Donna Watts challenged incumbent state Rep. Geoff Simpson (D-47) last November. Before the election she caught some knuckleheads in the act of stealing her campaign signs. She tells me it was four people with two vehicles, methodically pulling signs along Black Diamond Rd.
Watts pressed charges, and the first of the alleged perps is going to trial this Monday -- Joel Higa, charged with 3rd degree theft. The trial is the afternoon of June 25th in the South Division - Burien Courthouse, Courtroom BU2. Other suspects in the incident may go to trial later.
I found only one Washington voter with the name Joel Higa. The details match this guy, who recently graduated from UPS and won a community service award! His only state campaign donation is to ... Geoff Simpson.
Curiously, the even more slam-dunk-seeming and egregious-sounding case of campaign sign theft, directly involving successful candidate Deb Eddy, was dropped.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 22, 2007 05:55 PM | Email ThisMr. Higa, you don't have to like every candidate out there, but please don't feel it's your civic duty to pull up signs that don't belong to you!
Posted by: Michele on June 22, 2007 06:22 PMIf a property owner had the sign on his or her awn they were his or hers, and they could legally be stolen from him or her.
BUT IF THE SIGN IS ON PUBLIC PROPERTY, it was probably illegally left there and in any event being intentionally left there it should be considered abandoned and belonging to no one.
I can't have the cops prosoecute you for stolen property if I leave a beaten up bookshelf on the street w/ intent to abandon it, and you take it.
These are the laws of property rights so if you believe in strict construction of laws, there may well be no crime.
Retaliatory sign pulling maybe should be a crime, but if the signs are on public property we might need a new law to cover it. We shouldn't have an "activist judge" "legislate from the bench" -- right?
Posted by: Seattle Democrat on June 22, 2007 06:35 PMWhile I agree that the kid should be charged, hopefully with something less than a felony, I think justice requires that Eddy also face a judge and jury.
Posted by: deadwood on June 22, 2007 09:24 PMIT is a popular argument technique to simply ignore your opponents' best argument. usually you do it when you can think of no response!
Here I said "and in any event being intentionally left there it should be considered abandoned and belonging to no one.
I can't have the cops prosoecute you for stolen property if I leave a beaten up bookshelf on the street w/ intent to abandon it, and you take it.
These are the laws of property rights so if you believe in strict construction of laws, there may well be no crime."
Yoiu seem to suggest abandoning the general property laws of abandoned property upon which I relied in making my argument. If you do that you go down a "slippery slope" as oft happens when "activist judges" "legislate from the bench."
To find stolen property the court has to find property which means it has to recognize a continuing property interest of the campiagn in the signs. Where does this lead?
If the campaign OWNS A PROPERTY INTEREST in these abandoned signs, and someone else can't take them down, as you seem to advocate, then the campaign gets a property interest not only in the sign but also in the little location they take up-- kind of a lease hold -- a right to use a defined space -- and then no one can "evict" them.
Hm, let's keep our thinking hats on. What then?
The signs' owners now have a kind of leasehold or temporary license to use the public space in the eyes of the law. Now we are USING PUBLIC RESOURCES for PRIVATE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS.
Is that a good idea? Certainly there are plenty of state laws against that so the judge may perhaps not go down that road.
What if we do allow unrestrained use of public spaces for private campaigns? WE go down a very slippery slope leading to intimate government regulation of speech. You could find local governments enforcing the Democrat's stranglehold on all the good locations in town, if they got there first. Or vice versa with the Republicans. Awkward!
Or it could start having lotteries and issue a lot of fairness regulations and rules and permits and forms delving into how to carbe up the public space. If I can put a sign on the right of way, why not on the wall of Bellevue City Hall? Why not in the middle of the town park? Remember, the court cannot discriminate against speech unless there are on the books specific time place and manner regulations and it can never discrmiminate based on content.
My oh my do we want the GUvmt getting into this or unelected judges making up all this tangle of rules?
The reason these questions get so thorny is if you abandon the general law of property in this case you are creating a new kind of property interest -- the political sign interest in a public property space -- and we just don't have 1,000 years of common law on this to tell us all the rules.
THIS would get confusing. We'd be on uncharted waters and slide down a slippery slope of judicial activism.
Of course if you don't give a hoot about law, precedent, judges who follow the law, etc., or if you just want to lock up a Democrat, hey, none of this mattters.
Posted by: Seattle Democrat on June 22, 2007 11:35 PMLast fall, my son interned for the Eddy campaign (God help me and God save him!) He could not force himself to see any problem with Eddy's actions. Even if the signs were legally confiscated, it shows very poor judgment for a candidate or her campaign staff to take on the role of policing campaign laws. They should have simply notified the local government and election authorities, and maybe put out a press release slamming the other side. Eddy deserved to be fined at least. It is such a short step from picking up "illegal" signs to slashing the tires of "inconvenient" republicans.
If the opposition steals or destroys your signs, contact them and let them know that if it continues, you'll get theirs, ten to one. Then do it. They write the rules when they start that crap.
I know Donna personally. We are less better off because she is not representing us.
Posted by: eastkingcountyrednecklogger on June 23, 2007 06:35 AMIsn't it just amazing he has so much time on his hands, considering his 2 jobs financed by all of us?
Posted by: WXYZ on June 23, 2007 10:56 AMhttp://fallenearth.org/blogs/yoshitaka/
Posted by: Rey Smith on June 23, 2007 11:52 AMDems are too stupid and too arrogant for such a simple competitive solution. Why try to outsmart your opponent when you can simply suppress him? That's the Dem mantra. Note the latest attempts to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Same thing.
Joel Higa is a well programmed little Moonbat Youth, doing the dirty work of the left.
Posted by: Jeff B. on June 23, 2007 12:23 PMSup, Flying Monkey Ahmadinejaddy-dude?
Alahu akbar!
Posted by: Rey Smith on June 23, 2007 01:15 PMFunny thing. I will probably vote for this D in the primary. Don't know anything about the token R.
And maybe the folks remember that last year I had 4 x 8 signs in my front for the local R candidate for State Rep.
I also remember the story of the Democratic County Exec. lying about his permissions for sign placement.
Posted by: swatter on June 25, 2007 07:39 AMBetter to deface them with big stickers that say "She'll raise your taxes SKYHIGH!" and "If there's a child predator around, you can bet she'll take HIS side!"
That's what I did with the two dem signs that appeared on my property once, and they were gone 24 hours later.
Posted by: johnny on June 25, 2007 01:27 PMI'm a recovering Democrat (15+ years clean and sober). Funny thing: When I used to put Demorat signs out, they stayed until I took them down. The first time I put out Republican signs they were stolen (off my property by-the-way) in less than 3 days.
I have many more interesting comparisons from my two political affiliations.
#19: So true. So very, very true. Demorat tactics always parallel Uncle Joe, and his admirers . . . like Barbara Boxer.
If I place an item on my property and affix it to the property it remains my property. If I plant some petunias and someone steals them, it is theft of my property. Additionally, they entered my property illegally (criminal trespass with intent to commit another crime). Especially, as happened with me when I was running for city council, the signs that the perps stole had my name on them (pretty hard to argue that signs with my name on them, on my property were not "MINE"...but the police, who got a complete confession from the thieves did not prosecute, even though they had several dozen signs...two weeks later, I was shot at 5 times on my property.
Again, basic law, my property placed in a legal place is still my property. If I am a realtor and I place an a-board temporary sign, this sign is not 'abandoned' property.
Considering the complete theft of private property by the demoncrats on the county council, how can anyone take a D seriously when he/she talks about property rights?
When putting up signs, always carry a video camera, never knock over other signs, always place pine tar on the top of your signs--it pisses off vandals and thieves!
Posted by: ApolloKnowsAll on June 26, 2007 10:47 AM