The Washington state government is headed for a shutdown if a budget is not passed by the end of the month.
Wouldn’t a shutdown make Rodney Tom the Newt Gingrich of Washington State?
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
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Newt’s had three wives. How many has Rodney had?
Where is the outrage of the media?
Tom’s ;leadership .. whatever anyone believes about his intent .. has been a horrid failure.
@1 Who cares? He’s apparently intent upon screwing all of us.
@2 The “media”? Well, Uncle Frank no doubt thinks Tom is a Great American Hero. Otherwise, we have a few local TV stations, one owned by Fox and two others in the process of changing hands (so the staffers are spending most of their time working on their resumes). Meanwhile, even The Stranger and The Seattle Weakly are more interested in filling their pages with Summer Entertainment Guides at the behest of their advertisers.
We’re on vacation. I think I’m gonna go back to sleep.
@4 My Gannett stock went up 34% yesterday after GCI announced it’s acquiring Belo (and KING-5 TV). The new owners can’t be worse than Belo. (I hope I don’t have to eat those words.)
Well, it looks like the Legislature passed a last-minute fix to the Estate Tax, which prevented the treasury from having sent out huge sums in tax refunds. Inslee signed it quickly.
Good for the estate tax fix. Allow me to vent on the provision in ESSB 5095 which would strip health-care benefits from part-time college and university faculty. Part-time is defined as less than 80 “contact” hours per month. Contact hours are hours in front of a class only. Lecture prep, grading, advising etc. don’t count for work. No, and I mean no, full-time faculty have 80 contact hours per month. The emphasis on contact hours reflects the inaccurate and demeaning view that all faculty do is stand up in front of a class and talk. Hell, anyone could do that, those overpaid parasites!
My wife is .75 FTE at the UW as a lecturer. She works close to 80 hours a week. When she is not in front of a class, she is prepping labs (this is a science dept.), meeting with teaching assistants, grading, advising, attending departmental meetings, writing letters of recommendation to medical school, and, at home, updating her lectures with the latest research results. She’s been doing this for almost 20 years. She is the only person in her department capable of teaching several courses as none of the tenure-track faculty work in those areas. The pay is poor considering the hours and her education (PhD). She does it because she loves teaching. Her students go on to medical school, nursing, physical therapy and other beneficial occupations. Taking away her health-care benefits is an insult. So much for all the blather about the importance of education.
And our part-time legislators, they will still have their state paid health care benefits. Thank you Hill and Hargrove.
@7 It smacks of a GOP vendetta against academia.
There is a henchman on the Venture Brothers who works for Dr. Girlfriend and is one of the Murderous Moppets. His name is Tim-Tom and he is always anxious for permission to use his knife, and not in a pleasant way. Whenever I see Tim-Tom I can’t help but think of the unpleasant duo,Sheldon and Tom, in our Senate and think of their love of slipping their knives into selected backs. Conservatives hate, and I mean hate higher education. Currently several Southern governors are trying to turn their State university systems into branches of Devry business college, except Devry probably has to pay overtime. Tim-Tom is one of their minions.
@9 “Conservatives hate, and I mean hate higher education.”
They won’t be satisfied until everyone is as stupid and ignorant as them. They want a level playing field when they apply for Wal-Mart greeter jobs.