Over the decade+ and some 7500 or so posts that I've done here, and the closing on 1.1million views... the one thread that most everyone can agree on is that politics can be a brutal business.
As a former political professional, I've seen... and experienced... the best politics has had to offer.
I've also seen among its worst.
I've felt the exultation of winning, and the crushing pain of losing.
I came to discover that no consultant can care more for the success of a campaign more than the client/candidate you're working for.
I've seen candidates bust their ass to get elected... and I've seen others mail it in.
And I've also seen what happens... all too often... once these people who start out to mean well... are co-opted by the system and they sell out; becoming that which they claimed, at first, to loath and despise.
Sen. Ann Rivers is a case in point.
I made the mistake of believing in her like I had no other. After her election; first to the House, and then to the Senate; my function, she told me, was to keep her "on track." To warn her if she was morphing into that most hated of beings, the caricature of a political hack... and to do everything I could to make sure that didn't happen.
At some point, she told me, she was going to run for Congress, and she refused to do that if both my wife and I did not agree to go with her to DC... so I could continue to do the same thing I had been doing.
At first, it was the easiest job in the world.
There were some rough spots... some issues... but she got past them with some assistance. Long nights... tense hours.
And things started coming together.
Then, the idea was floated that she should run for county chair.
She likely would have won in a walk; she was the number one vote getter among Freeholders who set up the Charter... which she did not vote on due to her husband, Fred, being in a hospital emergency room due to a serious cut on a hand I recall.
The table was set. Along with my wife, I met with her, Fred and Brent Boger to kick around the idea and rough out a strategy.
The idea was to hold both the position of State Senator AND County Chair.
Those who had a different agenda immediately started whining about holding two positions like that, apparently not knowing (or caring) that Sen. Tom Sheldon (D-Potlach) was also a county commissioner... and has held both positions for years.
There was some blowback on the announcement...the usual partisan hackery and the special interests expressing concern that she wouldn't be keeping her senate seat...
I blew that off, because despite the whispers of RINO-ism I'd been hearing for years...
I.
Knew.
Better.
Oddly... I began to hear rumors... for no apparent, particular reason; Rivers was going to pull out of the chair race.
I was sure THAT couldn't be true... after all, if she HAD made such a decision... why hadn't she told me?
Finally, I asked her... and it turned out to be true... and not for the obviously untrue reason she gave me:
"Well, I just didn't want to be out in public and have people stop me all the time, like at the grocery store... and tell me their problems..."
Yeah. Like that doesn't happen now?
Strike one.
Then, she became pot's number one proponent and was instrumental in cutting the pot tax, voted into place as part of the so-called "legalization initiative" in half.
So, instead of working to hold the pot millionaires accountable for their lie of a campaign: (you do remember this, don't you?)
As a former political professional, I've seen... and experienced... the best politics has had to offer.
I've also seen among its worst.
I've felt the exultation of winning, and the crushing pain of losing.
I came to discover that no consultant can care more for the success of a campaign more than the client/candidate you're working for.
I've seen candidates bust their ass to get elected... and I've seen others mail it in.
And I've also seen what happens... all too often... once these people who start out to mean well... are co-opted by the system and they sell out; becoming that which they claimed, at first, to loath and despise.
Sen. Ann Rivers is a case in point.
I made the mistake of believing in her like I had no other. After her election; first to the House, and then to the Senate; my function, she told me, was to keep her "on track." To warn her if she was morphing into that most hated of beings, the caricature of a political hack... and to do everything I could to make sure that didn't happen.
At some point, she told me, she was going to run for Congress, and she refused to do that if both my wife and I did not agree to go with her to DC... so I could continue to do the same thing I had been doing.
At first, it was the easiest job in the world.
There were some rough spots... some issues... but she got past them with some assistance. Long nights... tense hours.
And things started coming together.
Then, the idea was floated that she should run for county chair.
She likely would have won in a walk; she was the number one vote getter among Freeholders who set up the Charter... which she did not vote on due to her husband, Fred, being in a hospital emergency room due to a serious cut on a hand I recall.
The table was set. Along with my wife, I met with her, Fred and Brent Boger to kick around the idea and rough out a strategy.
The idea was to hold both the position of State Senator AND County Chair.
Those who had a different agenda immediately started whining about holding two positions like that, apparently not knowing (or caring) that Sen. Tom Sheldon (D-Potlach) was also a county commissioner... and has held both positions for years.
There was some blowback on the announcement...the usual partisan hackery and the special interests expressing concern that she wouldn't be keeping her senate seat...
I blew that off, because despite the whispers of RINO-ism I'd been hearing for years...
I.
Knew.
Better.
Oddly... I began to hear rumors... for no apparent, particular reason; Rivers was going to pull out of the chair race.
I was sure THAT couldn't be true... after all, if she HAD made such a decision... why hadn't she told me?
Finally, I asked her... and it turned out to be true... and not for the obviously untrue reason she gave me:
"Well, I just didn't want to be out in public and have people stop me all the time, like at the grocery store... and tell me their problems..."
Yeah. Like that doesn't happen now?
Strike one.
Then, she became pot's number one proponent and was instrumental in cutting the pot tax, voted into place as part of the so-called "legalization initiative" in half.
So, instead of working to hold the pot millionaires accountable for their lie of a campaign: (you do remember this, don't you?)
 | |
| Screen capture from the pro-pot initiative, a figure we've never come close to seeing... since we have yet to collect even a $100 million in a year, let alone $582 million. |
.
.
.
Rivers led the charge to cut their taxes.
By 50%.
Strike two.
And then... then... I began to hear other rumors that in direct violation of her WRITTEN WORD, she was going to cave to the special interests... KNOWING that her district OVERWHELMINGLY opposed her actions in advance... that she was going to vote FOR the gas tax and FOR the massive tab fee increases which she had pledged to oppose as a part of her campaign in 2012.
Well, remembering what my JOB was, I called her to confirm... and she finally admitted to me what so much of the rest of the local political world already knew.
That she was going to vote FOR the bill and FOR the emergency clause that would have made it much more difficult to gather signatures to put this to a vote and AGAINST a referendum clause... to make sure we had no say.
Nothing I said changed her mind. No reminder of her campaign pledge made any difference.
Strike three.
Rivers betrayed you. She betrayed US. She betrayed ME.
And after 10 years of a close family and business relationship, we were done.
These things all happened within a short time of each other... a few months, if memory serves.
It was like a switch was flipped... like blackmail... like someone had completely derailed the person who I thought of as a sister.
Clearly, politics makes strange bedfellows.
Rivers has been voting RINO ever since.
From also caving on McCleary, which will cost us additional billions... permanently... to her $182,000 lie on her PDCs... she has become the thing she professed to me that she hated the most: a complete and total sell out.
NOW, her mission is going to be to convince people that she did us a favor by screwing us. That's how Herrera has stayed in office, doing nothing and getting reelected.
Boldt, now the worst county leadership of my roughly 30 years of living here, was far easier: I quit working for him to go work for the State GOP as the executive director.
Now, I'm not sure where this situation devolved into personalities.
Our party chair's rabid defense of these two (Rivers and Boldt) has been based entirely on what he claims *I* am. Their records, self-evident to anyone who looks, are meaningless. What matters to David is he wants to find a way to discredit ME instead of discrediting THEM.
Because in HIS mind, *I* am the problem: not those raping us once they get elected.
I, for my part, will continue to be reminding people that Rivers betrayed us and Boldt is everything I've said he would be, including a whack job who's incessant texting forced me to block him to shut him up... a leftist bent on jacking our taxes and fees while he expands government and joins with the other 3 Stooges to ignore those he would govern.
I will also be reminding people who supported and continue to support that clown... particularly of the Young Democrats (who endorsed him) and Leftist Jimmy Mains and his uber democrat crew, where Marc can't even go to the men's room without Main's instructions... the fake Republican PAC put together by Carolyn Crain and the RINOs who have done more damage to the local GOP before 9 am than I have done in the entirety of my political life... which started 28 years ago when I volunteered for the Bob Williams campaign.
I'll take it a step further: Boldt is the ONLY politician I have EVER heard of to lose permanent control of his campaigns by Public Disclosure Commission edict.
The current GOP party chair has made a big deal out of telling people my history... or what he thinks it is. He's gone out of his way to remind people that I "am not a Republican."
Neither is Boldt, who first lied in his most recent campaign about being a "conservative Republican," then morphed into a "moderate conservative Republican," and THEN morphed into an independent... not a Republican at all.
Crain's crew insisted that he WAS a Republican, even putting the fake organization of 3 people or so behind him with their bogus endorsement placards on Boldt's signs... to make people BELIEVE Boldt had been endorsed by the GOP...
And here's David accusing ME that *I* am not a Republican while defending someone who has DECLARED he's not a Republican?
Hypocrite much?
The reality, however, is that I am NOT a Republican if BEING a Republican means I have to become a little GOP automaton.
I am NOT going to suspend my disbelief or silence my concerns if that is the price of adhering to an organization that is SUPPOSED to represent the vast majority of my views... while that organization which is supposedly representing truth, integrity and the people... ignores those who betray us and just soldiers on because they ran under a label of convenience to get elected... Not based on who they are, but instead, based on WHERE they are geographically.
David is pissed that I don't attack democrats here, apparently, enough to suit him... not that many more attacks on the left would make any difference to him.
I suggest that, just for one example, he search the words Cleveland, or Moeller, or Inslee or Obama on my meager effort here.
Like so many on the left, David isn't as concerned about reality as he is attacking those who are wise enough to disagree with him on a personal level.
Those of the Alinsky Rule 5 mindset have that sort of thing in common: when you can't attack the issues... you attack the messenger.
Experts have attacked me. I've been vilified in most every imaginable way, from Boldt and Rivers (and others) attempting to get me fired to lying Left Lou trying to shred me in his rag.
But the reality is that I am little different from many out there... and many reading this.
There are three minor differences... my education and experience outside the military have all been political... I have knowledge that others don't based on what people tell me... and, horror of horrors, I WRITE my opinions down instead of just speaking them.
So. The GOP has a Lincoln Day Dinner coming up.
They are paying THIS $15000 to come and speak, after humiliating the bedrock GOP on the neo-communist show "The View" on the question of abortion:
And then, her thoughts (such as they are) that the House repeal of Obamacare... or paint job of it or whatever... is not perfect... (Of course it isn't... who claims that it is?)
Perhaps she ought to change her name to Tomi Cleavage.
I do not see her as a reason to go to the LDD..
I see her as a reason to stay away. And I mention this on occasion, which apparently challenges the testosterone level of our esteemed county GOP chair.
Sadly, instead of joining with me to hold these people accountable and to make the right decisions concerning getting some kid who has yet to show bleeding and scared hands from pounding campaign signs into rock-hard dirt... he has seen fit to personally attack me.
And that's his privilege.
But in all of this, I recall someone offering the observation that David was "better than that."
I, for my part, offered that he wasn't.
Once again, events have proven me right.
But this all is the basis for the county chair's jihad.
The leftists and his fellow RINOs are loving it, of course, but it doesn't deter me. It's been going on for years.
We all speak out. Many fewer of us "write out." I'm one who does and while I freely admit that I'm not always right, I'm righter than I am wrong.
And regardless of popular belief, no one pays me anything to write any of this... RINO babbling to the contrary notwithstanding. No one pays or has ever paid me to oppose Boldt until the last general election and the write-in campaign... and nothing since then. No one pays me anything to do the GOP's job of holding Rivers accountable for her betrayal that has cost this county $700 million. No one is paying me anything to point out the idiocy of local GOP leadership.
These are MY thoughts, conclusions and analysis. They're driven by what *I* see and think, though God Knows that Rivers particularly would provide me with information over the years in the hopes that I would use it in this blog.
SOMEBODY has to hold those running under the GOP brand accountable. It sure doesn't appear to be the local GOP.
SOMEBODY has to tell the truth. And David, if you're bent on coming after me, here's a couple of pieces of advice:
1. Don't make it up. That could get you kicked right in the wallet.
2. You're bringing a fist to a gun fight.
3. If you want to be EFFECTIVE, your best bet is to point out where I'm wrong.
You see, David; who I am. What you think I've done, the weather, the outcome of the election in France (as sad as it was) the Blazers getting dumped 4 straight by Golden State... none of that changes the facts.
That you or anyone else doesn't LIKE what I write?
Well, you can always exercise the option of not reading it.
Otherwise, I ain't going anywhere.
Just sayin'.
Strike two.
And then... then... I began to hear other rumors that in direct violation of her WRITTEN WORD, she was going to cave to the special interests... KNOWING that her district OVERWHELMINGLY opposed her actions in advance... that she was going to vote FOR the gas tax and FOR the massive tab fee increases which she had pledged to oppose as a part of her campaign in 2012.
Well, remembering what my JOB was, I called her to confirm... and she finally admitted to me what so much of the rest of the local political world already knew.
That she was going to vote FOR the bill and FOR the emergency clause that would have made it much more difficult to gather signatures to put this to a vote and AGAINST a referendum clause... to make sure we had no say.
Nothing I said changed her mind. No reminder of her campaign pledge made any difference.
Strike three.
Rivers betrayed you. She betrayed US. She betrayed ME.
And after 10 years of a close family and business relationship, we were done.
These things all happened within a short time of each other... a few months, if memory serves.
It was like a switch was flipped... like blackmail... like someone had completely derailed the person who I thought of as a sister.
Clearly, politics makes strange bedfellows.
Rivers has been voting RINO ever since.
From also caving on McCleary, which will cost us additional billions... permanently... to her $182,000 lie on her PDCs... she has become the thing she professed to me that she hated the most: a complete and total sell out.
NOW, her mission is going to be to convince people that she did us a favor by screwing us. That's how Herrera has stayed in office, doing nothing and getting reelected.
Boldt, now the worst county leadership of my roughly 30 years of living here, was far easier: I quit working for him to go work for the State GOP as the executive director.
Now, I'm not sure where this situation devolved into personalities.
Our party chair's rabid defense of these two (Rivers and Boldt) has been based entirely on what he claims *I* am. Their records, self-evident to anyone who looks, are meaningless. What matters to David is he wants to find a way to discredit ME instead of discrediting THEM.
Because in HIS mind, *I* am the problem: not those raping us once they get elected.
I, for my part, will continue to be reminding people that Rivers betrayed us and Boldt is everything I've said he would be, including a whack job who's incessant texting forced me to block him to shut him up... a leftist bent on jacking our taxes and fees while he expands government and joins with the other 3 Stooges to ignore those he would govern.
I will also be reminding people who supported and continue to support that clown... particularly of the Young Democrats (who endorsed him) and Leftist Jimmy Mains and his uber democrat crew, where Marc can't even go to the men's room without Main's instructions... the fake Republican PAC put together by Carolyn Crain and the RINOs who have done more damage to the local GOP before 9 am than I have done in the entirety of my political life... which started 28 years ago when I volunteered for the Bob Williams campaign.
I'll take it a step further: Boldt is the ONLY politician I have EVER heard of to lose permanent control of his campaigns by Public Disclosure Commission edict.
The current GOP party chair has made a big deal out of telling people my history... or what he thinks it is. He's gone out of his way to remind people that I "am not a Republican."
Neither is Boldt, who first lied in his most recent campaign about being a "conservative Republican," then morphed into a "moderate conservative Republican," and THEN morphed into an independent... not a Republican at all.
Crain's crew insisted that he WAS a Republican, even putting the fake organization of 3 people or so behind him with their bogus endorsement placards on Boldt's signs... to make people BELIEVE Boldt had been endorsed by the GOP...
And here's David accusing ME that *I* am not a Republican while defending someone who has DECLARED he's not a Republican?
Hypocrite much?
The reality, however, is that I am NOT a Republican if BEING a Republican means I have to become a little GOP automaton.
I am NOT going to suspend my disbelief or silence my concerns if that is the price of adhering to an organization that is SUPPOSED to represent the vast majority of my views... while that organization which is supposedly representing truth, integrity and the people... ignores those who betray us and just soldiers on because they ran under a label of convenience to get elected... Not based on who they are, but instead, based on WHERE they are geographically.
David is pissed that I don't attack democrats here, apparently, enough to suit him... not that many more attacks on the left would make any difference to him.
I suggest that, just for one example, he search the words Cleveland, or Moeller, or Inslee or Obama on my meager effort here.
Like so many on the left, David isn't as concerned about reality as he is attacking those who are wise enough to disagree with him on a personal level.
Those of the Alinsky Rule 5 mindset have that sort of thing in common: when you can't attack the issues... you attack the messenger.
Experts have attacked me. I've been vilified in most every imaginable way, from Boldt and Rivers (and others) attempting to get me fired to lying Left Lou trying to shred me in his rag.
But the reality is that I am little different from many out there... and many reading this.
There are three minor differences... my education and experience outside the military have all been political... I have knowledge that others don't based on what people tell me... and, horror of horrors, I WRITE my opinions down instead of just speaking them.
So. The GOP has a Lincoln Day Dinner coming up.
They are paying THIS $15000 to come and speak, after humiliating the bedrock GOP on the neo-communist show "The View" on the question of abortion:
And then, her thoughts (such as they are) that the House repeal of Obamacare... or paint job of it or whatever... is not perfect... (Of course it isn't... who claims that it is?)
Perhaps she ought to change her name to Tomi Cleavage.
I do not see her as a reason to go to the LDD..
I see her as a reason to stay away. And I mention this on occasion, which apparently challenges the testosterone level of our esteemed county GOP chair.
Sadly, instead of joining with me to hold these people accountable and to make the right decisions concerning getting some kid who has yet to show bleeding and scared hands from pounding campaign signs into rock-hard dirt... he has seen fit to personally attack me.
And that's his privilege.
But in all of this, I recall someone offering the observation that David was "better than that."
I, for my part, offered that he wasn't.
Once again, events have proven me right.
But this all is the basis for the county chair's jihad.
The leftists and his fellow RINOs are loving it, of course, but it doesn't deter me. It's been going on for years.
We all speak out. Many fewer of us "write out." I'm one who does and while I freely admit that I'm not always right, I'm righter than I am wrong.
And regardless of popular belief, no one pays me anything to write any of this... RINO babbling to the contrary notwithstanding. No one pays or has ever paid me to oppose Boldt until the last general election and the write-in campaign... and nothing since then. No one pays me anything to do the GOP's job of holding Rivers accountable for her betrayal that has cost this county $700 million. No one is paying me anything to point out the idiocy of local GOP leadership.
These are MY thoughts, conclusions and analysis. They're driven by what *I* see and think, though God Knows that Rivers particularly would provide me with information over the years in the hopes that I would use it in this blog.
SOMEBODY has to hold those running under the GOP brand accountable. It sure doesn't appear to be the local GOP.
SOMEBODY has to tell the truth. And David, if you're bent on coming after me, here's a couple of pieces of advice:
1. Don't make it up. That could get you kicked right in the wallet.
2. You're bringing a fist to a gun fight.
3. If you want to be EFFECTIVE, your best bet is to point out where I'm wrong.
You see, David; who I am. What you think I've done, the weather, the outcome of the election in France (as sad as it was) the Blazers getting dumped 4 straight by Golden State... none of that changes the facts.
That you or anyone else doesn't LIKE what I write?
Well, you can always exercise the option of not reading it.
Otherwise, I ain't going anywhere.
Just sayin'.
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