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Jul 15, 2014 at 6:00 am
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
The Greeks had an intuitive grasp of the concept, but formal proof was established only in the 1950s.
Of course that's not the issue in this case, but since you say you're sick of - something - and that something seems to reject the established maths of voting, feel free to hold forth.
You bitch about Chopp listening to Boeing and Amazon and Alaska. Well what the hell do you want him to do? They're the state's largest employers -- any elected official with his salt had damn well better be willing to listen to them. Just because they're big businesses doesn't mean they're evil and wrong 100% of the time.
All of this complaining reminds me of the idiots who bitched about how the ACA just wasn't good enough, how it wasn't going to help, rather than being ecstatic over the biggest expansion of health care to those that needed it in 50 years. You're a bunch of Nader voters claiming that Al Gore was the same as Bush. You wound up with the worst president in the last 90 years and Alito and Roberts fucking you over. Forgive me and others if we consider your judgment a little suspect.
But I doubt she'll win. Sawant, who was more well known, only got 29% of the vote when she ran against Chopp. Most likely Spear is doing this as a test run for a city council run later on.
At some point you wind up being forced to make tough decisions. Many of those decisions wind up being made by the legislature, but they're forced by voter approved initiatives. Do I disagree with decisions Chopp has made? Yes. But I at least understand that he's operating from a box we've all put him in.
The only thing anyone needs to understand about voting for Spear is that she will accomplish nothing. She will never chair a committee. She will never drive a progressive agenda. She will be sanctimonious wallpaper in a chamber that is already overflowing with that.
Finally - kicking out Frank Chopp will result in a more conservative Speaker - Period, Full stop. So - if you want Olympia to become instantly less progressive, the quickest way to make that happen is to vote for Jess Spear. And as a die-hard progressive, it makes me want to bang my head against a wall that Spear supporters don't get this.
It's absolutely bullshit that a third party legislator (who gets to caucus where the please, just like everyone else) won't be at least as effective as a Democratic one. The difference is they won't be saddled with allegiance to the party of capitulation. If we can do the hard work of putting progressives of any party in the legislature it'll be better than electing nothing but center-right and right wingers.
You might have a point if we were talking about the executive office, where a third party office-holder would probably be stymied by the partisans of both parties (like you and fnarf and RonK) who value the status quo more than any ideals they pretend to hold.
So she is not looking to work with Democrats. Certainly challenging Speaker of the House Frank Chopp is not a sign of wanting to align with the Democrats. She is running an independent campaign and I guess she would be a caucus of one in Olympia. Hard to be effective that way although you won't get any dissent in your caucus.
Spear says she belongs to the Socialist Alternative Party. She is not a Democrat and certainly challenging the Democratic leader in the House is not a sign you are trying to make friends or work with Democrats. She is an independent and would be a caucus of one in Olympia.
She is no Bernie Sanders. US Senator Sanders of Vermont according a Wikipedia article ran as an independent in 2005 against a Republican and Democrats supported him and ran no Democratic candidate in the race. Sanders gained Democratic support for his Senate race because he had a record as a Representative of working with Democrats.
I mean how the fuck could that even happen? Nobody knows. And it won't. Ever.
She might as well make the invention of Warp Drive and matter transportation part of her platform. Actually. No. Those at least have some foundation in science. She might as well make learning Elf magic part of her platform.
Look. I'm with in so far as the two party system has been driven so far to the right.
However until the left can field competent candidates that aren't mired in 19th century Pseudo-Marxist magical delusions and can learn how the world actually operates I'm going to have to stick with Democrats. As imperfect as they are.
No I didn't. I said I find it very strange that you value having a legislator who shares more of your all things considered views than having a legislator who is effective at accomplishing goals. It treats the legislature like an aesthetic project rather than a political one. You have an excessively literal conception of representative democracy.
I invite you to contemplate the differences between the Seattle City Council and the State legislature further, and see if you can't figure out how obviously wrong this is.
McCabe and others attribute Chopp's success to his ability to restrain the left wing of his party...
He showed that this year in Clark County, where he overruled the local party choice and picked a different candidate to run against Republican Rep. Jim Dunn of Vancouver.
The Democratic county party chairman, Chris Bassett, resigned in protest.
"The speaker has complete candidate-selection authority, to put it mildly," Bassett says..."His sales pitch is that he's trying to create a new Democratic Party and he's looking for a centrist new majority and he's looking for people he can get into the caucus who will support that approach
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2…
David Brookbank
House Bill 2721 to create a Tax Expenditure Budget had 25 sponsors in the House in the last Legislative session and SB 6477 had 9 sponsors in the Senate. You can check the bills out by going to www.leg.wa.gov More information can also be found at www.taxsanity.org
This is not even up for debate. This was conclusively settled forty years ago and no new evidence has appeared to contradict it. That so many would support her says much about the ignorance and political bias of voters.