Quickies, Quotes, Qualms, Quandaries
Another tour through the quagmire of Portland quirks...
Race Here, Race There, Race Everywhere…
PBOT, a source of continual amusement and discombobulation around here, just put out its annual…
…chock full of graphics and progressive verbiage. Among the takeaways:
The 58 Traffic and pedestrian deaths in 2024 are higher than before the highly-touted “Vision Zero” program started to much fanfare in 2016. ”This is still significantly higher than the average 41 killed in the five years before the pandemic, 2015-19.”
Hewing to Portland’s fascination with race, ”This pattern corresponds with neighborhoods with more people of color and people living on low incomes—areas that have high scores on the PBOT Equity Matrix, which combines a variety of federal data sources to show the demographics of different parts of Portland.”
Who knew that, in addition to occasionally filling potholes and spreading thousands of gallons of paint on slalom-course streets,1 PBOT has spent time (and money, but don’t bother asking) determining…
People of color are defined here as any person who self-identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, two or more races, other, or Latinx (of any race).2
Please write if you can…
Figure out that “other” part…
How much someone at PBOT is paid to hash through US Census and other demographic databases to pin down the race of the victims…
Discover why “Latinx” is still used by our government after Hispanics laughed it out of court.
Nowhere in the report does PBOT give us a reason for noting the race of the deceased. Or for its barely concealed hysteria about—you got it—those usual disparities from some assumed race-norm…
…which hints at some vast conspiracy by motorists (in gloomy, lightless Portland streets) who are hunting down POCs. Or else that certain immutable racial characteristics make crossing streets problematic for certain minorities—but we can’t say that out loud.
Whack a Mole on 82d
The Portland Police Bureau trumpeted its latest assault on a problem about as old as 82d Ave., if not the human race…
…and netted a bunch of horny punters, with a full-court press from dozens of personnel…
…which leaves us with the question: what about the remaining seven miles of the funky street? After all, ladies of the night have feet. And when will the PPB get interested in the boom of “Massage” parlors up and down the avenue—as well as just about every neighborhood with a strip mall? Surely, there cannot be that many strained sacroiliacs in Portland.
If we were cynics, we’d say that prostitution is really more a matter of how well its practitioners keep it indoors and, in the best progressive tradition, change its nomenclature.
Then again, the city’s in a financial hole—so why not take the European route and set aside a few vacant highrises downtown as a regulated3 sin-center? Here’s one in staid, solid Frankfurt, Germany (the country’s banking capitol)…
The Krauts call it a Rotlichtviertel. Lots of red neon and exclamation points on the signage, but otherwise clean and calm. And legal.
If we’re giving free housing, meals, and “wrap-arounds” to our proliferating bums and junkies, why not people doing an honest day’s “sex work?”
In League With…?
What would we do without the comedy interludes provided by the League of Women Voters of Portland?4
In the midst of the uproar over—dare we use the words?—illegal aliens, sanctuary cities,and deportations, the League decided to do some “community educating” on the topic of immigration. It’s going to offer it by Zoom (which seems about as appetizing as pushing splinters under our fingernails)…
…but don’t count on a debate, or even differing viewpoints. Here are the “esteemed” folks who’ll do the educating (or preaching to the usual Portland choir):
Portland Police Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan, representing a police force that can’t (or won’t) work with ICE, and which might lose federal bucks for nullification of immigration laws…
Isa Peña of Innovation Law Lab, described as, “a long-time organizer and leader in the immigrant justice movement.”
Elliott Young of Lewis & Clark College, “author of Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World’s Largest Immigrant Detention System.”
Mercedes Elizalde of Latino Network, who “is able to combine her passions for community empowerment and addressing root causes of social issues.”5
This cozy conclave reminded us of the words of Douglas Murray…
“A continent which imports the world's peoples will also import the world's problems.”
…and Thomas Sowell…
Quizzical Junk Mail
You get the darndest stuff popping up in your email these days. The latest is from something called Partnership for Progress, which struck us odd since their web page said, “Website coming soon.”
…and had a rambling manifesto about fixing the city’s issues and—wouldn’t you know it…
…which begs the question: who the hell are these folks who want to use our money to save ourselves. Turns out their mailing address, 1819 SW 5th Ave, Portland, happens—by some quizzical coincidence—to be the PSU Academic and Student Recreation Center.
Before you send ‘em $200 (and give up your email address), check the website for names of the backers (you won’t find them).
Collegiate pranks are getting expensive. Back to goldfish-swallowing, kids!
DEI Delights, Chapter Umpteen
The Portland Planning Commission—just one of the myriad quangos attached to city government like Pacific lamphreys—is looking for new members, according to the city’s website. The requirement seems pretty simple…
To be eligible for the Planning Commission, members must live, play, worship, work or do business in the city of Portland.
…which includes just about everyone with a pulse—even white people!
City Council’s 25-percenters may (or may not) pay any attention to the Commission’s decisions, which merely deal with…
…specific responsibility for guiding, developing, maintaining, and updating the development and maintenance of the City’s Comprehensive Plan and zoning code.
To volunteer—it’s unpaid, but we guarantee you’ll be instant friends with the city’s developers—just fill out a questionnaire…boy, it’s kinda long. Questions about potential conflicts of interest6 abound, and then we get the first question about you and your qualifications. Where we’re reminded that we’re in Portland, where DEI will never die…
What is your commitment and experience working with a diversity of people, in terms of age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender, disability, culture, religious preference, etc.? How have or how would you contribute to productive group processes and collective work in a collaborative, multicultural, and/or multilingual setting?
…and the remaining slots don’t seem terribly interested in a question such as, “Have you ever written or enforced any zoning codes?” Or eve, “What should a city ‘comprehensive plan’ include?”
Nah. First things first.
Recommended Reading
This dispatch in National Review—which no good Portland progressive will allow in their mailbox—caught our attention…
The author, Paul Terdal, is a visiting fellow at Do No Harm, an organization that looks on the trans fad with healthy skepticism. He cleared his throat with…
As a lifelong liberal Democrat who believes gender-distressed kids should have access to evidence-based care, it pains me to see my state put politics ahead of children’s health.
That’s a topic that we explored back in November, ‘23, in OHSU's Gender Chop-Shop 'Fesses Up, and before that in Dr. Peters and His Marvelous Vagina-Making Machine, among others. It’s a topic that no one in our legacy media seems to even know exists.
The news peg for the NR article was our state’s attorney general (and progressive machine protector), Dan Rayfield, joining two other blue states in asking a federal judge to stop the Trump administration (aka, the tyrannical orange monster) from enforcing an executive order which cut off federal funding from medical providers that give puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries to children.
Terdal neatly eviscerated Rayfield’s legal claim that no one in the state actually does any surgeries on minors—but then his troll through public records turned up something that any respectable, sentient, actually breathing local editor ought to be interested in pursuing…
The state claims that “gender-affirming care is medically appropriate and necessary health care.” But the state quietly reached the opposite conclusion two years ago, only to bury the findings because they didn’t fit the demands of gender ideologues.
In 2023, the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Evidence Review Commission began a review of the latest medical science regarding transgender treatments. It wrote a draft report, which I obtained via public records requests. The investigators found a “paucity of data,” with no systematic reviews showing benefits of transgender treatments for children. But the draft was never finalized, and the report never published. It was even withheld from the commission’s medical experts. Instead, in November 2023, and without any of its own standard expert analysis, the commissioners endorsed third-party guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Those guidelines suffer from serious methodological and medical shortcomings, as the U.K.’s Cass Report made clear last year.
…and which report caused the British National Health system to end such interventions, along with France, Sweden, Denmark, and other European nations.
Terdal wasn’t done with his own surgery…
In April 2024, according to the records I obtained, the state Department of Justice advised the Oregon Health Authority to withdraw its endorsement of those third-party guidelines. The chair of the evidence commission also complained to a colleague about the “suppression, obfuscation, and misrepresentation of evidence” in transgender medicine, saying “we can do better as a medical community.”
So what happened?
…when presented last year with recommendations to repeal or at least modify the dangerous guidelines, the authority’s director — a political appointee — refused.
Think you’ll ever read all about it locally?
Sez It All…
Two headlines that ought to get in touch with each other…
By the way, if you’re wondering why housing doesn’t get built, like, overnight (or on the governor’s whim), consider this handy city website, which lists steps for getting a building permit7…
…but wait! There’s more! Here’s a list of Land Use reviews that might force you to take up permanent residence down on Fourth Sreet’s Planning Bureau bullpen…
Football Has Been Veddy Veddy Good to Me…
Just to make sure that kids going to the University of Oregon (at a conservatively estimated $42,236.25 per year for courses taught by indentured PhDs, fees for just about everything, and cruddy dorm rooms) understand the university’s real priorities, we submit this post…
[Coach Dan] Lanning, 38, remains under contract at UO through 2031 and will earn $9.4 million in salary plus $1 million in deferred compensation this year, up from $7.4 million previously. His salary continues to increase by $200,000 annually through the life of the contract, which has a total value of $65.4 million, and can be extended by up to one year if the Ducks win 10 regular season games in any of the next six seasons.
But, hey! UO students can shell out $150 to purchase a Ducks Sports Pass, which bestows “priority access to claim tickets.” Which, as a Daily Emerald investigation revealed…
To claim student-section football tickets…eligible students must enter the ticket claim the Sunday before the game. They are then put into a waiting room, where they are entered in a ticket claim queue. Wait times can range from a few minutes to multiple hours, depending on the popularity of the game.
According to Senior Associate Athletic Director of Communications Jimmy Stanton, the UO Department of Athletics sold 10,000 Ducks Sports Passes for the 2024-2025 school year.
Stanton revealed that due to student section capacity, only 8,000 football tickets can be distributed each game, leaving potentially up to 2,000 sport pass holders out of tickets.
But, never fear. The University of Oregon doesn’t charge students to use the video games in the Gaming Center.
Maybe it’s time for the out-of-luck students to start their very own “Progress for Ducks” charity.
PBOT innocently treats its road-candy thusly: “PBOT reorganizes roads by changing lane configurations, restriping, and/or building new safety infrastructure. Fewer lanes and shorter crossings make it safer and easier for pedestrians and people biking to cross.” And drive motorists maneuvering between potholes nuts.
This will come as a shock to the Coalition of People of Color, who recently allowed people of Slavic descent, mostly immigrants, into their panoply of resentment and special pleading.
More bureaucrats!
We might not have taken their advice and voted for the nutty, new city charter and its radical council stuffed with pols who each got 25-percent of the vote.
Didn’t Kamala run away from her job as border czar by rambling about “root causes?”
Such as: “Do you or a relative have connections to businesses that could result in a financial benefit of more than $500 annually as noted in ORS 244.020 (2)(3)?” Which doesn’t cover nonprofit money-laundries—good news for just about everyone on the city council.
Back in 2024, Commissioner Carmen Rubio pushed through a measure to cram the city's permitting processes into a single office to streamline the system. One office—tons of hoops. Nice to have ‘em all in one place. Despite her efforts, Rubio got left behind in the rank choice election for mayor.
So black communities in Portland are experiencing a disproportionate number of traffic deaths. We need to close that gap. Here’s how: More white people need to die in “traffic violence.”
We need a Shirley Jackson-type lottery. Remember her famous short story we all read in junior high (back when students had to learn how to read to graduate). All white people would be required to participate in this lottery. The "winners" — instead of being stoned to death — would be run over. Portland could finally be known for something besides rioting. We could become a national model in how to erase racial disparities.
You know who should volunteer to be a winner in the PBOT racial disparity lottery? Our friend Therese Bottomly over at The Oregonian. She’s retiring anyway. Let her go out with a big crash.
i appreciate the humor, and the flow chart for building permits