Too bad Merkley doesn't walk the walk of supporting the commons when it comes to the lack of affordable health care for children and all Oregonians, every bit as big a threat to our state and national economy in these times, as the lack of roads and electrification were in the 1930's-1960's. We have a chance this year, after the misguided M50 debacle and the 2008 experimental session where Merkley told children he wasn't going to do anything for them except tell them to get in line for the OHP lottery, to get predatory private health insurance companies who are destroying small businesses with ruinous health insurance rate increases out of the picture.

Merkley is AWOL in the OHFB deliberations EXCEPT to continue to endorse that we should be forced to buy private health insurance rather than support the commons by creating a public system like our roads. In addition, our low-integrity governor, backed by the same legislators including Merkley who gave us the OHFB and this plan, have now tried to hi-jack and politicize the OHFB process by saying the only thing he will definitely support is a recommendation for new tobacco taxes as part of the Republican-style wealth transfer from working people to corporations. At the Federal level Merkley supports exactly the same thing, and has repeatedly said he would be a co-sponsor of Wyden's Republican plan which similarly is all about welfare for insurance companies.

Of course, we know this is because Merkley and Wyden are heavily dependent on money from the DLC/DSCC wing of the party these industries support.

So Rick Seamen is a typical Merkley propagandist and more than just a bit dishonest when he invites the implicature that Merkley supports the commons for the good of working people. In fact, Merkley is really just like Smith in that he supports the commons that benefit corporate America, but could care less about working people --- like all those low-income children he, Westlund, and Bates told to get in line for the few OHP spots because they aren't voters and campaign contributors.

Troll.

Do you mean to take credit for everything associated with Democrats from the 1930s and before, or just the things still seen as positive? The parties have changed rather a lot since then.

Good information buddy...keep going..

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johnnysmith

Addiction Recovery Oregon

Rick Seaman is right. Investments in public infrastructure is good - privately or publicly financed, even the CRC as designed.

I toured Gordon Smith's plant, Smith Frozen Foods, back in the early 1990's. It was pretty obvious his entire workforce was Hispanic.

I'm not saying Gordon Smith got rich from the labor of illegal aliens because I honestly don't know that, but it did make me wonder.

And wasn't Smith Frozen Foods cited for polluting streams or creeks around Weston? http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E3DC1139F935A25752C0A960958260

Seems like Smith has generally managed to avoid much scrutiny of his business practices.

Go Dad! Way to make a valid point in a non-partisan way (or at least they made it seem that way). The Oregonian, staying true to their character, edit it (including a killer punch line).

The original reads as follows:

[...]

The fact is, public investments in infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, ports) and education are the world's greatest generators of private wealth. Democratic candidate Jeff Merkley knows this.

For example, he supports a national health insurance plan, which would make US companies more competitive, by lifting the costs off of employers, as is the case in Canada, German, Japan, or Ireland, for example.

Jeff Merkley is interested in a government that helps create opportunities for Americans.

Gordon Smith, still clinging to the self-serving mantra "private good, public bad", is just another conservative taking the "public" out of "Re-public-an."

local mom - you're right: Merkley told those kids parents to get in line for the lottery because he wasn't going to do jack to help them, and he offered kids absolutely nothing except they should go tell it to the Oregon Health Fund Board. I was perhaps being a bit too figurative when I wrote he told them to get in line --- as in "stand in line with your parents while we (Merkley and the rest of the Democratic-in-name-only majority leadership) thumb our noses at them". That's MUCH better, right?

No matter how much you dishonestly try to spin it, you are not going to be allowed to hide from the stinking truth that Merkley and the Democrats in the majority in "The Lege" --- as Kari likes to call them --- used low income hildren as pawns in their own political games and told them and their parents to take a hike in the 2008 session.

Voters rejected M50 because they saw through it for the cynical, morally irresponsible politics it was. And you are a typical example of the morally bankrupt NW elitist trash behind it when you try to impugn the honor of those of us who rejected if for that reason and who got in the face of Merkley and the leadership to do the right thing. It was Merkley and the Democratic Senate leadership, not Republicans, who walked away from kids and adults after the election by taking any legislation or debate about health care in the 2008 session off the table, rather than take the battle to Republicans and to the anti-tobacco zealots also just used kids as pawns in their own political games.

And of course Joshua is still too young and dumb to know the facts. His father has no such excuse and he ought to be ashamed of himself for misleading his son as he apparently has: Merkley doesn't support "a national health insurance plan" by any standard usage of that term. He supports a law that individuals who don't qualify for the few public programs that he wouldn't cut be forced to buy a health insurance policy from one of any number of predatory private insurers.

In fact, what Merkely supports as a plan, in Seaman's own words, of "lifting the cost off employers" and dropping it squarely on the backs of working people is EXACTLY what John McCain supports. Merkley and Wyden are just representatives of those elitist Oregonians who have the audacity to lie to people that their spin on a quintessentially Republican approach of taking advantage our health crisis for their own and the industry's benefit embodies Democratic values, including support for the commons. Well, it doesn't with this Democrat, and it doesn't with real Democrat I know.

At this point, I'm just happy to see someone--anyone-- attempt to dismantle the rhetorical burning straw men that have been built around the words "liberal" and "socialism". I have seen dozens and dozens of letters to the editor around the country, some previously printed in the O, that regularly and blatantly equate the Democrats with socialists, but very few letters apparently written to rebut the characterization. At the very least, I hope we here could all agree that, for good or for bad, the modern Democratic Party and the Socialist Party are quite different entities. I salute Mr. Seaman, and hope others will follow his example.

<h2>I hesitate to even engage with such an inflammatory yahoo like "yea right," but I thought it worth noting that Josh is an full grown adult, not a child. He can think for himself without needing any excuses. Hearing some idiot on this site accuse either him or his father, two of the most progressive people I know, of supporting an elitist, "quintissentially republican" health care plan is a joke.</h2>