A Look Back at This Week – 25 Years Ago
Excerpt from the NVN:
With Y2K just hours away, Yelm and Rainier city and emergency services officials said they were ready for anything. On New Year’s Eve, local fire and police departments were set to be out en masse to ensure nothing went wrong. At midnight, local officers planned to check to make sure the phone lines were still up and test start their vehicles to make sure they still ran.
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+ The New York Times: Carter Funeral Service to Be Held at Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9 – The state funeral will cap more than a week of remembrances honoring Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, who died at 100 on Sunday.
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Jan. 9 declared federal holiday as ‘mark of respect’ for Jimmy Carter, White House announces
Excerpt from WSB 95.5 FM radio, Atlanta:
January 9, 2025 will be declared a federal holiday in wake of former president Jimmy Carter’s death, according to a statement from the White House on Monday.
Carter passed away on Sunday, roughly 22 months after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives, The Carter Center said.
He turned 100 years old in October and was the longest-lived American president.
“All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall be closed on January 9, 2025, as a mark of respect for James Earl Carter, Jr., the thirty-ninth President of the United States,” President Biden said.
President Joe Biden has scheduled a state funeral in Washington for former President Jimmy Carter on Jan. 9, The Associated Press reported.
Biden also declared Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning across the U.S. and ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff for 30 days from Sunday.
Trump loses appeal of E. Jean Carroll $5 million defamation verdict
Excerpt from CNBC:
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a $5-million verdict that E. Jean Carroll won against Donald Trump when a jury found the U.S. president-elect liable for sexually abusing and later defaming the former magazine columnist.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected Trump’s argument that the trial judge should not have let jurors hear evidence about the Republican’s alleged past sexual misconduct, making the trial and verdict unfair.
The court said that evidence, including Trump bragging about his sexual prowess on an “Access Hollywood” video that surfaced during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, established a “repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” consistent with Carroll’s allegations.
“Taking the record as a whole and considering the strength of Ms. Carroll’s case, we are not persuaded that any claimed error or combination of errors in the district court’s evidentiary rulings affected Mr. Trump’s substantial rights,” the court said in an unsigned decision.
The May 2023 verdict stemmed from an incident around 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, where Carroll, now 81, said Trump raped her, and an October 2022 Truth Social post where Trump denied Carroll’s claim as a hoax.
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A different jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her and damaging her reputation in June 2019, when he first denied her rape claim.
In both denials, Trump said he did not know Carroll, she was “not my type,” and that she fabricated the rape claim to promote her memoir.
Click here to read the full story.
Space Needle fireworks and drone show live-streamed at 11pm Dec. 31st
+ KING-5 TV News, NBC Seattle: How to watch, livestream New Year’s Eve fireworks at the Space Needle – Starting at 11 p.m. on Tuesday, KING 5+ in Seattle will have live coverage of New Year’s Eve events. A firework and drone show will ring in 2025 at the Space Needle.
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Need a Washington state New Year’s activity? State Parks offering 40 free guided hikes, snowshoeing, more
Excerpt from The Bellingham Herald via The Chronicle (Centralia):
Washington State Parks is offering guided hikes at more than 30 of its parks on New Year’s Day. The event is part of an initiative called First Day Hikes, a collaboration between state parks departments across the country.
Visitors will be allowed to enter parks for free Jan. 1, one of 12 days that Discover Passes won’t be required to park on publicly-managed recreational lands.
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Locally: Millersylvania State Park Maple Hollow Loop [free] guided hike, 10 a.m. from the park’s retreat center
Click here for the full story.
John Braun: This year’s passage of four initiatives is already making our state better
Commentary by Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia:
Earlier this month, the City of Federal Way released data showing crime rates overall had fallen 11% from a year ago.
That’s great news for any community, especially one of the larger cities in our state. The statistic that really stood out was the 52% drop in auto thefts.
While Federal Way’s mayor appropriately gave most of the credit for this progress to the city’s police officers and leadership, he also made a point of acknowledging what state legislators did to help officers get back to pursuing criminals the way they once could.
That refers to the Legislature’s passage of Initiative 2113 this past March. The initiative repealed the reactionary pursuit restrictions that had been passed by majority Democrats in 2021, which quickly turned out to be a gift to car thieves and other lawbreakers.
It was nice of the mayor to praise legislators. However, the gratitude really should go to the 434,112 Washington voters who signed petitions to put I-2113 in front of the Legislature, and to Let’s Go Washington, which coordinated the gathering of the voter signatures.
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Almost exactly a year ago, boxes of signed petitions in support of I-2113 and five more initiatives to the Legislature were turned in at the secretary of state’s office. In all, they contained some 2.6 million signatures. Well over 800,000 voters signed in support of at least one of the six measures.
All six initiatives were certified — the first time that many measures had been put in front of the Legislature in a single session.
Three of the initiatives were passed before we adjourned for the year: I-2113, to return the pursuit restrictions to their 2020 form; I-2081, to create a parents’ bill of rights for K-12 education; and I-2111, to ban an income tax at any level of government.
The other three measures would have repealed laws that enrich state government: the Climate Commitment Act, which functions as a hidden gas tax; the capital-gains income tax; and the mandatory payroll tax for long-term care.
Majority Democrats refused to hold votes on those measures while we were in session, which automatically moved them on to the November ballot.
As a result, the attorney general’s office was able to use the majority’s new “warning label” law to publicly disparage those three initiatives. The biased claims were then blasted across the airwaves and online, week after week, by high-powered, big-money opposition campaigns.
Knowing how those three cost-saving initiatives would have made living in Washington more affordable, it was very disappointing to see them go down to defeat simply because opponents had such a financial advantage.
Still, Republicans respect the will of the voters. Now that we know the Climate Commitment Act, capital-gains income tax and payroll tax will remain in place, we can look for opportunities to deal with the obvious flaws in those policies.
Also, as 2024 draws to a close, let’s consider that our state is in a better position now than it was a year ago, thanks to Let’s Go Washington and the voters who made the initiatives happen in the first place.
Looking at the year as a whole — and counting the voters’ passage of I-2066, to protect access to natural gas — the people of Washington went 4-for-7 on either repealing bad laws or enacting pro-taxpayer, pro-family, pro-child policies. The benefits of that are already being seen in places like Federal Way, with its lower crime rates.
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Click here to read the full story.
Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.
Jimmy Carter, former US president and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, dead at 100
Except from the BBC:
Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center said. He was 100.
“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
The Carter Center said there will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington. These events will be followed by a private interment in Plains, it said.
Final arrangements for the former president’s state funeral are still pending, according to the center.
Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election. Carter was swept from office four years later in an electoral landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor.
Carter lived longer after his term in office than any other U.S. president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better former president than he was a president – a status he readily acknowledged.
Click here for the full story.
We Are on Our Own
Excerpt from Marc Elias [Founder of Democracy Docket and Partner at Elias Law Group, Marc Elias is a nationally recognized authority in voting rights]:
Each time I have sat down to write something since the election, I am bothered by this recurring phrase that I simply cannot get out of my head.
So, this week I am going to just say it out loud: we are on our own.
I realize this raises as many questions as it answers. Who are the “we?” Where, exactly, are the “we?” And what do I mean by “on our own?” Let me unpack them in order. …
The “we” is the easy part. It includes all of us who care about democracy, rule of law and free and fair elections. It is not a small group….
The hardest part to define and know for certain is where we are. I know for certain where we are heading.
We are sliding towards an illiberal democracy. The phrase, first popularized in the 1990s, took on new urgency in the United States as major figures in Donald Trump’s orbit came to view Viktor Orbán as a leadership role model. As Bill Kristol posted, “ABC’s settlement with Trump feels like it could be an inflection point in the Orbanization of our politics.” …
This brings me to the toughest part: the fact that we are on our own. Institutions that assured us they would be in the fight for democracy are already backing down. People who claimed they saw Trump clearly for what he is now have voluntarily put blinders in front of their own eyes. …
The guardrails of our democracy are not failing under violent contact. Rather they are being taken down in advance, by the very people who insisted they be entrusted to build them.
That is why I say we are on our own.
When the legacy media normalizes Trump’s most indefensible nominees at the same time its owners pay protection money, we are on our own. When businessmen fly their private jets to kiss the ring solely to protect their own companies from his deranged policies, we are on our own. When government officials, who know how dangerous he is, make excuses or resign in advance, we are on our own.
Click here for the full story.
In Thurston County news!
+ The JOLT News: Thurston County’s K-9s protect and serve the community – “Don’t run from TCSO when all five (K-9s) are on duty training. The odds are not in your favor.”
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+ The JOLT News: Thurston County gets a clean audit from the state – The accountability audit report from the state auditor’s office was for the period of Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2023.
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+ The JOLT News: Thurston County unemployment rate inches up in November – A decrease in the number of employed people, coupled with a similar decline in the labor force, had little impact on the jobless rate in the region last month.
Give Local 2024 raises more than $1M for South Puget Sound nonprofits
2,168 unique donors contributed to the campaign, making a total of 4,142 individual gifts.
Excerpt from The JOLT News:
The Community Foundation of South Puget Sound’s annual Give Local campaign raised more than $1 million, setting a new record for the 8-year-old initiative.
“This was our best year yet, with our communities raising an incredible $1,184,435 for 142 participating nonprofits,” Mary Lam-Witcher, Communications officer with the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound, told The JOLT.
Lam-Witcher shared Give Local’s 2024 report, which showed increased community participation.
According to the Community Foundation, 2,168 unique donors contributed to the campaign, making a total of 4,142 individual gifts.
The foundation emphasized that everyone was welcome to participate and that no gift was too small. The majority of the gifts — 81% or 3,357 contributions — were $200 or less, demonstrating strong grassroots support.
The campaign also attracted larger donations: 532 gifts ranged from $201 to $500, while 199 contributions fell between $501 and $2,500. About 54 gifts were made at $2,501 or above.
These contributions benefited 142 nonprofits across Lewis, Mason and Thurston Counties, marking the highest nonprofit participation to date. About 16 of these nonprofits are BIPOC-led and 32 are first-time participants.
The campaign’s success was bolstered by its ability to attract new participants. A post-campaign survey of 243 donors revealed that 37% were first-time participants in Give Local. About 40% of surveyed donors helped spread the word about the campaign within their networks. The campaign’s future looks promising, with 97% of survey respondents planning to participate again in upcoming Give Local events.
Click here for the full story from The JOLT News.
Hanukkah Celebration on December 30.
From the Chabad of Olympia Jewish Discovery Center:
Our annual Yelm Chanukah Celebration is coming up! RSVP today at www.jewisholympia.com/yelm