We have so many different movies and TV shows that illustrate how the Mafia and others ran their protection racket: the Godfather series, The Sopranos, and The Equalizer, to name a few. T he protection racket usually said, “It would be a shame if your business caught fire due to greasy kitchen pipes.”

Now let me provide some information about the law in Oregon called the “Tax Kicker.”

Bing explains, “The Oregon surplus credit, known as the ‘kicker,’ is a unique way for the state government to return some of your taxes when revenues are more than predicted.  The kicker comes from a 1980 ballot measure that created personal and corporate tax kickers.  It is triggered when the state’s revenue for a two-year budget is 2% higher than forecasted.  The amount paid to any given taxpayer is based on their payment from the previous year.”

In Oregon, we have just seen a new variation of this protection scam in our state government’s current legislative session.  State senator Jeff Golden, a Democrat from Jackson County, chairman of the 2025 Oregon Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfires, has proposed a new fire protection scheme.  If we, the citizens give the state our tax kicker refund, they will guarantee there will never be more wildfires in Oregon.

Every year since we moved to Oregon in May of 2011, we have seen Democrats continuously try to steal the tax kicker from Oregon taxpayers to fund their environmental agenda, road projects, windmills, and other liberal wants and desires.

In all that time, I have never seen somebody promise there will be no more wildfires in Oregon if he gets access to all that kicker money.  And unless Senator Golden has an inside track with Mother Nature; Thor, the God of Lightning; or the universe’s Creator, I doubt he can guarantee there will be no more wildfires in Oregon.

This is another example of the foolishness the Oregon State Democrats present when their ego and their supermajority gets bigger than their office allows.

John Woods: Father, Husband, Patriot, Conservative, Activist, Delegate to Oregon state Republican Party.

Image: Jeff Head via Flickr, public domain.