I think it’s instructive that people who are anti-tax like Rodney Tom usually run on we can magic up solutions. They’ll talk about reform or combating wastefraudandabuse. So it leaves the impression that you can lower taxes and at the same time keep our programs in place.
So they don’t seem to ever campaign on dismantling the social safety net. But when they get to Olympia, it turns out that — whoops — they’re doing just that. So we get to Tom trying to repeal the never even implemented family leave law.
Braun’s bill has 10 co-sponsors, including two Democrats who have joined with Republicans to form a new coalition this legislative session. The measure has its first public hearing Monday. Braun called Keiser’s counter-bill one of “good intentions, but good intentions aren’t always affordable.”
“We already have a program on the books that we can’t fund,” he said. “Expanding it seems contrary to public interests.”
Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, D-Medina, voted in favor of the paid family leave law when he was in the House, but he is now signed on to Braun’s repeal bill. He said some companies already are moving in the direction of paid family leave, but that taxpayers and businesses wouldn’t support a tax increase for a statewide program.
When he voted for it initially, it’s presumably at least because he thought his constituency supported it. So when he talks about the will of his constituents to not raise taxes, that has to be counterbalanced against the fact that his constituents probably want to live in a state with a strong safety net. So maybe when people like Rodney Tom run for office next time, they can be honest and instead of reforming education they can talk about how they’ll make schools more overcrowded. And instead of finding waste they can talk about destroying the social safety net. Because that’s the choice he and the rest of the GOP majority want. Maybe when that choice is laid out, their constituency won’t be so happy with the low taxes they keep promising.
Tom is majority leader? Now we know what the bribe was.
Meanwhile, in New Mexico’s legislature, a jackass (guess which party) has introduced a bill that would criminalize having an abortion after being raped on the putative grounds that aborting the rapist’s baby is “destroying evidence.”
(Personally, I don’t see how that can pass constitutional muster; but when did a little thing like the Constitution ever dissuade jackasses from being themselves?)
There’s a difference between the parties, and there’s a reason (actually lots of reasons) why Washington voters didn’t put the Jackass Party in charge of our state senate.
Tim Sheldon is a known jackass, so he can’t really be accused of deceiving voters. But Tom was elected on false pretenses and we’ll have to trust the voters of his district to take care of their jackass in the next election.
“Passion, openness and naivete are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and a contrived decency that conceals crimes.” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
I drew a cartoon about Rodney Tom back in the day… (he bought it too!)
NBC reports today that Republicans have a new stratgy to grab the White House in 2016: Gerrymander the Electoral College.
That worked so well in Congress — where Republicans have a “majority” despite losing the 2012 House elections by over a million popular votes — they’re now ready to take it mainstream.
The idea is to pass laws in cherry-picked states that apportion electoral votes by congressional districts. If this system had been in place last year Mitt Romney would have “won” the presidential election.
Never mind that a solid majority of American voters don’t want the Jackass Party running our country or dictating their jackass policies (see above) to the rest of us. This is about figuring out a way to impose minority control over the majority.
They couldn’t do it by keeping American soldiers deployed to combat zones from voting. They couldn’t do it by hacking Ohio’s voting machines. So, now they’re going to try Option C.
It’s up to us to stop them. The Rodney Toms of the world need not apply; this is a job for rabbits, not little boys who call themselves “Democrats” but behave like Republicans.
“They couldn’t do it by keeping American soldiers deployed to combat zones from voting. They couldn’t do it by hacking Ohio’s voting machines. So, now they’re going to try Option C.”
You left out a few like vote suppression and intimidation. So it’s more like “Republicans Shall Rule, Plan F”. Republicans remind me of the Brain character in the Animaniacs cartoon show. He’s the lab rat who on every show comes with a new plan to rule the world.
The 5th District has vote to censure Tom and Sheldon on the thinking that our Senator Mark Mullet’s influence has been curtailed by his actions.