Bless you, Portland, Oregon. Just when I am starting to grow thoroughly sick of the national press and its fawning over your smug, self-righteous obsession with veganism and 1980s nostalgia, you surprise me. You actually throw me a curve-ball. And fortunately, the nation’s press is paying our city and state some attention for the RIGHT reasons, for a change*. We raised taxes, moderately, on the very rich, and corporations! Here’s Bloomberg:
“It’s a go-after-the-rich strategy,” said John Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “It shows that some voters have switched their minds and they’re more likely to go after the rich.”
…
“How do you protect the middle class?” said Kevin Looper, who ran the campaign to pass the measures. “The only way you can afford to do that is to tax those who can afford to pay.”
The twin ballot measures also served as a gauge of anti-business populism and highlighted a nationwide debate over whether to fix state budgets by targeting the affluent. But they also fueled resentment of “tax and spend” legislators, as well as public-employee unions whose members enjoy job security at a time when thousands here have lost jobs.
Here’s Pat “too-chicken-to-show-for-his-endorsement-interview” McCormick bitching in The LA Times:
“The biggest issue is we were substantially outspent by the public employee unions. They were able to double, and more than that, the money we were spending on the broadcast media, and were able to get that much more of their message out,” said Pat McCormick, spokesman for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes.
God bless the New York Times, of course, and WHOAH, WE ARE NOT IN THE ATLANTIC ONLINE…Sheeee-it…lay it down, Derek Thompson:
The second observation is that I think this vote has nothing to do with Left or Right. It has to do with money and anger. With double-digit unemployment, eight-digit Wall Street bonuses and thirteen-digit federal deficits, Americans are feeling inundated with a lot of numbers that tell a simple story: America’s workers have no money, America’s coffers have no money, but America’s rich people have a lot of money.
Then, of course, there’s the statewide press. The Bend Bulletin gets snippy because local readers didn’t want the changes. The Statesman Journal says that “healing rifts between sides” is important (yeah, right, not today, it isn’t…suck it! suck it, Pat McCormick! SUCK IT, MARK NELSON! SUCK IT!!!) and the Coos Bay World quotes a moderate Democrat, desperately trying to cling to her seat. Enjoy the afterglow, peeps. Now, let’s raise taxes on the rich in Washington state, too!
*Astute readers will know that I like nothing more than to relax in a pair of locally sourced alfalfa booties, while wearing a Van Halen headband and eating eggplant casserole. Still, even I grow somewhat weary of myself sometimes, innit.
Ugh. Why do you have to ruin this for me, Davis? We did the right thing by approving these measures, but your unhinged glee reflects the worst part of it all: It was another resounding victory for the political cowardice, phony populism and cynical presentation of false choices that we seem to require from all of our leaders now.
Oh, Colin. Just let me have a little unhinged glee for 24 hours? That’s all I ask…I can assure you that the teabaggers would have behaved far worse if they had clinched it. And tomorrow I’ll be back to my normal balanced and rational self. All apologetic and stuff. Promise.
I was actually a little let down last night that nobody from the “yes” side really stuck it to the opposition. “The spit of a toad cannot reach the top of a cathedral,” said Peter Courtney.
As Sarah wrote last night, WTF!?
Why not just say, “SUCK IT,” and then get over it and move on. It’s more honest.
I don’t think we are much of a blip on the national screen. I don’t want us to be. Remember Tom McCall?
Let the national press present us as hicks who live in the rain except for a couple summer months when the sun comes out and it’s fun to visit. Let’s remind people that we have high unemployment, large numbers of people sleeping on the streets and struggling small businesses.
If we’re lucky no more Californian’s or New Yorkers will move here. I think we should subsidize people who want to leave the state. If your republican and resent our low tax rate let’s give them 50% off a u-haul rental. If a homeless person, and I’ve been there, who hates it here and thinks we’re too soft, buy them a bus ticket out of state.
Too many people have moved here thinking this is the end of the rainbow and then bitching about not getting a pot of gold. Send them back home if they hate it here so much.
I feel the complete opposite of you, Down’N Out Dave. In fact, I think your comment represents everything that is wrong with Oregon. And no, I’m not going to leave just because you don’t like it.
I wonder what the headline will be when dbag Davis gets laid off due to these class warfare taxes being passed by the uneducated 24k a year worker bees….
I nominate Redd for the weekly Montgomery Burns Award for Most Ostentatiously Evil Comment (or MBAMOEC).
@Redd: The economy was better for the middle and lower classes before Reaganomics, and the economy will be better for the middle and lower classes after Reaganomics is dead and buried.
@Redd: Al Franken has a good definition for “class warfare”:
In her book “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century,” Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with the children still watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her dead husband and then killed her.
That is class warfare.
Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not.
@Colin: The Monty Burns Comment Award will begin here on Blogtown in 2 weeks. Thanks for the great idea. We just need to animate a gif for it, now.
30 years of conservative economic policies have had a negative impact on the middle class and the poor, as dmitrir said..and that was all about class warfare, so it’s funny to hear that phrase come out after all this time..I hope Phil Knight won’t suffer too much as a result of all this
Dortmunder
States with low taxes are states with the best business growth. Same goes for countries. This is an extremely short-sighted move that will lead to more economic problems.