Off-Cycle Estimate Distorts, Magnifies Realistic View of Money Woes.
(BEND, Ore.) - “Magical tricks” amuse and please everyone - especially when they end with rapid access to a check representing “surprise money.”
Oregon suffers from the ONLY “sometimes you win while losing” fiscal-policy numbers-game, euphemistically named “the kicker” --with most-affected members of our Oregon family never realizing the true irony of that trusty-name.
It’s the participants that truly get “kicked” no matter how-or-when that “pleasing small-pile of self-pelf” is satisfyingly spent!
Based on near-impossible economic-forecast, perpetrated on political command by sometimes-astute professionals, the Oregon “kicker” estimates depend on superhuman skills to “see into the future” - and then say, “in economic terms, very precisely, what it may mean.”
ANY economic estimate. forced by law to be within TWO PERCENT, has got to be considered very possibly unreliable and open to question, in these days of sudden, drastic, unforeseeable economic, social and cultural events and desperate-making “happenings”.
Nobody can always-win, playing that near-impossible game.
Our citizens found that out in 2001, with near-Depression driving desperate State-program slashes still not fully-remediated AND ending any further “kicker”-payback until now.
Its political allure is allowed, in Oregon, to overwhelm its record of verifiable-by-event economic influence --and thus still operate to offer further misplaced - and now extremely dangerous - distortion of both economic and political realities.
Often even the most astute of participants gets taken in by that overwhelming warm-glow generated when SOMEbody, for SOME reason, happens to hand you UN-earned “sudden surprising incoming cash”.
That very-human rapid response is radically realized --even if UN-reasonably-so - when our economy is one-step/short of recession and signs of devastating dollar-dilemmas at every level of governance now abound, with actual abatement far-off over the horizon, dominated by looming large healthcare cost-growth. Add catastrophically-multiplying dollar-drains destined for defying public opinion to prolong “The Lying War”, and resoundingly-warning signs of sudden further-collapse.
In housing, hedge funds, manufacturing outputs, wholesale and retail trade, truck, automobile and transit sales-traffic and a host of other always-reliable “indicators for disaster-due and over-due.”
In reality-terms, the two economic eras involved in THIS ONE and the LAST ONE are far too closely parallel to provide anything but the sure signs of very/nervous-driven economic understandings by those who really do know.
“NOW I can spend this one!” is the universal response to receipt of the costly-provided payout-checks, leading even those same-astute citizens know full well - from long participation forced by that status as citizens - it is, if not truly “magic”, surely simply a political trick that is played by peculiarly-placed perpetrators to provide precisely that pleasing response. It is particularly well-timed for this gift-giving season already plagued by pronounced, prolonged lassitude in lessened purchase-power by insidious inflation, prolonged over many years.
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Widespread merchant-and-business attitudes are strongly demonstrated by distinctly-defined and highly persuasive “reminders” in every print-side and broadcast-advertising channel, of relentless pressures to spend-rapidly what Providence, via “kicker”-intervention, has provided us, precisely in time for the Christmas-spending part of the calendar.
But it is not Providence at work here at all.
The “kicker” is one more purposively-planned step to submerge and subvert and sabotage citizen understandings and rational sensitivities to realistic State taxation and operating-income realities.
The political-force/field in which it was generated --which still operates relentlessly, in Oregon and nationally - is devotedly determined to defy, deny, and defeat any widespread real-view “with your own eyes” of what our economy demands, requires, and must-have for any long-term remediation of trends destroying our middle class, creating huge further differences and deepening inequalities in our economic rewards for all workers, and putting our monies at work in many ways and many places deliberately and deceivingly chosen precisely to bring about those very specific results.
That’s the further furious-attack on our democracy, undertaken and carried out all-too-effectively in the past thirty years by those who seceded from both our basically-democratic parties “to provide the warriors and the work-demanded” for those long-range, most-damaging results.
Collectively, they are now known all-too-well as “neo-CONS” or “neo-LIBS”, depending on which political side-of-the aisle hey deserted to become part of that overwhelming force only now being denied any further opportunity to sabotage our democracy, allowed to them in the past several decades.
Any review of whence-came “the kicker” must take into account the historic political climate-prevailing in Oregon and nationally when this ironic and irrational --and irresponsible - “legislative anomaly” was allowed to happen here.
All of those “profiting” from this distortion of reasonable tax-collection and rational usage of taxes-so/collected should place those monies in a special savings-fund --ready for what’s sure to come sooner than later and at hand when-needed to replace the repetitive, unavoidable lacks-and-losses sure to be experienced in State programs and services when realities strike home, relentlessly - and perhaps all too soon, too.
Enjoy your “kicker”-check, if you still can do so.
While relishing the results, however, take time to check “with your own eyes”, in our print-side press, the extremely revealing differential between what larger-scale tax-payers were “refunded” as compared to the average check recipient - and YOURS!
Something is very radically wrong when such amazingly-deplorable differentials are allowed to exist, indeed, to be generated in the first instance.
When will we demand from “our elected representatives”, charged with first-and-only direct-allegiance to “the wit, wisdom and will of the people”, again begin to do our will on such fundamental issues as an equitable tax-system?
Why is there no discernible further-forward progress on remediating the “$10 minimum corporate tax”, allowed in Oregon for SEVENTY YEARS ALREADY?
When will we demand from our corporate colleagues that - for any incorporated institution showing a profit on their enterprise based in Oregon - a wisely-commensurate tax-collection be achieved?
What a kick that will be, when it begins to happen, soon, perhaps replacing the inevitable “revolution” already well-on-its-way!
------------------------------------------------------Reader’s Note:Documentation for each fact-cited is available in too many sources to be cited in our space-available here. “Quotes” are combined, summarized, re-stated from, again, too many sources for citation here. Originals are available verbatim.
As in all our Op Eds, documentation is always available in PDF-format for anyone requesting it and providing full-ID to the Editor.
Op Ed: Kicker FalsifiesSalem-News.com