Oregonians make a painful choice

01/29/03

Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians voted to raise their taxes Tuesday -- even during a recession, even with little or no encouragement from
political and business leaders -- to protect schools and other public services.

OMED: By far the largest segment of this "yes" vote were people who feed at the public trough.  The largest employer in this state is the bloated public sector monster. The Kitzhaber/Kulongoski/Democrat welfare state slops  buckets of money into many pens.  We are shocked, shocked that those who suck at that teat voted to enlarge it. 

This voter support for an income tax increase in Oregon wasn't nearly enough to push Measure 28 over the top -- unofficial counts last night showed the measure failing by about 10 percentage points. But the near-record turnout for a special election and the relatively close vote should alter Salem's budget and tax reform debate.

Yes, this victory for sanity should indeed alter Salem's budget and tax reform debate.  The victory margin was a multiple of Kulongoski's winning spread.  Clearly, the people of this state have rejected the policies of our new governor within days of his inauguration.  The Oregonian, like all of Oregon's mainstream, liberal media elite, believes polls are news, and that every time the Bush approval rate drops below 110% he should admit defeat and thereafter do what Tom Daschle tells him to do.  So, the Measure 28 no vote is a clear message that Kulongoski should check with Rush Limbaugh before he does anything, at all. 

That debate should no longer be about the least that Oregon can do for its public schools, its human services and its public safety.  Oregonians didn't vote that way Tuesday. 

The debate never was about doing the least.  It was about doing too much.  The editors of the Oregonian are modified Robin Hoods who lead a merry band of bureaucrats in the silicon forest, robbing damn near everybody in sight.  After taking 90% off the top of their tax booty, the merry men give the rest to the poor. And, should any of the poor manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a good job?

You guessed it, didn't you?  You are so very clever.  They become the ones who get robbed in the forest.  It is evil to be successful.  It's a wonderful philosophy when you think of it.  Operating this way, we'll never run out of poor people.  As long as we keep the number of rich people down to a minimum, there will never be enough money for the poor.  This forces us, if we are compassionate, to raise taxes.  This creates more poor people for us to take care of, and so on. 

It's an impeccable approach to generating and maintaining a proper welfare state.  The last thing we need is lower tax rates.  A temporary handout is fine, but a basic, continuing reduction in tax rates?  That is a formula for disaster.  People would invest and spend that money.  If it doesn't pass through the government like crap through a goose, how will we, the elite compassionate at the Oregonian, know if it has been alotted to the correct groups?  Worse yet, what if people get used to taking care of themselves, and like it?  Why would anybody give a credit card to a sheep?

Yet the budget ax is now going to fall. Most of the burden will land on some of Oregon's most vulnerable -- the mentally ill, the elderly and children. The responsibility resides with a Legislature that provided no leadership in the Measure 28 election after referring it to voters. A handful of Republicans even undercut support for the measure by hinting that they'd blunt the worst cuts to public safety and schools. 

Lies, double-lies and propaganda.  Serpents now inhabit the Oregonian.  Editorial Elmer Gantrys crane their necks to peer out the office window to see if the rubes are buying the slop they are dropping to the street.  The budget this time is larger than the last time.  If one is capable of establishing priorities, all real pain can be alleviated.  It is true that some illegal aliens may have to remain their present sex, but in times like these, sacrifices must be made.

Oregon Republican Party Chairman Kevin Mannix sent out a taped
message to 290,000 Republicans saying that the Legislature didn't really have to cut the budget if Measure 28 failed. As Multnomah County 
begins releasing inmates, as state police proceed with layoffs, as school 
districts begin slashing school days, don't sit by your phone waiting for
Mannix's next call. 

The budget for the new biennium is larger than the budget for the previous biennium.  The term "larger" means "more."  Would somebody please telephone the Oregonian and explain this to them? 

The Legislature must not waste much time refighting last year's budget
battles and the Measure 28 cuts. Lawmakers may be able to shuffle
money and play one state service against another -- Rep. Dan Doyle,
R-Salem, for example, has suggested taking money from the disabled to
save state police troopers -- but in the end they have no choice but to cut deeply into core services. Oregonians were warned what would be cut if they defeated Measure 28. Honest government requires that the cuts take effect, pretty much as promised.

We all know from recent experience that Oregon government agencies are what charitably may be called "less than efficient at times."  Water districts that can't carry a bucket.  Massive misfeasance concerning computer systems.  Waterford Crystal gratuities.  $90,000 per year lottery machine repairmen. 

Children under the supervision of child services are kidnapped, raped, murdered and buried under patios. Scams by the "street poor" abound.  Millions go to medical and welfare support to illegal aliens.  And, generations of women living on public support have pumped out generations of children without bothering to determine who the father was because it would interfere with their soap operas. 

Finally, no cuts have to go in as presently ordained.  Would somebody call the Oregonian and explain that the legislature is where the laws are made?  The budget, too.  Laws and budgets can be changed there, too.  A process called "voting" is used, though it is done in person, not by mail.  And, the governor is what is known as an "executive."  He has the power to do executive things with state agencies.  Really.  I'm not kidding.  Ask John Kitzhaber if you don't believe me.  One thing a governor can do is say "no."

John was very experienced at doing that.  He did it about 200 times while he was governor.  Maybe Ted could say "no" to some things, too. He could begin with the present cut schedule, which is nothing more than political punishment.  Using the actual poor and disadvantaged, and basic services like state police and their crime lab, as tools of revenge.

Even as recently as a month ago, as polls showed Measure 28 with only
about 35 percent of the vote, the conventional wisdom was that the
measure had no chance of passing. Everything was stacked against it.
The timing was awful: Oregon was still locked in recession, suffering from the nation's highest unemployment rate, and the ballots showed up in mailboxes side by side with Christmas bills. 

Under the direction of the governor and the mayor the Oregonian supported, the state became enemy territory for business, taxes grew like scum in a warm swamp, a light rail system was constructed that costs the taxpayers eight bucks per rider and billions were spent on urban renewal that is dedicated to turning downtown Portland into a sterile Soviet architectural graveyard. 

Just as Gray Davis, the Enron-supported liberal Democrat governor of California, ordained energy policies which guaranteed brownouts and economic disaster for his state, the compassionate politicians the Oregonian supported have driven Oregon to the financial brownout brink.  If you wish to help the disadvantaged, buy the Oregonian editors a ticket to North Korea so they can see that when you extend compassion far enough you end compassion forever.   The road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions.

Private industry is the evil liberals fear most.  It frees men from dependency on government.  It allows them to choose where they live, to eat what they wish, and, horror of horrors, to drive an SUV.   People who are not under the control of the editors of the Oregonian may have dangerous thoughts.  They may locate a place where they can smoke a cigarette.  They may harbor non-feminist views.  They may not wish to be eunuchs,  They are a danger to the coming utopia where all are named Smith and love Big Brother.

Meanwhile, nearly all of Oregon's "leaders" hardly lifted a finger in support of the measure. Former Gov. John Kitzhaber gave a couple of speeches in one day of campaigning. Gov. Ted Kulongoski largely kept his distance.  The low-budget campaign for Measure 28 came down to hundreds of volunteers working phone banks -- and the panicked voices of Oregonians in news stories about to lose their care, shelter or other services provided by the state.

Yes, of course.  We heard your savants join with those from the Salem Statesperson Journal on OPB (Seven Days).  There was no media barrage in favor of Measure 28.  Innocent as the babe in the crib, you all merely walked out the front door and were mobbed with disaster stories.  The television stations didn't exclusively show weeping mothers whose children were about to be ground into hamburger to feed the cannibalistic rich.  The Eugene Register People's Revolutionary Guard didn't write stories about weeping mothers whose children were about to be ground into hamburger to feed the cannibalistic rich.  Government bodies didn't send me mailings which explained that if I voted no, weeping mothers would watch their children be ground into hamburger to feed the cannibalistic rich.

Just out of curiosity, how stupid do you think we are?  I was creating mass communications for political campaigns up to the state presidential primary level in the Sixties.  (And won.)  Do you think we are unaware of the influence of unpaid journalistic support for a political cause?  Do you actually believe that we are ignorant of the actual meaning of our victory in the face of the massive barrage spewed forth by you and your friends all over the state?

Or is it that you really believe that you are politically unaligned, journalistically neutral, the voice of reason, fairness, logic, compassion and enlightenment?  The media barrage for a yes vote was invisible to you?  The one-sided presentation of dire predictions -- you didn't see that?  The complete lack of understanding you displayed for the people who pay more in taxes for their 800 square foot home than they do for food -- you actually are unaware that you damage the very people you say you want to help?

You people are amazing.  Absolutely amazing.

Even with all that, a substantial number of Oregonians were willing to have their state become the first in the nation to approve a general tax increase to help offset plunging revenues caused by the national recession. The vote is a positive counter-message to all those people who continually insist that the only way to balance the state budget is to slash services and force Oregon to keep racing to the bottom. 

"Caused by the national recession?"  I assume you mean the one that magically began the second George Bush II became president.  Just out of curiosity, why did you endorse him?  Bored with being Gored?  A brilliant tactical move that would allow you to print what you had been holding back for months -- evidence that the nation was sliding into a recession long before the last presidential primaries?

As to "slashing services and forcing Oregon to keep racing to the bottom," it was your governor who increased services and forced Oregon to keep racing to the top -- of the unemployment rankings.  I really hope that one day you people notice that the Soviet Union went broke, the people of North Korea are starving, you have to bring your own lightbulb to read at night in a Cuban hospital and China avoided economic collapse and mass starvation by inviting Wall Street stock brokers to open up offices in downtown Beijing.

At least study the presidency of John F. Kennedy, paying particular attention to his economic policies.  Focus on the tax cut he asked Congress for, and the reasons he gave for wanting it.  Then look at the American economy in the years after what was essentially Reaganomics was applied.

We badly wanted this election to show that change is possible, that
Oregonians want something other than the shortest school year in the
nation, the highest college tuition in the West or the smallest force of
state troopers in modern Oregon history. 

This election did show that change is possible.  Oregonians don't like your message anymore.  Every day, more of them are coming to realize that it is the kind of policies that you have been recommending that have given us the shortest school year in the nation, the highest college tuition in the West and the smallest force of state troopers in modern Oregon history.

Oregonians made a determined effort over the past month to save their
state, even without leadership. Imagine what might be possible with some.

They succeeded in saving their state --  from your leadership.  It was far and away the most positive, most hopeful thing they've done in years.

(LL)

© 2003 Oregon Magazine