HorsesAss.Org

I’m watching a forum on C-Span from February of this year. It’s moderated by Tim Russert and includes former RNC chief Ed Gillespie, Democratic advisor James Carville, and columnists E.J. Dionne and Peggy Noonan.

You can watch it here.

Merry Christmas. Talk amongst yourselves.

It may be Christmas Eve, but it sure as hell won’t be a silent night on “The David Goldstein Show” from 7PM to 10PM tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO. I don’t have any scheduled guests at the moment, but I’ve got a number of topics I’m just itching to discuss, including:

• Is it time for a state income tax? Republicans complain that Gov. Gregoire’s new budget will result in budget deficits several years out, but our sales tax heavy tax system would produce long term deficits even if we freeze the size of state government. At what point do we face reality and either reform our tax structure (the most regressive in the nation) or just simply accept our destiny as the Alabama of the West?

• Is this a Christian nation, or just a nation of Christians? And either way, why do so many politically prominent Christians feel so comfortable getting so damn pissy about it? Locally, mega-church preacher and Republican activist Pastor Joe Fuiten describes Jews as a bunch of money-grubbing merchants who should thank Jesus for their yuletide profits… and barely anybody bats an eye. Nationally, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warns that if we don’t reform immigration “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.” Heaven forfend.

• Who’s afraid of the big bad Rossi? For two years now we’ve been hearing from the WA GOP about how they’re going to get revenge for the 2004 gubernatorial election, which they claim was stolen, but which actually turned out to be an excruciatingly close tie that broke just barely for Gregoire, in turn breaking the hearts of Republicans who came oh-so-close. First it was Ron Sims who was supposed to pay the piper, and I-912 was supposed to be a shot across the bow. Then Mike McGavick was supposed to benefit from a statewide backlash. (Yeah. How’d that work out for you?) And now a new poll shows Gregoire besting Rossi 51 percent to 40 percent. Ouch. So, is Dino Rossi a one hit wonder, or the next governor of Washington?

• An inhabited island off the coast of India has disappeared beneath rising sea levels. Oops.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
I’ll be filling in for Dave Ross and Ron Reagan all week, from 9AM to 1PM.

The Seattle Times thinks that Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget is too high because it leaves the state with projected budget deficits out into the future.

Well, yeah… but even a budget that merely keeps pace with growth in demand for public services (which roughly tracks growth in personal income) would result in projected budget deficits out into the future. In fact, even if we ratchet government down and only try to have spending keep pace with population growth plus inflation, we’ll still end up with budget deficits projected indefinitely out into the future.

That is because we have an inadequate and unfair tax structure that simply cannot keep pace with our economy, resulting in a structural budget deficit as far as the eye can see.

For too long the state has dealt with this structural deficit by delaying investment in critical infrastructure. The result is a multi-billion dollar backlog in transportation maintenance and construction, and a higher education system that’s fails to accommodate all our state’s college bound students… and at an ever increasing tuition cost. Spending per K-12 student is amongst the lowest in the nation, and Spokane and Seattle area teacher salaries adjusted for local cost of living are near the bottom of the 100 largest metropolitan areas nationwide.

There is a popular fiction — which the Times editorial board fails to refute — that Washington is a high tax state. It is not. In fact, it’s rather middling. And average state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income have dropped steadily since I moved here in 1992. I pay no state income tax, and while my property taxes have more than doubled since I purchased my home in 1997, they are less than half that of a similar house in the Philadelphia suburb in which I was raised.

A tax structure that heavily relies on taxing the sale of goods simply cannot sustain adequate revenue growth in our 21st Century service economy. It has also created the most regressive state and local tax structure in the nation.

If you earn less than $20,000 a year you live in the highest taxed state in the union. If you earn over $200,000 a year you live in one of the lowest. Unless and until we reform our tax structure so as to tax all families more fairly, we will never adequately address our state’s long term structural budget deficit. And we’ll never have a fair and adequate tax structure until we implement an income tax.

Tune in to a special Saturday night edition of “The David Goldstein Show” from 7PM to 10PM tonight on Newsradio 710-KIRO, as I fill-in for Frank Shiers. Subject to change, here are the topics for tonight’s show:

7PM: What have we learned (if anything) from last week’s power outage? Both the Governor and the Seattle City Council have asked for reports from the powers that be, evaluating our emergency response and suggesting what we might do better. Here’s one idea: mandate backup generators at filling stations. Here’s another: do a damn better job maintaining the existing infrastructure. You’ve got a better idea? Give me a call.

8PM: Is it time to legalize pot? At over a billion dollars a year, marijuana is now Washington state’s number two cash crop, just behind, well, you know… apples. At what point do we finally admit that our silly little War on Drugs is going even worse than our war in Iraq? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just legalize pot, regulate it… and tax the hell out of it?

9PM: Is this a Christian nation, or just a nation of Christians? And either way, why do so many politically prominent Christians feel so comfortable getting so damn pissy about it? Locally, mega-church preacher and Republican activist Pastor Joe Fuiten describes Jews as a bunch of money-grubbing merchants who should thank Jesus for their yuletide profits… and barely anybody bats an eye. Nationally, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) warns that if we don’t reform immigration “there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.” Heaven forfend.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
I’ll be on at my usual 7PM to 10PM time tomorrow night, and then filling in for Dave Ross and Ron Reagan all week, from 9AM to 1PM.

Happy Festivus! Here’s Gov. Jim Doyle (D-WI) with his Festivus pole.

• EFFin’ Unsound is fast becoming a must-read, in large part to it’s author Carl Ballard and contributor TheHim. The both of them never let a stupid post at a conservative blog go unmocked. Here’s a recent gem.
• Public financing of judicial races isn’t enough, says Lynn.
  

  My question is, “Why stop there?” The timing is good to jump on public financing for the judicial races given the insane amounts of money that was spent on the three Supreme Court races between the primary and the general elections. I understand that. Plus, Gregoire is cautious by disposition. But what an opportunity to go all the way and ask for public financing of all statewide and legislative races.

  I’m very interested in any blogger who has a credible arguement AGAINST public finance, as I’m sure one exists.

• If you have iTunes, download this now, while it’s still free.
• There’s been excessive spinning over whether or not the Governor actually made a decision regarding the Viaduct. Dan’s satisfied:
  

  The fact is, if she had decided to take it upon herself alone to decide a matter that’s more a Seattle concern than anyone else’s, she would have been lambasted for overstepping her authority and power.

  If she had chosen in favor of a replacement viaduct, she would have pissed off one half of the people, and if she had decided on a tunnel she would have pissed off the other side.

  Count me as one of those that thinks she made the correct decision[…]

  If the replacement option is “financial viable”, and the tunnel option isn’t (according to the Governor herself), why vote between the two? Why present voters an option that isn’t paid for? No, I think the real “punt” the Governor made was by advocating that Seattle vote between two options, only one of which is feasable. As Josh Feit says, this will result in selection of the rebuild option. The Seattle City Council, which lists another Viaduct as its third choice, ought to be sharpening their knives over the Governor’s actions.

• How to replace a popular county executive: Pierce County Edition.

Business is booming:

Washington is among the top five pot-producing states, producing a $1 billion-a-year crop that is second in value only to the state’s famed apple harvest, according to an analysis released this week by a public-policy researcher.

Hmm. If the state legalized and taxed pot at the same rate it taxes non-cigarette tobacco products (75 percent of the retail price,) that would produce about $750 million in revenues a year.

Yeah, yeah… I’m making a lot of bogus assumptions there, but the point is that our embarrassingly ineffective war on drugs has only succeeding in creating a burgeoning black market, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues… not to mention the many millions more spent interdicting, prosecuting and jailing pot offenders. This is money that could not only be spent on important public services like health care and education, but also on treatment and prevention programs that couldn’t possibly be any less effective than our existing efforts at interdiction.

There’s absolutely no way to prevent people from growing, selling and consuming pot. It isn’t just climate or an abundance of hippies that makes WA a prime pot-growing region — hell, Tennessee and Kentucky rank second and third respectively, for a combined $9.4 billion crop that makes WA look like a community pea-patch. So if we can’t stop farmers from growing reefer in the heart of the old Confederacy, how are we going to stop it here in the liberal-tarian Northwest?

Of course, we can’t.

Prohibition just doesn’t work, and at least when it comes to the relatively innocuous social harm caused by marijuana — arguably less harmful than alcohol — it just doesn’t make sense. That’s reality. I’m not saying we should encourage or promote our local pot industry, but it’s far past time we legalize, regulate and tax it.

As for those who continue to attempt to make rational arguments in favor of marijuana prohibition, well… I don’t know what they’re smoking.

DISCLAIMER:
I did occasionally smoke pot during college, but no longer do because it now makes me physically uncomfortable. So I have no dog in this fight.

Because relatives are visiting from New York this week, the cellulose-based legacy media is finding its way into my house. I spotted this interesting introduction to an Op-Ed piece by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann in today’s New York Times:

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves.

The term redacted is, of course, a euphemism for censored. The Times printed the Op-Ed with the censored sections of text blacked out.

Why the White House feels so threatened by a series of facts contained in the original draft—all drawn from public sources— that they would engage in such gratuitous censorship is beyond me.

I suppose it could be because the article documents how Bush double-crossed Iran after a period of fruitful cooperation in the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I suppose the White House was a little miffed by being exposed as squandering opportunities to get Iran’s help in fixing the Iraq civil war quagmire. But neither of these reasons justifies government censorship of the press or the free speech rights of the authors. It is clear from numerous sources—the censored Op-Ed, the authors’ statement, the statement of CIA Publication Review Board, and the cited sources—that the Op-Ed contained no classified information or information that compromised national security.

Simply put, the only rationale the White House had for censoring this article was to save the Administration a little embarrassment. And that is outrageous. Every American, regardless of political persuasion, should be alarmed by the realization that the White House even bothers to intervene in newspaper Op-Ed pieces, not to mention that they gratuitously censor embarrassing material.

Gov. Christine Gregoire has ordered the head of WA’s Emergency Management Division to review how the state responded to the recent wind storm and power outage. My guess is that the report will be mixed.

There are of course a lot of things we need to do better, but I’ve got a suggestion that’s pretty straight forward, and would surely ease the crisis in the wake of future disasters: require the installation of backup generators at filling stations.

Residents throughout the Puget Sound region faced an artificial fuel shortage in the days following the wind storm due to power outages that left filling stations unable to pump gas. Had this been a major disaster — like a massive earthquake — this fuel shortage would have greatly magnified the human misery, preventing residents who had lost their homes from leaving the region. And in the end, it’s not much good installing a generator at your home or business if you are unable to purchase the fuel to run it during a prolonged power outage.

Gas stations are a critical part of our transportation and economic infrastructure, especially in such an automobile-centric region. It only makes sense that we attempt to keep them operating during future emergencies.

I’m not sure what the costs would be, but it’s hard to imagine that a backup generator and hookup sufficient to run the pumps would cost much more than a few thousand dollars per station. And it is very hard to argue that a state law mandating and/or heavily incentivizing such installations would not be in the public interest.

I dunno… just seems like common sense to me.

Apparently, it’s A-okay for a politically connected mega-church preacher to say shit like this:

“Even Jewish merchants ought’a be gathered around their cash registers singing ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.'”

Silly me. I guess I should just learn my place.

The Stranger’s Eli Sanders has more on Seattle’s “Jewish Problem.” It’s a must read.

King County Executive Ron Sims supports a public vote on the future of the Alaska Way Viaduct, but apparently thinks it should initially be limited to an up or down vote on the rebuild option alone. Or so says Sims spokesman Sandeep Kaushik, who joined me last night on 710-KIRO to discuss Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposal to hold a public vote pitting the rebuild vs a tunnel.

At first glance a lot of observers thought the Governor had punted on the Viaduct, but a closer look makes it clear that she’s really made most of the decision, eliminating the retrofit and surface options, and setting up a vote that strongly tilts towards a rebuild. The rebuild is by far the furthest along in the design phase, and comes closest to a fixed price tag, with the Governor promising that the state will pick up any cost overruns. So if the Governor gets her way, Seattle voters will be faced with a choice between the devil we know (a 50-percent wider Viaduct with a fairly fixed cost range to local voters) and the devil we don’t know (a tunnel that could end up looking like anything and eventually cost us $5 billion or more.) I think the Governor is fairly confident that given that choice, voters will choose the rebuild.

Sims however thinks it’s too soon to give up on a “surface-boulevard-plus-transit” option, especially since we haven’t fully explored what such an alternative might look like.

“Governor Gregoire’s announcement today that the public should vote between two Viaduct replacement options – a tunnel or a rebuild – is too limited. While I can support the idea of a public vote, and strongly prefer the tunnel over the rebuild, I disagree with the governor’s call for excluding a surface-boulevard-plus-transit option from public consideration.

“That option, which could potentially open up the waterfront while providing an affordable, environmentally friendly means of moving traffic through the city, has not yet been studied. The surface option that WSDOT briefly examined contained no transit element and bears little resemblance to what surface-transit advocates are proposing.

“If we are going to position Seattle as a vibrant world-class 21st century metropolis, we need to proceed with boldness and vision. We need to think beyond present-day categories, with an eye to the long-term. How we decide on the Viaduct today is a profound test of our commitment to a better, more enlightened future. The right sort of transit-friendly surface proposal could meet that test.”

I agree.

If the Viaduct wasn’t already in place, nobody in their right mind would propose constructing a massive, double-decker freeway through Seattle’s waterfront, and our transportation planners’ inability to envision options beyond a rebuild or a tunnel is a failure of imagination and vision. By all means, let the voters decide if they want a rebuild. But let’s not set up a false choice where a tunnel is the only other option.

So, well… I guess my friends in the local media are just going to give Pastor Joe Fuiten a free ride on this one, huh?

“Even Jewish merchants ought’a be gathered around their cash registers singing ‘what a friend we have in Jesus.'”

The statement, broadcast Sunday on Up Front with Robert Mak, is even worse in context, coming in the wake of Sea-Tac Airport’s Christmas tree fiasco and the torrent of anti-semitic comments it generated on KING-5 TV’s own blog. So it strikes me as more than a little bit insensitive for a prominent public figure to go on the air and say that the Rabbi deserved the condemnation he was getting, that nobody travels for Hannukah anyway, and that Jews are basically a bunch of greedy merchants who should be satisfied enough to just celebrate their profits.

I don’t get it. Seattle has a reputation for political correctness ad absurdum, and yet this clearly insensitive if not downright anti-semitic comment from a major public figure doesn’t even generate a yawn.

Joe Fuiten is the pastor of our region’s largest mega-church, Bothell’s Cedar Park Church. He is also an influential player in Republican Party politics, a close advisor to Mike McGavick during his failed senate campaign, and a publicity hound who actively seeks to interject himself into controversial political and social issues. Fuiten gets air time exactly because he is perceived to be credible.

So I guess in this town, it must be credible to perpetuate anti-Jewish sentiment in pursuit of one’s political agenda. Huh. Who knew?

As a kid, whenever the power was out, I learned how to play the piano. I re-learned during each power outage. We never had a generator, but my father was smart enough to install a wood stove in the center of the first floor of our house. Because of this we were never cold. The house is in rural King County, an area where folks are still a bit tougher than regular suburban people. While outages were never fun, we got through it.

Not everyone has a wood stove. Or a generator. Or, it would seem, a practical understanding of the dangers of carbon monoxide. Folks, if this event had really been serious, we would be in a world of trouble. What if this was an earthquake? I saw one lady walk into a drug store downtown and ask if they had flashlights. They didn’t. Why didn’t she have one? Everyone should. Getting supplies won’t be so easy in a worst-case scenario.

This storm really hurt people in the immigrant community. Of those deaths caused by carbon monoxide, several were immigrants. Perhaps instead of the dull programming on government cable channels, maybe we should be showing programs on the dangers of CO in languages other than English.

People have to stop whining. After listening to Goldy’s show on Sunday, I was irritated by how people have a sense of entitlement during these tough times. There was lots of complaining about Puget Sound Energy and Seattle City Light by folks with little understanding of how the electrical grid works. Amazing. With just a little preparation, you can make life a lot easier on yourself.

You’d all be surprised to find that you can buy a generator for 600 bucks. It’s a small one, but you can run a refrigerator, a heater, and some light bulbs, maybe more. If you own a house, it’s a good investment. Also, you’ll be the neighborhood’s hero as everyone will look to you to save their salmon steaks and buffalo burgers.

A few suggestions:

Listen to this guy. Do this stuff. Don’t panic, complain, or put a generator in your living room. If all else fails and you find yourself in the dark after the next storm, grab a sleeping bag and a duffle. I’ll probably still have power.

Every Joo
Down in Joo-ville
Liked Chanukah as such…

But the Kvetch,
Who lived just north of Joo-ville,
… not so much.

The Kvetch hated Chanukah, the whole Chanukah season.
Now don’t ask me why. What? Should I know the reason?
It could be he wasn’t a mensch, that is all.
Or his petzel, perhaps, was two sizes too small.
Such meshug’as comes from one thing or another,
But like most Joo-ish boys, we should just blame his mother!

But,
The reason, whatever,
His mom or his putz,
The Kvetch hated Chanukah. Oy, what a yutz!
For he knew every Joo down in Joo-ville tonight
Was busy preparing menorahs to light.

“And they’re giving out gelt!” he sighed as he said
“I need waxy chocolate like holes in my head!”
Then he nervously whined as his fingers tapped horas,
“I MUST stop the Joos from igniting menorahs!”

For,
The Kvetch knew that soon…

… All the Joo girls and boys
Would say the baruch’ha, then unwrap their toys!
And then! Oh, the oys! Oh, the Oys! Oys! Oys! Oys!
If it’s not what they wanted, the OYS! OYS! OYS! OYS!

Then the Joos, young and old, would sit down for a nosh.
And they’d nosh! And they’d nosh!
And they’d NOSH! NOSH! NOSH! NOSH!
They would nosh on Joo-latkes, and Gefilte-Joo-Fish,
Which was surely the Kvetch’s least favorite dish!

And THEN
They’d do something
Which made the Kvetch plotz!
Every Joo down in Joo-ville, Bar Mitzvahed or not,
Would sit down together, their proud ponim’s grinning.
Then dreidels in hand, all the Joos would start spinning!

They’d spin! And they’d spin!
AND they’d SPIN! SPIN! SPIN! SPIN!
And the more the Kvetch thought of this Joo-Dreidel-Spin,
The more the Kvetch thought, “I can’t let this begin!
“Oy, for fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now!
“Chanukah, Schmanukah! Stop it!
… But HOW?”

Then he got an idea!
And the moment he had,
He said
“I’m no Einstein, but this… not half bad!”

“I know just what to do!” Then he donned an old sheet,
And dug up some sandals to wear on his feet.
“I’m the Prophet Elijiah! They’ve set me a plate!”
(For the Kvetch couldn’t keep Joo-ish holidays straight.)
“The Joos ‘ll oblige ol’ Elijiah, no doubt!
“I will simply walk in. Then I’ll clean the place out!”

“All I need is a camel…”
He looked far and near,
But this wasn’t the desert, and camels are dear.
Did that stop the old Kvetch…?
That pischer? No, never:
“If I can’t find a camel,” the Kvetch said, “…whatever.”
So he called his dog, Max. Then he took an old sack
And he tied a hump onto the front of his back.

THEN
He climbed on this
dog-dromedaryish mammal.
You never have seen
Such a schmuck on a camel.

Then the Kvetch cried “Oy vey!”
As old Max started down
Toward the homes, while the Joos
Where still schmoozing in town.

All their driveways were empty. Just SUV tracks.
All the Joos were out last-minute-shopping at Saks,
As he rode to a not-so-small house on old Max.
“It’s a good thing I brought” the old Prophet Kvetch thought,
“All these bags with to stuff all the stuff the Joos bought.”

Then he looked at the chimney. It seemed quite a stretch
That a fat goy like Santa could fit, thought the Kvetch,
“Still, the goyim believe stranger things, that’s for sure.”
Then the Kvetch shrugged his shoulders, and walked through the door
Where the little Joo dreidels were all strewn about.
“These dreidels,” he grinned, “are the first to go out!”

And he schvitzed, as he shlepped, with an odor unpleasant,
Around the whole house, as he took every present!
Barbie dolls! Mountain bikes! Brios! And blocks!
Pokemon! GameBoys! And all of that shlock!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then his arms spread akimbo,
He shlepped all the bags, one by one, out the wimbo!

Then he shlepped to the kitchen. He took every dish.
He took the Joo-latkes. The Gefilte-Joo-Fish.
He cleaned out the Sub-Zero so nimbly and neat,
Careful to separate dairy from meat.
Then he shlepped the Joo-nosh right out the front door-a.
“And NOW!” kvelled the Kvetch, “I will shlep the menorah!”

And he grabbed the menorah, and started to shlep on,
When he heard a whine, like a cat being stepped on.
He spun ‘round with shpilkes, and coming his way,
It was Ruth Levy-Joo, who was two, if a day.

The Kvetch had been caught by this small shaina maidel,
Who’d been watching TV on her big RCA’dle.
“The Prophet Elijiah?” she quizzed the old fool,
“You visit on Pesach, they taught us in shul.”

And although the old Kvetch was surprised and confused,
It’s not hard to lie to a girl in her twos.
“Bubbeleh… sweatheart…” he started his tale,
“Your dad paid full price, when this all was on sale!
“And like any good merchant, I just want to please ya.
“I’ll ring it up right, then I’ll refund your VISA.”

Then he patted her tush. Put a Barney tape in.
And she spaced-out as fast as the spindle could spin.
And as Ruth Levy-Joo watched her mauve dinosaura,
HE went to the door and shlepped out the menorah!

Then the match for the shamas
Was last to be filched!
Then he shlepped himself out to continue his pillage.
On the walls he left nothing at all. Bubkes. Zilch.
And the one speck of food
That he left in the house
Was a matzoh ball even too dense for a mouse.

Then
He did the same schtick
In the other Joo’s houses.

Leaving knaidlach
Too dense
For the other Joo’s mouses!

It was quarter to dusk…
All the Joos, still at Saks,
All the Joos, still a-shmooze
When he packed up old Max,
Packed him up with their presents! The gelt and the dreidels!
The chotchkes and latkes! The knish and the knaidels!

He hauled it all up to his condo in haste!
(A Grinch might have dumped it, but why go to waste?)
“Shtup you!” to the Joos, the Kvetch loudly cheered,
“They’re finding out Chanukah’s cancelled this year!
“They’re just coming home! I know just what they’ll say!
“They’ll ask their homeowners insurance to pay,
“Then the Joos down in Joo-ville will all cry OY VEY!”

“All those Oys,” kvelled the Kvetch,
“Now THIS I must hear!”
So he paused. And the Kvetch put his hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising up from the shtetl.
It started to grow. Then the Kvetch grew unsettled…

Why the sound wasn’t sad,
It was more like the noise
Of a UPS trucker
Delivering toys!

He stared down at Joo-ville!
And then the Kvetch shook,
As truck after truck
Replaced all that he took!

Every Joo down in Joo-ville, the Golds and the Steins,
Re-ordered their presents by going online!

Chanukah HADN’T been cancelled!
IT CAME!
…On UPS trucks… but it came just the same!

Then the Kvetch, staring down at the gifts where they sat,
Stood kvitching and kvetching: “For this, I did that?
“It came without traffic! It came without tax!
“It came without shopping at Bloomie’s or Saks!”
And he kvetched on and on, til he started to shvitz,
Then the Kvetch thought of something which might make him rich!
“Maybe stores,” thought the Kvetch, “don’t need mortar and bricks.
“Maybe toys can be bought with a few well-placed clicks!”

And what happened then…?
Well… in Joo-ville they say
That the Kvetch raised
Ten million in venture that day!
And the minute his web site was ready to go,
He raised ten billion more on his new IPO!
He sold back the toys to the homes they came from!
And he…

… he the Kvetch…!
Founded YA-JOO.COM!

©2000 by David Goldstein
All rights reserved

[With apologies to the late, great Dr. Seuss — but not to the greedy, litigious bastards at Dr. Seuss Enterprises, LLC. So there. Happy Christmukah.]

The Seattle Times has some advice for Icos shareholders:

Shareholders of Icos, the Seattle area’s largest locally owned biotech company, have another few days to think about whether to sell out to Eli Lilly, which has just raised its offer by $2 a share. Lilly has not changed its intention to close Icos and lay off all 550 employees here.

[…] Management, which stands to gain tens of millions of dollars in bonuses from the deal, was telling shareholders Lilly’s $32-a-share offer was good. Now, it’s $34 a share. Shareholders might think twice before taking its word for it and selling so easily.

At the risk of being branded a dirty commie, I’d like to also suggest that local shareholders might also think twice about whether their personal profit should take precedence over the broader interests of their community — both the community in which they live and the community of Icos employees.

This is an issue the local media seems to have gingerly danced about since Lilly announced their intention to shut down Icos and lay off all 550 employees. The decision has been described as “strange” and “unexpected,” but now that Lilly has made its intentions clear, Icos managers and shareholders can’t blame Lilly for the layoffs. If shareholders approve the deal, they will be directly responsible for shutting down a company they helped create, and laying off all of its employees. They can’t just blame Lilly; they must blame themselves.

I know it is apostasy in a nation that deifies capitalists to suggest that there is more to life than maximizing ones profits, or that individuals have an obligation to society that sometimes trumps personal self-interest. And it may appear idealistic and naive to advocate that there are some values that can never be quantified on a spreadsheet. But it is likewise idealist and naive to hide behind the notion that the market always makes the most efficient allocation of resources.

No doubt many Icos shareholders are only in it for the money, and they should follow the Times advice and evaluate Lilly’s offer based purely on whether they are getting a high enough price for their shares. But I’d wager that many shareholders — as well as the vast majority of Icos employees — also take pride in having helped to build something larger than themselves.

A vote to sell out is a vote to dismantle Seattle’s largest locally owned bio-tech company and lay off all of its employees, and I don’t think it unfair or unwise to ask local Icos shareholders to factor that into their decision. And if Lilly ultimately prevails, and yet another local bio-tech company is bought out and shut down, I think it is time to ask our elected officials to reconsider whether the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other public subsidies we are investing in this industry is really benefiting the region, or merely benefiting a handful of savvy investors?