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The City of Olympia in Washington State once was known for an assertive, aggressive, and well-funded environmental movement. Locals who claimed to care about the environment would fill a Thurston County Commissioner meeting demanding abusive regulations on the rural residents of the county for daring to build a porch on their home, or to build a barn on their property. These attacks were conducted under the theory rural residents would pollute the water and instigate a nebulous global warming apocalypse in the distant future. However, a strange sound of silence has descended on the once vibrant and noisy movement now that toxic waste garbage piles filled with used syringes, human waste, chemicals, and mountains of trash are filling Olympia’s city parks, trails and greenspaces. These faux environmentalists are nowhere to be found.
This author has written extensively for years about the many terrible policies and abusive regulatory efforts pushed by local members of Gang Green including the Thurston Environmental Voters, Washington Conservation Voters, League of Women Voters (which does not include Republicans) The Black Hills Audubon Society, the Carnegie Group, and the Friends of Rocky Prairie. These organizations supported ridiculous $42,000 pocket gopher taxes (see here), aggressive police-state powers to impose large fines on rural residents (see here), and other abusive statist policies. In many ways, these abusive efforts by this group of activists led to the replacement of all Democratic Party Commissioners in Thurston County in 2014 and 2016 with Independent County Commissioners for the first time in State history (see here).
Frequently, public meetings from 2010-2015 were flooded with wealthy, elitist Olympia city residents demanding that their urban rules be imposed on rural residents. No level of regulatory abuse was too much for these wise urban dwellers to impose on their neighbors in the rural county. Even if the Central Planners couldn’t find real examples of rural pollution, the bureaucrats and Gang Green imagined it must be so. They demanded the government regulate and tax something, anything, and everything they could find. Crap taxes, Pocket Gopher Taxes, and other scams proliferated their blizzards of demands.
However, in recent years, due in large part to innovative policies enacted by the self-proclaimed “Progressive” Olympia City Council, the drug addict/homeless population has exploded throughout the city. The promise of “low incarceration rates” is attractive and necessary to recruit criminally minded drug addicts. The policy of “low barrier shelters” ensured that drug addicts, criminals, felons, sex-offenders, and illegal aliens could finally congregate in Olympia openly. Free food, free tents, free tarps, free needles, free wi-fi, and no hassle from the police became high priorities for the Olympia City Council. The sanctuary city status and the restrictions imposed on the Olympia Police Department to “not sweat the small stuff” has ensured that Olympia becomes a regional magnet for as many addicts as possible to come to the capital city. At council meetings, homeless addicts lobby for more free stuff, and the City Council hands out taxpayer funded goodies like candy.
Unfortunately for the residents of Olympia and the environment, a massive influx of junkies tends to carry baggage. This baggage consists mostly of garbage, used needles and human waste. These addicts/homeless are not just takers of the many freebies handed out by the Olympia City Council (and the vendors who receive the grants from the city and are bonus parts of the Homeless Industrial Complex). These addicts also tend to bring their garbage with them. To be more specific, this garbage is mainly from local residents and businesses who are robbed by the addicts and then the stolen stuff that can’t be used or fenced to pay for meth or heroin is unceremoniously dumped on trails, parks, and in local streams. Despite the City providing dumpsters and trash cans and used needle boxes, the addicts ignore them and dump their garbage, used needles and human waste wherever it is convenient for them to do so. This includes dumping their garbage in salmon streams. Gang Green remains silent.
Who is most responsible for raising the cost of housing in Olympia?
The Gang Green crowd, of course, is most directly responsible for raising the cost of housing in Washington State, in Thurston County, and in the City of Olympia. Housing is much less affordable as a direct result of their policies and actions. They have done this purposely and willfully primarily through four policies.
The first is to restrict the land supply available for housing. Many of these artificial restrictions are invented through the abuse of the Growth Management Act passed in 1990 and the various mutations that have metastasized from that original piece of legislation. The second is to invent a variety of artificial restrictions and arbitrary bureaucratic interference in the home building process. For property owners or prospective home buyers to comply with this constantly changing blizzard of regulations, they have to hire attorneys, consultants, and pay for the bureaucrats to squander money and time. This adds great cost and uncertainty to home building or remodeling.
The third policy priority is increased taxation and fees. Any excuse to impose a new tax is justified and lobbied for by the local Gang Green crowd. Pocket gopher taxes, Crap taxes, increasing utility taxes, homeless taxes (so they can recruit more addicts to Olympia), public safety taxes, increased sales taxes, increased property taxes. All these increase the cost of living. Finally, in a particularly ridiculous example of incompetence, they push for subsidized housing, which is government funded housing like Camp Quixote (see here) which is a bunch of shacks costing more than a high-priced home in Olympia, or the currently under construction “little house” village. To get these projects going, Gang Green won’t use their own money or fundraising. Instead they force taxpayers to waste tax dollars building overpriced and low-quality structures.
Why is Gang Green so silent about real pollution in the city?
Those who claimed to be environmentalists like former Olympia Mayor Bob Jacobs and others were happy to impose abusive regulations on rural residents based on the fear of the “potential to pollute.” However, when faced with hazardous toxic waste piles accumulating all over the city, the parks, the greenspaces and into local salmon streams, they have gone silent. Why?
One reason is fear. They have already seen how people, like the local businesses suffering from the addict/homeless plague downtown have been harassed. Those who dare speak up are on the receiving end of black-masked violent retaliation from Evergreen College sponsored “Olympia Solidarity” and others.
The Gang Green crew was brave when they were beating up on poor rural people in south county, but when faced with the drug dealers, rogue Evergreen students, Olympia Solidarity, slashed tires, and open threats of retaliation, they have become fearful, timid, and silent. Brave people don’t join Gang Green. So, they are fearful of personal retaliation where they live or work, and concerns for the environment take a back seat.
The second reason is ideological. Most of the Gang Green crew in Olympia consider themselves “Progressive.” Many ideologies demand rigid adherence to blind orthodoxy, and this includes total acceptance of all aspects of the stated religion. Progressivism is no exception. Progressivism demands that sanctuary city status be celebrated. Progressives demand that low barrier shelters with no rules be expanded. Progressives love needle exchanges. Progressives assume (rightly) that they can get drug addicts/homeless to vote for them in exchange for promised “free things.” Progressives silence all criticism of the Homeless Industrial Complex because how can the “homeless” be anything but a visible critique of the evils of Capitalism? Progressives must silence all dissent and wrong thinking, through violence and intimidation if necessary. Rather than see the obvious disaster unfolding before their eyes, it is easier and politically safer to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. They like to pretend crime isn’t escalating or they downplay the crime they are forced to edmit exists.
Finally, if Olympia’s Progressives do recognize a problem, they blame Trump, Republicans (even though none have been elected in Olympia for decades), local businesses, this author, or global warming. For sure, it is always someone else’s fault, not their obviously failed incoherant policies and incompetent local politicians.
Instead, if the members of Gang Green speak up at all, it is only for someone else to pick up the garbage – i.e. another tax. They love higher taxes. Maybe they support paying $350,000 for one toilet (see article here). Fiscal responsibility is a low priority for them, which is why the City of Olympia has been such a friendly political environment for their addict/junkie/homeless crusade. One thing they won’t do is go clean up the mess themselves. They certainly won’t look too closely at the policies that subsidize drug use and are obviously harmful to the community and environment.
While the regular citizens of Olympia avoid downtown and treat it like a quarantine zone, the faux environmentalists wring their hands and try to blame rural residents in Thurston County. While the addicts break into their homes and steal their worldly goods to fund an insatiable escalating appetite for more heroin or meth, Gang Green looks the other way. When the addicts and homeless flood the parks, trails, greenspaces, and city sidewalks with garbage, used needles, and the detritus of their crime sprees, the local Progressives pretend it is not too bad. As the salmon streams are filled with garbage, human waste, used needles, and the wetland buffers are filled with trash, the silence of the enviros deafens us all, and their silence tells us just how much they really care about our environment when it really matters.
OUR CONSTITUTION BEGINS WITH THE PHRASE “WE THE PEOPLE.” IT WAS THE FOUNDER’S INTENT THAT GOVERNMENT BE CREATED BY THE PEOPLE, TO SERVE THE PEOPLE. IT WASN’T THEIR INTENTION FOR THE PEOPLE TO SERVE THE GOVERNMENT. IT WAS ALWAYS INTENDED THAT GOVERNMENT WHICH FAILED TO SERVE THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE “ALTERED OR ABOLISHED.” UNTIL WE RETURN TO THE FOUNDER’S INTENT, WE REMAIN WE THE GOVERNED…
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The environmental devastation in the Olympia area reveals despicable racketeering by the political class in Washington State. Everyone involved in facilitating this human and environmental destruction is involved in a criminal racket to profit from problems they caused by recruiting a large, permanently dependent population. The racketeers consolidate their power when new “residents” vote for their benefactors and against the interests of productive citizens.
I’m guessing the racketeers’ identities are known. (I moved long ago and don’t know the current players.) The legacy media and corrupt state government will protect them as long as possible but eventually this criminal network will collapse. Does your church enable the racketeers? Your employer? Your newspaper? Your children’s school or your alma mater? How much of your time and money supports organizations that enable the homeless-by-choice or drug addict lifestyles?
All good questions…
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