From the looks of the Lazy C this Father’s Day weekend, either it is of no real importance any longer or they feel there are no decent Dad’s locally.
While maybe not a major holiday, Father’s Day is intended to be a day set aside honoring fathers and celebrating fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. A way to recognize the contribution of hard working Dad’s in raising families, providing, protecting and caring for their families.
As a father myself, it’s nice to be recognized for one special day. In spite of our shortcomings and missteps, the overall majority of us do the best we can juggling work, home and yes, dealing with both wives and children after a long day working.
But, the Lazy C seems to see it as just another day to push the CRC agenda and berate citizens locally for not wanting to take on more debt for another public/private adventure to benefit a minor league baseball team owner, not even an acknowledgement on their front page Sunday.
It’s been nearly three years since conservative firebrand Ann Coulter rightfully labeled Washington State Senator Patty Murray “The Stupidest Person in America” and Ms. Murray appears hell-bent to keep on proving it.
Nowhere is this better shown than in her blind, rabid support of the Columbia River Crossing light rail project as she ignores bridge engineers, WSDOT, ODOT and past Dept. of Transportation Director Paula Hammond’s call of the current bridge over the Columbia River being “safe” so she can parrot other fearmongers erroneous calls of “the bridge is collapsing any moment.”
The Lazy C, staunch blind proponents themselves make Murray’s idiocy their headline news in the Saturday June 14, 2013 edition with Murray targets opponents of CRC wherein she repeatedly states how “unsafe” she feels the bridge is adding, “people who don’t want this to go forward don’t often think of the consequences if they win, and I think they need to think about that. … If this bridge collapsed here, there would be loss of life, there’s no doubt about it. I don’t want to go to anybody’s funeral to get federal funding.”
In a stunning announcement that sent shockwaves through the organized crime world and Vancouver politics, FBI and Justice Department Attorneys from the District of Oregon Portland Division today unveiled a five-count indictment against the Mayor of Vancouver, Timothy D. Leavitt, and his private employer, Government Contracts R Us, Inc. The indictment from the secret grand jury culminates a 4-year investigation dubbed Operation Low Bridge by the several federal and state agencies involved.
The indictment alleges improper lobbying of Congress by government contractors, failure to declare lobbying activities by employees, failure to register as a lobbyist, abuse of office, and mail fraud. All such activities are precluded or restricted for recipients of federal money, including government issued contracts, under Title 31 of US Code Section 1352. Criminal and civil penalties and remedies may be pursued in fines plus jail time.
Many of us have alleged for some time now that the Lazy C is totally out of touch with the community they claim they serve. If subscribers that do not buy into the agenda’s pushed by the Lazy C aren’t being labeled ‘Hounds of Whinerville,’ they’re censored in commenting under certain articles.
The Lazy C shows just how out of touch they are with Clark County in the headline run in their Monday June 10, 2013 edition.
Prof. Dean: Welcome back, Class! Let’s get started.
Prof. Dean: Welcome back to the Second Quarter of Psychology 601: TRUTH OR FICTION? I trust you all had a good break and are ready to explore the wonders of Chapter Two: Deception in the Modern Era.
Prof. Dean: You all are graduate students but we have a new guest, undergraduate Jim Moeller, who has joined us. I see him in the back there. Welcome Mr. Moeller. And, of course, we welcome back Ms. Tiffany Couch who is auditing the class. Welcome back Ms. Couch.
Prof. Dean: Now, last term we divided into groups. Each group was given an assignment to be presented to the whole class this first week of the second term. Let’s see, first up we have the Copperheads with a presentation they have titled “Lie to Me.” Sounds relevant and interesting.
Mayor Tim ‘the Liar’ Leavitt is once again relying on another campaign of deception to ramp up the fearmongering to sell the Columbia River Crossing light rail project.
As we all know, the CRC light rail project has been a very contentious and bloated project to force Clark County into accepting an over-priced bridge replacement designed solely to carry the light rail Clark County voters have rejected numerous times from Portland.
The project was seen as having no chance of survival, thanks to the work of the Majority Coalition in Olympia, especially that of Sens. Ann Rivers, Don Benton and Curtis King.
But then the I-5 Bridge over the Skagit River collapsed after a semi-truck with an oversized load struck 10 critical structural beams and proponents began an intense campaign of fearmongering, falsely comparing the two bridges, the one in Skagit County up north and the twin spans the CRC light rail project hoped to replace down here in Clark County.
Either the fix is in or someone has been given the word that construction of a new bridge is likely a sure thing.
I received word today from a well connected source that a “worldwide mega-corporation” is making calls locally to ensure there will be 800 pile drivers on hand by fall of 2014 to “begin construction on a bridge across the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington.”
This has not been confirmed by an “official” but the source is very well connected to be included in inside information.
It is unknown if this is a move to just be ready in case the CRC is funded or if the go ahead has been given at the highest of levels to build it.
As I suspected last year during the campaign for the 2012 election, Annette Cleveland has shown herself to be nothing more than another Jim Moeller tool blindly advocating for the Columbia River Crossing light rail project.
Cleveland, a Democrat from Washington’s 49th legislative district, the same district as Moeller was easily elected, even though she had no political experience that even the Lazy C admitted her opponent, Republican Eileen Qutub had the qualifications as they endorsed Cleveland.
But elected she was and as suspected, walks lock-step with the Democrat Party and Jim Moeller.
I say this as just this afternoon I received her June 3, 2013 e-newsletter where much of it is devoted to fearmongering over the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge after having 10 structural support beams damaged by an over-sized load on a semi-truck.
One time or another we have all heard the old adage, “Don’t take any wooden nickels” meaning to be cautious in one’s dealings. The exact origin of the phrase is debated, but we have come to accept a wooden nickel as indicative of something with little or no intrinsic value.
Such is the case with the Columbia River Crossing light rail project to force taxpayers in Clark County Washington to accept a financially ailing light rail extension from Portland, Oregon a very short distance into our community, even though voters have rejected it and all funding measures considered associated with it.
Since the collapse of the bridge over the Skagit River in Mount Vernon, Washington a week ago, proponents of the CRC light rail project have craftily used that collapse to urge swift approval of funding in the Washington State Legislature to ‘get going’ on replacing the aging spans linking Washington State and Oregon, completely ignoring the collapse had nothing to do with the bridge itself and was caused by an over-sized load on a semi-truck striking numerous structural beams holding the bridge section up.
Advocates of the Columbia River Crossing light rail project are pulling out all of the stops to coerce passage of funding to get moving on the project, ignoring citizen voices, pleas of the middle class to stop the bankrupting madness and throwing all caution to the wind that the current design calls for creating the lowest river clearance point on the Columbia River, making the new bridge more susceptible to collision from waterborne craft, unsafe in my estimation.
It didn’t take but minutes for proponents to grab hold of the Skagit River Bridge collapse to equate it to the need to replace the current Interstate Bridge with a light rail carrier. The Lazy C has run articles nearly every single day trying to tie the two bridges together and minimizing the collapse was caused by a semi-truck with an oversized load impacting and taking out structural support beams.
Waiting for results from the NTSB is out of the question when you have a crisis you don’t want to waste.
Since the collapse of the I-5 Bridge over the Skagit River in Mount Vernon, Washington, the rhetoric has grown increasingly heated over decades of deterioration of our highways and bridges. We all know hundreds, if not thousands of bridges across America have been allowed to fall into disrepair, jeopardizing the safety of our families as we commute back and forth.
With spending trillions of dollars each and every year, why have our roadways become tantamount to death traps for commuters? With well paid engineers, expensive equipment owned by states and state employed crews, as well as private companies fully capable of repairing, rebuilding or even replacing aging bridges, what possible excuse is there for our bridges to be in such poor condition?
Even with that, bridge collapses are rare. After the deadly Minneapolis Bridge collapse back in 2007, ABC ran a story Deadly Bridge Collapses Through the Decades listing such collapses at that time. But still, as rare as they may be, given the known condition of so many bridges, we are tempting fate with letting them continue in such condition.
The ‘light rail at any cost crowd’ to include the Lazy C wasted no time in spinning last evenings collapse of a section of the I-5 Bridge over the Skagit River upstate to promote forcing Clark County into accepting Portland, Oregon’s financially beleaguered light rail.
Even before the reason was known, the structure being struck by an over-sized load on a semi-truck, the light rail at any cost crowd was blasting those who oppose dragging the light rail line into Clark County, presenting it as a ‘wake-up’ call with dire, ominous predictions of the bridge between Vancouver and Portland facing imminent collapse as well.
Rep. Jim Moeller (D. Portland/Vancouver) wasted no time crying how “unsafe” our bridges are, neglecting that he and his fellow Democrats have for years diverted transportation funds to studies to drag light rail into Clark County and the massive Alaska Way Viaduct project in Puget Sound, depriving the rest of the states bridges from funds needed for maintenance and repairs.
The Columbian article, Group forms in support of new I-5 bridge about two wealthy engineers forming an advocacy group of other self-interested CRC proponents brings to mind one my kids’ favorite bedtime books – I Wish That I Had Duck Feet by Dr. Seuss.
Sorry to butcher the first few stanzas but my mind tends to twist things around after mulling on them.
Jim Moeller Oh Robert! Will you please quit trying to scare me with your “legal mumbo jumbo”? I don’t take you seriously I certainly hope you don’t. Clark County going bankrupt??!! Really?? How is that going to happen when there is NO county money in it? WOW! Are you that desperate to kill this Project? 18 hours ago • Like
Jim Moeller No need to answer that question, Robert. Of course you are. 18 hours ago • Like
Robert Dean: Jim, hooray! At last you are seriously questioning the project. OK, great, hang with me here, I don’t want to lose you again. OK, sit at your computer monitor and open this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_County,_Alabama
UPDATE: Not shown on the front page of the May 24 Columbian addressing the “collapse,” but admitted in a separate but smaller article online, North Wash. I-5 bridge collapse caused by oversize load. While this is being used to inflame the CRC debate and hammer opponents, not one thing in the CRC plans would have prevented such an accident from happening. And in fact, given the inadequate river clearance of the current design, such an accident is more likely to happen if a ship or barge struck the lower level trying to pass underneath.
Sad news to hear of the I-5 Bridge over the Skagit River up in Skagit County collapsing this evening. We pray that early reports of only minor injuries hold up and that no one lost their life.
A bridge collapse is never good news and must be taken seriously, given that we depend on these bridges to travel to and fro.
But, knee-jerk reactions to further a political agenda or justify bankrupting middle class taxpayers must be stood up to and not allowed to sway emotions to vote to increase taxes where they are not needed.
Within minutes of the news of the bridge collapsing the Lazy C had their article up, complete with their spin of information used to justify coercing opponents of the Columbia River Crossing light rail project to cave and cease our opposition, lest it happen here, as they have tried to claim is imminent unless we accept Portland’s financially failing light rail into our community.
We have long known that the Columbian mouthpiece, better known here as the Lazy C, is deep in the tank for the Columbia River Crossing light rail project. We have seen them marginalize legitimate concerns of citizens and elected officials who scrutinize the project and at times, just not report revelations that may shed light on it.
Their blind devotion to forcing Clark County’s middle class taxpayers into bailing out Portland’s financially failing light rail competes with that seen from Representative Jim Moeller (D Portland/Vancouver) who would like nothing more than to see every middle class taxpayer broke, paying excessive taxes and receiving what he deems they may through his legislation.
But the Wednesday, May 22, 2013 editorial, In Our View: Inslee Turns Up The Heat contains one of the most flagrant out of context mispresentations that border on outright dishonesty as I have seen then publish to date.
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.
From the looks of the Lazy C this Father’s Day weekend, either it is of no real importance any longer or they feel there are no decent Dad’s locally.
