The Mingus Mapps letdown has begun

I voted for Mingus Mapps for Portland City Council. He was better than the alternatives. He looked like somebody with a spine and some common sense. He was supported by the police union, which was bad, but I was willing to overlook that if he could help Portland wake up and get back on its feet.

And so you can imagine my disappointment today to see that Mapps has joined the homeless industrial complex and his extremist colleagues in decrying the mayor's homeless emergency trial balloon as "internment."

Also on Monday, Commissioner Mingus Mapps called Adams’ proposal an “overcorrection” to the “current hands-off approach” that “has failed everyone.” “There are ethical and effective solutions between internment and anarchy, but policymakers need to honestly face the issue,” Mapps added.

This is what the preservers of the status quo are calling the proposed policy of forcing tent and RV campers off the streets, off the freeways, out of the parks, and into shelters. It's what used to be called "vagrancy laws," universally accepted, but now the shelters are "cruelty camps," "concentration camps," and this latest, "internment."

Dear Comissioner Mapps:

There are some undeniable truths that you need to acknowledge:

1. Portland is never going to recover as long as there are thousands of people living outdoors.

2, Many of the people living outdoors prefer their current camp life, often involving hard-core drug addiction, to being a functioning member of society. They will leave their tent or zombie RV only if they are forced to.

3. Campers must be given a choice between a government-sponsored shelter bed or a jail bed. If they have kids, a motel room. Sleeping in public spaces cannot be an option.

4. Even if you could afford to build cheap apartments for them all, which you can't, that would only attract more campers from all up and down the West Coast.

5. See "1" above.

You are either part of the solution or part of the problem, Mr. Mapps. Dan Ryan's Don Quixote act with the tiny houses is laughably inadequate. We elected you to move us forward. It's time to stop with the political science term papers and get on with the dirty work of actually governing.

People don't work in Portland City Hall long before they get sucked into the vortex of delusion and incompetence. Mapps showed some promise. Today, I can't say it's panning out.