[See note on related post here, and Jack bog post here.]

The Shadow,

Unless some money gets transfered directly to one of the elected folks or city staff outside their transparent income or transparent campaign funds then the whole issue can be characterized is nothing more than a policy disagreement, or religious-style belief. It is usually rebutted at the earliest procedural phase of any private litigation on the basis of standing, or rather need for a showing of some particularized interest that is different than that faced by the community as a whole. Prosecution on the former does not lead to any structural fix, and the sole remedy for anything remotely structural is to go get elected and is justified as judicial deference to the political branch. It is as if there are no limits at all that pertain to the merits as they do not matter any way.

The US Supreme Court also just clarified a limitation in a RICO action, at least in civil litigation, that harm to competitiveness by virtue of some criminal conduct cannot lead to extraordinary relief. Belief is all that one needs, no matter how misguided or erroneous.

Daphne, the Stennies are actually on the same page as Mr. Bush. Bush does not want the federal government to build things like the Timberline Lodge, as a jobs measure, on the federal government's dime, and Bush is wholly in favor of local municipal governments forcing their own residents to cough up future earnings (via taxation to cover bonds) to guarantee returns for the new-capitalists that fear capitalist risk like the plague. This way they, the locals, do not make a mess of the federal budget or the plans of the Federal Reserve.

The feds can cover debt merely by printing new money. The city cannot. The equitability, among residents and between locals and non-locals, of the benefits and burdens of city economic schemes would be enhanced if we had the faces of the local councilors on our very own currency and it was used and exchanged for all pro-economic measures. Sten credits, the Sten dollar, could then have a value that "floats" just like the US Dollar on the international market. Just replace all non-collateralized bonds with their real equivalents, the Sten Dollar. Revenue bonds, which are back only by a "moral" obligation, as stated by the Oregon Supreme Court, would clearly fit in the category of obligations payable to the beneficiaries in Sten Dollars.

This way if OHSU or Homer received Sten Dollars, rather than from City backed bonds payable in US Dollars by all from the proceeds of bonds or future benefit of tax breaks, then when the bond rating folks wield their power it would effectively be redirected to the exchange rate for those folks holding Sten Dollars. Imagine if Homer expected to get a fixed sum of Sten Dollars ten years from now, in lieu of a prospectively effective tax break, but during the next few years the Sten Dollars lost a lot of exchange value because Sten printed too many of them.

This may sound absurd. But if revenue bonds are just moral obligations is a bond rating on them just an expression of "morality?"