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January 17, 2010 in City
Rhetoric springs a leak as Washington legislative session gets under way
OLYMPIA – With only a week down in the legislative session, it’s too soon to make solid predictions about anything meaningful. It’s not too soon, however, to predict that the quality of rhetoric can only get better.
That’s because it probably can’t get worse.
There have been quite enough references, thank you, to the Founding Fathers. No disrespect to the Dutiful Dads, but they were mentioned last week on everything from legalizing pot to checking names on initiative petitions to rejecting federal health care plans.
A legislator at the tea party rally on Thursday talked about getting back to the country the founders intended, and since the speaker was a woman, it seems that would mean she’d be out of a job because the founders didn’t allow women to vote, let alone run for office.
What would have happened, mused Rep. Christopher Hurst as he made a pitch to keep signatures on petitions public, had the Declaration of Independence been sent off to London with the names blacked out. “Would we even be here today?” the Pierce County Democrat wondered. That was more likely a reference to the grand sweep of American Manifest Destiny extending the country from 13 original colonies to the Pacific Ocean than a question of why everyone was stuck for two hours in a hearing room.
It does seem worth noting, however, that the French army and fleet helping the Continental Army at Yorktown had more to do with starting a new country than whether King George III could read names at the bottom of the parchment.
Not to be too picky with words, but there is much talk of “incentivizing” business, or sometimes “incenting” it. Almost makes one wonder about the need to offer incentives to the legislative and executive branches to hire some English grammarians, or perhaps stimulate the economy by purchasing dictionaries.
There were a few odd nautical references by Republicans, who sometimes view their minority status in both houses in dire terms. After Gov. Chris Gregoire’s State of the State speech, GOP leaders gathered to explain – here’s a shocker – that they’d handle the budget crisis differently: No tax hikes, more budget cuts, boost jobs except if they are state jobs, in which case cut them.
Gregoire was asking for suggestions, Sen. Joe Zarelli, a top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said, and they’ll make some. “But at the end of the day, we’re passengers on the Titanic,” he said. They can’t make the captain and crew change course.
“It’s more like the Lusitania,” corrected Rep. Richard DeBolt, House minority leader.
The what? asked Zarelli.
“The Lusitania. It’s the torpedoes that are going to get us,” DeBolt said.
It’s unclear at this point whether the Republicans will spend more time debating on which sinking ship they find themselves. One could make a case for the Andrea Doria, which collided and sank in the fog, if one likes to think of government bureaucracy as an obscuring element. Or the Normandie, which was a really nice ship when it was in the private sector, but a real disaster when taken over by the government.
No one is yet singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but at least Zarelli avoided his slip-up from the previous week, when he referred to the USS Titanic, which wasn’t the ship that went down in 1912, but the ship in a 1960s ballad that might be better used to convince the state not to legalize marijuana.
Spin Control is a weekly column by political reporter Jim Camden. It also appears as a blog at www.spokesman.com/blogs/ spincontrol, with daily posts, reader comments and videos, including a video that helps explain the reference to the USS Titanic.
Romney/Paul split weighing on county GOP 
Liberty_Bell on January 17 at 8:30 p.m.
But let us suppose, that in this our ship of state, the pilot is drunk, the most of his associates are asleep, or after large and unreasonable tippling together, they regard their eminent danger in approaching a rock with idle and negligent jollity; the ship in the mean season instead of following her right course, that might serve for the best advantage of the owners’ profit, is ready rather to split herself. What should then a master’s mate, or some other under officer do, who is vigilant and careful to perform his duty? Shall it be thought sufficient for him to pinch or punch them who are asleep, without daring in the meantime to put his helping hand to preserve the vessel which runs on a course to destruction, lest he should be thought to intermeddle with that which he has no authority nor warrant to do? What mad discretion, nay, rather notorious impiety were this? Seeing then that tyranny, as Plato says, “is a drunken frenzy or frantic drunkenness,” if the prince endeavour to ruin the commonwealth, and the principal officers concur with him in his bad purposes, or at the least are lulled in a dull and drowsy dream of security, and the people (being indeed the true and absolute owner and lord of the state) be, through the pernicious negligence and fraudulent connivency of those officers, brought to the very brim of danger and destruction, and that there be, notwithstanding, amongst those unworthy ministers of state, some one who does studiously observe the deceitful and dangerous encroachments of tyranny, and from his soul detests it, what opposition do we suppose best befits such a one to make against it? Shall he consent himself to admonish his associates of their duty, who to their utmost ability endeavour the contrary? Besides, that such an advertisement is commonly accompanied with too much danger, and the condition of the times considered, the very soliciting of reformation will be held as a capital crime: so that in so doing he may be not unfitly resembled to one, who, being in the midst of a desert, environed with thieves, should neglect all means of defence, and after he had cast away his arms, in an eloquent and learned discourse commend justice, and extol the worth and dignity of the laws. This would be truly according to the proverb, “To run mad with reason.” What then? Shall he be dull and deaf to the groans and cries of the people? Shall he stand still and be silent when he sees the thieves enter? Shall he only hold his hands in his bosom, and with a demure countenance, idly bewail the miserable condition of the times? If the laws worthily condemn a soldier, who, for fear of the enemies, counterfeits sickness, because in so doing he expresses both disloyalty and treachery, what punishment can we invent sufficient for him, who either maliciously or basely betrays those whose protection and defence he has absolutely undertaken and sworn? Nay, rather than let such a one cheerfully call one and command the mariners to the performance of their duty: let him carefully and constantly take order that the commonwealth be not endamaged, and if need so require, even in despite of the king, preserve the kingdom, without which the kingly title were idle and frivolous, and if by no other means it can be affected, let him take the king and bind him hand and foot, that so he may be more conveniently cured of his frenzy and madness.
Junuis Brutus
MikeAlmond on January 21 at 6:25 p.m.
Ahh! The local 2010 comedy season is underway at long last. The other Washington has pretty much lost its (inadvertent) sense of humor — it is hard to come across as funny when someone is screeching and waving their arms about.
Or at least, it would be funny if so much of it didn’t wind up as laws! (with a tip of the hat to WIll Rogers).