tinac's blog

 From the Oregoniam

By Steve Novick

On Tuesday, Bill Sizemore's measure to allow an unlimited deduction of federal taxes on Oregon income tax returns -- a repeat of a measure Oregon voters defeated in 2000 -- qualified for the November ballot.  Sizemore's measure will join, among other things, Kevin Mannix's measure to impose mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain property crimes.  What the two ballot titles won't tell voters is what impact either measure would have on education, health care, senior services and child protective services in Oregon.  But, in fact, the measures will divert money that would otherwise be spent on those services.

Sizemore's measure would reduce the amount of money in the state general fund -- by $550 million in the 2009-11 biennium and by $1.75 billion in the 2011-13 biennium.  The bulk of that money would go to the wealthiest people in the state.  The average tax cut for people in the top 1 percent of earnings would be more than $15,000, while the average for people in the middle 20 percent would be $1.

Mannix's measure would increase spending on prisons by $250 million to $400 million a biennium.  Since Mannix's measure is an unfunded mandate, that increase would have to be paid for by reducing the amount of money that would otherwise be spent on other general fund services.

From Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: 12 Reasons to Get Out of Iraq
 

12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling?

And here's the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the "success" of the President's surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well.

Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq -- and of thinking in Washington.  So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:

1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military's worst Iraq nightmare:

This Post contributed by MoveOn 

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China.  Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose.  He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade.  It should be overturned."4

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children.  He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires.  The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes!  Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6