Portland - A "progressive" city in demise

Just thought I would share this with you. Saw this on my youtube

My favourite part of the video is at 1:30 where one guy claims to have been given a bus ticket by the city of Montana to go to Portland :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The metro system has to wash down all the buses, trains after each loop, because of the open drug use, especially fentanyl, which one can absorb even through the skin.

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And you posted this in Technology why?

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I couldn’t quite find the right category so I was going to message an admin to change it after posting. The category I wanted obviously was “life.”

More progressive progress in Portland:

All Walmarts closing in Portland

While some outlets have speculated that [shoplifting losses] were a factor in the decision, Walmart has pushed back against that, [saying in a statement] with an NBC affiliate: “We consider many factors, including current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores when making these difficult decisions

Even progressives have had enough of the progress in Portland:

“ U.S. Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer has made a life’s work out of promoting and defending his hometown. . . .

But lately, Blumenauer isn’t bragging quite so loudly about the Rose City.

“Portland is broken,” he said in a statement in February announcing his reelection bid.

That’s a sentiment voters are used to hearing from Republicans during election season. It was a striking comment for Blumenauer, a former city commissioner who, over a decade working in City Hall, helped make Portland a national model for its policies on land use and transportation (think bikes and light rail).

One thing the statement was not: flippant. In a recent phone call, Blumenauer laid out his reasoning.

“We haven’t done everything right, but anybody who watched the trajectory of Portland, I think, realized that we earned a reputation as a community that was growing and thriving and was a magnet,” he said, speaking of the city’s recent history.

Now, though, Blumenauer bikes through the city and sees piles of garbage and people unable to cope with their afflictions. He hears about sharply rising gun violence. His car’s catalytic converter, like many others, was ripped out by thieves.“

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Portland is another city that’s too expensive even for white collar workers to live in. I know someone on a teacher’s pension from the 80s (you know, the kind where you retire in your 50s and you’re financially set for life) that is a tenured professor (of at least 35 years) at a university who wants to retire and move to Portland. Told me Portland is where all his friends are, but the cost of living is too high to even dream of. Guaranteed income of at least 120k/yr., single, house in current location long ago paid off, can’t afford Portland. So yeah, homelessness and everything that follows is going to be a problem there, as it is in every other unaffordable city in the US

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Lived in Portland back in the summer of 2015. Even then, the place could transform from sunshine to shithole just in the space of a couple of blocks. It was really jarring. I can’t imagine what it is like now…

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This hits close to home. I’m still living here! When I moved here in 2008 it was pretty nice, one of the “most livable cities in the US”.

Now though the downtown area is a hell hole, not all of it, but many sections are blighted. If you go out into the suburbs you wouldn’t have any idea all of this homelessness and drug use is happening. That’s why I don’t go downtown anymore.

It’s incredibly frustrating because the taxes here are rather high but we don’t get much return on the investment. Lots of the tax money goes to the multitude of parks we have and great library system, but now the downtown parks and library are full of homeless, drug abusers, people with mental illness.

I’ve been having thoughts of moving to Canada…

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People who don’t know Portland have a hard time believing how dystopian its highways and byways are these days. Even the cops are fleeing. Was talking to an 18 year veteran of the Portland Police who’s now my neighbor in the suburbs and he advised staying completely away from downtown Portland for the foreseeable future.

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The Walmart I worked at has a shrink of about 1.6 million per year. I have no idea how they keep paying bills with all these. This was in liberal Austin, and the cops are as aggressive as ever, as in lots of officer involved shootings almost every other day, etc.

Makes me wonder if they will close up shop too.

I might add these closed up Walmarts and other big stores ends up becoming a squatting ground. They really should just demolish these buildings once they are out. There was a Home Depot that closed up in Austin that stayed empty for probably 10+ years. They’re not good places to be.

I wonder why the option of “not voting Democrat” never occurs to them.

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Because if you vote anything other than Republican or Democrat you throw away the vote. This is the problem with a winner take all, 2 party system.

Without proportional representation the majority will oppress the minority.

You can just vote for who you want to. Voting for someone you don’t approve of, on the other hand, is truly wasting your vote. In some places the big parties are so afraid of it they make it very hard for third parties to even get on the ballot.

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Sure, but like I said, without proportional representation and the amount of gerrymandering that goes on by both parties, how much representation does the average people really have? Politics in the US has become dirty, and too much financial incentives for any meaningful change. Sad fact is the government no longer represents Americans, and the state of most cities reflects that.

There’s a reason why other democracies, real democracies have proportional representation and not a winner take all system, and the type of gerrymandering and campaign contributions that are done in the US is illegal in other democracies, because those undermine democracy. How do you turn a city that is 1/4 democrat into a completely democrat city? You gerrymander the city in such a way that the majority opposition voters are always the minority.

Stop gerrymandering, overturn Citizen United, make the government accountable, then we can start fixing things. Otherwise nothing good will happen.

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There’s lots of reforms that can be made, but for now it is what it is. I’m just speaking against your “wasted vote” idea. Voting for someone you don’t support who is just a cog in a system you despise makes little sense.

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Yes, reforms are possible, but unfortunately there’s no financial incentives for those currently in power to do so.

I don’t know what will compel changes to be made, but it needs to be made.