Ouch. From The Spokesman-Review:

Washington’s state government – which pays for schools, prisons, colleges, last-resort medical coverage for the poor and hundreds of other things — now faces a $4.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two year, state officials say.

That’s up $1.4 billion from what was expected just two months ago.

Now that we’re facing nearly unprecedented economic woes in this country, and with consumer spending in the tank, it’s utterly predictable that a system of taxation that relies so heavily on regressive taxes on consumers will basically break down.

Yeah, I know. Don’t touch that third rail (income tax) or you’ll be electrocuted. Far better to dismantle the state’s education system, that will fix things. Is there no way to move forward with tax reform by ditching awful things like the business and occupation tax and reducing sales and property taxes? It’s impossible no matter what forever and ever and ever?

Okay, hope you liked that educated workforce, it was neat while it lasted. Now start chopping those universities and community colleges!

Whatever the relative merits or drawbacks there are to forking over giant sums of taxpayer money to failing corporations, it’s hard to see how that is going to reverse the larger trend of deflation.

Consumer prices plunged 1 percent last month, more than forecast and the most since records began in 1947, after being unchanged the prior month, the Labor Department said in Washington. Excluding food and energy, so-called core prices unexpectedly fell for the first time since 1982.

Seriously, after we bail out the automakers, then what? We bail out retailers? Restaurant chains? With job losses mounting this sure looks like a severe deflationary spiral.

We needed a stimulus package yesterday, but that’s not going to happen until at least late January or early February, apparently. Yikes.

You’re not getting bailout money and I’m not getting bailout money.

So if you or I want to buy a house or car, exactly what incentive do we have to buy stuff at this moment in history? Hell, I’ve snapped my wallet shut as a matter of principle.

If ordinary Americans are going to be completely ignored while a trillion dollars flows to the very people who created this mess, basically they can bite me. I’ve been crotchety since I was about 14 years old, and with the exception of the Internet Toobz, I can survive on Spam and AM radio for a long damn time. Sure, the kids will get their toys, but I’m not going out of my way to buy anything at all right now.

I know economics is dismal and complicated and all that, but somehow I’m not understanding how “give free money to corporations or else” is going to work out in the end. If consumers can’t or won’t buy the products, then we’re just giving money to stockholders and executives. Once the federal money is gone, it’s gone. The situation is insane.

Some people would call this a heist. It’s like “The Great Train Robbery” with you starring as the money on the train. Or something.

Bite me, and pass the black beans and rice.

Stevens Expulsion Vote Postponed

Democrats Let Lieberman Keep Senate Chairmanship

It’s the world’s most exclusive kleptocracy. There is nothing a United States Senator can do, apparently, that will cause his fellow senators to hold him accountable. A regular person sneezes wrong at work they might get fired. A United States Senator gets convicted seven times over, or actively helps the competition try to ruin his own side’s chances, and oh well.

Get the figurative pitchforks. As if our country doesn’t face enough challenges, we have to contend with this Bozo the Clown “leadership” in Congress.

You enable crooks and liars, the people don’t respect you. It’s pretty simple.

I’m guessing Harry Reid is not faring too well in the Daily Kos leadership poll. (Note: the poll is not scientific and is only a rough gauge of the sentiments of people who chose to participate because they were so fucking pissed.)

Don’t mess with the new White House. Seriously. All Democrats are like this. It’s not worth it.

Shorter John Laird, editorial page editor for The Columbian: it’s all George W. Bush’s fault.

Still, if Clark County is red, how do we explain Barack Obama carrying the county by 6 percentage points? That question is easy to answer. This result doesn’t say nearly as much about Obama or about Clark County as it says about President George W. Bush. In fact, I suspect a lot of America’s breathless infatuation over Obama might actually be — deep down — an opinion about Bush.

If my theory is correct, then Bush’s drop in local popularity has been dramatic, almost pathetic. He carried the county by 5.4 percentage points in 2004 and by 4 points in 2000.

For what it’s worth, there is likely a kernel of truth there, as “Brand Republican” has been severely damaged, not only by Bush but by Republican extremism up and down the ticket. This is a hard blow for some Republicans, who seem to invest an inordinate amount of psychic energy in being perceived as the dominant tribe. A lot of the rash and uncivil statements emanating from the conservative noise machine are likely the product of this slightly strange fetishization.

For several cycles now a prominent local Republican Party activist has been repeatedly quoted in the newspaper saying, essentially, that Clark County is a Republican county. This was never all that true, as effective Democratic candidates like Brian Baird and Craig Pridemore, and many others, were elected to office. Candidates with good name ID (especially incumbents) always do well most places, especially here in a county dominated by media from another state. There’s a good reason the landscape is dominated by 4 x 8 political signs during election season.

Clark is a suburban swing county overall, with predictable party trends in the more urban and rural areas. Incumbents are hard to beat, meaning most of the big battles are over open seats. In that regard, the Democrats picked up a state House seat in the “swingy” 17th LD with the victory of Tim Probst, and might or might not pick up a county commissioner seat pending a likely recount. The more rural 18th LD is completely a lost cause as it is currently drawn, and the opposite is true in the urban 49th LD.

So the real issue for Democrats here is how to continue recruiting quality candidates who will be in position to take advantage of open seats.

Correction– Technically, Democrats would not be picking up a county commission seat in Clark County if Democrat Pam Brokaw defeats Republican Tom Mielke after a recount, as the retiring incumbent is Betty Sue Morris, D-BIAW. But in real world terms it would be a pickup for Democrats if Brokaw won.

A currently recommended diary at Daily Kos is tracking the devastating fires afflicting the greater Los Angeles area. It includes links to Los Angeles television stations and reports from Kossacks in the Southern California region.

The situation certainly sounds severe and we extend our best wishes to our fellow citizens in California who have suffered losses. Here’s hoping things improve quickly.

Retail sales have plummeted.

Retail sales plunged by the largest amount on record in October as the financial crisis and the slumping economy caused consumers to sharply cut back on their spending.

The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales fell by 2.8 percent last month, surpassing the old mark of a 2.65 percent drop in November 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that year.

Name the sector, for the most part it’s not looking good.

Prof. Krugman, you know the one who got that Nobel prize thing, says a massive stimulus package is needed. Like $600 billion worth. It’s a figure well shy of what the batshit insane Paulson bailout (or whatever the hell it is today) received, but it’s real money.

Krugman is undoubtedly correct, but the key political question is how to keep the kleptocratic lobyists from Wall Street and Washington, D.C. from intercepting it.

Everyone probably recalls how the Republican Party ran its infamous “K Street Project” under Tom Delay in order to further its corrupt goals.

Maybe the Obama administration needs to run a “Main Street Project” that seeks to place stimulus funds out of reach of the crooks and liars. It would be far healthier for the economy in the long run to have millions of ordinary Americans make rational spending decisions rather than enabling a small group of executives to do so. They’ll just spend it on seaweed wraps and “vinotherapy” and shit anyhow.

And no, the way to do a stimulus plan is not to mail checks to everyone. A true stimulus plan would start with extending unemployment benefits and increasing grants to the states, where you get your most economic bang for your buck, paying particular attention to community colleges and other places folks can receive career related education and training.

If transportation and other infrastructure projects are quickly funded as well, we’re still not going to avoid some fairly significant economic pain, but getting money out into the real economy is absolutely essential if we’re going to avoid a complete disaster. It sure seems like we’re looking at a year or two of hard times, minimum, no matter what.

Another challenge is to come up with sensible regulations for the banking and wider financial sector so that the crooks and liars can’t get away with this again, at least in our lifetimes. And you have to do this while somehow sorting out the so-called credit freeze, which at times is described as easing in the traditional media and at times appears to still be a significant problem. This is another area where extra attention needs to be paid to Main Street, to make sure the myriad small and medium size businesses in our country can obtain the credit they need to operate.

The burst housing bubble and related mortgage scandal are huge factors here, and while finding ways to help folks keep their homes is an admirable goal, the best way to stabilize housing prices is to ensure ordinary folks can afford to buy them. Programs that offer relief to individuals facing foreclosure might be some help, and are certainly a humane idea, but defining which Americans get that relief is complicated and problematic in practice. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, I’m just suggesting that approach has obvious limitations.

The frightening thing for the new administration, and all Americans, is how many goals need to be achieved in short order.

Earth to Washington, D.C. Earth to Washington, D.C. Come in Washington, this is Earth. Over.

Calculated Risk quotes Campbell Surveys on plunging house sales

According to the survey firm, Campbell Communications, buy-side agents responding to the survey indicated a 19% drop in completed transactions between the months of September and October. Declines were especially severe for sales of non-distressed properties in states where home prices have fallen rapidly during the past year, agents indicated. For example, buy-side agents indicated a 22% decline in non-distressed sales in Florida, a 32% drop in California, and a 51% drop in Michigan.

Washington, D.C., we’ve got a situation here.

The Columbian reports that foreclosures have spiked again in Clark County, which had previously (sorta kinda) weathered the storm okay.

Local foreclosure rates had appeared to be leveling off in September, when 144 foreclosures were filed in Clark County, up just 3 from the same month the year before. But the lull — down from more than 290 foreclosures filed here in August — was short-lived.

The number of Clark County homes in foreclosure in October jumped by more than 63 percent over September numbers.

The county’s foreclosures in October accounted for 5.5 percent of the 4,278 foreclosures filed statewide. Washington had the 17th-highest foreclosure rate out of 50 states, according to RealtyTrac, which incorporates data filed during several stages of foreclosure. Oregon ranked No. 16.

Washington, D.C., you need to stop fooling around now. You there, Washington, D.C.?

Naomi Klein spells things out in an article for Rolling Stone.

Unfortunately, many of the banks appear to have no intention of wasting the money on loans. “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion,” said John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Gary Crittenden, chief financial officer of Citigroup, had an even better idea: He hinted that his company would use its share of the cash — $25 billion — to buy up competitors and swell even bigger. The handout, he told analysts, “does present the possibility of taking advantage of opportunities that might otherwise be closed to us.”

And the folks at Morgan Stanley? They’re planning to pay themselves $10.7 billion this year, much of it in bonuses — almost exactly the amount they are receiving in the first phase of the bailout. “You can imagine the devilish grins on the faces of Morgan Stanley employees,” writes Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil. “Not only did we, the taxpayers, save their company…we funded their 2008 bonus pool.”

Uh, Washington, D.C., we got a lot of citizens starting to turn blue here. Copy?

Reuters reports on higher than expected job losses.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to 516,000, the highest level since the weeks following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.

U.S. imports fell by a record 5.6 percent in September and exports suffered their steepest drop since September 2001, narrowing the monthly trade deficit slightly more than expected, a U.S. Commerce Department report showed on Thursday.

Come in, D.C. Don’t know if you copy but it looks like people are starting to think about taking matters into their own hands. Situation critical. Repeat. Situation critical.

What would happen if a bunch of people just stopped paying their mortgages in order to get a better deal? Irvine Housing Blog relays admittedly anecdotal evidence from an acquaintance who is a real estate agent:

My friend, a very smart person, math thesis of the year award winner in college, with a masters degree in math, vice principle at a high school making excellent money, expresses to his neighbor that he is upset that his home is worth $100,000 less than he paid for it, however his neighbor then explains that he received a $100,000 principle write down by not paying his mortgage and negotiating a loan modification. Stopping by his house a few weeks ago on the way back from Las Vegas my friend explained this to me and said he thinks that he is going to get a modification as well.

I hope you copy D.C.

Everyone on board, prepare for impact.

Earth out.

Irvine Housing Blog explains why ARM resets aren’t finished, and just how bad things might get, at least in California. Yikes.

And since California is basically the size of a country all by itself, it’s kind of difficult to be optimistic about a quick rebound of housing prices on the West Coast. You could give AIG $25 billion a day for the next year and it wouldn’t help much, unless they hold all their parties in vacant houses rented for the occasions.

This socialism stuff is hard. Can I interest you in a used car (company?)

If we’re going to be stimulatin’ and subsidizin’ the construction industry, an admittedly wise step considering the scope of the financial scandal and related crash, could we pretty please with sugar on top have basic consumer protections in return?

Is there something I don’t understand here? You buy a new car, you get a warranty and you’re covered by the lemon law. If the wheels fall off you have options.

You buy a new house and the plumbing fails, well, sorry pal. Caveat emptor.

It doesn’t make any sense, and it really won’t make any sense if we inject hundreds of millions of dollars into a sector without providing basic consumer safeguards. This socialism stuff has to be about all the people, not just the bidness guy socialists. Otherwise it’s Chi-Com Socialism!

There’s no question the economic downturn has been hard on house builders. But at least one BIAW-affiliated official is optimistic. Here’s David Roewe, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Clark County, the local unit of the BIAW, in a Columbian business section article:

Roewe predicted home sales would improve after the first of the year and continue to pick up in the second quarter of 2009.

“Springtime is when you’ll see the release of money, with the new (presidential) administration in office,” he said.

See, even some BIAW folks are rooting for President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress to succeed. Now that’s refreshing.

I happened to recently see a replay of a documentary entitled “Liquid Assets-The Story of Our Water Infrastructure.” The film is part of a project at Penn State.

There’s a lot of talk right now about funding infrastructure as both a sensible investment in our future and as a means of stimulating the economy, although as Robert Reich pointed out on-air today on CNN, critics will point out large projects can take a while to get going.

But as the documentary mentions, there are projects all over the country involving water and sewer that need funding, and while they may not be as um, sexy, as light rail or big bridges, they are no less vital. And the film doesn’t just focus on big city projects like Atlanta and New York, it also features a small town in Pennsylvania that simply has no sanitary sewer. The lines just empty into the creek, or even worse, back up into lawns and streets. In 2008. Despite a decade or more of efforts to fund a sewer system, little progress has been made. And nobody should care whether these are “real” Americans or “fake” Americans, they’re Americans for crying out loud.

These are the kinds of nuts and bolts issues that Republicans have ignored with their endless and robotic attacks on government and taxes. Sure, nobody wants to pay more taxes, but poop backing up into lawns and streets isn’t exactly a neat thing either.

So as we move into the next administration, it would be wise for the Congress to fund basic water and sewer projects, not only to help the environment but to help our country compete on a global stage. It’s kind of hard to attract business without clean water and sewer systems.

Control of the Clark County commission may hinge on a recount. The Columbian reports that Republican former state legislator Tom Mielke has a slim 78 vote lead over Democrat Pam Brokaw. Since Republican incumbent Marc Boldt won handily, and Democrat Steve Stuart was not up this year, partisan control will rest on the outcome of the Mielke-Brokaw race.

Don’t know exactly why ballots counted later tend to break Republican, and I suppose it doesn’t matter as the votes are the votes, but it is like water torture, as Aneurin observes.

So maybe Darcy should complain to the Washington News Council, that supposedly objective collection of movers and shakers who have arrogated to themselves the right to decide what constitutes real journalism. They did so in the WA-08 race in 2006, when they voted thumbs down on a P-I story about the real story behind Dave Reichert’s investigation of the Green River Killer. The P-I wisely rejected their findings, but the Washington New Council got their little kangaroo court broadcast on TVW, if I recall correctly. So our tax dollars were being used against us in a bald political manner, even if it was all dressed up in legal niceties. Still waiting on the Legislative hearings asking TVW um, WTF?

Here we are two years later and the Seattle Times indisputably did a hit job on Darcy Burner, so I’m sure the Washington News Council will be all over it.

And the Washington News Council is having a nice dinner tomorrow night! You should go. Really. I bet they’ll just be outraged about what happened to Burner and can’t wait to get to the bottom of it.

Here’s the poster: