Goldy

I know it is cliche to say that with every crisis comes opportunity, but cliches have a habit of ringing true, as with our worst ever budget crisis facing Olympia, now in its second year of a three to four year run. Unfortunately, while Republicans are prepared to take advantage of this opportunity, Democrats apparently are not.

The all-cuts approach of last year’s budget, and the mostly cuts, plus more federal bailout, plus maybe a hundred million or so in odd revenue increases the governor is pushing in this year’s supplemental, is nothing if not a recipe for permanently shrinking the size and scope of state government. We’re not talking about merely squeezing out waste or cutting the fat or reprioritizing, although we’ll get a little of that too; we’re talking about redefining the role of government in Washington state… ensuring that not only does state government come out of this recession smaller as a percentage of the total economy, but that it will continue to shrink in such regards for perhaps decades to come.

This is, of course the Republican agenda, an agenda that they have been unable to win with at the polls, but which they will inevitably achieve nonetheless as long as our highly regressive and inadequate tax structure remains at status quo. And faced with an opportunity to at least move the debate forward, if not immediately enact substantial reforms, the Democrats have opted to cede the debate to the opposition, pretty much accepting their terms unchallenged.

Republicans and their surrogates in the legacy press (you know who I’m talking about, Seattle Times editorial board) have insisted that a down economy is the exact worst time to raise taxes, an assertion that many economists would challenge, but which our state Democratic leadership will not. So… um… when is the right time to raise taxes? When the economy is good? Does anybody really believe that there will be political support in the Legislature to raise taxes once state revenue starts to recover?

Of course not. But the problem is, barring another unsustainable economic bubble, state revenue will never recover to pre-recession levels compared to growth in demand for public services, and will certainly never grow as fast as the overall economy. Without substantial tax restructuring — without a shift away from our over-reliance on regressively taxing the sale of goods, a tax base that has been steadily shrinking for the past half century as a percentage of the total economy — our government can never grow fast enough to keep up with the economic, infrastructure and human investment and services our state needs to prosper in the 21st century.

Without substantial tax restructuring, our state government, the investments it makes and the services it provides, will be gradually dismantled, piece by piece by piece.

This was our inevitable future before the Great Recession, and it will be our inevitable future after. Which is a shame, because with their large majorities in both houses of the Legislature, and their control of the governor’s mansion, the Democratic leadership had an opportunity to use this crisis to guide us down the road toward the reforms necessary to at least sustain our current quality of life, if not enact a truly progressive agenda.

Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve had the wrong Democrats in leadership.

Is it even necessary to point out the irony of Ted Van Dyk remarking on other people having outlived the politics of their youth?

Kennedy’s death, Dodd’s withdrawal, and Sen. Robert Byrd’s perilous health have drawn attention to the fact that the Senate that existed when they arrived has dramatically changed.

An astute observation which of course demands immediate, anecdotal references to Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, as if to illustrate his point by example.

Um… could Van Dyk be any less self-aware?

Those leaders all knew that no major policy change would be lasting if passed on a one-party basis. This stands in contrast to the path taken over the past year by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders with stimulus, cap-and-trade, and health-care legislation. All were drafted and passed on a Democrats-only basis.

So, Van Dyk’s point is, what? That the Senate that existed at the time Humphrey reached across the aisle to Dirkson has “dramatically changed,” but that Obama and the Democratic leadership should behave as if it hasn’t?

What a load of crap. The Dems did reach across the aisle to “moderate” Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, and even to more conservative Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley and others, but the Republican caucus, determined to see President Obama fail, refused to concede an inch. Yeah sure, I suppose we could have gotten Republican support for something called “health care reform,” that severely limited the ability of patients to sue for malpractice, while eliminating the ability of states to regulate insurance within their own borders, all the while continuing to allow insurance companies to deny you coverage for preexisting conditions, and cancel your coverage when you get sick. But what would have been the point of that? Short of total capitulation, the Republicans were intent on denying Obama a legislative victory.

That is the new Senate, that exists today, which is indeed very different from the Senate of Van Dyk’s youth, and as much as he may bemoan the decline of bipartisanship, that’s the reality that President Obama et al have to deal with. Times change, something even Ted Kennedy didn’t fully realize until it was too late, for despite his reputation as a liberal lion, he was also one of the Senate’s consummate practitioners of the sort of bipartisan collaboration that Van Dyk now mourns. Stuck in the mindset of the Senate of his youth, Kennedy ended up playing the role of Roosevelt at Yalta when it came to education reform, becoming little more than a Republican tool in garnering bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind, an act that promised to invest in and improve public education, but which ended up punishing those schools that needed the most help, while turning our classrooms into the public school equivalent of a Stanley Kaplan prep course.

I won’t argue with Van Dyk as to whether America might be better served by the more collegial Senate atmosphere of the 1960’s, though it was no doubt easier to reach across the aisle when both sides were populated almost entirely by white, Christian men. My dispute with Van Dyk is over his repeated accusations that the current partisan rancor is entirely the fault of the Democrats — a bizarre assertion after a decade during which Republicans have taken to vilifying their opponents as morons, traitors or worse — and his apparent conclusion that the necessary prescription to our nation’s political woes is unilateral Democratic disarmament.

Not only would the Republican minority laugh at us as we ceded to them the national agenda, voters would laugh at us too. Indeed, I’d argue that the Democrats’ greatest political weakness is the popular perception that Democrats are in fact weak. That’s not a trait that voters tend to seek in their national leaders… hence the two terms of that idiot cowboy, Bush.

But that is exactly the posture that Van Dyk, calling upon his personal experience with a Senate that no longer exists, so vociferously advocates.

Here’s a question… if Republican Scott Brown defeats Democrat Martha Coakley tomorrow in the special election to replace recently deceased Democratic icon Sen. Ted Kennedy, will some name-brand Republican in Washington state grow balls big enough to challenge Sen. Patty Murray here in Washington?

By this time two years ago, Mike! McGavick had already held like his twentieth campaign kickoff event. So it’s kinda amazing that, ten months before a mid-term election, Murray still has no serious challenger.

Ezekiel 23:19-20
Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

Discuss.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

It’s always good to set the record straight.

The headline says, “President Obama needs to focus on jobs,” but the 624 words of this latest Seattle Times editorial can be summed up in this single paragraph:

The time, energy and political capital Obama invested in creation of a national health plan would have been better spent on promoting job creation and helping U.S. employers compete internationally.

What’s that, the fourth time in as many weeks the Times has advocated scuttling health care reform, each time using jobs as the main rationale?

And how exactly would Obama create more jobs? Here’s an idea: raise taxes on the rich and spend the money on a massive investment in public infrastructure, like building rail and green energy production, or maybe something less controversial like making a dent in the trillion dollars worth of deferred maintenance and investment in our aging drinking water and sewage treatment infrastructure?

Nah… that would require tax increases, and we all know how the Times feels about that.

So come on, Team Blethen… let’s hear some suggestions of your own on how a president might create jobs.

You know that huge teabagger rally in Olympia yesterday… the one which spooked the GOP caucus into introducing a bunch of crazy-ass bills based on bizarre, tentherist bullshit? Well apparently, the only thing that can stop loyal patriotic Americans from defending the Tenth Amendment against the threat of Obamunist oppression is a little rain.

Frightened Republican legislators expected thousands to rally on the steps of the state Capitol yesterday, as evidenced by the dozen porta-potties set up to accommodate the nonverbal excrement they spew, but according to local observers the much publicized rally attracted little more than a hundred angry, deluded righties… maybe two hundred, tops.

That’s some populist revolt the righties have going for them. And yet, they managed to dominate the Republican agenda for the current legislative session. Go figure.

I’m wondering if now might not be the perfect time for the state Legislature to attempt to repeal Washington’s Defense Of Marriage Act, since political buggery appears to be all the rage in Olympia these days:

A bill co-sponsored by Senate transportation chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) and North Seattle Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-46) would severely restrict Seattle’s say in major state construction projects like reconstruction of the SR-520 bridge and the deep-bore tunnel along the waterfront.

Essentially, the bill would exempt the state department of transportation from the requirement to get local government permits to build state highway projects—a clear swipe at Seattle, which has two major state highway projects—the waterfront tunnel and replacement of the 520 bridge over Lake Washington—in the pipeline.

Specifically, the state transportation department would no longer be “required to obtain local government master use permits, conditional use permits, special use permits, or other similar local zoning permits for staging areas related to the construction of state highways.”

Additionally, under the bill, any street use permits obtained by the state for major state road projects (i.e., the tunnel) would be “presumed approved as submitted” and could only be appealed in superior court, not to a local hearing examiner “or through any other local appeal process.”

So, let me get this straight. Under this proposed legislation, and last year’s measure funding the deep bore tunnel, the state could build whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants, without any input or say from local governments, and then (here’s the punchline…) stick local taxpayers with any cost overruns.

Or, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we just give Rep. Doug Eriksen the billions of dollars the state has reserved for replacing the 520 bridge and the Viaduct, so that he can spread the money around throughout the rest of Washington like he says he wants to do, while at the same time we eliminate the state gas and MVET taxes altogether, and hand off such authority to cities and counties to levy these taxes locally, if they so choose, to pay for the local transit and transportation projects they want?

That way, the rest of the state won’t have to worry about Seattle stealing its money, while we in the Seattle area can address our own infrastructure needs without worrying about the rest of the state repeatedly fucking us up the ass.

I’m just sayin’.

When state Sen. Ken Jacobsen introduced legislation to allow dogs into bars, the old and new media alike tripped over themselves in a mad rush to heap ridicule on this lone, eccentric senator. But when a full two-thirds of the House Republican caucus sign on to a batch of clearly unconstitutional bills spouting tentherist teabagger bullshit, what do we hear from our depleted political press corps…?

[audio:https://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/crickets.mp3]

And there are folks who accuse me of not being a serious political commentator.

Will of the people, blah, blah, blah, blah…

DEMOCRATIC leaders in Olympia should not be so eager to brush aside Initiative 960, which sets the two-thirds threshold for the Legislature to raise taxes. The people have voted for a two-thirds rule three times — in 1993, 1998 and in 2007. Clearly they want it that way.

Without I-960, the Legislature can raise taxes with a simple majority of both houses and signature of the governor. I-960 raises the bar by requiring a two-thirds vote of both houses or a vote of the people. Raising taxes is not impossible — hardly that — but it is more difficult.

The state constitution protects successful initiatives for two years. During that time they can be modified with a two-thirds vote of both houses. Last month, the two years were up for I-960, which can now be brushed aside with simple majorities. But that is not what the people wanted.

Let’s be honest, the Seattle Times editorial board only vigorously defends the will of the people when they agree with it. On issues like light rail and renewable energy requirements, not so much.

Besides, the law is the law, and as the Times argues, if the people don’t like it, they are free to change it. For example, the Constitution says that the Legislature can amend an initiative of the people after two years. If that’s such a big problem then perhaps the Times should endorse a Constitutional amendment that keeps the Legislature’s hands off initiatives, and allows them only to be amended via initiative. After all, just such a restriction on legislative powers has worked out so well for California, hasn’t it?

And you know what else the state Constitution says? That all legislation, even that raising taxes or eliminating tax breaks, requires only a simple majority to pass. The Washington Supreme Court has never approved I-960’s super-majority requirements, rather, all previous challenges to these provisions have been rejected due to lack of standing. And again, unlike in California, Washington citizens cannot amend the Constitution via initiative.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that an initiative should remain inviolable but the Constitution should not.

Or I guess, if you’re the Seattle Times ed board, I suppose you think you can.

So, let me get this right, Pat. God is killing innocent little children today, because their Haitian ancestors made a pact with the devil two hundred years ago? What an asshole.

Anyway, despite the fact that God hates Haitians, you can still help them by contributing to the Clinton Foundation Haitian Relief Fund. Or, text “HAITI” to 20222 and $10 will be donated to relief efforts, and charged to your cell phone bill.

State Rep. Matt Shea (R-Greenacres)

In case you missed last night’s post, House Republicans have introduced a butt-load of paranoid, crazy-ass, teabagger bills, in a paranoid, crazy-ass attempt to appease the paranoid, crazy-ass teabaggers threatening to challenge incumbent Republicans from the paranoid, crazy-ass right. And one of the common denominators — other than a shaky grasp of the law that makes Tim Eyman look like a Constitutional scholar — is state Rep. Matt Shea, who has not only signed on as a sponsor to all the bills, but appears as the prime on most of them as well.

Of course, this is the type of craziness we’ve come to expect of the Republican from Greenacres (no, really… he’s from Greenacres), but it’s more than a little astounding and embarrassing to see two-thirds of Shea’s fellow caucus members join him in such ridiculous political slop. And it’s hard for the GOP leadership to complain about being excluded from critical budget negotiations when their members appear to have made provoking a second Civil War their number one legislative priority.

(3) Any action by the federal government, or its agencies or agents, including the president of the United States, the congress of the United States, and the federal courts, against any person in Washington state for compliance with the provisions of this chapter is considered a hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens, and the state of Washington will by all necessary measures act to preserve its sovereignty.

Yeah, well, good luck with that, Rep. Shea. It’s one thing to abuse your wife, but it’s another thing to try to push around the government of the United States of America. I mean, to do that you’re going to need lots of firepower… you know, lot’s of unregulated arms, ammunition and accessories, manufactured right here in the Sovereign State of Washington. Which I suppose explains why Shea and 19 of his colleagues would introduce HB 2709, the Washington State Firearms Freedom Act of 2010, which amongst other things, would legalize and deregulate both silencers and cop killer bullets.

Sec. 4. (1) A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Washington and that remains within the borders of Washington is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce.

This in the wake of our recent rash of tragic police shootings.

I suppose I should be amused to see the state Republicans self-destruct this way, but when you really think about how crazy and dangerous their proposed legislation is, it’s more than a little bit scary to imagine what they might do to Washington and its citizens should they ever seize control of state government. You know, through Democratic or other means.

During his years as a columnist at the Seattle P-I, Ted Van Dyk earned a reputation for, um, not responding kindly to editorial feedback, which I suppose explains why the editors at Crosscut don’t even try. For example, take his recent prescription for balancing state and local budgets without raising taxes:

Big capital projects should be put on hold. That would mean, in Seattle, moving forward with both the deep-bore tunnel, to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and the Evergreen Point bridge modernization.

Now that’s the sort of logical, coherent prose that makes Van Dyk a must read for lazy bloggers everywhere.

Yeah sure, if you read further you eventually figure out that he really means that all big capital projects other than 520 and the Big Bore should be put on hold, but from a writerly perspective one could make a strong argument that there’s an entire paragraph missing between the two sentences above.

Which of course distracts from the factual incoherence of Van Dyk’s argument, in that capital and operating budgets actually have nothing to do with each other. For example, Van Dyk surprises no one by arguing that King County Executive Dow Constantine should halt light rail’s Eastside expansion:

Its crushing prospective pricetag ($23 billion and counting) already threatens to displace not only non-rail transportation but other spending for other public purposes in the decade ahead.

But the dedicated taxes to pay for this project were overwhelmingly approved by voters for the express purpose of building rail, not roads. (Remember, the “Roads & Transit” measure failed at the polls one year before the transit-only version passed.) And even if Constantine could halt construction, in clear defiance of the will of the people, it’s not like the revenue could be legally shifted to, say, jails, courts and law enforcement… a criminal justice system that eats up over 70% of the county’s general fund.

So to use an operating budget deficit as an excuse for arguing to halt capital spending on projects you don’t like, is just plain dishonest. Or stupid.

But either way, it makes for juicy blog fodder.

If the Republican caucus has a coherent strategy for narrowing the Democrats’ near super-majority in the state House, you wouldn’t know it from the steaming pile of crazy-ass bills their members have already introduced. Sure, there are always a few extreme or downright bizarre bills dropped each session from both sides of the aisle, but never before has one caucus gone so far off the deep end, and in such overwhelming numbers.

And if Democrats play their cards right, you gotta think that this is gonna hurt the Republican brand next November.

Exactly how crazy are we talking about? While how about HJM 4010, a House Joint Memorial sponsored by Representatives Condotta, Shea, Klippert, Kretz and McCune, that asks Congress to do away with both the Federal Reserve and paper money:

NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that the Congress of the United States, and particularly, the legislative delegation to Congress of the State of Washington, use all of their efforts, energies, and diligence to protect all the citizens of this nation from potential, unprecedented losses in the value of take-home pay, retirement income, insurance policies, and investments as a result of the Federal Reserve’s ongoing inflation of our unbacked paper money by passing legislation (such as H.R. 2756 to repeal our nation’s legal tender laws, H.R. 4683 “The Free Competition in Currency Act of 2007,” and H.R. 5427 the “Tax-Free Gold Act of 2008”) to help restore gold and silver money in accordance with the Constitution, then phasing out the Federal Reserve System and its inflationary paper money, the Federal Reserve Note (as in H.R. 2755).

That’s right… these Republican legislators want our currency to consist entirely of gold and silver coins. Yeah, that’ll get our economy moving.

Now I know what you’re thinking: there’s only five Republican sponsors on that bill. It just isn’t fair to categorize the entire GOP caucus as off their collective rockers based on this one joint memorial.

So how about HB 2709, the Washington State Firearms Freedom Act of 2010 (Shea, Ross, Kristiansen, Haler, Klippert, Taylor, McCune, Short, Hinkle, Course, Dammeier, Parker, Johnson, Angel, Bailey, Orcutt, Roach, Schmick, Fagan and Condotta), which attempts to exempt any firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured and retained in Washington state from federal regulation.

Or HB 2712, the Washington State Sovereignty and Federal Tax Escrow Account Act of 2010 (Shea, Condotta, Kristiansen, Klippert, Haler, Anderson, Taylor, Short, Kretz, Crouse, McCune, Hinkle, Ross, Roach and Schmick), which requires that all federal taxes be remitted to the state, and held in escrow, and includes the rather startling threat that any action by the feds against a WA citizen for complying with the act (you know, like not paying the IRS your taxes) would be considered a “hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens,” against which the state would take “all necessary measures.”

And then there’s HB 2708, the Washington State Energy Freedom Act of 2010 (Shea, Condotta, Kristiansen, Haler, Klippert, Herrera, Taylor, Short, Kretz, McCune, Crouse, Rodne, Hinkle, Parker, Dammeier, Ross, Angel, Bailey, Roach, Orcutt, Schmick, Fagan and Smith), which exempts seeks to exempt Washington state from any federal fuel economy or greenhouse gas emission standards. That’s 23 of the caucus’s 36 members!

And all three of these clearly stupid and unconstitutional bills include the following clearly stupid and unconstitutional provision:

Any federal law, rule, order, or other act by the federal government violating the provisions of this chapter is invalid in this state, is not recognized by and is specifically rejected by this state, and is considered as null and void and of no effect in this state.

That’s right, nearly two-thirds of the Republican House caucus have signed their names onto crazy-ass bills that attempt to assert that state law trumps federal law whenever state legislators say it does. Which raises the question: what the fuck have they been putting into their tea?

Well apparently, “tea” is the operative word here. The crazy-ass teabaggers are rallying in Olympia on Thursday, and this apparently has Republicans running scared… so scared that they’re willing to make themselves look like… well… a bunch of crazy-ass teabaggers.

Republicans apparently fear that unless they appease the teabaggers with the kinda crazy, paranoid, right-wing, pseudo-constitutional bullshit that makes Ellen Craswell look like Dan Evans Lyndon LaRouche look like John Adams, they’ll face a Teabagger Party primary challenger… so much so that some Republicans reportedly plan to put “Prefers GOP/Tea Party” next to their names on the ballot this year.

How else to explain why, with the Legislature facing a $2.6 billion shortfall one year after passing a devastating all-cuts budget, the House Republican caucus has made redefining the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution they’re number one priority this session?

One would have thought that with the crappy economy and the ongoing budget woes and the Democrats already having stretched their majorities to likely unsustainable numbers, the GOP might at least pretend to run to the middle in the hope of winning back a few swing districts. Instead, it looks like what’s left of their party is dissolving like a sugar cube in cup of hot tea.

Man, is this gonna be fun to watch.