Archives for October 2008

When the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) spends hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking Gov. Chris Gregoire for spending too little on foster care children, you just know there’s something suspicious about the ad… suspicions easily confirmed with a modicum of factchecking.

It turns out that Mary Radcliffe, the “child advocate” at the center of the ad, is a long-time Republican Party activist, the former co-chair of the anti-affirmative action Initiative 200, and a WA delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention, handpicked by the Bush campaign to add some color to the proceedings.  Her abuse of the title “Court Appointed Special Advocate” for political purposes has repeatedly drawn legal action from the the Washington’s Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA), and, not surprising, the charges made in the ad have already been debunked as total lies.

But that hasn’t stopped the BIAW from spending its illegal funds to attack one of Gov. Gregoire’s strengths, her unmatched advocacy on behalf of children, and it hasn’t prompted the amen editorialists at the Seattle Times from expressing their moral outrage, despite their patently ridiculous call on Gov. Gregoire to pull a factual accurate ad about embryonic stem cell research, because in their view “the issue is not real.”

Watch the video for all the details.

Today there were 17 new polls for 16 states released, but not much has changed with the electoral map, except that a new West Virginia puts Obama in the lead by +8%. On the other hand, McCain leads in a Missouri poll today–following two consecutive leads by Obama in the state.

The Monte Carlo analysis employing 100,000 simulated elections finds Obama winning every single one. Obama receives (on average) 363 to McCain’s 175 electoral votes in a hypothetical election held today.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

Black Friday. Heh.

Less than 24 hours after The Columbian newspaper reported it is in deep financial shit and will have to move back to its cruddy old building while trying to sell or lease its new, $30 million tower across from Esther Short Park, the city of Vancouver is making noises about purchasing the new building and making it into a new city hall.

The newspaper building at 415 W. Sixth St. could be an ideal resolution to the city’s decade-long effort to consolidate city operations under one roof, said Eric Holmes, the city’s economic development director. He said the building is the right size, in the right place and the price is in line with the $35 million to $40 million the city expects to spend redeveloping the Esther Short Building into a new City Hall.

And it might make sense in more ordinary times.

However, right now this trial balloon is likely to be met with widespread catcalls if not pitchforks. The idea that taxpayers would jump in to save publisher Scott Campbell’s skin in the midst of an historic economic collapse is outrageous on the face of it.

If the city is actually serious, they should wait a year or two and see how much the property is worth, ’cause there’s likely to be a lot of space up for lease in downtown Vancouver. As I’ve noted before, most commercial activity downtown other than the growth industry of criminal justice seems to center around development and related fields, like banking, insurance and engineering. Plus some restaurants who feed the developers on weekdays.

Maybe the new Columbian building would make a nice judicial annex for our fellow prisoners.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down another 679 points today, closing at 8,579, it’s lowest point in over five years.  With a return of negative 19%, President Bush has now surpassed Richard Nixon for the honor claiming the worst performing market this side of Herbert Hoover.

By comparison, the Dow first broke the 8,500 mark way back in June of 1998, under President Bill Clinton.

I noticed this post at Calculated Risk regarding mortgage equity withdrawals, or MEW’s, on Monday, and I’ve been meaning to link to it. If you click through there’s a nice bar graph that really illustrates just how much money is being yanked out of the economy. Here it is in words:

Equity extraction was close to $700 billion per year in 2004, 2005 and 2006, before declining to $471 billion last year and will probably be less than $100 billion in 2008.

The post goes on to sort through what this might mean, and I’ll leave those technical details to the trained economists.

But as we keep hearing how consumers used home equity to finance not just lifestyles but in many cases simply to stay afloat through health and job crises, it’s hard not to conclude there’s going to be a continuing ripple effect throughout the economy.

This would seem to add to already intense deflationary pressures, both from the housing bubble collapse and recession-related job loss. As the ripples spread nothing short of a massive government intervention to help fuel demand (as opposed to repeatedly injecting cash into failing corporations) would seem to be worthy of discussion.

Paulson is already pivoting toward nationalization of banks, so who knows? By Halloween we may be looking at the new Treasury Department Works Progress Administration.

Just sayin’.

State Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R- Ridgefield and ranking minority member of Ways and Means, responding to criticism of his 2007 “Convergence Northwest” conference that featured extreme-right speakers and Knesset members:

Zarelli said the conference was open to the public but told The Columbian he did not invite Muslims to make presentations because, “It’s not my purpose or goal to understand why somebody wants to kill Americans.”

I wish I could report that Democrat Jon Haugen was a worthy adversary for Zarelli in the 18th LD, but unfortunately Haugen is about as wingnutty as they come too.

I have submitted Initiative to the People 997

Initiative Measure No. 997 concerns valuation of single-family residences
for property tax purposes. I have spoken with Tim Eyman about this idea
and discussed the uniformity clause of the Washington State Constitution.

This measure would limit tax valuation of single-family residences to the
assessed value on December 31, 2005, adjusted annually for inflation but
not greater than two percent higher than the previous year’s valuation.
Should this measure be enacted into law?

Great. An end of times candidate or a Tim Eyman candidate. Some choice.

From the Seattle Times:  “Reichert, Burner debate over lunch.”

Huh.  Surely they must have talked about more substantive issues than that?

For almost a year now I have been obsessively collecting state head-to-head polls for the 2008 presidential election, and analyzing the recent polls via a Monte Carlo analysis. Once a day, on days when new polls are released, I’ve published an analysis designed to address the question, “who would win if the election was held today?”

I’m going to start posting the meat of the (nearly daily) results at Horses Ass. You can always check out the full results at Hominid Views.

Think of this as a score-board for the election through the final quarter of the game.

If you want more details on the methods used to analyze the polls, rules for accepting polls, etc., check out the simulation FAQ.

After 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins all 100,000 times. In an election held today, Obama would receive (on average) 363 to McCain’s 175 electoral votes.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

A new music video from Seattle’s own Julie Mains.

UPDATE [Lee]: Palin will be dropping the puck at the Flyers home opener against the Rangers on Saturday night in Philly. Another hockey mom at her side or not, she’s gonna get booed out of the arena.

The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver is reporting that it will return to its old offices in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.

The move, according to Columbian Publisher Scott Campbell, is out of the need to generate more revenue from a new six-story building constructed by Campbell and his wife, Jody, which opened south of Esther Short Park in January. The options, Campbell said, are to either lease all of the 118,000-square-foot $30 million structure or to sell it. At present, Columbian newsroom, advertising and circulation operations occupy four of the six floors in the building at 415 W. Sixth St.

And bankruptcy isn’t out of the question:

In order to make the difficult financial transition, Campbell said the company is trying to negotiate a new loan with its lender or will seek temporary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors. Chapter 11 gives a business time to reorganize and return to financial health.

Whew. I’m no expert but given what we’ve been hearing about the credit crisis created by the mortgage scandal, that sounds pretty grim.

I have to confess I have mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, the heart of newspapers is news gathering, and the thought of Clark County not having a daily newspaper would mean that some 400,000 residents would find out even less about what is happening in their community. Sure, it’s possible that Oregon media would increase their coverage some, but The Oregonian has laid off tons of people this year as well. And Oregon TV stations are, well, TV stations.

On the other hand, Campbell runs a newspaper that printed the likes of Michelle Malkin for a long stretch of time, while adopting a thoroughly anti-union stance and coddling the local wingnuts. The standing joke for years has been that Campbell would be better off if he just sold the newspaper and concentrated on his apparent first love, real estate. Of course, that’s not looking so hot right now either.

The whole thing is kind of weird coming on the heels of a series of endorsements favoring Democrats. It’s as if The Columbian has come to the belated realization that the folks intent on destroying the “EM ESS EM” are not, in fact, the liberals, who despite grumping about various editorial positions and tendencies in reporting at least acknowledge the role a free press is supposed to play in our system.

Then there’s the collapse of the housing market itself and the attendant ad revenue. No point in advertising new houses when nobody is building them and nobody is buying them. So much for diversification of the Clark County economy. That turned out to be so much hot air, no surprise. The business of Clark County the last eighteen years or so has been building as many houses as possible, and now the residents shall pay the economic penalty.

They can be a cantankerous lot down there at The Columbian, so I wouldn’t rule out a McCain endorsement just yet. They seem to delight in making as many people angry as possible sometimes, just to prove a point. What the point would be with a McCain endorsement I don’t know, but trust me, they could come up with something.

Overall, the troubles at The Columbian are a continuation of ongoing problems in the industry, exacerbated by poor ownership, an unpopular editorial stance and small town cronyism. It’s entirely likely that Clark County will not have a daily newspaper at some point in the not-so-distant future.

And that’s a bad thing.

I had the opportunity to tag along with members of the real press as we covered Sen. Patty Murray, Mayor Greg Nickels and other local dignitaries on the first semi-public test run of Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail, scheduled to start service in July 2009.  Most of the time I hung out in the back of the train with the other bloggers, but when Sen. Murray walked by I just had to snag her for a couple questions about our current economic crisis.

Specifically, I asked her if there was any appetite in Congress to invest in fiscal stimulus for projects like the one we were riding on, and she said that there have been discussions about a package that would invest in infrastructure, particularly transportation, because it puts people to work immediately, but that a recent bill was blocked by the Republicans.  (All the more reason to send more and better Democrats to Congress.)

So I guess the answer was “yes,” but she didn’t sound too confident.  Near the end of the interview I asked whether there might be some federal money forthcoming to help the states with their ballooning budget deficits and she said that they were already getting such requests, but “I think everybody recognizes that this is a time when everybody is going to have to cut back.”

Huh.  By most accounts our nation now has several trillion dollars worth of critical public infrastructure—roads, bridges, transit, water, sewer, etc.—that needs to be repaired, replaced or expanded over the next two decades, much of it built as public works projects during the Great Depression.  As our economy worsens and our banking industry collapses, it may very well be left up to the federal government once again to keep America working.