Month: August 2017

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, August 23, 2017 by devadmin

The solar eclipse has come and gone but look skyward again. Why is the sky so dark? Why is the sky filled with smoke and haze? Why is air quality so poor? Why has it been so bad for the last month? We’ve all seen pictures from China where people wear masks to protect their nose and mouth from soot.

Is this what we face in the Pacific Northwest?

Should we blame industry? Is it coal-fired electric generation plants? Maybe its diesel traffic freighting up and down the I-5 corridor?  Or, could it be diesel construction and agricultural engines which we use to build our cities and produce our food? Is it manufacturing, or should we just chalk it up to mankind as a modern day scourge on planet Earth?

The environmentalists and those seeking political control and power may successfully demonize any of the above for their ultimate purposes of resource control and tax revenue.

The Map below tells a different story.

All of the large fires burning in Oregon are under the jurisdictional authority of the USFS. There are literally hundreds of fires but the large ones belong to the federal government. Why? Is it policy or is it bureaucratic malfeasance?

These questions are why I recommend that Obama’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument expansion gets withdrawn by Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke. I would suggest that the feds are not capable of managing their current resource load and that there is no point in giving them even more responsibilities.

Most of this land is already managed for forest, watershed, and sustainable resource diversity by the BLM. The existing cattle grazing allotments are extremely beneficial for curbing unhealthy fuel loads. There is no reason to burden private landowners, farmers, ranchers, cattlemen, forest service or BLM management teams with additional rules and regulations imposed by the Monument designation.

In 2000, when Clinton set aside 53,000 acres for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, his executive order marked the first time a monument had been created with the sole intention of protecting biodiversity.

Wow, that’s quite a claim. Let’s see, 53,000 acres divided by 126,000,000,000 acres on planet earth… hmm… 0.000000420. Now does anyone believe that this infinitesimally small parcel will protect biodiversity? Surely not!

But, the crowd cheered, “It’s a start; let’s expand it!”

So, in Obama’s final weeks, he expanded the monument by almost doubling it’s size to the current 100,000 acres. Obama asserted that the additional land would “increase habitat connectivity, watershed protection and landscape-scale resilience for the area’s unique biological values.”  Now, let’s re-do our math, 100,000 acres divided by 126,000,000,000 acres… hmmm… that equals a whopping impact for “landscape-scale resilience” of 0.000000793.

The math might seem silly but, for years, through the language of Utopian solutions, environmentalists have sought more control through federal acquisition or escalating wilderness status.

Federally controlled land is predominately concentrated in the West. Nationally, the United States government has direct control over almost 650,000,000 acres of land — nearly 30% of its total territory.  In our state, Oregon, the federal government controls 54% of all of the land.

In Venezuela,  the authoritarian regimes of Chavez and Madura have used government acquisition as their methodological mantra – nationalize anything that produces profit for “the good of the people.”

In 2005, then President Chavez began implementing a law that he put through his legislature in 2001. His plan allowed the state to lawfully expropriate unproductive farms or seize land without proper titles. After gaining title to those lands, he redistributed millions of acres supposedly to boost food production and ease rural poverty. This was really nothing more than Banana-Republic cronyism at work.

Today, Venezuela’s inflation rate is 720% and economists say that the Venezuelan government’s overspending on social programs and strict regulatory business policies have created an imbalance in the country’s economy. This imbalance is now fueling rising inflation, poverty, low healthcare spending and material shortages throughout Venezuela. The result from the status quo is increased corruption, profiteering by government agencies and blossoming trade opportunities for smugglers and drug traffickers.

This can also happen in America. These efforts are always done under the color of law. There is slow and gradual eating away of our nation’s foundational principles.  Many systematic expositions have been written on this idea which holds much of the world in its sway. It is most commonly known as socialism or by the more inclusive names of collectivism, Fabianism, progressivism, or gradualism. The more virulent wing of the movement is communism.

This movement has been continually tried and has always been found failing and Venezuela is today’s perfect example.

In Oregon, this slow, step-by-step tragedy started a hundred years ago with actions by a “progressive” living in the White House – Theodore Roosevelt.

Between 1902 and 1906, President Roosevelt went mindfully at work with maps of Oregon’s pristine landscapes. He acquired enormous swaths of Oregon’s forested wilderness for exclusive federal control. Most were acquired by using Executive Orders, however, he also urged passage of the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Oregon’s U.S. Senator Charles W. Fulton was outraged by these unprecedented land grabbing actions. Fulton introduced legislation to eliminate the president’s authority to establish national forest reserves via Executive Orders in 1907.

The very night before signing this law, Roosevelt issued another Executive Order snatching an additional 16 million acres from Oregon’s control. Honest journalists of the day deridingly labeled these new forests as the “Midnight Reserves.”

Then, in 1908, after the legislation prohibiting these blatant land grabs became law, Roosevelt engineered a new scheme to pluck more land from the states. In this instance he designated land surrounding Malhuer, Mud and Harney Lakes in Eastern Oregon as an “Indian reservation.” This last swindle avoided using the phrase “forest reserve,” which was now illegal after Fulton’s legislation. Instead, these new takings were identified, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”

Modern day 1906 Antiquities Act proponents, with help from environmentalists and main-stream media, have successfully steered the act away from it’s original intent as protection for “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest…”

Today, it is purely a tool for collecting booty from the several, free, sovereign and independent states.

As the founders feared, the heart of the issue is the probability that the central government will seek to, “annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce… an iron banded despotism.”

If we don’t stand for rural Oregon Values and common-sense – No one will!

Best regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, August 17, 2017 by devadmin

Recently, allegations of a diabolical scheme were exposed regarding Oregon Health Authority (OHA) attempted a smear campaign against one of the state’s 16 health care providers.

The allegation is that an attack was engineered against a Coordinated Care Organization (CCO) named FamilyCare Health. Apparently, OHA sought to exploit HIV patients that FamilyCare Health served to aid in the takedown of this non-profit organization.

If these allegations are true, first, it is unconscionable that OHA would systematically target HIV patients to help them with their dirty deed. Second, it is an atrocious violation of OHA’s public trust and responsibility which is to use their resources to diligently provide health and healing to Oregonians. Lastly, OHA abused taxpayer dollars to create their smear campaign against a valid, fully functional and diligent provider who focused on serving Oregon’s most vulnerable.

After the story leaked out, mass outrage ensued from both Democrats and Republicans. Surprisingly, the media erupted with anger, and Democrat Lynne Saxton, OHA’s director was removed from office. Saxton has consistently come under fire for perpetual failure and abuse while at OHA.

When asked for records requests, the Brown administration intentionally blacked out 26 entire pages of emails involving OHA’s FamilyCare takedown scheme. It was apparently, a strategic plan developed to attack the CCO health care provider for the sole purpose of growing government.

Well, I guess this tells a us a lot about transparency in this Democrat Party-filled Administration.

My friend and colleague, Senator Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer) said, “It is chilling how much unchecked power exists within certain powerful agencies in our state government. When a few people in charge don’t like a person, or a business, or a non-profit, they can use the might of the 800-pound government gorilla to pound them down and ride roughshod over them.”

OHA’s malicious plan highlights the decay of Oregon’s governing fabric. Having long jettisoned its constitutional boundaries, political power is more willing to overreach. Agencies are constantly seeking more control, more growth, and more bureaucrats armed with more stringent regulations. This of course, also leads to their resounding cries for more and more tax dollars.

Oregonians deserve to know why the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) maliciously targeted this private entity and abused taxpayer dollars while seeking to grow OHA’s portion of the service industry pie.

The story is, OHA’s injurious public relations (PR) plan was designed, first, to discredit and defame the health care provider in the eyes of the public, second, to leak juicy tidbits to “mainstream” media, and third, to manipulate lawmakers into killing legislation backed by FamilyCare Health.

The legislation in question sought to clarify rate-setting transparency so that CCO’s and service providers would better understand the process for health care reimbursements.

It should be noted that these allegations come on top of nearly $200 million in wasted Medicaid funding applied unlawfully to 37,000 individuals. It appears, agency officials are more interested in wielding their power to protect their monopoly, redistribute taxpayer money, and pursue falsely perceived enemies.

This is monopoly power in full “pin-ball tilt.”

Yet, the FamilyCare matter is not the first, nor will it be the last of these vicious and unprecedented examples of government over-reach and abuses of power.

Just last April, a Linn County Circuit Court judge blocked OHA, DEQ, and Oregon OSHA from implementing a similar PR scheme. In that instance, OHA sought to discredit and defame Entek International, a Lebanon based manufacturer, because Entek – though it was following all existing environmental standards – may have been emitting at levels that could exceed DEQ proposed standards. In other words, they were exercising regulatory punishment for violations of rules that didn’t yet exist. Coincidentally, Entek was strongly opposed to Measure 97, the gross receipts tax which was aggressively pursued by Democrat legislators and unions who are the largest beneficiaries of Oregon’s runaway spending.

What can we learn…

People often make the mistake of imagining that government workers are more altruistic or better than the rest of us. This is, quite obviously, not true. Character counts and the unscrupulous will be unscrupulous whether they work for private industry or government.

In government, as in business, your home, school or office environment there are always those energetic passions and untamed desires that exceed their limits. Thus any organization or social body without checks, balances and oversight will eventually squander itself to corruption.

Rather than voluntary participation in free and open markets, the statist’s tool of choice is control through political power. Political power is monopoly power. It is the power to write the rules, enforce those rules, and demand compliance. Why would a person walk a block down the street and shop at another bakery, flower shop, or photography studio when they could use political power to force a specific business to service their every want and desire?

Oregonians deserve a state government that is efficient, effective, and accountable; not one that wastes taxpayer dollars and uses its regulatory power to punish competitors or its perceived political enemies.

Taxpayers know their pockets have been picked and they know who picked it. This knowledge will be the coming tidal wave of change which will wash the current administration’s abject wastefulness and baleful regulations overboard and out with the flowing tide.

Remember, If we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common sense – No one Will

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, August 8, 2019 by devadmin

The current fiasco on the national stage, with the House Democrats threatening to impeach President Trump and all of the fanfare in Washington, DC isn’t really anything new. We’ve seen it all before and we’ve all heard the proverb, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

What I find most compelling about the sordid affair is that conservatives are being ‘woke’ in a new way. Up until now, the political left had control over what subjects needed to be ‘woken,’ but now the underhanded nature and deceit of the whole ‘investigation’ has put big government, itself, on trial and that’s what the left finds unacceptable. What… dismantle the deep-state?

Back in the early 1950’s our nation faced a similar set of hearings. The Republican House was investigating communist infiltration efforts within the State Department and federal government. They used FBI resources and federal manpower to expose the seriousness of Russia’s efforts. Similar to today’s fanfare, everyone was absorbed by the gossip and accusations that made headlines, only then, it was proven true and today it appears to be only “fake-news.”

Whitaker Chambers was one of the key witnesses. He was a former communist party member who had abandoned that part of his life’s destructive trajectory. During the trial, he said he hoped his testimony would help Americans, “recognize at last that they are at grips with a secret, sinister, and enormously powerful force whose tireless purpose is their enslavement.”

Chambers identified the many famous names who added weight to the fervor for communism. Included were well-known authors John Steinbeck and Lillian Hellman, along with poets Malcolm Cowley, Archibald MacLeish and Dorothy Parker. These were the Hollywood elites and MTV crowd of the day who weren’t afraid to be known as communist sympathizers. At the time, politicians and bureaucrats had to keep their socialist leanings under wraps, unlike today’s Democrat party presidential candidates.

In Oregon today, just as we see at the federal level, our freedoms are being squeezed by the ever-present, twin pincers of socialism. One tong is the Marxist revolutionaries, like the Antifa gang in downtown Portland, who desire power through violence. Marx, after all, wanted to achieve his goals through revolution. The other tong is gradualism. This is the slow and meticulous pressure that comes through rules, regulations, laws, commissions and agencies springing from the fertile womb of the maternal state.

During each legislative session, legislators pass more laws and the state gains more power, while families and individuals lose freedom. The bureaucracies, agencies, administrative and executive offices exercise greater control over more and more facets of our individual lives.

Both pincers have the potential to crush and destroy our existing culture and force monopolistic government power over the people of Oregon.

In his 1979 book, The World in the Grip of an Idea, scholar and economist, Clarence Carson explains why political forces focus on deriding traditional values, family, sexuality, property and Christianity:

“The engine of Marxism is hatred, hatred for everything as it is, hatred of religion, hatred of the family, hatred of the division of labor, hatred of the state, hatred of capitalists, hatred of property, hatred of the “rural idiocy” (as Marx put it) of farmers, and, yes, hatred of industrial workers. …  Above all, Marxism is a hatred of the past, everything shaped out of it, everything drawn from it, which is to say, just about everything. In short, Marxism hates man as he is and has been.”

Carson’s book examines the results of socialism across three countries, England, Sweden, and the United States and his conclusion is:

“The modus operandi of Marxism is destruction. That is the true meaning of Marxian revolution. It is no simple seizure of political power. …  All the actuality that has been accumulated through the ages must be destroyed—property relationships, religious belief, family ties, legal forms, the intellectual heritage, culture and civilization itself. How else, but by tyranny, can such a destruction be wrought?”

Therefore, we must align our Hope with Virtue, Tradition and Truth. We must avoid getting trampled by a manipulated worldview where up is down, left is right, male is female, and nothing is as it once was. Otherwise, we will find ourselves standing squarely in the quicksand of uncertainty.

There is no reason to buy into the super-majority’s demonization of businesses as the source of our state’s problems. Businesses are the source of productivity.

There is no reason to dismantle our historical and societal understanding of male and female, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, and all of their various and sundry complicated relationships. They are the source of our families, our friends and our communities.

There is no reason to disrespect the fundamental right of a parent to direct the care, teaching and education of their own children. Self-government requires that families master themselves, including the management of their own affairs as individuals, families and through voluntary associations of church and community.

There is no reason to imagine that “free college” will make college tuition less expensive. Neither will “free college” solve the employability problems of our youth nor will it increase our state’s labor force participation rates. Ownership and personal responsibility are the truest source of productive freedom for the individual. A student’s motives, desires and goals must be priced into the decision-making process of choosing an education or career path.

The political crisis of our time comes from people imagining that governments, gorged with taxpayer money and immense regulatory power, can provide individuals with an endless array of efficient services, security and liberty.

Remember the proverb, “There is nothing new under the sun?” The danger we face has been seen before. Alexis De Tocqueville described it in his 1832 book, Democracy in America:

“[The power of government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power . . . does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people, until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and hard-working animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

Allow Freedom to win. Vote for traditional values, fiscal responsibility and enforcing constitutional restraints on governmental authority.

Our firmness, resolution and perseverance are the tools we possess to protect our ourselves, our families and posterity from the historical tragedy of socialism. Let us not become “sheeple” following mindlessly to our own demise. Instead, let us continue to make our voices heard through the ballot box, peaceful rallies, public testimony for truth and science, and our own unwavering commitment to voluntary markets, individual liberty and personal responsibility.

Remember, if we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common-sense, no one will!

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28