We declared R-74 a definitive winner (yay!!) on Thursday. Rob McKenna conceded to Jay Inslee (yay, yay!!) on Friday. Yesterday, soon after we asserted that Kim Wyman had won (boo!) the Secretary of State race, Kathleen Drew issued her concession statement. That left only I-1240 as an undecided statewide issue … barely undecided, as it looked increasingly bleak for the opponents of greedy school privatization charter schools.

After Saturday’s vote-count updates (only 6 counties, only 93,955 additional ballots), little has changed but much has changed. As on Friday, Yes on I-1240 is in the lead by a 50.8% to 49.2% margin. As on Friday, the estimation model suggests that those same numbers will be the final tally.

That’s the case even though Yes did worse on Saturday than its previous cumulative percentage in King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Snohomish, and Whatcom Counties. In other words, in every county that updated on Saturday, the day-specific percent Yes was lower than the previous percent Yes. In fact, the No side got more votes than Yes on Saturday, thereby narrowing the absolute margin between the two sides. Unfortunately for those of us who oppose profiteering by Gates, et al. charter schools, the absolute margin decreased by … 33 votes. In percentage terms, that’s 49.98% Yes to 50.02% No.

Obviously, it would take a long, long time to beat I-1240 if you’re eating into its lead (43,860 as of Saturday) by 33 votes per day. Over 1300 days, as a matter of fact.

Let’s look at it in a different way. The SoS estimates that there are still 275,250 ballots remaining to be counted, which would result in overall turnout of 79.8%. To overcome Yes‘s through-Saturday margin, the No side would have to win 58.0% of those votes. In the counting thus far, neither side has ever done better on a single day than 54.4% (No on Thursday, when just over 300,000 votes were tallied), so a percentage large enough to reverse the outcome is beyond implausible.

Now suppose the SoS’s estimate of remaining ballots is low. If there were actually 400,000 more ballots to be counted (turnout would then be 83.0%), No would need 55.5% of them to win the race. In the highly unlikely scenario where the estimate is way-low — 500,000 left to be counted, 85.6% turnout — it would still require 54.4% to overtake the Yes lead.

Thus, while the possibility of reversal cannot be ruled out in a mathematical sense, in the real world it can’t be done. To the detriment of public education in Washington, Gates ($3 million) and Walton ($1.7 million) and Allen ($1.6 million) and Bezos ($1 million) and Hanauer ($1 million) bought themselves an initiative.

For the record, Approve R-74 had a banner day on Saturday — 62.2%. Governor-elect Inslee picked up 56.1% of Saturday’s votes. And although she has conceded, Kathleen Drew won 54.1% of the day’s count.

Thus ends this series of daily updates. I hope to be back with more thoughts after it’s all said and done.

So Rob McKenna hides at home while sending out his campaign manager to let us all know that he’s bowed to the inevitable. Still, I suppose it’s better to confirm that you’re a wimp than to reiterate that you’re an asshole, à la John Koster. Sure, Koster had the cojones to make his own concession speech (though of course he was so thoroughly stomped that it could have been done at least two days earlier). But Koster didn’t have the common courtesy to call WA-01 victor Suzan DelBene beforehand … and then spitefully excoriated the WA GOP and the NRCC for their failure to back his teahadist jihad while conceding. We now see Koster and Kirby Wilbur dissing each other, while nobody takes the blame responsibility for the loss. Stay classy, Republicans!

But I digress. The sharp swing to McKenna prophesied (with zero supporting evidence) by the aforementioned campaign manager, Randy Pepple, didn’t happen on Friday. Oh, on a day when all but six counties updated their counts, he narrowed the percentage of Inslee’s lead by a tenth of a percent. But he fell about 1300 votes farther behind in the absolute margin, from 54,398 back to a deficit of 55,682 votes. Inslee did better in King County on Friday than on Thursday — not much surprise there — but he also ticked up his percentages in Benton, Clark, Kitsap, and Snohomish Counties; there was simply no sign of a turn to McKenna.

At 50.8% to 49.2%, Friday’s cumulative margins in the two remaining races under consideration — Secretary of State and I-1240 — were only slightly smaller than Inslee’s lead over McKenna (51.0% to 49.0%). And both moved in the wrong (IMHO) direction on Friday.

For SoS, Kim Wyman picked up 52.0% of the Friday ballots, thereby adding another tenth of a percent to her overall lead. Although Kathleen Drew did a bit less poorly in Thurston County on Friday, she also did less well in King and the other big counties in which she holds the lead. Since Tuesday, Wyman’s margin has ratcheted upward each and every day, 50.4 to .6 to .7 to .8. There’s no indication of a reversal in that trend, so it’s just a matter of time before Drew concedes. It’s the closest a Democrat has come to serving as Secretary of State since 1960, and it’s the only statewide office won by a Republican this cycle, but it’s still painful.

As good as Thursday had been for the opponents of I-1240, it was just the opposite on Friday. No got 54.4% of Thursday’s ballots while Yes pulled in 53.7% of Friday’s. That reversal was highlighted by the results in King County — it ran 61.7% No on Thursday, for a cumulative tally of 52.6% No … but 55.9% Yes on Friday. That daily outcome took fully 1.1% off of the cumulative percentage of No votes in King County. I have no explanation for these gyrations; the day-to-day differential is well beyond any sort of random fluctuation. Because of such inexplicable variation, I’m less willing to admit that the privatizers charter schools advocates have won. There’s still a ghost of a chance to defeat Bill Gates and Alice Walton, but it’s very unlikely.

Overall, 33 counties counted 269,657 ballots on Friday. That’s fewer than Thursday but more than Wednesday. The SoS estimates that 366,122 remain to be processed, which would take us to 79.7% turnout if correct. However, it isn’t correct. King County, for example, believes it will end up seeing perhaps 50K additional ballots by the time their tally is certified. I anticipate eventually getting closer to 85% statewide turnout than 80%.

According to the SoS’s schedule, additional counts are due to be received today from six counties: King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Pierce, Snohomish, and Whatcom. Mostly Democratic/liberal, mostly large/Puget Sound. Expect a larger Inslee lead and stronger Approve percentage on R-74 (it’s at 52.8% through Friday) in my next update of the ballot counting.

[UPDATE (2:50pm)]

A few minutes ago, I received an email from the Drew campaign. She has conceded defeat in the SoS race. (And of course, she noted that she had first called Ms. Wyman to congratulate her. Kathleen Drew is no John Koster.)

On Thursday, Referendum 74 absolutely kicked ass. Its cumulative support numbers jumped from 52.0% to 52.6%, a real accomplishment when you’ve only added about 300K ballots to the prior count of almost 2.2 million.

How’d they do it? Well, Approve got almost 57% of the vote on Thursday. Only two of the 20 reporting counties did worse on Thursday than on the first two days — tiny Lincoln (542 ballots counted) and Kitsap, where “only” 52% of the day’s ballots voted in the affirmative.

According to my estimation approach, the proportion voting Approve is likely to rise a bit by the time we’re done counting; I have it as 52.8% to Approve, 47.2% bigots Reject. Ladies and gentlemen, R-74 is a winner!

As for the other three races we’re following, there was little overall change observed. In the Governor’s race, however, that stasis masks what might become a problem. Rob McKenna did better than before in 15 of the 20 counties that submitted reports on Thursday. Some of the changes — +2.4% in Clark, Grays Harbor, Skagit, and Whatcom; +3.2 in Snohomish; +3.4% in King; +3.9% in Kitsap; +4.0% in Lincoln — look pretty impressive until you realize that the vote counts in many of the counties were quite small compared to the statewide total. In the end, McKenna pulled in 49.0% of the day’s vote … a lower proportion than he drew on Wednesday. For the day, Inslee’s lead increased by nearly 6000.

Still, it fits in nicely with the scenario advanced by Randy Pepple, the McKenna campaign head, who suggests that late ballots will swing their way starting on Friday and continuing into next week. We’ll see about that, though I must note that the recent history of Republican prognostication is, shall we say, spotty.

Kim Wyman extended her lead a little bit in the Secretary of State race. She’s now ahead of Kathleen Drew by a 1.4% margin, 50.7% to 49.3%. My prediction model suggests that the race could tighten in coming days, though it still shows Wyman ahead by a 50.4% to 49.6% margin.

The vote on I-1240, the Gates/Walton enrichment charter schools initiative, got much tighter on Thursday. The Yes side led 51.1% to 48.9% heading into Thursday, but a strong day for the No forces (they got 54.4% of the day’s votes) dropped the Yes lead to a thin 50.5% to 49.5%. It’s the closest race on my list. My model pegs the final tally at that same 1-point margin, but that can still be reversed if ballots continue to come in as they did on Thursday.

Finally, it looks like the counties have caught up with their backlog of pre-Tuesday ballots. The estimated count of to-be-processed ballots decreased significantly on Thursday, from 744,382 all the way down to 595,614. As the number of arriving ballots continues to decrease, that figure will fall even farther.

Wednesday’s tabulations have arrived, spreadsheets have been filled in, and I’ve got quick updates on three of Washington’s statewide races. Here’s the executive summary:

• Governor — not much has changed. Jay remains in the lead, but Rob still has a chance. Maybe even a slightly greater chance than he did after Tuesday’s count.
• Referendum 74 — Approved stretches its lead. I think the marriage-equality supporters have every right to claim victory.
• Secretary of State — Wyman tiptoes a bit farther ahead, but it’s still much too close to call

New ballot counts were reported by 19 counties on Wednesday. The 228,253 newly-recorded votes constituted less than 12% of Tuesday’s count of 1,947,063. My assumption is that Wednesday was mostly finishing up the backlog of ballots processed before the deadline, and that the first late-arriving ballots won’t be tabulated until Thursday’s report. With nearly 750K uncounted ballots on hand, the estimated turnout jumped from 65.7% to 74.8% (it’ll go appreciably higher before we’re finished.

Inslee led McKenna 51.3% to 48.7% on Tuesday night, with a predicted final tally of 51.2% to 48.8%. He didn’t do nearly as well on Wednesday; in fact, McKenna picked up slightly more than half (50.4%) of the day’s count. Inslee’s percentage in King County came to just under 60%, well below Tuesday’s 63%. With the small number of new ballots, though, the cumulative statewide numbers are just about the same as on Tuesday — actually 51.1% to 48.9% (a bit worse than on Tuesday), predicted 51.3% to 48.7% (a bit better than on Tuesday). The seeming contradiction arises from the nonuniform distribution of new votes by county.

Approval of R-74 had 51.8% of the Tuesday vote, to 48.2% Reject. My estimate at that time was a final 51.7% to 48.3% tally. It got better on Wednesday, as 53.4% of the new ballots were for Approve. Approve did better on Wednesday than on Tuesday in 17 of the day’s 19 counties; only Lincoln and Spokane Counties bucked the trend. The Approve rate on Wednesday’s King County ballots (67.6%) was more than two percent higher than Tuesday’s (65.5%). Through Wednesday, Approve’s cumulative percentage was 52.0% and its estimated final result was 52.1%. It’s all but certain that Washington will join Maine and Maryland on the right side of the argument.

Wednesday’s new ballots reaffirmed the tightness of the battle to replace Sam Reed as Secretary of State. After the first day’s count, Republican Kim Wyman led Kathleen Drew by less than one point, 50.4% to 49.6%. At that time, my predicted final tally was identical to the actual percentages. Wyman’s margin among Wednesday’s new ballots (52.7% to 47.3%) was appreciably higher than Tuesday’s, and her Wednesday percentage exceeded Tuesday’s in 13 of the 19 counties. While my estimated outcome didn’t change with the addition of Wednesday’s ballots, Wyman’s actual percentage rose to 50.6% to Drew’s 49.4%. This race remains basically deadlocked. I must say, though, that if Wyman were the Auditor of any county other than Thurston, she would be trailing. Normally reliably Democratic, Thurston favors its Republican favorite daughter 59.0% to 41.0%.

I anticipate a larger number of newly tabulated ballots in Thursday’s count, as many counties start tallying ballots that hadn’t been been sitting in the county offices, waiting for the official poll-closing at 8pm. We will likely have a much clearer picture of the gubernatorial race, and perhaps also of the SoS outcome. And I’ll be here, peering at my spreadsheets and analyzing what’s going on.

[UPDATE] (1:30pm)]

In comment #1, Moderate Man asked why I wasn’t looking at I-1240, the initiative in which Bill Gates and friends are pushing privatizing education charter schools. I had no good answer to the question (see comment #7), so I went back and built a spreadsheet to examine it.

On Tuesday, Yes on I-1240 was leading 51.2% to 48.8%. My estimation method put the “final” tally at 51.4% to 48.6%. In Wednesday’s returns, Yes was ever-so-slightly ahead, garnering 72 votes more than No among the 216,702 recorded votes (to one decimal place, that’s a 50-50 dead heat). At 51.1% to 48.9%, the cumulative result was identical to my interim estimate.

I’ll include I-1240 as this series continues. Even if the bigots opponents of R-74 have conceded, I’ll still report on that race for at least one more day.

Early this morning, Darryl presented a brief discussion of yesterday’s results in the gubernatorial race. He introduced a model of its eventual outcome:

• take the actual county-by-county D-R percentages from November 6
• apply county-specific 2008 turnout percentages
• estimate the final outcome between Inslee and McKenna

This may be, as he explains, a conservative model, in that recent elections have demonstrated a generalized increase in Democratic percentages over the days of post-Election Day tabulations. As I explained in a DailyKos diary about the 2010 Murray-Rossi Senate race (posted on the Friday after Election Day:

During the day on Thursday, 22 of the 39 counties added ballots to their totals, counting a total of 207,170 votes in the Senate race. Patty Murray received 113,085 (54.6%) of those votes, with smarmy huckster Dino Rossi pulling down the remaining 94,085 votes, 45.4% of the day’s total.

As she did on Wednesday, Patty increased her percentage of the vote in most of the reporting counties, 16 of the 22. But that doesn’t come close to describing how she dominated the day. You see, the counties in which Murray did worse on Thursday than she had been doing theretofore (Asotin, Clark, Cowlitz, Grant, Lewis, and Pend Oreille) tallied only 27,836 of the day’s ballots. That is, a mere 13.4% of the Thursday votes were from counties where Patty underperformed. Counties where she outperformed her previous level comprised 86.6% of the day’s counted ballots.

Patty even won the day in several red counties. For instance, she took 50.7% of Island County’s 4031 Wednesday ballots, though her overall votes percentage there is 49.7%. Pierce always seems to hover near the break-even point, and Patty’s 50.6% on Wednesday (22,891 ballots) hardly budged her cumulative 49.7% mark. And then there’s Klickitat County, where Murray’s 52.9% (359 of 688 ballots) was shockingly high. It raised her cumulative share of the small county’s overall vote from 41.4% to 42.3%.

For context, Murray won 50.5% statewide on Tuesday night, 53.4% on Wednesday (cumulatively 50.8%), and 54.6% on Thursday (reaching a cumulative 51.3% over the three days). Two nights after the election, her overall share of the vote had increased by almost a full percent.

So Darryl’s model, wherein the D-R percentage doesn’t change over time, is a conservative one.

I too have developed a model for estimating the eventual outcome of the election. It’s rather different from Darryl’s. What I do is to “believe” what the counties report to the Secretary of State. By which I mean that on each night I assume (pretend might be a better word) that the total number of ballots that will be processed by a county equals the sum of their Total Ballots Counted to Date and their Estimated Ballots on Hand to be Processed, as reported on the SoS’s Voter Turnout page. My estimate consists of combining each county’s current D-R percentages with the sum defined above.
[Read more…]

Who’da thunk it?

The home of such dreck as Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers, and Only in America with Larry The Cable Guy may have actually gotten something almost right, almost historically accurate:

That’s the trailer for an episode of “Mega Disasters” on The History Channel, ordinarily as misnamed a channel as there can be. What the environs of New York City are facing in the next few days may, in fact, be even more catastrophic than that program envisions. To wit:

• The storm depicted in the show comes up the coast, basically tracking toward the northeast. Hurricane Sandy is expected to travel in a northwesterly direction, churning into New York Harbor directly from the open ocean.
• The hypothetical storm moves very fast, with clear skies arriving within less than a day. Sandy, we’re told, will stall over Pennsylvania for days, deluging the entire Northeast under at least 6-12 inches of rain.
• Coming at the end of October, newly-fallen leaves will obstruct and clog storm drains, making for faster and deeper flooding than would happen in the September timeframe of the TV show’s storm.
• As a final kicker in the real scenario, Monday, October 29 is a full moon, when tides are always at their highest. High tides at the Battery will occur at 8:31am and 8:53pm Monday, 9:06am and 9:32pm Tuesday, and 9:40am and 10:13pm Wednesday.

Here’s hoping it isn’t nearly as serious as the dire predictions are telling us. I expect to hear reports from my nephew, who lives near Lincoln Center, once the worst passes … if there’s any electric power in the area, that is.

PS. This is Bruce’s Sandy:

Almost five years ago, a small group of individuals began to call for a Presidential candidate Science Debate. The idea quickly gained momentum, with support from dozens of Nobel laureates, the leaders of over 100 major universities, prestigious scientific organizations (among them AAAS, the National Academies of Science and Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine), and tens of thousands of American citizens. From thousands of submitted questions, a list of 14 was eventually developed. Science Debate 2008 had bipartisan Congressional co-chairs, a television deal with NOVA, and even rented a venue. Unfortunately, although both the McCain and Obama campaigns produced written answers in 2008, neither side agreed to make science the topic of a debate.

The story in 2012 has been very much the same — tremendous support for a colloquy on the important scientific issues to be faced in the next few decades, a set of 14 serious questions, written answers but no debate. This cycle, the editors of Scientific American graded the Obama and Romney responses:

To make our determination, we invited readers to send us leads and solicited input from our board of advisers and other subject-matter experts. We scored the candidates’ answers on a five-point scale (with five being best), using the following criteria: how directly and completely they answered the question; scientific accuracy; feasibility (including economic viability and clear accounting for both revenues and costs); potential benefits to health, education and the environment; and sustainability (meaning how well the proposed solutions balance the needs of current and future generations).

While SA‘s evaluation found Romney to be more specific in his plans, and to have greater feasibility, Obama greatly exceeded Romney in scientific accuracy. In particular, Romney’s responses on climate change, ocean health, and freshwater “revealed an unfamiliarity with the evidence that shows how urgent these issues have become”. Also, as an opponent of Net Neutrality, Romney scored 0 on the question about the Internet.

The Science Debate people presented a subset of their questions — those particularly relevant to the Evergreen State — to the candidates for Governor of Washington. The issues on that list were:

• Innovation
• Climate Change
• Education
• Ocean Health
• Vaccination and Public Health
• Science in Public Policy

As would be expected from the author of a well-received book on green energy, Jay Inslee provided extensive and detailed answers to the six queries.

Rob McKenna’s responses, in full, are displayed below:

 
 
 
 
 

McKenna was invited to answer the questions on six different occasions. He failed to reply to any of the invitations. Even on what is allegedly his signature issue — education — his silence was deafening. In his typical weaselly fashion, McKenna opted to say nothing whatsoever instead of revealing his Republican anti-scientific orientation. He’ll do anything not to offend the teahadist GOP base in Washington while passively thumbing his nose at the reality-based voters in the Puget Sound environs.

Playing mute has worked for McKenna in the past; it worked well (and may almost have been appropriate) when he was running for a statewide service position. But after Dino Rossi’s twin failures to fool enough people in gubernatorial — that is, executive — elections, we the people of Washington are onto these barefaced attempts by conservative Republicans to bamboozle us.

If you haven’t already mailed in your ballot, what are you waiting for? Vote for Inslee (and Obama, Cantwell, Ferguson, Drew, Goldmark, Kreidler, McCloud, et al.), seal it up, and drop it in the mail!

In case HA readers have forgotten, I’d like to remind you that Washingtonians will elect 10 people to represent them in the House of Representatives in the upcoming 113th Congress. That, of course, is an increase of one over the nine Representatives we’ve sent to DC for the last 20 years.

Incumbents are running for reelection in seven of the redrawn Congressional Districts, and every one of them is all but certain to win. Therefore, I offer congratulations-in-advance to Rick Larsen, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Doc Hastings, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Jim McDermott, Dave Reichert, and Adam Smith … the Representatives in, respectively, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 9th Districts. That’s three Democrats (Larsen, McDermott, Smith) and four Republicans (Herrera Bueutler, Hastings, McMorris Rodgers, Reichert).

But what of the two open, and one brand-new, seats?

It was widely acknowledged that the principal goal of the Democratic members of the Redistricting Commission was to center the new 10th CD on Olympia, and to anoint Denny Heck, who lost in 2010 to Herrera Beutler in the then-open WA-03, as their candidate. He faces underfunded Republican Dick Muri, who unsuccessful challenged Adam Smith in the old WA-09 two years ago. Well, it looks like Tim Ceis and Dwight Pelz got their wish, as the Cook Political Report rates WA-10 Solid D and DailyKos Elections calls it Likely D. The two organization agree that WA-01, where Suzan DelBene faces teahadist John Koster, and where most of Washington’s Congressional-race attention has been concentrated, Leans D. Boy, I hope they’re right.

The third open seat came as something of a shocker. Norm Dicks surprised many Washingtonians when he announced his retirement after 18 terms representing the 6th District. Conventional wisdom suggested that WA-06 had remained in Democratic hands largely because of Dicks’s seniority (ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee) and close ties to the strong Navy presence on Hood Canal and Puget Sound. The sprawling, largely rural WA-06 doesn’t fit the usual mold of Democratic CDs.

Well, conventional wisdom appears to have been wrong. Even though a Republican self-funding Weyerhaeuser relative is on the ballot, both Cook (Likely D) and dKos put the District strongly in the Democratic column. In fact, on Monday DailyKos Elections upgraded WA-06 from Likely D to Safe D.

The principal reason behind this happy outcome is the superb Democrat running in the 6th District, Derek Kilmer. I’ve known Derek ever since I arrived in Washington in 2001; at that time he and his wife Jen were colleagues of my sister in the 36th District Democrats. We in Seattle were disappointed when they relocated to Gig Harbor (he’s Vice President of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County), but it was clearly the right thing for them. I’m thrilled that the people of WA-06 see the same positive qualities in Derek that I recognized.

When Derek won his first political race (State Rep from the 26th LD in 2004), I began thinking that he could be a great candidate to replace Norm Dicks when the old warhorse decided to hang ’em up. I didn’t expect it to come quite so soon, but it seems like I was onto something.

So Derek will, in all likelihood, slide into Norm’s position as a Democratic Congressman. That leaves the overall status of Washington’s delegation in DC in the same place it was when the Redistricting Commission finished its work — five Democratic CDs, four Republican CDs, and one up for grabs. If, as most pundits predict, DelBene keeps the odious Koster away from DC, we’ll be 6-4 Democratic. Not nearly what I’d like it to be, but I believe that would be an accurate description of our state.

[Cross-posted from Peace Tree Farm]

I’m fortunate.

When I was laid off from my job last month, I was eligible for continuation of my health insurance. I have enough money saved up that I can pick up the large portion of the premiums that used to be contributed by my employer. I was persistent enough, and knowledgeable enough, to navigate through the shoals of bureaucracy that lay between employer-based and formerly-employed insured status.

It was frustrating for several weeks. For instance, I wasn’t allowed to apply for continuation coverage while still insured. Then I couldn’t write a check for the first month of coverage until my application for continuation coverage was received, processed, and accepted. It took over a week after my check was deposited before my status was updated from no coverage to insured. Even after that change was acknowledged, it required a call to the PBM (pharmacy benefit manager), a business separate from the insurer, to update my prescription insurance.

When it all settled out, the insurance was reinstated retroactively to the first day of the month. But I still had to make sure that the claims rejected while I was in limbo were resubmitted (I haven’t yet contacted the lab that drew and tested a blood sample). Every one of those steps wastes money—customer service operators who could have helped someone else, clerks who had to open, photocopy, and file my applications, eligibility assessors who had to process my paperwork, personnel at my providers who had to send my claims to the insurer for a second time, computers that had to rerun those claims. It was only a little bit of money each time, but of course those infinitesimal amounts add up to big bucks when multiplied by thousands or millions of incidents. At least I get my EOBs electronically, so I didn’t kill many trees by generating all those papers twice.

My office visits and lab tests hadn’t made it through the providers’ billing systems by the time I became retroactively covered, so they had no visible impact on my wallet. Because the office personnel don’t know the alleged prices of their services, they probably couldn’t require up-front payment anyway. Not so when it comes to prescriptions … I had to pay the full retail price before I could get my medications. Once covered, I went back to the drugstore to have my credit card reimbursed for the cash I’d laid out.

As it happens, I take six “maintenance medicines”, prescriptions that I refill every month. All six are generics, costing appreciably less than the brand name versions of those medications. Even so, the full retail price of a month’s-worth of my meds was rather hefty — $445.74 (brand names would have run $864.67). After my coverage was restored retroactively, I went back to Bartell so that they could resubmit the prescriptions to my insurance. After applying the (appreciably lower) price negotiated by the insurer, and after accounting for the portion of that price paid by the insurer, my out of pocket cost for those six prescriptions came to just $11.98. I have very good insurance.

Similarly, were I not insured, the price of an office visit would be $219.00. My insurer had negotiated an allowed amount of $83.01 for that sort of visit, only about 38% of the alleged retail price. And my out of pocket portion of the insurer-negotiated price comes to a mere $12.45. To reiterate, I have very good insurance.

I knew it would work out as it did. And I had the resources to ease the difficulties of the bureaucratic delays. But suppose I didn’t have a credit card. Suppose I lived from paycheck to paycheck, with only a debit card and a meager bank account. Then, I would have had a problem. Then, I might have been required to choose between maintaining my health and buying groceries, or maybe even between medicines and rent. Forced into such a dilemma, filling prescriptions would undoubtedly fall behind food and shelter.

Being unemployed and uninsured, then, is a double triple-whammy:

• You have much less money coming into your bank account
• The bill for healthcare services is much larger than what an insurer can negotiate with the provider
• You bear responsibility for paying the entire bill

I could go on. I could mention the uncertainties faced by providers; because of the myriad insurers with myriad rules and myriad methods of bill submission, they never know how much they’ll actually receive in reimbursement for their services (and they must hire additional staff to handle all those procedures). I could argue for something like Medicare for all, or for a sensible healthcare system like those in civilized nations (there are many models to choose from, all of which are better and less costly than ours).

Instead, I’ll just thank my lucky stars that my layoff isn’t the kind of financial and health disaster that it could be if I didn’t have resources. And I’ll pay my insurance premiums every month.

[Cross-posted from Peace Tree Farm]

Sometimes, the Seattle Times makes it too easy to criticize their endorsements. Really, Frank, what were you thinking??

• Jim Kastama for Secretary of State?
• Steve Hobbs in WA-01? They even suggest writing him in for the special election in the old WA-01.
• Dual endorsements for the US Senate (Maria and Whatshisface from Spokane), WA-02 (Larsen and some random Republican), and WA-06 (Derek Kilmer and the richie-rich 1%er from Weyerhauser)?

Even when they get one right, they often get something wrong. Consider state Supreme Court Position 8. In that particular race, with only two candidates on the ballot, the primary will decide who earns a full term on the Court. Like everyone who actually examines the candidates, the Times is endorsing the appointed incumbent, Justice Steven Gonzalez. His opponent is a little-known “strict construction” type, whose sole attribute is that he bears an Anglo-Saxon name. It’s well known, of course, that odd results may ensue in low-turnout, low-information elections. It’s also well known that in such races higher ballot position is a distinct advantage (the other guy’s name is above Justice Gonzalez’s on the ballot), and unfortunately it’s also known that in a state with Washington’s demographics a non-“ethnic” surname is a big edge in low-turnout, low-information races.

That’s why I find it rather disingenuous of the Seattle Times to have chosen the photo of Justice Gonzalez displayed here when they published their endorsement on July 5. Mr. Gonzalez certainly looks, well, ethnic in this image.

But that’s not at all the way he looks these days. For that matter, it’s not what he has looked like for quite a long time. For example, video of the news story broadcast on KING-5 when Justice Gonzalez was sworn in is shown below. That video was shot on January 9, 2012, fully six months ago:

As further evidence, I offer several additional recent photos. The first one shown below is from his page on the Supreme Court website. Presumably, it’s his current official portrait. Also displayed here is a shot from his campaign’s photo page. Now, I could have chosen one of the three pictures showing him with a beard, but I instead picked one of the 48 clean-shaven photos. Incidentally, all of the with-beard photos on the campaign site show his facial hair in a much softer, much gentler, less “bandito” light than the one attached to the Times endorsement. (Yes, that’s Edgar Martinez with him.)

How difficult would it have been for the Seattle Times to locate a current photograph of the candidate they were endorsing for a vital spot on the state’s highest court? Is it presumptuous of me to ask whether anyone of the editorial board of the Times noticed that Justice Gonzalez was clean-shaven when they interviewed him in preparation for making their endorsement decision? Yet they still chose to accompany their endorsement of the Justice with a picture that could easily play into the worst preconceptions held by voters in the low-turnout, low-information primary election for Supreme Court Position 8.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only person in the Puget Sound region who was shocked into wakefulness by a loud crash of thunder this morning. I was thrilled — in a positive sense — that it happened.

In my 11½ years as a Seattle resident, I recall exactly zero times when I’ve experienced a real, honest-to-god thunderstorm before today. On those very few occasions when we’ve had any lightning/thunder at all, it was always just a single flash and crash. And that one solitary event was often water-cooler fodder the next day.

That’s not how it was where I grew up. No, I’m not talking about Tornado Alley or any of those midwestern states where you could see that line of thunderstorms approaching for an hour or two before it hit. I’m from South Jersey (Exit 4, as we like to describe it). We had plenty of electrical storms there as well. The main difference was that we couldn’t see them coming as easily, since we had trees and hills and buildings there.

I love thunderstorms. Love the way the air seems to turn yellowish as the storm nears. Love to watch the sheets of rain as they pour down (under a non-conductive roof, that is). Once, when I lived in Pittsburgh, we sat on the front porch and saw an electrical transformer on a telephone pole across the street completely shorted out by a lightning hit … sparks, almost fireworks, and of course the neighborhood was suddenly without power.

I wonder whether very many Washingtonians know how to estimate how far away a lightning flash happens. It’s a simple formula, but why would anyone who grew up around here be familiar with it?

So, am I right or wrong about this? If you’re a Washington (or maybe just PacNW west of the Cascades) native, do you know how to calculate that distance? Do you even know that such an estimate is possible?

If you do know how to figure it, just say so; don’t reveal the formula. Wouldn’t want to let the other guys know about it too soon.

In this post (the third in my series on LD redistricting), the topic is still another Seattle-area Legislative District with an open seat. I have a lot of connections with the 36th, not least of which is that my sister and her family live there. Also, as we’ll soon see, my own precinct used to be — but is no longer — right on the border between the 43rd and the 36th.

NOTE: a click on the “Click to continue” link below will open the key to definitions of the meanings of the various colors and other symbols on the maps.

Location — northwest Seattle, from Belltown to Crown Hill
   Senate: Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D), 2014
   House 1: Reuven Carlyle (D)
   House 2: Mary Lou Dickerson (D), retiring

The 36th District is quite compact, and its borders didn’t change very much in the recent redistricting. It still encompasses most of Belltown and all of Queen Anne, Interbay, Magnolia, and Ballard. Like the 43rd to its east, but now unlike the 46th to its northeast, it lies entirely within the city of Seattle. Not only that — the 36th LD is also entirely within Jim McDermott’s Congressional District (WA-07) and entirely within Larry Phillips’s King County Council District (KC-4). The map below displays the 36th District as it was defined on the 2001 map, prior to the recent redistricting. The map’s scale is 60,000:1.

It is immediately obvious that the new version of the 36th LD is quite similar to the 2001 map. Given the homogeneity of Seattle, and understanding that the LD’s and the city’s population growth was much the same as the state as a whole, there was little reason to make many changes there. We can’t look into the collective mind of the Redistricting Commission, but it appears that they generally chose to concentrate whatever changes took place in Seattle in the redrawn 46th District.

The map of 2011’s 36th District displays the boundaries of the Congressional Districts in its vicinity. Only one of those dashed blue lines is particularly interesting … the small piece of border in the lower right corner of the image. It demonstrates that the edge of WA-07 comes close to the 36th, but doesn’t quite get there. That piece of the CD’s border (WA-09 is southeast of that line) actually separates the 43rd District from the 37th; the core of Seattle is divided among the three LDs.

The great similarity between the 2001 and 2011 maps of the 36th Legislative District is quite evident when the two are superimposed on one another. Except for some very slight rejiggering in Belltown, the alterations consist of losing its portion of Fremont (to the 43rd) and gaining those parts of Greenwood and Phinney Ridge (from the 46th) that weren’t already in the District. The new 36th might possibly be a wee bit less Democratic than the old one — the western hillside of Fremont might be a tad bluer than the eastern hillside of Phinney Ridge — but there will be little change in the political nature of the LD. It remains a solidly Democratic bastion.

As a Fremont resident myself, I’m happy to see the new boundaries. Under the 2001 map, my precinct was smack-dab on the line between the 43rd and 36th, and at least one of the first-draft redistricting maps would have moved the border eastward, thereby transferring me into the 36th. Instead, the new 43rd covers 14 precincts that are home to quite a few former stalwarts of the 36th District Democrats, including a former LD chair and nearly half a dozen former Executive Board members of the old 36th. My precinct is now well inside the boundaries of the 43rd Legislative District, which extends around 10 blocks to my west.

When Mary Lou Dickerson decided to relinquish her House seat, a crowd of aspirants arose immediately. Of the seven declared candidates, one is a self-declared Progressive, one is a Republican (Paulista, actually), and the other five are Democrats. Sounds pretty typical for this solid blue LD.

There is general agreement among the Democrats on the issues. So perhaps the crux of the matter will come down to the candidates’ personal backstories. In alphabetical order, the Democrats are:

• Evan Clifthorne, legislative staffer for Senator Paull Shin (D-21) and native Washingtonian
• Sahar Fathi, staffer for Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Iranian-American woman
• Noel Frame, state director of Progressive Majority, former campaign manager, native Washingtonian
• Brett Phillips, green building/energy efficiency expert, son of County Councilmember Larry Phillips, native of the 36th District
• Gael Tarleton, Port of Seattle Commissioner and national security analyst

In a very real sense, this election reminds me of the 2006 open-seat House race here in the 43rd. Back then, we had six excellent Democrats competing for the seat then held by Ed Murray, who was running for the State Senate. In that primary, Jamie Pederson won the Democratic nomination with just 23% of the vote. One difference between then and now is that in 2006 we were temporarily operating under the sensible Open Primary, Private Choice methodology (called Pick-a-Party by Sam Reed) rather than the ridiculous Top Two favored by the inane majority among us. Thus, winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to winning the general election. There was a Republican primary as well in 2006, wherein the winner drew far fewer votes than the sixth-place Democrat … but appeared on the November ballot.

There was no hint of negative campaigning in our 2006 primary in the 43rd. I’ve detected a hint of non-collegiality in the 36th, though there hasn’t been anything close to real mud-slinging. Perhaps the large number of candidates has prevented a repeat of the 36th’s ugly two-way 2008 race. Races actually, since the Top Two forced it to carry over from the primary to the general election. When there are lots of near-equivalent choices available, it wouldn’t be sensible to alienate any of the electorate. Assuming that two of the Democratic candidates will continue on to the November ballot, could the gloves come off post-primary? We’ll see…

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Here in New Hampshire, beer and wine are available at grocery stores, convenience stores, general stores. Liquor can only be purchased at the 77 state-owned, state-run liquor stores scattered around the state.

You may be familiar with this type of system for the sale of alcoholic beverages.

I stopped in a state store — one of their specialty wine & spirits stores — this afternoon. I’m not familiar with a lot of Washington’s liquor prices, so I couldn’t make anything like a comprehensive comparison between NH and WA prices. But there’s one particular item that I do know about, because I bought a bottle of it a few weeks ago back home in Seattle. That was before the privatization change-over. IOW, before the prices went up.

I paid $44.95 for a 1.75 liter bottle of Bombay Dry Gin (not the Sapphire variant) in a Washington state store. By all indications, were I to buy it today (I’m not really sure where it’s sold these days), that bottle would cost somewhat more than that.

New Hampshire was having a sale on Bombay today, charging $3.00 less than its standard list price. So that 1.75L bottle wouldn’t have set me back the usual $27.99; I could have walked out of that state store with it after putting a $24.99 charge on my credit card.

For the numerically-minded, the price at the New Hampshire store was only 54.3% of the Washington state store price (the regular price would have been 60.9%). The NH price would be an even smaller proportion of the private-store Washington price, or so I’m told.

Ain’t privatization grand?

The annual Netroots Nation gathering has come and gone. A record number (2500 or so?) of progressive activists, operatives, politicians, staffers, and such were in attendance at the meeting in Providence. As usual, I was invigorated by last weekend’s activities. You see, unlike my youthful colleague Roya, I’m a veteran of these gatherings. The only one of the seven YearlyKos/Netroots Nation events I missed was YK2 (Chicago, 2007). In Rhode Island I was pleased to have quality time with longtime friends, and also to make new friends, connecting faces with names I’ve known for years.

Between Roya and me, we’ve more than adequately recounted Darcy Burner’s keynote, so there will be no further mention thereof. However, I do have one addition to Roya’s piece on criminal justice … identifying the principal speaker at the keynote. It was Ben Jealous, who has hugely revitalized and strengthened the NAACP in his short tenure as its President and CEO.

For the next several days, I’ll be visiting with an old and dear friend (we first met in our first college class, in September 1968) in the pleasurable small city of Keene, New Hampshire. It’s a bridge-time between NN12 and next weekend’s college reunion up in Hanover.

While the vibe of Netroots Nation is fresh, though, I’d like to offer a few observations about last weekend’s get-together in Providence:

• The city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island welcomed us enthusiastically. It’s a real advantage to be a small state in which nearly everyone is closely connected with everyone else. When US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a good friend of Angel Taveras, mayor of the state’s largest (and capital) city, things get done.
• Further evidence of our warm welcome was the always-spectacular WaterFire, wherein the city celebrates its revitalized downtown rivers with over 80 ceremonial braziers, unique music, boat processions, and civic engagement that inspires residents and tourists alike. Saturday’s WaterFire was held specifically to honor Netroots Nation.
• One of the major themes of the meeting was the widespread illegal practices of the banksters. Whether it was foreclosure fraud or peddling of “securities” they knew full well were worthless, or a thousand other outrages, banks and their enablers in Congress (to be fair, many in the executive branch have been (ir)responsible too) were repeatedly the targets of our enmity.
• In the “horse race” panel, where DailyKos elections experts offer up informed opinions on the upcoming cycle, I asked about WA-06. That’s the seat long held by Norm Dicks, who will retire after the current session of Congress. The only Democrat running to replace Dicks is Derek Kilmer, a good friend of mine and an absolutely top-drawer candidate. At least two self-funding Republicans are also running in WA-06. One of them, I’m told, wrote his campaign committee a half-million dollar check within days of forming it. Although the CD is ancestrally Democratic, I was somewhat taken aback when the panelists opined that those deep GOP pockets mean that the race is a tossup. I expect to have more to say about Derek and his campaign in the future.
• While perhaps not as star-studded as in some previous years, NN drew the likes of Paul Krugman; Elizabeth Warren; Bill McKibben; Cecile Richards (Planned Parenthood); Rich Trumka, Trevor Potter (Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC lawyer); Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Ben Cardin; Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Keith Ellison. And, of course, all four of Rhode Island’s members of Congress — Senators Whitehouse and Jack Reed, Representatives Jim Langevin and David Cicilline.

One item requires a few paragraphs of its own.

Netroots Nation was supposed to have been held in Providence last year. Instead, we went to Minneapolis. The reason for that switch is straightforward. In 2010, the hospitality industry union in Rhode Island, UNITE HERE Local 217, was involved in acrimonious contract talks with the Westin Providence. The hotel threatened pay and benefit cuts, and even fired some leaders of the union, prompting a strike. Local 217 asked Netroots Nation for its support by not coming to Rhode Island during their labor dispute. That request was honored, of course. More than that, though, it prompted many bloggers across the country to write about the union’s situation. The increased attention and publicity, along with UNITE HERE’s dogged persistence, eventually led to a new agreement with the Westin … with pay and benefits restored, and with fired workers rehired.

After that happy result, UNITE HERE joined the city and the Senator in opening its arms to Netroots Nation in 2012. Sure, members of the union tended our bars, cleaned our hotel rooms, provided our bagels and coffee. But they did it almost as friends, interacting with us as individuals (and vice versa). At one of the plenary sessions, a dozen or so members of Local 217 — some of whom had been pouring drinks just a couple of minutes earlier — stood on the stage with NN Chairman Adam Bonin, thanking our organization for its assistance by presenting him with a print of Providence signed by them and many of their union brethren.

One of the last Netroots Nation events was a “blogger breakfast” hosted by Local 217. Held on the top floor of the Providence Biltmore, another unionized hotel and an official NN12 hotel, it was their way of formally thanking the rank-and-file activists for our aid to the rank-and-file workers. We learned about other places, all around the country, where UNITE HERE continues to fight for its rights. And we heard from Providence City Council member Carmen Castillo, almost certainly the first elected official in a big city who works as a hotel housekeeper.

It was an inspiring event for me, particularly after I learned that UNITE HERE is, in part, a descendant of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. My paternal grandmother was a proud longtime member of the ILGWU. During and after that breakfast, I thought a lot about immigrants, about how unions have helped them become productive, functioning Americans. About how union membership led directly to their opportunity to fulfill the American Dream. About how those immigrants were able to buy homes and cars, to feed, clothe, and educate their children.

I’m a result of what unions did to build the success of America. I bet you, dear reader, are such a result too.

Greetings, HA readers, from Providence, Rhode Island! Until Sunday, I’ll be here with a couple thousand other bloggers, activists, and media, attending the annual Netroots Nation meeting.

As I write, I’m in a session called “Winning Smarter: Using Data to Transform Elections”. Mega-wonky, with discussion of polling and focus groups, targeted advertising, GOTV for primaries, and more. It’s moderated by an avid local consumer of this sort of data. You many have heard of her … one Darcy Burner, candidate for Congress in WA-01. She’s actually the organizer if this panel.

Also in the audience is one of Darcy’s arch-nemeses, covering the event even though (as he’s told me and other HA bloggers) he’s disappointed that the Right Online idiots aren’t stalking NN meeting in the same town at the same time, as they had been doing for several years. Last year in Minneapolis, the late Andrew Breitbart — film crew tagging along, of course — tried to disrupt Netroots Nation by antagonizing attendees. Instead, the security people at the convention center escorted him away, after he’d tried to bully his way into the exhibit hall without an NN nametag. Parenthetically, several years ago in Austin, Bob Barr (running for President at the time, as a Libertarian) paid for NN registration, attended a few sessions, and was treated civilly in all respects.

I predict that Joel’s first Netroots Nation piece will include, if not focus on, several snarky (he thinks) digs at Darcy. You know the type:

…more popular here among the goofy Left than she is in Washington state…

…campaigning nationally instead of shaking hands in Sedro-Woolley or Ferndale…

I expect to file at least a few more reports from the conference (or maybe from the parties surrounding it), so stay tuned for more of Netroots Nation.