Archives for February 2005

Without a doubt, HA has the most active and passionate comment threads of any political blog in the Northwest. While (un)Sound Politics still draws considerably higher traffic, my couple of posts a day regularly manage to generate a comparable number of total comments — an even more remarkable feat considering that that (u)SP has fourteen contributors, and comments are distributed across as many as a dozen posts daily. HA often receives over 200 comments a day, and it is not uncommon for a single thread to cross over into triple digits.

Much of the time I am superfluous to the raging debate, with comment threads veering off in unimagined directions, sometimes without any input from me whatsoever. While I am proud to have created a forum that has become an important part of your daily routine, I recognize that it is my readers to whom I owe my success.

I firmly believe that part of HA’s amazing growth is due to my oft debated policy of never banning what the other guys call “trolls.” I’m not talking about those passionate people on the other side, willing to debate the issues with respect for an open dialogue, if not with an open mind. I’m talking about the assholes (and you know who you are,) who when they see that they cannot win a debate, content themselves to disrupt it. Or the solipsists who ignore basic blog etiquette to promote their own agenda or websites.

For the most part, the HA threads have been self-moderating; while they sometimes get out of hand, and hopelessly off-topic (like today), you all have usually done a commendable job of policing each other. I do not want to be a schoolmarm or an editor. Banning people is philosophically problematic, and technically impractical as long as I allow anonymous posting. And if you can describe me as being a libertarian on any issue, it is on free speech.

But none few of us want the comment threads to devolve into pointless name-calling…though I have absolutely no problem with the pointed kind. This is not about sanitizing HA… this is about fostering debate — even angry debate — without getting sidetracked by personal attacks and retribution.

So I want to leave this as an open thread where we can all talk about how we can make HA a better place for public debate… what type of etiquette we need to enforce, and how best to enforce it.

Your comments, as always, are appreciated. (Except for you Cynical… yours are merely tolerated.)

I had my half hour on the Carlson show this afternoon — which I think, after subtracting commercials, traffic reports and other interstitials, came to about four-and-a-half minutes of air time — and then Stefan had his turn. After calling me “sweet” and complimenting my fiction writing skills (oooh… I think he likes me,) Stefan ran out of canned outrage, so John had to change the subject to (dramatic chord) the felon vote.

Carla over at Preemptive Karma recently deboned some of the red herrings flapping about over Republican charges that a thousand-plus felons voted illegally in the November election. Carla points out that by making felons the crux of their election contest, Rossi’s attorneys have constructed a legal catch-22:

Rossi’s people (and the State GOP) are complaining that taking affadavits from felons is a nonstarter because a felon can’t be trusted to swear to the truth. Too damn bad. The law is the law. Rossi must prove that enough illegal votes went to Gregiore to tip the election to her (RCW 29A.68.110).

Mary Lane complains that the convicted felons can’t be placed on the stand because they’re criminals.

Maybe you guys should have thought of that before you hung your contest on the illegal felon vote, Mary.

My guess is, the Rossi people have thought of that. I can’t vouch for Rossi himself, but his lawyers ain’t dumb; they understand they have to do a helluva lot more than just prove there are more illegal votes than Gregoire’s margin of error. So I’m guessing this attempted hoo-hah over the thousand felons, actually has very little to do with legal strategy.

My intuition is reinforced by the fact that the Rossi campaign has focused its media efforts, not on the possible impact of felons voting, but on King County’s alleged negligence for allowing felons to vote in the first place.

Understand, these allegations can have no legal impact whatsoever. The court has already ruled that votes by felons will be contested as illegal votes under the statute — blaming them on official misconduct cannot change their status.

So why the extralegal effort to blame King County Elections for voting felons? Well this has long since ceased to be about winning an election contest. This is about delegitimizing the Gregoire Administration in particular, and Democrats in general.

Allegations of negligence or corruption against King County are so far off, they would be funny… assuming you find vicious, hateful slander funny. The (un)Sounders have ridiculed Dean Logan for saying that his department only has the authorization (and the ability) to remove felons from the roles when notified by the courts. But that’s exactly what RCW 29A.08.520 says… at least, through the end of the year:

RCW 29A.08.520
Felony conviction. (Effective until January 1, 2006.)

Upon receiving official notice of a person’s conviction of a felony in either state or federal court, if the convicted person is a registered voter in the county, the county auditor shall cancel the defendant’s voter registration.

RCW 29A.08.520
Felony conviction. (Effective January 1, 2006.)

Upon receiving official notice of a person’s conviction of a felony in either state or federal court, if the convicted person is a registered voter in the county, the county auditor shall cancel the defendant’s voter registration. Additionally, the secretary of state in conjunction with the department of corrections shall arrange for a periodic comparison of a list of known felons with the statewide voter registration list. If a person is found on the department of corrections felon list and the statewide voter registration list, the secretary of state or county auditor shall confirm the match through a date of birth comparison and cancel the voter registration from the official state voter registration list. The canceling authority shall send notice of the proposed cancellation to the person at his or her last known voter registration address.

Get it? On Jan 1, 2006, the law changes, requiring counties to do exactly what Republicans are accusing King County of not doing. Not surprisingly, that’s also the date the Secretary of State’s database is scheduled to go live… the database that actually makes purging the rolls of felons possible. As I’ve said before, if the current statute actually granted county officials the authority and ability to routinely purge felons from the rolls, the Legislature wouldn’t be adding a provision that grants county officials the authority and ability to purge felons from the rolls.

At the end of the show, John Carlson accused Democrats of being “utterly disinterested” in illegitimate votes, and he challenged his listeners to come up with the name of a single Democrat who has shown alarm or dismay at the thought of felons voting. Well John, I’d say that SSB 6419 — the bill that amended the statute above — showed quite a bit of concern over the issue of felons voting. And considering it unanimously passed both houses of the Legislature last March, I’m pretty damn sure you’ll find more than a handful of Democrats who supported it… not to mention former Governor Gary Locke, who signed it into law.

No… none of this is really about the 2004 gubernatorial election. This is about control of the Legislature in 2006, and more specifically, the governor’s race in 2008.

Welcome to the meanest, ugliest, longest campaign in state history.

I’ll be on the John Carlson Show 570-KVI, this afternoon at 4:03 PM. John and I will be talking about “the big binder“, and possibly some other election contest errata.

UPDATE:
The Snark has posted that he too is scheduled for Carlson in the 4 PM hour. I was told I’d be on solo, so it looks like just a single segment for me, and then Snark gets to refute. I’d much prefer to go head-to-head.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
I asked the producer to let us go head to head, but apparently Snark refused. Too bad… it would have been much more fun than my wonkish display of truth-telling. Other than the fact that I was probably a little boring, I thought I got my point across. Ah well, now I’ll sit back and listen to Snark’s rebuttal.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
Twice Stefan called me a “sweet guy;” I’m not really sure what he was implying, but I’d be happy to discuss it with him over drinks. He also thinks I am an excellent writer of “fiction.” I can only assume that he was one of the few dozen non-family members to see my Off-Broadway musical flop. (Just like Stefan for his review to be at odds with the “liberal” New York Times.)

Then he proceeded to devastatingly refute me by charging that yes, the binder does exist… and yes, it does contain the data I said it contains… and yes, my description of the polling place reconciliation process was accurate… and… um… what was the refutation again? Oh yeah… the reconciliation numbers are “way off”, not that he’s actually seen the numbers, but he’s been told so by “sources” and “leaks” and “people that know”… whereas I have naively and deceptively relied on second-hand testimony from KC Elections Director Dean Logan, and KC Superintendent of Elections Bill Huennekens, and KC Elections Communications Specialist Bobbie Egan.

He then concluded his discussion of the binder with a classically McCarthyite rhetorical flourish: “If it exonerated them, they would have released it.” A conjecture to which I would have liked to reply… exonerated them of what?

Following the Snark’s example of logic and fair play, I suppose it appropriate to ask him… if he had not moved to Seattle to flee some personal scandal back in California, why hasn’t he produced the exculpatory evidence? Or perhaps proving a negative is a burden only government officials deserve?

John and Stefan then went on to discuss “the felon vote”, a topic I will address in more detail in a separate post.

While I expect that one’s take on who got the better of the discussion will be colored by ones own partisan perspective, there is one thing that the honest among you surely must admit. John’s listeners actually learned something new from me today: the actual process of polling place reconciliation, and the fact that it did indeed take place. I managed to contribute factual information to the conversation; whether it was lost amidst the usual noise and rancor of talk radio, is beyond my control.

[More on Snark Talk…]

I’ve been meaning to mention a new local blog for the past couple days, so I thought I’d just give a quick plug to blatherWatch, which fills in the gaping niche of slamming critiquing talk radio.

Listening to talk radio, so you don’t have to — a turn of phrase I freely offer to freelance-journalist-turned-unpaid-blogger Michael Hood as his new motto — blatherWatch intends to cover the entire radio spectrum. I wouldn’t wish this curse on my worst enemy… I can barely suffer through Air America due to all the commercials… and those tend to be the least unpleasant moments on right-wing rant stations like KTTH and KKKvi. But as much as we love to hate GOP-surrogate blogs like (un)Sound Politics, talk radio is still by far the loudest voice in the right-wing echo chamber, and somebody needs to keep an eye… um… ear on the opposition.

Recent topics have included the impending real-news-blackout that will accompany the papal death watch, KTTH host Mike Siegel’s ties to Bill O’Reilly, and the highly suspect slant of the Arbitron ratings:

NPR and other public broadcasters are not surveyed, since they’re non-commercial and Arbitron is nothing if not about business. That leaves a large part of the local listener story left untold especially in liberal markets like Seattle where NPR is widely tuned in.

It also throws into question the numbers that conservative talk supposedly enjoys and the conventional wisdom that there’s not enough progressive interest in radio talk for it to pencil.

Personally, I hope blatherWatch fleshes out its excellent commentary and analysis with a bit more reporting of the daily truth-carnage on our local airwaves. I’m not sure if Michael knows what he’s getting himself into, but if, like me, he stupidly dedicates too much of his time to blogging, blatherWatch will surely evolve into an important destination in the local blogosphere.

Righties like to attack avowed liberals like me for wanting to “redistribute wealth,” but they apparently have no problem when the wealth is redistributed to the wealthy. And as Geov Parrish points out in The Seattle Weekly, that’s exactly the effect of President Bush’s new budget proposal. [“Transfer of Wealth“]

President Bush’s 2006 budget proposal, unveiled in detail last week, is the other shoe dropping. It’s not quite fair to say that this is a budget designed to reduce the deficit. There’s still plenty of expansive spending; the Pentagon’s budget increases, and pork for favored Republican projects still abounds.

But what it does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don’t like. The Department of Education