Issues
The Keystone debate
Senate GOP needs Demo votes to override veto
– Eugene Register Guard Editorial
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has promised an open debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, one that will allow amendments by Republican and Democratic lawmakers…
While a Keystone bill already has passed the House and Republicans appear to have the votes needed for Senate passage, the case against the pipeline remains compelling. The project would generate only a small number of permanent jobs and would do little to promote U.S. energy independence. It poses serious risks to the environment, including potential leaks that could foul groundwater and wilderness areas…
We Respond & Your Comments
Rarely do we dive into a national issue. We do here because it’s important for readers to get both sides of an issue that might affect them.
The Register Guard (RG) claims that Keystone would create few permanent jobs. The Dept. of State (DOS) “Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” claims we’d get 42,100 construction jobs but just 50 permanent jobs. forbes.com projects 42,000 jobs with a majority being permanent.
The RG fails to mention that Keystone construction would add $3.4 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and that year one of operation would generate $55.6 million in property taxes (DOS estimates).
Would Keystone impact U.S. energy independence? Definitely. washingtonpost.com reports that Texas’ Valero refinery alone will buy about 150,000 barrels per day, replacing a significant portion of the oil we buy from Venezuela, an unstable, unfriendly country.
“Serious risks to the environment…”? Concerns center on climate change and spills/leaks. washingtonpost.com reports: “Keystone Pipeline would have little impact on climate change, State Dept. says.” Spills? DOS reveals that Keystone has incorporated 96 “Special Conditions” and “mitigation measures” to prevent and mitigate spills/leaks and raises no alarm concerning them.
Now you have both sides of the issue.
Capitol Tax List: Over 50 taxes proposed!
By Taxpayer Association of Oregon, reprinted in The Oregon Catalyst
Hb 2080 – Provides that for first property tax year after sale or transfer of property, assessed value and maximum assessed value equal real market value of property.
Hb 2086 – Imposes fee on fossil fuel or fossil fuel-generated electricity to be paid by vendors.
Hb 2151 – Limits, for purposes of personal income taxation, availability of itemized deductions.
HJR 8 – Proposes amendment to Oregon Constitution to repeal individual income tax surplus refund “kicker” provision.
HJR 14 – Proposes amendment to Oregon Constitution directing Legislative Assembly to adopt sales tax at rate of five percent on sales of tangible personal property and services and use tax at rate of five percent on purchase price of tangible personal property….
Our Response & Your Comments
These are a mere one tenth of the bills proposing new or increased taxes that will be considered during the current legislative session. Taxes on gas, homes, water, more.
As the old saying goes,”Elections have consequences.” And Oregon’s continued leftward drift toward liberal (sorry, we meant “Progressive”) nirvana has resulted in these 50 new attempts to grab money from our pockets.
Unless you want 50 more new taxes in 2017, remember these 50 the next time you vote. Also remember…
“For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” – Winston Churchill
“A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”– G. Gordon Liddy
Good News for the New Year! – Issue 82
Earth’s sea ice expands to record levels as 2014 comes to a close.
Arctic ice returns to 1984 levels: Area of Arctic sea ice is nearly identical to 30 years ago.
Satellite Temperatures Reveal the ‘Global Warming Pause’ Lengthens to 18 years 2 months.
Labor commissioner sets priorities for new term
– Peter Wong, Portland Tribune
More money for school-work programs, higher minimum wage, paid sick leave, pay equity.
As economic issues remain on center stage for the Oregon Legislature, newly re-elected Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian says he’ll take an active role in advancing many of them during its 2015 session…
The issues range from more state grants to re-establish career and technical education in public schools to a higher state minimum wage and pay equity…
“Families still are having a hard time making ends meet, especially those who are our lowest wage workers,” Avakian said in an interview Monday…
Among the steps Avakian wants taken are flexible work schedules, time off for parents to attend their children’s events, and a requirement for paid sick leave…
We Respond & Your Comments
OK, we’ll ask our usual question: Who pays for Avakian’s good intentions? Maybe Avakian’s families who “are having a hard time making ends meet”? Maybe Oregon taxpayers whose wages can’t rise fast enough to keep up with his compulsion to spend their money ?
Come on, Brad, you know that every one of your grandiose ideas has to be paid for by some Oregonian. And can you explain why grabbing money out of one Oregonian’s pocket to put it in another Oregonian’s pocket makes sense?
We bet Brad’s answer to the above questions would be “There just ain’t no end to the good you can do with somebody else’s money.”
During a discussion on Oregon taxes a friend asked rhetorically “How much more can they take from us?” We reckon Mr. Avakian would have answered “How much more have you got?”
Buzzed birds slur their songs, researchers find
– Amina Khan, printed in Eugene Register Guard, L.A. Times
You know how that guy at the karaoke bar singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” sounds a little off after he’s had a few drinks? The same goes for buzzed birds, according to a team led by researchers from Oregon Health & Science University.
For a study published in PLOS ONE [Public Library of Science One] , scientists found that when they got some unsuspecting zebra finches drunk, the birds slurred their songs. The findings could help scientists study the neural processes underlying birdsong – and shed light on human speech.
While many scientists want to understand alcohol’s effects on such a complex system as speech, it’s difficult to perform the necessary studies on humans, which is why many researchers turn to birds…
For this paper, researchers gave white grape juice to one group of birds, and gave a mixture of the juice and ethanol to another group. They found a number of effects on different aspects of birdsong – particularly on amplitude and entropy…
We Respond & Your Comments
This “study” would usually have been fodder for a “Golden Fleece Award.” But it’s so utterly ridiculous that we decided to give it the spotlight it deserves. Herewith some questions and comments:
- Who gives a rat’s patootee about the “neural processes underlying birdsong”?
- If you want to “shed light” on human speech, here’s a radical idea – Study human speech!
- You need a study to “to understand alcohol’s effects on…speech?” We can tell you (and we won’t even require a grant application): If you drink too much you sound like an idiot. There – that was simple.
We don’t know how many taxpayer dollars OHSU scorched on this nonsense, but if it was ten it was nine too many.
Now, excuse us. This kind of (insert your favorite term here) makes us want to get our speech slurred.
Sen. Johnson predicts drones will be a topic for 2015 Oregon Legislature
– Senator Betsy Johnson in Tillamook Headlight Herald
…If drones were on your Christmas Wish List, keep an eye on the 2015 Oregon Legislature…
Since Oregon was one of six states selected by the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct test sites on drones, this state is positioned to take advantage of what could become a clean, multi-billion dollar industry…
Results from Oregon’s test sites will be used to help the FAA develop a drone policy.
Currently, the FAA grants permits for unmanned aviation vehicles used in research and in such operations as aerial surveying and monitoring forest fires. The public can also fly them as a hobby…
We respond & Your Comments
We share Sen. Johnson’s hope that drones become a multi-billion industry. But why is it so slow in coming?
And why are drones right now creating jobs in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong?
The answer: government. The FAA that now wants to just test drones in six states has smothered this infant industry.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “…all the R&D [research & development] has been done outside the U.S. because beaurocrats at the [FAA] prohibit commercial use of drones. Amazon sought the FAA’s permission to operate an outdoor testing facility in the U.S. but was denied. The company now bases its drone work in Cambridge, England.” [Editors’ note: are they afraid commercial use might create jobs and get folks off welfare?]
With FAA rules not expected before 2017, how many companies will invest how many billions developing drones abroad? How many doltish Senators (and Presidents?) will curse them as “unpatriotic” for taking their business offshore? How many jobs will not be created here?
We hope Senator Johnson is right. But we fear that she may need to fly across an ocean to visit what should have been a multi billion dollar industry right here.
Portland Creates Socially Responsible Investment Committee
– OPB
Portland City Council voted Wednesday to establish a new committee to make sure the city’s investments are socially responsible.
The committee will consider a half-dozen issues when making that decision. They include labor practices, environmental impacts, health impacts (for example, a weapons producer might have harmful effects on health) corporate ethics, extreme tax avoidance, and disruptive market dominance…
There is concern that limiting the city’s investment choices could reduce earnings on those sums.
We respond & Your Comments
We suggest some questions that these “socially responsible” geniuses on the Portland City Council should consider before proceeding with this harebrained plan:
What’s their mission? To raise money to fund police and pave streets or to ram their personal preferences down citizens’ throats?
Who says what is/isn’t socially responsible? Some think oil companies aren’t. Others believe that the millions of jobs they create and the gas they supply to get people to them makes them responsible;
If returns on their oh-so-pious investments do “reduce earnings”, will they just respond “Yeah, we know we have to close police substations, but we’ll close them and fire 50 cops in a ‘socially responsible’ way”?
If these clowns are investing their own money they’re welcome to put it into Solyndra or generators powered by hamsters on wheels. But they’re not. They’re investing money confiscated from Portlanders who earned it. Their job is simply to legally return the highest possible profits.
Frankly, we doubt they’d recognize “disruptive market dominance” if it bit them on the behind.
Is a carbon tax in Oregon’s future?
Oregon could significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions without impacting the state’s overall economy by imposing a fee on carbon emissions, Portland State University researchers told four legislative committees today.
That’s because those tax revenues would go back into the economy, perhaps in the form of business and individual income tax breaks…
While the overall impact would be neutral, some geographic areas, including Portland, would be harder hit. And some sectors of the economy, such as retail, would feel the effects more than others.
The tax also would be regressive, hitting low-income residents the hardest. That’s why income tax rebates or other methods of redistributing the revenue are important, the researchers said…
We Respond & Your Comments
Get it? Our Beaver State Legislators may add $1.50 per gallon to our gas bills, tax the daylights out of manufacturing and retail, redistribute 100% back into the economy and it won’t cost a dollar. Right!
They won’t add one department, administrator, enforcer or accountant to the payroll. They won’t rent one office floor in Salem or commission any analysts, economists or committees to study the results of their handywork. They’ll just give it all back in tax breaks.
Not one dollar will be tossed to donors. No money will be wasted on harebrained “green” energy projects. No “Special Favors” for “Special People”.
Remember the Oregon Dept. of Energy’s Small Scale Energy Program? You should, because even if the scale was small, the losses weren’t. They’ll eventually total an estimated $20 million of your dollars.
But it will all be different this time because our pals in Salem “promise”, on a stack of failed green energy loans, that it won’t cost us a thing. Sure.
An obscene amount of money spent on the election
– chicagotribunenews.com/news/opinion/letters
After observing the reactions of Republican and Democratic pols and pundits to the national midterm election results…I’ve distilled my own characterization of the entire campaign down to one word: Obscene.
After all, $4 billion was spent in service to this embarrassing fiasco; $4 billion for saturation advertisements awash in cynicism and demagoguery…
Four billion dollars that could have built how many new public schools in Chicago?…
— Jane Artabasy, Glencoe
We Respond & Your Comments
We hear this all the time: “Obscene money spent on elections.” A few thoughts on this…
First, the $4 billion spent on the 2014 elections is just two thirds of the money we spend on potato chips each year.
Second, the money doesn’t just evaporate. It’s paid to printers, writers, camera operators and others who use it to get their kids’ teeth filled, send them to school and buy them Christmas presents. How “obscene” is that?
Third, does anyone (are you listening, Ms. Artabasy?) think that if we spent, say, a billion bucks less, that even one more school would be built in Chicago?
Fourth, does anyone think that we write out checks to political parties because we want to? No – we do it because of governments’ intrusion into our private lives and businesses. Some pay to reduce it; others to expand it. Want to get the money out of politics? Get the government out of our lives.
Fifth, isn’t public discourse about the direction of our country’s destiny a pretty good thing to spend money on? Maybe it’s even worth a few million bags of chips!
The Hole Deepens
Washington ponders how to pay for smaller classes
Voters in Washington state (sic) had only three statewide ballot measures to decide Nov. 4 and two of them…drew national attention because they concerned firearms…
However, it’s the third initiative, 1351, that’s likely to prove most vexing for Washington voters — and taxpayers. It requires the state’s public schools to limit their class sizes to 17 students for kindergarten through third grade and to 25 students for grades four through 12, with limits of 15 students and 22 students, respectively, for schools in low-income neighborhoods…
Although Initiative 1351 attracted little attention outside Washington, it generated a ferocious battle within the state, with the teachers’ unions leading the charge for a “yes” vote…Virtually every major newspaper in the state recommended a “no” vote, with The Bellingham Herald calling the initiative a “funding black hole.”
That’s because the measure doesn’t say where the money will come from to implement the smaller class sizes…
In addition to requiring hiring more teachers — possibly as many as 15,000 — the measure requires increased student support staff, including counselors, teaching assistants and librarians. The Office of Financial Management estimated that the initiative will add $4.7 billion to the cost of elementary and secondary education over the phase-in period…
We Respond & Your Comments
We’re shocked! Shocked! You mean somebody has to pay for this? Who on Earth could be against smaller class sizes? Can’t we just raise taxes on the rich? How about corporations? Just take it from them! How about millionaires?
Yes, Dear Readers, somebody has to pay for everything – no matter how good it sounds. No matter if politicos call it an “investment.” Even if it’s “for the children.” And that “someone” is you.
So we snicker while we watch to see how our neighbors to the north will find the $4.7 billion they’ll need to fund this “sounds good…feels good” boondoggle. And we take this opportunity to remind ourselves that the government has only one source for getting dollars. As readers of this publication know – that source is the money you worked to earn.