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Oregon is a liberal state waiting for a disaster. Trying to get more money out of the taxpayers is not going to work. Liberal Minnesota just elected a Pubbie Governor and House of Representatives and we are close to controlling the Senate.

There just isn't enough money around to re-distribute according to politician's whims and fancies. Government, like the rest of us, will face cuts in this "depression."

People here have high expectations for public service.

Nothing more needs to be said. They are going to pay for these high expectations one way or another, either through their taxes or through their volunteer work. I look forward to the day when every municipality finds itself in this position -- where they can't just reach out to the next level of government to pay for these expectations.

These people are using what's called in DC "the Washington Monument ploy". It refers to the US Park Service response to a budget 'cut': close the Washington Monument and make sure the public's hurt enough to get the money restored.

It's hard to believe that these people can't go back to say the 1997 budget, before the bubble.

Yes, poor Oregon never has enough money...I just have to laugh...I and my husband just moved from high-tax Oregon to a low tax state, and we couldn't be happier. Our combined sales taxes, property taxes, and car registration fees are in total lower than what we were paying in Oregon for property taxes alone.

This whole business of "slashing budgets" is a joke; I remember one year, Portland voters rejected a measure to tax themselves to pay for more parks. After the voters rejected paying more taxes, the first thing the city did was to remove trash cans from the parks because there "wasn't enough money" to collect the refuse. Then they hired 2 new landscape architects, at a cost of about $80,000 a year each in salary alone. The removal of the trash cans from the parks was just to harrass the voters into paying more money; "if you don't want to pay, fine, but you'll have a garbage-strewn park." I predict that the backlash in Corvallis will be that streets will suddenly bloom with potholes, in order to convince the voters that city bureaucrats really do need more money.

Voters need to stand up to this blackmail. If bureaucrats can't handle a small budget, why should taxpayers give them a bigger one?

As State Budgets Break, Pain Trickles Down

I have to give The Los Angeles Times credit on this topic.
They ran an article this week in which high-tech economy analysts said that
many high-tech jobs (and their high compensation and state-tax receipts) were
probably "gone for good" from California.

I think the best remark from the experts was that California had experienced
(something like) "a once-a-hundred-year gold rush" and had already spent all the
extra money from it.

Oregon with its love affair with the Watermelon Jihadists and its Watermelon Governor, Taxenslobber has drive a lot business out of Oregon. They have killed the construction industry in the name of clean air and sustainable growth.

They will not even allow logging in areas burnt this last summer and the summer before.

They have set around waving their green digits up in the air cheering as the Andy Kerr, the Oregon Natural Resources Council tried to drive 1500 farm and ranch families out of the Klamath Falls area.

Andy Kerr told his thong of Watermelons about 4 years ago that Oregon had too many people and too many bad jobs. Now the Oregonians are reaping the bad harvest of putting the Watermelon Green Jihadists in charge of jobs, construction, farming, ranching, logging and any other industry Oregon use to have.

Public education is a boondoogle. It's amazing that with the amount of money schools receive, it never gets to the classroom. It goes to lawyers and unions. California teachers are the second highest paid in the country with the average salary in the $50,000 range (and starting salaries in the high $30s) and still the union goes on the radio said that "everyone knows teachers are underpaid." Everyone THINKS teachers are underpaid, and we're doing NOTHING to correct this misperception.

I pay for public schools but send my kids to private school because I don't want them indoctrinated and taught had to use a condom.

My kids' school is non-profit. I pay less than HALF what the per pupil spending is in California public schools. We bring in class supplies like color crayons, scissors, kleenex, notebooks, etc. that get through the year. We have lots of fundraisers, but we don't have to participate if we're broke. Public schools have the same fundraisers!

My school just built a new middle school and gym. Our tuition did not increase.