Oops- wrong word! The word "calvary" should be "cavalry". The first is the hill in Jerusalem with the three crosses. The latter is the horseback soldiers.

Having read this story in several locations, I need to ask: Did the Governor REALLY say this? I hope and pray that we are all missing something here. L&I; is just about to enact new rules for electrical safety. (In May I believe.) So, according to how I understand her statement, making buildings safer electrically is trumped by cutting costs during construction. L&I; issues rule changes every three years in conjunction with the National Electrical Code, these changes are always done with regard to life safety.

This statement would also include I assume, if traffic becomes too heavy and fast on a state highway, and fatalities go up, the state will not revise the speed limit down as slower trucks will impede the economy.

Weird, very weird, wait until the lawsuits start because the state is considered negligent.

I may not have been paying much attention, but I missed which of our current problems government has not been part of. That may sound flip, but the cost of government at all levels is the sword of Damocles hanging perilously over all people (except maybe government employees) in this society. We have all the government we can afford, and then some. We can't afford any more. There is a limit to the amount of money government can consume before the economy drags to a halt. We're pretty much there. Europe seems to be learning that lesson, but in DC and Olympia, it's full speed ahead down the road to serfdom.

The Executive Order to stop agency rulemaking is a way past due recognition that the continual piling on of regulation and taxation is having a critical-mass cumulative effect on Washington's businesses and families. It needs to, not only stop, but be reined back. For WAY too long, state government has grown, oftentimes, on the base personal desire of ambitious bureaucrats. Our state has been put on the financial hook for co-administration of many federal programs by a bait-and-switch federal government (agree to co-administer and receive a little start-up seed money) and those ambitious bureaucrats who take the bait while assuring state taxpayers it is in their best interest to not have the feds administer their own laws. And so state taxpayers "voluntarily" co-administer all manner of programs that are the legal responsibility of federal agencies (and budgets). These include the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, etc. So, Washington state taxpayers now fund a federal bureaucracy to administer those programs AND a state bureaucracy to co-administer those programs. The people should realize the state expenditure is completely optional. Perhaps, as they struggle to fund schools, roads, fire, police, etc.; the citizens of this state should tell the feds to eat their own vegetables and tell the state to stick to state matters and relinquish co-administration of those programs. Maybe that will be the next step.

One quick thing on Christine's executive order: It only applies to "non-critical" rulemaking. This begs the question (and should shed light on how we got to this point): Why are they making "non-critical" rules, in the first place? (for a clue see one of the loudest objectors to the rulemaking moratorium: SEIU). Lastly, I hope the rule-making moratorium works better than the travel ban and hiring freeze.

This is a disturbing thing for Gregoire to do, and I wonder why she's doing it. Any theories?

I agree with Knute's undelaying premise here--government may be part of the problem in practice; but to say that it is always and will always be is idiotic--so the antithisis of that is...anarchy? you think there is regulatory uncertainty now.

Democracy is for the people, by the people. its also requires the "people" to put in a little book time to understand what the policy should be and the consequences of that choice.

Knute, your columns are always good at inducing head-scratching.

I would rate Governor Gregoire's leadership well overall, but she hasn't seemed to show strong leadership on the longest term matters. For example, when the downturn began to get serious, her budget proposals made overly optimistic assessments of the economy and federal money, thereby putting off the major structural changes. Now we have a yearlong moratorium on rule-making. Is the assumption that the economy--and thereby the political climate as well--will have improved enough by 2012 that this tea party silliness will have gone away? What long-term, structural changes are inherent in this policy? Would it make sense if it was extended, say for five or 10 years, and if not, why then does it make sense for one?

On the ideological front, there is an equally appalling lack of a long-term vision. The idea is the Unique Selling Point, or USP, a marketing concept from the 1940s that calls for repeating a central idea over and over again until it penetrates the consumer mind. It has been used to sell products ranging from Lucky Strike ("It's Toasted") to deregulation ("Government is the problem"). There were signs of an emerging Democratic USP in 2008--you allude to it with such phrases as "leaner and meaner" and "doing more with less", but Democrats let it be shouted down by the tea party.

Yarrow: Here's Gregoire's rationale as reported by her chief of staff in the Seattle Times:

"Manning said the governor's office wasn't motivated by any one particular issue, but by complaints from small businesses that they're dealing with a cumulative effect of new rules from many agencies all at once at a time when profit margins are slim or non-existent.

"This wasn't drafted with a set of rules in our head that we were targeting," he said.

Manning also said halting new state rules would free short-staffed and oft-furloughed state workers to do a better job dealing with the rules they have now, though he couldn't point to a single rule he was certain would be suspended"

Knute, I think you have confused the R's Press Release with Gregoire's Executive Order.

I think she recognizes that implementing new rules costs money - money that is in very short supply. Her order, in distinguishing between essential and non- essential rule making, has enough exceptions to look like a piece of Swiss cheese. So I don't think the New Reaganomics has arrived.

But, her goal is to save money for existing, essential services. We're NOT all Republicans now - but we are all now fiscal conservatives. (As a Democrat, along with Jerry Brown, I have long supported a balanced budget amendment. We might not be in Irag or Afghanistan if we'd had to pay -and pay now - for those stupid escapades).

The people of Washington didn't just say 'no' to new taxes. They said 'hell, no'. Thee only place Eyman was voted down was San Juan County - and only by 36 votes. King County went with Eyman 53% to 46%. King County was the ONLY jurisdiction to say yes to a tax on soda, candy, etc.

The Governor is a realist, she is pragmatic, she knows that government is always the art of the POSSIBLE. Seems to me, her message to the Legislature, other branches of government, and the Lobbyist Community, is short and simple: Get real, people.

Ross Kane
Warm Beach

Labor costs, benefits, and pensions are a huge percentage of any government budget. Pare back 1% per year for as many years as it takes. Do not fill vacancies of any non-essential positions. Freeze hiring; cut administrative staff, consultants, commissions, frivolous patronage, and things will get better for taxpayers.

I'm confused. On the one hand you say "there are plenty of exceptions, perhaps too many for it to be very meaningful in practical terms", and on the other hand you seem to be greatly concerned that its effect(s) may be catastrophic. Even as a largely symbolic act you seem overly concerned with the message you believe it sends. At it's worst, it is symbolic of the need to rethink and rebalance role of government as it concerns business. Do you honestly believe that government is NEVER part of the problem? And, it sometimes is part of the solution too.

As this recession has shown, when businesses fail to prosper, individuals and government services suffer. We need business to prosper so that government has the revenues to do those things that benefit us all and as well as help those less fortunate. Voters understand this better than most career public servants and politicians. I fail to see how this moratorium is anything more than an effort to make sure any new rules and regulations won't be part of the problem as businesses struggle to recover.

Knute, are you saying that the rhetoric in the order bothers you more than the substance of the order? If the idea behind the order is that the State of Washington is going to conserve resources by temporarily halting needed regulatory updates then I'm OK with that. If the idea is that the State is abandoning it's role in protecting public safety by updating Fire Safety and Electrical codes on the off chance that might somehow help business, then I'm not OK with that.

The cuts to local and state government have been a disaster in my field (construction). There's nobody to review permit applications, so they take forever. Even if you get someone assigned to a project they'll get laid off in a few months, and then you have another delay as a new inspector is brought up to speed. When the economy turns around the decimated inspection and review staff at Seattle and other cities will be a tremendous drag on new construction.

Now that's an overstatement---Club For Growth doesn't want to drown govt. in the bathtub. It wants low taxes, eliminate unneccessarily burdensome regulation so we can have economic growth, which sadly some pols don't realize is needed for generating tax revenues and having prosperity in the land; which most people recognize as a good thing. Here behind the iron curtain, people actually have to be told that.

I'm saying that if you take the order literally, it is confusing. But it's philosophy is not: it is declaring that regulation is a barrier to business and economic recovery (ironic on the day of GM's re-emergence). The order will be a boon for lobbyists, gives conflicting signals to state workers, amplifies the Tim Eyman's approach (government is bad) and, as symbolism, is a victory for the GOP. It's a nice gift for Gov. Rob McKenna.

Misty: I put the anti-tax Club for Growth in the same league as Grover Norquist, who famously said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Can someone explain to me what is so confusing about the her executive order? The criteria seem clear cut and the exemptions reasonable, certainly no more burdensome than the rules developed by agencies. It would make sense in an executive order with a goal of reducing the burden of rules on small businesses to allow exemptions for negotiated rules (where the agency works with the stakeholders to develop a win-win rule) and pilot rules (rules suggested by the regulated to meet the agencies objectives).

And Knute, I seem to remember a piece you wrote recently about Congressman Blumenauer and how being liberal and fiscally conservative are not mutually exclusive. Further, an efficient government restores faith in government itself. I can't help but see the parallel (and the contradiction).

Lastly, I encourage folks to look at the regulatory reform efforts B.C. started in the early 2000s - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/42/44981275.pdf.

Gregoire's moratorium on regulations is of a kind with Obama's serial betrayals – the stealth-murders of Bill of Rights restoration, real health-care reform, Employee Free Choice, repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell – and of course the knife Washington state Democrats' stabbed in the back of organized labor to kill (forever) the employee privacy protections proposed in 2009 via Senate Bill 5446 and House Bill 1528.

Each of these outrages exemplify not just the Big Lie of "change we can believe in," but the death-beyond-resuscitation of the American Experiment in constitutional democracy – the now-permanent reduction of hope from “audacity” to imbecility.

When viewed as a whole, all of these acts of methodical oppression – and that is precisely what they are – demonstrate the new paradigm of governance and social relations now being imposed on the U.S.

Robert Reich calls this new ideology “supercapitalism,” but it should properly be labeled "tyrannocapitalism": its inevitable outcome a zero-tolerance hybrid of theocracy, fascism and imperialism – a high-tech tyranny that literally has no human precedent.

Under tyrannocapitalism, we-the-people are increasingly subjected to government that once claimed to serve us all but is now dedicated exclusively to the protection of capitalists and the propagation of capitalism: infinite greed as ultimate virtue, maximum selfishness as ultimate good.

All such governance whether federal, state or local has as its sole purpose the imposition of the tyrannocapitalists' vision of utopia: absolute power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class (the Wall Street banksters and their Big Business/Chambers of Commerce elites), total subjugation and the genocidal poverty of everlasting "Jobless Recovery" for all the rest of us.

Welcome to the genuine New World Order: Moron Nation (precisely as proven by this month's elections) now reduced to Slave-Pen America on Sweatshop Earth.

Maybe someday we'll wake up – not just to the fact there's no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans, but (far more importantly), to the bitter truth we now have nothing left to lose but those damn chains – the capitalist shackles Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels so prophetically decried 162 years ago.

Regulatory reform is not a new idea in Olympia. But the idea that the governor, the head of the executive branch, would identify rule-making as a problem to solve by calling for a stop to it, is puzzling and odd. That's like having the head of the plumbers' union declare that because the city's having too many sewage backups, there will be a moratorium on plumbing work for a year.

What I mean is, that if anyone in the state has faith in government's ability to *help* matters via regulation, it ought to be the governor! So it's very weird for her to be apparently agreeing with anti-government types, identifying rule-making per se as a hindrance rather than a help. Theoretically, regulations are supposed to help society run well. If the governor no longer thinks so, then where are we?

Lorenbliss - your vitriol is hilarious. "Ruling Class"? Please. You just can't join it because you are too lazy.

Don't blame others. Work hard.

PeteB -- it is your assumptions that provide the hilarity here. I'm 70 years old, crippled and physically disabled by conditions that include a failing heart.

But unlike you I'm not a coward who flings vitriol from a sanctuary of anonymity.

And having worked since I was 10 -- then watched the capitalists first destroy the job market and now begin stealing my Social Security pension and the Medicare that keeps me (barely) alive -- I have every right to denounce the perpe-traitors who have irreparably destroyed our once-great nation.

Well I think we have the governor give up the One Washington ideal. Some people really do want less government services, taxes, and regulation so they are free... to be dumb, still poor, and live in their own industrial filth. The red county fantasy will become reality.

Seattle voted for its school operations levy, it is a liberal idea that somehow education (no matter how inefficiently delivered) is better than not delivered at all.

I think the Democrats need to call the Republicans bluff, give them what they want, give the Demicratic counties all kinds of new and crazy ways to tax themselves and let those opposite ends if the spectrum go find their happy place, a place not called One Washington.

That would be a good analogy if most state regulations were beneficial, but unfortunately, most are onerous and meddlesome, and reflect the kind of micromanagement and nanny-state philosophies that are so antithetical to a free society. After all, those people in Olympia work for us, don't they? An accurate analogy for the situation in Olympia would be to have the head of the plumber's union posit that because the city's having too many sewage backups, the government needs to dictate the color of plumbing fixtures. Lots of micromanagement, lots of busywork, lots of government jobs for union workers and a lot less freedom for the people.

I thought I had voted for the Democratic candidadate for governor in the last two elections. It turns out I voted for Dino Rossi in disguise.

Jay Inslee cannot become governor soon enough.

lorenbliss has pretty much nailed it, but I disagree that this particular form of oligarchical business-oriented fascism has no human precedent. Franco pulled it off in Spain, where decades of economic fascism left the economy in a shambles and more recent examples abound in Latin America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism

In "The Shock Doctrine" Naomi Klein gives many recent examples of how economic implosions and wars over the last four decades have left hundreds of millions of disaster-shocked, exploited people and countries in a state of economic ongoing upheaval.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

The documentary film "Life and Debt" provides a window into one such ruined economy--that of Jamaica.

http://www.lifeanddebt.org/

Few Americans believe the US could be headed toward a Jamaican style economically deregulated future, thanks to the power of mass delusion that blindsided us to all of the recent bubbles including the current massive recession such a future is not beyond possibility. The effects of Gregoire's new regs holiday will be miniscule compared to really big stuff like the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the economic effects of endless war coupled with permanent tax cuts. It does, however, show that Gregoire is willing to play ball with people like Tim Eyeman and the guys who will be back running the show after the 2012 elections.

@dbreneman--Not to overthink the plumber analogy, but what I meant was that we expect plumbers to think that more plumbing is the solution to any plumbing problem; and I think we likewise expect that a governor would think that regulation should be helpful, not harmful. Governors are in the making-things-better-by-making-and-adminstering-rules business. You expect them to stand up for the brand, or at least not trash it. Which is I think the point of Berger's article here. What's the world coming to, when a Democratic governor says that rule-making is a drag on the economy? If she's doing this to appease the Tea Partiers, I think she's not going to get any credit there. If I were governor, I hope I'd be focusing on sorting out the good from the bad rules, and making the bad ones better.

I can think of a dozen really awful regulations without even trying, and I'm sure you can too. Regulatory agencies can be infuriatingly nonresponsive, which I think is not because they're government but because of human nature. Businesses can be just as infuriating to their customers, as government can be to citizens. But you'd think I was being ridiculous if I said that business was bad, period. And I think it's just as absurd to say the same about government, or about government regulations.

I'm glad we have minimum safety standards for drinking water, air quality, and so on, and a legal minimum working age. I wish we had stronger regulations making sure that pilots get adequate sleep in between flights, and that toxic chemicals stay out of the plastics we store baby food in. I'm glad for food labeling laws that make it easier to tell what you're eating, and avoid things you don't want.

I hate to think about what life will be like for my granddaughter if she lives in a society where government can no longer effectively regulate health and safety standards, or working hours and conditions. We need regulation because people have demonstrated time and time again that there are no natural limits to how bad things can get when we have no rules to restrain us.

Yarrow, I too believe in strong and vigorous enforcement in areas where it has a positive impact. The problem is one of diminishing returns. Government regulators seem to use the number of regulations passed as a positive measure of their performance. However, one can make the case that "All the good laws have been passed." There isn't that much more that needs to be regulated, and if government keeps turning out laws and regulations at an accelerating pace, we will reach the point at which every conceivable human action will be either unlawful or mandatory. We simply don't need this much government. We need government which focuses on those essential services which government does best. Anything beyond that risks becoming parasitic. Now, people can argue which services are essential, but what should be beyond dispute is that government cannot continue to expand indefinitely. We can't afford it, and it will ultimately crush our souls.

"A worry from a project senior engineer who looked me in the eye last summer and said, after repeating my Name for emphasis, "The risks in this project are just SO enormous." I was expecting a little pep talk, but instead was left speechless," quoting a Beacon Hill guy yesterday on the dying amendment string.

I only aim to upset the unacceptably incompetent or others who may indeed deserve the charge of borderline criminal negligence regarding the Dbt&etc.;

The governor is likewise as misled as the rest of you who won't admit the dbt is crap; waterfront designwork isn't the best; MercerWest should NOT widen Mercer. NO! And Keep Battery Street Tunnel. You support the tunnel and you think the governor is misled? tksmk

Well the government may cause a little confusion here and there but at least you can come closer to trusting it. In my mind you can't trust corporat/capitalist america to not short change you on safety rules/bank honesty/the little extras in a product to make it safe. Cars anyone before seat belt regs or any other required safety feature? Baby crib safety measures anyone before some suggested some safety regulations? Banking/investment safety especially since the canceling of Glass-Steagle. TB/Brucillosis in your milk before the federal ag departments in the l;ate 18th century. It is a forever problem with capitalism. If they don't like rules quit screwing up.

Having worked in state government in the '90s as a budget analyst for OFM, and as a small business owner today, I can relate to the frustration with certain rules, but I just don't think it makes sense to throw up our hands and say that government is an inherently worse way to do things than, say, privatizing important functions.

When I worked in state government--something I got into mainly because I lived in Olympia at the time and that's who was hiring then--I started out with a lot of cynicism about government in general, and I was continually surprised by the caliber of the people I got to work with and for. There were of course the kinds of people you'd expect (if you were cynical)--power-hungry, narcissistic, etc. But there were also a lot of the kind of people you'd find on your church's Facilities committee or your kid's school's PTA, people who are modest and very competent, and believe in working hard to keep things running, and do a good job of it without ever holding a press conference.

We can't possibly have too many of those people working for us. I wish more people who criticize government in broad, sweeping ways knew more in detail about what government does and doesn't do, and how it does and doesn't work.

@dbrenemen--I agree with you that there's something soul-destroying about having too many rules. And it's important to think about what functions government plays in our lives. But I also think that regulation helps business in many ways. For one, it evens the competitive playing field. It would be too expensive to do the right thing in your business practices unless your competitors also have to do it. And the world is changing rapidly, which means that if regulations *don't* continue to be revisited and rewritten, problems develop as they become obsolete or fail to anticipate newly emerging situations.

If you want to know how much Government is not part of the Problem -- but is the Problem, read the book "Free Lunch".

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591841917

Free lunch illustrates how the many projects and subsidies that are sponsored by Government end up creating inequities. Those who have their hand in the public Till get enriched...those who do not and try to compete honestly in the private sector, get steamrolled.

Here in Washington, where voters may, at best, be described as "childish", they often think they are performing some great moral service by voting Democrat -- when in fact, they have hurt themselves, the poor and middle classes, by keeping the Gregoires and their cronies feasting on the gravy train.

As someone above points out, only "non-critical" rulemaking will be suspended. The Office of Financial Management is ordered to develop guidelines for what's critical and non-critical. Gregoire certainly isn't in line with Club for Growth. She's as liberal a governor as we could hope to get in this state. She's also got a horrible job, just as the Legislature will this coming session, because the citizenry wants services without taxes and has been encouraged in that stupidity by the Republicans, who of course are crowing about this. Why wouldn't they?

A photo of Gov. G in the City of Langley proves the point: too much regulation and nannyism by any governmental entity is destructive.

Bored this weekend? The City of Langley is 1100 residents, and has a 222-page Comprehensive Plan.

Most people don't know what a Comp Plan is or does ... but I'll wager there are many of you who do. For a gut-wrenching read, go here http://langleywa.org/planning.html

Check out the Sustainability Element, which is not an element of the GMA Comp Plans. It is Chapter 1 in Langley.

Mud Baby (with my apology for responding so belatedly): What has no precedent is NOT the economic model, which you correctly associate with Franco and implicitly with
Pinochet. The economic model actually dates to Mussolini, specifically his declarations that fascism is in fact "corporatism" -- i.e. (and in today's terms), government that serves only the interests of Big Business and Wall Street (and does so in defiantly authoritarian opposition to the will of the people): precisely what the malicious, post-JFK collaboration of DemocRats and GOPorkers has deliberately imposed on the United States.

What IS unprecedented -- and I regret I failed to make this point more clearly -- is the irremediable technological superiority of the Ruling Class, which now has powers of surveillance and oppression that were hitherto considered divine. These powers mean this new tyranny can never be reformed nor overthrown, not even when Nature herself intervenes, as by natural disaster or environmental apocalypse. Even then (note the Haitian and post-Katrina examples of genocide by abandonment), the tyrannocapitalist Ruling Class will always prevail; its godlike powers of surveillance will now always interdict any organized resistance, including resistance that might be clandestinely pre-planned to rise up at a moment of crisis like an earthquake or a hurricane. Hence for the first time in human history we are faced with tyranny that is truly everlasting, made so by its technologies of terror and thus destined to remain so until our species is extinct.

Indeed I suspect this is the real message sent to the world by the imperial activities of the United States in the Middle East: whether in the New World Order or beneath the bootheels of the fictional(?) Borg, resistance is futile.

The ignorance that equates suspending rule-making with savings comes from an oversimplified government-must-be-bad world view. A few facts: some rule revisions help clarify standards and increase predictability, thereby saving money or reducing percieved risk in business decisions; some rules codify needed protections and safeguards that decrease risk and improve profitability; and some rule revisions are actually requested by the regulated community. The exceptions to the moratorium help alleviate some of the unintended consequences.