Goldy

Yup, that’s the kinda “conscious-driven independent” who currently serves Washington’s 8th Congressional District. The kinda congressman who apologizes to fellow Republicans for voting with his constituents and against drilling in ANWR… but of course votes for drilling when the vote really counts. The kinda congressman who votes the way the Republican leadership tells him to vote, because he knows they are trying to protect him. The kinda congressman who is comfortable voting against education funding because he knows his leadership is putting together a bill to cover his ass. The kinda congressman who jokingly compares Democrats to the Green River Killer, trivializing the deaths of dozens of women… deaths that occurred on his watch.

And this is the type of leadership Darcy Burner would bring to Congress:

No wonder the national response to our Burn Bush for Burner campaign has been so overwhelming: over 1,420 contributers giving over $47,000 in just a day and a half! (Blue Majority totals included.) Wow!

That is simply amazing, but it’s still less than half-way toward our ambitious $100,000 target. This is not just about supporting a progressive netroots candidate like Darcy Burner when she needs us most — it’s about sending a message to other Republican candidates nationwide that they bring Bush into their district at their own peril. If we can meet or beat our target — if Darcy can possibly raise more money from Bush’s visit than Reichert — then we will have effectively neutralized the GOP’s most effective fundraiser, potentially costing other Republican incumbents millions of dollars by making the rewards of a Bush visit simply not worth the political and monetary price.

So if you haven’t already given, please give today. Every little bit counts.

Help Darcy Burn Bush: $

As for my own, personal HA targets, it’s been equally amazing. Yesterday I asked for ten HA readers to match my own $100 donation (as most of you know, a financial stretch for me,) plus a total of 25 contributions of any amount over the next day. One day later we’re an encouraging half-way towards my $100 matching challenge… but you blew my one-day 25-person contribution request right out of the water. So far, 56 HA readers have contributed over $1,700! To put that in perspective, that ranks HA number five nationwide after powerhouses Daily Kos, Atrios, AmericaBlog and Blue Majority! And on a contribution-per-reader ration, nobody else even comes close.

So here’s what I want to do. Let’s keep my $100 matching challenge unchanged, but let’s shoot for a total of 100 HA contributors by midnight Sunday. Give whatever can — five or ten bucks is enough — and let’s show Bush, Reichert and the Republican and Democratic establishment that people-powered politics can beat a handful of rich folk any day of the week.

No doubt the Seattle Times editorial board doesn’t like taxes, as evidenced by the sarcasm they ooze in commenting on Tuesday’s decisive approval of the two King County Parks levies:

Yes, yes, everyone take a bow and gush over how much we need parks and how much we use them. It is all true, but that doesn’t make it any wiser that the county has become dependent on levies to run its park system.

Well, yeah, I think most tax structure experts would agree that it isn’t particularly wise to depend on dedicated levies to run our parks or anything else. But rather than presenting a constructive discussion of the circumstances that have led us to this situation, the Times merely adopts the lazy, anti-tax meme of blaming elected officials for failing “to make other, unpleasant budget cuts.”

Such as? Over 70-percent of King County’s general fund goes to the criminal justice system — a number typical for counties statewide. Shall we empty the jails? Cut funds for the courts or the sheriffs department? Slash salaries in the prosecutors office? Where’s the fat?

The Times doesn’t know, and they haven’t bothered to look. The editors have the reporting staff of the largest newspaper in the state at their disposal, yet I don’t see the expose on all the waste, fraud and abuse apparently sucking King County coffers dry. And I also don’t see a serious discussion of the reason the county was forced to go to special purpose parks levies in the first place: I-747’s arbitrary and unsustainable 101-percent limit on growth in revenue from existing construction.

The Times continues to editorialize on local property taxes as if they understand what they’re talking about, but I see no evidence of this from the cursory and muddled nature of their discourse. By setting a limit factor on revenue growth well below that of inflation, I-747 intentionally erodes the real-dollar value of regular levies over time. Indeed, the whole point of the initiative was to force local taxing districts to resort to special purpose voter-approved levies like the type the Times now disses; this is exactly the kinda “direct democracy” that Tim Eyman professes, and that the Times sacredly defends.

In fact, the only way for a district to secure a stable inflation-adjusted revenue stream under existing statutes is to run a multi-year lid lift, like the parks levies, which not only permits the district to replace the 101-percent limit factor with a more reasonable growth index, but also specifically requires that the levy be dedicated to a special purpose, and not supplant existing revenue in the general fund.

Ask nearly any government budget writer what they’d prefer, the current system that routinely forces the district to run special purpose levies, or a more reasonable limit factor — say, inflation or 4-percent, whichever is lower — and dollars to donuts they’ll choose the latter.

That’s the issue the Times should be discussing. But they don’t. Or they won’t. Or maybe, they can’t.

Last cycle it took an immense amount of local support for Darcy Burner to prove herself a national netroots candidate. This cycle, she has that national support right from the start.

Yesterday we launched an ambitious $100,000 fundraising drive to counter President Bush’s $10,000/person funder for Dave Reichert, and to coincide with Darcy Burner’s Virtual Town Hall on Iraq, Monday Aug 27 at 3PM. And while 380 individuals have already contributed over $15,000 via our Act Blue page alone, I’m hoping HA readers will be more than just a tiny asterisk in the final totals.

To that end I have personally donated $100 (and you all know I don’t have a lot of cash to spare,) and I’m hoping 10 of you will make it worth my while by matching it dollar for dollar. And for those who can’t afford to be so generous (or unlike me, are prudent enough not to make a donation you can’t afford,) ten bucks isn’t so much to ask, is it? I’d like to see at least 25 HA donations over the next day, in appreciation of the generous support we’re getting from our friends in the national netroots.

Send a message. Make a difference. Please give generously to Darcy Burner.

Ambassador Joe Wilson asks you to support Darcy Burner

George W. Bush is coming to Seattle Aug. 27 to raise money for his friend and ally, Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-08), and to thank him for his unwavering support of the president’s policy in Iraq. Reichert hopes to raise over half a million dollars from this $10,000/person event, but this is our opportunity to send a message Reichert and his fellow Republicans that toeing the Bush line on Iraq just won’t pay off.

Over the next five days the Darcy Burner campaign will be releasing a series of videos, asking for your participation in a Virtual Town Hall forum on Iraq, scheduled to coincide with the Bush fundraiser. Meanwhile a coalition of national and local blogs is launching a coordinated drive to help Darcy counter the Bush visit. Our ambitious goal: $100,000 in netroots contributions to the Darcy Burner campaign between now and the end of the drive.

Sure it’s a lot of money, but money seems to be the only political currency Republicans understand. Reaching our target will not only send a strong message that we want our troops out of Iraq, it will also teach other Republicans that bringing in Bush isn’t worth the financial and political cost, thus neutralizing the GOP’s most effective fundraiser.

We have created a special Act Blue page just for this event, or you can contribute directly via this embedded form:

Help Darcy Burn Bush: $

As we’ve learned from several recent disappointing votes, it is not enough to just send Democrats to Washington — we need to send progressive Democrats who will stand up for the values and concerns of their constituents. So please dig deep into your pockets and give generously before the Bush fundraising juggernaut gets off the ground, and rubberstamp Republicans like Reichert get out to an insurmountable lead.

Oh man that’s funny.

It was the talk of conservative talk radio Monday and Tuesday, after the Seattle Times published an editorial Sunday with the dire headline “Warning: New taxes will be permanent.” Only problem was, the Times got it wrong. Dead wrong.

A change in the state law regarding property taxes has silently transformed what have been temporary tax increases into permanent ones.

We say “silently” because the Legislature, which made the change, did not name what it was doing in the bill title or the bill reports. The change is something every voter should keep in mind as the election arrives Tuesday and more new taxes are proposed in November.

Hmm. You’d think before the state’s largest newspaper prints an editorial impugning the integrity and/or competency of the Legislature, it might have given legislators or their staffers an opportunity to explain themselves, huh? And you’d think just maybe, before warning voters that “new taxes will be permanent” — just days ahead of crucial levy votes in yesterday’s election — the Times might want to double- or even triple-check their facts, right?

But the Times didn’t. As a result, thousands of voters went to the polls yesterday angry and confused, and had any of the regional levy votes been close, the Times’ factual error and lack of editorial judgment could have flipped the outcome.

On the surface, Senate Bill 5498 allows fire districts and other special-purpose taxing districts to ask voters for multiyear tax increases. It is the same authority cities and counties already had.

That’s the one part of the editorial the Times got right, except for their implication that there is something nefarious beneath the surface. There is in fact nothing beneath the surface.

The nonobvious part of the bill changed the old rule that unless a tax levy said specifically it was permanent, it wasn’t. Under the old rule, after a levy expired, Washington’s 1-percent property-tax limit would be set as if the levy had never happened. If voters didn’t renew the levy, their taxes would go down.

And what makes this change particularly “nonobvious” is that it just isn’t there. Here’s the “old rule” the Times talks about:

(2) After a levy authorized pursuant to this section is made, the dollar amount of such levy shall be used for the purpose of computing the limitations for subsequent levies provided for in this chapter, except as provided in subsections (3) and (4) of this section.

That’s also the text of the new rule, except it now references subsection (5). What this means is that the default behavior of a lid lift is now, and always has been, to permanently raise the base on which the limit factor is calculated… except as otherwise provided. That was the default under the old rule. That is the default under the new rule.

Under SB 5498 — a governor’s-request bill passed by large majorities in both houses — unless a tax levy says it is temporary, its authority is permanent. So says the Department of Revenue in an official memo to county assessors.

A) It wasn’t a “governor’s-request bill.” It just wasn’t. B) If the Times’ editors don’t understand the difference between a “permanent” lid lift and a “temporary” lid lift, they really shouldn’t be editorializing on the issue without thoroughly researching the subject. All they’ve succeeded in doing is making an already confusing issue even more confusing, but I’ll try to clear things up.

The whole purpose of a permanent lid lift is to permanently reset the base on which the limit factor is calculated. For example, lets say a fire district levied $100,000 in taxes from existing construction in 2003, the year I-747 went into effect. Under the initiative’s arbitrary 101-percent annual limit factor, the maximum dollar amount the district could levy by 2007 would be $104,060. But due to inflation, the purchasing power of this revenue is really only equivalent to $91,920 in 2003 dollars. Year after year, the fire district would steadily lose purchasing power, and be forced to steadily cut back services.

Or, the district could put before voters a permanent lid lift with a dollar rate that would increase total revenues to $115,000 in 2008, a figure that would pretty much reset the district’s revenue to 2003 levels in inflation-adjusted dollars. The 101-percent limit factor would subsequently be calculated on this new base, but over the years, that too would be eaten away by inflation. Better than slowly starving to death, but not a stable means of securing a reliable revenue stream for longterm planning. And also, quite costly. According to public testimony, South King Fire and Rescue has spent over half a million dollars over the past six years running a string of successful permanent lid lifts.

Under the old rules, counties, cities and towns had an additional tool at their disposal. They could instead choose to put before voters a multi-year temporary lid lift (up to six years) which states a dollar rate for the first year (just like a permanent lid lift,) but also specifies an index to be used as the limit factor for subsequent years of the levy, superseding I-747’s 101-percent limit. Each of the parks levies passed yesterday did exactly that, raising an additional $0.05 per $1000 of assessed value in the first year, and authorizing annual increases on that amount indexed to inflation. The parks levies thus produce a stable revenue stream of inflation-adjusted dollars throughout their six-year term.

But these lid lifts are temporary under both the old and the new rules, and when they expire the basis for calculating revenue limits under I-747 reverts to the maximum amount it would have been had the parks levies never been passed. It appears the Times kinda-sorta understands this, but then at the same time kinda-sorta doesn’t:

To be deemed temporary, a measure has to say when the tax expires, and it has to limit itself to specific purchases.

Right, and the parks levies do both these things.

Otherwise, in the year after the last tax increase authorized by voters, the new tax limit is 1 percent higher. Even if voters don’t renew the levy, the taxing authority can keep pushing taxes up — at a slower rate, but still up.

Poorly phrased, but um… what’s your point? That’s what permanent lid lifts have always been intended to do. You know, the kind of permanent lid lift the parks levies are not.

King County Assessor Scott Noble, who drew our attention to this, has looked over the 11 property-tax measures that will be on county ballots Tuesday: two for King County parks, two for Redmond, one for a hospital district and six for fire districts.

“All of them are permanent increases in new levy capacity,” he says.

Um… no they’re not, and the Times being misled confused by Scott Noble being misled confused by a confusing DOR memo is no excuse for a string of sentences that clearly contradict each other. To be deemed temporary, a lid lift must limit itself to a period of time or a specific purpose, and the parks levies clearly do that. The new rules specifically state that “except as otherwise provided in an approved ballot measure under this section, after the expiration of a limited period … or the satisfaction of a limited purpose … subsequent levies shall be computed as if … the limited proposition … had not been approved.” The parks levies are temporary, and temporary levies by definition do not permanently increase levy capacity.

How can I be so sure? Well for starts I, um… read the fucking bill. And the RCW. And the WAC. And in the Times defense, this stuff is pretty damn confusing. So I called the House Finance Committee and asked a staffer to step me through it. He did. And he stands by the succinctly worded summary in the final bill report:

Any property taxing district with regular levying authority may seek multi-year lid lifts over a six year period in the same manner as counties, cities, and towns.

That was the clear legislative intent of the bill, and that is how committee staffers expect it to be written into the rules.

Of course, to the Times’ demerit, this stuff is pretty damn confusing, and so I simply cannot believe that they didn’t ask a legislator or staffer to step them through it before running such a hyperbolic and misleading editorial. The Times clearly considers foul-mouthed bloggers like me to be unserious, but at least I took the time to do my homework. Meanwhile Times editorial page editor James Vesely only compounds his paper’s error in a separate column, denouncing “a sneaky tax” he clearly doesn’t understand:

Voters should also pay attention to The Times editorial opinion on the fourth page of this section about an obscure change in state law that turns temporary taxes into permanent ones. Instead of asking for a four- or six-year levy increase on your property taxes, the new law takes the opposite view — that taxes are permanent unless they are specifically noted as temporary. It turns the approval of a levy from something voters see as binding for a few years into a perpetual tax that can be renewed, but at always higher levels.

No, no, no. Multi-year lid lifts are temporary by default, and remain so under the amended statute. Furthermore, Vesely clearly doesn’t understand the relative roles of permanent vs. temporary lid lifts, and now neither do his readers.

Sure, the lid lift statutes are complicated and confusing; hell, I didn’t get it right the first couple times I read through SB 5498. But the Times’ editors didn’t just get it wrong, they implied ill intent. Had the editors been strong supporters of the parks levies (or levies in general,) one wonders if they would have been so quick to jump to conclusions… or so eager to publish them just days before the vote?

Either way, the tone and timing of this editorial was simply irresponsible, and as such it deserves a retraction as prominently placed as the editorial itself. I eagerly await Sunday’s op/ed page.

Yesterday was a pretty damn fine day for Seattle-area Democrats in general and progressives in particular… though you never want to see your party blow an opportunity like the opportunity the Dems have blown against DUI-damaged King County Councilmember Jane Hague. So in tribute to the suddenly high-profile KC Council District 6 race — and the missed deadline that has made Richard Pope the Democratic Party standard bearer — I’ll be posting HA’s official primary endorsements and predictions, sometime later this afternoon. (I think you’ll find my predictions pretty dead-on.)

My election night take-away in a nutshell? Bill Sherman has a clear path to defeating Dan Satterberg for King County Prosecutor, the numbers favor Alec Fisken and Gael Tarleton bringing a reformist majority to the Seattle Port Commission, and in passing the two parks levies by comfortable margins, voters once again prove that they like paying for government services that deliver the services they like. Oh… and the 2-to-1 Democratic preference in our pick-a-party primary shows just how marginalized the King County GOP has become.

Republicans tend to turn out heavier than Dems in primaries — particularly low-profile, off-year primaries like this one — so the party-identification split is likely closer to 70-30. “Nonpartisan” local races have served as a wilderness preserve for endangered Eastside Republicans, but look for identifiably progressive candidates to make huge inroads this November.

My apologies to King County Councilmember Jane Hague. A few weeks ago I abused her for a fundraising letter in which she warned that her opponent would engage in a the “politics of personal destruction.” Considering the 25-to-1 cash advantage she held over the combined Democratic field (perennial gadfly Richard Pope, and officially anointed write-in candidate Brad Larssen,) I bluntly characterized Hague’s letter as fanciful, unnecessary and dishonest: “Hague is a liar, shamelessly fleecing her fellow Republicans for money that would be better spent elsewhere.”

Well, who knew…?

Metropolitan King County Councilmember Jane Hague faces a Redmond court appearance Aug. 29 on a driving-under-the-influence charge, according to court records.

Neither Hague nor her attorney, William Kirk, could be reached for comment about the July 16 charge.

It’s not so much the politics of “personal destruction” as it is the politics of self-destruction (Mike McGavick style,) but either way it looks like Hague’s eventual opponent will have plenty of ammunition — and justification — to go negative against Hague in November. If only he has the resources to get his message out.

I bet there are some name-brand Dems who are kicking themselves for turning down the opportunity to take down Hague.

Christmas isn’t coming early this year, but primary election day is: today is WA’s first ever August primary! So if you haven’t already cast your ballot, get thee to a polling place.

And stay tuned for live coverage of today’s premier race, the hotly contested battle between Richard Pope and Democratic Party endorsed write-in candidate Brad Larssen, as they fight for the right to get their ass kicked by King County Councilmember Jane Hague in the general. (I know my fellow Dems would prefer I talk up Larssen, to which I say: show me the money!)

I am looking for somebody with expertise in developing WordPress templates, widgets and plugins, who is willing to do some work for me in exchange for little more than the vague promise of future glory and/or potential remuneration should our mutual efforts eventually result in future glory and/or remuneration. The project involves developing a heavily widgetized template, custom widgets, and modifications to the WordPress drag-and-drop sidebar/widget admin tools. If done right, it would be way cool.

Please contact me via email if you’re interested and qualified. Thanks.

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

7PM: Got votes?
Tuesday is Washington state’s first ever August primary election, and that’s got a lot of pols worried that turnout will be even lighter than usual for an off-year primary. Assistant Secretary of State Nick Handy will join me by phone to give us the latest forecast, and predict whether vote-by-mail will help make up the slack (you know, in those counties that have all vote-by-mail.) Then Sandeep Kaushik will call in to make one last pitch for the King County parks levies. Have you voted yet? Do you plan to vote? And if not, why do you hate America?

8PM: Lose pounds, earn euros?
When King County banned trans fat and required nutritional labeling in restaurants, many critics complained that this was nanny-statism gone too far. So I wonder what these folks would have to say about the town in Italy that’s planning to pay its residents 250 euros ($350) to lose weight and keep it off? What would it take for you to slim down? Healthy menu choices? Better nutritional information? A $350 bribe?

9PM: HA says taxes are too low? Are we stoned or something?
Fellow HA blogger Carl will be joining me in the studio to explain his controversial assertion that our taxes are actually too low! Is he high or something? Well, that might be a better question to pose to fellow HA blogger Lee, who will also be joining me in the studio to give us a first hand report from HempFest 2007.

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

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
My show will be preempted again by a Seahawks preseason game next Saturday.

Oh, don’t get excited, it’s only for tonight. And next Saturday. And a couple other night games during this Seahawks season. I’ll be back on Sunday night, spouting my anti-America hate talk.

About a week and a half ago I pissed off both righty and lefty readers alike by daring to question popular economic orthodoxy. A worldwide credit crunch was threatening to take the broader economy down the crapper with it, yet the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee unanimously refused to cut interest rates, acknowledging “downside risks to growth,” but restating that their “predominant policy concern remains the risk that inflation will fail to moderate as expected.” To which I replied, “fuck inflation.”

The FOMC was impassive at the prospect of 2 million American families losing their homes, but once the credit crunch threatened to tank Wall Street they leaped into action, first flooding the markets with liquidity, and today slashing interest rates by half a percent.

Stocks soared Friday, propelling the Dow Jones industrials up more than 180 points, after the Federal Reserve, acknowledging that the stock market’s plunge posed a threat to the economy, slashed its discount rate by a half percentage point.

[…] The Fed cut the discount rate to 5.75 percent from 6.25 percent, declaring that “downside risks” to the economy have increased appreciably.

Again, I gloat — not so much because I predicted the necessity of a rate cut (I could’a been lucky,) but because my original post clearly doesn’t paint me out to be the moron so many of my critics obviously wish me to be. Sorry to disappoint.

We can argue the economics all we want (and I’m sure we will,) and I stand by my original assertion that a little inflation can actually be a good thing for the majority of Americans who owe money on mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards, etc. But my initial reaction was mostly prompted by the Fed’s decades-long inflation policy, which I described as “obsessively narrow at best, and intergenerational warfare at the worst.” Ten days after restating that its primary concern was inflation, the FOMC dramatically changes course. In that short time have the “downside risks” to the economy really “increased appreciably”…? Or did the volatility on Wall Street finally get the Feds to see beyond their inflationary blinders?

I don’t pretend to be an economist, and I freely admit that every single member of the FOMC has more relevant expertise in the tip of their little finger than I have in my entire body. But science morphs into ideology when we fail to question orthodoxy… and under those conditions even the experts can sometimes make mistakes.

TANGENTIAL ASIDE:
I’m back.

Jack McClellan is one twisted dude. He’s the sicko who posts photos of children on his website, where he chronicles the best public places to stake out little girls, or “LGs.” While McLellan emphatically claims he’s never inappropriately touched a child, his obsessive public fantasizing certainly pushes the limits of the First Amendment, and demands extraordinarily close scrutiny from law enforcement officials.

McClellan is under a restraining order prohibiting him from loitering within 30 feet of minors, and as a father of an LG, news of McClellan’s arrest yesterday outside a UCLA child development center elicited no empathy from me. Yet I couldn’t help but notice the curious way the AP wire story was reported.

As of 9AM PST this morning, a quick Google News search found over 200 published articles on McClellan’s arrest, and in nearly every single one the headline refers to him as a “pedophile” or “admitted pedophile” or “self-described pedophile” as in the Los Angeles Times headline, “Pedophile arrested outside UCLA child development building.”

That is, every single headline except that in the Seattle Times, which had its own unique take on McClellan’s dangerous perversion: “Controversial blogger is arrested near children.”

“Oh no, a controversial blogger?” I thought, reading the headline, “Which of my trusted colleagues turned out to be a disgusting pervert? Hmm… Postman is down in California for a few days, perhaps it’s him?” But no, it turned out to be not a blogger at all, but rather a “self-proclaimed pedophile.”

Over two hundred other papers saw this wire story and described the perp as a pedophile, but to the fearful headline writers at the Seattle Times, McClellan’s most disturbing biographical detail is that he blogs. How many readers clicked on this misleading headline, expecting the juicy details of a well-known blogger brought down by scandal? I sure did. And how many righties turned away disappointed to learn the “blogger” in question wasn’t an evil netroots leader like Markos or Atrios or even a lesser local blogger like me?

To primarily describe McClellan as a “controversial blogger” would be like introducing Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen as a “dog shooter.” In fact it’s worse, since blogging on its own is a neutral activity, whereas shooting your neighbor’s dog is both a heinous and criminal act.

That the Seattle Times would imply that McClellan’s infamy stems from his blogging rather than his pedophilia says something about the paper’s own fearful approach to new media competition. But it also provides a warning to which the blogging community should take heed: if the old media is willing to spin the arrest of pedophile into a headline about a fallen blogger, just imagine what they’ll do given the whiff of a real netroots scandal. No doubt there are some amongst the broader netroots community with skeletons in their closets or ethical and/or legal lapses in their future. As we gain readers and influence the media and political establishments will surely attempt to use their vast resources to defend their turf. And they won’t stop at misleading headlines.

What?! You mean a group of Oklahoma City billionaires, desperate to bring a major league team to their home city, had no intention of keeping the Sonics in Seattle when they purchased the team? Who’d a thunk?

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma City energy tycoon says the group that purchased the Seattle SuperSonics hopes to move the NBA franchise to Oklahoma City, but he acknowledges the team could make more money in the Pacific Northwest.

“But we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle; we hoped to come here,” Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, told The Journal Record for a story in Monday’s edition. “We know it’s a little more difficult financially here in Oklahoma City, but we think it’s great for the community and if we could break even, we’d be thrilled.”

[…] “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.”

That’s right, Clay Bennett — the guy the easy marks at the Seattle Times editorial board judged to be negotiating in good faith — “artfully and skillfully … made off with the team.” Hoity-toity editorialists comfort themselves by dismissing bloggers like me as unserious, but they do their readers a disservice when they infuse their coverage with the kind of naivete that comes from their solemn dedication to establishmentarian objectivity:

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.

No, I guess it was never a foregone conclusion, but with Bennett and the other owners willing to lose money in Oklahoma City — in fact, preferring it over making a modest profit in Seattle — it would take a helluva sweet deal to keep the team in the region. You know, something like a free half-billion dollar arena from which they keep all the revenues. Bennett and his buddies never negotiated in good faith (hell, they never even negotiated,) they always intended to move the team to Oklahoma City, and they laughed at the naive, big city rubes who ever believed otherwise. You don’t get to be a billionaire by taking the first deal slapped on the table, yet that’s exactly what the Sonics asked WA state and local officials to do.

Unless the NBA intercedes for the good of the league, the Sonics are moving to Oklahoma City. All the talk thus far has been little more than a charade to keep hopeful fans in their seats until the Key Arena lease expires in 2010.