Archives for September 2007

Last night was one of my favorite annual events – our fantasy football draft. Our league started out in 1998 with a bunch of recent college grads who relocated here to work for Boeing. Now, we’re starting up our 10th season. More than half of us are now married, and a few have kids, but we still have one night a year where we revert to shameless bachelorhood, talking trash, drinking cheap beer, and picking the players whose successes or failures our hopes will ride on for the next four months.

In the past, I’ve made pretty elaborate NFL predictions at the beginning of the season, only to debate with myself in November whether I can go back and delete the post. Like fellow Philly-native Goldy, I’m a huge Eagles fan, but I’ve also grown to like the local team here, and really enjoy how much the Seahakws’ recent success has brought some excitement to the games at Qwest Field.

As the Saints and Colts get it all started this evening, what do you expect to see this year? Can the Seahawks make it back to the big game? Were the Saints a fluke last year? Can the Colts win it again? Will Donovan McNabb still be healthy when the Seahawks head into Philly in December? Will Joey Harrington make everyone in Atlanta forget about Michael Vick? Can anything possibly happen this season that’s more embarrassing than what happened to my alma mater last Saturday?

Enjoy the games everyone!

In an unusually frank press conference, King County Councilmember Jane Hague finally apologized for driving drunk and berating law enforcement officers…

The arresting officers “did not deserve the rude and abusive behavior. I was very drunk that night,” said Hague, “Stinking drunk. Plastered. Pie-eyed. Totally shit faced. And a mean drunk too… or so I’m told — I really don’t remember. Apparently, I swore a blue streak at the officers, and there is no excuse for that… except for, you know, that I was drunk. Very, very drunk.”

About a week after her arrest, she said, she underwent an evaluation by an alcohol-treatment facility. After several hours of evaluation, she said, “fortunately, there was no problem that was uncovered. Other than the fact that, well… I’m a drunk.“

At least, that was the general spirit of Hague’s apology. I wasn’t taking notes. Or paying much attention. In fact, I may have been a little drunk, for which I’m truly sorry.

From the HA comment threads:

Stefan Sharkansky says:

The Democrat whom you’ll eventually support for Congress in the 8th District, Rodney Tom, also opposes the state death tax.

07/25/2007 at 11:03 am

[…]

Stefan Sharkansky says:

I don’t care who wins the Democrat primary in this race. But I will have a bit of smug satisfaction in fall 2008 when all of you Darcy fans have to eat sh*t and campaign for a formerly nominal Republican turned nominal Democrat who supports photo ID at the polls, opposes the death tax and supports charter schools. tee-hee.

07/25/2007 at 10:11 pm

[…]

Stefan Sharkansky says:

Yes, but you’ll still be supporting disgruntled former Republican legislator Tommy Rod after he cleans Darcy’s clock in next year’s primary

08/24/2007 at 12:06 am

[…]

Goldy says:

Thanks for the prediction, Stefan. I’ll be sure to quote this back at you when Darcy wins the nomination (or perhaps, when Tom withdraws next spring.)

07/25/2007 at 11:17 am

Consider it done.

Rodney Tom announced this morning that he is withdrawing from the race for the Democratic nomination in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, leaving Darcy Burner as the sole declared Democrat.

“Our fundraising was going great, but Darcy Burner’s campaign has been phenomenal”, Tom said. “Darcy has over 3,200 contributors, an incredible statement to her broad base of support. Reichert’s idea of campaign finance reform is having $10,000 dinners. Democracy was never intended to be limited strictly to millionaires. Clearly, he’s out of touch with the common voter.”

“My purpose from the start was to replace the current Congressman with someone whoactually represents the values of the 8th district. Dave Reichert is completely out of step with the values shared in this district. Darcy Burner’s campaign has proven they have the leadership, strength and momentum to win next November.”

Tom will pay off campaign costs from his own pocket, refund all contributors and urge them to contribute to Burner. In Yiddish, we call that being a mensch.

I don’t mean to gloat, especially considering how gracious Tom has been in withdrawing and backing Burner, but you gotta think that our unprecedented $125,000 netroots fundraiser played a significant role in pushing Tom out of the race. And honestly, that was one of our primary objectives.

As I told Tom shortly after he announced, one can make legitimate arguments for why both he and Burner are a good fit for the district, but I didn’t really see his path toward winning a Democrat primary. I also told him that my aggressive support of Burner was nothing personal, and that we would make up after he got out of the race. I guess that reconciliation starts today.

More thoughts and observations later….

UPDATE:
I talked with Tom earlier this afternoon, and thanked him for his graciousness. He is fully behind Burner, and quite impressed with her grassroots appeal. I think there is no question that Burner’s campaign is stronger for Tom having challenged her.

Former WA-08 congresswoman Jennifer Dunn died suddenly this morning of a pulmonary embolism. She was only 66.

My condolences to her family.

The Seattle Times doesn’t much like the rabble calling bullshit on one of their editorials:

Legislators, a local think-tank intellectual and an Internet fulminator all declared we were flat wrong about SB 5498, and that it did not silently transform anything.

By “Internet fulminator” the Times is of course referring to me, and while I wouldn’t mind being derided as an “intellectual” once in a while, if this is the type of fulmination it takes to coax the Times into engaging in a higher level of discourse on complicated issues of tax policy, well then, fulminate I must.

The Times stands by its take on SB 5498, and I stand by mine. At issue is a vaguely worded memo by a midlevel Department of Revenue staffer that seems to interpret one provision of the bill contrary to the stated legislative intent. The Attorney General’s office has been asked to review the DOR memo, and that is the opinion that will ultimately count. But my dismay with the Times original editorial extends far beyond dueling interpretations of a couple paragraphs of obscure legalese.

Coming just days before a handful of crucial levy votes, the Times original editorial was irresponsible in both tone and timing, attempting to speak authoritatively on an issue that was far from settled and on which they apparently lacked much authority. The Times’ efforts to impugn the motives of legislators were unfounded and uncalled for, its discussion of levy lid lifts muddled and contradictory, and its alarmist headline, “Warning: New taxes will be permanent,” was flat out wrong, regardless of the AG’s pending interpretation. A temporary lid lift raises both levy capacity and taxes; even if the new law makes capacity increases permanent — and the legislators who wrote the law continue to maintain that it does not — the tax increase itself would still expire at the end of the levy. District officials (councilmembers, commissioners, etc) could vote to increase regular levies to the limit of the new capacity, but they would be held accountable to voters for any perceived abuse of their taxing authority.

While I applaud the Times for following my lead and presenting a more in-depth discussion of lid lift basics in their new editorial, they still fail to make an adequate distinction between increasing statutory levy capacity and actually raising taxes, and they totally avoid a conversation about permanent versus temporary lid lifts. And perhaps most importantly, they refuse to address the issue that creates the need for frequent lid lifts in the first place, the totally inadequate and arbitrary 1-percent limit on revenue growth… well below inflation let alone growth in demand for government services.

… the law needs to be restored to what it was. In passing Initiative 747, the voters of Washington imposed a 1 percent limit per year on how much a taxing district can increase its gross collections from existing properties.

I-747’s 1-percent limit was vindictive and unsustainable, and a responsible editorial page would point this out instead of sticking to the meme that initiatives to the people, no matter how stupid, are somehow inviolate. The state constitution does indeed grant special status to initiatives, protecting them from being overturned by an act of the Legislature for a period of two years. But once that two years is up an initiative is the same as any other law — and the only thing more irresponsible than a dumb-ass (and possibly unconstitutional) initiative designed to cripple the ability of local governments to function, would be a timid Legislature refusing to address the problems it created out of fear of an editorial backlash.

Danny Westneat is right on with his column about the worst bench in Seattle:

It doesn’t look like much. Just a two-level bench of fiberglass, with legs made from steel plumbing pipes. It was designed to evoke an era when labor halls and working stiffs ruled Seattle’s Belltown. The art bench juts slightly into the sidewalk along Second Avenue, intervening in the right-angle-orderliness of the urban grid. Its goal, says the city’s art Web site, is to “engage passers-by physically and mentally, as well as visually, by providing places to sit and think.”

Yeah, to help passers-by engage with a Mickey’s Big Mouth, maybe.

Even if the art itself isn’t to blame, what irks neighbors is that because it’s art, it can’t be moved without special permission from a city arts panel.

“We’ve been trying to get rid of it for eight years,” Markovich says. “But it’s part of this Belltown art theme, so the city won’t let it go.”

The theory was that art can help design away crime. Make a place interesting and vibrant, it will be safer. Only it turned out drug dealers and pimps appreciate art, too.

The artist, Kurt Kiefer, wrote on the city’s public-art Web site that he placed that bench and other objects on the Belltown sidewalk as a way to “remember the experiments and improvisations that … continue to define the Denny Regrade.”

Corsi says the city must end this art exhibit, or neighbors will do it for them.

“The bench is going to show up one morning on the mayor’s front lawn,” he said.

One day, that bench will disappear. And no one, and I mean no one, will be sorry that it’s gone. I walk by this bench every day, and it’s always a dump. Belltown has other “art” pieces, like the concrete rubble on 1st Avenue, that ought to get the heave-ho. But lets start with that bench.

City Hall needs to stop inflicting crappy public art on the public.

Apparently, car batteries aren’t supposed to last seven years. Who knew?

Half a day and a hundred dollars later, I now know.

Join us tonight for a fun-filled evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

No doubt a hot topic for tonight will be the new GAO report suggesting that the Bush administration is cooking the books on sectarian violence in Iraq. (Perhaps another hot topic will be the shameless way that Republicans have blown off the restless leg syndrome constituency….)

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for the dates and times of a chapter near you.

I’ve been on KEXP-90.3 on Saturday mornings for over a decade, and for the last several years we’ve been running an extremely popular weekly overview of news from Iraq. Since there’s a lot more of it than I have time to run through (and links don’t work well on the radio), for a while now I’ve also been posting the weekly summaries over at Booman Tribune. It occurs to me that it might make sense to post it locally, too. And so, with your indulgence (and hopefully interest), here is the first of a weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous war.

Much of the last week, in D.C. and the Green Zone, was spent by various parties trying to pave the way for their spin on the congressionally mandated report on the escalation “surge” due at the end of next week.

That included George Bush making a surprise Labor Day PR visit to Anbar Province — a profile in courage somewhat undermined in that he stayed protected by a 13-mile perimeter and 10,000 troops, not venturing outside the base to see for himself the wonderful progress he has been touting. But more importantly, days previous, Bush hinted that he’s already made up his mind regardless of what Gen. Petraeus has to say, suggesting that he would send still more troops to Iraq after the 15th and announcing that he would ask Congress for yet another $50 billion “emergency” war appropriation.

Meanwhile, the impartial investigative arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office, released a report that flatly contradicted the White House, finding little progress in Iraq during the escalation surge. Specifically, the GAO looked at the 18 benchmarks set by Congress. Unlike a White house report last month that tortured logic and semantics in order to find “progress” in only eight of the 18 benchmarks, the GAO found progress in only three and declared the war effort to be failing on all the most important ones.

Other indicators that things didn’t have the rosy glow insisted upon by Bush and his apologists: a New York Times report that while deaths this summer are down from their peak in Baghdad — perhaps because ethnic cleansing has progressed so far that there are fewer people left for the death squads to kill — nationwide the rate of sectarian deaths is double what it was in 2006. (Even in Baghdad, it’s still higher than 2006, just lower than the cooler months of Spring.) And the Center for American Progress released a study declaring that American troops can be safely withdrawn from Iraq in one year, again undercutting the war hawks’ argument that without all those American soldiers and weapons the violence would get worse.

Oh, and there was also the little-noticed tidbit that Gen. Petraeus intervened to “soften” the language of the recent National Intelligence Estimate to reflect recent “progress.” (Even so, the NIE basically said Baghdad was somewhere around the seventh circle of Hell.) Plus, the U.S. leaned on five leading Shiite and Sunni exile politicians to announce a “deal” on America’s desired give-Iraqi-oil-to-American-oil-companies oil law, prisoners, and a few other concessions. But it was largely for show, and American consumption: the deal didn’t bring Sunnis back into the government, won’t get any of the agreed-upon items through Parliament, and the remaining Iraqi politicians allegedly running the country are mostly returned exiles with no constituency outside the Beltway and no relevance outside the Green Zone.

On the other side of that wall, a far more damning measure of how the escalation surge is going, namely how it’s affecting actual Iraqis, emerged last week. Over 5,000 cholera cases have now been reported in Northern Iraq, primarily among refugees living in shanty towns in areas of the country without much fighting. (The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated last week that 4.2 million Iraqis, one in every six, has been uprooted by the war.) Why is this important? Cholera is a disease of the extremely poor, normally seen only in areas where poverty is extreme and government services nonexistent. In this case, as in much of Iraq, there is no longer clean drinking water and, of course, no public health sector to speak of. The government has no presence, local militias and tribes can only do so much, and many of the doctors and technocrats have fled the country or been killed. That’s what the escalation surge means to the average Iraqi.

Want more? Iraqis are no longer eating fish out of the Tigris or Euphrates Rivers, in part because there are so many dead bodies in the rivers — which the fish nibble on — that Iraqis are afraid of contracting diseases associated with cannibalism.

In the south of Iraq, 52 people died last week in Karbala firefights (widely reported in the US as “riots”) between members of Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Maliki-aligned Badr Organization, both Shiite militias vying for control (and wider imposition of sharia law) as British soldiers complete their withdrawal from southern Iraq. After the fighting, al-Sadr ordered the Mahdi Army to stand down for six months to try to avoid widening the civil war. We’ll see how long it lasts. Prime Minister Maliki, the great American-sponsored statesman, blamed Sunni clerics from Saudi Arabia for somehow provoking the Karbala bloodshed, in an effort to deflect attention from his Badr friends. This is our voice of political reconciliation during the escalation surge.

Another important front was emerging in coverage of Iraq last week: a widening scandal (finally) over corruption and where all that American money and weaponry I mentioned earlier has actually been going for four years. McClatchy newspapers reported that hundreds of thousands of dollar in U.S. rebuilding money went to insurgents (still only a fraction of the billions that went missing overall). The Army accused Lee Dynamics International of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to US officials to get $11 million in contracts. The New York Times reported that several federal agencies are investigating weapons sales, disappearances, fraud, kickbacks, and black market profiteering by US officials. And one investigation involves senior official who worked with a Gen. David Petraeus — yes, that Gen. Petraeus — when he was heading the effort to arms and train Iraqi militias and death squads army and police units in 2004-05. (Heckuva job, Davie.) Also from the Times: US weapons given to the Iraqi army are being found used by criminal gangs in Turkey. (No surprise there — we’ve flooded the black market in arms the world over by handing out AK-47s etc. like candy in Iraq.) And, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley (another political appointee) was accused last week by a DoD task force of mismanaging government money in Iraq — and also engaging in public drunkenness and sexual harassment.

Big picture: The Project on Government Oversight reported last week that the top 50 Iraq contractors paid over $12 billion in fines and restitution for violating various federal laws over the last 10 years. Being scofflaws not only hasn’t disqualified them from the Iraq feeding trough, but seems to be an entrance requirement.

Finally, in the most unintentionally hilarious incident since Larry Craig got Restless Leg Syndrome, the U.S. military characterized as “regrettable” a Baghdad incident last Tuesday in which eight Iranians, including two diplomats, were released hours after being arrested. In a country awash with guns and where security details are essential for normal travel for VIPs, the eight were singled out because the Iraqi security guys they’d hired had an “unauthorized” AK-47 and two pistols in the trunk of their car. Not entirely coincidentally, President Bush was in Reno that day, telling an American Legion convention that Iranians were arming the insurgency, as part of the steadily increasing PR campaign for a military strike on Iran — which several credible reports this weekend, including this one in the Times of London, say will be massive and imminent. Attacking Iran would not only be illegal and immoral, but politically, militarily, and economically disastrous — the time to mount public opposition to this insanity is now.

So, I kinda missed last week’s “this week”. So even though it’s still kinda sparse, it’s totally two weeks’ worth.

* By now you’ve probably ceased to want to care, but some time long ago, Roger Stone was making the news being a loon. Saying crazy shit about Spitzer. And also, if you want to attack Spitzer, maybe it’s best not to have the quality you ascribe to him in spades.

* Bi-Partisan bullshit: Former Clinton speech writer Michael Cohen is upset about us mean bloggers. But he does acknowledge our right to hate America, so you can see he’s a serious person.

* In case you’re wondering, the fact that Larry Craig tried to have sex in a bathroom proves that it’s the Democrats who are obsessed with sex. Republicans are only obsessed with sex when they can’t see an electoral downside.

* President Bush came to town this week (Did this blog report on that? I just can’t remember.) and he gave a bullshit speech.

Locally, I can only think of two things that are bullshit:

* Phone books.

* and Pudge.

This is another open thread.

The second Marvin Stamn Highlight Reel is posted.

Let’s take a moment on Labor Day, 2007 to remember that America was built into the great nation it is today on the sweat and blood of no-bid contractors.

And now, a Labor Day message from our President:

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

7PM: Is Seattle a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah?
In his book “Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril,” Discovery Institute senior fellow David Klinghoffer argues that Seattle is a “wayward city,” sanctioned by God to be “left a ruin forever, as a warning to others.” Oh. My. God. Klinghoffer joins me for the hour.

8PM: Is Death a racist?
According to a new study, a black man in California can expect to live 68.6 years on average, compared to 75.5 years for a white man… numbers that largely reflect national trends. Co-author Helen Lee joins me by phone to discuss the study and the possible causes of this disturbing disparity.

9PM: TBA

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

The Seattle Times is unhappy with the choice King County Council District 6 voters have between gadfly Richard Pope and barfly Jane!™ Hague. And typically, they blame the Dems:

State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz or King County Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Sheary failed voters in a significant way.

Even before the June 2 driving incident, both knew that although Hague was a leader on the county budget, she was not the most compelling councilmember. They knew, too, that her campaign office had difficulties with contributions and that her district is turning more Democratic every day. Where were these two when there was a chance to mount a strong challenge against her?

Truth is, I haven’t been shy about criticizing my party for failing to be in a position to take advantage of this opportunity, and have openly ridiculed the hopeless primary write-in campaign. But in all fairness, the blame deserves to be spread more broadly, and shared not just by the party leadership but also by the unimaginative field of potential challengers who refused to take a fly at the unimpressive if well-funded Hague.

The most heavily recruited challenger was state Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48), who might have decided to run had he received a little encouragement from key Dems on the council who rightly perceived him as a threat to their ambitions for the executive’s office. Not that it would have mattered, as his relapse of lymphoma would have pulled Hunter out of the race well before the filing deadline. I also know that an effort was made to recruit Darcy Burner, who surely would have kicked Hague’s drunken ass, with or without the public scandal… that is, if Burner wasn’t already running for Congress, and, um, you know, if she actually lived in the district.

Those are the only names I know for sure, but I can think of at least three or four state legislators who stood a decent shot at winning, while risking little damage to their careers in a loss. It would have been nice to see somebody like, say… Rodney Tom take one for the team. But not a single Dem stepped up to the plate.

That said, there is a choice in this election, and I hope both the Times and my fellow Dems eventually focus back on this race with a fresh perspective. Richard Pope may be more than a little odd, but he’s smart, well-informed, and he doesn’t drink let alone drive drunk. If you actually sit down and talk with Pope about the kind of issues that routinely come before the council, he does generally come across as both reasonable and a Democrat, and his personal experience fighting for an education for his autistic daughter should make him a powerful advocate for adequate state funding of our schools.

I don’t expect the Democratic Party to embrace or support Pope, but I do strongly encourage my fellow Dems not to work against him. I’ve heard some talk of launching a write-in campaign in the general, to which I say “show me the money,” for unless Dems come up with a few hundred thousand dollars and a compelling candidate, any such effort would be counterproductive. Instead, I suggest the party and its surrogates focus all their efforts on attacking Hague, and educating voters on her blatant disrespect of both the law and our law enforcement officers.

And if we somehow stumble into Bizarro World and Pope actually wins an election, what’s the downside for Democrats? Nobody is going to blame the Dems if Pope’s antics cause embarrassment, and what would the Dems rather face in 2011, a general election battle with Jane Hague (or more likely, her incumbent, appointed replacement,) or a primary battle against Richard Pope? I’d choose the latter.

Of course, there is the Doomsday scenario: Pope not only wins, he turns out to be no worse than your average councilmember. Now that would be an embarrassment to both parties, and to the many journalists, editorialists and bloggers who have had so much fun poking fun at Pope over the years.