Author Archives: Sheila

Hooray For Washington State

You don’t have to be a “leftist” or a socialist to support higher taxes for the very wealthy and obscenely rich, but the GOP remains steadfastly–even hysterically–opposed to proposals to tax those they misleadingly call “job creators.”

(Actually, jobs are created by increasing demand–if no one is buying your widgets, you aren’t going to hire more people to make more of them, which is why putting more money into the hands of the poorer folks who will spend it rather than hiding it in some tax haven, is what boosts employment. But I digress.)

A reader recently sent me a fascinating article about Washington State lawmaker’s decision to raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents.

The article began by quoting a 1933 Washington State lawmaker named Wesley Lloyd, who had proposed to  “bring up the poor and bring down the rich into the class of the average man, where all may find real happiness and where we may know a widespread national prosperity.”

It then noted that–over the ensuing dozen years or so–FDR’s New Deal had caused “unprecedented progress” toward greater equality. One measure that helped achieve that equality was  a 94 percent marginal tax rate on income over $200,000.

But Lloyd’s tax-the-rich spirit lives on, especially today in his home Washington State. Earlier this year, 19 of the state’s senators and 43 state reps introduced legislation that would fix a first-ever 1 percent annual tax on stocks, bonds, and other forms of “intangible personal property” worth over $250 million. The Evergreen State currently hosts over 700 grand fortunes that top this quarter-billion mark.

That legislation failed, but as the article noted,

that failure hasn’t left Washington’s deepest pockets feeling like celebrating. The reason? They’ve just become subject to another new tax, a measure that Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat is describing as the state’s first-ever “wealth-related levy.”

The levy–a 7-percent tax on asset-sale profits over $250,000– has turned out to be a windfall for state coffers. Analysts had predicted that the tax would raise $440 million dollars. Instead, it has so far raised $849 million, almost double the take originally anticipated.

I hardly need point out that the mega-rich who paid a 7% tax on massive profits were hardly impoverished by them.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities–based in that other Washington–has been working to produce a package of tax reforms that would prioritize “equity and fairness; it  has pointed to the experience of Washington State.

The Center is now hoping to nudge state lawmakers nationwide further in that direction with a new online tool for developing “State Revenue Options for Advancing Equity and Prosperity.” State policymakers, the Center notes, don’t always understand “how much revenue different policies might raise, whether a tax will fall more on families with low incomes or people at the top.” The new Center tool aims to build that understanding.

Understanding, of course, only takes lawmakers so far. They still have to overcome the opposition of the richest among us to paying anything close to their fair tax share. Lawmakers can certainly do that overcoming — if enough of us push them. And if we do enough of that pushing, maybe our lawmakers will start sounding like Wesley Lloyd back when he proposed to limit the personal wealth of our super richest.

“I do not seek to destroy wealth or industry,” Lloyd told his fellow members of Congress, “but I do propose to place the burden of public expense and national development upon the shoulders of those best able to bear that burden and those who have profited most. I would have the strong help the weak rather than have the weak forever carrying the strong.”

There are seemingly two fundamental questions that all American lawmakers confront: what should government do and how should government pay for doing it? We aren’t doing very well answering either question.

This blog–among many others–tends to focus on the first question, because so many of our current government policies are arguably counter-productive (or, in the case of our ongoing culture wars, insane). But the second question is inextricably entwined with the first, because the way we decide to pay for the decisions we make has an enormous effect upon how (and whether) those chosen policies work as intended.

Do we want the strong to help the weak? Or do we want to deepen the already massive divide between the haves and have-nots? Do we want to build and maintain a physical and social infrastructure that serves all citizens, or do we want to see only to the comfort and prosperity of the fortunate few?

Wesley Lloyd was asking the right questions, and Washington State is (slowly, incrementally) moving toward the right answers.

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A Fighting Chance

A damaging consequence of Republican gerrymandering and the creation of “safe” districts has been the behavior of Democrats, who effectively concede many such districts by failing to put up a candidate. 

You would think that statewide elections would be different, since they can’t be gerrymandered, but in Red states like Indiana, the Blue statewide candidates have all-too-often appeared to be tokens. I assume that’s because more competitive politicians opt out because they consider the state party too weak and/or the state too Red. Whatever the reason, that lack of competitiveness has facilitated the political rise of some truly substandard Republicans. 

This year, the likely candidates for Governor (Mike Braun) and Senator (Jim Banks) are particularly odious. But also this year–for whatever reason–the Democrats are running two absolute stars for those same positions.

I have previously posted my reasons for admiring and supporting Jennifer McCormick for Governor. More recently, Mark Carmichael has announced a run for Senate.

 Carmichael– a self-described “old political warhorse” was elected to Indiana’s General Assembly in 1986, after defeating a sitting Speaker of the House.  He says he entered the race because, among other things, he has four granddaughters, and because Indiana deserves better than to be represented by someone as “mean-spirited, blindly partisan and out of touch with the majority of Hoosiers as Jim Banks.”

His attacks on innocent LGBTQ children for purely political gain are disgusting and his vote against certifying the Biden election and dishonest rhetoric on FOX News after that election help lead to the riot at the U. S. Capitol on January 6. He should be ashamed.

Carmichael also issued a list of his ten most important positions and goals–all of which I can enthusiastically endorse.

  • Believes women’s rights are human rights and will work to codify Roe v Wade at a minimum.
  • Will work for a ban on military style assault weapons—the weapon of choice for the mass murderers of our children and other innocent victims, and will fight for a national red flag law.
  • Is concerned about the white nationalism and antisemitism growing in our country thanks to extremists’ ugly rhetoric, and by someone who believes racism is still a cancer on the United States.
  • Wants to leave our planet better than we found it for our children and grandchildren and will take immediate action on global warming.
  •  Will stand up for the LGBTQ youth who are being used as political pawns by mean-spirited, calculating Republicans who needed a new social wedge issue after Roe v Wade was overturned by the Republican Supreme Court majority.  These vulnerable children deserve our help, not scorn, and their healthcare decisions should be left up to their families and compassionate, qualified doctors, not political opportunists.
  •  Is committed to confirming fair and impartial federal judges, not like the partisan appointees that have been foisted on us by Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society.  We deserve judges who don’t lie to get confirmed or accept generous gifts and travel from wealthy patrons.
  •  Is committed to no more gratuitous tax cuts for the rich and corporations who use the windfall to buy back and drive up the price of their own stock.
  • Believes teachers and librarians deserve our help and respect and not the threat of losing their jobs or getting shot. They shouldn’t have to fear being accused of a felony if someone whines about a book or movie that speaks honestly about life as it really is.
  • Will push for marijuana to be reclassified at the federal level from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 3 or less.
  • Will work to lower drug costs and bring adequate medical care to all parts of Indiana, and will push for Medicare for all citizens.

In 2024, Indiana citizens will vote to replace an undistinguished and retrograde MAGA Senator (Braun, who is leaving the Senate to run for Governor). We will either replace him with the even more MAGA Jim Banks, or with someone who has actually read the Bill of Rights and has chosen to live in the 21st Century.

McCormick and Carmichael are immeasurably more attractive candidates than the dour and reactionary Rightwing ideologues they will face. More importantly, according to survey research, their positions–on abortion, on guns, on education, on civic equality–are far more representative of those held by a majority of Hoosiers.

I have friends and family members who believe that all it takes to win statewide office in Indiana is an  R beside the candidate’s name–that candidates’ intellect, character and positions on issues are irrelevant to the tribal rural voters who dominate state politics.

If we are ever to have a test of that thesis, the upcoming Senate and Gubernatorial races will provide it.

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Florida Man

I am constantly confounded by the evident belief of Republican presidential candidates that the way to GOP hearts is be overtly autocratic, bigoted and/or “in your face” corrupt.

Which brings me–once again–to “Florida Man,” aka Ron DeSantis. (I am hopeful this will be the last time I focus on DeSantis, since my reading of his trajectory suggests he will not be the nominee…but hey! I was equally certain that no sane political party would nominate Trump, so my prognostication skills aren’t great…)

As we’ve seen with TFG,  this particular breed of politician exhibits what a friend used to insist was a prime motive for seeking political power: to help your friends and f**k  your enemies. We’ve seen this dynamic in DeSantis’ petulant efforts to punish Disney for daring to criticize His Majesty’s anti-gay bigotry.

An even more recent–and telling– exhibit, courtesy of Robert Hubbell:

Like other red states, Florida is doing its best to prevent car manufacturers from selling electric vehicles. This week, DeSantis signed legislation prohibiting “direct to consumer” sales of electric vehicles, a marketing approach that bypasses automobile dealerships. Elon Musk pioneered the “direct-to-consumer” approach and uses it exclusively to sell Tesla cars.

So, one would think that the Florida legislation banning direct-to-consumer sales of cars would be bad news for Tesla. But you would be wrong—because the legislation exempts Tesla from the ban. 

As a result, large auto manufacturers like Ford, GM, and Chrysler are prohibited from selling electric vehicles directly to the consumer, while Tesla is free to do so. It is amazing what a presidential endorsement can buy in Florida!

DeSantis’ has declared war on anything he considers “woke”–evidently, any effort to ensure equal treatment of, or information about, previously marginalized Americans. A recent post to Daily Kos shed light on DeSantis’ animus toward New College, a small liberal–“woke”– institution in the state.

The narrative has been that this is a small college that DeSantis is trying to take over for his culture war and leave it at that. It is true that DeSantis is effectively destroying Florida’s universities with the help of his supporters’ openly hostile resentment of higher education. And yes, he’s making Florida toxic to not just out-of-state students, but Florida’s own students and professors who are deciding it’s best to leave the state and go somewhere less oppressive. Not to mention the medical students who are canceling their residencies in Florida due to abortion laws. But there’s so much more than that.

To begin with, no outlet has even described the unique way New College operates. It’s modeled after the New College of Oxford University in England. There are no grades: all courses are pass/fail. The student is responsible for his or her entire course planning, and there are no required courses. There’s few organized sports, and no fraternities or sororities. This school is only for the most highly motivated students who have the maturity and intellect to chart their own path and create their own approved course structure. New College has always scored at the top of national rankings, such as The Princeton Review and Forbes; and has ranked fifth in U.S. News & World Report’s annual review of public schools for higher learning. It is a very small school, with under 1,000 students, but has produced more Fulbright scholars than either Harvard or Yale.

The post attributed DeSantis’ determination to transform New School “into a sham school catering to bigoted yokels” to something that occurred on its campus 10 years ago, and ties it into “the resurgent white nationalist movement in Florida.”

For a school that has produced some notable alumni, one of the ones they tend not to feature is a young man by the name of Derek Black. He is the godson of David Duke and the son of Don Black, the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Don Black founded the first neo-Nazi online forum and world’s most prominent white nationalist website, Stormfront.

When Derek Black came to New School, he was a committed neo-Nazi. The experience changed him.

In 2013, Derek sent a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center that rocked the white supremacist movement to the core, and outraged the hate communities in Florida. The key phrase was this: “I do not believe advocacy against ‘oppression of whites’ exists in any form but an entrenched desire to preserve white power at the expense of others. I am sorry for the damage done by my actions and my past endorsement of white nationalism.”

DeSantis candidly admits he targeted the school for its “progressive culture.” That culture dealt a blow to  Florida’s white supremacist movement, and that movement is  a core part of DeSantis’ base.

And the core of today’s GOP.

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Now Alito

There’s a lot to unpack about the ongoing disclosures about Supreme Court Justices,  beginning with the old adage that power corrupts. 

Digging a bit deeper, it’s interesting to note just who has been shown to be morally–and probably legally–corrupt. (Hint: it hasn’t been the liberal female justices. There are stories about Elena Kagan’s refusal to accept a gift of bagels on ethical grounds!) The culprits are the far-right Justices who sit on the Court courtesy of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.

It began with disclosures about Clarence Thomas and his appalling wife. If a lower-level judge accepted–and hid– lavish gifts and travel from a billionaire ideologue and failed to recuse himself from cases involving that billionaire–not to mention cases in which his wife was an interested party–that judge would soon be removed from the bench. 

Now we discover that Justice Alito shares more than ideology with Thomas. Pro Publica broke the story:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito–like Thomas–failed to report the trip on his required annual financial disclosure form. Ethics experts tell Pro Publica  that the omission violates federal law. Those experts also report being unable to identify another instance of “a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.”

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Alito claims he and Singer never discussed business, and that when Singer’s cases came before the court, he’d been unaware of his connection to them.

Right. And I have a bridge to sell you…..

Talking Points Memo points to the larger issue:  justices groomed and chosen by the Federalist Society “remain ‘kept’ in perpetuity” by the Right-wing donor network that got them there … “Sugar Justices, if you will.”

What is especially infuriating about these disclosures is that they involve Justices who posture as moral arbiters and issue judicial opinions based upon religious dogma rather than constitutional precedent. 

I have previously characterized Alito’s decision in Dobbs as profoundly dishonest, because he cherry-picked and misrepresented both history and legal precedent in order to achieve his desired (paternalistic) result.  Given Pro Publica’s report, it seems Alito’s dishonesty isn’t limited to his jurisprudence.

Thomas insisted that Harlan Crowe (whom he met after he joined the Court) was a “dear friend.” Alito says he had “no idea” that Singer was connected to ten cases before the Court. Neither allegation passes the smell test. According to Pro Publica, Alito and Singer have appeared together at public events, and Singer introduced Alito’s speeches on at least two occasions– the annual dinner of the Federalist Society (where Singer told an anecdote about their fishing trip) and a dinner for donors to the equally far-Right Manhattan Institute. 

The disclosures are profoundly depressing. They should also be a wake-up call.

It is past time to apply binding ethical standards to the Court. Imposing term limits, and adding Justices to the Court would dilute the influence exercised by corrupt culture warriors doing Federalist Society bidding..

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Speaking Of Bad Choices

One of my sons lives in Amsterdam, so when I come across a headline featuring that city, I generally take more than a cursory interest in the report that follows–especially when that report confirms my own impressions.

And especially when the implications confirm my policy conclusions.

A recent article by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post hit both of those targets. Rubin began by recounting how, on a recent visit to Amsterdam, she’d walked back to her hotel late on a weeknight. It was a pleasant evening, and a relatively long walk, yet she never felt nervous or unsafe. She acknowledged that there are many New York neighborhoods in which she also feel safe, but unlike her Amsterdam experience, her feeling of security there was largely “because police are everywhere. Visible on the street, in cars, on horseback.”

The experience led her to consider the very different approaches to crime chosen by policymakers in the Netherlands and the U.S.–beginning with gun ownership.

In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns. In fact, according to a report by Mariel Alper and Lauren G. Beatty in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly “21% of state and 20% of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense. … About 29% of state and 36% of federal prisoners serving time for a violent offense possessed a gun during the offense.

In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total. In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.)

The differences go well beyond gun policy; Rubin reports that the Dutch don’t incarcerate people for drug addiction, for example, a decision that has allowed them to lock up far fewer people. She cites a report from the Guardian,

“Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.”

By contrast, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system…. As a result, “Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.” In short, the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people.

And–just as with our other policy choices (health care comes immediately to mind) our choices have been and continue to be expensive. The United States spends some $300 billion annually on policing and incarceration. And as Rubin points out, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Overpolicing and over-incarceration costs include lost earnings, adverse health effects, and damage to the families of the incarcerated. Those social costs are estimated to be three times the direct costs.

And none of those fiscal consequences include the ongoing, negative social effects of disproportionate policing of Black and White citizens…

The public safety choices we’ve made might be defensible, if the result was to make Americans safer than the Dutch. But–you knew this was coming, didn’t you?–that clearly isn’t the case. As Rubin says, “Our choices have not made us safer and have cost us dearly.”

In real terms, the U.S. criminal justice system and ubiquitous guns require an industry — ambulances, emergency room personnel, police, courts, judges, prisons, lawyers, private security and more — that the Dutch system does not. As I walked down the streets of Amsterdam, I imagined what we could have bought with the money we spend on the criminal justice system: universal college education, universal medical care, a strong social safety net.

Bottom line: American policy choices feed a “criminal justice industry”–without doing much to eliminate crime. As Rubin writes, different criminal justice policies “very likely could allow us to spend less money, lower incarceration rates, reduce the human and opportunity costs, and increase personal safety.” She says we have the system we do because we’ve “fetishized guns, criminalized addiction, neglected mental and emotional health, and resisted addressing social factors driving crime.”

We could make better choices–but that would require a clear-eyed look at the consequences of the choices we’ve made.

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