Your facial hair is appropriate and your gun is no problem. But your stick make legislators uncomfortable. You’ll have to leave it with us.

When 2,000 people threaten to show up, armed, inside and outside the state capitol, you know it’s either a join family reunion sponsored by the Senate Republic Caucus, or a rally by 2nd Amendment Fundamentalists. (Or both.)

Gun lovers called a rally at the Capitol in early February because despite jointly carrying enough armaments that they ought to feel quite safe if they believed their own rhetoric, the gun community is feeling threatened & uncomfortable as state politics threaten to explode with sanity over our culture of violence.

In their militaristic fantasy world, they are suddenly in retreat; their hands increasingly cold, dead, and pried-from; feeling under attack for believing too deeply that snakes should not be tread-upon. In fact, even before their Olympia lobby day began, gun rights advocates had already been decimated, reduced from the 2000 figure they had frothed about to maybe 200 if you included a few fetuses and a handful of not-yet-fertilized eggs which were present.

(That said, it’s worth noting that in the humans-last logic of the Legislature-industrial complex, a turnout of 200 is a show of force, while the long slate of advocacy days with greater numbers is no news at all.)

But the gun-toting nuts of Washington are used to being undermined and persecuted at every turn. (See: Roach, Pam.)

So no right-thinking sharpshooter who attended the rally was surprised when AP reporter Mike Baker took a moment away from his drycleaning research to point out the curious fact that while it is legal to carry a gun into the Capitol building, signs on sticks are forbidden — and get confiscated.

It’s right there in Washington Administrative Code 200-220-210

Banners and signs may be used during an activity in a capitol building only if they are handheld and not affixed to sticks or poles.

This makes sense: while guns kill people, you need a wooden stick to kill a vampire. And the undead have long been given special priority by the Legislature over people. After all, adding one more human to the Legislature’s bodycount is well within the margin of error of the impact of the cuts they’ve already made, but a popular movement wielding signs affixed to sticks and crying out against the inhumane choices of state government … well that could pose a fundamental threat to the vampire hearts at the center of state power.

(For similar reasons, don’t be surprised if Capitol police look much less kindly on 2nd amendment fundamentalist rallies that involve silver bullets. And don’t bother asking why there’s a potato day every year, but garlic day never comes — you already know the answer. )

Stick to it

Signs on sticks are often referred to as “picket signs” and closely associated with demonstrations & direct actions by workers taking action collectively to improve the conditions of their labor. In fact, the picket sign is under US labor law treated as carrying certain additional communicative force by virtue of being placed on a stick — thus NLRB rulings such as this one which allows a message to be printed on a banner which would be forbidden if affixed to a stick in the same location.

This is very much the logic of the Capitol too:

1. The stick itself carries cultural and historical meaning.
2. So there must be no sticks.

In essence, sticks are banned because they’re dangerous, even though speech is protected by the Bill of Rights. Guns are allowed because they’re protected by the Bill of the Rights, even though they’re dangerous.

Anyway, it’s only logical that the 2nd Amendment takes precedence over all others. In the immortal words of an anonymous schoolyard poet presumably ranking the various pieces of the Bill of Rights: “First is the worst, Second is the best, Third is the one with the hairy chest.” The final line is thought to be a reference to the stereotypical hirsute quality of soldier who might be forcibly quartered in the home.

(But in case you’re also worried about amendment number three: don’t. Local government has the 3rd amendment covered, and then some: the city of Olympia is steadfastly against quartering homeless veterans or other vulnerable people on city streets. Or even letting them sit. So don’t worry, they’re on our side too.)

All in all, it was no surprise that Pam Roach said it best when explaining government to rally-goers:

“We’ve done nothing but make it easier for people with mental health issues to walk among us, untreated, and get around firearms.”

And that is of course the Senate’s legislative agenda in a nutshell: cut state assistance for vulnerable people, reduce funding for treatment programs, and make sure guns are easy to come by.

All of this goes to show why in the world of Undead Olympia, it’s perfectly reasonable that crazies are allowed to stick to their guns; while humans are barred from sticking to their sticks.

Because otherwise, the humans might rise, and Legislators might have a sticky situation on their hands.

“the Legislature has expanded the definition of ‘vulnerable’ a bit

Senator Tom Riddle

wide.” — Rodney Tom

Rodney Tom was not surprised when he was told he had successfully become the leader of the Senate. In fact, he had long been eager to believe he possessed special gifts nobody else had.

Partly this was because of his multimillion-dollar house in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country – hard earned by years of brokering real estate for the ultra-rich of the Eastside and banking interest from his wife’s family trust.

But partly it was because of his unshakeable faith in his own analysis… his own expertise… his own genius… his own destiny.

So on that fateful 2012 day when he evoked Order Nine (and three quarters), it came not as a surprise to the man himself, even if it it did upend Olympia politics and set the stage for this year’s takeover.

Tom had long since divided himself, leaving a piece of his soul in each party. He split himself the only way possible: by taking a life or two (or a few thousand) of the poor and vulnerable. “We can not afford it,” he would say, knowing that the body count of the disabled and poor would be his own path to political immortality.

And so he built for himself a Majority Coalition of “the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty.”

“I believe my credentials as a Democrat are rock solid,” he said as he stuck out against the heart of the Democratic Party — that is, caucusing with other people who attached D’s to their names. Because when the sorting hat puts you in your house, you stay in that house. You don’t dump Slytherin for Hufflepuff only to come back around again the Hufflepuff. (Your scarf collection alone couldn’t bear it.)

But alas, this is the Tom we are left with. (And the humans fear we may end up with a budget that shall not be named.)

There are many pieces of the man’s soul:

• Senator Tom, curiosity: a man who has done the politically unthinkable — switch the letter in parentheses that appears after his name but before the real signifier, Medina. And yet despite the changes, he has remained  consistent as a foolish hobgoblin in his belief that the rich deserve more rights and the poor deserve less everything.

• Senator Tom, mystery: a man whose astonishing capacity for self-justification includes even thinking that billing a $300+ iPhone to the state while living in a $7 million+ home is OK — at the same time as he argues that $200 of assistance to the unemployable is fiscally and therefore morally unacceptable. (Why don’t they just get a job… selling iPhones and drycleaning… to state legislators…. who can expense it on the public tab?)

• Senator Tom, question: he is actually giggling when he posts that he is “honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.“… along with Senator Schoesler. Right? He retains at least that level of self-awareness, right?

But really the man we have running the Senate, the best friend of Rambling’ Pam Roach, is:

Senator Tom Riddle.

The Dark Lord of Olympia.

“If I say it myself…I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed.”

Dry cleaning gets tricky during the legislative session.

It’s ridiculous. The public-records-requesting investigative reporting hacks at the Associated Press are trying to blow up a story that condemns hardworking legislators for doing a little shopping and dry-cleaning on the public dime.

These reporters are probably just upset they didn’t get a job in corporate public relations like the rest of their cronies. They couldn’t even make the cut at a jingle-writing company like the Seattle Weekly’s flotsam & jetsam. So they’re stuck “reporting”.

Ridiculous.

But get real, there’s no scandal here.

Yes, Representative Pedersen bought a $383 painting of the Montlake Bridge for his office. That’s because it metaphorically represents the connection between the richest and least culturally diverse and interesting parts of his district, where he feels most comfortable as the corporate lawyer he is. And how does a corporate lawyer get rich? Well, it helps to maximize reimbursable expenses. Who wants to bet he actually charged the state cost + 15%?

And of course Senator Tom needed to bill the cost of his $164 Bose headphones back to the state. The man needs the highest quality in noise cancellation technology to ease the cognitive dissonance of his position on issues like education, reproductive rights, and himself. And c’mon — you get to live in Medina because you are willing to extract every single bloody cent from the people around you. That’s Medina rules… and that’s why Medina rules.

(There’s also the voices in his head. Who wants to hear those demons screeching when you’re on a conference call? He was asked to go on mute one too many times, so he took action.)

And sure, Representative Alexander had to spend a few hundred public dollars on dry-cleaning bills. But that was absolutely a legitimate business expense related to the job. First, there’s what he said, which sounds perfectly reasonable to us:

Alexander said he only submits dry cleaning receipts that are above and beyond the expenses he has outside of his legislative work. He said the job, especially when the Legislature is meeting, requires him to use a lot more dress shirts and sport coats.

“I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expense to be reimbursed for,” Alexander said.

But this isn’t the whole story. Because Frank Chopp would ignore every word Alexander said whether he was wearing a dress shirt & sport coat, a velour track suit, or nothing but his own little pinched red face. So it’s not the style of dress that matters here.

What matters is the work.

Rep. Alexander spent tireless days last session proposing inventively brutal ways to reduce government spending on people who have nowhere else to turn. (He even wrote a whole budget — did you read it? Oh that’s right, nobody did.) And no doubt that kind of work leads to higher dry-cleaning bills. Seriously: do you know a better way to get spatters of human blood out of silk?

We have a metric-baesd incentive system here, and you can’t argue with the results of this sort of results-driven lean management.

• For every poor tenant evicted from their home, Jamie Pedersen (corporate lawyer – Seattle) gets a new piece of tedious art.

• For every disabled person unable to work who is denied even a pittance of cash assistance, Rodney Tom (realtor – Medina) gets a new pair of headphones.

• For every person newly and unnecessarily brutalized by the fundamental inhumanity of poverty, Gary Alexander (auditor – Lacey) gets a freshly cleaned and pressed dress shirt.

It’s the invisible hand of market incentives, strangling those who, frankly, deserve it.

The only thing we need to find out: who paid for that bouncy exercise ball Rodney Tom sits on at his desk?

Sure hope it was funded by cuts to TANF.

Alfred J. Inslee — what, him worry?

Apparently, Washington has lurched from an inhumane Governor to an inhumanly optimistic one. Our dearly departed vampire Governor enjoyed lurching from one tortured angsty brutal cut to the next, always declaring her deep unhappiness with her lot in life. But we don’t think the new creature in the Governor’s mansion is going to be claiming he’s up all night — because he doesn’t seems constitutionally unable to worry about anything whatsoever, whether it’s a state’s rights battle with the Federal government, staffing difficulties, or even the annihilation of the species.

Instead, he just guffaws and deflects.

When hell comes to his doorstep (watch out Senator Roach!) we suspect he’s going to assume it’s just a rabid fan of Apollo’s Fire acting out the title. Because Jay Inslee is not worried about anything.

• Yes, Richard DeBolt is a professional whining worrier, but nonetheless, he is “extremely worried” about the cost of Medicaid expansion in the long run. But Alfred J. Inslee is not worried.

• North Korea is testing long-rang missiles that may be able to reach Washington State. The national security establishment is concerned… but Alfred J. Inslee is not worried.

• The Governor and the Attorney General went to DC recently to talk about Washington’s marijuana legalization law. The Federal government is concerned the state could become a major drug trafficking center. Supporters of legalization are worried about a Federal crackdown against the will of the people. And what message did Alfred J. Inslee bring? Don’t worry!

• Just two weeks before his inauguration, the Govenor had filled a grand total of zero cabinet seats. What did they think about this? “Inslee’s office said Wednesday there’s nothing to worry about.”

• The Governor ran on a vague promise of clean energy jobs. (Also bulldozers. Mostly bulldozers. ) Think tank libertarians are worried this amounts to the Governor playing favorites. (They should worry less — it just means a whole new set of interests to give tax breaks to.) But Alfred J. Inslee is not worried.

• The state is yet again facing a substantial budget gap, in addition to the multi-billion-dollar education funding obligations of the McCleary decision. But Alfred J. Inslee is not worried. In fact, he’s so not worried that he apparently doesn’t even see the need to offer a budget proposal of his own. (Note that even the House Republicans thought they were important enough to write up a budget proposal last year.) The most detailed proposal he has offered is this:“So I favor a good budget that we eventually will have that will be balanced, that will move forward to the extent humanly possible on school funding and will not increase taxes as much as humanly possible.”

  (P.S. That’s a lot of “humanly”. Perhaps the Governor doth protest too much?)

In all this preternatural calm, about the only thing the Governor has done so far is write a letter attempting to poach an unnamed battery mogul (or did he send some wooden shoes to a windwill entrepreneur?)  from some other state.

Maybe the people of Washington should be worried?

Click here to watch Undead Olympia’s video summary of this already-legendary declaration of principle. (Roach’s key principle, evoked repeatedly: “I like me.”)

Only people outside the mainstream are ever described as “rambling”. Even the longest & most meandering pontification by Bill Clinton could not warrant the adjective, but the sharpest declaration of principles by Hugo Chavez would likely begin to “ramble” by the time it made the pages of an American newspaper.

So, did Pam Roach ramble? The reality is that for her, she was sharp and clear in her hour-long session — despite struggling with hunger than whole way through (she only stopped because she had to eat), having to somehow compress her myriad accomplishments into such a small time, and deeming it appropriate to attend the press conference armed only with photos of good work rather than her usual rifle.

For those of you too judgmental to listen through the whole thing, here’s a capsule summary of the nuanced argument she made

• She is a good person.
• She likes herself.
• She does good things.
• She has been to 45 countries, including Romania and Zambia
• She has a clinic named after her in Honduras
• At least one member of her staff allegedly likes her, as does at least one person from Zambia.
• She has fulfilled her responsibilities here on earth.
• She inarguably does more than anyone else in the Senate.
• The Republican Caucus is out to get her, either because one former leader was gay, because she ran against another, because she is so accomplished, because she is an expert on campaigns, or all of the above.

She also warned clearly: the attacks on her not-so-good name amount to “inviting hell to your doorstep.”

Call it what you will, but that’s at least as cogent as any floor speech Don Benton has ever made, and tighter than several of Governor Inslee’s answers during one of the early debates.

Still think it’s rambling? Check out our video summary and judge for yourself if she’s a coo-coo-racha.

A key piece of the Governor’s agenda?

Today, our vampire Governor returns to the land from which she came, replaced by a leader whose shape remains indistinct despite his offering many months of biographical drivel that amounted to a LinkedIn profile — a list of all the jobs he did (especially masculine ones involving lifting things and/or breaking them and/or throwing them), the places he lived, and continued desperate attempts to pressure people into becoming his contact.

But one thing was clear: although nobody believed him — not his supporters and not his opponents — Governor Fill-in-the-blank insisted repeatedly that his budget plan is essentially the same as Hobgoblin Tom’s: lots of money for education, but no new taxes.

Which sets up a session where for the next few months at least, Inslee’s allies are going to ignore his promises, while his opponents repeatedly invoke them.

Clearly, it’s going to be a cluster.

Inauguration day events are going to reveal a lot. Here’s a few things to look out for:

• Will Inslee fulfill the implicit promise of his every campaign ad and lit piece and arrive at the Capitol on a bulldozer?

• Is the rumor about the Governor’s ball true? Will he order a late change to the menu of his private inaugural reception, ordering that the “galatines of sage hen” and “Lamb Legs mini steamship style” be served with his famous secret sauce?

• Will he be finally ready to reveal that his secret plan to balance the budget without taxing the rich or cutting any programs is the same as his plan to fund his electoral campaign? That’s right: we’re going to balance the state budget one limited edition doodle at a time. (The Senate majority clearly prefers to balance the budget through en-graving.)

• Will he begin his speech in dramatic fashion, raising a cast-iron frying pan, flicking rendered fat onto the hungry crowd, and declaring “Move over bacon,” pausing dramatically, then adding “There’s something leaner,” revealing that his fix-it-all plan for “lean management” is actually about “Sizzlean management” — lowering state health insurance costs through low-fat eating?

Stay tuned.

Drink up, Senator Tom. Your consistently inhumane agenda is the toast of the town

We have of course been tracking Rodney Tom for years now, but much like his style of dress, his demeanor, his income, and his politics, his hygiene habits are so anal-retentively Medina male that it’s been difficult to sniff out exactly what kind of beast he be. Some days he displays the vicious brutality of a werewolf, Other days he shows the conniving self-promotional ability of a vampire (and realtor) getting himself invited into whatever Legislative chambers he chooses, whether it’s House Democratic Caucus, House Republican Caucus, Senate Democratic Caucus, Senate Republican Caucus, or his own Caucus of One.

He’s a shapeshifter it would seem.

But even that is not quite right.

As Generalissimo Tom courageously pointed out the other day, “the Legislature has expanded the definition of ‘vulnerable’ a bit wide.”

Human vulnerability is of course a special area of expertise for all Medina realtors.

There’s another group that’s been casting the definition of vulnerable a bit wide: the Democratic Party establishment. That’s probably why they poured tends of thousands of dollars into Tom’s last race for reelection despite the fact that the 48th district has become increasingly safe for Democrats as well as “Democrats”.

And we’ve been casting our search a bit wide too.

Because despite all the changes of affiliation, Senator Tom has in fact been consistent for years. He has always believed in the same things: surprisingly humane on issues like reproductive choice & marriage equality, but viciously contemptuous of spending money on anything but corporate tax loopholes. (You don’t get to live in Medina because you’re comfortable spending resources to show respect for other human beings after all.)

So his position has been the perfectly appropriate one for his economic position: lifestyle liberalism plus budget brutality. It’s probably the future of one of the two parties. (Maybe both if we can get a grand Social-Security-cutting-compromise through Congress.)

Tom is just ahead of his time, because he wants to turn back only half of the clock. Consistently, he doesn’t care who’s helping him wash down human meat with the milk of human unkindness.

Consistently, like a foolish hobgoblin of small minds.

And this has remained true throughout all the changes of party from Rodney Tom (R) to Rodney Tom (D) to Rodney Tom (T).

The T stands for Tom. His true affiliation.

The man is foolishly consistent. Foolishly, consistently in love with himself.

Too bad nobody else has any affection for him.

It didn’t take a make-up kit to help Rodney Tom transform. (He’s always been this way.)

With the vibrant taste of fresh hemoglobin  still giving us a youthful blush, Undead Olympia focused our attention these past 2 years and 200 special sessions on four key stake-holders in the Olympia establishment. All have been forced to confront their own mortality this past year.

Citing an “insatiable thirst” to move on to the next “phase” of her life, Chris Gregoire has left the Governor’s mansion, along with the small box of soil from her native Auburn.

But it’s an open secret this side of Tumwater that she fled due to pressure from The Old Ones, who didn’t like the public notice she has drawn for the  all-too-revealing moral documents she has issued.

Hairy old Joe Zarelli couldn’t resist the tug of the moon and, apparently based on his own experience, he didn’t understand how anyone with a dollar in their pocket could resist spending that dollar on strip clubs and alcohol. (Or cocaine.) So after enlisting much of the Senate Democratic caucus to consistently support his mission of mutilating every cash benefit still to be found in the RCWs, he sought one last transfiguration: he has left Olympia for private life in Clark County. All the better to live his dream of residing in an income-tax free state while shopping just over the river, sales tax free.

Some observers might have you believe zombie-in-chief Don Benton barely survived an electoral challenge. But his opponent didn’t muster anywhere near a two-thirds majority, so in Benton’s own terms, it wasn’t even close.

And undead narcissist Ed Murray was the shortest-serving Senate majority leader on record, despite the fierce, passionate, and deeply-held belief he holds that he himself is the best one for the position. Also for the position of Seattle mayor. And also for the position of leader of the Ed Murray fanclub. (Josh Feit loses out by a nose on that one.)

Lots of new souls with new roles coming to Olympia this year — or is that lots of newly soulless about to get rolled? Either way, it’s more important than ever that Undead Olympia continue to pay tribute the curious transformations that happen in the dark of the Thurston County night. (Watching suspiciously-well-manicured Rodney Tom’s changes alone could be a full-time job.) Candidates who ran as butterflies will transmogrify into the caterpillars they are… if not into maggots.

Spells will be cast, chains will be broken, and bad old ideas will be reanimated.

Also, someone will go after the poor old state printer. (Why does this raise such passions? Noone truly knows, including the rotten corpse of Gutenberg. (We asked.)

What happens next will be as McCleary as mud. But no matter what, ’13 looks like a lucky one… for our side of the grave at least.

Stay tuned.