Early last week, the King County Council Budget and Fiscal Management Committee voted down funding for public health and social services for veterans.
Here’s how Jane Hague, vice chair of the committee, justified her vote:
“Many families are in very difficult financial times right now and cannot afford an additional tax burden. We need to be more creative and think of the most efficient and effective way to provide county services while living with our means and still providing services that people rely on the most.”
Tax burden, eh? At most, the costs would’ve been a property tax of 15 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value. The median home price in King County this June was about $360,000; that works out to no more than $55 a year, under $5 a month to keep veterans from being shoved onto the street. She was joined in idiocy by Reagan Dunn, Bob Ferguson and Kathy Lambert—all of whom contributed to the 4-to-6 defeat of this proposal—bravely saving King County residents literally dozens of cents a week. Good job, team!
I’ve spent the last month or so working as a health care provider at the Seattle VA Medical Center. King County vets, working through places like William Booth, the Theodora, and other places, assist vets suffering from broken bodies and minds—serious things like traumatic brain injury, PTSD and polysubstance abuse—get their feet under them and have a shot at reintegrating into society. Without King County vets—costing you dozens of cents a week! Dozens of cents that Mrs. Hague is saving you each week by spitting in the face of veterans—these men and women will be literally thrown onto the streets, without any ladder out of poverty and despair.
Here’s the dirty secret about social spending like this, put in a way that should be comprehensible to the dimmest of Republican politicians: it’s a bribe—a cheap and cost-effective bribe—to keep people from becoming hopeless, and therefore ruthless. The cents you’re being saved will cost you dollars a week in higher car insurance (broken windows suck in the morning, don’t they), higher house insurance rates (home break-ins are on the rise with despair), higher prison and jail costs (petty crime is another way of getting housing and food when you have nothing). The cents spent on shelters and social workers save dollars. Larry Gossett and Julia Patterson get it, and said as much in their horrified statement following the vote:
• First, the 143,000 people who visit our public health centers—127,000 of which are below the poverty line—are at risk of losing care. This will result in higher health care costs for us all because people will be going to emergency rooms when their conditions become chronic, and that cost will be passed on to us.
• Second, cuts to our general fund will result in our inability to adequately address issues such as communicable diseases and emerging health threats.
• Third, a loss of human service programs will drive some to despair and crime—which means we’ll be paying TEN TIMES as much when they become part of the criminal justice system.
Votes like this are the epitome of dine-and-dash conservatism—the sort of dim-witted and short sighted thought that passes for leadership in Washington State.
Updated:
Just to make this clearer for some of you, this levy was expected to cost anywhere from five to fifteen cents per thousand. In other words, it could’ve been as cheap as $15 a year for the typical King County homeowner.
And, this was to cover public health for everyone and social services for veterans. The veterans were to consume only a tiny portion of that fifteen cents per thousand. If you don’t want public health in your county, you deserve to die of diarrhea—in my opinion.
Finally, what I’m trying to describe is an opportunity cost. By saving a teeny amount now, you’ll spend a lot more later. Unless you are prepared to execute, deport or otherwise eliminate people unable to care for themselves—let’s face it, anyone who wants to live in a shelter is probably dysfunctional enough to need to live in a shelter—you, the functioning taxpayers, will have to pay. Imprisonment, hospitalization or both are much more expensive—and the likely alternative. You’ll end up spending more on the vets alone, then you’d spend now on social services for them, and public healthcare for all.
Jesus Christ politicians are dumb! Was there ever a day when American politicians actually based their votes on logic rather? Ever?
Ferguson has always been somewhat of a calculating dem. Unless he has a plan to provide these services he should be held accountable for this. I am as against waste as anyone and I can’t say paying property taxes is something I enjoy, but I would like my government ot take care of veterans and the disadvantaged.
Patterson has always been the kind of dem Ferguson claims he is. Principled and pragmatic. She represents a suburban and exurban district but does so in a progressive manner. She does not get enough credit for this and really should.
My house is $400,000 and I sure as hell wouldn’t pay $5 a month for veterans.
Everybody wants to support the troops. Until they need to give something besides a “rah!”.
Sure doesn’t help that the state legislature has been progressively strangling counties by adding new mandates without new revenue options. Unlike the state, local governments have to make due with the taxation choices that the state (and Tim Eyman) dictate.
“petty crime is another way of getting housing and food when you have nothing”
sometimes people get jobs to pay for housing and food.
Only living violent indigent drug addicts are a problem, so stop providing emergency care when they are found dying.
Wow, 3, 6, and 7, you’re either ironic trolls or just bad human beings.
This state needs an income tax.
I support medical and mental health care for everyone. I’m not seeing the point of giving special services to those who chose military employment, for–let’s face it–generally self-serving reasons.
“Here’s the dirty secret about social spending like this, put in a way that should be comprehensible to the dimmest of Republican politicians: it’s a bribe—a cheap and cost-effective bribe—to keep people from becoming ruthless.”
Thanks, Doc-
Now that you make it so understandable it is easy to know what to do; I’ll spend my $55 on shotgun shells…
Let’s cut to the chase, Jonathan-
without this tax increase your position will be cut, is that it?
I love you guys.
This one would only have cost you $55!
Teaching gang bangers the lute only $65 a year!
Pike Place only $135 a year!
Parks only $85 a year!
Teaching homeboys to where rubbers only costs you $50 a year!
Pretty soon you’re talking actual money.
Teaching stupid white men how to spell “wear”: priceless.
1) Does Golob actually own a house?
2) How can he call it conservative politics in an area so liberal it’s purple?
Jonathan, how many $55/year special-interest projects does it take to matter? 5? 10? 20?
A pretty small group benefits here, and in a very specific, limited way. It’s easy to imagine there are 20 more projects of the same size and value. Does $1100/year matter?
You know what happens if you give spare change to everyone who asks?
You go BROKE.
The idea that this allocation of property tax revenue is more justified than another simply because it’s smaller than others is ridiculous.
When did ‘despair’ become justification for crime? I wish I’d known because I would have spent my entire faggy-goth-kid adolescence knocking over liquor stores.
And @ 9, I agree with you completely. Our focus needs to be on adequate health care for ALL, regardless if they choose, of their own volition and for their own reasons, to join the service. Its always struck me how, when some people engage in risky behaviors like smoking or drunk driving, they are solely to blame for the health consequences they incur, but if someone engages in the extremely risky behavior of traveling to another country and attempting to kill its inhabitants, their health consequences become the responsibility of the state.
If we give $55 to the veterans, we’ll have to give $55 to the homeless! And then we’ll have to give $55 to drug addicts! Then we’ll have to give $55 to the orphans! And then $55 to the girl scouts! And then $55 to the band club! We’ll have to give $55 to the hare krishnas! And then $55 to the crazy guy on the corner who swears at cars! And then we’ll have to give $55 to the slippery slope maintenance crew!
While I completely agree with the notion that our care of veterans is abysmal to the point of being nearly criminal, I don’t think the financial burden of that care should fall on the shoulders of the county. The military is a federal expense. So is the Veteran’s Administration. If more money is necessary to provide better care (which I completely support), it should come from the federal government, not King County.
It’s called a typo honey but glad you had no REAL comeback.
17
that’s pretty good…
If we finally get socialized health care, you’ll probably be paying more than $55.00 a year for the tired, poor huddled masses. In fact, you’re probably paying more than that now for the tired, poor huddled masses.
Wow. You people are heartless. A whole bunch of privileged Seattilites who preach their open minded-ness and desire for equality until a group comes along and actually needs it, and “it” comes from your pocket book.
Reminds me of Kipling:
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
(N.B.: Tommy Atkins is the stereotypical British soldier, known as G.I. Joe over here.)
@22:
If you think these penurious trolls in any way, shape or form represent “open-mindedness and desire for equality”, then you really need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
And I can’t see why anyone should be surprised by this, after all the GOP treats soldiers like it treats babies: while they’re in the military/womb they’ll defend them without question, but once they’re discharged/born? Eh, fuck ’em they’re on their own.
First, Golob, you goddamned stupid bastard, go back to school and study economics.
Second, go to talk to Constantine, “the grunge candidate” and the favorite of The Stranger, accordingly, and ask him to free up that wasteful spending on the ferry taxis.
Instead of taxing people in a recession, Golob, go ask Dow to free up some wasteful spending. Golob, go look for other wasteful spending, you lazy cunt.
First, Golob, you goddamned stupid bastard, go back to school and study economics.
Second, go to talk to Constantine, “the grunge candidate” and the favorite of The Stranger, accordingly, and ask him to free up that wasteful spending on the ferry taxis.
Instead of taxing people in a recession, Golob, go ask Dow to free up some wasteful spending. Golob, go look for other wasteful spending, you lazy cunt.
Conservatives like their heroes dead so they can put words in their mouths and ascribe their own motives to them. It’s just easier that way. So why pay for a vet to get assistance? After all, It’s much more hygienic and oodles more convenient to just put a bouquet on a memorial, spout some platitudes, and then go to a a barbecue.
People who don’t wanna pay taxes for needed social services are morons and pussies besides.
ditto 28 and Dr. Golob.
Oh, and stupid white dude @19: spelling “where” when you mean “wear” is not a typo. It is, however, yet another example of why your handle is entirely appropriate and not ironic.
A group of suits failing to finding funding for public health while a mutating flu virus is afoot seems like it could be the opening scene for the H1N1 horror film.
Still, I have to agree with @18 that the cost of social services for veterans should come out of federal money. Of course it should happen, but it shouldn’t happen piecemeal, county by county, depending upon which county funding passes in. That’s not fair to veterans who need services who live in a stingy county.
That said, I’d like to see a counter-military-recruitment program paid for by property taxes. Go into junior highs, high schools, expose the truth about recruiting lies, educate for non-violence, and try to reduce the capacity for our leaders to make war by reducing the amount of people who are willing to fight in wars.
Trying to use logic on right-wingers is like trying to explain calculus to a brain-damaged earthworm.
@30, the point I think it that only a fraction of this tax goes to provide health care for the VA (patients of which are, of course, residents of the county). Most of it goes to general health services.
Trying to dump this off on the federal government is a cop-out.
You should also describe the effect of any property tax on a typical renter. When only talking of the median homeowner, it leaves the impression that renters do not share the burden of property taxes. An $85-per-year-burden-on-a-median-homeowner property tax for a ferry hits a typical renter at about $30 per year. It’s relevant to know that. Why indeed should a median renter support a $300-per ride subsidy for a ferry taker, who might be making $200K?
Also, there are poor homeowners who can’t pay their medical or other bills.
There might even be homeowners or renters are are vets, or disabled, etc.
The artful failure to paint the full picture of the burden is cherrypicking. It’s either dishonest or lazy. And it leads to the erroneous notion that because each increment is presumptively affordable to that median homeowner, it’s affordable to everyone paying the property tax. So virtually any program with any benefit is deemed good policy without further description. It also paints every program as progressive when it’s not necessarily so progressive. IOW if everyone paying the tax is richer than me, and the people served, because everyone paying the tax owns a median home, that’s a good program, don’t even think about it! But if you realize everyone paying the tax includes all income levels, you actually have to figure out if the program makes sense. Just thikning of that median homeowners makes ANY program make sense, because they’re all morally free, in that the median homeowner can afford yet another $30 hit or $85 hit ad nauseum. But if you think of that struggling homeowner who can’t pay for her prescription drugs or the struggling renter who can’t pay the freaking rent….it’s another story.
Maybe you should even portray the impact on the unemployed, struggling ARTIST renter. Does that make the point clearer?
She SHE pay another $30 in rent, via increased property taxes passed on to renters, to support a foot ferry from Renton taken by folks who have jobs downtown including the $50K a year office adminsitrator, the $150K a year programmer, and the $70K a year law corrections officer?
(Yes, the conclusion is impose progressive income tax and means test every social program, duh!)
I think everyone is sympathetic to the plight of the vets.
However when Golob gives the subject the usual Slog treatment: “let me explain it in a way you retards can understand and btw if you dare disagree with me you are an asshole” then it is hard to supress the “Fuck You” response.
Slog has never learned that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.*
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Slog doesn’t really care about making the world a better place as much as indulging itself in snarky assholery.
Jonathan, why do you think people would respond any better to these threats than they do to the bully who threatens to beat them up for their lunch money, or the gangster who extorts protection money out of them? A crime is a crime. People are quite unlikely to have much sympathy for an appeal for help accompanied by “and if you don’t, we’ll break out your car windows, burglarize your house, and steal from your store.” Sorry, but that’s how you convince more people it’s time to arm themselves.
Putting this on the ballot now would’ve likely led to its failure. There is no group organized to lead the charge and educate voters why it would be necessary, nor time to raise the needed funds. Having worked on ballot campaigns, I know from experience that you need to prepare for many months, and preferably even a year in advance. The Council was voting in July and the vote would’ve been in November. That’s simply not enough time to raise the money needed to ensure it’s passage. I’m positive not all members that voted against this voted for this reason, but I know at least one that used sound judgement rather than knee-jerk reaction to vote no. Perhaps some actual journalistic work by Golob could’ve been useful to the readers in getting the reasoning for the no votes.
@12: Apparently arithmetic is not your strong suit. Let’s do a simple example you can understand.
Suppose you have a house. Your house’s water heater is old and needs maintenance; the estimate is about $150 for parts and labor. That’s not a trivial amount of money, but if the heater isn’t fixed it could potentially leak and flood the basement, which would cost you about $5000 to fix. OBVIOUSLY the $150 repair is worth the money to avoid flooding your basement.
Similarly, veterans’ care and public health. $15-$55 per house per year isn’t nothing, but it’s way cheaper than picking up the costs for the emergency room, ambulance, police, jail, court, etc. accrued by dumping disabled veterans out on the streets and acting like their problems will sort themselves out.
Couldn’t we just cut the Sherrif’s budget in half so it was only three times as much per capita as it was in 1975, instead of six times as much?
Then we’d have a budget surplus.
I’d be happy to pay additional taxes to help the homeless… but since our council members are short sighted…except for Patterson and Gossett….I will just increase my budgeted pan-handler $$$ this year.
I think you should too.
We asked these men for their service.
We didn’t just ask them for their lives, we asked them for their families, we asked them for their sanity, and we asked them for their very souls. We asked them to leave their families (sometimes permanently, Army divorcee rate was 80%) and go to a third world country half a world away where they are alone, in a hostile environment many of which can kill or maim not even through weapons of war but lack of clean water or even misquotes. Then after months of physical, mental, and emotional scarring we asked them to come back, many of whom would be spit on, derided, or threatened for simple volunteering to serve their country.
King County was being asked for 15 cents per thousand dollar. I guess you’re right 15 cents is a lot to ask for what little our veterans gave us. I mean they’ll be fine, we already asked them to sleep in tents at Normandy, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
They’re used to it, right?
@40: We sort of asked them for all that, and we sort of offered to pay them for all that. (And many of us neither asked them to go fight wars of aggression nor offered to pay them for it, but were forced to fork over about a third of our budget in support of this effort by a bunch of war mongers.) Let’s not forget that our “volunteer” military consists entirely of paid citizens and mercenaries.
If those people are willing to work for less pay than what they otherwise would demand because of they feel a civic duty to go kill for us (or rather, for those of us who think such killing is justified by the desire to maintain our standard of living), that’s very generous of them. But let’s not pretend like they’re volunteers.
Lots of people give their time for the public good. Some of them devote their time to working as killers (not always bad; sometimes we need killers) and some of them devote their time to other efforts. If there’s an unwritten rule about the health care that we’ll provide in return for people’s service as our hired killers, then let’s put it in writing and quit jerking them around.
I feel quite strongly that we should provide legal representation to people entering the military. If there is any question about compensation, it should be addressed *before* those people sign up to go kill for us in return for the salary we provide them, not after they’re back home and no longer employed by us. If we promised them quality health care for life, then we need to suck it up and fund that health care. If we gave them the idea that we’d provide such but have no legal obligation to do so, then we need to do a better job of educating them about the compensation they’ll receive before they enlist.
@40 It is not a service to this country to go to Iraq to participate in an illegal war/occupation.
When a soldier like Ehren Watada refuses to go to Iraq because he believes the war is illegal, and that to do so would make him a party to war crimes, that is a service to this country worth getting patriotic over.
“Suppose you have a house. Your house’s water heater is old and needs maintenance; the estimate is about $150 for parts and labor. That’s not a trivial amount of money, but if the heater isn’t fixed it could potentially leak and flood the basement, which would cost you about $5000 to fix. OBVIOUSLY the $150 repair is worth the money to avoid flooding your basement.”
Hmmm, only one problem with your little analogy. I don’t ask tax payers to buy me a new water heater if I’m an idiot or don’t take care of it myself.
@43…calling homeless vets idiots is BEOYOND ridiculous & dick-ish. Just because you have the ability to take care of yourself properly, doesn’t mean you should assume others do…especially those who have endured horrors you couldn’t imagine.
Think the county should not cut their support for domestic violence shelter, legal advocates for sexual assault victims, food banks, adult day health for seniors or veterans services? Come to the King County Council heating tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 (Council Chambers) and tell them to dedicate 3.2% of the general fund to human services until they can find a long term funding solution.
See you there.
I’ll give $55 a year to stop entering/perpetuating aggressive (non-US border defending) wars. The long term vet problem will start be solved in a alltogether better manner.
@18 Yes. AGREED. Fed should bolster VA. We should spend energy lighting fires under congresspeople to let them know to do so. But in the meantime local gov should bolster local shelters,…right?
I’ll give $55 a year to stop entering/perpetuating aggressive (non-US border defending) wars. The long term vet problem will start be solved in a alltogether better manner.
@18 Yes. AGREED. Fed should bolster VA. We should spend energy lighting fires under congresspeople to let them know to do so. But in the meantime local gov should bolster local shelters,…right?
“especially those who have endured horrors you couldn’t imagine.”
Just because someone says they are a ‘vet’ does not mean they were knee deep in paddies going after Charlie. Survey these guys and I bet a large proportion 1. never saw combat and 2. we messed up before they joined the military. 3. Know a ‘help a vet’ cardboard sign shakes out more money from suckers to pay for their drugs.
This is a Federal/VA issue, not a county government issue.