Goldy

Anybody expecting bold gestures or a call for shared sacrifice from our state’s civic “leaders” should think again, at least when it comes to funding higher education:

A task force charged with finding stable money to pay for higher education in Washington state has some ideas it wants the Legislature to consider.

At the top of its list announced Monday: Find someone other than state government to pay the bill.

That’s right, the last thing the panel, chaired by Microsoft executive Brad Smith, seems to want to propose is that we should adequately fund our state college and university system by raising adequate tax revenues. Instead, they suggest the state hike tuition, and then raise a new scholarship fund via donations from individuals and corporations.

Uh-huh. I myself have long advocated that the state consider moving to a high-tuition/high-financial-aid model in order to more efficiently target state subsidies at a time of tight budgets, but I’ve become increasingly concerned that we’re on the verge of embracing the former without implementing the latter. And the apparent reluctance of this panel to consider taxes as a legitimate revenue source, well, it only adds to my unease.

Other bold proposals include saving money, by doing more with less:

— Eliminate underused majors and courses.

— Offer more online classes, particularly for large introductory courses.

— Create three-year bachelor degree programs.

— Limit state support for students taking credits beyond what they need to earn a degree.

— Test students on prior learning experiences and give them credit.

— Recognize college work done during high school.

Do any of these six proposals actually make the educational experience at our state colleges and universities any better? No. Of course not. They make it cheaper… and in every sense of the word.

I haven’t yet read the task force’s report, so I don’t mean to entirely dismiss it out of hand, but I’m disappointed by what appears to be a relentlessly free market approach to the problems at hand. Soviet-style controlled economies ultimately failed; I understand that. But there must be something in between that, and pinning the educational aspirations of the children of the working and middle class on the voluntary generosity of wealthy individuals and corporations, right?

Of course there is, and I’m guessing it looks something like the taxpayer funded state college and university system upon which much of the economic gains of the past half century were built.

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been posting a bit about budget priorities, pointing out that the decisions we make in Olympia in regard to both taxing and spending, reflect our priorities as a state.

For example, if lawmakers choose to cut yet another couple billion dollars from K-12 education while refusing to even consider the repeal of nonproductive, special interest tax exemptions, well, that reflects our priorities. If the state continues to slash funding and raise tuition at our community colleges and four-year universities at the same time businesses claim they can’t find enough qualified workers in the midst of near record-high unemployment, well, that reflects our priorities too.

And of course, the fact that our state and local governments have steadily shrunk themselves over the past couple decades both as a percentage of the total economy and in the number of FTEs compared to population, that sure as hell reflects our priorities, as does the fact that nationwide, Washington now ranks 45th in spending on K-12 education, but 14th in spending on corrections.

But unfortunately, when I write about stuff like this, I’m mostly ignored. Oh, call out the Seattle Times editorial board for licking Rob McKenna’s balls, and that might earn me a link from some self-anointed arbiter of journalistic integrity, but spend a little time and effort exploring the conventional “government must learn to live within its means” narrative, and refuting it with actual, you know, numbers, well that just elicits a collective yawn from our political press corps. I guess, because, I’m just some foul-mouthed local blogger (as opposed to a real journalist like Joni Balter), so you can just ignore my math, even when it’s lifted directly from the OFM. And… I sometimes use the word “fuck.”

Well, okay then… if you won’t pay attention to little ol’ me, perhaps you’ll listen to State Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, a trained economist, who on the Senate Dems blog writes about how we pride ourselves on being one of the top states in the nation in terms of quality of life, but how we’re increasingly at the bottom of the pack in terms of our willingness to pay for it:

In Washington, we want to be among the top quarter of states in public services, but we’re in the lower-half in amount paid in state and local taxes. In fact, we’re lagging far behind the same mid-West states like North Dakota and Minnesota that Lake Wobegon is meant to poke fun at.

We may laugh at the gap between what people from Lake Wobegon think of themselves and reality, but if Washington levied the same amount of state and local taxes per $1000 of personal income that North Dakota levies – North Dakota –  we’d have 29 percent more revenue than we have today. That’s more than $9 billion, which would more than cover our current revenue shortfall, and then some…

In Washington, we have a bigger Lake Wobegon gap than Lake Wobegon does. We’re in the third year of significant recessionary impacts on our state budget. And for the third year in a row, we hear loud talk about making Washington live within its means by cutting state spending to match diminished revenues.

The truth is, state spending compared to personal income has been declining for a decade. And all this talk about “living within our means” masks another important truth: We can’t keep cutting spending without downgrading the public services mentioned above. And if we keep downgrading these same services, we can’t expect to maintain our quality of life, much less improve it.

Both Sen. Brown and I are making the same basic assertion, and we’re making it based not on ideology, but on math. We cannot continue to shrink government, the services it provides and the human and infrastructure investments it makes, while continuing to maintain the quality of life Washingtonians have come to expect.

Republicans and their ball-lickers on the editorial boards would have you believe that we have no choice but to make do with tax revenues that continue to fall even as the economy recovers, but the reality is, thanks in part to the public investment of prior generations, we are a wealthy state that can afford to do more… particularly the wealthiest amongst us. Whether we choose to, well, that reflects our priorities.

I’m watching the Seahawk’s game, and I’m wondering… why the hell would anybody patronize one of those bars in the Miller Lite commercials with those bitchy, emasculating, female bartenders?

As for the game itself, I’d much prefer my Eagles play either one of these teams than the Green Bay Packers.

UPDATE:
Seahawks win! And get to host the Saints next week. It would be fun to see the the Seahawks face the Eagles, but that would require the former getting past the Saints and the Falcons, and the latter getting past the Packers and the Bears. Not a likely scenario.

Deuteronomy 23:12-14
Set up a place outside the camp to be used as a toilet area. And make sure that you have a small shovel in your equipment. When you go out to the toilet area, use the shovel to dig a hole. Then, after you relieve yourself, bury the waste in the hole. You must keep your camp clean of filthy and disgusting things. The LORD is always present in your camp, ready to rescue you and give you victory over your enemies. But if he sees something disgusting in your camp, he may turn around and leave.

Discuss.

This year I resolve to write a shit-ton of posts, have a better election, and, alas, help my daughter grow another year closer toward adulthood.

I wrote a shit-ton of posts, the election didn’t go so well, and my daughter, alas, grew yet another year closer toward adulthood. Other than that, 2010 was mostly a blur.

According to a blog post on the Business Examiner website (which bills itself as “The South Sound Business Information Resource”), Pierce County businesses are having a helluva time finding qualified employees:

About 70 percent of businesses responding to a Workforce Central survey said they find it necessary to seek talent outside the county to fill job openings. And 47 percent of respondents said they find it necessary to look outside the county for qualified workers most or all of the time.

WorkForce Central surveyed 130 Pierce County employers from across industries in November and identified the following concerns:

• 52.5 percent have difficulty finding a sufficient supply of local talent.
• 45.1 percent say that current employees do not have up-to-date skills and knowledge needed.
• 28.7 percent are concerned about a talent/brain drain because of an increase in retirements of experienced employees.

Um… really? At the time this survey was taken, Pierce County’s unemployment was hovering around the 8.6 percent rate, about the same level as the state as a whole. And employers still couldn’t find enough qualified local workers to fill the available jobs?

Hard to believe, but if it’s true, you gotta wonder about the wisdom of slashing funding and raising tuition at Washington’s community colleges and four year universities at the same time jobs remain unfilled in the midst of 8.6 percent unemployment. I mean, forget about taxes, there’s no way businesses can afford to stay in Washington state if we don’t have a qualified workforce, right?

Of course the Seattle Times editorial board enthusiastically supports Attorney General Rob McKenna’s call for liability reform. He’s Rob Fucking McKenna, the WA GOP’s Kwisatz Haderach. Hell, if McKenna had come out in favor of strangling kittens, the Times would’ve surely urged broad bipartisan support:

“Kitten lovers will not like these ideas,” the Times editors might write. “Democratic lawmakers are sure to be lobbied against them. McKenna is a two-term Republican appealing to a Democratic-controlled state Legislature for reform.”

Oh please.

Consider this: In 2009, the state paid out more than $50 million in legal judgments and settlements. According to McKenna, that is between four times and 12 times as much as comparably sized states, including Massachusetts, Arizona, Tennessee and Indiana. The tally for this biennium may approach $125 million.

Now, I’m not totally dismissing out of hand the notion of some sort of liability reform, and I’m willing to hear the arguments pro and con, but consider this: perhaps it’s not just our liability statutes that account for the rising cost of legal judgments against the state, and the dramatically lower costs elsewhere. Perhaps, just maybe, Massachusetts, Arizona, Tennessee and Indiana pay out less in legal settlements because they have better lawyers?

I mean, it’s not the law that changed back when McKenna first won election in 2004, just the management of his office. So shouldn’t he accept at least a teensy bit of responsibility for losing all those expensive cases, rather than, as the Times attempts to do, pinning all blame on the trial lawyers who keep kicking the AG’s ass (not to mention Democratic legislators)? Isn’t it reasonable to at least consider the possibility that the rise in the cost of judgments against the state has something to do with a decline in the quality of our legal representation?

Republicans are fond of saying that government should be run more like a business. Well, if I were the CEO of a large corporation, and my legal costs suddenly spiked concurrent to the tenure of my Chief Legal Counsel, I’d probably look into hiring myself a new Chief Legal Counsel… you know, one who’s not such a sucky lawyer.

When a troll comes to my blog, in my comment threads, and in response to my political speech, repeatedly and viciously attacks my daughter, and then backs up his threats by posting my home address, well, I suppose the appropriate course of action would be to forward his comments and IP address to the police. Instead, and for only the second time in six years, I’ve permanently banned a troll from the threads.

I think even my harshest critics would agree that no blogger anywhere has been more tolerant of dissent than I have, even when that tolerance has been flagrantly abused in the most hateful, personal and disruptive manner. But in the end, this is my blog, and everybody who comments here does so only through my grace. The First Amendment guarantees you a right to free speech, but grants you no such right to expect me to publish it.

I never wanted my comment threads to be a one-sided yahoo chorus of the type one so often sees on other partisan political blogs, and so I steadfastly refused to moderate them. It’s too bad so few on the other side could manage to treat this open forum with respect.

There’s been a bit of an uproar recently over a series of new “history” books in Virginia, which amongst other errors, repeat the bullshit claim that African Americans fought on behalf of the Confederacy during the Civil War:

“I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes — wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?” said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College.

To be fair, much of what we teach our elementary school children about our nation’s past is a carefully sanitized, if not outright mythologized version of American history, but really… a century and a half after Fort Sumter, and the South is still fighting to defend its traditional values? Can’t we just settle this once and for all that slavery was bad (you know, for the slaves), and that in fighting to maintain the institution, the South was on the wrong side of history? No ifs, ands or buts?

Of course the author, Joy Masoff, vehemently defends her work:

“As controversial as it is, I stand by what I write. I am a fairly respected writer.” But when it came to one of the Civil War’s most controversial themes — the role of African Americans in the Confederacy — she relied primarily on an Internet search, according to the report. And the results were based on the work of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-confederate group based in Tennessee.

Masoff’s other literary achievements include “Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty” and “Oh Yikes! History’s Grossest Moments.”

Now that’s what I call quality scholarship, and since we both primarily rely on the Internet for our research, I suppose that makes me a “fairly respected writer” too. Maybe I should put my Ivy League history degree to good work, and write some elementary school textbooks? Couldn’t do much worse.

The Seattle Times editorial board wants Metro Transit to get out of the advertising business… you know, just like the Times itself has been gradually, if involuntarily doing over the past couple years.

Metro is learning the hard way that it should not be in the advertising business. Instead of scrambling to craft better policies on noncommercial ads on buses, Metro should get out of the advertising business altogether.

And I’m sure the fact that the Times competes with Metro for local ad dollars has absolutely nothing to do with their opinion.

FOX News’ Megyn Kelly is livid over an effort by the Society of Professional Journalists to persuade news outlets to stop using the prejudicial phrases “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” in favor of the more neutral “undocumented immigrant,” leading her to rail against what she sees as the tyranny of politically correct language:

“You know, we did a segment earlier in the year on how little people find the term midget offensive, and so you can’t say that anymore,” Kelly lamented. “There’s so many words that are suddenly becoming hurtful, and part of the group thinks it’s hurtful, and the other group doesn’t, and you’re left as a journalist saying, I don’t know what to do.”

Huh. Okay, so, if someone were to defy the tyranny of political correctness and describe Kelly as, I dunno, a “cunt,” would that be fine by her?

I mean, I’m not using that word, and I’d never use it to describe Kelly or any other woman. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve ever typed that word before. But if someone else were to use that word to describe Kelly and her mean-spirited, disingenuous screed (no Megyn, “undocumented immigrant” is not equivalent to calling a “rapist” a “non-consensual sex partner”), well, I’d kinda understand what they were getting at, even if I found their choice of words to be offensive.

But then, who am I to bow to political correctness?

I spent most of the morning writing a passionate response to Dave Meinert’s stupid proposal over on Publicola to solve our budget crisis by dramatically expanding tribal and commercial gambling in Washington state. And then at the last minute, I decided to send the post over to Slog, where it might get a larger audience and a more reasonable comment thread.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

State Rep. Larry Seaquist (D-Gig Harbor) plans to introduce legislation this coming session, aimed at raising an additional $2 billion a year in education funding by eliminating nonproductive tax preferences exemptions loopholes.

“In my opinion, the cuts on eduction would do disproportionate harm,” Seaquist said.

Rep. Seaquist proposes creating a Commission on Tax Exemptions, an idea I wholeheartedly endorse, but I’d argue that legislators should go even further. The pending cuts in education and healthcare represent an immediate crisis, and thus require immediate action, and so I urge the Legislature to jump start the process by finding the first billion dollars of exemptions on their own, and putting their repeal on the November ballot.

Let voters decide for themselves what they value more: adequately funding K-12 education, or providing special interest tax exemptions to, say, gold bullion dealers and newspaper publishers?

A former Navy captain and commander of the USS Iowa, Rep. Seaquist presumably knows a thing or two about leadership. His colleagues in Olympia would do well to follow his lead on this issue.

Of course, the phrase the Seattle Times’ headline writers are searching for is “Planes, trains and automobiles,” but I guess they just couldn’t resist their pro-car/anti-rail bias, explaining why they left out the latter, while shifting the primary emphasis to “trains.” Yup, that was the top headline on the Times’ home page this morning, even though the article itself mostly focused on delays at airports, while making only a passing reference to yesterday’s story about the shorted-out surface tracks near JFK.

And not worthy of a prominent headline on the Times’ home page this morning…? The news that 2010 tragically saw a 39% jump in police fatalities, to 160 nationwide. The number one cause of death: traffic accidents.