Interesting perspective from a former Oregon gubernatorial candidate

[Mick1]

The problem with the Democratic party is not liberals, per se. It’s West Coast liberals, you know…the kind that ruin cities from Seattle to San Diego.

What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast? – DNyuz

Great quotes throughout, from the lion’s mouth so to speak:

• “the truth is that too often we offer a version of progressivism that doesn’t result in progress.”
• We are more likely to believe that “housing is a human right” than conservatives in Florida or Texas, but less likely to actually get people housed.
• We accept a yawning gulf between our values and our outcomes.
• The two states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness are California and Oregon.
• liberal Washington and Oregon have below-average high school graduation rates.
• Drug overdoses appear to have risen last year in every Democratic state on the West Coast,
• The homicide rate in Portland last year was more than double that of New York City.
• In 2022, the Portland Freedom Fund helped a Black man named Mohamed Adan who had been arrested after allegedly strangling his former girlfriend, holding a gun to her head and then — in violation of a restraining order — cutting off his G.P.S. monitor and entering her building. “He told me that he would kill me,” the former girlfriend, Rachael Abraham, warned. The Freedom Fund paid Adan’s bail, and he walked out of jail. A week later, Adan allegedly removed his G.P.S. monitor again and entered Abraham’s home. The police found Abraham’s body drenched in blood with a large knife nearby; three children were also in the house.
• And the capper: So my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes…For example, as a gesture to support trans kids, Oregon took money from the tight education budget to put tampons in boys’ restrooms in elementary schools — including boys’ restrooms in kindergartens.

As the kids would say, no duh.

 

Audaces fortuna iuvat

[Beeg_Dawg]

Good read, I share many of the same views.

“The inability of progressives, particularly in the Portland metro area, to deal with the nitty-gritty of governing and to get something done is just staggering,” Representative Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat who has been representing and championing Portland for more than half a century, told me. “People are much more interested in ideology than in actual results.”

Couple of thoughts – I can’t believe I agree with Blumenauer on anything, but he is 100% on the mark.  After 40 years of Dems control, locals still want to blame every conservative for the current problems.  Mental health issues – Reagan’s fault.  Border crisis- Donald Trump. Somehow, local problems are caused by conservatives on the national stage.

Portland could be wonderful, world class city, except it is cursed with a never ending stream of ineffective leaders.  A local company was paid almost $30M to clean up homeless encampments, while at the same time Multnomah County handed out 6500 tents and over 25k blue tarps.  Local activists claim there have been over 12,000 homeless that have been moved off the street.  Never mind the highest estimate of homeless was 8000 and at most there are only 1000 housing units available for them.

Some of the locals are starting to get the idea.  Voting for ideologues with a vision is not a road map to utopia.

[Author]

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