Awkward. Under Armour wants to pay $5.5 million to spiff up a couple Portland parks, but Nike already spent money spiffing up one of those parks back in the day, and it’s jealous. The company’s asked city officials to nix the Under Armour deal, and Mayor Charlie Hales has said he wants to step back and consider it. The problem? Hales isn’t the parks commissioner. Amanda Fritz is. And she’s happy to accept the Under Armour money.
After all manner of finger pointing over the thousands of untested rape kits languishing in Portland Police Bureau custody, Police Chief Larry O’Dea has offered a proper apology. It’s largely driven he says, by the fact cops promised publicly to deal with a far smaller backlog all the way back in 2002, and never did it.
Is it a wage-off? A new labor-backed group calling itself Raise the Wage has emerged, promising to press for a ballot measure that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $13.50. Unless, that is, legislators do it on their own in next year’s short legislative session. The group also wants to kill the state law that bans cities from setting their own minimum wage. It’s the second wage-raising measure that could appear on the November 2016 ballot. The group 15 Now Oregon has already collected thousands of signatures toward a $15 and hour minimum.
Hey Volkswagen owners: Don’t worry if you’re too busy to keep up with the massive scandal unfolding over your automobile’s potentially fraudulent emissions rating. Some brave “sympathetic and concerned citizen” out there is willing to give you the skinny via accusatory windshield notes.
Donald Trump released a tax plan! It would give big breaks to rich people and hugely increase the deficit! These exclamation points are sarcastic!
The perceived frontrunner to replace John Boehner as speaker of the house is promising that he’ll “have the courage to lead the fight for our conservative principles and make our case to the American people”! Plenty of people take that to mean he’ll be more averse to compromise than Boehner! These exclamation points are alarmed, but also sick of it all!
Remember how the pope was just in country, being all cool and papal? Yeah… still thinks its okay for a government worker to deny a gay couple a marriage license as a form of “conscientious objection.”
President Obama and Vladimir Putin gave dueling speeches to the United Nations, then sat awkwardly near each other at lunch, and then met in private. Doesn’t look like they’re any closer to agreement on how the world ought to deal with Syria and ISIS.
And whoops! You forgot about the Taliban. Now they’ve taken over a major Afghan city—far and away the group’s biggest victory in years.
Eighty-two!
