{"id":24322,"date":"2016-10-22T14:16:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-22T21:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=24322"},"modified":"2016-10-22T14:16:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T21:16:31","slug":"republicorp-attacking-oregon-measure-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/22\/republicorp-attacking-oregon-measure-97\/","title":{"rendered":"RepubliCorp Attacking Oregon Measure 97"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I have previously reviewed and supported Oregon Ballot Measure 97.&#160; It is necessary, because giant corporations&#160; have been paying Oregon Income tax at the same or a lower&#160; rate than poor people like me.&#160; Recently, the Koch Brothers and their giant Republican Corporate Cronies have been flooding the airwaves with pure unadulterated lies about the measure.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1022Measuree97\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; display: block; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; margin-right: auto\" border=\"0\" alt=\"1022Measuree97\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1022Measuree97.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"488\" \/><\/p>\n<p>$18.3 million in mostly out-of-state corporate money buys a lot of ads and spreads a lot of disinformation, doubt and fear about Measure 97. Don\u2019t be fooled. Below are some of the top arguments you\u2019ll hear against Measure 97.<\/p>\n<h6><font color=\"#ff0000\">It\u2019s a sales tax!<\/font>&#160; (Actually, it\u2019s not.) <\/h6>\n<p>Oregonians do leave the state sometimes, so they know what a sales tax is: If you were to buy a smartphone, say, in Clark County, Washington, you\u2019d pay 7.7 percent sales tax. It\u2019s on the receipt. Oregon is one of just five states without a general sales tax, and Measure 97 won\u2019t change that, because it isn\u2019t a sales tax. Consumers wouldn\u2019t pay it. Small businesses wouldn\u2019t pay it. It\u2019s a corporate minimum income tax that only the very biggest companies would pay. And that\u2019s long overdue. Up to now, giant companies have employed legal and accounting maneuvers to claim that they make no profit \u2014 despite hundreds of millions in sales \u2014 and thus they pay almost nothing in state corporate income tax. For example, companies that donated to the anti-Measure 97 campaign had $600 billion altogether parked in offshore tax havens. That\u2019s money they claim was earned in places like the Cayman Islands \u2014 so they can get out of paying state and federal income tax. If Measure 97 passes, they won\u2019t get away with playing \u201cpoor\u201d any more.<\/p>\n<h6><font color=\"#ff0000\">It\u2019ll lead to higher prices on almost everything!<\/font> (Actually, it won\u2019t.) <\/h6>\n<p>Ask yourself this question: Are Cheerios more expensive in Vancouver than Portland? After all, tax systems vary quite a bit around the country. Do big companies like Target, Lowe\u2019s, Toys R Us and Walmart charge more in states where they pay higher taxes? The folks behind Measure 97 wanted to find out, and teamed up with the non-profit Oregon Consumer League to do a study. They <a href=\"http:\/\/oregonconsumerleague.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Side-by-Side-Shopping-Cart-Study.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">found<\/a> that those companies charge exactly the same prices for their products in every state. Maybe it\u2019s not surprising that companies that do business nationally set their prices nationally. But it definitely means there\u2019s no reason to think they\u2019ll raise prices just in Oregon if Measure 97 passes. [Skeptical of their findings? Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can do your own cross-state price comparisons <a href=\"http:\/\/voteyeson97.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/DIY_pricing_report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.] Oh, and one more thing: If the biggest corporations could just pass this tax onto the consumer via higher prices, why would they contribute $18.3 million to talk you out of voting for it?&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From &lt;<a href=\"https:\/\/nwlaborpress.org\/2016\/10\/five-corporate-lies-and-two-truths-about-measure-97\/\" target=\"_blank\">Northwest Labor Press<\/a>&gt;<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Photo&#160; Credit: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wweek.com\/news\/2016\/10\/12\/wws-november-2016-endorsements-state-measures\/\" target=\"_blank\">Willamette Week<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Please click through for more.<\/font><\/p>\n<h1 align=\"center\"><font style=\"font-weight: bold\" color=\"#0000ff\">Reject RepubliCorp Lies!&#160; <\/font><\/h1>\n<h1 align=\"center\"><font style=\"font-weight: bold\" color=\"#0000ff\">Vote YES on Oregon Ballot Measure 97<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have previously reviewed and supported Oregon Ballot Measure 97.&#160; It is necessary, because giant corporations&#160; have been paying Oregon Income tax at the same or a lower&#160; rate than poor people like me.&#160; Recently, the Koch Brothers and their giant Republican Corporate Cronies have been flooding the airwaves with pure unadulterated lies about the <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/10\/22\/republicorp-attacking-oregon-measure-97\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}