M66/67 - all that's left
T.A. Barnhart
The campaign to protect Oregon's vital state services has been going on for a very long time, from the moment the Legislature's tax increases on businesses and the wealthiest Oregonians were signed into law by the Governor. We have been working to inform Oregon of the facts about these modest tax increases, to counter the lies and to register voters for months. Now we come to the last few days, and the only thing that matters now is getting our votes into the county election offices.
One-by-one. That is all that's left to do. Nothing else matters until 8pm Tuesday.
I do not enjoy phone banking. I get butterflies before canvassing, sometimes severely. I am so much happier where I am right now: at my computer, at home, music playing and a fresh pot of tea only minutes away. This is what I love doing — writing — and what I think I do best. And today, tomorrow and Tuesday, doing what I enjoy most is the least useful thing I can do.
In a few hours, I'm going to go out in this lovely rain and spend about 6 hours at the Bus, phoning Oregonians and trying to get them to understand that turning in their ballot (marked Yes, please) is absolutely vital for the state. Tomorrow and Tuesday, I don't know if I'll be phoning or walking; probably both at some point. In the past week, I've knocked on 180 doors and made 100-plus phone calls; that's in addition to a 500-door lit drop in my neighborhood.
And I'm a lightweight. There are people like Mike Litt who have been canvassing almost daily for weeks. I've done some other work I hope is useful — the videos we made with Steve Novick and distributed via Onward Oregon's 150,000-name mailing list may have helped people get our message — but in the last week of an election, nothing matters as much as GOTV: Get Out the Vote.
You, like me, may dislike or fear phone banking and canvassing. While I appreciate your trepidation (and know as well as anyone the way your gut roils and your brain screams in panic), my response right now is: Tough. Suck it up. This is more important than you and your fear.
The new Activate phone software means you don't waste time dialing numbers where no one is home. You'll not be dialing hardcore Rs who'll be voting No regardless. Same with walk lists for the canvas: the people on your list are people who will either be Yes votes or amenable to that vote — people who need a reminder to get their damn ballot in. They may be someone who just needs a friendly "Yes" face at their door to seal the deal — you, at their door or on the phone, to personalize the message and make it real. Modern technologies allow us to narrow our efforts to the friendly and near-friendly out there, and that means your time working GOTV has a big chance to be useful — to help swing this direction in our favor for a win on Tuesday night.
However, if on Tuesday night we lose these measures by a few thousand votes, what will be your response? If you were one of those who gave their time, even just a few evenings or weekends, you will have earned the right to say whatever you want. But if you did nothing if you sat at home and limited your efforts to blogging, tweeting, or bitching at the tv, then you'll need to remain silent. The right to complain about an election's result is limited to those who did something during the election. Thanks for voting, but that's not good enough. If you are reading this post, then you are one of the minority for whom politics is an interest of concern.
Put that into action.
Get to your local "Yes for Oregon" campaign office. Spend a few hours on the phone; find a friend or take your partner and walk your neighborhood. We need every potential Yes vote to become a mailed-in or dropped-off Yes vote. This is not about convincing people to vote Yes; this is about getting every possible Yes vote into the election office. That's your job for the next 3 days. Get Yes votes into the elections office so we do not have to cut hundreds of millions from school budgets, public health budgets, public safety budgets.
Stop bemoaning Massachusetts and health care and the Supreme Court. You can't do anything about those this afternoon. You can protect Oregon's school kids, vulnerable elderly and mentally ill, your own community. You can make a real difference, right here, right now.
Get out the vote. That's your job as a progressive citizen. That's the only job we have open right now. It's the only thing left to do, and if we fail to do that one thing, we only have ourselves to blame.
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connect with blueoregon
Jan 24, '10
The campaign to protect Oregon's vital state services
My. I can believe a number of folks would like to see you writing the ballot titles!
That's your job as a progressive citizen.
Don't tell real progressives what their duty is and I won't tell you how to be a Dem hack. Deal?
and that means your time working GOTV has a big chance to be useful
I don't own a television.
12:53 p.m.
Jan 24, '10
z, i will certainly tell progressives who sit at home during the last days of a campaign, doing nothing, and then dare call themselves a progressive that they are nothing of the sort. if you don't act to change all that is going wrong, you are, as the old saying goes, part of the problem.
progressive citizens get beyond themselves and help their community. and i will continue to say that, out loud and to people's faces.
Jan 24, '10
Get him T.A.! You're dead on with this one.
Jan 24, '10
Everytime one of you anti-tax fairness advocates at BO post a piece on 66/67, I've pointed out that the top 2% pay more than 1/3rd the State's cost. This is a FACT and it gives lie to the irresponsible untruths presented on this blog. Your presentation is clearly a lie but, you continue. This is the mentality that drove me from the left, if you guys are correct then, why do you have to protect your truth in a shroud of lies?
Geoff
1:24 p.m.
Jan 24, '10
pls, Geoff. get real. the top earners got huge tax breaks under Bush. they control more & more wealth, both as a percent & absolutely. the 2% addition (for individuals over $125k/yr & couples $250k/yr) will not hurt them one bit. and in 2013, that changes to income over $10 MILLION. so it's not like they're even close to being soaked. it's taking back a tiny portion of what they took from US under Bush - and for just a few years.
o yea, M66 also provides 260,000 unemployed Oregonians with a tax CUT. i guess we need to ask those folks to shoulder more of the burden by voting no?
Jan 24, '10
Great post TA----you're right, it's all about GOTV now and has been since the ballots dropped. My nightly phonebanks in East County are done now, so tomorrow and Tuesday I'll be at the YES Office in Portland to phonebank there. Yesterday one of my PCPs and I were at YES and went out canvassing and I just got back from distributing voter guides in East County.
We're in the final push---there's no more time to delay or debate---just get out there and do the work! Then Tuesday night we can celebrate.
Jan 24, '10
@ TA ... you didn't address the point, you fall back on the same cliche' "they can afford it".
The top 2% of earners pay more than a third of the state's cost -- where do you draw the line? At what point are they finally paying their share?
BTW -- none of this would have been necessary had our non-representatives restrained their lust for public spending and not increased spending.
Get real.
;o)
2:11 p.m.
Jan 24, '10
Geoff, i'd answer you but i'm too busy laughing at the idea of this country's wealthiest coming even close to their fair share. if only.
Jan 24, '10
@TA really, draw the line, what's their fair share?
2:40 p.m.
Jan 24, '10
a small measure of the vast haul they took under Bush. those tax cuts, combined with the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, sent us from 2000 surpluses to the massive deficits that make the recovery so difficult. while most Oregonians suffer & see things getting bleaker, the wealthiest have what to gripe about? that they can afford an extra 2% on their top earnings for a few years?
Jan 24, '10
Another perspective is that America has had a decades-long rising addiction to debt that transcends any single political party. As to the present set of tax reforms, they may pass, but if they do, expect repercussions not forecast by the "vote yes" armada.
Jan 24, '10
TA Barnhart, excellent post. I must admit that I had great difficulties phone banking last week-- the butterflies were so severe that I was unable to coherently speak to the people on the other end of the phone. But I gave it my best shot. Now I am unable to canvas or phone-bank, because of a long-ago booked out-of-state trip I'm on. But I CAN give til it hurts (and boy, does it!) at voteyesfororegon.org, and pester my facebook friends AND call my lazy friends begging them to get their YES ballots in.
Geoffrey Ludt, in his capacity as (paid?) tr0ll for satanic right-wing lobbyist Mark Nelson, asks what the wealthy's "fair share" of the tax burden should be. Personally, I think that a combined top rate of about 90% on any income (including capital gains) above $1 million / year is quite fair. So measure 66's modest temporary increase from 9% to 10.8% (then down to 9.9%) on wealthy earners doesn't even come CLOSE, in my book. The rich are destroying our economy, our political process, and our planet; they have tilted the playing field in their own favor so that their share of the tax burden continues to shrink. These measures (finally) begin to move things in the right direction. Mr. Ludt continues to spout the misleading claim that "the top 2% pay more than 1/3rd the State's cost." That is immaterial. Fairness dictates that to those whom much is given (in terms of state infrastructure, educated employee base, police & fire protection, etc) much is required. A fundamental tenet of the Democratic Party (of which BlueOregon is representative) is that of "progressive taxation." That is the principle which simply states that the more money you make, the higher your tax rate should be. During the past 30-odd years, much of the tax burden in Oregon (and the rest of this godforsaken country, for that matter) has shifted from the wealthy & corporations onto the beleaguered (and dwindling) middle class. The resulting social stratification is BAD for society and BAD for the economy. If you want to keep spewing your OBA/Norquist talking points on Blue Oregon, Mr. Ludt, nobody's going to stop you. But nobody here is buying your bulls***.
3:03 p.m.
Jan 24, '10
Marv, there's always unforeseen consequences. that's to be expected. that's one reason we need annual sessions of the Leg - so they can respond to a world that changes uber-rapidly.
Jan 24, '10
ta; with all due respect you are full of yourself. I voted and voted yes even though I detest the concept. The wealthy already pay a disproportionate share of state and federal taxes. I'll speak out any way I please regarding the outcome of this vote. Your continual sophomoric harping about the Bush tax cuts wear thin. In case somebody actually believes you I'll inform them that those were FEDERAL tax cuts..... oh, yeah and 66&67 are about STATE increases.
I voted yes just like voting yes on M30 in 04. I did so because I believe again that the state will punish education, safety and health. I think these measures will fail. Here in southern Oregon the MT online poll (defintely unscientific has Yes trailing no by about 23%.
Jan 24, '10
@Kurt -- the punishment of kids is a ruse, the state constitutionally mandates funding.
Jan 24, '10
Are any of you silly enough to believe that if 66-67 pass the "wealthy" will consider Oregon for retirement? I be outta here.
Jan 24, '10
I always wondered what the definition of "Progressive" was. The exchange betweeen Zara and t. cleared that up. Progressive = engaging in the get out the vote machine. Not a Progressive = not engaging in the get out the vote machine.
t.a., your writing there was good. And impassioned. Wonder if it's really true that if a person did something else besides the standard gotv they no longer qualify?
Your "Suck it up" is akin to what you sometimes hear in Sundance. Interesting!
Jan 24, '10
progressive citizens get beyond themselves and help their community. and i will continue to say that, out loud and to people's faces.
Of course they do. Can you accept that not everyone sees "help" the same way? It would be funny, if it weren't so sad, that for the first 2 years I blogged here, that was pretty much all I ever said, and I was summarily dismissed for the tone. Guess it's come full circle with you using my lines and tone, and my coming back with what the old BO would have said. It's all time and place, and I will admit to having a rather aberrant conception of the present tense.
One can agree with the premise without appreciating the cajoling tone. I don't know what I'm arguing about. We're doing the exact same thing. I suppose I should just suck it up and say, "good on ya, mate".
Posted by: Geoffrey Ludt | Jan 24, 2010 2:26:27 PM
@TA really, draw the line, what's their fair share?
Whatever it takes to have a sustainable, acceptable quality of life for everyone. If that ends up being a humongous middle class with 80% of the GDP redistributed, like the Netherlands, so be it. The line that people won't work hard for that is a load. People largely act according to their personality, and hard workers don't become slackers just because the wealth gets redistributed. I remember talking to a guy in a bar in Am*dam once that was getting hit with a big, new tax on his business, and he was taking it in stride. When I asked him why, he said that he knew that someone else would get hit next, and that money would benefit him. That's political maturity.
rw, the usage of "progressive" that gets my hackles up is when Dems use it as a straight substitute for "liberal", because they don't want right wing talk radio making fun of them. Appropriating labels like that just moves the political spectrum to the right.
Jan 24, '10
Rereading all this, I didn't know you all had said "suck it up" too. Now that's being on the same page.
Jan 24, '10
Yah, Z. I'm with you. Down the line on this one.
Jan 24, '10
& Ralph, if that's the kind of person you are, good riddance. No doors here to hit your ass.
Jan 24, '10
Kurt, Thanks for voting yes for whatever your reasons, your a savior but, "The wealthy already pay a disproportionate share of state and federal taxes." What about? The top 1%, who benefit disproportionately from the system, will still pay the smallest share of their income in state and local taxes Screaming and kicking all the way, its all fun and games till somebody shows up with a graph and a calculator...
"YES" on 66 and 67
Jan 24, '10
You folks realize your rationalizations for theft are all tied to jealousy and greed right?
So long as you're cool with that.
Just sayin'
Jan 24, '10
Voting Yes for more accountability and a smaller more efficient state government by voting "NO" on 66&67. Show the results and we'll show you the money...there will just be less of it.
Jan 24, '10
Geoffrey Ludt:
You realize your rationalizations for increased wealth inequality are all tied to ignorance, callousness, irresponsibility and greed right?
So long as you're cool with that.
Just sayin'
Jan 25, '10
@Bob Sopor -- actually, my arguments for wealth inequality are tied to Hope, Faith, and the belief that people want to live their lives to the fullest and shouldn't be boxed in by dependency and low expectations. You should read "Atlas Shrugged", it has tiny type, is really thick, and my version has no pictures.
Jan 25, '10
"actually, my arguments for wealth inequality are tied to Hope, Faith,..."
And basing our state's budgetary decisions on Faith and Hope are such a terrific idea, yes? Thanks anyway, but no.
Jan 25, '10
Thanks for the reminder TA, I sat down and voted no on these two stupid measures. Too bad the idiots in Salem couldn't have figured out to do the job we gave. Guess we need to find smarter idiots to send to Salem next time.
Both measures are bad public policy and are a step in the wrong direction. A yes vote is just enabling the clowns in Salem to waste more money.
Jan 25, '10
Andy: In case you hadn't noticed, BlueOregon is a blog for Oregon Democrats. Do you think that you're going to convince any Democratic party activists to vote no on the single most important piece of legislation for the Oregon Democratic party in years? One can only assume that when you, Geof & others like you come here and put forth Republican anti-tax talking points, you're simply trolling. Am I wrong?
Jan 25, '10
Get your family and friends who are voting Yes to get their ballots in if they haven't already. It's getting tight. 50-44 on #66 and 48-45 on #67. http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=126418394026137500
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