Basically as far as I can tell all the problems in Portland are related to government apathy about staffing. Pretty much every...
illuminator-of-eternal-warfare:
Basically as far as I can tell all the problems in Portland are related to government apathy about staffing.
Pretty much every government agency I get any insight into here is deeply understaffed for the workload, and also deeply committed to not doing anything to attract staff.
Culture war stuff or ideology seems largely unrelated.
“Pretty much every government agency I get any insight into here is deeply understaffed for the workload, and also deeply committed to not doing anything to attract staff.“
Sounds like ideology to me.
Well, sure, but how would you call that ideology? Republican small government ideology? I mean, I guess our city government is pretty right wing.
We’re hoping that once the structural changes go through the bureaucracy will unclog itself a little.
Well, I do think that until the 2020 unpleasantness, the downtown establishment was like “engaged community-oriented young people with leftward-trending opinions? all to the good, they’ll be great allies in developing this liberal city, perhaps as pertains to service provision and incorporating marginalized eastside communities into our (fundamentally neoliberal westside property owner-run) civic order!” and they’re a bit more hesitant to bring new employees or allies on board without proper vetting now.
What we’re vetting for is “will tolerate police corruption as the price of doing business instead of getting all riot-y about it” yeah?
Well, with Hardesty gone they’ve purged the council but they were too halfassed to keep the rabble-rousers off the charter reform commission or get their proposal rejected, they might shave it down some in the courts but the insurgent left def. planned it to undermine establishmentarian locks by expanding the council and dividing it into multi-member districts. I’m in the same one as Lents and I’ll do my part to keep Sarah Iannarone out, but in case she gets in you sure don’t want her to have sympathizers inside administrative agencies she can articulate with.
Ah. So it is kind of what I said. I have an old-fashioned, not to mention autistic, belief that the purpose of the political system is to create certain beneficial results, and focusing on which team has the most power in city government is at best tangential to that goal.
Or, put another way: shit or get off the pot. That there is a certain level of radical incompetence in the radical left side of Portland government doesn’t make the moderate business focused side competent.
Wheeler, for example, seems uninterested in really amping up police hiring OR creating any kind of accountability; he seems happy to let the police stagnate and then throw blame at the left-wingers.
Oh yeah, Wheeler is incompetent at either wielding government power or evoking public sentiment, all the establishmentarian councilmembers are uninspired fronts for the downtown poobahs (who shouldn’t’ve stuffed Jefferson Smith to get Charlie Hales in, I don’t know what made that so critical, my blind guess was lining things up for the buildout of “South”) whose “People For Portland” astroturfing is terrible (the kind of communications firm an insulated and comfortable technocratic establishment in a liberal city has ties to would be shit at tapping into authentic voter anger around crime and homelessness).
Meanwhile, the left had two tactics: infiltrate and escalate, but they pulled the trigger on 2 without enough 1.