Goldy

The numbers are in, and they don’t look too good for Dave Reichert, with challenger Darcy Burner expanding her lead over “Congressman 401” in the much watched category of cash on hand. Reichert raised only $331,000 in the first quarter, compared to the impressive $517,000 hauled in by Burner, who now leads Reichert $922,000 to $698,000 in cash on hand.

And that’s with a fundraising visit from the First Lady. Pathetic.

I turn 45-years-old today, and yeah, I know some of you righties might find it ironic that this “tax and spend” Democrat was born on the dreaded date of April 15th. (Trust me, I don’t much enjoy cutting the IRS a check either, but well, we all have to do our patriotic duty to help assure a military victory in Iraq, right?) And so to celebrate my birthday on a day most Americans associate with money, I’ve decided to use this opportunity to kickoff my Second Annual HA Pledge Week.

Last year, 106 readers blew past my $3,500 target, contributing $4,043.91 over a week in January, an amazing and gratifying show of support. But this year, with a huge hole in my income left from the loss of my 710-KIRO show, and big plans to build out and expand HA, I’m setting a more ambitious fundraising goal: $6,000 from 150 loyal readers.

That amounts to only a $40 average donation from about 5-percent of my current daily readership, and while I hope those of you who can afford to give more, do, I know some of you can afford less, so any amount is appreciated.

Of course, I can’t afford to live on only $6,000 a year, but there’s a method to my madness, and that’s why I need your support now. Over the coming months I plan to appeal to “big donors” to fund me and my HA expansion plans, and I need you to show them that you have my back, that you value the contribution I make to the public debate, and that you desperately want to see progressive media grow and flourish in Washington state. If you, my readers, collectively cut that first big check, more money will follow. But first, I need you to help me meet or exceed our 150 donor/$6,000 target.

So if HA has become a regular part of your daily routine, and you want to see it continue, let alone continue to grow and expand, please help me build Washington’s progressive media infrastructure by contributing today. And thank you all for your steadfast support.

The momentum continues to build for Democrat Darcy Burner in her race against Republican incumbent Dave Reichert in Washington State’s 8th Congressional District, as she announced today that she raised $516,740 between January and March, a total that likely places among the top five challengers nationwide, and first in the Western states.

“Our record-setting fundraising demonstrates that voters in the 8th District are hungry for more effective representation in tackling the growing list of problems we face as a country, from the endless and costly war in Iraq, to our faltering economy, to the skyrocketing cost of health care,” Burner said. “Our message is already resonating, and this fall we will have the resources we need to make our case for positive change to the voting public.”

This new filing will bring Burner’s totals to $1,374,866 raised over the election cycle, with $921,615 cash on hand. Since declaring her candidacy, Burner has outraised Reichert in three consecutive quarters… and I’m guessing this will make a fourth. And when you dig into the numbers there’s even more bad news for Reichert:

The vast bulk of Burner’s fundraising has come from individuals rather than PACs or political party committees – about $456,500 this quarter, or more than 88 percent of the total raised. Burner received 4,859 contributions from 4,416 individuals in the first quarter. Burner has received 11,615 contributions from 8,817 donors who have given over the course of the current campaign.

That’s only an average of about $156 per donor, leaving Burner plenty of opportunity to reach out to her astoundingly large donor base for more contributions, whereas Reichert has thus far relied on large donations and PAC money to even come close to keeping pace. Ain’t much upside from a double-max donation.

Can’t wait to see Reichert’s numbers.

Real estate salesman Dino Rossi will introduce his transportation plan Tuesday morning, and I can’t help but wonder what it might include. More freeways and wider bridges? Foot-ferries and monorails? An utterly fucking ridiculous deep bore tunnel? Well one thing I’m pretty damn sure it won’t include are HOV lanes, because as he told KUOW’s Ross Reynolds back in January of 2003, Rossi doesn’t believe in rewarding drivers for (gasp) carpooling.

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/rossi_hov_2003-1-8.mp3]

REYNOLDS: Wouldn’t opening up the HOV lanes during the middle of the day make it harder for those who have voluntarily decided to carpool or those who’ve decided to ride buses – those who some would argue are being good citizens by not driving on the highways – wouldn’t it make it harder for them to get to their destinations when some would argue they should be rewarded with a single lane that they can use exclusively during that part of the day?

ROSSI: Well, you’re absolutely right that there are tie-ups in the middle of the day and much of that is because there are car accidents during the middle of the day, and the whole point of spacing these cars further – improving the capacity on state 405 – would probably relieve a number of those congestion problems, because people wouldn’t be getting hurt and getting in car accidents. Picking people and rewarding them for what you believe or others believe is the proper way to commute I don’t believe is the right method.

There you have it… transportation expert Dino Rossi pinpoints our congestion problem on too many car accidents! So why hasn’t Gov. Gregoire done anything about that, huh?! (I bet it’s because she’s in the pocket of Olympia’s powerful car accident lobby.)

As for carpool lanes, who needs ’em? After all, according to WSDOT, they only “move approximately one third of the people on the freeways in only 18 percent of the vehicles, and carry approximately 52 percent more people per lane than other freeway lanes during prime commuting hours.” And while a 2004 survey showed that 96% of Puget Sound drivers use HOV lanes, and an overwhelming majority consider them a good idea, convenient, and a fair use of taxpayer money… well… I suppose Rossi and his advisers at the Discovery Institute simply know better than us common folk.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) inserted a provision in last year’s energy bill that gave the Federal Trade Commission the authority to investigate manipulation of the petroleum market, and now with gasoline expected to top $4 a gallon this summer, Cantwell wants the FTC to use it.

“Their response has been tepid,” Cantwell said in an interview. […] She said she expected the agency would “run out the clock” and leave the manipulation regulations for the next administration to write and implement.

“They didn’t ask for the authority and they’ve never been excited about it,” Cantwell said. “They say they want to work with us. Given the impact on the economy, they need to get started.”

Now I know you knee-jerk free-marketeers will tell me that this is merely the market in action, and that the invisible hand of God will sort everything out just fine as long as we don’t let those damn government regulators interfere. But with crude oil now hovering around $110 a barrel, the supposedly inviolable law of supply and demand appears to have been magically suspended:

Cantwell noted that crude oil prices have doubled over the past year despite adequate inventories, no major disruption in supply and a slight drop in demand in the United States as the economy has cooled.

At congressional hearings over the past several weeks, oil company executives and market analysts have been at a loss to explain the sharp increase in crude oil prices. Cantwell said an Exxon Mobil executive recently told a House of Representatives committee that he thought the price of crude oil should be about $50 to $55 a barrel, given current supply and demand.

It was Cantwell who also authored a law that banned manipulation of the natural gas and electricity markets, and ordered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to enforce it. Subsequent investigations have resulted in 15 settlements and nearly a half billion dollars in fines. I’d wager the FTC would find similar manipulations in the petroleum market… that is, if it ever bothered to follow the law.

Hey, it turns out US Sen. Jim Bunning is not, in fact, the nuttiest politician in Kentucky. Saturday night, at KY-04’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, the appropriately named US Rep. Geoff Davis (R-1960) displayed that famous Southern charm, saying of Sen. Barack Obama:

“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,”

And that cracker’s lily white ass doesn’t need to be in the US House.

Tune in to KUOW’s Weekday with Steve Scher this morning at 10AM, when I’ll be joining Eric Earling of (u)SP, Tom Forbes of Palousitics, and Liz Burlingame of SeattlePoliticore for a political blogger roundup. Topics of discussion will surely include how goddamn depressing it must be to be a Republican these days.

UPDATE (9:55AM):
I’m sitting in the green room at KUOW, with Eric Earling, and he seems normal. KUOW is still $25,000 short of their pledge week target, so if folks call in now and put $25K on their credit card you’ll get an extra 20 minutes of me and Eric!

UPDATE (10:01AM):
$19,000 to go. They’d like us to live blog during the interview, which shows you how much they know about blogging. Not likely to happen.

UPDATE (10:20AM):
Apparently, according to Tom, Democrats are the party of the wealthy elite. Who knew?

UPDATE (10:38AM):
Wow… Dino Rossi is about “change.” I should talk to Republicans more often.  If this is the best they have in defense of Dino, it’s not gonna be much of a campaign. 

Welcome to HA v3.0, only the third major update since I started blogging almost four years ago, and HA’s first total redesign ever. It’s slick. It’s feature-packed. And it may even be a tad annoying until you get used to it — or I fix the annoying bits — whichever comes first.

But the best thing about the HA v3.0, is that unlike the previous versions, it won’t be another two years until I dive back into the code. As big a change as this may look on the surface, the big news is what’s going on underneath the hood, where I’m laying the groundwork for an ambitious development roadmap intended to greatly expand and diversify HA’s content and features. This is very much a work in progress, so if you see something you don’t like, or don’t see something you think you should, you’ll let me know.

So what’s new, apart from the strikingly, um, different site layout? Well, some whiz-bang features for starters, including…

[Read more…]

From an editorial in today’s Seattle Times:

From the day Seattle owners sold the Seattle Sonics to Oklahoma businessmen, we should have known.

Yes, they should have. As should have the editors at the Seattle P-I:

We’ve often faulted political leaders for passivity and lack of creativity about the Sonics. Well, it appears that if the out-of-town owners were going to keep the team here, it would have been only because they got a too-lucrative-to-refuse deal. More than creativity, that’s about cash — oodles of taxpayer cash.

That’s pretty much all the gloating I’m going to do today, except to say “Hey Tom and Erin… read my post, then read the two editorials, and tell me… who’s influencing whom?”

From today’s Seattle Times:

If money is any indication, this year’s race for governor is going to make the 2004 contest look like a low-key affair.

You have no idea.

The article focuses on money, which both Gov. Chris Gregoire and real estate salesman cum motivational speaker Dino Rossi are raising at a record clip — over $7.5 million combined thus far, with some observers predicting a $20 million-plus race.

“This is one of those things that never ceases to amaze me, the amount of money in politics,” [former state Dem Party chair Paul] Berendt said. “Certainly the rematch is a factor here. But it’s not the dominant factor. There’s just more money in politics.”

But money is only part of the reason the 2008 campaign will be a helluva lot different than the last time around. The big difference, in my opinion, will be the lessons learned from 2004, a race in which an overconfident Gregoire allowed Rossi to get away with running as an amiable tabla rasa, on to which voters could project a fanciful image of the Rossi they’d like him to be.

First rule of political campaigning: if your opponent refuses to define himself… define him for him define your opponent. And you can be damn sure that a substantial chunk of Gregoire’s (and her surrogates’) war chest will be spent doing exactly that. Rossi is simply too conservative for WA state, on both social and economic issues, and this time around he’s not going to get away with refusing to talk about issues that don’t poll well for his campaign. There are also character issues regarding Rossi — his dubious business ethics and his documented reputation as a downright mean spirited campaigner — and in 2008, voters are going to be informed of that too.

Since Rossi’s near miss in 2004, David Irons, George Nethercutt and Mike!™ McGavick have all tried to duplicate the Rossi model — a low-key, likable, issue-less run toward the middle — and all with disastrous results. That strategy simply won’t play here anymore… at least not if your Democratic opponent is awake. And I don’t believe even Rossi is willing or able to duplicate the Rossi Strategy in 2008.

Sure, Rossi’s going to attempt to avoid those many issues where he’s clearly out of step with WA voters, but we’ve seen a different Rossi — a meaner, angrier Rossi — on the campaign trail thus far. No doubt he truly believes he was cheated out of the governor’s mansion four years ago (cognitive dissonance is a powerful drug) and thus he’s understandably pissed off. And it shows. He likes to joke that at the start of the last campaign most folks thought that “Dino Rossi” was a brand of wine. Add an “h” after the “w” and you’ve pretty much described Rossi’s 2008 campaign thus far.

The point is, it’s going to be a much nastier campaign from both sides, which in this particular race, I think is a good thing, because it will leave voters much better educated about who the candidates are, and what they stand for, than in 2004. And as little influence as Rossi uber-patron BIAW wants you to believe bloggers like me have, in their heart of hearts they know that a lot has changed since 2004 in the way the media covers political campaigns, and that the emergence of the blogs as media watchdogs has a lot to do with it. Perhaps I give them a little shit, but there isn’t a single political reporter I have met who is not a dedicated professional, and while they may chafe at our criticism (and the tone in which we offer it), as long as it is substantive, well-supported and relevant, it generally doesn’t go unheeded for long. Much of what I do as a blogger is the media equivalent of complaining to the refs, a time honored sports tradition that yields real, if hard to quantify results.

So hold onto your hats. This won’t be the same Rossi. This won’t be the same Gregoire. And this won’t be the same passive media environment in which the 2004 campaign played out into a virtual tie.

Sometime this weekend I’ll upgrade HA with an all new look and a handful of the new features I’ve been working on.  Just thought you should know.

Other than that, talk amongst yourselves.

Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun, as city attorneys use the discovery process to reveal the dishonest dealings we all assumed were going on behind the scenes, but our sports-page-hawking editorial boards refused to acknowledge. And it looks like I’m going to get the opportunity for some delicious gloating.

For example, today the Seattle PI reports on recently uncovered emails between Clay Bennett, his fellow Sonics owners, and NBA Commissioner David Stern, that establish once and for all what an unrepentant bald-faced liar Bennett has always been. “I so cherish our relationship,” Bennett breathily wrote Stern on August 17, 2007, after co-owner Aubrey McClendon frankly told Oklahoma City’s The Journal Record that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.” In what can only be described as a digital blowjob, Bennett described Stern as “just one of my favorite people on earth,” attempting to reassure him:

“I would never breach your trust. As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group. I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off.”

Uh-huh. Yet only four months earlier, during an April 17 email exchange, Sonics co-owner Tom Ward bluntly asked Bennett if there was “any way to move here for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?”

Bennett’s reply: “I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!”

Ward: “That’s the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here (in Oklahoma City) next year.”

McClendon: “Me too, thanks Clay!”

Those e-mails came during the one-year grace period supposedly earmarked for good-faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle.

Isn’t legal discovery fun? In fact, just two weeks after purchasing the team, Bennett’s co-owners made their intentions absolutely clear :

Corresponding after one partner had dropped out of the group, apparently after deciding a move to Oklahoma wasn’t certain, Ward told McClendon on Aug. 2, 2006, that Bennett was angered by the defection.

“I don’t think that you and I really want to own a team there either, but we are better partners,” Ward wrote.

Shocking, huh? Well, I assume it is to the grownups on the editorial boards at our two dailies, who repeatedly vouched for Bennett’s character and intentions throughout the entire sham arena process. On February 15, 2007, the PI naively insisted that “Clay Bennett deserves credit for sincerity in his efforts to work out a deal that keeps the team in the Seattle area,” while on May 2, 2007 the wise old folks at the Seattle Times went so far as to chide cynics like me for suggesting otherwise:

There have been whispers and shouts that SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is only buying time until he can move the teams to his home state of Oklahoma. This is an unfair claim. Bennett has done nothing to suggest that moving the teams is a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing to suggest that Bennett is being insincere?” I responded at the time…

Um… how about seeking $400 million in taxpayer subsidies on a $500 million hoops palace, just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected $200 million in subsidies on a $220 million Key Arena renovation? If that’s sincere, it’s sincerely stupid.

And it’s not like I’m puffing up my analysis with the benefit of hindsight. Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did. But I never believed Bennett ever intended to keep the team in Seattle, and the basis for my cynicism seemed obvious:

Even the most casual observer of Washington politics could have told Bennett that his $530 million hoop dream would be D.O.A., so I can’t help but view it as a disingenuous con game intended to fill Key Arena with gullible fans until the lease expires in 2010.

And…

I’ve never believed that Bennett ever seriously wanted to keep the Sonics in the Seattle area, but rather has always intended to move the team back home to Oklahoma City, where he will be welcomed as a conquering hero. In that admittedly cynical scenario the arena proposal must be just believable enough to keep gullible fans (and editors) in their seats until the Key Arena lease runs out in 2010, but outrageous enough to make the deal politically DOA.

And what if I was wrong, and state lawmakers actually caved to Bennett’s unreasonable demands and gave him his taxpayer funded hoops palace? Well, I always believed Bennett and his partners had that angle covered too:

See, if as expected, taxpayers (and the lawmakers representing them) rejected his extravagant proposal, he could claim he made his “good faith effort,” and then pick up and move the team to Oklahoma City, where he’ll be greeted as a local hero. But if we foolishly caved to his demands, well, he still might end up with an Oklahoma City team… just not the Sonics.

The Renton deal would dramatically increase the value of the team, allowing Bennett and his partners to sell out, taking a couple hundred million dollars in profit… money which could defray the cost of buying a smaller market team, like the Hornets, and moving it to Oklahoma City instead. In that scenario, Washington taxpayers would indirectly subsidize professional basketball in Oklahoma. Sweet.

Yeah, I know, it sounds a little too devious. But the fabulously wealthy generally don’t get that way by being artless and uncalculating.

Which brings us back to those emails, where Ward wrote to McClendon about just such an eventuality:

“I assume that I will be ready to sell there and work on a team here if they build a new arena, but we shall see.”

Bennett and his partners never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and never negotiated in good faith; that not only should be obvious by now, it should have been obvious the day they purchased the team. As McClendon bragged to that Oklahoma City paper:

“We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle,” McClendon told the newspaper. “So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.”

They certainly did. And in the process they played our local media for fools.

Over on Slog, Josh Feit reports that the Waterfront Trolley is dead.

[Deputy Mayor Tim] Cies told me tonight that the waterfront trolley idea “no longer fit into the city’s transportation plan.”

He also cited the fact that plans to revamp the viaduct had thrown the waterfront trolley plans into limbo. Also: too expensive.

“It’s not in our plans, and we’re moving ahead,” Ceis says, saying the new priorities were servicing the transportation grid around the viaduct and around light rail through Capitol Hill.

I dunno, just seems kinda silly that we  spent all this money laying down tracks for the SLUT, with City Hall talking ambitious plans to build a half dozen other trolley lines throughout the city, but we’re just not interested in using the tracks we already have.

As you know, I’ve been immersed in code recently, developing a new version of HA for your reading and poo-flinging pleasure. I’ve started to upload some of the new plugins and templates for testing, and while I had hoped that none of it would go live before I flipped the switch, it seems that some of my plug-ins have a mind of their own. For example, it looks like the new visual rich text comment editor is now live. So have fun with it, and let me know if there are any problems.

Larry Grant, who ran a strong Democratic campaign in 2006 in Idaho’s blood red 1st Congressional District, has withdrawn from the 2008 contest, and endorsed fellow Dem, Walt Minnick:

“My campaign has never been about my personal ambition. I have spent the last three years on the campaign trail doing my very best to build the Idaho Democratic Party from the ground up. I’m proud of what I and my campaign team have achieved.

“There isn’t ten cents worth of difference between my view of the world and Walt Minnick’s. That’s why we need to be working together to beat Bill Sali, not spending valuable time and resources in a contentious primary.”

Word is that Grant’s decision was all about the money. Minnick had raised an impressive $410,000 by the end of 2007 compared to Grant’s paltry $65,000, and the disparity is expected to dramatically worsen when first quarter results are reported next week. But you gotta admire Grant’s willingness to put the interests of the Party and the nation ahead of personal ambition. (Hmm… I wonder when that’s going to happen in the Dems’ presidential race?)