Outside money bankrolled Lorna Smith. An out-of-state donor made the largest single contribution to top finisher Heidi Eisenhour. Even Amanda Funaro, who is in third place after the first count of ballots, received sizable contributions from outside Jefferson County and the State of Washington.
Eisenhour and Smith will move onto the general election. Funaro’s first attempt at public office is over.
Outsiders Bankroll Lorna Smith
Lorna Smith
Eight of ten of Smith’s top donors were from outside Jefferson County. Not including loans from herself, she raised just under $20,000 from 188 separate donations, of which 84 were not from here. Many of those donations were from out of state.
Smith’s largest single donations came from Seattle residents Martha Kongsgaard and Peter Goldman of the Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation. The wealthy husband and wife contributed $3,000.
Smith received $11,518 from donors outside Jefferson County, or 58% of all funds she raised. Smith received more money from out-of-county and out-of-state donors than Funaro raised altogether. Without help from outside donations, Smith would have raised under $8,500, less than Funaro raised within Jefferson County.
Funaro raised a total of $11,084, not including $1,020 she donated to her own campaign. Of that amount, $1,957.40 came from five out-of-state donors. Funaro’s second largest donation, $1,000, came from Carolyn Elgin of Talihina, Oklahoma.
Eisenhour Received Significant Outside Money
Top vote-getter Eisenhour raised a total of $28,020. Her largest contribution, $1,000, came from rancher and conservationist Seth Hadley of Tucson, Arizona. Of 191 separate donations, 33 came from outside Jefferson County or outside Washington state. Outside donors gave Eisenhour $6,375, or 23% of her total.
Notable Out-of-State Environmentalist Funding
Both Smith and Eisenhour have earned national recognition for their work in conservation and wilderness protection. It is unsurprising that they have substantial support from environmentalists, some quite notable. Smith received $500 from Brock Evans, a legendary activist who has held high level positions with the Oregon Environmental Council, Audubon Society and Sierra Club. He is currently president of the Endangered Species Coalition. Smith has received support from other individuals well known for their work in protecting wilderness, such as the Jones sisters of Boulder, Colorado. These twin sisters currently hold the positions of Boulder Mayor and county commissioner.
Eisenhour can claim her own legendary conservation support. Her largest contribution, as mentioned, was from Seth Hadley. He and his family have created a very successful collaborative effort between ranchers and conservationists in New Mexico’s Bootheel and the Guadalupe Mountains, known as the Malpai Borderlands Group. The Hadley patriarch–cowboy, poet, conservationist–the late Drum Hadley, created the Animas Foundation, to acquire the 502 square mile Gray Ranch at the tip of the Bootheel from the Nature Conservancy. The Gray Rach has since become one of the world’s leading models for how a working ranch can responsibly manage and protect grasslands and fragile habitat.
This may be an over generalization, but if any difference in the environmentalist support received by these candidates stands out, it is this: Smith’s endorsements come from professional activists who protect land and animals by removing people or prohibiting human activities, while Eisenhour’s endorsements run more along the line of land trusts and conservation easements which keep land in productive use while protecting its natural and wild characteristics.
[Editor’s note: This data was compiled from campaign finance reports filed with the Public Disclosure Commission. In another life I was executive director of a small national environmental group and a statewide wilderness alliance and so became familiar with the people and organizations mentioned in this article.]
Former Port Townsend Free Press contributor Scott Hogenson has an article in the August 2, 2020 edition of the Wall Street Journal. Scott and his family have moved to Texas. But he and his wife received ballots inviting them to vote in the August 4 primary election—in Jefferson County, Washington.
The WSJ story is paywall protected (sorry) at this link.
The Hogensons lived on Mats Mats Bay until late spring this year when they moved to Texas. As he points out, the fact they received Jefferson County ballots raises the question of how many nonresidents are voting in Washington state and local elections. The Hogensons won’t be among them. They know that would be fraud.
The article explores the problems with vote by mail. Hogenson writes, “Even if every bureaucrat and election volunteer involved in every part of the process of vote by mail was honest and efficient, it is still fraught with problems. In my case, I don’t suspect any sort of malfeasance on the part of election officials. It takes time to purge voter rolls and it’s entirely reasonable for this to not happen in the month between my moving away from Washington state and receiving my ballot in Texas.”
Two votes here, two votes there, two more over yonder. They could be enough to decide an election, for example the recent neck-and-neck Hospital Commission and PUD races.
The featured photo for this story is a shot of the envelope delivered to Hogenson’s house.
In an email to The Port Townsend Free Press, Hogenson writes: “I did not mention this issue [in the WSJ article] but a look at the envelope shows that it is labeled ‘Address Service Requested.’ Because this is an election ballot with a number of federal, state and local issues, shouldn’t the envelope be labeled, ‘Change Service Requested,’ or ‘Return Service Requested’ so the ballot is returned to the sender instead of being sent to an ineligible voter?”
The point of his questions is that when the Jefferson County Auditor’s staff sent the ballot with “Address Service Requested,” it gets forwarded, in this case to an illegible voter. If Jefferson County election officials had instead requested “Change Service Requested and “Return Service Requested,” the ballots would have been returned to sender and not delivered in Texas. But because county election officials sent this and presumably other ballots out with the “Address Service Requested” instruction people no longer living in Jefferson County can vote in county elections.
From the USPS website:
Address Service Requested provides forwarding and address correction services when possible. If the mail is undeliverable and not forwardable, it is returned to the sender with the reason identified on the mailpiece.
Change Service Requested provides address correction services without forwarding or return. If undeliverable, either the new address or the reason it is undeliverable is provided to the sender.
Return Service Requested provides address correction services and always returns the piece.
Illegal immigration hurts Black Americans. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
Port Townsend’s liberal elite wanted to jump on the sanctuary city bandwagon. In March 2017 City Council declared the city to be a “welcoming city” and directed local government and law enforcement to deny cooperation to federal immigration and border security agencies. They also prohibited police from cooperating with the federal authorities who battle human trafficking–an abhorrent form of modern-day slavery that sadly exists even here on the Olympic Peninsula.
Liberal elites embracing policies that hurt Blacks while also hampering the fight against modern-day slavery–these are yet more manifestations of the systemic racism that runs through Port Townsend’s ruling elites. In the first installment of this series we examined how Port Townsend’s liberals have celebrated Black Genocide. In the second we examined how they have embraced slavery in the cobalt mines of the Congo in order to power their green cars.
“Black Lives Matter” is painted in fading letters on the street outside City Hall. Those words may be worth less to the self-described liberal, progressive politicians behind the old brick walls than the $500 they allocated to buy the paint and declare themselves virtuous for a day.
“The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man.” Malcolm X
Illegal Immigration Hurts Black Americans
There is “little doubt” that illegal immigration hurts Black Americans. That was the testimony in 2008 of Vernon Briggs, Professor Emeritus of Labor Economics at Cornell University before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Black Americans are the “major loser” to illegal immigration. Because most Black Americans seek to enter the workforce through lower paying and lower skilled jobs, they find themselves having to compete with illegal aliens who depress wages and compete unfairly. While Black citizens work subject to state and federal wage and occupational safety laws and regulations, illegal aliens commonly work under the radar of those same laws.
The influx of millions of illegal immigrants has worsened the economic standing of Black Americans, a conclusion reached through research conducted by Dr. Augustine Kposowa (1995) of the University of Delaware and David Howell and Elizabeth J. Mueller of the New School for Social Research (1998).
Recent research has confirmed the findings of decades ago. The economic displacement of Black workers, particularly Black men, contributes to disproportionately high incarceration rates for lower income Black Americans. Dr. George Borjas and his team of researchers from Harvard’s Kennedy School, after examining four decades of data, concluded:
As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 4.0 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.
These adverse impacts on Blacks are exacerbated by illegal immigration.
The top six sectors for illegal immigrant labor–farming, maintenance, construction, food service, production and material moving–are also sectors that each employ hundreds of thousands of Black Americans. “Illegal immigration hurts low-skilled, low-wage workers of all races,” says Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt Law School in Debating Immigration.“The greatest competition occurs among people at the margins of society; a multi-racial group that includes poorly educated blacks, whites and Hispanics who compete against each other and against new immigrants for low-wage, low-skill jobs.”
“But Blacks,” Swain concludes, “are hurt the most because they are disproportionately low-skilled.”
Dr. Carol Swain
Swain, who has withstood reprisals for her research, adds that any parallel between the Black civil rights movement and immigrant interests is weak. “Most illegal immigrants have willingly left their homelands to seek their fortunes in a more prosperous nation. They were not brought in chains.”
U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow, who has also served on the National Labor Relations Board, for years has highlighted the disproportionately adverse impacts of illegal immigration on Black Americans, particularly young Black men who suffer the highest unemployment and incarceration rates of any demographic.
“Forty percent of the decline in labor participation rates among black workers over three decades was attributable to competition from illegal immigration. The figure comes to nearly 1 million fewer jobs for black Americans as a result of the competition from illegal immigrants.” U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow
Peter Kirsanow
Blacktradesman.com documented how, using data focusing on Texas, illegal immigration has destroyed high-wage jobs for Black construction workers. “Texas black tradesmen have had it worst off as tradesmen of other states, due to more than half of the state’s construction industry being made up of illegal aliens.”
The Anti-Black Racism of Port Townsend’s City Council
On March 27, 2017, the Port Townsend City Council unanimously declared the city to be a sanctuary city. They chose, for PR purposes, the phrase “welcoming” instead of “sanctuary,” but the intent and result were the same. The Port Townsend City Council embraced and directed that the city and all its employees, including police, condone, protect and promote illegal immigration.
During the debate councilors professed to be thoroughly informed on the issue of illegal immigration. No one engaged in the debate about illegal immigration can claim to be unaware of the harmful impact of illegal immigration on Black workers.
The Port Townsend City Council just didn’t care. It was more important to them to burnish their liberal, progressive cred than to stand with Black workers against lawlessness that keeps them chronically un- and under-employed and confined to urban plantations of hopelessness and despair.
Not bothering to pause to consider the impact of their actions on Black Americans is a manifestation of systemic racism. It means Black Americans did not matter enough for their concerns to even enter the Councilors’ deliberations. Black workers and their interests were invisible and meaningless to these liberal, progressive politicians.
A goal of the Black Lives Matter movement is increasing economic opportunity for Black Americans. The Port Townsend City Council lined itself up squarely with one of the major forces that has been suffocating Black economic aspirations for decades. Those words on the street outside City Hall are indeed just fading paint.
Welcome Human Traffickers!
The resolution adopted by Port Townsend City Council instructs police not to cooperate with the Customs and Border Protection agencies of the Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It also asks the Sheriff not only to deny those agencies information, but also to advise persons in its custody that they do not have to talk with those agencies.
The agencies whose jobs City Council wants to frustrate are the agencies that lead the fight against human trafficking.
Immigration enforcement is one of the strongest and most effective tools against human trafficking. Indeed the essential key to combating human trafficking is border security and enforcement of immigration laws. Slavers and smugglers are, after all, importing human beings illegally into this country for sex work and forced labor. Port Townsend City Council does not want those federal legal weapons against human trafficking being used here.
The first question asked in a human trafficking investigation is whether the slave–a child, woman or man–is here legally. Traffickers and smugglers bring their merchandise into this country by violating our immigration and border security laws. Port Townsend City Council believes that line of inquiry should not be permitted. They are substantially aiding and abetting any human trafficker who chooses to operate or pass through here.
Don’t think for one minute that our community is far removed from the horrors of human trafficking. The victims of that trade in human life are not members of the white elite. Human trafficking is a terrible problem in Seattle and surrounding areas. Human trafficking cases prosecuted by federal authorities in Washington have more than doubled in recent years. This surge in forced sex work and manual labor has fueled extensive sex and forced labor rings. Closer to home, the very agencies Port Townsend’s City Council detests and want to cripple saved a man and woman from forced labor and sex slavery in neighboring Clallam County. Local law enforcement asked about the woman’s immigration status, leading to the involvement of federal immigration authorities and the end of their bondage. And it was immigration enforcement that tripped up a Jefferson County man who had imported a young Filipino girl so he could rape and hold her as his sex slave. (We wrote about that case in a series of articles that can be picked up at this link).
For a town that wants to see itself as cutting-edge progressive, we have a strange contradiction with activists insisting that we all buy cars dependent on cobalt mined by African slaves, local officials endorsing Black Genocide and a local government providing sanctuary for those who profit from human trafficking. Welcome to Port Townsend, Victorian seaport and arts community.
No police brutality. No court judgments for racial profiling or wrongful arrest. No Department of Justice investigations or complaints by civil rights groups that our police have systematically, even occasionally targeted minority citizens.
It is widely recognized that we have a great police force that does its job very well. We have had no officer involved shootings since 1995, when police had to defend themselves against a man who had just shot another member of the community.
But wanting to show they are in step with the BLM and the “defund the police” movement, councilors have launched an ad hoc committee of the full council to explore “alternatives to law enforcement.” Ideas to be considered range from cutting the police budget to replacing police with social workers to disarming police or requiring them to keep handguns in the trunks of their patrol cars “until needed.”
Port Townsend police pride themselves on having adopted a “progressive” policing model a decade ago. Officers follow the rules and there has been no cause for severe discipline in recent years. The last officer to be disciplined left the force years ago. In the only recent case requiring outside review of use of force, the officer involved was cleared.
Chokeholds and strangleholds are prohibited except when lethal force is justified (e.g., an assailant has overpowered and is about to kill an officer). Officers are not permitted to shoot at or from moving vehicles except in the most extreme cases.
The Port Townsend Police Department has developed its own Crisis Intervention Training program. It far exceeds state standards. Officers must pass ten separate examinations. The only way to pass is to get every question 100% right.
An innovative R.A.D. Protocol was developed by a PTPD officer and an East Jefferson Fire Department chief in 2015. The Rage, Aggression, Delirium Protocol synthesizes police and medical responses to persons in crisis to resolve physical threats through medical intervention. It has been employed 76 times and is being studied as a model approach by other agencies.
PTPD officers undergo more training in de-escalation and alternatives to use of force than required by other departments. Internal policies require officers proactively to intercede to stop the use of excessive force by other officers. All officers wear body cameras. Every use of force is reviewed by supervisors. The police department already has a social worker on staff, as well as an unarmed community services officer.
Understaffed, with the city every day being patrolled at times by only a single officer working with no possibility of timely back up, they have kept our community–and themselves–safe. Crime and violence have soared around us in neighboring counties and Port Townsend is not Mayberry RFD. See our article on the surprising levels of crime here. Our city has its daily incidents of violence, plentiful property theft, and a severe drug and alcohol problem that is seldom acknowledged. But because of the high levels of skill and sensitivity of our police, many people in our community mistakenly believe we are virtually crime-free.
If It Aint’ Broke, What’s To Fix?
City Council may undo a decade of good work and draw opportunistic criminals to our community. In the first meeting of their ad hoc committee, city councilors revealed their factual ignorance about law enforcement.[You may watch the video at this link]. They are generally unaware of what police do. Only one city councilor has taken the opportunity to ride along with police to learn the challenges facing an officer patrolling alone. Councilors also revealed how uninformed they are about crime and violence in our city. Yet, they believe they are competent and wise enough to recreate law enforcement in an even “more progressive” way.
Interim Police Chief Troy Surber presented a report entitled “21st Century Policing.” It discussed how in response to former President Obama’s national task force on policing, Port Townsend police undertook substantial reforms of their own a decade ago.
It also revealed how seriously understaffed our department is. Two of its officers are still in training and not permitted to patrol alone. PTPD does not have enough sworn personnel to keep two patrol officers and a supervisor on duty at all times. That level of staffing is needed to avoid resorting to lethal force. A patrol officer facing a threat alone may have no alternative but to use his weapon to protect himself and others. In numbers, police can use less lethal means. But that also means exposing themselves to physical injury.
Chief Surber told Council how six officers were required to restrain an individual undergoing a mental health crisis that endangered the safety of hospital personnel. Without that number of officers, he said, it is likely lethal force would have been needed. Even with six officers on him, this individual managed to injure two of them to the extent they had to be removed from active duty. One officer remains unable to return to work three months later.
It would have been easier to shoot the assailant. Instead Port Townsend police employed their training to take a softer approach, but one that resulted in serious injury to themselves. That is the risk they take every time they don’t draw their weapon and instead use their bodies to resolve a confrontation.
Any reduction in the number of officers means the city is more likely to see isolated officers working without support and having to employ higher levels of force when confronted with threats to themselves and others.
Officers patrolling alone are always exposed to harm. Approaching a stopped vehicle is one of the most dangerous things an officer can do–so dangerous the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized that officers must be granted particularized exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. Yet some on city council would increase the risk to officers by stripping from them the ability to defend themselves when the occupant(s) of the vehicles pull out weapons or otherwise attack officers.
An officer acting alone at a traffic stop can lose his life if he is unable immediately to neutralize the threat. The idea of making him do his job with the tools he needs locked in his trunk is, in a word, insane. It devalues the lives of our officers. But it is a proposal city council has discussed.
Reason For Concern
The people who want to remake law enforcement in Port Townsend have a worrisome track record of not accomplishing anything that works well or at all.
This City Council has produced–even before the COVID crisis ravaged city finances–what has been reported as a $17 million deficit. City streets are in terrible disrepair and won’t see improvement any time in the future. In the case of one deteriorating street, City Council just gave up and closed it.
They’ve talked about affordable housing for years and accomplished nothing. All of these people once thought they could provide affordable housing affordably and quickly through the fiasco now known as the Cherry Street Project. If they couldn’t rehab an old building why should we have any confidence that their monkeying with law enforcement will produce anything that does not harm the community’s security and sense of personal safety?
The idea about disarming police was first articulated by City Councilor/Deputy Mayor David Faber. He was head of the group that ran the Boiler Room into the ground. He could not protect at-risk youth from older, sometimes dangerous, often intoxicated vagrants and as a result the organization collapsed. Why should we think he is any better at protecting citizens from criminals?
The former Executive Director of the failed Boiler Room, Amy Howard, is another City Councilor who wants to reshape law enforcement, though she could not keep open the doors of a simple non-profit.
Not one person on City Council has any training, education or experience in law enforcement. Not one of them would or could do the job police do. They are not asking our police what they need to do a better job (hint: enough funding to be adequately staffed). No, they are going to make it up as they go along.
With all the questions City Council wants answered, several omissions stand out. Not a single City Councilor asked Chief Surber what could be done to better protect our officers or what city hall could do to make Port Townsend a safer place for everyone. You’d think those would be priorities. That they are not says a lot about why we should be concerned.
Irresponsible Politicians Drive Gun Sales
Chief Surber presented a graph showing the unprecedented recent spike in gun purchases by Americans. The graph attributes the rapid arming of Americans to unrest surrounding COVID-19 and the George Floyd civil disturbances.
People are indeed buying guns and ammunition like never before. I recently went shopping for a shotgun for home defense. Good luck finding any short-barreled or tactical 12 gauge shotgun in stock in any nearby gun retailer. The line at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Silverdale was 1.5 hours long and their display racks were mostly empty. Ammunition purchases were limited, if they weren’t already sold out. Every handgun with a laser had been sold long ago. (True also at every other store I checked except one fifty miles from my home that had a single lasered pistol left–until I snapped it up). Neither were there silhouette targets to be had in Jefferson or Clallam counties. People obviously are practicing with the weapons they have acquired.
Even on-line sources are sold out of many guns and most ammunition. Bids for used short-barreled and tactical shotguns on sites like gunbroker.com are almost twice the prices for the same weapons new a couple months ago.
According to data cited by Chief Surber, 3 million more guns than would be the normal rate of purchases have been acquired by Americans during the last three months. I would submit the reason was what was being discussed among people in the 1.5 hour line at Sportsmans Warehouse: crazy ideas like we are hearing from Port Townsend City Council that will handcuff police and force citizens to rely on themselves for protection of their lives and property. In Minneapolis, where that city council abandoned streets to rioters and is cutting its police force in half, citizens who just watched their city in flames are forming armed militias and barricading entrances into some neighborhoods. They recognize that ideological, irresponsible politicians have deprived them of the fundamental reason government exists, the maintenance of order and public safety.
If police are not safe, none of us are safe. Let us hope Port Townsend City Council comes to its senses. But don’t bet your life and your family’s safety on unlikely miracles.
Jim McEntire interviews Brian Pruiett for the Port Townsend Free Press. Pruiett is a candidate to represent the 24th Legislative District in the Washington State House of Representatives, a position held by long-time incumbent Steve Tharinger. McEntire is well-known around the Peninsula, having served as a Clallam County Commissioner and a Port of Port Angeles Commissioner. McEntire’s questions are followed by Pruiett’s answers.
What lessons learned can we gather from our most recent crises?
SARS-CoV2 is a serious virus. We are all grateful that the transmission rate can be managed. However SARS-CoV2 and it’s threat of COVID19 disease symptomology caused two far more serious actions on our Peninsula. The catastrophic chain reaction of consequences in the governor’s edict to allow larger businesses to remain open while demanding the closure of all our small businesses now is set firmly as a legendary failure in decision-making, based more on hypocrisy than justifiable pandemic management.
SARS-CoV2 , a reverse-transcriptase, polymerase chain reaction, is a killer. When the disease arrived here in January and outbreaks detected in early February, the governor could have enacted the state Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan approved in 2013.
The Pandemic response appendix in that plan is 90 pages long. Page 16 shows the state responsibility for stockpiling testing supplies, such as swabs, and equipment, such as ventilators and PPE and other medical needs. Do you recall the governor’s rants about how the Feds weren’t giving him all these supplies? It was practically a daily occurrence.
The focus of our legislature has been to drastically take more and more money out of our state’s businesses every year by taxation. In December of 2019, mass media was already talking about increasing taxes by another $12,000,000,000. Our two state representatives dutifully approved the taxes and 400 new laws including the act which sexualizes young children, dismantles the family structure needed to provide stability for children, and mandates gender confusion as a false new normal in mandatory school curriculum.
Our two legislators also passed laws which violate our state constitution related to the Second Amendment.
As the seventh year in the timeline passed since the requirement to stockpile pandemic supplies remained unfunded by our Democrat-controlled legislature, conservative members submitted numerous amendments to halt overcommitment of spending. No support was given to requests for structuring a deeper cash reserve by our two House representatives. No urgency was allocated to begin stockpiling Pandemic supplies either until it was far too late, continuing the pattern of the past 7 years.
Our two house legislators instead voted in much more new spending. Their news letter to Peninsula public members in May states ‘Three months ago we hadn’t heard of the coronavirus.’ In the investigations I covered as an Inspector General, that is called willful ignorance unless damages or death occur, in which case attorneys then make a determination of suitability for prosecution.
We are in a global economy. Who doesn’t understand that? We compete for resources worldwide.
Now we face an eight billion dollar crisis but…. the next shoe to drop is our legislator-backed governor’s proposal to repeat the shutdown of our small businesses. Again we’re facing the biased and hypocritical closure of our Peninsula small businesses. The east side major corporations and corporate-owned big box stores stay open and get all the consumer spending. I intend to stop this inequality with legislation.
We have crises, plural: societal, economic, and pandemic. The governor’s mismanagement and wrongful legislator actions are coming to an end. The public has had enough. Every community I visit has an overwhelming focus on replacing the incumbents.
The key words we should be taking away are environment and location. The science shows our Peninsula climate and lifestyle have extremely low viral transmission rates, attested to by the packed private campgrounds and streams of mainland visitors who flocked here beginning the first weekend in March. Tens of thousands of big-box store visits have so far yielded a total absence of transmission.
The social crisis of mob takeover of Seattle, looting by a gang of a hundred members in Bellevue, burning of cars and businesses with accumulations of human waste mixed with used drug gear on their main streets, are all unwelcome on our Peninsula.
Good-hearted people here are ready for change. I have the human resource background, the military education for successful management, as well as a solid environmental career in my resume. I know I am uniquely suited to restore our peninsula, revitalize our businesses and families, and am focused on resolving the looming education crisis which is almost upon us. Repairing our education system will take more than a few months.
Already former House Majority Leader Frank Chop is pushing the concept of $2,000,000,000 in taxes but that simply means more unpayable debt. Rebudgeting is the only escape route. Capital Construction spending must be slashed immediately, otherwise many more state employees will go unpaid or lose jobs entirely. I will achieve this during the next session. Our small businesses deserve a tax holiday to match as many days as they have been forced to be closed. Their recovery is essential.
Blanket statewide orders meant to address a problem occurring in King County are mandated while our Democrat controlled legislature refuses to meet. Even in times of emergency, our legislators need to be active in providing much needed checks and balances so that we do not devolve into single person rule. A special session to repeal the new $12,000,000,000 in taxes is required.
What in your personal experience makes you ready to play your appropriate role as a legislator in crisis?
My 34 years of military service coupled with my experience in the career Federal Service makes me very aware of the importance of leadership and teamwork. Leadership without teamwork is an autocracy that is destined to fail. Teamwork without leadership is a mob. I am ready to harness those tools in my background for the well-being of the voters of the 24th Legislative District. My extensive career in the Federal Government has covered Human Resources, Equal Employment, as well as complex environmental issues. I am well versed in the complexities which a legislator in the 21st century must deal with. My experience dealing with international law, federal and state laws, is well documented.
Where do you stand on the Second Amendment?
In respect to the totally unrestrained mob violence across several counties, the criminally violent element in major cities scoffing at gun laws, and the 13 murders in Clallam County in the past two years, I propose a Safe Castle law and would consider a Stand your Ground law appropriate to our society. Restoration of our state laws to be brought into full alignment with our constitution. America is under assault by radical anarchist forces. Well organized, well trained, and well-funded, these destructive cadres have made it clear that no neighborhood is safe. Our police are overwhelmed and frankly over-constrained. Often it is only armed neighbors standing together between bomb-throwing mobs and total mayhem. We are often outnumbered. Lawful access to firearms to defend our homes, our families and ourselves is clearly a right.
What are your legislative priorities?
The budget is my most immediate concern. There should be a special session going on now to address the upcoming, very real shortfall. Raising taxes will precipitate an even worse fiscal crisis. To protect future budgets, we should be rolling back taxes today. We no longer have a choice between austerity and flush budgets. Austerity has been thrust upon us by our current two legislators. It is the legacy they gave us..
I believe we also need to address the legislature’s role in emergency powers declaration in the light of recent events. Throughout our district people tell me their voice hasn’t been heard in Olympia. I will work to change the law so that within two weeks of an emergency powers declaration, the governor must call for a special session of the legislature. The legislature must consider itself “in session” throughout the duration of the emergency declaration. The majority of our Peninsula people are demanding Inslee never be re-elected and promote their candidates in strident voices.
What other issues would you like to address?
We need to take a look at our priorities in light of environmental protection of the Salish Sea. The State Department of Ecology is pretty good at clamping down on commercial polluters but metropolitan governments are now the biggest source of toxicants killing our marine life and endangering salmon along with others. Environmental enforcement needs to focus on major metropolitan pollution restrictions.
Where do you stand on the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) clinic proposed for Sequim.
I deeply resent how our two legislators sourced and implemented this project. A friendly, peaceful community of diverse peoples and interests is now increasingly divided at the pending increase in criminal trafficking and crime they understand to be associated with giving outpatients drugs such as methadone to carry home with them. We all want to reduce the slavery of addiction, but county law enforcement busts are frequently finding the treatments handed out are being trafficked. More addicts are winding up in our jails with addictions such as heroin. I don’t know where communities will find the funds to deal with increased law enforcement, confinement, and judicial requirements. But if the legislature is going to give us A MAT clinic, it needs to give us the resources to deal with its aftermath.
Where do you stand on the recently enacted Sexual Education bill?
This sex ed bill SB 5385 reflects the worst outcomes of single party rule. Passed in the middle of the night after rejecting literally hundreds of thoughtful amendments, the bill is a sociopolitical triumph, that demolishes the authority of local school boards, and by implication, parents over their schools’ sexual education curriculum. Effective locally approved sex ed programs will forcibly be replaced with a government mandated, ideologically driven program of propaganda that sexualizes our children down to the kindergarten level. I was proud to help gather signatures in support of Referendum 90 which seeks to overturn SB 5385. Due to many hard-working volunteers, R-90 will be on the ballot in November. Regardless of the outcome of the vote on R-90, if elected, I will join the numerous co-sponsors opposed to this act, to overturn it.
Do you have any final thoughts?
Taxes. My opponent is very good at raising them and creating innovative new ones. I am focused on reducing them. I will never vote for an income tax in any shape or form. I absolutely oppose Carbon taxes.
Education. I am Pro-Choice for schools, giving parents more options for educating their kids, not less. I want a full fledged trade certification option for high schools students in lieu of the current standard college bound curriculum. Our youth should be able to decide to walk out of high school right into a good-paying apprentice position, fully qualified at that level without requiring another two years to do so. College is a wonderful choice for those who really want it and can pay for it, but I hear we are still having 20 percent of our kids failing to graduate statewide.
Life. All life is precious and all lives matter to our God and Maker. I am proudly Pro-Life at both ends of life’s progression. I will act to protect life in the womb and in advancing years by resisting all calls for health care rationing.
The other day in Port Townsend as the Black Lives Matter march passed through Uptown. I saw many people I know, good people, thoughtful people, marching with this group. I wondered to myself why these people would show their support for an organization whose name leads us to believe that lives matter, but then openly uses violence and intimidation that often destroys the communities they say they support.
It’s in the name really. No decent person could oppose the concept that Black Lives Matter. I can’t. But there is that pesky voice in my head. What is really going on here? What does Black Lives Matter really want? Who is behind this organization?
The story is complex and convoluted to say the least. I cannot do it justice here. Yet understanding the origins of an organization can lead to clearer view of what the heck is going on. I leave it up to the reader to make their own conclusions.
From the Black Lives Matter website:
Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the U.S., U.K. and Canada whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted in Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
Patrisse Khan-Cullors founded Black Lives Matters with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013.
In 2015, while being interviewed on Real News Networks, Ms. Khan-Cullors stated, “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”
Here is a brief definition of Marxism from dictionary.com: “The state throughout history has been a device for the exploitation of the masses by the dominant class and that the capitalist system, containing from the first the seeds of its own decay, will inevitably, after a period of dictatorship of the proletariat, be superseded by a socialist order and classless society.”
According to Brietbart News, Cullors is also the protégé of Eric Mann, an accomplished California based community organizer specializing in Black militant groups, and a former agitator for the Weather Underground domestic terror organization who spent 18 months in prison for an attack on a police headquarters in New York State in November of 1969.
In North America, Black Lives Matters is physically represented by fifteen chapters in the U.S. and two in Canada. Black Lives Matter does not have a central office or 501(c)(3) designation, but is incorporated. They describe their organization as a decentralized network of activists with no formal hierarchy. Black Lives Matter explains their situation is not unusual for an organization that is applying for non-profit status, but has yet to receive that designation.
I have not been able to confirm if they are actually applying for non-profit status. I have not been able to determine why an organization founded in 2013 has yet to receive non-profit status.
Black Lives Matters currently “borrows” the non-profit status of another organization whose name is Thousand Currents. It seems this is allowed under IRS regulations. Thousand Currents is self-described as providing grants to organizations led by women, youth and indigenous people.
If you donate to Black Lives Matters, the money is initially processed through another non-profit named Act Blue. Act Blue is self described as “an online fundraising platform available to democratic candidates and committees, progressive organizations and non-profits that share our values for no cost other than a 3.95% processing fee on donations.”
Once collected, Act Blue transfers the donations, minus their fee, to Thousand Currents. Thousand Currents, according to IRS rules, designates where the Black Lives Matters funds are directed.
When I visited The Thousand Currents website recently, I could find very little information on the organization. Yet thanks to an article written for the Daily Caller by Andrew Kerr on June 25, 2020 we have recently learned that the Vice-chair of Thousand Currents, one of the main people in charge of distributing Black Lives Matters funds, is convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg.
“Rosenberg’s involvement with the May 19th Communist Organization, which carried out its bombing campaign to create a contrast to former President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign promise, earned her a spot on the FBI’s most wanted list, according to The Washington Examiner. She was arrested in New Jersey in 1984 while unloading 740 pounds of stolen explosives and a sub-machine gun from a truck.
Rosenberg was released from prison in 2001 after having her sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. She served 16 years of a 58-year prison sentence.
U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White lobbied aggressively against Rosenberg’s commutation at the time noting that she had allegedly been one of the getaway drivers in the 1981 Brink’s robbery, which resulted in the deaths of two police officers and one security guard.”
Let me be clear. I am not judging. I am not story-telling. I am repeating facts revealed through research I did for myself to better understand what the Black Lives Matter Movement is all about. I share this with the hope that the good people, the thoughtful people I know here in Port Townsend might gain a better understanding of what it might mean to be involved with Black Lives Matter.
I leave you with a couple of quotes from an article titled, The Complex Funding and Ideology of Black Lives Matter, written by John Howard for Brietbart News, June 2020.
“Many people think, “Black Lives Matter” is a slogan, an ideal, or a grassroots movement, not a political organization with eight figures of funding and a hardcore left wing agenda….Many of BLM’s donors are signing on to a new social contract with a great deal of fine print they should read more carefully.”
[Editor’s Note: The author of this article, fearing retaliation for raising questions about Black Lives Matter, requested that it be published as authored by A Concerned Citizen of Port Townsend.]
