Moving quickly to snuff a political fire over a long-promised community college scholarship program, Mayor Sam Adams dropped a plan to pay for it with extra sewer and water rate revenue. Already on the “creative” side when he conceived it, that idea turned positively toxic after an audit last week took aim at other dubious uses of utility cash. To pay for the program’s $360,000 allocation, Adams on Tuesday, April 5, decided he would tap the city’s contingency fund instead. The council is expected to vote on the plan Wednesday, April 6. DENIS C. THERIAULT
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Who would you rather see survive: a rat or a cute little girl? That’s the frank argument plastered on two new billboards, on Interstate 84 and SE Powell, paid for by the Foundation for Biomedical Research. Portland is one of five US cities where the billboards popped up this week. Portland has had a spate of animal-rights protests over recent years aimed at the Oregon Health and Science University’s primate research center, which was recently in the news for fattening up monkeys for obesity research. SARAH MIRK
I was riding on the MAX yesterday when i saw one of these billboards for the first time. Now i can totally understand the need for [some] research & i’m practical enough to understand that this does involve some animals dying. But the idea that the Foundation for Biomedical Research would leverage a rat up against an “adorable” blue-eyed, blonde-haired little white girl in order to wretch maximum slobbering sympathy from people is… cheap & racist to say the least. Not that i’m a scientist or anything, but i’m pretty damned sure (at leasat i hope) that this medical animal-torturing research benefits EVERYBODY – not just aryan little photogenic white children. But beyond this, i find this whole billboard campaign to be pretty damned cheap anyways. I mean, who are they trying to convince, anyways??? Most people could really not give a shit about animals – their precious house pets, sure, but not animals in general. It’s only a tiny percentage of activists/ALF types who’re truly passionate about this shit. And you’re not going to sway them, not with some cheesy-ass billboards, that’s for sure.
Besides, the message is all wrong anyways. I would prefer a rat over a small human girl, actually. The REAL problem we have is OVER-POPULATION. Humans are multiplying at a rate that this planet cannot sustain for another 20 years. MOST of our problems could be solved instantly if humanity all collectively decided to chill out on breeding – just for one year, that’s all. You know the awesome part about this: we can still have lots of sex – that’s what BIRTH CONTROL (& if push came to shove) abortions are for. So if anything, it would be a benefit to humanity if that little girl were NOT here.
Once billboards went up that promoted LIMITED POPULATION SUSTAINIBILITY(LPS), as opposed to subliminally advertising the “virtues” of racial hierarchy, then we’d actually be getting somewhere.