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Adam Wickham

We're less than a week out from a massive sweep of homeless campers on the Springwater Corridor, and there is so much happening around the city's homelessness fight.

The Mercury first reported yesterday that Mayor Charlie Hales is fixing to ask his city council colleagues to extend the city's housing "state of emergency" for a stunning three years. That's a far, far greater extension than was contemplated last year, when council stipulated the one-year emergency could be extended only in six-month increments. Hales' office wants to toss that limitation—and every city commissioner immediately said yesterday they'd oppose a three-year extension.

The O looks at Lents, the neighborhood that has borne the brunt of fallout from the concentrated homeless activity along the Springwater. Neighbors haven't been pleased about that situation for a long, long time. That hasn't changed.

ADDENDUM: Lents resident and advocate Nick Christensen offers this about that last assertion:


"An arson investigator who searched Kidwell's nearby home recovered a pipe bomb and hobby fuse, according to the affidavit. The investigator also found ammunition powders, literature about booby-traps and munition, and some PVC pipe..." So this guy who chucked a pipe bomb underneath a homeless person's motorhome seems like a very stable human.

Finally, laying bare some of the acrimony on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, Commissioner Loretta Smith writes in the Tribune that the county should immediately open the unused Wapato jail facility as a homeless shelter. County Chair Deborah Kafoury has repeatedly argued that'd be a huge waste of resources.

The author, in repose.
The author, in repose. Natalie Behring

A month in, Biketown is gathering effusive headlines like so many neon orange posies. The O notes the system saw 59,000 rides for a total of 136,000 miles in that first month. BikePortland.com calls it "the ultimate vehicle for change."

What's cracking with the hottest ballot measure of the season, Measure 97? Well, Gov. Kate Brown acknowledges to OPB that the $3 billion corporate tax hike just might find its way into the price of goods in Oregon, an idea that the campaigners behind it are strongly resisting.

And in another close vote, the Washington County Board of Commissioners decided, by three votes to two, to formally oppose Measure 97. A citizen panel and a City Club of Portland panel also split on their views, though those two groups ultimately supported the measure.

Privileged Harney County fat-cat federal employees will get their own video feed to watch the trial of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers. Typical federal favoritism and overreach.

A brisk 74 days before the presidential election, things are getting real. Hillary Clinton is now just straight up calling Donald Trump a racist. And... he's calling her a racist, too?

This portion of a speech by Clinton yesterday, where she began reading off headlines from Breitbart.com, which was run by Trump's new campaign CEO, was pretty money:

“I’m not making this up,” she warned, before digging into the site’s archives: “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”; “‘Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?’”; “Hoist It High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage.”

Best for Last: Repugnant human Ann Coulter released a worshipful book, In Trump We Trust, praising Trump's hard-line immigration policies just as he was flip-flopping on them, and it's just so fantastic.


Sorry, Hood to Coast relay participants. It's going to be a hot one. At least you won't have to look at homeless people.

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