Hey, remember how just a year and a half ago the oh so wise Seattle Times editorial board vociferously (and dishonestly) backed up Rodney Tom’s call to shut down GET (the state’s Guaranteed Education Tuition Plan), deriding it as “too generous,” while arguing that “lawmakers should be seriously concerned about a projected $631 million future shortfall” in the program?
“Closing GET to new enrollees would cause a $1.7 billion hit to the state treasury,” the editors wrote in January 2013, back when they were editorializing in favor of, you know, closing GET to new enrollees. And yet just 19 months later, according to today’s Seattle Times, GET is now funded at 106 percent of obligations:
The state’s prepaid college tuition is no longer underfunded, and has fully recovered from the recession.
That’s right: following the editors’ sage advice would have cost Washington taxpayers an unnecessary $1.7 billion, while eliminating our state’s only college savings option that allows middle-class families to securely plan for their children’s college education. Oops. Not that this wasn’t entirely predictable. As I explained in my contemporaneous fisking of this insane editorial:
Why the fuck would we want to lock in a $1.7 billion loss that we’d never have to pay if we’d just fund higher education at the level we all say we want to fund it? I mean, that’s just crazy. Inflation has averaged between 2 and 3 percent over the past few decades. Limit tuition increases to 7.5 percent a year and the GET program easily outgrows its shortfall.
As it turns out, the legislature ended up freezing tuition for two years. That and a booming stock market predictably led to GET’s full and speedy recovery.
Seriously… where do these clowns get off telling us how to run a government? Nobody should ever, ever, ever listen to their budgetary advice.
Goldy, as you noted, the Seattle Times’ editorial board is the last viable right-wing blog around these parts. Asking right-wing bloggers to consider reality is like asking a squad of rejevts from a junior-high football team to take on the Seahawks.
Really, now, Goldy — just because you make more sense than they do does not mean you get to be so cruel as to compare their words with verifiable facts.
Or maybe it does….
I predict that the next Times editorial will state that there’s no need for the legislature to worry about McCleary now because GET is now in the black. “Let’s just wait and see” will be their solution.
“the Seattle Times’ editorial board is the last viable right-wing blog around these parts.”
And that was true even before (un)SP went into a Jim Miller induced coma.
“Nobody should ever, ever, ever listen to their budgetary advice.”
Nobody should listen to their investment advice, either. I wonder they’re the fools who sold GE stock to me for $6.74 on March 5, 2009?
@2, @4 Given McClatchy carries their 49.5% stake in Seattle Times on their books at zero dollars, I’m not sure “viable” is the right word.
“I’m not sure “viable” is the right word”
I’m defining viability as the ability to post something worth shit. At least the ST still does that. Over at the sucky, comatose (un)SP, not at all. Barely a detectable pulse, and none at all when it’s just the extraordinarily lame Jim Miller posting there.
@7 It’s fair to say (un)SP is defunct, as nothing’s there but Jim Miller cross-posting from his own blog.
“… as nothing’s there but Jim Miller cross-posting from his own blog.”
We now have two local blogs with nothing but Jim Miller shouting at himself! Because free market!