Unmade phone call could haunt VA secretary
Poor Jim Nicholson. The head of the Department of Veterans Affairs is having a tough summer.
First one of his managers has a laptop computer stolen in a burglary, and it just happens to have confidential information for about 26 million veterans. Members of Congress were all over him faster than you can say “identity theft,” and some even wanted him ousted.
After the laptop turned up – apparently without the vets’ files being cracked by the burglar – Nicholson hit the road, and last week found himself in Washington state, where he apparently couldn’t help sharing some good news.
New veterans clinic for Bellingham, he told folks in that city on Thursday. New outpatient clinic for Walla Walla, he said down there on Friday.
Problem is, this was news to someone who probably should’ve been tipped off first: Sen. Patty Murray. True, she’s a Democrat and Nicholson works for a Republican president, but Murray is the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, where she’s made her mark after being the first woman appointed to that panel and has a spot on the Appropriations subcommittee that goes over the VA budget.
So in other words, Nicholson has to appear a fair amount before committees with Murray on them. And like most senators, Murray doesn’t like to be surprised about issues she’s worked hard on, which includes finding a way to save the aging VA hospital in Walla Walla.
Nicholson’s staff did think to invite Rep. Cathy McMorris to the Walla Walla announcement, apparently giving her staff enough of a heads-up that they rescheduled Friday’s congressional subcommittee hearing on electricity and salmon down in Pasco to get her out of the Tri-Cities in time to make the announcement.
That left McMorris to thank Murray for all her work to save the hospital and explain the absence with an oblique “Sen. Murray couldn’t be here today.”
Well, she probably could’ve, if she’d been told about it. She was in the state, after all, showing around a high-ranking official from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Chances are someone could’ve reached her by cell phone.
During a telephonic press conference a few hours after Nicholson’s announcement, Murray took a few jabs at the whole process, saying several times she hadn’t been invited, so of course everything she knew was secondhand, but boy there sure seemed to be a lot of unanswered questions about these new facilities. Just how tough she might be on Nicholson at their next meeting was probably best summed up late in her session:
“I’m one of the ones who has not called for his resignation,” she said.
Hanging in the air seemed to be the unspoken ” – yet.”
This just in
Sen. Maria Cantwell will not face a primary challenge from anti-war proponent Mark Wilson.
Wilson has scheduled a press conference this afternoon to announce he’s dropping out of the race and endorsing Cantwell. He’s also going to campaign for her.
Not such a good deal
Whenever gasoline prices take a jump, some politician somewhere comes up with the generally popular proposal to give motorists a “gas tax holiday” to ease the pain at the pump.
Bad idea, says a new study from the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank which studies, well, taxes.
Gas tax holidays are hard to administer, mess up the market and get in the way of better tax relief ideas, says economist Jonathan Williams, co-author of the report. After studying several states that enacted gas tax holidays, Williams says a one-cent gas tax holiday doesn’t always cut the price by one cent at the pump.
To make sure that gas stations actually pass on the tax cut, states sometimes come up with complicated rules and regulations, which sets up government scrutiny.
It’s better to have a general sales tax holiday, Williams concluded. It stimulates the entire economy and leaves more money in people’s wallets.
The study can be found at the group’s Web site, www.taxfoundation.org.
A title that works
Tim Eyman has been called many things this year, and not just the ones that aren’t printable in a family newspaper. He brings some of it on himself, of course, by dressing up as Darth Vader or Buzz Lightyear for various stunts for his ballot measures.
Spin Control has always struggled with a title that is both accurate and evocative. Last week, he sent an e-mail that seems to nail it.
Eyman is doing a guest stint on a Seattle talk radio program this week, and the station sent out a press release announcing he was joining them temporarily. The station called him “the Northwest’s foremost initiative promoter.”
Promoter is good. Eyman is to initiatives what Don King is to boxing.
With shorter hair, of course.