Cultural Appropriation in Oregon. Shut those white imperialists Burrito makers down now!

The owners of a Portland, Ore., small business called Kooks Burritos have shut down their business after an interview detailing their trip to Mexico to learn about the burrito-making process resulted in a debate about “cultural appropriation.”

Kooks Burritos owners Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly spoke with the Willamette Weekly about what sounds like, essentially, a fact-finding trip to Mexico in search of the best burrito.

Some have called it “polite white supremacy.”

Here are the pieces of the interview that sparked outrage online and effectively closed down the business:

CONNELLY: I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did. They told us the basic ingredients, and we saw them moving and stretching the dough similar to how pizza makers do before rolling it out with rolling pins. They wouldn’t tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen, totally fascinated by how easy they made it look. We learned quickly it isn’t quite that easy.

On the drive back up to Oregon, we were still completely drooling over how good [the tortillas] were, and we decided we had to have something similar in Portland. The day after we returned, I hit the Mexican market and bought ingredients and started testing it out. Every day I started making tortillas before and after work, trying to figure out the process, timing, refrigeration and how all of that works.

The Willamette Weekly has since added a note at the bottom of the story, saying, “Kooks Burritos has closed.”

The reaction on the internet has had everything to do with it.

Consider Mic’s headline, “These white cooks bragged about stealing recipes from Mexico to start a Portland business.”

Or the Portland Mercury’s headline, “This Week in Appropriation: Kooks Burritos and Willamette Week.”

Here’s how that piece began:

Portland has an appropriation problem.

This week in white nonsense, two white women—Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly—decided it would be cute to open a food truck after a fateful excursion to Mexico. There’s really nothing special about opening a Mexican restaurant—it’s probably something that happens everyday. But the owners of Kooks Burritos all but admitted inan interview with Willamette Week that they colonized this style of food when they decided to “pick the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever.”

The fundamental contention of both articles is that white Americans went to Mexico and exploited the labor and methods of people of color without compensating them, in typical colonial style.

There is even a Google document circulating that lists restaurants in the Portland area that aren’t appropriative.

“This is NOT about cooking at home or historical influences on cuisines; it’s about profit, ownership, and wealth in a white supremacist culture,” the note at the top of the list says.

Almost as soon as the owners of Kooks Burritos expressed excitement about the prospects of their business — “The second we had the tortilla, we were like, ‘We’re doing this'” — the excitement was over.

The business is dead.

I am an anarchist. This is good. And peaceful. Not chaos.

“My political opinions,” J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control, not whiskered men with bombs).

“The most improper job of any man,” Tolkien went on, “is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”

“A consistent peace activist,” philosopher Roderick T. Long wrote, “must be an anarchist.”

“Anarchism,” said Edward Abbey, “is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

Anarchism, I’m sure you know, has a bad rap.

In fact, I’m sure most people would be appalled at the above quotes… and the mere thought of anarchism being a “good thing.”

(Especially when they find out that the Lord of the Rings mastermind considered himself an anarchist!)

The collective consciousness holds the belief -- with the help, of course, of the media and Hollywood -- that anarchy is synonymous with chaos, destruction and terrorism.

More and more, however, despite that big red flashing sign from the mind-molders which reads “STEER CLEAR,” we find ourselves dipping our brains into the philosophy…

There are two sides, we realize, of any story. And anarchism, at least this week, is sunnier than most think.

Anarchapulco, according to its website, is “the world’s first and largest international anarcho-capitalist (ancap) conference.

“Held yearly in Acapulco,” the website reads, “ancaps from around the world gravitate to Mexico for three days of speeches, presentations, panels, debates, musical acts, parties and networking with the intention of creating a freer world and seven billion governments on Earth.”

So… what is anarchism?

It’s derived from the Greek anarchos, which means to “have no ruler.”

 For that reason, says Doug Casey in an interview with International Speculator, “Anarchism is the gentlest of all political systems.

“It contemplates no institutionalized coercion. It’s the watercourse way, where everything is allowed to rise or fall naturally to its own level.

“An anarchic system is necessarily one of free-market capitalism. Any services that are needed and wanted by the people -- like the police or the courts -- would be provided by entrepreneurs, who’d do it for a profit.”

In free-market anarchy, says Casey, all usual functions of the state (yes, all) would be run privately, including police and courts: “the police would likely be subsidiaries of insurance companies, and courts would have to compete with each other based on the speed, fairness, and low cost of their decisions.

Bomb-throwers and chaos inflictors, says Casey, are not anarchists: “Chaos is the actual opposite of anarchy. Anarchy is simply a form of political organization that does not put one ruler, or ruling body, over everyone in a society. Whether that’s actually possible is a separate matter. This is what it means. And I see it as an ideal to strive for.

“But,” he concedes, “I never said a truly free, anarchic society would be a utopia; it would simply be a society that emphasizes personal responsibility and doesn’t have any organized institutions of coercion. Perfect harmony is not an option for imperfect human beings. Social order, however, is possible without the state. In fact, the state is so dangerous because it necessarily draws the sociopaths -- who like coercion -- to itself.

“What holds society together is not a bunch of strict laws and a brutal police force -- it’s basically peer pressure, moral ‘suasion, and social opprobrium. Look at a restaurant. The bills get paid not because anybody is afraid of the police, but for the three reasons I just mentioned.”

What’s your take? Could we survive without a state? Is the complete absence of government superior to limited government? Are you, as they say, a “minarchist” who believes in limited government? Or do your sympathies lean, like Tolkien, to the anarchist?

It might have been

a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these are "What might have been?"

Be Honest and True boy

“Be Honest and True” by George Birdseye.

Be honest and true, boys!
Whatever you do, boys,
Let this be your motto through life.
Both now and forever,
Be this your endeavor,
When wrong with the right is at strife.

The best and the truest,
Alas! are the fewest;
But be one of these if you can.
In duty ne’er fail; you
Will find ‘twill avail you,
And bring its reward when a man.

Don’t think life plain sailing;
There’s danger of failing.
Though bright seem the future to be;
But honor and labor,
And truth to your neighbor,
Will bear you safe over life’s sea.

Then up and be doing,
Right only pursuing,
And take your fair part in the strife.
Be honest and true, boys,
Whatever you do, boys,
Let this be your motto trough life!

Nothing really changes in Washington, Red or Blue. Crooks are crooks.

Why do things never seem to change no matter who we send to Washington? It seems like for decades people have been trying to change the direction of this country by engaging in the political process. And then election day comes and one group believes that "finally" real change will come.   And then the loosing group believes that the country will go to hell in a handbasket.   But no matter how hard they try, the downward spiral of our nation just continues to accelerate. Just look at this latest spending deal. Even though the American people gave the Republicans control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, this deal very closely resembles “an Obama administration-era budget”. It increases spending even though we have already been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt, it specifically forbids the building of a border wall and there are dozens of other concessions to the Democrats in it. These “negotiations” were a political rout of epic proportions.

Perhaps many being highly unrealistic when they expected that Donald Trump could change things. Because fixing America is going to take a lot more than getting the right number of “red” or “blue” politicians to Washington. Rather, the truth is that the real problem lies in our hearts, and the corrupt politicians that currently represent us are simply a reflection of who we have become as a nation.

The generations of people that founded this nation and established it as the greatest republic that the world had ever seen had far different values than most Americans do today.

So until there is a dramatic shift in how most of us see the world, it is quite likely that not much in Washington will change.

Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump spoke about “draining the swamp”, but this spending deal very much reflects the swamp’s priorities. The Washington Post has published a list of eight ways that “Trump got rolled in his first budget negotiation”, and the Post is quite correct…

1. There are explicit restrictions to block the border wall.

2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen.

3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously funded.

4. Trump fought to cut the Environmental Protection Agency by a third. The final deal trims its budget by just 1 percent, with no staff cuts.

5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood.

6. The president got less than half as much for the military as he said was necessary.

7. Democrats say they forced Republicans to withdraw more than 160 riders.

8. To keep negotiations moving, the White House already agreed last week to continue paying Obamacare subsidies.

In essence, the Democrats got virtually everything that they wanted, and the Republicans got next to nothing.

Trump and the Republicans are promising that they will fight harder “next time”, but Republicans year after year going all the way back to 2011 have said the same thing.

Among many other conservative pundits, author Daniel Horowitz is absolutely blasting these “weak-kneed Republicans”…

Now, with control of all three branches and a president who sold himself in the primaries as the antithesis of weak-kneed Republicans who don’t know the first thing about tough negotiations, we are in the exact same position. Last night, President Trump signaled that, after not even fighting on refugee resettlement and Planned Parenthood, he would cave on the final budget issue – the funding of the border fence. But fear not, he’ll resume his demand … the next time!

This degree of capitulation, with control of all three branches, is impressing even me … and I had low expectations of this president and this party. They have managed to get run over by a parked car. It’s truly breathtaking to contrast the performance of Democrats in the spring of 2009 with what Republicans have done today with all three branches. At this time in 2009, Democrats passed the bailouts, the stimulus, the first round of financial regulations, an equal pay bill, SCHIP expansion, and laid the groundwork for other, bigger proposals, such as cap and trade and Obamacare. Then they got everything they wanted in the March 2009 omnibus bill, and a number of GOP senators voted for it. We, on the other hand, are left with nothing.

And even the mainstream media is admitting that the Democrats made out like bandits in this deal.

Just check out the following quotes…

• “Overall, the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one,” Bloomberg reports.
• The Associated Press calls it “a lowest-common-denominator measure that won’t look too much different than the deal that could have been struck on Obama’s watch last year.”
• Reuters: “While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored … significant victories in the deal.”
• The Los Angeles Times describes the agreement as “something of an embarrassment to the White House”: “Trump engineered the fiscal standoff shortly after he was elected, insisting late last year that Congress should fund the government for only a few months so he could put his stamp on federal spending as the new president.”

If Trump can’t get his priorities funded now, do you think that the Democrats will somehow become more agreeable after he has spent a year or two in the White House?

Of course not.

If there ever was going to be a border wall, it was going to happen now.

The next “big battle” is going to be over a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the truth is that “Trumpcare” is going to end up looking very much like Obamacare.

Instead of repealing it, the Republicans are trying to “fix” Obamacare, and that is kind of like going to the dump and trying to “fix” a big, steaming pile of garbage.

But like I explained earlier, we should not expect things to move in a positive direction in Washington D.C. until the values of those representing us change.

At this point, there are only a few dozen members of the House and a handful of members of the Senate that even give lip service to the values of our founders.

And until our values change, we are not going to send representatives to Washington that share the values of our founders.