There’s a billboard on East First Avenue in Albany. It’s been there for years. But I hadn’t really paid attention to it until one day this month. With time on my hands, I was wandering around that part of town, on foot for once. And I got to wondering: What’s a billboard doing there? […]
Albany’s downtown urban renewal district is working once again to define what it wants to do from now on, and how. Earlier this year the city council, acting as the governing board of the Central Albany Revitalization Agency or CARA, put several pending projects on hold. In October, the CARA advisory board agreed that it […]
Puerto Rico has narrowly voted to apply to become a U.S. state, a request that now will go to Congress for a decision. Judging by a report in The Week magazine, the majority was at least partially motivated by the prospect of more federal aid, not exactly a big surprise. But if we are going to […]
For two or three years now, the Oregon transportation department has been preparing for an environmental assessment of plans to widen Interstate 5 from Highway 20 in Albany to the Jefferson exit. The process is an example of how the agency, following its own and federal regulations on big projects, wastes both time and money. […]
As usual after decisive elections, the commentariat is writing off the losers as headed for the dustbin of history. Chances are the commentators are as wrong this time as they were a few election cycles ago, when they predicted the Republicans would be in charge as far as the eye could see. Now conservatives are […]
A local story illustrates why there is no hope of reforming our government and reversing the drive for more costly, federal  control. There would have been no hope for such reforms even if Obama had not been re-elected. Albany and surrounding towns are forming a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for transportation planning. Whether they want to or […]
Climate change or something else?
A study publicized by Oregon State speculates that climate change is causing additional stress to western rangelands where cattle and wild animals graze. In the Los Angeles Times, an art critic reports on the flooding in Venice. He suggests that the annual winter flooding there is much worse this time because of global warming. We […]
Tags: cactus, climate change, Venice