The ultimate bad penny

This one stopped me in my tracks. There was Don "The Don" Mazziotti, former head of the Portland "urban renewal" agency, being interviewed on Channel 6, like some sort of expert, about the future of the city.

The Don, a faithful lieutenant to Neil Goldschmidt, was in charge of blowing hundreds of millions of property tax dollars under Vera Katz, building the aerial tram, the South Waterfront concrete jungle, and the Fake New York known as the Pearl District. A lot of people made big bucks on the Portland Development Commission dime, especially if old Goldy was their "consultant." 

All the while the basics of civilized society were being neglected all over town. The Don's long tenure in the bureaucracy basically set the stage for the disaster that Portland has become in recent years. There's chaos everywhere you look, but boy, those cr-apartments got built.

After his time in Portland was up, I recall that The Don went over to Beaverton and became the urban renewal brains behind then-Mayor Denny Doyle for a while, before Doyle's recent imprisonment on child pornography charges. I lost track of His Don-ness after the Beaverton gig, but apparently he's been busy working for Schnitzer and then for a nonprofit industrial complex member called Harbor of Hope. And now he's a member of the Oregon Alcohol and Drug Commission, and gosh, everything's been going so well with alcohol and drugs, isn't it?

Anyway, Mazziotti's thoughts on the current state of Portland can be found here. It sounds as though he's running for office. The new City Council, perhaps? Or maybe a new job pushing paper at the Chamber of Commerce or somewhere like that. Whatever that guy is selling, the taxpayers have already bought way too much of it. It's time to give him the gold watch or whatever and have him sit down or try a different locale.