Monday, October 27, 2008

Bend -- Closed for Business

Welp, if you can't tell, I'm pressed for time, and people seem to want to talk about McPAIN no matter what I post, so this will be just a short weekly placeholder.

I noticed something on Wall St that I haven't seen in a long, long while: 9, count 'em, NINE empty parking spaces in a row. Nine! I the middle of the day. Last year at this time, on a nice sunny day, you just started rounding Bond & Wall, and finally settled on something way off the beaten path.

I can SEE Bend slowing VISIBLY. Which is bad. Cuz once you can SEE it on the streets, it's pretty damn bad.

The Pita Pit, which opened with such fan-fair & crowds, similar to Sonic, was DEAD EMPTY. I mean, the half life of The Big Bang Openings, has gotten down to 1 week. It's just one week, and the honeymoon is over.

And Bend's Beautiful People, you know, the people with 278 non-profits started in the past 3 months... you know, people with morals, looks, titties and MONEY so superior to you and me, that you & me make THEM wanna VOMIT.... well, those people have started engaging in the lowest, most VILE activity known to man:

THEY ARE APPLYING FOR JOBS!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! MY GOD!!!!!!! NORMALCY IS FOR LOSERS!!! ONLY THE START-UP & ABANDONMENT OF NON-PROFITS IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Yeah. These people are applying for jobs. OK, this is like The Yankees putting a penguin on first base or something. It's so alien to these people to engage in NORMAL LIFE, even they don't know how to do it well, if at all.

Well, if you have 2 cents to rub together this should all be obvious. Hard times are here to stay. If you're looking for The Turn, don't look in Bend. We're 18 months behind, and twice as deep in the shitter.

We're supposedly 3X the exposure to RE as the rest of the state. Bullshit. We're 5-6X MINIMUM. 150% MINIMUM of this regoins growth over the past 10-12 years is due to RE. Without it, we'd have SHRUNK.

This "Credit Crunch" is the End of Days for us. We're dead meat. $120K medians may look Way The Hell Too Optimistic at the end. Why? Bend was purposefully BILKED FOR EVERY FUCKING CENT by RE INTERESTS. And they were enabled by our beloved City Council. Realize that these positions have NO PURPOSE but dispensing influence.

TOM GREENE is the PRESIDENT of the Central Oregon Realtors Association, and I'm sorry, but we DO NOT NEED yet another BOUGHT & PAID FOR WHORE RUNNING THIS TOWN. We have FAR MORE than enough. My God.

These people got us HERE. This is the "Who could have possibly predicted THIS would have happened?" types. They literally cannot predict the sunrise.

Bend council candidates all over map in fundraising

The second-highest fundraiser, attorney Jeff Eager, has brought in $17,563 in his bid for the seat currently held by Mayor Bruce Abernethy, who is not seeking re-election. About $4,000 of Eager’s money comes from Central Oregonians for Affordable Housing and the Central Oregon Association of Realtors’ PAC.

In the three races with an incumbent seeking re-election, the challengers all have raised more money. Former Mayor Kathie Eckman, who is trying to unseat Councilor Linda Johnson, has raised the most of any candidate: $19,446. More than a third of that money has come from Eckman and her husband, Paul, but a large amount has also come from a handful of political action committees, including the Bend Firefighters Association, Deschutes County Republican Central Committee, Central Oregon Association of Realtors and Central Oregonians for Affordable Housing, a builders’ group.

Eckman said this election is the first time she’s received money from political action groups. She said the builders and real estate agents are supportive of her because of her earlier work in city government.

Fundraising efforts in the race between Councilor Peter Gramlich and Tom Greene, the president of the Central Oregon Association of Realtors, are more evenly matched. To date, Gramlich has raised $9,329 and spent $4,007, while Greene has raised $10,034 and spent $8,899.

Gramlich has not received any contributions from organized PACs. Greene has received $3,000 from the Realtor’s association’s PAC and $1,000 from the builder’s group.

In the race between Councilor Jim Clinton and propane company owner Don Leonard, Clinton has raised $5,149 — including $500 from the Bend Firefighters Association’s PAC — and spent $1,279. Leonard has raised $9,100 and spent $6,171. About half of Leonard’s bank account has come from the Realtor’s and builder’s PACs. He has also received $250 from the Deschutes County Republican Central Committee.

No. That is NOT BULLSHIT. Nearly every SINGLE FUCKING CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE is a bought & PAID FOR WHORE of the LOCAL RE PAC's. Every fucking one.

This Jeff Eager fucker takes the cake, in that he's a LAWYER too.

OK, NONE of these FUCKWADS are worthy of having me pee in their fucking mouths. they are to a one, INFLUENCE PEDDLERS. That is the ONLY GROWTH INDUSTRY LEFT in this town. Hell, it's almost the only industry, period.

This is similarly how I feel about Obama-Nation & McPAIN: This country has become a nation of Politco's, influence peddling whores. WHY is the HELL would Osama spend $160 MILLION in one month?

Because politics is the industry of SELLING OUT EVERYONE ELSE. Get as close to The Honey Pot as you can, and then FUCK EVERYONE.

This country is doomed. They're starting to raise the idea of AmeriKKKa as a second-rate power in mainline media. That means it's really already here. And believe me, it IS inevitable.

Don't vote for these City Council fuckers. Write in someone. Write in Dunc. Write me in, I Hate To Baste Your BUTTERBALL. Write in someone. This town is going to shit, and COAR has their hands firmly on the rudder, which is planted in the asshole of EVERY SINGLE CANDIDATE. COBA too.

We're losing this place. To the worst fucking bunch of thieves on EARTH. read the above article and DO NOT VOTE FOR A SINGLE FUCKER that is either:

1) Supported by RE or builder PAC's, or

2) Won't disclose their funding sources. Dallas Brown comes to mind.

Send a message folks. Write in someone you know. This town is LOST cuz of these fuckers. They have put us on the road to OBLIVION. Go look around downtown. It's a fucking GHOSTTOWN.

THAT is what RE has gotten us. We put ALL our eggs in ONE BASKET, because RE PAC's have bought every election for a generation in this town. You CAN SEE they are trying to buy this one. They will probably succeed.

They will SUCK THIS TOWN DRY. They will DESTROY IT. They really already have. We are already totally doomed. Vote, and tell these fuckers to FUCK OFF.

803 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1 – 200 of 803   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

#1 homer, your the man, just got back from the monday bike beer run, and I have to tell you I love you.

Anonymous said...

OK, NONE of these FUCKWADS are worthy of having me pee in their fucking mouths. they are to a one, INFLUENCE PEDDLERS.

*

You be talking about Bend's finest now. Yet, not a word about $500M deal with Cali luv guv Schwarznegger or poisoning cali's.

Not that we ever have loved cali's here on this blog, but it does seem odd, at the 11th hour of Bend's demise that Suterra who profits on poisoning and kill cali infants is today the savior of YO Bend.

Anonymous said...

Chump change, $5k here, $15k there, and to run a credible election in BEND? Some are using their own fucking money!! Does this mena that LORD HO HOGG HOLLERN ain't even ante'ing a nickle anymore??

Our Own BP, had he put his "Terewe" on the ballot would have won, just cuz he be the only on the ballot that ain't a dog shit eating lawyer or RE-HO.

We're there HOMEEE your worst fucking nightmare, the BEND at bottom the Bend that can't even pronounce Aspen anymore.

Anonymous said...

BP,

Just to let you know.

I voted today, and mailed in my ballot I have never done this before, but I voted "DEM" down the fucking line.

WHY PRAY TELL?

Cuz, I feel that the PUG's NEED to get real fucked, real BAD, fucked in the ass bad, like out of work for 2-4 years with a real job.

The DEM's will always be parasites, but the PUG's have fucked themselves in the ass with hypocrisy, and deserve to go down and hard, and be bitch slapped for two years.

Beware fucking BP, cuz in TWO years it will flop back, cuz the DEM's are incapable of being rational with power. That said at least they're not insane with power like Team-Dumbya.

Anonymous said...

The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 28, 2008

U.S. consumer confidence fell to an all-time low in October, after a slight rise a month earlier, and expectations are even bleaker, a report released Tuesday said. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its index of consumer
confidence for October dropped to 38.0, compared with a revised reading of 61.4 in September. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected a reading of 51.5.

Anonymous said...

This is HILARIOUS - ONCE AGAIN DUMBYA HAS ORDERED THAT THE USA START SUPPLYING TALEBAN WITH STINGER MISSILES.... During the Last eight years the Taleban were the bad guys, OVERNIGHT they're now the good guys, simply amazing, these fucking PUGS.

All I can say is that the RUSKIE's must have been once again filling the VOID in power in Afghan that the USA (BUSH-CHENEY TEAM ) has created.

***

WSJ ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 28, 2008

The U.S. is actively considering talks with elements of the Taliban, the armed Islamist group that once ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda, in a major policy shift that would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

Senior White House and military officials believe that engaging some levels of the Taliban -- while excluding top leaders -- could help reverse a pronounced downward spiral in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both countries have been destabilized by a recent wave of violence.

Anonymous said...

Reuters

Home prices see record plunge

Reuters - 24 minutes ago
By Julie Haviv NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prices of US single-family homes plunged a record 16.6 percent in August from a year earlier and plummeted more than 30 percent in Las Vegas and Phoenix, Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday.

Anonymous said...

Blue Chip Industrial USA to see the biggest slow-down in US history since the great depression.
...

Whirlpool to Cut 5000 Jobs as US Economy Slows (Update3)
Bloomberg - 28 minutes ago

Anonymous said...

These people got us HERE. This is the "Who could have possibly predicted THIS would have happened?" types. They literally cannot predict the sunrise.

*

Lately, I'm really getting tired of the 'WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN", the pussy was on it last week.

"WHO could have known that Suterra was making poison all along?", "Nobody in Bend knew, its NOT their fault", "City Council didn't know, the BULL didn't tell them"

"Who could have known"

Go try that in COURT bitches of Bend, they'll say that ignorance is no fucking excuse. But in BEND OREGON, ignorance is contagious and rules the roost. In Bend any crime can be apologized by simply suggesting that it didn't happen cuz you didn't know.

But when the PUSSY started this shit a few days ago I went out of my mind, its like infected his brain as well, then he suggests that Bend is stoooooopid cuz COSTA wants it SO.

NO pussy, BEND is stupid, because it is STUPID, since 1998 this town has went up 2-3X in population, and all being DUMB fucking global-warming denying PUG's, like Homer these Pug's came from god knows where, and brought their fucking ignorance, which they wear like a fucking badge of honor.

Stoopidity make meeee strong, being an idiot makes you rich in Bend, Bend is exceptional cuz its a city of criminal morons.

It's NOT their fault, its cuz of COSTA.

Well BULL fucking shit, this town is like I have always said a town of parasitic electorates, every fucking vampire for himself, and that includes HBM & Aaron Switzer of the SORE, and all COSTA Kunts at the BULL, every fucking one of them only cares about themself.

But collectively all is well, cuz nobody knows anything, "who would have guessed??"

This past week, I have reminded folks over and over how the USA Army had to drag the folks of Dachua through the camp's to see the death, cuz the good citizens didn't know, didn't want to know, and didn't care that there own city had been used to shake&bake 1,000's of Jews.

This 'denial' shit ain't new, its quite human, and is the reason that AmeriKKKa has the highest homocide right in the world, we're a criminal colony of selfish lunatics.

Bewert said...

Re: I voted today, and mailed in my ballot I have never done this before, but I voted "DEM" down the fucking line.

Did you write in "Bruce Ewert" for City Council Position 3?

Send a message to the fuckers.

Funny, my verification word is "mentsa"...

Anonymous said...

A lot of that selfishness is a result of Social Security, which diminishes extended families.

The benefit (for the economy) is that people became mobile. They didn't have to look out for extended family. They could go anywhere and work because the gov't would take care of the old folks.

The downside is that community and family ties got drastically weakened.

You don't have to treat others well, or worry about the community, if you can just get up and go tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

>>Funny, my verification word is "mentsa"...

Bruce is like "mentsa." Kinda smart, but always gets at least one thing wrong.

Bewert said...

Re: Central Oregonians for Affordable Housing and the Central Oregon Association of Realtors’ PAC.

Butter, you should bold them both. They are the same people. One just sounds nicer.

Bewert said...

Re: n the three races with an incumbent seeking re-election, the challengers all have raised more money. Former Mayor Kathie Eckman, who is trying to unseat Councilor Linda Johnson, has raised the most of any candidate: $19,446. More than a third of that money has come from Eckman and her husband, Paul, but a large amount has also come from a handful of political action committees, including the Bend Firefighters Association, Deschutes County Republican Central Committee, Central Oregon Association of Realtors and Central Oregonians for Affordable Housing, a builders’ group.


That's Position 3, folks. Eckman the builder whore or Johnson the idiot who asked Econ Dev Director John Russell what his name was and what he did.

Truly a pathetic choice.

Anonymous said...

You don't have to treat others well, or worry about the community, if you can just get up and go tomorrow.

*

I still say the NAZI Germany analogy holds.

In a few years California Tribunal Courts will be up here dragging BEND-OR war criminals off, and everyone will be so fucking surprised.

Like our fucking selection of candidates, who in the fuck would run for office in this town? Other than a PUSSY who wants cargo, the only gig in this town is three gigs.

1.) Exempt real estate property tax for sacred land-holders.
2.) Exempt SDC cost for sacred builders.
3.) Open the doors to military production of the worst fucking poisons on earth, cuz the future is bio-weapons and Bend-OR is going to be the epicenter of the action, and everybody is going to get rich.

Eventually this place is going to be a shit-hole of your worst fucking dream. The Rich will pay NO tax of any kind.

Talk about social-security what is military spending? Just community welfare.

The bizarre thing about BEND-OR, is OUR State pol's didn't lobby for the weaponization of Bend, it came through Schwarnegger, who lobbied for Resnick. Why did Resnick pick Bend-OR?? Why here?? Why invest here??

Most likely the WATER, we got lots of WATER and RESNICK loves water, as you all SHOULD KNOW BY NOW, Resnick OWNS the CALIFORNIA-WATER under the ground, I kid you not.

Cali would NEVER allow Resnick to make his poison, and OREGON pol's would never get the OK, so what did BUSH-CHENEY setup??

Homeland Security authorizes $500M by Bush-Cheney, which passes through USDA to Schwarnegger, which passes to Suterra LLC of Resnick.

Huge military production in ORYGUN, and NOBODY is involved, and everyone gets denial. Trouble is from day-one when BUSH-CHENEY won office in 2000, they were working with HOLLERN, no accident that NOBODY pays any SDC at Juniper-Ridge, and that the taxpayer picks up the tab.

My point here folks is who you elect in ORYGUN don't make a fucking bit of SHIT, $500M is a lot of money, and money is politics, and the MAJORITY of the money coming to BEND is outside of the scope of our political influence.

So go ahead and vote for dwiddle-dee, or twiddle-doh, but realize that the $500M power-ball will continue to roll towards HOLLERN&CO.

Bewert said...

Re: NO pussy, BEND is stupid, because it is STUPID, since 1998 this town has went up 2-3X in population, and all being DUMB fucking global-warming denying PUG's, like Homer these Pug's came from god knows where, and brought their fucking ignorance, which they wear like a fucking badge of honor.

Unfortunately, you're talking about most of America. Not just Bend.

Palin is the #1 example.

Costa's problem is he plays to them, instead of trying to really educate them.

Anonymous said...

No Bruce, Santa Cruz is NOT like Bend, Portland is NOT like Bend.

The majority of Bend voted for BUSH-CHENEY in both elections.

Palin is a fucking actress, she plays DUMB just like 'W', cuz it works, but Palin doesn't represent the USA cuz she's too smart.

I think an earlier poster got it right, modern mobility creates places where nobody has roots, and certainly in Bend you have a town where nobody gives a fucking shit about anything, other than how they can sell out and leave ASAP.

No PUSSY BEND was #1 from 2004->2006 in the ENTIRE USA RE appreciation, and that was ENGINEERED by HOLLERN/BUSH, NO fucking accident.

Bend is NOT like any other place in the country, except other similar right-wing shit-holes like Prescott, AZ where McCain comes from.

Bewert said...

The latest example: 8 Year Old Accidentally Shoots Himself Dead with Uzi Submachine Gun

WTF. We've become a nation of fucking Homer Simpson's.

Anonymous said...

The PUSSY is now the 'candidate' he see's 'good in Bend'.

He see's good in the people.

How you going to feel next wednesday PUSSY when you see that +60% of BEND votes party line down the line for PUG's you still going to feel that this fucking city has a soul?

BEND HAS NO SOUL PUSSY.

The real question is WHY DID YOU COME HERE?

You say you came to fix BEND, and make it better, noble goal, but why BEND??? Why the PUG's paradise?? It's like going into a Muslim town, and professing baby-jeebus, what's the fucking point?

Then you have the audacity to suggest that in every Bend Muslim, is a christian.

No PUSSY Bend is a town of mobile fucking drifters that came by car, and will leave by car. Bend is/was a class western gold-rush town. Now the gig is imploding.

Sure I concur, when all the smoke clears and Bend is back to below 25K population, and only the old-timers are left, and folks that really want to stay, then you might see some hope.

Today however, you have BIG MONEY invested in RE, and the only people who run for office are those that need a fucking job, or inside connection to a revenue racket ( think HOA freidman ).

The people of Bend, these newbies are in general educated people, they're trained to swindle via mtgs, re, loans, appraisals, they know all about how to rob stupid people, the essential problem of Bend is that it 80% criminals.

The pussy thinks this is NORMAL, no BP its not normal, a society cannot sustain when the majority are parasites, it usually only finds equilibrium at 3%.

BEND IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL BP, BEND IS ABBY-NORMAL.

Anonymous said...

The latest example: 8 Year Old Accidentally Shoots Himself Dead with Uzi Submachine Gun

WTF. We've become a nation of fucking Homer Simpson's.

*

I as life-member of the NRA, but remember all who ever do vote for the PUSSY is that he is a gun-grabber at heart. Which makes him an enemy of the people.

This guy who failed to keep the 'uzi' locked up will go to jail BP.

Anonymous said...

08 reasons Barack Obama might lose next Tuesday

In January 2005, just after Barack Obama was sworn in as a United States senator from Illinois, I published "`08 reasons why Obama will run for president in 2008.

Then in January of 2007, just before he officially announced his candidacy, I published `08 reasons why Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination.

This week, to finish the cycle, I'll give you a pair of `08-reasons columns about Obama: Today, why he might lose Nov. 4. And Thursday, why he'll win.

Am I hedging? No. I'm looking at the same polling data everyone else is but saying I can still see Republican John McCain pulling an upset. Why?

1."Bittergate."

Obama has been remarkably disciplined in his campaign, but his one "oh, no, he didn't!?" moment was a doozy -- his unscripted comment in April that "it's not surprising [that residents of small-town America] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

2.He's played too much defense.

Though Obama's campaign has run bazillions of ads criticizing McCain, they've stayed away from trying to raise questions about McCain's character and his judgment—questions the McCain campaign has been raising relentlessly about Obama and that Obama has had to answer.

It's absurd, for instance, that more ink has been spilled about the judgment Obama showed in the 1990s when working on education reform with former Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers than about McCain's judgment in 2002 and 2003 to cheerlead for the invasion of Iraq.

3.He was more dismissive than responsive to festering issues.

When questions came up about Obama's real estate dealings with crooked fundraiser Tony Rezko, he tried to brush them off with curt denials rather than bury them with documents and comprehensive answers.

Ditto his lackluster and in places inaccurate responses to concerns about his votes on "born-alive infant" legislation when he was in the Illinois Senate and demands that he give a full accounting of his personal and professional interactions with Ayers.

4.He left points on the table.

Most of you know about Obama's sleazy associate Tony Rezko. But how many of you know about McCain's sleazy associate Rick Renzi?

McCain named Renzi, a retiring Republican congressman, a co-chair of his Arizona campaign in January, even though the Wall Street Journal and other publications had reported he was the subject of a federal corruption probe.

Renzi was indicted in February and is facing trial. Yet the Obama campaign, apparently content to try to sit on this lead, hasn't made an issue of him or of McCain's friendship with convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy, who once urged his radio listeners to "go for a head shot" if federal agents came to take their guns away.

5.Biden's blunder.

Yes, foreign evildoers tend to test new presidents. But when Obama's veepmate, Sen. Joe Biden, blathered on recently about an inevitable crisis in the first months of an Obama administration, it gave McCain a fat opening to highlight security concerns, one of his few winning issues, and play the fear card.

6.The economy now looks more like a chronic woe than an urgent crisis.

This has allowed McCain to settle into an anti-tax, anti-spend, anti-liberal campaign groove that often works for Republicans.

7. Smoke.

I've never seen a candidate subject to as many nutty rumors and guilt-by-association smears as those about Obama that land in my in-box every day. If enough voters decide in the end that there must be fire somewhere in all that noxious smoke, Obama's apparent lead will vanish.

8. He's African-American.

Let's be honest. In this rotten year for the Republican brand, if a white Democrat were sitting in the polls where Obama now sits, this "how he might lose" talk would be absurd.

It's not. But it is misleading. Join me Thursday and I'll tell you the `08 reasons why he'll win anyway.

Anonymous said...

Let me give you 8 REASONS WHY SENATOR OBAMA WILL WIN THE ELECTION.

1. He has not given up yet. He knows the task ahead.

2. He has been very focus and consistent.

3. He believes so much in the American people, that prefer CHANGE in this election.

4. He will not give up in this historical election.


5. He believes that our future lies in this 7 days of election.

6. We will work as hard as we have been doing to this day.

7. Even if you dont believed in him, I DO.


8. I WILL VOTE FOR HIM AND CHANGE.

Anonymous said...

"Hey Resnick, I got this great place up here called Bend-Or, plenty of water for a bio-weapons plant. The best part of it is its a town of non-real people, with non-real jobs, and non-real children. 1500 acres do with what you want, the city taxpayer will even pickup the infrastructure, and defer taxes forever" - Hollern 2000

The best part is that these people of Bend would fuck their parents for a nickel.

They're not real, and thus nobody else is real, and so they'll produce the poison to be tested on California, and then sprayed on the rest of the world, that doesn't follow USA party (DEM&PUG) line.


Is there any other town in the USA composed of non-real people?? Are Suterra jobs 'real'???

Anonymous said...

Cali Suburbs have always been PUG, Bend is PUG cuz its a Cali-Burb.

***

Any chance California goes from blue to red?
Los Angeles Times - 58 minutes ago
The polls have shown California to be Obama country for months. And the pundits are still predicting a sea of blue. But there has been a lot of chatter on the political blogs about an interesting finding on early voting in the state.

Anonymous said...

Pest control program in Calif. raises free speech concerns

By Garance Burke
ASSOCIATED PRESS

6:52 p.m. October 18, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO – Residents say they're worried sick about a chemical mist aimed at stopping a moth from devouring crops along California's central coast.

Now the state's pest control efforts also are piquing free-speech lawyers, who say a judge considering the program's future this week could break new ground as he weighs the public's desire to know what's in the spray against the pesticide maker's right to keep its formula secret.

State attorneys asked a federal judge Thursday to let them resume aerial spraying, despite residents' concerns that the chemical mixture made them ill.

Many of the product's ingredients remain a mystery, cloaked in nondisclosure agreements in a federal law governing pesticides that make them exempt from public records requirements.

“With few exceptions, the First Amendment says when there is great public interest in this type of information, the government can't keep it from being disseminated in the public,” said David Greene, executive director of the First Amendment Project, a nonprofit that defends free-speech rights. “The question the Supreme Court has never answered is what happens if that information is also a trade secret.”

Since March, when a retired botanist in Berkeley found the first light brown apple moth in a trap in his backyard, the crop-eating Australian pest has infested 12 counties from north of San Francisco to Los Angeles.

State agriculture authorities designed an aerial spraying program to combat it using a synthetic pheromone that keeps the moth from mating without killing it and hired night-flying planes to douse communities in Monterey County for several nights last month.

Judge Robert O'Farrell halted the program last week after hundreds of residents from Monterey to Santa Cruz – including an 11-month-old baby boy – complained of respiratory problems and aching stomachs.

Agricultural officials warn that if left unchecked, the moth could devour up to 250 species of plants and cause $2.6 billion in crop losses.

The pheromone spray they've used to combat it – a product called Checkmate that's manufactured in Bend, Ore., by Suterra, LLC – has been applied before in other states and abroad with no effect on human health, said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Company officials say residents' concerns are unwarranted.

“People are upset because the government has the authority to spray without their consent,” said Suterra spokesman Steve Hartmeier. “If they were spraying people with Santa Cruz City water they would be concerned because it had too much chlorine in it, and chlorine is a carcinogen.”

Still, O'Farrell said the lack of sound science about the product's components were cause to halt the spraying last week, after environmentalists sued, claiming the state never prepared an environmental impact report to ensure it was safe for families and aquatic life.

He cited concerns over the “potentially harmful propensities” of a chemical called polymethylene polyphenyl isocyanate, which an official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told the Santa Cruz Sentinel was an inert ingredient in CheckMate.

But on Monday, the EPA suddenly reversed course, saying CheckMate didn't contain the ingredient – part of a chemical class known to trigger asthma and respiratory symptoms in sensitive groups – after all.

Spokesman Dale Kemery said trade secrets laws prevented him from disclosing any more information about the pesticide and refused to answer additional questions Thursday.

Meantime, confusion over the spray's ingredients – as well as mounting questions over the legal bounds of pesticide law – has veteran intellectual property lawyers watching for an outcome.

O'Farrell did not immediately issue a decision following Thursday's hearing to extend the temporary injunction.

“If people are saying this is causing health problems, you would think the federal agency has some authority to force the manufacturer to disclose to them what's in the formula,” said Rick Darwin, a San Francisco-based intellectual property lawyer. “But then again, I've never seen a context in which trade secret law bumps up against public safety.”

Anonymous said...

They will SUCK THIS TOWN DRY. They will DESTROY IT. They really already have. We are already totally doomed. Vote, and tell these fuckers to FUCK OFF.

*

In a town of parasites who do you vote for??

Vote for "HOLLERN" write him in, he's the only one in this town with something to lose.

Write in Resnick of LA, he's the new owner of the BULL & SORE.

Write in Suterra LLC, they make all the perfume for shit eating majority of Bend, Oregon.

Anonymous said...

BP,

I'll say one thing of all the topics we have discussed nothing has ever created the 'deafening silence' as Suterra.

Note that even butter, not a fucking word.

Dunc, not a fucking word.

Marge, terror and fell off the planet.

Quim, one sarcastic joke about it being good or bad?

In effect only two people in Bend, are even willing to discuss this fucking issue.

God Damn fascinating indictment.

Then even the PUSSY himself ( as a 3rd party ) suggests, that well they didn't know. Well they know now, and they're still playing ostriche, they don't want to know, they never wanted to know.

Everyone wants it to be over, they want 2004 the best of times in Bend to return, and thus when Resnick of LA, the richest man in Cali, and one of the richest in the world takes over Bend, OR everyone can assume that 'cargo' will trickle down.

Homer is wrong, this is not the DEATH of BEND, this is the beginning. Soon like Richland, or any tri-city near Hanford, we'll see "Death Bowling", "Bio-Burger", why?? Cuz people know that is wealth. Disposable income in Bend will come from poisoning people in California, and vendors will send a direct signal to those with that disposable income that They KNOW, UNDERSTAND, and SUPPORT the New Bend.

Anonymous said...

Bend is NOT like any other place in the country, except other similar right-wing shit-holes like Prescott, AZ where McCain comes from.


*

No fucking accident that Prescott, AZ was #2 in the years that Bend was number one for RE appreciation.

Anonymous said...

Deschutes Brewpub was packed last night.

No recession there, I did talk with some people that were at a Cessna meeting at the airport, Cessna has a dealer convention this week for FOB's.

They said that they drove all over town, and Deschutes was the only place with life.

Imagine that.

Well tonight is Bend Brewing's Happy Hour, and tomorrow is Cascade Locks so there will be life in Bend somewhere.

Anonymous said...

The subject of Suterra in Bend is over. Back to Palin 24/7 per Homer.

Today I learned from Suterra, that they don't produce 'CheckMate'.

I also learned that the purpose of the new factory will be to produce bottled water.

Case Closed.

Quim Asks "Is this bad"? I don't know.

Anonymous said...

I am still here and reading. Suettera is exactly what we need here to clear out the population. Sorry, I have been busy burying my guns and ammo. The socialists will want them. Must keep stocking my shelves with food and tangibles. Putting more firewood away this year. I may need to share it.
If I lived in the City I would write BP in. I did write in Ron Paul for Prez, as we are screwed with either of the other choices.
See ya after the election.

Anonymous said...

I love this blog... It's the only place I know that mixes readers of New Yorker (yours truly) with folks that write:

"Sorry, I have been busy burying my guns and ammo."

Nice comments by the Social Security guy. Never thought of it that way.

This blog would be nothing without Homer and Bart.

Bruce: love ya, but you don't do yourself any favors by telling us about Mensa.

*

Long live diversity -- we all learn from each other.

Bewert said...

Just saw a homeless guy with a sign that said "STUCK".

Bewert said...

Re:
Then even the PUSSY himself ( as a 3rd party )

I never post anonymousely. I take full credit for even the dumb ass shit I spout after a few drinks. Which may be stupid but WTF, who really cares.

I plan on attending the next meeting of the JR Management Board tomorrow. Seems like someone should. And they have had an Exec Session every time they've met. And although they have met six times already, there are only minutes available for the first one.

But I think they are actually giving some oversight, and a sense of reality to the process of developing JR. As long as they let the sunlight in.

Anonymous said...

Then even the PUSSY himself ( as a 3rd party )

I never post anonymousely. I take full credit for even the dumb ass shit I spout after a few drinks. Which may be stupid but WTF, who really cares.

*

BP, it was a joke. I never accused you even being an anon-nymph.

Can't we be funny any more? Has everything become seri-ass??

Suterra LLC is said to be soon producing some of the freshest Juniper-Ridge water in the USA, I was wrong about Roll INTL Corp only doing imported water, it turns out that the Bend Area Acquifier contains some of the most coveted water in the world, and people in Fiji ( the Island ) will pay anything for Bend water.

Go Suterra Go,

Bewert said...

That could be a real export. "Fresh filtered water from the snowy Cascades."

Anonymous said...

Costa's problem is he plays to them, instead of trying to really educate them.

*

Edooooocating BEND what a fucking oxymoron, I can't even edooooocation one person, and that be you BP.

Like your gun control, let tell you short story.

Read the book 'On War' by Von Clauswitz, the greatest MIL strategist of all time, other than Sun-Tzu.

He say's that the purpose of war is to "disarm the enemy".

Now in effect dog shit eating DEM's want to 'disarm' folks like the good Marge.

Do you fucking realize that by definition any attempt to disarm marge, is an act of war???

Thus the US government has declared war on its own people.

Anonymous said...

Bend area has 4,000 abandoned pets in area shelter ( doggy prison ).

.....

More Pets Turned Over To Shelters in Ailing Economy
Families give up cherished friends as costs rise and jobs disappear




By Lisa Wade McCormick
ConsumerAffairs.com

October 28, 2008

• More Pets Turned Over To Shelters in Ailing Economy
• July 4th Can Be Dangerous for Dogs
• Summertime Can Be Hazardous to Pets' Health
• Kennel Hounded Out of Missouri
• FDA 'Reapproves' Heartworm Drug
• Menu Foods Settles Pet Food Class Action
• Indictments in Toxic Pet Food Case
• New York Tops Animal Cruelty List
• How Smart is Your Dog?
• Cat's Death Blamed on Contaminated Food
• Finding Safe Toys to Give Your Pet
• China Agrees to Stepped-Up Food, Drug Inspections
• Menu Foods Denies Acetaminophen Found in its Cat Food
• Entrust Your Pet to a Pet Trust
• Secondhand Smoke Bad for Pets
• Rawhide From India? Pet Owners Should Think Twice
• Common Flame Retardant May Be Killing House Cats
• Menu Food CEO "Doesn't Know" How Rat Poison Got into Pet Food
• Pet Food Contamination May Be Rat Poison
• Reports of Dead Animals Increase as Word of Recall Spreads
• Latest Information For Pet Owners
• List of Recalled Pet Foods
• One in Six Animals Died in Pet Food Tests
• Pet Food Recalled After Reports Of Kidney Failure
• New Drug Treats Vomiting in Dogs
• Salmonella Found in "Wild Kitty" Cat Food
• Lost Dogs Found More Often Than Lost Cats
• Feds Approve Weight Loss Drug for Dogs
• Pocket Pets May Carry Disease
• Pets Rescued Faster Than Elderly After 9/11
---
• Pet Food Recall
• More about Pets
Leanne Potts can't shake the painful image.

A distressed pet owner told Potts she'd lost her home and business and could no longer afford to take care of her beloved dog. The Chattanooga woman then asked Potts' organization to take her 8-year-old Basset Hound.

The story is one her animal rescue group in Tennessee is encountering often during these tough economic times.

"It was heartbreaking to take the dog from her," says Potts, president of Bellyrubs Basset Rescue, a non-profit group that finds homes for Bassett Hounds.

"This was a middle class woman who lived in a nice part of Chattanooga. She and her husband owned a restaurant and had taken out a second mortgage to start the business. The business failed and they lost everything."

Potts' group took the woman's Bassett Hound, but she had three other dogs. Another rescue group took one of the dogs.

"But the other two were older dogs," Potts says, adding they were 10 and 12-years-old. "They were on a lot medication for arthritis. The woman told us she couldn't afford that medication and couldn't find anyone to take those dogs."

That forced the woman to make a heart-wrenching decision.

"She put the older dogs down," Potts says, unable to mask the sadness in her voice. "She said she would not take them to the pound, she couldn't keep them or couldn't find any rescue group to take them. And she didn't want them to suffer without their medication. So she had them put down."

Potts worries that other pet owners in her area may soon be forced to make similar decisions.

"We've been hit really hard (economically)," she says. "Tennessee is leading the nation in personal bankruptcies. We're getting a lot more calls from individuals who want to give us their dogs because they're losing their homes.

"With all the foreclosures and job losses, the animals are the final victims," adds Potts, whose organization has rescued 71 dogs this year. That's a 50 percent increase since 2007. "They're the forgotten victims in all of this."

Animal rescue groups and shelters across the country echo Potts' concerns. Many tell ConsumerAffairs.com they've seen an increase in the number of pet owners forced to give up their dogs and cats because of the ailing economy.

"We've seen a lot of that," says Kathy Burkley, executive director of the Humane Society of Westmoreland County in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. "A lot of people are either losing their homes or can't afford their homes."

Two people recently brought their dogs to Burkley's facility, which is a no-kill shelter. "They wanted to leave their two big dogs with us because they couldn't afford them anymore," Burkley says. "We asked them if they could give us a few days because we didn't have any space."

The people walked out, but left their dogs in the shelter's parking lot.

"We looked out the window and saw they had tied up those dogs to a telephone pole," Burkley says. "We couldn't get a license plate because they walked here."

This particular story, however, has a happy ending. "Both those dogs were adopted," Burkley says.

But some distraught pet owners simply leave their dogs and cats in their foreclosed homes when they're forced to move out.

"Our humane agents have seen that happen several times," Burkley says. "People leave their dogs and cats and walk away.

"Last week, we took in eight Jack Russell Terriers that were left in a house without food or water."

Burkley's facility has seen the impact of the tough economy in other ways.

"We run a clinic once a week where pet owners can bring in their animals for shots and check-ups," she said. "We've started to see people coming in with absolutely no money. When we ask them if they can afford to pay even $10, they say 'no.' Last Tuesday, we had two emergencies and the people had no money to give us."
Problems across the country

Across the country, the ailing economy is taking its toll on pet owners in central Oregon.

ConsumerAffairs.com learned the Humane Society in that area has seen an increase in the number of people forced to give up their animals because of foreclosures and job losses.

"Animals are the victims when finances are tight," says Lynne Ouchida, community outreach coordinator for the Humane Society of Central Oregon (HSCO). "Like all shelters across the nation, we have felt the impact of the economy on animals and witnessed the tears when people have to give up their animals due to foreclosure."

Unlike other shelters, though, Ouchida's facility isn't seeing pet owners give up just one animal.

"What we're getting is people turning in multiple dogs, cats, birds, and small animals. They're giving up all the animals in their homes. This is something we used to rarely--if ever--see. But now, we're seeing people give multiple animals at one time."

Even horses in Ouchida's part of the country have become victims of the troubled economy. Many people in central Oregon own small ranches, and some of those ranchers are now abandoning their horses because of the high cost of hay and veterinary care, Ouchida says.

"Often times they do not consider the long term costs, and during difficult financial time, horses are found abandoned on public lands. This can also happen to long time ranch folks."

Some ranchers have even tried--unsuccessfully--to euthanize their horses because they can't afford to hire a veterinarian, Ouchida says.

Ouchida's shelter has seen another sign of the sagging economy--more people are asking for pet food.

"We provide pet food to the homeless, those needing assistance, and to seniors," she says. "These people need help with the food, but while we are receiving more requests for food--and our goal is to help people keep their animals--we are not getting the donations we need because of the downturn in the economy. In last year, we have seen huge drops in dog food and cat food donations."

Thanks to one philanthropic young girl, though, Ouchida's facility now has enough pet food to feed its animals.

In April, 12-year-old Mimi A. of Bend, Oregon, started the FreeKibble and FreeKibbleKat Web sites to help feed the hungry dogs at cats at Ouchida's shelter.

Mimi donates ten pieces of kibble for every person who goes to those Web sites and plays a trivia game.

She's partnered with pet food company Castor and Pollux. Their efforts have already provided over 49 million pieces of kibble to 11 shelters nationwide.

"Freekibble is truly helping to feed the 4,000 animals cared for each year (at our facility)," Ouchida says. "But it also allows us to support our pet food program for those in need. We distribute pet food and treats to those in need via Meals on Wheels, VFW LaPine Community Kitchen and Pantry, and local soup kitchens.

"We also help anyone who asks for pet food assistance via the phone or walks into our shelter."

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has also helped Ouchida's facility--and scores of other animal shelters and rescue groups nationwide--deal with the increasing number of animals they're seeing in this tight economy.

Earlier this year, the HSUS started a special foreclosure fund to help "establish, expand, or publicize services or programs that assist families in caring for their pets during the current economic crisis."

"We started seeing that pets were getting into trouble as people got into (financial) trouble," Nancy Peterson, manager of the HSUS's Feral Cat Program, told us. "I would say this is a national phenomenon. That doesn't mean every shelter in every community is effected to the same extent, but we know it's happening."

Under the program, animal shelters and rescue groups can apply for grants of up to $2,000.

"So far, we've given out about $80,000 to 46 organizations," Peterson says. "We seeded the grant with $15,000 and now have $105,000 thanks to the generosity of a lot of wonderful people. And we will continue to provide grants as long as we have money."

Animal groups that have received the grants appreciate the HSUS's generosity—and say it will help them care for distressed animals and their owners in these difficult times.

"During this foreclosure and financial crisis we have noticed a marked increase in the number of people abandoning their pets," wrote Valerie Slamka, founder of A Purrfect World in New Jersey. Her organization received a $2,000 grant from the HSUS.

"We intend to use the grant to help educate people about viable alternatives, to expand our foster network to accommodate those in need of temporary assistance and, if necessary, find suitable homes for pets from our list of potential adopters."

The founder and president of the Community Partnership for Pets in North Carolina says her organization will use the $2,000 grant it received to help struggling pet owners.

"We will be using this grant to provide emergency veterinary care to low income families," said Mary Cervini. "Just the thought of an animal dying in the back of a car while the family is trying to negotiate a payment plan with the veterinarian's office is a terrible situation."

A pet owner in central Oregon, who recently received assistance from the humane society there, never forgot that act of kindness.

"She had come upon some tough times and couldn't feed her dog," Ouchida told us. "We gave her some dog food. And now that she's back on her feet, she wants to do a fundraiser to help us."
What you can do

In the meantime, officials with animal shelters and rescue groups offer the following advice to pet owners faced with a financial crisis:

• Contact your local humane society or animal rescue group. "They probably have programs in place to assist people who come upon difficult times," Ouchida says. "Most have ways to help people. And the goal of animal welfare groups is to help people keep their animals...it's most stressful for animals to go home to home."

• Never leave your pets in a foreclosed home. -"It is irresponsible and cruel and most likely illegal to abandon a pet," says the HSUS's Peterson. "A pet could linger there for a long time and die a slow and painful death."

• Be proactive."If you're facing financial problems, deal with them," says Potts, president of the Bellyrubs Basset Rescue. "Talk to your lenders now, pay attention to these (presidential) candidates, and talk to your family and friends. And we tell people that if they take their pets to a shelter, the odds of their animals getting out are slim."

• Try to keep vaccinations and flea treatments current. "But I know that if people don't have the money, they don't have the money," says Burkley, with the Humane Society of Westmoreland County. "The wellness part is just so important because you don't want your pets to get sick. We have people who skip that and find themselves and their pets in a worse situation--something more life threatening and expensive."

• Don't be afraid to ask for help. "I have given some products free to people who don't have the money and say their dog is infested with fleas," Burkley says.

Animal lovers can also help struggling pets--and their owners--during these tough economic times by:

• Providing temporary housing for pets while their owners get settled;

• Supporting their local animal shelters by donating food, money, or time. Some children across the country have asked their family and friends to make donations to animal organizations instead of giving them presents for their birthdays, Christmas, or other holidays;

• Helping a pet owner in need by pay for their animals' food or veterinary bills;

• Contacting local animal control officers if they know about a pet living in a house that is abandoned.

Anonymous said...

The USDA is spending $500K this year on Pr&marketing the justification of using Suterra's Products. Think about that having somebody else pay for you marketing. Bend city council do you read???

***

What Would Larry, Moe and Curly Do?

Last week the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) announced it was changing its tactics against the light brown apple moth. Unfortunately, the plans read more like a comedic farce in the spirit of Spies Like Us than a serious plan to repel invasion. And given the outcry after the first aerial spraying of pheromone last November, it looks like the generals at CDFA haven't learned anything about how the civilian population feels about this war.

First, let's inspect the ground forces. While the enemy is busy causing invisible and theoretical crop damage, CDFA personnel will dart around on the ground affixing pheromone-drenched twist ties to trees and bushes.

Then it's time to roll in the heavy artillery. Specialists, most likely outfitted in protective suits, will bombard telephone polls and trees in moth territory with a goopy mix of pheromone and pesticide (the kind used in flea medicine for pets) at a level eight feet off the ground.

Of course, no campaign of genocide would be complete without a biological weapon or two, so the CDFA will be spraying the bacteria BT and Spinoza into known terrorist training camps—what look like simple agricultural fields to you and me.

Now, CDFA officials are well aware that not all insects are fanatic extremists bent on turning all of California into an apple moth caliphate. There are moderate insect forces that can be recruited to aid in the effort. A tribe of predatory wasps called trichogramma will be brought in as allies. These are stingerless wasps—harmless to humans—but they're deadly to light brown apple moths. Ragged but determined, they'll inject their own eggs inside the moth egg sacs; when the moth larvae hatch, they'll dine on the apple moth eggs, killing the enemy before it even hatches.

Wait a minute—this just in—the moths are potentially dangerous to many lepidopterids, including the monarch butterfly. But no worries! The monarch doesn't lay its eggs here. That's one crisis averted by luck. ... Right?

All four of these ground techniques are essentially being deployed to buy time until the CDFA can perfect its real weapon against the moth: the pheromone spray. The agency is searching for a formula that will last longer than 30 days, thereby reducing the number of aerial treatments (and, nūz has to think, opportunities for opponents of spraying to go berserk). The first aerial spraying will most likely be in late spring or summer, rather than early spring as was originally planned.

Right now researchers in New Zealand are testing three new possible vehicles for aerial application of pheromone by CDFA's crack air forces.

First up on the drawing board is a reformulated version of Checkmate LBAM, which will essentially be the same product used in November, except that it will persist in the environment for 90 days instead of 30.

The second option being considered gets filed under "potentially messy." Specialized Pheromone and Lure Application Technology (SPLAT—yes, "SPLAT"), is a claylike material that would be dipped in the pheromone and then shot out of planes. ISCA Technologies, the Riverside-based manufacturer, claims one treatment can last for eight months. It also claims, more ominously, that the product will "not wash off vegetation," which makes nÅ«z wonder how it will do with convertibles—not to mention chard. We couldn't make this stuff up.

CDFA and USDA press officials have not confirmed the third product being tested. But sources briefed by the CDFA described it as a small (quarter-inch-long) piece of biodegradable plastic, much like the material in dissolving sutures, that would be dipped in the pheromone and then "applied" in a storm of anti-mothist confetti. It is as yet unclear how the sticky pieces would be cleaned off of playground equipment, cars, houses, heads of hair and other exposed areas.

Whichever option is chosen is sure to generate even more controversy than this issue has already seen—not least because the map of areas to be treated has expanded significantly. It now includes seven new counties, including Alameda and San Francisco. nÅ«z says: Get ready for the fireworks. This is going to get interesting.

These Are the Big Guns? So the CDFA thought Santa Cruz was tough? Wait until Berkeley and San Francisco find out about the goop, the SPLAT, the wasps and the confetti. The CDFA is getting ready to take its light brown apple moth show to seven new counties, and it could use some public relations help.

But wait! It already has some! After waking up to the smell of some very strong coffee last autumn, beleaguered state bureaucrats decided to call in the cavalry. On Nov. 1, the transnational PR firm Porter Novelli began lending a hand to CDFA public affairs officials attempting to defend their aerial spraying program.

While the CDFA will continue to be the "face" of the operation, Porter Novelli employees will help out in the background by gathering information, helping to prepare for town hall meetings and engaging in other thankless tasks associated with the state's controversial eradication plan.

For CDFA public affairs supervisor Steve Lyle, it was some much welcome backup.

"There are lots of communities to stay in touch with, and a lot of people to engage," notes Lyle. "So we recognized the complex nature of this program required us to bring in additional resources."

The USDA will be footing the bill of $497,500, which should be enough to pay for the PR services through July 2008, when the contract expires.

So, pardon nūz, but does anyone else wonder whether the feds are getting their money's worth? From here it looks like a public relations shit storm is about to hit the CDFA, and it ain't water soluble. Goop? SPLAT? Wasps? Confetti? Was this the best Porter Novelli could do? Or are the advisees just not listening to the advisers?

These are no small fry, PR-wise. According to news sources, Porter Novelli was founded in 1972 by ad men working to get President Nixon re-elected. If these miracle workers can't persuade the tone-deaf paper-pushers at CDFA that a more nuanced approach is called for, who can?

Anonymous said...

First up on the drawing board is a reformulated version of Checkmate LBAM, which will essentially be the same product used in November, except that it will persist in the environment for 90 days instead of 30.

*

Nobody knows where the shit comes from, our own Suterra LLC in Bend, Orygun deny's being the parent.

New & better 'checkmate' to be made at a new & better Bend factory (ssh! nobody is supposed to know).

Anonymous said...

"Sorry, I have been busy burying my guns and ammo."

Nice comments by the Social Security guy. Never thought of it that way.

Who is a SS guy?

Anonymous said...

Bruce, and Ramiel, Read the following carefully, it is from the BULL this past JULY 2008, note (1) that the new factory will make pheromone(s), that the factor/company Suterra is a spin-off of Bend Research ( owned by Harry Lonsdale ). BP please put the city/suterra 'letter of intent' up on your site.

***

Suterra scouting Juniper Ridge
Local biotechnology company wants construction to begin by November

By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
July 23, 2008

Suterra, the Bend maker of high-tech pesticides, is the latest firm to shop for land at Bend’s 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development, according to a document obtained by The Bulletin.

The biotechnology company, a spin-off of pharmaceutical firm Bend Research, focuses on pheromone-based....

Anonymous said...

'A lot of that selfishness is a result of Social Security, which diminishes extended families."

*

Ok, lets look at this deeply.

Folks kicked grandpa & grandma out when SS came out cuz, they could take care of themselves with the newfound new deal riches!!!!!!!

The absence of granny around the house of course is what created the demise of America, and the birth of 'W'.

The fact is that 'SS' will most likely be destroyed by 'W's bankrupting our economy.

Regarding who 'ss' is, the person is clearly a person who believes PUG party line.

*

I think the selfishness is about BEND, and Bend is/was a gold-rush town, and the people came here to get rich, and that is why they don't give a fuck about the town. It has nothing to do with granny's ability to buy dentures.

BEND IS FUCKED SS or NOT.

Anonymous said...

I was always told the that demise and selfishness of AmeriKKKa came about because of electronic baby-sitting post 1950's aka TV.

Have it now, life is easy, entertain me NOW, ME, NOW.

So very Bend.

Yep, if we impoverish all the oldsters, once again the USA will rule the world, yea right.

Anonymous said...

Bruce, and Ramiel, Read the following carefully, it is from the BULL this past JULY 2008, note (1) that the new factory will make pheromone(s), that the factor/company Suterra is a spin-off of Bend Research ( owned by Harry Lonsdale ). BP please put the city/suterra 'letter of intent' up on your site.

***

Suterra scouting Juniper Ridge
Local biotechnology company wants construction to begin by November

By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
July 23, 2008

Suterra, the Bend maker of high-tech pesticides, is the latest firm to shop for land at Bend’s 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development, according to a document obtained by The Bulletin.

The biotechnology company, a spin-off of pharmaceutical firm Bend Research, focuses on pheromone-based....

Anonymous said...

This is the only mention this year, this is the most silence I have ever seen on any subject in this town. This is a huge story, perhaps someday the Willy-Week or Big-Zero will be given the green light, or maybe even OPB could come out of the dark. The trouble is that this story involves the richest DEM's & rePug's in Calif&Orygun. Bio-Warfare is the future, Nukes are obsolete, this is the biggest Military operation since the Manhattan Project. Billions of dollars coming to Bend, Oregon.

juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com

Suterra scouting Juniper Ridge
Local biotechnology company wants construction to begin by November

By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
July 23, 2008

Suterra, the Bend maker of high-tech pesticides, is the latest firm to shop for land at Bend’s 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development, according to a document obtained by The Bulletin.

The biotechnology company, a spin-off of pharmaceutical firm Bend Research, focuses on pheromone-based....

Quimby said...

>> Bend area has 4,000 abandoned pets in area shelter ( doggy prison ).

Best way to handle this problem is to put them all in a large walk in freezer. They'll slowly fall asleep. When they're good and solid, rent one of those 12" or 18" Vermeer chippers and spray 'em into the Deschutes.

PROBLEM FUCKING SOLVED

Anonymous said...

"Who is a SS guy?"

Someone wrote that:

Social Security means that elderly can be independent of their relatives and live alone.

This has decreased community stability, because children are free to move where the jobs are (or, in the case of Bend, aren't).

Anonymous said...

The biotechnology company, a spin-off of pharmaceutical firm Bend Research, focuses on pheromone-based....

*

BP, and other newbies, you need to know your BEND history to understand this shit, and the history of Bend Research and their place in OLD BEND, and the good old boyz who ran this town for the past 40 years.

Suterra was spun off and sold to Resnick ( ROLL INTL CORP ) in 2000.

One of the reasons that NOBODY can talk about this is because Bend-Research is one of the most loved ( cuz they be DEM ) outfits in BEND, and for the past 30+ put most of the good old pol's in power, well before team HOLLERN took the reign in 1998.

Anonymous said...

This has decreased community stability, because children are free to move where the jobs are (or, in the case of Bend, aren't).

*

We like to use the gold-rush analogy, back in 1849 they all left their elders and came to CALI, and the SS didn't stop them then.

This is a BEND stupid argument.

They came to Bend post 1998 for RE GOLD, there was RE-GOLD in them desert hills. Today like all gold rushes, most didn't even pay for their 'KIT'.

Anonymous said...

Human Greed since the dawn of man has never stopped children from leaving their parents for gold, girls, or glory.

FACT.

Anonymous said...

The story of the second half of the 20th century is all about mobility, whether it's the car culture or the breakdown of the extended family or the increase in divorce.

I'm not saying any of those things are bad or good. Just that they affect us.

Quimby said...

RE Suterra,

BULL & Sore are quiet because they don't want to piss off the new kid in town. They might not get to partner in sponsoring all the Cali-bait partying and merriment downtown.

Anonymous said...

>>We like to use the gold-rush analogy, back in 1849 they all left their elders and came to CALI, and the SS didn't stop them then.

Some of them strapped their grandmothers to the roof of the wagon, like in National Lampoon's vacation.

Anonymous said...

The story of the second half of the 20th century is all about mobility, whether it's the car culture or the breakdown of the extended family or the increase in divorce.

*

(a) Your giving the internal combustion engine too much credit.

(b) Since the time of Socrates every generation has said the world is going to shit.

(c) People have been mobile since the invention of the wheel, and the domestication of the camel.

Anonymous said...

They might not get to partner in sponsoring all the Cali-bait partying and merriment downtown.

*

What might that be??

What is a 'cali bait' party?

Merriment downtown? Where?

Quimby said...

>> What is a 'cali bait' party?

Don't play fucking stupid.

Anonymous said...

The stronger the welfare state, the fewer kids people have. Look it up. You have lots of kids and big extended families when you know you'll be relying on them later.

Anonymous said...

Quim, Say it like it is man...Don't hold back on us

Anonymous said...

Please shut down this crappy blog... as I thought you planned to do before.

LavaBear said...

>>>Please shut down this crappy blog... as I thought you planned to do before.

Haven't you been paying any fucking attention? This is AMERICA dammit. We don't let anything fail. We only do bailouts with money we borrow. Homer just has to keep treading water long enough and I'm sure there will be a blogger bailout soon enough.

LavaBear said...

>>>( doggy prison )

It's well known that the black ones taste better. Any china man will tell you so.

Bewert said...

Hey, the homeless need protein, too.

Anonymous said...

>> What is a 'cali bait' party?

Don't play fucking stupid.

*

There are a lot of things that aren't obvious.

I mean to 'me', cali-bait is Cocaine, I put out a 'line' on the street and I could nail cali's all day long.

I have no fucking idea what your talking about.

Are you referring to us 'trolling' cali's, ain't ever been here.

A 'cali-bait' party to me also sounds like Burning-Man, me always go to burning man, me like young pussy.

But WTF is 'cali-bait' in Downtown Bend?? Something that city-hall does like the old wine&coke partys they used to have all summer long prior to the depression?

WTF is a downtown cali bait party??

Anonymous said...

They might not get to partner in sponsoring all the Cali-bait partying and merriment downtown.

*

Ok, so the reason the BULL&SORE are doing the subject-non-grata on SUTERRA is that if they mention it, there will be no more cocaine flowing downtown near city-hall?

Anonymous said...

>>>( doggy prison )

It's well known that the black ones taste better. Any china man will tell you so.

*

4,000 critters in bend-area shelters, some of dim got to be black, cuz its halloween, and dim cali-witch ( wicka ) folk like black critters for animal sacrifice.

Anonymous said...

The stronger the welfare state, the fewer kids people have. Look it up. You have lots of kids and big extended families when you know you'll be relying on them later.

*

I have lived virtually everywhere, at the peak of 'welfare' in China couples could only have one child.

In Africa couples that have more than one child, usually see the others die. In general you can only afford to feed a few, at the expense of the others, better to have one strong son, than ten weak.

I'm not sure unless your a MORMRON that large familys are that common, and the reason it works for MORMRONISM is they have a great cultural welfare system to support one another.

Is this 'SS' again trying to espouse sill PUG theorys??

I mean I have traveled every corner of the earth, and I have never seen culture with large family's, unless they were people like Bin-Laden who has fifty sons, and twenty wives.

Another reason folks used to have lots of kids is that 80% of died by ten.

Not a fucking thing to do with welfare.

Anonymous said...

The effect of social security on fertility is seen clearly in empirical data. The figure below shows cross-sectional data from over 100 countries in 1997.[4] In this data, all countries with large pension systems have fertility rates below the replacement level. No country with pension payments above 4 per cent of GDP has a fertility rate above 3.

http://mises.org/images4/juur1.gif

Historical data is even more revealing. The following figure depicts time-series data from eight European countries from 1960 to the present. The growth of social security payments (X-axis) is associated with the decline of fertility (Y-axis) almost one-to-one.[5]

http://mises.org/images4/juur2.gif

Bewert said...

In other news, they were burning American flags in Baghdad the other day over the security agreement BushCo is trying to force on Iraq...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html

The soldier, Sgt. Ali Bandar Gomer al-Qaisi, 23, said with a shy smile, “If only they would leave before tomorrow.”

That article does not mention the actual flag burning. You have to watch Mosaic's middle east news shows to see that.

So someone remind me why the fuck we are still spending $10 billion a month killing people halfway around the world again. Is it just to prove that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have dicks bigger than their little fingers?

LavaBear said...

Jimmy Rogers

I love it when he pulls out the handful of 1 oz gold coins from his pocket. Most people keep from none to a few hundred bucks in the wallet. He's got a few thousand in gold in his coat pocket. Funny fucker.

LavaBear said...

"The government is going to run the banking system??? They can't even run the Post Office." - Jim Rogers

Bewert said...

Re: "The government is going to run the banking system??? They can't even run the Post Office." - Jim Rogers

OK LB, I call BS. I ship stuff via USPS almost every day, and rarely does anything go awry. I can't even remember the last time.

But I'll agree, letting the government oversee the banks, with individuals from the banking system doing the overseeing, is scary. From Paulson on down.

And I love Rogers, too. If Obama could persuade him to be Treas Sec I would be overjoyed.

LavaBear said...

>>>OK LB, I call BS. I ship stuff via USPS almost every day, and rarely does anything go awry.

Well it was Mr Roger's quote and it made me laugh. Most companies I work with ship USPS because it's the cheapest. But in terms of ease of use, manifesting, electronic tracking, pretty much making any sense what so ever DHL, UPS, FedEx all clean up. It's not even close. I could probably get my UPS rep on his cell phone right this second and get a questioned answered. Try that with USPS. And they lost a shitload of money last quarter. Yes, the fucking post office lost money. But they are the cheapest.

Quimby said...

>> Something that city-hall does like the old wine&coke partys they used to have all summer long prior to the depression?

Yeah, sorry, I'm out of it. Did these stop? Didn't appear to last summer. I think these events have two purposes:

1) Keep food in the bellies of Bend's children cuz their parents are making $$$ selling corn dogs to tourists.

2) Make said tourists lose their ever-lovin' minds and think out loud "what a great place to live!".

Yeah, cocaine would bring them running too, but I've seen very little of that action in my lifetime.

Bewert said...

OK. my second totally national politics post of the day. It's to rich not to share. And, yes, it's from DKos:

Why I Won't Vote for John McCain
by Lt Gen Robert G Gard

Some people have been surprised by General Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. How could Powell, who served in several Republican administrations, endorse a Democrat over John McCain, a storied war hero?

As a lifelong military man, I too will be casting my vote for Barack Obama on Election Day. I deeply respect John McCain's service to our country. I admire his bravery as a prisoner of war, described by a fellow prisoner as similar to that demonstrated by hundreds of other U.S. prisoners in North Vietnam.

The fields of foreign and national security policy, however, are John McCain's disqualifying weaknesses, in my view. McCain has demonstrated clearly that he is a dedicated ideologue when it comes to foreign policy, unwilling to consider opinions or even credible evidence contrary to his preconceived notions.

His temperament, marked not only by impatience but also by rude and sometimes hostile behavior, would discourage advisors from bringing to his attention views that might not be consistent with his preconceptions. A President with this combination of significant shortcomings would be a dangerous commander-in-chief, posing an unacceptable risk to the security of the nation.

McCain has adopted, promoted, and sustained the position of the so-called neo-conservatives and ultra-nationalists who believe that the United States should capitalize on American military superiority to spread democracy abroad. Overthrowing the Iraqi government was seen as the first step in transforming the politics of the Middle East by converting governments in the region to democracies friendly to the United States and its interests. McCain reportedly has bragged in private conversations that he was the first neo-con.

McCain has been a consistent advocate of employing military force, as well as diplomatic and economic measures, to overthrow the governments of non-democratic states. In his 2000 presidential primary campaign, he promoted a strategy of "rogue state rollback." He has served as a long-term chair of the Republican Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting democracy in closed societies, even though most experts agree that viable democratic reforms cannot be imposed but must be generated locally.

Consistent with his ideological predispositions, McCain has gone so far as to advocate expelling Russia from the G-8, an organization of leading industrial nations established to coordinate international economic policies, in order "to improve their behavior" while adding Brazil and India to the organization but excluding China. This obviously would result in the alienation of Russia and China, resulting in a confrontational foreign policy rather than encouraging their cooperation on vital issues of international security and their integration into the international community.

The importance of McCain's temperament, should he become President, is apparently regarded as too politically incorrect to discuss. By his own admission, however, McCain has "a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's." Of greater significance, he also has written: "Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint."

In matters of national security and foreign policy, however, it is the nation that will have to live with the consequences of McCain's temper and haste should he be elected President of the United States.

No President can be conversant with all the problems and issues he or she will face. More important than a specific set of experiences are high intelligence, good judgment, a steady and even temperament, and a willingness to consider options presented by advisors who have been selected for their expertise.

A few months ago, I met in a small group with Senator Obama in his office to discuss a contentious security issue. People with different, even opposite, views had been invited to attend. Obama listened carefully and asked penetrating questions, confirming my observations concerning his intelligence and temperament.

I believe that Barack Obama possesses the requisite qualifications to serve far more effectively as President of the United States and commander-in-chief of the U.S. military than his opponent, John McCain.

Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr. (U.S. Army, ret.) served in both Korea and Vietnam and is a former president of National Defense University. He is a member of the Vets for Obama steering committee.


'Nuff said.

Anonymous said...

>DHL, UPS, FedEx all clean up.

DHL left the area a few months ago.

UPS has an uncanny knack for breaking stuff. I had a week that they broke 3 of 5 shipments. Overall it was about 25% breakage. Shipments were were packed the same way as I had been shipping for years with DHL with little problems. I switched to FedEx, and surprise - no breakage.

FedEX ground won't deliver packages over 75 lbs to a residence.

SO... if you have a company in Bend and need to ship large things to customers you are fucked. I got fucked.

LavaBear said...

>>>DHL left the area a few months ago.

I was bummed when they left but it sounds like you and I were the only two people shipping out of Central Oregon with them. I've stuck with UPS but I did have to have a 'come to jesus' meeting with the Regional Rep over a list of crap. It's been better since.

Anonymous said...

Some CUNT here today said he reads the NY'r, well this here is sad, the CSM is closing down the print.

**

Christian Science Paper to End
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: October 28, 2008

After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print

Anonymous said...

Shutdown this blog?

Where else can I read about Mormons in Bend like Elder Bruce who still think that fucking 14 yr old girls is not statutory rape?

I love this fucking blog.

Bruce for mayor write him in!!!

Anonymous said...

Bruce's Resnick friends most green and generous DEM's on west coast.

***

$45 million gift for L.A. art museum expansion

Associated Press
(10-29-2008) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles -- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, home to works by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, received a $45 million donation to fund a wave of renovations, including a major new gallery for special exhibits.

The gift from beverage magnates Stewart and Lynda Resnick, to be announced Monday, will boost the effort to improve the sprawling museum's campus, which also features renowned collections of Asian and Islamic art and a vast costume and textiles collection.

"It's sort of a required expansion," said museum chief executive Michael Govan. "It's really needed to meet the public demand."

The Resnicks, whose Roll International Corp. owns the Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice, Suterra LLC Bio-Warfare Labs in Bend, Oregon and Fiji Imported Water brands, also will give the museum $10 million in art from their personal collection.

Much of the cash donation, among the largest grants the museum has received, is earmarked for the construction of a 45,000-square foot gallery for traveling exhibitions and highlight shows.

The single-story, travertine-enclosed Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion is being designed by Renzo Piano, designer of San Francisco's newly opened California Academy of Sciences. The architect was behind the Broad Contemporary Art Museum that opened at the L.A. museum's campus in February to showcase works by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons.

"We can think of no better way to buttress this rapidly evolving museum than to create additional space for the exhibition of art," Lynda Resnick said in a statement.

The museum has raised more than $300 million since the 2003 start of its expansion campaign.

Anonymous said...

yeah, it seems like tight asses wrt to amazon are using usps, I have had good look with damage,

DHL have always been weird and over-priced,

UPS hires good looking guys in brown shorts, keeps my dick hard,

fedex, is sort of the walmart of over-night,

i concur soon it will only be usps in bend-or, makes it sort of hard to do business,

Anonymous said...

Stewart A. Resnick
From SourceWatch

Stewart A. Resnick "is chairman and owner of Roll International Corporation, a Los Angeles-based holding company, and has developed and owns a number of companies, including Paramount Agribusiness, POM Wonderful, Teleflora, FIJI Water, and Suterra LLC, Bend, Oregon."[1]

"Resnick is a member of the boards of UCLA Medical Sciences, Bard College in New York, and Conservation International and is a trustee of the California Institute of Technology. Resnick and his wife, Lynda, have been featured in Art & Antiques magazine as two of the nation’s top art collectors. Major galleries have been dedicated in the Resnicks’ name at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Resnick holds a B.S. in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a J.D. from UCLA School of Law," a biographical note states.[1]

Married to Lynda Rae Resnick.

Anonymous said...

Lynda Resnick purchases largest breasts in the world.

***

Pomegranate power
Her latest squeeze
From Beverly Hills to Brighton, pomegranates are the latest thrilling wonderfood, packed with anti-ageing antioxidants and flying off supermarket shelves quicker than they can count the money. Andrew Purvis tracks down the multimillionaire marketing genius who stumbled on this new secret of youth - and bottled it

* Andrew Purvis
* The Observer,
* Sunday December 11 2005

In the opulent headquarters of Roll International Corporation, on the fault line between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, Lynda Resnick is telling me proudly about POM Wonderful - the juice that stole America's hearts and became the health-drink sensation of 2005. 'Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the bottle would become the famous little character that it has,' she says, in a Jewish-American voice pitched - like her age - somewhere between Ruby Wax and Joan Rivers. 'When you pick it up, it's hard to put it back on the shelf,' she rasps, clutching the bulbous figure-of-eight as Eva Longoria did in an episode of Desperate Housewives earlier this year. 'It just fits in your hand, it's fabulous.'

Though designed to resemble two pomegranates stacked one on top of the other, the bottle - iconic as a Marmite jar, coveted by everyone from Will Smith to Jennifer Lopez - may have another secret precursor. 'It's Mother, it's the female form,' Resnick declares. 'It looks like me, which is why I'm so popular! I was convinced it would be like the Venus of Zachendorf.'

I can find no reference to such a work but she probably means the Venus of Willendorf - the Paleolithic limestone statuette of a fleshy, large-breasted woman excavated in Austria in 1908. Whatever the inspiration, bottles of POM have been flying off the shelves quicker than Resnick's company can fill them. Though Roll International, which owns POM Wonderful, is reluctant to discuss figures, the Beverage Marketing Corporation estimates that sales have totalled $50 million (£30m) since the product launched in 2003. To meet demand for its juice (and the fresh pomegranates which it also grows and sells), POM Wonderful has planted 6,000 acres of orchards in the sun-drenched San Joaquin Valley - the agricultural crucible of California. That, according to the Pomegranate Council - a non-profit trade group in San Francisco - is more than half the total crop grown in the US.

It's a colonisation that took root 15 years ago, when Lynda Resnick and her husband Stewart acquired land in the valley. Then, a handful of pomegranate shrubs grew naturally among the almond and pistachio trees that have also been turned into a lucrative business. Lynda had read about the fruit's reputation as a mystical cure-all and began to explore its market potential; by 2000, when the shrubs produced their first fruit, she had hatched a plan to make California the country's biggest producer and POM Wonderful the pomegranate's Coca-Cola.

Britain, too, has felt the effects of pomegranate power. Available in 108 Waitrose stores, branches of Budgens and sporadically at Fresh & Wild, POM Wonderful proved so popular in early November that Waitrose ran out of stock. Meanwhile, homegrown brands such as Pomegreat - a juice drink, rather than a pure juice, available at every major supermarket - have benefited from the hype. 'We're selling more than a million litres a month,' says Adam Pritchard, MD of RJA Foods, 'compared to 2,000 when we started. Most of that growth has been in the past 12 months. It's been the year of the pomegranate.'

Tesco sells 500,000 litres of pomegranate juice every week - a 300 per cent increase on 2004. Last month, Marks & Spencer launched a 100 per cent fresh juice (declared 'the gold standard for fruit drinks') to rival POM, confirming that the ruby-red upstart is big business. 'Two years ago, nobody in America knew what a pomegranate was,' Lynda Resnick reminds me. 'Now, we're in Wal-Mart for God's sake, we're in Costco, we're in 7-Eleven. I want POM Wonderful to be within arm's reach of everyone who wants it. That is the biggest service I can do.'

It's a mission statement at odds with how POM is perceived: the darling of Hollywood A-listers and readers of Nylon, an elitist elixir - costing a preposterous £3.29 per bottle - added to 'pomtinis' (the official cocktail at the 2005 Oscars) and packed into goodie bags at the Vanity Fair party. 'Of course I know everyone in the world,' says Resnick, 'every mogul, every movie star. You've no idea, the people on my VIP list who drink it - but that doesn't make people buy a second bottle; they do that because they love it. Why would they bring us back to the Academy Awards every year, why would the Golden Globes insist on having it? People don't buy it because I'm in the know or a small celebrity in the big pond of Hollywood. The average consumer in Des Moines doesn't know who I am.'

In Derby and Manchester, too, consumers may have forgotten who Lynda Resnick is. In 2004, she and her husband Stewart became household names when they successfully sued the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund for $25m (£14m) in a dispute over Diana memorabilia, jeopardising the charity's future. In fact, the fund had earlier - and mistakenly - tried to stop the Franklin Mint (another Roll International company) selling such items as the Princess Diana Porcelain Bride Doll on the grounds that the charity owned the 'exclusive rights' to the Princess's name and image. The fund lost and the Resnicks counter-sued for 'malicious prosecution' (the documents lodged with the Los Angeles court had described them as 'vultures feeding on the dead'). Even Rosa Monckton, a close friend of the late Princess of Wales, described the fund's first legal battle with the Resnicks as 'absolute insanity' because the charity stood no chance of winning. Magnanimously, the Resnicks settled out of court on the first day of their lawsuit and no money exchanged hands. Instead, a statement was issued saying the $25m would go to charities decided jointly by the memorial fund and the Resnicks, particularly causes 'that resonate with the memory of the Princess'.

In court, it emerged that the Resnicks had their own charitable body, the Resnick Foundation, which had given £25m to charity in eight years - including £1m to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Mind you, they could afford it. Stewart Resnick's wealth is estimated at $890m (£513m) and the couple's assets include not just the Franklin Mint - once the world's largest collectables firm - but Fiji Water, Teleflora, Paramount Farms (pistachios, almonds) and Paramount Citrus (oranges). As friends of Bill Clinton, the Resnicks donate to the Democratic Party and sit on the boards of several museums. A clinic in Los Angeles was recently named after them - the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. Their taste for French and Italian art from the 17th and 18th centuries is evident at their £10m mansion on Sunset Boulevard - described by the writer Howard Blume as having 'the tasteful opulence [that] exudes a tincture of Versailles - only better kept.'

It's a world away, aesthetically, from the Guardian of Destiny Gargoyle - a pewter monster crouching on a crystal ball - that helped the Resnicks earn their millions: at home, the collectibles are more Bulgari than vulgari. How else could the 'Beverly Hills billionaires' (as the New York Times described them) hold their heads high in the art world? Lynda Resnick certainly does. What's more, with her vivacious manner and dark, business-like Bill Blass suits (a penchant that has earned her comparisons with 'a little general'), she has the personality - and the financial clout - to convince corporate America of almost anything.

'I'll tell you my trade secret,' she says, when I ask how she insinuated her plastic bottles into the chillers of 'fresh produce' aisles in US supermarkets (on the grounds that it was 100 per cent fruit with no artificial additives or cheap filler juices such as pear or grape). Somehow, her trade secret doesn't surprise me. 'We went to the very top of every organisation and spoke to the CEOs,' she says. 'Once they saw the packaging, understood our marketing and tasted the product, they couldn't say no. If we'd let a bunch of brokers run around, talking to low-level grocery people, they'd have been afraid to take the idea upstairs.'

It was a stroke of marketing genius. While dozens of juice drinks, from Ocean Spray to High-C, stood side by side with identical red cartons, Resnick's maroon-brown sputniks sat in an arresting pile close to the fresh pomegranates (available in America from September to December) and chiming with their spherical shape. It was a way of identifying the juice with its provenance - helped by the fact that the most popular variety of pomegranate grown in California is called Wonderful, linking the fresh product and its juice as if POM had invented the fruit. Even Resnick concedes she didn't have the wherewithal to do that. 'It's easy to be a genius,' she says, 'and people think, "my God, you're a genius for doing this" - but only God can make a tree. It was already a perfect product.'

Some might disagree, since the fruit itself - cultivated not just in California but throughout Asia and the Middle East and parts of Spain - is notoriously hard to eat. Most people can't be bothered, hence the success of commercial juices. Constructed like a large, knobbly apple with a leathery shell instead of a skin, pomegranates contain hundreds of glistening, jewel-like arils (edible seeds) housed in sacs of pithy membrane. The best way to extract them is to cut off the crown (like a stalk), lightly score the fruit's surface and soak it in a bowl of water for five minutes. Keeping the pomegranate immersed so its juices cannot stain, break it apart with your fingers and pop all the seeds out of their casings; the pithy membrane floats to the surface, where it can be skimmed off, while the arils sink. Pour them into a sieve, drain them and you have a perfect crop for a snack, to sprinkle on cereals and salads or for a pomegranate risotto - a dish mocked by Gordon Ramsay when he saw it at the Glasshouse Restaurant in Ambleside. Jamie Oliver is a fan and, with their sensuous allure, the seeds are drooled over by Nigella Lawson.

'A pomegranate is filled with rubies when you open it up,' Lynda Resnick says theatrically, glossing over the problem of extraction. 'Diamonds may be a girl's best friend - but not for me. I love rubies, they're great over necks, you know.' In antiquity, they were thought to be great for other parts of the anatomy as well and became a symbol of fertility (in women) and virility (in men). They appear on the coats-of-arms of venerable medical colleges and, in more rigorously scientific times, have been found to be rich in antioxidants. These are the natural compounds that mop up 'free radicals', the damaging molecules coursing through our bodies (some generated by a junk-food diet, pollution and cigarette smoke) which are implicated in heart disease, stroke, cancer and ageing.

The best-known antioxidants are vitamin E, vitamin C and folic acid - all abundant in whole pomegranates and their freshly squeezed juice. One pomegranate supplies 40 per cent of an adult's daily vitamin C requirement and the juice has three times the antioxidant properties of red wine or green tea, previously regarded as the best protection against heart disease and lifestyle illnesses. Blueberries, blackcurrants, cranberries, red grapes, red onions and plums are also rich sources of antioxidants, particularly those known as polyphenols - indicated by their red pigment. The best dietary advice is to eat a wide range of fruits and vegetables, including some that are red - but this does not boost sales of pomegranate juice, the first step in Lynda Resnick's crusade to bring heart health to the masses. What is needed is hard scientifc evidence that pomegranate is an unrivalled panacea.

In 1998 the Resnicks set out to prove just that, using their influence deep within American and Israeli society to find a unique selling point for POM Wonderful years before it was launched. First they contacted Dr Michael Aviram, head of the lipid research programme at the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel. For 20 years, he had been looking at ways of preventing and breaking down deposits of plaque in the arteries - atherosclerosis - which cause cardiovascular disease. Searching for natural antioxidants, he tested '20 different things' before alighting on the pomegranate which, although it doesn't lower bad (LDL) cholesterol, limits how much of it gets 'oxidised' - the first stage in the formation of plaque, which can narrow arteries or become unstable and break off, leading to heart disease and strokes. With the Resnicks' help, Dr Aviram embarked on further studies. Another key ally was Dr Ephraim Lansky, also at the Technion Institute, who had developed a pomegranate pill called CardioGranate, sold 'in a fancy bottle out of Israel, mainly to the States', according to one British researcher. Most impressively, POM Wonderful managed to hire the eminent Dr Louis Ignarro, a Nobel laureate who received his prize for work on nitric oxide, a ' factor' released by the lining of blood vessels which acts as a vasodilator (opening up vessels in the same way as Viagra) and improves cardiovascular function. His work and many other projects are co-ordinated by Dr Harley Liker, medical director of POM Wonderful and a physician at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Stewart Resnick's old college, and a recent recipient of more than $3m (£1.75m) from the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund legal settlement. To date, the Resnicks have lavished $10m (£6m) on scientific studies - four times what POM Wonderful spends on advertising each year - at 18 medical institutions worldwide, and committed $8m (£5m) to future projects. Though funding research is not unique for a food company, the sum is staggering. 'That's ridiculous,' exclaims Adam Pritchard, MD of the British company that makes Pomegreat, when I mention the $10m figure. 'We're hoping to begin our own work on something similar - but we're not spending $10m. The Scottish Crop Institute is using our product in a cancer trial - and we're not paying a penny for that. I could get the best result in the world with $10m.'

In the past two years, the Resnicks' investment has paid off - lending credibility to the heart-shaped 'O' in the word POM on their packaging. In 2004, Dr Aviram published a paper in Clinical Nutrition, showing that plaque in the carotid arteries (supplying blood to the brain) was reduced by up to 30 per cent in patients who drank POM for a year, as opposed to sugar water. In March this year, Dr Louis Ignarro and colleagues showed that antioxidants in pomegranate juice help maintain levels of beneficial nitric oxide - his Nobel prize area - in a POM Wonderful-funded study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also this year, Dr Dean Ornish published a paper in the American Journal of Cardiology, looking at blood flow to the heart in 45 patients with blocked arteries who were given pomegranate juice or a placebo.

'Over three months,' Dr Liker reveals, 'those on the juice showed a 17 per cent improvement in blood flow while those on sugar water got worse by 18 per cent.' Such studies are peer-reviewed - meaning they are held up to scrutiny by experts - and published in respectable journals (and therefore subject to checks on integrity, including the ethics of funding). However, they are not as watertight as the Resnicks and their team would like. 'You can show all sorts of things in 10 people or 25 mice,' says Dr Richard Bogle, senior registrar in cardiology at Hammersmith Hospital, London, 'but when you start extending it across big populations, it's different. You find the magnitude of effect is smaller than you would have predicted from small-scale studies, or that there is no effect at all.'

That is one big problem with the antioxidant story, he says. In particular, the Big Three - vitamin C, vitamin E and folic acid - have proved disappointing in large-scale trials. 'Nevertheless, antioxidants are a recurring theme,' Dr Bogle explains, 'because companies realise that this is a pathway well trodden by the public: they have this idea that antioxidants are a good thing, the elixir of life, anti-ageing, anti-heart disease. There is no real evidence.' Dr Bogle's specialist area is the endothelium, the lining of the blood vessel, known to produce 'factors' (chemical substances) that regulate blood flow and the permeability of the vessel, and stop platelets and white blood cells sticking to it. In people with high blood pressure or diabetes, endothelial function is compromised, leading to heart attacks and strokes.

'Some of the foods I am interested in, one of which is pomegranate juice, appear to have some effect on restoring the function of blood vessels,' Dr Bogle explains. In due course he hopes to do trials with pomegranate juice - but 'it's not my top priority,' he adds. What is not in doubt is the general orientation of pomegranate research, which focuses on the juice's ability to block the oxidation of LDL cholesterol - the process that forms life-threatening arterial plaque. 'What you get initially is lots of small studies like these, and they all point in the right direction,' Dr Bogle says. 'Then hopefully, someone like POM Wonderful comes along and funds a proper study that can answer our questions.'

Whatever the science, this is not the end of the pomegranate frenzy. While Lynda Resnick continues her crusade, others are launching new products or refining existing ones. Like POM Wonderful, the new Fresh Fruit in a Bottle from Marks & Spencer is a 100 per cent, refrigerated juice with five pomegranates in every bottle. Uniquely, it is made from the freshly pressed fruit rather than a concentrate that is stored, rediluted and pasteurised (losing its vitamin C), as POM is. Meanwhile, Pomegreat - a drink made with 'fruit extract', 30 per cent pomegranate juice (from concentrate) and aronia berry - will be joined by a new product in January, a fresh product in the M&S vein.

'Pomegranate juice has staying power,' Lynda Resnick concludes. 'It's not a fad. Once people have tasted POM Wonderful, they say they are addicted - and it's a good addiction to have.' Perhaps the fruit's dangerously compelling quality is something she has mentioned to President George Bush. In May, Bush proposed that President Karzai of Afghanistan grow pomegranates instead of heroin poppies.

Anonymous said...

Schwarnegger luv-guv of Calif gives no-bid contract for $500M to his top campaign contributor, who owns Suterra LLC, of Bend, Oregon.

PUSSY SAYS WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN?

***

Pesticide maker owned by political donor

Matthew Yi, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Saturday, March 8, 2008
(03-08) 04:00 PDT Sacramento --

The company that makes one of the pesticides state officials are considering spraying over the Bay Area to fight the light brown apple moth is owned by a wealthy California agribusinessman who has been a generous contributor to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials.
Images
Paramount Farms almond orchard in Lost Hills (Kern County...Stewart Resnick is a California agribusinessman who has b... View Larger Images
PESTICIDE SPRAY PLAN

PR firm's no-bid deal scrutinized (3/12)

Pesticide maker a generous political donor (3/08)

Experts question threat of the moth (3/06)

Q&A on chemical CheckMate (2/23)

Bills aimed to curb moth eradication program (3/11)

Migden pushes for a moratorium (2/20)

Airplanes will drop pesticide over the Bay Area (2/15)
More Bay Area News

* A Hollywood affair in the Castro for world premier of 'Milk' 10.28.08
* Newsom ignores risks, campaigns against Prop. 8 10.28.08
* Ranked-choice voting to slow supervisor results 10.28.08
* SF school board approves JROTC replacement 10.28.08

According to federal and state agriculture departments, the moth's larvae could threaten more than 200 crops in California and could potentially put a significant dent in the state's $32 billion agriculture industry.

Among the business owners whose agricultural operations in California could be affected by the insect is Stewart Resnick of Los Angeles, who owns nut and citrus tracts in the Central Valley.

His Roll International Corp. owns Paramount Farms, the world's largest grower of almonds and pistachios, and Paramount Citrus, one of the biggest citrus fruit producers in the United States.

Roll International's holdings also include Suterra LLC, a fledgling pesticide company in Bend, Ore., that makes CheckMate, a pheromone pesticide that is one of four chemicals being considered for aerial spraying by officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

The chemical was sprayed over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties in the fall in an attempt to disrupt the moth's mating.

Resnick has been a longtime donor to politicians, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party and its candidates for state and federal offices. In recent years, he's also given nearly $150,000 to Schwarzenegger's campaign, records show.

Although the governor supports the aerial spraying, that decision has no bearing on Resnick's political donations, said Aaron McLear, a Schwarzenegger spokesman.

"The governor leads by what he believes is in the best interest of California and doesn't take those types of things into consideration," the spokesman said.

Rob Six, a spokesman for Roll International, said "there's no quid pro quo" and added that Resnick and his wife and business partner, Lynda Resnick, generally make a lot of political contributions. Six agreed that the moth could have an adverse impact on Roll International's farming business.

While the extent of damage the moth's larvae could cause is under debate, the pest is already affecting California growers' ability to export because other countries have begun placing restrictions on fruits, vegetables and nuts that are grown in areas affected by the moth.

"This is a very bad threat for a lot of growers," Six said. "And one of the biggest threats is on quarantines on our exports. ... There are many countries that have a blacklist for fruit or nut products if apple moth is found on them."

The nine Bay Area counties have been placed on the quarantine list by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is recognized by many nations that import California's produce.

Mexico last week added Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Napa counties to that list, said Rayne Thompson, director of national affairs for the California Farm Bureau. Federal officials need to contain and eradicate the pest before it becomes widespread in the Central Valley, the heart of California's agricultural industry, she said.

"Other countries recognize the apple moth as a huge problem," Thompson said, adding that California exports about $9 billion worth of produce each year. Restrictions could range from more stringent testing for the pest, which would cost more, to not importing the products, she said.

But debate continues to rage over how destructive the pest's larvae are and whether aerial spraying would work.

Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the federal agricultural agency, said that there is no guarantee CheckMate would be chosen and that his department could also later change its decision about aerial spraying. The Environmental Protection Agency must give its approval, followed by a program to inform the public, he said.

But many people are concerned about the health effects of the pesticide. Last fall, hundreds of residents in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties complained of health symptoms including shortness of breath, muscle aches and sore throats after an aerial spraying of pheromone pesticides.

State officials have said they are examining the complaints but have not found evidence that the chemical is harmful.

Momentum to stop the spraying has been building in recent weeks, with thousands of Bay Area residents signing petitions to stop the spraying. Lawmakers have introduced five bills to control aerial application over urban areas, and four city councils in the region have voted to oppose the spraying.

Anonymous said...


Bay Area Population to be Sprayed with New Unregistered Pesticide - Courtesy of the Richest Democratic Jew in Calif.
.
The people of the Bay area of California are about to be sprayed with a new pesticide not registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a pre-emptive strike against a perceived threat from the Light Brown Apple Moth.

“In August, the California Department of Food and Agriculture plans to spray pesticides in five Bay Area counties for the invasive species” (CBS 5, 2008). One of the chemicals being used is Checkmate, manufactured by Suterra, LLC, which is owned by Stewart Resnick, one of the richest men in California, and owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world. Mr. Resnick is also included in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s top 100 donors. (Arnold Watch, 2008)

Mr. Resnick has developed and owns a number of successful companies including Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world, which includes Paramount Citrus, Paramount Farming and Paramount Farms, growers, processors and marketers of citrus, almonds and pistachios; POM Wonderful, grower of pomegranates and maker of the all-natural POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Teleflora, the largest floral wire service in the world; FIJI Water, the second largest imported bottled water in the United States and the newest member of the Roll family of companies; The Franklin Mint, a leader in high-quality collectibles; and Suterra LLC, of Bend, Oregon, the largest biorational pest control company in the United States. (Political Friendster, 2006)

The pesticide used to spray Santa Cruz last year was the same product, but without a new active ingredient. The new and improved Checkmate contains two active ingredients. It is this new version that will be used on Bay Area residents. The new version of the pesticide contains an active ingredient that has not been approved by the EPA. The picture below shows the original ingredient, (E)-11-tetradecen-1-yl acetate, which was in the original product, and the second ingredient, (E,E)-9,11-tetradecadien-1-yl acetate, which was not, and is the ingredient currently under exemption from EPA registration.

Checkmate

(C&EN, 2007)

Tests have been conducted with the original version of Checkmate, but not on such a large scale. It is the second active ingredient, (E,E)-9,11-tetradecadien-1-yl acetate, that is the wild card. The EPA has not approved this new ingredient! In fact, the EPA has granted an exemption just for the Bay Area spraying and waived the public comment period due to the “emergency situation.” The following is taken from the EPA site:

SUMMARY: EPA has received a quarantine exemption request from theUnited States Department of Agriculture/Animal and Plant HealthInspection Service (USDA/APHIS) to use the pesticide (E,E)-9,11-tetradecadien-1-yl acetate (CAS No. 30562-09-5) to treat host plants tocontrol the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). The Applicant proposes theuse of a new chemical which has not been registered by EPA. Due to the unique nature of this emergency situation, in which the time to reviewthe conditions of this situation was short, it was not possible toissue a solicitation for public comment, in accordance with 40 CFR166.24, prior to the Agency’s decision to grant these exemptions.

DATES: EPA is waiving the public comment period, as allowed in 40 CFR166.24, due to the short period of time available with which to reviewthis situation and render a timely decision. However, comments maystill be submitted and will be evaluated. (EPA, 2007)

This exemption is dated July 2007. The spraying is to begin in August 2008, over a year after the exemption was granted. “Because of that exemption, the spraying program isn’t subject to state approval, according to representatives of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation” (Kay, 2008).

Just what is this emergency situation? Some say that it is no emergency at all. According to botanist Daniel Harder, Executive Director of the Arboretum at UC Santa Cruz, “It’s not such a nasty pest. You’re not going to see a plant succumbing to the Light Brown Apple Moth.” The bug is considered a minor pest in New Zealand, where it arrived from Australia, they say. (Kay, 2008)

No eradication measures have been taken against the moth in New Zealand, and none are planned. The moth is a minor pest whose larvae are eaten by earwigs, birds, and spiders. Furthermore, “there is no widespread infestation of the light brown apple moth [in the U.S.], but U.S. Department of Agriculture officials say they are trying to head off a potential disaster” (Kay, 2008). Therefore, Bay Area residents will be sprayed with an untested unregulated pesticide on the pretense of this non-existent emergency by Stewart Resnick, owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world, and one of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top 100 contributors, and are basically told to just shut up and take it. Cities to be sprayed are as follows:

Alameda County:
Albany
Alameda
Piedmont
Emeryville
Oakland

Contra Costa County:
El Cerrito
El Sobrante
Hercules
Kensington
Pinole-N. Richmond
San Pablo

San Francisco County:
San Francisco

San Mateo County:
Daly City
Colma
Pacifica
San Bruno
South San Francisco

Marin County:
Tiburon
Belvedere
San Pablo
Corte Madera
Larkspur
Sausalito

Copyright 2008, Barbara H. Peterson References:

Arnold Watch. (2008). Arnold’s Top 100 Donors. Retrieved from: http://www.arnoldwatch.org/special_interests/index.html

C&EN. (2007). Rancor over Pesticide Spraying in California. Retrieved from: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i46/8546news3.html

CBS 5. (2008). Outrage over Planned Bay Area Apple Moth Spraying. Retrieved from: http://cbs5.com/local/apple.moth.spraying.2.662703.html

EPA. (2007). Federal Register Environmental Documents. Retrieved from: http://www.epa.gov/EPA-PEST/2007/July/Day-06/p12872.htm

Free Patents Online. (2008). Communication Disturbing Agents and Method for Disturbing Communication. Retrieved from: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0962137.html

Kay, J. (2008). Experts Question Plan to Spray to Fight Moths. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/06/MN69VD309.DTL

Kay, J. (2008). State Plans Bay Area Pesticide Spraying. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from: http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/15/MN99V2PMN.DTL

Political Friendster. (2006). Rate the Roll International Corporation – Stewart Resnick Connection. Retrieved from: http://www.politicalfriendster.com/rateConnection.php?id1=5223&id2=5220

Anonymous said...

Suterra LLC, of Bend, Oregon, the largest pest control company in the United States. (Political Friendster, 2006)

Anonymous said...

Bend OREGON to be paid $500M to kill all the Brown Pelicans in California.

***

Why Birding Sonoma County Has Been Quiet Lately - LBAM Spray
April 16, 2008 on 4:54 pm | In Daily Local Birder |

brown pelican endangered by lbam spray

You may have noticed that there hasn’t been much posting here lately. It’s time for me to share the reason for that. Our family’s total attention has been taken away from the normal, happy pursuits of our daily lives by an impending health and environmental crisis that is being forced on the SF Bay area against the will of local government and private citizens.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), as you may now have heard, has determined to violate the California Constitution and aerially spray a combination of never-before-tested pesticides, carcinogens, mutagens and synthetic pheromones encapsulated in particulate plastic spheres over 9 urban counties in the state, beginning June 1st of 2008.

They began these egregious actions last fall in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Following the spraying, more than 600 families reported severe illness from pesticide poisoning. In addition to this, the beautiful Monterey bay and the rest of the watershed were horrifically fouled with a toxic yellow foam that resulted in the death of at least 600 seabirds - probably more. Among these birds was the endangered Brown Pelican which is supposed to be protected by federal law.

Sonoma County is not currently scheduled to be sprayed from airplanes, but Marin County is, and the drift from the spray there will absolutely get into our air, our water, our land, our bodies and the bodies of our precious wild birds and animals.

Government officials have adopted a total policy of public deception, ignoring the damage that they have already done in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, referring to the pesticide as a ’safe pheromone product’ and telling us, the free people of the United States, that we have no vote as to whether we want to be sprayed or not. 7 million people will be chronically exposed to documented carcinogens unless CDFA is stopped. This violates the Nuremberg Code which was adopted by all civilized nations after WWII to prevent human beings from ever again being experimented upon without their consent. The pesticide compound has never before been tested on urban populations - only over vegetables - so this is an experiment.

There are numerous lawsuits pending against the State for their illegal actions, there are 5 bills and 1 measure being presented in a desperate attempt to protect the people and environment of California from this violation of basic rights, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his financial supporter, Ag. Secretary A.G. Kawamura continue to insist that they will begin spraying us this summer.

What is going on here?

CDFA’s excuse for their unforgivable and unconstitutional actions - they are doing this in an attempt to control an insect which is considered a negligible bug elsewhere in the world - the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). All scientists who are not on the State’s payroll or in some way tied up with forwarding the state’s plan have come forward with proof that that the moth can be ignored and everything will be fine. It has done ZERO damage to agriculture in California despite the fact that it has likely been here for decades. It is a little leaf-roller moth that does minor cosmetic damage to leaves where it builds its home. It does not eat fruits or vegetables. It simply builds its home on leaves. It is no threat to us, our food supply, native or ornamental plants or anything else. Research into this matter will prove what I am saying here. CDFA has chosen to lie, to use scare tactics to convince the people that unless the LBAM is wiped out, it will eat everything on the planet. This is unscientific, untrue and simply ridiculous.

The actual cause of all of this is that, many years ago, this moth was incorrectly classified as a Class A pest and trade restrictions were applied to any nation where the moth lives - places like Australia and New Zealand. In order to avoid the very trade penalties that were applied by the USDA to other nations, our government is now carrying out this outrageous program to show that they are attempting to eradicate the light brown apple moth. When they talk about economic damage to agriculture…they do not mean to plants…they mean trade penalties put on farmers because of the moth. Rather than correctly reclassifying the moth, they have decided to spray 7 million people living in densely populated urban cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Marin and all of the other residential areas of the 9 counties they have chosen. If they reclassified the moth, our nightmare would be over, but they have shown themselves unwilling to even consider doing this, despite the fact that Mexico and Canada have indicated that if we change our policy, they will change theirs.

One of the most outrageous things about CDFAs actions in this is that they managed to get a state of emergency declared so that they wouldn’t have to abide by laws that demand an Environmental Impact Report be conducted prior to taking any potentially-devastating action. The state of emergency enables them to skip over any safeguards for our health or the health of our environment. Their absurd claim that there isn’t time to test pesticides before spraying them on children, men and women because the moth will devour all living plants if they don’t stop it right this minute has been met with incredible scorn in the UC scientific communities. As the UC Scientists say, there is no emergency. The moth has been here for decades. There is no need to rush.

Unfortunately, our governor receives political donations both from the Ag. secretary, Kawamura, and the public has been especially aghast to discover that the governor has also received more than $140,000 in contributions from the maker of the pesticide spray - Stewart Resnick of Suterra, LLC. It is a case of dire political corruption, and the end results of the billions of dollar of profits these men have come to together to make will be the pesticide poisoning of at least 7 million Californians, the toxification of our bays, rivers and other water sources, the end of organic agriculture in the state and the death of untold wildlife.

If this sounds like a crazy conspiracy to you, please, begin to investigate the matter yourself. All of the major Bay Area and Monterey Area newspapers and TV stations are covering this public health crisis and mayors, city council members, supervisors, senators and representatives are engaged in a desperate battle to protect us and our lands from aerial spraying without consent.

The spraying will take place every 30 days, 9 months out of the year, for up to 10 or more years. This will results in chronic, longterm and extremely dangerous exposure to documented carcinogens and mutagens and particulate pollution (as deemed by the American Lung Association) on a scale that has never been seen before in the world. Everyone living in the spray zone will be subjected to this and groups that are expected to be most gravely harmed are children, pregnant women, women in general, the elderly and citizens who have chronic diseases or are attempting to fight off diseases like cancer. One of the xenochemicals in the spray is a known cause of breast cancer. Others are linked to reproductive harm. Others are endocrine disruptors. Because of this terrible danger, a refugee problem is emerging in California, as residents sell their homes and attempt to flee to safety. In other words, mayhem has begun here and it will only get worse if the densely populated Bay Area is sprayed.

I have personally spoken to many Monterey Bay region residents who were made terribly ill by the spraying. One father’s healthy little baby became delirious with eyes rolling into the back of his head and went into respiratory failure. The baby is now being kept breathing by means of asthma medication but the state is refusing to acknowledge this family or any of the hundreds of others who were damaged by pesticide exposure.

Because the pesticide is designed to release slowly into the air over a 30-90 day period each time it is sprayed, there will be no way to leave the area and come back when all is clear. There will be no all clear. The air will be full of the toxic matter permanently, year round, for years to come.

As a woman who has spent her whole adult life eating organic food and cherishing wildlife and the natural environment, my whole way of life has been threatened with destruction by CDFA and the USDA. Since I found out about the spraying, my world has been turned upside down, and I have been researching, making contacts with people and working to educate the community about this terrible crisis.

And that is why Birding Sonoma County has been quiet. If there is any hope of coming to a time again when we can all enjoy a walk in our woods, breathing clean air, taking joy in the wild birds and animals that make our lives so rich, we have to work now to stop this illegal and immoral poisoning of California.

And, I want to add to this that I hope no Sonoma County resident will be lulled into a false sense of security because we are not currently on the spray map. The USDA has announced that it intends to hunt this moth across the nation, and they will not hesitate to begin aerial spraying wherever they find it. Rather than reclassify the moth, they will do this to our beautiful country because it is profitable for them.

What this means is that, wherever you live in the United States, I urge you to join the valiant efforts to stop this terrible violation of our U.S. Constitution which grants us an inalienable right to safety. If you deeply value our nation’s tenets of freedom, it is the patriotic thing to do to fight these greed-driven men. If you care for your family’s health, it is the loving thing to do to fight this spraying of documented poisons. If you value our wild life and environment, it is the just thing to do to begin working to protect the voiceless animals and lands. We need every single one of you in this fight. Please, get educated now.

Visit:
VeganReader.com

LBAMspray.com

StoptheSpray.org

California Alliance to Stop the Spray

HopeforTruth.com

Watch YouTube Videos Documenting the LBAM Spray Health Crisis HERE

You can also start reading Bay Area newspapers or Google phrases like ‘LBAM Spray’, ‘LBAM Aerial Spray’ or ‘Health effects of LBAM spray’.

I want you to be able to investigate this for yourself. I realize, the reality of this situation is so horrific, it sounds like a bad movie or a crazy conspiracy theory. I’m not a fan of either one of those things. As my readers know by now, I am a very peaceful and simple person who loves the natural beauty of our world. But now, political corruption and corporate greed are threatening to ruin these best treasures - health, life and environment - for all of us. So, for now, I am putting down my binoculars, my paint brush, my personal happiness and I am giving my heart to this battle in hopes of finding a time of peace and joy in the future.

Please, join me in this crucial moment.

Anonymous said...

Lynda Resnick, not just the queen of Bend OR but the Queen Bee, Female Black Widow would be more apt towards Bend, OR.

***

Her latest squeeze
From Beverly Hills to Brighton, pomegranates are the latest thrilling wonderfood, packed with anti-ageing antioxidants and flying off supermarket shelves quicker than they can count the money. Andrew Purvis tracks down the multimillionaire marketing genius who stumbled on this new secret of youth - and bottled it

* Andrew Purvis
* The Observer,
* Sunday December 11 2005

In the opulent headquarters of Roll International Corporation, on the fault line between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, Lynda Resnick is telling me proudly about POM Wonderful - the juice that stole America's hearts and became the health-drink sensation of 2005. 'Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the bottle would become the famous little character that it has,' she says, in a Jewish-American voice pitched - like her age - somewhere between Ruby Wax and Joan Rivers. 'When you pick it up, it's hard to put it back on the shelf,' she rasps, clutching the bulbous figure-of-eight as Eva Longoria did in an episode of Desperate Housewives earlier this year. 'It just fits in your hand, it's fabulous.'

Though designed to resemble two pomegranates stacked one on top of the other, the bottle - iconic as a Marmite jar, coveted by everyone from Will Smith to Jennifer Lopez - may have another secret precursor. 'It's Mother, it's the female form,' Resnick declares. 'It looks like me, which is why I'm so popular! I was convinced it would be like the Venus of Zachendorf.'

I can find no reference to such a work but she probably means the Venus of Willendorf - the Paleolithic limestone statuette of a fleshy, large-breasted woman excavated in Austria in 1908. Whatever the inspiration, bottles of POM have been flying off the shelves quicker than Resnick's company can fill them. Though Roll International, which owns POM Wonderful, is reluctant to discuss figures, the Beverage Marketing Corporation estimates that sales have totalled $50 million (£30m) since the product launched in 2003. To meet demand for its juice (and the fresh pomegranates which it also grows and sells), POM Wonderful has planted 6,000 acres of orchards in the sun-drenched San Joaquin Valley - the agricultural crucible of California. That, according to the Pomegranate Council - a non-profit trade group in San Francisco - is more than half the total crop grown in the US.

It's a colonisation that took root 15 years ago, when Lynda Resnick and her husband Stewart acquired land in the valley. Then, a handful of pomegranate shrubs grew naturally among the almond and pistachio trees that have also been turned into a lucrative business. Lynda had read about the fruit's reputation as a mystical cure-all and began to explore its market potential; by 2000, when the shrubs produced their first fruit, she had hatched a plan to make California the country's biggest producer and POM Wonderful the pomegranate's Coca-Cola.

Britain, too, has felt the effects of pomegranate power. Available in 108 Waitrose stores, branches of Budgens and sporadically at Fresh & Wild, POM Wonderful proved so popular in early November that Waitrose ran out of stock. Meanwhile, homegrown brands such as Pomegreat - a juice drink, rather than a pure juice, available at every major supermarket - have benefited from the hype. 'We're selling more than a million litres a month,' says Adam Pritchard, MD of RJA Foods, 'compared to 2,000 when we started. Most of that growth has been in the past 12 months. It's been the year of the pomegranate.'

Tesco sells 500,000 litres of pomegranate juice every week - a 300 per cent increase on 2004. Last month, Marks & Spencer launched a 100 per cent fresh juice (declared 'the gold standard for fruit drinks') to rival POM, confirming that the ruby-red upstart is big business. 'Two years ago, nobody in America knew what a pomegranate was,' Lynda Resnick reminds me. 'Now, we're in Wal-Mart for God's sake, we're in Costco, we're in 7-Eleven. I want POM Wonderful to be within arm's reach of everyone who wants it. That is the biggest service I can do.'

It's a mission statement at odds with how POM is perceived: the darling of Hollywood A-listers and readers of Nylon, an elitist elixir - costing a preposterous £3.29 per bottle - added to 'pomtinis' (the official cocktail at the 2005 Oscars) and packed into goodie bags at the Vanity Fair party. 'Of course I know everyone in the world,' says Resnick, 'every mogul, every movie star. You've no idea, the people on my VIP list who drink it - but that doesn't make people buy a second bottle; they do that because they love it. Why would they bring us back to the Academy Awards every year, why would the Golden Globes insist on having it? People don't buy it because I'm in the know or a small celebrity in the big pond of Hollywood. The average consumer in Des Moines doesn't know who I am.'

In Derby and Manchester, too, consumers may have forgotten who Lynda Resnick is. In 2004, she and her husband Stewart became household names when they successfully sued the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund for $25m (£14m) in a dispute over Diana memorabilia, jeopardising the charity's future. In fact, the fund had earlier - and mistakenly - tried to stop the Franklin Mint (another Roll International company) selling such items as the Princess Diana Porcelain Bride Doll on the grounds that the charity owned the 'exclusive rights' to the Princess's name and image. The fund lost and the Resnicks counter-sued for 'malicious prosecution' (the documents lodged with the Los Angeles court had described them as 'vultures feeding on the dead'). Even Rosa Monckton, a close friend of the late Princess of Wales, described the fund's first legal battle with the Resnicks as 'absolute insanity' because the charity stood no chance of winning. Magnanimously, the Resnicks settled out of court on the first day of their lawsuit and no money exchanged hands. Instead, a statement was issued saying the $25m would go to charities decided jointly by the memorial fund and the Resnicks, particularly causes 'that resonate with the memory of the Princess'.

In court, it emerged that the Resnicks had their own charitable body, the Resnick Foundation, which had given £25m to charity in eight years - including £1m to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Mind you, they could afford it. Stewart Resnick's wealth is estimated at $890m (£513m) and the couple's assets include not just the Franklin Mint - once the world's largest collectables firm - but Fiji Water, Teleflora, Paramount Farms (pistachios, almonds) and Paramount Citrus (oranges). As friends of Bill Clinton, the Resnicks donate to the Democratic Party and sit on the boards of several museums. A clinic in Los Angeles was recently named after them - the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. Their taste for French and Italian art from the 17th and 18th centuries is evident at their £10m mansion on Sunset Boulevard - described by the writer Howard Blume as having 'the tasteful opulence [that] exudes a tincture of Versailles - only better kept.'

It's a world away, aesthetically, from the Guardian of Destiny Gargoyle - a pewter monster crouching on a crystal ball - that helped the Resnicks earn their millions: at home, the collectibles are more Bulgari than vulgari. How else could the 'Beverly Hills billionaires' (as the New York Times described them) hold their heads high in the art world? Lynda Resnick certainly does. What's more, with her vivacious manner and dark, business-like Bill Blass suits (a penchant that has earned her comparisons with 'a little general'), she has the personality - and the financial clout - to convince corporate America of almost anything.

'I'll tell you my trade secret,' she says, when I ask how she insinuated her plastic bottles into the chillers of 'fresh produce' aisles in US supermarkets (on the grounds that it was 100 per cent fruit with no artificial additives or cheap filler juices such as pear or grape). Somehow, her trade secret doesn't surprise me. 'We went to the very top of every organisation and spoke to the CEOs,' she says. 'Once they saw the packaging, understood our marketing and tasted the product, they couldn't say no. If we'd let a bunch of brokers run around, talking to low-level grocery people, they'd have been afraid to take the idea upstairs.'

It was a stroke of marketing genius. While dozens of juice drinks, from Ocean Spray to High-C, stood side by side with identical red cartons, Resnick's maroon-brown sputniks sat in an arresting pile close to the fresh pomegranates (available in America from September to December) and chiming with their spherical shape. It was a way of identifying the juice with its provenance - helped by the fact that the most popular variety of pomegranate grown in California is called Wonderful, linking the fresh product and its juice as if POM had invented the fruit. Even Resnick concedes she didn't have the wherewithal to do that. 'It's easy to be a genius,' she says, 'and people think, "my God, you're a genius for doing this" - but only God can make a tree. It was already a perfect product.'

Some might disagree, since the fruit itself - cultivated not just in California but throughout Asia and the Middle East and parts of Spain - is notoriously hard to eat. Most people can't be bothered, hence the success of commercial juices. Constructed like a large, knobbly apple with a leathery shell instead of a skin, pomegranates contain hundreds of glistening, jewel-like arils (edible seeds) housed in sacs of pithy membrane. The best way to extract them is to cut off the crown (like a stalk), lightly score the fruit's surface and soak it in a bowl of water for five minutes. Keeping the pomegranate immersed so its juices cannot stain, break it apart with your fingers and pop all the seeds out of their casings; the pithy membrane floats to the surface, where it can be skimmed off, while the arils sink. Pour them into a sieve, drain them and you have a perfect crop for a snack, to sprinkle on cereals and salads or for a pomegranate risotto - a dish mocked by Gordon Ramsay when he saw it at the Glasshouse Restaurant in Ambleside. Jamie Oliver is a fan and, with their sensuous allure, the seeds are drooled over by Nigella Lawson.

'A pomegranate is filled with rubies when you open it up,' Lynda Resnick says theatrically, glossing over the problem of extraction. 'Diamonds may be a girl's best friend - but not for me. I love rubies, they're great over necks, you know.' In antiquity, they were thought to be great for other parts of the anatomy as well and became a symbol of fertility (in women) and virility (in men). They appear on the coats-of-arms of venerable medical colleges and, in more rigorously scientific times, have been found to be rich in antioxidants. These are the natural compounds that mop up 'free radicals', the damaging molecules coursing through our bodies (some generated by a junk-food diet, pollution and cigarette smoke) which are implicated in heart disease, stroke, cancer and ageing.

The best-known antioxidants are vitamin E, vitamin C and folic acid - all abundant in whole pomegranates and their freshly squeezed juice. One pomegranate supplies 40 per cent of an adult's daily vitamin C requirement and the juice has three times the antioxidant properties of red wine or green tea, previously regarded as the best protection against heart disease and lifestyle illnesses. Blueberries, blackcurrants, cranberries, red grapes, red onions and plums are also rich sources of antioxidants, particularly those known as polyphenols - indicated by their red pigment. The best dietary advice is to eat a wide range of fruits and vegetables, including some that are red - but this does not boost sales of pomegranate juice, the first step in Lynda Resnick's crusade to bring heart health to the masses. What is needed is hard scientifc evidence that pomegranate is an unrivalled panacea.

In 1998 the Resnicks set out to prove just that, using their influence deep within American and Israeli society to find a unique selling point for POM Wonderful years before it was launched. First they contacted Dr Michael Aviram, head of the lipid research programme at the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel. For 20 years, he had been looking at ways of preventing and breaking down deposits of plaque in the arteries - atherosclerosis - which cause cardiovascular disease. Searching for natural antioxidants, he tested '20 different things' before alighting on the pomegranate which, although it doesn't lower bad (LDL) cholesterol, limits how much of it gets 'oxidised' - the first stage in the formation of plaque, which can narrow arteries or become unstable and break off, leading to heart disease and strokes. With the Resnicks' help, Dr Aviram embarked on further studies. Another key ally was Dr Ephraim Lansky, also at the Technion Institute, who had developed a pomegranate pill called CardioGranate, sold 'in a fancy bottle out of Israel, mainly to the States', according to one British researcher. Most impressively, POM Wonderful managed to hire the eminent Dr Louis Ignarro, a Nobel laureate who received his prize for work on nitric oxide, a ' factor' released by the lining of blood vessels which acts as a vasodilator (opening up vessels in the same way as Viagra) and improves cardiovascular function. His work and many other projects are co-ordinated by Dr Harley Liker, medical director of POM Wonderful and a physician at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Stewart Resnick's old college, and a recent recipient of more than $3m (£1.75m) from the Princess of Wales Memorial Fund legal settlement. To date, the Resnicks have lavished $10m (£6m) on scientific studies - four times what POM Wonderful spends on advertising each year - at 18 medical institutions worldwide, and committed $8m (£5m) to future projects. Though funding research is not unique for a food company, the sum is staggering. 'That's ridiculous,' exclaims Adam Pritchard, MD of the British company that makes Pomegreat, when I mention the $10m figure. 'We're hoping to begin our own work on something similar - but we're not spending $10m. The Scottish Crop Institute is using our product in a cancer trial - and we're not paying a penny for that. I could get the best result in the world with $10m.'

In the past two years, the Resnicks' investment has paid off - lending credibility to the heart-shaped 'O' in the word POM on their packaging. In 2004, Dr Aviram published a paper in Clinical Nutrition, showing that plaque in the carotid arteries (supplying blood to the brain) was reduced by up to 30 per cent in patients who drank POM for a year, as opposed to sugar water. In March this year, Dr Louis Ignarro and colleagues showed that antioxidants in pomegranate juice help maintain levels of beneficial nitric oxide - his Nobel prize area - in a POM Wonderful-funded study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also this year, Dr Dean Ornish published a paper in the American Journal of Cardiology, looking at blood flow to the heart in 45 patients with blocked arteries who were given pomegranate juice or a placebo.

'Over three months,' Dr Liker reveals, 'those on the juice showed a 17 per cent improvement in blood flow while those on sugar water got worse by 18 per cent.' Such studies are peer-reviewed - meaning they are held up to scrutiny by experts - and published in respectable journals (and therefore subject to checks on integrity, including the ethics of funding). However, they are not as watertight as the Resnicks and their team would like. 'You can show all sorts of things in 10 people or 25 mice,' says Dr Richard Bogle, senior registrar in cardiology at Hammersmith Hospital, London, 'but when you start extending it across big populations, it's different. You find the magnitude of effect is smaller than you would have predicted from small-scale studies, or that there is no effect at all.'

That is one big problem with the antioxidant story, he says. In particular, the Big Three - vitamin C, vitamin E and folic acid - have proved disappointing in large-scale trials. 'Nevertheless, antioxidants are a recurring theme,' Dr Bogle explains, 'because companies realise that this is a pathway well trodden by the public: they have this idea that antioxidants are a good thing, the elixir of life, anti-ageing, anti-heart disease. There is no real evidence.' Dr Bogle's specialist area is the endothelium, the lining of the blood vessel, known to produce 'factors' (chemical substances) that regulate blood flow and the permeability of the vessel, and stop platelets and white blood cells sticking to it. In people with high blood pressure or diabetes, endothelial function is compromised, leading to heart attacks and strokes.

'Some of the foods I am interested in, one of which is pomegranate juice, appear to have some effect on restoring the function of blood vessels,' Dr Bogle explains. In due course he hopes to do trials with pomegranate juice - but 'it's not my top priority,' he adds. What is not in doubt is the general orientation of pomegranate research, which focuses on the juice's ability to block the oxidation of LDL cholesterol - the process that forms life-threatening arterial plaque. 'What you get initially is lots of small studies like these, and they all point in the right direction,' Dr Bogle says. 'Then hopefully, someone like POM Wonderful comes along and funds a proper study that can answer our questions.'

Whatever the science, this is not the end of the pomegranate frenzy. While Lynda Resnick continues her crusade, others are launching new products or refining existing ones. Like POM Wonderful, the new Fresh Fruit in a Bottle from Marks & Spencer is a 100 per cent, refrigerated juice with five pomegranates in every bottle. Uniquely, it is made from the freshly pressed fruit rather than a concentrate that is stored, rediluted and pasteurised (losing its vitamin C), as POM is. Meanwhile, Pomegreat - a drink made with 'fruit extract', 30 per cent pomegranate juice (from concentrate) and aronia berry - will be joined by a new product in January, a fresh product in the M&S vein.

'Pomegranate juice has staying power,' Lynda Resnick concludes. 'It's not a fad. Once people have tasted POM Wonderful, they say they are addicted - and it's a good addiction to have.' Perhaps the fruit's dangerously compelling quality is something she has mentioned to President George Bush. In May, Bush proposed that President Karzai of Afghanistan grow pomegranates instead of heroin poppies.

The top ten free-radical busters

Anonymous said...

Bend must be ASS-PEN, they have managed to sell themselves the most crass fucking lawyer sue happy SOB's on the fucking planet.

This is so fucking Bend.

Quim still doesn't tell us how any of this is going to bring magic cali's??

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Pronghorn shutting down.

According to KTVZ this morning, they are shutting their Wall St Model Center, laying off 40 people, and shutting golf course on Monday's.

Anonymous said...

Anyone seeking the reversal of plaque choked arteries and a caked up colon will need to do far more than pomegranate. The process is a complete change in your diet and what that means is that you need to change your body's pH from acidic to a permanent alkaline state. Anyone suffering from joint inflamation will see the results the quickest. Get the book titled "Alkalize or die" and start feeling great by simply changing your diet. I do not sell these products but the Acerola cherry (vitamin C)and the Acai berry (Monavie) are the best antioxidents available.

Anonymous said...

Anyone seeking a clean colon, and I don't mean a reaming by bruce, should go to Suterra in the old mill next to the Deschutes brewery, and purchase over the counter a liter of 'CheckMate'. Taken rectally I have found that Suterra's products are superior to either acidic or alkaline detergents. The added bonus is that the Pheromones make you horny as hell. Kids at the Bend Martini bar near the old mill are known to do a double-ball of 'CheckMate' an ecstasy for all nighters. A little more expensive than Meth, but a lot healthier.

Anonymous said...

Pronghorn shutting down.

*

Yep, and pronghorn to quote all my rich friends who like to display their wealth in terms of cars, clothes, and spending all say Prongy is #1.

With the falling of Prongy, all hope is gone, now there is NO WHERE in the region as a bastion for the rich in Bend, well there still is Bledsoes Cigar club ( $50k/yr ) next to the D&D, but I wonder how long people will pay to belong to a club of jocks watching Monday Night Football 24/7??

Bend as ASSPEN is pretty much Walmart, Costco, Food4Less.

Anonymous said...

Our reporter Bruce is nearly complete with his full report on the Juniper Ridge transistion for tire-flipping&rotation ( Les Schwab ) to bio-warfare ( Suterra ).

Here is what bruce has given us to date ( juniper-ridge-info.blogspot )

1.) That Suterra LLC ( note another LLC just like HOLLERN ) of Bend, Oregon is owned by Stewart Resnick of LA, CALIF. Bend loves Calis.

2.) Stewart Resnick owns a holding company in LA, CALIF called "Roll International Corp". In the JR sales agreement all correspondence is sent to the Roll Corp address.

3.) Stewart Resnick is the richest man in California, he is also the rich Jewish man in California, and is recognized by Israel as one of the richest Jewish men in the world, well after Schnitzer of Portland, who owns Schnitzer Steel.

4.) Stewart Resnick a Democrat is the number one contributor to the Democratic Party of Calif, Stewart Resnick is the number contributor to Arnold Schwarznegger the Gov of Calif. Stewart Resnick has owned every Governor in California for the past thirty years.

5.) Stewart Resnick is the Governor appointed Water Bank chief of Calif, and has held this post for over twenty years. This has entitled him to sell all under ground water tables in the State of Calif to companys owned by Resnick ( himself ), today Resnick owns most of the water in Calif at an estimate value of $500M. Water is assumed to be more valuable than oil in 10-20 years, this position means that Resnick will be the richest man in the world.

6.) Gov Schwarznegger via a no-bid contract has promised to purchase $500M worth of Suterra 'CheckMate' from Suterra LLC, of BEND, CA ( owned by Resnick ) over a ten year period, that started two years ago.

7.) Federal MSDS for 'checkmate' clearly show that it is toxic poison and must be handled by professionals with full respiration and appropriate clothing. For the past two years State of Calif has been spraying 'CheckMate' over the Calif Bay Area city's. You can't say that Suterra didn't warn them about the fact that 'CheckMate' is poison.

8.) This year the USDA ( dept ag ) via Bush/Cheney is spending $500k on PR&MARKETING in Calif to convince people that 'CheckMate' is safe, and friendly and green.

9.) Most of the money coming through Calif to purchase Suterra CheckMate from Bend, Oregon comes from Homeland Security via USDA.

10.) The city of Bend, and Suterra LLC, have a letter of intent, available on the city of Bend website made available by our own reporter 'Bruce' http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/Letter_to_Suterra.pdf



Thanks Bruce, for your hard work.

Anonymous said...

KOHD...

Login | Create Account
HomeNewsPoliticalWeatherSportsContestsCommunityWatch ABC ProgramsABC National NewsLocalRegionalNationalBusinessInternationalHealthScienceTechnology
Pronghorn Resort Lays Off 40 Employees - Tetherow Resort Downsizes

10/27/08 Bend
By Allison Martin

Another sign of the times for destination resorts. Pronghorn on the east side of Bend is the latest to announce layoffs. 40 of it's more than 250 employees have been notified their positions will be eliminated this Saturday-- November first. Most of those layoffs are among seasonal employees-- the other cuts are from, maintenance, housekeeping, food and beverage, and the marketing team. "We wanted to acknowledge the current financial challenges the national economy is presenting for everyone by decreasing expenses to a point that we would not need to increase members club dues for 2009," said Tiffany Clark, VP of marketing for Pronghorn.

Pronghorn also made some changes to services. They closed the family recreation building for the winter-- and closed the clubhouse on Mondays. "We'll open during holiday periods of time and we found that we just don't have the demand for child use during the winter months, during the off season," said Clark.

Also hit by the economy is Tetherow Resort on the south west side of Bend-- which asked Deschutes County Commissioners Monday to reduce it's $16 million bond by almost 50 percent to build a smaller, more affordable type of overnight rental unit. " We believe that this bond reduction is going to help us move forward and build our overnight accommodations sooner rather than trying to wait for the credit markets to recover.

Deschutes County Commissioners agreed. "Sounded very reasonable to us and the county's well protected with the bond they're proposing so we okayed the project," said Commissioner Mike Daly.

Earlier this month Sunriver resort laid off seventeen people --16 managers and one hourly employee -- because tourists aren't spending as much as they once did.

Anonymous said...

And Bend's Beautiful People, you know, the people with 278 non-profits started in the past 3 months... you know, people with morals, looks, titties and MONEY so superior to you and me

And just who are these people? Are you talking about trustafarians, or what?

Anonymous said...

Costa's problem is he plays to them, instead of trying to really educate them.

Once upon a time (I can remember it) journalists thought their job was to tell people what they needed to know. At some point in the last 30 years or so, journalists decided their job was to tell people what they wanted to hear. Journalism (all media) become market-driven instead of news-value-driven. Happy talk, upbeat feature stories, "news you can use." The more substantial reportage gradually got crowded out. Also the "tell 'em what they want to hear" approach gave rise to blatantly ideological "news" programming, with Faux being the first example and MSNBC becoming sort of its counterpart on the left.

Anonymous said...

And Bend's Beautiful People, you know, the people with 278 non-profits started in the past 3 months... you know, people with morals, looks, titties and MONEY so superior to you and me

I think he means the hippies that work at the bike shops, rent space in someone's basement and have a healthy glow and devil-may-care attitude.

Quimby said...

>> Quim still doesn't tell us how any of this is going to bring magic cali's??

What? All I said was that the reason no one is speaking up is they don't want to piss off the big-bad new kid on the block. Not saying its right, that's their thinking/fear I presume.

You'll likely see all sorts of community goodies handed out (like summer parties for locals and tourists/suckers (a bone to the RE industry)) by Suterra to "bribe" the constituency. "Wow, Suterra ain't so bad, they be passing out lines of blow". Not saying its going to bring a boatload of Calis as there is no more easy $$$ for mortgages.

Quimby said...

"they" (in the first sentence) meaning the local media.

Anonymous said...

"The growth of social security payments (X-axis) is associated with the decline of fertility (Y-axis) almost one-to-one."

This sounds like the shit that RDC is always writing over on Duncan's blog. RDC, is the BEBB too boring nowadays that you had to come over here?

Since the Republicans may eventually succeed in eliminating Social Security (their wish for 70 years), I'm planning to have 8 kids.

These are the odds to ensure that at least one of them will let me stay with them when I'm old and wrinkled.

Anonymous said...

People will frequently say 'why don't you use a handle, well this is why', when I see "RDC", I never read the content, so there is another arg for being an anon-nympussy, is that you don't get ignored, I here 'RDC' is fond as his/her own name like our pussy, and yes RDC/DUNC are a complete fucking match in heaven.

The trouble on BEBB is they delete everything, and thus even 'RDC' comes over here for some color.

DUNC is a fucking bore, unless reading about his bowel movements everyday is telling?

Anonymous Rules!!!

RDC is a fuckhead faggot just like BENDBB.

Anonymous said...

What? All I said was that the reason no one is speaking up is they don't want to piss off the big-bad new kid on the block. Not saying its right, that's their thinking/fear I presume.

*

Thanks QUIM, In my very old age I have seen this too fucking often, what they're doing is 'waiting' waiting for party line, waiting to be TOLD what to do, as 'bruce' says they did the JR deal on Suterra secret, they played every trick that it be ignored, and we have relentlessly came down hard. For a week now if you GOOGLE-NEWS on "SUTERRA", you get the very content and subject line that BENDBB deleted today on his site.

Eventually the PR&MARKETING folk will figure out how to handle this, they just want to be sure they're all on the same play-book, and the ugly fact is to date, since nobody has gone public that is legitimate, its total silence waiting for the first.

I have only see three arguments so far from 'them' and by them I'm talking SORE & BULL people I have contacted.

1.) "HOW to you know Suterra makes CheckMate"

I found this argument to laughable to even reply.

2.) "How to you know that Suterra, will make bio-pesticides at the new facility?" Gee, cuz their letter of intent says so.

3.) "You can't call it a bio-weapons lab, cuz it ain't so", well tell that to a cockroach. The stuff that kills bugs kills humans, and the chemicals that Suterra is using aren't natural pheromones in spite of their fucking PR.

1&2 have been the serious media questions I have got so far, (3) is the one that seems to be bothering Bend the most. They don't mind being the #1 US manufacturer of pesticide, which in itself ain't ASS-PEN. What they seem to dislike is "BIO-WEAPONS MANUFACTURING", the fact is its true, the micro-encapulated iso-cyanate techology they use to deliver their synthetic pheromones (POISON) are a patented technology, and SUTERRA is the world leader. This shit is HOT, bio-warfare is HOT. Nobody else can license this shit, they rule the roost, to suggest that the expansion is anything else is lunacy.

I concur, hand out whistles, and kittens. Cute little bug's dressed as people roaming the streets, good-will, lots of good-will, and lots of Cocaine & BOOZE for city-hall, sure BEND is easy to BUY, no fucking doubt.

The real problem is external like I said to BP, this war will be fought outside of BEND, with $500M on the table, and BUSH/CHENEY now out ( hopefully ) this whole fucking bio-weapons project could unravel, if the $500M goes south, then the new Suterra lab becomes like Tetherow, Pronghorn, Brasada, ... Just another example of post excess of the BendBubble.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the person the other day that said "Shut this blog down" was RDC, or could be HBM, he's around but afraid to show his ass.

I concur that the social-security drivel is pure RDC.

What's worse about RDC is not that he's a right wing nut, but that he try's to act like BEM and use big words like he's a fucking CPA, or MBA, ... ( like homeboy ), but at least homer really is an MBA, RDC is just a fucking Rush Limbaugh listener ( that's worse than a Drake Goose shit eater ).

Where the FUCK is HBM, that fucking HO??

Anonymous said...

The real problem is external like I said to BP, this war will be fought outside of BEND, with $500M on the table, and BUSH/CHENEY now out ( hopefully ) this whole fucking bio-weapons project could unravel, if the $500M goes south, then the new Suterra lab becomes like Tetherow, Pronghorn, Brasada, ... Just another example of post excess of the BendBubble.

*

HOW ABOUT CUNTS anybody want to bet a nickel??

Anonymous said...

HBM,

You fucking SLOVENLY fucking BITCH, when are you going to write some blogger fodder about SUTERRA LLC at the FUCKING SORE so we can shoot you down? You fucking bitch??

Your Fans,

Anonymous said...

or could be HBM, he's around but afraid to show his ass.

I'm trying to recover from sinus surgery and I feel like shit. Thanks a bunch you fucking troll.

Anonymous said...

I don't know a fucking thing about Suterra and at this point I don't fucking care. If you want the Source to do a story about it talk to Aaron Switzer or Eric Flowers.

Outta here.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the assertion about Stewart Resnick the new boy who owns Bend, and him being one of the richest men in the world, and a Jew.

I'm only bringing this up cuz Resnick is a professed DEM, and is #1 in his state for giving bucks direct to the party.

But the reason I'm bringing up the "JEW THING", is that he's giving fucking $150k/yr to Scharznegger ( luv guv CA ), a man who has admitted on many occasions that he loves HITLER, that HITLER was a role-model, that HITLER accomplished 'good shit'.

I just find this too fucking much to let go, let's be honest RESNICK is a mother-fucker down in CALI, and he's stretched his arms our way, and if you think he ain't going to grab our water, ... Fuck his weapon's plant, its one of the smallest fucking assets he owns.

Ok, some will say, he has to give $150k/yr to LUV-GUV TERMINATOR cuz he wants to be the master of the water bank, and that is a governor appointment, and he's been appointed to the position for fucking EVER, under every CALIF governor since RAYGUN, if your that fuck old.

Resnick spends tons of time in ISRAEL and is considered there as one of the richest Jews in the world. How in the fuck can he with a straight face support Herr Schwaarzzy? Ok, lets be honest, Israel is all about money, and stealing real-estate from the Palestinians.

But SHIT, I only respect JEWS who say NEVER-AGAIN, and mean it, and do something about it, its obvious that RESNICK is as much he is a JEW as he is a DEMOCRAT.

Anonymous said...

I don't know a fucking thing about Suterra and at this point I don't fucking care. If you want the Source to do a story about it talk to Aaron Switzer or Eric Flowers.

Outta here.

*

FUCK YOU BITCH, I know three people who have posted shit over the last week on this subject on your fucking HO of a paper, and they all fucking deleted all the content anybody posted on the subject of Suterra.

THE FUCKING SORE is TERRIFIED of PISSING OFF THE NEW JEW WHO RUNS BEND.

Suterra LLC is the BIGGEST pesticide manufacturer in the USA, their new factory will 10-100X production, you fucking call yourself a FUCKING ENVIRONMENTALIST, and you don't fucking care??

It's like PRONGHORN today, guess what they're downstream, upwind from JR, not a good place to be that close to a fucking bio-weapon plant.

The SORE doesn't give a FUCK about the BEND ENVIRONMENT, all that Aaron Switzer cares about is protecting RICH Jews, and play frisbee golf at Tetherow.

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to recover from sinus surgery and I feel like shit.

*

There are 1,000's of people down in cali whose sinus has been permanently fucked by aerial spraying of Suterra poisons bitch, and you say your not interested??

You think that this shit ain't going to have a leak?

In a reasonable town that votes 60% pug, and the one ALT daily, you think would do a story about the town being the site of the new Manhattan Project for 2010. HBM don't give a fuck, and Aaron, all I can say is Aaron must be hurtin, as the BULL & SORE are economically imploding.

Anonymous said...

There you have it, Our Missing Bitch HBM, has a runny nose, and doesn't give a fuck about anything.

With all of BEND imploding and going to shit, it must be real fucking sad to be even near the SORE.

HBM what do you care about? I mean issues?

I mean I know you want OR-BOMB-EO to be the new leader, but what the fuck else do you care about??

Anonymous said...

"We wanted to acknowledge the current financial challenges the national economy is presenting for everyone by decreasing expenses to a point that we would not need to increase members club dues for 2009," said Tiffany Clark, VP of marketing for Pronghorn.

*

Yeh, You want a ghost-town, increase them fucking monthly expenses for members of the Pronghorn Club.

All these fucking siberian resorts were all sold on the basis of $500k going to $5M in a few years on the basis of 25%/yr APR always has always will, ... Now a $1M suffed into Prongy wouldn't get you $500k, and the fucking $500/mo, ... for what? Oh security, the guys that drive around and make sure that your garbage cans ain't out, or you laundry can't be seen, in every fucking one of these 'resorts' or STD's in the region I know of the people paying the $500-$1k/mo are pissed, good money going into the toilet, everyone is cutting back on the security, ... and all else.

All these places are now going to seed, and quick.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to be hard on HBM, but sheeet, I'm mean the SORE is supposed to be an ALT,

ALT to what the BULL?

A baby-bull, that is all the SORE is, somebody tell me I'm wrong??

Bewert said...

Wow, search Google News and the number one result is our own Bilbo's article/rant: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/10/24/18546160.php

I went to the JRMB meeting today, and wasn't made to feel too unwelcome. No other observers or press at all. Under John James rather forceful leadership, things are going to get done and fast. Full focus is on employment lands. No further sales until things are worked out with ODOT. And no Exec Session--James asked if they really needed one and the answer was no.

Rather refreshing.

I'll get up a full post on the blog later.

Bewert said...

BTW, the rendering of the new Suterra building was labeled "Suterra Manufacturing Facility".

tim said...

Can you elaborate on that a bit, Bruce.

Does that mean no housing development until they see real companies pay real money to get in, or what?

Anonymous said...

all that Aaron Switzer cares about is protecting RICH Jews

FYI Aaron is not a Jew, you anti-Semitic ignorant flaming asshole.

Glad I dropped in here today -- I was reminded of why I stopped coming. I don't need this fucking craziness especially at this point in time. Fuck you and good bye.

Bewert said...

Tim, yes. The first 150-200 acres are all employment land. I'll try to get to know James more, as he seems to be forceful and smart. He is definitely the alpha male.

Bewert said...

hb, there are crazies everywhere.

tim said...

>>especially at this point in time.

Are you kidding? This is the best time to be crazy in 20 years!

Anonymous said...

Glad I dropped in here today -- I was reminded of why I stopped coming.

*

You mean that Aaron doesn't wear Yalmuke? Or wear funny underwear like BP? What are you trying to say HBM?

Note that HBM plays the fucking 'anti-semitic' card, when it fact the issue is why is Resnick who now owns Bend giving Scharzzy a fucking Nazi $150k??

Anonymous said...

Blogger bruce said...

BTW, the rendering of the new Suterra building was labeled "Suterra Manufacturing Facility".

*

Who would have guessed we were told it would be an Organic Green Moth Mating Center.

Anonymous said...

HBM,

The biggest fucking RIGHT-WING BUSH/CHENEY CUNT in Bend.

Right when the BUSH pulls the biggest rabbit out of his hat in eight years, and brings 'Manhattan Project' to Bend, Oregon, HBM spends his time playing the 'anti-semitic' card.

How is that the richest Jew in the world owns a bio-weapon factory that is killing and poisoning people in Cali? How is that that his best friend is Nazi Scharznegger & Bill Clinton??

Bewert said...

Re: Or wear funny underwear like BP?

Dude, I am not a Mormon. Get over it. To start with, Mormons don't drink. Which I find incomprehensible, as I sit here with a glass of red wine in hand.

Anonymous said...

Wow, search Google News and the number one result is our own Bilbo's article/rant: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/10/24/18546160.php


*

BP, our contacts at google are going to keep that #1 for months to come, I can't stress enough that the +60% PUGS in Bend, who find this funny are a minority.

Resnick owns a lot of SHIT in CALIF, but he can't control google, and most of those people got sprayed with Suterra-LLC love-juice, its going to get ugly.

For months to come if you google 'bend oregon' you'll see bio-weapons lab.

Bend, HBM, Costa, ... can put their fucking head in the sand, but they're dead wrong on this one.

Anonymous said...

Dude, I am not a Mormon.

*

I'm sorry snuggles, I can't help it, trudi quick give bruce some cookies and milk.

Nighty,

Anonymous said...

"Glad I dropped in here today -- I was reminded of why I stopped coming."

Sorry HBM, once you start posting here, you can never leave.

It's like the song Hotel California, once you enter, you cannot leave.

I know -- I've been trying to stop reading this blog since August 2006! But there are no substitutes.

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding? This is the best time to be crazy in 20 years!

*

Homer, WTF have you done to this town? Even TT is suffering from gallows humor.

What's next? We lost Tetherow, Pronghorn,... all that is left is our SORE & BULL, anyone want to place bets how long they'll survive??

Anonymous said...

I know -- I've been trying to stop reading this blog since August 2006! But there are no substitutes.

*

Homer is a lot of things, but he does believe in FREE SPEECH, the reason all CUM here is that this is the ONLY free rock in Bend to piss on.

Take BENDBB he fucking deletes all, and SORE ditto, every fucking place you go in this town is a gate-keeper editing content to please the fucking mysterious master.

Here's the deal folks HOLLERN is finished right now today BEND is without a rudder, the fucking pol's that run this town don't know what to do, cuz daddy-warbucks, ain't got to more bucks. They're all sitting around with the their thumbs up their ass, looking at BP for help.

This town is fucked.

What do you expect of a PR&MARKETING town, and now all their PR&MARKETING is just noise, how in the fuck do they fix the Bend they have created??

All the toy bunny's, and chipmunk's, and silly shit that Suterra LLC hands out in the coming months will not fix the problem. To date since 1998 under TEAM-HOLLERN the deal has been to FEED the people of BEND SHIT, and it has worked, today is a new problem, MORE want to leave than enter.

Worse than that, to quote the PUSSY "NOBODY IN BEND KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON", and yet those outside of BEND know.

Bend has now reached MUSHROOM status, a town kept in the dark and fed shit, and what's worse is the population likes it, trouble is who is going to pay??? The gig is up, no more city money to pay for dozens of RALSTON-360, or a hundred other BEND PR FIRMS.

PR&MARKETING ... USDA under Homeland Security spent $500k this year to PR&MARKET Suterra-LLC in the bay-area. Guess what they got their ass kicked. Now the BIG OREO takes over, ... my guess is will be more of the same, defense projects have a life of their own.

That said there are so many fucking people in the bay-area so fucking pissed off about this Suterra Spraying that no fucking politician will own up to it, my guess in the coming months ALL will run from this project, with the BUSH-CHENEY gone.

Sure Suterra-LLC will continue to do special contract for the military, as they control micro-encapsulation delivery technology and it is HOT, but I some how doubt it will be in BEND, nor funded by CALIF via USDA and scharzy.

Given that Resnick is B-CLINTONS best friend, its easy to surmise that OR-BOMB-EO is RESNICK's best friend also. The cockroaches will move this project silently to a quiet place. Given that Resnick just bought 5,000 acres a few months ago in North-Mexico, its a good guess that there are lots of places where people say "OMERTA", OMERTA-OBAMA sort of has a ring to it.

Bewert said...

Re: What's next?

Gottshalcks.

Did I spell that even close to being right?

I figure since Trudy the uber-shopper has shown little interest if going there that it's game over.

Bewert said...

Hard to believe I'm the one turning off the lights tonight...

tim said...

>>Gottshalcks.

I saw the flyer for that store in last Sunday's paper. Grand Opening, and it was a flimsy four pages of nothing. Dullsville. K-Mart.

Worst Grand Opening buzz ever.

I drove by and I couldn't even tell if it was open.

Anonymous said...

Good people of Bend, Oregon,


Pardon me for not having the pleasure of knowing your mindset before making you this offer and it is utterly confidential and genuine by virtue of its nature.I write to solicit your assistance in a funds transfer deal involving US$3.5M.This fund has been stashed out of the excess profit made last year by my branch office the Cascade Bancorp Bank (CACB) which I am the manager.



I have already submitted an approved end of the year report for the year 2005 to my head office here in Accra-Ghana and they will never know of this excess. I have since then, placed this amount on a Non-Investment Account without a beneficiary.


Upon your response, I will configure your name on our database as holder of the Non-Investment Account. I will then guide you on how to apply to my head office for the Account Closure/ bank-to-bank remittance of the funds to your designated bank account.


If you concur with this proposal, I intend for you to retain 30% of the funds while 70% shall be for me.

Kindly forward your response to: icbton@aim.com

Mobile: +233-24-468-5072

With Regards,

Anthony Aka

Anonymous said...

I heard yesterday that Brooks laid off all their sales staff

....

It's time to put Brooks Resources on the tombstone Butter.

Anonymous said...

Brooks has been slimming for a while, but what's the proof for this latest rumor?

Anonymous said...

Brooks laying off 'all sales' is over on BEBB.

That's why I asked this group for verification.

Anonymous said...


Somebody obviously has an axe to grind with Suterra, and they're doing it by posting innuendo and unsupported assertions about bio-weapons. If you want to discuss Suterra and its product in a factual manner that's fine, but this is a warning that if any more bio-weapons trash talk is posted I'll lock or delete this topic. - bendbb



Google "suterra toxic poison", there are 5,000 hits.

A bio-weapon is any biological agent that causes harm. All the material on Suterra is on average over two years old. If somebody has an ax to grind, then it must be 1,000's of people in California. The smallpox blankets used on the injuns were bio-weapon's, it a very general term.

Bruce says that 100% of Bend thinks that Suterra LLC is a good company to host, that they make 100% natural Pheromones, and everything is green and non-toxic. The fact is that the courts of Calif have ruled that the Suterra LLC Pheromones are synthetic and toxic.

If you google "suterra toxic poison", you can see for yourself that PR&MARKETING in Bend has created a PR-AX and BEBB supports that notion of 'truth'. Green & Natural if repeated enough times becomes true.

If you google "Suterra green non-toxic", you'll only get Suterra PR. Imagine that. USDA spent $500k this year on PR&MARKETING in Calif trying to convince the public that Suterra pesticide are safe, yet Suterra's own MSDS says that the chemicals are toxic.

Suterra LLC is the US leader in micro-encapsulated biological delivery systems using a 'micro-pill' with a iso-cyanate barrier. The US military is very active in these systems, and Suterra holds all the patents, licenses, and has sued anyone for trade secret violation who has tried to make their ingredient(s) public. Fact.


Anybody who trys to create a real debate in Bend has an ax to grind, and if they get close to the truth, they get deleted.

Anonymous said...

No ax to grind bebb.

The issue is the truth, the issue is a free and fair debate about our city.

The issue is the Source & Bulletin have had nada on this subject.

The issue is that the city has sold Juniper Ridge to Suterra in a secret deal, see juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com

Regarding biology and axes to grind not one iota of content needed to be created, there are ten's of thousands of references of Suterra's handiwork all over the internet. Spraying on the google campus itself has created a cottage industry of websites dedicated to making Suterra's poisons public.

Many people who work at google commute to Santa Cruz & Monterey, which was especially hard-hit by Suterra poison.

The essential issue with Bend is that over 50% of the voting public voted for Bush/Cheney which funded this spraying operation, while the majority of the Bay Area hates Bush-Cheney. The majority of Bend loves Bush-Cheney. This is the reason for the silence in Bend.

This debate has NOTHING to do with Suterra BEBB, it has only to do with Bush-Cheney's secret projects, its just frosting on the cake that Suterra got a $500M no-bid contract from Gov Schwarznegger courtesy of USDA aka Bush-Cheney & homeland security.

It's just icing on the cake that Schwarzneggers largest campaign contributor "stewart resnick", OWN's Suterra.


These are all public facts that need to be TATTOOED on the ass of the Bend citizenry.

Anonymous said...

I'm about ready to turn off my local news feed at google news. Too scary and depressing.

>>Bend's Marshall High on state safety 'watch list'

>>Two people stabbed at northeast Bend Safeway

>>Why Gas is More in Bend

>>Arrest made in Oregon horse shooting

...

So we know that crime can hit you over there in Cosrco's or Safeway's parking lots. So far B&N is safe, I believe.

Anonymous said...

On the subject of Brooks Sales office 'all closing' over on BENBB.

I would just like to remind folks that Brooks owns 100's of LLC's all over the try-county region.

I was just up yesterday at NWXC the sales office of which is next to the coffee shop. NWXC is owned by "BROOKS".

So what does it mean for someone to post 'brooks sales offices closing', 'all staff terminate'.

This person is probably talking about one tiny little office out of 100's in the region.

Some will go DOWN and hard, Brasada, Yarrow, ... all siberian STD resorts, ... but at NWXC close-in BEND, ... it will survive, albeit starting 2009, they're going to bring in mega-apt complexes, which is why they lobbied for permanent SDC exemption.

Lastly, ALL of BROOKS-RESOURCES is owned by ONE man, whose name I shall not utter here, being a hobbit at heart, well it sounds in MORDOR like 'mic hollern', who is said to own the land under the Bulletin, and every chipmunk in the region, an heir to the old shevlin-hixson mill, who to this day runs Bend as a company-town.

Is Brooks going down?? In my most humble opinion all +100 of the LLC's would have to go down, ... not going to happen, 50% hell yes, 80% yes, ... but NOT 100% as asserted on BEBB.

Anonymous said...

I'm about ready to turn off my local news feed at google news. Too scary and depressing.

*

You haven't seen anything yet, go over to DUNC's site, he loves those Bend wanted poster's posted daily on TV, and in the BULL, ... and else where,...

Crime? NO folks, BEND is just reverting to its former self.

Sisters, Tumalo, Redmond, LA-PINES, and BEND used to be mostly trailer-parks with white-trash, ... and thus the meth-capital.

Now we have tens of 1,000's of rotting STD's, are they any different than single-wides that were bull-dozed en-masse over the past ten years??

Hell no, white trash?? Did we not with our taxpayer money PR&MARKET and attract grifters and get rich quick parasites to BEND?? Has not those in financial capacity already left??

Folks who complain about crime in BEND, are simply seeing the real BEND, the past ten years had only been a mirage. With 1,000's of empty homes for rent, losers from all over the region will once again return to BEND, ...

The city spent a fortune driving out the rednecks, and now the city will spend a fortune attracting any humanity they can, and thus the cry for 'affordable housing'.

The rich? That is why BT, HIGHLANDS, PRONGY and all are gated.

Anonymous said...

For years OUR HOMER has predicted a Japan style economy in the USA. We're there HOMER, we're soon going to have zero percent interest.

***

A Rate of Zero Percent From the Fed? Some Analysts Say It Could Be ...
New York Times - 12 hours ago
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON - Zero percent interest rates! It sounds like free money, or maybe a promotional deal from General Motors to get people to buy Hummers.

Anonymous said...

And Japan is at a what, 25 year low on their stock market?

Assuming that stocks will work out in the long run apparently means at least 30 years now. How does that sound? Do you mind breaking even after 30 years?

Anonymous said...

BEBB is going to jail, and taking RDC with him, ...

Oregon man sentenced to 5 years for child porn

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORTLAND -- A 63-year-old Bend man has been sentenced to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.

Investigators looking into the online trading of child pornography discovered a "shared files" folder on the home computer of Phillip Lannis Douglass containing more than 1,300 still images.

There were also 60 video files. The computer files included images depicting sexual assaults on very young children.

Douglass admitted downloading child pornography from file sharing programs on the Internet.

Anonymous said...

So we know that crime can hit you over there in Cosrco's or Safeway's parking lots. So far B&N is safe, I believe.

*

A high desert town with over 5,000 living in their car or the bush?

Crime?

What is crime? BROOKS has robbed the city blind with SDC deferral since 1998, we're going to BK.

The crime? Chump-Change.

White Collar Crime in Bend, that's what we need to focus on.

Petty Crimes, ... is just a by product of our city-hall being a kleptocracy, e.g. a government ran by common criminals.

Anonymous said...

Suettera is exactly what we need here to clear out the population. - marge

*

In deep philosophical thought?

In Honduras it is illegal to spray Suterra Product, as it causes male sterility in Banana farmers? Is this what you mean by population? Old fashion Eugenics??

Oh, given that Bend becomes a 'Hanford' Military bio-weapons dump, all the beautiful people will exit?? Is this what you mean?

Spraying California with Poison? Where will they go? Certainly not BEND, the home of the poison.

What do you see Marge? What do you have in mind?

Anonymous said...

Bend is Bush-Cheney Country That is what Suterra is About

Anonymous said...

So the Forum Shopping center's score is:

2 carjackings at knife point
2 stabbed with knife
crazy man with gun runs into Safeway lot and takes off for Dodds Rd. hideout. Police SWAT talk him out in 2 hours.
Knives and guns should be banned:)

Don't forget the knife hold up at BOTC nite drop the other day. Damn knives are getting dangerous.

tim said...

I'm going to start carry a fork to protect myself.

Quimby said...

>> I'm going to start carry a fork to protect myself.

Tim, best to let the villain have his/her way with you. You're more likely to have that forked turned and used against you.

Anonymous said...

Notices of Default for October weren't looking that huge... then 23 today. Twenty friggen three. We just hit 203 for the month with a day left. That brings us above August's 201.

So Marge, will this be another month that NOD's outnumber county-wide sales?

Anonymous said...

What is the philosophical nature of our blogo-sphere in our little domain??

On the left-wing we have BP, dunc, & hbm ( m,w,f-left, tu,th-right), ..

The indys are homer, buster, quim, lava, the vast majority of free loving non-censorship rock-pissers are independents here!!!

On the right we have bebb(rdc same person ), marge, not too many right-wingers in the group.

The goal here is to have a debate.

Well for about five days we got bebb to debate 'suterra' he tried his rush-limbaugh damnest to argue the facts, but fell back to censorship and deletion in pure rush-o'reilly form.

his first arg was how do you know suterra makes 'checkmate', then how do you know suterra will make 'pesticide', today it was 'you just have an ax on suterra'.

As we ALL know prior to BP last week doing his JR on the secret buy, SUTERRA has NEVER-EVER been mentioned in our groups, that said I have mentioned 'bend research' many times, but nobody ever knew what the fuck I was talking about.

Like I told BEBB today prior to final deletion. The reason for the 'suterra' debate has NOT a fucking thing to do with suterra or resnick.

It has to do with PUGS & DEMS, it has to do with the fact that the majority of BEND voted for BUSH-CHENEY, who are the ones that gave ARNOLD SCHWARzzy millions of dollars to BUY & SPRAY suterra poison. This is the fucking issue on the debate.

So we take the debate to the LIB's ( dunc, ... bp ), and indy's ( quim, ... ), and our right-wing ( bebb ). Of course Bebb incapable of a debate, but only Limbaugh censorship, .e.g. selection, hang-up, ...

The debate about suterra is fascinating, I have NO AX with SUTERRA I know nobody at suterra, what I find fascinating is the the people of BEND voted for bush-cheney, and the people in the bay-area voted against bush-cheney, and the bend chemicals were used to poison bay-area people. I find this fascinating.

Getting our left, indy, and right-wing groups to 'debate' this has been quite interesting.

In my 2-3 years of discussing the history of 'brooks' I have never been accused of having an ax to grind, but today BEBB fell to that, Bend-History has always been my passion.

THE BULL & SORE choose to ignore our contemporary history, the rest of the world is watching.

Anonymous said...

Tim, best to let the villain have his/her way with you. You're more likely to have that forked turned and used against you.

*

Why does anyone need a fork? Hunting? I don't think so.

"National Coalition to Ban Forks" could start right here in BEND, and I bet all that the BULL & SORE will cover it.

"Use a fork in a crime, go to jail"

Anonymous said...

Help me folks sort this out, ..

LEFT-WING (FDR)

bruce, hbm, dunc, ...

INDY's ( Ron Paul, Jim Rogers )

buster, tim, quim, lava, ???

RIGHT-WING ( Bush-Cheney, Hitler )

bebb(rdc), marge(lookwarm), ...

Did I mess anyone ?

*

Here on BB2 we get un-censored, and 24/7 indy thought.

Dunc on poorminwageguy you get pure 24/7 FDR.

BEBB rush-limbaugh,o'reilly, shutdown social-security, golden parachutes for realtors,mtg-brokers,appraisers...

Dunc thinks that if you quote a right-winger its wrong, I don't think so, to me a DEBATE require's thought from the full spectrum, .. FDR-left, indys' who hate dem&pug, and right-wingers who love to kill shit and watch it die.

Of course some of this is wrong, as marge is an indy slightly to the right, hbm goes from right to left so frequent I really don't know, dunc is pure fucking FDR(left).

Homer well he could be right being a PUG, but his 100% commitment to free-speech and free thinking, ... puts him more in the indy than the right.

Then you got the right-wingers like bebb(rdc), who foam with cerebral writing, but at the end of the day delete shit when you win the arg. Denial, delete, ... just like BUSH-CHENEY, hey it works, been working for limbaugh 20+ years, ...

The goal on BB2 is to debate the bend economy, the goal to do is to do it free of censorship.

If bruce is wrong, he fesses up, if buster is wrong he admits he's a fucking asshole, ... homer is never wrong about anything.

HBM is in many ways a right-winger, he's intolerant to the other persons thinking, and if someone posts shit on his blog at the SORE, he'll delete the comment the majority of the time, rather than addressing the subject, thus left-wing in banter, but right-wing in action, fascinating.


DEBATE ON!

Anonymous said...

Damn knives are getting dangerous.

- marge


* JAIL

We have the highest rate of any country in incarceration in the world, we have over 5,000 on the street in Bend.

Most of these people have served time in JAIL, in jail survivors carry a weapon, anything they can make be it a coat-hanger, ... some steel in general, to survive.

The revolving door of homelessness/prison, and many end up in BEND, as we have much discussed most of the marketing of BEND has been to white-trash retards, so surprise that so many losers roam the streets with steel in Bend.

In a perfect little town, the homeless would be ran out, but BEND cottles the homeless, counts them, nurtures them, builds for them, wants affordable housing for them, ...

Soon we'll have 50k in BEND, but by then 10k will be homeless, 20% of the people on the street who carry steel, and think nothing of making you bleed.

Welcome to BEND.

I'm not advocating being hard on homeless but the numbers here are ridiculous. Portland is a homeless mecca, but the numbers are less than 1%. Bend is great town on the peripheral to camp, and live in your car, and spend the summer by the rivers, and winter near a fire, and never be alone.

The citizens of course in BEND, being retired, elderly, rich & stupid, ostentatious wealth, or just fucking BITCHES ... when 20% of the population are armed and homicidal the outcome has never been pretty.

So we'll see more security, more lights, more cameras, more privatized security.

What is the homeless population of ASS-PEN?? Anybody know?? I know one thing, if you make less than $100k, you can't even live in town.

BEND is one strange fucking place, I really do think that BEND cuddle's to homeless in a strange way that makes them feel a little too fucking comfortable.

A person who doesn't care about himself, or anybody else, angry at the world, that's normal in most societys 1-3%, but when you get this up over 10% your talking about a fucking war.

tim said...

>>BEND is one strange fucking place...

I don't think a city can be anything but insane after tripling in size so quickly.

Bewert said...

Re: I don't think a city can be anything but insane after tripling in size so quickly.

Post of the day, Timmy. Went up fast, going down fast. There is something to be said for a program of bus tickets to Phoenix or Vegas for the homeless before it gets too cold.

As horribly as that would fly politically.

Bewert said...

What's become really worrisome to me is the increase in homeless women with children. Like at the Westside Safeway.

And you know for every one you see, there are ten more that are really hurting, but are trying not to stoop to begging.

Anonymous said...

There is something to be said for a program of bus tickets to Phoenix or Vegas for the homeless before it gets too cold.

*

Are you out of your fucking mind?

Been to those places.

Arizona is a right to work state, which is a nice way of saying get a job or go to jail. Enough said.

Vegas, has no trees, colder than shit in the winter, and is barren desert like phoenix, the fact is for the homeless Bend is a fucking resort.

Anonymous said...

Portland has a homeless parade every year.

Oregon in general is a homeless mecca.

Lot's of women & children living in cars, lots of people in Calif living that way.

Again the numbers are mind boggling 10-20% homeless in the area, no place has these numbers, it wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else, begging/panhandling is legal in Oregon, upheld by the courts,

The fact is Bend is a great place to be if your homeless.

Sure there are destitute folks that have lost their home, no money for a place, there are social services for those folks. The vast majority of people you say sitting in Drake park all summer, or biking around, or hanging out camping the fringe are homeless by choice.

On the west coast there are season migrations between pdx & sf, these homeless have been around since the 70's, in fact quite a few of them are vets from vietnam, and tend to be right wingers, survivalists, living off the land, carrying a knife, love the movie RAMBO.

A person could write a book about panhandling at shopping centers and traffic lights, ... There is UNION of sort, each person works their slot, has their turf. Try it some time, go panhandle and watch how quick they'll tell you to move out of the territory.

Bend has so many malls, and so much access to rivers, and woods for fires, its truly a mecca.

All the shit goes down at malls, why not? Drinking all day, panhandling, by night they're angry and horny, and pissed. An endless cycle, ,and Bend is the perfect place, endless malls, endless parking lots, endless traffic.

The homeless will not leave Bend, until folks quit giving them money and food, and I'm talking about the pro's who work all the mall's.

There are plenty of services for Bruce's hypothetical mom's with children, but that said CSD are assholes, you go to them, and they'll take the kids, but that is another issue, thus the women live on the streets to be with their children.

Anonymous said...

don't think a city can be anything but insane after tripling in size so quickly.

*

Just a normal west-coast gold rush town, many went from zero to 10k, and when they bust, ...

Early folks get rich, merchants get rich, bars run 24/7, then one day newbies quit coming, then they start leaving, then the merchants have no sales, and they close, then you have a ghost town.

What rabbit can Bend pull out of its ASS?

In 2000 the assholes of BEND voted for BUSH-CHENEY, dumbya proves to be a homocidal killer, and Bend votes for an even higher majority in 2004, cuz Bend loves that shit, 2008 Bend votes for Palin-MCain, cuz Bend thinks only the PUGS can break back the gold rush.

Insane is a complement, it means there is no choice, Bend has free thinking people they're not insane, they're fucking monsters.

Happy Halloween.

Anonymous said...

"Bodie became a boom town in 1877 and by 1879 had a population of approximately 10,000 with 2,000 buildings. The town became more known for its wild living than for its big gold resources - numerous saloons and breweries dotted the mile long main street.

By 1882 the town was in the grips of decline - the rich mines were playing out and mining companies were going bankrupt. Two fires, one in 1892 and the other in 1932 ravaged the business district and Bodie faded into a ghost town in the 1940's.

Anonymous said...

A ghost town is a town or city that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as flood or war. The term is sometimes used in a depreciative sense to include areas where the current population is significantly less than it once was. It may be a partial ghost town such as Tonopah, Nevada, or a neighborhood where people no longer live (like Love Canal). A tourist ghost town has significant economic activity from tourism, such as Oatman, Arizona, or numerous sites in Egypt, but cannot sustain itself except by tourism.

Anonymous said...

A ghost town is a town or city that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as flood or war. The term is sometimes used in a depreciative sense to include areas where the current population is significantly less than it once was. It may be a partial ghost town such as Tonopah, Nevada, or a neighborhood where people no longer live (like Love Canal). A tourist ghost town has significant economic activity from tourism, such as Oatman, Arizona, or numerous sites in Egypt, but cannot sustain itself except by tourism.

Anonymous said...

So what's it like living in one of Bend many ghost-towns??

Oregon subdivision a ghost town

By David Fisher

The (Bend, Ore.) Bulletin

Buena Vista Custom Homes unloaded 141 homes last weekend in an auction the company says was the biggest residential home auction by a single builder in Oregon's history.

The 2,209 people who swarmed into the Oregon Convention Center over two days snapped up almost all of the unsold homes the Lake Oswego-based builder put up for sale in Portland's suburbs.

But in Bend?

Not one of the 29 homes Buena Vista put up for auction in its Forum Meadows neighborhood in east Bend sold, company spokesman Mike Higgins said.

It was the only one of the company's nine sales areas without a transaction and the subdivision now stands like a ghost town, with empty houses hovering over half-landscaped lots.

Buena Vista President Roger Pollock thinks distance might have played a role, Higgins said. Buena Vista's Bend subdivision was the only neighborhood in the auction east of the Cascades, and it reflected the poorest turnout.

Of the 385 people who registered to attend the auction and left their registrations at the Forum Meadows site in Bend, only about 15 percent attended the actual auction in Portland, he said. By contrast, about 95 percent of the registrants who filed their forms in Portland-area neighborhoods actually attended the auction.

Buena Vista may stage another auction later on in Bend to try to move the Forum Meadows homes, hoping that geographical distance was the biggest factor in the Portland auction's failure to move anything here, Higgins said.

Meanwhile, he said, the company has no plans to start any new neighborhoods in Bend, even though it still has options on some available home lots.

"The market has got to come back before that will happen," Higgins said. "I guess we don't feel too good about that market just yet."

Buena Vista's decision to aggressively bring houses out of the ground last year, despite the nationwide slowdown in residential real-estate sales, got it named the No. 1 single-family homebuilder in Oregon and Southwest Washington by the Portland Business Journal. The award was largely based on the estimated value of the 309 building permits the developer pulled in Oregon last year.

About 96 percent of the company's 141 homes that sold at the auction went for final bids below their reserve prices, which were set at Buena Vista's break-even level, Higgins said.

advertising

That means that the company lost money on the sales, despite the weekend's $65 million in income.

Still, in every place except Bend, the auction achieved what Pollock set out to do — get rid of expensive-to-carry housing inventory. And it gave him some cash to use on his next moves.

"The sale of the homes from the auction put us in a great position as a buyer," Pollock said in a news release. "There are some great deals to be had out there right now on lots."

Some of the Bend houses attracted bids, Higgins said, but none of the bids came close enough to meeting the reserve prices to justify finalizing sales on any of the homes, Higgins said.

"They were trying to steal them," Higgins said.

The company retained the right to reject any final bids below its unpublished reserve prices, Higgins said. It was obligated to close on any final bids that rose above that level.

Buena Vista had hoped to see bidding start at $189,000 for its 1,133-square-foot models in Bend and $229,000 on its 2,116-square-foot homes.

Original asking prices had been $349,500 and $443,950, respectively.

Tamara Christensen and her family live nearby. She had hoped the auction would work at least well enough to fill the houses with people who would landscape the bare-dirt backyards she sees out of her back windows.

But another nearby resident said she was OK with the way it is.

"I kind of like having fewer neighbors," Charlene Gossling said.

"It's quiet."

Anonymous said...

Then there are the fucking assholes of Bend, the majority of the population, who are silent, with their silent papers, and silent radios, and silent TV's. All good nazi's waiting for more BUSH-CHENEY cargo.

***


A Deadly Policy of Silence - LBAM Spray and the USA

Sunday 25 May 2008 | LBAM Spray Bay Area

This week, former presidential adviser, Karl Rove, has been the subject of international headlines, greeting the demands that he appear before Congress with a queer and deafening silence. According to his lawyer, Rove has been ordered by the White House (the Bush Administration) not to obey the subpoena or give testimony about the possible politicization of the Department of Justice. Congress may have to send out the Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest Rove and bring him to a hearing, no matter what President Bush wants.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Senator Barbara Boxer convene a hearing, the subject of which was the profound corruption that has rotted away the core of the Environmental Protection Agency. Special interests, dirty money and corrupt politicians have changed the mission of the EPA from being one of protecting public and environmental health to being one of protecting the profits of chemical manufacturers and polluters. Strangely, the head of the EPA did not show up for the hearing, despite requests that he be present to answer questions regarding the obvious criminal activity going on in his agency. Again, there was a very strange silence in that room, filled with senators and media but lacking any testimony from the head of the EPA.

Here in California, we have the same silence ringing in our ears. With the threat of a biochemical assault hanging over the heads of 7 millions citizens, people are demanding answers to their questions and are being met with silence.

I want to know why U.S. Congressman Sam Farr's direct demand that USDA Secretary, Ed Schafer, and Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs, Bruce Knight, explain to him how the LBAM was classified as a class A pest in the first place has still not received a reply over a month later.

I want to know why Major Tim Wilcox, whose baby nearly died after being forced by the CDFA to inhale Checkmate Pesticide in 2007, has never received the slightest acknowledgment from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to whom he wrote, pleading for help.

I want to know why neither Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Senator Carol Migden and Congresswoman Barbara Lee's letters to the USDA and other officials have received no reply.

I want to know why the Monterey Bay Aquarium refused to let their neighbors speak to their staff regarding the dangers of spraying Monterey Bay, and why, even after hundreds of sea birds died from Checkmate spray, the aquarium has maintained a mysterious silence about the poisoning.

I want to know why not one of the 43 Californian Audubon Society chapters I've contacted cares that birds have been and will be killed by blanket aerial spraying of California. I want to know why I have not received a single concerned reply.

What can you add to my list?

The policy of silence in California is deadly. Hundreds of families have already been sickened, untold wildlife has died, and our air and water has been polluted with biochemicals and microscopic plastic which causes human fatality. Again and again, our demands for reasonable answers, for rational explanations as to the logic behind this assault on California are met with, at best, lies and at worst, utter silence.

It would appear that what they are experiencing in Washington D.C., with a president who can order someone to defy congress and a host of agencies that are sweltering in sickly corruption, is happening across the United States.

Let it be remembered that when the Ford Pinto was put out on the market, the manufacturers knew that a certain percentage of purchasers would die because of a malfunction in the car's construction. But, Ford did the math. And, they realized that the total they would have to pay out in lawsuits was less than the total profits they would make before the car was recalled. So, they made a choice. The innocent people who would die were expendable, because a good margin of profit could still be accrued by releasing the car.

And, isn't this what we are seeing in our nation and state? For whatever dark and unspeakable reason, the profit being made off the illegal spraying of human beings makes sense to a few criminals. When infants like little Jack Wilcox go into respiratory failure, when infants die after 2, 3, 100, 450 exposures to this deadly pesticide, perhaps a few dollars will be paid out in lawsuits if anyone is committed enough to actually get a ruling against the perpetrators. The money that will have to go out, however, cannot compare to the billions coming in for CDFA and Stewart Resnick, manufacturer of this poison.

They need only bide their time. Keep mum. Spray the people. Scrape away their piles of money. Deal with some small consequences later. In this life, silence is serving them well.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Want to have real fun in the late hours,

Google "lbam conspiracy" 2200 hits.

LBAM of course is little-brown-apple-moth, the justification for Bush-Cheney aka Rove giving suterra of Bend a $500M non-bid contract.

Quimby said...

>> Help me folks sort this out, ..

I think you have it right Buster.

Anonymous said...

The republicans of Bend, who are the majority of Bend, will go down in history as the biggest assholes in US history.

***

California Sprays Its Citizens With Pesticide

Have you ever wondered what’s wrong with Californians? I think I found the answer. I’ve said for a couple of years now that there must be something in the water, because of all the weird news that comes out of California. I’ve wondered how a people who used to be free-living spirits, are suddenly so fragile and fearful. While this story is recent, you have wonder what they’ve done to the citizens of California in the past.

From NaturalNews.com:

Governor Schwarzenegger Backed Immoral Sex Pheromone Spraying Continues…

(NaturalNews) Sometimes bad dreams do come true. My bad dream was that the government issued quarantine, and forced everybody to be vaccinated for some fake disease. In my dream, I took my family, and fled to the hills to avoid being vaccinated.

Now, nine months later, this dream has come true. In an emergency, I relinquished my rental contract and moved my pregnant partner and three and a half year old daughter out of Santa Cruz, CA, to avoid being exposed to potentially deadly chemicals.

The chemicals, known by their trade names as Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F, have been sprayed via state owned airplanes in September and October in Monterey County California. These same aerial chemicals, despite their known health risks, were sprayed on two nights (11-8, 11-9) over the people of Santa Cruz County. The purpose of this spray is to control the mating/reproductive habits of the light brown apple moth (LBAM). The prevailing belief is that the mating habits of this moth needs to be controlled because the USDA believes that the moth might cause 100 million dollars of damage (Realize that this figure is not a fact, but based on a government guess).

The way Checkmate works is by attempting to disrupt the mating habits of the LBAM, by cluster bombing infested cities with billions of miniature time-release plastic microcapsules filled with synthetic moth sex pheromone. The pheromone gives of a scent, which supposedly confuses the male moths who then cannot find the female moths and instead will attempt to mate with other moth’s or anything that gives off that pheromone smell.

Government’s Pesticide Experiment Program

The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s own doctor acknowledges, in court documents, that the aerial application of this chemical has not been tested. Let me repeat this so you understand, chemicals are being sprayed on young children, nursing mother’s, people with asthma, lung problems, heart problems, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless and the chemically sensitive - and this chemical formulation has NEVER been tested on even a piece of dirt, let alone, humans. The newly designed Faroes Statement, the consensus of over 200 scientists, calls for a precautionary approach with respect to exposure of fetuses and children to environmental toxins. The consensus is that exposure of fetuses or children to chemicals can cause increased susceptibility to disease and disability later in life. In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has specific directives and codes that state that they should not experiment with pesticides on pregnant women, or infants. It is a fact, since this aerial pesticide has not been proven to control the moth’s mating habits and has not been proven safe to animals or humans, that this is an experiment.

In Monterey, approximately 100,000 residents were exposed to untested chemicals to control the mating habits of less than 750 moths. In Santa Cruz County, over 100,000 residents will be exposed between 11/06/07 – 11/09/07 to untested chemicals to control the mating habits of less than 9,000 moths. This is not a one time application, but will continue monthly beginning again in February, for nine months, and then repeated for up to a total of three years. Again, this program designed to eradicate the moth at best will only control the moth’s mating habits; it will not eliminate the moth. At worst, the program will be ineffective, cost tax payers millions of dollars, and cause permanent disability to residents and their pets. All this harm is over a little moth that has yet to cause even $1.00 of damage in California.
~snip~
Documented and Undocumented Pesticide Damage to Humans

While the moth may cause an estimated $100 million of crop damage, one cannot put a price tag on the damage that Checkmate’s chemicals cause to humans. In Monterey County, the first county in California to be sprayed with Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F, documented affidavits show that citizens got sick, ill or suffered life threatening reactions to the toxic spray. One infant in the City of Monterey nearly died from inhalation of the experimental biochemical, and now has permanent lung damage. Dozens of women in cities throughout the Monterey Peninsula are reporting problems with their reproductive systems after exposure to the pesticide, including: sudden, severe and irregular menstrual cycles, extreme cases of tender and swollen breasts, and the recurrence of menopause symptoms in older women. Other side effects of both Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F include: asthma and sudden breathing difficulties, chest pain, vomiting, lethargy, fatigue, and extreme mood swings. Some people have coughed up blood and have gotten bloody noses from Checkmate exposure.

If you are familiar with chemical exposure, then there is something to note which is of great alarm. If you have ever smelled paint, bleach, or something toxic like that, it takes a significant and potent amount of the chemical to make one sick. It is not typical that such small and minute amounts of chemicals can cause such severe damage as described above. The explanation for the severe side effects, is that the chemicals are in miniature balls of volatile plastic called microcapsules; thus chemicals can be introduced deeply into the body through swallowing or inhalation of the micro-sized particles. It is as if this “agricultural” product acted more like a drug on humans, than as a pesticide on moths.

Thousands of residents, including myself, have undocumented pesticide damage. I lived forty miles from the October-Monterey spray zone, and on the last day of aerial spraying, my entire family became ill. My three and a half year old daughter vomited. I had severe intestinal distress and could not eat for several days. I felt nervous and anxious, as if I had the caffeine equivalent of 10 cups of coffee. And for the first time in my life, I had for two days orange/red colored urine (I am now recovered). I did not link these symptoms to pesticide exposure until days later upon talking and hearing about dozens of other Santa Cruz residents who were experiencing the same or similar symptoms, on or near the same day. Their symptoms included severe vomiting and dark yellow/red colored urine. Recently I learned that this exposure may not have been from pesticide drift, but from a rogue plane releasing chemicals where it was not supposed to. Witnesses have recently linked the red color to the Checkmate formulations, seeing small red droplets where the Checkmate has contacted metallic objects.

The questions I ask myself are: What type of chemical, in such small doses, causes such profound harm? Why does a chemical claimed to be harmless to humans by the EPA, the CDFA and Governor Schwarzenegger have a significant and severe effect on the female reproductive system?

Anonymous said...

>> Help me folks sort this out, ..

I think you have it right Buster.

*

Did I mess anybody, put anyone in the wrong box? Homer for a PUG is pretty fucking open minded.

BEBB (RDC) is a fucking realtor, a PUG, and a loser I can tell that about how he disses Sandy Garner the only good realtor in this city, that I will give business to.

I hate to call marge a PUG, but she is, but she does have a good heart.

Like I said, I was trying to explain why its important to get opinions from our different groups. We certainly have the full philosophical spectrum here.

HBM is the most confusing one, he wants people to think he's a pussy ( left-wing liberal bambist ), but in many respects he's a right-wing status quo fuckhead. I'm sure he's like Pelosi DEM-Ca, and Feinstein DEM-CA, I have a hard time listening to an elitist talk about the common man.

In almost every way HBM is exactly like BEBB, its always most easy for him to delete a topic, rather than have to think. You have to wonder why they even play this game?

Bruce thinks he's getting something done? Well he wanted name recognition, but what he got was face recognition, when he walks in a room at city-hall, it now goes silent. He should have put his fucking name on the ballot, that would have made him an equal, even if he lost.

I suspect in many ways Homer really is an INDY, he talks about being a PUG, but he's probably really a recovering PUG.

As a life member of the NRA I understand most of Marge's convictions, its good to see people with convictions. Most people in Bend, have none.

There's dunc our mayor, you really got to wonder why he wants to blog everyday and tell everything about his life? He loves to write. You all heard OPB interviewed him tuesday.

This AM BEBB said that the reason I write about Suterra for the past five days is I have an ax to grind, out of curiosity I drove by Suterra coming back from REI today, what an ugly building and lot, the place just looks sick and run down. I explained to BEBB why I'm writing about Suterra, and as soon as I explained it, he deleted the whole thread, what can I say, pure RDC.

Essentially Bend voted in majority for bush-cheney in 2000, but 2004, the Suterra-poisoning was being setup by bush-cheney-rove TEAM-PUG. In 2004 even MORE people in Bend by majority voted for Bush-Cheney, knowing that they were homocidal killers. What can you say, Bend was getting rich.

Being an NRA life-member I don't blame guns or bullets (rounds) on crime, I blame the criminal Certainly Suterra makes bullets no different than their neighbor Nosler. It was Calif that sprayed their own people, it was team Bush-Cheney that BEND LOVES that put together the project.

Suterra made the bullets, and Calif AG pilots were the guns, they were hired guns. Suterra is quite clear in their MSDS ( material safety sheets ) that their products are poison.

Still its like the continual war, in Iraq for instance Bush-Cheney love to kill people, and there is no difference between bay-area people and Iraqi people. Bend voted twice for more of the same.

I have all along called Obama "OR-BOMB-EO", cuz he has to prove he's tough, he may start a new war, BUSH already this week has started a new front in Syria.

Today the USA is going bankrupt, endless wars, the cost per kill is going up, the 'final solution' to a cheap way to terminate human life is paramount at this hour.

There is much known data now on the use of Suterra products in both male & female sterility. Today using their technology there are Pheromones that can influence elections 'bio-weapon light', delayed plague for denial, or just pure sterilization of entire region. Certainly cheaper to do it with smart-bio-weapons, than scorching the earth.

We can only hope that OBAMA pulls the plug on all the misery that BEND VOTE TWO TIMES in row for that fell upon Calif using Suterra bullets. We know the trigger-man was BUSH/CHENEY, and we known they were hired by Bend, Oregon.

Anonymous said...


Checkmate: Killing us softly with bioweapons?


From The Aspen Institute about Lynda Resnick and her husband Stewart Resnick:

"Lynda Resnick began her business career at the age of 19, when she founded a full-service advertising agency. Other successful ventures throughout her career include corporate management, marketing, product development, and most recently, writing. She and her husband Stewart are passionate about all things healthy and Resnick is behind the marketing success of brands such as POM Wonderful, Fiji Water and Teleflora."

"Passionate about all things healthy." Maybe the Resnicks should tell that to the hundreds of people from the Santa Cruz and Monterey areas that have signed affidavits stating that their product, Suterra Checkmate (Checkmate OLR-F and Checkmate LBAM-F) got them sick, many seriously, when they were sprayed against their wishes last year.

Even with these affidavits and massive public outcry, high-profile lawsuits and city resolutions demanding an end to the spraying, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Homeland Security, the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the Resnicks (Suterra LLC Bend, OR ) have decided to use Californians as guinea pigs for this untested, un-approved by EPA, biochemical to see if it will eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM).

Why?

According to the CDFA they have to spray because there is potentially millions of dollars in damage that might occur to state crops due to LBAM.

That's right, the state has declared a emergency and the right to spray Californians with a product that has carcinogenic, mutagenic and reproductively harmful ingredients (see Aerial Spraying for the Brown Apple Moth to Resume) based on a possibility that there MIGHT be damage to crops in the near future by this moth.

What this amounts to is that they want to preemptively take out a potential threat before it's established that it is a threat at all. Doesn't this scenario sound familiar? Weren't we told that we had to go into Iraq because we had to act preemptively to take out Saddam's WMD program before he unleashed a mushroom cloud on some American city? How is the LBAM spraying program any different?

One missing ingredient in the PR campaign is that we didn't have the dazzling pyrotechnic display of 9/11 to get our blood boiling for vengence. Maybe if the state promoted this innocuous little bug as "Mothra" like one paper factiously did, they could sell this campaign to a skeptical Californian public.

However, LBAM is no Mothra and even the CDFA acknowledges this, stating that so far LBAM has not done any damage to crops. This is significant because according to James Carey, professor of entomology at UC Davis the moth has likely been in California for decades.

So, why the urgent rush to spray an untested, un-approved pesticide on children, grandmothers and people with auto-immune and respiratory problems? What form of insanity could explain such irrational, immoral behaviour?

There are many theories out there as to why the rush to spray. The most commonly heard theory (one held by both sides of the issue) is that this is all about protecting the interests of state's multi-million dollar agro-business, which is also the official narrative as well. And there is some validity to this point as the LBAM threat is already hurting local agriculture due to import restrictions by Canada and Mexico on the LBAM. But, this just constitutes a threat to the economy by bureaucratic fiat based on irrational fears, not because of some real threat.

Another theory being bandied about is that this spraying is about cronyism and political favoritism. The Resnicks are the owners of Suterra, the company that manufacturers Checkmate, and are among the top 100 campaign contributors to Governor Schwarzenegger, having donated to his coffers an estimated $144,000. It is believed that Resnick will be getting something in the tune of $75,000,000 if the spray program goes through.

So, is the rush to spray just an example of Schwartzenegger giving political/economic favors to his friends? A quid pro quo of the most prosaic kind?

Perhaps, but maybe we should venture outside pandora' s box into unchartered territory, or maybe we should call it "terror"tory, as that is what the elite do -- create threats -- real and imagined -- trump up the fear (anti-spray activists say that state (company?) goons were coming to the meetings and threatening the audience with visions of massive food shortages should there be no spraying), and then reap the benefits after they provide the solutions. The old Hegelian dialectic at play and we are all pawns in their game. (Perhaps this is the real reason for the name "Checkmate".)

In the mindset of the elite any crackpot, criminal and psychopathic idea is fair game to contemplate and apply in their Machiavellian worldview, including exposing civilians to biological and chemical weapons, as can be demonstrated countless times in U.S. history (see Humans Used as Guinea Pigs By US Government and Military). Recently Salon.com exposed an Army-run bioweapons exercise in Dead or Alive? in which the Army tried to cover-up the fact that they were using a live bacteria, bacillus subtilis, on unwitting civilians.

So, is it out of the question to ponder if this spraying campaign could have a more sinister agenda to it? After all, the American eugenics movement was funded by major American foundations, foundations that today are major supporters of population control programs. Can we rule out this possibility? ("Here is a good summary of an evil "whitewashed" out of our history books Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection)

This brings us to the Resnicks and The Aspen Institute, to which both husband and wife are members. Other notables members include Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, Prince Bandar bin Abdul Aziz, and Brent Scowcroft, just to name a few of the many political movers and shakers in the organization. (see list)

It is significant that Brent Scowcroft is on the list as he is the author of the secret (now declassified) paper NSSM 200, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," which provided insight into U.S. government plans for population reduction internationally. He linked these plans to goals that have very little to do with alleviating human suffering, and everything to do with the maximization of profit.

And, who can forget ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote about the death of more than a half million Iraqi children due to U.S. sanctions: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." (60 Minutes, 5/12/96)

Worth it to whom, Madeline? Your New World Order overlords?

Besides having such unsavory membership, the Aspen Institute is also principally funded by Rockefeller and Carnegie foundation money (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Institute), which were two of the mayor funders in the eugenics movements in the U.S. and Nazi Germany, and today big supporters of population control programs.

So,this brings us back to that unsavory third hypothesis. Could the LBAM spray program just be a cover for some sinister eugenics or depopulation program? After all, why is the spraying slatted to happen in heavily populated urban areas? Cities to be sprayed this summer are San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, San Leandro, Tiberon, and other heavily-populated Bay Area communities -- communities that one would not in any stretch of the imagination be called agricultural lands (though one might call them unfriendly to our global overlords). Since these moths have a mobility range of 20 to 40 yards it is a patently absurd notion that they have to spray urban communities to protect agricultural crops.

Anti-spray activist and Santa Cruz resident, Rami Nagel, speculates on this theory as well. He writes:

"Apparently the CDFA or the USDA, or both, decided that the previous chemical formulas used, Checkmate LBAM-F and Checkmate OLR-F were not good enough, which really points to the fact that the past two aerial sprays in Monterey, and the one in Santa Cruz County, were a waste of time and money. Not to mention the tragedy of the many severe health reactions experienced by thousands of people from chemical exposure. It doesn't matter to those in charge at the CDFA, EPA, or USDA, if a new chemical is needed to be used, because the goal is not to stop the moth, the moth cannot be stopped, it can only be controlled. This is known. The goal may be to coat people with a toxic mesh of disease causing microcapsules.

The chemicals that were sprayed, and that are planned on being sprayed, have not undergone thorough safety evaluations. And they won't undergo such evaluations in a legitimate way, because if they did, they would prove only one thing - that these chemicals are potentially deadly.

The chemicals planned to be sprayed will no doubt be similar to the ones used in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in 2007. They are a plastic encapsulated microtechnology, a microscopic plastic dust. The reported microcapsule size of the aerial mating disrupter is as small as 10 microns and averages 25-35 microns in size for an undeployed moth spray. For comparison, a human hair is approximately 70 microns in thickness. The size of these chemical containing plastic balls comes suspiciously close to micro-sized particles that are used to evade the body's defensive systems for biological weapons, those are reported to be 3-4 microns in size. Miniature particles between 2.5-10 microns in size, especially from pesticides, are known to cause both short term and long term health effects, including decreased overall life span."

-- Plan To Spray Toxic Biological Chemicals Over San Francisco Announced



Okay, so maybe Rumi and this author might be a little paranoid, but why shouldn't we speculate on the motives of this program? After all there is a history in this country of secret biological warfare programs carried out on unsuspecting Americans.

It's unpalatable, but plausible.

But, even if we choose to less conspiratorial but conventional in our thinking all we have to do is look at the stupid and criminal spraying of DDT, Agent Orange and Malathion to know that these spray campaigns can have disastrous results.

There is also the question of the legality and the the will of the people being subverted. To quote Rami Nagel:

"This aerial spraying violates several state, federal and international laws. It violates the right to personal safety given by the California State Constitution, the very document that creates the California government. It violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with chemical sensitivities and other disabilities from discrimination. It violates the Federal constitutional right to personal liberty. It violates the EPA’s laws against spraying pesticides on people. It violates human rights laws that say that human experimentation without consent is unethical and immoral. It violates criminal laws that claim it is a crime to poison children, or anyone else. It violates pollution laws to spray a toxic substance over plants, animals, and waterways. It violates laws against organized crime and it violates the very tenants of our democracy; a system of government designed to represent the people, not to poison the people to represent private agri-business interests."

--- Governor Schwarzenegger Backs Aerial Biochemical Spraying That Harms Children



What this spraying program constitutes is a de facto biological weapons program against the people of California. And, if they can get away with it here you can bet it will be open warfare on the rest of the country. It is imperative that Californians stop it now.



Here are some thing you can do to stop the spraying.

Ask your congressmember to support A.B. 2892 Voter Consent by Assemblymember Sandre Swanson (Oakland, Alameda, Piedmont). A.B. 2892 would require the secretary of Food and Agriculture to obtain the consent of two-thirds of the registered voters of the cities and counties affected by applications of pesticide if the pest eradication zone includes any urban areas.

You can also boycott all products from Resnick-owned companies. Products include Paramount Agribusiness, POM Wonderful, Teleflora, FIJI Water, as well as the Franklin Mint.

And, definitely call Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's office (ask to leave a message for his wife, Maria Schriver, too) to demand an end to the spraying: 916-445-2841 (press #1m #5, #0)

For more information and to get involved, see:

"True Accounts of the LBAM Aerial Spraying"



www.veganreader.com
www.stopthespray.org
www.dontspraycalifornia.org
www.lbamspray.com
www.cassonline.org
Posted by redpill8 at 10:10 AM
Labels: Biowarfare, chemical warfare, LBAM, light brown apple moth
6 comments:

Mim said...

Thank you so much for blogging about this. Every single voice is so important in this crisis.

This is my first visit to your blog, so I'm not sure if you live in California or not, but if not, I want to share exactly how frightened people are here. People are selling their homes and fleeing, or intending to flee if we can't halt the spray.

Evil plots aside (and I'd be the last one to rule out the evil plot idea based on our governments actions surrounding the nuclear testing in Utah in the 50s and 60s)what we are looking at is a government that has become so arrogant, it is quite willing to expose 7 million residents to carcinogens encapsulated in particulate plastic pollution, while lying about it being safe to do so, in order to avoid trade penalties.

If they simply reclassified the moth, correctly, as a negligible bug, Californians could feel like we'd finally woken up from this nightmare.

I have people coming to my blog and telling me just how sick they've been made from the 2007 spraying and how their whole lives have been turned upside down by these illegal, unconstitutional actions of CDFA.

We want every person who has authored this assault on us to be fired and held responsible for violating the California constitution. Anyone who would dream up a plan to pour pesticides on children is a seriously deranged individual and needs to be viewed as a public menace.

Anonymous said...

Almost all the bail-out will be going to exec perks, who would have guessed, now we know why the emergency prior to the election.

***

The Wall Street Journal

Oct. 31, 2008

Financial giants getting federal cash owe over $40 billion to executives for past years' pay and pensions as of the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

Anonymous said...

County wide all types of residential sales as of right now stand at 197 sold @257k median.
I'd would guess the NOD's will out do the sales again.

Anonymous said...

One Bend day care closing, others faltering
By Sheila G. Miller / The Bulletin
Published: October 31. 2008 4:00AM PST

Feeling the pinch of the troubled economy, a longtime Bend day care center is closing its doors. And with more parents losing their jobs or struggling to pay the bills on reduced salaries and hours, other area day care centers are facing similar challenges.

Fox Hollow Child Care Center has been operating in Bend since 1976. Today, it shuts its doors for good. It announced the closure two weeks ago, leaving some parents fumbling for other accommodations.

“We had to scramble to find someplace else,” parent Jay Foust said. “It’s sad, number one, because they’ve got a great staff, and my son thrived here.”

Foust, 48, found his 3-year-old son, Kenyan, another day care center. But he’s worried about the transition. “Little kids adapt, but I hate to keep making changes,” he said. “The good thing is some of the kids in his class are from the same day care, so he’ll have a familiar face.”

Angie Davis, Fox Hollow’s director, said the closure comes from a variety of factors.

The center, which has capacity for 74 children, has watched its enrollment shrink from 72 in January to fewer than 45 today.

It had been operating on an extended credit line, Davis said, which was recently reduced. And the center, which depended on the revenue from business partner Parkway Bingo, has struggled as the bingo hall’s revenue has dropped. Finally, Davis said, the day care and bingo hall had seen several management changes that left the day care center reeling.

But low enrollment made an immediate impact.

“We’ve lost over a dozen kids just in the last 2½ months due to layoffs or parents who are moving out of town and relocating,” Davis said. “We’ve lost parents who have to cut budgets because they’ve had to take pay cuts.”

And Davis said to make ends meet it seems like more parents are providing in-home child care, which can operate more cheaply because of different regulations, or are operating under the table.

“We can’t compete with that,” she said.

The day care center, which charges tuition ranging from $150 per month for before- and after-school care to $595 for full-day care for toddlers, has been placing kids at other facilities around the area, including Kid Works, Small Wonders and Bright Stars. Others will go to after-school programs at the Boys and Girls Club or to Kids Inc.

“It’s been very sad,” Davis said. “We have families who have been with us for an extended period of time. ... We’ve established a family.”

In addition, many of the employees at Fox Hollow have children attending day care at the facility.

“We’ve not only lost our jobs, but we’ve lost our day care as well,” Davis said.

Facing challenges

Over at Small Wonders Learning Center on the southeast side of Bend, Director Heather Patterson said the economy is hurting her business, too.

“We are fighting the battle every day, even in a good economy, to financially provide quality care for children,” she said. “Because the economy is changing, that battle is becoming harder for us to fight on a day-to-day basis.”

Small Wonders has lost 10 children so far because their parents have been laid off and they no longer require, or can’t afford, day care. The center, which can provide service for 69 children, currently only has 45 children enrolled. Still, Patterson said, the day care center is hanging on.

“We’re just cutting costs in every way we can while meeting licensing regulations, and we are trying to make community connections” like finding businesses to partner with, she said.

The challenge for day care centers, Patterson and Davis said, is that state regulations require the centers to maintain ratios of adults to children. For example, the ratio for infants is four for every one adult. While most businesses would cut salaried positions, day cares can’t do that without also reducing the number of children they serve.

To stay open, Patterson said, Small Wonders will need to increase its enrollment, and if people continue to lose their jobs, that will be a challenge.

But other facilities, while they’re struggling, have actually seen an increase in their numbers. This week, Rainbow Express Preschool in northeast Bend enrolled four new charges.

Principal Mary Dennis said she’d seen a small influx of students this year, perhaps because of other day cares shutting their doors. Overall, it has enrolled seven more children this year. “It’s not a lot, but I’m thankful for seven more,” she said. “But I budgeted for more. I was thinking I’ve have more in some areas.”

The center cares for 184 children, including 130 who are enrolled in the preschool.

“For right now, we seem to be holding OK,” she said. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure how. A lot of our families worked in construction, and everybody’s been hit so hard. But, so far, we’re holding on and making it work.”

Still, Dennis is prepared for the worst. “It might get harder,” she said. “Everybody’s just trying to hang on.”

Back at Fox Hollow on Thursday, Daniel Alm, 24, worried about his 3-year-old son, Vedder.

“The hardest part is there’s no other school like this,” he said. “We are kind of running out of options.”

Lauren Dake contributed to this story.

Sheila G. Miller can be reached at 541-617-7831 or at smiller@bendbulletin.com.

Anonymous said...

>>“We’ve not only lost our jobs, but we’ve lost our day care as well,” Davis said.

Isn't that just one problem?

She can watch her kid until she finds another job.

Anonymous said...

>>“We’ve not only lost our jobs, but we’ve lost our day care as well,” Davis said.

Isn't that just one problem?

She can watch her kid until she finds another J-O-B.

*

JUST FUCKING LEAVE, DOESN'T ANYONE SEE THE FUCKING PICTURE???

Anonymous said...

Modern day care is much like 'white-bread', moderns white-trash worker enjoying the high-tech nanny,

Now all of a sudden, living near mom&dad, or grand-pa looks real fucking good, Sheet 20+ years ago I was paying $400/mo per child for my employees day-care, now $600/mo, you throw that on some breeder divorced with four kids, and today is $2400/mo just for day-care.

Well these BIG fucking biz day-cares had to go, small home will flourish, better yet move home with the parents, and have them watch the kids for free, and build a better town from where you came from.

BEND IS FUCKED.

Anonymous said...

"Bend is a town, of non-real people, with non-real children, and non-real jobs"

- mike hollern, last year per BULL

***

Well everything that folks are pasting about homeless, kids, jobs, ... was all predicted by mikey, only an artificial economy predicated on credit-cards & HELOC could sustain 2004, and now its gone forever.

It ain't coming back, LEAVE while you can.

Anonymous said...

The center, which has capacity for 74 children, has watched its enrollment shrink from 72 in January to fewer than 45 today.

It had been operating on an extended credit line, Davis said, which was recently reduced.

*

Shit isn't even a 50% drop in revenue, IF YOU CAN'T stick it out in the coming economy with a 90% drop, then you don't belong in Bend.

Sheeesh, 70 to 50, that's $42k/mo to $30k/mo, and they closed, ... something is fucking rotten, cut-backs, ... make the teachers clean, shit my wife worked day pre-school back in the 60's as a teacher, and they had them cleaning the rooms, she always bitched that she felt more like a janitor than a teacher.

This a good thing, it gets all the "FOR-PROFIT" people out of the pre-school babysitting racket.

Besides a fucking pre-school ( daycare ) with 70, jeebus fucking xmas thats a fucking factory.

The issue here is these MEGA CORP babysitters, came setup shop for ASS-BEND(aspen) and now its 100% k-mart, and they're bailing.

Who would have guessed??

If you can't make $50k on baby-sitting in Bend, I'm out of here.

Anonymous said...

If you can't make $50k on baby-sitting in Bend, I'm out of here.

*

I meant $50k/MONTH.

Anonymous said...

HOLLERN's QUOTE is so fucking RIGHT-ON,

In BEND you have phony jobs, PR&MARKETING et-al,... non-real jobs

Factorys raising the children,... non-real children


Phony tits, cocks, cocaine all over town, heloc credit cards, ... non-real people

It's over,

Anonymous said...

Modern day care is much like 'white-bread', moderns white-trash worker enjoying the high-tech nanny,

*

Nobody understood what I meant by 'cargo-cult' ( see wiki ), so I guess I have to say what I mean by white-bread,

Once upon a time there was highly coveted white wheat,only available to be baked as bread for kings!!!

Then at the turn of the century some entrepreneur figured out how to bleach bread, so that the common man ( white trash ) could also eat white bread.

I think day care is the same thing, women used to stay home in USA, then WWII changed that, but they had family to help out.

Today, in places like BEND, everyone works so they can drive big cars, and payoff debt for the breast implant. Of course the kids get sent to a factory, rich have always had nanny's, but no white-trash didn't do that CORP-USA sold white-trash the baby-sitting-factory,

The rest is history.

Like cable TV, and modern medicine, day-care (CORP DAY CARE) is just another luxury that ma&pa USA can no longer afford.

Anonymous said...

Hot off the press! Foreclosure scourge spreads into Oregon !!!!!!!!

October 30, 2008 21:55PM

The Oregonian

Real estate broker Roger Erickson is trying to sell a foreclosed home on Southeast Portland's Johnston Drive that has been stripped of the oven, microwave and range vent. Erickson, whose business selling foreclosed homes is booming, said about one of every 25 homes he sees has been stripped or vandalized. By his count, this foreclosed home is missing 29 door knobs, 28 light fixtures, 10 floor registers, eight faucets or shower heads and one air conditioner.

The first sign of trouble at the home on Portland's Southeast Johnston Drive snakes out of the siding at the front door: a twisted electrical wire that used to power the doorbell.

Inside, the kitchen faucet is now just a hole in the sink. The fridge, dishwasher and cabinet hardware? Gone. Gone. Gone.

The stone-front house in a well-kempt subdivision sold for $523,000 at the peak of the housing boom. Now, it sits vacant, stripped and mired in a nasty foreclosure.

The house provides an extreme example of what Oregon homeowners, banks and neighbors face in a rising tide of foreclosures.

Foreclosures have spread through California, Florida and other states for more than a year. But the national housing decline is just now moving to its next ugly phase in Oregon: A glut of unsold houses, falling prices and vacant foreclosed homes that drive down values for neighboring homes.

More than 2,800 homeowners defaulted on their mortgage in Clark, Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties in the third quarter of 2008, according to county records. That's more than 30 defaults a day. In the once fast-growing Deschutes County, 520 people defaulted, up from a low of 51 in the second quarter of 2006.

Across the five counties, defaults were up 107 percent from the same quarter in 2007.

The number of new defaults was still less than 1 percent of all housing units in the counties. But by comparison, Oregon's foreclosures in this downturn are likely to rise to the highest levels since the 1980s recession.

"It's coming out of the woodwork," said Brenda Hereth, a principal broker at Coldwell Banker Barbara Sue Seal Properties in Beaverton. "We're really at the beginning of it."

Oregon's mortgage delinquencies fell to tiny numbers in the 2004-2006 housing boom. Homeowners were flush with equity, thanks to ever-rising prices. Anyone who lost a job or charged too much on their credit card could sell or refinance to escape trouble.

That's not the case this year. Job losses pile up and prices slide. People who maxed out their mortgage debt with no down payment loans or home equity lines of credit have dwindling options. A growing number of them find they owe more than their house is worth.

Hereth, who only sells homes foreclosed by banks, saw her sales peak during the last recession at 112 in 2004. This year, she expects to close 150 deals. Every home she's listing was sold or refinanced in the last 2 1/2 years.

"Everybody who bought a house in the last two years probably overpaid," she said.

Rate troubles
The couple who owned the Johnston Drive home bought it from the builder in September 2006, about the worst time possible.

The month before, the region ended 22 straight months of double-digit price growth.

To buy the five-bedroom home, the couple got a $418,000 adjustable-rate mortgage from Countrywide with a minimum monthly payment of $1,384 to start. The mortgage offered payments that covered no principal and only part of the interest. If they took that option, the couple could have seen their principal grow each month. The couple also got a $52,300 home equity line of credit from Countrywide the same day they bought the home, Multnomah County records show.

The couple stopped paying the mortgage in December 2007 and defaulted in April, owing $436,151, according to county records.

Real estate broker Roger Erickson of 20/20 Properties Inc. in Gresham is selling the home for the lender. He doesn't know for sure who stripped the home but has his suspicions.

Celene Cross, who lives across the street, woke one morning to find the lights that bookended the garage gone. She later saw the home's then-residents pulling trees out of the front yard with ropes.

On a tour this week, Erickson showed off the upstairs and flipped a light switch. The room stayed dark. He looked up to the ceiling to see only electrical wires.

"Oh, no light," he said, laughing. "I chuckle about this stuff but it's not funny. It's fairly common and it costs the banks a lot of money."

By Erickson's count, the house is missing 29 door knobs, 28 light fixtures, 10 floor registers, eight faucets or shower heads and one air conditioner.

"This is what we call a clean strip job," Erickson said. "They didn't beat in the doors. They didn't put holes in the Sheetrock. They just took things they thought had value."

Erickson estimated $20,000 in damage. He's listing it for $369,900. That's 29 percent less than the previous owners paid, because of the damage and declining home prices.

Cross, the neighbor, doesn't fret about the foreclosure across the street or another on the next street up. She motioned to the yard across the street and said, "We just thought if it got too overgrown we would just go over and mow it.

"You know, the whole country is dealing with this."

In fact, so is Cross.

The 41-year-old speech pathologist and her husband, an anesthesiologist, moved to Portland from a town near Chico, Calif., last year. They bought their California home in 2005. "A really bad time," she said.

Prices have since fallen, and their house is worth less. "About $100,0000," she said.

Cross said they got an offer last November but needed their lender's OK because the price was less than they owed -- a deal known as a short sale. The bank still hasn't decided whether to accept the offer, Cross said.

"They stopped sending us any notices on payments," Cross said. "Not sure why they won't approve the short sale. But not sure why they won't foreclose on the house."

Anonymous said...

I am definetly an Indy. I vote both sides when I feel strongly about a candidate. Sorry I can't fit into any molds.

Anonymous said...

Match Grade Rifle Ammunition
Our match grade rifle ammuntion is made one at a time on either single stage ... match grade bullets such as Sierra, Hornady or Nosler in our match ammo.

* LBAM Manufacturing

Riding me bike past Suterra yesterday, made me think of that hood, in between Suterra is MicroSemi ( used to be APT ), I have written much about APT over the last 2+ years, never a mention about NOSLER. Nosler is just north of Suterra.

Nosler makes bullets, bullets are dim little things surrounded in brass, with gun-powder. Bullets are typically copper coated lead. Nosler makes the best bullets in the world. Professional military snipers use the Best, and they demand 'match grade rifle bullets'.

My point is that BEND has always been a military weapons manufacturer. Suterra isn't the first.

Suterra's parent Bend Research owned by Harry Lonsdale was a real environmentalist.

Suterra today makes bio-bullets, some contain synthetic Pheromones, but they can be designed to contain anything biologic agent you wish. Suterra in their MSDS (federal safety disclosure) clearly state they're products are poison, and to be handled as such.

Suttera just makes the bio-bullets, they're NOT bad, anymore that NOSLER is bad.

It was BUSH-CHENEY that ordered the suterra-bullets to be shot from planes on the people of california. It was the people of BEND-OREGON that voted in a majority for BUSH-CHENEY in 2000 and 2004.

The evil in California for allowing the spraying, the evil is in BEND-OREGON for voting for BUSH-CHENEY.

Then their is Suterra's owner a complex man, but who has a wife (Lynda Resnick) who is a marketing genius. Green, natural, non-toxic; How could such a disconnect happen between PR&MARKETING and MSDS disclosure??

Resnick convinced Schwarznegger to spray the cali's, and got scharznegger to sign off on a $500M non-bid purchase of Suterra 'Checkmate', was Suterra of BEND wrong in not refusing the order, in todays economy???

Post dot-com crash, and into post 2000, everything had gone military, today its virtually impossible to do business, and not get a majority of your orders from an agency of Homeland Security aka Bush-Cheney.

No ax to grind on Suterra or Nosler, they both make interesting products, in fact Nosler to will tell you that bullets when used in their intended method will hurt you. When the bullets leave the factory, they can't control the usage.

When Suterra chemicals leave the factory they can't control the usage. The EVIL of the CALI spraying of Suterra-Checkmate is because of Bush&Cheney. The people of Bend-OREGON voted in majority for BUSH-CHENEY both terms.

Bio-Weapons, or match-grade precision military sniper bullets, BEND-OREGON has always been a military weapons manufacturer.

Nosler makes some the best bullets in the world, Suterra is the US leader in micro-encapsulated Pheromone delivery systems. Both good companys, and both clearly tell their customers that their products are dangerous.

tim said...

"In the once fast-growing Deschutes County, 520 people defaulted, up from a low of 51 in the second quarter of 2006."

So that's what we are now. "once fast-growing."

It's all over for us now. The bloom and the rose are no longer associated with each other.

Quimby said...

Bend is different, Bend is Exceptional! We'll make it through this unscathed because people WANT to live here.

Well, true, people want to live here, the reality is that they can't.

tim said...

>>Well, true, people want to live here...

People also want to be astronauts on the space shuttle. People want to eat donuts without getting fat. People want to have Green Lantern's ring.

Quimby said...

Its sorta grave dancing at this point but I remember a time when folks thought us crazy!

I recently visited my Dr. and he said that they are slammed with people suffering from insomnia, depression, despondency etc in the past few months. It actually made me sad because that shit is real, not just blogger talk.

Anonymous said...

Money problems affect health. And money problems affect marriages. And marriage problems affect health. Bad scene in Bend.

What I'm worried about more than suicides are murders.

Quimby said...

>> I think day care is the same thing, women used to stay home in USA, then WWII changed that, but they had family to help out.

>> Today, in places like BEND, everyone works so they can drive big cars, and payoff debt for the breast implant. Of course the kids get sent to a factory, rich have always had nanny's, but no white-trash didn't do that CORP-USA sold white-trash the baby-sitting-factory,

Gospel truth Buster.

All to enable the mercantilist economy...two incomes for double the consumption!

Live within your means people.

I asked my brother in-law for some advice before I got married and he said "Live off of one income". Its been the smartest advice I've received in all my days.

Bewert said...

I was at the Westside Bakery this morning, and the woman in front of me first didn't have enough cash, then her card was declined and she had to pull out another one. For a sale under $10. By somebody who looked to be doing all right.

The City is in dire shape, too. I'll post the BULL article next.

Bend sees reserve fund shrink as it tries to close revenue gap

After a rocky year that included dramatic slowdowns in development fees and three rounds of budget cuts, the city of Bend’s key reserve funds have dwindled considerably — a financial picture officials say is the result of more than just the recent building slump.

According to its financial policies, the city aims to keep enough money in the general fund reserve and most other reserve, or savings, accounts to keep operations running for at least two months in the event of an emergency.

But by September, when the city cut 11 jobs and froze 19 open positions after development fees came in at about half of projected levels, almost all of the reserve levels had dropped much lower.

The reason: As the bad news about revenues rolled in, the city attempted to patch some of the gaps by tapping reserves or transferring money out of the general fund, which is used primarily to finance public safety services and road maintenance.

And after years of growth and new projects — including Juniper Ridge, Bend 2030 and the expanded Bend Area Transit service — officials say there’s little room left outside of the reserves to help out in the event of a prolonged economic slowdown or other emergency.

“The one-time expenditures definitely reduced the reserves, and the ongoing commitments have put a burden on the general fund that it might not be able to carry,” said Finance Director Sonia Andrews.

The situation

Although the city has reduced its staff by more than 17 percent this year, mostly in the development-related departments, and trimmed back on other expenses across the board, officials have said the financial situation hasn’t reached crisis level.

But they’re not comfortable with how big a hit the city’s savings have taken in the recent past. At the end of the 2006-07 fiscal year, the general fund had about $8.2 million in reserves. Today, the city is projecting it will end the current fiscal year with about $5 million, or enough for just under two months of operations. Andrews said she wants that fund to have at least $7.5 million.

But other funds have seen even bigger drops. Three years ago, the city had $4.8 million in its building reserve. Now, officials expect to end the year with about $223,000, enough for about three weeks of work.

And since the economic slowdown hit Central Oregon, four other major reserve funds — street operations, planning, engineering, and fire and emergency medical services — have also slipped below the two-month reserve level.

Andrews said some of those funds, like fire and EMS, can survive on less than the two-month minimum because they have other funding sources or are less likely to be faced with an emergency situation. But others, said City Manager Eric King, have much less wiggle room.

“With some (funds) we need a lot more — with volatile funding in planning and engineering, it should be six months to a year,” he said.

Getting back to those levels, however, won’t be an easy task. Mayor Bruce Abernethy said the city has cut as deep as it can into its reserves.

“Right now, we don’t have reserves to go into,” he said. “We literally are as low as we are willing to go, and therefore if the economy doesn’t pick up, and if we don’t find other ways of making the budget balance, there are going to have to be more cuts, because we can’t dip into the reserves anymore.”

How it happened

In the past several months, the City Council has largely been playing catch-up with the budget, trying to keep services running despite bringing in less money in the development departments. In January, the council voted unanimously to move $1.5 million from the general fund to boost planning and engineering services. More recently, the council agreed to increase general fund support for long-range planning to $990,000 and put another $865,000 toward engineering.

The financial ups and downs of the last year, King said, have created the kind of emergency that reserves are designed for.

“Over the last year, year and a half, the city, like other public agencies, has been dipping into reserves,” he said. “That’s what they’re there for — the economy took a sharp turn. It would be one thing if it was slowly declining, but it fell off a cliff starting last summer, and we needed that cushion of reserves.”

But Andrews said the declining numbers are also representative of events with deeper roots. Over the past five years, as the city went through a major growth spurt, it started and expanded dozens of new programs, from the 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development to a fixed-route bus service, accessibility improvements and the Bend 2030 visioning project.

Many of those expenses came without dedicated funding sources, so the City Council tapped the general fund. Andrews said some, including $5 million the city spent to purchase the former Bulletin site in 2005 with the goal of building a new City Hall there, were loans that were eventually paid back. But many of those expenses came with long-term bills; because the city hasn’t been able to sell the Bulletin property, it’s been paying about $162,000 in interest on it each year out of the general fund.

Former Councilor Dave Malkin, who served from 2002 to 2006, said he was often uncomfortable with spending large amounts of money from the general fund on items like the Bulletin site, Juniper Ridge or the Bend 2030 initiative, on which the city spent more than $300,000 between 2005 and 2007.

“Ignoring sound, established, budgeting guidelines was one thing,” he said. “And the other thing that was repeatedly disappointing to me was the expenditure of general fund dollars on so many things that had nothing to do with running the city properly.”

Much of that spending, however, happened at a time when the city’s reserves were above the baseline two-month limits and rapidly growing, rather than shrinking in size.

Looking back, Abernethy, who has served on the council since 2000, said some spending decisions, like the purchase of the Bulletin site, didn’t bring the best results. But he said the council has generally been responsible in its decisions and simply couldn’t have predicted the current economic situation.

“There are some ‘pet projects’ of some of the counselors that have been put forward, but from a magnitude, a scale perspective, that’s not what caused the problem,” he said.

What’s next

These days, officials said they’re working harder to keep the council up to date about the city’s financial status with quarterly reports and forecasts that track how spending could end up cutting into city savings.

“In the past, the finance department didn’t have an opportunity to comment on financial implications to the council, and now we do,” Andrews said.

In January, city staff and the council will meet for a full-day session to reevaluate the city budget, and look ahead to what might be coming next. King and Andrews said building up the reserves will be a major goal but a tough challenge as the city tries to weather slow growth without having to make additional rounds of cuts.

But in the end, they said, the City Council is charged with a difficult task: making good financial decisions that help the city flourish in good times and bad.

“We strive to put strong policies and financial practices in place, but the city still requires fiscal discipline,” Andrews said.

tim said...

Two parents working is how America has seemed to be getting richer for the last 30 years.

In my opinion, it's a pretty unsatisfying way to afford big TVs and cars.

Anonymous said...

Quimby says:
"Live within your means people."

Yes, that's hard to disagree with, BUT ....

.... if we ALL save -- even those who don't absolutely have to -- due to fears about the economy, then there's a big fall in demand, and *lots* of businesses get hurt, sometimes NEEDLESSLY.

When industries get hurt, they lay people, that's MORE bad news, and the whole thing just feeds on itself.

If nobody but nobody buys a new car in the next 12 years, Michigan and Ohio are going to look like they did in 1936.

Keynes called this the 'paradox of thrift' -- saving is beneficial to us as individuals but on a whole it can be harmful, and ends up biting us all in the ass.

Some here will say "bring it on" -- let's go back to the hunting and gathering economy, but I hope it doesn't go to that.

SPEND, BABY, SPEND.

Anonymous said...

"nobody buys a new car in the next 12 years..."

Meant to say "12 months"

Anonymous said...

Some here will say "bring it on" -- let's go back to the hunting and gathering economy, but I hope it doesn't go to that.

SPEND, BABY, SPEND.

*

GW-BUSH day after 911, "GO SHOPPING"

Adolph Hitler "SPEND"

No folks, time to tighten the belt, unless you want to be Hitler-Bush Fodder.

In order for most people to spend, they have to go into more debt, the last thing this city needs, or most people.

The mercantile house of cards is about to fall.

"BRING IT ON" GW-BUSH said this also, and it has bankrupted our country.

The PUGS despise America, and love poverty, and debt.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, it's a pretty unsatisfying way to afford big TVs and cars.

*

No Big tits, Big Dicks, and Big Cigars.

It's called Pug-Onomics.

Go spend, aka go into debt, enlarge your organs, ... have the biggest dick at the homeless camp, or for Bend women see whose rack hangs the farthest below the belt line.

Anonymous said...

I was at the Westside Bakery this morning, and the woman in front of me first didn't have enough cash, then her card was declined and she had to pull out another one. For a sale under $10. By somebody who looked to be doing all right.

*

Bruce, same here, this AM I went to Newport Market and there was an elderly gal dressed to the hilt, and asked for $500 CASH. They told her they couldn't do it, and she asked for the manager. He came over and said there was a limit of $200 per card, and then she handed him three cards and said $200 from these two, and $100 from this one.

Strange. I mean I once and awhile get an extra $20 or even a big $40 over the price of my items.

The teller was flipping out, and they had to take out cash of all the drawers down the line. After the old gal left my teller was grumbling that she had no more cash for change.

It made be think their might be something in the air or maybe its getting harder to get cash for cards at the bank??????

Anonymous said...

“The one-time expenditures definitely reduced the reserves, and the ongoing commitments have put a burden on the general fund that it might not be able to carry,” said Finance Director Sonia Andrews.

*

Bruce somebody should have told them?

Nobody knew, everybody thought that Bend had unlimited money.

Bruce write some more information about the 'Bulletin Site' purchase.

Somebody should have told Sonia that Bend wasn't rich.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 803   Newer› Newest»