Well, May Day went about how you’d expect. After a peaceful rally in honor of International Workers’ Day, a march downtown devolved into what police termed a riot, as self-identified anarchists broke windows, set fires, lobbed cans of Pepsi toward cops, and vandalized at least one police car.
By the time things quieted down, 25 people had been arrested. As usual, Doug was on scene chronicling the whole chaotic affair.
Earlier in the day, Mayor Ted Wheeler introduced his first crack at meting out the $515 million discretionary portion of the city’s general fund. Unlike past years, a central theme to the budget was hard to pick out, but Wheeler’s putting cash toward homelessness—including promising more forceful “cleanups” of camp sites—and pushing a bold $600 million plan for spiffing up city infrastructure. Here’s our first crack at summarizing.
Meanwhile, the O drilled down into the mayor’s proposed police bureau budget, which would kill the Mounted Patrol Unit, push off investments in a body camera system, and develop a team of Community Service Officers who respond to low-level calls.
Detroit Lake is full up, after sitting at low levels during previous years. A tough call: Is all this rain worth a shot at jumping off that one super great foot bridge?
Congrats to Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quinonez Denton, who run Ox and Superbite, for snagging a James Beard Award yesterday.
If you ask the President of the United States a tough question on camera, he will walk out of the interview, then quietly invite you to a cordial dinner, then run an campaign-style attack ad about you doing fake news. Just FYI.
Then again, if you steer clear of those tough questions, you’re liable to hear anything come from the President’s mouth. This Politico piece begins like so: “President Donald Trump questioned why the Civil War— which erupted 150 years ago over slavery — needed to happen. He said he would be ‘honored’ to meet with Kim Jong-Un, the violent North Korean dictator who is developing nuclear missiles and oppresses his people, under the ‘right circumstances.” It somehow gets worse from there.
Meanwhile, Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is describing the bombing of Syria by the US as “after-dinner entertainment.”
Lots of talk over a spending bill being worked up in Congress this week. Here’s an interesting piece about the provisions lawmakers have snuck in there to walk back the Trump Administration’s power.
They say it’s going to be 79 tomorrow. I don’t believe them.
