Op Ed: M-50 Election Bought
Your Vote Sold
At $24.00 per Ballot

Oregonians misinformed, misled by malign BIG-T dollars.

Salem-News.com

(BEND, Ore.) - Some editors in Oregon profess to believe that the Big-T portentous piles of pelf, now already arrived in tv-station, radio AND printed-page pockets, made no REALLY appreciable difference in the damaged and damaging outcome for Measure 50.

Yet our most sacred Oregonian democratic process --”the initiative” primarily set up precisely to determine true and-reliable voter values on controversial issues, has never been more challenged and now badly damaged than by this debacle.

This historic event is, very obviously, “paid-for in full” from the deadly/poison-cursed and death-delivering dollars provided by the world’s only publicly-allowed “poisoner for profit”.

Every hand moving that product into easy-reach by uninformed or otherwise vulnerable new-users --or those now cruelly addicted-for-life, must share in the consequences, now long overdue, and plainly providing much of the rapidly-rising healthcare costs we now must face.

Ironically it is also now well-known that Legislative maneuvers, making it absolutely impossible to approach this badly-needed voter-declaration EXCEPT through the initiative process, were irrevocably and repeatedly shaped and malignly manipulated by legislator response to ongoing BIG-T “corporate campaign contributions”.

That pay-off for “profits”-so-shared was long ago obvious to nearly every Legislative observer and so reported in the state press.

Twelve million additional BIG-T dollars, at least, went winging into this most offensive, distorted, misrepresenting and lying campaign ever experienced in Oregon’s checkered initiative-history.

That “market” priced out each and every Oregon vote-cast at $24.00 each, for the distorted/perverted outcome.

OR one can figure BIG-T’s open, public, known-in-advance “price per resident” at about $3.33.

Thus Oregon lost its chance for national leadership on this most painful and prominent issue, as noted in national press editorial statements, perhaps even more damaging than that notorious DOONESBURY comment of some years ago. (See New York TIMES Editorial “Big Tobacco Defeats Sick Kids”; 11/8; www.nytimes.com.)

To state that all those bucks did NOT “bucket-buy the distorted/perverted result” is as editorially-pretentious, perverted and off-putting for the Oregon voter outcome here as the entire pile of BIG-T ads themselves.

But some professional communicators in Oregon still find it impossible to accept reality, even when demonstrated in their own bailiwick. The reason for such denial is also obvious.

The Bend BULLETIN, in a Thursday-published Edit (11/9), states unequivocally: “Measure 50 voters were not bought”.

That flat-out denial of realities-recognized widely all across the State of Oregon has drawn incredulity from many.

It flies directly in the face of statements by the Governor and the leaders of the intense campaign to provide our voters with full, authoritative and reliable information.

(Reminds me of that famous-film quote from one of the Marx brothers: “WHO you gonna believe - me or your own eyes?”

“The problem” here is obvious to all, too, and is entirely pertinent to any such obviously questionable conclusion.

Daily newspapers still MUST derive a large part of their troubled incomes from large volumes of advertising, from precisely those purveyors of groceries, drugs and sundries, and other “modern needs”, where those deadly death-sticks in deeply-persuasive packaging, and provided by the most costly of marketing ploys, are easily available.

Not only did those BIG-T dollars buy radio and tv-time, alone.

That heavy-airtime ad-purchase fact paid off promptly in the lackadaisical story-coverage provided by most print-side dailies, some few detailing the grossly misleading aspects of all those ads.

Never forget that the heavy providers of cigs by-the-pack, especially for youth, are precisely those large-scale merchants of food and family fixings whose heavy advertising also drives the print-side proportionately.

A huge Federal suit some years ago heavily hampers the BIG-T long-tested and efficient marketing maneuvers through printed-page and other advertising --now resulting in their highly evident and desperate ventures into mass-propaganda “achievement” to protect heavy loss-of-profit in this nation.

From Day One of this go-round, the heavy impact of those BIG-T dollars was definitely feared and foreseen, not only those involved in the ad campaign on TV and radio, either.

That fact-of-life was well recognized early on --by Measure 50 supporters for sure, who provided rapid-source reliable information precisely for the print-side, accordingly.

Also on-the-record/publicly, not only by the ethically minded tv-station managements challenging the original-ad responsible-signers, forcing rapid and radical changes, but also by some of these same editors now decrying these record-setting expenditures to defy, deny and defeat the wit, wisdom and will of most Oregonians, in their own stories about the new expenditures sure to occur this time.

Easy test for this true-record: What if BIG-T dollars had never rapidly rushed-in to distort, discredit, deny, defy and delay any rational/reasonable approach to Measure 50. and its open, honest attributes?

Simple answer to that "NOT BOUGHT"-bit is to take away Big-T dollars-paid ads from Oregon media channels, and then see what properly informed voters would have done.

In fairness, it was media managers who protested the distorted, perverted PR-built statements in the Big-T ads, and first forced changes, even before any channel exposure.

It was The OREGONIAN who led the realistic reporting which made facts highly evident, a major offset to Big-T’s clearly evident lies building deceit where possible.

SO "BOUGHT" is surely the operative term, and Governor K. et al is "right on" to so describe the consequences of such dollar-manipulated voter/response; with BIG-T spending more than four times what supporters could apply.

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Wit, wisdom and will of our informed and impacted voters will now respond for the rapidly-coming February legislative meeting, thus allowing full-test of what-and-whom "for sale" in Oregon.

That’s when responsible “legislators” must confront what they have now “achieved” on this momentous issue -- so obviously turning on false “right to political speech” granted, very dubiously, to what is only a form of business management --NOT THE HUMAN BEINGS “for whom our Founders intended that very human right.”

Will there be “further struggle to do the right thing” for all those multiple-thousands of Oregon children deprived of proper healthcare, at no fault of their own?

You better believe there will be - continuing until we finally “get it right, and get to do the right thing” by those suffering kids, some of whom are actually dying slow deaths due to decent-care denial.