I’m Back!
Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 8:34PM I left the Yup’ik village, where I teach in Alaska, just over a week ago and have spent the time almost entirely with family. Together we have seen four movies (the new Star Trek, Night at the Museum, Terminator and Up), went out to eat several times and twice angered PETA and the EPA when we barbequed ample amounts of steak. That is a wild and crazy week for me and I enjoyed all of it. I’m refreshed and ready to get back to work on the blog.
Even when I am trying to focus on family the outside world seems to bang at my door. From time to time I give money to conservative Republican candidates and consequently I receive a steady stream of mail from the state and national party. A letter from Washington State Senator Mike Hewitt arrived several days ago and while he is not my senator, his 16th district is very rural and conservative so I decided to see what he had to say. Here, briefly, are the highlights.
“Sure enough, when the Legislative session began in January, the Democrats admitted the budget was billions of dollars out of balance. They had made so many campaign promises to special interest groups that they found themselves with a past due bill for $9 billion.”
During the 105 day legislative session, “The marmot was named the official state endemic mammal.”
“While they debated new taxes, the Democrats began to cut into the heart of state government – taking money away from colleges and universities, voting for higher tuition, and even reducing the supervision of convicted sex offenders.”
I wrote about how the Democrats were reducing sex offender supervision in a post title Blind Eye to Sex Offenders. Senator Hewitt correctly indicts the Democrats for cutting the budget in this manner, but other than that I find his letter to be a pretty weak denunciation of the party that has been in power for years. In addition to making us all less safe by granting greater freedom to sex offenders here is my review of the last Washington State legislative session.
Democrats have controlled the governor’s office since 1985 and they have ruled in both the house and senate for almost as long. Today the state budget is $9 billion in the red, but the democrats didn’t fix that problem. Other than making life easier for sex offenders, what did they do?
Washington is now Felon Friendly
In a March 2009 post titled Unfair to Felons, I told how the state is now a friendlier place for the 46,000 felons who have not paid court ordered restitution to their victims. Recently Secretary of State Sam Reed stated that, “When people have served their time and are out of prison, we want them to get involved in their community and get connected.” He went on to say that giving felons the right to vote would reduce the bureaucratic challenges in determining who is a legal voter.
So, because our highly paid bureaucrats can’t figure out who should be allowed to vote and because our elected officials want felons to “get connected,” they passed HB 1517 restoring voting rights to felons without a requirement that they first pay restitution to their victims.
Kill the Messenger
A month later in a post titled Strangle Performance Audits, I talked about how, in an effort to close the state’s multi-billion dollar deficit, elected officials planned to cut 15 million dollars from voter-mandated performance audits. What do performance audits do? Find ways to improve performance, cut budgets and save money. As I said then, “If you can follow this reasoning you might feel right at home in state government.” In the end, the state was saved from legislative stupidity by the governor’s line item veto.
Even they aren’t this Dumb--Are They?
I title this section Even they aren’t this Dumb because HB 2316 did not pass. Thankfully. This law would have made it illegal for someone working for Boeing to “threaten any legislator...with the relocation of manufacturing jobs...based upon the outcome of any pending or proposed legislation.” The legislation doesn’t name Boeing, but that is the target.
Boeing could still move all the jobs out of the state, they just couldn’t say that to anyone in Olympia. Shouldn’t our elected officials want to know if Boeing was planning to move?
I’m thinking Boeing should leave the state just because the Washington legislature was stupid enough to consider such a silly, unconstitutional, law.
Many of our legislators spent the entire one hundred day session passing, or trying to pass, silly or downright destructive laws. Apparently, some of our elected officials are just that dumb.
hb 1517, hb 2316 in Personal, Politics State
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