Imagine that you are Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, of course, for most of you, that would require a tremendous stretch of the imagination, a lobotomy, or both, but we digress.
Because it seems that the City of Portland, or what’s left of it anyway, after conducting talks centered around defunding the police (in what was an ineffective attempt to appease the mob), has gone a wee bit over what the city’s budget allows for police personnel payroll.
The “Portland Mercury” carried the story
While not a complete picture of the city’s costs for the past four months of demonstrations, records obtained by the Mercury of PPB protest-related expenses between June 1 and August 1 offer a snapshot of how PPB has used public dollars to respond to recent demonstrations.
The vast majority of PPB expenses during this time period went to overtime costs: Officers raked in $5,012,418 in overtime pay for working extra shifts. Much of the remaining $2 million is divvied up between regular officer pay, benefits, and pensions—which is to be expected.
It seems slightly excessive for a city the size of Portland to require such a massive amount of overtime dollars to provide coverage for such a short amount of time. Common sense would seem to dictate that the best way to limit substantial overtime designated to controlling riots would be, well, not to have riots
Unable to achieve the lofty goal of peace throughout his city, Ted Wheeler stumbled unto a seemingly brilliant strategy for dealing with violence and unrest. The man who was elected to administer Portland in what we could assume was to be a peaceful manner decided to blame Trump for everything!!
Of course, we shouldn’t give all the credit to Wheeler for coming up with this strategy on his own, after all unhinged pandering politician of the West, Nancy Pelosi, set the standard for blaming Trump for Portland’s troubles way back in July
Not to be outdone by his Congressional counterpart, Senate Psychopath Chuck Schumer added his turd to the Liberal bowel movement
Remember, Liberals HATE it when anyone screams LAW & ORDER.
But of course Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden would rise above the fray, right? Naturally anything he would say would only contribute to an increase in riots and destruction, so Biden did the honorable thing and remained quiet, not wishing to put cheap political points ahead of the lives and property of innocent Americans, Correct? Not so much as it turns out. Following the instructions of the mysterious voice emanating from his sleeve, Biden (according to “The New York Post“) joined with Pelosi and Schumer; what a shocker!!
Joe Biden on Sunday condemned the surge of violence in Portland after one man died over the weekend amid clashes between far-left and far-right protesters — while blaming President Trump for “fanning the flames.”
It seemingly took flagging internal poll numbers to convince the former Vice President and his staff to condemn the violence occurring in Portland and elsewhere.
Naturally, Wheeler wants to redirect the anger and the blame somewhere else, and who is a better target than President Trump? After all, Wheeler’s efforts to appease the rioters didn’t go over too well.
Perhaps Wheeler will have better luck explaining to the citizens of Portland where the overtime money is going to come from to pay a police department that protestors have assured the populace that they don’t need to begin with. Still, let’s hope not, after all, when it comes to city government, Portland can only do better.
