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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Olympia

More of what we’re reading…

Yet more, um, aggregation this morning:

Senate Democrats' senior staff director Rich Nafziger, writing on his personal blog, offers a session overview:

The real shock was the extent to which the session hit the friends and allies of the legislative democrats...The Governor and the legislature abandoned organized labor on their two biggest issues, worker privacy and unemployment insurance. Legislation to help child care organizers also failed in the Senate. While their overall scorecard could be seen as positive Environmental organizations were also less that satisfied.

(snip)

So why did their Democratic allies balk? For one very simple reason. The economy is very bad and a majority of legislators in both parties were simply afraid of making it wors(e). Many analysts argued that Boeing was already looking for a reason to leave the state and after last Fall's bloody strike were not eager to face a more empowered labor movement.

Nafziger's also been reading philosopher John Gray's "Gray's Anatomy: Selected writings." It's an interesting choice for a progressive, since Gray argues that "progress is a pernicious myth." From the book:

No traditional myth is as untruthful as the modern myth of progress. All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce.

Far better, Gray writes, to "accept our lives for what they are," instead of forever judging them against what they could be -- or could have been.



Short takes and breaking news from the Washington Legislature and the state capital.