It's never too late to mislead
Yet another piece of election porn showed up yesterday, for the proposed new Portland tax for the arts. They seem to have quite a crew of cute minority children to show us:
What they're not showing is the fact that half of the tax would go to the opera and other rich folk pastimes that don't need our money. Nor is there any discussion of the fact that this so-called "income tax" is a head tax with a low-income exemption -- which is terribly regressive, if not downright illegal. We're voting no, and certainly wouldn't pay the tax unless and until its legality is established in court.
There are only a couple of deliveries of this stuff left. Maybe we should have a contest for the worst mailer of the election. So far, we think "Alien Claw" takes the cake.
| Posted at 10:45 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (5)
If it passes I will be advising my clients to do as Jack describes in his post. I have already been through an illegal taxation amendment circus with the city (Real Estate Agents working for a principal broker). Clients should not have to suffer the cost of asking for their money back when the city breaks the law in the original assessment.
Posted by will | November 3, 2012 12:00 PM
I'll be so happy to going back to the TV advertisements for Mattress World.
And, does anyone else get the creeps when the Rob McKenna (Washington candidate for governer)ads are on the air? Think Paul Allen with double the nerdiness and half the personality.
Posted by umpire | November 3, 2012 12:06 PM
There appears to be a lot going on that is downright illegal these days, including allowing people to be on ballots that have no legal right to be on the ballot with such a case apparently laying on the Secretary of State Kate Brown's desk.
In my opinion, we cannot rely on her judgment to secure elections with integrity. Unfortunately, the mail in is questionable, the machines are questionable. The deal is the law applies to some and not to others. In some ways I have mentioned this before, it is like the wild west without a sheriff, and here in pdx, the wild "weird" city without proper oversight.
Posted by clinamen | November 3, 2012 1:27 PM
I even work for the public schools, and find this tax completely bogus. Our tax dollars should not be going to fund nonprofits, worthy as they might be. Once AGAIN, we should be funding basic services first and foremost with our tax dollars.
After the money gets sent through the arts groups organizations with myriad layers of administration and overhead, there will be precious little going to needy children, you can be sure.
I'm curious to know more about why this tax might be illegal. I'm not debating it, I just don't know anything about this.
Posted by curious | November 3, 2012 8:25 PM
Curious: http://www.noheadtax.com/
Information from this site should answer your question.
Posted by teresa | November 5, 2012 10:47 AM