Archives for October 2008

Some of you may have noticed an ad on HA for the “Pickens Plan” for energy independence, an initiative by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens to wean our nation from foreign oil.  And so I thought this might be a good time to reiterate HA’s advertising policy.

See, despite the fact that Pickens’ investments in wind energy are probably good thing (I think), that doesn’t erase his long history as a financier of right-wing ideologues, and his role as one of the major backers of the Swift Boat smear campaign that likely sunk John Kerry’s presidential prospects.  It also doesn’t detract from his cynical investment of millions of dollars in California’s Prop 10, which would tap CA’s already stressed state coffers to boost his natural gas business.

Pickens is no progressive, and just shouldn’t be trusted.  But I’m happy to take his money nonetheless.

See, here at HA we have a very simple advertising policy:  we’ll take paid ads from pretty much all comers, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike.  We won’t accept ads that amount to blatantly deceptive astroturfing, though I’ve only rejected one thus far.  And we won’t accept ads I find pornographic or patently offensively… but as my regular readers know, that’s a pretty low bar.  Basically, if you have the money, I’ll take your ad.  But if I really don’t like it, don’t be surprised if I go out of my way to trash it.  You know, like this post about the highly questionable ad for the Pickens Plan.

See, not only did Pickens finance the Swift Boat ads, Mentzer Media Services, Inc, the company that placed this web ad, also placed most of the Swift Boat ads as well… a service for which they made millions of dollars.

And so, considering HA’s wall between advertising and editorial, the only responsible course of action was to take Pickens money, and then give a free ad to The General to mercilessly mock it.  So that’s exactly what I did.

Yup, that’s my advertising policy, and I’m sticking to it.

From WaPo:

Now it is less than a month later. Obama appears to be cruising and McCain stumbling. Every shift in campaign tactics by McCain is seen through the prism of an operation in distress. That’s why McCain is on the hot seat for Tuesday’s debate.

Well, okay. It’s seen that way by Beltway reporters and the politically obsessed (guilty as charged, your honor.) But that’s “horse race” campaign coverage, focusing on the tactics and strategy. Nothing against it, actually, but it’s becoming more beside the point right now.

What strikes me is how much interest there is in this election amongst normal people. A lot of folks may be leaning one way or the other, but they’re watching the debates and are genuinely concerned about the economic crisis and who will lead this country. I’ve certainly been a little surprised by some friends and neighbors (both Republican and Democratic) who approached the first two debates with the anticipation usually reserved for football games. (We now live in a country where people make decent snacks for political debates! Yeah!)

When you’ve observed politics closely for a long time, though, debates can be pretty tough to stomach. Platitudes abound, and transparent efforts to score the next “Where’s the beef?” line grow tiresome. So the earnestness with which many voters are viewing this election is refreshing.

Broadly speaking, I think there is an expectation by the public that the candidates will actually say something meaningful tonight about the meltdown. People want to know what these guys are going to do about it, and I’m certain platitudes and evasiveness are not going to be met with much acceptance. Nobody wants to bore the audience to tears with technical discussions, but laying out a long-term, sensible plan for the economy would seem to be within the abilities of at least one of these candidates. You would think.

I suppose it’s likely we may hear the names “Ayers” and “Keating,” but if it gets out of hand people are going to be royally pissed.

Just my $.02.

Today is Now You Know Dino Day, a statewide event sponsored by NARAL/Pro-Choice Washington, who wants all our state’s voters to know the truth about Dino Rossi’s stance on reproductive rights.  For example, did you know that Rossi:

• worked against I-120, which codified Roe v. Wade into Washington state law?
• voted NO on a bill that would require health insurance companies that cover prescriptions such as Viagra for men to cover birth control for women?
• sponsored a bill seeking federal money for ineffective abstinence-only sex-education for Washington schools?
• believes pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill doctor-prescribed prescriptions based on non-medical, personal reasons?
• compares women’s health care to sports drink preferences?

One of the more disturbing things I’ve seen in poll after poll as that more than a third of pro-choice women don’t know that Republicans Dino Rossi and Dave Reichert are anti-choice, opposing not just access to safe, legal abortions, but to contraception and medically accurate sex education.  That’s why over 300 volunteers in 15 cities across the state are waving signs during evening rush hour tonight to let voters know the truth about Rossi… that he is bad for the women of Washington state.

If you want to join the effort, go to the Now You Know Dino website for more information.

The McCain/Palin campaign might want to think twice before heading down that dangerous path toward guilt by association, as the candidates at the top of the Republican ticket have plenty of guilty associations of their own, some of which might even be fresh news to even the most attentive voters.

For example I had no idea about John McCain’s shady associations with the Iran Contra scandal until reading about it this morning in Politico, where former Tacoma News Tribune reporter Ken Vogel (one of the few ex-reporters around here to move up in the biz instead of moving out) sheds new light on McCain’s association with John Singlaub and the US Council for World Freedom.

Since the mid-1980s, there’s been almost no attention paid to John McCain’s long-ago association with a controversial group implicated in a secretive plot to supply arms to Nicaraguan militia groups during the Iran-Contra affair.

But now, with the Republican presidential candidate stepping up his negative blitz against Democratic opponent Barack Obama, some Democrats are hoping that the group – the U.S. Council for World Freedom, and its founder, John Singlaub – will become for McCain what Bill Ayers has become for Obama: a fleeting past association used as ammunition for political broadsides.

[…] “This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group.”

McCain later claimed that he “disassociated himself” from the group after learning of its secret program to arm the Contras, circumventing a Congressional ban on aiding the rebels, but he never informed authorities of these illegal activities.  And he never seemed too bothered by the group’s known anti-Semitic leanings.

Singlaub founded the council in Phoenix in November, 1981, as the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League, which he also helped run for a time. The league billed itself as a supporter of “pro-Democratic resistance movements fighting communist totalitarianism.” But the Anti-Defamation League in 1981 alleged that the anti-Communist league also had had “increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact, for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

An aide to McCain told Politico that “McCain has a long and consistent and strong record on issues involving Israel and he would never be associated with anything that was anti-Semitic in any way,” but, as Sarah Palin’s church has proven, being pro-Israel and pro-Jew are not the same thing.

After being sparked by a brief comment Sunday from Democratic strategist Paul Begala on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Singlaub story is quickly gaining some media traction on a path McCain may soon regret choosing.

From the Washington Post:

Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Of course, hate talk unleashes hate.  That’s what it’s supposed to do.

Yes Virginia, there is a race for Attorney General.  Though you wouldn’t know it from reading the newspapers.

Consider this an open letter to the editorialists, columnists and commentators at all our state’s news organizations:  if you care about open government, if you care about clean elections, if you care about maintaining the integrity of our state’s campaign finance and disclosure laws… now is the time to weigh in on the emerging Buildergate scandal.  Not two weeks from now, not two months from now, not two years from now after this twisted tale has finally finished wending its way through the courts, but now… now while the public still has an opportunity to judge Dino Rossi’s character for themselves, before casting their vote for governor.

No doubt the amen editorialists at the pro-Rossi Seattle Times, whose news pages have curiously remained silent on this scandal (but, you know, there’s a “wall” between news and editorial and all that), will reassure themselves  that Rossi remains innocent until proven guilty, and thus a moral pronouncement would be inappropriate until the court has passed a legal judgement of its own.  But of course, that’s a load of hooey.

The Times has a long established history of inserting itself into active court cases (for example, here, here, and notoriously here), and of lambasting the court for decisions it disgrees with on issues of principle or policy, sometimes with little regard for the law itself.  In these and many other cases, the Times’ editorial board and their colleagues throughout the media have routinely taken it upon themselves to weigh in on the hottest issues of the day, and with the election only weeks away, now is as good a time as any.

No, not all the facts have been revealed, but the facts we know are damning.  The BIAW did create “a fund for Rossi” with the sole intent of influencing the 2008 gubernatorial race.  The BIAW did ask the Master Builders Association to contribute over half a million dollars to this fund, for that the express purpose.  And when the MBA hesitated, Rossi did call three board members to press them to cooperate.  The documents are clear.  Rossi’s public statements are clear.  The context is clear.  And the law is very, very clear.

The BIAW is now being prosecuted for numerous “egregious” campaign finance and disclosure violations in relation to this $3.5 million illegal fund… but only after nearly all of the money has been spent attacking Rossi’s opponent.  So to wait until this case has wended its way through court before publicly holding Rossi responsible for his actions would only reward him and the BIAW for their perfidy.

To our state’s opinion leaders this should not be an issue of whether or not Rossi successfully skated through a technical loophole in the law, but rather, whether he was morally and ethically right to attempt to do so.  We all know Rossi was a candidate for governor back in May of 2007, whether he had officially declared or not, and so any effort by him to aid the BIAW with their “fund for Rossi” would be a flagrant violation of the spirit of the law, regardless of whether he is ever held liable for violating its letter.

Our media’s instinct to dismiss these allegations as mere partisan stunts is an insult to the highly repected former justices who have brought these suits, and a disservice to the voting public.  Read the court documents.  Read the FAQs.  Use your judgement and tell me whether or not the BIAW’s “fund for Rossi” constituted a political campaign of which Rossi was both aware, and an active participant.  Or better yet, tell your readers.

Dino Rossi routinely slanders Gov. Gregoire for “laundering” money, while his party is currently being prosecuted for doing exactly that, and yet nobody in our media is willing to seriously question his blanket disclaimers in this Buildergate scandal, or hold him accountable for his actions?  I find that hard to believe.

Shortly after receiving a complaint in Utter vs. BIAW this morning alleging illegal collaboration between Dino Rossi and the Building Industry Association of Washington, a King County Superior Court judge has issued an  order approving the plaintiffs’ request to immediately subpoena witnesses and begin taking depositions.  Subpoenas will be served by October 7, and depositions will begin October 15.

In a press release, plaintiffs’ attorney Knoll Lowney said:

“One of the purposes of this suit is to learn Dino Rossi’s precise role in this fundraising effort, which the State Attorney General has deemed illegal.  We obviously have substantial evidence that Rossi assisted in this fundraising, or the Justices could not have proceeded with their lawsuit.  Now that the Judge has allowed us to begin discovery immediately, we will learn how deeply he was involved.”

Indeed we will.  Though, even under this expedited process it unlikely injunctive relief can come soon enough to prevent the BIAW from spending the remainder of its illegal warchest.

Of course, Rossi and the BIAW could attempt to resist the subpoenas by requesting a protective order, but if, as they claim, they have nothing to hide, why would they want to do that?

The  U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which took $23 million from AIG to lobby for deregulation of the markets by the way, is running a one-week $156,000 TV spot supporting U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert (R-8) in his run against Darcy Burner.

The National Federation of Independent Business will begin a $219,000 pro-Reichert TV campaign the following week. 

Burner got dinged in the Seattle Times last week for all the netroots money she’s getting ($400,000 in small donations). The implication, sorta like the implication of all the out-of-state Howard Dean supporters who gave Dean a bad name in Iowa for carpetbagging, being that Burner’s support isn’t tied to the 8th District.

What then is the implication of these Reichert buys by the Chamber and the NFIB? Has the other Washington come to bail him out?

In direct donations, Burner is beating Reichert $2.3 million to $1.8 million, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Everyone in the country gets to pay for the $700 billion Hank Paulson slush fund, and if you’re a Countrywide customer in good standing you get to pay some more.

Washington residents who got mortgages through Countrywide and who already lost their homes to foreclosure will be eligible for money, said Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, who will discuss the settlement this morning at a news conference.

“This is a very large and important first step in helping to stop the cycle,” McKenna said. “We are going to put the brakes on that downward spiral.”

McKenna said Countrywide used predatory lending practices similar to those found in investigations of other large lenders across the country. They issued loans to people who couldn’t afford them by falsely inflating borrowers’ incomes, used hidden fees and made deceptive marketing claims, saying, for example, a loan had “no closing costs,” when borrowers were actually paying closing costs.

To be honest, at least this plan actually seems to be addressing the heart of the problem, namely bad mortgages caused by a combination of ARM’s, industry fraud and overreaching by home buyers during a bubble.

You can call this situation a lot of things, but you can’t call it free market capitalism. Someone always has to pay, and the money for this plan appears to be coming from Countrywide customers and Bank of American customers. (As an aside, it’s a curious fact that consumers are allowed no choice about whom to do business with when it comes to home loans, no? They just buy your loan and you get no say.)

The details of the plan seem to make sense, but are still maddening:

Rates could decline to 2.5 percent, depending upon a borrower’s ability to pay, and remain at that level for five years. Then the rate would adjust to prevailing interest rates charged by Fannie Mae on its fixed-rate mortgages.

The program will focus on borrowers placed in the riskiest loans, including adjustable-rate mortgages whose interest rates reset significantly several years after the loans were made.

Pay-option mortgages, under which a borrower must pay only a small fraction of the interest and principal, thereby allowing the loan balance to increase, are also included in the modifications.

Borrowers whose first payment was due between Jan. 1, 2004, and Dec. 31, 2007, can participate. The loan balance must be at least 75 percent of the current value of the home, and the borrower must be able to afford the adjusted monthly payments.

So the reward for resisting outrageously risky ARM’s and paying your mortgage on time is that you get to enjoy severe declines in the stock market, including IRA’s and 401(k) plans, decline in the amount of equity in your home, a shaky job market and higher prices for everyday items like food and fuel.

Now, I know not everyone is impacted equally. There are plenty of folks out there who don’t have much in the way of savings and investments, and an Obama administration and a “more and better” Congress will need to look hard at issues like real wages. In bad economic times, the working poor always take it in the shins.

Sadly, there’s really little choice in the matter of Countrywide. The politicians, though, will have to forgive we plebeians if we’re wondering why our families don’t get a special low interest rate and maybe some principal knocked off our mortgage. Hell, we’d settle for a nice four-figure contribution to the old college fund, which is looking rather battered at the moment.

Some people might be concluding that paying on a loan is a sucker’s game. Not my family, of course, because we believe in old-fashioned progressive values like honesty and personal responsibility, but there is a palpable sense of frustration out on the hustings. Our government and large portions of corporate America need to clean up their act, big time.

So, the McCain campaign wants to take off the gloves, and try to turn the conversation away from the economy and on to Barack Obama’s “associations“…?  Well two can play at that game.

Learn more about Keating Economics.

The Buildergate scandal takes a new twist this morning as former Washington State Supreme Court Justices Faith Ireland and Robert Utter filed notice with Attorney General Rob McKenna of their intent to bring suit against Republican gubernatorial challenger Dino Rossi, alleging illegal campaign coordination with the Building Industry Association of Washingtion (BIAW) and its political committees.  They also filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court claiming that the BIAW’s coordination with Rossi disqualify it from making “independent” expenditures in the 2008 gubernatorial.

These dramatic legal developments could have a huge impact on the gubernatorial race.  The BIAW has already spent over $2 million on behalf of Rossi this year, mostly smearing Governor Chris Gregoire, and plans to spend an additional $700,000 during the final weeks of the campaign.  The justices are asking that further “over limit” expenditures be barred by court order.

These suits are just the latest in a widening Buildergate scandal for which the BIAW is already being prosecuted, in a case stemming from Utter and Ireland’s original October, 2008 complaint.  But while McKenna is pursuing the BIAW for numerous “egregious” campaign finance and reporting violations, he took no action on the assertion that the BIAW improperly coordinated its activities with Rossi, thus prompting Utter and Ireland to bring suit on their own.

In a joint statement, the two retired justices—both appointed to the bench by Republican governors—outline both the evidence behind their allegations, and their motivation for seeking enforcement.

The evidence upon which we base our legal action can be construed to show that Dino Rossi was not just a beneficiary of these illegal activities, but was a knowing and active participant.  The evidence shows, moreover, that the attack ads of the BIAW are not really “independent” of their beneficiary Dino Rossi.  This is because Dino Rossi helped the BIAW to amass the war chest for these attack ads.

This is an important issue for all races.  Special interests are increasingly supporting candidates through “independent expenditures” that are not subject to contribution limits.  These “independent” campaigns also tend to contain the most vicious and dubious negative attacks, since the benefitting candidate can say that they have no control over these messages.  It is critical to enforce the law that prohibits candidates from providing fundraising assistance to or otherwise coordinating with “independent” committees.

The fact that Dino Rossi had not publicly declared his candidacy when this alleged coordination took place is not a defense.  A person becomes a candidate when he helps a political committee to amass a war chest to support his candidacy.  And the evidence suggests this is what happened here.

If this coordination took place, then the BIAW’s expenditures would not qualify as an independent expenditure, and would be legally limited to $2,800.  The millions of dollars of attack ads that have blanketed our airwaves would be illegal, and further expenditures should be enjoined.

Washington campaign laws are in place to ensure our elections are fair, that all candidates know what they are facing from their opponents in terms of campaign financing. These rules are there to ensure that special interests cannot buy their way into a legislative process designed to serve and protect the interests of all citizens. Without enforcement our laws are meaningless.

When the Buildergate scandal broke last week, the Rossi campaign tried to dismiss it as frivolous, partisan electioneering, a sentiment that seemed to ooze into some of the press coverage (the Seattle Times, for their part, ignored the story entirely), but remember, these are two retired Supreme Court justices making the charges, and like their original complaint, for which the BIAW is now being prosecuted, their legal arguments seem to be fairly airtight.

In fact, Rossi has publicly admitted the action at the heart of this scandal, that he called board members of the Master Builders Association in May of 2007, when they were considering a request to contribute to the BIAW’s “fund for Rossi.”  Rossi excuses his actions:

“I didn’t ask them to put money anywhere but it would have been perfectly OK for me to do that because I wasn’t even a candidate.”

But as Utter and Ireland point out in a FAQ posted to the website of attorney Knoll Lowney, Rossi’s claimed defense is little more than a distinction without a difference.  State law and prior Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) advisories make it clear that a candidate does not have to ask for a specific dollar amount to be involved in fundraising, and the very act of participating in such activity, even on behalf of a so-called “independent” campaign, automatically makes one a candidate by definition.

Indeed, back in June of 2004, the BIAW asked the PDC for an opinion on this very issue, to which the commissioners replied without equivocation:

One of the most fundamental ways a candidate could encourage a person to purchase political advertising supporting that candidate is to help make sure that person has sufficient funds to undertake an effective advertising effort. Assisting a PAC in fundraising fosters that committee’s ability to make the political advertising expenditure benefiting the candidate. As such, the PAC expenditure is not sufficiently removed from the candidate to qualify as an independent expenditure.
…
That collaboration disqualifies any resulting expenditure from the definition of independent expenditure.

You really can’t get any clearer than that.

Buildergate is shaping up to be a classic political scandal, and like most such scandals, it’s the coverup that will eventually bring down the perpetrators, for had the BIAW properly reported its activities like it knew it should have, we may never have known about Rossi’s illegal coordination.

With most of the BIAW’s warchest already spent, there may not be time for the courts to impose any meaningful sanctions, so the only question remaining is whether Rossi will suffer the consequences of his unethical and illegal behavior before the election, or after?  I await to see if our local media will fulfill their obligations as public watchdogs, or merely resort to the kind of half-hearted stenography on this scandal we’ve seen thus far.

Woke up to find the Dow down over 500 points, under 10,000 for the first time in four years.  Maybe we should just buy Dow Jones, and jigger the index?

UPDATE:
Somebody should do a remake of that memorable “crying Indian” ad from the 70’s, on it should be Dino Rossi shedding a tear at the sight of industrial polluters being forced by DOE to clean up their mess.