There are trillions from the Feds for corporate oligarchs, but what about the kiddies right here in Washington state?

Gov. Christine Gregoire’s office is considering vast cuts in state spending that Democratic leaders once would have considered unthinkable, including more than $1 billion in funding for public schools.

—snip—

“If we were to cut every single dime that we give to higher education — all the money to the community colleges, all the money to the universities, everything we spend on financial aid — we still have a $2 billion problem,” said state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, vice-chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

“The kinds of things we’ll talk about cutting are going to shock a lot of people,” he said.

Um, yes, we will be shocked.

Just to be flippant and hysterical, we didn’t freaking vote for a Democratic President, a Democratic Congress, a Democratic Legislature and a Democratic governor to watch the K-12 and higher education system get demolished. Good lord. To be clear, I realize Pridemore is simply trying to offer perspective here, but Crikey!

It is true that things are quite serious, and that multiple constituent groups will be trying to avoid the meat axe. That’s politics, and it’s not clear at this point what relief will be coming from the federal government. So it looks to be a wild and woolly session.

Everything else being equal, a quality education system is the foundation of a healthy economy and a civilized society. Conservatives often don’t want to understand this and start prattling on about “waste,” of which there is undoubtedly some, but in the end quality teachers on the front line is the key ingredient that makes for success. And quality teachers have to be paid a salary that is higher than “you’re kidding, right?”

Interestingly, tax increases are in fact contraindicated by the economic situation, not to mention a campaign pledge made by Governor Chris Gregoire, so the broad possibilities seem to be federal assistance or a dramatic dismantling of the K-12 and higher education systems.

Not sure what exactly the latter would mean; most likely much larger classes, severe cutbacks in things like extra-curricular and transportation, and far fewer FTE’s for colleges and universities. Not a way to grow the economy. Plus when you start messing with people’s kids they can get a wee bit crabby.

For instance, if the Legislature axes a bunch of K-12 funding, I think we all know what they can do with their WASL test.

You won’t have Elizabeth Hovde to kick around any more.

Unbelievable:

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

Was just telling someone yesterday that not only do I not want to be at a retail outlet at 5 AM, I don’t want to be anywhere near a retail outlet any time today with the people who were at retail outlets at 5 AM.

This whole Black Friday thing was always asinine beyond belief. Now it’s turned deadly. Yes, people die in many horrible and needless ways, but this takes the cake. The culture of unbridled consumption, greed and criminality has become a cancer threatening to destroy all of us, as the economic collapse attests.

Like people can’t buy cheap plastic shit at normal hours under normal conditions. Lord have mercy.

Catching up on that election thing, it looks like Republicans will have a two to one majority on the Board of Clark County Commissioners. 207 votes pending an automatic machine recount. Ouch.

Bad football or a parade broadcast that features Broadway musical numbers instead of giant balloons? Maybe putting up the War on Christmas lights would be better use of time…

India suffers horrible terrorist attack.

Indian security forces have been exchanging fire with gunmen holding dozens of hostages in two luxury hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).

Troops surrounded the premises shortly after armed men carried out a series of co-ordinated attacks across the city, killing 101 people and injuring 287.

The hotels were among at least seven sites in the main tourist and business district targeted late on Wednesday.

Not totally clear who is behind the attack, but Islamic extremists seem to top everyone’s list. The coordination of the attacks with multiple targets would seem to suggest a high degree of organization and financing. Whatever the case, it certainly qualifies as a “Madrid” or “London” or in some ways even a “New York City,” given Mumbai’s importance in India’s economic life.

A sad day for India and the world.

We’re in “horrifying economic statistic of the day” territory now. From the AP:

Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged in October by the largest amount in two years as manufacturing was battered by the overall economic weakness.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durable goods dropped by 6.2 percent last month, more than double the 3 percent decline economists expected.

As the economic crisis has unfolded, there’s been a fair amount of discussion about how our economy doesn’t make stuff any more. This isn’t entirely true, of course, but it does reflect concern over manufacturing being moved to low wage countries.

One risk, I think, is that the crisis will further hollow out our remaining industrial capacity to the point where we’re left with not much more than financial services. We’ll be kind of a giant United Kingdom with better food. (I kid, UK folks. You know I love you. And I hear your food is much better these days.)

Talking Points Memo is gearing up for the second annual “Golden Duke” awards, named for incarcerated former Congress-critter Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

I was reminded of this because my prize for nominating former state Rep. Richard Curtis in the 2007 category “Best Scandal- Sex and Generalized Carnality” arrived via UPS today. It’s an authentic TPM media t-shirt emblazoned with their logo and the Golden Duke statuette.

Who says blogging doesn’t pay? So be thinking about possible nominees for 2008. I’m thinking AIG executives are a cinch in some category. Hopefully not that same one.

In the previous post, Goldy speculates about federal money flowing to the states as part of a broader spending package, and specifically about whether Gov. Chris Gregoire is headed to D.C. to advocate for such spending. The answer surely is: maybe!

At Political Buzz, Joe Turner wonders if we will see a return to revenue sharing, where the feds don’t put strings on things.

When I started covering Pierce County government in 1981, cities and counties were still getting no-strings-attached money from Uncle Sam. According to Wikipedia, revenue sharing existed from 1972 (the last bad recession) until 1987. It lost favor under President Reagan.

But it appears to be making a comeback, and Washington state workers no doubt will rejoice if it does. Basically, the federal government gives cities, counties and states money to pretty much what they please. That means Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Legislature could head off some of those layoffs that probably are in their future.

I watched Obama’s press conference this morning; there are not a lot of details yet. Basically the message seems to be “if it works, great, if it doesn’t work, it’s gone.” Another point seemed to be that spending at the state level is fine, but it has to be part of a national economic game plan.

So I’m expecting Obama’s team to come up with plans to get money out to the states, but not necessarily without strings. I’m just guessing, but increasing block grants might be another way to go. A short term aid package for states to cover existing shortfalls would make sense, however. There’s really no sense in heightening unemployment misery by ignoring what’s happening at the state and local level.

There’s a little bit of a clue about what might happen in this article from Stateline:

Obama didn’t specifically mention states or a dollar-figure in his remarks over the weekend or during his Nov. 24 press conference in which he unveiled his economic team, including New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner as treasury secretary. But before he was elected, Obama called for at least $25 billion in nonspecific state relief and another $25 billion to help states build and fix highways, roads, bridges, airports and rail systems.

Honestly, this is why we want smart, qualified people running the government, instead of anti-intellectual stink tank cretins and talk show hosts. It actually does matter, a lot, what happens next. A good plan might get us through the next few years with a lot of economic pain, but with recovery on the horizon. A bad plan, well, you know. It would be very bad.

We’re all free to raise questions and kick things around, as we should in a democracy, but we need as many good ideas we can get right now. There are still a few conservative voices out there warning about over-spending, and at least that’s a legitimate concern to raise if it’s done in a sincere fashion.

The consensus seems to be we simply must have a large stimulus package, though, and we’ll have to sort out how to pay for it both as we go and in the future.

One thing Obama seemed to be getting at this morning was that wasteful pork will really have to be axed this time. No more cheap talk. You can count on the noise machine to wail mightily if anyone starts pointing out the horrendous inefficiencies in the Defense Department, for example, but as Obama said this morning, every part of the federal budget must be examined.

If the Obama team can focus like a laser beam on getting the most “bang for their stimulus buck,” as they say they are doing, it should help. At this point I could care less if the good ideas come from progressives, moderates, conservatives or little green men from Mars.

I doubt anyone can know how much it might help, but the desperation apparent in this move should be obvious. From Bloomberg:

The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve will unveil as soon as today a lending program to shore up the consumer-finance market, using money from the government’s $700 billion rescue, two people familiar with the effort said.

The Treasury and the Fed will help fund new loans packaged into securities for sale to investors, the people said. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who scheduled a press conference for 10 a.m. New York time, said two weeks ago that he wants to spur lending for automobile purchases and college education while also reducing the cost of credit-card debt.

If we really need something like a half trillion dollar (or more) in stimulus spending per year, as learned economists seem to be suggesting everywhere, taking some of the leftover $700 billion and using it to provide cheap loans sounds pretty much like a Band-Aid. Consumer confidence is completely shattered. Hard to see how it improves auto sales much. Maybe people pay off some credit cards and take some classes.

But, it is something. The Fed can’t lower interest rates to any effect, so what the heck.

The magical mystical free market, also known as taxpayers, should stimulate house builders to the tune of $250 billion. Or so sayeth the national house builders.

Or Else! Because nothing causes plummeting prices to stabilize faster than an even greater oversupply.

For $250 billion we could probably build a giant domed mini-world, kind of like The Truman Show, and populate it with auto executives, house building executives, financial sector criminals and castoffs from the Cato Institute, creating a nice little Bubble Land where they can build and build and build while celebrating how great laissez-faire capitalism is. They can create innovative derivative securities to sell one another while smirking about the stupid liberals to their heart’s content.

It’ll be a completely false and fantastic world, but not much different from the one they currently inhabit.

What are you doing to help the economy this weekend? I purchased a 472-pack of toilet tissue, meaning the unit price per square is .00002 cents. If you only use one ply, it’s half that! But I will not spare a square, no matter what.

Meanwhile, go read Robert Reich if you wish. Sounds like some actual grownups may be in charge come Jan. 20.

Not to belabor Goldy’s earlier point, but the stupid idea that the netroots will come unglued when competent people take charge is, well, stupid. We’ll express differences of opinion at times but instead of trying to get brain dead people to come back to life via an act of Congress, we’ll simply state our case and work to elect people who we think will do a good job. It’s called democracy.

Deal, old media and Old Democrats. The netroots isn’t any one thing, it isn’t any one person and it sure in the hell ain’t going away.

Please list in comments how many bits of soap you can squeeze together to make new bits of soap, and how one might take one cranberry and make it multiply a hundred times before Thanksgiving to make “Magical Paulson Cranberry Sauce.”

Richard Roesler at Eye on Olympia reports that the husband of incoming state Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy, pleaded guilty yesterday to third degree theft involving money stolen from a fair board.

Seems during the campaign Short and her husband had leveled all sorts of accusations against the Spokesman-Review, using terms like “political smear job” and the shoddy conservative standby “elitist.”

There’s far more to the tale of the Shorts, but it’ll be simpler if you just go read Roesler’s post.

Invoking the Ten Commandments is always a tell, huh? Harry Truman used to relay a saying he attributed to his grandfather that went something like, “If a man sings too loud on Saturday night and prays too loud on Sunday morning, best go home and lock up the smoke house.”

Holy crap.

(Props to Eschaton and thanks for the Sprite in my nose.)

The federal government should just purchase $25 billion worth of vehicles from the auto companies, then distribute them according to population via state lottery departments, which can then award them as prizes. Should be great for voluntary tax revenue!

Imagine the excitement each week, and imagine the bonanza for the traditional media during a time of lackluster ad sales. The possibilities are endless. A car an hour! Seven cars at once! Bowling for cars! You get the idea.

All this bridge loan stuff sounds pretty fishy to me anyhow. I don’t even know what it means. Most likely it means “you will never see this money again, taxpayers, making it a “bridge loan to nowhere.” Might as well make sure some lucky citizens get a new vehicle out of the deal.

Okay, small problem: there are a handful of states that have no lottery. According to this Wikipedia entry they are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Maybe some of them could be persuaded to quickly enact a temporary car lottery or something. I’m sure Nevada could dream something up. Utah, well, you know.