HorsesAss.Org

One of the Democrats’ first moves Friday after taking control of the US House was to pass a package of rules and ethics reforms aimed at addressing political corruption and reigning in our massive federal deficit. All six Democratic members of Washington’s delegation voted for the rule changes. All three WA Republicans voted against them.

And one of the highest profile changes was to re-adopt a stringent “pay-as-you-go” (PAYGO) budget rule that requires lawmakers to offset any new spending on entitlements, or any new tax cuts. Such a rule was in place during much of the 1990’s, during a time when President Clinton led the nation from record deficits to record surpluses, and actually started paying off the national debt. Deficits later exploded and the national debt mushroomed to $8.6 trillion under President Bush after Republicans suspended PAYGO.

Rep. Dave Reichert, who campaigns as a “fiscal conservative,” vehemently opposes PAYGO:

“I will vote against it because it raises taxes,” Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., said in a telephone interview. “The easiest fix is always to raise taxes.”

Uh-huh. If you ask me, the politically easy move has always been to cut taxes, which is how we got into this mess in the first place. Republicans are concerned that the new rule will make it harder to renew Bush’s tax cuts, most of which expire in 2010… and most of which disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Given the choice between true fiscal conservatism and paying back the GOP’s corporatist patrons, Reichert has clearly chosen the latter. And who pays for this choice? Rep. Brian Baird explains:

“We want to get the budget under control and we need to look at entitlements and revenue,” he said. “Does Dave Reichert really want to sit down with my 22-month-old boys or his grandkids and tell them they owe $8.6 billion?”

Of course, that’s what it comes down to — somebody’s got to pay for this generation’s deficit spending, and if it’s up to Reichert and the Republicans, the cost is going to fall on the shoulders of the next generation.

We’re not talking about discretionary spending. We’re not talking about investments in infrastructure or education or R&D. We’re not talking about national defense. We’re not even talking about the automatic cost-of-living increases mandated in programs like Medicare and Social Security.

PAYGO only applies to new entitlement spending (like when Medicare’s prescription drug program was implemented) and new tax cuts. Under PAYGO any new tax cut or entitlement would have to be offset by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere. It’s Balanced Budgeting 101. You know… common sense.

Yet Reichert apparently thinks we can still balance the budget using, you know… magic.

“But the way to reduce the deficit is to rein in federal spending and cut taxes, which has proven to increase revenues,” Reichert said.

Yeah, just like it was proven under Ronald Reagan and George Bush II — the two administrations that oversaw the largest expansions in the national debt in US history. That’s supply-side economics, or as Bush I famously called it during his 1980 presidential campaign, “Voodoo Economics.”

Reichert claims to be a moderate. He claims to be fiscally responsible. But when push comes to shove he unblinkingly repeats the Republican mantra and votes to protect tax cuts at all costs.

Hmm. I’d love to see where his buddies on the Seattle Times editorial board fall on PAYGO?

When Gov. Chris Gregoire unveiled her proposed two-year state budget a couple weeks back, the Seattle Times editorial board echoed the criticism of state Republicans, calling it “too high” and “unsustainable.” Oh, don’t get them wrong — the Times liked most of the spending priorities in Gov. Gregoire’s new budget — they just don’t want to pay for them:

Much of this has our support. But a 12.2-percent increase in spending compared with a 7.7 percent expected growth in revenues is too much. It is unsustainable on its face.

My immediate response was to point out that the projected budget shortfall was not due to out out-of-control spending but rather an antiquated tax system that is not only the most regressive in the nation, but is structurally incapable of producing revenue growth adequate to meet the demands of our state’s growing economy. I argued that Washington is not a high tax state, and that measured as a percentage of personal income, state and local taxes have steadily decreased since I moved here in 1992.

Well, now I have some current statistics to back me up, and it turns out that far from a dramatic expansion, state government under Gov. Gregoire’s proposed budget is actually shrinking as percentage of the state economy.

A summary analysis by the Washington State Budget & Policy Center describes Gov. Gregoire’s budget as “a modest step towards the kind of state Washingtonians want to live in,” and clearly shows that general fund spending under Gregoire is merely following the same trend established during the 1990s.

The Times would have you believe that it is Gov. Gregoire’s proposed 12.2-percent spending increase that is the anomaly, but in fact it was actually the slower spending growth during the national recession and tepid recovery that fell below historical growth levels. Gov. Gregoire’s budget merely returns the state to the established trend.

Indeed, as a share of the total state economy, Gov. Gregoire’s budget actually represents a reduced investment — a smaller share of state resources than any of the six budgets that directly precede it.

Anti-government/anti-tax critics can spout all the want about rising spending and per-capita tax increases, but those numbers are entirely meaningless when taken out of context… as they usually are. Read the academic literature and you will find that the most common metric used in comparative studies of government spending, and for analyzing the relative growth of both expenditures and revenues, is spending/taxation as a percentage of personal income.

The reason is twofold. First, the economic metric that most closely tracks long term growth in demand for government services is growth in total personal income. That is because many of the services provided by the government are commodities, and as personal income increases, so does consumption. As our state grows wealthier, demand for government services increases faster than population plus inflation.

The other reason to focus on personal income is that it is the only metric that tracks individual taxpayers’ ability to pay. The state invests in things like transportation and education and law enforcement — investments that provide the infrastructure necessary for our economy to grow and for all our citizens to prosper. A spending increase, even when accompanied by an increase in marginal tax rates, does not increase the burden on individual taxpayers if it results in a corresponding increase in personal income.

There is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper size and scope of government, and the priority in which we make public investments. But it is fundamentally dishonest to enter this debate by reinforcing the common misconception that our state government is growing, when by the most meaningful measure — the government’s total share of our state’s economic resources — even Gov. Gregoire’s proposed 12.2 percent increase represents a decline from historic trends.

So let’s have an honest debate.

Some folks like to knock Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Seattle) for not being like other congressmen, for not being a log-roller or a guy who “brings home the bacon.” The guy is very vocal on Iraq, and does lots of good work on Africa, and pushes a good healthcare plan that will likely never become law, but he doesn’t do things the same way some of his colleagues do them. Some folks (Josh Feit, Joel Connelly and, uh, me) have mused openly about how we’d like to see the guy retire sometime soon in favor of some new blood.

With all of this taken into account, I come across this at Postman:

Congressman Jim McDermott was on his way to an “Open House to Celebrate the People’s House” this morning to celebrate the new Democratic majority and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ascension.

But he also had some business to do. He was looking to corner Pelosi or Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., to lobby to get 2nd District Rep. Rick Larsen a permanent seat on the Agriculture Committee.

Just then Miller walked by on his way into the Cannon Caucus Room. Or tried to. McDermott grabbed him, pulled out some notes, and gave Miller the pitch: Larsen would be the only Northwest representative on the committee and he’s a good guy doing a good job.
Miller said he’d do what he could. And that was good enough for McDermott. “If you want to make sure Nancy hears it, tell George,” he said.

Fuckin’ nice! A liberal guy like McDermott doing what he can to help out a super centrist like Larsen, that’s class. What’s so great about this move? Rep. Rick Larsen represents the only district west of the Cascades that has lots of agricultural business. This means he’s Washington’s only Democrat to represent agriculture in Washington D.C. This will do good things for Larsen as far as keeping the GOP out of the 2nd District, which also happens to be (I heard this somewhere, correct me if I’m wrong) the only Democratic-held district in WA that is actually trending towards the GOP.

If Jim shows he’s playing the game this well in the majority, we’ll just have to postpone that retirement party.

Note: Jim! Come to Drinking Liberally when you’re back in town! We want war stories!

George Bush likes to think of it as the people’s house:

Well, thank you all so very much for coming to the White House. It’s my honor to welcome you to the people’s house.

But he apparently doesn’t think the people have a right to know who is visiting their house. From the AP:

The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall.
[…]

The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
[…]

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.

That’s our Bush—always promoting transparency and accountability in government. Really, you don’t want to know if the logs record almost 500 past visits on behalf of someone pleading guilty to fraud and corruption…. Just try not to think about it.

The White House is now using the memo to block a Washington Post request for Secret Service logs identifying visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

Clearly, only freedom hating, terrorist sympathizers would want to know about the comings and goings in the people’s house.

I’ve had my disagreements with some of the individuals at Washington Public Campaigns, but I certainly support their efforts to promote a broader debate about public financing of campaigns.

In any case, they’re holding a “Clean Elections” forum tonight at Town Hall, and any panel that includes David Sirota is well worth the five buck admission.

Washington Public Campaigns is an organization founded to promote the passage of legislation establishing public financing of campaigns. Maine and Arizona have instituted publicly financed campaigns, which, after three election cycles, has resulted in more competitive races and more women and minority office holders. Following a short video narrated by Bill Moyers, author and political strategist David Sirota, Representative Linda Valentino (Maine), and Senator Ed Ableser (Arizona) and a panel of experts discusses how public campaign financing is working elsewhere and how it could work in Washington.

That’s tonight, Friday Jan 5, 7:30 at Seattle’s Town Hall, corner of 8th & Seneca. Admission $5.00 at the door.

While I hate to harp on the kind folks at (un)Sound Politics (um, not really) I thought it only fair to follow up on a post the other day in which I take (u)SP’s Jim Miller to task for taking the Seattle P-I’s David Horsey to task for his final “Burning Question” column.

Horsey asked his readers if our understanding of the world was made better or worse by the “unfiltered cacophony of opinions” that is the blogosphere, and in attacking Horsey as an anti-free speech elitist, Miller made a strong argument (by example) for the latter. But to add irony to irony, only one day after arrogantly defending the superiority of us bloggers, Miller writes a post in which he authoritatively cites Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist known for making shit up about the Iranian government.

Over on Effin’ Unsound (a must read for local connoisseurs of political snark,) theHim thoroughly undresses Miller in a line-by-line deconstruction. It’s hilarious. And instructive.

Senator Patty Murray is now the secretary of the Democratic caucus. That puts her in the number four leadership position in the U.S. Senate.

She outranks Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Sen. Olympia Jean Snowe, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Sen. Barbara Boxer. Senator Murray is now the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Senate.

Before (un)Sound Politics, before the gubernatorial election contest, before he moved to Seattle, our good friend Stefan cut his shark teeth on the Bay area blog NancyWatch, ferociously setting out to destroy the political career of his hated congresswoman, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

And where’s Nancy today? Speaker of the House.

Hey… congratulations Stefan.

Stefan abandoned his ponytail-in-inkwell-like obsession in May 2003 after moving to Seattle, but he quickly added new names to his enemies list, building (u)SP into a politician-killer that has since toppled the careers of Chris Gregoire, Ron Sims and many other liberal Democrats.

No, wait. They all won their elections. As did a near sweep of Democrats in local legislative and council races over the past couple years. Hmm, pretty much every ballot initiative and referendum has gone the other way too. Come to think of it, except for Dave Reichert’s close victory over come from nowhere Darcy Burner, and a couple of Republican favored candidates in supposedly nonpartisan Port Commission races (how’s that going for you?) Stefan’s pretty much been on the losing side of nearly every race over the past two election seasons.

(Not to mention the much vilified Dean Logan, who left King County for a higher paying job administering elections for Los Angeles, the largest jurisdiction in the nation.)

So here’s a tip to ambitious Democrats everywhere: get on Stefan’s shit list, for it certainly seems to be a surefire path towards higher office. Don’t believe me? Just ask Speaker Nancy Pelosi and future cabinet Secretary Ron Sims.

UPDATE:
As fellow HA blogger Will points out, I shamelessly stole this meme without attribution from a post of his right here on HA. Sorry Will. But considering how infrequently you’ve been posting, you can’t really blame me for forgetting that I have co-bloggers.

Damn it. In plotting our conspiracy to violently overthrow the government of the United States, my comrades and I have been careful not to communicate via email or telephone because we know how easily these communications can be intercepted by a Bush administration unfettered by the First Amendment. But now we can’t even rely on old-fashioned snail mail anymore:

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

[…] Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will “construe” an exception, “which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent … with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.”

Yeah… yeah… I know what the righty trolls are going to say. I hate America. I love Osama bin Laden. Lefty wingbats like me are at least as dangerous as the terrorists we mollycoddle.

But I’d just like you righties to pause for a moment and imagine it was a President Clinton (Bill or Hillary) who was asserting the unitary executive doctrine and the power to “construe” legislation as he or she chooses. Imagine it was a President Clinton claiming the power to invade your privacy simply by declaring “exigent circumstances.”

Would you still defend the President? Or might you start wondering if the means by which the administration is fighting the War on Terror might be destroying the very democratic principles we’re attempting to defend?

I’m just askin’.

Phew. For a moment there, I thought I might have to agree with a post over on (un)Sound Politics. But then I followed through the link. What a relief.

Jim Miller takes issue with Seattle P-I editorial cartoonist David Horsey for this week’s Burning Question, blockquoting it for the convenience of (u)SP readers:

Unquestionably, there are good things resulting from the democratization of the media. The best bloggers are delving into issues and information that may be bypassed by professional journalists. But with everyone holding a virtual megaphone, will we be able to hear the wiser voices amid the din of full-throated free expression?

Here’s my Burning Question:

All things considered, is our understanding of the world made better or worse by an unfiltered cacophony of opinions?

Miller calls it a “revealing question” that displays a “dangerous misunderstanding”:

Freedom of speech is not something owned by public officials and “professional journalists”. It belongs to all of us, regardless of how wise David Horsey may think we are. It is up to the listener, or the reader, not some filter, however “professional”, to decide what should be believed — and what should not be believed.

The loss of their monopoly has hit many journalists hard. But to see one half wishing for filters on the freedom of others is still dismaying. I have criticized David Horsey more than once, but I have never said that he should be filtered. But he seems to believe that it might be better if I were.

Uh-huh.

What a pompous, paranoid load of crap.

The fact is, Horsey’s question isn’t “revealing” at all, and the only “misunderstanding” is the one that Miller willfully foists on his readers by presenting the question entirely out of context. If you click through the link and actually read Horsey’s piece (something I’m sure Miller understands a small minority of blog readers generally take the initiative to do) you’d understand that this week’s Burning Question is the final installment in Horsey’s long-running series.

The world of punditry has been democratized. The mainstream media are surrounded by non-professional competitors who employ a wide array of formats to exchange opinions unfiltered by editors or experts.

In this new context, finding a place to express a viewpoint is hardly a challenge. Thus, with that need more than met, Burning Questions will close up shop next Saturday to give way to new things.

Miller tsk-tskingly accuses Horsey of “half wishing for filters on the freedom of others” (totally oblivious to the fact that us bloggers are media filters in our own right,) but a fair reading of Horsey finds that he actually celebrates the new media, openly acknowledging that the Burning Question series has come to an end exactly because us bloggers have made it superfluous and outdated. That said, Horsey then goes on to raise some legitimate concerns about the blogosphere in general, and our comment threads in particular.

Yes, it does seem good that average folk can have their say, just like George Will and Paul Krugman. Yet, most times when I’ve read through a long string of comments posted on an online forum, I have come away with the same doubts I had about the amateur hotel reviewers.

Not just doubts, actually, but worries about the intellect and analytical skills (plus spelling ability) of my fellow citizens. In so much of this populist punditry there is an overabundance of ill-informed spouting off infused with incredible rudeness, paranoia, bias and bile.

Gee, I dunno… that seems to me like a pretty fair description of the comment threads on both (u)SP and HA. I’m not exactly sure what Miller finds so objectionable.

As for the claim that Horsey’s question is “revealing,” Miller ignores the basic conceit of posing a “Burning Question” in the first place. The whole point of the exercise is to spark debate. How could a question possibly be revealing if the very nature of the rhetorical device demands that it be controversial?

Jesus… what an idiotic and/or dishonest critique.

The irony is that by reading between the lines to portray Horsey as a status-quo-defending, patrician enemy of free speech, Miller pretty much confirms all of Horsey’s doubts about the “intellect and analytical skills” of us citizen bloggers. (Though I gotta admit, Miller’s spelling is dead on.) Unpoisoned by Miller’s paranoid analysis, I think the average reader would find that Horsey was actually saying some pretty darned flattering things about us bloggers.

Too flattering.

Apparently, state Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla) didn’t get the message that the phrase “stay the course” is so yesterday.

At an Associated Press Legislative Forum held this morning in Olympia, Pete Callaghan of the Tacoma News Tribune asked the panel whether there was any “resistance” to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposal to delay the math WASL as a requirement for graduation. House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-Seattle) said he supported the governor’s proposal. But at around the 31:10 mark, Sen. Hewitt disagreed:

“Our caucus, and I think probably the House caucus as well, will tell you that we want to stay the course. The WASL scores are increasing, as are the math scores.”

That’s it. No problem here. Nothing to look at. Sure, a huge percentage of the state’s high school seniors are about to be denied a diploma, keeping them out of college and higher paying jobs, but… you know… stay the course.

To be fair, as Sen. Hewitt continues, he starts to sound a bit more nuanced, arguing that we need to evaluate the issue district by district. “One shoe does not fit all,” Sen. Hewitt tells the audience. But the question was straight forward: do you support the governor’s proposal to delay the math WASL requirement? And apparently, according to Sen. Hewitt, the official GOP position is “no.”

Whatever the merits of standards based teaching, something’s clearly not working right here in WA state. And to simply respond with “stay the course” in the face of a growing anti-WASL backlash is the kind of head-in-the-sand policy orthodoxy that has landed Sen. Hewitt and his fellow Republicans firmly in the minority.

A kid was shot to death today at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington.

One of the arguments given by gun control proponents is that handguns make it really easy to take out aggressions on someone. It’s hard to find fault with that claim.

From 1999 to 2004, there were 70,200 people in the U.S. that died of gun-related homicide, which is a rate of 41 gun-related homicides per million people. (And this does not include gun-related suicides.)

Over the same time period, there were 2,927 people who died of terrorism—a rate of less than 2 terrorism-related deaths per million people.

Yet, somehow we’ve chosen a war on terror™ [sic] as our national obsession. And using that “war” as justification, we’ve weakened the Constitution and abandoned other fundamental American values, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the effort, we’ve invaded other countries, and we’ve brought death, injury and violence into the lives of millions of innocent people.

My point is this: if we really wanted to make America safer, wouldn’t it be far more effective to launch a war on gun violence with the same resolve? I mean, that war would involve weakening the constitution, too, but I cannot imagine it would entail all the other bad side effects….

I suppose the PR folks at Microsoft thought it a savvy move to send free computers loaded with Vista software to dozens of tech-industry bloggers. But rather than generating glowing reviews, the Redmond software giant’s outreach efforts have created an online controversy, with charges of “payola” and “bribery” flying in all directions.

Microsoft’s efforts to woo influential bloggers by sending them free computers loaded with the Vista operating system is generating controversy, with some online writers attacking would-be Vista reviewers for taking what were tantamount to bribes, while recipients defend their editorial independence, arguing that journalism-style rules prohibiting such gifts are outdated.

[…] In total, Microsoft and AMD gave away 90 PCs, all loaded with the highest-end version of Windows Vista, the 64-bit Ultimate edition. Most received Acer Ferrari laptops that list for between US$2,000 and $2,400 at retail stores. Others received media center desktops made by Velocity Micro Inc.

Microsoft says it has “no expectation of any editorial payback,” and some of the bloggers who have benefited from the company’s largesse argue that professional journalism ethics simply don’t apply in an online world where many bloggers could not afford to review products if they had to pay for them themselves.

Hmm. If Microsoft were to send me a new Acer Ferrari laptop, I suppose I would be faced with quite an ethical quandary. On the one hand, accepting such a gift might compromise my credibility when writing about Microsoft or its new operating system. On the other hand my current laptop, a time-worn Apple iBook, is now over five years old.

So I guess the only way for me to adequately consider this controversy and determine for myself and my readers on which side I fall, is for Microsoft to send me a free computer too. Personally, I’d prefer a new MacBook Pro. (I understand that Vista runs fine within a copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac.) But I guess I’d take one of those Acer laptops if that’s all you have lying around.

So, hey Microsoft, drop me an email and I’ll give you my shipping address. And I absolutely promise you… no editorial payback.

Don’t you just love irony?

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Rep. Goode — who took Rep. Ellison’s election as an opportunity to warn his constituents that unless we “wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office” — represents Jefferson’s birthplace of Albemarle County Virginia.

Hmm. If we don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there might be more Thomas Jeffersons elected to office.