16-38 Common Sense vs. Crazy — How Policy Becomes Law, and the War Iran Is Waiting Out

By Dr Mark | September 19, 2026 | Comments 0 Comment

Heritage Action sums up American politics in four words: “common sense versus crazy.” This week, how a think tank’s white paper turns into an actual law — and why a regime running out of money is betting everything on the American midterms.

Doug Blair, press manager for Heritage Action and an Oregon native, walks through how the Heritage Foundation’s model legislation actually becomes law: the congressional scorecard and key votes that hold members accountable, the Sentinel grassroots network, and the three priorities heading into November — the SAVE Act, codifying border control into law, and keeping advanced AI and semiconductor technology out of the Chinese Communist Party’s hands, including the Chinese money behind the campaign against American data centers. Plus Blair’s own reporting on how the closure of Dammasch State Hospital put Oregon’s mentally ill onto the streets of Portland, and why he says Housing First has failed.

Then retired U.S. Navy Captain Brent Sadler, Senior Research Fellow for Naval Warfare and Advanced Technology at the Heritage Foundation, on the Iran war: why it won’t become a quagmire, a regime losing $120 to $170 million a day against $34 billion in reserves, a leaked internal Tehran document putting popular support at 10 percent or less, why Iran is stalling peace talks until after the American midterms, and why gas prices remain near five dollars in Oregon with the Strait of Hormuz nominally open.

Full show notes, source links, and transcript: https://www.ispyradio.com/heritage-action-save-act-iran-war-gas-prices

Oregon’s Universal Health Plan: The $85 Billion Tax Bill | Show 16-31

By Dr Mark | August 1, 2026 | Comments 0 Comment

Sixteen Years in the Making — Oregon’s March to Socialized Medicine

Aired August 2026

Runtime 48:00
Host Mark Anderson
Guest Lisa Lettenmaier
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About this episode

For sixteen years this show has been telling you what was coming. We are now standing on the threshold of it. In seven weeks, a board appointed entirely by Governor Kotek delivers Oregon a blueprint for state-run health care — and the numbers are on the state’s own website.

$85B

Total annual cost

9.6%

New employer payroll tax

10.1%

New personal income tax

Sept 15

Plan due to Legislature

Independent health insurance broker Lisa Lettenmaier of Health Source NW returns for the full hour — and this one may be the most important conversation we have had with her. Mark opens by tracing the ten-step path Oregon has walked since 2011: the bills that created the Coordinated Care Organizations and then exempted them from state and federal antitrust law, the “global budgets” that pour money from every source into a single pot where no one can follow it, and the nonprofit structures that shield those books from public view.

Then the payoff. Because voters passed Measure 111 in 2022, health care is now a right written into the Oregon Constitution — and proponents argue the Legislature is therefore obligated to deliver it. The next year, Senate Bill 1089 created a nine-member Universal Health Plan Governance Board, appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate, and gave it a statutory deadline: September 15, 2026. By law, every member of that board must agree with the objective before they can be appointed to it. There is no seat for a skeptic.

Lisa walks through what the plan would actually cost a household. A 10.1% health care personal income tax stacked on top of Oregon’s existing 4.75%–9.9% rates, kicking in above 200% of the federal poverty line — a threshold a full-time minimum wage earner in Portland has already crossed. A 9.6% employer payroll tax on any business with more than $500,000 in firm-wide payroll, which is a landscaping company with a couple of crews, a small restaurant, a dental office. Plus three points on the corporate income tax and a bump to the corporate activity tax, which is levied on gross receipts, not profit. Total new Oregon revenue: $16.9 billion a year. The other $68 billion has to come from Washington.

And that is before the history. Vermont passed the nation’s first single-payer law and then killed it when the real tax numbers came back at 11.5% on employers and up to 9.5% on individuals — a Democratic governor walked away from his own signature achievement. Oregon is proposing a comparable payroll tax and a higher income tax. And Oregonians have already voted on this once: in 2002, Measure 23 proposed single-payer funded by income and payroll taxes and lost 78.5% to 21.5%.

The hour closes where it has to. In Canada, assisted dying has moved from a mandatory 48-hour waiting period to same-day — and a study has projected savings in the hundreds of billions, with the largest figures under non-voluntary scenarios. Oregon’s own board has adopted five governing principles, and one of them reads: during public health emergencies, protecting community health may temporarily take priority over individual preference. When the government is the only payer, the government decides what your care is worth.

The report lands September 15. It goes to the Legislature seated by the November 3 election — and under the Oregon Constitution, a tax package needs three-fifths of both chambers. Democrats hold 37 of 60 House seats and 18 of 30 in the Senate. Two House seats, or one Senate seat, is the whole margin.