Wide World of Links

The convergence of a number of other tasks has caused me to be a real slouch in the blogging department this week. But thanks to my alert readers, I have several links to offer.

First, we had a front-page story in The New York Times today about an especially creative creative writing student at NYU. Another fine blogger success story! But I can't seem to find the blog that made him famous. With all the publicity he's gotten, the guy may have encountered a major bandwidth problem. (He's supposed to be broke, after all.)

Then, with June rolling around, brides-to-be may be interested in this great deal on eBay.

And as part of our commitment to keep you, the reader, abreast of IRS-related developments in the Western region of the country, we offer this news story from our 50th state.

Thanks to Lorne, and to whoever steered me to the other two stories. I'm so punchy at the moment, I can't recollect my sources.

One less career change option

I have always thought that if offered a position as a judge on a prestigious court, I would have a hard time passing it up. Granted, there might be some background-check issues, heh heh, but if I cleared those, I'd seriously entertain such an offer.

After spending the last two days serving as an arbitrator (with another day set for tomorrow), I have changed my mind. Presiding over people's disputes, although stimulating and exciting on an occasional basis, is not the way I'd prefer to spend my regular workweek.

Follow the money

The Portland City Auditor's office has done an amazing thing. It has put on line (as pdf douments) all the campaign finance reports of all the candidates in the upcoming municipal elections. It's a gold mine of information about who's financing political campaigns in these parts (and in many cases, who's buying access to the occupants of City Hall).

You political junkies of Portland, the fun starts here. Click on over and see for yourselves.

b!X has started entering some of the data onto his blog. I'm hoping somebody puts all of it into an Excel (spreadsheet) file so that it can be sorted in more meaningful ways than the chronological presentations that the report forms give. Then we could really have some fun.

Another batch of reports will be out in early May -- one hopes, before the dedadline for mailing in those ballots.

Thank you, City Auditor's office. We've waited a long time for this. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but are any of these forms filed electronically? And would it be possible for interested residents to get a copy of the electronic files?

Retain Justice Kistler

You should vote to retain Rives Kistler on the Oregon Supreme Court. Rives brings an extraordinary wealth of intelligence, integrity, and fairness to that court. His opponent's not so hot, but he would have to be a star just to get into the same league (which he doesn't).

Endorsement time

The Voter's Pamphlet is here, and the ballots won't be far behind. Here are my picks for the upcoming races in the Portland area:

Portland City Commissioner: Nick Fish. Sam Adams is just Vera Katz in men's underwear (I think). Deny it as he will, his fingerprints are all over PGE Park, the Convention Center expansion, the OHSU aerial tram, and one waste of taxpayers' dollars after another. He was Katz's "economic development" chief. Just look at the state of the city's economy, and his record speaks for itself. If he wants to hold public office, let him start in the state legislature, the county commission, or Metro, where he can prove he's not the kind of guy who would waste taxpayers' money to make Homer Williams and Neil Goldschmidt happy. He doesn't deserve a cakewalk onto the City Council. Quite the opposite.

Portland City Commissioner: Randy Leonard. Randy has done a lot to shake things up at City Hall, and in that sense, he has lived up to his previous campaign promises to be the outsider and represent a neglected constituency. I don't mind much that he's rubbed the neighborhood association types the wrong way. But I'm very concerned that he was flown down to Las Vegas to be named some national developers' group's pet politician of the year. And he's right there with a yes vote for the RiverPlace streetcar and the Pearl theater. Randy, I'm still with you, buddy. But the day you and I part company is definitely in sight: the day you vote to spend city transportation funds for an operating subsidy for that stinking aerial tram.

Mayor: James Posey. Jim Francesconi is West Hills money with an Alameda mailing address (don't forget, he's a proud director of Portland Aerial Transportation, Inc.). Gongg!!! But try as I might to warm up to his principal rival, Tom Potter, that guy is just a bag of vague platitudes. With all the problems Portland is facing, you would think he'd offer some specifics. Except for his expertise in running the Police Bureau (which alone tempts me to vote for him), however, Potter has presented nothing concrete to merit the mayor's office. At least Posey has looked the voters in the eye, spoken from the heart, and said some things that needed to be said. For example, abolishing the Portland Development Commission, because it's just a tool for the wealthy. Right on, James! He probably can't win, but a vote for Posey is a vote for a runoff, likely between Francesconi and Potter. And it would send a message to both of them. Good enough for now.

Busse? Nah. Anyone who says he's a politician and a journalist at the same time doesn't get my vote.

Multnomah County Commissioners: No endorsements. I am weary to the bone of the Sisters of Hawthorne. They bitch about the school funding situation, but then they retreat into an aromatherapy-filled back room and come out with their gay marriage adventure. Now the state is so polarized and paralyzed that any reasonable conversation about tax reform or restoring faith in government has been postponed indefinitely. They haven't administered the county income tax very well, either. I'm not going to endorse the anti-gay-marriage folks who popped up at the last minute to run against them. But I'm never going to urge people to vote for them, either. Indeed, I wish they had some credible opposition.

In the East County race, I endorse Lonnie.

Measure 26-53: No. On its face, it looks innocent enough: If a candidate for city office gets a majority vote in a primary, he or she automatically wins the position, rather than have to run unopposed in the general election. I guess it's supposed to save money, although seriously, folks, how many dollars are we talking about? Plus, if the victorious candidate is caught having sex with animals over the summer, why shouldn't he or she have to face the voters again in November? More importantly, I hear a rumor (although you'd never know it from the Voter's Pamphlet) that this measure would change the method for determining the number of signatures necessary for initiative and referendum petitions in future city elections. That alone deserves a closer look, which nobody's given it. Which adds up to a no vote from me.

Collateral damage

While on the subject of Steve Duin rants, he's also launched two at Blazers owner Paul Allen on account of the latter's placing his Portland real estate company, the Oregon Arena Corp., in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Duin chides the billionaire for playing deadbeat on the mortgage on the Rose Garden arena -- a mortgage held by a large teachers' and college professors' pension fund. (The same sentiment was voiced here a couple of months ago.)

Duin overlooked the latest scoop on this debacle, though -- the part where Portland taxpayers take one in the shorts. It turns out that, as part of the bankruptcy, Allen's company may wind up walking away from its contractual obligation to operate the city-owned Memorial Coliseum. The Coliseum, which hosts lesser events and has run seriously in the red ever since the Rose Garden opened next door, could conceivably be handed back to the city to operate. There it would join the city's money-bleeding PGE Park and the chronically empty (but heavily mortgaged and taxpayer-financed) Convention Center for the historic Trifecta of Bad Economic Development Deals, engineered by our illustrious mayor and her former economic development aide.

A decade ago, when Allen originally got the deal from the city that allowed him to build the Rose Garden, many questioned whether he was getting too sweet a deal. One answer to the critics was, "At least he'll run the Coliseum for us."

Well, now he could well be walking away from that commitment, too. "The rich are different from you and me." Thank heaven.

Fighting Ray Charles

Oregonian columnist Steve Duin really lets the Portland police have it today.

He speaks for many of us.

I hate the Lakers

Through my stupor of fatigue, I have managed to catch a couple of hours of the NBA playoffs on TV. I don't really like the NBA much any more, but with the Blazers not in the playoffs this year (I fiendishly enjoyed jogging around an empty Rose Garden last evening), I'm naively hopeful that the league might one day become more likeable once again.

There's one eternal truth that won't be changing any time soon, though: I hate the Lakers.

I hate Shaq. I hate Kobe. I hate Phil "Col. Sanders" Jackson. I hate Derek Fisher. I hate Gary Payton. And although I'm occasionally tempted to respect him, I hate Karl Malone the worst. So many future NBA Hall of Famers, all on the same team. I hate them all.

On Friday night, the Houston Rockets made me extremely happy by beating the schmucks from Staples and narrowing their seven-game series to 2-1 in favor of the Lakers.

For me the defining moment came in the fourth quarter, when, with one referee sidelined with an injury and neither of the other two watching, Malone punched the Rockets' star center, the Chinese sensation Yao Ming, in the kidney.

Nice, Karl. You've made a career out of crap like that. Enjoy your arthritis. I pray that you and your loathsome teammates are eliminated as soon as possible.

Friday on my mind

Hello out there, blog fans. Sorry to have neglected you today. I've been writing, writing, writing like a madman -- just not here (aside from answering a few comments). Slightly less fascinating stuff, like this:

Figure 1 presents a diagram of the fair market value analysis, with the willing buyer's and seller's expectations (along with their knowledge and their goals) being the driving forces brought to the hypothetical sale. When the subsequent events relate to the condition or quality of the subject asset, such as the fragile earning power or "looming" liquidity problems of SSE in Okerlund, their probative value depends on the expectations of the hypothetical parties. These events prove value only to the extent that they might have been expected -- that is, anticipated or predicted -- by the willing buyer and seller as they sat down at the bargaining table. Thus, their relevance and weight should be analyzed along the lines of the diagram in Figure 2.

By the time I awake, we all will be deep into our weekend. God bless us, every one, let's have a great couple of days.

The Kerry spam continues

Today I received a lovely fund-raising e-mail from none other than Robert Redford. "Today is Earth Day," it begins, "and I am afraid."

Me too, Bob.

No bill

The Multnomah County grand jury has decided not to indict Portland police officer Jason Sery, who recently shot and killed an unarmed African-American man in a North Portland traffic stop.

It's not surprising. Grand juries rarely indict police officers.

Observers of the Portland scene have been hoping that the aftermath of this police killing would be different from the many others that have gone on before.

It hasn't been.

So far.

Words of wisdom

A friend and colleague relays this story:

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks. The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?" One of the astronauts said that they were practicing a trip to Mars.When his son relayed this comment, the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the Martians.

Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official, accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate. So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon.

An official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these a*sholes. They have come to steal your land."

They're back

Two of my favorite blogs, Hanlonvision and Frolic and Detour, are back in action after long hiatuses. (Hiati?)

Alli of Frolic has a new address and design, and she said something nice about me yesterday. The woman's a genius, I tell ya.

Show's over

Well, tonight concludes another school year's worth of tax classes, taught by yours truly. This semester included Partnership Tax -- bitchiest course in the law school curriculum, IMHO -- at 8:00 to 9:30 at night, two nights a week. It wasn't so tough on me; check the times of many of my posts to this blog, and you'll see that 9:30 p.m. for me is like other folks' noon. But it isn't so for most of the students, who labored over some positively gnarly tax technicalities with me at the ends of some very long days.

Hey, whatever -- classes are out, for better or worse. It's on to exams, and then to summer. My first lectures of the fall term are more than four months away.

I've got the best job in the world.

Solidarity

So, how'd we do?

I hear a deafening silence so far regarding how much Multnomah County collected in the first year of its new, supposedly temporary, individual income tax.

The estimates that County Chair Diane Linn mailed to every household in the county last September said that it would bring in $128 million a year, with $7 million of it to be spent on collection.

I've said all along the county would never collect that much, because it didn't make mandatory wage withholding part of the new tax system. Income taxes don't work without withholding, and since withholding's not required for the Multnomah County income tax, most employers won't do it.

And a lot of taxpayers just haven't paid, and aren't going to unless the collector shows up at their door. The last figures I saw, in early March, showed that only $22 million had come in. Now we're nearly a week past the April 15 deadline for payment of 2003 taxes. All the local mail from last week has been delivered by now, and one would think the envelopes would have been opened and the money counted by now. And so far, no word on how much tax actually came in.

Until an official announcement, it's anybody's guess, but I'm thinking around $90 million at most. That's less than three quarters of the projections. I'm sure the Sisters of Hawthorne have been working furiously on a spin for that one.

Expect a lot of angry folks who paid, when they hear how many didn't. Not angry enough to vote to repeal the tax -- the petitions being circulated now won't pass, although it will be close. But angry enough, and with low enough morale, that political consequences will eventually be felt.

That's what happens when you have an income tax system run by a bunch of rookies.

And notice that it's too late to get a decent mandatory withholding system in place in 2004. The year is almost one-third gone, and employers and their payroll clerks (or payroll services) need a couple of months to ramp up. So the situation isn't going to get any better until 2005 at the earliest.

Which is supposed to be the third and final year of this tax.

Same-sex marriage court ruling

Just a few words about Judge Frank Bearden's ruling yesterday on same-sex marriage in Multnomah County. The decision is being spun so much by all sides, I'm already slightly motion-sick. Plus, the comments on this story tend to get nasty, so I'll be brief.

Judge Bearden's ruling is here. He basically agreed with the Oregon attorney general. He held that the state's hetero-only marriage statute was unconstitutional (under the state constitution), but he indicated that a "separate but equal" system of "civil unions" for gay couples might be enough to fix the problem. So long as they get all the legal benefits afforded to married hetero couples, gay couples might not have the right to the word "marriage."

So much for the substantive issue, and on that, the Multnomah County Circuit Court is not the last word. The Oregon Court of Appeals may get a crack at it, or it might be taken directly to the Oregon Supreme Court, which will have the final say. (Of course, there could be a constitutional amendment passed by the voters of the state in the meantime, but to me that seems unlikely.)

At this point, however, Judge Bearden is in charge on all procedural matters, including the means of remedying the unconstitutionality. And his order yesterday requires Multnomah County to stop issuing same-gender marriage licenses until the legislature has had 90 days to come up with a remedy (which the courts, of course, would then get to judge). That's 90 days from the next time the legislature (now in recess) meets as a whole. In so holding, the judge accepted the wise suggestions of the opponents of gay marriage that the matter needs to be resolved at a state, and not a county, level.

So everybody can say they won, for now, and Judge Bearden (who runs for re-election every six years) can hope to fade back into the background. But his order is likely to stand for at least a few months, if not a year or so. The legislature now appears unlikely to meet before next January, which would put the court's deadline for action at April 2005. And although the ACLU and the anti-gay-marriage folks would like to rush the appeals courts into a quick decision on their beef, there's been no indication so far that they will go along.

Around here, the higher courts don't usually expedite cases. And one would think that the Oregon Supreme Court, whose newest and only openly gay member is currently running for "retention" (re-election) against a noisy right-wing opponent, would not accept an accelerated timetable for this "hot button" issue.

Be that as it may, one interesting question is what is going to happen in Benton County (Corvallis and vicinity). You may recall that the county commissioners there suspended issuing all marriage licenses -- gay and straight -- until the Multnomah court ruled. Now that the court has spoken, and done so in an ambiguous fashion, what will Benton County do? Go back to hetero-only licenses? Continue to issue no licenses at all? Or dare to issue same-sex licenses? Unfortunately for them, Judge Bearden's thrown the hot potato right back.

I guess we'll see in a few days.

Caution: Paying attention will raise your blood pressure

Yesterday's New York Times served up a heapin' helpin' of alarm and outrage.

Level yellow: The IRS has been adding political messages about the glories of the Bush administration tax policies onto its official notices to taxpayers. Four April 9 news releases from the tax collection agency included this little tidbit:

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president's policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

Level red: Political "scientists" are now putting human guinea pigs through MRI experiments to see what parts of their brains light up when political television ads are played before them. You talk about a distortion of the democratic principles on which this country is based -- this takes the cake. We're starting to make Orwell look like Pollyanna. Special shame goes out to the sick and desperate humans who are actually subjecting their brains to gratuitous radiation in the "cause" of perfecting the TV campaign ad. What losers.

Speaking with authority

My good friend and former partner John Bradach Sr. had a thoughtful guest commentary published on Oregon Live yesterday. He's asked that I post a link to it on this blog. I do so gladly.

You think you have a stake in 9/11 and the war in Iraq? John may have you beat.

The earth moves

Big news, weblog fans. One of the world's most prominent bloggers, Howard Bashman, has moved his blockbuster blog How Appealing off Blogspot. More significantly, he's apparently picked a sponsor, a magazine called Legal Affairs, and he's posting on their site now.

Good for them. Good for him.

Still no comments, though....

Got a pimp name yet?

If not, let a pro assign you one. He'll keep trying 'til you get one you like.

For today, I'm going with "Funk Master Jack Trump." (Via LL Robot.)

Who controls the PDC?

Portland mayoral candidate James Posey's suggestion that the Portland Development Commssion be abolished, at least in its current form, got me thinking. It was high time I learned more about who runs the PDC. Like Posey, I don't like the vast majority of what they've been doing with my tax dollars in recent years. I needed to spend some time to figure out who "they" are.

It didn't take long at all. And the answer is, well, depressingly predictable.

The PDC is a creature of a 1958 public vote by which Portland voters established a commission to oversee urban renewal in the Rose City. The law passed by that vote has become Chapter 15 of the City Charter. The PDC is run by five commissioners, all appointed by the mayor; they serve staggered three-year terms.

The current commissioners' biographies, and the bio's of current top management, can be found here, on the PDC website. Chair Matt Hennessee's life story provides Clue No. 1 as to who really controls PDC:

Matt has 8.5 years of experience at nike, Inc., where he served in a variety of roles in customer service, distribution, and operations nationally and internationally.

During her tenure at the bank she served for two years as an executive on loan to the City of Portland as the Executive Director of the Bureau of Human Services at the request and under the direction of then Mayor...

Past positions include: Chief Planner for the City of Portland; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation for the U.S.; Secretary of Commerce for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Chief Executive Officer, Delta Development Group, Inc. and Chief Information Officer for the State of Oregon.

I hope the next mayor is more independent of folks like that than the current one is.

Taking the pledge

Last week, I said in a blog entry that after I filed my taxes, I was going to get drunk. After seeing this photo essay, however, I changed my mind. (Via VodkaPundit.)

He read my mind

Finally, one of the candidates for mayor of Portland has said something specific that speaks to me. And it's James Posey. His thought is this:

Posey, a small-business man, advocated getting rid of the Portland Development Commission based on urban renewal money, which he said goes too often to the city's rich and powerful.

And if we can't abolish the PDC (I'm sure the deck is stacked to make that next to impossible), we ought to tear it apart and put it back together in such a way that our (and Uncle Sam's) tax dollars go to projects that a majority of Portland voters support.

If my ballot were on the kitchen counter today, I'd be blackening the circle for Posey. Actually, at this point, a vote for any candidate except Mr. Moneybags is a vote for a runoff. And that's a very good vote.

Will it play in Portlandia?

There sure is a lot of interest in Bush's, Cheney's, and Kerry's tax returns. It's been a busy weekend on the old hit counter for this blog.

Which leads me to thinking... Wouldn't it be great if we could see the tax returns of the current crop of candidates for Portland municipal office? If I could get them in a pdf file, I'd host them, and we could all spend some time analyzing them.

What do you say, readers? Should we start telling the mayoral and City Council candidates that our inquiring minds want to see their tax returns? At least as to their Multnomah County income tax returns, I'd say we have a moral right to know!