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Jerry Lee Wilson, Write-in Candidate for Oregon Governor
Occupation: Founder/CEO, Soloflex, Inc.
Occupational background: Airmail Pilot; Airline Transport Pilot; Organic CSA Farmer.
Education: Attended New Mexico Military Institute, South Texas College, Eastern New Mexico University; Flight Safety International.
Candidate Statement
Oregon’s Constitution grants its Governor Executive Power. By Executive Order I will:
End government-for-sale. Money is the root cause of every ailment in our body politic. No contributions or gifts will be allowed to those seeking or holding public office. Candidates for office can publish their resumes and ideas in an expanded voter’s guide and participate in televised and other public debates. This is a truly revolutionary thing I will do if you elect me. Both major party candidates in this election have accepted contributions from unions and corporations, a clear violation of the law (Ballot Measure 47, passed by Oregon voters in 2006).
Establish a State Bank. This bank would make 2% loans to municipalities, private companies and individuals to repair and expand Oregon’s transportation and renewable energy infrastructure, to make our factories, offices, homes and schools more energy efficient and to rebuild our manufacturing base. We need this bank to create long-term, living-wage jobs. And we need it now!
End the drug war. It hasn’t worked, we can’t afford it and we can use that money to help create an economically viable future for the next generation.
While I have never run for elective office, I have been a Chief Petitioner on two statewide Initiatives, one to close the Trojan nuclear plant, another to decriminalize hemp. I served as a member (dissenting) on the 2004 National Democratic Party Platform Drafting Committee. I have been a long-time anti-war activist, Executive-in-Residence at the University of Oregon MBA Graduate School and twice a keynote speaker at Willamette University’s Entrepreneur Conference. I have created hundreds of jobs and brought to Oregon about $1 billion in sales.
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“Without Jerry Wilson in this race, important issues like campaign financing, the war on drugs, and state-supported, broad-scale economic development would be quietly swept under the rug by the two major candidates. Why vote for the lesser of two evils when one has the opportunity to vote for the better candidate with better ideas and the courage to state them.”
—John Platt
See more such comments and read the latest news: One Alternative to Kitzhaber and Dudley, by Hank Stern, Willamette Week, August 16, 2010
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Three good reasons why we MUST get money out of politics.
- Elected officials stay so busy keeping their jobs they have little or no time left to actually do their jobs.
- Every contribution implies a contract to do what the contributor wants. What contributors want is seldom (if ever) in the public interest.
- Almost all of the money given to politicians gets spent on advertising. This distorts the media reporting.
If elected I will issue an Executive Order to ban contributions of any kind to office holders or those seeking office. This will cost the media millions in ad revenue and is why my campaign has been mostly ignored by the media in this election.
I do not believe advertising is a fair or proper way to inform the voters about candidates or issues. An expanded voter’s guide could do this job much better. Candidates for office can simply publish their resumes and ideas without cost. And you wouldn’t have to watch or listen to those phony ads anymore! Good idea, eh?
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A State Bank of Oregon
Using Fractional Reserve Lending, an Oregon State Bank (OSB) would make loans to Oregonians at much lower interest rates than privately owned banks. For $100 in deposits, the OSB can create $900 in new money by making loans. The Oregon State Bank would offer 6 percent credit cards and 6 percent Certificates of Deposit. The OSB can pay 6 percent for CDs to make mortgage and other loans at 2 percent. For $6 per year in interest paid to depositors the OSB can earn $18 by lending $900 at 2 percent!
The state would earn $15,000 per $100,000 of mortgage at a cost of about $1,700, while the homeowner would save $88,000 in interest – and pay for their home 15 years sooner! “This bank will save people about seven years of their income over the course of 30 years, just on interest costs.
The state could earn billions yearly on these loans, while saving hefty sums for consumers. It could also refinance its own debts and those of its municipal governments at very low interest rates. Interest composes 30 percent to 50 percent of everything we buy. Slashing interest costs can make projects such as low-cost housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure construction not only sustainable, but profitable for the state while at the same time creating much-needed jobs.
I want money completely out of Oregon’s elections and law making. I don’t accept contributions, so the only way I can be elected to do things like this is if you help spread the word to vote for me. That’s not so difficult – just forward my blog to your family and friends. Maybe print off a yard sign too…
Watch Ellen Hogsdon Brown’s State Owned Banks: Fixing the Economy
And How to Abolish the Federal Reserve, a clip from the video “The Money Masters”
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Voting your conscience
It’s hard to know which candidate for governor best reflects your ideas and ideals. Here’s a simple guide to find the candidate that does: 2010 Oregon Governor Selector
Here’s a Party Position Chart
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What we need is a Soloflex for the mind
By Steve Duin, The Oregonian, March 17, 1992
Jerry Wilson admits he never thought it through. When he sent his full-page essay, “America Inc.,” off to The New York Times, he had a $42,000 check in his hand, but nothing up his sleeve. He wasn’t thinking follow-up. “I just lit the fuse and ran like hell.”
The firecrackers have been going off in Wilson’s mailbox at Soloflex ever since.
“Your message . . . was the finest thing written since the Gettysburg Address,” Wallace Morrison of Woodburn wrote in a quivering scrawl that suggested he may have heard Abe deliver the speech.
Wilson’s message — which ran in the Times on March 4 and in every Oregon daily the following Sunday — was that a massive public works push could rescue the United States’ economy.
He argued that every citizen is a shareholder in this country and, as a shareholder, can demand that the company stop burying 40 percent of its industrial output in security (the defense budget) and reinvest it in such things as interstate water systems and new sources of energy.
“You have once again proven,” wrote Gordon Solie, a professor emeritus at Portland State, “that it is not the real intelligentsia that is running for public office these days.”
Some responses came in pencil, some by postcard, some by fax. Among the 250 letters that arrived that first week were notes from John McConnell, the founder of EarthDay, Gene LaRoque, the director of the Center for Defense Information, and Harry Lonsdale.
A Brooklyn woman, Annemarie Degla, said she was moved to tears. Barry Commoner was moved to send a copy of his book, “Making Peace with the Planet.” Many of the others arrived at the end of their moving letters with one of two questions:
“Where do we go from here?” Or, “Have you ever thought of running for office?”
Read the full text: America Inc.
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Soloflex Founder/CEO, Jerry Wilson, Announces Bid for Oregon Governor
Jerry Wilson is taking his politics more seriously. A longtime activist, Wilson served on the National Democratic Party Platform Drafting Committee in 2004, and has been a been a Chief Petitioner on two statewide Initiatives, one to force the closure of the Trojan nuclear power plant in 1992 and one to decriminalize marijuana in 1986. Both were ahead of their time but PGE closed the Trojan plant six days after the election citing all the reasons in Wilson’s initiative. Today, only 20% of the voters still believe the drug war should continue. (more…)
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Jerry’s Platform
Here’s what I will do:
- Establish an Oregon Infrastructure Bank: Before we can rebuild our infrastructure and re-tool Oregon for serious manufacturing we need a credit resource with capital sufficient for the job. Conventional financing means everything we build will cost more than if we provide our own credit and make it available without usury (excessive interest). We don’t have to play at someone else’s money-changing table. We can set up our own table. It’s easy to charter a state bank. It will be a first order of business to insure full employment, loans being available exclusively for capital projects in Oregon. This bank would be modeled much like the Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only state owned bank.
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So Vital!
Everyone knows the definition of an honest politician – one who stays bought.
I’m running for governor primarily to make a big deal about an issue no democratic or republican party candidate would dare mention – getting money COMPLETELY out of our politics.
No other issue is so vital to the health and quality of government.
What is needed in government is a commitment to work for the public good above special interests. That’s not what we have. EVERY illness in our body politic stems from this one root-cause. I intend to stop it in its tracks by Executive Order. No more bribes, no more gifts, no more favoritism for those seeking or holding office.
Candidates for public office can publish their resumes and beliefs in an expanded voter’s guide. Nothing else is needed. The best IDEAS for improving society should determine our votes, not the advertising agencies that sell us candidates like they sell us soap.
We don’t allow those who judge our laws to be conflicted by money. The same should hold true for those who make and enforce our laws.
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I’m embarrassed…
…that many of us are on the streets reduced to penury, in this, the richest country in the history of the world. I’m embarrassed that each child isn’t provided an income so they might share in the riches of our inheritance.
I’m embarrassed that our most difficult, tedious and valuable kind of labor, motherhood, goes completely unremunerated. Being a factory owner, I view things from that perspective. The real product of Factory America is the next generation. That’s the bottom line and that’s where we should all focus our attention.
I’m embarrassed that we spend more on caging people than we spend on higher education. I’m embarrassed that we have a government for sale. I’m embarrassed that we torment our children and teachers with a Prussian Military education system that teaches them to obey and believe instead of learning to question. I’m embarrassed that we’ve allowed ourselves to become subservient to a nanny state as a consequence of this education system.
I’m embarrassed that our country has been so intimidated by demagogue politicians that we devote half our industrial output to protect it, from what I can’t discern. I’m embarrassed that we fund this spending by printing paper money instead of raising taxes, shifting the debt to our kids and hyper-inflating our currency. That shows a serious lack of character.
We owe it to our children and grandchildren to do something about these embarrassments. Ralph Waldo Emerson says the state is a trick. Clearly it’s time for a new trick. Nothing should be off the table to get this factory humming again, justice demands it.
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What should kids learn in school?
It will come as no surprise to those who’ve read my previous blogs on our education system that I think it stinks, a Prussian military invention that has produced a fearful nation of non-readers and non-thinkers. Pouring more money into more of the same will only make things worse. We need to totally rethink what an education should be, and whether government should have any role at all in providing it. We need diversity in education, not all be stamped out like sub-standard parts on a Chinese assembly line.
Our schools do not teach us how to grow, preserve and safely handle food, the most important thing anyone can learn. Our schools do not teach us how to eat properly, what to eat and what to avoid. It is ruining our health. The information is out there but it isn’t being passed along.
Our schools do not teach anything about the law, an amazing fact considering we’re a country founded on law.
Our kids are not taught how to diagnose illness. Africans were taught that with a yes/no chart and could diagnose as well as 99% of American physicians after three months of practice.
Our schools do not teach us how to build or fix things electrical or mechanical, so remain ignorant of such things in an electro-mechanical world.
Our schools do not teach the practical aspect of ethics. No person can rise above the level of his own character.
What the teacher’s union IS allowed to teach is very strictly dictated by competition, so nothing one can earn a living with is allowed to be taught. Of course, the real point of our education system is to act as babysitters, while parents, both of them, are working at mostly boring and irrelevant jobs, working twice the hours necessary just to feed an overblown military/welfare/police/prison state that doesn’t even resemble what our founding fathers imagined.
It isn’t the state’s responsibility to educate your children; it’s a parent’s responsibility. The whole point of an education is to teach people the art of providing for themselves. Does that sound even remotely like what public education does? No wonder the kids and teachers hate it.
All the other candidates in this governor race say education is their top priority but all just want to spend more doing the same thing, digging us deeper into this trench. Delegating someone else the responsibility for educating your children is like having another guy take your wife on her honeymoon. Some things you must just do for yourself.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
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