Bombastic 'Mo

Let’s Vilify Some More People

Representative Mark Miloscia just introduced a bill that would add an 18.5% sales tax to all adult entertainment items.  The Digest of the Bill reads:

“Dedicates revenue from a tax on the sale and use of adult entertainment materials and services to crime victims’ compensation, with an emphasis towards providing services, support, or therapy to those children who are victims of sexual abuse.

Imposes an additional tax on each retail sale of adult entertainment materials and services equal to eighteen and one-half percent of the selling price.  Requires all revenue collected on sales and use of adult entertainment materials and services to be deposited in the general fund to be used solely for the general assistance unemployable program.”

I’m pro-tax in almost any regard, and I really appreciate that we’re in dire need of new streams of revenue.  But this bill is completely wrong.

I believe in the “sin tax”.  I think raising the taxes on cigarettes makes sense, as they do have a tangible cost to society.   (Full disclosure: I’ve never smoked in my life.)

I can also get behind taxes on alcohol.  Like cigarettes, they have an associated cost to society (DUI’s, disintegrating livers, urine in alleyways) that’s not bundled into the cost of production.  (Full disclosure:  I got so drunk in Portland last weekend I vomited in my pants.)

But this doesn’t pass those same standards.  First off, it’d be very difficult to associate any real, tangible, negative affects of pornography or sex toys on society.  If anything, I think it’d be easier to prove their positive effect.  (One example would be this study that links an increase in access to Internet pornography to a decrease in rape.)

Second, this tax is simply meant to impose a tax on people who generally would be unwilling to speak up for themselves.  Unfortunately we’re still living in the remnants of a very Puritanical society, and many people are rather closeted about their adult entertainment expenditures.  It’s a very dangerous precedent to set to tax people who are either afraid or unable to defend themselves.

And third, the adult entertainment industry isn’t a good revenue source.  With the rise of YouTube-style porn sites, the vast majority of porn is now available for free.  In addition, unless the state gets a LOT better at policing our Internet use, it’s going to be a hard item to itemize.  Especially since the providers (who are mostly out of state already) will simply move further away from Washington.

Seriously folks.  It’s time for a fucking income tax.

That’s not a fucking Privilege

I’m still editing the earlier story, and listening to the Senate hearing.

I just had to spit out.

No one has the privilege to make sure that no one else has privileges.  You do not have the right to know that people you don’t like don’t have rights.

Crazy old lady just gave us a Sex Ed talk about Adam and Eve and men and women coming together physically.

Ah!

Live from Oly: Domestic Partnership Hearings

The atmosphere was tense, the temperature hot, and the crowd an uneven mix of vitriol and hope at today’s House Bill 1727 public hearing.  Openly gay Representative Jamie Pedersen introduced the bill, which will provide all of the benefits of marriage to Washington State’s domestic partners.“[I know] there are strong feelings on this bill,” Pedersen said to the crowd in a plea for civility.  “But we are not going to tolerate disrespect.  I understand that there has been some name-calling and pushing out in the halls.  We are not going to tolerate that in here and neither will security.”

Constituents against the bill outnumbered those for the bill nearly 3 to 1.  Wearing white “Vote No! on 1727 and 5688” stickers and matching pins featuring the silhouette of a man and a woman, the members of the crowd cheered, applauded, and yelled amen while their side spoke, despite repeated requests from legislators to be silent.

“We can’t have outbreaks like that if we are to have people coming up to testify,” Pedersen told the crowd.  “It’s against the rules.”

The crowd booed.  Many of the people against the bill were children who looked to have been pulled out of middle school to attend the hearing.  Pubescent youth leaned against walls, their “Vote No” stickers oversized on their small, acne-riddled forms.  Many seemed disinterested and bored.  A mother sitting next to me scolded her son for putting his “Marriage is between a Man and a Woman” pin in his mouth.

Those for the bill sat in front of the angry crowd and told personal stories about their families.  Pairs of mothers introduced their children, and a gay firefighter spoke of his fear of dying on the job and being unable to leave anything to his partner of 13 years.

The opposition to the bill spoke just as passionately, although their arguments seldom were about the bill itself.  Pastors, church groups, and concerned citizens from Eastern Washington threatened the collapse of the public school system, the dissolution of the economy due to rising gay health care costs, and burning in Hell.

Pedersen sat quietly during much of the testimony; his hands clasped across his mouth as he listened to women talk of their experience “working with the ex-gay” community.  Repeatedly, he and other Representatives would interrupt to remind those against the bill that this was not a Gay Marriage bill, nor a chance to preach about the Bible.

“I’m sorry,” Pedersen would repeat.  “I really wish that you could speak to the bill.”

Emergency: Domestic Partnerships a danger to “Public Peace, Health or Safety”

The gays have had their fun, and after two years of state-sponsored domestic partnership, it’s time to preserve “public peace, health, or safety, or support of the state government and its existing public institutions”.

So says house bill 1980, the brainchild of Representative Jim McCune R-2,  whose district I couldn’t find on a map.

Co-sponsored by like-minded Republicans Shea, Crouse, Schmick, Cox, and Roach, the bill is “AN ACT Relating to reaffirming and protecting the institution and benefits of marriage as a union between a man and a woman”.  In doing so, the legislation would revoke all domestic partnership benefits to already registered same-sex couples in Washington, as well as denying any future benefits that could be granted to the gays of the future.

Citing “serious concern” over the recent California Supreme Court “imposition” that ruled domestic partnerships were unequal to marriage and violated the state’s constitution, the representatives have decided they should nip all problems in the bud by declaring domestic partnerships illegal.

The good news, there is only six Republicans signed on to the bill.  In contrast, house bill 1727 (which expands all rights of marriage to domestic partners) has support from Representatives Pedersen, Walsh, Moeller, Johnson, Carlyle, Quall, Sullivan, Maxwell, Roberts, Chase, Upthegrove, White, Conway, Nelson, Cody, Hudgins, Morris, Eddy, Liias, Kagi, Ormsby, Rolfes, Clibborn, Dunshee, Pettigrew, Springer, Hunter, Williams, Blake, Darneille, Goodman, Dickerson, Hasegawa, Linville, Kenney, Appleton, Van De Wege, Kessler, Santos, Sells, O’Brien, Ericks, Wallace, McCoy, Kirby, Haigh, Takko, Hurst, Seaquist, Wood, Flannigan, Orwall, Jacks, Finn, Hunt, Simpson, and Driscol.

Domestic Partnerships >= Marriage?

Well, just equal.  But you get rid of all that crazy religious guilt and saving yourself for marriage.  And you still get to have the party!

Right now the Domestic Partnerships we have in Washington are a start, but they provide a small fraction of the benefits that true marriage provides.

HB 1727 intends to change that.  The 110 page bill will provide all rights that marriage provides to state-sponsored Domestic Partnerships.  The bill is accompanied by Senate Bill 5688, which would do the same thing.

The bill digest reads:

“Declares that for all purposes under state law, state registered domestic partners shall be treated the same as married spouses. Any privilege, immunity, right, benefit, or responsibility granted or imposed by statute, administrative or court rule, policy, common law or any other law to an individual because the individual is or was a spouse, or because the individual is or was an in-law in a specified way to another individual, is granted on equivalent terms, substantive and procedural, to an individual because the individual is or was in a state registered domestic partnership or because the individual is or was, based on a state registered domestic partnership, related in a specified way to another individual.  Provides that the act shall be liberally construed to achieve equal treatment, to the extent not in conflict with federal law, of state registered domestic partners and married spouses.”

Anyone wishing to either listen in on the hearing, or give testimony should attend the public hearing Thursday, February 5th at 10 AM (the house bill) or 3:30 PM (senate version) in Olympia, Washington.