Thank you everyone who voted for us and supported us.  Special thanks to my wife Lora, who defended me against all comers and prevailed.  Thank you to my children, Mike, who carried Liberty’s banner at Saturday Market and on Independence Day in Corbett; Rob, who carried Liberty’s banner at Pride, Freedom Fest, and Independence Day; Asia and Bryson, who carried Liberty’s banner at Salem Tea Party, Benson Reloaded, and Independence Day; Lexa, who carried Liberty’s banner at St. John’s Parade, Pride, Freedom Fest, Independence Day, and Teddy Bear; Rachel, who carried Liberty’s banner at Independence Day and Teddy Bear.  Thank you Anna and Bill for bringing class.  Thank you Chris for helping when I needed it most.  Thank you Richard for your practical insights.  And thank you Mindy for keeping us both out of jail . . . so far.

Congratulations to all the winners!  To all those prevailed not, we extend our appreciation and admiration, with special affection for our friend in liberty Mr. Marc Delphine.

We look forward to the next time.

I was coming home through the San Jose Airport last week after some business meetings in Santa Clara and had the misfortune of experiencing a full body scan for the first time.  I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.  I was ordered to stand with my legs apart and my arms raised over my head like some kind of criminal.  I turned and asked the security officer if they were looking at me naked.  He simply replied, “not me”.  I was outraged and humiliated and told the officer so.  He said if I have any issues with it, I should take it up with my congressman.  Good idea.  Earl, are you listening?  I won’t voluntarily subject myself to that again, and plan to do everything I can to avoid it.   How can the employers of people like me expect us to kill ourselves travelling the world, paying high taxes, and getting humiliated and treated like cheap entertainment in a peep show? 

While the full body scan is an outrageous violation of personal privacy, it only magnifies the theft of individual liberty that already takes place in airport security.    This has got to stop.  We are so afraid of violating someone’s  individual’s rights that we violate EVERYONE’s individual rights instead.  What have I done to warrant a full body naked viewing by government officials?  What have I done to be treated like a common criminal and be subjected to such humiliation?  Where has our respect for privacy and decency and individual liberty gone?   And its only going to get worse, especially if we keep putting folks like Mr. Blumenauer in office.  He believes that the government should control all aspects of our lives, and that any government action is warranted if its for the health and safety of America.  Which, of course, brings us to the greatest threat to our personal privacy that we face today:  the complete government takeover of health care.   Do you want the government owning your medical records?  Do you want the government making life and death decisions for you?  Do you really want the government in charge of your health care and your personal privacy?  Count me out.

We asked Mr. Blumenauer about his and Mr. Obama’s health care bill, in person, when he was out at Bumpers a little while back.  He told us that we wouldn’t even know what is in the bill for another four years, but we can count on rising costs, loss of personal privacy, and loss of individual liberty through government mandates.  Most importantly, we know that it will fail to deliver cheap, quality health care, that meets the growing demand and lowers the total cost.  As I told the Willamette Week, we have to commoditize health care or the long term costs are going to kill us, but the only way to do that is through interstate competition and more consumer choice and control.  More competition always delivers better services at lower costs.  Consumers will demand it, and they will get it.  Look around you.  Let’s start fixing the problem now and not just wait for it to get worse.

An exerpt from the Oregonian Voter’s Guide:  What can we do to get this country working again?

Enterprise drives wealth and job creation. We need a national competition strategy that makes America the boldest enterprise zone in the world, lowers the cost of doing business today, and seeks to attract and keep businesses (and manufacturing) large and small. Let’s compete on the world stage and win real business and real jobs. Let’s lower business taxes, encourage research and development with tax credits, drive down health care costs through interstate competition and consumer choice, pass immigration reform that attracts more talent, and stop the fiscal insanity in Washington. Rather than look to enterprise, Mr. Blumenauer promises more wealth transfers and unsustainable government make-work. Earth to Mr. Blumenauer. These are the same failed and unsustainable policies that are crippling us today. At best you promise to build a little more train track for your friends but you offer us nothing to stop the national train wreck you are engineering.

Homo sapiens are innovators and builders by nature, programmed by our creator to use our talents and abilities to survive and advance.  We are innovators and undertakers of great challenges, rivalling the ants and bees and other industrious species on this planet.  Without mandate, we build hospitals and schools and undertake other praiseworthy work.  In crisis, we rally together and rush to the side of the afflicted.   Our enterprises look to the stars and we innovate over generations to accomplish great things from small beginnings.  Innovations in computing have made technology thousands of times more powerful and a hundred thousand times less expensive than just a few short decades ago.   Futurists like Ray Kurzweil have written extensively about the exponential growth rate of technological innovation (from computing, to medicine and everything in between) and how immortality beckons just around the corner.  All these advancements, and all of this innovation, is driven by human will and passion.   With so much going for us, why are we in such fiscal crisis?  Why do health care costs continue to skyrocket? Where is our national business strategy?  Why are we so divided when we share so many common values?  

As I look at the magnitude of the challenges facing us,  I keep asking why we cannot innovate and work our way out of this.   Can government innovate?  It can when its belt is tightened and it is forced to.  Can government mandate innovation?  Not effectively, but it can implement policies that are friendly to enterprise and innovation, including policies that promote education and investment.   What about retirement, can we face the future and innovate now to both empower the young and protect the old?  I think so, but we need a real national strategy to become a wealthy nation where retired citizens clip coupons from real accumulated personal and national wealth, instead of just borrowing our way to oblivion.  

While I do not have all the answers to these difficult questions, I know for sure that special interest government is not capable of innovation, and that unless we the people threaten the power base of special interest government, it will continue to ignore the challenge and crash the train.   The long road back to sustainability starts with innovation.  Innovation starts with you and a little enterprise.  Don’t let the King’s men fool you.

Candidate:  Jeff Lawrence Fusion,  Independent Libertarian

Occupation: Director, Global Content Policy, Intel Corporation.

Occupational Background: Enabling sustainable business ecosystems (e.g. DVD, Blu-ray, UltraViolet), driving innovation policies, and running a multi-million dollar service business; practicing business, intellectual property, and natural resources law.

Educational Background: University of Washington, BA, Cum Laude, PHI BETA KAPPA; Brigham Young University, J.D., Magna Cum Laude, Order of the Coif.

Prior Governmental Experience:  Advising on media and content policy, innovation, and sustainable systems.  No public office.

My family.  My wife Lora and I have lived in Troutdale since 1991.  We have five children.  Lora has been an active public school volunteer, and I serve on the Board at a local charter school.  Both of us want a sustainable future for our children.

Sustainability.  We usually apply this term to natural resources, but it applies to government as well. Today, we are a nation on an unsustainable course. We must balance our budget again, build real wealth within the Social Security system, transform healthcare through competition and innovation, defend our borders while welcoming legal immigrants, and bring our troops home with honor.

Tolerance.  We’re people first – not Republicans, Democrats, or anything else. We’re neighbors in a free society where the rule of law must protect us all and punishments must fit the crime.  We must respect diversity and protect individual liberty.  Tolerance and privacy are essential for us to live together in a sustainable society.

Upgrade Your Congressman.  I’m not looking for a new career, but I am willing to risk mine to help make this country better. I bring the business experience so lacking in Washington today, along with problem solving skills, a fresh perspective, and twenty years of experience making things happen on a global scale.  I understand how free enterprise drives job creation and how important good government is to our safety and well-being. I will tell you the truth and defend our children’s future.  Join me.  Vote sustainability and tolerance.

Read more at votejefflawrence.com.

Here are some thoughts on some of the big issues facing us.  We are where we are.  We can thank both the Republicans and the Democrats for the mess that we are in.  Let’s chart a better course. Let’s be principled and pragmatic and inclusive.   Let’s be fiscally responsible and socially tolerant.  America needs third party representation now more than ever.  Don’t let the king’s men fool you.  A little leaven will go a long way.

I set out a vision for prosperity in the Oregonian Voters Guide. 

We need a real American work out and a real competition strategy. 

We need to make America the boldest enterprise zone in the world. 

Compare my vision with Earl’s, side by side. 

Then you decide who has the vision, passion, and results oriented work ethic to get the job done.

Goodbye Earl.

http://thevoterguide.oregonlive.com/candidate-detail.do?id=200384872&sfr=1286582412237

Sustainability is a principle we understand in Oregon. We often apply it to the environment, but it applies to our social and economic systems, including government, as well. Unfortunately, our current course of government is not sustainable. We are trading our independence and freedom for unsustainable entitlements and foreign entanglements.  A train wreck is coming. Government solutions are not the answer to our problems, but a sustainable and innovative government that defends individual liberty is essential.   We must start to empower the young and unleash innovation today while defending the nation with a sustainable foreign policy. Principles matter.  A free society depends on principles of independence, life and self defense, liberty and accountability, and privacy and social tolerance.  If we don’t agree on basic principles, we will never agree on long-term solutions. Free enterprise is self sustaining and leverages human creativity. Free enterprise inspires innovation and job creation which produce wealth and economic growth. Free enterprise has done more to promote freedom and well-being than any other system. 

Join me and others who want more freedom, fiscal responsibility, and social tolerance.  The long road back to sustainability starts here. 

Don’t let the King’s men fool you.

Education is an important topic for all of us.  I have five children, three in college.  My kids have always attended local public schools in the Reynolds School District (Troutdale Elementary, Walt Morey Middle Schoold, Reynolds High School), the only exception being two years of public school in Maihama, Japan, just outside of Tokyo.    (We know what its like to be the only ones in school who don’t speak the language, and we know how much work it takes to catch up to the rest of the class).  I have always appreciated my own public school teachers and the education opportunities that our public schools have provided to me and my family.  My familily’s experience, over 19 years, with our local public schools has been a good one, and I want to thank the teachers and administrators who have served our family’s many needs. There is no greater calling in life than to pass wisdom and learning on to the next generation.  I hope that I am able to contribute to fulfillment of that responsibility in some small way over the course of my life.

Whenever I think about education, I think about my dad.   He went back to school when he was in his thirties to puruse his teaching passion.  He loved kids, especially underdogs.  He developed a special needs program in St. Maries, Idaho, and was awarded the Wings of Mind for his innovations.   After that, he went to the North Slope in Alaska, where he taught public school in Pt. Hope, Barrow, and Kaktovik.   He loved working with the Inupdiat people and sharing their culture and daily life.   I wish I could have spent some time on the North Slope with him, and now that he’s gone I hope that I can honor his memory by supporting rational education policy and helping to put our children first.  He left many grandchildren behind.

From a legal and political perspective, I believe that education is a state and local issue, and that more school choice empowers families and gets parents and children alike engaged in owning their own destinies.  In this context, I support charter schools and appreciate the opportunity I have to volunteer at the MLA Charter School in Fairview, where I am learning alot!  I am amazed at how school leaders are able to satisfy the myriad of state and federal mandates on limited resources.  Charter schools are, I believe, the waive of the future.  They provide a path forward with respect to choice in our district within the existing public school infrastructure.   This is a good thing.  A lot of people depend on public schools today, and it is going to be that way for a very long time into the future.   So, I support making them as good as they can be and growing the number of charter schools to add a little leaven while moving in the direction of choice.

As a parent trying to work within the public school system, my biggest criticism is that by the time a real issue works its way down from the state and federal level, it is too late for parents to really do anything about it.    In my experience, parents engage then give up after beating their heads against the wall.  The feeling that the state and federal governments are dictating education policy to our children, and deciding when and what they learn, is frightening and creates fear among parents.  It is this fear, I believe, derived from the real experience of being helpless before the giant educational machine, that alienates so many of our citizens from public education.  Parents need to feel in control when it comes to the safety and welfare of their children, and parents rightly demand a strong say in the values that their children are taught.    Increasing school choice through charter schools, vouchers, and other programs can really help, but let’s be pragmatic.

Alot has been said about President Obama’s efforts to expand federal financial aid for college.   From a constitutional perspective, I don’t believe that the federal government should be in the education business, but of all the programs that governments variously contribute to, education is the one thing that is clearly an investment in our future, and the very last place we should be looking to cut in our federal, state and local budgets.   Holding the children hostage during every budget cycle has simply got to stop.   It is arbitrary and capricious.  I am particularly sensitive to the need for financial aid for motivated students to attend college.  Responsible for my own educational costs and expenses, I was grateful for the opportunities that the Pell Grant and Stafford Loan programs created for me, and I hope that we can continue to extend those opportunities to others in the future (while getting rid of all the unfunded mandates and other federal controls first).  As we look for human creativity and enterprise to drive this nation forward and provide the innovation that we are going to need to cross the abyss that now faces us, we must do whatever it takes to educate our citizens so that they are capable of competing in the most demanding fields of science and technology.

So, lets balance the federal budget, but let’s also face the future and keep investing in education and research.  If we fail, these are opportunities lost with long term consequences.