Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, was right last week when he said there is a war on rural Washington.
I know he calls himself a Democrat, caucuses with the Republicans and has often supported rural causes, so seeing him unhappy with the governor isn’t really a surprise.
The story last week that Gov. Jay Inslee will likely veto the Vancouver oil terminal proposal (if he hasn’t already) should come as no surprise either, even though good jobs would come with the project and operation of it.
But this column isn’t really about oil, good jobs or the fake unemployment numbers we see reported in the news all the time.
Rather, it’s about something else Sen. Sheldon said is going on. It’s about the difference between urban and rural Washington. In a press release, Sheldon said, “What we are seeing is an attempt by urban special interest groups to realign our state. Instead of seeing us as part of the Pacific Northwest, sharing our interests with Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Alaska, they are drawing a big blue line around a West Coast nature preserve where cities like L.A., San Francisco, Portland and Seattle lord it over everyone else,”
Amen.
I’ve said that for years.
I recall being in Olympia as sheriff years ago to testify on impacts of unfunded and underfunded mandates and legislation (which had no impact back then, and as far as I can tell still doesn’t) when I became engaged with a Seattle lawmaker who noticed my uniform, and my gun, and asked how come I was allowed to carry it up there.
Then she wanted to know where Lewis County was located, and when I told her just south of Thurston County, she wondered where that was too.
I have no idea what this lady did, but presumably she was educated and certainly could have understood there was a whole world outside Seattle.
But she didn’t and, sadly, Seattle folks just like her rule this state.
•••
It is sure seems surprising that after legalizing pot, sort of, we are still seeing so many stories about arrests involving it. After all, I thought the promise was if we legalized it, the state would be rolling in cash and drug crimes involving marijuana would just be a thing of the past.
Yet here we are reading stories almost every day about marijuana arrests, investigations or crimes.
Chinese nationals didn’t get the word pot was legal, so they came and set up shop west of here and sold a bunch of it — although not much around the local area we’re told. The surprising part of the story to me was that even the cops complained it was about the tax money lost.
In a Dec. 7 tweet to Keith Eldridge of KOMO news, Aberdeen Lt. Kevin Darst posted, “If you look at the millions and millions of dollars that are going out of our area without any taxes being paid like the legal growers, it’s very substantial.”
Ah. So that’s the problem with Chinese nationals selling pot? They aren’t paying taxes.
Makes the cops sound more like tax regulators than law enforcement officers.
There were other stories involving marijuana as well, like the former 16-year veteran Seattle cop who was allegedly ferrying it to Baltimore, or the assault case over a simple marijuana business deal that went wrong and caused the buyer to be stabbed a few times in Chehalis.
Point is, after all this time, we still have almost daily stories involving marijuana, jail time and investigations.
They promised us this wouldn’t be the case.
•••
Finally, last Thursday was Dec. 7, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I’ve often wondered if history classes in school even teach about this anymore. Or have historical events like that been overshadowed by transgender bathrooms, global warming, white privilege, microaggressions and all the other nonsense we can’t escape these days?
I sure hope not.
•••
John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
