Give the Man What he Wants

 

According to news reports, the mayor of Portland wants the feds to “leave.”  I think the federal government should oblige him.  Hear me out.

People get the government they elect.  When that government fails to serve its purpose — and that’s now obvious in Portland — it must be removed.  That happens through elections.  But sometimes, in order to make those changes, people have to feel the pain of their prior stupidity.  They have to understand that electing Democrats isn’t really a suicide pact, because the Democrats have no intention of harming themselves, but they don’t mind if you get smashed to bits in the process.  If they did, they’d support their police.

Perfect example:  Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The idiot mayor there let the idiot populace burn down the city and then stuck his hand out and asked President Trump to put $500,000,000 in it for clean up and rebuilding.  Mr. Trump said “No.”  In essence, you made the mess, you clean it up.  Thank God.  No way this Alabama boy should be paying for a bunch of pudding-headed liberals in Minnesota turning a major city into 1980s Beirut.

Now we have this mayor of Portland pushing the cause of the six weeks of riots off on the federal government.  He is reported to have said that the feds caused the violence.  Yes, sort of like the bank being there on the corner caused the robbery, and the kid standing there on the sidewalk in Chicago caused his death from a drive-by shooting.  Do you think these knuckleheads ever get tired of trying to gaslight people?  Do they really think a bunch of black-clad, ninja-wearing, hoodlums in hoodies rose up to oppose some orchestrated violence brought down by the Department of Homeland Security?  Of course, they know better, but they want you to be fooled.

So, let’s give Mayor Ted what he wants.  Step one: close the federal courthouse.  Pack up the judges, the clerks, the files, and everything else, and leave town tomorrow.  Remove the district court to Bend, Oregon.  Now, every time some business fails or some family needs to sue the police, they have to drive an hour or two to get to a federal courthouse.   Their lawyers can file electronically, true, but all that tax revenue from federal workers in the city…gone.   Oh, and those federal criminal trials pending.  The prisoners need to be moved out of Portland to closer to the Court.  No sense paying Portland to house them.  And if that makes it harder for the family and friends to attend the trial, well, they should thank their mayor.  Bankruptcy?  Sure, it’s filed on line too, but it’s administered by the Trustee.  If the US Trustee is in Bend, he can simply demand that citizens come to him if he needs to meet with them.  No sense having an office in Portland.  Make those people without money or assets pay to come justify their terrible financial situation.  Is that cruel?  Well, sure, but that’s the point.  Sometimes, as the song notes, you have to be cruel to be kind, and in the right measure.

Oh, and that Environmental Protection Agency, the founder of some of the most draconian regulations in the Federal Register, let’s move it to Salem.  Secret Service, FBI, BATF — let’s move them too.  Get them out of Portland.  Maybe Eugene could benefit from a nice big new Federal Building — The Donald Trump Federal Building has a nice ring to it.  Let’s move the Federal Contracts Board and the Federal Executive Board out of Portland as well.  No sense spending our federal tax money in a city that has no use for it.  The Commerce Department and the Treasury Department should also be relocated, perhaps to Yakima where nice people with common sense and apples are the chief exports.  Surely a nice new Federal Building would look good there.  Name it after Mitch McConnell.

Want to file for Social Security or Medicare?  Sorry Portlanders, you’ll have to travel to Albany, or maybe Corvallis.  And when Mayor Ted sticks his hands out for federal aid to clean up the mess he made, he gets not only a “No,” but a “Hell No!”  That’s especially true now that there is supposedly another “autonomous zone” in Portland.

And Mayor Ted should take note that what happened to Mayor Durkan in Seattle after she allowed BLM and others to run rampant.  First, she got sued for violating a whole slew of constitutional rights, and second, she got a recall petition.  And that lawsuit… it wasn’t being pushed by the nutballs who generally bring constitutional claims for getting chunky peanut butter instead of creamy while locked up in state prison.  No, it was brought by business owners and citizens who had enough of being treated like serfs instead of citizens.  The city will claim Durkan is immune, but there are enough allegations in the complaint to defeat a motion to dismiss.  Mayor Ted’s complaint will be far worse.  After all, he’s let this go on for more than six weeks.

If I lived in Portland (and thank God I do not) I’d be out there driving a recall petition right now.  I’d be taking the steps to get this clown of a mayor removed, replaced with someone with an IQ higher than room temperature in degrees C, and then investigated for dereliction of duty, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and anything else I could think of.  

I’m certainly not the first to observe that where these riots have occurred and caused the most damage are places where Democrats run the city.  If these mayors actually cared about racial disparity there are many things they could do short of letting their city be looted that would improve that.  But they don’t care.  It’s all about optics.  It’s about Orange Man Bad.  It’s being a part of the resistance to ordered liberty and freedom.

But, like Dylan observed more than 50 years ago, “the times, they are a changing.”  Reasonable people will put up with nonsense only so long before they rise up and take action. 

Probably time to start booking flights to El Salvador mayor.  They don’t extradite to the US.

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There are 19 comments.

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  1. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    I support this action.

    • #1
  2. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Actually, the mayor should book the next flight to Beijing.  They don’t extradite either, and his point of view is similar to theirs.

    • #2
  3. John Park Member
    John Park
    @jpark

    Years ago, some folks complained about the Navy’s use of the island of Vieques for shelling practice. It was TOO LOUD. The Navy stopped the shelling, then moved out of the Roosevelt Roads base. There was a lot of howling, but actions have consequences.

    • #3
  4. Maguffin Inactive
    Maguffin
    @Maguffin

    John Park (View Comment):

    Years ago, some folks complained about the Navy’s use of the island of Vieques for shelling practice. It was TOO LOUD. The Navy stopped the shelling, then moved out of the Roosevelt Roads base. There was a lot of howling, but actions have consequences.

    Off topic, but when I was a kid a family friend had farm land near Fort Riley.  We’d visit in the summer and occasionally lend a hand tossing around some hay bales.  And there would be the friendly sound of artillery (well, friendly if it’s yours and has good aim) as a background while we worked.  It was glorious.

    I was very odd as a child.  Some people say I never grew out of it, but I never listened to my parents anyway so why start now.

    • #4
  5. tigerlily Member
    tigerlily
    @tigerlily

    I have mixed feeling about this, but you make a good case. And as far as removing Federal agencies currently headquartered in Portland, are there any towns in Western Oregon big enough to be home to one of them? I pretty sure Eugene as a college town is already pretty far left.

    • #5
  6. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    Eugene is the home of Antifa. 

    • #6
  7. Al French of Damascus Moderator
    Al French of Damascus
    @AlFrench

    Anthony L. DeWitt: If I lived in Portland (and thank God I do not) I’d be out there driving a recall petition right now. I’d be taking the steps to get this clown of a mayor removed, replaced with someone with an IQ higher than room temperature in degrees C, and then investigated for dereliction of duty, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and anything else I could think of.

    Recall isn’t needed. He is up for re-election in November. Just vote for his opponent.

    Oh, wait. His opponent is “I am antifa”.

    • #7
  8. Anthony L. DeWitt Coolidge
    Anthony L. DeWitt
    @AnthonyDeWitt

    Al French of Damascus (View Comment):

    Anthony L. DeWitt: If I lived in Portland (and thank God I do not) I’d be out there driving a recall petition right now. I’d be taking the steps to get this clown of a mayor removed, replaced with someone with an IQ higher than room temperature in degrees C, and then investigated for dereliction of duty, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and anything else I could think of.

    Recall isn’t needed. He is up for re-election in November. Just vote for his opponent.

    Oh, wait. His opponent is “I am antifa”.

    Just like a bunch of commies.  They give you a choice between awful and worse.

    • #8
  9. Dan Campbell Member
    Dan Campbell
    @DanCampbell

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Actually, the mayor should book the next flight to Beijing. They don’t extradite either, and his point of view is similar to theirs.

    Sorry, the FAA moved all the tower controllers out of PDX.  The airport is closed.  You’ll have to try to fly out from somewhere else.

    • #9
  10. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Excellent post! Actions have consequences! So does lack of action!

    • #10
  11. Anthony L. DeWitt Coolidge
    Anthony L. DeWitt
    @AnthonyDeWitt

    Dan Campbell (View Comment):

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Actually, the mayor should book the next flight to Beijing. They don’t extradite either, and his point of view is similar to theirs.

    Sorry, the FAA moved all the tower controllers out of PDX. The airport is closed. You’ll have to try to fly out from somewhere else.

    This made me laugh!  You clearly get the idea.

    • #11
  12. Al French of Damascus Moderator
    Al French of Damascus
    @AlFrench

    Anthony L. DeWitt (View Comment):

    Al French of Damascus (View Comment):

    Anthony L. DeWitt: If I lived in Portland (and thank God I do not) I’d be out there driving a recall petition right now. I’d be taking the steps to get this clown of a mayor removed, replaced with someone with an IQ higher than room temperature in degrees C, and then investigated for dereliction of duty, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and anything else I could think of.

    Recall isn’t needed. He is up for re-election in November. Just vote for his opponent.

    Oh, wait. His opponent is “I am antifa”.

    Just like a bunch of commies. They give you a choice between awful and worse.

    I think someone is starting a push for a write in campaign. Hopeless. Just like the campaign (again) to recall Gov. Brown. 

    • #12
  13. Headedwest Coolidge
    Headedwest
    @Headedwest

    tigerlily (View Comment):

    I have mixed feeling about this, but you make a good case. And as far as removing Federal agencies currently headquartered in Portland, are there any towns in Western Oregon big enough to be home to one of them? I pretty sure Eugene as a college town is already pretty far left.

    Are there any cities that used to be prosperous from lumber that need an economic boost?

     

    • #13
  14. Ammo.com Member
    Ammo.com
    @ammodotcom

    It’s an attitude akin to a toddler trashing their room and then stamping their feet when their mom won’t help them clean it up . I rather suspect this particular toddler will live in squalor before learning a lesson from it, though.

    • #14
  15. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    As a guy who used to live in the middle of a “Federal” wilderness, in all seriousness I’d love to see the Federal Government pull out of the states. Save for border and military, I’d rather make states directly responsible anyway.

    Stuff like air traffic control can all be done privately anyway (as it is in many countries already).

    • #15
  16. colleenb Member
    colleenb
    @colleenb

    Congrats on the link to Instapundit! 

    • #16
  17. Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw Member
    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw
    @MattBalzer

    Anthony L. DeWitt (View Comment):

    Al French of Damascus (View Comment):

    Anthony L. DeWitt: If I lived in Portland (and thank God I do not) I’d be out there driving a recall petition right now. I’d be taking the steps to get this clown of a mayor removed, replaced with someone with an IQ higher than room temperature in degrees C, and then investigated for dereliction of duty, conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and anything else I could think of.

    Recall isn’t needed. He is up for re-election in November. Just vote for his opponent.

    Oh, wait. His opponent is “I am antifa”.

    Just like a bunch of commies. They give you a choice between awful and worse.

    Hey, at least you get a choice.

    • #17
  18. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    Welcome, Instapundit Readers

    We appreciate you stopping by Ricochet, where the tradition of blogging lives on.  We offer a platform for people to blog about any topic, with a bit of moderation to keep this from resembling a youtube comment section.  We have groups for discussing specific areas like firearms, political memes, cooking, and alcoholic drinks (Stephen Green approved!).  All this for a reasonable annual fee – sign up for membership today.

    • #18
  19. Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing) Member
    Sisyphus (hears Xi laughing)
    @Sisyphus

    Dan Campbell (View Comment):

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    Actually, the mayor should book the next flight to Beijing. They don’t extradite either, and his point of view is similar to theirs.

    Sorry, the FAA moved all the tower controllers out of PDX. The airport is closed. You’ll have to try to fly out from somewhere else.

    There are some environmental issues that have been brought to our attention. Yes, those are EPA tanks covering your runways. Leftovers from the Obama Administration.

    And passports and customs? I think the whole Northwest would be better served out of Boise. Restricting international flights to a few select facilities seems so much more orderly. Just thinking out loud.

    And governor, we have a team here to speak to you on some tax matters.

    • #19
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