Why, why, in heaven's name why are Portland taxpayers paying good money to have some clown sitting around posting this? And this? It's such a bad dream. Will grownups ever retake city government?
Comments (26)
Q. "Will grown-ups ever retake city government."
A. Not for at least another 4 years and 102 days.
5S in my kitchen? What's next - Quality Circles my the bedroom? Kanban in my bathroom? Six-Sigma pulling weeds in my garder?
I suggest Poka-Yoke in our government! And if you're not familiar with these terms consider yourself lucky. (Actually, Poka-Yoke is a worthwhile concept.)
It's just Portland's ongoing obsession with all things liberal and with people who, rather than fix potholes and other such mundane endeavors, want instead to micro-manage every detail of our personal lives so that everyone comports with their view of the correct way to conduct ourselves. And if we don't go along with the program they really get their jollies ensuring our compliance at gunpoint. These are the people you love to cynically skewer, but then inexplicably you keep voting for them, derisively calling the alternative "tighty righties." When the dust settles out, in the end, YOU represent the a part of the problem, Bojack, not the solution, because all you really want to do is rearrange the deckchairs on this sinking ship.
Not that hard to figure... a nanny-state that advertises itself as "beneficent" is naturally going to attract residents who either given up on or never were capable of thinking for themselves, hence "a place for young and old to retire".
Your tax dollars are providing essential services for the confused and lobotomized.
Jack, you do a huge service when you point out spending on non-priority items and the dangerous growth of debt due to big projects. I read your blog really as a local news source.
Unfortunately, you also spend a lot of time editorializing about how bad current city leadership is to allow these things to happen. Criticizing current city leadership is just pissing in the wind. This is a one-party town and current city leadership is exactly what the people of Portland want. (That's why they won the jobs.) I might add that you are as derisive of the other party as anyone.
So you don't like current city leadership, you think the other (almost non-existent) party are a bunch of Richy Rich dopes (which only occasionally hurts my feelings), and you don't like the result.
Maybe there are people who you would like, but they don't seem to run (or are so unknown that they can't mount a realistic campaign). My suggestion: write a post about a realistic way that you believe things around here could be improved. (Just saying "elect different people" doesn't count, because you need to suggest who they might be and why you think they'd have a chance to win.)
Just a suggestion by a regular reader.
It seems like everytime we get a nanny state sighting those of us who still have a grip on reality roll our eyes, crack about the sorry state of government priorities and go on with lives. Then of course we get a comment from our friends on the Far Right that sounds positively unhinged. LIBERALS! Forcing us to wipe our tails at GUNPOINT! (I thought the Right loved guns...I guess only when they are pointed at the mentally ill)Does not take much to validate whatever hysterical fantasy they have of government and those nasty black helicopters. Of course they did not seem to mind it so much when the government, under GDub, went around violating civil rights, torturing and sending people to rot in Gitmo. I guess government is only bad when your guys are not at the wheel.
Maybe you should start you own blog boycat. I am so tired of pointmaking through perpetual widebrush liberal-conservative identity rhetoric.
To follow your analogy, our ship may be headed for an iceberg but (on the national level) liberals and conservatives elected the people who set and maintained that course. We will need liberal and conservatives finding common ground to change course to avoid local icebergs. Jack is doing more to highlight this common ground than anyone else in Portland.
Whats next?
Personal home inspections by our city for the good of the planet?
The new urbanites will be more than happy to comply? When will they have had enough?
...or has the education camp already prepared them for the lock step life?
"Personal home inspections by our city for the good of the planet?"
You laugh. There are already proposals to require compliance with an energy audit before you are allowed to sell your house.
After all, there is a century-old example of this sort of thing:
"The Sociological Department of the Ford Motor Company was organized in March, 1913, and oversaw a broad array of social benefits for Ford employees, including assistance in living in well-maintained single-family homes as opposed to small apartments. After the announcement of the Five Dollar Day in 1914, the Sociological Department was responsible for determining if employees’ personal lives and personal habits made them eligible for the full wage."
After all, there is a century-old example of this sort of thing:
"The Sociological Department of the Ford Motor Company was organized in March, 1913, and oversaw a broad array of social benefits for Ford employees ...determining if employees’ personal lives and personal habits made them eligible for the full wage.
Not relevant. We're not employees that receive pay and benefits for our labors. We're taxpayers that give up our pay and have things taken away from us for our labors.
It's possible to not like the current crop of elected hacks, and also not like the hacks that didn't get elected from the other party.
This isn't a system that is mutually exclusive. Oregon has elected Republicans before - they just happened to be moderate Republicans that didn't bend over backwards to the national party, or the religious right.
They however are a dying breed, so we're left with the hacks we have, or the hacks that are unelectable in the Tri-County area for some reason. The moderates all fled.
However, my family and friends are still in Oregon, and I still own property there because the current city hall hacks can't figure out how to stop the downward slide of property values - something that other parts of the country did 18 months ago.
Lange, Pinot Gris 2015
Kiona, Lemberger 2014
Willamette Valley, Pinot Gris 2015
Aix, Rosé de Provence 2016
Marchigüe, Cabernet 2013
Inazío Irruzola, Getariako Txakolina Rosé 2015
Maso Canali, Pinot Grigio 2015
Campo Viejo, Rioja Reserva 2011
Kirkland, Côtes de Provence Rosé 2016
Cantele, Salice Salentino Reserva 2013
Whispering Angel, Côtes de Provence Rosé 2013
Avissi, Prosecco
Cleto Charli, Lambrusco di Sorbara Secco, Vecchia Modena
Pique Poul, Rosé 2016
Edmunds St. John, Bone-Jolly Rosé 2016
Stoller, Pinot Noir Rosé 2016
Chehalem, Inox Chardonnay 2015
The Four Graces, Pinot Gris 2015
Gascón, Colosal Red 2013
Cardwell Hill, Pinot Gris 2015
L'Ecole No. 41, Merlot 2013
Della Terra, Anonymus
Willamette Valley, Dijon Clone Chardonnay 2013
Wraith, Cabernet, Eidolon Estate 2012
Januik, Red 2015
Tomassi, Valpolicella, Rafaél, 2014
Sharecropper's Pinot Noir 2013
Helix, Pomatia Red Blend 2013
La Espera, Cabernet 2011
Campo Viejo, Rioja Reserva 2011
Villa Antinori, Toscana 2013
Locations, Spanish Red Wine
Locations, Argentinian Red Wine
La Antigua Clásico, Rioja 2011
Shatter, Grenache, Maury 2012
Argyle, Vintage Brut 2011
Abacela, Vintner's Blend #16
Abacela, Fiesta Tempranillo 2014
Benton Hill, Pinot Gris 2015
Primarius, Pinot Gris 2015
Januik, Merlot 2013
Napa Cellars, Cabernet 2013
J. Bookwalter, Protagonist 2012
LAN, Rioja Edicion Limitada 2011
Beaulieu, Cabernet, Rutherford 2009
Denada Cellars, Cabernet, Maipo Valley 2014
Marchigüe, Cabernet, Colchagua Valley 2013
Oberon, Cabernet 2014
Hedges, Red Mountain 2012
Balboa, Rose of Grenache 2015
Ontañón, Rioja Reserva 2015
Three Horse Ranch, Pinot Gris 2014
Archery Summit, Vireton Pinot Gris 2014
Nelms Road, Merlot 2013
Chateau Ste. Michelle, Pinot Gris 2014
Conn Creek, Cabernet, Napa 2012
Conn Creek, Cabernet, Napa 2013
Villa Maria, Sauvignon Blanc 2015
G3, Cabernet 2013
Chateau Smith, Cabernet, Washington State 2014
Abacela, Vintner's Blend #16
Willamette Valley, Rose of Pinot Noir, Whole Clusters 2015
Albero, Bobal Rose 2015
Ca' del Baio Barbaresco Valgrande 2012
Goodfellow, Reserve Pinot Gris, Clover 2014
Lugana, San Benedetto 2014
Wente, Cabernet, Charles Wetmore 2011
La Espera, Cabernet 2011
King Estate, Pinot Gris 2015
Adelsheim, Pinot Gris 2015
Trader Joe's, Pinot Gris, Willamette Valley 2015
La Vite Lucente, Toscana Red 2013
St. Francis, Cabernet, Sonoma 2013
Kendall-Jackson, Pinot Noir, California 2013
Beaulieu, Cabernet, Napa Valley 2013
Erath, Pinot Noir, Estate Selection 2012
Abbot's Table, Columbia Valley 2014
Intrinsic, Cabernet 2014
Oyster Bay, Pinot Noir 2010
Occhipinti, SP68 Bianco 2014
Layer Cake, Shiraz 2013
Desert Wind, Ruah 2011
WillaKenzie, Pinot Gris 2014
Abacela, Fiesta Tempranillo 2013
Des Amis, Rose 2014
Dunham, Trautina 2012
RoxyAnn, Claret 2012
Del Ri, Claret 2012
Stoppa, Emilia, Red 2004
Primarius, Pinot Noir 2013
Domaines Bunan, Bandol Rose 2015
Albero, Bobal Rose 2015
Deer Creek, Pinot Gris 2015
Beaulieu, Rutherford Cabernet 2013
Archery Summit, Vireton Pinot Gris 2014
King Estate, Pinot Gris, Backbone 2014
Oberon, Napa Cabernet 2013
Apaltagua, Envero Carmenere Gran Reserva 2013
Chateau des Arnauds, Cuvee des Capucins 2012
Nine Hats, Red 2013
Benziger, Cabernet, Sonoma 2012
Roxy Ann, Claret 2012
Januik, Merlot 2012
Conundrum, White 2013
St. Francis, Sonoma Cabernet 2012
The Occasional Book
Phil Stanford - Rose City Vice
Kenneth R. Feinberg - What is Life Worth?
Kent Haruf - Our Souls at Night
Peter Carey - True History of the Kelly Gang
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games
Amy Stewart - Girl Waits With Gun
Philip Roth - The Plot Against America
Norm Macdonald - Based on a True Story
Christopher Buckley - Boomsday
Ryan Holiday - The Obstacle is the Way
Ruth Sepetys - Between Shades of Gray
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Claire Vaye Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus
Markus Zusak - I am the Messenger
Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See
James Joyce - Dubliners
Cheryl Strayed - Torch
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Saul Bellow - Mister Sammler's Planet
Phil Stanford - White House Call Girl
John Kaplan & Jon R. Waltz - The Trial of Jack Ruby
Kent Haruf - Eventide
David Halberstam - Summer of '49
Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead
Maria Dermoȗt - The Ten Thousand Things
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief
Christopher Buckley - Thank You for Smoking
William Shakespeare - Othello
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cheryl Strayed - Tiny Beautiful Things
Sara Varon - Bake Sale
Stephen King - 11/22/63
Paul Goldstein - Errors and Omissions
Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Steve Martin - Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Beverly Cleary - A Girl from Yamhill, a Memoir
Kent Haruf - Plainsong
Hope Larson - A Wrinkle in Time, the Graphic Novel
Rudyard Kipling - Kim
Peter Ames Carlin - Bruce
Fran Cannon Slayton - When the Whistle Blows
Neil Young - Waging Heavy Peace
Mark Bego - Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul (2012 ed.)
Jenny Lawson - Let's Pretend This Never Happened
J.D. Salinger - Franny and Zooey
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Timothy Egan - The Big Burn
Deborah Eisenberg - Transactions in a Foreign Currency
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five
Kathryn Lance - Pandora's Genes
Cheryl Strayed - Wild
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Jack London - The House of Pride, and Other Tales of Hawaii
Jack Walker - The Extraordinary Rendition of Vincent Dellamaria
Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin
Niccolò Machiavelli - The Prince
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus - The Nanny Diaries
Brian Selznick - The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Sharon Creech - Walk Two Moons
Keith Richards - Life
F. Sionil Jose - Dusk
Natalie Babbitt - Tuck Everlasting
Justin Halpern - S#*t My Dad Says
Mark Herrmann - The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law
Barry Glassner - The Gospel of Food
Phil Stanford - The Peyton-Allan Files
Jesse Katz - The Opposite Field
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
David Sedaris - Holidays on Ice
Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Mitch Albom - Have a Little Faith
C.S. Lewis - The Magician's Nephew
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Ivan Doig - Bucking the Sun
Penda Diakité - I Lost My Tooth in Africa
Grace Lin - The Year of the Rat
Oscar Hijuelos - Mr. Ives' Christmas
Madeline L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Steven Hart - The Last Three Miles
David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day
Karen Armstrong - The Spiral Staircase
Charles Larson - The Portland Murders
Adrian Wojnarowski - The Miracle of St. Anthony
William H. Colby - Long Goodbye
Steven D. Stark - Meet the Beatles
Phil Stanford - Portland Confidential
Rick Moody - Garden State
Jonathan Schwartz - All in Good Time
David Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Anthony Holden - Big Deal
Robert J. Spitzer - The Spirit of Leadership
James McManus - Positively Fifth Street
Jeff Noon - Vurt
Road Work
Miles run year to date: 113
At this date last year: 155
Total run in 2016: 155
In 2015: 271
In 2014: 401
In 2013: 257
In 2012: 129
In 2011: 113
In 2010: 125
In 2009: 67
In 2008: 28
In 2007: 113
In 2006: 100
In 2005: 149
In 2004: 204
In 2003: 269
Comments (26)
Q. "Will grown-ups ever retake city government."
A. Not for at least another 4 years and 102 days.
Posted by Portland Native | September 20, 2012 8:13 AM
5S in my kitchen? What's next - Quality Circles my the bedroom? Kanban in my bathroom? Six-Sigma pulling weeds in my garder?
I suggest Poka-Yoke in our government! And if you're not familiar with these terms consider yourself lucky. (Actually, Poka-Yoke is a worthwhile concept.)
Posted by Old Zeb | September 20, 2012 8:17 AM
It's just Portland's ongoing obsession with all things liberal and with people who, rather than fix potholes and other such mundane endeavors, want instead to micro-manage every detail of our personal lives so that everyone comports with their view of the correct way to conduct ourselves. And if we don't go along with the program they really get their jollies ensuring our compliance at gunpoint. These are the people you love to cynically skewer, but then inexplicably you keep voting for them, derisively calling the alternative "tighty righties." When the dust settles out, in the end, YOU represent the a part of the problem, Bojack, not the solution, because all you really want to do is rearrange the deckchairs on this sinking ship.
Posted by boycat | September 20, 2012 8:56 AM
boycat...get a life!
Posted by Portland Native | September 20, 2012 9:05 AM
Jack,
Surely, you understand that Sustainability means government jobs area sustained?
Posted by T | September 20, 2012 9:07 AM
What can you expect from Friends of Neil and Democrats in general?
Just what you got, and getting weorse. Just like my spe\lelling.
Posted by Sam L. | September 20, 2012 9:23 AM
Not that hard to figure... a nanny-state that advertises itself as "beneficent" is naturally going to attract residents who either given up on or never were capable of thinking for themselves, hence "a place for young and old to retire".
Your tax dollars are providing essential services for the confused and lobotomized.
Posted by Mr. Grumpy | September 20, 2012 9:25 AM
"Your money, straight down a rat hole"
Hey! Leave Stenchy out of this. At least he's honest about who he is and what he does.
Posted by PDXLifer | September 20, 2012 9:26 AM
Could there be an ethics violation where a public entity is endorsing/recommending a particular business?
"Buy crafts and wares from local creators at Crafty Wonderland for a unique touch."
Posted by Mike (one of the many) | September 20, 2012 9:27 AM
Hard to argue that government is not getting too big when you see silliness like this.
Posted by dg | September 20, 2012 9:31 AM
In Oregon, it's: "eh, thicks -- you just don't get it do you? Nothing to see here, folks...."
Posted by Mojo | September 20, 2012 9:33 AM
Jack, you do a huge service when you point out spending on non-priority items and the dangerous growth of debt due to big projects. I read your blog really as a local news source.
Unfortunately, you also spend a lot of time editorializing about how bad current city leadership is to allow these things to happen. Criticizing current city leadership is just pissing in the wind. This is a one-party town and current city leadership is exactly what the people of Portland want. (That's why they won the jobs.) I might add that you are as derisive of the other party as anyone.
So you don't like current city leadership, you think the other (almost non-existent) party are a bunch of Richy Rich dopes (which only occasionally hurts my feelings), and you don't like the result.
Maybe there are people who you would like, but they don't seem to run (or are so unknown that they can't mount a realistic campaign). My suggestion: write a post about a realistic way that you believe things around here could be improved. (Just saying "elect different people" doesn't count, because you need to suggest who they might be and why you think they'd have a chance to win.)
Just a suggestion by a regular reader.
Posted by The Original Bob W | September 20, 2012 9:38 AM
"PORNLAND, the City that Wanks"
Posted by ltjd | September 20, 2012 9:47 AM
It seems like everytime we get a nanny state sighting those of us who still have a grip on reality roll our eyes, crack about the sorry state of government priorities and go on with lives. Then of course we get a comment from our friends on the Far Right that sounds positively unhinged. LIBERALS! Forcing us to wipe our tails at GUNPOINT! (I thought the Right loved guns...I guess only when they are pointed at the mentally ill)Does not take much to validate whatever hysterical fantasy they have of government and those nasty black helicopters. Of course they did not seem to mind it so much when the government, under GDub, went around violating civil rights, torturing and sending people to rot in Gitmo. I guess government is only bad when your guys are not at the wheel.
Posted by George | September 20, 2012 10:02 AM
If only a Clint Eastwood type could just tell Sammyboy and The Hose Guy to do actually it to themselves
Posted by TR | September 20, 2012 10:14 AM
Maybe you should start you own blog boycat. I am so tired of pointmaking through perpetual widebrush liberal-conservative identity rhetoric.
To follow your analogy, our ship may be headed for an iceberg but (on the national level) liberals and conservatives elected the people who set and maintained that course. We will need liberal and conservatives finding common ground to change course to avoid local icebergs. Jack is doing more to highlight this common ground than anyone else in Portland.
Posted by Panchopdx | September 20, 2012 10:27 AM
Whats next?
Personal home inspections by our city for the good of the planet?
The new urbanites will be more than happy to comply? When will they have had enough?
...or has the education camp already prepared them for the lock step life?
Posted by clinamen | September 20, 2012 12:10 PM
"why are Portland taxpayers paying good money to have some clown sitting around posting this?"
Because you might be:
"Looking for a unique gift for that hard-to-please friend?"
Besides it justifies hiring even more people to burn tax money instead of spending on the people who give it to them.
Posted by Steve | September 20, 2012 12:19 PM
"Personal home inspections by our city for the good of the planet?"
You laugh. There are already proposals to require compliance with an energy audit before you are allowed to sell your house.
After all, there is a century-old example of this sort of thing:
"The Sociological Department of the Ford Motor Company was organized in March, 1913, and oversaw a broad array of social benefits for Ford employees, including assistance in living in well-maintained single-family homes as opposed to small apartments. After the announcement of the Five Dollar Day in 1914, the Sociological Department was responsible for determining if employees’ personal lives and personal habits made them eligible for the full wage."
Posted by Random | September 20, 2012 12:26 PM
What are you worried about ?
This silliness was probably funded with Federal stimulus money.
Posted by tankfixer | September 20, 2012 12:36 PM
After all, there is a century-old example of this sort of thing:
"The Sociological Department of the Ford Motor Company was organized in March, 1913, and oversaw a broad array of social benefits for Ford employees ...determining if employees’ personal lives and personal habits made them eligible for the full wage.
Not relevant. We're not employees that receive pay and benefits for our labors. We're taxpayers that give up our pay and have things taken away from us for our labors.
Posted by Mr. Grumpy | September 20, 2012 12:40 PM
Random,
What happens if the house is not in compliance for sale? How much does this cost?
What if one could not afford to do so?
Posted by clinamen | September 20, 2012 12:54 PM
Guess what, guys?
It's possible to not like the current crop of elected hacks, and also not like the hacks that didn't get elected from the other party.
This isn't a system that is mutually exclusive. Oregon has elected Republicans before - they just happened to be moderate Republicans that didn't bend over backwards to the national party, or the religious right.
They however are a dying breed, so we're left with the hacks we have, or the hacks that are unelectable in the Tri-County area for some reason. The moderates all fled.
Posted by MachineShedFred | September 20, 2012 1:07 PM
To everyone:
Why do you stay? Why would you want to?
What is keeping you here?
None of this is going to change any time soon. Look at your mayoral/city council candidates. Think they're going to do anything differently?
So again...why live in such a place?
Posted by The Other Jimbo | September 20, 2012 11:03 PM
Jimbo: I don't.
Moved two years ago.
However, my family and friends are still in Oregon, and I still own property there because the current city hall hacks can't figure out how to stop the downward slide of property values - something that other parts of the country did 18 months ago.
Posted by MachineShedFred | September 21, 2012 5:16 AM
WTF.
Posted by jon | September 23, 2012 4:41 PM