Smart Bombs: Have a party — for the kids

Initiative 1351 staged a late rally and passed. Estimated cost over four years: $4.7 billion. So now the folks who voted for smaller class sizes have a duty to smoke, toke, drink and scratch, because that’s how we raise money in the “progressive” Evergreen State.

“Look, I don’t know how to pay for it, that’s why I didn’t support it,” House Budget Committee Chairman Ross Hunter told the Northwest News Network. Gov. Jay Inslee voted against it. And these are Democrats.

Washington is a state brimming with progressive ideas, but it’s saddled with a tax code that disproportionately taxes the poor and business. To make up for that, the state has some of the highest “sin” taxes in the nation. Plus, it sells lottery tickets to scratch out more revenue.

On his website, Hunter detailed the Legislature’s challenge for the 2015-17 biennium before I-1351 passed. Lawmakers are facing a host of issues that add up to an estimated $500 million to $1 billion shortfall before even getting to the Supreme Court’s order to fully fund basic education. Included in the list is more funding for mental health services, because the court ruled the state could no longer warehouse people in emergency rooms.

The cost estimate for McCleary (basic education) is $2.5 billion per biennium until the state catches up to funding its own education plan. Add the hefty price tag from I-1351, and it’s enough to drive budget writers to smoke, toke, drink or scratch.

Feel free to join in. It’s for the kids.

Gun play. Gun rights activists plan a protest in Olympia on Dec. 13 because voters passed Initiative 594. Gavin Seim, the activist ramrodding the “I Will Not Comply” showdown, called the background check initiative the most “corrupt, tyrannical, lawless and draconian gun restriction” ever seen.

Whoa! Then this calls for dramatic action, so what will the protesters be doing? Exchanging guns.

Now I’m no expert in optics, but as I ponder a circle of folks passing guns to each other, I have to wonder if this protest won’t be a big dud. The rally could be spiced up if a SWAT team swooped in and arrested them, but the Washington State Patrol already has said it’s holding its powder. It seems troopers have more important things to do than enforce the most extreme interpretation of I-594.

This fuss is supposed to highlight the notion that any transfer of weapons requires a background check. But what most people care about are background checks before a gun is purchased. If the Legislature were to change the law to make sure this is what is meant by “transfer,” most people would yawn.

But extremists would lose their ammo for future melodramas – and they’d still call the law “lawless.”

Short memories. So Grubergate is the newest Fox News scandal. Remember when it was Ebola? Then the election passed, and apparently the threat did, too.

Jonathan Gruber is a health policy expert who advised the Obama administration on its health care reform plan. To anyone following politics or the health care debate, this is an odd controversy. While it’s never smart to call voters stupid, as he did, it just isn’t the case that Congress was duped. Every single Republican voted against the Affordable Care Act. The mechanics and semantics over how the law was to be funded is something policy wonks debated at the time. Little did they know this would be the centerpiece of a “scandal.”

Apparently, Republicans already have forgotten how they lowballed the costs of Medicare Part D and the Iraq War. The Medicare actuary was threatened with firing if he didn’t bury his cost estimate for the new prescription drug benefit. The lowballing of the Iraq War remains a national tragedy.

But scandals? Not if you tuned into Fox News.