumers can expect to be footing the bill for these suddenly expensive grains.

At the same time, the cost of rump roasts, chicken wings and milk are also climbing because of ethanol production. Corn is the main ingredient in animal feed, and as corn prices go up, so does the cost of feeding livestock.

Last year, we started baking every loaf of bread in one of those bread machines. I don't know what the electricity cost is, (soon, homemade wind-generator electricity might make it FREE), but the cost of ingredients divided by number of loaves penciled out about 70 cents, the two times I tracked it. As I'm typing, the air in the room has a warm wheaty aroma.

(In childhood, Mom baked all our bread, also rolls, donuts, cakes, cinammon rolls, etc. constantly. We pleaded for 'store-bought bread,' pre-sliced and uniform, so we weren't 'embarrassed' having friends over, making sandwiches, seeing we were too 'poor' to afford 'real' bread ... years later, an earliest friend happened by home and begged Mom, "have you got any of that bread around like you used to have, that was the biggest treat when I used to come over, my Mom never baked bread." Of course, my Mom smiled so broad, gave him half-a-loaf sitting there, and told him not to be so hard on his Mom, that she did many other good things for him -- the Moms knew each other.)

[ OpEdNews.COM/maxwrite/link.php?id=52294 ]
Wheat prices surge 90% to new high, Submitted by Rob Kall, February 17, 2008
A surge on Friday in prices for wheat used in bread to an all-time high of $19.88 a bushel – the highest yet paid for any wheat contract and a three-fold increase from a year ago – prompted the US baking industry to call for wheat exports to be curtailed. The American Bakers Association stopped short of asking for an export moratorium but pressed for curbs on foreign sales.

[ CapitalPress.COM/main.asp?SectionID=94&SubSectionID=801&ArticleID=39356 ]
Portland daily grain report for Feb. 15, Bids as of 9:30 a.m.; Subject to change. 2/15/2008.
Bids for grains delivered to Portland, Ore., during February by rail or barge, in dollars per bushel, except oats, corn and barley, in dollars per cwt.* Bids for soft white wheat are for delivery periods as specified. All other bids are for full February delivery.
May morning wheat futures in early trading were mixed, from 19 cents lower to 25 cents per bushel higher compared to Thursday's closes, with the most decline in Chicago and the advance in Minneapolis.

(* Everyone knows 'cwt' means centi-weight, a hundred lbs.)

---

[ InformationClearingHouse.INFO/article19365.htm ]
Bernanke's State of the Economy Speech: "You are all Dead Ducks", By Mike Whitney, 16-FEB-08.
Bernanke sounds more like an Old Testament prophet reading passages from the Book of Revelations than a Central Banker. But what he says is true; even without the hair-shirt. The humongous losses at the investment banks have forced them to go trolling for capital in Asia and the Middle East just to stay afloat. And, when they succeed, they're forced to pay excessively high rates of interest. The true cost of capital is skyrocketing. That's why the banks are protecting their liquidity and cutting back on new loans. Most of the banks have also tightened lending standards which is slowing down the issuance of credit and threatens to push the economy into a deep recession. When banks cramp-up; the overall economy shrinks. It's just that simple; no credit, no growth. Credit is the lubricant that keeps the capitalist locomotive chugging-along. When it dwindles, the system screeches to a halt.

So, let's summarize. The banks are battered by their massive subprime liabilities. Housing is in the tank. Manufacturing is down. Food and energy are up. Unemployment is rising. And consumer spending has shriveled to the size of an acorn. All that's missing is a trumpet blast and the arrival of the Four Horseman.

Bernanke addressed Congress last week, maybe ya'll missed that, the text of his speech supplies the article. However, what comments here seem oblivious to, is remarked in the comments section below the article, there; (so I can't give a link.)

Hal | Homepage | 02.16.08 - 12:36 pm
The US government shutdown their own news site www.economicindicators.gov

go | 02.16.08 - 1:09 pm |
The financial markets are collapsing and the USA controllers are ceasing publication of the following statistics. Are you ready for the Brave New World of subjugation by a few predators of the CFR and their Jewish mangerial class?
$$$$$$$$$$$$
www.financialsense.com/fs.../2008/ 0215.html
The Latest Data Scheduled to Disappear Behind the Iron Curtain:
Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service (www.economicindicators.gov) will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008.
Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services
Advance Report on Durable Goods
Construction Put in Place
Gross Domestic Product
Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories, and Orders
Manufacturing and Trade: Inventories and Sales
Monthly Wholesale Trade
New Residential Construction
New Residential Sales
Personal Income and Outlays
Quarterly Financial Report
Quarterly Services
Retail E-Commerce Sales
U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services
U.S. International Transactions
A few more bones to hide in the closet, ehhh?
$$$$$$$$
“President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.”
$$$$$$$$$$

Afghani Jed | 02.16.08 - 12:09 pm |
"A wheelbarrow of greenbacks to buy a quart of milk and seed potatoes"??
Let's see ...
Dried food in 5 gallon buckets -- Ok
Wood stove & 8 cords of wood -- Ok
Home canned food in quart jars -- Ok
Water well drilled in yard -- Ok
Natural gas car & compressor -- Ok
Access to garden in country -- Ok
Cases of essential barter items-- Ok
Weapons and cartridges -- Ok
Gold and silver coins -- Ok
Friends to watch my back -- Ok
... Best of luck to the rest of you.

---

And for Bob Clark and disciples, in noticing that half-a-loaf of information is waaay short of food for thought: Forget ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Forget LNG terminals. Get this: It's gone. The oil on the planet is kaput. Natural gas co-deposits with oil, and so both exhaust at the same time. Here's one way to GoogleEarth and see for yourself, [ TheOilDrum.COM/node/3574#more ], Oil. Is. Gone. We burned it all; before you got here.

Here's what you never 'got' in the first place, so nevermind forget'ing it: What you call the "oil crisis period of the 1970s," was an OPEC embargo, 1973. Shady politics then, NOT a resource shortage as is the case today, and is different. Back then, you got out of being hostage by paying the ransom cost: Voting for Reagan. Today, you don't get out of it, you die. No oil. Used up. Depleted. Tank is empty. It is different today. Thanks for playing their game, though.

Moreover, NOT "folks changed to more efficient cars." Congress enacted m.p.g. fuel-efficiency standards and so Regulated (gasp!) car manufacturing, as it is empowered to, and should! (Nixonazi added his own maladroit imperiousness: made a federal case out of speed limits, signage, road constructions, traffic laws, drivers licensing, daylight savings time, gas prices and Big Oil favoritism, and more -- e.g., prohibited Oregon's bottle bill, public beach access, uniform statewide land-use planning, from being adopted elsewhere.) Dodge (Chrysler) rolled out the 'Caravan' model, unable to meet mileage standards; Iacocca extorted Congress by threatening "too big to fail" bankruptcy, meaning default stiffing taxpayers for Dodge's $2 Billion loan, and by this torturous arm-twisting, getting 'loop-hole' waivered by designation as a 'light truck' ... and hence, the SUV tsunami of gas-guzzlers.

Now Prudoe Bay is empty, the Alaska pipeline is dry, Texas/Oklahoma (the Permian Basin) is pumped dry, Mexico's mainstay Cantrell field production graph is falling off a cliff, there ain't enough proven reserves in ANWR to equal the oil it takes to manufacture the steel to build the pipe to reach there -- analogous to Canada's 'oil shale deposits' which takes 4 barrels of oil to go there, extract, and bring back 1 barrel of oil -- and on and on go the SUV abominations since the Republican coercions of Congress defy to Regulate (gasp!) car manufacturing. It seems your half-knowing, half-LIARSoaked mind cannot grasp modern history comprehensively and should not grasp a ballot pencil; show me better that that impression is wrong.

Oroweat (the "short/wide" loaves) are routinely $4.19 to $4.79 at local grocery stores.

We usually buy the "special of the week" which is usually $2.50 (green label "Oatmeal" is our favorite, but "Healthnut" is a close second).

These prices are quite a bit higher than it averaged a few years ago ($2.89 was the old rack rate). Given that the price of wheat has almost tripled in the last two years, it's amazing we aren't paying $8.00/loaf.

More information on "bread inflation" here:

http://www.post1.net/lowem/entry/bread_and_inflation

I should think it far easier to attack the oil shortage from both the supply and the demand side simultaneously than just the demand side only. There's about a million barrels per day of potentially recoverable oil in ANWAR for some 10 to 20 years. This would expand the world's spare oil supply capacity by about 50% currently, from about 2 million barrels a day to 3 million barrels per day. This also represents more than twice the energy being produced currently in the form of ethanol domestically. Seems a lot less land and chemical intensive to drill for more oil than to take millions more acres growing biofuels. Oh, well, looks like people want to try the untested waters of alternative energies, throwing caution to the wind (no pun intended).

Something to consider is if you have the money, you can hedge your commodity (inflation) costs with new exchange traded funds (sybols JJA for ag commodities and USO for oil futures).

P.S. To quote Bill Clinton: "I feel your pain." :>)

"I have to go to a Fred Meyer to get it down to $2.50 or so."

Costco- $2.69 for two large loaves
White or whole wheat

Winco is the way!

Best to get there before 2:00 PM as then you will miss the Oregon Trail Card holders and all their kids.

Oh yes, wear the shirt collar up, the baseball cap down and park across the street.

Costco- $2.69 for two large loaves
White or whole wheat

Plus $2 worth of gas to get me there and back, whatever it costs to freeze the bread until we can get to the second loaf, etc.

George Seldes: Your cut-and-paste article is about ethanol, which I also think is pretty bad science. Yet you reference biodiesel in your posts quite often. Do you know anything about biodiesel, or the huge, fundamental differences between the two, their production, and refinement ? Do you know anything about current (2008) research into biodiesel from algae or Fischer-Tropsch synthesis from agricultural waste and/or coal ?

Do you know anything about diesel engine history and development through the present, meaning circa 2008 ?

Just curious. I keep real up on this stuff, partially because I'm curious, and also because I'm forced to use biodiesel as a fuel additive in my truck, now that ULSD is mandated by law due to environmental concerns. See, Stanadyne DB series rotary injection pumps freeze up on the low-sulfur fuel, and bio is the best additive I've found. Type "biodiesel algae" into google news. There is a wealth of data out there about this stuff. Genuine scientific articles from peer-reviewed journals, even, not the biased collectivist tripe that people with no background in science post up on here all the time.

I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Bob Clark: I should think it far easier to attack the oil shortage from both the supply and the demand side simultaneously than just the demand side only.

Your original post emphasized supply side only, i.e. ANWR drilling. So I would infer from this statement that you do acknowedge that we can attack this from the demand side as well.

My position is that we do it all from the demand side with conservation measures - after all, as Tenskwatawa pointed out, it's all going to be gone eventually anyway. You want the easiest way to go about this? This is the way.

we can attack this from the demand side as well.

Anyone have any concrete numbers, not from Tri-Met, regarding just how much coal is burned, per day, in pollution belching power plants, to power MAX and the streetcars, currently ?

Anyone have any figures on how much this tonnage of coal burned per day is projected to increase, with the expansion of the MAX system and the streetcar lines ?

Don't get me wrong, the less people use automobiles, the easier my job is. Also, denser, more congested cities with more rail transit use my services more, per capita, so my friends and I make money off of the deal, spewing exhaust the entire way.

I just want to see some numbers on this specific point.

Cabbie: quite a bit, actually. But I don't want to hijack this thread to discuss it. I think what I have posted so far is on point, including a current article suggesting some reasons that are relevant to the original post about high and fast-climbing prices.

But discussing diesels, current status of various flavors of biodiesel, subsidies, etc. would take us pretty far afield from the original post.

Amanda Fritz's blog (http://www.amandafritz.com/) has several posts on agrofuels recently where your questions would be germane to her posts, and I've made many posts on agrofuels at Onward Oregon where the discussion would be relevant. Would be glad to take up your questions at either of those sites.

Oh, biodiesel from any source will never completely replace regular diesel oil, excellent lubricity additive that it indeed is. Nor will public transit ever replace industrial trucking and shipping. I'm reminded of one of the few things Y2Kunstler might actually be correct about, in the manner of a stopped clock, and that is the idea of a return to gritty waterfronts in cities like Portland, with everything that implies, in an oil shortage scenario.

But then we get into the idea of naturally occurring vs man-created "Peak Oil," which I believe is an absolute scam and nonsense, as does Greg Pallast and the nation with the largest natural resources in the world, Russia. For that matter, our own NASA is of the opinion the Sun has a far more significant impact on our climate than Man.

But, those are all professional scientists and journalists, which I am not. I merely remain skeptical of just about everything I read.

What kind of Diesel engine systems did you say that you have direct experience working on with your hands ?

And what's up with this ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Seldes

Have a nice day.

Whoops, typo, Palast, not Pallast, in regards to the theory of artificially induced oil shortages and a more multivariant look at development/consumption of fuel reserves.

what's up with this ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Seldes

Well, as you can see, George is late.

(* Everyone knows 'cwt' means centi-weight, a hundred lbs.)

Actually "cwt" means hundredweight. "Centi-" would imply one one-hundredth.

i guess livin in the sticks ain't so bad after all. I'm one mile from my Williams bread outlet store, where bread is half what it goes for in the stores. Franz is a NW bakery and they make fantastic bread, no enriched white flour in it, and no high fructose corn syrup. 8 or 9 different types. Best bread in the world. MMMMM. Of course, making my own bread is pretty fun, too, and works out to less than $1 a loaf, even without a bread machine. great family fun to stand around beating bread dough.

For all the peak oil alarmists: we are using oil about as fast as we are able to pump it out of the ground. As we continue to use more, we will continue to find more, especially if the prices remain high.

Demand will eventually outstrip supply, which is why prices will continue to rise (the actual "peak oil" top is at least 5, possibly 15 years away).

At the current extraction rates, Venezuela and Brazil will run out of oil in the next 75-100 years, Saudi Arabia in the next 30-50 years, and Mexico in the next 20-30 years.

More coal and natural gas will be used for transport purposes (after being converted to DME), and nuclear WILL generate more and more electricity in the future.

Eventually, I can imagine a world where remaining petroleum stocks are confined to airline and military uses.

But the automobile isn't going away, not by a long shot. The fuels will change, and hybrids will become the norm.

Sam's Tram will need new cables and gondolas before automobile ownership begins to decline. And I'll bet it costs more than $55 million just to rehab the Tram.

Be thankful you're not on social security. Inflation compensation rose a whopping 2.3%

Wow...more than I got.

As for bread, you can regularly get Franz bread for $2/loaf at my local Albertsons, and if you want it even cheaper, I have a Winco a block away with their brand of bread around $1.50 or so.
And there is a Franz outlet in Tigard right off HWY 217, near Greenburg Rd. (Right next to the Harley Davidson dealer.)
Now, for the good stuff, they just opened a Panera Bread by my place...really good stuff, but spendy ($4-$6/loaf)

"They don't care at all if they break the country, betray the American People, and destroy the greatest form of government ever devised. Just as long as the power elite they work for can cash out."

I'm with Bill on this one, you'd be hard pressed to find truer words.

Panera Bread by my place...really good stuff, but spendy ($4-$6/loaf)

But it comes with "free" wireless.

The John Birch Society and a few other groups have been sounding the alarm on this for 40 years, but the mainstream media and its political pundits cry "conspiracy theory" and most people suspend their intelligence and go back to watching TV.

This is the New World Order. Highly credible journalists, academics, and politicians have been writing (warning) of it for years. Basically, the NWO philosophy is promulgated through think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations, American Enterprise Inst, CATO Society, Rand Corporation, and similar organizations. It is the belief that world government and a world-wide planned economy is preferable to national sovereignity and competition. Of course, its the current power brokers who will see their hold on power extended infinitum through the NWO. Generational mobility and free competition don't enter into it.

Whether Republican or Democrat, you get a NWO adherent. It's basically a euphemism for a perpetual ruling class that is above the law. Your standard of living is expendable to that cause. You can find the warnings of past Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Judges, Generals, etc about this threat if you want to use some creative google skills, but you've all been foolishly playing the game this long, I doubt you will care about the truth.

All this talk about the price of bread makes me wonder about the origin of the phrase "Best thing since Sliced Bread."

Was a time, Americans bought a hunk of bread at the corner or general store every few days with other simple supplies, if they could afford it. My great-grandmother's generation often had a common recollection about the arrival of the refrigerator, when asked about the greatest change they saw at the dawn of the Twentieth century...it changed everything about how you lived, on the same scale the streetcar, and then later the automobile did.

But we are one adaptable species, that's for sure, some capable of imagining clever utopias, and others still happily displaying some of the most uncivilized barbarity in our entire history. It will be interesting, the Portland experiment in forced density along rail corridors will, especially when poverty and human beings innate dislike of being penned in are shaken together in a sick marinade in the coming years. Old crime scene photos from America's golden streetcar years are most informative and instructive, and there are some excellent books on this.

I still want to know how much coal this city is burning daily to run the free choo-choo, and how much that tonnage is projected to increase with the expansion of the forced density rail corridors to Clackamas and Milwaukie.

Cabbie, I never voted on the "forced density" along light rail and trolleys, did you?

METRO has not taken one vote on these made-up premises they assume we all want. A poll, a survey or a neighborhood meeting is not a vote.