EFFin' Unsound

Post by Carl Ballard

I know this is kind of old, but I find it strange how much praise the Republicans are putting on Gregoire’s budget. Even if they do think it doesn’t go far enough.

OLYMPIA… Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, offered this statement in response to the release of the governor’s proposed biennial budget for 2011-13.

What will these retrograde assholes say?

“It appears the governor has given the Legislature a good place to start. Once we get into the details I expect we will disagree with some of her choices, especially considering the commitment Senate Republicans have made to protect the most vulnerable residents of our state. At the same time, some of what she proposes is what we need to make the state budget sustainable over the long term. Her budget includes more fund transfers, but at least we’re not seeing every budget gimmick in the book.

Wait, what? I’m not sure who the most vulnerable are, but are right wing senate Republicans attacking Gregoire’s budget for not being liberal enough? I know it’s a trap and all. And that the Republican’s commitment to “the most vulnerable” probably doesn’t include, for example, the urban poor. Or the poor at all. Still, what?

Hey, if you had some commitment to the poor, perhaps you should have come out for figuring out how to make our tax system more fair instead of applauding a proposal to eliminate Basic Health.

“Judging from this budget the governor is open to making government smaller. That makes sense given the smaller amount of revenue available. To me, the way we get to a smaller government is not by asking ‘What do we cut?’ but ‘What do we fund?’ and ‘How can we do things better and more efficiently?” based on the priorities of government process. I have concerns about the governor’s approach to reducing personnel costs, and her proposed consolidation of state agencies seems more a case of rearranging than reforming. The 15 million dollars that would be saved in a year by merging agencies may not even cover what is lost through fraud and abuse in the state’s social and health services programs over that same amount of time.

So eliminate all fraud in social and health services is a better plan than things she can actually do. Of course any budget should aim to root out fraud, but I don’t see how you can actually make a statement like that: Fraud isn’t a line item.

“When we begin the 2011 session next month Republicans will again be ready with cost-saving ideas that didn’t make it into the governor’s budget. Those include allowing state-employee health savings accounts, changing qualifications for social services, reforming the bilingual education system and allowing private-sector competition when it comes to providing public services, to name several. We have proposals that the Legislature can no longer afford to ignore.

So cutting employee health benefits, presumably. I don’t suppose they’ll put the legislative health plan on the block first. Anyway, how do you know they aren’t interested in actually protecting the vulnerable? Well, because they like the Governor’s budget that doesn’t. Also, since they’ll be arguing that the voters said we couldn’t raise taxes, it’s funny how the defeat of the liquor store privatization initiatives won’t stop you from pitching privatization of all sorts of things.

“I can’t help but wonder how the state’s financial situation could have been better if we had seen a budget proposal like this from the governor two years ago, after she finally acknowledged the state was in financial trouble. The Legislature could do worse by taxpayers than to adopt a budget that is the same general size and shape as this one. It won’t bring about the ‘reset’ of state government that is overdue, but the governor’s budget looks like a step in the right direction.”

Yes, if only we’d cut spending earlier. Imagine if we’d managed to dismantle Basic Health 2 years ago how much stronger the economy could be! I can’t help wonder how many parks we could have closed. I can’t help wonder how many teachers we could have fired. Just think of how high tuition could be.

- posted by demo kid

Shorter Chicken Wing [link removed by Carl with DK's permission, see comment]: No woman — including women of the Tea Party like Bachmann and O’Donnell — should be in government, because they might keep us from beating women like good conservative males.

Remember folks… rape is an invention of radical feminists!

I wonder if Doug will write a poem about it.

Post by Carl Ballard

The Seattle Times had a couple editorials cheering some compromises. In fairness to McGinn and Obama, the Seattle Center proposal and the tax cut package aren’t as bad as I’d feared a few weeks ago. But The Seattle Times doesn’t seem to realize that doing nothing was an option in both cases.

Paul Krugman made a good case for doing nothing on taxes. Letting the tax cuts expire is less bad than what’s in the package.

But while raising taxes when unemployment is high is a bad thing, there are worse things. And a cold, hard look at the consequences of giving in to the G.O.P. now suggests that saying no, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, is the lesser of two evils.

And for the Seattle Center editorial, the Mercer Island Mutt Murderer never even asks what would happen if the Fun Forrest stayed instead of the Chihuly-not-a-museum. They applaud what we got. And I sort of appreciate that. I appreciate that moving KEXP into that space probably means more concerts for me, and that a nice playground means that families will still have some incentive to come down here. And while I don’t get Chihuly, I understand that people do. Still, not even a mention that the Fun Forrest is paying a significant rent (although not as much as the city wants, or will get for the land under the proposal) or that the Fun Forrest is a good place for children, including children tourists.

And that’s going to be a problem going forward now that Republicans control a house of Congress and have more power in the state. When Republicans inevitably propose some nonsense to fix something that isn’t really an issue in the first place, don’t expect the Seattle Times to point out that doing nothing is better than their plan.

Post by Carl Ballard

Bruce Chapman wonders why more conservatives don’t do science.

Slate’s provocative essay by Daniel Sarewitz on why Republicans are unrepresented in science continues to ripple through the Internet.

It’s because even though we don’t always live up to it, telling the truth is a Democratic ideal. Republicans aren’t grounded in facts in the same way. That’s why Republicans say things like “death panels” and make fun of Democrats for being “reality based.”

Various answers are given and several have merit, but the strongest real reason is that contemporary science as taught in government supported universities (which is almost all of them) implicitly supports the ideological viewpoint of the left–since that supplies the money and is resistant to normative influences from tradition–and it is pervasively prejudiced against the kind of students found on the right, especially religious believers. A large share of America is cut off from science in universities on that account, and American science is the poorer for it. Now try studying that.

Or, Democrats are better at objective facts. When Bruce Chapman doesn’t like the facts of over 100 years of biological findings that evolution by natural selection happened, he starts a foundation dedicated to saying, “God — or at least magic — did it.” If you want conservatives to do better at science, don’t encourage them to do bad science.

Post by Carl Ballard

Look, King 5, I understand that your audience is mostly shut ins who would never take a bike anywhere. So give them what they want: a story about how their money is paying for for those dastardly bicyclists and their motherfucking lights.

At a vehicle licensing office we met several car drivers who wonder why the city is spending taxpayer money on bikes.

Chad Gorney just paid $139 for his car tabs.

“I understand it’s more green to ride a bike, but half the problems I have in traffic is cause of bikers in the city,” said Gorney.

I had writing this post on my mind this morning when I walked a few blocks to a coffee shop and back. And hand to God, I saw 3 cars run red lights at 1st and Cherry. Once with pedestrians (including me) in the crosswalk. One was trying to make an illegal turn and the other was trying to go straight through the red and he honked at the car that was just running a red.

But this post isn’t about the fact that Seattle drivers tend to underestimate the problems caused by other drivers and overestimate the problems caused by bikes. And it’s not a post about random car anecdotes. This is about lousy reporting by a shitty TV station.

And really, the video was even worse than the report they wrote out. As far as I could tell, they didn’t interview the people giving away the lights (although they did have a clip of McGinn, who they mentioned rides a bike). So naturally let’s go to the DMV and get footage of angry people. Who are angry because of the thing we just told them. And no context of if the program actually works, or what the $5,000 might otherwise pay for.

Try to imagine a piece “Tax payers shell out for drivers’ free parking”* and they went to a bike shop for their Vox Pop. Or “Tax payers shell out for Boeing contract.” I mean those things cost taxpayers way more than $5,000. So way to have your priorities right, King 5.

Read the rest of this entry »

Post by Carl Ballard

So, you guys. I’m still not sure if Washington Rebel is from this Washington. I suppose I could ask someone. I mean it’s in Orbusmax’s Washington links. Not that anyone considers Orbusmax a particularly good source of factual information. But I do love this piece by Morgan K Freeberg, so fuck it, we’re doing this.

Just another smarmy secularist. Oh, no wait, I forgot: She isn’t saying anything about a desire for more secularism, her argument is grounded in diversity. Okay, very well then. She’s a cowardly fucking secularist.

Or she wants more diversity. I mean I’m support making our institutions more secular and a supporter of diversity. We need our institutions like government and business to not impose religion on people. And they are better when they don’t impose religion on people. These things flow from the same place, perhaps, but you can argue for one or both.

And she’s being eaten alive in the comments section. Oh, that just warms the cockles of my heart. Really, it does. She deserves it. Just give it a read…

It seems there should be no debate that Christmas does not belong in the workplace. The people who disagree do not understand what it’s like to be a minority, and they fail to accept that Christmas is not a universal holiday.

Christmas isn’t a universal holiday. Does anyone really need this explained to them? That some people don’t actually celebrate Christmas either because they aren’t Christians or because they’re a type of Christian that doesn’t do holidays.

“Should be no debate” — that’s rich. This is where the whole thing falls apart. Diversity has something to do with tolerance, right? Tolerance has something to do with diversity? Diversity-tolerance, tolerance-diversity? Two great tastes that go together like peanut butter & chocolate?

Yes. In America in the 21st century when people celebrate many different ways or in no way at all that only the jesusy-santay way counts.

Anybody who thinks so, I’m gong to show them Penelope’s column. It absolutely oozes non-tolerance.

Wanting to include as many people as possible: non-tolerance.

What are my own feelings about it? Ann Landers wedding rule — and longtime readers will know what I mean by that. It’s one of the few pieces of sage advice on which the addled-minded late advice columnist agreed with Yours Truly, or maybe it’s more appropriate to say Yours Truly agrees with the advice of the deceased fuzzy-brained advice columnist: When someone says “If you want me there you’ll have to dis-invite X” there is only one appropriate, one logical answer: “That’s a shame, we’ll miss you.”

That’s not really the same as a party at work. The column was about the workplace. The first sentence is: “The biggest problem with Christmas is its role in the workplace.” So a wedding with a large invite list is different from a Christmas party where the Hindus have to come or fear losing their job. She says in the column that she doesn’t want to go to the Christmas party, even if you call it a holiday party so everyone wins. Yay. Anyway, what we really need here is the most fucked up metaphor in history.

You do not negotiate with terrorists, and you do not appease people who make those kinds of ultimatums. Period. It all comes down to this — if your productivity & cheerful demeanor slip a notch or two because you were just reminded someone has a different belief from yours, then you are the problem. Just like the wedding guest who says “I’m not coming if X is coming” is the problem.

So, if I’m reading this right it’s:

People who would rather it be called a holiday party or an end of the year party, or not have a party at all : offices :: Bin Laden : America.

OMGod, people.

Penelope has allowed herself to wander very far afield from where she wanted to go; she’s on a very dark path, although she may not realize it. She has begun to systematically abjure things that are not compatible with “diversity,” and I don’t think it’ll be too long before she starts to target the people she thinks are incompatible with this goal, as she sees it, as well.

Wanting a floating holiday at the end of the year is 1 step away from genocide against people who say “Merry Christmas,” you guys. Why do you hate logic?

And she has a big ol’ fistful of studies that say this is key to workplace productivity; profitability; competitiveness.

Why would a writer for Business net care about productivity, profitability or competitiveness when she can care about Jesus?

Whatever trivial differences there are between the people who are like her, and the classic caricature of Ebenezer Scrooge, are melting away rather quickly huh? Kind of like a snowman whose season has passed. Um…how is she any different…gender, age bracket, nationality. And diet. And she looks kinda hot in her own way, whereas Scrooge certainly did not — although others are hotter. Other than those things she’s pretty much a carbon copy at this point, right?

Look, I’d totally fuck her, but it’s a hate fuck. What with her displeasure with Jesus at work. And I think we can all agree that Scrooge’s demand that there be a floating holiday made the story perfectly logical in every way.

If I had my way, every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

That’s cute, and obviously over the top. Let’s see if Freeberg gets it.

Yup. That’s her; she’s there.

You know what I hear when someone says “Merry Christmas”? Lots of things, chief among them the very same thing I hear when someone says “Welcome to Hooters sir!” I know I’m someplace where there aren’t any tightasses. I hear “Come, let us break bread together because we’re all here together, we’re all brothers and sisters; maybe we have some long-simmering dispute, but if we do, we’ll pick it up in January. Have a seat at our table, and leave your troubles on the doorstep!”

If Christmas reminds you of Hooters, let me suggest you’re doing something wrong.

I’m sorry, if you have a problem with that there’s something wrong with you. Something frightfully, terribly wrong. I don’t care if you have a bookshelf full of Nobel prizes, a healthy society is not going to be listening to people like you until you get a serious attitude check. The issue is not wisdom, but brotherly love…which, contrary to what may have become my rightfully-earned reputation as a cold-blooded bastard, I daresay is a bit more important. The brotherly love — you people who are like Penelope and Ebenezer, you see it where it doesn’t exist, and you deny it where it is paraded right before your cynical eyes, in as real and genuine a form as it has ever been beheld.

I don’t care if you wish me a “merry Christmas,” or “happy holidays,” or “boy this winter weather is sure strange huh?” because I can appreciate it in every case. But I imagine if I didn’t celebrate Christmas the first might get old pretty quickly.

The English language deprives me of the words I need to describe how much I pity you.

Don’t blame a beautiful language on your inability to form coherent sentences.

Say hi to Marley’s Ghost for me, Penelope. If he doesn’t pop up on your doorstep about seven o’clock tonight, he should. If he and his pals turn your damned attitude around, I’d like to see you over a table filled with num-nums and good wine and a great big ol’ stuffed goose in the middle. If it doesn’t happen, then maybe next year. And pardon me for daring to disagree, but I’m sure your employer & mine would do just as well as they would’ve otherwise.

Marley’s ghost: mostly complaining that he has to burn a personal day for Rosh Hashanah when his Christian friends get Christmas off. Also, I’ve only recently stumbled on Washington Rebel but it seems to me half of their posts could be titled, “Are there no prisons?” so maybe the Christmas Carol metaphor doesn’t really work.