Lost, Bought or Stolen in Oregon

By Oregon Senator, Dennis Linthicum

July 31, 2024

How did we get here?

Why is there so mush turmoil in our country, state and neighborhoods?

The problems are long-standing and run-deep. Most people think the deep-state is in control and grown too powerful.

So, how did this happen? Did we give away our freedoms? Did we sell our freedoms or, were they taken from us? Those are the only three options. Which is it? I think this is a fair question.

In both America, and our state, we have arrived here because we have been ensnared in all three scenarios:

♦ We have complacently surrendered our individual authority, freedom and independence to marketeers and do-gooders in state and federal offices.
♦ We have been bought with visions of a benevolent-Marxist system of “ideal” government through monetary policies, free-education, and forced medical care, all for our own good.
♦ Our liberties have been forcibly usurped through the gradual but constant over-reach by politicians and their appointed officers within the administrative state.

In Oregon, the statists run the show. They have long been the majority party and they are in charge. They write the rules, they play by those rules and they deal the cards they have marked.

The majority party and Gov. Kotek know exactly what is going on while they unabashedly claim to have genuine concern for the problems that plague the state. But they are powerless to stop the problems they created.

Take for example, the governor’s so-called, $376,000,000 “Emergency Housing Stability and Production Package.” This initiative actually does little with sticks and bricks for home production, yet throws tons of money at all the other societal problems that are hard to quantify.

We can count housing units and ask, are we building a continual supply chain of new homes? We can measure the economy and ask, is Oregon inspiring private business entrepreneurship, full-time employment, real property rights and prosperity?

How does one measure the accountability of an NGO or non-profit that received millions of dollars? How will we know if the problems that plague home ownership are being solved or perpetuated?

The compassion angle is strong and it all sounds benevolent but there are few quantifiable results from these efforts. We can’t know how many productive citizens will leave the state for greener pastures or how many newly minted homeless will arise in our metro areas.

Yet, everyone knows that if houses never get built there will never be enough homes.

This is a typical solution for the party of big-government – make news; claim to care; stand up another government program; pilfer money from taxpayer wallets; offer costly and ineffective regulatory burdens on the private sector while claiming success.

I see Gov Kotek’s solution as another potentially eternal bureaucratic program. It adds pages and pages of bureaucratic rules; it creates the Housing Accountability and Production Office for enforcement and has the power to last and last, even with the 2027 expire date. That date will surely be extended because the program can’t possibly impact housing in a documentable and meaningful way within that timeframe.

The entire program should be audited for efficacy and terminated if it doesn’t work.

We are witnessing a gross violation of the structure of our constitutional forms of governance. The founding principle for our American experiment was that each of us, as individuals, has unalienable, natural, (God-given) rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. But this pursuit of happiness doesn’t mean, “Do as you please!”

Obviously, your just and rightful pursuits do not include the freedom to steal from your neighbor’s wallet because this makes you happy.

An individual’s just rewards should be derived from their own honest endeavors. It should represent the result of their hard-work and faithful service – the just fruits of one’s labor. This might sound terribly familiar but I’m afraid it is not as well-known as we think it is.

The next sentence in our Founders’ unanimous declaration begins with, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and ends with, “organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

This is the world changing idea behind the American Revolution. It is the equivalent of an Einsteinian rupture in the fabric of our knowledge of space and time. In all of human history, this glorious notion regarding, “the consent of the governed,” had never been expressed so clearly, vibrantly or as valiantly as during the creation of “these united States.”

How do we get back to these native, self-evident truths?

Only through accountability and transparency. When people see the hard facts that flow from intense and rigorous executive agency auditing processes then people will realize they are being taken to the cleaners.

I am running for Secretary of State. I have the required skill-set to audit the state agencies and bureaucracies that impact our work, our businesses, and our families. My opponent, as a Democrat party insider is in no position to investigate, audit, or summarize anything with the required separation, dispassion and honest evaluation that I will bring to the office.

Our government exists to protect our rights and freedoms as individuals. This protection includes our financial rights, property rights, our right to voice grievances and provide consent to policy decisions through free, fair and honest elections.

I will these advance principles for holding Executive offices accountable. These are comprehensive concepts that can properly inform all voters in Oregon, including my non-affiliated, Independent, Libertarian and Democrat readers.

So, I encourage you, rather than being disheartened by the current dismal state of affairs, let us draw courage and resolve like our forebears who overcame their conflicts. We too can be victorious and change the course of our government. It has fallen to us to be the generation that turns Oregon and America back to its foundational first principles.

In closing, let’s put Oregon back on the road to transparency and accountability. Only by using sound and demanding principles can we make Oregon prosperous again.

Thanks for joining with me as we unite to, “Save Our State.”

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Thank you!
For more information about me and my candidacy:

Election Website
April 16, Video of Oregonian interview
A series of newsletters on election integrity

E-Mail Dennis Linthicum: sen.DennisLinthicum@gmail.com