Tag Archives: northwest

Privatization vs Free Market

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Some years ago a friend was complaining about the cost of a particular computer accessory. Another friend said, “You just need to encourage people to buy them. As soon as demand goes up, prices will come down.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I heard, so I asked the second friend to repeat it. Then asked a couple of follow-up questions, to clarify. Yep, her understanding of the Law of Supply and Demand was: “When demand goes up, suppliers figure out how to lower prices.”

So I had to explain that the Laws of Supply and Demand describes how economic equilibrium changes in a competitive market. If demand goes up, while nothing else changes, then price will also go up, not down. One way to get to the lower prices is for demand to get high enough that more suppliers see a chance to make a profit and jump into the market, leading to supply going up, which tends to push prices down, which in turn may make some suppliers try to find ways to more cheaply produce their supply (in order to preserve their profits), et cetera. The end result may be that prices go down, but it takes a few back and forths of the seesaw before that happens.

Her response: “Well, my major was Literature, so of course I never took any Economics classes in college.”

I told her that I’d learned about supply and demand in middle school social studies. And then been taught it again in high school civics.

“Really? What does economics have to do with society or government?”

Watching how my state’s liquor privatization adventure has played out brought that flabbergasting question back to mind.

For a long time, liquor sales and distribution in Washington state were regulated by a state-appointed board. The board had been set up in response to the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed Federal Prohibition and sent the regulation of the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol back to the states. Among the goals the board was tasked with were to provide uniform pricing and uniform availability throughout the state, as there was a feeling that rural residents had been gouged by suppliers in the past.

There were many other factors in play. The complex and sometimes very dysfunctional relationship society has with the use of intoxicants, the moral absolutism some people project on intoxicants, as well as a tendency to look for simple solutions to complex problems (which had led to Prohibition in the first place) insured that.

There had been many previous attempts to privatize the distribution of alcohol. Most of the legislative attempts bogged down over economic issues, rather than moral arguments. Timid legislators have increasingly turned to cigarette and alcohol tax increases to close gaps in state revenue, as it is harder to rally the public against a tax increase on substances that many feel were sinful, and which very few feel are necessities. There is also the fact that some (and sometimes most) of the costs of individual misuse of alcohol falls on the public, not just the person(s) directly involved.

Since a privatization initiative nearly passed a couple of years ago, the legislature did finally pass a law setting up a bidding process to open alcohol distribution to private companies and begin the process of disentangling the state from the process. It would have been interesting to see how that worked out.

Unfortunately, some of the larger retail corporations, who had been donors to the previous initiative, felt the state’s process was a bit too intent on encouraging competition, so they dumped money into another initiative, which included language giving existing large grocery stores a virtual monopoly on the sale of alcohol.

This time, the voters passed it.

There are a couple of provisions meant to allow some competition. People could bid on the right to take over old state liquor store franchises. And restaurants and bars could turn to other distributors, including out-of-state distributors.

Except that the large grocery store chains have used a combination of existing lease agreements or the threat of moving their stories to prevent landlords for letting the new, smaller liquor stores open. And, surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Prices have gone up while selection has gone down.

Imagine! We went from a non-profit system owned by the public and charged with selling and distributing a popular (and sometimes problematic) product to a system run by for-profit companies, and the prices went up. Who could have possibly foreseen that?

Things like the law of supply and demand only work in a free market (or one in which all sellers act on a level playing field). Privatization is not the same thing as a free market.

Now, those same grocery companies who essentially wrote the initiative and bought the election, are lobbying the legislature to repeal those few protections in the initiative intended to keep the distribution channel to restaurants and bars open. They want to be able to act as distributors, without paying for distribution licenses or taxes.

There are good reasons for some regulation and taxation to be involved. As I already mentioned, the costs of the misuse of alcohol fall disproportionately on the community rather than just the people who misuse it. Any product which is mass produced for ingesting by the people who buy it carry risks that are on a completely different scale than buying produce at a local farmer’s market. We need to have systems that can impose penalties when manufacturers or sellers negligently or recklessly cause harm to their customers.

Privatization can be made to work, but replacing a monopoly that was directly answerable to the public with several near-monopolies whose primary goal is to extract as much money from the public with as little effort as possible is not the answer.

Not exactly a surprise

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I was laying half asleep the other morning, the clock radio playing one of the local NPR stations (we have three), when I heard a story about the special office within our state’s department of motor vehicles responsible for making driver’s licenses for undercover cops.

The licenses are real, valid licenses, it’s just the identity that’s fake. The reason officers going undercover need valid licenses is so that the identity “holds up.” Right? If it’s a fake, the number and name on the license won’t be in the system, or the number won’t match the fake name. It would be a bit too easy for the bad guy they’re hoping to take down to find the undercover cop just by running a license.

I was laying there thinking it was cool that we had such an office. Then the story took an odd shift, because the reporter was surprised to find out that federal agencies obtain licenses for fake identities of their undercover people from states that have these programs. Again, it makes sense, and in our system, it’s states that issue most driver’s licenses and IDs, right? You only get a federal ID if you are a federal employee or a dependent of a federal employee. Which would kind of give it away.

All this has come to light because the state DMV has never obtained official approval from the legislature for this program. And the program was set up many decades ago (presumably with the approval of whoever was governor at the time), and since the identities are supposed to be secret, it’s just kept going without all the subsequent governors being fully involved. They decided that they ought to have official legislative approval, so there’s a bill moving through the legislature now to authorize the office to continue to provide these false identities to law enforcement agencies.

The reporter seems quite worked up that one of the federal agencies that obtained IDs was the CIA. It seems that when the first public information request was made, that the person responsible revealed which federal agencies obtained how many licenses. Which was a violation of the agreement that the office had with the feds. So there is a bit of a kerfuffle about that.

But I’m not sure why the reporter is so breathlessly wondering why the CIA needs so many false identities. I think I’m particularly confused because I’ve been following this reporter for years. He’s been covering government affairs stories in Washington and Oregon for several different radio stations and the national NPR news organization for a long time, and normally he seems very savvy and informed.

What is the big deal that the CIA has agents who need false identities? Has this guy never watched Alias, or Covert Affairs, or even the original Mission: Impossible? Those shows are all dramatic exaggerations, but yes, some agents are going to need more than one cover in the course of a career. Sometimes more than one in a year.

And sometimes you’re going to need a cover ID for someone who isn’t an agent, someone who’s gotten into trouble and needs to be relocated. I know the CIA doesn’t handle witness protection, but sometimes there really are defectors in real life. Someone who knows valuable things and wants to leave his or her country, bring their family with them, but their home government isn’t letting them.

I think the story was worth doing. It’s interesting to know that there is a process for this sort of thing. And it’s even very slightly newsworthy that the agency mistakenly released the CIA numbers, and then had to retract.

But the rest of it isn’t news. If you have any sort of understanding of how the world works, it shouldn’t even come as a surprise.

Damage control

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A few years back a church bought a recently vacated big box retail building about 8 or 9 blocks from my house and converted it to a worship center. The church was a regional megachurch, not affiliated with an existing denomination. I had heard a little bit about it, but wasn’t terribly familiar at the time. I’ve since learned a bit more.

Although they try to wrap their message in language that sounds hip and liberal, and they clearly aim their marketing at a younger demographic, it is anti-gay, anti-women’s rights, and anti-all-the-other-usuals. The head pastor drives a couple of Mercedes-Benzes. His sermons each week are broadcast on giant screens in the neighborhood worship centers. Dissenters in the congregation are kicked out and all church members who wish to remain in good standing (included the kicked-out person’s spouse, if applicable) are instructed to shun the person.

There is a beautiful historic church building in downtown Seattle, with a gorgeous doomed main building. The building is on the eastern edge of downtown, close to Capitol Hill, which has long been known as the city’s gay neighborhood. Years ago the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Chorus (of which I was a member) was one of about a dozen community musical groups that rented space in the church for weekly rehearsals. Every year they asked all the groups that rehearsed to participate in a Christmas concert. It was wonderful to sing under that big beautiful dome. But also sad to see how small the audience was. The congregation had been shrinking for decades, finding it increasingly difficult to even keep the lights on, let alone maintain the structure. The big beautiful building is on a prime piece of downtown property, and it seemed inevitable that the building would be torn down.

A few months ago, the megachurch announced that it would be leasing the property, moving its downtown neighborhood worship center from a converted warehouse space to the building. Their announcement included the statement, “being closer to Capitol Hill is a blessing as we are serving and ministering to those who are infected with AIDS on the hill.”

There were so many things wrong with that sentence. I’m not sure where to begin.

First, it is literally not possible to be infected with AIDS; you can be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but not AIDS itself. AIDS is a specific constellation of symptoms which are a late-term manifestation of an HIV-infection. It is a common misperception, but no one who was actively involved in any serious program to serve or care for HIV-positive people would not be aware of the distinction.

Second, it isn’t the 1980s. AIDS has not been cured, but thanks to the various new drugs, most people in the U.S. who are infected with the HIV virus do not have AIDS. Further, thanks to the drugs, a person can live thirty or more years without experiencing any symptoms. People do still die from the disease, and being on the drugs for decades is no picnic, but there are no longer thousands of people in every gay neighborhood living in near-hospice-care situations counting down the days (and T-cells) until they move into an actual hospice. Some studies, in fact, are beginning to indicate that a person infected with the virus living in a first world country, who begins treatment early, doesn’t even have a statistically significantly shortened lifespan because of it.

Third, while a higher proportion of white people infected with HIV are gay or bisexual than are straight, it is by no means a majority of gay people who are infected. Most gay people, like most straight people, don’t have the virus. In many places in the U.S., one’s ethnicity is a better predictor of HIV infection than whether one is gay and out of the closet.

Fourth, this specific church is anti-gay. Gay members are not allowed. Anyone is welcome to attend, but gay people are not allowed to become members until they become ex-Gay. No one wants to be “ministered to” by someone who thinks you are an abomination. And in the year 2013 if you are the kind of person who thinks that a gay neighborhood is filled with AIDS patients, you are the kind of person who thinks gay people are an abomination. You may not say it aloud, and you may deny it if confronted, but that level of ignorance is only achieved by assiduous avoidance.

Fifth, the statement is in the present tense. In other words, the church claimed to already be involved in some sort of service ministry to people with the disease. The fact that they are obviously unaware of my first, second, and third points shows the statement was a lie. Furthermore, not one single news article or press release in which the church had touted its various charity activities which mentioned anything about AIDS or HIV service could be found before this one statement. Not one.

Sixth, while that building is located close to one part of Capitol Hill, to the extent that the hill remains a gay neighborhood (more on that in a bit), most of the gayborhood is centered on the Broadway business corridor, about a mile walk (most of it uphill), from the church’s location. The church is not really conveniently located close to most of the homos on the Hill. And the Hill isn’t quite the great gay village it once was. The majority of queer people living in the Seattle metropolitan area live outside the Hill. The Hill is still very queer, don’t get me wrong, but one of the reasons the Pride Parade had to move off the Hill is because the neighborhood literally can’t hold all the gay people who want to attend the parade. I don’t live on the Hill, and I almost never go there, for instance.

Seventh, during my years of observation of their worship center in my neighborhood, the attendees drive in from somewhere else, attend the events on their property, and then leave. They aren’t part of the local community. They don’t seem to make the slightest effort to even get to know the local community. This last point may not be entirely fair. I’m a flaming homo, after all, and I don’t really want to get into any meaningful conversation with them. But from what I’ve read on other neighborhood blogs, it seems to be the case there, too. So I don’t see how moving the downtown meeting place a few blocks closer to Homo Hill is going to foster much in the way of interaction, constructive or otherwise, with the locals.

When the news broke, a lot of neighborhood blogs and the snarky, ultra-liberal alternate weekly newspaper raised similar points.

When contacted to explain at least in what way the church was “serving and ministering to those infected with AIDS” the church spokesperson became flustered and said someone would have to get back to the news people. They then issued a statement that claimed they were in “beginning stages of volunteering with the Lifelong AIDS Alliance.” Except the Lifelong AIDS Alliance has policies against proselytizing, which the church stated explicitly as its intention in its answer. Also, the Lifelong AIDS Alliance had received only one phone call from the church months before with no follow-up, and a second one less than an hour after the newspeople started asking questions. Volunteer applications had never been submitted from anyone identifying themselves as a church member.

When this was pointed out, the church backtracked. They made excuses. They bobbed and weaved, saying that they intend to help and repeating that bit about being in the beginning stages.

It’s not nice to laugh, but really, the sheer transparency of the lies, let alone the ludicrous depth of ignorance, demands it. I know, they don’t think they were lying. Someone had made a phone call, right? They planned to do something, right? I bet some of their members have even donated money to the charity. Or, at least went out to dinner at one of the restaurants participating in the annual Dining Out for Life fundraiser. That’s the same thing as serving and ministering to those poor AIDS victims, right?

It has been months, now, and there has been no further talk of any such ministry by the church. I’m not sure whether they were embarrassed about the whole thing, or just realized that there was nothing to gain from any effort. I know that people will say that at least some of them had their hearts in the right place. Jesus said to take care of the sick, right? But see, when the first thing that springs to mind when you find out your church is moving closer to a gay neighborhood is AIDS, that right there says all that needs to be said about how ignorant, bigoted, and self-deluded you are. If you feel god calling you to minister to people suffering and dying from AIDS, don’t move around an affluent city on the west coast, go to Africa, or south/southeast Asia.

This megachurch isn’t the only institution having a hard time grappling with its own ignorance and bigotry, as Stephen Colbert explained in this clip (click on Stephen’s name to watch):

Fly season

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As the weather warms, we open more windows, sometimes prop open the door, and generally open up the house. We also start eating more fresh fruit and produce.

One of the side effects of all of that is the appearance of flies.

Over the years, I’ve learned way more about flies than I care to know.

The little gnat-like flies that hang out around the houseplants? Those actually live and breed down in the soil. You can spray the plant with every insecticide you dare, and it won’t bother the flies. To get rid of those flies, you need at least an inch of clean sand or gravel on top of the soil. The adult flies have difficulty getting down to the fertile soil to lay their eggs. The larvae that do get down there, can’t climb high enough to avoid drowning fast enough when you water. Takes a couple months, but it works a charm. Just be warned that about every other year you’ll need to replace the sand or gravel.

The other little gnat-like flies that hang around the kitchen? They don’t fly in from outside. You brought them in with that fresh fruit you picked up at the store. Their microscopic eggs were on or in the skin of the fruit. Washing the fruit before eating it and eating it quickly can slow down the arrival of the flies, but that doesn’t really knock them out. You’re just going to need to trap them. Homemade traps can be made by pouring honey, syrup, or a sweet red wine into shallow cups (though I think that only gets half—the other half just eat and get away). You have to change them often, and it’s more than a bit gross.

Slathering bleach on every surface in the kitchen does nothing about the flies, but people keep trying. Yeah, go to extra effort to clean, but the idea is to eliminate their food—spilled edible substances. Bleach is way overrated as a household cleaner, anyway. Vinegar often does a better job of getting rid of what you’re trying to eliminate with the bleach, and it’s less dangerous to the environment.

I have had people suggest that if I were more tolerant of spiders, I would have fewer flies. To which I say: half the reason I want to get rid of flies is to deprive the spiders of food!

Weather is not climate

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Last week we received an amount of rain slightly greater than the average for the entire month of June.

June in Western Washington is cool and damp. This freaks out a lot of people. Newcomers more than long time residents, but the long timers over react, too. Thanks to the way atmospheric patterns of the pacific change as the northern hemisphere transitions through spring, we always wind up with several weeks in May where the sun comes out and warms us not to summer temps, but certainly warm enough for people to switch to shorts and t-shirts. We get virtually no rain for a few weeks, and people start thinking summer is here.

But the atmosphere is far fromthe summer pattern. As it gets closer to that summer shift, a curious thing happens. High pressure over the Pacific starts pushing cold, but not terribly wet, air at the northwest corner of the continent. Prevailing airflow from the inlands traps that air over a narrow band, and we get several weeks of overcast.

We call it June Gloom.

Now here’s the thing. It happens every year. This is part of our spring. People who complain, including long time residents, are suffering from some kind of amnesia.

The June Gloom is mostly about clouds, not rain. Yeah, it drizzles a bit, usually at night (Cliff Mass’s weather blog has a nice explanation for why most of our June rain happens before dawn), but June is not our wettest month, by any means. So getting an amount of rain equal tothewhole month ofJune inasingle week, well, it’s nothing compared to a week of rain in November.

If we get only typical rain for the rest of the month, we won’t even set a new record.

And remember: official summer in most of the Northern Hemisphere is still ten days away.

While for Seatle, you’ve got a bit over a month.