Now think of this: a historian with a background in law is going to share his
perspective on the distortions from original intent of the Oregon Constitution.
Think of the talking points that will put into your arsenal.
Can you AFFORD to miss this episode of Executive Club?

It's a new year, and Oregon (and Washington an California!) ain't red yet,
and that means it's time to start again, with that
as our shared resolution.

Think of this as pep talk to start this next season of WINNING!

Bradley Nicholson

Bradley J. Nicholson is now retired after an impressive career,
beginning with a B.A. in history at Reed College followed by a
J.D. at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was
a staff member of Journal of International Business Law.

Still a member of the Oregon Bar Association, he formerly
practiced law in Silicon Valley as an intellectual property and
business litigator, served as law clerk for Judge Morris S.
Arnold on the United States District Court for the Western
District of Arkansas and on the Eight Circuit Court of
Appeals. He also served as a staff attorney for the Supreme
Court of Nevada and for the Oregon Supreme Court, is the
author of several law review articles on the subjects of legal
history and intellectual property, and the author of

A Sense of the Oregon Constitution,

which details the sources of the reasoning behind our state's
foundational document, and how major decisions in the areas of
religious freedom, free speech, trial by jury, property rights,
remedies, equal privileges and immunities and the initiative
process have departed from original intent.

Sounds like a completely awesome evening, doesn't it?

Join us Wednesday night, and bring your notebook.

Executive Club passes on meeting followup information as a courtesy to our speakers and members. Any member or speaker may submit, by email, a simple update text presentation to be sent to the club mailing list, to give the membership to have more details, or just a recap of your platform presentation. To be considered for publication, please be sure to submit your update within 24 hours of the close of the meeting. Please don't include any pictures in your text, but links to web pages, or links to things stored elsewhere on the web -- .pdf files, Word documents, or even pictures -- are OK now. Formatting and inserted pictures will not be copied, just the text content, so please don't use 4 fonts and 6 colors to convey your thoughts: you will be disappointed. Look at a previous followup email, or the bottom of most of the invitation emails, to see how they are presented. The simpler and cleaner your text, the more likely it will appear exactly the same in the email we send out. Each update must also indicate the author's name and contact information -- either a phone number, email address, or website with contact information. We reserve the right to edit for brevity, or reject, any submission.

Hello, fellow freedom lover!

December has been an "anniversary" month for me at Freedom Foundation. It was December of 2014 when I submitted my initial public records request to Oregon's DHS requesting names and addresses of home care workers in Oregon. At the time, it was public record. We at Freedom Foundation were completely open with our plans for that information. We were going to inform every single one of those folks their newly found rights under the Supreme Court Decision from the summer of 2014, Harris v Quinn, that allowed those people to 100% opt out of their union membership and dues. That decision granted "Right to Work" for them, and we believe they should know that.

You'll remember that the request was stalled by DHS intentionally. A law was quickly inked, creating an exemption for the addresses of those folks. The Oregonian uncovered in December 2015 that there was collusion all the way to the governor's desk to keep that information from being disclosed. Our governor colluded to prevent citizens from knowing their Constitutional rights. She received direct orders from SEIU to not disclose that information to us. SEIU knew exactly what we would do, and the harm it would create in their coffers. The governor obeyed.

A little over a year ago, Oregon's Attorney General's office formed a "Transparency Task Force" to address the over 550 public records exemptions that bog down transparency. Since I managed to create one of those exemptions with my request, I attended almost every meeting.

The final meeting took place during our recent ice storm. After a long year of reading through exemptions, discussion, categorizing, and more discussion, there would be no addressing of exemptions. Instead, the AG and governor, declared they would be putting forward legislation this spring to create a new position that would be the "public records advocate". Long story short, this position is a governor's appointee for the purpose of watching government—under her control, no one else's.

I predicted and published over a year ago in The Oregonian, this task force was simply created to give the veneer of transparency to a governor who is very transparency challenged. This new position is just an extension of that veneer. There would be no meaningful reforms that actually kept government accountable.

Yesterday The Oregonian published a guest column I wrote on this ridiculous dance that resulted in simply growing more government.

Click here to read it.

Thank you for your ongoing, strident support of freedom. We have done much in the last two years to drive the message that Oregon is transparency challenged and to continue to press our leaders to account for their ridiculous policies and postures. Your support has supported these efforts and so much more. The sky is the limit. A more free Oregon is on the horizon.

We believe the only path to freedom is achieved when the relationship between the liberal left and labor unions is dissolved.

We won't stop. We press on the gas every day. Join us. Click on our website listed below. You can sign up on the lower part of the page to receive our weekly email. You can click in the upper left corner to give a tax deductible donation as the year comes to a close.

Happy New Year. Let's make 2017 one for the books!

Blessings,

Anne Marie Gurney
Oregon Director | Freedom Foundation
AGurney@FreedomFoundation.com
cell 503-901-5635 l ofc 503.951.6208 | PO Box 18146 Salem, OR 97305
FreedomFoundation.com

Take Back Our Republic is a relative newcomer having formed in late 2014. It's a non-partisan, non-profit focused on education around campaign finance reform at both the national level and in support of state initiatives. I became aware of the group because the Executive Director is John Pudner, the man who managed the campaign for Dave Brat when he upset Rep. Eric Cantor in 2014. Mr. Pudner is known for winning campaigns with modest budgets (sometimes referred to as the "Moneyball" manager of campaign finance), and is taking the expertise learned on the campaign trail to lead this organization.

Our focus in 2017 will be on gaining conservative support for campaign finance reform, creating an open-source campaign playbook to help candidates defeat big money opponents, to build membership bases in all states who can deliver on reform referenda where needed, to continue efforts on foreign contributions (see HR4177), and introducing individual tax credits for political giving (much like Oregon's), among other issues.

If you'd like to join the team, formally or informally, and become more involved in any efforts to reform campaign finance law in Oregon or at the national level, please review the web site and feel free to contact me for more information on how to participate further.