What, you want a business to internalize costs that it could be grabbing from others by playing states and countries off against each other? What kind of a commie pinko are you?

There's multiple problems with the lack of engineers being "produced" in the state of Oregon. There's also a space problem in the classrooms where that training occurs. As a math instructor at Mt Hood Community College, the word I hear is that many of the engineering programs available around the state are maxed out in terms of capacity. Mt. Hood hasn't built a new building since the 70's. So even if more students suddenly took an interest in engineering there's no gaurantee there would be a seat for them in a nearby school. Here in Gresham, voters have turned down every bond measure for the past 30 years and the school had to take out a loan recently to repair leaks in the roof of one of our buildings, which houses an enormous investment in machine tool technology. The Early Childhood Education program is still housed in the same "portable" buildings that they were moved into decades ago. Throwing money into programs without a corresponding state investment in infrastructure seems like a wasted effort. The local community is not always willing or able to invest in the kinds of capital expenditures required for new buildings. There's got to be a better way to get schools the financial resources they need to develop, grow and maintain programs critical to the state's economy than to make the school's faculty and staff waste thousands of dollars and countless hours campaigning over and over and over again. It's time for the legislature to figure out how to stabilize school funding, K-16, and replace the revenue lost with the collapse of the logging industry.

Oh, Chuck, that kind of reasoning is not welcome whatsoever by the economic powers that be in Oregon. They'd much prefer somebody, anybody, else pay to train their workers, even if that happens in Washington or India.

And as long as those engineer-employing corporations can make unlimited political campaign contributions, the present situation is not likely to change. Hold on, didn't you oppose Measure 46, which would have established the right of Oregon voters to limit campaign contributions?

OK. If this legislature won't deal with the corporate minimum issue, what kind of ballot measure would be needed to rectify the situation? Would it be a measure to somehow force a return to the good old days when the corporate income tax constituted a significant percentage of the General Fund? How could that be done? Why wouldn't a majority of Oregonians vote for that? The fact that Intel might be paying $10 a year in corporate income tax is absurd. Oregonians should be outraged.

JB,

The important questions are:

• Who would pay to collect the needed signatures? [By the way, administering an all-volunteer petition drive is MORE expensive than paying signature gatherers.]

• How long would it take the Legislature to override the peoples' decision, as has happened more than once when wealthy interests were unhappy with successful ballot measures? [See history of measures prohibiting profit on non-operational electrical power plants.]

Chuck,

The reason for the super-majority provision was the history of legislatures repealing campaign finance reform enacted by voters [Massachusetts, Colorado, Missouri, and others]. A simple majority could always have referred a measure to the voters. This is substantially different than the situation with tax referrals, which voters are quite unlikely to approve.

In reformer school I learned these things:

• Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. There is unlikely a majority that will agree with every detail of any piece of legislation. You may have noticed that the Legislature has not proposed a substitute constitutional amendment to do what M46 would have done, and neither have any of the progressive groups that supposedly support campaign finance reform but opposed M46 circulating their own CFR initiative petition [of any kind]. M46 was likely our only chance of significant reform for several years to come.

• It makes more sense in the long-term to eliminate the undue power of wealth over politics than to ask wealthy interests to treat the rest of us better because they should. The poor may sometimes act contrary to their own interest due to lack of good information. The wealthy pay to make sure they have the information needed to always act in their own interest. Why should Intel pay to educate engineers in Oregon when they can import educated engineers or export engineering jobs? As long as Intel ]Nike, PGE, AOI, et al] can make big campaign contributions, it is unlikely that big business will pay its fair share of taxes. Measure 46 would have changed that.