The Oregon Sustainability Center
Brad Schmidt has an update on Mayor Sam Adams’ wish list that will cost us “$1.3 million on lobbying efforts this fiscal year, about 10 percent more than in 2010-11.”
Entries Tagged as 'Oregon Politics'
Oregon Sustainability Center “Bleeding-edge Folly”
Today’s Oregonian features a proposed Oregon Sustainability Center to be built on the Portland State University campus.
It’s a good looking building, however financing is still uncertain.
Backers are seeking $40 million in state money, plus $17 million from the city and $5 million from federal grants, tax credits and private donations. The Legislature will vote on funding in February and the Portland City Council in spring.
The article by Beth Slovic states that “…construction would run $434 a square foot, almost 50 percent more than downtown Portland’s most expensive new high-rise — the First & Main building at the foot of the Hawthorne Bridge, completed in 2010 and would push office rents as high as $40.25 a square foot, about 50 percent higher than downtown’s Class A average now.”
Here’s the kicker for me: Project leaders are counting on four nonprofits to move in. …they would pay $31.75 a square foot, compared with typical nonprofit rents of about $20. If they backed out or couldn’t pay, taxpayers would be on the hook for about $200,000 a year.
As a taxpayer, I’m tired of being stuck with these kind of bills that I don’t get to vote yea or nay on. Almost all of the funding depends on the taxpayer. No developer in his right mind would build a building that is so uneconomic. It just wouldn’t pencil out.
In September Henry C. Kunowski, an architectural historian, called the proposed building a “bleeding-edge folly.” Governments like to deliver these kind of projects, including ethanol production and solar power, that can”t stand on there own financially and lead to misallocation of resources. China has taken it one step further by building whole cities that are unoccupied. Bah! Stop giving politicians money!
“We have Responded To The Mixed Messages Of Our Leaders…”
The Oregonian carries a story about the Occupiers. In the story is another about Officer Daryl Turner, president of the 900-member Portland Police Association, who said he believes the protests have been overshadowed by troublemakers.
“There is an element there that has a different agenda and that agenda doesn’t seem to be coinciding with what Occupy Portland is all about,” Turner said. “They’re actually provoking a confrontation.”
“The premise of what Occupy Portland is saying is worthy and important,” he said.
But the union noted that taxpayers have already shelled out $200,000 for extra police resources and will pay more to clean up garbage, damage and illegal structures left by Occupy Portland campers.
“If the Occupy Portland movement has a message, let it be heard, but not at the cost of taxpayers dollars, police resources, and the damage it has done to the citizens and business owners who are a large majority of the 99 percent,” the union wrote in a letter addressed to the “Citizens of Portland.”
Officer Turner writes that inspite of the great cost to the residents of the city, businesses and the police “We have Responded To The Mixed Messages Of Our Leaders…” That may not go over well with our pervert Mayor Adams who supports free speech of the Occupy movement. We’ll see if Officer Turner is soon walking the beat, penalty for speaking up!
Congressman Resigns in Sex Scandal
Finally!
The NYT reports “Wu, 56, has won seven terms. In 2004, he won despite acknowledging a decades-old college incident in which he tried to force a former girlfriend to have sex. Voters said they disliked an opponent’s attempt to use that against Wu as part of a political campaign.”
Eugene, Oregon Upholds Ban
Lovely Eugene, Oregon makes national news as a lib city with the ban on saying the Pledge Of Allegiance at city council meetings. The pledge is divisive the opposition argued. A compromise did allow it on or near four holidays: Fourth of July, Veterans Day, Memorial Day and Flag Day.
I thought the pledge was supposed to unite us!
Oregon House Bill 2972 Authorizes A State Bank
Ellen Brown writes today that “…the budget crises now being suffered by nearly all the states did not arise from too much spending or too little taxation. They arose from a credit freeze on Wall Street. In the wake of the 2009 financial market collapse, banks curtailed their lending more sharply than in any year since 1942, driving massive unemployment and causing local tax revenues to plummet.”
How then can we restore credit in the state? The FED is not authorized to do it, plus that would only increase our national debt. Brown says, “One measure that is drawing increasing interest is the creation of a bank modeled on the Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the only state-owned bank in the country. The BND has a 92-year history of safe, secure and highly profitable banking. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country; and in 2009, when other states were floundering, it had the largest budget surplus it had ever had.
Eight states now have bills pending either to form state-owned banks or to do feasibility studies to determine their potential. This year, bills were introduced in the Oregon State legislature on January 11; in Washington State on January 13; in Massachusetts on January 20 (following a 2010 bill that lapsed); and in the Maryland legislature on February 4. They join Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, and Louisiana, which introduced similar bills in 2010. The Center for State Innovation, based in Madison, Wisconsin, was commissioned to do detailed analyses for Washington and Oregon. Their conclusion was that state-owned banks in those states would have a substantial positive impact on employment, new lending, and state and local government revenue.
Oregon Rep. Bob Jenson has introduced House Bill 2972.
Banks “create” money by leveraging their capital into loans. At an 8% capital requirement, they can leverage capital by a factor of twelve, so long as they can attract sufficient deposits (collected or borrowed) to clear the outgoing checks. States give this leveraging power away when they put their deposits in Wall Street banks and invest their capital there.
State and municipal governments have assets tucked all over the state in separate rainy day funds, which are largely invested in Wall Street banks for a very modest return. At the same time, states are borrowing from Wall Street at much higher interest rates and have to worry about such things as credit ratings, late fees, and interest rate swaps, which have proven to be very good investments for Wall Street and very bad investments for local governments.
By consolidating their assets into their own state-owned banks, state and local governments can leverage their own funds to finance their own operations; and they can do this essentially interest-free, since they will own the bank and will get the interest back. The BND contributed over $300 million to state coffers in the past decade, a notable achievement for a state with a population that is less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County.
Imagine that! We send our money to Wall Street and receive modest returns. You know what money in a CD fetches these days! Then Wall Street turns around and loans that money back to us at outrageous interest rates. or worse, turns down needy small business starving for funds.
A State Bank has been run successfully in North Dakota for 92 years. Let’s move ahead and open a State Bank of Oregon and pay ourselves first.
Here’s Barbara Dudley speaking about the Oregon economy and the need for a State Bank:
Thanks to Conscious Media Network for highlighting this story.
What Is Wrong In Oregon?
Recently released numbers tell us that 43 million Americans are on food stamps; 43 million! That means that in the U.S. 14.1% of us are getting food stamps. And how does Oregon fare? In Oregon 749,498 Oregonians are on food stamps. That’s 19.6% of us. In the U.S. the year over year gain was 1.8%, in Oregon it’s 2.0%.
How do we compare with the west as a whole?
- Washington - 1,019,791 15.2% 1.8
- California - 3,521,881 9.5% 1.3
- Montana - 120,013 12.1% 1.4
- Utah - 268,216 9.7% 1.9
- Idaho - 219,271 14.0% 3.1
- Wyoming - 35,924 6.4% 0.6
- Colorado - 435,306 8.7% 1.1
- Nevada - 322,950 12.0% 2.5
- Arizona - Arizona 1,050,181 16.4% 1.0
- New Mexico - 399,454 19.4% 3.2
- Oregon - 749,498 19.6% 2.0
Only three states or districts are worse than Oregon: Mississippi, Tennessee and the District of Columbia. I get pissed every election season to see the same Democratic lawn signs in my neighborhood and to see the election returns in Multnomah County go heavily Democratic. I think as badly as our state is doing, just maybe you who vote for Dems might think, “Hey, something is not working. We need to change!” But you never do and this state continues to fall behind the progress of our neighbors and the nation.
Oregon: Consequences For Raising Taxes!
International Liberty quotes the WSJ:
In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City’s rate is higher. Oregon’s liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their “shared sacrifice.” Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper reports that after the tax was raised “income tax and other revenue collections began plunging so steeply that any gains from the two measures seemed trivial.”
So how does it work to raise taxes? Taxpayers aren’t stupid. They vote with their feet. Who is John Galt?
