Month: March 2009 (Page 2 of 2)

Because you can’t tell the difference between a town and the state legislature:

Hey Olympia, hands off the $

Dear Rhenda,

President Obama signed the federal stimulus plan to help states and their residents rebound from the current recession. Funding for health care is a significant part of the package. Washington State’s share is expected to be $2.06 billion over the next two years.

However, there is danger that lawmakers in Olympia will take the money with one hand, but then turn around and still make deep cuts to the health care safety-net with the other. That’s just wrong.

Email your legislators to demand that they use this new federal health care funding to stop cuts to the health care safety-net.

We agree with President Obama when he said, “These funds are intended to go directly toward helping struggling Americans keep their health coverage.” Now more than ever, we can not afford to weaken our health care safety-net programs such as the Basic Health Plan.

This past Sunday, the Tacoma News Tribune ran a guest editorial outlining the need to ensure federal dollars from the economic stimulus go to strengthen our state health care programs. Take a minute to read it now, www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/othervoices/story/642058.html then email your lawmakers.

Wanna have an even bigger impact? Please join us next Wednesday, March 11 in Olympia to speak directly to your legislators about the need to strengthen our health care programs. This is your last opportunity to register, so sign-up today!

Thank you for all of your support!

~the Washington CAN team

Hat tip to dear ol’Rhenda Strub, because she cc’d me on her response:

Olympia has no control over the money. Olympia is a city struggling to make ends meet just like every other city in the state. If you have a gripe with the legislature, please say so and stop batting our name around to make your point. Most of the legislators are from up there where you are. Why not say “Hey Seattle, hands off the $”

Rhenda Iris Strub
Olympia City Councilmember

I honestly couldn’t argue with Heather’s actual point, but to make that point on the back of a lazy use of language, she can bite me.

And, yes: an elected official has bought into my crazy pet peeve.

Metonmy:

Olympia to Seattle: Drop Dead

More metonmy:

This week’s dustup between Seattle and Olympia over how to spend $341 million in federal stimulus money…

The problem with this specific metonymic device is that is blurs out the reality of the situation. It makes the state legislature, an organization of locally elected (and proportionate to population) representatives into “Olympia,” an other.

Its a very short line of logic from othering state government to a Gov. Bobby Jindal-type speech where government can never solve any problems and wrecks everything it touches.

It would be much different to say: “Our State Legislature to Seattle: Drop Dead” or “this week’s dustup between Seattle and the state legislature…”

An aside: I understand metonymy, probably more than most people should. See my somewhat depressingly long archive on this particular topic, please. I understand the purpose of using a specific term for a broad topic, like “press” for the “news media,” especially in a time when there are fewer and fewer “presses” in the “news media.”

But, the use of Olympia for “state government” or “state legislature” is a hugely inaccurate and damaging metonymy, because it misstates the nature of our government. Because we elect our representatives from proportional districts, most of the people who serve in the state legislature come from the urban Puget Sound (not unlike the makeup of the Senate Transportation Committee), so its also the urban Puget Sound telling Seattle to “drop dead.”

Back to the main point: I don’t have a problem with language short cuts. I have a problem with language short cuts that are dangerous.

And, especially when my town is made the label for the scapegoat. At least Josh Feit stop saying “Oly.”