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Woops, I accidentally deleted the asterisk entries at the end. Here they are in very abbreviated form:

*Cryptocurrency is something I don't understand well, even after spending lots of time researching and writing about, at least from the political angle. Basically, crypto coins or tokens have value because some people agree they do, and the software that keeps track of how many coins or tokens people have is called the blockchain.

** The pandemic prevention giving is what led Bankman-Fried to spend $10 million in an unsuccessful effort to win Carrick Flynn the Democratic nomination in Oregon's newly drawn 6th Congressional District in 2022. Flynn was an EA and worked in pandemic prevention. Bankman-Fried spent just under $1,000 per vote won by Flynn.

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Jeff: Tremendous reporting and writing. I'd like to cross-post to PortlandDissent.

Always good to know what the current market for buying a US Senator is.

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author

Thanks, Richard! Please feel free to cross-post. Also, anyone who hasn't yet listened to my podcast interview of Richard, who co-writes the excellent Portland Dissent newsletter on Substack, should do so. It's a good one!

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Nov 8, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

Excellent article. I am shocked, shocked that the third senator from New York, the honors graduate of the Daffy Duck School of Elocution may not be pure as the driven snow and that the DPO has ethical standards that would make Edwin Edwards blush

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Thanks, Kendall! Wyden and I both graduated from the Daffy Duck School of Law in Eugene.

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

Well apparently one of you two didn't sleep through the ethics classes, just sayin"

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I law school we call them “ethics” classes :-)

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Nov 8, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

Jeff......Thank you for all your work RE the corruption going on our government, especially Sen. Wyden. It is sickening that this is allowed to happen and he is still in office. I feel this is an example of what is going on in our country right now. Why voters don't wake up and I'm not just talking Dems vs Reps, it all through our government. I just pray and will continue to pray, God is in control and will take care of it guiding those in government and guide them.

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Thanks!

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Nov 10, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

Wyden, of course, is the guy who's accusing Clarence Thomas of some sort of financial shenanigans. Nice try, Ron.

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Yes, both he and Merkley think very lowly of Clarence Thomas's failure to report travel that he was not required to report. At the same time, they're hunky dory with DPO misreporting the source of its $500k contribution, Oregon Sec State burying the resulting investigation, and then backfilling, with their own campaign funds, the DPO when it forks it over to federal marshals.

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Yup. If Democrats didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all.

If there was ever a straight shooter in the halls of justice it's Clarence Thomas.

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Nov 8, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

what ever happened to the grey panthers?

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Perhaps not surprisingly, it looks like Wyden is in close contact with Gray Panthers of New York City.

https://www.graypanthersnyc.org/post/gray-panthers-nyc-meets-with-senator-wyden

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Nov 10, 2023Liked by Jeff Eager

I'm a law school classmate of Ron, a likable guy back then. The Gray Panthers was, if I'm not mistaken, just about Ron's only "job," which he parlayed into perpetual electoral bliss. Anyhow, back in the day, when the Oregon State Bar had standards, it had a "three-strikes" rule on passing the Bar Exam. Ron whiffed all three times. In my opinion, Ron, raised in Palo Alto, was in the first wave of transplants who helped change Oregon from a nice, pleasant, get-along state into the divided, near-totalitarian mess we have now.

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Yes, the three-time Oregon bar failure story is an important, if under-recognized, part of the Wyden story. I've not written about it because it seems mean, and is not really central to his current role as U.S. Senator and Senate Finance Chair. But yeah, Oregon does not send its best to Congress.

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Pretty sure any members from when Wyden ran Gray Panthers of Oregon (1974-1980!) are, unfortunately, long gone.

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too soon old, too late smart...

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GREYPANTHERS: https://www.graypanthersnyc.org/

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sigh... they haven't kicked him out yet? so much for the perspicacity of my fellow geezers.

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