Mr. Marks's Nasty Letter
Corruption? Who us?!!!
Occasionally, the kimono flips open, offering a tantalizing glimpse of things we’d rather not think about. And so, this weekend one of the bigger players in Salem—one Steven Marks, the former head of the state’s Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission—decided to give the Obi a tug.
His lawyer wrote a letter. An interesting one, at that.
The “to whom it may concern” missive has been well-documented by both mainstream and pirate media—PDXReal, WillyWeek, and Oregon Roundup—while, of course, The Oregonian and Tribune had better things to talk about. (The Oregonian, in particular, headlined its Sunday edition with the…
shocking!!!
…news that the homeless are screwing up all sorts of “natural” areas around town.
Welcome to reality, folks.
In the case of Mr. Marks, his missive was essentially a fair warning that a civil suit (and great embarrassment) is imminent against top-level machine pols who engineered his “resignation” from the booze-and-grass commission. It is really a declaration of war against GuvTina and the machine based on their chummy monetary relationship with a pair of cannabis buccaneers who were throwing money around in an effort to get the state off their backs.
Mr. Marks says he got in the way, spoiled the fun, and got whacked.
To which one might ask: what’s so unusual about that in Salem?
The letter and the promised lawsuit are rich with unspoken ironies. One machine insider versus another machine insider…one from the murky and wholly political liquor “control” bureaucracy and the other from the Portland-style progressive-equity-sexual wing of the party.
Different constituencies; different modes of grift and power.
The booze business in Oregon is so weird that any belief that it isn’t inherently corrupt is untenable. Just ask yourself, ”How come Oregon is one of the few states that only sells the hard stuff through small, usually tawdry liquor stores, with everything funneled through one big state warehouse and with certain top-shelf booze brands strangely unavailable without saying some magic Shazam word?”
A partial explanation was deeply encoded in the Oregonian’s clumsy hit-job on Mr. Marks...
..which, if Mr. Marks’s accusation is correct, was really a coverup: suckering credulous journalists to hide the real reason for his defenestration at the urging of the state’s biggest grass dispensary owners.
If you read the coverage that led to the end of the line for Secretary of State Shamia Fagan, you know all about Rosa Cazares and her partner Aaron Mitchell who—for reasons of their own—decided to emigrate from Florida to dank, dark Oregon. They put together a 37-location grass-shop chain, La Mota, and—according to the letter—then ran afoul of Mr. Marks over the matter of…
OLCC cited one of Cazares’ and Mitchell’s cannabis companies, Black Market Distribution LLC, for mishandling 148 pounds of marijuana in a manner suggesting it might be diverted from Oregon’s legal market to the black market.
In other words, Mr. Marks was actually “regulating” them.
Their response, says Mr. Marks, was to get politically hyper-active, writing checks and hosting get-togethers at their suburban leased manse. One of the events produced a picture that GuvTina will probably see again, if and when she runs for re-election…
…Tina playing pickleball with Mr. Mitchell. Such good friends!
You kinda feel sorry for the fresh-from-Florida duo behind La Mota: the liquor industry has distribution and competition-control wired from the inside; while the folks with scads of funny money thought that pushing the preposterous notion that the state would stop “regulating” grass was an achievable goal. Silly kids!
Who was actually getting ripped off here?
It will be amusing to see what the state (and its minions in legacy media) make of Mr. Marks’s riposte, but the letter doesn’t seem to offer a pre-emptive buy-out…
State officials…conduct caused Mr. Marks to suffer substantial economic harm (including lost pay and benefits) and noneconomic harm (including emotional and psychological damages and harm to reputation). Mr. Marks will also be pursuing reimbursement of his attorney fees and costs incurred as a result of the defendants’ actions.
For his damages, Mr. Marks may seek relief under Oregon’s employment laws (including whistleblower protections); Oregon common-law governing wrongful termination, interference with economic relations, and defamation; federal civil rights laws, and federal laws barring the misuse of an individual’s position or authority for personal gain or advantage and protecting the right of honest services; and other claims, including equitable relief.
Have we left out the kitchen sink?
The real point of all this is an actual civil suit, with that nasty business of discovery and depositions under oath. It’s never the offense, it’s the cover-up, as wise politicians (excluding our current president) always fail to understand.
Then there’s the matter of some innocent-sounding asides in the letter. Try this one out…
On Friday afternoon, February 10, 2023, an attorney from Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s office contacted Marks’s attorney and informed him that, if Marks did not submit his resignation immediately, the OLCC would place the matter of his continued employment on the agenda for its meeting on February 15, 2023. Marks submitted his resignation on February 13, 2023.
…which raises a question about the state’s venerable attorney general and her lack of interest in digging deep into the LaMota affair—and why was the AG carrying water for the governor in the first place? Can’t Tina pick up the phone?
(Subsidiary question: will WillyWeek bother asking any of these questions?)
It’s all very creepy. Local media lacks the horsepower to really dig into all of the interesting aspects of this kefluffle-cum-scandal and some of the town’s top editors do tend to have old friends downstate.
But this is an awfully tempting target for pirate media—and there’s a compliant and vocal plaintiff who seems to have taken any number of files with him as he left. Who gets the first interview on Instagram?
If Mr. Marks gets whatever he really wants—just to be cynical about it—then everyone will close up shop and go on playing the shoddy politics/money game. This has happened many times before.
GuvTina gave back her share ($75,000) of the tainted La Mota windfall to the Oregon Food Bank, while other Democratic place-holders scurried to give back money to all sorts of nonprofits and PACs with nice-sounding names.
Food Bank sounds so…comfy. Forget about soup kitchens—so bourgeoise! The Food Bank proclaims, modestly, that it’s actually in the business of…
…and…
Oregon Food Bank actively engages in advocacy efforts to address the root causes of hunger. By prioritizing the needs of gender expansive and Two-Spirit individuals, Oregon Food Bank advocates for equity-driven policies. Addressing systems rooted in oppression requires dismantling anti-Blackness, settler colonialism and practices and policies that perpetuate White supremacy.
Ready for the revolution? (The true-believers who started this nonsense managed to starve 3.9 million Ukrainians.)
We’ve always wondered why would-be candidate for governor (and New York Times columnist) Nick Kristof got the chop, from none other than Secretary of State Fagan, when he began talking about accounting for all the money being ladled out to nonprofits. Just a coincidence.
And then there was the FTX-contribution—a $-half-million to the machine—reluctantly given up by everyone from Sen Ron (“See you when I see you””) Wyden to downballot players after the crypto-empire collapsed.
In other words, business as usual.
Anyone who is…
Aware of the state’s rich and long-lasting corruption (please read Phil Stanford’s magisterial “Portland Confidential”)…
And the gobs of money sloshing out the state and local governments’ back doors to shady “nonprofits” and the “equity” crew, and racial-quota hiring, and clumsy “housing first” builder-payoffs, and “green” mandates to goose up the alternative-energy hustle, and the gross giveaways to the chip industry…
…shouldn’t really be surprised if this evaporates with a mild scent of dollar bills rolled up to snort fentanyl.
The pols who have been around know that the state’s ultra-permissive election system (the one that produced a Democratic party super-majority overnight); combined with the IQ level of the average voter (who brought us Measure 110) will produce only a momentary speed-bump.
But it will be amusing for a while.
Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.
I used to routinely say “yes” when a grocery store clerk asked me at the checkout if I wanted to donate to the Oregon Food Bank. Recently I was at a Fred Meyer, and when the clerk asked me if I wanted to round up my tally and give to the Food Bank, I declined. I told her I didn’t wish to donate to the Democratic Party of Oregon.
This was very good. I'd never before seen Oregonians as trailer-park cousins of the Delaware dynasty.
That was simple and clear and powerful reportage. I was going to claim that the older print journalism would have done what you have done. Then, I recalled that they sat on the governor raping the babysitter story for a quarter century plus.