Meme

[libertango]

Ten Things I've Done That I Bet You Haven't

* Graduated from Midland School.
* Walked the length of Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.
* Helped kill a Washington state law that would have cut unemployment benefits for tens of thousands of contract workers.
* Took the photograph for pecunium's icon.
* Walked the length of beach from the Santa Monica Pier to Pepperdine in Malibu (by moonlight, overnight) -- and back.
* Communicated -- conversed? played? -- with Bjossa, the orca who once lived at the Vancouver Aquarium.
* Broadcast on radio the news that Yuri Andropov was dead.
* Played The Ghost in Hamlet by lip-synching my part (by direction, damn him).
* Sang a Barry Manilow song solo ("It's Just Another New Year's Eve") for hundreds at Knott's Berry Farm.
* Married the most sane woman I've ever met, akirlu.

Comments

*I* am Spartacus!

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Hey wait! I married the most sane woman I've ever met. It was janeehawkins, not akirlu, but still.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Yep, you're right--other than the one about helping kill the law cutting unemployment benefits.

The death of SB 5016

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Here's how I described that incident, once:

*^*^*^*^*

Here's my other story. My wife used to work at the UW's School of
Social Work. There's a professor there, Nancy Amidei, who encourages
students and citizens to come down to Olympia during legislative
sessions, and one day a week she goes herself. Having made the
spur-of-the-moment decision – the night before – to go down and join
her, I looked up my legislators, and also looked up what bills they
were sponsoring. This was both to get a sense of their concerns, and
to have relevant topics to talk with them about.

I found my State Senator, Luke Esser, was a co-sponsor of SB 5016.
This is a bill that proposed changing the calculation of unemployment
benefits from the highest of the previous four quarters, to an average
of the four quarters in a year dated from July 1st to June 30th.

When I met with Esser's staff, I told them the problem I noticed right
off, as a contract worker for a well-known software firm in the
region. Due to an out-of-court settlement, every single contract
employee can only work for 365 days before taking a "break" with a
minimum of 100 days. This meant that unless a contract employee was
lucky enough to start on July 1st, they would see a reduction of
unemployment benefits under this bill. And there are tens of
thousands of contract workers for this company, many of them in
Esser's district, and many of them voters.

That's when the staffer's eyes grew wide, and he mumbled, "Oh my god.
The permatemps."

I probably didn't single-handedly kill the bill. But I'll bet Esser,
in his role of Majority Floor Leader, never showed much enthusiasm for
it after that.

Re: The death of SB 5016

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

My contact wasn't that direct or personal...I just went to one of the legislative sessions with a bunch of people from WASHTEC and told my little piece about how one of the bills...and I forget which one at this point...would affect me personally and why it was evil.