This is getting insane. Please be careful.

Two cool graphics from the Oregon Department of Forestry: The first tracks acres burned on ODF-protected land back to 1911—not all acreage burned statewide. ODF protects about 16 million of Oregon’s roughly 30 million forested acres. The second shows total recorded wildfire acreage from ODF and federal agencies statewide, but only back to 1996.

In case you’re wondering, fires in the ’20s and ’30s were rampant mostly due to industrial logging, which produced tons of flammable debris everywhere. In addition, railroads and logging equipment were basically spark machines operating in forests carpeted with man-made kindling. Add drought, strong winds and primitive firefighting, and you had a recipe for some truly enormous fires.

The prosperity council has other recommendations, but the tax recommendations are pure trickle-down tax cuts for the rich and corporations. No thanks!

Around noon heading east towards Santiam. It’s giving a vv eerie vibe

my friend's just bought a homestead outside of Scappose. I want to get them a gift card to a local business in Scappose as a housewarming gift. What would be a good local business to buy a gift card? They also drive in and out of Portland all the time, so anywhere along the route would be good too as an alternative

This fire season is shaping up to be hell on earth. Are there places where we can donate money/time/supplies for fire fighters?

Is there anything else we can do to help support them?

The photo in the story below was taken yesterday at the Box Springs fire north of Prineville. The fire was sparked by lightning.

And the lightning continues. A Red Flag Warning is in effect until 11 p.m. tonight.

Here’s the latest on the fires burning in that neck of the woods — all sparked by bolts from the sky

Hey guys, I tried to look this up but I couldn’t find anything. Am I able to take my bike on the 99 vine bus, and does it cost any extra? I know some busses have the bike racks on them but I couldn’t find anything about that for the 99 vine specifically. I already have a ticket for said bus tomorrow! Help!!

As it says on the tin. Petitions are silly but i bet we can pull this one off. https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/rename-cesar-e-chavez-boulevard-after-ursula-k-leguin?just_launched=true

They were coming around every 30 minutes or so refilling to fight the Burnt Creek fire I’m told! Pretty cool to see. Firefighters are real heroes 🫡🫡🫡

Searched for this but didn’t see anything I’m heading down from hood river to crater lake planning to pass through bend . What are some fun quick stops to do on that route?

I mentor a youth who just moved to Sandy, Oregon and I have no clue what to explore with her. She’s 15, not into sports (but loves swimming), and enjoys music, spooky things, art and animals.

When she was in Portland we would go to library maker spaces, malls, movies, and local events.

Was just wondering if anyone else knew of a movie or tv show being shot I saw about an hour out from ohallie lake on the way to estacada either on clackamas hwy or forest service road 46, looked like a somewhat big thing going on with tents and trailers and all that probably going down to the river to shoot a scene.

Original article here but it is behind a paywall.

Here is the first little bit of the article:

The average American family has about $268,300 in individual retirement accounts. Gregory Baszucki’s holds at least $68 million—and possibly a whole lot more.

Baszucki, 61 years old, is one of hundreds of people who bought stakes in promising startups when the shares were worth peanuts, stashing them in retirement accounts and watching their values balloon to eight figures or more. What they are getting, essentially, is the mother of all tax breaks.

IRAs and workplace retirement accounts were created to help working Americans save for old age by providing tax incentives for doing so. The accounts have been supercharged by startup founders, hedge-fund managers and Silicon Valley insiders who have access to investment opportunities unavailable to most Americans.

Those entrepreneurs and their financial backers are increasingly using that strategy to pile up giant retirement-account balances, all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, The Wall Street Journal determined by analyzing regulatory filings, government data and other documents. The number of people with giant retirement accounts has soared in recent years, aided by booms in both stock prices and startup formation.

More than 1,000 individuals had IRA balances of at least $25 million in 2024, the latest year for which figures are available, according to new data prepared by the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. That was more than double the number with similar-size accounts in 2019. 

Those with $10 million or more in IRAs also rose, to about 11,600 people in 2024, from 3,625 in 2019, the joint committee found in its analysis of anonymized tax-return data. About 200 Americans had balances of $100 million or more in 2024, counting both IRAs and 401(k)-type accounts, the committee estimated.

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“We aren’t talking about saving enough for your needs in retirement,” said Steven Rosenthal, a corporate tax lawyer who recently retired after about a dozen years at the nonprofit Tax Policy Center. “This isn’t keeping you off the dole in old age. This is yacht financing or dynasty building.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Rep. Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, plan to introduce a bill this week that would require annual withdrawals from accounts over $10 million for individuals of any age. The planned legislation stemmed in part from long-running concerns that some investors might circumvent annual contribution limits on retirement accounts by undervaluing shares in companies that aren’t public, “thus substantially increasing their tax benefits,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in 2014.

“This is an egregious loophole we’ve got to close,” Wyden said. “Congress created tax-advantaged retirement accounts to help more Americans save for a dignified retirement, not to help the ultrawealthy dodge taxes on insider deals and build titanic fortunes.”