Archives for August 2006

Sources have confirmed to HA that Safeco Insurance is indeed the unnamed “Firm 1” in a Washington Insurance Commissioner’s Office study of the abusive use of credit scoring to cancel auto-insurance policies. As first reported in the Seattle Times, Safeco has asked the Thurston County Superior Court to block release of the information.

According to sources familiar with the investigation, the controversial practice was initially pioneered in WA state by Progressive Insurance. Sources say that Safeco was actually late to embrace the practice, but did so aggressively under former CEO Mike!™ McGavick’s leadership, far and quickly exceeding the scope and impact of its competition. As the Times initially reported:

The study cited “Firm 1” for relying on credit scoring to cancel auto policies, as opposed to simply raising rates, which the other companies did. It said Firm 1’s decisions disproportionately impacted minorities, divorced women and low-income residents.

Many of those terminated by Firm 1 had clean driving records.

“Over one-quarter of those cancelled for low credit scores” by Firm 1 “had no ‘incidents’ in the insurer’s records, though some had been with the insurer for more than 10 years,” the 2003 study said.

“Seventeen percent of apparently accident-free cancelled policyholders were minorities.”

When the story first broke Monday I thought it would be easy to find a cooperative source inside an office Democrats have held for years, but extracting relevant information turned out to be harder than squeezing blood from a stone. Commissioner Mike Kreidler has called credit scoring “a form of redlining” and thinks it “should have been banned,” yet he has adamantly refused to disclose the identity of the firms in question until the legal issues are resolved.

This has apparently led to much consternation in and outside his office by those who complain that Kreidler is not doing enough to help fellow Democrats. But while I personally wouldn’t mind if Kreidler were a bit more partisan, I fully admire the respect he has shown for his office, and am somewhat reminded of similar complaints from GOP stalwarts who attacked Secretary of State Sam Reed for not doing more to help fellow Republican Dino Rossi come out on top of our excruciatingly close 2004 gubernatorial election.

Still, this was a study conducted by a public agency, paid for with taxpayer dollars, and so the public has a right to know its details. Thus if you are one of those Insurance Office insiders who think Kreidler should be more partisan, I urge you to act on your convictions and please leak me any relevant documents. I promise to maintain your anonymity, and once again affirm my pledge to go to jail before ever revealing a source.

Perhaps you’ve heard about it, but if you haven’t yet seen Keith Olbermann’s commentary yesterday on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, watch it now.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism – indeed.

Finally, a journalist with a large national audience courageous enough to say out loud what many of us have been warning for years. It’s almost enough to make me call up Comcast and order cable. Almost.

Instead, I sent an email to MSNBC thanking them for putting Olbermann’s Countdown on the air.

On Tuesday, at around 5:00 PM, I donated $100.00 to Peter Goldmark’s campaign, and challenged you all to give what you could to Peter and Darcy Burner by the midnight, August 30th reporting deadline. I’m thrilled to report that over the past 55 hours, 55 of you answered my call and donated a total of $3,535.00.

While we fell a bit short of yesterday’s goal of doubling the number of contributors to my ActBlue page, we far exceeded my expectations for total dollars raised. I’d only hoped to average about twenty bucks per donation, and maybe a couple thousand dollars tops. But your generosity blew that target away.

Netroots fundraising is still in its infancy, but it’s obviously more mature here than virtually anywhere else. 120 HA readers have now contributed a total of $6,778.36 to Goldmark and Burner via my ActBlue page. With average daily traffic of about 2400 unique visits a day, that’s an astounding response rate of 5 percent… a response rate most direct marketers wouldn’t dare dream of.

Compare that to the National Netroots ActBlue page, which has leveraged a combined readership of over 600,000 readers a day to raise about $620,000 from 7,600 donors. That’s respectable, even impressive, but on both a donor and dollar per reader comparison, HorsesAss readers kick ass.

I want to thank you all for your generosity and support. With your help we can take back Congress this November, and finally bring some accountability back to the other Washington.

24 hours ago I challenged my readers to double the number of donors to Peter Goldmark and Darcy Burner from my ActBlue page by today’s midnight reporting deadline, and while I’m blown away by the $2505.00 raised thus far, I’m a touch disappointed that with 6 hours remaining, only 39 of you have responded to the call, bringing us little more than halfway towards our 72-donor target.

Perhaps I was too ambitious. Or perhaps I didn’t make myself clear.

The more individual contributors each candidate can report, the easier it will be for them to attract big-money donors and independent expenditures during the final weeks of the campaign. That means even a FIVE BUCK donation, if that’s all you can afford, can be leveraged to help raise the cash Peter and Darcy will need to get their message out and win this November.

That’s all I’m asking — a $5.00 donation. I’ll probably log another six to eight hundred readers between now and midnight… surely, 33 of you can afford to pony up five bucks each?

Please give now. Thanks.

UPDATE:
Still don’t know much about Peter Goldmark? Lynn has a typically excellent interview with Peter up on Evergreen Politics.

Let the caption contest begin.

Since launching my challenge late yesterday afternoon, 33 readers have donated $1945.00 to the Goldmark and Burner campaigns via my ActBlue page. That’s fantastic, but still 39 donations shy of my target of 72 by midnight tonight.

Peter and Darcy need you to prove your grassroots support, and the more contributors they have, the easier it will be for them to pull in the big donors. Just a 5 buck donation can make a huge difference come November. So please give now.

KING5/SurveyUSA: Sen. Maria Cantwell 56%, Mike!™ McGavick 39%. Check out the crosstabs. Just a robo-poll, but nothing for the McGavick folks to cheer about.

Oh, and on a somewhat related topic, TPMmuckraker reports that the US Senator who put a secret hold on a bill that would have created a public, searchable database of all federal grants and contracts (you know, making it easier for taxpayers to figure out how their money is being spent,) turns out to be none other than Mike!™’s good friend, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

Hmm.

Just this past week Mike!™ wrote on his own campaign blog:

This is a sad state of affairs when a senator (or senators) secretly prevent legislation to remove secrecy. The American people have a right to know how their money is being spent. We need senators who are willing to hold their colleagues accountable for this sort of thing, regardless of party.

So… the best way to hold Sen. Stevens accountable is to, um, elect his friend Mike!™ to the Senate?

Ted Drinks!™ to Mike!™ at Alaska fundraiser

UPDATE:
Fixed the numbers. It’s 56-39, not 53-36.

Man, us lefties sure are a bunch of pussies. Sure, we’re liberal. And yeah, most of us drink. But last night not a single one of us managed to get what the kids these days call Mike!™ McGavick drunk. (Or the popular shorthand: Drunk!™)

Joining me in an all too sober discussion of the issues of the day were Will, Mollie, Geov and Carl. Topics of discussion included the relatively warlike tendencies of the various world religions, the Katherine Harris crazy comments of Katherine Harris, what the hell the Democrats are going to do if they actually take back Congress, the human, political and military disaster that is Iraq, the human, political and non-military disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, the Seattle Weekly’s transition from Mossback to Wetback… and Republican US Senate candidate Mike!™ McGavick’s curious revelation that he once got pulled over for driving Drunk!™

The show is 51:33, and is available here as a 38.7 MB MP3. Please visit PodcastingLiberally.com for complete archives and RSS feeds.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for producing the show.]

Late yesterday afternoon I challenged my readers to double the number of donors on my ActBlue page from 72 to 144 by midnight tonight. Since then, 17 generous readers have donated $935.00 to the Goldmark and Burner campaigns.

That’s great, but we can do better. Candidates are judged not just by the money raised, but by the number of individual contributors, so even a $5.00 donation can make a big difference in attracting big donors during the final, crucial few weeks of the campaign.

Let’s show the nation that WA’s netroots are doing their part to take back Congress and bringing accountability to the other Washington. Please give now.

The Seattle Times’ latest editorial is neatly summed up in its headline: “Pull the ad, Mike“:

Mike McGavick’s latest radio ad is a politician’s version of highway robbery.

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is appropriating the issue of sales tax deductibility as his own and using it to attack incumbent Maria Cantwell. Problem is, Democrat Cantwell might as well be known as Sen. Sales Tax Deductibility. Both she and Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, have been leaders, in their respective houses of Congress, on the issue of first restoring, then keeping, the right of residents in Washington and seven other states to deduct their state sales tax from the federal tax bill.

[…]

McGavick’s radio ad attacks Cantwell for voting against the sales tax deduction

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Yesterday I put $100.00 on my credit card and wired it over to the Peter Goldmark campaign via my ActBlue fundraising page, and then I asked all of you to follow suit. Since then six of you have contributed a combined $790.00 to the Goldmark and Darcy Burner campaigns via my ActBlue page… an astounding $132.00 per contribution!

Thank you for your generosity.

But did you know you don’t need big bucks to make a big difference in the upcoming election?

The pre-primary reporting period closes tomorrow at midnight, and that’s the figure the DCCC and various PACs and big donors are going to use to help them decided which campaigns have the wherewithal to warrant further investment. But they don’t just local at the amount of cash raised… they also look at the total number of contributors as a powerful indicator of a candidate’s grassroots support.

So here’s what I want everybody to do. Even if you don’t have much money, I want to go to my ActBlue page and donate whatever your can to Peter and Darcy… even if it’s only $5.00.

Of course, if you can give more, please do… but five measly bucks can make a big difference when it comes to convincing the big money to take the campaign seriously.

We have only a little more than 24 hours before the reporting period closes, and as of now a total of 72 donors have contributed through my page. Let’s prove again how powerful the local netroots are, and see if we can double that number before midnight tomorrow.

5 bucks. That’s all I’m asking. Please give now.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Assuming somebody brings along a breathalyzer and a 200-pound man, I intend to run a little experiment to see exactly how many drinks it takes to get “Mike McGavick drunk”. I’ve got a free copy of Sen. Byron Dorgan’s new book, Take This Job and Ship It for the first person to show up with a functioning breathalyzer, and 8 or 9 free drinks and ride home for one lucky volunteer.

Washington liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. Here’s a full run down of WA’s ten Drinking Liberally chapters:

	Where:	When:	Next Meeting:
Burien:	Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub, 435 SW 152nd St	Fourth Wednesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	September 27
Kirkland:	Valhalla Bar & Grill, 8544 122nd Ave NE	Every Thursday, 7:00 pm onward	August 31
Monroe:	Eddie’s Trackside Bar and Grill, 214 N Lewis St	Second Wednesday of each month, 7:00 PM onward	September 13
Olympia:	The Tumwater Valley Bar and Grill, 4611 Tumwater Valley Drive South	First and third Monday of each month, 7:00-9:00 pm	September 4
Seattle:	Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Ave E	Every Tuesday, 8:00 pm onward	August 29
Spokane:	Red Lion BBQ & Pub, 126 N Division St	Every Wednesday, 7:00 pm	August 30
Tacoma:	Meconi’s Pub, 709 Pacific Ave	Every Wednesday, 8:00 pm onward	August 30
Tri-Cities:	Atomic Ale, 1015 Lee Blvd, Richland	Every Tuesday, 7:00 pm onward	August 29
Vancouver:	Hazel Dell Brew Pub, 8513 NE Highway 99	Second and fourth Tuesday of each month, 7:00 pm onward	September 12
Walla Walla:	The Green Lantern, 1606 E Isaacs Ave	First Friday of each month, 8:00 pm onward	September 1

To call him “a stinking drunk” might strike some as a misleading and means-spirited personal attack on Mike!™ McGavick’s character, but in my defense I’m only attempting to follow his lead. Indeed, unless he wants to add the word “hypocritical” to the headline, the dipsomaniacal former lobbyist and self-proclaimed champion of civility must reluctantly acknowledge the epithet as both accurate and, well… civil.

Huh?

Yeah, I know us Democrats tend to get bogged down in nuance, but I want you to follow me on a little thought experiment, put all your partisanship and cynicism aside, and assume for just a moment that we can actually take Mike!™ at his word.

You see, Mike!™ says he wants to bring civility back to the other Washington, and rails against candidates for “attacking each other’s personal character instead of attacking the issues.” And in his much publicized, recent mea culpa he even apologized for a TV ad he ran in 1988 while managing Slade Gorton’s senate campaign — an ad that cynically mischaracterized Mike Lowry’s position on drug legalization.

“Though we never raised it again, we should have pulled it once evidence mounted that the Daily article was not an accurate reflection of his views.”

Mike!™ lists this ethical lapse as one of the two biggest regrets of his professional career. So let’s take him at his word. Surely, today’s Mike!™, a champion of civility and clean campaigning, would never knowingly mislead voters about an opponent’s views again.

So how do we explain Mike!™’s current radio spot in which he accuses Sen. Maria Cantwell of opposing allowing Washington residents to deduct state and local sales tax from their federal income tax?

“Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families,” says the announcer, noting that the deduction was worth $550 to Washington families.

“Sen. Cantwell said she voted ‘no’ because she disagreed with parts of the bill, yet when she was offered a compromise, she refused to talk,” the ad says.

As the Seattle Times points out this morning, that’s simply misleading.

Cantwell, in fact, co-authored the bill that first allowed state and local sales-tax deductibility in 2004. That legislation expired this year. In February, Cantwell sponsored a measure to make that deduction permanent. It passed the Senate 75-25 and is still pending in the House.

The bill the ad refers to was the GOP’s cynical “trifecta” legislation, that in addition to extending the sales tax deduction (for only a single year) would have reduced the take-home pay for millions of tip-earning workers while permanently slashing the federal estate tax on our nation’s wealthiest families. And in fact, Sen. Cantwell talked with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist the night before the vote, but he didn’t offer a compromise that could satisfy her or the American people.

Yet not only doesn’t “Open” Mike!™ regret this ad, he actually defends it.

“She voted against it,” he said, adding that her vote on state sales-tax deductibility will be a major campaign issue.

And you know what? Technically, he’s right.

Even though Sen. Cantwell has long been a champion of the sales tax deduction, ushering it through the Senate in both 2004 and 2006 — and even though the ad deliberately leaves the false impression in voters’ minds that she opposes the deduction — technically, the ad is accurate in stating that she voted against the deduction, this one time.

And so following this high standard of accuracy and civility, I think it is fair to say that technically, Mike!™ McGavick is a stinking drunk.

Oh, Mike!™’s not stinking drunk all the time. I’m sure he tends to wake up sober most mornings, and there are probably occasions when he orders only a club soda or maybe an O’Doul’s, rather than a 12-pack of beer.

But we now know for a fact that on at least one occasion he not only drove drunk, he blew a literally staggering 0.17 percent — a blood alcohol level difficult to achieve with fewer than 8 or 9 drinks over the course of an hour. And when fellow KIRO host Dori Monson accused him of being “stinking drunk,” Mike!™ not only didn’t deny it, he actually admitted that there are still occasions to this day when he is too drunk to drive.

And so if it isn’t misleading to claim that Sen. Cantwell opposes a sales tax deduction she’s long championed, based on a single vote on a bill deliberately and cynically designed to provide fodder for misleading campaign ads (“There’s like 12 30-second ads sitting around in this bill,” one Republican aide told The Hill)… then it certainly can’t be misleading to describe Mike!™ McGavick as a stinking drunk based on the fact that from time to time he gets, well… stinking drunk.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps Mike!™ fully intends to live by his civility pledge and set the record straight by apologizing for this ad too (some 18 years in the future.) Or perhaps, we really shouldn’t blame him for approving and defending this misleading ad because, you know… maybe he was just drunk at the time.

But for the moment I’m just going to have to follow his example, for after all, when he’s not fall-down drunk, I’m told that Mike!™’s a real stand-up guy. In fact, he’s downright Socratic.

That’s why I wanna be like Mike!™.

Congressional Quarterly just upgraded its rating of the race for Washington’s 5th Congressional District!

Republicans have hailed Cathy McMorris of Washington’s 5th District as a rising star since she won an open House seat in 2004 by an unexpectedly wide margin.

This image

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Mike!™ McGavick says he wants to talk about the issues, yet ask him why he’s running and he’s bound to tell you that he wants to bring civility back to the US Senate.

How does a real straight shooter answer the question? Listen to Peter Goldmark lay down his priorities:

I’m running for Congress because we need to change things in Congress, and we need to change the direction of our country. We need look no further than the price of gas, no further than the corruption and problems in Congress, no further than the agricultural crisis in eastern Washington, no further than the escalating cost of health care, and no further than the fact that nobody seems to be paying any attention or taking care of those issues. It is my intention to go back to Washington, DC and address those issues. People out here need a representative that will work on these issues on their behalf.

Energy, corruption, agriculture and health care. Bam! Those are Goldmark’s priorities if elected to Congress.

Mike!™, on the other hand? I’ve been following his campaign for over a year, and hell if I know what his legislative priorities are. Do you?

To learn more about Peter Goldmark and where he stands on the issues, read a full transcript of the interview over on McCranium.