So, today’s contribution for me being the next oracle of delphi is fresh from the Oregonian. Mind you, this is the biggest paper in the region, and when I was beating the drums that we have problems back when we could have fixed it without major issue a few years ago, there had been some who had called me out for being pessimistic because the Oregonian didn’t talk about it. Go. Read the Opinion from the paper that people said they will come around when this paper does. While you do that please be aware of all the things in the past tense. The tense that things already occurred, the tense that actions have been committed.
The only reason I bring it up that I was right, was because I do not want to hear ow so many people could not have seen it.
Look at it all, read the article and let it echo especially if you were the kind thinking I as pessimist, because those people with high end college degrees? I was right. The city commissioners who said they know better? I was right. The people who lived in the pearl or in the expensive towers who thought they had a better grasp? I was right. People who thought measure 110 was going to happen and make the city perfect when I thought it would make it right? The only right was me, and all the others who could read to a third grade level and could see what was going on, and not be given nice words or pretty pictures when all of it is fake.
Between blog posts, less then seven days, no less then a business has shuddered a day. A day brings the death toll for a business some with thirty, forty, fifty years and all of them are now shells. Considering there are not enough to replace them means a bit of a problem. No longer helping the community, no longer making it better. Some may think I am being a bit crass, but when you are right, time and time again, and people do not listen, because I am not the only one, this is not some rocket science we are calculating on our fingers here.
I want Portland to be better, I want it to be the city I love again. However, the people who are so lost seem to put their hands up just saying an oops and then walking off like they did the right thing anyway. Well things have been a bit of a riddle, because I do not have the supplies to make any store or anywhere in Portland right now, not enough anyway to make more of a difference. Because one has to remember there is not a lot of help from the police, insurance is going to be higher, and often times one has to defend themselves, their has to be a way, but their needs to be a way to bring about ideas for business that bring back some of the safety of before.
Donald Trump has been brought in under suspicion of 34 charges of business fraud. A lot of people are cheering that he will finally be caught, but here are my thoughts. I am not a lawyer, but there is a lot of business woven through this so just my thoughts from a loudmouth.
Considering this is based around a time almost a decade ago. They have to prove that he falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. Here is why I am not holding my breath.
First, this man whether you love him or hate him, has one of the biggest war chests available. Prosecution can’t push out the clock like they can with those with less funds, he can afford and will afford to make his case as easy to fight as possible and from the D.A’s own office it comes down to three main charges.
Now, one thing we need to make clear before going any further is there are thing that may not meet moral standard, but are legal. One is it is not illegal to pay someone if they have an unflattering story about you, that is why often in many settlements it cannot be talked about. Just from the D.A the first of three three major points is not going to hold well.
Going to the third, there was already a special counsel who got in trouble for doing this paying an adult film actress $130,000 now one can have two people be charged for the same thing, but if the payment was handled by counsel, and trump just said to get it paid, then that would most likely be on the counsel and not on Teflon Don. Which leaves the second point.
American Media Inc, they admitted what they did was unlawful that they made false pretenses to take that money, but the issue as it stands is not the payment of the money, but how it was received. That would be a problem on AMI, not Trump.
In short I doubt he gets anything more then a fine, and that is if that.
It is legal to pay for people with negative stories for their silence, it is legal to hide it, it is not moral. What is not moral. That a case this honestly soft would be brought forward. It smacks of a last minute throw at the end of the game, because the state of New York basically just said to the guy who could say is a master of loopholes that they know the rules better then he does. Considering How the State of New York is handling their own businesses I would think will be a calamity. You know what this also does though?
How many republican groups are watching this and are taking notes on how to do this better because some of the states of many democratic presidents can now dredge up the past for the exact same thing, and most likely with more chance for success. Never teach your enemy and right now the class is in for those who have backed Trump to any degree and I can tell you a lot of people are taking notes. Let us not even go into political bias, because when CNN has to do a survey and even most of those people see this as being a political biased then we are taking a turn down some bad moves. For those who are happy to see the political pressure brought down in law then you cannot under any condition complain when the republicans are deciding to start with the D.A of the case.
Never, ever, EVER train your enemies. While you will get first chance at the idea or tactic they will be able to see you bumble through it and they can watch to see mistakes they don’t need to make. That would be making their efforts overall more fruitful.
Back to three major moments. The second is really the only thing that would be the best chances of the three, but remember there are still a lot of questions to answer, like when did Trump specifically do the falsifying of records? Because my thought is he would know just to tell someone to get it done and have them do as they need to do without his knowledge, he is given plausible deniability and if that is the case there could be grounds to see him innocent on all charges. On top of that considering how long it has been since the charges there is a possibility that it may have been too long, we shall see on that.
For any charge, any single charge the case needs to be locked up, air tight, in the ocean, shot with a full drum of ammo and blesses by several preachers, because if there is any crack, any chance it will be looked it with the best eyes money can buy and it will be seen as weakness. If Donald Trump gets out of this without a serious sentence (prison time), then I feel the party behind him will be galvanized enough to push him to a second term. Not the D.A the bad press, or those who hate him with such vitriol will stop it.
In other news, my knights are in the playoffs for the Stanley cup. Small positives.
It has been a couple weeks. I am still alive. Although a lot has happened. First, finals always tends to be something that takes extra energy from me and I have done well in my classes, and that makes me happy. There has been some health issues that took some time of course, when your body runs on caffeine and spite sometimes you need to recharge every so often. That or the nerve damage gets the better of me sometimes.
The city is still a shit show, and while I can tell you how, there are others who do it better then me just look up on twitter PDXReal1 does a lot of good work showing how things are, People4Portland on twitter and now it seems more and more that people are getting the word out that we do have a problem in the city. So people are knowing, but now we have to make some impact, and that is been something that I have mused for the past few weeks.
Portland business journal recently had a survey of businesses where no one, I am sorry “99% do not feel supported by the city’s elected officials.” Damning by any count when almost every business believes they are not being supported by the city. That means you could go and throw a rock in the air and the sidewalk it lands on you got almost 100% chance that the business closest to it thinks they got no help from the city. Not like anything has been done to change that, Measure 110 has gone a major calamity because the government has not been fast enough to get the support out there. ( Big shocker, it is almost like someone called it.)
The city is in rough shape and the state is worse, but you know what sometimes it just takes a spark, a chance to get things rolling in the right direction. While the more well known businesses are running away from the city there is a chance to make it better, and if you can survive in the harshest conditions then it should be able to survive in friendlier conditions. It may be looked at as a bit of trying to find the sunshine in the dark clouds, but there is something to be looked at when bad things happen. One can always look at it more as a challenge to be overcome. Just seems honestly, that there are a lot more challenges then times of smooth sailing. These times will test those of the city I love, because there is a lot that seems to be wrong.
Try and stay healthy and hopefully I don’t need to do this again this week. I am sick as a dog.
Portland has decided to at least hurry their spiral because at least if you are going to fail you might as well do it quickly. For those who do not know Portland has gotten much more violent having more then 900 shooting incidents in 2020 and more then 1300 in both 2021 and 2022 and it looks like its another year over a thousand incidents.
We have among authorized sworn members has only been able to this date keep the rate from he rate in 2021 when it was lower then 2005, that is almost twenty years ago. Portland still has a prosecutor that does not want to prosecute, and a city council that doesn’t want to deal with the unpleasant reality and a growing issue with businesses feeling more uncomfortable, almost a third of business vacancies in the city and that is going up in a year where people are learning they cannot survive in a city that very simply, does not care.
So we have 880 authorized sworn workers in the police and we have in a thirty day period 19,099 calls for the month of January, that is top to bottom. The average response times for high priority calls, your really nasty crimes, in January is 16.5 minutes. Considering it was at 20 minutes in October, it is going down but unfortunately it is not going down enough to make people safe. Here is a number that gets me angered.
81% of high priority calls will be responded to after 5 minutes. You got a four out of five chance that whatever is so bad you need cops yesterday you have a 4 out of 5 to survive 5 and anyone is been in an abused situation or has been hurting or bleeding. Those five minutes can seem like years. All of these numbers are all looking through the Portland police department data dashboard.
This is just to show that all the things are not getting better, but I think a different tack is needed. For this I have something I would like to ask anyone reading this.
If you had a chance to ask a question or a couple questions to the homeless of Portland, what would they be?
Let me know.
Stay strong.
Also, yes. I did have this lined up and just forgot to hit the post button. One of those days.
College is fun when you can’t get a loan because the government (Sallie Mae) and the school don’t understand some crippled people are actually trying to gain skills for a future, but hey, so far, no loans. Look on the bright side of life. It will save you headaches in the long run. Outside of that, I found one can make hard-boiled eggs in the air fryer.
Fifteen minutes at 300F and letting cool naturally works excellent for some medium eggs. Suitable for some healthy snacks. Also, we had to do some shopping around, but we found a couple of stores had our five dozen eggs deal for 7 dollars, which we are going to take that all day. It is always nice to make a couple of new snacks. Good for something else to work on later. I would say try other seasonings against what I can make, but that would be humiliating to my opponents.
For all that has happened in Portland, I am starting to look at some properties to see what I need, and right now, the cost can be best described as too damn high. It is going in the right direction. Most people want to avoid starting a business in Portland. I need to figure out what to ensure my employees in different areas are happy. Can I pay 100k each? Most likely not, but I can find the right combination of pay and benefits where people want to work with me for a position.
I would remark on the city of Portland itself, but that is a level of things that needs its own post. See you tomorrow.
Welp, it’s been a couple of weeks again. Sorry about that. Unfortunately, some numbers have come out based on the city where it has to be said. Portland is now in a position where the problems they have constructed for themselves will be fixed slowly, which is unfortunate. This was brought up by KOIN 6 news and reported on by the News for Reasonable People channel( A name I get a giggle from whenever I watch their videos). Also, they are a channel with a view on more of the business and property lens. However, human issues make enough appearances to be counted on being shown.
So, what am I talking about? Currently, the violence in Portland has been growing, and the cost of living has been rising throughout the country, even more so in Portland. More drugs, less quality public education, and less business have been happening. Now we have a business vacancy rate getting close to a third. That means that about 73% of spaces are filled. Which would be good, except most people need to learn that cities account for something like 95% to be filled on a bad year for tax reasons. If businesses are not in buildings, they aren’t making money, no money, no tax, and the budget is reduced, and while a lot of places have had to deal with many of these things, Portland has been ranked third last in recovering from the pandemic. We are ranked 60 out of 62, with a wild guess being able to figure out the two below us.
This has now reached a point that, save for a miracle of high-class thought and action from our city commissioners, this will not be good for a while. Five years, maybe ten, maybe thirty. The time frame depends on how shit others are after this. What will be something is that now we are in a position where it will most likely be this way for quite a while, and a lot of Portlanders are okay with that.
Not because there is a wealth of ideas or thoughts. Actually, it’s because most Portlanders only know or care to know once they have to. As a result, portlanders generally boil down into two groups.
They are in a position to ignore everything until something happens, as they get robbed, their children are in danger, or their life’s work is destroyed.
They are so poor and just trying to hold it together; unfortunately, they just had to get used to it.
This is sad because what comes next is not going to be fun for a lot of people. It will not be able to be fixed quickly because people do not want to see it. It won’t be the end of the world, but for those who think Portland is going back to the 2000’s era dominance, this will be bad news.
Good times will come at some point, but we have some choppy waters.
You ever just get into a thing where you do and keep doing until you get to the point you are exhausted and on autopilot and look back to wonder what you were doing to that point. That is EXACTLY how the past two weeks has been for me. Running for chair of the school senate committee on Government operations and finance, homework, nerve attacks, passing out, taping myself back together. Sometimes though, things work out in a way where you are just happy to have.
Despite being exhausted that running for the chair, well it is something more then that now. The problem is that a lot of things going on I am finding needs more then someone to help good ideas, they need someone willing to take the field as well. Always something to be done, and despite it my body is not the font of energy it once was and sometimes, especially since my nerve damage there are limits that have to be respected physically or there will be more problems then whatever good is done in those few moments.
The fraility of existence unfortunately is not something that can be mentally broken sometimes. It must be dealt with, in that dealing though new answers arise. Moments of thought sometime occur here, I like to call them sigma moments, not because of things like sigma grind set, but because it would be something Sigma the character (overwatch) would most likely think of.
So ya, a lot of things are happening here, which is why I went radio silence, things have gotten so hectic I have to actually use a calendar like a responsible adult. You know what I hadn’t looked at what has been happening in Portland since trying to help the students I represent. Hopefully it was a slow news week….
Ever ask yourself why you should ever ask a question that seems to be the start to disaster?
We are starting off with the Willamette Week, who did some interesting journalism this time. Some progress in some areas, but this article is about the value of money.
I am just going to save some pain and just go to the numbers. 82 units, refurbishing a building from 1911 and the refurbishment will cost 36.15 million dollars. Which is about 480,000 per unit or just about 13,00 per sq foot for units that have no bathroom or kitchens. I do not know about you, but this so expensive that anyone tries to explain this as a good value needs their head examined because the only reason this money is of some value is if it’s in someone savingsd account because you aren ot getting that value or even half of it on the work.
I would fire the people who okay-ed it, the people who accepted the contract, the company, anyone who thought this was a good idea. There would be mass firings of the failure that allowed this to stand. Why would all this be important, why would the value of things be needed especially now?
Portland fire and rescue have to freeze spending both of them are within the range of the project or even could be heavily aided by the half that could be cut by the building if someone with a calculator worked in Portland politics.
Get some progress done, bask in the bright light if this stupidity and then try to make your day a little better
Seeing as I do not have anything to say but to keep in the habit of making posts. I am going to do something different.
This is Clodsire. It is cute, and I hope it brightens your day.
Yes, I will do serious posts again. Just felt that sometimes a little spontaneous brightness is fine. What are some thing you like? Could be pokemon, pets, favorite animals. Just things that make you happy.
Recently the week has been rough. Things were going well, but I realized a reason that I had not heard from someone was that they no longer with us. It kind of stings because this teacher was someone who I had talked to the last conversation was about my nerve damage had blocked me from a lot and she just said “You will make it.”
Well, cut to a couple months after that conversation, she died, no one told me, she never made mention that she had been sick for a couple years afterward. Just, it stings, I felt like I should have put it together, but from what I heard after being shocked by the news, no one else knew either. Meaning she kept it to herself. Which would be like her, it’s just stings because there was something that could have been something she would have liked to work on since I am a student senator. Unfortunately, she was someone who did not want to show weakness and it hurts.
She was smart as a whip, and honestly the world is a little dimmer now that she is gone. It hurts that I did not know for so long. One of the few times I cried too, but she was an anime fan. So this would be something she would have been happy with me using.
With all the flappery about people complaining about gas grills there is enough to squabble over. I will just say the following on gas stoves. They are not going away because it would hamstring every restaurant most of those that have survived for any time will laugh at you for trying also. I read the report, and considering they tented up particulates without calculating dispersal rates, how much is breathed in on a regular basis, or even the difference of psi for the gas between residential and professional meters then I am not even give it a second glance. It has more holes then a mini golf course and the second time I went back to study’s website it had been taken down. Arguing against gas stoves right now just shows you do not know how important it is in cooking.
That aside, because that one was really bad something else has been happening over and over again. To quote George Carlin.
“We got some dumb-ass motherfuckers in this country.”
Now, you may think this is some political rant based on my own party. Well SIKE!
It seems to me that people in groups seem to take something say like the gas stove and then try to make themselves the Grand Poobah of idiotic decisions. We got people out here in groups trying to get the team award for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
For those who do not know Dunning-Kruger from the Britannica, not the best source for everything but does well for majority.
“Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intelligence or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.”
Now, on this blog I have in full view explained my own bouts of wall to wall stupidity and have had to take the heat from them and tried to give as good as I got. Some people hear the protest of the first, and then just run their gas stove just because. Then one group thinking stoves are Hitler and the other one using it as their potpourri are dueling and there has to be a portion of the population who looks at the groups of dipsticks and wondered how the dumbest are also the loudest. Well, I have been practicing so if you know someone that is belonging to either group, either everything is evil or we must overuse to the point of stupidity the things the first group mocks sit them down right here.
They here? Okay.
The world is not going to end and just as much as you want to help, wagging your finger does nothing, trust me, I know. This blog is a almost a decade of attempts, because remember was a leftist here.
Getting people to change stoves to electric, which is an investment for the majority of people, would be a further energy drain on many systems already taxed too far, does not have the quality as gas, and often takes half a year to ship even if someone decides to do it. You are not reading the room, in fact you are clueless.
Can there be good electric stoves, yes. Do they do some damage? Most likely. Did the study fail in describing that? Yes. It makes you look like a snob and no one wants to help you when people think you are putting your nose up or forget a few other factors that can be pretty important to people.
Read the room, read how other people are living, and you may make this place better and find some common ground places everyone can start. Good? Alright. Go have a nice meal or something. For the love of all that is good in the universe do not cut your gas line out of protest without letting the gas company know.
Alright, time for the other side of the show.
Yes, I know arguing it was stupid. Yes. I did read the paper.
Just give me a couple moments because what you are doing is not helping the cause you want to defend, I understand their has been some stupid calls by people who think they know better and did not have a clue if you gave them two consonants and a vowel. It may be very cathartic to tweak their nose and have them smell the shit we all call living in modern year (2023)
All I would ask is this. If they want that then sum it to a challenge. If someone can make an oven that runs off a clean fuel that is not electricity and is safer, let them make it and give it a try. You don’t need to mortgage your home, when you have the chance be open to it and honestly do so. Tweaking and trolling is fun. It is getting to the point where some of the people who say such things as just running it for fun or the other side sawing through their gas line are really doing it and would you like to know how I know?
I did work taking calls for a gas company, that guy who you had to tell smells like rotten eggs after bifurcating the line behind the stove and asking him if you should try to take a look? That was me at some point for about a year of my spare time. Taking calls for accounts and working on things there would be at least a half dozen calls for our team that only worked for customers in two states all about something smells like gas, how someone tried to dig a pond in their yard and hit a pipe, how someone shut down the gas to a hospital and fire department.
You may be laughing because people just COULD not be that stupid? Everyone who has worked for a gas company is nodding because they get those calls too. In short, be open be thoughtful, do not troll so much and please do not protest where you have to call someone saying it smells like rotten eggs. It happens every day, and I have facepalmed hard enough the other teams could keep track for an accurate count.
BigTAnderson in Portland 