In spite of all of their boastful claims, anybody paying attention has come to realize that Democrats are actually the enemy of the middle class in America, not their guardian or friend. From restrictive taxes to job destroying policies, Democrats continue to burden the shrinking middle class as more and more, citizens fall below the poverty line.
Washington State far left Democrat Governor Jay Inslee provides a perfect example of how the Democrats are out to destroy the American Middle Class as he vetoes $81M for CRC yesterday, making the claim of “It’s all or nothing.”
On first look, given that our state once again faces a budget deficit exceeding $1 Billion, it may appear that he is actually cutting expenses. But the truth is far different. His ultimate goal in vetoing the $81 Million is an attempt to force the legislature into passing a measure to spend $450 Million to begin construction of the contentious Columbia River Crossing light rail project, forcing Clark County’s middle class taxpayers to not only accept the light rail they have repeatedly rejected, but pay for it too.
Mike Briggs, thank you for launching into facts, now, in the ongoing debate over the costs and benefits of the CRC to the local community. I know numbers are not your thing so I’ll try to make it simple for you.
CRC proponents recently released an ad and Jim Moeller made sure to circulate it throughout the legislature in an effort to convince elected officials in Olympia they were in the majority.
Couv.com has released a more truthful ad featuring numerous citizens expressing why the CRC is a bad deal for Clark County.
Proponents ad may be seen at the Couv.com link above. Take note, those speaking in the pro-ad are all speaking from the exact same script with the editing cut to switch back and forth to say their pre-written message.
Couv.com did not have a written script, we each spoke freely of our views.
We all saw just how pleased with himself Lou Brancaccio, Editor of the Lazy C, was for labeling County Commissioners David Madore and Tim Mielke as “M&M,” complete with a pack of M&M candies over a copy of the Lazy C, meant to be demeaning.
We also saw ex-Mayor Royce Pollard and ex-State Senator Craig Pridemore conduct a rally to whip people into a recall frenzy, even though they admitted they have no sound reason to launch one.
We now have our own acronym for Pridemore & Pollard, “the P P boys” since their goal is little more than peeing on Clark County citizens
Jim Moeller, 6 times elected Representative for Washington State 49th Legislative District can be accurately labeled many things. An open homosexual, bombastic, arrogant, sly, slick, effective (for a liberal), agenda driven and more. But the one thing I have never seen in Jim is cowardice, until now.
He does operating in the Legislature with a “my way or the highway” attitude and up until this latest session, pretty much got his way with fellow Democrats controlling both houses of the legislature and a Democrat in the Governor’s mansion.
Jim has never been known to shy away from confrontation, other than to ignore it when it suits him and he will just go about his business. So I was taken aback some when I discovered over a week ago that he placed a block on me for his facebook page, especially considering we had not ‘friended’ each other.
Not on either’s friends list, neither of us leaves a comment on the others page, so I was perplexed why he would block out a constituent, since I reside in the 49th Legislative District and have for over 25 years.
Regular readers know that the so called newspaper of record, heavily biased towards strapping the struggling middle class with more expenses in order to pay for forcing the financially failing light rail into Clark County from Portland, is probably one of the least reliable sources of news in the Pacific Northwest.
Hence, they are labeled the Lazy C for not properly vetting or researching many subjects, primarily anything political in nature or critical of the Columbia River Crossing light rail project,
They spare no ink when it comes to maligning critics and in large part, is behind the current brouhaha over County Commissioners Mielke & Madore being blasted daily for over a week now for legally hiring much hated State Sen. Don Benton to head the County Dept of Environmental Services.
But they out do themselves in getting wrong in what seems like an attempt to smear a group critical of the current CRC design and calling themselves the I-5 Project Inc. as they run an article on lobbying efforts on behalf of both sides of the issue, CRC foes, supporters step up lobbying efforts
“Folks should be tolerant of both (whom) they agree with and disagree with.” Lou Brancaccio
The above quote is found in a March 26, 2011 editorial “Keep Us Close, Very Close” where editor Lou Brancaccio is whining about people cancelling their subscriptions to the Columbian, better known as the Lazy C for their ineptness in reporting relevant truths about the Columbia River Crossing light rail project and their perverse witch hunt attitude against conservatives.
Brancaccio also said within the same editorial, “Essentially, we try not to be anybody’s friend or anybody’s enemy.”
To quote County Commissioner Steve Stuart and former Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard, BULLSHIT!
All we need do is perform a cursory look back through the archives to find strong evidence of their pro-Democrat bias and seething hatred of certain conservatives.
As we in Clark County are aware of, given we have been inundated for over a week now of article after article from the local mouthpiece hating the hiring of Don Benton to head the county department of environmental services, allegations of “collusion” have been raised in an effort to stir up citizens to support a recall of County Commissioners Tom Mielke and David Madore.
But those allegations are unfounded, they are little more than a fallacy trumped up by a few who see the overwhelming votes for both as interfering with the agenda previously seen from the County Commission and who wish to thwart the will of the county voters in changing the direction of the County Commission.
First of all, we need to establish what is meant by the term “collusion,” which means “an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage.”
There is little doubt that the Lazy C, legally known as the Columbian, the unofficial daily newsletter for the Democrat Party is one of the poorest excuses for a newspaper seen. Their bias reeks as does their contradictions in articles often published.
It’s not unheard of to see one article one day boasting of home values increasing followed the next day by foreclosures increasing. With Democrats largely in control over the past few years, the Lazy C spared little ink to try to convince readers how well off they were, even though they obviously weren’t.
Now we see them setting a new record in bashing of a Republican with some 24 articles in a week blasting State Sen. Don Benton (R 17) along with Clark County Commissioners Tom Mielke and David Madore, both elected by wide margins just this past November.
Even though the Lazy C admitted their act was legal and within the confines of a Commissioner’s duty, the two hiring 5 term Sen. Benton to also head up the County’s Environmental Department as set the Lazy C on a rampage as they have spent the last week whipping some people into a lynch mob frenzy over the hiring.
The Lazy C, the unofficial daily newsletter for the Democrat Party, the Mouthpiece is well known for their deep leftist bias, in spite of denials from editorialista Lou Brancaccio.
Legally registered under the title the Columbian, too many times they have exposed themselves as anything but objective, all too often working against the very community they hope to buy their product.
Blogs exposed the heavy bias in reporting when a Republican elected official was accused of wrong doing versus when a Democrat elected official was involved in an alcohol fueled sexual harassment scandal that continues to be covered when confronting cronista Stephanie Rice over denials of extreme lopsided coverage publishing 14 articles in 5 days for a Republican, followed by 2 over a month for a Democrat.
The manufactured flap over the admittedly legal hiring of State Senator Don Benton to be Clark County’s director of environmental services rages on, now with County Commissioner Steve ‘Bullshit’ Stuart deciding to publicly take fellow Commissioner David Madore to task over Madore’s open letter to retiring County Administrator, Bill Barron.
On May 4, this blog ran a copy of Madore’s Open Letter that cleared up several fallacies being promoted by Benton haters and the lazy c, since Barron quickly announced retirement from the position, timing it to appear as if he could no longer tolerate the two conservative Commissioners, Tom Mielke and David Madore.
Stuart, who left the Wednesday meeting in a profanity laced huff announced he will apologize for that outburst at the next meeting, although he took the intended apology back even before it is issued by justifying his juvenile act.
As we all know, Governor Jay Inslee snuck into town a couple weeks ago and issued marching orders to “increase the decibels” to shout down the struggling middle class taxpayers in Clark County who oppose being straddled with decades of increases in the gas tax, license fees, tolls and more to fund the CRC light rail project from Portland that they have repeatedly shown they do not want.
Apparently seeing an opportunity to try to derail the growing opposition, the Columbian mouthpiece is pulling out all of the stops to engage in a so called journalistic Kristallnacht assault on the choice of Sen. Don Benton to take over the vacant Dept of Environmental Concern for the County.
Since it came out Wednesday evening, we have been subjected to no less than 12 screeds objecting to the hiring, from articles, an editorial and Stephanie Rice’s hit pieces, 4 in a single day on the lazy c’s blogs.
Sunday’s John Laird rant can only been seen as the icing on the cake, or maybe better as the major window smashed by the jackbooted thugs in print as he falsely claims to have extinguished fires in opposition to the deeply troubled project.
Ignoring the concerns of their constituents in the 49th Legislative District, all 3 Democrats elected to represent us have now vowed to cast our concerns aside, continue ignoring our voices and work as hard as possible to screw us over to ensure funding of the highly unpopular Columbia River Crossing light rail project.
An email received from rookie Senator Annette Cleveland today says, “We are working hard to fund the Columbia River Crossing”, concluding with “Rep. Moeller, Rep. Wylie and I will continue to work on CRC funding throughout the special legislative session to ensure that our state meets the September deadline and qualifies for the $850 million in federal funds. Anything less would be fiscal lunacy and a terrible mistake for our community’s future.”
That voters have rejected every funding measure proposed and outright rejected light rail itself back in 1995 doesn’t enter into the equation.
Clark County Washington sits in an awkward position at the southern most point of Washington State where the Columbia River separates the state from its Southern Neighbor, Oregon.
Positioned where we are, Washington State often ignores us, except of course when the time comes to want taxes, and Oregon treats us as their bedroom, the hicks to north they like to poke fun at.
All too often our elected officials, seeing Portland, Oregon as that “economic powerhouse” south of us, cater to the whims of Oregon over the desires of Clark County citizens.
You might say 1974 was a watermark for the media, Journalism in particular. The diligent investigative journalism of the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein resulted in the only resignation of a sitting U.S. President as Richard Nixon was forced to resign over the scandal.
I missed much of it as I was stationed overseas in Germany during that time, after completing my tour in Vietnam. But we heard of the relentless pursuit of information on the cover-up and illegal actions of President Nixon. It was clearly a fine example of how dogged determination of scandal by the media could change the course of a country.
With that in mind, I find it peculiar to see Columbian editor Lou Brancaccio leaning on the investigative journalism of Woodward and Bernstein in his Saturday, April 27, 2013 editorial, Of Watergate, awards & stress. I find it so peculiar because the Columbian is anything but serious investigative journalism.
As we see more and more Washington citizens and businesses joining in opposing the Columbia River Crossing light rail project, the desperation seen from Oregon in wanting to tap into our tax dollars to bail out their folly of light rail increases.
Kitzhaber’s call showed that the calls of “decrease congestion,” “unsafe bridge” and “improve freight mobility” have been nothing more than lies and reaffirmed what this blog and several others have been saying for several years, light rail is the only factor driving this project.
Just as opponents of the Columbia River Crossing light rail project have been saying all along, Portland, Oregon is calling the shots while Clark County Washington will be bearing the lion’s share of expense.
We have been saying for some time now that this is not a bridge replacement project, that is only the carrot used to force Clark County into not only accepting Portland’s financially failing, deep in debt light rail against our wishes and now we once again see the truth of that coming out of Oregon.
Even opponents agree a new bridge would be great, but as was indicated in the Columbian’s recent poll, 87% of county residents want a third bridge first.
More and more it appears as if proponents are following Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s admonition of “increase the decibels” in a late effort to finally ram the Columbia River Crossing light rail project off onto Clark County citizens, even though every indication shows they strongly oppose it.
Of course, “increase the decibels” we know to mean shout down opponents, marginalize them, ignore them and just blindly push ahead, shortcomings be damned.
Editor of the Columbian mouthpiece, Lou Brancaccio says, “There have been so many missteps on this Columbia River Crossing project that if it was entered on ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ it would be voted off before Mike Tyson. It’s just mess after mess. The tomfoolery is epic. Even its most ardent supporters would agree with this. For me, I hold my nose and close my eyes, and say we should move forward.”
49th Legislative District Representative Sharon Wylie says, “We can always wish for a better process, however, we wound up with a process of our own making, based on the quantity and quality of our participation. The process may not have been perfect, but it was open and it was fair.”
The 170’ high Crescent City Connection Bridge blocks passage of a Carnival cruise ship on the Mississippi River at New Orleans
Paul M: Tap, Tap, meeting in session.
Paul M: I’ve called this emergency meeting of Identity Vancouver because, as you’ve already been told, the judge ordered us to let the people of the City of Vancouver vote on light rail.
As first mentioned on the Columbian and this blog in Of Increased Decibels, Cutting Bait and the Four P’s, the much anticipated poll results are in with Editor Lou Brancaccio claiming, “the poll showed slim support for the entire project.”
Of course, given the polling method chosen, targeting certain zip codes where support might be stronger than outlying areas within the county, it is no surprise and actually a result I would expect to show an even larger degree of support.
But is this really how the County feels? Does this interpretation really give the outlook of the majority within in Clark County? Lou Brancaccio seems to think it does. But what if we applied the same logic to this poll that Identity Clark County President Paul Montague applied to the overwhelming defeat of last year’s C-Tran Proposition 1 to increase sales tax to fund light rail operations and maintenance? (Video after jump)
In spite of all of their boastful claims, anybody paying attention has come to realize that Democrats are actually the enemy of the middle class in America, not their guardian or friend. From restrictive taxes to job destroying policies, Democrats continue to burden the shrinking middle class as more and more, citizens fall below the poverty line.
