LOTSA LOCKE. Spectator.org has an article on Governor Locke that was mildly amusing:

The governor of Washington State is a constitutionally weak office, and it has been made even more infirm by the increase in voter initiatives in the last two decades. I often summarize the new consensus as, We hate the legislature, and the governor had better play dead.

The normal way of things in Washington is that politicians work hard to raise fees and taxes and pass irksome regulations, and then citizens sign petitions and vote for initiatives, pulling the rug out from under said pols at the ballot box.

Boy does that sound familiar.

3:59 PM

IT'S A GIRL! Congrats to Jake and family!

3:49 PM

MORE PO'ED. Jack Bogdanski has an interesting post regarding the story in yesterday's Trib story on the Pioneer Courthouse.

Wu, whose district is not safe for him as a Democrat, will lose a lot of friends, and some votes, on this one. And I disagree both with his position and how he's handling it. I clerked for the same judge Wu did, and I think that the basement garage and the loss of the Post Office are a crying shame. I also think that if you're going to pull high-level strings on an issue like this one, you have to face the music with the many citizens who care deeply about the issue.

Yet Jack is not a fan of Wu's opponent in the courthouse parking garage debacle, either.

Yet another clue that Blumenauer is just Vera Katz in a bow tie.

Go read Jack's post to find out why he thinks this.

10:23 AM

ALL HAIL SEPTOBERFEST My SeptoberFest 2003 poster was a big hit with the client. I am very happy right now. Here it is:

To see a complete play-by-play of the process, see the gallery page on this project here.

12:08 AM

END OF FILM? Well.... maybe it's only the end of Kodak:

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- First, it was new competition. Then new technology. Now, analysts believe struggling Eastman Kodak Co. has some two to three years to find a place in the world of digital photography.

If not, the venerable pioneer of mass-market picture-taking, which grew fat in the 20th century off high-margin, silver-halide film packaged in ubiquitous yellow boxes, could begin to fade into history.

Interesting.

4:23 PM

MIKE'S NEW DIGS. Michael J. Totten has moved to a new MT powered blog here. Update your bookmarks.

12:24 PM

PHOTO-ADDICTS IS BACK. After a slight hiccup over the weekend, PA is now back. Oh, btw, yours truly is now an Administrator there, as well as maintaining the front page blog.

12:06 PM

HAVIN' A BABY. Jake and Lydia Ortman are having another munchkin. Go wish them congratulations!

12:05 PM

DAY BY DAY RETURNS:

Heh. Welcome back, Chris.

11:48 AM

PUBLIC MARKET REDUX. Also from today's Trib, the construction of a new Portland Public Market is being proposed once more.

The plan could spur a new market district in an area besieged in recent years by drug dealers. What's more, the recent movement indicates that the public market plan, first floated three years ago, is finally taking hold.

::
The Ankeny Square plan fits a Portland Development Commission proposal to improve several blocks across from Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park. PDC believes the area's redevelopment could include housing and more retail outlets.

Talk about history repeating! Maybe some will not recall the Journal Building that sat where Tom McCall Park is now, but that building originally started as -- you guessed it -- the Portland Public Market.

Construction began in the summer of 1933 and proceeded apace. Records indicate a quicker than usual construction schedule with concrete being poured by the tons daily through November. On December 14th “Portland’s Marvelous New Million Dollar Public Market” finally opened to a three-day “public reception” that boasted “wonderful sales” and “plenty of music and fun.”

So once more, amid tumultuous economic times, Portland considers building a public market near the waterfront. My, how times change.

11:28 AM

MAYORIAL WRAP-UP. Today's Trib has a good piece on Vera's decision not to run again. And there is a lot of speculation regarding who will take her place at the election.

But despite the open mayor's seat and Francesconi's open council seat, so far no one has stepped up to represent groups that have long criticized City Hall for leaving them out of the political process.

The Portland business community, for one, often feels unwelcome at City Hall and once again is looking for its own candidate. And Portland minorities, inflamed by the May 5 police shooting of Kendra James, haven't found a way to harness that political energy into a candidate of their own.

Trib writer Don Hamilton goes on to describe the elephant in the room: the Portland Business Alliance:

The mayoral election next year will be the first for the Portland Business Alliance, the politically active successor to the more neutral Alliance for Portland Progress and Portland Chamber of Commerce.

The alliance has talked in the past about finding its own mayoral candidate and said this week that whoever runs must make finding new jobs a priority, said Kevin Montgomery-Smith, spokesman for the group

"Any potential candidate for mayor must have a clear economic strategy that will attract and retain businesses as well as address our regional and international competitiveness," he said. "We are a national leader in livability. However, livability starts with a job."

The article goes on to mention former Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Saxton, who says he is not interested.

My predictions?

• The PBA is angling for Saxton. If they can't twist his arm they are less likely to field their own candidate. If Saxton does run, he'll deny his candidacy until the moment he announces, unlike Francesconi and his open secret.
• Blumenauer will run. I think he's bored with D.C., and the lack of a progressive candidate will push him to announce.
• Francesconi is in a bind. If the PBA gets Saxton to run, it becomes a Saxton-Blumenauer race, and Francesconi starts to look like a mediocre candidate who really has no chair at the table.

Anyway, we shall see. I wasn't too far off on Vera, was I?

11:21 AM

DAY BY DAY.

Chris Muir, who turns out to also be a Chandler fan, sends word that Day by Day will return monday. Mark your calendar, and best wishes to Chris for his health.

3:58 PM

MAX MADNESS. Rob has more, complete with a handy map. For the record I still think this is completely insane. The alignment is being decided on political and economic grounds, not engineering grounds. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And did I mention dumb?

Double track Morrison and Yamhill!

3:44 PM

WELL I WAS RIGHT. As predicted, Vera has stated that she will not run for Mayor again. Yesterday, in her letter to the city, she said:

After 32 years in elected office, what I want most a year and a half from now is to focus my energies on new adventures and challenges, and spend more time with friends, my son and grandson.

Can I call them, or what?

UPDATE: Jack has more. And is the complete text c/o b!X, who has an excellent followup here.

Sidenote: doesn't it figure that this would all happen the one day I was out of town? No wonder Portland looked different as I stepped off the 509 last night.

3:40 PM

VACATION? Nope. But is sure seems like all us Oregon bloggers have gotten a little lax lately. Why? Two reasons. One, the heat. I'm sorry but natives like me just don't function well above 90 degress! And two, a packed schedule. I've hardly been able to sit down for five minutes lately. Now, if only some of it paid....

And the Blogosphere is not alone in this; it seems most of the newsmakers have either left town or decided to nap for a while, so nothing spectacular is happening on a local front.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I will be gone to Olympia to deliver a poster I just created, so no more blogging until thursday, unless I get a chance to later.

3:55 PM

B!X LIVES. He's just been busy unpacking stuff. He's also wondering how much posting time he'll have when he's employed again. Hmm... that sounds familiar.

Speaking of distractions, yesterday I was gone as I had a friend in town who invited me to visit with him for the day. So that killed all my time, though it was fun. And today is more parking survey, and tomorrow and saturday are in Sherwood....

Sigh.

It never ends.

9:45 AM

TOTTEN ON ART. Responding to a post by John Derbyshire in NRO's The Corner, Micheal writes this post on art in America.

This is no way to teach art, and it isn't what students show up to class for. I studied literature in college. I encountered some of this stuff myself, and I know what it means.

It's esoteric political dogma that uses art as a prop.

Read the whole thing.

10:06 AM

WO BIST DU? Jack notes b!X has been absent at the Portland Communique for about two days, going on three now. Hey Jack, maybe he's just been working or goofing off, or both, like... well... umm... me.

9:58 AM

MAX FACTOR. I just can't let this piece on Max Williams and the sales tax slide without comment.

"He may not be in office as a result of all this," said Dan Murphy, president of the Tigard Area Chamber of Commerce.

Indeed. And I'll leave it at that.

8:38 PM

WHERE HAVE I BEEN? Yes, I've been absent. And as you can tell by the changes around here, things are shaking up a bit. I've been messing with CSS and with intergration with a new site I am building. More to come on that later.

Also, I've been busy with a poster project for a festival put on by a College in the Olympia area, and that is going to occupy most of my free time for this week. And then add to that a parking survey I am helping to complete for my local town, and a few events this weekend I volunteered for, and....

Anyways, feel free to visit some of the other Oregon bloggers in my Reading Matter column to the right, and in the meanwhile I will blog a little when I get the chance to....

2:02 PM

GASP! Inside Portland is back. I'm amazed.

2:35 PM

ENRON TO PDX: NO PGE. Enron has rejected Portland's bid for PGE.

If the court approves the plan, a process that could take from several weeks to many months, it would make PGE a separate company owned by about 2,000 companies, banks and institutions.

"Obviously, no one has come up with an acceptable offer," said Fred Miller, vice president of operations at PGE. "If the city or anyone made an acceptable bid, it seems to me they'd have accepted it."

And then, Sten says something really stupid:

So far, the city has spent $850,000 on legal bills and other costs to pursue PGE.

"We're not walking away from this at this point," Sten said. "Now a bunch of banks own PGE instead of a bankrupt company. It's possible they'll sell it in the short term. We want to make sure they do the right thing."

Just let it go, Erik. It's over. Sure, you can drag it out, but further fighting this will only result in one thing: more city money poured down a rathole.

Of course, it's not my city's money, so I guess I could just shrug it off and say I don't care....

There are some more interesting comments regarding the final disposition of the fraud related debts created by Enron, further down in the article. Worth a read.

UPDATE: Jack Bogdanski thinks it's time to let go as well.

12:35 PM

MAIL FRAUD. The Trib reports today on the continuing saga of the Pioneer Courthouse Post Office.

Although the GSA had cited security needs in justifying the parking garage, Blumenauer said, the judges have secure parking half a block away.

“Judges have been walking to this courthouse for more than a century, and according to federal marshals, there has never been an incident,” Blumenauer said.

Hmm. First Leonard does something level headed about the murals, and now Blumenauer on the courthouse. Can you tell that campaign season is in the offing?

12:28 PM

MORE MALL MADNESS. Here is a nice post covering the Tri-Met proposal to put MAX on the Bus Mall.

I still don't get this need to add a north south MAX line into downtown. If extra train capacity is needed, it would make much more sense to double-track Yamhill and Morrison. However, if it must be done, I agree with Noah as well as with b!X -- without whose TypePad beta blog I would never have discovered Noah -- that the left side platform makes the most sense.

I also found his comments on AORTA very amusing.

I am happy that the group was a the open house, but I felt that they were a bit to loud and more than a little obnoxious. During the showing of the virtual "flythrough" it was difficult for many members of the audience to hear the TriMet employee over the loud discussion between advocates of the subway.

AORTA is a well intentioned group but definitely out there at times, and just a little too reactionary. (Not to mention that their site is hosted by Trainweb, which puts them firmly in the foamer category.) But then I guess most special interest lobbying groups are similar in that respect, aren't they?

12:16 AM

JACK ON HENRY'S: Thanks for the plug!

12:12 AM