Empathy means weakness, right? And everyone who is successful got their all by themselves, with no help from public entities at all? The neo-con post-Reagan hangover continues. Tax cuts pay for themselves. Welfare recipients should be assumed to be shiftless grifters. And the way to reform government is to just cut revenue and let the rest sort itself out. However it does that. Who cares. It's an ideology which is surpassed in it's arrogance only by it's ignorance and mental sloth.

Well its either that, or celebrate a stalemate, where both sides agree to disagree and nothing gets done. You know, just how road projects in Seattle always seem to go back to the drawing table after years of designs due to the objections of any given NIMBY minority group.

By all means, continue to bitch about everything and nothing.

Goldy, don't forget the Times' happy dance over our road kill Democratic Gov and Legislators having begun to dismantle Washington's Workers Comp system. The Times didn't pretend to feel any pain. Cutting benefits for injured workers (the only way the "reform" achieves any savings), is an unqualified good as far as the bloodthirsty Blethens are concerned. The only problem for them was that the Legislature didn't finish the job: "more ...needs to be done" to injured workers, they thunder.

This is a super whiny post. Seattle Times sucks, yes. Can you please report on the real news instead of using blogspace to bitch about your competitor like a catty Cap Hill queen? Your credibility as a journalist is clearly not as important to you as emotionalism and grudges.

If you look at the state county by county you will see that it is predominantly the Republican counties that run the highest deficits. Therefore it really makes sense to make the cuts in those counties.