CONTROL ISSUES
RE: “Out of Control” [News, June 17], arguing the potential benefits of adopting rent control policies in Portland.
HI MERCURY—An old friend/sparring partner of yours here, recently returned to Portland after six harsh years in San Francisco, where I trained as a tenants rights counselor at the SF Tenants Union. I am happy to see you countering Willamette Week‘s odious “Grow Up, Portland!” pro-development coverage, though [differentiating] certain aspects of rent control [can be confusing]. The rent cap, which restricts annual rent increases to one or two percent of current rent, is a feature of San Francisco’s version of rent control, which covers buildings constructed before June 1979. Vacancy decontrol is something entirely different. It is a significant exception to rent control that allows landlords to jack rent up to market rate as soon as a tenant vacates a rent-controlled unit—whether voluntarily, due to death, or one of the insidious loopholes that unscrupulous landlords find, such as the Ellis Act. Vacancy decontrol, therefore, far from being one of the “pluses” of rent control in SF, is actually its most serious flaw and also the reason that tenants get “stuck” in their rent-controlled unit for fear of losing their protections. Good work, and please don’t believe the propaganda on the other side: The lesson of SF is that rent control needs to be expanded, not repealed.
Tony Longshanks
AS A VEGAN…
RE: “First Taste at Harvest at the Bindery” [Blogtown, June 9], a first impression of the completely plant-based menu of a new restaurant. It doesn’t call veganism a “lifestyle choice,” though… so who knows.
DEAR MERCURY—Veganism isn’t simply a “lifestyle choice”—it is the highest form of enlightenment achievable by human beings. No appeal to nature can excuse the act of disrespecting another living being. There are only two reasons to consume meat and dairy, and that is out of necessity for survival, or out of selfish desire. To live up to our potential we must spread freedom and compassion when and where we can—not to enslave and use other kinds of animals for our pleasure. Consuming corpses is completely unnecessary, and the reality of the matter is that there are more than 100 billion animals and trillions of fish being slaughtered each year for food, which is completely unsustainable and the primary cause of chronic health diseases, which are the most common cause of mortality, and all the while there are people starving, yet the livestock are being fed every single day. Hunting is not an ethical way of keeping populations under control for animals or humans, and natural ecosystems should be allowed to take their course until humanity can ethically intervene.
Chance Catch
CONTENTION
RE: “Et Tu, LaMarcus?” [Everything as Fuck, June 10], in which columnist Ian Karmel discusses coping mechanisms in the event of LaMarcus Aldridge’s departure from the Blazers.
DEAR MERCURY—Ian Karmel is great, but he’s being Portland as F*ck by referring to the Trail Blazers as “a contender.” The reality of the situation is that the Blazers are a second-tier team who have not been close to winning the title since 2000. Not sure what kinda magic dust they put in the water here to make people think otherwise, but it sure is effective!
Pdxpootietang
APPLES TO APPLES
RE: “My, What a Busy Week!” [June 17], in which we selected the Cider Summit as one of our weekly event recommendations, accompanied by a stock photo.
DEAR MERC—I appreciate your promotion of the Cider Summit. However! The apples in this photograph are the old familiar Yellow Delicious, Granny Smith, and Red Delicious. Thirty years ago, the average American could have reasonably believed that those were the only apples, and pilsner was the only beer. Times have changed. Next year I would like to see a photograph featuring some traditional cider apples. May I suggest Golden Russet, Kingston Black, and Wickson? Cider! 🙂
Isaac Hudson
GOOD EYE, ISAAC, good eye. Your attention to apple details has earned you this week’s Mercury letter of the week, with two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater, whose films often benefit from an observant gaze.
Thanks Chance Catch, I haven’t run into a self righteous vegan (preaching, obvs) in a few days. I was feeling a little off kilter not knowing if there were still people out there so much better than myself. FYI your poo still smells, and your farts are waaaay worse.
“No appeal to nature can excuse the act of disrespecting another living being”
Because everybody knows that plants aren’t, like, alive.
“natural ecosystems should be allowed to take their course until humanity can ethically intervene”
Why is it that natural ecosystems don’t involve humans (and other omnivores) doing what comes naturally? That is to say, eating animal matter as well as vegetable matter.
Let’s see here, I guess I’m supposed to learn something about rent control from recently returned Tony – from San Francisco of all places, where rent costs are beyond astounding.
Thanks Tony, yeah, we all must learn a little something from there.
You made a difference man.
Chance, it is a cruel world, whether we like it or not.
All life is based on consumption of some sorts, to include the stars in the universe.
How dare you suggest your own personal beliefs are more enlightened than the natural order of life?
Yes, another self-righteous vegan espousing their ignorant ideology. The life cycle of all species is devoted to gobbling up the sun’s energy in its various incarnations (both plant and animal). You choosing to extricate yourself from a segmented part of the food chain based on your moral reasoning (despite the fact that your are very much an omnivore) does little to alter the symbiotic processes of life. In fact, by eliminating animal domestication you are systematically depleting the world of a key chemical component that sustains all life…and that is nitrogen.
Nitrogen comes from bones, blood and shit, and we need it to grow your groovy soy beans and organic kale. If not from animal sources, do you know where nitrogen comes from? Well, courtesy of the Haber-Bosch process, since the middle of last century, nitrogen for the most part has come from fossil fuels (which are just really old dead animals). Fruits and vegetables cannot grow without it, and when the fossil fuel eventually runs out, we are all screwed. There could never be enough dead livestock in the world to create enough fertilizer to sustain seven billion people.
And speaking of fruits and vegetables (and grains) why would anyone choose to stuff themselves full of indigestible cellulose and phytate-infused, mineral leaching mono crops that have inaccessible nutrients? You want to talk about “chronic health” issues? Well, they don’t come from eating a nice grass-fed steak, with its full amino acid profile. It comes from eating “food’ like soy, which up until 1913 was listed as an industrial material by the USDA. And let’s not even get into the fact that you are selectively choosing plants for their demise, arrogantly insinuating that they are not, in fact, sentient beings.
No one here is supporting factory farming by the way. We are simply talking about what works – self-sustaining perennial polycultures that have shepherded humanity through millennia…before the advent of what is a very destructive, resource intensive, energy loss…and that is agriculture. Nothing, except for the industrial revolution has done more to precipitate global warming, and it’s only going to get worse. People cannot live on corn, kale and soy. Corn, kale and soy cannot grow without shit (or fossil fuel created substitutes).
All the species in the world are constantly eating each other as they try to devour the sun’s energy; just spend twenty minutes looking in your lawn to witness the struggle. It ain’t pretty, it’s just part of life and it’s what sustains all of us.
Perhaps it’s time to come down from your soapbox and read a book?
It’s too perfect, too good of an argument. I’m gonna say Chance Catch is a troll.