250,000 in Bend?

Well, maybe in a 100 years.

As of July 1, 2011, PSU's Population Research Center estimated Bend had a population of 76,925, Redmond had 26,305 and Sisters, 2,055.

In fact, Deschutes County's population estimate was just 172,050 as of July 1, 2010, according to PSU.

But, recently, one of Bend's top developers claimed he expects to see Bend's population hit 250,000 by 2050.

I think it's safe to say that the county may hit 250,000 by 2050, but not Bend itself.

Besides, there is no way the city could handle that population growth when it can't supply sewer to half its citizens now.

There aren't even sidewalks in much of the city.

As for roads, the city has a few hundred million dollars in projects already lined up just to handle our current population.

Part of the problem is that the city lets developers design the city to their benefit. The other problem is that long-time residents are forced to subsidize these developers through higher property taxes and skyrocketing water/sewer rates.

Bend has never developed a "public facilities strategy" and, consequently, our public facilities can't keep pace with growth.

Yes, Bend is a desirable place to live, but unless you come here with wealth, you aren't likely to make your fortune here.

It's always been known as "poverty with a view."

The only "industry" is tourism, but contrary to an article in the local daily, we do not have "world class tourism amenities."

We've got some nice golf courses, some decent restaurants, but accommodations are definitely not even close to "world class."

Our ski resort, Mt. Bachelor, is great, but it is too short to ever attract World Cup ski races.

On the plus side, the medical community in Bend is the largest east of the Cascades.

And, Bend has become a beer town, thanks to Deschutes Brewery and about a dozen other brewpubs/breweries in the greater Bend area.

But, a beer gut will only get you so far in this world.

What's next? A medical marijuana mecca?

Bend does have Central Oregon Community College and a tiny branch campus of Oregon State University located at COCC.

The only way Bend could approach 250,000 people in 100 years is through higher education with a legitimate four-year university. Local leaders know a such a school is a necessity for long-term sustainability of the region.

But, the powers that be can't agree on a strategy.

While we have COCC/OSU Cascades on Bend's west side, there is this ridiculous notion that a "world-class" research university can sprout up from the sagebrush at Juniper Ridge on Bend's northeast side.

I've written before that the only private four-year school we could ever attract is a Bible college and that is exactly what is happening with Northwest Nazarene University.

Given the fact that Bend almost always elects Republicans to the state legislature in a Democratic state and that these Republicans just want to cut government spending, including at all levels of education, the west side of the state merely laughs at our higher ed aspirations.

Until the leaders of our community realize that COCC/OSU Cascades should evolve into a four-year university at its present site and seek ways to fund that institution, say through a 3-cent increase in the beer tax, rather than de-fund it with tax cuts, we won't ever have such a school.

Oregon is not alone in de-funding higher education. This is a national problem that will ultimately make us less competitive, less affluent, less secure and, well, less educated.

End this March madness

The "war on women" continues unabated as Republicans across the country are doing their best to antagonize women.

Senate Republicans oppose extending the Violence Against Women Act that first passed with broad bipartisanship support in 1994.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican governor dismissed the complaints that a new ultrasound bill goes too far by saying, "You just have to close your eyes."

In Wisconsin, a onetime progressive state, the GOP-dominated Assembly voted to ban private insurance abortion coverage and teaching contraception in school.

Republican Idaho, which never likes to be left behind when looniness calls, saw a legislative panel vote to oppose the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Also, the state Senate backed its own anti-abortion ultrasound legislation.

And in Arizona, a longtime leader in sun-baked leadership, a Senate judiciary panel endorsed a bill that would allow employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for contraceptives based on religious objections.

What's driving all this wackiness is the GOP assumption that religion (meaning Christianity only) is under attack.

But, a new poll shows that most Americans do not believe religious liberty is under assault.

So what is this really all about?

Well, it's a way for GOP lawmakers, mostly men by the way, to show how much they hate President Obama, which solidifies their wingnut bona-fides.

It is hard to imagine, though, that all this anti-women rhetoric, will accomplish anything other than enrage women and the men who back them.

And, what do all these potential laws have to do with creating jobs and hiring workers?

Well, nothing.

That's exactly what the GOP has to offer as the national economy slowly rebounds from the meltdown of 2008, before Obama was elected president.

'Toxic and destructive'

An op-ed piece in the New York Times today has ruffled a few feathers on Wall Street for daring to expose Goldman Sachs by a former employee.

Take a read and you'll see why we're so many of us lost so much in the Great Recession.

Here's a sample from the article written by a former Goldman Sachs trader named Greg Smith:

"I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them." 


Or this:


"What are three quick ways to become a leader (at Goldman Sachs)?  a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym." 


The essay provoked hundreds of responses at the end of the story. They're worth checking out, too.


The article was so incendiary and, apparently, too truthful that the Wall Street Journal devoted a good chunk of the top of their website to it this afternoon.  In fact, the WSJ had six different stories/videos devoted to the op-ed piece, including one titled: "Experts: 'Just Resign and Move On.' "


The main WSJ story had hundreds of responses, too. They're worth looking at.


For more responses, you can go to the Digg entry.

The upshot is that Smith exposed a trend on Wall Street to take whatever you can from whoever you can, be it the government clerk with a 403(b) or a corporate secretary with a 401(k) or the government itself.

Actually, Goldman Sachs was willing to screw over its competitors for some extra bling. And, obviously they're not the only ones.

If you haven't seen it, check out "Margin Call" on DVD. It, too, is revealing about the 2008 meltdown. It shows how a Wall Street firm was willing to sell junk to longtime buyers just so they could avoid collapse. Again, another game of hot potato, with the one holding it at the end getting burned.

For anyone who has continued to throw money away on Wall Street by way of automatic deductions for your 401(k) retirement plan, you may want to rethink that position.

Until Wall Street shows you the money, don't show them anymore of yours.

Another victory night for Obama

Rick Santorum wins the GOP primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, the two states with the most racist and ignorant Republican voters in the country.

In other words, if Alabama and Mississippi are for Santorum, he has absolutely no chance of being elected president of the United States.

This is all good news for President Obama.

Whenever Mitt Romney loses, Obama wins because Mitt is the only GOP candidate with a prayer against Obama.

But, Mitt whiffed in the South on Tuesday. He came in third behind Newt "Family Values" Gingrich despite spending far more money than his three competitors combined.

Mitt will likely be the Republican nominee, but he is now more damaged goods since the deep base of the GOP doesn't care for him and will likely not turn out and vote for him in November.

As I've noted before, if Mitt can't energize Republicans to get out and vote for him, it spells trouble for  GOP candidates in other federal, state or local races.

Still, it's only mid-March. We've got eight long months of negative ads, funded by unregulated Super-PACs, to wade through.

It's fun, though, to see Republicans make themselves look ridiculous in trying to pander to the least-common denominator in America.

A new low in local debates

The Tea Party held a debate for Deschutes County Commission candidates on Monday and shockingly, the Democratic candidates showed up.

The Tea Party, being affiliated with Republicans, already sponsored a presidential GOP debate.

But, it is certain that the Tea Party won't be sponsoring a presidential debate this fall because national Democrats would rightly object to such a travesty.

The Redmond branch of Central Oregon Patriots (COP) sponsored the local event.

According to the daily newspaper in Bend, the debate opened with a prayer that included the phrase "to make this a Christian nation again."

Again?

One of the missions of COP and other teabaggers is to get government to strictly adhere to the Constitution. Well, nowhere does it say that America is a Christian nation.

Also, the article noted that some questions went unanswered when "they covered issues that commissioners do not face."

I'm sure these questions concerned abortion and gay marriage. Maybe, bombing Iran was in there, too.
Did they ask if they believed President Obama was a Muslim or U.S. citizen? These are questions that county officials across the land grapple with everyday. Not.

And, of course, no teabagging Republican debate would be complete without the obligatory reference to Ronald Reagan.

The commission candidates were asked, according to the paper, "to rate their political ideology from one -- for Ronald Reagan -- to 10 for, Barack Obama."

Really.

There are many in Deschutes County who claim they are card-carrying members of the Tea Party.

But, the vast majority of the residents here are not.

We do not appreciate this freaky, fringe element given legitimate status in being able to hold a debate at which Democrats are compelled to participate.

Calling out to League of Women Voters. We need your help.

Look away, from Dixieland

The GOP's carnival marches through the Deep South today with primaries in Alabama and Mississippi, two states that continue to embarrass this country nearly 150 years after the end of slavery.

The intelligence of Southerners has always been questioned. A recent poll confirms the worst about white, racist Republicans.

In Mississippi, when Republicans were asked if Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim or are you not sure, the results were disturbing:

Christian - 12%
Muslim - 52%
Not sure - 36%

Alabama, by comparison, showed enlightenment on this question. Republican respondents there thought Obama was:

Christian - 14%
Muslim - 45%
Not sure - 42%

Then, of course, these Southerners were asked if they believed in evolution or not.

Their responses indicate they have not evolved as much as most educated people in the world.

In Mississippi, respondents:

Believe in evolution - 22%
Do not - 66%
Not sure - 11%

In Alabama, respondents:

Believe in evolution - 26%
Do not - 60%
Not sure - 13%

It was always humiliating that the South was reliably Democratic until the mid-1960s when President Johnson signed Civil Rights legislation.

Giving up the South, though, ensured that Democrats would lose many presidential elections in the following decades because it no longer catered to racists.

Richard Nixon saw the opening and seized it in 1968 and 1972.

Ronald Reagan put his arm around the Southern racists in 1980 and brought them fully home to the GOP.

Good riddance. You can have the ignorant racists.

President Obama will win re-election without them.

What the papers wouldn't run

This is what didn't run today in many newspapers across the country

Garry Trudeau knows how to skewer, ridicule and mock our world and the people in it with his classic, long-running comic strip Doonesbury.

Along the way, he stirs up a bit of controversy.

He gets too political for some newspapers. So instead of placing Doonesbury amid all the other strips on the comics page, some papers put it on the editorial page or op-ed page.

Or, newspapers run a substitute strip provided by Doonesbury's syndicate, Universal Press Syndicate, now called Universal UClick, when a topic gets too touchy for "family" newspapers.

Which is what our daily and The Oregonian did today. The Oregonian gave its reasons for not running the above strip, but our paper did not.

Below is the repeat strip that ran in The Bulletin today:

Trudeau speaks about the latest kerfuffle in this Washington Post story.

Before anyway starts crying "censorship," as some did over Rush Limbaugh recently, it should be noted that newspapers, and other forms of media, can choose not to run comics, stories, ads or photos at any time. In fact, they do so on a regular basis.

It's not censorship. It is only censorship when the government says something cannot be printed in a free press.

Newspapers are exercising their editorial judgment when they choose not to run something. You may argue with that decision, but they own the press, the ink and the paper.

Thank God we have the Internet these days. It's harder to suppress the news. And, it's easier to get the word out.

So, you can check out Slate, which runs the Doonesbury strip that Trudeau intends to run on that given day.

Keep surfing the web.