If there was ever any question in your mind that The Oregonian was biased, leftist paper controlled by the tax-and-spend elitists in Oregon, then what you are about to read here should put the question to bed once and for all.
What happened yesterday on The O's website is about as unethical as I can imagine. I can't believe what The O did has any modicum of journalistic ethics. This should be a HUGE scandal in this town, but of course the MSM won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, otherwise the public employee unions will come after them as well.
First, here is an article that appeared on Jeff Mapes' blog (thank you Google cache):
The campaign in favor of the tax measures on the Jan. 26 ballot has just reported some major contributions from their union supporters as they catch up to their business opponents.
The campaign opposing the tax measures is also continuing to haul in big money from several of the state's major business interests. We're now getting a much better picture of spending because the campaigns are now required to report each transaction every seven days instead of 30 days.
So we got a slug of new spending reports overnight. The most eye-catching ones were from the unions to the Vote Yes for Oregon campaign. Perhaps most important was the $250,000 given by the national leadership of Service Employees International Union. That's the first real significant money coming from out-of-state, although it should be noted that SEIU Local 503 is the largest union representing state workers in Oregon. Local 503 recently gave another $210,000 (bringing its aggregate contributions to nearly $493,000).
Other big contributors to the pro-tax campaign:
--Oregon Education Association, $500,000 ($827,000 aggregate for campaign).
--American Federation of Teachers, Oregon chapter, $200,000
--Oregon Health Care Association, $75,000 (101,000 for campaign). The association represents nursing homes and assisted care centers, which rely heavily on state and federal health care spending.
Additionally, the Salem Statesman-Journal reported this weekend that the national headquarters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has pledged $500,000 to the pro-tax campaign. Oregon AFSCME has already given $250,000 and pledges another $250,000, according to the story.
On the opposition side, Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes reports these large new contributions:
--Associated General Contractors, $24,500 ($214,000 for campaign). Plus, an associated committee, Building a Better Oregon, gave $27,000 (totalling $52,500 for the campaign).
--Oregon Bankers Association, $25,000 ($125,000 for campaign).
--Oregon Restaurant Association, $25,000 ($115,000 for campaign).
--Associated Oregon Industries, $17,000 ($223,000 for campaign).
The National Association of Realtors kicked in $6,500 and the Oregon Association of Realtors gave $50,000. Also of interest: the Oregon Business Council, which normally stays out of political campaigns, has spent just over $16,000 on research help for the opposition campaign.
All told, Vote Yes has raised $2.37 million while the opposition campaign has raised $3.1 million. But those numbers aren't comparable since Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes spent around $700,000 or so collecting the signatures to place the tax measures on the ballot.
And the opposition campaign says it is being outspent on the air when it comes to advertising.
Mapes' article was published at 9:35 am yesterday. His article is critical of the massive amounts of out-of-state money coming into Oregon for the "Yes" committees (parenthetically, isn't it ironic that when out-of-state money comes in to support conservative ballot measures the left is up in arms, but now, the
moonbats at BO are just fine with out of state money coming in to support these tax increases. Just further evidence of their hypocrisy....).
Less than 12 hours later,
Mapes' article is taken down from The
O's website and replaced with this campaign piece...er...uh...article from Bent
Walth. Notice the decidedly more favorable tone
Walth gives to the out-of-state contributors as opposed to
Mapes:
Public employee unions and business groups battling over two state tax increases on the January ballot have each raised about $2.3 million to wage their campaigns, new election finance records show.
The union-backed campaign to pass the measures has been raising money faster in recent weeks and still has nearly $1 million in cash. The corporate-financed opposition has only a fraction of that amount on hand as both sides continue their blitz of dueling commercials.
The numbers show that public employee unions, which once were routinely outspent by corporations and business groups, have found ways to even up the money game.
They also underscore the intensity of the fight over the tax increases, passed by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate elected in 2008 with big support from the unions.
"We've expected to be outspent, and we are being outspent currently," said Pat McCormick, spokesman for Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes, the group opposing the tax measures. "Public employee unions are clearly the most dominant, not just in Oregon politics but increasingly everywhere."
Scott Moore, spokesman for Vote Yes for Oregon, the lead group backing the measures, said he expects the campaign to draw national attention, which could bring in more out-of-state money.
"The immediate campaign is about protecting Oregon's critical services," Moore said. "But it's not just an Oregon fight. It's the first real effort by a state in this recession to come up with a progressive tax plan."
Measures 66 and 67 would raise $727 million over the next two years to prevent possible cuts to schools, social services and public safety, including prisons.
Business groups say the taxes strike too hard during a recession when tens of thousands are out of work.
Backers say the measures start to restore balance in an Oregon tax system that has shifted an increasing burden to individuals.
Measure 66 would raise personal income tax rates on taxable income above $250,000 for households and $125,000 for individual filers. The higher tax rate would move from 9 percent to 10.8 percent. The tax increase would affect about 3 percent of Oregonians, according to a state analysis.
Measure 67 would raise the $10 corporate minimum tax to $150 for most businesses, or about 0.1 percent of total Oregon revenues. The measure also would raise corporate tax rates on profits beyond $500,000 in Oregon revenues from 6.6 percent to 7.9 percent. After four years, those rates would return to their current levels for companies with profits of less than $10 million a year.
As of Dec. 15, the biggest donations in support of the measures have come from the Oregon Education Association ($827,000), and local and national organizations of Service Employees International Union, which represent state employees and health care workers ($742,826 combined).
Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes shows that it has raised $3.1 million. About $800,000 was spent to pay for signature gatherers and force a statewide vote on the Legislature's tax increases.
The top giver to the opposition group is the Oregon Local Grocery Committee, which has donated $226,544. The group has received major contributions from the Northwest Grocery Association and from retailers such as Fred Meyer, Safeway and WinCo.
Associated Oregon Industries has donated $223,000 through its political action committee, which has received contributions of $25,000 each from Hoffman Corp., Siltronic and ESCO.
The campaigns won't reveal what their polls show, but both sides say the fate of the measures is still up for grabs.
Oregon voters have not approved a tax increase on the ballot in nearly 40 years.
In 2007, lawmakers asked voters to approve an 85-cent increase in new cigarette taxes over two years to expand health insurance for children. Polls showed the measure passing before the tobacco industry spent about $12 million to defeat it. Voters ended up crushing the measure.
Caught red-handed.
Clearly, the unions did not like what
Mapes had written and they called their boys at The O and told them to take down
Mapes' article "or else". I am not sure what the "or else" might have been (perhaps finally unionizing The
O's employees? just a guess), but The
O's editors did what their Public Employee Union Masters told them to do and took down
Mapes' more critical article and replaced it with
Walth's pansy piece.
In particular, notice that
Mapes' expose on all the out-of-state money is absent from
Walth's article. The left (and The Oregonians' editorial board) is always -
ALWAYS - criticizing conservatives for relying upon out of state money in order to pass ballot measures. Now, when the left gets caught relying on that horrible out of state money, The Oregonian participates in an effort to deceive the public and cover this up.
This just goes to show that the left knows they can't win this election fair and square. Instead, the left has tried every trick in the book (even making some new tricks up), to wit:
- Remember the "Yes is No and No is Yes" attempt to deceive the voters?
- They drafted a ballot title that is nothing more than a campaign piece for the Yes campaign
- Now The Oregonian (a strong supporter of these tax increases) is covering up information in yet another attempt to deceive the voters.
The funny thing about all of this, though. The left is STILL going to lose in January.
Read more ...
Summary only ...
We have already mentioned in the last few weeks that Republican Representative Bob Jenson has picked up a primary challenge from a fellow named Mike Mathisen.
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