To the Entire Washington State Legislature:

The legislation you pass and the legislation you pass that forces local governments to pass more legislation, is all funded from the tax dollars of Washington State Citizens, our money.  The lions share of our money, you take from us by force, funds social payments to many who produce nothing for society and thus pay no taxes (welfare recipients, illegal aliens, etc.).  The tax-paying citizens of Washington state carry these non-producers on our collective shoulders. 
 
A good portion of our tax money also funds radical environmental laws that continuously erode constitutionally-guaranteed property rights (i.e. GMA, CAO, WRIA, etc.).  The following e-mail (see below) was sent to over 1,000 rural landowners who are directly affected by your legislation and who are losing their property rights to it.  These rural folks are being forced to fund their own enslavement by you, but these folks are finally "waking up" and gearing up to challenge you. 
 
When each elected official takes office, they swear on oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of Washington.  Every day, when in session, most of you spit on that oath.  Now the citizens of Washington State are forced to go the initiative route (I-933, the Property Fairness Initiative) to regain a right they already have under the U. S. and State Constitutions, as delineated in the 5th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and in Article 1, Section 16 of the State Constitution, which government at all levels (you),  has chosen to ignore. 
 
Rural landowners of King County were forced to go to the state Supreme Court to regain the right of referendum, which right they already possess under Article II, Section 1(b) of the State Constitution.  That right was unconstitutionally taken from them by an egregious state Supreme Court decision in 1994. (Brisbane vs. Whatcom County)  Rural landowners will regain that right, one way or another.
 
Now I ask you.  Why should the citizens of Washington State have to pass an Initiative (I-933), or go to the Supreme Court, for constitutional rights they already have?  The reason is because you the legislator, continuously violate your oath of office and "kneel" to the all powerful social and environmental lobby.  The legislative and judicial branches of our government are out of control at all levels.  Each one of you, when you ignore our constitutions and violate your oath of office, adds to that out-of-control condition.  But you all think you are doing a great job, when in fact all you are doing is usurping more and more power from the CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED and robbing us of our money and our constitutional rights.   That "ain't" what you are getting paid for.
 
Politics has become (or always was) all about POWER and never about PRINCIPLE.   Look in the mirror and examine your reflection.  In which camp do you make your bed?
 
 
 
Ron Ewart
(5th District)
Fall City, WA
425 222-9482
 

To Rural Landowners, Entire Washington State Legislature, Interested Parties and the News Media:

Since we started this barrage of almost daily e-mails, over two years ago, our primary focus has been on disappearing property rights and make no mistake, they are disappearing.  Here is one of the major reasons why.   YOUR TAX DOLLARS fund disappearing property rights.
 
As we read the paper each day, we specifically look for articles that spend YOUR TAX DOLLARS.  We look for the reasons why those dollars are being spent and how it effects property rights.  In today's King County Journal there were two articles of direct interest, both effecting your property rights.  The first article was governmental entities arguing over how much of the King Conservation District Money each will get and the autonomy each district will be allowed to exercise in the spending of YOUR MONEY to save salmon.  The headline read:
 
TAX DOLLARS TO HELP SALMON AT RISK
Read it at:  https://www.kingcountyjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060723/NEWS/607230316
By Dean Radford, Journal Reporter
 
In the King County Conservation article, they are talking about a paltry $5,800,000, which of course is chicken feed in comparison to other projects, like Ron Sims' request for $355,000,000 of YOUR TAX MONEY to attend to river levies to protect 25,000 acres of King County flood plain.  25,000 acres is about 2% of the total land area of King County and works out to a cost of over $14,000 per acre, which Ron wants of YOUR TAX MONEY.  Ludicrous!
 
All of this saving-salmon stuff is driven by the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and this is the same Act that wiped out over 40,000 logging jobs, lumber processing mills and wood products employees by designating the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) as endangered, when in fact the NSO was endangered for purely natural reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with logging or loss of habitat.  This is the same Act that drove the State Fish and Wildlife Department to fine and possibly throw in jail, one Gwen Bartol (Covington, WA-K/C Journal, Sunday, July 16th 2006) for daring to clean up her property around a salmon-bearing stream.  This is the same Act that drives state (the GMA) and local governments (the CAO) to take away your property rights.   This same Act, over 31 years old, has maybe saved 10 species out of over 1,300 listed as endangered.  But this same Act has done more damage to property rights than almost any single act of the U. S. Congress.  And the U. S. Congress has just renewed this abject failure of legislation, when it should have been repealed outright.
 
But there was another article in the King County Journal this morning about the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP) (https://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/) which I have written about before.  The PSP is Queen Gregoire's pet baby to "Save Puget Sound" with YOUR TAX DOLLARS.  Unfortunately, we are unable to provide a link to the specific article because it was taken from the Associated Press.  However, what we can provide is their budget.  The article says they are going to spend $150,000,000 in the next two-year budget cycle, but their website says something QUITE different.  Take a look at their budget at:
 
https://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/meetings/meetings/053106/PSP%20Funding_May_25_2006.pdf
 
In our first e-mail message on PSP (5-26-06) we said:  We just recently sent an e-mail to the entire Washington State legislature about WWRC, Washington Wildlife Recreation Coalition (https://www.wildliferecreation.org/)  a government organization that has spent over $360,000,000 over the last 10  plus years of OUR tax money, to buy up 150,000 acres of private land for some nefarious, radical environmentally driven, reason.  NO RESPONSE from any one legislature.  Not one.
 
Now we discover that our illustrious governor has established the Puget Sound Partnership,
 
(See https://www.pugetsoundpartnership.org/legislative/papers/Treasure@Risk.pdf)
 
with a beginning cost of $42,000,000 (for planning and ramp up of course) and a 2005 - 2007 biennial budget of just under $572,000,000.  That's over a half a billion dollars my learned representatives and senators.  Here is the organizations proposed budget (pdf).  Take a look.  It should blow your socks off.  But Hey.  What's a few billion here and there.
 
Both of these programs to save salmon or to save Puget Sound are just more ways for government to come up with reasons to exercise more control over you and your land.
 
With regard to saving Puget Sound, in an e-mail to the legislature in our e-mail of May 26th, 2006, when we discovered the PSP, we asked the following questions of the legislature, to which not one of the legislators answered:
 
1.  What will the health of Puget Sound be by 2020, if we do nothing?  A very important question before spending billions of dollars on clean up.  Mother nature has ways of "healing itself".
 
2.  When is the City of Seattle going to stop flushing its collective toilet into Elliot Bay, every time a major rain storm overflows the sewer system into the storm drains?  Another very important question.
 
3.  What affect does British Columbia's City of Victoria flushing its untreated collective toilet into the Straits of Juan de Fuca, have on the overall health of Puget Sound?
 
I'm sure that there are many more questions that could be asked before spending $572,000,000 of OUR TAX MONEY, but PSP is on a fast track.  Queen Gregoire and her covey of special interests and so-called stakeholders, are going to shove this tribute to her legacy down your collective throats.  They will use every trick in the book and some blatant propaganda, spending YOUR TAX MONEY, to convince you that this tribute to her legacy is in your best interests, no matter how much you have to pay, or how many freedoms you have to give up.
 
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do some important things to make sure Puget Sound stays reasonably healthy, but a true cost/ benefit analysis must be applied to the most important of those priorities.  Stopping the Seattle and Victoria BC collective toilet flush could go a long way towards this goal.  But what they will do instead is to put more restrictions on land development by stopping any new on-site sewage treatment systems and spending millions more working out a monitoring system for on-site systems, giving government more authority to trespass on your property.
 
In the final analysis, all of this control over your lives and your property is being funded by YOUR TAX MONEY.  Until WE THE PEOPLE take back control of our government and OUR TAX MONEY, this travesty of lost freedoms and property rights will continue unabated.  Government is hopelessly out of control and WE THE PEOPLE let them get there, using OUR TAX MONEY as their weapon.
 
 
 
 
 
Ron Ewart, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS
P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA  98027
425 222-4742