Daniel Kirkpatrick guest writes how he, with encouragement in 1994 from the city of Bellingham, organized dozens of Happy Valley residents to build a trail on a city right of way.
Republicans who are silent during this disaster of a transition should be held to account in the next elections: county, state, and national. Here’s one example of their hypocrisy.
In the three Whatcom County school districts carried by Trump-Pence the covid-19 infection rate is 1.4 times higher than found in the 4 districts carried by Biden-Harris.
Chuck Robinson provides his knowledgeable perspective on Christmas and Holiday shopping. We asked Chuck, who is now retired, to write this for all of us.
Trump advocated behaviors that placed his followers at higher risk to being sickened and even dying from covid-19. Did a reduction in republican voters aid in the election of Joe Biden?
The novel coronavirus also attacks our need for community, which is the antidote to the epidemic of toxic individualism that has begun afflicting much of middle America.
Diana Bradrick, our elected Whatcom County Auditor, leaves two ballot drop boxes in storage rather than install them in Bellingham - where they are needed.
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."
