Betsy Johnson: How the Democratic Machine Crippled a Crime Victims Charity
Hard to believe it was just an "oversight."
You know you’re living in good times when your state Legislature can afford to spend millions of dollars on nightclubs, theaters and music venues.
The times must really be good when that same Legislature cuts funding to the state’s only nonprofit organization that gives legal advice to crime victims.
According to a news accounts, a board member of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center said the Legislature’s failure to allocate anything to the group appeared to be an oversight.
In politics, there are few oversights—but many calculations.
What the Legislature did was indefensible. They used crime victims to get back at Republicans.
For the past decade, the state’s Democrats—which I used to be—championed legislation to reduce minimum mandatory sentences for violent criminals. The Democrats pushed “justice reinvestment,” offering sympathy and services to drug dealers, car thieves and burglars. I didn’t support that position. Meanwhile Republicans tended to align with crime victims and favor tougher punishment.
We’ve seen the results on our streets. Democrats don’t want to acknowledge the devastating effects their progressive politics have had on public safety. They have surrendered to chaos, particularly in the state’s largest city.
Witness Kate Brown’s generous commutations, done with the acquiescence of Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. Now a beneficiary of those commutations is a “person of interest” in serial murders.
The amount allocated to the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center in the previous 2021-23 biennium was $1.27 million. In the 2023-25 biennium, it will be nothing. Compare that to the $5 million doled out to nightclubs and theaters. Among some of the recipients in Portland:
$285,580 to Crystal Ballroom
$263,706 to Roseland Theatre
$235,604 to Revolution Hall
$111,267 to Holocene Nightclub
$159,522 to Mississippi Studios
$147,309 to Wonder Ballroom
$145,877 to Doug Fir Lounge
$103,672 to Dante’s Lounge
$63,175 to White Eagle Saloon
Last century I used to drink and shoot pool at the White Eagle. This is what now passes for arts and culture?
Many of us have enjoyed these venues. But given Oregon’s profile as one of the largest abusers of alcohol and drugs, why are we funding for-profit bars? At least a nonprofit is required to adhere to certain strictures for public accounting.
When I was in the state Senate, I served as co-chair on the Joint Ways and Means Committee that writes the budget. I know how the process is supposed to work. Proposed projects are vetted. As it is, Revolution Hall received a generous $750,000 last year and came back this year for more.
State Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Portland) was quoted in a news story saying these venues were the “first to close and the last to reopen, and the culture of going out hasn’t returned here like it has in other states.”
It’s true people couldn’t buy a beer in Oregon during Covid, but they could socialize and riot in Portland. The lines today outside the Crystal Ballroom would suggest business isn’t as bad as Nosse thinks. If the culture of going out hasn’t returned, it could be that people are concerned about public safety—a residual effect of all that rioting that progressive activists supported.
There’s a saying, popular with some of those activists, that “budgets are moral documents.” It’s a rallying cry for what has become known as participatory budgeting—where activists organize and lobby to get money from the government for things they support.
The goal of participatory budgeting isn’t to encourage more citizen participation in democracy. It’s to turn the state treasury into a slush fund where groups can fight over money — and politicians can buy voters.
"Proposed projects are vetted."
???
A little too much hand wringing from the Ways and Means chair who let $400 million in federal funds disappear into the ether.
Do people on the left truly think all but the most heinous criminals are essentially good, and can veer into normalcy with adequate counseling? Kate Brown's clemency for evil-doers like Cunio and Hedquist was shocking.. Might many leftists have private criminal leanings, i.e. cheering for the team? Except for Antifa fringes, I tend to doubt that, so naivety makes the most sense.
It really is a mystery because they claim to support "harm reduction" and "compassion," but their detachment from the plight of crime victims doesn't fit that mantra.
Is their obsession with race and opposition to official authority figures completely blinding them to crime victims? That would indicate a gross lack of reasoning abilities.