Op-Ed: Public Legal-Oath Can Settle Norquist Question Impacts

Thirty-Year Cabal May Have Shaped Oregon Education and Services.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM) - Ever since Far Right billionaires set out to install a new political climate protecting their selfish interests during the Reagan era, there`s been an extremely well-funded cabal shaping and manipulating social services in our democracy for their own interests -- across the entire nation.

One of the extremely active areas of malign influence may well have been widely operated in Oregon -- driven by `campaign contributions" either awarded or withheld.

Experienced observers cite consequences of continuing failures for funding education from K-12 through graduate school as a prime example of the damage, long blamed only on routine political disagreement.

Another long-continued situation is the essential slow-starvation of social services while corpulent corporate profits remain unburdened -- and at a notoriously low rate, widely reported as `close to the bottom."

A third especially harrowing dilemma is growing dependence of many low-income Oregonians on free-food boxes from intermittent and strained sources.

The added dependence on public monies to fund what health care is still available for many, including far too many children --the hospital emergency room-- adds heavy dollar-demanding loads beyond practical necessities.

Dollar-draining cost thus `carried over" to general tax burdens. That has been a manipulative tool in distorted reporting, leading to generalized strong aversion against any and all tax-rises, here and nationally.

All these --found in other states, too-- are sure indications of something far too seriously wrong to occur only and simply by political ploy; without plans and programs to plunder both state-and-national level resources by favoring special interests; often accomplished via many tax loopholes and give-aways; with Oregon`s corporate-tax `kicker" as Exhibit One.

That`s the same `kicker" under close examination for rapid diversion to education and other threatening deficits in the special Legislative session starting Thursday in Salem.

Numerous clearly unmistakable other indications --far too many for any one Op Ed-- are also long-observed and recorded, in a whole set of national-magazine investigative reports over the years. (Documentation on every point herein available on request.)

Newly-uncovered evidence of massive political-party machinations, now under detailed review in Oregon media, throw threatening shadows over these painful situations in Oregon, reflected nationally.

In latter years, with success of effort guaranteed by amounts spent annually as high as $100 million; applied via every possible communications channel including specially-established `foundations" and purchased-publishers; the main rally-point has been a distorting and perverting political promise exacted under very extreme party pressures:

The Norquist PLEDGE.

Norquist Himself boasts that ten governors and hundreds of state representatives committed to his PLEDGE --or the equivalent promoted with plentiful economic promises nationwide. That PLEDGE commits elected officials to democratic `political suicide."

You either submit to direction from party chieftains or you suffer relentless and painful political stomach-slashing.

You cut out your conscience and the interests of your constituents NOW; OR see your own career and elective continuance very rapidly slashed-away by lost `campaign contributions" made essential by corporate- controlled `free press".

The politically-perverse direction demanded and exacted is simple: `You will never, under any circumstances, for any program or purpose, permit or promote a TAX RISE !!"

Did that occur in your own state?

How can you reach reasonable, realistic democratic issue decisions under such duress?

Shouldn`t we make every effort to find out ?

Why NOT simply ASK for a definitive and legally-supported answer ?

Let`s seek a legal oath, under penalty for perjury, taken in public, by every Legislator committed to the Republican cult, as part of their public service during this special session.

If that sounds like an old-fashioned Maine town-meeting, that is precisely `as intended", learned from early press experience.

What else could be any more honestly democratic ??