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

Americans Happy To Pay For American Quality

You've heard it a thousand times. America can’t compete with Chinese goods because they can beat us on labor rates. Yet Tim Leatherman sat in my studio yesterday and patiently explained how he’s managed to do it for the better part of 30 years.  Leatherman is the man who invented the namesake tool owned by ten percent of the people in the United States.The top knife makers in America rejected Tim’s tool so he made it himself. Leatherman makes tens of thousands of them every week and sells them at around a hundred bucks each.  He makes all of them in the United States of America with American workers.  Tim’s glad to tell you that his hundreds of imitators make look-alike Leatherman tools in China and sell them at a tenth of his price.  Competition is good. It makes Tim Leatherman and his workers strive to produce the best, and Americans have been glad to pay for that quality.

Vacation: All They Ever Want

Many of the public officials I know don’t care that they effectively get unlimited vacations because they don’t take much vacation to begin with.  So that makes it all the more embarrassing to hear the stories this morning about Portland city council members taking five, six or seven weeks of vacation per year.  And the attitude of entitlement from the likes of Randy Leonard…who explains that he earned his long vacations in the fire department.  Hey Randy, newsflash, you’re not hauling hose bundles up stairwells anymore…you’re managing duct tape regulations and six figure public toilets.  Especially in hard times like these…where the Portland metro area lost 53-hundred jobs in September and much of the reason is the crazy tax and regulation policies of a city that can’t stop spending.  I think public officials should take two weeks of vacation a year…like the majority of their constituents.  And when you can't get the roads paved, keep cops on the beat, and bring in new business, you might consider skipping even that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a time that we should sit down and remind ourselves how lucky we are as Americans to live in such a great nation that, at least for now, awards us so many amazing freedoms that many other countries in the world are not afforded.

I thought we would mark today by reading some words from one of the greatest Presidents in our nation's history: Abraham Lincoln. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

UnGovernor: Kitzhaber Is His Name...

Oregon Lawmaker Mitch Greenlick plans to carry water this legislative session for UnGovernor John Kitzhaber on the Death Penalty. Greenlick wants a constitutional ban on the death penalty. Yet Oregonians overwhelmingly support Capital Punishment…as do the vast majority of Americans.  

Oregon's Twinkie Future?

So called environmentalists have just about killed the state of Oregon and its time to find a way to stop them. Fishing as an industry is dying, farming and ranching suffering, logging just about gone. It’s great, I guess, if you’re independently wealthy like our Governor and already own a piece of land by a nice river. If you’re a working stiff it means slow economic death.