Today's Seattle Times reports: "U.S. senator wants to know why Medicaid funded sex operations"
The head of the Senate Finance Committee wants [Mrs.] Gregoire1 to explain why the state's Medicaid system is paying for erectile implants, sex-change operations and breast enlargements.They don't call her "Governor [sic] Fix-It" for nothing.
1 Since Mrs. G. is reported to be so good at brokering deals, I should call her office and ask for her to intervene with Deanron on my behalf and convince him to release the transaction logs from the "biggest display of democracy" Mrs. Gregoire has ever seen.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 10, 2006 09:09 AM | Email ThisPerhaps her 1st Lady, Mike, also has some wants in this area.
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on March 10, 2006 09:28 AMGrassley is the da man. Of all the Rs, he sounds the best to me, but he isn't sexy enough to get the nod for President. FYI, in the 2000 election my horses were John Kasich and for the Ds, Bob Kerrey not John.
Posted by: swatter on March 10, 2006 09:45 AMGovernor Gregoire had a great session and is positioning herself for a handy re-election victory, and the thought of it makes right-wing heads explode, like in "Mars Attacks."
Just a smear a day keeps the mouth-breathers coming back. It's kind of neat to read every day, if you're into Pavlov and Skinner.
Posted by: ivan on March 10, 2006 09:50 AMIf YOU read the article, you'd also see that the concern was over "...a lack of documentation from DSHS showing that the procedures were medically required and formally approved." Sorry, but I want to know why people with prostate cancer are getting penile implants. That's hardly a "life-saving" measure.
Posted by: libertarianobserver on March 10, 2006 09:51 AMwho you callin' a mouth-breather? You're the biggest partisan hack, bottom-feeding mouth breather I've come across in a LOT of blogs.
Posted by: libertarianobserver on March 10, 2006 09:53 AMI'm not surprised that DSHS is upset with Brian Sontag, WA State Auditor.
DSHS has been the poster child of Murphy's Law for the past 20 years.
The fact that DSHS actively resists Sontag's recommendations that DSHS implements best practices and other standard business practices that are used to maximize the use of limited funds is disappointing.
Posted by: Green Lake Mark on March 10, 2006 09:56 AMOne more reason to vote WSRP... maybe I should make a blog called 1001 Reasons to vote WSRP...
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 10, 2006 09:59 AMLOL
Maybe she has great approval numbers amongst the erectile challenged and/or disfunctional... but the rest of the state thinks she stinks with approval numbers stinkier than big bad George W.
Sex change operations as mandatory health care? Sheesh.
I wonder how progressives can take themselves seriously.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 10, 2006 10:04 AMThis is why we need the Dino Rossi-Mary Lane ticket in 2008 instead of Mrs. Gregoire who is state government. People like Danny Westneat need to realize this fact.
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 10, 2006 10:05 AMJust today, republicans all over are claiming that the success in the democratically controlled legislature was a result of doing the right things for the state for political reasons!
The republcians are in dire straits. Good things happen...and they admit good things happen...but blame it on politics!
Not only that, but the Governor is being praised for her strong willed support for good things -- eg transportation.
But you still refuse to even call her the Governor.
You are painting yourself into a very small, emotionally intense, self-delusional position that is occupied only by the extreme right wing of your party.
Even your poster boy Rep. Toby Nixon (note, I don't call him Mr. Nixon as you would if you were on the other side) couldn't find a way to vote for simple majority -- where every vote counts equallyi.
You extreme folks are creating a nice path to oblivion. Enjoy the descent.
Posted by: LovinUSA on March 10, 2006 10:25 AMDon't get blinded by however Stefan chooses to poke fun at Mrs. Gregoire. When you are in public office, you open yourself up to a lot of cheap rhetoric. It goes with the territory.
There are a lot of important questions that Stefan asks that most on left leaning blogs are afraid or unwilling to ask. It's called opposition. If you don't like it, head back over to the Horses Ass where you will find more sympathy.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 10, 2006 10:34 AMSeems as though the idea to throw out the Republican Commitment to Washington before the legislature began was a dim-witted and ill-advised idea, if we note the title of this article today from Orbusmax.com -
"Republicans say legislative moves by Dems dim GOP election hopes".
At least a few of these legislative moves were apparently stolen by the Democrats from the draft of the Republican commitment to Washington. Very poor political strategy ! Why couldn't this have been held back until the Legislature was over ? Unbelievable !
The Republicans in this state must be content at being second fiddle. I don't just pay attention to words - I look at actions :(
Most of this was either a spoof or lunacy. That said, please let me respond to the below:
Even your poster boy Rep. Toby Nixon (note, I don't call him Mr. Nixon as you would if you were on the other side) couldn't find a way to vote for simple majority -- where every vote counts equallyi.
a) Rep. Nixon said: "These are levies that could cause people to lose their homes," said Rep. Toby Nixon, R-Kirkland. "We should have a higher standard."
b) As Elizabeth Hovde explained last year why to keep the supermajority:
The no-brainer crowd crows that it is undemocratic to require a 60-percent passage rate for school money measures when politicians typically are elected to office with just more than 50 percent of the vote. And while it sounds well and good to say that the majority should always rule in any given election, the reality is, the majority rarely rules, given low voter turnout especially in lesser known school-levy elections usually held in months that voters aren't paying attention to political questions.The time of year schools schedule these extra-cost special elections is actually intended to reduce voter turnout, thereby eliminating the opportunity for a true majority rule.
Setting aside the platitudes, the supermajority requirement was created for a good reason that its critics don't like to talk about: School levies tax only property owners. And a supermajority helps safeguard property owners from the spending whims of those whom the tax does not directly affect. Sixty percent support for taxes that only some people in the community have to pay makes sense still today, even given the increased number of propertyowners. While landlords can pass on their tax burdens to renters, the connection is often lost on renters. And the tax pain is diluted by communal living in any case.
There are other reasons to keep the supermajority around. One of the most compelling among them is that school employees are numerous and have an extra special interest in school levies. Statewide, there are 160,000 people on the K-12 payroll. About 99,000 of them are full-time school employees.
These workers make up a good bulk of voters in a lot of communities. Take Clark County, where the second- and third-largest employers are the Evergreen and Vancouver school districts, respectively. In a December survey by The Columbian, Battle Ground School District rounded out the top 10 employers in the county. Isolate school employees in their given communities and they can dominate a voting area.
These workers are inclined to vote in favor of school levies because it can benefit them personally, which makes sense. They are also pressured to vote for school measures by their union and even their own schools and principals.
Obviously, LovinUSA didn't think of this.
c) If you did some research on this issue, you'd quickly pick up why the opposition. Obviously, you just don't care about property rights or taxpayer$' rights!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 10, 2006 10:45 AMcouldn't agree with you more, jeff. I knew if I waited long enough, I'd see the real truth on Sound Politics: A LOT OF CHEAP RHETORIC.
Gee Stefan...do you kinda feel like Georgie Bush, even your supporters are revealing the truth about you. Maybe the latest Bush washout, Gail Norton, can help you with your paranoid DeanRon 'scandal'.
Probably not, she's trying to avoid the losers!
That said, the argument described might have made sense in the early part of the century when it was passed....nowadays, property owners are not the minority in any sense, way or form. And renters, all over, are paying the taxes through their rent to the owners (who are not dumb).
The sparsely attended elections argument is similarly wrong. Otherwise, Rep. Nixon, and yourself, would argue that primaries (which are sparsely attended and not during regular election times) should be supermajority only.
The law is archaic. The fact that some people's vote counts more than others (4 NO votes equals 6 YES VOTES) in this election is simply evil in a democratic society.
Also, Rep. Nixon shows his extremism about people losing their homes. Can he show examples in all the places where levies pass eith 60% passage? Of course not. There aren't any. It's a typical repbublican "scare the electorate" tactic.
Finally, our state leglislature caps the amount taxpayers are allowed to pay -- in some bizarre non-democratic way -- voters in Redmond who want to tax themselves more to support schools ARE NOT ALLOWED TO -- using the logic that kids in Yakima would suffer. Let's keep everyone to a low standard....at leats it's fair.
Any self-thinking republican can see that simple majority is right - democratically.
The good news is the majorityh of people in Rep. Nixon's party udnerstand this and support it. Again, this shows his extremism. Simple majority passed the house in huge numbers with many R's supporting it.
The Rs in the senate are another story. There, we have too many extremists like Rep. Nixon preventing the 2/3 majority required for the constitutional change.
Even Esser and Finkbeiner support it. Get real.
Posted by: LovinUsa on March 10, 2006 11:02 AMThe supreme executive power of this state shall be vested in a governor, who shall hold his office for a term of four years, and until his successor is elected and qualified.
Washington State Constitution, Art. III, Sec. 2. http://www.courts.wa.gov/education/constitution/?fa=education_constitution.display&displayid=Article-03
Even Esser and Finkbeiner support it. Get real.
Posted by: LovinUsa on March 10, 2006 11:02 AM
In November.
At that time, Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, said his members would have supported the measure with the provision that the school levies be on the November general election ballots, which tend to have the highest voter turnout.Supporters of the bill said doing so would make it difficult for districts to complete their budgets and would leave the districts with only one shot at a levy or bond each year.
GOP lawmakers in the Senate want a provision included in the bill that Democrats and the Washington Education Association (WEA) oppose: allowing simple-majority school levies only during November elections, when voter turnout is typically higher than in other elections. Senate Republican Leader Bill Finkbeiner said the measure would have a better chance with that requirement included. Without it, school districts could run the levies when voters aren't paying much attention, Finkbeiner contended. "I think the motivation to raise taxes with the smallest possible vote in an off-cycle election is just too high," he said.SOURCE Unlike you, I cite my sources.
Next time, Google before you speak. Taxpayers need protection from the spendthrift educational industrial complex.
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 10, 2006 11:55 AMThe Rs in the senate are another story. There, we have too many extremists like Rep. Nixon preventing the 2/3 majority required for the constitutional change.
Obviously, a State Representative LovinUSA can't block stuff in the State Senate.
LovinUSA is freedumb. We, on the other hand, want freedom from overzealous tax & spenders.
Posted by: A Watchdog on March 10, 2006 11:58 AMThey seem to want Stefan to have the fact-checkers and editors that used to be required of major newspapers, as well as the formalities and discretion to be expected of a competant County Executive. But they don't expect the same qualities be present in the local media or the local County Executive. Nor do they recognize that their critiques elevate Stefan to a level of expected performance of those professions.
It's much like Democrats attacking Dino Rossi because he doesn't take a stand on current state issues. They didn't want him to be Governor but they expect him to ACT like the Governor, while not requiring the current Governor to act like a Governor.
I think it's just because they don't think.
Posted by: Larry on March 10, 2006 12:05 PM"The supreme executive power of this state shall be vested in a governor, who shall hold his office for a term of four years, and until his successor is elected and qualified.
Washington State Constitution, Art. III, Sec. 2."
Implicit in this statement is the assumption that said governor was lawfully elected.
As Mrs Gregoire was not lawfully elected, what's your point?
Posted by: ewaggin on March 10, 2006 12:18 PM"Not only that, but the Governor is being praised for her strong willed support for good things -- eg transportation.
But you still refuse to even call her the Governor.
You are painting yourself into a very small, emotionally intense, self-delusional position that is occupied only by the extreme right wing of your party."
Praised by whom? Praise from her fellow moonbats probably sounds sweet to CG, but isn't worth much otherwise.
Given that CG wasn't lawfully elected, even the use of "Mrs" is an undeserved courtesy, much less "Governor".
Who are you calling self-delusional? About 60% of Washington State voters polled believed that CG was not lawfully elected. The ongoing shenanigans of DeanRon ("We've cleaned up our act so much by ourselves that now there's no need for the turnaround team we said we needed to restore confidence!) are only serving to reinforce the voters' belief.
The overall DSHS budget is up.
They are cutting services on the ground.
I am a foster parent. We have two of the cutest most wonderful boys in our home (okay biased opinion). The parents where homeless, drug use etc... The reason the boys are in the system is that the youngest from birth to 4 mo was physically abused. The list of injuries is a page long.
DSHS is paying for ELECTIVE procedures.
DSHS is cutting service to parents and children.
Our current challenges:
The bio-parents can't get court mandated treatment.
To continue the case the parents get treatment. If they succeed they kids might go back. If the parents fail they the State proceeds to permanently take the kids and adopt them out.
The court mandates visits with the bio-parents.
DSHS can't fund the visits. As foster parents we don't want the bio-parents to have any knowledge of us or contact with us. So DSHS contracts out for services to pickup the kids and supervise visits.
When DSHS fails to provide treatment and visits. The case hangs in limbo. It can't continue until the services are provide.
Remember DSHS budget is increasing, but they cut services. They can pay for ELECTIVE procedures but not Court Ordered services.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
I wrote the gov. and ask about this (politely) with no response.
I would to find someone in Olympia with the intellectual capacity, honesty and simple spine to give some straight answers to some questions:
Why is DSHS cutting services required by law when the budget is increasing?
Why is DSHS cutting services required by law when they fund elective procedures?
What will be done to correct this problem?
Who will be held responsible?
Posted by: JCM on March 10, 2006 12:46 PMYeah, especially those that were fraudlent and illegal. And just how many times did King Co. keep "accidentally finding" votes that "just happened" not to be counted in the previous counts? How many different batches of votes did they "just happen" to find stuck in the sides of voting machines or squirreled away in some back room somewhere just waiting to be "found"? And wasn't it just "convenient" that a rabid 'Rat activist "just happened" to notice that his name was not on the voter list (or whatever it was that happened with that scumbag)? Gee, so many wonderful, completely innocent "just happenings" to make it barely enough to have the lousy, stinking 'Rat come out on top! Simply amazing, no? But, sure, nothing to see here, just a "close election", never mind, move on, blah blah blah.
Give me a freaking break here, people.
Posted by: Interested Observer on March 10, 2006 12:55 PMivan (you moron) I was wondering what attracted you to this site. Thanks for claring that up. So, are you a mouth-breather because you were born that way, or did someone drop you on your head as a child?
Posted by: alphabet soup on March 10, 2006 01:08 PMJCM, please also refer to my posts on the nursing home crisis. Gregoire and Co. chose to start a few boondoggles like the school assistance thing, but also chose to cut back on nursing homes to balance the budget.
Her plan is to increase the budget in both the new and old by increasing taxes. It is what she has done before and will do again.
Posted by: swatter on March 10, 2006 01:59 PMQueen Fix it has has only accomplished fixing her treasure chest by robbing ours! Some Leadership that is!
Posted by: GS on March 10, 2006 02:17 PMImplicit in this statement is the assumption that said governor was lawfully elected.
Heck, it isn’t implicit. It is explicit. And, unlike most of what you read here, it is in fact true:
Gregoire's election stands
State Supreme Court throws out legal challenges by voters
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/262434_electionruling10.html
“After spending millions of dollars, months on investigations and two weeks in trial, the net result for the Republicans yesterday was that Dino Rossi lost four votes from his total, pushing Gov. Christine Gregoire's victory margin to 133 in what is still the closest governor's race in the nation's history.
Rossi and the GOP sued in January in Chelan County Superior Court to set aside the November election. Rossi won the initial tabulation by 261 votes and a machine recount by 42, but a final hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots gave Gregoire her official 129-vote margin.
Yesterday, Rossi lost again.
‘The court concludes that the election contest petition should be dismissed and the certification of Miss Gregoire as governor confirmed,’ Judge John Bridges said in formally announcing his decision.”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/227408_election07.html
As Mrs Gregoire was not lawfully elected, what's your point?
As you are lying, what is your point?
The Lunatics really think that doing what the Republicans wanted done is somehow a victory!!
Pathetically for the Dems, they also failed in many areas---
*Soft on crime
*Added more State employees.
*UNSUSTAINABLE Budget adopted.
*No real transportation solution other than delay the decisions until late this year.
What a bunch of idiots!
The problem with these Lefty's is they want so badly to be in charge. However, they are so clueless as to what to do, that they copy the Republicans....and CLAIM VICTORY!!
Lighten up my friends who are Right.
Are we worried about getting things done...or just being in charge??
The Lefty's trust NO ONE! They feel they MUST be in charge and by God, they'll show us who is Boss!!! They'll do exactly what WE were going to do!!!!
The Lunatics really think that doing what the Republicans wanted done is somehow a victory!!
Pathetically for the Dems, they also failed in many areas---
*Soft on crime
*Added more State employees.
*UNSUSTAINABLE Budget adopted.
*No real transportation solution other than delay the decisions until late this year.
What a bunch of idiots!
The problem with these Lefty's is they want so badly to be in charge. However, they are so clueless as to what to do, that they copy the Republicans....and CLAIM VICTORY!!
Lighten up my friends who are Right.
Are we worried about getting things done...or just being in charge??
The Lefty's trust NO ONE! They feel they MUST be in charge and by God, they'll show us who is Boss!!! They'll do exactly what WE were going to do!!!!
Lousy, stupid, stinking, blithering idiot. MISS Gregoire? WTF is that, Mr. Monopoly's unmarried sister? The Fraudoire (Gregoire?) who was fraudulently elected governor is MRS. Gregoire, last I heard.
Posted by: Interested Observer on March 10, 2006 03:41 PMThe difference between me and you is that I actually listen and read Judge Bridges’ decision. I heard him say that under any rational statistical analysis that Governor Gregoire won. I also noted that he said:
“There is no evidence that ballots were changed, the ballot box stuffed or that lawful votes were removed from either candidate's ballot box.”
He also noted that:
“Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts.”
And, when it comes down to all those improper votes, the court was quite clear:
“[The GOP had not] satisfy petitioners' burden of proof to convince the Court that Mr. Rossi received more votes than Ms. Gregoire. Indeed, the Court is more inclined to conclude that if this type of testimony is properly admissible, then Ms. Gregoire would have prevailed under a theory of proportional deduction . . . .”
And
“The Court concludes, by clear and convincing evidence, that Mr. Rossi received four votes cast illegally by felons and that Ms. Bennett received one vote cast by a felon. There is no evidence, however, in this record that Ms. Gregoire received any illegal votes. Indeed, there has been no evidence produced that Ms. Gregoire received any of the 2,820 votes claimed by petitioners in their closing argument.”
So, what color are your glasses? Or, since you post in agreement with this blog, what color is your koolaid?
This is the same "Judge" Bridges who said, in effect, that, yes, the King Co. election system is mucked up, but that only the voters had the power to fix it? How, by voting?! So he is saying use a broken, corrupt system to fix a broken, corrupt system? Nice conundrum, that.
That's enough for me. The guy is either a totally brain-dead, blithering idiot waste of human flesh, or he's a corrupt, rotten slimemold. Either way, the "decision" he handed down reflects unmitigated idiocy.
Posted by: Interested Observer on March 10, 2006 05:50 PMI partly credit King County & Deanron for successfully stonewalling enough evidence to keep there from being sufficient proof. However, if the Repubs would have canvassed and received at least 200 signed affadavits from convicted felons that illegally voted for Gregoire (the Repubs got 5 affadavits signed by those who voted for Rossi), the judge would have had to overturn the election. That basically renders your last thread ineffectual. Time to move on now.
Posted by: KS on March 10, 2006 07:51 PMit would not be nearly as maddening if there was a real budget shortfall. But not only do they have an increase they spend on the most inane things and then cut where there are real needs.
They've do it for years with public safety: "See how tight the buget is? We have to cut fire and police!"
I am I the mood to go to Olympia and just dope slap the lot of them.
Posted by: JCM on March 10, 2006 09:16 PMOf course it does not. It means nothing more than that the WSSC rejected the arguments put before them.
Nor is this result surprising. It was predicted on this board many months ago that the WSSC would dismiss any challenge that reached it.
As for "rational statistical analysis", Judge Bridges would be better off sticking to analysis of the law. He was sold a bill of goods by the expert witnesses produced by the Dems. Those profs claimed that looking at a single felon vote was an example of the "Environmental Fallacy". They compared it to claiming that because the Major League Baseball batting average is X, therefore the average of any single batter is X. Since this claim is demonstrably false, they said that making a claim about how any felon voted is not possible.
Unfortunately, Judge Bridges bought into this misleading argument.
Using the baseball analogy, although it is very unlikely that the batting average of any one batter would match the batting average of the entire league, it is likely that the batting average of any twenty batters would be close to the league average. Thirty batters, even closer. Fifty batters, even more than that, and so on, and so on.
In the 2004 General election, there were about 867,000 votes counted in King County. CG got 57.8%, Rossi 40.1%, an advantage of 17.7 votes per hundred for CG. Evidence of 754 felon votes in KC was produced at the trial.
Pull any 754 votes out of the 867,000, and the odds are extremely high that the percentage for each candidate will match the results of the entire county within a very small margin.
For the entire county, 754 votes represents an advantage of (754/100)(17.7) = 133.5 votes for Mrs Gregoire. With the four votes that Judge Bridges gave her, her (alleged) margin of victory was 133 votes, so the felon votes alone are enough to give her fewer legal votes than Mr Rossi.
Add in the other illegal votes counted by DeanRon (that we know about now, but didn't know about at the time of the trial, due to DeanRon's stonewalling and refusal to produce requested records in a timely manner), and the probability that Mrs Gregoire got more legal votes than Mr Rossi becomes vanishingly small.
And that is why about 60% of the public believes that Mrs Gregoire didn't actually win the election.
And that is why it is important to clean up KC Elections - not because it will prove who really won, but because it is critically important to have an elections process that will produce a result that everyone, on both sides of the issue, has confidence in.
Posted by: ewaggin on March 10, 2006 10:15 PMI was shocked and became very disillusioned. I always had hoped that everyone can agree on 95% of the issues and it was the remaining 5% that made politics a contact sport. And in those 5% you can go have a beer with the opposite side after the vote. Not anymore, apparently.
Posted by: swatter on March 13, 2006 07:50 AMTruly is Republican-lite.
Posted by: Palouse on March 13, 2006 08:34 AMSomething perfectly predictable after the '04 governor's race debacle when things didn't quite go as predicted and the media's Queen had to cheat her way into office, and got a number of people riled up in the process. I predicted then that the media slimebags would spend the next four years buttering up and gussying up Fraudoire as "an effective leader". They're just greasing the rails for Fraudoire's run in '08. You watch, we haven't seen the half of it yet.