Pity. Maybe that's there motivation.

Advertising.

Yes - this sheep insists it wears wolf attire. My guess is the owners know they only need to publish a news-worthy story once a quarter or less to be glance-worthy. Their measurement of success, for circulation=ad rates logic, is, how many copies are removed from newsboxes.

On that logic advertisers are persuaded to participate. The quarter-or-less strategy sustains informants, keeps staff costs low, maintains the high fluff to info ratio acceptable. Perhaps it's profitable.

Used to be suits would grab a copy on Wednesday AM and ruffle quickly to 1. Make sure they're not in it, 2. See if they'd caught some other fool. Now I just wait for someone to email me the link, "oh, you're in WW again." Ok Grandpa.

The saddest recent moment concerning Saltzman is when he effectively said when voting for the new billion dollar bike plan, I don't know how we're going to get the money for this new shiney toy but dog gone we just have to have it. It's not too different from dad saying I know our roof is leaking and its getting worse, but I am going to buy a new snow mobile for my occassional fun trips to the mountains.

And the Oregonian has in the recent past supported Saltzman for his business experience. It makes me want to give up on Portland governance...it seems like a lost cause.

It's not just the WWeek. All of the mainstream media outlets here in Portland are unethical and/or incompetent. You'd expect that in a small town, but not in a major metropolitan area.

Unfortunately, Portland has a culture of corruption that permeates every level of governance.

The people who play that game can pretend it doesn't matter, but the fact is that bad deals attract more bad deals, and drive away good deals. And despite all of Portland's glowing urban planning media hype, that's probably the main reason why corporations and investors choose to take their jobs and money elsewhere.

I was listening to talk radio yesterday. A caller said he was at the airport recently and saw Chris Dudley there speaking with Karl Rove...

If Dudley wins, who will he be beholden to?

Is Bradbury the strongest candidate to win if Dudley is the republican candidate?

YIKES! the end is near!

I was at hour long sit down with Saltzman on April 18.

It was a q & A session fotr folks in the area. We had one with Cornett a week prior and will have one with Volm as well.

At the Saltzman fest, I asked him a question which had been posed to GW Bush back around the 2004 election, IIRC. The gist of the question was "What in your 12 years on the council are your biggest failures, errors, and mistakes?"

Followed by three painfully long minutes of dead silence.

Then some pap about no failures, only successes, such as the childrens initiative, the water bureau computer system,

Nary a mention of the non appearance of 10,000 bio tech jobs in SoWhat after his tram vote.

So unimpressive.

I'll have to read this endorsement to see what arguments they can possibly come up with this guy is a "leader".

I think that Saltzman is the least dynamic politician in the city, if not the state. He just looks vacant. He's a lump on a log. You want to wave your hand in front of his eyes to see if anyone is home. When he does something, it's only because he's being pulled by the ear by Sam Adams.

WW doesn't see any value in replacing someone like that?

They like to pose as anti-establishment, but after 30 years they're now firmly entrenched in it themselves. So no wonder after much hue and cry they back establishment candidates in the end.

I think a large part of why Saltzman is endorsed is that one has to question and ponder the positions of candidates willing to run against him. But one has to look beyond these "positions" because they are designed only to grab what is the dejour of the month.

For example, both Mary Volm and Jesse Cornett are claiming they are "Back to Work" oriented. But look at their past histories and political thinking-their base. Neither have ever voiced this concern in the past, why will they be advocates, or even know what do to be "Work" oriented. This applies to their other dejour positons.

I am not saying they aren't still better choices than Saltzman, but this phenomenon applies to many other races. We are just getting the same old kind of candidates with basic cores all the same. You can't change an alligator into a gecko.

Jack is spot on about WW's lack of transparency regarding its motivations. My biggest beef with that paper (in 15 years of living in Portland) is that it has never once offered its readers a clear, explicit statement of its political philosophy or any overarching vision for the city's future. The introduction to this endorsement article seems to imply awareness of this criticism and a belief that such explication is simply unnecessary in order to "tell you how to vote." To the contrary, this absence of context makes their endorsements pretty much useless for anyone who thinks beyong personality traits such as "collegiality" when choosing candidates. The Mercury, while it has its own shortcomings, consistently does a much better job with endorsements. They tend to be explicitly ideological and partisan, making them far more useful to voters regardless of one's own political outlook. When it comes to politics, WW just doesn't get it, never has, probably never will.

Lee,
I worked for the State of Oregon in Economic Development when the timber industry tanked and the state was trying to recover from the trickle-down recession of the late 80's. I worked directly on business development proposals to attract new business and industry to Oregon, matching it with resources and workforce talent throughout the state.

During my 18 years of transportation experience at both the city and the state, our first priority was to identify improvements necessary for the movement of goods and services, create new business districts and connect major business development land to major transportation systems. The streetcar was an economic development tool that was paid for by willing property owners voting to tax themselves to allow for redevelopment of blighted areas in Portland.

To say I have no experience is absolutely inaccurate. I have more experience in real, long-term job creation than all the candidates combined in my race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zPa0n6hqvI

Yeah, but you can apparently make a gecko sell auto insurance.

And...it's important for the 'entertainment' sector and the 'creative class' to have an advertising outlet that isn't crimped by the dubious morality of the monopoly daily.

Saltzman is the 'Cardboard Commissioner'. He could almost have cardboard cutouts made with a few interchangeable word balloons and place those at candidate fairs. The self-assumed "Defender of Children" label is most curious. Have city services to children improved in his tenure? Does the city have services to children? Oh, yeah...there is parks. And how's that going? Summer programming for children slashed....

It seems it's more important to spend beaucoup bucks inticing silver-spoon east-coast financier pirates to tear up our Civic Stadium....again...than to provide summer parks programs for kids, especially for kids in the economically strapped neighborhoods. Thanks, Dan.

Yeah...Like I believe anything a sitting Commissioner uses to advertise themselves during a campaign.

So...Has any wag listed the number of patent failures, scams, and bamboozles Danny the Man of Salt has signed on to?

Can anybody help him the next time he has problems remembering his bad decisions?

Don't children do best when their parents have jobs?

Mary, you help make my point. After spending 18 years to help your claim that you are an "economic development" expert, you state "the streetcar was an economic development tool that was paid for by willing property owners voting to tax themselves...". Very untrue!

The trolley dollars are mostly from the feds, state, Portland's general fund, PDOT budget (as you should know), and even the revenue from street parking and even city owned parking garages. Local Improvement Districts (LIDs), which taxes nearby property owners of the trolley, is the ONLY contributor that helps, in a very small way, your claim.

Also, LID's do not vote to tax themselves. There is no voting. It is dictated by the City.

To help make your claim even more preposterous is to examine the trolley line in SoWhat. The $40 Million line had a large chunk paid by the feds and state. The city then "borrowed" money from the general fund and then took TIF dollars of the SoWhat URA to pay most of the remainder. The little bit still required is being paid for by the local LID. And there was not ONE vote, not by the property owners, not by the citizens of Portland who are paying a substantial portion of the bill.

Then you claim it is a "economic development tool". In SoWhat there is not one biotech job created. Ridership is low and very few people ever pay to ride. Trolleys are not economic tools, the endless tax abatements, grants, TOD's, etc. are the so-called economic tools, not Trolleys-and even they havent' made SoWhat successful.

At least you haven't voted on the 9 SoWhat Amendments that Saltzman voted "yea". If you had been on the City Council at these votes, I find it hard to think you would have voted any differently. That's my point.

Children do best when they have parents. That is not the City's job.

What to do, what to do ...

Saltzman clearly has to go.

Cornett is a mix of Sten, Adams, and Streetcar Smith. Makes me want to vomit in my food waste bucket.

That leaves Volm. It's sad that the candidate who exhibits scooter rage is the best of the bunch ... Ugh!

I rake in the rock-solid curmudgeon vote by staying home and minding my own business.

ZOMG!!! She actually used the phrase "trickle-down recession"...Ronald Reagan was right, and the longest period of economic expansion in the postwar era was the result. The City of Portland has driven most of our homegrown success stories beyond city limits (Freightliner, Precision Castparts, LP, and Columbia Sportswear, to name a few) but that is all Reagan/Bush/Cheney's fault right?

Actually the longest and most robust postwar economic expansion was 1961-69, when the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. Poverty, homelessness, structural unemployment and deficit spending all increased sharply under Reagan/Bush I, decreased under Clinton and soared again under Bush II, leaving us where we are today. Let's not rewrite history.

Remember what Joe Biden said about Rudy Giuliani? "There are only three things he mentions in a sentence--a noun, a verb and 9/11."

With Saltzman, it's a noun, a verb and children's initiative. I listened to the City Club "debate" and he brought that up every other minute.

I like Cornett. He's at least saying all the right things. Volm is way to scattered.

"AND TREES HAVE FEELINGS." NUFF SAID!

Mary, Jessie, anyone else who hopes to get elected to city council: You need to focus on what a slime Adams and Leonard are. You need to focus on how Saltzman aids and abets them under the cover of good guy. You need to highlight how Fish and Fritz are both enormous flops at standing up for what's right. And has any one of you even brought up the ticking time bomb on the left side of this page? The only one who will get a vote from me is the one who isn't afraid to say let's get sane and end these financial fiascos like the post-office buyout, neon roses, bike paths, quadrupling water rates, reservoir covering, stadium giveaways, subsidies to private developers, nutty couplets that f*** up traffic and shady parking meter contracts to name but a few. I have not seen any of you wanna-be big shots even pretend to take ownership of the real problems facing the city. Until you are ready to stare down reality and speak on specifics, SHUT UP.

Lie2me:

Sounds like you know from being there against these creeps!

I sat tonight and thought about what it finally will take, be it the city, county, state,or country, before the whole thing falls apart.

All the examples in your fine post are examples of things among many I have begged, pleaded, ranted and to a point cried tears about since stupidly getting envolved in an issue of real community safety.

I will not even lift a finger to explain it anymore as what I have said will come to pass, someone will die ,and some damn idiot like Leonard(yes RANDY...idiot) will rush in and like the "mighty mouse" he is not...will save the day, but having known about this in another lie to me(the if elected lie)he cannot say to anyone in this city, he was the first to react to it.

Lies seem a political standard..they are, that is where my tears actually fell once...I took this issue to Katz, hat in hand at first, cause again, a grand mother would never allow her grand kids to be at risk, like mine were when they were little, ..but you know what I found out...her grand kids were safe, it was my kids and the kids of 400 parents in SE PDX, who were put at risk.

Diane Linn, the same, Charlie Hales the same, and a host of others, all liars.

Now Jesse Cornett, who lives in Lents, tried to contact him..still waiting, as with others...but I HAVE given up.

Pretty soon, it will not matter, a city will fail,a county, then a country.

Where are those who will fight for the "greater good" not the most endorsements to get elected.

The left here..and the right, have no courage, and as you said in your post, if you have no detailed answers, no hard evidence, or as with some I have mentioned Randy,Dan, Ben Cannon, a host of others, as you said, " The only one who will get a vote from me is the one who isn't afraid to say let's get sane and end these financial fiascos like the post-office buyout, neon roses, bike paths, quadrupling water rates, reservoir covering, stadium giveaways, subsidies to private developers, nutty couplets that f*** up traffic and shady parking meter contracts to name but a few. I have not seen any of you wanna-be big shots even pretend to take ownership of the real problems facing the city. Until you are ready to stare down reality and speak on specifics, SHUT UP."

Your post that another one like me is out there...there is hope(even the word hope,I have begun to hate)I HOPE, we find a leader..soon!