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Archives for Wednesday, 4/8/09

WaPo names HA best WA blog

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For the second year in a row the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza has named HA to his list of best state political blogs.  A big thanks to you loyal readers who apparently lobbied on our behalf.

Washington

Horses Ass
Strange Bedfellows (Seattle Post Intelligencer)
Politics Northwest (Seattle Times)
The Petri Dish (Everett Herald)
Political Buzz (Tacoma News Tribune)
Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate

You’ll notice HA is listed in bold, at the top of the list.  According to Cillizza:

In a state where one blog was far and away the most recommended by Fix readers, we have noted it by bolding the name of the blog.

Eat my dust, newspaper blogs!

But considering all the guff I get about the unserious name of my blog (yes, I’m talking to you John Carlson), I’m perhaps most proud of making a second, even more exclusive list:

The best named blogs on the list: Doc’s Political Parlor & Lawn Mower Repair (Ala.), Rum, Romanism, Rebellion (Ariz.), My Left Nutmeg (Conn.), The Old River Road (La.), Writes Like She Talks (Ohio), Not Larry Sabato (Va.) and Horses Ass (Wash.)

A horse’s ass by any other name would smell as… well… you get the point.

Discover Susan Hutchison

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Much to the relief of liberal bloggers throughout the region, former KIRO-TV news anchor Susan Hutchison has finally announced her candidacy for King County Executive, providing a much needed object of mockery in what was otherwise shaping up to be a tedious contest over who supports public transit more.  Oh God, is this going to be fun.

Hutchison, for all her benign, if fading, public profile, is a genuine Republican of the corporatist/religious wing-nutty persuasion, who’s about as out of step with the values of the majority of King County voters as she is with their middle class lifestyle.  And what exactly are her qualifications for higher office?  According to the Seattle Times:

Hutchison has been executive director of the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences since 2003, chairs the Seattle Symphony board of directors and sits on the boards of several other nonprofit organizations.

And by “other nonprofit organizations,” of course the Times means the board of the Discovery Institute, the folks whose main claim to fame is their well-funded effort to destroy science education in our nation’s schools by promoting the creationism-cum-voodoo they call Intelligent Design.

So if your natural history education came half from the Bible and half from The Flintstones, Hutchison is likely your candidate of choice.

As for the rest of us, I’m not so sure Hutchison’s not-for-profit background provides exactly the kind of experience we’re looking for in a county executive.  Widely feared in the arts community as a “tyrant” and… well… just plain crazy, her many board appointments have long been understood as the unavoidable string attached to Charles Simonyi’s money… you know, just the cost of doing business.  And for her part, Hutchison has never been shy about making it clear that the road to Simonyi’s money runs straight through her:

One sunny morning a few weeks ago, Susan Hutchison woke up with a persistent Barry Manilow tune on her mind.

“I turned to my husband, and sang, ‘I write the checks that make the whole world sing,’ ” says Hutchison of the new take on the Manilow hit, “I Write the Songs.”

One of the Northwest’s most recognizable faces as a former KIRO-TV news anchor, Hutchison does indeed make a lot of people sing with the checkbook for the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, of which she is executive director.

Which makes her campaign kickoff comments about King County’s budget deficit all the more amusing.

Declaring that “our county’s financial house is in disorder,” Hutchison questioned the need for new taxes to close a projected $50 million budget deficit next year.

“We need a new direction in King County, with new leadership that does not believe the answer to every problem is a new fee or a higher tax,”

Taxes?  Who needs ’em?  No, the last time Hutchison needed $50 million (and a job), she just asked her good friend Charles to write a check.  But I suppose we can trust her to spend our money wisely, considering she works for a guy who just spent $35 million going into space, for a second time, and you can’t get much more fiscally conservative than that.

Still, it looks like Hutchison’s days as a philanthropic kept woman may be coming to an end, Simonyi’s recent marriage to a much younger and prettier real wife reportedly marginalizing Hutchison’s influence on his daily affairs.  So it’s probably a good time for her to move on to the exciting new challenge of seeing whether she can draw more votes in a King County election than Richard Pope.

To that end Susan, I wish you the best of luck, and my sincerest hope that you stay in this race until the bitter end.  (That would be August 18, about 8:20 PM.)  And to the many enemies you’ve made over the years through your tyrannical, solipsistic behavior, I welcome your contributions of gossip and innuendo, and promise to always respect and protect the anonymity of my sources.

UPDATE:
Wow.  That was quick.  Sometime shortly after I posted, Discovery scrubbed Hutchison’s name from their list of directors.  But they couldn’t scrub Google’s cache.

The real budget debate

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lihLdXHx8jM[/youtube]

In print, budget battles are all about numbers, but in real life they’re actually about people.  The ad above, funded by a coalition of hospitals, clinics and health care unions, makes that point very well.

I’m told this ad will be running in fairly heavy rotation, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion it’s just the opening salvo.

High Tuition/High Financial Aid model picks up support

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I’ve been admittedly obsessed over the past couple weeks with making the argument for a high-earner’s income tax, but the other policy issue I’ve been advocating this session also appears to be gaining a little traction: a move toward a high tuition/high financial aid model that could raise additional funds for higher education, while increasing access and decreasing costs to students from lower and middle income families.

A few weeks ago Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-36) staked his own credibility to the concept in a guest column in the Seattle Times, and just last week, the even the Times editorial board wrote in favor of raising tuition and financial aid.  And today, coming on the heels of Gov. Gregoire’s proposal to let tuition rise 28% over two years, none other than University of Washington President Mark Emmert, writing in his own guest column in the Times, argues that if we are going to keep the “higher” in higher education, colleges and universities need more “flexibility on tuition.”

The leaders of our four-year colleges and universities understand that our schools must take cuts. But we also know that we can keep students coming to school and graduating on time if we are simply given more flexibility on tuition. We can help our students and our state without new state money. Moreover, we can fix much of this problem without denying access to students because of their income or family background.

The UW has the lowest tuition of any of its peers and is one of the best bargains in the country. With increased financial aid and the expanded federal tax credit, we can remain an excellent value for our families, maintain our world-class quality, and not slash the number of students we admit.

To give higher education the opportunity to resolve this crisis without requiring more state money is the only responsible thing to do. To do otherwise is to deny thousands of our citizens a chance to succeed in the knowledge economy.

Huh.  Guess the idea doesn’t sound so wing-nutty after all, when it’s coming from the mouth of Emmert.

So how does it work?  How can we possibly raise tuition while maintaining access and affordability to lower and middle income students?  Well, as I’ve explained before, it’s simple math:

Let’s say you’re a low to middle income student currently receiving financial aid in the form of $3,000 in grants, and the UW suddenly jacks up its $6,800/year in tuition and fees to $17,800.  Now let’s say the UW (ie, the state) increases your grant by another $11,000 to offset the hike.  How much extra money did this cost the state?  Zilch.  You were paying $3,800/year and you’re still paying $3,800.  It’s a zero sum game.

But if you’re a student from a wealthy family, who does not need financial aid, and thus does not qualify for it, you’re suddenly paying an extra $11,000 into the system… money that can be spent to increase the quality of education at the UW, or expand the number of seats, or even lower the costs for truly needy students.

The key of course is to increase financial aid commensurate to the needs of the students, both the dollar amount, and the upper range of incomes that qualify for aid.  The goal should be to accept students based solely on merit, and to charge them for their education according to their ability to pay.  That, in my opinion, is the best way to extend opportunity to all of our state’s young people.

Or, you know, we could continue with what we do now, where wealthy families who have easily afforded years of $23,420 annual tuition at Seattle’s exclusive Bush School, send their kids on to the UW at the same $6,800 bargain rate as everybody else, at the same time the university is being forced to slash classes and slots. Does that really make sense?

74% of Americans: Tax the Rich!

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I know, I know… Washington voters overwhelmingly rejected an income tax 35 years ago.  But before timid lawmakers brush aside proposals to put a high-earners income tax on the ballot, they might want to look at some more recent polling data:

Almost three-quarters of Americans think it is a good idea to raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 per year, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

In fact, two-thirds of Americans think the tax code should be changed so that middle-class Americans pay less than they do now, while “upper income” people pay more.

That’s right, 74-percent of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy.  74-friggin’-percent! So somebody please explain to me why now isn’t the perfect political climate to put a millionaires tax on the ballot?

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