Keep Your Friends Closer . . .
Marc Abrams
It's said you're supposed to keep your friends close and you enemies closer, but that may not apply to the Multnomah County Commission. I don't get it. Individually, this is a good bunch of folks. Together, they're not working.
At their last meeting, they accepted the invitation of their charter review commission to send ot the ballot a repeal of the term limits on county commissioners. Now don't get me wrong -- I abhor term limits. They strip responsibility from the voters. But this crew is already in such foul odor (and one of them told me she knows that full well), that this looks like just another stick in the eye of Multnomah County citizens.
This on top of the pay for snow days, the head librarian getting a budget breaking salary then following it with library hour reductions, and the poor handling of the critical civil liberties issue of gay marriage (the Chair simply should have said it was administrative and never dragged the others in, making it look like they violated the open meetings law when they didn't).
As it is, McIntyre and his ilk are going to get their vote on repeal of the County's temporary tax, and a switch of eight percent is quite possible because of how folks view the County. Unfortunately, two-thirds of that tax doesn't go to the County, it goes to the schools, but we'll have to remind the voters of that, and all never-met-a-tax-I-liked-Don will have to do is remind people that, once again, the circus is in town.
When you're public approval smells like a skunk, it's not the time to ask whether you can hang around the living room a bit longer. Once again, the Commission has given our enemies aid and comfort, and once again, the school children may pay.
 |
More Recent Posts | |
Albert Kaufman |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
Kari Chisholm |
Final pre-census estimate: Oregon's getting a sixth congressional seat |
Albert Kaufman |
Polluted by Money - How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America |
Guest Column |
|
Albert Kaufman |
Our Democrat Representatives in Action - What's on your wish list? |
Kari Chisholm |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
connect with blueoregon
1:49 p.m.
Jul 24, '04
"the poor handling of the critical civil liberties issue of gay marriage (the Chair simply should have said it was administrative and never dragged the others in, making it look like they violated the open meetings law when they didn't)."
Presuming my recollection of events is correct, the potential for same-sex marriage in Multnomah County was not first raised with Chair Diane Linn, but with Serena Cruz and Lisa Naito. For the rundown, see soem of the links in this piece from March:
http://communique.portland.or.us/04/03/how_the_process_unfolded.html
So, Linn did not in fact drag anyone else into it, because the others were already in it.
Jul 24, '04
-- As I recall, the County Commission received contact in or before January describing plans to litigate against the County for marriage licensing fault, (abridged rights), and from legal review and prudence, they acted to prevent the injured standing for possible costly lawsuits.
Commissioners probably saved taxpayers hefty dollar damages by simply admitting our mistake of prejudice longstanding, and correcting it, instead of having to be counter-injured in court fines and having our public noses rubbed in the injustice for nothing but to get us to recognize the wrong in vaunted law we have done.
Of course, many dogma dependents, (and Abrams doesn't share creative moment gaining distance from them, so include him there), seen often in media celebrityhood, have nothing to say or write if they don't regurgitate what they were fed in the story-play-framing that encases the mass media groupthink. Dogma dependents can't talk outside the box, or walk outside the box, or 'get' outside the box of the media-mind made up and closed off from the facts. So they spout bigot-words and hate-snarf at the doers, changers, and remodellings of the world rather than hatch out of their pigeonholes and feel flight free of their gilded cage, capable of fending for themselves in the air of ideas and thoughts and creatively imagined self-governance.
County Commissioners rightly saved much public damage and deserve pride in doing their job and an open future to do it longer, as they are capable. Abrams' opposite opinion tastes like it has been steeped in acid fumes belched out of KXL crypts of supremacism.
As an exercise to learn to spot media groupthink, substitute 'investment' wherever 'taxes' is said. So 'anti-taxers' become 'anti-investers,' 'tax' revenue becomes 'investment' revenue, 'tax dollars' in schools and teachers and public employees becomes 'investment' in schools and teachers and public employees, ditto roads and infrastructures. And ditto 'taxes' for military industry privilege, where our 'investment' is put in the premise that a large active perpetual standing military keeps us safe and secure from invasion threat, and the 'investment' return is put out in the prospect that armies worldwide muster poised to invade us at all times although none can be seen, exactly, in their military bases, just right now, nor for the last fifty years our investment has grown monstrously big. From my annual $50,000 wages paying $10,000 in federal 'investment' of which half goes to buy security from our military, I'd just as soon re-direct my $5,000 'investment' in power into 'investment' in empowerment, (give a fish? or give knowledge of fishing?), and take my and my progeny's chances against a brigade of invading Canadians or wherever the takeover threat is camped.
--