Sea-Tac Restaurant Refuses to Serve the TSA

http://piglipstick.blogspot.com/2011/02/tsa-put-on-restaurants-no-eat-list.html explains how a restaurant by the Seattle-Tacoma airport refuses to serve the costumed clowns of the TSA.

Splendid idea, especially since you're more likely to die of cancer from their instant-porn scan machines than from a terrorist attack.

President wants $200 million for Portland-Milwaukie SLAX

The slacker's rail, Portland-Milwaukie MAX, won't die: President Obama wants $200 million for Portland-Milwaukie MAX.

The expense is absurd. 'Light Rail' is anything but, and this will cut deeply into the far more effective buses which don't shut down when ice storms strike. Curitiba, Brazil implemented Express Buses in lieu of rail with a 99.5% savings; not my figures, see the 1996 Scientific American cover story at http://goo.gl/k5qwi .

Now, factor in the fuel and labor savings intelligent driverless vehicles will bring, and this clearly is one of the last 'light' rail projects to be proposed, as 'light rail' boondoogles for the benefit of construction companies and their political friends go the way of the buggy whip and the whale oil lamp.

Fox News: Fairly Unbalanced

You expect Faux News to have a conservative agenda, and factor for it, right? Well, here's proof their agenda is not truly conservative, but self-serving in some other dimension; they falsified reaction to Ron Paul, the sole true conservative in the House, winning the CPAC straw poll, and then covered it up with denial and misdirection.

Red State Socialism Works

North Dakota's got its own state bank. The state's in the black, not slashing services left and right.

It doesn't bar commercial banks, indeed, it works with them.

It gets to recycle the interest in municipal and other government bonds, bonds so expensive the state university system pushed through a ballot measure allowing them access to marginally less expensive bonds.

Government bonds have driven many city and county governments into bankruptcy and cost Oregon billions annually, money we could recycle locally.  

Why not?

 

Fire tracking

C-COM, our county's Public Safety Answering Point, the folks who answer your calls to 911 and non-emergency calls to 503-655-8211, have collaborated with Washington County's similar agency, WCCCA, and offer visual tracking of fire and EMS calls.  You can see every fire and EMS call, with dispatch, arrival and departure times at http://www.wccca.com/PITS which is a laudable benefit to the folks of both counties.

Here's an example of the response list for today's Foxfire Aprtments multi-alarm fire which had 11 engines, including mutual-aid callouts, and many other responders, including voluntary response agencies.

Lie of the day from the Internet slams Beavercreek, Oregon

UPDATE: 'TeleTruth' and 'NewNetworks' caved and rewrote the screed. Now, the only remnant of the original lie is the whiny comment, "NOTE: BEAVER CREEK, the ski resort, is supposedly not affiliated with the phone company." They could confirm that if they wanted to, but as long as no one calls them on their irresponsibility, this, as well as many, many other websites, will continue to post lies as truth.

Reader, beware.

---

The Universal Slush Fund: Or How Out of Control is the Government Phone Tax? Why does Beaver Creek gets over $10,000 a line? is just flat wrong in an important area. Please allow me to quote:

An example?
Beaver Creek is a high-end ski resort which received $11,892 per line.

Wrong.

This amount is unfathomable when the average local bill, according to the FCC data is $25 a month (the last FCC data is from 2008).

Beaver Creek is, among other things, serves a high-end ski resort with the marketing line “not exactly roughing it”. http://www.beavercreek.com/Summer-Site-Home.aspx

You're mixing up Beaver Creek, Colorado, the ski resort, with Beavercreek, Oregon, which has the telco in question, four states over and 1,200 miles away.

Sure makes your case looks better, in the 'throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks' method of litigiousness, in order to serve your corporate interests, but trying to conflate the wealth of Vail, Colorado with the telecom needs of rural Oregon is just plain wrong.

The company states: “Beaver Creek Cooperative Telephone Company (BCT) is a member-owned organization that provides friendly, high-quality, professional service at reasonable rates to the Beaver Creek and Oregon City region. At BCT we focus on combining advanced communications technologies with local customer service.” http://www.bctelco.com/index.asp

Now, I'm just an unemployed PC and telco technician (with no connection to Beaver Creek Telephone, OBTW), but even I know to double check my facts before I go public on the web with a screed.

You didn't. Shame on you, NewNetworks.com and 'TeleTruth'.

An apology to Beaver Creek, in fact, both of them, is in order.

I shall look forward to your response.


PS: You also might want to spell the name of your advisors correctly: It's Robert, not Rober, Garnet at http://www.teletruth.org/About/boa.html

Public meetings to gather feedback on new library designs

Drop-In and See the Designs for the New Library in Gladstone

Two Open Houses:

1. Tuesday February 22, 2011 3:30-5:30pm
Gladstone Senior Center 1050 Portland Ave. Gladstone
Babysitting services will be provided
Cookies and drinks will be served

2. Thursday March 3, 2011 6:30-8:30pm
Rose Villa - Fellowship Room
13505 SE River Rd Milwaukie
Cookies and drinks will be served

You are invited to join us and give us your valued feedback on the designs for the new library in Gladstone. Meet and talk with the architects from THA Architecture and your community members serving on the New Library Design Committee.

Feel free to share with friends and neighbors; the QRcodes at right can be scanned into your smartphone to enter the dates into your calendar.

Questions - call or write Mary Nixon, Library Director 503-656-2411

Information about the new library project can be found at
http://www.ci.gladstone.or.us/library_new.html

A letter to Rep. Dave Hunt

Dear Rep. Hunt:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/11reg/measures/hb2600.dir/hb2602.intro.html is bad law, and I hope you will oppose it.

http://www.blueoregon.com/2011/02/bikeshoes suggested Rep. Schaufler be asked to participate in a 'drive-off' to demonstrate the harmlessness of driving with a Bluetooth earset or Walkman headphones. Not a bad idea, but I don't need that to know cyclists are *very* aware of our environment even with audio devices. However, you and I have both observed many folks driving cars who are unobservant due to stereo systems, as we don't ban those.

Oak Grove and Gladstone are pleasant places to live, in no small part due to the lack of excessive and intrusive silly ideas. Let's leave this one at the curb.