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.
- I will pardon all Oregonians ever convicted of a “victimless” crime and strike the laws forbidding the manufacture and sale of hemp, our state’s most valuable agricultural product. It’s a practical business decision. If you knew prohibition was to soon end wouldn’t you run out and get yourself a Budweiser distributorship? Hemp is the most versatile carbohydrate, a renewable resource to make clothing, food, paper, lubricants and thousands of other products. Rising income taxes, the source of 88% of our state’s revenue would fill our coffers. What about the Feds? Well, they can kiss our bootlegging ass. The right to plant is primordial, pre-constitutional and inviolate.
- Allow Juries to judge the law: One would think this wouldn’t be necessary as it’s already in our constitution but the lawyer’s union usurped the citizens as the rightful ruler of society in 1905 by fooling us (with their legal mumbo-jumbo) into believing that THEY are the rulers of society! They are now but a single executive order can fix that!
- Campaign Finance Reform: One gets the crime out of government the same way one gets the crime out of prohibition; by taking the money out of it. We cannot have paid shills of special interest telling us how to live. How ridiculous!
- Legal Reform: It doesn’t take three lawyers to resolve one dispute. Resolving civil disputes without prejudice is a first duty of government. Since ignorance of the law is no excuse and legal knowledge is available only to lawyers it’s a necessary function of any government to provide that service from tax revenue, like highways. This reform would offer all members of the bar who chose to participate a guaranteed and substantial income to serve the public, a single-payer legal system. The contempt of the public towards the bar today is intolerable. Everyone should respect and trust the “priests” in our church of state. This would insure it. It would also put an end to frivolous lawsuits. The clergy must serve the public interest first, not the commercial marketplace.
Healthcare Reform: Access to medical and dental care for all is a moral issue. A Single-Payer system is the most cost-effective way to deliver it. You’ll never be sold anything you don’t actually need and what you do need you will be paid for from state income taxes. If you want cosmetic surgery or other elective procedures, you pay for it. Pharmaceuticals will be procured at world market prices, a few cents on the dollar of what we’re paying now. What about the Federal law saying that is a crime? What are they going to do, put us ALL in jail? I think not.
Article on North Dakota State Bank: http://www.truthout.org/01031003
http://www.truthout.org/funding-public-health-care-with-a-publicly-owned-bank-how-canada-did-it56313
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Thanks for running. It’s good to get a perspective different from the Dems & Reps. I’m with you on most of this stuff, but would like a lot more detail about the criminal and legal reforms you mention. That’s a thorny thicket you are wading into.
A thorny thicket indeed! Chapter 30 of my book, Back to School (you can click on the link to see it), gives some overview to the practical aspect of legal reform in civil disputes, namely that one lawyer can resolve a dispute quickly, accurately and inexpensively – it doesn’t require three. Everyone deserves legal representation in a country founded on the law. Single-payer legal, that is “free” access to the courts for everyone, would reduce our overhead burden significantly. Lawsuits could not be used to drive competition out of business (a common practice) and frivolous suits would end. Business could focus on business. Medical malpractice insurance would drop to a fraction of what it is now to make healthcare less costly. And finally, most importantly, it would let attorneys regain the respect of the community. None appreciate lawyer jokes. I’ll leave it up to the Bar to work out the nuts and bolts of this reform and will bargain with them in good faith to set their fees. The Oregon Governor does have the power to dictate this reform by Executive Order. I will do it. The criminal law changes I would make are: 1. Strike laws against consensual crimes. 2. Empower juries to judge the law as well as the facts. 3. Eliminate mandatory sentencing to empower the judge to serve justice as he/she sees fit.
Right on Jerry!
You are brilliant. You do not have to win, you do not need to win. You run only because you love and you care. You run only because you believe in your ideas and your ideals. You believe it can be done.
Change begins with just one Jerry. You have the potential to deliver great messages of hope! You will deliver messages of change! You virtually offer life to many, with an end to suffering. You offer compassion with the suggestion of change while you endorse peace!
You want big government to go to a cavern someplace in a distant land and encourage your state to embrace love and brotherhood.
Not many campaigns like that around. Not many politicians like that either. You could foil the works for too many who are vested in the status quo. Please be careful.
Jerry –
What is your take on the Dept of Human Services – taking children away not only from their parents – but from their entire biological family – to be placed with paid care givers (foster “parents”) who are funded with our tax dollars – via federal funding.
DHS has to meet benchmarks to keep the funding dollars flowing – and after decades of ASFA funds … its a mad grab to get more children each successive year – Its quite an economic stimulus package – the paid providers cash their checks and spend money locally …
I’ve not encountered one elected official willing to look at this corrupt dysfunctional system – to make changes.
Grandparents have no law supporting their access to their grandchildren – as the law reads – DHS should first consider grandparents – but there is no teeth in this — if the caseworker doesn’t “like” you – she can “look at you” and dismiss you – and that is the end of that. All decisions are made in “court” – with no jury – all based upon hearsay and biased opinion of workers and CASA volunteers.
What is your stand – re DHS tearing apart families and ruining the lives of so many?
The Department of Human Services should be eliminated. The state itself creates orphans by locking up parents in its quest to keep the prison population increasing, then deals with the children with the same compassion it shows for the parents in prison. Orphans should always go to grandparents. If no grandparents exist the children should be provided safety and guidance by living with single retired women, grandmothers, their incomes provided by the State Bank. No bureaucrats need be involved with this.
I keep reading sites that talk about becoming financially free or making an extra income, and seeing your information is encouraging, because it is not so easy as they say it is..
I think those sites are trying to sell you something. The only way to become financially free is to make something useful and get it sold.
Keep working at this, great job! This was what I needed to know. We are all experts on something!
Happy New Years!! To my favorite blog.
Is your facts correct? I am not trying to be a jerk, however I don’t perceive how this makes over all sense! Thanks!
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This is indeed a helpful piece.
Good thread. Cheers!!
Jobs require production and trade. I make something and trade it for your something. Green pieces of paper only facilitate the trade, it doesn’t create trade. Handing out that $50k in stimulus money means I just traded away the product of my labor for something I didn’t want (or if it turns into another welfare program, for nothing at all). This is a very bad thing. Plus, the government could just withhold 15% of that $50,000, tell the recipients it’s tax free, can save money by firing IRS agents, and be right in the same place. Handing out $50,000 checks to generate $7,500 in taxes is the peak if idiocy.
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Well thank you Leora. How nice of you to say so.
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