Here is the latest television spot for Yes on Measure 104 by the official campaign. The Measure 104 TV ad is very good and shows what is at stake.
This is no joke. For instance, the politicians created HB 2006 in 2017 which rolled back the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction for homeowners by introducing new income limits and tough rules on which homes qualify. The tax was labeled Not-a-Tax (despite raising a $100 million) and was allowed to bypass the Constitution’s 3/5 rule.
The politicians also created HB 2060 in 2017 which voided the Small Business Tax Cut for any businesses that didn’t hire new employees. The tax was deemed Not-a-Tax (despite it raises a ¼ billion) and was allowed to bypass the Constitution’s 3/5 rule.
These are real tax raising tax bills being sold as non-tax budget tweaks. Don’t buy the lie – Vote Yes on Measure 104!
Nearly 75% of the public has not voted. Please get your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers to turn in their ballots and Vote Yes on Measure 104.
We need to honor the will of the voters.
In 1996, Oregon Voters approved a Constitutional amendment requiring all taxes and fees to require a 3/5th majority of votes.
This higher 3/5 vote (60%) threshold in the Constitution has stopped a flood of tax increases from being passed over the past 20 years.
Now, the politicians have found a way around it.
By changing who qualifies for tax credits and deductions, the politicians can raise billions in new taxes without it ever being considered a tax increase.
This is why we need Measure 104!
— Was this article helpful? Enjoy lower taxes? Support the Taxpayer Association with a small donation here[2]. Tax credit and tax deductible options.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek just held a press conference and announced that there will not be an office of First Spouse for her wife. Kotek also pledged to make her spouse’s schedule public so people can see when she is acting on public duties.
Kotek said[4]; “After listening to and reflecting on the concerns of Oregonians who have contacted my office, as well as the advice of staff, I want to be clear about next steps: There will not be an Office of the First Spouse. There will not be a position of Chief of Staff to the First Spouse.”
Lars Larson: Our leaders all are failing around PSU shutdown
Look up the word “impotent” in the dictionary (this morning/today) and you’re likely to find elite leadership figures from Portlandia.
A mob of Jew hating activists have taken over a building at Portland’s downtown campus of PSU and those in charge can only bluster.
Pictures inside show a “fortified” occupation with expensive vandalism and graffiti.
PSU President Ann Cudd declares “we cannot allow continued occupation of the library”. Yet Cudd, herself, invited this mob to set up camp at the library.
The cops aren’t much better. Two days ago, Chief Bob Day threatened to send in his officers…but as of Tuesday morning, they’re just standing by, burning overtime.
Day’s boss, Feckless Ted Wheeler, declared this a criminal act two days ago…but Teddy sits only months away from exiting his massive failure as Mayor.
Why would he change now?
Soon-to-be unelected District Attorney Mike Schmidt-Show’s promise to prosecute the protestors is “future faking”.
We know Mike’s track record when he agrees with criminals.
Meanwhile, PSU fails its real students, who’ve had classes canceled, dorms evacuated and Jewish students spit on and called “zionist pigs”.
All these elite leaders think if they dither long enough these criminals will just leave voluntarily and without any punishment at all.
Just type the word “meme” into the Oregon Catalyst Search Bar on the right hand margin and see the site’s extensive library of memes and other visual messages.
Why memes? There is only so many breaking news stories of Oregon’s apocalypse we can broadcast on this website before the viewers start descending into chronic depression.
(viral video) Students re-pole U.S. flag after protest flag hijack
By Jason Williams
Founder of Taxpayers Association of Oregon
Special video of University of North Carolina students who witnessed the campus American flag be taken down and replaced with a Palestinian flag in a show of protest. The students were able to re-pole and fly the American flag which represents freed of expression not freedom of vandalism as expressed by rioters. The American flag represents free speech not taking over libraries and campus buildings and denying studenst access to them as rioters have done.
Here is the video.
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(Photos) Riot shuts down PSU. 21,000 students stranded.
The rioters who shutdown the library after barricading the doors (and calling the library “Palestine”), now have shut down the entire Portland State University campus.
The campus alert could not even muster the courage to explain the situation in their broadcast.
Photo from KOIN-TV from inside the barricaded library, Read more[7].
Here’s an exclusive close up look at the Antifa autonomous zone Gaza encampment at @Portland_State[8] where far-left extremists have sieged the library for days and forced the entire campus to shut down this week. Law enforcement source tells me the extremists broke through a door… pic.twitter.com/DizPw35Rdv[9]
— We assembled the highlights from 7 different media sources to make this article happen. If you appreciate this …. please contribute online to support future articles at OregonWatchdog.com[11] (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction[11] or Political Tax Credit[11] options to promote liberty).
Washington Department of Transportation has rolled out a new graffiti-erasing drone[12] that can clean up vandalism in record time.
It can also easily reach hard-to-access places.
As you may know, Portland is over-run with graffiti:
Portland keeps spending million on graffiti removal, only to have it re-appear.
This is because vandals who are arrested are usually released without prison time.
— Was this helpful? If so, Contribute online to support future articles at OregonWatchdog.com[11] (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction[11] or Political Tax Credit[11] options to promote liberty).
Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull is running for re-election with a pledge of not raising a penny for campaigning, or as The Oregonian quotes[13] “declining to raise any money for his campaign.” This will likely be a first for a sitting incumbent to run a campaign without money. Commissioner Shull does not want to be connected or influenced by money as part of a effort to campaign in a new way.
Bend’s property tax Measure 9-167 risks throwing many seniors out of their homes
By Taxpayers Association of Oregon OregonWatchdog.com[3]
Bend and La Pine school District homeowners are facing a massive property tax increase with Measure 9-167 on the May Primary ballot.
• Homeowners can’t afford it! Many new Bend homeowners will pay $230 to $730 in higher property taxes to fund $112 million in new increased spending. (2024 Deschutes Voter Pamphlet estimate)
• These higher taxes fund 8% fewer students. Bend-LaPine Schools saw 8.4% enrollment drop, which means property owners are paying $112 million in higher taxes to fund less students. That doesn’t make sense. (The Bend Bulletin 3/8/24)
• We’re in the midst of Oregon’s first population decline in 40 years thanks to high home prices. Oregon saw more people leaving than arriving because people cannot afford to live here due to high housing costs and high property taxes.
“Oregon’s population dropped in 2022 for the first time in decades, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.The agency figures Oregon lost about 16,000 residents in the year leading up to July 1, 2022, representing about 0.4% of the state’s population. That puts Oregon at No. 6 among the fastest-shrinking U.S. states, both in percentage and numeric declines… A shrinking population would endanger the state’s enviable economic growth over the past decade. ” — The Oregonian 9/14/23
Please vote NO on Measure 9-167
Don’t throw seniors out of their homes with a COSTLY PROPERTY TAX with Measure 9-167! Already seniors on a limited income are paying double digit increases in electricity prices, high inflation prices at the grocery store and the nation’s fifth highest gas prices[14]. Being on limited income traps seniors and the disabled in this price trap. Now they must face higher property taxes $200, $500, $700 and more.
When you factor in Measure 9-167 it all adds up to a huge expense!
Taxpayers Association of Oregon urges a NO on 9-167
— Was this helpful? If so, Contribute online to support future articles at OregonWatchdog.com[11] (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction[11] or Political Tax Credit[11] options to promote liberty).
Rioters takeover PSU library, rename it “Palestine”
Anti-Israel rioters took over the Portland State Library and have renamed it “Palestine”.
Some left pro-communism and “burn down the banks”scrawling behind.
See some of the news from Andy Ngo, Oregon independent journalist for more below:
Portland, Ore. — As @Portland_State[8]’s president allows the Antifa encampment for Gaza to grow at the library, the militants have begun vandalizing it and the surrounding building. The library has also closed. pic.twitter.com/0yORKPTjsF[16]
KATU-2 had this headline and story on the protest:
Breaking: Far-left extremists and Antifa have released a video saying they’ve taken over the Millar Library at @Portland_State[8]. They’ve renamed it and says it belongs to Palestine now. pic.twitter.com/2C7syCff5h[18]
Appeasing evil didn’t work when England tried it with Germany.
And it won’t work with pro-terrorism protestors on college campuses like PSU.
Still, this state-funded university has taken the side of students who have joined with the bloody hands of Hamas.
Yep, the same terrorist group that slaughtered 12 hundred 6 months ago.
Police forced the pro-terrorism protestors out of Portland’s South Park blocks, so they found a new home on the outside portico at PSU’s Millar library.
And there’s the amazing part.
PSU President Ann Cudd INVITED them to camp out.
Protests at universities around America brought more than 800 arrests, as they should have.
Events at other major universities made them declare campus too dangerous for students and even professors.
President Cudd, who plays Neville Chamberlain in this drama…has already agreed that PSU may end its relationship with Boeing.
Cudd suggests that PSU supports an “exchange of ideas.”
One idea you will hear at PSU is that nonsense “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which means erasing the state of Israel.
Anything ideas counter to that, you’re not likely to hear from this bunch.
But I could offer up, “Hey, Hey, PSU, why take the side that wants to exterminate the Jews?”
DeRemer aided “Fend-off-Fentanyl” Act signed into law
The FEND Off Fentanyl Act, a bipartisan proposal that Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-05) helped introduce[20] last year, was signed into law by President Biden. The legislation, sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (TX-10), seeks to combat the fentanyl crisis by targeting the illicit drug’s global supply chain. More specifically, the proposal would strengthen current law and direct the Treasury Department to target, sanction, and block the financial assets of transnational criminal organizations – targeting everyone from chemical suppliers in China to the cartels that traffic the drugs from Mexico. The proposal was included in the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, a critical component of the national security supplemental package that included funding to deter growing international threats.
“No state is suffering the effects of the fentanyl crisis worse than Oregon, where open-border policies have thrown fuel on the flames that were first ignited by Measure 110. I’ve been working hard to bolster the federal response to this crisis, including through legislation like the FEND Off Fentanyl Act,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “This new law will ensure cartels and transnational criminal organizations are held accountable for the drug trade that has resulted in far too many deaths in the United States. I’ll keep fighting for commonsense legislation that protects our communities from deadly drugs like fentanyl.”
more fentanyl pills this year than in all of 2023, and Oregon is experiencing the highest rate[22]
of fentanyl overdose deaths in the nation.
Now that it has been signed into law, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act will ensure sanctions are imposed on criminals involved in the international trade of fentanyl and on the money launderers who make it profitable. Additionally, international fentanyl trafficking will be declared a national emergency – opening up critical resources for federal agencies to support law enforcement efforts.
The proposal was introduced and led in the U.S. Senate by Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Ranking Member Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Full text of the bill is available HERE[23]
You can catch Biden incorrectly reading the teleprompter below:
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Want more memes?
Just type the word “meme” into the Oregon Catalyst Search Bar on the right hand margin and see the site’s extensive library of memes and other visual messages.
Why memes? There is only so many breaking news stories of Oregon’s apocalypse we can broadcast on this website before the viewers start descending into chronic depression.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s Communication Director has resigned[25]. The Director resigned with no explanation and at the same time that Kotek’s Chief of Staff, two top other top staffers and her lawyer have resigned[26] all in the past few weeks. These issues surround conflict over Governor Kotek’s providing Governor’s office space, security detail and a government scheduler for her spouse and a newly formed First Spouse Office.
OPB has reviewed many of the emails from the Governor’s office. OPB has discovered conflict-of-interest warnings from her staff on involving staff into issues related to Kotek’s spouse.
OPB reports[27],“Abby Tibbs, a former special adviser to Kotek, wrote to one of the governor’s behavioral health staffers … I realize I never followed-up with you in writing about the situation we discussed about the Governor asking you to call Cascadia about a friend of the [first lady’s] who is upset with her supervisor,” Tibbs wrote to the aide, Juliana Wallace.She went on to write that “actions by the FL and/or Governor like the ones above are indeed highly inappropriate at best,” and said that Kotek and her wife had been “reminded several times now” about using the power of the governor appropriately.The email is one example of top staffers raising red flags about Kotek Wilson’s involvement in the administration, and perhaps a telling one.”
Willamette Week reports[28] that Kotek’s spouse has played a larger role than previously disclosed. Willamette Week notes[28], “First lady Aimee Kotek Wilson has ranged far and wide in the first 15 months of her wife’s administration, meeting with a variety of people who have interests before the state, her calendar shows. She’s gotten involved not just in governor’s staff meetings on behavioral health, as WW has previously reported, but is also taking meetings on civil commitment policy, corrections policy, the future of Measure 110, Oregon State Hospital and a variety of other topics—and even involved herself in personnel matters.” Read more here[28].
— Was this helpful? If so, Contribute online at OregonWatchdog.com[11] (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction[11] or Political Tax Credit[11] options to promote liberty).
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Johnson v. City of Grants Pass. The central question is whether local ordinances that prohibit people from camping on public property constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
Based on prior rulings in the 9th Circuit court of appeals, western states have been limited since 2018 in what they can do to prevent people from using parks, sidewalks and streets as campgrounds. A successful class action lawsuit against the City of Grants Pass on behalf of homeless people resulted in long-term camping in a city park, preventing residents from using the park for recreational purposes.
Although some people have criticized Grants Pass for allegedly making it illegal to be homeless, that is not the issue. Cities and counties simply need clear authority to prohibit camping in certain public spaces, while designating other spaces as legal places to sleep for people who lack permanent shelter.
Enforcing those rules is not cruel; it’s essential to the livability of our communities. The sooner the Supreme Court clarifies this matter, the sooner we can implement real solutions to the problem of public spaces being permanently converted to unsanitary campgrounds.
John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
Put your money where your mouth is – learning the lessons from our neighbors on homeless spending By Oregon State Senator Daniel Bonham,
They say, “Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them”. As I have mentioned in previous newsletters, many of our issues mirror some of our fellow states with a similar political make-up.
Our neighbor California made national headlines again stating that California spent “$24 billion on homelessness in 5 years and didn’t consistently track outcomes”. While the committee in charge of reporting on these programs stated they didn’t “have the funding” to collect data on the programs, the reality is data won’t change what residents already know – throwing money at the problem is not working.
The issue with many of our politicians is they will tout and spend for these programs to check a box on a problem, but not have the courage to actually roll up their sleeves and do the work. Here in Oregon, we too have been spending and authorizing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to address homelessness.
If we can learn anything from our neighbors, our state needs to insist we receive annual reports about the efficiency of our tax dollars on homeless spending as well as have the intellectual honesty to identify what is working and what isn’t. And if we have learned anything — we can throw all the money in the world at programs, but if we don’t utilize the criminal justice system to ensure individuals use those programs to actually get the help they need – we may find ourselves in the same boat as our neighbor.
Check out the recent news related to liberals blocking people from accepting free money
• At Portland State University, anti-Israel student activists successfully pressured[34] the University to stop accepting donations from Boeing. That means PSU is turning away free money used to help students. This comes just after PSU socked taxpayers with a $400 million bond.
• Oregon State Senator James Manning (D-Eugene) candidate for secretary of state was pressured[35] by liberal activists over his donation from a Eugene businessman who happens to contribute to pro-life and pro-family causes. Senator Manning has since returned the donation as reported by Willamette Week.
• Columbia Sportswear CEO had a difficult time[36] trying to get Portland to accept their $250,000 offer to clean up their streets.
At the same time, liberals were happy with not returning a half million donation from the FTX scandal and Governor Kotek. Go figure.
— Was this helpful? If so, Contribute online at OregonWatchdog.com[11] (learn about a Charitable Tax Deduction[11] or Political Tax Credit[11] options to promote liberty).
When the President threatens to punch his opponent in the face, what should we think?
We know the already rapid mental decline of Joe Biden has accelerated.
It happened during a speech, on camera, in front of NABTU, the group that represents North America’s Building Trade Unions.
Here’s the quote “Think about the guys you grew up with that you’d like to get in a corner and give ‘em a straight left”.
And it’s not the first time. Five years ago, Biden told an audience he’d “beat the hell” out of Trump if they were both still in high school.
Anytime they get the chance, Joe’s political friends like to accuse those of us on the MAGA side of the aisle of “violent rhetoric”
I guess the Democrat Party has a double standard for its own.
And then Joe had one more of his regular teleprompter failures.
Like Ron Burgundy in the movie “Anchorman”, Biden reads whatever’s on the teleprompter in front of him.
When he reached the line “Four more years”…which Joe sort of delivered with a question mark at the end, the script said “pause”.
I’m sure speechwriters wanted him to hold up while his audience cheered.
Nope. Joe just read the stage directions out loud.
That pretty well sums up his Presidency at this point: do as the people really calling the shots tell you, read the speech and you’ll get an ice cream cone.
I see the evidence that Marie Perez, member of congress [Southern Washington] , just got “mugged”, metaphorically speaking of course.
Less than one year ago this hard-left democrat rejected republican proposals to clamp down on America’s wide open borders, where a Biden sponsored invasion has seen 10 million illegals cross in just 3 years.
Four months ago, Perez dismissed concerns about the invasion: quote, “nobody stays awake at night worrying about the Southern border.”
She said it.
Yet a new Harris poll show more than half of ALL Americans support Donald Trump’s call for mass deportations.
That includes 42% of democrats.
Well, Perez wants voters in the 3rd district to re-elect her.
So, she’s done a 180.
This week, Perez called for reinstating Title 42, the federal law President Trump used to bring about the lowest level of illegal aliens in decades.
Joe Biden reversed that Trump policy.
In a letter to Open Borders Joe this week, Perez and 5 other democrats demanded “We (call) on President Biden to use (executive authority) to immediately reimplement (federal law) and we are calling (for) legislation to give the Border Patrol back the expulsion authority that expired last year.
That’s what famously happens when a liberal gets mugged…instant conservative.
Let’s hope voters remember that Perez opponent, Joe Kent, demanded tough borders all along. Perez only “got religion” when she got desperate.
That’s the Rose City Rap. Join me at noon on KXL for First Amendment Friday. I’m Lars Larson
