Author Archives: whmacken2013

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A Tangled Web: Carrick Flynn and the Justice Unites Us PAC

Why has the Justice Unites Us PAC, which says it’s all about mobilizing Asian voters, pumped $846,000 in independent expenditures into boosting the Democratic primary campaign of a white guy, Carrick Flynn, in Oregon’s new 6th Congressional District. 

Not only that, but who has been plowing money into the PAC and how much?

Who knows.

Justice Unites Us identifies itself online as “A project of the Family Friendly Action Fund, a section 50©4) social welfare organization.”

As for why it’s embraced Carrick Flynn’s primary race, that’s a tough one. 

Is the 6th District heavily Asian? Nope.

It consists of Polk and Yamhill Counties, plus portions of Marion, Clackamas and Washington Counties. Most of the district is in Yamhill and Polk counties in terms of land area, but most of the population is in Washington and Marion counties. If the district had existed during  the 2020 presidential election, it would have gone 55.2% for Biden and 42.1% for Trump, according to Daily Kos. So, the new district probably leans Democratic.

But Asians are far from a prominent force in Oregon at large or in the new district. According to the most recent American Community Survey, the Asian population in all of Oregon is just 185,221, 4.4% of the total population. And they are far from a unified group, with multiple subgroups. Chinese, Filipino, and Indian are the largest. Furthermore, In the 2020 census, just 2.5% of Marion County’s population and -11.7% of Washington County’s population was “Asian alone”.

OK, then who’s behind the Justice Unites Us PAC? We don’t know. 

Like pop-up stores that show up during the Christmas holidays, the PAC only popped up recently. having been formed on March 22, 2022 (FEC Committee ID #: C00810606). In its report to the FEC for the first quarter of 2022, the PAC reported raising and spending zero dollars. 

After the end of the quarter, it disclosed it had disbursed $846,581.14 on April 5, 2022 for “canvassing” in support of Flynn.

Then, on April 15, 2022, the PAC filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission so it could delay filing its next report , and identifying its donors, until after the May 17 primary:

“Justice Unites Us PAC has filed its April 15th quarterly report.  This is to notify you that Justice Unites Us PAC intends to assume a monthly filing schedule for calendar year 2022.  It is therefore our understanding that the next report will be due May 20, 2022. “ 

Is this runaround of disclosure rules new? “No, it isn’t.,” Politico wrote recently. “Pop-up super PACs have become increasingly prominent over the last several election cycles, and have become a way for sophisticated political operations to bypass rules that shed light on campaign finance until after elections — when it’s too late to matter.”

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Chasing The Money: The Democratic Primary in Oregon’s 6th Congressional District

Are direct campaign contributions going to be the determining factor in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 6 on May 17, 2022? How about money from Oregonians? Will it be critical?

The campaign committees of the nine ambitious people running in the primary had raised a total of $4,821,322.84 according to reports just filed with the Federal Election Commission covering up to March 31, 2022. Reports were due on April 15, 2022.

If you just look at the campaign finance reports for the official campaign committees, Steven Cody Reynolds is far and away the strongest candidate.

The reported totals for each candidate are as follows:

Ricky Barajas: No data available

Carrick Flynn:  $830,185.45

Greg Goodwin: No data available

Kathleen Harder:  $137,259.28

Teresa Alonso Leon:  $67,704.00

Steven Cody Reynolds: $2,506,917.65 (Includes $2,000,006.00 in loans and $502,186.65 in contributions from the candidate)

Andrea Salinas: $178,195.00

Loretta Smith: $297,478.00

(Includes $60,000 in loans from the candidate)

Matt West: $803,583.46 (Includes $400,000.00 in loans and $47,878.16 in contributions from the candidate)

But this is far from the whole story. All this data obscures millions of dollars of so-called independent expenditures in support of individual candidates.  

An independent expenditure is a political campaign expenditure that expressly advocates for the election or defeat of a candidate that is not made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a particular candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee  or the candidate’s party.

The Democrat’s House Majority PAC, the largest super PAC supporting Democratic House candidates, has already stepped up to support Carrick Flynn with a $1 million independent expenditure.

House Majority PAC television ad for Flynn

On top of that, Protect Our Future PAC, funded largely by Bahamas-based crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, has thrown its weight behind Flynn with about $6 million in expenditures on a wide range of activities, including radio, television and digital ad production and time purchases, lawn signs, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote phone calls.

Flynn is also benefiting from other independent expenditures. An independent expenditure of about $800,000 was just committed by the Justice Unites Us super PAC, which says it wants to engage and mobilize progressive Asian-American voters.

“In Congress, Carrick Flynn will be the ally AAPI voters in his district deserve,” said Minh Nguyen, Executive Director of Justice Unites Us PAC. “He knows what it’s like to grow up poor and has spent his career helping others escape poverty, an experience that is sadly shared by too many AAPI families across America. We know his perspective will lead him to advocate for a government that looks out for our most vulnerable, and we are excited to support his candidacy with this historic investment.”

The National Wildlife Federation Action Fund also announced several days ago it was investing in Flynn and already has an ad running on television. “We need more champions for wildlife and #climate action in Congress, which is why we’re significantly investing in Carrick’s race to underscore his leadership and what’s at stake for people and wildlife alike,” it said on Facebook.

By the way, the Salem Statesman Journal reported on April 15 that Flynn’s  campaign committee filings show just 2.5% of his direct campaign committee support has come from Oregonians. That makes the independent expenditures coming from outside Oregon crucial to his campaign, a clear demonstration of how money can undermine faith in our democratic institutions…and an insult to Oregonians.

It also raises a legitimate question. If Flynn wins the primary and then the election, to whom will he owe his fealty? We’re deluded if we think that fealty will be to the common people of Oregon.

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Carrick Flynn’s Conundrum: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

Carrick Ronan Morgan Flynn, who came out of nowhere in Oregon politics, hopes to outrun a primary field of Democrats seeking election to Oregon’s new Congressional District 6 seat created as a result of the 2020 census.

His television radio and digital ads, lawn signs, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote phone calls have been ubiquitous, helping propel him to high name recognition. Most of that activity has been paid for with multimillion donations from his presumed friends, a crypto currencies pacesetter, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the national Democrat’s House Majority PAC, which recently made a $1 million donation. 

“The independent expenditure campaign gives Flynn an outsized advantage in the race to be the Democratic nominee in the new district, which draws most of its voters from Marion County,” observed Willamette Week on April 10. 

The problem is the independent expenditure campaign has also majorly pissed off Flynn’s primary opponents, many with much stronger Oregon ties, exposed him to rebukes by multiple Democratic-associated interest groups and raised questions about backdoor dealings at the national level.

The House Majority PAC’s intervention is particularly mad because it was so unnecessary. Protect Our Future, backed by a man with an almost bottomless pot of money, has already shown it is willing to invest vast sums in Carrick’s race. 

Six of the nine Democrats seeking to win the Democratic primary rapidly issued a statement denouncing the House Majority PAC’s donation to Flynn. “We strongly condemn House Majority PAC’s unprecedented and inappropriate decision…” the joint statement said. “We call on House Majority PAC to actually stand by our party’s values and let the voters of Oregon decide who their Democratic nominee will be.”

The PAC’s endorsement of Flynn probably didn’t help the party with Black Oregonians either. 

Loretta Smith, a Black woman and one of the primary candidates, has said she feels betrayed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the PAC’s support for Flynn,. “I think it’s disrespectful and it’s wrong,” Smith said.

Adding to the pique of the other primary candidates, some of the Democrats’ most dependable constituencies objected to the House Majority PAC’s support for Flynn.

On April 11, CHC Bold PAC , a Democratic-aligned political action committee supporting the election of Hispanic Democrats to Congress, condemned the House Majority PAC’s donation to Flynn with a reminder that Latina women have been critical to Democratic victories and the PAC’s support for Flynn ignored the fact a highly qualified Latina, Andrea Salinas, was in the primary battle. 

“HMP is tasked with defending the House Majority by boosting Democrats and holding Republicans accountable, not with spending critical resources against a woman who has spent decades fighting for progressive causes and who will excite Democratic voters in November,” the statement said. 

Withering criticism also came from Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (TX-29 ). “At a time when reproductive rights are at stake, Democrats should be moving mountains to ensure that there are more women at the table – especially women of color – instead of actively trying to tip the scales against an exceptionally experienced Latina. That is precisely what House Majority PAC has done,” Garcia said. 

So much for friends who are just trying to help.

——-

“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!”

Warren G. Harding

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Carrick Flynn: Oregon’s Crypto Candidate

Top executives at FTX, a major digital currency trading platform, are financing a high-priced communications war on behalf of Carrick Flynn, who hopes to outrun a primary field of Democrats seeking election to Oregon’s new Congressional District 6 seat. The primary will be held on May 17, 2022.

Carrick Flynn
Source: Northwest Observer

If Flynn wins the primary he will owe his win lock, stock, and barrel to wealthy crypto supporters.

Is this how we want our political campaigns to be financed? Do Oregonians really want candidates to be captured by special interests, particularly so early in the political process? And in this case, are we OK with the capturers being major players in the controversial and risky business of cryptocurrencies? 

If you’ve paid attention to the plethora of television campaign ads already running in the Democratic primary race, you’ve noticed that the ones by the other candidates note at the end “paid for by” the candidates campaign committee. In Carrick Flynn’s case, most have said “Paid for by Protect Our Future PAC”.

The major backer of the PAC is FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old American “Master of the Universe” billionaire who lives in the Bahamas.

FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. The company officially opened its doors for trading in May of 2019. It enables trades of a variety of digital assets, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Dogecoin. 

Sam Bankman-Fried
(Source: New York Magazine)

Super PACs cannot legally coordinate with candidates, but many candidates find creative ways to work in concert with them that stretch the legal boundaries.

According to data filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), as of April 11, 2022, Protect Our Future had made independent expenditures in support of Flynn totaling $4,932,464.73 in 2022. The expenditures have been devoted to a wide range of activities, including radio, television and digital ad production and time purchases, lawn signs, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote phone calls.

On April 12, 2022, OPB reported that a political action committee affiliated with national Democrats, the House Majority PAC, had also purchased roughly $1 million of ads to help Flynn. The PAC’s television ads are already appearing.

Six of the nine Democrats seeking to win the primary put out a statement denouncing the move. “We strongly condemn House Majority PAC’s unprecedented and inappropriate decision…” the joint statement said. “We call on House Majority PAC to actually stand by our party’s values and let the voters of Oregon decide who their Democratic nominee will be.”

Interestingly, some of the money Flynn received from the House Majority PAC could be considered as a pass-through from Bankman-Fried. According to OpenSecrets,a research and government transparency group tracking money in politics and its effect on elections and policy, Bankman-Fried has also made substantial donations to the House Majority PAC.

It’s not hard to decipher Flynn’s potential appeal. He’s a climber with a hard luck story about his youth and a touch-all-the-bases career of prestige academic success at Yale Law School and international social justice-oriented work.* But to really pop in Oregon’s political world, he needed money, and FTX has given him a jump start.

“…the company’s executives are quietly emerging as crypto kingmakers in the nation’s capital as they spend millions to launch super PACs, bankroll congressional campaigns and recruit former government officials with an inside track on looming crypto regulations,” Politico observed in February. In other words, the “Our” in Protect Our Future most likely means the crypto industry.

Down the road, FTX may also have other interests that could bring into play a need for political support. The Generalist, a tech-focused weekly online publication, has speculated that the company may try to grow its footprint in sports betting, banking and social media.   In this regard, Bankman-Fried has openly talked about his desire to build out a fully-fledged financial giant, a kind of monetary super-app handling payments, custody, and of course, investing across asset classes. 

If Flynn wins the primary** and the election, will he be indebted to FTX’s interests as much as to Oregon’s. It’s damn hard not to think otherwise. 

________________

*Flynn’s efforts to position himself as a true Oregonian resemble Nicholas Kristoff’s efforts to do the same in his failed quest to become Oregon’s governor.  Flynn, 35, was born in Oregon, grew up here and graduated from the University of Oregon in 2008, but he has spent a substantial part of his adult life elsewhere, much of that overseas: 

·      2009: Legal Clerk, The Carter Center, Monrovia, Liberia

·      2010: Legal Consultant, The Asia Foundation, Dili, Timor-Leste

·      2011: Volunteer, Volunteer, Progressio UK, Dili, Timor-Leste

·      2011-2012: Program Associate / Legal Consultant, The Asia Foundation, Dili,    Timor-Leste

·      2013-14: Bernstein Human Rights Fellow, New Delhi Area, India

·      2014: Bernstein Human Rights Fellow, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

·      2015: Lecturer, Jimma University, Jimma, Ethiopia

·      2015-2018: Assistant Director, Center for the Governance of AI (GovAI), Oxford, England, United Kingdom

·      2018-2022: Research Faculty, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

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Lake Oswego’s Charming First Addition: Going, Going, Gone.

Looking for a charming modest affordable home in Lake Oswego, Oregon’s First Addition neighborhood?  Fuggetaboutit.

This delightful 1,380 sq ft 1960 bungalow with an adorable backyard playhouse, (described as “The Very Best of First Addition Lake Oswego”) could be an option, but it is probably doomed, even though it is listed at $864,000.

In our disposable culture, it will likely be replaced by a hulking, extravagant bloated McMansion built as close to the lot lines as possible.

After all, the modest house that used to be next door sold in 2020 for $586,000 and it was still torn down. A newly built 3,922 sq ft house on that lot (described as “A confluence where good ol’ American farm style meets sophistication.”) sold for $1,965,000 in February 2021.

Zillow puts this property’s current value at $2,038,000.

The construction of some of these McMansions may be driven by the desire to outdo the less wealthy (or the less indebted), reminding others of the Ozymandias line: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” And real estate agents probably love them. The commission on the sale of a $1.5 million McMansion is most certainly much larger than on a $400,000 cottage.

Whatever the motivation, the quaint First Addition of old, platted in 1888 and 1925 and once praised by the American Planning Association for its “housing variety and affordability (and) small-town atmosphere,” will soon be no more.  

 As Washington Monthly recently put it, “The modus operandi is always the same: Take a totally usable older house that is the same style and size as neighboring dwellings, though perhaps needing a rehab, and knock it flat, along with every mature tree on the property—there will be no room for them, owing to the enormous footprint of the planned structure. Then construct a particle-board chateau that has at least 75 percent more square footage than the neighbors, complete with a quarter-acre driveway for the obligatory Range Rover.”

Drive or walk around First addition and the proliferation of large homes that have replaced smaller ones is evident everywhere.

Massive condos are taking root in First Addition, too.

Blazer Homes built six 3,376 sq. ft. townhomes on 4th St. in First Addition in 2018. The most recent sale , on March 3, 2022, was for $1,445,000.

With dreams of another big payoff, the company recently bought an adjacent lot on 4th and plans to build similar condos on the site.

Their expected price? About $2 million each. 

And the beat goes on.

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The Oregon Department of Education’s Ever-Expanding List of Maligned Minorities

A just-released Education Update sent out by Colt Gill, the Director of the Oregon Department of Education, notes that his department and the Oregon Health Authority have created a toolkit centering on safety, health and belonging as schools transition to face covering optional policies.

In his determination to cover all his bases, he says the goal of the toolkit is to create safe, supportive, welcoming schools, particularly for “students who experience disability and those who are Black, Indigenous, Latina/o/x/e, People of Color, Tribal members, and/or are members of the LGBTQ2SIA+ community.”

Good grief! 

Gill clearly sees the K-12 education universe as nothing more than an assemblage of distinct and maligned minorities. This is the kind of identity politics that foments perilous division of our state and our country. Rather than emphasizing common values and interest, Gill’s identity politics stresses differences and creates a feeling of ‘zero-sum’ competition between groups. 

In a Medium article, Benjamin Morawek posited that there are two types of identity politics.

“The first kind is what I call inclusive identity politics and it is synonymous with the term “common-humanity identity politics” used by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind. This kind of identity politics, they explain, mobilizes identity “in ways that emphasize an overarching common humanity while making the case that some fellow human beings are denied dignity and rights because they belong to a particular group. This is the identity politics of the civil rights movement and a shining example of its use is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.”

 “… the second kind of identity politics, exclusive identity politics, calls for the value of marginalized groups based on the very identity that makes them different,” Morawek wrote.  As Oberlin College professor Sonia Kruks said in Retrieving Experience, “The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of ‘universal humankind’ … nor is it for respect ‘in spite of’ one’s differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different.”

One problem with Gill’s identify politics is that it leads to even more minority designations. “Once identity politics gains momentum, it inevitably subdivides, giving rise to ever-proliferating group identities demanding recognition,” says Amy Chua in Political Tribes.

Gill’s reference to “the LGBTQ2SIA+ community” illustrates this point. 

The Oregon Department of Education says this  “…means a term that encompasses multiple gender identities and sexual orientations including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Two-Spirit, Intersex, and Asexual. The plus sign (“+”) recognizes that there are myriad ways to describe gender identities and sexual orientations.”

“Originally LGB, variants over the years have ranged from GLBT to LGBTI to LGBTQQIAAP as preferred terminology shifted and identity groups quarreled about who should be included and who come first,” Chua wrote. 

“How can we come together on anything big…when we keep slicing ourselves into smaller factions?”, wrote Carlos Lozada in The Washington Post. “Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure,” warns Stanford University political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, in Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

At some point, the left is going to tie itself up in knots trying to categorize everybody. In the meantime, the country will slowly break down into warring factions and we will all pay the price.

More to read

Teaching Race in Kindergarten: Oregon’s new standards for social science exchange colorblindness for racialism. This is not progress.

Oregon’s New Ethnic Studies Standards: Identity Politics Run Amok

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Bringing the War Home: Social Media May Be Putin’s Achille’s Heel in the Ukraine War

Bodies of Russian soldiers lie outside a school destroyed not far from the center of Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images.Source: New York Post, March 2, 2022

Russia’s war in Ukraine is showing that its gotten a lot harder to keep the homefront in the dark.

For a long time after invading Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviet government told its citizens that its soldiers were there fulfilling their duty, building hospitals and schools, planting trees and helping the Afghans build a socialist state. It wasn’t until 1990 that a book written in Russian by Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian Journalist, disclosed the full reality of the brutal, horrific war. I read the book a long time ago, but it is still relevant.

“All we know about this war…is what ‘they’ consider it safe for us to know,” Alexievich wrote in Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War. “We have been protected from seeing ourselves as we really are and from the fear that such understanding would bring.”

In an Introduction to a 1992 English translation of Zinky Boys, Larry Heinemann, a college professor and Vietnam vet, wrote of how the book revealed Soviet efforts to keep news of the war and the dead from the people at home:

Letters were heavily censored and photographs were not permitted. So thorough was the censorship that few battlefield photographs by the soldiers survive. Soviet veterans of the war were told bluntly and firmly not to talk about what was going on – a pall of denial by the government not unlike the experience of Vietnam GIs.

The corpses of Soviet soldiers were sent home in sealed zinc coffins, accompanied by military escorts with orders that the coffins not be opened. The families, in their bottomless grief, could never be positively certain that their sons and brothers and husbands were actually dead and their bodies actually present in the coffins.

No explanation for the deaths was given; funerals were conducted at night to keep down the crowds; tombstones were inscribed with the words ‘Died fulfilling his international duty’, which became the euphemism for Killed-in-Action.

Russia also tried to smother information when it seized Crimea and went into eastern Ukraine with unmarked troops in 2014 and 2015.

“Authorities at first denied any involvement, then suggested any Russian soldiers there were on vacation.,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “When Ukraine captured a unit of paratroopers, Russian officials said they had got lost and strayed over the border.”

It’s a lot harder now for Putin and his minions to hide the realities of the Ukraine invasion from the Russian people, including the mothers whose children are dying in the fighting.

Look for Yours, a Ukrainian channel on the Telegram messaging app, is one outlet making sure of that. 

Today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal describes the coverage by the channel and a website, run by officials from Ukraine’s interior ministry, in all its horror.

“In one, the body of a man in camouflage uniform lies rigid in a snowy field, with mangled flesh and blood where his face used to be. “Unidentified,” reads the caption…Some pictures and videos on Look for Yours depict gruesome scenes of charred corpses and twisted bodies amid wrecked vehicles. They also show videos of prisoners and identification documents of the captured and dead.

“Unfortunately, it’s not possible to recognize the person in every photograph,” says Viktor Andrusiv, a Ukrainian interior ministry official, speaking in Russian in a video on Look for Yours. “Those are the horrors of war launched by your president.”

The Ukrainian channel shows videos of Russian prisoners, including several saying that their commanders abandoned them and that they had been sent to Belarus for military exercises last month not knowing that they would be invading Ukraine.

On the Look for Yours website, Andrusiv appealed to relatives of Russian soldiers. “Do everything you can to end this war, and so that your children, husbands and sons don’t die in our country,” he said.

Russia has long tried to obscure the extent of its military operations in Ukraine, which included its seizing of Crimea and direct military interventions in eastern Ukraine with unmarked troops in 2014 and 2015.

Authorities at first denied any involvement, then suggested any Russian soldiers there were on vacation. When Ukraine captured a unit of paratroopers, Russian officials said they had got lost and strayed over the border.

John Mueller, in War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (1973), used data principally from the Vietnam and Korean wars to argue that publics will rally behind presidents who go to war, but that these rallies will eventually fade and support for intervention dissipate as home-country casualties mount over time—something known as the casualty aversion hypothesis. “Some historians have argued that the United States lost the Vietnam War not only because casualties mounted but also because television turned the conflict into a “living room war” that exacerbated the public’s casualty sensitivity by making the war’s human costs more vivid.”

Although some have challenged this proposition, the US government believed there were hazards to exposing the public to the reality of war when images of dead GIs were almost entirely forbidden  in American media during WWI and WWII.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could now be the “first social media war,” as individuals on the ground in the besieged nation are able to share real-time reports from the frontlines, Peter Sucui argues in Forbes. “That ability to post updates, share videos could help ensure that the first casualty of this war isn’t the truth.”

Reuters has reported how some of social media’s youngest users have experienced the Ukrainian conflict from the front lines on TikTok. 

“Videos of people huddling and crying in windowless bomb shelters, explosions blasting through urban settings and missiles streaking across Ukrainian cities took over the app from its usual offerings of fashion, fitness and dance videos. Ukrainian social media influencers uploaded bleak scenes of themselves wrapped in blankets in underground bunkers and army tanks rolling down residential streets…”

Reuters noted that TikTok users have also urged Russian users, in particular, to join anti-war efforts.

Pictures of massacred Ukrainian civilians and dead Russian soldiers lying in the snow on social media may prove to be Putin’s Achilles’ heel.

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Lawyers of Distinction: the Scam Continues

There it was again – – an advertisement in the Sunday New York Times congratulating “Lawyers of Distinction.” 

UPDATE, 08/14/2023: Lawyers of Distinction: The Fraud That Won’t Die

The Feb. 20, 2022 ad, like others in previous years, welcomed the newest honorees. This time there was one from Oregon,Natalie Hedman Esq., a family and divorce lawyer in Gresham. According to the Lawyers of Distinction’s website, Hedman is one of 25 Oregon member lawyers recognized for excellence in the practice of law.* 

Sounds impressive, until you dig deeper. 

About all that’s required to be named a “Lawyer of Distinction” is to apply yourself or be nominated, fill out some online forms and pay a fee. It’s like diploma mills that claim to be higher education institutions, but only provide illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee.

“There’s a sucker born every minute,” is a phrase often attributed to P. T. Barnum, an American showman. It’s apparently true with respect to the attorneys who buy “Lawyers of Distinction” memberships as well as members of the public who are misled by them. 

The Lawyers of Distinction website makes the application and review process sound complex. 

According to the website, it includes a review and vetting process by a Selection Committee. That involves an analysis of a candidate’s work, experience and abilities based upon 12 independent criteria using a platform spelled out under U.S. Provisional Patent #62/743,254. Once a final score is generated, an applicant is subjected a final background check and Ethics Review. Applicants who achieve a minimum passing score and have no disqualifying ethical violations within a 10-year period prior to completion of the application are then eligible for acceptance to Lawyers of Distinction.

Sounds tough and thorough.

Don’t believe it.

 Essentially, it’s just pay-for-play. It’s selling badges.  It’s paying for meaningless accolades. Apply, pay the annual membership fee and you’re in.

According to the Florida Division of Corporations, “Lawyers of Distinction Inc.” is a private for-profit company with a principal address of 4700 Millenia Boulevard, Suite 175, Orlando, FL 32839. 

4700 Millenia Blvd., Orlando, FL

Robert (Robbie) Brian Baker at the same address is listed as the President in the company’s 2020 Annual Report. But don’t go there expecting to be ushered into an office with a clean, modern aesthetic that communicates success. The address is identified online as nothing more than an “Orlando Virtual Business Address & Live Receptionist Answering Service.”

Lawyers of Distinction is a sign of the overabundance of lawyers, leading some to try to elevate themselves with impressive, but meaningless, awards. The ads the organization places in multiple publications are fake news at its most blatant and deceptive. 

Some lawyers may want the Lawyers of Distinction plaque on their wall to bolster their self-esteem, even though in their heart they know the plaque is meaningless piece of junk. Maybe they want to add a plaque to their office brag wall. Maybe the “honor” adds glamour to what some lawyers describe as mind-numbing work.

Whatever their reasons for signing up, Hedman and the other 24 Oregon lawyers, including one on the Oregon State Bar Board of Governors, who are lauded as Lawyers of Distinction shouldn’t be proud; they should be embarrassed. 

11/13/2024 UPDATE: Oregon State Bar Refuses To Prohibit Deceit and Misrepresentation By Its Members

_______________________________________

*Lawyers listed as “Top Rated Lawyers in Oregon” and “Charter Members” on Distinquished Lawyers website

GREGORY ABEL, Medford

LYLE BOSKET, Salem

BONNIE CAFFERKY CARTER, Portland

B. NICHOEL CASEY, Tualatin

BRYAN DONAHUE, Bend

KEVIN EIKE, Portland

JULIA FOLLANSBEE, Bend

ANDY GREEN, Portland

EDWIN HARNDEN, Portland

RANDY HARVEY, Sherwood

NATALIE HEDMAN, Gresham

JUSTIN JOHNSON, Hillsboro

MYAH KEHOE, Portland

SUSAN LAIN, Lake Oswego

GEORGE MCCOY, Portland

TARA MILLAN, White City

MARISA MONEYHUN, Portland

USMAN MUGHAL, Lake Oswego

ILENE M. MUNK, Portland

JOHN PARSONS, Portland

RONNIE SAYER, Salem

JASON SHORT, Salem

COREY SMITH, Salem

JASON THOMPSON, Salem

TIM WILLIAMS, Bend

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Eileen Gu Wants to Have Her Cake and Eat It, Too

Olympian standout, Eileen Gu, clearly wants it all. The 18-year-old California native wants the Olympic medals, the modeling jobs, the rich sponsorships, and public adulation. But she also wants to be both an American and Chinese hero.

The perky, confident young woman, who goes by the name Eileen Gu in the US and Gu Ailing in China, was born in San Francisco, CA to a Chinese mother who was born in Beijing and emigrated to the United States. 

Neither Gu nor her mother have disclosed any information about her father other than to say he is an American-born graduate of Harvard University.  For some unexplained reason, American media have not verified that information, simply noting that there is no public record of her father. Even The New York Times has apparently accepted Gu declining to comment when asked if she knows anything about her father. It’s not clear why much of American media is treating her with such kid gloves.

In June 2019, when she was a 15-year-old child, Gu announced that she would switch country affiliations and compete for China in the Beijing Games. “This was an incredibly tough decision for me to make,” Gu wrote on Instagram, “The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born, during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport I love. Through skiing, I hope to unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendships between nations.”

But had she given up her American citizenship?

In February 2021, Forbes reported that Gu had announced on Instagram that she had become a naturalized Chinese citizen and planned to compete for China in the 2022 Beijing Games. But that was incorrect. Gu had said only, “I have decided to compete for China in the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics.”

The International Olympic Committee requires athletes to hold passports for the countries they represent, and China says it does not accept dual citizenship.

” …state media have previously reported that the 18-year-old renounced her U.S. citizenship after she became a Chinese national at the age of 15,” Reuters reported. But Gu herself has repeatedly dodged questions on her citizenship. And so far, she’s gotten away with it. 

“She tends to avoid questions of geopolitics in interviews,” the New York Times reported earlier this month. “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese,” Gu has said.

“Nobody can deny I’m American, nobody can deny I’m Chinese,” Gu was quoted in the South China Morning Post.

In December 2021, when the media asked Gu about China during a slope-side interview in Colorado, her sports agent, Tom Yaps, tried to end the interview. “I’ll pass,” Gu said. “There’s no need to be divisive.”

ESPN reported  on Feb. 1, 2022 that after The Wall Street Journal inquired about a story on Red Bull’s website that mentioned Gu had indeed given up her U.S. passport, the passage disappeared from the story without explanation.

Conjecture on her citizenship status arose when she registered for the US Presidential Scholars Program in 2021. Applicants are required to be US citizens or legal permanent U.S. residents to be eligible for the program. Gu did not, however, get into the program. 

Gu will also face questions when she registers for Stanford, where she has been admitted. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires that international students have F-1 or J-1 visas. 

Wherever the citizenship issue settles, Gu has already felt the sting of some Americans who see her as abandoning the US for personal gain.

And if China continues to treat Gu as one of their own, there may be ramifications if she falters down the road that she likely did not consider at the tender age of 15. (It’s interesting that the media has not paid much attention to the fact that Gu made her decision at such a young age, in contrast to the media attention given to concerns about all the pressure put on Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian phenom who was allowed to compete even after disclosure that she tested positive in December for trimetazidine, a drug that boosts blood flow to the heart.)

Figure skater Zhu Yi knows how things can turn. A U.S. born athlete with Chinese parents who is competing at the Olympics for China, Zhu Yi came under blistering attack in China when she crashed into a wall during a team event and was blamed for pushing her team into fifth place.

“There’s no next time,” a Weibo user, posted under a video of Zhu crying at the end of her performance. “How shameful.” The comment was liked more than 45,000 times.

“Go back to America,” read another comment accompanied by a US flag emoji.

Gu may also face Chinese criticism if she continues her outspoken support for girls and women in a country where gender roles are much more rigid and feminist activism is discouraged.

She has racked up an impressive number of sponsorships deals with Chinese companies, including Bank of China, China Mobile, Luckin’ Coffee, that are said to be worth millions. She has also become a highly bankable model in China and globally. In China, she’s been on the cover of Chinese editions of GQ and Elle. And as guest editor of Vogue China’s Gen-Z-focused bimonthly issue, Vogue+.

But Chinese sponsors, like American corporations, can be fickle and gun shy in the face of controversy. And controversy can come out of nowhere in Xi Jinping’s China.