Op Ed:
Make-or-Break Arrives
Early in The Arena:
Get It Done Or Pay Price

Participants poised For progress or heavy cost.

Ethics and social responsibility underpin a global policy, implemented wherever Fujitsu operates in the world.

(SALEM) - Oregon business leaders are publicly agreeing on a one-time kicker usage to fix the roof before the next downpour. The rainy day fund so established recaptures lost-millions now dumped to corporate bottom lines outside of Oregon. That will create rational and reasonable stability for sure-to-come necessity. Final-fate for the now-fully/discredited kicker-concept can be left to later voter-discretion --but that rainy day reality must be achieved NOW and without fail. This essential action can set the tone and tenor for what could be our most-successful Legislature in decades. That dissolves political-cult/confrontations with working-level cooperation of all/concerned on many other issues and essential demands. Voters elect representatives to do the will of the people. Trust is the true honor-conferred --never, ever, to be bartered off for personal gain or private profit. That is solidly understood by anyone who has ever run for office under any circumstance. For this session that will of the people - and the wisdom from which it is formed - is very clear and on-the-record, in nearly every issue and question involved: In education.

CHALKBOARD and STAND are presenting results of sessions involving thousands of Oregonians and national experts, over several years, now translated into sure-and-steady guidance for Legislators.

In healthcare. Newly-innovative comprehensive proposals are ready and documented by national leaders, including a former Governor and a current Senator - supplemented by still others - for sure and steady guidance for Legislators. In corporate-tax reform.

Dependable documentation from nationally-known authoritative OCPP analysis, combined with Oregon- generated self-study by State agencies, makes reality obvious: Something has to change when 80 percent of the corporate tax burden has been shifted to individual Oregonians; and the minimum tax of $10 is a ravishing time-relic from real Depression Days.

The facts are there, again, affering sure and steady guidance for Legislators. Even on its own operating rules mirrored in yet-unchanged Ethics Commission actions, there is their own Oregon Law Commission special-review/findings, now embodied in Senate Bill 10, a reform package raising the current fine of $1,000 to $5,000. Surely that 5X-multiplier should also be sure and steady guidance for these particular Legislators. (It may be only coincidental that the current Commission, derailed by funding futilities and acting on current violations through its malignly-modified "muscle", is about to impose a wrist-slap: Fines averaging $150-per violation on the unfortunate few entrapped in their own time-warp; with payment from campaign contributions, still legal, even though heavily corporate-tainted.) SO it's either succeed --

OR return to old animosities multiplying damages already done to State programs and Oregon's people ostensibly served by representative governance. IF this Legislature, this time, with all this strong guidance, does not NOW succeed RAPIDLY in solution for these issues, problems and essential realities, surely it will be labeled the most ruinous of all Oregon performances in the Salem Arena. This is probably the last chance to remedy and set things right before massive punishment descends from voters whose wit, wisdom and will have been made remarkably clear on every enveloping issue. Even Oregon's press-and-media agree that this session has offered the best guidance and strongest support for a return to a common sense consideration of inescapable realities. Will common sense and community-demand overcome continued reluctance to recognize those inescapable realities? They have been inherited from decades of irresponsibilities and downright neglect of essential needs. Yet not all are silent nor anywhere near satisfied. Some continue to plan and perform to put an end to anything progressive or positive, and retain that cutthroat approach that has robbed the State for too many decades already. Yet the same-old-game is being played by some-few who will never learn: A cooperative modern society must depart from the dollar-driven profit in the fixed-attitudes of corporate-controlled conglomerations and demand Corporate Social Responsibility-changes worldwide. Will Oregon now, finally, REJOIN THE 21ST CENTURY? That Arena-ticket covering the next several weeks may bring you one of the great political dramas of the beginning-Century. THEN you get to contribute to the pay-off, too...when you vote again.