Archives for October 2009

Over the weekend, the NYT had an article featuring Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the Portland congressman they hold up as a spokesman for the “Frustrated Left.”

Instead of forging ahead, Mr. Blumenauer, 61, finds himself fighting to retain one of the touchstones for liberals this year, a public insurance option in the health care overhaul, and is watching his hopes of curbing global warming grow cold in the Senate. Mr. Blumenauer, a seven-term congressman, is bracing for a tough vote on sending more troops to Afghanistan while he frets about the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay remaining open.

“It has been a hard landing for a lot of the people that I represent,” Mr. Blumenauer, referring to his largely liberal constituency, said as he assessed the first months of the Obama administration.

While Blumenauer is fairly diplomatic towards the administration, blaming circumstances rather than the president, it’s kind of hard to avoid coming to the obvious conclusion: this president is likely looking at one term only, and it ain’t because he’s “Jimmy Carter,” it’s because he’s Herbert Hoover. America didn’t elect a president of Goldmann Sachs, but that’s what we got. And when the next foreclosure crisis hits, and it’s coming, all hell is going to break lose.

The batshit insane right demands purity of their officials, who scramble over each other to genuflect in the directon of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter how insane their base gets, they at least get that the base needs attention.

OTOH, we demand little to nothing of Democrats, being all pragmatic and stuff, and nothing is what we get, over and over and over and over. This administration thinks nothing of screwing over key constituent groups, it’s ready to expand a land war in Asia, and it just generally has its head up its ass. I guess tearing off people’s heads and shitting down their necks only works on HBO comedy shows, or when you shit down the necks of your enemies. What we didn’t grok is that in Rahm-world, we are the enemy.

Fuck, the administration should actually hire Jeremy Piven, at least he’s funny.

I guess I don’t know how to spell this out more clearly for the Democratic Party: stop fucking the regular people over, or you’re done. And don’t tell us you “don’t have the votes;” you had the votes for all sorts of dumb-ass shit like condemning Move On and declaring a brain dead woman alive, so I’m not buying it any more.

If you’re looking in the mirror and thinking about your next contributions from the financial “services” industry and the “health care” industry, I’m talking to you. Fight the stupid Blue Dogs and show the people you have a spine for once, on health care, on gay rights, on Afghanistan, on everything.

Or. You. Will. Lose. Big. And you can blame “liberal purists,” all you want, but the people who will be voting you out will be all the regular Americans who are fed up with weak-willed, sell-out shitheads who send their kids off to die and steal their tax money to give it banksters, health insurance executives and defense contractors.

In their endorsement of Susan Hutchison, the Seattle Times told us that it was important for the county to, “act more like private-sector businesses.” Now, ignore that the county and businesses have fundamentally different jobs, so they should be run differently. Also, ignore the fact that the Times’ advice – hire someone with no experience, don’t look at new ways of finding revenue, and don’t even consider running a deficit – would be terrible advice for a business during a recession.

No, what I’m more concerned about is: who the fuck is the Seattle Times to tell anyone how to run a business? The Seattle Times that’s mired in debt? The Seattle Times that in recent years has lost most of its value. The Seattle Times who rumors are always circulating about their bankruptcy? They’re the ones who want to tell the county how to be more like a business?

I mean shit, if King County was run like The Seattle Times’ business, they’d buy worthless county property in Maine. Maybe hire Kurt Triplett’s kid to head up a major department even if he wasn’t really competent.

Now, you may think this is unfair. After all, there’s a line between the content and business sides of the paper. Normally, I’d think that was a reasonable point, if not necessarily a convincing one. But when the publisher is dictating content, it’s fair to ask how that content lines up with what that publisher does.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. The location was Burlington, NJ.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

If you are dissatisfied with the editorial content here on HA… if you find it offensive, insulting, narrow-minded, blindly partisan, dishonest or just plain poorly written… please, please cancel your subscription.

Every page you view earns me a little money. More importantly, I take pride in maintaining such a relatively large and engaged audience. So the best way for you to send me message is to simply stop reading my blog.

I mean it. Leave. Go away. Erase the bookmark. And don’t come back. That’ll teach me a lesson.

Otherwise, I’ll just take your continued readership and active participation in the comment threads as an indication that I’m doing something right.

– Radley Balko and Publius from Obsidian Wings have been following the scandal involving Texas Governor Rick Perry’s attempts to cover up the fact that an innocent man was likely executed on his watch.

– It never ceases to amaze me how often people who rant about taxes and socialism try to invoke Thomas Paine. I think they just assume that because the American revolution was partly about taxes that Paine must think like tea-baggers do today, rather than as someone who used to loudly advocate for re-distributing wealth through progressive taxation.

– Bruce Mirken asks why Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is doing so much to help out Mexican drug cartels? Law enforcement officials may be uncomfortable with those comparisons, but they’re undeniably true. Card carrying medical marijuana users in that county of over 10 million people are either going to obtain pot from local growers and local businessmen, or obtain it from gangs who are currently fighting the Mexican government. When you attack the local growers and local business, you automatically boost the profits of the gangs.

– I just very happily marked my ballot for Pete Holmes. The Stranger conducted a series of interviews with Holmes and his opponent, Tom Carr. The last one concerned marijuana arrests, which was somewhat funny because it consisted of Tom Carr spinning for several minutes about why his office is still pursuing marijuana cases, following by Pete Holmes making this very simple statement:

Whether standing alone or in conjunction with other charges, I will not charge another simple marijuana possession case. Period.

It’s that simple, Tom. And that’s why we want you out.

– Here’s a fascinating account from a mother who – after discussing it with her doctor – decided to treat her severely autistic son with medical marijuana. I’ve generally been averse to the idea of giving marijuana to children that age, but if it helps a child stop eating his own shirts, I think I’m ok with it.

American Violet is now available on DVD. I still haven’t seen it, but I’m hoping to check it out very soon.

That fresh pile of poop on your front lawn, near the walkway? It wasn’t a dog. It was me.

Last night I was visiting friends on the Island, and I had a little too much to drink. So I drove over to your house, scaled the security gate, dropped my pants, and took a dump.

It felt good. (You know, the way you must feel every time your paper shits all over the citizens of Seattle.)

Now I know in a region with a functional, well-funded government, this is the sort of disgusting, uncivil behavior the authorities might investigate and prosecute, but since you clearly hate government (or at least, hate paying for it, and see absolutely no need to leave it in the hands of a qualified executive) I’m guessing you wouldn’t bother to waste precious tax dollars by calling the police over something petty like this.

Oh, and when you have one of your servants clean it up, tell them to double-glove and wear a face mask. I was eating beans.

Check out Joe Copeland at the Post Globe.

But the council endorsements underline the odd disconnect between a very progressive city population and how its only remaining daily paper’s editorial page, at least on – one guesses – issues in which the Blethen family ownership makes its views known. The council editorial started by almost holding the editorial board’s collective nose to support the re-election of Richard Conlin, who is quietly brilliant on environmental issues. “It’s not that we agree with Conlin often; we don’t,” the editorial proclaims. They go on to cite his reversal of position on an employee head tax, something the chamber is dying to end and Conlin now thinks was a bad idea.

More confusingly, The Times writes, “His challenger, David Ginsberg, shares many of the same values. The key difference is who is more enthusiastic about environmental sustainability — not much of a differentiation at all. Ginsberg is in more of a hurry, which comes off as naive.” Maybe that means The Times doesn’t like the green Conlin, but at least he is in less of a rush about sustainability? But does The Times really have a problem with Conlin’s environmental positions? This summer, the editorial board had the good sense to endorse – unsuccessfully – the grocery store bag tax this summer.

I was going to post this as an update to my previous post, but the point is too important to leave as an afterthought.

I’m hearing that the Seattle Times endorsement of Susan Hutchison came directly from publisher Frank Blethen himself. This is his right, of course, not because he is particularly wise or well-informed or civic minded, but because he owns the newspaper. He signs their paychecks, so he gets to tell the editorial board to endorse whoever he wants, no matter how unqualified she is, or how out of step with the values of a majority of King County voters.

But… if in fact this blatantly irresponsible endorsement came at Blethen’s directive, then the Times arguably has an ethical obligation to reveal it as such.

One of the monotonously familiar knocks against bloggers like me is that we are just partisan shills, but if and when we are, at least we’re honest about it. So when an editorial board like the Times’ pretends that its endorsements come through candidate interviews and informed discourse, when in fact they merely reflect the anti-labor, anti-tax, pro-Republican views of their boss… well then… the entire endorsement process becomes just as much a lie as those of Hutchison which their paper has chosen to cover up.

Old media journalists love to attack the blogosphere for its supposedly destructive and uncivil anonymity, but it should be duly noted that I proudly hang my name on every stance I take and every word I write, rather than cowardly hiding behind the anonymity of an unsigned editorial. And if Frank Blethen has any sense of civic obligation, he will do the same.

I actually thought the Seattle Times wouldn’t endorse Susan Hutchison because whatever the ideological affinity, even they couldn’t bring themselves to endorse a candidate who is so spectacularly unprepared and unqualified to serve in such an important office.

I was wrong.

I often speak of the Times ed board as a single entity, but I know this decision wasn’t unanimous, so if those ed board members who opposed Hutchison’s endorsement retain at least a shred of self-respect, they will make public who voted for whom, or whether the decision ultimately came mandated from union-busting publisher Frank Blethen himself.

But institutionally, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Apparently, Joe Mallahan wants to arm kids at playgrounds, or something like that, at least according to Renee on the prerecorded robocall I just got. I’m against that, so I guess I’ll have to vote for Mike McGinn.

Can you find I-1033 on this sample ballot? If not, apparently you’re not alone, at least according to the folks at the No on 1033 campaign, who have been fielding phone calls today from confused voters who can’t locate the measure on the ballot.

Hidden beneath five boxes of instructions on the first page, many voters are apparently just dismissing the entire left column as instructions. Folks at the No campaign are particularly concerned that this unfortunate choice of layout might appear on the King County ballot only, thus depressing the vote in the county likely to go strongest against Eyman’s stupidest initiative ever.

So pay close attention when you get your ballot and be sure to vote No on I-1033.

Down here in Clark County it seems there may be a wee problem, and that the problem has gone on for a very, very long time:

Allegations surrounding the firing of a black manager from Clark County’s jail portray a workplace where racism is tolerated or ignored, a state civil rights official said.

The graphic charges were detailed in an internal investigation by the county sheriff’s office and a series of legal claims against the county last month.

The result: a “toxic climate” that has led employees of the county sheriff’s office to “take sides” against one another, said Earl Ford, a local NAACP leader.

And if you click through and read the entire Columbian article, it appears that it’s not just white people who are accused of saying and doing racist and sexist things.

The other thing worth noting is that the local NAACP is being very deliberate and sensible about how it approaches this. While Clark County has its share of problems, like anywhere, it also has some pretty terrific community leaders who will try to address these thorny issues in a positive manner. Nobody wants to squash anyone’s right to free speech, but there are limits regarding what is professional conduct in the workplace. Racial and sexual taunts are clearly out of bounds, no matter who makes them.

In defending her failure to report the use of a four bedroom Laurelhurst house as her campaign headquarters, Susan Hutchison merely shrugged off allegations by claiming it was “the residence of my campaign manager.”  Of course, that’s neither here nor there, as she’s still required to account for the use of the house as either an expense or an in-kind contribution.

But as I previously pointed out, her dismissive explanation is also clearly a bald-faced lie, as there’s no way her young campaign manager could afford the $2300 to $4000 a month comparable homes in the neighborhood are renting for. Either he’s not paying rent at all, or… well… or this particular scam is part of a larger money laundering scheme Hutchison’s consultant, Dresner Wicker is using to funnel tens of thousands of dollars of illegal, excess contributions into the campaign.

Of course, there would be one way for Hutchison to help clear up the confusion. She could actually live up to her pledge of transparency and have her campaign manager make public both his pay stubs and his rent checks, so that we can see exactly how much he is earning compared to how much he is shelling out for his so-called “residence.”

Or, of course, Hutchison could just continue to lie the public and the press.