Archives for March 2014

Please join us tonight (Tuesday) as the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally makes a second visit to the Traveler Montlake, 2307 24th Ave E in Seattle. This week we will make a decision on our new home (which will be either the Roanoke Park Place Tavern or Traveler Montlake). We meet at 8:00 pm, but some folks show up early for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another nearby DL meeting over the next week. The Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters also meet this Tuesday. The Lakewood and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. For Thursday, the Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet.

With 215 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

For some people, St. Pat’s means wearing green or drinking. For others there’s traditional food like corned beef and cabbage. For some it’s a time for a parade or just in general celebrating their Irishness. I suppose some people will go to church. For me, it’s finding a poem by William Butler Yeats and copy and pasting it here.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I’ll have more thoughts on this later, but in a rather anticlimactic meeting this afternoon, the Seattle City Council approved final passage of taxi and “transportation network company” (TNC) regulations that impose a cap of 150 drivers per TNC actively picking up passengers at any one time. Also, it makes these services legal, so it’s not like Lyft, Sidecar, and uberX don’t get anything out of this.

“What we’re actually doing in these regulations allowing the ride-shares to operate in the market,” explained council member Bruce Harrell.

Council member Tom Rasmussen had proposed an amendment that would have removed these caps, but only he, Sally Bagshaw, and Tim Burgess voted for it. There were a bunch of other amendments passed, some technical, some a bit more policy oriented. For example, the minimum rating for an insurance company providing commercial taxi insurance was lowered a notch, increasing the number of insurers in the market and thus potentially lowering costs. Also, an amendment trying to prevent, say, Uber, from getting around the cap by creating UberY and UberZ, was also added to the ordinance.

Despite the 3-6 dispute over caps, the final entire ordinance passed unanimously. So there.

Before the start of today’s meeting, noted city council heckler Alex Zimmerman was escorted from council chambers, due to violating a 28-day exclusion order (PDF of exclusion notice available here) resulting from disruptive behavior at prior city council meetings. The most interesting thing we learn from the exclusion notice? That Alex Zimmerman’s legal name is Avrum Tsimerman. Who knew?

Perhaps sensing such despotic censorship was coming, Tsimerman savvily spoke to the audience about ten minutes before the meeting’s scheduled start. Take that, tyrants!

With the Seattle City Council finally scheduled to vote on proposed taxi and TNC (Lyft, Sidecar, uberX) regulations today at 2 pm (really, this time), I thought it appropriate to post some comments from an actual taxi owner. Taxi owners have without a doubt been the most reviled stakeholders throughout this entire debate, cast by TNC boosters (and some for-hire drivers) as a cabal of greedy medallion-hoarders, sucking the lifeblood from immigrant drivers while assuring crappy service.

Responding to my coverage in The Stranger, one of these allegedly greedy drivers (who wishes to remain unnamed to protect his music career) emailed me with his personal story:

Just want to thank y’all for your coverage on the taxi v tnc issue. Honestly it’s where I’m getting most of my information.

Nowadays I’m temporarily making a living with music & have rented out my cab, watching in panic as my future job (can’t survive on music in the long term) and planned retirement crumble away to dust, and it’s even worse for the guy leasing my cab right now, who can’t make the payments or support his refugee family. Let’s just say it’s very personal for us.

Last time I was in Seattle I was shocked to see hipster oligarch David Mienert opining on the topic in some article, not sure if it was with y’all or the Weekly, but clearly there must be a shortage of expert opinions if someone is turning to him. If you ever need an inside perspective just holler, I’ve been in this business for a tedious eighteen years, drove for Broadway, Greytop, Orange & finally Yellow before buying my own taxi.

And if you think this cab owner’s story is an outlier, think again. “There is this myth out there that a few people own all the taxi cabs,” Green Cab general manager Chris Van Dyk tells me, “but the vast majority of taxi cabs are individually owned.” Van Dyk, a longtime industry insider, says that there is only one owner in the city who owns more than 50 cabs, and only about 25 who own more than five. At Yellow Cab—the largest taxi association in the city—Van Dyk estimates that there are about 370 owners of Yellow’s 559 cabs.

Of course, there are many more drivers than owners. The costs of owning and operating a cab are so high that they require 24/7 operation to provide a return on investment, so every owner leases out his cab for at least one 12-hour shift a day. In addition to purchasing a medallion (which went for as much as $140,000 just two years ago) and a $30,000 car, the musician/cab-owner above estimates his recurring costs to be:

• $600/month commercial taxi  insurance
• $550/quarter for Labor & Industries insurance ($225 per driver)
• $170/week to be a part of a taxi association
• $1000/year in licensing & inspection fees to the city, county and state

Plus, you know, gas, maintenance and depreciation. Van Dyk says that 24/7 operation puts about 100,000 miles a year on the typical taxi, meaning the vehicle is totally depreciated after just three years. That comes to $10,000 a year in recurring depreciation costs. And that doesn’t begin to count the steadily depreciating value of taxi medallions, which are reportedly now selling for half what hey did just a couple years ago, if you can find a buyer at all.

Lyft, Sidecar, and uberX currently bear none of these costs but for some indeterminate cost for insurance coverage. The drivers do bear the cost for gas, maintenance, and depreciation, though the part-timers may not fully appreciate the total tally.

“Imagine for a moment how much we could lower the taxi leases and lower the customer fares if we had less fixed costs,” our musician/cab-owner writes. “Alternately,  imagine how much  the fares would rise in UberX if these same business costs were applied to them?”

It is ironic that some of the same people arguing that a $15 minimum wage would crush struggling small businesses, have absolutely no empathy for the hundreds of small business people in the taxi industry—most of them current or former drivers, and many of them immigrants—who have sunk their life savings into purchasing a medallion and a cab, only to have their livelihoods ripped out from under them by the illegal operations of the TNCs.

It is that uneven playing field that the council is expected to at least partially address this afternoon.

– Buffer zones for abortion clinics are necessary.

– When the Washington State Legislature adjourned without getting much done, at least it didn’t get the bad stuff done.

– A while ago in an open thread, I’d mentioned that Rodney Tom has an opponent, Former Kirkland Mayor Joan McBride. If you’re interested, here’s her website. [h/t]

– The first is a new rule vigorously enforced: Pay to play. It now costs money to get a close up look at America’s political leaders, or ask them a question.

– Given my grammar, punctuation, and poor word choice, far be it from me to make fun of a typo by the Discovery Institute. But not far be it from me to link to someone else making fun of a typo from them.

– I don’t know that any rules or laws will ever be adequate to that task. Social norms are actually probably more important in something like this (which is why it’s so depressing to see so many people defending this stuff and condemning those who object.)

Last week’s contest was won by Seventy2002. It was Gulfport, MS.

This week’s location is somewhere in Florida, and because it’s Florida, it’s related to something ridiculous in the news from 2014. Good luck!

Genesis 19:30-36
Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I lay with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.

Discuss.

Anna Kasparian: Racist MN GOP Rep. labels NBA players as criminals.

Paul Ryan’s Clown Show:

• Sam Seder: Paul Ryan suggests black men are lazy.
• David Pakman: Paul Ryan lifts CPAC speech plot from a book
• Sam Seder: Idiot Rep. Paul Ryan says he meant ALL poor people are lazy.
• Shapton: The GOP vicious war on subsidized school lunches.
• Pap and Sam Seder: Paul Ryan’s lunch lies
• Sam Seder: Paul Ryan can help himself from making up a story at CPAC.

David Pakman: Uninsured rate goes down under Obamacare.

Thom: The failed private prison experiment.

ONN: DHS report says leading cause of death is God needing angels.

Thom: Antioch College to run on green energy.

Young Turks: Shocking 9/11 Chris Christie scandal:

Ann Telnaes: “The CIA wouldn’t do that”.

Sam Seder: Nutjob Republican woman refuses to believe Obamacare is saving her money.

Stephen: U.S. Government’s ballzy lawsuit over spying program.

Mental Floss: 26 outrageous truths about children’s television.

David Pakman: A NC Republican frontrunner claims Planned Parenthood wants to kill babies.

Mark Fiore: The anti-gay law in Uganda & the miracle of denial.

Maddow: Women lose health options under GOP anti-abortion law in TX:

Abby Martin and friends: Fukushima three years later.

Between Two Ferns:

• Zach and Barack.
• Young Turks: FAUX Outrage!!!!
• Sam Seder: The Freakout.
• David Pakman: Bill-O-The-Clown, “Lincoln wouldn’t do that!”
• Young Turks: Bill-O-The-Clown goes stupid
• Chris Hayes: Bill-O’s unpresidential claim
• Sam Seder: Bill-O-the-Clown claims Lincoln would never to this!
• Dennis Trainor, Jr: Obama on Between Two Ferns.
• Pap and Sam Seder: Are conservatives humorless?
• Stephen: Outraged!
• Sam Seder: Obama promotes health care between two ferns.

Stephen is torn by pot.

White House: West Wing Week.

WaPo: Francis Collins on the art of leading scientists.

Jon rips Eric Bolling over FAUX’s shaming of SNAP recipients (via Crooks and Liars).

Absurdity Today: News of the week.

Liberal Viewer: Ronald Reagan hero worship goes too far.

Sharpton: Gov. Jindal gets stupid a CPAC.

Happy Pi day.

Bachmann’s Gay Concern Trolling:

• Ed: Michele’s gay bullies!
• Sharpton: Rep. Michele Bachmann says the gay community has ‘bullied’ Americans.

Fallon: Vladimir Putin’s new Kickstarter:

Sam Seder: Something Obama can do for workers that Congressional Republicans cannot stop.

Jon: #McConnelling.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Sam Seder: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stands up to charter school madness.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Losing a job isn’t fun under any circumstance, but it used to be made all the more stressful by the loss of health insurance that went with it. Now, thanks to Obamacare and Washington State’s relatively easy to use health insurance exchange, the newly unemployed have one less thing to fret over.

Logging in to WAHealthPlanFinder.org this morning, it took me about a half hour to complete my application, compare plans, and sign up. I chose a “silver” plan from Group Health with a $200 deductible for only $92 a month after a $300 a month federal subsidy (based on my current meager income from unemployment). And I could’ve done it quicker if not for some repeated glitches in the Safari browser. Once I switched to Firefox, everything went smoothly.

The downside with switching to Group Health is that I can’t keep my current primary care physician, but that was likely true of The Stranger’s insurance too, as my doctor recently switched his practice from Polyclinic to Swedish. The exchange reported that my doctor would’ve been covered under a $168/month plan from Community Health Plan, but my doctor’s office couldn’t confirm that. On the cheap side, I could’ve alternatively purchased a $42/month plan from Coordinated Care, but their HMO offered far fewer providers, so I split the difference and went with the larger and more established Group Health, which also conveniently has a clinic down the street.

By comparison it would’ve cost me $329/month via COBRA to continue on my less comprehensive Stranger insurance. So Obamacare will end up saving me quite a bundle.

As long as I’m unemployed, that is. Should I get a decent paying job relatively soon, I’ll probably have to pay back some of this subsidy on my 2014 tax return. But that’s okay; I’ll be able to afford it. Whereas right now I’m operating under a very tight budget.

So, thanks, President Obama, for easing my job transition with some affordable health insurance. And thank you, WAHealthPlanFinder.org, for putting together such a relatively well designed website. While I would have obviously preferred a single payer system that wouldn’t require me to change my health insurance every time I change employment, this is a helluva lot better than the individual market that used to ream people like me.

There goes that crazy Socialist Kshama Sawant being soooo divisive by bringing class into it again:

[I]t’s hard to escape the suspicion that class interests are playing a role. A fair number of commentators seem oddly upset by the notion of workers getting raises, especially while returns to bondholders remain low. It’s almost as if they identify with the investor class, and feel uncomfortable with anything that brings us close to full employment, and thereby gives workers more bargaining power.

Oh. Wait. That quote wasn’t from Sawant. It was from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. My bad.

Look, people. The Senate GOP worked really hard on making a transit package this legislative session. Just because there wasn’t a transit package, you can’t get mad at them for not passing a transit package.

King says failure to pass transportation package not due to lack of effort

See. If the person who brought us not having a transit package in the state Senate can be blamed for our not having a transit package, then what? Also, I thought the GOP philosophy on hard work was that you could tell the amount of effort based on the result. So if people are on food stamps, even if they are working full time, the GOP prescription is for them to work hard. The GOP can tell they didn’t work hard because they’re on food stamps. So I think we can tell the GOP weren’t working hard on a transit package because the legislature adjourned without a transit package.

At a news conference today – one day before the scheduled end of the 2014 legislative session – Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, and co-chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, lamented the fact that lawmakers did not pass an agreed-upon transportation revenue and reform package before adjourning. King added that the Majority Coalition Caucus, which leads the state Senate, repeatedly made compromises sought by the Senate minority, but to no avail.

Majorities, how the fuck do they work?

Seriously, this is what happens when you hand out things — like a majority — to people who haven’t earned it. Sure, they say they’ll work hard, but the results are the results.

“During the 2013 transportation feedback forum tour, we visited ten cities across Washington in five weeks. The vast majority of citizens made it clear that they wanted reforms before they’d accept any gas-tax increase, and we listened to the people.”

Those lazy roustabouts will lash out and make excuses. But in the end, if they wanted to pass a transit package, they could buckle down, work hard, and pass something.

“From the very beginning, the MCC has prioritized reforms, and additional revenue was never off the table. But in the end, the Senate’s minority Democrats weren’t serious about making the tough reforms. They were more interested in tax increases and sound bites, despite knowing as well as I do that the state can’t win public support for a multibillion-dollar transportation package without first establishing that we are serious about fixing the waste, mismanagement and abuse that exists within the system.”

These reforms are so popular and good that the GOP isn’t even going to mention even one specific reform in their press release.

“Add to that the governor’s signing of a climate-change compact with Oregon, California and British Columbia. Of those governments, the only state that has not yet implemented low-carbon emission standards is Washington. California is expected to see an immediate 12-cent hike in gas taxes with a possible increase of up to 40 cents in the next year because of these types of standards, and Governor Inslee’s refusal to acknowledge his plans to unilaterally impose low-carbon emission standards was an obstacle to finalizing a transportation package.”

An unrelated thing that Governor Inslee did is responsible! Look, GOP, just stop making excuses.

“The MCC offered a new compromise proposal February 13 and revised the offer on February 21, again moving significantly toward the Democrats’ position. However, it became obvious to us over the last month that Democrat leadership in the House and Senate is not interested in seeing a transportation package move forward this session, and their response to our most recent proposal told us – in no uncertain terms – that they are not interested in reaching agreement and moving forward.”

The House passed a package a year ago. It’s plenty problematic, but they got the job done. If the Senate wanted to pass a transit package, they could have passed a transit package. Don’t lash out at other people who are doing better than you. It’s not the House’s fault.

“The MCC remains committed to addressing Washington’s transportation needs, and will continue to work toward that goal even after the 2014 legislative session adjourns.”

Yeah, we’ve seen promises before. But they never seem to materialize, do they?

The best part about leaving The Stranger is that nobody can make me write a wrap-up of the Rodney Tom shit-show in Olympia. Just sayin’.

Having already lost the local debate on the minimum wage in general, and on $15 in particular, the business interests on Mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee have largely adopted a strategy of attempting to redefine the meaning of the word “wage” itself. The restaurant industry has long pined for a “tip credit” (or “tip penalty” from the perspective of workers) in which tips are counted towards meeting the minimum wage. But that wouldn’t lower the labor costs of businesses that rely on non-tipped employees, and so a strong push is being made to adopt the more sweeping notion of “total compensation.”

I’ll delve more deeply into the tip penalty debate in a subsequent post, but for the moment I want to focus on total compensation, which in addition to tips, would count the cost of providing  health insurance, sick leave, vacation leave, 401K matches, and other non-cash benefits toward the employer’s requirement to pay a minimum $15 an hour wage. And to better understand the impact of adopting a $15 an hour total compensation minimum wage, it is useful to start with a real-life example:

Let’s say you are a dishwasher working full-time at a midrange Seattle restaurant, earning $10.50 an hour plus $3 an hour in pooled or shared tips. You’re taking home the equivalent of $13.50 an hour, plus benefits. I guess there are worse jobs, but it’s hardly a living wage.

Now let’s say we pass a $15 total compensation minimum wage.

Based on the monthly price I’ve been quoted for COBRA, minus my share of the premium that had been deducted from my paychecks, I can estimate that I had cost The Stranger about $1.60 an hour for our so-so medical and dental coverage—let’s assume that’s typical for a restaurant. Then there’s a shift meal, with a retail price of $12.00, or another $1.50 an hour over the course of an 8 hour shift. Add two weeks vacation for another $0.40 an hour. Paid sick leave, that’s another $0.20 an hour still. I’m sure there are other benefits I’m missing, but this is more than enough to make my point. That’s already $3.70 an hour in benefits just there.

So… $10.50 an hour in wages, plus $3 an hour in tips, plus $3.70 an hour in benefits, and after our wonderful new $15 minimum wage ordinance passes, you’ll magically be making $17.20 an hour! That’s great! Except your take-home pay won’t increase a penny. In fact, some unscrupulous employers may seize this as an opportunity to actually lower wages. Hooray for total compensation!

Of course, not all employers are going to be dicks about it. But in this imbalanced labor market, some will. Wage and tip theft are already rampant. So if you don’t think that some employers are going to be eager to creatively use a $15 total compensation minimum wage as an opportunity to cut labor costs, then you don’t know fuck about capitalism. (Or human nature.) 

But wait—it gets even worse.

Your $15 minimum wage would be indexed to inflation, but the cost of one of your biggest benefits—health insurance—will inflate at many times that rate. Health care inflation is currently at a historic low of about 6.5 percent, but the Consumer Price Index is only expected to rise about 1.75 percent during 2014. That means that the costs of your benefits will rise significantly faster than the putative minimum wage, pushing the effective wage floor ever lower in inflation adjusted dollars over time. For example, after five years at the inflation rates above, the official minimum wage would rise about 9 percent to $16.36 an hour, while the cost of your dishwasher benefits will have gone up about 21 percent to $4.48 an hour, bringing your official total hourly compensation to $17.98—again, without raising your take-home pay a single penny!

Total compensation effectively shifts the burden of healthcare inflation from the employer, entirely onto the employee. And as benefits make up an increasingly larger percentage of total compensation, real take-home wages will steadily fall. For low-wage full-time workers, a total compensation minimum wage would be a formula for expanding the income gap, not closing it.

Admittedly, the impact on part-time workers is different. Lacking the cost of benefits to subtract from total compensation, low-wage part-timers could see their effective wage floor rise substantially. This in turn would remove from employers some of the economic incentive they currently have to shift low-wage full-time work to part-time work. So that’s one possible positive impact of total compensation.

But as a policy for raising the effective incomes of all low-wage workers—which is what the $15 minimum wage movement is presumably about—a total compensation minimum wage miserably fails. It would provide little or no immediate wage hike to most full-time workers while eroding the effective wage floor over time. But most importantly, it would be a lie. Mayor Murray and other leaders have promised voters $15, but total compensation only gets to that number by redefining the meaning of the word “wage.”

And that would not be a promise fulfilled.

– Wayne LaLaPierre’s speech at CPAC was troubling. Even by speech at CPAC standards.

– War-mongering is self-justifying. If you bungle a war in Iraq, it does not mean you need to sit back and reflect on the bungling. It means you should make more war, lest Iraq become a base for your enemies. If Vladimir Putin violates Ukrainian sovereignty, it is evidence for a more muscular approach. If he doesn’t, than it is evidence that he fears American power.

– Because the city of Seattle has been so awesome on civil rights issues, they really need new things like facial recognition software for video surveillance. The logic is solid.

– The amendment does not define “vicinity”. Nor does it specify a cap on how much a city can charge for Restricted Parking Zone (RPZ) permits. In theory, the City of Bellevue could deem the whole city to be in the “vicinity” of Sound Transit infrastructure, declare the whole city to be an RPZ, charge $1 million per annual permit, and require Sound Transit to pay the entire cost of these $1 million annual parking permits.

– The Very Real Consequences of Young People Not Voting

– The worst part about Putin’s power grab is that it’s totally copyright infringement.