In a typical display of what she calls "leadership", Oregon's accidental governor, currently running for actual election to that office, she gave a speech at the Westside Economic Alliance on Wednesday, at the end of which she was asked whether she supports the corporate tax on gross revenue, IP 28, that public employee unions are pushing. Her response:
Brown left without responding to the comment. Afterward, word spread that the governor’s staff had made it clear she was not to be asked about the measure, currently known as IP 28.
That's real leadership, Katie-style. There's no question that she favors it; she's a fiercely partisan Democratic from Minnesota, and she knows full well that if passed this measure will not - as the public employee unions insist - "earmark all revenue derived" for education and social services. If it passes (and they're counting on stupid Willamette Valley voters to do just that), all revenue derived will go to public employees.
But it will create jobs:
The study, released Wednesday by the Northwest Economic Research Center at Portland State University, projects the measure would trigger a nearly $3.38 billion jump in tax revenue from Oregon's wealthiest 1,000 businesses next year and then gradually escalate over the next decade to $4.3 billion in 2027. Our Oregon, the union-backed group behind IP 28, paid the research center $45,000 to do the study.
As for employment, the NERC study projects more than 30,000 government jobs would be created within a decade, almost double the state's estimate. The private sector, on the other hand, would lose roughly 20,000 jobs over 10 years, versus the state's estimate of 38,200 in half the time.
In other words, the sole function of IP 28 is to increase the size of an already bloated government, as the public employee union - financed study clearly shows. The unions (and our accidental "governor") are hoping that the rubes won't notice. And given the intellectual capacity of most Willamette Valley voters, they can bank on it.
