Archives for September 2010

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6saBwHM6VM[/youtube]

While most of the rest of the media, local and national, have so far been unwilling to mess with the accepted narrative, the folks at Talking Points Memo at least are acknowledging what’s been obvious on the ground for quite some time: Sen. Patty Murray just ain’t all that vulnerable.

While the political earth shifts around her, Sen. Patty Murray appears to have grounded herself in Washington state. While the national press largely passes her race by, Murray — who at the start of the summer was, according to conventional wisdom, a Vulnerable Democrat — appears to have built the momentum she needs to comfortably compete for a third term.

[…] If Murray was the Vulnerable Democrat in the original Washington state narrative, Rossi was (in the view of most Republican establishment figures) the ideal Formidable Opponent to defeat her. But as election season has proceeded, that storyline has proven to be more and more far-fetched. Murray, quite simply, is winning while Rossi is losing. And it’s been that way for awhile.

TPM goes on to graph the polling averages, emphasizing that the polls have been trending in Murray’s favor for quite some time. And while it’s still close, yeah, filter out that clearly bogus SurveyUSA outlier, and not quite so much.

So what’s to blame for Rossi’s lackluster performance at the polls? Well, one factor might be his lackluster performance on the campaign trail. Indeed, to say that his campaign is in disarray would imply a level of energy and passion, even negative, that Rossi has never been able to muster this cycle.

To paraphrase Clint Didier (the quote escapes me at the moment) before voters get excited about Rossi, Rossi is going to have to get excited about Rossi. And so far, we just haven’t seen that happen.

The 31st officially became the stupidest, most pathetic and most completely dysfunctional legislative district in Washington state yesterday, as three “prominent” Democrats (you know, about as prominent as a Democrat can be in cousin-marryin’ country) issued a press release announcing their endorsement of too-crazy-even-for-the-Republican-caucus state Sen. Pam Roach. Really.

So what prompted Yvonne Ward, Karen Willard and state Rep. Chris Hurst to make such a “painful and necessary” decision? Well, Sen. Roach may in fact be a gun-toting, mouth-foaming, flower-avenging wingnut, but unlike her general election challenger, fellow Republican Matt Richardson, at least she doesn’t, um, “sexually assault” young girls.

You know… allegedly. The Tacoma News Tribune felt too “uncomfortable” to repeat the Democrats’ charges, but lacking an attorney on retainer to advise me otherwise, I have no qualms about reporting the public statement of an elected official:

After carefully reviewing the extensive documentation relating to the criminal behavior of Matt Richardson extending back many years, we conclude that if he were elected to the Washington State Senate, the safety of children would be at risk.  Matt Richardson was charged with sexually assaulting two young girls over multiple years.  He pled guilty to the charges.  He then engaged in a pattern of seeking positions in schools with young children while hiding his history.

According to a criminal Affidavit of Probable Cause, Matt Richardson engaged in a persistent, ongoing sexual assault of two young girls.  After this incident, he engaged in inappropriate behavior in public school classrooms.  That pattern should stop at the steps of our Capitol.

Um… ya think? Finally, an issue on which Rep. Hurst and I can wholeheartedly agree.

Democratic State Representative Christopher Hurst, when faced with the prospect of a child molester in the State Capitol stated:  “Spirited political debate is a healthy process in our system of self-government.  However, there are times when a moral imperative becomes so great that it is necessary to set aside partisan differences in the interest of public safety.  This is one of those times.”

It certainly is. Though it’s a kinda ironic sentiment coming from a self-proclaimed “Independent Democrat” who tends to side more with Republican legislators than with his own caucus. Still, I think we can all join Rep. Hurst in his bold stance against electing child molesters to the Legislature.

As for Ward, who has long opposed Sen. Roach, and whose campaign for Roach’s seat I aggressively plugged here on HA in 2006, well, it’s hard to argue with her logic:

“I disagree with her on so many policy issues. But given the choice between a conservative Republican, and a conservative Republican with a history of sexual assaults against children, Pam Roach gets my vote.”

Hmm. Perhaps that should be Roach’s new campaign slogan. I can see the yard signs now.

Via email, Ward added that “painful” is too much of an understatement to describe her decision to endorse Roach; “torturous” would be more apt.

“Roach is like a cat with nine lives. Just when the stars seem to align so she can be ousted, her opponent turns out to be a child molester. Amazing.”

Yeah, I guess. But Richardson’s sexual assault conviction and classroom firing were public records, both of which have been previously reported in the press (so I’m not sure what’s provoked the TNT’s sudden disquietude), thus the bigger question here is… could the 31st LD Dems be any more incompetent?

I mean, when the Republicans put up a child molester and Pam Fucking Roach for chrisakes, the Dems might want to look at this as an opportunity to lock themselves in a room until they can agree to unite around a single Democrat, instead of suicidally splitting themselves between Ron Weigelt and Raymond Bunk the way they did. And then, once you settle on a Democratic challenger, you do a little goddamn opposition research and get this treasure trove of Richardson related muck to nasty-ass partisan bloggers like me weeks before the August top-two primary, instead of emailing me a press release weeks after.

Sen. Roach may be a shooting rampage waiting to happen, but at least she knows how to win a fucking election by cutting her opponents legs off at the knees and then sucking the marrow from his bloody stumps. Um, metaphorically.

And that’s a lesson the 31st LD Dems might want to learn if they ever want to send another Democrat to Olympia.

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for an evening of some politics under the influence. Please join us 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 early for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 247 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

There are different kinds of laws.

There are the laws of nature. There are the laws of man. And some would argue that there are the laws of God.

But here in Washington state, we also have the laws of Rob McKenna.

HA regulars are well familiar with our Attorney General’s efforts to redefine both the scope and obligations of his office, so it should come as no surprise to see McKenna’s imaginative approach to the law applied to more mundane issues, for example, our state’s formula for calculating increases in the minimum wage:

The state Department of Labor and Industries asked Attorney General Rob McKenna if the state would be able to increase the minimum wage if inflation increases, but not above the level the current rate is based upon. In an opinion issued Wednesday, McKenna said no.

See, in accordance with 1998’s Initiative 688, Washington state’s minimum wage is increased annually by the rate of inflation, specifically the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Last year the CPI-W actually decreased, so the minimum wage remained flat. This year the CPI-W is expected to increase slightly, but not by the amount it decreased the previous year. So McKenna says no minimum wage increase.

But what does the law actually say?

(b) On September 30, 2000, and on each following September 30th, the department of labor and industries shall calculate an adjusted minimum wage rate to maintain employee purchasing power by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation. The adjusted minimum wage rate shall be calculated to the nearest cent using the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, CPI-W, or a successor index, for the twelve months prior to each September 1st as calculated by the United States department of labor. Each adjusted minimum wage rate calculated under this subsection (4)(b) takes effect on the following January 1st.

I’m no lawyer, but the language seems plain… so plain that it actually describes a mathematical formula that a software programmer might express as something like this:

if (CPIW > 0)
then mWage := mWage + (mWage * CPIW);

The if statement is necessary because the statute specifically uses the word “increasing” not “adjusting” or something like that. I suppose one might theoretically argue that the plain language of the statute permits increasing the minimum wage by a negative amount, but that’s not McKenna’s argument; if it were, then the minimum wage should have decreased from 2009 to 2010. It didn’t.

No, in his opinion, McKenna argues that the tension between the words “maintain” and “increasing” makes the statute’s language ambiguous, going to great lengths to confuse the matter by engaging in a bunch of mathematical gobbledygook, culminating in his adoption of an entirely extra-statutory “index-ratcheted calculation.”  McKenna also asserts that the statute does not define an actual formula for adjusting the minimum wage, when in fact the use of the word “by” in constructing the sentence clearly denotes a course of action: “by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation.”

Q: How shall L&I “calculate an adjusted minimum wage rate to maintain employee purchasing power”…?
A: “by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation,” that’s how.

That’s what the word “by” in this context means; the clause following it describes the method for achieving the intent stated in the clause that precedes it.

mWage := mWage + (mWage * CPIW);

Perhaps there is indeed a tension between the stated method and the stated intent, but the method is perfectly clear, despite McKenna’s elaborate effort to distract the reader with formulas and graphs… so clear that Oregon, which modeled its statute after ours, has already announced that its minimum wage will rise. One could even make a perfectly reasonable argument that the statute should behave as McKenna claims it does… but if so… well… that’s the sorta stuff that happens when we legislate via citizens initiative, and if the Legislature agrees that the statute needs to be fixed, they are always free to do so.

But Attorney General Rob McKenna should not be free to reinterpret the law by fiat.

It’s kinda an experiment, but between now and the election, I’ll be posting a few times a week on The Stranger’s Slog, in exchange for a larger audience and a little beer money. (I like beer.) And the first such post — “Pend Oreille v. Seattle and the Triumph of Socialism” — just went live:

This whole Boundary Dam controversy drives home for me a couple of lessons, not the least of which being the immense public benefit of public investment. Most Seattle residents and businesses have no idea how lucky we are to purchase our power from a city-owned utility whose primary obligation is to the rate payers, not the shareholders. Call it “socialism” if you like (and technically, it is socialism), but Seattle City Light has always proven a tremendous boon to our local economy.

Pend Oreille County rate payers also benefit from such socialism, both from the impact fees and wholesale power provided by the Boundary Dam hydroelectric project, and from the power generated by the Pend Oreille PUD’s own Box Canyon Dam, just up river.

But the bigger lesson is that today’s enormous political divide between rural and urban Americans as to the proper size and scope of government is largely based on a fundamental misconception about who is subsidizing whom. For without state and federal investments and subsidies in rural electrification, irrigation, transportation, communication, education and nearly every other “-ation,” much of rural America would have remained the same economic backwater it was prior to the admittedly massive expansion of government during President Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the next half-century of Democratic and Republican administrations that followed.

Anyway, I encourage you to read the whole thing, and comment here, there, or in both threads.

As for HA, don’t expect much of an impact from this diversion of energies. I’ll always link to my posts on Slog, so you won’t miss anything, and I always planned to post with more frequency as the election approaches, so there shouldn’t be a dearth of content here.

Courtesy of R.R. Anderson

Meet Dino Rossi’s newest campaign consultant:  John Carlson.

From: Dino Rossi
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:08 PM
To: Carlson, John
Subject: In case your staff didn’t pass it on to you.

John,

We are going after Patty every day and it has resulted in many articles on Iraq, Lobbyists  ……

We have a media plan in place that’s working.  We are ahead in poll after poll.  She spent millions in the primary and 54% told her she shouldn’t get 6 more years to raise our taxes…..  We spent $150,000 on air in the primary.  Most people are not going to pay attention until after labor day anyway.

Why don’t you call me if you have questions.  We are giving you plenty to talk about with the press releases below but it looks like you are not getting them.

Thanks for your help.

Dino

[Press Release links appended]

From: “Carlson, John”
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 18:47:17 -0700
To: Dino Rossi
Subject: RE: In case your staff didn’t pass it on to you.

Hi Dino,

Some context.

Yesterday I had intended to talk about your campaign for the first 20 minutes of the show.  I mentioned how well the Scott Brown event went, then played the Murray “Dino DC fundraiser” ad and pointed out that she was trying to make you look like the DC establishment while she was battling the insiders to fight for our families.  I said your campaign should aggressively respond to this BS, not least because she has had dozens of DC fundraisers over the years and was taking four times more PAC money than you.

Kaboom.

The lines absolutely caught fire.  Emails had been trickling in since before the primary from people saying that you lacked “fire in the belly” or “passion”, but I wrote them off as Didier supporters.   But yesterday the response that poured in wasn’t coming primarily from Didiots.  They are Rossi supporters who watched the Ds mislead voters by sliming you in 2008 and were going right back to that playbook.   They don’t want it to happen again.  And neither do I.

What started as an extended commentary from me became two hours of listener “venting”, a number of emails, all of which said essentially the same thing, and more calls today.   Not one of them was trying to get you to talk up abortion or any other social issue, but all wanted your campaign to take a tougher line on Murray.   Their thinking is that if the Ds can get away with tossing mud today, they’ll throw more next week, and more the week after that.   But if the tactic backfires, then maybe they’ll think twice.

FOR EXAMPLE:  How about an ad stating that Patty’s deliberate misstatements reveal how “desperate she’s become to stay in Washington, DC.”?  Voters across the board don’t like politicians who want to stay in Washington, DC.   Tie all of her attacks on you to that motive.  Not just to be in the senate, but to be “in DC” where she continues to drift out of touch.

Anyway, that’s the background on what touched all of this off.  I called you yesterday to tell you, but it went straight to voice mail.

I realize there is a difference between the KVI audience and the state at large (as I tell people, KVI is the primary, KOMO is the general).   But please realize that what your campaign heard these past couple days was coming from people who dearly want to see you win.  And with the exception of Terri, no one wants you to win more than me.  Well, OK, maybe the kids…….

JC

First of all, let me just state for the record that I genuinely like and respect John Carlson. He’s always been incredibly gracious and helpful to me, and I tremendously enjoy our conversations both on and off the air. But… if I were Rossi, I’m not sure I’d be taking campaign advice from a guy who garnered only 39 percent of the vote against Gary Locke, for chrisakes, let alone from the crowd wisdom of the callers at KVI.

And yet, just a couple weeks after Carlson suggests “an ad stating that Patty’s deliberate misstatements reveal how ‘desperate she’s become to stay in Washington, DC.’,” that’s pretty much the ad Rossi runs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_1TDR_Cddc[/youtube]

As much as I generally like it when candidates talk for themselves, Rossi’s eye-on-the-interviewer/shit-eating-smirk demeanor does little to persuade voters that he’s got that “fire in the belly.” Furthermore, while a challenger’s goal is generally to make the election a referendum on the incumbent, Rossi’s first-person kvetching just comes off as narcissistic and defensive — you know, it’s all kinda about him. Which I suppose might even be okay, if so many voters didn’t already dislike him.

And while I know this is an extraordinarily negative year, in which challengers and incumbents alike must go extraordinarily negative in order to survive, Rossi still needs to persuade and collect about 80 percent of the undecided vote, and these are the folks who don’t trust either party. So at some point, Rossi’s gonna have to actually come out for something, other than, you know, just repealing Wall Street reform and rolling back reproductive rights.

TANGENTIAL ASIDE:
One other concern, Dino: you might want to look into who the hell on your staff was so indiscrete as to let this private correspondence ultimately fall into my hands, as I can assure you it didn’t come from Mr. 39 Percent.

And John, when Dino confidently assures you on Sept. 2 that he’s “ahead in poll after poll,” you might want to ask him for a look at his internals. I’m just sayin’.

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, John Carlson defends/explains his use of the term “Didiots”…

25. John Carlson spews:

“Didiots” does not refer to Clint’s voters, gang. It refers to the few of his supporters who refused to support Rossi after he won the primary because he’s not “pure” enough. Think of them the way liberals thought of Ralph Nader after the presidential race of 2000.

09/21/2010 AT 5:26 AM

Of course, for the moment, by that definition, the “Didiots” still include Clint Didier himself.  Still, I can empathize. In fact, that’s exactly my take on the better-than-thou Naderites who arguably cost Al Gore the election in 2000.

So in the spirit of conservative talk radio and all it stands for, I suppose it would be wrong of us to hyperbolize or decontextualize John’s statement for mere rhetorical effect or political gain.

The Seattle Times released details over the weekend of the Elway Poll it and the Spokesman-Review had commissioned, and the crosstabs look even worse for Dino Rossi than the top-line 50-41% Patty Murray lead initially reported. Indeed, according to Elway, Murray doesn’t just enjoy broader support than Rossi, she enjoys stronger support, and for more positive reasons.

The 50-41% top-line includes both strong supporters and leaners, but when the latter is excluded, and only those responding that they would “definitely” vote for one candidate or the other are counted, Murray leads Rossi by a more substantial 43-30%. Huh. 30 percent. That’s less than Will Baker type numbers… the bare minimum that any Republican candidate will get in a statewide election just for having an “R” next to their name on the ballot.

Perhaps even more interesting is the question regarding the motivation of respondents. 66% of Murray supporters said that their vote had more to do with keeping Murray in the Senate, compared to 22% who were more concerned with keeping Rossi out. But only 35% of Rossi voters said they were motivated more by the desire to put him into the Senate, compared to the 45% motivated to keep Murray out.

If there’s an enthusiasm gap, it doesn’t appear to be in Rossi’s favor.

Still, both campaigns are up on the air now in heavy rotation, and voters are just starting to pay close attention to the race, so it will be interesting to see how these numbers move in the next round of polling.

Does it make me a bad person to admit that this, reminds me of this?

If there’s a headline and a link on the front page of the Seattle Times website, it must be news…

The Seattle Times won four first-place honors, and the Tri-City Herald won three, in the 2010 C.B. Blethen Memorial Awards for distinguished reporting.

The annual awards were established in 1977 in honor of Blethen, publisher of The Times from 1915 to 1941.

So, um, the Blethen-owned Times reports that the Blethen-owned Times wins four Blethen Awards. Such an honor.

Last week, people threw out some good suggestions on what to do with these contests going forward. One good suggestion was to have a rotation of themes, so I’m planning to do that from now on. On the first and third Sundays of the month, it’s a regular contest, just a randomly selected location. On the second Sunday, it’ll be a movies/TV themed contest. The view will be something from a movie or TV show (old or new). On the fourth Sunday, it’ll be a news item from the previous month. If there’s a fifth Sunday in a month, it’ll be a regular contest for now, but I’m thinking of a possible theme for that in the future as well (suggestions are always welcome).

The contest two weeks ago was won by wes.in.wa. It was Aurora, OR, where a plane crashed into a house. This is the third Sunday of the month, so this week’s contest is a random location, good luck!

Judges 11:29-40

Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD : “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.

When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the LORD that I cannot break.”

“My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the LORD. Do to me just as you promised, now that the LORD has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request,” she said. “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.”

“You may go,” he said. And he let her go for two months. She and the girls went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.

Discuss.

It’s a good ad, and I sure hope she wins, but I was kinda hoping Suzan DelBene would’ve been on the air a little earlier than this.

As Cienna reports over on Slog, the panel tasked with reviewing proposals for redeveloping the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest has recommended a Chihuly Museum as the best use of the 1.6 acre site.

(Sigh.)

The whole selection process was of course a sham intended to mollify opponents of the for-profit glass tchotchke gallery, gift shop and catering hall with the semblance of public input, so that all involved could pat themselves on the back that the Seattle Way was appropriately honored. And like trained monkeys, we all scampered into the public meetings and rode our unicycles on command.

As I wrote back in August:

Last night hundreds of people gathered again to voice our opinions about the best public use of the Fun Forest site at the Seattle Center, and once again we couldn’t help but get the vibe that we were just being humored. Oh, the committee and the Chihuly gift-shop/catering-hall folks at least tried to make a better show of it this time as compared to the insulting propaganda-fest of the first public meeting, but it was still just a show. I didn’t talk to anybody who believed  a decision hasn’t already been made.

The problem is, as much as the committee will ultimately claim that this was a fair and open process, there’s nothing fair or open about taking a year and a half to secretly negotiate the details of the Chihuly proposal, and then publishing an RFP tailored to the same while giving everybody else just six weeks to respond. And so yeah, I kinda resented being there last night playing the role of “Man in Auditorium” in the Seattle Center’s unintentional amateur production of Our Town.

And like most bad theater, it’s not hard to predict how this play ends.

Yup, a complete and total sham.

That said, I suppose I should take a little satisfaction in helping to pressure the Space Needle folks to add to the proposal $1 million for an “artist-designed playground,” plus $50,000 a year for maintenance. But a million bucks doesn’t buy you a lot of playground these days, so it strikes me as an awfully cheap price in exchange for building an 8-foot wall around a couple acres of scarce, in-city park space.

Ah well, money talks, and all that.