Art Robinson is an indication of a scary, scary process.

Facts, Speculation, and Educated Guesses:

So, somewhere, some group of elderly billionaires, mostly involved in oil, guns, or insurance industries, sat down and realized that they could make more money if they could buy more government legislation favoring their companies.

Recently, apparently, they have identified some number, maybe 20-30, members of congress who stood in the way of the legislation they wrote and wanted Congress to pass for them.

So, instead, they went out and found maybe 20-30 guys who wanted to be in politics enough to do what they say, and ran them against these members of congress, dumping tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into their campaigns.

One of the aforementioned members of congress is Oregon's 4th district representative, Peter DeFazio.

The guy they got to run against him is Art Robinson, who claims to be a scientist, though he doesn't seem to have done any actual science since getting his PhD in biochemistry in 1968.

The guy is a "Libertarian" in the Ayn Rand tradition, wanting to abolish all public schools, libraries, and so forth, and whose ideas for getting rid of nuclear waste include sequestering it into the foundations and walls of people's homes, so they can get a nice continual "healthy" dose of radiation.

DeFazio has gathered a bunch of quotes from him published the results of his research at http://whoisartrobinson.defazioforcongress.org/archive/

I've still got a bit more research to do myself. I'm interested not just in Robinson, but all the other people these guys are financing in order to get a Congress that'll pass the legislation they write.

Watch this space...