Big Government?

Last month we looked at the issue of how to pay for government when some folks refuse to raise the revenue needed. Today I want to take a slightly deeper look. Let’s start with the conservative talking point that liberals favor “Big Government” and they do not. A standard ploy at election time is to attack Democrats as “Tax and Spend” liberals with the implicit assumption that they are not and anyone who is, is very bad. The ideologically fixated Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, came up with the infinitely quotable line that his goal was to “shrink government down to where he could drown it in a bathtub.” Norquist has been remarkably successful in gathering literally thousands of Republicans in both Federal and State legislatures to sign on to his pledge to never raise taxes. As he often remarks with a smirk, if tax revenues are reduced then government must reduce spending and government must shrink.

All this is great fun in the game of politics but no one seems to stop and ask what would seem to be two reasonable questions:

a. Are conservatives consistent in holding this purist position or are they more pragmatic and flexible depending on circumstance?

b. Are there reasons for thinking that a smaller government and lower taxes is better (in the sense of improving the quality of life) than larger government with a larger tax-revenue stream?

The first is pretty easy to answer. Saint Ronald, after seeing the looming economic mess that was arriving on the fast track after his tax cuts (the debt ballooned and, over his presidency, jumped from roughly $700 billion to over $3 trillion), reversed course. Contemporary conservatives who have canonized Reagan conveniently forget but over the course of his eight years in the White House taxes were raised a dozen times. He also expanded the size the Federal government significantly and presided over huge spending increases, mainly in the military. You can look it up. Google “Reagan taxes debt government” and sit back and do a little reading.

Ronnie wasn’t alone, of course. Bush I also raised taxes, famously, after he ran on that other classic line “read my lips, no new taxes.” It likely cost him re-election.

To round out the picture Bush II damn near broke the country because he only embraced half the standard message. He did cut taxes (and was praised by conservatives) but he expanded government and increased spending by truly astonishing amounts. Most conservatives today, so focused on blaming Obama for the ongoing economic woes, forget that Bush II started two wars and signed an enormously expensive expansion of Medicare that was little more than a gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The debt expanded by roughly $5 trillion while he was in office.

It continued to grow under Obama but not because of any “tax and spend” profligacy. Obama actually cut taxes. The stimulus package was largely tax reductions for middle-income earners which conservatives rarely acknowledge. The sizes of both the government and the deficit have been dramatically reduced since 2008 which, no surprise, is virtually never mentioned by Republicans. The debt continues to grow because the GOP refuses to even consider revenue increases — many of them having signed Norquist’s astonishingly stupid pledge. [It’s stupid because it commits an elected representative to a position established by a private individual that forces you to ignore the needs, wants and desires of the people who elected you — not exactly what I’d call “democracy in action.”]

So the answer to the first question is “No” — resoundingly. How about the second — and here I’m limiting the focus to democracies like ours.

Let’s begin with a simple question: What is government for? Essentially government is what people do when they get together. The larger a group becomes the more difficult it is to organize and run things using informal means. So groups began developing formal structures. Historically the direction is obvious: government expands as the needs of a growing, complex society increase.

This isn’t complicated. You need to get from one place to another so you and other locals lay down a path. Soon lots of folks are using it and need other ways to get around. Your path runs into your neighbors’ paths so you cooperate on a larger set of interlocking paths. Same kind thing happens with teaching your kids how to live in your group, farming and moving produce around, defending your territory, dealing with illness, holding folks to societal standards, etc. Eventually providing these services becomes too complex so your group incorporates and forms a government. You (s)elect people to take care of these issues, provide the services — and collect taxes to pay for it.

When your “group” is some 350 million people spread across a vast continent the organization governing it has to be “big.” And it has to be paid for. Taxes pay for services. It’s misleading to argue that taxes fund government. They fund services and the most efficient and cheapest way to provide services is to have a government do it. Yes I know, conservatives like to claim that private industry and privately held corporations can do these things better but the data do not support them. Take health care where the US is, even with Obamacare, the most privatized health care system in the industrialized world. What do we have to show for it? Just awful stats on health and we pay twice as much per capita for them. In the few areas where health care is run entirely by the government things are surprisingly cheap and well-run. Medicare, Medicaid, the VA are among the best run and most cost-effective health care programs in the country.

Two overarching factors make it clear that privatization of governmental systems cannot work. One, the private sector needs to turn a profit and once the profit element is folded into the bargain we’re going to run into problems. Two, the privatization model depends on the outmoded and misguided economic assumption that humans are rational decision-makers. We’re not and, interestingly, Herb Simon and Daniel Kahneman have won the Nobel in economics for convincingly explicating the psychological principles behind this. The principle of the “silent hand” held dear by the Austrian school also fails because it, too, was based on rational decision-making.

In short, there’s really nothing wrong with Big Government. In fact, every social, economic and political indicator screams that it’s far better than Big Business. And, funnily, even the conservatives know this. All you have to do is examine what they’ve done when they’re in control. Now if they would embrace the “tax” gambit as lovingly as the “spend,” we might get out of the freakin’ mess we’re in. We could end up like virtually every other industrialized nation on the planet — all of which are rapidly outstripping us in longevity, education, productivity, health and almost every indicator of the quality of life there is.

Stopping radio station KRPI -- an exercise in local, national and international politics

I’m back. My apologies to my regular readers but I have been preoccupied, my time commandeered and my energy hijacked by a nutty, insane project: trying to block a bunch of deep-pocketed rat-bastards from building a Brobdingnagian array of AM broadcasting towers in our Lilliputian community.

In an earlier post I told you a bit about Point Roberts, the geopolitical exclave where I, and a mixed bag of some 1,300 others, live. We’re a quiet bunch here, content to deal with local issues like raising money for a new library, getting a lighthouse at our lightless Lighthouse Park (which, in a way, kinda fits our funky community) and arguing over stuff like how wide a walking/cycling path should be. We do not want or need a monstrosity that will consist of five 150-foot steel towers plunked down on a richly wooded 10 acre lot a stone’s throw from the border with Canada.

At first we thought we just had to let the county planners know about our opposition. So we did. Howls of protest, passionate letters, vituperative emails, visits to the county seat all went for naught. The powers that be and the moneyed folks behind projects like these don’t give a rat’s ass who’s upset. If there’s money to be made they will fight you at every turn. We shifted gears, toned down the passion and formed a “cross-border coalition” — because this mess impacts Canadians as well as Americans.

We focused on law, zoning codes, survey data, court cases, international treaties, sightline analyses, public protests, politics, history and money raising (lawyers ain’t cheap). No longer the pacific residents of the easy-going Northwest we have morphed into a bunch of really vicious bastards.

The battle lines have been joined and they encompass the Federal Communications Commission, Homeland Security and the US Customs and Border Patrol, Whatcom County’s Planning and Development Services, Industry Canada, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, Canadian politicians in British Columbia and Ottawa, our US Senators and Representatives in Congress, a prominent law firm in DC, a small stable of local lawyers, electrical and civil engineers in both the US and Canada and a surveyor. In the past months I’ve given talks to various groups on both sides of the border and had meetings with the most unlikely people including a Minister in the Canadian government and the Mayor of Delta, BC who is addressed in all official settings as “Your Worship.” Makes you want to just run for that office, doesn’t it?

I won’t bore you with gory details (they are many and they are gory) but, briefly, what we found as we dug was that BBC Broadcasting (yup, that’s their name though they have nothing to do with the real “Beeb”) appears to have been operating in violation of Federal law for a decade. It is not really an American company but is operated out of Canada under the name “Sher-E-Punjab, Inc.” BBC Broadcasting is a “shell” corporation set up behind the name of an American citizen who probably doesn’t even know how to turn a radio on. They want to move their towers to Point Roberts because it is where it is — right on the border. By transmitting from here they can better reach their listeners virtually all of whom live in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and speak Punjabi, the language which all programs are broadcast in.

But, in transmitting from Point Roberts they will also be flooding, not just the several hundred homes here, but the 23,000 residents who live just north of the border with what’s called “blanketing interference.” You may not know what that is but if you live within a mile or so of a 50,000 watt AM transmitter you sure as hell do. It screws up radio and TV reception, messes with DSL lines, makes cordless phones nearly useless and can even make the speakers of your hi fi system start “broadcasting” the signal. A church in Ferndale, where the towers currently are, has complained bitterly about Punjabi music coming over their public address system during services. Stations that broadcast with this kind of power are called “blowtorches” for damn good reasons. Blanketing interference is called that for equally good reasons.

In short, we have a Canadian company quite happy to screw up the electronic devices of thousands of Canadians in order to boost profits (which come from Canadian advertising) using an empty American company which shares a name with a famous UK telecommunications giant (surely, there’s a trademark violation in there) as a front to hold a license that was granted under false pretenses. Cute, eh?

We also discovered that the company has been applying for broadcasting licenses in both Canada and the US and in each application they tell a different story. In the US, BBC tells the FCC that they’re serving the folks in our corner of Washington State. In Canada, Sher-E-Punjab tells the CRTC that the target group is the South Asian community in BC.

Amusingly (provided you have a twisted sense of humor), in their application to the FCC this Canadian company never mentioned those 23,000 folks in Canada. In the maps they supplied, Canada is blanked out. It appears as a large, dull-brown area — no roads, no towns, rivers, people — just CANADA printed in tiny letters. Why? Because this way the FCC didn’t know about these people and wouldn’t be obliged to notify Industry Canada about the interference problem which international treaties demand. In their Canadian applications they claim that they have no real financial interest in BBC Broadcasting and no role in determining company policy. Why? Because they need the CRTC to believe they are totally committed to Canadian issues and needs.

Since we stopped howling at the moon and turned into a pack of data-sifters and internet-surfers, we’ve been busy. We have amassed bucket-loads of data on the company, its dealings, the family that owns it and their business practices. We have filed petitions with the FCC to block the renewal of BBC’s license focusing on what’s known as the “Alien Ownership” clause. Our new political friends north of the border have directed Industry Canada to file an objection with the FCC to reconsider the original tower-relocation decision citing international treaties. We have called on Homeland Security to explore possible disruptions of electronic monitoring at the border. We’ve submitted position papers to our local planning department imploring them to deny the permit to build. We will soon be filing formal objections with the CRTC to deny Sher-E-Punjab a Canadian broadcasting license. Our next step may be the most interesting one…. We will, if the moment is right, have our lawyers approach their lawyers with a offer: cancel the plan to build the towers and we’ll call off the dogs.

I’ll post later when we know how this all turns out.

Paying for government

Conservatives constantly beat the “no taxes” drum. They attack Democrats as “tax and spend” liberals. Whenever there is a shortfall their response is to cut spending; it is never to increase revenues. And they have been getting their way. Government spending is down. The sequester is firmly in place and it’s going to be tough to get it reversed. The pressure from the far right never stops. They shut the government down for over two weeks and showed no sign of remorse for the pain caused. Their only hint of unease was over the possibility that it damaged them politically. They get giddy with anticipation at the chance to do it again in a couple of months and start to hyperventilate over the possibility that they might actually get the US to default on its debts.

I live in the reasonably progressive state of Washington and in a funny, oddly balanced district in Whatcom County — the most northwesterly county in the lower 48. We routinely vote for the Democrats in higher offices. We went for Obama and Senators Murray and Cantwell. We backed Democrats Gregoire and Inslee for governor. Our Congressman was moderate Democrat Rick Larsen till they redistricted us but we stayed true to form and elected Suzan DelBene, another moderate Democrat.

Oddly, we have elected conservatives to all three state offices. Our state senator is Doug Ericksen, a stalwart conservative and ALEC member. Our two representatives are Vincent Buys and Jason Overstreet — the former is a conservative who seems to be trying to be reasonable, the latter is a right-winger whose positions are so extreme that they make some in the local Tea Party uncomfortable. Overstreet is out there on the far right wing with national figures like Senator Ted Cruz, think tank President Jim DeMint, Governor Rick Scott and far, far too many others. Does Overstreet think like these ideologues? Do they think like he does? Cruz is supposed to be a smart guy with Princeton and Harvard degrees. Scott made millions in business and we all know that means you have to be clever and smart. Would it be asking too much to expect some measure of coherency from them? Would it be unfair to call them on some of their positions, like on taxes, spending, running government? Well, I’m never going to get a chance to chat up Cruz or DeMint but Overstreet is within reach.

In fact, I’ve had several chances to chat with him, once when I was part of a lobbying group seeking to overturn that idiotic state law criminalizing playing poker online and then again when he ran for re-election. I asked him about taxes. His response was right out of the “Bagger’s” play book for he is a proud signer of the Norquist pledge to never raise taxes. He’s so committed to this position that he rejected out of hand the argument that legalizing online poker would be a bonus because it would raise revenues for the state.

“You’re saying you want to tax the game,” he said. “I’m against any form of taxation.”

“No,” I replied. “It wouldn’t tax the game. It would tax the company that runs the game.”

“I am against all taxes,” he repeated.

“But,” I tried again, “These wouldn’t be new taxes. They’d just be the kinds of taxes businesses pay anyway.”

“Sorry,” he smiled (he does have an engaging smile). “I cannot back any legislation that includes taxation.”

“Okay,” I said realizing I had no chance to get through here. “How do you feel about fees?”

“Fees?”

“Yeah, fees. And nuisance levies, rising property tax rates, increased water and electrical costs, add-ons for the purchase of liquor, cigarettes, candy.”

“Huh?”

“Well, Jason,” (I shifted from constituent appealing to my elected representative to professor lecturing a particularly dense student), “in case you haven’t noticed things still have to get done, services need to be provided. If you won’t raise taxes in the standard way they’re gonna get raised in other ways.”

“I already told you Arthur,” (we were now clearly best buds and on a first name basis!), “I signed the Norquist pledge never to raise taxes.”

“Ah yes. So you said. But by your inaction on taxes you have raised taxes, and the worst kind.”

“Huh?” (Perplexity swam across his face.)

“In order to keep government going government has stepped in and generated the needed revenue, bypassing you and the rest of your tax-resistant friends in Olympia.”

“I don’t understand. I’ve never done anything that would increase taxes.”

“But you have. Sales taxes have gone up. The new liquor law carried a huge increase in the taxation on liquor. There’ve been boosts in nuisance taxes on all kinds of purchases and we have among the nation’s highest gasoline taxes.”

“I wasn’t in office when that happened,” he bleated.

“Fair enough, but you were when the county boosted property tax rates. When the filing fees for any project were increased, when driver’s licenses got more expensive, when construction permits went up … way up, when what look like minor charges began appearing on things like septic tank inspections or wetlands surveys.”

“Huh?” (Perplexity was being replaced by a look I’d seen before I retired — panic and a compelling desire to get away, far away.) “I didn’t have anything to do with those.”

“But you did. Because you have refused to raise taxes, taxes have been raised. And guess who’s paying these taxes.”

“Huh? Who?”

“The people who can least afford them. The poor, the middle-class homeowners, the farmers in your district, the small business owners — the people you claim you went to Olympia to help.”

“Well, I do help them,” he said, seeming to recover a bit. “I help them by keeping taxes down. I told you so many times Arthur that I thought you’d heard me. I am resolutely against any new taxes.”

“Well then, thanks for your time Jason. I guess I’ll see you at the next Tea Party rally.”

“Really? You attend those?”

“Of course. I’ve read Sun Tzu.”

Guest Blog: The Angry Buddhist

Today’s blog post is a contribution from an old friend. He used to go by the name Wayne Lively. After many years of studying the writings of Siddhartha Gautama (commonly known as the Buddha) and those who followed in his footsteps, Mr. Lively sold his Harley, gave away all his worldly belongings (such as they were) and entered a Buddhist monastery. Since being consecrated or commissioned or whatever it is that Buddhists do when you enter the monkish life, he uses the name Don Gatasaro, a bow to his family and ethnic roots, though to me he is still ‘Wayne.’

He has undergone a remarkable change in his views on life and his vision for this planet. He studies philosophy, psychology, history and genetics along with his ongoing Buddhist training and is currently working on a book blending the palliative effects of mindfulness meditation with a broader social view of the modern world. But he retains his life-long fascination with politics. Born into a rigid conservative family and community in Texas he slowly moved toward progressive ideals and for a time was a left-leaning blogger for the Las Vegas Review Journal (yes, that right-tilting paper actually published his writings).

He recently sent me an engaging political rant, a very un-Buddhist political rant. It struck me as more than a little amusing. Here we have a Buddhist monk, a rather large white man with a shaved head who wraps the orange robes of his community about his frame, who meditates several hours a day, who preaches peace and tolerance, whose life is devoted to the diminishing of suffering and stress in the world going totally fucking ape-shit crazy over the insanity of contemporary right-wingnuts. It is amazing the impact that sheer stupidity can have. Even the quiet, contemplative Buddhists of the world can just fucking lose it. Rant follows:

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Isn’t it time we finally stop being liberals, just gave it up ‘cause nothing we do makes any inroads? Conservatives have had their chance and screwed the pooch. I cannot think of one single conservative ideological success. Not one. Name an industry, any part of our society that, over the last 30 years of conservative domination, hasn’t been hurt. Can’t, can you? What area of our society has moved forward in a positive manner from conservatives screwing around with it? Airlines, banking, media, religion, education? They have succeeded in just one place: They have made already rich people richer. (Which might have been the point, honestly, which certainly hasn’t been honest on their part.)

What happened to the conservative mantra of calling a spade a spade, of honestly, compassion? What happened to idealism? If Nelson Rockefeller were here he’d be first in line to change party registration. Nixon would be a moderate Democrat. Even Reagan couldn’t have stomached these morons.

I’ve tried talking to the ignorant conservatives I know — ignorant because they have limited facts, willfully stupid because they ignore facts which do not support their viewpoints so set in stone — and not one of them can readily point to a success. They simply try to bully their way out. They try to turn the tables. They change the subject. If you stick to the point, and make them answer the question, then they make YOU the problem. 

If they refuse to answer, then they should be ignored — and told they will be ignored until they stop being stupid. Case in point, health care reform. Did you see that the US came in 36th out of 38 in a report released last week of health care in developed countries? “We’re 36th! U-S-A, U-S-A.” Great chant. Yet the first meaningful reform has been put on the floor of the House to be repealed 48 times by Republicans. With no replacement plan at all! Not one! Not in five years! If there were a conservative alternative, don’t you think somebody would have found it by now??? So why isn’t anyone saying, “Shut the eff up!”

I wish I were going to live another fifty years to see if we ever clean the conservative mess up, and how. I think we will — the ‘we’ here being our children who have inherited it. It certainly won’t be the current bunch of idiots. What else could you possibly call the current crop of conservatives. Let them whine and bitch about liberals all they want, from social outcast purgatory. They’ve earned it.

What a bunch of losers.

 /rant off — Don Gatasaro

Damn Good Mushroom Sauce - For Pasta

Time for a foodie blog. This is the best mushroom-based sauce of those I make. It’s a Fall recipe because that’s when you’re most likely to find fresh wild mushrooms (and, no, I don’t gather my own — I wouldn’t eat any mushroom I picked!).

It’s hard to call any mushroom sauce original because no matter what you think you’ve come up with someone else almost certainly has as well — and before you. I like to think this one is mine … but wouldn’t want to have to argue that in court. Recipe below makes two good-sized servings.

Use 12 inch stainless steel pan. It works better than non-stick.

•3 strips of bacon — Ayrshire is perfect for this recipe if you can find it. If not, use regular.

•1 pound wild mushrooms — chanterelles, porcinis, morels, shitakes all go well. Toss in a couple of regular criminis or the dish starts getting expensive! Coarse chop. If you can’t find fresh mushrooms, use dried. Rehydrate in hot water or broth (veggie or chicken). Strain and save the soaking liquid.

•2 T butter

•1 T olive oil

•2 cloves garlic, mashed and chopped

•2 scallions, sliced thin

•2 T shallots, chopped

•2 T flour

•1/2 c white wine (or mix of wine and soaking liquid)

•1/2 c (or more) cream

•1/2 lb pasta — pappardelle is best. It’s broad and has the right texture for the sauce. Linguini or fettucini will work.

Fry bacon — if Ayrshire add a t of vegetable oil and use medium heat. It won’t crisp up like regular bacon. Set aside and cut up into small pieces. Pour off fat.

Melt butter, add oil and sauté mushrooms — use fairly high heat here, you want to get a lightly caramelized quality on the ‘shrooms. Cook for about 3 or 4 minutes, stirring when needed.

Add garlic, scallions and shallots — cook another minute or so

Dust with flour — continue cooking another minute or so

Deglaze with wine/soaking liquid — cook another minute or so as sauce thickens

Add 1/2 c of the cream and cook another minute or two. You may need more cream depending on how thick the sauce is

Salt and pepper to taste

Add to cooked pasta and garnish with the chopped bacon bits

Sauce takes about as long to prepare as the pasta does to cook so try to time it right.