Fearless Predictions

What we see in the cloudy (with rain) crystal ball.

There’s a hoary tradition in journalism (which used to be called “the press”¹) called the “Year ender.” It’s something written as a way to “fill space” in newspapers (remember them?) fat with post-Christmas sales at Macy’s (remember them?) when the staff of “reporters” (remember them?) were drying out or off reacquainting themselves with mates who never quite got used to reporters’ odd hours and propensity to disappear when “something big” was happening.

Which always did.²

While we wait for actual news to resume, let’s predict some stuff…

• The realities of the city council robo-vote will go down the well-known Portland memory hole. Here’s one of our 25-percenters—and socialists—Mitch Green, mouthing off to NW Examiner’s Allan Classen…

“We were very clear on what we stand for,” he told the NW Examiner after the election. “I’m openly embracing this policy, and a lot of people took to it. It does feel like a mandate.”

Just for the record, Green’s “mandate” in the so called-election was 7,034 votes in a district with 120,150 registered voters. Just sayin’…since none of our dinosaur media will mention it ever again.

• The new city council will sooner or later elect a president, who will automatically become the pivot-person in what passes for Portland politics. It will be a radical progressive³ and it won’t be Mr. Green. Men are so…so…yesterday. Heterosexuals? Who you kidding?

• Meanwhile, we wonder what will happen when virtually the entire Oregon political, media, and nonprofit elite simultaneously enters menopause?

• In any event, Portland Dissent won’t run out of snark. There are 273 pages in this book…

…thoughtfully gifted at Xmas by my partner, Pam Fitzsimmons. Here’s a taste…

There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.

—Gertrude Stein

• Bojack’s skin will get even thinner…

…and he’ll continue bitching about the Democratic machine and voting for the villains.

• Ducks will start migrating on the ponds on my street…and dozens of others around town⁴…

…and, no doubt, newly-minted city councilor Steve (“Tiny Terror”) Novick will come up with a new set of fees, which will be disbursed only to the “underserved.” Money will be collected and mysteriously vanish.

• Ted Wheeler will hang around town (too bad our forever-Congressperson Ol’ Earl Blumenauer beat him to a tidy retirement sinecure at PSU). The Oregonian gave Ted a last kiss on the cheek…

…which kiinda missed the essential question: Did he leave Portland better than he found it?⁵

• Wherever he lands, it will not make a profit.

• And it will have this sort of shameless pitch…

  

  …personally we’ll settle for straight justice, no chaser.

• Our capon-mayor, Keith “High Voltage!” Wilson will end homelessness.⁶

• The “y’alls” over in Albina will continue their expensive attempt to resegregate Portland…

…by building the usual subsidized Stalinesque apartments in ignorance (if not defiance) of the 14th amendment, which was paid for with the blood of 360,000 people who cannot be mentioned—or rented to.

• GuvTina will finally achieve domestic tranquility by giving wifey Aimee Wilson…

…a job somewhere in the Outer Hebrides.

• Meanwhile, she (and the machine) will continue to throw good money after bad….

  

  …while “homeless” numbers set new records. Homelessness Inc.™ will hire anyone with “lived experience,” and we all know what that means...

• Speaking of homelessness, Portland’s (maybe the nation’s) greatest reporter on that beat, Kevin Dahlgren…

…will not get a Pulitzer Prize, which he deserves—mostly because the fuddy-duddies at Columbia University don’t have a category that recognizes online journalism, unless it’s pumped out by the likes of The New York Times. We plan on nominating him for a Kennedy. Won’t it be interesting if he wins?

• The Oregonian, owned by the New York conglomerate that just shut down four newspapers in New Jersey—among them the state’s largest paper, the Star-Ledger—will, we predict, be sold to a nonprofit and will build cheesy little apartments on the side.⁷

• Julia Meier, Portland’s most mysterious power-player, will find something else to turn into a City Club/Coalition of Communities of Color assault on traditions, norms, good sense, and standard-variety democratic elections. Her creation, the veto-proof city council, will prove that what starts as tragedy always ends up as farce.

• PBOT will continue its war on the automobile…

…as in: Notice what’s missing from the purty picture above? We fearlessly predict the spindly little trees on the new 82d—think Parisian boulevard—will be promptly cut down to keep tenters warm. PS: That structure in the background is a “village…”

• Speaking of which, folks near 82d will soon find out what it costs to house 45-people⁸ in itty-bitty broom-closets…

….as they watch their property values tank. We wonder how many bus tickets to Florida those $-millions might buy.

• Some things will never change…

• Nor will this…

…we suspect you’ll soon find this at your local Goodwill store.

• Here’s the next OHA screw-up (and small business wrecker) waiting in the wings…

Stock up on masks early! But first view this…

See you next year.

1. …as in “Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.” Both men and presses are in rather short supply hereabouts.

2. No one is more easily excited than a journo, usually without really thinking it through.

3. Translation: Your money is ours.

4. …the city admits to 50-miles of what are amusingly called “unimproved streets.”

5. …not noted: antifa, unleashed by the Portland powers-that-used-to-be, ran him out of his apartment in the Pearl.

6. We’re kidding.

7. Portland’s only growth business, along with government jobs.

8. Do the arithmetic. We’ll bet that money could buy a lot of bus tickets to Florida.