A Pause on the Road to Damascus
Local media: flubs, follies, and some surprisingly great journalism.
It’s Alive!!!!!
For anyone has followed local politics for more than, oh…four minutes, this must rate as one of the most improbable headlines of the month, if not the millennium.
The Oregonian’s “see no evil” education beat reporter, Julia Silverman, gushed…
Kafoury, who grew up in a politically powerful family and served years in the Legislature before winning two terms as chair of Oregon’s most populous county, is [school superintendent] Armstrong’s first announced hire and a splashy one.
….and then tippy-toed around just one of Kafoury’s glaring conflicts-of-interest…
…“decompressing,” in her own words, and volunteering, including on the board of directors for the Albina Vision Trust, whose ongoing project with Portland Public Schools will be part of her portfolio.
…which Silverman dropped faster than the value of downtown properties. Which smells like one of the reasons Kafoury was dispatched (surely not by the new superintendent, elevated from a middling job in the Vancouver schools) to do good things for her real constituents: the city’s rapacious property/developer/union blob.
Silverman didn’t bother fleshing it out, but the Albina crew got a strangle-hold on the right to snatch the district’s headquarters building in return for their “help” in moving the district’s bloated non-teaching bureaucracy into a downtown building. You’re allowed to wonder which underwater building will be blessed with a top-dollar lease.
The Cascade Policy Institute nailed the give-away…
…the concern is that if you enter into exclusive negotiations with one interested buyer, you may not get the best price, to the detriment of the families you serve. Without competitive bidding, you’ll never even know what you left on the table.
An obvious point that has thus far been totally ignored by every journo in town.
PS: The district is teeing up what the Oregonian referred to as…
… a massive construction bond slated to go to voters next May that is likely to be the largest in the state’s history.
Ms. Kafoury will now arrange the beaks at the trough.
Raw Meat
Every member of Homelessness Inc. should be required to spend time watching the heartbreaking videos by Kevin Dahlgren and his partner, Tara Faul, aka ghostportland. We’ve written about them before; but one of their latest videos was, in its own way, unusually terrifying…
…see it here.
Dahlgren’s caption told the tale…
We met a homeless teenager. We tried to get her into a shelter but she declined because she has an older boyfriend taking care of her. She is well aware of human trafficking and why she said she stays close to her new friends. These friends though are heavy drug users and @ghostportland and I have a bad feeling she will be consumed very soon on the streets and become almost unrecognizable.
Meanwhile, over at the city’s leading pirate media outlet—now back in business after an Antifa smear campaign—the Church/Todd duo at PDX.Real have been trying to get…
one single person
…a. 22-year-old homeless kid named “Nicholas,” past the institutional numb-nuts and naysayers off the streets and into some kind of housing. Along the way, PDX.Real’s 120,000 followers have responded with unofficial, non-bureaucratic acts of kindness…
…and after the help of other folks who know their way around bureaucracies, Nicholas might—just—be finding housing, despite the efforts of nonprofits more interested in filling out forms rather than getting a good kid off the streets. Soviet border guards couldn’t have been more thorough, and infuriating.
Meanwhile, PDX.Real has blundered onto a helluva story, which we hope they will pursue since no one else in the town’s media seems interested.
It’s the slimy promise made by the proponents of bum-camps that their clients won’t be allowed to just stroll in off the street; instead, they’ll be carefully vetted before being wrapped-around by various high-priced “services.” (Which are never enumerated.)
No one bothers asking about that process—who asks the questions, how winners are selected, how many casual opportunities for petty authoritarianism and corruption might be embedded in the rickety system.
Which means that Homelessness Inc. assures itself of never-ending supplies of the hard-core feral, while they hand-select the best cases for their $-multi-million showcases.
Darwin would be pleased.
How to Flub an Election
For that, let’s turn to yet another WillyWeek story…
…by heavy-hitter Sophie Peel, who falls for the standard political insider’s illusion that endorsements mean anything other than political debts that will have to be paid.
Peel lets us know that the “two leading mayoral candidates” (sez who?) are fast jumping into various pockets around town. Carmen Rubio, for example, has the fast-fading governor’s pat on her head, as well as those totally public-spirited folks in…
…the city’s heaviest-hitting union, Local 189 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees…she’s also received endorsements from the NW Oregon Labor Council, LiUNA Local 737 and the Portland Association of Teachers.
God save us from these folks.
Rene Gonzalez got the new DA’s endorsement (as well as neighboring county DA’s) and is trying to look tough on crime without getting the social justice types worked up. They’ll wise up by November.
As for the other candidates, well, three of them got a brief mention in Peel’s last graf; others such as Durrell Kinsey Bey and Shei'Meka (BeUtee) As-Salaam were totally ignored. How come? (Hint: covering two candidates is a helluva lot easier on the shoes than seventy—probably more, since pols have until August 27 to file.)
Meanwhile, to no one’s surprise, other local media are fast picking winners and nobodies—without giving you any hints about who gets the ink. For example, the Oregonian—keystone of the Big Girls Club—gave this kiss-on-the-cheek to a tiresome political warhorse…
…but give ‘em credit: they noted that Smith has flubbed two prior attempts for a comeback. Buried deep in the adulation was this…
Smith’s name recognition and decades of government work — including a 20-year stint as a staffer for Sen. Ron Wyden — are certain to be assets as she competes against at least 15 other candidates in District 1, Portland’s most racially and ethnically diverse.
Let’s bet that the other 15 will never be heard from again.
Over at WillyWeek the selection process is running-full blast with these outta-the-blue articles. (We’re not sure if they qualify as “ballot buddies,” but it sure looks that way.)
…which only leaves around 60 to go. Let’s start betting on when Ms. Shei'Meka (BeUtee) As-Salaam will get her inches of fame.
Old Guys Say, No Way!
“When I hear the word ‘retire’—or ‘Come back home and actually live here’—I reach for my gun.”
The Hottest Target for Taggers Is…
Nice of the city, state, county, feds to prepare fresh canvasses for the city’s graffiti artists to ply their trade. Has the first tag appeared yet?
The Merry Wives of Salem Partay Hardy!
…getting off the hook (never mind it was a tie vote by the misnamed Government Ethics Commission) never felt so good. If you look carefully back in the bushes, you’ll see the glowing eyes of predators.
Which brings us full-circle back to…Deborah Kafoury.
Our local media does little but bullhorn the party line for whatever Progressive, Democrat line of BS they need our low information voter Blue Bubble sheep to feed on. You and Ms. Fitzsimmons have done a terrific job of illustrating that sad reality.
Another sad story that our complicit media pretended to cover, but really glossed over was the rape (and cover up) of a 4th grade student at Scott School in an after school program run by the SUN Program. In light of what I'm going to outline, I suppose it is worth noting that this elementary school used to be named Harvey Scott Elementary School prior to the saints of the Oregonian and PPS Central deeming that man too racist to be honored as namesake.
What was covered - PPS is being sued by the parents of the 4th grader who was raped.
What wasn't really covered - the principal, vice principal, the lead counselor at Scot School and the head of the SUN program (under whose watch the girl was raped) ALL knew, but chose not to follow state Mandatory Reporting law and report the alleged felonious assault to proper legal authorities. Which begs the question - that our local media didn't ask or certainly didn't dig into - why the hell didn't EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE MANDATORY REPORTERS report 4 boys raping a 4th grade little girl? Answer: The 4 boys that allegedly perpetrated the rape are all black.
Epilogue:
The principal was removed from his position. He was the sacrificial lamb - largely because he was an extremely incompetent affirmative action hire (a gay Latino man) who was going to be moved at the end of the year to PPS Central to continue to suck up taxpayer money with some bureaucratic duties.
Very few qualified administrators applied for the newly opened Principal job at the former Title 1 school - tis not the place good teachers/admin want to spend their careers. Eventually, the vice principal, who was anointed interim principal after the principal was moved, was hired as principal for this next year. One might even wonder if she was elevated to the position because performed her klannish duties of NOT reporting the rape. One might further advance this notion if one knew that this same vice principal could be heard at staff meetings berating teachers as racists for "disproportionately" sending black kids to the office on "referral" (for acting out violently against other students or teachers and destroying the safe space learning environment).
The head counselor is still employed at the school.
The head of the SUN program at Scot school is still in his position (he is a gay Latino man).
Dimes to donuts this litigation gets settled - no way PPS Central Casting wants the heinous reality of what went down on public record.