Chuck's Page
      |
|
By Chuck Shepard January 29, 2009
January 29: I have been overwhelmed by emails from people at least as outraged as I have been about the tactics of the Measure’s proponents and the lack of economic understanding shown by the politicians who proposed them. Earlier I did have about 10% of the respondents mad at me because they felt that the schools needed the money. None of them seemed to realize that actually, the money raised in the short run did not have to go to schools anyway and since the Measures were likely to harm the economy, they didn’t realize or seem to care that that the long run consequences would most likely decrease the taxes collected even more. I have had many well thought out positive responses though and many just thanking me for my honesty. Some writers obviously understood the problems better than I did and others, although supportive need to check out of politics since they felt I should run for governor. I do seem to know more about economics and business than most of the current incumbents (so do many of you apparently), but the last I knew there were more issues out there that even a commitment to honesty would have a hard time overcoming. I am still planning on writing about the need to increase taxes at times, and for the most part I have already written that Page, but I understand that the Governor is trying to encourage the state Kicker to be repelled which I heartily endorse, so I will wait for another week or so. Meanwhile, I received a letter from a Texan who would like to thank the supporters of Measure 66. From the race analogies at the end, this person seems to understand how Oregonians think. Dear Oregonians, As a resident of a state other than Oregon, I would like to send you all a hearty "thank you" for your votes on measure 66. Voting to raise your income taxes on the wealthy and the business owners will do wonderful things for all of us other states in the near future. In fact, you just may pull all of us out of this recession ahead of Oregon. This tax you passed will likely slow new business in your state and will almost certainly stop future businesses from moving there, thus causing your unemployment rate to increase while your surrounding states stand back and scoop up those jobs that you are chasing out. As a resident of Texas who has been enjoying the benefits of hosting more and more of California's companies in these past few years, I am looking forward to what measure 66 is almost certain to bring our way. You have voted to increase the price of goods and services in your state. Nobody wants to admit it to themselves, but companies and people like to keep their incomes steady. You raise taxes on companies, they pass down that cost to the consumer. You raise taxes on the individual, they are likely to decrease their charitable donations. In both cases the tax is passed down the line with the greatest effect on the poor. Measure 66 is going to be paid for by the consumer and those in need of donations. Measure 66 supporters may think they are "sticking it to the man", but in the end will see that they wound up increasing unemployment in their state and paying more for the goods and services they are accustomed to. I admit to doing very little research on Measure 66. I don't need to. The benefits to any state trying to bring jobs in instead of chase them out are obvious and for that, I thank you. Texas is likely to be one of the first, if not the first to be out of this recession. With most of Texas' major cities already out of the recession, measure 66 just may be the boost we needed to reach the finish line. So Oregon, see you at the water station when you finish the race. Best wishes to all of you. January 27: It may surprise some of you who have been reading Chuck’s Page recently, that I don’t like discussing politics and I don’t think of myself as a political junkie at all. In fact mostly it bores me. Even though what goes on in Washington or Salem has a huge impact on much of my life, I figure I can pretty much adjust to whatever it is, so taking a stand on a Measure 66 or 67 actually didn’t matter to me politically, my stand was moral. I will adjust how I do things to help make it work. If measure 67 had just included the part where the minimum tax went from $10 to $150 like most people thought it did, I would have been OK with it, but increasing the tax on the corporations that had higher gross incomes even though they lost money was unfair and to advertise the Measure as one that was going after the “big” corporations was a lie and even it had been true would have been unwise. It was Measure 66 that really bothered me though and not so much because of the extra money it was going to take from my pocket. In many years I don’t even qualify for the tax and when I do in the future, I can decrease other expenditures to make up for it if I have to. This year we have discussed making a large contribution to a community college. That contribution will now be reduced by the new tax giving it a 0 effect on me. However, I have figured out that in order for the tax to have a 0 impact we will have to reduce the gift by 80%. I will have to figure out what other expenditures to reduce as well to make this reasonable. So why have I “wasted” your time with this. I received quite a few responses to my last Chuck’s Page. A disappointing amount of people told me that they would not come back to Hoodoo because of my stand. What a sad thing for those people. They are going to withhold a really nice experience from themselves and their kids because the owner of the ski area holds a different belief than them. One person asked me why I thought I should write my political ideas when no other owner of a ski area or any related type business thought that he or she should. The implication was that I was doing something very wrong. I told him I didn’t know of any other owner that greeted customers in the parking lot either, but that didn’t make it wrong. My thought though was that doing things the same old way is not all that good. I came into Hoodoo telling people that I would run the area as if I were a customer. I have tried to do what I thought would be important to the customers. I started Chuck’s Page a decade ago to try to relate my thoughts and ideas to you on a personal level, and I have reached a lot of you. I always felt that the Page was just a lark, but as I have tried to pull away from writing it, I have gotten a lot of complaints from people saying that they loved to know what I had to say even if they didn’t like my views. So I decided to keep going and tell you what I thought. I don’t want to lose customers because of my personal stuff, but on the other hand anyone who decides where to ski because the owner of the ski area either doesn’t express his ideas or agrees with the customer’s ideas, probably won’t be all that happy at Hoodoo anyway. I see Hoodoo sort of like a big family. We aren’t all alike, but I do feel like we are in it together. So I will continue to write when I see some point in doing so. Measures 66 and 67 weren’t all that important to me, but the principle of what was behind them was very important to everyone even if they didn’t recognize it and I am going to expand on those principles now. Even before these Measures were introduced, I have increasingly come to the realization that a lot of unrecognized bigotry exists in this country and in places that I know well. Many of the schools in Eugene, my home town, promote themselves as bigotry free zones. That is just plain not true. What they really mean is that it is OK to be a different color especially since African-Americans are such a small minority that it doesn’t matter anyway. But I don’t think there is quite as much acceptance of Latin Americans as there is of some 14 year old who declares that he is gay. So if you are in a politically correct class you are a home town hero, but some of you who are different in an unpopular way, may be accepted, but just don’t push it. However, if you are not in a politically correct class at all watch out! There are several such classes, but the one that I am thinking about now is that of those who are rich. To many people someone who has more money than others deserves to be treated with disdain. So what if that same person risked it all to make a factory work and brought all sorts of jobs to town. When I was a kid, I lived in a fairly affluent suburb of Milwaukee. My parents did not have much and I suppose that by the standards of that suburb, I was probably even poor. Who had how much money wasn’t a factor to kids, but it was to the adults I came in contact with, many of whom were teachers. I am sorry that I am picking on teachers here, but you guys more than most are the ones that should know better and because of these measures you have been some of the ones responding poorly. I have had and continue to have a lot of respect for teachers as a class, but some individuals I have known have been drastically lacking. Many of you are heroes, but I certainly know some who take less than stellar stands. Like athletic standouts, you are looked up to by children and many adults as well. Your views are listened to and so what you have to say takes on a greater importance. I remember one kid whose father owned a plumbing supply company was teased unmercifully by the teachers for the money his family had. To this day at the age of 60 I believe he is still trying to live down the shame of coming from a rich family. Since I am a white Anglo American male, I don’t pick up on the prejudice that some people experience. In fact my first experience of prejudice personally was when I was refused service at a bar – restaurant in Harrisburg, because I had long hair and a beard in the early 70s. I am sure that someone who speaks Spanish picks up on the prejudice though and I am sure that in many places those with darker skin still see problems. The more financially successful I have become the more prejudice I have seen aimed at me or the more I pick up on things that others might just ignore. Lets face it, the idea most people have about those who are rich is first that they don’t deserve to be and secondly they must be greedy, Republicans (of course), and somewhat dishonest. As the commercial says “Isn’t it time that the rich started paying their fair share?” And no one sees a problem with that even though the rich pay almost all the taxes in this country or more specifically in this state? (except social security which isn’t really a tax). What if I said I was against some welfare item because “isn’t it time that the poor quite living off the rest of us, got off their lazy rear ends and went to work instead of sitting in front of the TV drinking beer all day?” I wonder what kind of outrage I would get if I used that in a commercial? Obviously that is an unfair bigoted slam. My father grew up in abject poverty and he was a greater man for it. His mother was a great lady who brought up her son without his father because my grandfather died when my father was 4 and that was at a time when there were no safely nets. Luckily these days it is politically incorrect to make fun of the poor so you won’t hear that type of comment around here, but comments made on that commercial about the rich shows that others are jealous, closed minded and bigoted. Instead of Bill Gates being held up as a hero for giving away so much of his money, what I more often hear is that he is so rich he should be giving away more. The really sad part of this though is that this bigotry is being fostered by the very people who should certainly know better, politicians, teachers, and other government workers. Please don’t get the idea that I am saying this is true of ALL of them, far from it. But every election time you hear this prejudice being used to motivate you into some sort of hatred and in the schools I see it in various ways. I once gave about 50 IBM computers and the needed software to use at a school. This was about 15 years ago and having computers in the school were still a novel idea. Some of the teachers in the advanced classes refused to use them (so ironically my oldest kids did not benefit from them) because it was the computer type used by business people. They wanted their students to use Apples. However, on the fair side of this, it was a principal of a nearby school who told me about this, not knowing for sure that I contributed the computers. She was equally outraged. So I don’t like to write about political things for the most part, but I do like to stand up for things that I see are wrong. Sure whats going on in Haiti is far more important and true the rich can take care of themselves, they hardly need some guy who really isn’t your idea of someone who is rich anyway standing up for them. However, I do qualify because the state has labeled me that way by telling us all that only the rich will feel the effects of this tax, and I suppose really financially rich people won’t comment because they don’t want to become a verbal target. Finally though, I always have believed that the real rich are simply those who spend less than they make rather than those who are in the brackets that pay a lot of tax (but not enough apparently). My dad taught me how to be rich when he taught me to live within my means and he taught me to appreciate that position by teaching me that basically we are all in this together regardless of the color of our skin, the language of our forefathers, the religion we profess or our financial means. I have also learned that a bigot is a bigot regardless of political correctness. This issue has basically been played out, so my next Chuck’s Page is going to be about when is the right time to increase taxes. That one is coming soon.
When you come up make sure you check out our new sign. Thank you Forest Service for helping us make this happen. See you on the slopes,
|
|
