Unfortunately a similar measure would pass in Oregon in a heartbeat! Voters arent going to pay attention to the details (as always the devil's in the detail), all the sponsors need to do is come up with a "feel good" initiative title, and it'll be a done deal.

"Overspending" on what I wonder? No doubt the sponsors will come up with some oversimplified horror story to use as an example of alleged overspending. Add in Lars Larsons bloviating half-truths and his sycophants will fall over each other to vote SOS in. And then after they vote it in they'll bitch about lack of State Police patrols, potholes in the roads, waiting in line at DMV, etc, etc. The adage you get what you pay for works not only for consumer goods but for government services as well. For the record I am a registered Republican.

SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT.

I have two things to tell Grover Norquist.

1. It's Democratic, not Democrat to pay for the commons as a community without privatizing our vital needs to a corporation to hold us up for that which is inherently ours as a community, state, and nation.

2. Your riding a political train wreck to an American Fascism, and we Democrats won't have it.

As this Harvard educated neo-con plots to transform America's Democracy to the next American Fascism the public is seeing their freedoms, environment, and standing as a democracy crumble around them. The Fox Network, the massive move of our media's need to appease the White House and its sarcastic rhetoric in place of sane public policy has not gone un-noticed by the communities whom are in reality paying for their privileges with our government services.

I dare say I'm not alone when I see the schools in a state of decay, a curriculum that is a shadow of the education my generation enjoyed means we have already cheated our coming generation. The call to the plight as a possibility has come and gone, we're living it. We're paying for our folly when high school grads see a job market shrinking to minimum wage jobs with little prospects of improvement, and future prospects. When our children are in their thirties sleeping on the couch, and we’re raising our grand children, what will be the message we’re sending to them about their future.

College is being priced out of the reach of the middle-class, and our nation is now experiencing a brain drain from government into the private sector. We have made government a dirty word, and presumed the American enterprise would just step up to provide the same services more effectively, and cheaper. That was the argument; private enterprise could do anything government does better, and cheaper. Whoops.

Corporations provide services for profits. Governments provide services for constituents.

Constituent’s needs and demands are not going to be the same as the corporation’s need for greater profits. When these services are necessary for the nation’s common good, but are less than profitable to be affordable, corporations grant the same type of effort that the profits afford. Government provides these same services at the pleasure of constituents, regardless of their profitability. Fail to keep the commons the public trust for the corporate bottom line makes the constituents little more than serfs under the corporate thumb.

I would not want to live in the 21st Century serfdom of the new American Fascism. Grover Norquist and friends meet weekly like the King and his court to speak in terms of how to change the language to suit their desire to privatize government, to smother it in the bath as he has so famously put it.

TABOR is the grand plan for America, and as constituents are transformed into serfs, we can be happy to know we stood by and watched as the Fox network tell us how we are all proud Americans, and the world is jealous of our freedoms we don’t have anymore.

Happy Thoughts;

Dan Grady

Unfortunately a similar measure would pass in Oregon in a heartbeat! Voters arent going to pay attention to the details (as always the devil's in the detail), all the sponsors need to do is come up with a "feel good" initiative title, and it'll be a done deal. In 2000, McIntire had Measure 8 "limits state appropriations to percentage of state's prior personal income".

789,699 Oregonians voted against it, only 608,090 voted for it. Since then we've had the Measure 28 fiasco (remember "mystery money"?) and the 2 longest sessions in Oregon history. Not to mention the vote in Colorado to loosen TABOR. Young people not old enough to vote in 2000 will vote for a spending limit? Or maybe given McIntire's great political successes since then there are Oregonians who didn't vote for Measure 8 in 2000 because no one pays attention to details and people love underfunded schools, never seeing state troopers on highways, etc.?

Just why would anyone have such a low opinion of Oregon voters?

And if anti-tax is such a popular ideology, why didn't Tiernan win his state senate race?

Could it be Oregonians are smarter than some give them credit for?

SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!

Could it be Oregonians are smarter than some give them credit for?

Posted by: LT | Apr 30, 2006 1:13:44 PM

Amen! Amen! Amen! and chuck in another Amen!

In a statement that is what the future of our state of government depends upon.

The book was written, the movie made before the election telling us in plain English that a vast number of citizens across the nation have voted against their own best interests. Abortion, Gay Marriage, the National Security Myth and the like were the divisive factors in electing those whom profess smaller, more effective government with lower taxes, and less government restrictions.

Where is the smaller government?? Where are those more effective services?? Where are those lower taxes, and less government restrictions got us to? Are we not in the deepest debt we’ve ever been? Are we not far more divided by issues that have little to do with our overall well being?

The Administration wants what it wants, and they are pleased to dump the bill on the states. We have the federal government dictating educational policy to the states, while funding nothing to reach these dictates. Is our government being privatized to anyone whom will make a campaign contribution, even if they are from a country involved in the attack against us on 9/11?

Are we more secure now in our communities, as well as a nation with a depleted Nation Guard? Who’ll pay for this?? The rich? The corporations?

The richest 1 % and the corporate conglomerates went from an 80% tax burden to less than 30% since our new Republican brand of government. They are certain that the estate tax will be eliminated with the kind of newspeak that Grover is found of: the “Death Tax.” This will intern certainly leave our children under the thumb of a new generation of an American oligarchy to dictate over the end of our democracy.

Happy Thoughts;

Dan Grady

The front group for Norquist here in Oregon, the Taxpayer Association, has been trying to put lipstick on this pig of a petition by claiming it will create a rainy day fund. But it won't. Our Oregon filed an election law complaint and they have rolled back their rhetoric slightly but continue to try to claim the ballot will do what it won't.

People just aren't buying it. There is already an active campaign building to keep the Colorado TABOR Spending Trap out of Oregon. The formal opposition is braod and deep and includes the following groups.

For more information on this and other petitions that would send Oregon in the wrong direction, go to: Our Oregon TABOR spending trap page.

Opposition to the TABOR spending trap includes: AARP, AFSCME Council 75, American Federation of Teachers/Oregon, Ashland School Board, Association of Oregon Counties, CareOregon, Columbia-Pacific Building & Construction Trades Council, Community Action Directors of Oregon, Elders in Action Commission, League of Oregon Cities, League of Women Voters/Oregon, Oregon AFL-CIO, Oregon Business Association, Oregon Education Association, Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Oregon School Boards Association, Oregon School Employees Association, Oregon State Building Trades Council, Oregon State Police Officers’ Association, Our Oregon, Pendleton School Board, National Association of Social Workers/Oregon, Rural Organizing Project, SEIU Local 503/OPEU, Stand for Children, United Food and Commercial Workers.

Patty, I would love to be proved wrong... my sense is that most voters dont take the time to become educated as to the unintended consequences of their votes...

Don't know about "most voters". I do know that the friend who had been so busy he thought Measure 30 was a legislative referral and "why were they doing that again?" did not vote for any Sizemore initiatives in 2000. As a matter of fact, he and I were talking one time that fall and he said "I've come to the conclusion Sizemore is just out for himself. How do I figure out which measures are his without reading that whole huge ballot measure voters pamphlet?". I told him "just look at the bottom of each page where there is a ballot measure argument in the voters pamphlet. If it has Sizemore listed as the person who submitted the argument, look to see if it is an argument in favor, or opposed. If he favors something, vote no. If he opposes, vote yes." He thanked me for the advice.

And I think this is a guide to how we stop this nonsense. Each of us has friends who are not politically active and aware (neighbors, co-workers, people at church, friends of friends, etc.)

If everyone reading this blog and every member of an organization in Patty's comment talks to 2 friends about this issue and educates them on what it would do (friendly conversation, not sales pitch) the TABOR people wouldn't know what hit them.

Any more than McIntire knew what hit him when he consented to debate the Mayor of Monmouth at a 2000 WOU ballot measure forum. Apparently McIntire hadn't been speaking to groups who were not members of an anti-tax group, or to people under 40, for quite some time. It was an unfriendly crowd for him, and he ended up "losin' it" on stage to the degree that young people at the event started telling friends and co-workers about it.

But that's the thing--those in the audience who told the story to others told it to individuals they knew. The co-worker who told me the story did not tell me what "average voters" thought of his appearance, she said "Have I got a story for you". Later I met a young man who knew the name of the audience member who stood up in the Q & A and demanded "Mr. McIntire, you owe the mayor and the audience an apology for your language".

Too many activists get wrapped up in the jargon and forget that in a room of 20 people there are 20 individuals, not "the base" or "average voters" or any generality like that. If you are willing to treat voters as adult human beings who deserve intelligent discussion (as I believe the BUS PROJECT does), all kinds of interesting things can happen!

Don't think TABOR will pass in Oregon because the electorate is smarter?

What about the kicker? Or Measure 5?

I don't have a great deal of hope here.

When Measure 5 passed, it was a very different time. College students mentioned in the above story about the 2000 WOU ballot measure debate would have been in elementary school. McIntire's 2000 measure and Sizemore's measures that year didn't pass. Could that possibly have been because young people who saw the effects of Measure 5 (and 47/50)every day in their public school classroom registered and voted those measures down?

Yes, in 2000 (very different economic times) the voters put the kicker in the Constitution as Measure 86. 88 and 86 were the measures which got the lowest number of yes votes in 2000 and still passed. During the recession special sessions, 88 was modified--so much for "the voters have spoken".

Are Oregonians so stupid that they believe "the voters have spoken " on 86 and it can never again be discussed? Or is it that people who care about such issues are so interested in jargon about "the voters" and "the base" that they can't mobilize concrete action? Or is that just too much work?

These last 72 hours have been full of reports about mass rallies--to do something about the Iraq War, about Darfur, about the economic power of immigrants.

But we are stuck with Measure 5 and the kicker in the Constitution because "the voters" want it that way?

When OPB interviewed Rep. Butler (an accountant and the House Revenue chair) and a Democratic counterpart awhile back, Butler said it was time to take a look at Measure 5 and see if changes needed to be made. But no Democrat can speak up like that? Where is the leadership?

<h2>What we need is leadership (of the sort Wyden has provided nationally on his Fair Flat Tax and more recently on the subject of oil subsidies and royalties), not people complaining that "the voters" make all public figures and activists powerless.</h2>