Hey! Elections have consequences, Oregonians:
Hundreds of miners gathered Thursday on the steps of the Oregon Capitol Building to speak out against a plethora of bills that would restrict their livelihood. Through drizzling rain and cloudy skies, these working men and women held simple signs asking for a ‘no’ vote on the bills that would virtually destroy mining in the state of Oregon. One man held a sign that said “You’re taking my job away.”
…And there are going to be consequences to handing over control of the Oregon legislature to a political party that hates mining. If I seem unforgiving about this, I am. It’s well past time that people understood this: the Democratic party that once saw use or beauty in a mine or a dam is now DEAD. It was murdered by a bunch of unemployable crypto-Marxists in the 1960s, and their descendents aren’t about to give up power any time soon.
I know that it’s weird to hear this from a Republican, but my dad was a railroad union man, so I feel personally comfortable saying it: vote your freaking class interests, you… people.
Moe Lane
Via
Oregon Miners Protest To Protect Their Jobs From New Legislation ow.ly/ilpZU #orcot #orpol #orleg #p2
— jeffery reynolds (@ChargerJeff) March 4, 2013
Hate mining? They hate people, and anything people do.
Would the republican be any better? It seems like they run for election on one stance and then once in office embrace dem/liberal agenda because the MSM and a bunch of fatcat lobbyists tell them too.
Yes. The Republican would be better. 2009 taught us this.
Trouble is, the population centers — Portlandia and the People’s Republic of Eugene — are dominated by lefties. The miners are located in the part of Oregon that’s solidly conservative.
The Republican Party in certain areas of the state also has the regrettable habit of handing the election to the Democrats by not bothering to waste money on serious candidates and allowing undisciplined, crazy-sounding candidates to run … and thus to be seen as official face of the Republican Party, keeping them marginalized. (Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you Art Robinson, even though I agree with many of your positions.)
You forgot Salem, where the government of Oregon lives. Another Democrat ghetto. The Wilamette Valley (includes all three of those cities plus Corvallis and a bunch of smaller suburbs) holds more than 60% of the population of Oregon. It’s a Blue Heaven, and it’s going to stay that way for a long time.
“Forgot”? Hell, I live in Corvallis. But if mainstream Republicans continue to abandon parts of the state to their sure-to-lose fringe candidates, the people who live there will see the flakes as the face of the Republican Party, and things will never change.
My sympathies. 😉 If you ever decide to move to the right side of the Snake, I’ll help with your deprogramming.
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I have to say, though, that being a flake certainly worked for Tom McCall.
Corvallis is about the only sane part of the Valley, in my fading memory. I lived in Wilsonville just south of Portland for a couple of years not long ago, but I had the chance to get out not long after they cranked the income tax and I took it. I really liked living in Oregon, but they clearly did’t like me.
Ya know, Oregon (and/or other blue states) can suffer and die, and I won’t even waste the energy to wonder if I should care. All of my energy is bent towards, first, insuring the survival of my family, and second the mitigation of the misery that is now assured. If the idiot blue states screw themselves to the point where the must turn cannibal and eat each other, I still will not have any sympathy to spare for them, because I will still be spending all of it trying to salvage what I can of the life I had B. O.(before obama).
Alas, we have this thing called the federal government … which, when misused by opportunistic jerks *cough* Democrats *cough* can bleed the sane, productive states dry with taxes to sustain the idiocy of the blue states. You may not care about the problems of the blue states, but their problems care about you.
Afraid their problems don’t care about me anymore, Herp, since I no longer earn enough money to pay federal income taxes….a situation I don’t see being rectified until after the democrats are fully out of power for at least two years.
Do you own any firearms? Do you want to do something that they don’t want you to do? Do you think any illegal thoughts?
I agree with qixlqatl somehow after 2012 I find myself totally void of any sense of mercy for anyone living in a blue state or voting blue. Vote for the blues end up singing the blues. As I said before the election in the end there will be neither pity nor mercy, and they voted for it.
I would point like to point out only 54% of the voting public here in Oregon voted for Obama in the last election, and some of the comments here are damning a lot of Republicans for being outnumbered by immigrants to this state from the craziest state in the Union–California.
Your pity, not your contempt, would be appropriate. Think of us not as another of those crazy states, but as one of the unfortunate states that absorbs Californians who might otherwise end up living where *you* all live.
My (expecting) wife and I are Oregon natives, live in Portland, and in spite of working for a company that is actually doing well right now… we don’t have the money to move.
These miners might live in one of the counties that voted 60+% for Romney, so the scorn is a bit premature. Goodness knows the logging industry, killed primarily by the Feds, used to.
Fair enough.
I loved when ya’ll had a sign on the California border that said “Oregon–A nice place to visit. Don’t stay.”
Really, the main problem is the Supreme Court ruling that one man/one vote was the only acceptable form of representation. It destroyed the bicameral nature of state governments, since senate seats had to be apportioned by population, rather than by county.
Beforehand, a Governor and State House of Representatives could be placed by a concentration of population in one region, but the State Senate acted as a brake, and protected the interests of the rest of the state.
Now, population concentrations hold all the power. They know it, and any number of people in those concentrations will haughtily insist that we in the hinterlands should be grateful to them for any forbearance shown. It’s happened in California, Oregon, Washington, and is now happening in Idaho.