To: NARLO Members, Rural Landowners, Interested Parties,
the Entire Washington State Legislature and the News Media
From: Ron Ewart, President, National Association of Rural Landowners
For: All recipients
Dear Washington State
Legislators:
Every session of the legislature you, (mostly Democrats) GIVE more and more to the socialists and
environmental lobbyists and do everything in your power to TAKE more and more
rights from the people and raise their taxes. (i.e. bills
to limit the initiative process - HB 2601) You declare emergencies on Bills that have not
even a hint of an emergency, just to shield them from the right of the people to
referendum. How dare the people interfere with your Absolute Democrat
Monarchy!
You have shoved down our throats the
Growth Management Act (GMA) and all the Critical Area Ordinances (CAO) that
followed it, even after the people shot down an initiative (I-547) by over 70%
that did the same thing. Here is a news report at the time that Initiative
547 failed back in 1990:
"State Initiative 547,
backed by environmental groups, would have required growth planning, but the
53-page measure and its complex language was too much for voters. Opponents
credited a mail campaign that stressed, "Read the fine print." It was the most
lopsided defeat of an initiative since the 1916 trouncing of a measure to allow
the serving of liquor in hotels."
(This state's GMA is way more complex than
I-547 ever thought of being.)
You didn't get the message and so what
did you do? The people shot the GMA initiative down at the polls and
then you, the legislature, shafted it to is by a law. Each year, you the
legislature, expand the GMA's restrictions on rural landowners at the
behest of your favorite lobbyists, the radical environmentalists.
Since rural landowners are a minority, they can't fight back and you
have free rein to insult them even more, while you let the city folk get away
with environmental hypocrisy.
You have levied upon rural landowners,
at their cost, very expensive fish and habitat culverts that replaced
perfectly good culverts for the God of fish and to placate the environmental and
Indian lobbyists that hold you in the palm of their dirty little hands.
You passed the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP) to clean up Puget Sound, with a
price tag of almost $30 Billion, even though you will allow large cities to dump
their raw sewage into the Sound every day. But the PSP will come down hard
on the property rights of private landowners through more restrictive
regulation, to reach their lofty goals, while they give the cities
(Seattle-Victoria) a pass.
You allow the Department of Ecology (DOE) to run
rough shod over land and water rights of rural landowners for the God of Salmon,
(in-stream flow rules) when the only
reason Salmon are endangered is because the Indians and the Commercial
fisherman draw on the resource way beyond their replacement
cycle. The death of Salmon runs have nothing to
do with habitat and have everything to do with over-fishing the
resource.
Now you want to pass another environmental law
that continues the TAKING of private property for the cult of environmentalism
in Senate Bill 5318, the so-called y2y initiative. We have read up on y2y
and it is nothing more than the draconian continuance of the UN
Wildlands Project to connect illegal United Nations Biospheres for wildlife
corridors, even though those corridors go through millions of acres of private
property. By establishing the corridors, you can further limit
private property rights and use, through the police powers of government and the
landowners will be able to do nothing to stop you. Remember the
Columbia Gorge Commission? Ask the private property owners in the Columbia
Gorge how they feel about the loss of their property rights from the Gorge
Commission.
We extend our appreciation to the
Republicans in your midst who are at least trying to do the right thing by
stopping you Democrats (SB 5318) dead in your tracks. We can only hope
they succeed before you do more dirty work against the disenfranchised,
unrepresented private rural landowner. Once y2y is law, Katty bar the
door. It will expand just like every other environmental law expands over
time as environmentalists gain more and more power over rural
lands.
You will give us ill-advised global warming
legislation, at great cost and reduced freedoms, even though there is
absolutely no consensus that man is causing global warming. Blind!
Ludicrous!
Once again you have gone to Olympia to pass law
after law to restrict the people, take away their rights and pander to the
socialists and radical environmentalists. You say you are representatives
of the people. We say poppy cock! You represent only the
special interests of the lobbyists who camp on your doorstep to promote special
favors for them and them only. You are instruments of
unconstitutional social and environmental enslavement and violate your oath of
office to UPHOLD the Constitutions of the United States and
the State of Washington, every day. Is it any wonder why the people
try to hold you in check with initiative after initiative? We don't know
how you even look in the mirror any more.
If you will take the time, read the story below
and you will see the perspective of the people you no longer represent. It
is where America is headed as a country, unless we, who know what
you are doing, stop you in time. Perhaps, if Dino Rossi can take the
place of our current Governor this year, we might be able to slow you folks down
a little more, if by nothing more than the line item veto. It is high time
for a change.
Ron
Ewart, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
RURAL LANDOWNERS
P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah,
WA 98027
425 222-4742 or 1 800
682-7848
(Fax No. 425
222-4743)
Website:
www.narlo.org
"I Must Keep
Running"
By Ron Ewart,
President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS
Copyright February 16, 2008 - All Rights
Reserved
(If your browser does not display this image,
it is attached as a JPEG file)
I keep running, but the dogs are gaining.
I've been running for three days now and I'm exhausted. I hear the hounds
behind me but I must find the strength to stay ahead, always ahead. If
they catch me, I might as well be dead.
It all started one Sunday when I was
working one of my fields with a tractor, preparing the field for the
next round of hay for the season. The exhaust pipe of the tractor was
belching black smoke, as it usually did. The old diesel engine kept on
chugging in a low staccato, as it always did, old reliable as it
was.
I looked up and saw about
three official-looking trucks in the distance down in the draw,
coming up the gravel road that led into my isolated ranch. I
knew by their speed and the dust streaming behind the trucks, that
something urgent was a foot. What I didn't know at the time, was that I,
working my land with my tractor, was that "something".
For you see the county council got together
in one of its weekly meetings and decided that in order to curb CO2 emissions
from all vehicles, due to the threat of global warming, they passed an
ordinance declaring that Sunday was to be a day in which all
citizens of the county were prohibited from running their trucks and their
tractors and that only cars could be used for the sole purpose of going to and
from church. No other form of vehicle transportation was allowed on that
day. To violate this new law was a criminal act. If you were caught
you were guilty. No due process or face your accusers, you were just
guilty.
The county council had directed that the
new ordinance be posted on their website and that a small public notice be
published in the local newspaper. I don't own a computer, I don't read the
local newspaper and I had no idea that the new law even existed and I doubt that
many others in the county knew as well. Nor did I know that the penalty
for violating the law was criminal and included a huge fine and six months
in jail. But my neighbor did, as you shall soon
see.
Down by my ranch house the trucks roared in
and screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust. I could see from my tractor
that four hound dogs on leashes were being let out of one of the trucks.
The handler looked up in my direction. Five sheriffs in uniform, the
dog handler and the four dogs opened the gate and started walking
across the field towards me. I had no idea what they were doing here,
but I thought I would stay on my tractor, still running and wait for
them to tell me.
When they finally reached where I had stopped,
one of the sheriffs that was out in front, with his hand waving circles in
the air, motioned for me to shut down the tractor. I ignored his
signal. He then handed me a piece of paper. I opened it up and on
the paper was a description of my violation and the penalties for it. It
seems one of my neighbors had seen the smoke from my tractor and called the
sheriff. The call was anonymous of course. I looked at the sheriff,
who had his hand on his gun, and said, "I was not aware of any
such law". The sheriff said that ignorance of the law
was no excuse and that I should get down off the tractor and accompany him to
the sheriff's office. I had but a spilt second to make a decision,
go with them, or run. In an instant, I chose to run.
I slammed the tractor into high gear, the front
wheels jerked off the ground and I took off towards the far
fence. On the other side of the fence was deep woods that wound into the
mountains behind my ranch. I heard the multiple "cracks" of a pistol and a
few bullets ricocheted off the cab of the tractor. The dogs started
barking furiously. But since the officers were on foot, I knew that if I
could beat them to the fence and I would have time to disappear into the
woods. I knew every inch of that forest and that would give me an
edge, an edge I needed badly. I didn't even stop the tractor as it neared
the fence. I jumped off after it had broken through one of the sections
and ran in the direction of the mountain pass. I was sure I
could lose them there. I heard the tractor crash into a tree and go
silent.
I've been running for three days now and
I'm cold, hungry, tired, scratched and bleeding. I can always hear the
dogs in the distance, but so far I have stayed ahead of them. I know
that if I don't make it to the pass, they will have me. On the other side
of the pass was a mine entrance and I knew that if I could reach the mine, one
of the shafts would lead me to a place way down the other side of the
mountain from which they could never find me. I breathed a sigh of relief
as I crossed over the pass and saw the mine entrance up ahead. Finally, I
would be free of the dogs. I entered the mine, hurried towards the shaft
in the darkness, feeling my way and stumbled down its full length until I
reached the lower entrance. I walked out into the sun, a free man, at
least for now.
I wondered how it is that a peace-loving,
law-abiding rancher like myself could be in this situation, running from the
law? How had our government become so out of control that they would pass
laws that made no sense? What was it that we did or didn't do that made
government think that they could treat Americans in this manner? Did we
not have a constitution that granted us inalienable rights from our
creator? Did not those rights shield us from government abuse and
tyranny? How could government ignore the supreme law of the land with such
reckless abandon? How is it that we have reached the point where neighbor
would rat on neighbor. I thought of Nazi Germany. As I pondered
these thoughts, I ran down the path to the river that would lead me out of the
county. I vowed to find out what happened to our government and get others
to help me right a situation that had gone terribly wrong. I vowed to
regain my freedom and the freedom of all Americans, no matter what it took or
where the path would lead.
NOTE: You don't think that this kind of thing can
happen? Think again, it already is. Every day lawmakers, at every
level of government, are making laws just as insane as the one in this
story. Every day, most people just ignore what goes on in the halls of
local, state and federal governments. Every day that is, until one of
these insane laws catches up with you and you have to choose between being
caught in the enforcement of the insane law, or to run. Many
stay and fight the injustice because by God they are Americans and they have the
righteous right to defend themselves under our constitution. But in the
end they get run over by the legal system, because government supports and
defends government, instead of government supporting and defending the people,
as it should be.
Ron
Ewart, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
RURAL LANDOWNERS
P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah,
WA 98027
425 222-4742 or 1 800
682-7848
(Fax No. 425
222-4743)
Website:
www.narlo.org