Goldy

One can make a strong argument that over the past six years, Attorney General Rob McKenna has proven the most adept politician in Washington state. Cautious, pandering and downright relentless in his pursuit of publicity, McKenna has simultaneously managed to privately court far-right, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-choice forces while successfully maintaining a public persona as one of those mythical “moderate” Republicans. Yet as tight a rope as he’s had to balance, I’d never seen him slip.

Until now.

For a politician presumed to be running for governor in 2012, McKenna’s participation in a multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of health care reform seems baffling on its face, especially considering its stature as little more than a legal stunt. McKenna’s electoral strength is that, unlike most Republicans, he doesn’t do too badly in King County, winning it by a comfortable margin in 2008, and losing by less than 5 points in the much more closely contested contest from 2004. That, combined with nearly guaranteed landslide Republican margins in Central and Eastern Washington has made him the putative favorite in the 2012 gubernatorial race against nearly any Democratic opponent.

As long as McKenna maintains his moderate facade — and you know damn well the Seattle Times will do everything in its power to help him out in this regard — he’s damn hard to beat. So why would McKenna so very publicly throw in his lot with with Tenthers and Teabaggers and other far-right-wingers of that ilk?

The only thing I can think of, other than a hard night of drinking or a minor stroke, is to better position himself for a tough primary battle. And the only Republican in Washington state with the stature to keep McKenna off the November 2012 ballot is Dino Rossi.

So that begs the question: does Rob McKenna know something we don’t know? Is Rossi planning yet another run for the governor’s mansion? And has Rossi privately made his intentions clear?

I posed my theory to a handful of Republican lawmakers who were willing to talk with me — off the record — and while none had any first-hand knowledge of Rossi’s intentions, all seemed equally baffled by McKenna’s lawsuit. “This has gotta hurt Rob in King County,” one fellow GOPer told me, lamenting the damage to McKenna’s gubernatorial ambitions.

Yeah… no shit, Sherlock.

So the question remains, why? McKenna’s not stupid, so why would he risk alienating King County moderates for the sake of shoring up his support amongst the Teabagger/Tenther crowd? A stroke of political genius, or just your run-of-the-mill stroke?

AND FYI…
Over 5,800 6,100 Washington citizens have already joined the Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit Facebook group in less than 24 hours. Wow.

If there are any good lawyers out there willing to file a suit pro bono, seeking to bar Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna from using state funds to participate in a lawsuit seeking to toss out health care reform, I’d be happy to play the part of the plaintiff.

As per the post on Publicola, I fail to see where McKenna has either the constitutional or statutory authority to unilaterally join such a suit on behalf of the citizens of Washington state, and while some might question the legal grounds for just some guy seeking an injunction to bar the AG from action… well… isn’t that ironic considering the bullshit Tentherist arguments on which McKenna and his Republican allies are basing their challenge.

In the meanwhile, over 4,200 people have already joined the Facebook group, Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit, and I urge you to join as well. The King County Dems have also created an online petition, Stop the Health Care Lawsuit, and I urge you to sign that too.

And oh yeah… call McKenna’s office, (360) 753-6200, and give him a piece of your mind. I understand the phone is ringing off the hook with angry callers; let’s keep it that way.

UPDATE:
There is another petition, sponsored by Fuse, that has already collected over 3,000 signatures. Sign up there too!

John Boehner and Michael Steele should be a little more careful in their choice of words. As ridiculously hyperbolic as the assertion is, I understand what they’re trying to say when they describe health care reform as “Armageddon,” but if the Republicans’ far-right Evangelical base takes the word literally — as they are wont to do — the GOP could lose a big chunk of its support.

After all, there are a lot of Republican Christianists out there who would not only welcome the End Times, but are actively working toward it. So if they believe that health care reform really is Armageddon, won’t they just support it with open arms, and then ready themselves for the Rapture?

I cut my teeth as a blogger covering the recount and legal contest following Washington’s excruciatingly close 2004 gubernatorial election, playing the role of Democratic yin to Stefan Sharkansky’s paranoid, mean-spirited, conspiratorial, Republican yang over at (un)Sound Politics. But for his part, Stefan was already an old hand at this blogging thing, having cut his online canines as a paranoid, mean-spirited, conspiratorial critic of his Bay Area congresswoman, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

And so it was with some curiosity — and admittedly, more than a little swagger — that I wandered over to u(SP) to read Stefan’s well considered take on last night’s historic passage of health care reform legislation:

AND MAY THEY ALL BE BOILED IN OIL
National News
by Stefan Sharkansky, 08:43 PM

219 Democrats voted tonight to wreck the U.S. health care system.

May their victory be Pyrrhic, short-lived and reversed.

Speaking of which — the RNC has a new website “Fire Nancy Pelosi”, where you can donate to support this year’s Republican House candidates.

So how does it feel Stefan, to know that the congresswoman you hate most, has managed to achieve what other Speakers only dreamed of over the past century? Since you started your personal crusade against Pelosi, she not only rose to become our nation’s first female Speaker, but within a few short years managed to make her indelible mark on history with an extraordinary legislative accomplishment that will shape U.S. policy for generations. How’s that feel?

Does it sting? Does it burn?

I sure hope so.

When Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna decided to spend our tax dollars joining nine other Republican AGs in a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the recently passed health care reform legislation, who the hell was he representing?

The 58% of Washington voters who cast their ballot for Barack Obama and his promise of health care reform? The 6 of 9 Washington congressional districts who overwhelmingly elected Democrats and their promise of health care reform? The 57% and 55% of voters who last reelected Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray respectively, and their promise of health care reform? The 500,000 Washingtonians who will be added to the state’s health care rolls?

Or, is Rob McKenna merely representing the interests of AWB and BIAW and other monied, special interests?

Washington is a state that supports health care reform and that benefits from it, yet McKenna is spending our tax dollars in the hope that an ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court will put aside a century of legal precedent and toss out this historic legislation. So I hope this puts to rest any notion that he is in someway a “moderate” Republican… a political animal that simply no longer exists.

Representatives Dave Reichert and Jay Inslee both spoke briefly on the floor of the House during yesterday’s health care reform debate; not surprisingly, Reichert spoke out in opposition to the bill, while Inslee spoke in its support.

But it was interesting to see both Republican Reichert and Democrat Inslee make freedom of choice a lynchpin of their divergent arguments:

Putting aside the obvious irony of Reichert making a pro-choice appeal, the fact that opposing sides could make the same basic argument in service of competing causes, shows just how muddled, confusing and hopeless this debate really is. If Democrats and Republicans can’t even agree on the meaning of the word “choice,” how can they possibly agree on something as complex as health care reform?

Of course, they can’t, which is why the mythical beast known as bipartisanship was never going to rear its head in this debate.

For the past few years Democrats campaigned vigorously on health care reform, and the American people rewarded them with control of both Congress and the White House. As a result, the American people were going to get a Democratic health care plan if they were going to get anything at all, whether the Republicans chose to constructively participate in the process or not.

The Republicans lost this debate not yesterday, not last week or last month, or even during the long year in which this bill has made its torturous way through Congress. No, the Republicans lost this debate in 2006 and 2008, when voters resoundingly decided to place their confidence in Democrats, not Republicans, to solve our nation’s most pressing problems.

These are the voters to whom Congress fulfilled a promise yesterday, and if voters in 2010 and 2012 aren’t happy about it, they will be free to toss the Democrats out. And that is a definition of “choice” on which I hope both sides can agree.

Writing on the Washington State Insurance Commissioner’s official blog, Rich Roesler explains what yesterday’s passage of federal health care reform means for us here in Washington state:

The health care reform bill passed by the U.S. House Sunday will cut the number of uninsured in Washington state by more than 500,000, provide better coverage to those with insurance, and save $500 million in uncompensated care – health care that’s delivered in Washington state but not directly paid for.

Which makes it hard to explain why Republicans Dave Reichert, Doc Hasting and Cathy McMorris-Rodgers would vote against it. Unless, of course, their votes were purely ideological and/or political.

Bill Clinton couldn’t do it. Richard Nixon couldn’t do it. Neither could Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, nor Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt.

But sometime today or tomorrow, President Barack Obama will sign health care reform into law, delivering on one of his top campaign promises.

I’m just sayin’….

The yeas have it, 219-212, without, of course, a single Republican voting for it. More later, but for now, what Josh Marshall said:

If the bill passes, and should the worse befall the Dems and they wake up on November 3rd having lost both houses of Congress, they can look back on all the work in the 2004, 2006 and 2008 cycles and say, it wasn’t wasted and it wasn’t for nothing. This bill will be by far the most significant piece of social legislation in almost 50 years and will achieve, albeit imperfectly, something progressives have been trying to achieve for going on a century. If the Dems lose their majorities in November, they’ll be able to say: we worked this hard, we built these majorities, and this is what we did with it.

Even more though, I come back to the central lesson of the Social Security battle in 2005, which was the realization that the key condition of political success is almost always a genuine willingness to lose well.

[…] A genuine willingness to lose means just that: you might lose. You might lose big. And the dynamics of a mid-term election, amidst crippling unemployment and an energized right, have certain unavoidable implications. But I suspect the effect for the Democrats of actual passing this legislation will be considerably more positive than people realize.

The Dems spent some political capital, and the result was history.

They’ve never been anything more than an angry mob:

Tea partiers and other anti-health care activists are known to get rowdy, but today’s protest on Capitol Hill–the day before the House is set to vote on historic health care legislation–went beyond the usual chanting and controversial signs, and veered into ugly bigotry and intimidation.

Civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Black Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) related a particularly jarring encounter with a large crowd of protesters screaming “kill the bill”… and punctuating their chants with the word “nigger.”

[…] And that wasn’t an isolated incident. Early this afternoon, standing outside a Democratic whip meeting in the Longworth House office building, I watched Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) make his way out the door, en route to the neighboring Rayburn building. As he rounded the corner toward the exit, wading through a huge crowd of tea partiers and other health care protesters, an elderly white man screamed “Barney, you faggot”–a line that caused dozens of his confederates to erupt in laughter.

After that incident, Capitol police threatened to expel the protesters from the building, but were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed.

Makes you proud to be an American, huh?

Of course, bullies are also cowards, and outside of the security of their own mob, I don’t really believe that most tea baggers have the balls to act on their convictions, let alone their threats (The traitor Dave Reichert votes for cap and trade, yet faces no Tea Party challenger… what’s up with that?), but as I’ve written before, there are crazies out there, and violent rhetoric breeds violent actions. So if health care reform does pass, and right-wing violence does break out, I hope responsible political leaders have the guts to brand them as the terrorists they really are.

Leviticus 25:44-45
And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property.

Discuss.

The Seattle Times editorial board has, of course, come out in favor of handing over a couple acres of the Seattle Center to a wealthy local family to build a for profit museum. Much more on this editorial later, but…

Seattle Center officials should have opened to all comers the possibility of siting a project on the south side of the Fun Forest. That would have made Chihuly’s glass house a cleaner proposition.

The way forward now is to seek proposals for other privately funded ideas. Exhaust the possibilities, sate the process hounds, then proceed with this promising upgrade.

Honestly, how fucking condescending can they get?

The same ed board that pees its pants over sunshine and open government advises to simply make a charade of it when it comes to a private deal with one of Frank Blethen’s Rainier Club drinking partners.

I think with these two paragraphs the Times has pretty much written itself off as a serious contributor to this particular conversation.

Another day, another intentionally misleading, anti-labor editorial from the Seattle Times:

LAST year organized labor pushed a bill to restrict a company’s ability to talk to its employees. It was marketed as the Worker Privacy Act, and its aim was to shut up managers during the organizing of a union, so that only the union organizer would be heard.

That, of course, is a load of crap. The Worker Privacy Act would have done nothing to restrict a company’s ability to talk to its employees, it didn’t “shut up managers,” and would not have assured that only union organizers would be heard. Employers would have been just as free to oppose unionization as they are now, even to hold meetings expressly for that purpose. The only difference under WPA would be that employees would be equally free, if they so chose, not to participate in such non-work related meetings (regarding unions, religion, politics, etc.) without fear of retaliation.

As it stands now, your employer  can call a meeting for the sole purpose of proselytizing and converting non-Christian workers, and then fire your ass if you walk out or choose not to attend. They can force you to attend a companywide Tea Party. Or they can crowd you into a room without a union representative, and cajole/harangue/threaten as much as they want in their effort prevent unionization. That’s the inequity the WPA sought to address.

No law like it existed in any other state.

You know, except for neighboring Oregon, and I’m guessing a few other states. But regardless, that’s an incredibly stupid argument prima facie. No other nation guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of speech at the time our First Amendment was adopted, so would that have been a reasonable argument to reject it? According to the Times, yes.

Business hated it, and Democratic leaders, elected with union support, found an excuse to kill it.

In a hyperbolic charade intended to provide political cover for scuttling the bill, Democratic leaders literally called the cops on labor over an internal email that state troopers and other watchdogs ultimately laughed off. And the Times presents this as a good thing?

The spirit of this bill resurfaced deep in the 292-page budget measure, ESSB 6444, moving through the Legislature. Certain employers receiving state funds would be forbidden “to use these funds to assist, promote, or deter union organization.” The “or deter” is what this is about.

This restriction is not for all employers. It is only on those providing long-term care or services to people with disabilities. But the principle is the same: The state would use its spending power to favor unions.

You gotta be kidding. The 30-word provision in question has absolutely nothing to do with the WPA. The WPA would have protected workers from retaliation when choosing not to participate in workplace communications related to issues of conscience. On the other hand, here is the specific language to which the Times objects:

“No employer, provider, or entity receiving state funds to provide long-term care services or services to the developmentally disabled may use these funds to assist, promote, or deter union organization.”

Would the Times object to the provision had the word “deter” been deleted? No, of course not. Indeed, the Times wouldn’t even have been aware of the provision had it not been brought to their attention by the Association of Washington Businesses. (You don’t think the Times’ editors are actually in the habit of reading 292-page bills, do you?)

In fact, the provision is actually quite evenhanded, as it prohibits an “employer, provider, or entity” from using state funds to “assist” or “promote” union organization, as well as to “deter” it — specifically and only within the context of providing long-term care to the developmentally disabled. And yes, there are union “entities” that receive state funds for the purpose of providing training to long-term care workers, that would fall under this provision, so it does impact employers and unions alike.

Oh, and it’s not like this provision was added without provocation. Long-term care employers have used state funds to hold mandatory “training” meetings for the purpose of deterring union activities… and they’ve been caught on video. The Times is all gung ho about reducing the footprint of state government while protecting seniors from shoddy long-term care, yet apparently the editors believe mandatory anti-union meetings to be an appropriate use of taxpayer funded training dollars. Go figure.

Here, not coincidentally, the benefit would go the state’s most politically aggressive union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

And here, not coincidentally, is the crux of this issue. The Times just hates SEIU, and thus anything SEIU supports, the Times opposes. SEIU = evil incarnate.

Compared to the whole economy, long-term-care homes are not large. But if this provision goes through once, it will be used again. “We view this provision as a crossing of the Rubicon,” said Kris Tefft, counsel to the Association of Washington Business.

AWB = second coming of Christ on Earth.

Oh… and I’m sure SEIU and the provision’s sponsor were asked to provide a comment too, but just never got around to it.

Let us be clear: Under federal labor law, unions can speak to workers. So can employers. A state cannot abridge the rights of either side. The U.S. Supreme Court said so recently in Chamber of Commerce v. Brown (2007). There the Court threw out a California law that forbade any employer receiving $10,000 in state money from using it “to assist, promote or deter union organizing.”

Let us be clear: the Seattle Times editorial board has the legal acumen of a walnut, and is no more in the habit of reading (let alone understanding) obscure court opinions than it is of spelunking through the details of 292-page legislative bills. Like the provision in question, the Times was only made aware of this court case through the tireless PR efforts of the water-walking, loaves-and-fishes-multiplying AWB, and you can be pretty damn sure that the Times’ interpretation of Chamber of Commerce v. Brown came straight from the mouth of AWB. So forgive me if I don’t take it at face value.

In fact, Chamber of Commerce v. Brown appears to very narrowly focus on whether or not the National Labor Relations Act preempts state restrictions that attempt to regulate employer speech about union organizing under circumstances where Congress intended free debate. A quick reading of both the decision and the dissent makes it clear that the entire case rests on interpreting Congressional intent.

But while the California statute rejected under Chamber of Commerce v. Brown was broad, the particular provision to which the Times objects (at the apparent behest of AWB), merely seeks to reiterate a policy that is already in federal Medicare and Medicaid law, and thus unambiguously sanctioned by Congress. The Medicare provider manual states that “Costs incurred for activities directly related to influencing employees respecting unionization or related to attempts to coerce employees or otherwise interfere with or restrain the exercise of employee rights under the NLRA are not allowable costs for program purposes,” and a few minutes of Googling reveals that this language is duplicated in state Medicaid regulations throughout the nation. (Minnesota, North Dakota and Alabama, for example.)

The ruling was 7-2, with the Court’s senior liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, laying down the law.

Well, as long as the Times is lauding a liberal justice — you know, when it believes it suits its purpose — let’s take a look at what Justice Stevens actually wrote:

[T]he mere fact that Congress has imposed targeted federal restrictions on union-related advocacy in certain limited contexts does not invite the States to override federal labor policy in other settings.

That is the heart of the majority opinion, and since ESSB 6444 imposes targeted advocacy restrictions within the exact same limited context and setting as that already provided under federal law, it is clearly permissible, and the Times application of Chamber of Commerce v. Brown to ESSB 6444 is clearly wrong. Ignorant, misinformed, boneheaded wrong.

The same language Justice Stevens struck down has been in and out of the budget bill in Olympia. It is a bad provision and has to stay out.

Like I said… the legal acumen of a walnut.

But then, that’s the kind of foolishness that comes from letting your hatred of organized labor get in the way of the facts.

The Seattle Times editorial board is starting to sound like a broken record:

There is still time to make structural spending changes and reduce the footprint of government, but the moment is passing.

And that is a lost opportunity.

Yeah, maybe, but the point the Times’ editors seem to miss is that voters didn’t elect Democrats to “reduce the footprint of government.” That’s the Republican platform, one which voters consistently reject. So, um, why exactly should the Democrats use this economic crisis as an opportunity to enact the Republican agenda when the majority of voters clearly prefer the Democratic platform?

Now if the Times wanted to dis Dems for failing to take the opportunity to enact structural revenue changes, that might be more in line with the will of the people, instead of just the will of the people who own newspapers.