Susan Hutchison is clearly running as an anti-tax candidate for King County executive (I won’t say “the” anti-tax candidate, as Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter seem to be vying for that vote as well), what with her vague, nonspecific talk about “bloated government” and the county needing to live “within its means.” And exactly what experience does she have cutting all that waste, fraud and abuse?
Hutchison said she solved a significant budget shortfall as chairwoman of the Seattle Symphony board of directors. “I solve problems and I fix things,” she said, “and King County needs a fix.”
Except… she helped solve the Symphony’s budget shortfall largely by raising more money. That’s what not-for-profit arts board members do.
Jesus… you’d think somebody might want to ask a follow up question or do a tad of digging before reprinting her rhetorical bullshit unchallenged.
Goldy sees no difference between a symphony and a county?
Apparently, Goldy is confused about how the private and public sectors operate.
@2
It does seem like Goldy is confused. Or maybe he’s just fulfilling some sort of talking points directive.
So, solving the symphony problem by raising revenue, so, she wants to raise revenue (taxes) to solve county spending problem.
Or, she is for lower taxes and her symphony example does not apply.
Pick one.
Troll and Lil’ Ricky Dumbass above,
What you retarded fucks are missing is the following sentence:
That is the point. She has no experience whatsoever with the things she is running on.
Hope you goofy dopes catch on.
Lil Ricky Dumbass @ 2,
What exactly is it in the quotation you show that supports your claim that “Goldy is confused about how the private and public sectors operate.”
Please be specific and use specific evidence combined with coherent arguments to make your case.
We’re waiting….
@5
I can just see Darryl at election time … “Duh, the incumbent got the most experience, so he must be da best, so I will keep on reelecting him, cuz nobody who’s every held public office before should ever be elected, cuz they don’t got no experience.”
Darryl, you didn’t go to college, and have no understanding of the American form of citizen government, do you?
HAHA!! you say that as an Obama supporter? that’s fucking laughable.
I say the same thing about the American electorate as this nation spirals downward with Erkel at the wheel.
I’ll help break it down for Darryl and the rest of the short bus HA crowd as the bong resin has obviously impaired their reasoning abilities:
Raising money in the private sector means cutting in areas that are bloated, like for example,
Not to mention the non-profits ability to raise money through donors like Dancin’ Queen Davey Ross and others who attend such functions and support them financially.
Yes. Cut the fat and stay within their means. Revenue in the private non-profit sector also means “donations” dumbasses. So, as I said before, you’re confused how it all works.
David, call it an evening. Nobody’s listening. After you said you like your judges lying to ensure “progressive outcomes” you lost all credibility.
Stick to your legalize dope articles.
Four of the five primary candidates; Hunter, Hutchison, Jarrett, and Constantine to a lesser extent; recognize that the County is bloated and want to reduce spending.
Phillips whines and bitches about Eyman and apparently wants to increase taxes.
Troll @ 7,
‘I can just see Darryl at election time … “Duh, the incumbent got the most experience, so he must be da best, so I will keep on reelecting him, cuz nobody who’s every held public office before should ever be elected, cuz they don’t got no experience.”’
Really? Huh. Of the thousands of posts, comments, and published articles I’ve written, what evidence can you offer to support this insinuation. Please be both (1) specific, and (2) argue your point using evidence-based logic.
“Darryl, you didn’t go to college, and have no understanding of the American form of citizen government, do you?”
I rarely take college courses anymore, but I do teach at a major university. Does that count?
Still waiting….
@5
What experience do the two current council members have at cutting all that waste, fraud, and abuse in the county? That is a good question which should be asked of Constantine and Phillips.
[Deleted — off topic, see HA Comment Policy]
Lil’ Ricky Dumbass @ 8
You cite me:
and then spew:
“HAHA!! you say that as an Obama supporter? that’s fucking laughable.”
You FAIL…TWICE.
First, I did not make the statement you attribute to me. Goldy did. Dumbshit!
Second, Ummmm…how is 10 years in elected office NOT sufficient experience? I mean Obama has the same tenure in state-wide and federal elected office as Abraham Lincoln.
You then say:
“Anticipating money problems, the symphony cut $1.6 million from its original 2001-02 budget of $21.1 million.”
FAIL! She was not the chairwoman of the Seattle Symphony board of directors in 2001-2002.
“Not to mention the non-profits ability to raise money through donors like Dancin’ Queen Davey Ross and others who attend such functions and support them financially.”
Goldy’s is suggesting that that experience won’t be of much use in running the King County government. You have not contradicted that by the above prattle.
“That’s what not-for-profit arts board members do.”
Indeed! But they don’t run one of the largest counties in the country.
“Yes. Cut the fat and stay within their means. Revenue in the private non-profit sector also means “donations” dumbasses. So, as I said before, you’re confused how it all works.”
I’m sure she will be EXCELLENT in getting donors to fund KC (*rolls eyes*)
You still have not addressed my question. What exactly is it in the quotation you show @ 2 that supports your claim that “Goldy is confused about how the private and public sectors operate.”
Please be specific and use specific evidence combined with coherent arguments to make your case. You’ve failed miserably so far.
@5
No experience?
Never stopped you ignorant douche bags from flailing your arms around and screaming over Ditzy Darcy Burnout now did it? Darryl, you are a one-sided hypocritical asshole. And I’ve met your other brother Darryl, and he is too. :) Have a good weekend.
@7 Dear Dumbass Troll: King County Executive is not an entry-level job. Prior political experience is required, and a candidate with a proven track record of delivering on campaign commitments is strongly preferred. Signed, A Voter
@10 Exactly where is the county “bloated”? As three-fourths of the county budget goes to public safety (cops, prosecutors, courts, and jails), I assume this means you want fewer cops on the beat, fewer prosecutions, and fewer criminals in jail. It can’t possibly mean anything else.
@16
It’s obvious you don’t understand the American form of government.
And Darryl? You’re a bitch for deleting my comment. Fuck you. And I DARE you to delete my IP. I WANT TO BE BANNED!
@17 Rabbit by a knockout in Round 1; trolls lose again.
Mark1 @ 15,
“No experience? Never stopped you ignorant douche bags from flailing your arms around and screaming over Ditzy Darcy Burnout now did it? Darryl, you are a one-sided hypocritical asshole. “
Two issues: First, you are confused. I’ve made no claims about whether she has enough experience to be KC Exec. Goldy raised very specific concerns about experience. I am simply pressing specific commenters to back up claims they have made in response to Goldy’s post.
Secondly, you chose to ignore Ms. Burners significant achievements in her life. Oh well…that make you look very closed minded to me. I can very well see someone making similar arguments for Ms. Hutchison–in general. That is, they could argue that OVERALL Ms. Hutchinson is qualified to be KC Exec (perhaps you wish to make that argument?), even if her qualifications are not very strong in some specific areas. Goldy is asking about specific, practical experience in “cutting […] waste, fraud and abuse” in response to statements she has made as part of her campaign.
That is different than the broader discussion of whether or not she is unqualified OVERALL.
I know, I know…such subtleties are hard to work through.
“Have a good weekend.”
Thanks…you too…douchbag.
@18 There’s a misspelling in your comment #18 which I’ll take the liberty of correcting. Electing people with no experience to top executive branch positions (e.g., governor, president) is a REPUBLICAN form of government, not AMERICAN form of government.
The “Republican form of government” is akin to putting an Army private 2 weeks out of boot camp in charge of planning and carrying out the D-Day invasion. The results would be predictable, e.g., the shambles that George W. Bush left in his wake.
Troll @ 18
“It’s obvious you don’t understand the American form of government.”
FAIL…twice. First, you fail in the use of evidence-based argumentation. Secondly, you originally claimed that I don’t understand “American form of citizen government.” Now you claim that I “don’t understand the American form of government.” The two statements differ in an important way.
I’m beginning to get the feeling that you have no idea what the fuck you are babbling about. But give it another try.
“You’re a bitch for deleting my comment.”
So?
“Fuck you.”
Sorry, Squirt, you aren’t my type.
“And I DARE you to delete my IP. I WANT TO BE BANNED!”
Are you sure? I’d be happy to fulfill this request. First, please respond to my original question…bitch.
Of course, any pretensions by Republicans of opposing “waste, fraud, and abuse” are laughable in the wake of the epidemic of waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer monies by the pervasively corrupt Bush administration and GOP Congress.
That’s not the only thing Hutchison is bullshitting about. I heard her tout herself as a “nonpartisan” candidate on KOMO radio. She appears to be trying to position herself as the biggest bullshitter on the local political scene, for whatever that’s worth.
[Deleted — off topic, see HA Comment Policy]
@5
The rest have experience in waste, fraud and abuse. Which is precisely why they should be pilloried, not promoted.
delbert @ 26,
“The rest have experience in waste, fraud and abuse. Which is precisely why they should be pilloried, not promoted.”
That is easy for you to puke out. Can you back up your claim? Please provide specific examples of “experience in waste, fraud and abuse” for “the rest”. (Do you even know who else is running?)
I await your response.
The Economist, a U.K.-based conservative newsweekly, is talking this week about government spending and public debt. Much of what they say makes eminent sense. But then their conservative horns come out:
“Broadly, governments should pledge to clean up their public finances by cutting future spending rather than raising taxes. Most European countries have scant room for higher taxes. In several, the government already hoovers up well over 40% of GDP. Tax reform will be necessary …. Even in the United States, where tax revenues add up to less than 30% of GDP, simply raising tax rates is not the best answer. There too, spending control should take priority, though there is certainly room for efficiency-enhancing tax reforms, such as eliminating the preferential tax treatment of housing and the deductibility of employer-provided health insurance.”
In short, the magazine argues that boosting public debt to save the Western democracies’ undercapitalized banking systems from collapse and pay for stimulus spending to prevent a deeper and longer recession was necessary, but this debt should be paid off by taxing the already overtaxed middle class by hitting the middle class’ two biggest tax breaks.
Spoken like true conservatives: Preserve the tax privileges of the rich and screw the working classes.
Apparently Hutchinson is using the Cliff Notes version of the Republican talking points…
Hmm… I wonder how Hutch would rate on the Bristol Stool Scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Scale
Now let’s talk about King County’s 13.2% sales tax. I was in a store this week buying a $3.50 item for $2.50 with a $1-off coupon. When the cashier rang up my purchase, I noticed the sales tax was rung up before taking off the $1.00 coupon. In other words, I paid sales tax on $3.50 even though I paid only $2.50 for the item. This, by the way, is required by state law and is uniform retail practice throughout the state.
So, the sales tax on the item I purchased for $2.50 was 33 cents, not 24 cents. Anyone capable of fourth-grade math can see for himself that I paid a sales tax of 13.2%, not 9.4%, on this purchase. This makes our sales tax even more regressive than it appears on paper, because it’s mostly poor people and retired rabbits on fixed incomes who take dollar-off coupons to retailers’ checkstands.
Conservatives want to replace our regressive federal income tax, which taxes wages at 3 times the rate that it taxes passive investment income, with a national sales tax. In one of the most blatant advertising misrepresentations of all time, they’ve labeled it the “Fair Tax” to make it easier to sell. This extremely regressive tax was the centerpiece of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign last year, and is the #1 political objective of the Libertarian movement.
Right out of the gate, they lied about what the sales tax rate would be. They claim a 23% sales tax in lieu of the income tax would be revenue-neutral. But by their own definition, the actual tax rate is 30%, not 23%. They get their by manipulating the math. For illustration — and this is their illustration — you would pay $23 sales tax on a $77 purchase, so the $77 purchase would cost $100. Then they assert that $23 is 23% of $100. The problem is, you’re paying $23 sales tax on $77, not $100, so the actual tax rate is $23 divided by $77 = 29.87%.
But many economists dispute that the 30% tax rate advertised as 23% would, in fact, be revenue neutral. Studies indicate the actual sales tax rate would have to be between 40% and 60%.
The most credible calculation is the Brookings Institution’s figure of 54%. But wait — that’s only the nominal tax rate. If you use the dollar-off coupon like I did, the actual federal sales tax on my $2.50 purchase under the so-called Fair Tax is 75.6%, and with the state/local sales tax of 13.2% added, the total sales taxes come to 88.8% — $1.89 federal and 33 cents state/local, or $2.22 tax on a $2.50 purchase.
This is what conservatives want to impose on you. And the tax rate on inheritances and money the rich use to buy businesses or investments, or spend abroad? Zero. Nada. Zip. 0.0%.
Why would anyone except the rich vote for a scheme like that?
@30 She’s definitely got Type 7 plumbing.
What the Bristol Stool Scale fails to take into account is the amount of gas that comes out with the stool, which in her case is a lot. She produces more methane than an old landfill. The question is what should we do with all that potential energy? I say light a match and run like hell. With the Fourth of July just around the corner, and Ivar’s cutting back and Washington Mutual completely gone, Hutchison promises to be this year’s top fireworks draw in the region.
“Susan Hutchison, in her first debate with other candidates for King County executive, vowed to impose a hiring freeze if elected and to negotiate with employee labor unions to roll back benefits she said are too generous.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....um12m.html
Spoken like the true Cheap Labor Conservative she is! The Republican-Rebranded-As-Nonpartisan solution is always to cut workers’ pay. Always, always, always.
When will these damn fools finally figure out that lower worker incomes means less consumer spending which means less sales and lower profits for businesses?
re 7: “I can just see Darryl at election time … “Duh, the incumbent got the most experience, so he must be da best, so I will keep on reelecting him, cuz nobody who’s every held public office before should ever be elected, cuz they don’t got no experience.”
Those are the exact reasons you posited for voting for Reichert. ‘Duh’ – you….
@35
I’d rate Troll a 1 on the Bristol Stool Scale.
I’m against waste and fraud, unless I’m in on it.
If my snout’s in the trough, I’m very conservative about change. She’d have to be very careful about whose waste and fraud she’s cuttin’ in on.
In a race to the bottom for cutting fraud, do you think that Hutchison would target paving contractors first or health care for the poor?
Therein lies the question and the answer.
@37 Republicans define “waste and fraud” in strange ways — basically anything that benefits average Americans.
31. Roger Buy anything you want on Ebay or Craigslist, and you will most likely see ZERO Sales tax.
If you buy as you stated, Your Hero Gregoire will crawl into your rabbit hole and rip your wabbit balls off if they were worth a dime.
12 trillion and counting hows the Obama monster bring you change?
I wonder if Hutch has the spine to abolish the death penalty in King County. It costs the county at least $2 million to execute someone, and most people sentenced to death aren’t executed anyway, so it’s usually an exercise in futility. And a gigantic waste of money. A number of Washington prosecutors never seek the death penalty, especially in smaller counties. Their counties simply can’t afford it. Jeff Sullivan, the longtime prosecutor in Yakima County before he became the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, never tried to execute anyone, even though there’s a lot of drug-related murders in his county, some of which are very heinous (shooting kids, etc.). This is an area where Hutch could make a pragmatic decision to save money because King County usually has at least a couple of death penalty-eligible cases pending at any given time, and it’s easy savings because it doesn’t involve laying off staff or cutting services. Don’t hold your breath, though. No matter how tough times are, Republicans always seem to find money for killing people.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the death penalty, per se. I’m for it, in appropriate cases. There are crimes so heinous the perps deserve to be dead. For example, one case that landed on Sullivan’s desk in Yakima was a drug murder. A drug dealer was marked for death, but when the hit men arrived at his abode, he wasn’t home so they shot his kids instead. I feel that should have been a death penalty case, but Sullivan wouldn’t prosecute it that way, and these scum went up for life without parole instead. Now, realistically, I think in many ways that’s a worse punishment than execution, especially for perps in their 20s (like these guys were) who are looking at spending 50 to 70 years in a concrete cage. But there’s no denying the visceral satisfaction of terminating the bastards who do things like this. I was for killing these guys, even if it cost the taxpayers $2 million per pop, but Sullivan wouldn’t do it. He either couldn’t get that kind of money from his county commissioners, or wasn’t willing to ask. Other prosecutors do the same thing, for the same reason.
I think it’s too bad someone didn’t murder Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin, and those would have been moral acts. I think Tim McVeigh deserved what he got and it’s a minor injustice that Terry Nichols didn’t follow him to the execution cage. I would pull the switch myself without flinching on someone like Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway. Some people deserve to be dead and I’m not squeamish about handing them their just desserts. I don’t like the idea of criminals being allowed to think they won’t be killed no matter what they do. Even though the death penalty strikes rarely, and in a random and arbitrary manner, it ought to be out there and the worst scum among us should be kept guessing. Let ’em sweat! But the fact of the matter is you don’t get executed in this state unless you want to be, and even then you have to kill at least 3 people and at least 1 of them has to be a kid to have any chance of being put to death, so why throw taxpayer money at it? If these slime get tired of living in a cage, give them a belt and order the guard to turn his back for 10 minutes, and let them terminate themselves.
@39 Since you asked, I don’t much like the fact Obama has to borrow trillions to save our civilization from the calamity you asswipes engineered. We’re probably going to pay for it with inflation down the road, which always hurts senior citizens on fixed incomes the most, and when it comes I’m going to blame Bush, the GOP, and the idiots like you who voted for them. Thanks for nothing, shitheads! Obama is doing what he or any other president would have to do to save civilization. You’re responsible for this, not him, and don’t you forget it, because I won’t. If it were up to me, I’d deport every Republican in the country.*
* Hey just kidding! Ann Coulter ideological cleansing joke.
@39 (continued) Oh, and 12 trillion is the total debt, not what Obama borrowed; nice the way you try to blame the trillions Bush borrowed from China to give tax breaks to billionaires and fight his recreational war in Iraq on Obama. That’s real cute.
i propose a real debate forum. It would be good for the public narrative. Anyone game?
Goldy is spot on in calling out Hutchison for solving a budget problem at the Symphony by – raising more money.
Hutchison appears to be a pretty face with some smarts, but – lethally – no practical experience and no pertinent experience on her resume.
The fact that she’s also being funded by some of the most radically conservative ideologues in the state ought to be enough to know how this ends. Then there’s her own obvious experience guiding extreme conservative causes – like the PR work of Bruce Chapman at Discovery Institute, which has backfired on every Republican who touched it. (But he’s soooo smart?) Ever wonder how a Democrat became governor of Kansas, thank Discovery.
They want to elect her Exec so she can run for higher office later. And they don’t smoke dope?
That’s today’s Rethuglican Party – raising an army of know-nothing Palins to conquer the world. Or so they think. I hope they keep on keepin’ on, it’s great comedy.