Ray Stevens - We the People

I always did like Ray Stevens, although I haven't heard much from him lately. This might be one of the best songs he's ever done.

Enjoy!

Stimulus Projects by State

In case you were interested to see where the bazillions of dollars of stimulus package money is going to be spent, here's the list.

• Alaska (46 projects)
• Alabama (318 projects)
• Arkansas (199 projects)
• Arizona (743 projects)
• California (1971 projects)
• Colorado (201 projects)
• Connecticut (449 projects)
• Washington, D.C. (8 projects)
• Delaware (7 projects)
• Florida (1752 projects)
• Georgia (266 projects)
• Hawaii (316 projects)
• Iowa (51 projects)
• Idaho (348 projects)
• Illinois (1031 projects)
• Indiana (713 projects)
• Kansas (139 projects)
• Kentucky (524 projects)
• Louisiana (433 projects)
• Massachusetts (266 projects)
• Maryland (54 projects)
• Maine (72 projects)
• Michigan (782 projects)
• Minnesota (335 projects)
• Missouri (403 projects)
• Mississippi (552 projects)
• Montana (57 projects)
• North Carolina (319 projects)
• North Dakota (61 projects)
• Nebraska (154 projects)
• New Jersey (261 projects)
• New Mexico (215 projects)
• Nevada (163 projects)
• New York (289 projects)
• Ohio (847 projects)
• Oklahoma (223 projects)
• Oregon (159 projects)
• Pennsylvania (352 projects)
• Puerto Rico (340 projects)
• Rhode Island (116 projects)
• South Carolina (271 projects)
• South Dakota (30 projects)
• Tennessee (103 projects)
• Texas (1240 projects)
• Utah (298 projects)
• Virginia (400 projects)
• Vermont (61 projects)
• Washington (368 projects)
• Wisconsin (358 projects)
• West Virginia (1 projects)
• Wyoming (85 projects)

I'm not so sure all of these projects are worthy of emergency funding, but what do I know.........

Washington Will LOSE Money With New Liquor Stores

Our governor here in Washington, Christine Gregoire, has come up with a wonderful new plan to raise additional money for the state government to squander. She's decided to open up to ten more state run liquor stores. Unfortunately The "Gov" must have skipped classes when she took economics, or maybe just never took the class at all.

Here's the deal: In Washington we have roughly 320 liquor stores. Half of them are run entirely by the state liquor control board, with state employees. The other half of the stores are officially called Contract Liquor Stores and are run by private citizens very similar to a franchise operation. The state provides them the inventory, and the contract store gets a percentage of the gross sales. Regardless of the size of the contract store or their sales volume, the State always makes money, since all operating costs, rent, payroll, etc., are paid by the store owner, not the state.

Overall, considering all the liquor stores together, they show a positive income for the State. However, and it's a big however, the State run stores barely break even, or lose money, but the contract stores all make money, some more than others, but all are profitable by the nature of the contract.

The governor has decided that to bring in more money, she would authorize and open up as many as ten more STATE stores. Assuming that the total amount of liquor purchased, regardless of the type of store for the purchase, is a constant for any given year. The argument that more liquor store will produce more liquor consumption may be true, but the change overall will likely be fairly small.

If you open more stores, their sales will have come from sales that would have been made at another liquor store at some other location. So we have two possibilities. First, the sale otherwise would have been made at another State run store. Net financial gain: ZERO, and additional operating costs have been incurred to run the new store. Bottom line then is the State LOST money on that sale.

The second possibility is that the sale otherwise would have occurred at a Contract store where the state would have received a guaranteed profit from the transaction. By moving this sale to one of the new State run stores the profit from the sale, if any, will be greatly reduced.

In short, there is no way that new State run liquor stores will increase the State's liquor control board's revenues. What the new stores would add is more State employees. Did I mention that the State store employees are unionized?

What the governor SHOULD do, which would increase liquor control board revenues and reduce costs at the same time is obvious. Convert ALL of the State run store into Contract stores and let private enterprise take over.

That would reduce the number of State employees, however, so that will never happen..................

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Possibly the quote of the decade:

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005

Excellent Article in Kitsap (WA) Sun

For the second time in the same week a really good article concerning handguns has appeared in a newspaper, the Kitsap Sun. This time it's an article about concealed carry here in Washington state, and specifically in Kitsap county in Western Washington. That's where Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club is located, and where I do the majority of my match shooting. Marcus Carter, the head of the KRRC club, is one of the main interviews in the news article. That's Marcus in the picture (pic from the Kitsap Sun).

It's refreshing to read an article that sticks to the facts and avoids the rants and unsupported claims of the gun banners. Thank you Josh Farley, for proving that good news reporting is based on facts, not personal agendas, and that you know the difference between a news article and an editorial.

Well done!

Washington Legislative Report - Wrap Up

I just concluded the final Olympia Lawmakers/Bloggers Conference Call for this session of Washington state legislature, and it was a bit depressing. With the Republicans outnumbered roughly two to one, it was just about impossible for any Republican ideas to make any headway at all.

At the start of the session, the Republicans identified four main categories of legislation that needed some action; Tax Relief and Spending restraint, Transportation, Health care, and Education.

Tax Relief: No tax reform legislation passed. Legislation to establish property tax growth as had been approved by the voters but overturned in court was not allowed to even be voted upon.

Spending Restraint: The new budget will not only wipe out the 2 billion dollar surplus, it will put us roughly 2 billion dollars in debt, and not one penny of the surplus will be returned to the taxpayers. Voted in the largest budget increase in history for this state.

Transportation: No legislation to resolve the Alaskan Way Viaduct problem in Seattle, although they DID talk about it a bit. Voted to borrow a lot more money to pay for cost over-runs on current transportation projects.

Education: They voted to spend more money on the State Colleges, while still allowing in-state tuition for illegal aliens. We now have a standardized curriculum for sex education for our schools, although there is no standardized curriculum for math, English, history, or any other subject. No action was taken on standardized testing in K through 12 education to see if the students are actually learning anything, but a study group was formed to study the issue. I believe this is the 18th. study group to address this issue.......

And finally, a Global Climate Change Task Force was created by this year's legislature. Perhaps they should just pass a law outlawing global climate change?

Was there any good news? Not very much. The law to restrict private gun sales at gun shows died in committee, which is good, but it should have never been in the legislature in the first place.

It must be incredibly frustrating to be a Republican legislator in this state............

More On Washington State Gun Show Bill SB 5197

I mentioned in a prewvious post that Senate Bill 5197, thew gun show "loophole" bill, was in the Senate Rules Committee and had been added to the "X" file. According to some Olympia folks in the know, that means that the Rules committee has round filed it, as far as taking any action on the bill. Although this is good news, the bill is never really dead until the legislative session is over. The bill can be brought to the Senate floor for a vote at any time, if enough senators vote to do so.

At the moment our (not really elected) Governor has several brush fires to deal with which are probably taking up most of her (and her arm-twisting team's) time.

For example, the mess with the state department of corrections releasing 3,500 felons per month back into the community, and doing almost nothing to monitor them. The head of the department of corrections has a plan, however, that should make us all sleep better at night. His plan is to increase monitoring of those released felons all the way up to where they actually would monitor as many as 25 percent of them, once a year. He maintains that since SOME of the corrections officers have as many as 40 (!) felons to monitor, there just isn't enough staff to do any more than that.

Lets do some simple math, shall we? If we figure four weeks to the month, that would work out to ten felons per week to check up on. That would be two a day. That doesn't sound too difficult to me. You can probably check up on most of them with a phone call, maybe even require them to phone in on a regular basis?

How hard can it be...........

Olympia Has X Files !!

The following was taken directly from the Washington State Legislature's website pertaining to SB 5197.

Check out the last entry, "Senate Rules "X" file. Boy, does that give you grounds for speculation! Will the bill be secretly be brought to the Senate floor by little gray men with a flying saucer? Will Mulder and Scully be there?

I didn't even know they HAD X Files in Olympia. Granted, I've suspected some of the legislators were possibly recent arrivals from some other planet or dimension, or something, but REAL X Files, WOW, how COOL is THAT!!

SB 5197 - 2007-08

Regulating the sale of firearms at gun shows and events.

History of Bill as of Wednesday, March 21, 2007 7:36 PM

Sponsors: Senators Tom, Kohl-Welles, Kline, Fairley, Murray, Weinstein, Regala, Jacobsen
Companion Bill: HB 1026

2007 REGULAR SESSION

Jan 12 First reading, referred to Labor, Commerce, Research & Development.

Feb 8 Public hearing in the Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce, and Research & Development at 3:30 PM.

Feb 27 Executive action taken in the Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce, and Research & Development at 1:30 PM.

Feb 28 LCRD - Majority; 1st substitute bill be substituted, do pass.
Minority; do not pass. Passed to Rules Committee for second reading.

Mar 21 Senate Rules "X" file.

Gun Show Bill 5197 Dead - For Now......

Good news from Olympia, Washington, and the Washington State Senate concerning Senate bill 5197, the bill to require all private party gun sales at a gun show to be done through a FFL holder, has died in the rules committee. Yesterday at 5pm. was the deadline for bills to get voted out of committee, and 5197 didn't get voted out!

YAAAAAAAAY!!

Now, that being said, any bill that dies in committee can be brought to the Senate floor by a vote of the Senate. Our (not really the) Governor and her people are pushing really hard to get this bill passed. The more conservative Democrats who come from the more rural areas of the state don't want to vote for this bill against the wishes of their constituents, but they don't want to go against the Gov either. The best of both worlds for them would be for the bill to not get out of committee, which is how it now stands.

The bad news, and why we should not be celebrating yet, is that the Senate can bring the bill to the floor of the Senate at any time by just voting to do so. If it goes to the floor, with a Democratic 2/3 majority, it would, in my opinion, probably pass.

The good news is that the Gov is currently up to her eyebrows in two big controversies, the first being the Department of Corrections releasing 3,500 felons a month back into society and not monitoring them, and the second controversy is a battle over a overhead viaduct through downton Seattle that is falling apart, and needs to be either refurbished, or replaced with either a tunnel, a new viaduct, or surface streets. The least expensive approach, refurbishing the current viaduct, would cost half a billion dollars less than the next least expensive alternative, but the Gov refuses to even consider it. With all that going on, hopefully she will have all her troops working on those problems, and leaves the gun show bill alone.

We'll just have to wait and see.......

D.C. Gun Ban Overturned

JUST IN -- This could be big news:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the District of Columbia's longstanding handgun ban, issuing a decision that will allow the city's citizens to have working firearms in their homes.

In the ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected city officials' arguments that the Second Amendment right to bear arms only applied to state militias.

In a 2-1 decision, the judges held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia."

Check out the entire story at Fox News

UPDATE: It looks like the entire blog world is all over this story!

Legis-loonies Report

Yesterday we held another conference call with some of the Washington State Republican legislators from the House of Representatives. the current hot topic in the news is the parole release of dangerous felons into our communities, and the department of Correction's failure to monitor these felons. When parole violations occur, these felons are not being arrested and put back into prison. Instead, the DOC is more or less ignoring the parole violations, and letting the felons remain on the outside. Their excuse is that there just isn't enough prison space to re-incarcerate them!

Every time the Republicans have put forth a bill to build more prisons, the Democrats block it. Our "Not Really " Governor even ordered the DOC to stop even considering building more prisons, or even working out plans and costs to do so! "we can't afford to build any more prisons." they bleat, yet we have over two billion dollars of surplus money in the state treasury, even beyond the 1.7 billion surplus put into a rainy day emergency fund.

A house bill was proposed to stop all felon releases until the DOC solves the problem and makes changes to their procedures to keep track of these felons. The bill was blocked from even getting out of committee by the Democrats. Since the bill never got out of committee, a motion was made on the floor of the House to bring the bill to the floor for a straight up or down vote. This bill was also blocked by a straight party line vote, excvept for three Democrats who voted to bring the bill to the floor. The next morning all three of the Democrats issued statements that their votes should have been against the bill coming to the floor, now that they had thought about it over night. That seems to happen a lot to the Democrats......

Another bill discussed was SB5197, the "Gun Show Loophole" bill. Last week we reported that, at least in the opinion of Senator Jim Clements (R), the bill was a dead issue, and would never see the light of day. It now appears that may not be the case. It sounds like there is some serious Democratic in-fighting going on over SB5197. One faction, composed of the Governor and the "Big City Democrats" are pushing really hard to ram this terrible bill through the legislature.

All of the Republicans, and a lot of the Rural Democrats see this bill as a bad bill, and are solidly against it. If this bill comes out of the rules committee and goes to the floor for a vote, it could get really ugly, particularly for the more conservative rural Democrats. They would be in a lose-lose position, where if they vote for the bill, their constituents are going to be really unhappy, and may not re-elect them come next election. If they vote to oppose the bill as their constituents would prefer, they will tick off the Governor and her folks, not a good thing if you want to get any help in the future from the Governor. Sure glad I'M not in that position!

That's the high (low?) points for this week ,and I'll keep you posted as things develop.........

Senate Bill 5197 - Good News!

As an update to the previous post regarding the SB5197, the gun show bill, I have some good news!

I spoke this morning with Senator Jim Clements and his assessment is that the bill is as dead as "A goose twelve yards away in the middle of my decoys!" as he colorfully explained. It will never come out of the rules committee. Even with a 5 to 3 Democratic majority on the original committee hearing the proposed bill, it took some serious arm-twisting to get it passed out of that committee.

Apparently there are too many rural Democrats in opposition, and the folks pushing for this bill now realise it doesn't have enough support to pass without burning a whole lot of bridges and creating a lot of anomosity by trying to force it through.

I sure wish Senator Clements was in MY district so I could vote for him! Of course, that doesn't mean I can't contribute to his campaign, though.......

Thanks, Senator, and also to Senator Holmquist and Senator Hewitt for opposing this terrible bill at the committee level.

Gun Show Bill Passes out of Comittee

Sadly, as I predicted, the Gun Show Bill SB5197 has been voted out of committee and sent to the rules committee. The vote was 5 to 3.

All five Democrats voted for it, and the three Republicans voted against it. For those of you who keep saying that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, you might remember this when this bill becomes law and you have to fill out paperwork and pay a FFL holder to transfer a firearm from one private citizen to another at a gun show.

An interesting sidelight is that one of the Democratic Senators, Senator Prentice from South Seattle/Renton, originally was going to vote against the bill, thereby keeping it from coming out of committee. As of the end of the Executive session yesterday, that was her position. By this morning, she had changed her mind and voted for it. I wonder who talked to her last night to change her mind, and what they said? We'll probably never know.

The rules committee will now vote on sending the bill to the Senate for a vote.

It does not look good on this one......

Rabid Democrats Running Wild ?

With the two to one majority in both houses in the Washington State legislature, the Democrats are pretty much running unchecked in their efforts to pass legislation furthering their agenda. Here's some of the bills proposed by the Washington State Democrats in Olympia this session:

Attacking traditional marriage

* House Bill 1350, Senate Bill 5335 - Legalizing gay marriage


Bah Humbug legislation

* House Bill 1524 - Outlawing incandescent Christmas lights


Coddle the criminals, hug the thugs

* House Bill 1003 - Free condoms for prisoners
* House Bill 1473 - Allowing convicted felons to vote
* House Bill 1874 - Allowing felons back into the community after serving only half their time
* House Bill 2069 - Another early release bill for felons

Criminalizing berry pickers

* House Bill 1040 - Prohibits collecting and selling of huckleberries (Tribal members are exempt)
* House Bill 1909 - More anti-berry picker regulations

Eroding the citizens' cherished right to engage in initiatives, referenda

* House Bill 2018 - Requiring licensing of paid signature gatherers
* House Bill 2019 - More regulations on paid signature gatherers

Government-run health care

* House Bill 2094 - "Pay or Play" government-run health care
* House Joint Memorial 4005 - Government-run universal health care

Increasing the burden against taxpayers (Washington is now the fourth highest taxed state in the nation.)

* House Bill 2138 - Automatic, annual gas tax increases
* House Bill 2309 - Eliminates the 1 percent property tax limit passed by the people
* Senate Bill 5150 - Enacting a state income tax

Infringing upon the Constitutional right of the people to keep and bear arms

* House Bill 1011 - Requires an alien firearm license
* House Bill 1014 - Regulates storage of firearms
* House Bill 1026 - Regulates firearms sales at gun shows and events

Forced political activism

* House Bill 2079 - Agency shop fees (Allowing unions to use non-member dues on political activities without permission. Attempts to do an end-run around the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on Washington Education Association dues.)

Lawyers' prosperity legislation

* Senate Bill 5816 - Tort expansion

Requiring graphic sex education to be taught to your fifth-grade child

* House Bill 1297, Senate Bill 5297 - Medically accurate sex education

Spending YOUR tax dollars to fund political campaigns

* House Bill 1186 - Public funding of judicial races
* House Bill 1360 - Requiring taxpayer funded campaigns

Undermining support of our troops

* House Joint Memorial 4004 - Anti-war memorial


Huckleberry pickers? You've got to be kidding, right?

Here's the link to the original source from the House Republicans website.

Olympia SB5197 Hearing Video

Phil over at Random Nuclear Strikes has now got the video posts up at Google video showing the SB5197 hearing last week in Olympia. He's broken the testimony and hearing up into five to seven minute chunks with written descriptions of what's in each chunk. Good job, Phil!