By Eric Fruits, Ph.D.
If you guessed that Oregonians think homelessness is the most important problem facing the state, you’d be right. That’s no surprise.
What’s surprising is what came in second. It turns out, according to a poll by DHM Research, more than 1-in-6 Oregonians think politicians and government are the biggest problem facing our state. At the beginning of the year, only 2% of Oregonians had such a dim view of government.
That’s a huge turnaround in less than a year. The people we elected to lead our community out of the pandemic are now seen as a bigger problem than the pandemic itself.
Despite sitting on a gusher of tax revenues and federal relief funds, our state and local governments have checked out and left us on our own. Thousands have waited months for unemployment assistance. Schools are shutting down because they can’t handle rowdy students. Residents are cleaning up city parks because the city won’t do it. Businesses are hiring their own private security, because we don’t have enough police.
Remember when they said, “We’re all in this together?” Yeah … that ranks right up there with, “The check is in the mail.”
Fortunately, next year is an election year, up and down the ballot. Perhaps it’s time our elected leaders learn that when they abandon voters, the voters will abandon them. We may be looking at a ballot box revolution.
Eric Fruits, Ph.D. is Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
Glenn Gailis
Right on Eric! Well stated. The government the majority elected is totally non functional. New leadership with common sense is desperately needed. We need to clean up Portland and re-establish law and order.
Bill Udy
This is a good sign. People should not be looking to government to solve problems because government is not very good at solving problems. It’s about time people started seeing this. Since the state can’t seem to handle the growing crime and vagrancy, individuals and businesses are now doing something about it by hiring private security to do the job. Parents are upset about forced masking of children, closed schools, distance learning, and the teaching of the poisonous doctrine of “critical race theory” and are pulling their kids out of public schools and paying for private schools.
Since the state is experiencing “a gusher of tax revenues and federal relief money”, taxpayers would be justified in demanding their money back, then taking an ax to income tax rates. Enough already!