Portland

Kroger wants to buy Albertsons, a major competitor, who also owns Safeway, which Albertsons somehow was approved to buy 3-4 years ago. The attached is a good representation of what “choice” would look like if the merger were approved by the FTC for SE metro area of Portland; 6/10 larger grocers would be run by Kroger (WinCo, Costco, Grocery Outlet and New Seasons the only exception).

This is a big deal because:

• Kroger has already been price gouging like crazy since the pandemic as we all knew but has been recently confirmed by Kroger themselves (https://www.newsweek.com/kroger-executive-admits-company-gouged-prices-above-inflation-1945742)
• This would make bullet #1 above worse with that scale of market dominance
• Kroger was among the most appalling for worker and customer safety during the pandemic. They had sneeze guards up in their 172nd location in May of 2021, a full 1.5 years after the pandemic started, never enforced masking and refused to take any returns during the pandemic for any reason, but mainly to pad their bottom line.
• Kroger’s local workers are currently on strike for the crap wages and conditions they have endured. A larger corporate entity would only grow the awful employment and labor practices Kroger has.
• Pharmacy services are already under-served and with Rite-aid and Walgreens closing hundreds of locations nationwide, it would force more medically dependent customers to Kroger, who demonstrated its absolute indifference to worker and customer safety before, during and after the pandemic.

If you want to slow grocery price gouging, support better conditions for customers and employees, be able to choose other companies when one isn’t meeting your needs, I highly recommend sharing your thoughts with the FTC and boycotting Kroger/Safeway/Albertsons as much as you can.

...and the NLRB agrees with them.

Seems like Nexstar is just trying to stall out the clock until there's another Republican in the White House who can gut the NLRB.

The gist is that Portland drivers couldn't stop hitting crucial safety infrastructure (proving its necessity) so PBOT gave up on it.

As one of the commenters pointed out: Since a pedestrian/bike fatality costs PBOT nothing and replacing a concrete planter a car has demolished costs them more than nothing, to balance the budget they're going to go with more pedestrian deaths.

​​Southbound I-5 will close between the SW Terwilliger Boulevard off-ramp and the SW Capitol Highway on-ramp. Northbound I-5 will close between the SW Barbur Boulevard off-ramp and the SW Terwilliger Boulevard on-ramp.

​Several on-ramps will also close to prevent drivers from getting on I-5 in the area during the closure.

Southbound on-ramp closures:

S Harbor Drive.

Interstate 405 southbound exchange to southbound I-5.

Northbound on-ramp closures:

​SW Spring Garden Street.

SW Capitol Highway.

OR99W/SW Barbur Boulevard.

SW Haines Street.

Kruse Way.

Full bill text: https://sos.oregon.gov/admin/Documents/irr/2024/017text.pdf

TLDR; Oregon corporate tax has a minimum rate of 1%. This ballot measure would raise it to 3% and give $750 to each Oregon resident (including children).

Get ready for an Uber/Lyft level of corporate ads and media spamming to try to sink this common sense bill.

A cellphone shot of the gorgeous aurora tonight. It wasn't quite this dramatic to the naked eye, but this is actually pretty representative of what we could see. I have a bunch of other pics too but I'm sure there will be pics everywhere tomorrow from better photographers.

After a long and brutal day of standing off with cops and being subjected to police violence for 12 hours, the students are still standing ground and have taken back the library

Am I the only one that thinks putting the stadium out in Beaverton seems like a terrible idea from a travel/density perspective? Locating it in the Lloyd District seems like such a no-brainer...

This is about the alleged food hall that was going to be coming to the Ritz Carlton Tower. They made a big show about how they'd be offering spots to the food carts they displaced.

Well now e-mails are bouncing and there's radio silence from everyone involved about whether there even will be a food hall anymore.

It sounds shocking, I know, but it certainly seems like the olive branch that they offered to assuage everyone's anger about the food carts they were displacing was a lie.

Proposing general boycott of Trader Joes. They have joined an unholy trinity of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Starbucks, because they've lost so hard in the past few years against workers forming unions (to push back against awful wages and lack of safety and terrible working conditions pronounced by COVID) that since they can't win fair in union elections under law that has been around for 90 years, want to dismantle the entire apparatus of the NLRB.

If successful, their complaint and other arguments and conclusions that would follow, would lead to loss of labor power that would be strikingly similar to what happened when Trump was allowed to appoint 3 justices and upend the Supreme Court which quickly lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned.

40 hours a week then overtime? Probably deemed unfair to the profit rights of our poor megacorps. Discrimination protections at work? Struck down federally but states allowed to pass their own, for a while, then those would be overturned by SC when challenged. Those would be week 1.

It's sad to see Trader Joes, who espouses lots of human values on its website becoming a mouthpiece for unfettered capitalist abuse of hourly workers.

My boycott, as a 20-year shopper, starts today. I think there are lots of TJs shoppers who think of them as "not Kroger/Walmart/Safeway-Albertsons/etc." but honestly, by throwing in with Musk/Bezos/Starbucks they're no different.

I feel like starting a picket at a store or two, then growing would build some shopper awareness, maybe earn some folks who want to get involved and build from there. Want to join?