Oregon Strategist

Reinventing the Oregon Dream

Veterans: A “Thank You” Solution

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MarinesWe all know at least one: A grandfather, mother, friend, or sibling. These folks have served our nation, committed themselves selflessly for the preservation of American ideals and have sacrificed their health and well-being to bring folks on the home front a sense of security and an enjoyment of peace in their daily lives.

Yet American Military Veterans are also a segment of our population that, aside from the tributes and parades adorning Veteran’s Day, are often forgotten in the daily routine. And yet there is so much we stand to learn from our women and men in uniform that greater attention, love and care may help to surface.

We stand at a threshold of American military return from overseas as we wrap up our dealings in Afghanistan. What we take away from the last ten years of war must be a growing awareness of and response to the tragedies of war and its cost on the bodies, minds and spirits of these folks that battled the threat of extremists on the front lines. We are facing the return of a veteran population that will bear the scars and burden of these years of fighting. How will their struggles on their return to the United States become our struggles?

National Public Radio reported a shocking figure last week: there are twenty-two deaths from suicide amongst the veteran population every single day. In the wake of each of these deaths, is a line of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances left questioning why, after all of the warfare, such a tragedy must befall this person.

With 23 million veterans in our nation, we must think everyday how to successfully bring these people back into civilian life. With such a sizable group making up 8.1 percent of our population, it is no wonder that so many go without care or face incessant bureaucracy and an endless paper chase. How can we possibly balance the budget and improve our care for veterans? Something must be altered.

Returning our soldiers to American soil and having them work and spend their money stateside is a start. Our assets must be restored and retained. Whether through border security or disaster relief, there is no shortage of useful efforts our military could engage in here in the United States. A smaller, more dynamic military could be a corresponding solution. This would boost the quality of care for veterans over time as more resources could be devoted on a per capita basis. Tax and entitlement reforms would also provide savings to the federal government that could allow us to focus more on the promises we have made to those who have served our nation.

Today we thank the veterans of our nation. Let us thank them equally tomorrow. Let us thank them by remembering their service not only by providing them the care they need to deal with the trauma of warfare, but also by being cognizant of the true losses of warfare and the true costs of war’s aftermath. Let us act and vote accordingly.

Youth and the Republican Party: An American Recovery

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Republican Elephant and Democratic DonkeyParty warfare and polarization of ideologies may be significantly to blame for the finger-pointing and squabbling in Washington D.C. Open primaries, term limits, and policies that suspend Congressional pay if shutdowns occur are just some of the answers to questions of how we must reform the internal mechanisms of our government in order to get back on track for being a proud and confident nation.

Yet, these policies may be some time away from now until young leaders are put in power that are willing to limit their own power for long-term objectives. Until that time, we must ask serious questions about how all of us – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – can come together to help shape the new Republican Party and bring back a balance of power to the system to check the unprecedented spending and waste in our federal government.

Every dollar our government spends today is a dollar that young people will have to pay back in their future. This is inherently unfair and unjust. Entrenched leaders in Washington D.C. continue to waste the money of future generations for their own political short-term gain. Our interests, the interests of those in their thirties, twenties and younger – are not being represented.

Young people have an opportunity to take over the Republican Party here in Oregon – be you Democrat, Republican or Independent. We have the opportunity to shape the party for ourselves and take back what is our future to spend – not theirs.

And conservative and progressive values, the real kind that is (as opposed to the kind promoted by the media), may be the kind we younger generations can embrace. We know what it is like to be under the weight of massive educational debt, not to have the employment opportunities we were told would be waiting for us on the other side, and to find ourselves unable to fulfill our American Dreams.

Our current leaders have failed us. We must now take up the torch and lead with real principles. That is, with self-sacrifice, courage, and pride in a future America we can own and love.

Entitlements are wasting our money. Military ventures are wasting our money. Centralized corporate-sponsored federal programs are wasting our money. Congress is wasting our money. This is our future. We want this future to be green, healthy, productive, and local.

To get back in the game we must go to work. We must find work in any sector. If it means working in an area we perceive to be below our educational level, we must work. We must reject anything handed to us. Only then can we hold our heads high. And we must hold our heads high in order to lead.

We will bring jobs back from overseas. We will go to the ports, find out what China is shipping to us, and make those products here. We will make them better and less expensive. We will encourage entrepreneurs. We will educate. We will stockpile. Our future will be one of great influence.

We will put our money into credit unions and keep our organizations nimble, flexible and local – like Privateers. We will execute a trade surplus and pay down our deficit. And we will not be reckless with the future of our next wave of youth.

We will reform Congress. We will take only one term in any given political office and will condemn political entrenchment and the establishment. We will limit our salaries because what we do is a service to our Great Nation, not a pillage of our Great Nation. We will give back, we will pay the way forward, we will unite, we will overcome and we will live mightily on our principles, work and love.

Timothy Crawley, a native son of Oregon, is a candidate for the 2014 United States Senate seat for Oregon.

Our Veteran Homeless: A Caretaker’s Perspective

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Homeless VeteranJason Kersten is a former Army Ranger that served in the Gulf War during Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. I spoke with him on a park bench in Lownsdale Square about his work with the veteran homeless population in Oregon and Portland in particular. 
There are currently 1400 houseless veterans in Oregon. Jason’s life mission is now to help these veterans deal with their drug, alcohol and health issues. He has a passion for this work and a deep connection to the community-at-large.Jason knows the difficult and unstable life of being without a roof over his head. He was one of four Porlanders who inspired me on the last Sunday in September, to sleep under the Hawthorne Bridge to experience, for just a moment, the restless night of one without shelter.

Imagine for a moment what it is like to have to merely choose where to sleep. Will you choose to sleep near other houseless, or by yourself in isolation? Will you sleep facing a wall with your back exposed or facing outwards where other people know you are sleeping because they can see that your eyes are closed? Either position imbeds an extraordinary lack of security. Now imagine, a train, or car, or passerby waking you up every two hours. You have to walk around the block. Go back to sleep. Imagine trying to hold a steady job under these conditions.

Ibrahim Mubarak, one of the primary founders of Right 2 Dream in downtown Portland, at one point told me that if we focused on eliminating homelessness amongst our veterans we would reduce overall homelessness by 30%. This is an astounding number on its own but given that this particular type of homelessness is a product of our society and the future we have created for many of these individuals who served their county with honor and valour, this is a type of homelessness we are obligated to eliminate.
I saw many others sleeping on the street that last Sunday in September. There were immigrants, the mentally sick, young runaways, and drug addicts. These are the most vulnerable in our society. The way we treat them is a reflection of who we are as a society and the kinds of values we promote.
We have the wealth and the capability in our nation to lift eachother up. Wealth stratification is stretching our society apart at an unhealthy and degrading level. The term “paying our way forward” has picked up new momentum as so many of us are realizing that consuming for ourselves is not the type of world we want to create. We see a better world. A world where we are not so reliant upon the energy the government sells to us to consume. A world where we are not so reliant upon the industrial food complex – where we now may find trees next to sidewalks bearing fruit. A world where we decide that modesty is relevant and alive and experience is shared.
Our soldiers have been exposed to the atrocities of this world. Whether one agrees with the military’s purpose or not, our human empathy begs us to stand by them on their return. We must pay the way forward to bring our soldiers home. We must re-integrate them properly into our civilian communities and think hard, as we have with Syria, about the real cost involved in sending them away to begin with.

Government Shutdown: The Poison of a Partisan Perspective

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Capitol HillOur federal government has ground to a halt. Again. Republicans and Democrats were unable to meet a deadline to fund the government Monday night. While a group of “combative” Republicans are largely bearing responsibility for the impasse in Congress due to their hawkish advocacy to defund the Affordable Care Act, the reality is the factions in Congress are more varied and deeply divided than ever.

Both parties are to blame for this stalemate, and the result may very well be an ever-divided Congress where each party will blame the other for their unwillingness to negotiate. On the one hand, Republicans are claiming they want to reign in spending but are unwilling to compromise when it comes to military budgets and spending on our overseas police power – a capacity that is becoming increasingly disfavored by the public. And, indeed, the Department of Defense is, by far, the largest contingent that will be affected by the shutdown. On the other hand, Democrats spearheaded a bill that is not feasible to fund given the current economic crisis because the government is strictly not generating enough revenue to support such a program short of spending our future away.

Our government’s sole focus right now should be on economic improvement. While the Affordable Care Act promotes a noble purpose, the fact of the matter is that our government cannot afford to pay for it. Our federal programs, such as Social Security, are already failing for lack of funding and mismanagement. There is little support for the idea that the Affordable Care Act would face any more promising future.

Economic improvement will come from taking military spending and re-investing those dollars here on the home front where our infrastructure and education are sorely lacking. Economic improvement will stem from creating a positive climate for small business and entrepreneurship by removing barriers to entry and by encouraging smaller, more flexible entities. These entities will, in turn, create the types of jobs we want in our society – the types based on relationships and accountability. And, finally, at the heart of economic improvement, is the idea that we decrease the stratification of wealth in our society. Simplifying the tax code is essential for leveling the playing field for all people. Complexities in the code create the types of loopholes that allow for corporate exploitation and tax shelters for the wealthy.

There are very certain and definite roles for our federal government. The services Washington D.C. provide through the unification of essential interstate laws and international treaties should be primary but focused. We must be realistic in what we can and cannot sustainably afford at that level. And let’s be honest, Cover Oregon is doing and would do a better job at providing health care for our citizens than any federal program. If our federal government is unable to afford Social Security and Medicare, then what good will the Affordable Care Act do for us when we ultimately cannot afford to pay the doctors?

Will it take a nationwide default to provide the political impetus to reform?  That is a possibility. But blaming one party or the other is only fuel for a divisive fire. The stopgap just may be to practice viewing this shutdown from an opposing point of view.

 

A New Feudal America

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Statue of LibertyThe top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago, according to an updated study….The top 1 percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913, when the government instituted an income tax. –As reported in the on-line New York Times, September 11, 2013

I’m a Matt Damon fan, so I’m looking forward to seeing his latest film, Elysium. The movie takes place in a future time when the entire Earth has become a slum so that the very wealthy have taken up residence in an exclusive retreat in space, visible from Earth, but inaccessible and forbidden to the mass of humanity.

The irony of Elysium is that it is not really a film about the future: it is a metaphor for the present economic situation in the United States of America, a situation that should shame us. (And bravo to Matt Damon and the Elysium writers for their political sensibility and boldness!)

The idea of an America of economic democracy—not Socialism, mind you—in which middle class prosperity is virtually guaranteed to anyone willing to labor with earnest ingenuity for the fruits of modest wealth has died.  The reigning economic culture is a throwback to the late 19th century and the era of the robber barons. The rich deserve to get richer and those in the underclass must learn to accept their suffering if they have not been lucky enough to design (and patent) a jackpot computer app or a chance to buy a loaded security with adequate insurance for its failure.

Wealth is accumulating in the pockets of the corporate magnates, money taken out of the pockets of the former middle class. The very rich now do live in a separate society prohibited to the ordinary masses. Traditional means for righting the inequities between the very wealthy and the working class—such as strengthening organized labor—have fallen into disrepute. The 1990’s taught the young they have a right to aspire to great wealth before they turn 30 and if they don’t achieve that, well, they’ll have to accept that they’re just losers.

There is no longer any community sensibility advocating a continued American aspiration for the wider distribution of wealth.  Moreover, with the help of our advanced technology, the corporations have acquired and are employing the means to make its customers—us—their servants.  By reducing personal services and compelling us to accept more efficient automated alternatives to increase the corporate bottom-line, they substitute our labors for services we used to take for granted. (Consider, for example, the nightmarish recorded message option menus that now often prevent access to real human beings when we try to do business or file a complaint with a corporation or, for another example, the growing self-checkout lines in supermarkets.)

America has apparently become a new kind of feudal state: a plutocratic regime run by and for the benefit of the already rich.  What can we do about it?

Harrison Sheppard, San Francisco, CA

Syria: Not Another War

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SyriaAgain we face military intervention in the Middle East, this time from a President who has come to Congress for authorization. 

There is no doubt that action by the United States, absent the formation of a coalition or joint resolution with other nations, would be an act of war against the Syrian government. We face no imminent threat from Assad nor from the chemical weapons he has chosen to unleash against his own people – horrific as these events are.

An act of war, at this time in our nation’s history, is perhaps the last thing we need. Who amongst us is still advocating international intervention of this kind? Are we not able to honestly reflect on our current capabilities as a nation? We have borrowed money to spend it again on our policing powers. Our trade deficits show we are now importing security. So what should our leaders do?

Any proposed military action by the Obama Administration or by Congress should be outright rejected. Our economy, while having shown signs of slight recovery, still drags its feet with 7.4 percent unemployment. The government programs that are still functioning drastically underserve their stated objectives – despite many of their objectives being too broad, too deep, and too overlapping. Our infrastructure is wearing and outdated. John Kerry’s words heard around the world two days ago declared “This is not the time for armchair isolationism. This is not the time to be spectators to a slaughter.” Mr. Kerry: By an act of war against a non-aggressor, you will be slaughtering our Nation’s future.

If strikes against the Assad regime were intended to be limited, as Obama suggests, then striking their chemical weapons capabilities would not be a scenario where “the punishment fits the crime.” On the other hand, a strike that cripples the regime and tips the balance of power in favor of the rebels (as the United States did for Libya) means the United States would be ushering into the power vacuum a proxy regime likely made up of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.

For now, as the G20 Summit wraps up, world leaders are tremendously divided. China and Russia remain opposed to action against the Assad regime, while only France and the United States have committed to using force. Even the Pope has weighed in, urging leaders to put aside prospects for military action.

To make a dire situation enormously worse, Yale law professor Stephen Carter points out the “limiting lanaguage” in the Senate’s Syria Resolution is deceptively broad.

Finally, authorizing a strike to oppose Assad’s use of chemical weapons to massacre his own people is not morally superior to opposing Assad’s use of conventional weapons against his own people. The propensity of chemical weapons to inflict greater indiscriminate harm on civilian populations than their conventional counterparts originally led to their condemnation in the international community. However, in his use of both chemical and conventional weapons, President Assad has proved indiscriminate towards the killing of civilians and rebel fighters.

Surplus, Transparency and International Trade

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TPPAccording to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis the United States is running a trade deficit of $34.2 billion. This is a decrease from the previous annual period; however, it is still enormously unhealthy for an economy attempting to recover from the blow of 2008.

A country’s trade surplus or deficit speaks mightily about where that country stands in its growth and development. Like a college kid with a credit card, we ran up our deficits at the bar, one of those $300 nights, and expected Mother and Father to foot the bill in the end. Only now, we realize Europe has problems of its own. Yes, we have started to offload some of our debt to Asia. This is why Japan maintains an interest in Montana mines and why our Navy controls their harbors from bases in Yokosuka and Okinawa. This is why China, our much younger sibling, is racing to the top to secure its stake in our debt. And this is why we are attempting to join trade associations like the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (“TPP”) that has been the source of much criticism from Congress and the public in Washington D.C.

Understanding our goals for international trade are equally important as understanding our role and status. As Europe’s glory faded into ours, their economies relied upon specialty market goods that now find tremendous appeal in burgeoning regions like eastern and southeastern Asia. We, as a nation, have protected our resources well by relying upon others’ gases, textiles, metals and wood. But as our reliance has grown, so has our deficit, and so has our expectancy that a variety of choices will be laid at the Prince’s feet. Growth comes from acceptance to atonement to demand for greater responsibility.

Part of this acceptance results from raising public awareness about our proposed trade agreements like the TPP. Mega corporations have veiled the negotiations and are inhibiting our acceptance, growth and democracy. Their power over governmental processes is such that they can now bargain away our most important choice: the choice in how we will live and carry on. Yet the reason they are so large and have ultimately consumed our government itself is because we allowed our federal government run what our local government should have been dealing with. We centralized authority over the minute details of our lives.

Trade is, undoubtedly a federal issue that requires broad base, uniform dealings. However, when those dealings are skewed to the perspective of the highest orders, the interests protected tend to be those of the highest orders. Increasing exports by lowering tariffs through trade agreements, reducing imports through restricting the processing of our natural resources overseas, and ultimately working towards a trade surplus is one route to restore our “war” chest, that, next time around, will hopefully be used to advance our internal economic mechanisms and sustain our prosperity.

Such an effort requires the highest order of checks and balances. These checks and balances must span not merely between the three branches of our government, but between those three branches’ relationship to the fourth branch: the lobbies that have hijacked our government and are now controlling negotiations overseas. We must impose checks and balances between the public sector and the private sector in the form of simple, straightforward laws, that reveal where our politicians have been bought and paid for, in order, thus, to bring them down from their supposed role as stewards of our society.

Tax Reform: A Simple Solution

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Capitol-SenateThe current tax code has become a convoluted knot of deductions and credits. In Tennessee this week, President Obama hinted at his interest in seeing that code change. The President’s attention to the issue immediately drew a hailstorm of debate in Washington over tax reform.

The biggest problem with our tax code is that it has been used and abused by politicians for political agendas rather than as a simple method for raising the basic revenue for the function of our state. Along this line, politicians are able to solidify their constituency by carving out exemptions for the business interests that support their candidacies. Additional deductions, credits and rebates have added to the size of our nation’s operating costs for reviewing increasingly complex tax returns.

This is one place where our system is broken. President Obama and Congress are offering only more of the same. Conventional attitudes have proposed that any future solution must address income tax reform separately from corporate tax reform. In order to mediate a solution between Democrats and Republicans, tax reform must be dealt with as a whole. Parsing through the code in a piecemeal approach will render a piecemeal solution – not a holistic solution.

Any tax reform solution must occur at the highest level with a complete overhaul of both income and corporate taxes.

Currently, our society has awarded size of institutions rather than innovative, low-impact operations that encourage accountability. Because of the deduction maze, overweight entities can hire a legal tax team to navigate the tax return process, find loopholes, and increase profit margins. These tasks are disproportionately expensive for smaller businesses. The problem with overweight corporations, their ownership over the federal government, and their propensity to promote wealth inequality and waste may be solved through a proper corporate regressive tax.

A corporate progressive tax would tax revenue, not profit, such that the tax would be more akin to an income tax. Moreover, the tax percentage would increase as a corporation expanded revenue. There are a multitude of reasons why corporations deserve a progressive tax.

Corporations are considered by law to be fictitious persons. However, persons cannot balloon to the size of the moon; corporations can. A progressive tax ensures that as corporations expand, their exponential use of resources, amplification of waste, and propensity to marginalize labor comes with a higher price tag to be paid to society. As shareholders in our nation’s resources, we should all be paid when a corporation is able to capitalize clear-cutting a copse that provides us air, shade, food, and a nice view. It should not be allowed to deduct its way out of this cost.

Finally, a corporate progressive tax would be a treatment for the problem of growing wealth inequality in our nation. A large corporation or bank would not have the luxury of paying a windfall to its board and officers, particularly when such an entity is provided an incentive to remain smaller and more nimble.

Income taxes, however, should be flat. Unlike corporations, human beings have a maximum capacity for productivity and waste.

The answer to tax reform is simplicity. Deductions and credits create complicated arrangements where certain industries are rewarded and certain industries are punished – often for little reason other than politics. Simple solutions with simple revenue projections will make the function of our federal government more clear and concise.

And ultimately, to prevent politicians from usurping the tax code once again for their own political gain, Lawrence Lessig and David Segal’s suggestion to convene a modern-era Constitutional Convention would have to occur. Short of that, we would only see more of the same.

The Morrow Pacific Project: Killing the Columbia

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BargeJobs that promote the destruction of our environment are not jobs for the future. Jobs that fit us into a more rhythmic balance with nature are integral for our future. The Morrow Pacific Project will further entrench the barging industry and create further dependence upon the dams that block our most precious river. The proposal is a proposal that runs counter to the interests of our local communities and the Native Americans.

The Morrow Pacific Project, a proposal to transport coal from Wyoming and Montana to Oregon for shipment to China, Korea and Japan, must be altered. The coal would be shipped via rail to Boardman, Oregon where it would then be loaded onto barges for transport down river to the Port of St. Helens. The project would result in an additional 12 barge tows on the Columbia. Such a proposal would further entrench the barging industry and make them all the more powerful in a bid to keep dams operating on our rivers.

About two hundred dams (http://www.psmfc.org/habitat/salmondam.html) were built along the Columbia between 1930 and the late 1970s. This helped foster the barging industry that used the slowed river to advance goods up and downstream and created an artificial reliance upon this form of shipment. Since then, the industry has trucking and training beat for offering the best prices on shipment of goods and has boasted that its power blocked proposals to lower the river to expose the beauty of Celilo Falls.

Oregonians face an uphill battle to alleviate the strain upon our river systems. Bonneville alone is a behemoth that no one really believes can be broken. However, Congress authorized to build the Bonneville dam in 1930, emphasizing the “taming of the Columbia.” This dam will soon run its lifecycle. In order to replace a dam of this size and magnitude with low-impact technology that leaves the river partially open for fish passage, effort must begin now to build awareness regarding Oregonians and Washingtonians’ options.

For those seeing such an effort as a lost cause, it may be helpful to think about how large corporate interests can also be on the side of freeing the Columbia. Oregon company and outdoor recreation outfitters Columbia Sportswear, among others, would benefit tremendously from a river that teemed with fish and rapids.

Oregon must put in place leaders in Washington willing to promote the proper industries to make this dream a reality. Additional rail lines are needed to support a shift away from barging to carry wheat and other agricultural products across the state to Portland.

The Bonneville dam and many others on the Columbia River including the John Day dam are referred to as “run-of-the-river” dams, meaning that they do not back water up to create a reservoir. If electricity can be generated in such quantity from these operations, how could “run-of-the-river” technology be utilized to construct dams that do not impeded the full width of the river?

Portlanders have the option on their energy statement from Portland General Electric to source their energy from Green Source and Clean Wind resources. See www.greenpoweroregon.com. Choosing these local options is the first step. Putting the right folks in Washington D.C. is the second step.

On Independence

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FlagAs Oregonians, divided by the I-5 corridor, by the Cascades and the Willamette, by the interests of Nike and the interests of a democracy, by Beavers and Ducks, by two fiercely opposed political parties and their ideologies, and the varied idiosyncrasies of our farms, cities, markets, culture and climate, we understand one principle in common: the right and dignity to hold one’s differences in equal legitimacy to another’s. 

The forces of opposition to this principle are stealthy in the corrosion of its foundation in the Constitution. A vote is no longer a vote but competes now with the dollars of special interests packing the hallways outside of our legislative sessions, and colleges of election that spit on a Declaration. It begs the question how must we oppose such a daunting force? We answer by changing the game.

John Locke coined “the pursuit of happiness” to describe each human being’s path to fulfillment and self-determination. But when dependency is forced upon us by an organism larger than ourselves we lose the ability to determine our path – instead we are guided by the shackles of a creature empowered not by a citizenry united but a conquered one. And now our actions must be tempered in accordance with what we owe.

How does our burden break? Are we to believe that the current bifurcation of power in government and the precedence of the two-party platform will yield a solution that will allow the torch of entrepreneurialism and the fire of free-spirited endeavors which have sustained our nation, to carry on? Or are we merely selling out now, foregoing an inspirited future? There is no golden parachute waiting for us on the other side.

The monuments we have built in the name of progress were once named for the achievements of our history and personhood. They now bear the mark of collusion and oligarchy. Our landscape is burned with billboards – a conditioning by the top to us, telling us to vote the party line. And so we register, as Democrat and as Republican progressing our way ever closer to a future obsolete. Where is the voice of a single human being in that?

“The right to hold one’s differences in equal legitimacy to another’s” is an expression not of compromise but of reason of mind. Each point of view is a legitimate whole. We should not be asked to sacrifice a core belief in adoption of a compromised ethic, in a compromised American Dream. That will merely degrade our sense of humanness and that has been happening for too long. No. Liberation begins in the mind.

Politics is the marriage of each of us to our unity. Practiced properly it is the cornerstone of revolution. Abused and it is the pedestal of tyranny. We must resolve ourselves to seek peace instead of pork, dignity instead of derision. And when we do we will know we have buried the forces of opposition for a path clear to revival and suffrage.

Timothy Crawley