Oregon's public defender disaster

All of a sudden there are no public defenders in Oregon, and so criminals are being set free.

And yet the state spends something like $350 million or $400 million a year on something called the Office of Public Defense Services.

You know what that smells like? Bull manure. Classic Oregon bull manure.

You've probably seen some of the noise surrounding this in the news. The chief justice of the state supreme court threw a hissy fit over it, fired a guy, and then retired. The clown who's posing as the district attorney in Multnomah County is hiding behind it. And a lot of people are making a good living off it, including a somewhat shady-looking politician-turned-lobbyist.

It's time to get to the bottom of it all. Who will do that? Our flaccid local media? I doubt they have the requisite brain power and attention span. It's going to have to be somebody else.

I'm going to start here, on the Portland Dissent blog – usually way too right-wing and nasty for my taste, but on this subject, at least they're actually digging into the inconvenient facts and thinking critically amidst all their biases. Their spiel is way more reliable than what you'll be offered by the politicians.

But I'm sure there's more, much more. Let's figure this one out and start applying the pressure where it's needed to get it fixed. The vast majority of Portlanders are tired of living in a lawless hell hole, and this fiasco is making our situation worse. Along with a lot of other bad policy coming out of Salem, that is. The pendulum has swung way too far in favor of people who can't or won't follow any rules. Give them their lawyers, and when they lose their court cases, do the right thing and lock them up.