Op-Ed: Long-Denied Dollars
Threaten Life-Chances
For Oregon’s Learners

Best State Investment Shut Down For Political Purposes.

Photo courtesy: bctf.ca

(SALEM) - Recognized universally as an absolute foundation needed for ANY equal-chance-for-all, “Educational Opportunity” is known as “the best possible investment any nation can make” for both current developments and future potentials.

Yet in Oregon, for twenty years, that “first among many” responsibilities --clearly defined and fully recognized in our Constitution-- has been long-neglected, deeply-denied, and openly shuttle-cocked for political gaming.

Oregonian parents and school boards are suing the State for failure to provide Constitutionally-guaranteed common education for all students. The suit claims cumulative deficits of $1.8 billion.

That’s with-a-B, as in BILLION.

Court-action is closely watched across the nation.

In Oregon’s political struggle for next-Governor, the overwhelming issue is educational funding: and it is tightly-tied to corporate tax reform.

Without that, there can be no further pretense of providing support for any part of the State’s upcoming --and most crucial-- budget for any biennium we have ever had to face in past years.

That struggle now demands full attention from all Oregonians: Oregon schools are under increasingly sharp surveillance from the federal LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND program, and the threat of losing very large federal-support funds is all too real.

Business and corporate leaders (and some corporate lawyers, too) declare they understand the inevitable impact on all entrepreneurial opportunity, when our educational foundation is essentially stymied in Oregon’s 21st Century.

Nineteenth-Century neo-con political-cult philosophy versus the widely expressed “Will of the People” is long ago out-moded, out-classed and out-lived --in nearly every other state.

Yet, we face not only another Legislature in what is now commonly termed “the Salem Arena” due to confrontation, controlled lack of action and denials of responsibilities over past decades; but also continuing contentious confrontation with a corporate-lawyer candidate for Governor --PLEDGED to oppose an essential rise in tax levels! That's you, Ron Saxton.

Distortion of intent-and-purpose for the Oath of Office is especially fearsome given facts of distortion and perversion for Oregon’s corporate tax payments.

That perverted tax protocol threatens the very foundation of Oregon’s ongoing prosperity: OUR current crop of K-12 learners, college-goers, and the growing army of retraining workers, forced by corporate job-export.

“...human capital has a return on investment greater than almost any other investment Oregonians can make with their hard-earned capital,” states John van Schlegell, managing principal of Endeavour Capital and a member of the Oregon Board of Higher Education. (OREGONIAN 6/13/06)

Historically, Oregonians built prosperity and progress, over decades, from the high preparation founded on success in our K-12 system, then extended in higher education.

Unless radically reformed, the corporate tax-patterns and lavishly-provided offsetting provisions make inevitable, even lower levels of any funding possible for any purposes in Oregon. Where will that lead?

That’s deeply ironic in the first years of the 21st Century in Oregon, noted for new-technology leadership and production of peculiarly precise, extremely potent chip-components making the new-Century progress possible.

Rationally, one must accept that painful reality since it reflects what we must recognize for any action to save ourselves ---and thus savor the sweets of the arriving Century.

Let’s let friend Schlegel, quoted above, continue with facts-presented in his OREGONIAN Op Ed:

+ Income tax revenue: Bachelor-degreed Oregonians earn $1 million more in a lifetime career than those ending with only a high school diploma.

+ 1,000 more O’s with degrees means $60 million more in state and local taxes during that working career.

+ Cost-benefit analysis shows the vast majority of Oregon teachers and nurses were educated in Oregon’s universities.

+ Oregon universities attract nearly one dollar of Federal funds for every Oregon/taxpayer dollar allotted to them. That adds up to $4.76 in leverage for every Oregon dollar-invested in higher education, ranking Oregon 46th, vs Washington at 21st and California at 24th.

+ SO WHY does Oregon provide only 17 percent of the Higher Education budget -- down from 27 percent only a decade ago?

You may find that final question hard to comprehend, in the face of other points-provided by this dedicated “private equity” firm cofounder with profound personal experience, versus the real problems of higher education funding in Oregon.

I did; and when we examine the precisely same-pattern and even-more-profoundly-damaging current difficulties in Oregon’s ongoing K-12 system, built as the only firm foundation for higher education, SO WILL YOU.

Stay tuned for that pattern-probe, next in this series.

Meanwhile, never forget that simple situation so easily demonstrated by your own hand... Place that hand under ANYthing... then suddenly snatch the supporting-hand away... AND see what happens to whatever was solidly supported.

Works every time, in practical economics as well as in the physical world: Remove its essential support and ANYthing will COLLAPSE !!!

Even the entire economy of any State, especially one seeking import of heavy-investment business and industry, whose incoming brain workers will be seeking the very best available education for their own children.