During remarks last year before the Washington Policy Center, a conservative think tank funded by wealthy, right-wing donors, King County Exec wannabe Susan Hutchison took a moment to plug their Policy Guide for Washington State, a collection of policy proposals for key areas of government.
“I’d like to put in a plug for a book that you have on your tables. It’s called the Policy Guide for Washington State and it’s published by the Washington Policy Center. Let me tell you about this book. I have read it cover to cover and it is one of the most extraordinary pieces of work about Washington State and the policies that make our government run. It hits on 10 different subjects from health care, education, transportation, tax policy and others. But let me tell you, folks… if you started this book tomorrow morning and read it through you would be smarter by dinnertime tomorrow night. This book makes you smart. So I highly recommend that you take it and that you read it.”
So… what exactly are these “smart” ideas that have Hutchison so excited?
On transportation…
Manipulating transportation policies to force a particular behavior coerces people into abandoning their individual liberties in favor of a socialistic benefit where supposedly a greater collective good is created.
[…] Reduce spending on costly, ineffective fixed-route mass transit. Policymakers should change spending priorities that heavily favor mass transit systems despite chronically low ridership. Riders of these expensive systems, like light rail and the Sounder Commuter Train, are being heavily subsidized by automobile commuters, yet research shows that fixed rail does nothing to reduce traffic congestion.
[…] The problem is that transportation spending is based on other agendas rather than congestion relief. As a result, the cost of bringing goods to market rises and consumers end up paying more for products.
Sound Transit’s East Link proposal is a good example. Reconfiguring the center lanes across Interstate 90 (I-90) for light rail, as agency officials propose, would not only fail to reduce traffic congestion, it would, according to the state Department of Transportation, worsen traffic congestion by 25 percent.
On the environment…
Proclamations about the risks from climate change have been revised again and again, always downward, and other information has been shown to be more about politics than science.
[…] Eliminate the mandated “green” building standards for public buildings…
On science…
Even when the science is accurate, it does not indicate that the problem ought to be addressed or that particular policies should be followed.
On I-1033…
Adopt a constitutional amendment to limit the growth of spending to inflation and population growth.
[…]
Colorado’s spending limit, in contrast, was enacted as part of the constitution and has proved much more effective at protecting citizens from aggressive state spending. Passed by the people in 1992, Colorado’s Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights (TABOR) limits the amount of tax revenue the state can keep each year to the sum of inflation plus population growth.
That’s right, in enthusiastically embracing Washington Policy Center’s recommendations (and in giving them over $100,000 from the foundation she ran), Hutchison was for I-1033 before she was against it, only worse, as the Policy Guide calls for the population-plus-inflation limit to be cemented in the state constitution, just like Colorado’s disastrous TABOR measure.
Hutchison can talk all she wants about being a moderate nonpartisan, but these are the policies she’s endorsed, these are the policies she’s helped fund, and these are the policies we must assume she’d pursue. If Hutchison wins in November, right-wingers will hail it as a huge victory, because she is one of them. But her only path to victory is to hide this fact from voters.
Hmmm, if reading that book made her smart, forgetting what she read in it will make her even smarter!
I just don’t trust this woman. I think she’ll say anything to get elected and then turn out to be a hard-core wingnut after getting in office.
This blog is a great public service. I just vote for whoever Goldy is against! It’s a simple rule I learned from papa Crusader!
@3 To quote a famous movie character, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
3 – There he is Marvin. Go get him! Remember this chestnut from him?
http://horsesass.org/?p=15688=3#comment-915867
As for Suzie… Oy!! The nausea….
Heaven help King County if that empty suit is elected.
Hutchison is getting her transportation advice from Mike Ennis, the transportation hack and paid liar at WPC.
Mike Ennis is knowledgeable on cow tipping. But that’s about it.
Gotta love the lib blogs out in full force trying to pull the discussion away from Constantine’s PDC violations…This is a non-issue, but I do love Goldy wasting his time on this!
Jacob @7,
Just like an asshole righty to attempt to distract from issues with a bullshit, bogus scandal. There is no PDC violation. Period. But you’re just happy to smear Constantine because you know the issues are against you.
At least when I smear politicians, I attempt to do it with facts, and I attempt to keep issues as part of the debate.
Hutchison is right-winger, pure and simple, and if voters know where she stands on issues, she can’t win. Your hope is that voters don’t know.
@8
The wingnuts are just hoping if they blow enough smoke the vast majority who aren’t really paying close attention will wonder where the fire is.
Hey, so far we’ve been pretty nice to Hutch. No accusations yet of sex with farm animals. Luke Esser ought to be getting pissed.
“I just wanna tell ya folks”…they weren’t trying to sell the book. They were giving it away, and it was apparently necessary for her to stand up and try to persuade people to take the copies they’d put out on all the tables instead of, you know…just leaving them there.
She also saw fit to urge that once people had taken their copies home, that they actually read the things. Er…what do people usually do with books?
Jacob @ 7
The playing field is hardly even when one side has to acknowledge facts, while the other side has to recognize that facts matter. Your side gets to spew whatever it wants without any tie to reality, while the adult side of policy debates has to consider reality. Jacob, might I humbly implore you to go fuck yourself. Your opinions don’t count.
So vote for Constantine and get more of the same. He’s just as crooked as Sims, maybe worse. A fucking fifth grader could do a better job than Dow. Besides, WHO THE FUCK would name their kid, Dow? It appears LOSER runs in the family.
@11 Geez, it must be a pretty bad book, if they put it out on a table in a room full of rightwingers and nobody wanted to steal it.
If this is the best Sandeep can come up with, Dow is screwed!
People are already confused as hell about I-1033. It doesn’t help that Dow is out there mouthing off about dipping into the rainy day fund to solve the budget mess. That is a completely unsustainable short-term fix. His solutions unravel anytime the press takes a serious look!
The entire management of his campaign, including the recent poor handling of the PDC smears, is a complete disaster.
For nuts sake, his right-wing opponent is for asking voters to approve a levy to pay for human services?! And all he’s got is squeezing a few more bucks out of non-unionized management workers for their health care??
How did we end up with Dow as the standard bearer? Simply awful.
@13 Uhhhh…what do you think of “Track” and “Trig”?
What does Suzie bring to the table for effective executive leadership? Absolutely nothing.
She would be an ineffective embarrassment.
From the quote from the book:
Take away the emotion-laden adjatives, and the statement becomes:
“…coerces people into abandoning their individual liberties in favor of a … benefit where … a greater collective good is created.”
In other words, this is simply a description of the Social Contract theory of government, whereby people surrender some of their liberty to the sovereign in exchange for a greater good.
This was enunciated originally in Thomas Hobbe’s (1588-1679) treatise “The Leviathon”, where he described the original state of man as being without controls of any kind, living in a society where life is “…nasty, cruel, brutish, and short”. Saving mankind from this fate, he argued, was his ability to use logic to determine that by sacrificing a portion of his liberties, a greater good could be created.
John Locke (1632-1704)took it a bit further in his Two Treatises of Civil Government, indicating that there were limits to the rights which can be surrendered to the sovereign, including the rights to “…life, health,liberty, and property”. This became the official philosophy of American political life when Thomas Jefferson incorporated it into the Declaration of Independence, (albeit with a small change) to make in-alianable (non-transferable) the rights to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”. The social contract theory of government is the basis for our government, with Hamilton, Madison, and Jay using it as the foundation for the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, which (unlike the British Constitution) attempts to specifically enumerate and define the areas where the different branches of government have authority over the people, with all other rights remaining with the people. The Bill of Rights took it further, by specifically prohibiting government from interfering with certain rights.
Now, it’s always a fair argument to discuss where in the broad spectrum of public affairs the limits of government should lie. The right-wing of late has argued for a minimalistic regulation of economic behavior (at least as it respects large businesses), but a much larger intrusion into individual privacy than imagined previously (Patriot Act). Those on the left tend to argue the reverse.
But I do find it disturbing that the authors of this book attack the very premise of British/American political philosophy, the foundation of our government system, as being “socialistic” and “manipulating”. Perhaps they should have paid more attention in civics class.
And perhaps Susan Hutchinson doesn’t understand government theory very well, either.
@17 “She would be an ineffective embarrassment.”
I wish I could hope that would be the worst possible outcome.