Lackking people of courage, who also happen to be in positions sufficiently influential as to, you know, influence those in power, the chances of taking our city back from the corrupt, are exactly zip.

But you are welcome to begin the initiative process. I will happily contribute and support.

After your remains are found floating face down in the Willamette, having committed suicide by shooting yourself multiple times in the head, I will mourn your passing.

ORS 161.455

3,
Who is responsible for investigating that sort of thing again?
Asking for a friend.

@r, just r - They don't murder people on purpose anymore, its too messy and creates too much paperwork. In keeping with Russian tradition, they coordinate false and misleading statements with a political campaign or their informants (these may be the same people) to have you kidnapped, psychologically tortured, and perform "medical treatments" on you without your consent.

Or at least that's what I read on the tor site that has been detailing and documenting all this drama. They have like half of Portland's email and text messages on there.

I'm not a lawyer or an active law enforcement professional so who knows who'd be responsible for investigating that one law among others. Which doesn't have anything to do with this post really. The intelligent consensus is Governor Kate Brown needs make a move in the next week or so, if she's serious about a political future. She's fast tracked to the Senate, so odds are she'll figure out the maybe 50,000 delusionally hard-left follower votes in the state might have an outsized media presence but they aren't worth risking even one of the 450,000 consistently democrat leaning moderates in the rest of the state and providing easy corruption hits on the democratic party to chance a republican majority in the senate. She also might just do the right thing.

Polarization has peaked and people are reorienting themselves to the middle rather than the fringes. People are tired of myopic radicalism and want to move away from crony and crisis politics. Everyone's recognizing the violence and vandalism hasn't accomplished much other than a few moving speeches and the padding of certain wallets.

Some activists are moving away from participating in protests and transitioning to political consulting / intimidation schemes where you have to agree with their position and fund their projects or risk your window getting broken during a protest or some other type of reprisal.

Portland is so up its own ass lacking any long term thinking or self awareness. Entrenched members of the corrupt political class have even established a materialist for private-profit political consulting firm and named after a marxist buzzword without displaying any depth of understanding on the subject. They have also been documented exchanging favors with the police (again check the tor site).

Portland is an out-of-touch fantasy land ran by competing special interests who have no respect for their neighbors. It wasn't always like this, to me the Sam Adams / Charlie Hales one two punch really fuck this town up. They each leaned heavy into cronyism and gave away the store to their friends and donors. Potter wasn't great but some things got done. Vera Katz is a fucking legend.

Wheeler's problem is he has no discernable vision or recognizable moral compass. He just let's his gym buddies backseat mayor and then spouts out the words "economic prosperity" after getting gassed racial justice protests. His trash clean-up photo-ops are a nice idea, but that's not what we pay him for.

We are loong looooong past the point where there won't be any high profile national arrests and hearings about what the fuck has been going on these past couple years.

Human rights law states:

“Torture is any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

The definition checks a lot of boxes from where I am sitting. This whole thing will be surfacing sooner than later, at this point it’s just about how many go down with the ship.

Vive la révolution!

6, You've touched on a lot and to offer a response will eat up a huge amount of space.

"They don't murder people on purpose anymore, its too messy and creates too much paperwork..."
That we know about.

Ask Frank Gable about it. I'd suggest Michael Francke as well but he's, you know, dead. Or perhaps Jefferson Smith. Unfortunately he's just as good as, politically speaking.
The message has gotten out. They can do what they want when they want to anyone they want. No repercussions.

Brown heading for the Senate? Yeah, probably. But only because the stars lined up for her. Luck of the draw. But for Kitz resigning, Kate would quite probably have run for Portland City Council (her words, being termed out as Sec. State), and thus she and Ted would now find themselves in roles reversed. I think Ted is still looking at a nice house with a terrific wine cellar (it really is, paid for by you and me) in Salem. But perhaps not...

Ron hasn't retired yet. The machine is still thinking this through. And make no mistake, the machine decides, not the person. Despite Kate not having fared well these last couple of years, I suspect the machine see's her in the senate for many years to come. Poor Ted. Jeff M is too young to retire in Ted's functional lifetime.

So with Kate and Jeff in DC, where is Ted to go? Governor is only good for 8 years. Then what?

Think Terry Schrunk; 18 years Portland mayor. Multnomah County Sheriff before that. A period of compelling "decency" in city government.

I learned a little something when Adams was mayor. When the recall thing was happening, a boat load of people holding various staff positions in city, county (emphasis added), and in every department in state government, wouldn't sign the petition, despite dearly wanting to. Going on record as against anyone within the party is suicide. Sam learned about cronyism at the elbow of Vera Katz. He just wasn't terribly adept at being judicious with its use. Tell me, who is Sam's boss again?

It gets curiouser and curiouser. Who is friends with whom, who appears to be on what side of which line? Maybe there really isn't a line. Maybe just the machine.

And the machine owns Oregon entirely.

Cronyism is alive and well. Because it works quietly behind the lights and cameras. Do a simple look at the people behind Wheeler and Brown over the years. Then do a LinkedIn search of those names to see where they are now despite no apparent qualifications for the jobs. And as importantly, how much they're making. It can be very enlightening. It can also shine a light on the depth of the democratic machine.

Whose real task is preventing in-house squabbling. Lest in the remote chance the repugs get tired of trump fart and pull their head out of his ass. And then surprise the piss outta everyone by bringing forth a middle of the middle who has half a brain.

Kate is set. Ted wants to think he's set. He'd be toast if we hadn't been strapped with someone claiming a PhD (ABD) as his opponent. And for all intents and purposes it appears that Ted is using the Terry Schrunk play book. Which will serve him well, Portland voters being what they are. Unless of course the country devolves into civil war.

Then all bets are off.

There is not going to be a civil war. That's propaganda. It's delusional to think that anyone other than Ted Cruz would openly advocate for succession and the things that go with it.

Barring a couple years of intense psychotherapy and his open cooperation testifying on certain events freely and without reservation Ted's political career is long over. He has too many bad decisions and dirty dealings on record. The sad part is Ted is going to bring a lot of what would otherwise been bright political careers down due to their association with his office and campaigns.

I partially agree with you on why he won, I think that the only reason he won was due to the internal sabotaging of Teressa Raiford's campaign, she could have beat him straight out if it wasn't for some super shady behavior out of Iannarone's campaign. Iannarone is one of the Charlie Hales cronies too, which tells you exactly everything you need to know about the delusionally hard lefts' values and relationship with reality. She helped Charlie Hales's wife chat at a pie contest! WHO CHEATS AT A PIE CONTEST? Hales got her the job at first stop Portland and set her up as a useful idiot to challenge Ted and keep some strings on the left. She also got some non-repayment loans from the Hales family too.

Sarah Iannarone owes her political entire career to the man who ordered the police to beat her campaign manager out of city hall. It's a dumbfounding dynamic to examine.

I hear you about the lights and cameras, but the truth is media professionals get a pass, and they should. There is a pressing need (no pun intended) to be deferential to the media and allow them to make their own decisions about how they cover events. Even the shittiest journalist or media personality could find themselves in the middle of the story of the millennium and teach us a lot about how the world works. Unless of course there are clear records that they participated in covering up a crime or traded coverage for cash or the like. Can you imagine what would happen if there were records of a journalist discussing payments to the media outlet with a campaign's manager and then endorsed them without mentioning their financial relationship? Phones are everywhere these days.

The thing about Portland/Oregon's cronyism is it has become much too large and dense to adequately maintain itself. There is too many conflicts of interests and double dealing in such a tiny market that the participants have lost all sense of normalcy and finesse required. It's become much too open and brazen for people to continue to turn a blind eye to it. The PPA/Hardesty debacle is bringing a lot of attention to the interplay of law enforcement, media, politics, and corruption. The post-watergate purge was nothing compared to what we are about to see go down. We are about to see a lot of corruption and toxicity purged from our politics, and while it might be healthy, it's not going to be pretty.

That's going to make room for a whole new generation of leadership with a renew sense of commitment to our common values.

Wyden is seriously one of the best players in the game. Merkley could easily become Kamala's VP. We'll know soon enough about where Kate is going (she'll either make a move or not make a move in the next week or so). Oregon has a lot of talent on the bench, many of whom are smarter than current office holders.

People aren't forgetting everyone who downplayed and excused the behaviors of Diego Hernandez and Jefferson Smith, or who still associates with those creeps.

All machines require maintenance, usually from people smart enough to figure out how they work and know where to find spare parts. Machines can also be hacked... seriously do some tor browsing, the dark web stuff isn't as difficult to locate as people say and it has some seriously juicy stuff about pdx on there.

"There is not going to be a civil war"

Good to know. Be so kind to tell the clowns in the MAGA hats, who are buying every box of bullets they can lay hands on. Make sure they got the memo. Thanks.

"...without reservation Ted's political career is long over."

Which Ted you talking about? Wheeler or Cruz? You were talking up Cruz a few sentences earlier but I think you've moved back to our Ted. If it is indeed Wheeler, make sure he gets your memo too, because last I looked, he was still mayor.

Speaking of media and politics in Portland begs the question; you aren't from around here are ya? Think back, or google Adams and a journalist for a certain paper, named Ruiz and then perhaps rethink the discussion about journalists in the middle of a story.

As for Brown making a move or not (you've said this a couple times now) "in the next week or so"... You think she might want to, you know, wait for Wyden to say something first? So far, he's been rather quiet publicly. Now I know, she was a little miffed when Kitz called her back from DC just in time to interrupt her delivering her speech at the Sec States-R-Us party. To be tossed under the bus when asked why, to have Kitz deny it. Such that a few days later, when she was out riding (her horse) and her detail told her she was needed in Salem, she didn't believe it. I don't think she is going preempt Wyden.

Despite what I might think of her performance as governor, she has a bit more class than that.

I wasn't implying that the Governor will make a campaign announcement in the next week or so. I mean to say that depending on what move she makes or doesn't make, she may save or sabotage the Democractic party's upcoming tickets.

Yes, Wheeler is still mayor and I have good money on his resignation in October 2023.

I personally believe journalists deserve wide latitudes and deferential treatment in the absence of documented criminality. That's not say there aren't individuals or organization who abuse this latitude, I'm saying that poor decisions can be accounted for and better understood.

People are going to make mistakes, it's important to give them a path to repair those mistakes and re-earn our trust, otherwise we are sentencing ourselves to terrible fates.

There is no reason to fear those who are easily manipulated.

I've lived in Portland for decades now, but that doesn't mean I have a perfect memory. That's one of the benefits of having public discussions on these topics, because we each remember different details of the puzzle.

I for one kind of miss the police. I'm tired of seeing graffiti on tree trunks and garbage cans in parks. I'm tired of all the fucking trash drug addicts leave behind. We call them homeless in Portland. 62% of homeless shelter beds were occupied on the coldest day of the year. We don't need more beds as the numbers show. We need more police that uphold the law. Good police, which I believe is most PPB

@gardenstate, you're out of your element. We've evolved. Ask yourself, "how does this user know I'm not really in st. johns?"