Election porn '25
While I was on hiatus from blogging, we had an election in Portland. It wasn't much – some minor offices at the dog catcher level – but I remember getting one glossy flyer urging me to vote for somebody or other. As I pitched the mailer into the recycling, something felt wrong. I was supposed to be noting it on the internet and ridiculing it before tossing it.
Now that my blogging has resumed, I knew just what to do when this one showed up yesterday. A four-pager, 8½ by 11:
This stuff is so predictable, it's sad. Tax increase? It's "for the children"! Par for the course here in the World Capital of Self-Parody.
I wonder it was "for the children" that the City Council let municipal finances deteriorate so badly, and spent so much on ditzy politicians' campaigns and pet-project junk, that now something so utterly basic as park maintenance can't be paid for out of the existing general fund. It needs a special tax.
If you managed your money the way the city runs its, you'd be living in a cardboard box, or a prison cell. But in Portland politics, nothing succeeds like failure. This tax increase is a lock to pass.
It will pass because Portland has had an in-migration of people such as Angelita and Candace and the rest of the socialists--and an out-migration of people who work producing real things and then pay taxes. Portland had an in-migration of people who wanted to live here becauser of the city's rep--and who then proceeded to trash it. It imported people who were running away from whatever cultural norms other cities imposed--and who then turned Portland into an anythinng-goes freak show. These are the voters--now hyper-amped up by the noxious 25-percent city counncil elections. We're stuck with 'em.
ReplyDeleteIt actually doesn't take 25 percent. I believe one or two of the current crop got only 22 percent.
DeleteAnd let’s not forget all the perfectly functioning light poles they tore down then had the buy new ones when everyone complained. Idiots
DeleteThese measures pass because voters are too lazy to vote.
ReplyDeleteIt will be a small minority that passes this tax increase, this is why they put it in a special election.