Archives for November 2008

I’ve had some complaints that it’s really not fair to chart the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average under George W. Bush compared to other presidents, as the DJIA isn’t all that broad a measure of market performance.  So here’s a chart of the S&P 500… which has done even worse under Bush than the Dow.

FYI, had you invested $100 in an S&P 500 index fund on inauguration day of 2001, it would now be worth less than $46 in inflation adjusted dollars.  So much for the CEO president.

The federal government should just purchase $25 billion worth of vehicles from the auto companies, then distribute them according to population via state lottery departments, which can then award them as prizes. Should be great for voluntary tax revenue!

Imagine the excitement each week, and imagine the bonanza for the traditional media during a time of lackluster ad sales. The possibilities are endless. A car an hour! Seven cars at once! Bowling for cars! You get the idea.

All this bridge loan stuff sounds pretty fishy to me anyhow. I don’t even know what it means. Most likely it means “you will never see this money again, taxpayers, making it a “bridge loan to nowhere.” Might as well make sure some lucky citizens get a new vehicle out of the deal.

Okay, small problem: there are a handful of states that have no lottery. According to this Wikipedia entry they are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Maybe some of them could be persuaded to quickly enact a temporary car lottery or something. I’m sure Nevada could dream something up. Utah, well, you know.

I’m constantly accused by my friends in the traditional media of being way too cynical when it comes to the motives of Republican politicians… you know, like my eye-rolling at Dino Rossi’s alleged civic mindedness in taking his well publicized (and well exploited) minority stake in the Everett Aquasox.  Well here’s a little election day tidbit that totally escaped my attention at the time:

The Everett AquaSox baseball team – the Class A farm team affiliated with the Seattle Mariners – has been sold to 7th Inning Stretch LLP for an undisclosed sum.

The team had been owned by the Carfagna family for the past four years and was sold to the California company headed by majority owner Thomas Volpe. 7th Inning Stretch also owns the Shorebirds, of Delmarva, Md., and the Ports, of Stockton, Calif.

Yup, that’s right… Rossi and his partners waited until Nov. 4 at 5PM—just hours before the polls closed—to announce the sale of the team to out-of-state buyers.  I guess with the election over, he no longer needed the good will or the mailing list his minority stake bought him.

Forgive me for being cynical.

I’m not sure what Bruce Ramsey’s point is?

According to the latest story, the projected deficit in state government finances is $5.1 billion, up from $3.2 billion. The Times said before the election, in our endorsement of Dino Rossi, that the deficit might get to $5 billion by next spring, and we arrive at that figure early, in November.

A progressive blogger accused us of making a deceptive noise about the deficit, which he said did not really exist and was only a projection. Of course, that was before the election, too. Now it’s over, and the big problem is in the lap of Gov. Christine Gregoire and the two houses of the Legislature.

Well, it wasn’t a budget deficit, it was a projected revenue shortfall, and the size of the shortfall really wasn’t the issue.  The next biennium budget will be balanced, one way or the other, regardless of who is governor or which party controls the Legislature.  The issue in the election was always, who do we trust to make the hard choices necessary to balance the budget, consistent with the values of the majority of Washingtonians?

(Hint:  the voters’ answer was Gov. Gregoire.)

As for “deceptive noise,” it certainly was, and still is.  This budget crisis is not the result of overspending; the culprit in Washington, as in every other state in the union, is declining tax revenues.  Gov. Gregoire did not create this shortfall… our crappy national economy did.  And the Times’ efforts to promote Rossi as some sort of punishment or remedy for a revenue shortfall Gregoire didn’t create, was indeed deceptive.

It also serves to distract from the larger issue of Washington’s long-term structural revenue deficit, that when projected through both the good and the bad years, absolutely guarantees that state spending as a percentage of the state economy will steadily and dramatically shrink over the next few decades.

During the final few weeks of the campaign, Rossi and his surrogates relentlessly attacked Gregoire, alleging that she would instate an income tax.  She can’t and she won’t.  But despite its lack of political support, and even though such a dramatic restructuring could not possibly be implemented fast enough to address our current budget crisis, it is past time to start having a serious discussion about how to modernize our state tax system to meet the needs of our 21st Century post-industrial economy.

Our projected, $5 billion shortfall is largely the result of a particularly steep, downward swing in the economic cycle, but given a tax system that year over year taxes an ever shrinking portion of our economy, the long-term deficit will remain, even after the good times return.  Our current tax system is a 75-year-old improvisation, hurriedly constructed in the wake of a controversial court decision that overturned a voter-approved income tax, and it has long since proven itself to be outdated, inadequate and grossly unfair.

Now is the time to start a real discussion about how to modernize our tax structure to meet the needs of our modern economy.  And if the Times is willing to put aside the rhetoric and seriously join this debate, I’ll be more than happy to join them.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed under 8000 today, a five year low, and 24% lower than it stood the day President Bush was inaugurated.  But hey… that’s still better than Herbert Hoover.

Ouch. From The Spokesman-Review:

Washington’s state government – which pays for schools, prisons, colleges, last-resort medical coverage for the poor and hundreds of other things — now faces a $4.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two year, state officials say.

That’s up $1.4 billion from what was expected just two months ago.

Now that we’re facing nearly unprecedented economic woes in this country, and with consumer spending in the tank, it’s utterly predictable that a system of taxation that relies so heavily on regressive taxes on consumers will basically break down.

Yeah, I know. Don’t touch that third rail (income tax) or you’ll be electrocuted. Far better to dismantle the state’s education system, that will fix things. Is there no way to move forward with tax reform by ditching awful things like the business and occupation tax and reducing sales and property taxes? It’s impossible no matter what forever and ever and ever?

Okay, hope you liked that educated workforce, it was neat while it lasted. Now start chopping those universities and community colleges!

Help from above?

The lone survivor of a plane crash that killed seven people in British Columbia is not deeply religious but he must have received help from above to survive against staggering odds, his brother says.

[…] Tom Wilson, 36, walked away from the Sunday morning crash that killed seven others, including the pilot and six of his co-workers. The Pacific Coastal Airlines plane, a Grumman Goose amphibious aircraft, went down on Thormanby Island, off the British Columbia coast north of Vancouver.

Dr. John Reid was at a loss to explain how the man could not only survive, but suffer only burns to his face, hands and right thigh. There were no broken bones or internal injuries.

[…]  “There’s no way he could have went through that and come down without some sort of help,” Michael Wilson told a news conference Tuesday at Vancouver General Hospital.

Huh.  So if Wilson survived the crash thanks to divine intervention, it begs the question:  what did the other seven do to so piss off God?

Whatever the relative merits or drawbacks there are to forking over giant sums of taxpayer money to failing corporations, it’s hard to see how that is going to reverse the larger trend of deflation.

Consumer prices plunged 1 percent last month, more than forecast and the most since records began in 1947, after being unchanged the prior month, the Labor Department said in Washington. Excluding food and energy, so-called core prices unexpectedly fell for the first time since 1982.

Seriously, after we bail out the automakers, then what? We bail out retailers? Restaurant chains? With job losses mounting this sure looks like a severe deflationary spiral.

We needed a stimulus package yesterday, but that’s not going to happen until at least late January or early February, apparently. Yikes.

You’re not getting bailout money and I’m not getting bailout money.

So if you or I want to buy a house or car, exactly what incentive do we have to buy stuff at this moment in history? Hell, I’ve snapped my wallet shut as a matter of principle.

If ordinary Americans are going to be completely ignored while a trillion dollars flows to the very people who created this mess, basically they can bite me. I’ve been crotchety since I was about 14 years old, and with the exception of the Internet Toobz, I can survive on Spam and AM radio for a long damn time. Sure, the kids will get their toys, but I’m not going out of my way to buy anything at all right now.

I know economics is dismal and complicated and all that, but somehow I’m not understanding how “give free money to corporations or else” is going to work out in the end. If consumers can’t or won’t buy the products, then we’re just giving money to stockholders and executives. Once the federal money is gone, it’s gone. The situation is insane.

Some people would call this a heist. It’s like “The Great Train Robbery” with you starring as the money on the train. Or something.

Bite me, and pass the black beans and rice.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some of us will show up early for dinner.

Tonight we will raise a toast to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who turned 85 years old and lost his re-election bid—on the same day. We wish Sen. Stevens luck as he transitions from a great institution to another, um…lesser, institution.

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

Republican incumbent Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland has finally conceded the race to Democratic challenger Peter Goldmark.

In a phone call to The Daily World this morning, Sutherland said he was disappointed with the loss, which he blamed on the voters of King County.

“At this juncture, the people of King County have spoken,” Sutherland said. “As a rule of thumb for Republicans, you do well in the rest of the state and do at least 40 percent in King County and you can win. It’s been that way for the last couple of decades and it’s just getting worse.”

Yeah, well, it’s an odd thing about America, but we tend to apportion votes by the person rather than the square mile, and, well, King County is where the largest chunk of the people live.  In fact, while Goldmark only won five of 39 counties, those five counties still account for about 45% of the electorate, so it wasn’t nearly as narrow a win as Sutherland bitterly makes it out to be.

Still, to Sutherland’s credit, he did concede only two weeks after the election, which is about three years, eleven and a half months quicker than Dino Rossi.

So… when are folks going to start heaping the ridicule on Michael Dunmire that he so richly deserves?

In 2008, Dunmire personally contributed $285,000 to I-985, plus another $100,000 to Tim Eyman’s personal compensation fund, and in return bought himself an initiative that lost by a better than 60-40 margin, going down to defeat in all 39 counties.  And that’s on top of the $530,000 he paid Eyman in 2007.

Any idiot could get an initiative onto the ballot given a half million dollars to buy the signatures, and over the past few years it’s been Dunmire’s millions that have kept Eyman’s name in the headlines.  So doesn’t Dunmire deserve the same sort of scrutiny?

I mean, really… I-985 was perhaps the stupidest, most incoherent and ill conceived Eyman initiative yet (and that’s a pretty high bar), so doesn’t Dunmire deserve a little bit of the credit for personally financing this train wreck?  Or do really rich people retain unquestioned credibility regardless of how incredibly stupid they act?

I was listening to an NPR report on the recently convicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who appears to be headed toward a narrow defeat against Democratic challenger Mark Begich, and the question arose:  “What’s next for Ted Stevens?”

Well, considering today is Stevens’ 85th birthday, I’m guessing death, political and otherwise.  In fact, even had he won reelection—and not been convicted of multiple felonies—the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables suggest that Stevens would have been unlikely to have survived the coming term.

By the way, the latest batch of ballots have widened Begich’s lead to 2374.  Happy birthday, Ted.

Stevens Expulsion Vote Postponed

Democrats Let Lieberman Keep Senate Chairmanship

It’s the world’s most exclusive kleptocracy. There is nothing a United States Senator can do, apparently, that will cause his fellow senators to hold him accountable. A regular person sneezes wrong at work they might get fired. A United States Senator gets convicted seven times over, or actively helps the competition try to ruin his own side’s chances, and oh well.

Get the figurative pitchforks. As if our country doesn’t face enough challenges, we have to contend with this Bozo the Clown “leadership” in Congress.

You enable crooks and liars, the people don’t respect you. It’s pretty simple.

I’m guessing Harry Reid is not faring too well in the Daily Kos leadership poll. (Note: the poll is not scientific and is only a rough gauge of the sentiments of people who chose to participate because they were so fucking pissed.)

I haven’t written much about last week’s “stakeholder meeting” on Internet lobbying, because I came away confident that the PDC had listened to our concerns, and is unlikely to make the mistake of attempting to regulate the political blogosphere.  In fact, my hope is that in any new rule making, the PDC actually clarifies its current stance by explicitly exempting from reporting requirements bloggers like me.

The PDC’s current media exemption reads as follows:

“Persons who are working members of the print or broadcast media preparing news reports, feature articles or editorial comment.”

Obviously, both times and technology have changed to the point where this definition needs to be expanded to included “print, broadcast or electronic media,” and I doubt there would be any opposition to such a change.  But there is also a need for the PDC to clarify what they mean by “working members,” and I would hope that they would construe this term as liberally as possible, for to do otherwise would create an untenable and unfair legal disparity between traditional and new media.

For example, consider my dual role as both an independent blogger and a paid talk radio host.  Does it make any sense that my direct advocacy in one medium would be exempt from PDC reporting requirements while the same advocacy in the other might result in a reporting violation and a fine?  No, of course not.  But unless the PDC explicitly grants bloggers a media exemption, our status will eventually be challenged via a complaint, or before the courts.

The PDC can avoid this hassle and expense for all parties, by proactively expanding the old media exemption to fit the new media reality.  And my hope is that this is exactly what they will do.