Eli Sanders observes:
Continuing a theme he’s been pounding for a while now, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee just released a statement praising the senate Republicans’ turnabout on education funding.
For those who’ve been paying close attention (which may only be political reporters, but that’s not an unimportant constituency when you’re running for governor), Inslee’s statement is an implicit reminder that Republican Rob “Education Candidate” McKenna has been totally silent on his party’s slash-and-reverse education snafu.
Of course McKenna has been totally silent. It’s because he’s a fraud on education. A bullshitter. Someone who is simply embarking on a strategy of claiming he is pro-education because doing so should be beneficial to his campaign. McKenna’s wants to be the “Education Candidate”, the man who would restore Washington’s underfunded and underperforming primary education system and be a champion for higher education in Olympia.
McKenna’s problem is that his strategy is transparent and, ultimately, may not be very convincing. His position on education is largely at odds with the Republican Agenda. First, it requires raising taxes, big time. McKenna cannot implement his promised funding increases for education without raising taxes. Period. And there’s no fucking way McKenna is going to raise taxes. I mean, hell, we can’t even get our Democratic Governor to do that.
No…the increased funding for education thing is total vaporware. McKenna’s “commitment” to education, should he win, will boil down to instituting a series of G.O.P.-inspired “education reforms.” We get strong evidence for this in McKenna’s silence when Republicans slashed education in their ill-fated budget and his lack of comment on the restoration of education cuts in the current proposal.
Don’t forget that one of the democratic turn coats in the stealth budget was Rodney Tom who also chairs the Senate Higher Education committee.
I forget the name of the legislator that is the chair of the house higher education committee, but I recall that she is equally oblivious and indifferent about the state of higher ed.
Maybe they are like Slade Gorton was at the national level. Slade always got himself on the Indian Affairs committee but it wasn’t out of concern for Indians, but rather as a way to be in a position to help undo tribal sovereignty.
So at the state level, Tom and whatshername might be on their respective chamber higher education committees because they abhor colleges and universities, just like Slade hates Native Americans.
Inslee is looking for his second pension, he and his cronies are bankrupting this country, and he got out while the getting was still good. We don’t need another Gregoire. MeKenna all the way!
As you folks say, time for Change Change Change
I can’t disagree with any of the “vision” statements about education on McKenna’s campaign website, but I see nothing about how he wants to fund education, or govt., generally.
To be fair, nothing on Inslee’s website either!
C’mon guys: lay it out for us!
Though the R’s are suddenly “restoring education funding”, Sen. Tom is again blackmailing the budget over charter schools, which are in his budget proposal. His charter bill would authorize 10 charter schools and transformation charters. Do contact your legislators to remind them that there is no evidence that charter schools actually work (see CREDO study which showed that charters performed the same or worse than their public school counterparts in 83% of schools studied.} And the public voice would be excluded as charters would not be accountable to local school districts. They would be managed by their non-profit boards (who may contract with questionable charter management groups such as K12Inc). There is no guarantee of a public voice or oversight or even parent participation.
And this budget charade is balanced on the backs of state employees and retirees as once again, the budget would be balanced by not funding pensions. So much for fiscal integrity.
You guys don’t have too much to worry about: the Democrat will win the gubenatorial election here in WA in November. Obama will get re-elected, and the make-up of the US House and US Senate will remain about the same. WA’s house and Senate will also be run by the Dems. No worries!
Eli Sanders, cupcake, It is illegal for the state attorney general to campaign while the legislature is in session.
This is why Rob Mckenna has been silent, you unresearched, reactionary idiot
As for the rest of you
Remember the famous Clinton 1992 mantra?
“It’s the economy stupid”
The economy will dictate 2012. Obama and the democrats have failed to deliver. Things are worse under their watch and the people have had enough, just like in 2010….
This is not rhetoric, but provable fact. Check out the amount of air travel in the US in 2011. IT IS AS LOW AS IT WAS IN 2001!!!! This is an indicator of a dying economy….fuel prices, gold prices, jobs, etc what should be up is down and what should be down is up….
All the spin in the world will not change these facts. In fact the more they try to spin the more they reveal how we cannot trust them….
WA State will suffer the same fate as well; if the state GOP can pull it’s head out of it’s prostate…
Jay is as an awful candidate and the D’s are going to lose the office of GOV in 2012 for the first time in a generation….Outside of Seattle, he is unknown. EVERYBODY knows Mckenna.
Let’s be honest, Jay is not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree; but Mckenna is….
Also, Jay just pull a Sarah Palin; he resigned and he his congressional district unrepresented. Why you ask, for the better pay in the office of governor.
All those folks who bitched about Sarah Palin resigning are going to prove themselves hypocrites if they don’t condemn Jay the same way….
Bad move Jay and the democrats….This also tells us that Jay has no brains running his campaign…more poor strategy moves coming….
@ 6
Sarah Palin didn’t quit her office to campaign for Vice-President. She quit because she was entirely corrupt, and several Federal investigations were going to show that. She quit when she found out that the position actually involved doing work, something that she had never had to do as mayor of a isolated town in the foothills of Alaska.
When she was called to task for literally farming out the responsibilities of the office to a professional manager “on loan” to her from Alyeska (while still on the payroll) she quit rather than be investigated for official corruption. She spent almost her entire tenure as Governor at her home in Wasilla, while charging the State for the transportation to the Capitol, and the compensation for renting her own house from herself.
Alaskans hate her, for good reason. She’s weak, and terribly unintelligent. She made Alaska look like a State full of backwards white-trash rubes.
notice how deadfroggy focused on Palin, while sidestepping, completely, Eli Sanders and his article.
not a single mention of jay or rob….
I think it is very safe to say, independent voters, particularly women, are watching the shitty republicans and see them for what they are. Women-hating mongrels.
A big middle finger to republicans.
Idiot @ 6
“Eli Sanders, cupcake, It is illegal for the state attorney general to campaign while the legislature is in session.”
Uh-oh…it looks like somebody didn’t do their homework. But it isn’t Eli. It is YOU, ya fucking wingnut moron.
It is illegal for McKenna to solicit campaign funds during the special session. It isn’t illegal for him to campaign. And, as the AG, it most certainly isn’t inappropriate or illegal for him to comment on pending legislation.
“This is why Rob Mckenna has been silent, you unresearched, reactionary idiot”
Ummmm…no. McKenna is free to comment on the budget as he wishes (as long as he doesn’t ask for campaign funds). For example:
Ya know, Squirt, you really ought to do your homework before shooting off your mouth…
She hales from Wasilla, the heart of the matanuska-susitna valley otherwise know to Alaskans as the
“mad zoo”.
First, we need to be clear about something. Adjusting tax rates is not a tax increase when overall revenue is down.
Washington residents have received billions of dollars of tax cuts over the last few years — because they’re spending less (therefore they’re paying less sales tax) and because property values are falling (therefore they’re paying less property tax).
As a hypothetical illustration, if taxes fall $1 billion a year, and the legislature increases taxes by $500 million a year, taxpayers have gotten a $500 million tax cut, not a $500 million tax increase.
By The Numbers
State and local taxes have been flat since 2008 — about $70 billon a year. Here’s how the spending mix has changed:
Education – 2008 (28%), 2009 (27%), 2010 (26%), 2011 (26%), 2012 (26%), 2013 (27%)
Health – 2008 (17%), 2009 (17%), 2010 (17%), 2011 (17%), 2012 (17%), 2013 (17%)
Transportation – 2008 (10%), (10%), 2010 (10%), 2011 (10%), 2012 (10%), 2013 (10%)
Welfare – 2008 (10%), 2009 (11%), 2010 (14%), 2011 (14%), 2012 (12%), 2013 (10%)
Protect – 2008 (8%), 2009 (8%), 2010 (7%), 2011 (7%), 2012 (8%), 2013 (8%)
Remainder – 2008 (27%), 2009 (27%), 2010 (26%), 2011 (26%), 2012 (27%), 2013 (28%)
http://www.usgovernmentspendin.....g_2007WArn
It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here. As the recession put greater demands on safety net spending, the offsetting cuts came from education, public safety, and general government.
The essential point about Jay Inslee as the superior education candidate is that Mr. Inslee is an educated person. As such he will fully demonstrate during his first term as governor the nuanced view of educational reality required; as the the system negotiates like a ship its way through the dilemma caused by the contrast between the testing goal and the deep cognitive creative goals.Few can negotiate this; as Governor INslee can. The Mckenna defunding of education is a symptom of the same problem of overall continuous Republican disregard for education.
‘nuf said.
Darryl
A hex on BOTH their houses.
I agree that McKenna’s support for higher education is cancelled by his lack of a tax policy BUT ..
the dems have their own form of hypocrisy.”our” side … folks like Murry, Carlyle, Brown etc etc have supported downgrading academic quaoity in WA state by such expensive and dubious efforts as the Bothell and Tacoma camouses and the WGU project.
Carlyle has gone off the edge by making naive comments about putting UW teaching syllabi etc in the public domain … a great idea IF you think we can do that w/o violating faculty rights to IP. He and others also have a naive faith in online education … while not being willing to pout in the $$$ needed to do this well.
McKenna, from what I have been told, does support maintaining the quality of W#A state higher ed. I wish I could say the same for our dems.
Tax money is only useful if we do not waste it!
SJ @ 16,
…Bothell and Tacoma camouses and the WGU project.
Yes…we know that you HATE the existence of these two campuses. It hardly seems relevant to the gubernatorial election.
Carlyle has gone off the edge by making naive comments about putting UW teaching syllabi etc in the public domain
Well…goddamn…I most certainly won’t vote for Carlyle for Governor!
McKenna, from what I have been told, does support maintaining the quality of W#A state higher ed.
What…because he says so? He doen’t seem to be serving up much in the way of leadership on it.
Senator Tom is one of the few truly education supportive legislators in either party. Both parties pretend to be about education but only a few of them understand that in addition to money, there are other fixes needed to improve the system. Getting rid of the worst teachers is one place to start. Senators Tom, Litzow and a few others get that and are not willing to let the WEA run this expensive system so poorly any longer. The WEA needs to understand that others have an interest and stake in our educational system.