>The Rossi Conundrum: to run for the senate… or hang on for the governorship.

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Sources in the senate have told me late last night that two senate staffers who were going to take a leave of absence for the Rossi campaign cancelled them today.

Rossi is caught between the rock and a hard place. “Everyone” has indicated that Rossi would really, really, rather be Governor. With the rules for a situation like this, if Obama would actually be moronic enough to pick our disaster of a governor for solicitor general, the question would be one of timing.

As explained by the Swing State Project, here’s the scenario:

• WA-Gov: The rumor du jour is that Chris Gregoire is now on the short list to become Solicitor General, assuming Elena Kagan gets promoted to the SCOTUS. Allow me to say: bad idea, if only because it means at least several months of Governor Brad Owen. Under Washington law, though, Owen wouldn’t serve for long, as a special election would be held. The timeline varies, depending on when Gregoire might quit as Governor. If it happens before May 31, a primary would be held, followed by a two-person general in November. If it happens after May 31 but before October 3, it would result in a jungle-style election in November. And if it happens after October 3, we’d be blessed with two full years of Owen. One other major wrinkle: if this looks like it has legs, it may shut the door on a Dino Rossi run for the Senate, as it’s a poorly-kept secret that he’d really prefer another gubernatorial run rather than wasting his third strike on getting pasted by Patty Murray, and this would be the way for him to do it.

So, why would these two people cancel their leave of absence?

Dunno. Fascinating to ponder tho, eh?
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>Memo to Melanie Kenoyer: State employees should get a pay CUT… not a pay raise.

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I rarely respond to LTE’s in the Columbian. This nonsense from Clark County Sheriff’s Sergeant Melanie Kenoyer, however, takes the cake.

Rep. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, proposes to deny custodians who earn $25,000 a year and other state employees a 5 percent contractual raise in 2010. (Dec. 16 story, “Many state workers in line for raises.”)

It’s, uh, SENATOR, Sergeant. Not “Rep.”

That said, ALL government employees, INCLUDING YOU, should not only NOT get pay raises… you all should take pay CUTS.

I have no problem with people taking shots at Zarelli. I’ve taken a few, and will continue to take some here on this very blog. But his issues with his unemployment have nothing to do with taking the RIGHT position on government employee pay raises.

And government employees, INCLUDING democrat police officers/deputies, need to understand that you serve US; not the other way around.

We are in the midst of a horrific recession. Massive unemployment and cutbacks are the order of the day… small business is getting hammered… and all people like Kenoyer can do is whine about not getting a horrific 5% pay INCREASE?

Clearly, Kenoyer is as clueless about the economy and the role of government workers as she is about Zarelli’s office.

Tell you what, Kenoyer. You don’t think you’re getting paid enough? ANY government employee think they’re not getting paid enough?

Then quit.

We’ll be well rid of your bizarre positions, which are SUPPOSED to be in service to US, and any one of the hundreds of people applying to fill your positions would be thrilled to get your job not only at your current level of pay, but at ANY level of pay.

“Pay raise?” Stop sniveling like a little punk and thank God you even HAVE a job… that pays ANYTHING.

Because millions in this country can’t say they do.
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>Justice is done. Now… how the hell did this happen?

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How is it that a Clemmens was out there? How many more are there? What can be done to make sure this never happens again?

This is a clear cut case of the system failing. The failures appear to have begun when Mike Huckabee commuted or otherwise reduced this guy’s sentence… all the way up to the point where SPD Officer Benjamin L. Kelly, who punched this guy’s ticket at the scene of a stolen car, stepped in and did what had to be done when this clown wouldn’t stop on command.

But that this was a massive systems failure cannot be denied. Will subsequent investigations be substantive, or will they be the expected white wash, where the guilty will “Tiger Woods” this situation while taking cover and blaming others? (ala Huckabee)

In short, will the blood and the lives of these police officers make any damned difference?

Not in this state.

Years ago, the State of Washington wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars by resending registration renewal notices… they proceeded to send out 250,000 $1 checks… and untold thousands of one CENT checks… they then wasted $60 MILLION on a site needed to build a dry dock for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge… and who was fired for all of this? Who actually took the responsibility for screwing us?

Why….. no one.

Why even bother to ask?

Is THAT what we’re looking at here? The “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” philosophy inculcated in our leftist-run government?

The blood of these 4 officers HAS to mean SOMETHING.

Sadly, under the current regime…

…I seriously doubt that it will.
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>More unabashed stupidity from OUR government: Cash for clunkers.

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There are fools, damned fools… and our government.

As a general rule, government rarely SOLVES any problem. (Can you name one…. ONE problem government has solved? I can’t.) What they do is reduce the noise on the problems we face to a bearable level. It is, in fact, the implementation of the “squeaky wheel” rule.

Government typically wants the unwashed masses (That’s US, by the way.) to THINK government’s doing something. That’s why we cost ourselves tens of billions of wasted dollars by making all of the airport security workers federal employees, for example. It was a show, designed primarily to make us believe that our government, post 9/11, was actually DOING something.

In that regard… they were not. In the aftermath, it’s easy to forget that none of the 9/11 hijackers violated the security laws then in effect. Federalizing airport security BEFORE 9/11 would have made absolutely NO difference in the 9/11 outcome… unless the rules had been changed as well.

It’s important to remember that as we consider the latest plan to “save us” by removing older, more polluting, gas-guzzler type vehicles from the road.

Now, I haven’t seen the final version of this nonsense, and many of the rules in question would blind an accountant in their complexity, purely an accidental outcome to be sure. So, I’ll let Greg Gutfeld explain it to you in his own, inimitable, way:

Making Sense of ‘Cash for Clunkers’

Monday, June 22, 2009
By Greg Gutfeld

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FNC

Last week I was reading up on the “Cash for Clunkers” program which the Senate just approved, hoping to talk about it here. I gave up, however, because it didn’t make any sense.

Then it dawned on me: It didn’t have to! It’s a government program. As long as it’s paved with good intentions, it doesn’t matter if the road goes nowhere.

Here’s the deal: To get gas guzzlers off the roads, the government is offering vouchers worth up to $4,500 for your old car, to be used on a new car.

How does it work? (Breathe deeply.) You can trade in a car getting 18 miles per gallon for a car getting 22 mpg and get $3,500. But you’d get $4,500 if the new car is 10 mpg higher.

Now, if you own an old SUV, you could get $3,500 if your new wheels offer two more gallons per mile. If it’s five more miles, then you get an extra grand.

You follow? Good, then find a gun and shoot me in the face.

Now, here’s the fun part: None of this makes any sense if your old car is worth more than a voucher. Meaning this only works for crap worth under 3,500 bucks. And if that’s the case, then the government pays and loses money on every junk heap.

Lastly, try to find someone with a piece of crud up on blocks in their front yard, who can suddenly afford a new car. You can count all of them on one foot, even if you’re missing a toe.

So, in sum, welcome to the rebirth of big government. It’ll drive you nuts just thinking about it.

Greg Gutfeld hosts “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld“ weekdays at 3 a.m. ET. Send your comments to: redeye@foxnews.com

There are, perhaps WAYS to make this actually WORK… but this plan ain’t one of them.

The purpose of this, I guess, is to get people driving $4500 or cheaper cars in on a new car.

Besides credit markets so tight it makes your butt squeak, as Greg pointed out:

Lastly, try to find someone with a piece of crud up on blocks in their front yard, who can suddenly afford a new car. You can count all of them on one foot, even if you’re missing a toe.

So…. here we have it. This aspect of the bill will, no doubt, have a huge roll out. “Good” for the auto-makers, “good” for the environment, “good” for the consumers.

Except… it will make little to no difference…. because the target market will not be able to afford a new car.

But it looks good, doesn’t it?
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>The mind-numbing idiocy of Washington State Government: Now issuing checks for ONE CENT.

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God help me, I just want to scream.

Earlier, the geniuses at the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services issued 250,000 one dollar checks…

And now, in a move designed to cause heads to explode, they’re now issuing checks for one cent.

One.

Fricking.

Cent.

Will this kind of government waste and incompetence EVER end? One person has received, she claims, DOZENS of these checks.

What the hell is WRONG with my government?

>State union thugs: now SUING the Gov for their pay raises.

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The people of this country generally and this state particularly are hurting. We’re hurting big time in a wide variety of areas. On December 18th, I wrote about Gov. Gregoire’s stunning effort to balance the budget without raising taxes, and mentioned my belief that the unions don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.

So, what do the union scum do?

They sue the Governor. Here’s the Seattle Times’ take on it… and here’s the PI’s effort.

These selfish clowns are actually suing the Governor as outlined here:

The lawsuit asks Thurston County Superior Court to compel the governor to submit a request to the Legislature to fund the pay raises and other economic parts of the five contracts negotiated by the Federation. The pacts cover 30,000 General Government workers and 10,000 employees at 12 community colleges and all four-year universities and The Evergreen State College.

“Pay raise?” They need to be forced to take a substantial PAY CUT. Or do they find the idea of unemployment intriguing?

Apparently, these thugs, including those employed at our universities, lack the ability to grasp the impacts of our troubled economy.

Or, alternately, they simply don’t care because they’re greedy pigs.

Remember the good old days, before the dems paid these scum off with collective bargaining?

Were it up to me, I’d fire off a bill to decertify the state employee unions. I would hammer them like nails, since they clearly don’t give a damn about those they allegedly serve…. that is, us.
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>Enough is enough: just say "No!" to the auto or any other bailout.

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Folks, do you FEEL “bailed out?”

I don’t.

The auto industry is no more deserving then any other industry of government bailout funds.

NO business should have the ability to tap into the treasury so they can continue the bizarre, out of touch policies that got them and us into this situation in the first place.

Like our government, the same group of morons that got us into this are somehow expecting us to believe they’ll get us out of it.

We’ve already set aside to waste $850 billion in taxpayer monies with hundreds of billions more to come… again, if administered by ANYONE, they’ll be administered by the same tone-deaf idiots that got us into this trouble to begin with.

The first bail out was a terrible idea. McCain was a bufoon for supporting that effort, and our government will reach new heights of moronic achievement if they go along with this effort.

After all, was it just me, or did those dolts fly into DC a few days back in Learjets? And then, just a few days ago, they were begging for $25 billion. Now, a few days later, they demand $34 billion?

When would it end? What do they do when this money runs out, as it inevitably would? Does anyone believe they won’t be back, over and over and over again? When would it end?

Never. The fact is that like buying a new car itself with no downpaynment, you’re buried in it the moment you drive it off the lot.

And with every billion we waste on an auto company bail out, our ability to let these clowns fail becomes less and less. In short, the more cash we flush down the bail out dumper, the more cash we’ll HAVE to flush down the dumper, to avoid the allegation that we wasted billions to begin with.

Will it hurt to let these businesses flounder? Of course it will. But it will hurt much less than the alternative, which is the wasting of hundreds of billions of dollars with a result of having absolutely nothing to show for it, which is what we have now.

That the primary basis for doing this is to pay back the auto worker’s unions cannot be denied. Unfortunately, politics excuses nothing.

And wasting our money at such a violent rate; causing massive increases in our budget deficit that was OH such a BIG deal during the campaign but which now goes essentially unmentioned as our government determines how many thousands of dollars of indebtedness each of our children will have to bear for the entirety of their lifetimes, since this garbage is so expensive that our children and THEIR children will bear this burden for the duration of their lives.

And folks… there’s something wrong with that.

Enough is enough. No more bailouts. Period. For anyone.
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>The Seattle Times nails it: Change Washington law to open government

>If we could only see this happen at every level of government.

Originally published November 16, 2008 at 12:00 AM Page modified November 16, 2008 at 12:54 AM

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Editorial

Change Washington law to open government

The Washington Legislature should follow the recommendations of the state Sunshine Committee to more narrowly define when government agencies can cite attorney-client privileges to keep information secret from the public. Sliver-thin majorities in two state Supreme Court decisions have helped to keep the secrets.

Seattle Times editorial

THE state Legislature should blow away the clouds gathering over open-government practices in recent years and follow the clear recommendation of its own so-called Sunshine Committee.

Officially known as the Public Records Accountability Executive Committee, the panel voted 7-3 Wednesday, urging the Legislature to pass legislation to raise the shades on what has become a state Supreme Court-condoned practice of excessively hiding information from the public.

The panel recommends lawmakers more narrowly define when government agencies can cite privilege for attorney-client communications or work — definitions that have expanded over the past few years thanks to sliver-thin majorities on the state’s highest court.

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