HorsesAss.Org

Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer shows us why he should remain retired from politics:

The King County Executive’s job has become officially non-partisan, thanks to a voter initiative. In seeking the interim job, however, Royer discovered that the council still caucus and think as party members.

“They have not yet learned that they are non-partisan,” he said.

And I keep telling my dog and my cat that they are members of the same family, but they have not yet learned that they are non-enemies.

I mean, duh-uh.

I’m proud of my own contribution to Publicola’s start-up and its early success. But I’m also a little bit jealous.

The cold, hard truth about the right’s reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller—the truth that most anti-abortion activists are reluctant to admit, at least publicly—is that they’re happy he’s dead.

Well, maybe not “happy.” “Relieved,” might be a better word. Or, less succinctly, I think it is safe to say that there are many anti-abortion activists who genuinely believe that the ultimate good that comes from Dr. Tiller’s death far outweighs the inherent evil of his murder.

Our ever-absent blogging partner Will uses an apt analogy (though since he’s too lazy to write the post himself, I probably should’ve just presented it as my own), the oh-so-cliche thought experiment: If you could go back in time to pre-Nazi Germany, would you kill Adolf Hitler?

Murder is wrong; I think that’s a pretty universal moral standard.  But knowing the crimes Hitler committed and the horrors he wrought, few would consider it immoral to preemptively kill a man who would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent men, women and children. And while many of us might lack the fortitude to commit the act ourselves, neither would we mourn Hitler’s death. Indeed, we’d welcome it.

Yes, murder is wrong, but not all killing is murder, and as a society we tend to make moral exceptions in circumstances such as war, executions, and self-defense.

Now let’s look at the rhetoric anti-abortion advocates have used to describe Dr. Tiller, both before and after his death.

Few on the right have publicly condoned Dr. Tiller’s murder (though the crazies like those at Free Republic are always willing to to jump to the defense of any moral outrage), but even in disowning and/or condemning the assassination, some very public figures continue to describe Tiller as a “serial killer,” a “baby killer,” a “mass murderer” and worse.  Even anti-abortion activists and organizations who genuinely disavow violence have referred to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the Killer” and “Dr. Death,” comparing him to the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Many, many people in the anti-abortion movement, mainstream and extreme alike, have used and embraced this sort of rhetoric, and I see little reason to doubt their ingenuousness. These people believe that Dr. Tiller was a serial killer who brutally murdered thousands of babies, and who would have continued his killing spree for years to come… had he not been stopped by an assassin’s bullet.

Undoubtedly, most would have preferred that he were stopped through legal means, and damn few would have had the personal fortitude to pull the trigger themselves. But don’t kid yourselves. They don’t mourn Dr. Tiller’s death any more than I did the deaths of Saddam Hussein and his two odious sons, regardless of my opposition to the Iraq war itself. And they don’t think his killing was particularly immoral, especially when balanced by the thousands of babies who might have been saved in the process.

The cold, hard truth is, political and PR considerations aside, many in the anti-abortion movement are happy Dr. Tiller is dead. Or relieved. Or at the very least, comfortable with a moral calculus that, in their minds, balances the life of one guilty man against the lives of thousands of innocent babies.

And that is a disturbing truth the so-called “pro-life” movement needs to come to terms with.

Perhaps tiring of sucking off Michael Dunmire’s teat, longtime Tim Eyman lackey Mike Fagan has announced his candidacy for Spokane City Council.

“While the city of Spokane braces itself for some lean budget years…the taxpayers of this city deserve to be protected from wanton taxation in order to maintain basic services,” Fagan said in a press release this morning.

Good for him.  I mean, not the anti-tax bullshit, that’s a load of irresponsible crap. But good for him for attempting to be part of the process. I look forward to seeing how (whether?) Fagan intends to maintain basic services while reflexively opposing new revenues.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuTiTfbfy7Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

“I watched with glee

While your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades

For the gods they made.”

It’s Tuesday evening, which means that the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by even earlier for dinner.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqj_e6P9zCg[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 331 chapters of Drinking Liberally sprinkled liberally across the globe.

Over on Fuse’s Dr. Scoop, a reader asks why middle and lower income people so often vote with Tim Eyman and against their own economic self-interest, to which the good doctor rephrases the question:

First, it would probably be more accurate to ask, “Why do white middle and lower income people often vote with Tim Eyman and oppose progressive tax reforms?”  I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest that people of color have this voting pattern.  In fact, my data geek friends at Win/Win did a quick analysis and didn’t find any Eyman initiatives that passed in precincts dominated by non-white voters.

Huh.  Now that’s an interesting bit of data analysis that at the very least says something about Eyman and the image he projects.

The Seattle P-I has an article today supposedly exploring the future of tolling on Washington state roads, but which essentially just ends up serving as a forum for a debate between Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute and Michael Ennis of the Washingon Policy Center… two conservative think tanks.

I’m not saying that Matt and Michael don’t make any reasonable arguments, but really, is this the best we can do? Two conservative think tanks duking it out over creating state transportation policy that will largely impact the predominantly progressive Puget Sound region?

And fuck this terrorist asshole too. After a full and proper trial of course.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man who police say shot two soldiers, killing one, outside an Army recruiting office here because he was upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “would have killed more soldiers if they had been in the parking lot,” a prosecutor said Tuesday at a preliminary court hearing in the case.

The suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, pleaded not guilty at the hearing, and a district judge ordered that he be held without bail.

So in the course of 24-48 hours the country gets to witness twice the barbarity and delusion that infects certain sectors of religion in this country.

People who claim to speak the one and only eternal truth cannot be reasoned with, period, and there is no reason to be civil towards them or pretend they are only interested in debate. They’re interested in control of society based on their own particular warped views, and once they start advocating or using violence towards that end, any pretense of respect or civility is at an end.

Obviously it’s impossible to stop all lunatics, either Christianist or Islamist, but the goal should be continued high-quality law enforcement observation and investigation of those who repeatedly make violent threats against others. It’s a daunting task, but we should applaud the rank and file FBI agents and police officers who try to keep everyone safe while observing the law themselves. Cowards who engage in rhetoric along the lines of “I’m not saying kill people, but I won’t be sad if people get killed” are a pretty low order of scum and earn only contempt.

Engaging in violence-encouraging speech and actions is outside the bounds of legitimate debate in a democracy, and ordinary citizens need to reject those movements and the politicians who pander to them at the ballot box. Yes, it’s a tough line to draw sometimes, and certain movements have a knack for walking right up to that line and stopping, but that doesn’t excuse such infantile behavior. Responsible media figures and political leaders will realize they have a duty to conduct themselves in an above-board fashion, and citizens have a right to belittle and call on the carpet those who won’t.

A group of prominent conservatives have sent a letter to Republican senators urging them to filibuster President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court:

Our national experience in the past decade has changed the standard by which Republicans should cast their confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democrat president.  The benefit of a doubt that once arguably might have justified the indifference over the last two nominees of a Democratic president is no longer tenable.

Huh. Actually, this obstructionist approach might not be a bad political strategy… if Republicans are resigned to remaining a minority party for the foreseeable future. But if they ever plan to win back both the trust of the American people, and/or the White House, well, not so much.

Because, you know, what goes around comes around, and all that.

It wasn’t so long ago, during the Alito nomination, that Republicans reviled Democratic talk of a filibuster as unAmerican and unconstitutional. This was during the heady days following the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2004 elections, a time when Karl Rove was boasting about a permanent Republican majority, and Senate leaders threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminating the filibuster altogether—should minority Democrats put up too strong a fight. They didn’t.

But if a mere 40 Republicans follow this letter’s advice, and do vote as a block to hold up the Sotomayor confirmation over issues of judicial philosophy, then the standard by which senators cast confirmation votes really will have changed. And it will be a standard by which Democrats will measure their own actions the next time a Republican president nominates a justice.

The letter argues that “Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts,” pointing to 2008 exit polls that showed three quarters of voters considered Supreme Court nominations a significant factor in their vote, and 7% the determining issue. But it might behoove the authors to remember that this was an election Obama won by a comfortable margin, capturing electoral votes in every region of the country, and one in which Democrats made substantial gains in the Senate, thus making the “stewardship” argument profoundly self-defeating to the conservative cause.

With Republican presidents having appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and one Republican-appointed Chief Justice after another having run the court for more than half a century, I understand if Republicans feel they have some sort of unique claim on the institution. But they don’t. Obama has just as much of a right to leave his imprint on the court as the presidents who preceded him.

So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come. And I’m guessing that cooler heads in the Republican caucus won’t.

As most of you probably remember, four men from Newburgh, New York were arrested a few weeks back after they took part in what they thought was a plot to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx. Instead, the bombs were fake, and the ringleader of the operation was a government informant trying to mitigate his own legal troubles.

The cable news shows made a huge deal about the arrest as if it were some chilling reminder of the dangers of homegrown terrorism, but the reality was that without the informant, these four morons couldn’t have plotted to change a light bulb. The “leader” was being paid in weed by the informant and was high when they got arrested. Another of the four was described by his own sister as being “the dumbest person on this earth”. And a third one had previously been judged insane in an immigration hearing. This was nothing more than a desperate and persistent man trying to work a deal with cops finding whatever patsies he could dreg up in order to give police some “bigger fish”.

It’s hard to have sympathy for anyone who would even go along with a plot to blow up a synagogue (or any other place with innocent people inside), but I’m also not afraid of people like the Newburgh four. People that stupid and gullible are far more likely to be a threat to themselves than anyone else. And as Zachary Roth writes, it leads to some questions about how useful it is to do this in the first place:

Let’s be clear about what all this might and might not add up to. If these men were willing to go through with planting what they believed to be deadly bombs — as they appear to have been — then they should be charged, and, if convicted, sentenced to jail-time. (Their lawyers, of course, will likely claim entrapment, and it’ll be up to a judge and jury to weigh that claim after hearing all the evidence.)

But the emerging evidence that “Maqsood” aggressively targeted these men, and may have convinced them to participate in the plot only by offering them money and gifts, raises a different question: is pursuing “plots” that may well never have existed in the first place were it not for the work of a government informant, really the most effective way for the federal government to spend its finite terror-fighting resources?

I think what we should do is take some folks who’ve been arrested for various offenses like fraud and tax evasion and allow them to mitigate their sentences by going into churches around the country and recruiting disaffected crazies who would be willing to help them blow up a Planned Parenthood office. Then, after we bust like 4 or 5 “terrorist plots” in middle America, we can ask that question again.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37eu8MSXdP8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Hate-mongering anti-choice activist Randall Terry holds his own vigil of sorts for Dr. George Tilly, essentially blaming the doctor for his own brutal assassination.

“Pro-life leaders and the pro-life movement are not responsible for George Tiller’s death. George Tiller was a mass-murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

Huh. Well, as long as Terry is promoting this eye for an eye school of biblical justice, perhaps the proper response to this sort of vicious terrorist attack is to take out one of the terrorist leaders in return? Maybe Terry should reap the same sort of hate and violence that he sows?

And if you think that sentiment is a little harsh, I’d be happy to discuss it further with you over a beer.  I like Guinness, and prefer my wings really hot and a little crispy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT1MhKhpqjA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorializes about education, which as usual, leaves me totally confused.

Our state is at a crossroads. An ambitious education plan recently approved by the Legislature was a major hurdle crossed. The next hurdle is a question: where do we go from here?

Um… how about funding it?

Debates in this state about education reform rarely rise above the level of money.

You know, except during the past legislative session when an ambitious and expensive education reform package was passed to great editorial applause, without any discussion whatsoever about how we’re going to pay for it. Surely the Times isn’t implying that these reforms won’t require a major investment to turn all schools around?

Granted, it will take a major investment to turn all schools around, but without planning and general consensus, the cash will be useless.

Okay then, I’m all for planning and consensus.  Now where are we going to get the cash?

Federal input wouldn’t be intrusive, it would be welcomed.

Silly me… the money comes from the federal government, of course, because those are magical dollars pooped by fairies and wood nymphs, and don’t in any way come from the kinda income and estate taxes that the Times argues would be so unfair and wealth-destroying should they be collected in Washington state.

Education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever.

That’s swell, but what’s this about the largest spending increase ever? I thought we just dramatically slashed education spending in WA, even with the federal stimulus dollars? Am I missing something?

This state will use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature, but millions will be available with varying degrees of flexibility. The new rule in spending should be money spent on unproven efforts is money wasted.

Wait… so do “education stimulus dollars account for the largest spending increase ever,” or did we just “use much of the money to mitigate education cuts imposed by the state Legislature”…? And if the latter, how does this in any way implement the “new rule” the editorial kvells about.  I’m soooo confused.

Encouraging signs from Duncan, and President Obama, are the two men’s refusal to simply throw money at public education’s many problems.

Right, because otherwise, gutless legislators, cheered on by gutless, anti-tax editorialists, might just use the federal money thrown at them to “mitigate education cuts” rather than applying it to public education’s many problems.  And we would want that to happen.

Consider this the warm up before Congress delves into reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind law. The massive law should be tweaked, necessary improvements include additional flexibility and money, but not abandoned.

Again with the shilling for more federal dollars. Can’t debates in this state about education reform ever rise above the level of money? The editorial mentions money nine times; I thought we were talking about education?

(Oh, and note to the editors who edit the editors: that last sentence doesn’t scan well, so you might want to consider rearranging the clauses. But then, I graduated from public schools, so what do I know?)

So there we have it, the Seattle Times editorial board’s usual clarity of thinking: we need to spend more money on education, but federal money, not local money, and we want to be careful not to throw money at the problem because more money won’t do any good anyway, which is why we shouldn’t even be talking about money, investments, cash, dollars or money in the first place.

Oy.

There will be a vigil tonight, 6pm, near the south end of the reflecting pool at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, to offer thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Dr. George Tiller, who was brutally assassinated yesterday by a right-wing terrorist as he was entering his Wichita, KS church.

Hey… apparently, I’m a genius…

“Everyone who owns GET plans, they’re starting to look like geniuses,” said Joe Hebert of TrueNorth Financial Services in Seattle.

We prepaid our daughter’s tuition when she was five years old, back in 2002, when the cost was only $42 a credit. After this week’s GET price increase, the cost is now $101 a credit. That’s a pretty damn good annualized return. But I’m no genius.

Washington’s in-state tuition costs were bizarrely low at the time we bought in, and there seemed nowhere to go but up. The GET program was only advertising (but not promising) a projected 6 percent average annual return at the time, but that seemed impossibly low considering rising costs and stagnating state tax collections. Besides, the “G” in GET stands for “guaranteed,” so it wasn’t much of a gamble to plunk down $16,800 in 2002 for four years of college tuition our daughter wouldn’t finish redeeming before 2019. I suppose it might have turned out to be a conservative investment, but it also bought us peace of mind.

But, as is my wont, I digress, for it’s not the virtues of GET I planned to blog about, but rather the first comment on the story in the thread on the Seattle Times, in which rawdibob asks:

Why has the cost of college tuition increased faster than inflation?

Yes, I understand that part of the government-run college tuition increases represents a decrease in the taxpayer subsidy but that is not all of the story.

No, the recent budget cuts aren’t all of the story, but this question gets to the heart of one of the basic misunderstandings many taxpayers have about the cost of providing government services… a misunderstanding I’d argue is intentionally perpetuated by many of those in the smaller government crowd.

Government critics often point toward population plus inflation as a formula for constraining government growth, and while that’s not the best metric (growth in demand for government services most closely tracks growth in personal income), it does appear somewhat reasonable, at least on its face. Problem is, there are multiple measures of inflation, and the familiar Consumer Price Index is perhaps the least applicable when it comes to measuring rising goverment costs.

Why? Because as a broad index of the economy as a whole, the CPI reflects productivity gains resulting from technological and policy efficiencies (such as trade) that simply aren’t available to state and local governments, for whom the bulk of the services provided rely on highly trained professionals.  Think about it.  You can automate a factory floor, resulting in fewer workers producing more and better product, but you can’t comparably automate a doctor’s office or a fire station or a police precinct.

Or, a classroom.

The only way to dramatically increase the productivity of a university professor is to either increase class size, or require the professor to work longer hours for less money, neither of which is a tenable alternative if your goal is to attract and retain quality students and faculty. And even if one were to head down that route, the productivity gains could not possibly be sustainable compared to those achieved in the broader economy, even compared to many industries that also rely on a highly skilled labor force. For example, Microsoft can exploit the global economy by outsourcing engineering to India and China, but the University of Washington simply can’t outsource its faculty.  (It can outsource its students perhaps, but not its faculty.)

Republicans point to year over year spending increases and argue that state government has grown too fast, but the fact is that the cost of providing most government services simply rises faster than consumer prices. Indeed, when adjusted for the Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Governments (the IPD is widely accepted as the most accurate measure of inflation for various industries), Washington state taxes per capita were already at a 15-year low heading into the Great Recession that sent our budget off a cliff.

Just look at the widening gap between CPI and IPD. What that represents is a decline in government spending power.

And that, rawdibob, is one of the main reasons why the cost of college tuition has increased so much faster than inflation.