Dear Editor,

I write today in vehement opposition to Langley Mayor Tim Calison, awarding his company the contract to build the new, proposed, expansive city park on the edge of town, a project funded by local bond money. Further, I feel like I’m living in a dictatorship when I, and many of my fellow citizens, speak out in protest against this blatant “self-dealing” and we our told by the Langley City Council to “Get over it.”

The fictitious example above would not happen in our fair city or any other in America. What we are witnessing nationally, with the President of the United States awarding himself the contract to host the 2020 G7 Conference at Doral, his private golf resort, is the complete break down of the two-party political system in America. This is not a Constitutional crisis; it is a traffic safety crisis. Half the country is not stopping at stop signs or red lights.

At a deeper level, this political breakdown in the two-party system due to the Republicans enabling a lawbreaking president, points out how provisional are the laws that hold the fabric of our society together, how much implicit trust one American gives to another American each and every day. I trust that you will stop at the red light. You trust that I will not attempt to run you off the road. We trust that the ferry boat captain will be sober. We trust that the food we purchase at the local market won’t be contaminated. We trust that our neighbor won’t poison our dog. We trust that the Republican party, when a majority in Congress, will not let a Republican president blatantly violate the Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution.

It is not enough to have a society of laws, to be a country of laws not men, as they say, for the laws are meaningless unless they are enforced. The prime responsibility of the Executive branch of the federal government is to ENFORCE THE LAWS NOT BREAK THEM.

When asked whether it’s okay for the President of the United States to self-deal in such a way by hosting the G-7 Conference,

the party line is they admire his bold action, suggesting had they only the balls to rip off the American taxpayer so.

Don’t you just long for the good old days when the Republicans were just a bunch of guys who drummed up fake weapons of mass destruction to wage a fake war?

Oh the memories!

Steven V. Horton, Langley