Tag Archives: Nicholas Kristof

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The Oregon People’s Rebate: Another Misguided Idea from Wealthy California Progressives

It wasn’t Oregonians who financed the campaign for the ill-advised Measure 110. 

Out-of-state money financed the 2020 campaign for the measure that rashly decriminalized drug possession in the state. Of the nearly $6 million in cash and in-kind contributions received by the ballot measure committees, the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance contributed over $5 million, one-third of its total revenue in 2020 according to its filing with the IRS.

Out-of-state money is also behind Initiative Petition 17, a 2024 ballot measure in support of a universal basic income (UBI) that would feature a $750 payment to every Oregonian, regardless of their income, every year, paid for by an increase in the minimum tax rate for high earning Oregon businesses.

The measure, called the Oregon People’s Rebate, would increase the tax on corporations making more than $25 million a year in revenue (not profit) in Oregon, increasing their minimum tax rate from less than 1% to 3%. According to the measure’s backers, the increase would generate about $3 billion a year. Oregon’s current population is 4,237,256. A $750 payment to each resident would total $3,177,942,000

“So your favorite local business won’t feel a thing,…other than every single one of their local customers, and employees, having an extra $750,” the backers say. “It’s that simple”.

‘Fact: The largest corporations pay less than 1% in Oregon tax,” the Oregon People’s website asserts. “We all pay between 5-10% in Oregon tax. Is that right? No! So we start to fix that.”

Oregon People’s Rebate was formed in Sept. 2022. It has received $425,696.50 in contributions to date in 2024, according to the Oregon Secretary of State. 

Following a long tradition Hollywood and Silicon Valley political activism, the biggest 2024 contributors are affiliated with investor and universal basic income proselytizer, Josh Jones of Los Angeles, CA. An early adopter of cryptocurrency, Jones says on his LinkedIn site, “I’m a programmer/entrepreneur/investor/retiree who likes Universal Basic Income, National Popular Vote, Groo the Wanderer, (aerial) Gondolas, basketball, lunch, programming, the internet, robots, space, movies, and starting up stuff!”

Jones Holding LLC, a corporation based in Los Angeles, has donated $425,000 in 2024 and Jones Parking Inc. has contributed nearly $95,000. The next largest 2024 contributors are the foundation (Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity) and the mother of Gerald Huff, a former software engineer from California who was an ardent proponent of Universal Basic Income before  he died in 2018. They have contributed a total of $90,000.

Calling the initiative a rebate is, of course, the first deception. Corporate taxes would cover the cost and the recipients of the largesse would be everyday Oregonians.

The assertion that Oregon corporations pay less than 1% in Oregon tax is dubious as well. According to the Tax Foundation,  Oregon C corporations face a 7.6 percent corporate income tax and a 0.57 percent gross receipts tax, and if they’re in the Portland area, they are subject to a 2.6 percent business license tax, a 2 percent business income tax, a 1 percent Supportive Housing Services Tax, and a 1 percent Clean Energy Surcharge, all of which are additional taxes on net income. 

The $750 payment might sound good,” the Tax Foundation says, “but if it raises the cost of goods, drives jobs and economic activity out of state, and puts Oregon-based businesses at a massive disadvantage with their out-of-state competitors, it’s likely to be an awful deal for Oregonians.”

Universal Basic Income is also far from a proven concept in addressing society’s ills.

“A UBI looks alluringly simple on the surface, since it provides cash unconditionally and with no targeting involved,” says a recent study by the staff of The World Bank.” But its implications are complex and largely unknown…It may affect, for instance, several labor market issues such as unemployment insurance, severance pay, unionization, contributory pensions, and minimum wages.”

“…hopes around a UBI as a societal revolution may be tempered by prosaic forces. After all, the ultimate generators of inequities may lie elsewhere, for example, in uneven access to education and health systems, low-paying and low-productivity jobs, poorly functioning markets, corruption, regressive tax codes, unequal pay, and social discrimination, among others.”

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a scathing critique of West Coast ideologues driving social policy. “…my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes,” he wrote. It shows “indifference to the laws of economics.”

Oregonians would be wise to firmly reject the ham-fisted efforts of wealthy Californians to mess with our economy.  

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If Kristof Can Do It, So Can I

Gov. Abbott will pick the Texas secretary of state, who gets vast new powers from GOP elections bill

ADDENDUM, Feb. 17, 2022 – The Oregonian reported on Feb. 17, 2022, that Oregon’s Democratic primary race for governor narrowed significantly, with the state Supreme Court ruling that former New York Times columnist Nick Kristof can’t run because he does not meet the state’s three-year residency requirement. The court’s unanimous ruling leaves former House Speaker Tina Kotek and state Treasurer Tobias Read as frontrunners for May’s Democratic primary, which will also feature a long list of lesser-known candidates.

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If the New York City Council can approve a bill allowing 800,000 non-citizen New Yorkers to vote in municipal elections, surely Oregon can bend its rules to let Nicholas Kristof run for governor.

Oregon already has made it clear it has no problem with one of its U.S. Senators living for extended periods in New York City in a $8.6 million 19th century townhouse.

Kristof, who was born in Chicago, has lived in Yamhill, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and New York City. He was registered to vote in New York from 2000 until December 2020 and voted there as recently as November 2020. He only registered as an Oregon voter on Dec. 28, 2020.  

But let’s be honest. Other politicians have maneuvered around election residency requirements.

In 2010, then-former-senator Dan Coats was trying to win back his old seat in Indiana  when it was reported that even though he was from the state, he’d been living and voting in Virginia since 2000. But, as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say on Saturday Night Live, “Never mind.” Coats won the election anyway. 

Richard Lugar served as a U.S. Senator representing Indiana from 1977 to 2013, even though he sold his Indianapolis house in 1977 and moved to Washington, D.C. His excuse? He told reporters he and his wife wanted to keep their family together and they couldn’t afford two houses.

Even though Kristof has moved around a lot, in a statement posted on Twitter on Jan. 6, 2022, he said he owes his “entire existence” to Oregon.  “This state welcomed my dad as a refugee, and he put down roots here,” he wrote. “Oregon has provided a home to me and my family as those roots deepened. Because I have always known Oregon to be my home, the law says that I am qualified to run for governor.”

Kristof has also put forward an opinion from William Riggs, a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court from 1998 to 2006, saying Kristof is an Oregon resident because he has frequently described Yamhill as “home” and has always considered himself an Oregonian. 

“Candidate’s conduct over decades and in recent years, as well as his description of Oregon as ‘home’ in contemporaneous writings, leaves no doubt that he has considered Oregon to be his home; in these circumstances, having voted in New York does not indicate otherwise,” Riggs wrote.

I’m so convinced by the logic of Kristof’s arguments that I’m thinking of running for governor of Connecticut.

All gubernatorial candidates in Connecticut must be:

  • at least 30 years old
  • a registered voter
  • a resident of Connecticut for at least six months on the day of the election

I’m way past 30 years old. OK, I first registered to vote in Colorado when I was 18 and I’ve been a registered voter in Oregon since 1984, but I can change that to Connecticut in a wink. And as far as being a resident of Connecticut for at least six months on the day of the next election, I’ve considered Wallingford, CT my “home” from the time I was born. 

Ask anybody about my connections to Connecticut. They go back a long way.

In 1833, at the age of 20, a fellow named William of Scotland departed from the port of Greenock and embarked on a voyage to America on the ship “Moscow”, a 461-ton, 80 HP Iron Screw Steamer built by Palmer Brothers of New Castle. A tempestuous six weeks later, the ship docked in New York City. On July 9, 1838, William married Mary Hall, 29, and in 1842 they built a home in Wallingford, CT where they lived for the rest of their lives.

After Mary died in 1845, William married Temperance Hall. They had a son, Theodore. When William died in 1872 his children sent away to Scotland for red Scotch granite for his monument, which still stands in Wallingford’s Center Street Cemetery.

Theodore became one of the foremost leaders of the engineering profession in Connecticut. He married and had a son, William, who later became Superintendent of Wallingford Water Works. After William married Helen, they had a son, William, my father. Except for when he lived in Washington, D.C. as a Navy officer during WWII, he lived his entire life in Wallingford, I was raised in Wallingford, too, living on N. Main St. until I went to college. 

I have other strong ties to Connecticut, too. I’m a descendent through marriage of Samuel Andrews, one of the founders of Wallingford in 1670, and of Lyman Hall, who was born in Wallingford in 1724 and later signed the Declaration of Independence. 

So, with all this, I figure I owe my “entire existence” to Connecticut and it is as much my “home” as Oregon is Kristof’s.

One more thing.

On. January 14, Kristof’s lawyers filed their first brief to the Oregon Supreme Court. Stretching their argument about as far as possible, the brief argued that denying Kristof, who has lived in lots of places, a spot on the ballot would disenfranchise other Oregonians who have lived in lots of places.

“There are many peripatetic Oregonians who, for various reasons, live in more than one place and may prefer candidates who understand the experience of living in multiple places or changing residences often,” the brief says. “Such Oregonians come from all walks of life: houseless and housing-insecure persons; university students; seasonal migrant workers; servicemembers; snowbirds; the list goes on. These groups are disserved by the Secretary’s interpretation, contravening the spirit of free and equal elections.”

I haven’t yet set up a website for my gubernatorial race, but I plan to let all my celebrity, journalism and Washington, D.C. friends know that they should start setting aside some big bucks to contribute to my campaign. I may not be able get money from Angelina Jolie, who has given to Kristof, but Kim Novak stayed at a house next to mine in Wallingford when she was performing at a local musical theater when I was a kid and I met the actress Tuesday Weld once in California. Maybe I could hit them up for some cash.

Are you with me?

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Nicholas Kristof’s Agenda for Oregon: More Magical Thinking

The cat’s out of the bag. 

Gubernatorial hopeful Nicholas Kristof is just another classic tax-and-spend liberal promising more free stuff.  Secretary of State Shemia Fagan may have determined that Kristof doesn’t meet Oregon’s residency requirement to qualify to run for governor, but he has made it clear he doesn’t plan to drop out.

His agenda for Oregon reminds me of an observation by American journalist and cultural critic H.L. Mencken that the principal device of many seeking to get and hold office in government “… is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them.”

In a January 3, 2022, newsletter, Kristof lamented that Americans aren’t guaranteed health insurance, dental care, Internet access, shelter, child-care, jobs, free pre-K and so much more. “Some of (these) services would be difficult or expensive to provide, but the same was true of universal postal service and electrical power,” he asserted.

Is there anything on that list you haven’t heard people such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal advocate? 

Is there anything on that list Tina Kotek, another gubernatorial hopeful and a key member of the Democratic party’s left wing, wouldn’t support?

The fact is Kristof’s agenda is a list of proposed entitlements for Oregonians that would be almost guaranteed to become more costly over time and, like opiates, become addictive.  

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, a book written by Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, has been widely praised for its empathetic portrayal of struggling Americans. I’ve read the book. What has been less noted is how the book excuses individuals from responsibility for life’s travails and makes them victims of circumstance. 

Even the Goodreads summary of the book sees things this way, attributing personal failures to public policy, not personal choices: “Taken together, these accounts provide a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes.”

As one reviewer put it, “Where this book struggles is the complete removal of personal responsibility for any of life’s difficulties, instead completely shifting this to the failings of Government and Society in general. I do think this can play part of a role in the situations people find themselves in, but personal drive and responsibility has to be a factor, or even a government program cannot succeed.” 

Another reviewer expressed a similar concern: “My opinion is that Kristof focuses more on the lack of safety nets that let his friends down instead of the real culprits: Parenting and personal responsibility. The friends and families I knew did not shoot guns at their spouses, engage in criminal activity as children, or begin using drugs at a young age. These are behavioral patterns that are passed down from parent to child, not something that befalls them only as a result of bad luck. To give this perspective so little attention in his book is shortsighted.”

As a conservative, I find Kristof’s approach to social issues troubling and worry it would guide his approaches to governing.

I also worry that, in any case, he’s simply not prepared to lead Oregon, increasing the likelihood he would be an incompetent governor and make things worse.

In a time when for some people the words “political experience” are a slur, Kristof is trying to get around his inexperience by likening himself to innovative and widely admired former Oregon governor Tom McCall, who served during 1967-75. 

“I bring the same experience that Tom McCall brought when he was elected,” Kristof told Willamette Week. “McCall, of course, was a journalist who had never been in the Legislature. And what he brought was a skill set that I think is essential for a successful governor. It’s articulating a vision for the state to rally people around that agenda and then using the convening power of the office to help achieve it.”

Chuck Sheketoff, former director of the left-leaning Oregon Center for Public Policy, has bought into Kristof’s argument. “In the current political environment, it’s refreshing to have someone who doesn’t have baggage and history,” Sheketoff said in November 2021.

Only somebody who knows their candidate lacks qualifications for the job they’re seeking would say this.