Light Rail Roadhouse: Enter At Your Own Risk.

Another stabbing on the Light Rail Roadhouse this weekend.  From Oregonlive: 

"At 12:10 a.m. Sunday, police arrived at the 1000 block of North Interstate Avenue near the Rose Quarter and found Andy Bloomstrom, 30, lying on the ground with stab wounds. He told police he was riding MAX with several friends when Poston held the door open, waiting for someone. An argument between the two turned physical and Poston allegedly stabbed Bloomstrom three times: twice in the chest and once in the left forearm."

  TriMet was right on top of things with Mary Fetch, their black belt PR mouthpiece. Fetch was convincing with her tough talk:

"Obviously we take every incident seriously," said TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch. "We want to send the message that TriMet is a safe system. We want to send the message that we have the additional personnel to prevent (these incidents) this from happening."

 TriMet probably has more PR flacks than transit cops. Wouldn't it be great if instead of saying "we want to send the message that TriMet is a safe system. . .", Fetch said something that Roadhouse cooler Dalton (played by the late, great Patrick Swayze) would have said:

" People who really want to have a good time won't come to a MAX train. And we've got entirely too many troublemakers here. Too many 40-year-old adolescents, felons, power drinkers and trustees of modern chemistry.

If somebody gets in your face  I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal.... I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice."

We need more transit cops on MAX and less PR flacks in TriMet offices. It's time to not be nice.

Occupy Portland: You've Met Them

You already know the people who call themselves "Occupy Portland":

• The co-worker who's always late for work. 
• The bicyclist who flipped you off after you honked your horn because you almost hit her while she blasted through a red light. 
• The waiter that ignored you for your entire dinner, but followed you outside to berate you because you didn't leave a tip.
• The roommate who never washes her own dishes and is always late with her share of the rent.
• The relative who is never on time for family functions.
• The "friend" who has never returned the book you loaned to him.
• The carpooler who never, ever chips in for gas or parking.
• The co-worker who never brings anything to the office potluck, but always first in line at lunchtime.
• The bus driver that kicks moms with their screaming babies off the bus.
• The high school student on the bus or light rail train that refuses to move his man-bag so the old lady can have a seat.
• People that still have John Kerry bumper stickers on their car. 
• Retired California Probation Officers.

Fair Share? Even 100% Corp Tax Isn't Enough!!

President Obama and the Democrats in Congress keep saying that U.S. corporations need to “pay their fair share” in order to resolve our national debt problems. They want more revenue a.k.a more TAXES from those evil corporations. And that leads us to the big question: Is our national debt a spending problem or a revenue problem?


Democrats want U.S. companies to pay their “fair share” to close the deficit gap. Ok! Let’s give it the old Democrat try. Let’s really STICK IT to those evil corporations and their Lear jets, tax breaks, etc. Are you ready? Here we go!



Let’s target the biggest U.S.corporations, the ones with annual gross revenues of over $40 billion per year. There are over 60 of these giant corporations in the U.S. (They’re listed below, along with their 2010 profits listed in billions of dollars. )


Remember now, we’re going to force these evil corporations to pay their “fair share”. Let’s not beat around the Bush. Let’s go all the way. Let’s tax their annual net profits at 100%. That’s the kind of fair share that any Democrat would be happy with. How much would a 100% tax on the net profit of these largest companies raise for one year? A whopping $204.8 BILLION dollars!!!


Wow, you’re thinking! $204.8 billion dollars would not only stick it to those corporations, but it would also would pay for everyone's health care, plus feed the poor children, and pay for all those public employee pensions, right? And it would solve our debt ceiling problems, too! That's the fair share President Obama is talking about, right?


There’s just one little problem. Currently, U.S. Government spending outpaces revenues by $118 BILLION per month. That’s right. The U.S. spends $1.4 TRILLION per year more than it receives in revenue. Even if Congress taxed 100% of the annual net profits of every U.S. company with over $40 billion in annual gross revenue, it would pay for less than TWO MONTHS of our monthly deficit of $118 billion per month. Think about that.
 

Even if our largest corporations were taxed the equivalent of 100% of their annual net profits, it still wouldn’t be enough to solve our nation’s debt problem. Clearly, we have a spending problem. And no additional “fair share” of new corporate taxes proposed by Obama and the Democrats will put even a small dent in our national debt.

TOP US COMPANIES (Exceeding $40 Billion in annual revenues)	Profits (billions)
WalMart	$14.3
ExxonMobil	$19.3
Chevron	$10.4
ConocoPhillips	$4.8
General Electric	$11.0
Berkshire Hathaway	$8.0
General Motors	$0.0
Ford Motor Company	$2.7
Hewlett Packard	$7.7
AT&T	$12.5
McKesson Corporation	$1.3
Bank of America	$6.3
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation	-$71.9
Cargill	$0.0
Verizon	$3.6
JP Morgan Chase	$11.7
Koch Industries	$0.0
IBM	$13.4
Cardinal Health	$1.2
CVS Caremark	$3.7
United Health Group	$3.8
Citigroup	-$1.6
Wells Fargo	$12.3
Valero Energy	-$2.0
Kroger	$7.0
Procter & Gamble	$13.4
AmeriSource Bergen	$0.1
American International Group	$0.1
Costco	$1.1
Marathon Oil	$1.5
Walgreens	$2.0
Home Depot	$2.7
Target Corporation	$2.5
Apple Inc.	$5.7
Boeing	$1.3
Microsoft	$14.6
Phillip Morris International	$6.3
Archer Daniels Midland	$1.7
Johnson & Johnson	$12.3
State Farm Insurance	$0.7
Medco Health Solutions	$1.3
WellPoint	$4.7
PepsiCo	$5.9
United Technologies	$3.8
Dell	$1.4
Pfizer	$8.6
Best Buy	$1.3
United Parcel Service	$2.1
Lowe's	$1.8
Lockheed Martin	$3.0
Goldman Sachs	$13.4
Dow Chemical	$0.1
Sears Holdings	$0.2
Intel	$4.3
Caterpillar	$0.9
Chrysler	$0.0
Bunge Limited	$0.4
MetLife	-$2.2
Safeway	-$1.1
SuperValu	$0.4
Kraft Foods	$3.0
Cisco	$6.1
TOTAL	$204.8
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue
Source:  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2010/full_list/

Berkeley Marine Corp Protest Documented

Zombietime.com has a great pictorial and running commentary on this week's Berkeley Marine Corps protests. Check out the Code Pinkers and Pro-Marine Corps demonstrators as they engage in a mini -clash of ideologies.

Portland's Peace Movement: Execute Bush

Audience members applauded the suggestion by one peace activist for a public execution of President Bush during Rep. Earl Blumenauer's Sept. 23 town hall meeting at Portland's Hollywood Theatre.

From the Oregonian article: "Some went even further, calling for Bush to be tried for treason. One Southeast Portland resident said the president "should be executed -- in public." A number in the audience applauded."

Did Blumenauer rebuke this comment at the meeting? It's disturbing, to say the least, that people in the audience applauded the concept of a public execution of the President. This speaks volumes about the true heart of the peace movement.

Peace via hate and execution, eh? Count me out. I'm with the Beatles on this one.


You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right