Multnomah County turned darker in February, and it wasn't the rain.

In spite of the overwhelming statistics that indicate handguns
drawn in self-defense are almost never fired, and when they are
fired kill an innocent party only a tenth as often as police do...

In spite of clear video evidence that a mob was in pursuit of and
assaulting a journalist as he tried to get away...

In spite of the mob not being so much as charged with any crime...

It was "2nd Amendment be damned! Fear for life and limb, stand down!
So what if that journalist had already been hospitalized by one such
unprosecuted thug, and was now pursued by a several with hate-full eyes?"

Darkness took the win, by the hand of one judge:
the victim of that mob assault, Mike Strickland, was charged with,
and convicted of, 21 felonies.

Perverse "progressive" Portland's very own political prisoner.

Our speaker this month takes just a bit of exception to this travesty.

Mike Strickland
Convicted

Victoria Taft
Speaker

Victoria Taft is a broadcaster, content creator for Independent
Journal Review, contributor to television's 'One America News Network'
and has contributed to Nancy Grace and Dr. Drew, both of HLN.
She's also the principal at Flamingo Road Studios, LLC.
She was Oregon's Broadcaster of the Year in 2010.

She keeps the website VictoriaTaft.com
and it's in this capacity as a writer and blogger that she
began writing about the Mike Strickland case.

Victoria considers Strickland a colleague,
using several of his videos on the air over the years.
And, as an observer of the left for years now,
believes this prosecution was politically tainted.

She has written 24 posts (click to read) on the Strickland case so far.

In addition, she's looking for sponsors for a podcast which
stands to be heard by thousands of people throughout the
country (but will probably be a lot more than that).

She has appeared on several radio shows talking about the case,
brought it to light on One America News Network, and hopes
to continue to get more coverage of this case.

She has tried to get public interest law firms interested
in the Strickland case and her pursuit continues.

Join us Wednesday night.
Grumbling and steam coming from your ears is acceptable.

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

Metro is like many other government agencies. They do whatever they want because there are never any consequences even when caught.

In violation of state ethics laws Metro employees have been collecting frequent flyer benefits and using them for personal benefit.
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/follow-audit-report-frequent-flyer-benefits

Paid family leave abuse grew after audit exposed it.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/272227/view

HR created new reports that would allow for better management of family leave and costs agency-wide. We analyzed these reports and found that the monthly average number of Metro employees out on a family leave case each month increased by 23% over the last two years and the annual payroll costs for family leave have increased by 48%.
Original family leave audit: http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/leave-management-audit-follow

1. Metro does NOT track the effectiveness of their transportation planning strategies. Case studies show failure.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212993/view

2. Metro does not track the effectiveness of their costly Transit Oriented Development program. Case studies show failure.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212992/view

3. Metro's public involvement/communication is lopsided advocacy with staff free to choose what suits their advocacy.
http://rim.oregonmetro.gov/webdrawer/rec/212480/view

4. Metro's Capital Project spending is not recorded or tracked.
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/sites/default/files/Capital%20Project%20Planning%20Audit_0.pdf

~ ~ ~

The central point in all of this is that Metro and TriMet are failing to produce their vision, intentions and objectives. They are covering up the failure and advancing more of it through perpetual propaganda.

Metro has been asked numerous times to reveal the cost ot date of the $3 Billion SW Corridor Light Rail planning. We now know why they have refused. Much like the CRC, they have no idea or intention of doing so.

No information was reported in some quarterly reports for some of the projects we reviewed.

It takes just a little bit of reading to grasp how severely Metro is out of control. As someone else says, it's "huge".

The punch line first: The cumulative detriment of such comprehensive government recklessness is responsible for much of the region's waste and worsening gridlock and housing crisis.

I have been hammering Metro to reveal the cost of planning the SW Corridor Light rail for at least least two years. In the middle of that span ODOT's region 1 manager Jason Tell warned the SW Corridor Steering committee that the projects could turn out to be as costly as the CRC and end up with the same result. That concern was omitted from Metro's reports on the project and never reported in the media. Jason Tell (soon after his warning) left ODOT to work for Parson's Brinkerhoff (light rail engineering firm ) and is now an advocate for the same project.

Clackamas County Chair John Ludlow also repeatedly requested the cost to date for planning the $3 billion light rail project and got no numbers in return. It may be that Metro and TriMet are nearing CRC levels of expenditure.

These chaotic Metro capital projects spending practices (below) exacerbate the impact of their planning practices. Former Metro Auditor reported that Metro does nothing to measure the effectiveness of neither their transportation or land use planning .

Consider how derelict this is. There is no reliable tracking of spending or merit in what they are doing with the money. Not surprising, the former Metro auditor also reported that Metro excessively spends the bulk of their public involvement & communication budget on feeding the public advocacy for their agenda vs gathering what the public wants etc.

Metro needs to improve its project management capability to better manage the scope, schedule and budget of capital projects. Spending on some projects did not go as planned. Some projects exceeded approved budgets and others moved forward without required planning and approval. We found that policies and procedures were inconsistently applied among departments, funding sources, and project types. This reduced the accuracy, completeness, and transparency of project planning and reporting. We were unable to determine the approved budgets for some projects. Annual budget amounts had not been established in either document for some projects. Budget amounts differed between the two documents.

That meant that two budgets had been approved for the same project in some cases. Without a baseline budget, it would be very difficult to determine if projects were on track. Planning documents for some projects were not complete, which may have contributed to the uncertainty about budget amounts. Some project plans had been completed but not signed by the appropriate authority, which should have prevented spending on them. We were told some projects did not require these forms because they were routine or ongoing projects. It was not clear who had the authority to make those decisions. Even when planning documents were signed they did not appear to be used as intended.