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LEGISLATORS DUPED AGAIN

Betty Freauf
March 14, 2003
NewsWithViews.com

I love reading Lynn Stuter's articles. They always trigger some memory in me. While all her articles on education are "right on", the one she recently submitted, "Connecting the Dots" [http://www.newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter24.htm] reminded me of how the "dots are connected" not only locally but globally. While Lynn is from the State of Washington and I am from the corporate State of Oregon, similarities abound in what we've seen happening in our respective legislatures over the last twenty years.

In the 1991 Oregon legislature HB 3565 (OBE) was introduced with Vera Katz (now Portland, Oregon mayor) as principle sponsor along with the School-to-Work legislation (HB 3474). Republican House Speaker Larry Campbell put Katz's legislation on "fast rack" at her behest and those that were in the legislature at that time AND VOTED FOR BOTH BILLS will remember how change agent Ira Magaziner flew to Oregon, no doubt, at the "behest" of Katz (as I'll explain later) and probably at Oregon taxpayer's expense to convince Oregon legislators these bills were necessary.

Magaziner said, "All eyes are on Oregon. You are leading the way to education reform in this country." One Oregon legislator noted in his book O.B.E., Understanding The Truth About Education Reform, "This was very flattering" and this legislator was only one of about four "nays" on HB 3565 but audio tapes of House floor discussion on the subject revealed him to be silent. He never stood up to warn his colleagues and he voted "aye" on HB 3474 which convinced me he truly did not have the full picture in his mind and fear of not being re-elected may have caused him to also remain silent.

While this legislator's intentions may have been good, one thing about the legislative process, only a person who will stand tall in the face of adversity and let his/her colleagues know the bridge is out ahead deserves to be in the legislature.

Those who voted "aye" should REPENT and tell the feds to take a hike and return to local control and basics.

Please remember when Democrat Neil Goldschmidt was governor of the corporate State of Oregon, the feds wanted to send our Oregon National Guard to some other country for some special training, and threatened to withhold that blackmail "revenue sharing", but Goldschmidt still said "NO". I later wrote my congressman to ask if we lost any funding. He said, "NO." The feds are bullies and it is up to OUR ELECTED OREGON LEGISLATORS AND GOVERNOR to likewise "JUST SAY NO!" to its demands and mandates.

Although some unconstitutional political tampering has gone on over the years, let us assume our constitution STILL MAKES LEGISLATORS BOSS. LET US ASSUME WE STILL HAVE TENTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS. LEGISLATORS MUST GET SOME BACKBONE or we are doomed as a state and as a nation. Our Founding Fathers never intended for us to have a centralized government dictating mandates to us from Washington, D.C. using a plethora of unconstitutional alpha agencies. In fact, the Founders gave that bunch on the Potomac very limited powers, one being a strong national defense to keep Americans safe.

But getting back to the education reform bills, elected officials want to be re-elected and no one dared challenge verbally a man like the House Speaker, who raised lots of money for GOP candidates and who decided who got the bucks. No one EVER stopped to think about the long-range consequences of educational reform, did they? Again, they disregarded their constitutional oaths and put their own self-interests first.

But Oregon's educational reform package ran head on into the property tax relief Measure 5's fists and now they find with an economic downturn and falling state revenues, legislators have a CRISIS on their hands. If they think it's going to get better in the next biennium, they are dreamers!

It took them several months into this current session which began in mid January 2003 to find money to rebalance the 2001-2003 budget which ends June 30th. They ended up borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, tapping some sacred cow reserves and now they have to tackle the method they plan to devise to pay Peter back in the next biennium. They are simply re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic again, as the saying goes!

Ira Magaziner, who came to Oregon in 1991 to promote educational reform, was also the advisor overseeing development of "President" Hillary's failed health care package shortly after Bill assigned her the task after his election. However, since that failed attempt, the change agents in all the states have been introducing and getting passed by "Bits and PCs" similar legislation which has, along with the education reform legislation from the early 1990s, nearly all states looking at "bankruptcy" today. In Oregon it was Democrat Governor Kitzhaber's Oregon Health Care Plan.

In the book Restoring The American Dream (C) 1979 (P. 268) it says the feeling of doom is stronger now. There is widespread feeling that our economic system and our civilization are nearing their end.

While both state and local governments have had a "tax and spend" problem for decades, so long as the economy was good, the states were able to balance their budgets as is constitutionally required, and they'd find ways to wiggle out of the dilemma. The feds simply kept printing more money to help them out causing more and more inflation. [http://www.newswithviews.com/Betty/Freauf10.htm]

"It's time to turn these institutions inside out and upside down," said Vera Katz in a Portland mayoral debate against Blumenhauer on a 3/18/1992 T.V. program. And she's certainly been successful. Now she and and the Multnomah County Commissioners are planning to tax businesses to help pay for Portland schools which are being closed right and left resulting in more "centralized schools" and less local control again. Businesses will only pass the tax onto customers which will hurt the poor more than anyone else. Her "hidden taxing" policies will also result in businesses moving out of Portland further exacerbating Oregon's financial crisis although I'm not sure where they might move inasmuch as nearly all states are in financial trouble.

It should be noted that Vera Katz was a trustee on the National Center on Education and the Economy. Among the architects of the Carnegie/Rockefeller-based program in 1986 was none other than Oregon House Speaker and future Portland Mayor, Vera Katz, Ira Magaziner, future First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and David Rockefeller, a controlling heir of his family' fortune.

Those who don't know history are bound to repeat the errors of the past and this my dear well-intentioned, but misinformed, legislators in Oregon is what the socialist change agents are counting on and that is why we have a "compartmentalized committee" system in our legislatures and let me repeat: "...and, like those assembling an atom bomb, very few of them understand exactly what they're building and won't until we put all the parts together," said Florida's Associate Commissioner of Education, Cecil Golden, in regard to these systems and those implementing them. (Source: The Ledger, Tallahassee, Florida, July 27, 1972.)

So long as the legislators continue listening to the misleading "experts", they will continue to be duped again and again ultimately resulting in massive chaos creating ill-will among the different groups all standing in line with their hands out for the few crumbs which will be tossed their way after the the public employees get their salaries for administrative costs.

When an extremity on our bodies has gangrene, it's better to cut if off to save the rest of the body. And that, our dear legislators across this great land of ours, is the job you must do.

© 2003 - Betty Freauf - All Rights Reserved 


Betty is a former Oregon Republican Party activist having served as state party secretary, county chairman, 5th congressional vice chairman and then elected chairman, a precinct worker for many years and twice ran unsuccessfully for the Oregon State Legislature. The Republican tradition is to stay neutral in Primary races but in Betty's case. They supported her opponent. E-Mail: bettyfreauf@webtv.com


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