Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The convoluted "thinking" of a democrat legislator.

Thanks to soundpolitics.com.

I've frequently been struck by the fact that I wouldn't let most democrat members of the Washington State House run an elevator for me, let alone craft public policy or write laws.

In an email of monumental arrogance and stupidity, a democrat state representative confirms my impressions while she attempts, and sadly fails, to justify her support of democrat efforts to crush the will of the people by ignoring I-601 in favor of their pet initiatives, I-728 and I-732.

Dumb E-mails from Elected Officials

The latest in our ongoing series of Dumb E-mails from Elected Officials.

This one is from Rep. Dawn Morrell (D-Puyallup). It's in response to a constituent's inquiry asking her to explain her vote on SB 6078 gutting I-601, the popular mandate to control revenue growth. Not only does Morrell not seem to understand the initiative process and its central place in the Washington State Constitution, but she appears to be so dumb that even in her second term in the legislature, she doesn't know how to spell the word "legislature".
Rep. Morrell's ditzy reply follows:

Initiatives aren't the primary means of creating laws in this state. The legislator [sic] creates the laws. They are, however, good indications of what the electorate wants. Unfortunately you often end up with competing initiatives or initiatives that are unconstitutional or create unintentional problems. It takes a 2/3 vote of the legislator [sic] to change initiatives during the 1st 2 years after they pass. After the first 2 years, it requires a simple majority vote. We recently had to change an initiative for the firefighters that required a 2/3 vote. The firefighters thought they had the perfect initiative for their pension plans. After the initiative passed, they found a fatal flaw that would have cost the individual firefighters a great deal of money to fund the pensions. They came to us and asked us to change the initiative. The problem with initiatives is that they aren't vetted through the legislative process, the code reviser [initiatives are vetted by the code reviser] and vigorous testimony and debate as well as a governor's signature.

Initiative 601 was passed in 1993. There is not a business in the state that would create the restraints placed on those planning for the state that this flawed imitative [sic] did. As a result it has been changed many times since its passage.. I am attaching the list of changes to 601 that have been made throughout the years by both Republicans and Democrats. 601 was changed by the Republicans to create a two way street - this effectively created other accounts so the cap of 601 was never reached because the money was diverted to the accounts. The bill we passed this year closed the two way street in 601 and indexed 601 to the income of the residents of the state of Washington. [what the heck does she mean by a "two way street"?] A much more workable and "open" way of accountability to the people of this state. [meaningless incomplete sentence] We also had to fund initiative 728 and 732 that were passed by the people [Suddenly she respects the initiatives that are passed by the people? ]- the only way we could fund these initiatives was to change 601 so we could raise taxes for smaller class rooms and keep children on healthcare [728 and 732 included promises not to raise taxes . They said nothing about keeping children on healthcare]. I had always intended to vote for this bill but accidentally pressed the no button. It created quite a furor as we needed 50 votes to pass. I realized my mistake and changed my vote. I felt better when about a week later Rep. Buck on the other side of the aisle accidentally voted for the budget. He had to stand up like I did and ask for a revote.

Shows we are all humans.

Being a nurse, I have to do what is best for the state. Funding education, healthcare and creating a strong economy has to be at the top of the list and we have to do what we have to do to accomplish those goals.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at 11:18 AM Comments (21) Email This

As much as I fail to care less that she is a nurse, she has to do what is RIGHT REGARDLESS of her occupation outside the House and defend the will of the people.

I, personally, was all about funding I-728 and I-732 fully... and cutting the rest of the pet projects of the leftists and union hacks that make up our legislature in the process. That is, after all, what the WEA promised us... is it not?

In the end, she put the interests of the WEA, who lied repeatedly and directly about passing these initiatives without a tax-increase, ahead of the expressed will of the voters.

And legislator who believes that thinitiativeve process is not the "primary" way we make laws has failed to read Article One, Section One of the Washington State Constitution:

"ARTICLE I DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

SECTION 1 POLITICAL POWER. All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights."

The direct voice of the people obviously reigns supreme over the thought process of a ditz legislator who needs to find another line of work, besides nursing and law making.

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