Archives for August 2004

In an editorial last week, The Seattle Times talked up the need for media diversity. Well this week they demonstrated it by ignoring the breaking story about our nation’s failing charter schools.

Yesterday the NY Times reported that “in almost every racial, economic and geographic category, fourth graders attending charter schools are outperformed by their peers in traditional public schools.” [Nation’s Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal]

This is a huge story… front page, above the fold in the NY Times. Over 600,000 children already attend charter schools, and the number is expected to grow dramatically under President Bush’s ironically named “No Child Left Behind” Act. No wonder this story was featured prominently in newspapers and media broadcasts nationwide.

But The Seattle Times? Nada. Not a mention. Not a word. Zilch.

The Seattle P-I and Tacoma News Tribune managed to squeeze the story into their pages yesterday. But The Times couldn’t be bothered… despite the fact that Referendum 55 — authorizing charter schools — will be on the Washington state ballot this November.

Or perhaps the Times didn’t cover the story because R-55 is on the ballot, and it would undermine their previously stated support for charter schools? In a June 11 editorial the Times called opposition to charter schools “an enormous waste of time,” lamenting that R-55 delays implementation past the start of the new school year.

Reasonable voters will see the state’s modest new charter-school law for what it is: one creative way to give some of our neediest students a top-notch education.

Knowing that fourth graders in charter schools lag half a year behind those in traditional public schools, “reasonable voters” might choose to err on the side of caution. And it is the responsibility of our region’s largest and most influential newspaper to give voters this information.

I’m not suggesting that the Times’ editors conspired to keep this story out of print, so as to protect their own political agenda. But every news outlet has its own editorial bias, and it surely influences decisions on which stories to run.

All the more reason why Seattle should remain a two-newspaper town.

From the LA Times:

California’s largest charter school operator has shut down at least 60 campuses amid new state restrictions and an investigation into financial and academic practices — leaving nearly 10,000 students to find new schools just a few weeks before the new semester begins.

I guess that’s the free market at work.

Washington voters have repeatedly rejected ballot measures approving charter schools, and we’ll have another opportunity this November by voting “No” on Referendum 55.

Rather than supporting adequate funding (and the taxes to support it) charter school proponents argue that subjecting public schools to free market competition is the only way to improve education. But according to an article in the NY Times, this national experiment with our children’s future hasn’t been going so well: “Nation’s Charter Schools Lagging Behind, U.S. Test Scores Reveal“.

The findings, buried in data quietly released by the US Department of Education, showed that fourth graders in charter schools lagged about half a year behind similar students in other public schools in both reading and math.

Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

Personally, I’ve got nothing against charter schools in theory, but in practice they’re really just a union-busting effort to defund traditional public schools.

And at the risk of being branded a Marxist, I’d just like to suggest the unpopular notion that perhaps the “free market” is not always the best and most efficient means of allocating resources. After all, if competition is such a magic elixir, why is it that successful companies like Microsoft are always striving to squash it?

The truth is, a lot of the appeal of charter schools is that it promises taxpayers something for nothing… it says we can improve public education without spending more money, if only we let the free market work its magic.

But it ignores one of the basic rules of free markets: you don’t get something for nothing. That’s something the 600,000 students in charter schools are learning the hard way.

(For more information on R-55, go to ProtectOurPublicSchools.org)

The other day I laid into professional prevaricator Tim Eyman for claiming a Snohomish County judge had ordered the original I-18 language back on the ballot, when in reality, all the judge did was set an August 24 hearing date. Surely Tim’s lawyers had explained the judge’s ruling, but that didn’t stop him from hyping this “huge legal victory” to potential contributors.

Well if you have any doubts that Tim Eyman is an incorrigible liar, his latest email should put them to rest.

In a press-release-cum-fundraising-email sent this morning to supporters and the media, Tim perpetuates his lie, and backs it up by deceitfully appending an erroneous version of a Seattle P-I article that has since been corrected.

Here is the opening paragraph of the article as it appears in Tim’s email:

A Snohomish County judge yesterday ordered that the original language of a ballot initiative that would reduce the size of the King County Council from 13 to nine members stand, reversing the effect of a recent vote by the council to delay the measure if passed.

And here is the opening paragraph of the actual P-I article as it currently appears online:

A Snohomish County Superior Court judge yesterday ordered set an Aug. 24 hearing date for a judge to consider whether the original language of an initiative to reduce the size of the King County Council from 13 to nine should be on the November ballot.

I’ve never understood why news publications continue to look the other way at Tim’s habit of violating their copyright by reprinting articles without permission, for commercial purposes. (And you can’t get much more commercial than a fundraising email for Tim’s personal compensation PAC.) But if protecting their intellectual property isn’t compelling enough, perhaps protecting their integrity is… for this isn’t the first time Tim has knowingly reprinted the wrong draft of an article or column.

On Feb. 6 Tim sent an email to supporters allegedly reprinting a column he had published in the Tacoma News Tribune. Problem was, it wasn’t actually the column the TNT printed on Jan. 18, but rather an earlier, much different draft that the TNT’s editors had forced him to extensively rewrite.

So let this be a lesson to my friends in the media: Tim doesn’t just lie to you, he uses you to repeat his lies to your colleagues and the public. He has complete and utter disregard for the press in general, and you personally. Thus nothing, absolutely nothing he says or writes should be taken at face value.

Even his alleged news clippings.

I cringed when I saw the headline of today’s editorial in the Seattle Times, “Sims’ tax plan: bold but impractical.”

The Times has been consistently ardent in their opposition to a state income tax, to the point of belittling William Gates Sr. in a Bruce Ramsey column last December (“The joys of not having a state income tax.”) Gates found it appalling that Washington had the most regressive tax structure in the nation, a sentiment Ramsey pooh-poohed, suggesting our regressive tax system is necessary “to offset the unfairly progressive federal income tax.”

So in the context of the editorial board’s topsy-turvy world, where balancing budgets on the backs of middle- and low-income households is not only defensible, but a moral and economic imperative, the headline on this new editorial had me expecting the worst.

In truth, the editorial was rather even-handed, applauding the Sims’ plan as bold, serious and pro-growth, while pointing out the obvious political hurdles of passing the necessary constitutional amendments.

But I’m guessing those hurdles shrank considerably once the details of the Sims’ plan were released last week. By eliminating the burdensome B&O tax, and replacing it with nothing, Sims may have turned the plan’s most dangerous potential opponent — the business lobby — into his biggest ally. The business community gets everything it could ask for: increased investment in essential infrastructure, and zero taxes. When push comes to shove, powerful business interests will be pushing and shoving to get the Legislature over that two-thirds hump.

While I personally had some initial reservations over this aspect of the plan, I have grown to appreciate it’s subtle brilliance. Eliminating corporate taxes is not only a clever political move in regards to the plan’s passage, it also eliminates one of the most corrupting forces in Olympia… the annual feeding frenzy of corporate lobbyists influencing legislators to pass billions of dollars of special interest sales and B&O tax exemptions. Without corporate taxes there can be no corporate tax exemptions. While the Sims’ plan is sure to be a job creator over all, it is certain to put more than a few lobbyists out of work.

As to concerns that business is getting off scott free, well, there’s a school of thought that says businesses don’t really pay taxes at all; they just pass it on to consumers. That’s a tremendous oversimplification, but when you consider the fact that business owners will now be taxed at as much as 10 percent when they take profits out, it’s a tradeoff I think many progressives will be willing to accept.

The end result is that Washington will move from having the most regressive tax structure in the nation, to one of the most progressive. 80 percent of households will see their total tax burden decline, with only the top 4 or 5 percent seeing significant increases. At the same time, the ability to deduct the income tax from our federal returns will produce hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues that can be used to either further cut taxes or fund needed investment in education, transportation and other essential services.

Sims estimates the plan will save Washington citizens $731 million in federal taxes, but the number is likely very conservative. The Gates Commission projections were considerably higher, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that a final analysis could more than double the savings.

That’s a lot of money to leave on the table for ideological reasons, which helps to explain why even such a knee-jerk income tax opponent as the Times is willing to take Sims so seriously:

This page has both big reservations about a state income tax and realism that putting one into place is almost politically impossible. But Sims deserves credit for forcing people to stop and think about the best way to pay for state government.

That may seem like a tiny concession, but it’s huge considering the hard line the Times has previously held on this issue. Sims has clearly made the editorial board (if not the headline writer) reconsider its position.

And that is what political leadership is all about.

A lot of you probably saw or heard the headlines the other day that a Snohomish County Superior Court judge had ordered I-18 onto the ballot without the technical changes added by the King County Council. As you can imagine, Tim Eyman made a big deal of this, emailing his supporters and the media a press release titled: “Huge legal victory! Judge orders original I-18 on ballot.”

What a fucking liar.

As the Puget Sound Business Journal dispassionately explains, the judge merely set an August 24 hearing for the two sides to argue whether the initiative should go on the ballot as originally written. Shame on those members of the media who repeated Tim’s spin on this story without getting the facts straight.

Now I’m not an attorney (much to my mother’s chagrin,) but does it strike anyone else as odd that a Snohomish County resident has appealed to a Snohomish County judge, to rule on a King County initiative? I’m sure I’ve seen the terms “standing” and “venue” bandied about in legal documents from time to time.

So if you, gentle reader, have made your mother proud by acquiring a legal degree, could you please add a comment explaining how one county gets to interfere in the affairs of another?

On Wednesday I reported that Tim Eyman had failed to report a $20,000 donation to his personal compensation PAC “Help Us Help Ourselves.” [Show me the money: $20,000 missing from Eyman PAC!]

Well what do you know… the very next day he files an amended report revealing a $20,000 pledge on July 31. (Somebody’s been reading my blog.)

Problem is, Timmy first wrote about this alleged $20,000 donation in a July 23 fundraising email to supporters, that clearly stated “Yesterday, one of our supporters donated $20,000.”

So… is this July 31 “pledge” one and the same as the claimed July 22 “donation”? Unless the PDC performs a proper investigation, we’ll never know for sure, because Tim has made a habit (and a healthy living) obfuscating his public disclosure reports.

The one thing I know for sure is that I smell another amended report coming up.

In her latest column — Getting to the root of the stem-cell debate — Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey raises a very interesting question: how much does she get paid for this cushy gig?

Does she really make a living writing one 900-word column a week? Taking into account her rigorous methodology, what’s that amount to… half a days work? And more importantly… how do I get this job?

Collin’s idea of exhaustive research is reading the Wall Street Journal in bed, so I viewed with suspicion her call for deeper analysis on the stem-cell debate. “It’s heady stuff, so let’s review a few facts as we wade into the politics,” she writes.

Good idea. But what kind of “facts” does she come up with?

In 2001, the Bush administration limited the federal funding of stem-cell research to some 78 pre-existing stem-cell “lines” from these sources. Of those “lines,” some smaller fraction of them has been useful.

Well, you can’t get much more specific than “some smaller fraction of” can you? Unless you spent 30 seconds searching Google, and found that according to the American Medical Association, the number of useful stem-cell lines was closer to twelve.

Sure… I know I’m quibbling here. But it’s kind of ridiculous for Collin to write that it is “better to err on the side of research and discovery,” and then not do any in preparing her column.

It is always a little easier to solicit contributions when you can show that others have already given. Thus it was good strategy for Tim Eyman to send a fundraising email on July 23, encouraging donations to his personal compensation PAC by citing a particularly generous supporter:

Yesterday, one of our supporters donated $20,000 to our compensation fund “Help Us Help Taxpayers.” Jack, Mike, and I are extremely grateful for this tremendous generosity. We know that not everyone can donate that much, but we hope that all of you will participate as much as you can.

Problem is, Eyman filed his monthly financial disclosure report with the Public Disclosure Commission yesterday, and there was no $20,000 donation listed. Indeed, for the month of July, “Help Taxpayers Help Tim” only raised a total of $7,325.

Far be it from me to question Tim’s honesty. Tim bluntly told his core group of supporters that on July 22 he received a $20,000 donation… so I’m going to have to assume that he actually received the money.

So where is it?

If he deposited it into the PAC bank account, it should have shown up on his PDC report. If it was merely a pledge, that too is required by law to be reported.

Or perhaps Tim skirted the public disclosure laws, and deposited a large, anonymous donation into a personal bank account?

I suppose it’s possible that there never was a $20,000 donation… that he intentionally misled contributors about the PAC’s finances in an effort to spur donations. But that wouldn’t just be a lie; an aggressive prosecutor might consider it yet another count of wire-fraud in what one could argue is a six-year pattern of racketeering and conspiracy to defraud contributors and evade the public disclosure laws.

So which is it Tim? Are you a liar or a crook? Or both?

I found an editorial in today’s Seattle Times rather curious. [Kerry and the FCC, forcing the issue]

On Aug. 5, Kerry promised to appoint to the Federal Communications Commission people who would maintain the existing restrictions. “As president,” Kerry said, “I will pursue a policy that tries to have as diverse and broad an ownership as possible. It is critical to who we are as a free people. It’s critical to our democracy.” That is exactly right. Media ownership should not be analyzed in economic terms only, as if what mattered were advertising rates. At issue is the public dialogue. For the same reason we do not allow the government to manage that dialogue, we cannot allow one private owner to do so either, unless one owner is all the market will support. If it supports only one newspaper and one TV station, those should be owned by different people.

Of course, what The Seattle Times is really saying is, we cannot allow one private owner to manage the public dialogue… unless that owner is The Seattle Times.

There is no arguing with the editorial’s main premise that media diversity is critical to our democracy. Yet this self-evident thesis is clearly contradicted by The Times’ own single-minded effort to drive the competing Seattle P-I out of business, thus turning Seattle into a one newspaper town.

The Times apparently understands this hypocrisy and proffers the caveat that the principle of media diversity can be discarded if “one owner is all the market will support.”

Well, I suppose from an economic perspective, that’s a reasonable corollary. Newspapers are businesses after all.

But who exactly decides whether Seattle can continue to support two newspapers? The P-I obviously has concluded that it can (unless you believe the Hearst Corporation is willing to lose money as a public service.)

The Times however, says “no.”

And there’s the rub. For if The Times were indeed the only newspaper in town, theirs would be the only voice we would hear on this issue.

I can understand — even sympathize with — the Blethen’s desire to eliminate the competition. It can’t be easy scratching out a profit in this competitive market. But their own editorial board said it best: “Media ownership should not be analyzed in economic terms only, as if what mattered were advertising rates. At issue is the public dialogue.”

There is no question that it is in The Times’ best interest to dissolve the Joint Operating Agreement. But they need to come clean with readers and admit that it is not in the public interest.

It’s old news to all but his most fervent supporters that at least part of Tim Eyman’s motivation is self-serving. Whatever you might think of his ideological agenda, you have to admit that he has exploited it to earn himself a pretty penny.

What is not always so clear is how his drive for personal remuneration constantly guides his political strategy. Take for example Initiative 892, his gambling industry backed effort to legalize slot machines. On the surface this was a simple money-grab… an irresistible opportunity to pocket $50,000 running the signature drive.

But it was also an attempt to cling to relevancy in the eyes of the core group of contributors who have enriched him over the years. Tim’s supposed focus for 2004, Initiative 864 (his bizarrely mean-spirited 25% property tax cut,) was clearly struggling, and two consecutive years off the ballot would have hurt his credibility with donors. Tim routinely asks supporters to reinvest their car tabs savings in his latest tax cutting scheme, and he desperately needed to show some hope of a return on investment.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Tim was touting I-892 in a fundraising email sent to supporters today:

With only eight weeks to gather the necessary signatures, qualifying I-892 for the ballot was very costly and the campaign is still paying off debts. The I-892 campaign will not have the funds for TV, radio, or newspaper advertising. Frankly, it’s a struggle right now just to afford campaign signs.

Oh no: I-892 can’t even afford yard signs… if you believe in I-892, you better send money now!

Problem is, the email wasn’t raising money for I-892… it was raising money for Help Us Help Taxpayers, Tim’s personal compensation PAC. Like all Tim’s emails from July through December, it ends with an appeal to send cash to “Tim, Jack & Mike.” Not a dime he raises through the end of the year will go to I-892 or any of his other anti-government initiatives.

In fact, while he continues to use I-892 to raise money to pay his Mukilteo mortgage, Tim isn’t actually running an I-892 campaign at all. I-892’s gambling industry backers simply don’t trust Tim to run the fall campaign; any expenditures on behalf of the initiative will be coordinated directly by the Entertainment Industry Association.

But Tim will continue to publicly promote I-892 as if it were his own, not because he passionately believes in its objectives, but because it gives him something — anything — to keep his name in the press, and contributions coming.

Tim tells supporters he needs to raise money for himself so he can continue to work on initiatives, but the truth is, it’s long been the other way around.

I just wanted to quickly point to an editorial in today’s Tacoma News Tribune, lauding Ron Sims newly released tax reform proposal. [From Sims, a bold bid to overhaul taxation in Washington state]

Like the TNT, I’m not completely convinced about all the details of the Sims proposal, but I loudly applaud him for boldly embracing a state income tax.

(By the way, notice that a Property Tax Homestead Exemption is a major component of the Sims plan, a proposal we aggressively promoted during the last legislative session, resulting in the introduction of HB 3076, and a fair amount of discussion in the press. See what a little hell-raising can do?)

I’ve said it before but… man, is Tim Eyman a whiner. In an email to supporters on Friday, the crybaby asked:

Why is the legal complaint against the King County Council for tampering with council-shrinking I-18 being kept a secret by the Seattle PI news department?

Um… could the answer be Tim, that the world doesn’t revolve around you?

Timmy’s political solipsism is understandable considering the media circus that has surrounded his every fart over the past six years, but he better get use to working a little harder for his free press. If not for the last-minute financial and PR windfall bestowed on him by Canadian and Nevadan gambling conglomerates, Tim would be teetering on the edge of irrelevance after two straight years of failing to qualify for the ballot.

Tim’s grown accustomed to throwing a hissyfit and seeing it broadcast on the evening news, but as his failures mount his coverage will inevitably decline. It may be hard for Tim to understand, but not everything he does is newsworthy.

In fact, very little of what he does is all that newsworthy… it’s how he does it that usually generates the press.

Anybody can file a lawsuit, Tim. And apparently the P-I’s editors felt that anybody did.

I don’t really feel like dissecting Seattle Time’s editorial columnist Collin Levey’s latest barf-bag of partially predigested partisan bile, except to say: “blah, blah, blah.” [“This band of brothers has a different view of Kerry“]

As usual, she uses her opinion column as a vehicle for rumor mongering. In the right-wing media sewer system that starts with the cesspool of supermarket tabloids and winds its way through the Wall Street Journal’s sewage treatment plant of an editorial page, Collin is our local discharge conduit, dumping its effluent into Puget Sound.

While I applaud The Seattle Times for seeing fit to provide op/ed space for a local columnist to regularly cover national and international issues, I’m having trouble understanding what exactly is “local” about Collin Levey? She never provides any local perspective, never explores the local impact of national issues, never draws on local history, people or events to color her commentaries.

Perhaps Collin actually lives in Seattle, but she might as well be writing from the WSJ’s Manhattan offices for all we know. She is essentially a nationally syndicated conservative columnist… without the syndication.

One of the lessons reinforced by last year’s “Horse’s Ass” campaign, was that people are willing to put at least as much effort into a good joke as a good cause. And if you can combine the two, all the better.

Well, I want to thank all of you who answered my rather sophomoric call to participate in the Weekly’s Best of Seattle 2004 ballot, and name me the Reader’s Pick for “Best Activist/Hell-Raiser.”

Best Activist/Hell-Raiser

David Goldstein lives up to this title. He’s extremely active (at least when it comes to hating antitax advocate Tim Eyman), and he definitely likes to raise hell (exemplified by Initiative 831, his attempt to officially declare Eyman “a horse’s ass”). Goldstein’s passion even led him on an Internet campaign to win this category as a statement against Eyman, and it worked. www.horsesass.org.

I am extremely honored — well, at the very least, rather amused — by your efforts on my behalf. Sure, “best of” polls like this are rather bogus (as evidenced by my selection,) but any opportunity to make last year’s winner, Tim Eyman, gag on his morning latte is well worth it. Plus, it made my mother’s day.

On a more serious note, it once again shows how a little bit of effort by a modest number of people can help shape the political debate. When I asked supporters to write and phone their legislators, we got a hearing on the Property Tax Homestead Exemption. When we emailed the Public Disclosure Commission, we got an investigation. And when we decided to use the Weekly’s best of poll to stick it to Timmy… we stuck it to Timmy.

Politicians and journalists seem to be under the mistaken impression that Eyman commands some kind of army of loyal, dedicated activists.

He doesn’t.

Sure, his email list may still be bigger than ours, but when it comes to dicks like Tim, size doesn’t matter. Indeed, a few weeks ago, when he repeatedly emailed his list, asking them to join him in Olympia for his I-864 failure photo-op, not a single supporter showed up.

His claims not withstanding, Tim Eyman does not represent the majority of Washington voters. The majority of voters do not want to dramatically cut state and local government, eliminate essential services, privatize schools, sell off parks and close libraries. The majority of voters do not want slot machines on every corner of every Main Street in the state.

Do the majority of voters want lower taxes? Sure. Hell, I want lower taxes! I’d also like to be able fly above Seattle traffic in my own personal helli-car.

Voters understand that you don’t get something for nothing, and if we all do our best to educate our fellow citizens that that’s exactly what Eyman is peddling, his initiatives won’t stand a chance.

Sometimes it’s enough to participate in a stupid little joke. But sometimes we all need to do a little bit more. So today we can sit back and enjoy this tiny, symbolic victory… and then redouble our efforts to defeat I-892 in November.