Dead bills haunt the Internet
Two dead-on-arrival bills involving new fees on your car continue to live on in the Internet, where they’re spurring get-a-load-of-this blog posts and angry calls to action. (And it’s working. I get calls and e-mails about these proposals virtually every day.)
SB 6900 would have charged vehicle owners a yearly fee based on engine size. It would charge nothing for displacement of 1.9 liters or less, $70 a year for up to 3 liters, on up to $600 a year for an 8-liter behemoth.
SB 6923 is similar but would have based its fees ($40 to $240) on miles per gallon. In both cases, the millions of dollars raised would go to transportation projects.
And in both cases, the bills are dead; neither got out of committee before a key deadline earlier this month. Barring some highly unlikely procedural acrobatics to revive them, these bills will not become law this year.
But tell that to bloggers and fan forums on the Internet. Among those blasting the bills recently – and apparently unaware that they are dead – were Web sites catering to sport fishers, Corvette owners, Volkswagen fans, gun owners, duck hunters and many others. Some excerpts:
“These guys need to be run over by a semi … that is if the owner of the truck can still afford to drive it!” said one post.
“Democrat Eco-Commies in Olympia and D.C. Must be stopped! … Forward this e-mail to everyone you know and stop this bill,” read another.
“It’s been passed in Washington, and they’re trying to get it passed in other states,” a Chevy truck enthusiast site claimed. “This is gonna really suck for those V8s now.”
Trying to calm the waters, Senate Transportation Committee Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, took the unusual step last week of sending out a press release declaring 6900 “the deadest of dead bills.” (SB 6923 died earlier in the process.)
Washingtonians cannot afford higher fees on their cars, she said, and the bill never had a chance.
GOP on transportation budget …
“This budget is the equivalent of throwing a drowning man a short rope.”
– Rep. Glenn Anderson, R-Fall City, arguing unsuccessfully against passage of the Democrat-written House budget proposa.
Meating the challenge of global warming …
As lawmakers ponder ways to curtail Washington’s greenhouse-gas emissions (land-use planning, cleaner cars), the animal-rights group PETA is offering up what it says is a better way: Stop eating meat.
The group recently appealed to Gov. Chris Gregoire, claiming that meat consumption is the leading cause of global warming. Yes, vehicle emissions are a key part of the problem, PETA said.
“But by focusing on the cars that we drive, you’re missing an even more critical piece of the climate puzzle: the food that we eat,” the group wrote. It cited a 2006 United Nations report that found that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than cars, trucks, ships and planes. In fact, PETA said, becoming a vegan lowers your global warming more than buying a Prius.
Alas, it may not be so easy. The online magazine Salon looked into the situation last year and found that burning fossil fuels for power is a far bigger contributor to global warming. And in the car-heavy United States, writer Liz Galst wrote, livestock production produces just 6 percent of greenhouse gases, versus 19 percent from vehicles and planes.
‘And there it was’
One of the coups that House budget writers pulled off this week was plugging an extra $50 million into low-income housing assistance.
“We’re very pleased with that,” House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, said in a meeting with capitol reporters. “That was great.”
Less enthusiastic is the state convention and trade center in Seattle, which is where that money and a little more would come from. Calling the move “a drastic reallocation,” the convention center is trying to delicately make the case that hey, it had plans for that money.
All told, the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau says, the budget would strip $60 million. Some $55 million of that would come out of the convention center’s construction account, which is fed by a slice of state hotel taxes. And another $5 million would come from the center’s operating budget.
Convention center officials say they’ve already done a lot for housing. Since 1984, nearly $10 million in convention center dollars have spawned a dozen new or rehabilitated apartment buildings with 831 low-income units.
That, it seems, is what gave Chopp the idea. During a center expansion years ago, he said, he made sure money was set aside to replace units lost to the growth.
“I said, ‘Hey, let’s check it again and see if we can get some more for housing,’ ” he said. “And there it was.”
Chopp said the transfer seems appropriate.
“I really strongly believe in One Washington, and if I can use the economic development generator in Seattle to help the entire state, that’s a pretty good deal for everybody,” he said.
At last, an explanation for some of those floor speeches
In recent years, lawmakers in Washington have become wedded to their state-issued laptops. Where once the Senate and House were filled with lawmakers whispering like golf commentators into their desk phones during debate, it now often looks like an army of court reporters out there. On the floor and in committee hearings, most lawmakers spend hours staring into the LCD glow and pecking away at their keyboards. (And playing computer solitaire, I’ve noticed.)
Now a writer and former tech executive named Linda Stone has come up with an interesting theory: that people working on e-mail virtually stop breathing. She’s coined a term for the phenomenon: “e-mail apnea.”
“As the e-mail spills onto my screen, as my mind races with thoughts of what I’ll answer first, what can wait, who I should call, what should have been done two days ago; I’ve stopped the steady breathing I was doing only moments earlier in a morning meditation and now, I’m holding my breath. And here’s the deal: You’re probably holding your breath, too.”
That’s just not healthy, she concluded after talking to researchers and health experts. Among the potential fallout: getting fat.