Archives for August 2005

“Stay the course is not a policy. Part of the problem … is we have no measurement for progress, for success.

And so I think by any standard when you analyze two and a half years in Iraq where we have put in over a third of a trillion dollars, where we have lost over 1,900 Americans, over 14,000 wounded. Electricity production down, oil production down. Any measurement, any standard you apply to this, we’re not winning.
…
The reason that I don’t think more troops is the answer now is we’re past that stage now because now we are locked into a bogged down problem, not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.

The longer we stay, the more problems we’re going to have, the more occupying force dynamics flow into this, the more influence of the outside people, as well as the inside people are going to hurt this country.”

So… which hate-America-first, lefty, lunatic-fringe wacko gave this devastating critique of the war in Iraq? Um… Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, and who sits on both the Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. He continues:

“We should start figuring out how we get out of there … I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.”

Hmmm. So why are influential Republicans suddenly finding their cojones, and speaking their minds about President Bush’s failed war in Iraq? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Bush’s approval rating is now below that of Richard Nixon during the depths of Watergate? I dunno. Maybe.

Now that KC executive wannabe David Irons is on the record opposing Initiative 912, it is time for a few other Republican “leaders” to fess up and make that wrenching Sophie’s Choice between their fervently anti-tax base, and their pro-infrastructure patrons in the business community. I have emailed the twelve other members of the King County Council (Democrat and Republican), asking them the same question I posed to Irons… and I plan to query other lawmakers and candidates as well. But at the top of my list must surely sit the state GOP’s putative figurehead, Dino Rossi, who skated within an inch of redecorating the Governor’s Mansion, largely on the strength of his don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach to public policy.

Rossi’s 2008 gubernatorial campaign started way back in December of 2004, about a week before King County completed its hand recount, when trends in other counties and reports from observers made it clear to campaign insiders that Christine Gregoire would likely be declared the winner. (Indeed, he technically formed his “Rossi for Governor 2008” committee way back on Dec. 8, 2004.) Perhaps there was a point when Rossi truly believed he had a shot at prevailing in court, but the election contest transformed into the opening round of an anticipated rematch long before it was forcefully “dismissed with prejudice.”

But if Rossi is going to wage the longest political campaign in state history — if he is going to wear the mantle of WA state GOP savior for four more years — then it is only fair that he be asked to publicly comment on controversial issues of the day. And none could be more controversial at the moment than I-912 and the state transportation package it would repeal.

Indeed, nobody owes the public an explanation of his position on I-912 more than Rossi… not just because of his role as de facto GOP leader, or his established record supporting pro-business issues (like the transportation bill)… but because it was his futile election contest that John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur successfully co-opted as a sort of political sweeps week. KVI astutely rode the election controversy to its highest ratings in years, and as it came to an end, John and Kirby launched their next on-air promotion, I-912, during the two-week trial, and the peak audiences it delivered. But they didn’t just cleverly exploit the bump in ratings Rossi’s contest gave them, they exploited Rossi himself, adopting him as a martyr of the anti-tax movement, and urging listeners to sign the petitions as a backlash against Christine Gregoire’s victory at the polls and in the courts.

Many, many people who go to the polls to vote for I-912 will do so in the name of Dino Rossi, and if, as I suspect, he privately opposes the initiative, then he owes it to his supporters to set the record straight. If on the other hand he really does support I-912, then his financial backers in the business community, whose interests he claims to represent, deserve an explanation as to why he opposes a transportation improvement package they deem so vital to the economic interests of our state. And more importantly, he owes us all an idea of what he might propose as an alternative.

If the gas tax hike is repealed, if desperately needed improvements are not made, and aging infrastructure is allowed to slip further into disrepair, then a Governor Rossi might someday have to deal with the consequences… consequences that include not only the economic impact of ever more suffocating gridlock, but potentially the loss of hundreds of lives and thousands of jobs should the worst case scenario occur.

As the Seattle P-I editorial board succinctly concluded: “When mobility, traffic congestion and thousands of local jobs are at stake, we’d hope for stronger leadership.” If Dino Rossi wants to lead our state, now is the time to demonstrate some strong leadership by taking a clear public position on the most important issue on the November ballot.

[NWPT63]

“When mobility, traffic congestion and thousands of local jobs are at stake, we’d hope for stronger leadership.”

I’m packing up my virtual tent, heading home and celebrating a successful end to my vigil. David Irons is now officially on the record opposing Initiative 912, but in the worst possible way: weakly, weasly, and without conviction.

Of course I never expected Irons to directly respond to my queries, but as Cindy Sheehan proved in Crawford, TX, persistence can have its rewards, especially if the MSM takes up the fight. When the Seattle P-I finally forced the issue, Irons was forced to respond, but only dug himself a deeper hole by answering my very simple question with a rambling equivocation. As the P-I correctly observes in a Monday editorial, it was not exactly a display of the kind of strong leadership we need in a county executive.

Gas-tax Politics: Irons in the fire

David Irons, King County councilman and Republican candidate for county executive, seems uncomfortably balanced on the razor’s edge of the gas tax issue, teetering between the interests of the GOP’s traditional business supporters and the passions of the anti-tax elements of his conservative constituent base.

David Goldstein’s horsesass.org blog started the humming with claims that Irons earned the nod from the Alki Foundation by proclaiming opposition to Initiative 912, which would roll back the gas tax increase. Asked to clarify, Iron’s campaign office responded with the following: “In principle, I believe all major tax increases should go to a vote of the people. Personally I am voting no on Initiative 912. This is not the package that I would have put together. I believe it should have done more to reduce congestion. That’s why we need new leadership in King County that will advocate for more congestion relief.”

So, I-912 — essentially a vote of the people on a “major” tax increase — is a good idea, but he’s going to vote against it?

But will Irons, as a council member and executive candidate, actively campaign against I-912 to defend the billions of dollars in new gas tax-funded construction projects headed for Seattle and King County?

Irons — through his campaign office — says that the prepared statement “speaks for itself.”

When mobility, traffic congestion and thousands of local jobs are at stake, we’d hope for stronger leadership.

Sure… Irons’ statement “speaks for itself”… but with a kind of rhetorical aphasia that’s likely to confuse and bewilder audiences out on the hustings. While I suppose his “its a bad package but I oppose repealing it” stance was intended to give him an all-things-to-all-people appeal, I’m guessing it’s likely to leave I-912 supporters and opponents equally unsatisfied. Perhaps Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson will strategically avoid the issue the next time he appears on their shows, for I can’t imagine how Irons can defend his position without either defending the transportation package, or coming across as arbitrary and… well… stupid.

Leaving aside the question of whether the transportation package constitutes a “major” tax increase (it doesn’t) or whether all such increases should be put directly to voters (they shouldn’t), Irons’ statement is clumsy in its misdirection, when not entirely incomprehensible. Irons says that he would not have put together the transportation package in its current form, but then, neither would I… so get over it. The fact is we both recognize that, whatever its flaws, the package is good for the state and good for King County, and that it adequately funds the priorities laid out in the RTID proposal that Irons himself helped put together. That’s why we both oppose I-912… because repealing the gas tax hike would indefinitely delay desperately needed transportation improvements and maintenance.

But the statement’s most utterly ridiculous assertion is that the transportation bill’s shortcomings reflect on the need for “new leadership in King County.” If Irons actually believes this deliberate misrepresentation of the legislative process, then he clearly needs a refresher course in School House Rock.

I can only assume (hope?) that his “prepared statement” wasn’t written by Irons himself. So here’s a tip to the campaign staffer or consultant responsible: if you’re going to refuse to give a coherent explanation, don’t give one at all. I asked a very simple question: “Do you support I-912?”… and you could have simply responded “No.”

Or, you could have shown me the courtesy of responding directly to my queries, and taken advantage of my generous offer to post your complete reply, unedited, here on HA. This would have afforded you the opportunity to fully explain your position, outside the P-I’s editorial prism… while shutting me up in the process. Yeah, I know that according to Irons’ own internal polls, a full two-thirds of his core supporters are reflexively anti-tax… but hell… it’s not like these people are reading my blog anyway.

So if there is any lesson to be learned from the way Irons mishandled my vigil, it is that while some issues can’t help but generate controversy, there is one policy that is always popular with voters: honesty.

[NWPT62]Rather than relaxing with a pot of coffee and a copy of the Sunday Times (the New York Times, not the Seattle Times… the latter wouldn’t last me longer than a thimbleful of joe)… I am seething. Literally seething. Torrents of cartoon steam are shooting out of my ears, as my eyes spin round like an old time slot machine.

(Okay, maybe I’m metaphorically seething, but you get the point.)

Splashed across the front page is a lengthy piece on the driving force behind so-called intelligent design: Seattle’s very own Discovery Institute… which apparently draws the name “Discovery” from its concerted efforts to squash it. That the institute should get well-deserved scrutiny in the NY Times, rather than its home town paper, is another story for another day. But what really pissed me off was the following little tidbit of information about another Seattle area connection to Discovery’s zealous efforts to dumb down the nation’s science curriculum — for in addition to such well known right-wing patrons as Richard Mellon Scaife….

A closer look shows a multidimensional organization, financed by missionary and mainstream groups – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides $1 million a year, including $50,000 of Mr. Chapman’s $141,000 annual salary…
…
The institute also has support from secular groups like the Verizon Foundation and the Gates Foundation, which gave $1 million in 2000 and pledged $9.35 million over 10 years in 2003.

I do not care that this particular grant pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars the Gates Foundation gives to eminently worthy causes, or that it is supposedly targeted exclusively towards the institute’s Cascadia project on regional transportation. In giving money to Discovery, Bill Gates not only provides financial support, but lends credibility and respectability to an organization whose primary activities are antithetical to the principles of scientific discovery on which Microsoft — and Gates’ unparalleled personal fortune — was built.

Gates would do better to follow the lead of more experienced Seattle area philanthropists, such as Bullitt Foundation director Denis Hayes, who describes Discovery as “the institutional love child of Ayn Rand and Jerry Falwell,” saying, “I can think of no circumstances in which the Bullitt Foundation would fund anything at Discovery today.” Indeed, that the world’s most powerful technologist should provide any support, financial or otherwise, to an organization that describes its goal as “nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies” in favor of a “broadly theistic understanding of nature,” is absolutely unacceptable.

There is no dispute that Gates is a brilliant man and that his foundation achieves great social good. But as has been proven by Microsoft’s missteps over its flip-flopping support for the gay civil rights measure, HB 1515, both he and his subordinates can make mistakes. And has also been proven by that PR fiasco, the full force of the progressive blogosphere can be successfully applied to convince Gates to correct his errors.

Gates’ support of the Discovery Institute — a vital cog in the right-wing propaganda machine… and an enemy of science — is an outrage and a scandal. And I call on my fellow members of the blogosphere to hammer this issue, and make clear to Gates that the only acceptable remedy is to instruct his foundation to pull its funding immediately.

The US has built its economic and military prowess on our scientific and technological leadership, and if organizations like Discovery are permitted to continue their Talibanization of our once proud educational system, the consequences for the American people and our standard of living will be catastrophic. A generation from now, when the economies of Europe and China are kicking our devoutly unscientific butts, we will have only ourselves to blame. And when the next Microsoft arises not in Silicon Valley or in Redmond, but in Paris or Beijing, it would be sadly ironic if the seeds of our own technological collapse were unwittingly nurtured by Bill Gates himself.

[Cross-posted at Daily Kos… please recommend!]

Or is it Day 6…? I’ve lost track.

So here’s where it stands… Dave Irons record strongly suggests that he opposes Initiative 912 and strongly supports the state transportation package and its 9.5 cent gas tax increase over four years. Reliable sources tell me that Irons privately made clear his opposition to I-912, in earning the endorsement of the pro-business Alki Foundation. And the two people listening to the Mike Siegel Show Wednesday morning report that Irons stated he would vote against I-912.

So it seems pretty clear: Irons opposes I-912 and supports the gas tax. I guess I should end my vigil, right?

I’m not so sure.

While I appreciate the fact that Irons actually answered Siegel’s question — if in a tortured and round about way — as a candidate for King County Executive he needs to show leadership, and get out in front on an initiative that would have a hugely negative impact on the ability of our region to fix its looming transportation crisis. This is not just about the personal safety of the few hundred people who might be unfortunate enough to be driving on the AWV at the time it inevitably pancakes. This is about providing the necessary infrastructure to permit our region’s economy to grow and prosper.

And the thing is… Irons seems to understand this.

This is about leadership… leadership that Irons refuses to deliver on the most important issue facing voters this November. If I-912 is going to be defeated, prominent Republicans need to be as much a part of the coalition opposing it as they were a part of the coalition that passed the transportation package in the first place. It’s not enough for Irons to mumble to a handful of listeners that he’ll vote against I-912. He needs to start explaining to the public — including his own supporters — why I-912 is such a bad deal for King County… the county he says he wants to lead.

See… here’s the idea… all the off topic stuff… it goes here. (Just thought some of you needed a reminder.)

My trolls don’t seem to get it. The right-wing screaming heads don’t seem to get it. President Bush and his evil-genius puppet master don’t seem to get it. But the Seattle Times editorial board gets it exactly right: “Cindy Sheehan’s symbolism.”

The Times expands on a sentiment that I expressed in a comment thread yesterday, that Cindy Sheehan is a symbol — nothing more, nothing less — and as such, she and her vigil represent a nascent anti-war movement, that will surely grow in boldness and popular support.

Advisers and supporters of the president have tried to ignore Sheehan or downplay her protest as a mother’s unseemly grief. This is both wrong and a mistake.

So far, 1,853 Americans have died in Iraq. The cost of the war, in lives and dollars, will only grow. Sheehan is the human face behind the daily toll. She has become the symbol of growing frustration over the war.

America’s purpose in Iraq is over. The soldiers should be brought home. It can be done, as has been proven in Vietnam, Somalia and other places. When and how it is done is not Sheehan’s call to make, nor should it be.

In the minds of many Americans, the tide of the war has turned. Sheehan didn’t turn the tide. She is a symbol of the sea change. Expect this symbol to grow in significance and importance.

Whether Bush meets again with the mom standing sentinel in Crawford is not the point. The point is that the president must understand what this mom represents.

In focusing on Cindy Sheehan the person, rather than Cindy Sheehan the symbol, President Bush and his surrogates have missed the point entirely. Even if they could succeed in destroying Sheehan’s reputation, there are plenty of other grieving mothers ready to take her place… with Bush’s war creating more every day. What Sheehan started cannot be stopped by a mere smear campaign.

As Frank Rich brilliantly observed in the New York Times last Sunday, the war is over… and somebody should really tell the President.

A president can’t stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won’t stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend’s Newsweek poll – a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.’s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents’ overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.’s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.

But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout “don’t ask, don’t tell” and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

Gays in the military? What’s next… Jews in the Air Force Academy?

I’ve never quite understood the right’s reluctance to use the hated homosexuals as canon fodder, but as has been the case throughout the history of our nation’s military, expediency has a way of overcoming bigotry’s divisive barriers, where reasoned pleas for tolerance cannot. Still, with nearly 1,900 dead soldiers and many thousands more permanently maimed and mutilated — and with no clear mission or exit strategy coming from our “leaders” in the White House — no influx of gay recruits or high school dropouts can maintain our military at levels necessary to continue our occupation of Iraq, or our ever emptier threats against incipient nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran.

Only a draft could procure the human resources necessary to continue the Bush administration’s military misadventurism, but forced conscription would cost the President some of his most loyal supporters: the chicken hawks and yellow elephants who are willing to sacrifice everything to subdue Iraq, except their tax breaks and their lives.

The war is over in Iraq, not because of Cindy Sheehan’s vigil or Bush’s plummeting poll numbers… and certainly not because our troops have failed to perform as valiantly and courageously as circumstances allowed. The war is over because Americans have inevitably tired of a war whose endgame was always left as ill defined as its purpose.

There is little doubt that a quick American withdrawal will be as disastrous for the Iraqi people as was the initial invasion; but so would be the near-permanent occupation that seems to be the only other choice… an occupation that the American people simply do not support. As Rich bluntly concludes:

Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war’s inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson’s March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we’ll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president’s claim on Thursday that “no decision has been made yet” about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president’s preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We’re outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

The war is over because when a President is unwilling or unable to lead the American people, the American people lead the President.

I’m not much of a monorail supporter, but I had been impressed with the reasonable and forthright statements of Monorail Board member Cindi Laws during the project’s dramatic collapse. Um… until now: “Candidate accused of anti-Jewish talk.”

I’ll leave it to the fervently anti-Monorail folk to rake Cindi over the coals, but I was particularly amused (saddened?) by how she managed to spin her “apology” about as well as a flat-bottomed dreidel.

Interviewers said Laws apologized and, in trying to explain her remarks, said, “It probably is a poor reference,” but that Joel Horn, former executive director of the Seattle Monorail Project, used to joke that he and another staffer were the only Jews who supported the project.

They said she went on to say that Horn would refer to the opposition as “Jews Against the Monorail,” but that she was not anti-Semitic and that she once was engaged to a Jew.

Oy. A “poor reference”…? Ya think?

Cindi… a couple tips. First, I suspect your broken engagement might be perceived as more enlightening than you intended. Second, if you ever come across a group of African Americans boisterously expressing their camaraderie by calling each other “nigger”… don’t feel free to join in.

Does Cindi hate Jews? Probably not. But such clumsy, thoughtless and earnest repetition of ethnic stereotypes fuels the paranoia of people who do. Us Jews do not own all the downtown real estate… we do not own all the banks… we do not control the media… and we do not vote as a block. And we most certainly do not make political contributions based solely on whether there is a “berg” or a “stein” at the end of the candidate’s name.

(Though come to think of it… we do control the region’s most influential political blogs. Hmmm.)

li

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My lonely vigil may be coming to a close!

Ah. Just noticed the latest libel from Dave Irons’ webmaster, Stefan Sharkansky:

Tonight, tens of thousands of patriotic Americans in hundreds of communities across the nation held Peace Vigils in solidarity with Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, TX. I’ve been struck with a vicious summer cold (or possibly, the plague) so I was unable to attend my local gathering, but David at HomesteadBook.com has a nice account (and pictures) of the vigil at Sunset Hill Park in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

Day 3 of my lonely, virtual vigil dawned cool and rainy, with still no official word from David Irons as to where he stands on the anti-roads initiative, I-912. I had hoped that I might take advantage of my close working relationship with Irons’ webmaster, Stefan Sharkansky, to get my question in front of the candidate himself, but Stefan proved as resolutely silent as his tongue-tied boss. So yesterday I emailed Irons’ campaign directly, and eagerly await his response.

I’m all on board with the thesis of today’s Seattle Times’s editorial lauding Judge Richard Jones ruling that last September’s unprecedented $1.5 million anti-Senn ad campaign violated WA’s public disclosure laws. Our Open Government Law was overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1972 — via citizens initiative — and the Times reminds us of one of its core tenets:

According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, both Sen. Maria Cantwell and Gov. Christine Gregoire are basking in the adoration of WA voters, enjoying 57 percent and 51 percent favorable ratings respectively. Both numbers are up from Rasmussen’s February survey.