You can’t say Portland had good intentions because they should have known that what they were trying to do wouldn’t “solve” the drug and homeless problems in the metro areas. Free-wheeling drugs and government tents have never worked anywhere they’ve been tried. Never. Not in San Francisco, not in Los Angeles, not in San Diego, and not in Seattle. But the we’re-smarter-than-you set just threw millions more at it, ignoring that Portland doesn’t just have a homeless problem; it’s got a drug problem. And predictably, things are worse.
Oregonians can blame their “progressive” leaders, George Soros, and the voters staring back at them in mirrors for this mess.
The governmental equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle — state progressives, Multnomah county actors, and Portland activists — have worked together to dispirit the people through their lawlessness, destroy their once beautiful metro area with tents and bodies strewn about, and make it a hospitable place, as a local photographer put it, “for people to come to our city to kill themselves.”
These progressives have chased out several retailers. On Monday, Pacific Northwest outdoor outfitter REI told its members it would close its doors in NW downtown, citing break-ins and thefts.
Even REI, a store that sells gear for manly men& womanly women to survive in the wild gives up on Portland due thefts and break-ins.
I was a member there.
Take a bow @tedwheeler, @GovTinaKotek, @multdems, @MultCoDA for your parts in this "controlled demolition" of my hometown.— Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) April 17, 2023
This line of tents is just steps away from REI’s location.
Portland, Oregon pic.twitter.com/Q4QmDCBHmR
— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) April 16, 2023
Soros has had a hand in Portland’s decline. Soros’s Drug Policy Alliance, on whose board he sits, was the force behind a measure passed by Oregon voters in 2020 to decriminalize hard drugs. Measure 110 allows crackheads to carry a personal amount of hard drugs. So, of course, they’re always high. Rarely is anyone arrested for drug possession because that’s racist or inequitable. They’re let off with a ticket and a promise to go to state-paid drug counseling that doesn’t exist to any great degree yet, though the state claims it’s helped 60,000 drug addicts.
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Oregon is well-trod ground for Soros. Undermining the dignity of human beings and society is his aim. In the late 1990’s, his Open Society organization shoved through the so-called “Death with Dignity” law to get doctors to help people kill themselves. Then he backed the fraudulent “medical marijuana” statewide measure. Then came his Secretary of State project to undermine elections, and then his District Attorneys project, which threw traditional law out the window. Then came legalizing pot. And now this.
Soros’s hollowing out of the tenets of civil society had a supporting cast of useful idiots. Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, called Measure 110 a blow to the so-called war on drugs. “In a historic, paradigm-shifting win and arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the nation’s first all-drug decriminalization measure.” She predicted it would become a model. It’s a disaster.
Another Soros acolyte, Kayse Jama of Unite Oregon, said that decriminalizing drugs in the election following the Summer of Love riots would help end “systems of oppression.” If “ending systems of oppression” means bodies lying on the ground from drug overdoses, then mission accomplished.
The certified smart guys tasked with “solving” the “homeless problem” didn’t stand a chance of solving anything when they accelerated the numbers of people coming to the area with the open offer of accountability-free drug use, free tents, and free food.
One person wrote a letter to the editor declaring Measure 110 “very effective.”
How? The price of fentanyl and meth in Portland is a fraction of the price found in other cities. The measure has been effective in making those drugs easily available all over the city. It has been effective in decreasing livability due to crime by drug addicts. Combined with our “compassionate” policies of free tents, free tarps, free sleeping bags, free food, and lack of penalties for shoplifting car break-ins, and bicycle theft, the low drug prices and easy drug availability have been effective in attracting homeless addicts from all over the country. They are overdosing and dying on our streets in record numbers.
The Oregonian calls the downtown Portland troubles a perfect storm. If that’s true, it’s a perfect storm of their own making. Only recently have Portland officials started clearing the open-air drug markets from downtown city streets. Just days ago, Oregon’s new governor stopped throwing good money after bad to fight homelessness.
Drug and alcohol counselor Ken Dahlgren spends his time on the streets with addicts, which describes most homeless people. He said if money solved this problem then Oregon would have solved it long ago. Instead, “The fact is, over the last seven years since the Joint Office of Homeless Services was established, our crisis has gone through the roof. So, as more money is poured into solving this problem, the problem continues to grow, which means money isn’t the solution.”
I’m happy to see @kevinvdahlgren voice being amplified both locally and nationally. He’s one of the very few homeless advocates who hasn’t been bought out by the Homeless Advocate Cartel.https://t.co/kRRajioe9V
— PDX Real (@PDXReal1) April 16, 2023
Dollars are still going to pay all the NGOs created to hoover up all the government grants to “solve” the homeless problem with more money.
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PDX Real social media site’s Jeff Altonen told CBN News (see video below) that what’s happening looks oddly planned. “It’s like it’s in some sort of controlled demolition, really. And when I say that, it’s because a lot of this stuff comes from policy.” His PDX Real partner Angela Todd agrees, saying “Portland is a social experiment. A progressive experiment that has gone colossally bad.”
And George Soros helped.
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