Why is anyone surprised by this?

Oregon taxes what we actually want our economy to produce more of (jobs, investments, savings, earnings) and we spend the tax revenue thus obtained by subsidizing things that produce things we want less of (pollution, use of nonrenewable resources, creation of hazardous wastes, displacement of workers, etc.) Stir in an insane "you guess revenue wrong" kicker law and an extremely dysfunctional and absentee board of directors in Salem and you have a recipe for a financial train wreck -- and lo! here it is.

My fantasy is that this crash causes us to be willing to revisit our preconceptions about how to fund our common venture (government) and to consider taxing the things we want less of and reducing and eliminating taxes on the things we want more of. I'm not holding my breath. The folks in office would rather see the state fail with them at the helm than succeed without them.

This is all George Bush's fault.

Why is anyone surprised by this?

I dunno, George. Who is surprised?

This will be fascinating - I mean we burned thru the tobacco settlement ($650M) without a trace, the stimulus (>$1B) again without any effect and the new tax measures will be shot down.

Ted is too afraid to even challenge the public employee unions and all of their benes and PERS. So I guess I'd get used to 3-day school years pretty soon as punishment fo rthe taxpayers.

It's because we don't have a pro baseball team in Oregon. I'm telling ya, all of the cities in that top 10 list of blighted economic states don't have--never mind.

The legislature increased spending 9% last session. Perhaps that was a mistake?

That was so California of them.

Now what?

Let's look at what California did in the 2001 recession and we'll know.

I was having coffee at a little coffee shop across the street from the Portland Building on Monday when a group of people sat at table next to me. They were having a great time and it appeared to be three City employees and two retired City employees. I couldn't help but hear one of the people ask the retirees if they got their cost of living increase a couple of months ago. He answered yes, and then they were pretty quiet. It was like catching someone putting their hand in the cookie jar before dinner. I hope Fireman Randy and the rest of the PERS's retirees are spending OUR money stimulating the economy!

We are.