Gary Crooks

Remember this absurd line from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding the Affordable Care Act: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” In the wee hours of Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the 1,603-page omnibus spending bill that few, if any, members read in its entirety. So they’ll be learning what’s in it with each passing day. More Republicans than Democrats voted for it. And in another echo of the Affordable Care Act, when the bill was posted online late Wednesday night, the server failed.

Politicians know there isn’t an easy solution to illegal immigration. They know massive deportation is unrealistic, but they also know that acknowledging this can be hazardous to their careers. The word “amnesty” makes them weak in the knees. In 2007, President George W. Bush pushed for immigration reform that included a path to citizenship, and it went nowhere. So what’s the alternative? For many politicians, the solution to their problem is to set a standard for border security that’s impossible to achieve, so they don’t have to confront the thornier issues of what do to next. So Bush’s plan was met with a loud chorus of: “Secure the borders first.”

As you may have heard – though probably not on Fox News – the House Intelligence Committee, run by Republicans, recently released a report that turns the Benghazi “bombshells” into duds. No advance warning of the attack. No “stand down” order issued to the military. No willful deceit in producing erroneous accounts of what happened. I recently caught up with Benghazi Scandal, which agreed to sit down for an interview.

In August, when the jobless rate was 6.1 percent, the polling outfit Ipsos-MORI asked, “Out of every 100 people of working age, how many do you think are unemployed and looking for work?” The average response was 32. What in the name of Tom Joad were people thinking? I know times are tough, but at the depths of the Great Depression the jobless rate was 25 percent. Five years ago, at the bottom of the Great Recession, it was 10 percent. Today, it’s 5.8 percent.

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.

From Sherman Alexie’s Twitter feed: “If you think Democrats & GOP are the same, then there’s a 98% chance you’re a straight white guy.” The Native American author pinpoints a gripe I have with people who rationalize their indifference to politics. If something doesn’t directly benefit them, it doesn’t matter. If they don’t follow issues, it’s the system’s fault.

After scores of endorsement interviews stretching over several months, I have shocking news for special interests: You might be supporting the candidates, but they’re not outwardly supporting you. All of them – regardless of party affiliation – say they’re “for the people.” The rhetoric of candidates lionizes the average American or Washingtonian. The candidates cast themselves in that role, too, never missing an opportunity to show how they’re commoners. They even gather their families around the old kitchen table to hammer out the household budget – just like you and me, and unlike “the other Washington.”

When Idaho schools superintendent candidate Sherri Ybarra was asked why she omitted a divorce from her personal history, she told the Idaho Statesman, “My brain doesn’t operate in the past.” It isn’t humming on all cylinders in the present either.

Inevitably in a gun debate, someone will point out that a particular regulation will only inconvenience law-abiding citizens. Criminals, they note, will go unscathed. But does that mean we should rescind theft and murder statutes, because only the virtuous will respect them? Of course not. They’re in place to punish offenders and to deter crime. Background checks on gun purchases, such as those called for in Initiative 594, can do the same.

If you ask whether Spokane Mayor David Condon should be the highest-paid city employee, most people would probably answer yes. After all, he is the chief executive officer. But what if you’re asked whether he should make nearly $70,000 a year more than the mayor of Boise, or about $50,000 more than the mayor of Portland, a much larger city? Hmm. Either those mayors are horribly underpaid, or something is amiss. However, what leaders elsewhere earn isn’t a factor, because in 2011 Spokane voters passed Proposition No. 2, which said the mayor’s salary “shall be equal to the highest-paid city employee.” The only exception is the city administrator, but she will make $47,000 less than the mayor under his budget proposal.

State leaders hoping to cling to their gay marriage prohibitions have been reduced to laughable arguments in the service of discrimination. Cue the straight men.

The people want ample funding for education. The people want a higher threshold before taxes can be increased. The people may as well want farm animals that don’t smell to improve their Spokane Interstate Fair experience, because it’s as just as realistic. If only we had a representative form of government to sift through the pile of conflicting desires. If only we elected leaders who could access the facts and report back to us. If only they could give us the straight poop rather than perfuming it.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has on his desk – or, perhaps, a dusty shelf – a couple of reports that scream “take the Medicaid expansion!” Other Republican governors do, too, and they’re starting to cave to the reality that it’s not worth punishing uninsured citizens, hospitals and taxpayers to aid and abet Obama Derangement Syndrome. This is the malady that causes them to scurry to the opposite side of whatever position the president has taken.

Remember the dish-washing nightmare, when phosphate-infused detergents were banned by the Nanny State? Darn that nanny, making us scrub a little harder before placing plates in the dishwasher. Maybe you’re still battling this prohibition. Maybe you’re still finding ways to buy the “good stuff.” But, holy Toledo, did you hear what’s happening in Ohio’s fourth-largest city? Residents went without potable water for a couple of days. Couldn’t drink it, and boiling didn’t help. They had to wash the dishes by hand with bottled water. The water supply had been poisoned by massive algae blooms on Lake Erie. Green slime had surrounded the intake contraption for the city’s water supply, and then moved in.

So the House of Representatives actually sued the president for delaying full implementation of the health care law they despise. Why the delay? Employers – you know, the job creators Republicans otherwise extol – wanted more time to sort out the challenges of purchasing coverage for their employees. So the president gave them an extended grace period on meeting the mandate.

Mortimer Zuckerman is the latest pundit to blame health care reform for this country’s large part-time workforce. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, he states: “… There is one clear political contribution to the dismal jobs trend. Many employers cut workers’ hours to avoid the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to provide health insurance to anyone working 30 hours a week or more.” Zuckerman’s “proof” is this: “Last month involuntary part-timers swelled to 7.5 million, compared with 4.4 million in 2007.”

The latest threat to the Affordable Care Act is a legal challenge – Halbig v. Burwell – asserting that subsidies cannot go to those who buy insurance in states that failed to set up exchanges. Washington is among 14 states that did, so if Halbig wins, the subsidies won’t stop here. However, 36 exchanges are run by the feds, because those states decided not to establish their own. “Gotcha!” says the libertarian legal team behind Halbig, because the law says subsidies are available through “state” exchanges. That section doesn’t mention the federal ones.

The issue of whether Washington’s football team should keep the name Redskins is needlessly complicated with diversions into debates about “political correctness.” My high school, the Western Warriors in Las Vegas, adopted the Redskins fight song as our own. Here’s part of what we sang back in the 1970s:

The widening gap between rich and poor is undeniable, but one way to feel better about it is to believe that poverty isn’t so bad. Many delusional Americans gaze upon “the poor” and imagine a life not much different from their own. In some ways, it may even be better. They call jobless benefits “unemployment assurance.” They believe fanciful tales spun from conservative propaganda factories, like the average welfare recipient collecting $30,000 to $50,000 a year. “No wonder they don’t work!”

Politicians’ uneasy relationship with data brings to mind the deliberate ignorance of Sgt. Schultz from “Hogan’s Heroes.” “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know NOTHING!”

The minimum wage is back in the spotlight, with the Seattle City Council pegging it at $15 and phasing it in over several years. Before that, the issue flared and waned when President Barack Obama, in January, proposed a $10.10 minimum. Both proposals drew the predictable ripostes from critics: “Why $15? Why not $20? Why $10.10? Why not $20.20?” As if they’ve never seen policy infused with political marketing. Can’t recall Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan?

After pounding the “job killer” theme and exhausting all Al Gore jokes, conservatives still face the problem of global warming. I’m all for a solution that doesn’t shake workers or rattle the economy, so let’s hear them. The Reagan administration allowed refineries to trade pollution credits to phase out leaded gasoline. The first Bush administration used a cap-and-trade scheme to curtail acid rain. But like the health insurance mandate, which was originally a Republican idea, such market-based solutions are now demonized.

What if you like the Affordable Care Act, but don’t like the president? You could stop calling it “Obamacare” and pretend your state’s health care exchange just happened to materialize at the same time. Welcome to the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently claimed that the state’s popular exchange, called Kynect, would survive his desire to rip the ACA out by the “root and branch.” By this logic, you can chop down a tree and still expect apples.

Now that veterans’ health care is under the microscope, conservatives are predictably uttering “vouchers” as a solution. For instance, Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer said, “If you would suggest that we go to a voucher system where everybody will get a voucher for treatment in any hospital he or she chooses, and I were a vet, I would choose that. I would rather go to Georgetown University hospital than to a VA.”