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It’s been a difficult few months attempting to keep enough quality content up here on HA while also contributing almost daily to Slog, especially once the election season ended. So I’m both pleased and wistful to announce that this experiment will soon be coming to a merciful end. Starting February 2, I will give up my part-time gig on Slog… and join the Stranger staff full time.

Part of what this means for HA—a blog into which I’ve invested over six years of my life—should be kinda obvious: come Feb. 2, I simply won’t be writing here much anymore, if at all. I’m working on some plans to try to keep HA going as a relevant, independent voice in the post-Goldy era, but I can’t share any details until I know them.

As for me, I know it’s the right move. The Stranger will give me a larger audience and a steady (if relatively modest) paycheck, plus, after years of toiling under the mixed blessings of my “Horse’s Ass” brand, I’m probably the only political writer in Washington state for whom the Stranger’s masthead would provide a boost in credibility. There’s a part of me that regrets giving up one of the best-read, independent state blogs in the nation to take an MSM job, but in spirit, you can’t get any less mainstream than the Stranger, and I mean, fuck… a newspaper job in this crappy, imploding newspaper market? How could I possibly turn down the opportunity? I’d have to be crazy.

Anyway, I had hoped to put a little more time and care into this announcement, but goddamn Dominic scooped me, so here it is. It’s been an absolute honor serving up dish and rants and whatnot to all of you these past six years. Well… most of you. Okay, some of you. The point is, a blog isn’t worth anything without its readers, and as bloggers go, I know that I’ve been incredibly fortunate to find such a loyal and passionate audience.

So, well, thanks.

If you haven’t already had the chance, Brendan Kiley’s fourth and final installment in his series on tainted cocaine is excellent. The entire series was easily one of the best pieces of local journalism from the past year.

UPDATE: And in other must-read news, Matt Taibbi’s latest on our new Speaker of the House is the usual great mix of hilarious and infuriating.

Yeah, I sure do enjoy poking a little fun at Crosscut—kinda a friendly rivalry—but really, Roger Valdez’s piece on waste in government is a must read.

As I’ve long said, a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy, public or private, and anybody who has ever worked for or with a large, established corporation knows what I’m talking about. Think there’s no waste, fraud or abuse at Microsoft or Boeing? Talk to a few longtime employees, and then tell me how it’s any worse in the public sector.

I’m not saying there aren’t any efficiencies to be gained in government. Of course there are. But all this perennial talk about waste, fraud and abuse is just a way of avoiding the more difficult conversation about policy priorities.

The GOP wins control of the US House in November, while making big gains in the Senate, and just a month later the unemployment rate falls to 9.4 percent, the lowest rate in 19 months. Wow, those Republicans sure did move fast to turn this economy around… even before they actually took office.

Of course I’m joking, but if unemployment continues to fall, dollars to donuts the GOP will attempt to take the credit during the 2012 election. See, that’s how it works. Booming economy and budget surpluses by the end of the Clinton administration, and that’s thanks to the policies put in place by Ronald Reagan. Near historic economic collapse and record deficits after eight years of Bush administration mismanagement, and that’s all Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress’ fault. Any recovery we see between November 2, 2010 and November 6, 2012… well clearly, it’ll be all the House Republicans’ doing.

And the funny sad thing is, a lot of Americans will buy it.

Nightlife promoter and bar owner Dave Meinert provides no hard numbers to back up his claim that the state could raise an easy $1.5 billion a year by massively expanding both legalized gambling and alcohol sales in Washington state, yet in attempting to refute my opposition to his proposal, he routinely dismisses me as an “old school thinker” who “doesn’t get it,” and who throws “shit at the wall,” while basically “guessing” about the economics of gaming. So in case he tries to similarly dis me today on KUOW, I thought it best to post a few links to some of my source material:

Lancet: Alcohol “most dangerous drug”

National Gambling Impact Study

WA Lottery: GAMBLING AND PROBLEM GAMBLING IN WASHINGTON STATE: A REPLICATION STUDY, 1992 TO 1998

Evergreen Council on Problem Gambling

Bill Virgin, Seattle P-I: Gambling craze not a good bet for states

These are all sources, by the way, that I’ve cited throughout my six years extensively covering this subject here on HA, as well as my behind the scenes activism on behalf of the welfare of problem and pathological gamblers. So if Meinert wants to dismiss me as not knowing what I’m talking about, he does so at his risk.

UPDATE:
For those who listened to the show, I a couple of points I didn’t have time to make.

Meinert talked about allowing a limited number of card rooms in Seattle, but that’s not how state law works. State law gives cities the power to either allow or disallow card rooms, but not the power to limit the number, or limit where they may locate beyond normal zoning powers. Once we allow card rooms, we lose all control. It’s an all or nothing, and Seattle has chosen nothing.

I also find it amazing that Meinert would brush off the difference between a problem gambling incidence rate of one percent and five percent as mere statistics. Five percent is five times one percent. Furthermore, while problem gamblers may make up a relatively small part of the general public, they make up a huge proportion of the casinos profits, with some studies showing up to 50 percent of the revenue from slot machines coming from problem gamblers (the 1998 WA study cited above found 40 percent).

Finally, Meinert likes to talk about “starting the conversation,” but we’ve had this conversation again and again, and he’s consistently come out on the losing side, most recently with the liquor privatization initiatives, and a few years back with Tim Eyman’s odious slot machine initiative. Washington voters simply don’t want this, and it is disingenuous to attempt to exploit our current budget crisis as an opportunity for a windfall for bar owners like Meinert.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
One further point for the moment. Meinert talks about card rooms and casinos as economic engines, but this simply isn’t true. They don’t manufacture money. Rather, they pull discretionary spending from other discretionary activities, or in the case of pathological gamblers, non-discretionary spending.

His proposals won’t turn Seattle into Las Vegas. Tourists won’t flock here to come to our casinos, nor will Washingtonians cancel their trips to Vegas. Rather, casinos and card rooms and slot machines in bars will mostly compete for local business between themselves, and with other local entertainment venues. It’s a zero sum game, particularly slot machines in bars, which studies show to be the worst form of gambling if your goal is economic development.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the general sentiment of the Seattle Times’ recent editorials on higher education and fixing potholes; these both constitute important government services that demand public investment, as the Times appears to recognize. But if the Times’ editors are going to continue editorializing in favor of spending taxpayer dollars, they might want to start rethinking their seemingly knee-jerk opposition to raising them.

For example, in making the case for dedicating more city resources towards pothole repair, the Times correctly points out that in 2006, Seattle voters approved a roads and bridges levy that, amongst other things, promised to “pave and repair Seattle streets.” What the Times fails to recall is that its editorial board advised readers to vote “No” on the $365 million proposition.

Likewise, while the editors rightly insist that “among the many things Washington must do about higher education, none will be as important as returning its investment in the system to a stronger, more robust stage,” they were also among the loudest voices arguing against a high earners income tax that would have restored budget dollars for education, while reducing taxes for 98 percent of Washington households.

The Times editors like to smugly harrumph about “Tax and Spend Liberals” like me, and I don’t deny the label—I think our state currently invests too little in our public and human infrastructure to sustain and grow our economy and improve our quality of life. Disagree with that perspective if you want, but at least give me credit for enunciating how we might pay for my spending priorities, unlike those “Don’t-Tax but Spend Conservatives” at the Seattle Times.

Heads up: I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation at around 12:40 this afternoon, giving nightlife promoter (and bar owner) Dave Meinert the business over his misguided proposal to help fill our state budget hole through doubling consumption of alcohol and a tenfold increase in gambling. I’ll post a few relevant stats and links closer to air time.

I’ve had a few phone conversations over the past few days with an old college friend who’s now an attorney in the Miami area. Back in college, he was a Republican, but he’s now utterly terrified of what new Republican Governor Rick Scott is going to do to that state. For those who haven’t followed his illustrious career, Scott is the health care executive who paid a $1.7 billion settlement after his company was found to have been defrauding the government. I can’t even begin to understand how someone like that was able to win a statewide election in any state.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

As much as it might pain me to type this… what Danny Westneat said.

Please join us tonight for the first evening of politics under the influence in 2011 at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or join some of us for dinner around 7:00 pm.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 236 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

I got nothing. At least, nothing I feel like writing about at the moment. So talk amongst yourselves.

As I explained yesterday on Slog, the High Tuition/High Financial Aid model proposed by Gov. Gregoire’s higher education task force, doesn’t exactly work if the plan doesn’t guarantee high financial aid, and from what I’ve seen of it, I’m just not confident that this proposal does. What might satisfy me? Well, for one, a philosophical shift in the task force’s objectives:

Along with more money from tuition, the task force’s proposal would lessen the impact to lower- and middle-income families by creating a private financial-aid endowment, with a goal of raising $1 billion in the next decade.

Change “lessen the impact” to “eliminate the impact,” and then back it up with reasonable safeguards, and you might just get my support, along with a enough Democrats in Olympia to make this a reality. Otherwise… piss off.

As the chart at the top of the post illustrates, it is possible to charge sky-high tuition, while keeping a college degree affordable to lower- and middle-income families. This chart compares the net costs at my admittedly pricey alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, to those at a typical public university, and as you can see, once financial aid packages are factored in, Penn can turn out to be just as affordable. In fact, more so, as Penn’s aid comes entirely in the form of grants, meaning its students no longer graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in loans.

That’s the way the High Tuition/High Financial Aid model is supposed to work. Those families that can afford to pay full price do; those who can’t, pay what they can afford. At Penn, students from typical families earning less than $90,000 a year receive grants equal to full tuition and fees; students from families earning less than $40,000 have their room and board covered too.

And it could work that way in Washington state too, if both the money and the commitment is there to move to this model without making a four-year degree less affordable to lower- and middle-income families.

So in the interest of moving this conversation forward, I’d like to suggest that my friends in the legislature consider this very simple but significant amendment to the task force’s proposals: give our four-year universities the freedom to set tuition prices as they see fit, but impose a needs tested cap on the net cost to in-state, lower- and middle-income families.

In the end, I couldn’t care less where the sticker price of a UW degree falls in relation to that at comparable public universities, and neither should should students or lawmakers. All that matters is the net cost of that degree in relation to what the student can afford. And if we as a state can embrace and defend this principle, then the move to tuition flexibility can be a net plus for our higher education system as a whole.

A reader alerted me to a news story that took place out on the peninsula right before Christmas:

Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded Dr. James Rotchford’s Olympic Pain and Addiction Services medical clinic in Port Townsend’s Uptown District on Tuesday morning, as city police officers assisted state and federal agents in executing a search warrant on the premises.

According to two other articles online, the raids were a result of an investigation by the State Attorney General’s office over Medicaid fraud. The Attorney General’s office provided no details on the warrants, which are sealed for 90 days.

Rotchford’s clinic specializes in treating pain patients and those with addictions to pain medications. Because of the risks of abuse from prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet, doctors like Rotchford are in a risky profession. Even doctors who’ve been cleared by medical organizations of any wrongdoing have found themselves guilty in a court of law, simply for not realizing that the folks they were prescribing to were supplying the black market. As a result, there are precious few doctors willing to go into this field of medicine. And the recent story of Siobhan Reynolds is a frightening indicator of how dangerous it can be merely to defend an accused doctor.

As of now, no charges have been filed against Rotchford and little else is known about why his clinic was raided. My understanding of Medicaid fraud implies that they believe that Rotchford was writing improper prescriptions that were then charged to Medicaid. Someone with some more knowledge of that charge can perhaps let me know if it could possibly mean something else. In the meantime, though, it doesn’t look like we’ll get to see anything related to the search warrant until March.

The difficulty in this issue comes from the balance we need to strike between the treatment of pain and the threat of addiction. Our federal government’s approach to this delicate topic hasn’t been very balanced. Keeping addictive pharmaceuticals under wraps is their only mandate, so there’s little consideration to chronic pain patients who suffer from the downstream effects of that mission.

This imbalance briefly came under scrutiny in December when Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin placed a hold on the nomination of Michele Leonhart to run the DEA. Kohl thought that the restrictions being imposed by the DEA on nursing home personnel were preventing adequate pain management. He lifted the hold after getting assurances from the Department of Justice that they’d work to rewrite the rules.

Reading through the comments on the Port Townsend-based articled I’ve linked, there are strong and conflicting opinions on Rotchford and his clinic, some positive, some negative. It’s not clear yet what’s going on here, but based on the history of the DEA’s conflict with pain doctors, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Rotchford targeted, nor should we be surprised if it turns out that he’s being targeted unfairly.

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.