Goldy

WellPoint pays its CEO $10 million a year, and spent over $9.5 million last year lobbying against health care reform. And now with reform all but dead, the company is intent on enjoying the fruit of its labors, hiking premiums on its 800,000 individual policy holders in California by 39 percent.

Ah, the efficiencies of the market.

In a blow to House Republicans who had made him one of their favorite targets of scorn and derision, U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) died today at age 77 of complications from gallbladder surgery.

Although he’d earned wide renown amongst D.C. insiders for his pork-barrel prowess (you know, the kinda bring-home-the-bacon politics folks here in our Washington like to abuse Rep. McDermott for not plying), Murtha didn’t become a lightning rod for Republican criticism until 2005, when the normally hawkish Democrat prominently came out in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. A former marine whose honors include the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, Murtha was the first Vietnam War veteran to be elected to the U.S. House.

And in a curious historical note, Murtha has now become the third in a direct line of succession to have died in office, joining his immediate predecessor John P. Saylor (1973) and Saylor’s predecessor Robert L. Coffey (1949). So a word of caution to those seeking to succeed Murtha: few who hold this office manage to return alive.

UPDATE:
Speaking of pork, Murtha’s death bumps WA’s own Rep. Norm Dicks to the number two position on the all powerful House Appropriations Committee, where he will likely take over Murtha’s chair of the lucrative Defense subcommittee. Say what you want, but that can’t be bad for the military-industrial complex here in WA state.

A couple of thoughts on Lee’s excellent and provocative post regarding the Department of Corrections’ abuse of probationers’ rights to use medical marijuana.

First, one would think that folks in the legacy media might be all over such a scandalous abuse of state power, if not for A) our media’s tendency to to view medical marijuana patients as a bunch of worthless, lying potheads, and B) their fear of covering any story that might cast media-beloved AG Rob McKenna in an unflattering light.

Second, if there’s anything that illustrates the incredible stupidity and casual cruelty of our drug policy, it’s how it so easily turned a sickly grandmother with a medical marijuana prescription and less than a quarter ounce of pot, into an enemy combatant in our so-called War on Drugs. Read Lee’s post; is there any moral or social justification for this poor woman’s arrest in Arizona, and subsequent abuse at the hands of the Washington DOC? And yet such abuse is the inevitable consequence of our current, twisted system.

What a waste of time and money, not to mention the cost in human suffering. So come on, let’s legalize marijuana already so we can let law enforcement focus on enforcing laws that actually make sense.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12
If two men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one attacking him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall not pity her.

Discuss.

I’ve used HA to advocate for moving to a high-tuition/high-financial-aid model in Washington’s four-year universities, pretty much since I started blogging, first in July of 2004, and at least once a year since (for example, here, here, here, and here). Hiking tuition is not a classically progressive policy proposal, and let me tell you, it didn’t win me many fans either in the comment threads or our state Democratic caucus.

But now that the Legislature is close to adopting this model via a bill that would grant “tuition flexibility” to the UW, WSU and Western, I gotta admit that I’m getting more than a little nervous.

See, the concept is rather simple. By mandating low in-state tuition prices, far below the actual cost to the university of providing an undergraduate education, the state has essentially been distributing the bulk of its funds directly to students in the form of a flat, per student subsidy, regardless of means. But under the new system, tuition would be allowed to gradually rise closer to actual costs, while financial aid grants and income thresholds rose accordingly, so as to keep higher education affordable to low and middle income families.

Indeed, with the extra revenue generated from those families who could afford to pay it, higher education could be made more affordable and more accessible. That is, assuming the state maintains its financial commitment to the state university system.

And that’s the assumption that’s making me nervous.

The whole point of this model is to offset higher tuition with higher financial aid, using the extra tuition revenue to help achieve this balance, but if the state uses new tuition revenue as an excuse for reducing its own expenses, that contract is irrevocably broken. My fear is that, with this tuition flexibility reform coming as a response to our state’s current budget crisis, legislators will view it primarily as a money-saving measure, and will treat it as such in subsequent budgets, resulting in a permanent reduction in future state funding for higher education. And honestly, I don’t want to play a role in enabling that.

We already don’t spend enough money to provide access to a quality higher education to all of our state’s young people, and we don’t need an excuse for legislators to spend even less. So while I obviously support tuition flexibility in theory, I cannot support it in practice unless the state makes the financial commitment necessary to assure that this reform makes higher eduction more accessible, not less. And I certainly cannot support it as a mere budgetary device.

DISCLOSURE:
Years ago, her mother and I bought our daughter four years of prepaid tuition through the state GET program, so higher in-state tuition will not impact us regardless of our means, should she attend a state university. Should our daughter attend a private or out-of-state university, higher  in-state tuition would in fact result in a higher return on our investment.

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
— Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 4/29/07

Not wanting to pile on or anything, but, well, you know.

In a decision that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick ruled today that the state has failed to meet its “paramount duty” to make “ample provision for the education of all children,” as required by Washington’s Constitution, and ordered the state to provide stable and dependable funding to do so.

In response, Gov. Gregoire issued the following statement:

“Improving the quality of our schools and the education system has been, and remains, the top priority of our state. I agree with the court that we have a duty to provide a high quality education to our children.

Working with my staff and the Attorney General’s Office, I will be reviewing this decision to determine where we go from here.

Last year we passed significant legislation that would institute major funding reforms to ensure the necessary resources and programs to help every student succeed. That work must continue.

Regardless of whether this decision is upheld, I will continue working with the legislature to improve school accountability, close the achievement gap and ensure we provide our children opportunities for success in the global marketplace in which they will be competing. The legislative process is the best avenue we have available to determine those components.

Right now there is legislation being considered that would reform our education system. In light of this decision, I think it’s even more important that we pass these proposals that will put us in a better position to improve educational opportunities for every student in our state.”

To which I say:  Show me the money!

That was always my problem with last year’s education reform package. It promised improvements that would cost an extra billion dollars or so by 2018, but it never actually provided the funding mechanism to make it happen. Meanwhile, school funding has been substantially slashed in the here and now.

The truth is, education reform without tax structure reform is a hollow promise, and we’ll never be able to sustainably fund K-12 and higher education until we move to a fairer and more adequate tax system. Everything else is just talk.

The good news for Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is that only 34% percent of Seattle voters surveyed disapprove of his job performance thus far. The bad news is that only 40% approve of his performance… that according to a KING5/SurveyUSA poll of 500 Seattle voters.

Well, so much for the honeymoon.

Other tidbits from the poll: Seattle voters don’t seem overly anxious about replacing the 520 floating bridge, with only 23% ranking the project “very important,” and while 62% of respondents prefer a 6-lane bridge to a 4-lane one, there seems to be a modest preference toward dedicating the extra two lanes to light rail over HOV, 46% to 33%. Huh.

Dear Amazon,

You lose money on every Kindle you sell, you pay carriers for every bit you transfer over your Whispernet wireless delivery system, and at $9.99 a pop you even lose money on many of your e-books. And you’re worried about competing with the iPad… why?

Quit wasting your time and money acquiring companies and technologies in hopes of outdoing Apple at what Apple does best, and instead put all your effort into creating a better Kindle app and e-book buying experience for the iPad and other forthcoming tablet devices than Apple has created with its own iBook platform. Think of the iPad as an opportunity to get your e-books into millions more hands, without having to subsidize the hardware and network costs. Yeah, sure, you might only ultimately capture 20 to 30 percent of the e-book market on Apple’s touch platform, but that would still represent a helluva lot of virtual Kindles… and just like in the smartphone market, even a wildly successful iPad won’t be the only major player in the field.

Oh, there’s still plenty of room for your physical Kindle, a special purpose e-book reader with a comfortable e-ink display and incredibly long battery life… and there’s plenty of opportunity to make the Kindle better and cheaper. But multi-touch, app stores, energy-hungry color screens… you’re never going to create a better multipurpose device at a lower cost than Apple. So please, keep your focus.

Kindle is a great product that kick-started the e-book industry, and you deserve to be proud of that. But don’t let pride get in the way of profiting off your initial success.

Best of luck,

Goldy

Now that even Colin Powell has reversed himself and come out in support of lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military, and ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that was implemented on his watch, is there really even much of a controversy anymore?

Top military brass support lifting the ban, and if I understand how the military works, those under them will do what they’re told. No doubt lifting the ban will make for some awkward moments, but what’s the big deal?

Apparently, the only thing that speeds more precariously out of control than a Toyota with a stuck accelerator, is DOT Secretary Ray LaHood’s mouth.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I kinda like Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey… you know, as a person, not as an editorialist for chrisakes. But I’d like him a helluva lot more if he were a bit more consistent.

For example, today Bruce is outraged over legislative attempts to reform the initiative process (reforms that are brought up every session, yet predictably never get out of committee). Applying campaign finance limits to initiative campaigns? Spiteful. Requiring paid signature gatherers to register with the PDC? Punitive. Raising the $5 filing fee from its 1912 cost to something approaching an inflation-adjusted value (about $110)? Well… um… Bruce defiantly stamps his foot down:

[T]he state constitution declares that the people’s right of petition “shall never be abridged.”

Really, Bruce? Huh, I don’t remember you coming to my defense when your own editorial page urged a Thurston County court to bar Initiative 831 from the ballot, and I sure as hell don’t remember you pontificating about my “right of petition” when the judge issued a wholly unconstitutional order barring me from filing my petitions with the Secretary of State.

No, I guess denying me and my tens of thousands of supporters our right to petition our government was okay, because we weren’t taking the initiative process seriously enough for civic leaders like you and your fellow editors. Besides, I guess I should’ve been satisfied enough, having “successfully placed the phrase ‘horse’s ass’ into dozens of family newspapers.” As if I held a fucking gun to your heads.

In the end, a humorless assistant AG and a humorless Superior Court judge denied me my constitutional rights, knowing full well that I lacked the resources to file an appeal. Written in the form of a resolution, the AG argued that I-831 was not legislative in nature because it failed to amend the RCW, and thus was outside the scope of the initiative process. And so for only the second time in our history , the state stooped to pre-ballot review to invalidate a proposed measure.

And you and your paper cheered them on.

So here’s your chance to make amends Bruce. An initiative was recently filed seeking to change our state’s official seal to that of “a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the taxpayer’s rectum.” I’m the last person to come out against the use of the initiative process for satirical purposes (even if it’s totally misguided considering that WA hasn’t raised a single tax since 2005), but I’ve read the initiative, and while it seeks to direct the Legislature to change the seal, like I-831, it doesn’t actually amend the RCW itself. Thus under the precedent set in Goldstein v. Gregoire, that should place it outside the scope of the initiative process.

So if you want to be consistent in your advocacy for the integrity of the initiative process, I would expect you and your editorial board to urge the AG to deny this initiative a title, and if it ultimately goes before a judge, to editorialize in favor of denying this petitioner the same fundamental rights that were denied to me.

Or… would that run counter to your impassioned defense of initiative sponsors against any and all obstacles?

I’m confused, Bruce. Perhaps you can explain why it’s so outrageous to, say, bar convicted sex offenders and identity thieves from being hired to gather our addresses and signatures, yet it’s okay to use the full legal resources of the state to harass a petitioner and bar his satirical initiative from the ballot? Or… would you argue that your ed board was wrong in advocating that I-831 be tossed from the ballot?

I await either an explanation or an apology.

I may not be a big fan of the Seattle Times editorial board’s prose, but it turns out it’s better than their verse.

“HOW do you solve a problem like Pamela?” reads the Times’ lede on the latest Pam Roach soap opera, apparently thinking they’ve made a clever reference to the iconic song “Maria” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The Sound of Music.

But they haven’t. Because “Pamela” and “Maria” don’t rhyme. They don’t even share the same meter.

“Maria” is a double or feminine rhyme, with the accent falling on the second to last syllable, whereas “Pamela” is a triple rhyme (or antepenult) with the accent falling on the third to last syllable. To rhyme with “Maria” you’d need a word that mimics its final two syllables, like “Korea” or “diarrhea” or “onomatopoeia.” To rhyme with “Pamela,” you’d need a word that mimics all three syllables, absent the “P.”

Not only doesn’t “Maria” rhyme with “Pamela,” offhand, I can’t think of another word in the English language that does.

And to make matters worse, not only isn’t the Times lede singable as written, nobody but nobody refers to Pam Roach as Pamela. So this supposedly clever reference fails on two fronts. (Not to mention the fact that 95% of non-gay-male readers under the age of 40 probably aren’t even familiar enough with the song to get a properly made reference in the first place.)

Fail, fail, fail.

And even as a fail, the Times’ reference is unoriginal. Indeed, I castigated Newsweek on similar lines just a couple months ago, for attempting to force “Sarah” into the same lyric in a feeble cover headline.

Of course, it is possible to make this lyrical reference work, as I did in a headline not too long ago. My secret? Having the discipline to only make the allusion where it fits.

So my advice to the Times’ editorialists is to leave the rhyming verse to the experts, and stick to… well… I’d prefer they leave the editorializing to experts as well, but I suppose we can’t have everything.

Nobody wins elections they’re not running for like Dino Rossi.

After losing an excruciatingly close race to Christine Gregoire in 2004, Rossi went on to win multiple gubernatorial opinion polls in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, as well as several head to head match-ups with Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2005. Indeed, just about the only poll Rossi has lost over the past five years was the one counted, in November of 2008.

And now comes news that Rossi has defeated Sen. Patty Murray in an opinion survey conducted by Moore Insight.

Encouraging news indeed for those Republicans living in that alternate universe where contests are decided months or even years before or after election day, and solely on the basis of surveys conducted by Republican pollsters.