HorsesAss.Org

Well, I never had a chance to say hello to Tim Eyman this morning… he refused to make eye contact with me, and rushed out as soon as his Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) enforcement hearing was over.

Ah, well. Screw him.

As it turns out, Tim only got a slap on the wrist, a fine of $150.00 each for two incidents of failing to report an in-kind contribution ($300.00 total.) Looking a bit haggard and unshaven — and lacking his usual shit-eating grin — the early morning drive down to Olympia for an 8 AM hearing seemed to be worse punishment than the punishment itself.

The enforcement was in response to a complaint I jointly filed on behalf of TaxSanity.org with my fellow Eyman-watchers, Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington’s Future, and Andrew Villeneuve of Permanent Defense. I stand by my allegations of conspiracy to defraud contributors, but clearly the PDC is not the proper forum to pursue justice. If you provide a detailed complaint of an isolated violation they will investigate and respond accordingly. But they seem unwilling (or lack the jurisdiction) to connect the dots.

Essentially, Tim’s whole public charade of separating his initiative campaigns and his personal compensation fundraising into two separate Political Action Committees is a total sham. Funds raised for one are used to support the activities of the other, and vice versa. This, despite the unambiguous disclaimer that appears in his most recent fundraising email:

Voluntary donations to I-900, the Performance Audits of Government Initiative, will be used to qualify this important taxpayer protection initiative for the ballot. A different political action committee, “Help Us Help Taxpayers,” raises money for a compensation fund for Tim Eyman, Jack Fagan, & Mike Fagan for their effective political work on behalf of taxpayers. These two campaign committees are kept separate and donations and expenditures for each fund are publicly reported every month.

What he doesn’t tell you is that absolutely 100 percent of HUHT’s activities are paid for out of VWMC funds. And, that money raised this fall for HUHT, is currently being used to subsidize the early fundraising activities of VWMC.

(Did I ever mention that Tim Eyman is a lying, thieving, blowhard?)

Anyway, perhaps we’ll just have to take our evidence someplace else — like a prosecuting attorney’s office — for the PDC is apparently too damn busy protecting the integrity of our system from the real villains. You know, like Rev. Paul Benz, who lobbies for social justice issues on behalf of the Lutheran Church, and was fined $100 today for reporting late on his lobbying fees for November, 2003… a month he didn’t have any lobbying fees.

Who the hell files a PDC complaint against a Lutheran minister for reporting late on absolutely nothing? I don’t know, but I did find out who tattled on the two unfortunate teachers who were fined $500.00 each this morning for distributing R-55 petitions to fellow teachers on school property… why, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation of course. (I’d call EFF a bunch of mean-spirited, vindictive bastards… but Marsha might shoot me.)

Meanwhile, Tim Eyman, a professional liar with a documented history of flouting the public disclosure laws, is fined only $150.00 per violation. And last spring, when the PDC ruled he had filed his January reports three months late, he was fined nothing at all. But I guess Tim deserves the benefit of the doubt… unlike that shady Rev. Benz.

Whatever.

Tim should rest assured that he shouldn’t rest assured, for we’ll continue to monitor his public disclosure filings, just to keep him honest. Hell… somebody’s got to.

I’m off to Olympia again this morning, first for what I assume will be a brief run-in with our friend Tim Eyman, and then off to the House Finance Committee to hear Bill Gates Sr. testify on tax structure reform. (Talk about a couple of odd hobbies.)

For those who don’t know, Mr. Gates chaired the Washington State Tax Structure Committee, whose final report included recommendations to implement a state income tax. Whatever you think of its recommendations, the Committee’s report should be the starting point for anybody wanting to educate themselves on the structural deficit and basic unfairness of the nation’s most regressive state and local tax system.

I’ll report back late this afternoon on both events, but for now I point your attention to a couple of items in today’s Seattle P-I. First, the news that local clean-elections activist Bev Harris has been vindicated in a whistle-blower suit in California, against dominant election equipment manufacturer Diebold (“I guarantee Bush will win Ohio”) Election Systems.

The second is Paul Loeb’s guest column: “Revote? If Florida and Ohio go first.”

By now, many of you have probably already heard the revelations about the Pentagon’s new in-house espionage agency, an organization so secret that not even Congress knew about it. Intended to operate without detection and to get around the military’s “near total dependence on the CIA”, the agency has also done a pretty good job of getting around a couple of other pesky obstacles, like appropriations, congressional oversight… the US Constitution.

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using “reprogrammed” funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA.

Ahh… don’t you love the military’s newspeak-like love of language? “Reprogrammed funds.” Which of course translates into “we appropriate money for this, but we secretly spend it on that.”

I suppose then — what with their Orwellian attention to linguistic detail — the Defense Department is perfectly comfortable with the secret name they chose for this secret organization: the Strategic Support Branch.

Yes… it’s the SS! Many people have noted this administration’s fascist tendencies, but they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

Yeah, I know there’s a “B” in there for “Branch”, but it could have been an “A” for “Agency” or a “G” for “Group” or something like that. You can be sure that when they sat down to name this organization, somebody must have looked at the abbreviation and thought “hmm… SS… some folks might find that a touch disturbing.” They just didn’t care.

Well, at least we can take comfort in the fact that our SS doesn’t operate on domestic soil. (Not that we’d know if it did.)

But whatever its name, these covert covert-operations raise a lot of troubling questions about the administration’s lack of accounta… wait a minute, somebody’s at my door. I’ll be right back….

We’ve had quite a debate going on in the comment threads over growth management, taxation, and other policies that exacerbate the urban-rural political divide in Washington state. Personally, I’m of the opinion that both sides usually get it wrong… that we are actually a lot more interdependent than we like to acknowledge, and thus have much more common ground than some provocateurs would have us believe.

I’d like to add some nuance to this debate by pointing to Kate Riley’s excellent column in today’s Seattle Times: “Getting city-slickers to listen to the states oldest industry.” Riley lays out the case made by the WA State Horticultural Association and the WA Tree Fruit Commission, that agriculture is a vital industry deserving the same attention and consideration as high tech.

“The Legislature would not consider changes to the tax code, transportation rules or environmental standards without first considering their effect upon economic engines like Boeing or Microsoft,” says Jim Hazen, executive director of the association. “Neither should policymakers adopt new laws and rules without considering their impact upon an industry that is the state’s second-largest employer and among the top 10 revenue generators.

I’m not enough of an Olympia insider or observer to know whether agriculture really does get short shrift in the Legislature, but I agree that it shouldn’t. In fact, one of the components of our Growth Management Act that I find most attractive is protecting productive agricultural lands from encroaching urban sprawl.

Ironically, Riley credits our high-tech Senator, Maria Cantwell, for being one politician who has embraced agricultural issues, and has worked hard in the other Washington on behalf of her rural constituents.

The senator shares farmers’ frustrations with the urban blind spot to agriculture, noting she reminded participants at a recent Seattle chamber discussion on biotechnology that agriculture research should be considered, too. “If you care about jobs in Washington, you need to care about agriculture,” Cantwell said.

It is rhetorically lazy to couch issues like this in the kind of “red-blue”, “right-left”, “east-west” dichotomy that turns every policy decision into an uncompromising ideological struggle. Demagogues like Tim Eyman may be good at sending angry messages, but they do a crappy job of writing rational policy that works for all our citizens.

And after all… we all have to eat.

A quick link to an article by the AP’s Rebecca Cook: “Dead voters won’t count in Rossi’s election challenge.”

Allegations of dead voters and election fraud elicit gasps from outraged voters and pundits, but they won’t really matter in the legal challenge to the Washington governor’s election.

As legal arguments unfolded in court last week, it became clear the case will turn instead on a close reading of the state constitution. Who has jurisdiction over election challenges — the courts or the Legislature? What is an “illegal vote”? What kind of proof does the constitution require to nullify an election?

These questions lack the sexy sparkle of voting felons, true, but the answers will determine whether Gov. Christine Gregoire stays in office.

I found the article a touch confusing (and perhaps, confused), but then… the legal issues involved are very confusing themselves. I’m working on getting some of my own questions answered, and plan to come back shortly with a more in-depth legal analysis (hopefully, from a real-life lawyer!)

In any case, in addition to the constitutional issue that has been raised over who has jurisdiction, the Legislature or the Courts, there appear to be a couple of issues at dispute: the definition of an “illegal vote”, that standard by which an election may be set aside on account of illegal votes, and the actual powers granted the courts by the controlling statutes.

Personally, I still think the GOP is essentially asking the court to ignore state statute and just set the election aside because it supposedly is “a mess.”

I was on the phone talking to family back east after watching my beloved Philadelphia Eagles whoop Atlanta on their way to the Super Bowl (fourth time’s the charm), when I looked out the window, and there, standing by a rat my cat had killed, was a peregrine falcon. The falcon looked around for a moment, hopped on top of the rat, and flew away with the rodent secure in its talons.

It was probably the best catch I saw a falcon make all day.

This is a region of spectacular wildlife that extends into the very center of our cities. In my South Seattle neighborhood I see eagles, and parrots, and blue herons, and peregrine falcons… an aviary far more diverse than the crows and pigeons of my native Philadelphia.

As I prepare to join the fight to protect our zoning and growth management policies from the inevitable, extreme “takings” initiative, I do so, inspired by the great natural splendor that makes Washington such a special place to live. Yes, there needs to be balance in all our policies, and I look forward to an informed debate. But if anybody thinks we’re going to get a balanced initiative from the likes of Tim Eyman and the BIAW, then… um… well, I couldn’t think of anything particularly witty, but you get the point.

Millions of people watched the Eagles and Falcons on TV today, but I actually get to watch the real things from my back yard. And that’s something worth protecting.

I’ve already documented the close connections between Dino Rossi and the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW). In addition to spending $750,000 on Rossi’s election, the BIAW has also led the legal and PR effort in pushing for a new election, dedicating its entire staff of 30 to scouring the voting lists for hint of scandal.

Now activist website and longtime Tim Eyman nemesis Permanent Defense reveals the close political alliance between Rossi and our state’s most prolific initiative-peddler. [Tim Eyman and Dino Rossi: Friends and Allies]

Washington State GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi likes to promote himself as a sunny moderate who will bring prosperity back to Washington State.

But what most people don’t know about Dino Rossi is his extremist positions – including his ties to initiative profiteer Tim Eyman, as well as his similarity to previous GOP candidates John Carlson (2000) and Ellen Craswell (1996).

Permanent Defense cites a string of quotes from both Eyman and Rossi attesting to their support for each other.

Surprise.

It’s hard to blame Rossi for attempting to recast himself as a moderate in the wake of Carlson’s and Craswell’s right-wing electoral debacles. But gullible voters who deserve blame for believing it.

Earlier this week I blogged on Seattle Times and AP reports on the financial woes of small-town Washington, like Mansfield and Bridgeport in rural Douglas County. [“Unintended consequences” Part 1 and Part 2]

Josh Feit follows up on the mainstream media’s sympathetic news coverage, but in The Stranger’s characteristically mean mien: “You Made Your Bed.”

Josh interviews Tricia Sima, tiny Mansfield’s beleaguered town clerk, who has been forced to cut a host of services — and add custodial duties to her own job description — as the city lost 76% of its revenues in the wake of Tim Eyman’s anti-car-tab I-695, and anti-property-tax I-747. Josh was decidedly unsympathetic.

After I established that Sima was a Republican (“I’m a bit conservative,” she chimed proudly) I asked her my question: Had the harsh reality of budget cuts made her reevaluate her conservative convictions about taxes? “No,” she told me emphatically. “I believe we can cut other programs that would not hurt the small rural areas.” (How’s that for traditional values? Greed and selfishness.)

According to Josh, compared to a rural county like Douglas, an urban county like King contributes 110 percent more state sales tax per capita, yet gets back from the state only 21 percent more. And King County actually generates 41 percent of state sales tax revenues, while Douglas County nets nearly $300,000 in special assistance. I have been warned in the past that revenue flow comparisons such as these can be complex and misleading, but have been assured by every “expert” I have consulted that, contrary to the myth oft repeated by politicians east of the Cascades, revenue does indeed flow from urban to rural areas.

Yet Douglas County voted 70.3 percent for I-695 and 69.9 percent for I-747. Josh is justifiably irritated at the suggestion that we should cut our services to maintain theirs.

Despite their disproportionate role in the equation, Republicans like Sima think services for the rural areas should take priority when taxes are cut. To that I say, I hope Mansfield’s leaky sewage lagoon is somewhere near Sima’s home.

Now some might (will) argue that if Mansfield wants more public services they are free to tax themselves. But Eyman’s I-776 was a statewide initiative aimed at preventing voters in three urban counties from doing exactly that… taxing themselves. A political “fuck you” that promised to stop Sound Transit from building light rail, it passed by a comfortable margin throughout most of the state, but failed in nearly every precinct within the Sound Transit taxing district.

Understand that the local MVET taxes I-776 banned were only levied in a handful of western Washington counties, and yet people like Sima voted to prevent us, from taxing ourselves, to maintain our public infrastructure… while at the same time expecting us to divert our dwindling tax revenues to subsidize theirs.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe most voters go to the polls attempting to do what they believe is right for their community. Unfortunately, our sense of community has grown so incredibly narrow, that we often fail to see the complex tangle of social, political, and economic interdependencies that Washington state really is. I join Josh Feit in his justifiable outrage over Sima’s misinformed and shortsighted politics, but rather than taking I-told-you-so satisfaction from the image of her backyard overflowing with sewage, I view it as a disturbing metaphor for Washington’s potential future.

There is a growing consensus in Olympia that structural flaws in Washington’s tax system are so profound, that beyond the perpetual budget crises we have now, state and local governments will eventually fall into a catastrophic financial meltdown, sometime within the next decade. Some Democrats see this as an opportunity, a point at which Washington will have no choice but to accept an income tax… or cease to be a modern economy.

I’m not so confident that given the current political climate, voters will make the responsible choice. Major tax restructuring is absolutely essential if we are to stay vital and competitive. But not even a fatal crisis will get us there, unless we first educate voters as to the realities of our current system, and the advantages of a new one.

Politics is rarely about leadership. Most successful politicians are more adept at convincing voters that they agree with us, than at persuading us to agree with them. But giving voters what they want is not leading… it is following.

It is time for individuals and organizations to take on the arduous and nearly-impossible task of shifting public opinion. Whether rising above the rhetorical rancor, or harnessing it to their own devices, it is time for leaders to step forth and risk their political careers in the service of persuading voters that tax restructuring is in the self-interest of all of Washington’s citizens, even those few at the top who will surely see their taxes rise. It is time to build a consensus for a tax system that at the very least meets the needs of a twentieth-century economy, if not the twenty-first.

Republicans refuse to engage in an honest public debate over the proper size and scope of government, because despite the loudmouthed libertarians on the right-wing blogs, they know they’ll lose. And Democrats are equally fearful of telling voters the truth about what it actually takes to give us the services we demand; instead, they perpetuate the charade that we can continue to close an endless series of multi-billion dollar budget gaps without raising revenues… or reverting to a nineteenth-century economy.

Yes I know that I am generalizing; there are some politicians willing to speak out on these issues, but rarely loud enough. For when someone like Ron Sims does, we the people take out his knees, desperately angry at the messenger for telling us what we don’t want to hear. Meanwhile, the politicians who lie the best, we reward the most. There is an odd, pathological symbiosis between us voters and our elected officials, that I would say is suggestive of the “Stockholm Syndrome” if only I could figure out who has been taken hostage by whom.

But we need political leadership whether we want it or not. So somebody better provide some before there’s no one left to lead.

It may be spitefully satisfying to envision Tricia Sima encamped on the edge of her leaking sewage lagoon, but it won’t be so amusing ten or twenty years from now when we are all wallowing in our own communal, political shit, passionately blaming the other guy for what went wrong.

Personally, I’m still willing to help Tricia clean up her mess, if she’s willing to help me clean up mine.

One of the reasons Judge Bridges denied the Republican request to expedite the discovery process was the incredible burden it was placing on some of the 39 counties, particularly the smaller ones. According to the Seattle Times:

One even accused Republicans of attempted extortion, saying the party offered to cut back its information request in exchange for the county agreeing not to fight some issues in court.

Republicans have apparently already made deals with ten counties:

Republicans offered to narrow their subpoenas, not seek attorneys’ fees and drop the counties as parties in the suit

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In an overwhelming victory for bloggers everywhere, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges denied a Republican request for an expedited schedule in their contest of the gubernatorial election. The next hearing will be held Feb. 4.

He said the old maxim that justice delayed is justice denied has a corollary, “And that is justice hurried is also justice denied.”

Bridges said the speeded-up schedule requested by Republicans would have been “expedited chaos.”

The ruling is a crushing blow to the GOP’s legal strategy, which was relying on “chaos” in the state court proceedings as the underpinnings of their inevitable federal court challenge.

Judge Bridges also denied Democratic efforts to suspend discovery until jurisdictional and legal issues are settled… much to the consternation of Ferry County Prosecutor James von Sauer, who says county officials have no idea why they were named in the suit.

“Even the Republican Party doesn’t know what we did wrong because they are asking all sorts of questions that have nothing to do with Ferry County,” von Sauer told Bridges.

He said to comply with the Republican requests for information would require the auditor to do nothing else.”

“As a county are we obligated to quit serving the public in order to respond? … This is really a serious matter for the small counties.”

Sounds to me like what’s known in legal circles as a fishing expedition. So here’s a suggestion, maybe all the county auditors should just chip in and send Dino Rossi a nice gift basket from my favorite seafood store, Jack’s Fish Spot in the Pike Place Market?

It’s beginning to piss me off! So just a quick reminder to my friends in the media as you prepare to report on today’s hearings in Chelan County:

Dino Rossi is not asking for a “re-vote.” He is asking for a “new election.”

This is not a subtle distinction. A “re-vote” is evocative of a “recount;” it implies that we just need to vote again to make sure we got it right.

But what we really would get is an entirely new election… new year, new campaign, new voters… new issues. It would come months into a Gregoire administration, after an unprecedented and virtually unopposed paid media and PR assault designed to undermine public trust in Christine Gregoire, the Democratic Party, and government in general.

There would be absolutely nothing “re” about this election… it would be entirely different.

In the unlikely event the GOP manages to meet the high standards of the contest provision, and the court orders a new election, well… we’ll just have to live with the dramatic and incredibly disruptive aftermath. But the public should not be lulled by carelessly repeated partisan PR fluff, into believing that a new election is — in and of itself — a good thing, regardless of the legal grounds.

The shamelessly partisan liars at the BIAW are free to call it whatever they want, but you in the media are not. Call it a “re-vote” and you are promoting their cause. But if you want to be accurate and neutral, you will call it what it is: a “new election.”

Uh-oh. As the Chelan County courthouse prepares for the circus to come to town, yet another “scandal” is brewing in King County regarding military ballots. According to an article in today’s Seattle Times, two Republican observers said they saw election workers improperly duplicate “federal write-in” ballots.

These federal ballots must be duplicated because the orginals cannot be read by the optical scanners. When a voter fails to name individual candidates, but merely indicates the party, the ballots should be counted as straight party-line votes.

But Republican observer Kirk Brandenburg said he sat at a table where election workers ignored party choices on at least 30 ballots. He said that when he asked a supervisor about it, he was told, “The names were not to be counted unless they were listed.”

Shit. The claim was corroborated by Carol “Sacrificial Lamb” Cassady, a Republican observer who also supposedly challenged U.S. Rep Jim McDermott this November. Damn it! A congressional candidate would never lie, so this really looks bad for Gregoire.

Or does it?

Cassady and Brandenburg said most of the overseas voters whose ballots they saw favored Democratic candidates, including newly elected Gov. Christine Gregoire.

If election workers had consistently counted party-choice ballots, Brandenburg acknowledged, Gregoire would have extended her 129-vote lead over Republican Dino Rossi.

Oh.

I guess that’s why we haven’t seen this “smoking gun” over on (un)SoundPolitics.

I was planning to report in detail on the House Finance Committee hearing I attended yesterday, including my private exchanges with several of the committee members… but my better judgment has gotten the better of me. Needless to say, it wasn’t particularly exciting, but the turnout in support of these worthy bills was very encouraging.

HB 1069, HB 1094, and HB 1096 all concern greater accountability for the over 500 tax exemptions, deductions, credits and other breaks scattered throughout our state tax code. Hundreds of millions of dollars in new exemptions have been added over the past few years, and that doesn’t even include the $3 billion package for Boeing. It only makes sense, particularly in these tight budgetary times, that the Legislature periodically review these tax “expenditures” to assure that they are producing the social and economic benefits intended.

In testifying, I referred to these as tax “loopholes”, a turn of phrase strongly objected to by Rep. Ed Orcutt (R-Angryville). While my choice of words was admittedly pejorative, I sincerely doubt that most voters would understand what I was talking about if I adopted the Legislature’s happy euphemism of “tax preference.” (I suspect that most voters’ tax “preference” would be not to pay any.)

Whatever.

From his line of questioning, Rep. Orcutt seemed awfully concerned that these bills were just a sneaky way of eliminating some of his cherished loopholes preferences… and I have no doubt that many of those in the room supporting the measures assume that this will surely be the end result. But if these incentive-exemption-thingies can’t survive a little public scrutiny, they deserve to die.

I’m not going to bore you with details. For those who are interested in a more wonkish debate, I suggest reading the bills, and downloading the excellent report from the Economic Opportunity Institute: “Lost Revenue, Lost Opportunities: Tax Exemptions in Washington State.”

Anyway… today is the first hearing in the election contest lawsuit. I don’t expect anything dramatic, but I’m sure there will be loads to discuss.

Yesterday I went down to Olympia to support legislation that would authorize State Auditor Brian Sonntag to conduct independent, comprehensive performance audits on state agencies. Today I am heading back to the Capitol to support legislation that provides similar oversight of tax exemptions.

The House Finance Committee is meeting at 1:30 today for a public hearing on HB 1069, HB 1094, and HB 1096. It’s time we demand the same kind of accountability from tax exemptions as we do from other government programs.

With the Legislature struggling over whether to raise some taxes in their efforts to close a $1.6 billion budget gap, one thing neither party seems to want to discuss are the billions of dollars of tax exemptions currently in place — an amount that actually exceeds the size of the budget itself. And of course, much of the lobbying that goes on in Olympia, is on behalf of millions of dollars in new exemptions.

If people like Tim Eyman really cared about giving taxpayers the most bang for their buck, he’d be down there with me, fighting to assure that our existing tax exemptions are actually producing the social and economic benefits that they promised. Otherwise, all this talk about performance audits on government expenditures, while allowing zero accountability on “tax expenditures”, comes off as just a load of partisan hooey.

I’ll post a full report tonight.

I’m trying to wean this blog from “all election contest all the time”, so that I can cover some issues that are actually important. But I couldn’t help notice a curious thing about the trickle of new information coming from Dino Rossi’s legal team: the more errors they uncover, the less it may help their case.

Much of the manufactured outrage has focused on Democratic stronghold, King County. The county has especially been taken to task for the 348 provisional ballots that apparently were improperly fed into scanning machines at the polling place. To hear some on the right-wing blogs tell it, this is a “smoking gun” that proves gross negligence, if not outright fraud.

Hmmm. But a number of similarly mishandled provisional ballots have now turned up in a few other counties, with more likely to come: there were 6 in Jefferson, 77 in Pierce, and 12 in Stevens. And when we calculate these numbers out as a percentage of total ballots cast in each county, we find that King’s performance was rather middling:

Stevens:	.058%
King:		.038%
Jefferson:	.033%
Pierce:		.024%

In fact, if Stevens performance was extrapolated out using Kings 900,000 ballots, it would have had over 520 improperly canvassed provisional ballots.

As I’ve said before, the only thing extraordinary about this election was its closeness. But now I’ll add a corollary: the only think extraordinary about King County is its size.

Errors occurred throughout the state, as they do in every election. It wasn’t due to fraud or negligence… just honest mistakes. Indeed, considering how much effort has been put into uncovering illegal votes — and how little the Rossi/BIAW/GOP folks have to show for it — this is turning out to have been a remarkably clean and well run election.

Can we do better at running our elections? Absolutely. Can we achieve perfection? Not in this world.

If this election were to be set aside based on the evidence made public thus far, then every close election will find itself in court. And that’s a precedent the court simply doesn’t want to set.