Disgusting...Career Politicians

Last night I attended a candidate forum in Tillamook. This was a general forum with candidates running for different offices including Governor, County Commissioner, State Treasurer, State Senator, and Circuit Court Judge.

Among the candidates were four career politicians. Betsy Johnson, a State Senator from Tillamook County; Ted Wheeler, our current State Treasurer; Tillamook County Commissioner Tim Josi, and a lady state senator running against Ted Wheeler for State Treasurer, I don’t remember her name.

The forum started with the Governors which was unfortunate. I gave my opening statement, Clark Colvin (a very cool guy) gave his, then we answered questions from the audience. No big deal. We’d both done this several times before. So why was this unfortunate? Because this was the first time we had been in the same room with a bunch of career politicians! I had to sit there for two and a half hours, listening to the thing I can’t stand the most about politics and politicians and couldn’t say a damn word! I was SEETHING!

Betsy Johnson was really the main culprit. The others bothered me because they seemed to worship her like some kind of political goddess. Patting her on the back every chance they got. Her opening statement consisted of her outstanding accomplishments as a Senator “finding” money for projects in Tillamook county. To the tune of what sounded like hundreds of millions of dollars. The other career politicians thought that was just WONDERFUL! I’m not sure what the audience thought, I couldn’t really get a read from them, although I did see some heads from older women nodding. Betsy is an older woman so I think they may have connected. But when I heard Betsy say these things I winced. My daughter sitting in the audience said she saw my face grimace.

I soooo wanted to follow-up!

People! How the HELL do you just FIND money??!!!

Don’t give HER or ANYONE ELSE props for FINDING MONEY in our state!!!!

This only means someone has LOST or MISMANAGED or INTENTIONALLY hid YOUR money!!!!!!

So Betsy could later FIND IT!!!

Laugh at ME when I say I could FIND 10% waste in every single state agencies budget??!!! I LAUGH AT YOU!!!! BECAUSE YOU, BETSY ARE AN LAUGHABLE!!! YES I’M YELLING BECAUSE I’M SICK OF YOU THINKING THAT THE PEOPLE OF OREGON ARE STUPID AND YOU ARE SO DAMN SMART!!!!

And here are the other career politicians…”you go girl! I sure wish I could “find” money like you can. Good job working for the people of Tillamook like you do.” Piss off. Tillamook, I want your roads to be fixed and as Governor I will help get that done. But there will be no “finding” money in your state government under my watch. Betsy won’t find it because it will be already spent on your roads and other things Oregonians need. It won’t be held back to be used at a later date as a bargaining chip. Disgusting.

OK. Maybe there’s a logical explanation for “finding” money. Betsy, feel free to explain and I’ll back off some. I’ll send this blog entry to her office. On the other hand, I fully expect Betsy being a career politician to be able to explain her way around this no matter how sketchy it may be. It’s what they do. Betsy, let’s just be honest.

So, that was one of Betsy’s “moment’s”. There’s one more. Someone asked her about HB 3013. I didn’t know anything about this bill. It’s a Marine Reserve Bill that recently passed the Senate. The people in the audience were obviously not happy this bill passed and were looking for an explanation. I looked up some info on it when I got home but I’m going to try to explain it to you the way Betsy explained it last night.

The bill ended up restricting a lot of Oregon’s costal waters from fishing. I think this is what the audience was so opposed to. Betsy made it very clear that she DID NOT support HB 3013 but she and the rest of Congress were forced to pass the bill against their will because special interests with a whole lot of money outside of the state had threatened to take away ALL of Oregons coastal fishing if the bill didn’t pass. Yeah, you heard me right. How were they going to do that? By introducing a bill to OUR state congress and spend millions of dollars in OUR state to get OUR citizens to pass the bill.

So Betsy, the rest of our spineless congressmen, and our spineless Governor sold you and I down the river to special interest. It was special interest who wanted HB 3013 to pass and they got it. And Betsy had the NERVE to stand up before this crowd of people and praise herself for doing the “right thing” by graciously saving the people of Oregon from the nasty special interest group. Once again, “you go girl!” from the other career politicians.

SPECIAL INTEREST CONTROLS OUR GOVERNMENT. Did the Governor step up to stop this? Nope. He was probably in the pocket of the special interest group.

I won’t be. I’m in no ones pocket. I’ll use the bully pulpit, veto power, and everything else at my disposal to stop this kind of despicable practice in out state government.

This is just a couple examples of the kind of CRAP that’s going on in our state. Can you imagine what else is happening? We need ME in office to represent us. Dudley, Alley, Bradbury, kitzhaber…they will be business as usual. I’ll fight to get rid of the crap in our state and make life better for us.

But don’t just vote for me. Vote out the incumbents. We don’t need them. Forget about how “nice” they are, or how “smart” they are. Just get them out of office and get someone else in there.

After it is all said and done…it was a great night. Thanks to AAUW for having us!!