RUTHFULLY YOURS

Oregonians deserve a safe space from government manipulation, propaganda and bloated contracts.

Remember, Cover Oregon? A national laughing stock with over $3 million spent on this ad and cited in ‘Wastebook 2013’ by then-U.S. Senator Tom Coburn.

State government, agencies and commissions are shelling out hundreds millions of dollars to public relations firms. Eighty-seven state agencies spent $278 million dollars to convince citizens to spend more taxpayer or gaming dollars on bigger government, higher taxes, more regulations, or more gambling from 2012 through 2016.

Here’s how the numbers breakdown. Since 2012, taxpayers paid $110 million to employ 303 public affairs employees, spokespeople, advertising, video, print, web, graphic designers, marketing and communications managers. But, it wasn’t enough. The state shelled out an additional $168 million to outside PR and advertising firms. Some of those firms charge fees up to $260 per hour and one company reaped total payouts of $34 million – convincing Oregonians to gamble.
The Oregon Public Relations Machine Overview

OpenTheBooks.com

Oregon Public Relations Machine Overview

In Oregon, the public relations industry is a favor factory for insiders. Thebiggest agencies are doling out extremely lucrative PR contracts.

Since 2012, the Oregon State Lottery Commission awarded contracts and payments of $34.5 million (from gaming dollars) to one vendor: Borders Perrin and Norrander (BPN). During this period, data at OpenTheBooks.com shows that BPN gleaned $34.5 million of the $55.9 million paid to outside PR/advertising vendors at the lottery. BPN handled the Lottery’s sponsorship of the Portland Trailblazers, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ television ads, Jackpots Scratch ads, and other campaigns.

In 2013, Borders Perrin and Norrander signed two major contracts with the Lottery. First, a ‘Price Agreement’ contract allowed BPN to charge up to $260 per hour for their ‘Creative Director.’ The contract was then amended or extended four times without competition until May 2017. In fact, BPN billed $200 or more per hour for five additional positions (see graphic).

Thank you Deroy Murdock…..Some events in New York City are unforgettable…..watching the elephants crossing the street to enter Madison Square Garden and then going to the circus was one. Getting hot dogs and a pickle from a deli on Hoe Avenue in the Bronx was memorable. Making the hot dog last for two blocks was Olympian. Going to the movies on Grand Concourse in the majestic Loews Paradise, now closed, and arguably, the most luxurious movie house in New York City, was another. Outdoor concerts in Lewisohn Stadium of City College were fabulous even with the noise of airplanes overhead. And the best of all, was a performance by the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Last summer, with a friend I attended their summer performance which included dancing in the rain onstage with parasols shaped like flowers. For an immigrant like myself those events ” only in America”were awesome and they are all disappearing swiftly….rsk

Uniondale, N.Y. — Send home the clowns.

After 146 years, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus rolled up the net. Sunday evening’s performance was its last.

My friend Neal K. Carter and I attended Friday night’s presentation of the Greatest Show on Earth. I went to say goodbye to a part of America’s heritage and compare the current show with the production I attended about eight or nine years ago and what I recall from my first such encounter as a little boy.

This was the first Ringling Bros. experience for Carter, a pentalingual Manhattan attorney, free-market activist, and performing cellist.

The crisply renovated Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum — now called NYCB Live — was the last stop for what Ringling Bros. CEO Kenneth J. Feld called a traveling “town without a Zip code.” On Friday, this legendary act showcased visual wonders, daring feats, and constant surprises.

Neal K. Carter and the author at the circus, May 19, 2017.

The often-stunning highlights included a half-dozen giant, silky balls that dangled from the ceiling like Christmas-tree ornaments. The silken cloth suddenly fell away and revealed a contortionist inside each plastic globe. These incredibly flexible young women twisted themselves into knots while cracking the plastic containers like eggs. They then hung by their ankles from the two clear hemispheres, perhaps 30 feet from the ground. Naturally, they made it look easy.

Before long, seven motorcyclists zoomed inside a see-through sphere of cross-hatched steel bars. Within this structure, their paths swiftly crisscrossed, but never collided. The slightest miscalculation would have made this look like a pileup at the Superbowl of Motocross, but inside a space smaller than a one-car garage. The effect resembled electrons hurtling within a nucleus, rather than outside of it — the laws of chemistry be damned.

Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election.

There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers.

Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration.

Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as incapable of properly vetting travelers to the U.S.

The first lady did not work for an elite escort or prostitute service. She never said that she and young Barron Trump would not be moving to the White House. Barron does not have autism.

Trump’s father never ran racist ads as a supposed candidate in a purported political campaign. Kellyanne Conway denies that in a private conversation between segments on MSNBC, she privately remarked to hosts that she had to take a shower after working for Trump.

Donald Trump never suggested to the Mexican president that the U.S. was going to invade Mexico. Nor did Trump plan to mobilize the National Guard to send back illegal aliens.

He did not remove a Martin Luther King bust from the White House.

There was no evidence that he ever promised to ease Russian sanctions (much less that he promised the Russians he would be “flexible” after he was elected). He did not short the FBI of resources to conduct an investigation into supposed Russian collusion. He did not go to Moscow and watch prostitutes in his bed urinate where Barack Obama had previously slept.

His deputy attorney general did not threaten to resign over the Comey firing.

We have no idea whether Trump really gets two scoops of ice cream while limiting his guests to one.

And we have no idea whether Trump really gets two scoops of ice cream while limiting his guests to one, or pads around in a bathrobe in the early evening, or cannot find the light switch in the White house.

Yet all that is what daily we hear and read.

President Clinton lowered the bar on accepting terrorists. The fact that vermin, terrorist Arafat was such a frequent visitor to the Clinton White House, and now terrorist Mahmoud Abbas is treated so cordially, make the presence of Oscar Lopez predictable…..rsk
The announcement that the 2017 Puerto Rican Day Parade would honor seditionist and Puerto Rican independentista Oscar López Rivera as a “National Freedom Hero” has led several sponsors of the parade to withdraw their endorsements. López Rivera was a leader of FALN, which conducted a campaign of deadly bombings around New York City and Chicago in the 1970s, and he was recently released from prison after having his 75-year sentence commuted by President Obama. Goya Foods, a significant backer of the parade for its entire 60-year history, has backed out, as have the NYPD Hispanic Society, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and the other police unions representing the NYPD senior ranks. NYPD commissioner James O’Neill announced this afternoon that he will not march in the parade because he deems Lopez Rivera a “terrorist.”

In response, city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito today held a “rally to defend the parade,” though the parade itself is not in need of defense, its only sticking point being the inclusion of a convicted terrorist as guest of honor. About 50 ardent supporters of Rivera assembled in a meeting hall at the headquarters of 32BJ, the building-service workers local of labor powerhouse SEIU, where they displayed banners and chanted, “We stand with the Puerto Rican Parade/Oscar López is our hero today!”

A number of speakers addressed the press and the few supporters of the rally who were not already on the dais. Estela Vazquez, executive vice president of SEIU 1199 (the nation’s largest union local), explained that “George Washington fought for his country, and Oscar López Rivera fought for his country. He should be celebrated just as George Washington is celebrated.” This parallel might hold up if López Rivera were being celebrated in his homeland of Puerto Rico, but it stretches credulity to demand that New York City celebrate the man who actually blew up Fraunces Tavern (where George Washington bade his officers farewell), and who in fact murdered and mutilated New Yorkers.

Much of the rally consisted of similarly flaccid historical comparisons. Supporters chanted, “Oscar López Rivera/Puerto Rico’s Mandela,” and speakers drew a connection between the fight against apartheid and Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence. The trouble with this parallel, however embarrassing it may be for the Puerto Ricans, is that black South Africans voted overwhelmingly to overturn the apartheid system, while the independence movement in Puerto Rico has virtually zero support. In four referenda held since Oscar Lopez Rivera went to prison, the “Independence” line has received between 2 percent to 5 percent of the vote.

He has come to America’s college capital this weekend to watch two of his grandsons walk across finely appointed stages to collect their degrees: a pair of life’s milestone moments that Andrew Burian will treasure like none other.

Commencement season is a time of hugs and handshakes and high-fives. Everywhere you look there is a story. Under every cap and gown, through the sometimes glistening eyes of every mom and dad, there are personal tales ranging from utter relief to absolute triumph.

Andrew Burian, now 86, has a story like that. Except his is stunning, horrific, and life-changing.

And even though his body and his memory are not what they used to be, as he cheers his beloved grandkids’ academic accomplishments on Sunday, his mind will doubtlessly carry him back to those darkest of days when a future of sunshine and splendor — any future at all, really — seemed beyond imagination.

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“It’s extremely powerful,’’ said Jordan Anhalt, 23, who will receive his bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Brandeis on Sunday. “I grew up with the duality in which other people recognized him as a survivor. He is a hero. But to me, he’s always been my grandfather. I’m so grateful he’s here.’’

He’s here.

It’s such a simple thought. But it belies an unspeakable, awful history that makes Burian’s presence all the more powerful. The blue-ink tattoo on his arm — B 14611 — helps tell his story.

He grew up in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains in a small town in Czechoslovakia, where his father ran a lumber company and young Andrew lived an idyllic childhood surrounded by cousins, aunts, and uncles, and a loving extended family that circumscribed his little world.

And then a madman named Hitler, whose maniacal voice blared from loudspeakers, tightened his grip. Burian’s family home was confiscated and converted into a police station. Curfews were enforced. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars that made them targets.

What followed, recorded on the pages of history books, is forever seared into Burian’s memory.

At the tip of a bayonet, his family was deported to a ghetto in Hungary. Ahead lay cattle cars with barbed-wire windows, the brutal searches of women, the screams of small children — and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

His mother, grandfather, and great-uncle were murdered immediately upon arrival. Young Andrew’s survival would depend on wit and courage in the face of German soldiers who shot into the ranks of concentration camp crowds just for the sport of it.

In his memoir, “A Boy from Bustina. A son. A survivor. A witness,’’ Burian recalls the moment when he was separated from his father and brother.

“My blood drained to my feet as I realized that I was left alone in Birkenau without parents and without a sibling,’’ he wrote. “All I could do was attempt to stifle my sobs and hold my hand across my mouth as I called for my mama, papa, and Tibi” — his brother.

Before he was forced to leave his son, Ernest Burian gave instructions to him that the boy remembered for the rest of his life:

“My child, I have three things to say to you: Keep yourself clean so you don’t get sick; be a mensch and don’t let them make an animal out of you; and remember, whoever lives through this inferno goes home and waits for the others. God willing, we will all meet at home.’’

Andrew Burian, who was reunited with his brother and their father, after the camps’ liberation, arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor in the spring of 1948. He was 17 and had $10 in his pocket.

‘A jackass can kick down a barn,” said the legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn. “But it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Democrats should reflect on that wisdom as they consider the special counsel now appointed to investigate President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. In the short term, the inquiry will probably hurt Mr. Trump and feed attempts to drive him from office. But in the end the president’s attackers will pay a price.

The political and media hysteria surrounding the Trump administration lies somewhere on the repulsiveness scale between the Jacobin excesses of the French Revolution and the McCarthy era. Thus far the public knows of no presidential action that would justify impeachment. Never mind, the crowd cries, let us have the verdict now. We can do the trial later.

What about discussions between Trump campaign advisers and Russian or other foreign leaders? Don’t they count as high crimes and misdemeanors? No, such conversations take place all the time in national campaigns.

What about the firing of FBI Director James Comey ? Wasn’t that suspicious? No, Mr. Comey disregarded the Justice Department chain of command and the normal proprieties of his office. He made public statements about ongoing investigations. He allowed it to leak that the president had suggested leniency for Mike Flynn, the former White House adviser now under investigation. A presidential suggestion of that nature would be neither illegal nor unprecedented.

What about Mr. Trump’s disclosure of classified information during a meeting with Russian leaders? It’s a tempest in a teapot. The president has the authority to classify or declassify information as he wishes. I have witnessed other presidents doing it.

What about Mr. Trump’s executive order declaring a short-term pause on immigration from countries with active terrorist movements? It may have been poorly handled, but other presidents have done similar things.

What about all Mr. Trump’s flip-flopping? Shouldn’t a president be trustworthy and reliable? Yes, but when Mr. Trump has reversed his campaign pledges it has been mostly for the good.

If Mr. Trump were a conventional president, these missteps would be shrugged off as growing pains or considered worthy of only mild reproof. President Trump, it is true, lacks the knowledge, experience and temperament for the office. His crude narcissism is grating. He has carelessly contributed to his problems with heedless public statements. He nonetheless was duly elected and should be given the leeway that new presidents are traditionally afforded. CONTINUE AT SITE

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is lost, [but] our analysis is that Comey’s

letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be [sic], stopped our momentum.”

Hillary Clinton in a call to donors,

As reported in the NY Times, Nov. 15, 2016

It had been universally acknowledged that FBI Director James Comey over-played his hand last July when he, essentially, indicted Mrs. Clinton, but then exonerated her. In doing so, he acted as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. He did it again on October 28, when he re-opened the investigation. His meeting with the President regarding Mr. Flynn was the day after the latter had been fired. Then, with crocodile tears, he claimed to be “mildly nauseous” that he might have “swayed” the election; but, he assured us, he would do it all over again. He played first for the Left, and then for the Right. He may be a qualified investigator, but his power grab was reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover.

When I first heard that he had been fired, I thought it a “dog bites man” story, something expected. However, the righteous indignation from the supercilious and hypocritical Left has turned it into a “man bites dog” story. Rarely have so many morally bereft politicians, along with their obsequious media accomplices, invoked so virtuously their vexations.

One could argue that the optics in Comey’s firing were bad. But when, with the press Mr. Trump has received, would have been a good time? Perhaps he could have alerted Congressional leaders as to his intentions? But surely that information would have leaked. Could he have prepared his staff, so that a replacement could have been named within a day or two? Perhaps. But, to Washington’s establishment, Mr. Trump is a pariah, an outcast who arrived at the White House without their help; and he belittles them – unforgivable sins for those who work along the banks of the Potomac.

Democrats have made much of the fact that the FBI is investigating possible “collusion” of the Trump team with the Russians. That investigation will go on regardless of Director Comey presence. Four Congressional committees are looking into the same allegations, suggesting redundancies, especially since some investigations have been underway for almost a year, without any proof of “collusion.” The hiring of Robert Mueller should assuage members of the “Resistance,” though the process will be long and won’t necessarily find an answer. Delay, however, will be injurious to Republicans’ agenda.

This strategy of the Left entails risk for democracy. The goal is to render Mr. Trump rudderless, to cause him to resign or be impeached. They take pleasure in the effects their efforts have produced. Should they succeed, they will widen divisions. They will hurt institutions. My guess is they misinterpret the consequences of what they do. Thanks to Harry Reid and, now, Mitch McConnell, implementation of the “nuclear option” has already meant that political bipartisanship and reconciliation are less likely. Would a forced resignation of a duly elected President for political and retaliatory purposes help heal our wounds? I think not. It would aggravate them. It’s a perilous game they have chosen to play.

“July 3, 2013 Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom speaks during the Intelligence and Security select committee hearing at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand. Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom wants to livestream his legal battle against the United States on YouTube. Dotcom’s lawyers have asked if they can film his extradition appeal, which began Monday, Aug. 29, 2016, at New Zealand’s High Court in Auckland. The U.S. opposes the plan. (Mark Mitchell/New Zealand Herald via AP, File)”

Infamous internet entrepreneur/hacker Kim Dotcom has offered to give the United States Congress “written testimony with evidence that Seth Rich was Wikileaks source” — if Congress agrees to include the Seth Rich case in their Russia probe.

Seth Rich is the Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down in Northwest D.C. near his home last July. Police have called it a “botched robbery,” but — curiously — nothing was stolen from him, including “his wallet, cell phone, keys, watch or necklace worth about $2,000.”

On July 22, just twelve days after Rich was murdered, WikiLeaks published emails that prompted the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz from her role as DNC chairperson on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has insisted all along that the DNC emails were not hacked by the Russians, and he has implied that Rich was indeed the source of the emails. On August 9, WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murdered DNC staffer.

The founder of Megaupload.com and Mega.co.nz on Saturday claimed that he knows Seth Rich was the source of the DNC email leaks because he himself was involved.

Dotcom said that he would be meeting with his legal team on Monday and would issue a statement on the matter on Tuesday.

Fox News host Sean Hannity expressed interest in having Kim Dotcom on his Fox News radio and television shows this week.