Goldy

I know it’s not particularly sensitive nor PC of me, but I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw this headline and accompanying photo in today’s Seattle P-I. Lighthouse is a great organization and all, but shouldn’t somebody clue in those blind people that they’re working in a manufacturing plant?

Folks down in Lewis County were already struggling to cope with the aftermath of last week’s devastating floods, when President Bush added insult to injury yesterday by signing an emergency declaration making renters, homeowners and businesses eligible for up to $28,800 in cash grants… this in a county whose residents reliably approve anti-tax/anti-government ballot measures by 20-plus-percent margins. Can’t we just git gov’ment off our backs?

God knows the flood victims could use the help, if only to find temporary shelter and give them the breathing space they need to get their lives back on track, but it’s hard to imagine folks who just voted 63.2% in favor of I-960’s government crippling provisions looking kindly on any sort of government handout. After all, these are the kind of upstanding citizens who voted 61.4% in favor of I-912’s fuel tax repeal, 68.7% and 72.9% respectively in favor of I-776 and I-695’s $30 car tab provisions, 73.6% in favor of I-747’s one-percent cap on growth in regular local levies, and a whopping 79.1% against R-51’s transportation improvement package… so it seems unlikely that they would ever accept the food stamps and emergency unemployment compensation the disaster declaration makes available. I mean, this is a county that voted 60.5% in favor of I-933 at the same time the “takings” initiative went down to defeat by a healthy 17-point margin statewide, so one would think that voters so adamantly opposed to government regulations that might, say, prevent a land owner from building a Walmart in a flood plain, would also be adamantly willing to take full personal responsibility for the inevitable consequences of doing so. I’m just sayin’.

(Whenever I hear righties bitch about gov’ment it reminds me of that old Catskill’s joke about the woman, who after complaining about the terrible food at a resort, adds “and such small portions.”)

The rest of the headlines are filled with equally horrid tales of government intrusion. A burning ban is now in effect for King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, and on Hanukkah, no less; advocates want to take away our constitutional right to discriminate against gay people; and in perhaps the ultimate indignancy, the EPA is nosing around in our bathrooms, urging us to switch to a new generation of 1.3 gallons per flush toilets:

All of the WaterSense toilets flush at least 250 grams, or about 10 ounces of matter. In the industry, that’s considered the average weight of adult human solid waste.

Yeah… well… I eat a lot of fiber, so I’m not so sure. Besides, the one thing I’m not flush with right now is money, so unless the EPA or SPU wants to give me the same free toilet they’ve been giving apartment complexes and businesses, I’m sticking with the old guzzler that came with my house.

Damn gov’ment.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Clinton vs Guiliani? Obama vs Huckabee? Romney vs Jesus?
Daily Kos front page editor Miss Laura joins us by phone for a conversation about the current state of the presidential campaigns and a report from the ground in New Hampshire. Oprah’s speech, Huckabee’s record, Romney’s come to Jesus speech, and more.

8PM: Who’s to blame for last week’s floods? (And what to do about it?)
Was clear cutting in the watershed and overdevelopment in the flood plain responsible for last week’s record floods in Lewis County, or were incompetent government officials to blame? Or maybe it was just the inevitable result of global warming? Those questions and more, but first, Patty Kaija from Friends of Lewis County Animal Shelter joins us by phone to talk about some of the floods most helpless victims, and what you can do to help.

9PM: Is Seattle ready to ride the SLUT?
Driving to the studio today I passed the South Lake Union Trolley gliding by in preparation for it’s inaugural run this week, and before this $52.1 million SLUT even picks up its first paying passenger, there’s already talk of building a network of streetcar lines to connect Seattle’s neighborhoods. South Lake Union to the UW? The Waterfront to Capitol Hill? Are we about to become a city of streetcars… and do we want to be?

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

FYI, rumor has at that documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (What Would Jesus Buy? and Super Size Me) has found Osama bin Laden. I guess we’ll find out in January when his new film, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, premiers at Sundance.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh Feit
The Stranger’s Josh Feit joins us for a recap of the week’s news, and a look ahead to what’s coming up. Are North Seattleites NIMBYs? Is Dave Reichert reaching out to labor? Should Tim Eyman have been tased? All that and more, plus your calls.

8PM: What’s up with Cathy Sorbo’s teeth?
Local comedian and Seattle P-I columnist Cathy Sorbo joins us for the hour to share her own unique take on current events, plus an illuminating update from the world of dentistry.

9PM: Regional Blogger Roundup
TJ from Loaded Orygun and Jimmy from McCranium join us by phone for our monthly look at Northwest political news outside the Seattle metro market.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I’m not prepared to argue with the main thesis of Alicia Mundy’s piece in the Seattle Times today, which posits that the US Senate Republican caucus is moving even further to the right in the wake of Sen. Trent Lott’s retirement.

This year, when Senate Republicans dropped into the minority, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Lott and their caucus began losing control to four conservative members with clout among several large and vocal interest groups — John Kyl of Arizona, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.

[…] Coburn, for instance, has held up many bills that involve earmarks and new spending. One, worth about $7 million over the next few years, would increase regulations on pool makers because of accidental deaths of children attributed to pool drains.

Kyl and his allies also strongly oppose issues related to birth control and stem-cell research, infuriating Murray.

On Thursday, Kyl was elected to take Lott’s place in January, as the new No. 2, the enforcer. He told Roll Call that he “can’t be a patsy.”

Are Kyl, Coburn, DeMint and Cornyn really further to the right of Lott, who infamously claimed that “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years,” had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948, running on a segregationist platform? Well, maybe, and Mundy certainly deserves credit for raising the question. But her closer… oy:

That leads to the question: How does a legislative caucus function with an ideologically driven group in the driver’s seat?

Democrats have grappled with that themselves.

Really? The Democratic caucus has grappled with an ideologically driven group in the driver’s seat? And when exactly was that? Surely Mundy’s not implying that Sen. Harry Reid operates as a liberal ideologue, or that the House Democratic caucus under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Rahm Emmanuel has in any way pandered to the liberal extreme of the party?

Of course, I guess centrism can be as much an ideology as the radical neo/theo conservatism that drives the likes of Kyl and Coburn, but it is this kind of media obsession with equivalency that ends up distorting the political debate, and driving our policies ever further toward the right. If “Democrats have grappled with” the same sort of “ideologically driven group,” readers might logically conclude then that Democrats must be as ideologically extreme. It is in this way that Mundy’s lazy attempt at balance achieves the opposite, branding by inference Reid and Pelosi’s relatively centrist agenda as equally “ideological”.

The fact is, Kyl and Coburn are extremists who don’t represent the mainstream of American political thought, whereas polls show that the majority of voters consistently align with Democrats on the majority of issues. To imply equivalency only serves to enable this right-wing fringe.

Turmoil in the Puget Sound housing market receives front page attention in both Seattle dailies today, as the Times and P-I fish the data for dramatic headlines.

The median housing price, we’re told, “has fallen four months in a row,” is “back where it was the previous November,” and “last month fetched nearly 10 percent less than the typical sale in July.” Wow. That sounds like the nationwide housing collapse has finally hit Seattle, except, you know, “it’s typical for monthly house prices to fluctuate,” some of the median price decline is surely from “the influence of condominiums, which have been making up more of home sales and generally cost less,” and of course the well known fact that “home sales are highly seasonal.”

To further complicate the reader’s job this morning, both articles liberally intermix data for detached homes and all housing, as well as trends from Seattle, King County and the surrounding areas. Ironically, the result of all this muddle is probably a fairly accurate picture: the regional housing market is soft — certainly softer than it’s been in years — but exactly how soft, how widespread, and how entrenched, well… we really don’t know. Gone for the moment are the bidding wars and double-digit annual appreciation to which we’ve all grown accustomed, but at least for us Seattle homeowners (and buyers) what we’re witnessing looks more like a return toward normalcy than an actual slump.

Which of course raises a question that seems to be missing from all the typically breathless local coverage of the region’s housing market: is a flattening or modest decline in prices actually a bad thing?

Self-appointed guardians of Seattle’s quality of life have long decried the loss of our city’s middle class heritage, but arguably the number one culprit in this trend has been the dramatic rise in housing prices that created such enormous wealth for those lucky enough to get into the market early. It was a struggle to buy my house for $187,000 back in 1997, but at a likely price of about half a million dollars today, it would be impossible. Average wages have not doubled and tripled over the past decade, but Seattle’s housing values have, pricing many families out of the market.

The equity in my house is my only substantial asset, so I have great empathy for homeowners watching their property value decline… or at the very least, not appreciate nearly as quickly as anticipated. But as someone with the experience of buying in the bidding war era — I joked at the time that I spent more time picking out a head of lettuce than I did deciding to make an offer on my house — I welcome a more rational housing market. And while the Ye Olde Seattle establishment bemoans the threat “vertical density” poses to our neighborhoods, the only realistic and palatable path toward “affordable housing” is to build more condos, townhouses and apartments… that is, short of a regional economic collapse.

So which is it? Do declining housing prices represent a crisis or an opportunity? I look forward to next month’s coverage to learn the answer.

Yakima Mayor Dave Edler had a police officer remove Tim Eyman from council chambers Tuesday when Tim refused to shut up after the council voted 5-2 to cut off his rant against Councilmember Ron Bonlender.

Eyman started by arrogantly introducing himself as Yakima’s “highest ranking unelected representative,” and then went on to attack the Yakima Herald-Republic for their coverage of the recent sock puppet scandal in which Republican Rick Ensey’s wife Diane effectively used an anonymous blog to defame Bonlender during the campaign. Diane Ensey’s identity was not revealed until after her husband’s victory, prompting bipartisan calls for his resignation.

Pissed off that the Herald-Republic wouldn’t give him a guest column, Eyman called the Herald-Republic’s coverage of the Ensey’s admitted deception a “witch hunt,” bizarrely comparing it to that of the media storm surrounding the Duke Lacrosse rape case — only the Herald-Republic’s offense is apparently much worse, because….

“… that was about an alleged rape; the Ensey thing involves a few lines on a blog that maybe six people read. For years I’ve been libeled, denigrated and insulted by anonymous people on blogs, but blogs are little stray comments like you’d hear in any lunchroom, they’re mosquitoes in the alligator infested swamp of politics.”

Uh-huh.

In fact, Tim is lying as usual. Yes, he’s been insulted and denigrated by me and other liberal bloggers, but not a single one of us is anonymous, and, if he really believes I have libeled him, I urge him to sue me before I sue him first for making such a slanderous allegation. Eyman hopes to diminish our credibility and influence, but what “the Ensey thing” makes clear in the exception is that the blogosphere does indeed subscribe to a set of ethical standards… standards the Ensey’s shamelessly violated to the detriment of both the blogo- and political spheres. As a blogger I do not shy away from using strong language, but I never lie, and I certainly don’t hide behind a pseudonym like those cowardly Enseys. I have standards. Folks like Eyman and the Enseys obviously don’t.

Given that he too is a fraud and admitted liar, Eyman’s impassioned defense of the Enseys is not surprising. That some newspapers still give him valuable free space on their op-ed pages, is.

I’m busy. And tired. So talk amongst yourselves. Or, watch this:

(By the way, if you’re not familiar with The Real News Network, get familiar.)

What with eight men now coming out claiming they’ve had sex with Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, despite his public protestations that he is not gay, I thought it a prudent time to come clean with my audience and clarify my own role in the Craig affair: I am not gay, and I have never had sex with Sen. Craig. Never.

But since so many men apparently have had sex with the senator, I figure the only reasonable way to get to the truth is by process of elimination, so I urge all my male readers to follow my lead and definitively state in the comment thread whether you have or have not had sex with Larry Craig. As for those of you who choose not to participate in this thread, well… you’re silence will speak volumes.

UPDATE:
I cross-posted to Daily Kos, and included a short poll at the end. Apparently, 24-percent of Kos readers have indeed had sex with Larry Craig. Who knew?

The Bushies have called Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez a dictator and a tyrant… but since when do dictators lose elections?

CARACAS, Venezuela, Monday, Dec. 3 — Voters in this country narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers, the Election Commission announced early Monday.

[…] The outcome is a stunning development in a country where Mr. Chávez and his supporters control nearly all of the levers of power. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.”

“I congratulate my adversaries for this victory,” he said. “For now, we could not do it.”

Our close ally in the “war on terror,” Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, he’s a dictator. Our good friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, now he’s a tyrant. But Chávez congratulating his adversaries for winning an election? That’s not a dictatorship… that’s a functioning democracy.

Now if only Bush had accepted the will of the people as graciously as Chávez….

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Radio Kos with McJoan
Joan “McJoan” McCarter joins us for our weekly chat with the folks at Daily Kos. Topics of discussion will include the GOP YouTube debate, a status report on the presidential race, and a look ahead to the issues that will drive the 2008 election.

8PM: Do all kids deserve a shot at a college education?
Polly Trout and Anttimo Bennett join us from Seattle Education Access to talk about their innovative programs to give all kids a shot at college education.

9PM: Is it time for government to get out of the marriage business?
That’s what Evergreen State College history professor Stefanie Coontz argues in a guest column in the Seattle PI. She is the author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

It snowed yesterday in Seattle, apparently for the first time ever! A dusting of frozen water fell from the sky in the form of fluffy, white flakes, making the roads slippery! Who the hell can drive in that?!

And in breaking news, today it is going to rain! A lot. Expect flooding. Again, something apparently that has never, ever happened here before.

Will wonders never cease?

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Special Session or Special Olympics?
Our Democratic leadership sure is “special” aren’t they, if they think a revenue cap below the rate of inflation is either good politics or good policy? The Stranger’s Josh Feit was down in Olympia for Thursday’s debacle and he joins us in studio for his first hand take and a discussion of the inevitable fallout.

8PM: Does WalMart have an obligation to treat its workers fairly?
A class action suit was filed this week, alleging as many as 75,000 were illegally denied overtime pay and work breaks. Tough shit for the workers? Or does WalMart have an obligation to treat them fairly?

9PM: Are we squandering America?
Robert Kuttner is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, and the author of a new book, “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity,” and he joins us in studio for the hour. With wages stagnating and the gap between the very rich and everybody else growing ever wider, Kuttner argues for a return to the “managed capitalism” that guided the great economic expansion from 1948 to 1973, an era during which the U.S. economy, wages, and incomes flourished, and a rising tide really did lift all boats. Kuttner appears tomorrow night, 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall, for a book reading and signing.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I’ll save the venting for tomorrow night’s show when The Stranger’s Josh Feit will join me in studio to give his first-hand account of the proceedings at yesterday’s special session, and the inevitable fallout from the Dems’ boneheaded political blunder. But I just want to take time to thank those Democratic legislators who stood up to the political pressure, and voted against rashly reinstating I-747’s unsustainable and irresponsible one-percent cap on regular levy revenue growth.

Yesterday I wrote, “I’d be surprised if a majority of the Seattle delegation didn’t vote to approve the governor’s plan,” and, well… I was wrong. There are six legislative districts that represent Seattle, for a total of twelve representatives and six senators. Of those, only one senator and four representatives voted for the bill, with two representatives excused and not voting. A total of eleven Seattle legislators cast votes against the bill: Senators Ken Jacobsen, Adam Kline, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Joe McDermott and Ed Murray, along with Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson, Sharon Nelson, Jamie Pedersen, Eric Pettigrew, Sharon Tomiko Santos, and Helen Sommers. I was particularly proud that my entire 37th Legislative District Delegation — Kline, Pettigrew and Santos — voted against the bill.

Only a handful of non-Seattle legislators bucked the governor’s pressure to quickly pass dumb policy. In the House, special kudos go to Rep. Geoff Simpson of Covington, who voted his conscience despite the fact that his district overwhelmingly supported I-747, and despite the fact that he feared this vote could potentially end his political career.

“I’m not here to make decisions based on whether or not I’ll get re-elected,” he said. “I’m here to make decisions that are good public policy … 747 is not good public policy.”

Simpson said local government can’t be expected to provide high quality services when revenues are not keeping pace with the rate of inflation.

While he was aware of the risks, Simpson said he hoped voters in his district would consider the sum of his voting record, not just this one vote.

That’s what representative democracy is all about. In the Senate, Craig Pridemore of Vancouver made a similar principled stand, again, knowing the political risks coming from a district that overwhelmingly supported I-747:

“I’m a former county commissioner. I know the impacts this will have on local government, law enforcement abilities, and all of the other critical local services. I can’t vote yes for that,” he says.

No doubt Pridemore and Simpson’s opponents will attack them as arrogant and out of touch, but this is exactly the sort of principled leadership voters so often decry as missing in our elected officials. If we want our legislators to mimic the polls rather than make informed decisions, we might as well just eliminate the Legislature entirely.