A while ago, I wrote my Seattle elected officials asking to keep Seattle a sanctuary city. Now here’s one asking my legislators (find yours here) to keep, and hopefully improve our health care system:
I don’t know exactly how Donald Trump and the GOP Congress plan to change healthcare in America, but I’m urging you to make sure Washington residents still have access to healthcare after the Republican Congress repeals Obamacare. I hope that means a health care exchange, and I would love to see a public option included in that. Or if you can find the votes, just universal health care.
If Congress allows sales across state lines, I would hope we sell a public option as widely as possible. Without a motive to skim off the top, it might be able to make money for the state and provide better health care for the rest of the country.
Thank you,
Carl Ballard
HorsesAss.org
Great idea, Carl, but the Senate Majority
CoalitionRepublicans won’t allow your hippie socialistic commie nonsense to —Work on bills in the Senate may be delayed by at least a couple of weeks after Republican state Senator Brian Dansel resigned Tuesday to take a job as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. The vacancy leaves the state Senate with a 24-24 partisan split. Senate Majority Leader Joe Fain, R-Auburn, said he does not plan to hold a floor session until a replacement for Sen. Dansel, R-Republic, is in place. That, according to Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, the leader of the Republican-led Majority Coalition, may happen by February 6th.
Also this week, Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, announced he is taking a temporary position with the Environmental Protection Agency. He said he will keep his state senate seat, commuting between Washington D.C. and Olympia. There is also speculation that Sen. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane may take a job with the Trump administration, leaving the Senate tied for a longer period of time.
Golly gee willikers! It looks like a whole lot of local Republicans will be seeking fame and
glorygraft in our new Administration! Time for us progressives to move ahead after they leave.Don’t let the revolving door hit you in the ass on the way east, boys!
Um, Carl?
Using state-sponsored universal health care as a means of making money for WA state is skimming off the top.
You wouldn’t want your health care dollars spent to benefit some other state program in, say, Idaho if the only cross-state exchange were offered by that state. What makes you think Idahoans would want their health care dollars going in part to fund non-health care programs in Washington state?
Or perhaps you’re willing to see your health care dollars used to generate sufficient profit to fund a charter school in Boise.
What makes you think Idahoans would want their health care dollars going in part to fund non-health care programs in Washington state?
If Idahoans can obtain lower-cost, higher-quality health care by purchasing it from Washington State than they can buying it in Idaho, then market ideology says Washington State deserves the profits, and can do what it wants with those profits. If some Idohoans want to put ideology above access to health care, they’re free to do that.
Given that a Republican Congress opposes universal health care both as a matter of blind allegiance to failed ideology and also as a way to receive
campaign contributionslegal bribes from the insurance industry, cross-state sales shouldn’t be a problem anyway.I really think this Sanctuary labeling is just bushit. Bullshit the Rubes and Hillbilirs can believe in.
What. Enter excuse just to cut spending and specific spending targeted at liberal enclaves. Meanwhile the bickering goes back and forth – exactly what the Repukes want to happen. They take every opportunity to demagogue an issue to death with no end result but to obstruct and deny and to delay and hold funds.
Miami-Dade Will Abandon ‘Sanctuary’ Immigration Policies After Trump Order, Mayor Says
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....r7f8g833di
The trolls would like everyone to believe that a sanctuary city is a city that protects a felon or a murder or so designated to give out welfare to illegal immigrants.
When it is nothing more, unless someone can tell me differently, to avoid holding people that don’t need to be detained in a jail and make cities waste taxpayer dollars by doing so.
Please tell me what specific action by a sanctuary city is taken that you trolls disagree with.
Fucking trolls dumbing down the dumber even for more dumbness.
You wouldn’t want your health care dollars spent to benefit some other state program in, say, Idaho if the only cross-state exchange were offered by that state.
When legislators in Idaho, who have kept their state’s minimum wage as low as possible for as long as possible, enact (a) a public-insurance plan (b) into which Washingtonians can buy, then we can discuss your tender concerns. Until then, we should worry about higher-probability issues, such as the risks pigs pose to aerial navigation, unregulated use of leprechauns, and contamination of our potable water supply by faerie dust.
@ 1
Time for us progressives to move ahead after they leave.
Hey, do you think you’ll be more successful than you were that time you tried to “move ahead” after a Republican woman left – to go breast-feed?
When Republican Senator Leaves to Nurse Child, Dems Take Advantage — Power Play Stirs Outrage
OLYMPIA, March 13.—When state Sen. Janea Holmquist Newbry, R-Moses Lake, left the Senate floor Tuesday to nurse her newborn son, Senate Democrats didn’t miss a beat.
Immediately they moved to take over the chamber.
While minority Democrats say they were making an important political point, outraged members of the Republican-leaning Majority Coalition Caucus say a greater principle of basic human decency is involved. They say they are incredulous that the Senate Democratic Caucus would take advantage of a situation created when a mother left to breastfeed her child.
http://washingtonstatewire.com.....ver-floor/
From taking advantage of a nursing mother’s desire for privacy to lying about agreement to hold a US Senate vote, Dem legislators demonstrate why they cannot be trusted.
This is why voters restrain your power. Because you will not use it honestly.
@6
Yes, the same Republicans who opposed workplace accommodations for working mothers statewide were the first to scream about Democrats taking advantage of exactly such an accommodation the Republicans had tried to grant to one of their own Special Snowflakes. Republicans didn’t notice their hypocrisy because hypocrisy is their political lifeblood, as this incident nicely showed.
While I’m not a Democrat, I will note voters gave a majority to the Democrats in 2012. The lack of Democratic control in that chamber happened over the expressed will of us voters, not because of it.
This may help to explain why Republicans have been locked out of most statewide offices for years, if not decades.
Tensor, if you’re,not a Democrat, what are you? I don’t believe you’re a Republican, so are you a Libertarian or an independent? Are you a socialist or a communist?
The lack of Democratic control in that chamber happened over the expressed will of us voters, not because of it.
Damn you Senator Sheldon!
The lack of Democrat control is due to the lack of Democrat control of Democrats.
Maybe you can compel Potlatch to secede.
@8:
Nothing you wrote contradicts the reality that voters gave a majority to Democrats. Sleazy backroom deals, not voters, were the reason Democrats do not have control of the chamber.
(The truth somehow never sounds quite as appealing as does your version of events, now does it? That’s a real chronic issue the truth should try to resolve soon, mm?)
@4
Of course it’s a crock. The real goal is making sure LE will start demanding extra ID from people who ‘look’ like they might be here illegally. They want to take Sherriff Joe’s tactics national.
Probable cause? Well you were going 7mph over the speed limit and you have olive skin and Raven hair. I need to see your license, registration and a green card.
@ 9
So, we should dispense with legislative districts, then?
There should be a statewide popular election to choose a party to control the state senate chamber, and the winning party, like the Electoral College, should get to appoint its own members to run the whole thing?
Or should it be proportionate, and if 55% of the state’s voters want Dems to control the senate, then 55% of the seats are allocated to Dems to appoint whomever they want, is that it?
And would that eliminate backroom deals, or fits of honesty that might compel someone representing one party to vote with the other party on some issues?
Can we be Switzerland sometimes and Washington others, according to what tensor wants at the time?
Clown.
So, we should dispense with legislative districts, then?
I sincerely hope you didn’t throw your back out when you bashed your straw man.
My radical proposal was to have legislators do what they told their constituents they would do. You know, when they asked those voters to hire them.
But I won’t expect someone who got so easily Chumped by a con man on the TeeVee to understand the concept of honesty.
Live on your knees.
@ 12
My radical proposal was to have legislators do what they told their constituents they would do. You know, when they asked those voters to hire them.
I am confused. Your radical proposal is about Tim Sheldon? ONLY about him?
Are you upset because he doesn’t support state funding of sports stadia?
Do you think the voters who re-elected him in 2014 did not know at that time that he is a Democrat who caucuses with Republicans?
Do you think that had the GOP been able to run a candidate against him in the general election that year that he might not have been re-elected?
I’m so confused and I cannot see so well from this genuflected position.
@15
Thank you for confirming my belief that any discussion with you involving honesty in our elected officials is a complete waste of time.
Perhaps you hope the farmers of Washington State will thank you for your lavish use of straw?
Live on your knees.
@ 14
Hey, all I asked for are specifics. That you can’t provide them is wholly unsurprising.
@16:
I made a general statement. You’re free to agree or to disagree with it.
Did the voters in 2012 know that “Prefers Democratic Party” really meant, “…but will vote like a Republican” in some cases?
I’m just asking for specifics. If you don’t supply them,
no one will be surprised.
@ 16
Did the voters in 2012 know that “Prefers Democratic Party” really meant, “…but will vote like a Republican” in some cases?
I don’t know for certain, tensor.
Although Sheldon wasn’t up for re-election in 2012.
State senators serve four-year terms. Sheldon won elections most recently in 2010 and 2014. His seat is up for election again next year.
I guess I would say voters should have had some clues.
Sheldon voted for GWB44 in 2004. In that case he voted like a Republican, right?
And in 2012 he voted with a bunch of Republicans against gay marriage, tensor.
So although I don’t know for certain, I would say that for voters paying attention, Sheldon served adequate notice that he wouldn’t always toe the Democrat party line. In 2012, since you asked about that year, tensor.
Are those examples sufficiently specific for you?
No babbling buffoon this morning?
So nice!
Sunset is at 5:03 pm – that’s when HA becomes a babbling FREAK free zone.
Be there!
Although Sheldon wasn’t up for re-election in 2012.
Then it would make sense to conclude I was not talking about Sheldon. (Why, it’s almost as if you introduced the subject of Sheldon, not me!)