OREGON ISSUES
1.     We have worked for real campaign finance reform. Oregon Democrats and Republicans have never enacted limits on political campaign contributions but have repealed voter-enacted limits 3 times. Democrats in state office are refusing to enforce the campaign finance reform Measure 47 enacted by Oregon voters in 2006. Campaign spending for Oregon state offices has skyrocketed from $4 million in 1996 to $57 million in 2010. Spending by candidates for Oregon Legislature increased another 13% in 2012. Winning a contested race for the Legislature now typically costs over $600,000, sometimes over $1 million.  

2.     The initiative and referendum should be available to grass-roots efforts. The Democrat Secretary of State is now discarding over 30% of all voter signatures on initiative petitions due to arbitrary, hyper-technical, and unnecessary rules, raising the cost of petition drives so high that only corporations, unions and the very wealthy can afford to use it.  

3.     The State Treasurer should direct part of Oregon's $87 billion of investment funds to invest in local public works and jobs for Oregonians instead of vulture capitalists, corporate raiders, leveraged buyout artists, and fossil fuel corporations and vendors.  

4.     We want fair taxation. Oregon has the 4th highest income taxes of any state on lower-income working families and is still at the bottom in taxes on corporations.  

5.     We want to stop government promotion of gambling, including video poker, video slots, and approval of private casinos.  

6.     We oppose installation of police "spy cameras" and use of drones to spy on Oregon citizens.  

7.     We oppose using public money to subsidize rail transport of oil or coal through Oregon communities.

The Oregon Progressive Party calls on Oregon's Attorney General to follow the lead of New York state's Attorney General, who on November 9th, 2015 “ordered DraftKings and FanDuel ... to immediately stop accepting bets from New York residents.”

NY Attorney General Schneiderman described these daily fantasy sports sites to be “...leaders of a massive, multi-billion-dollar scheme intended to....fleece sports fans across the county.”

Oregon's sports fans are no less cheated by the operation of these on-line betting parlors. Why silence from Oregon Attorney General Rosenblum?

The Oregon Progressive Party throughout its 7-year history has consistently opposed the legalization of gambling and "government promotion of gambling, including video poker, video slots, and approval of private casinos." We call upon the Oregon Attorney General to order fantasy sports gambling operations to stop accepting bets from Oregon residents.

Greedy tobacco companies continue their efforts to entice children to smoke by paying merchants to place tobacco products at low counter levels in stores, where children will see them, and by packaging tobacco products to be attractive to children. They look like candy.

SmokeFree Oregon has produced television ads calling our attention to these practices and asks that we take action.

The Oregon Progressive Party calls on our Legislature to pass laws banning the display of tobacco products in stores, period.  Anyone who want to buy tobacco products should have to ask at the check-out counter.  If the Legislature will not do this, then our county and city governments should do so.

Our health care system is broken. We pay more for health care than any other industrialized nation, but we cover the smallest percentage of people. Under the Affordable Care Act, many Americans remain without access to health care. For lack of health insurance, thousands of Americans die each year. For those who do have health insurance, large co-pays and deductibles send many into debt. And it's the taxpayer who picks up the tab for the subsidized plans. The Affordable Care Act is less than a band-aid. It is a giveaway to the insurance companies.

Imagine if health care were a human right. Imagine a health care system that puts people before profits. Imagine if everyone had access to health care. Imagine health care that doesn't push people into bankruptcy. Imagine doctors and patients making health care decisions, not insurance companies. Imagine health care including dental, optical, and mental health care for all.

The Oregon Progressive Party supports local and federal efforts to create universal access to health care. Everyone in, no one out. We need health care, not health insurance.

"Of all the forms of inequity, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane."
--Martin Luther King Jr., 1966

We support the efforts of these organizations:

Health Care For All Oregon - hcao.org
Mad As Hell Doctors - MadAsHellDoctors.com
Simgle Payer Action - SinglePayerAction.org
Healthcare Now! - healthcare-now.org
Physicians for a National Health Program - pnhp.org

The OPP has issued a Policy Statement on Police Body Cameras supporting required use of body cameras to record police interactions with civilians.

Oregon Progressive Party Policy Statement on Police Body Cameras

• The Oregon Progressive Party calls for all Oregon Police to be equipped with body cameras as soon as certain questions are addressed.  We recommend that such questions be addressed during the 2014 Oregon legislative session. 
   
• The Oregon Progressive Party calls on the Portland City Council to put body cameras on the Portland Police to prevent a systemic pattern of excessive force against citizens. 

Police in Oregon should be required to use body video cameras to document police interactions with citizens. This will lead to safer police encounters for everyone involved. Recent Oregon jury awards and settlements for police excessive force have put this debate over the use of body cameras at the forefront, making this the perfect time to have a healthy discussion on this issue. 
 
Police agencies around the country have started using body cameras with encouraging results. In Rialto, California, police officers have employed body cameras since February 2012. Since police body cameras have become mandatory, the number of complaints filed against officers dropped by 88% and use of force reports by officers dropped almost 60%. Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan applauded the City of Rialto’s use of body cameras on police in her ruling that struck down New York’s "stop and frisk" policy. The New York City Police Department now plans to employ such cameras on some of their officers as a pilot program to gauge the effect on the number of complaints and use of force reports they write and receive.
 
With mounting scrutiny over police shootings and misconduct throughout the country, there is no question that body cameras should be mandatory on Oregon police officers, but practical questions remain about implementation and the risk of civil liberties violations. Some of the questions that need to be addressed before Oregon police can begin using body cameras are as follows:

• Will officers be allowed to turn their cameras on and off? If so, when and how?
• Where will the information and video content be stored? 
• Who will have access to the content? And will officers or higher-ups be allowed to edit content?
• Will the public through public record requests be allowed to access content? And how transparent must the police be with allowing content to be accessed by the public? 
• How much storage space will be needed to store all the content? And how secure will that information be in this day and age where hackers can access almost anything connected to the Internet?
• Oregon State law requires notification when police are recording people.  How will that affect police interaction with citizens?
• How much will it cost to implement a mandatory body camera policy on all Oregon Police officers?

The Oregon Progressive Party calls on the Portland City Council to put body cameras on the Portland Police to prevent a systemic pattern of excessive force against citizens.  
 
Federal Judge Michael Simon recently approved the City of Portland’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which called for reforms of Portland Police policies, training and oversight. The settlement was reached after a federal investigation into excessive force used by Portland Police officers found a pattern of using excessive force against citizens who suffer from mental illness. In Judge Simon’s ruling, he stated his support for the use of body cameras on police officers but did not rule it mandatory.
 
Mayor Charlie Hales has publicly stated that he is in favor of putting body cameras on Portland Police officers. In an email to the Oregonian, Hales says: 

"We've long been proponents of body cameras but the technology wasn't good enough and they were expensive. The Bureau piloted a variation of clip-on cameras for the Traffic Division this summer to see if they live up to expectations. We have heard that the officers who used them like them.”
 
The Portland City Council approved $800,000 for in-car video cameras, but Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson has since indicated that police are now considering using that money to put body cameras on the 600 uniformed Portland Police officers. The body cameras would include patrol, school police, gang enforcement and traffic officers. 
 
Two of the City of Portland’s largest jury verdicts against the police for misconduct and excessive force have been rendered in the past two years. We as citizens are tired of police misconduct and excessive force, and these jury awards are a statement of this discontent. It’s clear that the time for body cameras is upon us, but we will need to work out the logistical challenges of implementation to make sure we protect our citizens' civil liberties.

The United States needs to:

Get out of Iraq.
Stay out of Syria.

Get out of Iraq.
Stay out of Syria.

The Obama Administration now says we have to do the same thing we already did in Iraq for over a decade.  But this time somehow military intervention in Iraq (and Syria) will work, instead of just continuing to make the situation worse for the U.S. and for those who live in Iraq and Syria.  Not to be outdone by the Bush folks, Obama wants to expand U.S. military strikes into Syria and to arm "the moderate Syrian opposition."  The CIA has already been trying to do that, but the weapons seem to end up in the hands of ISIS.

And, say the hawks, we have to "train and equip the Iraqi Army," which we already did for 10 years--before they ripped off their uniforms and turned over their weapons to ISIS.  And, although until about a week ago the two worst regimes in the Middle East were supposedly Iran and Syria, now the U.S. is allying itself with those Shiite regimes against their Sunni enemies.

The only reason the war hawks care about Iraq and adjacent areas is because somehow a lot of Arab sand got deposited on top of our oil.  Protecting the oil there does not benefit consumers; it only secures more profits for the oil companies.

Get out of Iraq.
Stay out of Syria.

OREGON ISSUES

1.     We have worked for real campaign finance reform. Oregon Democrats and Republicans have never enacted limits on political campaign contributions but have repealed voter-enacted limits 3 times. Democrats in state office are refusing to enforce the campaign finance reform Measure 47 enacted by Oregon voters in 2006. Campaign spending for Oregon state offices has skyrocketed from $4 million in 1996 to $57 million in 2010. Spending by candidates for Oregon Legislature increased another 13% in 2012. Winning a contested race for the Legislature now typically costs over $600,000, sometimes over $1 million.  

2.     The initiative and referendum should be available to grass-roots efforts. The Democrat Secretary of State is now discarding over 30% of all voter signatures on initiative petitions due to arbitrary, hyper-technical, and unnecessary rules, raising the cost of petition drives so high that only corporations, unions and the very wealthy can afford to use it.  

3.     The State Treasurer should direct part of Oregon's $87 billion of investment funds to invest in local public works and jobs for Oregonians instead of vulture capitalists, corporate raiders, leveraged buyout artists, and fossil fuel corporations and vendors.  

4.     We want fair taxation. Oregon has the 4th highest income taxes of any state on lower-income working families and is still at the bottom in taxes on corporations.  

5.     We want to stop government promotion of gambling, including video poker, video slots, and approval of private casinos.  

6.     We oppose installation of police "spy cameras" and use of drones to spy on Oregon citizens.  

7.     We oppose using public money to subsidize rail transport of oil or coal through Oregon communities.

We are VERY different from the Establishment parties.
Our 2012 Voters Pamphlet Statement

 OREGON ISSUES

1)    We have worked for real campaign finance reform, not the phony bills promoted by the Democrats and Republicans, both of which opposed the 2006 Oregon campaign finance reform ballot measures.

2)    We want a State Bank to invest in jobs for Oregonians and to stop the State Treasurer and the Oregon Investment Council from jumping into bed with corporate raiders and fast-buck artists who lavish luxury travel and gifts on State employees.

3)    We want fair taxation.  Oregon has the 4th highest income taxes of any state on lower-income working families and is still at the bottom in taxes on corporations.  

4)    We want to stop government promotion of gambling (including video poker and video slots) and stop giving away $100 million per year in ridiculously high commissions to shops with video machines.

5)    We want to make the initiative and referendum again available to grass-roots efforts, instead of making it so complicated and expensive that only corporations and unions can afford to use it.

6)    We want to improve K-12 public education by giving parents and teachers more rights  to manage their neighborhood schools.

7)    We want social justice systems that are inclusive and that promote responsibility, safety, trust-building and equality.

8)    We advocate abolishing the Oregon Senate, leaving the 60-member Oregon House of Representatives.  Splitting the Legislature into two bodies allows both of them to play games and avoid responsibility.

9)    We want the Oregon Legislature to adopt the National Popular Vote plan so that Presidents are elected by popular vote.