Issues
Milwaukie approves $15 minimum wage for city workers
MILWAUKIE, Ore. (KOIN) — The Milwaukie City Council unanimously voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 for all city workers on Tuesday night.
Earlier in the day, Mayor Mark Gamba said he hoped the city council would pass the resolution.
“We have to have a society where if you work full time you can live, you’re not in poverty,” Mayor Gamba said…
We Respond & Your Comments
We’re not going to rehash facts about how raising the price of labor depresses demand for it. And about how raising the minimum wage hurts the very people progressives say they’re trying to help.
Today we just want to congratulate Mayor Gamba and his City Council for their unmatched generosity. We can’t say enough about their concern for their workers and their desire to help the less fortunate.
Oh, we forgot…these do-gooders aren’t doing good with their own money. They’re doing good with money they confiscated from the Milwaukie residents who earned it!
As the old saying goes, “There just ain’t no end to the good you can do with other people’s money.”
Congress Must Get to Bottom of Obamacare State Exchange Failures
– Alexander Hendrie, townhall.com
Over the past four years, billions of dollars have been funneled from the federal government to states to construct Obamacare state operated healthcare exchanges. This money has not been well-spent. Several states have failed and others have misused hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.
When Oregon announced it would become the first state to shutter its taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchange in early 2014, it was undoubtedly due to mismanagement…Perhaps worse, the Governor’s office was so determined to win reelection that it gave campaign consultants with zero IT or healthcare experience total control over Cover Oregon’s fate.
…there aren’t enough facts or answers two years after the ill-fated state-operated exchange launched.
$5.5 Billion Spent with Little Oversight
Taxpayers shelled out $305 million for the Oregon exchange, and $5.5 billion nationwide, yet strong oversight over the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from Congress has been lacking for years… While Oregon is the poster child of troubled Obamacare state exchanges, the list of failures is far beyond a single state and includes Hawaii, Vermont, Nevada, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maryland…
We Respond & Your Comments
Mr. Hendrie’s article is one of the best summations of Cover Oregon’s and Obamacare’s failures we’ve read.
Rightly concluding that these failures leave many unanswered questions, Hendrie calls for investigations.
Fine. You can convene 26 commissions, 17 committees, 54 Congressional hearings and a special prosecutor or two. But we’ll save you the time and money. Here’s the answer: government is not capable of running a one-size-fits all health insurance program for Oregon’s 3.97 million people – much less for 319 million Americans.
Government programs inevitably become politicized, whether it’s to ensure someone’s reelection (think Kitzhaber) or reward a favored contributor or industry (think Solyndra). So let’s just face reality and get government out of the health insurance business.
Portland City Council Builds Apartment. And Then?
– Brad Schmidt, The Oregonian/OregonLive
…The city-owned [Headwaters] apartments have everything a needy resident could dream of: …a good grocery store…
But Headwaters wasn’t designed for the needy. Most residents…can afford to live just about anywhere they want…
- Though the city lacks enough housing for its poorest residents, leaders chose to spend $14.7 million in public money to build the 100-unit Headwaters for middle-income “work force” residents.
- City leaders said Headwaters, which opened in January 2007,, would generate profits to be invested in affordable housing. Yet today they can’t point to a single dollar spent elsewhere.
- The Headwaters Apartments are exempt from property taxes. That means Multnomah County taxpayers subsidize rents…to the tune of $100,000 in lost revenue a year…
Headwaters would be risky because it required charging “significantly higher rents than existing vicinity area properties,”…
Units feature Energy Star appliances…and free organic coffee…
…Headwaters’ $1.2 million a year in revenue is barely enough to cover debt and operating expenses…
We Respond & Your Comments
Predictable. Right? The brainiacs who run Portland brought their real estate development skills to the real life market. Their “mission”? Create working class housing that would turn a profit and fuel development of housing for the needy.
The result? Over priced apartments whose only market is renters well off enough to afford most any housing. So few of them chose the city owned digs that now the Portland City Council Einsteins will be lucky to break even.
The lesson? Leave real estate (and most everything else) to the people who make a living off doing it in the private market.
Oh, well. It wasn’t their money they scorched.
Zukerberg’s $100M Lesson
– James Piereson & Naomi Schaefer Riley, Wall Street Journal
“What happened with the $100 million that Newark’s schools got from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg?” asks a recent headline. “Not much” is the short answer…
The bulk of the funds supported consultants and the salaries and pensions of teachers and administrators, so the donation only reinforced the bureaucratic and political ills that have long plagued public education in the Garden State…
In 1993, philanthropist Walter Annenberg sought to improve education by awarding $500 million to America’s public schools…
But the $1.1 billion in spending that resulted, thanks to matching grants, accomplished little…The funds wound up in the hands of the unions, administrators and political figures who created the problems in the first place…
We Respond & Your Comments
On October 3 union backed Our Oregon launched its drive for a ballot measure that’ll raise $2.5 billion from taxes on large Oregon corporations.
“I think this kind of investment into Oregon…will bring a dramatic improvement to Oregon’s economy,” said Ben Unger, executive director of Our Oregon.
It’ll improve the economy because the government can create more jobs by sprinkling the money over its political base than leaving it with companies that could use it to create jobs. Right, Ben?
Of course it’s “for the children” – because some of it will be dumped into schools. Ask Mark Zukerburg & Walter Annenberg how that works out.
And it’ll force companies to pay their “fair share.”
Our take: Whenever you find “investment,” “for the children” and “fair share” in one place – you can bet somebody’s dollars will be cycled through government to unions.
Stupid College Courses – Issue 100
Dear Mom & Dad: I just love it here at the University of Pennsylvania. Here’s what I’m taking this term for my English major…
“…Wasting Time On The Internet. We spend our lives in front of screens, mostly wasting time: checking social media, watching cat videos, chatting, and shopping…this class will focus on the alchemical recuperation of aimless surfing into substantial works of literature. Students will be required to stare at the screen for three hours…”
What’ll it cost you for a year at U Penn for your little darling? $66,800.
We suggest this course: “Wasting Time (& Money) At The University of Pennsylvania”
Nestlé critics expecting battle over anti-bottled water ballot initiative
– Kelly House, The Oregonian/Oregon Live
A group of Hood River County residents want voters to decide whether the Nestlé corporation should be allowed to bottle and sell water from the Columbia River Gorge…
The Cascade Locks City Council has approved Nestlé’s plan to build a $50 million bottling plant in town…
Nestlé’s supporters laud the plant as an economic development opportunity for the cash-strapped town and a job opportunity for its residents, nearly 19 percent of whom are unemployed.
“This is an economic development question,” said Gordon Zimmerman, city manager…
Opponents argue selling water to Nestlé amounts to privatization of a public resource. They question whether it’s a wise move given the ongoing drought gripping most of Oregon.
Zimmerman countered that Cascade Locks’ ample rainfall makes it immune to many of the water problems plaguing dryer parts of the state.
“Water is an abundant resource here,” he said.
We Respond & Your Comments
Let’s get this straight… Nearly 1 in 5 workers can’t find a job. There’s plenty of water. Nestlé wants to spend $50 million on a bottling plant and hire a bunch of locals. Right?
And these Einsteins don’t want it because it would “privatize” a “public resource”?
We’re betting these dingbats would sell Eastern Oregon to Exxon if they’d plaster solar panels all over it. They’d sell Crater Lake National Park if Big Oil, Inc. promised to smother it with windmills. But they hate Nestlé because it’s a big, evil, out of state corporation.
Does it make you want to stick knitting needles through your eyeballs, or what?
We Celebrate 100 issues of Lane Solutions!
Dear Readers – This being issue #100 of Lane Solutions, it’s time to look both back and ahead.
First, we thank you, our readers, who share our concern about the economic health of Lane County and Oregon.
Oregon and Lane County should have booming economies. Why not? We have abundant natural resources, a capable work force and a quality of life many professionals will sacrifice salary dollars to enjoy. There’s no excuse for 16% poverty in Oregon.
But burdensome regulations, high taxes and frivolous litigation form barriers to creating the jobs that eliminate poverty.
We’ll continue to call attention to these barriers and tip our hats to those who, irrespective of party, join us in reducing them.
Again – We thank you and hope you’ll stick around for the next 100 issues!
Sincerely, Your Co-Editors.
Jobs for Prineville, OR!
We tip our hat to Oregon House Republican Leader Mike McClane (Powell Butte), who led the charge to create an Oregon tax structure for high-tech firms.
A recent result of Rep. McClane’s efforts is Facebook’s decision to invest $200 million in creating a third data center in Prineville.
Way to go, Mike!
Why Oregon lags on per capita income: Editorial…
Few economic statistics are discussed as much in Oregon as per capita income. Oregonians don’t have as much money as Washington residents and lag the national average as well…
Per capita income…is all income… divided by population…
So why is Oregon’s per capita income below the national average, and what can we do about it?…reasons include population growth, lower-than-average wages in key high-paying industries, proximity to lower-tax Washington, a shorter average work week, and demographic factors that contribute to higher unemployment and a lower labor force participation rate. That’s a lot to overcome if Oregon political leaders want to raise per capita income…
Pay for lawyers… and several other professions is below the national average in part because many of the people who hold those jobs are willing to accept less pay because…. They get to live in a place with amenities such as access to both the coast and mountains…
…31 states still have higher per capita income than Oregon’s $41,681. The national median was $46,129 in 2014…
We Respond & Your Comments
Nobody can do much about workers in high paying industries who’ll trade salary dollars for our high quality of life in Oregon.
But here are some factors that government can influence for better or worse:
- Oregon’s non-competitive tax structure compared to Washington;
- A shorter average work week. It’s shorter because there aren’t enough full time jobs. Stop taxing capital gains like earned income and we’d create more 40 hour work weeks. Stop confiscating wealth with a “Death Tax” and more job creators would come here;
- High unemployment and low labor force participation – again a culprit is Oregon taxes. Tear down Oregon’s barriers to job creation and guess what? Jobs will come and Oregonians will go to work. And per capita income will increase.
Earth to Salem: “Are you listening?”
When You Put Money in Front of Politicians
Sen. Wyden says borrowing from fire prevention fund needs to end
– kval.com
EUGENE, Ore. – Congress is back in session in September and Senator Wyden is already pushing some new proposals for consideration.
Wyden, along with several other senators, doesn’t want to tap into the forest service budget anymore. The budget is intended for things like fire prevention efforts and forest management. But due to the limited firefighting funds, the state is forced to borrow money from this agency instead.
For the first time ever, the agency has spent more than half of its budget for the year on fire fighting…
“Prevention always gets shortchanged…
We Respond & Your Comments
Kudos to Sen. Wyden for reminding legislators that for them to take money entrusted to them for Purpose A and use it for Purpose B is a breach of trust.
With this in mind we turn to Oregon legislators’ decision to create a 401-K type retirement plan for Oregonians who don’t have one at work. And, of course, they’re glad to “manage” the money pouring in from workers’ earnings to fund it.
How long will it be before they start “borrowing” (looting?) this fund to pay for something else? Probably something to promote “fairness” or that’s “for the children”?
Just like Feds who looted the fire prevention fund for firefighting, our Salem pals will be oh-so-tempted to loot the retirement fund for their pet projects.
What happens when you put money in front of politicians and ask them not to spend it today but wait to spend it for its intended purpose? Exactly what happens when you put a pound of hamburger in front of your dog and ask him not to eat it till tomorrow.