Local leaders effective to varying degrees

To The Eagle:

Last week's Eagle brought to mind an old favorite T-shirt epigram, "I am their leader. Which way did they go?" A front page article has Congressman Baird indicating that federal economic stimulus money helped with jobs when in fact the hemorrhaging never slowed and the fed lied outrageously about it. This is the congressman who voiced some reasonable views on both the Iraq war and health care that were contrary to the party line extant in the Kingdom of Obama, so he has chosen to quit and put in a year of lame duck ineffectiveness rather than fight his party for principled reform.

On page 2, our editor finds some valor in this ignominious retreat and voices hopes that Baird can put us on the road to higher taxes, military cuts, and more government meddling in the economy so that his successor can finish the job and a state senator complains that we citizens keep voting for initiatives that hinder his ability to tax us to cure the $2.6 billion state deficit. These people all need to learn the Government 101 mantra, "Raise revenues by cutting taxes, lower deficits by cutting spending." Worked for Kennedy, Reagan and Bush II (though none quite mastered the second half) and failure to observe it has hopefully doomed Obama to a single term.

Further unhinged leadership shows up on page 3 where Governor Gregoire endorses nuclear power development, which is a good thing, but blames her decision on climate change which the recent "climategate" scandal finally confirmed as a scam. And, elsewhere, our fearless county commissioners, after watching the federal and state governments destroy the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest have decided that now is the time to go into the timber business. They will finance this venture by going into hock with the feds, who themselves are scheduled to go bankrupt as soon as the People's Republic of China forecloses on our national debt.

It seems that the one local leader presently proceeding with due diligence and good common sense is the mayor of Cathlamet. Anyone care to join me in a campaign to draft George as king? Send me contributions and I'll try for a matching grant.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island