Archives for July 2010

Joshua Green at The Atlantic writes about the impact that marijuana legalization initiatives will have on partisan races:

I have a short piece in the current Atlantic about the marijuana ballot initiatives sweeping the country. (Paul Starobin also has an excellent cover story in National Journal.) But one issue nobody has examined is what effect these initiatives have on candidates’ performance at the polls. Acting on a tip from an Obama official, I found a few Democratic consultants who have become convinced that ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana, like the one Californians will vote on in November, actually help Democrats in the same way that gay marriage bans were supposed to have helped Republicans. They are similarly popular, with medical marijuana having passed in 14 states (and the District of Columbia) where it has appeared on the ballot. In a recent poll, 56 percent of Californians said they favor the upcoming initiative to legalize and tax pot.

The idea that this helps Democrats is based on the demographic profile of who shows up to vote for marijuana initiatives–and wouldn’t show up otherwise. “If you look at who turns out to vote for marijuana,” says Jim Merlino, a consultant in Colorado, which passed initiatives in 2000 and 2006, “they’re generally under 35. And young people tend to vote Democratic.” This influx of new voters, he believes, helps Democrats up and down the ticket.

I think it’s hard to argue with that. Younger people today are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats, so if you have an initiative that motivates more young people to vote, Democrats on the ballot will get a boost. But in California, where Proposition 19 will be voted on this fall, the picture may not be so clear.

The reason is because both Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown, the two Democrats running for statewide offices this year, both came out against the initiative. And they didn’t just check some checkbox somewhere saying that they were against it. They went full-on drug warrior with their public statements.

Boxer’s campaign put out a statement saying that it would lead to an increase in crime, and that law enforcement costs would go up. Just to underscore how ludicrous that statement is, the official ballot argument for Proposition 19 was signed by a former police chief, a former deputy chief, and a former judge.

Jerry Brown put out an even more ridiculous statement in opposition to Proposition 19 saying that it would open the floodgates for Mexican drug cartels. Jon Walker does an excellent job here drawing the parallels to alcohol prohibition and explaining why Brown’s statement makes absolutely no sense.

The recent polling for both Boxer and Brown hasn’t been good. Brown is trailing Meg Whitman in the Governor’s race. And in recent months, Boxer’s favorability numbers have taken a hit and she’s in a dead heat with Carly Fiorina. Her decline probably has a series of factors, but her opposition to the marijuana initiative is likely playing some non-trivial role in it.

I feel confident in saying that for two reasons. One, it’s an issue that puts her in direct opposition to her base (69% of self-described liberals support it according to the latest Survey USA poll). And two, I tend to think that while very few voters consider marijuana to be a major issue, a lot more of them have a strong enough opinion about the issue (and understand it well enough) for it to play into their overall perceptions of how the candidates would deal with issues more pressing, like the economy or health care. Boxer is being painted as an out-of-touch DC insider who caters to government interests. Her position on marijuana just plays right into that stereotype.

So how is this going to end up? Will the benefits to California’s big ticket Democrats from additional young voter participation due to Proposition 19 be counteracted by both Boxer’s and Brown’s laughable public stances on it? Someone with more time and resources than me could potentially put together some good poll questions to explore that, or to do some statistical analysis from existing polls. But what’s clear is that even if Democratic consultants see the benefit of having marijuana initiatives on the ballot, they apparently still don’t see the benefit of actually endorsing them.

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting report in the San Francisco Chronicle about Boxer and her polling woes:

Boxer’s slight numerical lead masks potentially serious problems for the senator, starting with how 52 percent of the respondents hold an unfavorable view of her.

At the same time, her job approval rating is among the lowest that Field has measured for her since she was first elected to the Senate in 1992: 43 percent of registered voters disapprove of her performance while 42 percent approve. Among likely voters, 48 percent disapprove and 42 percent approve.

…

“It’s a reflection of the effectiveness of a Republican strategy to characterize Sen. Boxer as everything that’s wrong with the government,” said Larry Berman, a professor of political science at UC Davis. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., another longtime Democrat facing a tough re-election challenge, faces a similar predicament, Berman said.

As I mentioned above, the job of characterizing Senator Boxer as “everything that’s wrong with the government” becomes a lot easier when Boxer herself takes a position on the marijuana initiative that large numbers of both her base and independents understand as being “something that’s wrong with the government”.

So here’s a question I haven’t heard asked, let alone answered, throughout the contentious debate over who pays cost overruns on the Big Bore tunnel.

If, for example, the tunnel boring machine gets stuck, as happened with Brightwater, and if the contractor is unable to get it moving again, as happened with Brightwater, and if we’re forced to bring in a new contractor at an expense of hundreds of millions of dollars above the original bid, as happened with Brightwater… who is going to write the checks?

Am not asking who will ultimately pay for the cost overruns; that’s what everybody is fighting over. But rather, who will pay the new contractor, in the short term, to complete the job?

Will the state, who is responsible for digging the tunnel, fork over the cash, and then attempt to collect from Seattle taxpayers later? Or, at the point when cost overruns become an actual reality, will the state halt work on the project until Seattle somehow comes up with the cash? I mean, obviously, no contractor is going to start a multi-hundred million dollar job on promises that they’ll be paid eventually… you know, once the city and the state and the original contractor finish years of litigation.

With the legislature insisting that the city is responsible, and the city insisting that the cost overrun provision is unenforceable, and the governor insisting that there won’t be any cost overruns — and the whole project under-bonded by more than half — isn’t there a potential cash flow problem here should the worst happen? And isn’t this the sorta thing we should settle before we sign all the contracts?

I’m just askin’.

For a guy running as “a new kind of Republican,” and railing against a Republican opponent who “is part of the establishment, having been recruited by the D.C. power brokers,” you’d think Clint Didier might have found a more personal and, I dunno, this-Washingtonish return address for his fundraising envelopes.

Oh, and by the way Clint, if you’re wasting your money sending expensive, six-piece, full-color mailers to the kinda Seattle liberals who would immediately hand it over to me for public ridicule, your “new kind of Republican” Beltway direct mail house might want to buy themselves a more targeted list.

This is the sort of stuff that happens along militarized borders. I’m just sayin’.

The Seattle Times’ Jim Brunner reports that real estate speculator and Republican senatorial wannabe Dino Rossi “pulled in $1.4 million during his first month in the race.” On the surface, not too shabby. But… technically, it was Rossi’s first five weeks in the race, and if you’re looking at fundraising trends for evidence of voter enthusiasm, let alone the ability of a candidate to compete in the looming air war, that extra week makes quite a difference.

An additional $1.4 million a month from July 1 through November 2 would bring Rossi’s totals to about $7 million, a hair more than Sen. Patty Murray’s current $6.8 million cash on hand, though far short of her $11.5 million total. That said, Sen. Murray has picked up her fundraising pace since Rossi entered the race, hauling in an additional $1.6 million during the recently ended quarter, and, well, it takes money to make money, so a sizable chunk of Rossi’s monthly haul inevitably goes out the door in fundraising costs. Thus, while Rossi is certainly gaining ground on the incumbent — starting from zero, how could he not? —even $1.4 million per month would leave him at a substantial dollar disadvantage.

But Rossi isn’t really hauling in the bucks at a pace of $1.4 million a month, now is he?

Remember, Rossi famously boasted, and the media faithfully reported, that he raised over $600,000 in his first official week of campaigning, the first six days of which actually fell in the month of May. No doubt there was some pent up pro-Rossi excitement… and despite the campaign finance laws, no doubt a bunch of big donors were lined up in advance. But once he picked all the low hanging fruit, Rossi’s fundraising numbers clearly trended down, only bringing in an additional $800,000 during the month of June.

Extrapolate that number over the four remaining months of the campaign, and Rossi only raises $4.6 million total. Then figure in his fundraising costs plus Murray’s future haul, and that’s enough to buy Rossi a race in which he gets himself outspent by a better than two to one margin. Not so hot for a candidate whose name ID and fundraising prowess are his two biggest qualifications.

And according to Real Clear Politics, Rossi’s relatively anemic results are not from lack of trying:

[H]e basically admitted that because he started so late, his campaign organization is currently in a mad dash to cut into Senator Patty Murray’s huge fundraising advantage.

And a mad dash that first week was. Unfortunately for him, a senate campaign is a marathon, and in this and other respects, Rossi’s starting to look awfully damn tired.

Please join us tonight for another Tuesday evening of 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 earlier and join some of us for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 328 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Per Joel Connelly’s suggestion in the comment threads, I’ve added to my gallery of prophets by drawing a cartoon of myself.

Note that unlike the previous two cartoons, I’m ignoring my own thirst, while offering a bowl of water to my dog, Feisty. Because I love dogs, even more than Jesus does.

I didn’t pay much attention when Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris’s suggestion of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” took off and became an Internet phenomenon, because I’m not a cartoonist, and frankly, the whole Muhammad cartoon thing was so 2006. That is, I didn’t pay much attention until yesterday, when Norris’s lark apparently earned her a spot on an Islamist terrorist hit list.

And so, as a staunch defender of free speech, no matter how inappropriate or offensive, I feel it is my duty to stand with Norris by posting a Muhammad cartoon of my own. And I urge all small “d” democrats to stand with me too. I mean, what are they going to do… kill us all?

Now granted, I’m not much of a graphic artist, but I did the best I could. And while I have no idea what Muhammad looks like, I know it’s hot in the desert, so for the sake of realism I’ve drawn him enjoying a cold, fizzy beverage. I’m guessing, seltzer. And it’s very refreshing. That’s why Muhammad is smiling.

Oh, and that dog in the picture, I know Muslims think dogs are unclean or something, so I want to be absolutely clear that this is not Muhammad’s dog. It’s just some dirty street mongrel that keeps following Muhammad around, trying to grab his seltzer, which might explain why he’s not too keen on dogs. In fact, had I drawn him feet, Muhammad would probably kick the dog. But I like dogs, so I didn’t. (I just thought I’d explain the whole dog thing, so that you wouldn’t think I’m being culturally insensitive.)

Anyway, the point is, it’s just a fucking cartoon for chrisakes, so Anwar al-Awlaki should just get a life. And, just to prove that I’m an equal opportunity blasphemer, and have nothing in particular against Islam, here’s a cartoon of Jesus drinking a Slurpee™:

And yes, I drew Jesus with feet, because he strikes me as the kinda guy who probably liked dogs.

During our several days of 80-plus degree heat last week, a single cherry tomato ripened. And nearly midway through July, that has been the extent of our tomato harvest thus far.

To be fair, the harvest generally doesn’t begin in earnest for another two to three weeks, but the ultra-early varieties I plant (Stupice, Sungold, and the Sweet Million above) usually produce a scattering of offerings by now. More disturbing, while the foliage is lush, very little fruit has set thus far; only three clusters between my two, always reliable Stupice plants, a couple clusters on the Sweet Million, and the first hint of fruit on the Sungold and Yellow Pear. My Ispolin, a Siberian beefsteak variety I’m experimenting with, has tons of flowers, but only a single, thumbnail-sized fruit.

Unless it’s hot and dry in August and September, this is shaping up to be a pretty crappy tomato year in Seattle. Depressing.

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Fox News personality Judge Andrew Napolitano on Bush and Cheney:

They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I’d like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you’re under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It’s a moral crime.

It’s not a coincidence that Fox News didn’t put people like Napolitano on TV give Napolitano his own show until after we had a Democrat inhabiting the White House.

UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that Napolitano was occasionally on Fox News in the past, but he didn’t have his own show until 2009. I’ve updated the original post accordingly.

UPDATE 2: In fact, Freedom Watch was created in February 2009 and began airing on Fox Business Channel in 2010. The timing was not a coincidence.

The Washington State Supreme Court announced today that it has granted review to Goldmark v. McKenna, Commissioner for Public Lands Peter Goldmark’s petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to compel Attorney General Rob McKenna fulfill his statutory duty to provide legal counsel.

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to take up my case with the Attorney General,” Goldmark said in an official statement. “It is a critical constitutional question of whether or not the Attorney General has the discretion to make policy for issues under the purview of another statewide elected official.”

This marks the second time in as many weeks that the Court has rejected McKenna’s claim of broad discretionary powers. Oral arguments are scheduled to be held November 18, the same day as those for Seattle v. McKenna, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes’ petition seeking to compel McKenna to withdraw from the lawsuit challenging health care reform.

In granting review of the two related cases, and scheduling to hear them on the same day, the Washington State Supreme Court apparently believes the constitutional issues raised by the Attorney General’s unprecedented claim of extra-statutory powers are a pretty big deal… but so far our local media disagrees. Huh.

Pete Guither responds to Roger Roffman’s concern-trolling of the drug law reform movement in the Seattle Times Mommy Advice Journal.

If you haven’t read it yet, you really need to take a gander at Dominic Holden’s in-depth spelunking of the deep-bore tunnel cost-overrun controversy in the current issue of The Stranger, in which a local journalist finally asks the rather obvious question: “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

I know it’s all the fad these days amongst the Rainier Club crowd to roll one’s eyes at the mention of Mike McGinn’s name, all the while planning for Mayor Burgess’s election night victory party, but considering what’s at stake, it’s nice to know that there’s at least one elected official standing up for Seattle taxpayers (whatever his motives or sometimes clumsy methods). For at a time when the Seattle Center is preparing to auction off a couple acres of rare, designated open space to the highest bidder, in pursuit of a mere couple hundred thousand dollars of additional annual revenue, just imagine what a couple hundred million dollars in cost-overruns will do to our ability to pay for the things we want and need, let alone the billion-plus bill we could be presented with should things go seriously wrong.

And as Dominic explains, things could go seriously wrong.

Now I’m not one of those who points to Boston’s “Big Dig” and similar fiascos and concludes that America has somehow lost its ability to engineer and construct big projects. Large infrastructure projects do sometimes come in on time and near budget, and WSDOT has had a particularly good track record in recent years. But I’m no pollyanna either, especially when it comes to the least studied, least engineered, most speculative of any of the various Viaduct replacement alternatives.

In fact, when the Discovery Institute first floated the idea of what I immediately dubbed “The Big Bore,” I ridiculed their apparently faith-based proposal as “Intelligent Transportation Design.”

I once proposed building a gigantic rollercoaster along the West Seattle to downtown portion of the Monorail’s abandoned Green Line, and you didn’t see my joke of a transportation proposal picked up by the MSM, let alone labeled “visionary”. And yet the Seattle Rollercoaster Project is no less technically challenging nor politically, well, utterly fucking ridiculous than Discovery’s deep bore, crosstown tunnel. … In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.

Much to my chagrin our political establishment quickly embraced Discovery’s Big Bore proposal, ignoring the technical challenges while attempting to bypass the political ones by excluding Seattle voters from the process… only to run into the electoral equivalent of a stuck tunnel-boring machine: the surprising election of Mayor Mike McGinn.

Like a stuck TBM, Mayor McGinn can’t possibly reverse himself, and with the cost-overrun issue still conveniently blocking his way, he sure as hell ain’t moving forward. Vindictive, short-sighted and/or lazy legislators may have thought they cleverly short-circuited our city’s famously obstructionist civic fetish with process, but where there’s a will, there’s a Seattle Way.

Observers who don’t believe last year’s mayoral election was at least in part a referendum on the Big Bore Tunnel are smoking crack. McGinn long and loudly campaigned on his opposition to the tunnel, and even when he relented during the final weeks, he still promised to fight any effort to stick Seattle taxpayers with open-ended cost-overruns. So why should anybody roll their eyes at the sight of Mayor McGinn attempting to fulfill his promise? The irony is, while the wise, old sages at the Seattle Times blame Mayor McGinn for the cost-overrun controversy, it’s actually the controversy that deserves the blame for Mayor McGinn.

As with the underlying technical challenges in drilling the largest diameter deep-bore tunnel ever, the powers that be have also failed to fully think through the financial and political challenges associated with the proposal. When I hear Governor Gregoire, City Council president Richard Conlin and other tunnel boosters warn that further delays will only increase costs, my immediate response is, well what the fuck did you think was going to happen to when you attempted to ram this through? It’s been nine years since the Nisqually quake marked the Viaduct for immediate demolition; did anybody really think that spitefully sticking Seattle taxpayers with all the risk for a tunnel they don’t particularly want was gonna speed up the replacement process?

And what if the tunnel comes in way over-budget, as mega-project history suggests it is likely to do? Where’s the money gonna come from to finish it? Are we gonna sit for years with a half-dug hole in the ground while the state and the city endlessly litigate their financial obligations? Or will the state shift funds from other parts of the project to complete the tunnel, while leaving the decrepit Viaduct standing like some ancient Roman ruin, until some future tumbler finally knocks it over onto the waterfront? I mean, how the fuck do you even start a project like this without knowing how you’re gonna ultimately pay for it?

There is not, as the Times and others suggest, consensus support for a multi-billion dollar tunnel with no downtown exits or onramps that will only serve 40,000 vehicles a day, though there may very well be a consensus by now to just get this debate over with and build something. I even find myself in “something” camp these days. Hell, I’d settle for anything.

But I’m not willing to settle for anything at any cost… and outside of the Times editorial board, the folks at the Discovery Institute and an apparent majority of city council members, neither are most Seattle taxpayers.

There may not have been consensus support for the surface/transit proposal either, but had the legislature forced that option down our throats — the cheapest and least financially risky of any of the alternatives — we’d probably be building it already, because whatever its downsides, it was by far the most technically, financially and politically doable. Instead, the legislature chose to risk the future fiscal stability of our city for the sake of folks wanting to quickly drive through it.

As utterly fucking ridiculous as the original Big Bore proposal was, that’s nothing compared to the notion of the state assuming all of the responsibilities for building it, while assuming absolutely none of the risks. And until the state proves it can navigate the well-charted sink holes and boulders of Seattle politics, nobody should have confidence in its ability to bore through the uncertain terrain hidden beneath the city.