Goldy

It is fashionable around these parts to criticize Seattle Rep. Jim McDermott as a do-nothing congressman who fails to bring home the bacon (you know, unlike Washington’s paragon of something, Rep. Norm Dicks). So I guess I shouldn’t expect our local media to break with the meme by covering the active role McDermott’s played in health reform negotiations, including the four key provisions he authored in the House version of the bill.

I’ve long had a reputation as a bit of a muckraker, and I’ve never been shy about aiming low if that’s where the facts lead me. But unlike some bloggers, I’ve generally refrained from breaking stories of personal scandal without being firmly backed up by say, 62 pages of documentation, or, you know, the first-hand testimony of the subject’s mother.

But if the other side wants to lower both the threshold and the standard, I may just have to lower mine.

Since 2004, retired Woodinville investment banker Michael Dunmire has given at least $2,747,193.71 to Tim Eyman and his various initiatives.

That’s nearly half a million dollars a year.

Over the past six years Dunmire’s impressive bank account has provided the bulk of the money used to buy the signatures necessary to get Eyman’s initiatives on the ballot, and the bulk of Eyman’s personal compensation. Without the largesse of this one man, none of Eyman’s recent initiatives would have qualified for the ballot.

Is that the citizens initiative process the populist framers of our state constitution imagined?

I don’t think so.

Talk of doing away with the initiative process is a nonstarter; even significant reforms would require a constitutional amendment, and nobody ever wins an election asking for less democracy. But I do have one idea that might return the initiative process closer to its populist roots, and just may be constitutional in the process: impose contribution limits on the signature gathering portion of the campaign.

The courts have been clear that the state cannot impose contribution limits on issues, as that would interfere with free speech, but as far as I know, separating the mechanics of collecting signatures from the messaging, while imposing contribution limits on the former but not the latter, has never been attempted.

Perhaps the courts would not allow this either; I don’t know, and perhaps folks with more expertise in this aspect of the law could chime in with their opinion. But at the very least such an effort at reform would create a much needed public discussion of whether our democracy is served by making the initiative process the private playground of wealthy individuals and powerful special interest groups.

TVW is playing their stupid little takedown notice games again, and this time I was prepared.

About an hour ago I received notice from YouTube that they had disable my “Suzie Huckabee” video at the request of TVW, claiming I had violated their copyright.  Yeah, well, so I quickly updated the original post by replacing the YouTube embed with one from Vimeo; you can view it at the top of this post as well.

I have also filed a counter-notice with YouTube, and fully expect the video to be re-enabled. If TVW wants to take this any further, I guess they’re welcome to sue me, but I think they know damn well that I have the law on my side. And of course I’m talking about the Fair Use doctrine.

My 2 minute and 16 second video includes a total of 26 seconds of copyrighted material excerpted from over 1 hour and 40 minutes of TVW streaming video. The clips are used to fact check and contrast Susan Hutchison’s claims during a KCTS debate with her statements during a Washington Policy Center annual dinner, a journalistic critique that simply would not be possible without the use of these clips.

TVW’s copyright notice may be broad and restrictive, expressly prohibiting both modification of their material and its use for commercial or political purposes, but its non-binding disclaimer does not revoke the right to fair use granted to the public over all copyrighted works. And there’s no doubt in my mind that my video does constitute fair use.

Now, I fully appreciate the purpose of TVW’s overly restrictive copyright policy, and as such I try to make use of their embedding tools whenever possible, and commend them for making these tools more functional for bloggers.  TVW’s mission is to provide a public record of public events, and I can’t argue with their concern that using their material as I have might dissuade some people from allowing TVW to record their events.  But… well… too bad.

Hutchison said what she said, in a public venue, on a taxpayer funded government channel, and I have every right to use these clips in the manner above. It may make TVW’s job more difficult, but that’s not my problem, and… nobody said democracy was gonna be easy.

NOTE:
TVW also apparently had the YouTube of Dow Constantine’s new ad pulled too (it uses a different TVW clip), so I replaced the video in the post below to one from Vimeo as well.

UPDATE:
TVW has apparently had my Vimeo video pulled, so I’ve replaced the embed with one from LiveLeak. I’m willing to play this game all day, if that’s what they want.

It was Hutchison who needed to effectively go negative if she had a hope of winning this race, and yet it is Constantine who has come up with the most devastatingly effective ad. I guess that’s because there are more truly negative things to say about Hutchison than about Constantine.

UPDATE:
Fucking TVW… they’re playing their takedown notice game again, so I had to replace the YouTube video with one from Vimeo. More on this later.

So, um… apart from Tim Eyman, the knee-jerk anti-tax Farm Bureau, and the Washington State Republican Party central committee, has anybody else actually endorsed Initiative 1033?

The reliably conservative Washington Association Realtors opposes the initiative. The equally conservative Association of Washington Business couldn’t bring itself to take a position. And now the so-called Mainstream Republicans have come out in opposition to I-1033:

“As Republicans from communities all over Washington State, we believe there should be reasonable limits on government spending. However, Initiative 1033 proposes an unreasonable and unworkable limit that punishes local governments, locks in funding cuts for law enforcement, schools and other important services, and weakens the ability of our communities to invest in projects that would help attract or retain jobs in our state. We ask you vote No on Initiative 1033 and reject Tim Eyman’s ill conceived and unreasonable proposal that will make already tough times worse in our state and our communities.”

Signing the statement were former governor and US senator Dan Evans, former US senator Slade Gorton, former state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland, former congressman Sid Morrison, and even GOP moneybags John Stanton.

And in favor of I-1033…? Anybody? I’m just wondering.

Considering her strength was supposed to be in the suburban and rural areas of King County, it must be at least a bit of blow to Susan Hutchison to lose the endorsements of both the Mercer Island Reporter and the SnoValley Star.

The MI Reporter was more circumspect in their Dow Constantine endorsement… kinda along the lines of what I had actually expected from the Seattle Times, before they totally jumped the shark.

The Reporter also endorses Dow Constantine for the position of King County executive. Mr. Constantine not only votes in every election but brings a great deal of knowledge and experience to the table. As chair of the King County Council and as a member of the Board of Directors of Sound Transit, he knows what is ahead for King County. His experience, we say, is much more complex and multi-faceted than that of his opponent. He is better suited for the job ahead.

But the SnoValley Star was more blunt in their criticism of Hutchison:

Susan Hutchison, Dow’s opponent, has many fresh ideas, but they are ideas not yet grounded in substance. For example, she now thinks State Route 520 should be the cross-lake route for light rail, even though voters approved a crossing over Interstate 90 — which was designed for just that purpose.

She touts her nonpartisan roots without seeming to understand that nonpartisan does not mean she won’t need political savvy.

We question her integrity — as evidenced by the details of her dismissal from her television career — and her commitment to public service — as as evidenced by her dismissing as unimportant the fact thatat she missed voting in eight elections in the past eight years.

Notice how they taunt the Seattle Times by snarkily referring to Hutchison’s “fresh” ideas? Gotta love that.

I’ve never been one to give too much weight to editorial endorsements in top of the ticket races, but this sure doesn’t help Hutchison regain momentum. And with the election heading into its final few days, momentum is certainly not on her side.

Yeah, of course, Republicans are blaming Democrats, Susan Hutchison is blaming Dow Constantine, and the Seattle Times editorial board is blaming the unions, but me… I blame Boeing.

In the end, this was Boeing’s decision. They’re the ones with no loyalty to the Puget Sound region that nurtured them for much of the last century, and they’re the ones intent on moving production to a right to work state… inexperience, shoddy workmanship and occasional hurricanes be damned. This was their decision, and like the Sonics before them, all pretense of negotiation was simply that.

So trolls, feel free to play the blame game all you want. But any argument that doesn’t lay the blame for this decision squarely on the folks who made the decision, simply isn’t a serious argument.

You suck.

Or rather, the database search facility on your website sucks on the verge of being totally useless. I mean, could it be any less responsive? Nine times out of ten the “Advanced Search” screen times out with an error message. If I’m lucky. And even when it does work, the UI is cumbersome, slow and clunky.

Please could we go back to the old interface? Pretty please?

It’s official. And thank God it’s done with, as our region hasn’t been intentionally dicked around like this since the whole Sonics charade.

On the subject of the future of daily newspapers, a reader sent me a link to a video of me recorded after a panel discussion at the 2008 Netroots Nation. I’d forgotten I’d given this particular interview, but I can’t disagree now with anything I said then.

Susan Hutchison and her top staffers appeared genuinely shocked and angered by yesterday’s Washington Poll which showed her trailing Dow Constantine by a double-digit margin.

Leading in the polls for months, Hutchison has behaved in recent weeks as if she were in the driver’s seat, prompting one political insider to question whether her campaign has been conducting any tracking polls at all. As I mentioned yesterday, the Washington Poll isn’t the only one to have recently shown Constantine jumping to a lead, and surely Hutchison’s own internal polling would have shown that trend as well.

Assuming they’ve been spending money on internal polling, like any well-run campaign in a tight race would.

I’ve been meaning to take a closer look at the the Seattle Times’ post-PI circulation numbers, but Crosscut’s Chuck Taylor has done much of the hard work for me.

But here’s what we know for sure: Today’s Seattle Times average weekday circulation of 263,588 is, by my calculations, 52,085 less — 16.4 percent less — than the 316,673 combined circulation of both papers a year ago.

So while the Times is touting a circulation gain of “an amazing 32.6 percent” and that “84 percent of the non-duplicated daily P-I subscribers are now Times subscribers,” the bigger picture of print newspaper circulation in Seattle is somewhere short of amazing, unless you’re talking about an amazing drop.

And I’d add to that analysis a reported 6-percent drop in circulation for the Times’ Sunday edition, revealing that the paper’s steady decline in readership (at least of the print variety) shows no signs of ebbing.

So what’s the solution? The Times’ braggadocio over its relative success in retaining P-I readers aside, it’s done nothing to address the long term problems that are eating away at its core business, and it can be fairly argued that its continued cutbacks in staff and coverage will only speed its decline. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if a morning paper, delivering yesterday’s news, isn’t as much an anachronism in the age of the Internet as the afternoon paper became during the heyday of TV evening newscasts. I’m not saying that there isn’t a rationale for a print edition, but timely delivery of actual news ain’t it.

To survive in print as a daily newspaper, the Times and other papers like it are going to have to re-imagine the medium, not simply in terms of the technology of content delivery, but in terms of the content itself. For in the end, whatever the market forces, readers are giving up their subscriptions because they just don’t find their local fish-wrappers a compelling enough product to be worth the price.

The P-I’s closure may have delayed the inevitable, but it does nothing to make it any less so.

I’ve been saying for some time that the day Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago was the day the decision to ultimately move production out of the Puget Sound region became final. Amongst other things, Boeing execs and board members didn’t want to be bad corporate citizens; so they decided to give up their local citizenship.

So I’d be awfully surprised if Boeing doesn’t set up its second 787 assembly line in South Carolina, despite the fact that with 767 production coming to an end, its got the facility and the trained workforce in Everett already available to churn out both 787s and 777s on the same line. As Danny Westneat points out in the Seattle Times, Boeing appears intent on pursuing a cheap labor strategy Washington state simply isn’t able to accommodate. Nor should it.

Take away the heat, all the union-bashing or management second-guessing as Boeing now appears ready to move a major piece of its plane-building operations to South Carolina. At the core of this breakup drama is a cold statistic: 14.

As in $14. Per hour.

That’s the average pay of the local line workers who are building the fuselage of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner in a Charleston, S.C., plant.

Average pay of a Boeing Machinist around here? $28 an hour. Now, these pay averages aren’t directly comparable, say people in the know. Many of Boeing’s workers in South Carolina are younger or less experienced (the plant is only 4 years old). So the average pay there tilts lower.

Still, the average pay at Costco stores around Seattle is $17 an hour. According to PayScale, a Seattle company that tracks wages, the average for a hairstylist in Seattle is $18.24 an hour.

So Boeing right now is paying less to build airplanes in South Carolina than we pay for cutting hair or shelving 3-pound jars of olives.

How can we compete with that?

Of course, we can’t compete with that if Boeing insists that labor costs are the bottom line value in its production decisions, as it apparently has.

Ironically, when Boeing does announce the new line in South Carolina, Danny’s colleagues on the Times’ editorial page will no doubt lambast the unions for driving Boeing away, oblivious to the fact that their own union-busting rants, and that of their publisher, helped grease the skids for Boeing’s union-busting strategy. But it’s hard to blame labor for the loss of high wage jobs that wouldn’t remain high wage if the union were to accede to the demands that Boeing ultimately wants.

No, none of this really makes much economic sense. But who needs to make sense when you have a globalist, free market ideology to fall back on?

A new KING-5/SurveyUSA poll to be released today shows R-71 passing by a 50-43 margin, while Tim Eyman’s vindictive I-1033 is failing 50-38. The poll was of 561 likely and actual voters; further details and cross tabs are not yet available.

These results are largely in line with the Washington Poll released this morning, which showed similar results, if by different margins.

Update [Darryl]: Over at Hominid Views, I’ve conducted a series of Monte Carlo analyses on the Washington Poll and the Survey USA poll, both separately and combined. The Readers Digest Condensed results:

• I-1033: 99.7% probability of failing (using the combined SUSA/WA Poll polls)
• R-71: near-100% probability of passing (using combined polls)
• KC Exec: 98.1% probability that Constantine wins (WA Poll only)
• Seattle Mayor: 89.9% probability of a Mallahan win (WA Poll only)

The full analytical details, in all of their geeky glory, are given here.