If there was ever a time for Oregon schools to teach about the holocaust, the time is now.
In a December 2023 YouGov/Economist poll, 20% of young American respondents aged 18-29 said the Holocaust is a myth. Another 30% said they don’t know if it’s a myth. And the proportion of respondents who said they believe the Holocaust is a myth was similar across all levels of education.
And now, denial of the well-documented Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel that left about 1,200 people dead is spreading, despite truly massive real-time documentation of the attacks.
On social media, an expanding group of denialists link Israel itself to the attack, claiming it was a “false flag” event spurred by Israel to cast blame on Hamas. And as the Washington Post has reported, the denialism is “bleeding into the real world.”
“Demonstrators have shouted the claim at anti-Israel protests and have used it to justify removing posters of hostages in cities like London and Chicago,” the Washington Post reported. “At a November city council meeting in Oakland, Calif., multiple residents disputed the veracity of the attack.”
According to the Post, “researchers are warning that Oct. 7 conspiracy theories may follow a similar trajectory to Holocaust denial, which was waning before social media platforms propelled a resurgence a decade ago.”
Fortunately, Oregon is ahead on educating its public school students on the Holocaust.
Claire Sarnowski, when she was a freshman at Lake Oswego’s Lakeridge High School, came up with the idea of mandating Holocaust instruction at Oregon’s public schools after hearing a Holocaust survivor, Alter Wiener, tell his story. Sarnowski approached state Sen. Rob Wagner, who agreed to introduce a bill, SB 664.
The bill passed unanimously in the Oregon House and Governor Brown signed it on June 4, 2019.
The bill required school districts across Oregon to provide instruction about the Holocaust and genocide in social studies classes, starting in the 2020-21 school year, to “enable students to evaluate the morality of the Holocaust, genocide and similar acts of mass violence and to reflect on the causes of related historical events.”
.As so often happens with legislation, the true believers expanded on Sarnowski’s vision and declared that the instruction must also address: the immorality of mass violence; respect for cultural diversity; the obligation to combat wrongdoing through resistance, including protest, and; the value of restorative justice. Like anti-terrorism laws, it was a classic example of mission creep.
But it was at least a start. And now it’s needed more than ever.
The question, of course, is whether schools are aggressively following the law’s mandates and whether students are absorbing the lessons. The State has also mandated drug prevention education in Oregon’s public schools, for example, but an investigative series from the Lund Report, the University of Oregon’s Journalism Project and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) has revealed that what students are being taught varies widely and that many school districts don’t use programs backed by evidence that they are effective at delaying or preventing substance abuse.
And then there’s the question of whether students are acting on what they are learning about the Holocaust.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said recently in a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sermon at Central Synagogue NYC that when he was asked why he spoke out so frequently and forcefully about anti-Semitism, his answer was, “The question is not why have I chosen to be outspoken. The question is why have others chosen to be silent amidst the deadliest days for Jews since the Holocaust?”
Gov. Kotek has apparently decided not to immediately pursue multiple money-raising proposals put forward by her Housing Production Advisory Council to address the affordable housing crisis in Oregon. But you have to wonder, who are these people and what in God’s name were they thinking? How could they have been so oblivious, so tone-deaf to, the public mood?
Oregonians are in no mood for massive tax hikes, particularly to pay for more wasteful programs run by a parasitic government determined to hoover up hard-earned private income .
The proposals in the Council’s ill-advised 20-page draft report, HPAC Policy Recommendations, all of which would have continued until sunsetting in 2032, include:
Increase all personal income tax brackets by ½ percentage point
Establish a special $1 per $1,000 real property tax assessment outside of Measure 5.
Implement a 0.5% retail sales tax
Implement a 0.5% payroll tax
Double the current state fuel tax
Targeted Measure 50 Reform:
Increase annual Maximum Assessed Value change from 3% to 5%.
Authorize voters to increase the permanent levy of their local jurisdiction.
Exempt cities and counties from compression.
Adopt Land Value Tax
Eliminate Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolish income tax deduction for interest paid on second homes).
Enact temporary property tax exemption for new housing at 120% AMI or below.
Reduce or Eliminate Tax Expenditures (i.e., tax exemptions) not related to housing.
Total projected ANNUAL new revenue from just the first five proposals would be $2.4 billion. If enacted in 2024, and maintained until sunsetting in 2032, they would would fill state coffers by grabbing almost an astonishing additional $27 billion from taxpayers. Measure 50 reform surely would grab millions more.
Who came up with this stuff?
The report notes that four lawmakers sat as members on Kotek’s Council:
I can understand the two liberal Democrats, given their party’s predilection for government spending.
Jama represents Oregon’s 24th Senate District, which includes parts of Multnomah and Clackamas Counties. He co-founded the Center for Intercultural Organizing, now Unite Oregon, and served as the director until 2021. He was appointed unanimously by the Clackamas and Multnomah County Boards of Commissioners to replace Shemia Fagan after she was elected Secretary of State. He won election by 58.7% in 2022.
Dexter represents Oregon’s 33rd House District, which covers the Northwest District and Northwest Heights of Portland, plus Cedar Mill, Oak Hills and most of Bethany. She was appointed in June 2020 after the death of Democrat Mitch Greenlick. She won election by 84.8% in 2022.
It’s harder to understand why Republicans Dick Anderson of Lincoln City and Vikki Breese-Iverson of Prineville signed on to the Advisory Council’s massive tax proposals, unless you accept the proposition that the two parties are actually a duopoly focused on expanding government through mock competition..
Anderson squeaked into office after the incumbent Democrat decided not to run for re–election. He defeated Democrat Melissa Cribbins in the 2020 general election by just 49.4% to 46.5%.
Breese-Iverson, who formerly served as minority leader of the Oregon House, is an even more surprising advocate of higher taxes. Her Prineville home is in conservative Sen. Lynn Findley’s district. He’s one of one of six Republican senators who might be unable to run for reelection in 2024 because of his 2023 walkout. If he doesn’t run, Breese-Iverson may run in his place.
Then there are all the gubernatorial appointees to the Council.[1] With broad experience in affordable housing, finance and architecture, and most with a long Oregon presence, you’d think they would be sensitive to the public mood. They weren’t.
The reality is that the optimism and liberal tolerance so long present in Oregon has been degrading for quite a while.
A January 2022 statewide survey conducted by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center found Oregonians questioning government spending, with half of respondents saying more than 44 cents of every dollar in state spending is wasted.
“We spent way too much money on programs without any evidence that those programs are SOLVING the problems they are meant to address,” said one male respondent aged 45-54in Multnomah County. “It seems that spending money is seen as a solution, but it isn’t. I want problems SOLVED andthen the program must end. The programs go on forever and accomplish little, if anything.”
Young adults (18-29)—a group likely to exhibit strong support for tax increases to fund social programs—reported the highest perceived waste in the state budget of any demographic group. The median response among young adults was that a whopping 56 cents per dollar of state spending are wasted.
Liberal patience has degraded most noticeably in the Portland Metro area, where about half of Oregon’s population resides.
In a May 2023 poll carried out by GS Strategy Group for People for Portland, 75% of Multnomah County voters said homelessness in the area was “an out-of-control disaster”.
More than half (55%) said “Portland has lost what made it a special place to live”. And even worse, 65% agreed that elected officials in the Portland area were listening to “a small group of insider political activists” on important issues, rather than the public at large.
The erosion of once reliable liberal tolerance for the homeless and community crime was also evident in the overwhelming support (67%) for compelling drug addiction and mental health treatment for people in crisis.
Similar shifts in public mood were evident in a December 2023 survey of Portland voters by DMH Research for the Portland Police Association. About two-thirds of respondents said the city was on “the wrong track” and more than half said they would leave if they could afford to. Almost 70 percent of those surveyed said the city was “losing what made it special” and only about 20% said the city’s best days lie ahead.
Against this backdrop, the members of the Housing Production Advisory Council were way off track in their revenue-raising proposals. Simply put, they clearly failed to “read the room” .
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Gubernatorial appointees to the Housing Production Advisory Council
Ernesto Fonseca is the CEO of Hacienda Community Development Corp., which provides affordable housing, homeownership support, economic advancement and educational opportunities.
Elissa Gertler, former executive director of the Northwest Oregon Housing Authority, is Clatsop County Housing Manager, leading the county’s efforts in developing more affordable housing.
Riley Hill is a longtime local contractor in Eastern Oregon and former Ontario mayor from 2019 to 2022.
Natalie Janney is Vice President at Multi/Tech Engineering, which designs subdivision and multi-family projects throughout Oregon.
Robert Justus was co-founder of housing company Home First. With its development partners, the company has built 1,425 units of affordable housing with a development cost of more than $381 million. Justus stepped away from the company at the end of 2023.
Joel Madsen is Executive Director at Mid-Columbia Housing Authority and Columbia Cascade Housing Corporation. Both work towards promoting and administering affordable housing in the Columbia River Gorge.
Ivory Justice was selected as Executive Director of Home Forward, Oregon’s largest provider of low-income housing, in January 2023. She previously worked as Chief Executive Officer for Columbia Housing and Cayce Housing in South Carolina.
Erica Mills is Chief Executive Officer at NeighborWorks Umpqua in Roseburg. The private non-profit works with residents in Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson and Josephine Counties on affordable housing development, education, training, and homeowner assistance as well as lending, loan servicing and other financial services.
Eric Olsen is the owner of Monmouth-based Olsen Design and Development, Inc., a design-build land development company focusing on small to midsize projects with emphasis on residential.
Gauri Rajbaidya is a principal at Portland-based SERA Architects.
Karen Rockwell has been Executive Director with the Housing Authority of Lincoln County since late 2022. She served previously as Executive Director of Benton Habitat for Humanity in Corvallis, a commissioner on the Linn Benton Housing Authority and as vice chair of the Corvallis Housing and Community Development Advisory Board.
Margaret Van Vliet is a Portland-based consultant focusing on strategy development, organizational improvement and project management. Her specialties are housing homelessness and wildfire recovery.
Justin Wood is a Portland developer and vice president of Fish Construction NW Inc.
Government just can’t seem to stop wanting more money.
In a strange twist, now there’s a move to make life less affordable for many Oregonians in order to promote affordable housing.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council has just submitted a 20-page draft report, HPAC Policy Recommendations, on ideas on how to address the affordable housing crisis. And, of course, the ideas include raising more money. The Taxpayer Association of Oregon revealed the report on Jan. 10, 2024.
Remember when voters passed Measure 50 in 1997? It introduced maximum assessed value (MAV), which acts as a “cap” on the growth of taxable (assessed) value for most property. MAV growth is limited to 3 percent per year. Combined with permanent tax rates, Measure 50 effectively limited tax increases, except under specific circumstances. Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing raising that to 5%.
Own a vacation property in Bend? Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolishing the income tax deduction for interest paid on second homes).
Drive a gas car? Kotek’s Housing Production Advisory Council is proposing doubling fuel taxes.
On section 7 (Page 16/17) it lists 5 suggestions to raise new revenue (as shown below):
Generate new, state-level revenue to fund critical local infrastructure. a. New revenue generation to be limited to duration of HPAC Timeline (i.e., sunset in 2032) and in support of the related work plan topics described below. Potential sources include:
i. Revenue Source and Annual Revenue Generated (Legislative Revenue Office, 2023, p. B7, FY 23-24 dollars).
Increase all personal income tax brackets by ½ percentage point. a. $699 Million
Establish Special $1 per $1,000 real property tax assessment outside of Measure 5. a. $504 Million
Implement 0.5% Retail Sales Tax. a. $501 Million
Implement 0.5% Payroll Tax. a. $620 Million
Double Fuel Tax. a. $686 Million
The report also proposes:
Reform Oregon’s tax system to encourage development of needed housing and provide adequate revenue for local governments to support housing production. a. Taxes are both a tool to raise revenue for government and to shape taxpayer behavior. Attaining the Governor’s desired housing production goals will require significant new revenue; this recommendation highlights actions that can address revenue shortfalls and encourage a shift in taxpayer behavior to support housing production. b. Potential actions include (but are not limited to): i. Targeted Measure 50 Reform:
Increase annual Maximum Assessed Value change to 5%.
Authorize voters to increase the permanent levy of their local jurisdiction.
Exempt Cites and Counties from compression. ii. Adopt Land Value Tax iii. Eliminate Mortgage Interest Deduction for Second Homes (i.e., abolish income tax deduction for interest paid on second homes). iv. Enact temporary property tax exemption for new housing at 120% AMI or below. v. Reduce or Eliminate Tax Expenditures (i.e., tax exemptions) not related to housing.
The report notes that four lawmakers, from both parties, sit as members on Kotek’s Council. They are:
There are also a number of community members appointed to theCouncil by Governor Kotek.
They need to hear from taxpayers.
_______________________________________
Gubernatorial Appointments:
Co-chair J.D. Tovey – rural Oregon and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation – land use, building codes and housing development
Co-chair Damien Hall – Metro- land use, and affordable and market housing development
Daniel Bunn– Southern Oregon – land use and financing market housing
Thomas Cody– Metro area – affordable and market housing development
Deborah Flagan – Central Oregon – market housing development and construction
Ernesto Fonseca– Metro area – affordable and market housing development and financing affordable housing
Elissa Gertler– Oregon Coast – land use and financing affordable housing
Riley Hill– rural Oregon – land use and market housing development
Natalie Janney– Willamette Valley area – land use, market housing development
Robert Justus – Metro area – affordable and market housing development
Joel Madsen– Columbia Gorge – affordable housing development and financing
Ivory Mathews – Metro area – affordable housing development and financing
Erica Mills– Southern Oregon – financing affordable and market housing
Eric Olsen– Willamette Valley area – construction, market housing development
Gauri Rajbaidya– Metro area – affordable and market housing development
Karen Rockwell – Oregon Coast – affordable and market housing development
Margaret Van Vliet – Metro area – financing market and affordable housing, and affordable housing development
Justin Wood – Metro – construction and market housing development
That was one of the recommendations of Gov. Tina Kotek’s Portland Central City Task Force convened to consider the city’s most challenging problems and recommend ways to address them.
“Declare a moratorium on new taxes…” urges the Task Force report. “…elected officials should consider a three-year pause, through 2026, on new taxes and fees…”
Oh well, so much for that.
Your Portland property taxes, which were due Nov. 15, probably already went up and will likely go up again in 2024. According to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, Portland ranked fifth highest nationally for effective property tax rate — a homeowner’s tax bill as a percentage of a property’s value — on a median-value home in 2022.
And Portland Commissioners Dan Ryan and Rene Gonzalez are already floating a November 2024 ballot measure that would raise property taxes to cover a $800 million bond for maintenance and new construction projects for the city’s parks and fire departments.
Oregonians are also already paying higher gas taxes. Oregon’s gas tax increased to 40 cents as of Jan. 1, 2024. That’s an increase of two cents per gallon from last year. The new rate keeps Oregon among the ten states in the U.S. with the highest gas taxes. Propane and Natural Gas Flat Fee increases also went into effect for qualified vehicles on Jan. 1.
Portlanders (and many more folks) are also facing increases in electricity rates. PGE customers can expect to pay 18% more on their power bills starting Jan. 1. The 2024 rate increase will cost the average single-family household an extra $24.59 each month.
And then there are all the taxes and fees the 2003 Legislature gleefully enacted.
According to the Taxpayer Association of Oregon, Oregon lawmakers passed 185 fee increases (increasing existing fees and establishing new fees) in 2023 that will mean $47 million in higher costs.
Of those, 77 new or increased fees will directly impact the cost of medicine, hospitals and health care, which are all already straining the budgets of Oregonians. Another 47 fee increases will impact Oregon’s agriculture industry and consumers.
A list of 2024 fee increases by agency is below:
And then there are the new fees the 2023 Legislature created:
Portlanders and almost all Oregonians are also going to be paying a new cell phone tax this year. Starting January 1, 2024, a 988 Coordinated Crisis Services Tax will be added to the existing Oregon Emergency Communications (911) Tax. The new tax was implemented by the Oregon Legislature with the passage of House Bill 2757. The $50 million a biennium tax is slated to fund the state’s new 9-8-8 suicide prevention hotline.
DMV fees have gone up, too, touching just about everybody with a vehicle. For example:
Class C driver license or restricted Class C driver license, increased from $54 to $58
Commercial driver license, increased from $75 to $160
Instruction driver permit, increased from $23 to $30
Commercial learner driver permit, increased from $23 to $40
Hardship driver permit application, increased from $50 to $75
Fee for renewal of a commercial driver license, increased from $55 to $98
Fee for knowledge test for a motorcycle endorsement, increased from $5 to $7
Fee for a skills test for any commercial driver license, increased from $70 to $145
And the list of fee increases goes on, nickeling and diming Oregonians.
And of course legislators are busy thinking of new taxes.
For example, because the Oregon Department of Forestry wants more money to fight wildfires, Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland, wants to charge every property owner in the state an annual fee to pay for what she perceives as a statewide issue.
And then, of course, there’s always inflation. It has been pushed down by aggressive Federal Reserve action, but in its long-term economic projections from December, the Federal Open Market Committee forecasted core Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index inflation will drop from 3.2% in 2023 to 2.4% in 2024 and 2.2% in 2025.
But, still, hold on to your wallet. The state is considering tolls on I-205, I-5, U.S. 26 and Highway 217.
Histrionic stories about Prager U, a nonprofit (not a university) which produces and distributes conservative videos and online programming aimed at millions of young people in homes and schools across the country, are commonplace in the media.
“PragerU and its right-wing propaganda machine spreads racist poison,” says Daily Kos.
“…more than a few (of PragerU’s videos ) function as dog whistles to the extreme right ,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Regardless of such reproval, in September 2023 PragerU won state approval to offer online classes to high school students in New Hampshire, in July 2023, the Florida Department of Education approved PragerU materials for use in classrooms as supplemental resources and recently PragerU became a state licensed vendor in Texas. Oklahoma and Montana are also allowing videos from PragerU in classrooms.
Meanwhile, flying under the radar almost unnoticed by media, there’s another outfit pursuing similar outreach efforts, the Lehi, UT-based Libertas Institute.
The Libertarian Institute describes itself as “a 501(c)3 non-profit “think tank” and educational organization” with a “mission to change hearts, minds, and laws to build a freer society…” and an “educational media platform dedicated to promoting pro-American values.”
And now it has set its sights on Oregon.
Founded in 2011, in the policy arena Libertas works on reforming state and local laws in Utah, but it also partners with similar free market-oriented groups and legislators in other states to pursue reforms initiated by Libertas.
Some of its current policy focus areas are affordable housing, legal services, employing ex-offenders, consumer privacy and portable benefits for gig workers.
Reaching outside Utah, Libertas, like PragerU, produces what it considers “educational materials” aimed at children. This includes a variety of print and audio books and YouTube videos, as well as a free-market curriculum that teaches economics to children. To some extent, Libertas is a provocateur in this space.
It also runs a Children’s Entrepreneur Market program “to provide a direct experience for youth to apply their knowledge and experience the benefits of operating a small business”. The program is described as facilitating “A farmers’ market…run entirely by KIDS!”
In December 2023, Libertas appealed for donations so it could expand The Tuttle Twins’ Children’s Entrepreneur Markets into 11 more states, including Oregon.
The Institute supplements all this material with free market-focused books such as “Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools are Failing Today’s Students”.
Libertas also supports homeschooling with its Tuttle Twins Free Market Rules! Curriculum, a comprehensive resource for teaching students about money and economics.
And then there’s the Libertas Institute Hoodie for $27.99. “You’ll become an evangelist for freedom as friends ask you what Libertas is all about — be ready to spread the good word!”, says the Libertas website.
Arguing that there’s a rot inside American culture that needs to be confronted and that liberals have made a squalid mess of things, Libertas asks, “Are your children being brainwashed? …most curriculum is dumbed down and leaves out the essential civic truths that children and adults need to know. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to create books and curriculum materials that teach students the values of a free society — ideas that support your family values.”
The Tuttle Twins books are a core element of Libertas’ proselytizing efforts.Libertas says it has sold 4 million copies of the Tuttle Twins books, endorsed by right-wing radio host Glen Beck, that “help you teach your kids how the world really works…”
The Tuttle Twins Books
Some of the books are available at Oregon libraries. “We had several patron requests for The Tuttle Twins books at our library,” Beka Murcray at the Molalla Public Library told me. “So, we purchased them and they have circulated fairly okay.”
A cartoon on the Tuttle Twins website has a mother wielding a Tuttle Twins shield while protecting her frightened children, absorbing the arrows of socialism, Marxism, collectivism, and media lies.”
In The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom, the twins “find in their latest adventure, central planning can ruin people’s lives.” In The Tuttle Twins and the Little Pink House, “When a greedy corporation schemes to take over Grandma’s land and push her house into the river, can the twins stop it and come to her rescue?”
According to reports submitted to the IRS, Libertas’ revenue totaled $13,904,104 in 2022 and $14,360,260 in 2021. Of that, $10,841,883 came from “Education Material Sales” in 2022 and $10,638,576 in 2021. “We sell a lot of books and things, but the bulk of the revenue is from our Tuttle Twins books, curricula, and other materials,” Connor Boyak, Libertas’ president, told me in an email. Libertas reported selling1.55 million books in 2021 and 975,000 in 2022.
Some are fulsome in their praise of the books.“The Tuttle Twins is a set of beautiful books that use storytelling to teach about economics, civics, socialism, and entrepreneurship. So basically everything that is NOT taught in public school.” writes Homeschool Curriculum Reviews. “I am learning right along with my kids as we explore how money works, what the free market really is, and what our freedom actually means.”
Others are almost apoplectic in their condemnation of the series. Rob Larson, a professor of economics at Washington’s Tacoma Community College, describes the books in Current Affairs as “…jammed…with pro-market economic vocabulary and stale right-wing life lessons”.
Larson goes on to acidly condemn them as “…among the most wretchedly contrived, grotesquely unethically indoctrinating, cliché-ridden heaps of steaming garbage I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. Written to bring young people into one of the most disgraceful political tendencies in the world before they have the critical thinking skills to recognize it, it is a hideous fraud and an ugly twisted farce.”
Though not yet a broadly recognized brand, Libertas clearly aspires to be one. Having grown its revenue almost ten-fold since its founding and vastly expanded its products and programs, it has simultaneously extended its presence across the country.
Whether you see it as a force for good or malignant propaganda, expect to hear more about this crusading Libertarian outfit in Oregon.
When educators from across the Portland Public Schools (PPS) district’s 81 schools began their strike on Nov. 1, they had a lengthy list of demands, with a focus on teacher salaries.
“As costs have risen here, teachers’ salaries haven’t kept up,” the National Education Association asserted in a news release supporting the PPS strike.
Data suggests, however, that Portland’s teachers were actually doing fairly well in comparison with other teachers across the country, though there is no question inflation has eroded their financial position. The same is true of Oregon teachers in general.
During the strike, PPS said the average salary for a Portland teacher was $87,000; the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) union said it was about $83,000. Pay can vary widely depending on multiple factors, including amount of education, certifications, additional skills, and the number of years spent in the profession.
PAT also raised concerns about pay for new teachers, with the lowest annual base salary in the district for a teacher with a BA starting at $50,020.
When the strike began, PAT wanted a 23% cost-of-living adjustment over three years; PPS offered about 11%. In the new contract, educators will receive a 14.4% compounded increase over the next three years (6.25% the first year, 4.5% the second and 3% the third) and about half of all educators will also earn a 10.6% bump from yearly step increases.
To get a handle on how all this translates into actual dollars, I asked PPS and PAT for their numbers on the current average and median salaries of educators in the district and what they expect the average and median salaries of teachers will be in the first year of the new contract?
PAT never responded. PPS responded to an initial request with a commitment to provide the data. Repeated follow-ups, however, brought nothing but excuses for the delay. Eventually my entreaties just went into a black hole. So much for public accountability.
In 2018, The Oregonian reported that in 2016-17, the average Oregon teacher made nearly $61,900 a year, higher than the national average of $59,700. Oregon ranked 13th highest for average teacher pay among the 50 states. “Oregon teachers have long been better compensated than most of their peers around the country,” the paper reported.
In 2023, according to the National Education Association (NEA), the average Oregon teacher made $70,402 a year, higher than the national average of $66,745, and again Oregon ranked 13th highest for average teacher pay among the 50 states.
In other words, Oregon has actually been holding its own in average salaries, although the numbers for starting teacher pay are not as favorable for Oregon.
In 2023,the average salary for a starting teacher inOregonwith a bachelor’s degree and no experience was $40,374 (31st in the US, where the average was $42,844). Under the PPS contract with PAT, the salary for a starting teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience in 2023 was $50,020.
Averages, however, can be deceiving. Very high or very low salaries can skew the numbers. Median compensation represents a more accurate picture of how much Portland’s teachers are being paid, but neither PPS nor PAT agreed to provide median salary numbers.
The Oregon Center for Public Policy, a progressive economic research organization, argues that Oregon public school teachers are underpaid by about 22%. Even after accounting for the more generous benefits earned by public school teachers, the Center claims Oregon public school teachers are underpaid by about 9%.
But the analysis is not based on compensation for other teachers. Rather, the Center claims Oregon teachers are underpaid “relative to comparable private-sector workers (in Oregon)…with similar levels of education and experience”. The claim that public-school teachers endure a salary penalty with this comparison is dubious.
Less dubious was PAT’s assertion before the strike that recent inflation has eroded teachers’ wage gains over time.
In an annual report that ranked and analyzed teacher salaries by state, the NEA estimated that the national average teacher salary for the 2021-22 school year was $66,397 — a 1.7 percent increase from the previous year. But when adjusted for inflation, the average teacher salary actually decreased by an estimated 3.9 percent over the last decade.
In other words, teachers were making $2,179 less, on average, than they did 10 years earlier when the salaries are adjusted for inflation. A similar NEA report issued in 2023 concluded that teachers made on average $3,644 less than they did 10 years ago, adjusted for inflation.
However, comparing over a longer period, the average Oregon teacher’s salary in 1970 was $8,818. Inflation adjusted, that figure would have been $66,509.99 in 2022. In other words, although there has been a decrease in inflation-adjusted pay in recent years, average teacher salaries in Oregon have kept up with inflation over the long term.
Most media coverage of the war in Israel has inexorably shifted from the Oct. 7 barbarism of Hamas[1] to civilian casualties from Israel’s response. Hamas knew this would happen.
“After dealing with reporters through many rounds of violence since coming to power in Gaza in 2007, Hamas understood that most can be co-opted or coerced, and that coverage of Gaza would reliably focus on civilian casualties, obscuring the cause of the war, portraying Israel’s military operations as atrocities, and thus pressuring Israel to stop fighting,” Matti Friedman, a Canadian-Israeli journalist and author, wrote today in The Free Press. This has allowed Israel’s critics to claim the high ground without shame.
It is critical that this shift be challenged by going back to the reality of Hamas’ aims.
The reality is in the Introduction to Hamas’ original 1988 charter.[2]
“…our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails.”
Hamas perceived from the outset that it would have many enemies.
“The enemies” who must be confronted “…stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there,” said Article 22. “They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Free Masons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like.”
“All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam,” added Article 28.
The shift in media coverage has allowed the reality of Hamas, as highlighted above, to recede into the background,
As one critical observer, Kevin Diamant, recently wrote in a Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal, “”Hospitals and civilians are entangled in the fighting because the terrorist cowards want them to be — images of civilian casualties are the tool Hamas uses to turn weak minds to its cause.”
Never forget.
[1] The New York Times reported on Nov. 28, 2023, that it had uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Vito Perrone was an elated finalist for the position of Superintendent of the Easthampton, Massachusetts school district earlier this year. One member of the School Committee that voted to hire him said he had a unique skill set, a “special sauce” that made him the best choice. For Perrone, the job was a special homecoming, since he’d served as Easthampton High School’s principal eight years ago and coached football there.
But The Times They Are A-Changin’.
After he was offered the superintendent position, Perrone and the School Committee entered into contract negotiations. Perrone made several requests in an email to the School Committee’s Chairperson, Cynthia Kwiecinski, and the executive assistant to the committee, Suzanne Colby.
Then, out of nowhere, the School Committee delivered the news that they had rescinded his offer after taking a vote during an executive session.
The reason? He had addressed Kwiecinski and Colby as “Dear ladies” at the beginning of his earlier email. According to Perrone, Kwiecinski said that using “ladies” was hostile and derogatory, a microaggression and “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.”
“I was shocked,” Perrone told the local newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.“I grew up in a time when ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ was a sign of respect. I didn’t intend to insult anyone.”
What a treacherous path microaggression warriors are taking us down. Their purity tests and lack of coping skills are corroding the body politic and doing lasting harm.
The word is Pamplin Media Group, publisher of the Portland Tribune and 23 other local community papers in Oregon, is being shopped around for sale.
Simultaneously, the Group is closing its Gresham Outlook printing facility and laying off its approximately 20 employees, an indicator of financial stress.
A Portland Tribune story noted earlier this year that the Pamplin Media Group “…has weathered numerous upheavals in the journalism business, three recessions that reduced advertising revenues and the COVID-19 pandemic that reduced revenues even more than the previous recessions.”
With all the bruising changes affecting the local newspaper industry, sale of the group may well lead to another upheaval.
In early 2023, when Mark Garber handed off the position of president of the Pamplin Media Group to become president emeritus, he commented that when he’d started his newspaper career as a reporter in 1979, “We used manual typewriters and handed our copy to an editor, who marked it up, literally cut and pasted it, and then sent it to a human typesetter.”
The changes in the local newspaper business since those days have been massive, butchering a once robust news ecosystem in the United States.
The loss of local news has had far reaching implications. “As everyone knows, the internet knocked the industry off its foundations, ” James Bennet, former editorial page editor at The New York Times, wrote in The Economist in mid-December. “Local newspapers were the proving ground between college campuses and national newsrooms. As they disintegrated, the national news media lost a source of seasoned reporters and many Americans lost a journalism whose truth they could verify with their own eyes.”
Just since 2005, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists. So far in 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers have closed each week according to a State of Local News Report by Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News and Director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. Most were weekly publications, in areas with few or no other sources for news.
“The underlying infrastructure for producing local news has been weakened by two decades of losses of newsrooms and reporting jobs,” noted an October 2022 report from the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. “And news organizations today…often sense they are swimming against the tide of economic, technological, political, and cultural changes that threaten the long-term viability of local news production.”
In Oregon’s current troubling time, when misinformation is on the rise, the civic damage from a decline in trusted, quality local newspaper coverage can be particularly severe. Even more so when local papers rip more of their content from national news outlets or run stories to satisfy distant corporate owners. “Communities that lack robust local news also tend to experience lower rates of civic engagement, higher rates of polarization and corruption, and a diminished sense of community connection,” the report said.
The recent acquisition of many legendary local newspapers by hedge funds and private equity groups shows what could await the Pamplin Media Group.
The Register-Guard in Eugene was locally owned until 2018 when it was sold to GateHouse Media Inc. In 2019, GateHouse Media’s parent company, New Media Investment Group, acquired Gannett, the parent company of USA Today and more than 100 other dailies, creating the largest newspaper company in the country, with the combined company adopting the Gannett name.
Management of the new company was left to Fortress Investment Group, a private equity firm in New York City. Fortress, which controlled New Media Investment Group, the parent of GateHouse, was owned by SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate.
There were about 21,255 employees at Gatehouse and Gannett at the time of the merger; Gatehouse had 10,617, Gannett 10,638. Gannett has since dramatically cut costs, reducing its headcount to 11,200 at the start of 2023.
Over the years, the Register-Guard has suffered right along with Gannett. At the time of its sale to Gatehouse in 2018 the Register-Guard had over 40 employees. Its website currently lists just 3 News reporters, 3 Sports reporters and 1 Multimedia Photo Journalist. Hardly enough for robust local coverage.
The Alden Global Capital hedge fund is another company eviscerating local newspapers. Alden, which owns about 200 publications, including the Chicago Tribune, is the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, behind Gannett. Alden is perhaps best known for acquiring and then gutting the Denver Post.
In July 2023, Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong sold The San Diego Union-Tribune to an affiliate of the MediaNews Group, which is owned by Alden, for an undisclosed amount. The Voice of San Diego called Alden “the most terrifying owner in American journalism” and said the sale put the Union-Tribune “back in the American newspaper doom loop.”
Word of cutbacks was swift. The same day as the sale announcement, the MediaNews Group sent an email to the paper’s employees saying cutbacks would be needed to “offset the slowdown in revenues as economic headwinds continue to impact the media industry” and informing staff that the new owner would be offering buyouts. If enough employees didn’t take buyouts, the company said it would lay off additional employees.
As of the end of October 2023, employees estimated that somewhere between 60 and 80 people were left from the 108-person newsroom under Soon-Shiong.
The Voice of San Diego said the sale of the Union-Tribune to Alden put it “back in the American newspaper doom loop.” Let’s hope the sale of Pamplin Media Group doesn’t put its community newspapers in the same place.
Oregon’s hyper-projections for electric vehicle adoption are proving to be wishful thinking.
On Nov. 6, 2017, Gov. Kate Brown signed Executive Order 17-21 stating “It is the policy of the State of Oregon to establish an aggressive timeline to achieve a statewide goal of 50,000 or more registered and operating electric vehicles by 2020.” (emphasis in original).
In 2019, Senate Bill 1044 restated the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) adoption target as 50,000 registered on Oregon roads by 2020.
It didn’t happen.
According to information provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation on Dec. 25, 2023, there were just 5,537 registered and operating electric vehicles in Oregon in 2020, 13,572 in 2021 and 23,163 in 2022.
Senate Bill 1044 also set a target of 250,000 registered Zero Emission Vehicles on Oregon roads by 2025.
That ain’t gonna happen either.
As of July 2023, there were 51,355 Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), vehicles powered solely by an electric battery, with no gas engine parts, registered and operating in Oregon, according to the Oregon Department of Energy.[1] The number of Oregon-registered zero emission vehicles on Oregon roads as of September 2023 was just 70,000. The likelihood that this number will grow to 250,000 over the next 12 months is nil.
In December 2022, Gov. Brown, in a burst of environmental overreach that slavishly followed California’s lead, announced that all new cars sold in Oregon would have to be emissions-free starting in 2035.
The way things are going, that’s a pipe dream.
The fact is adoption of zero emission EVs is falling far behind earlier exuberant expectations. Sales are growing, but the rate of growth is slowing and unsold inventory is piling up for multiple brands., despite car companies offering discounts and low-interest rates in an attempt to propel demand. The only segment seeing significant growth in demand is hybrids, which are not zero emission vehicles.
“The first wave of buyers willing to pay a premium for a battery-powered car has already made the purchase, dealers and executives say, and automakers arenow dealing with a more hesitant group, just as a barrage of new EV models are expected to hit dealerships in the coming years,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Some resistance to EVs may also be emerging because of their environmental costs, particularly the need for minerals for the batteries. And as The Washington Post has pointed out, mining the minerals is only the first step.
“The ore is almost never pure and needs to be refined, or processed, to become the minerals that go into batteries, the Post reported. ” When it comes to processing, there is one major player: China, which handles more than half of the mineralscritical to EV batteries. These elements aren’t used only to power EVs; they also appear in everything from building materials to toys. But as the demand for EV components soars, so could dependency on China’s refining infrastructure.”
Resistance to EVs in Oregon may also be related to the insufficiency of charging ports. Oregon is hoping to install about 370 new electric vehicle charging ports across the state in 2024 as part of an Oregon Department of Transportation rebate program.
In the meantime, car companies are cutting back on plans for battery plants and EV production.
In mid-December, for example, Ford announced it was cutting its 2024 F-150 Lightning products by half. Ford has delayed about $12 billion in new EV investments, reducing some Mustang Mach-E production and postponing opening one of two planned Kentucky planned battery plants.
The high cost of EVs is one major factor that will likely continue to hold back their widespread adoption in Oregon. EVs remain much more expensive than internal combustion engine vehicles, especially in North America. High interest rates will also restrain purchases. Consumer frustrations with the availability of EV chargers, excessive charging times, questions about reliability and high repair costs are also undermining early robust sales predictions.
While maintenance costs for EVs are proving to be lower than for internal combustion vehicles (EV-owners spend half as much maintaining their vehicles as their gasoline-owning counterparts, according to Consumer Reports), repairs after collisions can cost thousands of dollars because the fixes tend to require more replacement parts, the vehicles are more complicated and fewer people do such repairs.
The market is reflecting the concerns about EVs as investors have responded to the changed outlook for them. The iShares Self-Driving EV and Tech ETF | IDRV, set up in July 2019, seeks to track the investment results of an index composed of developed and emerging market companies that may benefit from growth and innovation in and around electric vehicles, battery technologies and autonomous driving technologies. A $10,000 investment at the fun’s inception would have more than doubled in value to $22,815 as of Nov. 2, 2021, but had declined to $14,432.58 as of Dec. 13, 2023.
So don’t bet the farm on EV predictions by politicians and bureaucrats. Their track record so far isn’t great.
[1] There were also 23,328 Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) similar to a Hybrid, but with a larger battery and electric motor, plus a charging port and a gas tank, which cannot truly be considered Zero Emission Vehicles.
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