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Tomfoolery

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, June 12, 2019 by devadmin

The National Popular Vote (NPV) is another leg of the progressive movement that is rolling across the US. Simply put, it is part of the scheme to undermine our fair and balanced election process. Although the popular vote initiative sounds reasonable on its surface, the devil is in the details. The NCSL (National Conference of State Legislators) website states:

“The National Popular Vote (NPV) movement emerged in late 2006 and has slowly gain some steam since then.

“NPV seeks to ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes nationwide is elected president. When a state passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide, rather than the candidate who won the vote in just that state.”

In a perfectly wild example, imagine if every single voter in Oregon cast a Republican vote for the President. Under NPV, after the polls close and the chads are counted and recounted, if a democrat candidate had a slim majority of votes nationwide, the state’s electors would be required to cast their vote for the democrat, even though not a single soul within the state affirmed that choice.

This is a clear violation of the principle of local control and the consent of the governed. Unfortunately, this twisted logic has Oregon’s democrats feverishly working to be the 16th “blue” state to pass an NPV bill (SB 870). It has already passed through the Senate and House, largely along party-lines and is now on its way to the Governor’s office.

The founders created a uniquely American scheme for electing office-holders at the national level. It was designed to disrupt the natural tendencies of mankind which have been witnessed in every age. To wit, regardless of national origin, religion, creed, sex or gender people exposed to power will be tempted by lust and selfish greed to amass more power.

Our nation’s founders wanted to preserve the principles of representation while building in constitutional safeguards for diluting unnecessary concentrations of power.  For example, they split the legislative body into two chambers, the House and Senate. Senators, representing the States, were elected to office by their respective State Legislatures. Unfortunately, this protection was undone in 1913 with the passage of the 17th Amendment.

Prior to the 17th Amendment, the Constitution specified that senators were elected by state legislatures. This construction gave state governments an equal say in the national body with regard to legislation, rules and regulations that would affect all states. Each state would have equal representation in the Senate with two Senators from each state.

The framers believed that in electing senators, state legislatures would cement their ties with the national government. The 17th Amendment changed this process to a direct election by the people of their state, essentially making it identical to the process for the U.S. House of Representatives. The fervor for NPV at the presidential level is an exact replica of the turmoil that hammered the nation during the debates around the 17th Amendment.

The House of Representatives was designed as the only chamber which had members directly elected by a vote of the people. Like our state’s House, this body was responsible for protecting the interests of the people and was the body that had budgetary power, being responsible for taxes and revenue.

The constitutional design had the president, or chief executive, elected by both houses of the legislature via their specific electors – the Electoral College. This arrangement created yet another filter on the proxies coming from the House and Senate and created a formidable obstacle to slow the quickened motives of ingenious men.

Additionally, the terms of office for these elected positions was purposely staggered across two-, four- and six-year spans with one-third of the Senate being elected every two years. In turn, the states generally dispersed their powers by having them exercised by municipalities, counties, and other local governments – local governance being the preferred choice.

The current NPV tomfoolery would ordain what the progressives falsely call “popular” rule but it is more akin to mob rule where everything is centrally orchestrated.

In the most recent 2016 election, the Electoral College proved to be a legitimate safety net for preserving the will of the people:

  1. There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57.
  2. There are 62 counties in New York State. Trump won 46 of them. Clinton won 16.
  3. Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
  4. In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond) Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.
  5. These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles. The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles.
  6. When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.

Large, densely-populated, group-think cities (NYC, Chicago, Seattle, LA, etc.) shouldn’t be allowed to usurp the opinions of the rest of the country. The progressive movement toward NPV is a dangerous idea and runs contrary to our founders’ remarkable blueprint for preserving the Liberty for the people while tempering the ever-present lust for capricious power.

Thos. Jefferson spoke directly to this in 1798, writing, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Finding freedom in the chains of our Constitution is what made America great in the first place … and …  it will Make America Great Again.

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

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Science, Common-sense and Reasonableness.

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Monday, June 11, 2018 by devadmin

In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed by Congress. This was the first time the United States government made free land available to western settlers. In that same year a Bureau of Agriculture was created.

There is a lesson here – if you are ever tempted to accept a gift from the government, know that what the government gives one day, can be taken the next.

Throughout history whenever the power and economic resources of the government are pitched against the people – the people lose. Not least because governments use revenue collected from taxes to fund the very policies that are becoming more and more burdensome. This is especially true in fields of agriculture, food production, natural resource extraction, high-end precision technologies and material manufacturing.

Government authority becomes concentrated in structures of command and control because government is duty-bound to regulate existing environments and processes. Government organizations receive their regulatory mandates through a single method – political power. Therefore, political factions, with their rival interpretations of law and jurisprudence, are engaged in constant struggle and turmoil. This is the nature of government.

Legislators, like kids with a shoebox full of Lego’s, get to guide and organize the tools of government to create and implement policies that will achieve their goals.

James Madison, wrote in Federalist No. 51 (1788), “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Government organizations, even those filled with good people and great administrators, are subject to Madison’s observation. No angels create, manage or administer government programs.

The tools of administration, on the surface appear simple, convenient and straight-forward. Yet, they form a complicated, multi-faceted, unavoidable and intricately woven snare. There is only one way to successfully navigate through the modern labyrinth. The path is actually the same for rule administrators (enforcers) or rule followers. For all participants, successfully navigating the maze only requires rejecting one’s common-sense and reasonableness. Then, with those two items out of the way, the rest is easy.

The organizations wielding this power can’t even be charged with illegal activity, because their activities are sanctified in law. Aside from civil lawsuits which help to corral regulators back into their legally defined roles or correct administrative blunders, how does one “oblige government to control itself?” Or, how do you stop a freight-train?

A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article noted, “Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency jammed through an average of 565 new rules each year during the Obama Presidency, imposing the highest regulatory costs of any agency.” This vast expansion of the sphere of government is clearly beyond the traditional areas of responsibility laid out by our nation’s founders.

Obama’s EPA illustrates that regulatory power is really political power. The regulations were engineered for political usefulness even though they were scientifically imprecise, economically facetious and morally vacuous.

Under the surface, this is really a contest of ideas. The conflict is between support for bigger, larger, more controlling government, or the establishment and preservation of a society of free individuals complete with their unalienable rights.

Newsweek Cover

However, as the cover of Newsweek magazine proclaimed, back in 2009, “We are all socialists now.” The government we experience today is a reflection of the progressive left’s ideological predisposition which has become the dominant force of government. This vision of a centrally-managed utopia, imposed by regulatory mandate, regardless of science, common-sense or reasonableness is pervasive in Oregon policy.

For example, last month, Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) shut-down ag-wells that are within 1 mile of the Sprague River. Their stated intention is to increase flow in the Sprague river due to a surface water call by the Klamath Tribes. This Departmental policy initiative will force 140 businesses, families and employees off their land because their groundwater wells were drilled nearly 50 years ago and happen to be within 1 mile of the river.

There is little evidence to justify the Department’s model assertion that groundwater wells negatively impact in-stream surface water. Given the low aquifer transmissivity, varying thicknesses in real-world geologic layers, and varying horizontal hydraulic conductivities this would obviously result in a futile call for water. Following OWRD’s own rules they should be regularly assessing conditions to determine if the call is futile and allow junior water right holders access to their groundwater allotments. Oregon law requires OWRD to demonstrate the use of a well is causing substantial and timely interference with one or more priority water rights before the department can regulate-off any particular well.

Yet, they don’t appear to be following these guidelines – water remains shut-off because of the model’s basic assertions. Aside from irrigation and stock-watering wells, three municipalities in Klamath County are also threatened with regulatory enforcement due to the artificial one-mile proximity range, but not due to substantial and timely interference.

All Oregon water users may expect the Department to employ similar computer modelling technology to force water shut-offs in other areas of the state. Given the complex technical nature of much scientific data, computer models, applications, assumptions and extrapolations, OWRD must address departmental weaknesses in identifying, disclosing, and resolving issues with conflict-of-interest and scientific-integrity, while ensuring the quality of the evidentiary findings used during enforcement actions.

To eliminate these unnecessary and politically contrived water shortages, we need to provide realistic problem-solving leadership and embrace strategies designed to increase water supplies. We should be recharging aquifers and building new water reservoirs and dams. This is especially true if weather patterns lower the water volume stored in our winter snowpack.

The legislature must select projects that yield the best return on investment while taking a hard look at costs, science and improved technology. Oregon’s ample runoff water-flows provide a unique source for water-storage efforts and are the proper way to eliminate water scarcity.

We should promote, not restrict, the ingenious free-market problem solver, the all-around engineer, and the entrepreneurs in our communities. Builders, bakers, family farmers and ranchers all provide the daily necessities of life and these are the hardworking Oregonians that should be our heroes.

Without these realistic, common-sense changes the state’s dysfunctional political culture will savage agriculture, just as it did Oregon’s timber industry, and along with it, Oregon’s overall economy.

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

Senator Dennis Linthicum signature

Dennis Linthicum

Oregon State Senate 28

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Explosive Entitlement

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Friday, June 9, 2017 by devadmin

Oregon’s Secretary of State, Dennis Richardson, reported last week that Oregon Health Authority may have failed to validate as many as 115,000 Medicaid recipient

Richardson estimated that potentially 86,000 of these individuals are ineligible for Medicaid coverage. On average, if every individual on Medicaid costs the state and federal government $430 a month, then the total fraud and waste is a whopping $37 million a month.

These are staggering numbers. You might wonder how Oregon gets away with such waste, and the sad answer is that we’ve come to believe an economic fallacy.

This fallacy, or false belief, is the idea of free money. Free money is the sought-after prize in politics, allowing the entrenched powers to create and continue state programs with little or no critical oversight.

Oregon’s legislature will often present the public with a grand solution for problems like the cost of college or healthcare. Unfortunately, their engineered solution always entails free money, which means that someone else will pay the bill.

Free money comes with strings attached. Salesmen offer these gimmicks all the time. It is an effective sales tool because of the personal discipline and hard work required to save, budget and plan. We should all know this instinctively, but the quick gratification that comes from signing onto that “no money down” new car can’t be beat. We can each imagine cruising down the Oregon coast in our shiny new SUV. Many lawmakers use this same technique to hide the real cost from the taxpayer while pitching a story that sounds too good to be true.

In Oregon’s case, along with free money comes bundles of regulations, mandates, taxes and penalties on Oregonians, all because lawmakers couldn’t be bothered to work for sustainable solutions.

Think about this concept with affordable or free health care.

When we need health advice, care or a prescription, we visit a healthcare provider. That becomes an external cost because we are buying a product or service, just as if we were paying for an oil change for our car or a cup of coffee from a barista.

We all realize that skilled people designed, engineered, tested, manufactured and distributed the thousands of medical machines we take for granted in our hospitals and doctors’ offices. We agree that it’s unfair to ask a doctor to go to school for years and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on education and then be expected to work for free. We certainly would not expect a scientist in a lab, designing new medical devices, the pharmacist at your local drugstore, or the receptionist at your doctor’s front desk to work for free either. These are skilled Americans doing needed jobs.

So, it appears that despite rhetoric about “free health care” as a right, it is the same as our no-money-down car analogy – it’ll definitely cost us, just maybe not today.

In fact, our health care system is the most fiscally explosive entitlement ever conceived.

Its growth is a ticking time-bomb for two reasons. First, the person receiving the health care benefit is completely disconnected from the cost. You and I have no idea what our doctor’s visit costs. We don’t know what our pharmaceuticals cost or should cost because we either get them for free or make a small co-pay contribution.

Second, healthcare costs are hidden and shifted across the population. For example, all US men carry coverage for maternity, prenatal and postnatal care. This is the ultimate “hidden fee” because it applies charges to people who will never use the services.

People can only make good decisions about healthcare with good information, including details about the costs involved. The current structure destroys the consumers’ ability to make wise choices about their own healthcare. People find themselves trapped in an environment where compliance with the rules, regulations and bureaucratic red-tape is a burden that becomes more difficult as they age.

Hidden costs also sabotage corrective pressure coming from consumers. Consumers are the best agents for communicating directly with their doctors and healthcare providers. However, without valid information the consumer becomes powerless.

As consumers look for help, government responds by sending in an army of bureaucrats armed with price-controls, regulations, and reporting requirements. Unfortunately, their intervention is after they created the problem in the first place.

Obamacare, like the 1965 enactment of Medicare, did not erupt spontaneously on the American political scene. In truth, this mess has been festering and growing, like malignant cancer, since the Progressive political movement sought power through government control during the early 1900’s. Socialized medicine and centralized control over healthcare is the Progressive’s dream.

There is no good reason for bureaucrats to substitute their opinions into the relationship between the patient and his, or her, doctor. Individuals deserve control over their own healthcare and putting patients back in control is our only answer.

In closing, we have our work cut out for us. It will take enormous amounts of energy, tenacity and courage to return to free choice in our healthcare markets.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Who Will Pay?

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, May 30, 2018 by devadmin

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) invites the public to comment on the proposed section 401 water quality certification for the removal of the J.C. Boyle Dam, reservoir, powerhouse and all other infrastructure related to the existing Lower Klamath Project.

ODEQ will hold two public hearings on Tuesday, June 12 at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. at Oregon Tech’s College Union Auditorium.  View the full public notice for details on the public comment period at: http://www.oregon.gov/deq/get-involved/documents/070618Klamathpn.pdf.

After reading the above announcement, several people asked the same question: Didn’t Congress refuse to fund the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and isn’t that story over?

The simple answer is yes! It should be over; but, it is not.

After KBRA/KHSA was rejected by Congress the “stakeholders” decided they didn’t need to abide by Constitutional requirements set in Article I, Clause 3 which holds that two states entering into an agreement need Congressional approval. Instead, dam removal and tribal interests convinced Gov. Brown (D–CA) and Gov. Brown (D–OR) that their two states could do it, alone. Typically state governments like to use federal funding sources because the Feds continually run enormous deficits, and besides, they can just print money.

Although, these two left-coast executives want to blow the dams, several legal and regulatory issues remain unsolved. In Oregon and California multiple levels of public comment are required depending on the project’s size. The Klamath River Dam Removal is the largest US dam removal effort ever contemplated and public comments are required.

The 401 Water Quality Certification program is designed to review and evaluate the water quality impacts of projects which require federal permits for activities that may result in a waterway discharge. Specific areas of interest will be water quality, turbidity and damage to spawning habitat from sediment held behind the structures, demolition debris, or bank erosion during the dam removal process.

Scientists report that the water in the upper reaches of the Klamath Basin is “severely impaired” therefore, it follows, that poor-quality water would subsequently flow downstream and become a part of the subject matter for review. This “severely impaired” water will spill into the Klamath River system more than 200 miles from the salty Pacific. Add to this, the volume of demolition debris and the toxic sedimentary loads stored behind the current dams and you have real problems.

There is estimated to be in excess of 20 million cubic yards of accumulated sediment behind these structures. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement did not investigate the seriousness of this potential problem, address any possible mitigation efforts or the costs associated with fixing these issues.

On Tuesday, June 12th, ODEQ needs to hear our voices. They need to be made aware of a realistic assessment of the potential problems and our concerns for costly overruns, damages, clean-up and/or mitigation efforts that are currently omitted from the feel-good narrative coming from dam removal promoters.

This water quality issue is not easily side-stepped because estimates suggest 20 million cubic yards of toxic sediment exist. That in itself is the equivalent of 1 million twenty-yard dump truck loads of silt, sediment and sludge which needs to be removed. Is ODEQ willing to dump that into the river system? Where else would this sludge get dumped? I can’t wait to hear the “NIMBY/NOMR” (Not-In-My-Back-Yard/Not-On-My-Reservation) crowds erupting with those realities.

As an aside, if your company owned 100 twenty-yard dump trucks it would take 10,000 round-trip excursions to remove and discharge that much debris somewhere on our pristine landscape. What is the cost for maintaining or repairing road damage after 10,000 round-trip dump runs? Who will pay for it? The tax-payers, that’s who.

Additionally, that much sediment would require a 20 ton or larger excavator spending 10,000 hours or more of excavator time on the fill-side, with who knows what on the dispersal side. Who is going to pay for that? The tax-payers, that’s who.

The easy answer seems to be, “Let it wash out to the Pacific Ocean,” then, only the downstream salmon fisheries will bear the burden from this harmful sludge. Sure, let that much sediment and debris clog the river, no problem. Look at where the mouth of this river systems meets the Pacific, how much debris would it take to fill this in? Who will pay for the dredging of the river after this happens. The tax-payers, that’s who.

Removal of the dams is a bad idea because grid capacity will be lost; reservoirs will be destroyed; boating, fishing and recreational opportunities will be diminished; land-values will be devastated; and flow regulating mechanisms will be demolished, aside from the resulting debris and sediment that will be washed down-stream. Without the dams and their respective reservoirs water won’t be available for flushing-flows or regulating the volume of dilution flows. The result will be degraded river conditions (low dissolved oxygen, increased primary productivity, elevated pH, unionized ammonia issues, destruction of spawning habitat, increased turbidity, etc., etc.

ODEQ partially recognizes these issues and has established a time compliance schedule of 24 months. This means the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (KRRC) gets to spend two years doing things that none of us could ever do. After all, they are paying a fee and getting their permit to pollute. The real question is what happens when this estimate goes awry? What corrective actions will be required? Who will pay for these efforts several years into the future? The tax-payers, that’s who.

Dam Image

The problem is that both governors have their hands clasped to the money-end of the environmental train that will needlessly waste and misallocate our respective state’s scarce financial resources. The story is composed of equal parts fairy tale and naiveté with a generous portion of political agenda lathered with public funds taken from future taxpayers.

I refer to future costs because today’s accumulated funding only amounts to $450 million. Part of the money, $200 million comes from PacifiCorp’s already collected customer surcharge and the other $250 million comes from California Proposition 1 Bonding. Yet, the original dam removal estimates were $1.4 billion, i.e., $1,400 million. How did the bureaucrats down in Dam Removal Central magically find $1 billion in cost savings?

They didn’t. They are just leaving those items out of the project’s current scope. Those extra costs will remain off the books and temporarily hidden. Think of it like a construction project change-order. The narrative will be, “We need this thing done…  we’re already well underway… it will only cost $xxx… and the world will be a better place for the children.”

Environmental-political activists know that legislative power is the key to successful political plunder. They gloss over the inconsistencies between their storyline and the science, forcing public policy on populations who disagree (deniers).  Apparently, this poses no problem because there is plenty of money to be made through legislated benefits and senseless government mandates. The needless destruction of useful technologies for capturing nature’s cleanest energy source – hydropower – is of no real concern because their agenda is being realized.

In closing, I strongly encourage you to join me and show up on June 12th. ODEQ needs to hear our voices, after all, we will get stuck with the bill.

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

Best Regards,

Senator Dennis Linthicum signature

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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FrankGUNstein Lives

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, May 25, 2017 by devadmin

Apparently, Oregon is tired of being a continual runner-up to California when it comes to restrictive gun control laws. The Oregon Senate recently released a lengthy 26 page bill composed of absurd and unnecessary regulations which will negatively impact the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

This bill (SB 1065) was thrown together in a surreal Frankgunsteinian fashion. Like Frankenstein, the only thing this bill needed was an electrifying jolt of sincere disregard for the constitutionally codified natural rights of Oregon’s citizens.

Oregon’s three leading Democrat gun grabbers, Sen. Prozanski (D-Eugene), Sen. Burdick (D- Portland), Rep. Williamson (D-Portland) introduced this villainous version of an omnibus, anti-gun bill. This bill includes legalese from several previous anti-gun bills that either died in committee or were set aside to be resurrected during the remaining weeks of this 2017 legislative session.

SB 1065 combines SB 764 and SB 797 plus portions of seven previous gun bills that never made their way forward (SB 495, SB 546, SB 549, SB 670, SB 804, SB 854 and SB 903).

Although this bill is a 26 page abomination, the metro-Democrats at least provided us with a delightful name for their legislation. The bill says, “this 2017 Act shall be known and may be cited as the Oregon Firearm Regulation Modernization Act.”

As usual, this very pleasant, forward-looking and enlightening language masks the true design of the legislation. Samuel Adams, in similar similar circumstances, noted, “It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer [our liberties] to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”

To wit, here are a few lines of text from the 1,150 lines smashed into this debacle:

In this section, it is easy to see the gradual and evolutionary mutations that happen under the guise of improving public safety. There is no statistical evidence documenting the benefit of an additional 14 days for the background check. Additionally, there is no evidence that more time is required. After all, they are using the internet for criminal background data aggregation.

The public is led to believe that more time would allow the security experts to do their job more thoroughly. Yet, information overload bogs down most government systems.

Remember,  the FBI knew of Omar Mateen and interviewed him on two different occasions. Mateen is the man who killed 49 and injured more than 50 others at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL. The FBI surveilled Mateen and they followed leads that he knew Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mateen’s co-worker reported that information directly to the FBI.

According to a 2016 report published by The Intercept:

 “The bureau forces agents to close assessments because agents are pursuing thousands of assessments nationwide under a policy to pursue any and all leads, no matter how ridiculous they are. The caseload can be overwhelming for FBI offices.”

In any similar situation, how would Oregon’s State Police (OSP) wade through this overload? Will this eventually lead to funding increases for staffing, newer computer systems and evermore surveillance gear?

The complexity of the problem comes from believing that the state can protect everyone, all the time. They simply cannot. Security cannot be obtained by trading away our civil liberties. Evil can’t be stopped by disarming those who contribute most to public safety – the public.

Also, with regard to SB 1065, the restrictions apply to all firearms. Not just handguns. This includes every self-defense weapon, hunting rifle, varmint rifle, waterfowl and quail-gun.

A complete disregard for the public’s interest is inherent in SB 1065’s language. These lines of text describe that, “if the department fails to provide a unique approval number to a gun dealer,” then no transfer can legally take place.

“Fails to provide.” What does that mean? Didn’t want to; never got to it; misplaced the paperwork; computer glitch; all of these would be failures.

Firearm dealers carry a Federal Firearms License (FFL) that enables them to engage in the sale and transfer of firearms. Currently, federal law allows a licensed firearm dealer to release a firearm after three business days if they have not received any additional correspondence after being notified of  a “delay” when conducting the initial background check for a firearm transfer. This bill would increase the wait time in Oregon to 14 days.

Today, a deferral from OSP does not necessarily mean a transfer to the recipient is prohibited, but rather that a determination has not yet been made. Would the “failures” clouded in SB 1065’s language be considered out-right “denials?”

Oregon Firearms Federation made this statement, “This bill does many other bad things and has serious technical flaws, but its clear intent is to create more obstacles and impediments to lawful firearms ownership.”

SB 1065 is proof positive that bad bills, or legislative mutants, can be brought back to life by a jolt of legislative juice from the Democrat majority.

Remember, if we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and Common-sense –
No one Will.

Send an eMail Today!

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Slip-Sliding Away…

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, May 18, 2017 by devadmin

Common-sense seems to be slipping away from our public consciousness. With common-sense no one needs a biology expert, scientist, certificate or license. With common-sense one can understand plain self-evident truths and you don’t even need a PhD.

The government, or the statists, have layered on so many controls that more and more of our independence is falling away. Under their dominion, we rarely have the freedom to live out our own lives as we see fit. The safety of the collective is deemed more important than the freedom of the individual.

Government intervention is growing more and more burdensome. As a result, people have become complacent. Their reluctance is only natural. After all, who can fight the voluminous regulations? This in turn, causes people to forego using their own common-sense. They see common-sense as a tool that no longer works in the modern world.

In fact, it doesn’t work because the vast majority of the rules and regulations were never constructed with any sense in mind. People end up just going along to get-along. Common-sense is missing today because it is now more advantageous to suffer the idiocy while at least making ends meet. This is a dangerous place for our society.

For example, take the water shut-off at Crater Lake.

The current snow-level is still between 100 and 120 inches. Parking is difficult due to the piles of snow in the parking lots. The park received more than 570 inches of snow in 2017. Yet, people will be informed that the park is experiencing a water shortage!

Tourists and Oregonians visiting Crater Lake will struggle making sense of the scene at the rim. The lake is beautiful, blue and full, the skyline is magnificent and the air is fresh and clear. However, the Rangers will inform them of the severe water shortage. They will be told to greatly limit their water consumption. The park will instruct our visitors to use non-flush toilets, take short showers, wash camp dishes, dry-brush teeth and clean the kids – all with their own dainty-wipe. Does this make sense?

Everyone is aware that these restricted conditions are due to a Tribal water call which included Annie Creek. Annie Creek, which normally supplies the park’s water, is a tributary of the Wood River and Upper Klamath Lake watershed affected by the call.

A priority call allows a water-right holder who has a senior priority claim to secure his water first. This may require other secondary water-right holders to undergo water volume restrictions or other regulations, so that priority rights can be met. This current call simply doesn’t make logical sense, since current stream-flow volumes are off the charts and there is more water in our rivers, tributaries and reaches than in the past several decades.

Never-the-less, this call, as senseless as it is, leads Crater Lake National Park to find an alternative water source.

The park typically uses about 36,000 gallons a day in May and that use will increase as summer visitation spikes in July and August – Chiloquin to the rescue!

The City of Chiloquin has contracted to pump 2.5 million gallons of water out of their groundwater well, place it into tanker trucks, drive it 40 miles round-trip while traversing several thousand feet of elevation to fill water storage tanks at the park.

The cost of buying water from the city of Chiloquin is nearly $40,000, while the cost of hauling the water will be closer to $400,000 for May & June. The absurdity hits the fan when one realizes that the rivers are flooding, snow is piled high, an existing aquifer is being tapped, millions of acre-feet of water are flowing into the salty Pacific, and the public will probably expend over $1,000,000 to accomplish – nothing

Common-sense is becoming harder and harder to find. Common-sense is getting smothered under the laws, rules, regulations, proceedings, motions, and summaries of the strategies. We will lose ourselves to the villains of this world if we can no longer approach an issue with forthright virtue and honor.

This recent water call is obviously not about common-sense regulation, it is about control.

Regulations are a necessary part of life. Regulation comes from a Latin word meaning rule, i.e., a standard, norm, or law. Regulations govern us from the day of our birth. We are regulated by our physical and mental capabilities, our family life, our parents, our church, our job experiences and much, much more. So, regulation per se, is not bad

However, control is another matter. Control, comes from a French word meaning a register, roll, or catalogue.  This is why the Federal Registry is named as such. It is a giant rulebook of controls and it is constantly growing. Last year it grew by 80,000 pages and the total cost for compliance is in excess of $4 trillion dollars. This would be greater than the GDP of all but four other nations.

Regulatory growth is the unfortunate bureaucratic habit which can destroy the very resource that it tries to protect. It has become an administrative juggernaut of senseless rules for the purposes of control and the gradualistic accumulation of these regulations, combined with our collective loss of common-sense, may be our undoing.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Where is OWRD’s Scientific Rigor?

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Thursday, May 17, 2018 by devadmin

Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) held several meetings in the Klamath Basin last week explaining why they shut-off 140 irrigation wells in the Upper Klamath Basin. I was not able to attend the several meetings that took place in Sprague River, Chiloquin and Klamath Falls because of speaking engagements with Young Americans for Liberty in Northern California.

Although I wasn’t there, believe me, I received a lot of on-the-ground reporting from farmers, ranchers, and community members who were in attendance.

For some background, water law and theory have long linked ground water to surface water as described in, Arizona Law Where Ground and Surface Water Meet, (1988),

“When water is pumped from an aquifer by means of a well, it creates what is known as a ‘cone of depression.’ This is caused by the groundwater in the aquifer moving toward the well. If the material in the aquifer has a high transmissivity value, the cone of depression will be wide and shallow. If, on the other hand, the aquifer does not easily transmit water, the cone of depression will be steep and narrow.

“If water is pumped continuously from the well, the cone of depression will become larger. If the water table is close enough to the earth’s surface to allow this cone to cut into a surface stream, water from the stream would directly infiltrate into the ground, following the slope of the cone of depression until it reached the well. … This would cause less water to be available in the stream bed.”

In Arizona law, the doctrine of prior appropriation applies to surface waters and extends to another water category known as “subflow.” Historically this is, “those waters which slowly find their way through the sand and gravel constituting the bed of the stream, or the lands under or immediately adjacent to the stream and are themselves a part of the surface stream.”

Now, this may be true in the sand and gravel of the Arizona outback, it may even be true in the geological formations found within the Upper Klamath Basin, but is it?

After all some wells are drilled through solid rock for hundreds of feet while other wells are not. In other circumstances, a well, even in close proximity to another, might travel through several different aquifer layers before arriving at a separate hydrological zone that will meet specific irrigation requirements.

However, the facts on the ground, or in this case underground, don’t seem to matter to OWRD. OWRD ought to answer one simple question, what impact does an individual well have on a senior water right holder?

OWRD, understands the full implications of this policy because they know people realize that every well might be different. Their policy pretends to require individual well testing, as in OAR 690-009-0050. Their policy states each well must be, “reviewed on a case-by-case basis to determine PSI [potential for substantial interference] in accordance with the methods indicated in OAR 690-009- 0040.”

However, this case-by-case requirement gets completely passed-over within the same OWRD policy because the model’s requirements are stranded upon a blind-faith assertion.

 Div. 9 Policy

The policy states, “the Department’s working conceptual model asserts that aquifers in the Upper Klamath Basin Area are hydraulically connected to surface water sources.”

Boom! There you have it. Game-over.

The assertion holds true because of …? Because of a “conceptual model”?

Look at OWRD’s own Technical Memorandum on Groundwater Regulation in the Upper Klamath Basin Area under OAR 690-009. Notice how many times these rules rely on the “model” and how little respect is shown for scientific data assessments. What techniques does OWRD use to review, verify and validate their model so that the department can accept, reject or qualify collected data in an objective and consistent manner. In other words, how is OWRD’s model confirmed or validated? And, what would happen if their model was flawed?

In this current regulatory policy, OWRD is making the case that across the entire Upper Klamath Basin watershed, all wells, at all times, and in all circumstances, are hydrologically connected to surface water sources.

My question is, who benefits from avoiding the use of scientific rigor and precision when analyzing whether an existing groundwater appropriation is hydrologically connected to surface water? Is this policy in effect because of budgetary constraints? Is it in place due to other limited resources, i.e., man-power limitations?

Science must be restored to its rightful place when weighing the pros and cons of our state’s public policy when prioritizing the use of our precious and scarce natural resources. First, OWRD ought to know with certainty that an individual well is harming a senior water right-holder, before shutting-off a specific water resource.

Second, OWRD needs to establish standards for measuring distances between wells and surface water sources for the purpose of determining the probability, or existence of surface water right impairment.

Third, OWRD also ought to provide negatively impacted right-holders with written notice of planned actions so that families have time to consider their available options.

Fourth, the models used, the facts gained, any legal theories or existing rulings being used to support the planned action also need to be made public.

If our government process is designed around public participation and transparency, then publishing planned actions and detailed evidentiary findings produced by a qualified hydrologist describing specific well site geology and hydrology should not be a problem for our state government’s executive agencies.

I am currently working on legislation that would require OWRD to follow and adhere to these four suggestions. We must hold our unelected bureaucracies to the highest bar possible when their rulings affect the very lives and livelihoods of hardworking Oregonians.

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

Best Regards,

Senator Dennis Linthicum signature

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Water Quagmire

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, May 10, 2017 by devadmin

Oregon’s economy is more than capable of producing enough prosperity to restore our challenged communities. Our natural resources and expansive agricultural abilities can revive our rural communities, satisfy every need and provide material comfort for Oregon’s population.

Doesn’t that give you hope for small rural towns and population centers alike? Don’t we all want an Oregon that is healthy, economically vibrant and reliably regulated for years to come?

Apparently the state of Oregon and the Water Resources Department (WRD) administrators do not agree with this hopeful view of our future. While I hear from concerned family farmers, ranchers, business owners and families every day, these administrators appear to only have ears for well-funded special interest groups, and as such have introduced a great imbalance in water appropriations for Oregon’s agricultural communities.

For example, the WRD recently verified a Tribal call on priority water and is now regulating and limiting water usage in the flooding river zones of the Wood, Williamson and Sprague River Systems.

WRD also set the rules for regulating these flood flows (Riparian High Flows) and the triggering events which led to this water call.  This water call is based solely on administrative actions and is highly subjective. It seems clear that this is the work of special interests and not those interested in prosperity for our communities.

In a 1999, Ninth Circuit appeals case, Klamath Water Users Protective Association v. Northcoast Environmental Center, The Wilderness Society,  Waterwatch of Oregon, et. al., the court found that, “a comprehensive water rights adjudication… and questions of relative amounts and priorities, at least within the State of Oregon, will be decided there.”

WRD created an artificial water restraint based on, “Riparian Habitat High (Flood) Flows are triggered by the 1.5-year recurrence interval flow and capped by the 3.4-year recurrence interval flow. If stream flows are at or above the Trigger Flow, stream flows must be maintained up to the Cap Flow.”

I, like the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, believe these judicial review processes and determinations belong to Oregon. Yet, the state has not resolved these issues, instead putting family farms and ranches on the sacrificial altar to the voracious interests of big money players.

This is nothing but unwarranted coercion. Our state’s administrators have become the new ruling class. Only they can exercise the power of the state to secure certain rights and privileges for the chosen few. Oregon appears to be focused on controlling the life of our communities by placing vital economic functions in the hands of a few administrators.

At the beginning of this commentary, I laid out a hopeful view for our beautiful state but we cannot have that kind of hope without a reliable, fair administration of government. The prosperity of our state and the future of our rural communities rely on us to do better. We need to undo capricious and arbitrary rules, so that all water users can seek judicial review and due process for water flow quantities and priorities.

Our state needs the courage to step up and fix failed policies while adopting new strategies to repair this broken system. Although the administrative judgements and rules were developed following the best suggestions and with best of intentions the resulting quagmire is a disaster for Oregon-based local agriculture, rural communities and our overall prosperity.

Remember, if we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common-sense – 

No one will…

Best regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Fish Over Farmer – Again?

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Wednesday, May 3, 2017 by devadmin

Hello Friends,

Water is a commodity just like gold, silver, oil and gas. Historically, water has allowed our farmers, ranchers and fisherman to literally feed the world. I know how valuable water is to the health of any community. Control the life-giving water and you have complete control over any community’s future.

Therefore, I was frustrated and disappointed when I received notice from the Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD) of the Klamath Tribe’s priority call on water.

Our water, the gift which allows our hard-working farmers and ranchers to create jobs, feed the world and carry on legacies of family-run agriculture, has become an invaluable tool in an ideological war. This war pits the Tribes, environmental groups and government agencies against small farms and ranching families, and is, in my view, an attempt to acquire complete control of water and land usage.

On April 13, the Klamath Tribes, who have senior instream rights, notified OWRD of a call on the Wood, Sprague, and Williamson Rivers and tributaries, including Upper Klamath Marsh. According to the Amended Order of 2007, the Tribes are within their rights to call for water for hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering on the former reservation land to the Klamath Tribes. However, this is, both, a legal and good-faith agreement regarding water as a shared resource. While the Tribes have an adjudicated right to it, Klamath Basin landowners also have rights and vested interests in the water, and its ecological impacts.

Riparian areas are thriving and current flows are off the charts, making any talk of drought or shortage simply ridiculous. There is more than enough water to go around this year and accomplish the important goals of each stake-holder.

One of the causes of this “water argument” is that the language used for describing water purposes is vague and subjective.

Recall that on February 12, 2007, an Administrative Law Judge, issued an Amended Order on Motions for Rulings on Legal Issues and confirmed, that the Tribes possessed treaty rights to hunt, fish, trap and gather on former reservation lands. Accordingly, as a matter of law, the Tribes possessed federally reserved water rights to, “whatever water is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the reservation.”

This “whatever” phrase allows for a constant rejigging and continual re-engineering for control over water resources, which is dangerous territory for the future of agriculture in the Klamath Basin. If the tribes call water during one of the highest water years on record, one can safely wonder if their goal is fishing, hunting or other heritage practices?

The local paper carried this report concerning the water call:

“There are two types of base flows, geologic and biologic,” said Diana Enright, an OWRD spokesperson. “In this case, these are biologic base flows, which are estimated as a lower protective threshold that provide biologically necessary habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms.”

Feel free to re-read those sentences, again. The phrases like, “biological base flows,” “estimated as a lower protective threshold,” and “biologically necessary” ought to illustrate the scientific hocus-pocus of it all. This is nothing-less than a fallacious appeal to a false authority. It is an attempt to justify a worldview by decree. These claims are not objectively true, and are appeals to the authority of data which has been interpreted.

The government, the press, the grant-funded researchers and their bureaucracies have a monopoly on the data, information, money and most of all, the organizational bandwidth to propagate their perspective. However, what is not obvious is this data has been organized in a specific way, with a specific ideology in mind.

Science is the work of questioning, not forgone conclusions. We must ask good questions when it comes to water priorities, flow, quality, needs and conditions.

The information being disseminated to the public regarding the water flows in the Klamath Basin has been influenced by the prevailing environmental/political world-views of the data collectors and presenters.

Interest groups realize that government authority can be used to cajole the public into believing the “experts know best.” Look at how the war against CO2 is progressing, complete with threats of legislation for dairy cow flatulence. These semi-scientific springboards are the perfect means for capturing adherents through fear-mongering. Corralling the experts, funding their efforts, organizing their evidence and setting the agenda is the easiest pathway to monopolistic control.

These “calls” on water, in such an abundant water-year, appear to be a concerted effort to force an artificial political/administrative constraint on the Klamath Basin.

These rules can be mitigated, changed or modified by parties who sincerely desire to live and work together, in community with each other.

It’s time to get back to the table and really talk to one another. I think that most of us sincerely want to see human flourishing with a healthy environment for our children and grandchildren. We want to know where our food comes from, share our water and celebrate our heritage, together, as a complete community.

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

Best Regards,

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28

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Only 9,000?

Oregon State Legislature sent this bulletin Friday, April 27, 2018 by devadmin

Last week Governor Kate Brown pulled a PR stunt by asking for a special legislative session. The Governor’s press release expressed her desire to clean-up Oregon’s adaptation of a pass-through law by including only the smallest of Oregon’s small businesses.

The Governor’s statement is cleverly worded to make it sound like she will be stepping up to rescue small businesses, and sole proprietorships. Her claim is that a simple fix would give these businesses access to the same tax breaks afforded larger businesses.

The Governor said, “We have an obvious inequity in Oregon’s tax system that is prejudiced against thousands of small Oregon businesses, and a simple change can fix it. I’m simply not willing to let these main street businesses — entrepreneurs, mom and pops, and start-ups — go through another tax year with unfair tax treatment as compared to their larger competitors.”

Doesn’t this message sound grand, generous and legitimate?

The Governor can apparently conquer inequity, solve the Democrat Majority’s long-standing prejudice for extracting taxes from hard-working Oregonians and provide well-deserved tax relief.

Hoooooray!

The governor’s statement continues by bragging this will help, “an estimated 9,000 sole proprietorships [who] could qualify and use this new opportunity to reinvest more of their profits into their businesses and employees.”

Only 9,000? Who are we kidding?

Recall, Oregon’s tax gulag recently imprisoned 192,000 of Oregon’s small businesses (mom and pop operations, sole-proprietorships, and “Schedule-C” filers) through Senate Bill 1528.

“Schedule-C” filers represent self-employed owners of small businesses who utilize the Form 1040 (Schedule C). This is the form used by businesses to complete income tax information for the federal government.

More importantly, this form is also known as “Profit or Loss from Business” and it documents exactly what the State of Oregon is interested in – your profits. Oregon is rapacious when it comes to scraping the last morsels off the plates of their small-business inmates.

The Oregon Department of Revenue estimated that SB 1528 would deny 192,000 “Schedule-C” filers their eligible for a 20% reduction on their Oregon income taxes. Although these businesses would qualify under federal tax-law they become trapped in an environment where it would be legal, except it’s not. This is exactly what SB 1528 from the 2018 legislative session was designed to do. It was engineered to disconnect Oregon’s tax code from Trump’s recent federal tax relief efforts.

With an effective state tax rate of 7.7%, these hardworking Oregonians already pay a higher tax rate than large Oregon C-corporations. In my view, SB 1528 represents the Democrat Majority’s official assault against small business owners and operators.

Here is another item that you may not realize: all revenue bills are constitutionally obligated to originate in Oregon’s House of Representatives. House bills are numbered with an HB prefix while Senate bills carry the SB prefix. Obviously, SB 1528, is a bill for generating tax revenue which started, unconstitutionally, in the Senate.

Additionally, raising revenue or increasing taxes requires a two-thirds majority to pass. SB 1528 passed by a simple majority without a single Republican vote.

The increased taxes on these 192,000 small businesses will be nearly 40 percent of the estimated $258 million in increased tax revenue pinched during the 2018 session. That means nearly $103 million will not be available for those local and family owned businesses to reinvest in their enterprises. That will be money that is no longer available for employees, benefits, or business expansion. For the young family running a small, sole-proprietorship, it could mean bread, milk and cheese which can no longer be afforded.

It seems that the language about solving the state’s tax-inequities quickly evaporates like green-house-gas emissions right into the night sky when we realize that this is  $103 million which will no longer be spent in our local communities but funneled into Salem’s grimy machinery.

Meanwhile, large multinational corporations will be allowed to hustle the system with special tax credits. Oregon’s inequitable tax-program allows its highest income earners to buy tax credits to offset their tax liability. This means that wealthy Oregonians will enjoy these tax savings at the expense of the small business owner who can’t afford to purchase these credits, let alone a box of Mac ’n’ Cheese for the kids.

In the typical fashion of the classic redistributionist, this scheme transfers general fund dollars to Oregon’s top 1% income earners while stealing federally allowed tax deductions from mom and pop businesses.

High-income investors have the financial resources and the means to lobby for these quirky tax rules. They can arrange to successfully game the tax system by using their Democrat allies who support complex giveaways hidden beneath layers of statist bureaucracy.

Gov. Brown could have exercised her leadership skills with a veto of SB 1528, but instead, she signed it into law. Typically, Oregon would copy federal tax breaks for businesses into state law. However, this year’s federal tax breaks have Trump’s signature all over them. In response, Gov. Brown reminded us once again why capitalist prosperity in America is so dangerously imperiled as she built her own version of a wall preventing Oregonians from accessing legitimate tax benefits.

This brings me to a question. Why all of the press notices and expense by Gov. Brown for this special legislative session?

Why? Because the Governor is on the ballot this November. The Governor’s claim that there is an “obvious inequity in Oregon’s tax system that is prejudiced against thousands of small Oregon businesses” will sell. It’s true. There is great inequity.

However, setting a mere 9,000 filers free does not make up for marshalling the other 183,000 tax-payers into Oregon’s scheme for preventing access to the Trumpian tax-breaks.

What gets missed is that the Democrat majority used unconstitutional and illegal means to create the initial problem and the Governor signed this into law. Despite claims about protecting small business, Gov. Brown and Oregon’s Democrat majority are masking their true objectives behind generous words.

They have accomplished their goal of raising an additional $1.3 billion in unneeded tax revenue over the next 6 years off the weakened souls of small businesses, local mom and pop shops and “Schedule-C” filers trapped within the state’s labor-camp boundaries.

The sad truth is, Oregon’s fiendishly unfriendly business environment will eventually push Oregonians to cut the wire, jump the fence and escape to more business-friendly states.

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

Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28