Op Ed: Rugged Oregon Realities
Wrecking Saxton Denial
Demanded by His Donors

Corporate Lawyer Can’t Avoid Overwhelming Evidence.

Photo courtesy: wcg.org

(SALEM) - Corporate lawyers don’t achieve lavishly-paid success by simple chance. Formal judgments sought facing that “fundamental force behind the bench” inevitably focus full attention on reality. That’s what must be “evidenced and documented” in detailed depth by court edict.

Judges demand that depth; legal-culture custom-controls it; public records must provide it; as Constitutionally-established by our Founders.

That’s the Third Power in our Democratic Pattern of Trinity. The “other two” are “Assembly” to write the laws shaped by elected representatives pledged ONLY to the commonwealth; and a commonwealth-guarding rationally-driven “Executive”; to administer and coordinate, avoiding confrontational “unfair and unequal” actions manipulated for private gains.

The Founders were profoundly wise and protective in demanding that “power confront power” when they provided that Pattern.

It is still the single sensible, sensitive and surely-overwhelming protection provided in our American Constitution; as the blockbuster statement by the American Bar Association, widely reported in the national media Sunday, surely emphasizes.

Any lawyer worth his price understands conscientious necessities here. Ethics aside, operational reality imposes very practical guiding-protocol: Actions-taken vs words-peddled.

ANY Oregon Governor faces public exposure to citizen examination. ANY conscientious Executive-to-be must accept the unavoidable candidacy-consequence, too.

Let’s examine corporate-lawyer par-excellence Ron Saxton as “campaign conquistador” for Oregon’s GOP-cult.

Is he informed on the desperate realities we know face us in funding Oregon’s future? Actions belie winsome words, peddled while PLEDGED-elsewhere.

Anomalies arise immediately, making sensitive citizens cringe with any cogitation: Sureties plainly present are potently controlling:

1. Saxton is PLEDGED to oppose ANY tax-rise; to the same perpetrators presenting further out-of-state money-mediated manipulation of Oregon’s Constitution.

Saxton spoke privately, at a recent private meeting with ongoing foes of corporate tax reform, at any level, offering more “campaign contributions”. Reporters were barred as deal-making protection; otherwise “all would be open and known.”

2. Saxton attacks and insults and threatens State employees and highly-skilled --but UN-competitively-paid-- administrators. (See recent press reports comparing private compensation.)

That’s Norquist-way provoking paralyzing-response by inducing worker alienation; then demanding “privatization” as ONLY answer, seducing the situation to irresponsibly, irrevocably weaken it.

THEN “governance under attack” can be “dragged into the bathtub and drowned” per previously-published, long-known plot.

(“Privatization” by definition includes “profit”, achieved somehow, for whomever is blessed with the contract.)

3. Saxton must be completely cognizant, as a practicing corporate lawyer, of corporate-tax consequences in Oregon.

But he defies inquiry re policy-decision on ANY reform. He denies the necessity widely recognized by all authorities; and refuses direct press inquiry publicly, even in open debate with incumbent Governor, again when confronted by media.

Yet “fully-documented evidentiary information” has been available ever since April from the prestigious authoritative source - Oregon Center for Public Policy: “The Great Corporate Tax Shift: Undercutting Oregon’s Economy and Quality of Life”. (Available at: info@ocpp.org)

What will Saxton DO to reform our corporate-tax system that now allows huge dispensation to corporate-share in income and property taxes, but continuing taxbreaks and costly concessions??

In that outmoded “system” corporations: 1. Now pay just 4.5 percent of Oregon’s income tax, while personal taxpayers pay 95.5 percent. That’s down from 18.5 percent in ‘73-75. Corporate-share will drop $24 million-more in ten years while “yours-and-mine” rises another $4.6 BILLION.

2. Now pay 40 percent of Oregon property taxes, down from 50 percent in 1978-79. Oregon homeowners pay 60 percent. If households still paid 50 percent instead of SIXTY, they would have saved nearly $500 million, in 2004 alone.

3. Now pay a “minimum corporate tax” of $10.00 set in 1931. That’s SEVENTY-FIVE years ago ! “Time for a change ?”

4. Now harvest multi-millions from “the Kicker” --most to out-of-Oregon corporations-- while individuals “get bribed with their own money” to pay little attention while being plundered.

The “Kicker” slashes corporate taxes in 2007 by 55 percent; that follows 36 percent corporate-refunded in 2005; Now estimated to cost $133.5 million instead of $101 million; as profits continue to rise as corporations report higher-than- expected profits in a stronger economy.

5. If “the Kicker” were eliminated, in 2007 corporations will still pay only 6.1 percent of income taxes in 2007-09, about one-third of what they paid a generation ago.

There’s much more in the OCPP Report: go “see with own eyes” for further detail too deep for any one Op Ed to report.

Corporate lawyers must summarize and deny any allegations that clients are “making out like bandits”; despite nationwide reports of widespread corruption with Enron as the malign mirror.

That’s what they get paid so handsomely to achieve.

For Saxton the candidate, here’s the same challenge faced in Court: “Tell it to this Judge; we are all listening and learning.”

Why NOT speak up publicly-and-loudly, with full evidentiary impact and the kind of detailed documentation demanded in Court ?