Goldy

A couple weeks ago I criticized a Seattle Times editorial urging the state Supreme Court to force Sound Transit to pay off its bonds and stop collecting the car tabs that I-776 attempted to eliminate. I argued that the Times editorial board was wrong both on policy and on points of law.

But in closing, I also took a swipe at the Times’ penchant for instructing courts how to rule on the law:

The Times has an established history of attempting to influence the courts, but personally, I’ve always felt that judicial decisions should be based purely on statute and the constitution, free from the pressure generated by special interest groups like, you know… editorial boards.

Well, they’re at it again.

In a Sunday editorial the Times chides justices for ruling that property owners are “not entitled to actual individualized notice” of condemnation hearings. The Times admits that “the law is fuzzy on it,” but criticizes the court for siding with Sound Transit:

Notice of the property to be condemned should also have been delivered to the people who own it. “Due process of law” should require no less.

As a policy issue, I cannot argue with the Times’ conclusion. If it were my property being considered for condemnation, I would damn well expect to receive an official notice of the hearing.

But… courts don’t decide policy issues, they decide legal issues… so rather than berating justices for ruling based on the statute, the Times should be urging the Legislature to change it.

And I most emphatically object to the headline the Times affixed to the editorial: “More arbitrary taking of land by the court.”

Arbitrary or no, the court did not take anybody’s land… Sound Transit did. All the court did was rule that Sound Transit acted within the constraints of current law in doing so.

Such a grossly slanted headline is particularly irresponsible in the context of the looming battle over the Farm Bureau’s developer windfall initiative. At the very least, such misleading rhetoric fans the flames of the property rights folk. At its worse, one wonders if the Times is telegraphing an intention to aggressively support the Farm Bureau in its efforts?

I do not blame the Times for being disappointed by the court’s ruling, but reasonable people can disagree over the interpretation of “fuzzy” law. And to use this decision as an opportunity to label the court a bunch of arbitrary land stealers, adds nothing constructive to the public debate… and suggests ulterior motives. If Frank Blethen and his editorial board wish to advocate a particular policy position, they should at least be forthright in doing so.

To my friends in the traditional media: notice has been served:

1. The Washington Farm Bureau is shamelessly lying to you in support of their dangerous, land use initiative, and
2. Us bloggers are going to make you look awfully damn foolish if you repeat these lies unchallenged.

Noemie Maxwell has posted an absolute, must-read piece over on WashBlog, dissecting just some of the lies with which Washington Farm Bureau President Steve Appel peppered his initiative campaign kickoff speech. Noemie presents a solid bit of sleuthing that pulls the veil from the Farm Bureau’s efforts to mislead the public on this very important issue; it’s a tad wonkish, but a fascinating read.

And I especially encourage reporters and columnists who plan to cover this initiative to pay close attention, because I promise you that this is the type of relentless fact checking local bloggers will pursue throughout this initiative campaign… and if you fail to do same, we will do everything in our power to mercilessly expose your lack of professionalism.

In this particular instance, Noemie focuses on the claims of Bruce Ritter, a small landowner whose plight Appel highlights as typical of thousands of others across the state. That the head of the Farm Bureau could not find an actual farmer to serve as his property rights poster boy was the first thing to touch off Noemie’s suspicions. But …

Odder than this choice of a representative landowner, and more troubling, is the inaccuracy in Mr. Appels’ statement about the Ritter property. Half of the assertions made by Mr. Appel are easily debunked. The other half are not substantiated and are, in fact, shown by the public record to almost certainly be untrue.

Noemie then proceeds to debunk Appel’s assertion that under the proposed Thurston County Critical Areas Ordinance, Appel would lose the use of 90% of two adjoining, 5-acre parcels, his “mobile home, horse barn, well, and septic system all regulated out of existence… his land would be virtually worthless.”

Yeah. Right.

In fact, as Noemie points out, the proposed regulations are public record, and they clearly state that not only are existing structures grandfathered, a “reasonable accommodation” of up to 5000 square feet is allowed per parcel.

Noemie then delves into testimony before the Thurston County Planning Commission, and other public records, and easily discovers further holes in the Ritter anecdote. In fact, a good portion of Ritter’s property is covered by wetlands, and thus development was already restricted under current regulations at the time Ritter purchased the properties in 1995. Thus the poster boy for the Farm Bureau’s initiative is a non-agricultural landowner who wants to obtain via initiative development rights on critical wetlands that he did not have at the time he purchased the property.

And how have these claims been reported in the press? Well, looking at an article in the Seattle P-I, exactly as the Farm Bureau cynically intended:

He points to people such as Bruce Ritter, who owns two adjacent 5-acre lots in Thurston County crisscrossed with wetlands and streams. Under proposed ordinances, he wouldn’t be able to build on 9 acres, Boyer said.

“When you draw all these buffers around these waterways, suddenly he’s left with no usable land, and the home and horse barn and well and septic system that he’s been sitting on for years are literally regulated out of existence,” he said.

This was a statement of fact, not of opinion, and thus the P-I had a professional obligation to fact check it before substantiating it in print. The fact that reporter Jennifer Langston cloaked the statement in attribution is no excuse, for it is demonstrably false, and thus should have been exposed as such, if repeated at all.

When Langston repeats such untruths, unchallenged, she becomes — willing or not — a collaborator with those who are trying to mislead the public for political gain. Indeed, our daily newspapers and other traditional media outlets are the essential cogs in the propaganda machine that transforms calculated lies into common knowledge: Ritter’s misleading testimony is cited by Appel who is cited by the P-I which is cited by others as an authoritative, objective source. This is the news equivalent of money-laundering, and it requires the passive assistance of professional journalists, if not their actual complicit cooperation.

Don’t get me wrong… I admire the profession. I am an avid news consumer, and I personally like and respect nearly every journalist I have met. I even consider some of them my friends. Hell… I’d kill for a shot as a paid columnist at a regional daily.

But this initiative is simply too important to hold my tongue when my friends and (gasp) colleagues screw up!

So notice has been served. Noemie and I and others will be scrutinizing every word you write on this subject between now and November, and I encourage all my fellow bloggers to link to Noemie’s post, and announce to your readers that you will be joining us in our campaign to keep this an honest debate.

Well, even if ignorance of the law was an excuse, Ann Coulter is going to have a tough time arguing it in her defense:

A Palm Beach poll worker says he tried to help GOP-loving pundit Ann Coulter vote in the right precinct last week. But, Jim Whited says, Coulter dashed out of the polling place when he told her she needed to file a change of address.

“I even ran out after her,” he says. “But she was fast.”

Later, elections records show, Coulter cast her ballot 2 miles up the road

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Don’t you people have anything better to do? Apparently not.

The official story, as faithfully repeated in the press, is that Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot his hunting companion, Harry Whittington, from a distance of 90 feet. But a forensic firearms expert who prefers to remain anonymous, tells me that this account seems highly unlikely.

Judging from published reports of the type of firearm and ammunition used, the tightly focused pattern of pellet wounds on the victim, and the severity of the injuries, my source says that the distance between shooter and victim was likely closer to 20 feet. And as it turns out, my anonymous expert is not alone in questioning Cheney’s story.

According to Slate, Whittington’s own local hunting buddies are skeptical about the official story that he was shot at a distance of 30 yards.

Hunters at the Vaughn Building are skeptical. The hunt took place on a cold, windy afternoon. Whittington and his fellow hunters were probably wearing warm clothing

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Well, the Legislature may have failed to act, but at least Governor Gregoire has showed some leadership when it comes to teen gambling addiction.

After a failed attempt to raise the state gambling age from 18 to 21, and the controversial disclosure of a WA State Lottery marketing plan that bluntly targets teens, Gov. Gregoire has instructed the Lottery, in no uncertain terms, to develop a new marketing plan that ensures that “we are not, in any way, marketing lottery products to youth.”

The directive comes in a Feb. 10 letter (PDF) addressed to Washington State Lottery Director Chris Liu, and posted to the website of problem gambling advocacy group Second Chance Washington.

“Because there may be little to no difference between marketing and advertising strategies directed at teenagers under 18, and those 18 and 19 years old, I ask that you refrain from using tools that entice those young adults to play. My concern is that, by following such a path, we would increase the likelihood of younger teenagers becoming involved in gambling at an age when they do not fully understand the risks involved.

I understand that this may mean a reduction in revenue from young adults who can play legally. In the interest of protecting more vulnerable children and teenagers, as I believe we have a responsibility to do, I am willing to take that chance.”

I know I don’t get much support in my comment threads for my personal advocacy for raising the gambling age, but I wonder how anybody can oppose the governor’s new directive? It is one thing for the Lottery to meet the demands of an existing market, it is another thing entirely for it to focus its substantial marketing, advertising and product development budget on addicting a new generation of youth.

Problem gambling is the nation’s fastest growing teen addiction, and teen problem gamblers use tobacco, alcohol and other drugs more than any other group. The Lottery’s own prevalence studies strongly suggest that lottery tickets often serve as a gateway towards other, higher stakes forms of gambling, and lifelong addiction.

While Second Chance Washington may have failed this session in its efforts to raise the gambling age, it deserves a ton of credit for raising the profile of teen problem gambling. If not for their hard work, and the commonsense judgement of Gov. Gregoire, the Lottery would still be spending our tax dollars promoting gambling to kids.

Longtime local blogger (Peace Tree Farm) and HA regular N in Seattle has a post over on Washblog, announcing the 43rd Legislative District’s experiment in “open platform building.” During the week prior to the March 4 precinct caucuses — the Dem’s official first step towards building a party platform — the 43rd will be holding a series of three platform forums to invite more open and direct grassroots participation in the process. As N explains:

The hierarchical structure of 2004 — precincts elect delegates to the LD and county, LDs elect delegates to the Congressional District, CDs elect national delegates — worked well when the ultimate goal was to choose a presidential candidate. But when we’re trying to work on specific points of the party platform, to refine proposed positions on a dozen big issues, starting the process with a couple hundred tiny groups in front of a couple hundred blank slates doesn’t sound like the best way to start.

What N is trying to politely say is that the platform portion of traditional caucuses sucks. Usually, each precinct is just dominated by some loudmouth like me with a bug up his ass about some issue or another, and the LD ends up debating an OCD-like manifesto that reads more like a hijacker’s list of demands than a practical political agenda.

So I’m really looking forward to seeing how the 43rd’s experiment works out, and while I don’t live in the district, I’ll probably stop by the Feb. 26 forum, if only to hear the keynote speech by Congressman Jim McDermott.

For more information, including dates, locations and forum agendas, please read N’s full post at Washblog.

UPDATE:
Writing in the comment thread, Emmett O’Connell informs me that Thurston County is planning similar platform forums. More information here.

One of the many bills that died as the clock ran out in the state House yesterday was HB 2872, which in its amended form would have raised the legal gambling age from 18 to 21 at card rooms and mini-casinos, and would have instructed the state Lottery not to market to teens.

It was a simple, straight forward proposal — backed up by science — that garnered broad, bipartisan support in both houses… yet failed to reach the floor in either. In the Senate the bill was blocked by Sen. Margarita Prentice for reasons only she can explain. In the House… well… I’m not exactly sure what happened in the House, but clearly it was not a priority of Frank Chopp and the Democratic leadership, who opted not to give it a vote.

With little or no public opposition from the gambling industry, I had naively expected some version of this bill to pass this session, but the legislative process is a complex one, and thus often both infuriating and disappointing. But perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of the process is that while a bill’s merits are loudly trumpeted by its sponsors at its birth, a bill’s death is most often left shrouded in the mysteries of the caucus. Good bills die without explanation from those responsible (usually, a committee chair,) and it is this lack of transparency that encourages speculation about ulterior motives.

Personally, I have my own suspicions that (gasp) “politics” may have played a role in the bill’s demise — a not unreasonable thing to suspect of politicians — and I have been openly critical of some of the legislator’s motives. And yet, I not only profess a profound belief in the wisdom of our (small “r”) republican form of government, I am also an ardent supporter of the (big “D”) Democrats who control the state Legislature.

So if a legislative booster such as myself can be inspired to voice suspicions, imagine the paranoid fantasies of some of the anti-government folk on the right. The problem as I see it, is that not only does the leadership do a lousy job of explaining their decision making process, they often make no effort whatsoever.

This may have sufficed in the past when it was almost guaranteed that most bills would die with little if any public scrutiny, for the Olympia press corps operates under time and column-inch constraints that leaves little room for in depth coverage of any but the most controversial or dramatic bills. But times have changed, and bloggers such as myself do not have the same constraints, nor follow the same journalistic rules. Lacking the time, cooperation or even the inclination to conduct a thorough interview, I am not above running with analysis, speculation, and opinion, rather than pure factual reporting. (As if such a beast actually exists.)

The point is, as chair of the Ways & Means Committee, the senate rules give Sen. Prentice the prerogative to kill nearly any bill, without explanation or public comment. But she does so at her own risk, for if she and her colleagues refuse to reveal the back room dealings and other machinations behind their legislative triage, then bloggers like me can’t help but fill the void with speculation. And increasingly the most impassioned and active voters on both sides of the political spectrum are getting their news from bloggers like me and our evil-twin counterparts on the right.

Professional initiative sponsor and renowned horse’s ass Tim Eyman likes to justify his own existence by highlighting real or imagined examples of legislative arrogance, and in truth, many of our legislators are arrogant… even some of those I admire most. After all, it takes a certain amount of arrogance just to run for public office.

But if our legislators want to instill public trust and confidence in the legislative process, they must start making this process more transparent. “Because I know better,” “because I can,” and just plain “because” may be all that is needed to exercise power in the halls of the Capitol, but it is hard to blame voters for resorting to the initiative process when these are the only explanations offered the public.

The gambling age bill died in the Senate Ways & Means Committee without a vote, and without explanation; the House version made it through all its committees, but was allowed to die without a floor vote as the clock ran out. I want to know why, and I shouldn’t have to personally ask Frank Chopp or Margarita Prentice for an explanation.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but the legislative leadership needs to do a better and more proactive job of communicating its priorities and explaining its decision making process. Bills like HB 2872 die for a reason, and the public deserves to know the reason why. If the leadership can’t adequately explain its decisions, don’t blame us bloggers for attempting to fill the void.

Yet another stunning example of widespread Republican vote fraud:

She may be smart enough to earn millions from her acidic political barbs, but when it comes to something as simple as voting in her tiny hometown, hard-core conservative pundit Ann Coulter is a tad confused.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections records show Coulter voted last week in Palm Beach’s council election. Problem is: She cast her ballot in a precinct 4 miles north of the precinct where she owns a home. […] Coulter, who owns a $1.8 million crib on Seabreeze Avenue, should have voted in Precinct 1198. It covers most homes on her street. Instead, records show, she voted in Precinct 1196, at the northern tip of the island.

According to the Palm Beach Post, Coulter registered (as a Republican) on June 24, three months after she moved from NYC to Palm Beach, but signed and certified as true the Indian Road address of her realtor rather than that of her Seabreeze Avenue home.

“She never lived here,” said Suzanne Frisbie, owner of the Indian Road home. “I’m Ann’s Realtor, and she used this address to forward mail when she moved from New York.”

The article implies that Coulter may have given a false address for privacy reasons… hell, if I were Coulter, I wouldn’t want people to know where I lived either. So I’m guessing she’ll probably get off with a warning or a token fine, despite the fact that Florida law makes it a third-degree felony to knowingly vote in the wrong precinct, and punishes lying on one’s voter registration by up to $5,000 and five years behind bars.

Meanwhile, over at the Way-Back Machine, our friend Stefan is still fighting WA’s 2004 gubernatorial election, arguing in part that incorrect registrations — similar to Coulter’s — are proof of widespread voter fraud, and a corrupt, inept King County elections department. To Stefan and his overlords in the state and local GOP, a duplicate registration equals a duplicate vote, and a voter registered at a wrong address is evidence of intentional voter fraud. And they continue to vilify KC elections director Dean Logan as an incompetent and a criminal who refuses to fix the county’s voter rolls.

Stefan likes to talk about public trust, but what he and his fellow travelers fail to comprehend — or at least, refuse to admit — is that nationwide, our whole voter registration system is based on trusting the public. So in case Stefan has missed this point every other time an experienced elections expert has made it, perhaps he should pay close attention to the closing paragraphs from the article on Coulter’s Florida foibles:

“We’re not a policing agency,” says Elections Chief Deputy Charmaine Kelly. “You do not have to show proof that you live at your address. But when you sign the registration application, you also take an oath that everything you wrote is the truth.

“If someone brings us proof that a person falsified a registration, we’ll check into it, then refer the matter to the state attorney’s office if necessary.”

When it comes to voter registration, Palm Beach County has nearly identical policies and procedures to King County… and nearly every other jurisdiction in the nation. And it is quite frankly mind boggling that after 16 months on his OCD-like electoral procedure jag, Stefan still doesn’t seem to have a clue as to how elections actually operate.

If Stefan and the state GOP want to argue that our current registration system results in widespread voter fraud, I say, show me the proof of widespread voter fraud. Don’t just show me the duplicate registrations… show me the duplicate votes. Go ahead, argue the case for making it dramatically more difficult to vote.

But to continue to excoriate Logan for failing to police registrations when it is clearly not his job to do so, is just plain dishonest.

It also intentionally destroys the public trust in elections that Stefan and his cohorts cynically claim they are trying to restore.

My head hurts so much it’s making me nauseous to look at the screen… and I’m not even reading (u)SP. So talk amongst yourselves until the ibuprofen kicks in.

Safeco CEO and former insurance industry lobbyist Mike McGavick first announced his candidacy for the US Senate way back in July, so it came as no surprise when he officially kicked off his campaign in October… and then again for a second time at a big, January 21 campaign kickoff event. Likewise lacking in suspense were the 22 other official campaign kickoff events he held during a 12-day tour following his campaign’s second official campaign kickoff.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that McGavick is finally, officially kicking off his campaign tomorrow at a luncheon in Bellevue.

That’s right, after seven months and at least 24 campaign kickoff events, McGavick is finally kicking off his campaign. Which raises the question: with all the kicking off he’s been doing, why can’t McGavick seem to move the ball? The latest polls show Cantwell maintaining comfortable approval ratings and a steady double-digit lead… a margin that hasn’t moved for months.

I suppose McGavick keeps staging “kickoff” events to cover up his lack of traction with voters, but I haven’t seen anybody miss the ball so many times since Charlie Brown. At some point he’s going to have to make contact and start running down field.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our fearless leader, Nick, sent out an email earlier today saying tonight’s gathering was cancelled due to Valentine’s Day, but really… screw Hallmark.

Personally, I can’t think of anything more romantic than downing an ice cold beer as Carl says nice things about my ass. So please join me, Carl “you’ve got a nice ass” Ballard, Jim from McCranium (visiting from the Tri-Cities,) and anybody else who has nothing better to do, for “Loser’s Night” at Drinking Liberally.

While the Seattle Times merely cuts and pastes from the wires, the Seattle P-I’s Mike Lewis adds some much welcome local color to his coverage of reaction to Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting “accident.”

Local blogger David Goldstein, on his www.horsesass.org Web site, wrote that Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean’s recent comparison of Cheney to former Vice President Aaron Burr turned out to be prescient. Burr was the last second-in-command to shoot someone while in office.

“Burr, as us history buffs well know, shot and killed fellow founding father Alexander Hamilton on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, N.J., in the most famous duel in American history.”

By Monday evening, Goldstein’s posting had 161 responses. The 42-year-old said he knew the shooting would bring traffic, even if it won’t have much of a shelf life.

When he heard about the accident, he first checked to see if the victim, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer, was OK. When he found out the man was in stable condition, it was, um, open season.

“What about the nature of the hunting trip?” he asked in an interview. “Those hunting lodges where they raise the birds are the avian equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. You could do this at a zoo. The guy (Cheney) just likes to kill things.

“(Hitting Whittington) was probably more sporting than the shooting of the birds.”

Man… that Goldstein guy always makes me laugh.

However, I do have one particular nit to pick with the coverage. The Times says Whittington was “sprayed with birdshot,” an official, White House approved circumlocution that Atrios pokes fun at by pointing out the subtle differences between a spray bottle and a shotgun.

The P-I repeats the other popular euphemism: that Whittington was “peppered” with birdshot. Hmm.

Peppered:

Shot:

Just wanted to avoid any confusion over what really transpired.

UPDATE:
Now we learn that Whittington has suffered a “minor” heart attack, due to a piece of birdshot lodged in his heart.

So I’m guessing that next week, when we finally learn Whittington has died (a couple days after his actual death,) the official cause of death will be listed as a “heart attack,” rather than being “shot through the heart by a drunken Vice President.”

No, that’s not Idaho, that’s Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where Dave Niewert of Orcinus reports on a small rally of genuine neo-Nazis that gathered yesterday across from the statue of Lenin. As Dave explains:

One reason that pseudo-fascism is so harmful is that it creates an environment that positively encourages genuine fascists.

Thus, it is no mere accident that we’ve been seeing increasing signs of a genuinely emboldened white-supremacist far right, with recruitment rising among disaffected young people. It’s no accident that they keep getting bolder and bolder and bolder.

Yeah, sure… there’s only a half dozen or so of them, but we now have Brownshirts proudly marching through the streets of Fremont, for chrissakes! Does anyone doubt that these people are emboldened by the mainstreaming of violent rhetoric from the likes of Ann Coulter? Shouldn’t we be at least a little bit concerned about developments like this?

FYI, Dave has spent much of his career chronicling the Northwest militia movement and other right-wing extremists. He’s a thorough journalist, a great read, and one of the pioneering members of our state’s blogosphere. He’s also nearing the end of his annual fund-raising week, and I encourage all my readers to drop a few bucks in his PayPal account.

Over the past couple years I have had the misfortune of sitting through a number of tedious and infuriating House Finance Committee hearings, where it has become commonplace to watch Rep. “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama) argue vigorously — and, um… angrily — for nearly every tax cut, tax break and tax loophole to come down the pike. The man simply doesn’t like taxes.

This year he championed yet another attempt to repeal WA’s estate tax, a bill that died in committee. So on Tuesday he forced the House to vote on a procedural motion to bring the bill directly to the floor without a public hearing. In a press release issued after the motion failed 53-45, Orcutt whined:

“I’m not content to let small businesses die from having to liquidate their assets to pay one of the most punitive death taxes in the nation,”

Uh-huh.

So here’s my challenge to Angry Ed: show me the small businesses that have been forced to liquidate their assets to pay off WA’s estate tax.

I don’t want an anecdote or a metaphor, and I don’t want businesses where the heirs just decided to cash out… that happens all the time, regardless of taxes.

I want documented evidence of small family businesses, where the heirs desperately wanted to keep it in the family, but just couldn’t wing it… all because of WA’s “punitive” estate tax on non-farm assets over $2 million.

How many have there been over the past few years, Ed? Thousands? Hundreds? A couple dozen? Can you name just one?

I mean, if you’re going to grandstand on an issue like this, I just assume you have the facts to back it up. Otherwise, people might start thinking that your procedural maneuver was just some cheap, political stunt like, you know… the GOP’s cynical effort to bring their sex offender bill to a floor vote — likewise without hearings or debate — just to manufacture a controversy they could use against Democrats.

Oh.

A Republican political action committee is sending automated phone calls to voters in swing districts targeting Democratic incumbents for opposing a vote on a bill to repeal Washington’s estate tax.

Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver, said her constituents began receiving the calls Thursday. “It’s ugly, partisan game-playing that we don’t need,” she said.

Besides, Wallace said, she voted in favor of bringing the bill to the House floor on Tuesday.

Yup, HA regular Kevin Carnes and The Speaker’s Roundtable is at it again. Apparently, Angry Ed’s hopeless procedural motion was just a ruse designed to provide cover for canned attack ads aimed at Democrats in swing districts. And when asked why Rep. Wallace’s constituents were being told she voted against the motion, when in fact she voted for it, Carnes displayed his usual ethical ambivalence.

“If she wants to be pragmatic about this, maybe (Wallace) should encourage her caucus to take a vote on this,”

So… Rep. Wallace is just a metaphor for the rest of her caucus?

So come on Ed, prove to me that you’re not just another tool of your caucus’s political hacks. You claim the WA estate tax — a tax that only applies to about 250 estates a year — forces small businesses to liquidate their assets. Now prove it.