HorsesAss.Org

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As I’ve written before, I’m rather agnostic about the specifics of HB 2261, the education reform bill that supposedly expands the definition of basic education, but includes no funding mechanism to actually pay for it.  In fact, at the same time legislators are patting themselves on the backs for bucking the teachers union to pass this bill, they’re also preparing to cut $2 billion from K-12 education.  And that’s an odd definition of reform.

I know there’s a lot of mumbling in Olympia about how this reform bill will serve as a necessary roadmap for setting funding priorities once the economy, and thus the budget, recovers, but I’m not so sure I buy the thesis that the budget will ever fully recover.  Rather, without some sort of structural revenue reform, I think we’ll more than likely look back on this crisis as marking a permanent ratcheting down of state spending power, and thus a permanent ratcheting down of state services and infrastructure investments. Even under a run of the mill economic recovery (and few economists expect even that) it’s hard to imagine state coffers recovering to pre-recession levels as either a percentage of personal income, or inflation-adjusted per capita revenue, let alone increasing to the level necessary to support the type of new spending promised.

So where will the extra money come from?

As the Washington Education Association angrily points out, the backers of this education reform bill can’t tell you, because to be honest, they don’t really have a plan to pay for these reforms.  But rather than just putting together angry YouTubes (however righteous), perhaps the WEA might want to accept their legislative defeat, and then fill the void by proposing a funding plan themselves.

I think you all know where I’m going with this.

As the Seattle Times’ Andrew Garber reports today, yet another poll shows a high-earners income tax, while far from a sure thing with voters, is anything but DOA:

A recent survey by Seattle pollster Stuart Elway found that 53 percent of voters questioned were “inclined to favor” an income tax on individuals making $250,000 or households earning $500,000.

The poll also found that 51 percent of voters questions favored small increase in the sales tax increase to help fund the Basic Health Plan.

Writing about the poll results, Elway said, “Although Washington voters are open to the discussion of tax increases to help close the $9 billion state government budget gap, they remain to be convinced. It will not be an easy sell, but most will not slam the door in your face if you bring up the subject.”

By my count that’s the third poll to show a high-earners income tax polling in the low to mid 50’s, and while one generally wants ballot measures to start off at least 10 points higher, it’s a damn sight better than anybody had expected going into this debate.  And to the “experts” who insist that’s not good enough, I say tell me… when do you ever expect conditions to get any better?

Remember, an income tax was approved at the polls in 1932 by a 70% margin, yet a similar constitutional amendment was handedly rejected by voters just two years later.  Sometimes, the time is just right.

So, yeah, that’s my advice to the WEA… the time is right.  If the Legislature won’t show you the money, then be proactive and show it to them:  a high-earners income tax.  It’ll never happen without your support… and without some sort of substantive revenue reform, these education reforms will never be fully funded.

In the overall scheme of things I know it’s not a big deal, but the piece of legislation that irritates me most this session is the one that allows car dealers to increase their “document fee” from $50 to $150.  What a totally bogus scam.

See, this is the way it works.  You do all your homework, educating yourself on the real dealer invoice, and all the various incentives and rebates out there, and then you go to the dealer and attempt to negotiate the best deal you can… you know, one in which you get a fair value and the dealer makes a fair profit, sometimes as little as a few hundred bucks, depending on the car.  And then when you go to sign the paperwork you find this extra $150 tacked on.

“What’s that?” you ask.  “Oh, that’s the state document fee,” the salesman responds, and you curse under your breath at yet another state tax you weren’t aware of, before coughing up an additional $150.

But it’s not a tax, and it’s not mandatory, and you just gave the dealer an additional $150 in profit above what you thought you had just negotiated.

That’s just downright deceptive, and the state’s got no business helping car dealers trick customers into padding their profit, regardless of the current sorry state of the industry.  If a 150 bucks is the difference between making a big enough profit or not, charge 150 bucks more, or don’t make the deal.  Nobody’s holding a gun to your head.  But it’s just plain dishonest to go into negotiations knowing the customer is already standing $150 in a hole.

Of course, everybody already expects car dealers to be deceptive.  I just don’t see why the state government has to enable them in that endeavor.

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These are just some of the tasteful, thoughtful signs from teabagging parties around the nation.

Let’s say I’m hiring you to build me some cabinets, but rather than paying you I will insist that you build the cabinets using precision laser cutters instead of saws, because precision laser cutters work so well.

Even though nobody has any laser cutters yet, and nobody could afford them anyhow, I will only pay you if you use laser cutters. Never mind the foundation that’s cracking beneath your feet, that’s not your concern. We have foundation experts for that, and they assure us that it can be fixed for a third of a penny or so.

The timing of my payment to you will depend on how some crazy people who hate cabinet makers feel about you getting paid. If they yell too loud I just might decide not to pay you at all, or I might decide to take the money and use it for a new garage door opener or garbage disposal instead.

In any event, you must build my cabinets, because you are a cabinet maker.

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President Barack Obama unveiled today his strategic plan for building a network of high-speed rail corridors across America, and yes, the Eugene, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver B.C. corridor is on it.  (Noticeably missing is the fantasy Las Vegas to Disneyland line that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned voters about in the same breath he ridiculed the notion of volcano monitoring.)

Obama calls the $8 billion allocated thus far a mere “down payment,” and the 90-mph definition of “high speed” is a far cry from the 120-mph designation in Europe, but both the plan and the money mark a dramatic turnaround from our nation’s recent rail strategy… or lack thereof.

As for the Pacific Northwest corridor, don’t expect a big pot of cash anytime soon.  The bulk of the money will initially go to shovel ready projects so as to create jobs as quickly as possible (the $8 billion is part of the $787 billion stimulus package,) but some money will be available for planning and engineering.  I’ll leave it to the geeks at Seattle Transit Blog to tell us what we might expect on our corridor, and when we might expect it.

The Washington Education Association, the union that represents the state’s K-12 teachers, was an enthusiastic backer of Gov. Chris Gregoire during the last election, as well as the Democratic majority in the state Legislature.  Hey… how’s that working out for you?

Not that the Republican alternative would have treated teachers any better, but like every other labor group this session, the WEA has pretty much gotten the short end of the stick on nearly every substantive legislative issue.  Writing in response to the education reform bill that just passed the House, WEA spokesman Rich Wood writes:

Teachers, the professional educators who work with students, are focused on the impact the Legislature’s huge budget cuts will have on our state’s students and the education they receive. HB 2261 may allow adults outside the classroom to think they’re doing something good for kids, but they’re ignoring the immediate and real problem. There’s no money.

$1.5 billion in K-12 education cuts are going to have a devastating impact on our students and classrooms. Trying to change teacher certification and evaluation or implementing a new school accountability system totally misses the mark. It suggests that TEACHERS are the problem, rather than the huge budget cuts. That’s an insult.

We’re losing thousands of teaching positions and students will be in overcrowded classrooms this fall. Meanwhile, the Legislature is poised to spend $3 million on work groups to study teacher certification? And teachers are supposed to accept promises that someday down the road the state might actually fulfill its constitutional obligation to fully fund education? We’ve heard enough promises.

That’s why teachers and other education staffers oppose these bills. Today, the Legislature introduced bills that wipe out the voter-approved initiatives for smaller class sizes and school employee compensation. If we care what the voters think, then the Legislature should be finding ways to protect those investments instead of spending money on work groups.

Wood closes by urging the Senate to reject the bill.  Yeah… good luck with that.

Personally, I’m rather agnostic about the education reform bill.  It does some good things and some bad things and more than a few pointless things, but as long as it remains unfunded, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.  The WEA is absolutely right that the immediate issue facing K-12 education is the dramatic cut in funding under the proposed budget… but banging their heads against this reform bill isn’t gonna do anything to open up the taps.

Instead, the WEA could be a helluva lot more effective getting behind efforts to put a substantive high-earners income tax on the ballot, all or part of which could be dedicated to funding K-12 education.  The internal polling on such a measure looks surprisingly good—at least as good as the third of a cent sales tax increase Rep. Pettigrew introduced yesterday—yet would generate more money, and wouldn’t require a sunset provision.  From what I hear, SEIU is willing to play ball, and the votes are likely there in the Senate.  If WEA and the public employee unions would just get behind the effort, they might actually be able to push the House along with them.

Seriously.  Without a substantial revenue increase, K-12 is getting less than squat this session.  But with WEA’s promise to aggressively back a ballot measure, a high-earners income tax is not out of the question.

Press releases are nice and all that, but it’s time to let legislators know that you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is, and commit to backing a high-earners income tax to fund K-12 education.

Last night the Washington House passed a bill to join the national popular vote Compact. The bill, previously passed by the Senate, will be sent to Gov. Christine Gregoire, who is expected to sign it into law.

The new law does absolutely nothing…for now. But once enough states have signed up—so that their combined electoral votes total at least 270—all the compact states will change the way their electoral votes are allocated. Right now, all states except Nebraska and Maine use a “winner take all” system that awards a state’s electors to the winner of the state popular vote. Once the compact “kicks-in” however, the member states will allocate their electors to the winner of the national popular vote.

In other words, the Compact enables a national popular vote without the need to amend the U.S. Constitution. This is because the Constitution gives each state discretion on how electors are allocated (my emphasis):

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

The Compact simply provides for a state-level change away from the common, but not universal, “winner-take-all” system adopted by most states through the early 1800s. The Electoral College remains completely unchanged.

A huge benefit of a national popular vote is that it greatly diminishes the influence of so-called swing states like Ohio and Florida. It is no secret that presidential candidates pander to these states and visit them more frequently during the campaign (and even after taking office). The effect is that an individual’s vote in a swing state has far more influence on the election outcome than an individual’s vote in a non-swing state. A national popular vote levels the field—everyone’s vote contributes equally to the election outcome.

The prognosis looks good for a national popular vote by 2012. So far four states (HI, IL, MD, NJ) are in the Compact. Once Washington is on board, the member states will have 61 electors behind them. Five other states (CA, CO, MA, RI, and VT) have passed similar legislation and await a Governor’s signature. All but two states (ID and DE) have at least introduced the legislation, but even these two states have bills drafted. All this comes after about three years of effort.

More information on the state Compact and the national popular vote effort can be found here.

At yesterday’s pathetic Teabagging event at Westlake Center, anti-tax entrepreneur Tim Eyman told the small crowd of angry, confused white people:

“We can’t trust the politicians to decide how big the tax burden should be. People should decide because we are the ones paying the bill.”

And really, that’s all we’re talking about, isn’t it?  I’m not asking legislators to impose an income tax, I’m merely asking them to put the option on the ballot so that voters can decide for themselves.  Give voters a choice between accepting devastating cuts in crucial social services, paying for them with a sales tax increase, or paying for them with a high-earners income tax.

Just give voters a choice.  How could Tim, or anybody else, argue with that?

If Texas secedes again, then we get to build a giant fence around it, right?

I wonder if Rick Perry has considered this clause in the 14th Amendment?

Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Thus Rick Perry must resign immediately, as he no longer meets the Constitutional requirements of citizenship to hold office. Check and mate.

Look, if people (a governor!) are going to be so silly then there’s really little choice but to also be silly. If Perry wants to pursue this line of thought so badly, then I propose we finally finish Reconstruction, starting with Texas. I’ll volunteer to be the military governor. If the paranoiacs on the right want to fetishize another Civil War, who am I to begrudge them their fantasies?

If I had a bunch of money to make a film this would be the perfect time to make another Red Dawn movie, this time featuring ACORN activists. If you could get Tina Fey and Will Ferrell…

Texas used to have a tourism slogan that declared, “Texas, it’s like a whole other country.” Which, well, it kind of is, but they get carried away with their Texas exceptionalism down there. Give it a rest, people. Mostly what Texas has given us is mentally defective politicians and criminal enterprises like Enron. They should thank their lucky stars we don’t throw them out of the union.

Like any big state it has the good, the bad and the ugly, the ugliest being the right wing loons who dream of one more Rebel yell. I kind of like the idea of cheap Texas bastards having to pay enough taxes to be their own country, though. That border with Mexico and the Gulf coastline are pretty long, and aircraft and ships aren’t exactly cheap. So yeah, Texas, go for it.

And by the way, Texans, mesquite is not in any way a proper smoking wood, it is a noxious weed. Real barbeque uses hickory. Maybe you folks should spend more time on the important things in life.

– Individuals in some rural parts of Washington are having difficulty finding doctors willing to certify patients and write prescriptions for the new Death With Dignity law. This was somewhat expected as there was never any intention to force doctors to participate, but if a person is forced to travel across the state to exercise what should now be a basic right, the law really isn’t working. I’m still confident that doctors in those areas will begin to step up and start working with the individuals who are seeking out this option without requiring the state to get involved (a la Plan B). Thursday is National Healthcare Decisions Day, and Compassion and Choices is using this opportunity to encourage health care providers to honor people’s end-of-life decisions.

– The Cannabis Defense Coalition is following a case involving two medical marijuana patients in Mason County. Prosecutors are claiming that the couple (John Reed, 48, and Karen Mower, 44) had more marijuana than they were authorized by a doctor to have. I don’t have a lot of information about the case other than what’s in the sheriff’s office’s press release (which appears to overestimate how much pot a single plant can produce). Some observers will be in the courtroom in Shelton this Friday.

– This Friday is the opening night for American Violet, a movie that chronicles the true story of an African-American single mother who was falsely arrested on drug charges and was able to fight the very corrupt justice system in her rural Texas town. Unfortunately, the movie is only being released in some markets, so we’ll have to wait to see it here in Seattle. If this review from Rex Reed is any indication, we’ll get a chance to see it before too long:

It’s rare, I’ll admit, but occasionally a good movie raises its head through the muck and mire and leaves me grateful but shocked with disbelief. Such a movie is American Violet, a harrowing, compelling and profoundly true story that dares to tackle an important but too rarely exposed issue of the abuse of power in the American criminal justice system.

…

At a time when almost every movie I see is about nothing at all, American Violet rattles a few cages with its story of personal courage against overwhelming odds. Sensational, nerve-racking stuff that leaves you shattered while it teaches you something.

The movie is based upon a real life drug task force sweep in Hearne, Texas. In the review, Reed seems stunned that what he was watching in the film is a true story. I’m not sure the average American is aware of the extent of corruption that happened in towns like Hearne and Tulia (which also has a movie in the works with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry). As I was reading the book that the upcoming Tulia movie will be based on, I remember thinking how the story would shock people as a Hollywood movie.

[Via Drug WarRant]

It’s a special triple holiday-eve edition of the Podcast, as the panel celebrates Tax Day, Teabagging day and Goldy’s birthday. The panel tries to get to the bottom of what the teabaggers are stewing over…and under. (Goldy is shocked when he learns the street definition of teabagging.)

Former news anchor Susan Hutchison is running for King County Executive. Has Ms. Hutchison sullied herself through associations with the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center? Are the anti-science views of a candidate even relevant for the position?

Back to taxes, the panel is split over the efficacy of a state income tax on the wealthy. Is the projected budget shortfall an opportunity for legislators to seize the moment for progressive tax reform, or does the electorate need more time for reflection and deliberation?

Goldy was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and Seattle Drinking Liberally co-organizer Chris.

The show is 43:10, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_14_2009.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

As some folks close to this blog already know, I became a father last week. In the months leading up to the big event, I did a lot of thinking about how different a world my son will be growing up in than what I grew up in. Admittedly, I was mostly intrigued by the superficial, like the kinds of pop culture icons that will seem totally ancient to him: Cheers will seem as old to him as I Love Lucy seemed to me. Nirvana will seem as old to him as the Beatles seemed to me. And E.T. will look as dated to him as movies like Inherit The Wind seemed to me.

But beyond the superficial, there’s a major technological gap between even those of us born in the 1970s and those being born today. Even with a father who worked in the early high-tech industry, I didn’t grow up in a world of gadgets. My son is likely to be using high-tech toys and playing with high-tech games that I couldn’t even conceive of as a youngster. But there are even starker divides among the living that I began to think about as I held my day-old son in the hospital while Willard Scott was on TV wishing people a Happy 100th Birthday.

Someone born in 1909 was raised in a radically different world than what we have now. If someone wanted to send a birth announcement across the country, the letter would’ve taken weeks to get there. If someone in Seattle wanted their relatives on the East Coast to hear their son’s voice, they’d have to wait until at least 1915 when transcontinental phone service was first set up. If a family wanted to take that newborn child to Japan and back, it would take them weeks or even months. And if that family wanted to be informed about events in the world that their son was growing up in, they relied on printed newspapers, often produced by well-heeled interests who would allow their personal biases to strongly influence how they presented the news to their readership.

It’s odd that with all of the technological progress we’ve made in 100 years, we still seem a little surprised to see this massively outdated way of keeping people informed going away. Even with TV and radio, newspapers still provided an advantage in that the consumer could easily skip over things they weren’t interested in, but all three of those media suffered from the same problem, that only a limited number of people had influence over the content. If a news outlet had an interest in hiding the truth or manufacturing a separate reality, it often had the means to do so. Taking that possibility to an extreme can lead to overly conspiratorial thinking, but it certainly was the reality sometimes. And alternate perspectives could often be sidelined.

The internet, of course, has blown the lid off of this. In 1909, if someone – or a group of people – could prove that something in the daily newspaper was intentionally misleading or false, most people would never find out. Today, liars in print journalism are quickly exposed. Fraudulent reporting is frequently called out. The internet has allowed us to fill in the gaps where the traditional media of newspapers, magazines, and television have failed us. The first major illustration of this was the Iraq War. People began to understand the extent to which they weren’t being properly informed by the outmoded media outlets of the 20th century, and we began to rely more on better avenues for keeping ourselves informed.

I remember telling people back in 2006 or so that the internet was about 2 years ahead of traditional media outlets when it comes to framing the issues in more truthful and more realistic ways. This has been true for issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where Americans are now far more aware that this is a conflict where Israeli aggression shares as much blame as Palestinian terrorism for the deadlock. This has been true for gay marriage, where public opinion has shifted significantly as more and more people are exposed to the human reality of in-born homosexuality. And this has been true for universal health care, as the fiscal and functional superiority of socialist-minded European systems has become more understood (and Michael Moore’s movie arguably played a big part in that too). At the time, I predicted that a drug policy shift would be coming, and sure enough, it has now exploded onto the national scene, primarily because the internet community has been forcing the traditional media to catch up to its level of understanding.

In each of these cases, the traditional media has either ignored reality or actively tried to hide it. Why? It’s been done for a number of reasons – historically strong sympathies with Israel, concerns over alienating a large conservative Christian news consumer base, wealthy special interests, and sometimes just general inertia and a fear to challenge conventional wisdom. But whenever media interests are controlled by a small number of extremely wealthy individuals as they are now, it’s unrealistic to expect them to truly be the voice of the people or to take our perspective into account. Of course, as the tea-baggers are now demonstrating, not all of us have the ability to figure out when the wealthy are convincing us to believe in stupid shit in order to further their own interests.

Last week on the Colbert Report, Phil Bronstein of the San Francisco Chronicle gave a familiar response concerning the death of newspapers, warning that it cost the Boston Globe over a million dollars to investigate the Catholic Church pedophile scandal, and therefore things like that won’t get uncovered if newspapers go away. Of course, Microsoft once believed that since they spent millions of dollars developing operating systems, office productivity software, web servers, and databases that no one could do those things for free too.

But Bronstein isn’t completely wrong. There needs to be some new form of revenue for people who provide good journalism. The best opinion and area expert bloggers out there rely on good reporting and are just as lost as the rest of us without it. And I think it falls to us – opinion and area expert bloggers – to decide how much value we place on being informed, and to come up with a way to preserve and promote good journalism before it goes away. But I also think we have the technology and the resources to develop a system that’s far superior to what we ever got from the top-down controlled media empires we’ve all grown up with.

It seems extremely unlikely at this point that any pay-per-view model will ever take shape on the internet. Putting new content behind a subscription firewall doesn’t bring in revenue as much as it decreases the amount of traffic, which is arguably the more important commodity for sustaining a journalistic enterprise today. Today, there are still tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of paid journalists across the globe putting their content online for free. But as newspapers cut back and fold, how much of that will we start to lose? I think it’s a very real possibility to get to Phil Bronstein’s worst case scenario, where big news stories simply have no one covering them.

I’m throwing out an idea here that I’ve begun to formulate, but haven’t shared with anyone yet. I want to encourage people to send me feedback on it. The idea is for a monthly “subscription” portfolio. (I put the word subscription in quotes because it’s actually more like a donation than a subscription) For instance, a standard portfolio would be like $20 a month, and you would set each dollar of that portfolio to go to a journalist that you rely on for good, accurate reporting. Or maybe it could go towards a group of journalists at a legacy outfit.

What I see this doing is two-fold. First, it creates a bottom-up way of rewarding good journalism. Second, it separates the legacy newspaper function that bloggers have trouble replacing (report journalism) with the one that they’re often significantly better at (opinion and analysis). Some journalists, if they choose, could provide perks for that $1 “subscription”, like a daily email or the ability to have specific questions answered and investigated. For instance, let’s say I want to “subscribe” to an Olympia reporter. Because I subscribe to that reporter, I may be able to have them pop into Frank Chopp’s office and get the answer to a specific question for me (as I’ve learned from experience, I will not get an answer if I email that clown directly). Maybe that privilege costs $5 a month. Who knows?

Again, these are just some preliminary ideas that I’m throwing out for discussion and feedback. I’ve been hearing a lot about catastrophic consequences to the death of print journalism. I don’t think this is an area where we need a government bailout or anything, but it may end up being entirely up to us in order to figure out how to sustain an industry that we’ve relied on in order to reach a new plateau in keeping us all better informed. It’s a beautiful thing to have right now and something I want to preserve for the next generation.