When Darcy Burner, who graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Economics, claimed in a debate to have received a degree in Economics, the Seattle Times saw fit to brand her a liar on its front page, possibly costing her the election. So I wonder if they’ll give equal play to Susan Hutchison’s lie at last night’s candidate debate in the King County Executive race?
[Constantine] linked Hutchison to the right wing Building Industry Association of Washington, the state’s chief opponent of conservation and climate change legislation. The BIAW spent millions of dollars promoting Republican Dino Rossi in the 2004 and 2008 gubernatorial races.
Why did you “give $1,000 to the BIAW, the very people who are trying to dismantle our environmental laws,?” asked Constantine.
… “I have never given money to the BIAW: My campaign manager has never worked for the BIAW. So I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hutchison shot back.
Hutchison did, however, donate $1,000 to ChangePAC, the front group and arm of the BIAW that in 2008 filled the airwaves with “hit” TV spots denouncing Gov. Chris Gregoire.
The political consulting firm handling Hutchison’s campaign, the California-based Dresner Wicker, played a central role in ChangePAC’s anti-Gregoire campaign.
Now, I suppose it is true; as far as we know, Hutchison never has written a check out directly to “BIAW.” Likewise, Dresner Wicker is her campaign consultant, not her campaign “manager,” and their association was with ChangePAC too. But that’s just splitting hairs, isn’t it?
In fact, it’s more than splitting hairs; it is a blatant lie.
ChangePAC is BIAW, and not even they deny it. ChangePAC was created by BIAW. It is run by BIAW. They share the same officers, and the same exact mailing address. That’s the way PACs work.
So the question is, will the Times hold Hutchison up to the same high standards they held Burner, and excoriate her, top of the fold, for telling such an obvious and intentional untruth? Or does the newsroom only apply such high standards to candidates the editorial board vehemently hates?
Manny’s! I’m looking forward to drinking Manny’s tonight. I’m also looking forward to warming up a bit at the alehouse. The house is a bit chilly.
Go Goldy! ChangePAC is indeed part of the BIAW.
LOL! All those millions BIAW threw away promoting Dino Lossi.
Sorry Suzie – you have no choice but to dance with them who brung you.
GOP Sen. Snowe Will Vote For Health Reform
Maine’s Republican Senator Olympia Snowe announced this morning she will vote for the Democratic health care reform bill.
Snowe, long considered the most likely Republican to vote with Senate Democrats on the issue, comes from a small and relatively poor state served by only one insurance company where monopoly pricing is in effect and most people can’t afford full coverage.
The local politics of her state are a very strong a factor in her willingness to break with her party on the issue. The cost and availability of health insurance is a simmering issue in her state.
In a strictly party-line vote, Snowe’s vote would be enough to ensure passage of a Democratic bill.
“Now, I suppose it is true; as far as we know, Hutchison never has written a check out directly to “BIAW.” Likewise, Dresner Wicker is her campaign consultant, not her campaign “manager,” and their association was with ChangePAC too. But that’s just splitting hairs, isn’t it?”
Depends on what the definition of “is” is. I can already see Hutch saying, “I did not have financial coitus with that organization!” or “That stain on my campaign is from a cheeseburger, not ChangePAC!”
@5 It might also depend on the definition of “hair”.
@6 One can only hope enough voters wise up to Suzie The Fake Moderate’s deceptive posturing before it’s too late.
@4
Sen. Snowe should just switch parties. She’s already more of a Democrat than Sen. Specter and many “blue dogs” will ever be.
Besides, we have cookies.
@8 She’s a Republican on most issues, but as noted @4 the GOP is out of sync with her constituents on this issue.
Maine is the poster boy for what’s wrong with the current health insurance system. No state is impacted worse by the flaws and failings of private health insurance.
That state has few large corporate employers. Most Maine residents work for small businesses. Only one major health insurer serves the state: Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Many small business owners, some of whom earn less than their employees, say they can’t afford to cover their own families let alone their workers. A very high percentage of Maine working families lack full health coverage, and many don’t even have bare-bones catastrophic coverage.
The situation is intolerable for Maine residents, and this is an issue the senator hears about all the time from her folks back home. She really has no choice but to vote for health insurance reform if she wants to stay in the Senate, and would ill-serve the voters who sent her there if she didn’t.
Considering the amount of money wasted by the GOP and it’s industry supporters over the last two govenatorial elections here in Washington State, I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t just a scam to deprive Republican contributors of their money.
Just think of it. A small group of Republican operatives identify “hot button” issues designed to bring out their contributors. The foment fear and uncertainty. The news media (especially local TV, radio, and newspapers) play into the hype. The faithful poney up their contributions to the PACs. The PACs then spend the money on advertising, after taking a significant amount of “management fees”, of course. The ads, of course, just continue to stoke the fires of fear, and result in more contributions, which are used to place more ads.
But the ads fail to change the vote because most voters are smarter than that. In the end, nothing has changed. Sure, the Democrats are forced to raise money and advertise in response. But the voting result is pretty predictable.
But what HAS changed, is that a substantial amount of money has changed hands – from the GOP faithful to those that manage the campaigns, and the local media which plays the ads. They feed off of each other.
@10 Republican. Brick wall. Head.
You gotta love it!
@10 (continued) Click here for photo of Republican car repair. (Yes, that’s the gas tank he’s welding!)
http://www.crossdrivenradio.co.....r-jack.jpg
Huffington Post takes note of the King County Executive race and Susan Hutchison’s attempt to run as a stealth Republican and Evangelical:
Susan Hutchison — Washington State’s Sarah Palin?
The Republican Newspaper Of Record has endorsed GOPer Reagan Dunn for re-election to the county council, and we all know who they’ll endorse for county exec, don’t we? (wink-wink)
What cost her the elections were two things:
1.) Lying & embelishing about her degree, getting caught red-handed in that lie, then falling flat on her face trying to spin it.
2.) Being inexperienced, lacking qualifications and generally being way too big of a ditzy dim bulb to be in Congress. It was refreshing that the voters saw the light.
And Goldy, we thought your now-limp dick Darcy obsession was over, guess we were wrong.
A review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnhybrxEEVw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Be11uRoQM
P.S. Kudos to Ken Schramm, a self-admitted liberal Democrat who had the balls to admit that Ditzy Darcy is in fact a liar, even though she is a member of his own party. I guess there’s a few libs left with common sense….
@3:
YLB arschloch: You can change your screename all you want, but your stalker-eye avatar and your continuing chronically unemployed non-tax paying ass continue to be blatantly obvious. Poor baby. Nice try.
@15
Speaking of lying and embellishing? Ken Schramm calling himself a liberal Democrat ought to qualify under that. Moderate, maybe.
“non-tax paying ass”-
I thought you guys call that a virtue.
If Ken Schram is a “liberal Democrat”, then Sarah Palin is a socialist.
@14
I’m not placing any bets at this time about who they are likely to endorse for County Exec. Hutchison has some real problems they might not choose to ignore.
As for Reagan he is actually fairly impressive as an elected official. I’ve heard a number of elected Democrats say good things about him. Besides he doesn’t have a serious or credible opponent. Heck, even Publicola endorsed him.
15
Susan Hutchison (1) lies about her campaign contribution; and (2) has no executive experience, yet wants to run this county even though she is dumb as a doormat. Darcy would have been one of 435 members of Congress. Hutchison would be one (1) of one (1) heads of this county. Any chance you recognize the hypocrisy in your post?
16 – Not trying to hide from anyone much less a moron like you. Nice try at being relevant. You’ve been failing since the 2005 election contest.
Goldy:
I am so surprised that you could use “Times” and “high standards” in a sentence without including “EPIC FAIL.”
I think a good question to ask Hutch would be what she would say to people who opposed letting public schoolchildren hear President Obama’s pep talk.
Here’s what a letter writer to the fishwrapper, a Tom Steele of Bothell, said about it:
“I was … saddened [Ryan] Blethen could find no common ground for dialogue with those who opposed the speech — just ‘hypocrisy and ugliness’ from the other side of the political spectrum. This was not only odd in a column urging parents to help turn classrooms into political caucuses, but ironically both hypocritical and illustrative of why many people opposed the speech.
“So … let us have a discussion about exposing young minds to competing views of history, politics and economy. Since Blethen references Marx’s ‘Manifesto,’ the left can bring that to the table. We on the right will bring ‘Wealth of Nations.'” As many folks on the left have not actually read the ‘Manifesto’ (it’s dense and isn’t really all that fun), we will bring that, too. In our home, we have copies of both, and we don’t need the state to tell our children what they can or cannot read.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....s_spe.html
Yeah, okay, let’s now ask Hutch if she thinks a presidential talk urging kids to stay in school and complete their educations is a “political caucus.”
Let’s ask Hutch if she thinks that should be replaced by exposing kids to an ideological contest between “The Communist Manifesto” and “Wealth of Nations” (notice Mr. Steele is unaware there’s anything in-between).
Let’s ask Hutch if she thinks simpletons like Mr. Tom Steele of Bothell who see everything through a “left-right” lens should be allowed to set the educational agenda for our public schools.
Let’s ask Hutch if she’s willing to denounce the kind of stupidity that Mr. Steele’s letter represents.
Then we’ll see how moderate she is, and whether she’s willing to risk pissing off the rightwing ignorati who form her electoral base.
@15 “1.) Lying & embelishing about her degree, getting caught red-handed in that lie, then falling flat on her face trying to spin it.”
Repeating your rightwing lies 10,000 times doesn’t make them come true, Mark. Darcy has a degree in computer science and economics from Harvard. A Harvard dean says so. His opinion is authoritative; your opinion is, well, merely your idiotic opinion.
“2.) Being inexperienced, lacking qualifications and generally being way too big of a ditzy dim bulb to be in Congress.”
I’ll bet this never kept you from voting for inexperienced dim-bulb
Republicans who lacked any qualifications for public office.
@16 So if someone is unemployed, that’s the fault of the worker, not the employer who laid him off or a weakness of the capitalist system when it fails to provide employment for all who want to work? Spoken like the wingnut idiot you are.
If someone doesn’t pay taxes, it’s because they’re either not earning income, not spending money, or a tax cheat.
We already know what the right’s attitude is toward tax cheats — it glorifies them. And the right hates the poor who have no income and therefore or unable to spend. What a sick, twisted, fucked-up set of values.
15 M1
Give me a break. The 8th CD has been reliably Republican since it was created, and Dave Ross didn’rt resemble Darcy Burner at all (although I was not in love with him as a candidate). What Darcy Burner DID do is do better against Reichert the incumbent than the Democrat did when Reichert was just a candidate for the (Jennifer Dunn’s) open seat.
But the 8th it is a-changin’, and I’ll vote Demcratic until we finaly send Reichert home to the government pension we were unable to deny him in 2008.
@27 Bellevue used to be a bedroom community. Now it’s a full-fledged city in its own right, complete with soaring office towers, shopping malls, employment centers, and mass transit.
What all this commercial development has brought into Bellevue is legions of WORKERS to staff all those offices and retail shops. Those workers live in older, smaller, cheaper homes (yes, believe it or not, they exist on the eastside; lots of ’em) or the rabbit-warren condos that have been built to accomodate Bellevue’s hordes of new not-rich residents. And they vote DEMOCRATIC.
Yes, the 8th CD is a-changing. Ironically, the development that has enriched Bellevue’s high-profile affluents has also brought in a large working class that will turn the 8th in a solidly Democratic district.
In the future, Republicans won’t be able to win seats in Congress outside of the lightly populated and politically irrelevant portion of the state lying east of the Cascade Mountains. And who cares what they think — they’re only a fifth of the state’s population and depend on handouts from the Puget Sound counties for their public services, roads, and schools.
Darcy Burner graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics?
I thought she just took a few classes in it.
You gotta’ wonder what the people in the national Republican Party are thinking about Reichart these days.
As a freshman Congressman while his own party was in power, he did next to nothing, other than vote whatever way his party whip told him to do. There’s usually always room in the Republican party for people like that.
And with the Republicans trying to get back into power, it would seem to be nonsense for them to give up the advantages which come with an encumbent who was already won the seat once and defended it successfully two times since.
But Reichart is like the neer’do well little sibling, who’s never quite got things on track and keeps coming back to momma and poppa for a handout to keep things afloat, while his other siblings are shouldering their share of larger burdens.
A three-term Congressman is expected to have secured his base by now, not only in terms of it being a “safe district” by voter count, but also in terms of re-election financing. At this point he should be a party stallwart, raising money for Republican challengers in other districts, lending his prestige and enfluence to further the Republican agenda not only in his district, but regionally and even nationally. He should be a staple on the talk-show circuit, giving interviews at the very least for local media on every political issue.
Instead, Reichart is trying to keep his head down, hoping nobody thinks of him too much. The only time you will see him in the news is right before an election, when he will try to take credit for some in-offensive bill he agreed to support (naming some national forest area, etc.). When it comes time to hand out national money for Congressional contests, Reichart isn’t adding money to the pool, he’s there with his hand out, competing with candidates hoping to challenge for Democratic-held seats, arguing that he needs the money desperatly to hang onto his own seat. When committee appointments are made, he makes the same argument – not that he would be the most effective person in that spot, but that the failure to allow him to list such an appointment on his own resume threatens his ability to hold a seat.
I suspect that among the Republicans who make the decisions to disperse the national campaign money, the phrase “Well, what are we going to do about Reichart?”, followed by groans, is most often heard. I’m sure they sorta-wish that a strong Republican candidate could upset Reichart in a primary challenge, but everyone knows that’s not going to happen – in the end, they will end up having to support Reichart, whether they want to or not.
But I imagine it’s going to be a lot like the lecture the neer’do-well gets with every handout – the speech about how this is the very last time, that he’s got to get his act together, it’s time he took his responsibilities as an adult seriously, etc.
Baucus Plan Wins 14-9 Committee Vote
Sen. Max Baucus’s health reform bill cleared the Senate Finance Committee today by a 14-9 vote, mostly along party lines with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe casting the only Republican vote in favor of the bill.
Or newer apparently.
Come to think of it, can anybody name anything of significance that Reichart has done during his three terms in Congress? Heck, I’d even give him credit for effectively opposing something which was eventually passed by the other party.
As far as I can tell, all he’s done so far is keep a seat warm and vote occassionally as the Republican whip tells him to.
I think the GOP will pay a steep price in the long run for opposing health reform. Two-thirds of Americans believe the present system is broken and needs fixing, and that number would be even higher if more people understood the current situation isn’t static but is deteriorating, and the health benefits they have now aren’t sustainable under the present employer-based model. The GOP will be seen as the “party of No” that voted against the welfare of ordinary Americans. That, on top of all the other Republican scandals and debacles of recent years, together with changing demographics that are making the electorate younger and more Democratic, pretty much guarantees that, as James Carville said, Democrats will be the majority party for the next 40 years.
Republicans are welcome to live in the 19th century if they want to! I will defend to the death their freedom to do so! However, I like electricity and indoor toilets, and damned if I’ll let them make me live in the 19th century.
@16
I’ve been wondering when/if the corporate big-wigs are going to figure out that people would have more cash to buy stuff and pay their bills if their jobs hadn’t been shipped overseas.
@33 As I recall, he voted for the Wild Sky Wilderness Area. There, I said something nice about Reichert, and didn’t even have to lie to do it!
Darcy did obtain a degree in economics from Harvard.
@37 shows that I have better bipartisan independent credentials than Hutchison does.
@28
Spokane and Whitman counties are looking more and more Democratic all the time. Whitman went for Obama, Spokane went for McCain by a hair.
@39
Having never held office or worked on any sort of bi-partisan commission, Hutch has 0 bipartisan experience.
@38 Peril lurks in the current stockmarket rally. The Dow’s 60% runup since March lows is illusory, because this year’s profit gains came from cost-cutting. That won’t sustain long-term profit growth, which requires growing sales that simply aren’t there for most companies. I’m expecting a market drop this winter, and plan to sell off chunks of my portfolio in this fall’s overoptimism to raise cash to buy on next spring’s lows.
By reshuffling my portfolio, I’ve already recovered most of my paper losses from the October 2007 – March 2009 bear market. Now, I’m poised to profit from market volatility, which allows a nimble investor like me to trade in and out of stocks that move within a range but basically aren’t going anywhere, often repeatedly selling stocks on temporary highs and then buying them back on dips and reselling them again on the next upward bounce.
Meanwhile, I’ve dumped most of my pre-crash growth stocks and accumulated issues paying robust dividends. In a low interest rate environment, which is likely to persist for several more years out of necessity to spur the moribund economy, investors desperately searching for yields will be forced to buy higher-yielding stocks, thereby forcing up the prices of these stocks until effective yields are lowered to prevailing risk-adjusted market levels. Thus, I will get a double payout from these stocks — high yields and capital gains.
Many fortunes have been vaporized and many formerly-rich capitalists have fallen back to earth in these hard times. But while stupid humans starve, I, Roger Rabbit, will prosper! Eventually, humans and dogs will vanish from the face of the earth, and rabbits will run this place. I’m laying up my nest egg for when that day comes, because I’m going to be their king!
RR @ 34: Well, it’s pretty easy to guess how the Republicans will try to play the Health Insurance Reform issue – the same way they do every other issue. They will lie. Just as they continue to le about every other issue such as the economic stimulus plans, Iraq, Afganistan, etc., even “cash for clunkers”.
They will say things were fine before the Democrats started to tinker with it. They will argue that the Democrats are spending too much money on it. They will argue that it isn’t effective, that it hasn’t met the wildest expectations which were ascribed to it, therefore it needs to be scrapped.
Expect that the mid-term Congressional campaigns next year will feature a lot of Republican claims trying to pin the current rescession on Obama (even though it started a year before he took office), the bank bailout on Obama (even though that took place during the Bush administration), the cost of the entire economic stimulus plan on Obama (half of which was approved and liabilities incurred during the Bush administration), that Obama is making things worse in Iraq and Afganistan (even though his strategy to date hasn’t changed from the Bush administration).
The Republicans live in a rather insular world these days where their rhetoric is completey divorced from reality. Rather than try to adjust their rhetoric to meet reality, they try to alter the public’s perception of reality so that it meets theirs.
@40 I would be thrilled to have a solid-Democratic Washington congressional delegation with no Republicans in it.
That would speak volumes to the wisdom and practicality of Washington voters.
By the way, a nice guest editorial piece in the Seattle Times today (not authored by the Times editorial staff), which conteracts the claims by Republicans and big business here that the State Industrial Insurance system costs too much:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....wells.html
RR @ 28
I agree. Here’s my take.
The Republican party has changed even more than the 8th LD.
Growing up in Bellevue, we considered ourselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Fruit cake factories like Overlake Christian Church had not yet displaced the (mostly) rational old school churches and Ronald Reagan wasn’t yet deified into cult icon. So while the 8th moved to the right, the GOP jumped off the cliff.
At the same time, the demographic shift moving segments to the left was well underway. We had lots of immigrants in our schools, rapidly assimilating. Today, the latinos travel the same path the families from indochina took. And the tech industry drew an educated work force.
The demographic shifts are exciting. I swell with pride knowing that people choose to adopt our home as their home.
Goldy, you are wrong, unless you want to agree that Jason Bennett does indeed work for both Dow’s campaign and for the group conducting illegal coordination.
@45
L&I cost isn’t even on our radar screen where I work. Health care costs on the other hand are a constant concern and have been for years.
@47
What kind of blogger quotes from a news article and fails to credit its author? A horse’s ass.
50 – Don’t unique page views driven from the link in Goldy’s post to your blog count for something?
@50
David has no qualms about posting items he finds without tipping the hat or attributing the source or origin. Yesterday he blatantly ripped off the “Preaching to the choir” item from publicola.net without citing the origin of his find.
I doubt #50 was really Joel.
@23 I am so surprised that you could use “Times” and “high standards” in a sentence without including “EPIC FAIL.”
—————-
Speaking of “epic fails,” any comments regarding the most recent of your employer, viz, the failure of its backup (yes, that’s backup!) servers:
“A server meltdown over the weekend wiped out the master copies of personal data — including address books, calendars, to-do lists and photos — accumulated by users of T-Mobile’s formerly popular Sidekick smartphone.”
Sidekick Users See Their Data Vanish Into a Cloud
http://voices.washingtonpost.c....._data.html
This will do wonders for cloud computing, eh?
Fake Joel @50 & Twit @52 — Goldy provided a link to the source, dummies. It’s not his fault you’re too lazy to click on it.
33 I’d say he qualifies for Nobel wouldn’t you agree?
45 That article is very misleading. L&I will have gone up 60% since 2003 when you add in the 20%increase coming this Jan. The rate holiday you claim was only on the med aid portion of the rate and was maybe a 2% “Holiday” but sure as hell not 100%. I would think with the high unemployment rate and fewer worker hours rates should be going down. We need competition from the private sector and get rid of this lunatic set up. Probably could save employers and employees 60 or 70 percent. Oregons rates in this same time have gone down 14 percent. Looks to me like management problems at L&I. Time for some heads to roll.
@44 That would speak volumes to the wisdom and practicality of Washington voters.
———-
Oh, you mean the voters who put Governor Gregoire in office . . . the same Governor whom you just recently excoriated for her performance?
@57
It’s insurance program. What you pay is based on the industry you’re in and your companies track record on injuries. It looks to me like where I work L&I rates “with adoption of occupational disease rules” will be going up at most by 7%.
http://www.lni.wa.gov/ClaimsIn.....ssCode.pdf
I may have been looking at it wrong, but I couldn’t get your 60% figure to work out either.
http://www.lni.wa.gov/ClaimsIn.....efault.asp
markie @ 57
No link, of course, to your nonsense. Labor & Industries needs to start being more oriented to the injured worker, rather than the employer. L & I is far too sensitive to its employer constituency (which, of course, throws around money in Olympia), while ignoring its injured worker constituency.
So, by Goldy’s logic here:
The PDC should be investigating both ethics complaints filed against Constantine and his consultants.
The irony of it all!