Disaffected Liberals: Move To Portland, Oregon

[Doug_Tipple]

When I moved to Lafayette, Indiana seven years ago I was somewhat surprised to learn that our public city library does not charge fines for late books, CD's, DVD's, etc. I guess that the county has enough money that it doesn't need to collect fees to support the library. In contrast to when I lived in the inner city of Tucson, I don't hear gunshots at night, people don't have steel bars on their home windows, I haven't seen any gang graffiti, and there are no armed officers guarding the all-night convenience stores. I feel safe here. The only thing that I don't like is that it depends on the direction of the wind as to what my neighborhood smells like. The corn processing plants smell bad, and so do the hog farms. I can tolerate the smell of mowed grass mixed in with a little car exhaust. However, I do prefer the smell of the Arizona desert in Springtime.

[Lorenzo]

http://www.quaker.org/colleges.html

There's a list of Quaker schools.

That's it...George Fox University.

I never knew John Hopkins University was Quaker owned.
I toured the campus once and thought it was very nice, in fact quite advanced. I don't blame you for going to a cheaper private /Christian college. Sometime they are excellent, academically.

[IRTradRU?]

Well, um...I've never been to Maine or Oregon, but I've seen them on TV. And I still think Maine is prettier. Doesn't Martha Stewart live there? It'd have to be.

Actually, Martha S. lives in Connecticut, in the well-heeled town of Westport. (The type of place were having to ask, "How much is it?" means that you cannot afford it).

These days, she stays pretty close to home (if you know what I mean)

[Jack]

Well, um...I've never been to Maine or Oregon, but I've seen them on TV. And I still think Maine is prettier. Doesn't Martha Stewart live there? It'd have to be.

Actually, Martha S. lives in Connecticut, in the well-heeled town of Westport. (The type of place were having to ask, "How much is it?" means that you cannot afford it).

These days, she stays pretty close to home (if you know what I mean)

Oh. Haha. I forgot about that. Let me phrase it another way: Doesn't she own a house in Maine?

[Lorenzo]

Everytown USA is suffering from the infrastructure being ripped away because federal funds are being redirected to war (800 billion now)

Yikes! You hit on something there. Federal Grants are nothing like they use to be for poor small cities whose infrastructure is so old it needs replaced (streets, water, sewer, etc). The timing of this war is not good. If there's that kind of money to spend on imaginary defense, first strike or whatever it's called, you'd think the Gov't could come up with ways of funding smalltown America. State funds are in trouble too, so hundreds of thousands of dollars (per city) are no longer available through "equalization" distribution like it was about 5 years ago. Even though the big boys are spending their extra millions/billions on new cassinos in Las Vegas, there are exceptions.

Some wealthy donor (a Woman) just gave a small town next door a 1.5 million dollar library (Milton-Freewater, Oregon). And Bill Gates does distribute computers to schools, etc., I guess (lots of charities as I understand it). Seems like so little though. Think what could be done to rebuild small town America if only some this money were spent on infrastructure. As it is, many of these little towns just barely get by, and then some environmental group comes along and sues them for non-compliance with their new sewerage treatment plant's effluent. I know one city nearby that just paid some of these California lawyers about $860,000 for something like this (legal fees, etc.) all because the temperature of the effluent was ½ degree too warm, and failure to get a permit on time for irrigation (all due to a change in staffing). These env. groups go around and feed off of small cities tiny mistakes and inability to always function correctly. Then, they take the money and go buy these $75,000 cars, plus that hideaway in the Sierras, and start looking for a new victim soon as the money runs down.

[Cynth]

[Flyingcursor]

So people are blaming all their woes on so-called progressives.

Crime is up because of progressives? It would be nice to see a little train of logic between those two points. Any supporting premise would be nice. And, as a couple folks have mentioned cities not run by "progressive" governments are suffering. Can any of this be proven by references to city statutes etc?

[Cynth]

Hey, don't include me in that!
Oh, sorry, maybe you saw my post about my town.

[I.D.10-t]

I don’t see any “conservatives” mentioned. The two quotes sound like winy little men that use to be hippies that turned into yuppies and are as spineless as ever. (not that all hippies were spineless, just the ones that now claim that they are “conservative”)

The conservatives I know would never be chased out of their neighborhoods by some people that cannot even find a proper tailor! They would have either used their 2nd amendment rights or leased out their old house as a slum.

It irritates me what passes as a conservative these days. The conservatives that I knew fought against Tipper Gore and thought that freedom of movement was a good thing. Now they are the leaders in censorship and tracking movement! The conservatives I knew wouldn’t waste food, clothing, or energy. Now days you can call yourself a conservative as you talk on your cell phone in your Lexus with heated seats drinking your star bucks coffee.

I know “liberals” that are more conservative than the spineless, coke snorting, make the government police the city because it’s not my job, “Conservatives”.


PS Woke up this morning in an Irrational bad mood.

[Lorenzo]

Crime is up because of progressives?...Can any of this be proven by references to city statutes etc?

• Curfew - School Hours: Toppenish (Washington) Ordinance No. 95-9 enacts a curfew for persons under the age of eighteen during normal school hours on Monday through Friday except on a holiday or when school is not in session, or during school vacation. Passed 3-95. source

Toppenish defines curfew hours as between 10 pm and 5 am any day of the week, and. between 9 am and 2:30 pm Monday through Friday, except on a holiday. I knew some of the councilmembers at that time, and they were very conservative, but were able to cut the crime. Wait...maybe that's progressive!

Several other cities adopted similar curfews, this report gives some statistics on how effective they were in cutting crime.

Now, if we only had more daytime curfews for adults!

[susnfx]

Utah ranks 50th in the USA on education spending per child. Has for years. In fact, we'd have to spend $300 million just to come up to the next lowest state - Mississippi. But we don't raise taxes because we're chest-beating conservatives!

We've got a county government scandal with most county officials driving huge gas-guzzling SUVs and charging personal trips to the county (called "guzzle-gate" locally), the county mayor forced to resign for channeling county funds to her daughter, and on and on - seems like it's something new every day. Conservatives are just as likely to have bad local governments as progressives.

Every place is hurting and I don't see how it can all be thrown at the feet of the "progessives." They're not running every city, county, and state government in the nation.

Susan

[Jeff Stallard]

Someone change the title of this thread to "My team's awesome, and your team sucks."

[missy]

Heck - we have THREE parties in the city government here (Republican, Democrat, and Charterite) and it's still messed up.

While the infrastructure goes down the tubes - we argue about the COLOR to paint a bridge........
While five star restaurants are moving out of downtown, we argue about putting a smoking ban in place........
While again looking to set a record for shootings, we argue about the "possibility" that cops are profiling when they pull over a car.......


Of course, we are also the city that once upon a time voted Jerry Springer mayor!

Missy

[susnfx]

Someone change the title of this thread to "My team's awesome, and your team sucks."

Everybody's team sucks. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Susan

[jbarter]

Someone change the title of this thread to "My team's awesome, and your team sucks."

Everybody's team sucks. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Yayy! I finally understand American politics.
It's just the same as British politics