Still undecided on Measures 66 & 67?
If you haven’t turned in your ballot yet, perhaps it’s because you can’t decide which bubbles to fill in: The Yes bubbles or the No bubbles.
Like many people, you’ve seen the TV ads, heard the radio ads, read newspaper editorials, op-eds and letters to the editor, but still can’t make up your mind. You want to do what’s right. But how do you figure out what is right with all this yammering?
My advice is to turn to the individuals, businesses, and organizations in the community that you trust and look at what they say.
At a time when many of the ballots still sitting around on kitchen tables do belong to undecided voters, and with precious little time left to get them in (you must get it in the mail by Saturday or use a drop box), let’s take a look at the supporters and the opposition. I think it tells the whole story.
You already know the Oregon League of Conservation Voters and the Oregon Conservation Network, a coalition of more than 40 environmental groups from around the state, are working overtime talking to Oregonians about why a Yes vote is so critical. Who else recommends a yes vote?
Oregon Environmental Council, AARP Oregon, Children First for Oregon, League of Women Voters of Oregon, Oregon Education Association, Oregon Nurses Association, Oregon PTA, Oregon State Building & Construction Trades Council, Rural Organizing Project, United Seniors of Oregon
Now, on the flip side, who recommends you vote no?
Oregon Bankers Association, Oregon Financial Services Association, Oregon Petroleum Association, Oregonians for Food and Shelter (which lobbies for the pesticide industry) and many others like them.
This really tells the whole story. Seniors, kids, teachers, nurses, workers, environmental advocates and parents urge you to vote yes, while big oil companies, the pesticides industry, big banks and lenders recommend you vote no.
When you look at it like this, it really isn’t a difficult choice. So fill in those Yes bubbles and return your ballot today. Vote Yes on 66 & 67.
We need proactive leaders that we can depend on to protect the health of our environment and that of Oregonians.
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Comments
I'm not an Oregonian, but as a small business owner in Seattle, I agree with the NO recommendation.
Voting NO doesn't mean you don't want public services. It means you want the private sector to grow, create jobs and wealth that can then be taxed as sales tax or income tax so that services can be provided. If you add mandatory fees to small business, you hurt their ability to do business, create jobs and grow the economy.
Raising taxes is like throwing gas on the fire. It will create a flash uptick until the fuel is spent and then it's over. We need to kick start this economy somehow. I don't have the answer, but raising taxes isn't what my company needs to grow and hire more people.
I admit I don't have all the facts here, I just felt the need to protect the NO voters, as it's not fair to say they don't ultimately want the same as the YES voters. It's a difference of strategy, not goal.
IMHO.
Tom
Most Oregonians agree: we need to fund schools and services. But many Oregonians are surprised to learn that Oregon employers are the primary source of funding for education and state services through the Oregonians they employ.
Oregon employers also are the primary tax collectors, withholding estimated state taxes on behalf of employees and sending that money to the state.
And right now, Oregon employers are struggling... shedding 131,000 jobs since the recession began. Last month, an additional 13,000 Oregonians simply gave up looking for work because Oregon employers cannot afford to bring on addition employees.
While Oregon's headline unemployment number rose to 11 percent, it would have been even higher if the work force hadn't shrunk.
Quote:
The decline in the work force highlights "how deep a hole we're really in," said Tim Duy, an adjunct assistant professor and director of the Oregon Economic Forum in the Department of Economics at the University of Oregon.
The same is true nationwide. The federal government said this month that more than 600,000 Americans gave up hunting for jobs in December. And nearly 2 million have done so in the past six months.
End Quote.
Oregon private-sector employers are the state's economic engine. It runs on revenue from the sale of its goods and services... and under these tough economic conditions, revenues have decreased dramatically while expenses -- such as healthcare costs -- have skyrocketed.
As a result, Oregonians across the board suffer greatly: Thousands have given up even looking for work. Twenty percent can't find full-time work. 211,000 are unemployed. 650,000 on food stamps. Record number of school-aged kids below the poverty line. Record mortgage defaults.
And as employment has declined, so too has state tax receipts. It's the classic vicious cycle: Fewer employers in business... employers with fewer employees... leading to fewer taxes collected for education and services.
It's simply doesn't make sense to cripple Oregon's economic engine even further by imposing $733,000,000 in new, retroactive and permanent taxes on Oregon's businesses and individual employers.
Twenty newspapers across the state have said Measures 66 and 67 will kill Oregon jobs... worsen Oregon's recession... and jeopardize Oregon education and services.
Please join ThinkOregon in Voting No.
Using the links in this post would lead to ALL the reasons to vote Yes! It's all about maintaining services to public schools, to people with disabilities. Those of us voting Yes! are intelligent people, people who have genuine concerns about underfunded social services. And we'd never stoop to characterize our opposition as "Rob" does.
We think you need to clarify your values if you're voting differently from us but would never call you names.
Wow, I'll have to read it again - but it looks like you didn't give even one single reason to vote Yes. Do you really think that people are so dumb that they can't handle evaluating an issue on it's merit - and therefore need to follow someone else's lead?
Here are some specific reasons to vote NO:
- 11% unemployment in Oregon. We need to put people back to work in the private sector (to support the growing public sector)
- 2/3 of those effected by tax increases in Measure 66 are Small Businesses (yep, the people who are struggling yet we need them to create jobs)
- Measure 67 introduces a "Business Sales Tax" that will tax some businesses on their gross sales - even if they don't make a profit. Talk about kicking someone when they are down!
Vote NO to protect Oregon's fragile economy
These taxes have been repeatedly characterized as job-killing taxes, and the people against them have been painted as heroes for being the state's economic engine. Yet, when I look around what I see are businesses that aren't doing so well anyway and jobs that have already been lost or killed. And this is before the tax was even referred to a vote. I know a lot of people whose jobs are less than they were, because of mandatory furloughs and businesses that aren't viable even in a state with one of the nation's lowest corporate tax rates. What I don't get is why business interests don't understand that to make money they need a population base. That population doesn't want to live in cities that have nothing to offer- nothing as in no decent schools, understaffed health care facilities, jails that don't hold people because they can't afford to, and so on. That population will move out of areas that don't have decent basic services, and the businesses will die- not because they were taxed, what was it, $150?-- but because there is no one who can afford their services. I voted yes on both.
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