The return of the Northwest Republican?

Like the Northeast, the Northwest was once characterized by the strong presence of moderate Republicans. Three term Governor Dan Evans was the poster child for Republicans who respected government, managed it well and tried to pragmatically balance opposing interests. Olympia's triumvirate of Lt. Gov. Joel Pritchard, and Senators Evans and Gorton represented the majority in the middle. Oregon was represented by moderate and pragmatic Bob Packwood and Able Lincoln liberal Republican Mark Hatfield in the U.S. Senate.


Republicans changed not the electorate. Slade Gorton, a long time environmental advocate was frustrated by the lack of recognition by the environmental community for his accomplishments in wilderness protection, clean air and clean water. He moved abruptly to the only side that consistently backed him - timber and rural interests. On issues like spotted owl and old growth forests he moved from solving the problem to using the problem as a symbol for rural Washington versus Seattle. He mounted a new Republican strategy called "surround King County" that focused on a coalition of economic conservatives, rural business interests and the religous right built on populist opposition to elitists and special interests in the city. On the old growth forest issue he even managed to suck in the Bush administration. Unfortunately, this new coalition was no longer a majority.


The Gingrich revolution swept into power a more extreme right group of Republicans united by far right religious ideology and rigid free market doctrine. As their majorities slipped away, the ideologues maintained control of the party caucuses and moderates like State Senaors Rodney Tom and Fred Jarret changed parties.


Today, Republicans represent only the two most rural congressional districts and only a third of the state legislature. These small minorities work against them. The remaining members represent only the purest districts generally rural and socially conservative. Lacking any swing districts in their caucus, their caucuses gain their energy from focusing on opposing environmental regulations, religious opposition to gay rights, and pro life. Out of touch with middle.


Obviously, this course isn't sustainable. Democrats have controlled the Governor's mansion in Olympia for 27 years now and at some point Republicans are going to attract a candidate who can rebuild a majority or come damn close. Attorney General McKenna appears to fit the bill.


McKenna manages hundreds of government attorneys in Washington State who represent state agencies and protect consumer interests. More than any other statewide elected official, McKenna commands the respect and admiration of his staff. My friends and neighbors in the A.G.'s office in Olympia believe that he listens to them and does his job well. Think about it for a minute. Government lawyers in Olympia are pretty much liberals right out of the box. This is no small feat and the mark of an excellent manager.


The man is bright, articulate and like the iconic Northwest Republican Gordon, he comes off as a bit serious perhaps even nerdy. His focus is laser picking up simple, symbolic issues which generate a lot of heat but not controversy; open government, public records, Internet safety, I.D. theft, methamphetamine abuse, and consumer protection.


McKenna does this without cutting his ties to the right. He recently sided with another 12 Republican Attorney Generals in calling the President's health care reform unconstitutional because it "buys off" Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson's with a special Medicaid subsidy for that state.

Environmentalists argue that he also parts company with traditional Northwest Republican moderates on environmental issues. While on the King County Council he was known by many as a strident property rights advocate.

The question is can McKenna appear to stay in the Center and win the in the primary? If Republicans manage to block a more conservative primary opponent he won't have to face the consequences of moves to the right to win in the primary hurting him in the general. How many of his more conservative King County green votes will count against him in the general?

McKenna is not the only successful Republican who has recently held statewide office. Former Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland was an excellent manager and a policy mediator in the Northwest Republican tradition. Secretary of State Sam Reed has resisted efforts to use his office to tip the political balance to the right and has followed the tradition of his true blue Northwest Republican Ralph Munroe who managed the office effectively and efficiently.

The bottom line is that Washington State likes moderates and will elect them...as long as Republicans are able to nominate them. Right now, surveying the field for the 2012 Governor's race, McKenna fits this bill better than any other name mentioned in both parties.

Why it is wrong to tax business services

There's a lot of talk about taxes in preparation for the next legislative session. Given the nearly $3 billion deficit on top of last year's bigger budget cuts, this isn't surprising. But this should take some serious thinking. Taxes actually can have a positive or a negative effect on an economic recovery.

I can think of two positive effects. One would be taxing things that aren't good for us. These are called sin taxes and raising their price actually decreases their sales. Cigarettes are a good example. A 50 cent per tax would cut consumption but still raise money.

The other positive effect is the impact of a tax on net spending. If you put a tax on wealth where let's say 2/3 of it are spent and the other 1/3 saved, and then used the money for funding general assistance to the poor, the economy would have a net boost in spending and we would be better off.

There are lots of taxes that would have a very negative effect on the recovery. One would be a sales tax on services like lawyers, accountants and architects. The logic is that these services are retail sales like buying clothes are a car.

This is doubly wrong. Most business services simply are not retail sales. They are sales from one business to another. A small software company in Redmond would likely by all three business services mentioned above from other small businesses. This is double taxation and provides a disincentive to go out of the firm and purchase these services. Double taxation distorts economic decision-making and is simply unfair.

The biggest wrong is the impact of a nearly 10% tax on the competitiveness of the business services. The state input output model shows that over half of business services are exported out of the state. Since we would be the only state taxing them we would have a 10% higher cost than any other state or country. One hell of a disincentive. Seattle's biggest industry is business services and it is one of highest paid sectors of the economy. Bad idea.

The Bottleneck in the Recovery

As our economy is beginning to grow again we are finding that the new jobs that are growing not the same as the jobs that have been lost. The new drivers of our economy are green jobs, technologically transformed health care and high value business export services like accounting, engineering and architecture.

However, to make the transition to this new economy we are going to have to close the skills gap in those new fields. Workers in the job that have been lost need to be retrained to fill the jobs that are growing. Even during the depth of the recession, we already saw unfilled vacancies of 10,000 jobs in health care fields, 2,500 in IT and and 500 in accounting and financial services in Washington State. As the economy picks up the skills mismatch will get worse.

What happens when employers can't find the skilled workers they need? In 2007, 4,000 firms reportedly moved at least some of their operations out of state to get the work done. Of 15,000 firms surveyed, 20% indicated that lack of skilled workers reduced their output, a third said it lowered productivity and and 14% indicated it reduced quality.

The problem is that there is no room at the inn. Washington State's Community and Technical Colleges run the Worker Retraining Program that provides money for instruction, tuition and fees for unemployed workers seeking new skills. The program is swamped with participants serving nearly twice as many students as the colleges have capacity and an equal number of students are unable to find openings in programs that they need to get a job.

Lack of capacity at our state's community and technical colleges to retrain workers for the jobs of the future could be the bottleneck that slows the recovery.

An Early Economic Indicator You Can Count on

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that overtime increased 6.5% from September to October and 14% from the previous quarter. This is a clear sign that the economy is on the move and is a fair substitute for employment growth. In fact, a measure, aggregate hours worked, might be a better indicator to watch then employment growth itself. Firms generally increaes overtime before they are confident enough to hire workes to meet increased demand for their products. That is why unemployment is a lagging indicator and can continue to decline or stagnant even as the economy moves forward.

That doesn't rule out the possibility of a W recession. The problem in housing is no longer sub-prime loans. The problem is after a long period of unemployment, workers have difficulty making mortgage payments while only earning unemployment benefits. With unemployment not expected to peak until next summer, these loans could create the worst wave of foreclosures yet.

It is time to debate legalization of marijuana

Marijuana is perhaps the nation's fourth largest cash crop with an estimated value to growers of $15 billion to $20 billion a year and a street value twice that. In Washington State, just the value of crops seized by law enforcement made it our state's 8th largest crop.

You have to admit that we haven't had much luck stopping the harvesting sale and ingesting of the drug. The $10 billion in annual law enforcements doesn't seem to have done much good. On top of that, medical marijuana has resulted in a near legalization of the product that makes enforcement of other criminal laws confusing at best.

But all of the income from this crop goes to criminals. Many of them dangerous gangs and local mafia who use revenues to support more heinous crimes. And none of it is taxed. There is an estimated 400,000,000 pounds of marijuana produced in Washington State. If the state were to regulate and tax the stuff it could collect another couple of billion dollars a year in revenue.

The mid-term revenue picture for Washington state is pretty bleak. If you think government is too big and we need to cut back on the services government offers that's a good thing. But there is a good argument to make that we cannot support our higher and K12 education system or health care for children and mental health services within current declining revenues.

The alternative would simply mean raising taxes. The chance of getting an income tax passed by the voters is small and even if voters approved, a positive review by our current elected supreme court is next to nil. We already have a 9.5% sales tax in Washington State and another tax hike would take us up over a scary 10%. It's hard to argue for increasing business taxes when sales are low.

We at least have to have a debate about the need for government services, a fair tax system and the legalization of marijuana. Like alcohol, marijuana has many problems that need to be considered. But you have to ask the question can we deal with these things better if it is regulated. We need to debate this.

A Rocky Road Ahead

We have a long way to go if we are going to create enough jobs to get us back to where we were before the four quarter of 2007. Since that time the economy has shed 7.2 million jobs.

The most recent forecasts (from the Washington State Revenue and Economic Forecast Council) would indicate that it would take us until the end of 2012 to replace those lost jobs (Using the most recent economic forecast by our state's Economic Forecast and Revenue Council for 2009-2011 and assuming 3% growth in 2012). Unfortunately, the labor force will continue to grow during this period - probably by nearly another 6 million jobs - thus unemployment could continue to be high.

The Wall Street Journal paints an even more dire picture. For them, assuming today's slow growth rates it will take us to 2016 to replace lost jobs - a very unlikely scenario. (perhaps poorly thought through).

There are two scenarios here. One is that the forecasts are wrong. That employment growth will be more similar to previous recoveries growing at 4 to 5% each year over the next couple of years. For example, using the 1982-85 employment growth rates, we would be very close to the pre-recession employment rate by the end of 2012.

If the forecast is right, we need to be aggressive about unemployment insurance policies, the safety net and job creation. As aggressive as we have ever been before.

Science and the American People

Ok. now I'll tell you what I'm really nervous about. Science and the American people.

A Pew Memorial Trust poll on climate change released yesterday indicated that the percentage of Americans who believe that the climate is warming has fallen dramatically in the past year. Now only 53% believe there is evidence of warming down from 75% a year ago. More importantly, less than 40% believe it is human caused.

This stacks up with other polls that indicate that only a third of of Americans indicated in a CBS News poll believe in natural selection. Pew points out that both of these numbers contrast with polling of scientists who all believe the climate is changing and 84% believe it is human caused.

97% of the scientists surveyed accept the theory of natural selection.

Science and the scientific method is what separates us from superstition and barbarism. This is a problem we need to think about.

Science and the scientific method is perhaps the most