Archives for April 2007

Okay, let’s see if I can explain this without getting too meta.

A few days back, former Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish posted to HA a kinda-sorta expose of an expose of an expose, highlighting a blog post by Real Change executive director Tim Harris, criticizing an anticipated hit piece in the Weekly. Harris wrote:

So this is what journalism at the new Seattle Weekly has come to. The paper owned and staffed by out-of-towners is out to do an expose on the fact that three or four vendors make as much as $24K a year selling Real Change. With no benefits.

At that rate, they can afford a cheap apartment. Hold the fucking presses!

This apparently pissed off Weekly managing editor Mike Seely, who dismissed Harris’s post as a “singularly bizarre pre-emptive diatribe,” and poked fun at the “sheer presumptive idiocy” of an angry letter aimed at an article that had yet to run.

Well, Huan Hsu’s article is now online, and… it’s not so bad. But then, it’s not so good either. In the end, there really isn’t much there there, though despite Seely’s pre-emptive prickliness, it’s pretty much what Harris predicted: “Not All the Peddlers of Seattle’s Homeless Paper Are Homeless.”

Hmm. To steal a line from Harris: hold the fucking presses.

It hadn’t occurred to me that some customers might feel cheated to learn that their Real Change vendor was not actually homeless. Personally, I would find it gratifying to know that my occasional purchase helped some unfortunate fellow off the streets. Call me naive, but I thought that was the whole idea.

So I’m not sure I get what Hsu is getting at. Some vendors are successful? A handful actually earn enough money to pay the rent? And that’s a bad thing?

I suppose I didn’t know that Real Change called its turf system a “turf system,” but it was pretty obvious that something like that existed. And I now know that most venders make 65 cents on every 1 dollar sale, but that the three top vendors each month get a nickel discount. Um, all in all, not exactly what one might call an “expose.” I mean, imagine if Real Change had done a 1600-word “expose” on how the Weekly used trucks to drop off bundles of papers at area coffee shops… that would be about as fascinating as this piece was.

Still, I think Geov’s presumptive sentiments hold true:

What pisses me off is when anyone – anyone – tries to make a buck or ingratiate themselves (e.g., with dimwitted readers) by pissing on the powerless. It’s one thing to lampoon the idiocies of Seattle liberalism; I might not agree with it (or think it’s well done), but it’s fair game. But trying to manufacture a “scandal” involving one of the few activist-initiated social service projects in town that truly does help people and change lives, all the time, is pure bullshit. Or, in Harris’ words, “What the Fuck”?

What the fuck indeed.

See, there’s a reason why you never read scathing reviews of small, inexpensive, family-owned neighborhood restaurants. What exactly would be the point? The regular patrons already like it well enough to keep coming back, while few outside the neighborhood are ever going to stop in anyway. So why waste column inches slamming some mom and pop lunch shack?

Likewise, absent a genuine scandal or a profound disagreement over the strategy (or goal) of helping the homeless get back on their feet, why on earth would you ever want to do anything but a fluff piece on Real Change? Maybe — just maybe — the Weekly might have succeeded in getting a handful of readers to think twice before forking over their dollar. But to what end? Hsu clearly set out in search of a controversy, and didn’t find one. That’s okay. Lots of stories don’t pan out. So why run the piece?

There is no shortage of important stories to write about, and plenty of worthy targets out there to skewer, but the Weekly chose to pursue an angle they knew could damage public support for an organization dedicated to helping the homeless. Huh. I have nothing against slaughtering sacred cows, but I’d hope the Weekly would view it as more than a blood sport.

Which brings me back to the springboard of this post, and one final observation. Seely sniped at Harris for his “singularly bizarre pre-emptive diatribe,” but from a PR perspective, there was nothing bizarre or singular about it. If Harris was expecting a negative piece in the Weekly (and from his questions, Hsu clearly wasn’t writing fluff,) why on earth should he wait until after it runs to refute it? Harris successfully got his message out in advance of publication, and quite possibly may even have succeeded in softening Hsu’s final edit.

That’s just smart PR. That’s being proactive.

And considering the fact that Harris’s efforts generated two supportive posts on HA, a handful of presumptive letters to the editor, and a preemptive prepublication post by Seely, I’d say it worked.

UPDATE:
Chuck Taylor chimes in over at Crosscut:

We’ll never know how Harris’ preemptive spin helped shape the article — there’s no way it didn’t. If I was the editor, I’d have made extra damn sure there weren’t any problems with it, that it was factually ironclad and fair.

Exactly. Erica also picks it up over on Slog.

So all in all, a pretty effective “pre-emptive diatribe” on the part of Harris.

When I was twelve years old I picked up a dog-eared copy of “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater,” and for the next ten years or so I read and reread everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote. Vonnegut was my first novelist, and as such, I suppose he couldn’t help but have an influence on making me who I am today.

Kurt Vonnegut died today. He was 84.

Fuck Don Imus. But you know what…? Fuck civility. And fuck the Seattle Times.

Really… who the fuck do they think they are pontificating about who should or should not have access to the public airwaves? [“Airwaves no place for Imus and his ilk“] And who the fuck can possibly take seriously this colorless, bland, bourgeois cabal of towheaded ho’s anointing themselves arbiters of “diversity and decency”?

I mean… what the fuck is up with that?

Does Imus come off as a racist, misogynistic, insensitive, mean-spirited prick? Hell yeah… that’s his whole schtick! That’s his stock in trade! What part of “shock jock” doesn’t the Times understand?

No doubt Imus should be raked over the public coals for his awful comments, and he deserves whatever punishment the marketplace delivers. But calling on the FCC to pull WFAN’s license? That’s censorship, pure and simple. That’s state control of the media. That’s fascism. And the Times — a newspaper for chrissakes, that owes its very existence to the unfettered rights enunciated in the First Amendment — should be just as ashamed of its offensive statement as Imus should be of his.

What’s next? Who else should be yanked from the airwaves and denied their livelihood because they offend the Times’ oh-so-sensitive sensibilities? If radio hosts should be held to standards exceeding FCC regulations, how far should the purge go? How careful must we tread? Should KIRO, as some angry letter writers have demanded, dump my show because I (gasp) repeatedly use the word “fuck” on my personal blog? Well fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck to that!

And don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou bullshit about radio stations having a legal obligation to “serve the community.” That lie gave up the ghost back during the Reagan administration with the death of the Fairness Doctrine and the birth of an anti-regulatory crusade that inevitably led to the relentlessly homogenizing, profit-driven, media consolidation we have seen ever since. Today, the vast majority of commercial radio stations fulfill the totality of their community service with a handful of PSAs and a weekly test of the Emergency Alert System.

At least WFAN airs local content, as opposed to the hundreds of radio stations in small markets nationwide, whose absentee, monopolist owners would continue to obliviously broadcast their automated, computer-controlled, top-McForty programming, uninterrupted, while a chlorine gas-leak slowly smothered their uninformed local audience in agonizing death. If that’s what they mean by community service, then the Times editorial board has its swollen head stuck so far up its tight little ass it makes the Enumclaw horse incident look like a prostate exam.

What kind of goddamn fantasy world is the Times living in? For decades now, right-wing talk radio hosts have villified liberals like me, questioning our patriotism, smearing us as traitors, cowards and terrorists, and accusing us of treason… a crime they repeatedly make clear is punishable by death. Ann Coulter publicly “jokes” about executing a few liberals to keep us in line, calls for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to be poisoned, and laments that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the New York Times building instead… but I don’t hear the Times complaining about her frequent appearances on FOX News. And G. Gordon Liddy once infamously instructed his audience how to deal with ATF agents: “Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches!” Hmm. No FCC licenses revoked; no fines issued. Is that what the Times means by serving the community?

And what the fuck is “decency” anyway? Polite language? Polite lies? Does anybody but a fourth or fifth generation Blethen really want the standards of civic discourse to be defined by literary somnambulists who can’t discern the difference between seriousness and solemnity, and who wouldn’t recognize nuance if it jumped right out in front of them and shot their dog?

I’ve got news for the Times: there’s a reason why assholes like Imus and Howard Stern have millions of fans, while former newspaper subscribers flee to the blogs in droves, no matter how foulmouthed, uncivil or indecent some of us might be. It is because anything is better than the stultifying, turgidly-written, equivocating prose that often passes for journalism these days, and the arrogant, moralistic grammarians who apparently revel in using as little of the English language as possible. The Times’ market keeps growing, and yet its circulation keeps shrinking — and they have the nerve to lecture others on how best to serve the community? Give me a fucking break!

Criticize to your heart’s content. Excoriate the trash-talkers and hate-mongers for their hurtful and violent words — even do so selectively if that is what your conscience allows. But when you call for using the power of the state to silence others, you abdicate any and all of the moral authority you believe your printing presses confer upon you.

If that’s civility… if that’s decency… then I want nothing the fuck to do with it.

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

Come joins us for some hopped up conversation and hoppy beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

I’ve made a habit of abusing the state’s media recently for constantly repeating the Sonics’ misleading number that they are only seeking $300 million in taxpayer subsidies… when in fact they are really seeking $400 million (not to mention another hundred million or so in road improvements):

The Times continues to repeat that $300 million figure when in fact the Sonics’ plan calls for $400 million in taxpayer subsidies: $300 million from the sales tax, and $100 million from Renton. I’m not sure what the correct answer would be on the math WASL, but the last time I checked, 300 plus 100 still equals 400. (Wait… let me check my calculator. Yeah. 400.)

Well, it looks like the Times finally took my criticism to heart and whipped out their calculators, for in today’s edition we finally see the number change:

The Sonics still are not sure if state lawmakers will support a bill that would provide $200 million toward the new arena.

Oops. You were supposed to add $100 million onto the public cost, not subtract.

Unless… maybe the Times knows something about the Sonics’ rumored new financing plan they weren’t supposed to tell us?

On March 20, HA readers learned that acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan once called undocumented immigrants “wetbacks,” and that he was admonished from the bench for blowing a murder-consipiracy case by withholding evidence from the defense.

On April 10, Seattle Times readers learned that acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan once called undocumented immigrants “wetbacks,” and that he was admonished from the bench for blowing a murder-consipiracy case by withholding evidence from the defense.

Sure, the Times piece was more thorough and evenhanded than mine (though to be fair to me, I did link to all my source material,) but still… three weeks?

I’m just sayin’.

Dino Rossi was interviewed by Liz Mair at the oxymoronically titled GOPProgress.com. And Rossi is sure sounding like a 2008 gubernatorial candidate.

Two things struck me about the interview. First, Rossi is no moderate. He is a typical voter-disenfranchisin’, truth-twistin’, anti-guvmint, gimmicky Republican. All tricks and no leadership—just like we’ve come to expect from Washington state Republicans.

But what struck me most of all is that Dino is still a sore loser:

We won 34 out of 39 counties, all the non-Seattle, King County ones, Snohomish County–first time in 20 years for a Republican, Pierce County–first time in 40 years for a Republican, and we were certified the governor-elect–first Republican governor-elect in 24 years, twice, actually…[laughs] Apparently, as a Republican, you have to win three times.

Yeah…34 out of 39 counties…as if it was counties that voted instead of, you know…voters!

The other bit of sore loserism is the suggestion that he had to win “three times.” As Judge Bridges so elegantly put it, Rossi led after the initial count, he led after the first recount, and Gregoire led after the manual recount. There was only one person declared the winner of the 2004 gubernatorial election, and that was Christine Gregoire.

Does Rossi really not understand the election process? Or is he intentionally being disingenuous? Either way, man…what a sore loser!

Later on, Rossi offered this remarkable claim:

In the end, we ended up with hundreds more votes that were counted in King County than they could attribute to human beings who actually voted. Which is why we said, and I don’t think I was going too far out on a limb by saying this, but that maybe each vote should have a voter. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

I mean, yeah, we expect this kind of bullshit from a blatant propagandist like Stefan Sharkansky. But Rossi is supposed to be a real politician. To make such an outrageous claim suggests that either Rossi is such a sore loser that he would knowingly perpetuate a blatantly dishonest statement to undermine the electoral process that hurt his feelings in 2004, or else he suffers from delusions.

Rossi was whining about the voter crediting process. During the election contest trial, it became amply clear that the voter crediting process has a higher error rate than the ballot counting process. As Bridges stated in his oral opinion (pg. 6):

The crediting system in Washington is not an accurate reflection of the number of persons who actually voted.

Presenting a credible challenge will be tough enough for Rossi in 2008 if only because many of the issues that gave his campaign strength in 2004 won’t even be relevant anymore. (And the tarnished Republican brand name won’t help.) But could it be true? Will Rossi Mk II be running on a “we wuz robbed!” platform?

Yes! Please, go for it, Dino! I want to see the Rossi 2008 “We Wuz Robbed” campaign tour!

Look out! The sore loser express is coming through, and you better get out of the way. Whooo woooo!

Hey…I hear that Mike!™ McGavick even has a mobile home available for the tour.

The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t keep epidemiological data on dog and cat illnesses and deaths… but the nationwide veterinary chain Banfield does. And according to an extrapolation of data from its 615 veterinary hospitals Banfield estimates that as many as 39,000 cats and dogs may have been sickened or killed by contaminated pet food.

The hospital chain saw 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold. It saw 284 extra cases of kidney failure among cats during that period, or a roughly 30 percent increase, when compared with background rates.

“It has meaning, when you see a peak like that. We see so many pets here, and it coincided with the recall period,” said veterinarian Hugh Lewis, who oversees the mining of Banfield’s database to do clinical studies.

There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats nationwide.

In other news, one person has died and more than three hundred have fallen ill in two separate incidents in China, after eating porridge suspected of containing rat poison. According to Wikipedia:

[…] canned and jarred gluten is commonly eaten as an accompaniment to congee (boiled rice porridge) as part of a traditional Chinese breakfast.

Hmm.

The White House lawn was abuzz with children and a giant rabbit this morning.

The annual White House Easter Egg Roll, started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, typically has been a rite of spring in Washington. But on Monday, it was afflicted by winter’s parting bite — cold air and even colder grounds. Undaunted by any of this, the young guests sprang into action under the watchful eyes of their families, hostess Laura Bush and several Bush administration Cabinet secretaries.

Vice President Dick Cheney even made a brief appearance:

Billionaire Microsoft Word developer Charles Simonyi’s civilian space trip nearly ended in tragedy yesterday when his Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft unexpectedly crashed with an “Internal Error” shortly after takeoff.

Accustomed to frequent backups, Simonyi successfully relaunched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after a clean reboot. The fifth civilian to rocket into space, Simonyi, 58, is expected to link up with the International Space Station sometime Monday night.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: What’s really happening in Iraq?
Sen. John McCain insists progress is being made and the war is winnable… but reports from the ground are much more grim. Dal LaMagna of ProgressiveGovernment.org has made frequent trips to the region in his efforts to create a peaceful dialog between Iraqis and Americans, and he joins me for the hour to give us the latest update from Iraq.

8PM: TBA

9PM: Help Wanted!
You’d think a job with a big office and a six-figure a year salary would attract a lot of applicants… so Geov Parrish wants to know why there are so few people running for Seattle City Council. Or the Port Commission and School Board for that matter. Geov joins me at the top of the hour to talk about the state of local politics and the dearth of candidates progressive or otherwise.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Last week, I was actually invited to a house party for Barack Obama. Twenty freakin’ months before the election. Out of curiosity and loyalty to the friends who were hosting it, I went. It was a great discussion. But amidst all the earnest expressions of Seattle liberalism, one topic remained completely, curiously absent.

Before Barack or anyone else matters, we’ve got an election here, this year.

You would never know it from either the headlines or the local political chatter, much of which already seems obsessed with next year’s presidential race. But we have five city council seats, plus four seats on county council, two Port of Seattle commissioners, four Seattle School Board members, lots of suburban positions, and a host of ballot measures, including some critical transportation votes, coming up this summer and fall. Yes, summer; the primary has been moved back to August (when fewer people will be paying attention), and the filing deadline for candidates is now June 8, exactly two months away.

Why hasn’t there been more attention? Well, local media never does a very good job of covering local elections. (Quick: When was the last time you saw a Port of Seattle race discussed on TV? And why not? It’s a countywide election for a position that will oversee $442 million in public revenue in 2007.) But beyond that, in the marquee races -– the citywide votes for five Seattle City Council members -– 2007 is not shaping up so far as a very competitive year.

Of the five seats, incumbents are defending four; Peter Steinbrueck is leaving his seat open as he moves on to waterfront advocacy and, perhaps, a 2009 mayoral bid. Four candidates have already announced for Steinbrueck’s vacated position, but there’s a distinct lack of drama elsewhere. Only one candidate has announced against any of the four council members running for reelection (Tim Burgess, running against David Della). The other three incumbents –- Jean Godden, Tom Rasmussen, and appointee Sally Clark –- are thus far unopposed.

At first glance this seems mystifying. There’s plenty of neighborhood dissatisfaction over the way Seattle is being run, and the way its middle and working class residents are being run off. And the incumbents are beatable. Clark was appointed to her seat in 2006 and has never run any electoral race, let alone a citywide one; she has no electoral base and has done little in her year on the council. Godden is in her first term, having won in 2003 on her name recognition from years as a local gossip columnist. She’s famously clueless on civic issues and has done little beyond attending all the right parties and keeping a seat warm -– if that –- in her four years on council. And Rasmussen is also in his first term (as is Della). Three council incumbents lost in 2003. Why isn’t anyone stepping forward to challenge incumbents this year?

More pointedly, why aren’t any progressives running? Steinbrueck’s departure leaves only one council member (President Nick Licata) who consistently stands out from the dull, establishment consensus that is the Seattle City Council: all good liberal Democrats, tolerant on social issues and always quick with a corporate handout. Two of the challengers for Steinbrueck’s open seat, Venus Velasquez and Bruce Harrell, portray themselves as progressive, but both are very much part of establishment Seattle. (The other two announced candidates for the seat are moderate Republican Jim Nobles and the execrable John Manning, who resigned a council seat a decade ago after his third domestic violence complaint.) Progressives are losing one of their only two strong allies on council, and it’s been years since there’s been a credible progressive challenger campaigning for city council.

There are any number of reasons for this state of affairs, but the most obvious is money. It takes a lot of it to run a citywide race for Seattle’s exclusively at-large city council seats. As of late March, Rasmussen had already raised a whopping $112,501 for his reelection bid; Godden was not far behind at $100,629. By contrast, Velasquez, the first to announce for Steinbrueck’s seat when he withdraw from the race (and the most progressive of his would-be successors to date), leads her rivals in donations with “only” $27,275. Incumbency is clearly a major advantage this year, and any successful challenger had better spend most of her or his time raising money between now and August.

That said, it can be done: Della, Godden, and Rasmussen all beat incumbents in 2003. There’s still two months before the filing deadline. Godden and Clark in particular could be vulnerable to a well-organized challenge. Goodness knows that as Seattle densifies the council needs principled members who will listen to the neighborhoods and don’t sell out to every developer-backed scheme that comes along. There’s still time. Anyone willing to step up to the plate?

Karl Rove spoke at American University last night, and while I’m sure the invited guests were enthralled, he didn’t exactly get a rousing reception from the masses.

Cliff Schecter, an American University alum, describes the events:

Rove, in usual elitist/slimy GOP fashion, only spoke to what Nietzsche might call the “splendid blond beasts” who make up the Young Republican idiot core. You know who these losers are, the people on your campus who split most of their time between defending date rape, working to get professors fired for not praising Pinochet and watching German shiza videos.

Well, Rove got a rude reception at American, in the form of students protesting him and trying to block his car as he left–calling for his arrest for violating the Presidential Records Act. As someone who has recently called for Rove to go to prison myself, I sympathize.

Hmm. Rove will be in town, celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s assassination with the King County Republicans this Saturday, April 14. Perhaps we should organize him a big Seattle welcome, WTO style?

This article is a few days old, but it’s still relevant:

State leaders are beginning the Highway 520 bridge rebuild with an uncertain and speculative finance plan that would fall short of the project’s estimated $4.4 billion cost even if all their gambles pay off.

These are the same officials who pulled the plug on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ plan to build replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a $4.6 billion tunnel because it lacked a solid finance plan.

Though the groundwork for the new 520 bridge is already underway, it will likely be years before the state secures the money to complete the project.

If I remember correctly, the knock against Greg Nickels and his proposed tunnel was that the plan lacked a finance plan that stood up to scrutiny. The tunnel plan included dollars from this fall’s RTID vote, and also federal funds not yet available until 2009 and beyond. It looks like hypocrites in Olympia are slamming Nickels for doing exactly what they’re doing now.

Transportation leaders in the House and Senate are banking on $1.1 billion from a regional transit and roads tax package that even supporters fear may be rejected by voters in November.

They’re also counting on nearly a $1 billion from a pooled account established to cover cost overruns for 520 and also the Alaskan Way Viaduct — but under current projections, the 520 project would require all of that and more.

And unlike the House plan, the Senate also assumes $200 million in federal transit money that could trickle in over the next 16 years.

All while the final design remains a topic of vigorous debate.

And good luck with that design stuff. The major players in the 520 game (the UW, the city, the state, nearby neighborhoods, Sound Transit, and lots more) aren’t on the same page.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Is President Bush unfit to lead?
That’s what columnist Joe Klein says in this week’s Time Magazine, in which he outline’s the Bush administration’s “epic collapse.” Do you agree with Klein that “arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys)” makes this administration “one of the worst in American history”…? I sure do.

8PM: Immigration

9PM: TBA

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).