Interesting quote. Thanks. When I hear a lobbying organization talk about their ethical standards, I put my hand on my wallet.

Is there any recent polling information regarding 66/67? All I could find was a December 4 poll from Lindholm which I believe was taken before the current advertising campaigns began.

"Apple executive John Brandon underlines the point: "Always tell the truth. We want to hear the bad news sooner than later.""

Bill Gates was once asked if someone came to him with good news and bad news which would he want to hear first. Gates replied that he would want to hear the bad news first because it was an indication of a problem that he would want to fix right away.

"should professional communicators and lobbyists agree to arguments and tactics they know are untruthful or deceptive? Absolutely not. Personal integrity and respect for principled public discourse should carry the day – even if you lose the client."

One notable thing about this campaign--the sloppiness etc. by Mark and Pat.

There are those of us who have been around long enough to remember when Pat and Mark actually lived by that sort of idea, or at least appeared to do so.

If they lose, it won't just be about taxes, it will be about their worth as consultants in the future---having alienated those who thought they were sneaky liars (dairy letter, etc.) and those who saw that such tactics didn't succeed.

You know, I'm more than a bit tired of points that are routinely dismissed as troll scat getting recycled as fresh insights by the contributors. For 4 years I've said "the business of America is business and the preferred method to accomplish that business is fraud". Universally panned as troll scat and never once addressed.

How is this saying anything different? Are you so into your primate mind set that you can only respond to power? Just so we're clear here, fraud is portraying something contrary to reality, for purposes of consideration. That alone demonstrates the premise. Few accept the definition at face value, always adding some aggravating factor to make it "real fraud". The base definition is accepted as something everyone does. It's no big deal.

Maybe you would like to take the position to its next step, laid out just as clearly? The "why"? "Just lie" or "don't like" aren't exactly cunning insights. I've proposed that it is because the way Americans live their lives. It is amazing how much the average person apes American marketing practices in their private lives. Your home's market value, the War on Drugs, standard hiring/firing practices...all work because everyone goes along to get along.

Our philosophy of law contributes too. When I used to travel around the world a lot, a favorite experiment was to see how long I could go without breaking any law, no matter how minor. In this country it was something between 45 minutes and, maybe 6 hours. In the Netherlands it was months and months. When you criminalize everything, it's easier for people to act like criminals.

Oh, look, "Health Care Reform" has managed to create a new class of criminals. What a surprise. But, then, we've a whole generation raised with the tacit assertion that how you say something and the effect it produces are more important than the facts that you were trying to communicate. That pretty much ossifies the principal into the body politic where it bleeds into other social classes. We're coming up on exactly one year, when Mayor Adams demonstrated how gen X an "over 40" can be.

Bill, I guess know one ever told Bill that Windoze doens't work. Just joking. We know market penetration trumps all. Thanks for demonstrating the "when power talks it's always more interesting" principle, though. I've quoted the identical sentiment from my cat. Have on here. Don't hear it being quoted. Personally I'll never forget something I heard the great man say back in '81, after a lunch with the development team at Tandy. We had eaten at a restaurant called Sichuan. "Man, I hope those peppers are as nice on the other end as they were eating". You can see why he's a billionaire. Much more reasonable than thinking that his grandfather's history of raping the land and peasants dovetails nicely with deflowering the desktop with a proprietary piece of junk. Yeah, I know his father is cool, but, then I'm a great believer that character propagates through families skipping every other generation.

One positive point. This has pissed me off enough to find something else to do. Will miss Jeff's annual "Airing of the Grievances". Probably wouldn't be possible with all the link spammers and dittoheads, now, anyway.

It's been real. It's been fun. Wish I could say it had been real fun.

"You know, I'm more than a bit tired of points that are routinely dismissed as troll scat getting recycled as fresh insights by the contributors. For 4 years I've said "the business of America is business and the preferred method to accomplish that business is fraud". Universally panned as troll scat and never once addressed."

Lord Beaverbrook, Maybe it isn't what you say but the way you say it? Most of the posts from you that I've read on this site sound like big whines and one-ups, and I rarely bother to read them past the first paragraph anymore. I don't care whether you're right if you're unbearable in the process . . .

Chuck's post, although I disagree with much of it, is well written and makes good points without making me wade through his emotional underbrush.

Conkling becomes more and more irrelevant with each terrible session that he has. Nothing like losing one of your biggest clients to a former employee.

Cafe, that former client (AGC) has lost even more credibility than CFM has lost during the past year.

ABC has gone from being an inside power player who can move a policy agenda to an irrelevant group of partisan hacks.

Amazing hearing anyone associated with the OAJKT campaign talk about integrity and truthfulness. Unfortunately hypocrisy, ethical conflicts of interest and money are ruling the day with some folks who once upon a time had some credibility. This is going to be a costly campaign for them, win, lose or draw.

I wouldn't want to be one of CFM's or Nelson's clients next session. Ouch!

This campaign is only helping cement Democratic control of the legislature. Business PACs are emptying their war chest's on the NO campaign and they will have no money left for Republican candidates next Fall. While they are doing a good job of helping fund the retirement accounts of their consultants, I think they are going to lose this campaign and tick off a lot of people in the process.

Pam, love your comments.

I was just saying to a neighbor today that whatever Bob Packwood did wrong, his definition of "gamble" and "longshot" were sheer genius. He once said he decided to run against Wayne Morse when he was convinced it was a longshot (long odds, but you know what those odds are) rather than a gamble (you don't know the odds).

For all the high minded rhetoric from OAJKT, they spilled the beans back in early fall. There was a Sunday Oregonian front page story (Sept. 27, as I recall) where an AOI lobbyist was angry that they couldn't dictate to legislative leadership.

"We will take it to the people, this will be war and it is going to get ugly".

So far, it seems to me the ugly part is how incompetent a campaign McCormick and Nelson are running--for all their experience, this is a case of "not doing their best work".

They can't find a small business "poster child" because the truly small businesses don't get hit with huge new tax bills.

They seem to think discussion of tax philosophy hide the fact they have no alternative plan to balance the budget.

This could so easily turn into a bad gamble---and Russ Walker, AOI, Mark and Pat will all turn out to have power that is more apparent than real. A loss would just show they have little power at the end of the first decade of the 21st century when "the voters" include young people born the year Measure 5 passed.

Then maybe we can have some intelligent debates about solving problems and not just which lobby group is most powerful?

Hi I am socially awkward, but I am trying to improve myself. When I make a comment sometimes someone near me might say something along the lines of It's ok Mendez and pat me on the head in a joking kind of way.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Dual-Action-Cleanse-Reviews&id=3080046

Now this is a good laugh. Honesty huh...Ballot titles...Measure 49...LOL...Keep on deluding yourselves...It is like a circus where every clown thinks they are perfectly normalnot wearing the clown get up or makeup.

Please, continue with this farce because it amuses me to the point of laughter.

Why so serious!?! LOL because a lot of you take yourselves so damn seriously.

Honesty would have been telling the Measure 37 claimants that their claims would be killed by Measure 49, but oh no a deliberately false ballot title taken seriously by every poster on BlueOregon was trumped as "honest."

Honest ballot titles do not need Oregon Supreme Court judges to rule on them.

Go on, delude yourselves and make me laugh.

To be fair, I am with all of you 99% of the times in terms of political beliefs and views. However, the way that some of you come off just makes me go into troll mode just to get a rise out of you.

I acknowledge that I can come off as self righteous, ignorant, snarky and on. I acknowledge that. However, what sets those bad traits off are the bad traits of others that are similar to mine.

Now that was mighty self serving of me. Anywho, I have fun here and other places I comment/forum on. My outlook is that life is too short to view blogs as a battle where one has to be dead serious and right all the time. I

n any forum or blog people will disagree regardless of politics or group cohesion. Sometimes people are in it to see the boundaries. Sometimes people are in it to see others. Sometimes people are in it to make asses of themselves. We all do this.

I apologize.

Chuck, I like your writing style even though I almost never agree with your point of view. thanks for the compelling piece.

Now perhaps you can influence pro 66-67 bloggers here (notably Carla), into following the right path and stop calling this "tax fairness".

I've known Pat McCormick since the early '80s when I worked for the legislature and he worked for House Speaker Hardy Myers. I've known Gary Conkling almost as long, since my days in the governor's office. They have more integrity in their little fingers than all the hacks, whores and self-obsessed blowhards who contribute to this steaming pile of a blog put together. How hypocritical. But then hypocrisy is the mother's milk of Blue Oregon.

Posted by: RyanLeo | Dec 24, 2009 5:38:52 AM

To be fair, I am with all of you 99% of the times in terms of political beliefs and views. However, the way that some of you come off just makes me go into troll mode just to get a rise out of you.

OMG. I'm glad I was sitting down because I would have been knocked on my ass. A Blue Oregon poster has used "troll" correctly!!! I actually thought I would never live to see the day. Typically, here, it means "someone I disagree strongly with".

I don't care whether you're right if you're unbearable in the process . . .

Why thank you Mr. Weiss for explaining exactly why nothing ever gets done in this country. The converse, of course, is "I care what you say if you're nice, I don't care whether you're right". That, Mr. Weiss, is what Jefferson meant when he said that people get the kind of government they deserve. You're in good company here. Bashing Naderites for not molly coddling the emotional sensitivities of the electorate is a favorite activity here!

Chuck's post, although I disagree with much of it, is well written and makes good points without making me wade through his emotional underbrush.

Where's the opinion? He states a bunch of facts. As Al Franken so poetically put it, "You're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts". Kari needs to hire you. You have a very similar concept of what editing involves. I think the Beav would reply that editing is "the systematic manipulation of prose to lessen impact and increase circulation". All that unregulated, unpoliced, stream of consciousness must really gall you.

Kurt: Now perhaps you can influence pro 66-67 bloggers here (notably Carla), into following the right path and stop calling this "tax fairness".

"Fairness" isn't the right word to use because "fairness" is in the eye of the beholder. Is a flat tax "fair" because everyone pays the same, or is a progressive tax "fair" because those who can afford more pay more? I can't impose my definition on you.

It is pretty hard to defend, however, a tax system where the poor pay a higher percentage than the rich. Unfortunately, that's what is happening in Oregon right now, with respect to the combination of all state and local taxes. The poor pay over 8 percent, while the rich pay a little over 6 percent. Even if the measures on the January ballot pass, the rich will still pay less than 7.

There are valid arguments to be had, but the one about how we shouldn't "soak the rich" doesn't fly because these measures don't come anywhere near doing that.

Fair and Balanced:

For property taxes, property owners in general pay the same rate, unless eligible for some sort of abatement.

For income taxes, Oregon does have a progressive rate that changes with income level. Unfortunately, the max rate kicks in at a very low income level, essentially placing everyone into the same tax rate.

Oregon limits the maximum deduction for Fed taxes paid, so in effect, higher income people do pay a higher effective rate since they are unable to deduct all Fed taxes paid.

At the highest income levels, people who have invested in Oregon's municipal and other public bonds of course pay nothing at all, s ince they have no taxable income.

What you are trying to say is that at lower income levels, there is little money left over after paying one's taxes and for life's necessities.

I'm still awaiting some definition of fair share so I can plan for my future.

F&B; sorry we obviously have different views regarding what is "fairness". Those singled out by M66 already pay the actual majority % of the entire state revenue coming from personal income filers. Heaping more on them, simply because we can ( just like the feds are proposing re health care and other national revenue enhancement schemes) is not tax fairness.

I voted for M30 because it was temporary and it was a shared response by all. This ploy by the legislature dominated by democrats is neither temporary or shared by all.

What's fair is what we agree is fair. Unfair is deciding not to agree from the git go, a la TEA people.

In response to, "I don't care whether you're right if you're unbearable in the process . . .", James M Earle III said:

"The converse, of course, is 'I care what you say if you're nice, I don't care whether you're right'. That, Mr. Weiss, is what Jefferson meant when he said that people get the kind of government they deserve. You're in good company here. Bashing Naderites for not molly coddling the emotional sensitivities of the electorate is a favorite activity here!"

Moreover, RyanLeo seems to be saying that he would be opposed to the militarist/corporatist policies of the Dear Leader Brigade if only we progressives had talked more nicely. If that's true, then why, RyanLeo, were you not moved to morality by the many who have presented their arguments here as sweet nothings to your ear?

The fact is that the DP and its lemming squad would only take progressive positions if the "leadership" told them it was okay, and regardless of the way they said it.

Spot on weevil. I'm a Sadhu. Presentation tests motivation.

only take progressive positions if the "leadership" told them it was okay, and regardless of the way they said it.

Except you can't scream it like Howard Dean.

No irrational exuberance. Only irrational cronyism. Sam's a case in point. Very clear headed dude with an irrational cronyism streak. I have a theory that Vera is like a queen wasp, laying her eggs inside the host. Brings new meaning to "being groomed".