Wednesday, August 02, 2006

$25,000 to Bonnie Neely from Blue Lake Rancheria!

You have got be kidding! We were not on a even playing field! Why would the Blue Lake Rancheria give Bonnie this kind of money? They did not even interview me, a Native American (Sioux Tribe, children and wife registered Cherokee and yes we use the local Indian clinic) to see my vision for Humboldt County. And our family has plenty of local Native American relatives to be disturbed over this amount of money being wasted on what? What has Bonnie done to deserve that kind of money? If the local Native Americans want to be politically active, they need to form a Native Political Action Committee (PAC) so they do things in order! Where is the Measure T people on this issue? This is not a good situation.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are spot on in your outrage over this blatant attempt to buy influence, Richard. While I sympathize that these folks never even interviewed you, these bigger issues to me:

1. Measure T does NOTHING to stop this kind of influence peddling and merely re-arranges the deck chairs on the campaign finance Titanic, despite the proponents' protestations to the contrary, and,

2. Without campaign donation caps, this crap will only continue and grow.

I have asked the Eureka Chamber to convene community groups to get the ball rolling on an ordinance to draft a donation cap ordinance, but do you want to bet whether Local Solutions, Deomocracy Unlimited or the so-called progressive groups will join in this effort?

I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but at the Ferndale races I tend to win more when I bet on favorites. Sad but true.

Chris Crawford
CrawfordCA@aol.com

samoasoftball said...

Chris: I am so stoked to be going to the Ferndale races so I can bet on the longshots! Ignorant local voters (I mean betters) will help me parlay geat dividends. Be sure to keep cohesive late in the day when losers get loose and try to make up there losses on long shots. Then you hit the favorites! Works all the time locally. Same in politics in Humboldt County. Sad but true.

Eric V. Kirk said...

Get the ball rolling Chris. "If you build it, they will come."

Measure T didn't go into effect until 30 days after the election. But over at Captain Buhne, and at Fred's, and now Heraldo's, there's extensive discussion as to whether Measure T applies to this group. Remember, if they even have one employee outside the county - it's a non-local corporation.

samoasoftball said...

Just finding out today about how bad the working conditions at Blue Lake has me now worried for those workers.

Also found out from past workers of the out of town investors of the Casino.

We do need some cap to limit campaign spending. I think that $20,000 should be plenty enough to run an effective campaign for County Supervisor.

Anonymous said...

the supremes just said you cant limit the overall spending of campaigns. contribution limits are still intact as long as theyre not too restrictive (or discriminatory like measure toast).