Media blames Walmart leaving Portland on … Walmart (?)

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

When Walmart said they were closing stores due, in part, to crime, that should be for us a time of self-reflection about Portland’s crime wave.

Instead, Portland Mayor, Ted Wheeler, got into a Twitter fight with Texas Governor over it.

The Oregonian ran this story with this headline (to rush to Mayor Wheeler’s defense).

To the article’s credit they do mention taxes and crime inside the article.

But they also layed out this silly argument:

“Saunders agrees that there could be cultural issues at play. He said Walmart has struggled in other markets, like San Francisco, Chicago and New York City. ‘Portland is known for supporting independent retailers, and maybe there’s a lot of people who might not want to shop at Walmart,’ he said. ‘And that can be off-putting and can drive performance and sales.’ ”

The Oregonian’s source insinuates that Walmart was too non-liberal for Portlanders and thus it is all Walmart’s fault.

If that was the case, then why did the super-progressive Portland home-grown grocer Green Zebra close all their locations this year!

Also, notice how The Oregonian article mentions that Walmart left “San Fransisco, Chicago and New York City” as proof that Walmart was not liberal enough.  Well, coincidentally those three cities have all experienced a crime wave of epic proportions as well.

Consider the Portland NIKE MLK Street store which was hit with shoplifters nearly every single day.  The store is closed.  The only way to keep it open is for NIKE to pay off-duty cops to make immediate shoplifting arrests.  NIKE has the money, but there are no off-duty cops to hire as Portland chased them all away.

Starbucks closed Portland stores over crime.

This Portland Pioneer Courthouse Starbucks was vandalized three times in just 30-days.

We can never fix our problems until we admit we have one.

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