Archives for March 2010

I’ll get to the rest of their editorial later, but I just want to start off briefly with the lede of the Seattle Times ass-licking defense of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s blatantly political ploy:

“THE politically orchestrated hiss at Rob McKenna has not been convincing.”

Hear that? The 17,688 people who spontaneously joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group in a matter of days…? We’re just a politically orchestrated hiss.

So the question remains: why on earth would you still hand over your money to Frank Blethen and his editorial cronies when this is what they think of you? In their opinion, our opinion doesn’t count. We’re not real Americans. We’re not the real grassroots. We’re just a politically orchestrated hiss.

A hiss. That’s the noise a snake makes.

I mean really… fuck that.

There isn’t anything in the print version of the Times that you can’t get online for free, and most of that you can get better from another source. So if we’re just an orchestrated political hiss, let’s orchestrate something the Blethens understand. Cancel your subscription and let them know why: that you’re sick and tired of handing over your hard earned money to folks who so clearly disrespect you.

Now that’s a hiss they won’t find so easy to dis, orchestrated or not.

“Hell No, you can’t!”

(And there are almost fifty more media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

They finally editorialize: “AG Rob McKenna has a case to challenge the health-care law’s individual mandate.”

Need I say more?

UPDATE:

(And we promise not to spend any the money raised buying advertising from the Seattle Times.)

I couldn’t make it down there myself, but I’m told a healthy media contingent showed up to watch the protesters drop off petitions at the Attorney General’s office, presumably on the off chance that there might be a little drama.

I’d say that was well played on my part, but, you know, one can only go to that particular well so many times.

When several thousand health care reform backers packed into Westlake Park last September the rally earned relatively little media coverage and absolutely zero ink in the Seattle Times. Yet when maybe a hundred or so Teabaggers gathered on a street corner to mark the anniversary of their so-called “movement,” the Times deemed that worthy of a reporter, a photographer and twenty column inches.

Why? Media bias, of course, though not necessarily of the kind you might think.

Yeah, sure, our media’s corporate owners are biased toward the right-wing agenda and away from ours, but outside of, say, Fox News and handful of other ridiculously partisan media outlets, that only explains a small part of the disproportionate coverage the Teabaggers have enjoyed. No, what the media is really institutionally biased toward is a good story. And the angry, crazy, froth-at-mouth Teabaggers are nothing if not a good story.

Peacefully dropping off a bunch of petitions on the other hand, not so much… not at least unless you’re Tim Eyman prancing about in a rented costume, and spouting off his usual anti-tax/anti-government sound bites. But up the ante a little — provoke the AG’s office into ordering a lockdown, for example — and voila… three TV cameras show up. You know, just in case.

Am I proud that it took turning up the angry rhetoric a couple notches to spark some attention? Not particularly, but neither am I ashamed. I’ve been at this too long not to know how this game is played.

In my emails today with AG communications director Janelle Guthrie, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be as ugly and contentious as you seem to like to make it. Reasonable people can have reasonable discussions.”

Yeah, well, reasonable people can have reasonable discussions, but apparently, if you want the media to pay attention, it does unfortunately have to be a little ugly and contentious. After all, my long time readers know that at my core, I’m a policy wonk who often digresses into lengthy, technical policy discussions, only to be completely ignored by the legacy press. But break a bit of dirty muckraking — or vaguely threaten to vaguely threaten a public disturbance — and that catches the media’s attention.

I’m a smart critic, an entertaining writer and a damn fine analyst with long track record of getting stuff right, but honestly, I know what my main role is: publicly saying the things respectable folk wish they could publicly say, if they weren’t so cautious and polite. That’s why folks read me, because I’m willing to call a spade a fuckin’ spade. And there’s something naturally cathartic in that.

But like I said, one can only go to that particular well so many times before it runs dry, and if I’m the only person around here expressing any real emotion, the media will continue to largely ignore our side of the story while heaping outsized coverage on the handful of loud, angry wingnuts across the street.

And for those in the media who take issue with my assessment of what it takes to manipulate you, well, actions speak louder than words. (Or at least, actions would speak louder than words, if only there was anybody around to report on them.)

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has ordered his offices on “modified lockdown” today in anticipation of protests against his bullshit lawsuit to block national health care reform. According to spokesperson Janelle Guthrie:

“We understand that a number of groups are going to be rallying tomorrow and bringing petitions over to our office. Some blogs have been encouraging acts of violence toward our office,” Guthrie said, declining to identify which ones caused alarm. “It’s for protection of all the employees here who have nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t make an exhaustive search, but I haven’t seen any of the local blogs I usually read advocating violence, so I can only assume that Guthrie is referring to me. And here’s what I wrote on the subject:

Tomorrow at the AG’s office, let the polite petitioners do their thing, but if you’re pissed off at Rob McKenna for pandering to Teabaggers and threatening health care reform with his cheap political ploy, I encourage you to show up at his office and make a ruckus. Get loud, get angry, get threatening. I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage, but I’d love to see the genuine fear of it.

So here’s my question to our state’s top law enforcement officer: if saying that “I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage” can be understood as advocating violence and property damage, then you damn well better send a state trooper to my door and have me arrested, because I’m not backing down.

I mean, Jesus Christ… the teabaggers are faxing nooses and cutting gas lines and flashing their weapons and generally behaving like health care reform is the legislative equivalent of Red Dawn, and you’re locking down your offices because some blogger says he hopes protesters will be loud and angry? Could you be a bigger pussy?

That said, protesters will be gathering at the Tivoli Fountain on the Capitol campus at noon today, and marching to the locked-down AG’s offices at 1125 Washington Street SE to deliver over 18,000 petitions. And yes… I urge you to show up and get loud, angry and disruptive. But you know, not violent per se, because that sort of behavior is apparently only acceptable from the right.

UPDATE:
Guthrie confirms via email that yes, she was referring to my post, but claims she was misquoted.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Guthrie elaborates that it was this line that allegedly prompted the need for a lockdown — “… it’s not our fault if some people get out of hand” — a line that parodies the refusal of Republican congressional leaders to forcefully condemn the violent acts and threats from the right that has been spurred on by their party’s incendiary rhetoric during the health care debate.

But, you know, I am a liberal, so you can never be too careful.

The Seattle Times editorial board has yet to chime in on Attorney General Rob McKenna’s misguided lawsuit to undermine the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but they did publish an editorial this morning calling for an expansion of our state’s medical marijuana law to allow for licensed dispensaries, so credit where credit is due.

Ironically, it’s under the leadership of our state’s top law enforcement officer, Rob McKenna, that the spirit of our existing, voter-approved medical marijuana laws have been undermined to the point of being useless. No mention by the Times of McKenna’s role in our state’s war on medical marijuana, but then, no surprise there.

So many possible jokes… but instead, I guess I should just wish him a speedy recovery.

The phenomenon of being a teabagging hysteric who demands that people throw bricks through windows to get the government off our back while simultaneously living off of government welfare seems closely related to the phenomenon of seeing the most fervently anti-gay hysterics ending up in highway truck-stop bathrooms with male prostitutes.

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker, a Democrat, has responded to calls for his state to join the suspect lawsuit against health care reform with a letter (PDF) that makes one wish our own AG, Rob McKenna, had the intestinal fortitude to do the same. Well, McKenna could have just said nothing, because Georgia has a wingnut Republican governor, and we don’t.

It’s not that long, so I encourage readers to click through and have a read.

What’s really hilarious is how Baker smacks down one of the most widely publicized contentions of the lawsuit, that mandates for people to purchase insurance are unconstitutional:

In fact, earlier this month, an appellate court decision rejecting such arguments was issued in the only case I am aware of to be litigated on this topic to date. As you may know, then-Governor Mitt Romney proposed and signed into law in 2006 a bill that requires all Massachusetts residents to purchase health insurance. A suit was brought against the Commonwealth by a plaintiff who alleged that the requirement violated his rights under the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments of the United States Constitution and various provisions of the Massachusetts Constitution. In Fountas v. Commissioner of the Depørtment of Revenue, 2010 Mass. App. Unpub. Lexis 223 (Marchs, 2010), the Massachusetts Court of Appeals rejected all of those arguments.

The concept of mandates is a Republican idea. In a normal political world the GOP would be demanding partial credit, and at least a dozen or so of their House members and a couple of senators would have voted for final passage.

But we don’t live in a normal political world, because the GOP and its noise machine cannot abide defeat, and even those Republicans who know the Tea People are full of shit are too cowardly to stand up to them. This potentially leaves the GOP, once again, facing status as a permanent rump party.

Republicans say they know something had to be changed, but all they did was obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. They’re still doing it, like a gambler who knows deep down it’s time to get up from the table, but can’t. But thanks, Rob McKenna, for making this pathetic state of affairs obvious to hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians who thought you were a straight shooter.

On the same day that real estate salesman Dino Rossi teases the NRSC with word that he’s seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate, the 18,000-strong Washington Association of Realtors announce their enthusiastic endorsement of Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray:

“Realtors are proud to endorse Sen. Murray as she has been a tireless advocate for housing affordability and the American dream of home ownership,” said Bill Riley, Washington Realtor president. “She has also been keenly aware of the state of the housing market and its importance to our economic recovery.”

With the Realtors’ endorsement comes the financial support of the RPAC, the state’s largest political action committee, with as many as 10,000 annual contributors. RPAC endorses Democrats and Republicans who share the organization’s concerns for the housing industry, home buyers, and homeownership in Washington state. In 2008, Realtors invested more than $750,000 to support political races around the state; about 93 percent of Realtor-endorsed candidates were elected to office.

Oh man, that’s gotta sting, doesn’t it, when the folks who know you best endorse your opponent? Kinda like David Irons losing the endorsement of his own mother.

Yesterday the Palm Beach Post ridiculed Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum for backing “the rights and freedoms of insurance companies” over that of the people, and today two more Florida editorial boards joined the chorus:

“Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s decision to sue over the new federal health-care law is a divisive, overly political waste of state resources.…McCollum has a duty to use the resources of his office — paid for by taxpayers — in the public interest. Taxpayers should also question the propriety of hiring McCollum’s former law firm, Baker and Hostetler of Orlando, to work on the lawsuit for McCollum and 12 other attorneys general. The firm will be paid whether the states win or lose.”
— Sarasota Herald-Tribune

“Beyond the political gamesmanship, the maneuvering in Tallahassee seems especially callous given that as many as 4 million Floridians currently have no health insurance.  Sadly, like the Republicans in Washington the Republicans in Tallahassee have no plan of their own to provide affordable coverage for uninsured Americans. All they have are political games.”
— Gainesville Sun

And yet the editorial board of the Seattle Times — the paper of record in a state that voted for Barack Obama and his promise of health care reform by an 18-point margin (and in a county that went for Obama by a better than 42-point spread) — has thus far remained silent on our own AG’s role in this Republican political charade.

Cowards.

As McJoan points out over on Daily Kos, much of the conventional wisdom about U.S. Senator Patty Murray’s presumed vulnerability has been driven by Republican pollsters, but according to the latest Research 2000 poll, not so much:

What R2K found? Patty Murray is the most popular Democrat in the state, with (contra Rasmussen) a 52 percent approval, and a 51 percent approval among all-important Independents. Only Obama is more popular with Washingtonians.

What’s more, she handily beats the leading conventional-wisdom contenders Rossi and Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-08).

Patty Murray (D)   52
Dino Rossi (R)     41

Patty Murray (D)   51
Dave Reichert (R)  43

While Republican pollsters and consultants have made an awful lot of money over the past 18 years underestimating Murray, Republican challengers haven’t done nearly so well, with the diminutive Democrat ending the the political careers of three sitting Republican congress-critters in a row. I suppose Dino Rossi or Dave Reichert might be dumb/arrogant enough to take a shot at Murray and hope for a Big Red Wave, but if I were them I’d wait to see a little more post-health-care-vote polling before counting on a right-wing surge to sweep them into the Senate.

Though as a liberal blogger, I gotta admit that a Rossi, Reichert or Susan Hutchison candidacy would make for an awful lot of fodder and fun.

Tomorrow at noon, pro-health care reform protestors will gather at the Tivoli Fountain on the Capitol campus in Olympia, and then march to the Attorney General’s office at 1125 Washington Street SE to deliver over 10,000 petitions demanding that AG Rob McKenna drop his lawsuit to block implementation of the Affordable Health Insurance Act.

No doubt the protestors will be polite, disciplined and well mannered. But I sure as hell hope not.

One of the reasons the Teabaggers have received attention far in excess of their actual numbers, is the presumably genuine anger they’re not afraid to express. They openly carry guns, or carry signs promising to use them. They mob congressmen, calling them “niggers” and “faggots”, fax nooses to their offices, and cut the gas lines of congressional relatives. They yell and they scream and they threaten and they disrupt… and they’ve been well rewarded for their efforts.

See, angry outbursts make for a good story, and thus emotion trumps policy almost every time. And that’s why it’s past time for some of us progressives to break with character and show a little genuine anger of our own.

Tomorrow at the AG’s office, let the polite petitioners do their thing, but if you’re pissed off at Rob McKenna for pandering to Teabaggers and threatening health care reform with his cheap political ploy, I encourage you to show up at his office and make a ruckus. Get loud, get angry, get threatening. I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage, but I’d love to see the genuine fear of it. Let McKenna and the media know that we may be peaceniks, but that doesn’t mean we’re not mad. Let them know that if they don’t start taking our side seriously… well… it’s not our fault if some people get out of hand.

Oh… and if any Teabaggers show up trying to grab the spotlight for themselves, don’t be afraid to get right in their face. Bullies are cowards by nature, and you’ll be surprised how quickly most of them sit down once we start standing up.