If you haven’t had your daily dose of depression, may we recommend leafing through the current Multnomah County Voters’ Pamphlet?
Since this is an “off-year” ballot, almost all of the races will be played out in the underbelly of the Democratic party machine that has run this town and state for a generation. Odd, no one seems to link that fact with the current state of that city and state—over-taxed, over-governed, rapidly declining. You’ll find not a hint of that among the candidate profiles.
And, yah-yah-yah, these are “non-partisan” races—a lie that even the city’s Charter Commission wouldn’t stop telling us. But the party runs the show, rest assured, even here in the minor leagues. All those community college boards and the weird Multnomah Education Service District and boards of education and water districts! What’s a voter, more interested in streaming and sour beer and worrying about the next tranche of layoffs to do as reading the candidate’s self-authored profiles leaves them with the feeling of mistakenly stumbling into a meeting of Narcissists International.
The headline contest gets the kickoff spot on page 35; the race for District Three on the disproportionately-female Multnomah County Board.
Step aside and consider that “district” thingy—and recall that forming four districts in Portland’s new charter is supposed to make democracy perfect. Can anyone actually say that the county districts have worked out that way?
Maybe that’s because the county exists in a weird media dead zone: responsible for spending loads of money on a host of problems, such as homelessness, that always seems to get blamed on Portland’s hapless mayor.
There are three candidates, one of which, Albert Kaufman, doesn’t seem to have much of a campaign presence—although he is by far the most interesting and, actually, amusing.
One of his key proposals is banning gas-powered leafblowers. That’s not as quixotic as it sounds: the newly-crowned county chair, Jessica Vega-Pederson, was lauded back in 2021 by the Oregonian because she…
…holds the anti-gas leaf blower mantle on the Multnomah County side [and] lent impassioned support for the resolution and a potential ban.
Sadly, Mr. Kaufman has not been endorsed by Ms. Vega-Pederson to continue her good works.
Mr. Kaufman also wants to stash the homeless in those shuttered Walmarts, which makes sense: District Attorney Schmidt—just in time for his re-election campaign—could use the locale and its inmates (who may have light-fingered at the Walmarts) as a training ground for his new “anti-shoplifting” squad. As we said: just in time for his re-election campaign.
As for solutions to the city’s drug epidemic, Mr. Kaufman says…
“What I’ll just throw out here quickly is I believe that for those who are addicted to drugs, we should be getting the best-grown cannabis in the world into their hands.”
How Mr. Kaufman managed to miss the La Mota gravy train is a mystery.
That leaves two—dare we say it?—ladies.
They represent competing caucuses within the machine, both deploying time-tested tropes like calling-cards at a debutante ball. They may be competing, but rest assured: neither one will push the boundaries of what’s ideologically acceptable for the party apparatus.
So, here we have Ana del Rocio from what you might call the Let’s Get Our Beak in the Trough Ethnic caucus. Her campaign floats on “100+ endorsers,” which is a useful way to tell voters which of her owners’ phone calls she’ll be returning. Labor unions are all-in (and spending members’ dues), along with a bunch of ethnic non-profits and ethnic pols. Think of the pie and who gets the biggest piece. It’s a Latinx’s turn; simple as that.
Ms. del Rocio lists, among her accomplishments a raft of boards and commissions—some of which she left rather suddenly—along with her service as tri-chair of the County Charter Review Committee, which belched up an even weirder charter than Portland’s.
She also, it is rumored, has some history, a nasty tussle with Trimet cops, something or other about her “real” name— but it won’t make any difference to the voters who see the “del” and automatically fill in the ballot-bubble.
The other candidate, Julia Brim-Edwards, is a member of a different caucus: the Very Serious Professional Women, Lesbian subsidiary. It’s currently headed by GuvTina, who helped to defenestrate (with the help of WillyWeek’s reigning scalp-hunter, Very Professional Woman Sophie Peel) yet another Very Professional Woman, Secretary of State Shemia Fagin.
Ms. Brim-Edwards is a departing member of the Portland Public School Board, such boards being the first stair-steps for candidates with their eye on the upper reaches of the pyramid. This might strike one as a rather weak background, given the schools’ loss of customers and inability, despite searching endlessly for expensive silver-bullet curricula, to move the needle on student achievement.
The district’s website averts its gaze from the actual numbers. But, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting…
“Overall, in English language arts, 17% of Black students, 29% of Latino students, and 32% of Native American students are proficient across grades three through eight and 11. This compares to 67% of white students,” [Chief of Research, Assessment and Accountability] Adams said. “In math, we see starker results.”
Then there’s the matter of Brim-Edwards’s other list of accomplishments, including…
Protect seniors by strengthening Covid response with PPE and vaccines…
…which, aside from being rather non-specific, forgets what we’ve learned about the mRNA jabs. Or, for that matter, masks.
All three candidates pledge to do stuff about homelessness, which drives people in the dumping-grounds of District Three nuts.
One of del Rocio’s endorsers assures us she’ll “hit the ground running;” the candidate says she wants “housing and real solutions to homelessness;” which is almost word-for-word the same as Brim-Edwards’s “Get people into housing quickly and off the streets.”
But none of the candidates (except Mr. Kaufman) say where that “housing” might be located (first guess: in district three), or when it will be built, or who will get the above-average per-square-foot construction bonanza, although we assume none of the politically-connected construction unions will turn down the jobs.
As for the new flood of semi-comatose, Narcan-injecting, psychotic, hapless, feral folks in all that “housing,” let’s wait for the section on measures to discuss what might happen.
One final note: none of the candidates uttered the potentially lethal words, Multnomah County Behavioral Health Resource Center.
And now we’re confronted by the various people who want to run our other satellite school districts. Most are running unopposed. No surprises.
There are nine candidates for the board running the Multnomah Education Service District (MESD)…and I’ll betcha most of you out there barely know it exists or what it does.
Check out their website, and they’ll tell you…
ESDs save school districts money by pooling resources for programs that would be costly and inefficient for the districts to operate on their own. Each ESD is unique, but ESD services can be summarized in four main categories
Special Education Programs
Technology Services
School Improvement Programs
Administrative Services
Turning to a discussion of funding, you’ll note the absence of any actual $-numbers for what they spend. Nada. Best guess: a lot.
None of the candidates seem to want to discuss those dollars. Their frequent invocation of the magic word, equity, makes up the difference.
Board chair Denyse O. Peterson is up for another term at the helm; she’s a classic fire-breathing racial-progressive who takes credit for…
…the creation of real history curriculum for MESD classrooms…
(Wink-wink; nod-nod.) And…
Currently working to develop clemency program for youthful offenders.
But where in the MESD charter does it say anything about getting juvenile delinquents out of the slammer?
No matter; she’s a shoe-in. The proto-criminals will get a pass.
Portland’s school district board has two “zones” without a contest; both candidates’ day jobs are in the bureaucratic depths of Portland and Metro government—how do they have the time?
The zone two winner by default will be Michelle DePass, another classic race-progressive. There is only one endorsement on her laundry-list worth noting: the Portland Association of Teachers PAC. Refer to “pick up the phone” remarks above.
And then pick up a book, “Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions,” by Philip Howard and Mitch Daniels, which argues that public-employee unions…
…have become the elephant in the room of American politics—one of the largest campaign contributors, and also the largest source of campaign workers. All this political power is consolidated toward one goal—protecting and benefiting public employees against decisions by elected officials and public supervisors.
None of the candidates have anything to say about those regrettable Portland school test scores mentioned above. The Oregonian printed a chart a while back. It was depressing. How can it be, f’rinstance, that just 42-percent of the kids at upper-crust Grant High School “met or exceeded state standards” in math, or that just 28-percent hit the mark in English at McDaniel? (We’ll encounter a longstanding tax that was supposed to do something about those dismal numbers below.)
Nor do any of the many candidates for satellite school districts say much about their own test scores, nor do any candidates anywhere take a simple stand to “restore discipline in our classrooms.”
Don’t upset the teachers, whose union looks the other way while their membership is punched, dissed, ignored by kids in training for a life of sociopathology.
And now we arrive at page 72: Measure 26-238, with the harmless ballot title…
Establishes residential tenant resources program, eviction representation, capital gains tax.
Which, should be titled, “The Full Employment for Lawyers and End of Rental Property Construction in Portland Act.”
Local media has been treating this measure the way an owner might treat a puppy that just dragged in something very dead. The entire Portland city council has opposed it—but then most of them warned against the new city charter and where did that get them?
My bet is that the crazy Portland voters will go for it. The Democratic party orthodoxy now regards single-family homes as the new class enemy; holy “density” requires tear-downs and apartments everywhere.
And, guess what? Renters don’t like getting evicted. Particularly voters who don’t like paying rent.
One could go on endless analyses of the measure’s kick in the groin to a city that has been beaten up by various oddball voter-approved measures that didn’t seem to quite work out—Measure 110, anyone? And a city that ranks close to the top echelon of most-taxed in the nation.
But the people bitching don’t have any real leverage and steadfastly refuse to get organized. Back in the good old days, Stalin, who believed in ultimate “equity,” called them “kulaks,” and got rid of them. Substitue “landlords” and you get the idea. Things aren’t that bad—yet—and there’s always Happy Valley.
There are two, maybe three, “tells” in the official description of the measure worth noting.
First, lest anyone think about dumping one’s house before the measure kicks in, note that it will be post-dated to January, 2023. No escape. You’re screwed.
Every half-sentient homeowner has probably done the arithmetic, but let’s just point out that a home that returns $100-grand in equity, will have $750 creamed off the top—chump-change, say the proponents. Although that number could go up, depending on the whims of the county council. Anyone want to go on record saying it will go down?
Second, the measure will…
…provide free, culturally specific and responsive legal representation, with translation, to persons sued in Multnomah County residential eviction proceedings…
Care to define “culturally specific?” Awww, c’mon. We all know.
Third, there’s this little passage…
The County would be required to contract with at least five nonprofit law firms or community-based organizations to provide legal representation, including seeking to recover attorney fees, costs, and prevailing party fees when applicable; educate the public about eviction services and related programs; and report annually on predetermined performance metrics.
You can already hear the rustle of papers as hustlers rev up new flocks of 501-c-3’s. And as county officials salivate over kanoodling with the non-profits that want to be one of the favored five. Those endorsements won’t come cheap.
As for all those lawyers who might turn their attention from ambulance-chasing and slip ‘n’ fall or “shopping while black” civil suits…well, Shemia Fagan has reapplied for admission to the Oregon bar. Get in line.
You might also note that all those “Arguments in Favor”—seven pages!—are signed by a host of non-profits, many of which stand to non-profit by this windfall. It’s a virtual conclave, with most of the endorsements bundled by one Amelia Stier, representing a non-profit called Tenants Organizing Against Displacement. Try Googling Ms. Stier or the non-profit: there’s virtually no paper trail. No form 990s. Nothing that pops up on the standard charity search-engines. The IRS is clueless, as usual.
But we’ll bet that the organization might—just might—be one of the five (why that arbitrary number? don’t ask) that will grab for the gold…
…as apartment construction grinds to its final halt.
And, just askin’…will all of those county and Metro-financed “affordable” housing units be covered by the anti-eviction program? They’ll be concentrating hundreds of the “officially poor” (a number debunked here) in teeny-tiny apartments, with non-profits and wrap-around services to keep the tenants in line. But no one’s perfect, right?
What then?
And how will our short-staffed courts (to be filled with the DA’s shoplifting and auto-theft prosecutions) handle the load?
What the hell. Let’s find out!
Oh, yah. There’s another measure—26-240—as a kind of aperitif. It will continue yet another feel-good (but badly-executed) tax that drives Portland people of “wealth” to escape to the ‘burbs.
Portland’s obtuse voters have re-upped it three times since 2002, despite any real evidence that there is a real problem with “childhood hunger,” (anyone heard of SNAP cards?) or any great need for early childhood programs (didn’t voters approve the county early-childhood levy? And what about those programs over at the Services District?) or programs building academic achievement (why are we paying school taxes…and whaddabout those test-numbers mentioned above?).
And isn’t it just a little suspicious that the “explanatory statement” in the pamphlet reads like a sales pitch…
“…The levy supports proven programs to help kids and youth succeed…”
Not that “succeed” is defined. Or, for that matter, measured, despite the levy’s ancient history.
The fine print estimates that the tax will rake in $25,944,885 in 2024-2025, and also vows that administration costs will not exceed 5 percent.
Do the math. It buys a lot of bureaucrats.
But, not to worry. It’ll pass.
Noisy, polluting leaf blowers are a legal crime against the soundscape and quality of life. Nothing wrong with wanting to ban them, or at least enforce quieter engines in newer models. It would be one less irritant in modern life.
A bit more about Rocío. At her arrest for fare evasion she supplied an incorrect name to the law enforcement officer. Her excuse: Latinx names are very complicated and she couldn’t remember what her legal name was. LOL.