Why is Freedom Foundation meddling? | Letter

Published 4:27 pm Monday, February 27, 2012

Practically the very last thing the citizens of San Juan County need is the Freedom Foundation and the Citizens Action Network, both of Olympia, Wash., exposing the evils of Community Development and Planning and Friends of the San Juans. Just possibly, without their help, the Dalton case on Orcas would have been resolved a year ago at a much lower cost to the landowner and our community.

Do San Juan Islanders really need organizations like the Freedom Foundation and its wealthy supporters, including, according to SourceWatch, organizations and individuals associated with the Koch Brothers, the Mellon Scaife family, the Walton family, and the Heritage Foundation, to intrude into our community, police our public and private institutions, and help us protect our environment from environmentalists?

Most people are unaware that the Freedom Foundation and its supporters have much bigger fish to fry. They are normally busy protecting our entire state from teachers, labor unions, gay rights legislation and so forth.  When they aren’t working on state issues, their network of supporters is protecting the entire country from anyone not signing the Grover Norquist anti-tax pledge, campaign finance reform, women’s health and reproductive rights, increased regulation of Wall Street, Sharia law, and Hilary Clinton.  So it is interesting to note that they are prepared to devote some of their unlimited financial resources to reforming our county, the smallest in the state.

And it is worth pondering just why the local supporters of the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights and the Common Sense Alliance have brought such an outfit as the Freedom Foundation into our community.

Jon Christoffersen

Shaw Island