HorsesAss.Org

[Oddly, some of my more popular posts over at Slog were about my backyard garden, a stark departure from my wonky policy analysis and foul-mouthed political rants. So I’ve decided to continue these posts here on HA.]

I spent the past few days of fair weather belatedly getting the last of my early spring sowings into the garden before the rains returned. Snap peas, snow peas, carrots, and a variety of lettuces, greens, and herbs have been sown under floating row covers in freshly turned and composted beds. Radishes, arugula, and at least one variety of lettuce have already sprouted. Potatoes have been buried in compost in separate containers. And 20 feet of onion starts are beginning to take root—I’ll start thinning out salad onions in another month so. (I’ve had much better luck with the Walla Walla onion starts that McLendon’s carries than I ever have with sowing directly from seed or from bulbs.)

In case you’re wondering about the floating row covers, they serve dual purposes. These thin yet sturdy pieces of remay fabric let through light, air, and water, yet are light enough to be lifted by the growing seedlings. The result is that they function as a sort of green house, warming and insulating the soil, while keeping out pests. But the row covers are also necessary to protect the beds from cats, squirrels, and other animals that just love to dig through freshly turned soil. Without the row covers the loose soil beckons like a giant kitty litter box. Once the seedlings are well established and the soil crusts over a bit, the cats tend to lose interest.

So I’ve found floating row covers to be an absolute must.

As for what I’m currently eating from my garden, well, not much survived the couple of extended hard freezes we had this winter. I’ve got kale, of course, and in addition to the leaves, the tender stems and flower buds are delicious in stir-fries or sautéed with garlic and tossed with pasta. I’ve still got a few leeks left to harvest, and the over-wintered parsley is coming back nicely and should stock my kitchen until its newly sown replacement matures. Other than that, it’s just perennial herbs—rosemary, oregano, sage, and thyme—plus a few scattered chives.

But next week no doubt I’ll be adding radish and arugula thinnings to my salads, and the 2014 garden season will officially begin.

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally has a new home! After more than two months of searching, the group has decided to settle at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle.

So please join us for a housewarming celebration this Tuesday evening. We meet at 8:00 pm, but some folks show up even earlier than that for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And on Thursday, the Woodinville chapter meets.

With 215 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee has released the two studies it commissioned on proposals to raise the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 an hour. I’ve only just skimmed through them—there’s a ton of data and analysis—but I thought it useful to skip straight to the conclusion of the report from three professors at UC Berkeley, Local Minimum Wage Laws: Impacts on Workers, Families, and Businesses:

In 1994 David Card and Alan Krueger published a groundbreaking study that changed how many economists view the minimum wage. Card and Krueger (1994) looked at employment in fast- food restaurants across the New Jersey and Pennsylvania border after New Jersey increased its state minimum wage. They found no measurable negative impact on employment. As we reviewed above, a large body of research has since built upon their methodology. As a result, we have learned a great deal about how employers respond to increases in the minimum wage.

First, paying workers more can change their work performance. It can change their productivity, their attitude about their job, how hard they work, and their ability to make it to the job on time. Second, low-wage labor markets have high levels of job churning. Turnover levels are high as workers leave jobs looking for better wages or because they are unable to stay in their jobs due to poverty-related problems such as difficulties with transportation, child care, or health. As a result, rather than eliminating jobs, raising the minimum wages can reduce turnover and increase job stability. Third, firms can absorb higher labor costs through other means as well. They can pass on some of the increased costs to consumers through higher prices or earn lower profits. In short, firms use a combination of strategies to adjust to higher minimum wages without cutting jobs or hours (Schmitt 2013).

Nonetheless, it is important to emphasize again that the existing research literature is necessarily limited to the range of minimum wage increases that have been actually been implemented. While these studies are suggestive, they cannot tell us what might occur when minimum wages are increased significantly beyond existing local, state, or federal mandates.

Finally, raising the minimum wage is not a cure-all, especially in the face of larger forces generating inequality that require national attention. Still, our assessment of the research evidence is that these policies have worked well. They raise the incomes of low-wage workers and their families. The costs to businesses are absorbed largely by reduced turnover costs and by small price increases among restaurants. Additional benefits, such as reduced spending on public assistance programs and the local stimulus of additional spending by low-income families, might also occur. But we do not yet have enough definitive research on these effects.

Seattle’s business community insists that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will result in the loss of hundreds of businesses and thousands of jobs. That’s what opponents claim before every proposed minimum wage hike. Yet according to the UC Berkeley report, there is no evidence that this ever happens.

Yes, the proposed Seattle hike is larger than most others (though not unprecedented), so no, we cannot know for sure that a hike to $15 won’t have a negative impact on businesses or employment. But the point is, there is nothing to suggest that it would. And so the burden of proof is on opponents to support their arguments with more than just the anecdotal empty threats of business owners who are loathe to abandon the low-wage economy to which they’ve grown accustomed.

As someone who gives the slightest fuck about politics, I get plenty of email from various politicos. I get policy stuff from Patty Murray in the email associated with this blog, I assume since I write open letters to her here. I get political stuff at my personal email since I was a volunteer on her last campaign. I get emails from all sorts of campaigns for policies and politics. Usually lefty but sometimes others.

I just recently got on the national GOP list. And unlike the policy that lefty groups send, they seem to just be trolling. For instance, I got a link from them over the weekend to some shitty bumper stickers. They were anti-ACA bumper stickers with the odd phrasing OBAMA DOESN’T “CARE” OBAMA “COSTS.” Never mind that the law isn’t called Obamacare; That’s just their nickname for it. If they’re unhappy about the name they gave to a thing, why not stop calling it that instead of being angry?

No, whatever. You want to sell dumbass bumper stickers that don’t make a lick of sense, sure GOP. Who am I to stop you? But the subject of the headline was “Tick off the Democrats.” So I realize there are a lot of digressions for this short post, but here’s another one: just say “piss.” When you use the minced oath you just make it sound like you’re a 12 year old trying to get away with swearing in front of your parents. Well, your parents knew what you meant, and so do people reading your emails.

Second, and finally to the point, I’m not ticked off about a bumper sticker. I’m ticked off that the GOP policy is shit. Democrats and liberal groups email me policy, even when they’re going after the GOP. The GOP seem to think the most important thing is pissing people they don’t like off.

Huh. I’ve got this nagging feeling that there’s something missing from the Seattle Times editorial board’s list of things we need to do to attract and retain corporate headquarters:

Support and fund education for students ages 3 to 23. Raise the quality of and reduce inequity of access to pre-K, K-12 and higher education. Protect and enhance the area’s vaunted quality of life and make strategic investments in transportation. Continue to promote a civic culture that values innovation, diversity and tolerance.

Oh. Yeah, that’s right. They forgot to mention the money it takes to pay for all these great things.

It doesn’t take much courage to argue for expanded funding of pre-K, K-12, higher education, transportation, and other public investments that improve our collective quality of life. I do it all the time. But what’s consistently missing from the editorial page of our state’s paper of record is support for raising the taxes necessary to pay for these things. It’s as if there is only one side to the financial ledger—the spending side—and it would be absolutely crazy to even mention the topic of revenue.

I mean, if attracting corporate headquarters provides the strange logic you need to put you over the top in support of universal preschool, fine by me. Whatever floats your pre-K boat. But then what’s so wrong about taxing the incomes of highly paid executives in order to help pay for all the public investments that draw them to the region? Washington does have the most regressive tax structure in the nation, after all.

Without the mention of revenue, the editorial comes off as scolding the rest of us for stingily refusing to invest in the things corporate executives refuse to pay for. Weird.

– I usually like it when national and international orgs mention Washington, but boo to having disasters bad enough for that in Snohomish County.

– What would you like to see from the next SDOT director?

– The video above shows the strange procedure that takes place on Sunday mornings in Father Nary’s church in Carnot. The Muslim refugee families clear out of the sanctuary so that area Christians — many of whom may share the anti-Muslim sentiment of the “Christian” Anti-Balaka militias — can come to celebrate Mass.

– Don’t turn off Twitter, national leaders.

– Purity culture needs to be exposed for everything that it is, everything it teaches, and everything that it does to the women and men growing up in it. I understand the you have GOT to be kidding me reaction, but this is not something that can be so easily dismissed.

– They are taking a lot of handouts in the financial districts of various cities.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Lake Worth, FL, the location of this disturbing Florida news story.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from March, good luck!

Leviticus 25:44-45
And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property.

Discuss.

Truth Mashup: Glenn Beck’s crazy defense of anti-gay bill .

John Green: Is the American Dream real?:

Sam Seder: Poor Mitt Romney doesn’t want to be remembered as a loser.

Spying on the Senate:

• Desk to Desk: Explaining the CIA search allegations.
• Sen Feinstein’s double standard.
• Mark Fiore: Bestest Friends.

Thom: What do cancer and Reaganomics have in common?

Mental Floss: 21 mind-blowing now-extinct life forms.

Is this World War III.

Obama Nation:

• Obama calls Putin.

Barely Political meets the President.

Obama between two O’Reillys.

Pap and Thom: Another week, another GOP voter suppression bill.

The Prosecution of the Uber-rich:

• Sam Seder: Another demented billionaire says addressing inequality is Nazi talk.
• Sam Seder: Why do crazy rich people keep talking about Nazism?
• Sam Seder: Billionaire Home Depot founder apologizes for calling us Nazis.

Ann Telnaes: The high cost of the Iraq war.

The Law and Lesbians:

• It’s hard for a lesbian to get a proper stoning these days!
• Young Turks: So, a lesbian knocks on a church door….

Newsy News: CPAC, Crimea & Masturbation.

AC370—Breaking News:

• Young Turks: A freaking psychic?!?!
• Matt Binder: Rupert Murdoch’s insane Malaysia airplane conspiracy theory.
• Young Turks: What Noah’s Ark tells us about Flight 370.
• Sam Seder: CNN W.T.F?!?
• Young Turks: Chuck Todd rips CNN.
• Young Turks: FAUX News host blames flight 370 disappearance on Muslims.

David Pakman: Harry Reid, “Republicans are addicted to Koch”.

Things to do in your 20s: Get Covered:

Republicans Target Millennials in New Ads:

• Paycheck–The Original
• Paycheck with Last Week Tonight goodness
• All of the Above–The Original
• All of the Above with Last Week Tonight goodness
• Sam Seder: The G.O.P.’s bizarre millennial advertisement.
• Young Turks: GOP launches ad campaign courting minorities.

Sam Seder’s moving rememberance of Fred Phelps.

Maher: New Rules (via Crooks and Liars).

White House: West Wing Week.

Republicans Say the Darnedest Things:

• Richard Fowler: Paul Ryan is really convinced poor people are lazy
• Paul Ryan: The inner city expert.
• Richard Fowler takes on Paul Ryan’s stupid, racist comments
• Sharpton: Republicans still obsessed with Black “cheats”.
• Pap and Sam Seder: Why Republicans should not use Twitter.
• Truth Mashup: Watch Republicans dodge Ted Nugent questions.
• Sam Seder: Nutjob Chicago Republican, “gay rights are responsible for natural disasters, mental disorders”.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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Seattle’s Tim-Eyman-wannabe Elizabeth Campbell, has filed an initiative that would repeal recently imposed caps on popular Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Lyft, Sidecar, and uberX. Initiative 111 (pdf) would also eliminate the $50,000 annual license fee per TNC that was intended to fund enforcement of the remaining regulations, while removing any reference to “the stability of the market for taxi and for hire transportations services” from consideration for subsequent regulatory review. If passed, the initiative would pretty much gut the work of the city council, freeing up the TNCs to operate at will and virtually unrestricted, while leaving the taxi industry capped and heavily regulated. So much for the “level playing field” the TNCs have been clamoring for.

Of course, Campbell is a bit of a self-serving pro-business crackpot with a habit of filing initiatives on spec and then hoping the corporate contributions roll in. She’s already filed a faux $15 minimum wage initiative that would not in fact raise the minimum wage to $15 for most workers, while lavishing tax cuts on business. No contributions thus far. So it’s not clear whether Lyft, Sidecar, and Uber were even aware of this initiative before it was filed, let alone whether they would lend it financial support.

That said, my sense is that a well-crafted initiative lifting the caps on the popular TNCs could very well pass. Everybody loves to hate on the taxis. So it wouldn’t surprise me to see the TNCs fund such an initiative, if not this particular one.

I’ve emailed Campbell and other parties for comment. I’ll update when I know more.

Great news!

According to a poll released Thursday by PEMCO Insurance, more than half of area drivers — 58 percent, to be exact — say that if a toll is put into place across Lake Washington on I-90, they will drive across the bridge less often. … A toll would propel 28 percent of drivers to choose greener commuting options, such as taking the bus, carpooling, or telecommuting.

Then, with consumers unwilling to drive across the lake to save 20 cents on a burger, we can raise the minimum wage even higher in Seattle. Because location, location, location!

God forbid we should be willing to pay for the public infrastructure we use, and all that, but if tolling I-90 not only helps eliminate unnecessary trips (and the climate-changing carbon emissions that go with them), it also helps support a more livable minimum wage here in Seattle, then I’d call that a win-win!

Since he’s been back Goldy has, rightly, taken The Seattle Times’ editorial board to task for all sorts of nonsense. It’s a target rich environment, and it’s the largest paper in the state. But there are other editorial boards spewing other nonsense. And I think it does the Trib a disservice not to mention things like this.

Governor should veto overreaching drone bill

No, he should sign it into law.

Precious little got done in Olympia this past session on some truly important, much-needed issues, from transportation funding to teacher evaluations.

We’re $2 Billion short on McCleary, and the state only managed to pass a tiny addition to that in the supplemental budget, but teacher evaluations is the education thing they’re pissed off about? That isn’t even the main thrust of the piece, and I agree with them that the session was pretty well wasted. But holy shit. Anyway:

But somehow legislators found time to pass House Bill 2789, an overreaching mishmash of several measures. It would regulate drone use by state and local agencies in a way that could have unforeseen effects on public access to government documents.

All regulation “could have unforeseen effects.” That’s why we have a process to repeal laws. If this is too restrictive, future legislatures can revisit it. I realize this legislature is pretty dysfunctional, but it doesn’t have to be that way in the future. But the idea that law enforcement, or other government agencies, should have a blank check with this type of surveillance until we have the perfect plan seems unhelpful.

The issues at stake are too complicated to address without more study, and Gov. Jay Inslee should veto HB 2789. What’s needed is a task force composed of stakeholders to recommend a clear and more comprehensive proposal that would address all future uses of drones, from private to regulatory and law enforcement.

Governor Inslee could sign the law into place and then we could still have that task force. But it would be coming from a place where our rights not to be watched by state and local governments is the default position. I mean unless you think the drone issue requires immediate action.

It’s not as if this is an issue requiring immediate action. State and local governments have no plans in the near future to use drones, but this highly restrictive bill threatens their ability to someday take advantage of an important emerging technology.

So, OK. There’s more, it’s mostly just a list of stuff the government could theoretically do with drones. If local governments want to do that in the future, I’m sure future legislators will take it up, task force or no task force.

Just a reminder to the regulars and an FYI to the new people: there is, in fact, a comment policy here. It’s pretty loose anyway, and it’s sometimes enforced more in the breach than in actual fact. But, you know, stay on topic and if you want to say something, there are 3 open threads as well as the Drinking Liberally and Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza act as open threads that are basically unmoderated (other than spam and copyright violations).

Now, I realize that pointing to the comment policy means that I’m somewhat committing myself to more moderating. Fortunately, the page is loading quicker, so it won’t take as long to do. But try to behave.

And feel free to use this as an open thread.

King County voters will soon receive their ballots for an April 22 special election in which they will be asked to approve or reject Proposition 1, a $130 million hike in local car tabs and sales tax. At stake is an additional $50 million a year desperately needed to maintain county and city roads, along with the $80 million a year Metro needs to stave off a devastatingly regressive 17 percent cut in bus service. So of course the Seattle Times chooses to kick off its coverage of this very important issue with a front page article featuring the views of the one organization opposing Prop 1!

An early face-to-face over King County’s proposed car-tab-and-sales-tax measure to fund transit and roads took place in front of one of the few organizations opposing the measure, the pro-highway Eastside Transportation Association (ETA).

… [ETA member Dick] Paylor and audience members complained about how Metro King County Transit is managed, voiced concerns about seeing some virtually empty buses on some routes and suggested having bus passengers themselves pick up a larger share of the service’s costs.

“The problem isn’t on the revenue side, it’s on the expense-control side,” said Paylor, arguing that Metro is operating under a “broken financial model.”

Jesus. ETA is just a who’s-who of old, pro-roads white guys (like the bitterly anti-transit Jim Horn), while the Yes side is a coalition of business, labor, transportation, environmental, and social service groups that enjoys endorsements from 19 mayors. So this is the equivalent of kicking off your climate change coverage by talking to the owners of a coal-fired power plant!

And of course, Paylor is totally wrong. The remaining problem is almost entirely on the revenue side of the equation. Through 2014, Metro will collect $1.2 billion less in sales tax revenue than previously projected, thanks to the Great Recession. Meanwhile, through a series of cuts, efficiencies, and fare hikes, Metro has lowered expenses or increased revenue by $148 million a year—$798 million from 2009 to 2013 alone. The only way for Metro to balance its budget without raising additional tax revenue would be to cut service and raise fares. Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what ETA advocates.

But wait… the stoopid doesn’t stop there. For the Seattle Times insists on citing Paylor citing the Washington Policy Center, a right-wing “think” tank best known for climate-change denial and its close ties to the stand-your-ground promoting ALEC:

Citing data from the conservative Washington Policy Center, Paylor said that from 2000 to 2012, Metro’s operating costs increased 83 percent, while the inflation rate over that span was 33 percent.

Uh-huh. And you know what else has increased over the past decade? Everything!

King County’s population has grown by 16 percent since 2000, while Metro’s service hours have grown 4 percent since 2008 alone, despite a 2 percent reduction in service from its least efficient routes. Costs for providing Metro’s paratransit services—federally mandated under the Americans with Disabilities Act—have grown by 25 percent since 2008, while security costs have grown by 80 percent, due to fare enforcement, increased policing, and enhanced tunnel security. To offset its revenue shortfall Metro shifted capital funds to operations, delaying the purchase of new buses that would have been less expensive to operate and maintain. Meanwhile, pension contributions—at a rate set by the state legislature—have increased by more the 40 percent.

And on and on and on. I won’t even bother fact checking the Washington Policy Center, because only an idiot or a liar would pit the CPI against Metro’s operating costs over a 12-year span and presume that there was any meaningful contextual relationship between the two numbers.

And yet there it is, totally unchallenged, in black and white on the front page of the Seattle Times. Next stop no doubt: a credulous citation on the paper’s anti-tax editorial page.

“As bus ridership rises, battle over funding measure heats up,” the Seattle Times headline reads in the teach-the-controversy tradition of climate deniers and Intelligent Design bamboozlers. Except there is no battle. It’s every other transportation stake-holder in the county versus the anti-transit ETA. And, I suppose, the Seattle Times.

To be certain, police misconduct and the political storm surrounding it were never my beat, but I know enough about the subject to know that the Seattle Police Department’s handling of the issue these past few months has been more than a little bit weird.

Misconduct findings have been summarily reversed, with not much in the way of a rational explanation (and no, arguing that the appeals were handled in “a manner consistent” with a process with “serious flaws” is not a rational explanation for a troubled department under a federal consent decree). Reformers like former interim chief Jim Pugel have been disappeared, replaced by one-time Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) vice-president Harry Bailey. And while actual misbehaving street cops get their records expunged, the SPD’s most effective and accessible public information officer, Sgt. Sean Whitcomb (who irked some SPD insiders for not being sufficiently devout in his defense of the thin blue line), remains exiled to lands unknown on a trumped up ethics complaint related to the department’s wildly successful Hemp Fest Doritos giveaway.

And of course, then there was the reversal of the reversal of the discipline to the officer who threatened Dom, an astounding fuck-up on both a policy and a communications level, that left Bailey looking weak, unserious, and uninformed.

So, how to explain the apparently anti-reformist behavior at SPD during the first few months of Mayor Ed Murray’s administration? Well, one bit of rather obvious speculation that I keep hearing is that Murray cut a deal with SPOG in order to get their campaign endorsement.

Now, I have no idea if this is true. And there’s no real point in asking Murray, as he’d be absolutely crazy to say anything but an emphatic “No!” So let’s just assume that’s his answer. But regardless, at this point the truth isn’t nearly as important as perception, and fair or not, three months into his first term Murray is beginning to come off as a toady to SPOG—and while that may win him points within SPD ranks, it won’t help him build the consensus he’ll need from the broader community in order to push through the reforms he ultimately proposes.

SPD’s cultural issues are just too ingrained to be solved simply by cultivating buy-in from the rank and file. Most officers are courteous and professional, yet few are willing to break the code and turn against the bad apples who ruin the reputation for all. Thus true reform can only come from outside the ranks. So if Murray is to be an effective reformer, he’s going to need to be perceived as leading the department, rather than as acceding to the demands of SPOG.