PORTLAND: “DEATH OF A CITY”

Democrats Foul Their Own Nests

On July 28th, Dr. Mary Costantino, 50, a Portland radiologist, was walking down the street with a friend about five blocks from a police station when an unidentified attacker approached the pair and launched an aluminum bottle at the left side of her face, according to surveillance footage. Perhaps this explains why foot traffic in Portland has decreased to a third of what it was in 2019.

“It happened really fast, kind of out of nowhere,” Costantino told Fox News. “He just threw an aluminum water bottle and it hit my face. It was hurled pretty hard and it just got me, just knocked me right in the head.” Costantino couldn’t remember what happened, but knew she was on the ground bleeding and called 911 thinking she was going to die. It took the defunded Portland Police 20 minutes to arrive at the crime scene. It is unlikely police are even investigating this “minor” crime because they don’t have the manpower. Unless a member of the public comes forward to identify the attacker, he will not be arrested or prosecuted.

DIANE FELT SORRY FOR HER NEW NEIGHBORS

In August 2018, I was walking Raindrop & Misty, our two precious Boston Terriers, through our neighborhood in West Linn, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, when I met a nice middle-aged couple who just moved in.   They were so happy to escape San Francisco where they had both lived their entire lives, telling me they could no longer stand the crime, filth, high taxes, drugs, homelessness, bad schools, corruption, et al.  They were desperate to get their younger daughter out of there.  In May, as their older daughter was graduating from high school & about to leave for college, they put their SF house on the market, found jobs in the Portland area and bought a bigger house for far less money than the sale price of their SF house.  They were thrilled to get out of SF and to find the house on our street.  They thought they had found paradise and talked my ear off while my dogs waited patiently.

This couple thought Portland & West Linn were wonderful.  As they spoke, I felt sorry for them.  I knew that Portland, where 90% of voters are Delusional Democrats, and its burbs were barely 10 years behind SF & burbs in their decline.  There were signs everywhere that Portland & West Linn were falling into the same Marxist nightmare as San Francisco.  This couple was probably unaware that Portland gave birth to the domestic terrorist gang who call themselves Antifa.

I just did not have the heart to tell them they should have moved to, for example, southern Idaho or western South Dakota.  Portland’s decline has accelerated since then.  Indeed, barely two years after this couple’s arrival, Portland politicians & bureaucrats cheered on five months of rioting. Two months into the riots West Linn’s city council invited the Black Lives Matter rioters in, and quickly caved to their Marxist & racist demands. The city council is now in the process of importing the homeless from Portland and setting up campgrounds for them, one just two blocks from their home. This couple’s daughter has no doubt graduated from high school by now. I wonder if they have moved again.

DIANE WAS OFF BY FIVE YEARS

In 2018, I thought Portland was a decade away from rivaling San Francisco.  It turns out I was off by five years.  A Pew Research study shows Portland is currently deeper inside the Democrat-dug cesspool than even San Francisco.

Portland has more crime than 99% of the United States based upon national data and set another homicide record in 2022.  San Francisco is “behind” Portland with more crime than 98% of the nation.  Congratulations to Portland voters!  You worked hard to “win” this prize by voting in ever more Delusional Democrats who 1) spent 16 years mentoring Antifa thugs, 2) cheered on domestic terrorists for five months in 2020 while they burned, looted, murdered, 3) handcuffed police, 4) refused to prosecute domestic terrorists, 5) defunded the police, 6) created and imported the homeless, and 7) generally promoted every woke absurdity that came along.

Last week the Washington Examiner published an article entitled “Portland is dying figuratively, literally, & financially.” In January 2021 Forbes called Portland’s decline “Death of a City.”  In February 2023 the Los Angeles Times asked “What’s the Matter with Portland?”  Think about that: the LA Times, who never met a destructive Liberal policy they didn’t like, thinks there is something wrong with Portland!  Hilarious! Liberalism is a constant source of amusement. 

SELF-PROCLAIMED HOT BED OF PROGRESSIVISM IS A POSTER CHILD FOR FAILURE

In San Francisco 54 out of every 1,000 residents were victims of crime in 2022.  In Portland, city leaders’ love affairs with criminals, thugs, terrorists, et al, lead directly to making crime victims out of 66 of every 1,000 residents last year. And the smart money is escaping.

Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, lost $1 billion in residents’ income between 2020 and 2021 according to a recent analysis.  Could this have anything to do with Portland’s embrace of daily/nightly riots throughout 2020, the defund the police movement and/or promotion of crime?  Democrats running the city and state shrugged off rioters assaulting police officers and dismissed charges against the 2020 rioters, while $1 billion fled from the county.

These figures only cover the losses between 2020 and 2021, but it is easy to see that Portland has dug itself even deeper into that sewer of their own making in 2022 & 2023.  Drug overdose deaths have become more prevalent, with a 210% increase in fentanyl poisoning deaths since 2020. Businesses are struggling given the 11.1% increase in year-over-year property crime and 16.9% rise in burglaries last year. The city saw a 50% increase in homelessness from 2019 to 2022, and the city’s population has decreased each of the last three years after growing for 30 years straight.

Portland’s “leaders” abandoned quality of life for law-abiding residents to push their delusional woke ideas.  Portland’s numerous nature areas are being contaminated by homeless encampments and the garbage, feces & violence that come with them, leaving them unusable by taxpayers.  City voters, in their own stupor, legalized fentanyl and hard drugs in 2020.

Have Portlanders learned anything over these four years of misery? Of course not. The hard drugs are still legal, the homeless encampments remain in place, and Mayor Ted Wheeler, who cheered on the 2020 riots, was re-elected. All that has changed is that Portland and the surrounding area have become poorer, more drug-ridden, and more undesirable for law-abiding residents.

VOTERS DESERVE WHAT THEY VOTED FOR

Portland residents are so tangled in their “progressive identity” that they are not capable of recognizing “cause & effect.” Portland is truly a lost cause.