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THE LARS LARSON SHOW                         Honestly Provocative.

Lars LarsonLars got his start in radio at age 16 spinning records (remember 45s?) and reading news, sports and weather (twice an hour) on KTIL (The Mighty 1590) from a little cinderblock building on the edge of a cow pasture in Tillamook, Oregon (75 miles West of Portland, Oregon).

 

36 years later, he’s only moved 75 miles east to Portland and light years to “the Right”. Emmy and Peabody award winner Lars Larson brings nearly four decades of experience as a radio and television journalist to the microphone for six hours of the best talk radio in America. Six hours of daily prep keep The Lars Larson Show on top of the news and top-of-mind for listeners across the country.

 

Along the way, Lars has worked for more than a dozen radio stations and five television stations. Today, Lars holds down the fort from 12pm – 4pm on Radio Northwest flagship FM NEWS 101 KXL. His local talk show airs on seventeen stations in the Pacific Northwest (and earns him the biggest local talk radio audience in the region).

 

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Faster. Cheaper. More Efficient. Unwanted.


Forest fires happen every year. Thousands of acres burn, homes are lost, and, in some cases, lives are lost. But every year, fire fighters hit the front lines, and with the aide of planes and helicopters, they do their best to put out these fires as fast as possible. Or, at least that's what we're supposed to think.

Now imagine if someone designed a plane that was faster to respond to fires, cheaper to run, and fought these fires more efficiently. You'd think that people would jump at the chance to use this new technology. That appears to be the case in countries like Mexico and Turkey, but, at this point, the U.S. appears to be content to fight fires the old fashioned way.

Today I was joined by Sam White from Evergreen Aviation. He told me about a plane that is a revolution in fire fighting, but, for some reason, the U.S. Forest Service doesn't appear to be interested in using it.

Don't Feel Sorry For The Oregon Department of Revenue.


This morning’s daily dead FishWrapper works hard to provide cover for incompetence at the Oregon Department of Revenue, but you have to deploy your secret decoder ring to find the details.  

Let me list a few here:

- A 25 year old woman files a clearly fraudulent tax return claiming $3 million in wages.  Unless she’s Bill Gates daughter that should have set off alarm bells.  

- Then a revenue department worker approved a $2.1 million refund.  Alarm bell number two, since no one smart enough to make that kind of dough loans it interest free to the door knobs in Salem.  

- Now the FishWrapper says the poor folks at revenue are understaffed, but then admits it’s been that way for three years; on purpose. So they can buy new computers.  And Governor Kitzhaber has let the department run without a director for more than a year.  

Is the worker who approved this fraud on the job?  Revenue spokesman Derrick Gasperini won’t say.  And the woman who was first tagged for the fraud? She was released by police without being charged.  

This stinks. But hey, who cares, it’s Other People’s Money.  

Buying Something Gluten-Free? It's Probably Not Fully Gluten-Free...


Millions of Americans suffer from celiac disease, which is an allergy to gluten. The gluten-free food industry in America and Western Europe is worth around $3.5 billion. 

Widmer Bros. brewing, is among a handful of breweries in the Portland area that are crafting gluten-free beers. Now, Widmer is in a little bit of hot water with the  Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau ("TTB").  The issue is over the ingredients in Widmer's gluten-free brew. Here's an excerpt from the Willamette Week about the issue:

According to the TTB, wine, beer or distilled spirits “made from ingredients that contain gluten (cannot) be labeled as ‘gluten-free.’” This could spell trouble for Widmer, which has invested significant time and money in a new gluten-free beer.

Only a few months ago, Widmer Bros., a division of Craft Brew Alliance (CBA), the nation’s ninth’s largest brewing company, released Omission Gluten Free Lager and Gluten Free Pale Ale. Widmer is selling the beer locally, and plans roll it out nationwide soon.

Here’s the kicker: Unlike other gluten-free beers, which are typically made from sorghum and usually taste nothing like actual beer, Omission is made from traditional ingredients, including barley. The beers are then deglutenized enzymatically. The result is a beer that tastes like beer—unlike so many competitors—yet has allegedly imperceptible levels of gluten. Not zero gluten, just almost none, not unlike caffeine in decaf coffee or alcohol in non-alcoholic beer. Widmer isn’t the first to use this process; it's just the first to do it commercially in the U.S. Development began six years ago and researched and tested full-throttle for the last two.

Adopting guidelines set forth by organizations within the World Health Organization, the FDA has said food labeled as gluten-free cannot exceed 20 parts per million (ppm) gluten. Omission beers are at 5-6 ppm. As a point of reference, Widmer Drifter Pale Ale comes back at 50-100 ppm.

The issue appears to be that, since Widmer starts with ingredients that contain gluten, and then remove it later in the process, the TTB says that Widmer's brew cannot be labeled as gluten-free. 

It seems a little odd that this is an issue. If you look at other type of products, caffeine-free coffee still has traces of caffeine. Alcohol-free beer still has traces of alcohol. This beer comes in well under the standard for a product to be labeled gluten-free. That also means that thousands of products that are labeled gluten-free still contain trace amounts of gluten. 

I don't believe that Widmer is in the wrong here. One can only hope that they win this fight against the TTB

Sam Adams Should Be A Dancer With The Way He Dances Around Questions...


I had the pleasure of chatting with Portland Mayor Sam Adams today.

I'd like to think that, despite our rocky past, which included him hanging up on the show, that Sam would be willing to answer questions that the citizens of Portland want answered.

I asked Sam about the firing of the Portland Police officer who shot Aaron Campbell, whether the new garbage service was successful, Portland water rates, and more.

After the way Sam danced around the questions, I'm convinced that he should be a contestant on Dancing With The Stars. You have to wonder if he's capable of giving an honest answer.

After the 20 minutes we had the Mayor on the air, I'm left wondering if he answered any of my questions...

Government Gone Dumb


I could make a full time career as a talk journalist just discussing the things government does under the heading of “dumb with our money”.  

Here is the latest example: a woman who took turbo tax software and cooked up a filing that claimed she made three million bucks in wages, and that the state of Oregon owed her a refund of more than two million dollars. 

Here’s the "dumb with your money" part: the state of Oregon signed off on the return and authorized TurboTax to give the woman a debit card loaded with $2.1 million!  Here's an excerpt from Oregon Live:

Krystle Marie Reyes was booked into the Marion County Jail on charges of computer crime and aggravated theft, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Oregonian. 

She racked up more than $150,000 in purchases. Reyes, according to the affidavit, paid $2,000 in cash for a 1999 Dodge Caravan and used the card to buy $800 worth of tires and wheels.

I’m trying to imagine the process here. Turbo tax calls some PERS drone at the revenue department and the drone says, "Yep, her return says she made three million bucks, and she had more than two million dollars withheld by the state of Oregon”.  

Since the state tax rate is only 11.5 percent, I’m wondering why it didn’t occur to anyone in Salem to question why it wasn't $300,000 withheld.  The state only caught the woman after she reported that she had lost two of her multimillion dollar debit cards, and tried to obtain another one.  

It's no wonder the government always claims to be broke.  It's because the room temperature IQs in Salem can’t wait to give your money away to anyone who asks for it.

Writing On The Wall For Obama After Failed Recall


Well, this could change everything. Wisconsin ramps up the third recall of an elected Governor in American history and the unions pull out all the stops to support it…and it fails. 36 percent of union households in the state even voted to keep Governor Scott Walker. 

President Obama recognizes that the election is seen as a harbinger of the fall election and he stays as far away as he can. The same way he has with virtually every difficult decision or vote in his political life.  

A political writer I know from the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen, told me last night that if Walker survived, Obama would lose this fall. Here is an excerpt from his op-ed piece leading up to the recall election:

"A victory tomorrow would make Walker the instant front-runner for the GOP vice presidential nod. Walker has a great story to tell. He took on the public-sector unions and did not back down in the face of protests, civil disobedience and the spectacle of Democratic state legislators fleeing across state lines to avoid casting their votes back home. By standing firm, he succeeded in implementing collective-bargaining and other common sense reforms that have saved Wisconsin taxpayers more than a billion dollars — turning a record $3.6 billion budget deficit into a $154 million surplus. And he did it while cutting property taxes and creating a business-friendly environment that has produced more than 35,000 new jobs since he took office. All this makes Walker the national poster child for taming out of control budgets."

I think Americans can now see that a politician can actually run on a set of principles, live up to his promises, even if they are controversial and unpopular with powerful unions, and enjoy the support of the electorate. 

The President on the other hand made all kinds of crazy promises, like closing Gitmo, not raising taxes on average folks and the like. He failed to deliver, and now will face both the wrath of voters and the severe disappointment of his most fervent supporters. And this fall, Americans will give my favorite Marxist his walking papers
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