MAIL IN YOUR BALLOTS

Honor those who have fought, killed, and died for our liberties and our right to vote. Please do not Break the Faith with our Veterans, Fallen Soldiers and MIA/POW’s by not voting. Every election, nothing less than your personal liberty is at stake.

Which Candidates Are Most Likely To Support Individual Liberty at the City and County Levels

Here are My picks:

BELLINGHAM

• Mayor: UNDERVOTE. Neither of these two clowns give a rat's patoot about individual liberty. collectivist vs. collectivist. Seems to be a focal point of the 3 or 4 sided civil war going on within our local Democrat friends and family.
• At Large: UNDERVOTE.Sure Louise is nice and her opponent has a meanspirited streak, both are collectivists. I predict that Louise will hold onto this seat until doomsday.
• Ward 1: UNDERVOTE, or write in Bob Ryan to retain his seat whether he wants the job or not.
• Ward 3: LARRY FARR. his opponent is a real nice guy, but a collectivist at heart. Larry has good solid solutions to many downtown problems.
• Ward 4: DAMON GRAY. His fresh and moderately fiscal conservative viewpoints and ability to solve problems is desperately missing from the current council.
• Ward 5: BILL GEYER. More planning experience from both sides of the counter than all current sitting and current hopefuls combined. This guy knows how to sign the front of a paycheck. His opponent is the most opposed to individual liberty of all current candidates and appears to be a goofball and highly unstable.

WHATCOM COUNTY

• Executive: PETE KREMEN, Okay, normally I pick on Pete, but he's been pretty gracious to the classy lady that the local cowards are hiding behind as a protest vote. I hope they feel SHAME. The forums have been painful to watch.
• Sherrif: BILL ELFO. Morale is high among the troops. He and his deputies are doing a terrific job. He is committed to our community from Diablo to Point Roberts to Eliza Island and everything in between. (however,stop asking for sales tax increases, please.)
• Treasurer: JOE ELENBAAS. There, I said it. I like Joe. I like Steve. Steve is a nice guy with a wonderful family. But can anyone point out a more determined individual liberty candidate than Joe "give 'em hell" Elenbaas? I just wish he'd run for county executive rather than Abacus Jockey. But the county treasurer's office needs a watchdog. Joe as Steve's supervisor. You'd have to increase Steve's wages to work with JOE, but what a combo for watchdoggin' the county budgets and expenditures.
• Assesor: KEITH WILLNAUER. Engaged with the public, makes time to talk with us.
• Auditor: SHIRLEY FORSLOF. She may never learn to speak loud enough for us deaf guys to hear in public, but she has good bipartisan support even though some folks still remember something about some schoolboard election.
• District 1 Pos. B: CHRIS HATCH. What more could a person concerned with individual liberty want than an effective Board of Equalization member voting for our individual rights on the council? This is a NO BRAINER.
• District 2 Pos. B: SAM CRAWFORD. This guy brought civility to the county council when it previously was operated like a punk rock romper room with no real leadership. His opponent who previously attacked Sam as "an Evil Genius" at a local Democrat Fundraiser (and on You tube) after getting sent packing with his outside bunch of collectivists from the second district homeowners, has now changed his dialogue and campaign strategy to "I am SAM, SAM I am." and Pretending to be a fiscal conservative pro-jobs candidate. SAM will continue to be the voice of reason whether one likes his views or not. I happen to like them most of the time.
• District 3 Pos. B: BARBARA BRENNER. I may agree with Barbara about 30% of the time, and sometimes think that it is a crapshoot how she'll vote. Even though she has been on the council back in the dysfunctional romper room days and can get excited, she is a classy lady that only occasionally makes one want to pull his hair out. Many claim to be the first eco-councilman, but for better or worse, Barbara was the first. Get over it, D.M. Unlike many politicians in this day and age, she has a reaganesque ability to have fun and even laugh at herself.
• The six Big cities? I'll leave that up to folks who live there for now as I admit I did not pay sufficient attention to these other important cities in our county.

SOMETHING NEW HAS BEEN ADDED

As you well know, Ballots have been mailed out, and now we are voting on several state issues, but mostly on city and county races. This is where elections are still cute and cuddly events where friends and neighbors get out and have a good time supporting everything from their favorite fire commissioner to who the abacus operator for the county will be. It is an odd year and that means small year with no outside or big money influences.

Something has changed, as this sure doesn't describe my community.

• Local campaigns learned about mudslingin' in past elections; they're learnin' how to do it, now. Just wait 'till the campaigns get good at it next time around!
• Candidates are pretending to scold their operators for leaking out lies about their opponents.
• Local PACs are contributing big money to candidates. and spoken about as if they are the ugly kid at the high school prom.
• Out of State Law Firms and other entities are contributing bigger money to candidates.
• Gambling influences are contributing big money to candidates.
• National Organizations have discovered local elections across our state and other states as well and are pushing their agendas through local candidates. The majority of these have a "progressive" agenda.
• Elected positions with annual part time wages of $16k to $19k a year are now finding candidates raising between $35 and $50k to be an effective candidate. the bar has been set, that is what it will take if you want to be a viable candidate, like it or not.
• And the newest feature, is the unrestrained freemarket of ideas, anonymous ideas, flaming ideas, and trolling ideas. Go online to any newsblog and newspaper website across the state and read how nasty the online political game is being played. further if you really have too much time on your hands

Yes, go online and read the comments to the articles and to opinion letters and posts. User names are ficticious, scandalous, frivolous and are nothing compared to the comments that are left by these users under creatively anonymous names.
However, I suspect that there are really very few people who are using these features and that by observing writing styles you can surmise that each author has several pen-names. I may be wrong, but I presume that some news reporters and opinion writers of Newspapers moving to the internet are flaming themselves under ficticous names just to encourage readership. With the Papers, Radio, TV News, if it's bleeding, it's leading. but I digress...

This year there is probably no significant effect on votes being decided by readers of these online smashmouth forums. There is a very small group of people who want to have serious, civil political discussions and debates, and they are not yet adapting to the youth who make a conscious effort to bring the dialogue down to below locker room humor and take it to the 4th grade to ninth grade level of political debate. While this may be the most entertaining for many readers, it leaves much to be desired by those who snivel for civil dialogue.

In the next local election cycles coming in the future, we will see more use of these unregistered comments and get more out of hand, scandalous, libelous, etc; it is and will be protected political free speech. Like it or not, it may begin to have an effect on local voters.
Eight Points to ponder and I only covered one.

See ya next post.