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A few days back I suggested that newspaper publishers should take personal responsibility for their own bad business decisions, arguing that as poor as industry fundamentals may be, it’s the mountain of highly leveraged debt, not operating losses, that threatens to crush many of our daily newspapers.  And as an example, I pointed to two of Washington’s most prominent struggling dailies.

While the whole industry is struggling, the financial precariousness of some of our most threatened papers is at least partially due to the awful business decisions of their owners, in particular, the incredibly over-leveraged position they find themselves in as a result of ill-advised acquisitions and other bone-headed ventures.

For The Columbian, it was the construction of a new $40 million office tower that landed a shrunken newsroom back in its old digs, and publisher Scott Campbell in bankruptcy court.  For The Times, it was Frank Blethen’s ill-fated foray into the Maine media market that has left him with a couple hundred million dollars of debt coming due, and no obvious means of raising more capital.  Both papers are currently losing money on their daily operations, but neither would be struggling to survive this particular recession if the bankers weren’t pounding at their doors.

As usual, my trolls took issue with my analysis, arguing that I was bucking conventional wisdom simply to take another potshot at my friends at The Seattle Times. Uh-huh. So I’m guessing they’ll probably be disappointed to read the unsigned editorial in today’s Times, that picks up on my basic premise in arguing that the bankruptcy of the Columbian is “different” than that of debt-laden giants like The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Los Angeles Times:

Like every newspaper, the Columbian’s advertising revenue has been whacked by the recession. Unlike larger companies such as Philadelphia and Tribune, the Columbian’s push into Chapter 11 does not stem from a debt-laden purchase of newspapers.

The Campbell family, three-generation owners of the Columbian, took on debt to help revitalize downtown Vancouver by constructing a new building. The newspaper quickly moved back to its old building because of the recession. Now Bank of America is calling in its loan of about $17 million — a pittance compared to what other newspaper companies owe.

What makes the Columbian’s plight so sad is that Southwest Washington could lose its dominant news provider because Bank of America is apparently not willing to work with the company. This is a newspaper that in ordinary times would be doing well and will likely do well after the recession.

Forget for a moment the Times’ effort to spin the Campbell’s ill-fated real estate speculation as an act of civic engagement; what’s important here is that The Times acknowledges my core thesis… that it is debt, not operating losses, that threatens both the Columbian and its larger cousins.  The Times also confirms that it was the construction of its new/old headquarters that ultimately pushed the Columbian into bankruptcy, not the Great Recession, or the fundamental weakness of the newspaper industry itself.

Of course, what we don’t see from the Times is a mention of their own poor business decisions, or an admission that they and their friends at the Columbian should take any personal responsibility for the current sorry state of their respective family businesses.  On the contrary, the Times paints evil, Bank of America as the bogeyman for demanding that the Campbells actually make good on their debt, according to the terms contractually promised.

The Times solution to The Columbian’s mismanagement of their own finances?  Appeal to gov’ment to force BoA to renegotiate the loan.

The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing today about the future of journalism. This hearing and the Columbian’s plight should grab the attention of the governor, the state Legislature and our federal delegation.

The time is right for politicians, journalists and the public to start working toward preserving an independent press.

One can’t help but wonder if this is a preview of the arguments the Times will make on its own behalf should it seek bankruptcy protection later this year… that the government should use its bailout accrued leverage to force financial institutions to renegotiate terms with struggling newspapers, in the interest of preserving an independent press?

Irony aside, I’m not necessarily opposed to the government doing exactly that.  It would be a shame to see Southwest Washington lose its only major daily, just as much as it would for Seattle to become our nation’s largest no-newspaper town.

But as a condition of any such government-brokered bailout, I’d want to see a genuine public admission from the likes of the Blethens and the Campbells of their own culpability in their respective paper’s near demise—not out of vindictiveness or a craving for public humiliation, or even the hope that acknowledging their own plight might moderate their editors’ demands for less government and more personal responsibility—but because self awareness is the first step to recovery.  For the most effective thing we can do to prevent newspaper publishers from repeating their own mistakes of the past fifteen years is to force them to admit these mistakes to themselves… something the Times, if today’s bankers-as-villains editorial is any indication, simply isn’t ready to do.

State lawmakers have put a lot of faith in deep-bore technology and the latest advances that, we’re told, will make the Viaduct tunnel possible. But apparently, not too much faith.  That’s why as a condition of providing a couple billion dollars of funding in the recently passed transportation budget, legislators threw in a provision that requires Seattle taxpayers to pull out their checkbooks for any cost overruns.

But you know… what are the chances of that?  Transportation mega-projects always come in on time and on budget, and those giant tunnel boring machines?  They’re as infallible as the Pope.

On Beacon Hill, Christine Miller-Panganiban said she was doing a little gardening in her front yard a couple of Sundays ago, when she noticed a mysterious hole. She stuck her shovel  down. It didn’t feel the bottom.

Her husband got a piece of tubing seven feet long. Still they couldn’t feel the bottom. Only when she looked down it with a flashlight did she find that it went down 21 feet. “Oh my God,” she thought, and more when she realized that suddenly there was a deep void that now only went down and down, but extended under her house.

The hole was apparently created when Sound Transit was boring the tunnel for the new light rail line. On Monday, Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray acknowledged the agency has found seven underground voids caused by its boring machine within a couple of blocks east of the future Beacon Hill station, though the one in Miller-Panganiban’s front yard was the only one visible from the surface. Aside from causing concern in the neighborhood, he said testing for them and filling them would cost the agency up to $1 million.Oops. Apparently, the boring machine hit a layer of sand, which flowed into the tunnel leaving a gap in its place.

What kind of gap? “An empty gap,” Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray explains to us laymen.

But let’s not worry about all those boring details. The scientifically minded folks at the Discovery Institute assure us that recent technological advances make it possible to dig the world’s largest diameter deep bore tunnel, straight under downtown Seattle, cheaper, faster and more reliably than ever before possible. So unforeseen and costly technical hurdles — like, you know… sand — couldn’t possibly happen here.

Oh wait… it just did.

Sigh.

Larry Stickney, president of the Washington Values Alliance, has a noon appointment to file a referendum that, if passed, would repeal Washington’s most recent domestic partnership bill, says Washington Secretary of State spokesman David Ammons.

But who, exactly, is running the show?

It’s unclear which group will actually run the referendum. Faith and Freedom had been fundraising for the referendum, but the group, led by the carpetbagging and tax-evading Gary Randall, may not run the campaign after all. “The latest buzz we’re getting is that it will be run by the Washington Values Alliance,” says Brian Vysltra, a spokesman for the Secretary of State.

For more on the skeevy nature of Faith and Freedom, check out this diary at Washblog by poster Lurleen.

The major recipient of PAC expense payouts was Northern Concepts LLC. Northern Concepts LLC is owned by the Faith & Freedom PAC Vice Chair and former F&F lobbyist, Jon Russell. He and his wife reportedly “run the business from their home”. The PAC paid Mr. Vice Chair $3,790 in “event planning” fees. The previous year, he had received a Warning Letter from the Public Disclosure Commission dated March 8, 2007 for failure to file his monthly lobbyist expense report (L-2) for January, 2007. Commission files relating to Jon’s tenure with FFN contain several memos between himself and the Commission regarding his mistakes in depositing funds in the wrong accounts and failure to submit reports on time. For the latter he was assessed a fine on June 3, 2008.

It’s the endless multi-level marketing nature of conservatism that’s the problem. A few rich and ultra-conservative nutballs pay the wannabes to do their dirty work for them, and the wannabes call themselves bidnessmen. Let’s call it “the Tim Eyman model.”

We should just take up a collection and pay these people to sell diet formulas and steam cleaners on late night television, give them a Chamber card, maybe they’d go away finally.

Public health officials announced tonight that they have identified six probable cases of swine flu in Washington state: three in Seattle, two in Snohomish County and one in Spokane County. Confirmation is expected over the next couple days.

The Seattle cases include an 11-year-old boy who attends Madrona K-8. No doubt attendance will be a tad sparse at the school tomorrow.

King County Executive Ron Sims released the following statement this evening:

We are now in the type of worldwide health situation that King County has spent years planning and preparing for. The probable cases of swine flu here in Washington serve as a reminder to all of us that we are a community of connected individuals, each with a role to play in keeping each other safe.

Our excellent public health doctors and staff, along with regional hospitals and health care providers are using the comprehensive pandemic flu plans we’ve created to respond and limit impacts and spread as much as possible.

The years of planning are just part of the solution though. We must each help limit potential flu impacts by washing our hands, covering our coughs, staying home when we’re sick, and making sure our families have the supplies they need if the situation gets worse.

King County is better prepared than many regions to deal with these flu cases and we will get through this medical challenge, together.

Here that folks?  Wash your hands and cover your damn coughs.

Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48) announces that he is running for King County Executive, and gives his first post-announcement interview on the Podcast. Ross explains why he is the best person for the position, what is right and wrong about the King County government, and what he will do to fix what’s wrong.

Changing into his Rep. hat, Hunter and the panel pick over the carcass of the freshly-ended legislative session—you know…the one that didn’t produce any tax reform, and cut to the bone. Following the nitty-gritty, the panel members give letter grades to the session.

Finally, the panel examines the remarkable transition of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter from a Republican to a Democrat. The Philly contingent of the panel (i.e. Goldy and Ross) spins yarns about the corruption of that city’s political machine that would make a Chicago politician blush and actually drove Sen. Specter to become a Republican in the first place….

Goldy was joined by King County Executive candidate & state Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48), the Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, and Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard.

The show is 53:54, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_28_2009.mp3]

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

The US Supreme Court has sided with the FCC, upholding its incredibly unreasonable “fleeting expletive” rule.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said the government could threaten broadcasters with fines over the use of even a single curse word on live television, yet stopped short of ruling whether the policy violates the Constitution.

The court, in a 5-4 decision, refused to pass judgment on whether the Federal Communications Commission’s ”fleeting expletives” policy is in line with First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

Well, fuck that.

[QUICK! How many of you instantly had a sexual image flash through your heads when I used the word “fuck” in a clearly nonsexual manner?  I’m guessing none, yet that notion—that some words are so offensive because they always evoke sexual or execretory images—is at the heart of the Supreme Court’s logic.  Utterly fucking ridiculous.]

I’m not saying the FCC should have no power at all to regulate the public airwaves, but these regulations should not be arbitrary or unreasonable, and the fleeting expletive rule is both, especially in light of how easy it is to cleverly—and legally—subvert the rule’s intent.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NDPT0Ph5rA[/youtube]

UPDATE:
From Justice Stevens’ dissent:

There is a critical distinction between the use of an expletive to describe a sexual or excretory function and the use of such a word for an entirely different purpose, such as to express an emotion. One rests at the core of indecency; the other stands miles apart. As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows, it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent. But that is the absurdity the FCC has embraced in its new approach to indecency.

Exactly.

In his Sunday “Smart Bombs” column, Spokane Spokesman-Review Associate Editor Gary Crooks takes on some common budget myths, and comes to a conclusion that might surprise a lot of his readers.

The best way to measure a state’s tax burden is to total up personal income and divide it by how much money the state collects. […] The same holds true for spending, which was about 6 percent of total income for a decade, then declined. That’s probably surprising to most people given the Republicans’ drumbeat on “out-of-control” spending. Spending has increased in recent years, but a lot of that was to make up for budgetary hits after the economic swoon of the previous recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The state then began making up for lost funding on voter-approved initiatives on teacher pay and class sizes and had to backfill pension payments that were delayed to help balance the previous budget.

To get an idea how much the “spending burden” has declined, it was 5.9 percent of total income for the 2003-’05 budget. This is the much-ballyhooed “tough” budget shepherded through the Legislature by then-Sen. Dino Rossi. Now we’re looking at 5.18 percent. And, yes, even the “Rossi budget” spent more than the state collected.

HA regulars are well familiar with this analysis, but I can’t tell you how heartening it is to read it in the op-ed pages of a major daily, especially considering that the editors at our own Seattle Times have been so aggressive at spreading the myth Crooks so effectively busts.  But perhaps the Times refusal to accept this reality has less to do with their inability to do the math, and more to do with their refusal to accept Crooks’ inevitable conclusion.

It’s the tax code, stupid. The problem with measuring the affordability of taxes and spending against total income is that the state doesn’t have an income tax. The above calculations help explain why it should. The state is relatively rich, but it has a tax code that’s unsuited to tapping that wealth. The result is that high-income households send relatively large sums to the feds and relatively paltry amounts to the state. Conversely, the state taxes the poor at the highest levels in the nation because of the heavy reliance on our regressive sales tax.

If the state instituted an income tax and lowered the sales tax, it could begin to address its chronic budget deficits and lower the tax burden for most Washingtonians. It’s the same argument that was laid out by the Gates Commission several years ago, but lawmakers failed to act.

The paper of record for Eastern Washington joining me in advocating for a state income tax?  Welcome to the radical fringe.

Reporting for the Tacoma News Tribune, Ian Demsky has the scoop on the State Lottery’s new “enhanced” marketing plan to boost impulse sales of scratch tickets by at least 20 percent, and I’m truly impressed with the expertise of his sources:

Informed of the promotion, one gaming critic called using such tactics during an economic downturn “cruel.”

“They are looking to create compulsion,” Seattle blogger David Goldstein said last week. “That’s how the industry works.”

And I’m not just pulling that critique out of my ass.  As I’ve written on numerous occasions, games like slot machines and scratch tickets are scientifically designed to create compulsion—hence the refreshingly honest name of the scratch ticket vendor designing and testing the Lottery’s enhanced marketing plan: “Scientific Games.”

I’ve no doubt that the expanded retail displays, the 48 new scratch ticket games and their seductive second chance feature, were carefully designed in consultation with behavioral psychologists, so as to specifically enable problem gamblers and exploit their weaknesses.  Problem gamblers may comprise only 5 percent of their customers, but they can produce over 50 percent of the gambling industry’s profits.  This is no secret, and like any business, the gambling industry has always catered to its best customers.

So what’s the problem?

Goldstein, a blogger who has advocated against gambling expansion, said the program makes sense – if the state’s primary interest is to maximize profits.

“But it’s the state,” he said. “In the end, its purpose is to provide for the welfare of the citizens. The lottery is at cross-purposes with itself.”

Again, I’m not pulling this stuff out of my ass.  Indeed, the Legislative Declaration that prefaces Washington’s gambling statutes is quite specific:

The public policy of the state of Washington on gambling is to keep the criminal element out of gambling and to promote the social welfare of the people by limiting the nature and scope of gambling activities and by strict regulation and control.

Notice that there’s nothing in that opening statement about maximizing state profits.  Nor should there be.  The social and economic costs of problem and pathological gambling are simply too high.

Problem gambling is a medically recognized addictive behavior associated with a much higher incidence of other addictions, including tobacco, alcohol and drugs, as well as other dangerous behaviors.   And even the lottery’s own problem gambling study suggests that scratch tickets often serve as a gateway to other forms of gambling. So why should the state spend money to promote behavior that harms the welfare of its citizens?

It shouldn’t.

The people who stand to profit the most from this enhanced marketing plan are retailers, and the shareholders at New York based Scientific Games, certainly not the customers, and not state taxpayers, who typically see only 20 cents on the dollar flow back into state coffers out of the more than half billion dollars of revenues the State Lottery takes in annually.

Gov. Gregoire did the right thing in 2006 by instructing the State Lottery to scrap plans to market toward teenagers.  She should once again remind lottery officials that they are not in the business of maximizing revenues at any cost.

After confirming 20 cases of the Mexican swine flu in five states, and four more cases in Canada, U.S. health officials declared a national public health emergency today in order to intensify resources toward diagnosis and prevention, and to release funds to purchase and distribute supplies of anti-viral drugs.

So far there have been no known deaths attributed to this new strain of swine flu outside of Mexico, and only one US victim has thus far required hospitalization.  Still…

Officials said they expect more severe cases as reports of infection multiply.

“You don’t know how much it’s spread, but you’ve got to at least make the assumption that there’s a lot more virus in this country than is seen at the moment,” Jeffrey Koplan, the C.D.C. director from 1998 to 2002, said in a telephone interview.

As always, DemFromCT is following the issue closely on Daily Kos.

The news coming out of Mexico City is worrying as 61 68 people are now confirmed dead, and more than a thousand sickened from a new variant of the H1N1 flu virus that has apparently jumped from birds to pigs, and is now easily transmissable through human to human contact.  Mexican authorities have closed schools, theaters, libraries and museums in an effort to curb the spread, but with cases now being reported throughout Mexico, and confirmed in both Texas and California, officials at both the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization are sounding increasingly alarmed over the possibility of a worldwide flu pandemic.

And perhaps the most chilling news…

Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest.

It’s times like this when strong, decisive and well-prepared government leaders can make the difference between life and death.  As the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 was killing an estimated 50 million worldwide, Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson preemptively shut down schools, theaters, businesses and other public places in a controversial effort to minimize the local outbreak.  Seattle was relatively spared compared to other US cities… and Hanson was literally run out of town by outraged business and civic leaders angered over the loss of revenues and the disruption of the city’s daily routine.

In that tradition, King County Executive Ron Sims has long made the inevitability of another flu pandemic a primary focus of the region’s disaster preparedness efforts, a focus I first learned about back in September of 2005, when I heard Ron talk at a post-Katrina, Red Cross fundraiser.

But rather than talk about New Orleans, he spent most of his time talking about the county’s own disaster preparation efforts. By far their primary focus? Not earthquakes, not terrorist attacks… but avian flu. It was a sobering talk with zero political upside for a man who was in the midst of what was supposed to be a tough fight for reelection, and I came away wishing every voter had the opportunity to talk with Sims one-on-one.

And it wasn’t just talk.  Seattle & King County Public Health has a detailed and informative Pandemic Flu Preparedness page, which includes links to videos, fact sheets, resources… even a 12-page comic book available in 16 languages.  The agency’s 50-page Pandemic Flu Response Plan is available here.

It is ironic that the legislature is about to slash public health spending exactly at a time we might need it most.  And more than a little bit scary.

“Why does Frank Chopp hate Seattle?” That’s the question Josh asks at Publicola after State Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-36) showed him an amendment to the Viaduct Bill that pins potential cost overruns on the backs of Seattle taxpayers.

The amendment, sponsored by House transportation committee chair Rep. Judy Clibborn (D-41, Bellevue, Factoria, Newcastle), says any cost overruns on the Viaduct tunnel project have to be paid by Seattle-area businesses—a standard for a state-funded project that Carlyle argued had never been applied to locals before. (Without any local accountability measures, for example, Rep. Carlyle pointed out, the state has spent $1.56 billion on 405.)

[…] Carlyle wasn’t simply standing up for his turf, though. He believed the amendment, if passed, would set a “dangerous precedent” that locals across the state could now be held accountable for cost overruns “on any bridge, ferry, roads, or building project.”

The “Big Bore” is the brain child of the oh so credible Discovery Institute, which, based on its profound respect for the sciences, promises that new and barely tested deep bore technology can dig the tunnel cheaper and faster than ever before possible.

Um… maybe.  But maybe not.  The deep bore tunnel is without a doubt the least studied Viaduct alternative from an engineering and a geological perspective, and yet it was quickly embraced by the powers that be after local voters and politicians appeared to be reaching a consensus on the much less sexy surface/transit option.

Surface/transit was also the least expensive option, for both the state and the city, and no doubt the easiest to accurately estimate costs, as we have a helluva lot more experience laying down asphalt than we do sending giant boring machines through downtown Seattle’s relatively unexplored substrata.  Discovery’s assurance’s aside, the Big Bore is by far the riskiest option in terms of potential cost overruns.  I’m loathe to bring up Boston’s infamous Big Dig, as I don’t subscribe to the notion that Americans have somehow lost the ability to engineer tunnels, but… well… shit happens.

And if shit happens, it should be the responsibility of the state to clean it up.  After all, it’s the Governor and the Legislature who put up the most resistance to the surface/transit option, and who eagerly sought out the Big Bore as a magically delicious alternative.  So why the hell should local taxpayers, who were already prepared to settle on a less expensive, less risky (and yes, less elegant) solution, pick up the tab should Discovery’s faith-based transportation plans turn out to be not all that intelligently designed?

We shouldn’t, and now is the time for Mayor Nickels and other local political leaders to send a clear message to Olympia that, if they change the terms of the deal on us, forcing us to pick up the costs of their potential blunders, then the deal is off.  Seattle has already agreed to pony up $1 billion toward the cost of replacing this state highway, but if this amendment sticks, placing all the risk on our backs, I say we put away our checkbook and tell our legislators to just go screw themselves.

Ah well, it looks like the timid status quoists are in full spin mode.

Covering the on-again/off-again prospects of a tax increase measure, Austin Jenkins reports for both KUOW and Crosscut that as weak as public support is for a sales tax increase, an income tax fares even worse:

The sales tax garnered better than 50 percent support if it included a tax rebate for working families and if the money raised was used to support hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care programs. […]  The income tax proposal polled under 50 percent even if the money was dedicated to education and health care.

Huh?  That’s not what I heard.  And while I’m not sure I’ve seen the polling detail to which Jenkins refers, clearly, neither has he.

Or maybe I have. Here’s how Jenkins describes the poll in question:

I got my hands on a summary of the poll that was given to the Senate Democratic Caucus. It’s not the complete poll, and I don’t have a sample size or margin of error; however I believe 800 likely voters were polled. The poll was taken last week — right when people were filing their taxes and there were anti-tax demonstrations all over the country, including at the State Capitol in Olympia. The health care groups who paid for the poll say it was the “worst possible” week to be asking voters their mood on taxes.

Huh.  I too have seen a poll of 800 likely voters, conducted last week, the worst week possible for asking voters their mood on an income tax… although unlike Jenkins, who reports on a summary passed on to the Senate Dem Caucus, I got to see some of the actual details:

Three tenths of one percent sales tax for working families tax rebate and Health Care Trust Fund For Basic Health Plan
(Total Approve) =  40%
Definitely Approve: 16%
Probably Approve 17%
Lean Approve 8%
Lean Reject 4%
Probably Reject 12%
Definitely Reject 22%
Undecided 21%

3% state income tax on individuals making over $250K
(Total Approve) =  47%
Definitely Approve: 27%
Probably Approve 15%
Lean Approve 5%
Lean Reject 2%
Probably Reject 8%
Definitely Reject 35%
Undecided 8%

Hmm. Perhaps there were two polls of the exact same survey size conducted at exactly the same time on the exact same subject?  And no doubt the pollsters asked these questions in multiple ways, pushing different strengths and weaknesses, so perhaps Jenkins’ data is just as valid as mine?  And yes, it is very difficult to make an apple to apple comparison when it comes to polling data.

But no, the impression that some Democratic lawmakers have been spinning to reporters, that an income tax fares worse in the polls than a sales tax hike, simply isn’t true.  In fact, the data I’ve seen from last week’s poll shows exactly the opposite, with an income tax out-polling a sales tax 47% to 40%.  Meanwhile, what support there was for a sales tax increase was incredibly soft, with only 16% responding “Definitely Approve,” compared to 27% for an income tax.

And that is consistent with all the other polling data of seen.  A recent Elway Poll showed an income tax slightly out-polling a sales tax, 53% to 51%, while a March 2009 poll, again a survey of 800 respondents, surprised income tax proponents and detractors alike with the proposal’s initial level of support:

“This measure would establish a two percent state income tax only on income above $300,000 a year for individuals or above $600,000 a year for married couples filing jointly. If the election were held today, would you vote to APPROVE this referendum, or would you vote to REJECT it?”

(TOTAL APPROVE) = 56%
DEFINITELY APPROVE 37%
PROBABLY APPROVE 16
[LEAN APPROVE] 3
[LEAN REJECT] 3
PROBABLY REJECT 7
DEFINITELY REJECT 30
[UNDECIDED] 5

Considering the income tax is purported to be the third rail of Washington politics, those results aren’t bad, and arguably represent a more neutral survey of the public’s initial impression than one conducted while voters were in the midst of filing their federal returns.

I’m not a big fan of poll-driven lawmaking, but since one side in this debate is attempting to discredit the high-earners income tax by pushing cherry-picked data to lawmakers and reporters, I feel the need to set the record straight.  There has not been a single poll this session that has shown top line support for a sales tax hike to be significantly higher than that for a high-earners income tax, while all the polls show what support there is for a sales tax increase to be unnervingly soft.  That’s why the health care coalition has been backing away from the sales tax proposal… their well justified fear of the squishy middle.

Yes, neither proposal has polled above 60 percent, the magic number the initiative and referendum industry considers the bare minimum level of initial support for a ballot measure to warrant a substantial financial investment.  But as the surprising level of support for a high-earners income tax has already shown, conventional wisdom can sometimes be wrong.

Back in June of 2005, polls showed support for Initiative 912’s repeal of the 9.5 cent gas tax increase to be running as high as 70 percent, yet once voters learned the costs and consequences of the measure, it failed in November by a comfortable ten point margin.  Likewise, in 2006, opponents were initially concerned about support for Initiative 920’s proposed repeal of the estate tax, but after voters learned revenue was targeted to education, the measure was trounced by a resounding 24 point margin.

Washington voters have recently proven their willingness to tax themselves for the services and investments they want and need.  And they’ve proven even more willing to tax the wealthy.

And while that final sentiment may be derided by some as a call to “class warfare,” it is hard to make that argument with a straight face in the state with the most cruelly regressive tax structure in the nation.

It seems the traditional media in the NW has some freaks in their midst:

Alan has never denied owning multiple Web sites catering to people interested in the sexual practices known as BDSM (for bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism). It’s long-term research, he says, adding that the true focus and scope is, for the time being, a secret.

It almost certainly has nothing to do with his work for the Cascade Policy Institute, a conservative political think tank. That’s a campaign to root out Oregonians who might cast fraudulent votes by assuming the identities, and ballots, of people who are dead.

“Fraudulent voters.” Um, yeah, okay.

I’m sure it’s just me, but every time I hear that phrase I get a little voice intoning “Republican crazy douche.” Just another MSM bad apple, nothing to worry about, or so we thought.

The BDSM media were wrong about invading Iraq and also wrong about how property values would go up forever. But you should go ahead and trust anyhow.

Please keep in mind left wing bloggers are shrill and don’t understand foreign policy or bidness. This has been proven by their opposition to foreign policy blunders and bidness bailouts.

Left wing bloggers will surely never survive in the age of virtually free internet service. Someone in the traditional BDSM media will point out the shrillness of left wing bloggers, and handcuff them to newsprint.

That would be a crime.

Earlier this week, Josh Marshall at TPM posted up some thoughts on Mexico:

Clearly, there’s a lot of violence in Mexico tied to the Mexican government’s attempted crackdown on its drug cartels. And the Mexicans are quite legitimately pressuring us to limit the number of guns being smuggled from the US into Mexico, which are fueling the fire. And if Mexico degenerates to the level of Colombia where for many years the key cartels have operated as rivals to the government — clearly beyond the legitimate government’s ability to bring them to heel — then that’s a big problem for us, given our proximity and long border, etc. But I keep hearing these stories about violence spilling over into the US, questions from whether we may need to deploy the US army to our own border, vague stories about death squads in the US. I’m not saying there’s nothing to it. But a lot of this has the feel to me of one of those stories ginned up by politicians and restless news outlets where there ends up being much much less there than meets the eye. Part of me wonders whether it’s a recrudescence of the illegal immigration hysteria of last two years.

There are three separate points being addressed here: (1) The issue of guns being smuggled into Mexico from the U.S. (2) The issue of Mexico’s inability to defeat the drug traffickers and (3) The issue of violence spilling over into the U.S.

Josh looks at these three issues and concludes that the third issue is being “ginned up by politicians and restless news outlets.” He’s right about that, and he later posts a link to a good piece in the Texas Observer about how the media is over-hyping the level of violence on the American side of the border. But the reality is that it’s both the first and third points that are being “ginned up by politicians and restless news outlets.”

Recently, a number of politicians and news outlets have been claiming that 90 percent of the guns that get used by Mexican drug traffickers come from the U.S. In actuality, that figure is wildly inaccurate. And Obama repeated the mythical percentage this week when meeting with Mexican President Calderon.

A certain amount of guns do cross the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and it’s possible that the amount of high-powered weapons bought on the illegal black market from the U.S. is higher than we can accurately measure, but to say that the flow of guns is “fueling the fire” in Mexico’s drug war is buying into a large amount of spin. What’s fueling the fire in Mexico is not the weaponry itself, but the money that the drug traffickers are making that allows them to spend so much money on weapons.

Radley Balko, in a column this week in The Daily Beast, gets to the heart of what’s going wrong in Mexico:

When Barack Obama visits Mexico today, the drug war, and the violence it has spawned south of the border, is expected to dominate the agenda. Since 2006, more than 10,000 people have been murdered in Mexico as a direct consequence of the drug trade. This bloody outbreak began when, with the blessing of and funding from the U.S. government, Mexican President Felipe Calderon ordered the Mexican military to aggressively crack down on the drug cartels. Such crackdowns often ratchet up the level of violence, as the elimination of one major drug distributor provokes those who remain to war over his territory. That’s a pattern as old and predictable as Prohibition itself, yet politicians never seem to learn.

Last month, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico, she expressed gave concern over the escalating violence… and then heaped praise on Calderon’s crackdown, promising to support it with more funding and more military hardware. Obama appears poised to say much the same thing. According to a recent preview of his trip in The Washington Post, the president is expected to promise swifter delivery of drug-war aid and increased efforts by the U.S. to stop the flow of American weapons to Mexico. But the best solution to what’s plaguing Mexico right now is the one topic that will almost assuredly be off the table: legalizing marijuana. Marijuana makes up 60 to 70 percent of the Mexican drug trade. Lifting prohibitions on it in the United States would eradicate a major source of funds for the cartels.

I’m not saying that the first and third issues mentioned above – guns traveling across south of the border and increased violence north of the border – aren’t happening at all. What’s happening is that politicians and media outlets are using both of these issues as distractions in order to avoid dealing with the central issue that Balko is discussing right there. This is a problem of organized crime, and the fuel for that fire is the billions of dollars (I’ve seen various estimates of between $10 billion to $100 billion per year) that Americans spend on drugs. It’s not going to be solved by stricter gun control measures. And sending law enforcement to secure the border would only escalate the amount of violence in our border communities. The only way to solve this problem is to cut off the drug trafficker’s income. But that’s something that Obama and a large part of the news media still can’t bring themselves to regard as a serious issue.

– Individuals in some rural parts of Washington are having difficulty finding doctors willing to certify patients and write prescriptions for the new Death With Dignity law. This was somewhat expected as there was never any intention to force doctors to participate, but if a person is forced to travel across the state to exercise what should now be a basic right, the law really isn’t working. I’m still confident that doctors in those areas will begin to step up and start working with the individuals who are seeking out this option without requiring the state to get involved (a la Plan B). Thursday is National Healthcare Decisions Day, and Compassion and Choices is using this opportunity to encourage health care providers to honor people’s end-of-life decisions.

– The Cannabis Defense Coalition is following a case involving two medical marijuana patients in Mason County. Prosecutors are claiming that the couple (John Reed, 48, and Karen Mower, 44) had more marijuana than they were authorized by a doctor to have. I don’t have a lot of information about the case other than what’s in the sheriff’s office’s press release (which appears to overestimate how much pot a single plant can produce). Some observers will be in the courtroom in Shelton this Friday.

– This Friday is the opening night for American Violet, a movie that chronicles the true story of an African-American single mother who was falsely arrested on drug charges and was able to fight the very corrupt justice system in her rural Texas town. Unfortunately, the movie is only being released in some markets, so we’ll have to wait to see it here in Seattle. If this review from Rex Reed is any indication, we’ll get a chance to see it before too long:

It’s rare, I’ll admit, but occasionally a good movie raises its head through the muck and mire and leaves me grateful but shocked with disbelief. Such a movie is American Violet, a harrowing, compelling and profoundly true story that dares to tackle an important but too rarely exposed issue of the abuse of power in the American criminal justice system.

…

At a time when almost every movie I see is about nothing at all, American Violet rattles a few cages with its story of personal courage against overwhelming odds. Sensational, nerve-racking stuff that leaves you shattered while it teaches you something.

The movie is based upon a real life drug task force sweep in Hearne, Texas. In the review, Reed seems stunned that what he was watching in the film is a true story. I’m not sure the average American is aware of the extent of corruption that happened in towns like Hearne and Tulia (which also has a movie in the works with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry). As I was reading the book that the upcoming Tulia movie will be based on, I remember thinking how the story would shock people as a Hollywood movie.

[Via Drug WarRant]