The Other Side Online

Visionary and progressive Construction Contractor & Developer, George Pechtel takes on the diminutive and ethically challenged Trailer Court manager, Rick Ensey for the District 3 seat on the Yakima City Council. The contrasts couldn’t be more vivid. Ensey is a puppet of Bruce Smith, publisher of the Yakima Business Times and is against virtually everything. His loyalty is to his mentor, Brucie boy, and he has accomplished absolutely nothing in 4 years.

On the other hand George Pechtel is his own man and has been a mover and a shaker in the resurgence of Front Street and the Downtown. Pechtel has worked well with politicians of both parties and citizen leaders. He has very broad support and should be able to defeat Ensey.

Ben Shoval is listed as Ensey’s campaign manager and has donated $500 to his re-election. But we all know that the real manager will be Bruce Smith lurking in the background. Watch for his editorials in his newspaper to be highly flattering of Ensey. They will also be full of B.S., distortions and probably outright lies. We will be pointing them out as they appear.

There won’t be a primary in August for this race as they are the only two in it for that seat. There should be plenty to comment on between now and November 8th!

Doing nothing is the easiest thing for Congress to do. Doing nothing would eliminate the Bush Tax Cut and that would trim the federal deficit by half in every future year beginning with 2013.

Because we run a deficit, the Bush Tax Cuts to the richest households are, in effect, paid for by selling bonds. Instead of paying taxes to fund government, the richest lend money to fund government. Let’s go back to taxing instead of borrowing. I am not saying that ending the Bush Tax Cuts is the very best tax policy, only that it is attractively achievable and, hey, if it means saving Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, I’m all for it.

Last week a forum was held in Yakima to inform the public about Secure Communities, a program run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. Secure Communities requires that the fingerprints of everybody who is picked up and booked by law enforcement be entered into the FBI/ICE database. By law, Secure Communities is to become a nationwide system in 2013. The Governors of three states have ceased to comply and refuse to participate because of abuses. A national debate has opened.

Yakima’s Police Chief, County Sheriff and the Head of the County Department of Corrections, although invited, did not attend the forum. They should have been there to explain Secure Communities and to answer questions. They should have been there to hear the stories of those who want justice.

With apologies to the lawyers out there, my interpretation of how our system of criminal law works is that the arrest is made by one branch of the public safety system, the prosecution is done by another and the final ruling is made by a third branch. This handing over from branch to branch provides for review and prevents abuse. ICE operates differently, pretty much handling all of the steps within one office. ICE was created after 9/11 and charged with the task of interdicting terrorists, human traffickers and gun smugglers. That is why it has extraordinary power.

Unless a person has been previously deported, undocumented immigration is a civil matter and civil authority should have full charge of the process.

For a family of four, the “average income tax rate under Reagan in 1983 was 11.06 percent. Under Clinton in 1992, it was 9.18 percent. And under Obama in 2010, it was 4.68 percent.” During Reagan’s time, income tax revenue ranged from 7.8 to 9.4 percent of GDP. Last year, it was 6.2 percent. In fact, in 2009, Americans paid their lowest taxes in 60 years. (from policy economist Pat Garofalo on Jun 1, 2011)

Each year the IRS publishes a summary gleaned from the tax returns of those 400 with the highest income. The data lag by a couple of years, so the latest one is for 2008. In that year, the 400 richest households in America paid an average federal income tax of 18.11 percent. It used to be that short-term capital gains, dividends and interest were taxed as ordinary income. There really is no good reason why the sources of income that most redound to the wealthy are treated differently than other kinds of income, but it sure does keep down their taxes.

The argument that higher taxes “kill jobs” is based on a theoretical construct called the Laffer curve. The Laffer curve shows a “job-killing” effect when taxes are somewhere well above a 40 % statutory tax rate. It just means that productive effort declines beyond some point. Politicians who argue against a tax increase by saying “job-killing” over and over are misleading us intentionally. They probably can’t tell you what a Laffer curve is and they plainly don’t care if it applies to our situation. Their purpose is to starve government of revenue so as to force us into breaking our social compact with seniors and others. Which explains why the economic policies of the Republican Party make absolutely no sense economically.

EARMARKS!

I have a new online subscription. It is called the Weekly Wastebasket and is posted by Taxpayers for Common Sense. You can signup at www.taxpayer.net

This is a clip from today’s message about how the Defense Appropriations Bill got stuffed with earmarks:

“First off, the amendments were adopted “en bloc” — in packages of dozens –rather than individually. In addition they were passed on voice vote, so we don’t know exactly which lawmaker was for or against each package of amendments…. [T]here was $1 billion left over that got dumped into a vague slush fund entitled Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund. Well, transfer they did, cracking that piggy bank open and sending $700 million to their pet projects. We don’t think it enhanced the bill one bit. But at least Rep. Flake’s (R-AZ) amendment getting rid of the $300 million still in the pot was adopted on the House floor….To be sure, we aren’t yet back in the bad old go-go years of earmarking. But instead of moving the country to a system where every dollar spending decision is based on merit, we are seeing some of Congress’ bad habits creeping back. We hope House leadership squashes that once and for all before our hard-earned reforms all unravel.”

The Washington State Redistricting Commission will hold a public hearing in Yakima on Wednesday June 8, 6-9 PM, location TBD. Attendance at the hearings in other locales has been about fifty, with about a dozen people desiring to make comments. Those hearings can be seen on TVW. I actually considered attending the Vancouver session. That is when I realized how very much I do not want to be in the 3rd CD. For me, the hours of driving and the overnight stay were forbidding, as they would be for most people.

According to the 2010 Census, 34.9% of the Hispanic and Latino population of Washington State live in Yakima County. The Redistricting Commission is supposed to ensure that the civic participation of this large group is in no way discouraged by distance, time and expense due to the redrawing of boundaries. I think that it is just not acceptable to draw a line through Yakima County and reassign our least politically active population to a CD based in the far southwest corner of the state. Certainly not when it is possible to drive from Ellensburg to Bellevue in a little over an hour, almost all of it on cruise control.

Think about this and also about how you would redraw the boundaries for the legislative districts so that you can speak out on June 8.

The current or recent spike in oil futures is largely a trader driven bubble according to the “Blame These Guys” article on the May 15 front page of the Yakima Herald Republic. Anyone who is bleeding because of high gasoline prices definitely should read this article. It is a number-rich report on Commodity Futures Market trading in crude oil that covers the history of regulation and price volatility.

In the statement issued last week by Senator Cantwell and 16 other Senators they propose limiting any single energy trader to holding 10% or less of the market. I believe the rule-of-thumb that when as few as four traders control half of a market, implicit price collusion results. So I think that the Senator’ proposed limitation makes a good deal of sense.

As you may know, Koch Industries ships crude oil, refines it and distributes refined products to retail. What unnerves me is that the commodities trading arm, Koch Supply and Trading, bets on the price of oil by trading in derivatives and is one of the five dominant traders in the market. Also, in 2008, the last time the price of oil spiked, Koch Industries leased and filled four supertankers with low priced crude and held them offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. They were able to short the supply and drive up the price by 20 to 40 cents per gallon.

Given the fact that futures trading is not well regulated and given the extreme political activism of the Koch brothers, manipulation of the price of gas for political ends is conceivable.

Medicaid in Washington State is primarily a benefit to senior citizens and secondarily a support system for disabled adults. Paul Ryan’s Republican Budget, the one that Doc Hastings voted for, would make Medicaid a block grant scheme with federal inputs beginning to decline in 2012 and steadily falling behind meeting real costs for every year hence forward.
There are many senior care, assisted living and nursing homes in Yakima that care for a great many seniors. Just how financially stable and profitable do you think the businesses that provide senior homes in Yakima really are? Without the state Medicaid payments at the levels that they have come to rely on, how could they survive? How would the resulting financial difficulties impact the scale and quality of senior care? If senior homes suddenly became unprofitable, what would be the wider impact on the healthcare sector of Yakima’s economy?

The Vatican issued a report on climate warming this morning. The document is only 17 pages long and takes little time to read. I am pasting in only the last paragraph of the report followed by the link.

We call on all people and nations to recognise the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and by changes in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other land uses. We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home. By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility, we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet
blessed with the gift of life. We are committed to ensuring that all inhabitants of this planet receive their daily bread, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink, as we are aware that, if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us.

This was sent to me by Phil Hoge, and it exactly says why Doc Hastings has got to go.  Horrendous manipulation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42692339#42692339