In case you missed it, Twitter has been fired up today about an Asian doctor who was picked at random and dragged off a United Airlines flight by security because the airline had overbooked the flight. (They wanted to make sure their standby crew could board and have a seat.) Watch the video from Business […]
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Posted inNews
Portland’s All Done Investing in Corporations—And That Will Cost Us
Commissioner Dan Saltzman is tired of talking about which corporations the City of Portland should or shouldn’t invest in. “There are a lot of issues I’m not getting work done on today,” Saltzman said this afternoon, near the end of a lengthy hearing on a controversial new city investment policy. “I don’t really want to […]
Posted inHousing
Developers Just Proposed Nearly 6,000 Apartments to Evade Portland’s New Affordable Housing Mandate
Nicole Cmar Want to ensure Portland developers build more housing? Threaten to make them offer affordable units. That’s one takeaway from new data obtained by the Mercury, which shows that developers applied to build an impressive 5,900 units in the two months before the city enacted a new inclusionary housing policy this month. And that’s […]
Posted inNews
Portland’s City Auditor is Pushing for More Freedom—And Asking Portlanders to Help
Portland Auditor Mary Hull Caballero City of Portland Portland’s elected auditor wants you to grant her more independence from the government she’s supposed to watchdog. And if the first hearing on that proposal Wednesday was any indication, it looks like Auditor Mary Hull Caballero will get her shot. Barring enormous disagreement, Portland city council appears […]
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Federal Orders For Cleaning Up the Willamette River Just Got Stronger—and More Expensive
Sometimes public comment pays off. After thousands of Portlanders provided input over three months this summer, the US Environmental Protection Agency revealed today it’s beefed up its long-awaited final plan for cleaning up the toxic and complicated Portland Harbor Superfund site The EPA’s final “Record of Decision”—a largely unbudging roadmap for how the Willamette’s badly […]
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After Deaths and Outcry, the City’s Spending $300,000 to Educate People About Navigating Division Street Safely
Rohgzhao Zhang had only lived in the US for around a year on the night his life ended on outer Division Street. The 65-year-old moved here in order to create a better life for his family in China, according to Duncan Hwang, associate director of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), but it […]
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YEAR-END BLITZ: City Council Just Banned New Fossil Fuel Terminals, Reformed Campaign Financing, and More
Portland governance doesn’t always live up to its ultra-green, lefty reputation. Today it did. As time ticks down on this particular gang of five, the Portland City Council this morning unanimously enacted new laws that make the city off limits to big new fossil fuels facilities, and will require homeowners to have their homes scored […]
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Watch: Steve Novick Spars With a Fox News Host Over His New Wealth Inequality Tax
As we’ve already seen, Commissioner Steve Novick is cool with right-leaning news outlets bashing his newly passed surtax on corporations that pay their CEOs at least 100 times the salary of the average worker. So much so that Novick agreed to walk into a near-certain ambush by sitting down with Fox News on Friday. It’s […]
Posted inNews
Steve Novick’s Tax on Egregious CEO Pay Passed, and National Media’s All Over It
Steve Novick It’s a well-worn tradition of Portland City Council (and probably any political body, large or small): Commissioners who are about to pass groundbreaking or politically fraught policy take a victory lap, of sorts, laying down flowery language about its importance, thanking aides and community supporters, etc. Yet there was Commissioner Steve Novick yesterday, […]
Posted inCity Hall
It’s Official: Portland’s About to Adopt a New Campaign Finance System—Without Asking Voters
It wasn’t a final vote, but if you were watching Portland City Council consider a new proposed campaign finance system on Wednesday afternoon, you got the picture. As expected, Commissioner Amanda Fritz’s “Open and Accountable Elections” proposal found the backing of Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioner Steve Novick. And despite the exhortations of the remainder […]
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The “Liberal Bubble” Is a Ridiculous Myth
SNL extrapolated the idea of the liberal bubble in a recent sketch. NBC Now that the white working class has enabled a Manhattan billionaire to dick-swing his way into the White House, it’s time to realize the idea of a “liberal elite bubble” is a false one. The notion of such a bubble presumes that […]
Posted inNews
Portland’s Paying $90K to a Teen Police Beat, Arrested in 2014
It’s purely coincidence, but worth noting nonetheless: The same day the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) took the very rare step of proactively releasing police reports surrounding a controversial arrest yesterday, the city agreed to pay out $90,000 to a victim of police abuse from the last time the PPB took such an approach (or at […]