Oregon’s current elected figurehead of state government, Tina Kotek, is not so different from those who preceded her. She promises to make the state do things Oregonians want, like “clean up the damn trash.” She spends millions to achieve those goals, but the achievement is most often limited to the press release heralding the spending, as though the spending, and not the cleaning, were the point.

The state exerts mastery over those elected to control it by ensuring, via public employee unions’ campaign contributions, that the big incentives point toward doing the bidding of the people who work for the state. When push comes to shove, cleaning up the damn trash is secondary to protecting the state employees who seem infinitely incapable of cleaning up the trash, or doing much of anything at all.

Which brings us back to the Declaration. Independence from our state government does not mean voting Republican or voting Democrat or joining Idaho. It means asserting ourselves as the proper sovereigns of our state, against the protestations of the usurpers.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is our right. It is our duty.

Happy Independence Day.

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