Morning Fizz
Our First Amendment Rights
1. Last month, we reported
that state Rep. Roger Goodman (D-45, Kirkland, Redmond) was sponsoring legislation to create a tougher legal standard to crack down on people who toke up and then drive—speculating that the lefty, drug reform candidate was actually standing up for potheads.
Our theory: One law-enforcement argument against legalization is that there's no way to regulate driving while stoned. By instituting a standard, cops can no longer make that argument.
Yesterday,Fizz ran into Goodman in Olympia and he told us we were 100 percent right. "I'm trying to get people used to the idea of regulation."
As an aside, Goodman also told us that studies show drunk drivers are far more dangerous than stoned drivers.
2. The Republicans convinced the Democrats to add two more spots to the state senate education committee, expanding it from eight to 10 seats.
Last time we checked in , the committee was evenly split—four-to-four— between pro-teachers' union votes and the (Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan crowd that wants to tie teacher evaluations to student assessment. (They'd also like charters if they had their druthers.)
The two new members, Sens. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) and Joe Fain (R-47, Auburn) side with the Duncan bloc; shorthand—they're fans of the Waiting for Superman movie. That math puts the union bloc in the minority, six to four.
You'll remember, Hobbs had initially tried to get on the committee, but had been left off.
Score one for Stand for Children—the activist group that's promoting Waiting for Superman—which spent $21,000 on Hobbs' election in November (the union spent $5,000 against him).
And while SFC didn't spend money on Fain, the union spent over $13,000 trying to beat him in November and over $30,000 trying to elect his opponent , incumbent Democrat Claudia Kauffman, who lost.
3. Washington American Association of Retired Persons, which was part of the progressive coalition that showed up in force in Olympia yesterday to demand the legislature consider closing corporate tax loopholes and raising revenue rather than going with the all-cuts budget proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire, was hawking a handy poll they'd done.
The AARP findings? Thirty-two percent of Washington voters want to balance the budget by finding new money and 45 percent want to balance the budget through balance of raising new revenue new and making some cuts.
Only 16 percent of voters support balancing the budget through cuts alone.
The poll was conducted by AARP's national pollster outside of D.C., Woelful Resarch Inc.
4. Yesterday, the state senate passed a bipartisan rule change. It used to be—for nearly 100 years, actually—that budget amendments needed a supermajority vote on the floor to pass, making it difficult for senators to do much more than vote yea or nay on the budget after it came out of the ways and means committee. The senate voted to change that yesterday, approving a simple majority requirement for budget amendments.
“There is an opportunity," conservative Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon (D-35, Potlatch) said in a press statement after the vote, "to pass a coalition budget—not a Democratic budget or a Republican budget—but a budget that truly is a reflection of the public and in the public’s best interests.”
Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill), the ways and means chair, added: "A simple majority of this body should make a decision on any issue. With this rule change, all members of the Senate have the opportunity to participate in the budget process fully and equally."
Sen. Murray quipped to Fizz after the vote, though, that he wondered why Republicans complained about the need for a supermajority to amend the budget, but not one to raise taxes.
5. During yesterday's opening ceremonies—a dynamite rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner," the Washington State Color Guard's opening bagpipe ritual, and the Pledge of Allegiance, several reporters at the crowded press table in the corner were too busy typing away to stand; some only rising for the pledge, but too busy filing copy during the Star Spangled Banner or vice versa. Or sitting during all of it.
A Senate security guard came over and scolded the table relaying a message that "we don't do protests here."
Two reporters, who shall go nameless (although not one from PubliCola, who, I think, stood during the pledge and during a moment of silence for the victims in Arizona, but not for the rest of it), straightened out the security guy, informing him: "No one here is protesting." ... "We're doing our jobs, we're not participating in this ceremony, we're observers," while filling him in on our First Amendment rights not to stand.
Liberal media!
Our theory: One law-enforcement argument against legalization is that there's no way to regulate driving while stoned. By instituting a standard, cops can no longer make that argument.
Yesterday,Fizz ran into Goodman in Olympia and he told us we were 100 percent right. "I'm trying to get people used to the idea of regulation."
As an aside, Goodman also told us that studies show drunk drivers are far more dangerous than stoned drivers.
2. The Republicans convinced the Democrats to add two more spots to the state senate education committee, expanding it from eight to 10 seats.
Last time we checked in , the committee was evenly split—four-to-four— between pro-teachers' union votes and the (Secretary of Education) Arne Duncan crowd that wants to tie teacher evaluations to student assessment. (They'd also like charters if they had their druthers.)
The two new members, Sens. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) and Joe Fain (R-47, Auburn) side with the Duncan bloc; shorthand—they're fans of the Waiting for Superman movie. That math puts the union bloc in the minority, six to four.
You'll remember, Hobbs had initially tried to get on the committee, but had been left off.
Score one for Stand for Children—the activist group that's promoting Waiting for Superman—which spent $21,000 on Hobbs' election in November (the union spent $5,000 against him).
And while SFC didn't spend money on Fain, the union spent over $13,000 trying to beat him in November and over $30,000 trying to elect his opponent , incumbent Democrat Claudia Kauffman, who lost.
3. Washington American Association of Retired Persons, which was part of the progressive coalition that showed up in force in Olympia yesterday to demand the legislature consider closing corporate tax loopholes and raising revenue rather than going with the all-cuts budget proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire, was hawking a handy poll they'd done.
The AARP findings? Thirty-two percent of Washington voters want to balance the budget by finding new money and 45 percent want to balance the budget through balance of raising new revenue new and making some cuts.
Only 16 percent of voters support balancing the budget through cuts alone.
The poll was conducted by AARP's national pollster outside of D.C., Woelful Resarch Inc.
4. Yesterday, the state senate passed a bipartisan rule change. It used to be—for nearly 100 years, actually—that budget amendments needed a supermajority vote on the floor to pass, making it difficult for senators to do much more than vote yea or nay on the budget after it came out of the ways and means committee. The senate voted to change that yesterday, approving a simple majority requirement for budget amendments.
“There is an opportunity," conservative Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon (D-35, Potlatch) said in a press statement after the vote, "to pass a coalition budget—not a Democratic budget or a Republican budget—but a budget that truly is a reflection of the public and in the public’s best interests.”
Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill), the ways and means chair, added: "A simple majority of this body should make a decision on any issue. With this rule change, all members of the Senate have the opportunity to participate in the budget process fully and equally."
Sen. Murray quipped to Fizz after the vote, though, that he wondered why Republicans complained about the need for a supermajority to amend the budget, but not one to raise taxes.
5. During yesterday's opening ceremonies—a dynamite rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner," the Washington State Color Guard's opening bagpipe ritual, and the Pledge of Allegiance, several reporters at the crowded press table in the corner were too busy typing away to stand; some only rising for the pledge, but too busy filing copy during the Star Spangled Banner or vice versa. Or sitting during all of it.
A Senate security guard came over and scolded the table relaying a message that "we don't do protests here."
Two reporters, who shall go nameless (although not one from PubliCola, who, I think, stood during the pledge and during a moment of silence for the victims in Arizona, but not for the rest of it), straightened out the security guy, informing him: "No one here is protesting." ... "We're doing our jobs, we're not participating in this ceremony, we're observers," while filling him in on our First Amendment rights not to stand.
Liberal media!
