All that says is basically that Kitzhaber used to be governor. Oregon unemployment has been above the national average for almost all of the last 35 years. It was significantly better under Kitzhaber than it was under the last Republican governor. If anything, the unemployment rate is a reason to vote for Kitzhaber, not against. The idea isn't to add sales tax on top of what we've already got. The idea is to use sales tax to reduce the current tax rates. Relying heavily on income tax (ours is one of the highest in the country) means that when we hit a recession, we have a state budget crisis because revenue drops suddenly. Sales tax revenue drops off less sharply in bad times (and grows more slowly in good times). I will admit I have mixed feelings about the sales tax myself. It's annoying for consumers and businesses. It's very regressive - it hits poor people much harder than income tax does. On the positive side, Oregon gets a lot of tourists, and they'd pay sales tax. That's new tax revenue that we don't have to pay ourselves. And my total taxes would go down hugely. barfo
I personally would rather have sales tax than income tax. It seems silly to me to tax people for working but not for consumption. It's saying - you work, we "punish you" - but if you spend money you borrowed on stuff you do not need - go ahead, do it...
Why do you ask? The actual answer is that I'd had several beers by that time and was feeling rather lazy. The question was specifically about his last tenure as governor. barfo
Looks like Kitz has a 50-50 state House and a 50-50 state Senate. It will be difficult for him to get his big "weatherize the schools" stimulus plan passed. I wonder if he'll throw his arms up, call Oregon "ungovernable" again, and ride off into the sunset after this gridlocked first term.
If I knew that other taxes would be reduced, I'd be all for a sales tax. However, I fear that our government would treat it as another revenue source and our overall taxes would go up. Also, there is a benefit to Oregon businesses (especially those in Portland) who have Washington buyers purchasing items in Oregon rather than Washington to avoid the sales tax.
There is always up/down for every decision. It just seems to me that the number of Oregon businesses that benefit from this is much smaller than the number of Oregonians that would probably benefit from a sales tax over employment tax. It's not as if Portland is a huge retail center. Let's look at Clark County - it has 400K residents, and while they certainly purchase stuff in Portland - big taxable expenditures like cars are not tax-free for them (they will pay tax for their version of the DMV even if purchased in Oregon, they should, technically pay tax on everything via their "use-tax" provision), let's remove people under 18 and people over 65 (low mobility) - we are looking at 300K residents that are likely to be doing some of their purchases in Portland. Now, let's try to put a percentage of their purchases on the Portland vs. locally - I would suspect that not even 10% of their purchases (after taking out the big-ticket items and figuring that even in Vancouver there are only 30% of the resident homes that work in Portland) come from Portland. So we are talking about removing 30,000 "customers" for retail purposes from the Portland retailers - where just the city of Portland itself (ignoring the metro area residents from the Oregon side) has 400K "customers" (leaving over 65 residents, removing under-18 residents). So, overall, I would argue that the impact of removing the sales-tax advantage for Washington residents on Portland's retailers is not going to be very big, especially when you realize that many of the Clark County people that purchase stuff in Portland will continue to do so simply because they will still work in Portland...
If we were to do a sales tax I'd like to see it broken down very clearly for dummies like me. 1 cent goes to schools, 1 cent goes to roads and infrastructure, 1 cent goes to the general fund, etc. etc. And only the voters can adjust or change how the money is distributed. When I'm paying my 6 or 7 cents tax per dollar I want to know exactly where each penny is going. I'm not interested in turning over a boat load of money to our politicians and letting them figure out the best way to spend it.
Kinda ... at least in terms of the tax hikes that were voted in last January. When the PERS bomb explodes in the next few years, things are going to get reaaallll ugly here.
An historic number of state legislative seats were taken by the GOP. Given that it's a redistricting year, that's bad news for the Democrats and will make it much harder to retake the House. http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/11/devastation-gop.php
I had no idea that NH had 400+ people in their state legislature. That's crazy, especially for such a small state. barfo
I thought this Jeff Mapes piece in the O was good analysis... Highlights: I guess I can give some confirmation on that. I'm a known democrat, I vote in every election (unlike, uh, Dudley), and for the first time ever, nobody came to my door to urge me to vote. Which, if it was by design, was the right decision, since I need no prompting and I mailed my ballot in the day after it arrived. Kord was the Constitution Party candidate. Sneaky, sneaky. Hard to say if it was effective, who knows why the people who voted for Kord voted for Kord. This I think was a big factor. You can't be afraid if you want to be a leader, and Dudley seemed afraid of Kitzhaber. Probably for good reason, but it might have been a better strategy to meet the problem head on and challenge Kitz to debate every day from labor day to election day. And that sealed the deal. A more experienced politician would have avoided that. Multi-millionaire saying waitresses make too much? Not good politics. barfo
Anyone have any thoughts on the governor race 4 years from now? My bet is that Kitz runs for re-election, and very likely wins (4 years from now the economy will - I hope and predict - be improved, and Kitz should benefit from that even though it will primarily be due to effects outside of Oregon). I'd say there is a good chance that Dudley runs again. If he does, he loses by a larger margin, assuming he makes it out of the primary. If he doesn't run again - who does? I don't have a good sense of who is on the bench for the Republicans. Alley again? A teapartier? Sizemore, running from jail? barfo
Great, so they didn't vote because they believe in their candidate, they voted because they were annoyed by their party into it. But not annoyed enough to actually vote non-partially. Tried Very hard. I attended the Obama rally and every other point was about the Women's right to choose, and it was the only statement that really incited the crowd. No wonder they proclaimed it so much. Two sides to every story, Kitz wouldn't even leave Portland for a debate. I applaud Dudley for trying to understand all points of view. I was disgraced by the Kitz's campaign who promoted this statement more than any of their own campaign promises or ideas. They even made this lovely bright blue bumper sticker that they handed out at the rally, very distasteful. Overall I would say that if he runs again he has a much better chance with some more experience under his belt.
There's no way they lower other taxes to add a sales tax. Government doesn't work that way. They don't get rid of taxes to add other taxes. If they add a sales tax, it will be on top of the income tax and the property tax, thus making us one of (if not the) highest taxed states in the union. Sorry, but my message to Salem is that they need to do a better job accounting for, and budgeting, the money we already give them.
You are a bit too cynical on this, I think. There are lots of people - probably the vast majority of people - who would only vote for a sales tax if the plan required a decrease in other taxes. Therefore any sales tax plan is likely to include a mandatory decrease in other taxes. And by people, I mean either legislators or voters, or both, whichever is doing the voting. barfo
