Republican RNC member Jeff Kent of Washington state is running into some resistance to his proposed resolution “re-branding” the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party” or “Socialist Democrat Party” or whatever the hell it is.

It seems even a maroon like Michael Steele can sense (yet another) public relations disaster in the offing for the GOP.

Party Chairman Michael Steele and others say the party should also drop the renaming resolution and focus on more serious problems. To avoid a party dispute over the renaming, Republicans were trying to compromise on milder language that would simply criticize Democrats for what they call socialist tendencies.

Some party leaders described the initial resolution as “stupid” and “absurd.”

Jeff Kent, a Washington state Republican who helped spearhead the effort, declined to comment on a potential compromise, saying he is still working to pass the resolution.

How bad is your idea when leaders in your own party are openly calling it “stupid?”

Stick to your guns, Jeff. The country needs to be protected from horrible “socialists” like me who advocate free, fair democratic elections, respect for the Constitution and human rights. I wouldn’t want to face a Republican Party that puts forth a logical argument about marginal income tax rates or health care, that would be too…logical. Your way is much funner.

Clark County bubble still not coming back.

The 13.4 percent is the highest jobless figure for the county since at least 1980, said Scott Bailey, southwest regional economist for the state Employment Security Department.

Apparently having one’s economy heavily dependent on endless real estate development isn’t a good idea.

But it’s just a blip, things will go back to the way they were any day now.

Me, I’m thinking I need a 5,000 square foot house with granite counter tops, full of furniture paid for with unsecured credit. I mean, a dog or a baby can get a credit card, right?

We live in a state where the governor called a special session to restore Tim Eyman’s 1% cap on property taxes, a cap that mindlessly and relentlessly hamstrings local government, no matter the local circumstances. You see, it’s all about local control, except when it’s not.

But college students, most of whom presumably have yet to embark on careers that will make it possible to afford stuff, well, here’s how the governor treats them:

The measure removes the current 7 percent cap on annual tuition increases for Washington state resident undergraduates. The state budget, scheduled to be signed by Gregoire on Tuesday, puts the new tuition cap at 14 percent for each of the next two years.

No special session for you, kids.

Tough choices yadda yadda yadda. Not only was nothing meaningful done about the plethora of special interest tax breaks in this state, they added a 40% tax break for newspapers, apparently so many of them can continue to advocate for the Grover Norquist position of dragging government to the bathtub and drowning it. The only allowable “moderate” position in this state is that things must be destroyed rather than even discuss an income tax or even a temporary measure for education.

Chris Gregoire made a no-taxes pledge, you see, and while it was a foolhardy thing to do, the bidness guys ‘n gals and the newspaper boards are going to make sure that not one red cent is raised to help restore education funding that plummeted due to the Bush Recession.

In the Orwellian world of conservative business lobbying, handouts to corporations are incentives and a very proper use of public resources, while public education, health care and other services that benefit the wider society can be given short shrift. And since the business point of view prevails no matter which party has a majority, or a super-majority, the regular citizen also gets short shrift and comes to have a jaded, cynical view about government not operating in their interest. Hard to imagine why initiative-touting charlatans have done so well here.

We haven’t even seen the full impact on K-12 yet. Should be interesting once parents find out in the fall what’s really happening. You haven’t seen angry until you’ve seen a parent who is expecting certain programs and teachers to be in place, basically because education is virtually the only direct service most of us get from the state government in return for our tax money, and now tuition is soaring out of sight and teachers are going to be laid off.

On the other hand, there’s absolutely no political risk in alienating parents of students. Just ask Terry Bergeson.

The editors at the bankrupt Columbian wrote a staff editorial about performance audits. Which, you know, is fine and all but notice the conventional mindset and needless carping. Why, it’s downright shrill.

Back on Nov. 4, most voters did not send the governor back to Olympia just to be a good Democrat. They returned her to office to be a good governor, party notwithstanding. That kind of independence can be suicidal among legislators, whose intense caucus meetings are led by seniority, where favors are traded like a commodity and entire careers are determined by loyalty litmus tests.

Not so with the governor. Gregoire wandered off the extremists’ playground back in December when she proclaimed a no-tax-increases stance, and then produced a budget to back it up. Blatant heresy, in the minds of many Democrats, we’re sure.

If you thought that in the face of the national economic calamity we should at least pass a few taxes for education, you’re an “extremist.” The default “moderate” position, as always, is basically the Grover Norquist position–taxes are always bad, no matter the circumstances and no matter the need or possible benefit to society.

It’s not like there was a wide-spread debate in this state about whether taxes should be on the table. Sure, there were a few brave op-eds and such, but meaningful discussion about the broken nature of the tax system in this state occurred mainly in places other than newspapers. Funny how that was.

That certain newspapers get their taxes cut 40% and bitch and moan about “left wingers” tells you all you need to know. It’s all about tribalism, and the newspaper boards fancy themselves part of the respectable bidness guys and gals tribe, even if they have to compose their screeds in between appearances in bankruptcy court. Please patronize us some more, that’s a great technique for generating customer loyalty.

It took about two seconds this morning for me to determine that I didn’t want to watch whatever Sunday morning politics show that had John Boehner spewing forth about Nancy Pelosi, demanding an investigation or whatever he was saying. Maybe it was Gingrich who wants an investigation, seeing as the media can’t stop quoting a thoroughly discredited and wildly unpopular former House leader.

The Villagers smell a little bit of theater that allows them to get all worked up raising “serious questions” about Pelosi, which is kind of like raising “serious questions” about the locksmith five years after someone kicked the door down. The whole staged attack on Pelosi is asinine beyond belief.

Because the GOP likely ordered deliberate torture, the logical thing to do is investigate Democrats. You know what, I’d be fine with that, as long as everything and everyone gets investigated. Kind of a new Church Committee.

It should be live on the major networks so Americans can get re-acquainted with basic concepts of law and human rights. Then we can all argue over what to do, like prosecute people, institute reforms, etc. And of course there would need to be evidence presented, unlike the Sunday shows.

I wonder what Dick Cheney thinks of all this?

Fascinating and somewhat long article from New York Times economics reporter Edmund L. Andrews about how he and his wife managed to run up tons of mortgage and credit card debt.

While one has to applaud Andrews’ courage in writing the article, certain bits have an almost surreal quality.

Between humongous loan balances and high rates, we had hung ourselves with the rope they gave us. In the previous December alone, we charged $2,845 on the Chase card for Christmas gifts, food, gasoline, clothing and other expenses. The charges included almost $350 for groceries, $700 in clothes from J. Crew, $179 at GapKids and $700 for airplane tickets for two of Patty’s children to visit their father in Los Angeles. Our balance climbed from $14,118 to $17,135, and in January 2006 we maxed out at our $19,000 credit limit. And there were other expenses on other cards: $1,200 in dental work for Patty’s son Ben; $1,600 to rent a beach house the previous year for us and all the children. Granted, the beach house was an embarrassing mistake. But given that Patty had landed a solid job, it seemed like an indulgence we could work off later.

Obviously this man has been coming to terms with stuff, so good for him.

Everyone knows stuff costs money, and lots of circumstances can cause difficulties. Andrews was divorced and paying alimony and child support, but people have difficulties due to illness and all sorts of other life events as well.

But good lord, if you spent $700 at J. Crew while drowning in debt, you had a problem. My kin ate squirrels, catfish and possum during the Great Depression, and while I’ve managed to avoid that particular experience, the wisdom my ancestors passed on about not wasting things and living within one’s means does come to mind. Somehow my kids have been clothed just fine at Fred Meyer and Target.

The key point to take away from the article is that the banksters became societal faith healers, temporarily solving problems with suspect mortgages and HELOCS. Whether it was lust for a woman or lust for material goods, the banksters could rub that out for you.

Tons of people needed to make their self-worth about material things that they couldn’t afford. It’s sad, but it’s true.

Don’t get me wrong, our family has stuff, we like our stuff, and many times I try to impress upon our kids how lucky we are to have stuff. But in the end it’s just stuff. Well, it’s stuff we paid for either with cash or with a credit card that is paid off monthly, excluding the mortgage and one car loan at a time.

If you’re buying tens of thousands of dollars of other stuff on credit, you have a problem. And the banksters will gladly give you a lap dance in hopes of making you feel better about yourself.

The speculative orgy wasn’t, in the end, about capitalism, economics or any other “rational” endeavor, it was about selling the supposed good life to anyone who would fall for it. Never mind that the granite counter tops are too expensive, or that the BMW adds too much to the monthly budget. The banksters were gyrating, the music was loud and tomorrow was for the suckers who play by the rules.

For some reason, many otherwise rational people needed to scratch an itch, and the time period coincided with the reign of George W. Bush. The excessive materialism and condescension towards us were part of the same social malignancy that yielded the invasion of Iraq, the Schiavo madness and the indifference to massive suffering after Hurricane Katrina.

A society doesn’t go mad in one little corner, it goes mad everywhere. The mindset that excuses torture can easily excuse a few little financial excesses, can’t it?

Interestingly, those who were conservative in their personal lives and finances probably didn’t get hit so bad. Funny how that works out.

(Props to Atrios for noticing the article.)

Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both Washington state Democrats, make Firedoglake’s list of “Democrats for Loan Sharking” for voting against credit card rate caps.

In the old days charging absurdly high interest rates was called “usury” and it was a crime. Not so much any more. Wouldn’t want to spook the stock market or the bankster lobbyists. The vultures no longer need thugs and guns, they wear Armani suits and stalk elected officials.

Meanwhile, if you find yourself unable to pay off a credit card charging 21% or more interest, well, that’s just too damn bad for you. What are you going to do about it, ordinary American? Vote for someone else? Who would that be? The game is rigged, at least on the economic front.

Our chief product in this country is debt.

Not sure how I missed this, it’s probably because the ridiculous nature of Republican antics has reached such heights (or depths) that “self-parody” doesn’t even do it justice.

It seems the Republican National Committee is on the verge of passing a resolution “rebranding” the Democratic Party as (ahem) the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

And yippee, there’s a Washington State connection, in the form of Republican National committee member Jeff Kent. From The Democratic Strategist:

Here’s how the sponsor of the resolution, Jeff Kent from Washington State, explained its rationale a few weeks ago:

There is nothing more important for our party than bringing the truth to bear on the Democrats’ march to socialism. Just like Ronald Reagan identifying the U.S.S.R. as the evil empire was the beginning of the end to Soviet domination, we believe the American people will reject socialism when they hear the truth about how the Democrats are bankrupting our country and destroying our freedom and liberties.

I don’t know what’s more offensive: the idea of identifying the Democratic Party, which the American people elected to run Congress and the executive branch just six months ago, with the Soviet Union, or the idea that Ronald Reagan brought about the collapse of the Soviet bloc through a magic spell. All in all, the highly adolescent nature of Kent’s thinking is illustrated not only by this comic-book historical revisionism, but by his insistence on retaining in his version of the “Evil Empire” the little-boy-taunt of dropping the last syllable from the adjective “Democratic.”

What’s awesome, as Atrios points out, is that it’s not even worth getting mad about, and it would be even funnier if the media bites, because the more the GOP implodes like this, the more political space there may be someday for actual progressive reforms to take hold.

Every time you think “surely the Republicans will come to their senses at least a little bit,” it seems they just gin up a whole new level of crazy.

Thanks, Jeff, or should I say “Mr. Poobah?”

My guess is Jim Vesely retired as editorial page editor at The Seattle Times because he couldn’t take the socialism.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has approved a tax break for the state’s troubled newspaper industry.

The new law gives newspaper printers and publishers a 40 percent cut in the state’s main business tax. The discounted rate mirrors breaks given in years past to the Boeing Co. and the timber industry.

I’m sure there was nothing else that could have been done with the money.

It’s going to be entertaining as hell now to watch newspaper editorial boards in this state pump out their usual anti-union, anti-consumer pap now that they’re big-time freeloaders. The cognitive dissonance may put brains in jeopardy all over the state.

Also, kids, your tuition is going up 28%, but it’s okay, you can still get a job throwing dead trees. Our spot as a regressive-taxation, low-services state is very secure. You didn’t need a first rate education for that anyhow.

My crystal ball is digging out the sleeping bags in hopes of some Spring recreation, assuming any parks are still open, but in the past voters have sometimes become quite annoyed when the rich and powerful get special treatment from politicians. Voters tend to overlook it when the economy is humming along, not so much when they’re getting screwed by everyone from their employers to the credit card companies to the state government.

Oh well, we all knew one party rule can’t last forever. It’s a shame we couldn’t accomplish much on the economic front. But that’s what happens when power for its own sake becomes the overriding consideration, the power brokers win. Go figure.

But at least nobody “overreached,” because to do that you have to reach in the first place.

Now scoot your desk over and make room.

Paul Allen is selling off a couple of radio stations in Portland. From The Oregonian:

Paul Allen is selling his two Portland radio stations to a group led by former radio mogul Larry Wilson, who aims to make a fresh start in the business he left eight years ago.

The stations are talk-radio’s KXL (AM 750) and all-sports KXTG (“The Game,” 95.5 FM). They are among Oregon’s best-known broadcasters by virtue of their association with outspoken radio personalities and popular sports teams, including the Portland Trail Blazers. Wilson said Monday that he plans to maintain the format of each, and in conjunction with the sale signed an agreement to carry Blazers games for eight more years.

So just for the record, according to KXL’s web site, their “outspoken radio personalities” include Lars Larson, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. There’s an ad for a t-shirt on Savage’s site that says “I’d rather be water-boarding.” Cute.

Larson is headlining an event called “Talkfest 5: Censorship,” which is billed as a discussion of “government censorship on the radio airwaves.” According to the KXL site, it’s sponsored by George Morlan Plumbing, IRA Advantage, Office Furniture Direct, Coors Light, Pilsner Urquell, Broadway Cigars, & Americans For Prosperity. That last one is yet another front group in the stink-tank pantheon, big surprise. I suppose they’ll get together and scream about how the Obama administration is going to shut them down, when declining ad revenues and a changing zeitgeist are their real enemy.

So hey, Paul Allen can buy and sell most things on the planet, that’s nothing new, and it’s not clear what his motivation is for selling the stations. Maybe he had a fit of conscience, or maybe it’s just routine business, as Allen’s spokesman David Postman implies in the Oregonian article.

What is clear is that Allen has had ownership of a station that disseminates the worst kind of paranoid right wing balderdash, which is his Constitutional right. But it sure doesn’t make me inclined to buy Blazers tickets, that’s for sure. The always fascinating and aggravating part of hate radio was that eventually some guy in a suit would say something like “It’s just a business,” as if the only possible niche market is conservative wingnuttery, and as if “business concerns” trump all moral and ethical responsibility for the product one puts out.

So thanks, Paul Allen, for all the years of Lars Larson and his brain-damaging stunts about Christmas trees and the “War on Christmas,” and especially thanks for mega-nuts Glenn Beck and Michael Savage. Rich folks don’t have to endure living in the regular world where actual morons believe the things they are told on stations like KXL, but the rest of us do. Instead of making the world a tiny bit better, you’ve made it just a little meaner and uglier.

Nice legacy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKCPUD0NXVA[/youtube]

Notice how many media jackals in the audience can’t really process it, although some can.

Limbaugh and Hannity are sick and deserve whatever ridicule they get, although it’s certain that after three decades of relentless and hateful attacks on us by conservatives, some of them will whine and bitch about this being out of bounds. Whatever. What goes around comes around.

Conservatives wanted divisive, bare-knuckle politics on all fronts, they got it and lost, the perverted freaks. Nice permanent majority they got there, BTW.

Elections have consequences, some unanticipated. It’s absolutely delightful to have someone throw everything back in their faces on such a big stage.

Drug addict snit fit in three….two….one…..Whaaaaaaaaah I need my binky and some oxycodone, I’m Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party.

Although it’s odd when it’s media personalities who make their livings saying stuff.

Today, Media Matters for America demanded an apology for columnist and CBS golf analyst David Feherty’s assertion that “if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”

The other odd thing is we all know what would have happened if a liberal blogger had expressed a similar thing about Republican leadership in say, 2004. You would have got to know your local FBI agents quite well.

Conservatives are always complaining about hypocrisy and double standards, because they’re always projecting their flaws onto others. They just don’t seem to get that our first response is not “shoot them” but rather “beat the crap out of them at election time.” It’s called democracy.

If the best you can come up with is a fantasy about someone putting bullets into people, maybe you have no business commenting about politics at all.

And yes, Feherty is protected by the First Amendment if he is not directly expressing the desire that violence occur, but is expressing his opinion (however generalized, inaccurate and absurd) about the feelings of US military personnel. But it’s a reckless, asinine thing to say.

The First Amendment also protects the rights of large corporations to use good judgment in whom they place on the air! Call the PR flacks!

From Political Buzz:

The Society of Professional Journalists national ethics committee is calling foul on the Washington News Council for conducting an online poll on a complaint against KIRO TV.

The Washington Secretary of State had complained to the News Council, a self-appointed watchdog group, about KIRO’s pieces on voter registration irregularities. KIRO declined to participate in a hearing. So the News Council posted an online poll, which turned out lopsided against KIRO.

“A hearing can be worthwhile if all parties voluntarily participate and work toward a common understanding,” the SPJ said in a news release. “The committee strongly objects to having a public online vote, or virtual hearing, on journalism ethics.

Now, the KIRO stories were suspect and full of factual errors, basically part of the noise machine crap about ghost voters and such. You can read all about it at the Washington News Council web site. KIRO did eventually pull the stories down, so that was good.

Still, I’m amazed that the Washington News Council, this self-appointed collection of rich people and formerly powerful traditional journalists, could make such an error in judgment by conducting an on-line kangaroo court.

Many readers likely recall that the P-I refused to appear before WNC in 2006 concerning an expose of the King County sheriff’s office, citing, among other reasons, the fact that WNC director John Hamer was married to a district director for Rep. Dave Reichert. (By way of clarification, Reichert used to be sheriff, and I have no idea what Hamer and his wife currently do, nor is that the point.) The P-I stood by its reporting in the face of the attempts by WNC to intimidate them.

The point is that the Washington News Council has little credibility, and deservedly so. But I’m not all that worked up about it, frankly, because this blog isn’t a “real” journalism outfit, and thus doesn’t fall under WNC’s self-defined jurisdiction, as far as I can tell.

And that’s just fine with me, because every time I hear the word “ethics” and “journalism” I flash on Commander Codpiece, and that’s something I really don’t like popping into my brain.

Yeah, let’s talk some more about ethics, guys. Here’s a topic: let’s say a reporter falsely accuses a candidate of lying about her education, writes a story full of half-truths and distortions spoon fed to reporters by the other side, and the candidate then loses by a cat’s whisker.

What should happen? Or more to the point, what did happen? As we all know, the answer is: nothing at all. Ethics, yeah, Uh-uh.

Republicans are very, very sorry they lost two elections in a row, and if the American people will just please give them another chance, the same people will do the same things.

But it will be called something else, although I’m relatively certain Harry S. Truman would have called it “bullshit.”

Aneurin catches a Forbes article about Spokane. It’s um, not flattering, unless being called “the scam capital of America” is a compliment.