The stunning comment today by Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler leaves one’s head spinning with wonderment on how an elected official could be so clueless to managing the largest county government in Oregon. It also illustrates why government employment (as a whole) continues to grow while private sector employment is contracting dramatically.

You see, he has decided to temporarily suspend the county’s search for a Twitter/Facebook social media coordinator (at a total cost of almost 100k per year) not based on the principle of restraining government growth when his is cutting county programs because of less tax revenue, but because other county employees complained to him!

Now you would think that the fiscal realities of a county that is 46 million dollars short of what it wants to spend would dictate to Ted that maybe there are higher priorities for the county than a media specialist who is really good at Tweeting and Facebook stuff. But apparently this common sense reality escapes him as he blindly offered up the position for employment the other day and continues to stand firm on the need for such a person.

And you wonder why government is growing and assuming more control over our lives? You wonder why public safety, road repair and other truly essential services are not being properly delivered for the tax dollars that the taxpayers are paying today? Look no further than Ted Wheeler’s lack of ability to see the forest for the trees.

He and other big government socialist types are so deluded into the thinking that everything government does is so necessary that it leads to these types of irrational decisions being made. Of course, new taxes must be levied (to pay for such folly) upon the unsuspecting voters of MC that keep electing people who think like this, which makes you wonder how sane they are.

In a sad postscript to this story, apparently only three people registered any complaints with the county after this story broke on Friday, yet many more people offered support for the idea! You would have thought that a few more people would have weighed in on this insanity, but apparently the limousine, latte leftist liberals of Portland are too busy building the socialist utopia to take notice.

Will they ever wake up to reality?