Hellloooo there Rip City! Here’s your daily news blip from Portland for Thursday, May 2, 2019. The weather in our little Camelot is mild in the city but only in the 30s in the valley, way early for tomatoes–but we’ll ease up to 60 or 65 today. And scrolling ahead for the next week or so, I don’t see any rain at all. Saturday’s high should be around 75! Sunrise 5:57 AM Sunset 8:18 PM.
Blazers! With that 97-90 win in Denver last night, our guys have seized the home-court advantage from the Nuggets, and could wrap it up with a pair of wins at home. Next game is tomorrow night at the Moda Center. The team dedicated last night’s win to staff member Jon Yim, who was seriously injured in a car crash last week on I-84. Yim is the team’s video coordinator, and is beloved by all; he started a tradition of wearing bow ties for all Wednesday game days—so last night, the whole staff wore bow ties in his honor. Watch that become a thing!
A billion welcome bucks every year will be heading for Oregon schools–if the state Senate follows the House lead in passing the “Student Success Act,” a gross receipts tax on the roughly 40,000 Oregon businesses that take in over a million in annual revenue. Democrats used their new supermajority to meet the two-thirds requirement for a tax hike, passing HB 3427 on a 37-21 strict party-line vote. Republicans argued that it will force small but successful companies to shed staff, and called it a hidden sales tax that does nothing about PERS. The money will start to flow in 2020-2021, and local districts will have broad latitude on how to spend it–as long as they show results.
Maine has just beaten out Oregon as the first to impose a statewide ban on food containers made of Styrofoam. Oregon’s House has passed the bill, but it hasn’t come up for a vote in the Senate.
Yesterday’s May Day protests came off peacefully, but then Patriot Prayer and Atifa hotheads ruined it all by getting into a brawl outside the Cider Riot bar at NE 8th and Couch, where the owner says Joey Gibson and his boys crashed an after-party and started pepper-spraying people. There’s video showing bear spray being fired by both sides. By the time the cops arrived, the two groups had separated and nobody wanted to file charges.
Attorney General William Barr, following yesterday’s bruising Senate appearance, is skipping today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, not wanting to be questioned by committee staff lawyers in addition to members. Meantime, “The Mueller Report” debuts at #1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.
A hero emerges from the UNC-Charlotte shooting, where two people were killed this week–including a 21-year-old student named Riley Howell who lunged at the gunman and held him down, and was shot and killed in the struggle, but his action stopped the shooting long enough for police to capture the perpetrator. (Who, as per policy here, is nameless).
Summertime in the Northwest can be lovely, but the last two have had some fairly brutal heat waves, and now there’s word from the National Interagency Fire Center that “The potential for significant wildfires is above normal west of the Cascade crest in Washington and Oregon through August.” We can hope that no thoughtless kids will be out there tossing firecrackers, but we can’t do much about lightning.
A TriMet driver named Mike Thomas was behind the wheel of Line 54 on a dark stretch of Capitol Highway when he slowed down because a man was holding a yellow lab by the collar at the side of the road. The driver invited the man and dog aboard for their own safety. But he quickly sensed that they didn’t know each other–the guy tried to give the dog away to another passenger, and he didn’t even know the pup’s name was Cooper, which Mike could easily see on the tag. So Cooper was a stolen dog. When confronted by the driver, the thief got off the bus, but Cooper rode around with Mike for the rest of the night (against the rules, but who cares). Turns out Cooper’s family was vacationing in Hawaii, their adult son was house-sitting, and all’s well now, except there’s a dog thief out there.
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So..here’s what I’ve found in the department of News that Doesn’t Hurt Your Eyes:
–“Parents Stunned to Learn Both Sons Are Expecting Babies at the Same Time”
–“Colorado teen saves entire family from silent killer”
–“A police officer responded to a noise complaint about a man playing the drums. He sat down and jammed out too”
–“Trail runner saves beached dolphin stranded on remote beach”
–“Song that is literally just birds chirping debuts at #11 on UK Singles Chart”
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Well, that’s what I’ve got–except for a formidable cold that might take me out of action for a day or two. Hopefully, the Facebook algorithms prevent the transmission of viruses, because this one’s a doozy. Bleh!
Portland's Daily Drip 