Here it is, the next installment of Guess Who's Coming to the Les Schwab Amphitheater?

And in this edition, we're announcing a familiar name to the LSA stage, Mr. Willie Nelson. The Red Headed Stranger last played the LSA in 2007 and is touring this summer in support of his upcoming album, Country Music. This year's show is slated for Friday, September 17.

This is the second country artist to make the LSA schedule thus far, joining legend Merle Haggard, who will play on June 20. But last time around, Nelson - as is his habit (or at least one of his habits) - drew much more than the boot-and-hat crowd, bringing in an eclectic crowd.

Here's an odd moment from Nelson's 2007 show in Bend in which he kisses a fan who braved security to get up to the stage.

A fire destroyed a home on Bend’s Westside Wednesday morning, and it took nine minutes for the fire trucks to arrive after the first 911 call came in.

Why? Because all the available firefighters were tied up handling a couple of other emergencies. Fire Chief Larry Huhn said his department is short on staff because it “hasn’t hired more firefighters to keep up with the growth in Bend,” according to the Bulletin story Thursday.

So the city isn’t able to adequately protect the area it already has, but it’s fighting the state tooth and nail to bring 9,000 more acres within the Urban Growth Boundary and open them up to development.

Brilliant, simply brilliant.

***

Speaking of city services: According to a survey out this week, most Bend residents are happy with their city fire and police departments, but – surprise, surprise! – they’re not willing to pay more taxes to support them.

The poll of 400 Bend residents found that a scant majority – 51% – said they definitely wouldn’t pay more taxes to keep police and fire services at present levels. The city paid $13,000 for the survey to help it decide whether to go ahead with an election to increase Bend’s tax base – presently a meager $2.80 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, the lowest for Oregon cities of comparable size.

It’s the same story in Bend as in other cities and states and at the federal level: People want government to do things for them, but they don’t want to pay for it.

Where’s the money supposed to come from? From the city’s fairy godmother, I guess.

***

The front page of Thursday’s Business section had a headline I never expected to see in The Bulletin: “Preparing for the inevitable bursting bubble.”

True, it wasn’t a locally written story (it came from the New York Times service) and it didn’t deal specifically with Bend’s real estate bubble – but it did acknowledge that (a) bubbles exist and (b) they inevitably burst. That’s progress, I guess.

***

As of Monday, KOHD News in Bend will no longer exist. The station is pulling the plug on local newscasts because of sagging ratings and ad revenue. Three reporters will remain in Bend – at least for now – to do short segments that will be folded into the main newscast out of the ABC affiliate in Eugene.

While I haven’t been a faithful watcher of KOHD News (or KTVZ either) I’m sorry to see it go. An area as big as Central Oregon can’t be adequately served by two local newscasts, much less by only one.  

I’ve been hearing quite a bit about a band called the Mother Hips lately and how their roots rock attack is blowing up on the West Coast right now. Well, wouldn’t you know it if an e-mail came across my electronic desk this morning announcing that the Mother Hips would be playing in Bend.

The show is slated for April 15 for Mountain’s Edge Bar (what isn’t going on there lately?) and is part of a tour supporting the Mother Hips’ record Pacific Dust, which was released last year.

The band has an ever-growing following, much of it originating within the ranks of the jam band community, and make sure you click over to the Mother Hips website to check out their classic-rock-inspired sound. Or, just click below. Whatever you’d like.

Lewis & Clark Law School professor James Huffman announced his candidacy for Ron Wyden’s US Senate seat yesterday, and the ink wasn’t even dry on his press release before the Democrats pounced on him.

The Oregon Democratic Party set up a one-page website titled “Meet Jim Huffman, Right Wing FreedomWorks Ideologue and Candidate for US Senator,” which rips into him for statements he’s made over the years.

Huffman used to write opinion pieces regularly for The Oregonian as well as other articles for conservative publications, and no doubt that will provide an inexhaustible mine of material for opposition research.

For example, the “Meet Jim Huffman” site reports that “[w]hen the Wall Street and bank executives who caused the financial meltdown started taking billions in taxpayer-funded bonuses, Huffman defended them in an April 2009 Oregonian essay titled ‘Outraged at Those Bonuses? Get Over It.’”

In fairness to Huffman the headline most likely was written by a copy editor, not by him, and he didn’t use the phrase “get over it” in his opinion piece. But he did defend the bonuses and opposed any government efforts to rein in executive compensation.

The site claims that “Huffman believes the only way to reduce health care costs is to restrict patients’ access to care, stating in an Oregonian essay that the ‘rationing of health care is unavoidable.’”

That’s a bit of a distortion. Huffman was only making the pretty obvious point that no government health care system can possibly afford to “fund every beneficial medical procedure or drug for every American.”

According to the site, "Huffman signed a FreedomWorks petition [in 2005] supporting President Bush’s risky scheme to gamble Americans’ retirement money on Wall Street." Bush's proposal -- which went nowhere -- was to allow people to voluntarily put all or part of their Social Security contributions into stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

"If history is any guide, these assets will grow over time, providing higher benefits than can the current system," the petition said. Whoops.

The site also says Huffman “joined a 2007 FreedomWorks letter arguing that federal action to avert the mortgage meltdown was unnecessary because ‘market corrections have already begun.’” That’s essentially true.

Oregonian political blogger Jeff Mapes said Huffman “seemed a bit disheartened to find that the Democrats are already digging into his archives. ‘I've got such a vast amount of stuff I've written, much of which, frankly, I don't remember,’ he told me.  He said much of it was part of an ‘ongoing academic conversation’ about issues, and he said he's sure he's contradicted himself at times.  ‘It's easy to take something out of context,’ he concluded.”

Welcome to politics, Jim. As Mr. Dooley said, it ain’t beanbag.

And then there was one...

One remaining local newscast remains in Central Oregon as of today, that being the folks over at KTVZ now that KOHD, the local ABC affiliate, has announced today that it will no longer produce a news program.

In a statement this morning on the KOHD website, KOHD General Manager Jerry Upham announced that tonight’s 11 p.m. broadcast will be the last for the station, which took to the air in September of 2007. Upham cited the station’s low Nielson ratings combined with the ongoing recession as reasons for the station to drop its broadcasts.

But KOHD will keep a crew on here in Bend to report pieces that will appear frequently on the station, likely interspersed in the newscast of Eugene-based KEZI. The website will also remain and feature local content, according to Upham.

Also, Dancing With the Stars fans will rest easy knowing that the KOHD shakeup will not affect ABC programming.

We first reported on an upcoming shakeup at KOHD in August when Daniel Pearson wrote a feature story in which Upham acknowledged the station was having trouble (like many local businesses) in the local economy. But the station insisted that there was no indication that they would be changing course. Industry experts in the story, however, predicted otherwise. Give it a read.

When Abe Lincoln talked about “government of the people, by the people and for the people” at the Gettysburg battlefield in November 1863, it’s a pretty safe bet he wasn’t including corporations in his definition of “people.”

But in January 2010, a bitterly divided US Supreme Court decided  that corporations have the same free-speech rights as people – meaning they can pour unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns.

In a 5-4 ruling the court’s conservative majority struck down the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, which restricted corporate and labor union spending on “electioneering communications.” President Obama called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

The decision was an example of radical judicial activism, and a group called the Campaign to Legalize Democracy is pushing a radical remedy for it – a constitutional amendment that would make it clear that corporations and unions don’t have the same rights as actual, living, breathing human beings.

Two representatives of the movement, David Cobb and Riki Ott, will be at the Central Oregon Environmental Center on Kansas Avenue in Bend this weekend to talk about the court’s decision and how to fight it.

Cobb, the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate, and Ott, an Alaskan community activist and writer, are aiming to “help local citizens learn how they can work to abolish corporate personhood and reestablish a government of, by, and for the people,” according to a news release.

“The movement we are launching is a long-term effort to make the U.S. Constitution more democratic,” Cobb said in the release. “We recognize that amending the Constitution to restore the power of the people over corporations will not be easy, but we know correcting the Supreme Court is imperative to the progress of our nation.”

The meeting with Cobb and Ott will take place from 7 to 9 pm Sunday at the Environmental Center; admission is free.

The group also has launched an on-line petition drive to gather signatures in support of the constitutional amendment. At this writing, almost 69,000 people have signed.

Eric Tollefson and the World's Greatest Lovers played the free Wednesday night show last night at McMenamins here in Bend, serving up a feast of blues rock jems before heading down to Hollywood for a show at the Whiskey A Go Go on Saturday.

I've got some video here, but sadly it is not of the show's defining moment, which was when a youngish man in the crowd challenged Feverishly Dancing Bespectacled Woman (if you've been to a McMenamins show, you know who she is) to a dance off. It was impossible to tell who won, given that the abundance of flailing limbs and gyrating mid sections prevented me from discerning any actual dance moves.

Here's a track from Tollefson and the Lovers, tragically missing a dance off.

The front page of the Local section of today’s Bulletin brought more proof (not that any was needed) that the bubble years are over for Central Oregon: Enrollment dropped in all of the region’s school districts over the past year.

Bend-LaPine enrollment this school year is down 0.9% from the 2008-09 figure. Other area districts saw shaper declines: Redmond 2.1%, Jefferson County 2.4%, Crook County 3%, Culver 5% and Sisters 11.4%

According to the story, “locally, district officials say the decreases are likely connected to a depressed economy, with families moving out of the area because of high unemployment.”

Gosh, ya think?

Meanwhile, the city of Bend keeps wrangling with the state Department of Land Conservation and Development over the proposed expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary. The DLCD has a number of problems with the way the city has drawn the new UGB, but the fundamental one is that it’s just too damn big.

City staff originally mapped out a much smaller one, but the city council, under pressure from the realtor/builder/developer axis, ordered them to expand it and bring in more land on the northwest side – where some of the local Good Old Boys owned property – rather than the east side, where it would be cheaper to supply sewer and water service for new development.

Blogger and downtown businessman Duncan McGeary has a funny post about the UGB battle in which the state plays the role of an exasperated grownup and Bend is a recalcitrant child:

“Come on Oregon, can't you give me a C- for old time's sake?” Bend whines. “You're going to keep us from being the big time city we always knew we'd become.”

“Sigh. I'll explain again,” says the state. “Your plan is too big and your locations are not supported by the evidence.”

“I'm baffled!”

The state “puts head in hands and groans. ‘You have failed to use proper terminology and zoning codes. We have no way of knowing what you're talking about.’”

“I'm mystified!”

“Oregon throws up hands. See you in the appeals process …”

Maybe several years and many barrels of taxpayer dollars down the road, city officials and the special interests who pull their strings will figure out that once a bubble pops you can’t re-inflate it.

Yes, that is the real name that local blues rocking singer songwriter Eric Tollefson has chosen for his band. I profiled the red head in this week's issue of the Source in advance of the band's triumphant journey to Hollywood to play the Whiskey A Go Go.

But before they head out of town, Tollefson and his band, which includes Pat Pearsall, Lindsey Elias and Keith O'Dell from Empty Space Orchestra and Tim Schroeder, formerly of the Bond Brothers on lead guitar, will play a free show tonight at McMenamins Old St. Francis School. It kicks off at 7pm with an acoustic set from Tollefson and Schroeder then brings the whole band to the stage later in the night for some full-on rocking.

How about that band name, though? Bold, sexy and hilarious -- making for a three-pronged attack of band name goodness. But here's a few names I would have suggested (creating band names is a longstanding hobby of mine) should the World's Greatest Lovers not been so potently awesome: Eric Tollefson and the Huckstable Family, Eric Tollefson and the Disbelieving Dinosaurs, Eric Tollefson and the Highly Motivated Individuals, Eric Tollefson and the Lunatic Fringe, Eric Tollefson and the Aggressive High Fivers, Eric Tollefson and Tollefsons...I could go on.

Are any of these better than the World's Greatest Lovers? No. Not at all...so here's some video of Tollefson and his sexy machine at the Domino Room in September.

On Friday I wrote about the fact that Band of Horses are coming to the Les Schwab Amphitheater on May 30, prompting at least one reader to complain about that band's lack of guitar solos. I also stated that info on an opening act would be coming soon.

Well, soon is now, because it's been confirmed that She & Him, the power duo of actress/vocalist/pianist Zooey Deschanel and producer/songwriter extraordinaire M. Ward will open the show.

The band debuted with Volume One in 2008 and will follow that up with the predictably titled Volume Two later this month. The band's songs tend to hearken back to the golden age of early '60s pop rock with Deschanel's sugary voice leading the way, as you can hear below.