From CNN’s wall-to-wall coverage of every leak - real or imagined - out of the Mueller investigation to the East Coast elite media’s obsession with trying to turn President Trump’s bull-in-a-china shop approach into obstruction of justice, the media would have you believe that their top concern is the rule-of-law and rooting out corruption in government.
But if that were really so, they would be equally interested in investigating the corrupt collusion between Democratic politicians and left wing interest groups that is happening out in the open in blue states on our nation’s coasts. The state and local governments have essentially become socialist fiefdoms where opposing views are silenced and often conservatives are targeted, and cronies are paid off through the power of the purse and an unbalanced scale of justice.
At the Freedom Foundation, we have seen this up close in our home state, Washington. Here, Attorney General Bob Ferguson is trying to make his career by scoring political points against the Trump administration. He has filed two dozen mostly frivolous lawsuits against the Trump administration, all while raising campaign donations “hand over fist” for a potential gubernatorial run.
This same attorney general has targeted the Freedom Foundation, fining our organization for a minor campaign violation and ignoring our repeated requests for a reasonable settlement all the while brushing under the rug far more serious campaign finance violations by his allies in the unions.
This is not a Department of Justice concerned about enforcing the rule of law, instead it is solely a vehicle for the political ambitions of one man.
The corruption and left-wing targeting in Washington state has become so prevalent that it isn’t just limited to A.G. Ferguson. Political pundits around the nation are concerned about potential interference in the Justice Department from President Trump, but in King County, Washington there is a smoking gun of political interference that nobody in the so-called resistance seems interested in addressing.
King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg has embarked on a politically-motivated and specious criminal prosecution of a former employee of the Service Employees International Union Local 775, at the special request of SEIU and one of its chief lobbyists.
After setting up private meetings between SEIU and Satterberg on the Prosecutor’s private cell phone, they met at pub. Satterberg allowed his deputy prosecutors to work hand-in-hand with SEIU’s private attorneys – even allowing them to edit certain prosecution documents. This political collusion was sealed when, one day after Esser made a political donation to Satterberg (in a non-election), Satterberg’s office filed indictments against the former employee. The alleged crime? The employee gave his own lists of home healthcare providers forcibly represented by SEIU to the Foundation, who then informed the providers about their constitutional rights to choose whether or not to remain in the union and continue to pay union dues.
On top of that, the freshly signed SB 6199 is political payback at its worst. The bill is being sold as an effort to streamline administration of a program under which low-income disabled Washingtonians are care for at home by friends and relatives who earn a stipend through Medicaid.
In fact, the SB 6199 would create an additional level of bureaucracy and cost Washington taxpayers tens of millions more for the same service. Meanwhile, by outsourcing oversight of the program to a so-called “consumer-directed employer,” around 35,000 caregivers for whom union dues and fees became optional because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Harris v. Quinn ruling would be forced back into the union as a condition of employment.
This is the local government deep state in action.
In a state dominated by liberal politics, corrupt favorst to help out unions (Democrats biggest ally in the Pacific Northwest) can slide under the radar unless groups like ours expose them.
The rule of law should not have an elephant or a donkey tattoo. And those who claim to be interested in fighting for it at the national level should not look the other way just because the perpetrators are political allies.
We will continue to fight back in these blue states but as long as the Democrats have a hammerlock on the offices and a complicit media uninterested in exposing their corruption, the fight will be arduous and will require a legitimate resistance. And resist, we will.