Comment to "Heaven help us.:"
I still want an initiative that dedicates all parking meter revenue (from cars only) for the next twenty years to be used to pay for a set of security-camera-guarded on-street spaces (maybe even covered) that are reserved for two-wheeled things (150cc or less). Such revenue, even if previously dedicated prospectively to repave parts of our pedestrian mall to accommodate tri-met-anti-pedestrian machines, can be rededicated at will.
The CoP's participation in the FlexCar thing too can be replaced by mandatory participation in a new "non-profit" FlexPed thing; so as to reduce emissions of noxious fumes.
Randy needs to review his dialog with Erik on FlexCar and apply it to the arbitrary pro-consumption-of-ethanol scheme. Alternatively, reserve 30 percent of the current parking meter spaces for two-wheelers so as to fight oil, and to spare pedestrians from some of the risk of catastrophic injury. How about reducing fuel use by the city, from any source, by 30 percent even if some staff must hop on mopeds? (Lower transportation costs for the employee could translate to lower pay, just as cheap food enabled farm laborers to move to industrializing cities. Such classic "development" reasoning might seem odd for our pro-spending-too-assure-profitability apologist regional economists that play only with other-people's-money.)
For a simple micro-economic representation of the gains from home price speculation in the context of ever-higher well-intentioned tax burdens upon the poor (for their own good) go see the House of Sand and Fog. For each person who benefits from the loyalty gifts to our modern Nobles (in a zero sum game of wealth transfer, or "resource allocation") there will be one or more people or families that have a reduced sense of security (bottom rung on Maslow's hierarchy).
Every home transaction, and assumption of the regressive tax burden coupled with the property, that has a debt-enabled price far in excess of its' rental-value-justified investment value represents an immediate actuarial underfunded liability by the so-called owner. The good folks at Harvard finally pegged the cost of housing to the ratio of interest expense to wages, rather than treating speculative pricing (and expectations of escalation of the same prospectively and in perpetuity), just as I have been arguing for several years.
The only common denominator for the public policy decisions seem, in an abstract sense, as if it is little more than a tap on the key of a video poker machine.
For the sake of the kids. Tommy?
===
Agricultural land that remains in the production of food rather than for ethanol production enables more exports from our region. Assuming that the ethanol is generated exclusively in Oregon what will be the measure of the reduction in exports? The IMF, when dealing with places like Argentina, gets all myopic about export oriented development, to cover . . . . debt. Randy's scheme is inefficient . . . and harmful to the exports that we so desperately need to cover debt. It will also raise generally the price of grain, domestically, with a consequent increase in the cost of food too (at least the cost of our noodles), and perhaps reduce the competitiveness of the price of our grain on the international market . . . leading to federal calls for more export subsidies. (One can imagine Bob Dole as a champion of the national plan to stimulate ethanol, so as to bring home even more bacon.)
I cannot afford medical care because I cannot compete with the city's purchasing power for their designated set of beneficiaries, nor will I be able to compete once the city gives a license to a fully monopolistic pricing model for all city residents, on behalf of the owners of the hospital industry.
Make the Oregon Investment Council Speak
The problem is within the judiciary. The catcall of "judicial activism" is sufficient to flip the inquiry from a single affected individual to that of a judge demanding that an objector explain why it is that they alone should be able to obtain a remedy based only on an offering of nothing more than an alternative, plausible, policy choice.
It is achieved in two ways. First, ask: Can you demonstrate some particularized harm that is different from the community as a whole and thus obtain standing? Second, ask, simply: Can you convince a judge that there is not a single, ad hoc at time of trial by creative lawyers, non-absurd and allowable public purpose that supports the government action?
Recall that the State Constitution is generally a document of limitation, as contrasted with the Federal Constitution which is a document of authorization. The same would be the case for the city too, except that the state itself, as with the gay marriage thing, could choose (I say arbitrarily) jump up and object to the claimed authority of a subdivision. The arbitrariness is illustrated by Ted K's public announcement of support for the CoP plan to pursue extraterritorial jurisdiction over PGE in the face of a clear opportunity (I say duty) for the state to slam the CoP's PGE plan back into their jack-in-a-box to spring on someone else another day.
Thus: You would need both a state law based piece of restrictive legislation coupled, more importantly, with the will of the AG's office to jump up and down. This raises the very same objection I have made in numerous factual contexts . . . intergovernmental squabbling that gets resolved in the judiciary is nothing more than a classic (and objectionable) advisory opinion.
The California experiment in testing the limits of the Commerce Clause has revealed that a focus in the health of the local population is necessary and sufficient, at least as to the output of stuff from the cars. The CoP could not make a private station buy from an Oregon or CoP supplier but the CoP could mandate that their own purchases must be made from an approved little list of suppliers . . . but exactly where these suppliers obtain their own supply would be the stuff of backroom deals and not the city code. (I expect to see an argument about single source supplier so as to avoid competitive offering of services to the city, coupled with Stennie-Warner-style pro-economic-development arguments that paying much too much is essential to success. If picking FlexCar out of a hat for a special gift is OK then so too is any gift which Mr. Sten wishes to pull out of a hat.) Yet, the federal folk's interest is still a wild card.
I would of course point to something else. The Oregon Investment Council (and PERB and the OEA/NEA) has had a long and intimate (incestuous, really) relationship with retail grocery business in Oregon and the larger region. These food outlets are still in the formative phase of trying to assert monopolistic control over retail fuel sales. Randy's eagerness to save his pension via the backroom deal to needlessly issue bonds to cover payments-not-yet-due-til-long-into-the-future would generate bond proceeds that would be delivered to the OIC to buy something somewhere that will somehow someway convince someone to scratch Randy's back and make him purr. Randy could be feathering his nest to prospectively be offered a 10 to 20 million dollar style employment deal like the Madusa-style figurehead panel that was proposed to represent Oregon in regard to OIC/TPG/PGE. Such rewards are postponed so as to evade timely discovery and correction of corrupt action.
I would demand that the Oregon Investment Council research and release all their current and prospective positions in entities that in someway relate to the alternative fuels business nationwide and to retail fuel outlets in Oregon, with particular emphasis on the Portland Metro area.
Enabling Randy's Anti-Fossil Fuel Goal
See link at top of post to access Randy's comments.
"eastern Oregon farmers"
But Randy, the Federal Commerce Clause unequivocally prevents you from mandating, or otherwise assuring, that the private retail fuel outlets buy directly from this designated group. Review why it is that Arlington must accept trash from Washington, for legal clarification.
I took Ag Econ in undergrad and your assertion of attending to their interests is just plain odd. You cannot assure, directly in your ordinance, that they benefit nor can you explain why non-Portland residents have become part of your overt constituency.
"benefits of a free market "
Suppose [dairy] operation X were located on the periphery of the city limits. Would you consider it an advancement of the free market to mandate that all milk sold within the city of Portland must originate within 20 miles of the city limits. Perhaps you could say that you wish to be able to have local milk inspectors access the sites conveniently and 21 miles is inconvenient, even if [dairy] operation Y is exactly 21 miles away.
You must have heard the Foster Farms chicken adds, you know, fresh not frozen. You could try to save them a whole lot of advertising cost with a simple ordinance, to support the "free market."
The International Trade Commission spends lots of time trying to expose all sorts of regulations that are nothing more than disguised anti-free-trade measures such as that which you propose. You have your definition upsidedown.
Mr. Warner must surely have an elementary exposure to the notion of agricultural cooperatives, like the Pendleton Grain Growers. If not, "heaven help us." They, together with other cooperatives, could themselves establish a certification, tracking, advertising and quality control group that targets an "Oregon Grown" theme that mimics the Washington Apple label.
Then you could have an ordinance [that] required "transparency" of [the] origins of the fuel that is drafted sufficiently narrowly to assure that such a "Oregon Grown" label gets pasted to the fuel pumps. For the city's own purchases of fuel, where you are using your more liberal purchasing power, you could require [that] such a label be pasted to the pump as a precondition for the purchase.
If your ultimate goal is that of anti-oil more generally and your concern is broader than the boundary of Portland's city limits then participating in such a labeling scheme would enable other jurisdictions throughout the state to follow along. Indeed, the label could instead be that of "NW Grown" and include OR, WA, ID and MT to encompass the bulk of the territory that makes use of Portland/Vancouver as their port for international sales of grain. Your idea could then spread far and wide in the NW, with less legal controversy and with greater aggregate total impact.
It would then conform with the notion of consumer sovereignty.
Randy Takes Personal Offense -- Rebuttal
Randy -- "But questioning my motives and veracity in this public forum, whether it is your site or not, is over the line."
Jack, suppose no single retail gas outfit in the city chooses to assert a Commerce Clause objection? (This very real possibility reveals the political usefulness of the OIC/PERB having a direct and influential ownership interest in private enterprise -- heavily into all the retail food chains which have used their stellar Food Stamp receipts to subsidize their entry into fuel sales -- so as to manipulate our laws to suit them for any number of reasons, one of which could be the profitability of particular investments on behalf of a subset -- a closed class -- of Oregonians at the expense of the rest. Monopoly pricing is great too, if you are an owner, and better still if the owner that benefits also has the power to convince the AG's office to look away, for their own pecuniary interest.)
Any mere consumer is likely to have their challenge summarily tossed out in either state of federal court.
The remaining challenge is as a taxpayer, but only as to the direct purchases that the city might itself make . . . and it is less oddball and challengeable than even the favorable terms offered to one particular FlexCar outfit.
You can't beat the use of plausibly deniable arbitrariness by the OIC, and the persons at the top are statutorily granted immunity from personal liability for any of their investment decision. One must wonder why the PERB board members are offered immunity for investment decisions for which they have no role whatsoever?
Randy has sufficient backup and his role is little more than like that of Mr. Kohler's role in the OIC/TPG move to transfer public employee ownership of PGE from one hand to another in a not-so-arm's-length transaction. Where is that retired guy who got to dig into the 2003 deal by OIC to deliver money to TPG and to put Neil at its head? This is just routine business, with a similar MO. Let's ask Ron Schmidt what's up? I cannot believe that Randy dreamed this one up all on his own.
Randy, these folks want 1.6 billion dollars of safety worker Pension Obligation Bond proceeds really, really bad. How about striking a bargain that nets 1.6 billion dollars of net benefit to the residents of the city and that is evenly distributed based on residency? Don't forget that the present pay-as-you-go scheme as actually more secure in court, provided that all the present workers seek a judicial action to reduce their annuity interests, earned for past work, to a final court order, without the hokus pokus crap about guesstimates about future returns (read the liability limitation in ORS 238.600, because I would do my best to impose that limit as to any investment returns below that which is projected by the actuary.)
I have it on good authority (Marion County Court) that I must effectively confine my whining to a public forum. I hope that you would not disparage me that too.
UPDATE:
UPDATE (Further Comment):
Thanks
That can lead to a quick set of public records requests and a narrower focus (better targeting) for future inquiry.
First, Mr. Warner wants to INCREASE imports of agricultural products? Wow.
Maybe we can directly support Chile too by requiring that Safeway (and other OIC partially-owned food retail outfits) must, at ALL times of the year, dedicate X percent of floor space to accommodate specific kinds of fruit and berries. It would have a public purpose of assuring that we all have a healthier diet all year long.