Did you know that wounded Army soldiers who are unable to complete their enlistment term - because of their serious wounds - are being required to return part of their enlistment bonuses? Not in the H
Did you know there are three public hearings this evening at the council meeting? The Herald had a big to-do article about banning Segways from sidewalks in Sunday’s paper - about as trivial an
Well, the blog activity sure did drop off after the election. Other blogs are quiet or short - and I also find a lack of energy to put the needed couple hours into a post. Plus some personal is
Final tally from the Auditor. No changes. Sam Crawford increased his margin over Ken Mann. The Auditor and the Canvassing Board will make a few adjustments to the counts and certify the election at 3
The truth should come out - eventually. That is not an accepted practice and many people think many important facts and the truths that follow should be forgotten and never revealed. I’m not on
A new vote tally has been posted just now. 41,770 ballots have been counted. Sam Crawford has moved ahead of Ken Mann by 148 votes or just over 1%. This is a trend during two vote tallie
Only 4,376 ballots were counted today, leaving 21,785 to count. With 33,288 counted, no races changed leads. Ken Mann slightly increased his lead over Sam Crawford to 1% - a good indicator of e
6:30 pm More ballots - for a total of 7,899 ballots returned today. We have at least a modest surge. The total returned is now 36,577 of 102,715 ballots
Some good info on Ken Mann and Dan Pike at Washington Outsiders website. CitizenSteve has Pike’s comments on the BIA mailer and notes Pike’s endorsement of Ken Mann. It also notes how much of Sam Craw
The city ballot returns are running about 2% above county returns. With Bellingham voters compromising only 37% of all voters in our county, our rural and small-town neighbors could control the County
Satuday ballot returns show 2,502 ballots received today, which should make the total returned to 24,372 out of 103,058 issued. No surge yet. This gives a 23.6% return through today. In the Primary it
Dan Pike has spoken to the issues and to the details and depths of the issues on a continuous basis during this campaign. I’ve heard him and so have thousands of Bellingham voters. You can visit his w
With such heated campaigns is it possible we could have less than a 50% voter turnout? Well, at the rate of ballot returns as of Tuesday, we are on track for a ballot return of below 40%. That seems i
Who is Royce Buckingham - and why does he think he needs to prevent democratic processes from taking place? This guy - a lawyer in the Prosecuting Attorney’s office - is one of three members of the Ca
Writer's notes: The candidates for State Representative in the 40th District Position 1 are: Dusty Gulleson (prefers Republican Party,) Chuck Carrell (prefers Republican Party,) Doug Revelle (prefers Happiness Party,) Mike Newman (prefers Republican Party,) Kristine Lytton (prefers Democratic Party,) Tom Pasma (prefers Democratic Party,) Thomas Boucher (prefers Democratic Party,) Justin Van Dyk (prefers Democratic Party,) and Donna R. Miller (prefers Republican Party.)
What follows are the two responses to questions I submitted to Chuck last Mon, Aug 2.
Why should I vote for you?
"I’m running this year because the Legislature and Governor continued their out of control spending habits despite our troubled economy, and we need to stop it.
The only way it will stop is to start electing strong leadership to the Legislature that can make the hard choices that will be needed.
I will not support any new taxes unless they will completely eliminate an existing tax and make the amount less overall to the people they affect.
I think people are taxed to their limit right now and the real long term solution is to have the state and local governments cut their spending and get back to the essential functions of what state government is supposed to do.
I will not accept money from, or be a representative for, any PAC or special interest group. That’s important when figuring out where to trim at least $3 billion dollars from our state’s budget next session.
When making cuts, these candidates will feel obligated to keep unnecessary programs due to the financial aid they received during their campaigns. The problem was highlighted this year, and electing those types of candidates will only bring the same issue to the next Legislative session."
What is important to you?
"The most important thing to me this next Legislative session is getting our fiscal house in order.
We need to simplify the tax structure and then get an accurate assessment of what the state budget will be.
Then we need to REALISTICALLY balance the budget. This means that we fund our most important things such as education and public safety first and then continue down until everything is funded or there is no more state money left.
When the state budget is down to zero then we stop funding programs. No matter how badly we want to fund a program, if the state budget is spent then they will have to get their funding someplace else besides state government.
Even within our top priorities we need to look at how to consolidate these agencies and programs to make them more efficient. We also need to look at reducing the middle management in these agencies and what I term “inner bureaucracies.”
Years of these types of hiring practices by state and local government has created an enormous drain on our resources and is not sustainable. Nor can we rely on Federal grants like we did this year to balance the budget."
