And all done in 30 minutes too! How convenient!

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"

Gavel Down!

I was told last evening that the county wants to adopt and Urban Renewal plan that spends at least $130 million on projects.

With Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail immediately requiring the borrowing of $25 million against a new UR district with no increment other interim financing will be required.
Add up all the lost property taxes from parcels removed from the tax rolls for light rail with the long term debt service and the result could easily mean a loss of $300 million in county property taxes that support essential services and payrolls for teachers, firefighters, police and other existing jobs.

This UR plan is actually worse than SoWa (North Macadam) and will take a huge district and possibly the longest payoff period in Oregon history.

If built Milwaukie Light Rail will have been a process of adding criminals and
taking away cops.

And this is exactly why it will be approved, Ben.

It amazes me that the people of Clackamas County would be so la-de-da as to allow their very own suburb of Milwaukie to be sacrificed and fed to Moloch, the Portland developer beast.

There must already be a map hidden away somewhere with Milwaukie labeled "... the next Pearl District... a pedestrian and bike friendly sustainable community with beautiful views of the river from high atop waterfront towers... transportation options... streetcars stopping at your front door... "

Yes, Mr. Grumpy, along with the map for the Central East Side (formerly called the industrial sanctuary).

Don't forget Ben that they also literally mowed down a bunch of functioning industrial businesses to widen the right of way for this MAX line. Can't stop "progress".

We really need to get beyond equating transportation projects with progress and livibility. Somehow we've taken transportation, which is just one of about ten core things that a city needs to focus on, and we've turned it into our single answer for everything.

Contagion. It started slowly in Portland, picked up steam over the years, and has now infected the rural areas.

I like how they parse the words "local people address local problem. They make it sound like a L.I.D.
Big difference between how LID and UR is used.

The only way the county can approve a new district is by passing an ordinance. State law permits any urban renewal ordinance to be referred to all the voters of the county. So they will never be able to fully implement a local control urban renewal policy (nor should they because UR affects all taxpayers).

This whole thing is a charade meant to undermine support for 3-371 via a competing measure.

These people should be ashamed. Dan Chandler especially. Once upon a time he was a legitimate private property rights attorney, now he's administering strategic policy for the county.

- Policy #1 deceive the voters.

It would be instructive to the county commission to have interested citizens write to the commission, request that their communications be included in the record of the work session and future process, and say that they absolutely agree with the commission's policy that local citizens should have the ability to determine the future of their areas. Therefore (each letter would continue) the commission should promptly adopt a measure that says that no urban renewal district will be designated without the affirmative vote, at a regular primary or general election, of the voters in that district.

"of the voters in that district"

I would be interested in knowing how you are failing to see how that is exactly what they are scheming to do and how it is entirely inappropriate.

It would be like having only SoWa property owners voting on whether the city of Portland should spend $1/2 billion in the North Macadam UR district.

The Clackamas County notion of having only those inside some district vote on whether or not the county should spend nearly $300 million in property tax revenue on that district is equally perposterous.

Ben - Let's break it down like my mother's ancestors did ... "No taxation without representation" ... easy peasy

And some wonder why the tea party got started.

The tea party is just the religious right nut ball wing of the repugs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/opinion/crashing-the-tea-party.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-CTP-081711-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

"Of course, politicians of all stripes are not faring well among the public these days. But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

The strange thing is that over the last five years, Americans have moved in an economically conservative direction: they are more likely to favor smaller government, to oppose redistribution of income and to favor private charities over government to aid the poor. While none of these opinions are held by a majority of Americans, the trends would seem to favor the Tea Party. So why are its negatives so high? To find out, we need to examine what kinds of people actually support it.

.......

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

..................

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government."

And all of this is precisely why the Tea Party is a huge FAIL.

I am all for smaller government and fiscal responsibility. However, I will never embrace anything that fails comprehend the separation of church and state. You don't want to have an abortion. Great don't have one. But don't interfere with women who want one. You don't believe in gay marriage. Great don't have one. But don't interfere in my rights. You don't like birth control, then don't use it. But don't interfere with responsible adults. You want to teach your kids "Christian values" then do it at home. Don't spend my tax dollars on stuff that offends me. And don't force my friends who share my beliefs to have their children subjected to that tripe.

LucsAdvo, your post is based on a NYTimes/CBS Poll. That's certainly unbiased, isn't it? Their survey has Tea Party dislike going from 18% to 20%. That certainly isn't a big change and even their own poll allows for over a 4 point variation. Then you failed to mention the kind of push question(s) that the poll solicited. Reading the tea leaves is a risky business. Fellow Demo.

lw - Easy on the assumptions. While I am registered as a Demo so I can vote in primaries, I am actually an independent by nature. I would probably be a liberal Republican if the Repug party had not been hijacked by the loonies and killed that wing of the party. In fact, when I was a college student I was a registered Republican in NY state. I'd love to see a few jaws dropping when certain people read that. Just remember Nelson Rockefeller was governor and Jake Javits was the Republican senator back when I first voted in NY.

LucsAdvo,

A more thorough analysis of the makeup of the tea party movement and the factors that drove it can be found in the book "Mad as Hell", co-authored by Douglas Schoen (Democratic pollster) and Scott Rasmussen (Republican pollster).

The Tea Party Movement did not begin as a movement of religious conservatives, it was born out of frustration over fiscal issues (government bailouts, stimulus, debt, etc.) and the political system that drives such solutions.

From my vantage point, there was zero party involvement in the beginning. Within weeks of the first tax day protests, however, the GOP apparatchiks quickly tried to co-opt the movement. That largely failed but it did focus tea party members on the prospect of whether the GOP could be fixed (that's why establishment republicans aren't safe in the primary process). The tea party jury is still out on whether the GOP can be salvaged (a failure in 2012 will likely fuel a third party movement for 2016)

While there are a great many religious conservatives in the tea party movement, they (mostly) know that they don't have a mandate for conservative social issues (abortion, gay marriage). They don't even have a unified view of foreign policy. A lot of the tea party folks who previously bought into the Iraq War have buyer's remorse now (see growing support for Ron Paul).

Pancho - With the crap that comes out of Bachmann's, Perry's, and Palin's mouths (among other baggers) you could fool me because their candidates are all over that social conservative mandate BS.

In addition to lw and Pancho points I know and talk to many tea party folks and have been to many local gatherings of what would be called tea party types.

AFP meetings, 912 meetings, Don McIntire's group, Cascade Policy Institute people and meetings with a mixture of all of the above and more.

Many have included democrats, liberals and public safety union people.

Not a single time was anything God, abortion or gay marriage discussed. Not once spanning years.

Instead essentially all of these meetings and discussions (many with diverse alliances) have been about what to do to stop the very boondoggles and politicians discussed here.
The largest segment of people taking action against them are the tea party types.

So it's neither fair or accurate to judge the entire tea party by occasional comments from a few candidates.

Calling any tea party folks "baggers" is
inappropriate.

Sorry Ben but I won't back down.

The social conservative comments from bagger candidates are not just occasional. They are fairly well non-stop. You do know about Bachmann's hubby's clinic, right?

I consider Don McIntire to be a weasel of the worst sort, so don't trot him out to impress me.

As for using the word bagger, I dropped the tea prefix at least. Because more and more I think the bagger candidates are a lot like carpetbaggers. They are running under false pretenses and most of them will serve corporate interests not those of the vast majority of the American people.

And that's one of my problem with the rank and file baggers. They are not smart enough to know when they are being had. Perry for example is a corporate bag man.

So while I truly believe in fiscal conservatism until there is a group or a candidate that is liberal socially and who I don't think is a puppet of corporate interests, I am going to continue to be cynical and call out all the phonies as I see them.

If what you say is true about the rank and file, why don't you people send a STFU message to your candidates? Trust me there are a lot of voters like me who are never voting for Bachmann, Perry, Palin, or the rest of the religious right nut balls.

If there was a way to actually meet you for coffee and have a face to face talk, I would Ben. I still think there should be a BoJack gathering at some point so we could all meet.

LucsAdvo

Sorry but you keep reading what is not said. I wasn't implying at all that you should "back down". I was merely trying point out the vast contrast between what you think goes on with tea party fols and what really goes on.

I'm not sure what candidate comments from bagger candidates are not just occasional and offensive but it is not a new "threat" spewing forth because of the tea party movement. It's the lingering "traditional values" that has always surfaced on the GOP campaign trail.

But you were claiming the tea party is a right wing religious nut ball army who has hijacked the Republican Party to God into government to ban abortion and prohibit gay marriage.

I was trying to tell you none of the things you find offensive about the GOP candidates or think is being pushed is happening in the rank and file tea party crowds.

It simply isn't.

So absent from the rank and file it doesn't even occur with who you would think is the worst, like McIntire's crowd.

That's why I mentioned him. Not to impress you. But McIntire's "weasel" work is really not much different than the pursuits or objectives found here by critics of the establishment.

The bagger label is no different than the N word or F word. It's obvious you get that so I suspect you'll be dropping that use soon.

As for the GOP corporate interests and tea party rank and file being duped, ALL of the evidence locally demonstrates just the opposite. That it's the left wing duped (many willingly and helping) by the left wing politicians around here who are in bed with the racketeers. The fat cat interests in cahoots with "city hall" et al run everything. The stories blogged here are a steady stream of that.

So who's "not smart enough to know when they are being had"?

I listen to left wing radio and I get the meme of tighty righties being had on the national front with the battle between government class and the so called corporate class. That's a larger argument.

So while you truly believe in fiscal conservatism you should recognize that most of the active resistance to the all of the local shenanigans is coming from tea party types without ANY of the socially judgmental element you find offensive.

And it's the socially liberal democrats who are the local puppets of local corporate/government rackets-interests.

I don't blame you for being cynical on the social side but the image you have of the active tea party is a false one.

I was not exaggerating when I said not one word of the social agenda has been mentioned in all of the local tea patty type efforts I have been to. It just does not come up. Rarely do even the national GOP candidates who you think should be sent STFU messages. There is simply too many problems here needing fixing. With the liberal democrat firefighter's union and others recognizing this and joining forces with a diverse force to work on them there's hope.

The UR petition has a Democrat chief petitioner, Democrat sheriff and Democrat union and others pitching in. The firefighter's union being the biggest contributor.

They all acknowledge the strange bed fellows reality and that when it comes time to vote there will still be big differences. However the alliance is now carrying over to local races with mutual support for responsible candidates.

Like many others I have very little interest in the usual political party work. More often than not that's an obstruction to cooperation. As would the social agenda differences.

We could have coffee or a beer anytime. But I like the BoJack gathering idea too.

Peace

Ben:

Despite what you want to believe, those candidates running on the Tea Party platform are very actively courting the religious right nut balls:

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/93781/rick-perry-religion-evolution

And that is a huge issue for those of us who believe in separation of church and stare among other things.

If you don't think Bush and Cheney fleeced this country to the benefit of Blackwater, oil companies and other corporate interests, I'd say that you've missed a lot. As I have said before, Ben, it's no longer a function of one political party or the other. It's a function of politicians doing business as usual.

I know a lot of people who agree with me on the social issues side (and they are not all gay either) who also think both locally and nationally that government has been responsible for all kinds of wrong doing - let's not forget how Wall Street and banks got bailed out and while those involved in egregious acts walked away scott free.

Since we have no way to make contact here, look on Craigslist missed connections m4m a bit later today. I will have an ad up.

LucsAdvo wrote: Despite what you want to believe, those candidates running on the Tea Party platform are very actively courting the religious right nut balls

I'm sure they do. The GOP playbook for presidential candidates trying to get a foothold in Iowa has always involved that kind of pander. It's not much different than Dem's using affirmative action to bring in the minority vote. I know democrats who detest role of minority victimization politics within their party as much as I loathe the social issue battlelines that have distracted the GOP from fiscal issues for the last 25 years.

The GOP base has a lot of family-values evangelicals and most of the candidates have followed a playbook to cater to their hotbutton social issues, but things are changing quickly.

It used to be that a republican could be an inveterate deficit-spending pork-hound as long as he was strongly pro-life and remained married (see M. Hatfield, RIP).

Now look at the 2010 Utah Senate primary where the Tea Party movement just threw out Bob Bennett, a Republican Senator who was the pro-est of pro-life and the anti-est of anti-gay in the US Senate. He was a three term incumbent, married 48 years, huge warchest, deep connections in the LDS church and no personal scandals.

He finished 3rd in the 2010 GOP primary with 29% of the vote.

The top issue in the tea party movement is fiscal policy. Social issues just aren't part of the conversation. I'm pro-choice and agnostic and I've been to dozens of meetings with people in tea party groups over the last couple years. If social issues were driving the movement I wouldn't waste my time.

I do occasionally meet some "Teavangelicals" who require candidates that conform to their fiscal and social values, but they do not define the tea party movement any more than the beatniks defined the hippie movement.

I dunno Pancho, Ben says that he'd have coffee or beer (wine yes, beer no) with me any time but now that I've given him a way to do that (another thread), and no answer. I suspect I know why he won't actually meet me. And reality, of course, makes the situation so much more funny.

Frankly, those of you who want to drink the tea Kool-aid ought to be aware of another flavor - Coffee:

http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/about-us

No religious right nut balls will be found within the ranks of the Coffee Party and neither will any currently established pols looking to dupe dissatisfied citizens. In fact non-partisan is part of the platform while the baggers cling to the GOP.

No religious right nut balls will be found within the ranks of the Coffee Party

How tolerant of them. I'm sure people must be showing up in droves...

Nice try Pancho. Because we know how unwelcome gay folks are in the Tea Party.

Try again, I have three gay/bisexual friends who are heavily involved in the tea party movement. The tea party held in washington county in 2010 was organized by an openly gay man.

So why weren't the Tea Party candidates standing up to Faux News when Fred Karger was excluded from the Iowa Debates:

http://fredkarger.com/sites/fredkarger.netboots.net/files/FEC_Letter_August_18_2011_A.pdf

The sounds of silence in answer to this should be defeaning.

LucsAdvo

You're continuing to make presumptions that are wrong.

I have no objection to meeting at all. I just haven't thought enough about when.

But you've already presumed I won't and why? Really?

What's the why? Because you're gay? That's preposterous. My own brother is gay.

You keep harping about the "religious right nut balls" dominating the tea party types but you're wrong there too.

As I have already told you that boogie man element just does not appear at tea party gathering. I have never heard gay marriage, abortion or God in government ever discussed in any gathering. ANY.

Now can you somehow at least ponder the disconnect between what you claim and the reality of what goes on?

Local tea party types are working along side local liberals to achieve some sanity.
But for some reason you imagine they are incapable of doing so.
There are no "religious right nut balls" or "left wing loons" who are even noticeable.

However, on these local battles it's the left wing loons who are the opposition and the ones perpetrating the insane agenda but their lunacy has nothing to do with them being gay or not.

Adams being gay is not what makes him a left wing loon.

Now chill out and we'll get together soon enough just as I have with others like you before.

Steve - I am confused. Are you Ben?

Why don't you explain the rabid stances of Tea Party national candidates? Saying that doesn't happen at the local level does not make me comfortable putting those people in charge at the top. The reality of what they do and say is what it is. And denials about it undermine your credibility with me.

I agree that Sam A. is a d**** bag. And for a lot of different reasons. I am not nearly as upset about what he did with Beau (unlike Wu's teenaged thang - this was consensual and I will assume that Beau was 18) as his lying about it and smearing Bob Ball. And his corrupt behavior with developer weasels and others as a SamRand twin is far worse.

As far as left wing loons. What makes you think that those you tar with that brush aren't wolves dressed up in sheep's closing.

I could say I an ex-Olympic ski racer and it wouldn't make in any truer than the day I was mistaken for a then current Olympian in Stowe, VT. For awhile for fun, I'd tweak strangers at parties and use that name when asked to introduce myself. I looked enough alike and my jacket had a USSA patch (since I raced in sanctioned races) on it.

So those who are involved in political corruption can pass themselves off as whatever it takes to get elected but it doesn't make them what they claim to be.

So why weren't the Tea Party candidates standing up to Faux News when Fred Karger was excluded from the Iowa Debates

Why should other candidates have fought to have someone else on the stage (especially since there were eight included already)?

I pay attention to politics, but I had honestly never heard of Karger before you posted this. I was disappointed that Gary Johnson wasn't included in the debate, but I also recognize that he hasn't moved up in the polls.

Karger had no name recognition so I'm not surprised he didn't make the cut. If you let every marginal candidate on stage it would have been a 15-way debate.

That's why I was surprised that Fox kept Santorum (who polls consistently around 1%) in the debate. I think they just wanted have him there to take shots at Ron Paul over foreign policy.

Golly gosh, Pancho, fair play is limited... see it's not fair I use the term tea baggers or religious right nut balls to tar the lot of the Tea Party. However, the Tea Party and GOP don't need to call for fair play. The candiate met the criteria. Screw your ignoring that. Is that how it works for you?

I agree that fox ignored their own rules on the debate. they should have announced that only the top eight candidates would be invited. They probably didn't do that because they were afraid that johnson might outpoll santorum.

I understand (and share) their desire to limit debate participation to a manageable number (eight was more than enough).

As for Karger, if you can find one credible nationwide poll showing him to be in the top eight gop candidates, I might change my mind. Otherwise, I'm going to attribute the same degree of public support to him as I do for the coffee party (

Whatever you want to tell yourself, Pancho. I am not taking you seriously any more. Ben is another issue.

Here is some real candor about the motivation of one TB leader...

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/653468/sarah_palin%27s_husband_admits_on_video_that_his_wife_quit_being_governor_so_she_could_make_more_money/