HorsesAss.Org

A couple weeks back I blogged about a Frank Rich column on the dirtiest joke ever told, and how Gilbert Gottfried’s telling of it was such a welcome relief just two and half weeks after 9/11. Every comedian tells the joke differently — it’s more of concept than a script — but for those interested in hearing a version for themselves, I’ve found a clip of a rendition from South Park.

Be forewarned, if you are easily offended, do not view the clip.

Really. You’ve been warned, so I’ll have absolutely no sympathy for people who find this offensive. (Personally, I found the sheer outrageousness to be fall-down-funny.)

So here’s a question: are right-wing “news” hosts like Fox’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough stupid, lazy or just plain liars? Both hosts repeatedly touted Dr. William Hammesfahr as a “Nobel Prize nominee,” Hannity eight times during a single hour-long program, and Scarborough four times. But according to Media Matters:

Hammesfahr, a Florida neurologist disciplined in 2003 by the Florida Board of Medicine who claims he can help Terri Schiavo, testified during an October 2002 court hearing on the Schiavo case that his claim to be a Nobel nominee is based on a letter written by Rep. Mike Bilirakis (R-FL) recommending him for the prize. But Bilirakis is not qualified to make a valid nomination under the Nobel rules.

Reading the so-called “nominating letter,” I’m not sure Rep. Bilirakis is even qualified to be a congressman:

It is my distinct privilege to present to the Committee, Dr. William M. Hammesfahr, for the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine.

“The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine”…? What a ditz.

Anyway, seeing as all you need these days to get a nomination is a letter from a slightly confused Floridian, my mother has written a letter nominating me for the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine too. She always did want me to be a doctor.

Wow. Last week’s open thread collected over 450 comments. I guess I’m pretty much superfluous.

Okay, I’ve heard enough bellyaching already from editorialists whining about legislation to amend Initiative 601’s spending limits. Passed in 1993, I-601 uses population growth plus inflation to calculate increases in the state spending cap; any spending above the limit requires a two-thirds vote in both houses.

In practice, it only takes a simple majority to amend or suspend I-601 (as has been done in the past,) and thus the super majority provision is utterly toothless — not to mention, undemocratic. And it has probably always been unconstitutional to boot, as only the state Constitution can dictate the majorities required to pass legislation. Complain all you want about removing this provision, but if you really want to require a super majority vote, you need to do it by constitutional amendment.

Yesterday the Tacoma News Tribune chimed in, criticizing SB 6078 for seeking to change the way the cap is calculated (the new formula would link growth in spending to growth in personal income): “Gutting I-601 spending limits a bad idea.”

Gutting? Gimme a break.

As has been explained by the Gates Commission, and nearly every reputable expert on these issues, the economic metric that most close tracks growth in demand for public services is aggregate growth in personal income. This is because most government services are commodities, and like most commodities, consumption increases with income. (Hey… that’s free market economics for you.) As the TNT points out, a growth in personal income calculation would indeed result in a higher spending cap than the current formula.

But to continue to impose a spending limit calculated on population plus inflation, is to ensure that over the long run, government services simply cannot keep pace with demand. And that is exactly what has happened since I-601 passed in 1993: expenditures as a percentage of personal income have declined steadily. And with non-discretionary spending like health care rising much faster than inflation — and thus eating up a larger portion of the budget — the impact of the spending limit is exaggerated on essential services like K-12 education.

K-12 Expenditures per $1,000 Personal Income
(State & Local Government)

In fiscal year 2002, Washington ranked 41st among states in state and local government K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income, down from 36th in 2000. As long as we continue to rely on a structurally inadequate tax system, and tie our spending limits to unrealistic economic metrics, we can expect the level of essential services to continue to decline.

I’m a big proponent of balanced budgets, and I’m not necessarily opposed to spending limits as a guideline for writing them. Indeed, I’m a helluva lot more fiscally conservative than most of my righty critics would imagine (or my liberal cohorts might like.) But my main complaint with I-601’s spending limits calculation, is that like our current tax structure, when projected out into the future, it guarantees that we will have a smaller and smaller government providing fewer and fewer services… without ever asking voters if this is what they truly want!

I welcome a knock-down, drag ’em out, no holds barred public debate on the proper size and scope of government, because I believe that most voters want safer streets, better schools, and all the other essential services that government provides. But the Republican leadership refuses to talk about the real issues, because they understand that the status quo will eventually produce their libertarian dystopia, without debate, if only they show a little patience.

Attacking SB 6078 as “gutting” I-601, ignores the whole purpose of imposing spending limits in the first place. I-601 was not intended to shrink the government, it was intended to keep government growth in line with our economy… and to this end the limit factor should reflect an accurate economic metric. It’s simple math.

To support the current formula is to support the Republican effort to dramatically shrink government by “starving the beast,” a disingenuous strategy to impose a radical vision of government they couldn’t possibly win at the polls. It is a stunningly clever act of political legerdemain, that distracts the eye by focusing exclusively on taxes, while ignoring the services they finance. Then, while voters aren’t looking, tada… government services disappear.

But there’s nothing magical about I-601’s population plus inflation calculation; it simply does not allow our government to keep pace with the growing demands of our growing economy, and thus necessarily results in diminished services over time.

Math may not be as entertaining as magic… but it’s a damn more reliable way to predict the future.

The Seattle P-I reports that King County prosecutors have identified 93 more felons from a batch of 100 names on the GOP’s felons list. Hmmm, 93 percent… not bad, I guess… not as good as KC Elections, but not bad.

Not that it matters as far as Rossi’s contest is concerned:

In pretrial rulings, Bridges has said it won’t be enough for the Republicans to establish that the number of illegal votes exceeded the margin of victory; they would have to show that Gregoire owed her win to illegal votes.

Um… which I suppose is why GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance is so confident:

“We have a slam-dunk case.”

Yeah… right Chris.

FYI, the P-I also has an article on the new statewide voter registration database, that should go a long way towards enabling election officials to properly purge the rolls of felons in the future.

The Olympian has managed to wrangle up US Rep. Adam Smith for an online chat, Friday morning at 9:30 am. It’s unlikely they’ll get too many questions in the pipeline on such short notice, so if you have a query for the congressman, go to their pre-chat and submit it now.

In a terse, one-page decision, the United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Terri Schiavo’s parents to order her feeding tube reinserted.

The appeal went first to Reagan appointee, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for cases emanating from the 11th Circuit. He then referred the case to the full nine-member court. This marks at least the fifth time the SCOTUS has declined to get involved in the case. According to the AP, the court’s decision was not surprising:

Not only had justices repeatedly declined to intervene in the Schiavo case on prior occasions, but they routinely defer to state courts on family law issues. Judges in various Florida courts have sided with Schiavo’s husband in the 15 years since she suffered brain damage.

Meanwhile the New York Times has an interesting profile on Dr. William Cheschire, the man at the center of Jeb Bush’s last ditch attempt to seize control of Terri Schiavo’s fate: “A Diagnosis With a Dose of Religion.”

There are an awful lot of lies being told by the Bush administration and its allies in their battle to dismantle Social Security through privatization, but perhaps the biggest lie of all is “$11 trillion dollars.” That’s the “unfunded obligation” President Bush tells us Social Security will supposedly accrue if nothing is done to fix it:

You realize that this system of ours is going to be short the difference between obligations and money coming in, by about $11 trillion, unless we act. And that’s an issue. That’s trillion with a “T.”

It’s nice to know the president is keeping up on his spelling, but he needs to do a little more work on his math. For according to the ever useful FactCheck.org, that mind-boggling number is calculated using the Social Security Administration’s new “infinite-horizon model,” which attempts to project revenue and obligations not 75 years into the future (as has been the standard model,) or even 100 years, but… well… forever.

Sound a little silly? Well the American Academy of Actuaries, a nonpartisan group with the really boring job of setting the standards of practice for US actuaries, points out that even 75-year projections are filled with uncertainty, but an infinite projection… well that’s basically worthless. In a letter sent to the Social Security Advisory Board, the Academy is unequivocal:

The new measures of the unfunded obligations included in the 2003 report provide little if any useful information about the program’s long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic, and actuarial aspects of the program’s finances into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated.

But then, that’s the whole point of the infinite-horizon projection isn’t it… to mislead Americans by conjuring up a really humongous number in order to scare us into supporting a bogus “reform” package? But how many Americans would take this number seriously if they understood, as NPR reported today, that the projection is based on the truly laughable assumption that the retirement age will stay at 67, while average life expectancy peaks at 150 by the year 2200!

150? Forget about Social Security’s unfunded obligations… how are we going to pay for all the court-ordered feeding tubes we’ll presumably need to sustain a nation of sesquicentenarians?

Knute Berger addresses the issue with a calmer, more measured voice than mine, but comes to the same conclusion.

I don’t know whether or not Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube should be pulled. I don’t know whose wishes her husband or parents are trying to honor, other than their own. A husband sees his wife in an irreversible vegetative state and naturally wants to end such suffering; her parents see the child they gave life to and aren’t ready to give up hope. There is nothing unique in this struggle or the pain it causes

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By a 2-1 margin, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to order reinsertion of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, saying her parents “failed to demonstrate a substantial case on the merits of any of their claims.”

One can only hope that our Supreme Court justices — who routinely refuse to grant stays of execution for prisoners whose cases have likewise exhausted all other legal appeals — act as judiciously as the lower courts, and allow Terri Schiavo to die in peace, ending this ordeal for her and her family. A quick and decisive ruling would place an exclamation mark on the shameful efforts of Republican lawmakers to exploit this personal tragedy in order to curry political favor with conservative Christians.

But the Schiavo case is only one example of the Bush Administration’s crusade to impose the morality of a powerful constituency onto the majority of Americans. The Seattle P-I reports today on the ongoing legal battles of a young Navy wife from Everett, who had to sue the military to pay for an abortion of her anencephalic fetus. Two years later, the woman’s attorney is shocked at how aggressively the federal government continues to appeal the case, seeking to force repayment of the $3,000 cost of the procedure:

“I can’t understand the impetus behind the government pursuing this case.”

I can. This is a culture war, and like all wars, the aggressors are willing to sacrifice a few innocent bystanders… even a 19-year-old woman carrying a fetus without a brain.

The so-called “right to lifers” are so absolute in their moral certitude, that they cannot distinguish between a real human life and a brain-dead or brainless person with no consciousness whatsoever. To them, promising medical research on a clump of cells is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, were Nazis conducted vicious medical experiments on fully-formed and fully-conscious Jewish children.

One wonders if extraordinary measures were used to save the empty shell that Ronald Reagan’s body became after Alzheimer’s cruelly withered his brain, and how his family might have reacted if the courts or lawmakers had imposed them? These are the types of painful, personal decisions that families must make for their loved ones every day… and these decisions should remain personal, no matter what somebody else’s bible may say on the matter.

The same people who speak so loudly about the “defense of marriage” are the same people fighting to deny Michael Schiavo one if its most basic legal rights: the power to make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse. Court after court has affirmed that Michael Schiavo has this right, and that his decision to remove the feeding tube was both medically proper and ethical.

To deny the Schiavo family the right to make its own medical decisions would not only be hypocritical, it would be a dangerous sign of a government increasingly willing and able to impose itself into our personal lives.

UPDATE:
By an 11-2 decision, the full court upheld a decision by a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, to deny Terry Schiavo’s parents’ request to have her feeding tube re-inserted. Meanwhile, the Florida Senate once again rejected a bill, 21-18, that would have prohibited patients like Schiavo from being denied food and water.

Next stop, the US Supreme Court, which has already refused to hear the case on three separate occasions.

FYI: TJ over at Also Also has some nice analysis of the legal machinations behind the recent court rulings.

There were a lot of very important announcements by very important people yesterday. Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled his plan to overhaul the United Nations, which could lead to adding Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Egypt, and South Africa (or Nigeria) to the Security Council. Governor Christine Gregoire released her budget proposal, which included fully funding the class size and teacher pay initiatives and adding thousands of poor children to state health insurance rolls, while closing a $1.6 billion budget shortfall with only $200 million in new taxes.

So of course, with all this important news breaking around me, I decided to spend the afternoon attending King County Executive Ron Sims’ “State of the County” address.

Speeches like this are generally staged events, newsworthy only in and of themselves — their contents rarely produce breaking stories, and this one didn’t disappoint. Oh, there were a few interesting tidbits, including a proposal for wireless internet access in White Center and on Metro buses, and the announcement of an innovative “Healthy Incentives Program” for county employees. But mostly Ron just laid out his vision for the region’s future, ten years and beyond.

So why bother covering the address if it didn’t generate much actual news? Well, first of all… I’m a blogger Jim, not a reporter! And second, Ron’s vision for King County’s future could have more direct impact on the day-to-day lives of its residents than anything Kofi Annan or Christine Gregoire might pronounce.

Although soon-to-be-unemployed Councilmember (and Sims challenger) David Irons myopically mocked Ron for his ten-year plan — “You can’t set your sights that far out” — this is exactly the kind of farsighted leadership our region needs to meet the demands of a county projected to add 300,000 new residents by 2050. In addition to recounting some of the recent accomplishments of the county and its residents, Ron laid out a broad list of priorities for the coming decade, including protecting our water supply, cleaning up Puget Sound, reining in health care costs, increasing affordable housing and eliminating homelessness, reducing the spread of HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis, investing in our transportation infrastructure and more.

Talking to a reporter afterwards, Irons attacked the speech as “a nice fairy tale, with no substance,” but really, how much substance do you expect from a speech like this? Hell, President Bush made privatizing Social Security the focus of his domestic agenda in his State of the Union address, yet months later he still refuses to paint a little flesh on the bones of his proposal. So no, Ron didn’t provide a lot of details, but then this was just a speech, not a budget proposal or a piece of legislation.

Moving on to the next reporter, Irons called the speech “a nice fairy tale, with no substance,” charging that while Ron’s speeches are all “warm and fuzzy,” he implements his policies with “an iron fist.” Irons said he wants government to be just as “warm and fuzzy” as Ron’s speeches… too bad Irons himself comes across as “cold and slick.”

With the next reporter, Irons mixed things up a bit, referring to Ron’s speech as “a nice fairy tale, with no substance.” Yeah… we get the point.

To me, the contrast between Ron’s passionate, forward-looking speech, and Iron’s cynical, dour rebuttal illustrates not only the fundamental difference between the two candidates, but between the parties they represent. Democrats like Ron view government as a powerful tool for positively impacting the lives of its citizens, whereas Republicans traditionally view government as a necessary evil, that they might as well control, if only to prevent the other guys from doing too much harm. In short, Democrats believe in government, while Republicans, well… don’t.

Much of Ron’s speech was actually spent congratulating individual citizens for their contributions to the county; on seven occasions he asked individuals to stand up and receive recognition, alone or in pairs, for their hard work and dedication. Jose Abarca, an officer at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, who just returned home from Baghdad after a two-year military leave, received a standing ovation. (Appropriately, the citizen who received the second-most applause was also in uniform: Porter Mathis, the Metro Transit bus driver of the the year.)

Irons dismissed the entire event as little more than a staged press conference, countering with what I cynically hope will be his campaign slogan: “Everything is not wonderful.” Both his observations may technically be correct, but they completely miss the point. Voters aren’t dumb. We know that everything is not wonderful, and we don’t expect it to be. What we expect government to do is to constantly help make things a little bit better.

And that’s what Ron offered yesterday, a positive, passionate vision for the future that builds on his and our accomplishments of the past… while all Irons offered was criticism. He derides Ron for daring to plan ten years into the future, because like most politicians, his horizons don’t stretch beyond the next election. Listening to Irons talk to reporters yesterday, it made me wonder if he actually believes in the job he’s seeking.

I know a lot of people think Ron is vulnerable because of backlash over Sound Transit, the CAO, and the trumped up election controversy. It is true that Ron’s brand of strong, aggressive leadership can rub people the wrong way, but sometimes it is the only way to get things done. No doubt there are a lot of voters angered over his strong-arm handling of the Brightwater waste water treatment facility, but fortunately for Ron, most of them live in Snohomish County.

And if Irons is the best candidate the GOP can throw up against him, that too will be fortunate for Ron. Having nothing better to do is not enough of a reason to run for county executive, and voters will quickly sense that Iron’s candidacy stems more from expediency than passion and commitment.

I don’t know if I’ll ever attend another State of the County address, but I’ve got a feeling this wasn’t Ron Sims’ last.

Just a reminder that the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday) at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave. E., starting at 8pm. I may stop by briefly after 9pm, if my daughter gives me permission.

It is a sad statement on our current state of politics when an unabashed liberal like me waxes nostalgic for good ol’ Goldwater Republicans. Reading L.A. Heberlein’s guest column in today’s Seattle P-I (“What happened to real Republicans?“), I couldn’t help but feel wistful for the days when political debates were more about disagreements over method than madness. Heberlein, who worked his precinct for Barry Goldwater, appears equally wistful, wondering if the people who call themselves Republicans today… really are.

When I was a Teenage Republican, all Republicans knew the 10th Amendment by heart and Republicans resisted the increasing power of the central government. Now Republicans leap over one another to make the federal government ever more powerful. It is Republicans at the federal level who now want to tell states whether they can allow medical marijuana or assisted suicide, or even who can have a driver’s license. They want to tell the states who can get married. Imagine a Republican of my youth thinking the federal government should dictate policy to local school boards.

When I was a boy, Republicans cherished personal liberty. Creating secret no-fly lists and spy-on-your-neighbor programs, turning medical records over to police, holding people without trial in hidden military compounds, saying it’s legal to torture them — that’s how we thought only Communists would behave.

Above all, the Republicans back in those days were the party of responsibility. They understood a balance sheet. […] The ones running Washington, D.C., today inherited a $236 billion budget surplus, and like kids on crack with a credit card, turned it into a trillion-dollar deficit almost overnight.

Heberlein goes on to ridicule the Bush administration’s proposal to privatize Social Security, asking the obvious question of where the money will come from to pay for those drawing out now, and incredulously providing the answer.

Listen, you’ll never believe this. The plan is to borrow it — to borrow a trillion more dollars.

Where have all the real Republicans gone? I have some sad news for Heberlein… this GOP is no more the party of Goldwater than it is the party of Lincoln. It’s the party of Bush and DeLay.

Now don’t that make you old-timers feel proud?

Jesus’s General has sent a letter to WA State Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City), asking him to pass legislation ending the Blastocyst-American holocaust:

Since we first learned of the existence of Nazi concentration camps, Americans have been firm in their resolve to never allow such an atrocity to occur again. We’ve committed ourselves to intervening whenever we see genocide occurring anywhere outside of Africa. We need to honor that commitment in regard to the Blastocyst-American holocaust.

That’s why I’m asking you to pass legislation requiring the redeployment of the Washington National Guard from Iraq to the United States so that they may bring freedom to the billions of Blastocyst-Americans living in stem cell research facilities.

Gen. JC Christian acknowledges that redeploying troops to invade medical research centers at home would cause a manpower shortage in Iraq, but points out that we can always go back “and kill more brown people later.”

And while I’m linking to irreverent posts that linked to my post on Rep. Anderson’s comments, I thought I’d just block quote Carl Ballard’s amusing take:

Rep. Glenn Anderson has a tough time distinguishing between the Holocaust and stem cell research. Aparently because Josef Mengele claimed to be helping people, anybody who claims to be helping people is as bad as Mengele.

Ridicule where ridicule is due.

The Seattle P-I has a short report on what to expect from the dueling legal teams in Dino Rossi’s contest of the gubernatorial election: “Strategies in governor’s contest now clearer.” Actually, I think the strategies have been clear for some time, but the article does a nice job of summarizing the issues, and concluding that the GOP’s hopes may hinge on whether Judge Bridges accepts their “proportional analysis” argument.

One possible line of attack they have sketched out is what Lane calls proportional analysis. The idea is this: If Precinct A cast 60 percent of its votes for Gregoire and 40 percent for Rossi, but it turns out that 10 votes from there were illegal, the court can assume that six of those votes were for Gregoire and four for Rossi and deduct those amounts from their respective totals.

Given that most of the 1,000-plus supposed illegal votes the GOP has rounded up so far came from King County, where Gregoire beat Rossi by 58 percent to 40 percent (amounting to a 155,000-vote difference), that strategy holds lots of appeal for the Republicans. And that’s one reason they’re trying to dig up as many illegal votes as they can.

Personally, I could see a court accepting such an approach if the number of disputed ballots were massive compared to the margin of victory. For example, if there were 10,000 illegal votes in heavily Democratic King County (and nothing to offset them in Republican strongholds) I could understand a court ruling that a 129-vote margin just can’t hold up to scrutiny.

I could even understand the court applying proportional analysis to a much smaller number, if there was clear evidence of that these votes were the result of organized fraud or misconduct.

But such statistical analyses become much less useful the smaller the sample data set, and I just can’t imagine the court accepting such an approach with the number of illegal votes reported thus far. It would be inaccurate to proportion votes based on countywide margins, as different precincts produce dramatically different results. Yet when you deconstruct the analysis to the precinct level, it is statistically meaningless to proportion one or two votes per precinct.

Of course the Republican’s case has always been more of an emotional appeal than a legal one, hoping that public outrage might undermine Gregoire if not sway the courts. But their pleadings are increasingly being met with cynicism in the court of public opinion as well, with a recent Elway Poll showing that 63 percent of voters now say we should accept the results of the election and move on, and 74 percent agreeing that there is always going to be some error.

And move on we shall. Today, Governor Gregoire will introduce the first draft of her budget proposal, which I fully expect to include about $500 million in tax and fee increases, along with over a billion dollars in cuts and other savings. Rather than being cowed by Republican anger over the election, she appears to be reacting to the pragmatic reality that maintaining government services at the level taxpayers clearly demand, requires raising revenues commensurate with those demands.

Now if only we can get her to consider structural changes that will eliminate these shortfalls in the future, instead of just the stopgap measures we’re likely to see in the current budget.

UPDATE:
Well, it looks like I overestimated the tax increases. Gregoire has proposed a little over $200 million, coming from a $0.20 per pack hike in the cigarette tax, and reimposing the estate tax on non-farm estates worth over $2 million. More on the budget later.