Month: February 2016

I grew up in the 1980’s and and early 90’s. During that time we had a lot of cartoons. One of the classics during that era was Disney’s Duck Tales. If you watched it, you probably just said “Duck Tales…woo hoo!” in your head. The cartoon was about Uncle Scrooge McDuck and his great nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Uncle Scrooge is probably what Bernie Sanders fans would call a “One Per-center!” And Uncle Scrooge would go swimming through his money in his massive Money Bin that dominated the skyline of Duckburg. But the reality is wealthy people don’t have money bins. And while they keep some money in banks, much of their money is invested. It is in stocks, real estate, buildings, machinery, trucks, and even to cover payroll for you and me. So when Bernie fans say they want to take the one per-centers money away, I would ask, “How?” Make them sell their businesses? Force them to liquidate assets? We work in those buildings. We operate that equipment. We use those assets to make our incomes. Do Bernie fans realize they are demanding their own pink slips? They need to get the idea that there is no massive Money Bin. It doesn’t exist. They need to quit acting like the Beagle Boys and stop trying to steal things that do not belong to them! Stop hating the wealthy and start working to become one of them. That is how we reduce poverty and create prosperity. It takes three things: hard work, smart decisions, and a little luck. But people will find their luck increases when they focus on the first two. My Name is Brian Heinrich and I running for US Congress. Please like my facebook page and share my thoughts with others.

The Oregon Legislature just passed a minimum wage hike. These poor legislators have no idea that the law they passed will hurt the poorest and least educated among us. It is discriminatory. In fact, that is why a “Minimum Wage” was created in the first place.
One of the first minimum wage laws created was up in B.C, Canada. White loggers were being undercut by lower priced Japanese immigrant laborers. While these immigrants were not as skilled as their white counterparts, they made up for that by selling their labor at a lower price. This did not sit well with the traditional white loggers, as they were losing business. So they pressured the British Columbia government to mandate a “minimum wage” which all loggers would be paid. Well, since the white men could produce more per hour than these new immigrants, they were given the jobs forcing the Japanese loggers out of business. Government promoted racism at its finest.
Nice, huh? Destroy competition by not allowing people to work at a price they are willing to work for. This was done in Australia against the Chinese immigrants. It was also done in South Africa to keep blacks out of white dominated industries. I would call that Un-American. Except we did it too. The US joined the racist minimum wage program by legislating a minimum wage in the North to deter blacks from migrating from the South to escape the Democrat created Jim Crow Laws. You see, if people can’t get a job because their skill does not justify the wage, they will never be able to get a job. Never allowing them to improve their skills. And thus never allowing them to get a better job. By preventing people from entering the work force, you are not improving their lives, your are ruining them. In recent history, the minimum wages laws have been harshest on immigrants and the poor due to a lack of education. With limited skills, or cultural and language differences, it takes time for people to be trained and thus improve their worth. If the value of labor starts too high, they will never find employment.
Now Oregon’s legislature just passed a minimum wage hike. Now I don’t think our state legislators are racist. I don’t think they favor any particular group, or dislike any for that matter. I think they truly believe they are helping people. But like many liberals, they just believe so much that isn’t true. There is a difference between “Feel Good” economics and “Do Good” economics. Feel Good economics makes the person who supports an idea feel good about themselves even though the policy does not help and often hurts the persons it was intended to benefit. The intent is good, but the outcome is poor. Do Good economics are the ideas that have long been proven to benefit peoples lives even though they don’t put that warm fuzzy feeling in your heart right away. Not until you see that same person moving up the economic ladder providing a better life for themselves and their family do you realize you truly made a difference. My name is Brian Heinrich and I want to make a difference. That is why I am running for US Congress. Please be a fan of my facebook page and share my thoughts and ideas with others.

Do you remember Paul Harvey? The radio news anchor? His voice was used for a Chrysler Commercial a while back about why “God Made A Farmer.” I listened to Paul Harvey my whole life up until he passed away. I remember around the age of five riding with my dad in his pickup and Paul Harvey’s morning news update would come on the radio, or I would hear his “Rest of the Story” in the afternoon. I did not know what conservative or liberal was back then. I just knew Paul Harvey was a great broadcaster and had a great voice.

In 1965 Paul Harvey wrote and read a piece called, “Freedom to Chains.” In it, he discussed the history of taxation. From there he goes into the failure of great nations when they chose security over freedom and opportunity. Our nations problems are not new. In fact, they are very old. But we will continue to repeat history if we do not learn from it. To appreciate the brilliance that is Paul Harvey, I highly recommend listening to it on this link:

If you can’t listen, or if you are more of a reader, you can read the transcript below. Just know, no country has ever taxed itself or spent itself into prosperity. The people must work to get themselves there. And shedding your responsibility onto government does not free you of work, it just puts you into chains.

FULL TRANSCRIPT
Now then, what makes a nation strong? Taxes? (Heh) There’s nothing new about those either, the first income tax was paid by Abraham. It was written on a rock by the hand of Divinity and handed to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai (and you might want to remember this) it was at the flat rate of 10%. It promised the wrath of God on anybody who tampered with or violated that law. Christ was born in Bethlehem because Joseph was on his way to pay his taxes. Joseph was a relatively well-to-do landowner of the house and lineage of David. Yet the taxes exacted by Caesar Augustus were so exorbitant that he didn’t have enough money left over to employ a trusted messenger for the mission so, though his wife was great with child, he made the journey himself. And Christ was born in Bethlehem because Joseph was on his way to pay his taxes. And Christ was born in a manger because there was a housing shortage when he got there. Our problems are not new.
At Runnymede the Magna Carta was handed to King John on the end of a sword denying to royalty the right of unlimited taxation. Yet, you know it was for us, the American People, to become the first in recorded history ever voluntarily to surrender our rights to private property? Oh, yes we did. With an innocent sounding Constitutional Amendment, the Sixteenth, which says that “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived” and we forgot to put any limit to the extent to which we could tax ourselves. Conceivably we could be taxed out of all private property. We could be taxed not 70%, 80%, 90% but at 100%. We could be awakened one morning and find the government owns the farm, and the house, and the car, and HAS A MORTGAGE ON THE CHURCH! LEGALLY!
Historically, when any nation has taxed its people more than 25% of their national income, initiative was destroyed and that nation was headed for economic eclipse. Presently (1965) the American People are being taxed 33% of their total income.
History says we’ll roll forward on momentum for a little while, but we’d better get some more gas in the tank pretty quick. You see, ours is not the first “By-George” good government to arise on the world stage, there have been several. Rome, Spain, Greece, China, and others, and each enjoyed about a hundred and fifty years at its zenith, and that’s just about our time in the new world, and then each decayed away. Not one of them was ever destroyed by anybody else’s marching legions. Each rotted away morally, socially, culturally, economically simultaneously. You know one of the most cruel paradoxes’ of history is this, because each was a good government it bore bountiful fruit and when it bore bountiful fruit the people got fat, and when they got fat they got lazy, and when they got lazy they began to want to absolve themselves of personal responsibility and turn over to government to do for them things which traditionally they had been doing for themselves.

At first there appears to be nothing wrong asking government to perform some extra service for you, but if you ask government for extra services government, in order to perform its increasing function, has to get bigger, right? And as government gets bigger, in order to support its increasing size it has to, what? Tax the individual more, so the individual gets littler. And to collect the increased taxes requires more tax collectors so the government gets bigger and in order to pay the additional tax collectors, it has to tax the individual more so the government gets bigger and the individual get littler and the government gets bigger and the individual gets littler, until the government is all powerful and the individual is hardly anything at all. The government is all powerful and the people are cattle. Now, some believe that the need is for a vigorous, strong man to rise on the scene. To regulate and regiment the affairs of men. Yet, history tells us there have been several such.

Once upon a time there was a nation great and powerful and good. Few were suffering from the aftermath of war, from a depression. And then came upon the scene a leader, an idealist, self-confident, intolerant to criticism. A wise lady limited his early activities to combating the financial depression, nobody could argue with that, but in a while he began to regulate business and establish new rules to govern commerce and finance. Some of them in diametrical disagreement with the God-Made laws of supply and demand, but anybody who disagreed with those new rules was promptly fired. The new leader saw that under the old system of free enterprise landlords prospered, so he levied new taxes to take away their profits and destroy what he called the “Monopoly of Capital”. To please laborers, he controlled prices. To win the favor of the farmers, he gave them loans and subsidies. The National Debt mounted, alarmingly. Whenever anybody tried to tell him “that governments, even as people, can go broke, when they spend beyond their incomes”, he said “They just didn’t understand deficit finance.”

Well, what do you say? Did he build on rock or on sand? I say on sand. For you see this was the story of Emperor Su Tung Po (Tsu Tong Phao) who led China to its doom more than a Thousand Years Ago. I am satisfied with all my heart that if Uncle Sam ever does get whipped, here too, it will have been an Inside Job. It was internal decay, it was not external attack that destroyed the Roman Empire. Starting about 146 B.C. internal conditions in Rome were characterized by a welter of class wars and conflicts, street brawls, corrupt governors, lack of personal integrity and moral responsibility. About 290 years after Christ a Roman Emperor named Diocletian took over. He really grabbed the bull by the horns. He took over in a period of turmoil and severe depression. The first thing Diocletian did was call in the gold and closed the banks and raised the taxes. He reduced the power of the Senate. Delegated its power to a lot of little government bureaus.

Do you know they even had a Transportation Act back there, prescribing the fee required to rent one laden jackass per mile and at today’s rate of exchange it would have amounted to about 1/8th cent per mile? Which meant that in order to make a profit a jack ass would have to carry five passengers? That was simply beyond the capacity of the jack ass. Diocletian put millions of people on the public payroll, but when this failed to do the job, the country was still in trouble, he asked more personal powers for himself. For a brief while, incidentally, they were standby powers, but then he used them, all at once. He froze wages, he froze prices, he froze jobs, he stopped profits, he dictated to the farmer what he should plant, when and how he should sell it and for how much and he rationed food and what happened? The labor market closed down, incentive was gone. Farm life became dependent on bureaucratic red tape.

Exorbitant taxes cost the farmer his land. He kept for himself only a small plot on which he might grow turnips for his family. He lost the rest of it to the state and without food and with incentive gone city life stagnated and declined. And Rome past into what history has recorded as the “Dark Ages” lasting a thousand years. Just by turning to the left, the world has gone in circles. A nation would evolve from a monarchy, into an oligarchy, from oligarchy to dictatorship, from dictatorship to bureaucracy, from bureaucracy to pure democracy where, finally, the people would cry out from the chaos and confusion of the streets “Oh! Please God give us a king!” And God would give ’em a king and they’d have a monarchy again and start the whole silly cycle anew. Now either we will profit from the errors of their ways, or it follows as the night the day, our children are going to have to relive the dark ages, all over again. How come after thousands of years of experiment our new nation has come so far, so fast?

All this in less than two hundred years. What is the secret of our success? Well, I think it had to do with a basic American’s Creed. Perhaps it never passed a pioneer’s lips in this form, but if it had I think he would have said something like this: “I believe in my God, in my Country and in Myself.” I know that sounds like a trite too simple thing to say, and yet it’s a rare man today who will dare to stand up and say “I believe in my God and my Country and in Myself.” (And in that order.) When the early American pioneer first turned his eyes toward the west, there were only Indian trails or traces as they were called, for him to foll’er through the wilderness. Do you know today you can roller skate from Miami to Seattle, from San Diego to Plymouth Rock? In this little bitty instant, as historical time is measured, our 7% of the Earth’s population has come to possess more than half of all the world’s good things. How come?

Well sir, when that early pioneer turned his eyes toward the west he didn’t demand that somebody else look after him. He didn’t demand a free education. He didn’t demand a guaranteed rocking chair at eventide. He didn’t demand that somebody else take care of him if he got ill or got old. There was an old fashioned philosophy in those days that a man was supposed to provide for his own and for his own future. He didn’t demand a maximum amount of money for a minimum amount of work. Nor did he expect pay for no work at all… Come to think of it he didn’t demand anything. That hard-handed pioneer just looked out there at the rolling plains stretching away to the tall green mountains and then lifted his eyes to the blue skies and said “Thank you God. Now I can take it from here.” That spirit isn’t dead in our country, it’s dormant. It’s been discredited in some circles, driven underground, but it isn’t dead.

It’s just that a few seasons ago politicians baiting their hooks with free barbeque and trading a Ponzi promise for votes began telling us “we don’t want opportunity anymore, we want security.” “We don’t want opportunity” they said, “We want security.” And they said it so often we came to believe them. We wanted security. And they gave us chains and we were secure. Suddenly with our constitutional guarantees depleted, with our national character eroding away, with our tax laws penalizing those who would dare to prosper, with workers concentrating on how little they can get by with instead of how much they can produce. Suddenly we looked overhead one day to discover that the first to the moon in space was a Russian accomplishment. That free men dragging their feet had been outdistanced by slave workers dragging their chains. And we were sore afraid. Perhaps this was a disguised blessing, too.

Maybe a dramatic accomplishment by this cold war adversary was necessary to get us off our dead centers and back to work again. If we can revive in ourselves, then in our youth, something of that basic American’s Creed, the horizon has never ever been so limitless. For Man stands now on the threshold of his highest adventure of all: his first faltering footsteps into space. Twenty years from today, half of the products you will be using in your everyday living aren’t even in the dictionary yet. We’ve got it made. If we just keep on keeping on. We’ve got it made – and if we don’t? We will follow those other great nation-states of history into the graveyard of ignominious oblivion. History promises only this for certain – We Will Get Exactly What We Deserve.”

PAUL HARVEY – FREEDOM TO CHAINS (Sept. 4, 1918 – Feb. 28, 2009)

Did you know the US was the first country to use the term “making money.” But we actually don’t make money, we create wealth. People often confuse the terms. And that is a bad thing. Because we associate people with a great deal of wealth as hoarders and taking money and opportunity away from others, when that is far from the truth
Lets use an example. Lets say Bob has saved up a lot of money and Bob wants to build a building to start a business. So Bob spends a million dollars on a building. After the building is done, we say Bob has a million dollar building. Or a million dollars in wealth But Bob no longer has a million dollars. Bob gave his million dollars to the concrete guys, the siders, the electricians, the roofers, the architects, the engineers and countless others. Bob’s million dollars in now improving the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people. And Bob has a million dollar building. So we essentially have 2 million dollars now. One in the form of money. The other in the form of wealth.
So Bob’s risk on his real estate venture actually transferred money to others. And that money is now turning in the economy. Maybe a roofer was able to finally buy a new car. Maybe the concrete guy took his family on a vacation to Disneyland. So now lets take it out one more degree. The Salesman at the dealership who sold that car was able to buy a ring for his fiance. The Disneyland cast member got some overtime and was able to take his girlfriend out to dinner. The money keeps moving forward.
Now this is not even counting the people who are working for Bob in his building who are making weekly incomes because of Bob’s decision to invest. The money just needs to turn. It has nothing to do with how much Bob has. It has everything to do with spending the money and creating wealth. If we want to end poverty, taking Bob’s money will not work. We need to have Bob and others like Bob invest their money so we can create more wealth for everyone.

So I went and watched Deadpool Friday night. If you like comedy, sarcasm, violence, sex and nudity, you will love this movie. Go see it! If you don’t like those things, you should probably pick something else. But in one particular scene on the movie, Deadpool gets his face slammed into the seat headrest of a car and responds with the comment, “ooh, genuine Corinthian Leather.” I may have been the only person in the theater to laugh at that. You see, he was referencing a classic 1975 Chrysler commercial starring Ricardo Montalban. (Kahn for you Star Trek Fans out there.) You can find the commercial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc In it he says the car seats are finished off with “soft Corinthian Leather…” Do you know what “Corinthian” Leather is? No? Thats ok. No one does. It doesn’t exist. Chrysler made it up. But if you said it just had leather seats, it would not sound near as exotic.
Enter our politicians. They try so hard to feel important. They try so hard to sound smarter than us. They are are rarely engineers. They are rarely designers. Most of the time they are lawyers. And the sad thing is, they all should have gone to college and majored in Marketing. Because they usually put more effort into the names of bills than writing or reading the bills themselves. Lets look at some examples of their work: Over priced government controlled healthcare program also known as “The Affordable Care Act.” Civilian Spy operation to trounce on individual liberty marketed as “The Patriot Act.” One of my favorites is the Give Money to Big Business who help us get reelected which is often advertised with the general name of “Government Stimulus Package.” And who can forget the classic bail out the banks who make bad decisions by giving them free money to lend called the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” also known as TARP. You know when they create an acronym for the program, they really put some effort into it. Do you know what all these programs have in common? They were all paid for with our tax dollars and all gave us very little benefit. Obamacare caused our insurance to go up and limit our choices. The Patriot Act restricted our civil liberties. Every Stimulus package is absolute theft and TARP was like giving bonuses to the worst employees.
Now there are a lot more things I dislike about our government. But what disgusts me the most is they use our money to try and sell really crappy products to us. How dare they! So the next time you see them reading their talking points to the TV camera about how much better our lives will be with the new law they going to pass, just ask yourself, “Does that include soft Corinthian Leather?” My name is Brian Heinrich I am running for US Congress.

I am pro choice. I love to choose. I get to choose things every day. What am I going to wear. What I am going to eat. Where I want to shop. Or perhaps what movie I am going to see Friday night. So why are so many of our Democratic leaders against choice? I mean, they mail out post cards when they are running for office saying how they are “Pro Choice” and promise not to let anyone take that right away. But then when they are in office, they spend their time removing our choices.
Have you ever been to Corvallis? Their city council claims to be pro choice. At least I am sure most of them do. But they really aren’t. Have you ever shopped in that lovely little town? Ever notice there is not a full sized Wal-Mart in Corvallis? Strange isn’t it. A Wal-Mart in a college town would go a long way in stretching college kids money. Especially when that money is borrowed on student loans. But you see, the City Council passed an ordinance that prevented a retail outlet the size of Wal-Mart from being built. In fact they passed it to keep Wal-Mart out. When Home Depot wanted to come to Corvallis, the ordinance kept them out too. But Home Depot asked for a waiver since they sold commercially. Not really, but when you are looking for an excuse, any excuse will do. So the City Council agreed to an exemption and Home Depot became a reality.
Now you might be saying, “But Brian, there is a Wal-Mart grocery store in Corvallis.” Yes, there is. It is a smaller foot print and Wal-Mart was able to get around the rule. And guess where the students shop? Wal-Mart Grocery! Of course the students have to bring their own shopping bags though. Because the city council removed that choice as well. You no longer get to choose paper or plastic for free. You get to buy your reusable bag that will last longer in a landfill than the paper one that is banned. Again, the government limiting our choices to save us from…..ourselves.
And that is not where it ends in Democrats limiting choice. Fast food restaurants have long offered free refills because it is less labor cost than paying an employee to fill a soda cup. (Imagine what they will have to do at $15 an hour.) Free refills is a great perk for dining at an American Fast Food eatery now a days. But Michael Bloomberg, former Democratic mayor of New York, pushed the state health board to ban sales of anything larger than a 16 ounce soda beverage and no free refills! Thank goodness the New York State Court of Appeals said they did not have the authority to impose such a ban. I mean really…..it wasn’t like New Yorkers were out selling babies parts at the local McDonalds. They just needed a large enough Coke to wash down that tasty Big Mac. New Yorkers leave the baby part selling for Planned Parenthood. But I digress.
Taking away choice is what many Democrats live for. They limit our choices on healthcare. They refuse to allow choice on schools. They restrict our choice on medications and pharmaceuticals. They have restricted our choices on union membership, toilets, light bulbs, vehicles, refrigerators, talk radio, news, guns and anything else that they don’t like. These same restrictions are also what contributes to Crony Capitalism. People and corporations who earn their wealth not through the free market, but by means of government manipulation. But that is a talk for another time. In the mean time, my name is Brian Heinrich, and I am running for US Congress.

So I am a huge fan of Milton Friedman. Most of you are probably saying, “Who the heck is Milton?” Well, he was a Nobel Prize winning economist and a huge believer in the free market and Capitalism. He believed that Capitalism was largely responsible for economic and political freedom. He also believed it was one of the biggest contributors to removing cultural, racial, and religious barriers between peoples.
How you ask? Well, Milton would grab a pencil and he would begin a story… “Look at this lead pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore. This black center—we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite—I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending … out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system: the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate, to make this pencil, so you could have it for a trifling sum.
That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.”
The Pencil. It did not need a government decree to be made. It was created by free people with the desire to make a better life for themselves and others. It did not need government involvement for people of different backgrounds to work together. They worked together out of mutual benefit. It did not need government regulation to establish a price. The price was established by the market based on what someone was willing to sell it for and what another was willing to pay for it. No force. No coercion. Just simple economics. So why does our government work so hard to make our lives more difficult? Because our Representatives just don’t know any better. That is why we need to elect Brian Heinrich for the US Congress!

So for those that do not know, I work for a truck dealership in North Portland.  Well about two years ago I sold a little SUV to a gentleman named Hans.  A wonderful man in his 80’s  Hans has a strong German accent.  One of the things I enjoy most about my job is the people I meet and the things I learn from them.  Hans is one of those people.  I asked him about his life and when he came to the US and what he did for a living.   As I got to get a better understanding of his timeline, it occurred to me that he grew up in Nazi Germany.  After the reality hit me, I looked at him and asked, “Hans, Were you a  Hitler Youth?”  He looked at me with very proud conviction and stated, “Yes.  Yes I Vas!”  My eyes must have shown my bewilderment.  “What was that like?”  “It vas great!  Vaht boy vouldn’t like it?  Ve had things to do.  They taught us things and ve had sports…….but unfortunately…..I had to learn my history twice.”    Hans  explained to me that the history they were taught was not the history the rest of the world was taught.  So after the war, he learned much of what he had learned was wrong. Evidently the German National Socialist government had a much different view on things.  
This brings me to one of the things I am a strong advocate of.  The ending of the US Department of Education.  You may not realize this, but the DoED is not very old.   It was actually created in 1979 under President Carter.  He took what was a small bureau under the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and immediately created a $12,000,000,000 Government bureaucracy.  Now I support public education.  It is one of the greatest gifts  Americans/Oregonians give to their children and young adults.  Think, you get 12 years of education plus kindergarten and you don’t have to pay back a single cent.  The majority of it (in Oregon) is paid for via property taxes.   And that education gives youth the skills and knowledge they need to be economically productive.  And before the Department of Education exerted its influence, the State of Oregon handled much of its own standards.  I like local standards.  It is like buying at the farmers market.  You know where it comes from.  You know who was involved in growing it.  And most of all, you know what is in it.  Do you really want fruit from Washington DC?  Common Core is definitely no local grown apple.  And who is to say that it is right for Oregonians?  
But now the Federal Government tells the states if they don’t follow their rules, they don’t get the Federal dollars they need.  Federal dollars is a fancy term for tax money taken from Oregonians and held for ransom more or less by the Federal Government just so they can tell those same Oregonians what to do with it.  What the heck?   If the Fed didn’t take it in the first place, we would have the money we needed and could spend it the way we deemed appropriate.  Wow, the whole basis of my campaign right there.  Less Federal Government.  More Local Control.    My name is Brian Heinrich and I am running for US Congress.