kingrat | Entries tagged with politics

The history of this one is a little convoluted. Labor unions ran an initiative to do a number of things regarding childcare, chief among them raise the childcare worker minimum wage to $15 per hour and require training and certification. They got enough signatures. The city council worked on a universal preschool pilot program. The propositions aren’t exactly one or the other like initiatives 591 and 594 are, but they both concern how to help preschool age children. So the city made it an either-or proposition.

My assumptive goal is to provide children with the resources to be functioning members of society.

So, if either of these measure does that, I’m going to vote yes on part 1. So on to checking both proposals:

: Photo by Barnaby Wasson (CC By-Nc-Sa)

Proposition 1A

1A does a few things:

It sets the minimum wage for child care workers at $15 per hour with a phase-in of three years. The city council passed a $15 minimum wage that can phase in for up to 7 years. I see no reason to make that more complicated. It was a hard negotiated compromise, and I opposed businesses messing with it and I oppose labor messing with it.
1A mandates that the city adopt goals, timelines and milestones to institute a policy that no family pay more than 10% of their income for early education and child care. While that’s a laudable goal, I think a hard limit of 10% is misguided as it doesn’t factor in number of children, their needs, or their families’ circumstances. I think a sliding scale based on family income and adjusted for other factors is a better target. That’s what 1B does.
1A states that violent felons cannot provide child care in a licensed or unlicensed facility. This is perfectly reasonable, though I’d be surprised if the state doesn’t already prohibit violent felons from working in child care facilities.
1A requires the city hire a Provider Organization to facilitate communication between childcare workers and the city. As far as I can tell from the requirements in the initiative, that organization would need to be one of the unions that is sponsoring the measure. I’m all for unionization, but this seems a bit like making the city talk to the union and pay for the privilege.
1A would establish a training institute to be run by the Provider Organization from the last bullet point that would train and certify all childcare workers. Requiring training and licensing seems fine with me, but requiring the program to be run by a union seems a big loss of independence. I’d rather it be run by another organization, or the city itself.
1A creates a Workforce Board to oversee the measure, including the training institute and standards. Half the board is nominated by the mayor, half by the Provider Organization. That seems like too large amount of influence to give to a union.
1A creates a fund to assist small child care providers to meet city standards. That seems like a great idea.

One thing not listed in this is where the funding for it comes from. That isn’t a definitive reason to vote against it in my view, but it does mean I’m gonna look hard at it. The city would have one more priority to work into an existing budget and it’s not like we have a lot of extra money floating around. I’d prefer if we had an explicit ordered priority for our budget so new things like this could be slotted in at some spot in the priority. We don’t, and so the city is going to have to do it, and going to have to cut something or raise taxes for it (and we don’t have much room to raise with current legislative limits). We could raise property taxes similarly to how 1B does it, but will require another vote. I’d much rather it be included in this vote.

All in all, I’m leaning against this, primarily for the reason that it puts too much control into the hands of the industry to regulate and manage itself on the city’s dime. It seems like a way to restrain trade rather than improve education and child care.

Proposition 1B

Proposition 1B creates a four year pilot early learning (i.e., preschool) program with the goal of making it permanent and covering all preschool age children in the city. It will have free or sliding scale tuition based on income. The oversight board includes 12 members of the Families and Education Oversight Committee, which is (I believe) an existing committee that oversees a previous levy. 4 additional members would be part of the oversight board, and they would be Seattle residents with interest and experience with the growth and development of children. Only one of them can be from an organization that receives funding through the measure.

The proposition enacts a property tax that raises $14 million to fund the pilot program. The city won’t need to prioritize other programs out of the budget.

Proposition 1B seems to be a good faith attempt to provide education to young children, which is my goal, rather than provide a large amount of control to a union. I’m all for unions, and even giving them seats at the table. But they should not be in charge, as their interests are with their members, not with children. I don’t think they are opposed to children’s interests, but they aren’t synonymous.

Upshot is, I’ll be voting yes for part 1 of proposition 1, and for 1B for part 2.

Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there.

Due to the remnants of a Tim Eyman initiative, we have advisory votes on anything that can be construed as a tax increase that’s passed by the legislature. There are only two such this year.

Advisory Vote No. 8

: Photo by Stephen McGrath (CC By-Nc-Nd)

After we legalized marijuana two years ago, marijuana growers qualified for standard preferences for agriculture. The legislature eliminated that preference for them, costing about $25 million a year. I am relishing the thought of conservatives having to vote for a tax increase or for marijuana. Since our state is undertaxed, there’s no way I’m voting against what’s essentially a sin tax. That was part of the argument for the marijuana legalization initiative. Legalize it and tax it. So here we are. I’m voting maintained.

Advisory Vote No. 9

The legislature added $1.3 million in excise taxes on leasehold interests in tribal properties. I have no idea what exactly that is, but this is exactly the sort of thing we elect the legislature for. Absent a compelling reason against it, I’m voting maintained.

Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there.

Initiative 594 would apply currently used criminal and background checks by licensed dealers to all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales, with specific exceptions.

: Gun Show photo by Michael Glasgow (CC By)

While I tend to be a bleeding heart liberal, I’m generally less supportive of gun control measures than a lot of other folks. There’s essentially two things I want to see changed about guns in the United States. The first is that stupid people should not possess or own guns. Who should decide what and who is stupid? Me. Of course, that’s not going to happen. But that’s my ideal.

The second is I’d really like to see a change in culture away from a hard-core attachment to guns. That’s not a law thing; that’s a culture thing. Guns aren’t needed and aren’t useful in 99.9% of the cases people think they are. For example, open carry. To give an analogy, I think flip flops should not be worn except at the beach, pool, or locker room and yet people wear them everywhere. I do not, and would not, support any banning of flip flops. But that doesn’t mean I think people should wear them. Please, stop wearing flip flops. Similarly, leave your gun at home. I don’t think open carry should be encouraged, but I think it should be generally lawful.

So that brings me to I-594. I-594 is not a litmus test for me. I think people can vote in good conscious for this measure without earning my ire. There are two questions that determine my answer to this initiative. The first is, will this do any good? The second is, is it worth the loss of freedom to transfer or sell a gun without a check?

I’m going to delve into the second question first. The answer is, I don’t think so. The burden on a person selling a gun is not substantial. TA quick search says the cost for this is generally less than $100 currently. The wait will be between 0 and 10 days, depending on the results. Generally the check happens instantly if a person doesn’t have issues that need to be dealt with. After 10 days, the sale/transfer can go through even if the background check hasn’t come back.

For the sellers, the burden is the cost. If the cost to purchase a gun goes up, people will buy fewer guns. Licensed gun dealers already factor this in, and they are doing just fine. Unlicensed gun dealers are basically free riding. Truly private sales/transfers between known people will be more inconvenient. I don’t see much more burden for doing this than registering a car though, and that is a pain in the ass, but it’s something we live with and accept. For purchasers, guns will be more expensive and there will be less reason to purchase privately and more reason to just use a licensed gun dealer in the first place. The only real burden is that people who are ineligible to purchase a gun will not have as large of a loophole to get one.

So, the first question: will this do any good? That’s much harder to answer. Few jurisdictions have had background check measures for long enough to have good data. And any changes aren’t going to be easy to measure given that people can and do work around them. If effective, background checks will be more effective when people can’t go to the next state over to purchase a gun without a check. Residents of Spokane can easily evade this because they are 30 minutes away from Idaho which doesn’t have background checks. All this makes it hard to know.

Additionally, if there’s any effect, it’s hard to see it because so many other things affect gun violence. Something might reduce gun violence by 5% but the economy goes south so crime in general goes up by 10%, which obscures the effect of the first. You can’t just look at the fact that gun violence in Colorado went up after they passed background checks in 1999. There are so many causes that extracting that information requires university-level studies.

The pro I-594 web site gives out some statistics, such as 39% fewer law enforcement officers murdered with a handgun in states with background check laws. The web site does not give the source for that. It also doesn’t say fewer than what, what the time frame is, how this was measured, what the confidence is, etc. The Officer Down Memorial page gives the stat that 39 police officers have died in 2014 due to gunfire. That tells me any measurement of law enforcement deaths in background check states is going to have a low sample size. Other measurements might not have that issue, but it’s really hard to tell given what the pro I-594 group posts.

I looked on JSTOR to see if I could find anything. Unfortunately, the only study I could find using background check as the key term wasn’t looking at background check efficiency. It looked used measures of background checks as a proxy for determining gun ownership and effects of that on suicide rates.

At the risk of falling into the trap of something must be done. this is something. therefore this must be done. I’m planning on voting for the measure. My gut feeling is that it will help reduce incidence of bad people having guns, but only slightly, given that people can work around it. I don’t have anything except gut feeling at this point, because actual numbers are so hard to come by. Sorry, pro-gun people, but keeping the government from funding these studies means I have to go with my gut. I hope a local university will actually study the effect and we can revisit the policy in 5 or 10 years. If it’s not working at that point, I’ll support dumping the law.

The argument that it’s a burden or infringing on rights doesn’t hold water with me. California has done this for decades and it’s not a gun free zone.

Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there.

Kicking off my 2014 General Election ballot is Initiative 591, which prohibits government agencies from confiscating guns or other firearms without due process, and prohibits requiring background checks unless there’s a national requirement to do so.

This initiative is an easy no. We already can’t confiscate guns without due process. A person’s guns have more protection than their houses.

The real goal of the initiative is the second part. The proponents want to prevent background checks. Basically, they want people to be able to sell guns to felons and the mentally ill. Those are the people that background checks catch. Not that background checks catch everyone forbidden to have guns. But it doesn’t make sense to prohibit the checking completely.

: Jesse James, half-length portrait, facing front, holding handgun in left hand at his waist

We have another initiative on the ballot on background checks. I’ll post about that one next. In the meantime, remember that these people want to sell guns to known criminals, like Jesse James.

Originally published at King Rat. You can comment here or there.

Thursday I participated in my third week of phone banking for Referendum 74. It was a very odd session.

My own dialer session called 141 people, but I actually had only 3 conversations with people and none of them were undecided. They were all strongly for marriage equality. With those folks, all we generally do is remind them that a vote to approve Referendum 74 is a vote for marriage equality. But not only were there no undecided people, there were no anti-marriage equality people. I had a lot of hang-ups, refused to answer, not homes, and wrong numbers. I think I had 3 people who were angry we had called them. Don’t you know my number is on the Do not call list? asked one lady. Nope, I don’t. See, lady, political calls don’t have to scrub people based on the do not call register. There’s this little thing called the First Amendment. Of course, I don’t tell them that or argue with them. I simply just ask Would you like me to put you on our do not call list? and then I do. Anyway, bummer about not talking with any undecided voters.

I also spent some time training a fellow next to me. He really had a hard time with it. In the role play before we started calling, I played an undecided callee. He really wanted to convince my character that marriage equality is a matter of civil rights and started to veer into trying to argue my character into voting for marriage equality. Which isn’t what we are trying to do. The phone bank script emphasizes the personal and emotional benefits of marriage for gays and lesbians. Rather than talk about fairness in hospital visitation rights, we’re supposed to talk about how visitation means a gay/lesbian family member gets to visit their loved one. It’s sometimes a subtle but important distinction. People sometimes think domestic partnerships are fair, for instance. We’ll tell them that no one dreams of a domestic partnership document signing, they dream of a wedding. The point, I think, is to make it personal and real. Even the prejudiced people, for the most part, don’t hate gays. They fear them, and we’re trying to make gay marriage just a bit less scary.

Anyway, dude to the left of me kept slipping into arguing. He also got off script early on too. Rather than tell people we’d like to talk with them about the freedom to marry, as the script notes, he started telling people we’d just like to ask a quick question about Referendum 74. Which doesn’t get the idea of the freedom to marry or even marriage equality burbling in callees’ heads at the beginning. Talking about a referendum tends to close off discussions before they start. And second, if they are leaning against, it’s gonna make them feel lied to when we do want to talk more than a quick question. Liked the kid, but he was making things hard for himself.

I won’t be doing the phone bank this week though. There’s a Sounders match on Thursday night. However, I’ll be participating in a training session on Wednesday so they can have me run future phone bank sessions. We’ll see how those go. I’m surprisingly good on the phone. I found this out when calling people on behalf of Ron Sims in 2004. I don’t know how good I’ll be at helping people do this though. As I’ve found out this summer, I’m not exactly a natural teacher.

crossposted from King Rat.

For the last two weeks I’ve spent 3 hours on Thursdays phone banking in support of Referendum 74. Washington United for Marriage has been running a pretty organized campaign to make sure marriage equality passes. They are doing phone banks at least 4 days a week. They’ve run some demographics to identify likely undecided voters. And then we call them. Find out what their concerns are about letting gay and lesbian people get married. Try to allay those concerns. Talk to them about how much marriage might mean to gay and lesbian families. It’s all persuasion rather than arguing.

My phone bank equipment has dialed almost 400 people in those 6 hours, and I’ve had about 35 actual conversations with people. We get a lot of people who don’t want to talk, and a lot of answering machines and wrong numbers and calls that just don’t connect. And out of those 35 conversations I maybe have nudged 2 people a bit more toward supporting Referendum 74. Just having the conversation that isn’t an argument gets most of them thinking about it in a way they haven’t previously. In the end, if we get only 1,000 people to support it who otherwise would have voted against it, that might be all the difference we need.

I kinda sorta think Referendum 74 will pass pretty easily, but that may just be optimism. I strongly support it, and live in an area where most everyone else also strongly supports it. I’m in a bubble that likely is inducing wishful thinking. But I kinda know that, so I’m working to get this thing passed anyway, just in case I am wrong.

Which reminds me, do you want to help out? Even if you only do one phone bank, that’s 20 people who have a conversation about marriage that won’t otherwise have that conversation. I’ll make you a pie or buy you a beer if you help out.

crossposted from King Rat.

Last Sunday I participated in the Democratic caucuses. I also participated in 2008, but that was a very different experience. In 2008, I lived in Ferndale for 5 days of the week, and was here on weekends. It was in the midst of the primary between Obama and Clinton, so TOPPS school was packed to overflowing with people there to participate. I had to be back in Whatcom county the day of the caucus, so I couldn’t stay for the whole thing. I stayed long enough to register my preference for Clinton, but couldn’t stay longer.

This year, with only Obama on the ballot, participating was quite a bit lower. My precinct caucus was in the Montlake Community Center. Precinct 43-2001 had only three participants. Me and two women who had never participated in a caucus before. One had been working in France for a decade and had to vote absentee. The other was an Obama campaign volunteer whose parents were American and German, and she’d been living in Germany as a young girl during World War II.

They asked me to be precinct caucus chair, since this is my third caucus. So we all voted for Obama, and then had to select delegates to the county convention and the District 43 caucus. Due to votes in previous elections, 43-2001 had 7 delegates allocated to it. The other two participants could only attend the District 43 caucus. nevertheless, we voted all three of us as delegates.

We also got to propose resolutions that eventually could be made part of the Democratic platform. Those are not debated or voted on at the precinct caucus level. Every resolution proposed is forwarded to the county convention. I assume the organizers combine similar resolutions to avoid duplication at that level. The older woman had seen a resolution on auditing the Department of Defense, but had forgotten to bring it and couldn’t remember the lengthy wording (or any detail at all). So I proposed a short broadly worded resolution for her in the hopes that someone in another caucus was proposing the resolution the woman wanted, and the organizers would combine them. There was a global warming resolution being passed around, and we put it on our list too. I added a resolution that the Democratic party support marriage equality and the referendum on marriage equality that will likely be on the ballot this November.

The district caucuses and the King County Convention are next weekend at 10 a.m. (one event each day). At the point, I’m planning on attending both, if I can find out where they are. The locations were undetermined as of the caucuses last weekend.

crossposted from King Rat.

One of the current narratives that I see on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and all over a lot of blogs is that Mitt Romney is too rich to be voted into the office of the Presidency.

To which I call bullshit.

First off, we’re never going to have a poor President. At best, we’ll have someone who was poor at one point. But you don’t build a political base large enough to get into the presidency without having the skills to make enough money to live comfortably. The closest we got to poor might have been Harry Truman (a haberdasher) or Abraham Lincoln (who had a successful law practice). There are plenty of Presidents who weren’t rich, but all of them were at least comfortable before they became President.

The basis of this narrative is that a rich person cannot possibly be a force for the have-nots. That’s total crap. Franklin Roosevelt was very rich, but also enacted programs that are the basis for America’s modern welfare state. Not all kajillionaires are self-interested Koch brothers. Sure, many are, but the key thing isn’t that they are rich, but that they are self-interested assholes. And Mitt Romney has plenty of that in spades. I’d much rather that his lying, asshole nature be the focus.

Why does all this bother me? Remember when the media bought into John Kerry as a rich elitist out of touch with America because he wind-surfed? Instead, we got a second term of George Bush. He was folksy, but he was no less rich than John Kerry. But also, and this is the important part, he designed his policies unrepentantly to benefit rich people. But the media rarely talked about that.

Additionally, Mitt Romney, as bad as he will be for America if he’s elected, is a far cry better than some of the poorer Republican possibilities. Remember, Sarah Palin is only 6 years removed from being the mayor of a small podunk city in Alaska.

Sure, rich as an epithet might work at the moment, but it can also be used to tag our candidates unfairly. I’d much rather that the idiots be tarnished with brushes that can’t be used against us. Like his willingness to lie. Or the fact that he will cause the United States to descend into a fiery pit of hell. You know, things that matter.

crossposted from King Rat.

For Port of Seattle Commissioner, Gael Tarleton is an incumbent and Richard Pope is a perennial gadfly candidate. I’m kind of torn on this race. Richard Pope is a little bit off, and he’s a one issue candidate. However, his issue is getting rid of the $73 million property tax levy the Port of Seattle gets from property owners. He’s totally right that there’s no reason for the Port to tax us rather than extract its fees from port traffic. Gael Tarleton is an intelligent candidate, and somewhat of a reformer. But most of her reforms are tinkering on the edges.

I’ll probably vote for Gael Tarleton, because I suspect Richard Pope will be an outlier on the commission and won’t be effective.

crossposted from King Rat.

SJR 8206 – A constitutional amendment on the budget stabilization account maintained by the state treasury.

This amendment would require the legislature to transfer additional moneys to the budget stabilization account in each fiscal biennium in which the state has received extraordinary revenue growth, as defined, with certain limitations.

There are two ways to smooth out revenue fluctuations from year to year. One of them is to borrow from the future, which is what the federal government does. However, the state constitution requires a balanced budget and getting that changed isn’t politically doable. The other way is to put money away, to be drawn down when times are bad. That’s how Washington State currently does it. (Some states don’t do it at all.)

The rainy day fund is currently about $300 million. The revenue shortfall is about $2 billion. In other words, the rainy day fund turned out to not be large enough. Not even close.

This amendment requires that, if the state has growth that is more than 33% above the 10 year growth rate, the amount above that be put into the rainy day fund. In other words, don’t spend as much money when times are really flush and story it away. We currently save 1% of our revenues, and this won’t change that. It only adds additional saving for flush times.

The no argument is that we should spend that money on needed services instead. And while that is an attractive argument, we’d have to cut off those programs a few years later during the next recession. I’d rather us have sustainable programs.

And it’s much preferable to save the money than rebate taxes. That doesn’t prepare us at all for the next recession.

I’ll be voting for this amendment.

crossposted from King Rat.

SJR 8205 – removes Article VI, Section 1A of the Washington Constitution.

This amendment would remove an inoperative provision from the state constitution regarding the length of time a voter must reside in Washington to vote for president and vice-president.

This one is pretty much a no-brainer. But before I explain why, here’s the provision which will be removed if this passes:

SECTION 1A VOTER QUALIFICATIONS FOR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. In consideration of those citizens of the United States who become residents of the state of Washington during the year of a presidential election with the intention of making this state their permanent residence, this section is for the purpose of authorizing such persons who can meet all qualifications for voting as set forth in section 1 of this article, except for residence, to vote for presidential electors or for the office of President and Vice-President of the United States, as the case may be, but no other: Provided, That such persons have resided in the state at least sixty days immediately preceding the presidential election concerned. The legislature shall establish the time, manner and place for such persons to cast such presidential ballots.

Basically the deal is that at the time, the 60 day requirement was much more lenient than the normal residency requirement for voting in Washington. However, the Supreme Court invalidated all laws that establish a residency requirement that’s greater than 30 days for presidential elections. And now we just have a 30 day requirement anyway. So why not clean this provision up?

I’ll be voting for it. Even if it wasn’t inoperative, I’m in favor of making voting easier.

crossposted from King Rat.

Initiative Measure No. 1183 concerns liquor: beer, wine, and spirits (hard liquor).

This measure would close state liquor stores and sell their assets; license private parties to sell and distribute spirits; set license fees based on sales; regulate licensees; and change regulation of wine distribution.

For the last few years, Costco has sponsored initiatives to privatize liquors sales and distribution. I’m generally in favor of the idea, but have opposed the specific measures in the past, and I oppose I-1183 as well. But it won’t break my heart if it passes either.

Right now beer and wine can be sold in private retail stores in Washington. Hard liquor is sold only from restaurants, bars, and retail stores run by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. I believe the hard liquor monopoly is a remnant of prohibition. I-1183 directs the state to sell any assets related to liquor sales or distribution. In practice this will mean that the stores will be closed, because another item in the measure limits sales to stores with 10,000 square feet. In other words, grocery stores and big box discount stores.

The measure does not eliminate the three tier system for distribution though; we’ll still have producers, distributors, and retailers. But some companies will be allowed to be their own distributors, bypassing the middle man. That means places like Costco can sell liquor more cheaply. Which is something I’d be fine with, but it will probably freeze out small producers from the largest sales channel in the state. Right now they have a better opening into the distribution system. I don’t know where I come down on that. I’d like small producers to survive, but I don’t agree with doing it by monopoly power and price fixing.

I-1183 will raise revenues for the state, from $5 million to $8 million in 2012, and $35 million to $42 million in 2017, depending on assumptions. Local government revenues increase as well. These are the numbers the state came up with. The No On 1183 campaign likes to portray this as a tax increase and therefore bad. People don’t have to buy hard liquor, so it doesn’t bother me much.

Where my opposition comes though is that liquor will more or less only be sold in grocery stores. My ideal privatization measure would sell off the stores to be operated privately. Or allow private companies to open competing liquor stores. But spreading liquor sales into groceries worries me.

So my vote is a weak no.

crossposted from King Rat.

Pushing a wheelchair — Pushing Wheelchair adapted from photo by bradleygee (CC By)

Initiative 1163 – concerning long-term care workers and services for elderly and disabled people.

This measure would reinstate background checks, training, and other requirements for long-term care workers and providers, if amended in 2011; and address financial accountability and administrative expenses of the long-term in-home care program.

Quick background that I know most of my friends know, but not everyone who stumbles on this will. I spent 3 years caring for my mother during her terminal illness and for my grandparents as their health declined before they died. I hired a number of people to help care for my mother. We did not use an agency for reasons that are not germane to this. There was no good way to determine the qualifications or experience for these caregivers, and it was a crapshoot with respect to the care they gave. For my grandmother, I insisted we use an agency that performed background checks at least, and they supposedly gave their workers some minimal training.

In 2008, I voted for an initiative that created a licensing program and training for long term caregivers. It passed by a large margin. Since then, the state legislature delayed some of the requirements instituted by that initiative. This was an attempt to save money given the horrible budget constraints the state experienced. Instead of starting in 2012, the program now starts in 2014.

If I could be sure this was a one-time delay, I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep. I wouldn’t like it, but we’d get the improvement in standards fairly shortly. However, given that we continue to have budget constraints, I fully expect the legislature to delay the start of the program again. I do not want it to be indefinitely delayed. If this initiative passes, the program starts in 2012, and the legislature can’t amend it for two years. By which time it will have started. It’s much harder to shut down an existing program than to delay one that hasn’t started.

I don’t care that it costs some money. In an ideal world, market forces would create a mechanism for ensuring care, but that hasn’t happened. The only way to ensure good long term care is to have a lot of money. People who are disabled or dying deserve a minimum level of care even if they are poor, and this initiative goes a long way to ensuring that.

I’ll be voting yes on I-1163.

crossposted from King Rat.

As I do most years, I like to write up how I plan to vote in the upcoming election and why. Although people are welcome to comment, or counter-argue, or whatever, the point of posting these is not to debate. Neither is the reason for posting these explanations to convince anyone, particularly people who disagree with my positions. I’m simply stating my opinion.

520 traffic congestion — Photo by Oran Viriyincy (CC By-Sa)

Initiative 1125 – Concerning state expenditures on transportation.

This measure would prohibit the use of motor vehicle fund revenue and vehicle toll revenue for non-transportation purposes, and require that road and bridge tolls be set by the legislature and be project-specific.

That’s the ballot title and question. Which, unfortunately, is pretty bland and misleading. There are a grab bag of provisions in the initiative, most of which are bad:

Right now the legislature authorizes tolling on specific roads or bridges, and the state transportation commission sets the actual toll rates. I-1125 requires that the legislature set the tolls. That’s a guarantee for a political clusterfuck. Need to raise tolls to pay to repave or for structural fixes? A group of eastern washington legislators can hold it up. It also means every individual toll decision is subject to referendum.

It requires that tolls be uniform. That’s to remove what’s called congestion pricing. Want to cut down on people using the 520 bridge during rush hour? Charge a higher toll during rush hour. This provision would prevent that.

But the real reason behind the initiative is to prevent using I-90 for light rail. If this passes, there is no light rail to Bellevue. The main person bankrolling the initiative is the owner of Bellevue Square and a major investor in car culture related projects.

One of the effects of the initiative, though not explicitly part of it, is that it reduces the bonding capability for the 520 bridge replacement, which has already started. So to finish the bridge, the WSDOT will need to cancel about $500 million worth of other projects and shift the money to 520.

Really, all a person needs to do is look at who is sponsoring the initiative: Tim Eyman. He had one good initiative (performance audits) and a shit-ton of crappy ones. Including this one.

I’m voting NO.

crossposted from King Rat.

Pardon me, but I’m about to go on kind of a wonky rant. I’ve been mulling a post on the Federal budget for a few days, but something just sent me over the edge to righteous pissed off about it. The following article from the A.P. is what got me riled up:

White House: Obama to lay out spending plan
Much will be revealed at midweek, when the House and Senate are expected to vote on a budget for the remainder of this fiscal year and Obama reveals his plan to reduce the deficit, in part by scaling back programs for seniors and the poor.

The A.P. item is based on an appearance by David Plouffe on Meet The Press this morning. David Plouffe is an advisor to the President, and his appearance is to grease the wheels for President Obama’s budget proposal later this week. The A.P. may be making a bit more of Plouffe’s words than ought to be taken. Here’s the relevant part:

Video:

Transcript:
So we’ve had a lot of savings in health care, we have to do more. So you’re going to have to look at Medicare and Medicaid and see what kind of savings you can get. First, squeezing them out of the system before you squeeze seniors. Secondly, on Social Security, what he said is that is not a driver right now of significant costs, but in the process of sitting down and talking about our spending and our programs, if there can be a discussion about how to strengthen Social Security in the future, he’s eager to have that discussion.

I really hope this doesn’t mean what the A.P. thinks it means. Sadly, they may be right.

The problem with the federal budget is actually really small right now, though it gets bigger down the road. You may have heard that the deficit is the largest it’s ever been. That’s only correct if inflation is not taken into account. A better measure is the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product, a figure that currently is about 10%. We ran a much bigger deficit during World War II, and we’re currently only running a deficit about twice as high as when Ronald Reagan was in office. ( I am not going to get into whether Bush or Obama is responsible for this level, but the answer is George W. Bush.)

Now, even that 10% of GDP may seem high because the U.S. has only exceeded that twice before, but we also have to consider interest rates. The Prime Rate was 15.25% when Reagan took office, and 8.75% when he left office. It got as high as 21.5% and dropped as low as 8% in 1987, but during the Reagan administration it was usually well above 10%. This rate was 7.25% when Obama took office, and now stands at 3.25%. That’s not what the government pays in interest, but it does show the general idea. The current cost to borrow money is less than half what it was at the lowest point during the Reagan administration. It is amazingly cheap to borrow money right now.

That’s why the current deficit is really not much of a problem.

Long term, we do have a problem with our deficits. No, not with Social Security. That actually doesn’t have an issue until the late 2030s, and will require a fairly small change to fix. Our long term problem is with Medicare and Medicaid. And the problem isn’t that we have too generous of benefits. The problem is that health care is too expensive in the U.S. Western Europe has much better health outcomes than we do, for about half the cost and much less hassle.

Health Care Costs as a percentage of GDP

If we paid the same as other developed countries, we wouldn’t have a long term deficit. The problem is that we’re spending recklessly. The problem is that we give too much money to doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, and the like. That’s why the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. RomneyCare or ObamaCare), even without a public option, was good for us. It has a number of controls that bring down costs. It doesn’t eliminate the problem, but it does remove a big chunk of our future deficit.

The Republicans introduced a budget plan last week that goes the wrong way. It repeals the A.C.A. and pretty much also eliminates Medicare and Medicaid. It eliminates the deficit long term by shifting health care costs to individuals. That would be fine, and in fact preferable, if health care costs were predictable for individuals. But they aren’t, so when you get sick, or A.L.S., you have to pay for everything yourself or hope that your insurance company will. Remember, health insurance companies make money by not insuring people with health problems.

The Republican plan, which thankfully doesn’t have a chance of passing in anything like it’s current form, has all sorts of problems that I may blog about later. But how it handles Medicare is its defining set of terms.

So now Barack Obama has agreed to find ways to save money in Medicare and Medicaid. The problem with that is that the only way to save money and not hurt individuals is to double down on the A.C.A. Introduce the public option or nationalize health care or the like. In other words, more not less socialized medicine. I’d be fine with that personally. But you know that hasn’t a chance of passing either. Obama loves compromise, and since the direction of compromise is the wrong direction on this issue, it means more health care costs will be shifted to individuals.

None of either of those plans (the Republican one or the possible Obama one) will affect health care costs overall. Just that born by the government. The Market works to control costs in many goods, but not health care. If it did, we wouldn’t have health care inflation outpacing regular inflation for the last 30 years. There’s many reasons for this, such as health insurance adverse selection, lack of bargaining power, inability to control health care needs, and more.

The upshot of all this is that it looks like we’re going to do something we don’t need to do right now, reduce the deficit, in a way that hurts everyone but the really rich and that doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem. We’ve got a center-right President moving rightward when he should be getting more progressive. And the Obama-istas wonder why the base that gave him the nomination in 2008 isn’t so thrilled with him. Sure he’s better than McCain would have been. But it’s hard to stay excited for someone who’s selling point is well, you could have that idiot over there.

I’ll probably write more about the budget compromise that was passed last week for 2011. It moved the wrong direction too.

crossposted from King Rat.

Initiative Measure No. 1107 concerns reversing certain 2010 amendments to state tax laws. The measure would end sales tax on candy; end temporary sales tax on some bottled water; end temporary excise taxes on carbonated beverages; and reduce tax rates for certain food processors.

I’m in favor of sin taxes if I agree that the items being taxed are sins. It’s simple economics: tax the things you don’t want to happen. When the price goes up, people do them less. It’s the principle behind cap-and-trade and carbon taxes. It’s the principle behind congestion tolls. It’s possible to raise such taxes too high. When a thriving black market in the item comes around, then you know the taxes are too high.

I’m all for taxing candy and soft drinks. There exist relatively cheap, relatively healthier alternatives that people can buy instead, if they want to avoid the tax. If you can’t go without your Coke Zero, pony up.

The soft drink industry has spent something like $16 million to pass this. The advertising campaign says it’s all about the taxes on grocery items that were included in the tax for technical reasons. a) the taxes on those items are around $4 million. The beverage industry could have donated the $16 million to grocery manufacturers 4 times over, and we wouldn’t have a need for the initiative (if even that’s a concern). b) The opponents of the tax could have crafted the initiative to repeal just the grocery tax part, but they did not. Their arguments hold little weight with me because of this.

I’m for keeping the tax and voting no on I-1107.

crossposted from King Rat.

Initiative Measure No. 1100 concerns liquor (beer, wine and spirits). The measure would close state liquor stores; authorize sale, distribution, and importation of spirits by private parties; and repeal certain requirements that govern the business operations of beer and wine distributers and producers.

Initiative Measure No. 1105 concerns liquor (beer, wine and spirits). The measure would close all state liquor stores and license private parties to sell or distribute spirits. It would revise laws concerning regulation, taxation and government revenues from distribution and sale of spirits.

The state government should not be operating private retail stores absent some important reason. The fact that Washington State does is (I assume) a vestige of the repeal of Prohibition, combined with a large amount of inertia. It does make getting liquor for minors somewhat more difficult, but not exactly because security at these stores is tight. They do have a better record at refusing sales to minors. But I think the real reason state liquor stores do better is that they aren’t so busy and there aren’t too many of them. The stores have a high markup, and limited selection. As some bars have noted, they cannot get some liquors for their businesses and service is not good.

There are two initiatives on the ballot that would get the state out of the liquor selling business. If both pass, how things will shake out will be anyone’s guess.

I-1100 is the Costco sponsored initiative. It removes a lot of the regulation on liquor sales as well as getting the state out of it. Places that have a license to sell beer and wine could get a liquor sales license, and the state would be limited in what it could regulate with regards to liquor sales. The key part for Costco is that it eliminates the current three tier system: manufacturer, distributor and retailer. As a retailer, they could skip the distributor and go straight to the manufacturer. The measure retains the current taxes on liquor.

I-1105 requires the state to close its stores, but retains more of the regulatory framework. The three-tier system would remain in place. Retailers must by from distributors. And distributors cannot offer better prices to one customer that to another, though they could offer volume discounts. Costco doesn’t like it, because they would like to negotiate lower prices directly from manufacturers that aren’t available to other retailers. The WSLCB would create a new license for retailers and establish the rules for it. For instance, they refrain from issuing new licenses in areas that are saturated with liquor sellers. The measure would remove most taxes on liquor sales (not sure about sales taxes) and direct the WSLCB to propose a new tax to the legislature.

I will be voting for I-1105 and against I-1100. While I think anti-drinking goes too far sometimes (like freaking out over restaurants that allow patrons to drink in their sidewalk seating), the fact that liquor is intoxicating means we should be exercising some discretion in how we sell it. I-1100 doesn’t allow for that. For instance, I-1105 could allow the WSLCB to require that liquor be sold in separated areas from other goods, while I-1100 does not. I’m not so keen on the requirement for three tiers, though I do like the requirement that distributors offer uniform prices. I’m agnostic toward the tax change. It comes down to the ability to regulate liquor retailers.

crossposted from King Rat.

Initiative Measure No. 1098 concerns establishing a state income tax and reducing other taxes. The measure would tax “adjusted gross income” above $200,000 (individuals) and $400,000 (joint-filers), reduce state property tax levies, reduce certain business and occupation taxes, and direct any increased revenues to education and health.

This one is another easy one for me. Washington has one of the most regressive tax structures in the country, because it relies heavily on the business and occupation tax, and the sales tax. Both of those taxes make low income folks pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than higher earners. The B&O tax because it gets passed on in prices, though a fair amount of it is non-consumer goods. As people make more money, the marginal sales tax rate with respect to a person’s income falls because consumption falls off at higher incomes. Money moves from consumption to investment. To explain, if you are broke, the next $5 you get will be spent on food (or gas, or whatever). If you made $1,000,000 last year, the next $5 will much more likely be used to buy stocks (or bonds or whatever). The sales tax on the poor person’s $5 is going to be approximately 50¢ where the sales tax on the rich person’s $5 will be close to zero. The choice to not spend is constrained the poorer one is.

We also rely heavily on a property tax, but that also gets passed on to anyone who lives in the state. It’s either direct, or paid out in higher rent. I don’t think property taxes are as regressive as the sales tax, but they are still regressive.

I1098 establishes a high earners income tax for the state, while cutting a portion of property taxes and B&O taxes. Income taxes can sometimes be regressive, but they are easier to structure to avoid it. In this case, it’s very progressive. People who need the next $5 to eat won’t get taxed. People who invest it in stock will. For that reason alone I am for it.

I also think it will help stabilize the state’s revenue somewhat. Not completely, but a bit. Aggregate income is a better gauge of the state’s economic activity than consumption. Consumption can only drop so low, and it can only climb so high. It allows the state to skim off the income in good years for the bad. We currently do that with sales taxes, to some degree.

The only arguments I’ve seen against it are hysterical rantings. The legislature will extend it to other people in 2 years!! Yup. They could. They could establish an income tax and extend it right now. This changes nothing with regard to what the legislature could do. And it changes nothing as far as people’s ability to oppose it. If people are against increasing the tax, and the voters don’t want it, they’ll vote them out. Or have a referendum against the law.

I’ve also seen but I’m not rich even though I made nearly $2,000,000 last year. And even no one I know who makes $200,000 is rich. It’s not fair to MEEEEE! Here’s something to think about: SHUT THE FUCK UP! You are rich. This is not the end of the world. You can better afford this than someone making $20,000. They’ve been sucking it up for years. Now you’ll have to for a bit.

By the way, in case you were wondering, these opinion piece aren’t really intended to convince people. These are polemics which explain my reasoning for voting for them. I fully realize telling a rich person to STFU isn’t going to convince them to vote for this.

crossposted from King Rat.

Initiative Measure No. 1082 concerns industrial insurance. The measure would authorize employers to purchase private industrial insurance beginning July 1, 2012; direct the legislature to enact conforming legislation by March 1, 2012; and eliminate the worker-paid share of medical-benefit premiums.

My opinion on this one won’t be as long as I-1053. I’m all for having private workman’s comp insurance options, but I don’t think this initiative is the way to do it. My concern is with who wrote this: the Building Industry Association of Washington. The No on I-1082 campaign has a detailed list of the problems they see in the fine print of the initiative. Their take is that the fine print will leave workers on the hook for job related health problems (injuries, occupational illnesses, etc.) for businesses that choose to go this route.

I’m not a lawyer. I can’t parse through all the fine print and compare it to existing law, regulations, and court cases to see where it falls down. I don’t exactly believe the F.U.D. pushed by the no campaign either. I have read the detailed text of the initiative though, and it’s certainly not a clean easy to understand bill. While those issues may not be nefarious, they could be, and I don’t have a good way to tell. If it were the product of negotiation in the legislature, I’d be in favor. But it’s not.

I-1082 is the product of a conservative business organization that’s known for looking out for it’s interests instead of the general public. If you look at the list of organizations endorsing the initiative on the Yes on I-1082 web site, every single one of them is a business interest. Their argument is that if they can get cheaper insurance, they’ll hire more people. I really don’t think that’s the case. They’ll take the difference and put it into their profits (or maybe lower prices if the particular industry is extra competitive). You don’t pay more for one ingredient because you pay less for another. They’ll increase wages only if the demand for labor increases relative to the supply, and this doesn’t change that ratio at all. I just don’t see this as a net win for workers.

So I’ll vote against I-1082. If called on to vote on a version created by the legislature, I’d vote for that.

crossposted from King Rat.

A few of my friends have asked if I planned to write about my opinions on the upcoming election, particularly regarding the initiatives on the ballot. I love spouting off my opinion, so here I go! Of course, I want to point out to my 3 or 4 readers that none of what I write is particularly original. You can probably find much better argumentation elsewhere on the internet.

Initiative 1053 concerns tax and fee increases imposed by state government. The measure would restate existing statutory requirements that legislative actions raising taxes must be approved by two-thirds legislative majorities or receive voter approval, and that new or increased fees require majority legislative approval.

This is a Tim Eyman measure. That alone almost tells you how I will vote on it. The only Eyman measure I’ve ever voted for was the one that instituted performance audits.

Several previous Eyman measures passed that duplicate what this measure does. But the state legislature has suspended the rules instituted by those initiatives in order to pass budgets. How does that work? According to the Washington state constitution, Article II, Section 1(c), after two years the legislature may do what it wants with any initiative. During the two years, changing an initiative requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature. It’s been more than two years, so they suspended it. This initiative basically unsuspends it for another two years. (The legislature did not overturn the law, just suspended it.)

Well, as you can guess, this royally pissed off the Eyman crowd, and that’s why they have this initiative.

My view is that a supermajority should only be required for extra-ordinary circumstances, things that don’t happen too often: changing the state constitution, declaring war, suspending civil rights, expelling a legislator. A supermajority means that a minority of people can prevent action. That’s appropriate to prevent civil rights from being abrogated. It’s appropriate to keep a power from being unchecked. But for mundane things, it’s inappropriate to require a consensus. It checks power too much. We already have mundane checks on power for mundane things: voting out legislators, separate bodies of the legislature, gubernatorial vetoes, the court system, referendum, and probably lots more that I haven’t thought of.

There’s nothing more mundane for the legislature about running government than determining the budget, taxes, and spending. Holding the running of the government hostage to a minority is bad business. As much as I object to funding abstinence only sex education, for instance, I don’t think a liberal minority should hold that up. (Luckily, that doesn’t seem to be the case recently.) I have the option of voting for a different candidate, for collecting petitions on a referendum, or having a sympathetic governor veto it (or line-item veto it).

I have another philosophical problem with this initiative, like the previous versions of it: it attacks a made up problem. Washington state does not have out of control taxation. I-1053 proponents would have you believe that the legislature can’t prioritize and so it just increases taxes to fund everything it wants. But that’s not the case. The Great Recession reduced the state’s revenues by billions. From I-1053 proponents, you’d think the legislature’s response was to raise taxes and fund all previous programs. We faced a reduction of revenue to the tune of about $2.8 billion for the current budget. The legislature raised about $780 million in taxes. The state received another $1.4 billion from other sources, such as the federal government and the rainy day fund. It cut about $714 million from the budget. I certainly think people can legitimately argue that there should have been more cuts. What is ludicrous is the idea that government just taxes and spends.

The approach is wrong. Don’t just say the legislature has it’s priorities wrong. Tell them exactly how it’s wrong. Get signatures on an initiative that eliminates programs you think are wasteful. (Initiatives can’t actually budget though. That does make things more difficult for this method.) I almost never see people who say the state taxes too much actually propose specific programs that should be cut. They instead rail about wasteful spending. But they never want to do the hard work of finding the wasteful spending. That’s the legislature’s job, according to them. Which it is, but it is also their job as citizens, voters, and human beings to give the legislature guidance. The few times I see suggestions of actual cuts, they are unrealistic for various reasons. Eliminating welfare completely. Or the cuts don’t come close to adding up to what’s needed to cut spending by the amount they want.

The reality is that the state tax burden is declining. That’s the evidence from the conservative Tax Foundation. In 1994, the state had an effective tax rate of 10.4% ranking it 17th among states. In 2008, the effective rate was 8.4%, ranking us 35th. Those numbers include both state and local taxes. At the state level only, the number of employees dropped over 4% from 2008 to 2009. Over the longer term, the state hasn’t exactly grown hugely in employees. According to the U.S. Census, the state had 133,000 employees in 1997, 149,000 in 2002, and 153,000 in 2007. That’s about a 15% growth in employees over 10 years, and before recent cutbacks. Over that same time period, the state’s population grew 13.6%. State government got a little but larger than our population would indicate, but not by much. Wages and salaries for state employees over that time went from $307 million per month in 1997, to $411 million in 2002 and $504 million in 2007. That seems like a huge increase, until you adjust for inflation. That $307 million in 1997 is worth $397 million in 2007, and the $411 million from 2002 is $473 million in 2007. Inflation adjusted, that’s a 26% increase from 1997 to 2007, but only a 6% increase from 2002. Compare that to the 6.5% increase in population from 2002 to 2007. Our gross state product (a measure of the size of the economy) grew 34% from 1997 to 2007. In other words, the state government isn’t growing like metastasized cancer. It’s grown, but not in uncontrollable ways. It’s growth our current tools for managing our government already can deal with.

To sum up, philosophically I-1053 is the wrong approach. Practically, I-1053 tries solve a problem that doesn’t exist to the level it’s proponents claim it does. That’s even if you think growing spending is a problem at all. I don’t. I think the legislature is already doing a halfway decent job at overall budgeting.

Data was pulled from generally reliable sources but percentages and other calculations when not explicitly supplied were done on the back of a napkin. Go dig up the data yourself if you don’t trust my numbers.