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Yep. I actually had already figgered y'all for an ol' buddy of good ol' pro-slaughter Da**e D*quette. No surprise there, sadly.

posted 1 year, 1 month ago
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Why not have an already existing "task force" assigned to examine how states that aren't in trouble are managing? YES there are some! What's wrong with looking at the successfully managing states to see how they do it???

posted 1 year, 1 month ago
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ONCE AGAIN I would respectfully call upon the Ways and Means Committees and other state agencies who are "in charge" of the money to take a very hard and thorough look at the FRAUD WASTE AND ABUSE which goes on in some agencies by some state workers. Specifically: you really REALLY need to make a thorough and deeply detailed investigation into the Oregon University System staff AND management. I'm sure by now the others who post here are thoroughly sick of hearing me beg for this but it needs to be said again and again until someone wakes up and DOES something about it: if what I directly have witnessed in just one agency is even a percentage of what goes on statewide, Oregon will never be able to bail itself out of its financial difficulties! There was and continues to be absolutely shameless stealing going on and it needs to be stopped. Oregon: if you REALLY want to balance the budget you need to do something about stopping illegal outflow as well as increasing inflow!!!

posted 1 year, 1 month ago
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Reub Long and his outfits rounded up wild horses by the thousands and had them slaughtered for "free" income. NOT a fan of the Legendary Reub. Once again the romance collides with the reality.

And don't forget about the water wars. As many if not more lives and fortunes were lost over water, and the lack of same, in the west as over cattle and sheep issues.

posted 1 year, 1 month ago
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DouginNEpdx yes I do live in Oregon. I don't make enough money to pay rent and buy groceries on the same paycheck however I was told that I "make too much money" to qualify for the plan you are talking about. Also if I DID "qualify" and paid the premium I would be still in the position of living on the street because that payment represents my rent and utilities. If you haven't heard about the "catch22" that goes on with lower middle class/lower class bordering on poverty class, that catch22 of health coverage is exactly why so many people were against mandated health insurance purchases: you don't make enough money to pay for health insurance, your high-income employer is too busy spending money on him/herself to pay employee benefits, and yet you are "too rich" to qualify for lower-income health coverage. This is such a widespread problem and it has never been fully addressed.

Calemonlaw - what you are experiencing is that Great American Pastime called "victim blaming." It goes something like this. Those with money/in power/in control would have everyone believing that if you JUST LIVE RIGHT and DO EVERYTHING YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO you will (1) be abundantly healthy and (2) basically be immortal. If you get sick or injured it is YOUR fault for NOT LIVING RIGHT and SURELY YOU MUST BE DOING BAD THINGS.  This is a set-up-to-fail mindset which guarantees guiltlessness for the smug power-trippers who have all the "goods" e.g., money and power (and they have endless 'excuses' for why they themselves might have health problems but gee golly they sure have enough $$ to pay for any health issues). "Victim blaming" is a nasty little game which makes it easy for the status quo to remain in place and also very easy for those with money or in power to marginalize, even demonize  those without money and without power.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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I also cannot grasp why so many in this country are against a single payer system! It sure works well (maybe not perfectly but a whole lot better than what we have in this country these days). Couple comments: first if all you are paying is $700 count yourself lucky if broke and continually blindsided by what you find after the fact that the ins co won't pay; in my age group with pre-existings the cheapest I can find is now 1275/month with a $5K deductible you heard me 5K deductible. And second comment: saw a great bumper sticker yesterday which says I have the GOP faith-based health plan called "pray you don't get sick." Doesn't that say it all about the political situation using people's very lives as chess pawns in the struggle to be political top dog! Finally as an example of what reasonable people are thinking about health care/coverage versus what the unreasonable majority is thinking about it, an acquaintance of mine said in response to being told the statistic about what percentage of the population dies young for lack of health care/coverage she stated: "that is their CHOICE." Excuse me, where is the "choice" there? That in a nutshell describes what happens with the progress toward extreme right wing/uncontrolled capitalism/make money regardless - there is no more morality, no more ethics, and we are evolving backwards in our humanity.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Venessa, there is plenty of evidence now that "reading before signing" didn't do a whole lotta good and that is because things were changed in the documents after the person signed. Where attorneys were involved it maybe happened less but it still happened.

Maybe one in a hundred prospective homeowners tried to get loans they "didn't deserve." Many more were deliberately duped by unscrupulous lenders and brokers.

"Getting an attorney" is not the answer to life's problems. I should know. I have been a paralegal for 40 years and pretty much seen it ALL.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Also: "Inside Job." Plus the series NPR did on how the meltdown happened; it was shockingly sickening to hear the taped interviews of twenty-something mortgage brokers who freely admitted they committed financial shenanigans to earn high fees - fees so high that they bragged of astonishingly, obscenely large incomes - one interviewee copped to an income of $120,000 per MONTH. You heard me. And the one who was earning that whined because he was always "broke at the end of the month." If you want a one-word diagnosis of the mortgage/home lending meltdown that word would be "greed."

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Very well said JRD.

Unfortunately, pursuing legal remedies is unaffordable for most people particularly those hardest hit by the Second Great Depression. Consider this: the mid-range American homeowner still employed averages approximately $21 per hour take home pay. Mid-range large city lawyers charge ten times that and more per hour together with a five-figure retainer up front to cover "costs" such as investigations, depositions, expert witness fees, and the high cost of going to trial. IF they will even take these cases; there are some who have been considering taking them on class-action basis and to my knowledge there have been no "class certifications" as yet. (And keep in mind no one except the lawyers "win" in class action litigation, witness the Johns-Manville asbestos litigation debacle or the Exxon Valdez litigation where judgments remain unpaid more than two decades later.) The harsh reality is this: remedies legal or otherwise may exist in law or on paper. They simply do not exist in the real world, except perhaps for the already very wealthy who don't need them anyway.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Read up on "securitization" and see how this was done. The banks got their money. They still have it. They are still sitting on their bags of gold.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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DFund, the caps button is a toggle, please do consider using it. That having been said here's an interesting factoid about property taxes that the realtors should feel pretty shamed over: homes being short-saled or foreclosure re-saled haven't had their property tax assessment revised and the reason is that the realtors themselves are generally refusing to budge on what they "believe" (despite no current market support) the house was "valued" at at the biggest bulge of the bubble. Example: In 2010 I looked at buying a foreclosure resale where the monthly amortized real estate taxes exceeded the mortgage payment (with strong assurances of absolutely no changing by county tax assessors on the assessed value of the residence, thanks to greedy realtors' freely offered baseless "opinions" based on wishes not reality). And yet those selfsame realtors still whine about not being able to sell homes!

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Jacob, please carefully examine your suppositions. You are saying that some should never have been approved in the first place. Your  allegation seems to imply you believe that the mortgagors somehow were aiming to get something they weren't entitled to. Noting of course that this sort of victim blaming is sort of out of date as it is exactly what the banks/mortgage "bucket shops" did to deflect scrutiny away from their own illegal practices currently being investigated though sadly not prosecuted. As an example, I have a good friend who quit the mortgage business when she found she was being expected to falsify not only loan applications after the applicant had signed and submitted them (to get the loans approved and her company get its fees) but was also expected to falsify the loan documents from the underwriter to hide the real terms from the mortgagor. There is so much allowed to go on in the largely heretofore poorly regulated mortgage brokerage business that it is not surprising to me in the least that these practices were rampant. In point of fact, look at the legislative history in Washington state regarding "bucket shops" and compare and contrast what is going on in Oregon with what is NO LONGER encouraged to happen in Washington. And Washington made its changes in the late 80's with the "savings and loan crisis" for those of you old enough to remember that particular meltdown.

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Considering the bankers' collective guilt in the financial meltdown of the last four years, IMO they have a collective obligation to renegotiate the loans. Unfortunately their dirty tricks are at work even where their feet are held to the fire via federal mandate and they are "forced" to renegotiate; those dirty tricks have been well documented in investigative journalism both print and broadcast and include but are not limited to the final injurious retribution against the homeowner: following re-negotiation even to the level of agreed turnover, turning the homeowner into the IRS claiming that the homeowner "financially benefited" from the process. Yes. They do that. They file forms with the taxing authority claiming the homeowner had "income" from the difference between the negotiated amount and the full amount due under the mortgage. There IS no such thing as true cooperation and good faith efforts on the part of bankers in these situations. There just is NO SUCH THING. If they can't have all their money, they will have their vengeance. Homeownership is not the American dream it is in fact the American Nightmare. Financial experts were noting this as far back as five years ago. Crunching the numbers equals the true meaning of the word "mortgage" = "death pledge."

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Not on the agenda (obviously) session after session after session is "something" very urgently needed which I will again respectfully point out. It is very simple, this "something." What IS this "something"? Why, read on if you dare or if you even care. Caveat: not all state employees do this. In fact, most likely do not do this. But enough seem to..... The State of Oregon is broke. The State of Oregon should be willing to investigate fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer monies. The State of Oregon needs to start with the Oregon University System. If even a small percentage of the fraud, waste and abuse happening in the Oregon University System (not the campuses, OUS) is found also in other State of Oregon agencies AND STOPPED, Oregon could balance its budget sooner rather than later. Just sayin'....nobody seems to be listening....

posted 1 year, 2 months ago
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Kyrstin - a website would greatly assist your business, even a simple one with a "where to buy" section and contact information. If you do have a website, it needs to show up on popular search engines. Just having a Facebook account for your fledgling enterprise simply won't reach the large pool of possible buyers who don't care to do the "YouTwitFace" combo or any part thereof. Clearly your market research has revealed the astonishing vibrancy and growth of "the dog market" and with Portland being one of the leading US cities in "dog friendliness" you should do well. But many of us do not social network precisely because we do NOT want to be "judged" by others with an agenda dissimilar to our own - especially when possibly becoming "friended" by someone whose agenda is diametrically opposed to our own. And don't forget there are three or four local-to-the-northwest dog publications with extremely affordable advertising rates that could assist with increasing your sales (no, I am not a salesperson for those publications, just a reader). Dogs need to know where to tell their pet parents to shop!!! You want sustainable? You need a website (and I'm not a website designer, either, just suggesting it).

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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I have two words which to me mean "sustainable job." Those two words are part of the interaction between employer and employee. Those two words are MUTUAL RESPECT. I have been an office manager, a department supervisor with hiring/firing duties, run my own (equestrian) business, and also worked as a full-charge paralegal for longer than I care to admit - especially to hiring managers. Again those two words - mutual respect - with many hiring managers there is zip zero zilch respect accorded to the older employment prospect (and by older I mean even just past 40). When I was "the boss" I went out of my way to fairly evaluate applicants for what they could offer the business - not what they looked like or what they might rack up in excess health insurance coverage. Amazing how MUTUAL RESPECT affects customer service, employee loyalty, superior products and production, and overall business health. Unfortunately what I see increasingly is twofold: the employer wants to and often does treat the employee(s) as something that came up on their shoe in the parking lot; the employee gunnysacks the (even abusive) treatment by the employer until it reaches critical mass and then spills over in unwise e-mails or in social networking. Worse, among the under 25 set the concept of RESPECT toward others and especially toward themselves is a completely alien one, so that an employer who does make the effort to at least ACT respectful of the employees is basically smacked in the proverbial chops with a metaphorical defunct fish. Prospective employers often show their lack of respect toward applicants by treating the employment process as a game, a game of EXclusion rather than INclusion. They aren't looking for why they should hire someone but rather diligently searching for a way to NOT hire someone. That's not my analysis - someone far more qualified than I has written an entire book about just that. That author also wrote a very revealing book about corporate culture that supports my comment about lack of respect on the employer's part. I have worked in big organizations and a two-person professional office and over the course of my life (I'm almost to retirement age) have experienced everything in between. And yes, I have seen radical changes in the employment picture, good and bad. In my opinion it boils down to a very simple equation: too many people, not enough jobs. Think about it.

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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I understand that in Oregon "ANY quit equals automatic denial of unemployment benefits." [caps for emphasis mine]. While this mandate may be appealed (according to the Employment Division) the general time period required is 90-120 days. Most people could not survive that long without any income whatsoever.

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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Have to be very careful that I am not outed for "complaining." Where I work, the boss is an obsessive collector (hoarder?)of weaponry and has MANY in the workplace. Literally, dozens. Old ones, new ones, exotic and mundane ones which are claimed "none loaded". Lets visitors go to his "collection" and play with these weapons sometimes without his even being there. Recently, a visitor came in and the "boys" were "playing guns." I came to the door of the boss' office to tell him he had a phone call. Visitor with gun in hand swung around to face me pointing the gun right at me. Like any non-gun fan would likely do I froze. In terror. My boss and his visitor thought this was "funny." THIS type of thing is why I would like to see a LOT more regulation of firearms because I don't frankly give a darn about any of the smug self-serving arguments from gun nuts including NRA types. What I see completely tied in with gun addiction is a certain mentality. A mentality that does end up with innocent people "accidentally" shot and killed (with that tired excuse, oopsie, dang didn't think that one was loaded gee sorry ma'am thass toooo bad).

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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Have to be very careful that I am not outed for "complaining." Where I work, the boss is an obsessive collector (hoarder?)of weaponry and has MANY in the workplace. Literally, dozens. Old ones, new ones, exotic and mundane ones which are claimed "none loaded". Lets visitors go to his "collection" and play with these weapons sometimes without his even being there. Recently, a visitor came in and the "boys" were "playing gunds." I came to the door of the boss' office to tell him he had a phone call. Visitor with gun in hand swung around to face me pointing the gun right at me. Like any non-gun fan would likely do I froze. In terror. My boss and his visitor thought this was "funny." THIS type of thing is why I would like to see a LOT more regulation of firearms because I don't frankly give a darn about any of the smug self-serving arguments from gun nuts including NRA types. What I see completely tied in with gun addiction is a certain mentality. A mentality that does end up with innocent people "accidentally" shot and killed (with that tired excuse, oopsie, dang didn't think that one was loaded gee sorry ma'am thass toooo bad).

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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Have to say, Jacob, if you haven't checked out Spot Magazine or CityDog Magazine you are kind of off base in feeling sorry for what you are calling the neglected lifestyle dog. From what I can see the reason pdx is considered one of the dog-friendliest cities in the US is because those dogs ARE getting a better life. Also Oregon has a very active Golden Retriever rescue group called Golden Bond. Good thing those Goldens are part of the "Lifestyle Choice".

posted 1 year, 3 months ago
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