We have some excit­ing news to share today on this glo­ri­ous first day of April.

As I men­tioned a few days ago, on Sat­ur­day, NPI’s board appoint­ed four out­stand­ing indi­vid­u­als to serve as the found­ing mem­bers of our Advi­so­ry Coun­cil: Steve Zemke, Mar­tin Chaney, Rob Dolin, and State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Luis Moscoso. Today, we’re pleased to announce that they will soon be joined by Dino Rossi of Sam­mamish, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers of Spokane, and Tim Eyman of Mukilteo.

While these appoint­ments are still pend­ing and must be con­firmed at a meet­ing of our board, I’m already look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Cathy, Dino, and Tim.

Now, you may be won­der­ing: Why these three? What makes them unique­ly qual­i­fied to sit on NPI’s Advi­so­ry Coun­cil? Well, the answer is sim­ple. In Steve, Mar­tin, Rob, and Luis, we have a stel­lar group of pro­gres­sives who will give us lots of sug­ges­tions and ideas as to what we should be doing. It occurred to us that it would be help­ful for our Advi­so­ry Coun­cil to have some ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty. That way, we’d have a very good grasp of what we should not be doing, as well.

There are few peo­ple active in the Repub­li­can Par­ty who are worse at gov­ern­ing than Dino Rossi, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, and Tim Eyman. By con­sult­ing close­ly with them, we hope to become more famil­iar with the specifics of the right wing’s anti-gov­ern­ment agen­da, so we can bet­ter make the case against the destruc­tion, dis­man­tle­ment, and pri­va­ti­za­tion of the pub­lic ser­vices that all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans depend on. Each of them has a great deal of expe­ri­ence to offer.

Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, forty-four, is a mem­ber of the Do-Noth­ing House Repub­li­can Cau­cus, which spe­cial­izes in the­atrics and polit­i­cal chore­og­ra­phy. Though it is not inter­est­ed in help­ing the unem­ployed, stu­dents, seniors, small busi­ness own­ers, or work­ing men and women, the cau­cus has man­aged to churn out a record num­ber of fill-in-the-blank attack press releas­es since win­ning the major­i­ty in 2010. As the fourth-high­est rank­ing Repub­li­can in the cau­cus, it was McMor­ris Rodgers’ job to present a response to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s State of the Union address this year that was almost entire­ly devoid of sub­stance. And she delivered.

Dino Rossi, fifty-four, is a three-time can­di­date for statewide office who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran against Chris Gre­goire twice and Pat­ty Mur­ray once. Rossi was pre­vi­ous­ly a sen­a­tor from the 5th LD who chaired the Ways & Means Com­mit­tee dur­ing the 2003 ses­sion. His most impres­sive accom­plish­ment while in office was writ­ing an unsus­tain­able bud­get that made deep cuts to Wash­ing­ton’s health and human ser­vices and did noth­ing to address the state’s struc­tur­al prob­lems, such as its bro­ken tax sys­tem. Since leav­ing the Sen­ate, Rossi has per­fect­ed the tech­nique of clos­ing off sec­tions of pub­lic parks with police tape for cam­paign events.

Tim Eyman, forty-eight, is a sell­er of incred­i­bly destruc­tive bal­lot mea­sures intend­ed to wreck Wash­ing­ton’s gov­ern­ment and com­mon wealth. Eyman has over a decade of expe­ri­ence using six-fig­ure checks from wealthy bene­fac­tors to force pub­lic votes on ill-con­ceived schemes to sab­o­tage Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of our state Con­sti­tu­tion, evis­cer­ate fund­ing for vital pub­lic ser­vices like edu­ca­tion, and pre­vent the con­struc­tion of Sound Tran­sit’s vot­er-approved Link light rail sys­tem. Eyman is the state’s lead­ing expert on foul­ing up the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton with ini­tia­tives that bla­tant­ly vio­late the plan of gov­ern­ment that our founders gave us.

I think you’ll agree, these indi­vid­u­als’ resumes speak for them­selves. I’m con­fi­dent we will ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from their lack of wis­dom, their ter­ri­ble ideas, and his­to­ry of poor judg­ment. These three could eas­i­ly write a book on how not to lead, and we’d cer­tain­ly con­sid­er work­ing with them on such a project.

I’ll be check­ing back in next April 1st to let you know how this bold exper­i­ment went. We have high hopes and we’re excit­ed about get­ting started.