Turns out firing all your experienced sales people doesn’t work out so well in the end as a business model. At least it didn’t for Circuit City.

Americans put up with a remarkable amount of shitty service, but even we have limits. The free market works well when it comes to discretionary items in sectors with numerous competitors. You don’t like a store, you don’t go back.

Not as simple, of course, when it comes to things like Enron. Hard to shop around for electricity during brownouts caused by criminals. This key difference is often overlooked by conservatives touting free market solutions to every last damn thing. Consumer choice in cheap and mid-priced electronics? Great! Handing Social Security funds over to Wall Street? Not great.

So if “everything is on the table” at all levels because everything is completely SNAFU, budget-wise, are we still going to stupidly spend tons of money arresting and locking up pot smokers?

In related, Atrios points out ending prohibition is the current number two issue at change.gov.

UPDATE [Lee]: Jon, the answer is no for the state legislators who introduced this bill today.

Okay, not to rain on the tunnel parade but Seattle isn’t the only metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest with a pressing mega-project in waiting.

Combine river, wind, eco-friendliness and smooth sailing across the Columbia River and what do you have? A new Interstate 5 bridge with wind turbines generating electricity.

You read that right: The latest bridge design features vertically spinning turbines that would generate an unknown amount of juice while proclaiming loudly that the Portland-Vancouver area is the sustainability center of the world.

Personally, since I don’t live in Seattle, I’ve refrained from commenting much on the whole tunnel versus surface thing. You folks who live there should get the major say.

But since you can’t put wind turbines in your tunnel, you lose the coolness war. Sorry.

Now fork over some more money for down here too. Whaaaa? Money is tight to non-existent?

Oh. Could we have a rowboat or something?

This is bad any way you slice it:

Retail sales plunged far more than expected in December, a record sixth straight monthly decline as consumers were battered by a recession, a severe credit crisis and soaring job losses, none of which are likely to ease anytime soon.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that retail sales dropped 2.7 percent last month, more than double the 1.2 percent decline that Wall Street expected.

And it’s especially bad for a border county.

Retail sales in Clark County experienced a sharp decline in last year’s third quarter as the effect of the housing slowdown continued to seep into the local economy.

According to a report Tuesday from the Washington Department of Revenue, the county’s store-only sales totalled $499.9 million in the three months ending in September. That was down 7.9 percent from $542.6 million spent at retail stores in the third quarter in 2007, and weaker than statewide trend.

Store-only taxable retail sales throughout Washington declined by 6.2 percent to $12.4 billion.

State lawmakers and local governments are chasing a constantly moving revenue target, and the target is going down, down, down.

That’s what happens when your system of taxation relies far too heavily on a regressive sales tax. By the time new revenue estimates are available, they’re most likely already outdated.

People are understandably worried about their own personal pocketbooks. I’m not so sure the wider public truly understands the huge impact on things we all take for granted, like schools, roads, police, parks and other basic services.

Our system of taxation never made much sense, and now it is just going to make things worse. And down here where a short drive over the river takes one to sales tax free Oregon, the trend is likely to accelerate.

Deep thought: usually recessions are relatively short and the state’s coffers are replenished. Is anyone talking much about what will happen in an extended downturn of say, two to four years?

The Seattle Federal Home Loan Bank has problems.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle joined its San Francisco counterpart in suspending dividends and “excess” stock repurchases, after devalued mortgage bonds dropped its capital below a regulatory requirement.

The likely shortfall on Dec. 31 was caused by “unrealized market value losses” on home-loan securities without government backing, the Seattle bank cooperative said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Calculated Risk says uh-oh and quotes Congressional testimony (PDF) by Nouriel Roubini from February of last year:

[T]he widespread use of the FHLB system to provide liquidity – but more clearly bail out insolvent mortgage lenders – has been outright reckless. … A system that usually provides a lending stock of about $150 billion has forked out loans amounting to over $750 billion in the last year with very little oversight of such staggering lending. The risk that this stealth bailout of many insolvent mortgage lenders will end up costing massive amounts of public money is now rising.

So as state and local governments struggle with the crashing economy, and individuals struggle with uncertainty, unemployment, the loss of homes and debt, we still don’t really know the extent of the damage by this insane financial disaster.

It’s like the car has gone off a cliff and we’re somehow going to suspend it in mid-air by giving people $500. Folks may like the money, and the very serious people who have been wrong about everything for eight years will insist the car can be suspended, but most folks won’t have much time to enjoy the dough. The ground is coming up at them too fast.

To answer eburger’s perhaps rhetorical question, yes Republicans in the Legislature tend to be wildly inconsistent. Their constituents want and need things that cost money (roads, schools, cops, etc.) but the GOP is so wedded to outdated anti-tax rhetoric that hypocrisy is the only possible outcome. Those proud, independent real Americans on the east side of the mountains need highways after all! Frankly I kind of wonder why the Republican Party still exists, other than tradition. It serves very little purpose.

When I consider things calmly and rationally every year or two, I realize that a sincere and dedicated opposition party would be very beneficial in running something as big and bureaucratic as a state government. There are always things to improve and it would be naive to think there is not corruption in places, if not illegality then certainly shady practices, back-scratching and nods and winks. You know, like the Bush administration, if we’re looking for textbook examples. But these things are endemic to bureaucracies the world over, public and private, and nobody has a monopoly.

But the GOP never seems to start from a place other than loud, angry, destroy-the-government rhetoric. I guess that’s their purpose, to just be angry. Fun for us as it’s great sport to return the favor. Elections have consequences, you know.

In only eight days, if I wake up, turn on the radio and hear the president is having a press conference, I won’t have to turn the radio off.

Been a long eight years. Is there anyone left who cares one whit what George W. Bush has to say about anything?

Flooding shuts down I-5 in Lewis County. The communist choo-choo is no good either.

Can’t we all just get along?

Why do people insist on living in New Orleans Lewis County anyhow? They should just move, abandon their property and history and scatter their families to the wind, that’s what they should do, ’cause I heard it on the talk radio station.

I don’t wanna pay to help my fellow citizens, because I’m a heartless bastard. Now back to the regularly scheduled talk about cutting the pay of the people who teach your children, because they are freeloaders.

Barry Ritholtz at Big Picture, noting that porn impresarios Larry Flynt and Joe Francis intend to ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout for their sagging industry:

According to TMZ website, Adult DVDs (and by Adult, we mean XXX) sales are, well flaccid. DVD sales are off 22%.

Leave it to the porn guys to make a point all Americans can stand behind.

I demand bi-partisan hearings chaired by John Cornyn.

Too bad regular folks don’t have any lobbyists.

Programs approved by the Legislature but not yet implemented, including a paid family leave benefit and a working-class tax credit, should be among the first to go, Zarelli said. Cutting programs now would reduce the amount lawmakers will have to slash from the 2009-11 budget, he said.

Yeah, that blasted little tax credit that hasn’t even been funded sure is causing problems. The working poor don’t deserve tax cuts or government bailouts, only corporations and executives do. This leaves aside the pressing question of who the heck is actually going to buy stuff from these corporations, but as long as Republicans get to punish someone I guess it’s okay.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Republicanism is at such low ebb. Even in the midst of the worst economic meltdown in 70 years, they still want to punish those they see as undeserving. Sad, really.

MORE–If you want to see what I mean, peruse these sections of RCW 82.08 concerning sales tax exemptions. I’m sure all of them are well intentioned. But I don’t think the public understands how many of these there are, or how they got there. And yes, many of them were likely sponsored and passed by Democrats. I don’t care who passed them. If there’s a budget problem, all of this needs to be on the table, with apologies to bee-keepers, purchasers of milk cows for use on the farm and makers of anodes and cathodes used for making aluminum for sale, etc. Stop bagging on the regular people for once.

TVW has a new political blog written by Niki Sullivan, who used to write for the News-Tribune. I always found her writing to be witty and informative, so I’m looking forward to this new effort. (Props to Bellingham Herald reporter/blogger Sam Taylor.)