Archives for May 2009

Oy.

Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.

Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.

The issue isn’t really whether horrific images are made available to the public, the issue is whether the leadership of the Democratic Party has the moral fortitude to do something to make sure this can’t happen again.

And that will require something like a Church Committee. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that a large formal inquiry is warranted.

If the position of the Democratic Party is “we don’t like torture but we’re just going to forget it ever happened,” then we’re no better than the Republicans. This is bigger than partisan politics anyhow, it goes directly to what kind of civilization we supposedly are.

If top Democrats wind up being embarrassed or worse, then they have whatever is coming to them as well. We already know the Republicans will screech about “criminalizing politics,” as if all this is just some unfortunate accident rather than the result of deliberate policy. This wasn’t soldiers losing control in combat, this was systematic torture of defenseless people, executed with gleeful savagery.

The Obama administration has a choice to make, and for the sake of future generations, it better find a way to deal with this ugly episode in American history and give the people a full accounting of what was done in their name. A government that abides barbarism undermines its claim to being of, by and for the people it represents, a flaw similar to those of European tyrants that prompted the creation and growth of this noble experiment in the first place.

George H. W. Bush was, seemingly, a traitor in the Wingnut War on Empathy™:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whAgq0HeiB8[/youtube]

A few weeks back I wrote a post arguing that as bad as the fundamentals may be newspaper industry wide, struggling publishers need to take a little personal responsibility for their own poor business decisions:

For while the whole industry is struggling, the financial precariousness of some of our most threatened papers is at least partially due to the awful business decisions of their owners, in particular, the incredibly over-leveraged position they find themselves in as a result of ill-advised acquisitions and other bone-headed ventures.

For The Columbian, it was the construction of a new $40 million office tower that landed a shrunken newsroom back in its old digs, and publisher Scott Campbell in bankruptcy court.  For The Times, it was Frank Blethen’s ill-fated foray into the Maine media market that has left him with a couple hundred million dollars of debt coming due, and no obvious means of raising more capital.  Both papers are currently losing money on their daily operations, but neither would be struggling to survive this particular recession if the bankers weren’t pounding at their doors.

That’s the kind of critical analysis one doesn’t often read from a medium tasked with covering itself, and so it was no surprise to be castigated in my own comment thread for daring to challenge the self-soothing meme that it’s Google and bloggers and various technical and economic macro-trends that primarily threaten the industry, rather than the poor business decisions of industry leaders themselves. But it’s an analysis I stand by based on the available facts.

And, it’s an analysis that just got a dumpster load of support in the form of an incredibly in-depth and well-sourced article in the latest edition of Seattle Business Monthly that details the Blethen family saga, and how their own dysfunction accelerated the Times’ “slide toward insolvency…”

What is remarkable about the Times Co.’s current financial state is not that it is happening—newspaper companies from the august New York Times Co. on down are struggling. But while it is true that the Seattle Times Co. has been hammered by the same forces affecting others, the management performance of the Blethens themselves during the past decade has contributed significantly to the Times’ current troubles.

“We asked questions that any one of our own publishers would have known, and Frank didn’t know the answers,” says Tony Ridder, chief executive of Knight Ridder, which owned 49.5 percent of the Times Co. from 1929 to 2006. “It was,” Ridder adds, “a weak business leadership.”

Ouch. It’s one thing when this kind of critique comes from me, the Times’ self-proclaimed volunteer ombudsman, but it’s another thing entirely when it’s coming from Bill Richards, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter who the Times had hired for three years to cover its own JOA battle with the P-I.

Among the many disclosures culled from board meeting minutes, interviews and a Harvard Business School case study:

• In 2005, the Blethens blew off a Knight Ridder offer of $500M+ for their share of the Times Co. This offer, which was never disclosed, was solicited by Frank Blethen, according to Ridder.

• In 1997, Tony Ridder blocked the Blethens from using the Times as collateral to purchase a chain of Maine newspapers.

• The owners of the Maine newspapers manipulated the bidding for the property so that Blethen ended up bidding against himself and overpaying for it, and no one else ever made a formal bid for the chain.

• During the run-up to the disastrous 2000-01 strike, Frank Blethen took such a hard line, anti-union negotiating stance that Times labor relations chief Chris Biencourt, in a post-strike assessment prepared for the Blethen Corp., called the resulting strike “inevitable.”

• Top Times officials were so sure the unions would fold they failed to secure adequate strike insurance before the 49-day walkout.

• Frank Blethen and his cousins have used their dominance of the Seattle Times Co. to attempt to redress wrongs and injustices they felt were done to them by their own parents, including forcing the Times Co. to buy the Blethen Maine chain and providing jobs for any family member who completes college.

Richards concludes:

Blethen’s pride has repeatedly driven him into endeavors and to actions that have undercut the Times’ ability to survive and remain the family’s centerpiece. “Journalistically,” says Tony Ridder, attempting recently to explain this dichotomy, “The Seattle Times was a good newspaper. But Frank absolutely did not make good business decisions.”

Double ouch.

It’s a fascinating and, at times, somewhat sad read. It’s easy to feel empathy for a man like Frank Blethen, who says that he took his first job at the Times at the age of 21, in order to become acquainted with his physically absent and emotionally remote father, a man who never sent him a birthday card or a letter, and never called throughout Frank’s entire adolescence. It’s a tortured tale of Citizen Kane-esque proportions.

And it’s hard not to respect Frank’s goal of building family cohesion, and instilling pride in the newspaper and its values amongst the fifth generation of Blethens.

But as a businessman, that doesn’t let Frank off the hook, and I’m tired of reading his editorial board demand that individuals take the same sort of personal responsibility for our actions that the Blethen family has thus far refused to publicly take for their own.

Some Republicans seem to think having empathy is a bad thing. This explains a lot.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWgyASf0KrA[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorialized yesterday that a citizens commission used sound logic in freezing the pay of Washington state elected officials over the next two years, a sentiment with which I can’t argue in light of our current budgetary woes. But at the same time I think it needs to be pointed out that at only $42,000 a year, we don’t pay our state legislators nearly enough to attract a large pool of qualified candidates.

Yes, that’s right… those same legislators at whom I’m still more than a little pissed off for their collective lack of creativity and courage during the past session… I’m arguing we need to pay them more, perhaps even double. In fact, I’d argue that the body’s lack of effectiveness is at least partially due to the low pay, and the sort of candidates who can afford to accept it.

What we get now are basically two groups of candidates: the very wealthy, who don’t need the money, or the kinda candidate who looks at $42K and thinks “Hey… I’ll be living large!” There’s also a third group in the middle, who accepts the job and the huge cut in standard of living that comes with it, out of a sense of public service or narcissism or both, but those sort of legislators become fewer and fewer as the gap between what legislators could earn and what they do earn grows ever larger.

Now I know some of you will retort that $42K ain’t bad for a part-time legislature that only meets in session for six months out of every two years, but I’d argue that the job is only part-time if you’re doing it wrong. The best, most effective legislators are the ones who make themselves available to citizens, interest groups and their colleagues year round, providing constituent services while seeking community input and expert opinions as they prepare legislation and strategies for our artificially condensed sessions. And for state reps, hell, running for office every two years is a full time job in itself.

So if we insist on maintaining the fiction that this is a part-time job, and continue to compensate accordingly, well, if I remember my Adam Smith correctly, you get what you pay for. The wealthy legislators (think Eastside Dems), however pure their intentions, can’t help but lose touch with the struggles of average Washingtonians, while the pool of less affluent, highly qualified candidates, willing and able to make the financial sacrifices necessary to serve, grows ever smaller. And, more compromised, for we’ve virtually designed a system that requires many legislators to leverage their political expertise and position to earn outside income.

The shrinking size and power of the legislative middle class is reflected in a body whose politics and priorities have increasingly come to resemble a caricature of economic reality, where thoughtful policy debates have been replaced by B-movie showdowns between evil industrialists and union bosses. Or so it often seems. What’s lost in all this are passionate, effective voices who not only understand the needs and aspirations of the vast majority of Washingtonians, but who live this life every day.  Oh, we have plenty of legislators who walk the walk, and plenty more who talk the talk. What we’re sorely lacking are knowledgeable, competent, and courageous legislators who are able to do both.

This hollowing out of the political class—this increasing dominance of amateurs and hobbyists—can only lead to the election of legislators who are less capable of representing the needs of their constituents, or who lack the empathy to do so. For example, much has been made year after year about how Washington state consistently lags well behind the national average in teacher pay, but you gotta wonder how much sympathy this earns the profession in Olympia, when the average teacher still makes several thousand dollars a year more than the legislators who sign their paychecks? Perhaps this partially explains a Legislature that could pat itself on the back for passing landmark education reform, while obstinately refusing to even entertain the notion of honestly debating the kind of tax restructuring that would be necessary to make full funding of these reforms even a remote possibility?

So yeah, sure… now’s the wrong time to increase legislative pay. Not during this recession, in the midst of this outsized budget crisis. But if we want a Legislature better capable of handling the next budget crisis—or perhaps even avoiding it entirely—it’s past time to start thinking about paying a wage that might attract a more capable class of legislators.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP9eiWuX3s[/youtube]

It would have been a pretty scary Supreme Court. Personally I think they must have been working for the DNC.

The nomination of Palin had to be part of the same plan. There’s no other explanation.

It’s Tuesday evening, which means that the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by even earlier for dinner.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIRGjxkmmUY[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 chapters of Drinking Liberally sprinkled liberally across the globe.

In writing last week about why a campaign based on process and personality won’t be enough to defeat Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in November (“Will Voters Tune In to Seattle City Government’s Family Feud?“), I raised a question that’s surely on the mind of his challengers and their self-soothing consultants:

Now some might counter, if Nickels is so strong, why are his polling numbers so weak? But that’s a question for another post…

Well, with retiring City Council member Jan Drago officially announcing her candidacy today, it’s time for that post, and I don’t think it’s one the field of challengers will find any more encouraging or flattering than the last.

Let’s begin with the facts. Every survey out there—the mayor’s, his opponents’, and those from third parties—shows Nickels’ approval rating consistently polling somewhere in the mid-thirties, and anybody who knows anything about electoral politics will tell you that for a two-term incumbent, that’s an awfully bad place to be.  Just falling below 50% is conventionally considered a sign of vulnerability, but 35%…? It’s time to start sending out your resume.

So it’s understandable why Drago and the other challengers might feel buoyed. Up until Drago’s entrance it was a crap-shoot as to who might win the second spot on the November ballot (my sense is that Nickels and Drago are now the clear favorites to make it through the primary), and going up against such an unpopular incumbent, it would be the challenger’s race to lose.

Or so dictates conventional wisdom.

But the the thing about conventional wisdom is that it’s so damn conventional, and as such, tends to obscure the vagaries that surround all candidates and influence all political campaigns.  And as I wrote last week, anybody counting on 35% in April to automatically translate into defeat in November has another think coming, especially since, quite frankly, Mayor Nickels never seems to poll all that well.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the mayor poll above fifty percent,” one long time Nickels aide told me.  You know, except on election day… the only day that really counts. As to why the mayor polls so poorly, well, that’s hard to say, but I’m guessing it has something to do with his penchant for attempting to do stuff.

Are you an ardent opponent of light rail? Then you probably hate the mayor… likewise for those of you for whom the monorail was the stuff of wet dreams. Prefer the rebuild or surface/transit options for replacing the Viaduct? Well then, screw Mayor Nickels and his gold-plated, faith-based tunnel.

Angry at losing the Sonics?  Convinced the grocery bag tax is nanny-statism gone awry? Think Nickels is anti-business and/or in the pocket of developers? Affordable housing vs. plummeting home prices… transit-oriented development vs. preserving our neighborhoods… service cuts vs. tax increases… whatever side of whatever issue, you name it and you can probably find reason enough to blame the mayor.

Of course, the only alternative to doing stuff is to do nothing, but that’s just not in Nickels’ character, and besides, whatever reputation the mayor has for a willingness to spend political capital (sometimes frivolously), it can’t help but appear exaggerated compared to the how-low-can you-go profile of the city council.

I mean, here’s a thought experiment for you: pull out your stopwatch and see how long it takes you to come up with nine things you don’t like about the mayor and his policies. Pretty easy, huh? Now time how long it takes you to name all nine city council members.

See what I mean?

Yeah sure, there’s something about Nickels’ style that particularly pisses off those establishment types steeped in a lazy political culture that puts every contentious issue up for public vote, and too often confuses leadership for arrogance (all the while whining about the lack of the former), but he’s not the only executive to head into an election year with less than stellar approval ratings. Gov. Chris Gregoire had only just inched up to 45% by April of 2008, yet still managed to win by over six points come November.  And perhaps more relevantly, former King County Executive Ron Sims’ approval rating was likewise mired in the mid thirties in April of 2005, yet he still ran away to a 16-point win in his landslide bid for a third term.

So while no doubt the mayor’s people would prefer to see his approval ratings climb, they won’t start shitting bricks unless and until the coming barrage of campaign advertising fails to budge his numbers.

So now that we’ve settled that—35% approval rating bad, but not fatal—let’s talk about what the challengers can do to exploit Nickels’ obvious vulnerability.  And the answer is… um… not much. For despite the litany of mayoral gripes I’ve outlined above, and the many, many more I’ve neglected, there really aren’t any big, consensus building issues with which to attack the mayor.

Drago and the others can focus all they want on Frozen Watergate, but in a city that experiences major snowstorms every decade or so, snow removal is hardly a top priority, while efforts to spin the icy streets as emblematic will be hard pressed in the absence of evidence of a broader culture of mismanagement. The city failed to clear the streets for a week, and…? They better come up with an “and” or two if they truly want to use this issue to their advantage.

We had the snow as bad as anywhere down in my neck of the woods, but that’s one week out of the 385 or so Nickels has been mayor.  Over that same tenure our crime is down, our streets have been paved, our libraries renovated, and our playfields re-turfed. We’re not too happy about the direction our schools are going or the level of Metro bus service, but somebody should remind Mike and Jan that these two services don’t fall under the mayor’s purview. Meanwhile, we’ve got a shiny new train running through the Rainier Valley that’s driving much needed redevelopment, and is about to make us the envy of the region.

And I live in South Seattle, one of the most neglected areas of the city.

I’m not saying there aren’t failures in the mayor’s administration, there just haven’t been any major failures, and certainly nothing endemic. A couple weeks ago I chatted with a staffer for self-financed candidate Joe Mallahan, who after failing to goad me on snow removal and Key Arena (“Aren’t you angry about the Sonics leaving… or don’t you like sports?” she asked me, I think implying something lacking in my manhood should I affirm the latter), raised the specter of Seattle’s budget deficit as evidence of Nickels’ unfitness to manage city affairs.

The budget? Really?

Seattle’s projected $29.5 million revenue shortfall is nothing compared to that of the state or even King County, and the mayor’s proposed budget adjustments have proven proportionately less painful and controversial, mostly consisting of a mandatory one-week furlough for library employees, the elimination of 59 positions (half of which were already open) and a $5 million transfer from the city’s rainy day fund (leaving another $25 million in reserve, compared to the mere $2 million he inherited in 2001).

All in all, I’d say the city has recently managed its finances quite well, and I don’t get the sense that many voters are convinced otherwise.

Likewise, despite the many opportunities Nickels has had to piss off one constituency or another through positions he’s taken and the policies he’s advocated, it hardly adds up to a throw the bum out consensus, especially considering the utter lack of differentiation his opponents have enunciated on these very same issues. How exactly does Mike McGinn expect to court the environmental vote away from one of the most outspoken environmental mayors in the nation? Does Drago really believe she’ll be embraced as a credible alternative when she’s been the mayor’s most reliable ally on the council?

Yes, opinion polls show the mayor remains unpopular, but it’s not due to any major scandal—personal, ethical, performance or otherwise—and its not due to the stances he’s taken on major issues, which have largely been in step with the vast majority of Seattle voters. The fact is, Mayor Nickels is neither corrupt nor incompetent nor out of sync with our values. Folks just don’t like him.

The dilemma for the challengers is this: how do you defeat a competent, scandal-free mayor whose values you share, and whose policy agenda you largely support?  You beat him by being a better politician.

And that’s why I’m convinced that none of the challengers in this race, not even Drago, can beat Mayor Nickels, for as vulnerable as he is, and as grating as his style obviously can be, none of his opponents possess the force of personality necessary to get voters excited about change. I don’t write this as Nickels booster; I’ve got nothing against the mayor, though I’ve got nothing particularly for him either, and there have been plenty of issues on which we’ve disagreed.

But issues don’t win races, candidates do. Thus the solution to beating a scandal-free incumbent, even one with a pathetic 35% approval rating, is to simply be a better politician. And sadly for them, none of the challengers are that.

It’s a big day for big judicial news that really isn’t news at all to court observers.

Earlier this morning President Barack Obama announced his first US Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor, surprising absolutely no one. Sotomayor had been on the short list since before there was a short list, and many had handicapped her the frontrunner.

Republicans have been desperately bucking for a filibuster, but this would be an awfully tough moment to go nuclear. If confirmed Sotomayor would be only the third woman to serve on the Court, and the first Hispanic… two constituencies the GOP can’t afford to alienate any further. Sotomayor’s bipartisan pedigree also presents an interesting obstacle to placing obstacles: she was appointed to the federal bench by the first President Bush, and to the appeals court by President Clinton; seven currently serving Senate Republicans voted to confirm her back in 1998.

One other curious observation. While I haven’t found any definitive source regarding Sotomayor’s religious affiliation, she is of Puerto Rican heritage, and was educated in Catholic schools, so at the very least, it is pretty safe to describe her as coming from a Catholic background. Thus if confirmed, the Supreme Court would now be composed of six Catholics, two Jews, and only one Protestestant, the 89-year-old Ford appointee, Justice John Paul Stevens. As I said, curious.

And later today in momentous/unsurprising judicial news, the California Supreme Court is widely expect to uphold the anti-gay marriage Prop 8, in a decision to be released around 10AM.

UPDATE:
As expected, the California Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 today by a 6-1 margin, banning same-sex marriage, but unanimously ruled that the 18,000 or so same-sex marriages conducted before the measure’s passage remain valid. That’s kinda weird.

I suppose that’s a victory of sorts for the anti-gay forces, but only for the moment. History is clearly on the side of equal rights, and no doubt Prop 8, which only passed with 52% of the vote, will be reversed by initiative a few years hence.

There’s quite a bit going on across the country in the effort to repeal the 70+ year old federal ban on marijuana. The fight is at various stages within each state, so I wanted to give a run down of where each effort is at. Some states are fighting for full legalization already, while others are still just trying to ensure that those with medical uses for the drug can legally use it.

If I’ve missed a state, please shoot me an email and I’ll update this post.

[Read more…]

It occurs to me that the whole raison d’etre behind the Dick Cheney Torture Tour and the FOX/GOP cacophony surrounding it is little more than an elaborate set up for an “I told you so” of monumental proportions.

The Republican message is that America is less safe under Barack Obama than it was under George Bush, a thesis whose ultimate proof seems to rely on there being another terrorist attack on American soil sometime during Obama’s long, eight years in office. Should Obama survive his term attack free, nobody will remember Cheney’s ravings, but should he not, Cheney and his cohorts will be all over the media screaming “I told you so!” And from a purely cynical political perspective, especially considering the current state of the world, that’s not a bad bet.

But it’s a bet none the less… and worse, it’s betting on the terrorists to succeed.

Think about it. Had Bush been warned publicly, before 9/11, about the imminent risk of a terrorist attack (instead of just being warned privately by his intelligence experts, as he was), he would have been raked over the coals for leaving Americans more vulnerable.  And that’s exactly what Republicans hope to do to Obama and the Democrats in the event of another attack.

I guess that makes the GOP the party of hope.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky for a three-peat. It was Monmouth Junction, NJ. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

As newspapers and other large media corporations struggle to develop new business models for the twenty-first century, I wonder if we aren’t already seeing the future of journalism gradually evolving before our eyes… a future that, from the consumer’s perspective doesn’t really look all that remarkably different from the past?

I was reading the New York Times this morning (online of course), and clicked through on a headline in the Technology section, “Why It’s the Megabits, Not the MIPs, That Matter.” It’s an interesting bit of analysis, at least to a techno-geek like me, but what I found truly fascinating was the fact that the Times had picked up the piece from the GigaOM technology news network.

Of course, this kind of arrangement is nothing new. Newswires like Reuters and the Associated Press have played an integral role in our media since shortly after the invention of the telegraph, and syndicated columnists have long been a mainstay of opinion pages nationwide. Hell, there are often days when less than half the stories on the Seattle Times front page are written by Seattle Times reporters.

What’s different today is the explosion in number and quality of web sites and networks like GigaOM, and their ability to expertly specialize in subject matter far beyond that of traditional news wires like the AP. As the Internet and other related technologies continue to tear down the barriers of entry to the media market, there will be many more, not fewer, opportunities to enter the field of journalism. These opportunities may not always pay well (or, at all), but they are there none the less.

The result may be that journalism is gradually transformed from a profession dominated by generalists to one of specialists, each focused on their own particular field of expertise. And as traditional media outlets grow increasingly comfortable with the notion of outsourcing their content to a growing number of third party sources, we may see an end to the kind of duplicate efforts that have long characterized certain types of coverage.  (For example, do we really need four TV cameras at the same press conference, when the same sound bite inevitably ends up on all four evening newscasts?)

Under such a model one could imagine an entrepreneurial journalist setting out to provide in-depth coverage of Seattle city government, a notebook computer and compact high-def camera in hand, serving as a one-person, city hall news pool for any and all media outlets wishing to subscribe. The fact that the same footage might appear simultaneously on KING-5 and KOMO-4 has little downside considering that few viewers watch both broadcasts at once, and if properly done, the only thing keeping the Seattle Times from supplementing their city hall coverage with this wire-like reporting might be a misplaced sense of pride.

Neighborhood sites like West Seattle Blog could fill a similar role, distributing hyperlocal coverage to regional, state and national outlets. On the flip side, a political site like Publicola could serve as a sorta Capitol news bureau for West Seattle Blog and other neighborhood sites.

Yes, such a model would surely lead traditional news outlets to hire fewer full time reporters, and produce less and less original content, but that’s already happening as it is. And as the Internet continues to tear down barriers to market, those newspapers and broadcasters who transition to a more portal-like product while failing to provide a richer and more varied experience to their audience will inevitably face serious competition from upstarts who will.

All that’s lacking now is a standardized distribution and payment network… a kinda AP representing bloggers and other journalists that allows media outlets of all sizes to reproduce content in print, on air and online, without having to negotiate a hundred different contracts. Ideally, this would take the form of a cooperative owned by the content creators themselves, but I suppose the market will have a say in the final details.

Or maybe not. This model of distributed journalism is clearly playing a larger and larger role in the news industry. The only question remaining is whether the journalists themselves will reap a fair share of the profits.

The NY Times reported on Saturday about the first Washington State patient to die under the death with dignity law. I’m going to ignore the headline that erroneously calls it “assisted suicide” and focus instead on this paragraph:

In November, voters approved the Death with Dignity Act, 58 percent to 42 percent, making Washington the second state — after Oregon — to allow assisted suicide. The laws in both states have been deeply controversial, particularly among religious groups. Washington passed its law after the United States Supreme Court in 2006 rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block Oregon’s law, which took effect in 1998.

It passed with 58% of the vote. You’d be hard pressed to get 58% on a vote to declare puppies adorable. Yes, the initiative had it’s critics, and I have no problem with the Times getting their point of view. But to characterize something that passed with a significant majority of the vote “deeply controversial” implies that the opposition was more widespread than it actually was.