Archives for January 2010

Anyone else receive an email today from Gov. Gregoire, asking you to support Denny Heck for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District? Huh. Seems a little early for the governor to be taking sides, considering the quality of the Democrats in the race, but, whatever.

Sorry for this brief fit of tech blogging, but a $499 starting price for Apple’s new iPad? Wow. Top that, Microsoft.

Back to your regularly scheduled political ranting.

One of the silliest aspects of the Tea-Bagging-Town Maul spectacles last August was the widespread proclamation by conservatives that they are carrying on the movement of Saul Alinsky. While it was (and still is) laughable that people fighting on behalf on privilege and concentration of power could in any way lay claim to Alinsky’s legacy, it’s instructive to note just how delusional conservatives have allowed themselves to become.

For example, the anti-ACORN agit-prop activist James O’Keefe, arrested this week with three others in New Orleans for allegedly trying to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, was a main proponent of this nonsense.

Here’s O’Keefe being quoted by Politico in September of 2009:

James O’Keefe, the activist and filmmaker who posed as a pimp for an expose of several ACORN offices in the Northeast, told the New York Post earlier this week] that he, too, had been inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” which includes such tactical lessons as “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” and “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”

O’Keefe told the paper he was trying to expose the “absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language.”

“If you can make impossible demands on your enemy, you can destroy them,” he said.

Yeah, ridicule is indeed a potent weapon, as O’Keefe and his little band of modern-day Plumbers are about to find out.

O’Keefe has his actual roots, not in community organizing, but in the wingnut welfare system that sponsors far right “alternative” college newspapers, and it appears a couple of his fellow travelers do as well. Check out TPMMuckraker for more on that.

O’Keefe had his moment of glory, and became a hero to conservatives, because his clearly deceptive and unethical assault on ACORN was pushed into the broader media environment by Fox Noise. But this is not knew, and conservatives rarely pay much of a price for their egregious statements and actions, and in fact one can argue it only endears them to their supporters.

The problem for the rest of society is the conservative agit-prop artists become steadily more outrageous and egregious. Because the legacy media has become accustomed to right wing demagoguery, it seems to barely register when someone on the right jokes about kidnapping and torturing the Speaker of the House. Ha. Ha, whatever. Nobody would really go kill a doctor Nancy Pelosi, don’t be silly.

As progressives have known for a long time, the mind-set of many conservatives is basically akin to that of criminals who justify their wrong actions through excuse-making and an unjustified sense of victimhood. In this parallel universe, fostered, nurtured and encouraged by the broad array of stink tanks, news outlets and operatives now known as the Noise Machine, wrong actions against perceived enemies are justified because the very existence of the country is at stake. Never mind the law, never mind the truth, never mind what a democracy actually can be.

The conservative tribe demands that the enemy (that would be us) be attacked, and meanwhile our tribe is in the nurse’s office because we glued our balls to our legs again, to steal a recent quip about health care reform from Jon Stewart.

And now this is all manifesting itself in outright criminality, and of course that’s not new either. From the Palmer Raids to the McCarthy and Nixon eras, the song remains the same. Remember how much hard time Oliver North did? Yeah.

Some of the national commentary about O’Keefe has centered on what his “motivations” were, which I suppose has some bearing but also acts to disguise the foul nature of being caught in such a situation. I mean, they were pretending to be telephone repairmen in the office of a Senator who sits on the Homeland Security committee? One of them apparently had a listening device in a car nearby? Is there some kind of explanation possible that would justify that, other than being lunatics?

Some national commenters have predicted that O’Keefe’s future is in jeopardy, but that seems unlikely. If history is any guide, O’Keefe could very well wind up in charge of a giant right wing agit-prop machine to wield against his perceived enemies, just like the man who gave him so much air time in the first place, Roger Ailes of Fox Noise. (For those not clicking the preceding link, Ailes got his first big national political job in the 1968 campaign of Richard M. Nixon. The song remains the same.)

Given O’Keefe’s problems choosing between right actions and wrong actions, for anyone in the legacy media to ever, ever, ever again lend O’Keefe credibility is to deny what is plain and obvious to everyone outside the conservative pathology bubble: much of the right-wing in this country is utterly and completely unhinged. Normal people want to be able to afford doctor’s visits and pay for groceries, they don’t think about bugging Senate offices, and normal people consider law breaking to be wrong.

And they don’t believe a damn word coming out of Fox Noise.

Tweeting in the wake of last night’s decisive win for the Yes campaign in Oregon’s two controversial tax increase measures, my friend Carla at Blue Oregon wrote:

Dear OR Legislators: When you take bold, progressive action–we have your back. Remember this night.

That’s something I hope Washington Democrats remember from yesterday’s Oregon election as well. When (and if) you take bold, progressive action, we have your back. And by “we,” I don’t just mean progressive bloggers like me and Carla. I mean the entire progressive/Democratic infrastructure, and ultimately, a comfortable majority of the people.

But knowing Carla as well as I do, her concise, celebratory tweet also contains an implied threat to legislators: If you consistently fail to take bold, progressive action when needed–watch your back. We’ll remember this night.

And that’s a message I hope our own Democratic caucus internalizes too.

– While the marijuana bills in the State House were voted down last week, the decriminalization bill is still alive in the Senate.

– The Cannabis Defense Coalition got the third set of documents from the Public Disclosure Requests from the Department of Corrections. I’ve updated the index of those documents here.

– Dan Bertolet writes about why it would be a mistake to implement the “Vision Line”, the proposed routing of light-rail through Bellevue that bypasses the Bellevue Transit Center. As someone who works in that area, I strongly second Bertolet’s concerns. It just doesn’t make sense at all not to utilize the existing Transit Center as a light-rail station. Plus, Wallace claims it “brings all of Downtown Bellevue within a 10-minute walk from the station” at 114th and 6th. It would take a pretty brisk pace to make it to Bellevue Square from there in 10 minutes, not to mention that it’s a fairly steep uphill climb between 112th and 110th. I just don’t see people making that walk – especially during the Christmas season when the weather is crappy and the need for transit alternatives is greatest.

– Tom Schaller writes one of the most dead-on posts I’ve read so far this year regarding Obama and how his instincts hurt him on health care. Here’s a snippet:

One of the joys of reading The Audacity of Hope is also one of its repeated annoyances: Obama’s reasoned and reasonable mind almost always works through a problem or controversy by admitting the merits of arguments made by advocates on both sides of some issue, then confesses his preference for a more liberal solution, but admits he is open to alternative solutions that might take into account a broad range of views and values. The book was undoubtedly written with his own political future in mind, and he surely aimed to demonstrate both his intellectual faculties and his open-mindedness.

But the presidency is not an intellectual exercise. It is a not a law school class debate. And in this hyper-partisan age it damn sure isn’t a colloquium in which opponents try to find common ground with opponents uninterested in reaching accommodation, no matter how much good faith bargaining is done. Consider the filibustering tendencies of the past three years, with the Republicans in the Senate minority, compared to the six years prior with the Democrats in the minority and George W. Bush in office.

Based on data provided by the U.S. Senate, cloture activities have doubled since the GOP became the minority. The average annual filed cloture motions from 2001 through 2006 was 34, but jumped to 69 in the three years since; average votes on cloture grew from 27 to 50; and per annum invoked clotures ballooned from 13 to 33. Neither party plays well with the other, but the GOP is more likely to throw a tantrum in the sandbox.

Did Obama think his political philosophies or 2008 campaign rhetoric would be an antidote to this sort of obstructionism? Did he think that the hand he reached across the aisle would be shook rather than bitten? Did he think wishing for a post-partisan America would make it so?

Join us tonight for some heated politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier and join some of us for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 343 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Conservative muckraker James O’Keefe became a Republican hero last year with his videotaped sting of poorly trained ACORN workers acting incredibly stupid. Well, this is the type of behavior you get from a Republican hero:

James O’Keefe, the conservative filmmaker who was behind the undercover operations that led to the ACORN scandal last year, has been arrested with three others for allegedly trying to bug the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) yesterday.

One of the three men arrested with O’Keefe is Michael Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan in Shreveport, LA. Now that gets my antennae twitching.

Something tells me this O’Keefegate scandal is going to be at least as big as ACORN’s, even if it doesn’t get the same sort of media attention or congressional scrutiny. (Tip to reporters: follow the money.)

I’m not sure what’s more frustrating: Democrats’ inability to use the power voters handed them, or their refusal to?

Take for example state Rep. Jamie Pedersen, who as chair of the House Committee on Judiciary has the power to kill any bill coming before his committee, simply by refusing to bring it up for a vote. Some might find that a little undemocratic, but that’s the way our legislative system works, and that’s why winning and holding majorities are so important — the majority party gets to appoint the committee chairs, and thus control the agenda.

And regardless of party, committee chairs tend to be pretty damn thorough in asserting this power. If you don’t enjoy the support of the chair, your bill is dead. Simple as that. But not, apparently, if the chair is Rep. Pedersen, at least when it comes to HB 2507, special legislation limiting asbestos related claims against a single, out-of-state corporation.

According to the House Bill Report, HB 2507 would have the following effect:

A corporation that assumed or incurred asbestos-related liabilities before January 1, 1972 as a result of a merger or consolidation with another corporation has limited asbestos-related liability. The cumulative successor asbestos-related liability is limited to the fair market value of the total gross assets of the predecessor corporation.

In reality, this bill was narrowly crafted to benefit only one corporation, Pennsylvania based Crown Holdings, a company with 2008 revenues of over $7.7 billion, and annual asbestos liability expenses of only $53 million, worldwide. If enacted, the bill would exempt Crown from any further liability stemming from its 1965 merger with Mundet Cork Corporation, and that company’s asbestos insulation that was widely used at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and other Washington state facilities.

The bill would cost our state’s workers compensation fund about $600,000 between now and 2015, while denying any future claims from workers who were harmed by the product. With Washington ranking 7th in the nation in asbestos related deaths, and King County ranking 4th nationally on a per capita basis, that would leave untold numbers of local workers unable to recover damages.

But that’s neither here nor there. This kind of corporate favoritism is common in both parties (just take a look at our state’s tax code), the common good be damned. But what’s not so common is the way Rep. Pedersen, as chair, has publicly postured his opposition to the bill (he voted against it) while allowing it to pass his committee.

In an email to a constituent, Rep. Pedersen voiced his concern that the bill would reduce compensation to injured workers, yet explained his actions as such:

A majority of members of my committee (seven of eleven) support the bill.  So I concluded that I would not stand in the way of a vote on the bill and would let its fate be decided by the larger body.  If it is any consolation, I think it is extremely unlikely that the bill will pass out of the Senate.

Yes, a majority of his committee supported the bill, including all three of the Republicans present, but a majority of Democrats did not. And yet Rep. Pedersen allowed the bill to pass this major legislative hurdle.

One can only assume that either Rep. Pedersen is a crappy politician when comes to effective execution of political power, or that as a corporate attorney himself, he’s actually being a bit disingenuous in stating his opposition to the bill.

Either way, he doesn’t come off looking so good.

The Republican mantra is that the real problem with the state budget is that state employees simply make too much and enjoy far too generous benefits. If we could just get rid of those damn public employee unions, we could balance our state budget merely by slashing the health care benefits and reducing the pay of state workers.

That’s the type of “fiscal conservatism” we’ve come to expect from Republicans. You know, like Republican state Attorney General Rob McKenna:

Total bonus payments within the Attorney General’s office exceeded those of any other state agency. Of the $1.9 million awarded as bonuses to state employees during FY 2009, nearly one-third – $599,000 – went to members of the McKenna’s staff (McKenna has been Attorney General since 2005).

The AG’s office awarded larger than average bonuses. While the average performance award for a state employee was $204, members of the AG’s office were awarded bonuses averaging $664 with 55 staffers getting bonuses of $3,000 each.

Bonuses were widespread. The AG’s office awarded a total of 901 bonuses to its staff of 1321 staffers, including 55 awards of $3,000 each.

Most awards were given during the economic downturn. In fall 2008, Governor Gregoire advised agencies to withhold performance recognition awards, and most agencies complied. However, the AG awarded the vast majority of his awards in February 2009, just as the Legislature was making draconian spending cuts to education and public health programs in an effort to balance the state budget.

Do as I say, not as I do, and all that.

“Remember, it’s 51 votes for passage. They have to filibuster. Make them filibuster.

[…] Here we have a chance to do something historic. And if it means some of us are going to lose because of that, so be it. At least you’ll have lost your office fighting for something and accomplishing something.”

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a former DNC chair himself, may be an asshole sometimes (okay, most of the time), but he’s our asshole, and that’s why we love him. Indeed, Democrats could use a few more assholes like Ed in both Washingtons.

About ten years ago, shortly after his return to Apple, Steve Jobs gave this motivational speech defining the company’s core values. (Via Gizmodo.)

“Marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.

Our customers want to know, who is Apple, and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world? And what we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody, in some cases.

But Apple is about something more than that. Apple at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.”

Substitute “politics” for “marketing,” “party” for “company,” and “Democratic Party” for “Apple,” and you’ve got a clear values statement and messaging strategy for getting the American people behind our efforts to move this nation forward. Even “making boxes for people to get their jobs done” is an apt metaphor for what the Democratic Party does, if only that.

You also have a clear answer as to why the Democrats, with our large post-2008 majorities, have failed to rally the nation behind our agenda: because the American people have no idea what we stand for.

Hell, I’m not sure even most Democrats have a clear idea what we stand for.

I’ve long said that the biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans is that we believe in government, while they do not. But Jobs says it much better. Indeed, apply his “people with passion can change the world for the better” to a national context, put a Boston patrician accent on it, and it would sound downright JFK-esque.

Republicans don’t really believe this. Sure, they’ve got their blind faith in the efficiencies of an unfettered free market that they like to promote as a defense of rugged individualism, but it’s really rooted in a sorta value-neutral if not mean-spirited social Darwinism that pretty much advocates every man for himself. Survival of the fittest, and all that. If the rich exploit the poor, the strong exploit the weak, well, that’s the natural order.

And while I suppose Republicans might even seek to twist Jobs’ value statement to fit their own philosophy, remember, Jobs was talking about the values of a company — an organization… a collection of individuals working together toward a common goal — in the same way that Democrats should be talking about the values of our nation.

Democrats too believe that people with passion can change the world for the better, both acting collectively through government, and individually through our market economy. That is the core belief that binds us together, and like Apple, our primary goal should be to provide the opportunity for people with passion to do what they do best.

Politics, like marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world, it’s a very noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No party or politician is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.

The American people want to know who is the Democratic Party, and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world? And what we’re about isn’t making policies for people to get jobs, although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody, in some cases.

But the Democratic Party is about something more than that. The Democratic party at the core, its core value, is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.

And it’s time for the Democratic Party to get behind such a simple, coherent message.

I agree with Danny Westneat:

Let me repeat what he said, because you don’t hear it often: We don’t mind some reasonable tax increase.

I think that’s true. I’d guess people want to see more cutting, first. But they also would rather pay a little more, across the board, than see the schools or safety net or criminal-justice system go all to hell.

So, legislators, just do that.

Even with one of the highest state tobacco taxes in the nation, I don’t mind seeing it rise a little higher. Smoking is a dangerous habit that shortens lives and costs businesses and government billions of dollars in lost productivity and higher health care expenses. Increase the cost of smoking and fewer people will smoke; that’s a clear social benefit.

But as a primary means of addressing our state’s interminable budget crisis, well, that’s just plain cowardly and dumb.

Legislators love to over-rely on sin taxes because they tend be relatively politically palatable, but they’re also the most regressive, and by far. A $3.00 tax on a $1.00 cigar translates to a rate of 300%, whereas it only amounts to a 10% tax on a luxury cigar that would otherwise retail for $30.00. It’s easy to figure out which income groups are impacted the most by such a tax.

But just as importantly, from a budgetary perspective, sin tax increases just don’t produce enough revenue, and simply aren’t sustainable.

One of the arguments in favor of increasing tobacco taxes is that higher costs decrease consumption, undoubtedly a social good, but that also means that from a revenue perspective, higher taxes also produce diminishing returns. Combined with the fact that the real-dollar-value of unit-based excise taxes inevitably decreases over time as it is eaten away by inflation, and the economics simply don’t allow for the state to wring significant new revenues from an already highly taxed commodity.

So while from a social engineering perspective I’ve got nothing against raising tobacco taxes, Democratic legislators who think that this might somehow answer constituent demands for new revenue to fill a significant portion of the state’s current $2.6 billion revenue deficit, well, they’re smoking something else entirely.

On the heels of last year’s devastating all-cuts budget, another mostly-cuts budget simply isn’t a reasonable alternative to anybody interested in maintaining a level of government services and investment necessary to sustain the quality of life in Washington state, while moving our economy forward. And even if Washington receives the additional $700 million in one-time federal funds Gov. Gregoire’s proposals anticipate, that would do nothing to address the budget crisis looming in the next biennium.

As politically painful and unpopular as it may appear to be, legislators need to start debating a broader based tax increase that can produce significant new revenue now, and for the foreseeable future. And barring the courage (and time) to wade into the billions of dollars a year in under- and non-producing tax exemptions, the only realistic option for substantial short term revenue is a general sales tax increase, and/or an expansion thereof to additional goods and services.

A general sales tax increase and/or expansion must be on the table this session, and by “on the table” I mean publicly discussed and debated. Yes, this too would be regressive, an impact that could be partly addressed by fully implementing the Working Families Tax Credit. But at the same time we’re talking about a sales tax increase, we also seriously need to discuss and debate an income tax as part of any long term solution.

A bold, courageous and creative Legislature could simultaneously pass both a sales tax increase and the income tax that would supplant it. For example, a temporary, half cent increase in the state portion of the sales tax from 6.5% to 7.0% would generate an additional $500 million a year in new revenue almost immediately, but a high-earners income tax, which would take at least a year to implement and muddle through the inevitable constitutional challenge, could replace the sales tax increase while impacting only the top two percent of households. Raise the income tax a little higher, and we could even knock the state sales tax down to 6% or less.

There are budget solutions beyond endless cutting and praying for federal bailouts. We just need a few legislators willing to lead the way.

This week, both of the progressive marijuana bills introduced in the State House this session were voted down by the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee. This wasn’t a terribly surprising outcome, as the Committee continues to be led by former police officer Chris Hurst (D-Enumclaw), who killed the decriminalization bill last year as well. Despite the outcome, having an actual legalization bill introduced was another big step forward towards ending the disastrous prohibition of marijuana.

Making that even more clear are the results of a SurveyUSA poll, which finds that 56% of Washington adults think that legalizing marijuana is a good idea (vs. only 36% who think it’s a bad idea). On top of that, the only demographic that remains strongly opposed is the 65 and over crowd. Even among those aged 50-64, SurveyUSA found that 63% think legalizing marijuana is a good idea. And even in Eastern Washington, they found that 52% think it’s a good idea.

Those numbers alone won’t make the laws change though. It still requires either the legislature and the Governor to care about overwhelming public support for reforming the laws (not going to happen any time soon), or it will take a voter initiative. On the latter front, Sensible Washington is gearing up for the 2010 ballot with an initiative to remove the criminal penalties for marijuana. According to Sensible Washington, they aim to have the initiative language hammered out by March 1, and will be collecting signatures through July. They need over 240,000 to qualify for the November ballot.

What ends up being the most frustrating aspect of this effort, though, is that there simply isn’t a sensible reason for Democrats in this state (or in other more progressive states) to get on board. In fact, Ben Morris makes this connection with respect to the defeat of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. Coakley was a vocal opponent of the decriminalization initiative that Massachusetts voters approved by almost a 2 to 1 margin. Yet everyone was scratching their head as to why progressives and young voters didn’t show up to vote for her.

Whether Democrats like it or not, drug law reform is part of the “change” that people want right now. And while drug policy isn’t as high profile an issue as health care or job creation, the frames that exist to drive voters perceptions of candidates are often greatly influenced by things like a vocal opposition to a commonsense drug policy measure – especially for young people, for whom the issue is often far simpler to grasp. It’s really hard to convince young people that Martha Coakley is the person you need to vote for to bring about “change” after she spent 2008 supporting absurd reefer madness crusades in an attempt to defeat the ballot measure. The fact that Democrats even here in Washington can’t look at these polls and put 2 and 2 together doesn’t make me very optimistic about their chances this November.

UPDATE: Seattle Weekly has a Q&A with Douglas Hiatt of Sensible Washington.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky, who got the correct answer of Fort Washington, MD.

This week’s contest was suggested by a reader (who is not allowed to win). :)

This might be harder than it looks, good luck!

1 Timothy 2:12
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

Discuss.