If You’re Sick of Big Money in Politics, You Should Vote “Yes” on I-122

October 26, 2015 Paul Constant

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Here at Civic Ventures, we believe in creating civic change on a local level. At a time when Congress is locked up in partisan stasis, we look to our cities to be laboratories of democracy, the places where we experiment with new policies that carry government into the 21st century. This is not always ideal; city government doesn’t always possess the far-reaching authority that the federal government enjoys. But those limitations shouldn’t discourage us. Gay marriage started in the city of San Francisco, grew to a state issue in Massachusetts, and eventually became a federal issue. Cities tend to start these conversations, which then become national issues. And no city in America has been more innovative over the last few years than Seattle. We’ve been at the forefront of the $15 minimum wage fight and we’re engaging in civic conversations that will likely change the way future generations of Americans talk about gun responsibility , criminal justice reform, and marijuana legalization. The United States desperately needs campaign finance reform. The system was already in decline when the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision established personhood for corporations and gave money the same protected status we give to free speech. But since then, corporate influence on elections has reached staggering heights. It now takes hundreds of millions of dollars to elect a president in America. The rules that stop candidates from conferring with political action committees are getting blurrier all the time. Politics has become super-saturated with money. That money results in real-world consequences: wealthy people and corporations enjoy greater access to political power than at any moment in modern American history. And Americans understand this; a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll recently found that one third of all Americans are concerned about the influence of money on politics, “more than for any of five other issues tested.” When you
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The NFL should launch a “Voting Awareness Month,” but here’s why they won’t

October 26, 2015 Nick Cassella

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2016, Pop Culture

Like 49 percent of Americans , I consider myself a pro football fan. I wake up every Sunday, have a cup of coffee, set my Fantasy Football roster(s), and tune into the best sporting experience the world has to offer. In 2014, NFL games reached 202.3 million unique viewers , “representing 80 percent of all television homes and 68 percent of potential viewers in the US.” If you think that’s impressive, think about this: 45 of the top 50 TV shows last year were NFL games. And all of the top 20 programs were football games. 2014’s most-watched matchup, featuring the Eagles vs. Cowboys, had 32 million viewers alone. The NFL uses its TV superiority to promote worthwhile causes, too. They relentlessly advertise their PLAY 60 initiative, “a campaign to encourage kids to be active for 60 minutes a day in order to help reverse the trend of childhood obesity.” And every fan of the NFL knows about the controversial “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and the nationalistic “ Salute to Service .” Both of these programs are promoted in order to, essentially, create awareness and solemnity around their respective topics. Oh, and they also happen to sell copious amounts of pink and camouflage merchandise! But why should the NFL only assist these causes? As the #1 de facto TV program in America, the NFL has the unique opportunity to push other deeply patriotic and non-partisan initiatives. In fact, I’d argue the NFL still has the chance to embrace another extremely important cause: The NFL should promote voting awareness in order to address our nation’s exceptionally low voter turnout . They could call it something like, “Vote for America,” and label it as a program which sought to create awareness around the most sacred and noble right given to US citizens: voting. You can almost hear Al Michaels saying, “And as a part of the NFL’s campaign, Vote for America, we urge all American citizens, domestic and abroad, to participate in our
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Daily Clips: October 26th, 2015

October 26, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

Rubio gives up on the Senate: Does anyone else think its highly convenient that Rubio has all of a sudden found a deep hatred for the Senate? It’s almost like he’s seen that his party’s base hates anyone that’s a politician. But are they dumb enough to fall for this 180 turn? Can Senator Rubio convince them that he’s not a politician? The GOP has a new speaker, but he’s stuck with the same doomed strategy: Matthew Yglesias has a great piece at Vox which highlights the difficulties which (most probably) await the next (probable) Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Yglesias argues: The core problem that afflicted John Boehner during his tenure in office remains in place — a band of hard-line conservatives routinely insists that the GOP use routine but critical pieces of must-pass legislation (debt ceiling bills, government funding bills, etc.) as “leverage” to secure ideological concessions from the White House. The plan fundamentally doesn’t make sense and can’t work, which most Republicans know but aren’t willing to say. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it hasn’t changed one bit. And in some ways, things may be worse than ever under Ryan, who isn’t really a practitioner of the kind of crass transactional politics that Boehner used to make it work. The concealed carry fantasy: The New York Times editorial board used their platform to discuss the delusion surrounding carrying guns and keeping yourself “safe.” Read what they have to say on the matter: This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research project showing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator. They’re not done. They then turn their anger towards the gun lobby: More complete research, unimpeded by the gun lobby, would undoubtedly uncover a higher death toll. But this
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You Should Read This Story About Seattle’s “Minimum Wage Meltdown That Never Happened”

October 23, 2015 Paul Constant

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Minimum Wage

This morning, Puget Sound Business Journal published an extraordinary cover story by Jeanine Stewart. The headline? “Apocalypse Not: $15 and the cuts that never came.” The story is right now hidden behind a paywall , but PSBJ managing editor Steven Goldsmith has outlined the piece as an “Editor’s Pick.” Here’s the front page: I encourage you to go out and pick up a copy, because it’s a rare case of the media making a clear-eyed assessment of threats levied by small business owners when local government starts discussing a minimum wage increase. As an autopsy of those threats, this is top-notch work. Stewart quotes Tom Douglas’s prediction, published by The Stranger , warning that “I don’t know that [a $15 minimum wage] would put us out of business, but I would say we lose maybe a quarter of the restaurants downtown.” Of course, anyone who has visited downtown Seattle in the last few months knows that we’re not hurting for restaurants. Stewart puts Douglas’s claims up against the facts: Dozens of new restaurants have opened in the city since April 1, including many new eateries run by the law’s fiercest critics, such as Douglas… King County has issued 5,227 permits for food service establishments in Seattle so far this year, which new and existing restaurants must get each year. That’s well on the way to surpassing the 5,458 permits issued all last year and the 5,415 issued in 2013. So Douglas’s prediction in that Stranger story was entirely wrong. In fact, Stewart notes, “Douglas has now changed his mind about the law, saying he was ‘naive’ to think that restaurants would raise pay on their own.” Douglas’s restaurant empire continues to expand—my favorite Douglas restaurant, Cantina Lena , opened after the minimum wage increase was approved—and his employees are happy about both developments. Stewart quotes Dezi Bonow, a head chef at another new Douglas restaurant, as
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Daily Clips: October 23rd, 2015

October 23, 2015 Nick Cassella

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2016

Lincoln Chafee ends his campaign: Who saw this one coming?! Evidently, some dude grocery shopping in Rhode Island: The Day the GOP Turned Benghazi Into a Farce: Joan Walsh has written a compelling summary on yesterday’s 11 hour fiasco, which was full of mansplaining, heated attacks, and desperation from Republican members of the Benghazi committee. Walsh points out the obvious: Clinton looked presidential and her answers show a growth of character and of coaching since the last Benghazi hearing. Her tough summer is officially over. Jeb! campaign starts cutting salaries and staff: Jeb Bush’s campaign has published a memo which says that it’s payroll costs are “being slashed by 40 percent” and that staff at his Miami HQ are being transferred to early voting states. “We are making changes today to ensure Jeb is best positioned to win the nomination and general election,” the memo said. “It’s no secret that the contours of this race have changed from what was anticipated at the start.” Your delusional article of the day – 20 REASONS WHY IT SHOULD BE DONALD TRUMP IN 2016: During my daily perusal of Breitbart, I came across this gem of an article. The points made by the author are borderline insane; here are some of my favorites: 1. Trump is not your ordinary politician. 4. Trump speaks for us little people. 8. Trump is pro-women. 12. Trump’s policies are spot-on, particularly immigration.

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Did You Know That Washington State Made Great Strides in Low-Income Education This Year?

October 22, 2015 Paul Constant

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Policy

So much noise has been made about the Washington State Legislature’s bumbling of K-12 education this year . This is for good reason, obviously: our state constitution demands that we consider education to be our first and highest priority, and our lawmakers in Olympia have failed that charge again and again. But here’s something you likely haven’t heard: the state legislature celebrated two enormous educational successes this year. First, a bipartisan group of legislators came together and passed the Early Start Act , which helps ensure that every child in Washington has access to high-quality early learning. And second, the legislature fully funded the state’s College Bound Scholarship program , which provides financial aid for low-income students. Together, these two programs help low-income kids earn the same opportunity to live productive lives as any other child born in Washington state. Frank Ordway is the Director of Government Relations—“that’s just a dressed-up term for political strategist,” he demurs—for the League of Education Voters , an organization devoted to giving “all students an equal opportunity for success from cradle to career.” We met at the League’s headquarters on Lake Union to talk about Early Start and College Bound, which Ordway characterizes as “a pair of bookends that are really quite transformative.” Early Start “ensures that by 2021, every low income child in Washington state will have access to all-day high-quality early learning,” Ordway explains. (By low-income, the law means children living up to 110% of the federally established poverty line ( PDF ), which right now totals roughly 30,000 kids in Washington—a number that could climb to 40 or 45,000 by the time the law is implemented.) He says this makes us the first state in the union to accomplish such a far-reaching goal. Ordway admits that the legislation is “complicated” to describe, but it’s packed with thoughtful flourishes that ensure these early learning programs will not be a race to the bottom. For one
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Daily Clips: October 22nd, 2015

October 22, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

51 percent of all Americans made less than $30,000 last year: The middle class in this country is being squeezed, as our Supreme Troublemaker Nick Hanauer has pointed out in the past . Newly released numbers from the Social Security Administration illustrates the dire situation of the American worker: -38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year. -51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year. -62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year. -71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year. What Scotland learned from making university free: Vox provides an interesting analysis on Scotland’s free university system, highlighting both the positives and negatives which occurred from the policy change. Here’s a big positive: when Scotland eliminated up-front fees in 2001, college applications rose by 24 percent. Compare that to England which saw a 30 percent drop in applications as tuition fees went up. Shocker. People don’t actually want equality: Here is a philosophical & evolutionary take on equality that challenges many of our preconceived notions on what people desire. While I don’t agree with all of the author’s points, his deep-dive into the psychology behind equality is definitely worth a read. 3 in 4 say Benghazi is politically motivated: Nothing to see here, move along.

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Postal Banking Is an Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

October 21, 2015 Paul Constant

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2016, Policy

If you hear about the US Postal Service at all these days, it’s likely because of a failure. The Post Office continually posts significant operating losses, which are generally accompanied by news stories about the slow demise of the USPS. These stories rarely give you the full story , which is the fact that the USPS only posts losses because the Republican Congress of 2006 strapped the service with an impossible financial burden—a bizarre mandate demanding that the USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits for 75 years in the future. This is a burden that no other government agency (or, for that matter, private company) has ever had to carry, and it amounts to over five billion dollars a year in annual payments, an operating cost that no organization could bear. Also, it’s important to note that the USPS has not taken a penny of your tax dollars since 1982 , and the service they provide is unparalleled: no private corporation could offer the network and consistency that the USPS offers. Joe Pinkser at The Atlantic highlights one of Bernie Sanders’s best ideas —a way for the USPS to become even more useful while also helping the poorest Americans save a little money. Here’s what Sanders has to say about it: If you are a low-income person, it is, depending upon where you live, very difficult to find normal banking. Banks don’t want you. And what people are forced to do is go to payday lenders who charge outrageously high interest rates. You go to check-cashing places, which rip you off. And, yes, I think that the postal service, in fact, can play an important role in providing modest types of banking service to folks who need it. As Pinkser points out, this is not a crazy idea. Plenty of European countries provide banking by post—in fact, a vast majority of post offices around the world provide some sort of banking services—and too many Americans rely
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Daily Clips: October 21st, 2015

October 21, 2015 Nick Cassella

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Daily Clips

BREAKING – BIDEN NOT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: Flanked by his wife and the president, Biden told the press corps, “While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation.” Bernanke is puzzled by the focus on Glass-Steagall: Former Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, says that he is confused by the Democratic field’s focus on Glass-Steagal, a depression-era act that created separation between commercial and investment banking. Bernanke said: I think that if you look at the actual, what happened a few years ago in the crisis, that Glass-Steagall was pretty irrelevant to it because you had banks like Wachovia or [Washington Mutual] that went bad because they made bad loans, and you had investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman that went bad because of their investment banking activities. His language mirrors Hillary Clinton’s , who claimed during the last debate, that the elimination of Glass-Steagall did not cause the 2008 financial crisis. Support for marijuana hits all time high…again: Gallup reports that 58 percent of Americans now support the legalization of the devil’s lettuce. 71 percent of Americans aged 18-34 back pot legalization, a sign that it is only a matter of time until it is legal in all 50 states. Regressive tax systems: Here’s a friendly reminder that Washington state has “the most regressive state tax system” in the US, where the poorest residents are taxed at 16.8 percent while the top 1 percent is taxed “only 2.4 percent.” Florida and Texas come in a close second and third, respectively. We must do all we can to change this grave injustice.

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A Property Tax Primer (or Why Prop 1 Opponents Don’t Know What They’re Saying When They Say Property Taxes Are Too High)

October 21, 2015 Goldy

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Policy, Seattle, taxes

One of the most frustrating things about covering property tax measures like Seattle’s Proposition 1 is that most people don’t understand the way property taxes work. From a budget writer’s perspective, the property tax is the best tax ever, because if done correctly, it almost always brings in exactly the amount of money projected. That’s because, unlike the stupid, stupid sales tax, budget writers don’t actually set a rate and just cross their fingers hoping that the money comes in; they request a specific dollar value—for example, about $95 million a year over nine years for Proposition 1’s “ Let’s Move Seattle ” transportation levy—and then the county assessor adjusts the property tax rate annually based on current assessed value (subject to statutory limits) in order to generate the requested revenue. If property values rise from year to year, the rate goes down; if property values fall as they did when the real estate bubble went pop, the rate goes up. But if passed, Prop 1 is almost guaranteed to generate that $95 million a year. Over the long run, nominal property values will almost certainly rise. So while the voters guide projects a tax rate of $0.62 per $1,000 of assessed value in year one, even a relatively modest 5 percent average annual rise in home values would leave the rate at about $0.39 per $1,000 of assessed value by year nine. But unfortunately for city budget writers, as reliable as the property tax is, it is subject to two very important limitations. The first is known as the “statutory dollar rate limit”: the City of Seattle’s property tax authority is limited to $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed value. That is the maximum theoretical rate the city can levy without voter approval. But thanks to the second limit, known as I-747’s “101 percent limit” (or more accurately: “Tim Eyman’s Revenge”), the city’s actual regular levy authority falls far short
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