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Our OCD pals over at Seattle Transit Blog are studying the details of our state economic stimulus bill, and they don’t like what they see.

Wait just a minute. What’s that amendment (PDF)? It’s from Representative Judy Clibborn (D-Mercer Island), whose constituents voted for light rail over the I-90 bridge?

Oh, I see, it screws over light rail across I-90. Again.

Apparently, thanks to Rep. Clibborn’s amendment, the one state project the voter-approved East Link light rail depends on actually ends up with $700,000 less than it had before the federal stimulus money. No doubt good news to those Mercer Islanders looking to maintain their SOV lanes as long as possible.

So when the people pass a ballot measure cutting taxes or limiting government, somehow their will is inviolate, and legislators quake in their boots at the very thought of overturning a voter approved initiative.

But when the people pass a ballot measure directing state funds toward reducing class size or increasing teacher pay, or banning certain inhumane hunting techniques, or… say… mandating electric utilities get 15% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020… well, apparently legislators feel free to reinterpret voter intent, or even sacrifice it altogether in the name of political or economic expediency.

Go figure.

I just want to thank everyone who supported the successful passage of the Death with Dignity law this past year. It reminded me why this corner of the country is truly a special place.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Compassion and Choices has a page up explaining Washington’s Death With Dignity Act, and providing many useful links for patients and their families.

Al Franken should debate Rush Limbaugh.

The podcast goes mostly national this week, beginning with a discussion of approval. Specifically…the public’s high opinion of Obama and his programs, and its low opinion of congressional Republicans (and their leader de profundis, Rush). Along the way some potshots are taken at “bipartisanship”. The conversation meanders through several foreign policy issues where we learn that Americans really do like Hillary, too. Returning from overseas, the panel takes a look at our 1997 economy, bank bailouts, stocks buys, taxes on the wealthy, and the future of reporting and the media.

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, DailyKos uber-blogger mcjoan, co-founder of Headzup.tv John Shay, and Donkeylicious’ Nicholas Beaudrot.

The show is 41:51, and is available here as an MP3:
[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_3_2009.mp3]

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

One of the things that annoyed me about state Representatives Deb Wallace and Glenn Anderson’s interview regarding higher education funding was their instant dismissal of proposals to move to a high tuition/high financial aid model.

At least Anderson was ideologically honest, objecting to wealthy families paying full fare by saying that “we’re not a class society.”  Okay.  Wrong.  But fair enough.

Wallace on the other hand, brushed off the suggestion by saying that the math doesn’t work… implying that the state would have to come up with more financial aid dollars to offset the higher tuition costs, and that ultimately it would make college less affordable for low and middle income families.

First of all, that’s just plain dumb.  Let’s say you’re a low to middle income student currently receiving financial aid in the form of $3,000 in grants, and the UW suddenly jacks up its $6,800/year in tuition and fees to $17,800.  Now let’s say the UW (ie, the state) increases your grant by another $11,000 to offset the hike.  How much extra money did this cost the state?  Zilch.  You were paying $3,800/year and you’re still paying $3,800.  It’s a zero sum game.

But if you’re a student from a wealthy family, who does not need financial aid, and thus does not qualify for it, you’re suddenly paying an extra $11,000 into the system… money that can be spent to increase the quality of education at the UW, or expand the number of seats, or even lower the costs for truly needy students.

That’s how this model works, and at many of our nation’s most prestigious private universities, it generally works damn well.

For example, I just received an email to alumni from University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, in which she explains how the economic downturn has impacted the university’s finances, and what it is doing to lessen the impact on students.  In fact, despite its endowment suffering a 19-percent loss over the previous six months…

Given the new economic hardships many Americans are facing, I want to focus on the steps we are taking to strengthen Penn’s commitment to access.  We can reassure prospective and current students alike that our financial aid packages will continue to meet the full need of every Penn undergraduate. We are moving forward to substitute grants for loans for all undergraduate financial aid packages beginning in September 2009.  As previously outlined, typical students from families with income less than $40,000 will pay no tuition, fees, room or board.  Students from typical families with incomes less than $90,000 will pay no tuition and fees. All undergraduates eligible for financial aid will receive grants rather than loans in their aid packages.

Tuition and fees at Penn for the 2008-09 academic year come to a stunning $37,526, compared to only $6,800 for in-state students at the UW.  And yet, students from families with incomes less than $90,000 will typically pay no tuition and fees at all.

As you can see, for those who pay full fare, the UW would be an absolute bargain when compared to much pricier private schools, even if tuition were to rise to $17,800.  That’s why the university can still attract so many students paying the $23,000 out-of-state costs.  Yet for those students coming from families on the middle and lower end of the income scale… well… not so much.  The problem is, we’re subsidizing all of our students, instead of just those who need it, while those supposedly elitist Ivy League schools come across as downright socialist.

So don’t tell me the math doesn’t work.  The math works damn well at Penn, and hundreds of other schools.  On this particular issue, it’s our legislature that isn’t working.

SEIU local 925, representing 6,500 University of Washington employees in academic, research and business departments, overwhelmingly voted last night to voluntarily give up scheduled wage increases for 2009-2011.

“Giving up raises won’t stop staff layoffs,” said Anne Lawson, SEIU 925 UW chapter president. “But it will preserve more services for students, faculty and hospital patients, and keep as many experienced staff as possible.”

State employee union leaders aren’t stupid, and everybody I’ve spoken to has seemed more than willing to negotiate concessions to help soften the blow of impending budget cuts.  And that’s the way it should work, rather than the governor or legislature simply imposing wage and benefit cuts, unilaterally abrogating contracts that had been negotiated and signed in good faith.

In response to my post taking legislators to task for the deceptive language in their bill authorizing “carbonless energy parks,”  Rep. Jeff Morris (D-Hole I’m Digging For Myself) tells the Bellingham Herald’s Sam Taylor that I’m just plain wrong:

It currently is a nuclear site, they, Energy Northwest, want to build a thermal solar facility. The bill transfers a water right from the nuclear facility which was never built to the carbonless park….. or maybe they could store black helicopters there?

Well, we all know how much I hate being wrong, which is why, before publishing, I tend to research my posts, even the snarky ones.  So before throwing in that “black helicopter” line, let alone flatly refuting me, Rep. Morris should have done a little more research himself… or at the very least got his story straight with Rep. Brad Klippert (R-Kennewick) whose own press release on the bill actually touts the nuclear option:

Klippert said the bill provides for water usage from the Columbia River for cooling of nuclear reactors.

“We have one nuclear reactor in operation and two others partially constructed. This bill specifically addresses the need for water. With three operating nuclear reactors, we could produce as much electricity at Hanford as all the wind generators in the United States combined,” said Klippert.

Oops.  Is that the whirring of helicopter rotors I hear?

Rep. Morris is right that there is also talk of building a solar-thermal project on the 20-square-mile Hanford site,  but Energy Northwest’s Jack Baker makes clear that for now it’s just talk:   “We want to build solar facilities there in the future when the price is right, and have options there for future nuclear development.”

Again, I’m not opposed to debating nuclear energy; I think there are valid arguments pro and con.  But this adoption of the phrase “carbonless energy parks” on a bill that, amongst other things, specifically secures water rights and tax breaks for the construction and operation of two additional nuclear power plants, is clearly an attempt to deceive, not persuade.

Perhaps, in Rep. Morris’s defense, he too was deceived.  I dunno.  But when it comes to his assertion that this bill is about nothing more than transferring water rights from an unfinished nuclear facility to a solar thermal one, it is he who is wrong, not I.

While Carl is emailing Republican congress-critters to ask them if they really consider Rush Limbaugh to be the de facto leader of their party, it is amusing to look back on our homegrown R’s own sad history of right-wing talk sycophancy.  Indeed, after seizing control of the Washington State House during the Gingrich-inspired red tide of 1994, one of the first things the new Republican majority did was appease their god by sponsoring House Resolution 4684 in his honor:

WHEREAS, Rush Limbaugh has exercised dignity, decency, integrity, and wisdom in exposing the foibles of political correctness and other peculiar doctrines held dear by radical fringe wacko elitist kook nutcakes; and

WHEREAS, Rush Limbaugh has spent his life serving humanity as “the epitome of morality and virtue” while on the “cutting edge of societal evolution” performing “libosuction” on “young skulls full of mush” and firing lethal shots with devastating aim at the whole spectrum of liberal ideologies;

[…] NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the state of Washington honor Rush Limbaugh for the dedicated service that characterizes his life’s work, for the outstanding example of diligence, integrity, and excellence he has set for others, and for the hope that his future endeavors will bring him even greater levels of satisfaction and success…

Yup… after being swept to power by an angry electorate, this was what 30 Republican co-sponsors determined to be one of their top legislative priorities.  The subsequent collapse of the GOP over the next decade or so starts to make sense in hindsight.

Read the whole resolution.  It’s just as amusing as the excerpt.

Ted Van Dyk, who self-identifies as a life long Democrat, writing at Crosscut, has some concerns about the Obama administration. Which is fine, although I think it’s worth addressing.

As a lifelong Democrat, I am concerned that President Obama could come out of his first 100 days decidedly weaker than when they began. His November victory was not as strong as anticipated, given the unpopularity of the outgoing Bush administration, a weakening economy, and an often inept McCain-Palin Republican ticket. Yet Obama has proceeded as if he were a landslide winner, like Lyndon Johnson in 1965 and Reagan in 1980, and has pushed forward a costly and ambitious domestic agenda even though we remain in a severe economic downturn.

Obama’s audacity — I consider it politically dangerous overreach — has energized Republicans and, in particular, conservatives as they would not have been had Obama followed the bipartisan, consensus path he promised on taking office. The politically polarizing economic-stimulus package and his proposed federal budget have done it.

Well, Obama tried to reach out to the Limbaugh Party and was rewarded with zero votes in the House. Then three “moderates” in the Senate hijacked the entire process on behalf of Susan Collins. So that explains that. It’s not the Obama administration that is obstructing things, so I’m not quite sure what Van Dyk means.

You can’t be bi-partisan and work with a batshit insane party that doesn’t understand basic economics, and more to the point, defines itself almost solely on cultural and racial resentment. They have a great deal of fun hating the dirty fucking hippies, but that’s not much of a policy position. There’s no “there” there. It’s just tribalism, with all its venomous, spittle-spewing invective coursing through the diseased veins of AM radio. If they’re not hating the dirty hippies, it’s the gays, or the immigrants, or the ACORN (black people mainly, in their view,) or left-handed people who wear green socks.

Without hate there is no conservative movement. And just like FDR did, we should welcome their hate, because it means we are doing something right.

Conservatives today are not serious people, because if they were serious they would put forth policy proposals that match the challenges ahead and they would not wish for the failure of the president. “Bi-partisanship” has ceased to be a word with any concrete meaning in the real world. Now, knowing Obama the door is still open, but Republicans will have to choose to walk through that door, meaning they will have to possess the balls to stand up to the Joe McCarthy of our time. Not bloody likely in my estimation.

As for recovery, spending and the budget, the very strange thing is that a lot of people don’t seem to understand that the immediate threat is of intense deflation and world-wide collapse of the economic structure. To paraphrase the hell out of John Maynard Keynes, you could go around burying millions of bottles of money and it would help prevent Depression, because then the private sector would busily engage in massive efforts to dig up the bottles. Of course, if instead you wanted to do something that would also provide a longer term benefit, like building bridges or wind farms, that would be good too.

The biggest short term concern is not the amount of spending that we must engage in, but the failure to address the “too big to fail banks” and by extension, their “too big to fail” insurance company, AIG. Talk about wasting money. I’m always amazed how Americans will get their noses all bent out of shape regarding urban legends about “welfare queens in Cadillacs” but will be nonplussed at incredible waste and fraud in the corporate world. The people complaining about the stimulus package and the budget, which at least contain many measures that will provide real relief to regular Americans, do not generally express much concern about the way we’ve all been robbed by Wall Street.

The people who brought us this calamity are yet to be held accountable in a meaningful way, and are reaping high salaries and other rewards still, not to mention frequent contributions to their firms by taxpayers that will doubtless total in the hundreds of billions of dollars. You don’t really hear any talk of a “tea party” because of that, now, do you? The conservative-Republican opposition is the same old suspects spouting the same old bullshit, bitching that the wealthiest 2% of Americans might have to pay the same tax rate they did a decade ago. Poor babies.

The deficit hawks have a long-term point. But we’re sure in the hell not going to reduce the deficit or the debt if the global economy falls into Depression, and for now the political battle is essentially an extension of the last eight years: the malignancy of movement conservatism has to be defeated if we are to prosper.

As a follow up to Jon’s Deep Thought yesterday and post today, I’ve emailed the 3 Republican congresspeople what they think of Rush Limbaugh. Specifically:

Dear XX

I’m a blogger at HASeattle, and we were wondering what your thoughts were on Rush Limbaugh. Would you call him a leader of the Republican party?

Love,

Carl Ballard

If they want to stand up to the heroin addict who runs their party, I’ll post a response. I sent it to the addresses listed on the campaign websites, so I don’t know how staffed up they are at this point and they have no reason to respond, so we’ll see.

…Afternoon update, the email I sent Reichert’s campaign bounced back. Does anybody have a good email address for his campaign? I don’t want this to go to the Congressional staff. No word from the Eastern Washington Reps.

The de-facto leader of the GOP calls a CNN reporter “butt boy.”

You kind of wonder at what point legacy journalists, um, stop it with the pretending about just reporting what each side said. I mean, how exactly do you report, “Republicans responded that I am a ‘butt boy?'”

Is there even ONE Washington state Republican elected official with the guts to stand up to the psychopath Rush Limbaugh? Frankly I doubt it. The silence speaks volumes. They’re all too damn scared to stand up to this pathetic bully. And you wonder how Joe McCarthy got away with it for so long.

The news of Mexico’s drug war violence is finally starting to get the attention it deserves – primarily because it’s starting to affect American (and even Canadian) cities. Much of the response has even been positive, with a number of insightful editorials, and some initial attempts by politicians in border states to begin discussing the connection between drug prohibition and the violence. But not everyone gets it just yet.

At a website called investors.com comes the most confused editorial I’ve seen on the Mexican violence so far this year.

Now that Phoenix has become a kidnap capital, it’s official: Mexico’s drug war is spilling over into the U.S. The administration vows a strong response, but so far seems to be putting special interests first.

Trouble from Mexico is cropping up in the usual place: the border, a nexus of illegal immigration, human smuggling and drug trafficking, all of it interlinked. It’s all about illegal routes into the states. As they grow scarcer, traffickers’ war on the Mexican state intensifies.

The intensification of this war has had nothing to do with border routes. The intensification was a result of a massive effort by Mexican President Felipe Calderon to go after the cartel leaders. The resulting violence was an entirely predictable response to Calderon’s push, based upon the numerous times in the past that Mexico has tried to eliminate the cartel and seen violence skyrocket. The smuggling routes aren’t becoming scarcer, they’re being fought over.

The U.S. seems to recognize the gravity of the problem — or is at least paying it lip service. A recent Pentagon report cited a risk of a sudden collapse in Mexico if cartels win. A Homeland Security report vows to ready a response if Mexico’s war spreads here. Last Friday, the State Department’s global counternarcotics report called the cartels “a significant threat.”

But for a threat this grave, the Obama administration places it below other priorities. Yes, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calls the violence “a top priority.” But how does that jibe with her response to the Texas governor’s request for more border troops? “We do not want to militarize the border,” she said.

The Obama Administration has been far from perfect in how they’ve discussed what’s happening in Mexico, but this is a foolish criticism. Considering that Mexico doesn’t allow American military personnel on Mexican soil, there’s not much that an increased military presence on the border would do, other than to lead to actual warfare in cities like El Paso.

This editorial is still premised on the archaic belief that the only way to defeat cartels is by killing off the “bad guys.” We know now that this doesn’t work. The only way to defeat the cartels is to cut off their profits. Collectively, the Mexican cartels earn roughly $1 billion per week. Once you kill a “bad guy”, there will be a dozen people fighting each other to be the next “bad guy” and get a piece of that pie.

Human trafficking is a real and serious problem, but it’s one that we’ll never be successful at fighting as long as we continue to maintain a drug policy that helps these criminal organizations remain untouchable.

The editorial goes on to criticize Obama’s attempts at resurrecting gun control legislation, criticisms that I generally agree with, but then it goes off the deep end:

Other Obama officials also send mixed messages. The new drug czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, stresses “harm reduction” instead of tough action. Sounds humane, but it essentially expands cartel market bases by enabling users and expanding the buyer base for the cartels.

“Harm reduction” distributes new needles, legalizes medical marijuana and puts pot at the bottom of enforcement priorities. Legalization lobbies are happy. But cartels have one more reason to smuggle.

What? And this website gives investment advice?

First of all, if medical marijuana were fully legal, the cartels would easily be pushed out of the market by legal American growers. If marijuana were fully legalized for recreational use, you could massively reduce the amount of money being used to wage this war against Calderon’s government. And you could free up the resources to shut down human trafficking networks, which don’t have the same enormous level of demand that drugs do.

Second, this editorial is assuming that harm reduction techniques for dealing with hard drug addiction increases demand. That hasn’t been true anywhere in the world where it’s been tried. Not in Switzerland. Not in Australia. Not in Canada. Not in Holland. The idea that needle exchanges give cartels “one more reason to smuggle” is an idea so outdated that it would have been laughable a decade ago.

The choice of Gil Kerlikowski to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy has generally been positive among drug law reformers, but he will certainly find that various members of the media and the political elite will see no distinction between his moderate support of a public health approach to drug problems and the views of more outspoken legalization advocates. We’ve long been used to Drug Czars who never let anyone take a more authoritarian posture than them. Now that the country at our southern border is in real danger of succumbing to the downstream effects of that legacy, Kerlikowske should find it easier to advocate for a new direction.

The General reviews Joe the Plumber’s new book.

Scott Morgan writes about the dangers of getting hooked on anti-drug propaganda.

Our nation’s dumbest citizens are “threatening” to remove themselves from the nation’s workforce. More here. And some tangential silliness here.

Finally, it’s a sad day as WhackyNation is no more.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some folks will show up earlier for dinner.

Tonight’s special topic is cats in the news. Cats…you can’t live with ’em, and you can’t live without ’em. And then there’s this.

Of course we’ll take a little time to write letters of apology to Rush.

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for some 330 chapters of Drinking Liberally spread across the earth. Find one in a neighborhood near you.