Sean C. Morgan
If elected, Senate District 9 candidate Rich Harisay would pursue several substantial changes to state government, all aimed at ending the “oligarchy” and benefiting the people of Oregon.
Harisay, a self-employed organic farmer in the Stayton-Sublimity area, is running in the Nov. 8 election against Libertarian candidate Jack Stillwell and Republican incumbent Fred Girod. The district includes Sweet Home and Lebanon in eastern Linn County, eastern Marion County and southeastern Clackamas County.
The state and federal governments were formed by “we the people,” Harisay said. As a senator, he will ask whether legislation benefits the people. He will gladly support it if “they make life better for other people. If not, down the tubes.”
Campaign finances and banking
In 2013, Harisay and the organization Move to Amend heped push a joint resolution through the Oregon legislature, declaring that corporations are not persons in contrast to the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which prohibited government from violating freedom of speech by restricting political expenditures by nonprofit corporations.
It “allows monied interests to buy our legislators,” Harisay said.
Since then, the group Move to Amend has been attempting to call a constitutional convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to add an amendment that would overturn the decision.
At least 17 states have done that, Harisay said. Another organization has added another three states.
“To my view, that is the most important thing going on in our nation,” Harisay said. “Corporations have taken over our government and are running our government.
“The Political Science Department at Princton University has recently concluded that we live in an oligarchy. A group of corporations and extremely wealthy people have taken our sovereignty, so we must get it back.”
In addition to fighting the Citizens United decision, he would work on legislation that would dampen the effects by establishing a central state bank.
Oregon would become independent of banks that are “too big to fail,” he said. If the state needed a loan, it would not need to pay interest to anyone but the state bank, and profits would generate revenue for the state.
Harisay also wants to regulate corporate campaign contributions.
Gov. Kate Brown supported a measure to change the state constitution to allow regulations on campaign spending, Harisay said, and he would pursue it as a senator. It probably wouldn’t survive a challenge in federal court, but it would send a message.
Healthcare
Harisay would pursue a single-payer health plan for Oregonians either by replacing or coordinating with the Affordable Care Act, he said. “Doing that, especially on a national basis, would reduce the cost of healthcare,” Harisay said. By eliminating the profit motive, everyone could be covered at a lower cost than covering part of the population now.
Employee-owned businesses
Harisay would like to encourage an employee-owned business economy, citing the successes of the Spanish Mondragon Corporation, established in 1956. Its first product was paraffin heaters.
Mondragon has wandered from the model it once used, he said, but it still stands as an example of an employee-owned company that operated successfully for many years.
In employee-owned businesses, “any profits that the business has does not go to some unknown party,” Harisay said. It goes to employees in the form of bonuses, pensions and business improvements.
It also solves a looming problem as technology improves.
Imagining a business that completely automates, he said, in an employee-owned business, “they would sit around and collect what their machines make.”
In the current model, if a business completely automated, those employees wouldn’t have jobs or the money to purchase what’s being produced, he said.
Retirement
Harisay wants strong protection for pension plans and to increase access to retirement, he said. He would resist all attempts to privatize Social Security and state retirement plans.
Regarding the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, which is dealing with large unfunded liabilities, “we have to be sure to ensure the promises we make will be fulfilled.”
Not necessarily in Oregon but often, retirement plans are seat-of-the-pants, Harisay said. Government officials think if they have a shortfall, they can just increase taxes to cover it.
If money isn’t available for PERS, “it will have to restrict itself to reduce its promises,” he said. “There are realities we have to face.”
Social Security faces the same thing because the federal government borrowed from its surpluses to finance things like the Gulf War, Harisay said. The unconscionable conservatives in control believe in deficit funding. They don’t want to pay the taxes to cover it, instead printing more money to put into corporations that are not regulated and do not pay taxes.
Harisay has worked fairly closely to the retirement business, he said.
“For a long time, corporations had defined-benefit pension plans, just like PERS,” Harisay said. Then they started getting rid of them in favor of defined-contribution plans like the 401(k). They didn’t fund the defined-benefit plans properly, and they became liabilities.
Then they simply wrote them off, something they had no right to do, Harisay said.
The malfeasance is flabbergasting, he said, and they must be held accountable for their abandonment and negative revision of retirement and pension plans.
“They need to change those in a way that is not catastrophic to employees.”
He recalled a woman telling him her husband died seven days before he became vested after 30 years working for a corporation, Harisay said. The rules have changed since then, and seven years is the maximum period for an employee to be vested. He thinks it could be better.
Trade agreements
Harisay opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and global trade agreements for several reasons.
“What they do, essentially, is deprive our country of sovereignty,” he said. Any trade imbalance can be determined and tried offshore. If a company isn’t making enough money, the United States can be sued in a foreign court.
The United States loses jobs to these plans, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, Harisay said. The TPP, completed in secrecy, is the worst of them.
College
Harisay wants to create debt-free higher education, he said.
“Education is the crux of democracy itself,” he said. “Democracy cannot operate without an informed and educated public.”
He identified two ways to fund it.
The Bank of North Dakota was the first bank in the United States to underwrite student loans, he said. “At the very least a Bank of Oregon could do the same at rates and terms favorable to students.”
Taxes are another way, and he supports Measure 97
Measure 97 is “from the people” through the initiative process, which is “the best handle we have on the state,” Harisay said.
“It would have to come from taxation because it is a way to preserve democracy,” Harisay said. It has the interesting side effect of helping the economy when everybody has the necessities in life. Once they have them, they can go beyond it and pursue the American Dream.
Instead, “we have privatized education by driving the price up so high a lot of people can’t afford it,” he said.
The United States is supposedly a classless society, he said, but it does have a class system. Mobility among the classes is severely restricted.
Studies show that education equalizes people’s positions in the world, he said.
Affordable housing
Affordable housing is another of those necessities, Harisay said, and he supports increasing investments in affordable housing.
“First of all, most cities have vacant property that’s sitting, doing nothing,” Harisay said. The state wouldn’t have to invest a lot of money into building new structures. It would need to invest in management and upkeep to give people access to them.
He is bothered by the high vacancy rate for business property, he said. The state could probably implement a tax incentive to make vacant business structures available to those who need affordable housing.
“If you’ve solved all the problems I’ve enumerated to this point, you wouldn’t have homeless,” Harisay said. “We’re lacking in so many social services.”
That needs to change, he said. “In order to function as a society, they have to take the (people) into consideration.”