Time For Americans To Get The Lump Of Coal They Asked For...

Get Out, Gutter Punks!

Downtown Portland gets more dangerous all the time.  How is that good for workers and the businesses that employ them?  The latest example you’ve been hearing about is an outright assault on food cart owners who were forced to arm themselves and fight back.  We’ve already seen city hall fail the public by allowing animal rights protestors to drive a fur business out of town.  And the Occupy Crowd brought violence, property damage, drug dealing and raw sewage to the streets near city hall…all with the blessing of Simpering Sam Adams.  People tell me they’re afraid to come to the city’s core because they’re forced to run a gauntlet of unwashed, pan handling, threatening bums who camp on the sidewalks.  And the Mayor’s answer?  He tells police hands off.  Food cart operators are robbed and vandalized…and the open season attitude …emboldens these young street thugs into a full on attack on law abiding citizens…in broad daylight.  Half a dozen of them sit in jail now and that’s a good thing.  All the fancy brick malls and high tech trains don’t make up for the kind of human urban sewage that city hall tolerates.

Costly Costas Comments

NBC needs to show Bob Costas the door.  Any politician who even breathes a word that suggests he doesn't respect the rights and dignity of any group of Americans, no matter how small, puts his future at extreme risk. Now imagine a man who suggests that an important civil right be stripped from ALL Americans. Imagine a man who proposes limitations on a right SO IMPORTANT that the Founders of America enshrined it in the Constitution of the United States!

I give you just such a man, Bob Costas, who during halftime of Sunday Night Football, suggested that if only Americans didn’t have guns, NFL player Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend would be alive.  Belcher murdered his girlfriend and then took his own life.  

Those of us who cherish our God given civil rights protected by a Constitution and elected officials who swear an oath to protect those rights, don't take threats like this lightly. People like me represent more than half the population of the country. People like Bob Costas, who command platforms from which to advocate elimination of our rights, constitute a threat to our freedoms. 

Imagine the reaction if he had suggested stripping or limiting the civil rights of American blacks, or Muslims, or homosexuals or the disabled. If Costas had done that, every part of the mainstream media would be raising a ruckus about it today. I’ve worked in TV and radio newsrooms for more than 35 years.  Most members of the media support the disdain espoused by President Obama who famously disparaged gun owners as Americans who bitterly cling to their rights.

I'll keep my gun rights and suggest that NBC pink slip anyone who uses the network to advocate stripping the Constitutional rights of Americans.

For Obama & The Debt...The Sky Is The Limit

A Home Phone For You. $5 Million For Me...

Multnomah's Double Down Double Dribble...

This comes courtesy of by good friend Jack Bogdanski's Blog...

Multnomah County is borrowing a whopping $128 million over the next week to pay its share of the cost of replacing the Sellwood Bridge. The official sales pitch for the deal is here. The bonds will be payable over 20 years (if they don't get refinanced, of course), and they'll be backed by the county's "full faith and credit," which is fancy talk for putting property taxes at risk. Interest costs alone are projected to run about $71.5 million over the life of the deal, and the interest the banks and other bondholders get paid will all be exempt from income taxes. The huge loan to the county gives observers a chance to take a look at the county's current financial picture. It isn't terrible, but neither is it great. The bonds are rated Aa1 by Moody's, which is three rungs below a top rating of Aaa. Given that the creditors can come after property taxes for repayment, that's not exactly a vote of confidence.

As of the end of 2011, the county had an unfunded pension liability of about $292 million, and as of the end of 2010, it had other unfunded retirement liabilities, for retiree health care and the like, of $154.5 million. Since these costs are going up rather than down these days, one can be fairly confident that the current figures for those liabilities are at least $450 million.

As for bonds and other loans, without the bridge replacement debt the county is in the hole for about $217.7 million, which will now jump to $345.7 million. Thus, combined with the retirement burdens, the county's long-term debt stands at about $800 million. The county's population is about 742,000, which means that the long-term debt works out to about $1,100 per person.

Of course, we who live within the City of Portland are staring at a city debt load of more than 10 times that amount, and so this additional mortgaging of the future may seem pretty small by comparison. But the county's debt, including the loan for the bridge, is another log on an already big pile.

And clearly the county's moving in the wrong direction. When we examined its debt picture five years ago, the county's debt per resident was about $545 -- about half of what it now. Doubling down on debt over a mere five years is a bad sign