OPB, Seven Days, the afternoon of Sunday, July 13, 2003 -- it was the weekend repeat of the show that originated the previous Friday.  Attending were David Steves of the Eugene People's Revolutionary Register Guard, Betsy Hammond and Harry Esteve, at least one of them from Sweden's favorite American newspaper, the Oregonian, Dana Haynes of the Salem Statesperson Journal and Stephanie Fowler of the Home for the Intellectually Confused, Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The subject was  funding schools.

Scanning the history of Oregon legislatures, airing comments from former governor, Vic Atiyeh, they sailed their liberal ship along the left coast, always bearing to port.  Here is the summation of their erudite observations -- we don't have enough money for our schools. 

Why the schools are short of money doesn't matter, even though they know the answer. PERS is part of it, bloated school bureaucracies are part of it, teaching time wasted on silly multiculturalist and other PC classes is part of it, phony evaluation programs like the legendary CIM/CAM boondoggle are part of it and some amazing teacher salary and benefit packages are part of it. (Portland teachers, for example, as part of their benefit package receive either $600 or $800 a month (I forget which) fully paid health insurance coverage.)  (Illus: Oregon Republican tax stool. It has one too many legs.)

Seven grand per pupil ($140,000 per 20-student classroom) funding that ranks Oregon well inside the top ten states in America, it seems, just isn't enough, and the problem with getting more, according to these press luminaries, is that Republican conservatives just don't want to face the truth.   It is impossible to teach a kid to read for only $140,000 per 20-student classroom. (This figure does not include physical facilities, by the way.  You pay for the school buildings with levies on your property.)

The fact is, they said, the unreal demand by conservatives -- that the growth of state spending in education and elsewhere must be restricted -- is going to starve out education.  The schools will founder unless we increase education funding.

Oregon's unemployment rate just went over 8%.  Our tax structure is slowly crushing business to death. We already have so many legs on the tax stool that it's getting hard to carry it to the public teat to milk the cow for more.  Add in the sales tax liberals are now eyeing hungrily, and the stool will look like a barrel.  There'll be no space at all between the legs. (Illus: Oregon Democrat tax stool. They want more legs.)

Here, let me explain this tax thing, again.. 

Business pays two kinds of tax.  The first is a tax on the business (income, property, regulatory agency fees, etc.)  The second is all the taxes levied on their employees.  If you work for Fred Meyer, and the legislature raises your income taxes (or your property tax goes up), Fred Meyer has to pay them.  Who else?  Your taxes come out of your salary.  How many salary decreases can you take at the moment?  If the legislature raises your taxes and Fred Meyer doesn't pay you more, that means your takehome pay is reduced.  Since people who can't both pay their taxes and support themselves on what is left are destined to financially go under, Freddie's on the hot seat.  It's replace good, experienced employees with cheaper, less experienced workers, or jack up salaries to cover the taxes.  This isn't nuclear physics, folks.

And, where does Fred Meyer get the money to pay all their taxes and all your taxes?  From the income generated by sales, of course.  If their expenses (your salary, which includes your taxes, is a business expense) go up, to keep from going under, they have to raise their prices, don't they?  "Well," you say, "why don't they stop paying dividends on their stock to all those fat cats?"

Okay.  That would be just like the bank stopping interest payments on your savings account.  Do you think the bank should be able to use your money for free?  No?  Then why do you think those who put their money in Fred Meyer should let Fred Meyer use their money for free?  Are you a communist?  If people stop investing their money in stocks and bonds, the entire national economy will collapse.  We'll have 80% unemployment instead of 8%.  They didn't have private businesses in the old Soviet Union.  The whole damn country went broke. North Korea doesn't believe in capitalism.  You can't buy stock in private companies there because there aren't any private companies there. The people of North Korea are starving to death.  Even silly socialist Canada has started privatizing state-owned industries to keep from going broke.

If you're one of those moronic anti-business types, go find another magazine to read.  This publication is written for people with working brains, which is why the Seven Days "journalists," Oregon's premier media stars, never read it.  Now, do you care if the company you work for stays in business?  Do you now understand that every time any kind of tax goes up, private business must come up with the money?  Do you now understand why business is so bad in Oregon that it has the highest unemployment rate in America?

The "journalists" who appeared on Seven Days don't understand it.  Their group opinion was that a compromise will have to be worked out in the legislature.  Now, what do you think the word compromise means to "journalists" like Stepanie Fowler, Dana Haynes, Harry Esteve, Betsy Hammond and David Steves?

You've figured it out already, haven't you?

Conservative Republicans want lower taxes.  Democrats and "moderate" Republicans want higher taxes. (A "moderate" Republican is a Democrat who wears a tie.) Obviously, a compromise between people who want higher taxes and people who want lower taxes would be no change in taxes.  No change is the middle ground between the two positions. But, the compromise these "journalists" like is higher taxes.  Just not as much higher as the Democrats want.

Recently, Oregon Public Broadcasting announced that because the legislature may not give them all the money they need to continue misinforming the citizenry at their present rate, they may have to cut some programming.  One of the programs mentioned was Seven Days.

If that happens, I will miss that program.  The "journalists" who appear at that table are so naive, so factually ignorant about how the world works, that they make writing these essays easier than trying to roll a ball downhill on a paved road.

(LL)

© 2003 Oregon Magazine