The BulleTin • Friday, april 16, 2021 A5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Almost dead last
is not a great place
for Oregon to be
O
regon’s corporate activity tax can be a fiscal bonanza
for schools. It’s lots of money. The most recent projected
gross revenues from the tax are $1.64 billion for the
2019-21 period and $2.29 billion for 2021-23.
Can you dream up ways to spend
those billions to help students learn?
Anybody can.
Is there a cost? What if we told
you Oregon was now ranked almost
dead last — we are 49th — in the
country in corporate taxes.
Approval of the corporate activ-
ity tax has been a bragging point for
legislators. They brought home the
bacon for schools. State Rep. Jason
Kropf, D-Bend, used former state
Rep. Cheri Helt’s vote against the
tax in his campaign against her. He
said she ”voted against funding for
Bend-La Pine Schools.”
When you bring home the bacon,
of course, you take the bacon from
somebody. In the case of this tax, it
takes the bacon from corporations.
The tax applies to taxable Oregon
commercial activity in excess of $1
million. To quote the state, the tax
is computed as $250 plus 0.57% of
taxable Oregon commercial activity
of more than $1 million. Only tax-
payers with more than $1 million of
taxable Oregon commercial activity
must pay.
Now that doesn’t sound all that
terrible, right? Except, well, $1 mil-
lion may sound like a lot of money.
But you don’t have to be an Intel to
bring in $1 million in revenue. For
instance, you don’t have to sell a lot
of new cars to hit $1 million. And
the tax only lets businesses count a
fraction of their expenses. So a busi-
ness could actually be failing and
still have to pay the tax. Now that is
terrible.
If that doesn’t get your attention,
how about tax pyramiding? That’s
when a tax applies to multiple layers
of a product’s life cycle. Think about
cross-laminated timber or blueber-
ries. They both can go through sev-
eral stages in the production process
and be sold on to the next business
at the next stage. At each stage, if the
product stays in Oregon, the manu-
facturer could be paying the tax —
making it a tax on a tax.
Many people still would say Or-
egon legislators were right to pass
the tax. Schools need the money.
Business needs to pay its share! OK,
three more things to think about.
First, if schools need the money,
why should only businesses pay the
increased taxes? Shouldn’t all Orego-
nians be chipping in?
Second, what about the percep-
tion of businesses who do business
in Oregon or who might think about
coming to Oregon? Some may like
the tax because it shows the state’s
commitment to education. Oth-
ers may wonder what else might
be coming if Oregon legislators are
willing to pass a pyramiding tax that
also may tax businesses even if they
are losing money.
And last, look at where the Tax
Foundation puts Oregon’s corporate
tax rank. We are 49th. That’s the sec-
ond worst in the country. Yes that’s
one ranking by one organization.
And in so many other ways, Oregon
is a great place to do business and
live. But for business owners and
their number crunchers it’s a clear
signal Oregon may not be the best
place to do business.
Should Oregon reverse law
on cold, allergy medicine?
M
ethamphetamine spread
like crazy in the late 1990s
and early 2000s with peo-
ple cooking up the drug in home
labs. One part of the recipe: pseudo-
ephedrine. You could go down to the
drugstore, buy up a bunch of cold or
allergy medication and with other
ingredients and a dose of stupidity
start brewing.
Legislators in Oregon put the sale
of drugs with pseudoephedrine be-
hind the counter. They required a
prescription. Home cooking of meth
became more difficult.
It also made it more difficult and
more expensive for some patients to
get relief.
Well, illegal drug makers found
other ways to make meth. Cold and
allergy sufferers still face more hassle
and cost to get what can be for some
more effective relief. Oregon is now
the only state “that requires a pre-
scription to purchase common cold
and allergy medicines containing
pseudoephedrine, which are avail-
able over-the-counter in every other
state, “ according to Sam Barber
of the Oregon Academy of Family
Physicians.
House Bill 2648 would sort of
reverse the law. It would limit the
purchase of such products to people
over 18 and would require people
to show a photo ID. No prescription
required. State Sen. Tim Knopp,
R-Bend, and state Rep. Jack Zika,
R-Redmond, back the bill. Should it
become law?
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Unions want laws that work for unions
BY BEN STRAKA
A
s organized labor continues its
push for the deceptively named
Protect the Right to Organize
(PRO) Act on the national stage, let’s
not forget that union leaders in Or-
egon have, time and again, lobbied
lawmakers in Salem for their own set
of rules designed for essentially the
same reason — to tilt the playing field
entirely in their own favor and away
from workers.
They’ve done it successfully for
years, turning Oregon’s collective bar-
gaining laws for government workers
into some of the most lopsided in the
country.
But union bosses always want more.
The latest damning example is
House Bill 3029, sponsored by a trio
of House Democrats at the request of
Oregon AFSCME, one of the state’s
most powerful government unions.
The seemingly innocuous mea-
sure would have allowed union “card
check” campaigns — a type of expe-
dited union drive in which organizers
collect signed authorizations from
workers — to be completed electroni-
cally rather than using paper copies.
It sounds entirely reasonable.
After all, many of us regularly
bank online, shop online and sign le-
gal documents electronically. There’s
nothing necessarily wrong with tran-
sitioning Oregon’s labor laws into the
21st century.
Except what AFSCME leaders re-
ally wanted in HB 3029 was to orga-
nize unions using modern technology
but also, to deny those same capabili-
ties to any dissatisfied workers seeking
to challenge them.
In fact, AFSCME leaders wanted
this unfair advantage so badly that
they outright lied to lawmakers about
it.
GUEST COLUMN
During the bill’s
first committee
hearing, AFSCME
Associate Director
Joe Baessler claimed
it was an innocent
measure designed
Straka
to bring Oregon law
“in line” with exist-
ing federal regula-
tions for private-sector unions.
What he conspicuously neglected
to mention was that while federal reg-
ulations do allow for electronic signa-
tures in union campaigns, they allow
them for all types of campaigns, in-
cluding workers’ attempts to change
or remove their union.
My organization notified commit-
tee members of the falsehood, and
lawmakers quickly introduced an
amendment to fix the bill.
Specifically, the amendment would
have extended the same electronic
capabilities described in HB 3029 to
all types of union-related campaigns
equally.
Problem solved. AFSCME leaders
would still get what they supposedly
“wanted,” and the amended bill would
accomplish precisely what they had
told lawmakers their goal was in the
first place.
Apparently not. As it turns out,
union leadership isn’t too pleased with
the idea of a level playing field.
When asked in the next commit-
tee hearing about why AFSCME’s
original version of HB 3029 sought
to give union organizers the benefits
of modern technology while deny-
ing it to others, Baessler was forced to
acknowledge the truth about the bill
and gave a shockingly honest com-
ment about AFSCME’s disregard for
dissenting workers’ rights, saying, “We
didn’t think (campaigns to change or
remove a union) was a priority… and
we still don’t.”
Say again? AFSCME specifically
crafted a bill to allow union propo-
nents to organize with the click of a
button while denying similar capabil-
ities to union dissenters, all because it
didn’t think they were a “priority”?
That’s kind of like saying workers
should be able to sign up for union
membership online but should have
to send a physical letter via horse-
drawn carriage at high noon on the
equinox during an odd-numbered
year while standing on one foot
should they ever wish to resign be-
cause they’re not a “priority.”
But that would be ridiculous. Oh
wait… AFSCME does that, too.
Are such things really because
union leaders believe nonmembers
and those who don’t agree with the
union’s one-size-fits-all model aren’t
a priority? Or is it because, in reality,
stifling any dissent is their priority?
Try as they might, union bosses
aren’t fooling anybody. Make no mis-
take, they want laws that work only
for themselves and their supporters,
not all workers.
HB 3029 is the latest example of
that. The bill died in committee soon
after the amendment was proposed,
presumably because — when given
the choice — AFSCME doesn’t feel
that online organizing is enough of a
“priority” if it means workers could
potentially dispose of their unions on-
line, too.
One can’t help but wonder what
they’re worried about.
e e
Ben Straka is a policy analyst for the Freedom
Foundation, a national nonprofit specializing in
fighting government union abuses.
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The media knows much less than it thinks
BY JENNIFER RUBIN
The Washington Post
T
he Dunning-Kruger effect is a
form of cognitive bias in which
we humans tend to believe we
know far more than we think. The
least-informed people are often the
most certain because, as Cornell Uni-
versity psychologists David Dunning
and Justin Kruger put it, “those with
limited knowledge in a domain suf-
fer a dual burden: Not only do they
reach mistaken conclusions and make
regrettable errors, but their incom-
petence robs them of the ability to
realize it.” Put differently: You do not
know what you do not know.
The current media environment
aggravates this dangerous tendency
because media figures are supposed
to have emphatic takes on everything
immediately. Disastrous! Brilliant!
Those are the responses that get clicks
and eyeballs. It is a whole lot less sexy
to say “We actually don’t have enough
information to tell,” or even “It’s a
close call.”
This plays out all the time in break-
ing-news situations, most recently
with the pause in the distribution
of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
People with zero expertise in public
health, immunology or any other rel-
evant body of knowledge pounced.
“Dr. Fauci, the CDC and the FDA are
all wrong!” Well maybe they are, but
novices do not have most of the infor-
mation needed to make an informed
opinion.
Let’s consider all the things pun-
dits did not know as the news broke.
Many decided that the Johnson &
Johnson pause would aggravate vac-
cine hesitancy and therefore do more
harm than good. But do they know:
Which people are vaccine hesitant
and why?
If, for example, the people at is-
sue are illogical MAGA types who
have adamant biases against the vac-
cine, the Johnson & Johnson news
will likely have zero effect. And sure
enough, a large contingency of those
who won’t get vaccinated fall into this
category. A recent poll shows that
43% of Republicans are determined
not to get a shot. A steady segment
of the population remains staunchly
anti-vaccine. Perhaps some people
are impervious to logic. (This doesn’t
mean we give up on them. As the ad-
ministration figured out, the way to
convince people is not through the
media, but through conversation with
people they know and trust.)
Might the pause actually increase
confidence?
That is what Anthony S. Fauci, di-
rector of the National Institute of Al-
lergy and Infectious Diseases, argues.
An initial poll suggests he is right.
(This might, in part, be because of the
nonstop appearances Fauci made on
Tuesday to explain the pause.)
Does new information change
minds on vaccines, or does it confirm
people’s predispositions?
Confirmation bias is now a well-
known phenomenon. (Also watch
out for the “illusion of causality,”
when people assume there is a causal
connection between two unrelated
events.)
Despite a year of nonstop informa-
tion about the necessity of wearing
masks, for example, many people still
believe mask-wearing is some kind
of ruse. Media types often expect the
public to follow the same logical pro-
gression they do. When it doesn’t,
it confounds them — over and over
again.
Do we know all the reasons for the
pause?
It’s possible the primary reason was
to inform physicians that the normal
treatment for blood clots, a blood
thinner called heparin, may make a
patient’s reaction worse or kill them.
So where does this leave us?
When news of this sort breaks —
especially when it involves topics
about which political pundits have
no prior experience — several things
should happen. Experts in the field,
not political reporters, should step
forward to provide insight. Reporters
should be asking the right questions,
not pontificating based on incomplete
data.
They should be wary of their own
confirmation bias and other cogni-
tive mishaps. They should inform
the public as to how the decision was
made and why.
In short, the media needs to know
what it does and does not know be-
fore it grades government officials
on their performance. Chances are,
Fauci, the world-renowned expert in
immunology, has better judgment
about the ethical and scientific issues
surrounding a pandemic.
e e
Jennifer Rubin writes opinion
for The Washington Post.