It’s tough to hold out much hope for the special session when the Republicans put out press releases like this.
It is the last day of the 105-day legislative session and we have just adjourned. Unfortunately, a special session is on the horizon — an outcome that is disappointing for everyone.
We are headed to overtime primarily because of one issue: the operating budget. The governor and House Democrats want to spend roughly $1 billion more than the state plans to take in for regular tax collections in the next budget cycle that begins July 1. To do so, they would increase taxes on Main Street sectors of our fragile economy.
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Some things are worth fighting for — no matter how long it takes. We don’t want a special session, but the alternative is accepting an approach that has led to many of the problems our state faces today.
Honestly, if you don’t want any loophole closing no matter how ridiculous they’ve become over the years, it’s tough to imagine any amount of cooling off time being enough. But maybe being a few weeks closer to a deadline will help? Sure.
Once again a minority party representing a privileged few is demanding everyone bow down before them as if elections and majorities don’t count. Inslee should keep them in session through Christmas if that’s what it takes to get them to acknowledge that Washington is run on democratic, not plutocratic, principles.
Maybe that’s not the complete release, but it seems to leave out a lot. For example, it ignores the fact that despite the outcry over drunk driving deaths, Inslee’s proposals to crack down on intoxicated drivers by making the third strike a felony is still stalled in committee.
Now, I can see that there could be lots of opinions on the best way to solve the problem. But such differences of opinions should be resolvable in a short meeting – perhaps one hour long.
Unless, of course, you are afraid you will get a DUI after attending some fundraiser. Or if you want it to die in committe, so then Puddy can complain that “the Democrats were in charge of the governor’s mansion and the legislature, and did nothing”, ignoring the fact that the Democrats do not control the Senate under any stretch of the imagination.
Austerity is bunk.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/.....nt-mistake
math mistake and austerity — 62,000 results on BING
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman suggests that an essential underpinning of the “the intellectual edifice of austerity economics” has been called into question. But, adds Krugman, “the really guilty parties here are all the people who seized on a disputed research result, knowing nothing about the research, because it said what they wanted to hear.”
The really really really guilty parties are the folks who accepted the research knowing it might be bogus, or who went shopping for something to present as “analysis” that supported their predetermined conclusions–or the researchers who ostensibly made a “mistake” that resulted in just what their target audience was looking for.
It seems that the current head of the International Monetary Fund is of a mind that this austerity business is all peachy–and her predecessor very definitely wasn’t. If you think Srauss-Kahn’s supposedly getting caught diddling a hotel maid at that particular moment in time was a simple case of a horny old man unable to control his urges, then I’m sure you also believe it was just a lucky accident that Spitzer got nailed right after publishing an article predicting the implosion of the housing/derivatives bubble. I’ll also be willing to give you one helluva deal if you want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
@3 The best-ever interview with a Nobel Prize-winning economist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu6MwbYsoxI