Here is Washington State, conservatives are fighting to keep the place from being turned into a figurative province of Canada. Our selected governoress (aka Queen Christine) has decided that 129 votes is a ‘Mandate’ to use her first four months in office to make Washington second only to California when it comes to stupid laws.
She recently signed into law a bill that makes it so our new cars have to meet California’s uber-strict emission standards by 2009 and another one that says all newly constructed government building must be ‘Green’.
The environut lobby has planted themselves firmly behind her chair and are chanting into her ear. The first bill is going to raise the price of a new car in Washington to where people will drive the extra couple hours to buy them out of state, costing jobs, and the latter of the two will add 20% to the cost of construction of all new government buildings when you factor in the ‘Green� materials and extra regulations.
Of course, it won’t be too long after that the envirodweebs will say “See, it worked for the government buildings, why don’t we make everyone do it?� just like in, you guessed it, California. We’ll be required to spend an extra $30k to pay for the solar panels and flatulence de-ionizers.
But remember, 129 votes is a mandate: 3 million is not.
Here are a bunch of links to other stupid things going on around here:
Speaking of Queen Christine, it seems that her budget couldn’t make it past a voter approved spending cap, so her minions in the legislature did some fancy bookwork, transferring money to non-capped sections of the budget to squeeze it through.
Council Members Rewarded For Driving Gas Guzzlers
Basically, if you are a King County Council member, you get to estimate your projected monthly mileage for driving to and from Council business in your private vehicle at the beginning of the month. The bigger class of vehicle you drive, the more money you get.
You do not have to show that you drove the actual miles or even that you did it in the actual vehicle you said you were going to, so they have no way to check to see if you need to pay the money back. And just like all government budgets, if you don’t need the money the first month, don’t expect to get it the next month. So the figures just keep getting bigger and bigger.
Hit that link to read some of the numbers, but not if you wear a pace maker.
Sticking to the transportation theme,
Sounds innocuous enough, right? Read further.
The shuttle will drive through the city of Olympia and has a designated starting and stopping point; the city’s Farmers Market.
Still doesn’t sound too bad, right? Just a little bit further, please.
The current plan is to pick people up at “state buildings and parking lots�. Oh yeah, and it’s free.
So now we have a free bus that goes from state office complexes, makes few other stops along the way and goes to the Farmers Market, all in 15 minute intervals.
“But it’s for tourism!� is what the city is saying. Yeah right! It’s more like a state employee productivity killer. Just what we need, slower paper pushers.
Staying in the City of Olympia, our state capitol, on the property of the Port of Olympia there was once the “May Day Community Garden�.
That’s right, the city handed over land to commemorate a holiday celebrated by socialists, communists and other degenerate Marxists. Notice the words “was once�. It seems that someone finally came to their senses and took it back.
The folks at the Indymedia Center are sad. And angry; the first commenter on the post was juan “let’s build another garden and defend it�
You build your silly little garden anywhere you want, juan, just not on publicly owned property. I don’t know how you would plan to defend it though, you folks couldn’t defend yourselves against the girl scouts.
Speaking of hopeless losers, Seattle Mayor, Greg Nichols, has come up with a plan to give the bums and vagrants of the city (aka ‘The Homeless) EasyPass swipe card readers. At least according to a local left wing website (they aren’t smart enough to provide a link for their readers).
The major idea seems to stem from keeping people who are stupid enough to give money to panhandlers from blocking up traffic on freeway offramps when they want to help bums get drunk. And we all know that the bums would never steal someones EasyPass card and run it through multiple times, they’re just too darn honest. Talk about ‘swiping’ someones card.
Staying with the loser theme, a report came out a while back that told about millions of dollars being spent to transport methadone users to their dosage appointment.
Now, I used to schedule and dispatch these particular rides to the Methadone clinics under contract from the fed, the state and the county, and the story is true. You can thank George HW Bush for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the state administrator of the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) for that program.
The DISHES and the feds came to the conclusion that if the taxpayer did not provide the funding for transportation to the methadone clinic, the junkie might not make it there for their taxpayer funded drugs. So, you pay.
And since the contracted vans that are the norm of the DSHS and ADA program are filled with the elderly, the physically disabled and the mentally disabled, the main mode of transporting the junkies is via taxi cab.
When I was scheduling these free rides, I would stack the junkies three and four deep in a cab, much to the disdain of the cab driver. I didn’t care, he is still getting his money, and that money used to be my money.
My employer at the time was underbid did not win the renewal of the contract in 2000, so I left. I knew who did win the contract and I refused to work for them. I knew that they’d screw this very simple program all the way up and it looks like I was right.
And last, but certainly not least, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Linda Tompkins let 28 year old Jeremy Allen Arnold out of jail for a ‘marriage furlough’.
You see, Arnold was awaiting sentencing ELEVEN FELONIES and has, predictably not shown back up at the jail.
Judge Tompkins claims that ‘No one told her!’ about what he was in jail for and she wanted to give him some time to “Tie up loose ends�.
I propose that the judge be put in jail in Arnold’s place. Maybe then she’ll learn to ask a few fucking questions next time, instead of going with the “What I don’t know won’t hurt me” train of thought.