Judge halts Sizemore funding
- A Multnomah County judge cut the flow of money to tax activist Bill Sizemore's political organization Wednesday, saying the group had engaged in "extensive wrongdoing."
The injunction dissolved Sizemore's tax-exempt foundation. It also ordered his political action committee to stop using money from charities and from doing business with Sizemore's signature-gathering business, I & R Petition Services, for five years.
Circuit Judge Jerome LaBarre blasted Sizemore -- Oregon's most prominent petitioner of ballot initiatives -- saying he illegally used the tax-deductible contributions for political purposes. LaBarre called Sizemore's group, supposedly set up for educational purposes, "a sham charity" used "for his own financial gain."
Sizemore has been the leading anti-tax activist in Oregon for some time now, and is almost singlehandedly responsible for the sorry state of education in the state's public schools. Like Tim Eyman in Washington, he's capitalized on the Conservative Freeloader faction -- you know, the folks who want all those public services and cops and roads and schools but don't want to have to pay for them -- by trotting out a fresh initiative every year or so designed to "get the government off our backs."
It should now be clear to everyone in Oregon that Sizemore and his ilk are nothing but scam artists. Unfortunately, there's a sucker born every minute -- and in the Northwest, it seems, there are two.
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