Political comment and discussion about Island County, Whidbey Island, Camano Island and Washington State
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Whidbey News Times’ Executive Director and Publisher, Keven R. Graves wasted no time weighing in on Senate Bill 5927 saying it was “seriously flawed.” http://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/opinion/206995691.html
Part of SB5927 is found below and a link to the full bill is provided:
Keven R. Graves, executive editor and publisher for the Whidbey News-Times, commented recently:
“This always fascinates me … we have two different sides saying the WNT is favoring the other … I guess that means we’re doing our job right if both sides think that.” Keven R Graves, May 8, 2013
http://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/opinion/205486181.html
If that were the case then why was a rebuttal comment deleted?
In 2008, the reality of our failing economy hit Island County and Government hard. After years of being able to fund many nice programs, but in 2008 Island County Commissioners were forced to reduce expenses
They failed to use proper budgeting techniques such Zero Base, Priority budgeting, etc
Commissioners claim they have been using their version of prioritizing spending but few, if any, non mandated programs have been eliminated; more have been created.
This report about the Prosecutor’s operation is just the tip of the iceberg regarding this serious problem. When the analysis of Sheriff Brown’s operation is completed you will see an ever more depressive picture of citizen safety
This needs analysis uses 2008 as the benchmark for staffing and M&O budgeting. That was the last year at which the Prosecutors office was fully staffed to perform all of the functions mandated by statute and state constitution.
It is notable that in 1999, they had a total of 5.5 deputy prosecutors on the criminal side of the office, including a Chief Criminal Deputy. Current staffing is below that level, although caseloads are higher.
UPDATED (see below) Was a series of on-line readers’ comments on the morning of Saturday, 09 Feb, simply “too much” for the Whidbey News-Times (WNT)? The newspapers’ on-line editorial chastised citizens about exercising their 2nd Amendment Rights at this past Tuesday’s Oak Harbor, WA City Council meeting. The WNT posted the editorial Saturday morning, and it was attracting a series of readers’ comments that were not favorable towards the WNT’s stated views. Around noon, the newspaper “pulled” the editorial from the on-line edition. The newspaper’s original link to that editorial is now met only with a page which reads “Page Not Found”.
Did the WNT decide to “pull” it’s editorial permanently from being on-line? Or, are they simply temporarily avoiding the growing number of on-line comments which had been criticizing the newspaper’s stated position? A readable copy of the WNT editorial appears below the “Read the rest of this entry »” link. The subject editorial was apparently printed in the locally distributed hard-copy edition, as evidenced by the Whidbey News-Times, February 09, 2013 (“Green Edition”) on page 6). Read the rest of this entry »
Well here we go again with more information, all from Island County records again proving that there is not now nor never has been a wetland on Emerson’s property
A February 6 Public Documents Request regarding the short plat division of the parcels surrounding the Emerson’s home and Emerson’s parcel indicated the following:
Official county records confirmed NO WETLANDS or Sensitive lands existed during the original development of that area in 1994.
Ken Wolf, longtime resident of Whidbey Island is still banned from contributing online comments in local papers via Facebook. Regardless of the message, these local newspapers still find it necessary to manipulate the online conversation by suppression of citizen’s comments.
Comments associated with a recently published an article in the Whidbey News Times entitled: Emerson vies for top spot on Island County commission http://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/news/185711381.html are being manipulated by the newspaper. Apparently Whidbey News Times finds that some comments are dangerous, especially those that are based on facts, and in the interest of public safety they feel obligated to suppress those fact based comments. Click on the images to enlarge.
Following is Homola’s Swan song that she is sending to plead her case for support of her ego driven, special interest group agenda items…
Sounds like Homola is planning to go out with another act of stupidity on her record
Word has it that she’s dusting off her old fight with her neighbor about gun noise
Last go around said, “According to Island County Sheriff Mark Brown, based on state law and county ordinance, Watanabe has complied with addressing the safety concerns surrounding the incident that the department looked at.”
“”Mr. Watanabe not only complies, but also calls ICOM every time that he is going to shoot,” Brown said.””
Now, the Whidbey News Times (WNT) has written an editorial christened “Our freedoms include free speech” .
In that editorial, the WNT claims to be defending “free speech” and stated “we are not censoring anyone’s opinion”. However, this editorial comes immediately following their act of TOTAL OBLITERATION of ALL 300+ comments posted in response to ONE letter which THEY THEMSELVES chose to print – a letter which is, quite hypocritically, STILL posted on-line.
Moreover, while the newspaper KNEW that one letter to be factually ERRONEOUS to begin with, based on previous news stories they had run, they chose to use that factually bogus letter directly on the heels of yet another editorial in which the WNT had warned folks that “readers unfortunately can expect to see inaccuracies, distortion and even outright lies” in the newspaper’s Facebook on-line forum.
Apparently, however, it’s perfectly okay for the WNT to print something both in the hard copy and on-line which they themselves ALREADY KNOW to be full of “inaccuracies, distortion and even outright lies”! And then they DEFEND IT after OBLITERATING 100% of the words ALL OTHERS had made in response!
The WNT’s policies and actions both epitomize and glorify journalistic hypocrisy!
A letter-to-the-editor titled Navy should act like our guests that received over 250 on-line Facebook forum comments in well under 24 hours had all comments completely DELETED and the notice “No Comments” was instead annotated on the letter’s web page. Many of the comments made had directly attacked the Whidbey News Times for publishing the letter in the first place, along with bashing the letter-writer for her liberal views and factually erroneous allegations. Read the rest of this entry »
It is interesting that many other citizens on the Island are also noticing that our local newspapers are not interested in reporting on issues that are not pro “establishment” or that do not fit the views of the reporters, staff or owners of the newspapers. As all of our local community newspapers are now owned by one entity and this should be troubling to all of us who wish to see both sides of an issue presented to the public.
Here is an article by another local blogger that has has had similar experiences with our local papers, his article starts out by stating:
Whidbey newspapers have unique abilities using Facebook as their operating platform for allowing comments from readers online. These abilities allow the Whidbey newspapers to change, distort, manipulate, and control the dialogue. Here are three methods used:
Masking comments – Masking is the art of hiding others comments from persons who remain logged on to Facebook. What is interesting is that when logged off those comments that are masked suddenly appear. An example of this method is shown below:
The document on left identifies the comments viewed when not logged onto Facebook. The document on the right depicts the comments visible when logged onto Facebook.
Click on the images to enlarge
Comment illusion – Illusion occurs when a person remains logged on to Facebook, and as long as that person is logged on, his/her comments are visible. After the person logs off Facebook the comment is no longer visible because it got deleted. Facebook has visiblity settings in their comments social plugin that allow a moderator to set the visiblity of comments made by individuals on the comment section. What this means is that if the Whidbey News Times or South Whidbey Record does not want your comment to appear they set your “visibility” to “has limited visibility,” and your comment appears to you and your friends but the comment will not appear to the general public. There is no notification of this to the person making the comment, and the comment will appear to you as long as you stay logged into your Facebook account. If you log out of your Facebook account the comments will not be visible to you either. An example of this method is shown below: Read the rest of this entry »
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Whidbey Island Fish Wrappers and their Progressive Opinions
April 10, 2013 by Ken Wolf | 9 comments
Keven R. Graves, executive editor and publisher of the Whidbey News-Times, certainly has a right to HIS opinion as outlined in his recent editorial http://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/opinion/202212551.html
It is no surprise however, that his typical Progressive Democratic Socialist spin fails to address another path for resolution in the Emerson case. That resolution requires the Island County Planning Department to admit they were wrong in their wetland assessment, drop the fines, and issue the building permit.
Unfortunately that won’t happen simply because Island County’s former Planning Director; Bob Pederson lacked the courage to admit his error. Instead Bob Pederson performed the cowardly act of sending a certified letter to the Emersons imposing fines on the last day as planning director. Does anyone think Keith Higman, who is acting planning director, has the fortitude to step up and right this injustice? I didn’t think so.
Keven R. Graves would have everyone believe that county officials are infallible.