About the Portland Area

If you ask the average person what they think of Portland, Oregon, they may mention microbrews, laid back people, hipsters, trees, wild-eyed liberals, coffee, and bicycles.

Ask them about the Portland economy, and they might mention Intel. That's certainly understandable, as Intel is the area's largest private sector employer, with between 15,000 and 20,000 engineers, designers, and production workers; mostly in the western suburb of Hillsboro.

A well-informed person may know that Daimler Trucks North America (maker of Freightliner trucks) is headquartered and manufactures here, as are Leatherman Tools and Danner Boots which also are headquartered and manufactured right here. Alternatively, Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and Adidas America all are headquartered in the area, but manufacture elsewhere. If they're really familiar with Portland, they may even mention the many locally-owned businesses characteristic of the area, from small, independent retailers to specialized bicycle makers, and even the high-end trumpet maker David G. Monette, renowned for crafting custom trumpets for many of music's top players, including Wynton Marsalis, who has been known to make a pilgrimage to Portland just to pick up a new, custom-made horn.

What may not get mentioned is large-scale metals manufacturing.  You see, despite its green, leafy image, the Portland metro area has long had a heavy industrial economy centered on steel and, until the economics of the past 20 years made continued production infeasible, aluminum. Manufacturing in the Portland metro area pays its workers wages totaling more than $4.6 billion per year; outpacing other metro areas that some may view as more aligned with manufacturing, such as Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Indianapolis. Portland's relatively (some may say unexpectedly) large manufacturing base is a major reason why Oregon ranks fifth of all states in the importance of manufacturing, which constitutes 18.7 percent of the state's overall economy.

Portland's industrial nature made it no accident when, during WWII, not one, not two, butthree huge shipyards sprang up almost overnight in the Portland metro area, producing 441-foot-long Liberty Ships and the larger Victory Ships in such great numbers that they eventually overwhelmed the German and Japanese navies' ability to sink them quickly enough to stop American shipments of armaments and food to our allies world wide. One shipyard, Henry Kaiser's Oregon Shipbuilding near the Portland neighborhood of St. Johns, pumped out a record 24 ships in just one month: September 1943. That's nearly one ship per day launched out of its 11 shipways. The production techniques developed in shipyards like those in Portland and other coastal cities during WWII still are used in modern-day shipbuilding.

After the war, the shipyards were converted to other uses. But the legacy of metals manufacturing and recycling in the area lived on, in such companies as Esco Steel, Schnitzer Steel, Fought & Company, Oregon Steel Mills, Vigor Industrial, Zidell Marine, and Precision Cast Parts.

One of these companies is Oregon Iron Works, which operates two plants in the Portland Area: one in the Portland suburb of Clackamas and one across the Columbia at a former Liberty shipyard in Vancouver. Starting business in the latter part of WWII to fabricate steel parts for Columbia River Dams built by the federal government to generate hydroelectric power, Oregon Iron Works now does heavy structural fabrication for a diverse range of applications, including bridge sections for highways, structural pieces including parts for NASA launch facilities, prototype ocean wave power generators, and various commercial and small military vessels.

The Return of the Streetcar

In 2001, the City of Portland did something no other North American city had done since the 1950s: it built a streetcar line in its downtown core designed for modern, European-style street cars rather than the cute, vintage trolleys that operate as tourist attractions in a few American cities. The streetcar line is currently being expanded to cross the Willamette River and provide another rail link to Portland's inner east side, after years of stonewalling and obstruction by the Bush Administration was brushed away by President Obama's Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. In addition, an extension along an all-but-unused trolley line south to the suburb of Lake Oswego is currently being debated. The Portland Streetcar has been studied by representatives of cities from across the U.S. and Canada, with Tucson and Washington D.C. moving ahead with construction.  

Keep in mind the distinction between streetcars and light rail -- unlike light rail,  streetcars generally operate on at-grade tracks in mixed traffic alongside and often in the same lane as automobiles, buses, and trucks. Many cities, Portland included, have light rail lines. Until 2001, however, no other North American city had a modern streetcar line -- all but a few lingering vintage lines had been abandoned and paved over in the mid-20th century in favor of buses and automobiles.

Sensing an opportunity, Oregon Iron Works formed United Streetcar in 2005 after it saw Portland buy European streetcars designed and built in the Czech Republic by a joint venture between Inekon and Škoda.  United Iron Works then went on to hammer out an exclusive licensing agreement in 2006 with Škoda to manufacture modern streetcars at its Clackamas plant.

Enter Peter DeFazio (D-OR): Job Creator

Peter DeFazio has represented west-central Oregon's 4th Congressional District since 1987. He somehow has managed to repeatedly win re-election despite representing a widely divergent district: ranging from the hippies and yuppies of Eugene to hardscrabble (and many unemployed) loggers and millworkers in communities such as Springfield, Roseburg, and countless other small burgs in the forests, mountains, valleys, and coastal areas of Oregon's 4th.

Notice that, officially, he doesn't represent the Portland area. But that bit of congressional geographic trivia does not mean he doesn't represent the Portland area.  He most assuredly does.

It was Rep. DeFazio who inserted the following text into a 2005 piece of transportation legislation with the unwieldy name of SAFETEA-LU:

(10) PORTLAND,  OREGON STREETCAR PROTOTYPE PURCHASE
AND DEPLOYMENT.—Not less than $1,000,000 shall be made
available in each of fiscal years 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009
by the Secretary to TriMet for the purchase and deployment
of a domestically manufactured streetcar

The contract to manufacture that prototype went to Oregon Iron Works/United Streetcar. The prototype was completed in 2009, making it the first streetcar to be built in the U.S. by an American company since the last car was built in 1952 by the St. Louis Car Company. The United Streetcar prototype has 70 percent U.S. content, and with an additional $2.4 million grant in early 2011 from Portland's mass transit agency TriMet, United Streetcar plans to increase the U.S. content to 90 percent by modifying the design to accommodate a propulsion and control system to be manufactured in Wisconsin by Rockwell. As with any start-up there have been hiccups: the original propulsion system obtained from Škoda for the prototype is not functioning properly.  United Streetcar is in discussions with the Siemens Austrian subsidiary Elin to provide the propulsion system for streetcars being manufactured until the Rockwell-manufactured system becomes available.

What of the Future?

To date, United Streetcar is under contract to provide Portland Streetcar six additional streetcars and Tucson Streetcar with a total of seven cars. Friday, it was announced thatUnited Streetcar is nearing agreement with D.C. Streetcar for an $8.68 million contract to provide two streetcars for its H Street/Benning Rd. Line.

The company would like to branch out into the larger light rail market. Teaming with Swiss rail constructor Stadler Rail, Oregon Iron Works/United Streetcar was recently informed that it is a finalist in the competition to manufacture at least 18 light rail cars for the Portland-Milwaukie (yes, that's how we spell it out here) light rail line.

If successful, United Streetcar could expand its current employee count by over 100 workers from its current 35. Though the workers may split their time between United Streetcar and parent Oregon Iron Works, this is a substantial jump in employment. If you're curious: yes, these are union jobs paying family wages, with the shop workers represented by Ironworkers Local 516, and the electrical workers who perform the streetcar’s electrical outfitting by IBEW Local 48.  

In my mind, Rep. DeFazio is performing just as a Congressional representative should. He is supporting investment in infrastructure. He is promoting local, unionized employers and their employees. He is helping to reinvigorate American manufacturing. And he is pushing transportation projects that will reduce our dependence on imported petroleum. We should have 434 more like him.

Note: I have no financial ties or any ties whatsoever to Oregon Iron Works or United Streetcar. I just thought it was an interesting story.

I strongly disagree with the ruling. In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.
Corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections.

The ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy. It has further tilted the balance of the power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when the wealthiest people in this country already never had it so good. History will record that the Citizens United decision is one of the worst in the history of our country.

At a time when corporations have more than $2 trillion in cash in their bank accounts and are making record-breaking profits, the American people should be concerned when the Supreme Court says that these corporations have a constitutionally-protected right to spend shareholders' money to dominate an election as if they were real, live persons. If we do not reverse this decision, there will be no end to the impact that corporate interests can have on our campaigns and our democracy.

According to an Oct. 10, 2011, article in Politico, "the billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch plan to steer more than $200 million -- potentially much more -- to conservative groups ahead of Election Day 2012." Others are doing the same thing.

Does anybody really believe that that is what American democracy is supposed to be about?

Think about the consequences in Congress. When an issue comes up that impacts Wall Street, like breaking up huge banks, what will senators be thinking about when they decide how to vote? Every member of the Senate, every member of the House, in the back of their minds will be asking this: If I cast a vote this way, if I take on some big-money interest, am I going to be punished? Will a huge amount of money be unleashed in my state?

It's not just taking on Wall Street. Maybe it's taking on the drug companies. Maybe it's taking on the private insurance companies. Maybe it's taking on the military-industrial complex. Whatever powerful and wealthy special interests members of Congress are prepared to take on -- on behalf of the interest of the middle class and working families of this country -- they will know in the back of their mind that there may be a flood of money coming in to their state. They're going to think twice about how to cast that vote.

When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. But more needs to be done, something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a Supreme Court decision. That is why I proposed the constitutional amendment in the Senate as a companion measure to an amendment proposed in the House of Representatives by Congressman Ted Deutch.

We have got to send a constitutional amendment to the states that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone - except five members of the United States Supreme Court - understands: Corporations are not people with equal constitutional rights. Corporations are subject to regulation by the people. Corporations may not make campaign contributions -- the law of the land for the last century. And Congress and states have the power to regulate campaign finances.

Show your support for this amendment by signing here: http://sanders.senate.gov/...