Archives for July 2009

David Brewster thinks Susan Hutchison will be hard to beat because, amongst other things:

King County is a safe place to indulge in a protest vote, since the government is so peripheral.

Really, David?

In size, budget and population served, King County government is larger than that of twelve states. That’s why the Executive’s office is seen as a stepping stone to the Governor’s Mansion… in responsibilities and duties, it is equivalent to being governor of a small state. And increasingly, the county has been forced to deliver crucial services the state is no longer willing or able to provide.

If Brewster is right, and much of Hutchison’s apparent appeal comes from her being a “protest vote,” then our media has an obligation to explain to voters what King County government really does, and how spectacularly unprepared for the job Hutchison really is. (You know, other than being spiritually prepared.) This is a woman whose professional career has consisted of decades of reading scripts off a teleprompter, followed by a several-year stint writing checks on behalf of an eccentric billionaire. She has no political experience, no business experience, and no administrative experience. And no, President of the Symphony Board is not an administrative position; that’s what the executive director is for. (Though if Hutchison wants credit for the Symphony’s dire financial straits—it’s currently making payroll by eating into its endowment—I’m happy to give it to her.)

I’m as cynical about politicians as the next guy (even of many of my fellow Democrats), but at least I care about government. I mean, honestly, David… if you’re just going to write off county government as “peripheral,” when in fact its functions are central to maintaining the quality of life in our region, then you have no right to complain about the quality of candidates we get.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KXabe-ufpc[/youtube]

Strange Bedfellows at the P-I reports that labor is coming up with a new way of supporting candidates, although I’m not sure I’d agree with their headline that includes the term “fundraising war.” Sounds more like moving into the more modern, agile internet age to me.

The Washington State Labor Council on Monday said it has created a new political action committee that would funnel money directly to candidates it feels supports their causes and not to House and Senate party funds controlled by party bosses. Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender said labor had previously given hundreds of thousands of dollars to those funds

Now the Labor Council will urge members and individual unions to give to the ‘Don’t Invest in More Excuse’ (DIME) PAC. Bender also said the Labor Council would change how it evaluates candidates and look beyond individual votes taken. Bender said unions will take a more holistic approach, considering things like action not taken as opposed to how politicians vote on certain bills.

Yeah, the days of dumping money into party committees probably should have ended long ago. There’s still a place for that, and there’s no reason the state labor council (or other groups) can’t pump money into party committees as situations warrant. But the system of kissing rings in Olympia has broken down, at least as I see it from SW Washington. Candidates that could have scored major upsets have been sold short, and squishy, milquetoast types get an automatic nod. That’s a sign of institutional sclerosis.

Sizing up political candidates is an inexact science anyhow, and it would be great to see this labor initiative develop into a flexible apparatus that can put pressure on Republicans and Democrats who act like Republicans, and maybe throw some money at supposed long shots now and again. Kind of a “49 district” strategy, if you will. Whether people like it or not, there is a “gamesmanship” aspect to politics, and for too long our side has been hampered by outdated traditions and tactics.

There’s no logical reason that party institutions need to have such overwhelming control, and you can make the argument that a great deal can be done outside normal party channels. Obviously labor is only one (albeit important) constituent part of the party. Could this be the beginning of a new and vibrant era where all progressives support each other to a greater degree?

If there’s one hallmark of progressivism, it’s a hope to wed practical ideas with hopeful ideals. Busting up the business as usual, business lobbyist clique in Olympia is a necessary precondition to advancing all progressive causes, from education to health care to protecting the environment. Sure, there will be differences and bumps along the way, but at long last it appears labor has determined that it should practice a more nuanced and effective form of politics.

Please don’t misunderstand me, it’s quite valuable to have a strong party structure, and the ranks of the Democratic Party in this state are filled with many fantastic, talented individuals. It’s the party leadership that has failed, not the rank and file.

But this seems to represent a fundamental change in how Democrats are going to be elected. I think we’re all going to be better off because of the labor decision.

Answering questions from attendees at Mercer Island’s Summer Festival on Saturday, King County Executive candidate Susan Hutchison affirmed that she does indeed oppose the legal right of women to seek an abortion.

Well… she didn’t actually say that, and in fact, she pretty much tried to avoid directly answering the question. But if you read between the lines, her answer was clear.

A friend of mine ran into Hutchison at the festival where she was glad-handing potential voters (she’s apparently older in person than she is on TV), and decided to ask her a few simple questions, the first of which concerning her position on medical marijuana. Hutchison, very much the politician, replied that voters had approved medical marijuana, and that as Executive she would uphold the law of the land.

Notice how she avoided giving her own position on medical marijuana (my friend looks like a bit of a hippy, so she probably figured he was for it), but at least that “upholding the law of the land” bullshit conveniently set the ground rules.

Next my friend asked Hutchison about abortion, which she described as a “controversial” issue on which we need to have “national conversation.”

Again, she avoided answering the actual question, but the thing is, legal abortion is also the law of the land… yet she didn’t mention anything about upholding that.

Medical marijuana… uphold the law of the land. Abortion… we need to have a conversation.

Telling.

Now some might object to me reading into her answers a meaning that might not be there, but since Hutchison refuses to publicly have that conversation she claims we need, what other choice do we have but to parse her words as best we can?

Over on Crosscut, Ted Van Dyk expresses his disappointment with Joe Mallahan’s campaign:

At local level, I am concerned that Joe Mallahan, though having a financial advantage (his own wallet) over other mayoral challengers to Nickels in next month’s primary, has not waged the well-managed campaign I would have expected. Voters clearly want a positive change from Nickels, and Drago is Nickels in drag. Mallahan, however, has not stepped smartly into the breech and established himself in voters’ minds as the hard nosed, businesslike, managerial type — with actual knowledge of economics and budgets — badly needed after eight careless tax-and-spend years of city governance. I have been surprised by Mallahan’s seeming lack of knowledge of city issues that have been on the front burner for several years. With his funding advantages, I had anticipated that by now he would be running in the front of the Nickels-challenging pack. He has a month left to get there.

Considering Van Dyk’s impressive political resume (did you know he worked in the Johnson administration?) I’m not sure why he’s so surprised at Mallahan’s relatively lackluster performance thus far, for self-financed candidates often run disappointingly mediocre campaigns. No doubt having a pile of money to spend on yourself can be liberating, especially from the daily chore of “call time,” but as tedious, time consuming and unpalatable as some candidates find it, fundraising also presents a crucial opportunity to listen to voters, hone one’s message, and develop crucial campaigning skills. Indeed, some of the best politicians I know tell me that they actually enjoy fundraising.

Running for office isn’t easy, nor should it be, for as imperfect a metric as it is, the strength, efficiency and passion of one’s campaign is often a predictor of future performance in office. There are many ways in which we weed out weaker candidates, and one of these is through their ability to raise money. Thus by skipping over this crucial step and jumping to the head of the line, Mallahan has missed out on all the political training and preparation that would have come with it.

On the flip side, had Mallahan not kicked off his campaign by sinking $200,000 of his own cash into it, it’s unlikely his candidacy would have been taken as seriously, and thus his subsequent fundraising efforts would have been all the more difficult. But why Van Dyk would conflate a fat wallet and a successful business career into an automatic expectation of a “well-managed campaign” is beyond me.

Money is damn important in politics. But how you get it can be pretty significant as well.

I have written before about the Discovery Institute’s infamous Wedge Strategy, and I have, of course, repeatedly mentioned Susan Hutchison’s close connections to Discovery. But an email from a reader raises a very interesting point:

Of course, running an undercover former board member in a suddenly “non-partisan” race fits the wedge strategy pretty tightly.

Indeed it does. Hmm.

All the more reason for Hutchison to answer the question of whether she supports Discovery’s stated goal: to overthrow traditional science “and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions”…?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WWWIYeS4Q4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Over at EffU, I broke down the dumbest post to appear at the orange clown car this year, Jim Miller’s bizarre follow-up attack on Rick Steves for things that only seem to exist in Miller’s imagination.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorial board argues that “Congress should enact consistent sales-tax laws to even playing field for Main Street businesses,” and I suppose that seems like a fair and reasonable enough objective. But do they understand that there’s no practical way of achieving this goal without putting tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs out of business, including many here in Washington state?

I know this because I started and ran a small software development and publishing company myself for about a half decade during the nineties, which at its peak consisted of me, my (not yet ex) wife, and a single employee. And had we had the burden of collecting and remitting sales taxes to forty-some states, we never could have afforded to stay in business.

The bulk of our sales during those years, maybe 70% of our unit volume, went through a handful of major mail order catalogs, and thus the bulk of our wholesale product shipped tax-free to the Airborne facility in Wilmington, OH. No problem for us there, and I don’t have much sympathy for big catalogs and online retailers who oppose efforts to collect taxes on interstate sales.

But the bulk of our profits came from direct sales, an outlet that would have been all but impossible to administer had we been required to collect taxes for every state and municipality in which we did business.

The mail order catalogs “purchased” our main product, a rhyming dictionary for Mac and Windows, at half the $49.95 MSRP, and generally resold it at the discounted price of $32.00. ($3.00 overnight shipping was pretty much standard at the time.) But I put “purchased” in quotes because that’s not really how the scam worked. Rather, we swapped product for co-op advertising, the price of a fraction of a page costing us thousands of dollars a month, per catalog, by the time we gave up.

If they sold enough product to pay for the ad, as they did every Christmas season, the catalog would purchase more, and we would make money. If they didn’t sell enough product to pay for the ad, as happened most Summer months, we would owe them money. The catch: they wouldn’t sell us Christmas if we didn’t advertise during the Summer.

We sold a lot of product over the years this way. But we really didn’t make much money.

Direct sales, on the other hand, that was mostly profit. At a $39.95 “discounted” direct price, plus about $4.50 shipping and handling for Priority Mail, we could realize 85% gross margins, and the credit card transactions went directly into the bank (as opposed to say, Multiple Zones, whose refusal to pay one Christmas season ultimately drove us out of business). It was a lot of busy work handling the direct sales, and they rarely amounted to more than a few a day, but I enjoyed dealing directly with customers, and the steady trickle of cash flow they created.

In our best sales year we grossed maybe a few hundred thousand dollars, but the cost of advertising was so high that we barely broke even on the 90% of units that went through retail. But the $20,000 to $30,000 a year in direct sales… that, plus a little contract work on the side, was often the difference between paying our bills and going deeper into debt.

And here’s where the Times’ sales tax proposal really strikes home, for had we been required to collect and remit sales tax for every sales tax state—and on any given year we shipped at least a few units each to every one of them—we never could have afforded to sell direct at all.

For example, for several years we displayed at the August MacWorld Expo in Boston, and sold product on the floor as a means of defraying some of the expense, and as such were responsible for paying Massachusetts sales tax on that few days of business. A hassle, but fair enough.

When we stopped exhibiting at MacWorld, and thus stopped filing taxes annually in Massachusetts, their Department of Revenue noticed, sent us a bill for a big late filing fee, and suddenly insisted that we file quarterly. For over two years I had to sporadically deal with Massachusetts’ demands, as late fees and interest accumulated, and threats escalated. I’m not really sure why they eventually dropped their collection efforts, but it probably would have just made sense to pay them the money I didn’t owe, rather than expending so much time and energy fighting it.

Now multiply that by forty-some, and you get an idea of what small businesses might face if sales tax could be charged on interstate sales.

Even the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax Project isn’t nearly streamlined enough for truly small businesses—and I’m not talking about the 100-person companies the Times thinks of as small, but rather mom & pop businesses like my own—if it requires multiple rates and remitting to multiple states. We never had the luxury of affording an accountant, and we certainly couldn’t have afforded one if the Times’ favored proposal had been law. In fact, with the accounting nightmare it would have created, we couldn’t have afforded to stay in business at all.

And thanks to the Internet and services like Ebay, the number of small time entrepreneurs making all or part of their living via direct, interstate sales has exploded over the past decade, taking advantage of an extraordinary online marketplace that would simply be impossible if every vendor had to take the time and/or expense to file taxes in every state that levies a sales tax. I have no gripe with the goal of protecting brick and mortar businesses from the unfair advantage enjoyed by the major online and mail order retailers, but not if tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs are flattened in the process, many of whom are just supplementing their income with a few hundred dollars worth of sales a month.

I’ve had this conversation with state legislators eager to stem the loss of tax revenue to interstate sales, and they’ve mostly brushed aside my concerns, telling me that third-party service providers will magically arise to fill the gap and process the sales tax for me… but at what cost?  5%…? 15%…? 20%…? And at what minimum transaction fee? At some point, and particularly on low cost items, selling direct ceases to be worth the effort.

Indeed, the whole Streamlined Sales Tax Project shows an utter lack of imagination on the part of legislators, and a total lack of appreciation for the role of really small businesses in our economy. For the bigger problem, at least here in Washington state, isn’t the loophole that allows interstate sales to go tax free, but rather our over-reliance on the sales tax itself. That the Times and our legislators would prefer to crush a vibrant economy of small, online retailers rather than address the real revenue problem, shows just how unready they are to lead our state into the 21st Century.

Last week’s contest was won by N in Seattle. The correct location was Lariat Loop Rd. just outside of Golden, CO.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

– I’m planning to follow the City Attorney’s race pretty closely this year. Tom Carr has always struck me as a disingenuous hack, but Josh has some concerns about the Holmes campaign. Even with those concerns, I feel compelled to support Holmes in this race, especially when he runs against someone who claims to be against prison overcrowding yet tries to send bar employees to jail for not properly checking id’s.

– A number of California TV stations are refusing to air ads in support of marijuana legalization despite the fact that 56% of the state supports legalizing marijuana and the Governator has asked to have an open debate on the subject.

– Mother Jones has devoted its latest issue to the drug war. This story about a Mexican reporter trying to seek asylum in the United States after he reported on corruption in the Mexican Army is chilling. Contrast that with the work of legendary moron Ruben Navarrette Jr, who safely cheers on the entire corrupt mess from the comfort of his San Diego home.

– The story of Eric Frimpong is not that well-known yet, and I’m struggling to understand why. It’s the story of a young man from Ghana who was destined to play professional soccer, but who is now serving a six-year prison term in California for a rape that he almost certainly did not commit.

– The overly aggressive police raid on San Diego Congressional candidate Francine Busby’s fundraiser was sparked by a neighbor who appears to have called in a bogus 911 complaint.

– One of the reasons why alcohol prohibition lasted for only a short amount of time was because people remembered the time before it and could easily see the progression towards more crime that it brought. In Copenhagen, the same thing is happening. Up until 2003, a small section of the city called Christiania tolerated cannabis and hashish sales. Since 2003, when the city cracked down, the drug trade has spread across the city, creating more crime. Now, 59% of Copenhagen residents want Amsterdam-style coffeeshops.

Reporter Stephanie Rice at The Columbian tells the story of a former police officer who spent nearly 20 years in prison for allegedly raping his own children, and the now the adult children have told a court it never happened and that they made the accusations as children after intense pressure by a former detective. Please click through and read the whole story if you wish.

But the Clark County prosecutor’s office is “not waving the white flag,” as reporter Rice writes, even though the former police officer received a commutation from Gary Locke in 2004. Amazingly, it sounds like prosecutors are actually considering appealing to the Supreme Court if the charges are wiped out.

This story is why we need good reporters, and more of them. The Columbian deserves credit on this story.

There is, of course, a public watchdog function that newspapers perform, as something seems to be seriously amiss at the office of Clark County Prosecutor Art Curtis. Readers may recall that Oregonian columnist Steve Duin had a column on July 2 about a Clark County man wrongly charge with luring of a child, despite having ironclad proof that he was elsewhere. The public has a right to know why Art Curtis’s office is conducting itself in this fashion.

We all want the bad guys to be caught, and have put them away. But our Founding Fathers came up with some pretty amazingly sound rules to follow, like the right to face one’s accuser. While that’s admittedly problematic when it involves children, it places an extra burden on police and prosecutors to make sure they have the right guy. That’s not always easy, and the good cops and the good prosecutors deserve our eternal thanks, but when serious screw-ups occur there needs to be some accountability.

Talk radio hosts nationwide breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell threw the book at Scott Brian White, handing him a 20-year sentence for the brutal axe murder of former KIRO talker Mike Webb.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg had only sought a 12-year sentence in exchange for White pleading guilty to 2nd-degree murder, and courtroom observers had speculated that he could have received as little as 8-years, a precedent that some disgruntled listeners might have found awfully tempting. (Only 8 years for taking an axe to Dori? Hmm.)

Fortunately for me and the rest of my radio colleagues, White’s more appropriate sentence sends a clear message that we’re still considered legally human, at least here in King County.

Andrea James, the P-I’s aerospace reporter, has a post concerning the views of Richard Aboulafia, an industry analyst with the Teal Group. I guess it’s not just foul tempered bloggers like me who are amazed at what has become of Boeing and the 787. From James’ post (emphasis mine:)

Boeing’s latest delay — its fifth — and purchase of supplier Vought combine to prove that the company’s strategy of saving money from outsourcing work to suppliers “has been dwarfed by the cost of remedying the damage wrought by that strategy.”

“This is all seriously bad,” Aboulafia said. “As we digested the news, I paused to reflect on just what a tremendous drug-like rush the 787 program once was, and just what a ghastly let down it has become.”

What was supposed to be a category killer has turned out to be even worse than the “commercially irrelevant” Airbus A380, Aboulafia said. Because, at least the A380 flies.

James goes on to quote Aboulafia, there’s some interesting history there about the McDonnell Douglas-Boeing marriage in the late ’90’s. It’s a familiar story for those familiar with late 20th-Century and early 21st Century American “capitalism.”

So what say before our entire state’s political class goes on bended knee to Chicago, promising the sun, moon, stars and no unions, they take a good, hard look at Boeing? Yes, the company is an historic and important part of this state. I can’t even imagine how hard this is for long-time Boeing folks. The company that helped win World War II and build the Pacific Northwest’s industrial base is now a basket case.

Boeing is apparently in seriously deep shit, folks.

But a lot of entities, including households, local governments and educational institutions are also in deep shit, and the people simply can’t afford any ill-considered and hasty offers to a company whose management has so clearly dug its own hole. It would be one thing if Boeing management had a good attitude, but in trying to blame unions for their woes they have revealed just how craven they really are.

The first and non-negotiable starting point should be that Boeing stop demanding no strike clauses and other union-busting tactics, and the second non-negotiable starting point is that Boeing commit to keeping assembly jobs in Washington state.

Absent those two things, there’s really not much to say. Playing the destructive game of pitting locality versus locality is ultimately self-defeating, both for workers here and in South Carolina. This isn’t a basketball team, folks, although the basic technique is the same. Threaten, threaten, threaten, and then threaten some more.

We all know how good Democrats are at giving away the store before negotiations even start, so for once in the history of the universe it would be nice to see some Dems start out strong and maybe even shove management’s face in their failures a little bit. Sure, it would be political grandstanding, but not any worse than say, calling the cops. Just sayin’.

The taxpayers of this state are already subsidizing the faltering newspaper industry with a massive tax break, for no good reason that I can think of, and likely to no useful effect either, as the newspapers still don’t understand the new landscape.

But the titans of industry and their boosters inevitably demand our money when they screw the pooch with bad business decisions. What we’ve seen happen at the national level is that people wake up to a new round of layoffs followed by a new round of executive bonuses. The least our political class here could do is make sure we don’t throw any good money after bad in the aerospace sector, and make sure that any efforts to assist Boeing are done with the interests of all the citizenry in mind, not just executives and stockholders.