Jack - "real" urban renewal & "economic" development" - what a hoot!

Let's get used to the oxymoronic nature of tax thievery around here. The politicos are all CIM/CAM'd up with techniques for co-opting opponents. Chief among these is adopting the oppoisition's language and twisting their common-sense meanings 180 degrees. Thus, urban renewal and development practiced by our officials is in fact both "unreal" and "noneconomic" to the rest of us. But this should be obvious by now to anyone who's been paying an ounce of attention.

If they did a 180 and decided to get "real" and "economic" they would have to undo their reverse-Robin Hood mentality of taking from the many and giving to the few. After all, it's the "few" who can advance careers in politics.

Our cast of officials, top down, do not know how to sing a different tune, however. This merry band is part of the problem, not part of the solution and we should only get more of the same from them. In order to get "real" and "economic" definitions that mean the same thing to The Man and the rest of us, we need a bunch of new actors and a regular recycling.

Why the recycling? For the same reason we wash our cars. Sure, they just get dirty again ... but it's different dirt.

Had a hard time choosing a thread today. I don't think technology will fix what ails the Portland Police Bureau and this place needs less sacharine politeness and more real questions, imho. Yesterday' bear story was a delight: reminded me of when my parents took my sister and me camping at Yosemite when we were kids: a bear broke into the ice chest and opened-then drank-a can of Hawaiian Punch. But I gotta comment on the less candid and insightful hicks here in Portland and the issue of REAL economic development. I don't think it is going to happen until we find a way to confront Good Old Boy action. Today's O had a column on entreprenuers and venture capital. How much of a boost does the successful entreprenuer need? The question that wasn't asked was "How much good old boy influence should an entreprenuer have to withstand? Consider the folowing: my sister,Julie Lewis, then a Lake Oswego housewife, founded Deja Shoe in the late 1980s. Deja made shoes out of recycled materials. The major media was all over it. Julie got an award from the U.N. yadda, yadda... Nike investigators found the shoes to be a good product. My dad and I still own pairs and swear by them. Well, Phil Knight has a cousin who is Senior Partner of one of the larger law firms in Portland. Some of its lawyers made overtures to Deja and started attending meetings where they learned about the investors, etc. Deja had made a conscious choice not to protect trade secrets(perhaps naive, but it had dreams of revolutionizing the shoe industry. So...........right as Deja was moving into the black, the investors got together and withdrew forcing liquidation. I am using conjecture here, but not wild conjecture- when I say I suspect Phil Knight's cousin's firm had something to do with it: I had seen that firm play dirty on more than one occasion in the past. And I had personal knowledge that some kind of business slander was going on vis a vis Deja Shoe: I was looking at the shoes in a mall shoe store when a salesman told me the "environmental community" didn't support Deja. I knew that was untrue as I live in a part of Portland heavily populated with environmentalists and people would stop me on the street to ask where i got my Deja shoes. This is but one ugly anti new business story out there. I know Dublin became less static when Irish subjects started getting coverage in literature and the international press. Maybe that is what will have to happen with Oregon subjects.