They’ve taken away an on-street parking space in downtown Bend to put in a rack for 12 bicycles. The politically correct response would be to jump up and down and cheer, but pardon me if I don’t join in.

The multi-bike rack, called a “bike corral,” was installed in a parking space in front of Thump Coffee on Minnesota Avenue. It cost about $3,500, according to The Bulletin’s account, and was paid for by the Downtown Bend Business Association and individual contributors.

Kent Chapple, co-owner of Thump, said the corral was a solution to bike congestion near his shop. “It was really apparent that there just wasn’t enough capacity for all the bikes that wanted to be in this area,” he said. “If we can serve 12 people with one parking spot, that’s 11 more people down here we can serve than with that one [vehicle] parking spot.”

Thump appears to be a sort of haven for bikies. (That’s a new word I made up to identify bike enthusiasts, like “foodies” for food enthusiasts.) Chapple ride a bike to work, as do almost all of Thump’s 10 employees, according to The Bulletin.

This bike corral took away only one parking space out of about 2,000 in the downtown area. But don’t bet that it will be the last one. The Minnesota Avenue corral “could become a prototype for future bike parking structures downtown,” according to The Bulletin’s account.

Is there a legitimate need for even one on-street bike corral, let alone a bunch of them? True, many people ride bikes downtown, and more power to them. But a bike can be parked almost anywhere – chained to a tree, a signpost or a light fixture as well as a bike rack.

In 25 years of visiting Bend’s downtown I’ve never had trouble finding a parking space for a bike. Obviously I can’t say the same about a car.

The downtowners have plans to install 28 more hitching posts for bikes on the sidewalks, and I’m cool with that; it falls into the category of encouraging bicycle use. But when you take away parking spaces for cars and give them to bicycles, that’s an attempt to discourage car use – and that’s too much like trying to dictate other people’s lifestyle for me to feel comfortable with it.

It’s not hard to figure out what the bikies’ agenda is, beyond the ostensible motive of relieving alleged bicycle congestion. “We just want to promote Bend’s bike friendliness,” Chapple told The Bulletin. “We wanted to send a signal that Bend was a bike-friendly community.”

Sending such a signal is okay. But by taking away a parking space they’re also sending a signal – intentionally or not - that Bend, or at least the downtown part of it, is a car-unfriendly community.

I never miss one of Lars Larson’s little commentaries on the Oregon Catalyst site. They’re some of the best free entertainment on the Web.

In his most recent entry, Lars warns of a sneaky plot by the Obama administration to ban bullets.

Well, it wasn’t exactly the Obama administration that wanted to ban bullets – it was some conservationist groups. And they didn’t want to ban all bullets, only lead bullets.

The conservationists don't want to get rid of lead bullets because they’re against guns or against hunting, but because lead is very toxic stuff. Birds and mammals – including bald eagles and rare and endangered California condors – feed on the carcasses of animals killed with lead bullets and die of lead poisoning.

But Lars doesn’t mention any of this; instead he sees the effort to eliminate lead ammunition as a “backdoor” attack on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

A lead bullet ban, he fumes, “would make all ammunition much more expensive. It will make it more expensive for folks to own guns, practice with guns, and even shoot guns. It will make it more expensive for folks to arm themselves as the Constitution guarantees.”

Fortunately, Lars goes on, this sneak attack on our precious liberties was foiled: The Environmental Protection Agency turned down the conservationists’ plea to ban lead bullets “because there was so much public outcry.”

“Another win against the Obamanation,” Lars crows. Poison a condor for freedom today!

UPDATE:  According to the right-wing Weekly Standard blog, the EPA is still considering enacting a ban on lead bullets. Well, this wouldn't be the first time Lars has gotten his facts wrong.

Would the state of Oregon be better off if it was its own banker? Ann Kramer thinks so.

Kramer, chair of the board of the Gorge Grown Food network, an organization trying to promote a regional food system in the Columbia Gorge, writes on the Blue Oregon site that having a state bank could help “recharge Oregon’s economy.”

“The State of Oregon collects and spends lots of money,” Kramer says. “Did you ever wonder where that money goes? Right now, much of it sits in the TBTF [‘Too Big to Fail’] banks and they receive the benefits. In fact, we use the TBTF banks for lots of government services — even paying them to administer the OR SNAP program (food stamps). Instead, a state bank could provide these services, saving us millions as well as interest income returning to state coffers.”

The State Bank of Oregon, she adds, also could team up with local Oregon banks to make low-cost loans to agriculture, small business, economic development and students. “This availability of credit has all but disappeared from the TBTF banks, but with a State Bank of Oregon, small businesses and farms, which are the backbone of [Oregon’s] economy, could once again get back to work!”

Kramer’s model, the Bank of North Dakota, was established in 1919 in response to a populist revolt over the high rates of interest that big out-of-state banks were charging farmers. It was given the mission of “promoting agriculture, commerce and industry” in the state.

“It was never intended for BND to compete with or replace existing banks,” the bank’s website says. “Instead, Bank of North Dakota was created to partner with other financial institutions and assist them in meeting the needs of the citizens of North Dakota.”

Eric Hardmeyer, president of BND, explained last year in an interview with Mother Jones magazine how, by being cautious in its investments, the state bank managed to avoid the disastrous impacts of the real estate bubble: “We’re a fairly conservative lot up here in the upper Midwest and we didn’t do any subprime lending, and we have the ability to get into the derivatives markets and put on swaps and callers and caps and credit default swaps and just chose not to do it, really chose a Warren Buffett mentality — if we don’t understand it, we’re not going to jump into it.”

The BND, which has about $4 billion under its management, acts as the repository for all state taxes and fees and pays back the profit it makes in the form of dividends to the state treasury. “Probably this year we’ll make somewhere north of $60 million, and we will turn over about half of our profits back to the state general fund,” Hardmeyer said. “And so over the last 10, 12 years, we’ve turned back a third of a billion dollars just to the general fund to offset taxes or to aid in funding public sector types of needs.”

When the state faces a budget shortfall it can call on the bank for help. Hardmeyer recounted how, after the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, the state fixed its $40 million deficit: “The governor just simply said all right, we’re going to turn back 1% of all general fund agencies, and the Bank of North Dakota, you will declare another dividend to make up the balance. And so we did that.”

Inspired by the success of the Bank of North Dakota, 11 other states are now looking into the idea of starting their own version, and Kramer thinks Oregon should be one of them. It’s hard for me to come up with a good reason why it shouldn’t.

As if he didn’t have enough headaches being behind Chris Dudley in the polls and in the race for campaign cash, John Kitzhaber has gotten involved in a scandal.

On second thought, better put quotes around “scandal.” Maybe it’s a scandal, maybe it’s something else.

The background: Cylvia Hayes is the longtime “significant other” of John Kitzhaber. She’s also the founder and CEO of 3E Strategies LLC, a Bend consulting firm that specializes in sustainable development, renewable energy and that sort of thing.

Last spring 3E was one of the bidders on a contract with the state Department of Energy for a project that was being funded with federal stimulus money. The contract ended up going to a Seattle firm, R.W. Beck. But, according to The Oregonian and other media, state officials then “encouraged” Beck to take on 3E as a subcontractor.

“At the time, some Energy Department staff members raised concerns about the way Hayes' company was promoted by the agency after losing the bid, and findings by state auditors triggered [a] criminal investigation [by the state Department of Justice and US Attorney’s Office], sources familiar with the investigation say,” The Oregonian wrote.

Hayes released a statement today saying she hasn’t been contacted by investigators and denying that she did anything wrong or that Kitzhaber had anything to do with her firm being picked as a subcontractor.

“It is … clear from the timing and leaks by anonymous sources that some people are attempting to exploit for political purposes the fact that I am in a long-term personal relationship with John Kitzhaber,” the statement said.

“Please allow me to set the record straight: John Kitzhaber has no involvement whatsoever in my company. While John Kitzhaber has sat on the board of my non-profit sustainable development organization, he has at no time had any material involvement with my small business; not as a board member, nor as an investor.  He has also never played a role in my efforts to compete for contracts, either in the private sector or the public sector.”

What to make of all this? Well, it might be worth noting that the story initially was broken Monday by Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week, a Portland alternative newspaper.

Jaquiss, who was a Wall Street trader before he decided to go into journalism, is Willy Week’s star muckraker, and he specializes in raking muck of a sexual nature involving Democratic politicians. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for revealing former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl, and he broke the story of Portland Mayor Sam Adams’s relationship with a young man who may or may not have been underage when Adams first got involved with him.

There’s no evidence yet that Kitzhaber had anything to do with applying improper pressure to the Department of Energy to steer a contract to Hayes’s company – assuming any improper pressure was applied. It’s even questionable how much weight he still swings with the department, having been out of office for seven and a half years.

But the media now have a reason to put the words “Kitzhaber” and “investigation” into the same headline, and a lot of voters will subscribe to the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire theory.

Is it all a political hatchet job, as Hayes is claiming? To use the most shopworn of editorial writer’s clichés, time will tell. But from where I sit right now it smells a little like it.

Democrats have launched a new website, You Don’t Know Dudley.com, attacking GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley. It’s a peculiar mix of new stuff, old stuff and some just plain silly stuff.

“Do you know Dudley?” asks the site, which was paid for by the Democratic Governors Association. “Do you see eye-to-eye on the issues that matter most? Take our quick survey and find out.”

The interactive “survey” asks readers to respond to a series of questions and then provides answers designed to put Dudley in a bad light. For example, it points out that Dudley is “still open to [oil and gas] drilling off the cost of Oregon” (old news) that Dudley lived in Washington while playing for the Portland Trail Blazers to avoid paying Oregon income tax (new news), that he “actively campaigned for George Bush who, as you may remember, drove our national and state economy into a ditch” (old news) and that “he’s done everything possible to avoid debating” his Democratic opponent, John Kitzhaber.

Some of the sting was taken out of that last accusation on Friday, when the Dudley campaign announced their guy would be willing to take part in four debates with Kitzhaber this fall. Details still have to be worked out.

The silliest accusation the new site makes is that Dudley – a professional investment advisor in Lake Oswego – “actually wanted to go to work on Wall Street.”

Although Dudley didn’t end up on Wall Street, the site adds, “his firm invests [for] and advises ultra-wealthy clients, while Dudley advocates for huge tax cuts for the wealthy.”

I’m still trying to figure out what to make of that. Financial advisors don’t normally work for poor clients. And attacking the man not because he works on Wall Street but because he supposedly wanted to work on Wall Street is really a stretch.

The fight over Deschutes County’s new destination resort rules isn’t finished yet: Central Oregon LandWatch has put the county on notice that it plans to challenge them.

LandWatch filed ìnotices of intent to appealî Thursday with the state Land Use Board of Appeals, charging that the county’s new rules for determining what lands are eligible for resorts ìactually increase the development potential in the county.î

ìThe county is proposing to remove from its destination resort map only lands on which destination resorts couldn’t be built anyway (because they are too small or are already developed with other uses), while allowing for additional developable land to be added to the destination resort map,î LandWatch Executive Director Erik Kancler writes on the organization’s website. ìThe result, then, is a net gain of developable land for destination resorts in the county.

ìFurther, even where the county is ostensibly removing lands from the map as ineligible, those lands may still stay in if the owner requests it.î Under this ìgrandfather clause,î Kancler claims, ìthe county is essentially allowing landowners to decide for themselves (without regard to the law) whether their lands are currently eligible for destination resorts.î

LandWatch also is troubled because the new rules allow landowners to bring together several parcels ìto amass the 160 or more contiguous acres that state law requires for developing a resort.î

ìFor whatever reason, county governments are not paying attention to what citizens want on this issue,î Kancler writes on the Blue Oregon site. ìThe problem isn’t that conservative elected officials aren’t paying attention to a small set of liberal constituents. It’s that local elected officials from both parties are largely ignoring complaints from a broad and politically diverse cross-section of their own communities. Which is why destination resort policy reform will likely only be achieved if the state legislature takes matters into its own hands.î

Meanwhile, a team of graduate students from the University of Oregon has embarked on a study that’s supposed to objectively weigh the pros and cons of destination resort development in the county. The first phase of the effort involves discussions with four focus groups including people on both sides of the issue. The input from those groups is supposed to determine what kinds of positive and negative impacts the study will look into.

It would be nice if the study (for which the county will pay as much as $40,000) came up with solid data that both the fans and the foes of destination resorts would accept. But after watching the resorts debate rage for more than 20 years, something tells me that’s not gonna happen.

Kevin Mannix, who lost as a candidate for governor, state attorney general and congressman, has had a more successful career pushing get-tough-on-crime measures. But he’s finding it tough to get traction with this year’s entry – even among some of his fellow Republicans.

In a campaign speech in Hermiston yesterday, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley said he wouldn’t support Mannix’s Measure 73, which would increase prison sentences for sex offenders and drunken drivers. That would mean an extra $18 million to $29 million a year in state prison costs, and Dudley said Oregon just can’t afford it.

“While the goals of these measures are laudable, their cost is simply too high,” Dudley was quoted by The Oregonian.

A week ago, Oregon’s newly created Citizens Review Panel also gave thumbs down to Measure 73 for the same reason. “Twenty-one of the 24 panelists opposed Measure 73, saying that mandating the longer prison terms would cost too much and limit judges’ power,” The Oregonian reported. “The three who supported the measure said the harsher penalties would deter crime and increase public safety.”

Mannix promptly attacked the citizen panel – established by the state legislature on a pilot basis in 2009 – as an unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy.

“We keep adding more layers and bureaucracy to what's supposed to be an open and creative process,” he said. “This is a review process to get the opinion of the people. But that's what the election is for.”

The Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance, which supports M73, lost no time in whining that the citizen review process was “fatally flawed.”

It complained that members of the panel “had not been screened for fairness and impartiality regarding Measure 73,” and in particular that one “experienced attorney” in the group “was obviously strongly opposed to mandatory minimum sentences from the outset,” which “amounted to the equivalent of the opposition to Measure 73 having one of their own attorneys on the panel.”

Here’s another bit of evidence that Oregon’s tax climate isn’t as toxic to business as conservatives make it out to be: Bend’s G5 Search Marketing announced this week that it’s getting a $15 million infusion of venture capital and plans to more than double its workforce.

The five-year-old company, which designs software to help businesses make their websites more effective in snagging visitors and customers, plans to add 20 employees by the end of the year and as many as 100 more within two years, according to co-founder and CEO Dan Hobin. It currently has a payroll of 75, plus five independent contractors.

“This has been an unusually strong year for venture capital in Oregon, which had its best first-half in four years,” The Oregonian reported in its story about G5’s success. “The state has benefited from looser capital markets and because Oregon entrepreneurs have diversified into hot sectors including clean tech, medical technology and social media.”

“This news comes as no surprise to me and many of those who supported [Measures 66 and 67] last January,” Chuck Sheketoff of the Oregon Center for Public Policy comments on Blue Oregon. “We continually pointed out that taxes play a very minor role in business location decisions. Much more important are factors such proximity to customers, the quality of the workforce, the quality of public structures and the quality of life in Oregon.”

I’m not sure I agree that taxes play only a “very minor role” in business location decisions, but they clearly aren’t the only factor – and probably aren’t even the biggest.

Hobin, a Silicon Valley refugee, told The Oregonian that Central Oregon’s low cost of living compared to the Bay Area enables G5 to attract high-quality employees without paying California wages. Hobin called it “geographic arbitrage.”

Sheketoff couldn’t resist pointing out that the 100 or so jobs G5 plans to add are substantially more – make that five times more – than the 20 lost by the sale of Tara O’Keeffe’s small hand and foot cream manufacturing company to Ohio-based Gorilla Glue this spring.

In a column by Business Editor John Stearns and in an editorial, The Bulletin has cited that sale as an example of the horrible consequences of M66 and 67, but so far it has refrained from commenting on G5’s coup. I guess it just doesn’t fit the narrative the paper is trying to peddle.

The big question Oregon Democrats have been asking this campaign season is: “Why won’t Chris Dudley play a little one-on-one against John Kitzhaber?”

The former Portland Trail Blazer center who’s now the Republican candidate for governor has filled the airwaves with platitude-laden commercials (a new one was released yesterday) but has ducked opportunities to debate Democratic rival John Kitzhaber. On Tuesday Kitzhaber offered a list of seven events around the state where he’d be willing to debate Dudley.

Dudley finally agreed to one debate – but it wasn’t at one of the seven venues Kitzhaber proposed. According to Oregonian political blogger Jeff Mapes, it’ll be an Oct. 7 event sponsored by The Oregonian and KGW-TV of Portland.

That’s too late in the game, complains Carla Axtman of the liberal/Democratic Blue Oregon site: “As I understand it, that's barely a week before ballots go out. Apparently Dudley thinks we don't need to know his actual positions on issues before then. Dudley's spokesperson LeRoy Coleman tells Mapes that Dudley doesn't want to debate until the fall because that's when voters are paying attention. Um … LeRoy, if voters aren't paying attention, then why are you guys shelling out giant piles of cash for TV ads? Gimme a break.”

The Democrats’ frustration is palpable, because Dudley's bob-and-weave tactics appear to be working. According to the polls he’s tied with or slightly leading the two-term former governor, and he’s way ahead in the money race, topping Kitz by almost $1 million at the start of August.

The Democratic partisans’ annoyance and dismay was reflected in a suggestion offered by Bill Ryan on Blue Oregon: “Back in the '92 Clinton campaign GHW Bush was trying to avoid debates. The Clinton campaign starting sending a guy out in a chicken suit to every Bush campaign event. It really grabbed headlines and pointed out the Bush debate cowardice. Let's bring out the chicken suits! Dudley is clearly a wuss and has nothing to fill that empty suit.”

No word yet from the Kitzhaber campaign on whether they’re considering the chicken suit option, but as the summer winds down it’s obvious they’d better come up with something … and pretty fast.

Has the Bend real estate market hit bottom at last? It’s too soon to say, but at least it looks like home prices here have finally reached a realistic level.

IHS Global Insight, which maintains huge databases of all sorts of economic data, reported back in March that as of the end of 2009, real estate in the Bend Metropolitan Statistical Area was overvalued by only 2.3%. (At the end of 2005 Bend real estate was among the most overvalued in the country – 44% above what Global Insight considered fair value based on market history, local incomes and other factors.)

And prices here have continued to fall. The real estate tracking site Zillow reports that the median Bend home value in the second quarter of this year was a mere $176,000. That’s an astonishing drop of almost 60% from the market’s peak on June 1, 2006, when the median was $374,000. During the past year the median value has dropped 18.9%, leading (if that’s the right word) the nation.

Is the local market poised for a comeback? “Just last week … a Bloomberg Businessweek report forecast that Bend would have the nation's second-strongest housing rebound by 2014, with a 33.6% uptick in prices,” The Bulletin wrote Tuesday in a story about the Zillow data.

Bend financial adviser and blogger Jesse Felder isn’t ready to uncork the Dom Perignon just yet, though.

“Prices can and usually do decline well below fair value after a bubble bursts,” he notes. “Still, we've come a long way in working off the massive excess in local home prices and current buyers can feel good knowing that they are no longer paying a premium above fair value.”