OK, maybe it's all a con, but I have always been fascinated by hucksters.
My favorite story coming from the old Twilight Zone series.

Seems a traveling Huckster came to town and claimed he could raise the dead, reuniting folks with their lost loved ones. Problem was, most of the dead were scoundrels or abusive spouses, and no one wanted them back. The townsfolk paid the huckster not to raise the dead, and he left town with the graveyard in tact, and a much fatter wallet.

Maybe we could just pay the developers not to build, and they would leave town.

I was reading the other day that the developer guy on the Killingsworth Station condo bunker is "only" going to make $900,000 profit on that deal. It probably cost the Portland taxpayers 10 times that to get that worthless box of hipster apartments built. It would have been much cheaper to just cut the guy a check for the $900K. Kind of like a payment to a farmer not to grow crops.

On the plus side, Pamplin's Steve Clark (the Publisher for the Portland Tribune, and a TriMet Board Member) is reported to be calling for WES to be shut down.

Clark is gone from Pamplin; he works at Oregon State now. Is he still on the Tri-Met board? I assumed he was stepping down.

Paying people straight up, regardless if crop subsidies or condo no build subsidies, is a great idea. I'd love to see that applied to Congress legislation. I'd support paying each US Rep and Senator $200K per year to not meet, and pass no bills.

Someone (I don't recall who) once equated Subsidies with parents giving adult children an allowance.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of smell; a journey into a odorous land whose boundaries are that of a small plastic bucket — Next stop, the Portlandia Zone.

(Apologies to the wonderful Rod Serling.)

Bah!!! Wrong thread! Sorry...

The relationship between ad revenue and news reporting is predictable. This is just another indication that our whole economy has jumped the shark.

EB, you got the thread right.

Exactly one sentence in that whole piece mentions a differing opinion. Not one interview with someone who opposes the plan. When I was at Univ. of Montana Journalism school, the student paper was put up on a board every day for students to make not so subtle corrections. This article would be awash in red correction ink. Absolutely pathetic stab at legit journalism.

And I saw an article in the Trib about how Urban Renewal and TIF along with the PDC are just like the WPA because they create jobs!
The Moyer Tower was given as an example of how IF only the "govmint" would just pony up the money then this current eye sore could be finished and rented out!
Sigh!

The reporter's obviously auditioning for a PR position with the City of Beaverton.

I think the Tribune Empire is having all these feel good articles on UR because they know that M336 requiring voting on UR is likely to pass in Clackamas Co. And the Commissioner's camouflage M338 will fail. Their writers don't even understand UR and just regurgitate what bureaucrats, commissioners, and pols tell them-it's there jobs on the line.