Once again the Seattle Times shows its peculiar left-leaning bias. The editorial writers for the Times are all for upholding so-called 150-year old treaty rights for Indians, but look the other way when it comes to preserving, protecting and defending Constitutional rights for American citizens, especially rural landowners. Here is the Times editorial that appeared today:

It's OK for the Indians to win court decisions in their favor for superior treaty rights, without any regard to the huge cost to Americans who pay the bill for this unconstitutional folly and to the loss of constitutional property rights that come with these decisions. In a recent article in the Olympian, it was stated that Governor Gregoire, then state attorney general at the time the Indians filed their "culvert" lawsuit, issued a joint statement with then Governor Gary Locke, that sounded foreboding, if not apocalyptic.

"We are aware this case has potential significance beyond the culvert issue," the statement said. "A favorable ruling for the tribes could impose a duty that may affect other public roadways, public facilities and lands and even the regulation of land use and water."

With radical environmental and fish protection absurdity taking over our laws, Indian treaty rights superior to constitutional rights, the Puget Sound Partnership that will all but render Washington State property rights in Western Washington non-existent and now a Federal decision in favor of Indian treaty rights affecting every private landowner in the state, rural landowners can kiss any constitutional protections goodbye. You don't own your land. The government and the Indians do. Quit bellyaching and just pay the taxes like the good little serfs that you are. But the Indians fight for their so-called rights. Where are you, the rural landowner, when it comes to fighting for your rights? Silent, that's where. Remember folks, you only protect what you are willing to defend. Silence doesn't protect or win anything.

Indians are a minority, protected by treaties. Rural landowners are a minority and are supposedly protected by the U. S. and state constitutions. The Seattle Times, as well as government, are all for protecting the Indians and their treaties, but are conspicuously absent when it comes to protecting another minority, the American rural landowner.

Perhaps it is time for the rural landowner to use the courts as the Indians have been so adept at doing, over the last 40 years. Perhaps it is also time for local, state and federal governments to tax the profits from Indian casinos to pay for the outlandish court decisions they have won over the years, that we all get to pay for. Or how about taxing the Indian salmon catch to get some return on American dollars that pay for maintaining their precious fish habitat? Or how about taxing the commercial fishing industry for the same reason? Why do the Indians and the commercial fishermen get to make profits from a fishery, while the rest of us (mostly rural landowners) have to make huge sacrifices in money and rights to protect that fishery? Why, if Salmon are endangered, are we harvesting them in the first place? Why indeed! As we keep saying, the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

There are limits as to how far the American people will take this judicial injustice coming out of activist American courts that rule in favor of everyone but the American taxpayer, but especially the rural landowner. There are limits to the patience of landowners to the continual assault on their pocket books and their rights, where only they are being required to bear the entire burden of environmental protection. When does the dam burst? When is it that the rural landowner says no more? They give and everyone else takes. A recipe of injustice that could easily lead to a revolt, in one form another. A silent revolt is already taking place. Rural landowners are just ignoring the government and their laws all together and doing whatever they please. Not unlike what the government does to us.

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