Promises are cheap, but keeping them can be difficult. Whitmire promised a lot during his campaign, but he finally realizes that the real world is challenging to maneuver, and other than the orange man and his grifts, few others can long get away with promises that cannot be kept.
Unlike other bloggers, I don’t post the entire article or almost the entire article from a source that I pay for. It is not fair to that organization. The quote below is from the Houston Chronicle. I don’t think much of the Chronicle, but it is improving, and if it continues that way, it deserves to survive. So pay for some of the news you get, a way to save our Democracy.
Whitmire floated the possibility of bringing back a program abandoned in 2004 meant to keep officers working past retirement amid ongoing discussions about improving police pensions. While the mayor called the discussions “very preliminary,” officers inside the department are talking openly about delaying retirement until after talks conclude. Source
Whitmire either outright lied, or maybe he actually believed that he was capable of doing the things that he promised. I don’t know which is worse for the city.
Like many other communities, Houston has struggled to hire and keep top police officers. I’m fairly sure that the present climate, where police have a less-than-stellar reputation, does not help with the hiring.
It is easy to criticize and much more challenging to provide solutions, which I am criticizing without providing solutions. I don’t know the solution for getting QUALIFIED candidates to apply. But I know not to promise something I am not sure I can deliver. Not because people would remember the promise or even believe that I would keep such a promise; for me, it is a matter of principle, something that needs to be improved in our country.
I recall my younger days and can tell you that the pension at the end of a very long career is not what attracted me to apply for a job. The only thing I looked at or considered was what did it pay. First, one must get them in the door and then figure out how to keep them, especially the good ones. The other thing that I considered was how secure the job was. Would it still be there in a few years?