If you are in Michigan and have foreclosed on your house, then you better have a new address ready to provide at the polls.

Complaints about the coverage of political campaigns are rife this time of year. Many pundits decry the lack of serious discussion of the important issues facing the nation, though they quickly return to speculating about whether a candidate’s latest attack ad will hurt his or her opponent. What never gets discussed is why reporting is so focused on trivia and attack.

The reason is that such reporting is profitable. All of the media covering the current election have one desire in common: they want a large audience. There is a collective benefit to the political media to have controversy because controversy and a close election result in a bigger audience.
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No, I’m sad to say that it isn’t, “Ask not what you can do for your country…” In fact, for my money, the best political quote of all time is from Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger, “I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I offended people and to those people that I offended, I want to say that I am deeply sorry and I apologize.” He made this statement in response to complaints from women that had been in movies with him earlier in his career that he had groped them.
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I know that the Bus doesn’t usually comment on National Politics, but I after all of the coverage I have been getting for my candidacy for President, I have to let LaneBus.org followers in on this amazing effort of grass roots campaigning! If you are still undecided on election day, Vote McNeeley!

Finally! Something to be excited about! Perhaps the best reason not to simply vote “no” on all the measures is former Secretary of State Phil Keisling’s Measure 65, the “open primary” initiative. It would revamp Oregon’s elections to reduce the role of political parties in the process. Put simply, for most partisan elections, Measure 65 would allow candidates to register as a member of a political party and allow political parties to endorse a candidate or candidates as they saw fit. The two candidates receiving the most votes in the primary would go on to the general election. Of the two, the candidate receiving the most votes in the general election would win the election. The measure has only a nominal financial cost.
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Finally, the last of the conservative measures! Measure 64 shows that Bill Sizemore wants revenge on the unions that successfully identified him as a racketeer. Again using crowd-pleasing language, it purports to prohibit using a “public resource” for a “political purpose” and levies double damages for doing so. Now, who could oppose such a benign statement of government neutrality?
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Measure 62, backed by long-time Republican politician Kevin Mannix, seeks to amend the Oregon Constitution to allocate 15% of lottery funds to public safety funding. Currently, lottery funds go 44% to parks, bond payments and educational reserve funds, while 56% goes to a variety of programs, including K-12 education and economic development. Absent new revenue for these programs, they would receive a reduction in the amount of funds they receive.
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Sizemore-sponsored Measure 60 would eliminate seniority as a consideration for pay raises and retention for teachers. The Measure would not affect current labor agreements, but would apply to all future agreements. Instead, pay raises and retention during layoffs would be based on an undefined criteria called “classroom performance” and by their training in the field they teach.
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Yet another Sizemore attempt to make the world safe for the rich and reduce the size of State government to a point at which it could be drowned in a bathtub, Measure 59 would eliminate the cap on the deduction of federal taxes from state income taxes. Let’s say you’re a single person who is lucky enough to make $100,000 per year. You’d expect to pay in the 28% tax bracket for federal taxes and in the 9% tax bracket for your state taxes. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have $15,000 in federal tax liabilities. You’re actually then only being taxed on $94,500 for your state taxes, since the first $5,500 of federal taxes is deductible on your state taxes. If Measure 59 passes, you would only pay state taxes on $85,000 of your income.
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Measure 58, another initiative petition from Sizemore et al proposing a statutory change to Oregon law, would prohibit the public schools from teaching non-English-speaking students in a language other than English for more than two years for high school students, a year and half for middle school students, or one year for elementary school students. It provides that English-speaking students may study a foreign language for longer than two years. The explanatory statement concedes that the measure will have to be harmonized with federal law. The State estimates financial costs of $203 million to $253 million annually to local school systems.
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