Year In Review: 2022 Was A Wild Ride But A Good Year
Dec 31, 2022 8:38 pm
Year In Review: 2022
MINI-INITIATIVE HEARING
- We started the year out by getting ready for the first hearing created by the people through a Mini-Initiative. A virtual February 1st meeting would show the public how our county's elected & unelected bureaucrats treat and think of everyday citizens.
- The County Manager's staff changed the phone number before the hearing which caused confusion and stacked the agenda to make people wait over an hour before being able to give public comment (bureaucrats using bureaucracy to protect themselves and keep the people out). Also, concerns of groups coming to disrupt our hearing event at Church On The Rock curtailed widespread advertisement of the hearing but it still attracted 250+ who came out on a cold February night to watch our elected officials treat the citizens with disdain by not taking their concerns seriously.
- Temple Lentz intentionally deceived the public with a Facebook video that falsely described the petition would ban all vax and mask mandates. The petition would only ban all mandates that created discriminating outcomes.
- Also, later through public records requests, I discovered that it was Temple Lentz that alerted Gov. Inslee directly which resulted in the 11th-hour letter from Gov. Inslee intended to intimidate Councilors to reject the petition. A few months later, Gov Inslee rewarded Lentz with an appointment to the State Board of Health.
- Councilor Olson lead the charge and put forth the motion to reject and flatly dismissed the 11,505 signers (equivalent to over 10%+ of those that voted in the recent Nov 2021 election). I also found out through public records requests that she was behind the scenes trying to deny us a hearing date. That attempt failed because it would violate the Home Rule Charter and because the Mini-Intiative didn't violate State or Federal law which is what she was reasoning her attempt to dismiss. Based on her selfish and partisan efforts, we set out to send her into early retirement.
- Angus Lee wrote a rebuttal to the ridiculous arguments put forth by the Council and their legal department. The Council gave an unlimited amount of time to their Democrat lawyers yet limited me, the petitioner, to only 5 min. Councilor Eileen wanted us to have at least 15 mins but the other Councilors voted to limit it to 5 minutes which severally hampered our ability to rebut their legal opinion nonsense. It was pulling teeth to get 5 minutes… the governing elites dont like it when the citizens get in their way.
OUR EFFORTS MOVED TO REPLACE OLSON WITH BELKOT
Shortly after the petition hearing, it was clear we needed significant reform on the Clark County Council and Michelle Belkot decided to do something about it by running to replace Julie Olson which is exactly what ended up happening. Reform Clark County had a big part in educating people regarding the candidates, getting Julie Olson censured by the CCRP, and a redistricted map that pushed Olson out of D2 and into D5 which ultimately led to her decision to not run.
These efforts contributed to Olson going into early retirement and the people being freed from the fraud that she's perpetuated on the voters of D2 by claiming to be a Republican yet always voting with Democrats and never defending basic conservative values.
CLARKCOUNTYGROUP CHANGES NAME TO REFORM CLARK COUNTY
The website ClarkCountyGroup was handed over to me for the petition efforts but after the hearing, it became clear that we needed to refocus on what our efforts were evolving into... Reform Clark County.
PATRIOTS UNITED & REFORM CLARK COUNTY WORK TOGETHER
Around the time that petition was in signature gathering mode, Patriots United started with the mission to unite patriots with a similar mission of Reform Clark County but with a broader scope. As a result, I started working closely with them, speaking regularly, and promoting events.
ELECTION SEASON KICKS INTO FULL GEAR INCLUDING OUR FIRST CANDIDATE'S FORUM
One of the trends we see happening is the decrease in truthful information on candidates and the increase of uninformed voters. When both of these situations occur, corrupt or easily corruptible candidates can be elected and work against the people rather than representing the people's interests.
As a result, Reform Clark County organized a candidate forum for primary candidates for Clark County Council. The candidates' forum turned out to be a huge success and helped voters learn where candidates stood on important issues. Other groups, like the League of Women Voters, like to control the topics and assist favorable candidates while trying to put unfavorable candidates, mostly conservatives, in a bad light. For example, during the Baker vs. Stonier debate zero questions about public safety and high crime came up because they happen to do more damage to Stonier while education and bureaucratic topics like redistricting were thrown on the table to help Stonier look better.
RIDGEFIELD SCHOOL BOND REJECTED
Once the notice came out regarding the "against" committee for the Ridgefield School Bond, I looked into it and discovered no one was signed up. So, I recruited a few folks and we wrote an excellent "against" statement and rebuttal, and the Ridgefield Bond was REJECTED by a total of 45 votes. I have no doubt that our efforts to educate voters on the wastefulness of the bond made a difference in its outcome.
TEACHERS CONFRONTED ON ILLEGAL STRIKE
While I don't mind collective bargaining and healthy labor unions, breaking the law and using kids as bargaining chips is never acceptable and that's exactly what was happening in Ridgefield when teachers were led by their union representatives to go on an illegal strike. I was watching what was happening and seeing how parents were being intimidated by union tactics and were really put in a terrible position so I decided to do something about it.
Even though I severely herniated my back just a few days prior, I set up my chair and "educated the educators" that what they were doing was illegal. The same law that granted teachers the authority to organize also precludes them from striking because public employees are NOT GRANTED the right to strike in Washington. So, Sally Synder and I taught them for two hours on Friday about the law and how to opt-out of the corrupt teacher's unions and that turned out to be the last day they were on Strike and over the weekend decided to return to the classroom even though they didn't have a new contract worked out. I don't know if we were THE reason but I believe we persuaded teachers to rethink breaking the law for more money.
JUSTICE FOR CHELSEA RALLY
Jeremy Baker spearheaded a rally to bring attention to the ongoing victimization of the family of Chelsea Harrison who's murderer was set to be released early from prison because of a terrible WA law that Monica Stonier voted for. We'll see more of Jeremy Baker in the future. He's a courageous man who is determined to help get our county, state, and country back on track.
REJECTALLSIX EFFORTS
We were disgusted when CCRP put forth little effort to defeat Home Charter Rule amendments in 2020 which lead to most of them passing. These democrat-led amendments got rid of the Chair position and redistricted many of the R Councilors into the same district. Also, it brought about the "non-partisan" rule that was only designed to confuse voters and make it easier for radical Democrats to hide behind "non-partisan" labels. Like what D5 voters quickly learned shortly after Sue Marshall was sworn in. She was and is a tax-and-spend Leftist Democrat but fooled many voters because most of the media coverage goes along with the charade.
As a result, several folks resolved to not let it happen again and fought against the amendments educated voters, and ultimately stopped 4 out of 6 of them from passing. Cemal Richards was key in this effort and we'll work now to get the Home Rule Charter commission flipped by electing patriots that will work to bring about true reforms that benefit the people and not the administrative state. I decided to not put out a video in the generals like I did in the Primaries but put out multiple videos to educate voters to REJECT ALL SIX charter amendments.
BELKOT ELECTED!
Michelle assembled an amazing team of volunteers and ran a great campaign that educated voters on her positions as well as on her opponent which lead to one of the strongest victories for a Clark County candidate. Even though D2 voted heavily for Marie Perez (a liberal Democrat) they then changed and voted for Michelle for Clark County Council. Belkot is a great candidate, who put forth a convincing message with a relentless campaign execution which turned out to be the winning combination. I was glad to support and help her win. I'm excited to see how she leads and helps bring about basic commonsense reforms here in Clark County.
RECOUNTS SHOW UNACCEPTABLE ERRORS IN ELECTIONS
Even though Benton came up short for D5, the recount that he did showed some errors in a voting system that was touted as excellent. Now, two ballot counting errors might not seem like a lot but remember only roughly 9,500 ballots were hand-recounted. Keep in mind that the Federal election standards for voting system errors target 1 ballot per 1,000,000 with a minimum acceptance rate of 1 ballot per 500,000. When you average it out, Benton's error rate was equivalent to 200 ballots per 1,000,000 which are massively outside of federal standards for election voting systems. One week later the Kent Campaign performed a machine recount and 14 ballots were found to be mistakenly miscounted. Imagine if all the races were recounted, more errors would undoubtedly be found since Kent's recount result also showed errors far beyond acceptable federal standards for voting system errors.