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Gary Crooks

This individual is no longer an employee with The Spokesman-Review.

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Opinion

Smart bombs

Forbes magazine, located a couple of miles from Wall Street, hatched an idea for an article on the Scam Capital of the United States. That’s a fun angle and easy on the travel budget, since the magazine is situated in Scam Central. There’s Bernie Madoff, the investment banks that spun mortgage-backed securities into a worldwide financial meltdown and humongous government bailouts, the ratings agencies that stamped this mess with AAA seals of approval and the asleep-at-the-wheel Securities and Exchange Commission. To offer a sweep of recent history, there’s the cast of characters in such books as “Den of Thieves” and “Liar’s Poker.” But, no.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Smart Bombs: Misinformation pandemic

It’s always interesting to check in with factcheck.org to see what strains of virulent misinformation are metastasizing in the nation’s blogs and e-mail inboxes. One of the following claims is true. Can you guess which one? A. President Barack Obama intervened to delay the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from the clutches of pirates for four days.
Opinion

Smart Bombs

The Spokane County GOP platform is worried about sovereignty and so it demands that this nation withdraw from the United Nations. The local party’s Web site also carries a warning that a Sustainability Action Plan put together by a wide-ranging group of local citizens must be opposed. The report is filled with common-sense suggestions for City Hall to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are no mandates. If the city wants to ignore the report, it can, though it would be counterproductive to do so. But some Republicans, including City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin, smell an attempt to please U.N. overlords, and so they’ve stitched together flimsy suspicions that the world body will soon dictate local decisions. Did you know that “sustainability” has its origins in the U.N.? Good thing capitalism didn’t start there, or we’d have to try something else.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Smart Bombs: Getting the business

From what I gather, the mantra “run government like a business” is a call for efficiency. It assumes that pushing government functions into the private sector will save money. Not always. Sometimes it just means a smoking deal for businesses. For instance, Medicare Advantage is a collection of private plans within Medicare, and the government pays on average 14 percent more per patient under those plans than under traditional Medicare. The big winners are the insurance companies. Another example is student loans. The feds give money to banks, which lend it to students. The government bears the risks; the banks take the profits.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Smart Bombs: Myths burden budget

So Washington state will now begin the process of implementing an all-cuts budget. No sales tax hike. No income tax on the wealthy. Polling showed that both ideas were non-starters. Legislative leaders held out the possibility of revisiting the revenue issue next year. If so, they better start campaigning now, because public perception is that the state taxes and spends too much. The best way to measure a state’s tax burden is to total up personal income and divide it by how much money the state collects. The Washington State Budget and Policy Center has done that and found that the percentage (about 6 percent) was fairly level from the 1995-’97 biennium to the 2005-’07 biennium. Since then, it has plunged to 5.5 percent in 2007-’09 and will drop even further for 2009-2011. The only significant increase in revenue came in 2005-’07, but that haul was courtesy of the housing bubble mirage.
Opinion >  Syndicated columns

Smart Bombs: Think time for WEA

After the state Senate passed a bill that redefines basic education and commits the state to financing the transition, Washington Education Association President Mary Lindquist hit the send button on a churlish message to members of the teachers union. The Web site Publicola posted her e-mail, and you can read it at the Matter of Opinion blog on The Spokesman-Review Web site. Here are excerpts with my comments: “This bill is a travesty and an insult to the education profession. The groups behind it are vested interests masquerading as concerned citizens who care for children. Yet they’re denigrating and dismissing those of us who actually educate our state’s children!”
Opinion

Smart bombs

A lot of the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) partiers complained about the federal deficit and with good reason. It is at a record high, and like Sly Stone the government wants to take it higher. Spending is certainly a problem, but only part of it. Back in 2000, when the feds ran a surplus, there was an immediate call to cut taxes. The surplus was treated as an indicator that the government had taken too much of the people’s money. The short-lived surplus came on the heels of annual deficits dating to 1969. That accumulated debt wasn’t wiped out. In fact, interest on the debt remains one of the largest slices of the federal budget pie. It overwhelms pork, which remains a favorite talking point of the allegedly frugal.