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The Puget Sound Partnership Scam, It Matters Here

1/12/2014

2 Comments

 
The Excavator has repeatedly raised alarm in the last three years about the Puget Sound Partnership's expanding and pushy presence here in Whatcom County, which is on the "Salish Sea" but far north of Puget Sound's central basin.  Just last Thursday night, it (or they, whomever they really are) went so far as to submit a last-minute recommendation for 20-year population growth here in our county - both city and rural - having provided absolutely zero science that we know of that would justify or support that recommendation.

It was sheer coincidence that Freedom Foundation has just released a new report that exposes the Puget Sound Partnership's notorious history of nepotism, incompetence, and patronage. This synopsis will ring a bell if you've witnessed PSP's slick "facilitation" tactics here (like the WIT, glad-handing funds to county departments, and liberal palm-greasing to preferred vendors and grant recipients). How can we rid ourselves of their cronyism and bureaucratic fleas?  (Ideas and comments welcome, below.)

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Why we must abolish the
Puget Sound Partnership Scam


Liberty Blog, Freedom Foundation
January 10, 2014


Unfortunately, it’s not very difficult to find evidence of incompetence and waste in most government agencies.  But that alone isn’t  why we are calling for abolishing this agency.  

By Washington state standards, this is a small operation, consuming less than $20 million in state taxpayer funds this biennium.  There are bigger financial problems in Washington state government. 

We are calling for abolishing the Puget Sound Partnership because if ever an agency deserves to be dissolved, this is it.  If our elected officials are unable to redirect our limited tax dollars away from such an obvious waste of resources, then we should question whether it is possible to do it under any circumstance.  

We are calling for abolishing this agency because a message needs to be sent to all government agencies in our state that there are consequences for corruption and total incompetence at some point. 

In addition to the attached report, it is worth reviewing some of the colorful history behind this agency. This is largely a tale of nepotism, incompetence and patronage, and is hardly unique in government history. What might be unique is how all this drama has produced a state agency that has accomplished so little for so much money squandered.  

It is helpful to know this history when reading our report and considering our suggestions.

Founded in 2007 by then-Gov. Christine Gregoire, the Puget Sound Partnership was created to be a “community effort of citizens, governments, tribes, scientists and businesses working together to restore and protect Puget Sound.” 

It was an opportune time for the Washington State Legislature to create a new agency dedicated to “restoring” the Puget Sound. State revenues were up and the prospect of a financial crisis did not appear likely.

The old agency dedicated to cleaning up the Sound, the “Puget Sound Action Team,” was looking increasingly more powerless to do anything productive and was set to be abolished by the state Legislature. Most auspiciously, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-6th) was serving as a ranking member of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee and was in-line to become its head in a Democrat-controlled Congress, putting the representative from Bremerton into one of the most powerful positions in the nation to funnel federal dollars.  
  
While sitting on the committee in January 2007, Dicks secured a $50 million earmark for Puget Sound cleanup efforts. At the same time, David Dicks -- Rep. Dicks’ son -- applied to become executive director of the newly created Puget Sound Partnership, a position that paid $125,000 a year.

PictureDicks (the younger)
David Dicks, a 36-year-old attorney at a Seattle law firm with no administrative experience, seemed an unlikely choice to head up the new agency whose mission was to lead a “science-based, results-driven, publically embraced partnership.” Yet the junior Dicks was eager to pursue a career in the public eye like his father. During public hearings, he touted his ability to secure federal funds and was repeatedly praised for doing so.

Despite concerns about his actual administrative ability, the Partnership’s Leadership Council, headed by President Richard Nixon’s one-time EPA-chief -- and vocal Norm Dicks’ supporter -- Bill Ruckelshaus, sent David’s resume to the governor for approval.

In August 2007, Gov. Christine Gregoire appointed David Dicks executive director of the Partnership. After his son’s appointment, Norm Dicks authored a bill that doubled the amount of federal spending on Puget Sound restoration projects. 

The elder Dicks also bragged about his role in funneling more money towards his son’s agency, “[before I was head of the committee] Puget Sound was receiving $500,000 from the EPA,” he said. “Since then, we've put in $93 million for Puget Sound cleanup in the federal legislation." 

In addition to increasing the sheer amount of money his son’s agency receives, Norm Dicks also sought to increase the political clout of the Partnership.  Bills passed by Dicks’ committee would also have clarified that “the Partnership is the sort of entity in Washington state charged with cleaning up Puget Sound,” according to his son David.

The father’s funneling of federal dollars to his son’s agency and the political appointment was obvious enough to generate interest by traditional media. National newspaper outlets like the Washington Post, and several  Washington politicians sounded off on what clearly seemed to be a case of high-profile nepotism in government.


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Ruckelshaus, still head of the steering Leadership Council, defended both his decision to hire David Dicks and his congressman father’s steering of federal dollars to the Partnership in a series of radio interviews and a letter to the editor. Ruckelshaus cited Dicks’ “long-time commitment to Puget Sound cleanup efforts and David’s qualifications as director.

Yet Ruckelshaus was certainly not in any position to defend them: Bill Ruckelshaus and his daughter Mary also worked together. When picking the top 15 finalists for the Partnership’s nine-slot Science Council, the Washington State Academy of Sciences  rejected Mary Ruckelshaus’ application, yet three  months later, David Dicks signed her up to be the Partnership’s chief scientist.  

Apparently, Mary Ruckelshaus was not qualified for the less-important Science Council position but was “well-suited” to be senior chief-scientist.

The Partnership’s director of government affairs, John Dohrmann, said of Mary Ruckelshaus and nepotism at PSP: “…it has always been humorous when she's been in a position to testify or make a presentation in front of a board that her father is chairing.”

Clearly, the two most politically powerful families involved, Dicks and Ruckelshaus, had managed to ensconce themselves with good positions at the agency, despite their lack of qualifications and familial conflict of interest. Nepotism was only the first of many missteps at the agency, one that led directly to many more mistakes. 

Fears about David Dicks’ incompetence as executive director of the Partnership quickly proved to be well-founded. Under his watch, the Partnership violated multiple state laws and ethical guidelines. 

According to a two-year long probe of the agency, the state Auditor’s Office found that the Partnership repeatedly circumvented state contracting laws, exceeded its purchasing authority and made unallowable purchases with public funds. 


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The audit report alleged that the Partnership: “…filed a contract with the Office of Financial Management (OFM) for $19,999, one dollar below the $20,000 threshold for advertising or conducting a competitive procurement. We found no cost detail to show how the Partnership determined this amount.”

Then-state Auditor Brian Sonntag said of the contract amount in a Washington Post interview, “This contract was originally $19,999. Now come on — that shows intent.”

Sonntag continued, “That tells me they were looking for a way to direct that contract without opening it to competition.”

Even more revealing, the Partnership gave the contract to the law firm K&L Gates, one of Norm Dicks’ largest congressional campaign contributors. The contract eventually superseded the original contract, paying $51,498 in total, more than twice the original agreed amount. 

No surprise, the contract was with Gerry Johnson, a personal friend and former co-worker of David Dicks.  Even the contract itself  -- for setting up a nonprofit foundation into which he could channel taxpayer funds  (which would have been immune from public audits) -- was a violation of state law that requires all agencies to use the state Attorney General’s Office for all legal business.

While the Partnership’s illegal contract with K&L Gates was the most expensive violation of state law, it was far from the most inept. 

Under Dicks’ directorship, the Partnership spent at least $120,000 on IT goods, exceeded their original budget for IT investments for the 2007-2009 biennium, and used to it purchase Apple Macintosh computers  --  which were not compatible with statewide information systems and applications for financial reporting, payroll, or travel according to the Auditor’s report.  

Wasteful spending was commonplace at the Partnership, including gems like:

·         $6,853 for 120 monogrammed fleece vests;
·         $5,044 for 30 monogrammed jackets;
·         $3,650 for 5,000 tubes of lip balm;
·         $687 for 20 personalized mahogany gift boxes containing sparkling apple cider for state officials; and,
·         $2,474 in catering for a private reception – which state agencies are prohibited from providing according to state law.

The OFM was also able to stop yet another attempt by the Partnership to break state law -- canceling an invoice for $4,900 worth of alcohol for a February event they held at the Convention and Trade Center.


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The report also criticized the $10,000 purchase of a “membership” to the Cascade Land Conservancy – which, according to the auditor “the Partnership could not show the public received value commensurate with the amount of funding provided for the membership.” 

Why would the agency spend the money in the first place? David’s brother, Ryan Dicks, was actually vice president of transactions and also served in a paid consulting role at the Conservancy at the time.

A series of high-profile investigations by John Ryan of local radio station KUOW highlighted further unethical activity at the Partnership. 

The KUOW report revealed that it was not just K&L Gates and the Cascade Land Conservancy that had benefited from political connections with the Dicks’ family. Steve McBee and Tom Luce, a lobbyist and a consultant, respectively, who used to work for Norm Dicks, were able to secure contracts with the Puget Sound Partnership through David Dicks.

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The relationship paid off big time, as McBee’s firm got nearly $400,000 for consulting work; Tom Luce was able to secure over $1 million from PSP for consulting work from “Enviro Issues,” a firm for which he was subcontracting.  

KUOW also reported that David Dicks was one of only a handful of directors with his own state-assigned vehicle. Dicks said that he did not commute to work with the car, which would be a violation of state law. And technically, he doesn’t -- the car’s official station is actually in front of his Seattle home. 

KUOW also reported that Dicks handed out most of the jobs on the management staff without advertising for them, hiring them on at salaries that paid $20,000 more a year on average than similar jobs at other natural resource agencies like Deparemend of Natural Resources  or Department of Ecology. 

According to an anonymous whistleblower at the agency, David Dicks also used his position to have his long-time friend, Jon Bridgman, taken on as graphic designer at the Partnership. Dicks would later have him design a poster for King County commissioner candidate Dow Constantine, without disclosing the in-kind donation to the Public Disclosure Commission.  

Constantine himself had been appointed to the PSP’s ecosystem coordination board by Dicks only five months prior.

An investigation was ordered, but after state investigators prematurely tipped off the parties concerned, the probe was closed. 

Dicks proceeded to have the tipster fired, an action in violation of state whistleblower-protection laws.Dicks then claimed not to have known that the worker he fired was the whistleblower, yet record requests of employee performance reviews turned up no previous complaints about her job performance, and her supervisor wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for her after she was fired.

Dicks had to shell out $40,000 in order to get her to sign an agreement agreeing not to sue the agency for firing her, according to an agreement obtained by journalists at radio station KUOW. 

Record requests performed by the Freedom Foundation determined there was yet another anonymous whistleblower, likely from inside the agency. This whistleblower told state investigators that PSP had “back-dated” the hiring documents of a new employee, Christopher Townsend, effectively paying him three months before his actual starting date.

Not coincidentally, Townsend was another personal friend hired by David Dicks after he was appointed by the governor. Despite this incredible snafu, Townsend was able to remain at the Partnership and collect a nearly six-figure salary for another two years.  

It is not clear at this time that state investigators have done anything about this complaint. Time and time again, the Puget Sound Partnership has been unwilling to follow the basic rules that govern how state agencies should spend taxpayer funds.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency (not known for great financial controls itself) found “a near total lack of certification” for PSP contracts and forced PSP to return $125,000 in federal grant funding already given to PSP.  

The Puget Sound Partnership did not appeal or dispute the findings and returned the funding in 2011 (although the Washington State Legislature increased funding to PSP the next year anyway).


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In the face of David Dicks’ incompetence as executive director of the Partnership, Gregoire’s demeanor towards him had changed considerably. Gregoire grilled Dicks on the lack of accountability at an otherwise friendly annual Public Accountability Forum for the directors of all the natural resource departments in October 2010. 

Gregoire interrupted Dicks in mid-speech to note, “These slides are too general for me. I knew the story. I want data. I want to be able to see that we are accomplishing what we set out to do. ... I need to be able to show to the legislature, candidly, that we are doing our job.

“We have to have measures, goals," Gregoire said, "and we don't have that. We have to have (them) for the Puget Sound Partnership itself." 

The governor added, "The next time we come here, I've got to be able to ... hold the Puget Sound Partnership accountable.  Where's the part where the Puget Sound Partnership can say ...’Here’s our job, and here’s how we're doing our job?’” 

In 2011, Gregoire interrogated Dicks over one of his most touted abilities as director. “David, where is the federal legislation that would allow us to have a continuing funding rather than having to ask the question every year?” she asked.

Unfortunately for the Dicks’ political dynasty, the congressional dynamic shifted dramatically in Washington, D.C., after the 2010 mid-terms elections. The Democrats’ historic loss at the polls wiped out Norm Dicks’ chance at becoming chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which had seemed assured.

In the ensuing session of the 111th Congress, the “Puget Sound Recovery Act,”presented by Sen. Maria Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray on Norm Dicks’ behalf, failed in committee.  

Six days after the 2010 elections, David Dicks quietly resigned as executive director at the Partnership. Inside sources indicated this happened at Gregoire’s behind-the-scenes insistence.  The nepotism, cronyism and waste that had plagued Dicks’ directorship were a point of embarrassment for the governor.  

Seemingly, David’s only useful quality was his ability to secure additional federal funds for his agency from his father. But with the new political makeup of the 112th Congress, earmarks like this were not likely.  

Unfortunately, Dicks did not totally abandon government work. He was given a three-day-a-week,  $75,000-a-year job, ironically, teaching students how to manage “strategic partnerships” at a newly created post at the University of Washington.

 Despite Dicks’ disappearance from power, the problem of politics at the Partnership does not seem to have disappeared. Before securing another executive director, PSP has seen three interim directors -- Gerry O’Keefe, Tony Wright, and Marc Daily. In the meantime, the chairman of the steering Leadership Committee, Bill Ruckelshaus, sent in his resignation to Gregoire.  

Ruckelshaus’ replacement, Martha Kongsgaarrd, also happened to be one state’s largest campaign donors, shelling out more than $250,000 to various Democrat candidates and causes since 2000.  

She has bestowed thousands of dollars to the campaigns of various powerful politicians in Washington state, including Inslee, Norm Dicks, Murray and Cantwell. Inslee is overseeing one of his largest campaign donors at the Partnership. 

With Kongsgaarrd at the helm of the Leadership Committee, it seems like the Partnership has received a fresh dose of politics, moving it further in the wrong direction by pursuing political patronage at an agency that is supposed to be guided by hard science.

It is time to end the silly drama of the Puget Sound Partnership. The Legislature needs to stop funding this embarrassment. There are far more worthy recipients of tax dollars, and there can be no claim to fiscal responsibility in Olympia as long as this agency still exists.


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2 Comments

PJTV:  Making Obamacare Cool, throw in a nice bag of weed

1/3/2014

2 Comments

 
The latest bad healthcare idea (Bloomberg):  throw in a nice bag of weed in Washington or Colorado.  Make it cool or make it hurt...  Some "choice," there.
2 Comments

FUD on Health Care Policy

1/2/2014

1 Comment

 
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WE noticed this article, about the girl who went in for a routine tonsillectomy and ended up on life support. This family has been criticized as publicity hounds for doing what any parent would do: Give their child every chance for life, as long as any scrap of hope remains. 

The McMaths are fighting for life. On Monday, they won a court order that prevents Children's Hospital of Oakland from pulling the plug on Jahi until Jan. 7. Her relatives have been attacked as "publicity hounds" for doing everything possible to raise awareness about the young girl's tragic case. They've been criticized as troublemakers for challenging powerful hospital officials. They've been labeled "selfish" and ignorant because they are praying for a miracle.

Why, many observers ask, don't they just "accept reality" and let go?

As the mother of a 13-year-old girl, I would have done everything Jahi's mom has done to this point. Everything. Here's reality: Children's Hospital faces serious malpractice questions about its care of Jahi. Hospital execs have a glaring conflict of interest in wielding power over her life support. According to relatives, medical officials callously referred to Jahi as "dead, dead, dead" and dismissed the child as a "body."

The McMath family refused to be rushed or pushed around. They demanded respect for their loved one. I say more power to them.

There are plenty of reasons to question the medical establishment's handling of catastrophic cases involving brain injury and "brain death." In 2008, doctors were dead certain that 21-year-old Zack Dunlop was legally deceased after a horrible ATV accident. Tests showed there was no blood flow to his brain. His hospital issued a death notice. Authorities prepared to harvest his organs. But family members were not convinced. A cousin who happened to be a nurse tested Zack's reflexes on his own one last time as the hospital swooped in. The "brain dead" "body" responded. Forty-eight days later, the supposedly impossible happened: "Brain dead" Zack Dunlop walked out of the hospital and lived to tell about his miraculous recovery on the Today Show. (Continue reading...)
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So who locally will be making the decision to pull our loved ones off of life support? God knows, there are plenty of reasons to have fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) when it comes to our health care these days. For example, what are the central planners cooking up here? Or here? Buzzwords like "Local Health Reform" and "Transforming Health Care in Whatcom County" leave us with a queasy feeling in the pit of our stomachs, especially with all the news events of 2013 under our belts. Transforming has become a dirty word, especially when we like our health care, and we want to keep our health care. On who's authority does anybody deem to transform it? And who the hell are these people, pray tell? In 2014, with a new panel of county council members, WE think it would be a good time, and very worthwhile to ask some probing questions.

1 Comment

Weekly Standard, "But What Is The Reality of It?"

12/29/2013

3 Comments

 
    Just as WE hear that quite a few Whatcom County citizens of all political stripes have lost their healthcare plans here, the Weekly Standard posted a short piece about a New York Times feature, that in the Big Apple elite Obamacare supporters are feeling "mugged by reality" as they lose their own health plans and access to doctors:

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‘But What Is the Reality of It?’
William Kristol, Editor
December 30 - January 6, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 16

If you have a taste for Schadenfreude (and who doesn’t, especially in this holiday season?), you’ll enjoy Anemona Hartocollis’s article in the New York Times of December 14. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

The article goes on to detail the Obamacare-induced travails of members of New York’s “creative classes” (a phrase the Times fails to put in quotation marks) and concludes:

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”


Ms. Sweeney’s statement-and-question says it all. It’s the voice of liberalism in the age of Obama. She’s for Obamacare, but didn’t know what it was. Now, Ms. Sweeney realizes (sort of) that she’s been mugged by reality. But she’s not quite ready to come to grips with reality. She’s not quite ready to press charges against Obama, or against liberalism.

But at least she’s asking a reality-based question.

In 2014, it’s the job of conservatism, and of the Republican party, to answer Ms. Sweeney’s question. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to explain the reality of Obamacare—that it’s bad for health care, bad for jobs, and bad for freedom. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to offer escapes from Obamacare, to the extent possible (see the piece by Jeffrey H. Anderson and Spencer Cowan in this issue). It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to set forth workable alternatives to Obamacare for the future, as Paul Ryan and others intend to do early in the new year.

And it’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to press charges. It’s their job to make the case against Obamacare on the broadest possible terms, as an example—as the example—of unintended-consequences-producing, rule-of-law-undermining, freedom-denying, big-government, liberal social-engineering. Obamacare embodies liberalism’s fatal conceit. It’s the job of conservatives and Republicans to make it liberalism’s fatal overreach.

So, to answer Ms. Sweeney’s question: The reality of it is that Obamacare is a disaster. And it’s a disaster because, as Margaret Thatcher put it, “The facts of life are conservative.”

If conservatives and Republicans can explain the facts of life in a language intelligible to contemporary Americans, the year 2014 could be an inflection point in the saga of modern American liberalism, modern American conservatism, and modern American politics. It could be a moment of genuine hope and positive change. Perhaps, to adapt a rhetorical flourish, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the nanny state began to slow and our nation began to heal. It could be the moment when we regain our footing and find our way back to the always difficult but ultimately rewarding path of individual liberty, honorable self-government, and national greatness.


Not to be cold hearted, but this was a surprise, how?
3 Comments

A Cautionary Tale - Over the Top?

12/14/2013

1 Comment

 
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The George Orwell novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949. At that time, it was considered fiction. What was once fiction is now real. Today (judging by their behavior), all too many elected officials consider the novel more of a handbook: "Tyranny for Dummies". Maybe WE should count our blessings that we got 10 or 20 good years past the eponymous year in question.

Anyway, WE noticed that one of our readers posted over on Kakistocracy Report, a parody that has been circulating on the internet about the Orwell characters, Winston and Julia in the book 1984, framed in what could be the not too distant future...


"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. 

Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad" example it sets for the rest of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting. 

Yet, it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. 

And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster. 
(Continue reading...)

The author adds some of his own commentary about the cumulative effects of progressivism:

... we have not reduced poverty; we have institutionalized it. We've created a dependent underclass. We've reduced self-respect. We've increased crime. We've reduced upward mobility. We've reduced liberty. Then, there's this from Bill Whittle:
If WE don't raise awareness, who will? As the album title goes, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. 
1 Comment

The Scheme behind the Obamacare Fraud

11/23/2013

1 Comment

 
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As you know, WE consider ourselves a local concern, but the Affordable Care Act is something that can cause big problems locally. ObamaCare has been promoted as a way to make health care affordable to everyone, but the true objective might be quite different. This article by Andrew C. McCarthy at National Review Online caught our eye. 

November 23, 2013

Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.

To be sure, it is the fraud — the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices — that grabs our attention. As I’ve recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” The incontrovertible record — disclosures by the Obama administration in the Federal Register, representations by the Obama Justice Department in federal court — proves that Obama’s promises were systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing, and not just because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama also insults our intelligence. It is one thing to tuck evidence of falsehood into a few paragraphs on page 34,552 of a dusty governmental journal no one may ever look at. It is quite something else to announce it in a legal brief publicly filed in a case of intense interest to millions of Americans aggrieved by Obamacare’s religious-liberty violations. To be so bold is to say, in effect, “The public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press is too deep in my pocket to raise alarms.”
(Continue reading at National Review Online ...)
1 Comment

The Herald Makes it Dead Simple!

10/29/2013

9 Comments

 
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Over the weekend, the Bellingham Herald endorsed Rud Browne, Barry Buchanan, Ken Mann and Carl Weimer, saying (and WE quote) "[Kershner, Elenbaas, Knutzen and Luke] want government to "get out of the way" at a time when more is required."  (Emphasis ours.)

The Bellingham Herald has unwittingly made voters' choice dead simple.

If you want your life here to be governed more, vote for Browne, Buchanan, Mann and Weimer.

If you want this area's government to have tangible limits, vote for Kershner, Elenbaas, Knutzen and Luke.

The rhetorical goal was, as always, the mobilization of partisan bias:  to identify restraint as outside the mainstream.

Allow us to share one basic principle about government:  Up to a certain point, government services actually do provide more freedom and self-determination when they're carefully contained. Government work that serves essential needs more efficiently than we could meet them alone allows us to attend to our own endeavors without being unduly or unjustly burdened. But beyond that point, government crosses the line to burdensome and oppressive governance. Instead of leaving us free to mind our own business, government starts sticking its nose into our business. WE believe government crossed into the realm of oppressive governance a long time ago.

There have always been loopy blue laws, but WE thought the nation got past most some time ago. Alas, the lust to rule seems like a hiccup in human nature.  Take a trip to the Nanny State and explore how easily good intentions slip to petty tyranny, and "nudge" becomes "shove."  The appetites of some to govern is a wonder to behold.

If personal and civil liberty mean little to you, and the thought of a ballooning local bureaucratic state seems safe - well, you know who to vote for.  The Herald told you so.

Could this problem be solved with more freedom, instead of less? ~ Penn Jillette

9 Comments

The Tangled Web They Weave

10/20/2013

0 Comments

 
WE saw an article over at WhatcomWatchdog that you may have missed:

I spent some time looking into the background of the PowerPastCoal.org campaign.  I thought I might find out who exactly they are.  I'm sure glad I did some more research because I discovered a tangled mess of organizations involved.

My original assertion was that this organization was a part of the Wild Earth Guardians Power Past Coal campaign.   I mean really, they have the same name!

Looking further into the WEG website I see that they (WEG) " heartily endorse and are a part of 350.org, a broad-based coalition to bring carbon dioxide down to safe levels".  Not sure who 350.org is but they just happen to be listed first on the list of organizations making up PowerPastCoal.org.

So I went ahead and looked up who the website (powerpastcoal.org) is registered to.  Lo and behold it's registered to someone in New Hampshire with a 350.org email address.  Very curious since their website claims that they are an organization that "acts locally". 

350.org  keeps who they really are private by using "Moniker Privacy Services" as as their registrant name.  Hmmmmm?  Why the secrecy?
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Continue reading...   

The gist of the story is that we have a large number of "non profit" organizations contributing money to influence our local elections anonymously, and it isn't easy to track. In fact, it's very confusing. Most people wouldn't bother. Thanks to WhatcomWatchdog for even attempting it.

0 Comments

Riot at WWU - Outrageous behavior, young voters

10/14/2013

2 Comments

 
There was national coverage of the absolutely outrageous and violent behavior that a mob near Western Washington University engaged in Saturday night. It is not known how many of these rioters are students at Western. The few people who were arrested were reportedly not students. The question remains, where did the nearly 500 rioters come from, exactly?

WE do know that in and around Western, these hundreds of people vote, and that they are constantly courted by environmental PACs and Whatcom Wins!

These little darlings did a nice number on the environment right there. Do they have any idea how big the carbon footprint is for all that beer? And whatever they belch out after drinking it? Not to mention the mess they made of the neighborhood: tearing down stop signs, pointless vandalism, littering ... everywhere. Way to nurture nature! Yelling “Faggot!”  Oh yes, that's a nice tolerant attitude toward homosexuals. All hail diversity! These are the people that Bellingham wants to protect from dangerously negligent landlords. WE wonder who really needs the protection. Al Gore should come down from Mt. Olympus and give them all a very good spanking.
2 Comments

Are They Schools or Soup Kitchens?

9/26/2013

2 Comments

 
WE think the mission creep has gotten way out of hand:

A Message from Communications and Community Relations  

Dear Staff,

We are sending this message to families on School Messenger today via email and phone. Dr. Baker and Isabel Meeker will be sending phone calls home to families. The press release is posted here on our website.

Bellingham Public Schools’ after-school dinners have begun for the new school year. We’re excited to offer free hot meals to all children under 18. Please note that accompanying adults are charged $4. 

These meals are offered at Shuksan Middle School in their cafeteria on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from September 19 through June 10, 2014. Dinner is served from 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Providing healthy meals and snacks is part of our collective commitment to the children in our community, ensuring they have the nutrition they need to learn, play and grow. Offering this program promotes healthy, active individuals and supports the whole child as outlined in The Bellingham Promise.

The after-school dinner program is sponsored by the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

For more information, contact Mark Dalton, Director of Food Services for Bellingham Public Schools. 
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