Archives for April 2010

Last week’s I-1077 kickoff marked an unexpected change of tactics for Tim Eyman. He not only made eye contact with me for the first time in god-knows-when, he actually chatted jovially as we shared our mutual disdain for government by jaywalking together across Yesler.

And then moments after Bill Gates Sr. ended his remarks, Tim invited the media outside, where he attempted to establish himself as our state’s most visible and vocal opponent of a middle class tax cut.

Yes, that’s right, Tim Eyman, who’s made a career out of hawking tax cuts, is positioning himself to be the voice of the opposition to an initiative that would cut taxes for 97% of households, and 90% of businesses.

Huh?

So whose side is Tim on? The overwhelming majority of businesses who would see their B&O tax eliminated? The 97% of households who would see their taxes go down? Or the 3% of households — our state’s wealthiest — who will be asked to pick up a little more of the cost of maintaining the extraordinarily high quality of life in Washington state?

I would feel a lot more confident about Washington state’s chances of successfully defending the constitutionality of our Public Records Act before the U.S. Supreme Court this week… if we had a better lawyer arguing our case. I’m just sayin’.

It’s been making the rounds, but hell, I might as well link to this post too…

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters – the black protesters – spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

Actually, I have imagined it, and have often mused about the political theater of say, putting together a group of largish, black men very publicly exercising their right to open carry, or perhaps filling the back of a pickup with rifle-toting Mexican-Americans to slowly drive by a teabagger rally.

But of course, that would be wrong. That would be provocative.

Last week’s winner was milwhcky. The correct location was Montreal.

As I mentioned last week, I’ve decided to add a twist to these contests. Instead of just being random locations, the locations I’ll be choosing from now on (including the one below) will be related to something in the news from the previous week. Here’s the first one, good luck!

Exodus 21:20-21
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

Sigh.

Perhaps I’ll eventually work up the energy to fully fisk the Seattle Times’ predictable, knee-jerk editorial slamming I-1077 as a jobs killer “Proposed state income tax will stymie job creation“, but for the moment, I’d just like to say that… really? We should be taking economic advice from the Times?

As far as tax increases go, I-1077 is relatively minor, only about $1 billion a year net, and falls only those who can most afford it… those top three percent of households who will still benefit from a somewhat less so, but still largely regressive tax structure. In return, we not only get desperately needed new funding for K-12 education and health care, but substantial middle class and small business tax breaks.

In fact, if anything, I-1077 actually improves Washington state’s already enviable business climate. As the Times explains, but does not understand:

The larger break goes to business owners. I-1077 gives every business $4,400 more in credits. A number of very small businesses would be exempt entirely from the business-and-occupations tax. But at companies in a position to create family-wage jobs, a $4,400 credit is not going to do anything.

This $4,400 credit will exempt 80 percent of Washington businesses from the state B&O tax, while lowering taxes on an additional 10%. How many times have we heard that small businesses are the engine of job creation, yet the Times editors dismiss 90 percent of businesses in the state as not being “in a position to create family-wage jobs”…?

How myopic could they get? Are they entirely clueless about how the new economy works? Do they have any idea how many people make their living these days as independent contractors or running mom & pop businesses? Do they understand that “very small businesses” sometimes grow into larger ones if given the opportunity to thrive, and that even a blogger begging for contributions to pay his bills means one less upward tick on the unemployment rolls?

Billions of dollars of extorted tax breaks for Boeing, that the Times can embrace, but a $261 million tax cut distributed to 90 percent of Washington businesses, well… I guess if the Blethens don’t rub elbows with them down at the Rainier Club, they don’t much matter.

I’m no economist, and my own entrepreneurial ventures haven’t made me rich, but hell if I’m gonna take seriously a lecture on job creation from a paper that has spent much of the past decade slashing its own staff.

UPDATE (from Geov)

I don’t post here often, but in conjunction with the Times’ whining that I-1077’s tax breaks don’t go to really big businesses, you know, the ones that matter, my friend Jeff Reifman reports that just yesterday, Microsoft got a doozy:

Struggling to close a $2.8 billion fiscal deficit, the Washington State Legislature ended its recent special session with two huge gifts for Microsoft:

1) It gave Microsoft an effective $100 million annual tax cut by revising the definition of the royalty tax. Under the old law, all of Microsoft’s $20.7 billion annual software licensing sales were taxable in Washington state at .484%. Under the new law, the royalty tax will be apportioned so that only the portion of sales to Washington State customers would be taxable, a tiny fraction of Microsoft’s taxable revenue.

2) It also gave Microsoft amnesty on an estimated $1.25 billion in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties that the company has avoided paying since 1997 by reporting this revenue from a small Reno, Nevada office. The state’s Department of Revenue has ignored this practice and refused to address precedents that call the legality of Microsoft’s accounting into question.

Most of the legislation was led by Chair of the Finance committee Rep. Ross Hunter, a 17 year veteran former employee of Microsoft.

Got that? While Olympia struggles to close a $2.8 billion shortfall, mostly by slashing services, it plants a big wet kiss on Microsoft, and it’s such business-as-usual the Times can’t be bothered mentioning it; but when citizens try to do the legislature’s job for it by offering a package that would give tax breaks to the majority of Washingtonians, the Times editorial board shrieks in horror.

Just in case you wondered where you stood.

Oh, and while I’m here: has anyone else noticed that Tim Eyman, who’s made a good living for the last decade exploiting middle class resentment over Washington’s regressive tax structure, is stridently opposing a measure that does far more to bring tax relief to his voting constituency than anything he’s ever done? Just in case you ever wondered whose side he’s on. (Hint: his own, and Mike Dunmire’s.)

I’m not much for crowded bars and loud music, but tonight I went out to the Sunset Tavern to hear Dan Bern play live. Loads of fun. And he played several songs I never heard before, including the one above: “Osama in Obamaland.”

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes yesterday asked the Washington State Supreme Court to block Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna from using his office to challenge the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act recently enacted into law. And while as a layman, I have no particular insight into the legal grounds supporting Holmes’ petition, as a connoisseur of irony I give it my full endorsement.

1.     Petitioner seeks a writ of mandamus to compel Respondent Robert M. McKenna to withdraw the State of Washington from the case of State of Florida, et al. v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, et al., Case No. 3:10-cv-91, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida on March 23, 2010 (the “Florida lawsuit”), and to cease participating in that case. Petitioner seeks the writ on the grounds that the Attorney General exceeded his authority when he made the State of Washington a plaintiff in that case.

This is what comes from McKenna’s abuse of his office in the pursuit of partisan political gain: we now have a City Attorney, suing to bar a State Attorney General from suing the federal government on behalf of the state, while our Governor must hire an outside attorney to defend the federal government against her own attorney — the Attorney General — and his unauthorized lawsuit.

And of course, we the taxpayers are paying for all of this.

No doubt McKenna thought he would score some cheap political points with his party’s base by joining this lawsuit, but as every experienced attorney knows, there’s nothing cheap about their profession.

You’d think state Republicans might have learned a lesson from their previous clumsy efforts to win political advantage by outrageously accusing Democrats of coddling sex offenders, but not state Sen. Don Benton, who apparently intends to make such a cynical political ploy the strategic centerpiece of his floundering U.S. Senate campaign.

The political ad above, an offensive gesture in itself, takes a disturbingly lighthearted poke at sex crimes, featuring a man collecting donations for “Viagra for Sex Offenders.”

Hah-hah. Funny. You know, unless you or somebody you love has ever been the victim of a sex offender. Or maybe you just find sex offenses no laughing matter. But all that’s really beside the point.

No, the point of the ad is to inform voters that our awful Sen. Murray actually voted against an amendment that would have barred the use of taxpayer money to provide erectile dysfunction medication to convicted sex offenders.

Really?

Well, the amendment in question was little more than a stunt, one of several introduced by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) as part of GOP efforts to stall or kill health care reform. Of course there’s no evidence that taxpayer dollars have ever been used to purchase Viagra for sex offenders, but the Senate needed to pass the reconciliation bill unchanged to avoid sending it back to the House, so Republicans chose to do their worst to monkey-wrench the process by introducing bogus amendments like this one.

As Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) told his colleagues in urging them to vote no on the amendment:

“This is a serious bill. This is a serious debate. The amendment offered by the senator from Oklahoma makes a mockery of the Senate, the debate and the American people. It is not a serious amendment. It is a crass political stunt aimed at making 30-second commercials, not public policy.”

Baucus almost nailed it, but for the fact that Benton’s cynical internet ad runs a tedious 1 minute, 44 seconds.

I suppose Benton’s got to do something to grab attention away from the Rossi Watch, and… well… sex offenders it is. Just remember that the next time Republicans accuse Murray and the DSCC of playing dirty.

I’m guessing there were an awful lot of folks who were awfully surprised by yesterday’s KING5/SurveyUSA poll that showed 66% of respondents supporting I-1077’s high earners income tax, and only 27% opposed. That’s a better than two-to-one margin, similar to the last time an income tax measure hit the ballot back in 1973… only in reverse.

Of course, I-1077’s backers wouldn’t have gone forward with the initiative if they didn’t have polling data suggesting it stood a reasonable chance of success, but no doubt even they were pleased by the SurveyUSA results. The poll shows I-1077 passing, not just by an overwhelming margin, but in every single demographic group. 63% of independents, 57% of Republicans… even self-identified conservatives approved by a 50%-45% margin.

Over at Publicola Josh is intrigued that the measure actually draws more support in Eastern Washington than in Western, 66% and 63% respectively. But assuming respondents understand the initiative and who it impacts, such a result makes quite a bit of sense.

After all, the Puget Sound region isn’t just the population center of the state, it is also home to a disproportionate number of Washington’s high earners, so I-1077 doesn’t just tax the rich, it also taxes Seattle. Think folks out in Eastern Washington won’t take a bit of pleasure in that? Well think again.

Yeah, sure, it would be more than a little cynical for I-1077 proponents to co-opt Eastern Washington’s “fuck Seattle” attitude in an effort to win votes from the other side of the Cascades. But hell… whatever works.

Got some documents to shred or some electronics to recycle? Well, if you’re anywhere near Kirkland on Saturday you can do it for free courtesy of Windermere Northeast, and that rarest of breeds, a couple of liberal Democratic realtors, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Dan and Shauna Willner.

Just stop by the Windermere parking lot, 11411 NE 124th St, Kirkland, 10 am to 2 pm, and drop off your old PCs, monitors, printers and TVs for free recycling, or take advantage of their shredding truck. And while you’re there, say hi to Dan and Shauna; I can’t promise you they’ll offer you a deal on a home, but they should have some embarrassing stories to tell about me.

I’m still getting set up at my new house, so blogging will continue to be light from me, but Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has been doing some great blogging on the west coast push to re-legalize marijuana.

The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions issued a cease and desist order today to payday lender MoneyTree, Inc., for repeatedly violating provisions of recently passed legislation, that amongst other things, limits customers to eight payday loans with a 12-month period.

From the DFI order:

1.2 Unauthorized Rescission of Small Loans and Exceeding Number of Loans. From about January 1, 2010, to present, Respondent has repeatedly engaged in the following practice: Respondent permits borrowers to obtain one or more small loans from Respondent, then borrowers are permitted to “rescind” the loans several days later, up to and including the due date, for the purpose of obtaining a new larger loan or for extending the terms of the existing loan. The amount of the rescinded loan is then removed from the Veritec system, resulting in the loan not being tallied against the borrower’s statutory limit of eight small loans in any 12-month period.

1.3 Substantial Injury to Public. The effect of the above-described condut is that borrowers are able to obtain more than the statutory maximum eight small loans in any 12-month period, contrary to RCW 31.45.073. Additionally, the conduct results in an unfair advantage for Respondent over those licensees that limit borrowers to eight small loans in any 12-month period.

The investigation was launched after a tip to State Sen. Adam Kline’s office from a MoneyTree customer who described the scheme as a common payday lending practice. After receiving six loans from MoneyTree, the customer service representative advised her of the eight-loan limit, but told her that if she needed more than eight loans, they could roll her previous loans into one, allowing her take out seven additional loans over the 12-month period.

According to emails I have obtained, a subsequent DFI review of database records uncovered 104 accounts at three MoneyTree locations where customers at or near the eight-loan limit had their previous loans “closed administratively prior to new loans being given.” DFI examiners were dispatched to these locations this week, and confirmed the findings.

DFI administrators speculate that MoneyTree might outrageously claim that these loan consolidations are within statutory guidelines, but to this non-lawyer at least, RCW 31.45.073 seems pretty damn clear:

4) A borrower is prohibited from receiving more than eight small loans from all licensees in any twelve-month period. A licensee is prohibited from making a small loan to a borrower if making that small loan would result in a borrower receiving more than eight small loans from all licensees in any twelve-month period.

I suppose it’s conceivable a court might rule that MoneyTree has discovered a legal loophole in the new payday lending statute, but there’s no question that their rescission practice constitutes a blatant violation of the spirit and intent of the law. The whole purpose of this provision was to prevent the borrower from having a small loan spiral into an insurmountable debt at an annualized interest rate of 391%, a purpose that MoneyTree’s actions totally undermines.

The irony is that even these hard won payday lending reforms were a feeble compromise compared to the more sweeping bills the industry successfully fought off. Sen. Kline sought to limit the APR to 36%, the same maximum interest rate that may be charged to military personnel under federal law, while other proposals sought to merely halve or quarter the industry’s usurious rate.

But if this is how the industry responds to what can only be described as a legislative victory, perhaps it’s time to go back to the table and ban payday lending entirely.

There are not a lot of issues on which I disagree with Dan Savage, but this is one of ’em.

“You are right that there is an issue here,” Sandeep Kaushik, spokesperson for the I-1077 (and Stranger alum), writes in an email. “We are working on it now to find a way to make sure, if I-1077 passes, that domestic partners are treated fairly under the law.”

Trust us, says Kaushik, we’ll fix this discriminatory law if it passes, somehow or other. Better to fix it now, before it passes, by refiling.

Yeah, well, I agree that the measure’s reference to “married couples” rather than “domestic partners” potentially ends up being inadvertently discriminatory, and would need to be fixed on passage, but Dan’s insistence that the initiative be refiled is simply impractical.

You can pretty much bet that the Republican Secretary of State and the Republican Attorney General would consume the full time alloted to perform their statutory duties on an income tax measure they surely oppose, and that other opponents of the measure would challenge the ballot title to drag the process out even further. It could be more than a month before petitions for a refiled initiative were back out on the streets, leaving little more than a few weeks to collect 300,000 signatures.

Refile the initiative and you could kill our best chance at progressive tax reform in nearly eighty years.

Besides, it’s not the language of I-1077 that is discriminatory, but rather, the language of our state and federal so-called Defense of Marriage Acts. Fix those, and we have no problem.

So my suggestion to Dan is not to stop pressuring on this issue, but to use his soapbox realistically. Use I-1077 as an opportunity to push for the repeal of our state DOMA, and the passage of legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Or less ambitiously… perhaps Dan could just trust the LGBT community’s allies in the broader progressive community to do the right thing should I-1077 pass, in the same way that we’ve fought hard to do the right thing on LGBT issues over the past half decade.

Yes, Sandeep is asking you to trust us. Well, have we ever given you any indication that you can’t?

You have our backs, and we’ll have yours. But to jeopardize passage of such an important piece of progressive legislation over this one fixable, if symbolic flaw, is to jeopardize the unity of the progressive community as a whole.