And....here comes Loren Parks in with money for the anti-fluoride crew! (Note the non-denial denial from Jason Williams....)

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.s…

In spite of the fact that the pro-fluoride lobby was throwing money at City Council behind closed doors and off their public calenders, violating the city's reporting requirements ...

In spite of the fact that the City Council tried to circumvent a public vote, giving opponents less than one month to gather the necessary 20,000 signatures to force a referendum before the $7 million dollar fluoride treatment plant was scheduled to come online ...

In spite of the fact that the fluoride lobby manipulated their data to promote a false "dental health crisis" in Portland by using statewide carries numbers instead of Portland metro's dental health figures, which are far better than the statewide average ...

In spite of the fact that the fluoride lobby has outspent the opposition over 5 to 1 from its 98% funded five and six figure corporate and PAC contributions ...'

And in spite of the fact that the fluoride lobby has been bribing minority groups with five figure "special grants" for support, after all that I guess the people of Portland do not want their drinking water contaminated with an unrefined, non-pharmaceutical grade byproduct of heavy industry that has never been proven in any well-controlled, double blind study to have any significant effect on dental health.

Looks like "Winning" Mark Weiner is going to have to change his title.

NAACP, LULAC & Sierra Club oppose fluoridation.

Fluoridation is an environmental injustice:

http://afrocentricnews.com/afro/fluoridega…

Everything you need to know about fluoride in 20 minutes:

http://youtu.be/GX0s-4AyWfI

Great. Now "An Inconvenient Tooth" can vacate the comments section, never to be heard from again.

Please?

How can we trust that they won't go ahead and poison us without saying anything? Aren't we already getting our drinking water from Wilsonville where they pump it to us from the Willamette, anyway?

Cool. Affluent white people want fluoride for the poor, benighted colored children whose parents are too pigheaded to know what's in their own best interest. How very generous of them.

Those affluent white people are going to drink the water too, for fuck's sake. You're not even making sense.

This is just paranoia, ressentiment, and scientific illiteracy. It's depressing, but not unexpected.

It's not that they're pigheaded, they just aren't as well educated.

Technical issues are an achilles heel of democracy.

You know what affluent white people want? The same thing as everyone else. Good health, economic security, good kids, etc. Shame on them for wanting to make sure everyone has the chance for this, right? I mean, fuck it - according to some of the people on here, it's entirely ok for cool white affluent people to pull up the ladder now.

Once people have been given scary ideas, and everything's a conspiracy, no amount of evidence to the contrary can convince them otherwise. I wonder if they'll vote out chlorine and sodium hydroxide next. They're both toxic. And that ammonia will kill you.

I love how some people assume that if you have not attended an expensive college, that you are not well educated. A college education means you have memorized lots of information, know how to jump through hoops and have paid a lot of money. It has nothing to do with intelligence and knowing how to think for yourself. Why would you assume that just because a person is low income, that they are not educated?

If you looked at the poll the college degree split was about even.

Lots of people in tax/ratepayer funded jobs live in SW, they are in on the graft, maybe not this one, but the next one or one after.

@altogether - that might say something, but just the fact that someone graduates from college doesn't mean they can tell science from woo - and the prevalence of woo "medicine" like homeopathy in Portland is proof.

"Among respondents who said they already turned in ballots, fluoridation is losing BIG."

This doesn't seem very surprising to me. The No people are more motivated. (Irrational people often are, cf. "the best lack all conviction while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" etc.)

The cross tab image would have made sense if you copied the legend header column over as well. It is a critical piece of information to make sense of it.

So this whole fluoride campaign is for the children right? Trying to help kids right? The health of children is the whole reason why this debate is happening right? There are no other reasons or interests at work? This is strictly for the kids.

Well since that is clearly the case here I would just like to applaud all the groups that have been spending their time and money to push this through. It is a rare event in America when the business community and our elected officials can combine their efforts to enact policies that have no other agenda than to help our citizens live healthier and happier lives.

Way to go America. Just when I was starting to lose hope you go and totally redeem yourself.

I would also like to take a minute to give a big shout out to the Mercury's coverage of the issue. The unified voice that the "news" team has presented has been a welcome voice of authority and wisdom.

You are certainly correct. Science is good and not science is bad. Let those poor science deniers speak in tongues and handle snakes all they like, it won't save their teeth!

And to think that some people don't consider the Mercury a real newspaper. They certainly didn't read that crack piece of pro fluoride reporting in last weeks paper.

Masterful work.

Affluent folk of all races, creeds and colors, be a drink'n that San Pellegrino. They even have charcoal filters on their shower heads.

UUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH

Fear tactics work. Fuck.