Goldy

It is hard to question the environmental credentials of Mike McGinn and Mike O’Brien, both having served as strong, vocal leaders in the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club. So why are these two passionately green candidates having so much trouble picking up sole endorsements from the broader environmental community in their respective races for mayor and city council?

Well it could have something to do with the Sierra Club’s well-earned reputation under the two Mikes’ leadership, for not working and playing well with others.

Talk to folks active with other environmental organizations and you’ll find that there’s still a lot of residual bitterness left over from the way the Sierra Club broke rank (and promises) during 2007’s failed Roads & Transit ballot measure campaign. And Sierra Club only rubbed salt in these festering wounds with their early endorsement of Dow Constantine in the King County Executive race, just a week before next Tuesday’s heavily promoted Green Choice Debate at Town Hall, sparking a flood of angry emails within the coalition of environmental organizations sponsoring the event.

“This was supposed to be an impartial forum,” one environmental leader complained to me. “Now, thanks to Sierra Club, Dow gets to come in there with the upper hand.”

Apparently, Sierra Club never promised to hold off on their endorsement until after the forum, which is why they’re not listed as part of the sponsoring coalition, but still… they couldn’t wait one week? No, that’s just not their style.

Now, after years of snubbing their noses at the broader environmental coalition, McGinn and O’Brien are asking these same organizations to hold their noses and endorse their respective candidacies. Yeah, well, good luck with that.

It’s one of those refrains we hear from candidates all the time, especially candidates coming from the private sector with little or no government experience, that they want to make government operate more like a business.

Really? You mean businesses like GM? Like Chrysler? Like Countrywide Financial, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual? Like Bernie Madoff? You mean even profitable, industry dominant businesses like Boeing?

The words “much delayed” are beginning to attach themselves to the Boeing 787 as if they are part of the brand name. On Tuesday came perhaps the most stunning delay of all: postponement of a first flight intended to show the world that the much-delayed Dreamliner was finally ready for prime time.

Yet it’s not.

The latest bungle has badly damaged Boeing’s already-dented credibility. It raises questions about its reliability compared with Airbus. And it sets the company up for a much tougher financial climb.

I can accept the argument that some aspects of government might work better if their operations were modeled more on some aspects of some businesses, but it is silly to assert that a candidate whose professional experience comes entirely from the private sector is more qualified to run a government than a candidate whose experience is mostly in the public. A) We don’t necessarily want to replicate in government, say, the project management prowess of a Boeing or the customer service practices of a Comcast, and B) private sector experience is not always relevant to the unique demands of public office.

For example, T-Mobile exec and Seattle mayoral wannabe Joe Mallahan likes to tout his business experience, but he won’t be able wring efficiency out of city government by outsourcing jobs to the Philippines or by attempting to bust powerful public employee unions. I’m not saying his business experience isn’t valuable, it’s just not automatically applicable on its own.

So enough of this “running government like a business” meme; it’s a crappy metaphor. Government is not a business (for example, it has no profit motive), and there are plenty of businesses, even profitable ones, just riddled with waste, fraud and abuse. What I want in a mayor or executive is somebody capable of efficiently running government as a government, as opposed to somebody intent on trying to turn government into something it is not.

Once again, Josh Marshall and his cohorts at Talking Points Memo have proven themselves the kings of the conceptual scoop. Something didn’t smell right about the bizarre disappearance of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, and they stuck with the story until the rotting corpse was uncovered.

But the same can’t be said for many in the legacy press, who if they didn’t entirely swallow the “hiking the Appalachian Trail” story hook, line and sinker, seemed lazily happy to take the bait. TPM joyously outlines some of the most credulous coverage in respectable outlets such as Politico, NBC and the Wall Street Journal, but perhaps the most embarrassing “reporting” came from the pages of our nation’s political paper of record:

The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza — in a Tuesday morning post hilariously headlined “Sanford Returns!” — reported that Sanford “will return to the state tomorrow after spending the last five days hiking the Appalachian Trail, according to a statement released by his office this morning.”

In fact, the Post fell so hard for the Appalachian Trail line that they even ran a story — “For the Gov, A Little Me Time,” by reporter Will Haygood, highlighting the quirkiness of Sanford’s decision to “trek off into the woods,” without ever stopping to ask whether tale was true. For good measure, the story reported: “The governor, it should be noted, is quite happily married” — something it had no way of knowing.

Ouch.

But as TPM’s Zachary Roth explains, there’s a larger point here than just taunting the legacy press. “It’s fair to say you didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to think there might be something fishy going on here,” Roth wrote, yet the general lack of skepticism displayed by many in the mainstream press reveals a flaw in the medium itself.

None of these are the biggest crimes in the world, but still: It feels absurd to have to point this out, but politicians and their staffers frequently have reason to dissemble, about issues far more important than an extra-marital affair. Too often, though, the press treats public statements from elected officials’ offices — especially those purporting simply to provide information, like the Appalachian Trail line — as self-evidently accurate. It’s as if, despite everything, some in the press can’t quite bring themselves to believe that politicians might try to mislead people.

Part of this is structural. There’s almost no acceptable way for a mainstream reporter to explicitly tell readers that the information being put out by a powerful office-holder may be false or misleading. But the only way that this structural flaw will change is if individual reporters are willing to stick out their neck to change it.

Until then, people will read blog for stories like these.

HA is no TPM, and I’m no Josh Marshall (though both are certainly worthy of aspiration), but I do believe that some of my biggest contributions as a blogger, recognized or not, have come in a similar vein.

Yeah, I’ve broken my share of important stories, but I’m not a reporter in the traditional sense, in that I don’t get up every morning and pound a beat. Nor do I want to. Instead, like many bloggers, I mostly consume the reporting of others, looking for patterns they’ve missed or concepts they’ve misunderstood, attempting to fit the raw data of the daily news into a broader and, I hope, a more informative and engaging context. I’m not so much interested in reporting facts, as I am in uncovering the truth about the facts.

Some call this lazy. Whatever. Lazy or not, it still consumes the bulk of my waking day. And besides, it’s what bloggers like me do.

And it is this contribution to the public debate that is exactly what keeps readers coming back to blogs like mine.

Well, no, the Seattle Times hasn’t officially endorsed Fred Jarrett for King County Executive yet, but this morning’s editorial lauding him pretty much telegraphs that they will.

No surprise there, and no real complaint from me. I like Jarrett, and think he would make a fine executive. I don’t know that I’m voting for him in August, but I won’t be upset if he ultimately wins.

The only question remaining is whether the Times endorses one or two candidates in the August primary, and if the latter, whether they’re crazy enough to endorse Susan Hutchison?

Oops…

A second tunnel-boring machine for the Brightwater sewage-treatment plant has broken down, causing the layoff of 67 workers, King County officials said Tuesday.

King County wastewater officials said the westbound machine, nicknamed Rainier, has a problem with a part known as the cutterhead rim.

It’s not as badly damaged as the eastbound boring machine, known as Helene, which broke down last month and caused the layoff of 60 people. Nonetheless, repairs to Rainier, also known as BT-3, are expected to take months, according to Brightwater Project Manager Gunars Sreibers.

But don’t you worry about Seattle taxpayers being forced to pick up cost overruns on the Viaduct replacement, because thanks to “new technological advances” such mishaps could never happen when the state attempts to dig the largest diameter deep bore tunnel ever. I know that is so because the Discovery Institute says it is so, and there is no greater or more reliable source on issues of science and technology than those progressive folks at Discovery.

A lot of people cheat on their partners. A recent University of Washington study found a lifetime infidelity rate of 28 percent for men, 15 percent for women. If anything, I’m surprised the rate is so low.

So while I personally believe that fidelity is an integral part of a committed relationship, have never been unfaithful myself, and would have been inconsolably heartbroken to have been the victim of such, it’s not really any of my business what goes on within (or without) someone else’s marriage.  Unless, they make it my business, by being an arrogant, holier than thou, family-values hypocrite.

You know, like Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC).  Or US Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). Or US Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). Or any number of other  pro-family, conservative politicians who have recently fallen victim to scandals of a sexual nature.

That Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is “packing fudge,” as one of my vile trolls puts it, is not a scandal, because he is openly gay, but would have been had Rep. Frank earned a reputation as a hateful, anti-gay bigot like the recently disgraced and deceased Spokane Mayor Jim West. Even former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat who never ran on a family values platform, ultimately fell victim more to his own hypocrisy than his sexual proclivities, when the former state Attorney General who had aggressively prosecuted prostitution rings, got caught frequenting one himself.

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.

And that is what has always been so infuriating and offensive about righteously indignant Republicans attempting to brand themselves as the family values party—not their human frailty; we all suffer from that—but rather the sheer arrogance of their claim to be morally superior over others.

The scorn and ridicule now being heaped upon Sanford and Ensign is well deserved, for those who choose to wield their Christian faith as a political sword would do well to read their own Bible: “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Amen.

Speaking of bullshit polls, HA readers have spoken, and Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos was the clear choice for the incumbent Seattle Democratic state representative who most deserves a serious challenge. (You know… not counting Speaker Frank Chopp.)

Sharon Tomiko Santos (37th)	51	42%
Mary Lou Dickerson (36th)	40	33%
Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney (46th)	30	25%

Huh. Of course, Santos is my representative, which makes this kinda awkward. Personally, I get along with her just fine, and have always found her accessible. Plus, I have a couple of fond memories of her verbally beating the crap out of Cheryl Chow (in the hallway outside a school closure town hall), and Terry Bergeson (to her face at a 37th LD endorsement meeting). When she’s on, she’ on.

But at least as of lately, Santos hasn’t been on nearly often enough, her voice virtually silent during recent legislative sessions. Her lack of production aside, Santos has also earned her reputation as being less progressive than her district, serving as an advocate for payday lenders, and an opponent of environmental causes. And while she talks a very good talk on tax restructuring, she doesn’t seem to have the will or the way toward getting there.

But perhaps what most qualifies Santos for a serious intra-party challenge is her role in the House leadership, where she serves under Chopp as Majority Whip. No, challenging the Speaker himself isn’t all that viable, but challenging one of his lieutenants is, and even a close race, if not a win itself, would send a very loud message to Chopp and the rest of the leadership that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

So, sorry Sharon, nothing personal, but I can’t argue with my readers’ choice.

The latest KING5/SurveyUSA poll in the King County Executive race came out last night, and while I know the media will focus on the top line figure, Creationist Susan Hutchison’s 41%, I think the real news, if the trend holds up, and if the whole survey isn’t bullshit, is the first indication that Councilman Dow Constantine may be breaking away from the rest of the Democratic pack.

Hutchison	41
Constantine	12
Phillips	7
Hunter	6
Jarrett	4
Goodspaceguy	3
Lippman	2
Lobdell	2
Undecided	23

The previous KING5 poll had Phillips at 9%, Constantine at 8%, and Hunter and Jarrett both at 5%, so the only move amongst the Democratic field that doesn’t appear to be mere statistical noise is that of Constantine. We’ll see.

As for Hutchison, whose numbers climbed from 34% to 41%, I still don’t buy it. I know the race is technically nonpartisan, but what we’re really seeing is a four-way Democratic runoff with Hutchison running unopposed as the lone Republican. And once her Democratic opponent and various constituent groups start spending money educating voters about where she stands on the issues, expect her current numbers with Democrats (31%) and liberals (24%) to drop well into the single digits.

Well, the Little Si Trail actually, but I’ll be out of contact with the office for a little while.

I understand that the political hoopla over yesterday’s scathing King County performance audit report is inevitable, with executive candidates falling all over themselves calling for government reform, but honestly, I’m not really sure what to make of it.

I don’t doubt that there are problems in county government, that there are some bad managers and messed up or missing procedures that need to be replaced or fixed. That’s true of all large bureaucracies, public and private sector, and that’s why we do performance audits in the first place.

But quite frankly, I’ve lost faith in State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s office to conduct and report performance audits fairly, honestly, and most of all, efficaciously.

As I’ve explained before, a performance audit is not a financial audit, does not come close to adhering to the same sort of strict, unwavering standards, and is neither objective nor irrefutable, even when done well. The primary goal of a financial audit is to keep the books honest and accurate by providing an outside, independent verification of an organization’s financial records, and as such, it is mostly an objective exercise in math. The primary goal of a performance audit is to uncover inefficiencies in procedures and/or execution, and to make recommendations on how to improve an organization’s operations. Performance audits are, by their nature, more subjective and less definitive.

Indeed, for a performance audit to be maximally effective it requires the active cooperation and participation of those being audited; when conducted well, a performance audit is meant to be a collaborative process. Unfortunately, by repeatedly using performance audits as a punitive political weapon—an opportunity to very publicly attack and humiliate state and local government officials—Sonntag has transformed his audits into an adversarial process that puts targeted agencies on the defensive, and thus works against the stated goal of increasing government efficiency.

Oh, Sonntag’s office proudly trumpets the millions of dollars the auditors claim that taxpayers might save if their recommendations were implemented, but how much taxpayers have saved, well, we have no idea. No idea which recommendations officials grudgingly implement after Sonntag’s orchestrated media thrashing, and no idea how effective these recommendations actually are.

I’m not refuting all or even some of the findings in the KC performance audit report; auditors appear to have uncovered some egregious and/or stupid practices. But I put the emphasis on “appear” because honestly, I don’t know that the report can be taken at face value, especially coming from an Auditor with a history of targeting his resources at agencies and programs he dislikes, and who has already compromised his impartiality by endorsing Susan Hutchison, the only Republican in the executive race, and the candidate with the least experience at running anything… other than her mouth.

Like I said, I understand all the hoopla and headlines. Journalists are famously skeptical of government agencies and officials. As they should be. It’s their job, and they wouldn’t be doing it properly if they didn’t jump all over a report like this.

But what really bugs the hell out of me about the coverage of this and previous Sonntag orchestrated hatchet jobs, is the complete and utter unquestioning credulity in which our media approaches the least audited agency in the state… the Auditor’s office itself.

A few weeks back I taunted the Seattle P-I for exploring the future of tolling on Washington state roads, by essentially printing a debate between two conservative analysts, Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute and Michael Ennis of the Washingon Policy Center. To which the article’s author, Aubrey Cohen, responded in my comment thread:

While the Discovery Institute surely is as conservative as can be when it comes to teaching evolution, the Cascadia Center is progressive with regard to transportation policy. Tarring the Cascadia Center as conservative because of the Discovery Institute’s views on evolution makes no sense and is a disservice to progressives.

Cascadia Center is “progressive” with regard to transportation policy? Oh really, Aubrey?

So I guess it’s progressive to advocate taking money away from Sound Transit’s light rail to spend on a privatized, regional monorail? It’s progressive to demand $30 billion for more freeways, but nothing for street cars, bike lanes or light rail? An expensive Sounder station under Benaroya Hall, and an untested deep bore tunnel… these are progressive policies?

I’m not saying that all of Cascadia’s proposals are conservative (mostly, they’re just kinda nutty), or that transportation issues even tend to neatly line up along a progressive/conservative divide, but to describe either Matt Rosenberg or Cascadia as “progressive” is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And to suggest, as Cohen does, that a vehemently and cynically conservative organization such as Discovery has room within its ranks for a “progressive” transportation policy center, strains all credulity.

I mean, how twisted is the transportation debate in Washington state when the Discovery Institute is portrayed as representing the progressive side of the debate, and nobody bats an eye? And honestly, what does Bruce Chapman have to do in his advancing years to convince the Seattle establishment of his political dotage? What, seeking to destroy science education in our nation’s schools and replace it with Christianist hocus-pocus isn’t enough? Does he have to actually instigate pogroms? Burn witches at the stake? Wander naked through the halls of the Rainier Club, talking to angels?

The Discovery Institute isn’t just crazy-conservative, it’s downright crazy. Perhaps Cohen and others think people like me are crazy too, but “progressive” and “crazy” are not one and the same thing.

After eliminating the also-rans, and tossing Speaker Frank Chop as an outlier, the qualifying round wasn’t even close, with long-time incumbents Sharon Tomiko Santos, Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney topping the field, so now it’s time for a loser-takes-all, sudden death runoff in our efforts to determine the Seattle Democratic state representative most deserving of a serious challenger in 2010.

In making your choice, I urge you to consider three main criteria.  1) How well does the incumbent represent the progressive values of her district? 2) How effective is the incumbent in representing our interests. 3) How vulnerable is the incumbent to a serious challenge? (Please don’t forget number 3; that’s one of the reasons why I eliminated Chopp.)

Of course, there’s nothing scientific about these polls, and I don’t mean them to be a personal attack on anybody. But there is this sense in the local Democratic community that not only are such intra-party challenges futile, even discussing the possibility is somehow disloyal and wrong… an attitude that I believe leads to complacency and ineptness, and ultimately threatens the Democratic Party’s hold on the reigns of state government.

The poll is now live at the top of HA’s home page; cast your vote while you can.

According to the financial experts at the Seattle Times, Washington state’s economy is on the cusp of recovery, and Gov. Gregoire deserves all the credit:

Gov. Chris Gregoire made a tough decision this year not to ask for a tax increase, and legislators, some of them reluctantly, backed her up. That was the right decision, and it will soon begin to pay off.

Yeah… sure… the “tough decision” is always to not raise taxes. Man do they disrespect their readers.

So, our economy has almost-maybe bottomed out, and that’s evidence that holding the line on taxes worked its magic? Of course, had Gregoire and the legislature chosen the opposite course, that lede would have been rewritten thusly, even given the exact same economic circumstances:

Gov. Chris Gregoire broke a campaign promise not to ask for a tax increase, and legislators, some of them reluctantly, backed her up. That was the wrong decision, and Washington’s economy is already paying the price.

But then, given the Times’s history of crappy business decisions, why would anybody take its economic advice seriously?

Ryan Blethen joins the rest of his editorial board in taking issue with the anti-Referendum 71 folks’ “Who Signed?” campaign.

What I, and this page, take issue with is the Web site called whosigned.org. The site will list everyone who signed Referendum 71. On the Web site it says this is being done so voters can make sure the public record is correct.

We all know that is not the case. The real purpose of whosigned.org is intimidation. People who sign petitions should understand that it is public record.

No, we don’t all know that this is not the case, for while intimidation, to some extent, is certainly part of the purpose of the whosigned.org web site, the strategy is a lot more subtle and nuanced than the Times admits (or understands).

Petitions are a public record, in the sense that should R-71 qualify for the ballot, I would have the right to go to the Secretary of State’s office and spend days examining the petitions by hand. But in reality, that’s not very public at all.

Personally, I would love to see petitions for all initiatives and referenda go online, both a computer searchable list of the petitioners, and PDFs of the actual petition sheets. Petitions are not a secret ballot, and were never intended to be. We have the right to petition our government, and our neighbors have the right to know who the petitioners are. Furthermore, with all petitions online and publicly searchable, I have no doubt that a significant amount of heretofore unknown signature fraud will be uncovered by citizen watchdogs.

We constantly hear from Eyman and his cohorts that there is no signature fraud in Washington state, and thus no need for reforms to identify and correct the problem, but really, how would we know when we’ve never looked for it? And honestly, why should we believe that WA is magically immune from signature fraud when it has proven to be endemic in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Kansas, Colorado and every other state with an initiative process?

But Ryan continues…

But just because somebody signs a petition does not mean they support the referendum. People sign referendums for all sorts of reasons. It is not hard to believe that someone who supports marriage equality will sign it because they firmly believe the voters, not the Legislature, should have the final say.

People sign petitions because somebody asks them. That’s the number one reason. I know. I’ve been there, both collecting signatures, and as part of a coordinated “decline to sign” effort.

Watch the professional signature gatherers, particularly the ones collecting signatures on a number of unrelated petitions. They’ll make the case for the most sellable measure—more often than not, with lies—and then after you sign the top page and fill in your address information, they’ll quickly flip another clipboard in front of you and ask you to “please sign this one…” and “this one…” and “this one…” and so on.  And more often than not, the signer will. You don’t even always have to fill in the address information on the subsequent petitions, the signature gather will sometimes offer to copy it over for you.

On the other hand, decline to sign campaigns are incredibly effective. Merely shadowing a signature gatherer, politely refuting his misinformation, and asking people not to sign, was enough to motivate most folks to walk away entirely. After a couple hours of such efforts the signature gatherer would sometimes offer to hand over the Eyman petition I was opposing, or dump them in trash, if I would only leave him alone to conduct the rest of his business unencumbered.

Yeah, Ryan’s right, that some people will sign nearly any petition because they believe that everything should come before the people, but that’s a stupid and lazy abrogation of one’s responsibilities as a citizen. It’s supposed to be difficult to get an initiative or referendum on the ballot, lest public policy billow in the fickle winds of public opinion, and thus folks should be encouraged to put a little thought into the issue before blindly signing. (Nobody, but nobody, will read the text of R-71 before signing, I can guarantee you that.) If knowing that one’s signatures will indeed become a public record—that is, a record easily searched by the public—then perhaps more folks would think twice before affixing their names to a petition that calls for taking away rights from a class of citizens?

And that, I believe… a more thoughtful electorate… can only improve our democracy, right?

The polls have closed and it wasn’t even close, with Sen. Ken Jacobsen capturing a commanding 40% of the vote in a five-way race to determine the incumbent, Seattle state senator most deserving of a serious challenge in 2010.  And once again an anti-incumbency sentiment appeared to guide the results.

	Votes	Pct.	Years
Ken Jacobsen	78	40%	26
Jeanne Kohl-Welles	51	26%	17
Adam Kline	38	19%	12
Joe McDermott	18	9%	8
Ed Murray	11	6%	14

The table above shows total years of service in Olympia, both House and Senate. And once again the top vote getters are those who have served the longest.

How the sentiment of HA’s rather insular audience translates into broader public opinion, I’m not sure, but I think it’s safe to speculate that it does show a growing frustration with the performance of the Seattle delegation as a whole.

That said, good luck challenging Sen. Jacobsen, who despite his reputation for being a little out there is perhaps the king of Seattle retail politics, with an unsurpassed lifetime D/Y ratio (Doorbells rung to Years of service).

Coming up, the final House runoff between Sharon Tomiko Santos, Mary Lou Dickerson and Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney.