Recalibrate Portland does a decent job being a voice that calls Portland, and Trump’s, BS what it is. In a radically polarized city that feels it must toe the party line blindly, it’s nice to see someone that apparently doesn’t mind calls out the idiots on any side when they start lying or distorting the truth. That’s something I can get behind.
Local user brrent reviews putting solar panels on his house and gets a good discussion going on the process, pros and cons.
Summary:
Oregon’s education system is now ranked as the 5th worst school system in the country. Continuing a long trend of continued declines and disastrous statistics for failing Oregon schools. This despite decades of complete Democratic party control of the state and school systems that have some of the highest funding per student in the country.
As it turns out, removing requirements to prove basic skills in reading and math hasn’t worked out so well. While Oregon leaders try to do a victory lap because the results are better than they were, the end result has been bad for all students. Ironically, it has been particularly bad for students of color, students that specifically targeted by activist educational policies:
Only 11% of Portland Public School’s Black students scored as proficient in math — akin to getting an A or B grade — the state tests indicated, and only 19% met that level in reading and writing.
And to show just how bad Portland itself is:
Proficiency levels for Black students were roughly twice as high in most of the four surrounding districts… In Beaverton, 35% of Black students hit proficiency goals in reading and writing and 23% in math, followed by Hillsboro at 34% and 25%, Tigard-Tualatin at 33% and 24% and North Clackamas at 29% and 22%.
Sadly, the one thing the teachers union has done is come under increasingly activist leadership. They held strikes that were proved to be without merit, union leadership encouraged pro-Palestinian messages and flags during strike marches, the union publish Pro-Palestinian teaching handbooks for classrooms that encourage students to pray to Allah. All of this has led to numerous lawsuits against the union and schools for being anti-semitic. Add to this fun Portland hosted the 2025 National Educational Conference in which Portland members openly harassed and threatened Jewish attendees from other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, Mississippi has gone from one of the worst schools, to one of the top performers by bringing back tried and true methods of education. They require 2 hours of daily reading from grades 1-4. They separate groups into skill level of reading and provide remedial reading assistance for those struggling. Those who fail – really do fail. It’s a system of accountability and phonics that is leading to dramatic improvements compared to what has been called the ‘soft racism’ of lowering or removing requirements to improve poor statistics.
It seems the Democratic governor has finally agreed and is now forcing science-backed phonics-based approaches instead of activist backed agendas.
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Michael Barnes, a professional pianist and organist, and has been Senior Organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church since 1992. He puts on his Halloween concert during the free noon Wednesday concerts at the Old Church in Portland at this spookiest month every year. He plays spooky music from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 all the way to sing-a-longs of favorite tv theme songs.
This year’s show was Wed, Oct 22nd at noon (video not up at the time of this posting). Here’s the show from 2024.
The study ranks Oregonians, youth and adults, as having the highest prevalence of mental health challenges among residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Mental Health America’s newly released 2025 annual report.
Despite complete Democratic party control for over 30 years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year – the latest annual report on mental health shows Oregonians have the highest rates of mental health issues in the country. Rates have increased every year for the last 5 years and Oregon has been above national averages since 2015.
How many Oregonians suffer from mental illness? 30% of the adult population.
There’s lots of finger pointing. Many blame normalizing homelessness and living on the streets for people who often struggle with addictions and mental health issues. Others point at attempts to normalize mental health issues and neurodivergence as simply ‘lifestyle choices’.
No matter how you look at it, the decades of policies we have today are clearly failing – and failing worse than anywhere else in the country.
When I was on a 8 week sabbatical a number of years ago, I took an artistic welding class. It was a ton of fun. Sugar Metal Customs does custom ironwork, but also teaches some classes from making metal roses to giant metal flails for your medieval fantasies.
Maybe pick up a skill that AI can’t replace?
Portland council’s openly socialist progressive bloc (Candace Avalos, Jamie Dunphy, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane, and Angelita Morillo) has been voting in lockstep.
As part of an Oregon Ethics Commission investigation to see if they violated either city and state law on negotiating outside of public meetings, a huge block of Teams messages has been acquired by public records request by Willamette Week. It reveals councilmembers discussing plans for government appropriation of buildings as well as airing grievances and annoyances at their colleagues as well as constituents. Even worse, they make it clear some of them lack even the most basic governance knowledge.
For example, on July 9th, Candace Avalos sent out a link to a story about the office tower Big Pink selling for $45 million – an astronomical collapse of 88% in value (It was last purchased in 2015 for $370 million). This was the exchange:
Dunphy: $45 million dollars? THAT’S IT??? Holy shit are we in market correction mode.
Candace Avalos: What does market correction mode mean?
Dunphy: Meaning that our real estate prices have been wildly out of control, and that the values of these buildings don’t match their worth, so now we’re seeing prices reduced to firesale levels, which will reduce property taxes etc
Candace Avalos: Reduce property taxes and therefore revenue the city gets?
Dunphy: Yes. Plus it will impact the evaluation of value for other buildings in the area,
Dunphy: It’s not inherently a bad thing, it’s not great, and we all knew our real estate prices were detached from reality, but this kind of a market correction can hurt. I’m less concerned about the biggest buildings be devalued, but it could have ripple effects to individual homes or condos etc
Candace Avalos: Forgive my ignorance here because this is NOT my area of expertise, but isn’t it good for these prices to go down? And if buildings are this cheap we can capitalize and do more buying as a city like we did recently with those 3 apartment buildings?
Dunphy: There are definitely some opportunities that could be beneficial, yes.
Candace Avalos: People’s individual homes have skyrocketed in value, making it so much harder for new people to get homes, so don’t we want them to go down?
Dunphy: Well, the problem then becomes having homeowners “underwater,” where the value of their home is worth less than the outstanding principal on their mortgage, so they won’t be able to refinance. There’s also a lot of these larger buildings that are owned by retirement accounts, so if the value of their portfolios decreases, retirees would see their investment portfolios decrease rapidly.
Candace Avalos: Hmm ok I see
This is a city councilmember, in charge of Portland’s $8.6 billion dollar budget, that doesn’t understand even the most basic concept of a real estate correction (one of the worst corrections in the entire country) and how it will utterly decimate the budget they are making. Instead, they look at it as an opportunity for the government to buy up buildings for their social programs cheaply.
As part of the government troops at the Portland ICE facility, I can confirm that there is nightly military helicopter activity over downtown. You can hear it for hours as the copters circle and trade off flying over the ICE facility.
Sadly, our local protest-industrial complex geniuses started encouraging people to shine lasers at overhead aircraft. The problem? OHSU and Emanuel do Life Flight operations to downtown hospitals. OHSU is quite literally a block away from the ICE facility. Sadly, Life Flights have been mistakenly targeted to the point OHSU has stopped flight operations to the hospital. Patients are sent to the Hillsboro or other nearby airports – which can be a 30-90 min away by ambulance depending on traffic conditions.
One group of men arrested shining laser pointers at helicopters – turned out to be in the US illegally. They are now facing criminal charges and deportation. More recently, a man in Hillsboro was also just arrested and admitted to targeting an aircraft with a laser pointer. He admitted to the crime as well as got busted for possession of about 100 grams of meth (about $600-1000 worth).
It’s worth noting that using a laser pointer at an aircraft is a federal offense that can get you 1-5 years in federal prison and pointing one at a police officer is against Oregon state law.
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The former Gordon’s Fireplace Shop, a highly visible multi-story building right next to I-84, went out of business in 2016. Investors swooped in and bought it for $2.7 million in 2017 during Portland’s boom time. Sadly, it has become a vacant, graffiti-covered building as investors waited out the market.
In another clear sign of Portland’s unprecedented commercial real estate collapse, the building was just sold in 2025 for $575,000. A 78% decline in just 8 years.
This marks another major commercial property sold at more than a 70% discount in Portland. Since COVID and the riots of 2020, Portland has experienced the highest commercial vacancy rate in the country as well as a 3 year population decline as both businesses and residents flee the 2nd highest taxes in the country.
