[Please welcome Goldy to Slog. He’ll be posting here as well as his home blog, HorsesAss. — Eds]

In addition to the discounted power already provided the region, Seattle agreed this week to pay Pend Oreille County $19 million over the next 10 years, including $3 million toward construction of a new school in compensation for continued operation of the Boundary Dam. Okay, whatever.

Seattle City Light took a big risk back in 1964, deciding to invest $94 million of rate payer money in building a new dam and 300 miles of transmission lines at a time when electricity was dirt cheap. The fact that this investment more than paid off — Boundary Dam now provides about 46 percent of Seattle’s power, ensuring us some of the lowest rates in the nation — is a tribute to the foresight and planning of our city-owned public utility.

In return, Pend Oreille County got a recreational lake that has become a key part of its local economy, new school buildings, and about $1.4 million a year in impact fees… not to mention cheap, wholesale electricity that saves its rate payers about $20 million a year. All told, that’s an average of about $1,615 in direct cash benefits annually for every man, woman and child in Pend Oreille County.

That was the legally binding contract. But strapped for cash, and with the federal relicensing process offering an opportunity for political monkey-wrenching, if not outright extortion, Pend Oreille demanded that Seattle triple its annual payments.

Instead, the two sides “compromised,” with Pend Oreille getting an additional $3 million toward a new school, a fraction of its original demands. But before you feel too sorry for those poor, exploited rural folk and their crumbling school buildings, you might want to look at this…

When Seattle built the dam 40 years ago, it also built a grade 7-12 school in the northern part of the county. Since then, enrollment has plummeted, the roof started leaking, and seven local bond measures have failed.

It’s not Seattle’s fault that Pend Oreille didn’t maintain its school buildings, it’s the Pend Oreille voters’ fault for rejecting seven local bond measures. I mean, when was the last time Seattle voters rejected a school levy or bond measure?

Part of Pend Oreille’s problem is that inexpensive recreational waterfront real estate has attracted retirees to the area, who obviously couldn’t give a shit about funding schools for school age children they no longer have. But a bigger part of the problem is the whole attitude toward government and taxes that seems to dominate in much of the rest of the state. In their minds, the problem isn’t that taxes are too low, but that those liberals in Seattle keep ripping everybody else off.

So of course Pend Oreille comes to big, bad Seattle demanding more money, because they’re convinced we’ve been sucking them dry… when in fact Pend Oreille has always been one of the biggest welfare queens in the state. For example, between 1983 and 2004, the Puget Sound region received 98-cents back in spending for every dollar it paid in state and federal transportation taxes. But Pend Oreille County? They saw an impressive $2.58 return! That’s a $68 million subsidy over 20 years, or roughly $260 annually per man, woman and child.

And that’s just for transportation; the numbers are similar in nearly every other category of government spending and investment.

More after the jump.

This whole Boundary Dam controversy drives home for me a couple of lessons, not the least of which being the immense public benefit of public investment. Most Seattle residents and businesses have no idea how lucky we are to purchase our power from a city-owned utility whose primary obligation is to the rate payers, not the shareholders. Call it “socialism” if you like (and technically, it is socialism), but Seattle City Light has always proven a tremendous boon to our local economy.

Pend Oreille County rate payers also benefit from such socialism, both from the impact fees and wholesale power provided by the Boundary Dam hydroelectric project, and from the power generated by the Pend Oreille PUD’s own Box Canyon Dam, just up river.

But the bigger lesson is that today’s enormous political divide between rural and urban Americans as to the proper size and scope of government is largely based on a fundamental misconception about who is subsidizing whom. For without state and federal investments and subsidies in rural electrification, irrigation, transportation, communication, education and nearly every other “-ation,” much of rural America would have remained the same economic backwater it was prior to the admittedly massive expansion of government during President Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the next half-century of Democratic and Republican administrations that followed.

Again, call it “socialism” if you want, and technically, for example, the interstate highway system, you know, is socialism — but it was this massive wave of public investment that helped build the United States into the greatest economic, military, political and cultural power in the history of the world.

And it was a lack of public investment that reduced Pend Oreille to begging Seattle for money after the roof fell in at its lone 7-12 school.

74 replies on “Pend Oreille v. Seattle and the Triumph of Socialism”

  2. Microdams and minidams are the wave of the future.

    People here complain about power cost, but really, it’s the cheapest and greenest power you’re going to get.

  3. Nice piece, Goldy. Do you think that your arguments are persuasive to them, though? I don’t know if they’ll look at your reasoning and say, “How reasonable and objective, I guess our own aggregate behavior has spelled our own doom over the years.” What will it take to make them realize that in this case they’re being hypocritically unreasonable?

  4. Great first post. But the cynic in me agrees with #3 in that I think you could show this article to a Pend Oreille resident and they’d see the argument as socialist legerdemain.

  7. @3 Nothing short of the death of their towns, and maybe not even that. I was in Odessa, WA over the weekend; the folks there acknowledge that the town is dying out, but they aren’t even close to making the realization that the only reason they existed in the first place was due to massive government investment of one kind or another.

  8. Thunderbird @3,

    Well, I don’t expect them to be reading Slog, but I suspect our own media and politicos do, so my real objective at this time when the GOP and their surrogates on the ed boards are urging a substantial shrinking of government is to remind decision makers of how much our economy relies on public investment.

    Also, it doesn’t hurt to somewhat rehabilitate the term “socialism” at least to the point where one can reasonably discuss its positive applications. You know… remind folks that there’s something to the left of “liberalism.”

  10. I think it’s great to see Goldy here on Slog, but what would be even greater is if they could see this article over there in Pend Oreille. “Welfare queens” ought to go down pretty well.

    The truth is, the whole paradigm is under attack from the right wing, but not only is public investment a good idea, it’s especially good for remote rural areas. If you want to take 1918 or 1932 as the year that everything went to hell, according to the Tea Party kooks, you should really take a look at what life was like in those places then. Electricity? Weren’t none. That came with the socialist Rural Electrification Administration. Those people would still be eating mud and dying at 40 if it wasn’t for socialism.

    The idea then was not just to help people rural areas. It was to help ALL OF US by bringing us closer together. The cost to urban areas was well worth it, to bring everybody into the modern world, no matter how far out in the sticks they were. That social contract has in many ways been broken, and if they break the agreements as well everyone will suffer. But the people in the sticks will suffer a lot more.

    Your point about the school levies just burns me up. Stupid bastards. Stupid ungrateful freeloading rich old people.

  11. Pend Oreille has natural resources we need and a tax base unwilling to pay for the local services they demand. Their elected officials did well to stiff us best they could to keep things running in spite of the dolts they pledged to serve. I don’t see how either side could have done any different.

  12. You know, it’s these same backwoods, lazy ass welfare queen tax sucks that scream bloody murder about hard working, tax paying “illegal” immigrants. I’ll take the “illegals” over these cheapskate, toothless fucktards any day.

  13. @10 do you think those seniors pull a Social Security check? Do you think they realize that today’s kids are paying for tomorrow’s benefits? Do you think they see a connection between educating kids today so they can get their check tomorrow?

    I’m thinking no.

  14. Wonderful first post from Goldy. Good to see him on Slog, but just as good to see that HorsesAss will remain HorsesAss.

    I have to agree with Thunderbird @3 and Mattini @4. As damning as Goldy’s argument is, it would hardly be convincing to people in Pend Oreille County. There’s a famous quote by the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Well, American politics today should put the lie to that. In a democracy, voters are entitled to their own facts, however ridiculous, and those “facts” are driven entirely by their opinions.

    Sadly, the only way to change those opinions is to change our culture. There’s a rot at the heart of our national culture, and it’s not unique to this nation’s rural areas. It’s this libertarian, “every man for himself and his family” myth we’ve been spoonfed.

    I’m reminded of a provocative interview MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan had with a UC Berkeley professor who’d written an apology to his students for the country they were inheriting.

  16. So, $1.4 million for “impact fees.” I’m trying to figure out what that impact is. Creating millions of dollars of waterfront, flood-managed property. Providing practically free power. Creating a reason for tourists to visit, let alone for anyone to even live there. Yes, I can see how that requires compensation.

  17. That the rightful owners (taxpayers) of a paticular resource realize the benefits of tapping that resource without sacrificing a huge percentage of it to the free-market model in profits is labelled ‘socialism’ and ‘bad’ is beyond comprehension. Who the fuck convinced everyone this was the way to go?

  18. It’s an interesting post, but calling residents of Pend Oreille County “welfare queens” really doesn’t do anything except make some folks feel smug, and others feel justified in their belief that they are looked down upon. It’s the opposite of “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The more effective approach would be to have the State Legislature pass a law that prevents this kind of shakedown. Dress it up in some kind of pious statement regarding the need to keep electricity rates low so businesses won’t become uncompetitive and be forced to lay off workers. Have the Chamber of Commerce sign on. Liberals are going to have to figure out how to save what little budget is left for our own priorities because guess what? we can no longer afford to care about the rural poor as long as they are voting for right-wing idiots. Think government is the problem? Great, we’ll get government off your back.

  19. Publicly-owned power companies provide a superior service to their private-sector rivals. When the private sector is trusted with the management of municipal power supplies it ends up looking like Enron; Charging higher prices for inferior services and swindling their customers at every opportunity.

  20. I think in this case the term should be re-branded as “welfare cowboys”, i.e. people who live in rural areas who think they’re still completely independent homesteaders from the 1880’s, and haven’t cottoned to the fact that their entire existence would have died out decades ago, if not for the largess they receive from the same gubbamint they so despise.

  23. The United States puritan rural past that continues to infuse its narrow, intolerant view of ‘outsider’ ways and beliefs into the body politic by leveraging an innate anxiety and guilt (which propagates across the political spectrum) positing that lives lived in cosmopolitan urban centers are incapable themselves of locating a valid moral center. Rather, only rural and agrarian existences fantasized to be somehow analogous to the early, out-rightly theocratic communities that pioneered this continent for Europeans can embody and inculcate such values for the rest of us.

    Ergo, the disproportionate hold rural America holds over the politics of the purse string, their sacred-cow status that equates their economic neglect with moral straying justifying their subsidization and which gives their critiques of ‘city folk’ and ‘city ways’ the weight of unquestionable moral truth.

    Largely urban-centered liberalism continues to suffer from such rurally induced and baseless guilt which, until it throws it off, will continue to immobilize us before a fantasy of purity that never existed and a model of self-sufficiency never proven sustainable, as Goldy’s piece at least adjacently implies.

  24. Goldy, good to see you here. I always love your writing but still haven’t slid HA into my blog roll. Now I don’t have to. (Although it had made it into my bookmarks toolbar, but that doesn’t mean I’ll remember to click it.)

    Great point, and I love the term welfare cowboys. But I also think some level of outreach has to be made to the great welfare cowboys of yore to explain to them why … they are wrong.

  25. Fuck the 1700s and 1800s and for that matter, fuck the 1900s. Nothing but stains on the human spirit and misery throughout, and the sooner ideals carried forward from those eras (the Constitution itself aside) the better off we’ll be.

    More importantly, maybe it’s time that states and counties begin to lock down their funding. If all these bedroom and rural communities really do think Seattle (or NYC, or LA, or Boston, or Miami, or {insert metro}) are burning them and leeching off them, let’s cut them off. I’d love to see how King County, Pierce, Snohomish, Yakima or wherever do without our tax money. Or let’s see how Mississipi and Haley Barbour do without that fat Federal money.

  26. Time for us to form Green State with one county – Sealth County.

    Then watch them suddenly realize how much we’ve been subsidizing them for all these years.

  27. Thing is Will, I’m not at all certain they’d “realize” anything of the sort. Instead, I imagine they’d continue to watch in impotent confusion at the inexorable crumbling of their way of life and continue to blame us “Godless big-city libruls” for its demise.

    The only difference being of course, that just for once, they’d actually be right…

  31. So, taxpayers from 1964 are responsible for you lazy ass GenXers getting to charge your Droids at bargain rates.

    And yet you begrudge the Swedish geezers of Washington their $250 a week social security?

    No shame….no shame…

  32. Ruler @31,

    To be clear, I don’t begrudge the Pend Oreille folks their subsidies. We’ve all gained from raising rural America out of poverty.

    But I resent the fact that they resent us.

  33. 8: I think we need to rehabilitate socialism, too. Still, I think it’s used so much nowadays (a la Nazi, communist, fascist) that perhaps we have to come up with a new way to sell it to those moderate folks we can convince without sparking aversion. I wish I knew how to do that repackaging but I don’t.

  34. 31: love the lack of nuanced analysis and commentary. I don’t think the poster ever intimated that he’d like those Swedish geezers’ SS checks at all throughout his entry.

  35. @31: That dam was not funded by taxpayers in 1964. Really, how stupid can you be? It was financed by the sale of electric revenue bonds, which were repaid over decades by ratepayers.

  36. Granted, I am both a geek and a dork, but I find the history of City Light (and, in a larger sense, the whole NW power industry) fascinating. The early years in particular were filled with all sorts of intrigue and accusations of communism and whatnot. The franchise agreement giving City Light sole authority was only signed in the early ’50’s, and in the years prior, PSE and City Light competed mercilessly. A Mayor was recalled because he went up against City Light (It was a good thing, as he was a stooge)

    Boundary was built in a time of great expansion, when CL was planning on raising the height of Ross Dam yet again, and building a nuclear power plant on an island in Puget Sound (neither of those things happened, of course) There was also, if I recall correctly, some shenanigans about misued construction funds and Boundary, but I don’t recall the specifics.

    But I do wish that the citizens of Eastern Washington would understand that their whole region is one big series of “earmarks”, and that if it weren’t for Grand Coulee (which is not only a hydro-electric project, but also a massive irrigation system) their area would be desolate..

  37. Give a man a fish and he’s fed for a day.

    Give a conservative a stipend and he wastes it all on guns and booze. And then he whines cause he spent all the fish money.

  38. God, I hope the cretins who infest HA don’t follow Goldy over here. There are some serious halfwits commenting on threads over there (I suppose because it isn’t really moderated).

  40. @38 When I saw this post by Goldy, my first thought was “oh no, here come the HA trolls.” But I must say, this comment thread is one of the most intelligent and well-behaved of any Slog post I’ve read. Congrats Goldy, for your excellent post, and for bringing out the best in Slog commenters!

  41. Didn’t this asshole originate from the same site as Will Kelley-Kamp. Didn’t the Stranger learn anything???

  42. Your offhand remark: “when was the last time Seattle voters rejected a school levy or bond measure?” may wind up being strangely prophetic: the supplemental levy on the ballot this fall for Seattle Public Schools may well fail, largely because of infuriated SPS ‘customers’ who now see that the bulk of that money will vanish into the gluttonous maw of central administration, and never reach a classroom. I’ve never voted against a school levy in my life, but I’m voting against this one – and I HAVE kids in SPS.

  43. A worthy followup would be to look at Pend Oreille PUD’s Box Canyon Dam (which also delivers electricity to Seattle) and the devastating effects it has had on the Pend Oreille River and the Kalispel Tribe as it flows through the Kalispel Indian Reservation upstream of the dam.

  44. @42 I know some SPS teachers who are voting against this latest levy.

    This has definitely piqued my interest in City Light history and some of the political ramifications of past actions.

  47. WHOA! I Live And Work Here In North Pend Oreille County And We Are Far From Being “Welfare Queens”(I Make About +80,000.00 Per Year)…Our Community Is Far From Being (And I Quote From A Few Articles Above) “Toothless Back Woods Queen Of The Welfare Community In Our Great State”…This Article That You Posted Is VERY MISSLEADING! Get Your Facts Straight Mr Goldy…Yes This Is A Retirement Community, And Someday I Hope To Retire Here Myself. Do You Have Something Against The Older Generation?
    For One,. WE DO NOT GET ANY OF OUR POWER FROM BOUNDARY DAM! We Get ALL Of Our Power From Box Canyon Dam…As For The Lake (Sullivan Lake) It Is A Very Beautiful Recreational Place(Thank You), But That Is Manned By The State Government Forest Service. We Do Not Get Any Money From It. In Fact People From All Over The USA & Beyond Enjoy Its Beauty, Fishing & Boating. We Have To Pay Just Like Everybody Else If We Want To Camp & Enjoy Its Beauty There…
    I Bet Dollar For Dollar Per Capita, There Are Far More Welfare Cases In Your “Neck Of The Woods”…What’s That? No Woods, Well That’s What Happens When You Have To Accommodate Large Populations With Housing…So Is It So Wrong That We Want To Preserve Our Forest & Wild Life For Everyone To Share And Enjoy For Many Years To Come? Yes! We Welcome Everyone To Enjoy And Share In Our Beauty & Recreational Areas. We Are Not Snobs, This Is A Very Friendly Community…When Was The Last Time You Drove Through Your City, And A Neighbor Weather You Knew Them Or Not Waved To You? That Is A Very Common Practice Here.
    Bottom Line Is, You Are Welcome To Come And Visit And Use The Same Lakes, Rivers And Streams We Have…Just In Return, Why Would It Be Fare For You To Reap Profits From Our Resources And We Get Nothing In Return? That’s Like Saying You Have Two Homes, Why Would You Charge People If You Rented One Out..Why Not Let Them Live There Free Of Charge? After All You Have Two…Get My Point? Or Do I Have To S-P-E-L-L It Out To You Mr. Goldy…”DUH”… Now! Do Some Meaningful Investigation Get Your Facts Right And Tell These People That Are Reading Your Blog/Article How You Misinformed Them, Then Tell Them The Truth!

  48. WHOA! I Live And Work Here In North Pend Oreille County And We Are Far From Being “Welfare Queens”…Our Community Is Far From Being (And I Quote From A Few Articles Above) “Toothless Back Woods Queen Of Th…e Welfare Community In Our Grea……t State”…This Article That You Posted Is VERY MISSLEADING! Get Your Facts Straight Mr Goldy…Yes This Is A Retirement Community, And Someday I Hope To Retire Here Myself. Do You Have Something Against The Older Generation?
    For One,. WE DO NOT GET ANY OF OUR POWER FROM BOUNDARY DAM! We Get ALL Of Our Power From Box Canyon Dam…As For The Lake (Sullivan Lake) It Is A Very Beautiful Recreational Place(Thank You), But That Is Manned By The State Government Forest Service. We Do Not Get Any Money From It. In Fact People From All Over The USA & Beyond Enjoy Its Beauty, Fishing & Boating. We Have To Pay Just Like Everybody Else If We Want To Camp & Enjoy Its Beauty There…
    I Bet Dollar For Dollar Per Capita, There Are Far More Welfare Cases In Your “Neck Of The Woods”…What’s That? No Woods, Well That’s What Happens When You Have To Accommodate Large Populations With Housing…So Is It So Wrong That We Want To Preserve Our Forest & Wild Life For Everyone To Share And Enjoy For Many Years To Come? Yes! We Welcome Everyone To Enjoy And Share In Our Beauty & Recreational Areas. We Are Not Snobs, This Is A Very Friendly Community…When Was The Last Time You Drove Through Your City, And A Neighbor Weather You Knew Them Or Not Waved To You? That Is A Very Common Practice Here.
    Bottom Line Is, You Are Welcome To Come And Visit And Use The Same Lakes, Rivers And Streams We Have…Just In Return, Why Would It Be Fare For You To Reap Profits From Our Resources And We Get Nothing In Return? That’s Like Saying You Have Two Homes, Why Would You Charge People If You Rented One Out..Why Not Let Them Live There Free Of Charge? After All You Have Two…Get My Point? Or Do I Have To S-P-E-L-L It Out To You Mr. Goldy…”DUH”… Now! Do Some Meaningful Investigation Get Your Facts Right And Tell These People That Are Reading Your Blog/Article How You Misinformed Them, Then Tell Them The Truth!See More

  50. For those of you who think Pend Oreille is some sort of desolate wasteland, I say to you, NUTS! I might suggest actually traveling there before you make such assertions. Pend Oreille has forests of Fir, Pine, Tamarack, and Cedar with nicely meadowed valleys. Try using Google Maps and have a look.

    As for the economy of the county, the demise of the timber and mining industries has had a very large impact on family incomes. Due to the fact that young people generally have to move away to find good jobs, there is a huge hole in the demographic of the area. The older folks of the Puget Sound area vote their pocket books as ours do, yours just form a smaller percentage of the overall population making it easier to spend tax dollars on things meant for younger people (schools).

    For those of you who think that rural areas are a complete waste of time, try finding something to eat that didn’t originate, at least in some way, from a rural place. WE MAKE YOUR FOOD! In addition, where do you suppose all the source materials for closed carbon loop bio-fuels come from? It sure ain’t Gasworks Park.

    Another bone I have to pick with this article, and many of the comments posted here, is this characterization of people living on this side of the Cascades as being some species of Toothless Neanderthal Dittoheads that would rather drink Bud and breed with our closest blood relatives than have a coherent conversation. The PC liberal mantra coming from urban areas is generally geared toward not stereotyping people and groups while treating all as they deserve to be treated. I happen to be an educated man and I know many well educated people who think that Greater Seattle area tends to be a bit full of self importance. If you truly believed in liberal/socialist principles, the phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” should have special meaning for you. Wouldn’t the disadvantaged rural people have the need while you rich urban dwellers have the ability? Something to think about…

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