BudgetMania!
Was Wednesday Night a disaster, or another step toward recalibration?
On a serious note: last Wednesday night (the same night as the budget meeting) a horrible terror attack, targeting Jews, was successfully carried out in Washington, DC. Two beautiful young people were murdered by a radical leftist terrorist. We will come back to this story, how it ties into the hateful rhetoric the DSA and allies have been spreading for the past few years, and the moral cowardice of Tiffany Koyama Lane. However, I promised you a budget breakdown. I’m setting aside my heartbreak and rage for a few more days. I have struggled to put this piece together and to even watch video of some of these councilors through “eyes unclouded by hate.” This will not be forgotten and I plan on holding local figures accountable for the increasing political violence in this city and nationally. We all knew where this would end up. Now we have arrived, and it’s time to draw some very bold lines.
Election Results
First, the results of the 2025 May Special Election.
A lot of non-surprises, a few disappointments, and a huge victory. Let’s look at the races I followed and what they might indicate about the Portland Metro’s current attitudes/political appetite.
The School Bond passed, to the surprised of no-one. Only a handful of us (Willamette Week, Portland Stack, myself, Portland Policy Institute, Rational in Portland, etc.) argued against it. Indication: mild negative.
Christy Splitt and Stephanie Engelsman easily won their races. Almost universal support gets the goods. Indication: neutral.
Voter Turnout is looking to be quite mediocre. Not surprising but disappointing. Indication: neutral.
Rashelle Chase-Miller defeated Herman Greene by a wide margin. This is a win for the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), not the students. Indication: negative.
Virginia La Forte (probably) defeated Jorge Sanchez Bautista by the narrowest margin. While I’m excited for La Forte, that’s a worrisome trend. This was the easiest race and it was the closest. A qualified leader with 13 years of PPS policy experience against an 18 year old DSA member is not a hard decision Portland. It is embarrassing that this wasn’t a blowout. Indication: mild positive (a very good result weighed down by the frightening margin)
Sara Ruth Epstein defeated Deian Salazar and Thomas Stephenson defeated Dennis Secrest for David Douglas School Board. That’s a disappointment to me because they are exactly the same sort of Portland Progressive that got us here. Indication: mild negative.
Van Truong and Karen Pérez-Da Silva defeated their Beaverton Education Association (BEA)-backed candidates (including DSA member Karin Stark). Indication: positive
Overall indication: neutral.
LET’S GO BEAVERTON!
Almost entirely rejecting the BEA’s attempted takeover of the School Board and cutting “Bernie-crat”1 (DSA Member) Tammy Carpenter off from her desired support network.
I’m happy enough with the results. Sad for Herman and Deian as they would have been more trustworthy candidates. Sad for a city that voted for a teenage communist in such large numbers. Proud of Beaverton. Good job parents and Stand for Children.
And now… Budgetmania.
Day 1 - The Big Show
For the most part, it was a long, boring day. I watched all of it.
All 14 hours and 40 minutes of it.
This newsletter will stay free for everyone but…
There were four or five notable exceptions to this slog of bureaucracy. You can watch the whole thing here:
The video is broken because of technical difficulties and the remaining section is here.
The first part of the meeting (before the budget was opened for discussion) involved a fight over the Portland Children’s Levy Allocation Committee, money, and identity politics. The whole thing was gross and sort of shockingly racist. I’ll be digging into it later, because I refuse to be distracted until the budget is discussed. We are going to need to have a very difficult conversation about “equity” in this city, and what we even mean when we say that word.
Several other agenda items followed, I won’t bore you with the details but you can read the full agenda here.
After a few hours they eventually arrived at Agenda Item 16: Approval of the FY 2025-26 Budget for the City of Portland.
“Time certain - 11:45 am, Time requested - 2 hours”
First up: the budget is not finalized. That happens on June 11th. We have weeks of this nonsense remaining and I would expect even more fights to spring up between now and then.
What you need to understand:
Mayor Keith Wilson submitted a balanced budget proposal for council approval. No $93M shortfall, no pet projects without funding. His team worked very hard on it and they made difficult compromises. Council could have approved it on the spot or with minor tweaks. After all, they are a legislative body now. Not commissioners or heads of bureaus. It would have been legal and acceptable to just pass Wilson’s existing budget proposal.
Was it perfect? No.
Was it good? Yes, it was very good.
Councilor Dan Ryan was ready to just rubber stamp the thing. Councilors Eric Zimmerman and Olivia Clark were varying degrees of almost there/supportive. I think President Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Councilors Loretta Smith and Steve Novick were a bit further away… but that’s only half the council.
What about the children? The Progressive Caucus, P-Cauc, or Clique of Six as I’ve heard them alternately named? Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane and her party of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) - Councilors Sameer Kanal, Angelita Morillo, and Mitch Green, along with Candace Avalos and her second seat Jamie Dunphy.
Well reader, they had plans. What we got (in part because of the chaos they sow, was hours of public testimony and debate with over 120 amendments on the table. They still had to cut public testimony short and they brought the whole thing to a crash landing right before the midnight cutoff.
Oh, and did you think the Mayor had tie breaking authority? Was that the impression you got from the charter reform process and the 2024 campaign?
You think the DSA is going to let some middle aged white man break ties when they only managed to form a voting block with 50% of the council. Please. Who does Keith Wilson think he is?2
Is it weird that I brought up his race? Don’t worry. Our City Councilors brought up race every chance they got.
“ I do think it is worth noting though that, uh, 90% of the amendments in this [package] did come from white members of council and 75% of it came from male counselors.”
- Councilor Dunphy (white male) referring to an amendment package put forward by a woman.3
Public Comment
The public comment period was two hours. Roughly half of those signed up got to speak, and each piece of testimony had to be cut short.
“We have enough people signed up that at two minutes each, if everybody spoke it would take seven and a half hours.”
- President EPG
There were a few main camps of speakers.
Residents speaking up in defense of the Community Music Center and
Multnomah Arts Center - Novick proposed closing them and giving the money ($1.8M) to Parks. Council didn’t even end up hearing this amendment because… well that’d be spoilers. The Parks budget is the finale of our whole story. Don’t skip ahead.
Residents speaking up in defense of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) budget, along with the broader Public Safety budget. There were a number of amendments to take money from the proposed police budget or mess with overtime and response.
Residents speaking up in defense of Prosper Portland. Green and Dunphy had proposed entirely defunding them for next year ($11M).
DSA members and assorted communists speaking up to defund both Prosper Portland and the PPB. The DSA came out, guns blazing, against Prosper because… capitalism. “Fund the people, not the plutocrats!”4
Parks and their allies coming out to oppose Zimmerman’s Tree Inspection/Urban Forestry amendment to fund Parks maintenance by moving money from other parts of Parks.
There were several familiar faces and I’ll try to whip together a highlight reel soon. Editing 14 hours of video is even less fun than you may imagine.
Reverend Sara Fischer, star of the “Radical Hospitality” movement, showed up to argue against Mayor Wilson’s Unsheltered Homelessness plan. Fischer is anti-congregate shelter. Just give them keys! Councilor Koyama Lane is a big fan of Fischer and seems to view her as a spiritual advisor. This was likely invited testimony — Koyama Lane moves more quietly than the other DSA councilors. She, like Fischer, maintains a reputation of kindness, compassion, and warmth while advocating for policies that will not work, and may actually result in horrible outcomes for the groups she claims to care about. Big on feelings, light on facts. Remember that for later.
The defenders of the Multnomah Arts Center flooded the testimony and President EPG failed to cut their comments short in time.5 It was apparent that Novick’s proposal was dead in the water and by cutting off the art parents (who won by the way), other residents could have been heard. I do not say this as a criticism of the art parents. You folks mobilized and showed up. Good job and congratulations. Given the time constraints, valid or not, the bell should have been rung when you had him on the ropes.
Relevant article: Novick’s Proposal to Close Multnomah Arts Center Meets Rebuke From Residents - WW
The comments ate most of the afternoon and experience showed as neighbors who are accustomed to public speaking and cutting 2 minutes of comments into 90 seconds on the fly came off great. Those less familiar with the process stumbled and struggled. There’s an equity issue in that, and I hope we can explore it soon. This new form of “more direct” democracy isn’t really working as advertised.
The Battle Begins
With around eight hours remaining until midnight, the budget discussion began.
President EPG attempted to set an agenda. I say attempted because she had almost no control over that room. I’m sorry EPG, but this was your biggest failing.
Some things you should understand about the day I am about to describe:
There were items that must be addressed during this session. Fee schedule amendments, anything moving a budget more than 10%, Prosper Portland’s budget, etc. This stuff has a hard deadline of midnight. Nothing else did.
Very little is final about the other decisions. Council is meeting again on June 11th, and anything not handled in these eight hours will be taken up then.
The council operates under Robert’s Rules of Order. Except when they don’t. Ex: during “roll call” — when voting “aye/yes” or “nay/no,” this is not meant as another chance to speak. You need to vote. Our council, all twelve of them, routinely use their vote as an additional opportunity to (sort of) hold the floor and speak. It is important that you understand this for what comes later. Council uses the rules, except when they don’t, because this is Portland where jeans and a flannel are dinner attire.
The legal requirements should have gone first, and EPG tried to get them out of the way… but ran into plenty of push back. Right off the mark, our Clique of Six wanted to get to the “Main Event”: the police vs. parks fight. Morillo tried every argument she could to reorganize the agenda. I’m not even sure the council has the power to do that; something Zimmerman voiced as well. You may begin to see my point about old Robert and his Rules. Council sort of follows them... but hey, the council is young. They’re “just figuring this stuff out.”6
Novick’s pull quote of the night summed it up well:
“ I think we need to get through what we legally need to get through first. However, if we have any time afterwards, I do think that we should get to the amendments to take money from police and give it to parks, because that's the main event. That's what the fans paid to see.”
- Councilor Steve Novick
That’s the attitude over half the council had; the sort of detached glee of putting on a show for their fans. The DSA and friends are putting on a pro-wresting show (Budgetmania!) and five councilors are just trying to help manage a mid-sized American city. They didn’t bring their ring gear.
If you want the honest reason I’m running for City Council in 2026, it’s because I’m willing to put on my luchador mask, lace up some boots, and hop into the ring with these idiots. I highly recommend you vote for people like Zimmerman, Clark, and Ryan in the future — but if you want a show, I plan to give you one. The difference is it will be a fair fight this time, because I know all the same tricks. I will fight these assholes up and down the campaign trail, and if it costs us both the election — well that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
So, how did it all go? The Novick quote was illustrative, but I want to share DSA chair Olivia Katbi’s reaction afterward.
They are better organized than the others; because they are a political party. That’s not supposed to happen on the City Council. They trade votes and strategize, ahead of time, in violation of the spirit of the council and possibly Oregon State Public Meetings Law.
Assorted Highlights
I’m about to use the word defund a lot in this piece, because there’s a language argument around it. Morillo has boosted a number of local black political figures claiming that “Defund” is a black-created movement (short for Defund the Police) and we shouldn’t be using it for anything that isn’t based in “black liberation.” So, we’ve heard “the police were never defunded,” “we aren’t defunding Prosper,” and now “you can’t use that word.”7
I’m not playing ball. Defund means “to stop providing money or as much money to pay for something.”8 It isn’t more complex, and the attempt to make it so is naked manipulation. With that said, let’s see how often I can use it, accurately. I’ll bold it for fun.
EPG Tried
President EPG put forward a “President’s Package” of amendments to save time. Bless her heart. It went horribly. Dunphy and Morillo both accused the package of lacking diversity (primarily racial). Never mind that the accusations are untrue. Why are we doing this? We’re looking at diversity quotas for our council amendments? This crew just bragged about the most diverse city council in history a few months ago and now they’re lying about an amendment package (or they’re bad at math) to make it seem like the YT’s9 are staging a coup? At least EPG pushed back.
Prosper Portland aka “The Plutocrats”
The attempt by Green and Dunphy to defund Prosper Portland was controversial! This was a pet project by the DSA as part of their “Defund the Rich!” platform.10
Watching a bunch of communists11 call minority business owners “tokens” was a highlight of the day for me. This thing was dead on arrival. Good job Prosper, now can we have a chat about the dangers of letting all our progressive institutions fall to the DSA?
To illustrate the stark contrast in tone:
“Why are we bailing out business owners? Why can't they bail out themselves with their millions of dollars?”
- local DSA member Janna Tessman
Here’s Jill Souede, former Chief of Staff to Dan Ryan:
“ These aren't faceless corporations. These are our neighbors, our friends, our family. Yet some of you persist in treating local business owners as if they're ExxonMobil or Enron, as if they're part of some extractive machine. Instead of the backbone of our economy and the employers of our friends and neighbors, it's tired, antagonistic rhetoric, and it's harmful.”
This was the one issue Avalos broke from the DSA and Dunphy on, but she knows where her support comes from. It’s a bad amendment and we do not need to be defunding economic development right now, even if I disagree with some of the ways Prosper chooses to prioritize those funds. That big equity conversation is coming, and it rang throughout this budget, but like a exasperated President EPG, I’ve got to try and keep this thing focused.
Relevant article: Prosper Portland Dodges a Big Cut for Now, but Council Takes Aim at Lack of Agency Oversight - WW
Votes: ❌ Failed 6/6 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy → Nay: Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney
Council Office Budgets
President EPG offered an amendment to cut $200k from the council offices. An amendment was offered lowering it to $120k. The fight got a bit nasty. Loretta Smith ended up yelling at Steve Novick after he took a dig at her staff “not being paid very well.” He got that idea from Smith’s earlier remarks:
I'm just trying to say to you, let us be the good stewards of our own money. If we feel like we have extra money to give back to you, we will. That money will go back. But I don't have any of those sums that you all say. And yes, I did. I hired five people and no, I did not hire them at the top of the range like some of you did.
My staff, I don't have a bunch of folks making a hundred and some thousand dollars in my office. They do the work because this is what they like to do and they are committed to the vision that I have set out for this district from Commissioner Smith's office. So I really find it very troubling that you all have decided to renege on what you… you were gonna do and you failed to connect with your constituents.
- Councilor Loretta Smith
I don’t agree with Smith’s position on how big those budgets should be, but I think she’s brings an interesting debate about those salaries. Are Portlanders aware of how many six figure incomes are being earned by staffers in City Hall? Are they comfortable with that, while we’re debating cuts to services? Also, why is it that the party of “no war but the class war” is composed of so many middle class folks from nice families? Do they just hate capitalism because it forces them to compete for high paying jobs instead of getting handed one by a friend in the local politburo?
Koyama Lane wanted to slash even more than $200k from the office budgets. She’s paying her staffers well, so why doesn’t she need much of an office budget for community outreach? That’s easy. Because she has all of the community outreach she needs. They’re called the DSA. Koyama Lane doesn’t care what District 3 wants, she cares what her backers want. Please remember that in 2026.
Finally, during the debate, Candace Avalos let this little gem slip:
'cause the outcome I want is more meetings, more council meetings, more committee meetings, more staffing for other things, more analysts to help us, you know, do budget stuff. More policy analysts. That's my outcome that I'm trying to accomplish.
- Councilor Candace Avalos
I wanted to highlight that because it sums up her entire ethos. Bigger, more. More everything — the maximalist approach to government. Portland has the second highest top-marginal tax rate in the entire country, and Candace Avalos wants more. Her friends in the DSA agree and want to pay for this by “taxing the rich.” As we saw with the Proper issue, they are willing to redefine “rich” as “anyone who owns a business.” Let that sink in.
How can Portland possibly recover under their leadership?
Votes: ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Ryan, Clark, Green, Zimmerman, Avalos, Dunphy, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Novick, Smith
Fees, fees, fees
Golf fees went up. Then the golf fund got raided for Parks by Morillo. This is an issue because the golf fund is actually self sustaining. They raised that money through fees, not injections of public money. By raiding the fund to pay for a failing parks system, we are punishing financial responsibility. We are telling our golf system that any success they achieve in order to fund themselves independently can always serve as a piggy bank for the city when we mismanage other areas of Parks.
TNC fees went up as well. You’ll see those on your Uber & Lyft receipts. Or as Zimmerman put it:
“ I know that the Uber receipt says City of Portland fee, 65 cents. City of Portland accessibility fee, 11 cents. I know that this sounds great that we're taxing some big company, but it goes directly to the users; to the riders.”
This was a big year for driving up fees. I don’t know how these councilors can justify squeezing Portlanders for more money right now.
Votes: Golf Fee Increase ✅ Passed 7/5 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Novick, Green, Avalos, Dunphy → Nay: Ryan, Clark, Smith, Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney; Golf Fee Plunder ✅ Passed 8/4 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Novick, Green, Avalos, Dunphy, Pirtle-Guiney → Nay: Ryan, Clark, Smith, Zimmerman
Small Businesses
Dan Ryan got some solid amendments through to help economic development and small businesses. Wholesome, non controversial. Thanks Dan. And that leads us to…
The Main Event
Alright. It was always building to this. President EPG tried to stop it. There simply wasn’t time to get into the Parks budget on Wednesday and it is worth considering the whole debate. The Clique of Six forced the question on Avalos 1 and succeeded. Let’s figure out how.
There were a number of amendments for patching the $6M cut from Parks maintenance from Mayor Wilson's proposed budget. These included:
Cuts to tree inspection (Zimmerman 1) - not discussed
Golf fees (Green and Dunphy 4, Morillo 4) - succeeded
TNC fees - not discussed. A TNC increase passed but we will being seeing what they do with that money.
Closing the Multnomah Arts Center (Novick 4) - withdrawn after public backlash.
Then there were three proposals by Avalos, Novick, and Morillo to take money from the police budget through various strategies.
Parks came out in force during public testimony to argue against Zimmerman’s proposal. I was unconvinced by their arguments. I say this as a member of the Friends of Couch Park and a passionate defender of our parks: Portland Parks and Recreation is a bloated nightmare. It’s opaque, secretive, and poorly run. If king for a day, I would clean house in a shockingly brutally fashion; top-down.
I was a bit surprised to see Parks so activated to fight Zimmerman on this. A little birdie told me there were some backroom shenanigans involving Director of Parks Adena Long behind this fight. Of course, the point is moot because Zimmerman 1 was never debated. There wasn’t time to get to the Parks budget.
So, how did Avalos 1 ($2 million from Police to Parks) get on the floor?
Robert’s Rules and the Snake of Camas, Councilor Sameer Kanal
Morillo asked to bring the Parks budget up before other, urgent issues. Her logic?
“I'm suggesting we do it before transportation so that you guys can have a little hustle in your step.”
She was shot down by EPG, so she put forward a motion in the next section:
“ It will take me one minute to get the votes I need to move 2 million from police into parks. So I think we can get that done. And you know what? It's not taking… it's not a cut. It's actually an uncrease™ as Councilor Sameer Kanal has so-called it.”
She got shut out again. Votes: ❌ Failed 6/6 → Aye: Kanal, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Dunphy → Nay: Ryan, Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Smith, Pirtle-Guiney
That’s when Novick dropped his little “what the fans paid to see” quote.
Then, at the 11:23pm, this happens:
You should watch all of it, from the 2 hour, 9 minute mark. Just in case you’re confused, here’s what happened:
EPG asks the council for a motion to wrap up. Kanal so moves.
“So moved, and I’d like to speak to it.”
Morillo protests but she doesn’t have the floor. Kanal does. He withdraws the motion and yields to Avalos. Avalos proposes Avalos 1.
Horrible pieces of shit, they may be — but impressively manipulative ones.
Now, under an extreme time constraint, with other business to wrap up, the council must consider cutting the proposed police budget. Defunding it, if you will. There are other mechanisms for funding parks, but only one is on the table, and they have a half an hour.
It went exactly like you think it did. There were only two possible outcomes: the 6/6 failure, or the 7/5 victory. Go back and watch that whole debate. You need to know how these people behave.
I was impressed by Councilors Smith, Ryan, Clark, and Zimmerman. I was unsurprised by the DSA. Novick was a fool and he ended his political career with that swing vote.
One (somewhat) surprising bit of business came from Koyama Lane. She called Parks Director Long up to ask about the impacts of cuts to Parks. This move mirrors every argument the DSA has brought forward over the last few months. Do not focus on the issue, focus on feelings and false choices. No one in that room wanted a Parks cut, but six of them lied to you about the options. They manipulated, mis-framed, and got their way.
No consideration of so many other options along with bullshit language like uncrease™. When you need to start demanding people stop using an accurate term (defund), and start making up fun sounding new terms to describe what you’re doing — you’re almost certainly full of shit.
This was a defunding, and it’s not even the only one on the table. Wait for the 11th, reader. They will try again.
Aftermath
The Main Event really was “what the fans paid to see.” Local media reported almost exclusively on the Police Budget cuts.12 That really bothered Avalos and the DSA.
You see, they weren’t cuts. It was an uncrease™ you morons. How could you go trusting every news source other than the Mercury and Street Roots? How do those boots taste, NIMBY?
The False Choice
Morillo often cites a poll showing Portlanders prefer cutting Police to cutting Parks. That’s probably because Willamette Week ran this dumbass headline:
Council-Requested Poll Shows Portlanders Overall Would Prefer Cuts to Police Over Parks and Fire - WW.
The poll shows 42% of respondents approved of cutting the police budget, while 55% disapprove; 38% of respondents approved of cuts to housing and homeless services, while 60% disapproved.
Respondents were much less approving of cuts to the parks and fire bureaus. Only 28% of respondents approved of cuts to Portland Parks & Recreation, and an even smaller portion of respondents—17%—approved of cuts to Portland Fire & Rescue.
So… Portlanders didn’t choose Parks over Police. It’s just that more of them are opposed to cutting Parks than Police. But the majority of Portlanders don’t want to cut either of them. The word “overall” is doing a lot of lifting here.
Yes, gun to their head, Portlanders would save services in this order: Fire → Parks → Homeless Services → Police. But the majority opinion was to cut none of them. And here’s the great news: those aren’t the only pieces of our budget, and we shouldn’t even be doing homeless services! That’s literally the County’s job.
We also have a Park’s Levy coming up on the ballot which will be… hold on: Funding for Parks!13
That’s also where out final little snag comes in. You see, the Portland Metro Chamber supported Mayor Wilson’s budget with the boost to police recruitment, alongside the future Parks Levy. Now that we’re taking from the police budget to fill Parks holes, they aren’t supportive of the Levy.
So, old Steve Novick is trying to get them back on board after he swung the vote to take those PPB funds (this is known as defunding).
Novick Seeks to Strike a Deal With the Portland Metro Chamber to Fund Both Parks and Police - WW.
“The chamber is open to a potential Parks Levy increase if it is explicitly to fund parks maintenance, safety, cleanliness, and modernization of parks operations,” Isaacs said in the statement to WW. “Unfortunately, the council adopted a $2 million cut to police staffing at literally the 11th hour last night. Any serious conversation about a Parks Levy will require that funding to be restored.”
After the Metro Chamber made it clear that they weren’t going to play ball with this false choice, suddenly we are looking at options to fund both? Huh.
Almost like that was always possible.
I hope this budget process is showing you the risks inherent in a “non-partisan” council with a political party operating inside it. You can look through the votes from Wednesday night here. You’ll notice several 6/6 failures ❌ and 7/5 successes ✅. Those numbers are key to recognizing the problem.
When the Clique of Six blocs up, they can tank any amendment. All the non-partisan councilors can do is argue for their support. You know, their regular job of being on a City Council.
With the DSA, you almost get one councilor with four votes and four chances to speak. Dunphy is essentially Avalos’s second seat. We joke about the Gang of Four (Smith, Ryan, Clark, Zimmerman) but they’re just the normal ones. They’re accountable to their Districts. They’re doing the job correctly. EPG is trying, and I don’t envy her, but she let things get away from her Wednesday. I hope she learns from this and comes back on the 11th with some teeth.
The Mayor’s budget is still mostly intact. This was a bad week and we aren’t out of the woods yet.
Other than the democratically elected Mayor of our city with a sizable mandate from the public.
His numbers weren’t correct either. White-guilt math, I guess.
How you get off calling small business owners (the majority of whom received equity funding because they were “POC”) plutocrats is beyond me. If you have any doubts the DSA hates small businesses, I hope this disabuses you of them.
The first of several errors. Sorry EPG.
If you believe that, I have a meme coin to sell you.
We’ll get to “uncrease.”
Wypipo, honkies, crackers. Squares, ya dig? The Man.
See?! They use it too!
They are literally communists, and proud of it. I think that’s gross but I’m gonna call them what they are because it’s accurate, not just because they suck. Every single person who spoke during the Prosper public comment in support of defunding was a DSA member. Only a few identified themselves that way.
And Portlanders will pass it. G-d help us, we can’t stop.
Luchador Max Steele, sir. You have my vote already.
In any discussion of the police budget it's necessary to remember that 5% of the final budget will be preemptively dedicated to the civilian oversight committee that will investigate the police rather than crime. So a $308 million budget will actually be $292 million for policing and $16 million to Joann Hardesty's anti-police legacy.
Both Morillo and Kanal were mentored by Hardesty and are Democrat Socialist of America members who want to end capitalism.