Author: DevAdmin

Posted on

The More Numerous the Laws…

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, March 21, 2018 by devadmin

As I travel, meet and talk with my constituents in Senate District 28 several items always come to the top of our discussion lists. Most people express continued concern for a standard litany of issues: the degradation of our traditional American culture; the need for fewer regulations and obstacles for business; freer markets with fewer tariffs; and a return to our American constitutional roots.

Stop and think for a minute. People want more freedom, smaller government, lower taxes and yet every year the legislature meets and passes hundreds of new laws. Why do we need all of these laws? An Ancient Roman Senator and historian, Tacitus, made the claim, “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.”

I think he understood humanity’s fallen nature correctly.

The 2018 legislative “short-session” scuttled perfectly legitimate efforts aimed at reigning in Oregon’s governmental enterprise. Bipartisanship became the media watchword while the Democratic leadership silently pursued their own progressive political agenda. For those of us in South, Central and Eastern Oregon, this is just a glimpse of what will happen in 2019 if there are no substantial changes in Oregon’s House, Senate or Executive offices.

This well-orchestrated short session circumvented attempts at meaningful change. It also sandbagged citizens by limiting their participation in condensed committee schedules. Therefore, substantial policy issues were forced through without transparency or the time necessary to pursue alternative solutions. Despite these challenges, I and my Senate Republican colleagues effectively stopped numerous hyper-partisan, tax and spend boondoggles from becoming law in 2018.

In particular, two bills which I adamantly opposed were HB 4001 and SB 1507. These two Cap and Trade bills were only used for political posturing and represent the worst of the Democrat’s agenda. They both have insurmountable problems. First, they would burden taxpayers with a minimum of $700 million dollars in extra taxes, annually. Second, neither would make a discernible difference in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Additionally, without any Republican support, the Democrat majority passed SB 1528, which will create a whopping 30% tax increase on Oregon’s sole proprietors, small and family owned businesses and LLC’s.  This partisan tax scheme will force 192,000 small businesses to pay $258 million in 2018 taxes while protecting large multinational corporations who are able to game the system.

Another bill which I supported, HB 4016, never made it out of committee. Environmental groups and tribal interests spoke against this straight-forward and common-sense fix for the Klamath Irrigation District (KID). This bill would have allowed temporary transfers within the KID district boundaries to other land within their boundary.  In KID these place of use changes would have allowed the district to remedy original mapping and boundary errors without exceeding the water right in the original claim.

As I have written in the past, I was a Chief Sponsor of HB 4005 which passed. This bill is intended to help grapple with the high costs of prescription drugs and the harm that patients and consumers experience by exposing the details behind cost increases for pharmaceutical products. This bill only requires reporting for drugs costing more than $100 per month that increase by more than 10% on an annual basis.

I sponsored HB 4100 which also passed. This bill enforces property rights for facilities that provide equine therapy or counseling activities in areas zoned for exclusive farm use (EFU). This will allow specific therapeutic service providers to continue utilizing our abundant natural resources, domesticated livestock and nonclinical rural environments for creating healthy, wholesome and meaningful interactions for their clients.

Another common-sense bill which I sponsored was HB 4008. It passed, making calculations of projected future earnings based on race or ethnicity of a plaintiff inadmissible. Since, we believe that all people carry enormous potential and are each endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, it seems only logical that any civil calculations for projected future earnings reflect those beliefs.

I sponsored and supported HB 4036, which passed. This bill allows home-schooled and public charter school students to participate in various types of interscholastic activities, including sports, band, choir and technical education programs. School Districts can determine the costs and may charge participating students within limits  set by the bill.

My deep appreciation for the lessons of history and the dangers of unconstrained government, will continue to inform my perspective. Only a constitutionally limited government can enable its citizens to reach their fullest potential by defending them against the bureaucracies’ perpetual tendency toward fiscal irresponsibility.

Oregon’s unrelenting drift toward collectivism will eventually swallow us, our families and our businesses without liberty-minded citizen’s and leaders standing up for our individual freedom. Legislators need to be constantly reminded of the ancient words from Tacitus, “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Posted on

First Do No Harm

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Tuesday, March 12, 2019 by devadmin

Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Pinterest and others are out to stop the so-called anti-Vaxxers. They are actively removing and demoting information simply because people are voicing honest disagreements with policy mandates.

I, too, am against the mandatory vaccine legislation and I think there has not been enough testing on the various vaccine-combinations. I hope you will see the validity of my assessment as I explain my position.

I realize there are pragmatic difficulties in staging realistic epidemiological studies due to the outrageously unique and utterly complex nature of our God-given humanness. Not to mention that we daily experience innumerable outside variables woven through the places, times and circumstances of our lives.

Intuitively, we are all well aware of these details because we each know of friends or family members who different from us. They each react differently to any number of food, drink, lotion, or medicinal items. Additionally, when you visit the doctor’s office, they invariable hand you a clipboard where they want you to describe allergic reactions that you may have experienced. This includes, common things like, eggs, fish, milk, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, wheat and antibiotics.

Take a second and count the people that you are aware of that have some sort of adverse reaction, possibly even anaphylactic shock, from various conditions. Second, consider the simplistic claim that, “all vaccines are proven safe.”

Right! Peanut-butter is perfectly safe, too; except when it isn’t.

However, no one is mandating that you eat peanut-butter and jelly for lunch (today.)

In the same way that the tech giants are demoting what they consider to be misinformation, they are promoting stories that are crafted to help the vaccine mandate crowd. Their web-crawlers are out looking for old pro-vaccine news that can be put to good use.

The Associated Press (AP) is digging up any tidbit of vaccine news so that a story can be twisted to fit today’s statist agenda. Like putty in the hands of a master-scaremonger these stories provide great fodder for promoting unfathomable governmental intrusions into our private lives.

In light of the recent push for, what I’ll refer to as, the “coerced injection act” (HB 3063) and the formidable campaign against the “consensual vaccine information act” (SB 649) the AP dug-up an older story about an unvaccinated child. The child was “hospitalized for two months for tetanus and almost [died] of the bacterial illness after getting a deep cut while playing on a farm.”

The AP article proceeds to quote Dr. William Schaffner, an expert in infectious diseases, as being “flabbergasted.” The story highlights the exorbitant costs and the near-death experience of this young boy in an effort to persuade readers that mandatory vaccines will save the “herd.”

Except, C. tetani is not an infectious disease. Tetanus isn’t transmitted person-to-person by sneezing, coughing, or unsafe sexual practices but instead comes from bacterial spores that exist nearly everywhere in the soil.

Those inoculated with the DTaP (Diptheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis) combination vaccine cannot impact the safety for schools or other public spaces. This is because the vaccine only provides personal protection. This vaccine does not rid our planet of rusty nails, old farm machinery or C. tetani spores. It only provides protection to the individual who receives the injection.

In an open-letter to legislators considering vaccine mandates, Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych, who earned her Ph.D. in Immunology at the Rockefeller University in New York and did post-graduate work at Harvard, writes, “People who have not received the vaccines […] pose no higher threat to the general public than those who have.”

For example, with a 95 percent vaccine compliance rate a school of 1,000 children, would have 950 vaccinated students and 50 unvaccinated students. If the vaccine had a 90 percent effective rate, then potentially 95 fully vaccinated students would be susceptible to an outbreak compared to 50 unvaccinated students.

This also creates an interesting concern for those in compliance – Why didn’t the vaccine protect these children? Were they sold a product that didn’t work or is the result due to variations in important cellular processes, metabolism or genetic makeup?

However, my real question is, why are we experiencing this all-out barrage against consensual free-choice?

A foundational tenet in clinical medicine is – first do no harm. This means, when physicians face choices between uncertain benefits and possible harm, they must err on the side of safety.

This is similar to the “precautionary principle,” in the environmental sciences. Arising from concerns for environmental safety, the “precautionary principle” asserts that when faced with suspected harm, or uncertainty, the prescribed course should be caution. By implication, proceeding without caution might lead to long-term cumulative environmental damage. Or, it might not, but caution dictates that those natural resources will still be available for others in the future.

All vaccines should be carefully evaluated, both individually and in long-term studies, and then, synergistically, for toxicity with other vaccine combinations.

The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) childhood vaccine schedule recommends all children receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines with 50 doses of 14 vaccines given between the day of birth and age 18. In the U.S. today, the majority of children receive 3X as many vaccinations as children received in 1983, when Diane and I started having children.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences, concluded there was not enough scientific evidence to determine whether vaccines are associated with health problems in premature infants or the development of chronic brain and immune system disorders that affect a child’s intellectual development, learning, attention, communication and behavior, learning disabilities and autism.

I realize there are real difficulties associated with performing extensive tests of this magnitude but aren’t our children worth it? Doesn’t it bother you that food allergies have increased by 20 percent in the last 20 years? Don’t you find it troubling that the number of Ritalin prescriptions has risen over 150% in the last ten years?  Haven’t you wondered about the inexplicable increase in autism in our lifetimes?

Lastly, are we willing to call the 228 measles cases, across 12 states, within a total U.S. population of 310 million, an epidemic? If so, then what term will we use to describe the more than 50,000 children who will exhibit autistic tendencies before this year is over? Are we brave enough to face an epidemic when we see one?

In closing, my concern is that Oregon’s legislators will be adopting a policy that will ostracize those who don’t have the correct paperwork or pox mark on their arms. Is this really the policy we want to adopt in our fight for freedom and tolerance? Is this what we mean when we praise our schools for being free from discrimination? Will we resort to feeding our collective fear and appetite against our neighbors who are faced with protecting their families with free-choice and the comfort of being true to their consciences?

Our inability to muster the political courage to demand more thorough testing is our failure. However, this has nothing what-so-ever to do with negating peoples’ rights to control their own destinies and the destinies for their children. We must ensure government defends and protects parental rights and their freedom to make their own family’s medical choices.

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

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Posted on

Positively Diabolical

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, March 9, 2017 by devadmin
Last summer I re-read C.S. Lewis’ novel, The Screwtape Letters. I am in Salem, for the state legislative session, and I am haunted by an image from that work.

The Screwtape novel is a satirical fantasy which places characters in plot-settings that mimic a typical human life, complete with all its temptations and failings.

The book has a unique format. The story is revealed through a series of written letters rather than the typical first-hand personal interactions which occupy most novels. The letters and notes which flow back and forth between the various parties reveal the heart and soul of Lewis’ main characters. The principal correspondent is Uncle Screwtape, He is a Senior Tempter and serves as the Undersecretary of his department in what Lewis envisages as a sort of infernal and devilish Civil Service.

Screwtape’s letters are posited as advice for his young nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood is a devil-in-training. He is a cohort, if you will, charged with the misguidance of only one man, or patient, as he is known in these instructional posts from the underworld

I would encourage you to find some time to read it. I think you’ll find Lewis’ story and style refreshing and his insight into human nature spot on. (Even though Lewis published this story in 1942.)

One of the more affecting descriptions of this novel comes from Lewis, himself. In Lewis’ original preface, he tells us of a humorous anecdote where a country clergyman had written saying that “much of the advice given in these letters seemed… positively diabolical.

And, it is.

Lewis continues with his introduction to this story by describing his sentiments and his purposeful use of certain symbols for Hell. I’ll note, also, that Lewis confesses to us that he likes bats better than bureaucrats. This sets the stage, for us, where his symbols make for ripe pickings when describing the growing legalese twisting through the marbled corridors of Oregon’s capital.

Lewis writes:

“We live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint.

“It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result.

“But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

“Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business con­cern.

In our lifetimes, we have made drastic policy reversals while striving to advance the seemingly more tolerant positions. Look at health care. Big changes are under-foot in how our culture views health care. Many of today’s policies are incoherent when compared with our age-old ideals that have been codified in law and medicine.

For example, you know the Hippocratic oath by it’s simplicity – ”First do no harm.” Yet, ever since government, through political self-will, has gained control of our lives by leveraging the healthcare industry for power, control and profit, it has become rare to hear the common-sense understanding of the age-old Hippocratic school.

The Hippocratic oath is simple and easy to understand. In the 1800 and 1900’s the latin phrase for this oath was popularly nuanced as, “I will utterly reject harm and mischief.” In modern parlance the tweet-able phrase has two tenants, 1) always help, and, 2) never harm.

But our modern culture has become flooded with a new, yet all-too-common, sort of sterile, bureaucratic tyranny. That combined with the complexities of modern law, and the desire to draw bright-lines around specific situations distorts our clear view of the underlying moral concepts.

One example of that distortion recently came across my desk while reviewing the 2017 Senate Bill, SB 494. Read the irony in the current statute, ORS 127.505, Sec. 9, §(8),

–– “Health care” means diagnosis, treatment or care of disease, injury and congenital or degenerative conditions, including the use, maintenance, withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining procedures and the use, maintenance, withdrawal or withholding of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.

Given this definition, “health care” can mean either treating and caring for a patient, or it can mean withholding nutrition from a patient. In other words, in one breadth we are saying that starving and dehydrating a patient is recognized as “health care.”

Truly, this language was, “conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.” The men and women who dreamed this up had thoroughly blanched hearts hidden beneath their suits, ties, and starched-shirts.

As I understand political theory, human flourishing should be considered as a first principled and a primary aim. Only a well-ordered political community and a well-educated citizenry can achieve that aim. This, then, requires virtuous citizens and virtuous leaders. Without these two foundational supports we will never be able to achieve the liberty we seek, nor the human flourishing we long for.

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

Posted on

Has tolerance been abandoned?

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, March 6, 2019 by devadmin

The phrase “totalitarian” does not refer to the existence of concentration camps, the lack of food, or the severity of current economic conditions. Rather, “totalitarian” reflects the scope of control that a state exhibits over the broadest aspects of human life. Therefore, a totalitarian state seeks to absorb as much private life as possible into the sphere of state control.

In Oregon, one can see this surfacing with recent attempts at absolute gun control, outlandish carbon taxes, comprehensive 0 to 20 education programs and the denial of access to educational resources without first submitting to mandatory vaccinations.

What appears to be missing is a conceptual understanding of the individual, or individual freedom, outside of the boundaries established by law. Once laws are passed, state officials breach other spheres of influence and advocate for more regulations; in turn, liberty loses.

This ideology leaves the bureaucracy stranded with no place to rest because they do not recognize any natural limits to legislative, executive, judicial, administrative or bureaucratic power. Eventually, everything succumbs to the grasping hands of the state.

Never-the-less, thousands of concerned citizens, families, physicians, nurses, dentists and educators traveled to the capitol, last week, to demand medical freedom. They came from all walks of life to denounce a bill (HB 3063) in the House Healthcare committee. Under the bill, the state would deny all educational resources to students who have not undergone the mandatory vaccine regimen.

The proponents testified about fears stemming from a recent Portland, OR outbreak. Yet, the last confirmed measles death in US occurred in 2015, with the next most recent measles death occurring in 2003.

The fear of death from measles doesn’t hold a candle to the real threat faced by vaccine-injured children and the life-long trauma and health concerns that plague these young lives.

Any parent who wants his or her child to be vaccinated and protected against common communicable vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs), such as measles, polio, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, etc., can find such protection readily available throughout Oregon and the US.

So why does Oregon feel the need to withdraw education from children in Public Schools, Public Charter Schools, Virtual Public Schools and Private Schools if they choose to forego the vaccination regime? Has coercion replaced persuasion as the state’s tool of choice? Has tolerance for religious, ethnic or cultural perspectives been abandoned?

Moms know their babies better and more intimately than anyone else and when they testified in droves against mandatory vaccines – they shared compelling insights that we ignore to our own societal peril.

So, why are those parents who choose their own course of action labeled as the non-scientific? Can the pro-mandatory vaccine crowd claim a valid statistical or “scientific” fear when currently there are only 19 cases of measles per million persons in the entire world?

Opposition witnesses unmasked the state’s desire to push the absurdity of this type of “voluntary yet mandatory” exchange. They also posed questions that the one-size-fits-all gang could not answer – Do all people respond uniformly to the beneficial aspects of vaccines and are there absolutely no down-side risks or adverse reactions?

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), “Historically, the non-clinical safety assessment for preventive vaccines has often not included toxicity studies in animal models. This is because vaccines have not been viewed as inherently toxic.”

This startling admission highlights that vaccines have not been evaluated for toxicity because of a predetermined belief in their non-toxicity, rather than because of scientific evidence.

This fact is probably why Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986. The act provided a legal liability shield to drug companies for vaccine injury and death claims. Under the NCVIA, parents have to file claims in the vaccine injury court which receives about $0.75 from every vaccine sold. The court paid over $4 billion to parents with vaccine injured children, from 1986 to 2018.

During our Senate Health Hearing on SB 649, a different bill that would require vaccine ingredients to be disclosed to all vaccine recipients, we heard testimony regarding a lack of any sure evidence of vaccine harm caused by vaccine bundles.

That’s the point… until research is performed, reviewed, understood, disseminated and read, the risk-benefit calculus is still an unsolvable equation. Without doing this first, state policy will fast become an extended round of Russian roulette.

The claim that phenomenal progress has been made in Public Health arenas due to expanding vaccine coverage ignores other causal relationships.

Vital statistics show that around the world, fatalities from scarlet fever had become quite rare by the mid-20th century, without any vaccine. Additionally, mortality from infectious diseases such as measles and whooping cough had declined before the introduction of the corresponding vaccines (see Figure 1).

A review of U.S. mortality data from 1900–1973 concluded:

“Medical measures [such as vaccines] contributed little to the overall decline in mortality in the United States since about 1900—having in many instances been introduced several decades after a marked decline had already set in.”

Instead, the decline in infectious disease incidence and mortality during the last century represents a “miracle” which is more likely attributable to classic, long-term public health measures, such as, better waste managment, sanitation and better information about food and nutrition.

A recent study, in Italy, found a significant association between increased caloric intake and declining mortality while reflecting positive “progress in average nutritional status, lifestyle quality, socioeconomic level and hygienic conditions.”

These conditions arise from economic advantages produced by free markets and capitalism not through the forced manipulation of the weakest by the strongest.

Epidemiologists are typically inclined to give credit to vaccines, but in another study they recognized other unresearched factors were invloved, including changes in “human resistance and bacterial quality,” and other factors.

The idea behind HB 3063 makes Oregon’s smallest citizens lab rats and forces them into an unacceptable experiment.

The purpose of life is not to serve the state; rather, it is to develop into a full and flourishing human-being who is capable of independent choices, thoughtful analysis and has the ability to recognize Truth, Goodness and Beauty, while exhibiting virtue and positively contributing to one’s family and community.

Remember, If we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common-sense, No one will.

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Posted on

Future Farmers will make America Great Again!

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Friday, March 3, 2017 by devadmin

Students from Future Farmers of America descended on Oregon’s capital on Thursday, March 2, 2017 –– It was fantastic!!

In my Education Committee there was standing room only as nearly a dozen of these admirable students presented testimony. Their well-stated perspectives on how FFA has contributed to their knowledge, skill and potential as young leaders of tomorrow made me proud to represent the fine families from rural Oregon..  It was my pleasure to hear them speak in committee and I also had the chance to meet with several groups in my office.

Below, I share some photos. Included here are Henley High, Santiam Christian and a great group photo on the steps of the rotunda, with others from throughout Oregon.

Join with me in supporting these young people because if we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common-sense –– no one will.

Posted on

Common Horse Sense

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Tuesday, February 27, 2018 by devadmin

Here’s some good news from this short Legislative session.

In many of Oregon’s rural settings, you will find innovative equestrian training facilities that specialize in providing therapeutic programs for adults and children.

These programs allow children and adults of all abilities and backgrounds to develop horsemanship skills, fitness, empathy, and self-confidence. Additionally, these facilities may also provide therapeutic and clinical programs, including counseling services.

Counseling services in the rural environs widens access to the real world by providing the opportunity to get dirty, connect with animals and gain very specialized therapeutic training using the natural beauty, grace and gentleness of horses. The power of this environment for counseling gets leveraged because it bypasses the sterile, and sometimes threatening, clinical type setting.

Additionally, the typical outdoor farm and ranch setting provides more than just exposure to dirt and horses. Anyone who has spent time in Oregon’s rural landscape knows that there is typically a myriad of other animals on the property from dogs and cats to chickens, cattle, goats, sheep and pigs. All of this deepens the experience for the children and adult clients as well as the instructors and counselors.

Rural property is typically zoned as Exclusive Farm Use (EFU) land. This means that any business taking place on this land must be related to farm, ranch, or an agricultural enterprise. This zoning was designed to ensure that high-rise office centers or strip-malls didn’t get built in the middle of a potato field. However, this has sparked some bureaucratic confusion regarding the legality of providing counseling services on EFU land.

I was happy to support a Senate Committee bill, SB 1533, that will clarify a vague law restricting where and how equine therapy centers offer counseling services.

There are nearly 20 of these centers all over our state doing extremely valuable work. They work with Veterans who may be dealing with the after-effects of a battlefield injury or PTSD and they provide needed therapy and counseling to children and adults with physical, emotional or mental needs.

These therapeutic riding centers have all been caught in a bureaucratic quandary – how would one provide hippo-therapy in a clinical setting? This is the classic problem where the County Zoning Departments must simply follow the statutes even if they recognize that the rural setting is obviously the appropriate place for horses, therapeutic horseback riding and complementary counseling. This therapy has been found to be extremely valuable and is simply impossible in a downtown medical center or it’s parking lot.

This bill simply clarifies that facilities that offer equine and equine-affiliated therapeutic and counseling activities are permitted to operate on EFU zoned areas. Problems arose when some counties were interpreting the law so that as soon as a patient was no longer physically touching the horse, the therapy was no longer permitted because counseling services were not permissible on EFU land.

This bill brought some common horse sense to the situation and removed the ambiguity about whether a patient had to be in physical contact with the horse.

My daughter is a Licensed Therapeutic Riding Instructor at Healing Reins Therapeutic Riding Center, in Bend, OR. Healing Reins is one of many outstanding facilities. They average about 15-20 horses that they use for riding therapy with 8 Licensed Instructors and about 150 volunteers. Additionally, they currently have 3 Mental Health Counselors and 2 Physical Therapists on staff.  The barn and arenas are buzzing with activity six days a week 10-12 hrs. per day.

Therapeutic riding centers typically offer a variety of therapy and counseling services, including traditional physical therapy, equine assisted psychotherapy, eco-therapy and therapeutic riding to improve balance, listening skills and the ability to stay focused on a task. The children and adults bonding with their horse is truly magical.

Jeff Campbell, whose wife co-founded Healing Reins Therapeutic Riding Center in Bend, said, “This very important legislation will provide a valuable platform from which our therapeutic riding centers can continue to serve our fellow Oregonians most in need due to physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges without the constant concern of the rug being pulled from under us due to some ambiguities in the current exclusive farm use code“

Campbell added, “Thousands of Oregonians across the state will continue to be effectively and seamlessly served in our centers, thanks to this valuable legislation.”

SB 1533 received unanimous support from the Oregon Senate and now moves to the House for further consideration. Let’s pray that common horse sense will prevail during the remainder of Oregon’s 2018 legislative session.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Posted on

You Gotta Watch Your Wallet…

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Monday, February 20, 2017 by devadmin

In 1946, Henry Hazlitt wrote a wonderful book, Economics in One Lesson. This small, easy to read book is still widely available and ought to be read and contemplated by all. The reason is simple. Hazlitt uses easy to understand stories to gently eviscerate the public policy mistakes that the know-it-alls and political wonks use to separate taxpayers from their wallets.

Meanwhile, the policy-wonks in Oregon’s majority party are hard at work trying to stuff the Governor’s budget with money straight out of your wallet. They seem to be only looking at this current budget-cycle and not ever contemplating the long-term health of Oregon’s economy, it’s families and businesses.

One example is the crazy idea to put a $1000 tax on any car purchased before 1997. Yikes! There is another idea for a $.05 tax on every wholesale pound of coffee sold. Hearing this, I can imagine that ODOT is trying to re-engineer their GPS milage tracking device to also include a tax on every sip that you enjoy from your Dutch Bros Kicker cup.

Another shameless tactic which is fast spreading throughout Oregon’s counties is using government to provide “affordable housing.” Proponents claim this can be partially accomplished by rent control. This economic fallacy of rent control is continually embraced by pundits, politicians, editorialists, news reporters and academics as a requirement for economic development. HB 2004 is the rent control bill currently making it’s serpentine way through the twisted logic of Salem’s hallways.

Here is a portion of the bill’s contorted control language:

Thomas Sowell wrote, “History alone should be able to tell us what the actual consequences of such laws have been, since they have been around for thousands of years. Anyone who has taken a course in Economics 1 should understand why those consequences have been so different from what their advocates expected. It is not rocket science.”

The advocates make claims like, “this will ensure stable housing for workers,” or “it will stop the landlords from gouging tenants,” and finally, “land-owners should not be making tons of money during a housing crisis.”

In Oregon, the reason there is a lack of affordable housing is there is a lack of housing. This means housing is not being built. Why not? One of the main reasons is  because of existing laws which prevent housing from being built. This is a particular problem in Oregon where designated Urban Growth Boundaries (UGB) are a major component of the zoning, planning and building requirements.

High and unaffordable housing costs are not the problem, they are a symptom. The real problem is a shortage of houses.

I can illustrate this by using an example of an ice cream shop. With low cost ice cream and cheap treats, everyone wants some. If the ice cream supply were limited because of some legal requirement or some unforeseen circumstance then the local ice cream shop would quickly. Some would label this a “shortage.” However, if store owners can raise prices the will slow demand for the product.

Owners don’t do this because they are meanies and they want to gouge ice cream lovers.They do this to slow demand and their stabilize inventories. The higher price makes people think twice, reconsider their resources and/or needs and weigh any options. Just like the housing market, as prices rise, inventories stabilize and more treats are available on the street (or in the freezer.)

The high cost of housing is not something that needs fixing. Rather it is the supply of housing that needs fixing. You know that local housing is in short supply because it is becoming more expensive. When bidding wars break-out among home buyers, as is currently happening, it is a sign of a shortage. This is a not a sign of an outbreak of unbridled greed among wealthy landlords.

Supply and demand is one of the first things taught in introductory economics textbooks and you will find great examples in Hazlitt’s book. If only I could get some folks here in the capital to curl up with Hazlitt’s book, too. Now that would be an accomplishment.

Also, please let your voice be heard with regard to Oregon’s upcoming budget (2017-2019). Without any viable increases in the State’s income, non-critical services will require budget cuts over the next two years. Representatives need to hear whether your wallet is up for grabs, or not.

  • Here is the Full Roadshow schedule.
  • Here is the backgrounder on the current state of the budget, and Co-Chair’s proposed budget framework for 2017-2019.

Posted on

Ratepayer Protections

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Tuesday, February 13, 2018 by devadmin

One of my bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act (SB 1552) will be heard on Wednesday, Feb. 14th. This bill has several sections designed to cap costs for Oregon energy users. The bill proposal would help establish strong, consistent policies aligned with keeping electric rates as low as possible.

Specifically, one piece of the legislation would prohibit a public utility from exceeding a 4.5 percent rate of return. Utility Companies can freely ask the Public Utility Commission (PUC) for rate increases. These increased payments come from the customers, who are businesses, households, commercial and industrial users. These ratepayers are the same ones trying to living within their means with little room to spare.

The Public Utility Commission exits, first, to “protect the customers from unjust and unreasonable extractions by establishing fair and reasonable rates.” (cf. ORS 756). This standard is established by definition, “Rates are fair and reasonable for the purposes of this subsection if the rates provide adequate revenue both for operating expenses of the public utility or telecommunications utility and for capital costs of the utility, with a return to the equity holder.”

Here is the rub. A small team of political appointees make up the commission and must exhibit what I call an “unattainable degree of neutrality.”  The problem is in the presumption that the central planners know or can determine what is “fair and reasonable.”

In free, open and voluntary market economies consumers determine what are “reasonable and just” value assessments because each individual makes their own choices about what to buy, or not. There is no requirement for a neutral party or government entity to “decide” what would be appropriate because each shopper can buy what they think is appropriate. This is why gasoline prices are writ large at every service station. People can make their own choices.

This self-interested, market-driven mechanism is far more efficient for determining value and setting prices. In actuality, people set prices not companies. People willingly part with their own money based on their own understanding of value. Therefore, any accepted price will necessarily be reasonable because people are buying and selling freely, without any government or corporate coercion. Agricultural products, our daily bread, meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables provides the easiest illustration.

We all eat food. The modern grocery store is a testament to American diversity and ingenuity. Various stores cater to various tastes, ethnicities and preferences. Each store makes their best effort to service their customers.

Some individuals prefer organic. Some avoid sugar, peanuts, or dairy while others can eat anything. It is easy to see that farms fill these stores by providing a blend of products to service the consumer. Farming occupies a unique place of importance in all of our lives and the free-market allows for the diversity and specialization that has fed the world.

The single-supplier electric generation and transmission franchise necessitates the requirement for a Commission. Once the boundary and service area (franchise area) are mapped out, no single user can purchase from any other supplier. Consumers are essentially trapped within the monopoly boundary and need someone to represent them. The franchisee is in a similar boat. They too, need to justify their investment matrix, re-capitalization requirements and cost of service parameters.

SB 1522 does not deny any of the complexities of the large-scale electric generating enterprise, it simply binds the public utility to “reasonable” returns.

The bill also prohibits a utility’s Public Purpose Charge from exceeding 1.5 percent of utility customers’ costs and prohibits the gross collections, from Public Purpose Charges, from exceeding the 2016 total. It also limits salaries for Energy Trust of Oregon employees, essentially keeping them from being greater than the Governor’s salary.

The final section of the bill would stop the collection of the Klamath Dam removal surcharge from ratepayers’ utility bills. The devil is always in the details, so here is some background information.

For nearly two decades, disparate factions struggled to implement their respective irrigation, power and water-related interests with regard to the Klamath River Basin. Their efforts resulted in the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA). These agreements were part of a major push to remove the four PacifiCorp dams on the Klamath River.

The stage was first set via a 2008, Agreement in Principle, which compelled the Federal Government to assess the costs and benefits of dam removal and either designate a non-federal dam removal entity (DRE) to remove the dams, or “decline to remove the dams at which point PacifiCorp will return to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for relicensing.”

Although a DRE has been designated, Klamath River Renewal Corp. (KRRC), the KBRA and KHSA agreements have long expired due to congressional inaction. A third agreement, the Upper Klamath Basin Comprehensive Agreement (UKBCA) has also been terminated by the DOI.

The time has come for Oregon’s legislature to call the dam removal effort, whether good or bad, a failure. The agreements have little chance of being resurrected and it is time to exercise the last clause (above) where PacifiCorp declines dam removal and returns to FERC for relicensing.

SB 1552 would require PacificCorp to discontinue the assessment of dam removal surcharges that appear on ratepayers’ electric bills.  Specifically, if the Klamath Dam removal has not started by Jan. 1, 2019, the dam removal surcharge will be discontinued, and funds collected by PacifiCorp would be returned pro-rata to ratepayers with a 4 percent interest on the monies which have been held in trust.

Additionally, I also have an amendment where the monies could be used for fish ladders or fish passage alternatives. This would aid in mitigating PacifiCorp’s main problem with FERC re-licensing requirements.

Alan Mikkelsen, deputy commissioner for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has said BOR will not interfere with the FERC process and believes the dams will be removed. However, there are still plenty of environmental, legal and financial hurdles to deal with.

First, is the long-term liability for unknown and known problems, such as dealing with the 20 million cubic yards of accumulated sediment that will pollute the river after the dams are removed. Turbidity, water quality, and long-term fish habitat are all big environmental issues at stake.

Lastly, a host of legal problems associated with the tentative dam removal agreement between Oregon and California will become tangled in strategies to find non-federal funding sources. Prior dam removal cost estimates, for the four dams, range upwards from $950 million and possible funding streams have not yet been identified.

Pinocchio

It’s time to stop the never-ending appearances from our dueling pair of “good cop/bad cop” protagonists with their endless questioning, changing, redefining and reinterpreting important issues. The opposing sides are arguing about what the definition of “is” is, and it should be as plain as the nose on Pinocchio’s face.

Here’s the straight scoop: Oregon’s hydro-electric power generation facilities are the most cost-effective base-load power sources for our state’s growing electric needs. Wisdom demands that we get back to using real-world economics, science and common-sense to steer Oregon’s natural resource policies in the right direction.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

Posted on

The Ever-expanding Universe of Laws

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, February 8, 2017 by devadmin

 “There ought to be a law…” 

Have you every seen something silly or ridiculous and muttered to yourself, “There ought to be a law?”

You and I might say, “There ought to be a law?”  when we see something that we think is ironic, unexpected, or just plain nuts. But, most of the time we realize that people have the freedom to make their own personal choices, even if the house color that they happen to choose isn’t our own favorite color.

Fundamentally, we are each faced with living, and cooperating, in a world with thousands of choices. We must be willing to allow others the same opportunity for free and independent action, unless an individual’s freedom impinges on someone else’s freedom or their personal property.

This is probably easiest to understand in the sense of property. I’m free to purchase and drive my car under obedience to the rules of the road. These rules have been established over time to create what I call “Ordered Liberty.” It is ordered so that there is a smooth  and safe flow of traffic. I have the freedom to go where I wish, when I wish, and the only constraint is that I pay attention to others, allowing them equal freedom while all of us follow the rules.

This may sound like common-sense, and it is, but things quickly go haywire when the legislature gets a little too cocky for our own good. You see, we send men and women to Oregon’s Senate and House and we call them legislators.

As legislators, they feel their job consists of being able to legislate, i.e. to make laws. So, when they get to Salem, what do they do.

They do their jobs, they legislate…

I think this has turned out to be detrimental to Oregon and it’s citizenry.

Why do I think that?

Because we have so many laws and so many regulations that no one can keep track, except the bureaucrats who are payed for their rule making efforts. They also write the enforcement measures, discover the appropriate fee schedule, determine the stiffness of the fines and/or penalties they adjudicate any grievances to determine whether or not they have done their jobs correctly.

Jefferson noted this danger, even during our nation’s earliest years. He said, “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for…”  He continues, describing the nature of a truly free and representative government by adding that it would be one, “in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies… as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

Oregon’s legislature is so busy making new laws, that there isn’t time to focus on the principles of good governance or self-governance.

To date, in the 2017 session, the Legislature has introduced 1,806 measures.

Just how many laws do Oregonians need to ensure that their liberty is protected?

This growth essentially represents the problem with government – that is, it has an uncanny, but natural propensity for growth. It turns out it is worse than germs growing in a lab petri-dish. It is really more akin to our ever-expanding universe.

The American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, discovered in 1929 that the distant galaxies were moving away from our Milky Way system. His observation was generalized into a universal law, known as Hubble’s law, where science can measure the speed and rate of expansion of the universe by observing a redshift in light emanating from distant objects.

It appears our government is experiencing this same natural redshift tendency. It even follows Jefferson’s pattern where the black-ink on our budgetary pages experiences a natural shift towards red. Jefferson described the process, where there is a consistent multiplication of public offices, increases in expenses beyond income, and the growth and entailment of a public debt. This is exactly the path set forth by the governor’s budget.

Additionally, the numbers above only represent the number of acts or measures, not the number of pages within the bill. Some of these bills are short while others are several hundred pages in length. The real impact on law-abiding citizens includes not only these laws but also the administrative costs for creating and enforcing subsequent rules and regulations.

For each of these laws, the bureaucracy creates and writes the regulations and then formulates the rules regarding fines, punishments and enforcement measures. These rules and stipulations might span several thousand more details all spelled out in mind-numbing legalese.

It turns out Oregon doesn’t need any more Legislation. We need some de-Legislators who will lesson the burdens placed on Oregon’s businesses, families and individuals.

Please remember –– if we do not stand up for rural Oregon and common-sense, – no one will.

Posted on

Constant Clamor

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Monday, February 5, 2018 by devadmin

This week I joined as a Co-Sponsor of HB 4005 – the Prescription Drug Price Transparency Act because for the past twenty years pharmaceutical prices have been sky-rocketing upwards. US drug prices have long out-paced historical norms and there is no foreseeable downward pressure on the cost curve.

I’ll be the first to admit that government intervention is problematic because it creates a constant clamor for more government. Once some segment of any industry gains a legislated upper hand then everyone else rushes in for more legislation and government grows. Congressional meddling, over-regulation and unintended consequences, stemming from well-meaning healthcare policy initiatives, has caused a large part of these price increases.

HB 4005, however, is not invasive government intervention but a well-crafted surgical strike focused on the cost of prescription drugs. It will shed light on drug pricing whenever a drug manufacturer has a steep price increase or when they bring a new expensive blockbuster drug onto the market.

President Trump mentioned the problem in his State of the Union address, He said, “One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. In many other countries, these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States. That is why I have directed my Administration to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of our top priorities.”

It will be fascinating to see how Congress handles this challenge because they created the lopsided environment where complexity reigns and patients lose.

The federal healthcare system is a giant spaghetti ball of legislation, with myriads of alphabet-soup agencies and 50 years of re-do’s, take-overs and fixes. The end result is an overly complex and extremely messy bundle of rules, regulations and unintended consequences.

And, we’re stuck in the middle…

However, in the face of continued skyrocketing prescription drug prices, Oregon can provide a little bit of needed transparency. Oregonians for Affordable Drug Prices announced bipartisan and statewide support for HB 4005 that will require pharmaceutical manufacturers to share information on any drug price increase that is more than 10% annually.

I have more faith in free, open and voluntary markets than government bureaucracies. The injection of government into the healthcare arena did not create better solutions for those in need. What it did supply is a source of revenue – the taxpayer.

Decades of lobbying has resulted in a protectionist system plagued by three systemic issues. First, the beneficiaries, or patients, present an insatiable, unquenchable and uncontrollable demand on the system. This is a hallmark of socialism where third-party payers carry the burden of an ever-growing desire for more and more services.

Secondly, current law provides the best of crony capitalism – market monopolies. Healthcare service providers composed of delivery system cartels of doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceutical suppliers, medical device makers, etc., have implanted themselves deep into congressional organs.

Patients experience the results in a complex system of excessive wait-lines, multiple referrals, and continual follow-ups while the providers are party to a rigged reimbursement system which maximizes revenue gains, minimizes system efficiency and has no competitive discipline.

The graphic below shows dramatic tandem price increases over the past twenty years for two competing insulin analogues. The upward trend is not due to normal inflationary increases; it is due to federal policies.

Competitive pressure should surface when supply chain circumstances, commodity contracts or manufacturing advantages present themselves in a free market. As can been seen, even when alternatives exist, there is little competition and prices do not go down. In fact, the opposite occurs – prices increase in tandem with one another.

This is because the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which established Medicare Part D, banned direct negotiations for lower prices on prescription drugs by the government. If the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, the agency could leverage its enormous purchasing power to pay less for drugs.

Lower prices would reverberate through the market because information is power. “I can’t give you a discount because when the word gets out then I’ll have to give discounts to everyone.”

Also, in the thousands of ACA pages there are several items that favor the lopsided pricing fiasco we recognize. These items are a mandate prohibiting re-importation of drugs (like insulin from Canada), preserving Medicare’s over-payment for drugs, mandates requiring state subsidies for drugs under Medicaid, and hundreds of billions in subsidies for drugs in Medicare part B and D.

Under HB 4005 drug makers will be required to give advance notice to payers before price increases of more than 10 percent a year. Additionally, for all drugs that increased more than 10 percent in the prior years, the manufacturer must report to the state their research, development and marketing costs, profit margins and whether generic drug alternatives are available.

Another feature of the bill requires companies to report what the price for their medication is in other countries, an especially pressing issue when prices are, on average, 50 percent lower in other industrialized nations. The graph below illustrates the enormous price discrepancy for insulin in the US verses other countries.

The US spends 18% of GDP on health care compared to 10-12% in the rest of the developed world. There is no hope of slowing down the health care monster without some transparency and the restoration of basic free market principles like consumer sovereignty, patient responsibility, risk-based pricing and a free market supply chain.

HB 4005 is one small step for transparency and gaining insight into the problem of rising prescription drug prices. The public hearing for HB 4005 will be on Monday, Feb. 5th at 3:00pm in Hearing Room E in the Capital Bldg.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28