Pggf 2. THE G 7FTTE-TIMFS, Heppner, OR, Thursday, Sept. 9. I9t
Brother, sister win
THE
GAZETTE-TIME
Editorial & Viewpoint
A brother sister team from Lexington
showed the rest of the state how to show
Angus cattle last week during the FFA show
at the Oregon State Fair In Salem.
Ken and Julie Grieb showed a total of nine
head of Angus in the FFA beef show,
competing as members of the Heppner FFA
Chapter.
Their honors included Grand Champion
Bull, first place Get-of-SIre, Early Junior
Yearling Heifer and senior Heifer calf.
In the livestock herdsmanship contest, Ken
was fifth and Julie tenth overall In a field of 79
exhibitors.
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It's here.
The grid iron gladiators don armor, helmets and spiked shoes. The face off, eleven on a team,
ready to do battle.
Fall brings school and school brings football, right in the middle of baseball season and the talk
of basketball.
Heppner takes on Condon's Blue Devils here Friday night and the Mustangs are looking for your
moral support through attendance.
The Mustangs are big and brawny. They need to pick up a few more tips on finesse and iron out a
few wrinkles. They have a new coach, John Sporseen.
The Mustangs play in one of the toughest high school leagues in the state. They are young and
vulnerable but when they get on that field, not a one will lay down and say die.
The fans won't either, we hope.
The Mustangs need your support. A pat on the back, a loud war cry, just being there to watch is
aesthetic beauty to a kid climbing up off a heap of bodies.
. That's tomorrow night, Friday at 8 p.m. at the fairgrounds. Bundle up and enjoy our town. Small
towns are judged on their high school sports and the people who make them work.
That's you. Be there.
wcp
Salem Scene
As the November General Election nears, campaign
activity increases and, as if on cue, the subject of taxation
achieves its usual prominence.
Pre-election tax talk usually involves elimination of
so-called loopholes or tax havens terms which candidates
use to indicate someone undeserving is getting off easy and
the rest of the poor taxpaying public is forced to bear a
disproportionate burden.
There is talk of reform, equity, regressivity and
progressivity. Actual meaning of the terms is not always
understood by taxpaying audiences. Nevertheless, the
subject is valid because nearly everyone pays taxes and
hardly anyone enjoys it.
The biggest reason hardly anyone enjoys paying taxes
most likely is because they don't think they're getting their
money's worth. But that's a different ballgame less likely
dealt with during campaign speeches unless in response to
a questioning audience.
Taxation itself seldom is a static procedure and Oregon
lawmakers find themselves modifying the system to some
extent every biennial legislative session sometimes even in
between those regular meetings of the Assembly.
Taxation in earlier times was utilized to exact retribution
from conquered subjects, to pay for protection of loyal
subjects from would be interlopers or a combination of
both.
Some of today's payers of government taxes and fees
might argue the system has changed little from this
medieval description. Nonetheless, the current approach
tells us government extracts taxes from those who have
something to tax in order to provide services not available
elsewhere, regulation in order to maintain a workable
society and protection from the unscrupulous including
ourselves.
High on the list of goals sought by almost any proponent of
a tax system is equity fairness for the taxpayers involved.
'Proposals usually seek to lighten the tax burden for those
who have relatively little to tax and shift more of the load to
those presumably more capable of sharing.
Burden often is expressed as a percentage of income. When
a system is successful in portioning the weight of the tax load
so that those who have the least pay the least and those who
have more pay more, a degree of progressivity is achieved.
Such a system is called a progressive tax system, meaning
taxes are being extracted on an ability-to-pay basis. A
regressive system generally means those considered best
able to pay aren't paying their fair share.
Measuring progressivityi and burden are tricky for
laymen and often equally difficult for authorities in the
field. An example might be the story by a syndicated writer
that appeared in a Portland daily newspaper recently
lauding the progressivity of taxes in the State of Wisconsin. It
barkened 0 years back to the LaFollette Era during which
the writer referred to Wisconsin as a laboratory of
democracy to which the whole nation might look. It detailed
tax reform adopted during the 1970s that purports to be
reducing taxpayer burden generally and shifting relative
weight of the lax load from taxes on property to taxes on
income. As would be expected, the emerging system is said
to be taxing least those with less and taxing most those with
more.
Unfortunately, the writer's story doesn't agree with data
developed in a study by Stephen E. Lite, associate professor
at Western Kentucky university. It measured tax burdens of
hypothetical families living in the largest cities in each of the
contiguous states for the calendar year 1974.
That widely accepted study deals with family adjusted
gross incomes ranging from IS.Ooo to $50,000 and develops an
index of regressivity for each state on comparative basis.
Wisconsin's index is I 12, below the 48 state 162 average
index.
Hut It shows that state's tax burden ranking4 at or near the
tap In every income measuring category. It's third i
th Ij.ftO level, second highest at I7.S0Q, In the first place
pot for incomes of 110. WW. 117.300 and 123.000 and Second
highest among all stales at the lop fcio.ooo income level
For comparison purposes, the Lite study gives Oregon the
krneM regressivity index a meager 0 62 and reveals it is the
w-Jy state with a truly pn-greive system exacting steadily
mounting tribute from each succeeding Income level.
Among the contiguous states, Oregon's family las burden
is 47th al the xj.ooo adjusted grow Income level. J7lh at
t7..VJ0. ZAh at IIO.). Jtnh at 117.500. !2th si 23,000 "d Kh at
tl.C)
S) while Wisconsin may appear progremive to one writer.
Orrgun by comparison appears a more likely candidal for
the lMratory of democracy title.
The fact brtfh the writer's Wisconsin article and reul( of
The
Heppner
Gazette
Times
the Lile study have been published here simultaneously
during the period office-seeking lawmakers are voicing
reform proposals should give Oregon campaign audiences
reason to pause and reflect.
Taxation certainly isn't static. And the fact Oregon may
now have the most progressive system doesn't mean it can't
be improved. But the laboratory of democracy is a complex
place and its scientists aren't necessarily experts in every
field.
While taxpayers at every level are concerned about their
particular burden, they are at least equally concerned about
getting their money's worth. Perhaps lawmaking scientists
would win more votes by taking this problem to the lab than
reforming a system already earning the highest marks in the
land.
Silent Majority
A THE SILENT MAJORITY SPEAKS OUT... ON
' MEXICO TURNING RED
By Jack Lenhardt
Kissinger, Part II will be postponed to next week.
Developments in Mexico deserve attention at the moment
especially in view of the major news media withholding
information on this subject. The following letter was signed
by 76 U.S. Congressmen and inserted into the Congressional
Record on August 10.
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: On May S, 33 members of
Congress expressed to you their concern over the trend of
political developments in Mexico, asking whether the
Secretary of State was, in fact, keeping you adequately
informed. A response to this letter has been received, but
there still appears to be substantial points of disagreement.
Since April 14, at least 35 excerpts from the Mexican press
have been inserted in the Congressional Record in a sincere
effort to illustrate points of concern, and to provide the
documentation which critics invariably demand and
Invariably ignore.
It would be interesting to learn what favorable
interpretation can be placed upon the following:
(1) The amnesty recently provided for hundreds of Soviet
agents who provided leadership for the bloody events of 1968,
when hundreds of Mexicans were killed in summer-long
disturbances.
(2) The placement of at least a thousand non-Mexican
communists and radicals in key government and journalistic
positions in Mexico.
(3) The Mexican government's drive to increase political,
economic, and "cultural" ties with every communist nation
on earth.
(4) The dismissal, by President Echeverria, of waves of
terrorist attacks as mere "diversion" and "provocations"
which are not the fault of self-proclaimed leftist
revolutionaries.
(5) The recent changes in the Mexican constitution to cut
away the legal basis of private property.
(6) The recent Introduction of Castroite Textbooks, for
compulsory use in all Mexican schools.
(7 The persistent employment of communist, rhetoric,
anti-American demogoguery, and calls for domestic class
warfare from the highest Mexican officials.
(I) Government inaction In the face of thousands of land
seizures taking place all across Mexico, often by armed
gangs under non-Mexican leadership.
(() Open declarations that collectivization of the
countryside la the government's goal, combined with heavy
government pressure on the rural population to join
collectives.
Surely wt are not expected to overlook the lesson of Cuba,
when all our official "experts" and media pundits assured us
thai Fidel Castro had no Intention of Imposing communism
upon the Cuban people. As a rsi, the Cufcana vera
enslaved, except for one Cuban In ten who escaped to the
United States, and a Soviet base has been Implanted 90 miles
from Florida.
The present one party government of Mexico Is following a
similar path. For moral and humanitarian reasons alone, we
should prefer not to see 63 million Mexicans forced lo choose
between slavery and exile. And for overwhelmingly
Important strategic reasons, we should prefer not to see what
some Mexican writers can already visualize cactus
curtain along the Rio Grande
For all these reasons and more, wt ask your assurance thai
the developing situation In Mexico is receiving the deep
attention whkh it merits.
The Silent Majority, P.O. Bos 128. Woodburn, OR. 17071.,
Srpt. I, 1976.
'I
V
Franciscan's
Greatest Sale!
20 Off on Every Rece!
Cabaret Crystal, too!
September 19-OctoberZ1976
-J
Hours 8 to 6
fuM dm
Phone 676-9158
HEPPNER OREGON
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Fall Festival
Dedication of Monument at
Old Fairview
School Site
2:00 p.m. Sept. 11
Barbecue Dinner
(Meat cooked by Jim Rogers)
Served From 5:00 to 7:00
at the
lone School Cafeteria
Adults Children
'3.00
fx J
Guest Speaker
Chancellor
Roy Lie ua 11 en
under 12
'1.50
Old Sigsbee Movies Will Be Shown
After Dinner
Sponsored by
MORROW COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
mi MES1ACI irOXIOXZD IT TOtn BOMI OWHCO SANf AS a COMKUmTT IXTOC1
DANK OF
JjElasterti Oreqon
HErrirtft ionc abukotoh
MXM1H. rKDXIAL DEPOSIT INIUXANCI COSfOllATIO
"THE
IIFTFNETt
GAZETTE-TIMES
The offirlsl ewpper ef the
City of llrppner and the ( ounly
ef Mocrow.
(J.M.Itrrd. I'ubli.hrr
Oolorrt Reed. Ce-publUher
Hil (M'hinney. Kdllor
PublUhrd every Thursday and entered as a
second rlsn mater at the pot! office al llrppner,
Oregon, under Ike art of March 3, 1X71. Kecond clatt
po(Kf pld al llrppner, Oregon.