Goldy

How can Dave Reichert afford to pay for so many glossy, full-color mailings, when his campaign is struggling to raise money? Easy… he just passes the cost off to unsuspecting taxpayers:

At first glance, these fliers may look like campaign mailers. But they are produced and mailed at taxpayer expense, using a congressional privilege called “franked mail.”

Most members of Congress use such taxpayer-financed mail to let constituents know what’s happening on Capitol Hill and within their districts. Since his election to Congress in 2004, Reichert has been among the state’s biggest users of franked mail. He spent more on postage than other members of the state’s delegation in 2005 and 2006, according to federal records.

According to the Seattle Times, Reichert ranked second in the state for 2007, racking up a bill of $90,000 to Jay Inslee’s $104,000. But Reichert’s total only includes the cost of postage, whereas Inslee’s report includes the costs of printing and design. (Reichert mailed out 475,000 pieces compared to Inslee’s 171,000.) Anybody who has ever paid to print glossy, double-sided, full-color, 11×17 tri-folds knows that they don’t come cheap, so we’re looking at a total bill to taxpayers of as much as $500,000.

That’s like a half-million dollar campaign contribution from US taxpayers… and that’s just for 2007. Reichert sent out a deluge of franked mail in recent months, ahead of the May 21 cutoff, repeating a pattern of franking abuse he established back in 2006… an “aggressive Franked Mail program” even by his own admission:

Will also oversee and update electronic, internet and other communications, including an aggressive Franked Mail program.

That’s from a March 2007 job ad Reichert ran for a Press Secretary, a job description that curiously included “campaign experience” as a necessary qualification for a staff position that is expressly prohibited by law from engaging in campaign activities. Huh.

Like all Republicans, Reichert likes to fancy himself a fiscal conservative. But when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on himself he is consistently our state’s most profligate spendthrift.

See, this is why the Seattle Times is slowly going out of business:

As an industry, we are in hard times. […] Like radio, it appears that Internet-delivered news has to be supported entirely by advertising.

We offer such ads, and every quarter we sell more of them. And yet we see the pot of gold in Internet advertising going to one company: Google. […] We look at Google, and ask: What do you offer? A shelf on which to stack our product. It is an instantaneous and custom-made shelf. It is useful, and we use it every day. But still, it holds our product.

[…] Copyright law everywhere is a balancing act. It is a system of rules to make sure that writers, photographers, musicians and other creators are paid. If, because technology changes, the law gives too much power to the owner of the shelf and not enough to those who create the products on it, the law can be adjusted.

Um… could they be more clueless? Rather than trying to adapt to the new media paradigm, they want to hide from it. What’s next, suing bloggers to prevent us from blockquoting and linking? And after that, why not just sue your own customers? (Just look how well that’s worked out for the recording industry.)

Hell, if the Times doesn’t want its slot on Google News, I’ll take it; it would likely double my traffic, and with it, my revenue from Google AdSense. See, Google doesn’t steal audience from newspaper websites, it drives traffic toward them, and if the Times can’t figure out how to monetize their traffic, well that’s their problem. No wait… it’s my problem too, because part of the reason none of us are making enough money is because the goddamn newspaper industry spent the better part of a decade trash-talking online ads in a futile effort to defend their lucrative print ad business.

So quit whining about Google, Frank, and start figuring out how to get a decent price for your valuable online inventory. We’re all counting on you.

From today’s Seattle Times:

The state Republican Party adopted a platform Saturday that includes a provision aimed at opposing automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

Actually, it opposes automatic citizenship for legal residents too, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

“Immigration is an issue that a lot of our party activists feel strongly about,” state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said. “And it’s certainly a very defensible position. It’s not at all something that’s based on race concerns.”

Yeah.. sure, Luke. It has nothing to do with race. And when Republicans think about immigration, they don’t automatically envision hoards of Spanish-speaking brown people.

“It’s a matter of what is citizenship going to be based on.”

And in the United States of America, Luke, citizenship is based on the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Of course, top notch attorney that he is, Esser relies on the classic Republican legal strategy for getting around a constitutional provision. Reinterpret it:

Esser noted that prohibiting citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants could “require a change in the U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment…”

That’s right, the trick, according to WA’s state GOP chair, is not to build the political consensus to revise the US Constitution, but rather, pack the bench with enough conservative justices who are willing to toss out legal precedent that has stood since 1898. And to be clear, the state GOP’s goal is not merely to deny citizenship to natural born children of illegal immigrants, but to deny our long tradition of “birthright citizenship” to the children of legal residents as well.

The provision goes on to say that legal immigration “can best be facilitated by a transparent, traceable and enforceable guest-worker program that does not include amnesty or birthright citizenship and sanctuary cities.”

So children born on US soil to “guest-workers” with legal visas, would be denied citizenship, as would any number of other second-class residents:

Esser said the issue of birthright citizenship is broader than just illegal immigration. For example, he said, “I think if you ask the average person, ‘Should a couple vacationing in the United States who are citizens of another country have a child on U.S. soil, should that child be a U.S. citizen?’, that doesn’t sound reasonable.”

And that’s just one example. The whole purpose of the 14th Amendment was to prevent Congress, the states and the courts from coming up with exceptions under which they could deny one class of people the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” But to our state GOP leaders, I suppose, a child born here of Mexican parents, raised and educated here, and for whom English is his first language, is still more Mexican than American.

That’s the sort of thinking that ultimately led to Japanese internment camps.

[WA Attorney General Rob] McKenna said he doubts the citizenship provision of the party platform will have much impact… “I think the attention span of the public on party platforms is very brief…”

Isn’t that always the GOP strategy… counting on the public not to pay close attention to the issues, or where their party stands on them.

As a member of the DNC Rules Committee, WA attorney David McDonald was pretty active yesterday questioning the various people testifying on behalf of restoring Florida and Michigan’s delegates in one form or another.  So I asked him for his take on yesterday’s proceedings:

Long day. Where you end up depends on where you start. Clinton’s folks assume that a proceeding held in violation of our rules is a primary within our rules and argue from there. Others believe a proceeding outside our rules is a beauty contest that may inform but does not dictate an estimate of what voter preferences would be in a proceeding held inside the time calendar and according to our rules.

I think we did our best to be fair and I am glad I stayed uncommitted through this proceeding.

(Personally, I was satisfied with the Florida decision, but think the committee went too far in reallocating delegates in Michigan; they should have maintained the 73-55 split, but given the uncommitted to Obama, as imperfect as that might be.  I’m just uncomfortable with attempting to divine the will of voters after the fact.)

As a DNC member, McDonald is also a superdelegate, and one of the few from the WA delegation who remains uncommitted.  A couple weeks back he told me that he planned to endorse after the May 31 meeting.  Yesterday, he still wasn’t ready to commit:

Because of the level of the rhetoric I want to decompress before I decide for whom I will vote.  But I expect to reach a decision next week.

I don’t know which way McDonald is leaning, but I expect Obama to wrap this up over the next couple weeks as most of the remaining superdelegates announce their support.

After a very long, drawn out, and occasionally emotional Rules Committee meeting today, the DNC has determined to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, but to give each delegate a half-vote.  In addition, the Rules Committee accepted a Michigan Democratic Party reallocation proposal giving Hillary Clinton 69 delegates to Barack Obama’s 59.  

The net result?  A combined 24 delegate-vote pickup on the day for Clinton, not nearly enough to eat into Obama’s margin.

Near the end of the proceedings Harold Ickes, a committee member and longtime Clintonista, announced that Clinton reserved her right to appeal to the Credentials Committee, but once the remaining superdelegates have declared, and a small deluge should declare shortly, not even a full seating of the Michigan and Florida delegations would be enough for her to catch Obama.

UPDATE (7:15 AM):
I just emailed rules committee member David McDonald for a comment, and got a quick response: “Very complicated combination of issues. Looks like a long day.” That’s probably an understatement.

UPDATE (7:32 AM):
Florida is presenting its appeal, and I believe they just asked for 50% representation for their pledged delegates, but 100% representation for their “charter” delegates, which I think he is using to refer to superdelegates who are DNC members and members of Congress.

UPDATE (9:01 AM):
US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), representing the Obama campaign as an intervenor, has also asked that Florida’s delegation be reinstated at 50% representation, acknowledging that it would mean a net gain of as many as 19 delegates for Clinton. He wants the same for the superdelegates (including himself) as the pledged delegates, asking that they be reinstated with a half-vote each.

UPDATE (9:37 AM):
Despite the fact that Barack Obama was not even on the ballot (because, you know, he followed the rules), the Michigan Democratic Party is asking for their entire delegation to be seated, but to split the delegates 69 for Clinton, 59 for Obama.

UPDATE (9:44 AM):
The rationale for the 69-59 Michigan split (10 delegate net pickup for Clinton) is based on exit polls, write-in votes, results of congressional district conventions, and the fact that there was an official and aggressive effort to have voters cast “uncommitted” ballots.

UPDATE (9:53 AM):
Let me just say, that while Michigan’s proposed allocation sounds fair, and likely representative of the will of the voters, it sets an awfully bad precedent.  I just don’t see how one can argue for the validity of an election, but not the validity of the results.  Michigan is a total muddle.

UPDATE (10:39 AM):
Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee, in questioning Sen. Carl Levin, makes it clear that he thinks the Michigan delegation should be seated exactly as the results of the election dictated:  73 for Clinton, 55 uncommitted, and zero for Obama.

UPDATE (10:54 AM):
Former Democratic Rep. David Bonior, speaking on behalf the Obama campaign, is asking for the Michigan delegation to be seated in full, but split 50-50 between Clinton and Obama.

UPDATE (11:17 AM):
According to the Huffington Post, an agreement may already have been reached prior to today’s public meeting.  Florida’s delegation would be seated as was argued for above, 100% of the delegates as allocated by the primary results, but with only a half-vote each.  Michigan delegates would likewise be seated along the same lines, but with Edwards, Biden and Richardson agreeing that all 55 uncommitted delegates would go to Obama.  The result?  A net pickup on the day of 28 delegates for Hillary Clinton… not enough to seriously challenge Obama’s lead.

UPDATE (11:30 AM):
Gotta move on with my day… watch it for yourself. 

UPDATE (3:38 PM):
The motion to restore Florida’s delegates to 100% has failed by a 15-12 margin. Disappointed Clinton supporters immediately started chanting “Denver,” apparently calling for the decision to be passed off to the credentials committee at the DNCC.

UPDATE (3:48 PM):
The motion to restore Florida’s delegates to 50% has passed 27-0.

UPDATE (4:10 PM):
The motion to restore Michigan’s delegates to 50%, apportioned along the lines of that proposed above by the Michigan Democratic Party has passed 19-8. 

As reported by Postman, all charges have been dropped against state Rep. Geoff Simpson, stemming from his arrest after an incident with his ex-wife. From the court order dismissing the charges:

Based on all of the information obtained in the present matter, the City no longer believes it has a sufficient evidence to go forward with the charges herein.  In regards to Count one, Assault in the Fourth Degree — DV, the City does not believe that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the conduct of the defendant was not legally justifiable.  Without the predicate domestic violence offense, the City is likewise unable to go forward with Count Two, Interfering with the Reporting of Domestic Violence.  In addition, based on the alleged victim’s stated intentions for calling 911 at the time of the incident, there is no evidence that the alleged victim was calling 911 to specifically report a domestic violence incident or that the defendant would have reason to believe that she was calling to report domestic violence.

Interestingly, Simpson tells Postman that despite his arrest and night in jail, he still supports the domestic violence laws that left police with little discretion but to detain and charge him:

“I’ve thought a lot about this the past several weeks. I don’t like what happened to me and I didn’t like going to jail with all the unpleasantness associated with that. But I think that’s better than the alternative.”

The alternative might be a victim denying abuse out of fear, only to be seriously injured or murdered after the police leave the scene. It is a complicated issue that certainly deserves more thought, but the current law is certainly better than the more hands-off approach to domestic disputes that used to prevail.

As for the political fallout, Simpson wrote in an email to supporters:

I am certain the Republican machine is gearing up with negative attacks, but the voters have rejected personal attack campaigns against me before and will see through them again.

No doubt. And I do think that in the absence of charges, such attacks might have been more effective had the GOP not used them in the previous campaign. Without a court case to keep this issue fresh, most voters will likely view the attack ads and mailers as old news. And that’s good news for Simpson.

Former Washington State Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn is appearing on stage this weekend at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, performing her new one-woman play “Until the Last Dog Dies.”  The play chronicles her 2004 run for state Attorney General, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s secret, $1.5 million ad campaign to kill it.

This is the second play Senn has written since leaving office, and while it may seem odd to most folk for a former politician to suddenly pursue a career in theater, it doesn’t to me.  Senn was a theater major in college, only to be sidetracked by the political activism of the time.  I myself come from a theater background, and have always considered my own foray into politics as at least part performance art.

Tickets are $20 and a can be purchased here, but act fast because it only runs through June 1.

Uncle Ted accusing others of “dirty politics.”  Now that’s rich.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation this afternoon, sometime during the 1PM hour.  I believe they’ll be questioning my patriotism.

Breaking news…

Seattle police are trying to negotiate with a man who has holed up in a Crown Hill home after pouring gasoline over himself.

“He’s very upset and agitated,” police spokesman Mark Jamieson said.

I would be agitated too, what with gas topping $4.15 a gallon throughout much of the city.  At that price, why not just douse oneself with Dom Perignon?