Good morning, Portland. Put that shovel down and click these links.
Snowpocalypse: Snow came in yesterday afternoon and fucked everything up in the city.
Make sure to check out this week's feature written by Santi Elijah Holley, out in print as of yesterday, on the life of Bill Hilliard, "Portland's pioneering black newspaperman." It's really good.
The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 to spend more than a half million dollars to keep a soon-to-be closed 59-bed jail dorm open for six more months, much to the dismay of outgoing Commissioner Judy Shiprack:
It was, in essence, a spirited debate between an emerging liberal anti-jail philosophy and the more old-school “lock them up” status quo. The status quo won, by a vote of 3-2.
“Jail doesn’t work, jail doesn’t make us safer,” said outgoing Commissioner Judy Shiprack, who spoke passionately for 16 minutes Thursday morning, railing against mass incarceration, racial disparities in the justice system, and more. Shiprack argued that jail is pointless without addressing the root causes of crime, and criticized the idea of funding jail beds rather than programs to address those causes. “What are the outcomes we gain by having them there?” she asked
Dirk VanderHart writes about the traffic deaths on Division and the efforts by activist to curb them.
It was another busy day for Portland City Council yesterday. Council yesterday voted to 1) ban "bulk fossil fuel terminals" in the city, 2) require homeowners to pay for a "home energy score" prior to putting their house up for sale, and 3) approve Commissioner Amanda Fritz's "Open and Accountable Elections" program, allowing for candidates for public office in Portland to match small donations with public funding. It was a big day.
The guy that runs a really good Northwest Portland barbecue food cart—Botto—is not a good person, and he's going to prison. The Oregonian: "Before he started making an honest living with smoke and meat, Bottinelli was a thief, a high-living West Hills swell who admitted he paid for his expensive vacations, his pricey club memberships and big restaurant bills out of the $3 million he stole from the poor and disabled clients of his former life."
The University of Oregon football team, under new coach Willie Taggart, just poached Colorado's defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt, who is good. They're going to pay him a lot of money.
OPB on some immigrant students at Portland Community College's Rock Creek campus publicly announcing their undocumented status.
Assholes in the North Carolina GOP. In the The New York Times:
Republicans in the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday took the highly unusual step of moving to strip power from the incoming Democratic governor after a bitter election that extended years of fierce ideological battles in the state.
After calling a surprise special session, Republican lawmakers who control the General Assembly introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election boards, to require State Senate approval of the new governor’s cabinet members and to strip his power to appoint University of North Carolina trustees.
"As Democrats steel themselves for the day next month when the White House door will slam on their backs,"the New York Times reports, "some of the country’s more liberal state attorneys general have vowed to use their power to check and balance Mr. Trump’s Washington."
And, finally, check out this very disrespectful dunk:
The @Lakers bench loses it...as Larry Nance Jr. RISES!#LakeShowpic.twitter.com/h436PooIU9
— NBA (@NBA) December 15, 2016