MaxRedline

Too Big To Fail

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.

 

Metro Considers BRT To Gresham

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.

Portland Steals More Money From Oregon Schools

Portland city commissioners on Wednesday voted 3-1 to create a $169 million urban renewal area around Portland State University.

Yeah, that's a really "blighted" area. Somebody needs to stop these clowns; this is clearly in violation of urban renewal laws.

The Unrelenting Stink Of Portland Democrats

Things have finally caught up with Neil Goldschmidt protogee Mikey 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!

A total of 136 complaints were registered in February alone.

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!

Portland Mayor Sam Adams Hates Mercy Corps

He hasn't had the guts to actually say it, yet, but he has to be seething. He's been very outspoken about his hatred for WalMart, so we can infer that since Mercy Corps and WalMart have formed an alliance to help tsunami victims in Japan, he'll try to drive the Corps out of town.

Portlandia Continues

Some Occupie types broke into a foreclosed house in Portland on May 1 and "returned" it to the "rightful owner". So yesterday, some of them were down at the Portland Building "demanding" that the City turn the water back on at the house. Didn't work out for them, poor dears. Commenters on the article are generally less than supportive, as well.

And a recent poll indicates that Portlanders have had about enough of the City's Agenda 21 foolishness: nearly 80% said they need to fix the roads and stop with the bike paths and bio-swales.

Portland should spend more time and money fixing its beat-up streets and attracting businesses, and less on bicycle amenities and streetcars, city voters say.

Sammy's response: bite me.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams, who oversees the city's transportation bureau, said he isn't surprised by the results but isn't swayed by them either.

Regulations, Small Business, Your Life

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.

Then warm up their bottles and put them to bed.

Related articles

• Government Regulations Are Killing Middle Class Opportunity (usnews.com)
• Washington not a 'friendly' state for small business: Report (bizjournals.com)
• Texas No. 2 most business-friendly state (bizjournals.com)
• CEI's Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation (openmarket.org)

Bicycle Boulevards, Greenways, and More

Portland may be broke, but that's no reason to stop spending your money. Let's see...there's a freeway and a light rail line, on either side of which are neighborhoods with streets, bike lanes, and sidewalks. Nope! Not good enough. What the city really needs to do is to blow another few million on a paved bike trail next to the light rail line. Yeah - that's the ticket!

Portlandia Rambles Greenly On

 

A lady in Portland's Department of Transportation sent a defense of their propaganda in response to a query. She claims that 

Portland residents have made it a priority to create livable and safe streets. There are important and critical safety issues that having a multimodal transportation system address. Part of that means getting information, tools, ideas and strategies into the hands of residents and employees that want to lead a more active and healthy life - through bicycling, walk, taking transit and driving less.

Portland Smart Trips accounts for an annual decrease in driving trips by 9%....

Evidently, Linda also works for the Department of Pulling Figures Out of Our Butts, as there is no reason to accept her statement that each and every year, nearly 10% more decrease their driving as a result of the City's glossy pamphlets touting bicycles and walking.

Moreover, according to The Zero, after six decades of seemingly inexorable increases, traffic peaked nationally in 2004. The total vehicle miles has been flat or down each year since. In 2011, the average American drove 6 percent fewer miles than in 2004.

Unsurprisingly, it appears that Portland bureaucrats are simply trying to take credit for trends that have been apparent nationwide for years. How else would they shore up their "green, progressive" credentials and justify their cushy "jobs"?

 

More U.N. Agenda 21 Porn From Portland

Drive less. Save More. That's the mantra of these idiots who seem to believe that they're doing essential government work by dreaming up propaganda, formatting it on computers, sending it out to be printed, then mailing it to your home. Tax dollars pay for the "staff", pay for the computers, pay for the printing, and pay for the mailing. For what? You can use the junk to start a fire in the fireplace or wood stove, but other than that, it's good for nothing. Remember this the next time they wail about being low on cash. They produce very expensive fire-starters, but nothing more.