Run, Erik, run!

Hey, Phil Stanford!  You demanded evidence that "dirty money" (your term) "corrupted" Portland politics.  Well, how about the naked grab for power by the movers and shakers of the local power elite to oust Erik Sten who apparently doesn't represent their interests?  And the initiative to throw out Sten's "voter owned elections", which  threatens their political clout?

It's quite likely that Ginny Burdick, former "Portland liberal" and now some sort of flack for the Gard and Gerber advertising agency, will take on Sten in the next election.  It's the people at Gard and Gerber, not so coincidentally, who are spearheading the challenge to publicly financed elections.  It was the same Gard and Gerber who torpedoed the Portland PUD proposal and represented Texas Pacific in their bid to buy PGE. 

The Gard and Gerber-backed First Things First Committee reads like a who's who of city business bigwigs.  Take a look at some of the names on the roster:

• Judy Peppler, CEO of Qwest.
• David and Judy Chown, hardware store moguls.
• J. Clayton Hering, President, Norris, Beggs and Simpson.
• Sandra McDonough, President and CEO, Portland Business Alliance.
• J. Kregg Arnston, PGE spokesperson.
• Greg Goodman, City Center Parking.
• Rolf Glerum, formerly of Gerber Advertising.
• Tom Imeson, Neil Goldschmidt crony.

Of course, Ginny Burdick is on the list, as is Jim Jeddeloh.  You may recall the name.  He was in the news recently as part of a local soap opera involving alcohol, spousal abuse, and Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto.

Now I admit that the challenge to Sten is not a classic David and Goliath story.  Sten is armed with more than a slingshot, and Burdick, even with the backing of the city's movers and shakers, is not exactly Goliath. But still, the open arrogance, the chutzpah, of the monied establishment galls me.  That establishment is the real Goliath in this tale, and I would be mightily pleased to see Goliath smitten with a voter's rock to the forehead.

So I say to Erik Sten, rise to the challenge.  Announce that you'll run for re-election and that, in the process, you'll explain why publicly financed elections are a good thing for the city of Portland.  And a good thing for democracy. 

Comments

[Jack Bog]

It's so sad that in Portland your only choice is between socialism and corruption.

[ron ledbury]

It is not either or it is a tag team likened to co-dependency between drug users in need of hope.

Suppose public employees had their liberty interest to choose a savings bank other than the "independent" (cough) PERS.

Both corruption and socialism, whatever, would be slightly reduced.

Investment bankers have covered themselves in a little bit of red dye No. 2, via the OIC, to make it social investing and thus as free as a bird from restraint, or everything that a true-blue-Laissez-Faire advocate could have possibly dreamed about.

The partnership will continue, with tweaks to the figureheads.

[Terry]

What's between "socialism" and "corruption", Jack? Capitalism unregulated? C'mon, Jack, give me a break. I know that you're too intellectually supple to fall for such simple-minded dichotomies.

[ron ledbury]

What we have today IS unregulated capitalism, precisely because of the government participation as owner -- or worse as the joint partnerships. Jack has objected to joint partnerships, public-private joint partnerships.

I can only hope that Jack's objection is based on the weird legal tactic of the joint partnership playing a game of swapping hats, for legal deception, to assert the most effective objection for the joint operation.

Capitalism is a means of accountability all by its lonesome, for errors in business judgment. It is thwarted by crazy assertions of sovereign immunity for an entity that also claims the benefits of being free from effective governmental oversight as they are merely acting in a proprietary capacity. They are two-faced. That is the purgatory, the near complete escape from all mechanisms of accountability.

I go one step further and plant the blame squarely on the judiciary and the bar association's tolerance for renegades who's elevated status has been accorded only by reason of effectively representing the public interest.

Perhaps we should demand that all members of the bar have a weblog and make 4 posts a week. We could then glean from such posts inadvertent slips of hostility to the public interest. If such were the case, which end of the scale of public interest versus greed, among his peers in the bar or journalists, would Jack's posts land? There should be no question, at least from his posts.