By Cascade Policy Institute Testimony before hearing by John Charles Oregon’s public purpose tax was enacted in 1999 through the passage of Senate Bill 1149. The tax went into effect on March 1, 2002. The stated purposes were to subsidize “new cost-effective local energy conservation, new-market transformation efforts, the above-market […]

Oregon Ranked 42nd For Business — the biggest drop of any state By Oregon Small Business Association Oregon is an unfriendly state when it comes to business, according to 650 CEO’s surveyed by ChiefExecutive.net. The survey ranked Oregon No. 42, down 15 spots since 2008, the biggest drop in the […]

By Bill Conerly, Oregon economist Businomics, Conerly Consulting Is the Facebook IPO a flop? Not on your life. It’s a sign that Silicon Valley has gotten as smart about finance as it has been about technology. I like it. The smackdown of Facebook comes from the lack of a price […]

By J.L. Wilson Associated Oregon Industries Federal Legislation would facilitate retaliation against Oregon businesses for political speech. AOI joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a national coalition of business groups in opposition to the federal DISCLOSE Act of 2012 last week. AOI signed a formal letter of opposition to […]

By U.S. Chamber of Commerce U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) released a first-of-its-kind study breaking out the economic benefits of intellectual property (IP) on a state-by-state level. By measuring R&D spending, the number of scientists and engineers, and the amount of patents, trademarks, and copyrights produced, […]

A pizza restaurant in Houston Texas, Patrone Pizza, is causing a ruckus by offering a free pizza to those who order it in Spanish. MNBC reports below in the video: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

West Coast Pump Prices Begin to Ease; National Average Dips Ahead of Memorial Day Travel By Oregon — American Automobile Association “Retail gas prices on the West Coast are close to historic highs, but there are signs prices in this region will begin to ease as the Memorial Day weekend […]

Key Workforce Challenges: Slow Job Growth by Nick Beleiciks, Gail Krumenauer Oregon Employment Department, Job growth following the recession has been excruciatingly slow. One measure of employment, the number of jobs covered by unemployment insurance, shows that Oregon lost a net 147,900 jobs during the recession. During the next 25 […]

By Senate Majority Office The Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board approved a request for funding this morning that will launch a foreclosure mediation program to help struggling homeowners by July of this year. The program created by Senate Bill 1552 was approved in the final hours of the February Session and […]