Kitzhaber for governor? Witness his 20 years of tax hikes!
Two decades of Kitzhaber’s non-stop taxing spree! and now he is interested in running for Governor again? By Taxpayer Association of Oregon
From 1981 to 1994 Kitzhaber voted 15 times for higher taxes, including:
- 6 gas tax increases,
- 2 income tax increases, and
- 3 times for higher sales taxes
From 1997 to 2000 Kitzhaber proposed or backed 10 different types of higher taxes:
Sales Tax (Oregonian 1-8-99),
Twice proposed keeping kicker (Oregonian 3/16/99 & 3/17/01),
Advocated higher gas taxes & transportation taxes (Oregonian 1-26-97 & 2-4-00),
Opposed a 10% property tax cut (Measure 47 in 1996),
Proposed corporate income tax hike from 6.6% to 8.6% (Oregonian 3/16/99),
Backed a cigarette tax hike (Oregonian 11-10-96),
Proposed a new excise tax of 3 cents on each beverage container (Oregonian 12-9-96),
Proposed a per-household tax (Oregonian 1-26-97),
Proposed a tax based on miles traveled (Oregonian 1-26-97)
Backed a plan for taxes on pesticides and fertilizers (Oregonian 1-8-99).
In 2001 Kitzhaber took the people’s kicker, raised the tax burden, increased fees and grew government by 17%
(1) Kitzhaber stole 1/3rd of the people’s kicker tax refund
(2) proposed over 25 new fees increases
(3) proposed ¼ billion in new bonding authority which would max out lottery bonding for 10 full years and put Oregon in it’s biggest debt load in it’s history
(4) proposed and approved a budget that spent $4.4 billion more than the last budget.
Backed a cigarette tax hike (Oregonian 11-10-96),
Proposed a new excise tax of 3 cents on each beverage container (Oregonian 12-9-96),
Proposed a per-household tax (Oregonian 1-26-97),
Proposed a tax based on miles traveled (Oregonian 1-26-97)
Backed a plan for taxes on pesticides and fertilizers (Oregonian 1-8-99).
In 2001 Kitzhaber took the people’s kicker, raised the tax burden, increased fees and grew government by 17%
(1) Kitzhaber stole 1/3rd of the people’s kicker tax refund
(2) proposed over 25 new fees increases
(3) proposed ¼ billion in new bonding authority which would max out lottery bonding for 10 full years and put Oregon in it’s biggest debt load in it’s history
(4) proposed and approved a budget that spent $4.4 billion more than the last budget.
I only hope and pray he gets in the race.
He has my vote!
Smart? Sincere? Really? The only thing this guy is really good at is following the party line and pandering to the lobby that puts him there.
Why on earth would you want to put a retread on your tire when you should be looking at a new one? This guy was the most people unfriendly Governor and had a disdain for the process. He has the nerve to come out and say that he can be a bipartisan leader when all he did was veto every bill put forward by the Republican Congress. If you recall, he was known as Dr. No.
He knows nothing about business and running a $50 billion enterprise called the State of Oregon. If you cannot see that this state needs a leader who understands economics and actually ran a business, then we will continue to get the kind of politicians who will grow government and bankrupt the rest of us.
As a former Democrat, I cannot understand how Democrats can continue to support an ever growing welfare and nanny state. Kitzhaber is the poster child for such nonsense. He had his turn and his legacy was the failed Oregon Health Plan and a disdain for the electorate, property rights and the initiative process.
Time to send this retread to the dustbowl of political history.
He is right that people do want change. How about a change away from the party that, with control of the Governor's office, the Legislature, the Secretary of State, the Treasury and the Supreme Court has seen Oregon's economy flushed down the drain?
Now THAT would be CHANGE!
We have a chance as a people to really make a change in our lives and government.
We have tried everything else so let us try something new and out of he box. Let us clean house and get rid of all of the career politicians, millionaires, lefties, righties, demos, repbs.
We have about 4 million people here and chances are many are qualified to run a state, business. The trick is to make anybody who wants the job has to sign a contract that compels them to only follow the constitution(s) when legislating and voting. This contract would also include a termination clause upon breaking the contract or breaking the law or unethical acts.
Just a wet dream? Maybe but how is your government working for you now? It will only get bigger and worse.
He is a pathetic joke of a candidate for governor and will be soundly defeated in the primary by any credible challenger.
Now, who is this credible challenger and when is this person going to step forward?
Gordon Smith?
Jason Atkinson?
Bill Sizemore? (He ran a great campaign against Kitzhaber!)
??????
Kitzhaber should be vulnerable -- a third term a tough sell, anyhow, he was already plenty stale by the end of his second -- but the Republicans have to come up with something better than they've got so far.
That would really be a stalemate -- Kitzhaber pushing his weird ideas on a liberal state, the voters pushing back through the initiative process -- four years of going nowhere on the 55-yard line.
People vote with their pocketbook, and the trailers and government employees know which side their bread is buttered on. The maddening thing is this nonsense (like in the previous Kitzhaber terrorist connection post) that these people act on principle instead of being slaves to the safety deposit box as that post put it. There is nothing wrong with public employee unions wanting to protect their jobs, everyone does it. However the fact that it is never stated forthrightly, and instead always couched in weird moralistic terms, like "doing it to protect the kids classrooms" is tedious..
Whether Democrat or Republican, everyone is a conservative in the field of their own endeavour. Republicans want to protect their jobs and money with tax cuts, Democrats want to protect their jobs in government or their welfare benefits. It's the same thing really, the only difference being Republicans will admit it, Democrats get indignant about it. Its all based on greed, one group wants to make money, another wants to take money. Greed is not always a bad thing. Greed provides jobs in the former case. In the latter, well, in the latter I guess it is a bad thing.
Disclaimer -
If you felt my making a comment about teachers unions means I hate both children and teachers - you might be a liberal.
If you felt that me mentioning government employees and Trailers in the same sentence means I think government employees are on welfare - then you might be a liberal.
And finally - If you construed my statement that greed is not always a bad thing to mean greed is always a good thing and thus it would be perfectly fine to kick grandma off of Medicare and eat her for dinner and have her school-less grand kids for an after dinner mint - you just might be a liberal!
If you think a 53% national statistic has anything to do with my point fine. It doesn't and Im simply tired of taking effort to restate everything two or three times because you can't comprehend a simple paragraph.
Fine, so you are proud the Democratic party is the party of the rich. I am not sure anyone has ever argued otherwise. I certainly haven't.
Yet again I ask, what the hell is it with you?
Pointing out that there are a whole lot of Democrats who apparently have jobs outside of government and are not on welfare seemed a reasonable response. No need to get your knickers in a twist over it.
They led the charge of public employees facilitating incompetent partisan liberals taking over evey level of goverment and government agencies.
v dean thinks it's been swell.
Now that Kitzhaber is "smarter" he thinks he'd be a good governor.
How dumb is this?
He admits to being a lousy Governor who screwed the State by being so for 8 years and now he wants to be rewarded with relelection and 8 more?
You know, I'm surprised that for a guy who does such affectations as refer to gas as petrol and uses the term knickers that you missed it in your other response. You should have asked if I wanted to check your CV, not your resume.
As for your response, it didn't have a lot to do with my post so that is why I responded as I did. Some is not the same as all Dean and your childish tactic, that never works, of conflating the two is truly inane.
So that's two lessons - To complete your affectation, switch to CV rather than resume, and learn the difference between some and all.
As for resume vs. cv, I prefer using the French. It makes me feel superior.
If it was recent, he should be ashamed that he is cutting the legs out from a viable candidate during a time of state and national crisis when socialism must be defeated. If it was not recent, it may have been true then but is ancient history now.