Portland, Oregon is nearly dead last on the list of cities where tourists and conventioneers want to spend money and time. And it makes sense. Portland is circling the drain.
The leaderless city from which police are fleeing, where Antifa thugs are ascendant, and which people in nearby towns avoid, is dying before our eyes.
Elected Leftists can’t seem to prioritize problems or affect solutions beyond spending more money to study an issue or giving out more freebies via their favorite NGO’s to “fix” problems for them. Grift being what it is, problems don’t get solved.
Leftists have tried hard to mold the one-time jewel of a city into their socialist utopia.
The city’s “Travel Portland” tourism CEO, Jeff Miller, says nobody wants to visit their utopia. Miller told the commissioners, “Portland has declined to the lowest levels of being a likely destination for delegates to attend a conference.” And it comes down to only a few things. “Portland-specific issues that are related to civil unrest and public safety concerns have exacerbated the negative occurrences of declining attendance and group cancellations.”
Miller told Mayor Wheeler and the council, “Continued attacks and breaking glass on buildings throughout the city, but especially downtown, continued to affect this hard to overcome sentiment. Our central city occupancy in September lags every competitive city we tracked.”
The only worse city was Minneapolis, which was also set on fire by Antifa and BLM, where cops are more hated, and where the Left has a firm hold on the justice system. See the Chauvin case for reference.
City Commissioner Mingus Mapps, the commission’s travel liaison, told his fellow commissioners during a Zoom meeting that things are very, very bad. “Here’s the problem. Around the world,” he told them, “too many people associate Portland with homelessness and homicide. Today, a significant chunk of humanity is afraid of spending time and money in our city.”
“Afraid” being the operative word.
It turns out that people just aren’t into crime-friendly places, where you could be shot at a downtown club, be clubbed on a downtown street, be called a fascist by the club-wielding mob, or where, for political reasons, cops won’t be able to find your body when you go missing or arrest somebody for your murder.
It’s kind of a turnoff.
Stepping around human feces and tents is also a problem.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast: ‘Homelessness and Homicide’ Edition
Leaderlessness results in an ever ending expansion of so-called “homeless” camps, which are nothing more than Fentanyl Flats, where druggies are encouraged to sleep and use for free.
Instead of telling people to drive their cars or RV’s away, the city assumes responsibility for these grown-ass, drug-addled adults and tells them to hang on because the city will use other people’s dwindling tax money to build them a damned condo because they care so much and are so “charitable.”
And they wonder why the “homeless” problem grows.
Mayor and Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler, who defunded police upon real threats by Antifa and BLM rioters, just announced that, gee, we need more cops. He’s throwing money at retired cops to come back and also planning to spend more money to reimagine policing. Yet, another money-sucking grift as well as a paean to Antifa and BLM that will solve nothing.
Public safety is one of my top priorities. @PortlandPolice is greatly understaffed, this we know. Chief Lovell and I have set a goal to hire 300 officers over the next 3 years.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) October 30, 2021
He needs to hire cops and enforce the law. But Wheeler won’t do that. Even after Antifa and BLM terrorist violence, “homelessness and homicide” are destroying my hometown.
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