Friday, January 21, 2005

Forum at the Library

Last night we went to a forum moderated by Val Ogden. She is an amazing woman and a great Democrat. She was elected as a state representative for the first time when she was 65 and then served for 12 years. She is still active and effective in politics. She drove up to Olympia first thing yesterday morning, met with most of the legislators and got a bipartisan sign-off on some big medical/mental health project. Then she came back down to Vancouver to host this forum. She is going to be 81 on February 11th and really doesn't show signs of slowing down.

There were two people on the panel: Judie Stanton and Don Carlson. Judie Stanton (D) just stepped down as a County Commissioner and Don Carlson (R) was just defeated for state senator. The forum was meant as a candid discussion of why people would run for election by people who have. However, after listening to this panel I still think it's because candidates are masochists.

Don Carlson was a little tiresome. He's a moderate Republican who had this message for teachers: "Manage your money better." That seemed pretty unfeeling. I wonder what message conservative Republicans have?

Val Ogden talked about how discourse had changed and become less civil. She wondered out loud whether it was due to talk shows or to the party system. Don Carlson hadn't really experienced a loss in civility. I think the explanation for that is that Republicans are ruder than Democrats. They try to emulate the talk show hosts. I have three Republican legislators in my district and whenever I communicate with them I get these rude blasts back, justifying their positions. "I'm sure you'll agree with me that..." and then stating something that no self-respecting progressive would agree with. Just incendiary stuff.

The other thing Judie mentioned was that lobbyists and lawyers are around our elected officials full time while there are very few citizens involved in government. This means that the average citizen just doesn't get the representation that business and special interests do. It was a very interesting evening -- especially after our anti-inaugural rally in the morning.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Senator Carlson's point about managing money better is right on track. Did you ever stop and ask WHY Tim Eyman's dumb-ass initiatives actually pass? It's because the average taxpayer (not the hard R's or D's) sees their money being misspent, and isn't too keen on throwing more good money after bad.

The state auditor (a Democrat) found a ton of people on our freebie Basic Health plan who weren't even qualified to be there. Additionally, DSHS failed their audit because there was no accountability in their $6.1 billion Medicaid budget...DSHS blocked the auditor from inspecting their records at every turn.

Teachers (at least their union) whine about cost-of-living adjustments, while they earn an average of $49K/year. Yet they always have the opportunity of continuing their education, with a guaranteed pay raise waiting for them when they've finished their classes. Hell, just an additional year's worth of time in service gets them a raise. The vast majority of folks in the private sector have NO cost-of-living adjustments. And what about the job security that teachers have? Thousands of people were getting laid off post-9/11, yet to my knowledge not a single teacher was laid off in Washington.

The fact is, people don't support increased taxes for government spending because they see government wasting the money they have now. That may "seem pretty unfeeling", but it's the truth.

RM

4:27 PM

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