Oregon City Dumps Mayor for Not Showing Up for Work

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 20, 2011 at 7:12 PM ET

SODAVILLE, Ore. (AP) — A small city in Oregon has kicked out its mayor for not showing up to work.

The Albany Democrat-Herald reports that Sodaville replaced 35-year-old Brady Harrington with the city council's president.

The newspaper says Harrington missed council meetings in June and July, along with skipping three budget meetings.

The new mayor, Nick Heineck, says Harrington was occupied as a firefighter and student, but would not commit to returning to meetings when council members reached him by phone this week.

Harrington declined to resign. He was elected to his second term as mayor in November.

Streetcar named Progress

One growing part of America's infrastructure, however, has a distinctly 19th-century feel. It's the return of the streetcar.

Like so many urban development stories in America, this one begins in Portland, Ore.

Outside the famous Powell's bookstore, a 21st-century streetcar glides to a stop, opens its doors, and lets out a mix of tourists and locals. Modern streetcars have been running in this city for about a decade, and Chandra Brown lives right along their route.

"I love the streetcar," says Brown, who's lived in Portland for 17 years. "They had told me that there were no streetcars built in the United States, and I basically said, 'You're a liar, that can't be, honestly.' So I did some research after that and found out, yes, that was absolutely correct. There was no builder of modern streetcars in the United States."

As it happens, Brown is a vice president of Oregon Iron Works. Her company has been making bridges, boats and other heavy equipment since the 1940s. A few years ago, they created a subsidiary called United Streetcar. Now they are manufacturing the first American-built streetcars in more than 50 years.

The Oregon Iron Works factory is a cavernous space in a Portland suburb, where men with hammers are busy constructing a streetcar base. Seventy to 90 percent of the parts are made in the U.S.; seats from Michigan, upholstery from North Carolina, windshield wipers from Connecticut.

"It was 2009 when we finished the first prototype, made-in-the-USA streetcar," Brown says. "Now this little fledgling company is building 13 cars with $50 million-plus in orders." Those orders are all for cities in the U.S., too.

'Back To The Future'

In fact, the U.S. is in a streetcar boom. More than a dozen cities either have them or are actively planning for their development.

Enough is Enough

I was already for the game last night, was watching it back in the bedroom, door closed, so I wouldn't be disturbed. Pre-game BS wasn't too long, nice singing, sounded recorded though, listened to the "experts" give their opinion on how it would turn out, listened to all the commercials, ready for the kickoff.

And then it dawned on me, Oregon, Auburn, Heisman winner, soon to be a multi-millionaire (surrounded by questions about his eligibility), Oregon in that gawd-awful green, those socks were awful, some of the crowd dressed up like savages, I really don't care who wins, so I turned to something else, watched "Pickers" and the Pawn Shop in Vegas, and went to bed by ten. I figured the last team that had the ball would win, and, I heard this morning that is pretty much how it turned out. Been a long season, even longer "Bowl Season," enough is enough. Oh, Auburn won, last minute field goal, I guess, good for TV, kept the audience glued to their sets the whole time.

Whoops.................

Back in the late 50's I lived in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Long story why I moved there, so won't go in to any details right now.

Klamath was a nice town, Bing Crosby had a place not too far from there, saw his wife on a few occasions in town to do some shopping.

The Klamath Tribe had a reservation not too far from town, they sold off a lot of land, I was there the day they all got their checks. Will save that story for another time.

I got a job working at Montgomery Wards, and worked in the Automotive Department, down in the basement. It was one of those older buildings, a front door which led to a big stairway that took you to the basement, and stairways on the side to take you to the second floor. I think there was an elevator, but not sure.

It was a very busy store, downtown location, not sure of the hours, but I think the store opened at 8 or 9 in the morning and closed at 7 in the evening. Normal "town" store hours for those days.

Our store manager was named Steve Gotschall, have never forgotten that name for some reason.

One morning, almost noon, he came rushing down the stairs to the basement, fuming. The store was on a big promotion selling "service" and he noticed a lady carrying a portable TV up the stairs, and went to her aid, carried it out for her, and helped her load it in to her car.

"Why didn't one of you help her carry it out, the TV was heavy and she should have gotten some help from someone. Here we are trying to promote good service to our customers and something like that happens. We are slow this morning, there is no excuse for it," he went on for quite some time, preaching about good service, helping our customers, etc.

He went on and on, scolding each person in the Electronics Department, one of which was a good friend of mine, who was just standing there, smiling.

He finally told Mr. Gotschall, "We haven't sold any TVs this morning."

Silence.

Washington Times Editorial ..

EDITORIAL: A euthanasia mandate
Bureaucrats could decide who lives or dies
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

May 1, we warned you that President Obama's health care proposals could lead to bureaucrats deciding when to "pull the plug" on an individual's medical treatment. That awful day is drawing nearer.

In an April 28 New York Times interview, the president spoke of having government guide a "very difficult democratic conversation" about "those toward the end of their lives [who] are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here." Those statements sounded a little creepy to us. Deciding who gets denied care at the end of life should not be dependent on government cost controls.

Presidential health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and chairman of the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health, has argued that independent government boards should decide policy on end-of-life care. He also has defended rationing care more strictly for older people because "allocation [of medical care] by age is not invidious discrimination."

It is in that light that House Republicans warn against draft Section 1233 of the House Democratic health care bill as an area of deep concern. It provides for seniors, every five years, to be provided "advance care planning consultation" for "end-of-life services." House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio and Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan warn that the provision "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."

If that fear sounds far-fetched, consider that similar things already are happening in several states. As Jeff Emanuel (no relation to the Obama officials) explains on the facing page, a panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals this spring ruled that Georgia can override a doctor's decision about how much care is warranted for a handicapped child because the state is "the final arbiter" of medical decisions.

The situation is even worse in Oregon, which has legalized "assisted suicide." As radio host and author Mark Levin has publicized in his best-seller "Liberty and Tyranny," the Oregon health plan last year refused to pay for a recognized drug to prolong the life of lung cancer patient Barbara Wagner even after her oncologist prescribed it. Yet the same bureaucrats told Ms. Wagner that the plan would indeed cover doctor-assisted suicide if she chose that option.

Saving her life was deemed too expensive, but paying her to die was just fine.

A year ago, on July 28, 2008, FoxNews.com reported that such cases aren't unique in Oregon but are becoming almost commonplace. For instance, until he raised a ruckus, 53-year-old prostate cancer patient Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., was denied new treatments but offered full payment if he would just agree to be killed.

As Jeff Emanuel noted in a post at the Red State blog, Oregon's plan expressly does not cover "medical equipment or supplies which will not benefit the patient for a reasonable length of time." Reasonableness is determined by green-eyeshade, budget-crunching bureaucrats rather than by doctors.

Mr. Obama's government health care proposal easily could devolve into a similar nightmare. That's reason enough for lawmakers to give this awful legislation a merciful death.