Successful day in the capital

Yesterday I went to Olympia to lobby for Western Washington University where I've gone to school since September. It's been a great four months.

I was scheduled to talk to 5 members of the legislature, including the Senate Minority Leader (Republican) who was a very personable man, and hopefully will keep education at the top of his agenda before the amount of upkeep the State needs to do becomes truly expensive. There is clearly a conflict with the Republicans between their desire for low taxes and their support for education (in this state, if only the Republicans in the federal government supported education) which means at the end of the session they have to decide which one they want more, low taxes or high quality schools. Most Democrats have a conflict between their desire for compromise and their desire for high quality schools, but fortunately that is less common in this state so we have some of the best schools in the country. (without getting into international comparisons)

I talked to my former representative Kathy Haigh and found her to be very personable and is very supportive of our education system.

I saw Karen Fraser and Sam Hunt of Olympia's 22nd district who clearly are very good people, and I am glad they are the representatives of Olympia.

The one representative I was not impressed with tried to explain how temporary farm workers don't pay taxes, which is not true because our state has a sales tax, and people pay the sales tax regardless of where they live or what color their passport is.

All in all I think it was a very successful day and I look forward to going down next month to do more lobbying for education because it is so important for me personally but also is the motor in the background of our economy.