Language scam used to gut Oregon death penalty

By Taxpayer Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Politicians who voted to scale back the death penalty promised it was not retroactive, that if wouldn’t affect the people on death row. But that was then. After the bill passed, we learned that the bill is indeed retroactive and applies to people currently on death row.

To defend the politicians’ public lie, supporters now say that the word “retroactive” means something different to lawyers than it meant to the general public, the media, and the lawmakers who voted on it.   The Oregonian stated, “The lack of transparency and outright misdirection that has tainted the legislative process should offend Oregonians regardless of their position on the death penalty.”

Today in Oregon, people can no longer believe what a bill or lawmakers or state officials say will happen if legislation is passed. To find out what a bill truly does, we have to wait until after it becomes law. That’s when lawyers determine exactly how the bill will affect Oregon citizens.

This is LANGUAGE SCAM. This semantics game running rampant throughout Oregon politics is darkening public transparency in our democracy and eroding public trust.

Carbon Tax language scam: Although supporters promote a Carbon Taxes as a cap-and-invest bills, the 2019 Carbon tax was in fact a tax intended to raise $700 million in revenue. By not calling it a tax, they intended to avoid the three-fifths (60 percent) vote rule for new taxes.

Health care tax language scam: The $330 million health care tax was sold to voters under Measure 101 as a “health care assessment.”

PERS reform language scam: Lawmakers passed the PERS pension reform bill as a cost-saving “reform bill,” when it actually made things worse by stretching out payments over time—costing taxpayers more.

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