One of the classic attacks on liberals like me is to berate us as “tax and spend” Democrats — an ironic pejorative in light of the record budget deficits rung up over the past six years of absolute Republican control over the federal government.
But the truth is, I do believe in taxing and I do believe in spending as legitimate and necessary roles of government… and for more things than just killing brown people overseas.
There is still this Reagan-era perception amongst many diehard conservatives that the bulk of our tax dollars goes towards supporting lazy poor people, provoking an angry and visceral reaction to any notion of a tax increase. But in fact one of government’s primary roles is building and maintaining the critical (and sometimes invisible) infrastructure on which our economy and our standard of living depend.
A recent rash of water main breaks in Seattle highlights both the cost and danger of deferred maintenance. The usual knee-jerk, righty comeback is to blame this on incompetent local Democrats, but as an article in today’s Seattle Times highlights, our crumbling system of aging drinking-water and wastewater pipes is a nationwide problem, and a particular crisis for rural (ie, Republican) communities that lack the local tax base to replace or repair this infrastructure on their own.
All over the state — and all over the nation — broken and leaking pipes have many poor rural communities facing similar health threats and economic hardships. It’s been a problem that has been buried for decades. But a crisis point is finally arriving, experts warn. And there’s nowhere near enough government money to go around.
As last Wednesday’s rupture of a water main under Seattle’s University Bridge showed, it’s a problem affecting urban areas, too. But the experts say the difference for such towns as Vader is clear: They don’t have the millions of dollars that big cities have to keep their systems running.
One federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) survey has estimated that Washington state alone needs at least $6.7 billion over 20 years to replace aging drinking-water pipes.
Nationally, the EPA guesses it could cost $300 billion over the next 20 years just for drinking-water pipes, and almost as much to replace failing wastewater lines.
“We have never been in this situation before, where such a vast system of infrastructure is aging like it is,” said Ben Grumbles, an assistant EPA administrator in Washington, D.C. “Water is life, and infrastructure systems are the lifeblood of a community.”
Left purely to free market forces, many of our rural water systems make as little business sense as rural electrification — one of the great triumphs of mid-twentieth century American-style socialism. As their aging infrastructure slowly collapses, driving families and businesses out of the region, the politicians who represent these rural districts should be faced with a choice: abandon the destructive, divisive and dishonest rhetoric of East vs. West, Rural vs. Urban, Republican vs. Democrat, or be prepared to have our state’s urban, Democratic majority greet your plight with the same lack of compassion and empathy with which you greet ours.
Residents of Washington state’s rural, suburban and urban areas all have critical public infrastructure needs — some shared, some not. But whatever the specifics, these needs can best be met by working together, rather than brandishing rigid, ideological swords in a fight to the death over dwindling public resources. At the same time conservative politicians champion the values and heritage of rural life, their anti-tax, anti-government screeds are poisoning the well — literally and figuratively — that made this lifestyle possible. For the past hundred years it was government that built and subsidized the infrastructure (transportation, electrification, irrigation, education, etc.) that allowed agricultural communities to grow and prosper. And only government has the incentive to invest in this infrastructure for the next century and beyond.
As our global food safety crisis makes clear, urban Americans have a vital stake in maintaining the livelihood and lifestyle of our rural neighbors, both out of appreciation and gratitude for the hard labor they put into feeding us, and out of simple, rational self-interest. By pressuring the margins of local farmers and processors, the walmartification of our food industry puts us all at risk. And for all of its obvious commonsense, the growing “Eat Local” movement can never be more than a slogan without local farmers to grow our food.
The explosion in the number of farmers markets throughout the Puget Sound region is as much about maintaining healthy rural communities as it is about healthy eating. Urban consumers have shown a willingness to pay a premium for high-quality fresh produce, knowing that the extra dollars are going directly to local growers. But ironically, it is this urban, progressive community that is most harshly vilified by the right-wing Republicans who represent much of rural Washington.
I believe that there is the political will, statewide, to continue to subsidize the investment in public infrastructure necessary to help Washington’s agricultural communities prosper for another hundred years. But to tap into this consensus the elected officials who represent these rural districts must stop painting state government as the enemy, and vindictively interfering in the ability of urban residents to tax themselves to meet their own infrastructure needs. Every time a rural Republican tells Seattle voters that we should not have the right to tax ourselves to build light rail or choose the means by which SR99 will run through our downtown waterfront, it undermines our support for fixing the leaky pipes beneath the streets of Vader and Tieton and a hundred other rural Washington towns.
Vader’s 2007 budget is a little more than $620,000. Nearly 40 percent — $244,000 — is for the water and sewer system.
Last year, the town replaced a worn-out clay sewer line and repaved Main Street with $1 million in grants and loans.
What the town really needs is a sewage-treatment plant. But “there’s no way 600 people can afford a $6 million sewage treatment plant,” [Mayor Guy] Chastain said.
Yes, governments tax and spend. But I suppose when your only hope of maintaining critical local infrastructure is to appeal for grants and loans from state and federal government, “tax and spend” isn’t such a pejorative.
Last night I was watching a panel discussion on C-Span about health care. It was sort of a mixed group, including both Bill Frist and Arianna Huffington, but the moderator was that guy who’s the head of Fox “News”…draw your own conclusions.
When Frist had the floor he spoke of how terrible the impending collapse of Medicare/Medicaid is supposed to be. The tale of woe he presented was that in a few decades the trust fund will face an unfunded liability of (oh, the humanity!) 64 billion dollars annually. It immediately occurred to me that this is equal to what our esteemed leadership spends every two months or so on this cockamaie war.
“There is still this Reagan-era perception amongst many diehard conservatives that the bulk of our tax dollars go towards supporting lazy poor people, provoking an angry and visceral reaction to any notion of a tax increase.”
This is one of the more vicious lies of the right wing’s countless lies. Even in its heyday, the AFDC* program never amounted to more than 3% of the federal budget. And most welfare beneficiaries were young children who either had been abandoned by their fathers, or whose parents were unemployed through not fault of theirs.
* AFDC = Aid For Dependent Children
The federal government has two other welfare programs of some size, SSI and Medicaid. To get SSI, you have to be disabled — unable to work at ANY job — and extremely poor. Most, although not all, SSI recipients are elderly and way past working age. The SSI rolls also include people who are blind, quadriplegic, or profoundly disabled by cerebral palsy or other catastrophic medical conditions.
Medicaid is a large and expensive program that provides health care to poor children and disabled adults. Medicaid is what pays for your wheelchair if you ride a motorcyle with no helmet or insurance. The most noteworthy aspect of Medicaid is that it pays about 2/3rds of all nursing home bills in the United States. Nearly every elderly person who goes into a nursing home ends up on Medicaid, unless they die within a year or so, because nursing home care is so expensive most elderly people go through their life savings within a few months. It’s almost impossible to operate a nursing home without a Medicaid contract with DSHS, because only a tiny percentage of the American population can afford to pay for nursing home care. Washington has nearly 400 nursing homes, and around 390 of them have Medicaid contracts with DSHS. The only ones that don’t are a handful of church-owned nursing homes that are subsidized by the vast resources of their churches.
The state also has a couple of small welfare programs that pay for drug treatment or provide a tiny monthly allowance for disabled adults who don’t qualify for SSI or Social Security disability (because their disability is temporary) and don’t qualify for AFDC (now called TANF**) because they don’t have dependent children in their household. A typical example is a Bush-supporting construction worker who broke his leg riding a motorcycle with no helmet or insurance and can’t collect L & I benefits because the injury isn’t work-related. The cost of these programs doesn’t amount to a piss in a bucket, and if you eliminated them (which the state does periodically, when there’s a budget crisis), you wouldn’t save enough money to pay for a tax cut anyone would notice.
** TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
It’s interesting to speculate why the nutwing beats up on poor people. It’s obviously a diversionary tactic, not to mention a straw man, and dishonest rhetorical trickery in a half dozen other ways. But I’ve always suspected that the rightys who hate the poor are themselves economically marginal people living in fear of being poor themselves. You know — the Bush-supporting trailer park trash … people who can’t pay $100 gambling debts and their ilk. There’s something pathological about conservatives’ hatred of the poor.
Most of the poor aren’t lazy freeloaders. Don’t get me wrong, our society has plenty of welfare bums. Clay Bennett, for example. And lazy freeloaders, too. Namely, the CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES who live off other people’s labor and spend their time on the golf course producing nothing except a lot of hot air about how “hard” they “work” and how much they “produce.” You know the type I mean.
But as for the real poor — i.e., people who have no money — many of them are young single mothers. Guess why they’re poor? Because the Bush-supporting assholes who knocked them up left them in the lurch, that’s why. The assholes who abandoned their kids and refused to pay child support, and there’s a lot of them, which is why we have a big and expensive government bureaucracy dedicated to wringing child support out of the Bush-supporting, wingnut-spewing, asshole deadbeats who don’t pay their $100 gambling debts either.
The TANF rolls also include parents who can’t work for some reason. They may be disabled by a medical condition. It’s pretty damned hard to drive a truck if you’ve just had a heart attack, or you’re in the hospital with pneumonia. During my long state career, I had some exposure to welfare programs and welfare families, and I’ve made plenty who wanted to work but employers wouldn’t hire them. Once you get outside Seattle, we have a lot of communities that have flimsy economies and not very many jobs. We have these things called recessions when people can’t work because there’s no jobs and employers aren’t hiring. To call people lazy because employers aren’t hiring is worse than vicious, it’s sick.
So, I have a special Mother’s Day message for all you poor-people-hating fascist motherfuckers: Go fuck yourselves! Or, better yet, lick my cute cottontail! For a good time, call 1-900-SUCK-ROG.
As for taxes, the major imperative facing our state is to make the lazy, freeloading, Bush-supporting affluent households pay their fair share! The problem is not that our taxes are too high, but the wrong people are paying them. The Gates Commission found that the poorest 20% of households pay 17% of their income to state and local taxes, but the richest 20% pay only 4% of theirs. In addition, small business carries 41% of the total state and local tax load in our state, compared to an average of 30% in the other western states. It’s obvious what we need to do: Shift taxes from the poor and small business to affluent households by replacing the B&O and state sales taxes with a flat-rate, revenue-neutral, state income tax.
As for Frank Blethen and his whining about the inheritance tax, I think the state inheritance tax exemption should be exactly the same as the federal personal exemption and standard deduction. This idea of exempting $1.5 million of unearned inheritance windfalls from taxation while workers get only $10,000 of exemptions is bullshit! It’s time for the rich to step up to the plate and pay the same taxes the poor pay. If for no other reason, simply because I’m tired of listening to these fucking freeloadings whining about taxes they don’t pay, we ought to stop mollycoddling them.
IT’S MY FUCKING MONEY!!! WHAAAAAA. WHAAAAAAA…
LET THEM DRINK – BOTTLED WATER..
It’s amazing to me how these folks can criticize “tax and spend” when their answer seems to be “spend and tax our grandchildren”.
Of course, in the case of Mr. Blethen, it seems to be “spend and tax someone else’s grandchildren”.
HOw come seattle libs can never fund this crap w/in a budget; instead we get the constant barrage of special levies to fund normal mainetenaince items
Rogger Rabbit ,
You bring a STRAWMAN POINT TO LESS TAXES VIEW POINT OF CONSERVATIVES . The fact is after spending billions of dollars on the war on poverty , the insurgents seem to still be winning . Could perhaps the strategy be what is wrong ? Instead of promoting corporate welfare by the country club republicans and the don’t look what I am doing democrrats , the constant rhetoric of just more taxes by the liberals does little to solve problems . Poverty and BIG business is indeed the winners here if you ask me .
Please don’t say education is the answer , that is a part , but mainly a slogan and the public schools help the middle class , Not the poor , public education has always failed the poor .
Perhaps promoting a tax structure that gives incentives to hire in this country instead of going out of the country to hire cheap labor , inner city charter schools will get to another level of the lower middle class , but that will not get to the roots . Other possiblibities that government could promote may be part of the answer. Not everyone is designed for college , and the problems of generational poverty have more to do with people getting involved with those on a one by one basis . Dealing with people in poverty is much worse then dealing with narrow minded conservatives Roger , its not as rewarding as you think either if your looking for a pat on the back . and yet I know of no better calling then helping the poor out of their circle of poverty . The poor see a police officer , and they see trouble not someone who helps , that is passed on to their children . Your child gets lost , they go to a cop for help , a child in poverty gets lost , a cop means trouble . You think they see gocvernment as a good buddie ? Their life is different then what a government agency can even begin to unravel . Children see schools as a place of embaraassment for them and their parents , warmth for themselves , maybe a meal . They know NO one in their circles who has graduated , why should they expect to ? Tell a kid in poverty he has to stay for detention , you might actually be doing him a favor . Teachers see parents of poverty as not caring , however if you got into those circles many in poverty see their children as their whole world and only good thing in it . I am not blaming teachers , I am just bringing up why government has never had my support on their war on poverty . They have no clue how to deal with it !!!
There is much to the subject , but somehow a person who sees conservatives as not caring about the poor such as yourself , and we do have the ability to cimmunicate between each , promotes my point that a government agency does not have means or the ability to change the outcome in poverty in this nation .
If you can not understand with a middle class education and income that conservatives do care , have a different view , how do you expect someone whose whole world has people in it that have not graduated HS , own property , succeeded in life from hard work , or has any belief that tomorrow will be better , or KNOWS amyone in thir life that can help , how can you expect them to communicate with a government agency with little or no compass in their lives to guide them .
Have not all your jobs , almost all your success in life not come from GOVERNMENT but by the people you know . Even government jobs come from some one we know usually , told us about , etc . How did we get our first car , have an address with any kind of longevity that proved stability that we could use A brother knows someone who knows some that a good job is open , etc .. We have people in our circles, the impoverished only have have nots in their circles . GOVERNMENT can only make it more comfortable for the poor , and more likely more comfortable for those who are NOT impoverished such as yourself .. Right blame conservatives .
I think taxes would be an easier “sell” if there were better accountability. For example, taxes in Saeattle are roughly 2X taxes in Bellevue. (or so I am told)
How come?
1. Seattle has lower property values.
This is hard to believe. If it were true, Belltown and SLU SHOULD be a boon.
2. Seattle pays a disproportionate share of cregional costs for thinsg like:
the Zoo, the UW campus, the Seahawks, County Trauma Center, the Symphony, the
3. Seattle spends to much subsidizing downtown developers as compared with support in suburbs.
Will SLU increase Seattle’s tax base and therefore decrease my taxes?
Anybody know?
goldy
Ever been to Vader????
They just demolished the only school (K-6 grade). The gym was a “barn”. These same taxpayers couldn’t afford a new school, so how in the hell they gonna afford a Sewage Treatment plant.
The 600 residents don’t live next door to each other. Drive through the town, each residence has surely an ACRE or more of lawn.
So when you decide to make us Yokels feel guilty about your Urban lifestyle, and why we are so USEFUL to you, just remember, there are some “towns” that will never survive as a Town.
The Stupidist thing on the internet ever:
“Every time a rural Republican tells Seattle voters that we should not have the right to tax ourselves to build light rail or choose the means by which SR99 will run through our downtown waterfront, it undermines our support for fixing the leaky pipes beneath the streets of Vader and Tieton and a hundred other rural Washington towns.”
The dumbest thing ever on the Internet:
“Every time a rural Republican tells Seattle voters that we should not have the right to tax ourselves to build light rail or choose the means by which SR99 will run through our downtown waterfront, it undermines our support for fixing the leaky pipes beneath the streets of Vader and Tieton and a hundred other rural Washington towns.”
And then we have Queen Crissy and the band liberal lawmakers thumbing their noses at the will of the people. Tacking on up to $20 to car tabs for cities and counties in unacceptable. We voted and passed that “$30 car tab” intiative overwhelmingly. 30 means 30, not 50. Typical twat tactics there. But then again, what goes around comes around. Crissy will get what’s coming to her for her complete ignorace, naiveness, pompousness, arrogance, and lack of even the tiniest shred of fiscal responsibility. Way to go Dems. have fun at the polls, assuming you’re alive by then and not taxed to death. Morons. And Roger Rodent-no mouth spewings needed from you-I know you need that gov’t cheese check badly.
@10;
I got no sense of “guilt-inducing” from Goldy’s posting today.
I did get a reminder that we are all interconnected and depend on each others infrastructure.
The farmer whose crops I buy benefits from me being able to reach them with whatever transportation I choose; I benefit from the farmer being able to transport their crops to where I can reach them. If either of our infrastuctures break down, then we both suffer.
Even the unpatriotic businesses that outsource to foreign countries or hire illegal workers depend on the U.S. infrastructure. Electricity and airports are all part of the infrastructure too.
EYEMAN WORLD! IF I ever hit a real big lottery, 2 things I’m gonna do:
1. buy a patch of nothing out in eastern WA and call it EYEMAN WORLD
2. get a ballot initiative passed that REQUIRES people who don’t want to pay taxes to move to EYEMAN WORLD in their natural state – bare ass, NO modern gasoline or technology or steel or machines … – just you and your community hating ass can bring your ass up by your bootstraps all by your fucking self. NO help. no seattle subsidized roads or dams or electricity or medical care … live in the fucking stone age, where you belong.
I grew up in a town of 3,500. It was nice, safe and quiet, but I agree, also not sustainable. If the rural folks don’t like taxes, let them have the no-government Reagan ideal free market system. If they want a water plant, pay for it, otherwise dig a well bitch. Stop asking big city tax payers (where 90% of the money comes from) to subsidize your nice idealized small town life.
Is there anything funnier than small towns bitching about taxes, consider the biggest welfare draw is from the rural south, and there isn’t a town under 5,000 that is even theoretically close to self sufficient in it’s ability to pay for it’s “modern” conveniences. Sure they can have “homesteads”, but if you want interstate paved highways, phone service, cable, internet, clean city water, electricity and you live in a town of 5,000 stop f**king bitching about the government. YOU’RE the ones sucking off the government tit.
And don’t get me started on farmers complaining about “welfare” moms. Pot…kettle calling on line 1.
The last time I checked, eighteen percent of Washington state’s population lived east of the Cascades, and the state spent twenty-three percent of its budget there. Urban King County, with less than 25% of the state’s population, paid approximately 40% of the state’s revenues. I well recall, after Mr. Eyeman’s $30 car tabs Initiative, mayors from 50 small towns appeared in Frank Chopp’s office, asking that a revenue stream the Initiative had eliminated — the one feeding their towns — be restored. Mr. Chopp pointed to the election results, showing how rural voters had overwhelmingly approved of the Initiative, while 81% of Chopp’s electorate had voted against it. He said he would not violate the will of the small-town voters.
@1 Bill Frist? Who’s he? Is he that exfoliated former GOP presidential hopeful?
@5 Well, that’s a good point Mark. The poor SHOULD drink bottled water. It’s probably not safe, but if the Bush administration isn’t already outsourcing our public drinking water supplies to China for “processing,” they will be soon.
@7 “HOw come seattle libs can never fund this crap w/in a budget; instead we get the constant barrage of special levies to fund normal mainetenaince items”
For the same reason Republican voters in Republican counties pass special levies: Our state tax system is broken.
As for the wingnut voters who defeat special levies because they’d rather pay for wars than their own kids’ education, these are the folks who file lawsuits against the state to get more money for their rural public schools out of Seattle taxpayers.
@8 “You bring a STRAWMAN POINT TO LESS TAXES”
So what? I’m a Democratic Party hack and liberal propagandist. Got a problem with that? I don’t do anything your side’s propagandists don’t do. In fact, I used to be a Goldwater Republican, and I learned how to do this from you guys.
@8 “Instead of promoting corporate welfare by the country club republicans”
You got the wrong guys. It’s not us who are promoting corporate welfare to country club republicans. Country club republicans are promoting it.
@8 “Perhaps promoting a tax structure that gives incentives to hire in this country”
The purpose of a tax structure is to pay for government so we have the public services necessary to a functioning economy. If you want to promote hiring, then eliminate business taxes and use public money to pay workers’ wages. Frankly, I don’t think we can afford that. It’s what Republican business owners want, but the price tag is just too high to be practical.
@8 “we do have the ability to cimmunicate”
Communication begins with correct spelling. Get that down, then we’ll talk about esoteric concepts such as your concept that government programs to help the poor don’t help the poor. Which, of course, is nonsense. If we didn’t have Medicaid paying for nursing homes, we’d have homeless elderly people dying in our streets. It does make a difference.
Apparently what the poster’s argument in #8 boils down to is the wingnut Inevitability Argument: The rich inevitably will get all the money, and the poor inevitably will get none, so why fight it? Just go along.
As someone who was very poor in my youth; worked my way through college, graduate school, and law school; and has acquired property and stocks; all I want from the government is the same tax exemptions the rich get.
Namely, no taxes on my first $2 million of wages, pension income, and Wall Street winnings …
@8 “Have not all your jobs , almost all your success in life not come from GOVERNMENT but by the people you know”
No. I was a career civil servant. All my jobs came from the government. Starting with Private, U.S. Army, $90 per month.
And my greatest success in life was not getting shot in Vietnam.
@10 An acre of lawn apiece may explain why your water bills are higher than ours. Okay, I stand corrected, your water bills are NOT higher than ours, because we in Seattle are subsidizing your fucking water system, too.
@11 Wrong! The stupidest thing on the internet is the blathering of red-county rednecks who think the Seattle voters who are subsidizing your schools and roads don’t have the right to subsidize their own schools and roads.
@13 “Crissy will get what’s coming to her”
Yep, she will. She’ll be re-elected in ’08 with 58% of the vote.
@14 To hell with the Republican farmers in the cow counties! If they don’t want us to subsidize their roads, let ’em haul their fruits and vegetables to market in mule carts over cow paths!
@15 Man, you nailed it! I’m gonna run out and buy a couple lotto tickets right now!
I can see it now: “oger Rabbit’s Wingnut Paradise”, the ultimate resort for humanity-hating hermits.
Click here for photo of Roger Rabbit’s Wingnut Paradise: http://tinyurl.com/376ysf
25 Roger, that’s a little beneath your level. You keep talking about how you’re retired and sitting comfortably in your burrow, posting stuff here in between checking up on your investments. So, please don’t be so hard on those of us who take an occasional furtive look in here and try to hammer out a comment before our boss walks in the door.
That being said, it’s going to take some real doing to beat the record for stupidity achieved by Mark in #13. The attitude therein suggests his postings are shoehorned in between wank sessions.
#9 The points you raise are quite valid, However, besides issues like the zoos (Harbor- and Woodland Park) and such, it remains that the population density is much higher in seattle than it is in other parts of the region, even Bellevue. With increasing density come some savings (you don’t have to drive 25 miles to the store) but also greater costs for services and infrastructure.
18 Yup. The same guy. The chest cutter who suddenly became the world’s foremost neurologist and diagnosed Terri Schaevo from an old videotape.
Fuck that shit. We need to invest more in urban horticulture. We need to at least grow more of our food outside of Vader.
Roger Rabbit says:
@8 “You bring a STRAWMAN POINT TO LESS TAXES”
No I bring a point if taxes were being used properly and people saw improvement instead of a growing population below poverty levels , especially youth , more people might consider it worth it . You don’t give money to a charity that does not do what they claim do you ? Government we have no choice , but to vote for people who do not support taxes . Some democrats understand , obviously you don’t .
Tax incentives are wrong ? We have tax incentives for mortage interest , it helps promote home ownership , which promotes not only economical but individual prosperity . I did not say give away the store , like we did to keep Boeing here .
Excuse the spelling , when I went to school they only had third reading groups for folks like me , now schools get extra money for people with my disability , their spelling still sucks , but the schools get some extra help . I just wish they helped those below the poverty levels , they don’t for the most part .
Roger also our state is leading the way in tax incentives for alternate fuel sources . Till the price of gas becomes even higher , those fuels will not be able to compete without them . We need a Congress and a President like JFK but instead of ten years we will be on the Moon , in ten years we will be energy independent . I really don’t care if it is a republican or a democrat , I am an American first , I assume you are too ?
In either case tax incentives allow whats best for America being followed by the business community by supporting behavior that works that way . . Corporations obviously care more about shareholders as they should I guess. The Oil companies are subsidized big time , auto manufacturers also . NAFTA screwed us up , Clinton signed it at the bidding of corporate America, not the American worker or their families .