every once in a while...

I know I am on the other side of the fence from many of my friends on stuff like measures 66 and 67 which makes this post even harder because it is supposed to be funny, but the topic means the humor portion will definitely fail. But I am going to try anyway.

I am for many reasons,* though the pity party job loss commercial is so annoying I might have changed my vote if it had not already been mailed in.

Be that as it may, in reading about it, I came across one of the funniest quotes EVER.

I am not, it should be pointed out, a Phil Knight fan. His massive financial support for the U of O sports programs gets on my nerves for some reason (it should not...Resers does the same, though on a noticeably less lucrative level for OSU).

His business practices often leave something to be desired.

But he can definitely come up with a great quote.


"Measures 66 and 67 should be labeled Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law II."


Awesome. I am going to have to cannibalize that one.

Fast Food-Hack: "Would you like fries with that?"
Me: "Fries should be labeled Oregon's assisted Suicide law II...or III if you count Knight's naming."

Yes, it definitely works. I mean, it is no "Would you like a spanking", but it is pretty close.





* Okay, thus ends the humor portion. Some of the reasons...
1) I already think the State is involved in many, many things they should not be, that if they actually dealt with what they should and stayed out of what they should they would have excess funds.

2) Even if they keep involvement where they have no business, if they just cut out the waste they would have excess funds.

3) The idea that a segment of the population that pays the largest percentage share already needs to pay a higher percentage seems exceedingly backward. Punishing success and rewarding failure...which I see on a daily basis with people of my association who are on welfare...is counter-intuitive and can have no outcome that is not negative.

4) I have mentioned before that no corporation EVER pays so much as a penny in taxes. Any monetary outlay in taxes becomes part of their overhead just like electricity, wages, insurance, and is passed on to the consumers in the form of raised prices, and those higher prices almost inevitably fall not on the "250,000+" portion of society but rather on the poor and middle class, as raising the price of a loaf of bread by 10 cents hurts me a whole lot more than it does say...Phil Knight. So the higher taxes end up not on the corporations but instead on the very poorest portions of society and are in a sense the most regressive taxes available. Not that I think companies should be tax-free or anything like that, but at the same time...well, Knight did a pretty good job of pointing out some of the things Smith and Keynes have pointed out in the past. His list of companies no longer in Oregon is just better than mine.
I do remember how past policies to raise taxes on companies ended up really helping St. Helens, for example...Crown Zellerbach closed, Boise made massive layoffs...then, of course, more taxes were needed to help all the people who no longer had jobs, but then the money had to come from the people who still had jobs because there were hardly any businesses left to tax.
What I have NOT seen is making it harder for businesses to turn a profit help the unemployment situation.

5) Even if none of the above was true...I have seen our public schools, and even if they were not a hotbed of economic waste and punishing the talented to keep the pedestrian from suffering low "self-esteem", the things and ways they teach are nothing that more money will help.

With all that, I think this is the sort of issue I would be very disappointed if the vote did not end up something like 51-49% or something like that, because the last thing we need is a bunch of unthinking automotons voting what they are told instead of thinking for themselves. If that happened, we would have a succession of increasingly worse Presidents, Senators and Representatives elected who would destroy the long-term outlook of the country in favor of desperate, regressive, harmful measures that...oh, never mind.