Senator Kim Thatcher
By the way a great woman, obviously doing her best to stay out of harms way. She’s agreed to to maintain a proper narrative of why these senators are doing what they are doing.
She has sent what amounts to a daily diary entry for lack of a better term to share with those that support the effort…
These are her unedited words for you to read and hear:
Its Day 2: I am one of the 11 Republican state senators who has left the state in order to deny a quorum to the tyrannical Democrats who have a super majority and are wiling to go to great lengths to ensure passage of their extreme agenda.
I thought you might like to know what we are up against here in Oregon. Actually, I’m not “here” in Oregon as I’ve had to leave the state since the governor has authorized the Oregon State Police to round us up and bring us back to the capital.
Additionally, starting today, the Senate President is planning to fine each of us $500 a day for each session day we deny the super-majority Democrats a quorum.
Reporters have stalked my home and police came to my house just this morning to pay me a visit in case I “need a ride” to the state capital. (As if THAT’S what’s keeping me away!)
The leftist organization, Our Oregon, has made large ad buys against three of us, including myself. The Democrats are threatening community projects in our districts. I’m also a small business owner who works on public works projects so I’m sure I will feel their wrath there as well. Part of the job, I guess.
What’s really rich, though, is that our governor, Kate Brown, orchestrated a walkout of Senate Democrats in 2001—when she was the Senate Democrat Leader—over the Republican “redistricting” plan. (By the way, I think our state is still paying the price for letting them get their way on that one.)
Anyway, in 2001 she told the media that the democrat walkout was very “appropriate” and that, “Under certain circumstances it’s fair to say we would use all tools available to us.”
Now In 2019: Kate Brown to media after REPUBLICANS walkout over an irreversible and extreme bill that will kill our state: “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans would turn their back on their constituents….They need to return and do the jobs they were elected to do.”
Hypocrisy?
And guess what… the Senate Republicans say “Under certain circumstances, it’s fair to say we will use all tools available to us.”
BUT THIS WALKOUT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT THE CAP AND TRADE BILL (or as we “lovingly” refer to as the Cap ‘n Crunch bill).
They passed a $2.5 Billion hidden sales tax (gross receipts tax) when we have a record amount of revenue. This tax was purportedly to help schools but will actually be going to plug the giant holes in our public pension liabilities. So we wanted PERS reform. We walked the day before the vote was scheduled on the gross receipts tax.
We were working closely with a Democrat who bucks her party all the time but still has to be careful. Since her party agreed to do meaningful PERS reform she agreed to vote for the bill. AND the D’s agreed to kill the gun control bill and the forced vaccination bill going through at that time , AND reset the cap and trade bill AND sit down with republicans in a good faith effort to improve the bill….we promised to return and not to walk out the rest of the legislative session which is over July 1.
We returned after five days.
The day we came back, they passed tax bill the day before our revenue projections came out. Our state has so much revenue, in fact, that it triggered our state’s taxpayer “kicker” law where the state returns revenue to taxpayers that exceed projections by a certain percent. More on this later. The hidden sales tax has made people, understandably, angry and they are wanting to collect signatures to get it on the ballot so it can hopefully be overturned.
So, the Democrats have decided to preemptively tilt the outcome of this potential referendum in their favor. They set the date of this election to January 2020 where there are notoriously low voter turnouts. They also granted themselves the power to circumvent the normal process for creating ballot titles by allowing themselves to write the ballot title and description (I.e. the children will suffer unless you make “corporations” pay their fair share) with verbiage that will catch the unaware.
Now back to the kicker. It will likely be over a billion dollars, averaging over $300 per taxpayer. True to form, the Democrats want to steal this money because as you know, there’s never an end to the “good” government can do with other people’s money.
Meanwhile, regarding the “reset” on HB 2020 the cap n crunch bill… there have been NO Republican amendments accepted. After over a hundred different amendments having been proposed by various people, the Joint Carbon Committee (that is the actual name of it, not the Joint CO2 or “Climate Change Committee , but whatever) scheduled many hearings, adopted a couple amendments and the bill flew through the committee process and across the House floor where it was scheduled to land on the Senate floor yesterday.
After spending all day Wednesday trying to negotiate changes, it was clear they were immovable. So we left the state.
Not only was HB 2020 coming to the Senate floor yesterday, a bill that grants driver licenses to illegals was also scheduled. Both of them contain an emergency clause which precludes a referendum by voters who want to put them on the ballot.
As a side note, just a few years ago, the Oregon legislature passed a driver license bill that was successfully put on the ballot where it was handily rejected by voters 2:1. Every county, except Multnomah where Portland resides, rejected driver licenses for illegals.
The D’s learned their lesson. Never again will they let a controversial bill pass that doesn’t include an emergency clause. They are afraid of the voters which oddly elected them, so go figure.
If we stay out of Salem, other bills will die as well. The California style “clean diesel” bill (won’t be able to register and operate any diesels built prior to 2007), the vote manipulation bill for the hidden sales tax, the driver licenses for illegals bill and the bills they had previously agreed to kill: the gun control bill and the forced vaccination bill.
I’m in **** for the moment. Gov. ****** has stated that no Oregon Senate Republicans are welcome here. I believe he would back that up by using his own law enforcement to help Gov Brown get her way on the draconian agenda being forced down our throats in Oregon.
That’s all for now.
