And to all the gun-grabbing, victim disarming statist and socialist wannabe dictators and petty tyrants:
Toward FREEDOM
And to all the gun-grabbing, victim disarming statist and socialist wannabe dictators and petty tyrants:
My ear doctor assured me shortly thereafter that my hearing was in good shape.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Each $ seized removes that property from the tax rolls and removes that property from contributing to Oregon's annual income produced in the state. Those $'s lost are lost forever.
Of course this has been Andy Kerr's agenda since the spotted owls, and he wants less jobs in Oregon, which equals less people.
This seems to have caught up with the enviral facist, Katznslobber. As he has decided not to run for in the Senate race. However, under his enviral facist anti business/anti private property reign of terror, he has trashed the Oregon economy.
We talked to our son who lives in Portland, last night. He is a recovering enviral. He woke up in 1999/2000. Now many of his enviral friends have lost their jobs or could lose their jobs. Of course they blame GW for these job losses. He will take them outside to point at one of their pro enviral bumper stickers on their vehicles, or a Gore/Clinton bumper sticker or even worse a Nader bumper sticker. Then he tells them that they are the problem with their money donated to the enviral terrorist organizations and their votes in the past. He really comes down on them if they have a Katznslobber sticker on their bumper!
I still think that a good lawyer in these cases should behind closed doors find out if the judge is pro enviral. If the judge has contributed to enviral causes and is active in their rural cleansing agenda, he/she should recuse themselves or be brought for bias charges after the trial!
Good luck up there! All 3 west coast states have enviral terrorist governors, courts, judges, state DA's and county DA's. We may not recover!
Extreme Countermeasures
by William E. Merritt
October, 2001
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On November 7, 2000, Oregon voters passed a ballot measure forcing state and local governments to pay landowners when one of their regulations reduced the value of property. A few weeks later, the measure was challenged as unconstitutional. "Deep-Sixing Seven," in June's BrainstormNW, described the way in which Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber gave every appearance of conspiring with a deputy attorney general and the lawyer bringing the challenge to Measure 7 in order to make sure the ballot measure lost in court.
At the time the article went to press, it was clear from public documents that:
1. Kitzhaber had campaigned vigorously against Measure 7 on the grounds that it "would bankrupt the state."
2. On November 17-before any lawsuit had been filed-Kitzhaber attended a two-and-a-half hour meeting with Tom Christ, a lawyer in private practice who would bring one of the two lawsuits against the measure. After the meeting, Christ returned to his office and began drafting the complaint.
3. Deputy Attorney General David Schuman, who defended Measure 7 in court, was an outspoken critic of ballot measures in general, believing the entire process should be declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. Schuman lost the Measure 7 case. And the arguments he relied upon when defending Measure 7 would later raise questions about whether he had conducted the defense in good faith.
A few weeks after Measure 7 was declared unconstitutional, Gov. Kitzhaber appointed Schuman to the Court of Appeals.
Until recently, the only insight into what went on at the November 17th meeting came from Tom Christ and from Chip Lazenby, the governor's staff attorney. Both claimed that the sole purpose of the meeting was to determine where matters stood in regard to Measure 7 so that Kitzhaber could plan his new budget.
Relying on documents produced in response to an Open-Records-Law request by Oregonians in Action and turned over to BrainstormNW, now we know more. The first document is a telephone message slip dated November 16, 2000.
The slip states that Jerry Lidz had called Lazenby and left word that David Schuman, Dick Townsend and the Attorney General's office wanted to meet with Lazenby and Glenn Klein.
Jerry Lidz and Glenn Klein are lawyers with the firm of Harrang, Long, Gary, Rudnick. Harrang, Long represents the City of Eugene, Oregon, which, a few days after the meeting, became one of the plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of Measure 7.
Dick Townsend is the Executive Director of the League of Oregon Cities, also soon to become a plaintiff against Measure 7.
The message slip goes on to explain that the get-together was for the purpose of coordinating state & local response (to Measure 7).
The message slip indicates that Schuman, the person entrusted by the state to represent the three-quarters-of-a-million Oregonians who voted for Measure 7, arranged with Townsend to have Lidz (the lawyer for another of the plaintiffs planning to challenge Measure 7) set up a meeting with the governor's staff attorney. The purpose: to coordinate the upcoming challenges to Measure 7.
When the meeting was held the next day, Schuman did not attend. If he had, he would have automatically been prevented by the Oregon State Bar's Disciplinary Rules from taking any role in the defense of Measure 7. Any plan to throw the defense of Measure 7 required that an insider handle the defense personally.
Gov. Kitzhaber was at the meeting, and so was Lazenby. Bill Wyatt, Gov. Kitzhaber's Chief of Staff, Steve Marks, who worked under Wyatt, and Robin MacArthur-Phillips, Kitzhaber's Natural Resources Policy Advisor, attended as well. Tom Christ attended, as did Robert Liberty, the Executive Director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, an environmental group that had opposed Measure 7 from the beginning, and Dick Benner, the head of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, whose ability to set land-use policy was threatened by Measure 7.
The single page of notes Lazenby produced is important, not just for what it says about what went on in the meeting, but for what it does not. Despite Lazenby's and Christ's assertions to the contrary, the notes contain no mention of any discussion of budgets. What was discussed was how to make sure Measure 7 never went into effect. That is all, according to the notes, that was discussed. The upper left-hand corner sets out the subject of the meeting:
B(allot) M(easure) 7 Litigation, and the date: 11-17-00. Yet, at the time of the meeting, no litigation was in the works. What the notes show is that the strategy to overturn Measure 7 originated at this meeting.
Then, in outline form:
A) Christ -- Pre-lim Injunction 1) S(ecretary) O(f) S(tate) /Canvassing votes Gov(ernor) /not to proclaim
This section indicates that Tom Christ, after bringing suit, was to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the Secretary of State from canvassing (officially counting) the votes, and Gov. Kitzhaber from proclaiming the results. Since Oregon's Constitution requires the governor to proclaim the results, Kitzhaber's participation in such scheme would constitute an attempt to circumvent his duties as governor.
This was to be followed by a:
B) Full Hearing on merits (leading to a) Permanent Injunction
Which is exactly what happened.
Next comes a description of the way the upcoming legal challenge would unfold:
Process -- Lawsuit in Marion Co(unty) Req(uest) P(reliminary) I(njunction) Opposition of D(epartment) O(f) J(ustice) Key If opposed -- May not get it
If the Attorney General opposed the injunction, the whole scheme could unravel.
By not attending the meeting he initiated, Schuman had preserved the right to try the case himself and make sure that the preliminary injunction was not effectively opposed.
Finally, in the lower left-hand corner, is one of the most evocative entries of all:
Abernethy, Lipscomb + Norblad, Barbur ? Leggert ~
These are judges at the Marion County Circuit Court who might be called upon to decide the lawsuit. Next to their names are what appear to be ratings. Litigants speculate about judges all the time, of course. What makes these ratings different is the fact that everybody agreed. Clearly, if Abernethy and Lipscomb were more likely to look favorably on a challenge to Measure 7 than Norblad and Barbur, then Liberty and Christ should have given them pluses, while Kitzhaber and Lazenby should have awarded minuses. It makes no sense that parties on the opposite sides of lawsuits would agree on how to rate the desirability of the judges who might handle the matter.
It seems almost impossible to make sense of what happened without concluding that:
1) After the citizens of Oregon passed Measure 7, Deputy Attorney General David Schuman and Dick Townsend, the Executive Director of the League of Oregon Cities, initiated a meeting with Gov. Kitzhaber, as well as representatives of the League of Oregon Cities, 1000 Friends of Oregon, and the City of Eugene at which plans were made to overturn Measure 7 through a sham lawsuit invalidating the measure in court, a lawsuit which from the beginning the state never intended to defend vigorously.
2) Schuman put himself in charge of the defense, then lost the case in court. Subsequently Schuman has been reported to the Oregon State Bar for failing to provide a vigorous defense.
3) A few weeks later, Gov. Kitzhaber appointed Schuman to the Court of Appeals.
If the facts add up this way--and it is hard to imagine any other way that they could add up--the citizens of Oregon were cheated out of their votes.
It is important to remember that everybody at the meeting that day, like everybody else in America, has the right to his own opinion about Measure 7. And the right to act on those feelings. Gov. Kitzhaber, Christ, or anybody else, was free to lobby against Measure 7 in the legislature, and to denounce it on the airwaves. That is legal and proper and ethical. What is not legal and proper and ethical is to use public office to deprive voters of their franchise under the cover of judicial proceedings.
Benighted, perhaps you could ship it off to Bill O'Reilly....and Carrie_Okie could write a novel!!!!