Goldy

In the autumn of 2004, about six months after the death of my horse’s ass initiative, and about six months before I would start blogging, my fellow activist Steve Zemke somehow managed to arrange a meeting for us with House Speaker Frank Chopp and then House Finance Committee chair, now State Treasurer, Jim McIntire.  Our purpose was to urge them to pursue some sort of progressive property tax reform in an effort to preempt Tim Eyman’s next initiative, but the conversation drifted broadly toward our structural revenue deficit, and thus inevitably, to an income tax.

Both Frank and Jim supported an income tax—in theory—but neither seemed too keen on raising the issue anytime soon.  In fact, I clearly remember Jim warning me that any attempt to push an income tax prematurely could set our efforts back by a decade or more.

But Jim did put forth one scenario in which he could envision an income tax passing voters, a thesis I’ve since heard from other Olympia insiders, and which I’ve dubbed the “Phoenix Model.”  Under this scenario, a brutal economic downturn combined with a decades-long erosion of our sales tax base could create a budget crisis so severe that legislators and voters would have no choice but to resort to an income tax, or… dramatically reduce the role and scope of Washington state government.  Out of this budgetary Armageddon a new tax structure would be born, so the theory went, like the mythical phoenix rising from its own ashes.

So… um… aren’t we in that scenario now?

How much worse does the budget crisis have to get before voters and their elected officials accept that we cannot build a 21st century economy on the back of an early 20th century tax system?  How many more hundreds of thousands of Washington citizens must be thrown off the health care rolls or denied a college education?  How many businesses must flee our state or avoid starting up here due to the lack of an adequate transportation system or educated workforce or any number of other vital investments in public and human infrastructure?

How many billions of dollars must our budget be in a hole, and how many consecutive budgets must this hole be plugged through cruel cuts and regressive stopgap measures before the emergence of political leaders who are more concerned with long term solutions than with short term political gains?

In the Senate, I have been heartened by the leadership provided on this issue by Majority Leader Lisa Brown, and by the public support displayed by Senators Kohl-Wells, Regala, McDermott, Murray, Kline, and Fraser.  Folks in the know suggest that should a high-earners income tax come to a vote in the Senate, Brown could likely corral enough support to put it on the fall ballot.

But from the House leadership, all we hear are crickets.

If House Finance Committee chair Ross Hunter (D-48) were to take the lead on a high-earners income tax he could rally support behind it and perhaps even push it to the floor for a vote.  Yes, I know he’s focused on passing the education reforms on which he’s passionately dedicated himself for years, but few of these reforms are possible without the funding to back them up.  And yes, I understand that he plans to run for King County Executive, but taking the lead on a high-earners income tax could be exactly what he needs to grab the edge with Seattle voters over Seattle liberals Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine.

But Hunter isn’t even technically a member of the House Democratic Leadership.  So where’s Rep. Larry Springer (D-45) who represents an Eastside district where education funding routinely tops the list of voter concerns, or Rep. Zack Hudgins (D-11) a guy at least as comfortable palling around with DFH’s like me as he is with Olympia power brokers?  Where’s my own representative, Majority Whip Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-37), a long time member of the Tax Fairness Coalition who represents citizens about as adversely effected by our regressive tax structure as any in the state, and who would suffer mightily under the proposed cuts?

For that matter, where the hell is our entire Seattle House delegation?

Yes, I know, I know, I know that Frank is as steeped in the conventional Olympia wisdom as the majority of the observers in the establishment press, and I know that he fears for his majority.  And I know that Frank doesn’t really believe a high-earners income tax could pass voters, regardless of its surprisingly good showing in recent polls.  But he can be nudged.  He can be pushed.  He could even be shoved.

Frank’s not a monolith.  He is open to persuasion, and he does change his mind.  But he’s clearly not going to take the lead on this issue on his own.

That’s why for those of you in the House who believe that an income tax is the only solution to our long term structural deficit, and who understand that after the federal stimulus monies disappear and a temporary sales tax increase expires, we’ll be right back where we started, even with an economic recovery—and I’m confident that covers the majority of the Democratic caucus—the only responsible thing to do is to stand up and take the lead on this issue now, while we actually have an opportunity to pass it.

Don’t wait for Frank!  He’s way behind the electorate on this issue, and while I’m confident he’ll do the right thing and do it well once he’s brought up to speed, he’ll never get there unless some influential members of his caucus clear the way.

If a temporary sales tax increase was a sure thing at the polls, I’d understand your reluctance, considering the dire consequences should a revenue measure fail.  But it isn’t.  And in many ways, a high-earners income tax has considerably more political upside than any sales tax proposal.

So take a look at the recent the polling, and dive into the details.  Talk to your constituents and listen to their concerns about further regressivity.  And then somebody, anybody, please stand up and take the lead.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation this afternoon, between 12:15 and 12:30, talking about proposals for a temporary sales tax increase.  Listen live or download the podcast.

And for those of you listeners coming to HA looking for the statistics I’ve cited, here are some useful links.

Sales Tax vs Income Tax: A Short Primer in Fairness and Adequacy

Out of control spending?

Per capita revenues at 15-year low

Structural deficit

UPDATE:
If KUOW listeners are typical (and I’m not suggesting that they are,) they are a lot better informed, and a lot more supportive of an income tax than many of our politicians imagine.

In the most positive assessment since Gallup started polling the question in 1956, 48% of Americans now say the amount of federal income tax they pay is “about right,” while 46% say it is “too high,” marking a dramatic shift from the historic norm.

On the macro level, this shift in opinion should serve as a warning to Republicans who have long relied on cutting taxes as the central theme of their political campaigns.  But on the local level, I hope it prompts Democrats in Olympia, and their various constituent groups, to reevaluate the conventional group-think that insists an income tax is a non-starter for Washington voters.

Yeah, I know, I know… a broad personal income tax got trounced at the polls the last time it was on the ballot back in 1973, and an off-off election year is typically the worst time to put a progressive measure before voters who will surely skew to the right.  But this isn’t 1973, and in the midst of the Great Recession and an extended Obama honeymoon, we may be passing up a once in a generation opportunity to enact real reform.

Voters are in a mood.  They’re anxious about the economy and angry at the fat cats on Wall Street who led us into this crisis, which may help explain why a high-earners income tax is polling just about even with a third of cent increase in the sales tax. Obama campaigned on raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year, and he won by a wide margin here in WA state, so why wouldn’t WA voters support the same locally?  Well, given the right package, the right reasons and an effective communications campaign, they might.  I’m not saying a high-earners income tax measure is a sure thing, but for the first time in a long time, neither is its failure.

So the next time someone points to 1973 as evidence of political futility, I say point to this Gallup chart illustrating the dramatic shift in national attitudes over the past 36 years, and ask the question:  are Washington voters really all that different from the rest of the nation? Personally, I don’t think so.

Guns make you safer:

A Fort Lewis soldier is dead after being accidentally shot in the head and killed by his wife in Olympia, the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office says.

Lt. Chris Mealy of the sheriff’s office told KOMO-TV the soldier was teaching his wife how to handle a handgun when he was shot early Sunday. Mealy told The Olympian that the semi-automatic handgun was the soldier’s personal property.

I’m just sayin’.

As first reported on Seattle Transit Blog, the state House passed a $4.9 billion two-year transportation budget on Friday that restored funding for moving I-90’s HOV lanes (work necessary to keep the voter-approved East Link light rail project on schedule) and which removed language that would have barred the state Department of Transportation from negotiating air rights with Sound Transit for access to I-90.

This blog has long made the case that Rep. Clibborn has long been opposed to Link crossing I-90, so we hope that this is the first sign of a House that is friendlier toward transit — perhaps due to advocacy pressure. One legislator described our outreach campaign as “a deluge of emails set off by bloggers,” but we think it’s important that transit advocates let the state know how important voter-approved light rail projects are to the region.

It is difficult to accurately gauge the impact of citizen advocacy, but the folks at STB deserve a ton of credit for taking the lead on covering this issue, and pushing awareness amongst both rail supporters and legislators alike.  If I were them, I’d quietly put another notch in my belt.

But after talking to a number of reliable sources both in and outside Olympia, I’m not so sure it was Rep. Clibborn’s opposition to Link crossing I-90 that was the real motivation behind the anti-Link nature of the original bill.  Clibborn and others, I’m told, weren’t really hoping to scuttle East Link, which is pretty much accepted in Olympia as a done deal.  No, this was more of a shakedown… part of a calculated effort to extort a billion dollars or more from Sound Transit for access rights to I-90… money House Speaker Frank Chopp hopes to target to his preferred, but monstrously expensive, “Option K” Montlake tunnel alternative for the Western approach to the new 520 floating bridge.

At least a billion dollars, possibly two, that’s what Chopp has privately told lawmakers and lobbyists he wants for access to I-90 (a bridge, by the way, built 90% with federal dollars), and that’s why, I’m told, he had his lieutenants throw roadblocks into DOT’s negotiations with Sound Transit.  That’s potentially enough money to fund all of the controversial Option K tunnel.

Now, as House Speaker, I kinda expect Chopp to play games like this.  That’s politics.  It’s part of his job description.

But Chopp also represents the voters of Seattle’s 43rd Legislative District… voters who overwhelmingly voted last November to tax themselves to build light rail across Lake Washington, not a highway tunnel under Montlake.  We tried to pass a roads and transit measure back in 2007—I aggressively supported it—and it failed.  The successful 2008 ballot measure, on the other hand, was explicitly transit only.

The Speaker’s efforts to steal money from East Link to help pay for Option K, may be a clever political maneuver, but it clearly ignores the will of the voters, and threatens the ability of Sound Transit to complete a project that, due to the Great Recession, is already seeing lower than projected tax revenues, and for which ST had never factored in the cost of tunneling under Montlake.

And it’s not at all that clear that this effort is dead, even with passage of a relatively ST-friendly transportation bill.

For all the incessant attacks from Republicans questioning his fitness to be Commander in Chief, President Obama appears to have engaged rather forcefully in the recent standoff with Somali pirates:

U.S. Navy Seals had a standing order from President Barack Obama to take out the pirates who held an American captain in a standoff on the high seas, according to Pentagon officials and White House aides.

Over the course of the five-day standoff, Obama, who said little publicly about the hostage situation, received more than a dozen briefings and gave the Department of Defense policy guidance and the authority to use force if the situation compelled it.

Mission accomplished.

A couple weeks ago, when I first set out on my recent series of obsessively wonky posts on Washington’s budget crisis and the structural revenue deficit at its heart, I pretty much knew what to expect.  Readership would trail off, incoming links would virtually disappear, and my comment threads would fill with automatic gainsaying, tired, anti-tax rhetoric, and pointless personal attacks on my manhood, my alleged socialism, and of course, my ethnicity.

i told u in your last post goldstein, get out of here and go to that garbage dump israel, and take that homo barney frank with u

No, my trolls rarely fail to disappoint.  And neither have the local media, whose coverage of this crisis, as expected, has largely focused on the spending side of the equation and the political machinations behind it, while providing little if any discussion of its causes, outside of the frame of the current economic cycle.

It is easy to point to a four-year period and show that spending has increased from X to Y.  It is much harder to cogently place this increase within the proper historical, economic and statistical context.  And so, for the most part, our media has failed to even try, and understandably so, for properly done, the subject matter is inherently godawful dry and boring.  Why should a daily newspaper devote precious column inches to explaining a premise that is at its best tedious, and at its worse, a maddeningly counter-intuitive and downright unpopular challenge to conventional wisdom?

Thus I was pleasantly surprised to read Seattle Times economic columnist Jon Talton this morning proclaim that now is the “Time for state to discuss taxes despite difficulties.”

It’s quixotic — or deranged. Such are most of the reactions, depending on political persuasion, to state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown’s idea of an income tax on high-wage earners to help fund education.

Huh.  Sounds like Talton is calling out his own editorial board.  But…

Even so, Brown’s proposal ought to open an important conversation about taxes and the state’s future competitiveness. It’s one that’s difficult to have without arousing partisan passions, cooked statistics and charges of socialism or a sales-tax-driven war on the poor. It’s one we should have nevertheless.

There… was that so hard?

As Talton points out, Washington’s individual and corporate tax “burden” remains relatively low while our per capita income remains high, and our heavy reliance on the sales tax leaves us with the most regressive tax structure in the nation.  Talton also peeks beneath the robes of the rarely challenged orthodoxy that inexorably links tax rates to private sector competitiveness.

Some of the states with the highest tax rates and tax burdens (taxes paid divided by income) are also the richest and most economically powerful.

These include New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and California. Some states with very low taxes also suffer from limited economies and a relative lack of well-paid jobs. This doesn’t mean that high taxes can’t ultimately hurt competitiveness, only that reflexive tax cutting is no panacea, either. Rather, tax policy seems to be one element in a state’s overall competitive DNA.

Our problem, as Talton explains, is that despite such facts, talk of higher taxes is generally political suicide.

Anti-tax activists have been effective in portraying government as always bloated and inefficient. This sidesteps answering what roles government must do well and which cost money to enhance competitiveness in a complex, global economy.

That’s all I’ve been asking for:  a public conversation on the proper size and scope of government, and how best to adequately, sustainably and fairly pay for those services and infrastructure investments we collectively want and need.  With rare exceptions like Talton’s column, we aren’t getting that conversation in our local media, and apart from Brown and a handful of other legislators, we aren’t getting that conversation from our elected officials either.

I’m not saying it’s an easy conversation, or one that won’t come with political costs.  But in the long run, it’s a conversation we can’t afford to avoid.

Apparently, I have kidney stones, a malady I’ve heard others describe as more painful than childbirth.  I’m not sure why I’d be prone to the disease, considering I sit at home most days drinking copious quantities of green tea, water and seltzer, so I’m just going to blame our frustrating lawmakers in Olympia, and the fistfuls of Tums they’ve prompted me to swallow over the past couple months.

The symptoms started about a week ago, but last night was the first time the pain got bad enough to keep me awake.  Still, it’s not so bad at the moment, and I hope to get through this without cracking open my prescription of Vicodin.  We’ll see.

I mention my ailment, not to elicit your pity, but to point out how stupid our health care system is.  According to the NIH, each year kidney stones prompt 3 million visits to health care providers, and half a million people to visit emergency rooms.  So it’s a pretty common ailment.  And without robust insurance, it’s a pretty common way to find oneself in a financial hole.

If I pass my stones on my own it’s going to cost me only a few hundred dollars in doctors office visits and lab work, but should I require further diagnosis and treatment—CT scans, ureteroscopy, surgery, a hospital stay and follow-up—it’ll cost me thousands of dollars before my deductible is exhausted and my co-insurance stoploss kicks in.  And that’s with an insurance plan on which I already pay a couple hundred dollars a month.

I’m sure I’ll manage to get by.

But a lot of families wouldn’t.  For many folks, even in good times, five to six thousand dollars in medical expenses could mean the difference between keeping or losing the house, or perhaps, completing a college degree.  And for the uninsured, the costs from an ailment as common as a tiny chunk of calcium stuck in your kidney could easily exceed $40,000.

There are those on the right who resent what social safety net we have, and who rail against being asked to pay for the consequences of the poor choices of others.  But affordable insurance simply isn’t available to tens of millions of American families, and God knows, nobody chooses to have a kidney stone.  So in the end, what good is the best health care available anywhere in the world, when there’s no functional system for providing it?

The Washington State Budget & Policy has revised their chart tracking Washington state government spending and revenue as a percentage of personal income to include the projected 2009-2011 budget… and it’s pretty damn dramatic.

It is important to note that while state spending has remained fairly flat for the past decade, apart from a spike during the real estate bubble revenue has been steadily eroding since before the current economic crisis.  As for the current downturn, the decrease in revenue is twice as steep as previous declines, and the proposed budget cuts are substantially deeper as a percentage of the economy than any other budget over the period of time charted.

Those who insist our current budget crisis is the result of out of control spending will just have to continue to ignore the facts.

The Seattle Times editorial board is at it again:

In unemployment pay, Washington is not a cheap state, nor is either side — labor and business — proposing to make it one. It has the fifth-highest unemployment benefit among the states and the sixth-highest level of taxes.

Really?  WA has the sixth-highest level of taxes?  According to whom, and by what measure?

According to the conservative Tax Foundation, Washington’s state and local tax burden ranked 35th as a percentage of personal income in 2008, dead even with Mississippi, while WA’s own Department of Revenue had us ranked 28th in 2006.  Both the Tax Foundation and the state DOR pull their numbers from the US Census Bureau.  Furthermore, the Tax Foundation ranks WA as having the 12th best “business tax climate” in the nation.

So where does the Times get its number that ranks WA with the sixth-highest level of taxes?  They don’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure the only math that could get us anywhere near that high would be to calculate total state, local and federal taxes per capita, a bullshit number for comparative purposes that even then they’d still have to fudge.

On average, Washington is not a high tax state.  It’s simply not.  And if the Times is going to insist on making that assertion, even in passing, they have an ethical obligation to back it up with real numbers.

Over on their editorial board blog, the Seattle Times’ Bruce Ramsey calls me out for calling out Susan Hutchison for her connections to the Discovery Institute and their Christianist, anti-science campaign to foist so-called Intelligent Design theory on unsuspecting school children.

Oh, come on. I don’t buy the argument from design, and once compared it to the fabulist Erich von Daniken. But Discovery does lots of things, from stuff on Russia to passenger trains. Discovery was the initial backer of the bored tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct—an idea now endorsed by Ron Sims, Greg Nickels and Christine Gregoire. Funny how our progressive pundits missed the chance to make fun of that idea by talking about Intelligent Design.

Oh Bruce… why are you always picking on me?  When have I ever said an unkind word about your publication?

But if you’re gonna pick on me, the least you could do is pick your spots a little more carefully, for I’m pretty sure I’ve never missed a chance to make fun of Discovery by talking about Intelligent Design.  Indeed back in December of 2007, when the deep bored tunnel idea was first raised, I ridiculed Discovery in a post titled “Intelligent Transportation Design,” writing:

[T]he folks at the Discovery Institute are a bunch of fanaticist nutcases “visionaries”… you know, if by “visionary” you mean promoting Intelligent Design, seeking to overthrow the scientific method and “replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions,” …

And then again a year later, in a similarly named post, I once again honed in on the cavemen riding dinosaurs meme, musing:

Yeah, but then again, these are folks who don’t believe in evolution, so forgive me for taking their claimed scientific and technical expertise with a grain of salt.

There are a lotta things you can tar me with Bruce, but being inconsistent ain’t one of ’em.

And as for your main premise:

There are two obvious questions that matter about Susan Hutchison as King County Executive. One is whether her career as a TV news anchor and in arts fundraising qualifies her to be CEO of the largest county government in Washington, which is involved in police, courts, jails, land-use control, public health and elections. The other is how Hutchison would use the power the county executive actually has. Focus on these, and give us all a rest regarding the Discovery Institute.

Well, forgive the over-the-top forced metaphor, but I’d say that arguing that Hutchison’s association with Intelligent Design has no bearing on her fitness for office is kinda like considering Mussolini to head Sound Transit, and insisting the only thing that really matters is whether he has the proven ability to make the trains run on time.

Of course Discovery is a valid issue in this campaign, as are Hutchison’s self-identification as a conservative Republican.  These are issues and labels which help inform us about Hutchison’s values, and whether she shares those of the majority of King County voters.  Given her background, Hutchison should be forced to answer whether she accepts evolution as valid science, and whether she believes Intelligent Design or other “alternative theories” should be taught in the schools.  Surely, Bruce, you’re not arguing that voters would be better served by having less information about their candidates?

As I stated yesterday, the bulk of the invitations for Hutchison to sit on boards came from her role controlling Charles Simonyi’s vast checkbook, but her position at Discovery, and the conservative Christian organization Young Life were different.  These were board positions Hutchison sought out, presumably because their agendas were consistent with her own personal beliefs.  Good for her.  People should act on their principles.

And people’s principles should be issues in political campaigns.

Washington state’s business, media and political establishment are often breathtaking in their lack of boldness, so I guess it should come as no surprise that, faced with a nearly unprecedented economic and budgetary crisis that has finally ripped the mask off our decades-old structural revenue deficit, the few calls for real change are being shouted down with deafening cries of “No we can’t!”

Take for example today’s Seattle Times editorial endorsing a 30% tuition increase over two years to help offset dramatic funding cuts.  Yes, I agree that tuition “should rise significantly to preserve student access, quality and years of progress toward preparing a sophisticated work force,” and without a doubt, these “whopper tuition increases” are somewhat mitigated by the fact that our state schools are an absolute “bargain compared with peer institutions.”  And it’s hard to argue against the notion that, as painful as it might be, given the size of the impending funding cuts, “it would be much worse without the tuition jump.”

But nowhere in the editorial did the Times mention anything about financial aid.  Not once.

And then there’s the news today that a temporary sales tax increase is once again gaining traction, a week after dreadful polling convinced most lawmakers that such a ballot measure would be virtually dead on arrival.  The solution?  No, our special Olympians aren’t rallying around an innovative high-earners income tax (which actually polls well), but instead, are coming back with a smaller, third of a cent sales tax increase proposal in the hope that voters might reluctantly swallow this less painful pill.

You know, conventional wisdom says that an income tax is a nonstarter, whatever fairness or simple math or recent polling says, so why even bother to go there?

The problem is, both these solutions, the tuition and the sales tax hikes, are half-measures that may make the budget easier to balance in the short term, but do absolutely nothing to address our long term problems.  And both solutions place their financial burden solely on the backs of those who can least afford it.  Both solutions, on their own, only make our revenue system less fair and less stable, and in the long run, will only serve to undermine working class Washingtonians’ faith in the ability of our state government to adequately meet their needs.

Increase tuition and fees by $3000 a year, and our schools will still remain a bargain compared to “peer institutions,” but without a commensurate increase in financial aid, many of our state’s low and middle income students will be priced out of an opportunity to attend a four-year university.  And if voters cooperate and agree to temporarily raise the sales tax a mere third of a cent on the dollar, we’ll save some crucial health care services now… only to watch them trickle away over time once the increase sunsets and the steady erosion of our state government’s purchasing power continues unabated.

Now, in this time of crisis, we have the opportunity to ask voters to grit their teeth and join us in embracing real change… and all we seem to get out of our so-called leaders are half measures.

Well, personally, I’m tired of half-measures, and morally conflicted about continuing to join the current Democratic establishment in fighting half the battle, when it has become increasingly apparent that they will never fulfill their promise to join me in fighting the other half.  Long term revenue adequacy can never be achieved without tax fairness, and the refusal (with few notable exceptions) to publicly acknowledge this simple truth, undermines our ability to achieve either.

From the Department of Irony:

Microsoft was told by a federal jury to pay $388 million to a Singapore company for infringing a patented invention used to deter software piracy.

The jury in Providence, R.I., deliberated less than two days before finding Wednesday that Microsoft violated a patent owned by Uniloc Singapore Private and Uniloc USA. Uniloc claimed Microsoft wrongfully used its security technology to earn billions of dollars.

Though my understanding is that Microsoft has taken Uniloc’s president hostage in an effort to negotiate a more favorable settlement.

For the second year in a row the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza has named HA to his list of best state political blogs.  A big thanks to you loyal readers who apparently lobbied on our behalf.

Washington

Horses Ass
Strange Bedfellows (Seattle Post Intelligencer)
Politics Northwest (Seattle Times)
The Petri Dish (Everett Herald)
Political Buzz (Tacoma News Tribune)
Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate

You’ll notice HA is listed in bold, at the top of the list.  According to Cillizza:

In a state where one blog was far and away the most recommended by Fix readers, we have noted it by bolding the name of the blog.

Eat my dust, newspaper blogs!

But considering all the guff I get about the unserious name of my blog (yes, I’m talking to you John Carlson), I’m perhaps most proud of making a second, even more exclusive list:

The best named blogs on the list: Doc’s Political Parlor & Lawn Mower Repair (Ala.), Rum, Romanism, Rebellion (Ariz.), My Left Nutmeg (Conn.), The Old River Road (La.), Writes Like She Talks (Ohio), Not Larry Sabato (Va.) and Horses Ass (Wash.)

A horse’s ass by any other name would smell as… well… you get the point.