HorsesAss.Org

A couple weeks ago, when I first set out on my recent series of obsessively wonky posts on Washington’s budget crisis and the structural revenue deficit at its heart, I pretty much knew what to expect.  Readership would trail off, incoming links would virtually disappear, and my comment threads would fill with automatic gainsaying, tired, anti-tax rhetoric, and pointless personal attacks on my manhood, my alleged socialism, and of course, my ethnicity.

i told u in your last post goldstein, get out of here and go to that garbage dump israel, and take that homo barney frank with u

No, my trolls rarely fail to disappoint.  And neither have the local media, whose coverage of this crisis, as expected, has largely focused on the spending side of the equation and the political machinations behind it, while providing little if any discussion of its causes, outside of the frame of the current economic cycle.

It is easy to point to a four-year period and show that spending has increased from X to Y.  It is much harder to cogently place this increase within the proper historical, economic and statistical context.  And so, for the most part, our media has failed to even try, and understandably so, for properly done, the subject matter is inherently godawful dry and boring.  Why should a daily newspaper devote precious column inches to explaining a premise that is at its best tedious, and at its worse, a maddeningly counter-intuitive and downright unpopular challenge to conventional wisdom?

Thus I was pleasantly surprised to read Seattle Times economic columnist Jon Talton this morning proclaim that now is the “Time for state to discuss taxes despite difficulties.”

It’s quixotic — or deranged. Such are most of the reactions, depending on political persuasion, to state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown’s idea of an income tax on high-wage earners to help fund education.

Huh.  Sounds like Talton is calling out his own editorial board.  But…

Even so, Brown’s proposal ought to open an important conversation about taxes and the state’s future competitiveness. It’s one that’s difficult to have without arousing partisan passions, cooked statistics and charges of socialism or a sales-tax-driven war on the poor. It’s one we should have nevertheless.

There… was that so hard?

As Talton points out, Washington’s individual and corporate tax “burden” remains relatively low while our per capita income remains high, and our heavy reliance on the sales tax leaves us with the most regressive tax structure in the nation.  Talton also peeks beneath the robes of the rarely challenged orthodoxy that inexorably links tax rates to private sector competitiveness.

Some of the states with the highest tax rates and tax burdens (taxes paid divided by income) are also the richest and most economically powerful.

These include New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and California. Some states with very low taxes also suffer from limited economies and a relative lack of well-paid jobs. This doesn’t mean that high taxes can’t ultimately hurt competitiveness, only that reflexive tax cutting is no panacea, either. Rather, tax policy seems to be one element in a state’s overall competitive DNA.

Our problem, as Talton explains, is that despite such facts, talk of higher taxes is generally political suicide.

Anti-tax activists have been effective in portraying government as always bloated and inefficient. This sidesteps answering what roles government must do well and which cost money to enhance competitiveness in a complex, global economy.

That’s all I’ve been asking for:  a public conversation on the proper size and scope of government, and how best to adequately, sustainably and fairly pay for those services and infrastructure investments we collectively want and need.  With rare exceptions like Talton’s column, we aren’t getting that conversation in our local media, and apart from Brown and a handful of other legislators, we aren’t getting that conversation from our elected officials either.

I’m not saying it’s an easy conversation, or one that won’t come with political costs.  But in the long run, it’s a conversation we can’t afford to avoid.

It looks like the Bush Administration’s war on terror continues.

UPDATE: I want to congratulate commenter Rick D, who has officially broken the world record for stupidity in the comment thread down below. When claiming that Obama hasn’t released his birth certificate is only the 3rd or 4th stupidest thing you’ve said in a comment thread, you’ve accomplished something special.

I think Jon Stewart had a pretty good take on these nutballs.

I’d have to agree that with Sam Taylor of the Bellingham Herald that teabagging is going to be news. The teabaggers should prance around all they want in public with their teabags. Life is like a box of teabags, and stupid is as…well, you know.

I heartily encourage the teabaggers to publicly present their dissent, even though some of them doubtless were calling liberals traitors and such for daring to dissent six years ago.

What would be interesting to know is the thought process, such as it is, that inspires teabagging. Sure, they’ll blather about “out of control government spending,” but they didn’t give a flying fig about it during the last administration and if someone today dares to talk about reforming the defense procurement system then the teabag noise machine starts in about “threatening America’s safety.”

So it’s really “government spending on things they don’t like that helps people they don’t like” that pisses them off. Wasting trillions on weapons systems that don’t work and invading countries that shouldn’t have been invaded was just fine with them.

Now, there is certainly ample room to criticize flaws in the TARP and the stimulus plan, but that’s not really what the teabaggers are doing. They’re just banging their tribal teabagging drum as loud and as hard as they can, the pulsating and quickening rhythm sending shivers of delight up their spines, as Glenn Beck weeps and Rush Limbaugh explodes. It’s all so..nostalgic.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNHuI0Pw0m8[/youtube]

Funny thing, though: elections have consequences. If the teabaggers don’t like it they should prance around with their mildly stimulating beverage bags, and see if a majority of the American people agree with them. I think we all know the answer to that already.

Apparently, I have kidney stones, a malady I’ve heard others describe as more painful than childbirth.  I’m not sure why I’d be prone to the disease, considering I sit at home most days drinking copious quantities of green tea, water and seltzer, so I’m just going to blame our frustrating lawmakers in Olympia, and the fistfuls of Tums they’ve prompted me to swallow over the past couple months.

The symptoms started about a week ago, but last night was the first time the pain got bad enough to keep me awake.  Still, it’s not so bad at the moment, and I hope to get through this without cracking open my prescription of Vicodin.  We’ll see.

I mention my ailment, not to elicit your pity, but to point out how stupid our health care system is.  According to the NIH, each year kidney stones prompt 3 million visits to health care providers, and half a million people to visit emergency rooms.  So it’s a pretty common ailment.  And without robust insurance, it’s a pretty common way to find oneself in a financial hole.

If I pass my stones on my own it’s going to cost me only a few hundred dollars in doctors office visits and lab work, but should I require further diagnosis and treatment—CT scans, ureteroscopy, surgery, a hospital stay and follow-up—it’ll cost me thousands of dollars before my deductible is exhausted and my co-insurance stoploss kicks in.  And that’s with an insurance plan on which I already pay a couple hundred dollars a month.

I’m sure I’ll manage to get by.

But a lot of families wouldn’t.  For many folks, even in good times, five to six thousand dollars in medical expenses could mean the difference between keeping or losing the house, or perhaps, completing a college degree.  And for the uninsured, the costs from an ailment as common as a tiny chunk of calcium stuck in your kidney could easily exceed $40,000.

There are those on the right who resent what social safety net we have, and who rail against being asked to pay for the consequences of the poor choices of others.  But affordable insurance simply isn’t available to tens of millions of American families, and God knows, nobody chooses to have a kidney stone.  So in the end, what good is the best health care available anywhere in the world, when there’s no functional system for providing it?

Dean Becker of the Drug Truth Network interviewed State Representative Roger Goodman (Kirkland).

Dean Becker: It wasn’t that long ago that there were just a handful of elected officials, willing to even talk about this drug war; to talk about regulation control or legalization. But I think, if I dare say, there are several score, perhaps even a hundred now, nationwide that are like you, willing to address this issue and if I remember right, your opponent, in this last election cycle, had a lot of similar thoughts. It’s not that rare anymore, is it?

Rep. Roger Goodman: Yeah. Let me tell you the timeline here. OK. So, three years ago I ran for office. I was the sort of renegade, grenade thrower, unpredictable, radical guy. Because if you ’Google’ Roger Goodman or Roger Goodman drugs, you’ll find all the things I talk about. ‘The fact that prohibition doesn’t work.’ ‘We need to assert regulatory control.’ People were sort of translating it to like… we’re going to legalize drugs and hand it out to kids in school yard or something.

But anyway, when my opponent, in my first election, hit me on that, my poll numbers went up. I got more votes after people found out what I’m working on to find this exit strategy for the war on drugs and so that backfired, for sure. The people get it, you know?

Now, just last year, I had an opponent who agrees with me that the war on drugs is a failure. He’s on the republican side but he’s also strongly libertarian and so he actually criticized me, in public, for not being aggressive enough… {laughter} … on drug policy reform.

So in a two year period, we had a switch all the way from one side to the other, where first of all I’m going to end civilization as we know it and then on the other side, I’m not doing enough. So again, the people get, the politicians are a little bit less afraid.

We still have a long way to go inside of the chambers of the legislature, but to a person, when I talk to them confidentially, my colleague’s in the legislature and other public officials all agree, that the policy’s broken and we need to change it.

I’ve talked to Roger about this same thing myself and I still have trouble understanding why this has so long to go inside the legislature. If being in favor of legalizing marijuana helped Roger get votes in a suburban area like Kirkland, what exactly is the political risk any more? Why is the legislature still dragging its feet on this? Don’t we have a “progressive” in the Governor’s mansion? Don’t we have “progressive majorities” in the Senate and House? Don’t we have massive budget problems that can be partially ameliorated by having a system of regulation and taxation for marijuana?

UPDATE: In the comments, Mark1 provides an excellent link demonstrating the kind of violence and gang activity that would disappear if the legislature removed its collective head from its ass and set up a legal system for producing and selling marijuana. Thanks Mark!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F26vC_1_8xw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

(Some fifty other media clips from the past week in politics can be found at Hominid Views.)

The Washington State Budget & Policy has revised their chart tracking Washington state government spending and revenue as a percentage of personal income to include the projected 2009-2011 budget… and it’s pretty damn dramatic.

It is important to note that while state spending has remained fairly flat for the past decade, apart from a spike during the real estate bubble revenue has been steadily eroding since before the current economic crisis.  As for the current downturn, the decrease in revenue is twice as steep as previous declines, and the proposed budget cuts are substantially deeper as a percentage of the economy than any other budget over the period of time charted.

Those who insist our current budget crisis is the result of out of control spending will just have to continue to ignore the facts.

The Seattle Times editorial board is at it again:

In unemployment pay, Washington is not a cheap state, nor is either side — labor and business — proposing to make it one. It has the fifth-highest unemployment benefit among the states and the sixth-highest level of taxes.

Really?  WA has the sixth-highest level of taxes?  According to whom, and by what measure?

According to the conservative Tax Foundation, Washington’s state and local tax burden ranked 35th as a percentage of personal income in 2008, dead even with Mississippi, while WA’s own Department of Revenue had us ranked 28th in 2006.  Both the Tax Foundation and the state DOR pull their numbers from the US Census Bureau.  Furthermore, the Tax Foundation ranks WA as having the 12th best “business tax climate” in the nation.

So where does the Times get its number that ranks WA with the sixth-highest level of taxes?  They don’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure the only math that could get us anywhere near that high would be to calculate total state, local and federal taxes per capita, a bullshit number for comparative purposes that even then they’d still have to fudge.

On average, Washington is not a high tax state.  It’s simply not.  And if the Times is going to insist on making that assertion, even in passing, they have an ethical obligation to back it up with real numbers.

Usually one can get some sense from a news article who is full of it and who has a legitimate point. But this Oregonian article about the economic wreckage caused by the Bank of Clark County failure leaves me scratching my head about what the truth actually might be.

While the U.S. Treasury funnels billions to Wall Street in the name of economic stimulus, its sister agency, the FDIC, is forcing some solid, local businesses into a damaging limbo.

Since taking over the failed Bank of Clark County in January, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has frozen borrowers’ lines of credit and declared active loans in default, demanding immediate repayment. And in some cases, it has denied borrowers access to thousands of dollars of their own money locked in Bank of Clark County accounts, former customers claim.

But the FDIC insists it is flexible and responsive:

FDIC officials were vehement that they are sympathetic to the plight of the borrowers and highly flexible to their needs.

“If the loans are performing, the terms and conditions of those loans remain intact,” said Ron Bieker, deputy director of the FDIC’s department of resolutions and receivership. The FDIC will happily extend a line of credit, he said, as long as a borrower qualifies and provides updated financials and an appraisal of their collateral.

“We’re very sensitive to these issues,” he said.

It does sound like some business owners may have been caught in a nightmare if they weren’t fortunate enough to have been tipped off about troubles at the bank, as many well-connected bidness guys and gals were. Their frustration is certainly understandable, although nobody seems to be placing much blame with the directors and management of Bank of Clark County, who were an elite group of Clark County’s best business minds.

If you read the full article, another thing worth noting is that it sounds like the credit markets are still not performing very well down in the trenches, as these businesses can’t seem to get loans for legitimate business needs. So we’ve spent trillions on the big institutions and the little folks still can’t get credit.

Long term, this sad episode points out the need for sound regulation of financial institutions. Short term, maybe a Congress-critter or two could take a look at these complaints and, if warranted, see what can be done to ease the situation. Sure, in hindsight people would have been better off not doing business with Bank of Clark County, which was basically a pet project of the developers and the local movers ‘n shakers, but honest business folks can’t really be faulted for doing business with an FDIC insured institution.

The damage to the local economy needs to be mitigated somehow. It doesn’t make sense to lose more jobs over this.

Ack.

Washington is falling behind other states when it comes to competing for aerospace business, a new study finds.

The study, conducted by Deloitte Consulting and obtained by local analyst Scott Hamilton with Leeham Co., was funded by the state of Washington.

David Groves of the Washington State Labor Council responds in an email sent out today:

As for the Deloitte “report” itself, in my cursory initial review, I already see that it uses the identical legislative talking points used by Boeing and business lobbying groups to try to lower their taxes (although I missed any mention of WA’s $3.2 billion tax break they already got). On Page 20, Deloitte’s report recommends that Washington “align workers’ compensation benefit levels (and thus cost to employers) with competing states.” The important thing to note here is the specific reference to benefits, as opposed to actual employer costs. There is a reason they — and business lobbyists in Olympia — write it this way.

The truth is that the latest objective state-by-state comparison of workers’ compensation systems — the only one of its kind that we know of — conducted by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services, recently ranked Washington 38th in terms of costs (that’s 14th lowest, including D.C.) Yes, the benefits are comparatively higher, but our state-run system is considered a national model for its low-cost, high-benefit efficiency. Many of those “low labor cost” Southern states we compete with have privatized workers’ comp systems, which introduces profit into the equation and raises costs. The Oregon study found that our aerospace competitors in South Carolina (13th highest costs), Texas (17th) and North Carolina (22nd) all have MORE EXPENSIVE workers’ comp systems than Washington’s. So now Deloitte is recommending that Washington cut benefits to injured workers to make us more “competitive” and drop employer costs even more?

Meanwhile Joe Turner dubs a new subcabinet position the state “Department of Boeing.” Hey. The governor practically tripped rushing to the podium to mollify Boeing. You know, it’s fine that Boeing is at the table, and given due consideration, but the tractability by the governor is rather startling. We thought we were supporting a Democrat, when we were in fact supporting a Dreamliner of a politician.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN99jshaQbY[/youtube]

It’s pretty clear that, taken as a whole, the Democratic Party is a captive of corporate interests, which to anyone who has been paying attention the last twenty years is no surprise. The Legislators in power are products of the Clinton era and honed their survival skills on triangulation and seeking the approval of traditional media. The corporate lobbyists threaten to take away jobs, the traditional media issues harrumphs, and most of the Democrats fall in line. Rinse, repeat.

What’s amazing is the sheer tone deaf attitude leadership has for relatively modest requests regarding workplace, environmental and consumer initiatives. If we’re going to continue to worship at the neo-liberal altar, sanding a few rough edges off doesn’t seem unreasonable, unless you’re the Washington Legislature. Anything that might upset editorial boards or business groups is to be hamstrung, delayed, obfuscated and finally discarded.

They play a bunch of games in Olympia, changing the faces and who takes the blame, but if you were hoping for workplace privacy, clean power, continued voter-approved teacher pay or homeowner warranties, you can suck eggs. Our local school districts are going to be savaged, and the Big Three are expecting we will once again fall in line and beg voters to vote for regressive taxes to save K-12 and/or the sick.

This game has been going on for a while. Every year progressive legislation gets sabotaged and we get a bunch of promises and lip service. At some point the excuses no longer bear up under scrutiny.

Fine. It’s not that long until 2010, and it’s even shorter until this November. Let’s see that tax increase on the ballot and let’s see the plaintive cries about saving the wee kiddies from the horrors of overcrowded classrooms. Maybe we could have fought that fight together.

Honestly, now, I’m not so sure.

State budgets have come out in the House and Senate, and the word “brutal” comes to mind. Goldy wants an income tax. Does that make him crazy? Are there good alternatives in the face of a state revenue collapse? Will someone show leadership on the issue? And how long will it take voters to warm-up to the idea?

Wait…wasn’t that Mike!™ McGavick’s shtick? Senators Murray and Cantwell vote to slash the estate tax. What the hell were they thinking? Same-sex marriage Marriage equality gets a huge boost with a ruling in Iowa, and votes in Vermont and Washington D.C. How long will it take here in Washington state? Finally, the panel peeks at the rave reviews from the Barack Obama World Tour.

Goldy was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve

The show is 42:19, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_7_2009.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Over on their editorial board blog, the Seattle Times’ Bruce Ramsey calls me out for calling out Susan Hutchison for her connections to the Discovery Institute and their Christianist, anti-science campaign to foist so-called Intelligent Design theory on unsuspecting school children.

Oh, come on. I don’t buy the argument from design, and once compared it to the fabulist Erich von Daniken. But Discovery does lots of things, from stuff on Russia to passenger trains. Discovery was the initial backer of the bored tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct—an idea now endorsed by Ron Sims, Greg Nickels and Christine Gregoire. Funny how our progressive pundits missed the chance to make fun of that idea by talking about Intelligent Design.

Oh Bruce… why are you always picking on me?  When have I ever said an unkind word about your publication?

But if you’re gonna pick on me, the least you could do is pick your spots a little more carefully, for I’m pretty sure I’ve never missed a chance to make fun of Discovery by talking about Intelligent Design.  Indeed back in December of 2007, when the deep bored tunnel idea was first raised, I ridiculed Discovery in a post titled “Intelligent Transportation Design,” writing:

[T]he folks at the Discovery Institute are a bunch of fanaticist nutcases “visionaries”… you know, if by “visionary” you mean promoting Intelligent Design, seeking to overthrow the scientific method and “replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions,” …

And then again a year later, in a similarly named post, I once again honed in on the cavemen riding dinosaurs meme, musing:

Yeah, but then again, these are folks who don’t believe in evolution, so forgive me for taking their claimed scientific and technical expertise with a grain of salt.

There are a lotta things you can tar me with Bruce, but being inconsistent ain’t one of ’em.

And as for your main premise:

There are two obvious questions that matter about Susan Hutchison as King County Executive. One is whether her career as a TV news anchor and in arts fundraising qualifies her to be CEO of the largest county government in Washington, which is involved in police, courts, jails, land-use control, public health and elections. The other is how Hutchison would use the power the county executive actually has. Focus on these, and give us all a rest regarding the Discovery Institute.

Well, forgive the over-the-top forced metaphor, but I’d say that arguing that Hutchison’s association with Intelligent Design has no bearing on her fitness for office is kinda like considering Mussolini to head Sound Transit, and insisting the only thing that really matters is whether he has the proven ability to make the trains run on time.

Of course Discovery is a valid issue in this campaign, as are Hutchison’s self-identification as a conservative Republican.  These are issues and labels which help inform us about Hutchison’s values, and whether she shares those of the majority of King County voters.  Given her background, Hutchison should be forced to answer whether she accepts evolution as valid science, and whether she believes Intelligent Design or other “alternative theories” should be taught in the schools.  Surely, Bruce, you’re not arguing that voters would be better served by having less information about their candidates?

As I stated yesterday, the bulk of the invitations for Hutchison to sit on boards came from her role controlling Charles Simonyi’s vast checkbook, but her position at Discovery, and the conservative Christian organization Young Life were different.  These were board positions Hutchison sought out, presumably because their agendas were consistent with her own personal beliefs.  Good for her.  People should act on their principles.

And people’s principles should be issues in political campaigns.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZaGks5LkkI[/youtube]

If there were meaningful truth in advertising laws, these “real people” would say “I’m a shitty, no-talent actor willing to work for hate merchants because I have no self-respect.”

On the other hand, I am a real Washington state parent successfully teaching my children that political advertising is usually deceptive, and that basic human rights are not optional. You don’t even have to be very old to see through this stuff. A storm, oh, for crying out loud.

But, please, please, please, someone comment that we must be “civil” towards the hate merchants, because if we’re not civil to the hate merchants, then we’re the haters. Because pointing out ridiculous bigotry is exactly like being Hitler and Pol Pot, you know.

(Props to AMERICAblog.)

Here are some news updates and other links:

– Prosecutors in Kitsap County have dropped charges against Glenn Musgrove, the 56-year-old quadriplegic and medical marijuana patient who the WestNET drug task force initially claimed was selling marijuana for profit. Musgrove won a large settlement for a medical malpractice suit and his attorney believes that Kitsap County went after him in order to get their hands on some of that money. His two caregivers were also facing prosecution, but those charges have also been dropped. It appears that the acquittal of Bruce Olson and the increased media attention on Kitsap Prosecutor Russ Hauge’s behavior is finally starting to yield some positive outcomes. Unfortunately, situations like this are not isolated to Kitsap County. The Cannabis Defense Coalition is also looking into cases in Mason and Pierce Counties as well.

– Glenn Greenwald’s report for the Cato Institute on drug decriminalization in Portugal can be read here. He adds in this post at his regular Salon blog that we’re at the point now that even longtime skeptics of decriminalization are being forced to admit that it works to decrease both drug abuse and its collateral effects. Although there are still some entertainingly obstinate holdouts.

– Washington State’s Senate Democrats have created an online forum similar to the one that the Obama Administration set up for their virtual town hall. I’ve posted a question about regulating and taxing marijuana.

– I’m a bit more pessimistic than Pete Guither here that Attorney General Holder really is on the verge of a spectacularly boneheaded attempt to arrest even more people for simple marijuana possession. At all levels of government, we already arrest around 3/4 of a million people every year for marijuana possession. If Holder actually thinks that increasing those arrest totals will lower the amount of money being made by Mexican cartels, he needs to sit down and read Greenwald’s report on Portugal.

– Finally, the Injustice in Seattle blog is a good local blog that’s flown under my radar for a little while now. I need to get them in my regular reading rotation. I’m not on the Twitter bandwagon yet, but if you are, they have a feed.