Wonder if there will be others.

We're still basking in the glow of some good news that we got on Friday: Our Portland water bill is going up only 11% this coming year! All right!

And what are we getting for our money? Cleaner water? Better water? It seems as though we're getting a lot of mega-pork projects that aren't needed. Burying reservoirs that don't need to be buried. Planning treatment systems that don't need to be built.

Why are we doing these things? Besides the fact that you-know-who says so?

For the money they're blowing, you could probably replace the lead pipes in tens of thousands of houses within the city limits. Keep a lot of plumbers and sheet rock people employed, too. But no. The money all goes to some sweetheart engineers and contractors in big corporations with big talk and big blueprints. They want to own the water systems eventually, and wait 'til you see the bill you pay then.

Already the city bureaucrats are urging us to compare our water bills with our cable TV and phone bills -- two of the ultimate ripoffs. Eventually you'll pay Pepsi to take a shower. For now, just pungle up your 11% extra and try not to think too much about it. Have you toured the Water House yet?

There's something about our state politician press release meter that we find irresistible. This year, with John Kroger retiring from public office due to a mystery illness, he may slow down enough to give one of his former rivals for the governorship a shot at the title. Anyway, here are the results for January. Ted Wheeler's making a run at top honors:

But of course, there's a long way to go until year-end.

Scott Fernandez, a biologist who's been part of the crew battling the Portland water bureau for years over its many questionable expenditures, informs us that he's decided to run for mayor. We're surprised, but not unpleasantly so. Fernandez seems like a bright guy who has put in a lot of time and energy fighting junk science and turning over many rocks to reveal curious behavior by the city's water bureaucrats.

To call his candidacy a longshot would be an understatement. Fernandez reminds me of Jason Renaud, the mental health advocate who ran for mayor four years ago, mostly as a means of publicizing mistreatment of the mentally ill by police and other local bureaucracies. If running for office helped Renaud get out his message about the brutal killing of James Chasse and other outrages against the mentally ill, it was worth it. And we feel much the same way about Fernandez.

And so if you can't bring yourself to vote for any of the "big three" versions of the status quo currently running for mayor, and if Max Brumm is too young for your liking, you might want to think about voting for Fernandez, if for no other reason than to tell the water bureau what you think of its recent performance.

But Fernandez's ideas are bigger than just water. He sees waste in many facets of the city government -- as his website puts it, "where cronyism runs rampant at the expense, both literally and figuratively, of hard-working ratepayers and taxpayers." Amen to that. Can you imagine how refreshing it would be to have a mayor with that perspective? It would be priceless. We wish him the best on the campaign trail.

Both of those propositions are nonstarters, but they're talking about them.

Their proposal for a utility ratemaking board makes a lot more sense. All of the proposals will be the subject of a public hearing next Monday evening.

These guys are funny. Manager commits child sex abuse? Look the other way. Poor employee wants birth control? Absolutely not!

The recent re-doing of the Portland transit mall was not really necessary, and it cost a fortune, but the spendthrifts in city government and Tri-Met pushed it through anyway. Meanwhile, downtown has deteriorated to a point that in many ways resembles its bleak state around 35 years ago.

But hey, we've got shiny trains, and this, this morning:

We're not sure what that is. Other than peculiar, and sad.

Good luck to you -- you may need it.

If the American pro basketball sort-of season isn't doing it for you, here at least is an interesting take on what's happening with the game in China. Can you say "Ma Bu Li"? (Patty Mills even makes a cameo appearance.)

This sharp economist calls it exactly right. Obama has done nothing with the tax code, and if re-elected he will continue to do nothing with it. Despite all his talk. [Via TaxProf Blog.]

An alert reader sends us this photo, from NW Tenth and Hoyt in the groovy Pearl District:

As someone who cleans up graffiti from time to time, we'd sure like to fill this researcher's ear. Graffiti is mental illness! But when you go to his website, it's clear that he's fishing for good things to say about the practice:

I have been photographing graffiti and street art for the past couple of years, and I am intrigued by the very high level of skill and the breadth of imagination behind much of the work. I work as a sociology lecturer and I would like to discover more about the people who create this art and also the people who document it through photography, so that I can learn more about this fascinating topic and put the images that I have collected into some kind of informed context.

Eventually, my aim is to create an article that takes an informed look at graffiti and the people involved in the creative process, which could then be published in a relevant academic journal. If you are involved in either creating or documenting graffiti and street art, I would like to invite you to complete my short questionnaire.

Is Portland State now about to start sponsoring vandalism? It certainly appears that way. Go by streetcar!

Here's a funny one: The City of Portland is recruiting neighborhood groups to go around proselytizing for the new ritual of dumping food slop in the yard debris bin. Canvassers will earn $2 per conversation, and 50 cents per flyer left on the porch if the resident isn't home. They're not being sent out to record complaints, mind you -- just to sing the praises. If they show up at our place, the $2 conversation is going to be quite brief.

Here's an emerging trend in Portland: When the city says it's handing out tax dollars to keep "green" businesses in town, chances are the money's actually being paid to those businesses' landlords. We noticed this recently when it was revealed that the $8 million sweetheart loan made by the city to keep Vestas's American headquarters here was in fact made to developer Mark Edlen and his co-investors on the real estate project to which Vestas is expected to relocate (if it survives that long).

An alert reader points out that the same thing is about to happen with the straight-out $1.15 million grant being made for the supposed purpose of keeping Iberdrola in Portland. If one reads the fine print, as opposed to what gets printed in the newspaper, one sees that the money is actually going to be paid to Iberdrola's landlord, for "tenant improvements." That landlord in something called SPF Brewery Blocks, LLC, which the State of Oregon lists as being located at JP Morgan Investment Management Inc. in New York City. Apparently the landlord has agreed to make some rent concessions to Iberdrola, but who knows how much, or for how long, those will be? Iberdrola is supposedly also going to agree to stay in the building for another 10 years or else pay liquidated damages to the city, but we'll believe that one when we see it signed.

In any event, if Iberdrola pulls out of Portland, the Brewery Blocks boys will no doubt get to keep the improvements that the taxpayers have bought. See how they did that? A neat little trick by the Portland Development Commission and its real estate pals.

And what are these "tenant improvements" going to be? Here's the sum total of what we the people are being told:

Various tenant improvements in Brewery Block 4 which may be amended from time to time. Such subsequent amendments to the Scope of Work shall be reviewed and approved by prior to Grantee entering into a contract for construction in connection with any Scope of Work

Well, that sure pins it down, eh?

Not to mention the gross distortion of the intent of the "urban renewal" statutes. Are the Brewery Blocks "blighted"? We don't think so.

Our spies tell us that Bruce Warner (left), chief executive of the Portland Development Commission under Mayor Tom Potter, is about to be nominated by our retread governor to be the new president of the board of Tri-Met. The linkage is perfect -- it illustrates so clearly that Tri-Met is all about apartments. That's what Warner was about at the PDC, and that's what he'll be about on the transit board. Streetcars, trains, and condo bunkers for all -- now, ain't that the Portland Way? Oh, and your bus has been cancelled.

Also going on the Tri-Met board, we're told, is Travis Stovall (right) from Gresham. Stovall is identified as president of the Gresham Chamber of Commerce and the director of something called the East Metro Economic Alliance. He has a business and financial consulting business.

Riding off into the sunset are board president Rick Van Beveren, who owns a restaurant in Hillsboro; and board member Lynn Lehrbach, a retired union guy. They leave the agency careening wildly toward bankruptcy, and will be forever remembered as presiding over the debacle known as the WES train. That may be one of the worst transportation investments in history, anywhere on the planet. That's not to say it can't be topped by whatever Warner and Stovall cook up.

First question for the new board members: Are you really going to sue the City of Milwaukie or Clackamas County if they don't pay toward the Milwaukie Mystery Train?

They had a little shaker under Molalla a few hours ago -- a 2.0 at 10:16 Sunday night. Not too far from the epicenter of the 6.0 spring break quake of '93.

If our amateur earthquake prediction skills are any good, within a couple of days there'll be a quake or two between McMinnville and the coast to match this one. Lately the two places have seemed seismically linked.

And for the second straight year, the inspirational figure we chose for our charity prediction contest turns out to have played on the current team that went all the way.

Congratulations to the Men of the Meadowlands for depriving Tom Brady of another ring to carry around in his man purse. It was not an outcome that too many of us predicted. Five weeks ago, only 2% of our readers picked the Giants to go all the way.

When Madonna breaks into "Vogue" during the Super Bowl halftime, you have to drink a shot of something strong.

We miss these guys.

They had a 2.5 over near Maupin a couple of hours ago. It's a common place for earthquake activity, but it's been quiet for a while. Wonder if it had anything to do with these yesterday. The geologists always say no, but just because they don't know there's a connection doesn't mean there isn't one.

And it will not go unobserved at our place.

That 5.7 earthquake off Vancouver Island yesterday came just a half hour after a 4.3 about 100 miles out from Bandon, Oregon.

It's tax time once again all across the United States, and this week, Americans have been busy ratting each other out to the IRS, as required by law. And as each form was dropped into the IRS document maw, a copy was mailed to the taxpayer affected. Employees got W-2 forms from their employers. Investors got 1099 forms from their brokers. Retired folks got 1099 forms from their retirement plans. Homeowners with mortgages got 1098 forms from their lenders. Students got 1098 forms from their colleges. Depositors got 1099 forms from their banks.

But people who recently opened accounts at Citibank, picking up 25,000 frequent flyer miles as a promotion, got an ugly surprise -- a copy of a 1099 form, telling the IRS about the miles and reporting that they had a value of $645. That's $645 that the customers are each supposed to put down as income on their tax returns. If they don't, the IRS computer is going to add it onto their income and start hounding them for delinquent taxes -- or just take the surprise tax out of the refund they were expecting.

It's an unfolding disaster for Citibank from a p.r. standpoint. Some customers are furious, and the numbers of the outraged are going to swell as the tax drama plays out between now and mid-summer. A lot of customers aren't going to realize what hit them until the IRS processes their returns.

Did Citibank do the right thing? Usually, the receipt of frequent flyer miles isn't taxable to the airline customer -- it's just a tax-free rebate on money the flyer has already paid for other tickets. Even when employees get to keep miles that they didn't pay for because they racked them up on business travel covered by their employers, smart tax advisors counsel that it's a "de minimis" fringe benefit, excluded from income because it's unreasonable for the employer to keep track of something so small.

But when a bank transfers miles to a customer, there's no exclusion in play. It's a bit like the bank giving a toaster to attract a new account holder; in that case, the IRS has ruled for many years that the value of the toaster is income to the recipient. Certainly, if the bank paid a higher rate of interest to attract a customer, that would be income to the customer -- why not miles? So maybe Citibank was right; our friend and colleague Jim Maule at Villanova certainly thinks so.

But to us, the real ground for outrage is the valuation placed on the miles by Citibank. Are 25,000 miles really worth $645 on the open market? If they are, we suppose that the outraged customers can now sell the miles to raise the money to pay the tax on them. But that number seems awfully high. And avoiding that difficult valuation problem is one of the reasons often given for the policy of not taxing miles in other settings.

Anyway, condolences to the Citibank customers who are now gnashing their teeth. It's almost enough to make you want to Occupy. [Via TaxProf Blog.]

Loaves of Tillamook Cheese will now be packaged in Idaho and Utah, with the loss of 47 jobs at the Oregon Coast. It's been coming for a while, but it still has got to hurt.

A young German's camera puts us in a New York state of mind.

This morning, upon deciding that we should make a run to Kettleman's for some bagels (get 'em while they're real), we made the further decision to go by bicycle. Surprisingly, the tires didn't need air, and so we were on the road without delay. We encountered hardly a car, and the slight chill and breeze made the first ride of 2012 a nice one. We need to do more of that.

Reed College's aging nuclear reactor keeps a-reactin' away, while federal regulators decide whether to renew its license. The "research" facility, which is right on campus next to the psychology building, is 43 years old.

Some inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- the Sergeant Schultzes of the atomic power industry -- visited the Reed facility in a routine visit in late November, and the inspection report is here. Apparently Reed passed, but there were a few items in the writeup that caught our eye. First, some possible corner-cutting on safety:

During the past several years the radiation protection duties at the facility were completed by various individuals who were Reed College part-time employees. They filled the position at the RRR facility designated as the Reactor Health Physicist (RHP). Recently, after discussions among Reed College management and staff, it was decided that the RHP position was not needed and that the College would be better served by having staff members and/or students complete the radiation protection duties at the RRR facility. Because the facility TS still required that there be an RHP on various committees, the Reactor Director was assigned as the interim RHP. Reed College management also decided that a Certified Health Physicist (CHP) would be retained once each year to conduct an audit of the campus radiation protection program. It was noted that the campus Environmental Director continued to fill both that position and the position of Radiation Safety Officer for the campus as well. The licensee was informed that the elimination of the facility RHP position, the completion of the RHP duties by staff members and/or students, and the completion of an annual audit of the radiation protection program by someone from outside the facility, such as a CHP, would be considered by the NRC as an Inspector Follow-up Item (IFI) and would be reviewed during a subsequent inspection (IFI 50-288/2011-203-01)....

Next, it was a relatively bad year for radiation exposure among the workers, most of whom are students:

The inspector determined that the licensee used optically stimulated luminescent (OSL) dosimeters for whole body monitoring of beta and gamma radiation exposure. The licensee also used thermoluminescent dosimeter (TLD) finger rings for monitoring beta and gamma radiation exposure of the extremities. The dosimetry was supplied and processed by a National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) accredited vendor (Landauer). An examination of the OSL and TLD results indicating radiological exposures at the facility for the past two years showed that the highest occupational doses, as well as doses to the public, were well within 10 CFR Part 20 limitations. The records showed that the highest annual whole body exposure received by a single individual for 2009 was 9 millirem deep dose equivalent (DDE). The highest annual extremity exposure for 2009 was 12 millirem shallow dose equivalent (SDE). The highest annual whole body exposure received by a single person for 2010 was 3 millirem DDE and the highest annual extremity exposure for that year was 40 millirem SDE. Through September 2011, the highest individual whole body exposure that had been received was 21 millirem DDE and the highest extremity exposure through September was 700 millirem SDE. The relatively high whole body and extremity doses received thus far in 2011 were received during the course of an experiment when the sample and sample holder were removed after a long irradiation and the aluminum sample holder was more radioactive than anticipated. The SOP has been revised as a result....

In reviewing the RWPs, it was noted that one had been used in connection with work involving the removal of a sample and sample holder from the Central Thimble (as noted above in Paragraph (2) above). After the RWP was used and the personnel dosimetry was processed for those involved in the work, the licensee discovered that one individual had received a dose to the extremities of 640 mr. Upon investigation the licensee determined that the sample and sample holder had been irradiated in the Central Thimble for an extended period and the person who removed the sample and holder probably did not take all the proper precautions during the work evolution. The inspector indicated that nonroutine jobs are often the ones that can lead to problems because the work evolution is not familiar and individuals may not complete the operation properly without extensive training and practice. This can be especially true with those jobs involving highly irradiated samples can. Through discussions it was agreed that such jobs should be reviewed not only by the Facility Director, but also by the Radiation Safety Committee. This would allow others to consider the work and through their collective expertise and experience, possibly determine better or more efficient ways to complete the job....

And despite the claims that the reactor makes little waste, Reed did in fact ship some radioactive waste out of the facility during the year:

Through records reviews and discussions with licensee personnel, the inspector determined that the licensee had completed various shipments of licensed material since the last inspection of transportation in December 2009. The licensee had completed one solid radioactive waste shipment to date in 2011. The necessary forms containing the appropriate information were completed as required. Appropriate procedures were in place for shipping various types of radioactive material.

It was noted that the licensee had also received a shipment of fuel and had completed a fuel shipment in 2011. These shipments were reviewed by the NRC and the results of these reviews were documented in Inspection Report Nos. 50-288/2011-201 and 50-288/2011-202 respectively. The inspector noted verified that the licensee individuals who were designated as “shippers” no longer worked at the facility. The licensee acknowledged that selected staff members would need to attend the appropriate training and become qualified to ship radioactive material....

Apparently, Reed's waste goes out on Woodstock, 82nd, and Foster to I-205, and then to I-84, finally ending up over at the Idaho National Lab waste dump.

Overall, it's not a pretty picture. Aging facilities, wholesale staff turnover, a layoff and job consolidations, student help, bad trends in radiation exposure... but you know what they say in the nuke industry: Nothing to see here, folks. We know more than you. And trust us, nothing can go wrong.

Over in northwest Portland, just west of the I-405 freeway and in the higher letters of the Alphabet District, there used to be some actual industry, especially trucking. Blue collar jobs, like the ones the politicians around here keep telling us they're trying to bring us. But now all those businesses have been chased away by the bad attitudes in City Hall, and there's no hope of them ever coming back. And so it's time to decide what else should be located on that prime real estate.

You'll never guess what the city planners have come up with.

What's that you say? Well, how did you know?

That's right, apartments!

Those glorious, wonderful, ugly crackerbox apartments. But hey, there's still a lot that hasn't been decided: eight stories, or 22, or 30?

There's also some debate about park space. Some people have suggested an actual traditional park with, you know, a playground. But to the creative 20-something know-nothings running city government, that's an impossible sell. They'd rather have some super-sterile concrete thing with a few blades of pathetic "native" grass that no one will ever sit by, except maybe the occasional junkie tying up.

There's a whole public involvement charade in progress on this, but let's face it, it's going to be more high-rise apartments that existing residents will heavily subsidize, some hideous totem poles, a bunch of Subway sandwich locations, a lot of fake brick, and a ton of pretension. Cue Randy Gragg! Go by streetcar!

Here's a wild one in Willy Week: Phil Knight's building a new sports building on the University of Oregon campus, but nobody in the administration of the university admits to knowing any of the details of the project. When Uncle Phil wants to build something, they just "lease" him the land, no questions asked, and when he's had his way with the property, he just surrenders it back with his new toy on it. During the construction, everything's "private," and therefore secret.

It's a little like the Penn State football program in that regard.

Here's a tale that does not speak well of what we thought was a sleepy southern suburb of Portland.

Yesterday, on our post about the City of Portland's outrageous $60 parking zone "Gotcha," we got this comment from a poster calling himself or herself "PdxBug":

Jack, These zones have been in place and enforced this way for many years. The reader who sent this in is just upset they got caught. Where on a red light does it say to "stop"?

When you check the IP address from which that comment was posted, you get:

IP Address: 74.120.152.212

NetRange: 74.120.152.0 - 74.120.155.255
CIDR: 74.120.152.0/22
OriginAS: AS12102
NetName: CITY-OF-PORTLAND-OR-USA
NetHandle: NET-74-120-152-0-1
Parent: NET-74-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
RegDate: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-74-120-152-0-1

OrgName: City of Portland
OrgId: CITYOF-152
Address: 1120 SW 5th Ave
Address: Room 450
City: Portland
StateProv: OR
PostalCode: 97204
Country: US
RegDate: 1998-10-23
Updated: 2011-03-31
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/CITYOF-152

They have found so many ways to give the citizenry the finger. It's a sort of a wayward achievement.

It's amazing that one false move could erase a decade or more of goodwill in a matter or a day or two. But that's what's happened. Stunning, really.

Most of the board and officers will probably be gone by Valentine's Day. That's what one gets for "playing it safe" in the internet age.

In light of our post of last night about the latest $60 "Gotcha" from Portland City Hall, we think that these ought to be posted in the parking zones to alert unsuspecting motorists of the operative rules:

The Portland City Council can easily get one's blood boiling, but in brighter moments it's important to stop and savor the sublime hilarity of their actions. Take the police fitness money scandal, for example -- the one in which any cop can get an extra $739 pay just by showing up once to take a blood test:

Ninety one percent, or 823 of the 900 members of the Portland Police Association got the extra pay the first year for simply showing up to get their finger pricked for blood, blood pressure taken and height and weight checked. The original plan was to have police take a timed obstacle and physical abilities test. Passing would earn the premium pay – 1 percent of top step officer salary, or $739.

The city scrapped the fitness test after the union balked about having to take the exams off-duty without receiving overtime. Yvonne Deckard, director of the city's Bureau of Human Resources, said the potential cost of paying officers overtime to take the fitness test would have been unacceptable.

We're surprised comics the world over haven't been yukking it up over that one. It's just too good. But almost as funny are the politicians' reactions to it. This abomination must stop! Yes, so outraged are the city commissioners that by gum, they're going to try to negotiate that out of the next union contract!

Leonard asked the City Council to consider a resolution that would put off any change until a new contract is negotiated in 2013. Under his plan, the city's Bureau of Human Resources would be directed to develop a physical fitness test for police before agreeing to pay a 1 percent premium health and fitness pay to officers in the next contract....

Mayor Sam Adams, who serves as police commissioner, said today, "Negotiations or implementation of the negotiations didn't go exactly as I had hoped."

The council voted 4 to 1 to approve Leonard's resolution. Saltzman objected.

What courage. What wonderful stewardship of the public's hard-earned money.

The capper of them all, though, is this:

Saltzman wants to require notetakers at all contract talks to provide an "accurate record" and greater involvement of the council and city attorney's office in crafting city bargaining agreements.

Note-takers? Note-takers? We've got five commissioners, each with a dozen or more minions running around on staff, and nobody knows what's in the union contracts because they need note-takers?

Fred Armisen, eat your heart out -- you'll never be that funny.

Our old partner from law practice, Greg Macpherson, made it official yesterday that he's running for mayor of Lake Oswego. We've always liked Mac as a politician, and were dismayed to see him lose the state attorney general's race at the hands of the public employee unions. They snuffed out his career in Salem as revenge for his daring to cut back their precious, and grossly unsustainable, pensions.

But we're afraid that we won't be supporting his mayoral run, because as the Lake O. rebels have warned us, Macpherson's in tight with Homer Williams and the real estate developer set who are still pushing condo bunkers, and a streetcar to Portland, for that 'burb's east side. If there was any doubt about that after his recent testimony in favor of the streetcar, Mac certainly sent out the bat signal in his e-mail announcement yesterday:

It appears he's gone completely over to the Portland planning mafia. Which is too bad, on a number of levels.

In any event, the rebels down that way had better find themselves a good candidate, and soon, because Mac is going to be hard to beat. And if he wins, the bankrupting apartment bunkers with their dopey trolley will be very much back on track.

Stenchy saw his shadow, which means there'll be two more weeks before the next garbage pickup.

The race to the bottom has never been more apparent. If you live in Portland, you pay money to a company in Spain to keep some well connected local landlord's office building occupied. All in the name of saving the planet -- and "jobs," of course.

Here's a new atrocity from Sam Rand City Hall. A reader writes:

I recently discovered an interesting and unusual Portland parking law today after I was issued a ticket. I parked in the NE industrial area near Widmer brewery (zone J 2 hour zone) in the morning (9am) and returned again briefly in the afternoon 2pm. Apparently it is ILLEGAL in Portland to go to the barber shop in that zone in the morning and return for a meal in the afternoon according to the parking regulations (below). I even parked on a different block! Oh well, Portland has my $60.

16.20.860 Violation and Enforcement.

C. During permit designated hours, it is unlawful for a nonpermitted vehicle to:

1. Exceed the maximum visitor time limit allowed within the signed permit area;

2. Return to the signed permit area for a period of 12 hours after parking for any time period.

Silly reader. Probably lives in a detached single-family home, too.

Look, friend, there's an easy solution to your problem: Don't do business in Portland.

"Urban renewal" is now officially dead in the bankrupt Golden State. It will take a long time, but eventually the same thing will happen in Oregon. The middle class and the poor will continue to suffer for the rich folks' sake, until finally the government is too broke to function. What a waste.

Finally, the City of Portland admits that shooting an unarmed man in the back is wrong. "In the Campbell case, the city hired multiple outside attorneys to represent Frashour and Lewton and two other officers who were subsequently dismissed from the case." And now, on top of that, we'll get to pay $1.2 million in damages. Who's running the police bureau, anyway? Whoever they are, they look incompetent. Maybe they're just drunks.

Is the City of Portland being run by vicious, petty, vindictive people? Here's somebody who thinks so, based on personal experience.

Call us crazy, but we have a theory: Willamette Week really, really doesn't want Eileen Brady to be the next mayor of Portland. We're not sure why that is, but whatever the motive, the Wednesday wonders are pounding on Brady relentlessly, pausing only for the latest bong news.

Here's Nigel's latest slap: New Seasons doesn't want its workers to unionize. And it's all Brady's fault! Last week her problem was that she really had nothing to do with starting up New Seasons; this week the problem is that she was the ruthless mastermind behind allegedly illegal labor practices by the company. She's bad either way -- so you're supposed to vote for Jeffy, apparently.

They keep digging up unflattering stories about Brady, but to us, the overall effect is praising her with faint damn. She didn't vote in Oregon while denying that she owed Oregon resident taxes, as one of her opponents did. And she didn't blow off court appearances, drive on a suspended license, run a shadowy network of political organizations, or sleepwalk her way through a year and a half at a job she had no interest in. Therefore, although she's not worthy of our vote, she's a darn sight better than either of the other two major face cards in the race.

Funny thing. Here it is a Presidential election year, and all of a sudden (a) the official unemployment numbers are down, and (b) there's talk of an imminent strike on Iran, by Israelis armed with weapons, if not aided by soldiers, from the United States. Oh, and watch out for Iranian "terists" here in the "homeland" -- they could strike at any moment, so hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your kids, hide your wife...

By summer we could have a nice little "recovery" to talk about, and a commander-in-chief who needs our support as we save ourselves from the Ayatollah (or equivalent). And bring back "code orange" at the airport! For some reason, to some of us older fish, it all looks like bait.

We've been leafing through the City of Portland annual financial statements that have just come on line, and we've adjusted the unfunded pension figure on our debt clock (see left sidebar) in light of our findings. As best we can compute, the city's unfunded liability to its retirees as of Jan. 1, 2011 -- for pensions, health care, and disability benefits -- was about $2.9 billion, and that number was growing at a rate of about 6.5% a year. With those figures in place, the current liability is slightly lower than our debt clock was estimating, but it's still well over $3 billion. And as a result, the city's aggregate long-term debt has slipped below $11,000 per resident for the moment, to just over $10,900. We'll keep monitoring the city's financial data as it is released to keep the clock as up-to-date as we can make it.

The City of Portland's big fat annual financial statement for the year ended last June 30 has finally hit the streets. The whole phone book is here. Among the interesting insights it provides is that the city's outstanding bonded debt rose by $493.4 million in that year; of that, $212.5 million was used to pay off pre-existing lines of credit. Taking into account another $4 million or so of miscellaneous other debt that the city took on for this and that, it is left with a net increase in debt of $284.9 million. (That doesn't count the underfunded and unfunded pension liabilities, of course.)

Debt service -- principal and interest paid on debt -- was $316.4 million for the year from governmental funds, and $324.4 million from proprietary funds. By our count, that adds up to a staggering $640 million of loan payments for the year. The city also spent $3.0 million in transaction costs on all the new debt it was taking on. The banks, it seems, had their way with the Portland taxpayers once again.

The city's excess of revenue over expenses for the year was $104.8 million. Property and lodging taxes grew by $13.4 million. How City Hall expects to pay off all that debt, and around $3 billion of unfunded pension liabilities on top of it, is anyone's guess.