By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Oregon liberals have received their wish list for the state.

This includes;

(1) high taxes
(2) far-reaching costly environmental mandates
(3) State government spending higher (per population) than 40 other states
(4) high minimum wage
(5) government hand-outs far exceeding most other states
(6) Health care taxes and mandates that most states do not have
(7) Unpopular gross receipts tax that most states dare not have (as it taxes revenue instead of profits)
(8) Inflexible land-use laws
(9) Hidden gas taxes (Carbon fuel standard)
(10) … and so much more

The end result?

The latest economic report shows that Oregon’s growth rate is half the state average!

Damon Runberg, the Business Oregon Economist, reported,

“The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released 2025 gross domestic product (GDP) figures for all states…U.S. GDP grew 2.1% in 2025—a moderation from 2024 (2.8%) and 2023 (2.9%). Oregon’s economy expanded, but at roughly half the national pace, with GDP rising 1% in 2025. The state saw a similar deceleration in growth, down from 2.1% in 2024 and 1.5% in 2023.”

The cost of the liberal policy wish list is that Oregon is falling behind the nation.

Also, for the first time in 40 years people are leaving the state faster than coming in.

Also, Oregon is a top state for homelessness, cost-of-living and addictions.

Oregon needs a self-correction soon.

Was this article helpful? If yes, please make a donation.   You can even make a charitable or PAC donation.

The post Liberal fail: Oregon grows half rate of nation first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Jason Williams, 
Oregon 250.com, celebrating America’s 250th
Founder of Taxpayers Association Oregon

This is a funny story.

As World Cup fans tour America, they are posting their experiences online as they travel state to state.   Some Americans are following these visitors online and reaching out to them on their social media and sending them directly all kinds of wonderful invitations to stop by.

Here is what one World Cup fans said in full, “American hospitality is unmatched. I don’t know the owner of this boat at all. He just saw my video yesterday and sent me a message saying, ‘I’m heading out tomorrow. Do you want to come?’ He then invited me into his house. He’s now giving me a tour and taking me to breakfast on the water on his boat. This is incredible. You guys don’t understand. This is not normal in any other country.”

These stories are more reasons to be proud this America 250th.

The post World Cup fans love USA (part 3) Wild hospitality story first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon Foundation,

KATU-2 Has run the numbers and the loss of market value in downtown Portland properties is down an astonishing 70% since 2019.   This has resulted in tens of millions of dollars of tax revenue loss.   There have been 10 new taxes that Portlanders have been hit with in the last 10 years.

As taxes go out … businesses leave … politicians respond by offering them tax $$ to come back.

The post Downtown Portland down 70% in property values first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

Top 5 headlines

1 Elected Dems come out against IP28 (Peace Act)
2 $25 minimum wage?
3 Why Oregon pays more as USA gas prices fall
4 Blazers owner: Taxpayers must fund arena
5 Tootie Smith: new Office of Seafood

Bonus

County prioritizes housing for LGBTQIA2S+, BIPOC
Right turns at red lights could be prohibited
Mayor’s home-sharing program, 5 applications in 4 mo.

The post Top headlines for the week of 6/26 first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Lars Larson

The Northwest Nonsense

A brand new public opinion poll shows massive opposition to taxpayer funding of MODA center renovation that mostly benefits billionaire ball team owner Tom Dundon.

This is the second poll done by Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation.

And here’s where it gets very interesting. The first poll showed almost 71 percent of Oregon taxpayers oppose spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix up the MODA.

Then came the not-so-subtle threat from new Trailblazer owner Tom Dundon, “fix it up or I’ll take my ball team and leave town”.

That’s a paraphrase but I think it’s totally accurate.

When the new poll asked if citizens supported the Round Ball Remodel given the threat, opposition actually grew from 71 percent to 77.

Apparently, citizens don’t like extortion.

Former State Rep Jeff Kropf, points out that nearly three-quarters of those polled, even in the very liberal Portland metro, don’t like taxpayers paying to benefit Tom Dundon’s team.

Meanwhile, I’m still searching for former Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who created this whole mess, by buying the MODA for a dollar two years ago.

That’s the Rose City Rap. Join me at noon on KXL for First Amendment Friday. I’m Lars Larson

The post Lars Larson: Blazer remodel rejected, despite extortion first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

A Massachusetts woman has been arrested for flying over 70 pounds of marijuana from Oregon into Kentucky.   This just shows that Oregon’s abundant marijuana supply does not always stay in Oregon.   The street was valued at over $150,000.

The post Woman transports 75 lbs of pot from Oregon to Kentucky first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon
OregonWatchdog.com

Big news.

Oregon Capitol Watch just released a poll that shows that nearly 80% of Oregon voters do not want a taxpayer subsidy to remodel the Blazer Moda center.  View the poll here.

This poll comes at the same day the new Blazer owner visited Portland and said taxpayers MUST provide a subsidy.  Wow!

It is getting so bad for the Blazers that this Oregonian headline screamed urgency when they said “Blazers must be active in their own salvation”

This comes the same week that Kotek is getting bad news on the datacenters. 

• A lawsuit was filed against tax breaks for datatcenters.

• La Pine shut down their datacenter over citizen protest.

• Citizens in Hillsboro have launched a petition drive critical of datacenters.

This happens mere weeks after Governor Kotek tried to expand datacenters with even more tax handouts.  Kotek got caught on the wrong side this year of a very strongly-felt voter movement.

Simply put, the public is turning away from bailouts for sports and datacenters and Kotek is caught on the wrong side.   The Moda Center should have been remodeled years ago … but … it was sold to the City of Portland.  What worse landlords can you have than a government?   Under Portland City’s management, Portland’s basketball arena fell into disrepair and is now listed among the most antiquated in the entire NBA.

Was this article helpful? If yes, please make a donation.   You can even make a charitable or PAC donation.

The post Blazers, data centers, crashing down around Kotek first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

In the short session of 2022, the Oregon legislature passed SB 1565, mandating businesses accept physical currency as a method of payment. Last year, they doubled down on this, passing SB 1176, which directed the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) on enforcement.

This is a classic example of how voters tell pollsters they want affordability but cast ballots electing representatives mandating unnecessary costs on businesses. When accepting cash makes sense to a business, they don’t need this regulation. When cutting cash out of processes will save everyone money, such an opportunity is lost. I spent more than an hour in a Taco Bell waiting for my dinner recently, because of this.

My mother was in the hospital in North Portland, and I was driving my dad home, all the way to Eagle Creek (where I grew up). On the way, he offered to buy me dinner. We were discussing where, when I suggested it would be fun to eat at the Sandy Taco Bell where I worked as a teenager around 35 years ago, to see how it has changed.

We made that decision somewhere in Gresham. If I were paying, I’d order our dinner on my phone as we’re stopped at a red light. It would be ready for us when we reach Sandy. I mentioned this to my dad, telling him that if you go into a Taco Bell today, they will look at you like you’re weird if you try to order at a cash register.

It got weirder. After complying with the sign at the counter that said to please use the kiosk to order, the mounted tablet could not accept cash. The process to comply with Oregon’s regulation was to push a pay with cash button and then go to the counter, where an employee would take your bucks. I thought my dad did this, since he walked over to the counter afterwards. I failed to realize that, having no employee there to help him, he thought they would just ask for his money when they completed our order.

That was a mistaken assumption. The order never went through, but we waited there for some time, thinking it had. Eventually, a manager noticed we’d been waiting for a while and inquired. She discovered they had no order from us.

Yet the problem didn’t end there. She happily took my dad’s order and his cash at the counter, like it’s 1989, possibly using one of the registers I once used. That order was promptly made, but then taken over to the drive-through and handed to someone else through their window. So, there we were, waiting again for an awkwardly long time.

The second mistake was discovered when the driver walked in to complain about getting the wrong order. It appears that the old-fashioned cash register is so seldom used, the workers on the food line did not recognize its direction where the order should go. Their system gets clear labeling from the drive-through, your phone, or the kiosk, but the old register doesn’t interface with the new system clearly enough (or often enough) for the worker to know that it was a dine-in order.

While this experience would have been better had our order been placed on a phone while en route, none of this Taco Hell would have happened if the business had been allowed, under Oregon law, to clearly say at its kiosk that they are a cash-free business.

Of course, many customers, like my dad, prefer to pay in paper bills and coins. Policymakers need not worry. There will be businesses that cater to that preference. We’d know Taco Bell doesn’t accept cash and go somewhere else. It’s when the government mandates these kinds of things that we get a mismatch of consumer preferences and business processes.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.

The post Paying in Cash: An anecdote of SB 1565 cost first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

By Guest Submission Meme,

More memes below:

The post (5 memes) Truism on getting older first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

Prosperity Council Recommendations Could Put Oregon Back on Track, Will Leadership Act
By Oregon House Republican leader,

SALEM, Ore. — Today, Governor Kotek’s Prosperity Council issued its official recommendations, which include relaxing Oregon’s regulatory burden, reconnecting to federal tax codes, and lowering taxes.

Experts are recommending a much-needed course correction for Oregon’s failing economy — starting with our business climate. CNBC recently updated its “America’s Top States for Business 2025” rankings. Oregon now sits at 39th overall, 41st in economy, 43rd in cost of doing business, 47th in business friendliness, and 45th in cost of living.

House Republican Leader Lucetta Elmer (R-McMinnville) issued the following statement:

“While I appreciate the work done by the Governor’s Prosperity Council, another report, no matter how thorough or thought out, can’t deliver results on its own. We, as elected officials, cannot continue to sit by and watch Oregon fall further behind.

I am skeptical as to how the Governor will implement the Council’s recommendations. How long will we ask Oregonians to wait to feel reprieve?

I am grateful that the Council is drawing attention to these issues, but businesses and Oregonians have been raising these same concerns for years. The Legislature has access to ample data to conclude that change is necessary, but the majority party has consistently pushed policies that take Oregon in the wrong direction. We must enact common-sense policies to address these challenges rather than defaulting to panels and lengthy expert recommendations that reach the same conclusions.

The Council’s recommendations — like amending the Corporate Activities Tax and Estate Tax — are not novelties; they are Republican priorities. If Governor Kotek is serious about partnering with legislative leaders who are passionate about securing prosperity for Oregonians, my door is always open.”

The post Rep. Elmer: Comments on latest Prosperity Council recommendations first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.

NEW POLL: Four Out of Five Oregon Voters Reject Nearly $1 Billion for the Moda Center, Even If the Trail Blazers Leave
By Jeff Kropf,
Oregon Capitol Watch,

SALEM, Ore. As Oregon leaders debate public funding approaching $1 billion for the Moda Center following renewed calls for public investment from new Portland Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon, a new statewide poll finds Oregon voters overwhelmingly reject the proposal, even if it meant losing the Trail Blazers.

Conducted by American Pulse Research & Polling for Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation, the survey tested the central argument made by supporters of the proposal: that taxpayers should help fund the project to keep the Trail Blazers in Oregon.

Four out of five Oregon voters (79.9%) said taxpayers still should not provide the funding, even if the Trail Blazers would leave Oregon without it. Just 13.6% said the public should provide the money. (Question 10).

“This poll tested the central assumption driving this debate,” said Jeff Kropf, President of Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation. “Many believed Oregonians would support nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer funding if it meant keeping the Trail Blazers. We tested that assumption directly. The answer was clear: Oregon voters believe taxpayer dollars should be focused on higher priorities.”

Key Findings

• Opposition crossed every major voting group. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, men, women, every congressional district, every age group, and every income level all registered majority opposition. (Question 10 Crosstabs).
• The findings held up after hearing both sides. Initial opposition measured 70.5%. After respondents heard arguments from both supporters and opponents, opposition increased to 76.2%, while support remained below 20%. (Questions 4 & 9).
• The possibility of losing the Trail Blazers did not change public opinion. Even when respondents were asked whether taxpayers should provide the funding if the team would definitely leave Oregon, 79.9% still said no. (Question 10).

The survey interviewed 329 registered Oregon voters June 18-20, 2026, using American Pulse Research & Polling’s Gold Standard multimodal methodology of live telephone interviews and text to web surveys. The poll has a ±5.4% margin of error and was weighted to reflect Oregon’s likely electorate. American Pulse has been featured by CNN, The New York Times, FOX News, Newsmax, NewsNation, and Newsweek, and reported a 97% polling accuracy rate during the 2024 election cycle.

Additional toplines, crosstabs, methodology, and interview requests are available through Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation.

Click the image below for increase size:

The post Poll: 4 of 5 voters reject near $1B for Moda – even If Blazers Leave first appeared on Oregon Catalyst.