Over the past few months, Stan Pulliam, the mayor of Sandy, OR, has been working on organizing businesses that are in counties still marked as "high risk" in Kate and Pat Alens' capricious and arbitrary system of "risk assessment" around the state to re-open under the "high risk" category" criteria and protocols so that they can do things like make money, pay bills and feed their families. Pulliam announced this in an open letter to Kate Brown on Facebook, using some rock-solid logic that Kate would never be able to give a straight answer for:

As mayor of Sandy, I can tell you that our neighbors are simply unable to continue drowning in arbitrary rules that are bankrupting their family businesses, disconnecting children from their friends and teachers, and causing our neighbors to spiral into depression and anxiety.

If you discover a mouse in your house, you don’t burn it down to solve the problem. You find a way to safely remove the mouse without destroying everything else you value.

But Kate and Pat think it is perfectly logical to destroy the 95% for the 5%.

Governor Brown, we are opening.

Our choice is whether we want individual businesses applying their own judgement to slow the spread of the virus one-at-a-time – which is something that will inevitably happen without cooperation. Or, we can have an organized partnership between business owners and government to create a safe environment that doesn’t obliterate local economies.

We are begging you to realize there are casualties to this virus that go far beyond the intensive care unit. Continuing to dig into this self-inflicted wound will eventually cause us all to bleed out.

We are asking for balance. And to be at the table. The growing list of business owners participating in this self-regulated protest of self-preservation are aware of your administrative consequences of fines, liquor licenses and video lottery machines. We ask that the courtesies you extend to other peaceful protesters be extended to our coalition as we reasonably and peacefully follow what is already a very restrictive compromise.

Following up with that post, the local Dead Fishwrapper (aka The Oregonian) published an op-ed by Pulliam about the businesses opening up on New Years Day.

Earlier this month, Newsweek ran a story about an Oregon mayor who was urging businesses to “defy ‘arbitrary’ COVID restrictions.” I am that mayor - and I want to set the record straight.

On Friday, Jan. 1, members of our coalition of 300 locally-owned Main Street restaurants, bars and gyms operating in counties labeled “extreme risk” for COVID will start following the governor’s requirements for “high risk” counties instead. They plan to open for business ­– at significantly reduced capacity – while painstakingly following protocols for sanitization and providing employees personal protective equipment. Coalition businesses located in “high risk” counties will likewise follow the state’s guidelines for “moderate risk” counties until the restrictions change to reflect a more sensible compromise.

This isn’t a mob of maskless outlaws. These are mom-and-pop restaurants, bars and fitness centers that have been arbitrarily shuttered while big-box retail stores are open to the masses.

Yes, this is a typical hypocrisy of Kate - big box stores can cram people in, and even serve food in food courts, but yet small businesses can't do the same. My guess is it's because the big businesses contributed to her campaigns.

With all the contact tracers now employed by counties, there should be some shred of evidence to show that my local gym is somehow a higher risk than Walmart. There is not.

Kate and Pat have been repeatedly asked to provide this data, and yet they refuse. When some small piece is mentioned in the news somehwere, such as part of a court case, it is usually something like 5% or less of infetions came from a restaurant or gym. Even in huge cities like New York, it was shown to be only 1.4% for restaurants.

In the absence of data, I think it’s reasonable to let common sense dictate our actions until that data can be obtained. I agree with the governor’s plan for a phased re-opening - but these businesses need to open. The governor’s plan is simply too extreme and comes at too great a cost.

We’ve seen Montage, Kellogg Bowl, McGrath’s Fish House, Saucebox, and dozens of other Portland-area icons announce permanent closure. These businesses employ service industry workers, making this shutdown disproportionately affect the economically disadvantaged. It simply isn’t fair to our most vulnerable neighbors.

The virus is real. It is dangerous. It is contagious. The sacrifices of health care workers on the front line have to be honored for what they are – nothing short of heroic. Being constantly surrounded by the grim reality of this pandemic is heartbreaking.

The virus is all these things. But that does not mean that combatting the virus is the only thing. There are massive mental health implications, economic devastation and concerns about socialization of our children that must be considered as well.

We come back again to Kate's insistency of destroying the 95% for the 5%, consequences be damned.

And now, Pulliam demonstrates the ice-cold heart of Kate and her need for nothing short of complete control over every aspect of the lives of Oregonians (as I've documented here, here, and here.

I spoke with Gov. Kate Brown last week and she was far from subtle in threatening fines, the loss of liquor licenses and the loss of video poker machines from businesses that don’t follow her mandates to the letter. But the businesses in our coalition have no other choice in the face of permanent extinction.> ? I can’t imagine our government would fine small community businesses into oblivion for acts of self-preservation implemented according to guidelines for counties just one level below partial lockdown. But if that occurs, members of our coalition are preparing litigation to reverse those administrative consequences.

We hope that our peaceful protest in re-opening safely will be treated with the same deference Portland has given to protesters who have escaped penalty for violent and destructive actions. Our coalition is not burning down buildings. They are trying to sell hamburgers. I plan on doing my part and buying one on Jan 1.

Yes remember how over the summer, the violent "protests" of Antifa and Black Lies Matter were treated as no problem, with the media covering for them and pretending that there was no COVID19 spread, while the rest of society was not allowed to gather at all. But then, that is the standard hypocrisy of Kate and Pat.

It remains to be seen how successful this will be, but I'm hoping that it will gather steam and create a large movement. Comrade Kate needs to be reined in.