Archives for March 2008

Here’s a website where citizens can leave feedback and provide ratings for the police officers in their community. As you might have guessed, this site has generated some controversy, but it’s still up, and I definitely think it can be a good instrument for improving relations between communities and their police officers. I’ve gone through the listings for SPD and see a mix of both positive and negative feedback. If only I knew the name of the officer who broke up an obnoxiously loud UW graduation party on my street at 4am last June I could give him a 5 star rating.

Back in August, Democratic challenger Darcy Burner concluded her unprecedented $123,000 netroots fundraiser with an innovative, Internet town hall meeting on Iraq. Hundreds of concerned citizens from around the nation tuned in to the live stream that afternoon, to hear Burner announce her intention to work with military experts to develop a coherent plan for both pulling out of Iraq, and reconstructing that shattered nation in the absence of our armed forces. On Monday, March 17, Burner will present the fruits of her labor to the Take Back America conference in Washington D.C., along with an impressive group of military experts and fellow challengers.

Joining Burner at the unveiling of the Iraq strategy document will be Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Jared Polis (CO-2), and Tom Perriello (VA-5). Eric Massa (NY-29), Larry Byrnes (FL-14) and George Fearing (WA-4) have also signed on to the plan, with many more to challengers come. It is an impressive and ambitious plan that calls for the sort of diplomatic and economic surge that the Bush administration has ignored for all too long. It is anything but “cut and run.”

One of the criticisms routinely launched at Burner is that she lacks the experience and accomplishments to recommend her to Congress… as if a prior legislative career was ever a prerequisite for higher office. But if this is the type of energy and leadership Burner displays as a mere candidate — bringing together retired generals and other military experts along with congressional challengers from across the nation on such a difficult and divisive issue — just imagine what we can expect from Burner as the congresswoman from Washington’s Eight District.

Yesterday we learned that the NRCC illegally obtained an $8 million loan in October 2006 based on fabricated audits and other financial documents, at the same time it was dumping money into tight races like WA-08. So how much did Rep. Dave Reichert benefit from his party’s shady financial doings?

Between October 9, 2006 and election day, the NRCC reported $2,268,255.08 of independent expenditures on behalf of Reichert, the bulk of it in the form of attack ads on challenger Darcy Burner. That’s $2.3 million they might not have had available to spend, if they hadn’t falsified their books. Every document, every loan, every transfer and every expenditure was signed for by Christopher J. Ward.

All those TV ads portraying Burner as a fiscally irresponsible liberal who couldn’t be trusted with taxpayer money…? They were authorized with the signature of an embezzler who was cooking the books to fraudulently obtain loans.

I’m just sayin’.

“Whatever happened to creative destruction?” That’s the question Sean-Paul at The Agonist asks in response to news that Bear Stearns, the nation’s fifth largest securities firm, is getting an emergency bail-out from the Federal Reserve.

It really is socialism for the big boys but cutthroat capitalism for the little people in this country. In my opinion, Bear Stearns, more than any other firm on Wall Street should be allowed to fail. No handouts, or bailouts from the Fed. If this were 1998, well, we all know what happened when Bear declined to aid in the bailout package of LTCM. So, that’s one reason. But the other is this: the more the Feds prolong a real shakeout the worse it will be when it finally comes.

Democratic efforts to provide universal health care are decried from the right as “socialized medicine,” but for some reason we hear nary a whimper from the free market ideologues when banks and brokerage firms are propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Sign the dotted line on a predatory, sub-prime mortgage, and you’re told to live with the consequences of your mistake… but blow tens of billions of dollars buying high-yield — yet worthless — sub-prime loans, and the Fed rides to your rescue.

Huh. Who exactly are the socialists?

Some folks are asking me what I think about this, so here goes:

First off, I’m not surprised. The Sierra Club’s campaign against Proposition One was predicated on an anti-global warming message as much as it was a “we’re lukewarm on light rail” message. When I went to the No on Prop 1 kick-off last year, few of the participants were actually excited about light rail. They were more excited to punish people living in Eatonville. Different strokes.

During the Prop. 1 campaign, the Sierra Club went into the campaign basing their opposition on the package’s increase in highway miles. Over time, their opposition shifted in part to a financial one. They attacked the Seattle to Tacoma line, saying it cost too much. (But they did that with numbers from Ron Sims’ budget office, numbers no transportation planner ever signed off on.) Re-reading Ron Sims’ Op-Ed against Proposition One, it seemed more like an anti-light rail screed than anything else. The fact that the Sierra Club is following Sims off a cliff is no surprise to me.

However…

I do think they have a point about parking spaces. Sound Transit shouldn’t be building a large number of additional parking spaces for any of their stations. That said, whenever Sound Transit does outreach to suburban communities, the first response is always, “where’s the park and ride?” You have to understand the folks you’ll serve with this stuff.

Park and Rides, of course, are necessary to get people onto buses. You have to coax and cajole people to get on the bus. You don’t have to do much to get people onto trains. Nerdy transit studies have shown that people will walk much further to get to a train station. I do. People don’t walk that far to the bus stop. I sure don’t. I’d much rather walk than ride on a bus that’s stuck in traffic.

In the first place, many of the proposed light rail stations are sited on current Park and Ride lots. Sound Transit should do like they do in DC, where the parking lots at suburban Metro stations are pay-to-park. That’s a perfectly reasonable option.

So I wish Mike O’Brien well on his soul-searching. I spent all of the campaign telling people that coming back to the ballot with a transit-only package in 2008 was an impossibility. I’m glad I was wrong (so far). How ironic is it that the very groups who promised us a 2008 transit-only vote are the same ones who are now dragging their feet?

Want to have your say? Join me and others at:

Post-Proposition 1: The Future of Transportation in Seattle

Thursday, March 20, 2008
5:30-7:30PM
Spitfire (2219 4th Avenue, between Bell and Blanchard)
$10 suggested donation includes a drink

Members from both sides of the Prop. 1 debate, including…
*Seattle City Councilmember Jan Drago, Chair of the Transportation Committee
*Rob Johnson, Transportation Choices Coalition’s Regional Policy Director
*Mike O’Brien from the Sierra Club
*Greg Walker, Sound Transit’s Policy and Planning Officer
*Moderated by the Seattle Channel’s C.R. Douglas

The General has more on Sen. John McCain’s spiritual adviser.

“The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf.”
— Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA), former NRCC chair

Things are going from bad to worse for House Republicans, now that Christopher J. Ward — the “gold standard” of Republican campaign finance experts, and the treasurer of 83 GOP fundraising committees — is now suspected of embezzling millions of dollars from his clients. “Several hundred thousand dollars” were apparently stolen directly from the NRCC over a period of years in a financial fraud that could have far reaching consequences.

Ward is now alleged to have falsified numerous FEC filings. The NRCC apparently had nearly a million dollars less cash on hand than reported to the FEC at the end of 2006, and $740,000 less cash on hand than reported just a few weeks ago. But Ward wasn’t the only beneficiary of his crimes:

Officials told The Post that the NRCC’s problems may be more extensive. Republican lawmakers and former committee staff members now allege that Ward fabricated audits and other financial documents for 2003 to 2006, some of which were turned over to a Wachovia Bank branch in McLean in October 2006, when the NRCC borrowed $8 million in last-minute money for congressional campaigns.

That’s right, NRCC money spent on behalf of Dave Reichert in the final weeks of the 2006 campaign was obtained fraudulently, using “fabricated audits and other financial documents.” Loans obtained based on “outside audits” that were never conducted, were used to buy TV ads that helped put Reichert over the top.

And Republicans accuse Democrats of being the party of waste, fraud and abuse…?

UPDATE:
I’ve just started searching through the FEC reports and already found this NRCC expenditure from Oct. 13, 2006:

STRATEGIC MEDIA SERVICES
1023 31ST ST. NW
4TH FLOOR
WASHINGTON, DC 20007

Purpose of Expenditure: Issue Ad Placement
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: DARCY BURNER FOR CONGRESS
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is Washington in District 08
Date Expended = 10/13/2006
Person Completing Form: CHRISTOPHER J. WARD
Date Signed = 10/13/2006
Amount Expended = $424948.80

Notice the name on the form: “Christopher J. Ward”. So Ward falsifies audits and other documents to obtain an $8 million loan, and then turns around and spends nearly half a million dollars of it attacking Darcy Burner. And I’m guessing there’s another million or so more where that came from spent during the following weeks.

Congratulations Frank Blethen… you just won yourself a tax break!

Yesterday the state Senate joined the House in overwhelmingly approving HB 2585 (only Sen. Rodney Tom voted nay), a bill that redefines for B&O tax purposes the term “newspaper” to include its online editions. The result is that revenue from online advertising will now be taxed at the special discounted newspaper rate of 0.484 percent, instead of the standard 1.5 percent rate currently charged. Although this tax cut will cost the state $3 million in the next biennial budget, I’m guessing Gov. Gregoire will quietly sign it into law, rather risk the ire of the state’s editorial boards during an election year.

Kudos to Postman for risking his annual bonus by posting on this issue the other day, and extra special kudos to him for pointing out his bosses’ hypocrisy:

Allied Daily Newspapers, the newspaper lobbying group, has been making the case for the tax cut. Meanwhile, newspaper editorial boards have been urging lawmakers to save money this year to prepare for lean budget times ahead.

The Times said the state could set aside $1 billion-plus and that lawmakers should cut spending until they have reached that goal.” And the P-I, which is in a joint operating agreement with The Times, has said lawmakers have to prepare for hard choices, “even if that means holding back on some of the new spending being discussed …”

Our state’s newspaper industry already costs Washington state and local governments $40 million per biennium with their sales tax exemption for newspapers, so what’s another $3 million, huh? Meanwhile, we can make up the lost revenue by cutting health care for children, or the fat paychecks of our state’s teachers. It’s all about priorities.

But there’s one more nefarious aspect of this bill that Postman and other Olympia observers have missed (or didn’t seem to think it worthy enough to comment on.) Take a look at the language of the bill, and how it defines a newspaper:

What that means is the Times gets the discounted 0.484 percent rate on ads served on Postman’s blog, while dirty fucking hippies like me have to pay more than three times that!

Now, I don’t generate nearly enough ad revenue from HA to pay a B&O tax, but I hope to someday, and this 20th century definition of “newspaper” secured by industry lobbyists is intentionally anticompetitive. Crosscut bills itself as an “online newspaper,” and has gobs of venture money behind it, but because it doesn’t actually print on “newsprint in tabloid or broadsheet format folded loosely together without stapling, glue, or any other binding of any kind,” its owners must pay more than three times the tax rate as Blethen and his buddies. (That is, assuming Crosscut has any ad revenues. Or, um… readers.) Where is the sense in that?

Newspaper readership is relentlessly moving online, and there’s nothing the industry can do to stop it; it’s simply a more efficient and flexible way to deliver and consume content. But this shift in media consumption patterns also tears down longstanding barriers to market entry, creating the opportunity for bloggers like me to nibble away at the dailies’ audience and influence, and the potential for new online news ventures to seriously vie for ad dollars with relatively little upfront investment. And so the newspaper industry has convinced the legislature to discourage and disadvantage new competition by charging them more than three times their tax rate.

I am as good a writer as anybody at the Times or the P-I; it is the quality of my writing that has always been the key to HA’s success. That the Legislature should choose to penalize me and other entrepreneurs for publishing online rather than on dead trees is incomprehensible, especially in a state that has led the nation and the world in commercializing the Internet. It is offensive. It is insulting. And it will not stand.

Wow, talk about Rossi leaping into the conversation:

In a move stunning some of his conservative “family values” supporters, the former state senator Dino Rossi pledged this week that if elected governor he would use less expensive prostitutes than disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer, (D-NY).

“It’s just one more example of people in government spending the people’s hard earned tax money in an inefficient manner.”

Rossi declined to say if he would use prostitutes if elected governor, but said that if he did he wouldn’t spend as much “as that guy from New York.” He went on to blame Gov. Christine Gregoire for rising prices that have earned Washington state a reputation for having some of the most expensive hookers in the nation.

“This is just more proof of the awful business climate she’s responsible for,” added Rossi. “Thousands of whores leave this state every year for states with lower taxes and less regulation. If I’m elected, hookers are going to get the respect they deserve.”

A spokesman for Gregoire couldn’t stop laughing long enough to comment.

Put a little musical political comedy in your life this weekend. Seattle-based comedian Winlar will be performing Love, Politics, and Love this Friday and Saturday evening (14 and 15 Mar). The show starts at 8:00 pm at the Jewel Box Theater in the Rendezvous Bar and Restaurant (21 and older), 2322 2nd Ave, Belltown (441-5823).

Here’s a snippet from the show:

The show is also the long awaited DVD release party for the long-awaited DVD of Winlar’s last show Nothing Controversial: Just Religion, Politics and How to Raise Your Children—A steal at just $10!

Here are a few of my favorite Winlar videos:

• The Terrorist Win.
• The Ann Coulter song.
• If Jesus were here.
• Condoleezza.

Winlar is a former writer for Almost Live!, NPR’s Rewind with Bill Radke and theater’s Kazoo! sketch comedy group.

My walk from the office to the bus in the evening takes me through Pike Place Market. Normally, it’s the same thing. Dodging slow-walking tourists, walking through some family’s photo in front of the original Starbucks, and pretending I can’t hear people asking for change because my headphones are too loud. Today there was some actual excitement:

Crews are shooting various Seattle scenes this week for “Traveling,” a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart.

From about 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Wednesday, filming will be done around the Market and Post Street Alley. Pine, Stewart and Virginia streets between First and Western avenues will be closed most of the day.

They had a crane sprinkler system set up at the corner of Virginia and Western, raining down fake rain on Eckhart (he was the guy from Thank You for Smoking) as he held a briefcase over his head during the one shot I saw. A fake traffic jam filled the market with slightly more cars than there normally are on a nice day.

Hopefully, Eckhart fares better than the last person I saw filming a movie in Seattle.

You’re not dreaming, kids.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proposed today that all of the city’s taxis get at least 30 miles per gallon.

Nickels wants the switch from gas guzzler to climate friendly to be complete by 2013.

Most of the city’s current cabs are Ford Crown Victorias, which average about 18 miles per gallon.

City Council approval is required for the change.

“It doesn’t matter if your cab is orange, yellow or gray. We think they should be green,” Nickels said at a morning news conference under the Space Needle.

I use cabs on a regular basis. I’ve always wondered why the model of car cabbies use has always been the godawful Crown Vics. Eighteen miles a gallon sucks. The big upside to the Prius is that it actually gets better MPG in the city than on the highway. And you don’t have to plug ’em in!

My favorite complaint from the cab drivers?

Driver Gurminder Kahlon, who owns his own taxi, said, “It is very difficult for a driver to buy a $25,000 car,” he said. “There is a recession and Sound Transit opens next year.” He was referring to the planned 2009 start of light-rail service between downtown Seattle and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

But I thought that light rail to the airport would never work, crazy cab driver/monorail guy?

With 24 hours left in the 2008 session, state Sen. Brian Weinstein has issued the following press release:

Today, I communicated to the Speaker’s staff that I’ll agree in principle to Speaker Chopp’s three-point proposal with some minor technical and substantive changes, if he’ll agree to allow a homebuyer to bring a legal action against a builder who has violated a building code after giving the builder notice and an opportunity to fix it.

A builder is already required to comply with building codes, but Washington law affords a homebuyer no rights to enforce the building code. This is a bare minimal right that all Washingtonians must agree a homebuyer should have.

I know the Speaker is a man of his word, and I would only do this with a good faith representation from him that he will work diligently to expand the right of access to the courts to aggrieved homebuyers in the next Legislative Session.

Really… is that so much to ask for? The right to sue a builder if they violate a building code, and refuse to fix it? I invite the pro-BIAW trolls in the comment thread to justify to me why homebuyers should not have this right?

I don’t normally reprint emails forwarded my way without asking permission, but since this email from Attorney Sandy Levy to Rep. Mark Ericks was CC’d to a number of journalists, I think it’s pretty much fair game.

Dear Rep. Ericks:

Boy, was I a sucker. I believed you were an interested, impartial and objective task force chairman, appointed by Speaker Chopp to investigate problems in the homebuilding industry and to report to the Speaker with recommendations. You told me when we met in August of last year that you would convene your committee, bring me in to speak, and bring in homeowners to hear first hand the problems they were having. Instead, you never convened that group, at least not with any homeowners or their representatives.

Now I find out the following article, published today:

While some accounts explain that Chopp (who killed Sen. Weinstein’s bill late last week at the behest of the Building Industry Association of Washington) crafted his alternative proposal (a study!!) with Democratic Rep. Mark Ericks (D-1, Bothell), they fail to report that Rep. Ericks was the guest of honor at last Tuesday’s BIAW fund raiser at the BIAW’s offices in Olympia.

Mark, it’s not as though there were no homeowner groups with real complaints, with visible problems you could have visited yourself. One of them is just a few minutes away from the Capitol, such as the 130 unit Cooper Crest subdivision in Olympia. Yet you and the Speaker misinformed the public that you were leading an independent task force and you were meeting with stakeholders. I don’t know who the stakeholders were, other than BIAW. I know your committee didn’t meet with me, as you had promised. I guess money talks doesn’t it? Homeowners just don’t have the fat wallet that BIAW does to line legislative pockets. From the same article as above comes this illuminating piece of information:

Killing Sen. Weinstein’s bill—which would have guaranteed a warranty for consumers when they buy a new home (allowing consumers to sue contractors for faulty or shoddy work)—was the BIAW’s top legislative priority this year. The powerful conservative lobby—which bankrolls the GOP—also maxed out to Democratic Rep. Ericks last election cycle.

Misleading the public and trying to manipulate public opinion should be grounds for dismissal as a public official. What you have done is a disgrace to democracy. And, my representatives have abetted this trampling of citizen rights. Where is the guiding principle that you disclose any appearance of impropriety, any appearance of a conflict of interest. How do you take money from BIAW, then say you are an independent fact finder on a task force charged with analysis of a problem? Doesn’t that strike you as shocking?

Sandy Levy

The emphasis is Mr. Levy’s.

My personal outrage has never focused solely on the bill itself; there isn’t a session that goes by in which I’m not disappointed by the death of bills that didn’t even get a hearing, let alone a floor vote. Rather, my outrage, like that expressed by Levy, stems from the manner in which this bill has been consistently blocked by the militia-funding orca-killers at the BIAW, without anybody on the Democratic side having the balls to acknowledge the truth. I expect to be disappointed by the Democratic majority either because they genuinely disagree with me on issues of policy or on political strategy; I just don’t expect them to be shills for the enemy. I’ve got nothing against builders or contractors or their industry, but the organization that represents them is viciously anti-Democratic, and politically amoral at best. The BIAW is an organization dedicated to legislating the labor movement out of existence, and opposing all and every environmental regulation. And they have given every indication that they will stop at nothing to achieve their agenda.

If Rep. Ericks has a reply to Mr. Levy, in which amongst other things, he can defend his appearance as a “guest of honor” at a BIAW fundraiser, I’d be happy to post it here. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine what that defense might be.