Measure would be on the 2018 November ballot

(Salem, Or) -- Dr. Bud Pierce, the Republican nominee for governor in 2016 and his wife Selma have filed an initiative petition to put into place Term Limits for legislators in Oregon.

In 1859, Oregon became America’s 33rd state.  The authors of Oregon’s Constitution wisely term limited Oregon’s Governor, Secretary of State, and Treasurer.  These founding citizens realized that politicians consolidate power when elected to political office.  With increasing time in office, political power only increases.  Special interests, including the very wealthy, big business, and powerful labor, ask for favors in exchange for political support.  These favors generally enhance the control and the ease of living for these special interests and their members, to the detriment of ordinary everyday Oregonians.  The political class controls the machinery of government, and incumbent office holders are shielded from accountability by the bureaucracy.  Many political office holders seek to control the press, to control information available to the public. 

Thirty years ago I listened carefully as President Ronald Reagan told America’s citizens that he was preparing to sign the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The Act required that employers attest to their employees’ immigration status, made it illegal to hire or recruit illegal immigrants knowingly, and legalized certain seasonal agricultural workers.  It also allowed approximately 4 million illegal immigrants, who had resided in America prior to 1982 and did not have a criminal record, to apply for legal status.  Applicants were required to pay a fine, pay any back taxes due, and possess basic knowledge of English, US government and US history.  We were told that we would never face the problem of illegal immigration again………

New Year is a time of reflection, a time to look at past successes and failures, a time to consider your goals for the upcoming year.

Thanksgiving Day found me doing what I have done on many a Thanksgiving, working.  As a doctor, I am one of millions of Americans who work in a field in which service must be provided 24 hours a day, 365 days (366 on leap years) each year. 

A rainy fall has returned to our Oregon, and we are about to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Most trace America’s Thanksgiving to the harvest celebrations of early Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts colony.  President George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide celebration of Thanksgiving in America “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.”

Kate Brown supports the $6-billion tax increase her political allies in our government unions put on this year's ballot. Their Measure 97 tax on Oregon sales is the biggest tax increase in Oregon history. Non-partisan state economists estimate that the average Oregonian will pay $600 dollars more for goods and services under Measure 97.

Consider this before you vote:

• Kate Brown took $10,000 in Comcast contributions. And then backed the Comcast-Time-Warner merger in a letter written by a Comcast lobbyist.
• Brown took hundreds of thousands from out-of-state ethanol producers and big utilities.
• And hundreds of thousands from out-of-state billionaires and special interests funded her campaign this fall, and Oregon unions, so it's no surprise she's supporting Measure 97.