I’m reading Jared Diamond’s latest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I was struck by this passage regarding forest fires in Montana:
Many homeowners sue the Forest Service if their house burns in a forest fire, or if it burns in a backfire lit by the Forest Service to control a much bigger fire, or if it doesn’t burn but if a forest providing a pretty view from the deck of their house does burn. Yet some Montana homeowners are afflicted with such a rabidly anti-government attitude that they don’t want to pay taxes towards the costs of firefighting, nor to allow government employees onto their land to carry out fire prevention measures.
And I couldn’t help but think of our current public debate over raising taxes to help offset our state’s expanding revenue deficit, or rather, the complete and utter lack of such a debate at all. Nobody likes taxes, but we sure do like the services they buy, and it is simply irresponsible for the governor and the legislature to attempt to balance this budget without even considering targeted tax increases, because, you know… they’re unpopular.
Kinda crappy to use fire protection as an example, Goldy.
Where I live fire protection funding is put up for a vote as a line item on the ballot. It passes.
We don’t get to vote on art at dump as a line item.
I find it odd that if you want to artificially inseminate a horse or a turkey (yes, your Thanksgiving turkey is a product of artificial insemination.) you pay sales tax on the purchase of the semen to do it with, but there’s no tax on the sale of bull semen.
Could we at least close the bull semen loophole?
It’s amazing how thoroughly the state Democratic Party has embraced the Republican/Tim Eyman mantra that all taxes are all bad all the time.
Washington could become like a Third World country and Chris Gregoire and Frank Chopp would still be saying “No New Taxes” just like Ronald Reagan.
Look at WSF for example. They have had mismanagement, I will admit that, they have had problems with boat procurement, but they do eventually get their and our money’s worth out of them. Even the Issaquah class, which one ferry site, Evergreenfleet.com calls, the Citrus Class, because they were lemons at one time. Now they are a sort of Utility Infielder, they can pitch in just about everywhere, except maybe Bainbridge Island and Keystone. The Steel-Electrics, despite being good boats, and went through a thorough overhaul/rebuild in the 1980s, showed what can happen when you keep anything in service for too long. When they were forcibly retired in late 2007, they were turning 80 years old. How many out there are still driving Model Ts?
Metro gets 15-25 years out of a bus, and some of the ones they inherited from Seattle Transit in 1973 and retired around 1978, were going on 40. In the case of the manufacturer of some of those buses, they were out of business by 1978.
Jard Diamond information is handy when you have a background in history or poly sci or something along those lines. It helps give another perspective or insight to the historical record. It’s dangerous and misused when nitwits rely on it solely for their historical analysis.
Diamond’s avoidance of in-depth analysis of the most dramatic failures of civilizations; fall of Rome and the Soviet Union begs the question of just how relevant his analysis really is (his 8 factors are–at best–only minor reasons for their collapse).
It’s end of the world stuff–wonderfully written–for those who know little about the history of the world.
Oh, and Goldy I didn’t mean you are a nitwit. I mean maybe you are, but not on this issue…I mean…oh I’ll quit now…
Wow, where to begin with this one…..
The gov to her credit is looking to cut spending and programs…That’s what happens when tax receipts are down. But wait, tax receipts were actually up (marginally) in 2008 over 2007…So the problem is spending…..
Roll back the spending.
And before the tired excuses of “show me where to cut, that hasn’t been cut” are presented, please consider this…
There is a Democrat talking point out there how BIAW was “over paid” by the state for years…..
The question is not whether or not BIAW needs to give back the money.. The real Donkey on the dining room table is…..What other state agencies and deptartments are overpaying? How much other waste is occuring? If the state can’t manage an automated system as simple as that which “overpaid” BIAW, then what of DSHS, DOT, WSP, DOC, etc etc etc etc etc…….
THAT is the real worry.
So no, now is not the time to be talking about raising taxes..Revenues were very slightly up over last year. Yet the budget deficit is 6Billion…..That’s just plain old overspending, and exactly what got the USA in the credit mess we find ourselves in now.
Funding for services should fall to the levels that were supported in 2008.
http://dor.wa.gov/Docs/Reports.....able04.xls
@1 Your comment is irrelevant because local fire departments have little or nothing to do with fighting forest fires, which, on the other hand, is a major part of the state Department of Natural Resources budget. Nor do local fire levies have anything to do with the USFS’s forest fire fighting budget.
@7 I have my own work with L&I, more specifically, their electrical inspection and plan review department. I can be critical of how they go about doing things, a lot of which I consider wasteful and unproductive. But the waste and lack of productivity I see is in no way the fault of the individual inspector or plan reviewer. Put another way, if I were the Gov I wouldn’t ask a single department head for their advice on cost savings. I would be listening to their employees.
By the way, I’ve changed my opinion of you. You showed a lot of class during the week of the inaugeration. To me you’re no longer a troll. Rather, you’re someone with whom I might disagree now and then but with no bad feelings.
@5 Of course, a reader has to be a nitwit to not realize that Prof. Diamond focused on microsocieties to see if we could learn something by studying their demise precisely because that is different from the evolution of large societies like Rome and the Soviet Union, whose peoples did not go out of existence as Easter Island’s population did. Rome, as a form of social and political organization, faded away but the Roman people didn’t disappear (as most of the Easter Islanders did) and the Russian people, of course, still exist. Rome and the USSR both evolved into different types of sociopolitical organization. Jared is interested in what happens when man abuses his environment to the point where it can’t support a human population anymore. Of course, a reader wouldn’t take that away from his book if the reader brought a willful blindness to environmental issues to your reading of his book. Which is where the “nitwit” reference comes in … :)
@6 Is your mind, such as it is, already tying itself in knots? Gee, that was quick.
@7 Good point! We should look at all the other private businesses feeding at the public trough, too! Starting with contractors that state jobs were outsourced to.
Speaking of criticism, it’s possible that the BIAW has a valid point or two about storm water regs and whatnot. But when somebody’s calling me a fascist, it’s a little difficult to listen to what else they might have to say. Their own members need to straighten them out. In fact, there’s rumblings of discontent within their membership ranks with the BIAW’s approach. It’s not like every builder out there shares the BIAW’s hate.
Oh, and while we’re at it, since Boeing’s sales are collapsing and Boeing is laying off workers from the jobs that $3 billion of taxpayer baksheesh were supposed to buy, let’s revoke that $3 billion.
@9 That had to be an impersonator. Wingnuts are incapable of civility. They have a million years of savage instincts programmed into their personas.
Washington will let its children become more stupid. Washington will make sure college is not something its citizens can access. Washington will wonder why business will leave the state because it will no longer be able to count on a pool of workers who can read, write, reason, or do basic math.
But daggum, Gomer, We won’t have us no gubmit taxes.
It is the most short-sighted stupidity. Keep in mind, the legislature is costing us a pretty penny each day, drumming the desktops, making no plans for any sort of new revenue until it will be nearly too late in the session to do anything but panic-stricken cuts.
The “bloated budget” people talk about really pisses me off because at the proposed cuts to higher education means hundreds of jobs, not the top dogs, but the people who do alot of the work your spoiled rotten children expect while on campus. Screw you! Wait 3 days in the financial aid line, you dumb hillbillies. I got your no taxes right here.
@15 Oh, I tend to agree, of course, but I also have to give credit when due. In Right Stuff’s case, it’s due. Heck, I bet he’s even capable of showing kindness to a rabbit now and then.
@9
Steve, I have been hyper critical of Democrats in congress etc about many things….
Example.
I was very critical about Harry Reid declaring the surge a failure before it began. Declaring “the war in Iraq is lost” I accused congressional Democrats of “investing”, or hoping that the USA failed so that they (Democrats) could win some political points..
I refuse to invest in defeat. I refuse to “hope President Obama fails” because if he does fail, we all lose…..We’re all Americans first. I disagree with many of the policies that are being enacted now, but that doesn’t mean that I wish for the failure of our leadership so that “my” party gets power.
Hell, there are folks announcing President Obama’s presidency a failure already!!!!
Ha after what, 3 weeks????? Both sides are rabid for each other….
Steve,
Some time ago, 2007? I don’t remember…..I was pretty new here…
I accused Goldy of being Roger Rabbit….I thought I was so clever, watching how whenever Goldy posted, Roger was right there commenting, then when Goldy would go on vacation and “guests” would post, Roger was nowhere to be found….
I was indignant that Goldy, as Roger Rabbit had concocted a vietnam record, service and all…..
YLB soon let me know that Roger was indeed flesh and fur… and had met him at DL.
I apoligized at the time, but took that as a lesson.
No matter what I thing about Roger Rabbit’s opinions, he put on the uniform, took the oath, and put it all on the line for his country and countrymen…..
That deserves respect, no matter the political differences
@18 and @19 Well said.
I do apologize for the times that I crossed the line of civility with you. I know that I’ve done that a few times and I’m sorry. I won’t be doing that again.
@18 “Both sides are rabid for each other…”
Indeed, I can see that on my side as well as yours. I see it in me. It doesn’t have to be that way. We are a divided nation during these most difficult times. You and I displaying civility towards each other on a contentious blog, Goldy’s “cesspool”, I believe is a small step in the right direction. Hopefully, as with the journey of a thousand miles, that small first step we take will prove to be an important one.
“Hopefully, as with the journey of a thousand miles, that small first step we take will prove to be an important one.”
Well put.
I particularly took to heart what the Gov said in her State of the state address when she requested all who could, to donate to their local food bank. Even one can of food per person could make such a huge difference…
Those are things we can all get on board with. Not political, just helping however we can our communities…right?
IMO that’s the kind of thinking that if priortiized, breaks political barriers.
@18 “Both sides are rabid for each other….”
And who, exactly, started the fire and spent years pouring gas on it? When someone hates you as much as wingnuts say they hate liberals, you look in the closet for your guns, not the badminton set.
@21 “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
That’s an interesting comment, in the same vein that Rodney King’s “can’t we all get along?” was an interesting question.
As a member of another species observing you humans from closer to the grass, I’ve concluded that yes, it does have to be that way, and no, you humans can’t get along, because that’s how nature designed you. You seem unable to change. The rest of the planet’s species have been watching for thousands of years to see if you’ll change, but nothing ever changes. You keep hunting us, running us over with your cars, using us for your medical experiments, and fighting among yourselves and doing each other in. We, the planet’s other species, naturally hope you’ll exterminate yourselves before you eradicate us. From our point of view, this planet has no problems that the extinction of one species won’t solve.
@23
Would that be Colt 1911? Beretta, Glock or Sig?
@22 “Those are things we can all get on board with.”
If you truly believe that, you should become a Democrat, because every single Republican member of the House of Representatives just voted against funding for food stamps and unemployment benefits in the teeth of the worst economic gale of our lifetime. These are people who have repeatedly demonstrated they can’t, and won’t, get on board with anything that helps human beings in misery because of forces beyond their control. What, exactly, is there to negotiate with such people? Why should we even talk to them?
@24
Well we humans might not be as “nasty” as we are if got as much tail as rabbits.
IMO that level of procreation would calm the most savage of us….
@26
Really you are right, but also, IMO wrong.
The baby and the bathwater comes to mind.
Look, I believe in personally giving…I also think that the “stimulus” is way to big and general.
Is there a need for food stamps and unemployment benefits? Yes. Is it stimulus?
Why not address that seperately, with a sunset or trigger based on unemployment figures.
Why lump it in with millions $$$ for securing habitat for the salt water mouse stimulus…?
That in a nutshell is my problem with it.
#8 Roger,
When we had a wildfire where I live a few years ago the fire didn’t give a shit who was fighting it or where the money came from.
Mark Sanford, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, is a rigid ideologue who doesn’t believe in taxes or government spending. According to the U.K.-based conservative newsweekly The Economist, Sanford has vetoed “hundreds” of bills approved by his state’s GOP-dominated legislature, “mostly over what he considered wasteful spending … includ[ing] such outrages as expanding children’s health insurance, funding HIV-prevention programmes and increasing the fine for neglecting to put a child in a car’s safety seat. The legislature … has overturned nearly all of the governor’s vetoes.
“Now he is feuding with his state’s Employment Security Commission, the agency that doles out cheques to the state’s 200,000 jobless. Mr Sanford … plans to sack its commissioners unless they provide him with better data on who is collecting unemployment benefits. The agency director says their data are fine; the jobless claims have simply ballooned over the past few months.”
South Carolina’s unemployment rate, one of the highest in the nation, is jostling against double digits — yet its governor is threatening to turn down billions of dollars of federal stimulus money … because he’s a rigid ideologue who doesn’t believe in government or public spending.
How, exactly, are the rest of us supposed to do business with people like that? Or, for that matter, with the hicks who elect them? Their stupidity and stubbornness makes them a threat to the survival of our civilization when they’re in power, and irrelevant when they’re out of power. Thank the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit that right now it’s the latter, or they’d take us the rest of the way down.
This fool will have to take his state and its citizens down by themselves, without the rest of us, and maybe the people of South Carolina deserve it — because, after all, they voted him into power. For that, and all the consequences that flow therefrom, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Let’s review: South Carolina. Right to work state, low wages, bad working conditions, no unions, high unemployment, and a Republican governor who despises helping the ill, hungry, and unemployed so much that even his Republican legislature can’t stomach his ideological rigidity.
Who the hell could possibly want to live there, and why? This works to my advantage. As a rabbit, I have my eye on that real estate, because I expect it to be totally depopulated of humans (except for a handful of holdouts) within a few years. After you humans move out, we rabbits will move in.
Your niche gets smaller and our niche gets bigger, see how that works?
@29 Do you think firefighters just drop out of the sky? In the same fashion that roads will magically appear without gas taxes?
Someone obviously did give a shit where money and firefighters would come from, or no one would have showed up to fight your wildfire. That doesn’t happen by itself.
Criminy, you are as dense as a concrete block.
Roger Rabbit Quiz
Today’s question is a real perplexer, so put on your thinking caps! This is not a trick question! There are no hidden meanings or subtle traps. In essence, it’s a very simple math question. So, think in numerical turns, and you will find the path to the one and only correct answer! ARE YOU READY? Okay, here we gooooo …
If the Department of Natural Resources’ firefighting budget is eliminated, how many DNR firefighters will show up for next summer’s wildfires?
[ ] 1. Same number as before.
[ ] 2. None.
@24 You better talk to your womenfolk about that, because this is not the rabbit community’s responsibility.
@25 What do you think? Would you go into a dark alley looking for Republicans with a fucking plastic gun?
@28 All of the criticisms of the stimulus I’ve seen are that it’s too small and general.
Are food stamps and unemployment benefits stimulus? Yes, the very best kind, because they get spent immediately — and locally on things like food and utility bills that keep stores open and communities functioning.
Social Security is the best Depression-preventer ever invented. It pumps billions of dollars into the economy every month. Almost all Social Security money gets spent immediately and locally. This income can’t be diminished by high unemployment, falling profits, or plunging real estate and stock values. It’s unaffected by corporate bankruptcies or bank failures. The consumer spending it creates puts a floor under how far a beleaguered economy can fall.
Succeeding generations of Americans have repeatedly learned that in our darkest economic hours, when employers and bankers are unreliable, government is the only life ring that always floats.
@24 “You seem unable to change.”
Oh, I dunno about that. I used to eat rabbit but I don’t do that anymore.
@36
Ok I see the trickle down effects of the unemployment and food stamp programs.
I see the same trickle down in tax cuts as stimulus…
I don’t see the point in delivering billions to banks run by the same people who leveraged those entities to the point of insolvency.
The TARP is the biggest corportate welfare joke we may ever see in our lifetimes….
Anyway, I digress….
Agree, foodstamps, unemployment benefits are needed, especially if unemployment continues to get exponentially worse, but with sunsets.
If we are to move forward, Roger, I think it might be best to let go of “who started it” and to instead try to think of ways to turn this around. Right Stuff standing up against those on his side who want to see our President fail was a damned good example in my book. Today in the cesspool we’ve had a brief but civil discussion. Who started it? Someone from the other side.
I’m all for unemployment benefits. I’m down, real down, on those who game the system. No better time than now for the gamers. Here’s how they do it. Work for a few weeks at a wage that gets you the maximum weekly check. Your account is small and runs out quickly. But then come the 13 week extensions. Where’s that at now? 26, 39, maybe 52 weeks? Run through the extensions and then work again for a few weeks. Start over. I know a guy who’s been doing that for 40 years.
If I can screen 10,000 stocks and find the ones where the 13 day EMA has crossed the 50 day EMA, then why on earth can’t the state screen and find those scamming the system?
@40
Good point! Those that game the system are taking benefits away from those who truly need them, and end up costing everyone…
IMO therein lies the slippery slope of demotivating those whom we mean to assist. Why create a population totally dependent on the state? I think the process out of government assistance is as important as the assistance itself.
Didn’t Tim McVeigh’s partner in crime cash a farm subsidy check shortly before they blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City?
Right wing ideology in a nutshell.
Kinda crappy to use fire protection as an example, Goldy.
Really??? Oh well, i guess reading this won’t help then!
Most taxpayers hardly if ever use public services.
We pay through property taxes for police, fire and 911.
How many Washingtonians haven’t used these services they never tell you.
How many Americans who paid into Social Security but, died months before their 62 or 65 th birthday or died shortly afterwards they never tell you.
So the little people who think getting more money will help are the same little people who think government are their mothers and father.
The little people who want to raise your taxes will never give the state or the Feds a check unless their forced to. Ask Bill Clintion!
You’re a bunch of Asses!