Playing Chicken

    Feels later than it is and I should go to sleep. Home thinking about tomorrow and the week. We have still left much undone. So much good effort dead in drawers or on the committee room floor.
    This week will be about force. These last days are. The big boys fight, take hostages and dare each other to kill bills. It sometimes is as if no issue is attached to the legislation. Like Governor Otter vetoing a substance abuse budget line. You never know if its about policy or personalities. Did the sponsor make him mad? Was there a political rival who would benefit. Did he have other designs for the money?
    So we have to do battle with plans to change retiree benefits. We have to remind the overzealous amenders of our constitutional that their work is not done until they actually pass a real piece of legislation to let local people vote for local option sales tax for roads and transit. They can pass fifty of these useless constitutional amendments and we are no closer, only farther from having public transit or local road funds.
    And we could stop the foolish amendment but the house Republican leaders have kept lots of Senate bill as hostages. They will commence a grand game of chicken to see if the Senate will cave and give them what they want. I'd like to be wagering for some backbone but treasure valley Republicans should be leading that fight and I'm not sure if they will step up, steel themselves and take that thorny bill by the horns.