HorsesAss.Org

I have no idea how to stop the media from stupidly blibbering about 14 babies and tax cuts, nor do I have any idea how to stop the right wing narrative that revolves around how bad it is to fund things like education. Maybe if we made up words, say like “bankuporking,” it would help.

The morons are winning, that much is clear.

We are at a defining moment in our history. God bless the United States of America.

Last week’s contest had two winners. Tommy Thompson was the first to guess the location (Santa Fe, New Mexico). Wes.in.wa was first to post the link. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing’s 787 :

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has quietly decided to loosen stringent fuel-tank safety regulations written after the 1996 fuel-tank explosion that destroyed flight TWA 800 off the coast of New York state.

The FAA proposes to relax the safeguards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, standards the agency now calls “impractical” and Boeing says its soon-to-fly 787 Dreamliner cannot meet.

[…] But the move has stirred intense opposition inside the local FAA office from the technical specialists — most of them former Boeing engineers — responsible for certifying new airplane designs.

Good.  Now, if a 787 blows up in a lightning strike, we know exactly who to sue.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFvrL_nqx2c[/youtube]

The point is not that the situation is exactly the same, because it’s not, but a president can indeed explain stuff if he can form coherent sentences.

I trust Obama will do so, perhaps in a news conference on Monday, and given the situation it’s worthwhile to hear how it can be done.

I’m old enough to remember when there were debates in the US Senate that were considered historic and important, and you could watch the debate without wanting to hurl things through the screen.

Sadly, the junior senator from Louisiana, David Vitter the whoremonger, just got up and babbled on and on about ACORN and how vital it is that no money go them, offering an amendment as such. I’m sure that’s the first thought of American who are losing jobs and houses.

Truly a different planet.

Anyhow, I try not to post “call your senators” very often because you are likely smart enough to decide when you need to call your senators. Like, um, today. And be nice.

At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent takes a whack at explaining the blogger term “The Villagers.” After tracing its roots back to the Lewinsky scandal and a 1998 Sally Quinn article, Sargent delivers a cogent definition of the political mindset of The Villagers:

In political terms, the term “Villagers” denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an “acceptable” center-right consensus, and a refusal to acknowledge it when a majority of the American people take a view on a particular issue that is not in line with that center-right consensus. Thus, the “Villagers” include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist and insist on “bipartisanship” for its own sake, damn the consequences.

This elite consensus, in the view of the bloggers, represents this particular Village’s hidebound small-town values, which must be maintained at all costs to protect this elite’s status and interests.

And of course there is also The Iron Law Of Institutions, as set forth by Jonathan Schwarz in 2005. Consider the two terms and you have a basic understanding of why the Senate may struggle today to reach 60 votes instead of passing the damn stimulus bill 100-0.

It’s better to be in charge of smoking rubble than to not be in charge.

Former Renton hypnotist sentenced for fraud

The imagination runs wild, but alas, the fraud had absolutely nothing to do hypnotism.

Our friends at (u)SP are still in a huff over Huff, disappointed that King County’s newly elected Elections Director does not represent “change” (ie, a partisan Republican), and fantasizing once again about the prospect of overturning an election in court.  (How’d that work out for you last time, Stefan?)

But while the “all Dems are crooks” crowd continues to scoff at her mere plurality, it is interesting to note that Huff keeps edging closer toward an actual majority as the ballots trickle in, her 44% election night lead growing to about 46.3% by Thursday afternoon, an impressive 27-point margin over the runner up. In a six-way race, that’s a landslide.

And that Stefan and friends just can’t seem to accept the results as legitimate?  Well, I think that tells you everything you need to know about their respect for the intelligence and integrity of King County voters.

Following up on my previous post about Pend Oreille County’s efforts to triple the $1.4 million a year in impact fees Seattle City Light pays on the Boundary Dam, I stumbled across some numbers which kinda pound home one of my central theses:  that contrary to the bitching and moaning often heard from the other side of the mountains, big, bad Seattle is not sucking tax dollars from the rest of the state.

At least, not when it comes to transportation dollars.

According to a report from the Washington State Department of Transportation (hat tip: Political Buzz), between 1984 and 2003, the Puget Sound region received 98-cents back for every $1.00 spent in state and federal transportation taxes.  And Pend Oreille County?  They saw an impressive $2.58 return.  That’s a $68 million subsidy over 20 years, or roughly $260 annually per man, woman and child.

Of course, after decades of neglect and a couple of gas tax increases, things have turned around for Puget Sound residents, who are projected to realize a $1.02 return for every buck spent between 2004 and 2015… though Pend Oreille still brings home the bacon, munching on a sizzling $1.88 of transportation spending for every dollar in taxes.  Sweet.

I point this out not to begrudge Pend Oreille’s good fortune, but merely to acknowledge that it exists.  An acknowledgement you won’t get from most Eastern Washington politicians, who would rather play the “Fuck Seattle” game than address their region’s underlying problems.

The President Strikes Back.

Whether you call it bi-partisanship, post-partisanship or non-partisanship, it doesn’t work as a one way street, as the GOP has so quickly and ably proven.

This isn’t about partisanship anyway, it’s about whether the already completely fucked economy becomes the biggest clusterfuck in our lifetimes, if not ever. It’s time to start burying lots of bottles of money, so the capitalists can go about digging them up and people who lost jobs can get back to work. Yes, the titans of industry and finance will insist they solved everything, but since we’re the practical ones we’ll have to allow them that conceit.

Krugman is still warning of a deflationary trap. Granted, no one has a crystal ball and it’s fine to consult with conservative economists, but the stimulus bill cannot be picked to death by Republicans and sell-out Democrats and still stave off disaster.

It’s good the administration seems to recognize this basic fact now.

Yesterday the Seattle Times reported on the fiscal crisis in rural Pend Oreille County, where declining tax revenues and stingy voters have forced local officials to seek a bailout from Seattle City Light, which owns and operates the profitable Boundary Dam on the Pend Oreille River in the northeast corner of the state.

Well… maybe “seek a bailout” isn’t the right term.

To compensate Pend Oreille County, Seattle pays an annual fee, which last year was $1.3 million. Now, leaders of this poor, sparsely populated and isolated county want to share in the riches Seattle has found on their river. They’re pressuring Seattle to triple its annual fee.

“It’s kind of like we’re the cow and they’re getting the milk from the cow in our barn,” said County Commissioner Laura Merrill, “and so there is an impact in Pend Oreille County.”

No, it’s kinda like Pend Oreille is a county in which there’s a dairy farm, and the owner of the farm is getting the milk from the cows in their barn. But, whatever.

City Light owns that dam, and took a big risk back in 1964, investing millions of dollars constructing the dam and 300 miles of transmission lines at a time when electricity was relatively cheap.  It’s the kind of public investment and forethought that has long delivered Seattle residents some of the lowest electricity rates in the nation.

And in return, Pend Oreille County got well-paid jobs, a recreational lake and new school buildings… not to mention about $1.3 million in annual impact fees, plus cheap, wholesale electricity that saves county ratepayers about $20 million a year… all told, an average of about $1,615 in direct cash benefits annually for every man, woman and child in Pend Oreille.

That was the deal.  Signed, sealed and delivered.

It’s not that I don’t have empathy for Pend Oreille County’s current predicament—I do, and I wouldn’t necessarily oppose some sort of grant to help them out.  But it’s a predicament they got themselves into, and I’m getting pretty damn sick and tired of rural Washingtonians blaming Seattle residents like me for all of their problems.

In Pend Oreille County, politicians and residents harbor some resentment toward Seattle. They feel the west side of the state doesn’t understand their rural lifestyle or their conservative politics. They’re outnumbered in the Legislature. Regardless, they find themselves somewhat dependent on Seattle.

Seattle paid for the county’s school for grades 7-12 as part of the original deal in the 1960s to build the dam. Since then, enrollment in the Selkirk Consolidated School District No. 70 has fallen by nearly half, and seven bond measures to remodel the school have failed.

It’s not Seattle’s fault that Pend Oreille voters refuse to tax themselves for the services they need, nor that the state has fewer and fewer resources to help them out.  Seattle taxpayer… City Light ratepayer… we’re one and the same… and if Pend Oreille wanted more of our money, perhaps they shouldn’t have voted for I-695 by a better than 2-1 margin, eliminating most of the state car tab, and with it, the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales tax equalization transfers on which rural communities had long relied to help balance their budgets?  And if they wanted a little sympathy from Seattleites like me, perhaps they shouldn’t have passed I-776 by a 69% margin, an initiative that had absolutely no impact on Pend Oreille taxpayers, but was successfully marketed by Tim Eyman as a “Fuck Seattle” measure that would keep us from taxing ourselves to build the light rail system we wanted.

They harbor resentment toward us? For what… building their infrastructure and subsidizing their public services?  If the Boundary Dam was owned by a corporation, well, that’s capitalism baby, and I doubt you’d see Pend Oreille have much success pressuring shareholders to triple their payments, you know… just because.  But since it’s owned by Seattle ratepayers, we should feel all guilty and everything over how well our investment paid off, and just fork over a share of the profits?  I don’t think so.

Rural governments and the communities they serve are in crisis statewide, many on the verge of insolvency, and it’s a crisis that the state needs to address collectively.  But we’ll never move closer to a lasting solution until elected and civic leaders throughout rest of the state stop lazily blaming Seattle for all of their woes, and start taking a realistic tally of what it actually costs to provide the public services their communities need and want.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlynf–lsxA[/youtube]

It does look like leather at least. Smell the Glove, progressives.