The laws of probability allow even a blind hen to occasionally find a kernel, and the right-wing Cascade Policy Institute to occasionally produce a valuable piece of research.

The institute has come out with a study titled “Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the Economic and Social Costs” that lays out some startling and disturbing facts about the heavy toll the state pays because as many as one-third of its high school seniors fail to graduate.

Among other things, the study found that:

• The unemployment rate of high school dropouts in Oregon is roughly twice that of high school graduates.
• On average, dropouts earn $10,000 less per year than high school graduates and far less than college graduates. Their lower earning power translates into about $173 million in lost state income tax revenue per year.
• More than 40% of high school dropouts receive Medicaid benefits, costing the state another $200 million a year.
• High school dropouts are twice as likely to be incarcerated as graduates. If the high school graduation rate was 100% the state’s prison population could be cut in half.

The study was authored by Emily House and released jointly by Cascade Policy Institute and the Foundation for Educational Choice, an organization originally established in 1996 by conservative economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose “to pro­mote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America.”

The report itself makes no specific suggestions for lowering the dropout rate, though considering the ideology of its sponsors it’s pretty easy to guess that if it did make any they’d involve “school choice” – i.e., vouchers.

But you don’t have to agree with the prescription to be alarmed by the diagnosis – and to understand that Oregon urgently needs to come up with a cure.

The scramble to succeed Ben Westlund as state treasurer is on, with four candidates entered in the competition by Tuesday’s filing deadline.

Bend’s Chris Telfer announced her interest almost as soon as the news of Westlund’s death broke. Telfer, a Republican state senator and the owner of an accounting firm, said in a press release that “if elected she will use the position to advocate for better fiscal management and financial oversight.”

“As a CPA, my priority is more sound and reasoned fiscal management of our state,” Telfer said. “Oregonians are looking for fiscal leadership right now and my background will ensure the Executive Branch has someone who can read a balance sheet, challenge the status quo mismanagement of taxpayer money, and chart a more sustainable financial course for Oregon.”

On the Democratic side, three people are vying for the nomination: State Sen. Rick Metsger of Welches; Jim Hill, who was state treasurer from 1993 until 2001; and Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler, whom Gov. Ted Kulongoski picked to replace Westlund until a new treasurer can be elected.

Oddly, although Telfer put a lot of emphasis on fiscal management in her announcement, the state treasurer doesn’t really have anything to do with fiscal policy, which involves government taxation and spending decisions.

How much revenue is raised by taxes and how it’s spent are, of course, determined by the governor and the legislature, and sometimes the voters. The treasurer’s office, as described on its website, basically functions as the state’s bookkeeper, keeping track of financial transactions, investments and debts.

It also was kind of strange that Telfer – who described Westlund as “a dear friend of mine” – appeared to be accusing him posthumously of doing a second-rate job by talking about “the status quo mismanagement of taxpayer money.” But let’s be charitable and assume that was just a poor choice of words.

A fire destroyed a home on Bend’s Westside Wednesday morning, and it took nine minutes for the fire trucks to arrive after the first 911 call came in.

Why? Because all the available firefighters were tied up handling a couple of other emergencies. Fire Chief Larry Huhn said his department is short on staff because it “hasn’t hired more firefighters to keep up with the growth in Bend,” according to the Bulletin story Thursday.

So the city isn’t able to adequately protect the area it already has, but it’s fighting the state tooth and nail to bring 9,000 more acres within the Urban Growth Boundary and open them up to development.

Brilliant, simply brilliant.

***

Speaking of city services: According to a survey out this week, most Bend residents are happy with their city fire and police departments, but – surprise, surprise! – they’re not willing to pay more taxes to support them.

The poll of 400 Bend residents found that a scant majority – 51% – said they definitely wouldn’t pay more taxes to keep police and fire services at present levels. The city paid $13,000 for the survey to help it decide whether to go ahead with an election to increase Bend’s tax base – presently a meager $2.80 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, the lowest for Oregon cities of comparable size.

It’s the same story in Bend as in other cities and states and at the federal level: People want government to do things for them, but they don’t want to pay for it.

Where’s the money supposed to come from? From the city’s fairy godmother, I guess.

***

The front page of Thursday’s Business section had a headline I never expected to see in The Bulletin: “Preparing for the inevitable bursting bubble.”

True, it wasn’t a locally written story (it came from the New York Times service) and it didn’t deal specifically with Bend’s real estate bubble – but it did acknowledge that (a) bubbles exist and (b) they inevitably burst. That’s progress, I guess.

***

As of Monday, KOHD News in Bend will no longer exist. The station is pulling the plug on local newscasts because of sagging ratings and ad revenue. Three reporters will remain in Bend – at least for now – to do short segments that will be folded into the main newscast out of the ABC affiliate in Eugene.

While I haven’t been a faithful watcher of KOHD News (or KTVZ either) I’m sorry to see it go. An area as big as Central Oregon can’t be adequately served by two local newscasts, much less by only one.  

Lewis & Clark Law School professor James Huffman announced his candidacy for Ron Wyden’s US Senate seat yesterday, and the ink wasn’t even dry on his press release before the Democrats pounced on him.

The Oregon Democratic Party set up a one-page website titled “Meet Jim Huffman, Right Wing FreedomWorks Ideologue and Candidate for US Senator,” which rips into him for statements he’s made over the years.

Huffman used to write opinion pieces regularly for The Oregonian as well as other articles for conservative publications, and no doubt that will provide an inexhaustible mine of material for opposition research.

For example, the “Meet Jim Huffman” site reports that “[w]hen the Wall Street and bank executives who caused the financial meltdown started taking billions in taxpayer-funded bonuses, Huffman defended them in an April 2009 Oregonian essay titled ‘Outraged at Those Bonuses? Get Over It.’”

In fairness to Huffman the headline most likely was written by a copy editor, not by him, and he didn’t use the phrase “get over it” in his opinion piece. But he did defend the bonuses and opposed any government efforts to rein in executive compensation.

The site claims that “Huffman believes the only way to reduce health care costs is to restrict patients’ access to care, stating in an Oregonian essay that the ‘rationing of health care is unavoidable.’”

That’s a bit of a distortion. Huffman was only making the pretty obvious point that no government health care system can possibly afford to “fund every beneficial medical procedure or drug for every American.”

According to the site, "Huffman signed a FreedomWorks petition [in 2005] supporting President Bush’s risky scheme to gamble Americans’ retirement money on Wall Street." Bush's proposal -- which went nowhere -- was to allow people to voluntarily put all or part of their Social Security contributions into stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

"If history is any guide, these assets will grow over time, providing higher benefits than can the current system," the petition said. Whoops.

The site also says Huffman “joined a 2007 FreedomWorks letter arguing that federal action to avert the mortgage meltdown was unnecessary because ‘market corrections have already begun.’” That’s essentially true.

Oregonian political blogger Jeff Mapes said Huffman “seemed a bit disheartened to find that the Democrats are already digging into his archives. ‘I've got such a vast amount of stuff I've written, much of which, frankly, I don't remember,’ he told me.  He said much of it was part of an ‘ongoing academic conversation’ about issues, and he said he's sure he's contradicted himself at times.  ‘It's easy to take something out of context,’ he concluded.”

Welcome to politics, Jim. As Mr. Dooley said, it ain’t beanbag.

When Abe Lincoln talked about “government of the people, by the people and for the people” at the Gettysburg battlefield in November 1863, it’s a pretty safe bet he wasn’t including corporations in his definition of “people.”

But in January 2010, a bitterly divided US Supreme Court decided  that corporations have the same free-speech rights as people – meaning they can pour unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns.

In a 5-4 ruling the court’s conservative majority struck down the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, which restricted corporate and labor union spending on “electioneering communications.” President Obama called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

The decision was an example of radical judicial activism, and a group called the Campaign to Legalize Democracy is pushing a radical remedy for it – a constitutional amendment that would make it clear that corporations and unions don’t have the same rights as actual, living, breathing human beings.

Two representatives of the movement, David Cobb and Riki Ott, will be at the Central Oregon Environmental Center on Kansas Avenue in Bend this weekend to talk about the court’s decision and how to fight it.

Cobb, the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, and Ott, an Alaskan community activist and writer, are aiming to “help local citizens learn how they can work to abolish corporate personhood and reestablish a government of, by, and for the people,” according to a news release.

“The movement we are launching is a long-term effort to make the U.S. Constitution more democratic,” Cobb said in the release. “We recognize that amending the Constitution to restore the power of the people over corporations will not be easy, but we know correcting the Supreme Court is imperative to the progress of our nation.”

The meeting with Cobb and Ott will take place from 7 to 9 pm Sunday at the Environmental Center; admission is free.

The group also has launched an on-line petition drive to gather signatures in support of the constitutional amendment. At this writing, almost 69,000 people have signed.

The front page of the Local section of today’s Bulletin brought more proof (not that any was needed) that the bubble years are over for Central Oregon: Enrollment dropped in all of the region’s school districts over the past year.

Bend-LaPine enrollment this school year is down 0.9% from the 2008-09 figure. Other area districts saw shaper declines: Redmond 2.1%, Jefferson County 2.4%, Crook County 3%, Culver 5% and Sisters 11.4%

According to the story, “locally, district officials say the decreases are likely connected to a depressed economy, with families moving out of the area because of high unemployment.”

Gosh, ya think?

Meanwhile, the city of Bend keeps wrangling with the state Department of Land Conservation and Development over the proposed expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary. The DLCD has a number of problems with the way the city has drawn the new UGB, but the fundamental one is that it’s just too damn big.

City staff originally mapped out a much smaller one, but the city council, under pressure from the realtor/builder/developer axis, ordered them to expand it and bring in more land on the northwest side – where some of the local Good Old Boys owned property – rather than the east side, where it would be cheaper to supply sewer and water service for new development.

Blogger and downtown businessman Duncan McGeary has a funny post about the UGB battle in which the state plays the role of an exasperated grownup and Bend is a recalcitrant child:

“Come on Oregon, can't you give me a C- for old time's sake?” Bend whines. “You're going to keep us from being the big time city we always knew we'd become.”

“Sigh. I'll explain again,” says the state. “Your plan is too big and your locations are not supported by the evidence.”

“I'm baffled!”

The state “puts head in hands and groans. ‘You have failed to use proper terminology and zoning codes. We have no way of knowing what you're talking about.’”

“I'm mystified!”

“Oregon throws up hands. See you in the appeals process …”

Maybe several years and many barrels of taxpayer dollars down the road, city officials and the special interests who pull their strings will figure out that once a bubble pops you can’t re-inflate it.

The conservation group Greenpeace has criticized Facebook for using coal-derived power at its planned Prineville data center instead of more Earth-friendly alternatives. This week The Bulletin fired back with a defense of Facebook, noting that Greenpeace’s power isn’t 100% green either.

“Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which provides energy to San Francisco, including Greenpeace’s office, gets the largest amount of its energy from natural gas, another nonrenewable resource,” said a story on the front page of Thursday’s Business section.

I guess it’s fair to point out that Greenpeace doesn’t always completely practice what it preaches, but comparing its power use to Facebook’s is quite a stretch. I’ve seen the Greenpeace HQ in San Francisco, and I doubt it uses as much power in a year as Facebook’s mammoth server farm will consume in a day.

On Friday, The Bulletin followed up its story with an editorial headlined: “Greenpeace red in the Facebook.” Cute headline, but if anybody should be red-faced over this story it’s The Bulletin.

***

I hope this won’t become permanent: While watching the Winter Olympics, I heard some commentators using the word “podium” as a verb, e.g., “He’s expected to podium in this event” – meaning he is expected to stand on the podium after winning a gold, silver or bronze medal.

What would the past tense of the verb “to podium” be? “Podiumed”? What would the present participle be? “Podiuming”? Try wrapping your tongue around that one.

***

Karl “Turdblossom” Rove will be coming to The Riverhouse in Bend on April 16 to speak at a $50-a-plate fundraising dinner for something called “Oregon REAGAN PAC.” Tim Knopp, chairman of Oregon REAGAN PAC, said the event would be “a tribute gala to President Ronald Reagan.”

It’s understandable that Republicans want people to remember Reagan (their last more-or-less successful president) and forget the two Bushes – especially the second one – so I have to wonder why Knopp wanted to bring in Rove instead of somebody from the Reagan administration.

More than any other individual, Karl Rove was responsible for putting The Worst President in History™ into the White House. He took George W. Bush, a blueblood New England preppie educated at Andover and Yale, and remade him into an ersatz cowboy – even arranging for him to buy the “ranch” in Crawford that provided the setting for so many rugged, manly photo ops. (The transformation of The Shrub into a faux Reagan could go only so far, though: While Reagan was an expert horseman, Bush was afraid to get on a horse.)

Rove also was the principal architect of the divisive “if-you-don’t-support-Bush-you-hate-America” political strategy the administration followed through its two terms. In gratitude for his services, Bush gave Rove the endearing nickname of “Turdblossom.”

I guess Knopp is counting on people to have amnesia about the decade between 1999 and 2009.

Bad news for anybody betting on a quick real estate rebound: The Commerce Department announced yesterday that new home sales fell to a 50-year low in January.

In news that surprised the so-called experts, purchases of new homes dropped 11.2% from December to January, to a pathetic seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 309,000.

One factor behind the dismal numbers, according to a Washington Post story, is the glut of homes already built: “Builders … continue to struggle with competition from previously owned homes, most notably the foreclosures that are on the market at fire-sale prices.”

Meanwhile, Bend investor, financial adviser and blogger Jesse Felder has an “In My View” piece in today’s Bulletin that throws cold water on the optimistic advice economist Alan Beaulieu gave during a recent appearance in Bend.

Beaulieu, “along with most investors today, is overlooking some major potential pitfalls for the economy and financial markets including the real estate market over the next few years,” according to Felder.

Felder notes that “the credit crunch is still on and shows no signs of improving,” with banks reluctant to lend and consumers and businesses reluctant to borrow. “Ultimately, the past two decades of fiscal debauchery by both businesses and consumers have caused an economic hangover that can only be healed with time and increased fiscal conservatism,” he writes. “Over the long term this process of putting our financial affairs in order is healthy for the economy. Over the short term, though, it can be very dangerous.”

Felder foresees a long process of “deleveraging” – getting rid of debt – that could lead to a prolonged recession like the one Japan has been experiencing since the early 1990s. Under those circumstances, he continues, Beaulieu’s advice to invest in real estate in the expectation of rising prices “represents precisely the attitude that created the financial mess we now find ourselves in and … there is a very real possibility this advice will have disastrous consequences for those that follow it.”

Props to The Bulletin for having the guts to print Felder’s piece (it couldn’t have made the local realtors happy) although for some reason the editors changed his original headline – “Have We Learned Nothing from the Real Estate Bubble?” – to the much less punchy “Continued economic weakness is a very real possibility.”

Now there’s a masterpiece of understatement.

Why the headline change? Maybe The Bulletin has developed a severe allergy to the B-word.

UPDATE: We're Number One again! The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Thursday that Bend led the nation in declining home prices over the past year, with prices at the end of 2009 almost 21% lower than they were at the beginning. Nationwide, home prices fell only 1.2 % over the year.

Even more depressing news: Over the past five years, Bend home prices haven't appreciated at all -- in fact, they actually fell by about seven-tenths of a percent. If anybody needs more proof that the real estate boom here was artificially inflated by speculation rather than being driven by Bend's supposedly unique wonderfulness as a place to live, there it is.

The circus might be coming to town in John Day, and people in John Day don’t like it.

According to reports in the local weekly paper, the Blue Mountain Eagle, the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations group is looking to relocate from Athol in northern Idaho and has been scoping out John Day as a likely new home base. The self-described national director of the Aryans, Paul R. Mullet (honest, that’s his name) was in town last week “looking at property to buy for a new ‘national compound,’” according to the Eagle.

As extreme racist groups go, the Aryan Nations are the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe.  Their website, proudly emblazoned with the eagle-and-swastika motif of Hitler’s Third Reich, describes the group as “a worldwide Pan-Aryan crusade dedicated to the preservation and advancement of our Race” and calls for establishment of a “Fourth Reich” in which the “Aryans” will have their own country – no blacks, Jews or Hispanics allowed.

Under the headline “The Coming Civil War!” is the following drool:

“If you notice at all times, anytime there is truth starting to surface relating to any and all crimes and/or the increase of crimes, the Whites and/or their organizations are always targeted as the problem by the Jews and the liberal communist press, politicians, and educators.  You can also throw the religious element into that pot of communist soup also.

“This could be no further from the truth as to what reality is in the United States.  Black on White crime is hitting the ceiling.  But of course, unless Whitey just bows down and allows the Blacks and/or the Mexicans to murder, maim, rape, or just rob them ...... then Whitey is the problem.

Well, WHITEY is waking up to the Jew conspiracy bullshit that has been thrown into the face of all Whites for quite some time … ”

There’s a lot more in the same moronic vein, but you get the drift.

The wackos are attracted to John Day because of its remoteness, cheap real estate and “proximity to the mountains for survival training,” Mullet told the Eagle.

“Mullet, wearing a uniform shirt with a swastika patch on it, said the group's goal is to create a homeland for white people.

“‘That area is the Pacific Northwest,’ he said. ‘The blacks have Africa, the Jews have Israel …’”

Mullet said he also thought the John Day area would be a great spot for a national convention. But the residents of John Day and the surrounding area are not eager to welcome the freak show.

A bunch of the locals picketed on the town’s main street last Saturday, and the Eagle is planning to bring in a couple of national experts for two community meetings on Friday “to answer concerns” aroused by Mullet’s visit.

The people of Grant County deserve a salute for standing up to the hatemongers, but they could use some help from the rest of us. It wouldn’t hurt for a few people from the Bend area to turn out at Friday’s meetings to show solidarity.

And the state legislature needs to pass a resolution telling the “Aryans” that they and their toxic doctrines are not welcome here, so if they’re looking for a new home they can keep goose-stepping west all the way through Oregon until they drown in the Pacific Ocean.

One of the main tenets of journalistic ethics is that while a newspaper is free to express opinions on politics in its editorials, it shouldn’t let its political agenda drive its news coverage. There’s supposed to be a firm, clear line between the editorial page and the news columns.

At Bend’s Only Daily Newspaper, that line sometimes gets awfully blurry.

On Sunday, The Bulletin carried a story in the top position on the front page headlined: “Stiegler’s tax votes factor into House race.” The story described how Jason Conger, a Republican challenging Democratic Rep. Judy Stiegler of Bend for re-election, plans to make an issue of her support for the Measure 66 and 67 tax increases.

The story pointed out that Stiegler’s home district voted against both measures, although the margins of defeat were not overwhelming: about 6% for Measure 66 and 7% for 67.

It’s not exactly news that Stiegler supported the tax measures, nor is it surprising that a Republican would attack a Democrat as a “tax-and-spend liberal.” Based on news value, the story hardly seemed worthy of leading the front page – and on Sunday, the highest-circulation day of the week.

I wasn’t the only one who thought there was something not quite kosher about the story and its play. “I thought the front page article on Judy Stiegler was pretty blatantly politically slanted against her,” wrote local blogger Duncan McGeary. “Both in context and where it was placed. Seemed like an ad for her opponent.”

This isn’t the first time The Bulletin’s political position has appeared to color its news coverage. Remember how hard the paper tried to make a huge issue out of state Sen. Betsy Johnson’s supposed “conflict of interest” during the battle over legislation to protect the Metolius River from destination resorts?

Coincidentally – or not – the lead editorial on the same day that the front-page Stiegler story ran was headlined “Stiegler’s district needs a centrist” and raised the same point about her supporting tax measures that a majority of voters in her district rejected. “Is she politically out of step with her constituents?” the editorial asked.

I’ll give you one guess as to how The Bulletin will answer that question as we move into campaign season.