That explains this morning's Politi"Fact" article about the streetcar. Looks like the O is willing to squander what little credibility and integrity it has left to get Hales elected.

So...who wants to help set up a fund paying the Oregonian's editors to finish drinking themselves to death? The ones who want to improve the paper are probably chugging a bottle of cheap scotch every night as they cry themselves to sleep. With the rest, they're just a step away from being busted for soliciting prostitution anyway, and that cheap scotch can't always be covered with a day's work in 25-cent r** jobs.

Ryan Kost's Politi"Fact" on Hales trolleys proves: Oregonian=Fiction

"Hales wasn't ready then to be the chief executive of this city. He is now. He has spent the past decade with HDR Engineering, leading teams of planners and engineers creating new light-rail and streetcar lines in cities across the country."

TRANSLATION: He's spent the last ten years cozying up to the construction mafia who is now funding his campaign and will expect even more public debt into which to sink their vampire teeth.

I fail to see how a "fact-check" that contains so many instances of "seems to", "but there's a catch", and that uses data provided by a third party that is either obsolete or attempts to compare apples to oranges can possibly come to a conclusion of TRUE, much less any conclusion at all.

If this were a high schoo critical thinking assignment it would get an F.

Mr. Grumpy, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the writer was "encouraged" by Editorial to go in this direction. As in telling him "Screw up this one, and...well, you won't be able to go back to your old job at Borders, now will you?"

Oregonian : journalism = Obama : the Constitution

The issue of streetcars vs. buses as presented in The O misses (as usual) a salient point:

Bus routes can be adjusted to serve areas where development has taken place organically. In other words, where the people/riders already are. They're

Streetcars (and their evil twins, light rail lines) are permanent structures built at great expense by the government so that development can be controlled by government officials acting on behalf of their political benefactors. The old idea of "if you build it, they will live/work/shop there." Which ridership figures demonstrate is largely crap-ola, but as long as the right people are getting rich, who cares if the cars are empty and shunned?

Who's fact-checking the "fact checkers"?

Gee, the cream skimmers do better than the ones who work for a living!

Same goes for trolleys that troll in the high density core as opposed to the bus that has to go all the way to the suburbs.

And just ignore the up-front big-cap money for the trolley constructions. Right. And ignoring the mass, an elephant is as light as a hummingbird.

Great journalism. Even Hearst would gag.

At first I thought that TexTriff's vitriol was over the top, but... naaah, it fits. I've been on sinking ships and seen the look in the eyes of the few who thought that working hardcould make a difference. Sad.

The slow-motion suicide of a once-pleasant city is now hastened to suggest the appearance of mercy, if not actual mercy. Hey, let's kill us twice.

What will it take for this gang of looters to realize that they've driven off the last taxpayer, leveraged every asset to the max, and are finally painted into a corner?

They all know this, but expect (if not pray for) a bailout. There will be NO bailout. Uncle Sugar's juice will run dry long before he gets down the list to Portland.

What's more, all of these fact-checking enterprises are self-serving, and merely puctuate the sad fact that practically nobody believes the actual "news" articles any longer... as they should not.

All of those rusty Eastern Bloc cities had plenty of streetcars too -- they didn't magically make the people prosperous and free.

Gah.

Old Zeb, I wish that I had been over the top on this. It's just that I've worked for similar publications where the initial thrill of working there was slowly beaten out of us through editorial edicts that usually benefited the publisher's frat brothers. (And as for that description of the passive-aggressive enthusiasts, well, the journalism market is so bad that it's good to see some of its worst practitioners wanting to make the switch to being kept reporters. I wonder: has anyone made the journalistic equivalent of "Pretty Woman" yet?)