Republicans, its time to caucus!

Saturday, February 13th at 10am Republicans around the state will be gathering to discuss:

• How we can build and strengthen the Republican Party.


• Help write a Platform and elect delegates that best represent our issues.


• Get active and help bring genuine change to Whatcom County.


• Learn more about candidates who are running for office.

The precinct level caucus is the first step in a series of elections and conventions that result in our county and state platforms being adopted. It also provides for a great opportunity to network with others in our community.

Whatcom County Chair Luanne Van Werven described the process this way:

At the precinct caucuses, delegates are elected to county conventions. From there, each county elects delegates to our state convention, where the state party’s platform is drafted for 2010. This year, the State Convention will be held in Vancouver, WA June 10-12, with two special guest speakers: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will be the keynote speaker and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin will be the banquet speaker. The state convention agenda will be forthcoming and posted online at: www.wsrp.org.

Check the Whatcom Republican website for details about your particular Caucus Location.

Note: The Democrats aren't holding caucuses. Instead they meet in off years for "caucus like" strategy sessions. From what I can tell, the only difference between the strategy sessions and actual caucuses are that delegates are not selected to represent the individual precincts at the county level.

Costco favors sales tax over members savings

I want to start off by saying I love Costco and that I do a lot of shopping there. My family buys the majority of our food as well as gas and other necessities there. That being said, I have a huge beef with how they treat their members.

While examining one of my Costco receipts recently I had difficulty getting the taxes to match up. After quite some time I discovered that the only way I could get the tax balance to match up was if I added the original prices of items that I had purchased with coupons. I assumed this was a mistake since other places I frequently shop at, like Fred Meyer and Target charge tax on the discounted price rather than the original price. After talking to a Costco representative it was explained to me that Washington State allows businesses the choice of charging tax on the discounted or regular price and that Costco chooses to apply tax at the regular price. Say what!?! I always thought Costco worked hard to provide its members the best possible value.

New government spending figures and cash for gold

Over at Yahoo Finance you can see the latest government financial figures as of January 25th, 2009. Never mind the fact that Obama more than tripled the year over year deficit amount from 454,798,000,000 to 1,417,121,000,000. Just remember, it's ALL Bush's fault! Also included in the figures was a total of the US gold assests as of last September which totaled a measly 11,041,000,000. This reminded me of the following classic Onion News Network report.


U.S. To Trade Gold Reserves For Cash Through Cash4Gold.com

Good for a little laugh before you begin crying for the fiscal state of our country. Even if Cash 4 Gold were able to cash in the entire gold reserves of this country (with probably most being sent to China, India, and the middle east) it would do little to dent the level of deficit spending under Obama or his predecessor.

Haiti Earthquate and devastation

A major earthquake occurred near the Haitian capital of Port of Prince at 4:53pm local time on Tuesday. Given the conditions in Haiti an earthquake of this magnitude so close to the capital city of a million plus people will prove to be completely devastating.

There are a great deal of local connections between Bellingham, WA and Haiti. Cornwall Church, where I am a regular attender, has sponsored an orphanage of roughly 30 kids for the past several years. Besides just caring for the orphans they also ensure that many more children and families in the community receive at least one steady meal a day and have an opportunity for schooling. A medical mission team connected with Cornwall was planning on travelling to Haiti this Friday.

There will be many opportunities for local people to help Haitians in the coming days. Whether it be the Red Cross or other relief organizations, please consider helping the neediest Country in our hemisphere recover from this devastating event.

Here is one such article covering the devastion if you are not already aware of it. There are also several videos on youtube, but I must caution you that viewing them can be very unsettling. Maybe that's a good thing.

Jury duty

For the first time ever I've been selected for jury duty. This is just fair warning that if you have a jury trial coming up in the next two weeks you'll have the Bellinghammer swimming around in the jury pool. So far I've made it to the voir dire phase of a criminal trial but was not chosen to sit on the jury.

In the juror training video as well as statements made by the judges and lawyers they want jurors to feel like jury duty is your way of being part of the government. I disagree. I see the jury as representing "the People" not the government. The whole jury system was created and designed to ensure that the government does not overstep boundaries and unfairly or indiscriminately strip individuals of their life, liberty, or property.

In fact it's awesome to me how difficult the founding fathers intentionally made it for people to be stripped of their liberty and freedoms.
For example, the accused:

• are innocent until proven guilty.
  
• must be proven guilty "beyond all reasonable doubt".
  
• has the right for a trial by a jury of their peers.
  

Bellinghammers Election Predictions

Here are my predictions regarding this election. They contain some hopeful thinking, but I've read there is power in positive thought. I hope my predictions are correct, but expect to be wrong on some or most of them. We'll find out soon.

Local elections
Initial results released by the County auditor will show that the liberal/progressive candidates for county council are leading. It will also be noted that there are a large number of write-in ballots. When all the write-in ballots are counted our new county council members will be Kershner, Mann, Luke, and Knutzen. There will also be a big upset in the Bellingham City At large race with Orphalee Smith becoming the first ever successful write-in candidate to be elected to the Bellingham City council.

Orphalee Smith winning the Bellingham City At large position is obviously a long shot, but it would be very exciting if it turned out that way.

I believe Mann will best Teigrob based on how well he ran his campaign. He did an amazing job at utilizing social media including his Bellingham Herald Blog, facebook fan page, as well as some of the interactive aspects of his website. He kicked off his campaign with a hefty warchest. He prepared for this campaign by increasing his name recognition and defending the conservative/libertarian position on the PM Bellingham talk show he co-anchored. He had an excited group of volunteers supporing him. Ironically his main weakness may have been his involvement on the Planning Commission which in almost any other election cycle would have been viewed as a positive.

Statewide measures
R-71 is accepted by a decent margin.
I-1033 passes by a small margin.

Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and the Groups They Inspire

Looks like Glenn Beck is now solidly behind Ron Paul and his ideas and even goes to the degree of wishing he could go "back in time" and support his candidacy.

This article is a good example of his progression from Ron Paul hater to Ron Paul enthusiast. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Beck has come out and said that Ron Paul was right. I expect to see plenty of backlash from neocons and other establishment Republicans who have so far been supporting him but have a seething disrespect for anything related to Ron Paul. A good example is the following blog post by David Frum to David Horowitz in which Frum is arguing that Beck is Paul's "Chief TV enthusiast and publicist". There's plenty of good YouTube video links in the above blog posting to back up that assertion. I think it's funny how Frum points out the November 2007 video was before Beck left CNN for Fox as if his going to Fox had anything to do with Beck's transition. Once at Fox Glenn Beck covered Ron Paul favorably a number of times including: here, here, here, here, and other times conveyed a message very similar to Ron Paul like he did here, here, or finally here. On the other hand many in the Ron Paul/Campaign for Liberty supporters refuse to forgive Beck for what he said back in November 2007. Some (hopefully just a few) in the Paul camp even wonder if Beck is some kind of CIA plant to hijack their message.

Glenn Beck isn't 100% responsible for the creation of the Tea Party/We The People group that is developing, but he played a large part in helping its creation and many in that group are big fans of Beck. I think it is vitally important that the Campaign For Liberty and the Tea Party group work together and not view each others as adversaries. The Campaign For Liberty group has been on point with this shared message for more than two years. We have a lot to offer the Tea Party people and I think it's important all grassroots conservative/libertarian groups work together on the common areas of their focus/mission and whenever possible celebrate our similarities rather than nit-picking at our differences. In other parts of Washington I've heard about some very promising examples where these two groups have meshed well in coordinating and organizing events and I hope we see the same cooperative spirit up here in Whatcom county.

Just look how close these two mission statements read:

Campaign For Liberty:

Our mission is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.

BHAM Tea Party (WCCF):

Reverse deficit spending and the concentration of power in central government,
in order to preserve states' rights and individual liberty for future generations.