Pacific Rainforest Wildlife Guardians                           

            Who's Flying the Plane?? You are! Yikes!!    

We all get to vote if we want to, but seldom elect someone who we can feel confident in to operate in auto-pilot.  Oregon's Governor Kitzhaber needs to hear from you to miss the mountain straight ahead.

Timber companies owning over 5,000 acres pay NO Severance Tax. Small woodland owners are supposed to pay it, but most don't. There's no enforcement. It's outrageously unfair to tax small businesses but not the biggest ones. 35% of $3.85 per thousand board feet should be going to county General Funds for health services,  housing, etc., 65% for education.  State service dependants suffer while wealthy corporations get away with sanctioned tax evasion, robbing us all. Many big timber companies are based out of state or overseas. It costs billions to restore the mess of watersheds damaged by clear-cuts and logging roads.

Governor Kitzhaber is balancing the budget by maintaining enormous tax breaks for big timber, (nearly every log load on road and rail is tax free), while endangering Mentally ill, Developmentally disabled, Alzheimer's patients, Medically fragile children, and Elderly, threatening to force them into more expensive care systems sooner than needed and for longer durations at far greater expense, loosing their independence and homes, or becoming homeless by using housing money to pay someone besides trained caregivers to bring them medicine, give baths, rides to the doctor, shop and fix meals if they can even find anyone to help them at all.

Tax Free Logs! Plenty of money to be had for both budget and services. His math is backward. To save $4 million, he is rejecting $11 million in federal funds.  Senior and disabled care providers will have their health insurance cut in half and provide services for shorter hours, reducing their wages. They only make $10.20 an hour and many will be forced to find better paying jobs and benefits to survive. Rural areas will be hit hardest.

 He chose to freeze caregiver pay for another 6 years.  It has been frozen for 4.5 years already.  Yet the rich got another tax break January 1st at the same time cutting services to Oregon's most vulnerable by 5%.    

Please call Governor Kitzhaber and beg him not to force our weakest citizens into expensive institutions or out into the street. 

He made a very bad decision while giving the wealthy everything they want. Don't let him get away with it! Speak out for Grandma and the severely disabled. Demand the rich pay their share of taxes. Don't balance the budget on the backs of the elderly.

Please call John Kitzhaber at 503-378-4582 and e-mail him at this link, or, best of all,

write to: Governor Kitzhaber, 160 State Capitol, 900 Court Street, Salem, Oregon, 97301-4047. Demand that he reconsider the injustice he has placed on our most fragile citizens, so the rich could get richer without paying timber severance tax.

The only way to fix Oregon, Governor, is repeal Severance Tax exemptions, and enforce stumpage tax laws for all log loads, not stick Grandma in an institution and more mentally ill out on the streets. A balanced budget must be a fair budget!!  

Tell him you want him to return to negotiations with SEIU and stop the cuts and wage freeze. Let them show him how to save $100,000,000.- without harming anyone, and fix the tax code.

                      "Where's My Caregiver?"