Featured Stories
Featured Stories
John A. Charles, Jr.
According to the state’s Global Warming Commission, Oregon has already met its goal of reducing per-capita carbon dioxide emissions to levels that are 20% below 1990 emissions by the year 2020. In fact, we met the goal four years ago.
Are state legislators celebrating this achievement? Not at all. They are too busy rolling out a 98-page bill that will establish a statewide limit on carbon dioxide emissions, designed to make energy more expensive. The bill also repeals the CO2 goal that we’ve already met and imposes a more stringent one: to reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the year 2050. Continue reading
Rescued sea otters Uni Suhi and Juno play in Steller Cove. ©Oregon Zoo/ photo by Shervin Hess
Playful 5-month-old meets Juno and Lincoln at Oregon Zoo’s Steller Cove
Visitors might notice more splashing than usual at the Oregon Zoo’s sea otter habitat this week. Uni Sushi, the rescued pup who arrived earlier this month, had her first meet-up with the zoo’s other otters — Juno and Lincoln — and the three got along so swimmingly they can now be seen together much of the time.
“The introductions went very well,” said Nicole Nicassio-Hiskey, the Oregon Zoo’s senior marine life keeper. “They just hit it off right away and seem to enjoy one another’s company.”
Keepers say Juno’s maternal instincts kicked in as soon as she met Uni — much as they did last year with Lincoln — and she hugged the young pup close and floated all around with her. Lincoln soon joined the pair, greeting them with a chorus of squeaks, and all three have been playing together since. Continue reading
Secretary of State Bev Clarno
Today, the Secretary of State Audits Division released its annual report on the Oregon Government Waste Hotline. This report summarizes the activities of the division’s government waste hotline during 2018.
“This hotline is an important tool that Oregon citizens and state employees can use to increase government accountability and transparency,” said Secretary of State Bev Clarno. “Waste in state government costs all of us by reducing resources available for services. We take seriously the reports received through the hotline, and we are committed to doing everything possible to hold state government accountable to the citizens of Oregon. I was a member of the Legislature when the Government Waste Hotline was developed, and its’s encouraging to see this tool being used to clean up government waste.” Continue reading
Kathryn Hickok, Cascade Policy Institute
This month, the Tennessee legislature passed a new Education Savings Account (ESA) law for its state’s K-12 students. The law creates the second ESA program that will operate in the Volunteer State.
The new Tennessee law provides families there with alternatives to low-performing public schools in the form of about $7,300 per student in education funding annually, if parents want to withdraw their children from their zoned district schools. Parents may spend ESA funds on private school tuition, tutoring, educational therapies, or other education-related expenses.
Education options are widespread in America, unless a family can’t afford an alternative to their zoned public school. Education Savings Accounts give parents the ability to customize their children’s education in the ways that are best for them as individual students. ESAs put parents, rather than government school bureaucracies, in the “driver’s seat” of their kids’ education. Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee are operating ESA programs today. Continue reading
Dr. Jay Lehr
Tom Harris
The true costs of wind energy are too often (deliberately?) ignored or underestimated
Wind energy can never replace fossil fuels, despite claims of environmentalists and advocates of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal (GND). It’s not environment-friendly either. Indeed, wind power is hampered by many limitations, including:
* its intermittent and inefficient nature
* insufficient sites with adequate, reliable wind
* acreage required to erect turbines and harness wind
* excessive expenses, many of them rarely mentioned
* dangers to bird and bat populations
* dangers to human health from light flicker and low frequency throbbing noise (infrasound).
* costs, limitations, and health and environmental impacts of batteries and other back-up systems
Wind turbines are highly inefficient. Large industrial wind turbines (IWT) typically produce about 2.5 megawatts of power when wind speed is between about 8 and 25 miles per hour. However, most of the time it’s not, even at the best locations. Continue reading
By Paul Driessen
Let’s finally review Endangerment Finding used to justify trillions in climate and energy cost.
In December 2009, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency issued its Endangerment Finding (EF) – decreeing that carbon dioxide (CO2) and other “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) endanger the health and welfare of Americans. In the process, EPA ignored the incredible economic, health and welfare benefits of fossil fuels – and the fact that (even at just 0.04% of the atmosphere) carbon dioxide is the miracle molecule that enables plants to grow and makes nearly all live on Earth possible.
EPA turned CO2 into a “dangerous pollutant” and ruled that fossil fuels must be eradicated. The agency subsequently used its EF to justify tens of billions of dollars in climate research, anti-fossil fuel regulations, and wind and solar subsidies; Continue reading
By Paul Driessen
The climate-fearing, capitalism-loathing Left cannot abide questions or differing opinions
Throughout history despots had effective ways of reducing dissension in the ranks. Inquisitors burned heretics. Nazi’s burned books – before taking far more extreme measures. Soviets employed famines, gulags, salt mines and executions. ChiComs and other tyrants starved, jailed and murdered millions.
Today’s Green New Dealers and their allies have mapped out their own totalitarian strategies.
They proclaim themselves socialists, but their economic policies and tolerance for other viewpoints reflect a different form of government – fascism: A political system in which authoritarian government does not own businesses and industries, but strictly regulates and controls their actions, output and rights – while constraining and suppressing citizens and their thought, speech and access to information. Continue reading
Marlon Furtado
Often when I get home after church, I’ll plop on the couch, turn on the TV for background noise, and work on another blog. I enjoy watching golf, which is so slow and quiet. On the far other extreme, I also like to watch car races. It may seem odd, but there is something relaxing about the deep throats of those cars as they barrel around the track.
When I was in college, I worked at a plywood mill some distance away. As I drove my Plymouth Fury to work one evening, I decided to see how fast it could go on the long straight stretch of road. When I approached 100 miles per hour, the car started to shake, and I quickly backed off the accelerator. Scared me to death. It was the last time I tried that! I can’t imagine the nerves of steel it must take to drive over 200 miles per hour while trailing another car by only inches. Continue reading
Join ODFW staff and volunteers at Fern Ridge Wildlife Area for a day of bow fishing. Bow fishing is a fun way to get outdoors and try your archery skills in a way different than shooting a paper target. Carp are an invasive species here in Oregon, meaning they directly compete with native fish for food and space.This means that removing these fish is encouraged. The event is free, equipment and guidance will be provided.
Participants should bring their own ice chest, mud boots or waders, polarized sunglasses, sun screen and bug spray. If you have your own bow fishing set up you are encouraged to bring it and join in on the fun! Bow fishing set-ups will be provided for those who do not have.
Required: Angling licenses will not be available for purchase at the event, please pre-purchase before attending. Continue reading
Susan Gallagher, Parents Rights In Education
Bottom line! No amount of hormone therapy and body manipulation can change an individual’s sex. Every cell in the human body is either male or female. It is defined by their reproductive organs and the DNA of every cell in the body. If people are struggling with their identity it is in their head, and they need professional help.
No Gov’t authority or any adult has the right to mess with another adult’s minor child by counseling him or her to consider this dangerous, irreversible decision. The American College Of Pediatricians recommends not taking this approach with minors because 80% outgrow any confusion when they go through puberty naturally.
Suicide is the unfortunate consequence for many souls who have transitioned only to realize it is not the answer. In a Swedish Study, Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers.