HorsesAss.Org

I couldn’t help but be amused by the headline of this morning’s Seattle Times editorial: “Crushing the illusion of nonpartisan King County Council.”

IN an election overshadowed by gubernatorial and presidential contests, voters last year opted to change the Metropolitan King County Council from a partisan to a nonpartisan office. The vote was one thing, the reality quite another.

A perfect example includes the political high jinks associated with naming the council replacement for longtime Democrat Dow Constantine, the new county executive. His departure leaves eight members — four Democrats and four Republicans — or, four former Democrats and Republicans.

At risk of crushing the illusion, harsh partisanship reigns.

Well, duh-uh!

Just because a charter amendment officially declares an office nonpartisan doesn’t make it magically so. City councils throughout the county have long been putatively nonpartisan, yet even the most casual local political observers all know which council members hail from which party. Without the “R” or “D” next to their name on the ballot, the average voter might not always know who’s who, but as the Times points out, that sort of skin-deep nonpartisanship is merely an illusion.

Or in the Times’ case, perhaps it’s a delusion? I’ve long wondered if the Times’ ardent support for nonpartisan races was disingenuous or delusional, but now I’m guessing it’s a bit of both. The hope was, I suppose, that eliminating partisan labels might break the Democrat’s stranglehold on county government, but instead, it’s just ended up breaking county government itself. Without an officially partisan means of appointing an unofficially partisan official, and with no procedural method for breaking a tie, a fiasco like we’re seeing in the deadlock over Constantine’s replacement was both predictable and inevitable.

Now, thanks to the pleasant-sounding but boneheaded measure to make county offices nonpartisan, the council’s post-Dow row has sucked three legislative districts into political limbo with it. At least one, and perhaps two legislative seats will certainly change hands after the start of the 2010 session (Fred Jarrett’s replacement, and perhaps Joe McDermott’s or Zack Hudgins’), and that sort of disruption is simply inexcusable.

Or, of course, this all could have been avoided if, as the Times had previously advocated, the Democrats on the council had merely caved to the Republican block from the start. That’s likely the only way this dispute will be settled in the end, because Democrats do tend to care about governance, and are no match for Republicans when it comes to harsh partisan discipline. I suppose such a “compromise” could be spun as an act of nonpartisan collaboration… but more in the spirit of the way the Vichy French collaborated with the Germans, than the sort of high minded collaboration the supporters of the charter amendment fancifully imagined.

No doubt nonpartisanship is a noble ideal, and was roundly espoused as such by the founding fathers, but even they quickly fell into deeply partisan camps not long after the ink on the Constitution had dried. While our two party system is nowhere to be found in our nation’s charter, its spontaneous development represented one of the most ingenious aspects of the American experiment, for by institutionalizing and legitimizing political dissent it was here that the notion of a loyal opposition first reached full fruition.

Yes, institutional partisanship can be nasty and messy and chaotic, and as we’re currently seeing in the Senate health care debate, with strict party discipline, the minority can often exploit the system to obstruct both necessary reforms and the will of the people. But over the past 220 years, this system has also granted our nation extraordinary political stability, without which it never could have grown into the greatest political, economic and military power the world has ever known. It was through the institutionalized dissent of our two party system that we survived the Great Depression without succumbing to either communism or fascism, and went on to simultaneously defeat the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II, our democratic values largely intact.

Some might argue that if party politics was good enough for the so-called “greatest generation,” it should be good enough for us, but that really misses the point. Partisanship is part of human nature, and as such it will be part of any system of government we humans create, regardless of whether that self-realization is embodied in law.

The Times, the Municipal League and other cynics and do-gooders can rail all they want about the mere illusion of a nonpartisan council, but it can never be any more than that. Nor should it.

– As the health care bill gets sliced and diced into a much more corporate-friendly and ineffective skeleton of its previous self in the Senate, I’m struck by how the arguments for still passing it sound like the arguments that were made (by myself and others) to pass the local roads and transit measure in 2007. Back then, I was fairly convinced that we only had a small window of opportunity on getting real transit and that window might close. It turns out that it got done – and got done in a much better way – a year later.

Although, for fear of being wrong twice, I’m still leaning towards the folks who are arguing that this is our last chance on health care for a while. The only thing that leads me to disagree with Drum’s linked post is that the condition of our health care system now is so much worse than in any of those previous years. It’s possible that the demand for reform from the public will not subside like it did in previous years.

And if anyone was on the fence about the willingness of Obama to side with the American public over the interests of the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, I think Jame Hamsher has definitively put that question to rest right here. At the beginning of Obama’s term, I considered his attempts to keep ties with Joe Lieberman his biggest mistake. But even though it’s turning out exactly as I expected – with Joe Lieberman being a hypocritical jackass and trying to derail real reforms – it doesn’t seem to be bothering Obama too much. It just adds more ammunition to those, like Matt Taibbi, who have come to believe that Obama has little interest in challenging the corporate corruption that continues to dominate our political system.

Passing a health care bill, even a half-assed one, might have one potential benefit that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere. Once it passes (if it passes), there will be a stronger interest among both Obama and the Democrats in Congress not to have it become a major boondoggle. There will be a clearer sense of ownership of the health care problem, and perhaps that might lead to a more rational discussion within the caucus of how to fix it, rather than simply worrying about the influence and power of the lobbies who are wielding a large amount of influence to simply kill the effort entirely. Or maybe we’re all just fucked, I’m not sure.

– The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, claims that money laundered by drug gangs saved some the world’s major banks from collapsing during the recent financial crisis. Worldwide, criminal gangs from Afghanistan, Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere make about $352 billion from the global market for illicit drugs.

– Californians will be voting on whether to legalize marijuana this November. Polls show that support for legalizing marijuana there is over 50%. The initiative that they’ll be voting on also addresses the personal growing question, something that the recently drafted bill here (HB 2401) in Washington’s State House doesn’t. The initiative there will allow for a 25 square foot growing area for personal use. HB 2401 should probably adopt something similar to that.

– I’ve been reading up on the case of Roe v TeleTech, a job discrimination case from Kitsap County where a company (TeleTech) terminated a medical marijuana patient because she failed a drug screening. The woman had actually started the job and worked for a week with no problems before the decision was made to terminate her for violating the company’s drug-free workplace policy. She was authorized by a doctor to use marijuana for her migraines and she did not use the drug at work. Her medical use didn’t affect her ability to work in any way, but the court ruled in favor of TeleTech. Since this occurred, a 2007 revision of the law made it clearer that companies like TeleTech could only terminate a person if they were in a safety-sensitive position or if they wanted to use their medicine within the workplace. The fired woman is petitioning for the State Supreme Court to review the case.

– As part of their attempt to build a downtown entertainment district around the new light rail station, Sea-Tac is using eminent domain to condemn a private surface lot (paying the owners $2 million less than what they recently paid to acquire it) and building a public parking garage in its place. The owners of the lot, James and Doris Cassan, have an uphill battle in fighting the action. The Supreme Court ruled a few years back in Kelo v. City of New London that it was legal for cities to take property like this for large-scale development projects. It also doesn’t help the Cassans that people would really love to have more public parking at the light rail stations rather than having to pay to park in a surface lot (which is why the use of eminent domain worries a lot of people in the first place, because it can become an instrument of mob rule). What I find most interesting about this is that it potentially makes the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and pro-transit groups – who don’t want lots of parking at light rail stops – temporary allies. [via Balko]

– Finally, Dominic Holden ridicules our Attorney General.

Because it’s worth repeating.

One of my biggest complaints with Washington legislators, even those who have long recognized the need for substantial tax restructuring, is their general lack of creativity in approaching the issue, both on the political level of how one might pass an income tax, and on the practical level of what form an income tax might take.

That’s one of the reasons I so quickly latched on to the notion of a high-earners income tax. It’s an imperfect idea that displaces only a small segment of our highly regressive tax structure, but it’s a savvy proposal, politically and rhetorically well suited to our times: an unprecedented budget crisis induced by an economic downturn for which much of the blame can reasonably be laid at the feet of some of our nation’s wealthiest and most powerful corporations and individuals.

Rightly or wrongly, there isn’t much sympathy for the rich these days, a sentiment which the high-earner’s income tax proposal effectively exploits. I’m not being cynical here, simply politically adroit; Washington’s tax structure is bizarrely and cruelly regressive, and if our current crisis presents an opportunity to address this inequity even just a little, progressives would be stupid not to take advantage of it.

All that said, I would of course prefer a somewhat broader income tax that did more to address the inherent regressivity of our current system, while providing a more adequate and reliable revenue stream for the future (i.e., one which grows state revenues largely in pace with growth in the state economy). And in that spirit I’d like to take a moment to briefly introduce an immodest proposal of my own, something I call the Education Income Tax.

The proposal is simple. An income tax would be levied, dedicated solely to funding K-12 education (you know, our state’s “paramount duty”), and that income tax would be the only source of state funding for K-12 education.

The Education Income Tax essentially takes K-12 spending out of the general fund and into its own budget, with it’s own dedicated revenue stream. It also forces legislators and the governor to balance a popular public service against a generally unpopular tax. And by walling off both K-12 spending and the income tax that supports it from the rest of the budget, it eliminates the possibility of budgetary tricks through the usual fungibility of funds.

From a tax fairness perspective, the Education Income Tax would represent a huge step in the right direction by supplanting about 40 percent of the revenue that currently comprises the general fund. The state portion of the property tax, ostensibly a school levy, could be eliminated entirely, while a substantial cut in sales and other taxes would also be possible. I would expect the Education Income Tax to raise more money for K-12 education than we currently spend, yet the majority of households would still pay less in state taxes than they spend now, as the entire system is somewhat flattened.

But most importantly, by locking an income tax to education funding and vice versa, this proposal could help many voters overcome their inherent suspicion of any income tax proposal. And any income tax proposal will ultimately have to be approved by voters.

Yes, there are downsides to such a proposal. Dedicated taxes violate basic principles of sound taxation, and income tax revenue tends to be more volatile than other taxes, but the responsible use of rainy day funds can provide an effective buffer against the normal economic cycle, and besides, there’s nothing wrong with forcing elected officials to do their jobs… you know, making tough decisions. If the Legislature is faced with the choice of slashing K-12 education, or raising income tax rates during an economic downturn, so be it.

Ideally, proposals like this wouldn’t be necessary, and Washington would have followed the recommendations of the Gates Commission report years ago. But politically, we have to find some way to make an income tax more palatable to a majority of voters. Perhaps the Education Income Tax isn’t the way to go. Perhaps a high-earners income tax isn’t either. But if we want to maintain the same level of public investment and quality of life Washingtonians have grown accustomed to — and which have contributed greatly to our state’s prosperity over recent decades — then at some point an income tax becomes necessary.

And it may take some very creative thinking to get us past that point.

Join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier for dinner.

Tonight we’ll raise a toast to everyone’s good health (while we can afford it), and have a moment of silence for the more than 20,000 people a year who die for want of affordable health care while members of the Republican and Lieberman for Connecticut parties obstruct health insurance reforms.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 340 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

As has been widely reported at Publicola, the P-I and elsewhere, the putatively nonpartisan King County Council deadlocked last night along partisan lines as they struggled to name a replacement to fill Dow Constantine’s vacated seat through the end of 2010.

Which raises a question. Were the Municipal League, the Seattle Times and other so-called civic “leaders” naive, stupid or just plain cynical in endorsing last year’s charter amendment that made all county offices nonpartisan? I mean, honestly… what the fuck did they think would happen in situations such as this?

It also raises the question of exactly what Republicans on the council are trying to achieve by blocking the appointment of State Sen. Joe McDermott, the obvious favorite of District 9 Democratic PCO’s. Are they hoping that an interim appointment would attract multiple legislators to the race (Rep. Zack Hudgins, for instance), thus creating additional headaches for Dems as they attempt not to lose too many seats next November?  Surely they don’t believe a Republican has a shot at the seat?

Either way they may end up regretting their gambit and the hard feelings it is creating. When Rob McKenna vacated his seat after winning the AG’s race, Reagan Dunn was appointed unanimously. As prominent Republican Toby Nixon points out in the P-I’s comment thread, next time around, Democrats might not be so gracious:

The Republicans need to keep in mind that the time may come when Kathy Lambert or Reagan Dunn (just a couple of examples) are elected to higher office and the council will be choosing their successor — and the Democrats on the council will remember well what is happening right now.

So how’s that charter amendment working out for you, Toby?

From The Columbian:

“I’ve never been so fired up for a campaign in my life,” said Pridemore, D-Vancouver, who is serving his second term in the state Senate. “It’s 320 days to Election Day, and the clock has started.”

Pridemore said he has assembled a strong campaign team and will begin raising money immediately, even as he prepares for a grueling 60-day legislative session in January.

So there you have it.

She’s in. From The Columbian.

I hadn’t realized it until I saw a link in the comment threads, but the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy recently updated its comprehensive survey, “Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States,” and Washington once again tops the list of the Ten Most Regressive State Tax Systems… and by far.

Hooray for us!

Let’s put this in perspective. If we were to totally eliminate our state and local sales tax, property tax, B&O tax and various excise taxes and fees (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco, etc.), and replace the revenue with a single graduated income tax that levied a 2.9% rate on our wealthiest households (those with an average income of $1.8 million), and a 17.3% rate on our poorest (those earning an average of $11,000), with those in the middle three quintiles paying between 9.5% and 12.7%, it would have the same exact impact on Washington families as our current tax system does now.

Can anybody reasonably argue that such a system would be fair? I don’t think so.

But that’s exactly what we have now.

Jon was too shy to name names, but the “well-known Republican personality” rumored to be weighing a run to replace Rep. Brian Baird in WA-03 is none other than crazy-conservative talk host Lars Larson.

That would certainly make the race, um, interesting.

UPDATE:
Did Larson just deny the rumor in the comment thread?

2. lars spews:

Hilarious. and flattering. and not the least bit valid. but kinda fun …

Anybody can spoof an email address and URL in a comment, so we can’t know that’s really Larson, but the IP resolves to Rose City Digital, the same outfit that does the KXL website. Hmm.

Who the hell goes to party meetings in December?

For the first time in a long, long time, I did Monday night, here in Vancouver.

Ken at NPI Advocate notes that activist Maria Rodriguez-Salazar has announced she is running for what will be an open seat in WA-03.

Rodriguez-Salazar came to the Clark County Democrats’ meeting Monday night and spoke briefly to the group. At one point she referred to herself as a “Blue Dog.”

And check out this bit from the KATU story linked above:

Being the mother of three children gives Rogriguez-Salazar the drive to choose “focus on the family” as her political platform.

Heh, I think that’s already copyrighted. Or maybe not, but it’s a hell of a catchy slogan. I don’t know quite what to make of a Blue Dogging, focusing on the family candidate.

Denny Heck, the former legislator and TVW founder, sent a representative in the person of attorney Jim Luce, who read a prepared statement. Heck is also pondering a run.

Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (17th LD,) also spoke and compared the 17th District to the 3rd Congressional district as a whole, emphasizing the need to grow jobs. Wallace was very gracious about the fact that there are going to be lots of candidates.

An official from the 49th District Democrats confirmed that Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver (49th LD,) is definitely running.

The open seat at the Congressional level is opening up races further down-ticket, and there were several possible legislative candidates present. One to keep an eye on is Monica Stonier in the 17th LD, who has announced for Wallace’s seat. A middle school teacher, Stonier was an Obama delegate to the national convention last year. She also has a pretty decent speaking style and likely pretty extensive community connections, from both the education and the political worlds.

There are also strong rumors of a well-known Republican personality getting into the race as early as today.

Earlier today I argued that Democrats need to take advantage of our current short-term revenue crisis to fix our long-term revenue deficit, by taking the budget crisis as an opportunity to win voter approval of a high-earners income tax. But how do we do this at the same time we meet the very real need to raise additional revenues now?

It’s not all that complicated.

Gov. Gregoire supports a revenue package, and the Legislature will likely pass one, no doubt comprised of hikes in alcohol and tobacco taxes, elimination of some tax breaks, and perhaps extension of the sales tax to professional services and/or a small hike in the sales tax rate itself. None of this will be popular, and most of it will be regressive, and while an emergency clause would eliminate the possibility of the tax hikes being delayed by a referendum, we should expect an attempt to repeal the package by initiative. So my suggestion to legislators is, why not pass the package, and then just put a repeal measure on the ballot yourselves?

Sound crazy? Not really. Take this scenario for example.

Let’s say you pass a package that raises an additional $1 billion a year in new revenue, while at the same time putting on the ballot a referendum that would repeal the hikes and replace them with a tax on household income in excess of $300,000 a year. Voters are given a choice: they can keep the current taxes that hit just about everybody by voting No on the measure, or they can vote Yes and shift these taxes to a handful of our state’s wealthiest households… those same households that profit most from Washington’s most regressive tax structure in the nation.

But one could take this concept even further. Instead of a dollar for dollar offset, the high-earners income tax could be set at a rate that raises, say, $1.5 billion a year, with the extra $500 million coming back to voters in the form of a half cent reduction in the state sales tax below our current 6% rate, or maybe a similar sized reduction in the state property tax.

Vote Yes, and not only do you get rid of the new tax hikes, the vast majority of voters would actually lower their own taxes. That’s how Tim Eyman wins initiatives (when he wins them), by promising to put money back into voters’ pockets. And unlike an Eyman initiative, there’s no corresponding cut in popular state services.

This isn’t just smart policy, it’s smart politics, as it leverages the short-term crisis to help address a long-term problem, while providing an outlet for voters who might otherwise vote for a straight repeal initiative. In fact, the Legislature’s referred referendum could be written in such a way as to protect the short-term revenue against repeal by initiative, essentially by re-enacting the hikes in the not so unlikely circumstance that both ballot measures passed.

Step 1: enact the revenue package legislatively. Step 2: refer a referendum to the ballot that enacts the same revenue package, but replaces it with a high-earners income tax once implemented. (In the eventuality that an income tax is passed, but ruled unconstitutional, the existing revenue package would remain in effect.)

Simple really, and not all that confusing.

And a helluva lot more responsible than passing up the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to seriously debate an income tax.

State Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver(49th LD,) will announce his candidacy for Congress in WA-03 within the next 24 hours, sources close to Pridemore tell me.

The other announced Democrat is state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (17th LD,) who entered the race last week, after the decision by incumbent U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., not to seek another term.

Announced Republicans include former Bush administration official David Castillo, Washougal city council member Jon Russell, and “yelling town hall man” David Hedrick. Also reportedly interested is state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD.)

The third district stretches from its population center in Clark County at its south end (just across the river from Portland, Or.,) to parts of Thurston County, home of the state capital Olympia. Longview-Kelso in Cowlitz County and Centralia-Chehalis in Lewis County are less populated but still significant population areas.

And for the last time, the district is not as conservative as people from Seattle and the Clark County Republican Party seem to think. It’s a flat-out swing district, and Clark County’s media landscape is dominated by Portland television stations, who generally come across the river only for things that are bleeding or snowing.

There’s a lot riding on who puts together the best campaigns and articulates the rising discontent regular people have towards our government and the elite institutions that very nearly destroyed everything.

So there’s no reason not to state the obvious: I will be an early and enthusiastic supporter of Pridemore. He’s a smart, tough, seasoned politician who still knows who he is and why he is in public service. And I genuinely mean no disrespect for Wallace with that statement; she is a fine Democrat in her own right and will deservedly have many supporters. But Craig’s my guy, just so I’m clear about that.

I suppose this will set off a predictable flurry of talk about who can win, and that discussion has happened over the last few days in phone calls and emails all over the district anyhow. Personally I believe either of them could win a general election, so I’m not going to cast any stones in that regard.

Pridemore has won both county wide and in his admittedly more liberal legislative district. Nothing wrong with that, and if Pridemore is willing to put his neck out there and fight for what he believes in, then more power to him. He’s also very, very bright, articulate and good with numbers, so anyone facing him in a general election will need to be on their game. Don’t let anyone from down here play games with you about his chances, he’s the real deal.

Much attention was paid to the Nov. 5th shooting rampage at Fort Hood, and rightly so. It was a terrible tragedy in which 13 were killed and 30 others wounded by a deeply disturbed U.S. Army psychiatrist.

Yet news today that 12 more Army soldiers committed suicide in November, bringing the yearly total to a record high 147 suicides thus far in 2009, will likely pass with little national debate. And that’s just the suicides in the Army. As of last month 334 active members of the U.S. military services had committed suicide in 2009, also a record high.

By comparison, the U.S. military has so far suffered 304 fatalities in Afghanistan this year, and an additional 150 in Iraq.

Politicians in both parties like to talk about supporting the troops. I doubt the families of the service men and women who took their own lives believe we’ve supported them nearly enough.

I agree wholeheartedly with the headline, if not the text of a recent Seattle Times editorial: “Washington state’s finances require long-term solutions.”

Of course, the one long-term solution the Times doesn’t mention is tax restructuring… you know, reforming our tax system so that revenues actually keep pace with growth in the economy, while distributing the burden more efficiently and fairly. That’s to be expected from the Times ed board, which on revenue issues has pretty much become a mouthpiece of the state GOP.

But the editorial does make one argument that’s as applicable to the revenue side of the equation as it is to the spending, and which progressives should heed as we attempt to deal with this unprecedented budget crisis:

Opponents will say that such suggestions don’t produce that much money in this budget period, and they will be right. These are ideas for the long term — and now is a really good time to consider them.

This is, of course, exactly the argument I’ve been hearing from many of my fellow Democrats whenever I advocate for a high-earner’s income tax as part of the solution to the current fiscal crisis. It can’t produce revenue fast enough, I was told last year as legislators battled to put together a two-year budget in the face of record revenue shortfalls. It can’t produce revenue fast enough, I’m being told this year, as legislators prepare to fill an additional $2.6 billion gap. And no doubt the same argument will be used to brush aside the suggestion again in 2011 and 2012, as the state struggles to deal with what are becoming perennial revenue shortfalls.

An income tax is a distraction, I’m told, that only complicates the political machinations necessary to assure that some sort of tax increase be a part of the current budget negotiations.

Yeah, well, the problem with this line of reasoning is that while implementing an income tax can never be a short-term solution, it’s exactly the kind of long-term solution we need to make sure that more short-term solutions won’t be as necessary in the future. And with the budget crisis — and the unpopular cuts it necessitates — fresh in voters minds, now is the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to get some sort of income tax approved by voters.

Wait until we don’t have a short-term budget crisis, and there won’t be the popular will to swallow and accept an otherwise unpopular long-term reform.

The Times editors and their fellow Republicans are thinking long-term; they want to use this crisis to permanently shrink the size of state and local government and cripple its ability to provide the services people want. They may not be willing to come out and say it, but they are advocating for a paradigm shift, in which government plays a much smaller role in our local economy, and a much smaller role in funding health, welfare, education and public infrastructure.

We should be thinking long-term too.