HorsesAss.Org

You’ve got to give him credit… initiative monger Tim Eyman has finally come up with a bold new idea, guaranteed to shake up the political establishment: $30 car tabs.

Sure, Tim ran a $30 car tabs initiative in 1999 (I-695) and again in 2002 (I-776)… but this one is totally different because, um… well… it’ll have a completely different number. As the French say, “plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose” (Translation: “Tim Eyman is a horse’s ass.”)

Tim called up David Ammons of the AP today to give him the scoop (a savvy PR move, considering nobody shows up for Tim’s press conferences anymore.) Tim plans to run an initiative to the legislature mandating $30 car tabs. It would block the Legislature from imposing a proposed $5 to $25 weight fee, and would eliminate the local MVET option currently levied for the Seattle Monorail and Sound Transit.

Tim railed against what he calls “tab creep” since the passage of I-695.

“This is the most arrogant and disrespectful attitude toward the voters. It’s like having children who are constantly trying to test you,” Eyman said.

Uh… local voters approved both the Monorail and Sound Transit’s Light Rail, and it is Tim who is being arrogant and disrespectful by calling us children. Personally, I think Tim is the “tab creep;” as one Eyman critic said, he seems to have some sort of $30 car tab fetish:

Eyman critic David Goldstein, a Seattle blogger and software designer, called the new initiative a tantrum by a sponsor who has gotten too caught up in his own myth.

“He’s making a fetish out of $30 tabs,” Goldstein said in an interview. “It’s his personal ego. And it’s bad public policy. It shows his disregard for local control. It’s another statewide initiative to prevent us in Seattle and King County from building the kind of infrastructure we want and need.

“Here’s the guy who’s against centralized government and for voter control who is now essentially railing against local control.”

Oh wait… that was me. How meta.

I could have been pithier, but the point stands… this initiative isn’t about taxes or public policy or respecting the will of the people… it’s about Tim. He built his career on $30 car tabs, and any tinkering with them he takes as a personal affront. But if he thinks he can simply slap tail fins on this old buggy and ride it to victory at the polls, he’s got another thing coming.

Tim traditionally relies on Eastern Washington for much of his support, but nobody has felt the pain of I-695 more than the residents of rural towns, many of which are on the verge of bankruptcy as a result. And voters have made it clear they want the kinds of non-asphalt transportation projects that only “flexible funding” can finance (the state Constitution limits gas tax spending to roads and car ferries.)

If Timmy really wants another winner, he’s going to have to get a little more creative. Could a $20 car tab initiative be far on the horizon?

The excerpt above comes from a fundraising letter the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) recently sent out to Washington residents, decrying our state “as the place you can vote from the grave” or “if you are a resident of another state.” The EFF’s solution? Purge the voter rolls and make everybody re-register:

Each of us who wants to vote must be able to prove that we are a non-felon, American citizen, with a legal residence. And we must still have a pulse when we vote!

(Emphasis theirs.)

Hmmm. Um… before the EFF pontificates to state and local elections officials about how to clean up their lists, perhaps the EFF should try cleaning up their own. The fundraising letter was forwarded to me by a faithful reader, along with an angry cover letter addressed back to EFF President Bob Williams:

I find it incredibly ironic that your organization so concerned with cleaning up the election process in the state of Washington is sending mail to dead people.

I received a letter addressed to a Mr. Harald R. Lellelid, [address excised] on March 3, 2005. This person has been dead for nearly five years. Furthermore he has never lived at this address. He resided in Oregon, but as the executor of this estate I transferred all of his mail to my address in Seattle.

That’s right… the EFF’s targeted profile of outraged Washington voters includes deceased Oregonians.

In case you’re wondering, Harald did not receive a ballot this past November… which I suppose can be attributed to the fact that the EFF was not running the election.

Clearly, this error proves that the EFF’s research is “totally messed up.”

Ooops… I almost forgot to stick it to Tim Eyman:

Tim Eyman and his treasurer created a sham corporation in 2000 to hide salary payments to the Mukilteo initiative king, a Snohomish County judge ruled Friday.

The Everett Herald reports that Timmy’s former treasurer, Suzanne Karr, was ruled to have participated in a deliberate attempt to circumvent state disclosure laws (hmmm… that’s a “conspiracy” isn’t it?) Guilty of six specific public disclosure violations, Karr could face up to $22,000 in fines, plus court costs and legal fees.

Which is kind of a bummer for her, considering that while Tim was secretly growing fat on diverted contributions, Karr didn’t take a dime for herself. Indeed, she was the one who tipped off the media after Tim continued to publicly deny he was making money off his initiative campaigns.

Karr, who was in tears after the ruling, said the state once offered to settle with her for a $2,500 fine, but she “couldn’t do it because I didn’t do anything wrong.” Hmmm. While she didn’t personally profit from her actions, she obviously did do something wrong (you know… violate the disclosure laws,) and some sort of penalty is called for.

For is part, Timmy settled out of court a couple years ago, agreeing to $53,000 in penalties and a permanent ban on handling political action committee money. Considering he paid himself about $250,000 through his sham corporation (with Karr’s help,) and raised over $100,000 in unregulated contributions to his “legal defense fund,” I’d say he got a pretty sweet deal.

If Tim were to take full responsibility for his actions… if he were a gentleman… if he were a mensch… Tim would pay Karr’s penalty and court costs out of his own pocket.

It’s the least he can do for the individual who was perhaps most personally victimized by his selfish, fraudulent, shameless scheme to secretly enrich himself on campaign funds.

“All of us at ‘The Daily Show’ very much appreciate the Peabody Committee’s recognition of our work,” Mr. Stewart said in a statement released by the show. “Because this is the first time we’ve ever released a statement, we’d also like to, just for the hell of it, categorically deny all charges and say that we find them both scurrilous and without merit.”

Yes, for the second straight presidential election, “The Daily Show”, Comedy Central’s satirical fake news show, has won a prestigious Peabody Award for its election coverage. Tom Goldstein, the director of the mass communications program at the University of California, Berkeley, said the award should come as no surprise:

“Jon Stewart is extraordinarily important phenomenon,” he said, adding, “The truth can be told in many ways – journalistically, through satire – and he does a brilliant job of expressing the truth his way.”

So for those of you who say I need to be more serious if I want to be taken seriously… screw you.

I just watched this week’s edition of Up Front With Robert Mak, featuring Stefan and myself. Not quite as exciting as the sudden death playoff in the Masters Tournament going on simultaneously over on channel 7 (Tiger won,) but I suppose it serves as a reasonable introduction to local political blogging for people who have been living in a hole. In case you missed it, the show will be rebroadcast tonight on KONG-16 at 10:30 pm, or you can stream it online from the KING-5 website.

Please remember that my few minutes of airtime were distilled from a two-hour interview in which I didn’t just talk about Stefan and the election. And while I have few complaints about being taken out of context, I want to assure everybody that I’m not quite so arrogant about my role in the election contest PR war as I probably came across. Many, many other blogs have contributed to the effort, including some great research and analysis from Also Also and Preemptive Karma. And I didn’t mean to entirely dis the media efforts of the state Democratic Party, the Gregoire campaign, and their surrogates, but lets face it… as far as PR goes, the Dems got their asses kicked.

Oh… and there was one thing that really pissed me off: they refused to say my domain name, going so far as to intentionally obscure it on screen. I was particularly surprised to hear them bleep the word “ass” in an old clip from the initiative campaign, which originally aired unbleeped, “ass” intact.

I’m proud of my brand, and don’t intend to drop it. But I clearly need to come up with an alternative domain name that won’t scare off the media cowards/puritans. Any suggestions?

UPDATE:
A couple people have asked about Robert Mak’s statement that I count my visitors in the hundreds. I generally do not reveal my web stats, but I believe what I said was that I have several hundred comments a day. My traffic is admittedly less than (u)SP’s, but it is certainly more than a couple hundred.

In his commentary this morning on Weekend Edition, NPR news analyst Daniel Schorr highlighted a fact that has been glossed over by the Bush Administration in its push for private accounts: one-third of Social Security beneficiaries are not retirees… and many of them are children.

Social Security is more than just an old-age pension fund, it is a family insurance program… the primary, if not only source of support preventing low income families from falling into poverty. Citing statistics from the National Center for Children in Poverty, Schorr points out that Social Security is in fact the largest children’s program America has:

• One in 15 beneficiaries of Social Security is a child under 18
  

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A couple days ago KING-5 sent a camera to my house to interview me for this Sunday’s edition of “Up Front With Robert Mak.” I was told the subject was blogging, and I assume I’ll be on the show, though I caught a promo last night that featured a shadowy shot of Stefan at his computer, so who knows how much. It’ll air Sunday on KING-5 at 4:30 PM, and again on KONG-16 at 10:30 PM.

Anyway, I’ve got a dirty little secret to tell, that I’m not sure I shared on camera… I don’t really read the blogs all that much. In fact, before I started blogging myself, I hardly read them at all. My main reason for turning HorsesAss.org into a blog was to force myself to write every day. (Be careful what you wish for.) Nobody was more surprised than me that HA developed such a large audience so quickly.

So I feel a little weird being presented on TV as the voice of liberal blogging in WA state, when I’m really such a newcomer to the blogosphere.

Fortunately, many of my readers are old hands, and they’re constantly pointing me towards good stuff that I otherwise might miss. For example, several readers have pointed me towards Balloon Juice, a conservative blog that has responded to the Schiavo Memo controversy and other current events with some serious introspection.

What I see going on around me is that my party is in power. We control the Presidency. We control the House and the Senate. Republican appointees outnumber Democratic ones on the Supreme Court, and we are poised to add more. We own talk radio. Cable news tends to be neutral to conservative (it certainly is not liberal or progressive- some outfits may have anti-Republican reflexes). We have all but eliminated partisan debate in congress, playing by rules much tougher than anything that was in place. Where there were once no conservative (or few) newspapers, there are now several. We have numerous conservative online journals. Hundreds of publications that all push the same point and pass on the same message.

And it still isn’t enough. Everything is under attack if it does not toe the same hard-right line. The university, the institution of marriage, journalism as an enterprise, the medical community, the legal community, every foreign institution, the United Nations- anything, that doesn’t cater to the conservative need for instant gratification in the form of message adherence and submission to the new doctronaire must be destroyed. Look at the recent behavior of Republicans in Congress towards REPUBLICAN APPOINTED CONSERVATIVE JUDGES. Forget ‘screw me once, shame on you.’ This new breed of fanatacism is “Slight me in any discernable way, even a mild disagreement, and I will publicly destroy you.”

Well, that’s the excerpt that seems to be getting the most interest from my fellow liberals, and I think it speaks for itself without further comment. But I’d also like to draw your attention to another sentiment that I think is too often overlooked by bloggers on both sides of the ideological divide. (You know… the few I actually bother to read.)

…most people who read blogs understand that this medium is by nature personal, opinionated, and partisan, and as such, each blogger should be read with the level of credibility they deserve.

Hate to sound like a broken record, but when it comes to blogging, caveat emptor.

G.O.P. Consultant’s Marriage Is a Gay One

Tom DeLay. (That should start things off.)

So, what’s my response to the recent events surrounding last November’s contested gubernatorial election?

Big whoops.

I’ve already discussed the 93 absentee ballots discovered amidst trays of empty envelopes. Sloppy work to be sure, but let’s have some perspective: that’s 93 out of over a half-million absentee ballots. And while more of these ballots came from pro-Rossi precincts than from pro-Gregoire (59 to 32), a proportional analysis would only give Rossi a pick-up of about four votes. Hardly grounds for setting aside the election.

And so I was a bit surprised to see former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, suddenly coming forth to put an ugly face on what has already been an incredibly uglier and mean propaganda campaign. Slade the Blade is also a lawyer — a former State Attorney General — and thus you’d think he’d be embarrassed to use such flimsy and inconsequential evidence as these 93 ballots as the basis for asking the U.S. Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation… and to do so with such reprehensible and over-the-top rhetoric.

The mistake could have been fraud or “colossal incompetence,” he said.

“I think it’s appropriate to come to the conclusion that King County has the worst election administration in any county in the United States of America

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I was going to blog about all those election “bombshells” and stuff, but it’s late, I’m tired, and I’ve got too much to say. So I’m going to bed, and I’ll finish my rant in the morning.

In the meanwhile I’d just like to briefly follow up on the cowardly parliamentary maneuver by a couple of conservative Democrats — and all 23 Republican state senators — to avoid a floor vote on HB 1515, a bill that would have added “sexual orientation” to our anti-discrimination laws. They don’t want to go on the record voting for the bill, because that would offend their Dominionist constituencies. But they don’t want to go on the record voting against the bill, because that would look like they endorse discriminating against gays and lesbians. So political chicken-shits that they are, the Republican caucus did what it has done in past years… avoided a floor vote entirely.

Yesterday’s satirical commentary apparently went over the heads of some of my readers, so I want to make it absolutely clear that I was only joking when I said that “Sen. Hargrove and I have secretly been lovers for well over a decade.” A more accurate description would be “casual fuck-buddies.”

But perhaps my irreverent approach isn’t for everybody, so I’d like to point you to a very straight editorial supporting HB 1515, from the very straight Seattle Times: “A simple question about gay rights.”

The bill is not about gay marriage. It does not confer special rights on gays and lesbians.
…
Senate Republicans and sidekicks Hargrove and Sheldon ought to stop playing games with a serious topic. Passage of HB 1515 is way overdue.

Can’t get much more straight forward or straight shooting than that. And if you’re looking for another serious-minded discussion of the topic, link on over to Orcinus, where Dave Neiwert challenges Republican claims that homosexuality is a “chosen behavior,” taking the argument to its logical conclusion, that we should also permit discrimination against “creed”… a chosen behavior if I ever saw one.

The point is, there are are gay people, and they are discriminated against. The Times says that this is a simple question about gay rights, and as I see it, the question is: “Why do we allow this discrimination to continue?”

I strongly believe that the intimate details of a politician’s personal life should have absolutely no place in the public debate… unless that politician acts so hypocritically as to make these details relevant.

I have reluctantly concluded that such is the case with State Sen. Jim Hargrove (D-Hoquiam), one of the ringleaders of a procedural move to keep the Senate from voting on HB 1515. By siding with all 23 senate Republicans, Hargrove has cynically blocked a bill that would have added sexual orientation to Washington’s anti-discrimination law… an indefensible display of legislative bias that effectively endorses discrimination against gays and lesbians.

I direct you to OlyScoop for excellent coverage of this bill, and the cowardly parliamentary maneuver used to kill it. But I feel compelled to express my personal disgust at this incident, in light of the fact that Sen. Hargrove and I have secretly been lovers for well over a decade.

Yes, underneath that harsh, conservative exterior, Jim (or “Sen. Hardgrove” as he likes me to call him) is as gay as the day is long. Thus his opposition to HB 1515 is at least as surprising as that of his fellow conservative Democrat, Sen. Tim Sheldon (D-Potlatch), an openly practicing homosexual with whom I have also carried on a torrid and passionate affair.

Coincidentally, I have also slept with Sen. Luke Esser (R-Bellevue) who initiated the parliamentary maneuver. Come to think of it, there isn’t a member of the Senate Republican caucus, male or female, with whom I have not had homosexual relations at one time or another.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In light of the apparent failure of HB 1515, I would like to make clear to any potential, future employers, lenders or landlords, that despite my occasional indiscretions with cross-dressing, conservative lawmakers, I am not gay. But who can resist the exotic allure of a man in drag… especially the always yummy Sen. Pam Roach?]

Sen. Hardgrove and I rarely see eye-to-eye. But later, after we’ve showered and dressed, we can usually discuss politics in a civil and constructive manner. Thus I find it hard to understand why he would vote to allow himself to be subject to discrimination, simply because some people, for some reason, might suspect him of being gay? I feel bad about outing Jim, Tim, Luke and their queer colleagues in the Senate Republican caucus (or as the Capitol press corps jokingly calls them, the “Olympia Men’s Chorus,”) but I thought that if they were forced to acknowledge a tiniest bit of the fear, hatred, and ridicule routinely targeted at gays and lesbians, they might not be so quick to allow and endorse the kind of discrimination in employment, housing, lending and insurance that occurs every day.

Hey… remember that controversial memo that made the rounds of Republican lawmakers, touting the Schiavo controversy as “a great political issue” that would excite “the pro-life base”…? And remember how right-wing bloggers immediately went about “proving” that it was a forgery, claiming that it was Democratic dirty trick? And remember how the usual suspects and their unblinking followers were so quick to take the bloggers’ debunking as gospel, with the American Spectator going so far as to call it “Rathergate all over again,” and Rush Limbaugh accusing Democrats of politicizing Terri Schiavo?

Yeah, well… eat me, Rush!

Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said Wednesday that a senior member of his staff had written an unsigned memorandum about the partisan political advantages of intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo that became a controversial footnote to the debate over the wisdom and motives of Congress’s actions.

In a statement on Wednesday night, Mr. Martinez said that he had just learned that the memorandum originated in his office and that its author had resigned. He did not name the author, but aides said it was Brian Darling, his counsel.

So reports the New York Times.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say again: us bloggers… we have an agenda. And anybody who naively relies on the blogosphere for their news, because they somehow believe we are more accurate, honest and unbiased… is fucking idiot. We’re not better than the mainstream media… we’re just different.

Caveat emptor.

I am unapologetic for expending so many pixels on the admittedly tedious topic of taxation, but in doing so I am afraid that I may have given short shrift to the other hobgoblin of conservative politics: regulation. It might be fair to say that right-wing apparatchiks from the EFF and BIAW are even more anti-regulatory than they are anti-tax.

And so I would like to call your attention to a news item that illustrates both the need for regulation, and the fine work of individual regulators. Evergreen International, one of the world’s largest shipping lines, has pleaded guilty to more than two dozen criminal counts of illegally dumping oil, altering records and obstructing Coast Guard investigations, and has been fined $25 million. The plot was uncovered by the keen eye of a regulator from the Washington Department of Ecology.

Amid the crazy-quilt tangle of pipes and machinery in the cargo ship’s engine room, the inspector’s attention was drawn to two bolts — two bolts among hundreds.

The paint was missing.

That sharp-eyed scrutiny by a Washington Department of Ecology inspector triggered a chain of events that culminated yesterday in one of the largest fines ever imposed on a company that deliberately polluted the ocean.

The investigation followed a 500 gallon oil spill in the Columbia River; a nationwide inquiry revealed falsified logbooks, and a three year, company-wide practice of illegally discharging waste oil into local and international waters. And it would still be going on today, if not for the work of WA Dept. of Ecology inspector Dodge Kenyon.

That’s right, this was the work of a state government employee, regulating private industry. You know… the kind of employee right-wingers usually denounce as a bloated leach, and the kind of regulations commonly railed against as an unreasonable economic hardship. (This was also a fine example of your tax dollars at work.)

There is a world view perpetrated by some on the right, where captains of industry should always be trusted and honored, while our elected officials should not… where regulatory agencies spring fully formed from the cunning minds of labor unions, eager to create cushy, make-work jobs for their members, while simultaneously harassing businesses owners and screwing the taxpayers, if only for sport.

But this libertarian fantasy is just that. In the real world, the competitive pressures of the market place often tempt businesses to choose profit or convenience over ethics, with such transgressions quickly becoming industry practice as competitors struggle to adapt or die. An unregulated market is thus a surefire path towards the tragedy of the commons.

And so when right-wingers decry overbearing regulations and wasteful public employees, as if all regulatory agencies are overbearing and wasteful, it is important to remember that there is no such thing as a free market, and that the costs of maintaining our regulations are often far less than the costs of the chaos that would occur without them. It is fashionable to balk at the expense of the kind of modern government our modern economy demands, but this neo-con chic purposely ignores the myriad of government regulations and workers who invisibly labor to keep our waters clean, our food safe, and our homes, offices and bridges from falling down around us… not to mention the many other public services on which our economy and civil society depend.

$12 billion a year is a lot of money, and surely the state could raise it fairer and spend it wiser. But the anti-tax/anti-regulatory forces are not proponents of incremental change; their goal is to starve the beast, as Grover Nordquist says, to the point were government is small enough to “drown it in a bathtub.”

One of the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats like me genuinely believe in government. And when I see public employees like Dodge Kenyon preventing a multinational corporation from clogging the Columbia River with oily sludge, my faith in government is rewarded.

As I’m sure you have now all been made aware by the 24/7 media coverage, Prince Rainier of Monaco tragically died yesterday at the age of 81. Flipping through the channels this morning, it seemed every network had preempted their regular programming to cover the death of this much beloved monarch — except, ironically, for FCDN (the Fox Celebrity Death Network) which for some reason was showing a documentary on Vince Foster. Even PBS Kids got into the act by rerunning a classic episode of Arthur, in which Prince Ranier helps Muffy set up a charity casino night at Elwood Elementary School.

World leaders are rearranging their schedules to attend the fallen monarch’s funeral this Friday. I think President Bush summed up our national grief best when he said, “Who could not help touch the man, or be touched by him? It’s sad… sad work.” With public sentiment like this, we should expect wall-to-wall media coverage to continue for days to come, pushing all other news off the air, and out of the newspapers.

FYI, I’ve heard a rumor that the Pope died. Great man with a complicated legacy. If anybody has any further details on his death, please forward me a link.