Jeb Bladine: One grain of sand in environmental war
State and local governments around America are being pressured to ban carry-out plastic bags at retail establishments. The campaign worked in McMinnville. A local ban began in September at large retailers ...
Tom Henderson: Immigration sweeps a stain on American honor
“Only Nazis get to be Nazis.” I said that frequently 10 years ago, when my son, then barely out of elementary school, protested “the madness of King George.” That was when he ...
Bob Franken: Tainting intelligence panel with partisanship
I covered Capitol Hill during my CNN phase. That was quite a while ago, but to this day, I have friends among veteran members of Congress, including members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Flu outbreak exposes critical danger
By MORTEN WENDELBO and CHRISTINE BLACKBURNOf the Snowcroft Institute The current flu season is one of the worst on record in the U.S. By early January, overall mortality was already double that of last ...
Jeb Bladine: Quest continues for accountability
Secretary of State Dennis Richardson, the first Republican elected to statewide office since 2002 and first to serve as secretary of state since 1985, said this after his November 2016 election: “We’re ...
Starla Pointer: Be the public at a public meeting
City councils, school boards, planning commissions, county commissions and other public bodies all have public meetings on a regular basis. And they discuss important issues, such as how to spend taxpayers’ ...
Jeb Bladine: City struggles with on-street RV living
McMinnville and Newberg, as most cities, have enacted municipal code protections against neighborhood nuisances. They bar activities that, in Newberg’s words, “promote blight, reduce property ...
Randy Stapilus: 2018 could break Oregon’s short-session mold
This year’s Oregon legislative session, which opened Monday, Feb. 5, took the biggest fork in the road before it even convened. On Jan. 23, voters across the state passed — by a landslide ...
Jeb Bladine: Energy not growing from high-value soil
We call them solar farms, but the operations aren’t growing energy from the high-value farmland lying below their arrays of solar panels. Therein lies the Oregon controversy playing out locally this ...
Scott Gibson: What I learned on the school board
After six years on the McMinnville School Board, I recently stepped down because my wife and I moved to Amity. Serving on the school board was one of the most enjoyable and interesting experiences of ...
Jeb Bladine: Recording history, 1 meeting at a time
For 40-plus years, I’ve had more than a passing fascination with historic records of local activities … some might call it a mild obsession. In recent years, the city of McMinnville has become ...
Moving back to the editorial page
My first exposure to the opinion function came in 1971, when I signed up for John Hulteng's legendary editorial-writing course during my first year of grad school at the University of Oregon. He was coming ...
We built the road; now fix the signage
Here’s a long-awaited sentence: I drove the Newberg-Dundee Bypass! It’s just Phase 1, thus incomplete, And funding and topographic challenges caused an interchange flaw that may become a black ...
Just looking for a wave and a smile
Former husband and homeowner reflects on a life winding down on the streets
Jeb Bladine: With few sibs, you depend on cousins
Year-end holidays remind us how families are complicated foundations of our lives. As someone with small nuclear families — both vertically and horizontally — I always marvel at how people ...
