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Made in Old Town: Just More Corporate Welfare

During the recent Legislative session, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 5701 to set aside $2 million for the Old Town Community Association. The bill proposed putting the money toward establishing a 30,000-square-foot green manufacturing facility in the Old Town section of Portland that would help get new companies off the ground and existing companies develop new products and technologies for the footwear and apparel industry.

WHY?

The proposed facility would potentially be part of a $125 million Made In old Town (MiOT) project that would eventually include 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space, 120,000 square feet of housing and 145,000 square feet of office and retail space in eight largely vacant Old Town buildings.

MiOT’s backers need to raise $5 million from the private sector to fund the green manufacturing facility, which they hope to open by this fall. Elias Stahl, a MiOT Board Member and CEO and co-founder of  Hilos, an Old Town-based 3D-printed footwear company, told The Oregonian in March he was “extremely confident” they could raise the money.

In early April 2024, it looked like Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek might throw a monkey wrench into the deal when she said she was considering vetoing the $2 million item. “My office is awaiting more information from the development group about the viability of financing for the entire project before I make my decision,” Kotek said.

But on April 17, 2024, Kotek announced she would allow the expenditure for the project to move forward. “I am grateful to legislators for responding to our state’s most pressing needs,” she said. “In the days following last week’s notice of potential vetoes, I received adequate information to have confidence in signing…Senate Bill 5701…”

On April 11, 2024, Vince Porter, Kotek’s Economic Development and Workforce Policy Advisor, informed the governor and key staff that he had received a letter from the Old Town Project and followed up with a conversation with Jonathan Cohen, the Old Town Community Association’s treasurer, who made a “commitment that they will not request (state) funding until they have raised their own funding,” referring to the $5 million to be raised from the private sector.

 “I think the letter along with written confirmation from me will meet the requirements we specified for the project, Porter said. “ Hopefully you all feel the same. Jonathan will provide documentation during the DAS funding process demonstrating that the other financing is secured to match the state funds. This will include “seller financing” which they are counting on to complete the project.”

The MiOT project’s website announces it will be building “An Innovation Campus in a Thriving Neighborhood Creating the Next Generation of Footwear & Apparel.” The website says MiOT is currently accepting tenancy applications, with various lease terms and spaces available, and that MiOT plans to announce the first cohort of brands that have signed on as founding members early in 2025.

Democratic State Treasurer-elect Elizabeth Steiner, who previously served as a state senator representing Oregon’s 17th district, including the Old Town neighborhood, said in April, “As somebody who both cares about her district and cares about the City of Portland and the state as a whole, creative ideas like that—that revitalize a part of the city that has really been neglected, if not abandoned for a long time, and do so in a way that meet a bunch of different goals simultaneously—are a very exciting prospect for me.”

The collaborative nature of the project, its potential to revitalize a neighborhood and support re-shoring manufacturing in the U.S. has merit. But, given all the state’s “pressing needs” and the wealth and resources already available to MiOT’s key backers, plus the presence of hundreds of companies in the Portland metropolitan area tied to the footwear and apparel industry, why did the governor sign this ill-advised bill that would siphon money from Oregon taxpayers for private gain?

I can understand why politicians like Steiner would go for MiOT. Politicians love the spectacle of ribbon-cutting ceremonies and the prospect of jobs (and voters). But that shouldn’t drive this corporate welfare. that is more “free money” than “seed” money. Oregon does, indeed, have other “pressing needs” that should take a higher priority in the allocation of public dollars.

If the players behind the entire MiOT project are confident of its viability, let them provide the start-up money. If they make their vision a reality, taxpayers will have been spared the diversion of public dollars and the backers of the project can take full credit for MiOT’s success.

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Donald J. Trump’s Dec.16, 2024 Press Conference: Falsehoods, Distortion, Fakery and Deceit

“Nuttiness may be subjective, but truthfulness is not”

Bill Scher, Politics Editor, Washington Monthly

On Dec. 16, Donald J. Trump held his first press conference since his Nov. 5, 2024 election. Wishing to be of service to those of you who were too busy or not inclined to tune in, I reviewed the entire deluge of Trump’s rambling thoughts:

  • “We had no wars when I left office and now the whole world is blowing up.“

Truth: When Trump left office in early 2021, US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. About  200,000  US troops were deployed overseas, including 6,000 – 7,000 American troops spread across Africa, with the largest numbers concentrated in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa,  about 50,000 troops at roughly two dozen bases across Japan and about 2,000 Marines in  northern Australia 

  • “Lot of people don’t realize, but we did 571 miles of wall (on the Mexican border).  I built much more than I said I was going to build.”

Truth: Early in his 2016 election campaign, Trump pledged to build a wall along the entire 2000-mile length of the border with Mexico. He later clarified he’d build a wall covering half of that distance. In his State of the Union address in February 2020, he pledged to build “substantially more than 500 miles” by January 2021.

Various types of fencing totaling 654 miles, running through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, were already in place before Trump became president in 2017.  At the end of Trump’s first term, the Trump administration said it completed more than 400 miles of border wall, but only 80 miles of new wall barriers were actually built where there were none before. The vast majority of the construction replaced existing structures at the border that had been built by previous US administrations.

  • “We’re also going to create clean coal. Clean coal is something that has really taken over. …we’re going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others, Wyoming.”

Truth: The idea of “clean coal” is generally considered not viable, as current technology cannot fully mitigate the environmental impacts of burning coal, making it essentially a marketing term with little practical application; while some technologies can reduce emissions, the process remains too expensive and energy-intensive to be considered truly “clean” on a large scale, with many experts stating that “clean coal” is a myth

  • “So we’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion and it’ll have no impact. Actually. It’ll make life better, but it’ll have no impact on people.  We will never cut social security or things like that. It’s just waste, fraud and abuse.” 

Fact: This would certainly run counter to Trump’s actions in his first term, during which he added $8 trillion to the national debt,  despite having promised to run budget surpluses.  The federal government is now burning through $6.8 trillion annually and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Trump’s proposed policies would add an estimated $7.7 trillion to debt over the next decade. Cutting $2 trillion in one year would be impossible, as well, given that Trump has already said he’s not going to touch Social Security or Medicare., the two largest government programs, and interest payments, which account for 13% of federal spending, can’t be cut either (Unless the government plans to default on the national debt). Discretionary spending accounts for only about 25% of total expenditures, but that includes defense, which Congress has no inclination to cut.

  • “We’ll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration.”

Truth: Over the past 30 years, the Border Patrol’s budget has grown more than sevenfold, the number of agents stationed along the southwest border has quadrupled, the border wall has been strengthened and lengthened, and increasing amounts of technology have been used to deter illegal migrants, but they have kept coming, more and more of them from countries other than Mexico. Also complicating the situation, a substantial number of the illegal immigrant population in the United States came legally on work visas and stayed after they expired.  The government has been terrible at finding and deporting these people. 

  • “We had no problems, we had no inflation. We had no inflation. We had at less than 1%. A perfect number.”

Truth: The Consumer Price Index rose 7.8% during Trump’s first term. The CPI rose an average of 1.9% each year of the Trump presidency according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was about the same as the average under Obama (1.8%) and below the average of 2.4% during George W. Bush’s years.

  • Trump responding to a question, “Do you believe there’s a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there’s a link?” Trump: We’re looking to find out. …There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”

Truth: Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD.), but to date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD, according to the federal Centers for Disease control and Prevention. 

Two studies, referred to as the Wakefield Studies, have frequently been cited by those claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Both studies are considered critically flawed. In the first study, published in 1998, Wakefield’s hypothesis was that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine  caused a series of events that include the development of autism. The study was subsequently retracted; in scientific terms, this means that the paper is not part of the scientific record because it was found to be based on scientific misconduct. In this case, the studies were deemed fraudulent and data misrepresented. The second study, published in 2002, which examined the relationship between measles virus and autism, was also critically flawed. Meanwhile, several studies have been performed that disprove the notion that MMR causes autism.

  •  Trump responding to a question – “Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?” Trump – “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person.”

Truth: Mandating vaccinations of schoolchildren saves lives. Schools and broader communities rely on high immunization rates to keep vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading. When more children are immunized, the risk for everybody declines, particularly for people with weakened immune systems and chronic medical conditions like lung, heart, liver, kidney disease or diabetes. The more parents who decline to vaccinate their children, the greater the risk that infection will spread in the community.

  • “Europe doesn’t use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do.”

Truth: Pesticides are still widely used in Europe, with the agricultural sector relying on significant volumes of chemical pesticides to maintain crop yields, although the EU has regulations in place to limit their use and is actively working to reduce pesticide reliance because widespread pesticide use is major source of pollution, according to the European Environment Agency.

  • ” They’re still counting the vote in California.“

Truth: California did take longer to count votes in the recent federal elections than other states, but the California Secretary of State had certified the 2024 election results prior to Trump’s news conference.  

  • “We got the biggest tax cuts in history.”

Truth: Trump’s tax cut s in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.  When the Congressional Budget Office reviewed tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023, it found that two other tax cut bills were bigger – former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut was the largest in U.S. history, reducing revenues by $19 trillion over a decade. 

  • The US took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs “from China” during Trump’s first term and “no other president took in 10 cents, not 10 cents.”  before he was president.

Truth: First, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics the revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports come from the importers, not China. Importing businesses pay the tariffs and then have to decide whether to bear some of the costs or pass any portion of the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Second, according to the Institute, Americans have been paying tariffs on imports from China for decades., going as far back as the late 19th and early 20th centuries and more recently during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. 

And we’re going to have four more years of this.

Admoniti estis.

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Contempt of Congress: Donald Trump’s Cabal of Co-Conspirators

Nancy Rommelmann, an American writer, recently attributed Hunter Biden’s failures to “entitlement and soul rot” and said his situation was a classic case of a boy who has never reached adulthood. “I can think of few things worse than never growing up,” Rommelmann wrote. 

Donald Trump, who holds everlasting grudges, enjoys humiliating people and acts like a schoolyard bully, has never grown up either. He’s a man-child. His childish, and mean-spirited attitudes are reflected in many of his selections of key people to exercise influence in his administration. 

How else to explain his apparent determination to ensure loyalty among his key advisors by creating a kakistocracy, a state governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.

if Trump gets all his key nominees for leadership positions, including what journalist Tina Brown calls his “cast of crazies” who need to be confirmed by the Senate, our democracy will be severely diminished. 

Kash Patel, Trump’s choice for FBI Director, wants to go after the media.  “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” Patel said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” Writing in Bulwark of Trump’s choice off Patel to lead the FBI, Jonathan Last said   “… the actual incoming president of the United States has signaled that he’s going to fire the director of the FBI for [reasons] and replace him with a psychopath.” And Patel was hardly admired in Tump’s first term. During Trump’s first term, Attorney General William Barr and CIA Director Gina Haspel thought so little of him that they threatened to resign if Patel was imposed on them as deputy FBI or CIA Director, respectively.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated to be Health and Human Services Secretary, is a much-ridiculed conspiracy theorist, vaccine skeptic and dumper of a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park. “There’s no telling how far an anti-vaxxer & fringe conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. could set America back in terms of public health, reproductive rights, research, & more,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

 “Kennedy has few good things to say about almost any technological invention,” Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic. “”He has voiced histrionic fears about nuclear reactors, said that Wi-Fi can cause “leaky brain,” suggested that chemicals in the water supply might make kids transgender, wondered aloud if Prozac might contribute to school shootings, and posted support for the so-called chemtrails conspiracy, which holds that the government uses the contrails, or condensation trails, of jetliners to spread toxic chemicals.”

Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, is another problematic case. “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools,” says National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle.

At one point, professional wrestling mogul McMahon said she didn’t know her claim she had earned a degree in education from East Carolina University was false. When Connecticut’s Hartford Courant newspaper reported that her degree was actually in French. McMahon said she thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student-teaching and had a certificate to teach. 

Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, who has never worked in the intelligence community, has been criticized for making laudatory comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Gabbard was “parroting fake Russian propaganda.” She has also spoken favorably of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has carried out a brutal war against his country’s people. In 2015, Gabbard was widely criticized by members of her own party when she urged the Obama administration to halt its support for  Syria’s opposition movement against Assad and in 2017 she made an unannounced trip to Syria in 2017 to meet Assad, despite the fact the U.S. had severed diplomatic relations with Syria.

Russ Vought, Trump’s nominee for Office of Management and Budget Director, was a co-author of Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation blueprint for Trump’s hoped-for second term. Which Trump vigorously disavowed during his campaign.  Vought supports a a broad expansion of presidential power, including giving Trump the ability to fire thousands of federal workers.

Mehmet Oz, a snake oil salesman with a history of and outright quackery and championing pseudo-scientific treatments, has been proposed as leader of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which provide health care to America’s most vulnerable.

Pete Hegseth, a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend”, whom Trump has nominated to serve as Secretary of Defense, has questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes. And The New Yorker ‘s Jane Mayer just reported, “A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.”

In Hegseth’s case, there’s speculation that Trump continues to support him in the face of opposition because it takes some of the heat and media attention off other unqualified candidates, particularly Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Nominee for U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has a lot of baggage, too. In a Truth Social post, Trump praised Charles Kushner as a “tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.” Trump pardoned Charles Kushner during his first term for a 2005 federal conviction on 18 counts of assisting in the filing of false tax returns, retaliating against a cooperating witness (his own sister) and making false statements to the Federal -Election Commission (FEC).

The retaliation charge was related to a beyond -the-pale admission by Charles Kushner that he had paid a private investigator $25,000 to have a prostitute seduce his sister’s husband, covertly film them having sex and have the videotape mailed to the cooperating witness.

Even with all these severely challenged nominees, it’s no sure thing that Trump’s -proposed appointees, what television host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel has described as a “clown car”, will be held in check by the Senate’s reluctance to challenge him or by an aghast public. 

All of it is enough to drive a concerned citizen to existential despair. 

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Post-Election Political Fundraising is Scamming Donors

In politics, the grifting never stops.

Team Scalise (House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s fundraising committee) just sent me an e-mail citing the importance of Republican efforts to replace recently-resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz with another committed Republican:

                               *** SPECIAL ELECTION FOR MATT GAETZ’S SEAT *** 

It’s official – the special election in Florida’s First Congressional District was just declared and voting starts in January! Every House race is critical but with our Conservative House Majority hanging on by a THREAD, this might be the most important special election of the century. Our Pro-Trump Republican trifecta could be COMPLETELY DESTROYED if Democrats manage to win key races like this.

That’s why we are PLEADING for your help right now. Majority Leader Scalise set a goal of raising one million dollars to help fill Matt Gaetz’s seat with an America First Patriot, win every other special election, AND deliver President Trump’s agenda.

Of course, the message urges me to “DONATE NOW”. Most recipients of the message likely assume any donation they make will go to the campaign to elect a strong Republican to replace Gaetz. Not so.

Work your way through the entireTeam Scalise message and you discover that each individual contribution will be allocated to SCALISE FOR CONGRESS, which shall receive up to $3,300 per election (for a total of $6,600). 

Other politicians are in on the donations scam too.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and Fox News contributor, to lead the Department of Defense. His nomination has generated considerable controversy because he has no managerial experience running a large institution like the Pentagon, has taken conservative positions on a number of hot issues and is enmeshed in an allegation of sexual assault. 

But Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) is still with him. Jackson just sent me an email:

The WOKE Democrats’ petition to IMPEACH Pete Hegseth has reached MILLIONS OF  SIGNATURES.

If we let Pete Hegseth FALL to the WOKE MOB – they’ll have everything they need to go after President Trump, and eventually YOU.

So, today we’re calling on 3,000,000 PATRIOTS to go on the record and say: 
I STAND WITH PETE HEGSETH.
I STAND WITH PETE HEGSETH

Of course, if you click on “I STAND WITH PETE HEGSETH” you get a plea for a contribution.

Bear with me now. 

The site explains: “Contributions go to Team Ronny (“JFC”), a joint fundraising committee composed of TEXANS FOR RONNY JACKSON (the “Campaign Committee”), TEXAS RED (the “LPAC”), RONNY JACKSON LEGAL EXPENSE TRUST (the “LDF”), and the National Republican Congressional Congressional Campaign Committee (the” NRCC” (each, a “Committee,” and, collectively, the “Committees”).”

But here’s the trick. The first $6,600 of any contributions will go to TEXANS FOR RONNY JACKSON (the “Campaign Committee”), PO Box 53058, Amarillo, TX 79159. 

In other words, Rep. Ronny Jackson has first dibs on any contributions made by people who want to “Stand with Pete Hegseth”. Way to go, Ronny. 

Then there’s this email urging me to rally behind Hegseth:

STAND WITH PETE HEGSETH!

The Radical Left’s petition to DESTROY Pete Hegseth has reached MILLIONS OF SIGNATURES. The Woke Mob will do whatever they can to REMOVE Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense from President Trump’s Cabinet. If Pete is gone we can say GOODBYE to America as we know it. An overwhelming and immediate response is needed right here, right now, or we’ll lose Pete Hegseth FOREVER.

Will you stand with Pete Hegseth?

Doing nothing is not an option.

PLEASE SIGN YOUR NAME NOW (and Donate to continue our MAGA Momentum)

The group behind the email urging me to rally behind Hegseth is the GOD, FAMILY, COUNTRY PAC. out of Arlington, Va.  No address. Just a PO box number.

According to Open Secrets, a research and government transparency group tracking money in politics, the PAC (political action committee) raised a total of $5,567 for 2024 campaigns. It spent $4,210. 

But almost all of that spending, $4,194, went toward fundraising costs: $203 to “fundraising fees” and $3,991 to “fundraising consulting.” The fees went to Better Mousetrap Digital, a major digital fundraising company for Republicans, and WinRed Technical Services, a “conduit” that centralizes donations to Republican-affiliated candidates and committees. The recipient of the “fundraising consulting” spending isn’t identified. The money likely went to the people who set up the PAC.

The only human being identified as associated with the PAC is Mr. Jason Young, listed as its Treasurer. But don’t try to reach him if you have any questions. He can’t be found.

Katie Elizabeth Britt, a Republican serving as the junior United States senator from Alabama, is in on the game, too.

As a Senate candidate, Britt publicly aligned herself with former President Donald Trump and gave credence to Trump’s false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Trump officially endorsed her, calling her a “fearless America First warrior”. She won the general election in November 2022 and took office in 2023. 

Britt sent me a message urging me to fill out a “MAGA Priority Survey” and, of course, included a plea, “Will you rush support now to show your support to the growing MAGA movement as we head into a critical year ahead?”

In. light, subdued print below the plea her message says, “Your contribution will benefit Britt for Alabama Inc., Trump National Committee JFC, and 1 other.” Click through to the fine print and the first option for the donation is “Britt for Alabama Inc. AL-SEN”. 

I wonder how many more grifters are out there. And how many people have been and continue to be scammed by them.

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Trump’s Immigrant Solution: Manzanar Redux?

During World War II, President Roosevelt authorized the military to forcibly relocate people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to inland camps. 

Manzanar War Relocation Center near Lone Pine, Calif.; it operated from March 1942 to Nov. 1945. Some 10,000 people were confined there during this time. Resistance to the incarceration at Manzanar soon led to a prison uprising that the Army put down by shooting 11 prisoners, killing two.

In April 1942, officials posted Civil Exclusion Orders No. 25 and No. 26 on telephone poles and store windows throughout Multnomah County. A few weeks later, Civilian Exclusion Order No. 49 was posted in Hood River. The orders gave Japanese-Americans only a few days to put their affairs in order before they had to report for evacuation.

On May 5, 1942, Japanese-Americans in Military Area No. 1 reported to the Portland  Assembly Center, leaving their pets, possessions, and lives behind. The center—built on the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition—was surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and military guards armed with machine guns. The center had a peak population of 3,676.

Those living in Military Area No 2, including the Japanese Americans in Hood River, were sent by train to the Pinedale Assembly Center in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a temporary location until later transfer to permanent internment camps. 

Now President-elect Trump and his coterie of illegal immigration hardliners want to use the military again and put arrested immigrants in the country illegally in camps run by the Homeland Security Department. 

Will he follow through with his threats?  Count on it.

“Trump 1.0 was a test for the system, but it was also a trial for an inexperienced leader who had the inclination of a wrecking ball but often lacked the capacity or the cadres to follow through,” Susan B. Glasser wrote in the Nov. 21 New Yorker.  “Trump 2.0 is about an all-out attack on that system by a leader who fears neither Congress nor the courts nor the voters whom he will never have to face again.”

During the Republican primary campaign, The New York Times reported that  Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said military funds would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging )enters” for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.

 Earlier this month, Tom Fitton, who runs a conservative group, Judicial Watch, wrote that Trump’s administration would “declare a national emergency and will use military assets” to address illegal immigration “through a mass deportation program.”  Trump responded on his social media platform, Truth Social, reposting Mr. Fitton’s post with the comment, “TRUE!!!”

On Monday, Trump confirmed that he planned to declare a national emergency to carry out his promise to use the military in his mass deportations. 

Trump has also threatened to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – which allows presidents to deport citizens of an “enemy nation” without the typical proceedings – as part of his mass deportation plans. 

Thomas Homan, a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 25 and Trump’s proposed Border Czar, told Fox Business Network, “They’ll be used to do non-enforcement duties such as transportation, whether it’s on ground or air, infrastructure, building, intelligence.” Horman has also said transportation and supply assets from the Department of Defense, including military planes, could be used.  

Stephen Miller, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for policy, has also floated the idea of “deputising” the National Guard  to carry out large-scale raids and detentions. The military could also be dispatched to the southern border with “an impedance and denial mission,” Miller has said. 

“You reassert the fundamental constitutional principle that you don’t have the right to enter into our sovereign territory, to even request an asylum claim,” Miller said  at the Conservative Political Action Conference  (CPAC) earlier this year. “The military has the right to establish a fortress position on the border to say no one can cross here at all.”

No matter how Trump plans to use the military, the move is likely to bring an avalanche of legal challenges.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said on Monday that under US law, presidents may declare a national emergency and exert emergency powers only in specific situations. “And ‘use the military for deportations’ isn’t one of those specific things,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote on social media.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, issued the following statement: on Nov. 18:

“We are crystal clear that the next Trump administration will do everything in its power to make mass deportation raids a reality. As we ready litigation and create firewalls for freedom across blue states, we must also sound the alarm that what’s on the horizon will change the very nature of American life for tens of millions of Americans.”

In 1983, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians reported that the internment program was a “grave injustice” driven by “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered a formal apology to surviving victims.

It’s hard to believe all this current Trump-inspired turmoil is what the 76,744,608 people who voted for Trump this time around wanted.

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Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Invective Signals Trouble for Those With Temporary Protected Status

Photo: American Friends Service Committee

UPDATE 02/02/2025: The New York Times reported today that the Trump administration has ended Temporary Protected Status, or T.P.S., for more than 300,000 Venezuelans in the United States, leaving the population vulnerable to potential deportation in the coming months, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times. “The Trump administration’s attempt to undo the Biden administration’s T.P.S. extension is plainly illegal,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, who helps lead the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the U.C.L.A. School of Law. “The T.P.S. statute makes clear that terminations can only occur at the end of an extension; it does not permit do-overs.”

——————————————————-

President-elect Donald Trump has made it crystal clear. 

America’s “immigration crisis” is a “massive invasion” spreading “misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land” and the nation’s cities are being “flooded” by the “greatest invasion in history” of undesirables from “every corner of the earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, Middle East,” Trump bellowed at the Republican National Convention in July 2024.

One action Trump plans to take in response to the “invasion” is to cut back on the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Set up in 1990, the program gave the federal government the ability to grant work permits and deferrals from deportation to nationals of any designated nation going through or recovering from natural or man-made disasters.

If you recall the uproar over unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbor’s cats and dogs, those Haitians are TPS holders. In an interview with NewsNation, Trump said the influx of migrants in Springfield “just doesn’t work” and “you have to remove the people; we cannot destroy our country.”

To say the least, the fate of those in Oregon with TPS will be precarious, too, under the upcoming Trump administration.

I asked Oregon’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Advancement how many people in Oregon are here under the Temporary Protected Status program, but they never responded. But I located a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) on the TPS topic. According to the CRS, as of March 31, 2024, there were an estimated 2,705 individuals with TPS in Oregon, fewer than the 9,500 in Washington, but more than the 510 in New Mexico. The current number in many states is likely higher now because the number of TPS individuals in the United States has increased by about 150,000 since March. 

TPS offers qualifying individuals already in the U.S. work authorization and a temporary legal status to remain in the country if their home country is determined unsafe. TPS offers up to 18 months of relief to qualifying individuals based on the status of that country. For example, the TPS program is scheduled to end in March 2025 for El Salvador and in April 2025 for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela. 

TPS designations can be terminated prior to expiration with 60 days notice. TPS status can also be extended by the Department of Homeland Security. For example, on Oct. 17, 2024, the department extended through Aug. 3, 2025, the validity of certain Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) issued to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) beneficiaries under the designation of Haiti.

Since 1990, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have largely automatically renewed certain key TPS designations

The impact of Trump’s plans on current TPS holders could be calamitous. That’s partly because the number of people in the United States under TPS exploded under President Biden.

In 2020, TPS protected about 330,000 people from 10 countries who would otherwise be subjected to disease, violence, starvation, the aftermath of natural disasters, and other life-threatening conditions. The largest group of TPS recipients was from El Salvador (195,000 people) followed by Honduras (57,000 people) and Haiti (50,000 people).

Other countries with TPS holders included Nepal (8,950 people), Syria (7,000 people), Nicaragua (2,550 people), Yemen (1,250 people), Sudan (1,040 people), Somalia (500 people), South Sudan (84 people), Guinea (930 people), and Sierra Leone (1,180 people). 

With President Biden’s term winding down, there are now over 1 million immigrants in the United States under TPS status. Qualifying individuals include people from 16 countries, with Venezuelans, Haitians and Salvadoreans the largest groups of TPS beneficiaries.[1]

Under the Biden administration, new TPS designations have been issued for six countries (Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Myanmar [also known as Burma], Ukraine, and Venezuela), and extended for ten others (El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen). The government has also granted or extended a similar protection, deferred enforced departure (DED), for people from Hong Kong and Liberia, with an estimated 3,900 and 2,800 covered respectively.

If a TPS designation ends, beneficiaries return to the immigration status that the person held prior to receiving TPS, unless that status has expired or the person has successfully acquired a new immigration status.

 If the Trump administration is aggressive in ending the TPS program, its beneficiaries in Oregon and elsewhere would return to being undocumented at the end of a TPS designation and become subject to removal. 

“It’s possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy” and economically disastrous, Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, a teacher at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, recently told PBS News. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.”

[1] Countries Currently Designated for TPS. Select the country link for additional specific country information.

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Oregon State Bar Refuses To Prohibit Deceit and Misrepresentation By Its Members

So much for expecting lawyers to be truthful and regulate their own.

The Oregon State Bar’s General Counsel has decided that its member lawyers are not engaged in unethical conduct when they assert to clients that their selection as “Lawyers of Distinction” by a Florida-based business is reliable evidence of their legal skills and achievements, despite the fact that “Lawyers of Distinction” is nothing more than a pay-for-play outfit with just a virtual office.

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.

The OSB’s decision to allow its members to mislead clients is an egregious display of malfeasance. It’s straightforward dishonesty, deceit and misrepresentation, prohibited in the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct (as amended effective January 1, 2024) for Oregon attorneys.

On Oct. 9, 2023, I filed a complaint with the OSB asserting that a number of Oregon lawyers are misrepresenting their credentials by asserting that their selection as “Lawyers of Distinction” 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, sent a response 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.”

WHAT?

Davis couldn’t find any information that challenges the legitimacy of Lawyers of Distinction? 

And OSB’s General Counsel, agrees with Davis, as Nik Chourey, Deputy General Counsel, said in an email to me: “ In this instance, I do not find sufficient evidence of ethical misconduct to warrant further investigation by disciplinary counsel.  Further, I agree with the reasoning set forth in the Client Assistance Office’s letter dismissing this complaint.” 

Give me a break! Where did these folks go to law school?

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.

It’s a scam.

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 even 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 OSB’s assertion that it lacked evidence that any particular lawyer in Oregon has utilized this marketing tool in a misleading manner, are they blind? Do they not know how to search websites? 

 All OSB 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 & AWARDS on his website; Portland DUI lawyer Andy Green features the Lawyers of Distinction logo on his website; Tammi Caress, the Principal Owner of Caress Law, PC in Portland, has the logo on her firm’s website, too. .

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. Securing such an office requires a payment for  a “Platinum Plan” of $69 a month and for a “Platinum Plan with live receptionist” of $194 a month. 

Robert B. Baker, at the same address, is listed as the Owner in the company’s 2023 Annual Report. 

But don’t go visit 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 you can buy on a “Platinum Plan” for $69 a month or on 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 OSB is honestly committed to accountability, excellence, fairness, and leadership in the legal profession as it claims, it needs to stop trying to dodge its obligations. It needs to insist that its members halt falsely advertising themselves as Lawyers of Distinction or holders of other unearned accolades. 

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Portland City Council Voters: Do You Know What You Did?

All you Portland voters. Remember how you voted 58.1% to 41.9% on Measure 26-228 to switch to a ranked choice voting (RCV) system for the Portland City Council?

“In the end, we saw monumental wins that will change the landscape of our local democracy and advance opportunity for communities of color,” enthused the Coalition of Communities of Color after the vote.

“Portlanders made history by demanding a government that is effective, accountable and representative,” said Debra Porta, co-chair of the Charter Commission, which initially recommended voters consider the sweeping changes .

“The passage of Measure 26-228 is an historic step towards a democracy that truly gives all Portlanders a seat at the decision making table and a government that meets their basic needs,” said Sol Mora of the group Portland United for Change, which advocated for the measure. “This victory was powered by the people for the people.”

Well, supporters got what they wanted. But while Measure 26-228 required mote than 50% yes votes in Portland to pass, the 12 new city councilors elected under the the quirky new system didn’t need 50% to win in the 4 new districts.

This is how the RCV reform proposal described the system: 

 “If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the initial round, subsequent rounds are counted in which (i) candidates retain the number of votes counted for them in the first and any subsequent rounds that already occurred; and (ii) the candidates having the fewest votes are successively eliminated in rounds and their votes are counted as votes for the candidates who are ranked next on the ballots that had been counted for the eliminated candidates. The process of eliminating candidates and transferring their votes to the next-ranked candidate on ballots repeats until a candidate has a majority of the vote.”

The Councilors of each district were elected using a proportional method of RCV known as “single transferable vote” (STV). In this system, voters rank the candidates and if a candidate gets more votes than needed to be elected the extra, or surplus, votes get transferred to the voter’s next choices. The charter reform proposal was so convoluted it took almost 300 words to explain how it would work (See below for complete text).

Under this system, a candidate running for a seat in a multimember district could win a position on the Council with as little as 25% of the vote, or maybe even less.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Eleven of the twelve Councilors were elected with 25% of the vote in their district. One newly-elected Councilor, Jamie Dunphy in East Portland’s District 1, was even elected with just 22.8% of the vote.

District 1’s three final winners were Candace Avalos, Loretta Smith and Dunphy. In the 1st round, Avalos was the first choice of just 19.4% of the vote, Smith was the first choice of 13.1% and Dunphy was the first choice of 11.9%.

One consequence of all this is that the newly elected Councilors may be able to remain in office by consistently satisfying just that small segment of eligible voters and ignoring those who are disenchanted with their performance because it would require 75% of voters to vote against the entrenched councilor to remove him or her.

As Tim Nesbit, a former chief of staff to former Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski and a critic of the ballot measure before its passage, wrote in the Portland Tribune, “This will be a ‘welcome to the Hotel California’ for candidates who seek office in the first council election to follow. It will be easy to check in to the council, but much harder to be forced to leave.”

Charter reform’s explanation of how “single transferable vote” (STV) would work: 

“Councilors of each district are elected using a proportional method of ranked choice voting known as single transferable vote. This method provides for the candidates to be elected on the basis of a threshold. The threshold is determined by the number of seats to be filled plus one, so that the threshold is the lowest number of votes a candidate must receive to win a seat such that no more candidates can win election than there are seats to be filled. In the initial round, the number of first rankings received by each candidate is the candidate’s vote count. Candidates whose vote counts are at least the threshold are declared elected. Votes that counted for elected candidates in excess of the threshold are called surplus. If fewer candidates are elected in the initial round than there are seats to be filled, the surplus percentage of all votes for the candidates who received a surplus are transferred to the next-highest ranked candidates in proportion to the total numbers of next-highest rankings they received on the ballots that counted for the elected candidate. If, after all surpluses have been counted in a round, no additional candidates have a vote count that is at least the threshold, the candidates with the lowest vote counts are successively eliminated in rounds and their votes are counted as votes for the candidates who are ranked next highest on the ballots that had been counted for the eliminated candidates, until another candidate has a vote count that is at least the threshold or until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of seats that have not yet been filled. The process of transferring surpluses of elected candidates and eliminating candidates continues until all positions are elected.”

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More Sex is Better, Right? More News, Too?

“The sexual revolution obviously succeeded in its aim: more freedom”, writes Rob Henderson[1], who publishes a newsletter on human nature.  “But many people conflate liberation with happiness and, sadly, the world doesn’t work that way,” Women are freer today, he argues, but they are less happy.

It’s the same with access to information. We all have access to much more information today, both free and paid, but it’s debatable whether we are better informed. 

When I was a kid in a small Connecticut town in the 1950s, we got our news facts from the Meriden Record newspaper delivered in the morning and the New Haven Register newspaper delivered in the afternoon. In the mail, we got weekly issues of the magazines U.S. News & World Report, Life and Time and monthly editions of the National Geographic and Reader’s Digest. 

We also listened to radio, mostly station WTIC out of Hartford. In the early 1950s we got a black and white TV (We didn’t get a color TV until the 1960s) and started watching evening news shows. 

Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.

We thought that was plenty to connect us with local, national and world news.

But the internet proved us wrong, at least with respect to the volume and variety of available news. Where news used to come out of a straw, now it’s spewed out of a bullhorn. It’s turning us all into nervous wrecks.

As Tom Slater, the editor of Spiked put it, with the deluge of commentary out there, “We are riven by ‘culture wars’ and hot-button topics that no one cared about five minutes ago.” 

We’re smothered in a torrent of news 24/7 from a fragmented media environment, much of it of dubious veracity.

A clear majority of U.S. adults (86%) say they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, including 57% who say they do so often, according to the Pew Research Center , and a high number still get their news from television.  Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently. In 2024, just 26% of U.S. adults say they often or sometimes get news in print, the lowest number Pew’s surveys have ever recorded.

There are several different pathways Americans use to get news on their digital devices, Pew says. News websites or apps and search engines are the most common: About two-thirds of U.S. adults at least sometimes get news in each of these ways. A little more than half (54%) at least sometimes get news from social media, and 27% say the same about podcasts.

Younger people, in particular, get their news from digital devices, with 86% of people ages 18-29 and 72% of people ages 30-49 preferring digital devices as their news source. 

But is the wider availability of news making us all smarter, better informed, more responsible participants in the dialog of democracy? 

In a recent essay in The New Yorker, staff writer Adam Gopnik wrote that “the Internet age and the era of social media has led not so much to engagement as enragement, with algorithms acting out addictively on tiny tablets.” 

“The aura of the Internet age is energized, passionate, and, above all, angry,” Gopnik wrote. “The democratic theorists of old longed for an activated citizenry; somehow they failed to recognize how easily citizens could be activated to oppose deliberative democracy.”

The deluge of information posing as news has also left us in a constant rush, buried in misinformation and outright lies unchecked by gatekeepers like the editors of yore. As Hamish McKenzie, a co-founder of Substack, puts it, “With few exceptions, the media power brokers of yesterday now oversee a series of properties with dwindling reach and a limited ability to convince anyone of anything,”

One result – a growing lack of trust in all media. 

The just-released Trust in Media Survey results from Gallup “leave no doubt that members of my profession are officially America’s lowest life form,” Gopnik wrote.

The Gallup survey asked:

In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, T.V. and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?

  • A great deal 7 
  • Fair amount 25 
  • Not very much 29 
  • None at all 39

That’s 68% saying they have “not very much” or “none at all” trust and confidence in mass media., which includes newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet.

In the current political environment, the fragmentation and declining reliability of the mainstream media has led to a decline of its influence. 

“One of the contradictions of the social-media age is that we can follow the campaigns incredibly closely—tracking every movement in the polls, listening to every concerning Trump remark—but somehow this flood of content makes us feel even more distant from the process, and less empowered,” Jay Caspian Kang, another staff writer at The New Yorker, asserts. “…the proliferation of content has actually weakened the mainstream media’s influence on voters, many of whom have moved on to alternative outlets of news and commentary.”

And those alternative outlets are often little more than collections of conspiratorial rubbish, like the manufactured news that Hillary Clinton was running a pizza-restaurant child-sex ring, accusations that FEMA prevented Florida evacuations in the recent hurricanes and claims that funding for storm victims was instead given to undocumented migrants. And all of this is reinforced by the echo chambers online news consumers occupy.

 “It used to be in this world that people could at least agree on the same set of facts and then they could debate what to do about those facts.,” says writer, Steven Brill. “We’re at a point where nobody believes anything. Truth as a concept is really in trouble.”

That has led to a widespread feeling of disappointment in America and its institutions.

Author and theater critic, Hilton Als, wrote of Joan Didion’s “romance with despair.” That’s where we are. Wallowing in such gloom can’t be good for this country.

[1] Rob Henderson is the author of “Troubled: A Memoir of Family, Foster Care, and Social Class.” A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he holds a B.S. from Yale and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Cambridge (St. Catharine’s College).

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Portland’s Next Mayor? Who Cares?

Portland’s Next Mayor?

In all the turmoil and media attention focused on Portland’s new ranked choice voting election in November, much of the focus has been on the contest for mayor.[1]

Why?

The next mayor is going to be a eunuch. No, I don’t mean a castrated man. I mean the word metaphorically, in the sense an ineffectual or powerless person.

It’s the new 12-person City Council that will have the power to enact laws. The new mayor won’t even sit on the City Council or vote on council items (except to break a tie).  The mayor, and the new city administrator, who will be appointed by the mayor with council approval, will be in charge of carrying out City Council actions and crafting the city budget.

The mayor will also be tasked with appointing a city administrator, city attorney, and police chief, but that will also be only with the City Council’s approval. And to top it all off, the mayor won’t have veto power over council decisions. 

The mayor will serve more as a $175,463-a-year figurehead than a legislator, Tate White, a member of the city’s government transition team, told OPB earlier this year. “They’re going to be partnering with other jurisdictions, they’ll be standing at press conferences, they’re going to be the people meeting with representatives from sister cities when they come and visit, it will be far more ceremonial,” she said.

But don’t count on the new 12-person City Council, with three representatives per four new geographical districts and only one staff person for each City Council member, to be all that cooperative, efficient or effective. It might be more functional than New York City’s 51-member City Council, but likely not much. After all, a City Council member can be elected with as little as 25% + 1 votes, so their constituencies will be pretty damn small.[2] One consequence could be a Councilor able to remain in office by consistently satisfying just that smaller segment of eligible voters.

Jeff Jacoby, an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe, calls the ranked choice voting process “democracy on the Rube Goldberg model”, where  ideas that supposedly simplify people’s lives wreak havoc instead.

[1] Mayoral candidates include three current members of Portland City Council: Rene Gonzalez, Mingus Mapps and Carmen Rubio. Others running are: Saadiq Ali, early childhood educator Shei’Meka As-Salaam, inventor James Atkinson IV, REAP youth advocate Durrell Kinsey Bey, financial advisor Nancy Congdon, Yao Jun He, advocate for the unhoused and community activist Michael O’Callaghan, artist and performer Liv Osthus, city hall veteran and green energy advocate Marshall Runkel, owner and president of TITAN Freight Systems Keith Wilson and maintenance supervisor Dustin Witherspoon. 

[2] Charter reform’s explanation of how “single transferable vote” (STV) will work: 

“Councilors of each district are elected using a proportional method of ranked choice voting known as single transferable vote. This method provides for the candidates to be elected on the basis of a threshold. The threshold is determined by the number of seats to be filled plus one, so that the threshold is the lowest number of votes a candidate must receive to win a seat such that no more candidates can win election than there are seats to be filled. In the initial round, the number of first rankings received by each candidate is the candidate’s vote count. Candidates whose vote counts are at least the threshold are declared elected. Votes that counted for elected candidates in excess of the threshold are called surplus. If fewer candidates are elected in the initial round than there are seats to be filled, the surplus percentage of all votes for the candidates who received a surplus are transferred to the next-highest ranked candidates in proportion to the total numbers of next-highest rankings they received on the ballots that counted for the elected candidate. If, after all surpluses have been counted in a round, no additional candidates have a vote count that is at least the threshold, the candidates with the lowest vote counts are successively eliminated in rounds and their votes are counted as votes for the candidates who are ranked next highest on the ballots that had been counted for the eliminated candidates, until another candidate has a vote count that is at least the threshold or until the number of candidates remaining equals the number of seats that have not yet been filled. The process of transferring surpluses of elected candidates and eliminating candidates continues until all positions are elected.”