pdxmurmurwatch .com

[May 18th, 2005] Specialty license plates are hot items, but beware House Bill 2655, which would permit Oregonians to pay $32 for a Smokey the Bear plate, benefiting the Keep Oregon Green Association (www.keeporegongreen.org). Just who is this group that is so concerned about our forests? Why none other than the likes of Crown Pacific , Weyerhaeuser and Associated Oregon Loggers . Their concern is touching-and profitable, since wildfire prevention (Keep Oregon Green's stated mission) has lately become a useful pretext for Big Timber to mow down Smokey's habitat .

Contest alert! State Treasurer Randall Edwards (at left) recently huddled with U2's Bono in Tigard (where else?). In no more than 25 words, tell us (creatively) what they were doing. Email entries to hstern@wweek.com.

Here's a money-making opportunity for enterprising right-to-lifers-direct from Washington, D.C. The federal Office of Public Health and Science is offering $950,000 in grants for public awareness campaigns about "embryo adoption." That's right: The feds want to find a home for all those unwanted embryos left over when couples pursuing in vitro fertilization are finished. Applications are due by July 8, but the grant carries this disclaimer: "grant funds may not be used for inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, and proselytization."

Basic Rights Oregon 's bargaining playbook as it tries to get a civil-union bill through the state Legislature will not include a quid pro quo on bills that target abortion rights. BRO head Roey Thorpe says the answer to any suggested trade-offs on anti-choice bills is the same as it's always been: "We've never agreed to those and we would not.''

What the... huh? In Chris Epting's just-released travel tome on infamous landmarks dotting America's pop-culture landscape, Elvis Presley Passed Here (Santa Monica Press, 332 pages, $16.95), Oregon warrants only one miserly listing. Instead of details on the current whereabouts of Tonya Harding 's trailer park, Ken Kesey's Magic Bus or the University of Oregon 's legendary Delta House from Animal House, we get a short history lesson on the Astoria Column 's role in Free Willy and Goonies.[/listbody]

Tidy up your desks, Portland media: A new blog (pdxmediawatch.blogspot.com/) promises readers a peek into newsrooms . The anonymous author of PDX Media Insider says she/he works inside the media and aims to offer a forum for other newsrooms' back stories. "The dirty truth in the media is that most people love what they do and hate the companies and some of the people they work for,'' says the initial post. "That's no different than most jobs, but the big difference is that most employees don't affect what we think about, talk about, get worried about or elated about. '' Author, author.

The Portland Fire Bureau says it will be at least another week before it wraps up its investigation into Michael Speck, a manager who allegedly hired his son's company at least 28 times for bureau work (see "Fire Bureau Manager in Hot Seat," WW, April 27, 2005). Meantime, it appears Speck may also have played a role in the bureau's big-bucks purchase of a building (see "Smoking Out a Fire Bureau Building's History," WW, May 11, 2005). An internal bureau email shows Speck passed along the owner's contact information in early October 2000 to his boss; the bureau later more than doubled the owner's recent investment.

While City Council prepares to OK public financing for city election campaigns today, talk swirls that opponents (including downtown business heavyweights) might force the issue onto the ballot with a petition drive. Could they do it? In 2001, property-rights initiative ninja David Hunnicutt spent $81,000 to gather the 17,000-plus signatures needed to put a street-management fee on the ballot (City Council promptly caved, repealing the fee before Portlanders could vote on it). The last time a petition drive actually led to a general vote on a council decision was 1956. The issue? Banning pinball machines.

Oregon House Speaker Karen Minnis' relatively narrow win over a little-funded Democrat last year has Democratic interest groups promising first-class financial treatment to next year's Dem candidate in Minnis' East County district. D's are salivating over a growing 2,300-person registration edge in the Wood Village Republican's home turf, which leads to musings that Minnis may run statewide, for governor or secretary of state, rather than seek re-election in the Legislature.