Oregon finds itself last or lowest among all the states in its public support of higher education. Every obvious indication would lead the observer to believe that Oregon's legislators ignore the relationship between paying for what you get. ['Relationship' needs to be between two things: Paying for what you get and...?]

One Oregon newspaper's editorialist wrote, "Even now, there are legislators who pretend there's no connection between Oregon's lowest-in-the-nation corporate income tax, and being last in public support of universities." The editorialist goes on to say, "You know there's something wrong with a state's finance system -- and its leadership -- when even during good times like this it still can't bring itself to make a basic investment in higher education."

I disagree. [As you read the rest of this paragraph, it's hard to figure out what this "I disagree" means.] Having been born and grown up in Oregon, I remember back when I was in high school here, along the way of going [slightly awkward formulation] from preschool through graduate school to a Ph.D., realizing that anyone from an Oregon school, no matter how many degrees he or she got and achieved at whatever the highest level this state had to offer, the person involved was going to be overlooked by someone with similar or even lower achievement from somewhere else. [Meandering and confusing sentence.] That somewhere else, incidentally, could be another state in this country or overseas. The bottom line is that, unfortunately, Oregon has a pronounced inferiority complex about its higher education graduates. [This is the man's basic argument. For clarity's sake, he should have put it somewhere in his first paragraph.]

That's the real reason corporations and others who could make a difference in academic standing in this state won't come forward to support higher education at any more than to the ['any more than to' is awkward] $10 minimum corporate tax to pay for a proper investment in higher education [Note the redundancy of 'higher education,' which gives the sentence a circular feel. We're getting a sense that this writer is trying to push forth with some real emotion, but that the emotion, which at this point looks unpleasantly like free-floating resentment, has compromised his lucidity.]. They don't need to do so in order to get the candidates they seek to do the jobs they want done. Oh, they'll support the kicker because that puts more money in their pocket to the level of $1 billion and they'll quietly (sometimes even with great noise) support K-12 at the proposed $6.245 billion. [Again, the tone is snide, which is rarely a winner; and the writing is just awkward.]

Do you know why they support the kicker and more money for K-12? The first is obvious because it means they can stuff more bucks into their already bulging pockets. [Stuffing more bucks in bulging pockets is nineteenth century populist boilerplate. It has absolutely no impact.]

The second, however, is a bit more obscure. Your see, if the state does well at educating students to the twelve grade level (even with an alarming number of some dropouts), then corporation[s], of course, have no recourse but to bring their pals in from elsewhere to fill the big buck jobs. [Pals, big buck...] The high school grads, GED holders, and dropouts can have the scraps; you know, the jobs they fight over with the illegal immigrant for the lowest, [most] menial, [most] poorly paid chores possible.

Look around at a few examples: every time there's need of a big-district superintendent, someone from another state is brought in and then he or she brings in his or her pals for the top positions or as exorbitantly-paid consultants. Where does Chemeketa Community College's new president come from? Somewhere in Oregon? Look again. She can absolutely be depended upon to bring her pals with her into all the top jobs. Did the new president and publisher of the Statesman Journal come from Oregon? Not this time! Just look around: Even Oregon's governor is not a native Oregonian. [The writer's getting uncomfortably close here to nativist rhetoric.]

I've lived in this state all my life. [Note the negatives I'm about to highlight in the next sentence.] Every person I know who attended an Oregon college who has not been able to earn more than a modest income has not been able to do so unless his or her family owned a business and he or she has been able to inherit it. [See how confusing they are? The writer doesn't know how to tighten his prose, to avoid confusing redundancy; the result is that readers need to scan many of his sentences twice to make sense of them.] It doesn't matter whether they went to school and earned a high degree, they'll never pull down other than a mediocre salary unless unless [Delete one "unless" -- in a prose style full of redundancy, it plays as just more of the same.] it’s as a self-employed professional, like a doctor, dentist, or attorney (often from a family that had the means to pay their way), but to head an organization, private or public, no way! [We expect guys at bars nursing vodkas to talk like this -- in rambling, emotional sentences that have trouble getting to the point.] That individual just has to be hired from elsewhere, out of state. They cannot claim any Oregon school or higher education as their alma mater because my experience tells me that is the kiss of death here.

As long as Oregon has an inferiority complex about it [its] own higher education graduates there won't be more than "peanuts" [Why quotation marks around peanuts?] thrown higher education's way in this state. We can expect more of current same [current same is awkward] from the Legislature regarding the support of higher education because any Oregonian with an ounce of insight knows that our legislators are in the firm grasp of Oregon's corporations and organizations and those folks want their bread and butter spread just the way it always has been. [Peanuts, bread, and butter: The writer has failed to make an argument, but has succeeded in making a sandwich.]