Goldy

If I were still working at The Stranger or free to blog full time here on HA, all I would be writing about right now is Governor Jay Inslee’s welcome new tax proposal. After years of stupidly austere all-cuts budgeting, Inslee has finally made the boldly responsible move to propose significant new revenue: $1.4 billion from new capital gains and carbon taxes in the next biennium. (And yes, it is an awful commentary on our political culture that I just strung together the phrase “boldly responsible.”)

Kudos Mr. Governor.

But of course, I’m not still Slogging or blogging full time, so I don’t have the time to go into the details. But what I will say is that as politically risky as a tax increase is traditionally presumed to be, Inslee’s proposal puts state Republicans in a much less enviable position than they might at first imagine.

As I have previously written, Washington State is on the verge of a constitutional crisis. It is simply mathematically impossible to meet the state Supreme Court’s McCleary mandate to fully fund K-12 education, without raising substantial new revenue. Can’t be done. There simply isn’t enough truly discretionary spending left in the general fund (let alone the mythical budget items waste, fraud, and abuse) to “reprioritize” to public schools. Inslee’s tax proposal is a recognition of that cold hard truth.

So when the Republican-controlled Senate rejects Inslee’s tax plan (and they will), what will they propose in its stead? Politically suicidal cuts like double-digit tuition hikes, emptying our state prisons, and eliminating health and human services? Or will they just defy the McCleary mandate, leaving the state in contempt of court?

Obviously, the latter.

To make matters worse for Republicans, how do they plan to pay for the twice deferred transportation funding package? Their own constituents are demanding long-promised road maintenance and expansion projects—projects Inslee’s carbon tax would fund. So if they reject the carbon tax, this leaves Republicans in the uncomfortable position of either opposing freeway expansion or championing an always unpopular gas tax! Pick your poison, GOPers.

No doubt Republicans thought they wanted to run against Inslee in 2016 as a tax-and-spender, but his budget puts them in a bit of quandary: Either they propose an alternative that finally names exactly which popular programs they seek to gut, or they risk branding themselves as obstructionists against funding roads and public schools—two programs that are broadly popular with voters, even their own tightfisted constituents.

Again, they’ll choose the latter, driving our state into a constitutional crisis and our roads and highways into further disrepair. And Inslee won’t just ask voters to reelect him in 2016, he’ll ask voters to give him the Democratic majority necessary to actually get shit done.

Governor Jay Inslee proposed a politically ambitious cap-and-trade-ish plan on greenhouse gas emissions yesterday. No doubt a complex proposal on which there is plenty of room for policy analysis and political debate.  But this is how the Republicans responded:

State Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, who chairs Senate’s energy and environment committee, called Inslee’s cap-and-trade plan “an energy tax, which is really a tax on mobility — which is a tax on freedom.”

So, um, Senator Ericksen, I sincerely hope you take my criticism in the most constructive way possible, but you, sir, are an asshole.

Seriously. Governor Inslee proposes pricing carbon in a way similar to British Columbia, California, and a number of northeastern states—a modest and much studied market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by forcing polluters to pick up just a small portion of the externalized costs—and you respond by accusing him of taxing our freedom? Because he hates our freedom, right? Just like Al Qaeda!

Of all the assholery an asshole could have devised, this has got to be the most assholic.

This is not a tax on freedom. If it is a tax, it is a tax on carbon emissions. Period. And only an asshole would equate carbon with freedom.

Twenty years ago today Geov Parrish got a new lease on life when he became the rare recipient of a double organ transplant—pancreas and kidney. But that lease didn’t come cheap: Two decades of health care costs and crises have taken their toll. That, combined with a low-paid career in journalism and social justice activism, has left Geov virtually broke and homeless. As Geov explains in his pretty damn depressing holiday letter (pdf), it’s been a tough year:

I was getting sicker, and we discovered that I also was, after the stress and couch- surfing of the summer, suffering from dangerously high blood pressure. By the time I got that under control I was also dealing with a dental emergency – I finally got a tooth pulled and immediately started feeling a lot better. Best my guess is that I was suffering from an infection (via the tooth) that was doing a number on my health for two months. Welcome to America, where dental care isn’t considered health care. I’ve still got a lot of dental work pending that I cannot even remotely contemplate affording – $7,200 was the estimate two years ago.

While dealing with the tooth and the elevated blood pressure, it also emerged that my transplanted kidney was in trouble. A biopsy in September showed that about a third of my non-native kidney was permanently damaged, with scarring in progress on another sixth. I also had some sort of liver blockage. A surgery to remove the liver blockage in September cleared the way for a steroid treatment to attack a suspected kidney infection – but at that point my kidney function suddenly got better. It was probably a function of the tooth infection, not an infection of the kidney, but the long-term kidney damage is still real and worrisome. Usually, you’d expect my non-native pancreas to have problems first, but (knock wood) it’s doing great. The kidney prognosis is still unclear, though. I expect that in 2015 there’s a good chance I’ll be added to a transplant list for another kidney, to replace the one that’s done so well for so long.

If it sounds crazy that our health care system would pay to give Geov another kidney transplant, but not pay to provide the dental care that might have prevented the infection that damaged his first transplant, well, God bless America!

Whatever. At least Geov has friends. On Monday I asked HA readers, many of whom have enjoyed Geov’s writing here on this blog, in the Seattle Weekly, and in Eat the State, and your generosity has been heartening. The link has been making the rounds on Facebook, and Geov tells me that he received about $2,500 from about 40 different people over the first 24 hours. A big thanks to everybody who has given.

But I hope we can do more. So please give by clicking on the “Donate” button, or by sending a check:

Geov Parrish PO Box 85541 Seattle WA 98145

Also, Geov and Revel are still looking for an affordable apartment that won’t set off her multiple chemical sensitivity disorder. If you’ve got a place for them to stay for a few weeks, it would be greatly appreciated. If you’ve got a lead on an apartment, let us know.

Geov has given a ton to the community over the past 20 years. Please give a little something back to help him get through this very difficult time.

Oy…

“The tunnel project is 70 percent completed, according to WSDOT, so there’s no turning back at this point,” [Seattle City Council President Tim Burgess] added. “It is city government policy that this project be completed. The governor agrees. The mayor agrees. We must move forward.”

Look, I’m not suggesting that now is necessarily the time to pull the plug on the deep bore tunnel (or more accurately, put a plug in it). I’m not privy to enough information to make that decision one way or the other. But we should at least be open to that possibility, regardless of how much money we’ve already spent on the project.

No doubt Burgess understands this. If the engineers were to estimate that it would cost an additional, say, $20 billion to “move forward” and complete the tunnel, I’m guessing Burgess would be more than willing to turn back at this point. But would he turn back if the cost of completion was another $1 to $2 billion? How about $4 billion? Or how about $10 billion?

The money we’ve already spent on the tunnel is a sunk cost (in more ways than one), and as such should have no impact on our future spending decisions. What matters from here on out, given the known cost overruns and risks, is whether we’re likely to get more for our taxpayer money completing the remaining 30 percent of the project, or whether it makes more sense to to turn back and pursue a different option. Our prior expenditure of both financial and political capital should in no way influence our decision.

HA blogger emeritus Geov Parrish recently sent out one of the most depressing holiday letters ever, describing the many health and financial woes that have struck over the past year, leaving him virtually penniless and homeless. And so I’m asking HA readers to join me in showing Geov a little emotional and financial support.

Wednesday will mark the 20th anniversary of Geov’s double organ transplant—pancreas and kidney—and while his two decades of survival on immunosuppressive drugs makes him a bit of a medical miracle, it has also taken a physical and financial toll. As has his poorly-paid career as a journalist and social justice activist—Geov founded Eat the State, and has written for The Stranger, the Seattle Weekly, Mother Jones, In These Times, and of course, HA, and has worked for little money on numerous political campaigns, including most recently the surprising election of socialist city council member Kshama Sawant. He also gets no income from his eternal stint on KEXP’s “Mind Over Matters.”

Geov has given a ton to the community over the years—not to mention nearly a hundred posts here on HA—and now he needs the community to give a little back.

You can read a pdf of Geov’s letter here—”2014 – It Was Not A Very Good Year“—but the gist of it is that their dual medical conditions (Geov’s fiancée Revel suffers from MS and multiple chemical sensitivity) have left them broke and homeless. They need both financial help over the holidays, and a place to stay for a few weeks in a home that does not trigger Revel’s sensitivities (older construction with bare floors or natural fibers, not painted recently). Also, if you have a lead on an affordable apartment in Seattle that would fit this description, they would be grateful.

But in the meanwhile, they really need some cash. Geov has a PayPal page where he is accepting donations: please join me in giving what you can (click on the Donate button in the right column). You can also send a check to Geov at PO Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145.

The HA community has proven awfully generous to me over the years when I needed your support to keep me writing. I hope you can be equally generous to Geov.

1 Kings 11:1-3
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.

Discuss.

The magic of the market at work:

Just months after it opened, First Place Scholars, the first charter school in Washington state, is in turmoil.

Its first principal resigned in November, more than half of its original board of directors have left, too, and the state’s charter-school commission has identified more than a dozen potential problems that need to be fixed soon if the school wants to keep its doors open.

[…] First Place was the first charter to open in part because it wasn’t starting from scratch. It had long been a private elementary school, founded to serve homeless students, in partnership with Seattle Public Schools.

To be clear, First Place Scholars had been successfully serving homeless students for years as a privately funded not-for-profit. As a charter school it got to replace its private charitable funding with state and local tax dollars, allowing it to more than double its capacity to up to 100 students. But the transition has not gone smoothly.

I sincerely doubt the state’s charter school commission—packed with charter school advocates—would allow First Place to close. They have too much at stake here. But First Place’s journey from successful private school to flailing charter certainly belies the notion that charter schools are somehow magically efficient.

The other day I challenged our state’s editorial boards to take the lead in urging state legislators to raise new revenue. And while I’ve no idea if he actually saw my post, yesterday Seattle Times editorial columnist Jonathan Martin did exactly that:

To level the tax burden, the Legislature should give a hard look at a 5 percent state tax on capital gains, the profit reaped on the sale of an investment such as stocks. The idea needs a full airing, because a capital-gains tax would affect the angel investor network that fuels Seattle’s startup engine. Revenue from capital gains taxes are also volatile, swinging with the market.

But nearly all competing tech-centric states have capital gains taxes. California has a 13.3 percent capital gains tax for millionaires, plus a big income tax, and that has not slowed Silicon Valley.

Washington voters have gone all in on the progressive policy agenda, with marriage equality, legalized marijuana, gun control.

It’s time for a bit more progressivism in tax policy.

Sure, it’s just the opinion of a single editorialist instead of the editorial board board as a whole, but it’s an encouraging start. Here’s hoping Martin can persuade his colleagues and his publisher that Washington’s future economic prosperity requires a fair and sustainable tax structure.

If you think some folks have been too alarmist over the news that the Alaskan Way Viaduct has “settled” a mere 1.2 inches in the vicinity of the Bertha rescue pit, then you’re probably not familiar with the Viaduct’s prior history of settling. Several segments of the aging freeway have long been settling unevenly—specifically, the structure is slowly toppling over onto the waterfront. The more the freeway leans, the more its high center of gravity accelerates the process—and the more vulnerable it becomes to even a modest quake.

Which is why SDOT and WSDOT need to focus now on engineering the Viaduct’s surface street replacement. Really.

The main selling point of a deep bore tunnel was that it would allow the Viaduct to remain open to traffic while its replacement was built, but the long delay, future uncertainty, and recent ground settling leaves that objective in doubt. The Viaduct could be deemed unsafe at any moment. So since we’re going to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with surface streets eventually, it would be prudent to finalize the design, engineering, and logistics as quickly as possible. That way, whatever becomes of Bertha, we would be prepared to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with surface streets with the least disruption we can manage.

Seriously. Whatever the odds, the sudden and permanent closure of the Viaduct is not a far-fetched scenario. And we would be crazy not to prepare for it.

Perhaps they’ll manage to get Bertha moving again, and perhaps the Viaduct will survive the tunnel’s construction. That would be great. But the prudent course of action would be to assume that it won’t, and move forward with its surface replacement with all due speed.

According to Crosscut, it was a year ago today that we first learned that the giant tunneling machine “Bertha” had become stuck in the muck beneath Seattle. One year later, Bertha remains stuck, and construction of a deep bore tunnel replacement to the teetering Alaskan Way Viaduct remains no closer to completion.

On this anniversary of ineptitude it is useful to remember whose brainchild this boondoggle was in the first place: none other than Seattle’s infamously faith-based “think” tank, the Discovery Institute! Yes, that Discovery Institute—the equally proud progenitors of the science-denying theory of so-called Intelligent Design! As I scoffed nearly 7 years ago today:

I once proposed building a gigantic rollercoaster along the West Seattle to downtown portion of the Monorail’s abandoned Green Line, and you didn’t see my joke of a transportation proposal picked up by the MSM, let alone labeled “visionary”. And yet the Seattle Rollercoaster Project is no less technically challenging nor politically, well, utterly fucking ridiculous than Discovery’s deep bore, crosstown tunnel. Engineering and economic feasibility aside, God himself could descend from the heavens with a blueprint in one hand and an infinite supply of cash in the other, only to be greeted by polar bear clad environmentalists and angry Eastside developers complaining that He isn’t doing enough to ease congestion on I-405. In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.

Of course, with hindsight, I was wrong about the political feasibility. A cabal of elected officials ultimately shoved Bertha down our throats. Where it remains lodged to this day.

Deuteronomy 22:23-24
If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

Discuss.

As much as I love to hate the Seattle Times editorial board, the truth is I actually agree with much of what they write. Sure, sometimes they’re just plain awful, like their shameful “death tax” lies. And sometimes they’re just hamfistedly insensitive and stupid, like Wednesday’s editorial that came off as placing more value on Black Friday than on black lives. But much of the time, and on many issues, I more or less agree with their general sentiment, however incoherently stated.

Take for example yesterday’s editorial urging legislators to protect funding for early and higher education:

MORE money will flow into Washington’s kindergarten through high-school programs in the next two years, but state lawmakers must ensure that doesn’t come at a cost to early and higher education.

The state’s education system should foster student success from ages 3 to 23…

Well, of course. Who could disagree with that? It’s great to see such commonsense advocacy coming from the editorial board of our state’s paper of record. And 3-to-23 education isn’t the only worthwhile program on which the editors have advocated spending more money. The problem is they’re missing in action when it comes to advocating for raising the revenue necessary to pay for it. In fact they’re worse than missing in action—they’re goddamn obstructionists!

The editors assert that it will cost the state an additional $10 billion over the next two biennial budgets to fund both McCleary and Initiative 1351. Whether you trust their numbers or not (and you usually can’t) it’s a lot of money. And the editors’ only revenue suggestion? “Raising the sales tax another percentage point would be unpopular, but effective.”

Unpopular, maybe, but effective, not so much. A percentage point increase in the sales tax would raise about $1 billion a year. So even in that unlikely scenario in which we pass a sales tax increase through the Republican-controlled state senate, where’s the other $1.5 billion a year coming from, let alone any additional money to fund early and higher education? On this the editorial board is silent.

What’s so frustrating about this editorial is that they’re almost there! They recognize the need to spend billions more on 3-to-23 education, and they even appear to understand that it will require significant sources of new revenue. But they just can’t bring themselves to take the lead in moving our state closer toward an actual solution. Which is what we need—especially after their years of knee-jerk obstructionism on revenue issues.

Washington is a very affluent state. We can easily afford to invest in education. But more importantly, our future prosperity depends upon it. It is past time to stop arguing about whether to raise taxes, and to start arguing about which taxes we’re going to raise. And if our editorial boards really want to live up to the civic role they claim for themselves, they might want to start leading this debate.

Apparently, all the other real journalists were busy, so I’ll be joining the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson and Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large in a discussion of local and national income inequality trends (and from my perspective, the role of the media in covering them)—”Reclaiming Prosperity: Economic Prosperity Through Equality,” December 11, 7:30PM at Town Hall Seattle. That’s next Thursday, so buy your tickets now!

It looks like the longest flight in aviation history is finally over, now that the NRA’s Brian Judy has been sighted in Olympia. Way back on July 28, hours after I posted embarrassing audio of Judy offensively comparing gun background checks to Nazi Germany, the NRA spokesman and lobbyist brushed off PubliCola’s questions, telling them he was boarding a plane and would get back to them later. Judy hadn’t been heard from since.

Four months later—on the day Initiative 594 goes into effect—Judy’s plane has apparently finally landed back in Olympia, where he’s reportedly lobbying legislators ahead of the coming legislative session.

Speaking to a pro-gun audience in Silverdale, WA on July 23, Judy went after I-594’s biggest funder, Nick Hanauer* for supporting “the same policy that led to his family getting run out of Germany by the Nazis,” provoking outrage from Jewish groups nationwide. “These people…” Judy continued, “it’s like any Jewish people I meet who are anti-gun … you come to this country and you support gun control? Why did you flee to this country in the first place? Hello! Is anybody home here?”

Listen to Judy’s full remarks below, and then email your legislator to ask them whether they can seriously do business with an anti-semitic buffoon like him?

 

* Full disclosure: I now work for Hanauer.