Smart bombs: Campaign or govern?

Now that Dino Rossi has entered the Washington state gubernatorial race, it looks like Gov. Chris Gregoire might drop pieces of her agenda to make room for his. I have a hard time believing she would’ve called an emergency special session on property taxes if she didn’t have to face him next year. After all, the last contest between the two was an epic squeaker.

If Rossi plays it smart, he can begin governing now. He can denounce the Legislature’s look at the basic education funding formula (“tax and spend!”), deride the new emphasis on pre-kindergarten education (“nanny state!”) and decry any proposals to make the state’s tax system less regressive (“jobs killer!”) .

That would put the governor in the position of either agreeing with him to undercut his appeal or sticking to principles and arguing those issues on the merits.

It will be interesting to see if Gregoire is willing to sacrifice one year of her agenda to ensure four more years in office.

Constructive criticism. In the statewide elections of 2006 and municipal elections of 2007, builders, contractors, developers and Realtors have spent a lot of money with little to show for it.

In 2006, the Building Industry Association of Washington backed two losing Supreme Court candidates, spending about $500,000 in just the Gerry Alexander-John Groen contest. In the recent municipal elections, building interests heavily favored Dennis Hession and Brad Stark in Spokane and David Crosby in Spokane Valley. They all lost.

Since heavy spending isn’t working, maybe builders and public officials ought to listen more closely to public complaints about growth and development.

Easy for them to say. Karen Pollitz, a Georgetown University health care research professor, asked 22 companies if they would cover a hypothetical breast cancer survivor five years after she was successfully treated.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Eleven companies said they would deny coverage, and six said they would issue a policy at standard rates. One company said it would charge double the usual premium. Another said it would issue a policy but exclude future cancer treatment. Three insurers did not respond.”

None of the Republican presidential candidates has a credible solution for that in their health care reform plans. Even the purportedly potent elixir of patient choice combined with private markets is powerless to defeat insurance companies when they invoke “pre-existing conditions.”

The kicker is that three of those candidates – Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson – are cancer survivors. Then again, they didn’t have to think of the unthinkable. The government covered their care.