So it should be no surprise that Bill Sizemore, Racketeer gets lots of money, but  according to this, his funding comes from Loren Parks, an out-of-state donor who has pumped $8 million into Oregon initiatives.  The Oregonian article does a fairly decent job of tracking the money, as Mr. Parks finances Bill Sizemore, Racketeer and Kevin Mannix. In the mix, also, is Russ Walker who is connected to the Washington, DC anti-tax, anti-lawyer group, FreedomWorks.

The Oregonian missed background on Mr. Parks. He’s an…uh…interesting–yeah, that’s the ticket–character. While he is not a licensed physician or mental health therapist, Mr. Parks provides services to women including sexual therapy. I haven’t gone into the links here, but it appears that Mr. Parks purports to provide some form of hypnotherapy to women suffering from sexual problems.

Seems like this stuff could only come from Hollywood. Sad to say that it’s not fiction. Sadder still,these are the people who have hijacked Oregon’s cherished initiative system.  I think we should all demand better.

David Sugerman

I’m not a Bill Sizemore fan. My view is that he has taken Oregon’s treasured initiative system and turned it into a mockery for his personal aggrandizement and financial gain. So I was amused to read this account of how Judge Janice Wilson found him in contempt of court yesteday.

As most people know, “contempt” is actually a techical legal term.  So Judge Wilson’s findings ocurred after a hearing on the merits. It’s probably just coincidence that many people held Mr. Sizemore in contempt well before the news report.

The backstory is that an Oregon jury found Mr. Sizemore’s Taxpayers United PAC responsible for damages due to his illegal campaign practices (racketeering, forging signatures, falsifying campaign expenditure reports). The court entered a judgment against Mr. Sizemore’s organization. Mr. Sizemore appealed, and he lost.  It’s a long opinion, but here’s a copy from the Oregon Court of Appeals that affirmed the bulk of the trial judge’s rulings. That case is apparently on appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Mr. Sizemore apparently decided that he could play a shell game with his money so that unions and the state could not collect on its judgment. And that’s where he ran into trouble in Judge Wilson’s courtroom.

Those of us who know Judge Wilson will tell you that she is smart and tough. She doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and she really dislikes game playing. Bad draw for Mr. Sizemore, I imagine.  In the article, Mr. Sizemore complained that Judge Wilson upheld “a blatantly unconstitutional ruling” by another judge. The answer to that is an appeal. So far, Mr. Sizemore has lost that argument, though who knows what will happen at the Oregon Supreme Court.

David Sugerman