Executive Fiat

Once upon a time there was a land where attendance at the state approved church meant the difference between liberty or death. Many people died when kings and queens changed which church was approved. It became obvious that the decreed church had less to do with God, and more to do with the king’s grip on power.

Thousands of loyal subjects joined together to build a far flung colony of that land. They made covenants and implemented local town hall rule. They wanted a church unshackled from royal fiat, and hoped the king and his clerics were watching and learning.

Each landed citizen had a voice and used it. A later king did not like the distant ministers whose unfettered sermons thundered against unjust government policies. He made plans to send an army and trash the distant churches. That king died suddenly, and the ministers and townhalls and churches lived on.

A century later, another king moved to crush the town hall people. A war was fought, and the king lost his distant colonies. “We the people” and citizen based rule was allowed to enlarge itself over the next two centuries into the America that we know today.

Today, “we the people” honor citizen based rule, and bump along with the forms and instruments of government handed down from our New England forbearers, yet something is wrong.

Kings are quietly beginning to rule over us. And being at great ease, “we the town hall people” let them.

At local, state and federal levels, the voting game plays its loud tunes, but the quiet power more and more lies in unelected coalitions of bureaucrats and non profits and multi national corporations, not with the town hall people.

Last week, an enterprising group, Shiftwa.org published highlights of e-mails obtained from the first year of Washington State Governer Jay Inslee’s term in office. In essence, Governor Inslee’s office right from the start, hired outside consultants to solicit non profits and corporate leaders to fund up an environmentally driven governor’s agenda that would not be mired in restraints of the legislature. This is executive fiat.

A month or so ago, April 29, Governor Inslee signed executive order 14-04, creating a Carbon Emissions Reduction Task Force. Read the whereas line items. Do sweeping, minimally supported conclusions and initial West Coast regional discussions (not even non-binding alliances) justify unilateral executive orders?

Do you know the governor’s powers vested in unelected appointments to the Growth Management Hearings Board? What about the Governor’s Office controlled (and ailing) Puget Sound Partnership that dishes out EPA funds for environmental “improvements”?

At the Whatcom County level is the unauthorized spending of the WRIA1 Joint Administrative Board. Stopping short of direct legal suit, a coalition of water districts have written an open letter to the Whatcom County Prosecutor’s Office and Executive Jack Louws, detailing violations of the Whatcom County Charter in the budgets and spending of the Joint Administrative Board. They are challenging executive fiat.

Who will prevail? Who really rules, the executive or the cadre of non profit advisors and facilitators, the business consultants and specialists who hover in clouds in city and county health, planning and parks offices, and further their interests through our youth and educational halls, and honor themselves through a complicit media.

Schooled and skilled ingroup manipulation tactics, progressives keep the town hall people three steps behind in the game of public policy and media/education virtual reality.

Don’t you want to be liked? Didn’t you fill out the “share your thoughts” survey? Wouldn’t you like to attend a neighborhood discussion on bike lanes and downzoning of arterial roads? Your thoughts collected by skilled progressive group manipulators are usually excluded from their predetermined reports, and worse, you stop watching and resisting with a false sense of being heard and represented.

Conservatives, newly elected to public office, struggling to learn the ropes of public policy, networking with the panoply of local, state and federal bureaucrats, NGOs and business alliances, and wanting to establish a reputation for balanced, productive, teamwork in governing, are easy prey for environmental handlers. “Getting along” is not always a good thing.

The media pats you on the back, and your legacy unwittingly becomes one of furthering the progressive, environmentally justified takings of private properties and personal freedoms. And the town hall people who elected you slumber on.

Executive fiat. The new reality. Or is it all that new? What is the lesson of American history?

When people of Christian faith walked the talk, there was salt and light, amid conflict. That was the story of the “Black Robed Regiment”of 1776. That was the motivation for British generals to stable their horses in New England church auditoriums, or use them as beer halls. Today, there is precious little Christian salt and interest in town hall or citizen driven legislation. Kings and executive branches take up the slack, and a saltless Christian church, drowning in comforts and Madison Avenue marketing, is poised to be ground into the pavement. There may be a temporary euphoria of freedom while the culture is in free fall, but when the ground is found, the “kings” grind fine and hard.

Maybe the future hot political career will be court advisor. Maybe not. Maybe it will be salt maker.

Are you voting conservative in the primary? Vet your state representative candidate over loyalties to executive agencies like Puget Sound Partnership or the Growth Management Hearings Board.  

At the county level, did your rep candidate turn a blind eye to the WRIA 1 Joint Administrative Board’s (Bellingham Mayor, County Executive, PUD manager, Nooksack and Lummi tribal representative) out of compliance, unfettered spending and policy making? You may be surprised.

JK

--------------

Colorado progressive money vs Scott Walker character

Longterm gas tax/carbon credit planning by Jay Inslee

Inslee seeks NGO evironmentalist funding

Governors should avoid the environmental mire.

Governor’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Taskforce

Reactions to the Inslee CERT

Puget Sound Partnership history and failures

Water District Coalition serves formal attorney’s noticeto the Whatcom County Prosecutor’s Office of Joint Administrative Board policyand funding violations under the Whatcom County Charter.

Countering Group Manipulation Tactics by B.K Eakman