San Juan County Republican Party

For those of you who have urged me to publish my thoughts on American Conservative life, I have begun blogging same at http://www.americanconservativesthink.com.

If you care, check it out. If you don’t, sorry for the bother. If you strongly disagree when you read it, weigh in.

The President has chosen Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, to be his top medical advisor.

Therein is another problem for some in our country. Did the President actually know what Dr. Emanuel believes? Certainly he did, because he is now defending him.

Dr. Emanuel has written a number of books and articles. Witting in the bioethics journal Hastings Center Report in an article favoring health care for active people, he said, “An obvious example is not guaranteeing services to people with dementia.”

Dr. Emanuel also wrote an article last January in which he says age is one of several factors that could be considered in deciding who receives scarce organs or vaccines. “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocations by age is not invidious discrimination,” he wrote, “every person lives through different life stages.”

House Minority Leader, John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said of all this it, “may start us down a treacherous path toward government encouraged euthanasia.”

Indeed. That would save significant amounts of money.

Newt Gingrich told ABC’s “This Week” that, “You’re asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there clearly are people in America who believe in establishing euthanasia.”

Read the rest at:

Representative Larsen visited Friday Harbor Monday, August 10th, but didn’t seem too interested in what the locals wanted to talk about. He started off by informing everyone that only Veterans’ issues would be discussed, even though the event was billed as Rep. Larsen would listen to “the issues important to them.” He restricted it immediately to only subjects applying directly to Veterans. Larsen asked that everyone politely allow the people who came all this way to speak on the Veterans’ issues be allowed to do so. They were allowed to do so, and spoke very well to inform the many Veterans who showed up about the changes in mileage reimbursement and about the new clinic in Northwest Washington.
Then question and answer time came, and again, people politely allowed the Veteran’s to speak, and many Veterans were frustrated with the long wait times and low mileage reimbursement levels. Rep. Larsen admitted that there was a shortage of doctors for the Veterans’ healthcare….welcome to government healthcare!

But the Veterans had enough and one Veteran asked when the rest of the people who were attending would be allowed to speak on their issues. Rep. Larsen started speaking immediately, not allowing the very loud, but again polite, applause to die down. He stated he wasn’t being allowed to speak. Then he went on to mumble something about maybe there would be time near Labor Day, but he didn’t know. Obviously, getting more than one group’s opinions on issues did not appear important to Rep. Larsen.

After the meeting, Rep. Larsen was asked by a Veteran, if Larsen would vote to put himself and his family and the rest of Congress on the Healthcare plan that Obama wants rushed through. Larsen responded that the Veteran would not be on that healthcare plan. The Veteran asked him to answer the question, to which Larsen repeated that the Veteran wouldn’t be on that plan. When the Veteran asked Larsen a third time to answer his question please, Larsen just turned away.
Will Larsen return to San Juan Island to hear the rest of the concerns of the citizens of San Juan County, or will he just turn his back on everyone else too? Let him know what you think, by calling his Everett office at 1-800-562-1385.

The Tea Party continues as we head to the Big Red Barn on San Juan Island. We will be hearing from the Island Country Band, and listening to Herb Meyer speaking on the Revolution going on in the country. Also, some candidates are coming up to speak to us including Sean Salazar, Mike Newman, and also, Steve Van Luven from Guemes Island who will give us the current state of the state.

There will be salmon for everyone, with drinks and Ceasar Salad. Admission and dinner are by donation. Bring a dessert, appetizer, or sidedish to share and let John Towson know how much salmon to order by giving him a call (378-3843) or emailing him (johnt@rockisland.com) that you are coming. Bring a friend and enjoy the day with fellow conservatives as we plan our stragedy for the coming election year.

Title: Salmon BBQ/Tea Party
Location: Big Red Barn on SJI
Description: Ferry shuttle available from other islands
Start Time: 02:00
Date: 2009-08-22
End Time: 05:00

Orcas’ County Councilmen Richard Fralick and Gene Knapp held a townhall meeting to update citizens on several topics and to get feedback from them. Over 60 people were interested in the updates and packed the room to participate in the discussion.

The first topic on the list was a possible levy lift, or tax increase, which seemed to be more of a checking of opposition than information. Information went from what services will be cut if there is no increase in taxes (as compared to the bloated free-for-all 2008 budget) to how large of a levy would be needed with both a $.10 and $.15 levy being mentioned.

But the citizens would have none of it. While two citizens thought they should be taxed more, citing San Juan County’s low tax rate and the services that would be cut, the great majority stated the hardships of the working person on the islands. Several people told of their own personal hardships, and included that they could not even sell their property and leave to alleviate their problems.

The low tax rate we have in the islands was mentioned several times, but when the lowest tax rate in the state is combined with the highest assessed value per capita in the state, both San Juan County honors, we get the highest taxes per person in the state…..over 50% higher than the next highest taxed county, King County! Surely with that much income from each person in the county, our wise coucilmen can figure out how to give us necessary government services in these tough times.

It was also mentioned how every time there is a proposed tax hike, it is presented as only so many cents per $1000…..our Orcas library is ONLY 19 cents per $1000, the Port of Orcas is ONLY 1 cent per $1000, our fire district is ONLY 68 cents per thousand and so on. But all of those “cents” per thousand add up to $1700 on a modest $350,000 home! People trying to wait out the recession are going to have a hard time coming up with that kind of extra money every year.

The Critical Areas Ordinance was also discussed, with someone mentioning the CAO wouldn’t affect people’s ability to build on that land. That was politely, but soundly corrected, with John Evans giving some information on just how much it would affect people. If anyone is near a stream that has water in it only 3 months a year, it is considered, according to the current CAO draft, in need of a 150 foot buffer zone. The Common Sense Alliance and Citizen’s Alliance for Property Rights for San Juan will be holding a forum on Critical Areas Ordinances and what advice/input we HAVE to take from the various state departments. Evans stressed, along with others, that these departments can recommend, but cannot bully local citizens into something that does not fit in their county, that one-size-fits-all is not necessarily the best solution. Information will be listed here about the date and time of the forum when it becomes known.

The last item mentioned was the sign ordinance. Several people spoke up in favor of signs around town, and finally Councilman Knapp asked for a show of hands of who supported the current sign ordinance, and not one person raised their hand. When asked who would like the sign ordinance to go away, about half of the people in the room raised their hands.

Ed Sutton spoke at the end of the meeting, saying that a meeting on the ferry in the next 3 weeks would be discussing hikes in fees for the ferries. He encouraged everyone there to attend that meeting also, or we will be getting much higher fees in the future. The ferry meeting information will also be listed here when it is available.