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Our state’s editorial boards love to complain about the budget impasse in Olympia, but for many years they have played a key role in the obstruction, consistently opposing any substantive new tax—especially on income—as fervently as the most dyed-in-the-wool anti-tax Republican. Until now:

A proposal in the Senate would apply a 7 percent capital-gains tax to 0.1 percent of the state’s residents, or about 7,500 residents. It would only apply to gains over $250,000 for individuals or $500,000 for couples.

Instead of punting to committees and next year’s Legislature, they should buckle down and make the choice to begin taxing capital gains.

That’s the Seattle Times editorial board making the case that a “capital-gains tax is best option to fund education.” Seriously. And while we’ve been seeing their position evolve over the past few months, it’s still pretty stunning to see them state their support for the tax so bluntly.

And then there’s this from today’s Olympian:

A key element of our state’s F grade for effort was the comparatively low percentage of the state’s economic output that Washington has invested through taxes into K-12 schools. Part of the problem is our over-reliance and regressive tax system that ignores a large share of economic activity including the sales of services and such income-producers as capital gains.

I sometimes joke that I’m the only non-lawmaker who still reads the editorial pages, but of course that’s not true. Editorial board endorsements may not be nearly as influential as they were even a decade ago, but they still play a role in shaping public opinion. Or at least, reinforcing it. And anti-tax legislators no longer have the “serious” people behind them in obstructing all efforts to tax income.

Washington’s tax structure is absurdly regressive. I’ve been saying that since my very first blog post, more than 11 years ago. There’s simply no arguing with that fact. And now the editorial boards have finally acknowledged that our revenue system is insufficient as well. Republican lawmakers should take note that they are on the wrong side of the editorial boards on this issue, and that if we fail to pass the additional revenue necessary to satisfy McCleary, the editorial boards won’t be shy about pointing out which lawmakers are to blame.

Given my fierce criticism over the years, you might think that I’d hate to give the editorial boards credit for finally advocating for responsible tax policy. Not at all. Responsible tax policy is all I ever really wanted. And it’s great to see the Seattle Times on board.

[Cross-posted at Civic Skunkworks]

Last week, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, a very modest reform of the NSA’s surveillance capabilities, still leaving much of what they can do intact.

The main reform is the end of the bulk collection of metadata under Section 215, which has been ruled illegal in multiple courts since Edward Snowden fully disclosed its existence two years ago. In its place will be a system where telecoms archive their data and NSA can only pull metadata after going through the FISA Court that will have a privacy advocate overseeing the proceedings. Although there’s a provision that could allow for a six month “transition period” to this new protocol.

In looking at these changes, Bill Scher argues that civil libertarians lost:

In an interview with Democracy Now just before passage, Edward Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald triumphantly declared “the only reason why the Patriot Act is going to be reformed is because one person was courageous enough, in an act of conscience, to come forward.” But minutes later, Greenwald conceded that “it leaves overwhelmingly undisturbed the vast bulk of what the NSA does, and it’s very unlikely that there will be another reform bill, which means that the NSA’s core mission and core activities will remain unreformed and unchanged.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who opposed the USA Freedom Act as too tough on the NSA, thundered on the floor before the vote that the bill amounted to a “resounding victory for Edward Snowden.” But the civil libertarian two-stepping exposes the truth: Snowden lost.

As one former intelligence official told the Daily Beast, “What no one wants to say out loud is that this is a big win for the NSA, and a huge nothing-burger for the privacy community.” Turns out one of the main reform planks – having telecommunications companies instead of the NSA collect personal metadata in bulk – is a logistical efficiency, not a restraint on surveillance. “It’s very expensive and very cumbersome,” said the official. “Good! Let them take them. I’m tired of holding on to this,” said another.

What this reminds me of is the debate in the wake of Obamacare’s passage. In many ways, Obamacare fell way short of the ideal health care legislation. Obama conceded significant reforms in order to get something passed, making deals that left significant inefficiencies and profiteering in the health care industry intact.

But the passage of Obamacare was a victory in some real ways. It was a baby step in the right direction and it put to rest the idea that health care reform of any kind was impossible. The passage of the USA Freedom Act is a victory in the same way. It changes the longstanding dynamic towards giving government agencies greater leeway in national security matters and it put the defenders of an unrestrained national security apparatus on the defensive for the first time in many years.

The “former intelligence official” quoted above seems not to understand the significance of the reform as well. The main problem with the Section 215 collection of metadata wasn’t simply the existence of the metadata itself. It was the potential for that information to be abused. The changes implemented make it harder for NSA to cross that line. That’s a victory, even if it’s a small one in a giant box of other needed reforms.

News items from the last two weeks…
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It’s maybe not the most shockingly dishonest thing the Seattle Times editorial board has ever printed—that would be this. But in terms of sheer disrespect for the intelligence of their readers, it’s hard to sink any lower than this unapologetic libel of Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed Move Seattle levy:

The size of Move Seattle is breathtaking. The property-tax bill for a $450,000 house would nearly double, to about $275 a year. That won’t help rapidly escalating rents or middle-class homeowners dealing with rising home values.

And you know what else won’t help rapidly escalating housing costs? Lying.

To be clear, Move Seattle would not double your property-tax bill. It wouldn’t even come close. It would double the amount you’re paying on the expiring Bridging the Gap levy, but that amounts to only a $145 increase on a $450,000 home—just 3.3 percent of the total property-tax bill (and a mere .03 percent of the value of your home)—not the 100 percent increase that the editors imply. Big difference.

To understand how breathtaking this lie is, imagine if “Property-Tax” Bill was an actual living, breathing human being. The editors’ assertion is so clearly erroneous, misleading, and defamatory that Bill could easily sue the paper for libel, and win big!

No doubt the proposed levy deserves careful scrutiny; all levies do. But so does the editors’ larger implication that Seattle homeowners are overtaxed: “Seattle is the city that doesn’t say no to taxes,” the editors emphasize in a pull-quote.

And yet according to the tax records on my own median-value home, my property-tax rate has actually gone down over the past decade, from 1.06 percent of assessed value in 2004 to only 0.96 percent in 2014! Compared to a lot of other cities, that’s a bargain, especially considering that we don’t even have an income tax. Despite rising property values, in raw dollars, my property-tax bill has barely outpaced inflation.

Yes, we pass a lot of levies here in Seattle, and we tend to pass them with ease. But these levies are constantly expiring. So while it may feel like we’re always being asked to raise our own taxes, our effective property-tax rate is actually quite low, and has remained low over time. In fact, tack on this allegedly “breathtaking” Move Seattle levy, and my property-tax rate would still be less than it was back in 2004.

Not that you’d ever know this from reading the blatantly misleading op-ed pages of the Seattle Times.

Recently in Cairo:

An Egyptian court on Saturday [May 16] sentenced to death the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with more than 100 others, for fleeing prison during the 2011 revolt against President Hosni Mubarak.

Mr. Morsi’s conviction is the latest sign of the undoing of the uprising that overthrew Mr. Mubarak. Mr. Morsi, who was Egypt’s first freely elected leader, now faces the death penalty for escaping extralegal detention — a form of detention that many Egyptians hoped would be eliminated by the revolution.

The past few years in Egypt have been painful to watch. The 2011 revolution that seemed to give many moderate Egyptians hope for a more democratic future was snuffed out after a 2013 coup against their first ever elected leader. Morsi was clearly unpopular and his religious extremism arguably rendered him unfit for the office. But it should be clear now that Egypt would be much better off had they democratically replaced him rather than the extreme response from al-Sisi and the Egyptian military.

At the time of the coup, I chatted a lot with a former co-worker from Microsoft who’d gone back to Alexandria (and who Dana and I visited in Cairo in 2007). He was torn between his fear of greater Islamic control of the country and his desire to trust the democratic process. It’s hard for most Americans to put themselves in his shoes. He supported the coup, but hoped it would still lead to more democratic reforms. It hasn’t (and he’s since moved out of the country again).

Ebrahim Deen, a researcher based in South Africa, wrote about Morsi’s death sentence (which he believes won’t actually be carried out) at Informed Comment:

The trial verdicts –Mursi was sentenced to life in prison on the espionage charge as well– were procedurally flawed, defendant’s had irregular access to legal representation, and evidence gathering and cross examination procedures were severely compromised. The glaring fact that the initial arrests were carried out by the former Mubarak regime in early 2011 under emergency law and without detention orders was not considered and so to [sic] was the communication between Mursi and an Aljazeera journalist the day of the ‘breakout’ wherein he provided the name, and street address of the prison, asserting that they were not escaping and would remain at the location awaiting government officials responses. The prosecutorial process had been extremely and even laughably shoddy. Of the around seventy Palestinians sentenced, two (Hossam Sanie and Raed El-Attar) had already died –Sanie as far ago as 2008 and Attar, during Israel’s operation ‘pillar of defence’ in 2014, which caused the deaths of over 2000, mostly civilian, Gazans. Another, Hassan Salama, has purportedly been in detention in Israel since 1996 and could not have possibly committed the alleged crimes from inside an Israeli cell. Further in the espionage case, which saw Muslim Brotherhood leaders including Mohamed El-Beltagy and Mohamed Khairet El-Shater receive death sentences, Emad Shahin, a political science professor now based at Georgetown University, who has no real links with the Brotherhood was handed the same censure, and so to was Sondos Assem, a media liaison official employed by Mursi.

This is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. Morsi is being sentenced for breaking out of a prison that shouldn’t have had the authority to hold him in the first place. Al-Sisi has taken Egypt back to the pre-2011 authoritarian regime where illegal detentions are commonplace, torture is routine, and members of religious parties like the Muslim Brotherhood are presumed to be terrorists, regardless of what those individuals have actually done. Deen continues:

These sentences are the latest in a string of actions adopted by the Sisi regime to crackdown on opposition and descent. Following the 2013 ouster, thousands have been killed, and over 16000 political prisoners currently languish in Egyptian detention facilities. A protest law, which has banned sit-ins and severely curtailed other protest rights, was adopted in November 2013, while in April, the Cairo Administrative Court criminalised worker strikes. Liberals and secular activists have not escaped this purge, in December 2014 Ahmed Maher, Mohamed Adel, and Ahmed Douma, three influential members of the April 6 youth movement were sentenced to three years for organizing protests in contravention of the protest law, while in February Douma was amongst over two hundred who received life sentences for inciting violence and destroying a science facility housing precious artefacts. Shahin’s farcical conviction falls into this milieu. Being opposed to the military ouster, publically vocalising this through writings and interviews, and being somewhat more ‘reputable’ internationally were the main reasons informing his death sentence. In 2014 alone, over 1400 individuals were sentenced to death in mass trials, which usually took only a few days to complete, and lacked even basic prosecutorial and judicial impartiality. It is noteworthy that the judiciary was a key cog in the political structure which allowed and maintained Mubarak’s regime and that following Mursi’s ouster, Sisi has sought a similar role for the institution –Adli Mansour (head of the Supreme Constitutional Court) was even installed caretaker president following the coup.

At least it’s not a theocracy, I guess.

News items from the last two weeks…

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I’ll sure miss the rhetorical utility of describing Seattle as “the fastest growing big city in America” now that Austin has seized back that mantle, though we’re still one of the fastest growing big cities in America—tied with Ft. Worth for third—so, whatever. But if you ask me, the Seattle Times piece on the new census numbers kinda buries the lede:

Also in the new data: Seattle grew 77 percent faster than surrounding King County in 2014. This marks the third consecutive year that Seattle has outpaced its suburbs.

This trend is not just remarkable, it is historic. The surrounding areas of King County had been adding population at a faster clip than Seattle for more than 100 years, and it’s not just in Seattle where this trend has reversed: for the first time in many decades, the majority of big American cities are growing faster than their suburbs. And there’s absolutely no reason to expect this trend won’t continue for the near future.

Whatever the reasons for this demographic shift, it is a mixed blessing. Obviously, we want and need our cities to grow more dense. Dense cities are more walkable, sustainable, and energy efficient than suburban sprawl. So we want to encourage urban density. But the flood of newcomers is forcing housing costs up, and shutting many middle and lower income residents out.

Seattle added nearly 15,000 new residents in 2014, nearly 18,000 the year before that, and new construction is not keeping pace with demand. While this imbalance is not the only cause of our growing affordable housing crisis, we obviously need to build more housing—some of it outside the market. And to do this, we’re going to have to deny our NIMBYist instincts that welcome growth everywhere but in our own neighborhoods.

Homeowners love it when their own property values rise. They’ll just have to learn to accept the change that comes with it. And that change must include a taller, denser, and more in-filled Seattle.

Much to William Shatner’s surprise, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee declared a statewide drought emergency last week, what with the state’s average snowpack only at 16 percent of normal and the national weather service predicting a hotter than usual summer.

Anticipating a decline in snowmelt, Seattle took advantage of winter rains to fill its reservoirs to above normal levels, so the city won’t likely face any water restrictions this summer, but our future water security is less certain. The mountain snowpack is by far our state’s largest reservoir, and as climate change shifts much of our winter precipitation from snow to rain, snowpack levels are expected to steadily decline over the coming the decades. But fortunately for the region, at least one of our leaders was thinking ahead.

At the time, former King County Executive Ron Sims was the target of a fair bit of criticism for the planning, execution, and cost of our state-of-the-art Brightwater sewage treatment facility, and one of the design decisions that added to the expense was its then-unneeded water reclamation capacity: up to 21 million gallons a day of Class A reclaimed water. Class A reclaimed water isn’t certified as potable, but it’s safe to drink, and it wouldn’t take much more processing to get it the rest of the way there. Diluted into the 140 million gallons a day Seattle Public Utilities currently delivers, we wouldn’t notice the difference at the tap, even as reclaimed water made up 15 percent of the supply.

With our population growing even as our source of fresh water shrinks, reclaimed water will become an ever more valuable resource.

Building that reclamation capacity into Brightwater wasn’t cheap, but it was a helluva lot cheaper than adding it on later. At least, that’s what Sims told me a decade ago when he explained that the county had to start preparing now (well, then) for the inevitable impacts of climate change. And a declining snowpack, Sims said, was inevitable.

To be clear, Sims was no latecomer to the issue. Way back in 1988, when he was just a county council member, the Seattle Times editorial board excoriated him for proposing that the county spend a mere $100,000 a year to study how to prepare for climate change:

IF THE “greenhouse effect” is exacerbated by political hot air, the world is in real trouble.

The hyperbolic clouds of rhetorical gas belched out on this issue in recent weeks could easily choke someone – or at least cloud the vision of otherwise rational people.

… many reputable scientists dispute the reality of the greenhouse effect. Others seriously question its long-term impact …

The point is that the sky-is-falling, icecaps-are-melting, oceans-are-rising rhetoric must be tempered by common sense.

If Sims and Laing want to study the greenhouse effect, they should buy themselves some tomato plants and a bag of steer manure – which shouldn’t be at all hard for such experienced politicians to find.

It’s not so much the wrongness of the editors that stands out, but the utter eye-rolling contempt in which they attacked Sims’ foresight.

Fortunately, Sims wasn’t cowed by the editorial board, and continued to stick by his convictions (and the science) throughout his years in office. And so on that inevitable day some years hence when reclaimed wastewater starts flowing through our faucets, I hope the editors of the Seattle Times join in raising a glass of recycled pee to the vision and perseverance of Ron Sims.

It’s not easy for politicians, facing the present day demands of taxpayers, to keep the needs of future generations in sight. But on many issues—from transit, to education, to income inequality, to the environment—that is the only way to assure that our region continues to thrive well into the future.

[Cross-posted at Civic Skunkworks]

Last Thursday, the Obama Administration came forward with the news that a drone strike back in January killed an American and an Italian, along with the four militants who were holding them hostage. The American, Warren Weinstein, is the 8th American killed by the Obama Adminstration’s drone program. Of those eight, only 6 were even suspected of being part of a terrorist network.

As numerous reporters have noted, there’s hardly any transparency when it comes to how the CIA is carrying out these attacks. It would be one thing if the secrecy of these attacks served some practical purpose, but that doesn’t appear to be the case anywhere.

In Somalia and Yemen, our drone strikes have only compounded the instability. And in Pakistan, where the Obama Administration has given the CIA even greater leeway – and where Weinstein and Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto were killed – not even the most strident domestic opponents of the Islamic radicals think it’s working. Writing recently in the Globe and Mail, former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani writes about the Obama Administration’s misguided belief that they can win the war on terror by dropping bombs from flying robots:

The fascination with drones reflects the desire of leaders to be able to fight wars without risking casualties to their own side. The Obama administration has preferred using unmanned aircraft, armed with cameras and missiles, in locating and eliminating terrorists over committing troops or even intelligence officers in the field. The death of hostages, coupled with the fact that terrorists continue to recruit and multiply despite drone strikes, points to the folly of that approach.

His piece gets at the heart of why drone warfare fails and why there’s so much official secrecy around it. Drones didn’t become a popular method of battling radical groups because of their effectiveness in war. They became the primary means of battling radical groups because of their effectiveness in selling us on war. The lack of transparency – and of dead Americans – keeps this disconnect alive and keeps public support for drone strikes at a much higher level. If Americans fully understood how this method of dealing with groups like Al Qaeda isn’t just a failure, but actually counterproductive, there might start to be some momentum to wind it down. But for now, there’s still a widespread belief that this method of waging the war or terror actually works. If you’re a drone manufacturer or a politician afraid to challenge the CIA, the less said about these failures the better.

More news items from the last two weeks…

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Maddow: Mainstream Media sucks up anti-Clinton book by right wing author liar.

Tim Simons prepares for the White House correspondences’ dinner.

White House: West Wing Week.

Why frats aren’t that bad:

MinutePhysics: How big is the sun?

Dickipedia: Mitch McConnell is a dick.

President Obama and Bill Nye talk Earth Day in the Everglades.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Matroclinously Ugly.

The 2016 Clown Procession:

• Sam Seder: Marco Rubio’s unique homophobia
• Young Turks: Ted Cruz attacks John McCain, then apologizes.
• David Pakman: Uh-oh…Jeb Bush funneled $2 billion to George W. Bush’s big donors
• Sam Seder: Scott Walker is now bashing all immigrants
• Seth Meyers on candidate’s attempts at relatability
• David Pakman: Scott Walker attended a gay wedding reception, but won’t go to a gay wedding
• Sam Seder: Mike Huckabee’s ammosexual fantasies.
• David Pakman: Craziest GOP lineup ever as Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina Launch Presidential campaigns
• Chris Hayes and Dan Savage: Anti-gay GOPers and weddings.
• Jon: GOP anti-gay bigots and gay weddings
• David Pakman: Who will be the first Republican to drop out of the campaign
• Maddow: Campaign cash becomes early differentiator between parties for 2016
• Young Turks: Bobby Jindal refuses to give in to “gay marriage bullies”
• Sam Seder: Rand Paul isn’t sexist! We’re the “real sexists”!
• David Pakman: Corruption alert…Chris Christie privatizes water

Joe Biden and Blondie sing about naked men.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Tropophilously Ugly.

WaPo: No…same sex marriage will not cause 900,000 abortions.

Glacier National Park’s glaciers are disappearing:

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about Caffeine.

Mark Fiore: Death & Destruction, Inc..

Michael Brooks: Bill-O-the-Clown’s War on White Men™.

The week in Congressional Hits and Misses.

SlateTV: A mystery on Ceres.

On Drugs:

• Sam Seder: FAUX News celebrates 4/20 by scaring viewers about “more dangerous” types of pot
• Thom: Why 4/20 is celebrated
• Jon: 420 and Chris Christie.
• Thom: The “War on Drugs” is a war on America

Young Turks: Comcast–Time Warner deal is over.

Sam Seder: You’ll never believe who is now in on the climate change conspiracy.

Jon asks Neil deGrasse Tyson an important question.

Thom: Corporations to America, “We own you”.

Mental Floss: 101 amazing facts.

SlateTV: Leaked 2016 campaign ad.

John Oliver: Patents:

Eighty-year-old Seattle man returns to Boston to run the marathon.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, the Bad and the Very Very Matelassely Ugly.

Jon announces his last episode hosting The Daily Show.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

A levy swap isn’t on its own a horrible thing. Poor districts should still be able to educate their children. But in the absence of new money, it’s just taking money from districts that have been doing a better job educating children, if because they can afford it or if they’re more willing to pay. Goldy explained this ad nauseum when Rob McKenna was running and losing on levy swaps.

I’m happy to pay for education in the whole state. Let’s fund significantly more education at the state level. I’m all for it! Ideally with an income tax, but absent that, the most progressive tax we can get through the legislature.

But what we shouldn’t do is take money away from some districts or force the Puget Sound to pay for it while the rest of the state doesn’t. And that’s what a levy swap will do. As long as that’s the GOP position, it’s never going to fly.

“This would be the biggest property tax increase in state history,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, adding that the latest estimates show residents facing the biggest jump in their property taxes would be in the Puget Sound region, while some getting the biggest break would be in Eastern Washington and other rural parts of the state.

Most property owners in Spokane-area school districts would see a drop in their local property taxes over the four years needed to phase in the changes, although the amounts vary because of significant differences in current school district levies and the complicated laws that govern them.

Property taxes in Spokane School District, for example, would go down most years between 2018 and 2021 – as much as $1.80 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2021 – but up by .01 per $1,000 in 2019.

Ranker and other Senate Democrats have a competing plan designed to address the same problem of a system the state Supreme Court says is unconstitutional: using local tax money to pay for a basic part of public education, the salary of classroom teachers. Their solution is a tax increase, plain and simple: a capital gains tax on any resident who collects more than $250,000 a year on investment earnings. Money raised by that tax would be used to replace the money local districts now contribute to teacher salaries. That amount varies from district to district, but the amount a district receives from the state’s capital gains tax they would lower the amount they could collect from local taxpayers, so everyone would get a property tax reduction and only about 7,500 residents would pay the capital gains tax.

Neither one has everything I would want, but at least one actually has new money for education. If the problem is that there isn’t enough money for education, that seems like the thing at the outset you should deal with. I don’t understand how you can try to take education dollars from Seattle and Bellevue and say you’re supporting education statewide.

Friend of the blog Fake Ted Van Dyk is moving to Bellingham, as is his real counterpart. To celebrate, he tweeted a bunch of tweets. I’ve collected them here.

I'm moving to Bellingham so I can make a run for the border if there's another Clinton as president. http://t.co/qhnGf2Zxod

— Ted Van Dyk (@FakeTedVanDyk) April 16, 2015

The rest below the fold…
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– District 8 has nearly $200,000 — and it’s only April. The at-large race has six candidates running, who have amassed, collectively, $193,710 in donations, according to the Public Disclosure Commission.

– Seriously, business owners, why are you volunteering anti-gay garbage?

– The people in Kayaks meeting the Shell rig are pretty amazing.

– Oh hey, here’s your list of possible people to fill Sally Clark’s spot on the City Council. Oddly, no Goldy this time around.

The wife and the little ones all managed to get sick for much of the last two weeks, so I’m just barely caught up with my bookmark list in the last few days. Should be able to do some commentary in the next roundup. News items from the last two weeks below the jump…

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik

At my new job, I’ve been reading a lot about economics. Along with a bunch of articles and white papers, I’m working my way through Beinhocker’s (very readable) The Origin of Wealth, and after that I’ll finally tackle Piketty’s Capital, which I have only up ’til now experienced through the lens that is Charles Mudede’s genius.

Learning about economics, it turns out, is great fun. Most of the modern texts are entertaining as hell, the concepts are fairly easy to grasp, and economics influences and is influenced by everything on the planet, so it gives you a new framework with which to perceive the world.

Maybe the most surprising fact about this deep dive is that the stuff I’m learning delivers a positive message. Unlike the vicious world presented by Ayn Rand and her legions of acolytes, the economics I’ve been reading about is inclusive: if businesses pay their workers more money, for example, the workers will spend more money, thus growing the economy for everyone. If you don’t just focus your growth on a tiny portion of the economy—like, oh, the 1 percent, for example—the money circulates outward and upward and downward. If everyone does better, it’s better for everyone. See? Positive!

Today, the New York Times published a piece by Adam Davidson titled “Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant.” It looks at immigration from an economic perspective, and it’s packed with good news: Davidson writes, “the economic benefits of immigration may be the most ­settled fact in economics.” But what about the conservative notion that immigrants are taking our jobs?

The chief logical mistake we make is something called the Lump of Labor Fallacy: the erroneous notion that there is only so much work to be done and that no one can get a job without taking one from someone else.

What’s the problem with this fallacy? Well, it’s, uh, false:

Immigrants don’t just increase the supply of labor, though; they simultaneously increase demand for it, using the wages they earn to rent apartments, eat food, get haircuts, buy cellphones. That means there are more jobs building apartments, selling food, giving haircuts and dispatching the trucks that move those phones.

The more people in the workforce, the bigger the workforce needs to be. So not only is the Republican fear-mongering against immigrants racist and hateful—it’s economically unsound, too. Go read the whole story.

Senator Sharon Brown has a brand-new idea for power generation. Nuclear something something!

In an era when carbon emissions are becoming a major concern and clean energy is a popular cause, Washington is poised to become a center for the development of one of the greenest technologies around. Clean, safe, abundant, all it needs is a bit of encouragement from the state and a willingness to understand that today’s nuclear power is like nothing before.

First off, I’m glad to see some Republican is acknowledging that carbon emissions are a problem. We may disagree on many things, but at least we can agree that humans are causing global warming. Oh? What? She voted with all but one of her GOP colleagues that we aren’t sure if humans cause global warming.

Also, unless you have some uranium lying around, you’re going to have to mine it. And that isn’t exactly a zero emissions proposition.

Yes, nuclear power. We’ve come a long way since the days of tie-dyed T-shirts and no-nukes concerts and the reactor technology of the 1960s and ‘70s. The new generation of reactor design is safer, simpler and potentially cheaper than anything we have seen to date. Export potential is enormous, to a Third World now electrifying with coal. Washington is uniquely suited to become a center for the development, design and export of this small modular nuclear-reactor technology, and we have a small window of opportunity to establish leadership and make this industry our own.

Export potential? I feel like that’s something to explore a bit. But no. Instead we have more discussion of the fashion sense of the 1960’s than of how that would happen.

Anyway, you could get me on board with one minor amendment. I propose we store the waste in her district. Since it’s so clean or whatever, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Or maybe just ask the Feds to deal with it and everything will be fine.

I have sponsored a series of bills in the Legislature this year that demonstrate our interest in this most promising industry. Senate Bill 5113 would require the state Department of Commerce to coordinate and advance the siting and manufacturing of small modular reactors. SB 5093 would establish a nuclear-education program in our high schools. SB 5091 would declare nuclear power a form of alternative energy that qualifies under the state‘s voluntary Green Power program. For those concerned about storage of spent nuclear fuel, we have passed a memorial asking the federal government to develop a nuclear-waste repository, once and for all. These measures all cleared the Senate — some with broad bipartisan support.

Oh cool. The Federal Government through Democratic and Republican governments, for decades and decades hasn’t been able to come up with a good solution. But now we’re asking them to develop a repository and so that’s that solved. PS, can the repository be in Richland?

Small modular nuclear reactors are quite a bit different from the big-reactor designs of the ‘70s. Instead of using a single built-in-place reactor core, they utilize a series of interchangeable and replaceable small reactors. A dozen together might be half the size of one of the big reactors of old. These small reactors use a more modern design with fewer moving parts, reducing risk of failure. And when one reactor goes offline for regular maintenance or repair, other modular reactors at the same facility can take its place and keep up the flow of power.

OK, great. We haven’t exactly solved the waste issue yet.

There are many exciting technologies being proposed. Planning is under way for a first-of-its-kind modular reactor in Idaho that will begin serving the Utah power market within a decade — most likely at the Idaho National Laboratory, with support from Washington’s Energy Northwest. Technology isn’t the holdup — federal and state permitting procedures must be developed, and there is ramp-up time involved in developing facilities capable of producing the required components.

Look, we’ve literally asked the Federal government to do something about nuclear waste, so now we have to hurry.

Now imagine if those manufacturing facilities were located here. Imagine if the next reactor were located at Hanford – Washington’s own nuclear industrial site, adjacent to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the talent base in the Tri-Cities. It could power Hanford’s new glassification plant, where legacy high-level defense waste will be converted to solid-glass form – and that by itself could spare us the need to consume 45,000 gallons of diesel fuel every day.

Hanford: Where nuclear waste was never a problem.

On a national level the states of Oregon, Idaho and Utah are becoming players. Nowhere in that conversation is our state, yet we have the intellectual capital and the resources. It is easy to see the possibilities. Successful companies plan for how to get from point A to point B — Washington should do the same for energy. Nuclear power is poised for a resurgence for economic and environmental reasons, and the question is whether we will seize the opportunity or let it slip away for lack of vision. It is better to lead, instead of looking back 10 years from now saying “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

Couldawouldashoulda had all that nuclear waste of our very own.

Mental Floss: 30 weird apps.

Bibi Goes To Washington:

• Maddow: Netanyahu on Iran echoes his incorrect 2002 Iraq alarm
• Young Turks: Rand Paul attacked for not applauding Netanyahu enough
• Mark Fiore: Greater Republica.
• Young Turks: Final judgement on Bibi’s little talk
• Jon on the CNN coverage
• Sam Seder: Chris Matthews destroys Netanyahu and Republicans for trying to hijack U.S. foreign policy
• Young Turks: Chris Matthews calls Netanyahu speech a startling “takeover attempt”

Pasco Police kill man but don’t know ‘use of force’ policy:

Jimmy Kimmel on his anti-vax haters.

Sam Seder: Nutcase Rep. Louie Gohmert thinks we can’t fight Boko Haram because of THE GAYS!.

Wrong-email-address-ghazi!

• Jon: Wrong-email-address-ghazi
• Young Turks: Did Hillary Clinton break the law
• David Pakman: Panic over Hillary’s emails for doing what Powell did

Funny or Die: An apology from Uber.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Crapaudinely Ugly.

They told this DEA agent not to enforce drug laws in white areas.:

Health Care Challenge:

• David Pakman: New challenge to ObamaCare explained
• WaPo: Health Care at the Supreme Court.
• Thom: Obamacare haters should be careful what they wish for
• Chris Hayes: GOP DISASTER if Obamacare “LOSES” at SCOTUS
• Sam Seder and Brian Beutler: Will SCOTUS save Obamacare?
• Ann Telnaes: Republicans look to trash health care through the Supreme Court.
• Young Turks: Upcoming Supreme Court decision could kill Obamacare
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Why did SCOTUS take the case that could destroy Obamacare now?

Congressional hits and misses of the week.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very Very Banausicly Ugly!.

David Pakman: Sheriff who refused Obamacare now begging strangers to pay medical bills.

Mental Floss: How does a two-way mirror work.

The 2016 Clown Parade:

• Maddow: Christie challenged on ExxonMobil pollution settlement
• David Pakman: Birfer Donald Trump has an idea on how to defeat ISIS
• Sam Seder: Dr. Ben Carson’s delusional presidential announcement.
• Dr. Ben Carson is convinced he knows how to become bay.
• Young Turks: Ben Carson’s queer silence about his homosexuality remarks
• David Pakman: Ben Carson apologizes for his previous idiotic statement on homosexuality
• David Pakman: Santorum’s CPAC Birfer joke bombs
• The irony of Presidential wannabe Scott Walker.
• David Pakman: Scott Walker can defeat ISIS because he took on prounion protesters
• Matt Binder: Scott Walker claims Reagan’s most important FOREIGN POLICY decision was firing 11,000 union workers

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about allergies.

Bill Maher: Republican’s obsession with whether Obama loves America enough.

David Pakman: 57% of Republicans say dismantle Constitution, make Christianity national religion.

Thom: Welcome to the new corporate feudalism.

Ferguson’s “Officers Friendly”:

• Thom: Shocking new report on Ferguson Police
• Jon on DOJ and the Ferguson police.
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: The systemic and grotesque racism of the Ferguson Police Department is uncovered
• Young Turks: DOJ show a racist Ferguson police department.
• Larry Wilmore gets pulled over. In his show’s studio.

Sam and Pap: How stupid has the GOP made America?

White House: West Wing Week.

David Pakman: Unemployment rate down to 5.6%, 212,000 new jobs.

“Senator Barb” paved way for Senate women:

Bill-O-The-Liar:

• Pap and Sam Seder: Bill O’Reilly’s career of lies
• Thom: Bill-O-the-Clown’s nose is growing again.
• Bill Maher and friends: Why isn’t the media going after bald-assed liar Bill-O like they did Williams?
• David Pakman: Audio tape debunks Bill-O’s claims regarding JFK case
• Michael Brooks: Audio tape proves Bill O’Reilly lied about JFK story
• David Pakman: Another lie…Bill-O-the-Liar didn’t really see ‘Irish terrorists kill and maim’ in Northern Ireland

Young Turks: Nutbag conservative blogger doesn’t like Spock because of Obama?!?

Greenman: Climate change elevator pitch from Mauri Pelto.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.