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.
I totally forgot about this yesterday. As I get older, I remember these things in the day before the anniversaries, but forget the day of. Same thing this year, even though it’s a big year.
Twenty years and two days ago, I called a suicide prevention line to get my drinking under control. Wasn’t suicidal, but didn’t want to wait for my nerve to fail in the morning to call around for help, and the only number my drunken self could think to look up in the phone book was the 24 hour suicide prevention line. Didn’t intend to quit. Just get it under control, so my grades would improve. (They didn’t.)
Nothing particularly important to say about it other than, hell that’s a long time to not drink.
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.
Stop the cuts / Photo by Tom Wills used under CC BY-NC license
Photo by Fibonacci Blue used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Tonight my cousin Dave (who is showing me around DC), suggested we go to Zaytinya. It’s an “in” place right now, owned by José Andrés who is a famous chef according to Dave. They server eastern Mediterranean food tapas style, and Dave claimed the people watching would be good. Little did we know.
We walked up, and there were two security guys outside wanding people who went in. They told us there was a special event there. We thought we were about to be turned away because Angelina Jolie (or some A-lister) was having a private party. But they just wanded us and sent us in. We got on the list for a table and chatted in the bar. Normal conversation, but Dave and I kept turning back to who might be there. There was another security guy at the base of the stairs to the balcony section. We decided it wasn’t the President because we thought the security would be much tighter, and in my (completely wrong) opinion, the security guys looked too friendly to be Secret Service. I figured some minor foreign royalty, Kofi Annan, Gary Payton type of person. Dave did ask what I thought I would do if it was the President since I’m of the disappointed in the President liberal persuasion. But we continued to dismiss that it was the President.
We got seated, ordered, and started eating. We ordered lamb in filo, asparagus, shrimp, mushroom, and veal sweetmeats tapas. I’d never had sweetmeats from a cow before. I don’t think I will order it again. It’s definitely sweet, and something between the consistency (they were supposed to be fried crispy, but weren’t) and kind of a weird taste that was released after the first bite, I didn’t like it too much. I don’t think it was Zaytinya’s cooking.
Then I heard a bit of clapping from the other side of the Zaytinya. I looked over and the entourage had already descended the stairs and were making their way toward us. We were seated the closest to the hostess station and the entrance. I didn’t recognize the woman walking toward us. Then I saw past her and the second woman was Michelle Obama!
I am not a celebrity gawker, but I’ll squee for Michelle Obama. Prior to being First Lady, she was no slouch in her advocacy and political work. She impresses the hell out of me.
The two women and the Secret Service detail made their way right by us, and only after they walked out the door did I think to pull out my phone to snap a picture. Too late by then. Ms. Obama seemed a little awkward with the scattered applause as she passed. Not put off or embarrassed exactly, but not ignoring it either. My best guess is that she was just out for dinner with a friend, but Dave suggested it might have been her mother. Possibly could be now that I’ve checked photos of her mother online, but I couldn’t be sure.
Dave was right. The food was excellent, and the people watching was superb!
I’m a beta user for Intersect. It’s a social network site for telling stories. I’m not sure what else is public at the moment, so I’m not going to reveal much more than that. But I am going to use the stuff I’m writing there to spur some more frequent blogging, which I haven’t been doing with any kind of regularity since before my mom died. So here’s the first story I wrote over there, an account of watching the Sounders beat Chivas USA 3 to 1 today.
Despite scrambling unsuccessfully to get someone to take my second ticket for this game over the last few days, I completely forgot about the match when I woke up. Luckily I had set a reminder for 2 hours prior to first kick.
I really prefer to take public transit whenever I am not in a rush. Since I was attending my first match at Starfire, Metro was going to be a little bit of an adventure. Google Maps helpfully told me to take route 150 to get to Starfire. Thank god I don’t have to use Metro’s awful trip planner anymore. And I’m definitely living in the future. I remember my high school days when I carried around 10 to 15 schedule pamphlets for all the possible places I might go. If I had to transfer and I had more than one choice of routes, it was a rough guess at best which option would get me to my destination faster. These days, plus in two addresses and I have the 3 best routes at my fingertips.
Route 150 zipped along quite nicely, taking the freeway for most of the way, and Interurban Ave for the last bit. Luckily, there were other Sounders fans on the bus who’d been to Starfire before. So I just got off when they got off. Lucky because Starfire isn’t visible from Interurban, with a lot of trees and the Green RIver obscuring the complex. And although it’s a little bit of a hike from the stop to the complex, it seemed shorter to me than walking from the International District Station to -NOT CAVING IN TO THE NAMING RIGHTS- Field.
I arrived about 15 minutes prior to the match, but the bleachers were completely filled already. My best option seemed to be the slight rise behind the eastern goal line, which turned out to be in the beer garden. I apologize, Sounders, for using prime beer garden space and not purchasing any beer. Several folks who sit around me in section 132 at the home games had grabbed a spot right on the rail next to the corner kick spot, so I joined them. Nothing like being 10 feet from the match, although the view to the other end of the pitch was difficult.
The Sounders seemed to have their way with Chivas for most of the first half, generating opportunity after opportunity. Fredy Montero took the right hand side. Steve Zakuani kept getting to the goal line on the left. Most of the opportunities were flubbed. But about 10 minutes in, Zakuani made a nice cross that Nate Jaqua tapped in. There was nothing that Zach Thornton, the bane of the Sounders, could do. It was the first Sounders goal against Chivas in five matches.
On at least two occasions, a Chivas player came down the left side of the pitch and had what appeared to me to be an open shot on goal. But in both cases they slid the ball to another player more centrally located who couldn’t put it away. I’m not sure what I was missing from my angle that the first player didn’t take the shot. Tyrone Marshall also continued to frustrate me. He made some brilliant defensive plays, but also had some ugly lapses as well. Luckily, none of the resulting chances could be converted, and he seemed to settle in to steady play after the first 20 minutes or so.
There was only one sign with the running time on the field, and it was behind, above and to my left, so I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Consequently, the first half seemed to go by really quickly.
The second half started off with some great attacking by Seattle. Another sweet cross from Zakuani to Montero for a tap in put Seattle up 2 to 0. I felt a lot more comfortable after that. A 1 goal lead can be quickly erased, but a 2 goal advantage gives a team the room to make a mistake and not lose the game. The Seattle players seemed to be working a little at cross purposes after the goal, and aggressive play from Chivas seemed to be taking advantage of it. For 15 to 20 minutes after the second Seattle goal, Chivas was constantly on the attack. They slipped one by Kasey Keller about 23 minutes into the second half.
As time wound down though, Chivas seemed to get more desperate and sloppier. The Sounders kept stealing the ball during the last 10 minutes and turning possession into attacks. In extra time, one of the Sounders took the ball away in midfield, passed to shaggy Roger Levesque running down the right, who made a nice cross to Jaqua in front of the goal. Both Thornton and Jaqua raced for it, with Jaqua a half step ahead to head it in over the Chivas keeper’s attempted punch away. Sounders ahead 3-1 with only a minute or so left in extra time. A some time wasting goal kicks from the Sounders and a Jeff Parke for Zakuani substitution ticked off the final minutes with no serious Chivas attacks.
Awesome game, and Nate Jaqua has to be considered for M.V.P. of the U.S. Open Cup tournament. I think that puts him at 5 goals so far, and he has one more match to add to his total, the tournament final at -NOT CAVING IN TO THE NAMING RIGHTS- Field in October.
As an added bonus, the bus back downtown was right there when I got out of the stadium, and unlike regular games, there were only 15 or so people waiting to get on. So I got to actually sit instead of be jammed upright against a bus full of nattering U.W. students.
I wish I had caught on sooner. Just a word to unsuspecting home sellers in the Seattle area to hopefully save you some trouble.
My grandparent’s place is on the market. We’ve had 4 offers on it, all of which fell through. It’s a tough market right now. I get that. But I’m a little peeved at the behavior of one Ms. Marilyn Scott.
Offer one was from Marilyn Scott. Got the offer, sent it to the lawyer, incorporated some technical changes into a counter offer, but accepted her price. Before we sent it over to her though, she withdrew the offer. I didn’t pay attention to the name at the time though.
Got a second offer from someone else. It wasn’t a great offer. I was about to counter offer when a second offer came in for a lot more money. It was from Marilyn Scott. So we pursued that offer, only to have her back out again. And by the time we figured out she wasn’t serious, the first offer was gone.
Here’s the key, I didn’t associate the second offer from Ms. Scott with the first. Thought they were from two different people.
A fourth offer came in. This one also from Ms. Marilyn Scott. This time I recognized her as the buyer from the second go around. I countered with the same technical changes again, but I suspected there was something wonky going on. I didn’t even bother letting the family know this time. I figured I would as soon as we had come to an agreement on the terms of the P&S, because I suspected she’d back out like the second time. Which she did.
Only just now did I look at the first offer again and realize it was the same woman in three different cases. If she comes back with yet another offer, I won’t even bother. Something screwy with the woman.
You’d think her real estate agents wouldn’t keep making offering for the same place on her behalf. And they probably wouldn’t. All three offers use different agents. Our listing agent has talked with two of them. Neither of them knew she was working with another agent. Now that I’ve pointed out the third, we’ll talk with that one too.
Anyhoo, the whole point of this is to get it all into Google. I’m betting there are other agents around Seattle who have Ms. Marilyn Scott as a client too. If you do, you might want to have a talk with her. If you are a seller, be aware that Marilyn Scott is likely not serious.
Having not sold a place in the Seattle area before, I have no idea if players like this are common. Just weird.
By now, most of my friends know that a judge in struck down California’s Proposition 8. Being the obsessive person that I am, I downloaded a copy of Vaughn Walker’s decision on Proposition 8. Here’s a couple of thoughts I have on it. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, so my speculation is probably suspect.
First, he laid out a lot of facts in the record to support his conclusions. And his legal reasoning based on those facts is detailed and methodical. The analyses I’ve seen online say that going to make it harder to overturn.
However, the Proposition 8 proponents were fairly negligent in putting on their case. They called two experts who were not qualified. I wonder how much precedential weight other courts will give the case when people challenge similar laws in other states because of this. Will they allow bigots in other states to put on a better case or will they give weight to the essentially unopposed facts and conclusions from this decision? If this were a death penalty case, the proponents would have a great case for ineffective assistance of counsel. I personally believe the scientific evidence offered in the case by marriage equality folks is pretty unassailable, but their opponents barely tried.
One of the facts that was a pretty important part of this case was the fact that California does not discriminate based on sexual orientation in adoption and child fostering. With or without Proposition 8, California viewed gay parents as equal to straight parents. That was one of a couple of facts underlying his decision that are specific to California.
That’s important because it totally undercut one of the reasons the Prop 8 proponents gave as a compelling government interest in banning gay marriage. They claimed the state had a compelling government interest to ensure that that children are raised by biological parents of opposite sexes. Since Prop 8 did nothing to change how gay parents would be treated, that could not be a compelling government interest behind Prop 8.
So, that makes me wonder if states that have been more intransigent in their deleterious treatment of homosexuals might have an easier time getting their gay marriage bans upheld. In other words, the might get away with claiming a compelling government interest in ensuring children have biological parents raising them.
Then again, an appeals court might give a fairly broad-based reason for upholding the decision that makes that reasoning moot.
The facts not specific to California could carry over to other cases unless other folks are allowed to put on a case that challenges the established facts in this case. I’m not really sure if other courts would just assume these facts are uncontroverted, or what. Things like studies that show no difference in child outcomes for gay parents versus straight parents when other family status items like class or cohabitation status are controlled for. Or that studies of gays and lesbians as a group show they do not have political power (used to support the designation of sexual orientation as a suspect class and justify strict scrutiny). At what point in the life of this issue as a legal controversy do those become dicta?
Anyhow, it’s a really good decision. Much better than the Washington State Supreme Court decision on gay marriage a couple of years ago. And I say that not because I like Walker’s conclusion better (though I do), but because it’s much more thoroughly reasoned.
One of the things I’ve been doing over the last few months is assembling my genealogy. Unfortunately, I was spurred to do this because my grandparents died. I *should* have done this last year when I could have asked them some questions. I’ve got the big book of Hathaways. My grandmother had some cobbled together information on the Swedes. My aunts on my father’s side assembled some information on the Weisses, Solle’s and Sorenson’s but not a lot. (There’s also a decent amount of information put together about my step-father’s family.)
I’ve been piecing all this together. I’ve also been digging through census records and other stuff available online. In addition, I’ve been able to match up people in my family tree with family trees other people have put online. Whenever I’ve been able to add to the tree through my own digging, I get a little thrill.
I’ve two great grandparents who emigrated from Sweden early last century. I’ve got pretty extensive records for the Swedish family. Also on the maternal side of the family are the Hathaways, who came to the U.S. way back. There are lots of other families that married into the Hathaways along the way, so that branch of the family is essentially mutt. The original Hathaway immigrants were English, but we’re talking three or four centuries ago. The records for the Hathaways are extensive too.
On my father’s side of the family, there are the Weisses from Wisconsin. My great grandfather Joseph Weiss’ parents emigrated from Germany. His wife was a Ryan, born in Wisconsin to an American and a Canadian. My other great grandfather on my father’s side was William Solle Jr., son of German immigrants, though they married in the U.S. and I presume they met here too. His wife was Flora Sorenson, daughter of Danish immigrants. Until a couple of years ago, I thought this whole side of my family was German.
By my addition, that makes me one quarter Swedish, one quarter German, one eighth Danish, one sixteenth Canadian, and five sixteenths a mixture that includes some English. Of course, the Canadian blood probably isn’t First Nations, but I don’t know who comprises that part of the family yet.
Anyhow, except for the Hathaways and possibly the Ryans, all my family are pretty recent immigrants.
I entered in the known information for my step-father too, even though they aren’t blood relatives for me. I knew his family was German. But what I didn’t know was that they didn’t immigrate from Germany. Both sides of that family were Germans who emigrated from Russia in the early 1800s and colonized Russia, in a part that’s now in the Ukraine. They left Germany due to Napoleon. A generation or two later, some of them left there and emigrated to the U.S. settling in North Dakota. Had no idea the Germans had colonized Russia. From what I gather, it was at the invitation of the czar.
Yesterday, The Stranger published an in-depth piece about the things that could go wrong with the proposed deep-bore tunnel downtown that would replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The Stranger’s reporting has gone downhill since Josh Feit left a few years ago, but this one is pretty good muck-raking yellow journalism. I urge you to read it if you live around here.
I’m not particularly invested with whether we replace the viaduct with a tunnel, another viaduct, or with a surface option. I don’t think having unshadowed access to the downtown waterfront is key to Seattle’s future. I wouldn’t mind it, but whatever. I do care about a couple of things though. First, the current viaduct is unsafe and should come down.
Second, I don’t think it should be Seattle’s responsibility to pay for the replacement. And that’s where things seems to have gone off the rails in the last year. As it stands right now, if anything big goes wrong with the tunnel construction (and if you read The Stranger article, much could), there’s no money to pay for fixing the problems. The state has said it will try to find a way to make Seattle residents pay for it, on the theory that we’re the ones who really want the tunnel. The Seattle City Council (or at least a couple of them, Tim Burgess and Richard Conlin) say we won’t have to pay, but all they offer is some trust us, we’ll make sure we don’t have to pay statements. In the meantime, the City Council wants to move ahead and sign contracts without dealing with the issue of what to do with cost overruns up front.
So what? Stuff’s gotta be paid for right? I’m generally in favor of levies and taxes for needed things. However, Seattle already has a huge deficit, according to the 2010 Seattle adopted budget. We have revenue of $3.4 billion ($1.2 billion from property taxes) and expenses of $3.8 billion. We’re already trying to figure out how to make up that $400 million. A lot is coming from other resources. Cost overruns on the tunnel could easily double our deficit. In other words, if something goes wrong big time (and that often happens), we’re either going to see significant property tax increases, or we end up with an unfinished and useless tunnel, no viaduct, and the state has spent a buttload of money that we don’t get back. The third option is to spread the cost increases across the state, but that’s not the way the law reads right now.
If you live in Seattle, it behooves you to let the City Council know now that you’d prefer cost overruns be planned for now. Richard Conlin and Tim Burgess are probably the two council people who need opposing feedback the most. Or, if you’d prefer to cross your fingers, you can just not do anything.
We listed my grandparents’ condo today. They lived there for 36 years. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but I’m not particularly sad about that. I am really sad my grandmother didn’t get to see the photos in the listing though. They intended to sell the place, but with them in the hospital I refused to spend a lot of time and effort cleaning the place and prepping it for sale when I could be spending time with them. It just wasn’t my top priority. It would have happened, but slowly. My grandfather understood. After Gram came back from the hospital, her memory wasn’t very good. She remembered they were going to sell it and that stagers were going to prepare it. But she couldn’t remember when I told her it wasn’t ready yet. She kept asking to take a trip to see what it looked like staged. She wasn’t in any shape to do so, besides the fact that it wasn’t staged yet.
As you can see from the photos in the listing, the place looks gorgeous. Not really much like when they lived there though. It had the cluttered grandparents look. The look the stager was going for was successful mid-40s manager.
