Search Results for: inflation

With Mayor Ed Murray expecting a recommendation on a minimum wage ordinance by the end of the month, members of his Income Inequality Advisory Committee are now negotiating in earnest. Nothing is set in stone, but the political realists on the committee realize that the proposal Murray ultimately submits to the city council will be for a $15 an hour minimum wage—if in name only. The proposal will also include some sort of multi-year phase-in, at least for “small” businesses; that’s a concession council member Kshama Sawant has already made from her initial “$15 Now” position. Also, expect to see tougher enforcement of wage and tip theft attached to the proposal.

Of course, details! But apart from the main points above, the debate has mostly shifted toward the definition of the word “wage.” Many on the business side of the table are arguing for a so-called “total compensation” minimum wage that would count both tips and the cost of providing benefits towards the employer’s $15 an hour obligation. As I’ve previously explained, that’s bullshit. Total compensation would mean a minimum wage worker earning $3 an hour in “benefits” (however those are defined and valued—again details!) would only take home $12 an hour in cash take-home pay. That’s not $15 hour! And that alone should make “total compensation” a nonstarter for anybody (or any mayor) who seriously claims to support raising the minimum wage to $15.

If we were talking about, say, an $18 total compensation minimum wage, that would be different. But we’re not.

(Also, because the cost of providing health care benefits inflates at a rate many times the Consumer Price Index, a total compensation model would erode the real value of an inflation-indexed minimum wage over time, as health care benefits gradually consumed a larger and larger share of total compensation. Honestly, read my analysis. The numbers are all there.)

Because of these obvious political and policy flaws, I am convinced that some on the committee are proposing total compensation as a mere negotiating tactic (you know who you are), intended to make way for a classic “tip credit.” (Opponents call it a “tip penalty.” What it really is, is a “tip deduction,” but we’ll use “credit” here for the sake of avoiding confusion.) A tip credit would permit employers to deduct from their minimum wage obligation the employee’s tips, up to the difference between Seattle’s minimum wage and the effective minimum wage for tipped employees under state and federal law—currently the Washington State minimum wage of $9.32 an hour.

To be fair, assuming no wage or tip theft, a tip credit would guarantee $15 in cash compensation. So there’s that. And on the vast majority of minimum workers who earn little to nothing in tips, a tip credit would have little to no impact. Considering where we were when striking fast food workers first started making the demand for $15 an hour, a $15 minimum wage with or without a tip credit would be a remarkable accomplishment.

So then why are the folks on the workers’ side of the table so adamantly opposed?

Because precedent!

Washington is one of only seven states without a tip credit, a distinction our restaurant industry and its Republican surrogates have relentlessly attempted to “fix.” Throughout much of the rest of the nation, the minimum wage for tipped employees is only $2.13 an hour, an absurdly low figure that inflicts poverty and abusive work conditions on a disproportionately female and minority workforce (70 percent of tipped workers are women!), while providing near-free labor to many restaurateurs. Wage and tip theft is rampant, and tip-dependent workers are forced to put up with all sorts of humiliation (and even outright assault) in order to secure the best shifts, and earn the highest tips.

Yes, the problem is with our tipped culture as much as it is with the tip credit, but a tip credit only makes things worse. Since the first $5.68 an hour of a worker’s tips would go straight into the employer’s pocket (as a deduction from their $15 obligation), any employee earning less than $5.68 an hour in tips (and most tipped employees do) would cost more to employ. Thus there would be even more pressure on a waitress to unbutton another button on her blouse in order to lower her employer’s labor costs.

I’ve got a daughter. Do I really want her being forced to show a little extra cleavage in order to keep her job, let alone up her hourly take-home pay? No.

So while $15 an hour with a tip credit would be a helluva lot better for most minimum wage workers than $9.32 an hour without, worker advocates and labor representatives simply don’t want to set the precedent that tip credit is an appropriate policy. They rightly fear giving state Republicans and squishy pro-business Democrats the ammunition to impose a tip credit statewide—a policy that would lower the income of Washington’s tipped workers everywhere outside of Seattle. That’s simply unacceptable. And they are also looking to set a good example for the cities and states that will inevitably attempt to follow in Seattle’s $15 an hour footsteps.

A tip credit is bad policy. It incentivizes wage and tip theft (an incentive I will illustrate in a subsequent post). It deceives consumers (who have no means of knowing if their tips are increasing the incomes of servers, or just decreasing the labor costs of employers). It helps perpetuate an unjust and abusive system. It is a totally arbitrary policy created in 1966 to buy off the National Restaurant Association (“the other NRA”) from opposing a federal minimum wage hike. And that is exactly what the Washington Restaurant Association and its surrogates are attempting today.

All that said, there may be room for a little compromise. But I’ll save that discussion for another post.

King County voters will soon receive their ballots for an April 22 special election in which they will be asked to approve or reject Proposition 1, a $130 million hike in local car tabs and sales tax. At stake is an additional $50 million a year desperately needed to maintain county and city roads, along with the $80 million a year Metro needs to stave off a devastatingly regressive 17 percent cut in bus service. So of course the Seattle Times chooses to kick off its coverage of this very important issue with a front page article featuring the views of the one organization opposing Prop 1!

An early face-to-face over King County’s proposed car-tab-and-sales-tax measure to fund transit and roads took place in front of one of the few organizations opposing the measure, the pro-highway Eastside Transportation Association (ETA).

… [ETA member Dick] Paylor and audience members complained about how Metro King County Transit is managed, voiced concerns about seeing some virtually empty buses on some routes and suggested having bus passengers themselves pick up a larger share of the service’s costs.

“The problem isn’t on the revenue side, it’s on the expense-control side,” said Paylor, arguing that Metro is operating under a “broken financial model.”

Jesus. ETA is just a who’s-who of old, pro-roads white guys (like the bitterly anti-transit Jim Horn), while the Yes side is a coalition of business, labor, transportation, environmental, and social service groups that enjoys endorsements from 19 mayors. So this is the equivalent of kicking off your climate change coverage by talking to the owners of a coal-fired power plant!

And of course, Paylor is totally wrong. The remaining problem is almost entirely on the revenue side of the equation. Through 2014, Metro will collect $1.2 billion less in sales tax revenue than previously projected, thanks to the Great Recession. Meanwhile, through a series of cuts, efficiencies, and fare hikes, Metro has lowered expenses or increased revenue by $148 million a year—$798 million from 2009 to 2013 alone. The only way for Metro to balance its budget without raising additional tax revenue would be to cut service and raise fares. Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what ETA advocates.

But wait… the stoopid doesn’t stop there. For the Seattle Times insists on citing Paylor citing the Washington Policy Center, a right-wing “think” tank best known for climate-change denial and its close ties to the stand-your-ground promoting ALEC:

Citing data from the conservative Washington Policy Center, Paylor said that from 2000 to 2012, Metro’s operating costs increased 83 percent, while the inflation rate over that span was 33 percent.

Uh-huh. And you know what else has increased over the past decade? Everything!

King County’s population has grown by 16 percent since 2000, while Metro’s service hours have grown 4 percent since 2008 alone, despite a 2 percent reduction in service from its least efficient routes. Costs for providing Metro’s paratransit services—federally mandated under the Americans with Disabilities Act—have grown by 25 percent since 2008, while security costs have grown by 80 percent, due to fare enforcement, increased policing, and enhanced tunnel security. To offset its revenue shortfall Metro shifted capital funds to operations, delaying the purchase of new buses that would have been less expensive to operate and maintain. Meanwhile, pension contributions—at a rate set by the state legislature—have increased by more the 40 percent.

And on and on and on. I won’t even bother fact checking the Washington Policy Center, because only an idiot or a liar would pit the CPI against Metro’s operating costs over a 12-year span and presume that there was any meaningful contextual relationship between the two numbers.

And yet there it is, totally unchallenged, in black and white on the front page of the Seattle Times. Next stop no doubt: a credulous citation on the paper’s anti-tax editorial page.

“As bus ridership rises, battle over funding measure heats up,” the Seattle Times headline reads in the teach-the-controversy tradition of climate deniers and Intelligent Design bamboozlers. Except there is no battle. It’s every other transportation stake-holder in the county versus the anti-transit ETA. And, I suppose, the Seattle Times.

It’s not that Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat is wrong when he points out that our progressive city and county agenda of preserving Metro bus service, providing a stable funding source for city parks, and expanding high-quality preschool comes at a high cost. It certainly does. But if he’s going to describe the price tag as “steep,” then we need to have a little more context. For steepness is a measure of the relative elevation from Point A to Point B—and while Point B is not in dispute, the location of Point A is a bone of contention.

Yes, the county is asking voters for $130 million a year in car tab and sales tax revenue to stave off a 17 percent cut in Metro bus service. And yes, Mayor Ed Murray wants to go to the ballot with a $56 million a year parks district. And yes, the universal preschool measure the council is currently developing could ultimately cost Seattle taxpayers another $30 million to $70 million annually. Westneat isn’t exaggerating the numbers. That’s a lot of new taxes.

But “new” based on what? Our current diminished tax based? Or the city and county tax base we enjoyed before a series of tax-limiting statewide initiatives were passed against the will of Seattle and King County voters?

Take Metro, for example. Prior to the passage of Tim Eyman’s $30 car tab fee Initiative 695 in 1999, Metro relied on a relatively stable Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET)—a tax on the value of your car—for about one-third of its operating revenue. King County voters rejected I-695, but it passed statewide, so the legislature granted Metro some additional sales tax authority to make up the difference. Unfortunately, sales tax revenue is much less stable than MVET, and when the economy collapsed in 2008, so did Metro’s funding. From 2009 through 2015 Metro will collect $1.2 billion less in sales tax revenue than previously projected.

That averages to $200 million a year in reduced tax revenue, far more than the $130 million a year Proposition 1 would raise.

Seattle tax revenues have been similarly slashed thanks to an Eyman initiative: I-747, which again, was rejected by Seattle and King County voters, but was approved statewide in 2001. I-747 limits growth in regular levy property tax revenues from existing construction to an absurd 1 percent a year—far below inflation. A 2012 report from the Seattle Parks Foundation concludes:

As a result of Initiative 747 alone, the City of Seattle’s property tax collections in 2010 are at least $60 million less than if the measure had not passed. The impact of the loss is compounded each year the limits remain in place, so annual losses increase by approximately $15 million per year, meaning that the estimated loss for 2011 will be at least $75 million. This estimate assumes the City Council would have limited the tax increase to the rate of inflation in the City’s labor costs (3.5 percent to 4.5 percent annually, which includes the cost of health care). If one assumes the City Council would have increased property tax to the statutory limit of 6 percent per year, the 2011 loss would be $126 million.

Taking into account compounding, and using Eyman’s own framing, I-747 will save Seattle taxpayers between $135 million and $186 million in 2015 alone, the first year any of the new taxes Westneat mentions would take effect. That’s far more than the combined annual cost of a parks district and universal preschool!

Such a bargain!

Yes, in both cases we’re talking about substantial tax hikes above what taxpayers are currently paying. But they amount to substantial tax cuts from what taxpayers would have been paying today had not I-695 and I-747 been forced on us by statewide voters. Indeed, the only reason we are going to voters with tax hikes to fund bus service and parks is that I-695 and I-747 left the county and the city without sufficient revenues to sustain these crucial services!

So are the costs high? Sure. It’s expensive to maintain the high-quality public infrastructure we want and need. But are these tax hikes “steep”…? Not if your starting point is the more rational local tax structure we enjoyed just a decade and a half ago, before that two-bit fraternity-watch salesman started fucking with our tax base for fun and profit.

Having already lost the local debate on the minimum wage in general, and on $15 in particular, the business interests on Mayor Ed Murray’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee have largely adopted a strategy of attempting to redefine the meaning of the word “wage” itself. The restaurant industry has long pined for a “tip credit” (or “tip penalty” from the perspective of workers) in which tips are counted towards meeting the minimum wage. But that wouldn’t lower the labor costs of businesses that rely on non-tipped employees, and so a strong push is being made to adopt the more sweeping notion of “total compensation.”

I’ll delve more deeply into the tip penalty debate in a subsequent post, but for the moment I want to focus on total compensation, which in addition to tips, would count the cost of providing  health insurance, sick leave, vacation leave, 401K matches, and other non-cash benefits toward the employer’s requirement to pay a minimum $15 an hour wage. And to better understand the impact of adopting a $15 an hour total compensation minimum wage, it is useful to start with a real-life example:

Let’s say you are a dishwasher working full-time at a midrange Seattle restaurant, earning $10.50 an hour plus $3 an hour in pooled or shared tips. You’re taking home the equivalent of $13.50 an hour, plus benefits. I guess there are worse jobs, but it’s hardly a living wage.

Now let’s say we pass a $15 total compensation minimum wage.

Based on the monthly price I’ve been quoted for COBRA, minus my share of the premium that had been deducted from my paychecks, I can estimate that I had cost The Stranger about $1.60 an hour for our so-so medical and dental coverage—let’s assume that’s typical for a restaurant. Then there’s a shift meal, with a retail price of $12.00, or another $1.50 an hour over the course of an 8 hour shift. Add two weeks vacation for another $0.40 an hour. Paid sick leave, that’s another $0.20 an hour still. I’m sure there are other benefits I’m missing, but this is more than enough to make my point. That’s already $3.70 an hour in benefits just there.

So… $10.50 an hour in wages, plus $3 an hour in tips, plus $3.70 an hour in benefits, and after our wonderful new $15 minimum wage ordinance passes, you’ll magically be making $17.20 an hour! That’s great! Except your take-home pay won’t increase a penny. In fact, some unscrupulous employers may seize this as an opportunity to actually lower wages. Hooray for total compensation!

Of course, not all employers are going to be dicks about it. But in this imbalanced labor market, some will. Wage and tip theft are already rampant. So if you don’t think that some employers are going to be eager to creatively use a $15 total compensation minimum wage as an opportunity to cut labor costs, then you don’t know fuck about capitalism. (Or human nature.) 

But wait—it gets even worse.

Your $15 minimum wage would be indexed to inflation, but the cost of one of your biggest benefits—health insurance—will inflate at many times that rate. Health care inflation is currently at a historic low of about 6.5 percent, but the Consumer Price Index is only expected to rise about 1.75 percent during 2014. That means that the costs of your benefits will rise significantly faster than the putative minimum wage, pushing the effective wage floor ever lower in inflation adjusted dollars over time. For example, after five years at the inflation rates above, the official minimum wage would rise about 9 percent to $16.36 an hour, while the cost of your dishwasher benefits will have gone up about 21 percent to $4.48 an hour, bringing your official total hourly compensation to $17.98—again, without raising your take-home pay a single penny!

Total compensation effectively shifts the burden of healthcare inflation from the employer, entirely onto the employee. And as benefits make up an increasingly larger percentage of total compensation, real take-home wages will steadily fall. For low-wage full-time workers, a total compensation minimum wage would be a formula for expanding the income gap, not closing it.

Admittedly, the impact on part-time workers is different. Lacking the cost of benefits to subtract from total compensation, low-wage part-timers could see their effective wage floor rise substantially. This in turn would remove from employers some of the economic incentive they currently have to shift low-wage full-time work to part-time work. So that’s one possible positive impact of total compensation.

But as a policy for raising the effective incomes of all low-wage workers—which is what the $15 minimum wage movement is presumably about—a total compensation minimum wage miserably fails. It would provide little or no immediate wage hike to most full-time workers while eroding the effective wage floor over time. But most importantly, it would be a lie. Mayor Murray and other leaders have promised voters $15, but total compensation only gets to that number by redefining the meaning of the word “wage.”

And that would not be a promise fulfilled.

That’s the proposal from Representative Jessyn Farrell for the entire state. Goldy has the details and some speculation about what it could mean for Seattle’s efforts.

Washington’s current inflation-indexed minimum wage of $9.32 an hour is already on pace to exceed $10 an hour by 2017, so the actual net increase on final phase-in would be less than $2 an hour. But that’s not nothing to the half-million or so Washingtonians who see their wages go up. It’s also arguably good for the economy and good for taxpayers.

“If families have more money in their pocket, it lessens the demand for government assistance,” Farrell explained in a press release. “That saves all of us money.”

True. Although it’s first and foremost a moral issue. People ought to be able to survive and raise a family in this state. And a minimum wage ought to be reflective of that. I’d still prefer a $15 minimum wage statewide, but this is an obvious improvement.

The government shutdown was not only a disaster for Republicans, it was also a costly disaster for all Americans.

For example, we paid federal employees during the shutdown, but they were prohibited from working. (So…the next time you hear a Wingnut complain about how inefficient the government is, be sure to point out that the government isn’t the problem…Republicans are!)

How much damage did Republicans do to the U.S. economy by shutting down the government for 16 days? Try $24 Billion.

To put that $24 Billion in proper perspective, consider this: the direct damage from the September 11th terrorist attacks is estimated as follows:

The four civilian aircraft that were lost: $385 million.

Replacement costs of the World Trade Center buildings: $3 to $4.5 billion.

Damage to the Pentagon building: up to $1 billion.

Cleanup costs: $1.3 billion.

Property and infrastructure damage: $10 billion to $13 billion.

With some adjustment for inflation, the costs to our economy from the Republican terrorist attack on the U.S. government is, essentially, same as the direct costs of the al Qaeda terrorist attack on our country.

Now I understand more fully what’s meant by “all enemies, foreign and domestic” in the oath of office taken by congresscritters and other federal officials.

As the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act once again, this time tying it to the budget, Cathy McMorris Rodgers is taking a more active role in pushing it. I’ve really noticed that they aren’t pushing for anything. It’s been repeal, repeal, repeal, and now it’s defund and delay.

“To get the entire bill repealed, or defunded, is probably not realistic,” McMorris Rodgers said Thursday following a spirited town hall discussion in Spokane Wednesday night in which the Affordable Care Act took center stage. “But I do think there are provisions in the law that we can get delayed, or provisions in the law we can get defunded.”

[…]

“I think there’s growing recognition that … portions of the law are not ready,” McMorris Rodgers said, citing recent votes in the House in which Democrats joined Republicans to delay the mandates in the law requiring employers and individuals to sign up on subsidized health insurance exchanges.

They are complaining and obstructing. They are demanding delay and attempting to defund the law. What they aren’t doing is proposing any alternative. The House GOP plan is to go back to before the health care law passed.

If you remember back when George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, the House and Senate Democrats were consistently opposed to his plan without offering any plan of their own. In that way, they made the status quo on Social Security their plan. They made Social Security the Democrats’ plan and privatizing it the Republican plan.

In the same way, the GOP plan for health care in America is how things were before Obamacare. The GOP plan is preexisting conditions and HMO’s. It’s tens of millions of Americans without health care coverage. It’s kicking kids off their parents’ plan. It’s shrinking of Medicaid and dissolving the other ways to make sure the poor can afford to be covered. It’s making it so that the power of the market doesn’t bring down costs in exchanges. It’s the out of control health care inflation that marked the period before the law passed. They ought to at least own up to that.

While Obama hasn’t released his budget yet, the reports are that it will include a proposal to include chained CPI for calculating Social Security inflation. It’s technical and if you manage to stay awake with a detailed explanation of it, congrats. The bottom line is that the calculations of inflation would rise more slowly on the assumption that seniors, people on Social Security Disability and widows would replace things for cheaper ones, so we can give out benefits at a lower rate than inflation.

I’m asleep just writing about it, but it’s a major benefit cut. To get out ahead of it, I’m writing Senators Cantwell and Murray and Representative McDermott (the 3 people who represent me in Congress). I hope you’ll do the same.

Dear Senators Murray and Cantwell and Representative McDermott;

I’m writing to ask you to oppose tying Social Security benefit increases to chained CPI instead of to to inflation. We should be looking at ways to increase benefits to seniors who’ve been paying into the system their whole lives, or at the very least preserving the current benefits.

Social Security is not in crisis right now. While some tweaks may be necessary down the line, they shouldn’t be made just to show that you’re doing something. it’s also abhorrent to talk about benefit cuts — either through this sort of thing or raising the retirement age — before raising or eliminating the earnings cap all together.

Thank you,

Carl Ballard

This is on domestic issues.

6:04: The economy. Jobs. What are the major differences between the two of you about how you would go about creating jobs.

– Obama: 4 years ago, we went through the worst financial crisis since the depression. We’ve begun to fight our way back. The auto industry and housing are coming back. Romney’s perspective is if we cut taxes, skew to the wealthy, we’ll be better off. I think we have to invest in energy and education. Fix the tax code to help people who invest in America. Are we going to double down on the old policies that got us into this mess?

– Romney: I’ve met people across the country. Mentioning swing states. Can you help us? The answer is yes. Get energy independent, open trade, make sure people have the best skills and education, balance the budget, champion small business. Complains about big government without mentioning that shrinking government is part of the problem (in the recession).

6:10: Obama wants to lower corporate taxes. Lovely. Fucking lovely. And he’s being a deficit hawk. Boo.

6:13: Romney is talking about clean coal. So that’s a lie, because that doesn’t exist.

6:14: Obama is now talking about tax cuts for the middle class. Sure. Now he’s going after Romney’s tax plan because there aren’t the specifics about the loopholes that he says he supports.

6:18: Romney is saying he won’t add to the deficit. But the math doesn’t really work.

6:19: Obama: “Romney’s big bold idea is ‘never mind.'” My tax plan lowered taxes for 98% of small businesses and families, but for incomes over $250,000 we should go back to the rates under Clinton.

6:21: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

6:23: Obama: The approach Governor Romney is talking about is the same that was tried in 2001 and 2003.

6:24: Romney is whining about not having the last word.

What to do about the federal debt. My answer is don’t care until we’re out of a recession.

6:27: Romney: The debt is immoral. Raising taxes slows down the rate of growth. I want to cut spending. He doesn’t seem to realize that cutting spending hurts the economy.

6:28: Obama: When I came into office we had 2 wars that weren’t paid for, 2 tax cuts that weren’t paid for and an economic crash. Now we’ve cut discretionary budget the most since Ike. $2.50 in cuts for every $1 of income.

6:31: Romney says Obama should have supported Simpson Bowles, but his plan isn’t Simpson Bowles.

6:34: Obama is going after the oil companies’ corporate welfare “when they’re making a profit every time you’re at the pump.” Don’t take a deduction for moving a plant overseas.

6:37: If you drink every time one of these people mentions a swing state or a city in one, enjoy blacking out.

6:38: Is Romney joking about how he shipped jobs overseas and didn’t get enough of a tax cut???????

Entitlements. Do you see a major difference on Social Security?

6:40: Obama: Social Security’s basic structure is sound, but it may need some tweaks. My grand mother raised me, and she ended up living alone by choice. The reason she could be independent is Medicare and Medicaid. And that’s what I think of when people talk about entitlements. So strengthen the system over the long term. Don’t overpay insurance companies or providers. Use that money to lower drug costs to seniors and preventive care.

6:43: Romney: Neither the president nor I are proposing any changes for retirees or near retirees. So stop listening. Now he’s saying Obama cut Social Security. I doubt he’ll mention that it’s the same as his VP proposed.

6:44: Obama: I think it’s important for governor Romney to present his plan. It’s called premium support, but it’s actually a voucher program. If you’re 54 or 55, you should listen because it will effect you. You can have a voucher, but it won’t keep up with inflation.

6:46: I have become fond of that phrase Obamacare. If you repeal it, seniors will be harmed, and insurance companies will be the primary beneficiaries.

6:48: Romney is talking about means testing for Medicare. Boo.

On the economy: What is your view on federal regulation? Should there be more?

6:52: Romney says regulation is important, at the same time it can become excessive. It can become out of date, and hurt the economy. Dodd Frank designates banks too big to fail (?). I would repeal and replace it. He doesn’t say what he’ll replace it with (but he does say he’ll keep some of it).

6:54: Obama: We had excesses from all sectors. So we had the toughest reforms since the 1930’s. We made sure all the help was paid back with interest. Does anybody think the problem is we had too much regulation of Wall Street?

6:56: Romney:Try to get a loan today. As if loans were easy to get before Dodd Frank.

Do you want to repeal health reform?

6:57: Romney: Health care is too expensive. Craft a plan at the state level, and get costs down.

6:59: Obama: When I was running for office, people weren’t able to get insurance. Families would go bankrupt if they got sick. If they had a preexisting condition they couldn’t get coverage. There might be an arbitrary limit. We worked on this and on jobs. If you’ve got health insurance, companies can’t jerk you around. If you don’t have insurance, you can essentially have a group rate. The irony is we’ve seen this model work well in Massachusetts.

7:02: Romney: In my state Republicans and Democrats worked together. OK, fine, but why didn’t he ask other Republicans to work with Democrats?

7:03: Romney: A president has to work across the aisle. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

7:04: Romney: The Democratic legislators in Mass could give some advice to Republicans in Congress about working across the aisle.

7:06: I was hoping for more zingers.

7:08: Are there any clinics not in swing states?

7:11: Obama: Romney will replace it but won’t tell you what he’ll replace it with. We don’t know the details of his tax plan, of his replacement of Dodd Frank, of repeal of Obamacare. Is he doing this because his plans are too good? No.

The role of government. Do you believe there’s a difference as to how you view the mission of the Federal government.

7:14: Obama: The first role of government is to keep people safe. But also, the Federal government can create the opportunities. There are some things we can do as individuals, but there are some things we can do together. Now he’s talking about Race to the Top. Boo, again.

7:15: Romney: I love great schools. Every state should make the decision on their own. The pursuit of happiness means something something God.

7:18 All federal funds should follow the child, not to the school district.

7:19: Obama: The Ryan budget would cut the education budget by 20%.

7:22: Obama: We’ve cut out the middle men on student loans. Our priorities make a difference.

7:23: I hope that “your own facts” line wasn’t his zinger.

A meta question about partisanship.

7:25: Romney: Since I worked with Democrats when they were 87% of the Mass legislature, I can totally work with them in Congress.

7:26: Obama: I’ll work with anyone as long as they have good ideas for building the middle class.

Closing statements:

7:28: Obama: Thank you and Romney. This was a terrific debate. 4 years ago we were going through an crisis. I still believe in lots of people in swing states. Make sure everyone has a fair share and plays by the same rules. I fought every day for the middle class and those trying to get into the middle class.

7:30: Romney: This is about the course of America. There are two paths and they lead in 2 different directions. I’ll get incomes up again. If I’m president I’ll create 12 Million jobs. If Obama is elected, Obamacare will be installed, and there will be a made up amount of health care premium increase.

7:33: I actually think this was a pretty good debate. People had a chance to get into the weeds a bit, but there was some real discussion. I’ve edited it a bit to make it more clear who was saying what.

This year I will be starting college in France and I am going to France for two reasons. One being that I love France, its language and culture; the other being that I will be paying roughly $400 for my annual tuition without scholarships, grants, loans taken out or federal aid. (And additionally, I am still able to apply for federal aid for my housing). I am not able to go to a respected university in my own country without going into debt for the next few decades. It wasn’t always this way. And it doesn’t have to be.

Since the 1980’s the percentage of the federal budget that has been spent on education has decreased significantly, while the cost of education has skyrocketed and increased more than 5x the rates of inflation.

Some argue that we can’t afford to put more money into public universities. I say that’s a lie. We waste plenty of money into defense spending on weapons we will never use. Some defense spending is of course important, but to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into things we have no need for, or will never use is fiscally irresponsible.

What we can’t afford is committing an entire generation of educated people to the debt sentence. People starting their lives with tens of thousands of dollars in debt will not only severely damage our economy but it will also alienate entire groups of people who are brilliant and have potential that will either never be able to develop it or be struggling too hard to pay back into loans to be able to invest in their dreams.

The tuition costs we have now specifically hinder growth and that is not what education is about and it is not what our country says we’re about either. We say that we are the country of possibilities that anyone who works hard can make their way in the world. So then why am I someone who has worked hard for years needing to leave my country just to have access to a decent education without starting my adulthood in debt? I have stayed in the top 5% rankings in my class in one of the best schools in the country, a National Honor Society Member, took 10 AP classes, 5 honors classes and 5 classes that were considered college in high school classes for which I received college credit. I was a JV athlete in cross-country, a captain and varsity athlete in gymnastics and a varsity athlete in track and field in my high school. Additionally, I have babysat since I was 12 and babysat with an additional job from the time I was 16. And this year, on top of those two jobs, I had an internship with Darcy Burner.

So the fact that I didn’t receive enough scholarships to make school reasonably priced is not based on the fact that I didn’t work hard or didn’t do well in school. For every dollar in scholarships available there are 2 dollars of tuition. In the past, this number was reversed.

This week at a student activism conference, I met some students who have been in the ongoing protests in Quebec. They have had hundreds of thousands of students in the streets protesting and on strike because of the plan to have tuition raised from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017. When an American student at the conference asked, “why are you striking? You have the lowest tuition in Canada.” The Quebecois student responded, “we have the lowest tuition in Canada BECAUSE WE STRIKE.”

So, why are we not all in the streets? We’ve normalized the way in which we deal with tuition and higher education but that doesn’t make it right. We need to fight for our right to an education. As a country we seem to agree with that from elementary school until high school so what makes higher education any different?

We can do better than this. We can fight for our right to education. If not an education that is as cheap as it is in France, at least something that is more manageable for the average citizen.The students of this country need to step up and stand together to fight for access to education without going into debt before it’s too late.

– I’m not sure zero tolerance is a good strategy for dealing with gun crimes. But the previous strategies clearly weren’t working.

– RIP Rodney King.

– If there is anything the Federal Reserve could be doing that it’s not doing — and there is — then they are to blame for this. For this multiplied by 14 million. For Ben Bernanke and his cohorts to be giving a single flying fig about the remote possibility of inflation right now really is obscene.

– If the Tea Party doesn’t want to be seen as racist, maybe don’t start off a rally with a racist joke.

– Lord Player says more homophobic nonsense.

– Publicola are back.

– Happy Solstice.

– This is the greatest headline in human history.

– Kill My Blues.

This is what U.S. military spending looks like over a little more than 2 decades:

(Data soure: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.)

So much for the Peace Dividend that followed the end of the Cold War. Apparently, fighting a rag-tag bunch of cave-dwellers requires the same level of funding as keeping up with mighty Soviet Union.

If we want a return to the glory days of a balanced federal budget–you know, like we saw during the last year of the Clinton administration, we should

1. Let the budget busting Bush tax cuts expire. The second major experiment with Trickle-Down economics proved to be an abject failure. It is time for grown-up economic principles to be used for tax policy.
2. Cut military spending to late 1990s levels. The proposed Ryan budget would, literally, cause higher death rates for the most vulnerable Americans, who would no longer be able to afford some types of health care. Quality of life would go down drastically for Seniors and people with disabilities.

   It’s immoral to allow military spending to increase far greater than inflation, and ask seniors and the disabled to pay for it with their life!

And if you believe that military spending pays us back by stimulating the economy, think again. A study by University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee political scientist Prof. Uk Heo finds:

…a 1 percent increase in the defense spending share of GDP in the United States is expected to lead to a 0.019 percent increase in economic growth over two years. This result indicates that the economic effects of defense spending on growth in the United States are meaningless because the size of the effects is virtually zero.

Military spending, at least at today’s levels, turns out to be a really, really lousy investment.

The Wisconsin Republicans have rammed through a bill that strips collective bargaining rights from public employees. The new legislation only allows collective bargaining for wage increases up to the rate of inflation. In other words, public employees will only be allowed to bargain over how much of a pay cut they will take each year.

Isn’t that special.

There are questions about the legality of the conference committee meeting. The brief meeting itself is well worth watching:

A complaint has been filed, which would be unlikely to void the law, but give another cause, and one based on violations of the law, for the campaigns to recall G.O.P. Senators.

And there are also questions about the constitutionality of the legislation. Regardless of the legal challenges, the legislation will probably become, and stay, law. At least it will until Wisconsin no longer has a Teabagger for a Governor with a G.O.P. controlled Senate and Assembly.

Following the Senate vote last night, the cowardly Republicans were whisked away in a semi-commandeered Madison Metro bus, while protesters surrounding the bus screaming, “Shame!” and “Cowards!”:

Recall campaigns are underway for six the eight Republican Senators currently recallable. The first phase is a 60 day signature collection period that has been going remarkably well—roughly 15 percent of the needed signatures had been collected by last weekend.

Greg Sargent has an early release of polls conducted by SurveyUSA in the eight districts:

When asked if they would vote for Hopper or someone else if a recall election were held right now, 54 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 43 percent they’d vote for Hopper.

In Kapanke’s district, the numbers were even worse: 57 percent said they’d vote for someone else, versus only 41 percent who said they’d vote for Kapanke.

It gets even more interesting. The poll was taken yesterday, before last night’s events, and fifty-six percent of voters in Kapanke’s district, and 54% of voters in Hopper’s district, said if their Senator voted for Walker’s plan, it would make them more likely to vote for someone else.

Finally, by all measures, the fundraising for the recall campaigns has been nothing short of astonishing:

As of this morning, according to Ben Smith, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America had raised $750,000. As of this afternoon, MoveOn’s ActBlue page for the recall reports around $860,000 of donations from around 27,000 people; the Daily Kos page reports around $340,000 from around 12,500.

As Goldy pointed out, all it takes is money.

Patrick O’Callahan of the Tacoma News Tribune has an editorial about public sector unions. Because daily newspapers in this state exist mostly to serve the powerful, he doesn’t like them.

In Wisconsin, the backlash against government unions has taken the form of a GOP drive to repeal collective bargaining for most public-sector employees. Similar drives are happening in other states where Republicans recently won governorships and gained control over legislatures.

In Washington in 2 years it may take the form of Rob McKenna if we’re not vigilant. But of course these types of editorials serve as a test run for their pro McKenna propaganda. So here’s my test run of opposing that bullshit.

This would not be happening if the unions had the support of the public. Many of those unions have forfeited that support by clinging to lush compensation packages at a time when workers in the private sector – including union members – are enduring the toughest economy in generations. A time when public services are being scaled back ruthlessly while generous labor contracts have continued on autopilot.

Yes, if only teachers agreed to live in poverty for the privilege of long hours ensuring the next generation has the requisite skills to survive as adults. If only firefighters would pay for all of their own health care for the honor of saving your life and property. If only police and prosecutors would demand extra, uncompensated work because putting criminals away is just so inherently rewarding. If only doctors and nurses were demanding to pay for their own training. Then perhaps the editorial writers in this state would support them.

Too many examples are found in Pierce County. Although the cost of living has been flat, some union leaders have adamantly rejected pleas to reopen their contracts to reduce “cost-of-living” raises that considerably exceed the actual rate of inflation.

That’s how it’s supposed to work in a healthy economy. Wages are supposed to rise beyond inflation. What do you want all public employees to make, inflation adjusted, the same as they were making in the early days of the Oregon Territory? As if there shouldn’t have been any raise in the standard of living for public employees ever? Come on. That attitude is why we have public employee unions.

County workers saw their compensation increase by 23 percent between 2005 and 2009, when their private sectors saw 14 percent. They’re doing quite well. Yet their leaders last year refused a request to roll back another round of raises, though the rollback would have helped spare county services.

This is such bullshit. This editorial and the thousands of others we’ve read and will read about public sector unions in all the papers across the state never seem to have any suggestions to bump up those numbers for private sector employees. It’s always cited as fucking gospel that the private sector numbers are a fact of nature as immovable as a boulder in your path. But if you believe these numbers and want public and private employees making roughly the same, then you need to figure out how improve the pay of private sector employees. It seems to me that the numbers you’re throwing around are a pretty damn fine case for more and stronger private sector unions.

I’m gonna tell you something nearly every Democrat in Olympia knows, but most are too chicken-shit to admit: Washington’s taxes are too low, and without substantial tax restructuring, few if any of the draconian budget cuts being proposed will be temporary.

Remember the boom years of the 1990’s, when our local economy clicked into overdrive and new residents flocked here for great jobs and the good life?  Between 1990 and 1999, Washington’s population increased by over 21 percent, even as state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income swelled to a thirty-year high, peaking at 10.4 percent by mid-decade.

Since then, lawmakers and initiative writers have fed the public a steady stream of tax cuts and business exemptions, ultimately slashing state and local taxes below 8.9 percent of personal income by 2008, a thirty year low. And with revenues dropping faster than incomes as the Great Recession came on, and recovering slower than incomes in its aftermath, new data will surely show our state and local tax “burden” dropping yet a couple tenths of a percent further over the past two years.

For much of the past decade, both tax revenues and our economy were propped up by the real estate bubble, but with that fantasy having popped, Boeing moving production out of state, the Microsoft dynamo reaching maturity, and population growth dramatically slowing, the bill for the past fifteen years of public pandering and disinvestment is finally coming due. Our current level of taxation, and the manner in which its burden is distributed, is simply insufficient to sustain a level of essential services and public investment necessary to maintain our quality of life and assure economic growth.

No state relies more on the sales tax than Washington, which at over 62 percent of total revenues tops out at nearly twice the national average. But the sale of goods as a percentage of the total economy has been steadily shrinking for the past half century, requiring a series of sales tax rate increases just to keep revenues in pace with growth in demand for public services and investment… a demand that closely tracks growth in the economy as a whole.

What this describes is a structural revenue deficit that barring a broadening of the tax base or a steady increase in rates, assures that state and local government as a percentage of our economy will continue to shrink, and with it, its ability to provide the services and investments we want and need. Health care inflation, economic booms and busts and other cyclical factors can merely delay or accelerate the inevitable.

The math is undeniable.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper size and scope of government… but we’re not having it. Instead, even as we continue to elect Democratic majorities, we’re getting the Republican agenda by default. And unless Democrats start providing a little leadership and confronting voters with the hard truth that in government like everything else, you get what you pay for, our state is going to increasingly look less like the Washington of the 1990’s, and more like the Arizona of today… only without all the sunshine and warm weather.