Op Ed: Single Issue Shapes Campaign, Oregon’s Future

(SALEM) - There’s always a prime-trigger for any explosive event -- not always widely understood at the blast- moment itself.

Massive blasts are more damaging if ignored while any chance for prevention remains -- as events have proven nationally.

In Oregon, despite campaign-attack and intense obfuscation by one candidate, the main chance for any real change remains as it was from the first day of this campaign -- implicit in the obvious background of the GOP-cult candidate: Rapid remediation of the massive tax-burden shift from corporate payment to ordinary Oregonians.

The issue is, very simply: “Right or Wrong”: Should profitable businesses operating in Oregon share appropriately in fair operational costs for education, public safety, health care and other unavoidable demands of any cooperative society?

The reigning trend in corporate management tells you the answer: It is Corporate Social Responsibilities -- so intensely driving that leading university management schools worldwide are setting up whole sections for its rapid application.

Why are a few Oregon powers-that-be -- heavily/funded via corporate and “outside” monies-- dragging their feet, delaying public actions to move ahead - returning to 19th Century confrontation with all-workers ?

That’s “the real rub” inflaming the sensitivities for fundamental understandings among the very large majority of Oregonians: They know right-from-wrong instinctively ---demonstrated time-and-time again-- and they are learning unavoidable and unmistakable reality in this campaign.

Corporate tax-burden/shift in Oregon IS a damaging reality: STARVING EDUCATION Op Ed - June 14th
Dollars-deposited from respected, protected, relied-upon corporate sources nationwide are long-gone, long-time, in Oregon.

Those rate have been slashed regardless of consequences. Corporate tax payments since late-‘70s: DOWN 71 Percent. $1.8 BILLION, UN-collected in this budget-cycle. Total since ‘73/’75 is $10.9 BILLION.

(Documented by OCPP (5/27/05; see also later studies deepening the irrefutable data.)
That’s damage-done by constantly-escalated “tax breaks”. By 2009-11 it will continue to RISE, reaching $15.2 BILLION.

Unless some courageous leader tells the truth to the people; AND we “tell the truth” to Governor AND Legislature: ”WE STILL RUN OREGON !” +++++++

That’s what is really shaping this attack-damaged campaign these telling days (no pun !):
Deep into the dirtiest. most malign-ad/barrage ever paid-for in Oregon by a few “richies” desperately protecting their embattled “good thing” underway for decades; as shown in the last next-biennium budgeting confrontations.

Long-silent candidate Saxton suddenly surfaced with silly- situation ads such as “Tick-Tock Time”; OR “Beautiful Morning In America” (remember Reagan ?); with carefully-selected and seriously-groomed school-learners supported by implied education-funding from --guess whom ?? But the public record in Portland shows OUT-going, rather than IN-COMING, funding on the Saxton pages, for poor-choices come-home to-roost.

“More-effective” funding will never come from simple-slashing ten-percent-MORE off every State program still surviving --while labeling it “efficiencies.”

Saxton refuses sensible, solid, rational considerations. He is PLEDGED both personally AND professionally to defy and deny via personal commitment to ATR and the already-collapsing GOP-cult still pirating the “old reliable” Party.

For any Constitutional scholar such PLEDGE denies and defies responsibilities IMPOSED by the Governor’s Oath of Office.

For one honestly seeking “real change”, first- essential action demanded now is surely correction of inequities forced upon us all by that ongoing escape-from-reality: Corporate avoidance of their tax-burden share.

That failure-evasion impacts “across the board” on every single State program, project, goal and objective; inescapably tied to what-we-DO about current problems now; and unavoidably shaping our entire Oregon future.

The main monument to these duplicities is NOT the Kicker. That is only a canny diversion, drawing unthinking attention by small-means while manipulating massive malarkey elsewhere: It’s there for malign purposes, concealing massive monetary-losses to the State, set up by minor derelictions for some while procuring major “deductions” for others.

“Procuring” is precisely the right word --inescapable when one examines the stll-growing open-addiction to “transactional lobbying”.
Everyone knows what a transaction entails; just as everyone know where and why lavish --or even minor-- corporate “campaign contributions” are made.
OR, it is said, withheld “unless”-- on some occasions.

Money is political muscle; always it will be so used where its penetrating power is unopposed and its many victims are left unprotected -- except by ineffective ethical means, impotent by staff-and-budget-thinned attack and left NON-threatening.

The only safe solution --as for other loathsome diseases-- is complete withdrawal and absolute abstention.
The only safe situation is contact completely uncomfortable OR impossible ; thus no longer a potent, seductive substitute for responsible payment procedures ; better able to provide public protection and fair funding.

That demands replacement of lavish lobbying with easily-observed, fully transparent corporate burden-sharing; simplified tax-structure and solidified payment directly into State coffers rather than return to corporate pockets; or deprivation of due payment by diffused and devious loops, turns and circuitous routes, relatively numerous in Oregon; and thus supporting the nation’s lowest rates AND the widely-used “minimum-tax”: $10.00.

Ironically that has not changed since the real Depression. It may be right in time for the “next one”, sure to come on while we still debate building a “rainy-day fund”; and winning us fame via comic-strip castigation while guaranteeing national notoriety with any entrepreneur poised to proceed here with thinking-worker jobs, knowing that those workers love their kids and will seek the best education-possible as an undeniable deciding-factor.

SO “there you have it”:
Simple, sensible, rational and reasonable choice for the first-job our Legislative servants must select to do rapidly; IF and WHEN we avoid new-confrontation in the Salem Arena.

Whose the best leader-resource for that?
Surely NOT the candidate who confronted the entire State working force with whole-group-smearing insult, irresponsible insinuation and arrogant personal/professional allegations vs their elected leaders?
“Foot-in-mouth disease” is sometimes fatal, I am told; but this is more like planned-impact for open-war -- on the very personnel who must perform and produce under his “leadership.”

“Make your bet” (read: VOTE !) and may this Op Ed help you to shape up the odds for yourselves and oncoming new-Oregonians.