The Freeholders and the leftist "Team ClarkForward."

First of all, I will oppose anyone that either of these people support.

Secondly, you know that every single one of their slate will be for the CRC Scam.  That should disqualify them for elective office in Clark County at any level.

Thirdly, they will only support those who, in addition to being CRC Scammers, will do all they can to neuter the county commission.

Frankly, I hope that every GOP legislator runs for these positions.  Having 11 Republicans and 11 freeholders opposed to the CRC would provide some security that those of Steve Stuart's ilk will remain out of power and unable to derail the conservative bent of the county commission.

Here's a golden opportunity for the allegedly "new and improved" GOP to step up and counter these two.

Will they do it?

Time will tell.  But from the start of the ClarkForward Scam, where the first discussion takes place during the day in the midst of the downtown mafia, this thing reeks of the same kind of garbage that brought us the CRC Scam.  And that cannot be good.

Kudos to Jaime Herrera Beutler.

Few, if any, have hammered Jaime Herrera more than I have since she came back to be appointed in the 18th District House here locally, and particularly since she was elevated to Congress back in 2010.

Partisan politics is less important to me for the past few years and into the indefinite future: I'm much more results oriented and to date, I have believed (and repeatedly stated) that our congresswoman has been a do-nothing wall-flower since her arrival.

Some are, apparently, born great.  Some have greatness thrust upon them.

This is one of those times.

From all appearances, Jaime Herrera Beutler has FINALLY stepped up.  Thanks to her efforts, the following language was put into the Transportation budget bill:

As a Member of the U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (T-HUD), Jaime helped craft the fiscal year 2014 T-HUD Appropriations bill.  The legislation keeps in place the criteria of the New Starts grant program that provides federal transit money for transportation projects, which includes: 

• A project must have its operations & maintenance funding in place;
• A project must have the local funding match in place;
• All necessary permits must be granted. 

The CRC does not meet these criteria.  Meanwhile, 17 other projects around the nation are already permitted, locally funded, and stand ahead of the CRC in line for New Starts funding.  Members of the T-HUD subcommittee are expected to approve the bill on Wednesday.

This is certainly a start.  Jaime goes on to get to the heart of the matter by closing her press release with this:

“Project advocates continue to state that the main priority for the CRC is safety,” Jaime continued.  “If that's really what they believe, then they should have no problem taking the divisive, controversial, and local light rail portion off the table.  Let’s concentrate on building a bridge that can safely and efficiently move people, goods and services and can actually earn the support of the taxpayers and commuters who will pay for it.”

The Willamette Week has done a story on it here:

That is not to say that it's a done deal.

On the other side of the Rotunda (as they say) are Sen. State Cow and Sen. Round Heels.

The Cow has thrown a fit over the CRC Scam and has demanded the funding be included.  As long as Herrera sticks to her guns, however, any changes made by the Senate will have to be approved by the GOP-controlled House... so this is likely not the end of this issue.

Again, I admit that I have beat on this woman for years because of her failure to act.  If she sees this through, then I can no longer make such a claim.

It was good for us, and it's good for her politically as well, since that would remove a major impetus for a primary challenge from anyone wired into the majority of the people in this congressional district.

While this is arguably a step that should have been taken much earlier than this, that it's taken at all is the thing... and I appreciate her efforts on this.

Hillsboro Hops blast Eugene 12-0 in home opener: Local Yakima Millionaire supporters whine.

As the headline says, the Hops mangled Eugene, 12-zip in their home opener this evening at the Hillsboro Stadium.

The rag is bittersweet about that: their efforts to sell out this entire community to pay roughly $8 million more for a stadium the same size than Hillsboro did, by stupidly locating in already parking-sensitive Clark College and force the rest of the county to pay for the ballpark scam every time any of us went to a movie, the Fair, the Amphitheater and any time anyone played golf.

All, of course, without asking us.

This is just one of the many scams that Tim "The Liar" Leave-it have tried to run on us since he lied his way into the mayor's office.  He failed.

I like baseball.  What I don't like is yet another effort to rip us off so the downtown mafia can get what THEY want without asking those of us who are going to pay for it what WE want.

That's a recurring theme on the part of Leave-it and his ilk.  You'd think he'd learn.

The local rag flipped on their position, about two years old, concerning screwing us to get a ballpark built at taxpayer expense:

The Columbian snivels over striking out on the ballpark scam.

Forgotten long since, two short years ago, this rag threw a fit over the very idea that taxpayer dollars should be used to pay for a millionaire's baseball facility:

But back to luring the baseball team over to this side of the river. That would require a stadium with at least 8,000 seats, which would cost about $40 million. As we’ve editorialized before, there appears to be no way any of that money could — or even should — be provided by taxpayers. That hurdle hasn’t discouraged Leavitt, though. “There’s still a lot of interest in bringing Beavers baseball or Triple-A baseball to Clark County. Private interests are working on a financing plan,” he said. To which we respond: Great! Work away! Which is a nice way of saying don’t come begging to cash-strapped city or county governments.

More:

What was the rag's position on the Yakima Millionaire's Ballpark Scam?

So, along comes Brancaccio, who blabs about how unacceptable Stuart's "dead horse" plan is.  He goes on to comment below the article:  

Lou Brancaccio Top Commenter University of Florida 

When you read the entire editorial Friday you will see we still favor baseball coming here and we still support an entertainment tax to make that happen. What we strongly oppose is this new idea of giving the money to the cities and then cutting them off after five years. Many politicians have trouble stopping spending once they start.

Yeah, I know: the lack of integrity is insane.

Nevertheless, those who screwed this up by trying to ram this badly located facility down our throats are a little whiny.  Unfortunately, arrogance likely keeps most of them from being what they need to be: a little more introspective and a little more willing to take the blame for screwing this up.

Next time you want to shaft us, perhaps you'll ask us first, and listen when we respond.

As for Hillsboro.... Play Ball!

UPDATE Galina Burley: I HATE to be "handled." Burley refuses to state her CRC position

I have a major problem with candidates who are ashamed of their positions.

I went to Vancouver city council candidate Galina Burley's Facebook page and asked her a very simple question:

Kage McClued One question: Do you support the CRC?

8 hours ago · Like
.

Straight forward.  To the point.  Yes or no, up or down.
.

Having done a little homework, based on the typical downtown mafia types who've endorsed her (Pollard, Louderback, Metcalf, Jacks (The legislative staff molester) Brokaw, Horenstein both the Ogdens and that ilk) I was reasonably sure she did.  Pollard, especially, would run over a child with a steam roller before he'd even think about endorsing someone who didn't.

This paragraph from her announcement article kind of set the tone: 

She said she supports the Columbia River Crossing, which has been a dominating issue in local political campaigns the past few years, and said she wants to support local businesses to foster job growth.

The number one thing a candidate should have is courage.  Whatever her positions are, she needs to own them and be proud of them... not prevaricate when asked a direct question.

That she tried to handle me... and God, how I HATE to be "handled," shows her to be either getting bad advice:

Yes, I oppose it.  Or, no, I don't give a damn what the voters think, I'm going to support this massive rip off and local economy killing extortion so we can get 40 years plus of tolls to rape our community for a worthless project.

...or that she's got the political awareness of a rock ape.
.

Here's her response:

Galina Burley for Vancouver City Council Hi kage, I'm excited to hear from you. I've read many of your comments on this issue in the Columbian. Do I support the crc? I, as a commuter, feel that we must have safe transportation options. We also need to have access to transportation so that people who cant drive can be connected (people with mobility restrictions specifically). I do not oppose transportation options for our citizens but do have questions about the council's role with crc specifically.

18 minutes ago via mobile · Like

Excuse me?

Burley is not an unintelligent woman.  She's got an MPA (HR Concentration) and BA's in Business and Communication.  She reads and speaks English.  She knows damned well what I was asking, and she refused to answer the question.
.

I responded thusly:

Kage McClued That's a "yes" or "no" question. You support it, or you don't. I'm reasonably sure that, based on those endorsing you, that is not the answer you gave them.

26 minutes ago · Edited · Like
.

Her response was telling and shows her political cowardice:

Galina Burley for Vancouver City Council You are welcome to check with my supporters. Or come to my event next Friday at torque. Thanks for your inquiry.

20 minutes ago via mobile · Like

That's crap.  She's clearly just another Leave-it type buttboy who is owned by the special interests, out to screw the people.

She's just shot to the top of my list, along with Mike Dalesandro, of new candidates unfit for elective office.

UPDATE:

An obviously pro-CRC supporter/campaign worker for Burley (Or Burley herself?) provides this spin in my comment section:

I found Burleys response refreshing. Instead of a knee jerk reaction she gave a thoughtful answer. To parse her words, she wants transportation for all people but is concerned about councils involvement. That tells me she is not an ideologue but a thinking person who wants all information before declaring a straight YES or No.

You're kidding, right?

This stinks like Leave-it's flip on tolls.  He had all the information when he was lying about his positions during his campaign.  He didn't find out anything when he was magically sworn in as mayor that he didn't already know as a councilman... which makes his lying justification as to why he betrayed so many of his supporters, as foolish as they were, and "changed" his position when, in fact, he changed nothing except his public persona on the issue.

I didn't ask Burley a question concerning the 6th dimension, quantum theory, sending troops to Syria, or ways to solve the national debt.

I asked her about one of THE most thoroughly investigated and information-rich issues of at least 8 years duration confronting us locally today.

Whoever the person is spinning this through this comment, here's my direct response: playing deliberately ignorant (need more information) when there's oceans of information out there, PARTICULARLY when her response isn't direct, but includes such idiocy as "ask my supporters" isn't "refreshing."

It's cowardice.  She can't run and hide.  When something is obvious, she needs to have the guts to own it.  If she gets defeated as a result (And that is a VERY likely outcome in this day and age) then at least her integrity will be in tact for another try later.  But her political cowardice will follow her forever if she insists on lacking the guts to answer direct questions on the issues most important to the community she purports to want to serve.

It would be one thing if she'd just parachuted in and had never heard of the CRC Scam.  It's quite another to be, allegedly, involved in this community and be too much of a coward to express a position on the issue, telling me to wait until the 28th as if something is going to magically happen that hasn't already happened or to "ask her supporters."

What are they going to say?

SHE INDICATED IN HER CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT SHE SUPPORTED THE CRC.  Her position was set then... why is she too much of a coward to re-iterate it now?

Further, this isn't an issue of her not having a position, or not knowing: she's already STATED her position.  She obviously sees this as being radioactive, unpopular and a political hot-potato.  If she doesn't have the courage to stand by her convictions, no matter what they are, so she can get elected, warts and all, then she is unfit for elective office or any other position of responsibility.

The LAST thing this area needs is another Tim Leavitt.

Since her campaign is to screw 440,000 people, she might as well get in front of it, own it, and revel in the pain and the harm she is going to cause.

Leavitt's a lying moron, but at least he doesn't run away from his positions any more (not that he's got somewhere TO run) and Burley can't even do THAT.

What you find "refreshing" has the stench of rotting cow manure to me.

Truer equality: Norway votes to draft women.

The bogus, fake gender-equality we have around this country and our military is just that: false.

This women in combat nonsense is a disaster waiting to happen and it inevitably will, just like our increasing dependence on females in the military has been a disaster in many respects.

We see the whining and sniveling from a few loud mouths.  We see the efforts the military is taking to lower standards.  We see the women using pregnancy to avoid deployment so some other poor schlep has to take their place.  We see the hundreds of millions wasted on training women who get pregnant and then just sit it out... at full pay, of course.

But what we DON'T see is any demand for women to be included in the draft.

What we DON'T see is any demand that women meet the same standards as men in, say, PT tests.

No, what we see is the military being used as a test tube by a bunch of non-serving scum who won't have to live... or die... as a result of their experiments.

So, along comes the democratic light known as .... Norway?

We've lacked the guts to charge the full price for equality.  The faux equality of women has never, to my knowledge, included riots or lawsuits on the part of women demanding to be... drafted.

You know... like true equality demands? (HT to This Ain't Hell)

Norway votes to draft women

June 16th, 2013

Tom sends us a link to Reuters which reports that Norway has become the first NATO nation to draft women.

“Rights and duties should be the same for all,” said Labor lawmaker Laila Gustavsen, a supporter of the bill. “The armed forces need access to the best resources, regardless of gender, and right now mostly men are recruited.”
Norway has been at the forefront in the fight for gender equality, introducing measures such as requiring all public limited companies to fill at least 40 percent of their board seats with women. On Wednesday the country celebrated a century since Norwegian women won the right to vote.
[...]
“This is historic. For me it is fantastic to make history, for the armed forces and for women,” Gustavsen said.

But I don’t see the US making the move to be “historic”. The only reason that the Supreme Court gave us when they said drafting men only was constitutional was because women couldn’t serve in combat, but that restriction has been lifted, so you’d think that the women’s movements would be pressuring Congress to draft women, too.

I don't see the women's movement getting all huffy about this, either.  But that failure just serves to reinforce the rank hypocrisy of the "equality" movement, both within, and outside, the military.

The pit yorkie jumps into the moron zone... again. He ain't gone yet?

Laird doesn't get it: the project that he has used to divide this community and hurt the rag's income by alienating anyone to the right of Lenin into shooting themselves before they'd ever by his newspaper blivet product is completely dead.

So, he puts up another rather pathetic effort of garbage entitled  "First Citizens consistently support transportation projects."

The problem is that the "First Citizens" are uniformly members of the downtown mafia/Identity Vancouver/Chamber of Horrors scum infesting us, invariably nested west of I-5 and south of 39th.

In short, what the "biggest schlubs" of the  Soviet City of Vancouver want is as meaningless as the rest of babble he spews in his year's-long effort to alienate the majority of this county.

Pollard's support of this scam, a man of no integrity or honor (Don Benton endorsed him for mayor... would he return the favor?  Nope... he threw him under the Probst bus.) helps to guarantee it's demise.  And, of course, the PY conveniently forgets to mention that Pollard got his ass kicked by the now-current scum bag running the local Soviet on his fake "no tolls" platform.

But then, leaving our inconvenient facts is what the democratian is all about.

Of course the list of arrogant, uncaring, unconcerned people with an agenda of making money (And many on this biggest-communist-in-the-city list ARE making money off this scummery) don't give a damn about what the people of this county want.

Reminding us of that is the kind of idiocy that the democratian is known for.

Wait for the CRC death party announcements.  And congratulations to the Senators from Clark County (Minus that rock ape Cleveland) who were smart enough to summarily execute this serial extortion of the 440,000 people of Clark County.

The most moronic lies?

Building a consensus

The 2011 First Citizen, the late Hal Dengerink, former chancellor of Washington State University Vancouver, co-chaired the CRC task force that met 23 times over three years and developed the Locally Preferred Alternative that was approved by a 37-2 vote of the task force and later adopted by six agencies in two states.

1.  The LPA wasn't "developed."  It was the ONLY alternative.  No other possibility was ever considered.

2.   The so-called "task force" policy of ignoring the people was in-effect at that time and has remained in effect since.

3.  That the self-appointed "downtown mafia" bent us over without asking us is NOT "building a consensus."

4.  WE WERE NEVER ASKED.

Laird's lying spin  doesn't change any of this.  We've known for years now that this thing was in the tank from the get-go.  The people were to be ignored as this extortion was slammed into place.  Arrogance was not only the order of the day, it was the official policy of this rip off, briefly mentioned once, and then ignored forever more by Laird's despicable rag.

Laird is supposed to be gone, soon.  It will be roughly the equivalent of the removal of an anal fissure.... painful while it lasts, but a great relief to all concerned when it's over.

Memo to the gun-grabbing scum: your fantasy plan won't work - 37 shot in Chicago this weekend.

You read it right: 37 people were shot, and 7 are dead so far... THIS weekend.

This is business as usual in the incompetently run city of Chicago.

PAPER: Iran will send 4,000 troops to aid Assad...


BLOODBATH IN CHICAGOLAND

WOW! I just found out my old Blackberry cell is worth $54,250!

At least it would be if I were a democrat.

Police report filed for lost and stolen items from Dem convention include $30k iPhone and $75k laptop computer

Tweet

By Doug Powers  •  June 15, 2013 10:33 AM

**Written by Doug Powers

Is this police report a precursor to the 2012 Dem convention slogan eventually having to be revised to “Yes we can wildly inflate value for insurance purposes”?

From ABC News:

Organizers of the Charlotte, N.C., convention have filed a police report for lost and stolen electronics, some of which they appear to have valued at as much as 62 times the listed market prices.

A reportedly stolen 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop? $75,537. The price listed on the Apple website is $1,199. A lost iPhone? $30,503. A lost Blackberry? $54,250.
[...]
Other items reported to have gone missing at the convention included two iPads worth around $15,000 each, laptops listed at $40,000, $34,000 and $25,000 each, and other miscellaneous items worth far more than their list price.

The report claimed that 40 items were reported lost and one item – the most highly valued one, the $75,000 MacBook Pro – was stolen.
[...]
The report was filed almost eight months after the convention, when the losses supposedly took place.

The cost of the 41 missing electronics totaled $465,142.97, according to the police report.

That averaged $11,344 per item.

Either something’s really fishy here or they originally bought the stuff at list prices from an Obamacare exchange.

I’m surprised they didn’t report TOTUS as stolen. That would be a claim worth some serious money, and it would have been believable.

(h/t Weasel Zippers)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Brancaccio STILL doesn't get it. The failure of the CRC and the Ballpark Scam.

Whiney Lou Brancaccio continues his spew of editorial (and situational) idiocy with this morning's snivel-fest: Press Talk: Let's play ball … someplace else.

I am eternally grateful that the ballpark scam crashed and burned.  I'm thinking of setting up a memorial to the CRC Scam as we likely bury it forever this week.

Those who have had permanent blinders installed like Brancaccio are utterly incapable of introspection or respect for the people of this county:

Privately, I had coffee with Big Mike a number of times and cautioned him that this would not be an easy road. We both know Chicago well, and Big Mike figured he'd seen plenty of politics in the Windy City. I told him he hadn't seen nothin' yet.

Apparently, Brancaccio, who's been here at least a decade to our detriment, has yet to figure out the same thing: this ain't Chicago.  The downtown mafia doesn't get to call the shots.  The people here, more often than not, will have the final say.

Yamamoto is credited with saying it best, perhaps:

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Brancaccio rather foolishly suggests that there was "local support" for this rip off.

There was practically ZERO support for this scheme to rape the people of the entire county to benefit the Yakima Millionaires, except among the same Identity Vancouver, CRUDEC, Chamber of Horrors scum involved in the CRC Scam.

He then points out the two most egregious liars in politics, Tim "The Liar" Leave-it and Steve "Strike Out" Stuart, as supporters, apparently unable to recognize that the support of those two political pariahs' high profile shilling for the Ballpark Scam, combined with the support of himself and the other lying slime at the rag essentially guaranteed its demise.

There certainly was local support for the ballpark. Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt and Democratic County Commissioner Steve Stuart were big backers. Other community movers and shakers were on board as well.

Like the CRC Scam, Brancaccio fails to understand that that THE most critical element in this passion play in this, or any other project where the people are going to have to pay directly out of pocket is the support of the PEOPLE.

That those in the downtown cocoon wanted this poorly located theft to take place is irrelevant.  It's what the PEOPLE want that matters.

And then THIS beauty:

The Columbian supported it editorially. We said, "It would be good to have a professional team here, the stadium also would be heavily used by the community for other things and the entertainment tax would only hit those who already can afford to spend money on entertainment."

First, it wasn't a "stadium."  It was going to be a ballpark.

The rest of that is a smoke-and-mirrors lie of the type that Brancaccio lives on.  The descriptive terminology only was changed when it started to become so clear that a blind man like Brancaccio could see it that Ron Arp's abysmal failure of a campaign was getting nowhere as a scam under the guise of a "Ballpark." So, they tried the "stadium" approach.

Second, a year earlier, this same liar wrote in an editorial:

But back to luring the baseball team over to this side of the river. That would require a stadium with at least 8,000 seats, which would cost about $40 million. As we've editorialized before, there appears to be no way any of that money could or even should be provided by taxpayers. That hurdle hasn't discouraged Leavitt, though. Theres still a lot of interest in bringing Beavers baseball or Triple-A baseball to Clark County. Private interests are working on a financing plan, he said. To which we respond: Great! Work away! Which is a nice way of saying don't come begging to cash-strapped city or county governments.

Brancaccio's situational ethics are part and parcel as to why he and the paper he runs have become a cancer on our community... he admitted himself that "...there appears to be no way any of that money could or even should be provided by taxpayers."

A year later after printing that, what's his take?

Something completely different.

But situational ethics is his hallmark.

In everything from the Benton hiring using a system put in place by democrats to allow them to bypass the usual rules to hire managers, to the ballpark to the CRC rip off, Brancaccio's "flexible" ethics on the issues confronting this community are the thing.

What Brancaccio and the rest of them SHOULD be doing is getting rid of their own arrogance.  What they SHOULD be doing is looking inside themselves to figure out why their efforts are such abysmal failures.

And the reason is quite simple:

They cannot get the support of the people of this county.

More importantly, like an alternative to the CRC Scam that they lie about having been "vetted" (We all know by now that no consideration was given to any other alternative: it was going to be loot rail into Vancouver all along, and no consideration was given to any other possibility) they never even try to get our support for their Hitler-like plans.

The arrogance that the Brancaccios, the Montagues, the Leave-its, the Stuarts, the Mike Briggs of the world exhibit is simply astounding.

That in the face of their now almost decade-long campaign of lies, distortions, exaggerations and deliberate efforts to ignore the people has resulted in the deaths of these projects is ultimately inevitable.

The question is this: will they learn anything from it?

Or will their monumental egos deny them the opportunity for an actual opportunity to engage in some introspection... some self-examination... some tiny effort to begin to understand what went wrong and why?

Brancaccio snivels that:

If you look at the I-5 bridge proposal — gasping its last breaths as we speak — we're becoming known as the "just say no" community. We now bear the burden of a community struggling to try to move forward.

He AGAIN blows it by failing to realize what commenter Dennis Henry wrote in response:

I disagree, Lou. We are a "Say yes to sanity" kinda city, which unlike Chicago actually wants to pay it bills and not overburden fellow citizens with BIG schemes that do nothing but to make someone else a lot of money at the citizens expense. It appears to me to be a fad.

Its like a lot of folks get together every years to see what BIG project they can sell to politicians promising the moon and delivering a tax due bill. The Amphitheater Fad and even the Convention Center Scam were exposed by Mainstream news reporters (Gasp) before our City and County determined they were the perfect thing to draw money away from Jansen beach.

Thanks all the same, Lou, but most folks here prefer sanity to policy by fad.

Precisely.  And Brancaccio is seemingly incapable of understanding this basic truth.  Sanity and common sense are the thing, but Brancaccio and the rest's massive egos keep them from understanding that.


This is a golden opportunity to reconnect with those who matter the most: the people.

And 15 will get you 20 that they'll blow it off and change nothing.

Here's a hint, Lou: you cannot whip the people with lies, with exaggerations, with omissions and with insults like those favored by you and your pit yorkie for almost a decade by selectively presenting information that tends to only support your agenda while ignoring the volumes of it that tends to do the opposite.

Will they ever learn?

If history is any judge... the answer is likely "no."

Hillsboro Hops home opener at the Stadium in Hillsboro on Monday!

Since the Hops are in Hillsboro instead of screwing us blind here, they're my favorite baseball team.






The Hops lost in Keizer today, 3-2... but unlike the Mariners, I'm sure they'll turn it around.

Well done, guys!

When democrats are in charge: Detroit to default on $2.5 billion in debt.

Like MOST (But not all) democrat bastions around the country; democratic Mecca Detroit is flat broke.

It's the kind of thing you get when democrats infest your political system for too long without being properly fumigated.

Bizarre, that.

Emergency manager: Detroit won't pay $2.5B it owes

AP  6/14/2013 4:26:41 PM

(AP) Emergency manager: Detroit won't pay $2.5B it owes
By COREY WILLIAMS
Associated Press
ROMULUS, Mich.
Detroit's emergency manager says the city is defaulting on about $2.5 billion of debt.

Kevyn Orr said Friday that Detroit is asking creditors to take about 10 cents on the dollar of what they're owed. Underfunded pension claims will get less.

Orr spent about two hours Friday morning with dozens of people representing banks, insurers and companies holding Detroit debt. He told reporters earlier at an airport hotel in Romulus he wants to fix fiscal problems that have made the city insolvent.

He has instituted a moratorium on all of Detroit's payments on unsecured debt, seeking forgiveness of millions of dollars owed by the city.

He also said $1.25 billion will be set aside over 10 years for public safety, lighting and neighborhood blight elimination.

Because Columbia Credit Union is betraying us, I am taking my accounts out of there in the morning.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my credit union was spending my money (and that of thousands of other members) to assist in the CRC Scammer's effort to ram this rip off down our throats.

My wife works there.  She has for 14 years.  So, this isn't going to be easy but I am leaving the credit union with my multiple accounts, personal and business, and taking them with me.

Obviously, the credit union, which doesn't give a rat's ass about us, won't care.  But *I* care.

All these years.  To have them be lumped in with slime like Leave-it, Moeller, Montague and similar scum is simply beyond the pale.

Words fail me.  Because of recent reverses in the market, this decision is going to cost me, personally, $3000 or so.  But I wouldn't care if it were $3 million.

Despicable.

It's bad enough they're spending this money, but now they're wasting it on this abysmal project with a campaign of lies, distortions and communist-style propaganda that is going precisely nowhere..

Pro-CRC group spends $30,000 on ads

Its focus is to convince lawmakers project is needed now

Associated Press files

Columbia River Crossing supporters have increased efforts in recent months to convince legislators in Olympia, and residents in Clark County, that a plan to replace the Interstate 5 Bridge needs funding now.

By Stevie Mathieu
Columbian Politics Reporter

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Identity Clark County donors

Download .PDF

Columbia River Crossing supporters have increased efforts in recent months to convince legislators in Olympia, and residents in Clark County, that a plan to replace the Interstate 5 Bridge needs funding now.

The Columbia River Crossing Coalition, a pro-CRC group, spent more than $30,000 on ads aimed at spurring action on the controversial project. Washington legislators are wrapped up in legislative overtime so they can resolve their budget differences, and CRC supporters hope they'll also pass a transportation tax package that would raise $450 million for the CRC.

Of the money spent by the coalition, $5,000 went toward newspaper ads in The Columbian, $770 paid for automated phone calls in the Vancouver area, and $25,000 bought radio ads that hit the airwaves during a two-week period, a Portland-based consultant for the coalition, Page Phillips, said Monday.

The Columbia River Crossing Coalition's newspaper ads include a picture of the crumpled I-5 Skagit River bridge resting in the river. It asks readers to imagine a similar bridge collapse happening to the I-5 Bridge over the Columbia River.

"Our situation is worse," one ad states. It asks readers to contact legislators who oppose the CRC.

CRC supporters also made several trips to Olympia in April, when the Legislature's regular session was coming to a close. Phillips, who doesn't typically work as a lobbyist, said she made so many Olympia trips that month that she registered as a lobbyist just to be on the safe side of state rules.

The strong voice of CRC advocates in Olympia, and the governor's embrace of the CRC, have helped keep the project intact in the proposed transportation package, Phillips said. That package would raise gas taxes and pay for several of the state's transportation needs.
"In that way, I feel like the folks in Southwest (Washington) who support this project have been really successful," she said. "We educated a lot of Washington state legislators in the last couple of months."

Phillips reported in her lobbying reports that the coalition paid her a salary of $8,000 in April. Phillips said she did not lobby during the 30-day special legislative session that ended Tuesday. Lawmakers started their second special session of the year Wednesday.

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