Caption: Lincoln City, Depoe Bay and Newport are an extra beautiful part of the Oregon Coast. This is a photo of part of Depoe Bay.
A subscriber living on the Central Oregon Coast tells the tale of what is happening to small business owners due to Democrats locking down the economy, sort of, for over two years.^ The Marxist governor kept Oregon’s economy locked down from March 23, 2020 to April 1. 2022, despite the fact that specially trained Covid nurses were beginning to be laid off starting in April 2020 because Oregon did NOT have a Covid crisis. I say “sort of” because Big Business flourished while small businesses were wholly or partially shut down. Most, like my niece’s restaurant, never recovered. John talks about what happened to his long time, hard working friends:
DEPOE BAY, OREGON
My best friends here are a Chinese family who recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of their restaurant business in Depoe Bay. There were originally four brothers and their wives, two brothers survive. Over the years they owned two restaurants in Lincoln City,* one in Corvallis, one in Newport, and always the one here in Depoe Bay.
I’ve known them almost 40 years and have helped them navigate the government and insurance bureaucracies. I’ve watched them struggle to understand what the system is doing to them, especially when they’ve faced frivolous lawsuits.
And I’ve watched them work their asses off with the kind of immigrant fervor that established my family here, watched them raise their kids and put them through college. I see their mystification at why their kids are having such a hard time in this promised land (the kids have all gone off to West Coast cities). The kids are doing OK financially, and provided grandkids for my friends to dote on, but modern relationships are hard and divorces are way too common. It really hurts my friends to see their kids unhappy.
OWNING A RESTAURANT ISN’T EASY
I’ve been around the restaurant business for more than 50 years, first as a supplier, then as an owner, and now watching and assisting my friends. It’s a tough business, and very few make it to 5 years, let alone 50. What I see in the restaurant industry now is this: established businesses with most of the major capital outlays covered have a chance; no one getting in and trying to pay off property and equipment, or cover today’s lease costs, has much of a chance unless they can do all the work themselves. Between the explosion in food costs, the minimum wage increases,** the increased utility costs, and especially the increases in insurance costs, there’s nothing left to make mortgage or lease payments on a restaurant.
The Central Oregon Coast is a beautiful spot, and it has been good enough to my friends and I. But the reality is that their business is worth less than half what it was pre-Covid,^^ and if they weren’t afraid of being too bored they’d just shut it down and sell the property.
You asked why I will leave, and their situation sums it up. I want to live somewhere with opportunity, where strivers can thrive, because those are the people I want to be around.
Oregon Has Created ANOTHER Scheme To Destroy Family Farms
Democrats in Oregon have become very inventive in their decade-plus quest to shut down small, family owned farms so that Big Farm, who donate millions to them each election cycle, can completely take over all farming activity in the state.^ Their latest scam, which became effective January 1, 2025, will not only damage small farms, but will also damage …
^Democrats, who own Oregon, were in the process of trying to pass Cap & Trade legislation to outlaw small businesses who work in the lumber and trucking industries, (lumber is a major industry in Oregon), when a miracle happened, Covid arrived!!! Covid was the perfect excuse my law school classmate, Governor Kate Brown, needed to destroy small businesses who are too independent for the likings of Democrat politicians & bureaucrats and who tend to lean Right in their political thinking.
*This writer and her husband owned a beach house in Lincoln City for 15 years. Like us, many residents of the Portland Area drive the short distance to the Central Oregon Coast to vacation, spring, summer, fall & winter.
**$14.70 effective July 1, 2024.
^^Jill & Scott, my niece & her husband, owned a going restaurant in Sherwood, Oregon which is on the main route between Portland and the beautiful beaches of Central Oregon. During the Covid lockdown state bureaucrats kept changing the rules for restaurants such that they struggled to stay in compliance. If found to be in non-compliance, the fines would have put them out business. They were already hanging on by a thread. Shortly after the lockdown was over they were forced to close the business anyway.
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited.
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