Portland violence is way worse than Seattle's
An alert reader has directed me to a fascinating tweet from yesterday evening. It was written by Shane Kavanaugh, crack reporter for the O. In it, Kavanaugh points out that Portland was far more violent and deadly than Seattle last year:
Seattle gun violence 2021
Fatal shootings: 31
Wounded: 126
Shootings: 396
vs.
Portland gun violence 2021
Fatal shootings: 71 (2.29 × Seattle)
Wounded: 314 (2.49 ×)
Shootings: 1,288 (3.25 ×)
And Seattle's population is 756,000, compared to Portland's 656,000.
The Seattle details are here (paywall, good luck); the Portland details are here.
Meanwhile, today they wheeled out the new 12-member Portland police team that's the successor to the old "gang enforcement" and "gun violence" squads. They can't say "gang" or "gun" any more, I guess, because that's racist. Now it's the "focused intervention team." Whatever.
If they're allowed to do their jobs, maybe these dozen cops will make a difference. But that's a big "if" in a city whose priorities are so badly warped. All sorts of Portlandians are standing by waiting to jump up and accuse them of wrongdoing at their first misstep, however slight.
The daydreaming defund half(ass) measures & police cartel ('union' they call it in the press & appropriate & besmirch the name on the 'force'?) strike stalemate bleatings / beatings (respectively) shall continue, regardless of morale?
ReplyDeleteLiked dis article:
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Little's changed in a way, tho the Timber, Local industrial & Railroad barons having Portland as their little gentleman farmer-gardener playground in the 'eve of the Civil war racial-exclusionary homesteader yeoman farmer fantasy / dream state,' tho, instead of locally regional barons, we're now de-industrialized & bolt-hole for the monied Californians, global-finance-capitol corporate raiders/corporations & desperate & displaced of the previous locals & modern-day traveling nation.
Tho SEA no-have our death-stats within or daydreamer bobble heads neglecting & incompetently managing the line-items of govt. as horribly, it's gone from being an IWW & Scandinavian WWI boss' war draft-dodger labor/general strike stronghold that was way ahead of Portland socially till ~'46 to (post red-scare 1&2) 2-a real no-urban-planning sprawling suburb/car-centric souless snarl w/military-industrial & privatized monopoly (formerly govt. subsidized & developed @ great expense) tech/logistics libertopia fed $ subsidized anti-labor wet dream!
Dat said, 'dey got the line items down MUCH better up thar in WA & they're MUCH more fortunate 2-have that juicy fed. subsidized big-$$$ for military-indst defense contracting, Co.river water for E-WA ag., big-tech companies & (often) cheap public PUD power instead of PGE/Energy trust scam/administrative waste):
-No flat 9% income tax (defacto tax on) on wages.
-No costly DEQ testing on cars >25yo (few of them driving many mi, anyway, by the #s....they're smart like that with govt. cost-over-run/dead weight & redundancy on line-item reviews/good analysis):
-Yes PUD/Co-Op (often BPA-sourced) low-markup kwh.
-Yes sales tax on luxury goods & new cars, but not on groceries/food & cheap/not much on old cars/used stuff that's a stable 2-fund schools & has minimal bureaucracy to administer w/min. costs, entrapment or coercion to collect.
-Cops there viciously pray on/raise revenue from out-of-town skilled laborers w/OR plates & Pierce Co. residents that have to commute long distances into Sleazeattle for work.
-Gated communities are common, trailer parks & tenements are rare, commutes are really long, not pedestrian or alternate transport friendly (for better & worse, just statement of fact here, don't yell at me!).
-WA shove most of the poor & working people in Tacoma & Renton, SEA housing costs a fortune!
-WA no-have darkies/non white ppl. 2 speak of,'specially in the poorer parts of Peninsula, Olympia, & Tac as a % like OR/(esp.)CA does?
-No-so-many pie-in-the-sky progressive & trust fund daydreamers CA Berkeley-typs....dey already got Evgrn-St. quarantined off/sectioned off from SEA-proper that isn't a patronage machine like PSU is 4-us?
So, incl. TAC & Renton in the crime stats w/SEA, the E-WA MUCH richer/more powerful Ammon Bundy types that get every drop of water from federal subsidy that come into the Olympia state-house with their guns/astro-turfed psychos that git what they want & all the (semi)retired defense contractor fat cat assholes/regional barons & bankers that live in Spokane, then tell me that WA's culture is somehow healthier &<curdled-toxic-rotten than our screwed up OR (undeniably bad as it is here, not saying that it isn't, don't yell at me!), in the aggregate?
They just spread out/separate/segregate out their classes & problems, & exclude them, have WAY more fed.-subsidized $ to play with (thx Wayne Morse'Nam-war no-vote...luv-u for doin'/sayin' da right thing, but the Feds/Johnson/Nixon foreign policy & pro-war labor union heads w/purse sure didn't!) & externalize the environmental footprint / consequences more there.
Dat said, dey trim da bureaucratic admin. fat / PERS costs & do line items of good govt. a LOT better than us! Can we lern?
Can we lern & appropriate? (formatting on this thing sux, sorry)
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