Goldy

Right around the same time yesterday that State Auditor Brian Sonntag was telling reporters he would run for governor should there be a special election to replace Gov. Gregoire, I was telling a Republican friend of mine that I would actually vote for Dino Rossi should it come down to a contest between the two. Really.

The way I figure it, as long as we’re getting a conservative Republican who hangs with teabaggers, cavorts with Tim Eyman and endorses Susan Hutchison, we might as well get one who openly embraces the Republican Party label (or at the very least, the Grand Old Party Party label). That way, I can vilify the new governor coherently, and without constantly having defend my party from being branded with his anti-tax, anti-transit, anti-Democratic policies.

So yeah, in the hypothetical event of a Rossi v. Sonntag contest, I’m voting for Rossi. Though I’m guessing I’ll have to get myself pretty damn drunk to fill out that ballot.

According to the Seattle Times, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is likely to receive the $44 million it needs to make emergency repairs to the Howard Hanson Dam. Why…?

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray convinced her colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee to put the money into a supplemental spending bill the Senate is expected to vote on later this month.

And this is why I’ve already made the bold prediction that the Times will break with character this November and endorse the Democratic incumbent, even if her opponent is Dino Rossi. Because Sen. Murray delivers in a way that a Sen. Rossi simply couldn’t.

See, unlike Sen. Murray, Rossi wouldn’t have any colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and even if he did, he’d be the juniorest of junior members, most likely in the minority party, and with almost zero influence. The result: billions of dollars of federal money going to states that weren’t stupid enough to toss out one of the Senate’s most powerful appropriators… dollars that could’ve been coming to us.

Does that analysis sound craven? Does it reek of pork barrel politics? Well tell that to the thousands of homeowners and businesses in the Green River flood plain who risk having their lives and livelihoods washed away should the Army Corp not get the funding it needs to continue emergency repairs.

This is the way politics works. Patty Murray is simply too valuable to our state economy to toss out on mere ideological grounds. And business establishment types like Frank Blethen know it.

It looks like Dino Rossi isn’t the only Republican with a moral hazard, and he might want to look to Ohio for a timely example of how one’s business “success” can turn into a political failure:

Republican John Kasich, the former congressman and Fox News host who is running for governor of Ohio, used to tout his eight years at Lehman Brothers.

But in the wake of the firm’s collapse, it’s Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland who is putting Kasich’s Wall Street ties front and center in one of the marquee races of 2010.

Co-founding Eastside Commercial Bank to help him and his associates cash in on the recent real estate bubble may have been a smart business move for Rossi, but now that his banks “unsafe and unsound” practices have come to light, he sure as hell won’t profit from it politically.

But if he can’t run as a successful businessman, what can Rossi run on? Almost winning the governor’s mansion in 2004? I’m not sure that’s enough to defeat Sen. Patty Murray, even in an anti-incumbency year.

It’s good to see that the Seattle Times editorial board has its priorities straight.

YOU do not have to be a technical whiz to know Craigslist is not to blame for the recent murder in Pierce County, a heinous crime that claimed the life of a loving father in front of his family.

No, you don’t. But despite this admission, the “Craigslist Killing” still kinda trivializes the rest of the Times’ editorial:

But it also doesn’t take too much to recognize the site must do more to rid itself of numerous posts that seem to promote or involve prostitution.

The Times urges Attorney General Rob McKenna to “step up his involvement,” but I think if local law enforcement is going to crack down on prostitution, I’d rather them focus on the hookers trolling Rainier Avenue, who occasionally have their Johns drive up the hill and park on the corner in front of my house, where they inevitably dump their empty beer bottles, used condoms and soiled paper towels on the sidewalk for the neighborhood kids to walk by on their way to school the next morning.

I mean, don’t you think that’s a bit more of a public nuisance than the more discrete, home delivery kinda services pitched online?

Personally, I find the whole notion of sex-for-money both degrading and, well, unhygienic, and I’m sure in favor of attempting to address the broader swath of social ills that leads women to engage in the sex trade. But when the transaction occurs between two consenting adults in the privacy of one’s own home or place of business, well, I find that much less troublesome than when it occurs in the backseat of a car parked outside my bedroom window at one in the morning.

But then, I suppose my priorities are bit different than those of the editors at the Times, perhaps because, unlike me, none of them live two blocks up the hill from Rainier Avenue.

I don’t doubt that the ads in the adult-services section of Craigslist are degrading and offensive, so unlike the Times’ editors, I never read them. But if, as the Times implies, these ads are “among the main ways officers track down sexually exploited juveniles and adults,” it strikes me that there’s a certain karma at play here, if not a useful check and balance on the sex industry’s worst excesses. After all, it’s easier and more efficient to patrol the adult-services section on Craigslist than it is our city’s streets, and during these tough budgetary times, law enforcement needs to prioritize its resources.

The truth is, men are dicks, both literally and figuratively, so there will always be a market for prostitution; I mean, you just can’t change human nature. So my concern is that if you crack down on Craigslist, you won’t stop these illicit services, you’ll just force them offline, underground… and into a car parked on that dark corner outside my house.

What started as a rumor running through the halls and barrooms of Olympia has jumped to the other Washington today, with the National Journal’s Reid Wilson confirming that Gov. Chris Gregoire is indeed on the White House’s short list to replace Elena Kagan as Solicitor General:

WA Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) leads a short list to replace Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the WH has told members of Gregoire’s home-state delegation.

Gregoire, a 2-term incumbent and a former WA AG, has been a rumored contender for other admin positions. But the WH has informed top aides to WA members that she is under serious consideration, according to several sources inside the delegation.

An admin official confirmed Gregoire’s name is one of those being considered. Gregoire endorsed candidate Obama just before the WA caucuses in ’08, offering a helping hand as Obama picked up two-thirds of the state’s delegates.

Yesterday, Gov. Gregoire’s aides seemed eager to quash the rumor, but in the wake of today’s reports, the most definitive comment I’ve been able to extract from insiders today are assurances that the Governor “has not been seeking” the job. Clearly unanswered in that response is whether Gov. Gregoire would consider the position if offered.

Of course, she’d be crazy not to, at least in terms of her own career. Gov. Gregoire does not appear to be planning to run for a third term, and there’s a better than even chance she’d lose if she tried. So there’s zero downside to her moving on to the national stage.

As to the political chaos her early retirement would create here in Washington state, well, that’s a different matter.

Even putting aside the unsettling prospect of Lt. Gov. Brad Owen’s brief stewardship, the political disruption would be immense, resulting in either a cakewalk for Dino Rossi in a special election, or a messy free for all that could leave several open seats in its wake. Would Rep. Jay Inslee suddenly abandon his congressional reelection for an early run at the governor’s mansion? Would Reps. Adam Smith or even (don’t laugh) Dave Reichert? Would WA Attorney General Rob McKenna defer his own gubernatorial dreams in favor of Rossi, or would he try to muscle the two-time loser out… or even risk splitting the Republican vote?

Given the circumstances, I’d have to put my money on Rossi. I’ve often joked about how well Rossi runs in the polls during off years, but a special election with little time for an opposing Democrat to gain statewide ID would be just the opportunity Rossi needs to break this cycle.

Hmm. Much to think about. Especially for Rossi as he continues to contemplate a near hopeless run at Sen. Patty Murray.

When I wrote a post back in March, laying out Dino Rossi’s shady business dealings with accused swindler Michael Mastro, Rossi’s defenders depicted the maybe-senatorial candidate as one of Mastro’s victims. When a real estate investment firm Rossi co-owns was found to owe over $20,000 in unpaid property taxes, Rossi’s business partners downplayed his culpability, saying “It definitely is nothing Dino is involved in.”

And Monday, when Politico reported that a failing bank Rossi co-founded and co-owns runs the risk of being shut down by the feds at taxpayer expense, a Washington State Republican Party spokesperson laughed off Rossi’s involvement, repeating the Rossi-as-victim meme by saying of his investment, “It’s not worth as much as it used to be.”

All of which raises a question: If Rossi — who frequently touts his business acumen and experience as one of his prime qualifications for higher office — is so hands off his investments, so easily swindled by his associates and so frequently on the wrong end of a deal gone bad, can we taxpayers really afford to have Rossi run government like he runs his business?

Or, is Rossi really much more involved with his business dealings than he lets on?

He’s allegedly a millionaire after all, so it’s hard to believe that Rossi is as clueless and detached as his surrogates consistently make him out be. Take, for example, the foundering Eastside Commercial Bank at the center of the latest expose. Rossi was one of 35 founding stakeholders who put in a minimum of $10,000 each to start up the venture, and it was Rossi who recruited Dick Ducharme, “a friend, lobbyist and business partner” to both invest in the bank and serve as its CEO.

So, when the federal Comptroller of the Currency declares that Eastside has “engaged in unsafe and unsound banking practices relating to its strategic and capital planning, credit underwriting, credit administration, concentration risk management, and liquidity management,” doesn’t that even somewhat reflect on Rossi’s judgement, if not his business ethics and management skills?

Rossi’s defenders insist “no,” dismissing this latest revelation as just another skid-mark in a Democratic smear campaign, but one can’t help but wonder if Rossi’s refusal to take any personal responsibility for the negative consequences of his own business ventures might have contributed to their failure? No doubt Rossi helped start the Eastside Commercial Bank with the intent of getting in on the huge profits that were being made during the recent real estate bubble, but now that it is collapsing under the weight of the same kind of “unsafe and unsound banking practices” that were widespread in the industry at the time, Rossi expects to be held blameless for his own co-creation.

This is exactly the sort of moral hazard that led to the Wall Street disaster and subsequent bailout, for when there are no consequences for one’s actions, or when the consequences are always the responsibility, perceived or otherwise, of some third party, then there is little disincentive to reckless behavior or benign neglect. And while the term has most recently been applied to the machinations of Wall Street, it is just as applicable to the way Rossi routinely leverages his political capital for both political and personal gain, apparently without fear of ever being held publicly responsible for his actions.

Rossi could have accepted at least a little responsibility for the unsound practices of the bank he co-founded, just like he could have accepted responsibility for not seeing through the fraudulent practices of his mentor Mel Heide or his investment partner Michael Mastro. He could have accepted responsibility for being a partner in a business that failed to pay its taxes, or for his gubernatorial campaign’s misuse of the Everett AquaSox mailing list, a team he part-owned. But in all these situations he allowed the blame to fall on others, painting himself the innocent victim of a Democratic smear campaign.

The thing is, it’s not a smear when it’s the truth. Rossi’s mentor was convicted of fraud, and Mastro is accused likewise. Rossi did misuse the AquaSox mailing list, his business did fail to pay its taxes, and his bank is on the verge of collapse. I suppose you could argue that it is unfair of me to imply guilt by association, but it is not unreasonable to attempt to infer a pattern by connecting the dots.

More troubling though for Rossi and his boosters at the NRSC is that the dots keep coming, and it is important to note that despite the vetting he received during his two gubernatorial runs, these latest revelations involve post-2008 timelines. This is the way Rossi conducts his business, and if he truly is as hands-off a manager as his defenders insist, or as morally hazardous as critics like me suspect, then dollars to donuts there are plenty more dots to come.

According to the TNT’s Peter Callaghan, the rumor du jour in Olympia is that Gov. Chris Gregoire is on President Obama’s short list to replace Elena Kagan as Solicitor General, a prospect that conjures three frightening words: Governor Brad Owen.

(Shudder.)

Callaghan goes on to explain that a resignation before May 31 would result in a special election, both primary and general, whereas a resignation after May 31, but before October 3 would result in a November free for all. (A resignation after October 3 would result in — ugh — Lt. Gov. Brad Owen filling out the remaining two years of Gregoire’s term.)

One intriguing aspect of this rumor is that should it come true, Dino Rossi would become the instant frontrunner in a special election. Yet one more bit of gristle for him to chew on as he considers flushing his career down the toilet in a futile challenge to Sen. Patty Murray.

Last night at the 37th LD Dems’ monthly meeting, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith talked about the tough electoral climate Democrats will be facing this November, pointing out that even he faced a credible challenger for the first time in years.

Really?

According to the FEC, Rep. Smith was sitting on nearly $650,000 cash on hand at the end of the March quarter, while his closest rival, James Postma, had an almost respectable reserve of about $135,000 at the end of 2009. I emphasize the date, because Postma has failed to file the Q1 report due April 15. Postma also hasn’t updated his website since at least early April, his Facebook page since March, and his Twitter feed since, well, ever. So it’s not really clear that Postma is still running.

Not that Postma was ever all that credible. Rep. Smith already defeated him by a nearly two-to-one margin back in 2008, and of the $150,977 Postma had raised before apparently dropping off the edge of the earth, $150,900 was a loan from himself. No, $77 in individual contributions is not really credible at all.

So I suppose the credible challenger Rep. Smith must’ve been talking about is Pierce County Councilman Dick Muri, who raised $56,000 through the end of March, for a total of $43,000 cash-on-hand. No, money isn’t everything, but from all reports Muri isn’t exactly the kinda imposing political presence who can afford to be outspent by a 15-to-1 margin.

No doubt Rep. Smith hails from a swing district, at least demographically, despite the firm electoral hold he’s managed to take on it over the past decade, but I haven’t heard even whispers of Republican optimism in WA-09, despite the GOP’s almost religious belief in the cleansing powers of an imminent Big Red Wave.

So sorry Adam, don’t mean to put a crimp in your fundraising appeals or anything, but the real opportunity for a GOP pickup is WA-03, where Rep. Brian Baird’s retirement has left an open seat for the taking, and to a much lesser extent in WA-02, where it remains to be seen if Snohomish County Councilman John Koster can wage the credible challenge to Democratic incumbent Rep. Rick Larsen that state Republicans have been promising. But, you know, it never looks good to come off as overconfident, so keep at it.

I just got back from the 37th LD Democrats monthly meeting, and I gotta say, I have absolutely no sympathy for those whiners who complain about politics and politicians being detached, inaccessible and elitist.

This being the “nominating convention,” the entire legislative delegation was present: State Sen. Adam Kline, and State Reps. Sharon Santos and Eric Pettigrew. But also speaking tonight — and available for one-on-one jawboning in the vestibule outside the meeting room — were King County Council President Bob Ferguson, State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders, and U.S. Rep. Adam Smith. (Apparently, a handful of 37th LD precincts extend into Rep. Smith’s 9th Congressional District. Who knew?)

You want a little face time with your elected officials? Show up at meetings like this. Otherwise, quit your whining.

If Dino Rossi is betting on Tea Party enthusiasm to sweep him into a competitive race with Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray, he better not bet too big, at least according to a couple of ‘baggers quoted in yesterday’s TNT:

Rossi is considering whether to enter the race against Sen. Patty Murray. One of a long roster of less well-known Republicans seeking to unseat Murray, former NFL tight end Clint Didier, last weekend said tea party activists would reject Rossi. And no candidate will win without their backing, he said.

Pierce County Tea Party member Lawrence Hutt agrees, though he supports a different candidate for Senate, Sean Salazar.

“Rossi is too establishment to get the tea partiers all fired up,” said Hutt, a paralegal from Wauna. “He’s not going to fan the flames of any tea partiers I know.”

Sen. Patty Murray’s alleged vulnerability hinges on a voter enthusiasm imbalance… you know, that Big Red Wave that’s supposed to sweep Democratic incumbents out of office come November. But if a lot of that Republican enthusiasm is coming from the over-hyped teabagger wing of the party, then the later Rossi jumps into the race, the more of an establishment interloper he’s going to appear to Didier and Salazar’s passionate supporters.

I mean, it would have been one thing if Rossi had gotten into the race back in March when he first started dominating the headlines and rumor mill, but for him to just step in and claim the nomination a couple months before the primary, well that can’t help but piss off a bunch of the true believers, and it’s tough to see how it puts him in much of a position to win their enthusiastic support.

The longer Rossi waits, the more toes he steps on, and the harder the logistics of a competitive race become. For example, if he were to jump in tomorrow, Rossi would have to raise about $60,000 a day between now and Nov. 2, just to match Sen. Murray’s current totals. And it’s not like Sen. Murray would be standing still; in 2004 she raised an additional $5.1 million from April through the end of the campaign, while facing only an anemic challenge from George Nethercutt.

Nor can Rossi count on anything approaching the $13 million worth of “independent” expenditures that came his way during his 2008 gubernatorial campaign. The BIAW, by far his biggest backer, is betting the farm on an initiative that would gut our state’s worker’s compensation system, while the NRSC would have an awfully tough time matching the $5.5 million the RGA put behind Rossi two years ago. Meanwhile the Washington Association of Realtors, one of the state’s wealthiest Republican-leaning PACs, has already endorsed Murray.

So is Rossi too liberal? No. Is he too establishment? Maybe. But his biggest problem is that he’s not really enough of anything.

Growing up, one of the surest signs to me of the quiet by endemic antisemitism that persisted in the United States was the relative lack of Jews on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sure, Jews never made up more than 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. population, so the bare handful to have been appointed from 1789 through 1993 wasn’t bad considering our representation in the population as a whole. But the legal profession, well, that’s a different story.

At the risk of perpetuating even a positive stereotype, the professions, that’s kinda our schtick, and so over the three decade drought between the confirmations of Abe Fortas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a string of presidents had to pass up an awful lot of Jewish legal scholars to a degree that just wasn’t true for other minority groups. Imagine over the same period of time, if Hollywood executives had refused to hire Jewish comedy writers; that’s sorta like what our nation’s highest court looked like to me.

Now, with the appointment of Elana Kagan, the Supreme Court is about to become a full one-third Jewish, a presence pretty far out of whack with the general population, but which is actually unremarkable considering the composition of top New York and D.C. law firms. In fact, the truly notable statistic here, is that with Justice Stevens’ retirement, for the first time in its history the court will now be zero percent Protestant.

It’s been 20 years since a WASP, Justice David Souter was last confirmed, a period during which the court has seen a stunning transformation. In 1985, Justice William Brennan, a Catholic, was the only non-Protestant on the bench, and had been since Fortas retired in 1969 after the Senate refused to confirm his elevation to Chief Justice. Since 1986, six Catholics and two Jews have been confirmed.

To put that in perspective, over the court’s first century, 49 of the justices were Protestant, and one was Catholic. Over the next 97 years religious diversity improved, with six Catholics and five Jews joining 41 Protestants on the bench. But over the last quarter century, the once dominant WASPs will have been outnumbered nine to one.

How to explain this phenomenon? Well, I guess it’s only fair to assume that our nation is not nearly as bigoted and narrow minded as it once was, at least when it comes to religion. There is no “Jewish seat” or “Catholic seat” on the court anymore. Religion no longer appears to be an issue when it comes to Supreme Court appointments or confirmation.

Or is it?

It is curious to note that five of the six Catholics on the court were appointed by Republicans, while all of the Jews were appointed by Democrats, and it’s hard to chalk this up to mere coincidence. In fact, at the risk this time of perpetuating a cynical stereotype, it’s hard not to chalk this up to the increasingly threatened status of Roe v. Wade.

This is not to suggest that all Jews are reliably pro-choice, or that all Catholics are not. I myself married into an Irish Catholic family that is pretty strongly pro-choice, at least politically, if not always as a matter of personal conscience. But let’s just say that, in general, Catholics are much less reliably pro-choice than Jews, and vice versa.

Thus a conservative Catholic appointment has proven a pretty safe bet for any anti-choice president wishing to avoid an overt litmus test, as evidenced by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito and Roberts, and as opposed to the last two Protestant appointees, Justices Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor, who both disappointed Republicans on this issue. Meanwhile, I think we can count on Kagan to be as reliably pro-choice as Ginsburg and Breyer.

I suppose I could be wrong, and the religious composition of the court is merely coincidental, or at the very least, incidental. But it sure doesn’t seem likely.

Jeremiah 20:14-18
Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you—a son!” May that man be like the towns the LORD overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon. For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?

Happy Mother’s Day. Discuss.

The new modem arrived late yesterday afternoon, and of course, it doesn’t work either. So yesterday’s tech rep insists he needs to send a technician to my house, which is a load of crap, as my line worked perfectly until they reprovisioned it without my permission Monday morning. If I had known then what lay in store, I would have just canceled my DSL and called Comcast.

UPDATE:
This morning, I lost dial tone again, which was a good sign, as it meant they were finally reprovisioning it back the right way. When dial tone returned, so did my DSL service.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown has been in the news recently for his bizarre insistence that President Obama purposely created the largest oil spill in history… but then, as the video above shows, Brown has a long history of bizarrely blaming others for man-made disasters.

Still, if Brown wants to blame me for exposing his lack of emergency management experience, I’m happy to take the credit, but… well… you can’t eat congressional testimony — not even Brownie’s — so it’s gonna take an awful lot more than accolades like that to keep me blogging. You know… I need money. Cold hard cash.

I haven’t blogged recently on my ongoing $25,000 fundraiser, if only to make a point that when I don’t nag folks to contribute, I don’t get many contributions. In the three weeks since I launched the fundraiser I’ve now received 109 individual contributions totaling $5427.37, or roughly $50 per contribution. Thank you for your generosity.

But that’s still below the total number of contributors and contributions over the one week fund drive I held two years ago, so I know the HA community as a whole can do better.

In addition to the individual contributions, I’ve also now received institutional donations and pledges totaling an additional $5,200, thanks to $2,500 sponsorships from UFCW 21 and SEIU 775, and a $200 donation from the King County Democrats. I hope to announce more sponsorships shortly.

I know $25,000 seems like a lot of money, but it’s really just the bare minimum I need to keep me blogging full time through the end of the year, and living pretty frugally at that. So if you value the work I do and the contributions I’ve made, please give generously today.