Round-the-clock child care options E1 •
Hotel tax rates may shift • B1
FEBRUARY 17, 2012
FRIDAY 75¢
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Like NBA star he ‘discovered,’ Bend man rose from obscurity By Zack Hall The Bulletin
Seeing a previously undiscovered basketball talent splashed across the pages of a national publication has become com- Lin mon in recent days. But Thursday’s Wall Street Journal was not focused only on out-ofnowhere NBA sensation Jeremy Lin, a basketball vagabond of Taiwanese decent who has suddenly captivated the sports world while leading the New York Knicks to a seven-game winning streak. No, Journal columnist Jason Gay was interested in the FedEx delivery man from Bend who was one of the few
Kanner hired as Ashland’s city chief
people on earth who thought Lin’s story was even possible. His name is Ed Weiland, and before “Linsanity” began, he was a mostly anonymous statisticsloving hoops nut analyzing basketball players in his spare time for the blog HoopsAnalyst.com. Weiland — who uses statistical analysis similar to baseball’s sabermetrics to project college basketball players’ NBA future — wrote in 2010 that with improvement in his passing skills Lin, then a lightly regarded Harvard guard, “is a good enough player to start in the NBA and possibly star.” See Lin / A4
Joe Kline / The Bulletin
FedEx driver Ed Weiland, of Bend, writes for the blog HoopsAnalyst.com. In 2010, Weiland predicted Jeremy Lin — now a star point guard with the New York Knicks — would become a solid NBA player. Weiland has received a lot of media attention recently after the blog was discovered.
A warm welcome to WinterFest
By Scott Hammers The Bulletin
Former Deschutes County Administrator Dave Kanner will begin work as the new city administrator of Ashland at the end of the month. Kanner, 57, held the top position in Deschutes County for Kanner six years until he was fired in August. Commissioners Tony DeBone and Tammy Baney cited shortcomings in his leadership style, while Commissioner Alan Unger voted to retain Kanner. The job will be a homecoming of sorts for Kanner. Prior to being hired by Deschutes County, Kanner spent six years as the deputy county administrator in Jackson County, working in the county seat of Medford, about 15 miles from Ashland. Ashland’s prior city administrator, Martha Bennett, left in October to become chief operating officer at METRO, the regional government for Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties. Since then, former Bend city manager Larry Patterson has served as Ashland’s interim city administrator. Kanner said Bennett’s announcement that she was leaving coincided with the county commission’s decision to fire him, and that he’s been working at landing the Ashland job since. Kanner said he was selective about where he applied to work — he applied for Bend’s assistant city manager position — and hesitant about taking a job until Ashland made its decision. See Kanner / A4
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The Bulletin
WASHINGTON — Three Oregon congressmen unveiled their proposal Wednesday to replace federal payments to 18 counties in western Oregon by opening up almost 1.5 million acres of publicly owned forests to logging. The remaining 1.2 million acres of old growth forest would be IN D.C. permanently protected under the proposal introduced by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Hood River; Peter DeFazio, DSpringfield, and Kurt Schrader, D-Canby. Under the plan, revenues from the 1.5 million acres would go into the O&C Trust, which would make payments to the counties directly. The trust would be overseen by a seven-member board appointed by the governor of Oregon. “The goal of our legislation is to take the old growth controversy off the table,” said Schrader on a conference call with reporters. “We’re trying to break through the paradigm that has stymied so many before us.” The land in question — 2.7 million acres across Benton, Clackamas, Columbia, Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson, Josephine, Klamath, Lane, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, Polk, Tillamook, Washington and Yamhill counties — was originally granted to the Oregon and California Railroad Co. to develop an interstate railroad. See Timber / A4
Universities look beyond the lecture
INSIDE: YOUR WINTERFEST GUIDE For comprehensive coverage of the weekend’s events, including music and competition schedules, see today’s GO! Magazine.
IN SPORTS: A SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNEY Washington’s Kyle Miller has climbed — and boarded down — the top 25 highest peaks in the Cascades. Read his story on D1.
By Daniel de Vise The Washington Post Submitted photo
Buffett tax rule is really more of a guideline By Annie Lowrey New York Times News Service
President Barack Obama has made the Buffett Rule, mandating that millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their incomes in taxes, the centerpiece of his campaign for “fairness.” But look for it among the myriad tax changes the White House detailed in the 2013 budget proposal it released this week, and you will not find it. The Buffett Rule has become a signal piece of elec-
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By Andrew Clevenger
Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
Braving warmer-than-average temperatures, workers distribute snow to create the Rail Jam ramp for this weekend’s WinterFest in Bend’s Old Mill on Thursday. Gates open today at 5 p.m. A WinterFest button costs $8 to enter, and food and drinks cost extra.
tion-year political rhetoric. It featured heavily in Obama’s State of the Union address last month. It has become a favored talking point on the campaign trail. And Obama underscored his support of it in his budget proposal. But the White House says it is a “guideline,” rather than a legislative initiative. And it says it would make little sense to try to implement the Buffett Rule without a broader overhaul of the tax code, though it would support a congressio-
nal effort to carry it out alone. “This is the guiding principle of tax reform,” said Jason Furman, principal deputy director of the White House’s national economic council. “To some degree, it’s a specific policy, where we set a floor, a minimum rate. And to some degree, it is a statement of principle of how you would like to design the tax system.” The Buffett Rule is named for Warren Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway billionaire
who made a point of saying that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, who sat in Michelle Obama’s box at the State of the Union address. It seems like an appealingly simple way to ensure that the rich do not pay a smaller proportion of their earnings than many members of the middle class. But tax experts and even the White House itself contend it might be hard to implement. See Tax / A3
The Bulletin Vol. 109, No. 48, 66 pages, 7 sections
Plan calls for logging on 1.5M acres
INDEX Auto News Business Calendar Classified Comics Crosswords
B3 B1-6 E3 F1-4 E4-5 E5, F2
Dear Abby E3 Editorials C4 Family E1-6 Horoscope E3 Local News C1-6 Movies GO! 30
Obituaries C5 Oregon News C3 Sports D1-6 Stocks B4-5 Sudoku E5 TV E2
TODAY’S WEATHER
Afternoon showers High 56, Low 28 Page C6
Correction In a story headlined “Life Flight plans Redmond base as area’s 2nd medical air outfit,” which appeared Thursday, Feb. 16, on Page A1, the company that runs hospitals in Bend, Redmond and Prineville and the AirLink medical air transport program was misidentified. It is St. Charles Health System. The Bulletin regrets the error.
The lecture hall is under attack. Science, math and engineering departments at many universities are abandoning or retooling the lecture as a style of teaching, worried that it’s driving students away. The faculty at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has dedicated this academic year to finding alternatives to the lecture in those subjects. Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and even the White House have hosted events in which scholars have assailed the lecture. Lecture classrooms are the big box retailers of academia, paragons of efficiency. One professor can teach hundreds of students in a single room, trailed by a retinue of teaching assistants. But higher education leaders increasingly blame the format for high attrition in science and math classes. See Lecture / A3
TOP NEWS PAYROLL TAX: Compromise would auction airwaves, B1 OBITUARY: Gary Carter, Hall-ofFame catcher, C5