The Legislature has gone home again.
What did these part-timers do this year? And what didn't they do?
We've already noted in this space last week that they totally wimped out in dealing with the firearms issue. But guns, despite being more important than bread in this country since the day I was back in the middle of the previous century, are not everything, whatever the NRA wackos believe in their twisted little hearts.
On the plus side, our brave politicians did pass a bill establishing a domestic-partnership registry, which included extended rights for same-sex couples, among others. This is a good thing.
Legislators also took the first tentative steps toward paying for a Puget Sound cleanup, a definite necessity for those of us who loved the pre-latte Northwest.
They took another commendable step toward providing health insurance to all kids in Washington state.
Now they need to work on providing coverage for the 30 to 40 percent of adults not covered.
Even though it was a compromise bill, the jewel in the crown of this year's Legislature - especially if you listen to party flacks down in Olympia - was the passage of a paid-family-leave bill.
The bill, which would pay a worker $250 per week for up to five weeks for folks caring for a new child, or a newly adopted child, would be there for the taking by anyone who had worked at least 680 hours in the previous 12 months. Those working less than 35 hours a week would be eligible for prorated paid family leave.
Washington would join California, currently the only state offering such benefits. California funds its program by extracting 0.6 percent weekly from all employees' wages.
The bill would also require employers to keep workers' positions open while they are on paid family leave - a much-needed benefit for working mothers (and fathers).
If completely implemented, this bill - combined with the Legislature's attempts to provide health insurance to all the state's children - will leave a better legacy for the 2007 politicos than most recent years can boast of.
ON THE NATIONAL level, societal fairness once again fell victim to greed, this time of the pharmaceutical-industry variety, as the Senate failed to pass a bill that would have required the Department of Health and Human Services (under the Bush regime, a misnomer if ever there was one) to utilize federal purchasing power to provide lower drug prices in the Medicare prescription drug plan.
Forget about helping old people who are other people's parents - the right-wing mantra when dealing with most groups not living in gated communities or in Iraq.
The measure needed 60 votes for passage but received only 55. Forty-two solons, primarily on the elephant side of the aisle, voted against the bill. Washington state's two senators, Maria Cantwell (D) and Patty Murray (also a D), voted for the measure.
Locally, recent court decisions are going to keep Seattle a two-newspaper town for the foreseeable future. The latest poll I've seen says that only 15 percent of citizens - or, to use corporate phraseology, consumers - between the ages of 18 and 29 regularly read a metropolitan newspaper. So the good news about continuing media competition between the Times and the P-I is for us older types.
The next step would be for both dailies to work at differentiating themselves from each other by reducing wire copy and covering more local and regional news.
When I moved here in 1984, the Times and P-I were distinctly different outfits. Nowadays they read the same and even look the same. I'm sure I'm not the only person in a hurry who thought he bought one and ended up at home with the other.
Homogenization is only a good idea with milk, not newspapers.
[[In-content Ad]]
