RageHapa’s Handy Guide to Ballot Measures
Getcher Oregon Ballot Measure voter guide here! I have a view about how you should vote on Measures 102 through 106 and I’m not afraid to tell you all about it. But I’ll try not to curse too much while doing so.
short & sweet
102 = YES
103 = NO (more detail on all below)
104 = NO
105 = NO
106 = NO
Complex & Bitter — 103 and 104
Let’s start with 103 and 104, because they are the weirdest and stupidest. I pass signs on my way down the highway that say stuff like “Yes on 103. No Grocery Tax.” Here’s the thing though. No One. Is. Coming. to Tax. Your GROCERIES. Got that? No one. It would be bad if they were, because it would obviously fall hardest on the poorest, because they have to spend more money proportionately on food than people with more resources. But that’s not about to happen. Not a single legislator has suggested it. I don’t read minds, nor would I want to read the mind of a legislator if I could, but I can almost promise you that the Oregon legislature is about as likely to levy a tax on groceries as they are to dance a naked conga line down Court Street in Salem.
So why the alarm? See, it’s like this. Some of the largest corporate operations in Oregon are the sellers of groceries. Target, Walmart, Fred Meyer, Safeway, Whole Foods, all sell groceries. Every single one of them also has a distribution chain: warehouses, delivery trucks, suppliers, wholesalers. Measure 103 would preemptively exempt ALL of these operations from taxes. Because all of them touch “groceries”.
This is a giant tax cut gambit, by a powerful lobbying group that recently managed to defeat a revenue measure that would have required giant corporations to step up and pay their share.
The way this works (and the way most ballot measures in Oregon work), is a lobbying group with a giant bum-load of cash pays low-skilled or marginally employable people to stand around grocery stores and gather signatures, giving them talking points for asking all the moms, dads, grandpas, grad students and what have you, “please sign a petition to avoid taxing groceries”. And of course people don’t want to have to pay more on their milk, bread, and peanut butter. So they sign, along with a 100,000 or so other people. Then the measure gets put on the ballot, with a similarly misleading campaign and zippy signs designed to appeal to all the suburban coupon cutters, as well as the die hard all-taxes-are-Satan crowd.
Presto! WholeFoods, which is owned by Amazon for eff’s sake, doesn’t have to pay taxes. Because groceries pass through their gilded fingers. It doesn’t help YOUR grocery bill either way. Sure, you aren’t taxed either, but remember, no one is trying to tax you. Everyone now and then someone in Salem does work up the guts to try to tax big box stores that are making billions off of Oregonians buying orange juice, breakfast cereal, dish soap, and diapers every year. But Walmart, Target, and Kroger Corp can’t be having that! Measure 103 strikes at the basic function of the legislature (paying for the operations of the government), to tie their hands, just in case those law makers get big for their britches and start looking for a share of the wealth made in Oregon. (To be used for, you know, roads, schools, and Medicaid for those Walmart workers who don’t get benefits).
That takes us to 104. Again, the signs on the freeway say something asinine like “Yes on 104! NO Easy Taxes”. Here we have bovine fecal propaganda of the ripest, slickest order. There is NO way to pass easy taxes in Oregon. Because this same ballot measure scam created a super majority requirement a couple of decades back. That means Oregon elected officials can’t just raise more money because more of them want to then don’t. Instead, they have to get EXTRA people (three-fifths majority) to raise money. This is already the rule in Oregon. Which is one reason why the schools are seriously hosed.
Just to be clear. Oregon is currently a one party state. The Governor is a Democrat (for now, unless people agree with the dingbats at the Oregonian). Both houses of the state legislature are nominally controlled by Democrats. If one believes the rap about “tax and spend Democrats” that should mean the big ol’ State Gummint is positively rolling in it, right? Fat of the land and all that? Nope. Not only do our own legislators make less than some of the lowest skilled, lowest educated folks in the labor force, our schools don’t have clean water, and most state agencies have some form of a hiring limits in effect (meaning the social workers, helpdesk analysts, document management techs, and receptionists are getting more stretched thin and burned out). The whole idea that State government as a swollen reservoir of excess is totally bizarre. Most senior civil servants (fiscal managers, analysts, lawyers, etc) get paid less than they do in the private sector. Sure, there’s a giant raft of stultifying bureaucracy, but a lot of that is due to not being able to innovate, not because of profligacy.
Our “tax and spend Democrats” in Oregon might as well be two lobbyists and a velociraptor hiding in a trench coat. But that’s not good enough for corporate PACs and lobbyists. They get 104 on the ballot so that ANYTHING that results in the state having more money requires super majority. I guess the theory is, any time the State does something to pay for something it needs to do (pay office service specialists, prison guards, forest rangers, and road maintenance crews, for example), it has to be getting the money from somewhere, and by golly, State Gummint better not being trying to extract it from the Holy Job Kreatorz. Or something.
Note there are people in Oregon who are so opposed to taxes that they deprive themselves of police forces and public libraries (not making this up. or exaggerating). They’re not thrilled to do it, but they have a righteous belief that they must Take A Stand Against Taxes. Because Jesus’ bootstraps. These people are absolutely voting for 104. The rest of us, unless we think that the money to pay for State services just floats off of rich people like excess glitter from a Kardashian’s contour, need to keep it possible for legislators to do the barest minimum of their job. Pass basic highway safety regulations so tires and sheet metal don’t fly off trucks like missiles? Then you need ODOT inspectors. Pass regulations to keep criminals off the streets (even non-violent ones)? Then build facilities and pay guards and parole officers. Pass clean air requirements? Then you need competent, decently paid technicians doing emissions checks. I suppose we could become one of those countries where you have to bribe the most mundane of public functionaries with cash or sexual favors to stamp your vehicle registration, give you a hair cutting license, or let you sell dairy products…
Not a Hate State — 105
Currently Oregon law limits the extent to which the State’s scarce law enforcement and first responder capacity can be suborned to go after immigrants (documented or otherwise). However, the froth at the mouth, hate-the-browns-yellowz-and-blacks crowd is convinced that we’re being overrun by the Chinese mafia and violent Central American drug cartels. Therefore they want to change the law so instead of tracking down domestic violence offenders and pedophiles, or doing welfare checks on people screaming at pixies on sidewalks or in ditches, local enforcement officers have to drop everything and go running when ICE calls and says “nab that mother of five, whose only crime is being on an expired visa”.
Note that if the federal government wants to go grab the nai-nais, abuelas, and tios, or steal babies and give them to Christian extremists to use as indentured labor, they can still do it. “No on 105” just means they can’t make local law enforcement do it. They gotta use their own personnel and money.
Medical Decisions with your Doctor, not your Neighbor — 106
Oregon currently offers extensive protection for women’s ability to make reproductive health decisions without intrusive oversight by politicians (as compared to states where elected officials with no medical training require women to have ultrasound wands inserted into their vaginas). Oregon also gives poor women and uninsured women better access to this constitutional right of privacy than some other states. Measure 106 is yet another attempt, starting with the poorest of women, to limit reproductive healthcare by placing an abortion funding restriction in the State Constitution.
At this point in the wars over women’s bodily self determination, most people know how they come down on abortion. Oregon is not a state where the legislature is in thrall to the people who believe a woman must die so a fetus may grow. Therefore the tactic here is to get all the people who believe that way to vote on the constitutional rights of uterus-bearing citizens and hope more of them show up. Because it’s always a good idea to put individual medical procedure coverage up to a statewide ideological vote. Kinda like we do with blood transfusions, cesarean sections, and kidney transplants…wait…
Finally! Something worth supporting — 102
102 doesn’t do anything. At least nothing concrete (if you live in Portland, there’s a bond measure for that). We’re not building housing for the thousands of low and middle income families in the state who are actually homeless, or increasing accessibly priced rental units.
All 102 does is change the law to allow more flexibility in funding by permitting public-private partnerships. So capitalism! innovation! yeay! There’s still plenty of things that have to happen before anyone actually builds any affordable housing, so for those who are paranoid about spending money, any money, ever, don’t worry, passing 102 won’t result in spending money.
Go Forth! Be Righteous. Turn in those Ballots. Remember to Sign Them.
Originally published at ragecreationjoy.wordpress.com on October 21, 2018.