Archives for June 2010

The more I think about the escalating spat between the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and Attorney General Rob McKenna over his refusal to provide legal counsel in appealing a lower court decision, the more I think that our local media may be missing an awfully big story in the making. Let’s just say my spidey sense is tingling.

The issue at the center of this dispute is whether a local government agency, the Okanogan Public Utility District, can condemn state Common School Trust land through eminent domain, an action for which there is little if any precedent, but the precedent the Attorney General seeks to set in refusing to represent DNR on appeal could be much more far reaching. Indeed, it essentially boils down to who gets to set policy priorities in Washington state: elected executives like Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and Governor Chris Gregoire… or the Attorney General himself?

The statute is clear; it is “the duty” of the attorney general to defend the state “when requested so to do by the commissioner”:

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.

Yet despite Commissioner Goldmark’s repeated requests for a Special Assistant Attorney General to appeal the decision, McKenna has refused. In a statement, McKenna claims that the decision not to appeal was based on the likelihood of success, but that is not his decision to make. The statute is unambiguous, and McKenna’s refusal to comply may be unprecedented.

Meanwhile, RCW 43.10.067 appears to bar DNR from retaining outside legal counsel, leaving the department powerless to legally defend itself in the absence of adequate representation on the part of the Attorney General.

So what is really going on here? Reading between the lines, Goldmark appears to give a hint in his earlier statement on the dispute:

“By refusing to represent the Common School Trust and the non-tax revenue it generates, Mr. McKenna is choosing to allow the inappropriate use of eminent domain over Washington’s schools,” said Commissioner Goldmark. “Mr. McKenna is choosing to play politics with our state’s heritage.”

This is a case that puts the state in the unusual position of opposing an expansive use of eminent domain, and one can’t help but wonder if McKenna is choosing to sacrifice the interests of one client to what he believes to be the general interest of others (DOT, for example). Yes, in the broadest sense, McKenna represents the people of Washington state, but according to statute the specific duty of his office is to serve as the sole attorney to the state’s individual departments, agencies and commissions.

If the Attorney General is given the option of choosing which laws and policies to defend, then he is essentially put in the position of setting policy, trumping the power of elected executives like Commissioner Goldmark. Which I suppose is why the RCW does not give the Attorney General such an option.

As DNR’s attorney, McKenna is free to strongly advise Commissioner Goldmark not to appeal. But to refuse a statutory request for legal counsel represents an unprecedented usurpation of executive power that could greatly expand the role of the Attorney General’s Office in setting state policy at nearly every level.

And that is a story our media shouldn’t ignore.

Alternate headline for this post: “You can tell we are Teabaggers by our misspelled signs.”

There’s little doubt that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna’s decision to join the lawsuit challenging health insurance reform was purely political; like the other Republican AGs in the suit, McKenna was apparently pandering to the hard-right teabagger faction on which the GOP has recently pinned its electoral hopes.

But TPM takes a look at how this strategy has thus far worked out for AGs facing electoral challenges in 2010, and apparently, not so well:

Take a look at Tuesday’s primary in South Carolina, where Attorney General Henry McMaster boasted in his gubernatorial campaign that he was protecting “South Carolina’s sovereignty, “standing tall for states’ rights,” and opposing Obama on health care. McMaster came in third place with 17%, failing to make the GOP runoff.

And in Florida, state Attorney General Bill McCollum joined the lawsuits at a time when he was the presumptive Republican nominee for governor at time he joined the lawsuits. But no longer. He is now trailing in a new poll against self-financing former health care executive Rick Scott — who is touting his own opposition to the health care bill, and the activism he spearheaded during the debates.

In Michigan, state Attorney General Mike Cox is running for governor in a five-way Republican primary. And he has not broken out of the pack. The TPM Poll Average currently has him running in third place with 17.6%, behind Rep. Pete Hoekstra at 24.4% and businessman Rick Snyder with 18.5%.

And last but not least, look at Alabama Attorney General Troy King, who joined the lawsuits — he already lost his primary to Luther Strange, an attorney and the 2006 GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, by a margin of 60%-40%.

Not all the AGs in the case have found themselves on the losing side of the ballot. Pennsylvania AG Tom Corbett easily won his Republican primary for governor, but he was already the frontrunner before the lawsuit. And a bunch of other AGs remain unopposed in primaries for their reelection. But as we see above, those AGs in closely contested races haven’t found the health reform lawsuit to be the electoral bonanza they thought it would be.

Of course McKenna’s strategy may already have achieved its main objective; by striking first for the teabagger vote, he may have forced Dino Rossi out of the 2012 gubernatorial race and into an ill-advised run for the U.S. Senate. But so far there is little evidence to suggest that McKenna’s stunt will produce further electoral payoffs two years down the road, especially as the benefits of reform begin to kick in, and voters become loath to give them up.

Apparently, Dan Savage also had a conversation with Dino Rossi about abortion, and the U.S. Senate wannabe is not only opposed, he told Dan that women who have the procedure should be arrested and prosecuted for murder. Who knew that Dan and Dino and I all hang out at the same bar?

Well it turns out that we weren’t the only ones, for a reliable source writes that he was also at the bar that night, and after Dan finished talking with Rossi, my source followed up to ask, “You would prosecute for murder… even in cases of rape, incest or when the health of the mother is at risk?”

“All life is sacred,” Rossi responded, as he picked the olive from his umpteenth martini.

Or so my source says. If Rossi recalls otherwise, he’s free to publicly clarify his stance on the issue.

Anyway, with over 150 comments already in yesterday’s thread, I just thought the HA community needed more space to debate why Rossi thinks women shouldn’t have control over their own bodies.

…I’m picking England, 2-1.

Also, I’m participating in the Times’ King of the Cup competition, And you can make your picks for Round One right now. (Somebody has got to take North Korea over Brazil. You could be that person.)

My favorite soccer ads are after the jump.

[Read more…]

State Sens. Steve Hobbs and Brian Hatfield were apparently all smiles at Tuesday’s lobbyist-sponsored “Roadkill Caucus” fundraiser at the Indian Summer Golf Club.

Huh. Considering the tough primary and general election challenges Hobbs faces, perhaps “roadkill” is an apt name?

I have the Netherlands, Chile, Nigeria, and the Kiwis in my pool. The greatest sports tournament on Earth begins Friday at 7am.

So if Dino Rossi refuses to talk about issues, or even post an issues page on his website, I suppose we’re just going to have to talk about issues for him.

So here’s the first one: safe and legal abortion. He opposes it. And would vote against reproductive rights, if elected to the U.S. Senate.

How do I know? He told me. I ran into him at a bar some months back and asked him, and he said “Goldy, I oppose a woman’s right to choose.” End of conversation.

And if Rossi wants to deny our conversation, or my representation of his opposition to reproductive rights, he’s free to go public and set the record straight. But he won’t. Because he opposes safe and legal abortion. So there.

A hot, dry desert. A tense, contentious border. Angry youths throw rocks at government security forces. Shots are fired. A 14-year-old boy lies dead.

Sound like one of those all too familiar skirmishes along the Israeli-Gaza border? Not quite…

A U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed a 14-year-old Mexican boy near the Juarez-El Paso border during a rock-throwing incident Monday night, authorities said.

[…] The FBI, which is investigating the incident, said two Border Patrol agents had detained two people suspected of illegally crossing the border. The agents had the suspects on the ground and ordered other suspected illegal immigrants to stop. According to the statement, the group surrounded the agents and began to pelt them with stones.

One agent, who was not identified, fired his handgun, killing the victim, who was identified as Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca.

It was not immediately known if the boy was among the rock throwers.

Such confrontations are almost inevitable along a militarized border, as is the profound grief and resentment this sort of tragedy generates. Thus all the arguments for and against aside, the American public must understand that if immigration reform relies too heavily upon a border fence backed by force of arms, then we should be prepared for the escalating violent backlash such a policy will almost surely create.

To our north, the United States proudly shares the world’s longest undefended border, and one would hope that this example would also guide our aspirations to the south. But to achieve this goal our nation must rethink the entire immigration issue, focusing less on interdiction and more on the relentless economic imbalances that continue to draw undocumented immigrants across an ever more hostile border: the lack of opportunity at home and the demand for low-wage, low-skilled workers here in the U.S.

Labor is mobile; the jobs that many undocumented workers fill in agriculture, construction and the service sector are not. In this sense, the mass migration we’re witnessing represents classical capitalist economic theory at work… a theory that in its purest ideological form not only suggests that we should not attempt to staunch the flow of labor capital, but that we ultimately cannot.

At least, not without the Gazafication of the U.S.-Mexican border.

Of course it would be a mistake to overstate the parallels with the exponentially more tragic conflict unfolding daily between Israelis and Palestinians. Even behind an American-built fence, Juárez is no Gaza, and the drug cartels wreaking cross border violence are no Hamas.

But it would be a mistake to ignore the parallels as well, especially when our nation is making the moral decision to send our uniformed men and women to a border where they will inevitably be put in the position of shooting unarmed children.

Yes, I’m disappointed that the Flyers lost, but I’m downright pissed that I didn’t get to see the end of the game because my stream crapped out just at the beginning of overtime. And why was I streaming a game that was nationally broadcast on NBC? Because fucking KING-5, for the second time in this Stanley Cup Finals series, decided they couldn’t be bothered to preempt goddamn Evening Magazine and Inside Edition to pick up the network feed.

I’m struggling to stream sudden death overtime — the most exciting event in professional sports — and with the Stanley Fucking Cup on the line at that, and KING-5 is broadcasting a Jean Enersen best-of interview show. I mean, what the fuck?

Thanks a lot KING-5 for giving the finger to local hockey fans.

Apparently, State Attorney General Rob McKenna is too busy representing the people of Florida to do his job representing the people of Washington, at least as evidenced by his announcement yesterday that he would no longer represent the state Department of Natural Resources in its legal fight against Okanogan County’s condemnation of Common School Trust land to build a PUD transmission line.

McKenna’s shirking of his constitutional obligations (he is, after all, the state’s attorney) leaves DNR, which has already laid off about 9 percent of its workforce, scrounging for money to hire an outside attorney in order to defend income producing public trust lands.

Which raises the question: who the hell does McKenna work for?

I thought he worked for us, the people, or more directly for the various state agencies for which his office is required to provide legal services, but McKenna apparently takes a more cavalier approach to his job. In defiance of both the Governor and the Legislature — our state’s policy setting bodies — McKenna was quick to use his office to join Florida’s lawsuit to repeal federal health insurance reform that is slated to bring hundreds millions of dollars a year of new federal funding to the state. But when Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark needs the AG to represent the interests of the people of Washington state, McKenna can’t be bothered to perform the mundane duties of his office.

Let’s be clear: it’s not McKenna’s job to determine the merits of the case or weigh in on the policy decisions guiding it. He’s DNR’s attorney, not it’s judge or jury, and his ethical and legal obligation is to represent his client to the best of his ability. And that, he is clearly failing to do.

The result? Okanogan PUD’s bifurcation of public trust lands with transmission lines and maintenance roads will reduce the value of the land and the income it produces to the state, while increasing both the fire risk and the cost of maintaining and patrolling it. This takes money out a public trust that has generated over $3 billion for public school construction over the past several decades.

It’s time for McKenna to put aside his 2012 gubernatorial campaign and start doing the job for which he was elected.

Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers

Following up on Carl’s suggestions for saving the Times, the Onion has a few ideas of its own.

There’s a memorable scene in the 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure (my favorite movie of all time… when I was nine) in which the main characters come across a second group of survivors shuffling down a hallway toward the bow. Gene Hackman’s character tries to convince them to follow him toward the stern of the capsized ship, and counterintuitively up to the engine room, but to no avail. The unfortunate group is presumed drowned moments later when the deck floods.

That’s kinda how I view the 2010 election cycle.

No doubt this is going to be a very bad year for Democrats, an outcome as predictable and unavoidable as the fate of the doomed cruise ship Poseidon the moment the captain first got word of an earthquake off Crete. But while Republicans are looking forward to a Big Red Wave™, the surest path toward electoral survival is proving to be not so clear once your world is flipped upside down. Just ask the bevy of NRSC endorsed candidates who will be watching the November general election from the sidelines.

And yesterday’s primary results don’t add any more clarity. In a supposedly profoundly anti-incumbent year, embattled U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas managed to win a run-off election, a not inconsiderable feat, while establishment Republicans went on to win top of the ticket primaries in California. Yet in Nevada, former frontrunner Sue Lowden became the latest machine GOPer to fall victim to internecine rivalry with the Tea Party Express.

But, apart from a handful of high profile Republican incumbents defeated by challengers from the far right, and party-switcher Sen. Arlen Specter’s loss to a challenger from the slightly-left-of-center, this presumably anti-incumbent primary season has thus far produced little evidence of actual anti-incumbency. 395 House members have sought or are seeking reelection this year, and so far only three have lost their primaries. That’s less than one percent. Try reading them tea leaves.

The one thing that is clear is that the Democratic Party appears to be holding steady, at least ideologically, while its Republican counterpart is lurching wildly to the right, a shift that doesn’t help the GOP’s efforts to retake either house. I guess there are some states in which crazy wins; I mean, you can’t get much nuttier than retiring Sen. Jim Bunning, though in Rand Paul, Kentuckians appear to have found their man. But I’m not sure if the best way to exploit a throw the bums out mentality is to put up challengers who make Newt Gingrich look like Adlai Stevenson.

Like I said, it’s a bad year for Dems. A mid-term election in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Nothing good can come from that. But with the political tsunami capsizing Republicans and Democrats alike, the morning after the general election might not look as grim as a lot of folks expect.

TPM’s got the morning after analysis, but just remember, you read it here first.