Option 1: Everybody just throw up their hands in dismay and let the fur fly.
Option 2: Adopt a “Stand by your man” attitude. Treat the current controversy as much ado about nothing, just “one bad night”. It wouldn’t be the first time the party ignored obvious personal failures by prominent members. Regardless of the current sturm and drang over Biden’s well-being and mental stability, just hang in there and hope the furor will dissipate, relying on the American public’s inability to focus on anything for more than a few days (or minutes). Count on spineless, wishy-washy electeds, such as Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), to back off their calls for Biden to step aside. Ignore the fact that Biden, even if he hangs on, may not be well enough to lead for another four years even if he wins.
Option 3: Keep up the practiced deception, despite the evidence. The Wall Street Journal reported today that aides, in order to protect the president from scrutiny (and keep their jobs and influence), kept a tight rein on his travel plans, news conferences, public appearances and meetings with donors. Ignore the fact that hordes of aides and elected Democrats have deceived the public and that most voters think Joe is just too damn old. Oliver Wiseman wrote today in The Free Press, “As Biden geared up for a second run, it was clear that any young, ambitious Democrat who dared to challenge him would be all but disowned by their party… In poll after poll, Democratic voters told the party they wanted someone other than Biden at the top of the ticket. But the party apparatus ignored them. Now look where we are.”
Option 4: Convince Biden to step down before the convention, making Kamala Harris President. Anoint Harris as the nominee at the party’s convention, in the midst of riotous pro-Palestinian demonstrations (Shades of the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, which lead to Hubert Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon in the general election) On June 27, the day of President Biden’s debate, Harris’ approval rating was 39.4 percent, while her disapproval rating was 49.4 percent.. ignore the fact that her approval numbers have actually fallen since the first presidential debate sparked calls for Biden to quit the race. According to FiveThirtyEight’s average, on June 27, the day of the debate, Harris’ approval rating was 39.4 percent, while her disapproval rating was 49.4 percent. On July 5, Harris’ approval rating stood at 37.1 percent and her disapproval rating was 51.2 percent, not a hopeful sign if she runs against Trump, whose approval numbers have actually been rising.
Option 5: Convince Biden to withdraw as the party’s nominee at the Democratic Convention and initiate an open convention, releasing the pledged delegates he has accumulated to date (3,894 of 3,937 committed so far). All those delegates could then vote for whomever they chose. That might, of course, run the risk of alienating minority voters who would resent the party automatically not elevating Kamala Harris (she wouldn’t even be assured of keeping the No. 2 job), setting off chaos on the convention floor and leaving the party’s eventual nominee just weeks to make his/her case to voters before the Nov. 5 election.
It wasn’t Oregonians who financed the campaign for the ill-advised Measure 110.
Out-of-state money financed the 2020 campaign for the measure that rashly decriminalized drug possession in the state. Of the nearly $6 million in cash and in-kind contributions received by the ballot measure committees, the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance contributed over $5 million, one-third of its total revenue in 2020 according to its filing with the IRS.
Out-of-state money is also behind Initiative Petition 17, a 2024 ballot measure in support of a universal basic income (UBI) that would feature a $750 payment to every Oregonian, regardless of their income, every year, paid for by an increase in the minimum tax rate for high earning Oregon businesses.
The measure, called the Oregon People’s Rebate, would increase the tax on corporations making more than $25 million a year in revenue (not profit) in Oregon, increasing their minimum tax rate from less than 1% to 3%. According to the measure’s backers, the increase would generate about $3 billion a year. Oregon’s current population is 4,237,256. A $750 payment to each residentwould total $3,177,942,000
“So your favorite local business won’t feel a thing,…other than every single one of their local customers, and employees, having an extra $750,” the backers say. “It’s that simple”.
‘Fact: The largest corporations pay less than 1% in Oregon tax,” the Oregon People’s website asserts. “We all pay between 5-10% in Oregon tax. Is that right? No! So we start to fix that.”
Oregon People’s Rebate was formed in Sept. 2022. It has received $425,696.50 in contributions to date in 2024, according to the Oregon Secretary of State.
Following a long tradition Hollywood and Silicon Valley political activism, the biggest 2024 contributors are affiliated with investor and universal basic income proselytizer, Josh Jones of Los Angeles, CA. An early adopter of cryptocurrency, Jones says on his LinkedIn site, “I’m a programmer/entrepreneur/investor/retiree who likes Universal Basic Income, National Popular Vote, Groo the Wanderer, (aerial) Gondolas, basketball, lunch, programming, the internet, robots, space, movies, and starting up stuff!”
Jones Holding LLC, a corporation based in Los Angeles, has donated $425,000 in 2024 and Jones Parking Inc. has contributed nearly $95,000. The next largest 2024 contributors are the foundation (Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity) and the mother of Gerald Huff, a former software engineer from California who was an ardent proponent of Universal Basic Income before he died in 2018. They have contributed a total of $90,000.
Calling the initiative a rebate is, of course, the first deception. Corporate taxes would cover the cost and the recipients of the largesse would be everyday Oregonians.
The assertion that Oregon corporations pay less than 1% in Oregon tax is dubious as well. According to the Tax Foundation, Oregon C corporations face a 7.6 percent corporate income tax and a 0.57 percent gross receipts tax, and if they’re in the Portland area, they are subject to a 2.6 percent business license tax, a 2 percent business income tax, a 1 percent Supportive Housing Services Tax, and a 1 percent Clean Energy Surcharge, all of which are additional taxes on net income.
The $750 payment might sound good,” the Tax Foundation says, “but if it raises the cost of goods, drives jobs and economic activity out of state, and puts Oregon-based businesses at a massive disadvantage with their out-of-state competitors, it’s likely to be an awful deal for Oregonians.”
Universal Basic Income is also far from a proven concept in addressing society’s ills.
“A UBI looks alluringly simple on the surface, since it provides cash unconditionally and with no targeting involved,” says a recent study by the staff of The World Bank.” But its implications are complex and largely unknown…It may affect, for instance, several labor market issues such as unemployment insurance, severance pay, unionization, contributory pensions, and minimum wages.”
“…hopes around a UBI as a societal revolution may be tempered by prosaic forces. After all, the ultimate generators of inequities may lie elsewhere, for example, in uneven access to education and health systems, low-paying and low-productivity jobs, poorly functioning markets, corruption, regressive tax codes, unequal pay, and social discrimination, among others.”
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a scathing critique of West Coast ideologues driving social policy. “…my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes,” he wrote. It shows “indifference to the laws of economics.”
Oregonians would be wise to firmly reject the ham-fisted efforts of wealthy Californians to mess with our economy.
The NW Natural Street of Dreams has long been a showcase for over-the-top homes in the Portland area. Thousands of curious visitors descend on the sites to explore unique residences during the event and nearby homeowners and local media have generally enthusiastically welcome them.
This year may be different as hordes of looky-loos descend on surprised nearby residents.
Produced by the Home Building Association of Greater Portland, the 2024 NW Natural Street of Dreams will feature more than 12 builders and 18 custom homes, luxury remodels, condominiums, and apartments scattered in and surrounding the Portland area, including including Portland itself, Hillsboro, Sherwood, Lake Oswego, and more. A ticket will provide entrance to all the locations to visit any time during the show hours.
The event, which will run from August 1 to August 18, 2024, will be open extended weekends only, Thursdays through Sundays, with varying hours and different open weekends.
Likely anticipating nearby homeowners and renters will be less than pleased with an invasion of their neighborhoods, the addresses for all homes on the tour are going to be a closely held secret until the eve of the event. They won’t be disclosed until emails are sent out the week before the show to all ticket holders.
Nan Binkley and Alec Holser of Lake Oswego have already sounded the alarm.
Four of the tour’s homes will be in established residential neighborhoods in Lake Oswego, they say, including one right next to their home. “We are sure our neighbors know next to nothing about this upcoming event,” they wrote in a June 19, 2024, Letter to the Editor published in the Lake Oswego Review. “Since when is it okay to let a commercial venture operate at such a large scale in small neighborhoods?” they wrote. “…it feels like the Home Builders Association is waiting until the last minute to apply for an event permit for something that will need shuttles, blocked roads and police oversight.”
Whose idea was this anyway? NW Natural and the Home Building Association of Greater Portland clearly didn’t think this through. As a result, they are likely in for a very public shellacking.
When Mississippi-based Carpenter Media Group announced its acquisition of Oregon’s Pamplin Media Group earlier this month, Todd Carpenter, the company’s chairman was effusive in his commitment to the continuation of quality journalism at Pamplin’s multiple Oregon new sites.[1]
“We are pleased to join this exceptional team of journalists, marketing and newspaper people in Oregon,” Carpenter said. “We share their high standards and business values, understand the importance of delivering high-quality journalism and marketing services to these communities and will work hard to support them in their efforts.”
That commitment may not hold long based on recent Carpenter actions at its Washington news properties.
According to the Seattle Times, Carpenter has just disclosed that it will lay off 62 people at Sound Publishing newspapers in Washington state, including more than half the unionized newsroom employees at the Daily Herald of Everett, WA., that it acquired in January. Sound Publishing operates 43 papers in Washington.
Sound Publishing papers were already thinly staffed, the Seattle Times said, with some employing just a single reporter, so cuts may be into the bone. “To me that doesn’t look like preserving local journalism,” said Kaitlin Gillespie, executive officer of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, “but what do I know?”
On June 21, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that the Herald published a story describing the owners as having “gutted” the newsroom—but the story then disappeared from the Web, apparently at Carpenter’s request. After editors threatened to walk out, the story was republished with some modifications.
Next up on the acquisition block could be the EO Media Group, that is known to be looking for a buyer. The EO Media Group, formerly known as the East Oregonian Publishing Company, is a newspaper publishing company based in Oregon that publishes 17 newspapers in Oregon and southwest Washington.
The loss of local news across the country has had far reaching implications. “As everyone knows, the internet knocked the industry off its foundations, ” James Bennet, former editorial page editor at The New York Times, wrote in The Economist in December 2023. “Local newspapers were the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms. As they disintegrated, the national news media lost a source of seasoned reporters and many Americans lost a journalism whose truth they could verify with their own eyes.”
Just since 2005, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists. So far in 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers have closed each week according to a State of Local News Report by Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. Most were weekly publications, in areas with few or no other sources for news.
“The underlying infrastructure for producing local news has been weakened by two decades of losses of newsrooms and reporting jobs,” noted an October 2022 report from the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. “And news organizations today…often sense they are swimming against the tide of economic, technological, political, and cultural changes that threaten the long-term viability of local news production.”
[1] Pamplin news sites include: The Portland Tribune, Lake Oswego Review, West Linn Tidings, Wilsonville Spokesman, The News-Times (Forest Grove and Hillsboro), The Times (Tigard and Tualatin), Beaverton Valley Times, The Outlook (Gresham), Sandy Post, Estacada News, Columbia County Spotlight (Scappoose and St. Helens), The Herald-Pioneer (Canby and Molalla), Woodburn Independent, Newberg Graphic, Madras Pioneer, Central Oregonian (Prineville), Milwaukie Review, Oregon City News, Sherwood Gazette, Southwest Community Connection (Portland), The Bee (Portland), Business Tribune and Your Oregon News.
In the 1930s, fashion entrepreneur Hugo Boss saw opportunity in Hitler’s rise. A German businessman and an early member of the Nazi Party, his clothing company used forced labor in German-occupied territories and prisoner-of-war camps to manufacture uniforms for the SS and the Wehrmacht.
The willingness of business interests to align themselves with dubious political leaders has a long history.
Some of America’s top business executives are carrying on the tradition today with their apparent willingness to reconnect with Donald Trump.
At a June 13 Business Roundtable meeting in Washington, D.C., about 80 CEOs met with Trump, including Apple’s Tim Cook, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and Xerox CEO Steven Bandrowczak.
The executives told the Wall Street Journal their willingness to listen to Trump stems from frustration with President Biden, a growing sense that Trump could win the presidency again and a desire to shape the Republican’s agenda before the election.
This warming to Trump comes despite his legacy of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric, his role in the chaos of Jan. 6 and his relentless effort to undermine the 2020 election and overturn the legitimate results. This is also a man who admired the Tiananmen Square massacre in China and told Xi Jinping that he had no problem with Xi putting ethnic/religious minorities into detention camps.
Larry Diamond, an expert on democratic governance at the Hoover Institution, told CNN that Trump, clearly a damaged man, “has massive responsibility for creating the normative atmosphere in which extremism, hatred, racial bigotry and violent imagery have prospered and metastasized.”
“Looking back at it now, the most surprising thing about the Donald Trump presidency is that we survived it at all: the lies, the chaos, the ignorance, ugliness, recklessness and lawlessness,” Bill Press, a senior political contributor on CNN, wrote in The Hill. Press noted not only “how bad the Trump presidency was, but how dangerous, operating without any limits, a repeat Trump performance would be.”
Too many American business leaders seem ready to ignore that ominous warning. They are doing so at great risk to themselves and America.
So much for the Oregon State Bar Association looking after the interests of lawyers’ clients.
On Oct. 9, 2023, I filed a complaint with the Association asserting that a number of Oregon lawyers are misrepresenting their credentials, that they are acting in an unethical manner by asserting to past, current and potential clients that their selection as “Lawyers of Distinction” by a Florida-based business is evidence of their legal skills and achievements.
On Feb. 17, 2024, I filed a second, more detailed complaint and followed up with an email asking whether the association intended to respond.
On May 20, 2024, Linn Davis, Assistant General Counsel and CAO Attorney, finally responded at length saying he found no reason to pursue any charges of professional misconduct by Oregon lawyers.
“You expressed concerns that Oregon lawyers are improperly using membership in “Lawyers of Distinction” to advertise their services,” he wrote in an email. “ “Lawyers of Distinction” appears to be a marketing firm that uses some criteria to determine what lawyers are eligible for promotion. Listings on the “Lawyers of Distinction” site include a statement regarding the criteria for promotion and a link to apply for consideration. I lack any sufficient basis for believing the statements there to be false regarding the organization or the significance of membership. I also lack evidence that any particular lawyer in Oregon has utilized this marketing tool in a misleading manner. I conclude that there is no sufficient basis to warrant a referral of your concerns to Disciplinary Counsel. Because I find no sufficient evidence of professional misconduct, I will take no further action on this matter.”
I beg your pardon!
You can’t find any information that challenges the legitimacy of Lawyers of Distinction? Give me a break.
The Lawyers of Distinction website says “…Members have been selected based upon a review and vetting process by our Selection Committee utilizing U.S. Provisional Patent # 62/743,254. The platform qenerates a numerical score of 1 to 5 for each of the 12 enumerated factors which are meant to recognize the applicant’s achievements and peer recognition. Members are then subject to a final review for ethical violations within the past ten years before confirmation of Membership. Nomination does not guarantee membership and attorneys may not pay a fee to be nominated. Attorneys may nominate their peers whom they feel warrant consideration. The determination of whether an attorney qualifies for Membership is based upon the aforementioned proprietary analysis discussed above.”
Phew! Sounds complex and rigorous.
Don’t believe it.
Essentially, it’s just pay-for-play. Apply, pay the annual membership fee and you’re in. It’s like a diploma mill, an outfit that claims to be a higher education institution, but only provides illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee.
Want evidence?
Some lawyers at the Davis Law Group in Seattle nominated Lucy, the office’s 5-pound teacup poodle, and paid the membership fee. Lucy didn’t go to law school, but she passed her state ‘bark exam, the law firm said, had been recognized by the legal community as a ‘top dog’ and was a member of the King County Bark Association.
Lucy, a Lawyer of Distinction
Lucy, recipient of a Juris Dogtor, was accepted. Lawyers of Distinction sent Lucy a plaque naming her one of the top 10 percent of attorneys in the country and congratulated her on Twitter. Suffice it to say, Lucy was thrilled.
As for Davis’ assertion that he lacked evidence that any particular lawyer in Oregon has utilized this marketing tool in a misleading manner, is he blind? Does he not know how to search websites? All he needed to do was check out the Lawyers of Distinction’s website and the websites of Oregon lawyers who are members.
For example: Casey Baxter, the founder of Baxter Law, LLC in Bend, lists “Lawyers of Distinction Award” under HONORS & AWARDSon his website; Portland DUI lawyer Andy Green and Tammi Caress, the Principal Owner of Caress Law, PC in Portland, feature the Lawyers of Distinction logo on their websites.
The Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct (as amended effective January 1, 2024) for Oregon attorneys is explicit about how attorneys must communicate about themselves:
Rule 7.1 A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material representation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make a statement considered as a whole not materially misleading.
Rule 8.4 It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to…engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s fitness to practice law.
An Oregon attorney claiming he or she is a exceptional because of membership in “Lawyers of Distinction” is clearly making “a false or misleading communication” and engaging in “professional misconduct” involving “dishonesty” “deceit” and “misrepresentation”.
According to the Florida Division of Corporations, “Lawyers of Distinction Inc.” is a private for-profit company with a principal address of 4700 Millenia Boulevard, Suite 175, Orlando, FL 32839.
Robert B. Baker, at the same address, is listed as the Owner in the company’s 2023 Annual Report.
But don’t go to the office address expecting to be ushered into a space with a clean, modern aesthetic that communicates success. The address is only a virtual office. The site offers a “Platinum Plan” for $69 a month and a “Platinum Plan with live receptionist” for $194 a month.
Robert “Robbie” Brian Baker, a member of the Florida Bar (Bar #992460), is also the founder and owner of Baker Legal Team at 2255 Glades Rd., Ste 330-W, Boca Raton, FL 33431. According to the Baker Legal Team website, he has a degree from Boston University School of Law in 1989 and a B.A. from Ithaca College. He began his career, the website says, as a prosecutor working as an Assistant District Attorney in Kings County, New York.
As an aside, the firm’s website has the chutzpah to highlight that it’s a member of Lawyers of Distinction.
If the Oregon State Bar Association and its 15,000 members are honestly committed to accountability, excellence, fairness, and leadership in the legal profession, as it claims, they should insist that Oregon attorneys halt falsely advertising themselves as Lawyers of Distinction or holders of other unearned accolades.
It’s common sense. Responsible lawyers and their association should maintain the integrity of the legal profession. To do otherwise diminishes the law.
I’m a political junkie. Have been forever. When I was a kid, i went with my father to drop off Eisenhower/Nixon campaign material at homes in our neighborhood, in the 8th grade a local paper printed my first letter to the editor on a national policy dispute, and my career included serving on the staff of a committee of the House of Representatives. Even now, Lord knows how many political news sites I monitor.
But I’m a peculiar outlier. Face it, most folks could care less about politics most of the time. They ignore day-to-day political drama. A recent Gallup poll found that only 32% of Americans pay close attention to politics. I think it’s less.
I bring this up because some may think the current dust-up over campaign contributions in the Jamie McLeod-Skinner/Janelle Bynum Democratic primary race in Oregon’s 5th District is going to influence a lot of voters.
I doubt it.
The Democratic establishment, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Gov. Tina Kotek (D) are backing Bynum. But now a new super PAC, Health Equity Now, has reserved about $352,000 in advertising with spots supporting McLeod-Skinner, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. The ads began running in the Portland market on Wednesday.
The PAC didn’t register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) until May 3, allowing it to avoid filing information on its donors before the election occurs next Tuesday, May 21.
News media have jumped on the story. OPB said the whole affair is “raising questions about whether Republicans are trying to tilt the scales in the contest.” The Oregon Capital Chronicle Outside reported the outside money money “…spurred accusations from Democrats that Republicans are meddling to ensure incumbent GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer faces a weaker opponent in November. “
ABC News reported a Bynum spokesperson said the ad buys “certainly looks like there are ties to Republicans.”
“Let us be crystal clear, Jamie McLeod-Skinner is House Republicans’ dream opponent because they know they can beat her — making this shady GOP election meddling in a Democratic primary all the more alarming,” said Blakely Wall, a spokesperson for the Bynum campaign.
So why do I think this tempest won’t much matter?
Sure, there are incessant polls on political opinions, but that doesn’t mean people are constantly paying attention to politics in general or political shenanigans in particular.
“We often talk about high-information voters versus low-information voters,” Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told Columbia Journalism Review. ” What we leave out is the no-information voter. They’re the ones on social media or watching these crank news shows from the far right.… They actually know less than they would if they didn’t watch news at all. I’m very pessimistic.”
Most Americans think the country is in deeply polarized times, but sixty-five per cent of respondents to a Pew survey last year said that they were “exhausted”, not absorbed, when thinking about politics. It’s probably worse now.
Even if some of our population have some interest in public policy, it’s hard to find it. A recent New Yorker article referred to when the late Neil Postman, an education scholar at New York University, wrote of the distinction between George Orwell and Alduous Huxley’s visions of the future. “Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us, Postman wrote. “Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
In the Internet/AI age, meaningful political information is “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” And what does get through is more likely to be disinformation or to stir cynicism. A recent University of Michigan study shows that people regularly on social media were exposed to more political attacks and came away more cynical and distrustful of politic. Instead of becoming more involved, that can make them frustrated, disgruntled and disengaged.
Then there’s the diminishing availability of real political news. Newspapers, once the main source of such news for everybody from business leaders to rural smalltown farmers, are a dying breed. And many of the ones that survive are on a resources diet. The Oregonian, once a powerful force with statewide coverage, is a shell of its former self.
And if you are reading this, you are a tiny, and shrinking, part of politically engaged Oregonians.
So don’t be surprised if the hullabaloo about McLeod-Skinner’s fundraising causes barely a ripple in the general public’s views on the campaign. That’s just the way things go.
In its early years, the electric vehicle start-up Fisker tried to stimulate public interest by showing off a concept sports car, the EMotion, going down a desert road in a flashy 2017 marketing video. The problem, revealed by the Wall Street Journal, – the car in the video didn’t have a motor or battery. It was propelled by people hiding inside who were pushing it forward with their feet through a hole in the floor.
To say the least, it was a deceptive start of a good idea, a worthy concept that stumbled in its execution.
Portland’s voter education project on the city’s new ranked choice voting system to be utilized in the November 2024 election seems to be like that.
A Request for Proposals on a voter education contract “…from qualified proposers with demonstrated experience in voter and community education and outreach” went out on April 7, 2023 asking that proposals be submitted by May 3, 2023. The intent was to post an intent to award the contract to a specific bidder on June 9, 2023.
The first slip-up occurred when a winning bidder wasn’t chosen until July 2023.
The winner of the $675,000 contract was United Way of the Columbia-Willamette in collaboration with Democracy Rising, Portland United for Change (a fiscally sponsored project of the United Way) and Brink Communications of Portland. United Way of the Columbia-Willamette was the sole legal entity awarded the contract and has oversight over it.
Portland United for Change was tasked with leading the day-to-day management of contract activities and to support subcontractor grant recipients working to implement the education and outreach effort for harder-to-reach voters. Samantha Gladu, Coalition Director at Portland United for Change, was expected to manage the overall project.
Democracy Rising was expected to apply its expertise in voter education efforts in five states on ranked choice voting.
Brink, which described itself as “…a queer woman-owned, BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+-led marketing and communications agency united around justice, equity and solidarity”, was expected to provide four members of a six-person Project Team working on the voter education effort.
A second slipup occurred two months later, however, when Brink, a 12-year-old 43-employee firm, unexpectedly ceased operations. “The disruptions of the pandemic, the recent economic downturn and upheavals in the marketing industry have been very difficult for our small business,” the company said in a LinkedIn post.
Rather than switch to another bidder, the city left it to United Way to find a replacement firm for Brink. It took until January 2024 for United Way to accomplish that by selecting Hearts & Minds Communications LLC of Portland, a company founded in 2021 which describes itself as “…a growing collective of communicators, designers and strategists united by our approach to center racial justice in our work”.
Hearts & Minds has not responded to inquiries seeking information on who on its staff would replace the Brink employees serving on the Project Team, details on their roles and qualifications and specifics on their projected hourly rates.
Then another problem.
Two months later, on March 13, 2024, Samantha Gladu, Coalition Director at Portland United for Change, abruptly left the organization and transitioned to another employer. She had been expected to be the day-to-day contact with the city, helping to coordinate all the meetings and directing the appropriate people to meetings regarding various elements of the project.
As of May 16, 2024, United Way had still not replaced Gladu and it’s not clear who’s running the show. “I think we can all agree that this is a very competitive market for employees, and we are not at all surprised that Samantha was poached away from her role at United Way. United Way is recruiting for this position,” said Shoshanah Oppenheim, Charter Transition Project Manager with the city.
All this turmoil occurred while the original timeline for the entire project had envisioned that two key phases of the project would be underway.
First, Nov. 2023 – Feb. 2024 was supposed be spent identifying and engaging local voter education partners, building out infrastructure and collateral for different campaign focuses and working with election officials on ranked choice voting implementation.
Then, during Feb. 2024 – June 2024, the project team was expected to focus on outreach to coalition partners to extend capacity, the recruitment and training of organizational and volunteer leaders on voter education, and engagement of stakeholders and media to facilitate their understanding of the new election system.
The winning bidder was expected to use this time to offer sub-grants to “…local non-profit and community-based organizations who can assist in disseminating this vital information through trusted mediums to members of populations who traditionally lacked access to inclusive voter education and are most likely to benefit from focused, supplemental outreach.”
United Way’s original bid said the voter education effort aimed “to be operating on all cylinders” in June. The way things are going, it’s doubtful that will be the case.
In 2020, Donald Trump filed several lawsuits in an effort to stop vote-counting or force recounts after his campaign said post-Election Day increases in vote totals for President Joe Biden — many of which came from mail ballots, that were counted following the in-person votes — were evidence of fraud.
None of the lawsuits succeeded.
But Trump has continued to denigrate mail-in voting and promulgate theories that the 2020 election was contaminated by voter fraud, and his true believers are falling in behind him. (A humorous aside is that many Republican groups are also spending millions of dollars this year promoting voting by mail to spur turnout, particularly in competitive states)
Even though elections researchers have demonstrated that making it easier to vote by mail generates higher voter turnout for both parties, and incidences of fraud are rare, in December Trump called for an end to mail-in voting entirely. Following a “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face” strategy, he claimed in March that “any time the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating”.
Some election experts expect Trump to prematurely claim victory on the basis of early in-person votes in 2024 and to litigate the election going forward.
Now we have all three Republicans running to be Oregon Secretary of State, which oversees the state’s elections, hyping claims of voter fraud and affirming their desire to end Oregon’s long tradition of running elections by mail.
The three Republicans in the primary race are Beaverton real estate broker Brent Barker, state Sen. and rancher Dennis Linthicum and Salem business analyst Tim McCloud.
Brent Barker’s campaign website spells out his support for:
Statewide In-Person Voting
Limiting mail-in ballots to Military and Absentee Voters
Resetting all voter registration rolls to zero and requiring everybody to re-register
Hand counting tally results for all elections with observers
Restore election integrity and promote diligent custodial ownership of election records
Advocate for in-person local precinct voting with ID
Safeguard the elections for the integrity of every Oregonian’s vote
Tim McCloud has not set up a website with campaign pledges. He was, however, a plaintiff in a lawsuit intended to end mail voting and electronic voting tabulation in Oregon.
A federal judge tossed the lawsuit, saying “generalized grievances” about the state’s elections aren’t enough to give a group of unsuccessful Republican candidates and other election deniers standing to sue.
McCloud has also commented on election issues in general. In responses to a questionnaire from KATU News, he said, “I will heavily fortify our election system against attacks, and implement fail-safe systems to prevent any disruption of our election system by bad actors. Additionally, I will advance all efforts for more access to Oregon’s public elections records, including more transparent processing of ballots, and conducting routine and thorough voter roll audits statewide.”
Whatever the merits, or failures, of mail-in voting, one thing remains true. As political analyst Larry J. Sabato, has said, “Every election is determined by the people who show up.”
At least that’s the message I get from the decision by Vogue’s Anna Wintour to choose Shou Chow, TikTok’s chief executive, as an Honorary Chair of this year’s over-the-top Met Gala in New York City tonight.
TikTok declined to reveal to The New York Times its financial contribution to the Met Gala, but sponsors in previous years are known to have each kicked in roughly $5 million (TikTok and China are probably delighting in how cheaply the glitterati can be bought off).
All the official co-chairs of the splashy event – Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny and Chris Hemsworth – are likely on board, too, caring less about matters of substance than celebrity visibility.
All this at the same time as Washington, D.C. is focused on TikTok’s corrosive influence in the United States, its massive collection of potentially sensitive user information and its ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance. Those concerns have prompted the U.S. government to pass legislation banning the social media platform unless it is sold to a government-approved buyer.
China has criticized the congressional action, saying it undermines US claims of support for free speech, an ironic assertion since speech is tightly controlled in China, where the government maintains a vise-like grip on media, the internet, and personal expression and any dissent can result in arrest, torture and imprisonment. Moreover, American platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) have been banned in China for years.
(TikTok filed a federal lawsuit on May 7, 2024 challenging the constitutionality of the new law. The lawsuit accuses the government of trampling on TikTok’s First Amendment rights—as well as the free-speech rights of Americans—under the banner of national security)
Still, the style elite seem perfectly happy to help TikTok elevate its presence and influence, national interests be damned.
It may be because in their jaded eyes they see moral equivalence between the United States and authoritarian countries such as China, even though the evidence is clear that, as Douglas Murray, a British political commentator, wrote in The Free Press, “We have enormous moral authority, and…there is an oceanic gulf separating the many failures and shortcomings of the United States and the intentional and wanton taking of human life that is all too common in more authoritarian climes.”
It brings to mind Donald Trump’s admiration of authoritarian leaders. In a 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox, Carlson asked, “How smart is [Xi]? Could you tell?” “Top of the line,” Trump replied. “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find [them], there’s nobody like that: the look, the brain, the whole thing.”
You may think that elites elevating questionable or authoritarian figures shouldn’t be of any concern. But people who enable dark forces, and even cheer them on, are ignoring the threat that China poses to democracy and rule of law around the world.
China’s abdication of its responsibilities under the 1985 Sino-British Joint Declaration, where China promised to preserve the judicial system, legislative and executive autonomy, and all the key freedoms to which Hong Kong people had become accustomed, is hard evidence of China’s intentions.
The fact is that dismissal of China’s threat is naive. China is seeking to displace the United States and restore China to its rightful place. Lionizing people like Shou Chow ignores that reality.
ThinkingOregon 