Mail your ballot before Tuesday, Sept 19 (or by 5 pm that day if you want to take a chance). Mary Kay Becker - re-elect her as a judge to the Appeals Court. Her opponent, Teichert, is ba
and what political gaming is being played to best position a candidate for the big election in the fall of 2007? I will be doing my best to sort this out for you over the next few weeks.
Gene Knutson is not knowingly part of any arrangement by Mark to succeed him as mayor. Below in yesterday’s post I suggested just that but today I’ve been convinced that Gene is personally on the up a
Bellingham Mayor Mark Asmundson submitted his resignation today, effective Nov 1. My my. He continues an old corrupt practice of Whatcom County - resigning a year before his last term is up - at elect
Yes. Is there truth in what we are being told by our corporate media and the Bush administration? No. Want an example of a lie and some truths that you are not being told? Then read Juan Cole’s blog p
What might be the biggest political issue of the next two years is - voting. Fair voting. Instant Runoff voting. The elimination of the crooked Diebold electronic voting machines and bringing in the u
Today, Israel broke the UN cease fire agreement with a helicopter raid into northern Lebanon - along with fighter jets bombing the area. Why mention this? Because it fits the pattern over the many yea
You can see a new link at the top of this page - to the writing of Joel Connelly, a Seattle PI columnist. His column normally appears each Mon, Wed and Friday. He should be helpful to us progressives
A fraud, more exactly. How did Bush get elected a second time? We may learn 20 or 40 years from now that it was the Diebold electronic voting machines that were ‘tweaked’ for final election results in
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog has it in a nutshell today. Check the Aug 5 post in his archive if you click this link after today. Israel is destroying Lebanon and grinding down the spirit of the p
So Mel Gibson is a racist - and his denials of being anti-Jewish with his film “The Passion of Christ” are quite false. Many claim it provides a very anti-semitic slant - and now we know why. Mel spen
Sec of State Rice visits Lebanon and offers $30 million to help relieve the destruction and death there that is caused by $hundreds of millions of US dollars in bombs given to Israel to destroy Lebano
Conservative Pat Buchanan has it right in his column posted Thursday. We should not be supporting Israel in its war of destruction of Lebanon. He rips up the extreme right wing-nuts who support Israel
The USA try and stop the Mid East war? Don’t kid yourself. We are air-shipping more bombs to Israel - bombs that will help destroy the city of Beirut and kill more civilians - women and children. No m
The pogrom to prevent a Palestinian State continues. Terror and murder are the normal weapons. Again the chance to form a nation and live normally is being destroyed by Israel. This is the plan and we
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."
