As mentioned here previously, Oregon's all about the tough issues, like requiring schools to eliminate Indian mascot names. Naturally, some folks have a problem with this.
EUGENE (AP) — Oregon’s new ban on Native American mascots in public high schools means a charter school on tribal land may have to change its Warriors logo, a chief in a headdress.
The new rules have drawn objections from two of the nine tribal groups in Oregon recognized by the federal government, including the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
Peter Rogoff, FTA head, was in town the other day to throw fed taxpayer dollars into the pot for the Portland/Milwaukie loot rail line, at which time he stated that opposition in Clackamas County can't halt it.
Clackamas County opponents have qualified a measure for the September Special Election ballot requiring a public vote on the county's $25 million share. Two light rail opponents have also made it onto the November ballot for two commission seats.
Rogoff, however, believes many, if not most, Clackamas County residents want the line.
"Transit projects create jobs and provide needed transportation options, especially in these days of $4 a gallon gas," Rogoff said.
And were it a transit project, rather than a deveoper project, there would likely be no opposition. Nobody objects to more and better bus service, for example. They do object - and rightly so - to exorbitant waste of funds on the Portland Agenda. Studies clearly show that the Portland model, in which commuters are forced into downtown Portland, is fundamentally flawed.
As it happens, Broward County has one of the strongest transit systems among other mid-sized metro areas in the United States (population: 1 to 5 million).
So what's the key to Broward's success? That's the question at the heart of a report published online earlier this month in the journal Urban Studies. A Florida State research team led by urban planning scholar Gregory Thompson considered the history of Broward County transit and evaluated its performance on a number of metrics. What they found, in short, is further evidence in favor of multi-destination systems that get people from home to work rather than simply from home to downtown.
If that's what Portland, Metro, and Tri-Met adopted, they wouldn't have an uprising on their hands.
It's not much, but at least the legislature got a toe in the door, cutting about 190 mostly mid-management jobs from the state trough. Unbelievably, the committee of budget writers who took this step consisted of two Democrats and a Republican. Bipartisanship occasionally works.
Naturally, Michael Jordan under whose term as head of Metro oversaw the sprouting of dozens of new mid-manager positions, is whining and crying. He loves his managers.
Michael Jordan, who serves as Gov. John Kitzhaber's chief operating officer and has oversight over the gamut of state agencies, said the plan follows the instructions laid down by the Legislature, but it undoubtedly will affect the level of state services.
"There aren't any of these cuts that go without any impact," Jordan said. "There are very few, if any, managers in state government that just manage. They carry a part of the general workload with them, too."
He may believe that, and if he does, he's a fool. If not, he's a liar. And say what you will about Jordan - he's not a dummy. Draw your own conclusions.
Being acquainted with a number of people who had to work under the exploding ranks of highly-compensated middle managers at Metro during the Jordan years, not one has reported a mid-manager actually working. They attend a lot of meetings, they hold a lot of meetings, they make up a lot of arbitrary rules - but they don't work.
The budget writers are on the right track.
As well, it appears that the folks in Portland City Hall have managed to pull off - however inadvertently - a major coup: traffic congestion dropped by 30% in 2011 when compared with 2010 levels. They'll doubtless claim that bicycles made all the difference, but that's actually a neglible component; the decrease was fueled by their tireless efforts to drive businesses away. The high price of gas, coupled with the lack of jobs, means that people are driving less because they have nowhere to go - and can't afford to drive without a job.
"We're experiencing a stop-and-go economy right now," Bak says. "The data indicate the country may be experiencing the jobless recovery economists warned of during the recession."
In some cases, the connection between job growth and increased congestion was clear. Cities that outpaced the national average of 1.5% growth in employment experienced some of the biggest increases in traffic congestion: Miami, 2.3% employment growth; Tampa, up 3%; and Houston, up 3.2%.
Cities that had big drops in congestion often were those that saw road construction slow considerably from 2010 to 2011 and those where gasoline prices were well above the national average at the peak in April 2011.
Florida's Secretary of State has gone through the databases, located, and purged some 53,000 dead people from the voter rolls. Here in Oregon, Secretary of State Kate Brown has other things to do: willfully misrepresenting election law in order to favor her fellow Democrats, trying to force Republicans out of the voters' pamphlet, and refusing to destroy unused ballots as required by law, among other things. Small wonder she's been given the #KorruptKate tag - she's been working hard to earn it.
Unlike Florida's SoS, Katie's too busy to bother with trivialities; voter fraud, after all, is simply a nonissue in Oregon - folks like Lafayette Keaton notwithstanding.
Keaton not only voted for a dead person in Oregon, he voted for his dead son. Making Keaton’s fraud easier was Oregon’s vote by mail scheme, which has opened up gaping holes in the integrity of elections.
But the integity of elections isn't nearly as important to Oregon's SoS as rigging them. Oregon has very critical issues facing it, such as requiring schools to eliminate mascot names like "Indians," "Chiefs" and "Braves." Presumably, the next step will involve eliminating things like "Fire Chief" and "Chief of Police". Mustn't risk offending our Indian compadres, after all. Troutdale will soon be home of the "Fighting Smelt", who will battle the Sandy Spotted Owls in epic high-school sports action.
These are critical issues which demand immediate, hard-hitting approaches for successful and sustainable resolution. Election integrity? Not so much.
The Metro council has voted to spend a million dollars to "study" a potential Bus Rapid Transit route between the PSU Development Corporation in Portland and Mt. Hood Community College.
The Powell-Division corridor study will look into whether the region could deploy “rapid transit” buses instead of far-costlier light-rail lines to connect downtown with Gresham.
It must have occurred to the brain-trust that the light rail gravy train is likely to derail in the not-too-distant future, so they're forced to look at bus options. In any case, Portland's not going to have a lot of money to throw into more light rail - they've been ordered to get it in gear and build closed reservoirs.
Things have finally caught up with Neil Goldschmidt protogeeMikey Burton. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
Mike Burton — the former state lawmaker, head of Metro and vice provost at Portland State University — pleaded guilty to first-degree official misconduct Monday for falsely claiming $4,500 in work expenses for an 11-day pleasure trip in Europe.
By pleading, he avoided a full-on felony charge - though even if convicted of that, the "punishment" wouldn't have differed substantially. He gets a year and a half of probation, had to pay back the $4500 (not hard when you've been pulling down $143,000 a year at PSU), and he won't get to feed at the public trough again without a judge's approval. The poor guy also has to complete treatment for alcohol abuse and post traumatic stress disorder.
Yeah, you know - a Democrat getting caught at theft is just so ...traumatizing! His mistake was in getting caught. When you do stuff as often as he did, you just assume you have a free pass - you'll always get away with it. When you don't, out come the excuses.
And in other none-too-surprising news, the Democrats at Portland City Hall are getting ready to shaft citizens yet again: the guy who's "director" at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, "Susan", says they need to bump the rates we pay up again.
In a memo to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, Susan Anderson, the planning and sustainability bureau’s director, acknowledged that some residents “may be displeased by an increase in charges.”
What a brain-trust we have there! They've cut garbage service by 50% without reducing rates, they've handed out slop-buckets for "food waste" and ordered us to stuff it in the "yard debris compost bin", and the resulting muck is trucked out of town so that the residents of North Plains can share in the "green experience": odor. Eau de Portlandia!
In the ongoing search to mitigate the problems their idiocy generated, Portland Democrats will meet at Metro's Planning Central HQ later this week to hear a plan from PacWest to use some "green machines" using power from the coal-fired Boardman plant to rip the stuff apart, slap it around, heat it, and spit out something that should compost without much odor.
What? The well-thought-out scheme that we forced on everyone is causing problems? Well, clearly, we'll need to charge them more!
As you may have noticed, the economy isn't really going anywhere - it doesn't matter what the government tells you, you see it all around you. It's dead, Jim. With all the blather about "job creation", constantly trumpeted by every candidate for every office, including dog-catcher, why isn't it happening?
One word:
Government.
As Ronald Reagan so succinctly put it, "Government is the problem." They set up agencies, staffed by lifetime bureaucrats, who then write rules with no Executive or Legislative oversight. At present, less than half-way through 2012, some four thousand new rules are already in the pipeline. And the net effect of all of this rule-making is economic strangulation.
The Environmental Protection Agency is among the most egregious, and numerous examples of their overreach can be found at a glance. From energy generation to construction to the local hardware store, their impedance touches nearly every aspect of American life today - and most is entirely unnecessary.
"I don't think that with all of the different regulations coming out of Washington, which are supposed to be for the general betterment, that they realize the adverse effects," Chapdelaine said. "Look at the shipping regulations they put on spray paint. It means we can't buy that product in bulk anymore because it's regulated as a hazardous material."
For example, the EPA is reviewing 330 regulations covering things such as farm and construction dust to carbon dioxide emissions, Patterson said.
"Our stance is, let's rein in some the regulations being created, and let small business owners get back to creating jobs," Patterson said. "If the government could foster an environment where business can grow and add jobs, our small businesses can hire people in their communities and put people back to work."
Unfortunately, our media and schools push the extremism promoted by groups such as Sierra Club and 350. With increasing frequency, we're seeing indoctrinated high-school students, prodded on by Leftist groups, bringing litigation against governments over global warming climate change.
Of course, it's not just federal agencies and rabid protectionists at work - state and local governments have gone deep into the regulatory environment as well, and even land-owners who do the "green" thing often attract their ire, as a resident of Longview, Wash. discovered when he erected a windmill on his acreage.
It's becoming increasingly apparent that in order to effect at least a degree of sanity in government, it's going to be necessary to elect individuals with the backbone to begin reducing the scope of many agencies at the local, state, and federal levels - and dismantling some entirely. The Left's always looking to yell and slobber, anyway. Let's give 'em something to scream about.
It's been a spectacularly bad week for Democrats: in Massachusetts, Scott Brown has been demolishing Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, but he's had a lot of help - from Warren herself. She's been taking a lot of heat over her on-again off-again claims of Indian ancestry; a claim that she's used shamelessly when she perceives it to be advantageous but has otherwise largely ignored. The Harvard law professor used to identify herself as a "minority" in law school directories, based on a far-back (and unconfirmed) Native American ancestry.
Her responses to the media firestorm have been downright silly - first using the cherished Democrat "I don't recall" line (which is suspect given that Warren listed herself as a minority). She also tried to say that the story was a sexist attack from the Brown campaign, but the argument didn't make a lot of sense. Her scrambling and scuttling around only makes her look worse.
Also back east, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is circulating about 81 pages of documentation laying out the basis for charging Barky's AG, Eric Holder, with contempt. This is just building up the foundation for action, but Issa certainly wouldn't be pursuing it if he wasn't comfortable that sufficient votes exist to bring the charges.
According to the draft contempt order, the department "has yet to provide a single document for 12 out of the 22 categories contained in the subpoena schedule."
The last time an Attorney General was found in contempt was also in a Democrat administration, when Janet Reno got the prize. Senator Chuck Grassley, having been sent a bald-faced lie by DoJ in response to his inquiry (which letter was subsequently retracted by DoJ), is pleased to see Issa's tenacity on the matter.
Our Campaigner-in-chief has also been busy, this month; in addition to continuing to threaten SCOTUS with "dire consequences" in the event that they fail to uphold his health care law, he's issued a couple of Executive Orders:
The first E.O., issued 1 May 2012, makes the USA subject to “international regulations” as opposed to looking to and following the US Constitution. Also, with this new E.O., the US FDA will now be able to be bypassed by International committees—thus, replacing the FDA with any international group which may be chosen.
The second E.O. issued in 2 days was signed by Obama on 2 May 2012. This E.O. instructs the USA to bow to international regulations instead of the US Constitution and Businessweek reports: “Obama’s order provides a framework to organize scattered efforts to promote international regulatory cooperation, the chamber’s top global regulatory official said today.
“Today’s executive order marks a paradigm shift for U.S. regulators by directing them to take the international implications of their work into account in a consistent and comprehensive way,” Sean Heather, vice president of the chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation, said in an e-mailed statement.” This also brings the USA closer to becoming a “North American Union” and—also—eliminating its sovereignty—in toto.
Everywhere you look, it seems, there's a Democrat with a long fork, looking to stab you in the fanny. It's even happening - hold on, this will be hard to believe - right here in Oregon!
Corrupt secretary of state Kate Brown gets a Chris Matthews-like tingle running up her leg every time she can come up with a new way to re-write the rules at the last minute, with an eye toward benefitting her fellow Democrats at the expense of everybody else. Her most recent escapade, involving the last-minute robbery of a Republican running for Congress in District 1, is described in the above embedded link to 5440.
In Portland, locally loathed Democrat Mary Nolan is running to unseat incumbent Portland City Councilor Amanda Fritz, and her campaign is so full of lies and negativity that even the editorial board at The Zero felt obligated to take note; observing that Nolan tries to paint her opponent as a failure for a project that was underway before Fritz even came into office. That's par for the former state legislator, however, who was so abrasive and dishonest that even her Democrat colleagues couldn't stand her - so much so that she was removed from positions of power and steadily marginalized at the state-house.
Two great items in the news today: as has been discovered in other states, Oregon's "Trail" cards, ostensibly given to the poorest of the poor to help them pay for utilities, rent, and food (to the tune of $16 million a month) are being used by some folks to get cash at strip clubs, casinos, and liquor stores. What a surprise! Hey, it's free money, and as one commenter brilliantly notes:
There should be nothing wrong if they use their card at a casino to buy food, they have to have a vacation too, just like you and me, if you are so concern about that little bet of money than how about our state and federal spending, are these people getting rich on public asst. Atleast they are not charging the goverment 55.000.00 for a vacation in vegas
"Kim", it seems, is a graduate of Portland Public Schools. Note the excellent command of the English language. The article goes on to observe that the practice isn't illegal,
But Oregon officials along with those in other states say this kind of activity undermines the integrity of government safety-net programs. Some states, including Washington, have passed laws to restrict such abuse.
Undermines the integrity of the programs? The hell you say! That's really not possible, as they have no integrity to begin with. The Oregon Trail cards are issued primarily so that recipients don't feel "stigmatized" when using them, as was so often the case a few years ago, when the state issued booklets of food stamps. Oh, the horror! It borders on abuse for people to feel stigmatized - it might motivate them to go find a job.
It gets better: as Oregon Catalyst reports today, the state wants to impose a fee upon people who draw water from their own private wells. Oregon Water Resources Department has increased its staff by nearly 20% over the past decade - they need to pay for the overhead somehow. So in addition to paying to drill the well, pump the water, maintain the system - Oregon's WRD thinks it's a good idea to charge users a fee in addition. They just never stop coming up with creative ways to steal your money.
So, having put up with David Wu for years (and continuing to elect him), voters replaced him with the wife of Wu's long-time lawyer. Feeling good about that? Not so much? Well, maybe it's time for a clean slate at the national level. Delinda Morgan can restore some dignity and confidence to Oregon's CD-1 district, and that's long overdue. On the other hand, if you just love dark comedy, there's always the wife of the lawyer for the guy in the tiger suit.
As well, something interesting has cropped up on the screen over in Oregon's Senate District 18, where Suzanne Gallagher has started up a write-in campaign. A small business owner, she's seen first-hand what decades of governmental (and bureaucratic) intervention has done, and is ready to step up to get some actual improvements going. Consider writing her in - and bureaucrats out.
Recent Comments