So Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward and leaders of the militant group holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge met on a lonely desert crossroads yesterday. Harney said he’d guarantee safe passage to the state lines if Ammon Bundy and his coterie would leave. Bundy said the same old stuff about federal property.
Here’s a video of the meeting:
Gov. Kate Brown, by the way, is finally offering a forceful message about the occupation, five days or so after it began.
And the Washington Post reports that federal officials decided to move their employees out of the wildlife refuge days before the occupation began, because militants had begun “stalking some federal employees as they left work and leaving threatening messages on office phones.” Real cool, guys.
In case you somehow didn’t hear, Portland’s plans for a bike share system got a mammoth shot in the arm yesterday, when officials announced Nike has agreed to pour $10 million into the program over the next five years. “Biketown” is coming in July.
Joe Walsh, an activist and incessant voice at Portland City Council meetings, recently convinced a federal judge to prohibit the city from keeping boisterous council attendees out of city hall for months at a time (Walsh had been issued several weeks-long exclusions the judge agreed were unconstitutional). City doesn’t like it, and council will vote on an appeal next week.
Zoo fun! The elephants have been giving zoo staff asymptomatic TB, apparently. You can get so much from your experiences with animals at the Oregon Zoo!
Mayor Charlie Hales will plop a modified 53-foot shipping container beneath the west end of the Steel Bridge next week—the first of two day storage sites the city’s planning for the homeless. The other planned site: North Portland organized camp Hazelnut Grove.
Prominent Portland businessman Roy Jay is being investigated by the state, which seems to think money from some of Jay’s nonprofits—for instance, one that helps felons burnish their records—might have found its way into his pockets.
Tampon tax debate! California is the latest state considering whether feminine hygiene products should be exempt from sales tax, as advocates argue women are being unduly being penalized for a bodily necessity.
One thing President Obama can do—apart from executive orders—to try and force progress on the gun control debate? Threaten to withhold his support during the upcoming election year. Problem is: The people who’d benefit from Obama’s support already support his points, and the Democrats who don’t probably don’t want his backing.
Just great. At least 17 of the men implicated in a violent series of assaults and sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve are among a swelling new population seeking asylum in the country. You can imagine how that’s playing out, I’m sure.
Hey! Nice Friday on the way.
Look, I don’t know how long Karaoke Friday can possibly last, but I know that as long as we have fine songs like this to sing, well, we better sing ’em.
Are we supposed to say that as “bikey town” or “bike town”?
I think the latter, but the former is going to be unavoidable.
The Germans are still dealing with the effects of all the Turkish immigration from the 60’s, when their ‘economic miracle’ gave them more jobs than workers, lower-end jobs.
The children of those workers in Germany didn’t have the right to vote, for example (could this have changed since?)
So, yeah, throwing such a huge percentage of of fresh immigrants into the mix of todays Germany maybe wasn’t the best of ideas that Merkel has had.