I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but honestly, fuck Rodney Tom:

Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom thinks he knows a way to prevent lawmakers from pushing the state to the brink of a government shutdown in the future: Fine them if they take too long to pass a budget.

Tom created a buzz after broaching the idea of a $250-a-day fine for each day lawmakers go past the time allotted in the regular session.

“We need a forcing mechanism, and right now, there really is not one,” Tom said Tuesday. “I think it’s crazy that it comes down to notices to state workers that we’re going to shut down state government as the only forcing mechanism that gets us out of town.”

Um, first of all, it was Tom who was largely responsible for the legislature's failure to get out of Olympia on time, so fuck him for pretending otherwise. And while we're at it, fuck the Seattle Times for not calling Tom on this utterly ridiculous pretension that he and the rest of the Senate leadership weren't the primary cause of our near government shutdown.

But mostly, could Tom find a better way to put the reins of government more in the hands of the very wealthy?

For wealthy lawmakers like Senator Rodney Tom (R-Medina), $250 isn't all that much money. Hell, that's less than Tom spends a day just murdering kittens. (Actual Rodney Tom 2012 campaign slogan: "Because Those Kittens Aren't Going to Murder Themselves.") But for legislators who mostly rely on their $42,000 a year salary, the $15,000 in fines they would have accumulated this year could've been the difference between keeping and losing their homes. The end result would be those lawmakers who can't afford to pay the fine caving to lawmakers who can.

Either Tom doesn't understand this, which makes him a totally out-of-touch elitist fuck, or he does understand this, which just makes him a fucking elitist.