Welcome New Subscribers.

This week we completed a major update to our Lopez email list. If this is your first time getting the newsletter from San Juan County Republican Party, welcome! Thank you Lynda Lee Gerpheide for your vital assistance in this. She has almost single handedly built up the party on Lopez.

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Confused about the Initiatives?

If you are new to this newsletter one thing you will learn is that we do not do punchlines, soundbites, or speak down to you — the reader. We assume that you are intelligent and want real, substantive material.

The county Republican part, SJCRP, has voted on and endorsed the following positions on Initiatives: Written by Cindy Carter (SJCRP State Committeewoman, Orcas) and voted on by the central committee:

I 940:  Police Training and Criminal Liability –  The legislature passed this initiative and immediately passed amendments to make it reasonable for law enforcement officers.  Once amending it, our WA Constitution states that it must be put on the ballot.

This bill is a bad bill for police.  if you want police to actually respond to help people, vote no.  This is why it had to be amended immediately.  Let the Legislature work on making our police force better equipped, with input from the police force on what really works.

I 1631:  Carbon Emissions Fee –  This Initiative creates 4 new boards of governmental bureaucracy to deal with the $2,295,785,000 fee (tax) that will be raised the first five years.  Some of the programs it will support are decided in a very prejudicial, biased manner to help non-English speaking communities and tribal communities, to relocate them for sea rise.

The largest polluters that are targeted in this measure include refineries, power plants, and logging trucks.   Do we want to drive all industry out of the state of Washington?  We actually need more logging trucks to decrease the amount of fuel burning every summer to decrease the largest carbon polluter in our state the past few years….forest fires.   Vote no on this lousy idea.

I 1634:  Prohibit Local Taxes on Groceries measure – This measure made it to the ballot mostly because of the excessively high taxes in King County on various beverages.  The state does not levy taxes on food items, to make it easier for lower income people to be able to afford food.  Local government does not have the same restrictions.  This is probably a good idea to keep local government from getting those ideas.  Vote yes on I 1634

I 1639:  Changes to Gun Ownership and Purchase Requirements – This initiative would raise the minimum wage for purchasing a rifle, which this initiative renames any semi-automatic, including .22’s as   “semiautomatic assault” rifles, from 18 to 21 years old.  This is a slap in the face of the young men we have enroll in the draft system to protect our nation, but do not allow to purchase self-protection or hunting or sports rifles.

Renaming them as “assault” weapons is as ridiculous as calling rocks “assault” weapons.  Any item can be used to assault people.  Putting the label on an item does not change the item.  This is a dangerous precedence, perhaps it even gives the impression that that is what is supposed to be done with these items.

Another dangerous item in this initiative is the fact that if someone not allowed to have a gun, if the gun was not locked up, the owner can be charged with a class c felony charge.  This is a serious charge, which will strip away a person’s right to vote, all of the person’s citizenship rights, and are punishable by up to 5 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines.

This will result in women not being able to defend themselves against home intruders, since their guns will be securely locked up.  For the sake of all women’s self protection, our 18-21 year old’s Constitutional rights, and for the sake of reasonable English, vote NO on I-1639.

Proposition 1:  Affordable Housing Real Estate Excise Tax – The local SJC initiative for “Affordable Housing” by making housing less affordable by tacking on a .5% excise tax on all real estate transactions.  This tax is projected to raise about $1.5 million / year to purchase land, thus driving up the costs of available land making housing even less affordable, as has the Land Bank real estate tax (1% Real Estate Excise Tax), which takes in around $3 million per year (using 2017 real estate transactions) to purchase land in SJC, for “preservation” and thus taking it off of the affordable land market.

This new program will produce one more layer of government bureaucracy, which is not cheap.  It is currently projected to cost up to 10% of the raised money (would have been about $150,000 in 2017, to review some paper work, since the people signing up to do the affordable housing have to pay to do all of the “studies” that this program will mandate.)

The land would either remain owned by the non-profit or landlord, or the unit would have a restriction placed upon it that would keep it in the “affordable” range, ensuring that the occupants could never escape from the lower income brackets to obtain housing in the regular free market….maintaining their lower residential status, with no hope of escape.  That is truly not the American way.  Vote No on Prop. 1