Issues
What Sacrifices are They Willing to Make?
– Jeff Wright, The Register-Guard
In an unprecedented letter, all 16 Lane County public school district superintendents on Thursday asked Lane County legislators to reject the “woefully inadequate” K-12 school funding budget proposed for the state’s 2015-17 biennium.
The letter was released on the same day that the Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee approved a $7.3 billion spending plan in a party-line vote. The two-year budget proposal would be a 9 percent increase in state aid for schools.
The Lane County superintendents’ letter contends that schools in Oregon “need at least $7.5 billion to add full-day kindergarten and remain stable with current programs and class sizes…
We Respond & Your Comments
OK, Mr. & Mrs. Superintendents, we hear your desperate cry for a 9% increase on top of the $1 billion increase you got last year.
And to the many teachers who echo your deep concern we respond “We feel your pain.”
Now we have just one question for these dedicated educators who would have us sacrifice more of our earnings “for the children”: How much of your PERS benefits are you willing to sacrifice “for the children”?
We eagerly await your response.
Oregon needs to limit campaign contributions
By Floyd Prozanski and Lee Beyer
For The Register-Guard
The costs of political campaigns are skyrocketing, blocking out the voices of everyday Oregonians. That is why we believe the Legislature needs to pass campaign finance reform…
The lack of contribution limits gives far more power and influence to those who can write massive campaign checks— businesses and wealthy individuals who don’t necessarily represent the needs of Oregon’s working families…
That is why Gov. Kate Brown, when she was secretary of state, supported the introduction of Senate Joint Resolution 5 in this legislative session. SJR 5 is a constitutional amendment that would authorize citizens and the Legislature to establish campaign contribution limits for Oregon…The absence of contribution limits has been a significant problem in Oregon…
Passing SJR 5 is one of the best ways to ensure that our citizen-based Legislature remains responsive to all people, regardless of income or background…
We Respond & Your Comments
We’re touched by this Oregon Senate tag team’s concern for “working families” and their commitment to being “responsive to all people.” We know they’re just out to protect “the little guy.” Right?
But then our cynical natures make us ask “What do these guys have in common?”
Together with five other Democrat legislators who signed on to this touching plea they’re all…incumbents. What do incumbents want most? To get reelected.
Do you think they know that the best way to get reelected is to be…an incumbent?
Think they know that over the last 50 years an average of 80% of Federal Senate and House incumbents (and often 90%) have been reelected?
They do know that “campaign finance reform” just makes it harder for challengers to raise as much money as incumbents because incumbency brings with it name recognition and power.
That’s why campaign finance reform laws are often called “incumbency protection laws.” But we know Floyd and Lee just want to give “the little guy” a “voice.” Right.
Oregon lawmakers consider state-run retirement plan to boost residents’ savings
– Jonathan J. Cooper, Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. — Democratic lawmakers are promoting legislation that would automatically enroll thousands of Oregon workers in retirement savings accounts, a move that proponents said Monday would help ensure nobody is forced to work until they die or to spend their retirement years in poverty.
House and Senate bills would create a state-run retirement plan. Workers who don’t have access to a retirement account from their employer would automatically be enrolled, unless they opt out, and a percentage of their earnings would be withheld from each paycheck…
“I’m proud to sponsor these bills with my colleagues because they’ll give Oregonians the means and the opportunity to take control of their retirement and the chance to retire comfortably and with dignity,” said Rep. Tobias Read, D-Beaverton…
We Respond & Your Comments
You gotta love this…the brainiacs who blew $200 million of your bucks on the Columbia River Crossing (and didn’t even build the much needed bridge) and $300 million on Cover Oregon (and never covered a single person) now want to manage…your retirement nest egg!
Here’s how we see this working out:
- Oregon legislators decide to take10% of your salary to seed “Oregon Retires Happy”;
- They tell us, “You can’t retire on this 10%”;
- Then they say, “Greedy employers have to kick in another 10% to make this fair”;
- Despite promising not to, they loot Oregon Retires Happy to pay for pre-kindergarten “for the children”;
- In 5 years they tell us there’s an unfunded Oregon Retires Happy liability of $3 billion;
- To cover the unfunded liability they raise income taxes “on the rich” by 5 percent. But it’s only “temporary”;
- You retire. Oregon Retires Happy can only pay you half what they promised.
- You die unhappy 20 years later and the “temporary tax” has been raised to 10%.
So go ahead – trust them with your retirement account. What could possibly go wrong?
Study: 60 percent of 2014 job growth caused by expiration of unemployment benefits
– Jason Russell, The Washington Examiner
Sixty percent of job creation in 2014 was caused by the expiration of unemployment benefits, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research…
In late 2013, a standoff between Republicans and Democrats led to the abrupt expiration of long-term unemployment benefits. Democrats warned that the expiration would have disastrous ramifications, but Republicans had long argued that allowing Americans to collect unemployment benefits for an indefinite period of time provided a disincentive for them to work.
The new working paper found that the expiration of benefits was responsible for the creation of over 1.8 million jobs. Nearly 1 million of those jobs were created by workers who would have otherwise stayed out of the labor force if unemployment benefits had been extended…
“The negative effects of unemployment benefit extensions on employment far outweigh the potential stimulative effects often ascribed to this policy,” the study said…
We Respond & Your Comments
Here, again, is an iron rule of economics: “If you want more of something, subsidize it.”
Driven by false compassion, Liberals subsidized unemployment by sending checks to the unemployed. What did they get? More unemployment. When payments for not working stopped, people found jobs.
We would bet the farm that you could show these facts to 100 Liberals and 98 of them would deny them. That’s because Liberals are driven not by facts, but by what sounds and feels good. And it feels good to take money from you and us and give it to someone who isn’t working.
That’s because of another Liberal guideline: “There just ain’t no end to the good you can do with other people’s money.” Even if you’re really doing harm.
Gee, Mom & Dad – Looked what I learned at UO this year for your $24,405!
How five professors teamed-up to create a course exploring the science and culture of bread.
BY BONNIE HENDERSON, BA ’79, MA ’85, Oregon Quarterly
Simple carb. Staff of life. Sacrament, mitzvah, the very body of Christ. Prisoner’s rations. The highest expression of the baker’s art. Irritant, allergen, toxin…No surprise, then, that when five University of Oregon professors…met last year to kick around ideas for an interdisciplinary life science–humanities honors college colloquium organized around one foodstuff or another, bread quickly emerged as the obvious focus…
A Hallmark of Civilization
Jennifer Burns Bright, Literature Scholar and Food Writer…
You’ve heard it said that bread is the staff of life? As a humanist, I seek to investigate that in different ways…
Does it mean that, because we bake bread, we are civilized?…
We Respond & Your Comments
So UO pulled together five profs at a UO average $104,900 each per year to teach kids, according to the eight page syllabus for “Bread 101”, such essentials as “Describe the terroir of wheat/bread” and “Compare and contrast the biodiversity of yeast within a bakery…”
In case you’re wondering why tuition’s skyrocketing and grads can’t get jobs, maybe it’s because kids take doughy courses like this one taught by half a million bucks’ worth of profs.
As part of UO’s quest for academic excellence, we look forward to these advanced courses:
- Cauliflower, 1066 & the Norman Invasion – A Postmodern Analysis
- Reconsidered – the Role of Belgian Waffles in the French Revolution
- Kumquats, Charlemagne & Gender Studies – A Holistic Approach
It’s all gonna look great on these kids’ resumes. Right?
Free Community College? Here’s How That Might Work In Oregon
Many in Oregon likely sat up and listened recently when President Barack Obama made this announcement in the State of the Union:
“I’m sending this Congress a bold, new plan to lower the cost of community college to zero!”…
Oregon can’t wait for Obama to get something through Congress, said Mark Hass, chairman of Oregon’s senate education committee…
We Respond & Your Comments
As we’ve said before, nothing is “free.” Somebody pays for everything. If it’s a government program we taxpayers pay every cent of it. We’ll now add that you can’t change the “cost” of anything unless you’re the provider of it. A thing costs a seller of it what it costs. Only the price changes.
Here’s another iron rule of economics: If you want more of something, subsidize it. What Sen. Hall wants to subsidize is tuition.
We saw this movie with four year college tuition. Federal and state governments subsidized it through scholarships, grants and loans. What happened? Colleges, knowing they could get tuition bucks from government entities, hiked tuition prices to the moon.
We guess Sen. Hass (D-Beaverton) wants to see the same movie again, this time starring community colleges. We guarantee that the ending will be the same. And very expensive.
Statement by House Speaker Tina Kotek on Quarterly Economic and Revenue Forecast
“…The budget process underway may be impacted by a personal kicker. The investments in our schools and mental health programs which came out of the 2013 special session are the lead factor in the kicker prediction…”
http://www.mycentraloregon.com/2015/02/19/speaker-kotek-says-kicker-could-impact-budget/
We Respond & Your Comments
Herewith some questions for Ms. Kotek:
- Concerning the “impact” on your “budget process:” Did you ever worry about the “impact” your ever-increasing taxes and fees have on Oregon families’ budget processes?
- Regarding your use of the term “investments”: Would you please explain the difference between “investments” and “spending”?
- We notice that whenever you want to spend (excuse us, we meant “invest”) more of the money we worked for it’s almost always for schools or something else for “the children.” Yet Oregon is crawling with poor kids. What did you do with all the money that was supposedly for them?
And herewith our guess at Ms. Kotek’s answers:
- Why on Earth would I do that?
- Huh? Well, It’s …uh…
- Ever heard of PERS, knucklehead?
Good News for the New Year – Issue 84
… The latest study from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that in the previous 15 years temperatures had risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit. The average of all models (was an) expected 0.8 degrees. So we’re seeing about 90% less temperature rise than expected…
– Bjorn Lundborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in the Feb. 2, 2015 Wall
Street Journal
Commission: Replace statues of Lee, McLoughlin in Capitol hall
– Raymond Rendleman, portlandtribune.com
A committee appointed by Gov. John Kitzhaber unanimously agreed last week to recommend that the statues of both Dr. John McLoughlin and Rev. Jason Lee no longer represent Oregon in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
McLoughlin, the chief trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company generally acknowledged as the “father” of Oregon, was not even being considered for removal a few years ago, when former governor and U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield died in 2011, and a movement grew to honor Hatfield by replacing Lee…
We Respond & Your Comments
We’re not taking sides here. But it did cause us to ask ourselves “Why are some elected officials honored and others aren’t? Why is Sen. Hatfield’s legacy so much greater than Sen. Packwood’s?”
Let’s look at Packwood and other elected officials for an answer.
Packwood’s legacy is that of a man who assumed every good looking woman would be eternally grateful if only he’d grab her and plant a sloppy French kiss.
Then there’s Oregon Governor and Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt, who could’ve starred in a sequel to the hit movie “Adventures in Babysitting.”
How about another Portland Mayor, Sam Adams, who lied about a reported sexual relationship with a teenage boy? Then there’s Gov. Kitzhaber, who gave a new meaning to “First Lady.”
The common thread? It’s that these four all succumbed to “The Arrogance of Power,”
which transcends party and office. It’s often about sex and it tends to infect politicians who are entrenched in their positions.
When we next fill out our ballots, let’s ask ourselves “Will the Arrogance of Power infect this guy or gal?” “Will he/she be another Hatfield or another Packwood/Goldschmidt/Adams/ Kitzhaber?” And might this candidate’s statue find a home in the National Statuary Hall?
Report: Why Wyden’s O&C Bill Doesn’t “Double” Timber Harvests
Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities
Sen. Ron Wyden recently announced the reintroduction of his O&C (Oregon & California) federal forest legislation, pledging once again to “double” timber harvests as a way to create desperately-needed jobs in rural Oregon. However, a recent report commissioned by Oregon’s affected counties indicates that the Wyden plan would actually reduce harvest levels…The only support for Wyden’s bill came from the Portland and Washington D.C. environmental groups that helped write the legislation.
Oregon’s key O&C stakeholders do not support Wyden’s bill…(because) the Wyden plan does not increase timber harvests, would not provide certainty against excessive litigation, and would not generate revenues for counties. In fact, Wyden’s bill doesn’t “double” timber harvests at all…
The report’s key finding was that Wyden’s plan would have resulted in long-term sustained harvests of only 85 to 171 million board feet (mmbf) per year. This is a reduction, not the “doubling” of timber harvests that Wyden promised…
The Wyden plan…will not generate the revenues O&C counties need to provide services and restore public safety agencies…
We Respond & Your Comments
“If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Period.” – Pres. Barack Obama
“John McCain met with Islamic State Terrorists.” – Sen. Rand Paul
“A referendum was held in Crimea in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms.” – Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin
We could go on – and on. Our point is that politicians of all parties and nationalities tend to (and we say this diplomatically) “shade the truth.”
In fact, they tend to twist it into a pretzel, grind it up, spit on it and try to sell it to you as a fresh pretzel.
This is not to excuse Sen. Wyden’s attempt to sell you a cut in timber harvesting as a doubling of it. It’s to remind readers that almost any claim made by any politician cries out for scrutiny. Maybe especially here in Oregon.