Incumbent Lt. Governor Brad Owen and State Auditor Brian Sonntag. I won’t necessarily be voting for their Republican opponents, but I will definitely not cast my ballot for these two “Democrats” this November.
I’ve never been much impressed by Owen, but Sonntag, well, I’ve grown pretty damn disillusioned with his confrontational, punitive, and thus counterproductive use of performance audits these past couple years. Rather than promoting efficiencies in government, Sonntag’s performance audits have only served to enable and embolden anti-transit, anti-tax, anti-government activists. If he audited himself to see what kind of return taxpayers have gotten for their performance audit dollars, his office wouldn’t look so good.
Careful here, Goldy. Dig behind appearances to what the law requires, and don’t condemn Sonntag if what he’s doing is what the statute requires. Don’t let this turn into a wingnut-like “shoot the messenger if you don’t like the message” type of deal. To be honest, I don’t know if Sonntag deserves your opprobium, I’m merely urging cautious and a careful look-see before reaching that conclusion. Policy decisions are fair game; compliance with the law is not.
1,000 Point Day For The Dow?
Probably not, but it looks like the market will close today up over 900 points on the Dow. Thin volume, though. So this “rally” doesn’t mean Main Street is jumping back into the market. It simply means the market is running out of sellers and a few bargain hunters with cash are scooping up small numbers of shares offered at astoundingly cheap prices by the few remaining sellers. But even if there still are few buyers, a slowdown in distress selling is itself a good sign. I made about $6,500 today. One of the stocks I bought this morning is AT&T.
You are right about Brad Owen. He is no Democratic. He has unfortunately found a comfortable well-paying job for the rest of his life, and that is a tragedy. As far as I can tell his job consists of playing in a rock-n-roll band that tells lies about marijuana.
Palin’s Different Reality
This is what Gov. Palin said to reporters about the “Troopergate” investigation findings:
“Well, I’m very very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing,” Palin said, “any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that.”
This is what the report actually said:
“I find that Governor Sarah Palin Abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act … Compliance with the code of ethics is not optional …”
(Material quoted from ABC News under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I wouldn’t trust her with my library card much less the U.S. economy.
Looks like the Dow closed up 936.42 points today — an all-time record. I don’t have my final portfolio figures yet because of the 20-minute delay, but my take for today may exceed $7,500 — also an all-time high, and brother does it ever beat fighting traffic and sucking up to a boss! The Republicans? They’re mailing resumes …
[fake rabbit tears and mock rabbit sniffling in background]
Let me get this straight. Sontag gets Kudos from both democrats and republicans alike for doing his job so that means you don’t like him? Sontag’s job is to find issues. Our state has a long history of ignoring audit results. With that in mind shouldn’t there be some sort of penalty? If Sontag says x dept. is out of compliance, or spending improperly shouldn’t there be some type punishment if they don’t change their ways?
MrRcguy @6,
You obviously do not understand the difference between a financial audit and a performance audit. (And sometimes I wonder if Sonntag does either.)
Typical bullshit from RogerRodent @ 1. Yeah, Sonntag can’t help which cherry-picked agencies he’s picking this month.
Look at the financial meltdown at King County and Metro. Sonntag claims he continues to go after Sound Transit because of “strong interest” by the public. If Sonntag wasn’t so isolated in Olympia, he would have figured out by now that these guys http://www.horsesass.org/?p=3748 aren’t a typical sample of the electorate anymore. They were in 1974. But not now. Same goes for that little creep Bob Williams.
Goldy is right: Sonntag is the only elected official in this state who pays attention to the screaming right wing and Libertarian fringes.
You’re a putz, Goldy. Sonntag is a terrific auditor and a good Democrat. Tough shit if he audits agencies you’d rather he not examine. You don’t get to pick and choose.
Owen is a cipher and isn’t worth anybody’s vote.
Maybe I need to be educated? All those cross party kudos must be getting in the way of what you think I should be seeing?
Goldy ..
I agree with Brad Owen and will up you. If CG were a true leader, she would have found the rock singer/lt guv some other thing to do over the next 4 years and put a protege in that office.
If I were a Rossi-ite, I would be dissing her for this choice of a running mate.
While we are at it, good politics says she ought to be visible in helping end and avert the Boeing strike.
Goldy …
Sontag is a harder issue. What I see and hear is that he is a straight shooter. I personally think the concept of performance audits is not a lot more useful than a broom cleaning up horse shit, but as RR says .. that is his job.
Why would Sonntag skip over the Metro bus agency audit – yet again – in favor of another light rail audit? (the monied fringes and too-much-time-on-their-hands freaks at NoToProp1 don’t complain about buses)
Why should Sonntag care if Metro is hemmoraging, and running very expensive buses – empty – through the ‘burbs…while Seattle and urban King Co buses are having to turn riders away?
Who gets audited has always been a political decision – not one based on good government or actual potential cost savings. That’s why the dinosaurs at Kemper Development, Discovery Institute, WA Policy Center and EFF have had so much undo influence with his office.
If you have a score to settle, an unhealthy obsession, a grudge, or an axe to grind, light rail is your lightning rod. (It used to be the stadiums, but they got built.)
These are Brian Sonntag’s peeps.
Sonntag has taken a particular interest in transportation, because he – like every middle aged white conservative male around Puget Sound – thinks HIS ideas on transportation will “fix the problem.”
Don’t bother with the transportation professionals, engineers, decades of planning and data…easily recongizable trends – throw all that stuff out.
What matters is Brian Sonntag’s self-centered drive-by assessment of “how things work.” The same line of thinking behind getting rid of HOV lanes and metered on-ramps.
When YOU are the center of the universe, the science of traffic and transportation planning is always disregarded.
Everyone down here in Olympia who sees Sonntag’s performance audits up close understands just how much bullshit is piled into them. There is a legitimate purpose to performance audits — but Sonntag completely misses it.
Instead, he (or his auditors) find random crap to criticize. Just a couple examples: He complained that an agency was financing cars, instead of purchasing them outright — at a time when financing costs were dirt cheap. He told another agency to deal with a large backlog of deferred maintenance — to which an agency spokesperson calmly replied, “we’ll be happy to, as soon as the Legislature allocates the money to do it.” One city government nearby got a demerit on its audit — for doing something the same way it had done it for years, with approval from the auditor’s office.
Worst of all, Sonntag frequently mistakes “auditor” for “policy-maker”. Many of his audit findings are actually policy recommendations that are contrary to what the people elected to make policy (the legislature and governor) said to do.
Sonntag is the epitome of a politician who has learned that accusing government of being wasteful — real or imagined — is an easy ticket to reelection. And that is why he is so popular with Eyman and friends.
I’m not voting for Sonntag either. It took him too many months to call BS on Tim Eyman and 985. In the process, Sonntag made mush out of his performance audit process and wasted millions.
I want to like Sonntag. Can’t. Not because he’s doing performance audits that call attention to ways of improving government.
I think it is clear he’s over his head.
He took too long on Eyman’s current fraud, probably because he’s tight with the ultra conservative Washington Policy Center, which whitewashed Eyman’s fraud by promoting a bogus analysis.
The WPC is usually pretty good at finding government waste and sloppy policymaking. 985 is full of both.
Sonntag should have saw that early on, and told the truth. He didn’t. He played footsie with Eyman instead.
That’s one reason why somebody needs to audit Sonntag’s performance. It would keep him accountable.
Seattle Jew @ 11 says:
“I agree with Brad Owen and will up you. If CG were a true leader, she would have found the rock singer/lt guv some other thing to do over the next 4 years and put a protege in that office.”
You know what? You’re a fucking idiot. The Lieutenant Governor is E-L-E-C-T-E-D, not A-P-P-O-I-N-T-E-D. She doesn’t “choose to run” with him, or with anybody else who files for that office. Anybody can file for that office.
The Lieutenant Governor is statutorily independent of the Governor. She can’t “find some other thing” for him to do, and she can’t “put a protege in that office.”
I hear they have a whole bin full of clues at Value Village. I suggest you go on down and get one.
Wait until Rossi gets in there and starts
exhuming. The State Ferries are hugely
corrupt with millions in cash missing each year
and all they do is shrug their shoulders.
Rossi will fix it and then he can start
working on the most corrupt agency in the
country, Labor and Industries. This should be good.
Speaking of WSF, they were good at getting the most out of their boats, and part of that is the reason they are in this mess they are in. The Klickitat, Nisqually, Quinalt, and Illahee were the oldest boats in the fleet until they were forcibly retired by the regulators, I mean the US Coast Guard as they were asking for more inspections and repairs that were getting more costly. WSF tried to standardize their new boats around a 144 car ferry, but that required relocating the Keystone Dock, and that would have cost more money. While they did the study, the boats got older. They were built in 1927, given a good rebuild in the 1980s, and had been operating under a waiver from the Coast Guard, as below decks, they did not have compartmentalized hulls. I am sure if it had not been for the hull pitting, with good maintenance, they might have got a few more years out of these boats that WSF acquired third hand. They got them when they bought the Black Ball line, the Black Ball Line(Puget Sound Navigation Company) got them used from Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries. The Evergreen Fleet is still aging even with these boats retired. The oldest in the fleet label now falls on the 1940-vintage Rhododendron, then there are three boats of the Evergreen State class built in the 1950s, 4 Super Class boats dating to the late 1960s(Evans was Governor when they were bought), Several Issaquahs and 2 Jumbo Mk.I class boats(Walla Walla and Spokane) That were procured in the 1970s and 80(Evans, Ray, Spellma were Governors). Top it all off, I have seen some specks of rust on the Puyallup, the newest auto ferry in the fleet, built in the late 1990s!
Now could be worse, could be BC Ferries, where due to financial difficulties of the loonie’s sudden rise and fall, higher fuel prices, and the mismanagement by both the previous Center-Left New Democratic Party government and the current Center-Right(they started out that way in 2001 at least, but with their bad Carbon Tax on diesel fuel) Liberal Government, more boats will be laid up as more sailings eliminated for the winter. The one that has people all upset right now, is docking the Coastal Renaissance, the newest boat in the BC Ferries fleet, for 4-5 days a week during the winter. How new? Delivered last year. I doubt this boat is un-seaworthy for whatever the Georgia Strait and other waterways up there can dish out during the winter, the boat had to survive crossing the Atlantic. BC Ferries does not have to worry about laws like our Jones Act(which for the most part, mandates that ships that sail between U.S. Ports, be built in the U.S, fly the U.S. flag, and be manned by Americans). The Coastal Class boats were built in Germany, so are the replacements for the Queen of the North. The Queen of the North is another example of incompetence at the highest levels of B.C. Ferries, the Government in Victoria, and the unions. B.C. Ferries fired the bridge crew of the Queen of the North, as I would expect would happen after the boat sinks.
http://www.news1130.com/news/t.....5459_12248
@18: Is that before or after he gets his payout from the BIAW and is indicted for campaign finance violations? How the heck is a corrupt politician going to fix corruption? And if there is so much corruption – why can’t you cite any? Where is the corruption in the Ferry system or Labor and Industries that no one knows about – why don’t you bust it wide open then? Or are you just sayin’ things that you think might be true…
As far as the state auditor goes, I noticed, in the voter info package that was mailed to me, that the guys running don’t seem to have much auditing experience. Wouldn’t it make sense for the state auditor to be a CPA and have some professional experience as an auditor rather than having the job be just another award in the political spoils system here in WA?
@ 17 ivan
Can you spell p-a-r-t-y?????? Or howsa about l-e-a-d-e-r?
Gregoire is the leader of the state demo party. If they can not influence/recruit who does or does not run for an office then . errr ahhh what do they do?
or do you think the psrties exist in case someone wants to have dunki or elefunt tatooed on their behinds?
Or are you try8ing to tell me that CG is so unpopular with ehr own party that if she backed a candidate for LG that person would not get enough votes to win #1 or #2 in our buggy primary system?
@ 23:
Your ignorance is more astounding than your spelling is atrocious. Learn something about the role of Lieutenant Governor in this state, will you? It’s a nullity, a sinecure, and nobody gives enough of a shit about it to care WHO runs for it.
Darcy Burner is a non-starter for me. If I vote for her, it will be while plugging my nose. I am sticking with Doug Sutherland as well.
@24 ivan
“my” ignorance??? you seem to be the namecalling thumb on your arse fool here.
Everything you say about the LtGuv job sis true, but irrelevant. The job is what the guv decides to make of it and what the Ly Guv wants out of life.
You, fool, pay this guys salary and he does nothing for it .. is that good for you?
Also, in case you have not noticed there is a high probability of a massive change in out national politics this year. Do you really think our state and Gregoire will not be affected by the clean broom? If Gregoire is approached for a job she can not leave as long as there is no acceptable LG.
As for my spelling, sorry about that. I do try. Blame the firefox spell checker.