HorsesAss.Org

While we’re on the subject of education (and Seattle Times editorials), here’s another of the Times’ line items which I found curious:

• $926 million — Cancel the Initiative 728 money, or most of it. Officially this is for class-size reduction in the public schools, but the schools have folded it into everyday operations. Cutting I-728 money was done in 2003, when the budget was in a crisis, and has to be done again. That is the danger of budgeting by initiative.

“That is the danger of budgeting by intiative.” Cutting taxes by initiative, apparently, the Times has no problem with that, but spending money, well that’s a no-no… despite the fact that taxing and spending are both part of the budget process.  But again, that’s not my concern for the moment.

No, I just wanted to point out that a $926 million cut comes to over $900 per K-12 student over the course of the biennium, or roughly $450 per student per year.  For a typical elementary school with about 400 kids, that’s about $180,000 out of the annual budget.  How many teachers will need to be cut?  Do they increase class size for all the kids, or do they eliminate art or music or gym or reading tutors… assuming they have any of these left to cut?

And don’t think local school districts can make up these cuts by raising local levies.  In fact, some districts may have to reduce their local levies in response, as state law limits the amount of money raised from local levies to a fixed percentage of the district’s total state and federal funding.

The Times argues that this money was cut before and “has to be done again,” because raising taxes—any taxes—simply isn’t an option.  No doubt tough choices have to be made to respond to these tough economic times, but raising taxes is an awfully tough choice too, and it just doesn’t make sense to automatically eliminate one half of the budget equation when something as important as our children’s education is at risk.

Yesterday the Seattle Times editorial board argued that the Governor and the Legislature should balance the state budget without raising any taxes.  They don’t explain why we shouldn’t raise any taxes, it’s just kinda a given behind all their editorials, which they apparently don’t feel they have to explain.  But that’s not my concern for the moment.

Instead I want to briefly talk about how we fund higher education in Washington state, spurred on by this line item from the Times’ list of possible cuts:

• $600 million — Cut seats in state universities and community colleges. Cut some tuition waivers. Offset some cuts with increased tuition.

Of course, with unemployment rising, we’re already seeing a spike in demand, particularly at our state’s community colleges, as students of all ages seek the training and retraining necessary to compete for jobs in our rapidly changing economy, so the last thing you want to do during an economic downturn is to cut seats and raise tuition, thus denying unemployed and underemployed workers the opportunity to better their job prospects.  But then, education comprises by far the largest chunk of our state budget, so it’s hard to imagine pulling education cuts entirely off the table.

There is another solution though, that I’ve written about before, that could absorb some of these cuts in the short term, while allowing for an expansion of seats in the future, without costing taxpayers a dime:  dramatically raise tuition near market rates, while broadly expanding our state’s financial aid system.

Essentially, under our current system, every college student in the state is heavily subsidized, whether they need the subsidy or not.  This broad, per student subsidy lowers tuition rates for all, but still leaves college unaffordable for many potential applicants.  But perhaps worse, it strains our college and university system’s resources, leaving it unable to expand the number of seats available to meet existing demand.

But if we were to shift a larger portion of the state subsidy toward financial aid, while allowing tuition rates to rise, those students who can afford to pay the full cost of their education will do so, leaving more state resources to fund the education of those students who cannot.

When we talk about budget cuts, in education or elsewhere, we are talking about rationing.  Right now, with our broad, per student subsidy, we ration access to education.  Under a high tuition/high financial aid model we can maintain and expand access to higher education while rationing the state subsidy.

Hiking tuition is never popular, but then nothing about the upcoming budget is going to be popular.  So why not take advantage of this crisis to put higher education funding on a solid footing for the future?

I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle this morning, watching President-elect Barack Obama’s news conference, as he not only appeared awfully damn presidential, he pretty much sounded like he was already president.

Has anybody ever seen a cabinet take form this quickly, or a presidential administration seize control of the public and policy debate so soon after an election?  I suppose extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, but the fact the transition team has been able to act this swiftly is encouraging in itself.

Pam Roach blogs.  Who knew?

With Obama comes the changing of the guard.

The word is that democrat Congressman Adam Smith (WA-9) will be stepping up to a spot in the Obama administration. That leaves his congressional seat up for grabs. But, no grabs here.

State Senator Tracy Eide (D-Federal Way) may just have a lock on Adam Smith’s seat. Republicans will have to fight for it after Eide gets the appointment.

Huh.  For a woman who wants to run for King County Elections Director, you’d think she might want to avoid showing off her total ignorance of, you know, elections.  Vacant house seats aren’t filled by appointment; they’re filled by special election.  It says so in the Constitution.

The magical mystical free market, also known as taxpayers, should stimulate house builders to the tune of $250 billion. Or so sayeth the national house builders.

Or Else! Because nothing causes plummeting prices to stabilize faster than an even greater oversupply.

For $250 billion we could probably build a giant domed mini-world, kind of like The Truman Show, and populate it with auto executives, house building executives, financial sector criminals and castoffs from the Cato Institute, creating a nice little Bubble Land where they can build and build and build while celebrating how great laissez-faire capitalism is. They can create innovative derivative securities to sell one another while smirking about the stupid liberals to their heart’s content.

It’ll be a completely false and fantastic world, but not much different from the one they currently inhabit.

… Neither particularly likes homework.

The Young Turks discuss the tie between the Bengals and Eagles last week and how bizarre it was that Donovan McNabb was unaware that there are ties in the NFL:

Jason Whitlock tries to defend McNabb here, but I just can’t. I’m as big a Donovan McNabb fan as anyone, but that was a shockingly dumb admission – not just that he didn’t know there were ties, but to be so unembarrassed by that lack of knowledge that he admitted it on camera. How do you play in a professional sports league for so long and not know something like that? Has he never looked at the standings of the league and seen the ‘T’ next to the ‘W’ and ‘L’?

If it wasn’t for this, it would be the dumbest thing I’ve heard all season.

What are you doing to help the economy this weekend? I purchased a 472-pack of toilet tissue, meaning the unit price per square is .00002 cents. If you only use one ply, it’s half that! But I will not spare a square, no matter what.

Meanwhile, go read Robert Reich if you wish. Sounds like some actual grownups may be in charge come Jan. 20.

Not to belabor Goldy’s earlier point, but the stupid idea that the netroots will come unglued when competent people take charge is, well, stupid. We’ll express differences of opinion at times but instead of trying to get brain dead people to come back to life via an act of Congress, we’ll simply state our case and work to elect people who we think will do a good job. It’s called democracy.

Deal, old media and Old Democrats. The netroots isn’t any one thing, it isn’t any one person and it sure in the hell ain’t going away.

Please list in comments how many bits of soap you can squeeze together to make new bits of soap, and how one might take one cranberry and make it multiply a hundred times before Thanksgiving to make “Magical Paulson Cranberry Sauce.”

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa, who just barely beat out Toby Nixon. The correct answer was Southport, Queensland, Australia.

Here’s this week’s contest. I think you’ll have to be quick to win this one…good luck!

A headline from today’s NY Post:  “Barack Obama doesn’t fear the enraged, impotent Netroots.”

Yeah, well, whatever.

If that’s the sort of self-soothing that makes the old media and political establishment feel better about their own declining fortunes, they’re free to hide their heads in that particular hole, but personally, I don’t feel all that enraged or impotent.  In fact, I’m still a bit amazed at how far we have come in such a short amount of time… and daunted by how far we have yet to go.

This movement we’re part of will take a decade or two to reach full fruition, and we are a lot more patient and pragmatic than most outside observers give us credit for.

Richard Roesler at Eye on Olympia reports that the husband of incoming state Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy, pleaded guilty yesterday to third degree theft involving money stolen from a fair board.

Seems during the campaign Short and her husband had leveled all sorts of accusations against the Spokesman-Review, using terms like “political smear job” and the shoddy conservative standby “elitist.”

There’s far more to the tale of the Shorts, but it’ll be simpler if you just go read Roesler’s post.

Invoking the Ten Commandments is always a tell, huh? Harry Truman used to relay a saying he attributed to his grandfather that went something like, “If a man sings too loud on Saturday night and prays too loud on Sunday morning, best go home and lock up the smoke house.”

I hate to hit on the same editorial twice, but I’m just curious… has the Seattle Times ever editorialized their concerns over Microsoft’s operating system dominance, which peaked at 98% of the market?  And if Google were a local company, would they be concerned over its dominance of online advertising now?

Hmm….

And you wonder why the Seattle Times is dying?

Google is getting rich packaging content owned by magazines and newspapers and not paying for it. At some point, Google should have to pay.

Yeah, that’s right, Frank… it’s all Google’s fault. Your paper’s declining fortunes have nothing to do with your own managment decisions and your inability to adequately respond to a changing marketplace.  So let’s get Congress to pass a law forcing Google to prop up your business by paying a royalty for the privilege of driving you traffic.  And while you’re at it, you better charge me a royalty too, since we parasitic bloggers do nothing but freeload off your content.

The fact is, Google isn’t getting rich linking to content, it’s getting rich selling ads.  And as long as the Times keeps pointing fingers instead of focusing on creating a more compelling product, they’ll continue to lose readers and advertisers.

Looking for the silver lining in our nation’s worsening unemployment numbers?

Citing a decline in donations caused by the slowing economy, Focus on the Family, the Christian advocacy charity in Colorado Springs, has eliminated 202 staff positions — 149 of them filled, 53 that were already vacant.

On the downside, this surely means tough times ahead for Colorado Springs’ burgeoning meth-dealing male hooker industry.

Last night at the 46th Legislative District Democrats monthly meeting, elections activist Jason Osgood announced his intention to run for King County Elections Director… which really didn’t come as much of a surprise considering Jason told me as much Tuesday night at Drinking Liberally.

Hmm.

I like Jason, and I appreciate his activism (if at times I think his focus is misplaced), so I sure hope he hasn’t conflated the 1.2 million votes he received in his recent run for Secretary of State into some sort of base of support.  Sure, Jason ended up pulling in about 41.5% of the vote while barely spending a dime—but that’s still only a few percent of voters greater than those who would pretty much vote for anybody with a “D” next to their name, and not much better than then-Republican Richard Pope, who in the 2000 Attorney General’s race garnered more than 38% of the vote against popular Democratic incumbent Christine Gregoire.  Indeed, Richard actually won 14 of 39 counties, while Jason barely eked out a victory in just tiny San Juan.

Still, if this were a normal election, I’d urge Jason to pursue his bliss, as he’ll certainly add some important issues to the debate.  Unfortunately, it’s not a normal election, and as I told him privately Tuesday night, I hope he’s prepared to bow out if support coalesces around a qualified candidate.

See, the Elections Director will be chosen in a February special election, with no primary, top-two or otherwise, to thin out the field.  And while the office is officially nonpartisan, we all know that true nonpartisanship is a fiction that lives only in the minds of editorialists and idiots.

From all accounts, Republican wingnut State Senator Pam Roach intends to throw her hat in the ring as the culmination of her decades long quest to earn a six figure salary from the government she loves to cut.  And given a crowded field of Democrats on the other side, she very well could win.

This would be a disaster.

A number of other names are being bandied about, but if we want this to be a fair fight they’re going to have to agree to agree to winnow themselves down to one.  The name that intrigues me most thus far is Port Commissioner Lloyd Hara, an uninspiring politician, but an auditor by trade, who would arguably bring the appropriate skill set and temperament to the office.  Despite his best efforts to show up at the right events, Hara doesn’t strike me as particularly progressive or Democratic; in fact, from a partisan perspective, he doesn’t strike me as much of anything.  And isn’t that, combined with competence, exactly what we need from an Elections Director to restore and maintain confidence?

So Jason, good for you for acting on your activism, but if you really care about elections integrity, I’m hoping you’ll step aside if the alternative means handing the election to Roach.