I Visited Members Of The Entitled Class Today

Or, as I like to call them, my family.

People who know the price of everything and the value of nothing like to moan and complain all day about how expensive PERS retirees and the poor are and how they're destroying the state and how maybe they don't deserve what they have coming to them.

I'd like to introduce you to a couple of people.

One's my mother. She worked for more than two decades with the developmentally disabled in the Oregon State system, at Fairview. Now, the system assisting the mentally and physically disabled is and was flawed, to be sure. People are still arguing over whether or not closing the Fairview Training Center and Dammasch State Hospital was a good idea. But for the majority of her working life, my mother was in the thick of it and she did a lot of good, not only caring for people in the State's charge but also taking her own time outside of work and helping foster a child or two as far away as Coos Bay.

Thing about my mom is, she can't stop mothering. Some of our most vulnerable citizens are maybe a little better off because of what she cared enough to do. She was paid adequately for it and now lives on her PERS pension. She is far from getting rich on it. They have enough to keep from being homeless and live in an excuciatingly-modest, cosy, well-maintained manufactured home.

She wouldn't feel comfortable in a mansion anyway.

The other person is my nephew. He's a nice, smart fellow with a blazing quick mind but a lot stacked against him. He was rescued by the state foster care system which has placed him with my mom who, as I said, can't stop mothering. After a great many alternatives have been tried to help him get a grip on his emotional problems, he's on a medication and counseling program that have given him real hope. He's as happy today as I've ever seen a kid with so many odds against him.

And how can he do it? The Oregon Health Plan. Without which, I might add, at $800 a prescription, we'd have no chance of getting on it, and he might well eventually go into the state system as a problem, not as a potential success story.

So if anyone wants to come at me with how spending for state retirees and the OHP is a waste on people who don't deserve it, you'll get a deaf ear over it from me.

Do you think I'm too close to the problem? So what? I'd argue that you are too far away from it.

I like to think of it as my tax dollars at work.

Senator Jeff Stakes Out The Left Wing

It's about time someone did.

Our national interests are not served by the war in Iraq. I applaud President Obama’s commitment to a solid plan for withdrawing our troops and ending the war.

However, I have reservations about the extended 19 month schedule for the draw down and I am very concerned that the size of the remaining force would still be too great. It will be hard to argue that our military presence is ‘residual’ when it is comprised of as many as 50,000 Americans.

Here's to someone with the guts to tell it like it is, and who doesn't forget why he was elected. If we had awards to give, we'd give him one.

City Council To Outer East Portland: Oh, There You Are!

They noticed us!

After years of benign neglect by the Portland City Council and the Powers, I'm happy to say that someone finally noticed us. And, after the last missive, I wasn't sure i'd have anything nice to say about the city council today.

By "Us", I mean that area of east Portland that's only been in the city since 1990 (for those with only 10 fingers, that's 18 years). Outer East, as us armchair intellectuals like to call it, that area from I-205 to the eastern city limits (which are mostly at E 162nd Avenue) is really the only invisible part of the city that's left. People from west of I-205 look on us and think "Gresham". Last year, I read on another blog, the Willamette Week's "Best of Portland" issue didn't have the guts to go east of the Freeway.

Well, we would have eaten them anyway. But I digress.

Anyway, as The Oregonian's James Mayer describes,

Fast-growing East Portland is closer to feeling like it belongs.

The City Council just adopted an "action plan" for the area between Interstate 205 and the city limits -- and put $500,000 toward making it happen.

The plan will guide decisions dealing with development, parks, public safety and transportation in eastside neighborhoods. It calls for more sidewalks, street lighting and storefront improvements, for example.

Most of the area was annexed into the city in the 1980s and '90s,
and residents often have said they don't feel like part of Portland.

He has the right of it. We've long been a source of tax dollars rather than a destination. The result is poorer streets, poorer transit service (except for lines like the 20-Burnside and the 4-Division, neighborhood routes, such as the one I'd depend on if I could, the 27-Market/Mill bus, only run at times that are not merely incovenient).

There's a sense of benign neglect. Especially when you get to intersectons like 148th and Stark and 122nd and SE Market.

It helps to have a friend who speaks up for you. Jeff Merkley, our newest junior Senator, hails from this area ... he was State Representative, District 47, which is right in the heart of the Outer East:

"There was a sense that annexation was more about pulling additional
taxpayers into the city than really doing anything to benefit the
people," said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who prompted then-Mayor Tom
Potter and Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler to launch the planning
effort last year.

Jeff puts his money where his mouth is, that's for sure.

All we want is our fair share, and for a very long time, we've not been getting it.

What sorts of things have they enumerated to start?

Expand storefront improvement grant program.

• Create an advocate position to seek money for carrying out the plan.
• Continue planning for a greenway between Interstate 84 and I-205 north of the Gateway Regional Center.
• A pilot project to test new land-use concepts aimed at creating "20-minute neighborhoods."
• Create a grant program to allow neighborhood associations,
  business associations and other groups to take on small or medium
  projects in the plan.
• Initiate Powell Boulevard street improvements planning project.
• Identify three pedestrian safety projects as part of safer routes to school program.
  

This is a good start. Especially the "20-minute neighborhoods" part, and I'll admit, I'm not sure what that is, but it's got to be better than what I got now.

Looks Like We'll Have To Stop By Muddy Waters

As pro-people people, we approve of gay rights. We think that everyone should be allowed to live with, love on, and form binding associations with anyone they damn well please without anyone snooping in and telling them they shouldn't.

JustOut noted this in passing:

Either way, queer-identified lucky new Muddy Waters coffee house co-owner Courtney “Aloe” Johnson and a trio of Muddy Waters employees recently bought the legendary 2908 S.E. Belmont St. coffee haven and flipped it to a self-described “anti-profit” business endeavor:
one where anything that the four owners make above and beyond their
monthly bills is turned over to local charities and community
organizations.

You people go and do that thing. And we're going to have to scrape together a few bucks and buy a little coffee over at your place, that's the thing to do right there.

Oregon: Stimulated

The necessary, done in record time:

Barely a half-hour after the House voted it out
Thursday morning, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed into law a $175
million public works package that backers hope will start
putting Oregonians back to work.

The contentious package is the first major act of the 2009
session, passed over strenuous objections from minority
Republicans who said the plan digs Oregon further into debt
and does little to counter a stubborn recession.

Of course the Republicans are crying. But they didn't care about going into debt back when they were running the ship. So faint over going into debt when it puts the common man back to work so they can pay taxes to pay down that debt.

The economy is fricken' awesome that way. And now, you can safely ignore them.

At least they had the good sense to get the hell out of the way. Not that they had much choice. Now, if the really want you and me and everyone you know to live in a better enconomy, they'll continue to do so.

But they elected Mr T as state chair, so ...