Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The Job of your Congressmen

The job of your congressmen is to represent the federal interests of your congressional district in Washington DC. Your congressmen is your oversight committee. The most patriotic thing a congressmen can do is represent his or her constituency. Our previous congressmen represented his constituency for 3 – 4 years before he sold out to party politics. Things are not rosy back home, a vote for me is a vote for you. The congressmen you see on TV that defend or attack the President or party affiliation are likely those that come from districts with very little federal exposure. They have more time on their hands to play the political game than your Congressmen. If you vote for someone who represents party over principle or his own people then you’re going to get the same results from your federal interests that you did for the last 22 years.

This has nothing to do with protecting the Kurds, War in Syria, North Korean Denuclearization, withdrawing from the JCPOA, Immigration Law or Border Security, if you want to go to the border and see the mess go, I’ve been. There are 434 other congressmen and 100 senators to work on domestic and international concerns. This is about protecting you, your family friends and neighbors and investing in your community.

Before we can make America great again we need to work on making Oregon great again.

I am running for Congress because I don’t like the current image of the Republican Party that I signed on to in 1983. I want to see Oregon get away from partisan politics and focus on prosperity. I want you to be proud to be a Republican. I am an actual conservative. I am what the Republican Party used to be. Ronald Reagan would vote for me and Teddy Roosevelt would be my Chief of Staff.

The average net worth of 5 of 7 of Oregon’s congressional contingent is 5 million dollars. I want you to be able to flourish as they have. We have a businessman in the White House but his acumen only goes so far. The greatest economy ever has not spread its wings and flown to Eastern and Southern Oregon. You’ll find the unacceptable and reprehensible stats to back that up  if you click here.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

Forestry – Why We Can’t Harvest a Tree in Oregon

This is your brain on federal exposure.

Federal lands in Oregon make up 53% or 32,665,430 acres out of 61,598,720 total acres. The people of the State of Oregon only own 4% of the land; the rest is in private hands. Everywhere you see white is private land. Everywhere you see color is federal land that belongs to the people of the USA and everywhere you see green or olive is where money & opportunity grow on trees. 6 of Oregon’s 10 federal forests are in the 2nd Congressional District, add in another million forest acres run by the BLM in the Medford Unit of the O&C Lands and The Monument in Ashland.

30 years ago we lost an industry and never replaced it. We’ve cut back on federal forest harvests by 90%. The reason your community doesn’t thrive is well known to the voter; true believers in conservation became true believers in the dollar bill. Dave Willis of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council in Ashland makes $105,000 a year running a one-man nonprofit business. How do I know this? The tax returns of nonprofit organizations across America are all public.

These people are not conservationists in the true sense of people like John Muir or Ansel Adams. Quite the opposite, their real heroes are people like the Unabomber. They use their ‘donations’ to file lawsuits when forest projects move forward in the NEPA, National Environmental Protection Act of 1969, process after they get shut down in 5 of the 7 collaborative NEPA steps that turn an idea into a job for an Oregonian.

How The Scam Works

Wealthy donors, mostly from Portland, and businesses donate to a nonprofit as a tax incentive. Nonprofits then use private money to obtain private and public grants. Every-time they obtain a public grant…. you get taxed. When a forest project makes its way through the elaborate NEPA process and the Forest Service solicits invitations for private industry to bid; the nonprofits file a lawsuit to stop it…. and you get taxed. The project is now in contention or before the court and cannot continue forward because of its legal status.

When the nonprofit loses at the district court level, and they’re starting to lose, they appeal it at the district court level… and you get taxed. Court isn’t free. When the nonprofit loses at the district appellate level they appeal it to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals… and you get taxed.

Are you with me? This isn’t that difficult, it’s just lawyering. A courtroom is part and parcel in the life of big business, so is it in the life of a so-called environmentalist. These people are merely interlopers who act as law firms to soak up your money and opportunity. Experts who run our forests have graduate degrees in sciences like Ecology, Biology, Geology, Hydrology, Botany, maybe some Engineers and Forestry. They didn’t study for 7 – 10 years to end up being at the forefront of a lawsuit and have their work scrutinized by a Judge. They’re tired; it’s not the job they signed up for.

These projects can end up stalled in court for years and the nonprofits are well funded. They are now bringing projects before they court they know they’re going to lose because in the end they still win by using the courts as a weapon.

Senator Wyden, who doesn’t live in rural Oregon, takes on this dilemma with Forest Service Fire & Aviation Director Shawna Lagarza in the video above but neglects to mention the people in Oregon who donate to him equally donate to the individuals who are filing lawsuits….. and that’s why they call it Politics.

How Your Congressmen Fixes This

Inside the box thinking like changing administrative laws that limit the ability for public collaboration in the NEPA process have always been the solution. Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t do anything anymore and the appropriate alternative is legislative changes coming from either the President or a bilateral agreement from the Secretaries of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture. Unfortunately, again, this would be too time-consuming and likely end up in the courts. Legislation has to come from bipartisan agreements in Congress and that is never going to happen in a Democrat majority house and possibly Senate. If you go to court and sit in the gallery you’ll hear Government Attorneys echo the same sentiments.

This is why you have a Congressmen. He represents your federal interests. It’s his job to think outside the box. Your Congressmen of the past says things like ‘I just wish the environmentalists and the public could come together on these forest issues’. These kinds of wishes are just that, nonprofits won’t come together with anyone because it would put them out of a job and as much as people in Oregon love to put their people out of a job it’s not going to happen.

Your wannabe Congressmen of the future with no forest knowledge will say we should look to private timber as an example on how to run a forest. That has never happened and never will. Our public lands are run by professional government career employees and the private sector comes in at the very end to turn our public resources into jobs and products whose revenues trickle down into your community to smooth your roads, pay your teachers and buy you a new car or pay your mortgage. We want our wild forests wild, not looking like a privately owned timber farm. That doesn’t mean we aren’t excluded from usurping the resources of the federal forests for public gain.

There is no law of the land that says a tree cannot be cut in Oregon. On the contrary, if a forest dies off at 20 million board feet per year then the spirit of the laws say we should be removing 20 million board feet per year. As a bonus to a forest economy we fight fire in spring and fall with science instead of fighting it in summer with water and jet fuel. If a forest manager isn’t doing their job then it’s your Congressmen’s job to make sure they do or there will be an ‘or else’ alternative.

The immediate solution is limiting the funding of nonprofits and focus on our district not those of the rest of the nation. The nonprofits don’t do what they claim to do and they are hardly scientists, they’re opportunists. Though they think they are men and women of science they also think people like you and I are idiots as they laugh all the way to the bank.

Your Congressmen needs to go to all the private donors and use his influence to have them donate to more worthy causes than ones that have destroyed your state’s economy. He may have to take them on a helicopter ride to look at all the dead trees in Eastern Oregon forests to see exactly where their donor dollars are going and the public equally needs to be involved, this is not a one-man job. If your bank contributes to a nonprofit you need to take your money out, tell them why, write a letter to their CEO and take your money to the bank next door and you need to show up in a federal court and support your government attorneys. They equally represent your interests and the public needs to know how the process works.

Don’t forget, this debacle over the last 32 years has happened with both GOP and Democratic Party Presidents equally sharing 16 years of leadership and neither has done anything for you here at home. This isn’t about party affiliation, we need unification on this issue because this is about your dollars and common sense.

The holder of the Oval Office doesn’t define us, we define ourselves.

To find out what kind of work is being done in a forest near you click onto the Schedule of Proposed Actions

It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

Geothermal Energy ~ Clean as a Whistle, Solid as a Rock

Oregon has an Albatross hanging around its neck and it’s called PacificCorp. PacificCorp or Pacific Power contributes 31% of Oregon’s 48 million megawatts of energy. PacificCorp is essentially a coal company owned by the world’s finest Democrat: Warren Buffet, and his parent company: Berkshire Hathaway. It produces its power and the bulk of its employees in Wyoming. There’s only one person in America who thinks Coal is a viable future energy source. Here’s the bad news, it’s not. Even the coal companies want out of the business but they won’t go away. They are still employers and members of the community and will use their access to energy infrastructure to burn cleaner and equally energy-dense materials like Uranium via next-gen technologies being produced here at home by companies like Oregon’s NuScale Energy. The largest thermal coal plant in America just shut its doors. Coincidentally, it was parked close to America’s largest nuclear generating station, so it wasn’t an issue of grid architecture, it was simply an issue of compliance. Coal emits radiation, pollution, and leaves behind radioactive ash that has to be disposed of. The bottom line is: coal kills people.

The world’s largest geothermal plant is less than 200 miles from Oregon in Geyserville CA and is known as ‘The Geysers’. It is located on a mountain top. It runs 24 hours a day 365 days a year at full throttle and is nearly carbon-free. When you look at it from below you’ll see a mountain in winter and on a clear blue summer sky day a mountain with a cloud over it. It’s run by ~35 people including management during the day and 10 at night. If Oregon owned The Geysers we could reduce PacificCorp’s impact on Oregon’s energy consumption to 4%.

Oregon’s geothermal exposure is huge. Our ground-water heated by gravitational forces and elemental decay where the Earth’s mantle meets the iron core turns rock into magma and heats groundwater under pressure up to 700 degrees. The water needs to be tapped where it has no choice but to move upwards under pressure where it runs through a heat exchanger and cools to steam that spins a turbine that spins a generator and is then injected back into the earth from where it came. No different operation than any thermal energy plant on the planet. Oregon’s Geothermal contribution to our energy mix is 1/10th of one percent. Compare that with California’s Geothermal contribution of 4.5%. The per capita contribution between the two neighboring states is staggering. Oregon’s current geothermal capacity provides energy to a meager 40,000 people.

If we could build 2,000 megawatts of geothermal capacity on federal lands in the 2nd district in the next 20 years we could provide affordable, clean, reliable & robust energy, made here at home that provides jobs, revenue, and taxation that go directly to Salem and your community instead of Cheyenne Wyoming. We would then have an energy net increase, and eliminate PacificCorp from Oregon’s diet.

How is this accomplished? It’s all in the hands of the voter. The voter hires and fires the people that represent them; pick your representatives wisely. If you pick me you won’t be disappointed.