John Braun

Oct 11, 2024 | chronline.com | John Braun

When our state’s lieutenant governor, a Democrat, refers to a Democrat-sponsored bill as a “hot mess” — saying it for all to hear, while presiding in the Senate chamber — it gets your attention. While that isn't a term we normally use when describing a policy proposal in public, it accurately described House Bill 1589.

Sep 30, 2024 | thereflector.com | John Braun

Eighty years ago, a lawyer who had fled to the United States from Poland a few years earlier combined an ancient Greek word and a Latin word to make a new term: genocide. The word was coined specifically to describe the mass murders committed by the Nazis, which would come to be known as the Holocaust. By this time in 1944, the Soviet Union’s Red Army had already begun to discover the concentration camps where millions of people, particularly Jews, were slaughtered.

Sep 11, 2024 | seattletimes.com | John Braun |Mark Mullet |Andy Billig

Thank you Seattle Times. As business owners — Republican and Democratic — your Tuesday editorial on the International Association of Machinists (IAM 751) and Boeing contract negotiations was spot-on. To quote from the editorial: “It is the people who design and manufacture these technological marvels who ought to be valued above all others.”Well said. Employees are the lifeblood of any business. Without them, a business cannot survive.

May 6, 2024 | yelmonline.com | John Braun

Blocking a bad piece of legislation can often be as important as passing a good bill. That’s why Republican senators took a moment to cheer a few months ago when, in the face of intense pressure, our Democrat counterparts dropped their push to clear the way for the largest property tax increase in Washington history. Senate Bill 5770, initially sponsored by 20 Democratic senators, would have tripled Washington’s long-standing 1% cap on the annual growth of property taxes.

Mar 29, 2024 | chronline.com | John Braun

Knowing what the Legislature did and didn’t do this year with the six initiatives submitted to it by the people of Washington, I couldn’t help noticing what a big-city newspaper columnist recently wrote under the headline “The cost of repealing state laws on climate, health, and capital gains.” Right out of the gate, the columnist showed his true colors by falsely claiming Republicans “pushed through three key initiatives that go to the voters in November.” This refers to the three...