Economics of Oregon, District 4

In the past three election contests vs. Peter DeFazio, I have won all of the rural counties of District 4, Oregon every time. These Oregon counties are suffering the bad economic effects of poor congressional representation.

DeFazio has won in the cities of Eugene and Corvallis. These cities are thriving because they are homes to two great universities, U of O and OSU. These universities bring very large amounts of wealth into these communities. I hope they continue to thrive.

Unfortunately, Mr. DeFazio and his big spending friends have bought their way back into office every two years with our tax money, with borrowed money, and with printed money – to the extent that our national economy hangs by a thread from collapse. Eugene and Corvallis may soon join the rest of District 4 in an economic depression of historic proportions as a result of economic irresponsibility in Congress.

The politicians who have caused this calamity are not going to fix it. We need new, fiscally responsible representation in Washington as soon as possible.

Lying Pete Seeks 17th Term in Office

Pete DeFazio’s career in Washington has been one long lie, financed by the people of Oregon. He’ll be back now, during the next six months, figuring that once again he can fool 51% of the voters all of the time.

Art Robinson has received the Republican nomination to run against him for the 4th time.

Let’s look at Pete’s record.

  1. In 30 years in office, Pete has originated very little significant legislation. He has always been quick to sell his vote for personal gain, such as his last minute switcheroo to cast a deciding vote for Obamacare, but most of his few personal legislative initiatives have died in committee, when they managed to get that far.

Pete is famous for dropping a perfunctory bill in the hopper to please a special interest and then not following through. And, almost everyone in Oregon is familiar with his biennial election-time forest plan paperwork that appears on the front pages of the newspapers that dance to his tune at election time and then vanishes until resurrected for the next election.

  1. Pete has disparaged Art Robinson’s education record all over Oregon, but look at the facts. A PhD in chemistry educated at Caltech and UCSD, Art has been a successful teacher all of his life – of K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, and his own six children all hold advanced degrees in science and engineering. Five of them hold doctoral degrees. Art and his children and students are also credited with significant discoveries in biochemistry and medicine.

Pete has never taught a student, nor has he ever used his undergraduate degree in gerontology in any publically productive way. Pete’s only successful work in gerontology has been the planning of his own lavish retirement by shipping his personal wealth to an off-shore tax haven in New Zealand.

Pete has given contributions from his salary to modest student scholarships – which are helpful to some students. But his motives in doing so are questionable because he has simultaneously spent millions of dollars in special interest campaign cash advertising these scholarships to voters in order to get their votes.

When faced with a primary opponent who had funded more dollars in scholarships than Pete, Pete claimed that his opponent was lying about this and endorsed a complaint to the Secretary of State filed during the voting. The complaint was thrown out by the Democrat Secretary of State (now Oregon Governor) after the primary election, where it got votes for DeFazio. This was just another DeFazio lie.

To cover his own failures in legislating for better education, Pete drags out partial quotes of Robinson – Robinson responses to wholesale educational neglect of students by union “educators,” such as those in Washington D.C. – who have destroyed the educations of an entire generation of black young people in schools that do not even teach most of the students to read. Robinson’s response – close these terrible schools, open some good ones, and give every kid a voucher so that he can attend any school in the U.S.

Yet, Pete DeFazio voted with the D.C. unions and against numerous efforts by other congressmen, including vouchers, to stop this educational atrocity. Pete’s view is that the schools are there for his union friends. The students are incidental.

There are 55 million American children in our public schools, some of which are failing miserably. Art Robinson is unwilling to sacrifice those students to gradual improvements.

Pete always votes with the public employ unions – when the unions are right and when the unions are wrong. His only concern is union support for his endless seeking of public office.

  1. Pete claims to be a champion of Social Security, while he runs lying ads claiming Robinson will end social security.

Yet, it is Robinson who has always called for raising Social Security premiums to bring them in line with inflation and revamping the whole program so that it sets aside money to have the cash to pay seniors in the future – and has an optional feature for those who still don’t trust Pete and his friends to take care of them in old age.

Pete knows Social Security is broke because he has spent 30 years spending Social Security trust funds on other programs to enhance his election chances. He has overseen the trading of Social Security money for Treasury IOUs, wherein our retirement money is loaned to the U.S. Congress – probably the least trustworthy custodian of money on our planet.

We need to get the hands of the Pete DeFazio’s out of our retirement funds before we find their cookie jar completely empty.

  1. Pete claims to be “independent as Oregon.” The fact is that Pete’s vote and the tax resources he controls were bought and paid for by corporatists and special interests long ago. His campaign cash reports are largely a long list of the special interests that are paying him back for sharing public funds and breaking public trust in order to pick his donors as “winners,” as the saying goes in Washington. The “losers” are those not unprincipled enough to buy the favors of Pete and his fellow congressional miscreants.

In a debate against Robinson in 2014, Pete bragged that he has brought “earmark” funds to a few special interests in Oregon, while Robinson pledges not to take earmark money. That earmark money does get Pete lots of re-election cash and support from the few who received the tax-funded cash.

The irony is that, in that audience, there were few if any earmark recipients. Yet, everyone in the audience was taxed to pay for Pete’s self-serving giveaways. Even audience members who do not pay taxes directly were charged for Pete’s largess because they pay taxes every time they shop – the taxes of those who provide them with goods and services.

  1. We are now going to hear for the 16th time that Pete is a friend of veterans. Why then is Pete consistently losing in Douglas County? He is losing because more and more vets are tiring of Pete’s photo op stopovers in their county, while VA fulfillment of their medical needs continues to be inadequate.

Yet, if Pete cared, the VA medical problem is easy to fix. There are lots of excellent medical professionals at the VA and throughout our nation’s medical system. The veterans have been promised the best American medical care, so we should give it to them. Every vet should be carrying a government voucher card good for all the medical care he needs in any medical institution in the United States. If he wants to go to the Mayo Clinic, let him go there and pay with his voucher card. Let all of the medical institutions, including the VA hospitals, compete for veteran business.

Would Pete be interested in this? No, because it solves the problem. Career politicians like DeFazio live on problems; advance their personal interests with problems; and gain fame and fortune from problems. The last thing they want is for problems to be solved and go away.

That’s why Pete and his friends never solved the timber problem in District 4. Instead of using their offices to assure trees for the mills, they substituted welfare payments to the counties. Then at election time they could remind voters that the welfare might not come unless they were re-elected. Now that the federal sugar daddy is running out of money, voters are paying the price. Pete never wanted to solve the timber problem. He just wanted to turn it to his advantage, which he did – to the disadvantage of rural workers and voters.

  1. It is easy to beat Pete DeFazio in rural Oregon District 4. Art Robinson won Douglas, Josephine, Curry, Linn, and Coos Counties in the 2016 congressional election. These are five of the seven counties in District 4. District 4 is the same size as Switzerland and has far more natural resources, but, through poor political representation, has only about half the per capita income of that country. The people in rural Oregon know what Pete’s poor representation has done to them.

In Lane and Benton Counties, however, where there are more voters, Pete has been winning every time. The universities in these two counties bring huge amounts of money to these communities, so their economies are thriving. The irony is that these two counties are now far more at economic risk than are the rural counties. The profligate ways of Pete and his colleagues in Washington have bankrupted the U. S. government, and the effects of this are going to be felt far more severely in our nation’s cities than in in rural areas, which are more self-sufficient.

Voters in rural District 4 already know that their real incomes have dropped substantially during the 30 years Pete has been in office. Voters in Lane and Benton should realize that, with Pete and friends in charge, they are going down just like their southern neighbors.

Voters in Lane and Benton need to wake up and throw their political baggage out, while there is still time to save their economies. Pete is not going to help. He will retire before long and move to his political-preper digs in New Zealand, leaving voters in Lane and Benton to pay the bills in Washington.

  1. It is late. In Pete’s case 30 years late, but let’s finally fix the Oregon District 4 political problem in this 2016 election. Art Robinson does not walk on water, but he does know how to swim – and does so honestly and effectively. Art is a classic citizen volunteer who, with a very successful career in education, science, and business, is offering to go to Washington and help solve the serious problems that the Pete DeFazio’s have created.

This is the best legacy that Art and the many other principled people now running for public office can leave behind them for their children and grandchildren and yours. The serious problems of District 4, Oregon, and our nation can be solved, but they cannot be solved by the same worn-out unprincipled career politicians who caused them.