If Portland did not already exist, we would have to invent it, so as to demonstrate how crazy things can get when liberals are offered no resistance. The moonbats running the city are destroying a recycling plant in the name of climate piousness.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Portland declared a climate emergency last year, and the City Council voted to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. To meet this goal that would have no effect on the climate, Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability wants to impose some $11 million in annual fees on city businesses. Facilities deemed “major stationary sources of air pollution” would pay an annual surcharge of up to $40,000, and Portland would also impose a per-ton fee on any facility that emits more than 2,500 metric tons of C02 a year.

Chuck Schumer has called for the White House to declare a climate emergency too, so that similar measures can be inflicted at the national level, scaled up to gargantuan size.

The carbon taxes would fall especially hard on Portland’s Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant, which handles all of the state’s glass-bottle recycling and processes the equivalent of 440,000 beer bottles a day on average. If the City Council adopts the proposal, the plant would have to pay an estimated $1.1 million a year, more than any Portland facility except the Evraz steel mill, according to the newspaper Willamette Week. The recycling plant pays $1.6 million in income, real-estate and property taxes.

When it goes under, that $1.6 million will have been lost because greedy bureaucrats demanded $1.1 million more.

The plant has 115 employees. Their tax contributions will be lost too when they join the swelling ranks of the eco-unemployed, putting Big Government even farther behind. Enviropolitics isn’t about numbers that add up. It is about striking poses while inflicting tyranny for its own sake.

Jules Bailey of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative said that if the plant went bust, the state’s glass bottles would end up in landfills or be shipped out of state.

Leftist pols are not concerned with improving the environment, or they would back nuclear energy. Better the garbage should end up floating in the sea than they should miss out on a chance to loot and persecute in the name of the planet.

The contradictions of progressive climate policy are multiplying, but one constant prevails: The costs fall on workers and consumers in return for no benefit for the climate.

However, the benefit of climate ideology to our rulers is immense. It may even allow them to impose the Great Reset.

On a tip from Varla.

No wonder there are hardly any real journalists in this country anymore, only servile Democrat apparatchiks who have switched from hecklers of Donald Trump to dewy-eyed idolaters of Joe Biden. This is no longer a safe country for real journalists — not once they have a reputation for exposing the viciousness of the Left’s street-level shock troops. That’s why Andy Ngo has had to flee the erstwhile Land of the Free in fear for his life:

In an interview with Sky News about his upcoming new book, “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy,” Ngo explained to his hosts that “for [any] number of months now there’s just been increasing threats of violence against me, promises by Antifa extremists to kill me.”

Ngo — who’s now in London — noted that “all those threats were reported to authorities, and even when I provided names of some of the suspects, nothing was done. So, it’s pained me a lot to temporarily [have] to leave the country and home that settled my parents, who came there as political refugees.”

It used to be that political refugees fled to America, rather than from it. At least we still receive plenty of economic “refugees,” thanks to the extravagant generosity of the welfare state.

For years, Ngo has served as the primary information source on Antifa from his base in Portland. He kept at it even after Antifa goons brutally beat him in 2019.

Serving as an island of honest journalism in a sea of partisan activism, Ngo resisted any temptation to blame the Capitol Riot on Antifa.

Ngo is fair to Antifa wokesters. He tells the truth about them. That’s why they want to kill him.

Ngo also has the honor of having made enemies among our liberal elite overlords:

A little over a week ago, New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong — who was hired by the “paper of record” despite her history of relentless social media attacks against “dumbass f***ing white people.” — set her sights on Ngo, calling him “dangerous” and a “very real threat.”

As soft tyranny gives way to hard, we are reaching the point where being called “dangerous” and a “threat” by powerful liberals is itself a threat, indicating that you are in genuine danger.

Antifa has also managed to intimidate Portland’s well-known Powell’s Books into not stocking or promoting Ngo’s upcoming book.

Huey Long had it right if he really said, “Sure, we’ll have Fascism in this country and we’ll call it anti-Fascism.”

On a tip from Varla.

Portland has been subjected to well over 100 riots over the past year. Mayor Ted Wheeler has forbidden the police to use tear gas to keep them under control. From September:

Wheeler, who was also gassed during a protest earlier this year, made the announcement saying “we need something different” to quell more than three months of nightly unrest in Portland following the May 25 police custody death [probably from overindulging in fentanyl] of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

However, chemical agents are okay if brandished by liberal politicians, as Wheeler did Sunday night:

Robert King, Senior Policy Advisor on Public Safety for Wheeler … notified the [Portland Police Bureau] that Wheeler had been involved in an incident in which “WHEELER used pepper spray against an unknown person.” …

According to Wheeler’s statement, he was leaving the Hillsdale McMenamin’s pub, and was confronted by a middle-aged male, who was taking video of Wheeler with a cell phone.

The male suggested he “had been photographing” Wheeler while he was inside the restaurant. The male accused Wheeler of not wearing a mask.

Presumably a constituent, the guy followed him to his car and would not get out of his face, so Wheeler “pulled out my pepper spray and I sprayed him in the eyes.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if police could do the same to rioters? Civil order might be restored.

Neither Wheeler nor [his companion former Portland mayor Sam] Adams indicated that the man who was sprayed posed an imminent threat or had physically threatened him, only that he was “in close proximity.”

But Wheeler fretted that he could have caught COVID-19 from him.

Let that be a lesson to the public. Even Ted Wheeler can be pushed only so far!

On a tip from Dragon’s Lair.

How can you impose a police state when the police may not have been brainwashed into rejecting Americanism in favor of your oligarchical collectivist ideology? This troubles Democrats like Rep Steve Cohen. But Oregon, ever at the cutting edge of leftism, has devised a solution:

Oregon state lawmakers are considering a bill that would require all Oregon law enforcement officers to earn four-year college degrees, regardless of how long they have served.

Senate Bill 612, the brainchild of Senator Lew Frederick (D – Portland), would apply to every police officer, correction officer, probation and parole officer, reserve officer and regulatory specialist within the state.

No doubt all law enforcement officers will be deeply enriched by being forced to take years of classes on how they are racist sexist homophobes and their country stinks, which appears to comprise the heart of the college curriculum these days.

Officers who are currently employed within the state of Oregon would have to earn their degrees within the next four years under the proposed bill, or else they would be fired.

That’s one way of defunding the police: force out as many as possible by making the job unendurable. There will be hardly anyone left to fund. This has worked great in Portland’s sister city Seattle.

The post-secondary education requirement would apply to all officers – nearly all of whom are already working full-time covering shifts around the clock – and does not include any exceptions for officers who have been working in law enforcement positions for years.

Some cops work second jobs to support their families, because they don’t get paid much to lay their lives on the line to protect a public that has been instructed by the liberal establishment to despise them. They don’t necessarily have a lot of spare time.

The bill is currently in committee. It’s chief sponsor Lew Frederick has been a busy moonbat:

Frederick also introduced Senate Bill 619 [last] Monday to pay reparations to black Oregonians.

Under his proposed bill, $123,000 would be paid out annually to each person for the rest of their life.

With liberals in charge, being oppressed is more remunerative than working for a living.

The lucky recipients would not have to pay state, county, or city taxes on the massive handout. In utopia, taxpayers and the racially sacred will belong to totally separate castes.

Frederick’s background is unsurprising: reporter for 17 years, Director of Public Information at Portland Public Schools for 13 years, on the State Board of Education. By a fortunate coincidence, he is of the appropriate race to cash in on the reparations. A guy like Senator Frederick knows how hurtful it is to be marginalized.

On a tip from Varla.

In 2020, the liberal establishment released the mob violence genie by inciting, praising, and facilitating Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots. This worked beautifully, resulting in $billions in damages, destroying any number of businesses, and feeding a public perception of the country spinning out of control, which helped Democrats seize power. Now that it has served its purpose, will the genie obediently slink back into its bottle? Unlikely.

This was the scene on Inauguration Day in Portland:

Biden’s VP (and possibly already our de facto president) Kamala Harris has praised Black Lives Matter/Antifa rioters as the “heroes of our time,” has explicitly called for them to keep it up, and has raised funds to bail them out of jail so that they can resume their destructive activities. But no one could be far enough left to suit a mob addicted to public displays of political violence — not even Biden’s handlers.

There won’t be fewer pointless “imperialist” wars under Biden’s handlers.

The Portland fun climaxed at Democratic Party HQ, where the social justice warriors paid their respects:

In case it wasn’t already clear that Biden’s own foot soldiers don’t like him much better than patriots do,

Meanwhile, up the Left Coast in Seattle, the original Starbucks location was attacked, as was a courthouse:

There was more Antifa violence in Denver and Sacramento.

Good thing Antifa is left-wing. Otherwise, the liberal establishment would be running these videos 24/7 as proof that dissidents need to be detained in reeducation camps.

On tips from Stormfax and TCS III.

Antifa rioted in Portland for 100+ consecutive nights, while Mayor Ted Wheeler wrung his hands and bleated sympathetically. Let’s see what kind of thanks he is receiving lately:

Wheeler and a dinner companion had been seated in Café Nell’s outdoor dining area for about five minutes when a group started shouting obscenities at him from outside the tent, mayoral spokesman Jim Middaugh said in a statement.

The hecklers forced their way past restaurant employees and confronted Wheeler, who asked them to leave.

“At that point, one member of the group started swatting at the Mayor and made physical contact with him,” Middaugh said.

Wheeler was not hurt, but would be within his rights to press charges for assault, not that he is likely to.

Last summer, Antifa laid siege to his home. Only very recently has he expressed a serious willingness to restore order, after handcuffing the police and resisting outside assistance.

The lesson: there is no middle ground with Antifa. If you oppose them in the slightest way, they will regard you as the enemy.

Meanwhile, the chaos continues:

On a tip from TCS III.

The election must really be over. The well over 100 riots that have erupted in Portland since last spring having served their political purpose, Mayor Ted Wheeler is willing to put an end to them by calling in outside help:

Wheeler requested for federal, state, and county law enforcement “to convene to deal with anarchist violence as soon as possible.” He also asked for the state legislature to increase penalties for repeat offenders of criminal destruction and vandalism.

In the past, Wheeler has pandered to the leftist rioters, handcuffing the police and resisting outside assistance despite his obvious inability to handle the situation himself. He even blamed those who offered to help for creating “the hate and the division.”

Time will tell whether Democrats can get the Black Lives Matter/Antifa genie back in the bottle now that they have conjured it.

Hat tip: Not the Bee.

In case anyone besides Democrats has forgotten, Mark Dice reminds us that the First Amendment guarantees not only freedom of speech and religion, but also “the right of the people peaceably to assemble”:

Actually, the capital of Oregon is Salem, but Portland is certainly the cultural capital of the people in charge. You might say the 100+ leftist riots that have occurred there this year have made it the cultural capital of moonbats throughout the country.

Oregon Gauleiter Kate Brown’s assertion that there is no difference between calling the police over a noisy party and ratting out neighbors for seating seven at the Thanksgiving table is absurd. In the former, the infraction is not gathering; it is creating a disturbance — similar to the case if Oregon’s leftist rulers were to enforce laws against rioting. With Thanksgiving restrictions, it is explicitly the gathering itself that is forbidden, despite being a fundamental right guaranteed in the Constitution.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

To get an idea of the depths to which moonbattery has sunk Portland, consider that it chooses to be ruled by people like City Council Member Jo Ann Hardesty. Hardesty is adamantly opposed to the police — except when she is calling them on a Lyft driver who just wants her to get out of his car:

Lyft and Uber drivers are warned: under no circumstances pick up members of the Portland City Council. It may not be easy to extract them from your vehicle.

On tips from Kate P, DCGere, and Pork_Soda.

Congratulations to Ted Wheeler, who was reelected Mayor of Portland. He is conspicuously awful at his job — allowing Antifa goons to rule the streets, presiding over more than 100 riots so far this year (and counting), refusing to take sides in the conflict between civilization and the anarchocommunist thugs burning down his city. Only New York’s Bill de Blasio could claim to be a worse mayor. But at least Wheeler isn’t his opponent Sarah Iannarone, who ran on the platform “I am Antifa.”

Maybe the reelected Ted Wheeler will be new and improved, as the Democrats running the region finally take some responsibility for maintaining public safety:

Wheeler may realize that the only reason he is still in office is that sane people who have not yet escaped Portland could not elect anyone better at this point. He is a moonbat, but circumstances have forced him onto the side of those who value law and order. Here’s what his fellow progressives think about him (sorry about the language):

Local media crows that Wheeler will be “the only straight white guy” on the City Council. Moonbats choose their candidates on the ostensible basis of not being straight white guys; this absolves candidates of lacking more meaningful qualifications. Their actual qualification in a place like Portland is that they are barking moonbats:

Looks like “police reform” will top the agenda. Buckle up for more anarchy.

If voter fraud fails to preserve Biden’s slim lead, the violence will be explosive — though only in the short term. Conversely, if Biden or rather Harris takes power, there will be encouragement from DC, so rioting in places like Portland will become the new normal until these cities dry up and die.

On tips from Kate P and Pork_Soda.

If Democrats prevail, they plan to pack the Senate by creating new states out of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. If sanity prevails and Trump is reelected, changes to the nation’s configuration could favor Republicans. Consider Oregon:

This year’s protests in Portland and Bend, Ore., have many wondering how the Beaver State’s increasingly radicalized left will cope if President Trump is re-elected. After the 2016 election, a group of Oregonians submitted a petition for a ballot measure asking voters to consider secession. It went nowhere, but this year could be different.

Portland is an open-air lunatic asylum. Its next mayor is likely to be Sarah Iannarone, an avid Antifa supporter. She is even more radical than Ted Wheeler, who allowed riots to go on for over 100 consecutive nights.

Bend is just as bent:

Consider the hysterical reaction of locals and election officials in Bend when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents attempted to take two illegal aliens into custody in August. Hundreds of protesters blocked ICE buses, and a 12-hour standoff ensued before agents could remove the men.

Bend’s political establishment defended the protesters.

Both of the illegals have criminal records that include violence against women. But anything goes if you are in the country illegally.

The kooks in places like Portland and Bend will go ballistic if Trump is reelected. Leftists have the time horizon of small children, making them incapable of dealing with temporary setbacks. If they demand their own country, to be run along the lines of Seattle’s CHAZ/CHOP, they are welcome to it.

Meanwhile,

Several right-wing groups are gathering signatures from residents of 15 Eastern Oregon counties that have had enough of this coastal insanity. They want either to become part of Idaho or form a new state with rural counties of Northern California.

Such a state might be called Jefferson, after one of the Founding Fathers the woke so hate.

Western Oregon is blue as a San Francisco bathhouse. In the eastern part of the state, every day is the Fourth of July. As in California, the state government is dominated by the more densely populated moonbat-infested areas, leaving the rest unrepresented.

Imagine—if Mr. Trump wins, the bluest part of Oregon could forgo becoming a new state and go straight to establishing an independent country, where far-out progressive policies can be road-tested.

That would be good for some grim laughs. Meanwhile, the remaining part of Oregon would reliably provide two Republican Senators. If Portlandia fails to secede but Oregon splits into two states, the GOP would again get two Senators.

All of this sounds less improbable than it would have a year ago. It is becoming increasingly obvious that Biden voters and Trump voters do not belong under the same government.

On a tip from Kate P.

Ted Wheeler has pandered spinelessly to Antifa for years, enabling it to take over the city of Portland. If you don’t mind a barrage of foul language, listen to a representative of Antifa express the gratitude it would be foolish not to expect:

A couple years from now, a similar tirade will be launched against Mayor Sarah “I am Antifa” Iannarone — assuming the entire city hasn’t been burned to the ground by then.

Antifa is to the Democrat Party what the Brownshirts were to the Nazi Party, except for one important difference: Nazis could control their Brownshirts.

On a tip from Anonymous.

There is one good thing about Portland. At least it can’t get any worse. Under Antifa-friendly Mayor Ted Wheeler, the city has degenerated as far into moonbattery as could possibly be imagined, with riots taking place literally every night for months on end.

But wait; I forgot that no matter how far they push the envelope, progressives will always find a way to progress further still. Just because a sane person cannot imagine escalating the madness even further doesn’t mean a moonbat can’t.

You thought no one could be worse than Wheeler? Meet Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone.

Via the Washington Examiner:

Iannarone was spotted wearing a skirt emblazoned with the images of communist dictators Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, as well as communist revolutionary Che Guevara.

How stylish:

Between the three of them, Mao, Stalin, and communist executioner Che Guevara killed tens of millions of people. In terms of body count, Mao is the evilest man who has ever lived; Stalin comes in second.

Iannarone’s campaign manager Gregory McKelvey openly identifies as a communist. Iannarone herself identifies as Antifa, literally proclaiming, “I am Antifa.”

At least she doesn’t leave anyone guessing as to which side she takes in the one-sided war between leftist terrorists and law enforcement. From her campaign website:

For weeks we witnessed Federal officers commit acts of violence against Portlanders in our streets… Before Trump’s secret police left the city, Portland’s current mayor failed for months to prevent Portland’s police from violently attacking journalists and protestors exercising their Constitutional rights. These failures represent a devastating reality that we must unseat in November. …

Under Wheeler’s watch, 71% of Portlanders do not have a high level of trust in the police, and 79% believe the PPB only sometimes, rarely, or never does a good job reducing or preventing crime. It is time to stop wasting money and stop putting good money after bad.

Portland is already a place where you might be shot in the street like Aaron Danielson for not being a leftist. Imagine the chaos after Iannarone defunds the police.

Reducing the budget of the PPB doesn’t mean there’s nobody there when you call for help. It means more funds available for the alternative types of assistance you may need. We have enough money to help everyone feel safe, and that money should be invested in better housing, transportation, education, health care, and social services that lead to real public safety.

When Marxists start burning your house down in the name of Black Lives Matter, you can call social services, and they will send around a social worker in a couple of weeks to chastise you for your racism.

Now for the really scary part. According to the polls, the communist crazy lady is going to win in a blowout:

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler trails his challenger Sarah Iannarone by 11 points, according to a poll of likely voters conducted by DHM Research on behalf of the Portland Business Alliance.

Some national polls have Biden up by even more.

If current trends are not reversed, Portland is our near future. Maybe it is a good thing that border wall never got finished, because the last sane people are going to want out of here.

On tips from Dragon’s Lair and Frances J.

The catch and release policy toward rioters that prevails in Democrat-run cities like Portland has predictable consequences. One could be the murder of Aaron Danielson, apparently at the hands of Antifa maniac Michael Reinoehl, against whom various charges had recently been dropped. This could be another:

Portland rioter Phillip Lawrence Nelson is now a suspect in a double-stabbing murder that occurred just one week after he was caught and let go by local law enforcement.

The original charges against Nelson of interfering with a peace officer were dropped the day after his first arrest in early June, and he was released.

Cassy Leaton and Najaf “Nate” Hobbs were found stabbed to death in Portland on June 16 after an apparent dispute over the building Nelson had been squatting in.

At least now he is being held without bail.

De facto presidential candidate Kamala Harris has described the rioters as a “new coalition of conscience” and “the heroes of our time.” She encourages people to donate money to bail them out of jail.

On a tip from R F.