Archives for October 2008

Darcy Burner does indeed have a B.A. from Harvard in computer science and economics; that is an established fact.

So, when Reichert, the NRCC and their enablers at the Seattle Times argue that claiming a degree in “economics” is misleading because it fails to mention the “computer science,” wouldn’t the opposite be equally true?  Wouldn’t it be just as misleading to claim a degree in “computer science” while failing to mention the emphasis on economics?  Are they really implying that anything less than spelling out “a degree in computer science and economics” is a deliberate misrepresentation?

Hmm…

Let’s see if this, Rep. Dave Reichert’s official Congressional biography, makes the front page of the Seattle Times:

REICHERT, David G., .a Representative from Washington; born in Detroit Lakes, Becker County, Minn., August 29, 1950; graduated, Kent Meridian High School, Renton, Wash., 1968; B.A., Concordia Lutheran College, Portland, Oreg., 1970; U.S. Air Force Reserve, 1971-1976; U.S. Air Force, 1976; police officer, King County, Wash., 1972-1977; sheriff, King County, Wash., 1997- 2004; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Ninth Congress and to the succeeding Congress (January 3, 2005-present).

Problem is, Reichert never earned a B.A. from Concordia in 1970, because they didn’t even grant their first bachelors degree until 1980.  In fact, the year Reichert started was Concordia’s first year as a Junior College; before then, it was merely a Lutheran high school.

What Reichert has is a two-year Associates degree from a small, Christian, Junior College.  (And possibly, not even that; has Heffter bothered to ask Concordia’s registrar for Reichert’s records?)  Thus Reichert’s official bio, which he has allowed to go uncorrected for four years, and which has been picked up by numerous news organizations and other web sites, is an undisputed lie.  Gonna print that on your front page Mr. Blethen?  I didn’t think so.

But more important than the parsing of the word “and” in Darcy Burner’s degree, or the substitution of the letter “B” for “A” in Reichert’s, should be their actual education, and how well that prepares the two candidates to deal with our nation’s unprecedented economic crisis.  Reichert has a two-year degree from a small, ultra-conservative Christian school.  (And by “ultra-conservative” I mean Missouri Synod Lutheran, whose positions on reproductive rights and the societal role of women leaves them far to the right of most fundamentalist Evangelicals.)  Meanwhile, Darcy earned a B.A. in computer science and economics, in the process completing five courses in economics plus two related math courses at Harvard, one of the most prestigious and rigorous universities in the world.

Isn’t that what should really be important to voters instead of these stupid gotchas?

UPDATE:
Looks like somebody is covering their tracks.  After four years of allowing an erroneous biographical entry on congress.gov tout a four-year B.A. degree when he only earned a two-year A.A., Reichert’s entry is miraculously updated, but only after being publicly scolded for his resume padding.  Of course, the lie still lives on in the Google cache.

After interviewing former Harvard Dean Harry Lewis, here is what reporter Emily Heffter chose to print in the Seattle Times:

Harry Lewis, a Harvard computer science professor and former dean of the school, confirmed that Burner did study economics at Harvard.

“She doesn’t have a degree in economics,” he said. “It’s a specialty within the computer science degree that she has.”

And here is Dean Lewis in his own unexpurgated words (the emphasis is mine):

I’m the professor and ex-dean who was quoted in the story, and as it happens, also the guy who wrote the CS degree requirements. At the time Darcy was at Harvard, she would have needed, as part of her CS degree requirements, several courses in a technical specialization area related to CS. She fulfilled that CS degree requirement by specializing in Economics (which meant, by the way, that she couldn’t have taken just the easy, non-mathematical Ec courses). So it’s not exactly a minor (which we didn’t have then, though we do now), and it’s also not anything that the registrar would be able to certify (because it’s an internal requirement of the computer science faculty). But it’s something everyone getting a degree in CS had to do (though other students would have other specialties). The way Darcy is describing herself is accurate.

And here is Dean Lewis’ account of his interview with Heffter:

Talked to her and told her you had a degree in CS with a specialization in Ec. She said you were claiming to have a degree in Ec and I just repeated myself. She asked me what that consisted of and I said a block of Ec courses. She started to ask me if that would make you qualified … and I cut her off, saying I couldn’t judge economics qualifications. She thanked me and said that was helpful.

Darcy Burner does indeed have a degree from Harvard in computer science and economics, and it is utterly outrageous that the Times would choose to turn the NRCC’s parsing of the word “and” into a front page gotcha story defaming Darcy’s character.

They owe her an apology.

Three former Washington State Governors have endorsed the Death with Dignity Initiative I-1000, Republican Dan Evans and Democrats Booth Gardner and Gary Locke. A fourth, Republican John Spellman, is opposing the measure. I’d been planning to write a final post about all of the myths and lies being spread by the I-1000 opposition, but Spellman’s recent editorial in the Seattle PI contains enough of them that it serves as the perfect springboard for this post anyway.

It is not often I publicly disagree with my former gubernatorial colleagues, Booth Gardner and Daniel Evans. While I respect them both, I must firmly disagree with their support of the assisted suicide initiative, I-1000.

Both frame the issue as one of strictly personal choice. But what’s at stake is actually much broader. Derek Humphrey, co-founder of the Hemlock Society, has asserted repeatedly that euthanasia and assisted suicide will inevitably prevail in our society because they make economic sense.

Think about that for a second. What on Earth is he saying? Obviously it’s cheaper to have people with serious illnesses die sooner rather than later. But when economics enters the picture, it’s no longer a matter of strictly personal choice. Do you really think that, once implemented, assisted suicide will remain merely a “personal choice,” isolated from not-so-subtle coercions of everyday life and magically protected from health care rationing?

Yes, I do, and we can look at Oregon for the proof. Oregon’s law has been on the books for 10 years now, and there’s absolutely no evidence that it’s moving any closer to being anything other than a personal choice. No one anywhere wants coercions, and no one anywhere is talking about coercions. As in Oregon, only the terminally ill individual makes the choice under I-1000, not doctors, not health care providers, not family members, not the government. The belief that I-1000 will lead to an end where people have less choices has no basis in reality.

[Read more…]

From BrianK in the comment threads:

I am an accountant. As part of my licensing and for other reasons, I am occasionally asked if I have an accounting degree. I always reply that I do have the appropriate accounting degree necessary to do my job.

I attended Portland State University when I earned this degree. PSU does not offer a degree in Accounting. Looking at my printed hunk of parchment, I see that I really have a degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Accounting. Because that’s what they call it at that institution.

I don’t believe that I am misrepresenting myself to anyone.

Really, how hard is that for Emily Heffter and her editors at the Seattle Times to understand?  Darcy Burner has a degree in computer science and economics, and Harvard’s failure to use the terminology they prefer, doesn’t make it any less so.

I myself have been called a partisan hack, and maybe it’s true, but the difference is, I’m not the largest newspaper in the state.  I’m not Washington’s self-proclaimed paper of record.  And I’ve never pretended to be impartial, balanced or objective.  No, I’m just a partisan, foul-mouthed, dirty fucking blogger, but with its latest NRCC press release cum front page story, the Times has proven itself to be less credible than even me.

Dave Reichert, Dino Rossi, the BIAW and the WSRP are all busy violating state and federal campaign finance law, and the Times chooses to splash this kind of bullshit semantic hair splitting on their front page?  Really?

Partisan hacks.  That’s what they are, partisan hacks.  And they should be ashamed of themselves.

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by an average of 368 to 170 electoral votes. Today there were 18 new polls representing 12 states released that weigh in on the score. The net result is a small gain for Obama.

A Monte Carlo analysis consisting of 100,000 simulated elections finds that Obama wins every one. Obama receives (on average) 370 to McCain’s 168 electoral votes—a gain of two. If an election had been held today, Obama would have had a near 100% probability of winning.

The long term trends in this race can be seen from a series of elections simulated every seven days over the period 22-Feb to 22-Oct. After a very slight period of decline, Obama is again gaining with time:

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.

The big topic of conversation was the seemingly illegal contribution to Rep. Dave Reichert’s campaign by Media Plus. Did Reichert violate the letter of the law, or just the spirit of the law? Are Republicans like Reichert and Rossi ignoring election financing laws, and treating post-elections fines as the cost of doing business? From there, a heady discussion arose about liberalism and conservatism, and what liberals must do about conservatives.

Goldy was joined by Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Publisher of the Group News Blog, Jesse Wendel, and Eat The State’s Geov Parrish.

The show is 56:26, and is available here as an MP3:

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

So I guess all those folks who pooh-poohed last week’s polls as partisan propaganda are eating a little crow now.

Meanwhile, I’ll have more on this later, but Matt Stoller pretty much puts knife through the scandal that isn’t.

I’ve heard a number of political observers wonder how the RGA and the BIAW can possibly spend the enormous sum of money they’ve dumped into the final two weeks of Dino Rossi’s campaign when the airwaves are already saturated with political ads?  One answer:

The Building Industry Association of Washington is making Dino Rossi’s “citizens movement” a little more attractive to strapped-for-cash citizens. It might surprise “Reduce the Minimum Wage” Rossi that the BIAW is luring paid canvassers with a wage of $12 an hour, almost $4 an hour more than Washington’s minimum wage.

So… if Dino Rossi really has all the grassroots support he claims, why is he spending $12/hour hiring canvassers, while Gov. Gregoire and the Democrats are mostly relying on thousands of unpaid volunteers?

Hmm….

From TPM:

National House Committees Shell Out Big Money, NRCC Finally In The Game
Both parties’ national House committees shelled out big bucks in the newest federal filings. The DCCC spent nearly $4 million in yesterday’s FEC filings, with the biggest expenditure going for $450,000 against Rep. Robin “Liberals Hate Real Americans” Hayes (R-NC). The NRCC, which has held on to its much smaller war chest until the home stretch of the campaign, spent $4.1 million, with the biggest payment going for over $450,000 to defend Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA).

That’s right, the DCCC is focusing its largest buy against a hate-talking, McCarthyite wing-nut, while the NRCC is focusing its resources in defense of… Dave Reichert.

He says he’s an outsider.  He says he’s independent.  He says he’s moderate.  And yet the party of Michele Bachmann, who says members of Congress should be investigated to find out who is “pro-America” and who is “anti-America,” is focusing its resources reelecting Reichert.  Telling.

The $150,000 the RNC spent on clothing for Sarah Palin is far from the most important issue in this campaign, but I agree with those who suggest that it may be a defining moment.  A self-defined “hockey mom” should be shopping at Walmart or Target or Sears, with maybe a pricier outfit or three befitting her suddenly elevated position.  But $150,000?  Which part of America spends money like that on clothes?

This is a bad story for the McCain/Palin ticket as it highlights the hypocrisy of their faux-populist attacks.  But then, with so many bad stories these days, maybe it won’t make a difference.

The Secretary of State’s office sent out a memo yesterday trumpeting a record high voter registration mark of 3.6 million, up almost 100,000 above the previous record set in 2004.  But if you look closely at the numbers, it’s likely the number of new, active voters is actually considerably higher.

Since the state launched a computerized database in January of 2006, about 482,000 registrations have been cancelled or made inactive, including about 160,000 duplicate, deceased or felon voters. As of mid-October, about 713,000 new or re-activated registrations were posted during the same time period.

It remains unclear how many valid registered voters were thrown off the rolls in this massive purge—no doubt there were some—and the issue of whether Washington’s harshest in the nation felon disenfranchisement laws comprise good public policy continues to be aggressively denied the public debate it deserves.  On these and other issues we’ve seen zero leadership and less than optimal transparency from Secretary of State Sam Reed.  But there is also no doubt that before the implementation of the federally mandated statewide voter registration database, the various county rolls were littered with erroneous, dead and duplicate registrations.

To be clear, actual polling place or mail-in voter fraud has remained virtually non-existent, with only a handful of cases prosecuted even after 2004’s intensely scrutinized and litigated gubernatorial election contest.  But our voter registration numbers have long been overinflated with non-voters and bad data, so the number of new, likely voters on the rolls is most certainly several times higher than the Secretary of State’s 100,000 figure would imply.

Everybody expects voter turnout to be higher this year, but with the credit largely given to increased interest in the presidential race, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether this would translate to higher participation in down-ballot races.  But I’m guessing that with the turnout calculations based on these cleaner rolls, turnout rates will be higher across the board.

We’ll see.