Forget Tasini
My first cut at the District 2 Portland City Council race, here, brought in a good response from one reader, who warned me that Jonathan Tasini was not such a hot choice. Looking at Tasini's statements about the issues, here and here, I think I agree with the reader. Too Eudaly-ish for my taste.
In District 2, that leaves Mike Marshall, Bob Simril, and Reuben Berlin. So far. More informative comments are welcome.
Not a Tasini plug but a note about one of his answers. After a couple of neighborhood meetings with our PPB precinct commander, I’ve found Jesus on Portland Street Response. They made it clear that there will never ever be enough cops, money, or mandate for them to respond to all the mental health breakdowns and they only go to the hardcore ones anyway. Sure it’s probably self serving but it’s also a cold bucket of reality.
ReplyDeleteCosign on Portland Street Response. This type of work shouldn't involve cops anyway.
DeleteI think most candidates will say something nice about Portland Street Response if you ask them.
DeleteHe lost me on kicker for the workers, not the wealthy
ReplyDeleteI got off the boat at "landlords are evil."
DeleteI also got the sense that he's been a renter all his adult life.
DeleteAnd not just the kicker. He says, "We need to look at new options: a city-level capital gains tax; a congestion tax and a progressive real estate excise tax." That's a lot of new taxes for a city that is already losing people because of taxes.
DeleteLabelling a politician a "Marxist" is usually a lazy cliche, but not in Portland.
DeleteYou really have to wonder about the sanity of the city's incestuous political class when NO ONE is seriously talking about getting off the taxpayers' backs. The ill-effects of the confiscation society are already showing up in the lleakage of people (mostly the ambitious and successful) from the city, which will explode in a year or so. when lower interest rates ripple down to the housing market.
ReplyDeleteDowntown is broke and will probably never come back to even 2019 levels.. There is no entrepreneurial culture--beyond hustler-nonprofits--in this town. There are no growth industries, beyond brewing weird beer and piling up your PERS bennies in. government. The medical iindustry is in trouble; OHA clueless.
And the whole thing is run by a classic pay-to-play political machine and the corpus of Big Girls who have floated on the wings of equity into positions of (they believe) power.
If there is any real power in the state is dumb as the stumps in the forests we can't harvest as we whack invading owls.
Sleep tight., folks!
Amen brother!
DeleteWeird isn't working. Reward excellence lavishly. Starve mediocrity. Care for the truly needy, but shun the grifters.
Delete