• 44 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • “Eugene Pride will be without public parking for the first time in 15 years due to a time-conflict with a sold-out Ween concert”

    AKA the city has a fair, transparent system for permitting these kinds of things and somebody else claimed the spot first and Eugene Pride organizers are throwing a tantrum that they aren’t getting special treatment. They planned an event without making sure there was parking available, that’s not anybody’s fault but the planners. If you run big events, you need to stay on top of your paperwork and do your diligence.




  • I’m all for corporations and the rich paying their fair share. But unless this is being matched by other states, it will just cause capital flight to those states. That’s jobs and capability Oregon won’t get. It will be one of many factors companies consider when asking which state to incorporate and operate in. The Oregon market is an easy one to ignore, we’re not exactly a huge state, we have just over 1% of the national population. This is the kind of legislation that can only work in markets companies can’t afford to leave, huge markets like California or Texas. There’s a reason OR gets in bidding wars with other states over the siting of a new Intel fabrication facility etc: the state with the most favorable operating conditions gets the jobs.

    A quick read of the bill text and I find “Less than $500,000, the minimum tax is $150”. That’s $150 for every small LLC, business with 1-3 employees, etc. It doesn’t matter if your LLC is profitable or not, you’re paying $150/year for the privilege of existing. Even if they lost money in the past tax year. This is in addition to existing costs you already incur like having to pay for payroll software to deal with the immensely complex state and local tax system, costs to file incorporation paperwork, and the costs for a ‘registered agent’. This will hurt small businesses and startups, no doubt. California had a similar incorporation tax, and it’s one of many reasons why companies try to incorporate out of state.

    Why not include an exemption for small businesses or those with extremely thin profit margins? Or for those who lost money that year? You’d have to ask the petition authors that.

    Who runs small LLCs?

    • Small businesses, restaurants, food trucks
    • Your local plumber, contractor, painter, tutor, or other independent contractor.
    • Private landlords renting out a single unit. People who rent out rooms in their home and want the additional liability protection.
    • Food co-ops, housing cooperatives, local sports clubs, and other forms of cooperative organizations
    • People who use the anonymity provided by LLCs to escape domestic violence, stalking, etc.

    “[Democracy] can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage”






















  • I would vote FOR 110 again in a heartbeat. Prohibition doesn’t work, is a waste of taxpayer money, and churns people through the criminal justice system. It should be no business of the government what you put into your body in your own private residence. If you are breaking the law because of your drug use, then they should enforce those laws which they currently don’t for various reasons.

    The whole point of ballot initiatives is to go over the head of the state legislature. It is a check on their power and the two party system. They have no right to reverse a ballot initiative. If they think public opinion has changed, they can send it back to the ballot. Any oregon dem who votes to repeal 110 is losing my vote in the primary.





  • It’s not that they’re nazi-adjacent right wingers, it’s that people in Eugene are getting serious compassion fatigue over some categories of crime or quality of life impacts which they blame generally on “the homeless”, which, to be fair, is a group of people who cause many of these problems. For understandable reasons? Yes, many times. Is it more the government’s fault than theirs? Yes, often. But it doesn’t change that people have very real reasons for being upset and pointing the finger in the direction they point it, and the tactic of just shouting down these people as being anti-homeless or compassionless or bootlickers really isn’t working any more.

    I’m a person who says “fuck the police” at pretty much every opportunity. I also understand people’s very real concerns about randomized violence in the streets caused by people in the homeless population and the city’s total lack of initiative in solving anything of these problems.

    It used to be only nazis and far-right people complained about “the homeless”, it was a boogeyman they essentially created and vastly over-stated the impact of to further right wing agendas. That’s no longer the case, mainly due to changes in the economy and drug markets. I personally have had several very uncomfortable interactions with homeless folks in this town, in two unrelated instances in a single year I have had my life threatened out of nowhere by a homeless person. There are whole parts of town I don’t go to because of that, and I’m a white dude, I’m sure my experiences pale in comparison to people from other parts of our community.