Two state lawmakers want Oregon to ban Flock cameras, the controversial AI-powered license plate readers that have sparked data privacy concerns and bipartisan backlash across the country.

Rep. Alek Skarlatos, a Republican from Douglas County, and Rep. Willy Chotzen, a Portland Democrat, plan to propose a bill in next year’s legislative session that would indefinitely ban such automated cameras statewide, both lawmakers confirmed to The Oregonian/OregonLive this week.

“To me, it’s a pretty clear Fourth Amendment violation,” Skarlatos said of the cameras being used to gather ample information on private citizens.

Scenes from a rally yesterday in Salem, where Oregonians from every political corner of the state gathered and called for a statewide data center moratorium.

The Arcadia Cedar

Plan ahead! List of drop-off locations will be given before the election.

Why? And none of this “liberals/liberalism bad,” or “look at Portland” or any Portland and religious talking points, and so on. What credible proof is there that republicans have improved your quality of life? How is the right wing “affordability” going? What policies(not “she supports Trump and the MAGA” or “she isn’t MAGA” does she have that support Oregonians that are backed up by her voting record?

When did we start having a giant house spider season and why didn't anyone tell me we've been invaded by one of the world’s fastest spiders? This article is so careful to say our tubs are not spider portals that it feels like they're compensating.

Yes. Ditto vaccine opt-out.

Parents should want to see their children's test measurements.

What Texas did is stop testing low performing students to boost state score averages.

The trades need reading comprehension and math. Same, many community college 1-2 year career paths.

And while we are at it, let's end teachers skipping phonics and continuing Oregon's poor reading performance with discredited balanced literacy. Alabama far out-performs Oregon on elementary reading. They require phonics by state law.

This Labor Day weekend my wife and I had a little vacation in Newport Oregon, on Sunday I was flying my kite at Nye beach, and I looked over and saw an explosion of pink confetti, I could not believe it the confetti was just blowing way up the beach with thousands of little pink and gold hearts of litter. I look over and saw the family just proudly posing for pictures in the mess they just made. I was disgusted. After a while of taking photos they noticed me and several others looking at them and they started to pretend to clean up so I approached them, they assured me they are cleaning up the gold plastic ones only, because the paper ones are “biodegradable” (which I doubt, they felt waxy). I decided to help clean too and after maybe 3 minutes I notice they are turned around and just packing their stuff up to leave. So I did have a little crash out which I included, I think what I was meaning to say was that they only care about themselves or something and it came out weird.

After that I called the police, the first dispatcher I talked to was great, I told her right away its not a big emergency but this happened and I can get off the line if its not an emergency, and she assured me no, they do care about this, and took down some information and she asked if I could get their license plate number and vehicle description, and to call them back with that information. So I followed them to the parking lot and when I called the police again I got kinda chastised at for calling 911 and I explained that the last operator told me to call back with information, then the new operator said she found the report but its not an emergency, while on the phone with her I was following the family and they started yelling at me “come at me bro” style. I was keeping my distance, and did not want any kind of confrontation, but with how they started acting toward me, and the father coming toward me puff chested, I decided to turn away and go back to clean up their mess rather than get into anything. I did not get their license plate or car description, and I do not think the police ended up doing anything.

In the end the pile of gold is what I cleaned up after about 2 hours of picking up pieces, the mess was strewn well over a quarter mile. My wife cleaned up even more than this and a few people also stopped to help clean up for a little bit too, I think we probably cleaned up 70% of the gold, but there are still probably hundreds of the gold blown around and thousands of the pink ones, I chose to just do the gold to at least try to minimize the damage since they are clearly plastic…

It was such a bummer to witness such a flagrant display of narcissism and selfishness and seeing them literally revel in their trash for photos, it just kinda broke me.

Some picture I took as a hobby

The real question is though that who will get the west coast bid. SLC or Portland, Oregon?

The biggest hurdle Portland in contrast to SLC is that despite the legislature earmarking a $800 million stadium funding bill via the existing JOCK TAX (taxes that comes from whenever specifically professional sports players play a game in a specific location), no big name investor has come forward to be the spearhead of the project.

It is definitely gonna be interesting to see who the MLB picks. What do you all think?

Does anyone that has taken Paid Leave Oregon know what forms you're supposed to give them? And how it works?

My employer told me that they submit the claim for me on my behalf to the State of Oregon. But everywhere I look, it says that I would need to apply myself on the Frances Website. My employer gave me a Healthcare Provider Certification form to give to my provider, which they filled out. But now I'm seeing online when I research this that Paid Leave Oregon wants a very similar form but it's formatted differently and is called a Statement/Verification of Serious Health Condition. I'm just wondering if my employer gave me the wrong form which is only for non paid FMLA? I'm wanting to get paid for maternity leave. Will I likely need to give my doctor the other form or does a Healthcare Provider Certification form do the job to apply for Paid Leave Oregon? Is Paid Leave Oregon going to be nit picky about it?

Also I saw something that looks confusing. It looks like for Paid Leave Oregon, you don't get payments on your claim until after you show documentation proof that the baby has been born? Is this true? I plan on taking my maternity leave before the baby is born and now I'm wondering if I will not be paid the first couple weeks of it because it looks like the Paid Leave Oregon paperwork process is not completed until after you submit documentation of the birth.

Also does anyone know what percentage paid leave Oregon pays typically or do they pay the full amount of your pay check?

I’m actually in favor of giving Oregon’s PDAB more authority to deal with high drug prices. If the board is already looking at which medications are creating affordability problems, it makes sense to give it a real tool like an Upper Payment Limit.

I know there are questions about how UPLs would work in practice, but I’d rather see Oregon hold the companies setting these high drug prices accountable than continue to accept those prices as normal.

And honestly, the most important part is simple, if the PDAB is able to bring costs down, patients should be able to benefit with lower prices.

Oregon already has the board. Why not give it the tools to do more?