Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Democracy Gets the D.C. Treatment in Washington State
Democracy G.O.P. Style in Washington State
by Scott Horton One of the open chapters in the internal corruption scandal rocking the Justice Department relates to Washington State. The U.S. Attorney in Seattle, John McKay, a uniformly well regarded Republican prosecutor, was fired on December 7, 2007. It appears that his termination had a lot to do with the sense among the leadership of the state’s G.O.P. that he “didn’t do enough to help” with the elections.
In particular, it appears that McKay did not engage in voter suppression tactics that the Republican hierarchy wanted to use to keep minorities away from the polls. He also failed to rally to the G.O.P.’s side in an exceptionally narrow 2004 gubernatorial contest, in which the Democrats prevailed by a paper thin margin. Of course, had McKay done what the party bosses wanted, he’d probably have committed several felonies.
This weekend, [Feb. 10,11] the Republican primary in Washington grabbed
headlines because of the inexplicable conduct of the state’s G.O.P.
apparatus. With 87% of the votes counted, the Republican leadership
decided to call it quits and declare John McCain the victor. At that
point there were a few hundred votes difference between McCain and
challenger Mike Huckabee. The state’s Republican leadership was backing
McCain. Understandably, Huckabee cried foul, making an unusual
statement in which he compared the G.O.P.’s management of the election
to the old Soviet Union:
The Washington Republican
chair, Luke Esser, apparently has a very unusual understanding of how
the democratic franchise should function. Or perhaps he believes in a
form of representative democracy in which he and his friends make the
decisions on behalf of all of the voters. Here is one of Mr. Esser’s
college-era columns on the subject of voter’s rights:
"Like any
sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents,
enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To
win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the
polls as possible. Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed
individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his
constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter
entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government
services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will
vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the
slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.
"Many
of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes,
sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have
been outlawed by busybody judges. The only means of persuasion left
available to us are Acts of God, who we know is exclusively on our
side. I’m talking about seriously inclement weather. I want Biblical
floods and pestilence. I will settle for rain, sweet rain. The
deadbeats won’t even go out in the rain for their welfare checks (they
send one of their social workers to pick it up). There’s no way they’ll
vote if it’s raining."
We should give Esser credit for an
even-handed application of this rule. Apparently he’s just as happy
about stopping his fellow Republicans from voting in a primary as he is
Democrats in the main contest.
Could it be that a highly
respected Republican U.S. attorney was dismissed for “not playing ball”
with someone who professes these sorts of shenanigans? More on that in
my upcoming article, “Voting Machine.”
Writings 
One of the open chapters in the internal corruption scandal rocking the Justice Department relates to Washington State. The U.S. Attorney in Seattle, John McKay, a uniformly well regarded Republican prosecutor, was fired on December 7, 2007. It appears that his termination had a lot to do with the sense among the leadership of the state’s G.O.P. that he “didn’t do enough to help” with the elections. 
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