Archives for November 2007

That’s the local news media for you; always looking for the pony… before, you know, shooting it in the head and leaving it to rot on the side of trail.

Don’t get me wrong — I love ponies — and I hope whoever capped those two ponies in North Bend are brought to justice for their cruel and inhumane act. But you’d think if the region’s news media was going to spend an entire weekend obsessing on yet another high profile case of animal cruelty, they might want to focus a little on the race for the office of the guy whose job it is to prosecute the evil doers, and report the obvious fact that Dan Satterberg and his Republican cohorts are cheating. I suppose if Bill Sherman was found shot through the head on the side of a trail, lying dead in a pile of Skip Rowley’s business cards, our objective media would want to wait until after the election to report all the facts.

Yeah sure, I know, that’s a pretty violent image, but I’m feeling pretty violent right now. Must have been all those Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons I watched as a kid:

Preschool boys who watch violent television become markedly more aggressive and anti-social as they grow older, according to a study by Seattle researchers in one of the largest examinations so far of such connections.

At the same time, girls appear impervious to the effects of television violence, a finding that has the researchers puzzled.

Hint to researchers: testosterone. Hint to media: you know what else causes violence? War. The media dutifully reports President Bush’s latest upbeat update on the war, at the same time 2007 is headed toward becoming the deadliest year yet in Iraq. How do we explain the constant contradiction between the news in the headlines and the facts on the ground? Um…

The Iraq war represents the end of the media as a major actor in war. … [I]n Iraq the number of journalists killed (now at least 138) means that this war is near private – the images and people who might make the horror of this war real don’t reach our screens. It’s no longer a war that is accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement.

Perhaps if there were more images of dead ponies, Americans might finally take to the streets in opposition to the war.

And you know what else isn’t being made accessible to public scrutiny or democratic engagement? The fact that Skip Rowley, Bruce McCaw and Martin Selig illegally earmarked $100,000 in excess contributions to Dan Satterberg’s campaign. You’d think, maybe, a scandal like this coming in the final days of a high profile race might garner at least a little interest from working journalists. You’d think somebody might sit down and try to connect the dots instead of just taking Satterberg at his word that he is above politics. But apparently they’re all too busy focusing on King Tut’s mummified face, or the man who lost his penis in prison, or gee, I dunno… wild mustangs being offered for adoption.

That’s the local news media for you; always looking for the pony.

The “Commission,” in this case, is the Federal Communications Commission, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

Twice before — on March 7, 2003, and just last year, on November 30, 2006 — hundreds of area residents jammed auditoriums to testify overwhelmingly in opposition to a Republican-dominated FCC’s attempts to further weaken ownership limits on broadcast television and radio properties. In each case, the crowds testified only before the two Democratic commissioners; the three-person Republican majority was MIA. But those crowds were broadly representative of a national movement for media democracy that in only a few years stymied former FCC Chair Michael Powell’s deregulation bid, preserved net neutrality, and stopped a telecommunications lobby “reform bill” widely expected to pass the Republican Congress in 2006. In last year’s hearing, local testifiers against deregulation spanned an unlikely ideological range, from Reclaim the Media’s Jonathan Lawson to Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, from KVI Radio host John Carlson to UW President Mark Emmert.

This time, FCC Chair Kevin Martin, architect of the latest (big) industry deregulation scheme, is bringing the whole Commission to town to “prove” to them that Seattle really doesn’t care all that much about this arcane stuff. Which is why, despite the entreaties of local Congresspeople (who wanted four weeks), he has given exactly five business days’ notice for this unprecedented local hearing. The hearing was announced late in the day Friday, November 2, timed for the least-read and -viewed news time of the week. The hearing itself will also be on a Friday night, from 4-11 PM November 9 at Town Hall, 8th & Seneca near downtown Seattle.

For the first two hearings, a significant number of people traveled from throughout the region, from California to Montana to Alaska, to make their opinions known to the FCC. The short notice and inconvenient time seem particularly designed to suppress regional testimony. Seattle area supporters of media democracy will need to stand in their stead. The FCC is hoping for a sedate dog and pony show that will ratify its ideological desire to give the public’s airwaves to the biggest companies and highest bidders (think Murdoch), regardless of content. They are looking to ram this through before opponents can get organized.

Our job is to be organized. And show up.

In a significant way, we already are organized. Much has changed since 2003, when the FCC first came to town. Nationally, the media democracy movement that barely existed five years ago is now a potent political force. Locally, newspaper lovers dodged a bullet when an ongoing court bid to dissolve the Times’ and P-I’s Joint Operating Agreement was going so badly for the Times (which initiated it) that the JOA was extended instead. But King County’s other daily paper, the King County Journal, was dissolved in the last year, and the 2006 purchase of the Seattle Weekly by the country’s largest “alternative” weekly chain led to the effective dismantling of its news department. Among the companies owning the 30 or so major local radio and television stations, only Fisher Broadcasting (KOMO TV/radio, KVI and Star 101.5 radio) is locally owned.

I have a personal stake in this, of course. I was a columnist and editorial board member at the Weekly for eight years, until its shift in editorial direction. Plus, a media company I started over 20 years ago is now owned by Clear Channel, which is also the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, with over 1,200. When Clear Channel started, the FCC allowed a maximum of 14 stations per company nationally.) Now Clear Channel, CBS, Entercom, and Sandusky own five radio stations each in the Seattle area alone.

Ultimately, though, my personal stake is the same as everyone else’s: I want to know about decisions being made that might affect my life, and I don’t trust Clear Channel or CBS or Belo or Entercom or any of the other companies controlling our TV and radio dials to tell me what I need to know. I don’t like the idea of media monopolies on information. The same is true of the music I listen to or the entertainment programs I watch. The number of people who access radio or TV programming through satellite or their computer is still minimal. And so the FCC’s proposed ruling — which would, for the first time, allow radio, TV, cable, and newspapers in the same cities to all be co-owned by one company — is a recipe for a media monopoly on local news, entertainment, and culture.

November 9 is our chance to tell the FCC what we think of the idea. If you care about a free flow of information in our democracy, please turn out, and let them know what you think. Whether they want to know or not.

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

7PM: Are Skip Rowley et al buying the KC Prosecutor?
Eastside developer Skip Rowley, Seattle developer Martin Selig and cellphone billionaire Bruce McCaw illegally launder $100,000 through the WSRP and into Dan Satterberg’s campaign… and the local media shrugs with indifference. Is this what Satterberg meant when he said he would keep his office out of politics and politics out of his office? Democratic candidate Bill Sherman joins me in studio. I expect him to speak bluntly.

8PM: Who is the father of the two-party system?
In his book American Creation, Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, historian Joseph Ellis wrote of the founding fathers: “they created political parties as institutionalized channels for ongoing debate, which eventually permitted dissent to be regarded not as a treasonable act, but as a legitimate voice in and endless argument.” The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner joins me by phone to discuss his book.

9PM: TBA
More liberal propaganda.

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

Over on Slog, Josh has cross-referenced Satterberg donors with those who have also recently contributed large, lump sum contributions to the WSRP. What did he find?

[P]eople who made big donations to Satterberg, the Republican candidate for KC Prosecutor, subsequently made large donations to a Washington State GOP account that has now downloaded about $125,000 to Satterberg.

Of the 18 donations to this GOP account, 13 donations were made by big Satterberg supporters. Or put another way: 78 percent of the money in the account, $139,500 out of $176,700, came from Satterberg supporters.

Was the GOP soliciting money from Satterberg donors, telling them the money would go directly to Satterberg—and then making good on that promise? That would be illegal: Parties cannot earmark donations for specific candidates. The GOP denies they earmarked the money. […] It certainly looks like Satterberg donors and the GOP are circumventing contribution rules…

Yes, it certainly does. Of the 18 donations to the WSRP “Non-exempt” committee, one donation for $200 was made in April of 2007; the other $176,500 was dumped in over the past few weeks.

17 wealthy contributors laundering $176,500 through the WSRP and into Satterberg’s account during the final days of the campaign is not politics as usual — it is a blatant and cynical effort to skirt our state’s campaign finance laws. By comparison, the Dems “non-exempt” committee has raised money from over 4,300 donors, mostly in contributions of $100 or less… and no large, lump sum, last minute contributions. The difference couldn’t be more stark.

Think about it: the WSRP committee had only $4,000 in the bank as recently as October 9. How could the $125,000 since spent on Satterberg have been raised for anything else? It defies belief to argue that Rowley, Selig and McCaw wrote checks totaling $100,000 for any other purpose. It just doesn’t pass the smell test!

What the fuck does it take for our dailies to connect the dots?

UPDATE:
Bill Sherman will be my guest tonight at 7PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO. Tune in to find out if he’s as angry as I am.

You know, everybody assured me at the outset of this race that Dan Satterberg was a decent guy, but I dunno, this sort of statement sure does strike me as beyond disingenuous:

“It is ironic that I’m getting help from the Republican Party even though they are well aware of my desire to make the office nonpartisan. I do expect they would rather have me running a nonpartisan office than Mr. Sherman running a partisan office.”

“Ironic” huh? Really? Did he say that with a straight face? What sort of fucking idiots does he take us for?

I hate people who think they’re smarter than me, unless they really are. (And then, I only just mildly resent them.)

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

7PM: D. Parvaz burns churches, plus the Stranger Hour
Seattle P-I editorial columnist D. Parvaz joins us at the top of the hour to tell us why she hates Christians, God and America, and to relate her experience through the looking glass of right-wing blogs, radio and TV. Then Josh and Erica join me from The Stranger for our recap of the week’s news, and a look ahead to Tuesday’s election.

8PM: Who knew?
Pakistan’s Musharraf declares a state of emergency, the Sonics declare they’re moving to Oklahoma City, and I declare that Dan Satterberg is just another law-breaking Republican politician. Who knew? And who cares? Apparently not the traditional media establishment. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait to see what happens if FCC chair Kevin Martin gets his way, and media ownership rules are further loosened.

9PM: TBA
More liberal propaganda.

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

I don’t know what makes me angrier right now, the fact that Dan Satterberg is about to win this election on the back of $170,000 in illegal contributions, or that my friends in the media are allowing him to get away with it without repercussions.

As I predicted eight days ago, the Washington State Republican Party is flooding the prosecutor’s race with money over the final few days of the campaign, laundering huge, lump sum contributions from developers and other special interests, through the party, and back into Satterberg’s coffers. Make no mistake, these contributions were earmarked for Satterberg’s campaign, and Satterberg clearly knew the money was coming. First Satterberg goes $40,000 into debt buying TV time, and then magically, Thursday night, nearly $40,000 gets transfered into his campaign from the WSRP. Then after he books yet more TV time for the final few days of the campaign, the WSRP transfers another $81,000 into Satterberg’s account. That brings the total to over $155,000 from the state and county party in just the past couple weeks.

Where is this money coming from? $75,000 from Eastside developer Skip Rowley, $25,000 from Seattle developer Martin Selig, $25,000 from cell phone billionaire Bruce McCaw, plus a rogues gallery of GOP faithful including Mike McGavick, Reagan Dunn, and Nuprecon Construction’s John Hennessy… all making large contributions well in excess of the $700 limit for the general election, and all timed for the final few weeks of the campaign. This was clearly a deliberate attempt to skirt our state and local campaign finance limit and reporting statutes… and our TV, radio and print media just doesn’t seem to care!

Satterberg ran promising to keep his office out of politics and politics out of his office, and yet he has run the most shamelessly partisan political campaign for PAO in recent memory. He has made a mockery out of his non-partisanship pledge, and fools out of our region’s political reporters by coordinating large, illegal contributions through state and county party organizations, and timing the disclosure for the weekend before the election, when newsrooms are reduced to skeleton staffs, and two-thirds of the ballots have already been cast.

I doubt they left a paper trail, but I have no qualms in stating that Rowley, Selig and the others gave their money to the WSRP specifically for the purpose of funneling it into Satterberg’s campaign, and that Satterberg and his staff operated in coordination with the party and their contributors. Satterberg, the GOP and their contributors have perpetrated a fraud on the citizens of King County, and if they dispute this charge I challenge them to sue me for libel. Of course they won’t, because they couldn’t possibly prove their innocence in a court of law.

So congratulations to my friends in the traditional media: your vaunted “objectivity” and hunger for non-partisanship has once again allowed a savvy politician and his operatives to play you like a violin. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see this coming, and yet you willfully ignored it, because it just didn’t fit your frame. Satterberg’s strategy always relied on your negligence — or complicity — to put this fraud over on the voting public, and he obviously judged you right.

I just ordered myself a new MacBook, taking advantage of HA reader Adam’s Apple employee discount. It’s my first new laptop since I purchased my recently deceased iBook in October, 2001. Thanks Adam, I’m really looking forward to it.

But my semi-impoverishment is nothing compared to that of fellow HA blogger Will, who recently quit his day job to go back to college full time. Will frequently finds himself at the UW libraries doing research, and a laptop sure would make it easier for him to both complete his studies and blog here on HA. Just about anything, Mac or Win, with WiFi and a copy of Word, would do the trick.

So if you have an old laptop lying around that you no longer use, and you’d like to donate it to a worthy cause, just drop me or Will an email and we’ll work out the details. We really appreciate your generosity.

Not many surprises in the news this morning, including this non-shocker out of Pakistan:

Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday, ahead of a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, thrusting the country deeper into political turmoil as it struggles with spreading Islamic militancy.

Seven Supreme Court judges immediately rejected the emergency, which suspended the current constitution.

There are more than a few folks who expect a similar emergency to be declared by President Bush in the weeks leading up to the November 2008 election… you know, except for the part about the Supreme Court rejecting it.

See… this is bipartisanship:

Michael Mukasey drew closer to becoming attorney general Friday after two key Senate Democrats said they would vote for him despite his refusal to say whether waterboarding is torture.

The decision by Sens. Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein to back President Bush’s nominee came shortly after the chairman of the committee, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced he would vote against Mukasey, a former federal judge.

[…] Including Leahy, five of the Judiciary Committee’s 10 Democrats had said they would vote against Mukasey’s confirmation after the nominee earlier this week refused to say that waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, is torture and therefore illegal.

But with nine Republicans on the panel, Schumer and Feinstein’s support for Mukasey virtually guarantees that a majority of the committee will recommend his confirmation when it votes on it next Tuesday.

When the media establishment moralistically calls for more bipartisanship, this is what they are talking about: Democrats caving and crossing the aisle to vote with the Republican block. It almost never happens the other way around on the most important issues of the day. Almost Never.

The issue here was simple. Is simulated drowning torture, and thus illegal? Mukasey, soon to be our nation’s top law enforcement official, refused to say. So this noble display of bipartisanship now confirms that the United States of America is a nation that condones torture.

Fuck bipartisanship.

I’ve been reluctant to join the fun of the Prop 1 debate up here on the front page, but I’ve gotta respond to Josh Feit here. He has a valid point that building massive parking lots around light rail stations will allow more people to drive to them. That’s obvious. But I think he misses the bigger point:

Because, like I said yesterday, ill-conceived light rail lines don’t create density, they create outpost park and rides that fuel exurban development and more roads. (Check out towns like New Market, Maryland “along” the Red Line—or some 40 miles away from DC.)

New Market, Maryland isn’t some new town created by expanded rail. It’s a rest stop town that was established over 200 years ago. It makes sense to build along established trafficways to accomodate the kinds of travel that people normally do. The development of the Philadelphia suburbs was very much shaped by where rail lines existed and along the main travel lanes, from the old Main Line to the newer SEPTA lines.

But while rail lines can concentrate development in certain areas, some people simply don’t like living in dense areas. No amount of urban planning will ever change how they think. One of the main problems I see undermining the development of better transportation solutions in this city is the belief that our transportation solutions should be used in a way to change people’s behavior. You can’t do that – it won’t work. You can only build systems that cater to people’s existing travel patterns and give them better options. Eventually, if you build a system that caters to what people want and need, they will use it to its fullest potential.

Sprawl will still happen no matter how effective your transit system is and how much effort you put into urban planning. New York City has a massive amount of trains going into the city from all over the region, yet people still live in far-off places, drive to train stations, and commute there. You’ll never stop people from choosing to live far from where they work in order to live more cheaply or to be far from others.

The solution isn’t to only build rail to places where people won’t (or can’t) drive to the station to ride it. The solution is to build rail so that larger numbers of people only have to drive their cars a short distance every day, rather than clogging the streets going into the major downtown centers (Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Bellevue) where most people work.

As I warned last week, Republicans are flooding the prosecutor’s race with money, with another $38,274 transfered from the state Republican Party into Dan Satterberg’s account just yesterday. That brings Satterberg’s total King County and state GOP cash and in-kind contributions to $74,405, with more to come. Yup, he sure is looking non-partisan to me.

Much of this money is coming from the usual suspects, folks like Bruce McCaw, Martin Selig and Skip Rowley who have given a combined $100,000 to the state GOP over the past couple weeks. Of course, this money was given with no earmark or quid pro quo — that would be illegal — but you can be damn sure that they knew exactly how their dollars were going to be spent… just like senior deputy prosecutor Nelson Lee, who after having his family and his family business max out to Satterberg, suddenly became a major GOP donor, giving $10,000 to the state party on 10/12. (So much for Satterberg’s pledge to keep the office out of politics.) Man… I’ve got to get me one of those high-paid government jobs.

I suppose this is all legal, but it’s money laundering nonetheless, and if Satterberg truly wanted to keep his office non-partisan he wouldn’t stand for any of it. Instead it’s politics as usual in the prosecutor’s race, and partisan politics at that… which I wouldn’t mind so much, if Satterberg was just honest about it.

I lived in rural King County for much of my childhood. In 1992, me and my dad went to Husky Stadium to watch the undefeated UW Huskies destroy Pacific. My dad hated (and hates) sports, and it was nice of him to do an activity that only I wanted to do. It was a fun; a day of watching football surrounded by drunk-ass WASPs and rowdy college kids. Mark Brunell (yeah!) and Bill Joe Hobert (boo!) split time at QB, and Napoleon Kaufman was unstoppable at tailback.

So how did we get from Redmond to Montlake? My dad drove us to the Downtown Redmond Park and Ride. We parked and waited for the Metro bus that would take us, across the Governor Albert D. Rosellini Bridge, to Montlake and Husky Stadium.

Well, the bus never showed, so we had to drive. Traffic sucked, as it always does. We missed kickoff.

I chalk it up to the inherent drawbacks of a bus system. If my dad had driven us to the Downtown Redmond Light Rail Station, it would have been a very different story. Given that light rail has suburban headways of eight minutes (depending on demand, service could be more frequent, or less frequent), the train (barring some calamity) would have shown within those eight minutes, and we would have saved big bucks on parking.

Suburban and rural folks are likely to engage with transit through park and rides. When Sound Transit does community forums out in the ‘burbs, the first question is always, “where are the park and rides?” This is a sensitive issue, especially for enviro-folks, who don’t like park and rides because they think them too accommodating to the automobile.

Josh Feit writes:

It sounds counterintuitive, but you have to be strategic about using mass transit to promote density.

Light rail is not just a pour and stir fix.

Running the line where there’s already some earnest development will suck in development and fight sprawl. Spending billions to run it out into Yenemsvelt [Yiddish for “far, far away” -Will] will simply create park and rides and more sprawl.

Opposing light rail on because of park and rides is so incredibly short-sided. If suburban citizens are going to pay taxes for transit, they’ll demand park and rides. Lecturing them to think otherwise is mostly a waste of time.

Besides, who cares? Park and rides become popular, they fill up, and the decision is made about what to do next. Sometimes they’re expanded into parking garages. And those parking garages eventually become paid parking garages, which turn into paid carpool parking garages, which turn into… apartments with retail. I know, evil right?

The park and rides along I-5 are slated to become light rail stations. The empty lots and asphalt slabs that surround these stations are going to turn into mixed-use developments (if you want examples, visit the line that’s opening in ’09). Those developments with attract the kinds of folks who will leave the car at home and ride the train instead. Sure, they’ll use the Honda (or better yet, a Prius Plug-In Hybrid) to run to the store, but many trips, especially the everyday commute-type trips, can and will be made by train. If they need a car at work, there’s always Flexcar (soon to be ZipCar). Give people choices and they’ll respond.

Like Josh, I would err on the side of fewer park and rides at rail stations. Unlike Josh, I’m not going to kill a huge light rail investment over park and rides.