Archives for September 2008

Founded in 1877, the nonpartisan Humane Society has never endorsed anybody for president it its entire 141 year history.  Until now.

I’m proud to announce today that the HSLF board of directors—which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans—has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President. The Obama-Biden ticket is the better choice on animal protection, and we urge all voters who care about the humane treatment of animals, no matter what their party affiliation, to vote for them.

And yes, this did have something to do with the endorsement:

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. Officially, we start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some folks show up early to enjoy the fine cuisine.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, McCranium shoud be announcing the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Seattle budget director Dwight Dively recommends taking the bulk of the $45 million settlement the city received from the Sonics, and use it to pay off the $34.2 million debt remaining on Key Arena’s 1995 remodel.

Yeah, I suppose we could do that.  Or, we could take the entire $45 million and buy bad debt from Key Bank at face value.  Perhaps our fiscally conservative Republican readers can chime in with their advice?

Ouch.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

And that’s from conservative columnist George Will.  Again, ouch.

There’s been a lot of conjecture around these parts over whether doctors in Washington support I-1000. Carol Ostrom provides some hard data:

In July, the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), which represents nearly 7,000 doctors in Washington, said it opposes the measure and that its “opposition was emphatically voted on” at last year’s meeting.

In fact, WSMA members never voted on the initiative.

And a survey WSMA commissioned last year actually found slightly more doctors approved of the provisions of I-1000 than opposed them.

In the survey, completed by Elway Research, 50 percent of doctors responding said they would support a measure like I-1000 while 42 percent would oppose it. Female physicians were more likely to support such a law.

In addition, I-1000 does not force dissenting doctors to certify patients under the law if they have moral objections to it. This is an initiative that respects choice for both doctors and patients. And this is why the similar law in Oregon has been so effective.

What the headline says.

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll suggests that by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks…

Hmm.  I wonder why?

Ouch.  All I can say is, ouch.

(FYI, you can view the entire discussion, unedited, here.)

When traditional journalists dismiss lowly bloggers like me as partisan and biased, while holding themselves up as oracles of objective, impartial, fair and balanced reporting, I generally respond by pointing out that for us mere humans, objectivity is an impossible, if at times an admittedly lofty goal.  Editorializing routinely creeps into the prose of even the most careful reporter… sometimes to the point that even their own editors sit up and notice.

Take for example the Seattle P-I’s Chris McGann, whose report on the Gregoire-Rossi debate in this morning’s paper appears to have sustained a few targetted snips from the initial report that appeared online Saturday night (via Google’s cache).

Saturday night McGann wrote:

The two sparred about crime, health care, and the environment in similarly harsh tones and for much of the evening the challenger kept the incumbent on her heals.

And this morning we read:

The two sparred about crime, health care, and the environment.

And on Saturday, McGann freely expressed his opinion that…

Gregoire’s manner came across as defensive, while Rossi seemed more able to stay on message.

While on Monday… well.. that bit of editorializing is entirely missing from the Monday edition.

Huh.  I guess McGann thought that Rossi decisively won this debate, which is not how I saw or it, nor how it was portrayed  anywhere else in the media. No doubt we can agree to disagree when it comes to matters of opinion—I just wish that more journalists would openly acknowledge that opinion informs everything they report.

McJoan recently spent a day with the Darcy Burner campaign, and writes about it over on Daily Kos.

It’s a smart campaign, and an innovative one. […] Darcy is willing to take quite a few risks in this campaign, but they’re strategic ones. As a “geek” and a former product manager, Darcy has a systems-based approach to the problem of taking on a popular incumbent. It’s led to much more unconventional campaign than the one she ran in 2006, partly because she has a higher degree of independence this time around. That’s largely because of the financial support she gets from the netroots. She doesn’t have to go to the telco lobby, or the pharmaceutical lobby, or the insurance lobby–she doesn’t have to necessarily dance to the DCCC’s tune this time around.

And you can trust Joan on this, because she’s credible.

There are dueling editorials in Seattle’s two dailies today regarding the projected $3.2 billion revenue deficit facing budget writers in the next biennium.  And if you’ve ever wondered why it’s necessary to have two dailies, well, this is a great example.

The Seattle Times leads off by intentionally misinforming their readers:

AFTER the deficit in the next state budget increased by $529 million Thursday, Gov. Christine Gregoire called on her director of finance to suggest $200 million in immediate cuts. It was a good move, if late.

Yeah, thanks for the backhanded compliment Frank, but as I’ve previously explained, there is no state budget deficit.  You can call it a “budget deficit” if you want, but that doesn’t make it so, and technically, you are absoposilutely wrong.

Had current revenues during this current biennium fallen below budgeted expenditures, that would have constituted a budget deficit.  But they haven’t.  In fact, we are still generating a small surplus.  What the Times is referring to is a revenue forecast that would project a deficit in the next budget should spending continue to grow at its current rate, which it won’t, because the state is constitutionally prohibited from running deficits.

The governor blamed the shortfall on the disaster in Wall Street and, by implication, on the Bush administration. That was not altogether convincing.

You know what I don’t find all that convincing?  An editorial page that routinely misleads its readers… you know, like the time you guys lauded Sweden for repealing their estate tax, without bothering to mention that they replaced it with a 1.5% annual wealth tax.  Or, you know, like when you label a revenue forecast a “budget deficit” when you know that it isn’t.

Whatever the cause of the Wall Street crisis — and we think most of the blame is in the private sector — some kind of economic downturn would have happened eventually, and Gregoire’s budget was not ready for it.

And eventually, our Sun will exhaust its supply of hydrogen, swell up into a red giant, and swallow the earth.  But that doesn’t stop me from planting a garden.

The point is, the governor could have let state spending continue to shrink as a percentage of our economy, socking away a few billion dollars for a rainy day… though the last time we tried that, Tim Eyman used the surplus as ammunition to pass his tax-cutting I-695.  Or, we could spend the money when have it, and then not spend so much when we don’t.  The latter option makes writing the 2010-11 budget more difficult, but in the meanwhile, class sizes have been reduced and tens of thousands of children have been given access to health care.

The rest of the Times editorial is filled with self-righteous I told you so’s and meaningless blah-blah-blah’s.  So let’s move on to the Seattle P-I, which offers a more concise, accurate and thoughtful approach to the issue.

Oh man, McCain kicks Obama’s ass… at least when it comes to the number of cars he’s owns.  But, you know, 13 cars, that’s really not so many when you consider that it is barely more less than two cars per house.

PS:
Obama drives a hybrid.  That clearly makes him an out of touch elitist.

Let’s be absolutely clear about one thing:  there is no state budget deficit.  There never has been, and there never will be.  Washington’s constitution simply does not allow deficit spending, so whatever the revenue forecast is when it is time to write the next biennium budget, and whoever is governor at the time, the budget will be balanced.

But that didn’t stop Dino Rossi from going on the attack during last night’s debate:

Rossi wasted no time blasting Gregoire’s record, accusing her of recklessly spending the state into a record deficit and presiding over a rising state unemployment rate. He also made note of her recent TV attack ads, which he said misrepresent his position on stem-cell research.

“She’s trying to distract us from the issues that most people in the state are talking about,” he said at the debate sponsored by the Seattle P-I, KOMO4 and the League of Women Voters. “Issues like this $3.2 billion deficit that she has created and she’s going to raise your taxes to solve.”

Again, there is no budget deficit, and both candidates have promised to balance the budget without raising taxes.  As for rising state unemployment, we are in the midst of a national recession, yet Washington continues to buck the trend by actually adding jobs to the state’s payrolls:

Washington had an estimated net gain of 1,300 non-agricultural jobs in August.

The number of non-agricultural jobs in Washington in August 2008 was 41,800 higher than in August 2007, a 1.4 percent increase. Nationally, jobs declined by 0.21 percent over the past year.

That’s a lower job growth rate than we’ve been accustomed to in recent years, but the reason our unemployment rate keeps rising is that people continue to move here for our relatively robust economy compared to the rest of the nation.  Meanwhile, our farmers are enjoying ample harvests and the best commodity prices they seen in years.

So all this talk about a $3.2 billion deficit is really misleading, and the media’s tendency to fixate on this number without thoroughly explaining it plays right into Rossi’s hands.  It is a revenue forecast for 2010-2011, which currently falls $3.2 billion short of the revenue needed to maintain state spending at its current rate of growth.  And as I’ve explained in the past, state spending has remained at about six percent of the state economy for more than decade, its growth more or less pegged to our state economy’s rate of growth, as measured in total personal income.

As explained in the Gates Commission report, and numerous other scholarly works on the subject, the economic number that most closely tracks growth in demand for government services is growth in total personal income, that is, total economic growth.  This is because (and perhaps counter to popular misconceptions) the majority of state and local government services are commodities, and we tend to increase our consumption of commodities as our income grows.  Roads, sewers, schools, courts, public safety, public health… these and other government services are all things we consume more of the wealthier we become, and thus personal income, not population plus inflation, is the best measure for tracking growth in demand for these services.

You can argue with me on this if you want, and perhaps there are economists who can explain these concepts more clearly than me, but both academia and reality are on my side.

So any accusation of reckless spending on the part of Gov. Gregoire is simple hyperbole.  During the Gregoire administration state spending grew at roughly the same pace as our economy, while managing to put hundreds of millions of dollars aside in a rainy day fund.  And where did the bulk of her spending increases go?  On education, where she fully funded two statewide initiatives calling for reduced class size and greater teacher pay… that is, she met the voters’ express demand for expanded government service.

And on taxes, well, both candidates promise to balance the budget without raising taxes, and I see no reason to believe one more than other.  Rossi accuses Gregoire of raising taxes during her administration, and it is true that she did raise the gas tax and reinstate the estate tax… but both of these measures were subsequently and overwhelmingly approved by voters at the polls.  If the argument is that Gregoire gave voters what they wanted, that’s a criticism she shouldn’t be shy of embracing.

And really, find me a Democrat who expects Gregoire to sign a tax increase… I betcha can’t.  Hell if House Speaker Frank Chopp is going to risk his meticulously crafted majority by pushing through an unpopular sales tax increase, so that’s not going to happen, and neither would a B&O tax increase during an economic downturn.  And I can tell you first hand that we fair tax advocates have pretty much given up hope of Gregoire embracing a sensible repeal of even a small fraction of the billions of dollars a year in questionable tax exemptions handed out to businesses and other special interests over the past decade.

And if you think that somehow Gregoire is going to embrace an income tax… well… I’ve got an eight-lane 520 bridge to sell you.

So what it comes down to in the end is not who will balance our next budget but rather, what will be their priorities.  Do we want a governor who has made education and children’s health care their number one priority during their administration, or a governor who proudly claims a budget proposal that cut health insurance for 40,000 kids?  Do we want a budget balanced by a governor who has made cleaning up Puget Sound one of the centerpieces of her second term, or by a governor who doesn’t believe in global warming, and who voted 99% with the orca-killing BIAW?  Do we want a budget balanced by a governor who actually believes it is the government’s proper role to deliver the services voters want, or do we want it balanced by governor who fully embraces the failed anti-regulatory, anti-government policies of George W. Bush?

Rossi complains that Gregoire’s efforts to talk about actual issues is a distraction from the campaign, but it is his and the media’s obsessive focus a deficit that isn’t, that is the real distraction.  There is no budget deficit. That is a fact.

But, of course, when have effective political campaigns ever been about facts?