Look like WA is safe, especially with King county (Seattle) only 55% reported.

CO is going down to the wire, but Denver is only at 54%, and Bennet is winning big there as expected. I'm hopeful.

That 30k vote swing really skewed the results. Looks good at the moment, when it looked hopeless before.

I didn't need write anything. I should have posted this.

I'm really, really glad Whitman and Fiorina didn't win.

I was kinda hoping for the conflicting redistricting propositions to backfire (...what if they both got "Yes" with 53% of the vote?) so it could shine light on how silly the proposition system is.

I mean, I voted against Prop 21 for that reason alone, even though I like parks.

Eh...phew. No Carly. No Meg.

That said, Gavin + Jerry = woah. Our budget's fucked.

Does somebody exactly know how many seats the Tea Party has now?

From folks that count themselves officialy to the Tea-Party-Movement?

Yeah, CO is good now. WA should not be a problem either, so -6 in the end, about as good as Democrats could have hoped for in the Senate.

Here's to two more years of nobody addressing the entitlement reform!

It's that or a woman out of Dr. Strangelove. Flouride FFS

It really irritates me that Washington voters decided to keep our state liquor monopoly. God forbid that Costco or Wal-Mart sold vodka or operated on a holiday like Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas. At least we can continue to pay for our hundreds of liquor stores which employ thousands of people who in turn will receive generous retirement benefits. We already have a 51.9% liquor tax.

When you mention entitlement, which programs do you mean? Are you including Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and Military benefits? What type of reform are you advocating?

The "healthcare reform" did little if anything to address the Medicare/Medicaid issue from my understanding of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

All of them.

What type of reform would I advocate?

Medicare - the problem with it is that the government has no incentive to reduce costs and the healthcare industry is lining the pockets of regulators, so the cost is outpacing inflation. My solution would shift the cost incentives onto users. One possible way to do so would be to share the cost savings with seniors. Another way would be to implement yearly deductibles and pay the difference in cash to the seniors. That way the net result is the same, however the beneficiaries have a say in how the first $X gets spent.

Social Security - reduce benefits and scale age of eligibility up. This will have to happen at some point anyway, otherwise we will go bankrupt. When life expectancy goes up you either have to rely on your savings to get you to age of eligibility or work more.

Not sure how the military benefits play into the whole scheme of things, but that is another unfortunate consequence of fighting wars - you have to take care of veterans. I'm all for reducing defense spending, and if that means fewer veterans in the future, well that's just the icing on the cake.

Well it only exacerbates the cost issue - now that we'll be adding 30+ million to the insurance system, costs for everyone will surely go up.

Do you have state run liquor stores in Washington? In VA, we have ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) stores. Those stores brought in $67.6m (above other taxes on alcohol) for the state's general fund in 2009. Approximately 60% of their profits go back to the state. I don't see how licensing private stores will be able to generate that kind of revenue.

http://www.abc.state.va.us/admin/annual/docs/2009ar.pdf
page 27



http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/polit ... 25234.html

I have been to privately owned liquor stores across the country. I do not think I have ever actually bought any liquor in those stores. I have purchased liquor in VA's ABC stores. In general, the privately run ones tend to be eyesores, poorly stocked, unclean, and more expensive than the ABC stores. I also like that the ABC stores are conveniently located to serve the population that drinks.

However, they don't overload the community by oversaturating the market like in D.C. In D.C., there is a liquor store for ever 500 residents. In VA, the ratio is one for every 21,500 residents. The price for liquor in VA is 10-15% lower than neighboring Maryland and 15-20% lower than D.C. VA generates a higher percentage of revenue for alcohol sales per resident than these jurisdictions. Yet, we have less alcohol-related problems than those jurisdictions.

They are able to achieve efficiencies that the private sector could never match. ABC stores do not have anything close to the failure rate that liquor stores in D.C. and Maryland have. That is good for the overall economy, because retail space that is not taken up by excess liquor stores can be used by other another business building up the overall economic pie.

I have only been to one private liquor store and that was in Houston, Texas. It was godlike. They were giving samples of the new (at the time) Jose Cuervo Black as well as a variety of cheeses. It was easily triple the size of our liquor stores in both size and variety of liquor sold.

I don't care that the state makes a nice profit on the liquor store. It costs money to maintain the stores and pay the employees. The state also marks-up all the alcohol then applies the 51.9% tax, which is the highest in the country. I highly doubt the ABC stores, though I could be wrong, "achieve efficiencies that the private sector could never match." I suspect the failure rate is low because, well, people have no where else to go to purchase their alcohol unless they use the ABC store and even if the store is failing, I doubt the state would close it and have to pay benefits to the state employees operating the store.


Our liquor stores are small and about the size of a 7-11, although they are clean. They are also closed on most holidays and do not operate late at night.

The main arguments here against were that the state would lose revenue, that Costco, et al. wouldn't check i.d.'s, and that there would be more alcohol related accidents.

I do not think this plan will work, because it does not address the real problems. The government has a tremendous incentive to reduce healthcare costs to remain competitive with other industrialized nations. It also has an incentive to free up unproductive spending for more productive uses.

The problem is that the current political parties both the Democrats and the Republicans do not have the will to make actual reforms that will drive down the cost. The people are too divided on how to address the issue with roughly 33% of the population advocating making little to no changes, another 33% advocating something considered radical by the status quo like single payer for all or a nationalized healthcare plan, and another 33% wanting some combination of not making too many changes while increasing coverage to all. This muddy middle of the road stumbling towards a solution leads to crap like PPACA and Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) that drive up the cost but have very little if any cost containment features. Everybody gets to eat their overpriced cake, with no consideration of the ultimate cost.

In order to reform U.S. healthcare, we have to take away the fiefdoms of the A.M.A. and the health insurance industry. We also need to change the culture of excessive and unnecessary testing, since it only seems to vastly increase the cost of healthcare with little to no improvement in healthcare outcomes. I don’t see how you can lower the cost overall when you never address the factors that drive those costs up.

The U.S. as of 2009 was spending 17.3% of its GDP on healthcare. Compared to other industrialized countries this is about 50% more than they spend. Private health insurance companies are run for a profit, so that cost is automatically built into the system. They are not as efficiently run in terms of administrative costs as government run insurance programs in the U.S. The U.S. compared to other countries also fare poorly. In 2006, the U.S. spent 7.3% on administrative costs compared to 5.6% in Germany, 3.3% in the U.K., and 2.3% in Canada. If we could get that figure down to 4.0-4.5% it would be a cost savings of roughly $75 billion in 2006 dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_car ... ted_States

planshttp://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/ ... ate_v2.pdf


The problem with healthcare in this country is that there are no incentives to drive down or limit the salaries of physicians. A single payer system would drive down the disparity between specialists, but overall physician’s salaries would only be decreased by about 10-15% from their current rate. I would be more than willing to limit physicians’ malpractice liability and forgive student loans for doctors in exchange for their giving up some of their salary. Some physician groups are on board for a single payer system, but the A.M.A, the largest and most influential group, is currently unwilling to compromise anything at the moment to lower the cost of healthcare.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/what-is-single-payer



The VA hospitals were horribly run up until the early 1990s. The private sector was doing a better job. However, by making reforms and becoming more efficient it is able to have better outcomes with cost containment. This is the model the nation as whole needs to emulate. Medicare cost containment will never be achieved until the rest of the healthcare system is reformed, no matter what silver bullet the right or left introduces. As an island onto itself it will continue to suck up more dollars with no increase in quality of care. The same is true of Medicaid.

I will address SS and MB tommorrow.

Our tax is lower. Stores do close, but almost all are due to getting better lease deals or moving to a more central location for the population that drinks. They have a computerized system. They match area codes of purchasers and try to match up store locations. Occasionally, a store just fails I would assume, because for whatever reason the area is already well served by existing stores. When a store closes the employees are allowed to move to another location. Again all benefits come from the revenue generated by the stores sales and not from other tax revenue.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/245.html

When I first started drinking in the mid-late 1980s the ABC stores were not very flexible to changes in population demographics and meeting customer demand. I would have been very open to privatizing the system. However, once they implemented their new computer system, they have done a fantastic job. For example, back in mid to late 1980s, in Hampton VA they had one ABC store for about 50-60,000 (rough estimate) residents that was not very convenient or centrally located for most of those residents. They added 2 stores since that time and are now centrally located for all those residents. One of those stores opened up in a strip mall near my home and has been open for 5-6 years. Previously, no store in that space had been able to remain in business more than a couple of years over the previous 2 decades and it was empty for years at a time.

Everyone, both drinker and non-drinker, I have discussed the issue with likes the system we have in Virginia. They do not want to privatize it.

Wow, mdana, you should make more friends. 57% of Virginians oppose ABC being in liquor wholesale and retail business. http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010 ... ar-536542/

State liquor stores are less efficient than private ones no matter what state they're in - Washington, Virginia, or Pennsylvania (where I happen to live). Here's the deal on PA stores:


http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phi ... 9-tonight/

From personal experience, liquor stores in PA are both more expensive and have worse selections than stores in neighboring New Jersey and Delaware - and incomparably so. Total Wine stores on PA border look like Home Depots compared to PA Wine & Spirit's shitty neighborhood hardware stores.

As for the revenue they bring in to the state - that's all good, but only if you neglect the deadweight loss to the state economy of having to cope with inefficient stores that do not respond to market signals.

Sorry I just HAVE to roll my eyes at that. :eyeroll: What possible incentive does the government bureaucracy have to reduce healthcare spending in order to compete with other nations?

As for spending on other things - not necessary to compromise, according to the Krugman's borrow and spend agenda that is championed by the Obama administration.

The rest of your post seems to focus on the fallacy that the profit motive is what's driving the costs up in healthcare industry (ironically, that is also one of your reasonings to keep state liquor boards in place, even though states that are not in the business of liquor sales have lower costs) and advocating for more government intervention.

You correctly identify that we spend much more on healthcare than other industrialized nations, but incorrectly identify the cause as profit motive. It is true that the universal healthcare system would probably achieve better results than what we have now; what escapes most, however, is that fully private unregulated system would achieve much better results. The silver bullet, as you call it, is in deregulation of the industry. That will drive down the costs significantly enough to the point where we can even afford to cover the uninsured as a safety net, not as a government mandate.

You are talking about alcohol here, right? One of the most damaging drugs on the planet. Personally, I'm against any kind of prohibition, but I don't mind if people have a couple of extra hoops to jump through to get their poison.

voted on tuesday

against both corrupt parties.

Hyperbole much?

Do you have any reason to believe that alcoholism rates in the states that have state monopolies on liquor sales are lower than in other states?

And by the by, how about you stay out of my liquor cabinet, k?

To be fair, there's often nothing to do in states with state monopolies on liquor sales.

1. It is a B.S poll massaged to provide the numbers the big box coalition wants to promote. This issue will fail if put up for a popular vote by a large margin.

2. Comparing PA to NJ and Delaware is ridiculous. Delaware takes much of their tax revenue from people out of state in the form of credit card taxes and excessive tolls on their 15 miles of I-95. New Jersey had their liquor tax lowered by the casino lobby back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

3. Any deadweight of the economy in your last paragraph is most likely negated by a more productive population (less alcoholism, missed sick days due to hangover, etc.).

You wrote government then switch to bureaucracy, which is it? Bureaucracy is not a dirty word, and it is just as inefficient in the private sector.

Unregulated healthcare would not provide the cost savings you suggest. I worked for Kaiser, Lumenos, private and non-private hospitals for almost two decades. The high cost of healthcare was a problem when I started, and it has gotten worse. HMOs, PPOs, HSAs, and consumer driven healthcare were all supposed to drive down the cost. Insurance companies advertise which is money that is not spent on healthcare. Healthcare providers have to track down payment which waste employees time and drive up the cost. Companies compete and overbuild hospitals, beds, etc., that waste drives up the cost. Profit for a company is another cost. I don't see how your fantasy solution (unregulated physicians, unregulated labs, etc.) is a silver bullet with all the costs built into your system.

The US, UK, and Canada all spent about the same before WWII on healthcare as % of GDP. Once the UK went to a national system, their % dropped in comparison to Canada and the US. When Canada went to a publicly funded system, they went down to the UK level of spending. The US has continued to increase its % at twice the rate of those two countries.

I will get to MBs, and SS next week. I had some things to get done today that kept me from writing about those issues. Have a good weekend everyone.

I wrote an essay/blog post about my cat if anyone is interested..

http://districtvibe.com/index.php?optio ... y&catid=34

I will be out of town till next week, so everyone take care.