"Whatchamacolumn" by Jeb Bladine
The News-Register publisher writes about the community; people; local, state and national affairs; and sometimes whimsey.
Whatchamacolumn: Local election results are short on details
Taking a deep dive into election results is fun for some, boring for others … for me, it’s a deep-seated habit from 50-plus years of writing news and commentary about election outcomes. Computers, ...
Whatchamacolumn: Drug programs ‘building the plane while it’s flying’
Oregon’s experiment with drug decriminalization became a governmental, political, social and financial fiasco. But for better or worse, the money keeps on flowing. It’s impossible to quickly ...
Whatchamacolumn: Investigative reporting on ills of Measure 118
Readers today will see the newspaper’s strong opposition to Oregon Ballot Measure 118, a major tax increase disguised as a magnanimous government handout to every Oregonian regardless of need. One ...
Re-do revealed on downtown development plans
McMinnville’s Third Street Improvement project, long a topic of controversy about trees, design and parking, became a source of background murmurs earlier this year. It first came to my attention ...
Whatchamacolumn: Newspaper viability messages in a new format
We’ve known for years that this time was coming. In the first quarter of the 20th century, automobiles and electric streetcars overtook a horse-drawn transportation system dating back to ancient ...
Whatchamacolumn: Presidential win predicted; but focus on local
Labor Day weekend led us directly and deeply into election season, with high stakes votes coming on local, regional, statewide and national candidates and issues. Look for spirited campaigns for city ...
Whatchamacolumn: Making sure trust is tempered with wariness
The older I get, the more cautious I become about financial transactions with anyone I don’t personally know and trust. Sometimes, even that isn’t enough protection from fraud. Take Ruben ...
Whatchamacolumn: System development charges replace tax increases
Tax increase proposals, always controversial, can be defeated by voters. Local government tax increases for infrastructure development, also controversial, are being avoided with significant increases ...
Whatchamacolumn: Meeting comments on the record in Carlton, statewide
I did a double-take on our story about Monday’s Planning Commission meeting in Carlton. Concerned citizens attended to raise concerns about possible development of a gas station near a floodplain ...
Whatchamacolumn: Pay or negotiate, but don't ignore small debts
More and more people overspend credit cards, fail to pay various personal debts and incur even greater financial losses from highly organized debt collection systems. Regularly published records, once ...
Whatchamacolumn: Readers skipping E-editions are missing news
Newspaper-related work constantly tethers us to computer and smartphone screens, so browsing our tri-weekly N-R e-editions has become second nature. Not so, unfortunately, for many of our newspaper subscribers. ...
Whatchamacolumn: Discussion of inflation requires a few actual facts
Campaign sound bites often ignore inconvenient facts, and hyperbole dominates political debate. In a time when information searches are supercharged by artificial intelligence, it’s still too common ...
Whatchamacolumn: Ticketmaster and the ravages of cybercrime
Good things, said ancient Greek philosophers and Chinese numerologists, come in threes, and millennia of folklore added “bad things” to belief in that pattern. It has a name – apophenia ...
Whatchamacolumn: At every level, regulatory overreach strangles America
Pure and simple: Government rules, laws, mandates and regulatory overreach have strangled America. Not “are strangling,” as has been lamented nonstop for decades, but “have strangled.” Consider ...
