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Thursday | January 27, 2011
Environmental Organizations Seek Protection for Klamath River Chinook Salmon
A petition signed by four local and national environmental organizations has been submitted to the National Marine Fisheries Service asking for endangered species protection for Klamath River chinook salmon in northern California and southern Oregon. According to the petition, Klamath River chinook salmon, prized by fishers for its taste and economic importance, has declined from 100,000 before dam construction and other habitat changes to now only 7,000 individuals. Environmental organizations hope that being listed as an endangered species under the ESA would allow fish populations to stabilize and recover.
- Go to story: Groups seek protection for Klamath Chinook salmon
- Go to story: Conservation groups seek Endangered Species Act listing for Klamath River chinook salmon
- Go to press release: Endangered Species Act Protection Sought for Klamath River Chinook Salmon
Wednesday | January 26, 2011
The Internet: Just Another Cable TV Box?
This coming Friday, January 28th, you are invited to participate in Portland City Council's Portland Broadband Strategic Plan Kick-Off event - CONNECTING OUR FUTURE - from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon in Portland City Council Chambers. Who else is showing up? Public servants from the city and county, a variety of public advocacy representatives, and the usual corporate lobbyists from AT&T Wireless, Comcast and other "industry players." Nationally, it's the industry players, and their handmaidens in Congress and the Supreme Court, who've wreaked the most havoc with public access to free, open, unfettered and affordable access to the Internet. Ten to fifteen years ago, thousands of mostly mom & pop internet service providers (ISPs) provided dial-up internet access to anyone who wanted it. If you didn't like the available ISP choices in your community, you could set up your own with just a small investment and a bit of technical know-how. These days, most of us access the Internet through our cable or DSL connections, or through our mobile devices. Access is controlled by a tiny number of corporate giants who invest millions of dollars each year to buy off your congress person, your senator, as well as any judge or regulator they can get to. The reason? The business rationale for forcefully stuffing the most democratizing communications medium ever imagined into a tightly controlled, commercially restricted "cable box"? Think about it: what could possibly threaten large corporations--essentially private label totalitarian regimes--more than genuine democracy?
- Go to announcement: Portland Stategic BroadBand Plan: Connecting Our Future
- Go to Personal Telco: Personal Telco
- Go to story: U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic
- Go to history: FAQ: What is Brand X really about?
Tuesday | January 25, 2011
Tobacco sales decline in Oregon
What is going on? Isn't smoking still cool in Oregon? Have those wacko doctors and scientists finally convinced people that it's unhealthy or something? Do some people actually dislike the taste it gives everything they eat? Well then why not respect the tobacco industry's marketing shift towards flavored smokeless tobacco. The additives mostly mask the tobacco flavor with something marginally more pleasant, and there's no law against constantly spitting brown sludge. My friend Phillip Morris says it's really sexy. It's still unhealthy though.
- Go to story: Report Finds Tobacco Sales Down In Oregon
Monday | January 24, 2011
Life In The Bike Lane: East Burnside
From BikePortland.org: "It's great to have a wide bike lane on Burnside. It would be even greater to someday have real, world-class bike access on this street with physical separation from motor vehicle traffic. I'd love to enjoy the same level of safe access to this street that other vehicles enjoy. If I did, I'd be able to bike comfortably with my kids to the many interesting businesses in the area." So, uh, when do we install bike lanes on West Burnside?
- Go to story: Photo essay: Riding the new Burnside bikeway
Sunday | January 23, 2011
Genuine Prosperity Begins In Community
We live in a world where most of us remain everlastingly duped by a perennial handful of folks who feel an absolute need to maintain power, domination and control. The relentless torrent of obscenities that result are too numerous to recount here. Even so, it's worth noting that in 2009--immediately after Wall Street's rampant criminality triggered the Great Recession--its "top 25 hedge-fund managers made a staggering $1-billion each...."[1] Meanwhile, on average, "1 person dies every second as a result, either directly or indirectly, of hunger - 4000 every hour - 100,000 each day - 36 million each year - 58% of all deaths (2001-2004 estimates).[2] At what point to communities of people begin rejecting absurd economic dogmas in favor of real-world initiatives that drive genuine, reasonably equitable prosperity into their communities? What will it take for folks at the grassroots level, working within their communities, to build economic and other social structures that deliver reasonable, healthy livelihoods to everyone in the community?
- Go to story: "Growing Wealthier" report shows how smart growth can enhance prosperity
- Go to report: Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change and Prosperity
- Go to essay: Unequal wealth distribution: Cause and effect
- Go to story: Job and Wealth Creation at the Grassroots Level – A Working Model In Cleveland
- Go to "Who Rules America?": Wealth, Income, and Power
- Go to "The Spirit Level": The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better
Saturday | January 22, 2011
Building Bike Lanes Creates Twice As Many Jobs Per Dollar Spent As Does Fixing Roads
<tab class=wikitable sep=tab head=top>
EMPLOYMENT PER
$1 MILLION EXPENDITURES Direct
jobs Indirect
jobs Induced
jobs Total
jobs Jobs
multiplier
Pedestrian projects 6.0 2.2 3.1 11.3 1.9
Bike lanes (on-street) 7.9 2.5 4.0 14.4 1.8
Bike boulevard (planned) 6.1 2.4 3.2 11.7 1.9
Road repairs and upgrades 3.8 1.5 2.0 7.4 1.9
Road resurfacing 3.4 1.5 1.9 6.8 2.0
</tab>
- Go to story: Building Bike Lanes Creates Twice As Many Jobs As Fixing Roads
- Go to report: Estimating The Employment Impacts Of Pedestrian, Bicycle, And Road Infrastructure
Friday | January 21, 2011
It's All Downhill From Here
A few decades ago, Portland was just a dingy Northwest backwater largely ignored by the rest of the country. Back then it seemed that most of the folks one met on the street were born and raised here. Many couldn't wait to get out: to San Francisco, or to Seattle, or to New York City, or to London, or to anywhere that looked, felt and sounded more exciting than Portland. Housing was dirt cheap. Everyday folks suffered low self-esteem and utterly lacked all pretense. To Portlandians, the Rose City wasn't merely white, it was white trash. City government was irredeemably corrupt[3] and P-Town's thuggish cops made even Bad Lieutenant[4] look good. Everything was perfect. Then the hipsters came. Everything changed. The newly minted, self-consciously "cool" Portlandians flooding into Stumptown took their "high-minded, laid-back, arts-focused, sustainability-oriented" vegan and passive-aggressive selves a bit too seriously. Fortunately, Dave Knows that "Portlandia may be the high water mark for the national media's obsession with Portland...an ongoing source of amusement to locals since the mid-oughts."[5] At last! Now we Portlandians can finally climb down from our self-absorbed pedestals and get back to the business of living life in an overlooked, thuggish, corrupt, passive-and-non-aggressive, white trash backwater.
- Go to story: TV Weekend: Portlandia
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