Old guy claps back
Today I learned that Bob Weinstein, the guy who got kicked off the Portland police review commission for refusing to sign an overbroad secrecy agreement, has a Substack site. And yesterday he put up a post there calling out the outrageous rudeness of the punks on the far-left wing of the City Council book club.
"When," he asks, "did basic respect for citizens become optional at Portland City Hall?"
Weinstein's lived in the City of Roses for seven or eight years now – he moved here from Alaska – and he may not know all the history. The bad attitude at City Hall started decades ago. But originally it was pretty much confined to the bureaucracy, a bunch of snot-nosed 30-year-old know-it-alls with urban planning degrees from Portland State, who rammed the slogan du jour down everyone's throat. In contrast, in the old days the elected officials were mostly grownups watching out for their friends' and families' financial interests. People like Vera Katz, Dan Saltzman, Earl Blumenauer, Charlie Hales. When money called (and his name was Neil), they picked up on the first ring.
Things changed, and not for the better, when one of Katz's ex-flunkies, Sam Adams, managed to become mayor. With the help of his council colleagues, former firemen's union boss Randy Leonard and lovable child genius Erik "Opie" Sten, Sam pushed whatever crazy idea he and his friends of the moment read about over the weekend, and nobody stopped him. This is why we have an arts tax. This is why we have an ICE jail next to a school and apartment buildings. A non-listener from a cubicle, Adams carried that culture over into the council chambers.
Then came Chloe Eudaly and Jo Ann Hardesty, accomplished non-attention-payers, and it soon became clear that City Council seats could be warmed by just about anybody, at least for a short time, if they bleated the "progressive" line loudly enough. It became irrelevant how openly contemptuous of the voters a commissioner chose to be. Which situation begat the ill-fated charter commission, which begat the new 12-person book club, and voila, now no fewer than six far-out true believers, four of them avowed socialists, who are there to Stick It To The Man™.
Anyway, I'm glad to see Weinstein blogging. The city needs him and more like him. And as for his rant against the angry, spoiled children currently controlling the council, I couldn't agree more. Those kids have nothing to offer. They never should have been elected, and they need to be replaced at the earliest opportunity. This will add to the city's unemployment rolls, as none of them can hold down a real job, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
Portland's multi-district, ranked choice provisions create weird dynamics for recall elections. Councilor Dunphy received 9.1% of the vote in his district in the first round of balloting. He eventually surpassed 25% in the final round of ranked choice voting, but if he were recalled it would just be an up-or-down binary vote on whether to keep him or kick him out. Since he wasn't the first choice of 91% of the voters he'd be starting off way behind.
ReplyDeleteSeems like any Councilors who are making asses of themselves could be recalled with a little effort (it's not like any of them arrived with a mandate).
Someone with means could hire a crew to get the 12,619 needed signatures in his district for around $50k. A sufficiently motivated group of volunteers could do it for a lot less.
No one in legacy media bothered to report what was going on in the chambers of the charter commission. It was a production of the City Club and Coalition of Communities of Color. Oddly enough, the ringmaster of the commish was a former head of both organizations--but we can't say her name because she is a state-secret and remains buried deep within the city's opaque bureaucracy.
ReplyDeleteMost of the heavy lifting was done during Covid--meaning it was very private; one can only speculate about who came up with the rank-choice and 25-percent winners and three-member districts, but it certainly wasn't any member of the brain-dead commission. It all had the smell of east coast third-generation money, listless coupon-clippers and (paradoxically) Reds.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the council knows that the charter is a joke...but no one around town wants to say so out loud. Sure, you an recall the knuckleheads--but the system was engineered to produce more over-represented "minorities," and they will keep getting "elected" as long as the DSA stays disciplined.
Get used to it. Portland's establishment is gutless.