The Truth About Art Robinson

Desperate to overcome the growing voter preference for Art Robinson in the race for Oregon's 4th district U.S. Congressional seat, DeFazio’s campaign is circulating an astonishing number of lies. These lies consist of out-of-context quotations to support falsehoods of omission, distortions, and outright fabrications about Art Robinson.

DeFazio has refused all challenges to debate his dishonorable claims (or the real policy issues of the campaign) man-to-man with Art in an ordinary debate format that allows presentation of evidence and reasoned argument. DeFazio prefers to hide behind an expensive campaign of Internet and media mudslinging, paid for by large amounts of money he has collected in exchange for favors to special interests and lobbyists in Washington.

Socialized Medicine and the U.S. Constitution

Americans have the finest medical care in the world, regardless of the fact that government and government-sponsored special interests have significantly raised the cost. On Sunday, March 21, however, Peter DeFazio cast one of the four deciding votes in favor of a vast government takeover of the entire U.S. medical care system, funded in part by taking $500 billion out of Medicare.

No more will doctors and their patients decide on their medical care. These decisions are to be transferred to hundreds of thousands of new bureaucrats in the hundreds of new government agencies that this bill creates. Trillions of dollars from new taxes, borrowing, and money printing will be spent, and medical care will become increasingly unavailable and lower in quality.

Moreover, this bill violates the U.S. Constitution. Physicians who have spent 10 to 15 years or more in college and medical school to acquire their skills, will be told who to treat and who not to treat, what medical methods to use, how much to charge, and how to conduct every detail of their professional lives. Peter DeFazio has no medical skills, but he voted to use government power to enslave physicians to force them to practice medicine in such a way as to buy campaign support for himself.

On April 1, 2010 on KPNW at 11:20 AM, Bill Lundun asked DeFazio, "Do you believe that it is constitutional for the government to tell people that they have to purchase health insurance?" DeFazio replied, "Well, um, I'm not a lawyer . . . that's why we have courts . . . Congress often passes laws that are of dubious or questionable constitutionality."

DeFazio has sworn 12 times to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That is his job description. No one should hold office as a U.S. Congressman who will vote for any bill or law that he is not absolutely convinced is in complete accord with the U.S. Constitution.

Art Robinson will vote to repeal the 2,000-page medical bill that DeFazio helped to pass and to defund the entire medical program that it created.

Defazio has voted consistently for a socialist (now called "progressive") agenda, regardless of the fact that most of this agenda is unConstitutional. Art Robinson will always make certain that every action he takes is entirely in accord with the U.S. Constitution.

Public Lands.

Art Robinson thinks that public lands (property that is owned communally by the public) should be used for public recreation such as hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing. Also, the natural resources of this land (forests, minerals, and water) should be available for public use. We must restore these lands to public use rather than allowing political interests to lock them away as “government” property rather than “public” property.

In Oregon District 4 this is especially important with respect to forest use. During DeFazio’s terms of office, logging on public land in District 4 has fallen by 93%, and DeFazio is promoting a plan to make that 100% – no use whatever of trees on public land. This policy has devastated our forest products industries and damaged our forests, giving District 4 a very high unemployment rate.

Defazio has voted to lock away our public lands and prevent our use of these lands for recreation and resources. Art Robinson will vote to restore this public property to public use.

Wall Street campaign funding.

The Art Robinson campaign is entirely funded by contributions from private individuals. More than 3,000 individuals have contributed about $750,000 to the Art Robinson for Congress primary and general election campaigns. Because of Federal election limits, the contributions from any single source are less than 1% of this total.

Art's contributors are scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, businessmen, laborers, retired people, and others from all walks of life. A few individuals, whose combined contributions comprise less than 2% of the total, list securities investing as their primary professions. Many of the others have, of course, invested their savings and retirement incomes directly or indirectly in the stock markets. These markets serve as the source of funds for a large percentage of the businesses, industries, and jobs in our free-enterprise economy.

DeFazio's campaign falsely implies that Robinson’s acceptance of campaign funds from contributors who invest in the stock markets makes Art a tool of Wall Street.

Investment and saving (and those who participate) should be encouraged. These economic activities are essential to our nation and the preservation of our liberty. DeFazio consistently votes against American free enterprise and the institutions that encourage it. Robinson will vote to encourage free enterprise and the jobs and prosperity that it makes possible.

Taxes and Regulations for the Oil and Energy Industry.

Art Robinson advocates lower taxation and less government interference in essentially all American activities. In this context, he has called for lower taxation of all U.S. energy industries and those who work in these industries, including nuclear, hydroelectric, coal, oil, natural gas, solar, wind, biofuel, and all other energy production enterprises. Art has written extensively about this. While he, of course, includes the oil industry, which powers a large part of our industrial civilization, Art has never called for reduced taxation solely for the oil industry, as DeFazio’s falsehood of omission implies.

We need a low-tax, moderately regulated free industrial environment in which our industries can build needed new energy generation installations without tax subsidies and without government favors or impediments. Otherwise, these new installations will continue to be built abroad instead of in the United States, resulting in job losses, trade deficits, and competitive disadvantages for us as compared with other nations.

DeFazio votes for higher taxes on American business, industry, and individuals. Art Robinson will vote for lower taxes on all Americans and the businesses and industries that produce jobs and prosperity.

Returning to Locally Controlled Public Education.

Each American community has students, teachers, school buildings, local tax funding for its schools, and a culture of social life, sports, and recreation centered in its schools. This school year and in the foreseeable future, these schools will be open and conducting their activities.

In the 1950s, when Art Robinson and his generation attended them, these schools were locally controlled and were academically the best in the world. They prepared him for Caltech and a wonderful career in science. Now, however, these same U.S. schools are academically among the worst in the world, and Oregon schools are among the academically worst in the U.S. Yet, teachers and students of the same abilities work in these schools. What has happened?

The problem is that the dead hand of central government and government-empowered special interests have gained control of our schools and operate them for the good of bureaucrats and special interests rather than for the good of the students.

Art is an educator. He has taught, directly and indirectly, tens of thousands of American students in grades 1 to 12, college, and graduate school. He has also written extensively (and at times with great passion) about education and the national tragedy that 50 million young Americans are not receiving the academic knowledge and skills that they deserve and need - knowledge and skills that were once available in America's excellent locally controlled public schools.

If the oppressive influence of central government power - and those who improperly wield it - is withdrawn from the backs of our teachers and students (by getting central government out of the business of public education), our schools will once again become locally controlled and academic excellence will return.

Since 50 million young Americans are currently attending these schools, these changes should be made as quickly as possible. Moreover, all sensible methods of partially compensating for these academic insufficiencies - home schooling, charter schools, school vouchers, merit pay for teachers, Internet classes, and other innovations - should be encouraged.

Art Robinson has written extensively and in strong terms about this serious problem - as have many other outstanding American educators. By lifting tiny parts of these writings out of context and not revealing the overall messages, DeFazio is spreading the ridiculous claim that Art wants to close American schools.

DeFazio votes for more power and money to the special interests that now control our schools and votes against all mitigating innovations such as charter schools, vouchers, and merit pay for teachers. These special interests, in return, give him election campaign support. Art Robinson will vote to return our schools to local control.

Nuclear Waste Disposal.

Art Robinson and many other knowledgeable scientists and engineers have written extensively about the nuclear waste disposal problem. They have explored all possible technologically sensible alternatives.

First, spent nuclear fuel recycling should be permitted in the United States. This provides lower cost fuel and reduces the volume of nuclear waste by more than 95%. This sensible practice is permitted in most other countries.

Second, the remaining radioactive byproducts of nuclear-electric power generation can be safely encapsulated and stored in special depositories. Proposed locations have included deep underground or even in deep ocean trenches that are so remote that mixing with the surface ocean is essentially negligible.

This storage has been criticized, however, by antinuclear activists by means of very improbable scenarios wherein the stored material eventually comes in contact with people. Since this small amount of material is dangerously radioactive, these fear scenarios have prevented sensible permanent storage.

Third, there is another alternative that renders this material permanently safe. The material can be diluted until harmless and its radiation so slight as to be undetectable from naturally occurring background radiation.

Suppose that one has 1,000 pounds of ordinary table salt that has become dirty or otherwise undesirable and wishes to dispose of it. Long term storage has disadvantages. It can leak out of containers and cause corrosion. If it gets into the soil, it can kill plants and spoil the environment. If, however, the salt is dissolved in water and carefully dispersed in the ocean, it is gone. There is so much salt in the ocean that this addition is completely undetectable and entirely without environmental consequences.

Radioactivity is similar. The ocean contains vast amounts of radioactive, radiation-producing substances already. If the very small amounts of radiation-producing byproducts of nuclear reactors were similarly dispersed in the ocean, they would be as entirely undetectable as the salt. Safely returned to the environment in this highly diluted state, these materials would be permanently gone and completely harmless.

While recycling and careful dispersal is one reasonable solution to this problem, it may never be used because so much misleading information has been published about it. The DeFazio campaign claims that, because Art Robinson has included this possibility (among the others) in his writings, he wants to "dump" radioactive waste in the ocean. This claim by the DeFazio campaign is illustrative. It is false in substance. It is another falsehood of omission, but the omitted information requires explanation beyond political sound bites.

DeFazio votes against safe disposal of nuclear waste and against all efforts to provide nuclear electric energy to the American people. Art Robinson will vote for a return to the sensible regulatory practices that permitted the construction of the safe, clean, economical nuclear power plants that now provide Americans with 20% of their electricity and should permit the construction of many more such installations. These include the small nuclear power plants being planned by NuScale, a Corvallis, Oregon industry with potential to provide very large numbers of jobs and revenue for Oregon District 4.

Racism and Gender-Bias in Education.

Art Robinson's lifetime of work in education has included no gender or race bias whatever. Moreover, he has long been complimented for his unwavering commitment to the highest possible quality of education and quality of life for all men and women regardless of individual differences.

Art has often written about the deplorable fact that African-American and Latin-American students, on a nation-wide average, perform even more poorly on academic tests than do white students in government, special interest controlled schools. This is largely the result of bureaucratic and other governmental biases and leads to fewer minority students in our graduate schools.

By contrast, among home schooled students throughout the United States (Art and his family provide curricula for 3% of these students), there is no gender or race difference in performance. In home schools, both genders and all races perform essentially identically on standardized tests.

Many minority parents seek to avoid this problem with vouchers or through charter schools. Peter DeFazio votes with the powerful Washington special interests and against all such innovations.

DeFazio's votes against improvements in American schools have the effect of continuing the race bias in our schools. Whether intentional or not, this is deplorable. Art Robinson will vote for locally controlled public schools, so that all students of all races will receive much better academic educations than they do today.

Technological Risks.

The advance of science, engineering, and technology has doubled the average human life expectancy in developed countries and can, if political interference to human liberty is overcome, do this for all people in all nations. People are the ultimate resource. Free people, working with the vast abundant resources of the Earth, can accomplish almost anything.

All technology, however, involves risks as well as rewards. There are an estimated 25,000 oil wells in and around the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, we witnessed an accident involving one of those wells. This challenge has been met and is being corrected by human and natural processes. Each year, approximately 40,000 Americans are killed and many more injured in automobile accidents while using oil-powered technology. We minimize these deaths as best we can and then accept the remaining risk in return for the benefits of automobiles.

We cannot ban knowledge of nuclear physics and engineering from the world, so we live with these risks. If, however, we are wise, we can also enjoy the vast benefits of nuclear energy in supplying us with clean, safe, abundant, and very inexpensive nuclear-electric energy.

We accept the risks involved in the use of medical technology – risks we accept in return for the much greater benefits. Life itself involves constant risks, but we must not diminish our lives as a result of fear of those risks.

DeFazio falsely claims that Art Robinson wants no taxes, regulations, penalties or other impediments to unbridled technological risks. This is entirely false. Art advocates sensible levels of taxation, regulation, and reasonable compensation for errors, rather than very high levels that stifle innovation and destroy jobs and prosperity.

DeFazio votes consistently against technological advance. Art Robinson will vote for a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise prosperous America.

Student Loans.

Education is especially important to success, whether that education consists of learning the many skills required for a productive life, usually outside of schoolrooms, or studying in college. Since college educations are expensive, many students borrow money for college.

As a faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, Art Robinson taught many undergraduate and graduate students. He understands the great value of college study, even if the student must borrow money to attend.

DeFazio voted for the "Obamacare" medical bill, which contains a provision limiting college loans solely to government agencies. Under this legislation, the options for college loans to students have been sharply reduced and put entirely into the hands of government bureaucrats. Art Robinson opposes permitting government bureaucrats to decide who will attend college and who will not. If elected, he will vote to repeal this intrusive bill.

Free Trade.

America's founders agreed with George Washington that Americans should trade freely with people throughout the world and decided that the U.S. government should depend upon tariffs for its income. Free trade is an important component of prosperity, job creation, and liberty.

There is, however, a large difference between free trade and free trade agreements that contain all sorts of special interest provisions favoring those whose lobbyists and influence were most influential in writing the agreements. Such agreements work against prosperity and liberty.

Art Robinson believes in freedom and liberty throughout America and throughout the world. In the case of trade, our government should be vigilant and guard against unfair trade practices in which other countries attempt to gain unfair advantages over American workers and industries.

Moreover, crushing taxation, onerous overregulation, and other government impediments to productive work should be removed from the backs of American workers and businesses so that they can compete successfully with those in other countries.

DeFazio consistently votes for bigger government, higher taxes, and more government burdens that impede American competitiveness. Art Robinson will vote for the liberty and economic freedom necessary to make our country once again the most productive, prosperous, and competitive in the world.

Wall Street.

"Wall Street," the current political term for America's stock, bond, commodities, and financial industries (which are actually located at many locations throughout our country) is now being politically demonized by DeFazio. Perhaps these industries have not contributed sufficiently to his campaign, although the transportation services part of "Wall Street" has given his campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars. Moreover, Obama and Pelosi, with whom DeFazio votes 86% of the time, have enormous funding from "Wall Street" and have given vast sums of taxpayer money to "Wall Street."

Even though these industries have been heavily regulated by government to such an extent that many of them are almost integral parts of government (marketing federal debt, insured by government agencies, and licensed and closely controlled by government bureaucrats), politicians are currently pretending to increase these regulations.

Art Robinson thinks that it would be better to stop providing tax-financed money and services to the "Wall Street" industries and to stop protecting them with Federal tax-financed bailouts. Then those who provide the best services at the lowest prices and who conduct their own affairs in a wise and frugal way would succeed, and those who do not would fail.

DeFazio wants big government (the same big government that has stolen trillions of dollars from the Social Security savings of its citizens, borrowed trillions from foreign countries, and accumulated tens of trillions in debts and obligations) to run "Wall Street." Perhaps government should first learn to run its own finances.

Oregon District 4 Campaign Finances. Both the Robinson campaign and the DeFazio campaign are receiving financial support from District 4 voters, with the Robinson campaign receiving the larger amount from this source. Each campaign also has substantial out-of-district support.

Art Robinson's campaign has received over half of its support from about 1,500 individuals throughout the United States (scientists, engineers, physicians, and many others) who know Art and his family and respect their hard work, accomplishments, and integrity.

Peter DeFazio has received over half of his support from corporations, lobbyists, and special interest organizations (who do little or no business in Oregon) for which he has done favors in Washington. These people hope to elect DeFazio to keep those favors coming.

Overall, as a result of the Washington special interest funding, DeFazio has more money, but the Robinson campaign is more frugal. So, if we and our outstanding campaign volunteers continue to work as hard and as effectively as we have so far, we can offset much of this difference.

Social Security and Medicare. The looting of these programs and dishonesty in managing these funds by the career politicians in Washington is deplorable. As a result, many older Americans have been forced into various welfare programs where their needs are very inadequately addressed.

Social Security and Medicare were established as savings programs, wherein the savings of American workers would be held in trust by the federal government and returned to them when needed later in life. Instead of this, however, ambitious and corrupt career politicians, including DeFazio, have spent all of this money. None is held in trust. (It is claimed that the funds are held in loans to the government itself, but there are no savings with which to pay these loans.)

Having stolen this money, these politicians are spending the savings that younger workers are entrusting to Social Security and Medicare in order to pay the older people, instead of saving these resources for the younger people as was agreed. Moreover, DeFazio is calling for even higher Social Security taxes in order to take more from young workers to compensate for this theft.

Career politicians have turned Social Security and Medicare into giant Ponzi schemes - schemes identical to that for which Bernie Madoff is now in prison as would be any other individual who behaved in this way.

The Social Security and Medicare funds were looted by Congress in the name of the American people, so every cent must be repaid by the American people. Every Social Security and Medicare recipient must receive full repayment of every penny he or she is owed. This repayment must come first and before discretionary government expenditures.

In addition, these programs must be changed so that future payments by workers are saved - not looted. Also, it may be wise to make future participation voluntary. Why should we force people to entrust their retirement savings to a government program that has proved entirely dishonest and corrupt in the past? With voluntary participation, career politicians could not loot the program because such actions would motivate people to avoid it.

DeFazio, while posing as a friend of the elderly, has consistently voted to continue looting the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to pay for entirely unrelated government programs. Art Robinson will vote to stop this looting and to honor, in every respect, the contracts with Social Security and Medicare recipients - including a large increase in payments to compensate for the ravages of inflation, which have been largely ignored.