Check out this analysis of how the May 2006 Portland elections began to look different due to Voter-Owned Elections. Congratulations to the Citizens Campaign Commission and the City Council for its work adopting additional safeguards to prevent the fraud being discussed in this trial. But let's not forget the flawless use of this reform option by other candidates. Read all about it.

Sue, timing of discovery is important.

Do you think that our auditor would be the slightest bit troubled, when reviewing school funding for the COUNTY, with a Gresham/Barlow school district contract that included retroactive pay increases going back 18 months? The encouragement to end a strike or to end a threat to strike when an impasse is reached is that the potential strikers can get higher pay for work performed after an agreement is reached. Let's talk about whether such pay terms were lawful AND whether it was fully known, and fully known to be unlawful at the time of agreement, when it was nevertheless agreed to as a valid expenditure.

Private individual money expenditures is not subject to examination (for non-violent action) except as a consequence of their voluntary participation in a scheme to enable the donor to obtain a tax deduction. Look back to NAACP v. Alabama (NAACP v. Patterson) for a vigorous insistence by outsiders to retain their membership-list and contributor privacy.

Insiders have nothing to fear from arbitrary government action, which is the very evil that is supposed to be repelled by a demand for non-arbitrariness.

I tell you what -- When the Democrats voice near-unanimous objection to treatment of capital gains as income that can be both delayed and treated for tax purposes as something other than income then I might start to believe that they are something other than confused PR shills for corporations/high-end-homeowners (so long as some of them are the owners or de facto beneficiaries). As the money supply is boosted to supposedly stimulate the economy (by increasing debt, public and private) it just devalues the relative value of the dollar or the return to labor relative to capital far faster than any CPI-based wage increase agreement -- ergo, UNEARNED capital gains and an increase in inequity of the system. So many initiatives proposed for the public benefit instead represent self-reinforcing increases in inequity.

Let's strip the statutory grants of the privilege of limited personal liability for artificial-entities -- i.e., if someone really wants to get bold. It is the fulcrum point that would most directly address the perceived imbalance in individual ability to influence politics on a more level playing field.

The clean money thing is a perverse political distraction from the root cause of inequity.

--pdxnag

the really sad thing here is it gives more ammo to the O which is definitely against the voter owned elections system. Every chance they've gotten, they've put this system down. So, it gives them one more shot over the bow, so to speak. They are so shallow. and dangerous, IMHO. to the Oregonian - we get it - you're against Voter Owned Elections. Enough editorializing through "news" already...

<h2>how about a report about Amanda Fritz's campaign which went smoothly. http://www.amandafritz.com/</h2>