Plain Talk

about matters of interest in Washington State and, often, elsewhere

January 2008

Here, to start the new year, are some collected tidbits of Washingtonia.

Washington State realizes--or ought to--better than most in the nation the ridiculousness of all the political bashing of free trade. Nationally, about one in five American jobs is supported by exports, most made possible by free-trade agreements. The national average for the worth of exports is $3,300 per American citizen; but in Washington, it's a whopping $8,300. Everyone from eastside wheat farmers to rainyside software makers benefits, immensely, from free trade. So when you hear politicians, from either party (and both are guilty here), whining about "keeping our jobs at home", suggest to them that they get their facts from someone more knowledgeable than Lou Dobbs.

How good ends can lead to bad means: deterring drunk driving is an unimpeachable end. But setting up "random-stop" sobriety checkpoints is, no matter what our wonderful Supreme Court thinks, as un-American an idea as there is. Understand, no one is pulled over on these for any least suspicion that they are in fact doing anything wrong: the checks are just that, random. Randomly stopping citizens in travel to see if they might be doing something wrong goes with jackboots and goose steps. There are perfectly legal and proper ways of accomplishing the important task, such as drunk-driving emphasis patrols, which State Patrol and local police have been using with greater frequency in recent years.

It looks, for now, like 2008 will be a bad year for Republicans in Washington State. The Elway poll found that roughly twice as many independents said it was "important that a Democrat win the presidency" or it "would be better" if a Democrat won than said the same for a Republican president. And Democrats are expected to raise and spend about three times what Republicans will contesting State House seats. Right now, Democrats have a large majority, and it looks like that will be going up by even more. "Politically, it's a rout right now," according to Chris Vance, former chairman of the state Republican Party.

If you missed it, Washington is one of the 16 or so states joining California in suing the EPA for the right to set more stringent auto-emission laws than the federal set. Despite the nonsense from the EPA's head, who bulled ahead despite his own staff's telling him he was flagrantly wrong on sheer law, this would not create some "patchwork" of multiple conflicting sets of regulations: it would set just two, the federal and the California. (It is a long tradition that numerous states have a second set of tougher controls; California has just been the nominal initiator.) The states involved constitute about one-third of America, and even more by citizen head count.

A final note: the Los Angeles Times, criticizing Governor Schwarzenegger's budget-cut proposals, held up how Washington's Gary Locke handled the process as an example of how to do it right.

Have a good 2008.

Plain Talk is a more or less monthly feature carried in the weekly Ritzville Adams County Journal.