Taking down a take-down
The Oregonian attacks, but it's the wrong target.
There must have been high-fives around the Oregonian newsroom over reporter Shane Dixon Kavanaugh’s takedown of Linda Woodley on Sunday.
Woodley runs a non-profit, Diversifying Energy, that came out of nowhere to win a $11.5-million city contract through one of Portland’s touchy-feely government handout programs, this one aimed at somehow or other mitigating Climate Change.
The non-profit vowed to give 15,000 free “heat pumps” to cool down Portlanders during one of the heat waves that climate fanatics promise will become widespread during the coming apocalypse. Last year’s heat wave allegedly killed 60 people, although you might wonder if the same folks who have been counting Covid deaths (the old “with” versus “because of” problem) were computing the heat wave’s kill-rate. Which was, statistically, somewhere below the odds of falling to one’s death off a ladder.
But, hey! The Oregonian and our political class really, really cares!
As with every giveaway in progressive Portland, the program was heavily frosted with the usual code-words: equity, diversity, people of color, vulnerable, homeless communities, low-income…have we left anyone out?
Taxpayers, but they don’t count.
Reporter Kavanaugh did some Googling and found that Ms. Woodley had…shall we say, a checkered past. Here’s the payload:
Woodley has served time in prison for long ago defrauding energy companies and pocketing the proceeds.
She’s racked up millions of dollars in liens for unpaid federal or state taxes in Oregon and two other states, including a six-figure penalty filed earlier this year.
She’s faced accusations in court of failing to disclose required financial records.
Which Kavanaugh goes on to detail, lien by resume fabrication, IRS fine by bankruptcy. Quite a mess, although Kavanaugh did allow his target a quick riposte:
“I have worked very hard over the past years to be a good person and I think that I am highly regarded in many circles in the industry.”
And then Kavanaugh cornered a hapless bureaucrat who took the fall:
“This is obviously shocking and distressing and sad news for us and the program,” said Eden Dabbs, a spokeswoman with the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, which oversees the fund.
“We are going to have to take responsibility for the decision. We’ll absolutely be looking at this in terms of process and use it as a painful lesson not to let this ever happen again.”
The demolition of Woodley got the full front-page treatment, a pretty massive “gotcha!” in terms of the paper’s recent reporting. But, as with all things extruded from progressive media, it was really more interesting for what it tip-toed past. Or simply left out.
For example, the Oregonian’s original Dec.2 story announced the “sweeping plan” with this bit of flackery for one of their favored politicians:
“Climate change is clearly here with us now,” said Commissioner Carmen Rubio, whose planning and sustainability bureau oversees the clean energy fund.
“It’s critical that we plan for the increasing impacts of this change, which falls first and hardest on our vulnerable seniors, houseless communities, low-income and Black and brown households.”
Strange. Kavanaugh didn’t mention Ms. Rubio in his hit-piece.
Nor did Kavanaugh ask anyone on the nine-member committee that doled out the $11.5 million for any explanation of why they didn’t bother with due diligence.
Nor did the Oregonian name any of these nine savants, or even tell us how they came to be on such a powerful board.
Nor was there the slightest assurance that, somehow, miraculously, Diversifying Energy would find the right 3,000 people (per year) to protect. Anything you might call a “metric” for identifying the most likely to die? After all, no one found them in the heatwave.
Perhaps Ms. Rubio will make those life-or-death decisions…kinda like handing out turkeys to constituents at Thanksgiving.
It wouldn’t take a Sherlock to spot the twitchy details buried in the Oregonian’s ho-hum Dec. 2 story. First off, forget the puffy $11.5-million number; $3.5 million would be promptly creamed-off by Ms. Woodley and eight other hires; another $1 million would cover “project costs” and a warehouse. So, actually, less than half, $7 million, would be left for the lifesaving machines that would be trickled out at 3,000 per year.
And Diversifying Energy wouldn’t actually be delivering the units; instead, as the Oregonian buried in its “sweeping” story:
The city also plans to contract next year with an array of community-based organizations that will deliver, install and service the cooling units in homes…
A competent reporter might ask: Do any of these rag-tag community-based organizations actually know beans about repairing a sophisticated heat pump? And how will the city ascertain that the organizations will actually do the work, given the penchant of some non-profit types to self-deal?
Wouldn’t it be easier to give 15,000 heat-threatened folks the dollars to buy the units from, say, Amazon, where the “SereneLife SLPAC Portable Air Conditioner with Built-in Dehumidifier Function,Fan Mode, 12,000 BTU + HEAT, White” lists for $499 with free delivery.
But, no. Hire we must!
The Oregonian avoided any mention of the blatant racism embedded in the project that, obviously, led to a character such as Ms. Woodley being given the OK, The signs of trouble were evident in the Dec. 2 story: bureaucrat Sam Barasso, the clean energy fund’s manager, confessed that the city staff had some “concerns” about Diversifying Energy, but put those aside promptly:
“Notably, they saw value in supporting a Black-led nonprofit stepping into this role and growing their capacity to fulfill the mission of the fund to build greater capacity within our priority communities to implement climate mitigation projects.”
Think about that innocent sounding term, “priority communities,” and wonder: who gets to set the “priority?” And what about the folks who are de-prioritized?
It’s the great you-know-who of Portland’s progressive politics.
And that’s a story the Oregonian will never tell.
Well done
You nearly lost a reader by trying to equate climate change (an emotionless phenomenon driven by triatomic CO2 molecules) with radical or even moderate leftists. Just because the left talks a lot about climate change doesn't make it their personal pet peeve!
Jordan Peterson has made the same false association between atmospheric warming and leftist extremism, despite his logic on woke degeneracy. In general, the right keeps associating environmentalism with old hippies and druggies when it's really about morality and survival.
Way back in the 1800s per scientists like Foote, Tyndall, and Arrhenius, AGW was a looming prospect. When warming reached an actionable level much later, it finally became politicized. Tribalism is drowning out reason more and more.
I suggest doing something truly intelligent, like studying the unprecedented west coast fires in NASA satellite photos (if you haven't noticed how much worse it's gotten from ground level). Or simply bother to learn the atmosphere's heat-absorbing limits, which have never been infinite.
Greater levels of ancient warming didn't put complex, weather-dependent modern economies at risk, but that comparison keeps getting rehashed by reactionaries who ignore context.
P.S. I also think sprawling wind turbines are a terrible climate "solution," and Trump was right about them for the most part.