"Cash balance adjustment" or otherwise known as a 'Plug'

Given that Kate Brown is secretary of state, I expect all the "fines" were minimal and (rank speculation here) got plowed back to Nolan's campaign in some typically sketchy, arcane accounting trick.

Meanwhile, Brown's office can issue another press release crowing about how ethical and upstanding it is.

City and state governments are so deeply and intractably corrupt that folks like me come to expect backroom shenanigans as par for the course.

Don't disconut being a Friend-of-Neil. I still don't see why this is a $300 fine and Huffman got a $30K fine.

Steve: Don't discount being a Friend-of-Neil. I still don't see why this is a $300 fine and Huffman got a $30K fine.

TOJ: See what I mean?

I think Huffman's fine was an FEC fine, and Nolan's is an Oregon SOS fine.

Just imagine, if elected, Nolan & her gang get their hands on millions.....

If this is how she manages from people she likes, just wait until she gets hold of billions of urban renewal dollars.

Once NewSeasons, Nolan, and Novick come in, you'll be longing for the days of the SamRand Twins. With three votes, even Dan "Legend" Saltzman can't stop them.

.....folks like me come to expect backroom shenanigans as par for the course.

I believe the insiders have come to expect it as well so
in their best interests to do they all they can to have
reliable three votes when needed.

Looks like all to be a merry insider game!
But the merriment isn't so great for the rest of us.

I don't think our city can survive another act in this playbook.

Just last night my husband and I were commenting on how sad it is that Portlanders have become so cynical with the current City Council/mayor in place.

We just automatically expect the worst, and they usually meet those expectations.

Hmmm. You may have something there, Michelle. As though the electorate is suffering from mass PTSD.

I have written about this before, I thought Alternet had an interesting take on this.

http://www.alternet.org/story/144529/are_americans_a_broken_people_why_we%27ve_stopped_fighting_back_against_the_forces_of_oppression/?page=entire

The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies.

We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanity. A few examples:
Schools and Universities:
Mental Health Institutions
Television
Commericalism of Damn Near Everything

Can anything be done to turn this around?
When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale.

What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).
His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

That's encouraging. Thanks, clinamen.

clinamen, the kinds of governmental policies that article cites are sort of counter to the ethos around here. They call on things like suburbanization, commuting to work, having small social circles, being isolated at home as causing these problems for Americans. Don't you usually accuse the government around these parts as trying to force some kind of collectivism on you?

Since life often gets boiled down to what fits on a bumper sticker; I saw this one yesterday while on I5 south of Salem:

Evil Happens when Good People do Nothing

Aaron,
Read the examples above in the article. There is a lot more to this than suburbanization, and isolation etc.

The article refers to humiliating abuse syndromes and being broken by a corporate-government partnership, etc.
Oppressive humiliations and control cause much of this and that is why I often write about what goes on here.

Yes, he does writes then that social isolation doesn't help the matter. Television as one example.

I appreciate Jacks blog as it does help to communicate with others and not feel isolated particularly about political matters.

I did not say I agree with everything of what he writes. There are many variables, I don't necessarily perceive suburbanization as being anymore of an isolation problem than living isolated in an apartment unit. Much of this depends on the individual. I communicate with my neighbors. Variables go deeper than where one lives, how one grows up, does one have extended family? Growing up in a small community versus a large city.
Much food for thought here.
The author brings up the subject of schools:

Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.

Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.