Goldy

I guess as a Republican member of our “nonpartisan” King County Council, Jane Hague has an obligation to help out the King County Republican Party. But considering her own DUI problems, you gotta wonder if she was drunk at the time she contributed the following item to the KCGOP’s recent 2009 Liberty Dinner Auction:

“You can enjoy these tonight!”…? I mean, come on… I know Republicans tend to lack any sense of irony, but that’s just a setup in search of a punch line.

The estate tax is in the news again, and (surprise!) the Seattle Times is editorializing against it:

The supporters of this tax, which we call the death tax, like to talk about rich bankers, entertainers and other upper crustaceans who die with a moraine of stocks, bonds, cash and title deeds to ten-bathroom palaces. If these were the only payers of this tax, we might heartily support it.

The opponents of this tax, who we call the Blethen family, apparently would have no problem applying this tax to the estates of bankers and entertainers — you know, folks who supposedly earned their fortunes rather than inheriting it through multiple generations — they just don’t want to pay it themselves. So much for ideological consistency let alone the moral high ground. (Oh, and the next time an editorialist accuses somebody like me of advocating class warfare, I’ll be sure to remember that quote.)

The death-tax bill now goes to the Senate. We implore our senators to lighten the load of it, or to pass a one-year extension and save this issue until after the 2010 elections.

Yes, the issue should be put aside until after Republicans have a chance to gain some seats in 2010, and unless Sen. Patty Murray supports this self-serving proposal, the Times will no doubt endorse her opponent, no matter how unqualified.

Personally, if I were Frank, I’d be wary of any delays. Under current law the estate tax temporarily falls to zero in 2010, before rising to 55% in 2011. Assuming the family business is actually worth something (and 49.5% stakeholder McClatchy seems to think it isn’t,) the fifth generation heirs might just off the family patriarch in order to save a bundle on their tax bills.

And if they did, they’d have come by their mercenary ways honestly.

Over at Publicola, Erica documents Rep. Dave Reichert’s many public statements in opposition to President Obama’s economic stimulus package, which, drawing upon his vast expertise as an economist sheriff, Reichert has repeatedly predicted would fail at its primary goal: creating jobs.

Oops.

This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that the stimulus package had created between 600,000 and 1.6 million new jobs, and raised the US gross domestic product by 1.2 to 3.2 percentage points above what would have been without the program.

Moreover, in the New York Times last month, several prominent economists argued that the stimulus had helped the economy, by creating jobs and hastening the end of the recession.

If only Sheriff Dave had the brains to match his brawn.

Amanda Knox found guilty; sentenced to 26 years. Talk amongst yourselves.

Last year, when university presidents lobbied for, the legislature passed, and the governor signed a 30% increase in college tuition over two years, promises were made that this would help keep higher education more affordable, not less. How? By increasing the total amount of financial aid dollars available, and by raising the income levels under which families qualify for financial aid, those who could afford to pay more would pay more, while those who couldn’t would pay less.

That is the high-tuition/high-financial aid model as practiced successfully by many private and some public universities, and it’s a model that can work… as long as public officials keep their promises.

One year later, with the governor and legislature looking to fill an additional $2.6 billion hole in the last year of our current two-year state budget, there’s talk that the state could eliminate financial aid altogether, saving $272 million in the process. But even a partial reduction in financial aid would be both a breach of public trust, and a disastrous public policy.

I understand the temptation to paint a worse case scenario as the governor and other Democratic leaders prepare to rally the troops in favor of a revenue package, but college financial aid must be explicitly taken off the table now, before any further damage is done. Cutting financial aid would surely interrupt the education of thousands of Washington students, but the mere talk of it is disruptive in itself, as many needy students will put off their college plans rather than face such financial uncertainty. Such talk also poisons the well, undermining faith in our elected officials to do right by our state’s young people, and ultimately making it even more difficult to enact further higher education funding reforms.

Promises were made, and they must be kept; our higher education system is simply too important to the welfare and prosperity of our state to do otherwise.

The Seattle P-I’s Chris Grygiel tells it like it is:

How did Dow Constantine beat Susan Hutchison so handily in last month’s King County executive’s race? As a Seattle Times map shows, he won Seattle handily and got more votes in the Eastside suburbs. Constantine’s strong showing in what, until recently, had been GOP territory bodes ill for the Republican Party heading into the 2010 legislative elections.

The emphasis is mine, and it’s not because I believe the GOP won’t pick up any seats in 2010 (I think they likely will), but because Grygiel’s analysis clearly exposes the lie that is nonpartisan elections.

Had Hutchison won, the conventional wisdom would have been that this would have bode ill for Democrats. So how exactly does the outcome of a supposedly nonpartisan race bode anything at all for one party or another? Of course, it was nonpartisan in name only.

I understand why Republicans would want to promote this particular fiction, and I don’t blame them for trying. But civic leaders who endorsed and supported the charter amendment (you know who I’m talking about, Muni League), and opinion leaders who attempted to perpetrate this lie after the fact (you know who I’m talking about, Seattle Times editorial board) should really be embarrassed by their efforts to deceive themselves and others.

Fortunately, the voters saw through this particular charade.

Republicans rooting for the failure of the Obama administration will be disappointed by today’s unexpected jobs report that showed unemployment falling from 10.2% to 10%, while the U.S. economy lost only 11,000 jobs in November.

Not a stellar day for Mark Griswold.

Update [Darryl]: From the Bureau of Labor Statistics report comes this graph (with colors modified to reflect political party):

Notice the November number is practically zero compared to numbers from the past 22 months. The graph highlights the differences under Republican economic policies compared to Democratic economic policies.

It also substantiates the labels: “The Bush Recession” and “The Obama Recovery.”

And of course, the best way to prove you are not a “sleazeball” is to try to get your son’s teacher fired for allegedly calling you one:

Hugh “Skip” McGee, one of Wall Street’s best-paid bankers, has launched an extraordinary attack on staff at his son’s exclusive private school after a teacher allegedly claimed that all investment bankers are dishonest “sleazeballs”.

Mr Mcgee, who is Barclays Capital’s global head of investment banking, penned a rambling five-page letter to the board of trustees of Houston’s Kinkaid School, asking that the teacher and two other staff members be fired.

In the letter, Mr McGee, who is alleged to have an eight-figure salary, claims that history teacher Leslie Lovett has a “leftist invective” which “is neither accurate nor part of the approved curriculum”.

The banker, who was global head of investment banking at Lehman Brothers until its collapse last year, goes on to claim that the teacher told his son John Edward’s 11th-grade class “that somehow both Lehman and Barclays made a bunch of money on the Lehman bankruptcy, and that all investment bankers were ‘sleazeballs’ and dishonest”.

Okay, maybe it was wrong to call him a sleazeball. Asshole might have been the more appropriate epithet.

Here is the photo the media wants you to know about, but not see. I’ve cropped out just a small section, but click on the image above to view the whole thing. Or not. It’s your choice.

We’ve all seen a lot of dead bodies on TV and on film, some of them even real dead bodies, and as far as these kind of images go, this one isn’t particularly brutal or disturbing. I’m not saying it isn’t disturbing, just no more disturbing than any number of other images with which we’re bombarded on a daily basis.

I can understand not plastering this image on a newspaper front page or broadcasting it on the evening news, but once you’re talking about it, what’s the purpose of withholding a link? Respect for the deceased? Respect for the family that tried to help him escape capture?

This is one of those bizarre journalism ethics things I just don’t understand. All over the local media this morning is news of a leaked photo of Maurice Clemmons dead body (here, here and here, for example). Yet nobody’s willing to actually show the controversial image. (Slog provided a link, but that’s as dead as Clemmons now, so it doesn’t really count.)

So if the photo isn’t safe for public consumption, why the hell are you teasing us with it? It’s either news or it’s not news, and since there seems to be unanimity in our local media that it is news, don’t you think you owe it to your readers to treat them like adults, and give them the option of viewing the photo for themselves?

I’ve searched for the photo and didn’t find it in Google’s cache or anywhere else, but I trust my readers. So if anybody has a copy of the photo and wants to pass it along, I’ll post it here to HA and give you all the choice of viewing it for yourselves.

UPDATE:
Several readers have sent me the photo via email. Thanks. Here it is.

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Eight more deaths in British Columbia from H1N1. Not a stellar day for Mark Griswold.

Carl has already thoroughly fisked it over at EFFin’ Unsound (yes, I know Carl, you hate the etymology of the term, but find me a better word that describes what you do), still, I just couldn’t let this Seattle Times editorial pass without comment.

METROPOLITAN King County Council members must be forward-thinking and willing to select an independent or moderate to fill the council seat vacated by new County Executive Dow Constantine.

You know, exactly the kind of “independent or moderate” (whatever that means) the voters of Constantine’s predominantly liberal Democratic district would never choose.

Why? Well, according to the Times, despite that fact that the office nominally became nonpartisan last year, council members still tend to caucus and vote along party lines, leaving a 4-4 split between Democrats and Republicans in any effort to choose Constantine’s replacement. So the Times’ solution: the Democrats must cave.

That’s right… it’s not up to the Republicans on the council to do the right thing and accept a replacement who largely reflects the values of the voters of Constantine’s district, but rather it’s the Democrats’ responsibility to settle this quickly by appointing a so-called “independent” who would surely tilt the balance of power on the council to the other side, and perhaps marshal the advantages of incumbency to win the seat for good next November.

What a load of crap.

Constantine won and held that seat as a progressive Democrat. Constantine ran and won the executive’s office as a progressive Democrat. It would thus be a disservice to the voters of his district and the county as a whole to appoint anybody who doesn’t largely share Constantine’s values. And if the Republicans on the council choose to be obstructionist about this, then they’re the ones who deserve the criticism.

Of course, this whole logjam wouldn’t have been possible if that incredibly stupid, naive, dishonest and shortsighted charter amendment making the council nonpartisan — you know, the one the Times strongly endorsed — hadn’t passed. Under the old system, the Democratic PCO’s would have presented a list of three suitable candidates to the council, eliminating the opportunity for kind of partisan gridlock the Times now claims it seeks to avoid.

Kinda ironic, huh?

I know a lot of my fellow Dems are disappointed in President Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Not me. For unlike a lot of my fellow Dems, I’ve always held my expectations of Obama in check.

I can’t even remember what Obama promised on the campaign trail, but I never labored under the assumption that he could quickly withdraw us from Iraq and Afghanistan. Personally, I would have preferred to have been told that we were ready to start bringing our troops home, but that clearly is not the conclusion that the White House has come to, and so given no reason yet to question Obama’s motives or intellect, I suppose that’s a decision I’m willing to accept.

I remain convinced that the U.S. had an opportunity to do things right in Afghanistan, and leave that country more prosperous, peaceful and secure than it was before we justifiably invaded, but that opportunity was squandered when President Bush turned our attention to Iraq. I’m not convinced that eight years later, that opportunity still remains.

But I suppose we’ll find out.

The folks at Seattle Weekly were doing some dangerous, investigative research, when they came upon this:

According to a “Safe Browsing” advisory from the search giant, Eyman’s site, www.permanent-offense.org [don’t click, for the love of humanity!], is “listed as suspicious” and “may harm your computer.”

It seems that destroying our state’s tax base, abolishing affirmative action, opening up HOV lanes to single-driver SUVs, and legalizing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation were not sufficiently malicious gambits for Eyman to attempt. Now his malware is extending beyond public policy into the digital realm itself.

According to the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page:

Of the 16 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 6 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-11-24, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-11-11.

Malicious software includes 6 scripting exploit(s).

Malicious software is hosted on 2 domain(s), including newtechnologyconference.co.uk/, ppl-14.ru/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including ppl-14.ru/.

One can only conclude that either Tim is in league with the Russian hackers, or he’s just as irresponsible in running his own website as he is in attempting to run state government.