Archives for June 2010

The Association of Washington Businesses claims its board unanimously endorsed Tim Eyman’s anti-democratic I-1053 at its May 13 board meeting, but after a bit of digging, the folks over at the Washington State Labor Council can’t find a single AWB board member who admits to attending the meeting and endorsing the initiative.

Can this be true? Amid severe recession-related budget cuts to higher education, transportation and other state funding priorities strongly supported by many of our largest private employers, the AWB board voted UNANIMOUSLY for this starve-the-beast strategy to avoid taxes?

Not Boeing.  Company spokeswoman Susan Bradley says the company has no position on I-1053 and had no representative at AWB’s May 13 board meeting in Spokane.

And not Microsoft.  Government Affairs Director Delee Shoemaker, an AWB board member, reports that the company will not take a position on I-1053 at least until it qualifies for the ballot. She adds that she wasn’t at the May 13 meeting either.

And the list goes on: Weyerhaeuser, Avista Corp., Ben Bridge Jewelers, US Bank… nobody would admit to even attending the meeting. In fact, of the AWB board members who responded to WSLC’s inquiries, only one, Safeway Director of Public Affairs Cherie Myers, expressed support for the initiative. But… “I was not there to vote,” Myers told the WSLC.

Huh. Reminds me of a lyric from Les Miserables:

Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

The bulk of the board members WSLC contacted wouldn’t respond to inquiries, but there’s a reason why local businesses might be reluctant to embrace I-1053 despite the business community’s natural knee-jerk support for anything that makes it harder to raise their taxes: as WSLC explains, the Californiafication of Washington government simply isn’t good for our state’s business climate:

Our biggest private-sector employers report that one of their greatest challenges is the insufficient number of skilled workers available. Microsoft regularly argues that more H-1B visas are needed to meet its demand for engineers. Boeing’s aging workforce — of both machinists and engineers — is considered a looming crisis.

This problem has been exacerbated by the recession. Plummeting state revenue has resulted in college and university budgets being slashed; University of Washington reports that its state funding was cut by one-third in the past 15 months. College instructors are being laid off, departments eliminated, class sizes sharply increased, and double-digit tuition hikes imposed. And all this is happening as Boeing laments its demand for engineers consistently exceeds the state’s production by a two-to-one ratio, a supply gap that is widening as its aging work force retires in droves.

WSLC includes a list of companies that have refused to respond, and it wouldn’t hurt if they heard from their customers that we don’t particularly enjoy doing business with companies that spend their profits ensuring that a one-third minority of the Legislature has veto power over our state budgets. At the very least, they need to know that they can’t continue to hide behind their empty chairs.

With time running out to appeal the use of eminent domain against Common School Trust lands in Okanogan County, the contentious face-off between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna is about to come to a head.

Either McKenna blinks, and accedes to Goldmark’s lawful request for legal representation, a concession that could come as early as today, or he plunges our state into a constitutional crisis by forcing Goldmark to take unprecedented legal actions that could ultimately lead to a Supreme Court showdown, and potential disbarment proceedings against McKenna.

And no, I’m not being hyperbolic.

“I am deeply disappointed that Attorney General Rob McKenna has denied my request to appoint a Special Assistant Attorney General that would allow DNR to appeal the use of eminent domain against the Common School Trust in Okanogan County.

As Commissioner of Public Lands, I have a fiduciary responsibility to defend the trust. It is puzzling that our Attorney General will not allow his client’s argument to be heard in court when he already supported trying it in a lower court.

While I am unsure what changed his mind, I hope he changes his mind again and appoints a Special Assistant Attorney General.

It is uncertain if there is a precedent for denying a request for a Special Assistant Attorney General to an agency headed by an independently elected official.”

Don’t be distracted by the measured wording of Goldmark’s press release; this is clearly a threat, and a clear indication that Goldmark has no intention of backing down in the face of his “fiduciary responsibility to defend the trust.” Just as the RCW mandates that McKenna must provide legal representation to Goldmark, the RCW also bars Goldmark from retaining outside counsel. Within days, both of these statutes may be violated, leading to a messy court fight over a court fight.

As a partisan blogger already focusing on the 2012 gubernatorial contest, I’d personally prefer that McKenna maintain his arrogant, illegal and unethical stance. It would be a dramatic, political misstep… but I’m not betting on it. My best guess is that McKenna will momentarily back away from the dark side and assign a Special Assistant Attorney General to DNR, while publicly criticizing Goldmark for ignoring his legal advice. That would be the smart political move, and up until recently, McKenna has proven to be a smart politician.

But if he doesn’t… well… Katie bar the door. So far the media has largely ignored this dispute — I guess they just can’t be bothered to wrap their minds around such complicated legal issues.  But they won’t be able to ignore what comes next.

Darryl neglected to put up his usual Drinking Liberally post — perhaps he’s drunk or something — so I guess it falls to me. Anyway, please join us (but not Darryl) for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by even earlier and enjoy some dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 325 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

There are 178 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, but according to the National Republican Congressional Committee only nine of those seats are vulnerable. And once again, one of those vulnerable seats belongs to our very own Rep. Dave Reichert.

That’s quite an accomplishment for Reichert, in a district that has never voted for a Democrat, and that under Jennifer Dunn’s tenure was a consistent cash cow for the NRCC, rather than the bottomless GOP money pit it’s proven in recent years. That’s just gotta be an irritant to NRCC retention chair Mike Rodgers, who is counting on his incumbents to be financially independent as Republicans go on the offensive in 2010.

“Our goal is not just to get every one of them to win… but to get everyone one of them to win with no help from the NRCC,” he said.

Fat chance there, at least when it comes to Reichert.

It is still unclear how much of the electoral mood this year is anti-Democratic, or more generically, anti-incumbent. But if it’s the latter, and the NRCC leaves Reichert to his own devices — and bank account — I wouldn’t rule out a surprise this November.

According to Josh at Publicola, real estate speculator Dino Rossi is kicking Sen. Patty Murray’s ass… you know, on Facebook:

In two weeks since declaring his candidacy, Dino Rossi boasts that he’s drawn 25,275 Facebook fans to his Facebook page.  And his punch line: Sen. Patty Murray only has 11,796 fans.

Actually, it’s been almost three weeks since he officially declared his candidacy, and while Rossi is still boasting about his Facebook prowess, it’s at least curious to note that he’s no longer publicly crowing about his fundraising totals. Rossi made a bit of a splash by announcing that he raised $600,000 in his first week of campaigning while attracting more than 20,000 Facebook fans. But this Facebook momentum clearly trailed off over the subsequent 12 days; does his silence on the money front indicate that his fundraising efforts have followed a similar curve?

You know, low hanging fruit and all that.

I don’t doubt that Rossi will raise a ton of money between now and the election; I just don’t yet see signs that his support is any broader or deeper than it was in 2008.

A Seattle Police officer punches a 17-year-old girl after stopping a group of teenagers for jaywalking.

The video at the bottom of the post makes it pretty clear that the teenagers were resisting arrest – and while punching a teenage girl was probably ill-advised – the officer certainly had a right to take action (in fact, he deserves credit for not using a taser or pepper spray). But the bigger question here is why we’re still trying to ticket people for jaywalking:

Criminalizing something as common and useful as jaywalking—criminalizing an environmental positive like jaywalking—invites selective enforcement and civil-rights abuses. I’m not saying that yesterday’s unpleasantness is a clear-cut case of police brutality, although that punch-to-the-face was pretty brutal. All I’m saying—besides “jaywalking: good”—is that yesterday’s unpleasantness could have been avoided if the cops hadn’t have stopped those girls in the first place.

I suppose I should take some satisfaction in the Wright family’s revised proposal for their Chihuly-themed gallery/gift-shop/catering-space in the old Fun Forest site:

As part of the deal, the Wright family proposes spending $2 million to fund and maintain an “Art Playground” somewhere else on the Seattle Center campus. They would invite local artists to design playground equipment inspired by Seattle Center or the 1962 World’s Fair that was held there. They would select four or five winners, build their designs and maintain the structures for 20 years, according to the proposal.

If that’s not a concession to my calls for a Really Kick-Ass Playground, I don’t know what is, and it’s certainly a smart PR move. The Wrights get their for-profit, paid-admission extension to their Space Needle catering facility, and the city gets a new playground… you know… somewhere else. Not that $2 million buys you an awful lot of playground these days, but it’s a concession nonetheless.

Still, my general response to this and the other Fun Forest proposals can be summed up in three words: What’s the rush?

There is a lot to criticize about the way the Seattle Center first introduced the Chihuly proposal as an all but done deal, and then went about hurriedly soliciting additional proposals in response to the initial public uproar, but the most significant problem with the process is the way that it institutionalizes the frame that the Fun Forest redevelopment is something that absolutely has to happen now.

Yes, I know they’d like to have something in place by the Center’s 5oth anniversary in 2012, but it’s hard to justify such a major, long term development for the sake of a symbolic gesture. Likewise, Center staff have argued that they need the income from the property to help subsidize other attractions, but we’re hardly talking about a massive infusion of cash. The new Chihuly proposal promises at least $350,000 a year rent, but the local, family-run business currently operating amusements on the site has repeatedly offered to pay $250,000 a year on a year-to-year lease.

An additional $100,000 a year in rent… that’s all the Center would sacrifice for the sake of giving the city some breathing room to really think through whether yet another private, paid-admission “museum” is the best use of a couple acres of scarce public park land. Yeah, times are tough right now, and revenue is hard to come by, but that makes this exactly the wrong time to rush through this decision.

The Wrights had a year or more to work behind closed doors to come up with their initial proposal, and then still had to go back to the drawing board to respond to public outcry, yet their competitors for the Fun Forest space only had a few weeks to start from scratch. That’s hardly a fair or efficient process, and if, as expected, the Chihuly project is the ultimate winner, this whole exercise can’t help but come of as anything but a sham.

So my advice to the Seattle Center and the City Council is that this is one case where the “Seattle Way” is the best way toward determining the best use of scarce in-city open space. There’s no rush to clear cut this last remaining swath of the Fun Forest, and no compelling reason to push through this privatization of public land at the depths of an economic crisis. If the Chihuly proposal makes sense now, it will still make sense a year from now; in fact, given another year of feedback and push-back, the proposal might even get better.

So please, let’s take the time to do this thing right.

Missed Dino Rossi at this weekend’s state Republican convention? Then join him June 15, 6:30PM at Bellevue Maggiano’s Restaurant, where he’ll talk about the most pressing question facing our nation: “Is now the time to buy a waterfront home?”

Really. In the middle of a supposedly hotly contested U.S. Senate campaign, Rossi is still giving investment seminars on how to profit off the real estate market collapse at the heart of our current crappy economy. Weird.

UPDATE:
And just take a look at the rest of the brochure with the $11 million homes and the low mortgage rates. No question Rossi is a man of the people. Very wealthy people.

On Friday I warned my friends in the media that they were missing the big story in the escalating dispute between Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Attorney General Rob McKenna. And after a sunny weekend and no further headlines, I feel compelled to raise the alert one more time.

Hey media… you’re missing a big story!

At issue here is more than just whether Okanogan PUD should be allowed to build transmission lines through state Common School Trust lands, or even the legal question of whether a political subdivision can unilaterally take state lands via eminent domain. (I’ve been advised by experts in the field that case law in WA and other states is very clear that such authority is not presumed; more on that later.)

No, the big story is AG McKenna’s refusal to comply with his statutory obligation to provide the legal representation Commissioner Goldmark has lawfully requested… an action — or rather, inaction — whose precedent threatens to dramatically expand the scope and authority of the Attorney General’s Office, essentially giving the AG veto power over the policy decisions of state legislators, executives and even The People acting through the initiative and referenda process.

As I’ve previously stated, the relevant statute is unambiguous:

RCW 43.12.075
Duty of attorney general — Commissioner may represent state.
It shall be the duty of the attorney general, to institute, or defend, any action or proceeding to which the state, or the commissioner or the board, is or may be a party, or in which the interests of the state are involved, in any court of this state, or any other state, or of the United States, or in any department of the United States, or before any board or tribunal, when requested so to do by the commissioner, or the board, or upon the attorney general’s own initiative.

“It shall be the duty of the attorney general” to defend DNR “when requested so to do by the commissioner.” The word “shall” is understood to mean that the AG’s duty is mandatory; there’s no other way of reading this provision.

McKenna’s spokesman, former right-wing talk radio host Dan Sytman argues that “usually, when we’re working with clients and we explain the legal reasoning, they defer to our expertise… generally they’ll defer to us on legal matters, just as we defer to them on policy matters.” Okay, maybe usually. But his client’s deference is not a statutory requirement, whereas the AG’s duty to defend his client is.

And by refusing to fulfill this statutory duty, McKenna most certainly is intruding into DNR’s business on matters of policy.

The risk is clear. If the AG is given discretion as to which laws and policies to defend, then he essentially holds veto power over any law or policy subject to a legal challenge. For example, should the BIAW sue to overturn storm water regulations, a suit against which the AG subsequently refuses to defend, these regulations will be overturned. Likewise, already on the record with an opinion that an income tax is unconstitutional, McKenna might choose not to adequately defend I-1098 from the inevitable legal challenge should it be passed by voters.

That is why neither the Constitution nor the RCW gives the Attorney General such broad discretion. Rob McKenna is our state’s attorney, and according to RCW 43.10.040, that means “the state and all officials, departments, boards, commissions and agencies of the state” are clients who he is legally and ethically obligated to represent. Outside of an obviously frivolous claim, McKenna simply has no choice but to honor a client’s lawful request for representation. And as I will show in subsequent posts, DNR’s claim is far from frivolous.

What we have here is the makings of a constitutional crisis… a dispute that, assuming neither Goldmark nor McKenna back down, will generate headlines for months to come, and that could possibly haunt McKenna throughout his 2012 gubernatorial campaign.

Like I said… this could be a big, big story. The only question remaining is whether media scrutiny will force McKenna to do his job, or whether McKenna’s refusal to do his job will ultimately force media scrutiny.

I just wanted to let Pacific NW natives know that in other regions of the nation, weather forecasters are actually able to somewhat reliably forecast the weather more than, say, 12 hours in advance. You know, like if they tell us on Friday to expect a week of relentless sunshine, the forecast on Monday won’t generally flip to clouds and rain.

I’m not blaming Cliff Mass and his cohorts; it’s apparently more difficult to make five-day forecasts here during much of the year than it is most anywhere else. But damn is it frustrating.

Last week’s contest was won by milwaukeehockey (aka milwhcky). It was a Valero gas station in downtown Kansas City where there was a mysterious explosion in a nearby donation bin. There are still no updates on a suspect or motive, but one wonders if it was one of the folks who caused the Valero to have to post this sign inside the gas station mini-mart.

Here’s this week’s photo, good luck!

And for those of you who enjoy this challenge, Andrew Sullivan has started doing a similar contest with his reader-submitted “View From Your Window” photos.

Genesis 6:6-7
The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

Discuss.

I’ve been following the saga of Wikileaks over the past few days. The secretive website’s founder, Julian Assange, has been on the run from the Pentagon:

American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.

Assange is like the kid in school who found the popular girl’s secret diary where she talks shit about the people she pretends to be friends with.

The person who’s believed to have turned over these cables was a 22-year-old Army Intelligence Analyst named Bradley Manning. Manning was arrested last week after admitting to the leak in a series of online chats. Manning also took credit for leaking the video that Wikileaks unveiled in April.

There will be a lot of debate about whether Manning should be considered a whistleblower or a traitor. In leaking the video, he was clearly trying to expose a coverup (Reuters had been unsuccessful in getting the footage showing U.S. troops killing one of their photographers). But with the cables, it’s not clear if Manning was trying to expose any particular wrongdoing or if he was just bent on undermining American foreign policy. Yet even if that distinction matters to some of us, it certainly won’t matter to the Obama Administration and the Pentagon.

While the true nature of what he revealed remains a big unknown, what isn’t a mystery is how this young Army analyst became disillusioned to the point of doing this. In his lengthy online chats with the man who eventually turned him in – a former hacker named Adrian Lamo – he pointed to one specific incident:

(02:31:02 PM) Manning: i think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything
(02:35:46 PM) Manning: was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…
(02:35:46 PM) Lamo : I’m not here right now
(02:36:27 PM) Manning: everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently
(02:37:37 PM) Manning: i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

Even as someone who thought the war in Iraq was ill-advised from the very beginning, and who fully expected an outcome where our occupation would eventually begin imitating the tyranny we’d set out to replace, I still find it fascinating to see this young man running into that glaring contradiction between our ideals and our actions. I have no idea yet how history will eventually judge Manning, but I understand how he ended up doing what he did.

If these cables are released, what will come next? Would it cause the unraveling of key alliances to the point that our national security would be threatened? Or does it merely expose embarrassing things that would only affect a narrow set of people and interests? Either way, the diary of the popular girl may be posted online soon.

Or perhaps I should have titled this “(U.S. vs. England) vs. Sunny Day open thread.” I had planned to watch the game, but given the first relentlessly beautiful day in God-knows-when, I’m not sure I can bear to be indoors for that amount of time.

Anyway, at the risk of upsetting all those crybaby Brits whining over President Obama’s criticism of BP, let’s get some payback for what British Petroleum is doing to our Gulf.

(And there are some forty more clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)