Good morning folks. It is Thursday and I am back on the train. I just decided that I did not want to drive today so I pulled into Wilsonville and here I am. I enjoy the driving but I was not feeling it today.
Pretty big things going on in my corner of the world. The Presidents state of the union address was last night. I didn't think that he said anything extreme or really thought provoking. If anything I think he has chickened out on his ideas of change and has begun to act just like any other politician and that is sad to me. But, I guess I should have realized that when he asked Joe Biden to be his VP. If anything said "Hey, I am going to say change but really it will be the same old, same old." The presence of Biden should have clued me in. Now granted I did not want the kind of change that McCain was pushing with Palin but I wanted something more then we have gotten from Mr Obama. I hope the next two years may allow for some of that.
In Oregon, the fallout from Measures 66 & 67 is building. It really felt like someone had died yesterday. Because everywhere I turned on Facebook there was someone expressing sadness at the bills passing. Now I realize that there were some pretty heated things being sad and statistics being thrown back and forth about job loss and such. But, the sad reality is that it really did not matter if these bills passed or not. Because in Oregon right now there would be, will be job loss. I think the biggest thing that the bills did was to decided from where that job loss was going to happen either the public or the private sector. The other big thing these bills did was to highlight the differences in what the people of Oregon think is good politics and isn't. When I looked at the county listings of the vote outcome it was pretty obvious that along the I-5 corridor and through the Willamette Valley these counties voted yes. But east of them and south it was a no vote. What this means is that the population centers of the state are controlling the future of the state. While I realize that this is frustrating for people I think that is Democracy and when the populace has a vote well sometimes you have to eat a crap sandwich.
I have also heard a few people mention, one on the radio, that they wonder about voter fraud. I hope that isn't the case. I like the vote by mail system in Oregon and I do not want it to change. I do not think there was voter fraud and until I hear actual evidence of such a thing I am going to continue thinking it was a fair vote that played out along party and population lines.
All of that being said. I think Oregon will get through this. The wheel keeps turning and life moves forward. Big business will stay and return to Oregon. We will get out of this recession and the jobs will come. I am confident of that. I do not think our state is going to go the route of California or Arizona. So hang in there Oregonians there is always sunshine after the rain but we all know that sometimes the rain lasts for several years.
2 comments:
Lance, failing to pass the ballot measures would mean the state would struggle to find cuts and pay for what they do.
Passing it means businesses have to cut spending and corners, and that means less hiring and even some firing. That means bad news for the entire state. I wouldn't be surprised to see unemployment rise by 2% this quarter in Oregon.
I think that as I said, job loss was coming and it didn't matter one way or another if the bill passed or not. Oregon is in a bad situation budget wise and right now nothing is going to fix it.
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