Leave Portland Alone

This an open letter to President Donald Trump. I write this with a huge sense of irony but also with sincerity as a teachable moment. Mr. Trump had commanded center stage as he seeks to pull back America’s great cities from the brink of economic ruin and virtual anarchism. For nearly three decades the far left wing of the Democrat part – the progressives – have dominated Democrat politics and by virtue of that Oregon government. It makes no difference that progressives policies have virtually destroyed Portland and left it a burning pest hole littered with bums, alcoholics, drug addicts, mental cases and dangerous psychopaths. The fact of the matter is that the progressives continue to increase their dominance through elections – albeit, with the single most corruptible electoral process (mandatory vote-by-mail) in the United States.

The point here is that it is apparent that the voters in the three county area surrounding Portland either desire, or don’t care about, dysfunctional and costly government. They don’t seem to care that the core of their city continues to be subject to yet another onslaught now in its second month which sees regular riots complete with arson, looting, property destruction, physical altercations and attacks on law enforcement. And they seem to wear as a badge of honor the almost daily ridicule from politicians and news media of the failings of the barely able running state and local government.

The point here is that it is that Portland represents very essence of what is wrong with the progressive philosophy in general and socialism in particular. It is seductive to those who do not believe that they can succeed and therefore they choose not to try. It reminds me of a relative who as a young man returned from Cuba extolling the virtues of a life of equality. He proclaimed that everyone existed equally – they had identical apartments, identical furniture, identical food and provisions. It made no difference whether your worked hard or not at all – everything was equal. Equal but on the edge of deprivation. I asked him whether he thought “equality” was better than “opportunity.” He answered “equality” even though it meant living without hope of ever getting better.

The newly risen savior of socialism/communism, Zohran Mamdani, when asked about the failures of socialist/communist governments noted that for every failure of a socialist/communist state, there were others that dream of yet another opportunity to try. Not that there were successful examples only that more nut jobs out there yearning to try it themselves using your money.

Okay, so back to the point of this article. In order for this to be a teachable moment on the failures of socialism/communism, there must be a demonstrable and ongoing observable trial – in this case Portland, or better yet Multnomah County. However, to understand the trues essence of the success or failure, the subject – Portland – must be freed from much of the economic control that comes with paying and receiving federal revenues. So in order to provide a real measurement of the effects of socialism/communism, all current tax revenues garnered from federal tax rules and regulations should be determined and bundled into a single package and returned to the Oregon state legislature in the form of a block grant. No other federal aid or payments would be forthcoming to Oregon – including those for health, education, public safety or transportation. Oregon would be on its own to determine how to spend that money and what additional monies needed to be raised for other public purposes. Oregon would sill be subject to the decisions of the federal government when it came to international trade and relationships. The essence of the proposal is to give Oregon as much freedom as possible without endangering the remainder of the country. In exchange the rest of the country will not have to fund any part of the Oregon government.

In order to provide residents and businesses of Oregon a chance to make their own choices, a notice period of one year would be required before implementation. That same notice period would apply to all of the free loaders, bums, alcoholics, drug addicts, mental cases, dangerous psychopaths and illegal immigrants wishing to embrace the Oregon experience the opportunity to move there – unfortunately it will be at their own expense. There is no duration to the experiment. Success or failure will be self-evident.

The importance of the experiment is to demonstrate once and for all the ability of socialism/communism to survive outside of a totalitarian regime.

It’s never going to come to pass because outside of those who yearn for a system where they are not held accountable for their actions or lack of actions, there is less than zero chance of success.

So President Trump, leave Portland alone and lets see what they can do and how quickly they will fail.