Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Rise up, producing class!

The only thing we have left is our determination to make our own way in life, but we are increasingly told that we are no better than equal to those who refuse to make their own way, but instead force us to support them.

I opened my local blatt today, and found this article. You really don't need to read more than the first couple of paragraphs to get the idea, it's another "freeloaders are just unfortunate, they can't help their condition, so we must feed, clothe and house them." At least this one didn't claim the lofty perch of Christian Godliness, but plenty such articles do.

I've had quite enough of this idiocy, thank you.

I replied to the op-ed:

UPDATE: 09292015: This letter WAS published in the Gresham Outlook today. Interestingly, the Editor then asked readers to take shots at it. I presume I will get the opportunity to reply to those taking potshots, because aside from the religious argument, there are NO winning arguments against my point of view in this letter. The religious argument of Charity is not even part of this, either, although I will bet right here that most of the pot-shottists will take me to task for my lack of Charity. I will counter the Charity argument by simply saying that it is for private people to be charitable, not governments.

Editors:

I write this letter to express a contrarian viewpoint on the subject of "homelessness", one which is almost never seen in print, but, I can assure you, is considered by solid citizens every single time this subject is discussed.

It is simple: cities have problems with homelessness and transients in inverse proportion to the effort which the city leaders spend pursuing proper efforts to discourage the presence of such persons.

A case in point: In 1969, the Air Force transferred me to Westover AFB, MA. The closest city to the air base was Holyoke, one of the first PLANNED industrial cities in the USA. The hot topic of local discussion in Holyoke then was all the vagrants (a legal term then) who had recently come north from New York City. Those vagrants had come to Holyoke because they were attracted by new forms of welfare that Holyoke instituted, but which were not available in NYC. Holyoke had attracted the seeds of it's own demise.

Flash forward 46 years to today. I was leaving my residential block and needed to drive West on Powell Valley Road. My passage onto Powell Valley Rd was blocked for a time by a procession of eastbound vehicles, the lead vehicle of which was a van from a food bank which said "Sanctuary" in big letters on it. Behind that vehicle drove a convoy of beater-mobiles, mostly full of passengers, most of the passengers being rough-looking men. My neighborhood is attracting them to a local church, no doubt.

I pose this question to Mayor Bemis and the City Council: Have you even LOOKED at what might be legally done to discourage all these unfortunates from coming to Gresham? Have you? If you have, I haven't heard of your efforts. Instead, I have endlessly heard that "we must feed them" and "we must house them".

This taxpaying, self-supporting citizen says that our efforts in placating these supplicants should end, replaced with a spirit of determination to keep Gresham for the producers, those who have learned to make their own way in life without the handouts, and especially those who have learned to make their way without the encouragements of the freeloading lifestyle.

George Schneider

It's time to raise this flag, folks. It's time to challenge the freeloader lifestyle every time it raises one of it's Hydra-heads. It's time to slay this dragon before it finishes the producing class off.

Civics bleg

This info request is about civics, the way your Citeh funds itself. Most municipalities work off of a tax base that is tied to property value, which is not the actual, immediate value of the real estate. The only reason that Citehs are not the worst of the gummint vote-buyers is that the millage rate limits their expenditure of public money, so they have to budget. Make that USED to have to budget.

Enter the monthly fee, in my Citeh (Gresham, OR), labeled "a fee to prevent more cuts" (cute name, innit?) Our City Council is trying to impose a fee, outside of the tax base, on every household and every business, of $7.50 per month.That's not a lot, but my basic research tell me that once these fees are introduced, they are usually raised, sometimes obscenely. In my case, I have to pay twice, because I run a small business here.

Back to the millage rate. The process of raising the millage rate involves the consent of the residents via an election. The process of sticking a new fee up our hoo-hoos does not, unless an ad-hoc committee arises to collect signatures and put the fee on the ballot in a special election (that could happen). Note that in Gresham's case, the City Council will put a new tax base on the ballot in 2014, and using the bludgeon of the new fee, will tell us to pass the new tax base or the fee will be continued, and likely, raised.

This is pure blackmail. As far as I know, the Gresham City Council members don't belong to the Mafia, but they are sure acting like they learned their civics at Mafia University.

Any Dear Readers who have information that might enliven my testimony before the Citeh Council next Tuesday, please leave it in comments.

Common Sense Gresham - UPDATED!

...the organization (MY organization), not the mythical local state of mind hereabouts, is reviving itself, thanks to an Editor of the local bi-weekly paper.

This popinjay had the gall to question my motives in a recent letter I wrote panning the paper for publishing a local pol's brag-piece about what he did in the recent Legislature (which was a waste of time and taxpayer's $$$, IMHO).

He made the mistake of tossing in a gratuitous insult with his questions.

I fired back.

He replied, pretending that he had never insulted me.

I fired back again.

This whole exchange will be posted here if it turns out to be appropriate to do so, just a teaser today.

The Editor is seriously undergunned in this running sea-battle with your Rivrdog. My broadsides have already dis-masted his sloop and killed his quavering gun-crew. He stands alone on his quarterdeck, completely amazed that there is someone out there who can WRITE and is not an Ivory Tower Journalist, but he refuses to strike his colors. I guess I'll have to close and grapple, and take him alive. Someone might just want to ransom him, but Zounds, I can't, for the Life of me, figure out who that might be. Arrrgh, mates!

It's fun!

*****************************************************************************

UPDATE: 032112 1145 PDT:  Mr. Editor struck his colors. He published my letter, which can be seen here.The other writer, Don McIntire, is a local anti-tax activist who lays the wood to local goverment but good in HIS letter.

New political org - WillBoat - UPDATED!

A new 527 org, "WillBoat" has sprung up here in Stumptown. It's all set to challenge the Green Agenda, as it relates to stifling power boating opportunities in the Metro region.

Your blogger incorporated it and made the tax filing...no website yet, there are a bazillion other things to do, people to meet, dollars to beg for. My suits are pressed and my low-quarter dress shoes are smokin'!

I'm going to be busy, and there may be a little less blogging, although there probably WILL be a new blog to go with the new corporation.

For now, I'm using my amateur political org's email: [email protected] for initial comms with the org.

The new company email is [email protected]. I can also host email at the dot-coms and dot-orgs I just bought, but website development is still in pursuit of a designer, so I'll use Gmail for now.

Stay tuned!

Thursday Thuds #9

Thud the First: Is the sound of the brain-dead MSM being scooped by Kootenai County Idaho, where they have the good sense to advise their citizens that a Nationwide EAS test, the first one ever held across the entire country, is coming in a week. So, just how sharp is YOUR Emergency Services director? THUUUUD is the sound of my county and city ES people keeling over, brain dead zombies that they are, as they failed to get this word out. Go here to see the particulars of the test, and here to see the actual FEMA brag on it.

Thud the Second: This Thud is a pre-emptive strike against the GOP, which, I'd wager a substantial amount, will try to "dump Cain" over the trumped-up sex harassment innuendo and charges coming out of the "Politico" website. Politico, of course, is wholly-owned by the Democratic Party. If YOU, the conservative voter, let the Obama War Room get away with THIS political assassination, YOU, the conservative voter, are as guilty as they are for the success of this Nation's leftward swing into Socialism. Put it this way, my friends, it's been a while since a black man was pilloried this way...think Justice Clarence Thomas. Don't let it happen again. If the pollsters call YOU, tell them you're still with Cain.

Thud the Third: Is the sound that Gresham Outlook letter-writer J.R. Bartline's intellect SHOULD hae made hitting the cutting room floor at the newspaper editor's office. He doesn't know his law. As a cop, I could NEVER enforce noise ordinances, such enforcement was reserved for the County Nuisance Officer, now known as the Code Enforcement Officer. That person is NOT a cop. JR, git yer shit straight before you go lambasting the cops for not going after the Coffee-Can & rice-grinder car kiddies. We USED to appoint all Sheriff's Sergeants as Nuisance Officers, but I only ever heard of one Sergeant who ever checked out and used a decibel meter, and that was so he could use the ticket he wrote to pimp the other Sergeants with at coffee. The legal process for writing someone up for a noise violation was more involved than making a bust for a triple-ax murder.

Thud the Fourth: Is the sound a Liberal Knee-jerk makes when it encounters hard reality. This local blatt editorial about "please don't privatize our Library" falls on deaf ears at the Rivrdog blog. Some questions about the factual background: The Portland Metro Area is roughly the twentieth or twenty-second in size in the USA as metro areas go, and are SECOND in Library size behind New Jack Citeh? Why is that? Library a bit overblown, is it? Property taxes have paid for the Library forever, but now the Metro Government (we have a third level of muni governance in this blighted area, City, County and Metro) which runs the Library wants to divest itself of it. Strange thing, Metro keeps shedding responsibilities for running things the taxpayers want, but Metro's share of the tax base has never gone down, which forces the gaining jurisdictions to have to raise taxes....

Thud the Fifth: I can't let a Thurday Thuds go by without THUUUUDing the Flea Party. Such a non-violent group, they just celebrated violence by protesting in "sympathy" with the parallel group in Oakland, CA. Of course, Oakland was in the news for using the po-po to dislodge illegal Flea Party protesters from their muni center squares. Some of those Oakland protesters fought back, and so yestiddy, the local Flea Party "celebrated" their arrests. During the "celebration", some douchebag hosenose blind-sided a Portland Police Sergeant and tried to shove him under a bus, literally! The puke fled back to the Flea party camp, apparently failing to realize that hi-def video and facial recognition software would, like the Mounties, allow the PPB to get their man. He's lodged in the hoosegow now, but the po-po missed a bet: they should have charged him with attempted murder. He was pulled out of the OWS main camp, so perhaps the cops should add up the probably-considerable cost of the investigation and pursuit of the dipwad, and send THAT bill to OWS. Harboring a fugitive, hmmmm?

Thud the Sixth: Will probably be the loudest Thud ever, for it will be the earth-shaking sound of first, the European economies crashing in domino fashion, then ours, and finally China's. The EU still doesn't get it that their credit line is maxed out and they can't print any more Euros to prop up their Socialism. They just begged the Chinese to bail them out with REAL money, in which China is awash, but the Chinese people are furious, and want nothing to do with a European bailout. BTW, for the words "Chinese people", you can probably substitute "Chinese government", since the ChiComs are NOT known for letting their people talk for them...

The "General Assembly" of the Flea Party gets a challenge

I'm only following the Flea Party's antics insofar as they affect Stumptown, my home environment, so I can't tell you if the other Flea Party "occupiers without occupations" are similarly disposed, but of late, the press hereabouts has been treated to pronouncements from the local Flea Party's "General Assembly".

Yep, they have modeled themselves after that other grand rabble out in New Yawk Citeh, the Younighted Nations. Well, they have stolen the name of one of the UN's governing bodies, anyway.

So, the matter of damage to the parks where they are illegally encamped came up at Shitty City Hall over the weekend, and the Parks commissioner, Nick Fish, was so moved to send the Flea Party a bill for damage (so far) of $19,000 or so, served upon the encamped group.

The reply of the Flea Party to the bill? Yes, they DID reply, a strategic error on their part, since they are supposed to be soooooo unlike governments and corporations, and in doing so, they admitted being a party to the City's claim against them. They said they "would probably" pay "some portion" of the damages. It appears that the General Assembly discussed this (for about 3 hours) the other night. Interesting that they only do their group discussions at night, and that it's never been photographed, other than some harangue between anarchists which I saw on the telly last week. Don't our TeeVee stations possess low-light cameras?

Anyway, the existance of the General Assembly of the Flea Party means that the group can't claim that they are a unorganized mob of like-minded folks anymore, so, Portland, let's send more messages to the General Assembly.

Here's MY message: my little political outfit, Common Sense Gresham, has as much standing as the Flea Party, so I issue a challenge to the General Assembly. Send your best dissembler Assembly-person out to the community Media place in Gresham, and my gracious  TeeVee producer, who is also the Factor of the Gresham Tea Party, will arrange to tape a debate between the Flea Party and Common Sense Gresham. If you like, we'll have stakes: Media will arrange a panel of Judges to determine a winner, and the loser will support the winner's cause after debate.

Simple enough challenge, eh?

The question at debate is: Resolved: both living and protesting life in the USA requires working through the System. Common Sense Gresham will defend the System, the Flea Party will defend countering the System.

What say you, good Assemblers?

Friday Follies

My ass, meet the ground. I'm too old for Warehouseman duty, but I'm doing it so as to be able to store the Doctor-daughter's sports car in my over-crammed garage while she's on an overseas assignment. So, the Gorilla shelving I had installed to store a ton of tubbed-up dregs of my 68 years of life all comes down, and my rental 10X10 storage room gets totally reorganized to be able to handle all that extra stuff (I refuse to just rent a bigger room). All of this results in hard labor, and I'm feeling it.

I'm also having sympathy pains for LaMichael James #21, Oregon running back, and the best RB in the country now, who dislocated his elbow (on national TV) last night. THAT'S gotta hurt! I am also building a website (in Google-Blogger) for my Common Sense Gresham Project. Link when done. It's done!

So, if the above EXCUSES for missing Thursday Thuds are not sufficient, my apologies, and with the abject apology, I offer Friday Follies.

Folly the First: Goes to the Gummint of these You-Nighty States. Yesterday, Wall Street was moved to a moderate gain by news that "101,000 new jobs were created" last month. Hmmm...seems that almost half of that amount, 45,000 of those "new jobs", were Verizon employees who ended a strike-action and returned to work. How's that for cooking the books?

Folly, Part Deux: In today's fishwrapper, a story on how to make cutesey-kitschy crafts out of waste cat fur. I didn't know whether to laugh or toss my cookies when I read this, and my cat wouldn't give up his morning tear-around-the-house exercise period long enough for me to read it to him. Can we say "waste of time"? I knew we could.

Folly the 'toid: Goes to Tri-Met, the regional mass-transit authority, now best-known nationally not just for planting miles and miles of expensive streetcar and light-rail tracks all over the area, but for kicking young mothers with fussy babies off of buses. No, this isn't an issue of how legitimately the young mother was in this country, because it's happened more than once, so that leads us to believe that this might just be transit-authority policy. Well, in this writer's humble opinion, they're kicking the wrong people off of the transit. Squalling babies I can put up with, that's why I take my music when I'm riding. There's a volume-control app for that. The gangsters are another matter though, and while there's a .44 app for THAT, I'd prefer not to have to.

Folly Four: Goes, again, to Tri-Met. Tri-Met is funded by a tax on the payrolls of businesses, and there are taxing districts laid out to coordinate this tax. The districts are supposed to be there so that transit stake-holders can have their say in their districts. How very democratic of them. Well, there is one district, Boring (yes, THAT Boring, Oregon), where all the businesses are taxed on their payrolls, and yet they have no bus service to speak of. This bus service is the one that comes closest to my house, the #84 Boring Line. Until recently, it had ONE before-dawn outbound-to-Boring bus, and ONE after dark inbound-to-Gresham bus. This had gone on for over 20 years that I know of, and I think that the run was designed to co-incide with the shift times of a plywood mill in Boring, long since closed, which probably never had more than 50 workers on a shift, and probably 90% of them drove to work. So, a bunch of buisness owners get together and petition Tri-Met to end the service, which might, in a good month, transport 100 people between Boring and Gresham (I've never seen more than four on any bus since I've lived here for 17 years, and most of the time, the bus is empty). Tri-Met refuses, but increases the bus service to a total of 4 buses a day from 2, adding a run closer to actual business hours in each direction (making the line somewhat more useable, at least for transferring to the train to go downtown to Portland). A Board of some sort rules that the abandon-service request is legitimate due to the lack of patronage on the line, so it agrees to abandonment. Democracy works, right? Not quite. There are SEVEN more hurdles for the business owners to overcome before abandonment, and then, even if they clear all the hurdles, they have to pay the taxes for a full year before being able to stop. Presumably though, Tri-Met can stop the service in the meanwhile.

Folly the Fifth: The City Gummint of Portland, Oregon gets named here. The "Occupy Wall Street" rabble spread their protest to Portland yesterday, and several thousand of the usual Portland counter-culture mob took to the streets. Remember Portland being known as "Little Beirut" a while back? The mob that makes it Little Beirut is always ready to take to the streets. In this mob, you'll see many Pentagrams, indicating their thinking (or lack of same) as much as the Great American Chicken Track did for the past generation of street mobs. So, the mob wants to bring down Wall Street. Mind you, the Street is known for too many excesses, most being the propensity of corporate barons to act like, well, barons. The protestors didn't think it through, though. They are protesting corporate America, yet that same Corporate America makes it possible for them to NOT be out hoeing rows on food-farms for their very survival. Then, the City of Portland gets into this act. They waive the laws regarding camping overnight in the city Parks, allowing the protest to continue un-impeded today. The City Administration claimed, through a spokesmouth for Hizzoner the Lame-Duck Pedophile Mayor, that the laws were waived as a "Reward for non-violence". Well, there was no violence, because Hizzoner ordered his Police Chief to stay away from the protest sites! Since there were no cops involved, there were no arrests, and therefore no violence resisting them. Having now given the City's core over to the protesters, once wonders if the City will ever get it back, and what shape will it be in when they do?

Folly the Sixth: Wolves. That's right, wolves. North America's fearsome four-legged killing machine. Unlike the cougar, another serious predator, or the bears which will attack only if disturbed, wolves attack first, then eat what they've attacked, then have wolf babies and do it some more. For some idiot reason, the eco-freaks have decided that North American forests must again be populated with wolves, after the settlers of these lands (both native and interloper) worked so hard to get them out of the ecosystem. In Oregon, wolves are multiplying rapidly, but the State and Federal governments deliberately under-report them. If you believed these gummint liars, you would think that there are wolves only in a few wilderness areas where people don't have to live and work. That's a lie, a good friend (and one of the Chosin Few, and a native American to boot) tells me that there are several packs in the Bend-LaPine area of Central Oregon, a heavily populated area. None of these packs have ever been officially reported, even though various outdoor writers have acknowledged their presence. Here what they will do to your pets:

Ruby and Candy were bear-tracking dogs, working the scent of a bear in the ID mountains. The wolves eating them desisted when the hunter came up, but if he had shot a wolf, he would have been charged with a Federal felony, since the wolves have "endangered" status. You can't legally kill a wolf anywhere, for any reason, even to save your own life. The Government can and does kill a few to "manage" the packs (well, those packs they care to disclose), but only when the packs start to prey heavily on livestock, and even then, there's a lengthy process to follow to have the gummint thin a pack down. What will YOU do when you encounter a wolf in the wild?

Common Sense Gresham Project - first You Tube - UPDATED!

The first You Tube of the Common Sense Gresham Project is up on the 'Net.

Good thing it's Fall, and more clothing is in order. My carry arms will have to reflect the fact that my political fantasies are now on-line.

I've been told that my second one is even better than the first one, in technical presentation, anyway.

The first two are explanatory of the Project, and I'm gathering photos and video for the first thematic series, "What Price Green, Gresham" as we speak. I have taping scheduled in ten days.

The Project progresses.

*********************************************

UPDATE: 100711 1705 PDT: There's a rudimentary website going up on Google Sites, here. Note that the Home page is blank, but if you look on the sidebar, you see "Introduction to..." and that page has the basic message. Hey, I'm no website developer, I'm just feeling my way along for now!

Thursday Thuds #5

Thud the First: Do you fly places due to a business requirement? If so, I feel sorry for you. The rest of us consider flying optional, and with the twin reasons of TSA Security Theater and lack of pilot qualifications to actually FLY the aircraft, vice operating the flight control computers, I don't fly much anymore. "Thud", indeed. I hadn't realized that almost 1,000 people had lost their lives in the past 11 years due to six cases of aircraft computers shutting off, and their pilots being unable to continue controlled flight without them, but the expert in this vid lists the crashes. Scary.

Thud the Second: "Solyndra". This looked to be a "gotcha" on the Won, but the whole FUBAR was the predictable result of a Government give-away program that GW started, the "green bank". The problem with Government largess is that even after Congress authorizes the money to give away, there is no guarantee it will be done properly (think Fannie, Freddie and Sallie). In the case of this "green bank" that gave Solyndra the money in the first place (before the loan was politically tampered with, that WAS Obama's fault), the Feds running the program were just not up on the cutting-edge industries they were funding. If they had been, they would have seen that China had geared up to hugely over-produce solar-panels, and that the bottom would drop out of pricing of the panels because of oversupply. A REAL bank would have had the market assessed BEFORE making the loans, and would have assessed the prospective borrowers' business plans to see if those plans were capable of dealing with a depressed price point in their product line. So, it turns out that the Solyndra example is not only Chicago Politics gone mad, the whole idea behind a "green bank" was crazy to start with. "Green" must be evaluated for capitalization under the same rules as conventional industries, and this sad story tells us why.

Thud the Third: A crisis of failed expectations is the only thing that will sell the hugely-ballyhooed Amazon "Kindle Fire". You are getting less than half an Apple here, and although it's less than half the price of an I-Pad, the rule is, in technology, you either keep up with ALL the available advancements, or you wait for the next offering. This dud's going to make a loud "thud" when it fails. I have an early smartphone, the Samsung SCH-I760. It does everything the Kindle Fire will do and more. I keep it around as a PIM, and to play silly games on. I can even read on it (with good glasses). The ordinary Kindle is very good for what it does, and very basic, and has a basic price. The Fire does NOT make it as a tablet computer (no 3 or 4G connectivity), and you can get three Kindle Basics for it's price. THUD!

Thud the Fourth: The GOP Presidential race. The Thud is coming from Perry, who is a good 'ol boy, but lacks the sophistication to stay with either Romney INSIDE the political bull-ring, or Cain OUTSIDE of it. I like Cain, even though we tried hiring a Prexy based on his "outsideness" some 35 years ago, and the result was a disaster known as Jimmah.THUD! goes Perry (unless he stops tripping on his dick and suddenly finds a way to out-do both the weasely Romney AND the business-savvy Cain).

Thud the Fifth: My You Tube/Public Access TeeVee series. I had to rip up the script for the big opening segment, "What price Green"?  Download Common Sense Gresham 3 See Thud the Second, above. I'm still writing the series, but now I will have to re-focus this segment as a purely economic one if I want to still do it, and I don't have the chops for that. Not an economist. Nope, got a "C" in that course in collitch.

Thud the Sixth: The Boston Red Sox. What else can be said. Seven and twenty in the last, most important month of the season? The only bright spot: Jacoby Ellsbury: give him a bonus, fire the rest of the team and build a new one around Ellsbury.

Busy as...

...the proverbial six-peckered billy goat.

After getting back from 3 days in Eugene/Springfield yesterday, I settled down with my email and blogs, only to be called by a friend, who runs the Gresham Tea Party. She has been taking a course in TV production at the Community College hereabouts, and just graduated, and has bagged some studio time on Local Access Cable, so she asked me if I had anything I wanted to say in front of the camera (knowing your blogger to have the Gift of Gab).

Did I? You betcha, Red Ryder! I just happened to have an on-the-shelf project ready-made for local-access TV, and I dusted it off, spruced it up, and began to practice the three pieces I will shortly air.

"Common Sense Gresham" will be all about bringing a more limited and cheaper vision of Goverment to my humble burg, the City of Gresham. As you can see by that link, Gresham thinks big, way too big for it's tax-base, so, to keep it's big-thinkers on the City payroll, it has cut police, among other things. Gresham now has the ugly distinction of being the only City of any size in Oregon to have increased it's crime rate in all major FBI classifications, especially noteworthy since most of the cities actually reduced their crime rates.

As I see it, this problem is caused by the distinctly Willamette Valley way of thinking, and that starts with a "P" for "progressive". Progressive costs big money, and lacks common sense, for the most part, so now I'm going to raise my voice and show my ugly mug on TV, uttering those pearly tones to tell viewers about the mistakes that their City makes.

Here's the script for the intro to my project:

Download Common Sense Gresham Intro

Then the script for the next spot, where I introduce viewers to some basic bureaucracy theory:

Download Common Sense Gresham 2

Then a longer spot where I tackle the lack of common sense in the Green movement:

Download Common Sense Gresham 3

It's a long way from writing TV scripts (I'm fairly good at that) to smooth delivery without use of a teleprompter or reading from a page, and I have exactly 25 hours until I have to smile for the cameras and she yells "...and ACTION" (or whatever producers do, probably just gestures at the camera operator to roll tape).

I'm a busy man. We're going to upload all to You Tube, so I'll post linx to those when I have them. If you want to comment, I have established an email address, (translate, you know why and how) "Common.Sense.Gresham-at-gmail-dot-com" to accept those comments, which site will become a permanent part of the project file. This project may eventually run someone (maybe me, maybe not) for City Council, so I will have to keep good records.