Hooray! Thanks to all those who worked so hard to stop this scam!

As a PGE customer, I have to say that I'm very upset not to have the chance to get ripped off by another group of greedy Texans.

I don't know how I would adjust to a world where Texans don't rip me off. Thank goodness we still have W in the White House.

Rorovitz, the state treasurers across this wonderful country are some of the big bad investors in the texas outfit, on behalf of the public employee pensions. Think of the rip off as an alternative tax, with a cut going to the scheme designers.

Does the goodness of the public employee taint the evilness of the texas folks or does the evilness of the texas folks taint the goodness of the public employees? I set aside the evilness/goodness angle long ago in favor of recognizing that the universal human trait of greed will lead toward the highest profit allowed. If one accepts the proposition that public employee participation is an indicator of goodness, even in the business context, does that not take us back to the good old days of Lassie Fair?

Consider the premise behind Social Investing, what on earth is it but the presumption that a business can be altruistic if the investor just so happens to be from a certain group of humans. I don't buy it. Competition and fair play is what generates net benefits, provided there is legal protection from corporate excess. If you think of Social Investing as little more than a hip renaming of Lassie Fair then you, and others here, might start to get my drift about PERS. (This PGE deal is proof . . . don't forget that PERS loved Enron, at least for a while.)

The texas folks are here because of a local invitation to be here. They are our guests, or rather the guests of some of our locals. These locals will still be here tomorrow even after the texas folks have walked. We get to play whack a mole.

Ron,

So I went back and looked at your argument on PERS. Personally, I don't quite understand what point you are trying to make. I think you are saying that PERS and the folks that invest the money for PERS and the rules making sure that PERS payments are made are somehow especially predatory.

This seems to me to contradict the idea that you stated which is that all people are greedy by nature and seeking the maximum profit.

I don't disagree with this when you look at how people invest and the actions of fund managers. That said, it seems a little bizarre to single out PERS or other public employee's as villains in this.

It also seems like you are implying that I, or others on this site, think of public employees as saints deserving some special due.

I don't believe I've made this argument, and I don't think others have either. What I do think people argue is that public employees should have the benefits paid to them which they were promised.

It's kind of funny, you argue that all people are motivated by greed and aggressive self interest, then go and prove that you are so motivated by arguing that you as a tax payer shouldn't have to pay your share for services rendered. Well it's nice to see that you're so honest about yourself.

Ron, you are truly a breath of fresh air!

It is wonderful the PUC rejected it so strongly.

Note from the press release:

The Commission received 889 comments from the general public, 784 of the comments came via the Internet.

Will the City now make a bid?

All my best wishes to Tom Potter and Eric Sten in regards to the bid. May the force be with you.

All my best wishes to Tom Potter and EriK Sten in regards to the bid. May the force be with you.

Rorovitz,

The folks investing PERS assets are not inherently good. They are no different then a texas cowboy in a quest for profit. They have something a texas cowboy does not, the seeming illusion that because the capital is somehow related to public employees that the investments will be inherently good.

You must have pulled in a non-TPG-PGE related argument about the recent court opinion, and mixed it in. The bonding, the Measure 29 bonding, was superfluous precisely because the courts would say that past pay and past accounts are safe. The court has already said there is a bill to pay, but only as the obligations become due, which is certainly not any weaker of a command than any bondholder could ever get.

The public was moved to issue bonds out of concern that they wanted to support good public employees, because they are good. The PERS public employees thought bonding was needed to protect future payments, because that is what they were told by the experts. Yet the court stands guard, as it has in that past and will again in the future to cover payments, as they come due; bond or no bond.

The actuaries and bond-rating folks and many law firms have converted the fear that the Oregon Supreme Court and the Oregon Legislature might not honor obligations, as justification, all by itself, into an excuse to issue bonds to play investment games, like making a play for PGE with general obligation bonds that are misidentified as PERS bonds so as to remain off-budget. The relevance of PERS, in this scheme, is little more than an excuse to borrow even though it is wholly unnecessary; that is predatory beyond description. The actuaries and bond-rating folks (and their remote masters) want the public employees to take the political heat for their schemes to get the state and local governments to borrow. The PERS beneficiaries gain nothing but a slight delay in fixing features of the plan that are genuinely unsound.

The Portland Police and Fire pension might have its own problems that need to be fixed. The actuaries and the PERB want to turn this unsound unsustainable plan into just another opportunity to issue bonds. The PERB is taking the lead to drag Portland fire into PERS . . why. . so as to be able to borrow more money to play investment games. Their need to borrow is again premised, solely, on some mysterious notion that a court would not honor the terms of the past bargains. The Portland police and firemen might gain only a slight delay in fixing an unsound plan design.

I think the actuaries and bond-rating folks and even bond counsel should be in jail, to be honest, and along with them a few other attorneys. The greed here, and the open door, is the incentive (in an economic sense) to bad mouth the court's dependability (an uncertain future court) so as to get investment capital.

I was trying to stop the Measure 29 bonds in October 2003 because they made no legal or economic sense. The OIC-TPG-PGE deal makes it all much clearer in hindsight. Ask yourself why it is that republicans tolerate bonds? Follow the money . . not to PERS . . . but to where it is invested.

I know my left from my right. Do you? For a little diversion, the African slave trade needed local black allies to accomplish their goal. So too here for the outside, and more sophisticated, game players playing wealthy and poor Oregonian's against each other, to our net loss. (I'm on the poor end by the way, with too much time on my hands, and I spend aparently it fighting old battles.)

If I were barking out this rant from some place South of the Mexican border, during the the 1980's, there would be zero risk of misidentification of my slant as that of a right-wing nut. Perhaps it is just bonds that are evil, people are all just too fearful of poverty, relative to one another, that they can't see straight.

I still think there was a deal in 2003 on the Measure 29 bonds and the PGE purchase, but with only a partial overlap that was sufficient to get the bonding legislation passed (in a rush at the end of the session). I want the other half of that deal to fall too, reverse the bonds so as to deny the game players any benefit from their scheme.

"Perhaps it is just ... people are all just too fearful of poverty, relative to one another, that they can't see straight."

Yep.

I think Nigel at Willamette Week --and our free press in general-- deserve a toast, and a thanks, on this one. Made all the difference, I think...

Ditto. Cheers! I second that motion... I think what made all the difference is the fact that Commissioners Randy Leonard and Erik Sten are utilizing modern communications such as Blue Oregon and Portland Communique to bring the city's issues into the public forum for in-depth dialogue.

Ron,

Ok, I've read a number of your posts and they strike me as a little cryptic.

But cool. I like what you have to say about the bonding that takes place and the improper role of bonds being issued so that people can play games with the money that are far from the intended use.

BTW, there was a series in the Washington Post last year talking about the lack integrity at the major bond rating agencies and the games they play to advantage/disadvantage friends/competitors of friends respectively.

And look at the massive publicly issued bonds issued to allow "not-for profit" companies to do massive capital investment with a tax advantage. Oh, and the companies are ripping off the good people of our state.

In short, I agree that you are onto something on the bonding issue. I wouldn't argue if you wanted to lock many of these people up.

And look at the massive publicly issued bonds issued to allow "not-for profit" companies to do massive capital investment with a tax advantage

Could you please provide specific sources as I'm genuiously interested in understanding your stance?

allehseya . . .. I think the Portland Housing Authority would fit the description offered by Rorovitz. Suppose that Gresham proceeds with any plan to use a park, and bond money, to build a mixed commercial residential complex for renting out to others. The advantage in getting the bonds and on covering for investment losses (if they choose to sell) and on not paying property taxes on the land to itself, are all very substantial. An economist looks to the minor differences in the costs between one private competitor and another (applying microeconmics and price theory); but here the advantage is so great that one need not quibble about minor details.

I kind of lump together all the quasi-public entities, or public-private partnerships, because the lawyers can then pick and choose the hat that suits them in court action. The public hat to escape accountability where an official act gets near blanket judicial deference, and the private hat when it comes to claiming the benefits of profits and divvying them up as if certain folks were the unique shareholders of a for-profit government. The state and local governments are, after all, in one view, just fancy non-profit corporations created for the mutual benefit of the citizens within a geographic boundary.

If PGE is owned by a utility district, rather than by a subset of Oregonians, via PERS for example, then the divvying up of potential rewards from profits will be less amenable to the back room dealing that would otherwise distort the pricing decisions. My attitude about PERS and their private investments became set in stone after examining the PERS investment in KK&R to facilitate their leveraged take over of Fred Meyers, followed by the strike in the early 1990's. It was reduced, in my mind, to the teachers union against the grocery unions.

The hybrid nature of PERS, part pays-as-you-go and part pure for-profit, makes proper analysis near impossible. Would PERS ownership of PGE be good or bad for the ratepayers, well, it all depends upon the vagaries of the arbitrary decision making by the PERB and the Legislature, and perhaps the court, after the fact. Keeping PERS out of the PGE rate making business is good, if for no other reason than it reduces uncertainty and reduces opportunities for back room deals on the profits (or losses). In my view, the public employee sponsored leveraged takeover of PGE should never have even been brought to the table, via a texas outfit or otherwise. That is the point of emphasizing the Oregon Constitutional prohibition on the government taking an interest in private enterprise, put in place more than a century ago in response to the same public-private partnership legal dilemma's as we face today.

Perhaps I am just crazy, but only just because there is not a sole that will pay me a dime to make such arguments.

Next stop: public ownership! Write and call your state reps to encourage this!

Don't know who they are? Find your legislator

Also, where the hell was Guv Ted on this? We needed leadership and--much to his credit--Pete Sorenson, Dem Candidate for Governor stepped in front of the parade of people thinking ahead. Thank you, Pete! MORE

OPUC bowed to a tremendous amount of negative input on the TPG sale. While Enron was able to bribe or cajole just about every interest group in Oregon, Texas Pacific didn't win over anyone.

The problems of the regulated private monopoly "public utility " remain. PGE has had its way with ratepayers for much longer than Enron has owned it. The PUC and the legislature have been ineffective in protecting us from PGE predation. The list is long. It includes the profit collected on the defunct Trojan plant, the hydroelectric facilities that should have reverted to public ownership in the 1990's, the huge income tax scam that continues unabated, the proposed natural gas-fired generating plant that is certain to be an expensive [to consumers] boondoggle.

I don't see how PGE's predation can be stopped without public ownership. The CoP has the clearest course, though they should flex the muscles of eminent domain to get the best price, and damnit, they should get the deal done quickly enough to meet BPA's preference power cutoff date. Both of these would have occurred if the PUDs had been approved. The savings at stake are in the billions of dollars over a couple decades.

We have been ill served by our political and economic leadership on the PGE issue. PGE should be publicly owned already. The problems with Enron and the advantages of public ownership were apparent several years ago to anyone who studied the situation and was not cowed by PGE's smoke and mirrors and power lobbying. Other than Eric Sten, I cannot think of an elected leader who was ahead of the curve on the issue. That is a sad situation in a state that prides itself in being progressive and publicly minded.

But...better late than never. The imperative is to get the deal done. Now.