..."“Fentanyl is unlike anything we have seen. … We all want an easy solution … decriminalizing won’t fix it,”...
Too bad that wasn't so widely known in late May, 2020. I'd literally never heard of fentanyl before then.
I often reflect on how unlucky that cop was, surely distracted by sidewalk goons with cameras; hardly the first time in that area full of gangs. The Asian cop got a prison sentence merely for watching that hostile audience, as if he knew the Saint would die all along. It never seemed like intentional murder, rather a case of distracted irritation while dealing with a guy who seemed strong. People, including conservatives. who just go along with the "murder" assumption remain part of the problem. There needs to be a retrial.
It wasn't intentional murder. At worst, it was negligent homicide by the Minneapolis police officers who were called to deal with George Floyd. Had he simply returned the cigarettes he stole with counterfeit money, Portlanders could have avoided becoming Antifa sheep.
There is a principal in physics about how little energy is required to turn something from an ordered state to a disordered state. Think of a gust of wind blowing a crystal glass on to the floor where it shatters. Like Humpty Dumpty you can't put it back together again. That night in 2020 Portland was that piece of crystal falling off a table and shattering apparently from an action almost 2000 miles away. Yes George Floyd could have just walked away just as the Police Officers could have sent him on his way with a warning just a perfect storm of overreaction. Why this particular situation blew totally out of proportion out of what might have been hundreds of similar incidents happening at the same time all over the world is unknowable. Blame it on the Fates I guess. Might even make a good subject for an Opera.
Yes, the Minneapolis police could have sent George Floyd on his way with a warning. How many times do you suppose Floyd was given a warning in the past and sent on his way? What did that teach him?
Here in Portland, the cops are now criticized for sending offenders on their way.
If the offenders go on their way and cause a car crash, or assault someone, or blithely steal from another business, then the cops are blamed for being lazy or on strike (Blogger and Lewis & Clark law professor Jack Bogdanski, in particular, is convinced the Portland Police Bureau is on strike).
At the time of his death, Rodney King had chalked up at least a dozen “wet reckless” stops. He had learned nothing over the years except that crime pays. Of course, the cops did not arrest King when they caught him driving under the influence. They gave him a ride home.
I made my first trip to downtown last evening in probably 4 years which is when I retired after working downtown for 20 years. My wife wanted to take me to dinner at Hubers on my Birthday but I wanted nothing to do with downtown, but a friend of ours who is a talented but struggling clothing designer rented a space to show off his work and the work of another local designer. The event was in a central part of town on Washington and Seventh and there was an evening concert in courthouse square so the police and private security were visible. I didn't see any open air drug use (not that I was looking for it) but I didn't stay long. The several block walk back to my car exposed me to something I don't recall from the downtown I remembered, lots of litter, empty pop bottles refilled with what looked like urine and a lot of grafitti. What I see of improvement is little more than a dab of lipstick on a pig. Still it was a little encouraging.
Hope you enjoyed dinner at Huber’s — Portland’s oldest restaurant. Did you have the Spanish coffee?
I often go downtown every week, usually via the No. 12 or 56. I feel more comfortable if I can take bear or pepper spray. If I’m going to visit a courthouse, I can’t do that.
Earlier this summer, I forgot I had pepper spray on me, and the bailiff at the county courthouse gave me a choice: relinquish the pepper spray so he could destroy it, or keep the pepper spray and leave. He declined to hold it for me while I was checking some court records. I left the courthouse, since I wanted to wander around downtown afterwards. It’s more comfortable to walk around if you have some protection.
On Feb. 28, I went to the U.S. District Court for one of Judge Michael Simon’s settlement conferences re: DOJ vs. Portland police. I remembered not to take pepper spray. After the conference, I walked a few blocks to Great Harvest Bakery to stock up on bread.
Later, while holding a bag of bread and waiting for the bus at Fifth and Alder streets, a lean woman with stringy, black hair charged at me, shrieking. I started running down Fifth to another bus stop and crossed paths with a young black man, wearing a vest indicating he worked for the city. He saw the shrieker, too, and we exchanged glances, like “What can you do?”
In Portland, the drug-addled and the lunatics run the show. They don’t need pepper spray. They can do whatever they want.
So I completely understand how you feel, Tom. I’m glad you ventured out. Come again soon. We have them outnumbered. But we have to fight according to the rules; they don’t.
Thanks. I can recall a time not that long ago you wouldn't have dared litter downtown because you would have been told to pick it up and they wouldn't have been Portland polite about it.
I was refered to a Robert D. Kaplan article in the Atlantic from 1994 titled The Coming Anarchy.
Came across this observation:
” The Minister mentioned one of the coup’s leaders, Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his schooling, “in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his
Guess a boy's got to mitigate what he's got to mitigate. Besides, I think the US left has steamed way past Mao, so in a return to the past - it's off to a new frontier
As someone who has been an old school photographer working in a darkroom on what we call 'Black and White' photography for most of my life it is really more about the many shades of gray between the two extremes that makes a quality print. Ansel Adams wrote the books on it..
Vega Pederson is incompetent. She's not really invested in actually doing something effective to address the drug addiction, due to Fentanyl. She'd rather hand out drug paraphernalia to addicts and help along their slow torturous demise. I have NO respect for her. She is incompetent and ineffective. The fact that she would not help with the running of the Bybee shelter is REPREHENSIBLE and it shows her true colors. The woman does not CARE.
Portland and it’s environs could almost be described as the star chamber for progressive ideas and policies that always wind up without the desired results. Maybe if they would seriously listen to what the other side of the political spectrum is proposing and come to some BIPARTISAN agreement once in awhile, it wouldn’t be necessary to “walk out” to be heard. It seems to me that these town halls aren’t very serious. Just patting each other on the back and hoping things work out and get better.
One solution is to never assume someone's "right wing" or even merely conservative for being tired of crime-coddling. I see anyone who supports Trump as equally sleazy in a different way, representing what stirred up the ugly left. Liars & deniers across the board need to go.
You can reach some leftists with the angle that ostensibly "caring, compassionate" people would weep over crime victims, not just criminals whom they insist can be reformed. That forces them to not be narrowly focused on harm of one kind.
I’ve been to more town halls than I can remember. Like you say, most of them are mutual admiration societies. At least with Wyden and Merkley they had someone pass a microphone around, and people could directly ask whatever they wanted.
I once attended a town hall in Portland that included then-House Speaker Kotek, Rep. Tawna Sanchez and Sen. Lew Frederick. It was a lively affair that drew about 75 people, many of whom were highly engaged in the issues. When Kotek got a bill number wrong, they quickly corrected her.
Aug 28, 2023·edited Aug 28, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Incredible.
1) Democrats, like Lieber, strongly endorsed Measure 110, although it was obvious on its face that it would make ANY criminal drug enforcement IMPOSSIBLE (that means a police officer being unable to even approach someone firing up a syringe in public and say "hey, dude...") It has created the WORST drug overdose crisis in America, since there is ZERO official intervention
2) ByBee Lake, the never-used Multnomah Jail site, gets NO public money while saving scores, if not hundreds, of lives by actually intervening - without government sanction - in the death spiral of addiction. Yet government officials like Lieber and Vega-Petersen refuse to allocate ANYTHING to this fantastic program!
Honestly, it makes me wonder if Democrats really are trying to kill as many people as they can. Through their policies - drug policy (overdoses and murder), non-enforcement of crime policy (murder and the side benefit of a scare tactic to use to ban people who do not commit crimes from owing guns to protect themselves), and of course abortion and Euthanasia (Canada now calls it MAIDs and advertises assisted suicide for people who are poor or depressed).
You must know Black Lives Matter has killed more (additional) blacks than any group in recent decades - by letting them loose on each other without police controls.
It's a case of blatant crime-denialism, just like willfully ignorant climate-denialism on the other side (ignore all the record fires and keep pretending it's a lack of thinned trees, as if every last acre can be made into a tree farm to deny AGW's existence - but tree farms also burn when desiccated).
Thugs in sweat suits are no worse than thugs in business suits, but street-level harm distracts from wider crimes with insidious effects. Trump's war on EPA pollution controls is hardly a patriotic public safety boon. Put that megalomaniac lowlife in a hoody and he'll look his actual part.
More people should acknowledge tribal flaws in human nature and show true courage, not mob loyalties.
Can you not see that BLM and Antifa are both part of the Democrat machine? They were funded by Democrats and have been promoted by Democrats and have been protected by Democrats. Although I argue that they are protected by the Uniparty Deep State.
Legislative Dems won't move on 110 until they all suddenly move, likely under the leadership of Tina Kotek. Guaranteed there are internal conversations among legislators and Kotek about it - the polling numbers are too bad not to.
The takeaway quote is from Max Williams, former state lawmaker, former executive director of the Oregon Department of Corrections and all-around apologist: “We are seeking to fix and improve Measure 110. Our goal isn’t to repeal the law. It’s to improve it.”
In other words, let’s have a conversation and maybe another task force.
Measure 110 needs to go back to the voters. They have learned. They will know what to do.
"....Our goal isn’t to repeal the law. It’s to improve it.”
Great, like fine-tuning Marxism! They'll probably ignore oft-repeated lessons from Portugal, which seemed to do it right in the first place but is now having problems.
..."“Fentanyl is unlike anything we have seen. … We all want an easy solution … decriminalizing won’t fix it,”...
Too bad that wasn't so widely known in late May, 2020. I'd literally never heard of fentanyl before then.
I often reflect on how unlucky that cop was, surely distracted by sidewalk goons with cameras; hardly the first time in that area full of gangs. The Asian cop got a prison sentence merely for watching that hostile audience, as if he knew the Saint would die all along. It never seemed like intentional murder, rather a case of distracted irritation while dealing with a guy who seemed strong. People, including conservatives. who just go along with the "murder" assumption remain part of the problem. There needs to be a retrial.
It wasn't intentional murder. At worst, it was negligent homicide by the Minneapolis police officers who were called to deal with George Floyd. Had he simply returned the cigarettes he stole with counterfeit money, Portlanders could have avoided becoming Antifa sheep.
There is a principal in physics about how little energy is required to turn something from an ordered state to a disordered state. Think of a gust of wind blowing a crystal glass on to the floor where it shatters. Like Humpty Dumpty you can't put it back together again. That night in 2020 Portland was that piece of crystal falling off a table and shattering apparently from an action almost 2000 miles away. Yes George Floyd could have just walked away just as the Police Officers could have sent him on his way with a warning just a perfect storm of overreaction. Why this particular situation blew totally out of proportion out of what might have been hundreds of similar incidents happening at the same time all over the world is unknowable. Blame it on the Fates I guess. Might even make a good subject for an Opera.
Yes, the Minneapolis police could have sent George Floyd on his way with a warning. How many times do you suppose Floyd was given a warning in the past and sent on his way? What did that teach him?
Here in Portland, the cops are now criticized for sending offenders on their way.
If the offenders go on their way and cause a car crash, or assault someone, or blithely steal from another business, then the cops are blamed for being lazy or on strike (Blogger and Lewis & Clark law professor Jack Bogdanski, in particular, is convinced the Portland Police Bureau is on strike).
At the time of his death, Rodney King had chalked up at least a dozen “wet reckless” stops. He had learned nothing over the years except that crime pays. Of course, the cops did not arrest King when they caught him driving under the influence. They gave him a ride home.
I made my first trip to downtown last evening in probably 4 years which is when I retired after working downtown for 20 years. My wife wanted to take me to dinner at Hubers on my Birthday but I wanted nothing to do with downtown, but a friend of ours who is a talented but struggling clothing designer rented a space to show off his work and the work of another local designer. The event was in a central part of town on Washington and Seventh and there was an evening concert in courthouse square so the police and private security were visible. I didn't see any open air drug use (not that I was looking for it) but I didn't stay long. The several block walk back to my car exposed me to something I don't recall from the downtown I remembered, lots of litter, empty pop bottles refilled with what looked like urine and a lot of grafitti. What I see of improvement is little more than a dab of lipstick on a pig. Still it was a little encouraging.
Happy birthday, Tom!
Hope you enjoyed dinner at Huber’s — Portland’s oldest restaurant. Did you have the Spanish coffee?
I often go downtown every week, usually via the No. 12 or 56. I feel more comfortable if I can take bear or pepper spray. If I’m going to visit a courthouse, I can’t do that.
Earlier this summer, I forgot I had pepper spray on me, and the bailiff at the county courthouse gave me a choice: relinquish the pepper spray so he could destroy it, or keep the pepper spray and leave. He declined to hold it for me while I was checking some court records. I left the courthouse, since I wanted to wander around downtown afterwards. It’s more comfortable to walk around if you have some protection.
On Feb. 28, I went to the U.S. District Court for one of Judge Michael Simon’s settlement conferences re: DOJ vs. Portland police. I remembered not to take pepper spray. After the conference, I walked a few blocks to Great Harvest Bakery to stock up on bread.
Later, while holding a bag of bread and waiting for the bus at Fifth and Alder streets, a lean woman with stringy, black hair charged at me, shrieking. I started running down Fifth to another bus stop and crossed paths with a young black man, wearing a vest indicating he worked for the city. He saw the shrieker, too, and we exchanged glances, like “What can you do?”
In Portland, the drug-addled and the lunatics run the show. They don’t need pepper spray. They can do whatever they want.
So I completely understand how you feel, Tom. I’m glad you ventured out. Come again soon. We have them outnumbered. But we have to fight according to the rules; they don’t.
Thanks. I can recall a time not that long ago you wouldn't have dared litter downtown because you would have been told to pick it up and they wouldn't have been Portland polite about it.
The good old days.
I was refered to a Robert D. Kaplan article in the Atlantic from 1994 titled The Coming Anarchy.
Came across this observation:
” The Minister mentioned one of the coup’s leaders, Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his schooling, “in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his
middle-class sponsors held over him.”
Now THAT'S what you call commitment.
Guess a boy's got to mitigate what he's got to mitigate. Besides, I think the US left has steamed way past Mao, so in a return to the past - it's off to a new frontier
As someone who has been an old school photographer working in a darkroom on what we call 'Black and White' photography for most of my life it is really more about the many shades of gray between the two extremes that makes a quality print. Ansel Adams wrote the books on it..
Admittedly, I do trowel and bludgeon work. Ansel had his forte, you yours, and I mine.
Thank you
Vega Pederson is incompetent. She's not really invested in actually doing something effective to address the drug addiction, due to Fentanyl. She'd rather hand out drug paraphernalia to addicts and help along their slow torturous demise. I have NO respect for her. She is incompetent and ineffective. The fact that she would not help with the running of the Bybee shelter is REPREHENSIBLE and it shows her true colors. The woman does not CARE.
Did you see the latest billboard linking Vega Pederson to the Schmidt Show?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cwllvwevapr/
Yes, I did. LOL... I'm going to share it tomorrow on my social media somewhere... so great.
Portland and it’s environs could almost be described as the star chamber for progressive ideas and policies that always wind up without the desired results. Maybe if they would seriously listen to what the other side of the political spectrum is proposing and come to some BIPARTISAN agreement once in awhile, it wouldn’t be necessary to “walk out” to be heard. It seems to me that these town halls aren’t very serious. Just patting each other on the back and hoping things work out and get better.
One solution is to never assume someone's "right wing" or even merely conservative for being tired of crime-coddling. I see anyone who supports Trump as equally sleazy in a different way, representing what stirred up the ugly left. Liars & deniers across the board need to go.
You can reach some leftists with the angle that ostensibly "caring, compassionate" people would weep over crime victims, not just criminals whom they insist can be reformed. That forces them to not be narrowly focused on harm of one kind.
I’ve been to more town halls than I can remember. Like you say, most of them are mutual admiration societies. At least with Wyden and Merkley they had someone pass a microphone around, and people could directly ask whatever they wanted.
I once attended a town hall in Portland that included then-House Speaker Kotek, Rep. Tawna Sanchez and Sen. Lew Frederick. It was a lively affair that drew about 75 people, many of whom were highly engaged in the issues. When Kotek got a bill number wrong, they quickly corrected her.
Incredible.
1) Democrats, like Lieber, strongly endorsed Measure 110, although it was obvious on its face that it would make ANY criminal drug enforcement IMPOSSIBLE (that means a police officer being unable to even approach someone firing up a syringe in public and say "hey, dude...") It has created the WORST drug overdose crisis in America, since there is ZERO official intervention
2) ByBee Lake, the never-used Multnomah Jail site, gets NO public money while saving scores, if not hundreds, of lives by actually intervening - without government sanction - in the death spiral of addiction. Yet government officials like Lieber and Vega-Petersen refuse to allocate ANYTHING to this fantastic program!
Honestly, it makes me wonder if Democrats really are trying to kill as many people as they can. Through their policies - drug policy (overdoses and murder), non-enforcement of crime policy (murder and the side benefit of a scare tactic to use to ban people who do not commit crimes from owing guns to protect themselves), and of course abortion and Euthanasia (Canada now calls it MAIDs and advertises assisted suicide for people who are poor or depressed).
Democrat policies are the banality of evil.
You must know Black Lives Matter has killed more (additional) blacks than any group in recent decades - by letting them loose on each other without police controls.
It's a case of blatant crime-denialism, just like willfully ignorant climate-denialism on the other side (ignore all the record fires and keep pretending it's a lack of thinned trees, as if every last acre can be made into a tree farm to deny AGW's existence - but tree farms also burn when desiccated).
Thugs in sweat suits are no worse than thugs in business suits, but street-level harm distracts from wider crimes with insidious effects. Trump's war on EPA pollution controls is hardly a patriotic public safety boon. Put that megalomaniac lowlife in a hoody and he'll look his actual part.
More people should acknowledge tribal flaws in human nature and show true courage, not mob loyalties.
Can you not see that BLM and Antifa are both part of the Democrat machine? They were funded by Democrats and have been promoted by Democrats and have been protected by Democrats. Although I argue that they are protected by the Uniparty Deep State.
Legislative Dems won't move on 110 until they all suddenly move, likely under the leadership of Tina Kotek. Guaranteed there are internal conversations among legislators and Kotek about it - the polling numbers are too bad not to.
Of course, you’re right about the polls. But I’m afraid nothing is going to change, especially after reading this yesterday on OregonLive:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2023/08/coalition-seeks-to-unwind-portions-of-oregons-measure-110-making-minor-drug-possession-a-crime.html
The takeaway quote is from Max Williams, former state lawmaker, former executive director of the Oregon Department of Corrections and all-around apologist: “We are seeking to fix and improve Measure 110. Our goal isn’t to repeal the law. It’s to improve it.”
In other words, let’s have a conversation and maybe another task force.
Measure 110 needs to go back to the voters. They have learned. They will know what to do.
"....Our goal isn’t to repeal the law. It’s to improve it.”
Great, like fine-tuning Marxism! They'll probably ignore oft-repeated lessons from Portugal, which seemed to do it right in the first place but is now having problems.