A $-Million Here, a $-Million There...

It's easy when it's OPM. (And other people's kids).

Someone is up at Bull Run pouring gallons of silly sauce into the water. How else to explain the latest money-shenanigans by our elected representatives…

Kill the Blowers!

I’m not the only bemused observer to suggest that Carmen Rubio’s idea to ban gas-powered leaf blowers was ultra-dumb politics—especially since everything in Portland revolves around race and ethnicity.

The ban will impact the largely Hispanic (or whatever term is fashionable) lawn care businesses, even though the dinosaur media did its best to tap dance around that fact.

Rubio needs all the Hispanic votes she can get—even if she shows signs of not really understanding the new Alaska-style voting scheme, which is virtually guaranteed not to produce a clear winner on the first round of counting.

That’s because her prime opponent is a guy with an “ez” at the end of his surname—and he seems to be doing pretty well. Sure, he voted for the ban, but he was conspicuously silent afterward. An oddity, since he’s our leading local headline-hunter.

For all we know, Rubio might be doing some triangulation: yah, the lawncare workers are mostly Hispanic—but can they all vote? Or will they be easily outvoted by typical Portland mouth-breathers who think that a little city can actually do something about Climate Change. And kinda-sorta protect the lungs of the folks we underpay to do stuff we wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole (see below).

The kind of people such as the Oregonian’s ace environment reporter, Gosia Wozniacka, who kicked off her story with a gross editorialization that no halfway competent editor would have allowed…

The whine and stench of gas-powered leaf blowers will soon be a thing of the past in Portland.

…and who buried the only dissenting view deep in the bowels of the story…

The drawbacks and deficiencies, particularly in a commercial operation, include limited battery life runtime, insufficient power, limited charging infrastructure, the event of regional power grid reliability, recycling limitations and the overall cost of new equipment, batteries and charging stations,” Chuck Wolsborn, a manager at Gresham Golf Course, told council members. “The cost of commercial-grade battery equipment can be two to four times that of gas counterparts.”

…without giving any evidence that she had actually talked to any of the lawn care workers on the firing line. As any property owner with grass knows, these are people who work rain-or-shine, and who are in a ruthlessly competitive business that is a perfect capitalist “race to the bottom.”

Tough luck, proles.

See if you can figure out the contradiction in this statement by a bureaucrat trying to massage the ban’s obvious impact, as reported in the Oregonian…

Enforcement will focus on property owners who use leaf blowers or who hire contractors who use them. It will not be directed at landscape businesses or yard-care workers.

“The reason for this is to ensure that small businesses and landscape workers, especially those from marginalized communities, don’t bear the brunt of enforcement,” Sonrisa Cooper, the Sustainable Economy and Just Transition Analyst at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, told the City Council. “The onus is on the property owner to ensure that gas leaf blowers aren’t used on their property.”

…which makes you wonder about someone with that title (what’s a “just transition” anyway?) being capable of logical thinking. So the landscapers can go on using the gas-powered thingies—but property owners will get a ticket for allowing them to do so and will have to kick them off their property.

Got that?

Yah-yah-yah, there’s a pledge from Multnomah County to help the landscapers buy all that new electric equipment (up to half, says the suddenly thrift county).

A pledge from the Big Girls at the county? Who’s kidding who?

And everyone conveniently forgets that the Portland Clean Energy Fund, which is gushing so much money that no one around city hall knows what to do with it, could buy everyone in the lawncare biz gold-plated electrical gear. Forever. (Or at least until the unallocated $156-million gets snapped up by our voracious nonprofits.)

Fat chance.

As for the “stench” part, let’s remind ourselves—and our reporters—that other gas-powered whining thingies, such as hedge-trimmers and lawnmowers and other tools of the trade aren’t mentioned. They will, no doubt, continue to whine.

Speaking of That Big, Fat Fund…

…and burying the lede, WillyWeek’s reining headhunter, Sophie Peel, gave the guy with the “ez” some ink this week—since he is the annointed candidate of “liberals who don’t want to go too far.”

Commish Gonzalez is pondering what to do with the Clean Energy Fund—one of the greatest boondoggles in a city with a vivid history of financial skullduggery. He’d like to remodel it, nip-n-tuck, cobble something together and give voters another shot in November.

Remember that…

• It’s a sales tax on big box retailers (who have been bailing out of the city), and that no Portland voters are capable of connecting price inflation with its causes.

• Sure, it’s just one-percent—but has any voter ever checked the operating margins of most large retailers?¹

• No one—especially the dodgy nonprofits getting the slush fund, will tell you if there is any metric for measuring how much Climate Change has been alleviated by the measure—even if Multnomah County’s Big Girls decide to extend their foreign policy from Israel to Chinese and Indian power plants.

The obvious solution for the massive take would be to reduce the damn tax. Abolishing it—impossible, since the people have spoken. (Amazing how Portland voters love to think they’re taking money out of someone else’s pocket. Think about that the next time you wince when you check out of the remaining Target stores.)

So Gonzalez, doing his best to look busy, circulated memos, and actually got a response from the only councilor not running against him.

That would be Dan Ryan, quoted thusly, in what seemed to be the English language…

“My message has been consistent for months, I think the big three [PCEF, supportive housing services and Preschool for All taxes] need to right-size the ask of taxpayers based on the miscalculated revenues that are far exceeding projections resulting in government failing to expend what we are receiving for the intended purpose of the targeted revenue.”

Is this the same as saying, “reduce those puppies?”

No wonder Ryan is being, shall we say, obscure. Because the big guns in local nonprofits reacted with secret meetings and a threat. As usual, Sophie Peel one-upped The Oregonian…

The loose coalition is also discussing what organized opposition to Gonzalez’s efforts would look like. The three sources declined to divulge particular strategy discussions to WW, but said they’re discussing deploying financial resources to fight Gonzalez’s effort should it get as far as a ballot referral.

Ms. Peel didn’t bother mentioning it, but the nonprofits are, well, nonprofit because they are licensed by the feds to do good works—as long as they are not political. For that, they need to have a separate charter from the IRS, something called a 501 c 4. And here’s the rub: donations to these creatures are not tax-deductible. Bye-bye foundations.

Not that the IRS has been very tough on this sort of stuff. And since the state’s media is deferential to the lords beyond the reach of the taxman, we don’t expect that anyone will say anything nasty about the gang when it colludes.

Short version: just because you don’t pay taxes doesn’t mean you’re not shy about getting tax money.

As for Multnomah County’s Foreign Policy…

…so many dirty little wars, so few freeways or bridges to shut down.

Look Out Below…

The Oregonian, stuck in offices downtown, gets our award for obscure headline ‘o’ the week…

…and darned if they weren’t talking about the architectural insult known as the Ritz-Carlton Tower—a reversion to ‘70s “flashcube” architecture, with all sorts of kinky post-modern creases and jutting angles, erected by local developer Walter Bowen.

The O did its best to minimize the lien—it’s just so…so…common in big-builds, don’t you know? The contractor was quoted thusly…

“We maintain a positive, cooperative relationship with our client and plan to bring this project to a mutually successful completion,” the company added.

…which someone acquinted with the volatile development business might translate as…”Pay us, put-leeze, before you go belly-up.”

Developer Bowen, who told the city to go pound sand when he was reminded that big apartment complexes must peel off some units for the officially poor (a measure based on dodgy Census Bureau calculations, but still…), has been selling some of his other properties and capped that by putting his four-acre estate and 16,828 square-foot mansion on the market for $15-million…

…which could buy an awful lot of leaf-blowers, although we expect he’ll need the money for something else. Not that anyone in our booster-media noted any of this.

The boo-birds around town have been uncomfortable with the project from the get-go; this is not the kind of town that yearns for a Ritz anything; nor would they want to welcome the kind of clientele that could afford $1.5-million (and up) condos, although the idea of Saudi expats stepping past fentanyl zombies and crossing the corner where a road-rager killed a pedestrian fills them with quiet pleasure.

Tom Wolfe wrote an entire novel, “A Man in Full,” about a developer in crisis; he observed that…

…a developer lives with the opposite of tranquillity, which is perturbation.

…and we’d guess that perturbation comes with seven-percent loans and no sign that the Federal Reserve will unleash animal spirits anytime soon. Or at least before the contractors expect to get paid.

And Now for Something for the Kiddies…

One of our fellow dissenters sends along this latest addition to the curricula for a local school district.²

Two online videos…

“Queer Kids Stuff,” which features a youthful something-or-other and a teddy bear, and lots of advocacy for a trip on the wild side…

..along with a prompt from the equity commissars for teachers to have the kiddies share their personal pronouns.

Also recommended by the thought-police: a video and booklet by a fellow (white, it appears) who is promoting—what else??—a pamphlet on white privilege…

…who bills himself (and his leather jacket) as…

Ben Sand (he/him) is a social entrepreneur who is convinced we can bust through the tension if we think differently and act with courage…

…which can be yours for $19.95, plus shipping.

We almost forgot: this is for kids between the ages of 4 and 8.

Happy pronouns, kindergartners!

1. According to the Inverge website, “A 2016 Deloitte study found that the average net profit margin for the ten largest retailers was 3.2%. This is lower than the average profit margins for many retail companies.

The average net profit margin for the ten largest retailers is 3.2%. The net profit margin for Wal-Mart is 2.9%, Costco is 2.0%, Kroger is 1.7% (Grocery Stores as an industry: 2.3%), Walgreens is 3.6%, Amazon is 1.7%, Home Depot is 8.4%, CVS is 3.0%.

2. It’s not the one that’s looking for another superintendent, or that gave away its headquarters building to a race-hustling nonprofit on the promise of something better downtown. Might we suggest the block 216 tower? Perfect!