Archives for February 2005

I’ve been real, real busy, so here’s a digest of highlights from some other worthy local blogs (in alphabetical order):

blatherWatch
Hear any lies today? blatherWatch needs your help:

If you hear a dubious fact, a sleazy assumption, an outrageous non-sequitur, a wild conclusive leap, or an out-and-out whopper by host or caller; a lefty or righty on Seattle talk stations–drop us an e-mail.

Here’s a lie, Michael… Sharkansky called me “sweet.”

Speaking of which, why not take a gander at blatherWatch’s account of my non-showdown with the toothless Shark on the John Carlson Show. Michael sucks up to me a little, but that’s okay, I enjoy being sucked up to once in a while.

Evergreen Politics
Jon Stahl and Jeff Reifman dig into Bill Gates’ recent education speech and are shocked to find hypocrisy coming from the richest man in the world, when it comes to funding for education.

Microsoft takes advantage of huge corporate tax loopholes to dodge paying its fair share of the taxes that fund our public education system.

So, whatever Bill’s ideas for fixing our high schools might be (and they could no doubt use some fixing), I suggest he start by looking at the behaviors of his own corporation that have contributed to the problem.

That said, I just want to point out that his father, Bill Gates Sr., is one of WA’s most passionate and eloquent proponents of a state income tax, a change that would largely correct our obscenely regressive state and local tax structure, while costing him and his son butt-loads of money.

NW Progressive Inst. Blog
While I’m digesting the other blogs, NPI is digesting a bunch of interesting articles and columns in Monday’s Seattle P-I.

OlyScoop

Only 18 percent of proposed legislation actually becomes law, I read in a report last year. Whew! Thank goodness.

As always, OlyScoop is one the best places to learn about the other 82 percent.

On The Road To 2008
Daniel Kirkdorfer considers a recent Harris poll, and wonders if we’re a nation of idiots:

– 47% of adolts believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
– 44% of adolts believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis.
– 36% of adolts believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.

Progressive Majority for WA
I apologize for calling Stefan a “prick.” I clearly should have included the BIAW as well. Stefan called Rep. Jeannie Darneille (D-Tacoma) an “imbecile” for mentioning the recent death of her father in an email explaining her opposition to a “re-vote.” But the BIAW stoops even lower, by trying to squeeze partisan advantage out of her personal tragedy.

Darneille Sr. had a 60-year history of voting and in recent years had done so absentee. The BIAW found a Charles Darneille had signed the poll voter sheet, however, and suspecting a scandal ripe for exploitation, fired off a public records request to the Pierce County auditor, demanding to know how an absentee voter who died the day after the election could have signed the poll voter sheet. I’m sure the PR hacks in the Republican party were slavering with glee over this apparent example of democratic cronyism and ballot-stuffing.

Turns out, there were two Charles Darneilles. What a bunch of pricks.

Pacific Northwest Portal is only a few weeks old and has already become one of the most bookmarked websites for regional progressives. Today it launches a revamped home page, expanded Blogs and Websites Directory, and other new features.

This a great way to keep an eye on dozens of progressive blogs; please check it out if you haven’t already.

I was going to comment on yesterday’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle on the accuracy of elections (“The vote you cast may not be tallied, 1 out of 100 shown uncounted in 2004“), but I don’t really have much more to add than TJ’s report over at Also Also.

There are two salient points to take from this analysis: first, electoral error rates can run to at LEAST 1%–and I say at least, because the figure cited only refers to votes not counted, leaving out invalid votes that are accidentally counted. In fact, as the article points out, “The National Commission on Election Reform has recommended that states reduce their error rates below 2 percent no matter what mechanism they use [emph mine, again].” Below two percent? So what does it say about a county with a new database and record numbers of voters, when they manage to achieve an “error rate” about one-TENTH of the national standard?

It says that whatever irregularities there were in this election (and of course, there were some,) were not all that irregular. I’ll repeat my mantra: the only thing extraordinary about this election is its extraordinary closeness. This election is so far within the margin of error that we simply cannot confidently determine who got the most votes… but Gregoire won by the rules. If there had been no hand recount, and Rossi had been declared the winner by 42 votes, his attorneys would be as vigorous in defending the integrity of the election as they are now in attacking it.

It is time to stop arguing over this past election, and start arguing over how to improve future ones. To that end, I intend to start posting a series on election reform, later this week.

A quick link to Mark Trahant’s column in the Sunday Seattle P-I: “Journalism as interactive medium.”

Mark writes about the P-I’s experiment of attaching online polls to nearly every editorial (but curiously, not this one.) Their goal is a noble one, to make journalism more interactive by easily facilitating reader feedback. But you all know my opinion about these stupid, lame-ass, online polls: they’re, um… stupid, and uh… lame-ass.

Online polls are too often leading, and too easily manipulated by OCD-like freepers, who would rather create the illusion that the people agree with them, than go through the actual effort of persuasion. Online polls also are not particularly all that interactive.

But how does journalism — especially opinion journalism — feel the pulse of what’s important to our readers? How do we measure and share those concerns with other readers? How can we contribute to a community’s conversation about itself, reflecting the concerns that people tell one another?

Um… why not attach a comment section to every editorial (or even every article for that matter) essentially turning the online version of the P-I into an uber-blog? Many real journalists are rightly concerned about the growing influence of us bloggers. So why not beat us at our own game?

See, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Mark. It’s not content that drives blogs… it’s community. Oh sure, content is important, and I’m gratified that so many people stop by to read me on a daily basis. But let’s be honest, my most engaged readers aren’t checking in a dozen times a day just in case there’s a fresh post. They’re itching to read the latest comments on their comments on other people’s comments, and so on.

Trust me Mark, you’re readers are just dying to share their comments with you — so much so, that for want of the opportunity, they’re going to leave their comments here on HA, by proxy. You say only 277 people responded to a recent poll, and yes, I understand you didn’t promote it. But HA has a tiny, tiny fraction of your daily readership, and yet three out of my last four posts have generated triple-digit comments. These people didn’t just push a few buttons… they took the time to thoughtfully put their opinions into words. (Well… some of them.) Now that’s interaction.

This brave new world of open-source journalism is a scary place Mark, but if traditional journalists like you don’t start to embrace it, it will pass you by. Do you really want public opinion to be shaped by propagandists like me and Stefan? I sure don’t.

So please… no more baby steps. It’s time for the P-I to jump right in and open a comment thread on every article and editorial you publish. Be bold. Be creative.

You’ve got to stop thinking of your website as the online version of the P-I. Your website is the P-I… and that thing the Times prints for you every day? That’s the paper version.

Make that paradigm shift, and you may even have a chance of surviving in a post-JOA world.

There has been some crowing over on the right-wing blogs about a recent Rasmussen Poll that showed Dino Rossi beating Maria Cantwell in a hypothetical match-up, 47% to 44%.

The poll also showed favorable ratings of Rossi 55%, Cantwell 54%, and Gregoire 50%. And on the issue of who really got the most votes in November’s gubernatorial election, 42% of respondents said Gregoire, 44% said Rossi, and 15% didn’t know.

Now I know my righty readers will accuse me of spin, but you know what…? As a partisan Democrat, I honestly don’t think those numbers look so bad.

Put aside the question for a moment of whether this was, or was not, a legitimate election, and you have to admit that Washington voters have been subjected to an intense and unprecedented propaganda campaign promoting the latter. And yet, after months of allegation after allegation that Gregoire and the Democrats stole this election through incompetence and/or fraud, public opinion on its legitimacy is well within the +/- 4.5% margin of error, and Gregoire’s favorables rank a couple points higher than her performance on election day.

With every day Gregoire holds the governor’s mansion, with every GOP defeat in the courts, and with every debunking of an allegation… the election contest becomes little more than partisan white noise. As it stands, Republican-leaning Rasmussen (Tim Eyman’s favorite polling company) already shows public opinion on the election and the candidates virtually split along the same lines as November. While I’m sure the contest will energize some of Rossi’s true believers during his 2008 rematch, for the general public that election will be a referendum on Gregoire’s job performance, not on a four-year-old election dispute.

I’m not saying the highly public election contest hasn’t negatively impacted Gregoire at all… just not nearly as much as I would have imagined, and surely not as much as Republicans would have hoped for.

If there’s any alarming data coming out of this poll, it is Maria Cantwell’s relative weakness… but that’s not such a surprise. Still 54% approval ain’t so bad, and the match-up with Rossi is purely hypothetical. As I’ve said before, I don’t expect him to run for the Senate.

So Republicans can crow all they want about these poll numbers. But they may end up eating a little crow come the actual elections.