– The oil train bill did pass after all.
– I’ve always thought rightwing media caterwauling about the liberal media is more about working the refs than covering for their own failures. But I guess both are true.
– The backlash is here, and it has lawyers, and things are going to get real ugly.
A levy swap isn’t on its own a horrible thing. Poor districts should still be able to educate their children. But in the absence of new money, it’s just taking money from districts that have been doing a better job educating children, if because they can afford it or if they’re more willing to pay. Goldy explained this ad nauseum when Rob McKenna was running and losing on levy swaps.
I’m happy to pay for education in the whole state. Let’s fund significantly more education at the state level. I’m all for it! Ideally with an income tax, but absent that, the most progressive tax we can get through the legislature.
But what we shouldn’t do is take money away from some districts or force the Puget Sound to pay for it while the rest of the state doesn’t. And that’s what a levy swap will do. As long as that’s the GOP position, it’s never going to fly.
“This would be the biggest property tax increase in state history,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, adding that the latest estimates show residents facing the biggest jump in their property taxes would be in the Puget Sound region, while some getting the biggest break would be in Eastern Washington and other rural parts of the state.
Most property owners in Spokane-area school districts would see a drop in their local property taxes over the four years needed to phase in the changes, although the amounts vary because of significant differences in current school district levies and the complicated laws that govern them.
Property taxes in Spokane School District, for example, would go down most years between 2018 and 2021 – as much as $1.80 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2021 – but up by .01 per $1,000 in 2019.
Ranker and other Senate Democrats have a competing plan designed to address the same problem of a system the state Supreme Court says is unconstitutional: using local tax money to pay for a basic part of public education, the salary of classroom teachers. Their solution is a tax increase, plain and simple: a capital gains tax on any resident who collects more than $250,000 a year on investment earnings. Money raised by that tax would be used to replace the money local districts now contribute to teacher salaries. That amount varies from district to district, but the amount a district receives from the state’s capital gains tax they would lower the amount they could collect from local taxpayers, so everyone would get a property tax reduction and only about 7,500 residents would pay the capital gains tax.
Neither one has everything I would want, but at least one actually has new money for education. If the problem is that there isn’t enough money for education, that seems like the thing at the outset you should deal with. I don’t understand how you can try to take education dollars from Seattle and Bellevue and say you’re supporting education statewide.
Lawrence O’Donnell: Who smoked pot in the White House, and other tales from Pennsylvania Avenue.
Sam Seder: A Republican story of self-hate and projection.
Bill Maher: Zombie lies of science-denying Republicans:
Vsauce: When will be run out of names?
The 2016 Clown Car:
Climate Change Denial Disorder.
Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week.
Thom: The origins and true face of American Libertarianism.
Slate: Where does lightening strike?
Hillary Announces:
Minute Physics: How do airplanes fly?
White House: West Wing Week.
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about history.
Indiana Legalizes Discrimination—Still:
Larry Wilmore: Maybe Black people need to fly gyrocopters instead of marching
David Pakman: Walmart pharmacist refused to fill prescription for woman who had a miscarriage.
Thom: Montana Democrats and Republicans team up to get dark money out of state politics.
How ALEC lobbies for the private prison industry
Mental Floss: 20 facts about Abraham Lincoln (and his family).
What’s White and Black and Red All Over?
Matt Binder: Fast food strike for $15 grows into a larger social justice movement.
Maddow: Reid, “The Senate is a better place because of women”.
Jon: Who Actually Strengthened Iran’s Nuclear Program?
Pelosi on Corker’s innocuous Iran bill.
Mental Floss: What makes a permanent marker permanent?
Michael Brooks: Obama’s biggest accomplishment?
Lawrence O’Donnell: What woman should be on the $20 bill.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Morbillously Ugly.
Matt Binder: NRA’s Nutjob Prez Wayne LaPierre: ““Eight years of one demographically symbolic President is enough”.
Maddow and Harry Reid: That time McCain threatened to kick the shit out of Sen. Reid:
ObamaCare is Still Working:
Stephen Hawking sings the Monty Python Galaxy Song.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
– Seriously, business owners, why are you volunteering anti-gay garbage?
– The people in Kayaks meeting the Shell rig are pretty amazing.
– Oh hey, here’s your list of possible people to fill Sally Clark’s spot on the City Council. Oddly, no Goldy this time around.
Rents at newer luxury “Class A” apartment buildings in Seattle are rising at twice the rate of rents at older “Class C” buildings, despite having twice the vacancy rate. Which which is weird because…
The data seem to defy the law of supply and demand. I asked Cain about it; he believes it has something to do with the different types of ownership models at luxury apartment buildings compared with the older ones.
Premium Class A properties are typically owned by institutional investors and managed by a national property-management company.
In contrast, Class C properties are usually owned by people with a connection to Seattle — either a family (though that’s become a lot less common in recent years) or a small group of local investors.
“Also, these owners seem to hold the properties longer,” Cain says, “and as a result, they have lower debt coverage ratios.” The less debt they have to service, the less pressure to push rents to the maximum.
In other words, many of these landlords aren’t jacking up rents to whatever the market will bear. It’s a refreshing change from the all-too-common stories of brutal rent hikes forcing tenants to relocate.
Except, of course, it’s not weird. Because there is no “law” of supply and demand. Supply and demand is a useful construct for describing, in general, how markets tend to work. But it’s not a law. People—and thus the markets they create—are a lot more complicated than any three-word phrase can describe. So no, merely adding more supply is not the only (or even an adequate) solution to Seattle’s growing affordability crisis.
I’m not saying we don’t need to add more housing units. Of course we do. Massively. But the market alone will not solve this crisis because the form of ownership matters.
– Did you pay your taxes? I’m sure this open thread will be all the reminder you need.
– Yesterday I had a post complaining about how much money was in the City Council race. Maybe comparing it to last time isn’t as bad after all.
– Patty Murray is working hard for the Healthy Families Act for paid sick leave.
– Is it possible we’ll have some action on oil trains, or is anything good just going to die in the State Senate?
– It’s kind of sad that a silly cartoon about Hillary Clinton has more useful info on her policy than most think pieces.
Last week I upset some of my urbanist friends by once again suggesting that the market alone could not build its way out of Seattle’s growing affordable housing crisis. Yes, our current NIMBYist regulations have helped create the current crisis, so of course we need to free private developers to build more density. “But…” I insisted, “if we want to substantially add and retain middle and low income housing in Seattle than we’re going to have to build and retain tens of thousands of units outside of the market.”
So what exactly do I mean “outside of the market?” I mean the city is going to need to build and own these units itself. And if done right, we can do this at no cost to taxpayers.
Specifically, the city and county have hundreds of millions of dollars of untapped bonding capacity that we can use to build middle-income and workforce housing at below-market rents. And we can do this because municipal governments have three huge advantages over private developers: we can borrow money more cheaply, we don’t have to produce a return on investment, and have we no incentive toward extractive “rent seeking.”
Here’s how it works: The city sells bonds to purchase and develop a piece of property, pledging revenue from that development (not taxes!) to pay off the bonds. You know, just like private developers borrow money. But cheaper. We then hire the same private architects and private contractors that private developers hire, because that’s how you build stuff. No need to reinvent the wheel.
In fact, the whole process works pretty much like a typical private development, using the same standard math that private developers use to determine if a project pencils out (banks won’t lend to them if it doesn’t). The only difference is that absent a profit motive, the goal of our bond-backed public development will be to charge as little rent as possible, not as much. We want to build as affordably as we can on any particular piece of land while charging rents sufficient to service the bonds, pay for management, maintenance, and improvements, and keep sufficient financial reserves. The larger rental market will necessarily influence our design decisions, but not define it. As a result, we will make different design choices than the typical private developer.
For example, in order to keep costs down, we might opt for smaller bedrooms and communal laundry rooms rather than washers and dryers in every unit. And rather than providing an off-street parking spot for every unit, we might build only a limited number of spots, made available to tenants at an additional cost. On the other hand, we might provide onsite dedicated parking spots for car-sharing services like Car2Go and Zipcar, or in a family-oriented development, we might include space for onsite preschool and childcare, thus reducing the need for young families to own a car.
It’s not about building cheap. It’s about building smart. We want to provide those amenities that best serve the needs of median-and-below-income tenants, rather than those amenities that might fetch the highest rent from a crowded market of well-paid tech workers.
And finally, even if we initially fail to offer these units at substantially below market rates, public ownership will allow us to impose our own voluntary form of rent control, only raising rents to meet our actual costs or necessary improvements, rather than hiking rents to take advantage of whatever the market will bear. If managed properly, over time these public developments would grow increasingly affordable relative to the larger profit-driven market. In fact, if we meet or exceed our goals, we may even be able to collateralize these developments in order to free up bonding capacity for additional projects.
To be clear, this is not subsidized housing—although additional subsidies could be leveraged to further reduce rents for low-income households. It is more like a public utility: like Seattle City Light pledges revenue from ratepayers to bond the investments necessary to build and maintain a system that delivers some of the cheapest and greenest power in the nation. The goal is to provide affordable rent-stabilized housing to as many customers as possible.
Also, this is not an entirely radical idea. Many state and local governments already offer low-interest municipal bonds to finance projects from both for-profit and not-for-profit developers in exchange for setting aside a number of low-income units for a specified number of years. I propose departing from this model in two ways: 1) We build for median income households as well as low income, and 2) We maintain public ownership and operation, keeping these units outside the market in perpetuity. I don’t have all the details worked out, but the research I’ve done convinces me that the basic premise is sound.
As for the risk to taxpayers, of course, nothing is risk free. Gross incompetence, corruption, a natural disaster, or an economic collapse could leave taxpayers holding the bill. But that’s true of anything we bond. The upside is that we could leverage our AAA credit rating to add hundreds or even thousands of affordable housing units to the region every year… units that would stay affordable regardless of market forces.
Is that enough to address our affordable housing crisis on its own? Of course not. Above all, we need more density, and that’s mostly going to come from the private market. In addition to publicly built and managed housing, I believe we must broadly lift height restrictions throughout much of the city, particularly near transit hubs, while freeing up homeowners to build “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs), both mother-in-laws and backyard bungalows. Additionally, we should liberally waive the requirement to provide off-street parking for new construction, and do the best we can to streamline the review and permitting process while maintaining reasonable standards of safety and aesthetics. NIMBYism is the enemy of density; while neighbors certainly should have input into local development, they should not have veto power. I’m not anti-zoning or anti-regulatory—I also support workforce housing set-asides and fees—but I do believe we have to be a lot smarter about the regulations we have now, and a lot more resolute in resisting our “Lesser Seattle” instincts. We need to build more housing.
So I really wish density advocates would stop viewing me as the enemy. I’m with you on almost everything.
But that said, and for the reasons stated in my earlier post, the private market is not going to solve Seattle’s growing affordability crisis on its own. As long as Seattle remains affordable compared to competing high-tech centers like San Francisco and New York, added housing supply will only increase demand. And with the possible exception of some ADUs, private developers simply aren’t going to voluntarily build many units aimed at median-or-below-income households: Buildable land is scarce and high-end housing has higher margins, so developers are going to try to squeeze as much profit as possible out of every square inch by aiming as upscale as the parcel will support.
So if we want middle-class and workforce housing in Seattle, the city is going to have to build and manage it itself, outside of the larger housing market.
Jon: Kansas is America’s welfare queen.
Slate: The tide of every 18 years.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Foveately Ugly.
White and Black and Red All Over:
Roy Zimmerman: What I Mean:
Slate: A year in space.
Mental Floss: What is the origin of the high-five.
Sam Seder: Louie Gohmert unhinged, “You’re playing God with the internet!!!”
Mark Fiore: Three-eyed Billy embraces the apocalypse.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: How she learned to ‘stand up’ and ‘speak out’.
Matt Binder: Draft dodger Ted Nuget claims to know why vets are committing suicide (hint: Obama).
The 2016 Clown Parade:
Mental Floss: 21 Fandom Facts.
Jonathan Mann: Hey, hey, NSA, stop looking at my penis.
Maddow: TN tweaks gun laws ahead of NRA convention
Ask a homo: Gays and political groups.
Congressional hits and misses: Best of Dan Coats.
Pap: How Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held the corporate media accountable.
Bill-O the Sociopath:
Garfunkel and Oats: Rainbow Connections:
Liberal Viewer: FAUX News lies about “ban the box” law.
White House: West Wing Week.
Jon on the Rolling Stone scandal.
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about dinosaurs.
Maddow: NC Lawmakers push sweeping anti-abortion bill.
The Bloody Neocons Are At It Again:
David Pakman: Republican to Gays, at least we aren’t hanging you.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Foudroyantly Ugly!
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
– It looks like the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in Seattle has been pretty successful and could use some expansion.
– Just because you can still check Facebook while driving, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, please don’t.
– More and more abortion restrictions are coming from the states. This time Kansas.
– I don’t have a TV, so my TV news comes via the Internet, so grain of salt. Still, I haven’t noticed KING 5 being worse than other local media outlets on being super car-centric, but Erica C. Barnett makes the case that they’re pretty bad while noting their latest problematic piece.
– I can’t even imagine what you’d do for an oil train explosion in the Downtown train tunnel.
– I don’t know Oregon enough to know about if running a primary against Schrader would be worth while, but in general I’m pro-primary elections.
– Liberals Aren’t Hypocrites for Opposing Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law
– It’ll be tough to lose Jeanne Kohl-Welles from the legislature if she runs for Phillips’ seat, but I can’t blame her for not wanting to deal with that garbage when King County can actually get shit done.
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Tomorrow, as the Washington Post‘s Colby Itkowitz reports, Rand Paul fans will celebrate their dear leader’s presidential announcement by hosting karaoke fundraiser parties in almost every state in the union. You can find a list of every Stand with Rand #LibertyKaraoke event on this Eventbrite page. The Seattle Stand with Rand #LibertyKaraoke will take place at Capitol Hill’s wondrous Rock Box karaoke bar tomorrow night at 6 pm. As someone on the event’s Facebook page writes, “JUST OVER 24 HOURS UNTIL LIBERTY BOOMS!!!”
What should you sing at #LibertyKaraoke parties? Organizer Matt Hurtt explained to Itkowitz:
There’s no official liberty song list, though Hurtt’s personal favorite is Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” He often changes the lyrics in one stanza to: “The phone’s wiretapped anyway, Maggie says that many say/ They must bust in early May, orders from the NSA.”
The parties are intended to dispel the stereotype that political fundraisers are for “stuffy old people” at hundreds of dollars a pop, he said.
Uh. Okay. But what songs should organizers sing to identify Rand Paul’s anti-choice beliefs? Maybe “The Lady Is a Tramp?” Which song would best exemplify Paul’s anti-gay-marriage stance? Probably “Going to the Chapel,” only with the whole room joyfully shouting “NOT” before every line of the chorus. Obviously, someone should sing that old John McCain classic “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran” to symbolize Paul’s belief that we need to increase military spending and go to war all over the Middle East. What a fun time #LibertyKaraoke will be for the handful of delusional white men who show up! I bet a stirring conversation about 9/11 Truth will break out at the Rock Box tomorrow night, too. They’ll for sure get to the bottom of the mysteries of Building 7 with all that brain power in one room!
See, the problem is that Rand Paul is trying to run his campaign as though he’s got a shot with the cool libertarian-leaning tech-minded youth vote, but that train left the station a long time ago. Paul has cozied up to the neocon right over the last few months, and in so doing, he’s distanced himself from the libertarian civil liberty platform that won him youthful attention in the first place. These karaoke parties are about as fanciful (and effectual) as the Ron Paul blimp.
The Seattle Times editorial board has long supported spending more money on K-12, higher education, and other essentially services, it just never wanted to raise the taxes necessary to pay for it. Until now:
If some new revenue is needed — and that appears to be the case — the Legislature should vet a capital-gains tax proposal offered by the House Democrats. It is more conservative than Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposal, hitting relatively few wealthy households, while accounting for the volatility of capital gains with a dedicated fund that would fill in go-go years and could be drawn down in slowdowns.
Whether the Legislature is capable of such fiscal restraint — and not spending every dime, every year — is an open question. A serious proposal would lock revenues in a rainy-day fund, accessible only with supermajority. The Legislature also needs to weigh the potential to chase away startups seeking to launch in a state without an income tax. But the capital-gains tax is a provocative idea, and could ease a regressive tax code that favors Seattle’s accumulating tech wealth.
Of course, this capital gains tax proposal neither raises enough money to fill our K-12 funding shortfall, nor makes anything but a small correction in this, our nation’s most regressive tax structure. But it’s a modest step in the right direction, and a hopeful sign that our state’s paper of record may be willing to have a grown up conversation about taxes.
Thom: How the 1% are rewiring brains & future generations.
SlateTV: America’s Worst President.
The 2016 Clown Parade:
Russell Brand explains why FAUX News pundits “have to attack Bowe Bergdahl”.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Cheimaphillicly Ugly.
Mental Floss: Thirty facts about chocoloate.
Thom: How much dark money is being funneled into our “democracy”?
SlateTV: The strange chemistry of the Crab Nebula.
A PSA from The Committee for Universal Accessibility and Lycantropic Concerns.
The Anti-Gay Agenda:
Mental Floss: Thirty one facts about pigs.
Greenman: Naomi Oreskes’ climate change elevator pitch.
David Pakman: Is MSNBC dying?
Netflix for kids.
David Pakman: This years, guns will kill more Americans than cars.
Farron Cousins: Has the tort reform fight been won?
SlateTV: Obama loves America.
Meet the Part African Black, Part Jewish, and Part Swiss and (Apparently) Offensive Comedian Who Will Replace Jon:
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Glottogonicly Ugly.
Matt Binder: Asshole ex-Governor John Sununu (R-NH) thinks Obama is only visiting Kenya to incite the Birfers.
Rubin Report: Republicans fear Obama more than Putin
White House: West Wing Week, 5th anniversary edition .
Sam Seder and Michael Brooks: Dick Cheney’s lies keep pouring in.
Thom and Pap: Our 2016 casino elections.
David Pakman: Deranged nutburger Rep. Louie Gohmert explodes, “You’re Playing God with the internet!”
Maddow chats with Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
CNN: Reid on leaving and going after the Koch brothers and Mitt Romney.
David Pakman: Indiana’s public health disaster follows from Planned Parenthood closure.
Iran:
Senator denies 280,000 people health care then calls advocate ‘asshole’ for asking him to give up his own health care.
Young Turks: In which Karl Rove is a dick to an Iraqi War veteran.
Sharpton: Fixing the criminal justice system.
Thom: Getting dark money out of politics.
The Barbara Mikulski tribute edition of Congressional hits and misses.
The best of CSPAN callers.
Seth Meyers finally puts the Elizabeth Warren Presidential run idea to rest..
David Pakman: Why won’t Republicans acknowledge Obama’s strong economy?
Menendez Indictment:
White House: Obama signs memorandum of disapproval on anti-labor bill.
John Oliver: Red-tailed hawks:
Thom with Prof. Michael Mann: Has climate change affected the West Coast?
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about appliances.
David Pakman: Small government Republican would make church mandatory.
The Church of Scientology responds to Going Clear.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
One of the biggest stories over the past two weeks is the controversy over the newly passed religious freedom law in Indiana. The backlash caught a lot of people by surprise, partly because the purpose and significance of these laws has evolved a bit over the past 20 years since Bill Clinton signed a federal law with the same name in 1993, but also because of how much the political notion of “religious freedom” has changed in recent years. Garrett Epps and German Lopez write about this history and why this particular law is different and causing an uproar.
I also think it’s worth reading both Amanda Marcotte and Jacob Levy on this. Marcotte comes from a more liberal perspective and Levy from a more libertarian one. But I think Marcotte makes the key point for me here:
The backlash is kind of surprising, when you consider that it’s already legal to discriminate against LGBT people in Indiana without having to pull the Jesus card to do it. Pence’s maddening dishonesty might be fueling the rage: Lying plus bigotry is a toxic combination. But there’s another factor that’s helping push this past the tipping point of “another story about conservative bigotry” to national scandal. Liberals are getting fed up with this ridiculous conservative push to redefine “religious liberty” to mean its opposite, using it as a phrase to justify Christian conservatives forcing their religious beliefs on you and depriving you of basic religious freedom.
Marcotte goes on to cite the Hobby Lobby court decision, which defined this narrative more clearly for a lot of people. Hobby Lobby’s desire to keep their employees from having easier access to birth control through their health benefits isn’t a matter of corporate executives exercising their own religious freedom. It was an attempt by a powerful employer to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. The fact that Hobby Lobby won at the Supreme Court certainly has people on edge about how radical ideas of religious freedom could potentially be recognized and become accepted.
In the case of Indiana’s new law, a small business owner refusing to serve gay customers is the same dynamic. If a florist or a baker refused to provide their services for an interracial marriage, we wouldn’t consider that to be someone exercising some valid religious objection, we’d see that as just plain bigotry. It’s hard to understand how doing the same regarding a gay wedding is any different.
This is why we now see the backlash. It isn’t the actual severity of the law, it’s the fact that it’s furthering a particularly cynical notion of religious freedom, one that is clearly rooted in bigotry and bad faith. It’s about the fact that Indiana chose to go in this direction, rather than passing anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians. And it’s about making clear the political risks of continuing to pander to those who are in denial about the recent awakening we’ve had as a nation regarding the rights of LGBT people.
Today, the Seattle City Council will vote on a resolution expressing concern about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement currently being negotiated, and the Seattle Times editorial board thinks that’s just plain silly:
The council’s ordinance sends a head-scratching message about the importance of trade. No American city, arguably, is more dependent on the import-export business than Seattle. The Port of Seattle is an engine of family-wage jobs. Overall, 30 percent of Washington’s exports — nearly $27 billion worth — went to countries participating in the TPP. Stronger U.S. trade ties with those 11 other countries would undoubtedly add to the total, especially in Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and New Zealand.
Uh-huh. So, here’s the thing about “free trade” as defined by agreements like the TPP: it isn’t free. Sure, goods are free to cross borders, and financial capital is free to cross borders. And since goods-plus-capital equals jobs, the TPP frees more jobs to cross international borders.
But you know what’s not free to cross borders? Labor. And since jobs are mobile and labor isn’t, free trade agreements like TPP and NAFTA and all the rest end up distorting the economy in a way that advantages capital and disadvantages labor. I’m not making shit up here. The same neoclassical economic theories that argue for free trade will tell you that if capital is free but labor mobility remains constrained, then the labor market can never reach a state of natural equilibrium. Capital can (and will) arbitrage the price difference between various labor markets, artificially suppressing wages for all.*
Good for profits, not so good for workers.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t have free trade. We could open our borders to all comers, and vice versa, allowing labor to move to where the good jobs are. We could actually allow the entire market to be free. But that’s not likely to happen. Or, we could all openly acknowledge that trade agreements disadvantage labor, and insist that they come with policies designed to ameliorate the harm and redistribute the profits more broadly. You know, if we actually gave a shit about workers.
But let’s not pretend that, on their own, free trade agreements are good for American workers. Because apart from those workers directly employed in import-export (and let’s be honest, mostly import), they’re not.
* Not to be construed as an actual endorsement of neoclassical economic theory.
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