The last major hurricane made a direct hit on Galveston Island and the Metropolitan Houston area on August 18, 1983. I remember it because I was living in Galveston at the time, working at the University of Texas Medical Branch and living in an apartment two blocks from the Seawall and the Gulf of Mexico. On weekends, I commuted to Houston, where my then-wife was going to graduate school. I still know folks down there. I hope they’re safe. The images of destruction coming out of Southeast Texas today are breaking my heart.

In 1983, during Hurricane Alicia, I evacuated to Houston and spent a long night hunkered down with my wife and a neighbor friend who was bedridden with a bad back. The storm wound up taking 22 lives, causing $2 billion in damage (in 1983 dollars), and leaving me with a profound respect for the havoc our planet can bring.

Alicia was bad. Today, a bullet was dodged when the worst of Ike’s storm surge went east of Galveston and obliterated the sparsely populated Bolivar Peninsula (a sand spit that’s basically at sea level and spent last night on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico). But Ike is still far, far worse than Alicia. Early estimates are that the storm will cost insurers $18 billion. Some 4.5 million people have no electricity; many will remain without power for weeks. Lots of folks also have limited water. And especially in Galveston, though it didn’t get hit with the 20-foot wall of water forecasters feared, rescuers are surely going to find bodies. Perhaps lots of them.

I mention all this because one of the most notable aspects of this storm is the large number of people who refused to evacuate – even though the National Weather Service issued an unusually dire warning yesterday that those in the storm surge zones who live in one- or two-story buildings faced “certain death.” Over a third of the people living in those zones – some 100,000 fools – stayed behind anyway.

In 2005, just after the devastation of Katrina, nearly 100% of folks evacuated for Hurricane Rita. The evacuation turned into a gridlocked fiasco, and more people died from it than from the storm (which then veered east and mostly missed the area). Listening to Houston radio last night, caller after caller cited the Rita experience, and distrust of government, as the reason they chose to stay behind. Hopefully, with the diminished storm surge, it wasn’t a fatal decision.

Which brings us to Seattle. We don’t get hurricanes, but we are more than vulnerable to a major earthquake or the lesser chances of, say, a terrorist bioattack or Mount Rainier erupting. Evacuation from Seattle, with only three major roads out of the area (I-90 and I-5 north and south), any of which could be badly damaged in a big quake, is a serious issue. So is the probability that without the sobering local experience of a Katrina in mind to encourage compliance, a lot of people wouldn’t leave. Plus, in a real-time event, you have folks who’d first want to get their kids from school or loved ones from work, folks who’d refuse to go without their pets, and the usual subset of people who fear looters more than a government warning of “certain death.”

What is Seattle’s disaster evacuation plan? Does anyone (outside a few planners at FEMA and City Hall and the King County Courthouse) even know? Would folks leave? What would you do?

As grim images emerge from my old home town of Galveston this weekend, now is a good time to consider what Seattle would, and should, do in a similar event.

Nine days ago in this space, I took a lot of heat for pronouncing John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as politically “brilliant.”

My assumption, of course, was that McCain had actually seriously vetted the most important decision of his campaign (I was wrong), but, scandals and ugliness in Palin’s past notwithstanding, that judgment is looking pretty sound. I praised the selection as giving McCain his best, perhaps only, shot at winning in November, and after this week’s convention and media coverage, the McCain strategy has become pretty clear: make November a referendum on personalities, not issues or records. Over the next eight weeks we’ll hear lots from the Republican camp about McCain’s war heroism and Palin’s ability to gut a moose, and virtually nothing about how they would actually govern — because to talk honestly about that would guarantee the White House to Obama.

So is that strategy — and Palin’s selection — working as planned? Judge for yourself. This weekend, from the Sunday chat shows to the daily newspapers to the blogosphere, it’s all about Palin. Meanwhile, an administration that has perfected the art of quietly letting slip bad news in the slow news cycles of the weekend let slip Friday night the worst news of the year — maybe of the decade (and yes, 9-11 was this decade). And thanks to Sarah, it is going all but unremarked:

The Treasury Department is expected to announce as early as this weekend a plan to bail out and recapitalize collapsing home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in one of the biggest government rescues in U.S. history. […]

According to media reports citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations, the government is expected to take at least temporary control of Fannie Mae … and place the troubled firms under the umbrella of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. […]

Fannie and Freddie hold roughly $1.5 trillion in direct debt, guarantees on what could be as large as $5 trillion and possibly off-balance sheet obligations that could reach $3 trillion, according to recent estimates from Ladenburg Thalmann & Co.

This is a disaster of epic proportions. In the best case scenario, we’re looking at a federal bailout that will make the savings and loan bailouts of 20 years ago (remember the Keating Five?) look like an ordinary earmark for Wasilla. At worst, the federal government just bought itself a major depression:

Today, we are back to the 1930s with large financial institutions reaping huge profits and paying obscene salaries to their CEOs in good times and with government bailing them out with public money when things turn sour.

And that’s not even the worst part. The takeover was reportedly forced by the foreign central banks that own much of America’s debt, particularly the Chinese.

Remember when red-meat conservatives used to rail (rightly) about the “red menace” of China? Well, while John McCain was crowing about his empty (and illusory) “victory” in Iraq Thursday night, his party’s government was capitulating completely to a far more serious global adversary on an issue that will likely spell ruin for tens of millions of Americans. And it was all made possible by economic policies McCain has enthusiastically signed off on, and a deregulatory law (the Commodity Futures Modernization Act) pushed through Congress by McCain head financial advisor and campaign co-chair Phil “Nation of Whiners” Gramm.

So much for “Country First.”

In any educated country, this news would drive a stake through the heart of the McCain campaign (as well as earning Bush unassailable honors as the Worst President Ever). But most Americans don’t even know what a “secondary mortgage market” is, let alone why it’s important, let alone why this news is so devastating. Our media certainly doesn’t help: instead of explaining it to us, we’re being inundated this weekend with moose drool. Which, absent the particulars, was (along with firing up the conservative base, and perhaps snagging a few credulous Hillary supporters) the entire logic behind the Palin pick: bad for the country, but good for McCain and friends.

That shouldn’t surprise us: it’s how Republicans govern. Cronyism and “America Last” is the overriding theme throughout the entire, ruinous eight-year Bush kleptocracy. And now taxpayers will be bailing out all the (well-heeled) decision-makers who exploited banking deregulation, kept all the fabulous profits, and now are sticking us with the inevitably staggering losses — in a course of action forced on the United States by a foreign adversary.

The American Empire may just have been permanently buried (though we may expect what Dick Cheney might call the “last throes” for some time to come). Thanks in large part to Sarah Palin, with a big assist from a lazy, celebrity-based media culture, the American people mostly aren’t even noticing. But when the economy subsequently tanks — and it will — we’ll notice in a big way. Republicans are simply hoping that will be some time after November 4.

Even though the DNC protests in Denver were undersized and essentially harmless, protesters in the Twin Cities planning similar protests at the RNC next week have, in the last 24 hours, been subjected to a series of appalling police raids and arrests. Journalists and lawyers present have also been detained, computers and other personal belongings seized — and all without a single illegal act being committed (by the protesters, anyway).

Glenn Greenwald, with video:

Protestors here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed, and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying….

Additional reports are emerging of numerous other actions, including the ludicrous detention of a permaculture bus.

Greenwald’s phrase, “suspected protesters,” says it all: protest, by definition, is being considered illegal. This is the culmination of a tactic that’s been used with increasing frequency in recent years, though never on this scale: the blatantly illegal intimidation and arrest of people planning perfectly legal demonstrations, on the theory that the inevitable lawsuits and awards are simply part of the unlimited budget being given to local law enforcement in these types of major events in order to suppress dissent.

These, quite simply, are the acts of a police state. And they should inspire everyone to be less, not more, silent.

I’ve spent the day in two odd, contrasting worlds. The first was the final leg of the drive back from Denver to Seattle, wherein (since virtually nothing else is available on the radio dial) I listened to red-meat conservatives like Rush, Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Laura Ingraham wax uber-enthusiastic over John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Then I got home, and I’ve been reading endless progressive blog posts and comments crowing over what a weak and disastrous pick Palin is.

On this one, I think the conservatives have it right. Palin is a brilliant pick, and instantly makes McCain more competitive in a way few VP picks could have done (or have ever done in the past). Here’s why.

Palin has two obvious weaknesses: her complete lack of experience and an ethics question about her (specifically) and anyone associated with the Republican Party in Alaska (more generally). Progressives are overrating both. Palin’s strong narrative as a reformer taking on Alaska’s corrupt old boy network will overwhelm her own love affair with Big Oil (the source of much of her state party’s ethics misery) and the relatively minor personnel matter she’s being investigated for. Moreover, it reinforces McCain’s own (inaccurate and manufactured) image as a reformer who’s battled against DC’s corrupt corporate culture.

Meanwhile, Palin’s thin resume does help the Democrats by contradicting that line of attack on Barack Obama. But it’s a non-issue for Palin. When was the last time someone declined to vote for a president because his running mate was inexperienced? The closest recent example was Bush Sr. picking Dan Quayle in 1988, and despite Quayle’s embarrassing lack of gravitas, Poppy won. Rather easily.

And Sarah Palin is no Dan Quayle. She’s a perfect fit for McCain’s campaign in several respects:

* She’s an extreme social conservative, someone the party base can enthusiastically mobilize around — which they weren’t doing for McCain. He just picked up a ton of volunteer energy.

* But Palin’s likeable and doesn’t come off as wingnut-crazy — meaning she can appeal to low-information independents in a way that, say, Tom Coburn never could.

* Her gender doesn’t just court (OK, pander to) disaffected Hillary supporters. It also negates some of the “historic” zeitgeist surrounding Obama’s campaign, because her election would be ground-breaking, too.

* Her personal story is compelling on any number of levels: blue collar, working mother, part-Eskimo husband, Downs Syndrome infant (that she refused to abort), son in Iraq. It helps counter the Obamas’ very appealing family narrative, which was on full display in Denver.

* And she’s physically attractive. Which matters. Ask (hetero) women if they think Obama is cute. (Hint: he is.)

As a bonus, Palin even helps lock up Alaska’s three electoral votes for McCain — believe it or not, polls had Alaska in play, between Obama’s appeal to independents and the troubles of Ted Stevens, Don Young, et al.

Note that all of these attributes are about McCain getting elected — not what Palin would actually bring to the job of Vice President of the United States. She is no Gore or Cheney; she is not being expected to play a significant role in a McCain White House, the way Biden surely would for Obama. But that doesn’t matter unless you win, and McCain just increased his chances of winning in a way that picking Mitt Romney or any of the other names that were bandied about never would have.

It’s easy to mock McCain for, essentially, picking a trophy VP. Except that Sarah Palin is only a means to the trophy McCain really wants. With her selection, he has served notice that Obamamania or no, McCain will continue to be a formidable candidate right through November.

While Goldy iPhlogs from the Pepsi Center, I’m in … um … Idaho Falls, Idaho.

I’d like to say I’m heading home because once it became apparent that the media frame of Clintonites tearing limbs off Obama delegates was more hype than fact, I was so bitterly disappointed that I couldn’t take any more. But the truth is much more boring. I got really sick starting yesterday morning, and owing to some risks of medical complications, I decided to take an uncharacteristically prudent (albeit difficult) course of action and drive back to Seattle.

Goldy and Darryl are, of course, holding down the fort admirably. I had to console myself this afternoon with the Grand Tetons.

It won’t be the protests – though Denver police somehow found it necessary to pepper-spray these dozens of clearly menacing protesters in downtown Denver tonight.

It won’t be Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speeches in coming nights — though regardless of who wins in November, I have every confidence we’ll be referring back to them along about 2011.

It certainly won’t be the staggering amount of corporate largesse that followed the Democrats to Denver — though we’d do well to remember it.

It won’t be Edward Kennedy’s appearance at the Pepsi Center tonight, even though his determination, and the crowd’s response, was enough to send chills down the spine of even a jaded old hack like me.

It won’t even be Michelle Obama’s speech tonight — though after that, the Republicans would be nuts to give Cindy McCain a speaking role in St. Paul.

Amidst all the usual (and not-so-usual) spectacles of a political convention, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, and that’s especially true here in Denver. To get a reminder, it’s helpful to talk with folks.Specifically, to talk with African-Americans. (The Latina/Native American family I’m staying with is a helpful reminder, too, but it’s not quite the same.) While trudging along in the heat today, I made a point of chatting up African-Americans — from delegates to convention staff to street vendors selling buttons, and everyone in between. Young and old, affluent and hustling to get by, all of them spoke, looked, and acted with a vibe I’d put somewhere between euphoric and disbelieving.

I’d bet that some, even many, don’t agree with all of Barack Obama’s policies. (A few probably can’t even name any.) But they know all too well that we still live in a racist country. Pick any measure of health, infant mortality, education, income, or incarceration that you like: the barriers to individual achievement by non-whites in general, and African-Americans in particular, are still pretty steep in this country. (And note that we still routinely define mixed race folks by what they are not, namely, sufficiently white to pass.)

Ten, 20, 50, 100 years from now, Barack Obama’s nomination in Denver — and, should he win, his ascendency to the White House in November — are what we will remember. Even though it’s only one man, and most of our worst race problems in this country are institutional, it’s a moment whose symbolic importance cannot be overstated. It’s easy to ridicule Obama admirers (as both Clinton supporters and now McCain supporters have gleefully done) for the way in which Obama inspires many of his fans not by his policy pronouncements, but because of who he is — not just as a person of color, but as someone who (unlike either Hillary, the president’s wife, or McCain, the admiral’s son) got where he is solely on his own considerable merits.

That he has gotten so far is a legacy that will inspire kids — and not just African-American kids, but kids of all races — for generations to come. Sure, the haters and bigots (some more subtle than others) will color this election’s outcome. (Including the apparent plot, reported locally today, of four white supremacists to assassinate Obama Thursday night.) Others may not be racist themselves, but will attempt to use racist fears and stereotypes to cold political advantage. But Obama’s story simply makes them, and every other story coming out of Denver and St. Paul over the next two weeks, seem petty. Even though this country still has a long, long way to go on race, the distance we’ve come just in the last 50 years is phenomenal. There aren’t many clear markers of that progress: Montgomery, Selma, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, various cultural milestones. But this is one we’ll remember for many years to come. Enjoy the moment.

After all the hype about violence in Denver, the provocative name of one of the protest coalitions (“Recreate ’68”) proved oddly prophetic, as slightly more than 68 people actually showed up for Sunday’s anti-war protests. Along with countless cops from numerous jurisdictions. The few hundred protesters, lacking a real place to convene (the “free speech zone,” once it was found in an area with one entrance and enclosed on three sides, turned out to be about 30′ x 30′ and was filled with counter-protesters; by contrast, the area set aside for law enforcement to process arrested protesters was several acres), simply marched around downtown and occasionally did random blockades of streets.

That’ll bring the war machine to its knees.

Not sure whether the pathetic turnout (hyperventilating coverage by Fox and local Denver media notwithstanding) is a reflection of bad organizing, the generally rudderless state of the anti-war movement, or people being scared away by police and media hype. (Tentative answer: yes.) Locals seem much more involved in organizing the immigrant march on Thursday, though the threat of police harassment could certainly keep a lot of those folks away, too. Regardless, even though disgust with Obama, Biden, and especially the Democratic Congress of the last two years is nearly universal among anti-war activists, most delegates hobnobbing in the various downtown hotels today had no idea protests were underway. The ones that did know were usually clueless about why people might be protesting — other than that somebody’s always protesting something. If first impressions are any guide (and they might not be), many of the attendees here, both the pols and the rank and file, seem blissfully unaware of just how much contempt they’re held in by folks who really, really wanted to believe the Democratic promises of 2006.

Instead, it’s been business as usual.

Which brings us to the swag.

Like any trade convention, attendees get canvas bags with lots of free gifts of dubious value. In this case, lots and lots of them. All, of course, provided by corporations (most of them big) and the occasional union, all hoping to buy a favorable impression.

If the Democratic Party’s standard bearer has vowed to turn his back on lobbyist business as usual in government (which is the rumor), someone organizing this convention never got the memo. Sponsorships are everywhere. Thanks to various loopholes in campaign finances laws, the parties and hospitality suites, all paid for by generous benefactors, are more elaborate than ever.

(One example of very, very many: the Washington state delegation is hosting four “Breakfast Meetings” on Monday through Thursday. They are sponsored by, in order, Amgen, Merck, Qwest, and Eli Lilly. Multiply that by fifty state delegations — plus D.C. and the territories — and every suite in several dozen upscale hotels, and one begins to appreciate why we don’t have any real movement toward universal health care, and why the Democrats caved on telecom immunity. Among many other things.)

In the absence of actual news, so far most of the media coverage seems to be media interviewing other media, and that includes the blogger tent (“The Big Tent”), which opened today. The DNCC does deserve credit for recognizing bloggers and setting up a special program for blogger access to the convention; the Republican convention in St. Paul next week has nothing similar. But at first glance — and bearing in mind that many of the Big Tent people had just seen each other in Austin — the whole exercise seemed just as incestuous as the MSM we endlessly criticize. Only, well, not as richly compensated. For all of the vaunted independence and orneriness of the blogosphere, so far not many people seem willing to be a skunk at the party. Or, you know, exercise critical judgment.

Most of that will happen outside the convention proper. For example, the Progressive Democrats of America are hosting symposia all week that look to be promising. (In a church, nearly two miles from the Pepsi Center.) But inside the convention, the one serious possibility of conflict, the Hillary fanatics (aka “PUMAs”) that have been openly fantasizing about disrupting the convention in various ways, is all about cult of personality and entitlement, not about any substantive differences to speak of on issues between Obama and Clinton. Sure, there will be the usual tussles over wording of the party platform that nobody reads. But you’d really never know that some polls recently have put favorable ratings for the Democratic-led Congress in the single digits, and that said rating among self-identified Democrats is worse than among Republicans.

Plenty of interesting things will undoubtably happen behind the scenes. But don’t expect any serious expression in Denver of the anger of many in the public over two years of failed congressional Democratic promises to reverse the disaster that has been George Bush (or even to try very hard) — not from delegates, not from media, and not even, apparently, from well-organized public protests.

I leave bright and early tomorrow morning (as soon as the polls open — I’m one of those hopelessly old-fashioned people that likes my polling place) for Denver — with stops en route to meet with activists and bloggers in Boise and Salt Lake. Goldy and Darryl fly out to join me early Saturday. Look for some exciting new wrinkles in HA coverage from us at the Denver convention!

So what would you like to see us report on?

This e-mail alert really was sent out, exactly like this:

From: Washington State Ferries [mailto:WSFAlert@wsdot.wa.gov]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 4:40 PM
To: WSDOT-WSF Alert Recipients
Subject: Ferry Alert: Edmonds / Kingston – Late Boats

Both vessels are running 15 to 20 minutes behind schedule. We apologize for any incontinence this may cause you.

This alert was sent on 8/8/2008 at 4:39PM to subscribers of the Edmonds / Kingston route.

Late last week, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that a recall effort against Port of Seattle Commissioner Pat Davis could proceed as planned. The unanimous ruling, which found that there was evidence of official malfeasance in Davis’s secret 2006 guarantee of a lucrative golden parachute to retiring Port CEO Mic Dinsmore, was pretty unequivocal:

“We can infer from the record that Comm. Davis understood her duties as Port Commissioner and the legal necessity of voting in public session before potentially obligating the Port in any monetary agreement, and, for purposes of recall, intentionally acted outside the scope of these duties by signing an agreement with Dinsmore.”

But the issue here isn’t just the contract for Dinsmore. For decades, the Port of Seattle, secure in its separate taxing authority for King County, has been the most corrupt and arrogant public agency in the state, which is saying something. The cronyism, back-scratching, sweetheart deals, and corporate welfare know almost no bounds. And during each of her 22 years on the Commission, Davis has championed that cronyism and staunchly resisted any efforts at accountability and reform. (It was also her initiative that brought the WTO ministerial to Seattle in 1999, a brainchild that alone should disqualify her from further public service.) For years, Pat Davis has exemplified everything wrong at the Port.

After last week’s court ruling, Davis immediately announced that she wouldn’t seek re-election when her term expires at the end of 2009. But she should still be recalled before then, for several reasons.

First, she can still do a lot of damage (and cost taxpayers a lot of money) if left in a position of power for another 16 months.

Second, Davis deserves to pay some price for her malfeasance — not simply to have a nice retirement party while her fellow commissioners name a wading pool after her. Or give her own secret golden parachute.

Third, even after a scathing performance audit by State Auditor Brian Sonntag — and an ongoing criminal investigation — the Port has been dismissive, defensive, and bitterly resistant to meaningful changes in its cronyist culture. In that context, get a load of this quote from fellow Port Commissioner Gael Tarleton — who ran on a reform platform last year, despite questions about her own corporate conflicts of interest — in arguing against the recall effort. Davis and Tarleton, it turns out, are working together to “implement” some of Sonntag’s demanded reforms. In other words, now that the fox has eaten every hen and destroyed the henhouse, she is standing, hammer and nails in paw, and undoubtably hungry again, ready to build the new henhouse. And, according to Tarleton:

“If we did not have her [Davis’s] knowledge about how things did not work in a transparent and open way in the past, we would not have been able to make many of the most important revisions to the delegation of authority,”

Words. Fail. Me.

Fourth, beyond making sure Davis can do no more damage, as Tarleton and the response to the performance amply demonstrate, Davis is scarcely the whole problem at the Port. And that audit barely scratched the surface: it only looked at the Third Runway project. It did not examine other airport projects, anything in the marine division (where SSA and other corporate contractors have bankrolled many a Port Commissioner campaign), or the Port’s lucrative waterfront real estate development projects. And the audit wasn’t looking for fraud (though it found plenty anyway).

What all this suggests is that there’s an ingrained, corrupt culture at the Port of Seattle that needs to be uprooted. The staff, commissioners, and CEO must all be held accountable. Recalling Pat Davis demonstrates that there’s a price to be paid for betraying the public trust — and maybe, just maybe, some of the other foxes at the Port will either change their own behavior, or get turned out themselves, if the precedent of recalling Davis moves forward.

The public has had enough of this nonsense. It’s time to fight back. Petitions to recall Pat Davis are available here.

Not in the pages of Seattle’s two major dailies, anyway.

When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) decided this spring that Boeing’s appeal of the Air Force award of a tanker contract to a rival had merit, the P-I was so giddy that it published the GAO’s entire press release.

But last week, when the GAO released a report finding that Boeing and other military contractors, along with Pentagon officials, had illegally interfered with government auditors investigating performance and cost of weapons systems — and with the GAO’s investigation of those investigations — and again yesterday, when Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) took to the floor of the Senate calling the report “what could be the biggest auditing scandal in the history of this town,” and calling for “firings by nightfall,” there has not been a word of it in local media.

So you’ll have to read about it here:

Among the findings of the report:

* The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) resident auditor made an agreement with an unnamed aerospace contractor (determined to be Boeing based on the facts contained in the report), one of the five largest government defense contractors, that “limited the scope” of the audit and would allow the contractor to correct problems that were found before the final audit opinion was issued.

* The resident auditor replaced uncooperative auditors and intimidated others into making unsubstantiated assessments that benefited contractors at the expense of the government.

* Supervisors assigned complex auditing tasks to underqualified subordinates, resulting in incomplete audits.

* DCAA officials threatened staff members with retaliation for speaking with GAO investigators.

* The director of a cost-estimating system for a major defense contractor threatened the DCAA he would “escalate” the issue “to the highest level possible” in the government and within the company in question if the DCAA would not green-light the billing system it identified as problematic.

* The DCAA failed to revisit contracts that were negotiated by a corrupt (and later convicted) Air Force official.

* Mistakes, incompetence or intentional deception by the DCAA has essentially built in defective price-estimating systems that may artificially inflate contract estimates for years to come.

McCaskill, on the floor of the Senate yesterday:

I will guarantee you, as auditors around the country learn about this, they’re going to have disbelief and raw anger that this agency has impugned the integrity of government auditors everywhere by these kinds of irresponsible actions…all this time that we have been wasting hundreds of billions of dollars [in Iraq], the fox was in the chicken coop.”

So why is a story about a major government corruption scandal — one that involves our (former) hometown heroes — getting no local coverage? Or, put another way, how is it that when the news is unflattering for the Mariners, local media can be honest about it — but not when the issues are rather more substantive?

When you’re the 419th 401st most powerful member of the House of Representatives, chances at the national limelight are few and far between. You must carefully weigh which, of the many pressing issues facing the body politic, you can expend your limited political capital advocating for. You don’t get many chances to shine; you gotta make ’em count.

So it’s sorta fascinating, in a gruesome car wreck kind of way, to see Rep. Dave Reichert (“Conscience Driven Independent™”-WA) in the pages of The Hill’s Congress Blog on Friday, taking a bold stance against the impeachment of President Bush:

As one of the nine Republicans crossing party lines yesterday on the vote moving Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee, I cast my vote not to hold hearings, but to move the bill off the House Floor so the House could focus on more important issues….

There are less than 30 legislative days left in the Congressional calendar. And this is what we are voting on? No wonder the country has lost faith in Congress. There are so many things that we need to take action on and impeachment votes that are guaranteed not to pass is not one of them.

Now, it’s pretty hard to argue with the assertion that members of the House of Representatives should, you know, do stuff. Although a reasonable observer might add that, with fewer than 30 legislative days left in his fourth year of Congressional service, Sheriff Dave has thus selected as good a time as any to start. Had he actually started to do anything.

Plus, to be sure, no matter how many high crimes and misdemeanors the Bush cabal has committed — and they are undoubtably legion — genuine impeachment, based on a full accounting of those crimes, at this point isn’t even physically possible; Republicans and Democrats alike have so run the clock out on Bush’s second term without mounting any sort of serious investigation of their crimes that at this point none could be conducted in time. Politically, it’s preposterous to think it could or would happen anyway. Neither party’s leadership is interested in turning over that rock.

So why is Reichert wasting his time writing about it?

More to the point, why is Reichert wasting his miniscule influence defending a widely reviled administration he’s supposed to be independent of? (Except for fundraisers.) (And his voting record.) And why does he think it’s a waste of time to investigate some of the crimes that have helped create those crises (illegal wars, soaring energy costs, an economy crippled by deregulated and corrupt financial dealings) he’s failed to help address for four years?

And if crimes leading to multiple crises crippling the country aren’t worth tying up the House’s time, why did his party think impeachment over lying about a blow job was worth bringing Congress to a full stop for over a year?

You’d almost think Reichert was using a meaningless vote to try to score exactly the sort of cheap political points he was allegedly deploring, on behalf of an administration he is allegedly independent of. But then, that’s exactly the sort of expediency-driven political hackery we’ve come to expect from the Seattle Times’ favorite “moderate.”

Once again, a local professional sports team’s threats to move the franchise are resulting in lawmakers flouting their own rules (and, oh, yeah, the desires of a vast majority of their constituents) in order to throw public money at a project which will primarily serve to benefit team owners. And once again, local TV, radio, and newspapers are breathlessly fawning over the proposal, without bothering to note that said media outlets have a tremendous financial interest in the success of the proposal. So sliced bread has nothing on this latest unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to Save “Our” Sonics.

Sigh.

It’s not the fault of the Sonics’ current owners, of course, that we’ve been down this road so many times now, with Safeco Field, Qwest Field, Key Arena, and the Bank of America Arena (which is at least owned by a public entity, UW, and whose renovation was mostly paid for by private donors). The financings of Safeco and Qwest in particular were ugly affairs in which the clear will of local voters was defied by politicians in order to accommodate team owners. So you’ll forgive folks a bit of “here-we-go-again” knee-jerk hatred for yet another fleecing, again joyously celebrated by willfully tone-deaf local media.

I actually think the proposal on the table now from four local billionaires to renovate Key Arena with $150 million of their own money, matched by $75 million each from the city and state, is about as good a proposal (and therefore about as reasonable a compromise) as one could hope for, given that the economics of modern pro sports now rely on the public to build teams’ playpens, and there’s always another sucker (in this case, Oklahoma City; previously, the Mariners were heading to Tampa Bay, the Seahawks to Southern California) willing to pay the price. In any other circumstances, this deal would work.

But there’ always a context, and this is a specific proposal, not an abstraction. As such, there are still three major problems we’re not hearing about from our sycophantic local media.

First is that the proposal’s success relies on current Sonics owner Clay Bennett selling the team to our local guys. Bennett has been telling anyone and everyone, consistently since day one, that he has no interest in selling the team. So the whole exercise is unlikely to result in “saving” the Sonics. Moreover, NBA commissioner David Stern, who has a lot to say about the matter, has warned that if the Sonics leave, Seattle won’t get another team.

The proposal is set up to meet the restrictions of (overwhelmingly voter-approved) I-91, which requires that the city at least break even on any arena improvement deal. So the public’s $150 million is to go to overall improvements to the arena, things that will also help with concerts, exhibitions, and the like, while the private $150 million is supposedly the only part dedicated wholly to pro basketball amenities like locker rooms and luxury suites. But that’s a game, of course; this is all about the Sonics. Nobody’s demanding $150 million in improvements so that the public can enjoy rock concerts in greater comfort. Given that, what we’re talking about is an extremely expensive public investment in appeasing a team that’s likely to move anyway. That’s one minor problem.

The second is that even if this were an ideal proposal (i.e., one with a chance of accomplishing its stated goal), the process is awful. By coming to the state legislature for $75 million six working days before the end of the session, boosters are essentially asking lawmakers to ignore all legal procedures and drop all state business in the remaining week in order to consider a very local problem: the “blight” that results if Key Arena were to lose 41 basketball games a year (some of which would be replaced by concerts that now can’t be booked). To use the appropriate analogy, it’s as if a coach whose team is losing badly midway through the fourth quarter suddenly insisted on throwing out the results, starting the score at 0-0, and if his team is still losing at the end of the game, continuing to play (a special session) until they win.

Each legislative session, a couple thousand bills are proposed, most of which fail — not because they’re bad bills, but because the session’s limited time forces politicians to prioritize. The Sonics proposal wants to skip the committee approvals, the public hearings, the deadlines, all the normal hoops bills must jump through, for what in the greater scheme of things is a pretty low state priority.

Lastly, there’s the local $75 million, which Mayor Greg Nickels has already generously pledged. Aside from the fact that it’s supposed to be the city council, not the mayor, who makes city spending decisions, isn’t this the same Greg Nickels who not a month ago wasn’t paying assistance to dislocated renters because there was no money for it? And now he’s magically found $75 million for a bunch of wealthy Oklahoma businessmen, for a proposal whose local economic benefits would be negligible even if it were successful in saving the team? Which it probably won’t be?

There’s a word for this whole process. And it’s not “generous.”

It didn’t make any local media reports. But last Friday, a deal was struck in the state legislature that could fundamentally change how elections are held in Seattle.

The deal concerned two identical bills with different numbers that had been overwhelmingly passed by the Senate (29-20) and the House (56-38). Because the bills had different numbers, one had to be passed by the other chamber, by this week, in order to be forwarded to the governor’s desk for her signature. And the Senate version, championed by the venerable Sen. Rosa Franklin, won out. (It’s amazing how much of Olympia’s legislative process comes down to personalities. It’s like middle school on steroids.) Gov. Gregoire is expected to sign it into law.

Oh, the bill? It would allow local jurisdictions (cities or counties) to hold referenda on public financing of elections. And Seattle is at or near the top of the list of Washington cities likely to put such a measure on the ballot in November 2008.

Seattle already had public financing of elections once, in the late ’70s and 1980s, before Linda Smith’s statewide initiative (I-134) killed all such laws in 1991. More recently, eight of the nine Seattle City Council members – the folks who’d have to decide to put any such measure on the ballot – wrote Olympia in support of the bill about to be passed. (The sole exception was new city council member Bruce Harrell, recently elected thanks to his wealthy lawyer and developer friends and to opponent Venus Velazquez’s poor driving judgment.)

The path, then, to a November 2008 Seattle ballot measure is fairly clear: a bill already approved by a supermajority in the House, a governor likely to sign it into law, a city council overwhelmingly supportive. And local activists are already working on what that public financing model might look like. Most likely is some variation of the “Voter-Owned Elections” law passed in Portland, Oregon, in 2005. In the Portland law, any candidate who raises 1,000 $5 donations can then qualify for $150,000 in city money, provided he or she agrees not to take further private contributions.

A hundred fifty thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it’s actually below the average of what serious candidates are spending to get on Seattle’s city council these days. In last November’s election, only two of five races were seriously contested (Harrell’s open seat and Tim Burgess’s unseating of incumbent David Della); both winners had the backing (and money) of much of the local business community. In the other three races, incumbents had raised over $100,000 before anyone else even declared for the seats; they raised double that by the time of the election, despite not being seriously contested. (Jean Godden and Sally Clark breezed to victory over underfunded opponents; Tom Rasmussen, the top fundraiser by the filing deadline, wasn’t even opposed.)

With public financing, that scenario wouldn’t be as likely in 2009. Recruiting candidates would be far easier if candidates with a minimum threshold of support were both guaranteed enough money to run competitive campaigns and didn’t have to spend the majority of every day on the phone begging people for money. If they won, they then needn’t worry about repaying those “debts,” either; the thinly disguised bribery that passes for the current campaign financing system (and that gives a huge built-in advantage to incumbents) would be over. And it can’t come any too soon, with several open seats likely in the city council in 2009 – plus Mayor Greg “Moneybags” Nickels running for reelection. (In 2005, Nickels’ war chest successfully kept any credible candidates from opposing him; a less-than-credible one with virtually no money, Al Runte, still did surprisingly well, suggesting that Nickels bought himself a second term even though voters weren’t sold on him.)

The upshot of all this is that last Friday’s deal ensuring Olympia’s passage of a measure allowing local public financing could fundamentally reshape our elections – and that almost certainly that decision will be in the hands of voters, perhaps as soon as November. Less likely, but also possible, is a King County measure – I-134 also struck down a public financing law in King County. Just think of how differently the Port of Seattle might be run if commissioners, earning a few thousand dollars a year, weren’t getting far more than that in contributions primarily from businesses that have dealings with the Port.

Ultimately, public financing of elections doesn’t just mean better elections; it also means a less corrupt government. And that’s well worth the relatively small amount of public funds needed to make it happen.