With Romney’s loss, despite a strong push from the White Evangelical community, the influence of that particular group is waning. But in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and throughout the Bush years, these politically conservative Evangelicals had quite a bit of power and money behind them. And with that came a large group of scam artists.

People made good money telling white conservative evangelical Protestants who were afraid of the other — afraid of gay people, afraid of black folks and black churches, afraid of women who acted in any way other than submissive to their husbands or virginal, afraid of women who’ve had abortions, scientists, anyone who isn’t Christian, anyone who is Christian in a way they don’t approve of — that their fear made them good Christians. These modern day witch-prickers ruined lives for money and when they’re questioned they found clobber verses and said “it’s in the book.”*

If this didn’t have any political impact it would still be awful. It would still cause people to abandon their gay children. It would still cause women to stay in abusive relationships because of these antiquated notions of gender roles in marriage and on the nature of divorce. It would still cause divisions among people based on their religions.

But of course, it also has a political dimension. They lobby hard against the rights of gay people and women, and they make policy worse.

Among the worst of the bunch are Tim and Beverly LaHaye: He had a horrible combination of John Birch Society and apocalyptic (I don’t even want to say Biblical, since what he describes and what’s in the Bible are so different) predictions that eventually lead to his co-writing the Left Behind books. And she founded the organization Concerned Women for America that pushed some of the worst of this hatred out there.

And why this history is relevant to a Washington State blog is that before running for office, newly minted Seattle mayoral candidate Tim Burgess worked at a firm that did consulting for Concerned Women for America. As Erica C. Barnett explained when he first ran for City Council.

Burgess, however, has a client in his past that won’t sit well in progressive Seattle. Burgess’s ad firm provided media planning, copywriting, media buying, and other consulting services to Concerned Women for America (CWA), a fundamentalist Christian group that’s best known for fighting against equal rights for gays and lesbians. Gay former council member, Tina Podlodowski, who has endorsed Burgess, says CWA is “not a group I could ever support. Clearly, he made a big mistake.” Among other things, CWA advocated against making emergency contraception available over the counter, arguing that access to it would encourage promiscuity; has said that legalizing gay marriage would destroy the fabric of society; actively opposes the Equal Rights Amendment; and believes that “politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.”

The firm Burgess cofounded, now called Merkle/Domain, services non-profits. According to Burgess, the firm represented CWA for eight or nine years. “We generally did not have an ideological screen on clients. We’ve served all kinds of groups, [including] some others that I don’t always agree with,” Burgess says. According to the Washington Secretary of State’s corporation listing service, Burgess’s clients did not include any liberal equivalent of CWA. They did include the African Wildlife Foundation, Mercy Corps, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.**

Look, Burgess should be judged more on his time in office than for a consulting gig a decade ago. But it seems to me that this is a window on his character. He saw a scammy group that was doing harm to people’s lives and claiming to be Christian. And rather than use his position as an outspoken Christian to denounce that, Tim Burgess figured out a way to get a cut. Given that a lot was made out of it by activist groups when he first ran for City Council, you would think it would at least play a part in the biographies people are running now. But so far, I haven’t seen it.

[Read more…]

– Not really Only in Seattle, so much as one building designed around bicyclists.

– What Pierce County Prop 1’s loss means for transit.

– Does Donald Trump realize he’s a joke?

– The Deep South is more pro-Obama than 4 years ago (also, I can’t figure out Upstate NY. I was talking to Darryl about it yesterday, and he hadn’t seen the map but thought it might be a reaction to Sandy. Maybe, but CT and Downstate changed in the other direction).

– I have to be pretty far out of town earlier in the day, but I’m going to try to make it to the Balloon Juice meetup in Seattle on Saturday.

There are a lot of angles you could take writing about Tim Harris writing a positive piece about McGinn’s downtown public safety program. Taking two paragraphs to set up how much you assume the ideas are at odds, as Josh Feit (?), does here doesn’t strike me as particularly helpful.

McGinn started his term with the support of an unlikely alliance of social justice lefties (like Real Change director Tim Harris) and urbanist greens (like the Sierra Club, where McGinn once served as chairman); typically those factions are at odds, with the social justice activists criticizing the urbanists as bourgeois and the urbansits criticizing the social justice advocates as provincial.

McGinn had some success keeping the coalition together, vetoing the panhandling ordinance for example. But as he pushed hard on urban density and light rail he has rubbed some advocates for the city’s lowest-income and homeles sresidents [sic] the wrong way; they’ve argued that density and high-cost rail transit increase the cost of living for Seattle’s poorest.

I mean, I’ve always felt it was a natural alliance. People in Seattle are generally supportive of both goals. And given that bad environmental things are generally shitting on poor people, they’re pretty intertwined. Really, wanting to put transit in poor neighborhoods isn’t as opposed by social justice activists as the piece assumes (although dealing with higher prices, etc. that can come from it absolutely is part of the social justice agenda). Now recently, I’m not so sure how solid McGinn’s commitment to social justice is with his response to the DOJ on police accountability, for example.

Goldy’s piece on how if we want to save education in this state, we’re going to have to pay for a lot more of it at the state level got me thinking about how the response to McCleary has been sold to us by both Democrats and Republicans.

Inslee and McKenna both more or less ran on magical solutions. Inslee thought we’ll grow our way out of it: hopefully OK for the short term, but not really a sustainable solution. And McKenna’s solution was to take money out of Puget Sound schools and put it into the rest of the state. Not really OK when Puget Sound schools are in trouble too. We were also told that charters would bring the magic of the market to education.

But no, we’re going to have to pay for it if we want better education, as Goldy says:

Instead—and here’s a novel and straight forward idea—why don’t we just raise the state school levy from the $2.26 per thousand dollars of property value rate it stands at now, to the maximum statutory $3.60 rate it stood at during the mid-1980s, the era of peak K-12 funding equity? That would add over $1.1 billion in new K-12 spending, about $1,000 per student. Sure, everybody’s taxes would go up, but by far the largest share would still be shouldered by those of us in “property-rich” districts, thus increasing both equity and funding. If local voters then want to cut their own local school levies, that’s up to them.

But of course, people would scream bloody murder if that were to happen. They’ve been told that they can fund education with magic. The debate is simply what magic to use.

– There’s more than one catch.

– I’ll believe these anti-Grover Norquist Republicans when they actually vote for something.

– If Patty Murray is a key to the budget deals, then I feel better about them (although still not great).

– I knew about Hamilton. And Eaton’s story sounded familiar when I read it. But the other two early American sex scandals, I didn’t know anything about.

– In the last couple months I got my driver’s license renewed and went to the doctor. And hands down the driver’s license was easier.

– I don’t understand what Boeing is doing trying to deny same sex married couples pension benefits.

– Salmon for Thanksgiving.

– Happy Thanksgiving.

– Nobody drive on 520.

– Bob Schieffer, Dana Milbank, and needless to say MoDo are trying to sell the pseudo-scandal. I rest my case.

– Good logic from Glenn Reynolds.

– Alan West really doesn’t want to give up being in Congress.

– Trail maps on a bike rack is a great idea.

– Please! Not in the voting booth!

Downtown it’s down to a drizzle for now, but there’s still a ton of standing water, and everyone has forgotten how to drive worse than the usual rush hour. Much of the rest of the city isn’t faring as well.

So are you soaked to the bone, or have you managed to keep dry? Did you lose power? Is it back or are you using your dwindling battery in your cell phone to leave a comment?

– Political talk radio is a tough business model, but the loss of it in Seattle is tough. Maybe whoever tries to take up the mantle next can air some local content.

– Who would have predicted that Rupert Murdoch tweet horrible things?

– I wish I thought that using this technology to take down a mythic military icon and CIA chief would be startling enough to engender a reevaluation but I don’t.

– This crisis could use more butterscotch pudding.

– Who could have predicted that one of the nastier impeachment managers (and that’s saying something) would be horrible the next time a Democrat was in the White House?

– Unlike Leschi, Quiemuth was never tried or even officially charged with a capital offense, yet he was the first to die for his alleged crimes. After his murder, Quiemuth’s body was buried near Fort Nisqually, but in July 1895, together with Leschi, he was re-interred near the mouth of Muck Creek in a grove of prairie oak.

I’m really confused why the first third or so of this Jean Godden piece was written. I like Godden’s writing for the most part, but this is both forced and unnecessary.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd thinks the players in the Petraeus scandal are like Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Othello.

Every once in a while, Maureen Dowd’s editors will mention to her, “hey maybe don’t shoehorn quite so many references to the movie you just saw into a political analysis when you write your next column.” And rather than seeing that as a request to not shoehorn any piece of fiction into her column on current events, she decides it’s ol’ Shakespeare’s turn. I’ve mostly stopped reading her, but I remember it seemed for years that any mention of Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Lady Macbeth reference.

A better analogy would be to another Shakespearean general: Coriolanus.

Even better would be to realize that this is a pointless effort and to either just write something about Petraeus, or to write about Seattle, since that’s what people go to Godden’s page for.

Shakespearean tragedies are defined by fatal character faults. MacBeth’s was envy; Othello’s was jealousy. Coriolanus, on the other hand, was driven by ambition. And that certainly seems to loom large in the Tragedy of Gen. David Petraeus: a man motivated, from the beginning, by ambition. He wowed them at West Point and climbed the social ladder by wedding the West Point Superintendent’s daughter. He climbed the ranks to earn his fourth star and embraced fame as a military idol.

I guess I should mention that there are spoilers for a play written in the early 1600’s coming up. I’d recommend the movie version of Coriolanus that came out last year if you haven’t seen it.

Anyway, OK, I see it now. When Caius Martius wins victory at Corioli it’s the same as when Petraeus married someone’s daughter. Oh, maybe it’s that his surge strategies in 2 countries killed a lot of people something something “this butterfly was a grub.” No! Here it is! Here it is: CIA drone strikes are when he teams up with Aufidius and, and, nope, I lost it. Shit.

He didn’t travel alone. He once arrived at a party (hosted by Tampa socialite Jill Kelley) at the head of a 28-car motorcade. He obviously liked having his attractive biographer Paula Broadwell hang on his every word. That he dallied with Broadwell is not too surprising given that she crafted a book that gushes with admiration.

You know what. Dude hooks up with someone too young for him. Nobody would approve, least of all their families. Lots of death follows the main character. For real, it’s a secret marriage and a couple suicides away from Romeo and Juliet. So that’s a better shoehorn! I win.

Um, I guess I should have had two spoiler alerts?

Anyway, then she gets away from the absurd comparison to describe life as a military brat her perception of military culture and says that too many people have died in Afghanistan. I have nothing against the former and agree with the later, so let’s end there.

– The religious right hucksters versus the true believers.

– Sorry Rainier Valley residents, 98178 is the 7th most diverse zip code.

– Getting Iraq wrong helped right winger’s careers. So I don’t see any reason why getting the election wrong would hurt them either.

– What the fuck Representative Scott DesJarlais? (h/t)

– Supporting Walmart workers on Black Friday by not shopping there then seems reasonable enough.

– Her name was Savita Halappanavar.

– Mayor Mike McGinn is opening Seattle City Hall’s gorgeous lobby to all couples who want to marry on December 9. Judges have volunteered to perform weddings for free and the Stranger is working with Jennifer Zeyl and Alicia Berger and other local scenic artists to create four tasteful pop-up wedding chapels in the lobby of City Hall.

– How to draw Doug may be my favorite Super Fun Pak Comix ever.

Goldy is right that Sam Reed is wrong about the ballot deadline. Most ballots were in before election day, and fewer ballots were counted than were in, so the backlog was due to the time it takes to count the ballots, not the fact that they were still in the mail somewhere.

Of course, not all of the ballots were in on time. As someone who put his ballot in the mail the last possible day, I for one am glad to know what the firm deadline was. And I’m not sure why the tradeoff between that and having the ballots counted, say, on the same day would be a good one even if it was true.

It’s kind of annoying not having election night be quite the same event it is in the rest of the country. And I imagine if we’re ever a swing state again, it’ll drive people from out of state who aren’t used to it up a wall watching it in a close election. But really, we count all the ballots in plenty of time to get them certified and possibly do several recounts, as was discovered in 2004. As long as that’s the case, there’s no reason to push the deadlines forward.

I guess it’s good for Washington that Representative McMorris Rodgers will be the House Republican Conference Chair. I mean she’s terrible but so would anyone the GOP would pick for that role. So sure, she’s a bit better than the average GOP member at going on the Sunday shows and explaining why their garbage positions are totally awesome. So sure, good on her.

McMorris Rodgers was named chair of the House Republican Conference in a secret-ballot contest. She was vice chair.

McMorris Rodgers defeated Tom Price of Georgia, who was endorsed by vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as well as Jeb Hensarling of Texas, McMorris Rodgers’ predecessor as conference chair.

– Congrats to Ed Murray for being elected Majority Leader.

– Congrats to Representative DelBene.

– A FAQ from SPD on what I-502 will mean for people who want to smoke marijuana in Seattle.

– Obama kicked ass in Indian Country.

– Andrew Johnson was a monster, but I would so sit in that chair.

– Keep throwing.

There’s an unseemly moment now looking at petitions for secession.* I don’t mean the secessionist talk. That’s a few assholes being assholes; it’s not a movement. If people are going to write about it, put it in some context. I mean way more people voted for Obama in states where those stupid petitions exist than will sign the petitions. Hell, he won some of the states.

And while I’m fine with calling this bullshit out, it’s unhelpful to just point and laugh, especially to imply that it says something about these states. I’m a 50 state strategy person, so it’s up to the Democrats to organize in Texas and in Alabama and in the Dakotas. Maybe the next election won’t make the difference, but we have a duty to keep pushing because there are plenty of people there who would never sign those sorts of petitions. Painting those states as a bunch of backwards yahoos sort of defeats that.

It discourages Democrats from trying and it shows an unseriousness to the people you’re trying to get to vote Democratic, and support liberal causes. It implies there’s nothing you can build on when there’s plenty. It looks back to the secession movements of, and before, the Civil War instead of forward.

So here’s some of the context I want in these stories: How many Obama voters live in those states compared to the number of people who signed the petitions? What are the efforts to reach out to those states? What are the demographics of the states?

Look, I know after the election there’s still a news hole to fill. And that ultimately this story doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. But this is the wrong way to write the story.

[Read more…]

– Happy Veterans Day.

– You have decades upon decades to contemplate what you did. But after today. After this moment. Here and now. Gabby and I are done thinking about you.

– In total, all the profiles, stage-managed and controlled by the Pentagon’s multimillion dollar public relations apparatus, built up an unrealistic and superhuman myth around the general that, in the end, did not do Petraeus or the public any favors.

– It’s pretty sweet how horribly Karly Rove and the NRA performed.

– And I think it’s a nice counter-narrative that Romney did worse with Mormons than George W. Bush.

– It’s strange to read Lindy West review a film positively, but I agree with everything she says about Lincoln.