Has Oregon Government become less effective with DEI?

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Charlie Munger who was co-chair to Warren Buffet's highly successful company, Berkshire-Hathway, said the following about modern day bureaucracies, before his passing away this last year at the wise old age of 99:

 “Modern life creates successful bureaucracy and successful bureaucracy breeds failure and stupidity.”  

Governments across Oregon in just the last five years have added Departments/Offices for pursuing the amorphous idea called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).  But these DEI offices seem to spur divisiveness and opportunity for employees to file more grievances.

Here are two examples just this week on how Oregon bureaucracies have become mired in the DEI activities of their employees:

First, at the Oregon Health Authority, which has 86 employees working in its DEI office at an expense of over $2 million per year:

 New records show relations soured before Oregon Health Authority equity director’s firing | The Lund Report 

Second, at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), an attempt to protest the Israel-Palestine conflict by the Department's DEI staff.  In response, you probably find yourself asking:  'why is the DEQ involving itself in the Israel-Palestine war conflict?  Afterall, isn't DEQ's main purpose to ensure Oregon's natural Environment is protected and ensuring Oregon livability - these purposes having little-to-no relation with the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

 Here's Willamette Week's recent reporting on this DEI event at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ):

 Oregon Environmental Regulator’s DEI Council Publishes Pro-Palestine Statement (wweek.com) 

We also see how the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) gets bogged down when it is developing its plans for road tolls.  ODOT hired a bunch of public relations employees and brought in all kinds of government employees to review the Equity consequences of Oregon's proposed road tolls for I-5 and I-205.  At the end of many months of discussion and hand waving, these bureaucrats came to the conclusion that already existed - that being, that the only way to be equitable is to measure Equity by the impacts of policies/programs on low-income folks, or in ODOT's case... low-income drivers.

If you want to know why ODOT's road toll proposals went down with a thud, so far, it seems apparent that ODOT is too conflicted with competing goals (building roads, achieving equity, and balancing road building against climate change) to actually deliver on new road construction, funded by road tolls.

I suspect that all the public monies being spent on DEI would be much more effective in achieving more equitable outcomes if the monies were spent instead on building and imparting to Oregon's youth successful life skills.  Armed with successful life skills, discrimination and other barriers faced by low income, disadvantaged people become easily circumvented - as those with successful, practical life skills are in high demand by corporate America.

So, as a candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives, I favor getting rid of most DEI staffing and transferring these savings in costs into educating and lifting up the knowledge and working skills of our low-income young people so that they can move up as quickly as possible into good paying jobs after they graduate from school.

(posted by Elvis Clark on July 3, 2024)

If the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) approves the handing out of free syringes to hard drug users, and the free continual handing out of the recovery drug Narcan to those who overdose with hard drugs like fentanyl; Isn't OHA, to some degree, perpetuating drug addiction by funding the handing out of free syringes and the distribution of the drug Narcan to those already addicted to hard drugs, like fentanyl?

The OHA reports the following paragraph:   "Providers also reported significant harm reduction assistance. Outreach teams distributed Narcan, fentanyl test strips, safety supplies, and motel vouchers. They operated syringe exchanges, conducted brief intervention counseling, and made referrals to housing, treatment, and medical appointments. Workers provided harm reduction training to service providers and communities. Nurses tested people for HIV and Hepatitis C and provided triage and wound care. " {re:    the following OHA report

Oregon Health Authority and Oversight and Accountability Office: Funding and Delivery of Measure 110 Substance Use Disorder Services Show progress, but Significant Risks Remain }

The Co-Chair of OHA's Oversight and Accountability Committee actually says in the following video [paraphrasing] that drug addiction should not be stigmatized, but be accepted:

 Video | Facebook 

Is it any wonder why some people say about woke:  "Go Woke.  Go Broke." [Isn't this somewhat indicative of public monies going up in smoke, because they are being managed by the woke?]

(posted by Elvis Clark on April 6, 2024)

In the Catalyst article by Eric Sherman (link below here), Sherman laments that Trump is not talking up his successful executive action in speeding the development of Covid-19 vaccines, with his "Operation Warp Speed." (Sherman is not a fan of Trump, by the way.)

But I think Sherman probably doesn't fully appreciate that Trump is not talking up his Operation Warp Speed, resulting in the Covid "vaccines," because many of his MAGA supporters have ill feelings about the Covid shot mandates that followed the release of the Covid "vaccines" - with many state governments and in some circumstances the Federal Government under Biden firing workers for not getting the jab.

 Campaign on Operation: Warp Speed | The Oregon Catalyst 

(posted by Elvis Clark on January 13, 2024)

Now that the dust has settled, and emotions stabilized, it may have become time to revisit the George Floyd case where four Minneapolis policeman are put on trial for being negligent in apprehending George Floyd (person of color) and causing his death in May 2020.  A former Minneapolis reporter for the local CBS station has now produced a documentary about the George Floyd case.  This documentary reports that the initial citizen video of the arrest of George Floyd seems to have been edited to put the four arresting police officers in a criminal like light.   And still this citizen video is part of the subsequent trial of the four police officers involved in the apprehension of George Floyd on the fateful day.

 The producers of this new documentary obtained the actual full length police camera footage of the arrest of George Floyd.  It tells a different story than the popular narrative cast in 2020 and 2021.  George Floyd clearly resisted arrest and made it nearly impossible for the four police officers to subdue him.  Floyd is arrested for having passed a fake $20 bill to a convenance store owner - Floyd also having a long criminal record.  The producers of the documentary also obtained the original autopsy report for George Floyd, and it revealed that Floyd had dangerous amounts of fentanyl in his system and also a bad artery.  Even so, the four police officers are tried, found guilty and sentenced to years in prison - much of the evidence disallowed by the municipal trial court.

But what really hit home to me about the trial of Police Officer Chauvin is that the trial is held in Minneapolis, at a time of violent riots in which the protestors are calling for the killing of cops - the rioters having been moved to do so by the edited video and the TV news media and politicians also impulsively berating the police for the arrest and subsequent death of Floyd.  

I ask you:  if you are one of the jurors, with hysterical, violent protestors just outside the courthouse, don't you have to fear for your own personal safety if you were to vote to acquit or find innocent Derrick Chauvin?  This in and of itself makes the Chauvin trial unfair, in my view.

The Fall of Minneapolis - YouTube

The George Floyd case reverberated far and wide.  The City of Milwaukie, for instance, created an Equity department costing it hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last few years since.  Then too, Milwaukie citizens wanting to prove they aren't racists voted Desi Nicodemus in as one of their City Councilors.  Nicodemus, who is a person of color, admitted in the election candidate forum that he didn't know much about Milwaukie City government.  But this did not seem to matter with the citizens of Milwaukie as he handily defeated Jon Stoll, who is white; and who is a long serving member and chair of Milwaukie's City Budget Committee.  (To be fair, Councilor Nicodemus is proving to be a very thoughtful elected official.)

Milwaukie Councilor Falconer at the time is publicly recommending people read the book "How to be an Anti-racist."  The Author of this group who is black got a high paid gig with Boston College, and under his tenure his small department subsequently blew through $40 million in Boston College monies, with no accounting of how these monies were spent.  Boston College reacts only in the last year trying to audit the author's department.

  Then there is the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization which also fed off the George Floyd case, raking in tens of millions of dollars overnight from corporations - these corporations wanting to signal their virtue.  Here again, this organization cannot account for where it spent all these millions, subsequently it being discovered that the BLM founder(s) may have been buying mansions for themselves with part of these donations.

Humans are susceptible to bouts of mass hysteria - as evidenced by the Floyd riots, vigilante events of the old West and the Salem Witch Trials.

(posted by Elvis Clark on December 6, 2023)

So, we state taxpayers are maybe being put on the hook to fund a bail out of the downtown part of Portland - which wallows in the predictable negative results of its own unrealistic, juvenile "big" thought-driven government policies.

Here's the Oregon Catalyst reporting on Kotek's pending bailout of the mis guided, big thinking City of Portland:

 Kotek’s secret $250M gathering to “fix” Portland | The Oregon Catalyst

(posted by Elvis Clark on September 5, 2023)

Facing a very tight budget, what with building a new courthouse, Clackamas County Commissioner Shull questioned the purpose and necessity of the County's Equity and Inclusion Office.   The County's Equity and Inclusion Office seems to have been formed only since the year 2020, and largely formed by the unelected Clackamas County Administrator (with little input from the elected County Commissioners).

Currently, the County's Equity and Inclusion Office has a budget of more than $800,000 per year.  And the County needs to raise $15 million per year to afford the construction of a new Clackamas County Court House (which replaces the nearly 90 year old, earth quake prone current courthouse in downtown Oregon City).  I have serious doubts that if the Clackamas Commissioners asked voters for a property tax increase to fund the new courthouse that voters would approve such a property tax increase.  

The public reaction to eliminating or reducing the County's Equity and Inclusion Office is reflective of the conservative and progressive divide among Clackamas residents.  

What is revealing about the discussion surrounding the Equity and Inclusion Office is that there is not a common understanding even among County Commissioners as to the meaning of the term Equity.  Commissioners Shull and West, I believe rightfully so, understand Equity to mean equal outcomes among monolithic groupings of people - groupings based for instance on skin color.  On the other end, Commissioners Schrader and Savas understand Equity as equal access.  One then wonders isn't equal access really Inclusion; and so, what would then be the purpose of having Inclusion in the name of the office (since in the minds of Schrader and Savas, Equity is equal access, or I should think a big part of Inclusion).

Another revealing thing from the public discussions is that it isn't really clear what the County's Equity and Inclusion Office does specifically - other than taking e-mails from those with grievances of one perceived slight or another.

For those wanting to leave the Equity and Inclusion Office untouched with continued funding, I don't hear any of their testimony that cites exactly what this relatively new Equity and Inclusion Office does in terms of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  They tend to cite work that the County has done even before the creation of the County Equity and Inclusion Office (that work being essentially already embedded in normal County business for many years now - even before the creation of the County Equity and Inclusion Office).  Or they cite, the work of other DEI organizations unrelated to the County itself.  Or, they cite incidences of past discrimination and talk of the County's Equity and Inclusion Office signaling to everyone at large that the County is now woke.

Conservatives, who testify, want the County to treat everyone as individuals, and not divide by skin color and other such involuntary attributes.  They worry about reverse-discrimination by governments, including the County.  And clearly, there are cases of reverse-discrimination.   I exhibit a photo to the top right of here of Kevin Dahlgren, a 25 year plus successful leader in addressing homelessness in the town of Gresham and other parts of Multnomah County.  In a recent presentation, Dahlgren notes a case where a homeless woman is denied medical treatment assistance because of her white skin color by one of the government's non-profit homeless organizations.  This homeless woman subsequently loses both her legs for lack of government addressing her request for medical treatment in a non-discriminatory manner.  He says government organizations, with scarce resources, are routinely discriminating against white homeless people.

It seems like the County will continue funding its Equity and Inclusion Office.  This Office does maybe give some reassurance to those that have indeed been discriminated against in the past. It might also qualify the County more easily for "free" federal government monies for DEI activity, and it might also avoid those with a chip on their shoulder from suing the County.

(posted by Elvis Clark on August 5, 2023)