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That former gubernatorial shoo-in Rob McKenna is a crappy lawyer is no secret. But writing on his blog (yes, McKenna is now a lowly blogger like me!), McKenna seems intent on proving that he’s also a really crappy economist:

As the House debated a $12 minimum wage, Rep. Matt Manweller (R-13), who is also a political science professor at Central Washington University, had apparently heard enough of tortured economic arguments from the other side.

His speech held the House in rapt attention – no mean feat. Of course, the bill passed anyway, on a party-line 51-47 vote, but Manweller’s speech is truly worth your time.

And McKenna is right: Manweller’s speech is truly worth your time… if you want some insight into the sort of bullshit Trickle Down orthodoxy that would have guided McKenna’s economic agenda had he won the governor’s mansion. But if you’re interested in learning how the economy really works, not so much.

Insisting that when wages go up, employment necessarily goes down, Manweller is “baffled” he tells us, that there are so many people who simply do not understand “the law of demand,” angrily denouncing the $12 minimum wage as “the most anti-science bill” ever! Which would be a powerful condemnation indeed, if “the law of demand” was, you know, an actual law. But of course, it’s not. Physics is a natural science, and the law of gravity is an undeniable natural law. But Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, and supply and demand, at best, is just a broad generalization. To insist, as Manweller does, that the labor market would behave in the exact same way as the market for carbon, or health care, or private jets, is just plain stupid. (As is that oft repeated straw man that asks if $12 is so good, why not $50?)

For all his apoplectic eye-rolling, Manweller isn’t actually a bad speaker, exuding an authoritative air grounded in a profound sense of passion, commitment, and total delusion. But the last gubernatorial candidate to follow Manweller’s advice on the minimum wage, didn’t do too well. So publicly fawning over “The Nutty Professor” speaks as poorly of McKenna’s political acumen as does of his economic.

Heidi Groover writes in The Stranger about the verdict in the Kettle Falls Five case in Eastern Washington. Down from the original 5 defendants, the 3 remaining medical marijuana patients were facing long jail terms, essentially being charged as big-time drug traffickers rather than ordinary folks pushing the plant limits of our state’s collective garden law. The jury saw through the bullshit being thrown around by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Eastern Washington and acquitted them on all but one charge.

I’ve written before about this case and the incredibly cynical and spiteful behavior of U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby. There’s really no excuse for the Obama Administration to continue having him serve in that role openly defying the Obama Administration’s desire to leave ordinary patients alone. Groover details the more egregious aspects of this prosecution:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office combined photos they found of 75 plants grown in 2011 with the 74 live plants they found in 2012 in order to charge the family with growing 100 or more plants. That’s the number that triggers a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. This actually made up three of the counts facing the defendants: 1) conspiring to grow and distribute, 2) growing, and 3) distributing. (On Tuesday, the jury found them guilty of growing fewer than 100 plants, but not guilty on charges one and three.)

Then, the feds tacked on another troubling charge: use of a weapon in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The Harveys keep multiple guns in their house, which they say are for hunting and protecting their dogs from bears and cougars on their property. (I know this is weird. Guns are terrifying. But they’re common enough in Eastern Washington that having them near a pot grow doesn’t mean you were using them to protect that grow.) It was troubling because it would have added another five-year mandatory minimum.

Anyone could see that the defendants in this case weren’t big-time drug dealers. No evidence was ever presented that any of the defendants sold what they were growing. Nor was any evidence presented that their legally owned firearms were used in any way other than for protection. This was nothing more than an attempt to railroad innocent people, for reasons that aren’t clear to anyone. And, as Groover points out in her article, Ormsby is unapologetic and continuing to pursue other cases. If there are other victims of Ormsby’s office out there, I hope we’re able to shine some light on their cases as well.

More news items from the past two weeks…
[Read more…]

In a recent article at Vox, Dara Lind and German Lopez looked at the various theories for why crime has declined so much over the past two decades, based on a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice. One of the commonly accepted explanations is the trend in “broken windows” policing, the idea that aggressively focusing on smaller quality-of-life crimes lowers the incidence of crime overall. In looking at the evidence, however, they conclude:

The bottom line: Too difficult to tell. Ultimately, different departments define “broken-windows policing” differently and implement it in different ways — and, again, often alongside other changes. It’s true it’s hard to tell why crime declines in cities, but that applies to broken-windows policing as much as it applies to other macro explanations.

Furthermore, one of the main proponents of the broken windows success story, Malcolm Gladwell, has started to back away from that conclusion.

The Brennan Center report also comes down hard on the idea that mass incarceration is beneficial for reducing crime.

One thing that characterized both the broken windows and mass incarceration trends is that they were disproportionately used against minority communities. The protests in the second half of 2014 and into this year are a reaction to that. Minority communities feel harassed and victimized by police. Eric Garner’s last words “I Can’t Breathe” struck a chord for many people across the country who’ve dealt with it.

I’ve never bought into the idea that broken windows has any benefit. The idea that you can create order through fear and intimidation is a delusion. The combination of broken windows and mass incarceration with a society where so many little things are criminalized, from jaywalking to selling loose cigarettes to pot possession, inevitably ends up with increased antagonism between the police and the public. We’re now at the point where trying to measure the benefits of these crime prevention strategies needs to be accompanied with efforts to measure their drawbacks.

News items from the last two weeks…
[Read more…]

Mental Floss: Misconceptions from television.

Sam Seder: New PA Gov. suspends death penalty.

John Green: Understanding Boko Haram:

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

The Fog of War:

• Mark Fiore: Brian Williams and the fog of war.
• Cenk on Brian Williams
• Pap and Sam: The scary pathology of Brian Williams
• Jimmy Dore: “Hey everybody, fire Brian Williams.”
• David Pakman: William’s name disappears….
• Maher: The real problem for Brian Williams

Jon: FAUX News wants a Muslim King for President.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: Alabama resists civil rights again.

Young Turks: Senator Inhofe caught using fake photos of Russian invasion to push for military aid.

Climate Change and Denial:

• This is what 8000 people marching for real climate Leadership looks like.
• Sam Seder: FAUX News’ most batshit insane climate denial segment ever?
• David Pakman: Dumbshit Pat Robertson claims snow in Boston disprove climate change.
• Greenman: Climate change elevator pitch with Eric Rignot.
• David Pakman: FAUX News had to “give up her freedom” because of snowstorm and climate change “hoax”.
• Young Turks: FAUX News nutbag suggests climate change “hoax” costs us our freedom!

Obama: “Can I live?” The Buzzfeed video.

Young Turks: A woman without an identity.

West House: West Wing Week.

Perpetual War:

• Liberal Viewer: Should Congress declare war on ISIS?
• Thom with Alan Grayson: ISIS and perpetual war.
• Sam Seder: Obama’s perpetual war?
• David Pakman: Obama wants war authorization

Mental Floss: 23 weird awards.

Joe Biden misses his butt buddy?!?

David Pakman: NYC Mayor Calls for $15/hr minimum wage.

Matt Binder: The Crusades were in self-defense?: The bizarre Wingnut historical revisionism.

Jon is Leaving:

• Cenk: Jon is leaving
• David Pakman: Jon is leaving.
• HuffPo: Jon is is leaving….
• Chris Hayes: Jon Stewart destroyed Rumsfeld & CNN ‘Crossfire’
• Rush Limbaugh bloviates about what he thinks is the reason Jon is leaving.
• Young Turks: Who will replace Jon?
• James Rustad: Welcome back Kilborn
• Sam Seder: Jon Stewart’s legacy

Elizabeth Warren preempts GOP on Dodd-Frank rollbacks for large banks.

Young Turks: FAUX News caught reading RNC memo word for word.

Pap with Howard Nations: The IRS is soft on dark money.

Thom: Don’t be fooled…the Koch brothers are NOT social liberals.

Maddow: Dearth of inspectors raises pipeline risks:
http://youtu.be/_ty2pk7a9js

Mental Floss: Why is the heart associated with love?

President’s Day: February’s sexiest holiday.

The 2016 Clown Parade:

• Sam Seder: Shock as Scott Walker dodges the evolution question.
• Young Turks: Scott Walker punts on evolution.
• Sam Seder: What does Rush Limbaugh know about Scott Walker?
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Rand Paul quickly caves to Bibi & principles
• Michael Brooks: Don’t be fooled…Republican (presidential candidates) are certainly not concerned about inequality!
• Young Turks: Rand Paul caught lying about his college record.
• Matt Binder: Alex Jones’ crazy sexist rant defending Rand Paul
• David Pakman: Shocking poll…58% of IA GOP think Joni Ernst has what it takes to be president

Thom: Even more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Maddow: Elvis leaves the Mississippi GOP.

Ann Telnaes: A flock of media sheep:

Kimmel: The collective wisdom of Pat Robertson.

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

The editorial board of Vancouver’s Columbian—a paper so knee-jerk anti-labor that it makes the Seattle Times look the Union Record—has once again come out opposing the minimum wage, regurgitating the same blow chunks of trickle-down pablum. Literally the exact same sentence in three different editorials. But it’s fascinating to see how their preface has evolved over the past 18 months.

In our view: Skills the Key to Better Pay
Proposals to hike minimum wage to $15 will eliminate jobs – and opportunities
Published: September 8, 2013

… Realistically, the notion of a minimum wage is a job-killing philosophy. If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.

 

In Our View: Minimum Wage Experiment
Here’s hoping Seattle’s gutsy move pays off — but it’s tough to not be skeptical
Published: May 6, 2014

… Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, who sat on the mayor’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee, said: “This is an awesome victory for the 100,000 workers earning less than $15 an hour in Seattle. They will see their lives dramatically improved.” That is, if they still have a job. As The Columbian has written editorially in the past: “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”

 

In Our View: Raise Skills, not Base Pay
Minimum-wage workers’ concerns valid, but hike to $12 could cost them jobs
Published: February 2, 2015

… Yet there is a fine line between helping workers prosper and helping the businesses that employ them to prosper. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, but they require some balance. As The Columbian has written editorially, “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”

So in September, 2013 they categorically claim that the minimum wage is a “realistically… a job-killing philosophy,” in May, 2014 they allow a touch of doubt to seep in, warning it might improve workers’ lives “if they still have a job,” and now they’re willing to acknowledge that raising wages and helping businesses prosper “are not mutually exclusive.” The Columbian is still wrong to repeat their reality-denying zero sum game supply-side bullshit. But for them, this is progress!

It’ll be interesting to see where the editors are in another 18 months when Seattle and SeaTac are both prospering under their higher minimum wages, and Vancouver is still… well… Vancouver.

Look, I don’t really care if a bill is bipartisan or not. If a bill is a good idea, then the party makeup of that bill’s sponsors don’t matter as much as the number of legislators supporting it. Of course, in the state Senate with GOP control, the measures I support will probably need some bipartisan support to pass. And in the state House, I suspect most bills I like will be improved by being more partisan and getting GOP support would water them down. But whatever, the process is the process. And for people who are less partisan than me, bipartisanship is important.

If you want bipartisanship qua bipartisanship, there are ways you can reach out to the other side without compromising your values. Let’s see how whoever is in charge of the House GOP Twitter feed tried to show they are bipartisan.

As of last night, @WaHouseGOP members have introduced 151 bills with Democrat co-sponsors. #bipartisanwa #waleg

— WaHouseGOP (@WaHouseGOP) January 24, 2015

“Democrat co-sponsors”? It wouldn’t have cost them anything to write “Democratic” and show they were actually committed to a process that respects both sides. I mean honestly, it’s not that big of a deal, but they could try to make their tweets a bit less self-refuting.

Also, I tried to find some context and was only somewhat successful. If I’m reading this right it looks like there have been 1229 bills introduced in both houses. If you assume half of them are in the House of Representatives, that’s most bills in the House aren’t bipartisan. I don’t know. It’s 7:30 on Friday, and this is exactly how much research I’m willing to do before I go out.

It’s great to see the Seattle Times editorial board so enthusiastically on board in support of high quality early education. But honestly guys… the logical next step shouldn’t be all that difficult:

Talking about how beneficial early education can be for kids and families is easy. Finding money for it is a much bigger challenge.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Early education has emerged as a promising strategy for closing the gap between low- and high-achieving students. Educators and lawmakers, both Democratic and Republican, are increasingly pushing early education as a necessity, rather than a merely “nice to have.”

Still, early education represents less than 1 percent of the state budget. During the 2013-2015 budget cycle, the state put $163 million into the Department of Early Learning.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

During this legislative session, which began Monday, lawmakers should take a hard look at how to significantly boost participation and funding in Washington’s early education programs.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Statewide, about 41 percent of Washington’s children, ages 3 to 4, are enrolled in an early education program compared with a national average of 47 percent, according to Education Week.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

The state’s main pre-K effort is the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, known as ECEAP, that targets children ages 3 to 5 from families earning 110 percent or less than the federal poverty level. For 2014, that means an income of less than $26,235 for a family of four.

Last December, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy reported that children who participated in ECEAP scored better on standardized tests in third and fourth grade than similar children who did not attend the program.

ECEAP shows results, but participation is way too low. During the 2013-2014 school year, 48,259 children were eligible for the program, the state estimated. But the state only funded 8,741 and another 10,390 took part in Head Start, a federally-funded program.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Therefore, about 60 percent — or more than 29,000 ECEAP-eligible students — were not enrolled in either the state or federal program.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed pumping an additional $156.3 million into early education to add 6,358 slots for ECEAP as well as expanding Early Achievers, a state program that rates and trains child-care providers to provide early learning curriculum.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

The governor’s proposal recognizes the variety of ways to provide early education. Even if the state provided enough ECEAP for all eligible children, there are many other children not eligible.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Some families prefer to send their kids to child-care centers or keep them at home with relatives. The state does not have a broad, one-size-fits all solution, but it does not have to.

As long as children are receiving some form of high-quality instruction before they enter kindergarten, they are more likely to perform better in later grades.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Funding for early education pales in comparison to K-12, but that system is taking center stage in the state budget discussion.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

State lawmakers are grappling with how to fund the McCleary ruling, a state Supreme Court decision mandating the state to fully pay for basic education. They also face Initiative 1351, a voter-approved measure that limits class sizes and calls for about 25,000 more school employees. Funding both could cost at least $4 billion during the next biennium, according to lawmakers’ estimates.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Elected leaders, state and local, advocate for early learning as an investment that will make K-12 students more successful. During what promises to be a tough budget battle, lawmakers must keep in mind it is never too early for a child to succeed academically.

Um… we could always raise taxes.

Seriously. It’s great to see the Seattle Times editorial board finally put its weight behind high quality early learning. Now if only they would put their weight behind raising the tax revenue necessary to pay for it (you know, the way voters just did here in Seattle), we might finally get our state’s three- and four-year-old’s the high quality preschool they deserve and need.

Thom: Politically correcting Bill-O on his crazy climate change statements.

Season’s Greetings:

• Roy Zimmerman: Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa:
  http://youtu.be/9MIKzPavUro
• Nick Offerman reads a more casual “Twas the Night Before Christmas”
• Mental Floss: 16 innovative origins of holiday traditions
• Slate: Pain and violence in Christmas movies
• Roy Zimmerman: Christmas is Pain.
• Sam Seder: Bill-O-The-Clown claim victory in the War on Christmas.
• Young Turks: Mission accomplished–the Grinch who SAVED Christmas
• James Rustad: The Bush’s 12 Days of Christmas

James Rustad: Ted Cruz…a rebel without a clue.

Thom: You don’t frack with New York.

Jon hits Hannity over referring to Jay Z as a “crack dealer”

The Cuban Mingle Crisis:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: Sen. Rubio’s blatant hypocrisy
• Stephen hits the Pope over Cuba
• Young Turks: New Cuba policy provokes nutburgers into a frenzy of nonsense
• Obama defends his actions over Cuba.
• Sam Seder: U.S. begins normalizing relations with Cuba
• Young Turks: Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have a Cuban missile crisis.
• Ann Telnaes: Sen Marco Rubio responds to normalizing relations with Cuba.
• Sam Seder shares his stories from Cuba

Congressional Hits and Misses.

Ed and Pap: Another corrupt Bush seeking White House?

Young Turks: Andrew Hawkins has some powerful words:

Megyn Kelly: When things go weird with Obama.

Torture in our Name:

• Jon: Dick Cheney’s mind is the scariest fucking place in the Universe
• Jimmy Dore: The torture report is so funny you’ll shit your hummus.
• Farron Cousins: The Bush Administration needs to stand trial. Period.
• Thom: Will Europe prosecute Bush or Cheney for torturing?
• Ann Telnaes: Dick has no regrets about torture.
• Stephen: Debates a formidable opponent on torture
• David Pakman: For 1st time Cheney admits some detainees were innocent. Doesn’t care.
• Jimmy Dore: Here’s what nobody understands about torture
• David Pakman: CIA didn’t just torture…they did human medical experiments
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Dick Cheney—The disgusting torture apologist

Larry Wilmore’s Nightly Show promo.

Sam Seder: Jeb Bush and the Republican clown car.

Obama talks about his own experience with racial profiling.

Thom: Is a climate disaster lurking off of the coast of Washington state?

Poison Pills:

• Jon: Look what Congress slipped into the spending bill.
• Mark Fiore: Citygroup Democracy
• Sam Seder: The argument for voting FOR the CRomnibus
• Ed O’Keefe: What’s inside the spending bill

White House: West Wing Week.

“Mom…you’re embarrassing us!”

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

Obama takes a swing at Keystone.

Sony and Kim-J:

• Lawrence O’Donnell: North Korea wages war on Sony.
• Obama: I am sympathetic…but Sony made a mistake
• Young Turks: FBI confirms the source….
• Jon: So now Kim Jong-un determines what movies get made?
• Ari Melber: Is canceling ‘The Interview’ caving to terrorists?
• Slate: The Interview, as reenacted with pencil puppets

Jimmy Dore: Ben Stein reveals his racist side talking about Ferguson.

Mental Floss: 13 inventions and innovations creating a better future for women.

Matt Binder: Ten Sandy Hook families sue gun maker.

Maddow: On Putin, GOP & FAUX News must eat their words:
http://youtu.be/Ezh5hQKI9ho

Jimmy Kimmel: The YEAR in unnecessary censorship.

Does Stephen Commit Comicide?:

• Stephen: 12 very good moments from the Colbert Report.
• The final Colbert Report
• FAUX News dullard thinks Colbert should write a check to FAUX
• Slate: A tribute—Stephen’s music
• Stephen holds a yard sale.
• Stephen: 10 years of ALMOST staying in character
• Stephen’s final “Word”.

Thom: Is George Zimmerman right?

Sam Seder: Ted Cruz “own goals” the G.O.P..

Farron Cousins: Jeb Bush is the worst Republican traits on one package.

Not Mental Floss: 13 thing you think are true but aren’t.

Nutbag Republican state lawmaker proposes women have to ask men’s permission to have an abortion.

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

Sam Seder: FAUX News contributor Ben Stein claims, “Obama is the Most Racist President in American History!”

Funny or Die: Republican Bruce Springsteen.

Sam Seder: FAUX News contributor pastor claims Starbucks puts semen in their coffee.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about pregnancy.

Pot legalization: Which states are next?

What Election?

• Mark Fiore: The last campaign ad ever
• Jon: Who the fuck are you people?
• Young Turks: Guns, balls, and other crazy shit from the 2014 election
• Obama meets with Congressional leaders.
• Maddow: Compromise unlikely after GOP anti-Obama wins
• Ann Telnaes: Americans will be the ones squealing.
• Sam Seder: Liberal policies win big
• Young Turks: Nutjob new OK Sen. elect packs just one book for new job….
• David Pakman: Alaska & Oregon vote to legalize marijuana.
• Thom: Democrats were duped by the Caucus Room Conspiracy
• Farron Cousins: Midterm losses a teachable moment for progressives
• Jon: a shared message of horseshit
• David Allison: Billionaire for Idaho
• Liberal Viewer: Election wins show drug reform will sweep the nation.
• Sam Seder: The worst of the worst of the midterm elections.
• Jon interviews Chairman of RNC, and discusses his erection
• David Pakman: San Francisco votes in $15 minimum wage
• James Rustad: The Midterm Election Debacle Song
• Represent.us: First anti-corruption act in US history passes
• David Pakman: The GOOD of the 2014 election
• Young Turks: Science denier will be running Science Committee
• WaPo: The voters that fueled the “Republican wave”.
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: How Democrats fucked up.
• David Pakman: 100% of newly elected Republican Senators campaigned on repealing ObamaCare
• Maddow: Obama calls GOP bluff on Ebola, ISIS.
  http://youtu.be/2f9zIVZSUrE
• Sharpton goes upside down over election results
• CSPAN: Republican caller warns Republicans to not overreach, and that “the Republicans hate that nigger Obama.”
• Thom: The fatal flaw with democracy.
• Jon: The chickenshit gambit.
• Chris Cillizza: The three Senate races that surprised The Fix.

Barack Obama: Lame duck or cool duck?

Sam Seder and Cliff Schechter: #PointerGate!

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Crazy shit actual U.S. Senators believe.

Jimmy Kimmel: This week in Unnecessary Censorship.

Political Climate Change:

• Stephen: Calling out “I’m not a Scientist” Republicans.
• Alex Wagner: Jim Inhofe, rabid climate denier, to head Senate climate committee
• Greenman: What history tells us about sea level rise.
• Thom: Stark warnings from UN on climate change

Jon says NBC is confused for going to him about “Meet the Press”.

David Pakman: Boehner hires two lawyers to sue Obama…they both quit.

Maddow: AZ town censors biology…gives textbook an abortion.

Sam Seder: Does Jeb Bush seriously think he’ll become President?

Mental Floss: 23 money tips for any occasion.

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

A while ago, Goldy thought Sound Politics might have gone the way of the Buffalo. I guess they did in the fact that it looked like they would be gone, but they’re still around. This is a bad metaphor so I guess instead of continuing it, I should still make fun of them? This Jim Miller piece [h/t to my friend N via email and to Tensor in comments] goes for it, starting with a violation of Betteridge’s Law and then not getting better after that.

Do Illegal Votes By Non-Citizens Sometimes Determine Elections Here In The United States?

No? Does Sound Politics need a new hobby horse? Yes!

I began thinking about that problem more than two decades ago, and concluded, tentatively, that the answer was yes. After the 2000 presidential election, and all the disputes that went with it, I put more time into the problem and, in 2002 gave an example, Maria Cantwell’s defeat of Slade Gorton, where that may have happened.

It sure is convenient to be able to just assume out of thin air that any close election must really belong to you. Because reasons.

The logic of my underlying argument is simple:

As it is written by a simpleton.

1. There are more non-citizens living in the United States than ever before.

Are there? No links or any other evidence was provided. It wouldn’t surprise me if, for example, when we were building the West with a significant amount of Irish, German, and Scandinavian (among others) immigrants that there was a higher number of non-citizens in the US.

2. Some small proportion of them will be tempted to register and vote, illegally.

Well, if some small portion are tempted to do a thing, that thing must happen all the time in fact. QED, I don’t think we need to even go on.

3. Many places have few checks against non-citizens voting, so most of those tempted will succeed.

Some amount of a small number will be tempted could in theory do a thing then that thing is always already happening.

4. The non-citizens here in the United States tend to favor the Democratic Party.

Again, no need to actually prove this.

Therefore, I concluded, some close elections were being tipped to the Democrats by these illegal votes.

So two unproven assertions and two things that are admittedly not very large combine to… something? Here, let me try:

1) Puppies are adorable
2) Most people who hate puppies are Republicans
3) That time Mitt Romney tied his dog to the roof of a car, or whatever
4) A small number of cars have been owned by Mitt Romney

Therefore, I conclude that people who hate puppies are the only reason that Romney won any states.

All through this time, however, I have been unhappy that I could not find any academic studies of the question. And it was obvious to me that it was not a difficult research problem, that you could get a good start on it simply by running a large survey, and asking the right questions, in the right way.

Hey you know how sometimes our trolls will come into the comment threads with large lists that if you’re a dummy — and don’t understand they’ve been obviously ripped out of context — sometimes seem a bit silly? I mean, I don’t know everything this survey does, but I imagine if our trolls actually cared, as opposed to were just copying and pasting from some nonsense list someone compiled, that they would add asking people who can’t vote if they vote. It’s a large survey and it probably does have value. But I wouldn’t posit this piece as the most important.

Now, finally, three researchers, Jesse Richman, Gulshan Chattha, and David Earnest, have done that study, and provided direct evidence for the conclusion I reached more than a decade ago.

I mentioned in the last Open Thread a thing that refutes this. So I’ll quote from that instead of Jim Miller’s quoting of the piece, and then pick it back up with Miller.

The limitations are, in fact, numerous, and not limited to those that Richman and Earnest enumerate. Their estimates rely on a key question from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study: “Are you registered to vote?” Notably, this is not the same question as “Are you registered to vote in the United States?” In principle, non-citizens could be registered to vote only in their home country and respond affirmatively, and truthfully, to the question on the survey.(Respondents are asked for the Zip code at which they are registered to vote, but this could be interpreted as the Zip code at which non-citizens receive absentee ballots from abroad. Mexico, for example, has allowed absentee voting by mail from abroad since 2005.) If this sounds outlandish, consider that 20 percent (15 out of 75) of those non-citizens claiming to be registered in 2008 were in fact verified as not being registered to vote in the United States. Another 61 percent (46 of 75) could not be matched to either a commercial or voter database. That leaves only 14 out of 75 non-citizen respondents claiming to be registered in 2008 who were in fact confirmed as registered to vote in the United States.

Anyway, back to the nonsense.

You may want to apply those numbers to make back-of-the-envelope estimates of the likelihood that illegal votes by non-citizens gave Democratic candidates victories in your favorite close elections. For example, this strengthens my conclusion that Cantwell’s victory in 2000, by just 2,229 votes, was illegitimate. And it makes it nearly certain that Christine Gregoire’s 2004 victory over Dino Rossi, by just 129 votes, was illegitimate. In fact, I will go further and say that, if you could have magically eliminated the non-citizen votes from just Seattle, Dino Rossi would have won the final recount.

Um, OK. They asked 55,400 people about their voting habits and 13 said they voted when they weren’t citizens. Assuming none of them misinterpreted the question and none of their answers were entered wrong, that’s 0.000235% of the population voting despite being unable to vote in the country legally. So yes, if you assume that is a correct number, there were 659.3999 of the 2,810,058 people who voted in the Rossi-Gregoire race that voted who shouldn’t have. That’s higher than the total difference in the vote, but (a) there’s nothing to indicate how they would vote if they exist except for the general results mean they probably would have gone something like half-and-half to each candidate, with a few to the Libertarian and (b) the state GOP and conservative blogs spent months and months looking for illegal votes, but really didn’t turn up anyone in this category. I can’t imagine if there were 659.3999 humans out there who had voted illegally that none of them would have been found. Talk about Sound Politics being a bastion of rank incompetence.

There is nothing difficult in the chain of reasoning that I went through years ago, and I am nearly certain that others came to the same conclusion, independently. I think it likely that unscrupulous Democratic operatives saw that they could gain a few votes by making it easier for non-citizens to vote, and that Republican operatives saw that they could be on the side of truth and justice — and gain a few votes, net — by putting tighter controls on registration and voting. Understanding that non-citizens were sometimes tipping elections to the Democratic Party would explain, for example, why George Soros, and others, put money into the Secretary of State Project.

Not the actual, legit disenfranchisement of voters that happens when you put those things in place. It’s the 0.000235% at most of people.

As has happened far too often in recent years, I wish that research had proved me wrong, wish that our close elections were not sometimes being determined by illegal votes.

Done! Today only I can grant wishes.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

I’m totally reading it again!

(For the record: I can think of a few places where illegal votes by non-citizens might help Republican candidates, for example, where there were many immigrants from Russia, or other countries that have suffered from Communism.)

For the record, I’m not sure that immigrants from Russia today are particularly opposed to Communism. Does Jim Miller not know what’s happened in the last couple decades in Russia? Anyway, there can be lots of reasons that people vote.

This is a little old, but State Senator Mike Padden is writing nonsense in the Spokesman-Review.

Gov. Jay Inslee’s justice reinvestment task force has met just twice and has until December to produce its recommendations. Already, however, there are signals that it may propose easing up on prison time for drug and nonviolent property offenders as a way to save money and delay building a new state prison. Some outside commentators have called that a “smart-on-crime” approach.

The executive order to form the task force was only signed in June. Then it takes some time to get everything together. They’ve also had another meeting since this was published, that presumably Padden knew was on the agenda.

The task force was created in June through a federal-level initiative that is supposed to take a data-driven approach to increasing and reinvesting in public safety. Yet the data I have, as Senate Law and Justice Committee chairman, fail to support the notion that putting more burglars on community supervision will do much – except put them in a better position to reoffend.

Keeping people in jail for low level property crimes seems like an excellent way to integrate them back into society. Also, are we deriding the very notion of data driven approaches?

“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams once said. Here are three facts that cannot be ignored:

There was really no value added in quoting Adams there. The guy who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts likes facts. Here are some context free facts about prison in Washington:

First, reports of crimes and arrests have declined across Washington. Since 1990, the state’s population is up 40 percent, yet arrests are down 18 percent, and overall crime is down 10 percent. Washington’s incarceration rate is almost one-half the national average, and its property and violent crime rates have fallen one-third or more in about 10 years. There is no reason to believe these trends will not continue.

So less crime means we need to get tougher on criminals? It’s solid thinking right there.

And not for nothing, but we started doing adult drug courts in 2003 as one way of of moving away from mass incarceration. I’m sure whoever the equivalent of Senator Padden then was complaining about mollycoddling criminals and addicts. But while correlation doesn’t equal causation — and of course there are multiple causes for anything as complex as changes in prison population — I would posit that that’s a more reasonable explanation for a decline in crime in that time than harsh penalties.

The root cause of overcrowding at state correctional institutions is not the number of inmates but a lack of bed space that coincides with the state’s closure of not one, not two, but three prisons in recent years.

How we would pay for keeping more prisons open with the recent spate of austerity budgets pushed for by the GOP is left to the reader’s imagination.

Second, Washington’s prison population contains a large number of serious criminals. Almost 5,000 of those in prison as of June 30, 2014 – or 28 percent of the total prison population – were there for crimes of seriousness level 11 or higher. Level 16 is for prisoners serving life sentences or on death row; levels 11 and 12 include first- and second-degree rape, rape of a child, and intentional assaults causing great bodily harm.

I thought this article was about “drug and nonviolent property offenders.” Now we’re talking about the quarter or so of offenders that are in prison for serious crimes? How you deal with addiction (or for that matter people relaxing after work or however else non-addictively they use drugs) and petty theft should probably be different from how you deal with more serious crimes.

More than one-half of those admitted to prison in 2013 served time at least once before, and more than 40 percent of those admitted were convicted of crimes against persons. While less than one-third were property offenders, even 40 percent of them had prior violent offenses.

There’s no discussion in this if going to prison as opposed to committing those crimes is the cause of future crimes or escalation. But maybe don’t put how Washington’s prisons aren’t doing a good job of rehabilitating people into your article about how we need to send more people to prison for longer in Washington.

I suspect these statistics, which came from the task force, understate the dangerous nature of Washington’s prison population. For example, the governor’s group categorized certain burglaries as “nonviolent” offenses. Either way, even the task-force members would be hard-pressed to deny that earning a prison sentence in Washington means committing a lot of serious crimes. That’s how it should be, which is exactly why trading prison sentences for community supervision is no way to increase public safety.

Well it depends on the crime.

Finally, reducing punishment doesn’t reduce crime. Property offenses are the least-punished offenses in Washington, so this year I introduced legislation to increase sentences for habitual property offenders. In public testimony on this bill, law enforcement and lawyers told of offenders with 50 or more prior property crimes who don’t face prison time until after a dozen or more felony convictions. We heard similar accounts at the Senate Law and Justice Committee’s Oct. 3 work session in Spokane Valley – an area that is no stranger to property crime. In such cases, who is looking out for the victims?

I’m sorry, but if someone is committing 50 property crimes and not getting punished for it, they aren’t serious crimes. Or they’re like children or there’s some other mitigating factor.

Some argue that increasing supervision after prison will reduce recidivism. I am not persuaded, especially given a recent Freedom Foundation report that uncovered serious problems with home detention and electronic monitoring in our state, including a lack of adequate service and timely notifications to law enforcement. What’s to discourage a burglar from stealing if being caught is unlikely to mean prison or even effective community supervision?

So instead of having a bill to make supervision work better, Senator Padden decided to introduce legislation for throwing people into prison.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that “pardoning the bad is injuring the good.” While releasing certain offenders may save money in the short run, doing so stands to hurt the people of Washington in the long run – and in more than their pocketbooks.

That quote is better than the Adams one, but I’d still ax it. Anything you want to say can probably be said better without it. Anyway, congrats on having a copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and/or having memorized two vague quotes from Founding Fathers.

I have been advocating for universal preschool for years, both here on HA, and more extensively at The Stranger. High quality early learning is the only education reform absolutely proven to work. And that is why I will be voting for Proposition 1B.

I’m not totally unsympathetic to the stated goals of the labor-backed Prop 1A, but to be clear, it does not implement preschool. It’s about raising the pay, training, and certification of childcare workers, and it sets a goal of reducing childcare costs to 10 percent of a family’s income. Which are good things. But it’s totally unfunded. And it does not create a single preschool classroom, let alone a high quality one.

Childcare and preschool are not the same thing.

Prop 1B, on the other hand, fully funds the gradual phase-in of citywide universal high quality preschool through a modest 11 cent per $1,000 of assessed value hike in the property tax—about $50 a year for the average homeowner. This evidenced-based program would ultimately be free to all three- and four-year-olds from families earning below 300 percent of the federal poverty line (currently $71,550 for a family of four), with generous sliding scale tuition subsidies for families earning more than that.

Yes, the implementation is a bit slower than a lot of people would like—the plan is to serve 2,000 children by 2018—but we have no choice but to implement slowly. Serving 2,000 students is the equivalent of creating five new elementary schools in a district that’s already struggling to meet capacity; we simply lack both the physical infrastructure and the number of trained and certified  teachers sufficient to implement a high quality program overnight. And experiences in Boston and elsewhere teach us that implementing preschool right is more important than implementing it fast.

Furthermore, implementing a successful preschool program here in Seattle is the first step toward implementing high quality early learning statewide. If we do it right here, we’ll soon see similar programs in cities like Bellevue, Mercer Island, Shoreline, Renton, and Tacoma. Pretty soon voters throughout the state will demand the same opportunities for their children. Reject Prop 1B and you could set back Washington’s early learning agenda by a decade or more.

So yes, I am enthusiastically voting for Prop 1B, without reservations. Whatever the disappointing political machinations that led to this showdown, the clear choice on the ballot is between a measure that actually implements universal preschool, and a measure that doesn’t. I’m voting for the one that does. And so should you.

Honestly, what a bunch of assholes:

Unfortunately for King County taxpayers, Metro’s focus on efficiency has also been like a teenager’s — wavering.

Until now.

Voters’ rejection of the $1.6 billion, 10-year King County Proposition 1 in April has forced Metro to do some soul-searching. Rather than cutting 600,000 hours of bus service, as was initially threatened if Proposition 1 failed, Metro this week said the real number is now 400,000 hours, due, in part, to suddenly found efficiencies.

It’s amazing that after a few months of budget-scrubbing, the agency can find $123 million in savings within its two-year, $1.4 billion operating budget.

Are you fucking kidding me? Do they honestly believe that these sort of savings happen overnight? The bulk of the savings in this budget come from cost-cutting efforts that have been ongoing for years—and take years to pay off. Other savings aren’t really savings at all, but rather shifts from capital spending to operations—shifts that will accumulate their own costs over time.

But even with these savings, a 400,000-hour cut in bus service is nothing to celebrate when it comes at a time when we should be adding 500,000 hours of service just to meet current demand! That’s a 900,000-hour shortfall! Almost a third of total bus service!

This is an austerity budget, pure and simple, and it is strangling our region’s ability to sustain economic growth.

Fuck the Seattle Times editorial board and its dishonest efforts to dis any proposed tax increase at any time for any purpose under any circumstances.

If the fairness issue can’t move the serious people to start the conversation on tax restructuring (and Washington State does have the most regressive tax structure in the nation), perhaps the negative economic impact of our current tax structure will?

Washington is among the states that depend most heavily on sales taxes for revenue, and a new report links a decline in growth of such funds to the rising concentration of wealth for the richest U.S. households.

The study by credit-ratings agency Standard & Poor’s shows a significant decline in annual average state tax growth among the 10 most sales tax-dependent states, which includes Washington.

That report ties the slowed growth to rising income inequality, which appears to stunt overall economic growth. S&P also links it to a slowdown in average yearly gains in state tax revenues.

Washington is in fact the most sales-tax-dependent state in the nation, and it is crippling our ability to make the human and physical infrastructure investments we need. Our state’s inability to fund McCleary? Blame the sales tax. King County Metro’s 400,000 hours of service cuts? Blame the sales tax.

Seriously, serious people, we need to add some sort of tax on income and/or wealth into the mix.

Danny Westneat has been obsessing over our woeful higher education funding recently, as he should, first with a column pointing out that we would need to expand the number of degrees awarded by 25,000 annually just to keep up with current demand, and now with a column highlighting the utter stupidity of asking our universities to prepare for another 15 percent cut.

Danny’s doing a great job of pointing out the death spiral our state college and university system is facing. But what he hasn’t touched on is the obvious solution: raise taxes.

As you can see in the chart below, the cost of educating each “full time equivalent” student has remained relatively flat over the past 25 years. But as state funding has been slashed, tuition has been hiked to increasingly make up the difference, from about 20 percent of costs in 1960 to about to about 75 percent today. That is a direct shift of costs onto the backs of students and their families, resulting in an explosion of student debt.

To be clear, it’s not the cost of a college education that’s been skyrocketing, it’s the price:

So why have we resorted to this dramatic shift from taxpayer funding to ever-higher tuition? The following chart, tracking state taxes per $1,000 of personal income should give you a clue:

As you can clearly see, our state’s dramatic decline in higher education funding corresponds directly to a dramatic decline in state tax revenue as a percentage of our overall economy. We can have a conversation about how to spend higher education dollars more efficiently if we want. But the inescapable truth is that we’re simply not spending enough money. And we’re not spending enough money because our state taxes are too low.

No we can’t just throw money at the problem. But part of the problem is a lack of money. And just like with our K-12 schools, we simply cannot adequately address this shortfall without raising taxes.