Swamp in Action - Oregon version
'Draining the swamp' is an expression that I have mixed feelings about as it could be construed as a threat to innocent and ecologically significant wetlands.
If, however, it is a necessary step towards cleaning up and restoring something degraded and defiled by decades of accumulated toxic crud, well - I'm all for it.
I had intended an essay on the Oregon May 17 Primary, and made some reference to it in another comment - that one about my preferred (among a half dozen) candidates to take on incumbent Ron Wyden: Ibrahim Tahir.
Sorting through the prospects for Republican nominee for Oregon governor was time and thought-consuming as there are 19 candidates. Two I could eliminate quickly as one only had Twitter and Faceplant pages and I am on neither and one dropped out for health reasons.
Without going into tiresome details, there are two, maybe three candidates with some level of name recognition and $$: Bud Pierce - a physician and former Marine and Christine Drazan, a one-term legislator and the clear establishment pick.
Normally, this might all not be such a big deal as Dems have had a lock on the governorship for decades, but a popular former Dem legislator, Betty Johnson - with a considerable amount of campaign resources available is running as an independent. And incumbent Kate Brown (who, fortunately for Oregon and herself cannot run again) has the distinction of being the most unpopular governor in the country. Thus, Republicans have their best shot in decades at a win.
FWIW, Johnson and a couple of the D candidates would be a considerable improvement over what Oregon has currently - IMHO.
Anyway, Blue Republic's preferred candidate - after research and soul search is Kerry McQuisten, 37 year-old mayor of Baker, Oregon. Lacking a lot of money and establishment backing she has been building grassroots support, but now looks (along with most other candidates) to be excluded from an important televised debate. Just how that winnowing process came about and to whose benefit is the subject of a news release I just received from her campaign. I'm quoting nearly all of it for its detail about the workings of the toxic swamp - Oregon version:
NEWS RELEASE
Gubernatorial candidate Kerry McQuisten says Oregon election corruption blatant in recent candidates poll
Baker City, OR—April 21, 2022—Today, Florida-based Jeff Reynolds of PJ Media broke a story from Oregon regarding a shocking example of voter manipulation. Link HERE: Will The 2022 Red Wave Hit Oregon? – PJ Media
In coordination with that coverage and resulting interview requests, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kerry McQuisten issued the following statement:
“Hello, everyone. As a grassroots candidate, I had a front row view of Oregon’s establishment swamp on full display last week, and I intend to fight it tooth and nail.
“Here’s what happened. Candidates were notified recently that Oregon media would host a televised Republican gubernatorial candidates debate on April 21. Participation in this event would provide a huge bump to qualifying candidates, and was a critical step in this election. Seven criteria were listed in order to make the TV debate. I immediately met the first six.
“The seventh, a score of five-percent or higher in a scientific poll, seemed like a slam dunk based on the traction of my campaign and past polling. I was shocked to receive notice that I had scored abysmally low on a poll and would not be allowed on television. The more I looked at the results of all the campaigns, the more disbelief I felt, as nearly none of them reflected what I was seeing boots-on-the-ground or when compared to other polling. In fact, only one candidate seemed to benefit from the poll, and that candidate was Christine Drazan whose popularity had jumped remarkably.
“Was this jump the result of TV ads alone? Or was it something more?
“I didn’t want to be one of those candidates who whines when things seem unfair, or who points fingers at my competition. I didn’t want to rail against the left-leaning media as I know that could just look like sour grapes, frankly, and speaking out might harm my own campaign.
“But I took a look at the poll. It was conducted in one afternoon, which is odd for any poll. Voters across the state commented that they had received calls days earlier and were asked questions similar or identical to those on that poll. Could those who were called have been pre-screened for their responses? Perhaps we’ll never know.
“I then looked at the margin of error. 4.3%. Statistically speaking, nearly every candidate fell within that margin of error, making the poll unusable, but yet it was used. A minimum poll sample of 520 individuals was also used. 68% said they were undecided and didn’t make a selection, meaning around 167 individuals made up the entire response. On that number alone, again, the poll should have been tossed; it still wasn’t.
“Strangely, a Constitution Party candidate was included into the middle of the strictly Republican poll. Why? This candidate would not even be on the primary ballot. This was the third reason in a row that this poll should have been considered null and void.
“Instead, Bud Pierce and Christine Drazan were allowed into the televised debate based on this deeply flawed data, an outcome set to affect the entire primary election. Two candidates out of 18 wouldn’t have been much of a debate, so a ‘leaning toward’ number was randomly factored in, allowing two other male candidates, but arguably not Ms. Drazan’s strongest competitors to date, into the debate.
“I decided to look even deeper into the poll, and this is when it became clear that speaking out or not speaking out was no longer a matter of campaign strategy. This was a matter of right and wrong, and I had to do what my conscience knew was right and let the chips fall.
“I found that J.L. Wilson’s firm, Nelson Research out of Salem had been tapped to perform the poll. According to a Willamette Week article, Wilson’s other firm, Public Affairs Counsel, covered the cost.
“Upon closer scrutiny, I discovered that J. L. Wilson has financial ties to one current Republican gubernatorial candidate, and only one: Christine Drazan.
“See, Wilson is also a registered lobbyist with the State of Oregon for nearly 50 different organizations and companies ranging from Oregon Wild to 7-Eleven. As we know, Ms. Drazan came into this race quickly and substantially funded through lobbyist connections. More specifically, over her two years in the legislature and into this campaign, her PAC, Friends of Christine Drazan, received hundreds of thousands of dollars both directly and indirectly through J. L. Wilson’s clients.
“What we have here is one of the most shockingly corrupt, inappropriate cases of election manipulation in recent memory. We have a television station contracting with a polling firm whose lobbyist owner has a vested interest in seeing one specific candidate make it through the primary. This goes beyond a conflict of interest.
“Oregonians, we have a huge election integrity issue out in the open right now, and we have the chance to stop it before the ballots even drop. I believe this situation needs investigated for criminal wrongdoing. I believe if Christine Drazan gets through the primary, or if any deep state establishment-selected milquetoast moderate does for that matter, we will lose the general election as Oregon Republicans always do. The honest, salt-of-the-earth conservative base will once again sit on their ballots. These lobbyists and their benefactors don’t care about saving our state. They are power brokers, catering to the left just as frequently as to the right. This level of corruption on my own side of the aisle contributes in large part to why Oregon’s good, honest Republicans lose races and why Oregon stays blue. If you, voters, allow this to go by unchecked, Republicans will once again steal defeat from the jaws of victory. I’m here to do everything I can to stop that from happening.
”I’m a ranch kid from northeast Oregon. I’m a small city mayor. I’m a business owner not a politician. I’m also one of you and I’m trying to save my state. It is high time we drain the Oregon swamp, and it starts now because this election is our last chance. Thank you for listening.”
Campaign website KerryMcQuisten.com
Comments
McQuisten is a typical 2022 winger
perhaps that's what you're looking for. Unfettered access to guns, banning abortion, banning critical race theory even though no one in public schools teaches it.
"we're spending our time focusing on horrific plans like implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT), which I would ban, into the classroom"
I hate Tina Kotek, though, so I'll likely vote for whoever runs against her.
No, of course they don't
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eJNE1Ii330&t=1s]
(suggest just going to 23:00 for those with a low tolerance for woke-blather)
But basic skills optional...
Perhaps we should be totally outraged --
and insist that all of our schoolteachers teach their students that racism is totally kewl and bitchen. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Or maybe not.
Since opponents of critical race theory want broad definitions, here's a broad definition offered by the New York Times:
Omigod! Scandalous!
Or, alternately, we might argue that anyone who would want to ban the teaching of such a thing, in the unlikely event that "critical race theory" happened to make it into some high-school upper-class Advanced Placement course, is 1) a meddling asshole and 2) totally out of their depth.
The on-the-ground reality is that "teaching," in a public or private K-12 context, doesn't really go so far anyway. Ever wonder why there's such a big college market for courses in remedial English and Math? It's because there isn't really anything efficacious about the notion of compelling people, no matter how young, to "learn" anything. On-the-ground realities supporting this conclusion include:
1) The fact that there is a rather tight noose around what teachers are allowed to teach anyway. Teachers aren't allowed to teach anything that parents or politicians or their higher-ups in the school hierarchies would object to. It's been this way since schooling was invented; school "reform" merely made it worse, by its constant denigration of the teaching profession.
2) The fact that school "reform" dovetails well with the professional lives of politicians, whose function in today's government is to fool the public while taking money from special interests. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, for instance, was the product of a partnership between the McGraw family, the people who own the enormous test-prep publishing company McGraw Hill, and the Bush family, which produced two of our Presidents.
3) The fact that the structure of students sitting in classrooms and listening to teachers is itself a rather severe limit on what can and can't be learned. That structure, it might be added, was not developed with learning in mind: mandatory schooling, public or private, was devised in the 19th century with the goal in mind of domesticating the children of an underpaid, underfed, and overworked working class. See e.g. David Nasaw's book "Schooled to Order" for the documented historical particulars of schooling.
4) The reality that critical thinking invariably seeps into any and all matters of curriculum. The appearance of critical thinking can be intentional, if perhaps in some low-pressure circumstances in nice well-off neighborhoods teachers are allowed to teach critical thinking, or it can be unintentional, when the students recognize (as so many of them do) that their teachers are in fact crap and that the purpose of their being in school is to give their parents a break from child-tending so that said parents can be obliged to perform tasks of wage labor. There's a broad ethnographic literature on this second manifestation of critical thinking: start with Paul Willis' "Learning to Labour" and Peter McLaren's "Schooling as a Ritual Performance."
Thus the notion that "critical race theory" is being taught in schools, and that our politicians ought to do something about it, appears as a diversion. The real issue is that politicians invariably fool the public while catering to a system ruled by political donors, and that, lacking any real accountability, said politicians are prone to invent diversions like how they're going to save the schools by banning "critical race theory."
"A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy." -- Luigi Mangione
ok, I guess you're a Republican
I'm not sure what the Blue refers to. Maybe Blue Republic means you're part D, part GOP. After visiting Tahir's website I can tell you I don't like him either. He's another guy who doesn't understand the obvious reasons why Biden won. Another guy who can't fathom how people hated Trump, how Biden could have gotten so many votes when it's clear that mail-in voting did it.
I'll put him on my list of "I hate them all" candidates.
Why is Blue Republic?
To clarify the 'Blue Republic' handle - it stems from a proposal put forward by Robin Koerner in a 2011 Huffington Post opinion piece. Given the inevitability of Obama's nomination and his by then clear record of warmongering authoritarianism, wealthy-centric economic policies and such and that the only non-corporate-vetted, peace oriented pro-civil liberties alternative out there was (in Koerner's view) Republican Ron Paul, Koerner proposed that peace and civil liberties oriented Dems and other progressive types support Paul in the primaries and, if necessary, register Republican to do so.
For myself, there hasn't often been much incentive to stay R there is has been even less to go elsewhere, especially in Oregon. And I'll stick by my contention that as far as civil liberties, peace and non-intervention and common sense go such action as there is is mostly to be found among Republicans these days, not that there aren't notable exceptions such as Gray Zone, Jimmy Dore, Naomi Wolf, Tulsi Gabbard...
Sounded about right to me, and with Oregon being a closed primary as registered Pacific (Green) Party (which I was at the time) I wouldn't be able to vote in the Republican primary without re-registering, so I did. And used the BR handle on the main sites I used to hang out on: Daily Paul and its successor, Popular Liberty (still the Gold Standard by which all other sites are judged). Used it on DK till they kicked me off...
The Koerner article (most of it):
Hope that helps.
As a swamp dweller
from Oregon you got lot of nerve. Your a freaking Republican who lives in Japan. The candidates your pumping suck! Why are you even here?
Oh, really?
FYI - I reside/work in Japan, I'm not a Japanese citizen. I have not not been an Oregonian since 1962 or thereabouts. Yes, I am registered Republican - I switched to R to be able to support Ron Paul's 2012 candidacy in Oregon's closed primary.
Prior to that, I was registered Pacific (later Pacific Green) Party from the early 90's when I helped found it. The party name itself and including Article One, Section 1 of the Oregon Constitution at the beginning of the party's mission statement were both my ideas. Prior to that I was a Democrat from when I first could vote (for McGovern) in 1972.
You are, naturally, entitled to your opinion of my preferred candidates. However, whatever your opinion of them do you think that it's a good idea to have corporate media types be the gatekeepers vetting which candidates they will allow to get exposure and be regarded as 'legitimate'?
Some people around, myself included, seem to think that is actually a BAD IDEA, even though it seems to be standard practice these days.
Oh, yeah. I'm here to engage in constructive and respectful dialogue with others on important (and sometimes trivial) issues of the day.
What about you?
Section 1. Natural rights inherent in people. We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.
Oregon Constitution Article One, Section 1