The Other Side Online

Bob McBride, a regular at Kittitas County Democrat meetings, passed away on Tuesday.

Here’s the story from the Yakima Herald:

ELLENSBURG, Wash. — Former Kittitas County Sheriff Bob McBride died Tuesday at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle following a stroke he suffered last week, county officials said.

– Leah Beth Ward

I will try to listen to it later this evening and give my thoughts but it should be interesting to hear what he thinks of the Obama Administration…

Here’s the link: http://www.yakimaherald.com/page/live-video-stream

Just a reminder: the hit TV show on Charter Cable Channel 21 (YCTV) : The Other Side on TV scheduled air times are as follows:

Today, Wednesday, July 1st at 10:45 AM

Thursday-July 2, Friday-July 3,  Saturday- July 4 at 6:45 PM

Sunday-July 5 at 4:00 PM then the following Monday thru Wednesday ay 6:45 PM

We also have a bonus for you! Cruise the Ave video will run at 6 PM today Wednesday- July 1 and at 10 am July 2nd -4th and on Sunday July 5th at 1:45 pm.  This video is 30 minutes.

You can see the entire schedule on the city website in the left hand column under quick picks

Hell no! Bill Lover, Rick Ensey, Micah Cawley and Kathy Coffey should all pay $625 each for their roles in their behind the scenes caper. And if Bruce Smith had a smidgen of honesty, he’d offer to chip in and make it $500 each for the funky five.

In one of Smith’s recent editorials he laments the fact that they didn’t follow through and have a court decide. I, too, wish a court would have made the decision. There’s no doubt that with the smoking gun emails that they would have been found guilty.

Of course, Bruce and his puppets would have screamed that the judge must be a liberal! After being found guilty either by a jury or judge, the city would then have many thousands in attorney fees to pay compared to the relatively cheap $2500 they ultimately settled for.

B.S. drones on to accuse the Yakima Herald of misreporting the story! Truth is, it is Bruce Smith that is misreporting. He’s trying valiantly to spin the misdeeds into a “lobbying effort”.  All four council members (Lover, Cawley, Ensey, Coffey) are guilty of conspiring behind the scenes to further their agenda. Bruce Smith being the great guru knew they were crossing the line and went to great lengths to make sure all 4 weren’t in the same coffee shop at one time. Instead he lined them up and coordinated individual meetings. It’s too bad for Yakima that these four are so easy to manipulate by the great puppet master.

Ethics seem to be a topical conversation piece nowadays. Here’s an example of how agenda driven people get off track and then pretend to ‘serve the public’.

Today’s Yakima Herald reports that Sonia Rodriguez will introduce a binding code of ethics at the next council meeting July 7th. Bravo!! This is timely and sorely needed. Besides the recent Open meetings Act fiasco that Rick Ensey, Kathy Coffey, Bill Lover and Micah Cawley recently orchestrated, the newspaper points out a model ethics code would expressly bar council members from disclosing information from closed council sessions. Sonia foresees an ethics committee to censure or punish violators. Great stuff. And a very important issue.
We all know that there are several council members that are real tight with Bruce Smith, editor of the Yakima Business Times. (Bill Lover, Kathy Coffee, Rick Ensey for certain). These council members all have pretty low ethics standards. Their close association with B.S. brings into question how much information from executive session that they pass on to the puppet master. Here’s an example:
About 2 or 3 years ago (when I was still on the council) we went into executive session to discuss the city manager’s performance review. Some real sensitive stuff was kicked around at this meeting and Bill Lover reported it all to Bruce Smith at one of their coffee shop meetings. Smith then published an editorial about the executive session discussions without naming Lover as his source. Lover later admitted he had made the disclosures to B.S. and he was kind of irked by the fact that his pal Bruce would actually write a story about the confidential information.
This would be a clear violation of an ethics code that Sonia is proposing. Had we had that then, perhaps we could have censured Lover and maybe diminished Bruce Smith’s entanglement with the City Council. The fact remains that Bruce Smith’s presence is lurking in every executive session the council has. As long as B.S. maintains his influence and his access to even one council member, the council will never restore trust with the public.

They did it again!

While Mark Sanford (REPUBLICAN!) did his press conference talking about his extramarital affair, FOX News (had a “D” next to his name on the screen!)

Talk about timeliness.

According to the Yakima Herald:

This evening, Yakima residents and others in Central Washington can attend a free public forum at Yakima’s downtown library on the importance of open government and the citizen vigilance needed to maintain it.

Public forum

• SPONSORS: Yakima Herald-Republic and the League of Women Voters of Yakima County.

The other day my wife and I embarked on an effort to organize our office. This involved cleaning out file cabinets and installing new and bigger lateral file cabinets. While transferring stuff and piling other stuff into a recycle box we came across an old newspaper of Bruce Smith’s. Just so happens it was folded open to page 4, the Editorials page of the January 25, 2008 issue of the Yakima Valley Business Times. Very interesting. I’ve reprinted it below:

Editorials

Boost “Illegal Meeting” Fine

“We agree with state Rep. Larry Haler (R-Richland) who thinks elected officials who violate the state’s  Open Public Meetings Act should be subject to a $1,000 – per-violation fine. The current penalty is a puny $100, which was set in 1971. Haler has introduced legislation in Olympia to boost the penalty and we wish him the best of luck.

Haler is a former Richland mayor and city council member. During a recent meeting with the Tri-City Herald’s editorial board, the second-term legislator admitted that the city council on which he served for several years often violated the act when he was a member.

Haler thinks the practice is widespread and we agree, as do state Auditor Brian Sonntag and state Attorney General Rob McKenna. Sonntag has documents that allege 400 violations over a three-year period. Our guess is you could multiply that number by ten and still fall well short of the amount of abuse that is occurring. Our recent experiences with the Yakima City Council drive home the point that the law is regularly and flagrantly violated.

Public officials need to conduct the public’s business in public. It’s the right thing to do and – oh, by the way, - it’s also the law.

Maybe passage of Haler’s proposal will give pause to the many elected officials and staff members who regularly skirt this important state law.”

The Governor put this out yesterday…

June 18, 2009

Therefore, I am imposing a hiring cap on executive agencies equal to a 2 percent reduction in their 2009-11 General Fund, budgeted, full time equivalent (FTE) levels and I ask agencies to take additional spending reductions. Implementation instructions will be communicated by the Office of Financial Management before July 1.

As a democrat, I’m tired of reading this stuff. Our tax system is unfair and unreasonably focuses too much on working people. We have no income tax (not even on millionaires) so it’s a great place to be rich and a terrible place to work for a living or rely in anyway on social services if you get in a tight spot.

We, as Democrats, can say we are doing the best we can (or we can tell it like it is.) Here’s how it is. Our Democratic governor and our democratic legislature are not doing enough to make our tax system more fair or to ensure there are enough resources so that government can do what it needs to do. We have cut 40,000 people off health care, closed state parks and cut teachers. It’s not why we elected Democrats in the first place.