Goldy

Lost in the debate over how best to use the remaining two acres of Seattle Center’s Fun Forest is the fact that the site is already home to a popular, rent-paying, job-producing attraction: the, um, Fun Forest.

Yeah sure, I know the hipsters and aging hipsters and yuppies and cultural elitists who dominated last night’s hearing all look down their nose at kitchy amusements and carnival rides, but since the opening days of the 1962 World’s Fair, the Fun Forest has been as much a part of the Seattle Center as the Space Needle that looms above it. And the family owned business that runs it is in no rush leave; they’d love to secure a long term lease, but they’re happy to operate on a year-to-year basis if that’s what works best for the city.

Much was made last night by Chihuly proponents about how their proposal is the only one that won’t require a public subsidy, but even in its reduced footprint, the Fun Forest is already producing about $250,000 a year in rent, taxes and concession fees, while employing 30 people in season. So honestly, what’s the rush?

I know the Fun Forest doesn’t fit into the Master Plan that calls for its removal, but neither does a paid-admission, for-profit glass gallery/gift shop/catering hall. And since it’s already producing revenues while providing residents and tourists a much needed family-friendly amenity, what’s the harm in leaving it in place for another year while we get to have a real public debate about the best use for the site? I mean, it’s not like it’s a vacant lot gathering abandoned cars or homeless encampments. It’s the Fun Forest for chrisakes. Kids love it!

I’m told the Wright family is a bit insulted by the city’s failure to embrace their proposal, and have threatened to pull out if a deal isn’t signed soon. But surely, if Ye Olde Chihuly Shoppe makes such good business sense to them now, it would still make good business sense a year from now, so it’s hard to take such hardball tactics seriously… especially when the guaranteed revenue from their paid admission “museum” isn’t all that much higher than what is already being generated by an attraction that has catered to Seattle families for two generations.

Yeah, I know… it’s hard to take something seriously when it has the word “Fun” in its title. But for all the arguments for and against the Chihuly proposal, I’ve never heard anybody attempt to explain what is so godawful about the status quo.

This is what a sham looks like, at least through the somewhat inadequate lens of my iPhone’s camera.

Last night hundreds of people gathered again to voice our opinions about the best public use of the Fun Forest site at the Seattle Center, and once again we couldn’t help but get the vibe that we were just being humored. Oh, the committee and the Chihuly gift-shop/catering-hall folks at least tried to make a better show of it this time as compared to the insulting propaganda-fest of the first public meeting, but it was still just a show. I didn’t talk to anybody who believed  a decision hasn’t already been made.

The problem is, as much as the committee will ultimately claim that this was a fair and open process, there’s nothing fair or open about taking a year and a half to secretly negotiate the details of the Chihuly proposal, and then publishing an RFP tailored to the same while giving everybody else just six weeks to respond. And so yeah, I kinda resented being there last night playing the role of “Man in Auditorium” in the Seattle Center’s unintentional amateur production of Our Town.

And like most bad theater, it’s not hard to predict how this play ends.

I don’t want to come off as the sorta blogger who obsesses on issues (though actually, it’s kinda my schtick), but I just can’t help but go back to that misleading article on Sen. Patty Murray’s fundraising in yesterday’s Seattle Times.

As the Times accurately reports, Sen. Murray has raked in a lot of cash from lobbyists and PACs, a not all too surprising fact considering that she’s one of the most powerful appropriators in Congress. And as I’ve already pointed out, it would be professional malpractice for lobbyists not to give to Murray.

There’s no indication that Sen. Murray has done anything illegal or unethical in accepting these contributions, or that contributors have purchased themselves any undue influence. In fact, as an anecdote involving her angry reaction to Boeing’s decision to build 787s in Charleston clearly illustrates, Sen. Murray is not afraid to publicly threaten one of her top contributors.

But what really sticks in my craw — and what leads me to wonder if the Times’ Kyung M. Song fully understands the subject on which she’s reporting — is how, in a subsection titled “Friends with agendas,” the article blatantly misrepresents the role of online political contribution clearinghouse ActBlue:

Microsoft is Murray’s top donor by contributor; its executives, employees and its PAC have given $131,000 since 2005 to Murray’s campaign and to M-PAC. The company just edged out the No. 2 contributor, ActBlue, a political-action committee that bundles individual donations to Democratic candidates.

Well, yeah, technically ActBlue is a PAC, and it does bundle individual donations to candidates, but that’s not particularly descriptive, especially within the context of an article whose thesis appears to be that Sen. Murray is a captive of special interests. For ActBlue doesn’t actually function like most every other federal PAC.

Most PACs raise money into their coffers, and leave it to their board to decide which candidates and committees to distribute funds to. ActBlue doesn’t do that. Instead, it uses its PAC status to legally accept earmarked contributions from donors, merely serving as a conduit to forward those contributions to the directed candidates and committees.

The genius behind ActBlue is that it democratizes online giving by taking most of the paperwork, time and expense out of what can be a very complicated process, enabling, say, bloggers like me to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for candidates (like, say, Darcy Burner), with little more than a blog post and a link. For example, simply click here to make a secure, credit card contribution to Sen. Murray, and ActBlue will forward it to her campaign.

And ActBlue’s model has proven a fantastic success. Since 2004, ActBlue has sent $138,297,445 to Democratic candidates and committees, via 1,063,855 contributions, for an average donation size of less than $130.00. Donors have elected to support 6,000 distinct committees through ActBlue, at every level of politics from local to federal.

So I forwarded the Times article to ActBlue communications director Adrian Arroyo, and asked him to put those numbers in perspective:

“I think those numbers underscore why it’s misleading to lump ActBlue in with the other PACs mentioned in the article, especially given the unfortunate section header “friends with agendas.” Unlike the other PACs listed, ActBlue doesn’t tell donors where to donate–that decision is entirely in their hands. Kyung M. Song wants to argue that Sen. Murray’s incumbency has led to her capture by special interests, but the fact that ActBlue is her #2 “contributor” undermines that thesis. It demonstrates that, in the aggregate, small donors can engage in politics at the same level as mega-corporations like Boeing and Microsoft. That’s good for Sen. Murray, good for Democrats, and good for democracy.”

If all you knew about Sen. Murray’s fundraising came from reading the Seattle Times, you’d think ActBlue was some powerful special interest group — you know, one of those “friends with agendas” — when in fact it is merely a tool for enabling small donors like me and you to collectively rival the power of special interests.

All the more reason why it would be a disservice to voters to let them get all their news from the Seattle Times.

Having followed Michael Steele’s inexplicable career as RNC chair, I’m beginning to understand what so many Republicans have against affirmative action.

Source: USDA (via TPM)

Why are Coke, Pepsi and the rest of the beverage industry spending millions of dollars to repeal Washington’s temporary tw0-cent per 12-ounce serving excise tax on carbonated beverages? Because, as this new USDA study confirms, raising taxes on sugary beverages does indeed decrease consumption.

Soda taxes are being pushed in states and cities nationwide, partially as revenue generators, and partially as public health measures, for as this USDA study also demonstrates, decreasing consumption of sugary beverages also decreases overall caloric consumption, leading to a substantial drop in obesity rates and its associated costs.

A tax-induced 20-percent price increase on caloric sweetened beverages could cause an average reduction of 37 calories per day, or 3.8 pounds of body weight over a year, for adults and an average of 43 calories per day, or 4.5 pounds over a year, for children. Given these reductions in calorie consumption, results show an estimated decline in adult overweight prevalence (66.9 to 62.4 percent) and obesity prevalence (33.4 to 30.4 percent), as well as the child at-risk-for-overweight prevalence (32.3 to 27.0 percent) and the overweight prevalence (16.6 to 13.7 percent).

It’s basic economics really. Raise the cost of something nonessential, and consumers will purchase less of it.

Of course our two-cent per 12-ounce tax was mostly sold as a revenue measure, and only comes to more like an average 7 percent price increase, so we won’t see the same degree of public health benefit as that shown in the USDA study, but the I-1107 sponsors can’t have it both ways. They can’t oppose the initiative because it would decrease consumption of their product while at the same time dismissing the public health benefits of reduced consumption.

Make the nanny state argument if you like, but we regularly use our tax code to influence behavior (you know, like cutting taxes on the wealthy to spur investment). And with both our state and our nation is in the midst of an obesity epidemic, I can think of worse ways to fill our gaping budget hole than a tax on soda-pop.

The Washington Farm Bureau came out with their primary election endorsements today, and they’re almost entirely Republican of course. For example, at the Federal level they endorsed Republicans John Koster (R), Jaime Herrera (R), Rep. Doc Hastings (R) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Congressional Districts respectively.

But what I found most interesting was this little comment on the U.S. Senate race:

No candidate for U.S. Senate received sufficient recommendations to allow for an endorsement.

And of course by “no candidate” what they really mean is Republican “Dino Rossi.”

So why did Rossi, who the Farm Bureau previously endorsed for governor, get snubbed when a do-nothing seat-warmer like Hastings easily gets the nod? Was there a large contingent of Clint Didier supporters? Or perhaps incumbent Sen. Patty Murray, who won the Friend of the Farm Bureau Award in 2009, has a few, um, friends on the Farm Bureau who appreciate her work on behalf of Washington’s agriculture industry?

Huh.

I had a nice relaxing Fourth of July weekend celebrating my freedom… the freedom from reading the Seattle Times. But now that the holiday is over I’m back to my usual grind, and oy is it particularly grinding today.

Take for example the front page, above-the-fold article on Sen. Patty Murray’s fundraising: “Lobbyists are Sen. Murray’s biggest donors.” Uh-huh. And your point is…?

The headline makes it sound nefarious, but the article, not so much. For example, we learn that back when she was first elected, Murray didn’t attract much money from lobbyists, but now that she’s a three-term incumbent, a top member of the Senate leadership, “one of only four people to sit on both the Senate budget and appropriations committees,” and a chair of two powerful Appropriations subcommittees, the tables have turned.

Well… duh-uh. It’d be professional malpractice for lobbyists not to give to Murray. Dog bites man, and all that.

And then there’s the Times expose of Murray’s big corporate donors, which includes following inexcusable muddle:

Microsoft is Murray’s top donor by contributor; its executives, employees and its PAC have given $131,000 since 2005 to Murray’s campaign and to M-PAC. The company just edged out the No. 2 contributor, ActBlue, a political-action committee that bundles individual donations to Democratic candidates.

Let’s be perfectly clear: ActBlue is no more a contributor to Murray than VISA or MasterCard, and to suggest otherwise is downright misleading. ActBlue is nothing more than tool — an “online clearinghouse for Democratic action” as its motto explains — used by campaigns, bloggers, activists and individuals to facilitate contributions, and you’d think Times reporter Kyung M. Song might want to explain that before implying otherwise.

As for Murray’s top contributors who really are top contributors, it’s kinda amazing that a newspaper so prone to licking the feet of Washington state corporate giants like Microsoft, Boeing and Weyerhaeuser would attempt to make an issue out of Murray receiving donations from Washington state corporate giants like Microsoft, Boeing and Weyerhaeuser, especially while illustrating Murray’s reputation for fierce independence.

One donor was Tim Keating, Boeing’s senior vice president of government operations. Keating donated $2,400 to Murray in April 2009, shortly after the company privately briefed her that it likely would locate a second assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner in Charleston, S.C., instead of in Everett.

Two months later, Keating gave Murray another $2,400. In October, Boeing announced Charleston as its pick. A furious Murray threatened to withhold her support for any Boeing projects beyond Washington’s borders.

Yup, that certainly sounds like Murray is in Boeing’s pockets.  Not.

Of course the big checks are gonna stand out, but Murray has received over 65,000 individual contributions so far this cycle, 85 percent of them from within Washington state, in an average amount of only $39.00. To put that in perspective, Murray will likely have more individual contributors this cycle than the allegedly grassrooty Clint Didier will receive votes.

Still, as long as the Times is focusing on this kinda stuff I’m assuming they’ll take an equally hard look at where Rossi has raised his money over the years, and where he’s raising it from now. You know, like the millions of dollars the BIAW has spent trying to elect him to the governor’s mansion, and whether Rossi’s refusal to state a position on Wall Street reform has anything to do with his recent fundraiser with hedge fund manager Paul Singer?

I mean if the the Times is as fair and balanced and objective as they claim to be, we’ll be seeing all that above the fold too, right?

Right?

I agree with the Seattle Times editorial board: “It’s time to end the pingpong match over the viaduct tunnel project.”

It’s much too dangerous to play a pingpong match over or under the earthquake damaged Alaska Way Viaduct. And who the hell schedules a sporting event in the middle of a freeway? What were the organizers thinking?

But once I got past that headline, the Times editors lost me:

To outsiders looking in, Seattle leaders have nothing better to do than play political pingpong on the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Oh. Political pingpong.  I get it now. It was a metaphor.

But perhaps I was just distracted by the ed board’s mysterious claim of psychic powers:

State lawmakers approved the project, the governor favors it and the region — save for one activist mayor — considers the matter settled.

Hear that? Except for Mayor Mike McGinn, the entire region favors the Big Bore tunnel, even me! Wow. The Times must know me better than I do. Amazing.

Okay, all snark aside, there is a germ of an idea in the Times editorial that could be promoted to help settle this dispute — assuming the Times is at least as interested in ending this pingpong match as it is in flinging the paddles at the Mayor — and it has to do with the controversial cost overrun provision:

At issue for the mayor is language in state legislation that attempts to lay potential cost overruns on an ill-defined group of Seattle area property owners who benefit from the project. McGinn seeks language in contracts with the state that delay the project until the Legislature changes the legislation.

The Legislature will not reconvene for certain until January and is not inclined to eliminate that verbiage because the governor, city attorney and most of the City Council consider it unenforceable.

[…] It is interesting to note the state legislation attempting to take the unprecedented move of dumping overruns on a city through which one of its roadway passes never mentions the city of Seattle as a corporate entity. That more than suggests it would be difficult to sue the city.

The Times goes on to suggest that if Mayor McGinn won’t sign the contracts, then Seattle City Council president Richard Conlin should sign them instead, despite the fact that it’s not at all clear he has that authority. But as long as the Times is demanding that the Council take the initiative in the ed board’s campaign to embarrass and diminish the Mayor, why not instead use the cost overrun issue to promote unity?

Why not suggest that the Council pass a motion rejecting the cost overrun provision, declaring that it will not authorize city funds to be used for that purpose, and will not authorize any taxes or taxing districts to collect such funds? If the provision is really as illegal and unenforceable as the Times suggests, then why not have the Council back up the Mayor on this issue, and allow our city government to speak with one voice in defense of city taxpayers? I mean, if the provision is as meaningless as the Times suggests, why not move this thing forward by allowing the Mayor to save a little face?

Of course, if Mayor McGinn still refuses to sign the contracts, then he’ll have backed himself into a corner. But he’s not there yet, so the smart political thing to do would be to create a scenario in which everybody can be a winner.

Unfortunately, I’m guessing the Times’ politics are about as smart as its headlines.

(From Clusterstock and CBPP, via Daily Kos)

Republicans in Congress are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits because, they claim, it would add too much to the current budget deficit. So, in the same interest, will they also let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year?

I just drove back from Oregon (FYI, stop and go traffic for much of the way from Chehalis through Tacoma), and if elections were decided by giant signs along the freeway, Clint Didier would have this U.S. Senate race pretty much wrapped up, at least in Southwest Washington.

Exodus 21:7
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.

Discuss.

In a blow to Attorney General Rob McKenna’s broad claim of discretionary authority, the Washington State Supreme Court today granted review to City of Seattle v. Robert M. McKenna, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes petition to compel McKenna to withdraw from the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of key health care reform provisions.

In granting review, Supreme Court Commissioner Steven Goff not only rejects McKenna’s multiple proposed grounds for dismissing the petition (that there’s no original jurisdiction, that there’s no justiciable controversy, that Holmes lacks standing and that there’s no claim upon which relief can be granted), he also affirms a major premise behind Holmes argument that the Attorney General lacks authority to participate as plaintiff in a lawsuit independent of state officer client:

The Washington Constitution provides that the attorney general “shall be the legal adviser of the state officers, and shall perform such other duties as may be prescribed by law.” CONST. art. 3, § 21. When language of this sort is used in a constitution to describe the powers or authority of a state official, the official does not have the common law powers that might be associated with such an office, but only the powers expressly given by the legislature. … Thus, this court has stated that “[t]he powers of the Attorney General are created and limited not by the common law but by the law enacted by the people, either in their constitutional declarations or through legislative declarations in pursuance of constitutional provisions.”

Sound familiar? Of course, that’s exactly what I’ve been arguing (for example, here and here) in my comprehensive analysis of the legal issues surrounding Goldmark v. McKenna, Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark’s petition to compel McKenna to provide statutorily mandated legal representation.

McKenna has repeatedly cited a broader duty to defend both the public interest and the interests of the state as a whole, as the basis for claiming discretionary authority to refuse an otherwise lawful request for legal representation from a state officer client, but such discretion would appear to contradict the plain language of the statutes. Thus if the Court affirms the relatively narrow interpretation of the Attorney General’s powers, as stated above by Commissioner Goff, it is hard to see how McKenna can prevail against Goldmark.

A hearing on Seattle v. McKenna is not scheduled until Nov. 18, with briefs due  beginning in August, but with Goldmark v. McKenna likely to be expedited to accommodate the tighter schedule of the appeal that sparked it, some of the main issues in the former case may be settled by the latter, far in advance of oral arguments. And while it would be a mistake to draw too many parallels between the cases, there is no question that the two overlap, in that they both challenge McKenna’s shaky claim to broad extra-statutory powers.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray announced today that she is joining 25 other U.S. senators in lobbying FIFA on behalf of the bid to bring the 2018 or 2022 World Cup the United States. And yes, Seattle is one the 18 proposed host cities.

In fact there’s even a web page devoted to Seattle’s role as a host city in the official U.S. bid, and a petition widget which I’ve temporarily added to the right sidebar. Sign the petition today!

In a preview of the looming battle over Initiative 1107 here in Washington state, New York Gov. David Patterson has dropped his proposed penny-an-ounce tax on soda and other sweetened drinks in the face of a relentless, multi-million dollar ad campaign from, you guessed it, I-1107’s sponsor, the American Beverage Association. The NY tax would have raised about $1 billion over two years to offset cuts in health care.

“The beverage industry takes the position that you can’t allow this to happen anywhere at any time, based on the slippery-slope theory,” Michael A. Nutter, Philadelphia’s mayor, who has proposed a 2-cents-an-ounce tax, said this week. “They’re successful the old-fashioned way. They pay for it.”

Of course, the industry won’t be able to run quite the same sort of ads here in WA; at only two-cents per 12 ounce serving, our tax is a mere one-sixth that proposed in NY — and only applies to bottled water and carbonated beverages, not fruit juices and other sweetened beverages — so it really would amount to only pennies a day for all but the most profligate soda drinkers. Still, expect the attitude to be the same, and to loudly attack “wasteful spending” in Olympia.

But don’t be deceived. This is all about protecting beverage industry profits, not the health or welfare of Washington citizens. The American Beverage Association is fighting similar proposals in a dozen states, and Washington is just one more line in the sand, much in the same way that the plastic bag industry spent millions to defeat Seattle’s proposed bag ban in an effort to stop or slow similar bans elsewhere.

Soda giants like Coke and Pepsi have already pumped $2.5 million into their I-1107 campaign, but with more at stake than just the WA tax, we can expect several million dollars more between now an November. In the face of such an intense media campaign, it remains to be seen whether WA voters will be willing to stand up to such powerful out-of-state interests, when NY politicians clearly weren’t.

Republicans are apparently willing to accept an awful lot of stupidity from RNC chair Michael Steele, but when he strays from the GOP’s traditional warmonger stance, well, that’s going too far.