Goldy

Speaking of change, the internets are abuzz with reports that competitors like RIM and Microsoft thought Apple was literally lying when it unveiled the iPhone back in January of 2007, believing that it was impossible to build a device like that with a usable battery life.

The iPhone “couldn’t do what [Apple was] demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life,” Shacknews poster Kentor heard from his former colleagues of the time. “Imagine their surprise [at RIM] when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it.”

Friends who were Microsoft employees at the time were also said to have had a similar reaction.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a lack of ability or resources that held RIM, Microsoft and the others back, giving Apple its opportunity to seize the smartphone market. It was a lack of imagination.

Something our governor and legislators should keep in mind as they head into this very bleak legislative session.

The sentiments expressed in the Seattle Times’ pointless editorial about the new penny design and the old one it replaces, pretty much sums up my sentiment toward our new, electronic media transcending the old, print-based stuff:

In the meantime, listen for the complaints, and then know how beloved the interloping new coin will be to future generations. Change happens.

Yup. Change happens. Time to stop subsidizing the old dying dailies with with special interest tax breaks, and move on.

Leviticus 15:19-20
When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean.

Discuss.

To be clear, the Republicans in Congress were willing to shut down the government unless we extended tax cuts to billionaires, even at the cost of $900 billion in additional national debt, but the home mortgage interest deduction…? Well, that they’re not sure our nation can afford.

Merry Republican Christmas.

Do I even need to explain this one? This chart represents our state’s “welfare” rolls. ‘Nuff said.

I’m not necessarily opposed to some kind of pension reform this legislative session; truth is, I haven’t really studied the issue closely enough to have formed an educated opinion one way or the other. But I do have an opinion on the rhetoric used by the Seattle Times editorial board to close their argument in favor of reform, an opinion I can pretty much sum up in two words: fuck you.

State employee benefits come out of the pockets of the average citizen. That person does not have a plan with annual pension increases and has no chance of ever having such a thing. The average citizen will support Gregoire’s proposal.

The Times, who constantly calls for bipartisanship, and who rails against class warfare (in the form of raising taxes on the wealthy) once again promotes its economic race toward the bottom by attempting to turn working people against each other, rather than against the corporate and political elites who have had their boots on the throats of the middle class for most of the past few decades. It is the same argument the editors use in favor of slashing the wages and benefits of public employees—you don’t get it, so why should they?—a mean-spirited appeal to society’s lesser angels, and the antithesis of the guiding principles of the labor movement that led to astonishing gains in workplace conditions, personal income and standard of living for nearly all Americans throughout the first three quarters of the twentieth century.

To be clear, what the Times calls “pay increases for beneficiaries” is nothing more than cost of living increases of the kind enjoyed by Social Security recipients. And no doubt when the Times eventually argues for eliminating that too, they will make a similar argument to the younger workers paying into the system to support the current retirees: “You won’t collect this benefit,” the editors will argue, “so why should they?”

Until eventually, nobody has much of anything, but for the lucky few who remain at the top.

I wasn’t going to post this particular graph as it should be pretty damn obvious from the previous post that full-time equivalent (FTE) state employees couldn’t possibly be growing out of whack, what with state government steadily shrinking as a percentage of the economy, and employee compensation representing the largest chunk of government outlays. But the question was raised in the previous thread, along with the word “bloated,” so, well, here it is.

Again, I know the Republicans and their surrogates in the media keep pounding home the point that state and local government spending is out of control, but that doesn’t make it true.

Yesterday I posted a couple graphs showing how Washington state has chosen to devote an increasingly larger portion of our economy toward imprisoning our citizens, at the same time we’re devoting an ever smaller portion toward educating them. I leave it to you to judge the wisdom of such spending priorities.

Today’s graph is also about priorities, in that it shows that when push comes to shove over the past fifteen years, our lawmakers have consistently chosen to keep taxes low. Indeed, between 1994 and 2001 WA’s rank in state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income dropped from 11th nationwide to 32nd. And WA has remained below the national average since 2000; it stood at 30th in 2008.

It is true that revenues briefly rebounded between 2003 and 2007, but this was not due to legislative action. Rather, easy consumer credit and a booming housing market spurred consumer spending, resulting in a surge in taxes relative to personal income in this heavily sales tax dependent state. But even this bump in revenue—and subsequent bump in spending, largely to fund the class size and teachers pay initiatives—left both spending and revenue near the bottom end of the fifteen year average.

Republicans and their surrogates on the editorial boards insist that our current budget crisis is the result of profligate government spending, but this simply isn’t true. With consumer spending having collapsed in advance of incomes, and recovering at a much slower pace, combined state and local government in the next biennium will consume a smaller portion of our state economy than at any time in the past three decades, and a substantially smaller portion than it did just fifteen years ago.

So as the Governor and the Legislature prepare to make all those tough budget choices—largely consisting of slashing spending on education and health care—remember… this is their choice. There are two sides to a budget, revenue and spending, and how we balance the two depends on our priorities.

Washington has chosen to become and remain a low tax state, come hell or high water, and with all the negative impact this lack of public investment will bring on future economic growth… not to mention the inevitable immediate suffering of the poor, the sick and the young.

So, what do Lee and the Rev. Pat Robertson have in common? They both oppose the criminalization of marijuana:

“I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

I don’t know if Robertson’s support helps or hurts the cause with rational people, but rational people aren’t generally writing these laws, so I’d call this development a net plus.

One of the most moving moments of last summer’s Netroot’s Nation, was when our very own Joan McCarter gave Lt. Dan Choi’s West Point ring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, insisting that he not give it back until Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed. Today, Sen. Reid gave Lt. Choi his ring back.

I dunno… sure does sound like a definitive statement of fact to me:

The Legislature cannot raise taxes.

But of course, that’s not true. The Legislature can raise taxes. It would require a remarkable display of bipartisan support—exactly the kinda bipartisanship the Seattle Times editorial board so often breathlessly pines for—but it can be done, even under the unconstitutional two-thirds strictures of I-1053.

For example, let’s say there was some kind of devastating natural disaster, a tsunami or an earthquake that required hundreds of millions of dollars in immediate emergency spending for relief and reconstruction… could (and should) the Legislature raise taxes to meet these needs, despite statewide voters “emphatic votes on three separate ballot measures” this past November?

I’d like to think so. So isn’t this really just a question of priorities? And isn’t that what politics is always about: priorities?

So no, neither the Legislature, nor the governor, nor the voters, nor the Times gets off that easily. We can raise taxes, if we want to. And if we don’t raise taxes to help offset the proposed devastating cuts to education and social services, then the human suffering and long term costs these cuts create is on our heads.

I know I’m a couple of days late on this, but anyone else notice that there were absolutely zero column inches in the Sunday Seattle Times on the failure of the DREAM Act in the US Senate? I mean zilch, bubkes, nada. Not a word.

I’d provide a link, but there’s nothing to link to.

A couple folks have asked me recently if I’ve heard anything about Rep. Dave Reichert stepping down. A couple other folks have asked me if I’ve heard anything about Reichert challenging Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2012. Unless Reichert’s head injury is giving him more trouble than he admits, the latter seems more likely, but it has me thinking that perhaps the two rumors might be conflated.

What does seem clear is that WA-08 will very likely become a bit bluer in 2012, losing a chunk of its Republican-leaning southern part of the district, as WA-10 inevitably squeezes its northern neighbors from the south. So it might not be a bad time for Reichert to make an honorable exit.

The U.S. Census Bureau released its latest numbers this morning, confirming that Washington state is in line to gain a tenth congressional district, starting in 2012.

That’ll be fun. Not only will this create a brand new open seat, likely in a swingy district carved out of Southwest Washington, it will also squeeze the boundaries of the other seven western districts, possibly shifting the red-blue balance here and there.

Unlike most other states, Washington’s got a relatively reasonable redistricting process, led by a bipartisan commission and a fairly strict set of guidelines, so we won’t get the sort of blatantly partisan gerrymandering we’ll surely see elsewhere. That said, it was heartening to see the Senate Dems recently select former Mayor Nickels henchman Tim Ceis as their representative on the commission. Whatever you think about Ceis, he’s about as Machiavellian as they come around these parts, so it’s good to see him part of the mix.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Washington’s population grew 14.1 percent over the past decade, to 6,724,540… well off the blistering 21 percent growth rate between 1990 and 2000.