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You know you’re living in good times when your state Legislature can afford to spend millions of dollars on nightclubs, theaters and music venues.

The times must really be good when that same Legislature cuts funding to the state’s only nonprofit organization that gives legal advice to crime victims.

According to a news account in The Oregonian, a board member of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center said the Legislature’s failure to allocate anything to the group appeared to be an oversight.

In politics, there are few oversights — but many calculations.

What the Legislature did was indefensible. They used crime victims to get back at Republicans.

For the past decade, the state’s Democrats — which I used to be — championed legislation to reduce minimum-mandatory sentences for violent criminals. The Democrats pushed “justice reinvestment,” offering sympathy and services to drug dealers, car thieves and burglars. I didn’t support that position. Meanwhile, Republicans tended to align with crime victims and favor tougher punishment.

We’ve seen the results on our streets. Democrats don’t want to acknowledge the devastating effects their progressive politics have had on public safety. They have surrendered to chaos, particularly in the state’s largest city.

Witness former Gov. Kate Brown’s generous commutations, done with the acquiescence of Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt. Now a beneficiary of those commutations is a suspected serial killer.

The amount allocated to the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center in the previous 2021-23 biennium was $1.27 million. In the 2023-25 biennium, it will be nothing. Compare that to the $5 million doled out to nightclubs and theaters. Among some of the recipients in Portland, $63,175 to the White Eagle Saloon.

Last century, I used to drink and shoot pool at the White Eagle. This is what now passes for arts and culture?

Many of us have enjoyed these venues. But given Oregon’s profile as one of the largest abusers of alcohol and drugs, why are we funding for-profit bars? At least a nonprofit is required to adhere to certain strictures for public accounting.

When I was in the state Senate, I served as co-chair on the Joint Ways and Means Committee that writes the budget. I know how the process is supposed to work.

State Rep. Rob Nosse, D-Portland, was quoted in a news story saying these venues were the “first to close and the last to reopen, and the culture of going out hasn’t returned here like it has in other states.”

It’s true people couldn’t buy a beer in Oregon during COVID, but they could socialize and riot in Portland. The lines today outside the Crystal Ballroom would suggest business isn’t as bad as Nosse thinks.

If the culture of going out hasn’t returned, it could be that people are concerned about public safety — a residual effect of all that rioting that progressive activists supported.

There’s a saying, popular with some of those activists, that “budgets are moral documents.” It’s a rallying cry for what has become known as participatory budgeting — where activists organize and lobby to get money from the government for things they support.

The goal of participatory budgeting isn’t to encourage more citizen participation in democracy. It’s to turn the state treasury into a slush fund where groups can fight over money — and politicians can buy voters.