What to do about a lack of funding for our communities….
 I was relatively surprised to hear Kulongoski (Governor of Oregon)
speaking out recently about the elephant in the room. The $10 corporate tax
boondoggle. There is nothing conservative about suppy-side, trickle-down,
blather like this.
If you give large corporations free rein to avoid and evade paying their fair
share of the taxes, then all the rest of us have to either pick up their slack, or suffer. Â
The solution is forcing the corporations who want trained workers
to pay their fair share of our costs for education and training of workers.
Instead of the 4-6% free ride they get now, they should pay the 23-34%
they paid twenty years ago. Our community colleges are absolutely capable
of providing the training programs which our corporate non-partners refuse
to pay for. The lie in the article below tries to pit higher eduction against
apprentice programs. This is a false choice. If the fortune 500 stepped up
to the plate we could get the job done. So far, they are unwilling and our
legislators do not seem inclined to do anything about it. Blaming our
schools for their intransigence is bizzare and wrong.
This is no “crisis.” It is the predictable result of refusing to invest in our people
and the abject ignorance inherent in subscribing to supply-side economic hooliganism.
We did it “their” way. There is no such thing as “trickle-down.” The more you pander
to corporate CEO’s, the more they take out of our economy and invest in India,
China, or Swiss bank accounts.  Â
tim