Archives for June 2008

Two weeks ago, Goldy praised reporter/blogger Niki Sullivan for “holding people in power accountable.” I think that’s central to why I do this and why motivated bloggers are slowly changing the political landscape in this country. But I also strongly believe that this applies to the politicians we support, and that’s why I’ve been very critical of Governor Gregoire recently for the way she’s handled the process for establishing “60-day-supply” medical marijuana limits for the state’s qualified patients.

Carol Ostrom from the Seattle Times writes about the meeting that took place yesterday involving a smaller group of stakeholders (it was only open to the public at the last minute due to public pressure). In Gregoire’s radio appearance on KUOW last week, she said (falsely) that doctors were not involved in the initial workshops held around the state and that they needed to be more involved. However, according to Steve Sarich from the patient assistance group CannaCare, one of the physicians who submitted testimony to the workshops wasn’t contacted about the meeting until Friday evening. On the other hand, Don Pierce, the executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, is still heavily involved in the process despite not having anything valuable to contribute to what should be a medical discussion. If the Governor truly believes that the decision over the limits should be rooted in medical necessity, she’s not doing a very good job convincing anyone of her sincerity.

I’ve posted up today in response to Ostrom’s latest report and I’m hoping to get some clarification on my conclusion:

I’ve covered Don Pierce and his illogal and uninformed nonsense before, but he’s hitting upon an even more absurd argument by saying that “anybody involved in cultivation and sale could hide behind” a 10ft by 10ft growing area. Is he kidding? We’re talking about the state’s #1 cash crop. Someone with a small patch of plants in their basement isn’t even a drop in the bucket to the overall supply of illegal marijuana in this state. According to the article linked above, law enforcement seized just under 300,000 plants in this state last year, and even that didn’t put a dent in the supply anywhere in Washington.

The question here, and I brought this up in the last post, is why the Governor continues to believe that someone like Don Pierce should be involved in this process? He has no expertise in medicine, he clearly has no clue what he’s talking about, he’s intentionally being misleading, and he has a strong incentive to keep getting paid with taxpayer money to do something that the citizens of this state have repeatedly indicated (through the ballot box and from polling) that they don’t think he should be doing (arresting medical marijuana patients). The Governor is often accused of being a pawn for the state’s unions over the good of the overall public. I don’t always agree with that assessment, but in this case, there’s really no other conclusion to draw.

In defending Dave Reichert’s abusive franking practices, the typical Republican defense is to roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders and say “everybody does it.” But not everybody does, and of those who do, few abuse the privilege to the extent of Reichert. And almost nobody uses taxpayer money to lie to taxpayers the way Reichert does in his franked mail cum campaign brochures.

Take for example Reichert’s recent taxpayer-funded campaign mailer constituent communication. In this one, Reichert touts his “bold” earmark reform… which basically consists of “not seeking congressional earmarks this year.”

“It is time to change the way things are done in Congress,” Reichert spends your money telling you, which is why he supports “a moratorium on earmarks, which have led to wasteful spending of your money.”

And yet, just two years ago, Reichert dropped a big chunk of taxpayer change on a piece of franked mail with the headline “Congressman Dave Reichert: Working for You,” and featuring a map bragging about all the pork he claimed to have have brought home to his district.

So one piece of franked mail touts his opposition to wasteful earmarks, while another brags about his profligate use of the tool. That’s the kind of rank hypocrisy Reichert shouldn’t be able to get away with, unless… you know… our local media lets him.

According to the AP, it’s over:

Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

[…] The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

Good.  Now we can get on to the business of kicking John McCain’s ass.

A news shocker in the Seattle Times this morning: “Feds say prostitution rampant at strip clubs.” (Cue Captain Renault.)

So, then… um… why did it take three years to conduct their “undercover” investigation? Huh.

That’s what CNN says.

More Republican humor…

Then came the offensive punch line. Cheney explained that during the course of researching his family lineage for Lynne’s memoir “Blue Skies, No Fences” last year, he learned there were Cheneys on both his father’s and his mother’s side of the family. There was a Richard Cheney on his mother’s side, the vice president said.

“So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia,” Cheney quipped.

A) Like anybody’s surprised that Dick Cheney is the product of incest; and B) Barack Obama is the elitist?

WA superdelegate David McDonald has endorsed Barack Obama. The end is nigh tomorrow.

UPDATE:
Here’s McDonald’s statement:

As you know, I serve on the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee.  Many months ago I made a personal choice to stay neutral as a super-delegate in the presidential nominating contest until the RBC had resolved all significant issues likely to come before it.  On Saturday the RBC resolved the last of those issues.  After a day of sightseeing in Washington DC, a long, cell-phone free plane ride home and some sleep, I have decided to cast my vote as a member of the Democratic National Committee for Senator Barack Obama.

The Democratic Party has been blessed this year with a century’s worth of great candidates for President.  This was not an easy choice.  Both of the candidates who remain in contention are capable of winning the general election and would likely do so if selected as the nominee.  The policy differences between them are relatively minor compared to the gulf between the Bush-McCain Republican team and the needs of the American people.  I cannot stress enough how proud I am to be associated with a political party that has brought to the forefront this incredible pair of final contenders.

It has been apparent to me over the months, however, that Senator Obama’s candidacy has brought astounding new energy and hope to the Democratic Party nationwide.  He has shown a remarkable ability to organize and mobilize Democratic voters and focus their efforts on the key task of persuading independent voters around the country to join us in changing the White House agenda.  His leadership provides, I believe, a unique opportunity to continue to expand this party, to continue our long term agenda of contesting—and converting—the “red” areas of the country, and to continue our task of making conditions better for Americans everywhere.  It is an opportunity that I want to help turn into a reality.

I couldn’t agree with him more.

Democrats Work is bringing Gen. Wes Clark into one lucky congressional district to participate in a community service project, and thanks to your support, Darcy Burner and WA-08 have made the cut. Darcy won the first round of voting, but the totals are reset to zero for this final round of voting.

So please vote for Darcy today, and bring Gen. Clark in WA-08!

Has the agonizing, prolonged battle between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama helped or harmed the Democratic brand name? This has become a hot topic of debate at dinner tables, in bars, and in car pool across the nation. But mostly the debate has been fueled by a seemingly endless parade of political pundits.

One side—the pessimists—argue that irreparable harm has been caused by elevated rancor and even the use of Rovian tactics by the campaigns. The other side—the optimists—argue that the media attention, fanaticism, and fevered pace of campaigning ultimately benefits the Democrats.

I fall in the optimist camp, but I am always more comfortable having empirical verification of my opinion. And empirical evidence there is.

Every month, Rasmussen Reports releases a new partisan trends report based on monthly interviews of a huge number of people:

…the Democrats now have the largest partisan advantage over the Republicans since Rasmussen Reports began tracking this data on a monthly basis nearly six years ago.

During the month of April, 41.4% of Americans considered themselves to be Democrats. Just 31.4% said they were Republicans and 27.2% were not affiliated with either major party.

April was the third straight month that the number of Democrats topped 41%. Prior to February of this year, neither party had ever reached the 39% level of support.
[…]

The partisan gap now shows the Democrats with a 10.0 percentage point advantage over the Republicans. That’s the largest advantage ever recorded by either party. In fact, before these past three months, the previous high was a 6.9 point percentage point edge for the Democrats in December 2006.

Here is a graph showing how the trend in party affiliation has changed over time for the U.S.:

Republicans reached their peak numbers of 37.3% in September of 2004, and have been on a slow decline since.

Until about six months ago, the Democrats were holding steady at about 37% Democratic voter identity. The rise since December has been nothing short of stunning. Democrats had 36.3% identity in December and shot up to 41.5% in February—just about the time that the race started heating up.

The data don’t tell us what this increase is all about. (Although…the correlations among the groups suggest that a shift from “Other” identity to Democratic identity explains about 2/3 of the recent variation). No doubt non-primary things like ongoing Republican scandals, a tanking economy, a dragged-out occupation of Iraq, soaring fuel prices, and the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney call themselves Republicans have helped swell the ranks of Democrats.

A cautious statement would be that any damage done by the primary contest is minor at worst, as the damage has been more than offset by the Republican collapse, resulting in a net gain for Democrats.

An alternative explanation is that the primary-from-hell really has been a good thing for Democrats.

How can Dave Reichert afford to pay for so many glossy, full-color mailings, when his campaign is struggling to raise money? Easy… he just passes the cost off to unsuspecting taxpayers:

At first glance, these fliers may look like campaign mailers. But they are produced and mailed at taxpayer expense, using a congressional privilege called “franked mail.”

Most members of Congress use such taxpayer-financed mail to let constituents know what’s happening on Capitol Hill and within their districts. Since his election to Congress in 2004, Reichert has been among the state’s biggest users of franked mail. He spent more on postage than other members of the state’s delegation in 2005 and 2006, according to federal records.

According to the Seattle Times, Reichert ranked second in the state for 2007, racking up a bill of $90,000 to Jay Inslee’s $104,000. But Reichert’s total only includes the cost of postage, whereas Inslee’s report includes the costs of printing and design. (Reichert mailed out 475,000 pieces compared to Inslee’s 171,000.) Anybody who has ever paid to print glossy, double-sided, full-color, 11×17 tri-folds knows that they don’t come cheap, so we’re looking at a total bill to taxpayers of as much as $500,000.

That’s like a half-million dollar campaign contribution from US taxpayers… and that’s just for 2007. Reichert sent out a deluge of franked mail in recent months, ahead of the May 21 cutoff, repeating a pattern of franking abuse he established back in 2006… an “aggressive Franked Mail program” even by his own admission:

Will also oversee and update electronic, internet and other communications, including an aggressive Franked Mail program.

That’s from a March 2007 job ad Reichert ran for a Press Secretary, a job description that curiously included “campaign experience” as a necessary qualification for a staff position that is expressly prohibited by law from engaging in campaign activities. Huh.

Like all Republicans, Reichert likes to fancy himself a fiscal conservative. But when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on himself he is consistently our state’s most profligate spendthrift.

See, this is why the Seattle Times is slowly going out of business:

As an industry, we are in hard times. […] Like radio, it appears that Internet-delivered news has to be supported entirely by advertising.

We offer such ads, and every quarter we sell more of them. And yet we see the pot of gold in Internet advertising going to one company: Google. […] We look at Google, and ask: What do you offer? A shelf on which to stack our product. It is an instantaneous and custom-made shelf. It is useful, and we use it every day. But still, it holds our product.

[…] Copyright law everywhere is a balancing act. It is a system of rules to make sure that writers, photographers, musicians and other creators are paid. If, because technology changes, the law gives too much power to the owner of the shelf and not enough to those who create the products on it, the law can be adjusted.

Um… could they be more clueless? Rather than trying to adapt to the new media paradigm, they want to hide from it. What’s next, suing bloggers to prevent us from blockquoting and linking? And after that, why not just sue your own customers? (Just look how well that’s worked out for the recording industry.)

Hell, if the Times doesn’t want its slot on Google News, I’ll take it; it would likely double my traffic, and with it, my revenue from Google AdSense. See, Google doesn’t steal audience from newspaper websites, it drives traffic toward them, and if the Times can’t figure out how to monetize their traffic, well that’s their problem. No wait… it’s my problem too, because part of the reason none of us are making enough money is because the goddamn newspaper industry spent the better part of a decade trash-talking online ads in a futile effort to defend their lucrative print ad business.

So quit whining about Google, Frank, and start figuring out how to get a decent price for your valuable online inventory. We’re all counting on you.

From today’s Seattle Times:

The state Republican Party adopted a platform Saturday that includes a provision aimed at opposing automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

Actually, it opposes automatic citizenship for legal residents too, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

“Immigration is an issue that a lot of our party activists feel strongly about,” state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said. “And it’s certainly a very defensible position. It’s not at all something that’s based on race concerns.”

Yeah.. sure, Luke. It has nothing to do with race. And when Republicans think about immigration, they don’t automatically envision hoards of Spanish-speaking brown people.

“It’s a matter of what is citizenship going to be based on.”

And in the United States of America, Luke, citizenship is based on the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Of course, top notch attorney that he is, Esser relies on the classic Republican legal strategy for getting around a constitutional provision. Reinterpret it:

Esser noted that prohibiting citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants could “require a change in the U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment…”

That’s right, the trick, according to WA’s state GOP chair, is not to build the political consensus to revise the US Constitution, but rather, pack the bench with enough conservative justices who are willing to toss out legal precedent that has stood since 1898. And to be clear, the state GOP’s goal is not merely to deny citizenship to natural born children of illegal immigrants, but to deny our long tradition of “birthright citizenship” to the children of legal residents as well.

The provision goes on to say that legal immigration “can best be facilitated by a transparent, traceable and enforceable guest-worker program that does not include amnesty or birthright citizenship and sanctuary cities.”

So children born on US soil to “guest-workers” with legal visas, would be denied citizenship, as would any number of other second-class residents:

Esser said the issue of birthright citizenship is broader than just illegal immigration. For example, he said, “I think if you ask the average person, ‘Should a couple vacationing in the United States who are citizens of another country have a child on U.S. soil, should that child be a U.S. citizen?’, that doesn’t sound reasonable.”

And that’s just one example. The whole purpose of the 14th Amendment was to prevent Congress, the states and the courts from coming up with exceptions under which they could deny one class of people the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” But to our state GOP leaders, I suppose, a child born here of Mexican parents, raised and educated here, and for whom English is his first language, is still more Mexican than American.

That’s the sort of thinking that ultimately led to Japanese internment camps.

[WA Attorney General Rob] McKenna said he doubts the citizenship provision of the party platform will have much impact… “I think the attention span of the public on party platforms is very brief…”

Isn’t that always the GOP strategy… counting on the public not to pay close attention to the issues, or where their party stands on them.

As a member of the DNC Rules Committee, WA attorney David McDonald was pretty active yesterday questioning the various people testifying on behalf of restoring Florida and Michigan’s delegates in one form or another.  So I asked him for his take on yesterday’s proceedings:

Long day. Where you end up depends on where you start. Clinton’s folks assume that a proceeding held in violation of our rules is a primary within our rules and argue from there. Others believe a proceeding outside our rules is a beauty contest that may inform but does not dictate an estimate of what voter preferences would be in a proceeding held inside the time calendar and according to our rules.

I think we did our best to be fair and I am glad I stayed uncommitted through this proceeding.

(Personally, I was satisfied with the Florida decision, but think the committee went too far in reallocating delegates in Michigan; they should have maintained the 73-55 split, but given the uncommitted to Obama, as imperfect as that might be.  I’m just uncomfortable with attempting to divine the will of voters after the fact.)

As a DNC member, McDonald is also a superdelegate, and one of the few from the WA delegation who remains uncommitted.  A couple weeks back he told me that he planned to endorse after the May 31 meeting.  Yesterday, he still wasn’t ready to commit:

Because of the level of the rhetoric I want to decompress before I decide for whom I will vote.  But I expect to reach a decision next week.

I don’t know which way McDonald is leaning, but I expect Obama to wrap this up over the next couple weeks as most of the remaining superdelegates announce their support.