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If Tim Eyman calls a press conference, and no reporters show up, did he make a sound? Apparently not, for the most striking thing about the media coverage of Tim’s performance audits initiative was the almost total lack thereof.

Yesterday was the opening day of the initiative filing season, an event Tim has traditionally turned into an annual photo op… but this year, few reporters took advantage of the opportunity. Indeed, scanning the papers, Tim’s “I-900” received nary a headline and barely a mention in the wrap-ups of the day’s political events.

Of course, with the filing coinciding with the first day of the legislative session, and the GOP’s failed efforts to block certification of Christine Gregoire’s election, part of Tim’s failure to grab headlines was due to timing. But it is also due to the fact that Tim Eyman’s time may have passed.

In fact, the most press coverage an Eyman initiative got today was actually his four-year-old I-747. A group of environmentalists, social organizations and at least one county have filed suit to have the measure tossed out. [Lawsuit says I-747 violates state constitution]

I-747 is a particularly nefarious initiative because its impact is so gradual, masking from the public the enormous cuts projected out onto future budgets. I-747 limits property tax revenue growth to 1% a year… well below inflation, let alone growth in population or personal income. As revenues grow slower than demand for public services, these services are gradually cut. Without revision or repeal, many local taxing districts — particularly in rural communities in eastern Washington — face insolvency over the next few years.

Eyman claims the initiative was carefully drafted to avoid constitutional problems, but as usual, I tend to trust experts over lying blowhards:

Attorney Hugh Spitzer, whose firm has challenged many of Eyman’s initiatives, said it was clear after the initiative passed that there were constitutional issues that could be raised, but there wasn’t a group of cities and counties that wanted to spend the time and effort to litigate it.

If Hugh Spitzer says there are valid constitutional issues, then there are valid constitutional issues. Whereas if Tim Eyman says the sky is blue, I’d have my doubts.

Anyway, it’s nice to see Timmy on the defensive, and it’s unlikely we’ll see him recover any time soon. His newest initiative is a dog, and even if it wasn’t about to be obviated by a more reasonable legislative proposal, he still lacks the grassroots and financial resources to qualify it for the ballot. And now I-747, his most lasting contribution to our state of perpetual budget crisis, is under legal attack.

Tim has failed to pass an initiative two years running, and as his ethical scandals continue to outnumber his electoral victories, he will continue his inevitable slide towards political irrelevance.

Who knows, maybe next year, when the media fails to show up for yet another filing day press conference… perhaps I won’t even bother to blog on it?

As expected, the Legislature just certified Christine Gregoire’s election as our new governor.

Anybody looking for excitement in Olympia today better hope for some kind of street fight between Gregoire and Rossi supporters… because you’re not going to get any drama from the Legislature. Sure, Republicans might follow through on their childish threat to walk out of the joint session, but any chance they had of blocking certification of Christine Gregoire’s election vanished when the slim Democratic majority in the Senate held firm during a procedural vote yesterday.

With that out of the way, the final certification of the election results will fall to a joint session of the Legislature, where a more solid advantage in the House gives Democrats a comfortable majority. Gregoire will be certified on Tuesday, and sworn in on Wednesday… regardless of how much money the BIAW spends on paid media.

Good thing too, because we choose our governor based on who wins the election the first Tuesday in November, not on who wins the PR battle afterwards. This is not a parliamentary system where governments are toppled on losing a vote of confidence — if Rossi wants a new election, he’s welcome to it… in 2008.

So it’s onto the courts — the proper forum for contesting an election — where I expect Rossi’s BIAW attorneys will be less persuasive then his BIAW financed media campaign. For while the court of public opinion might be moved by unsupported rumor and innuendo, a court of law is inconveniently rigid about obscure technicalities like “facts” and “evidence.”

Rossi has spent weeks shamelessly accusing Gregoire, the Democrats and King County Elections officials, of “fraud,” “corruption” and “conspiracy,” but his attorneys — constrained by reality — have now translated these charges into “neglect,” “errors” and “omissions.” This sudden shift in word choice cannot simply be dismissed as a legal expediency… it is an admission that they never had the evidence to back up these baseless charges in the first place.

For this, Dino Rossi owes the public an explanation. And he owes Christine Gregoire an apology.

Show your support for following the rule of law! Rally at the Capitol, Tuesday, Jan 11th, 10:30 AM, State Capitol, Olympia WA, Story Pole on North Side of Capitol Campus.

Or, show your support for Christine Gregoire, by telling the Legislature to stand up to the BIAW media campaign, certify the election, and get on with the business of government! Call the Legislative Hotline, 1-800-562-6000, or email your legislators!

First day of the new legislative session… first day to file initiatives to the people… it’s back to the real work of governing. While Dino Rossi, the BIAW, and the folks at (un)Sound Politics continue to pursue their real agenda — undermining the public’s faith in all government — I hope you’ll excuse me if I take a break from refuting their lies to address some real issues.

For example, as I write this, initiative profiteer Tim Eyman is holding what I expect to be a sparsely attended news conference, to introduce his newest ill-conceived initiative: mandatory performance audits of every state and local government agency, account and program.

Personally, I think performance audits can be a useful tool, along with Gov. Locke’s Priorities of Government program, for evaluating the efficiency of existing state programs, and reprioritizing government spending. But as usual, Timmy’s proposal is more about punishing government than making it efficient, and this initiative is really, stupidly over-the-top.

It’s one thing to empower the State Auditor to conduct performance audits. It’s another thing to require him to audit every single agency, account and program in the state. I mean, let’s be serious… the cost of conducting a performance audit on the average local cemetery district would likely far exceed the district’s entire budget.

How expense is this initiative. Well, Eyman dedicates a portion of the state sales tax equal to about $10 million a year. I believe in accounting terms, this is technically referred to as “a lie.” According to the State Auditor’s Office, the real cost would likely be in excess of $90 million per biennium. Not only that, it would require increasing staff levels by at least four-fold, and take 10 to 12 years to implement. That’s right… Eyman is proposing over a half billion dollars of new spending!

Way to cut government, Tim!

Don’t believe me? Check out the document provided by the State Auditor’s Office in response to questions by public watchdog group Permanent Defense. The Auditor is particularly critical of including local government agencies in the initiative, calling it “ill-advised.”

So where do I stand on this issue. As usual, I tend to defer to well-regarded professionals when it comes to issues on which I have only limited expertise… so I support giving State Auditor Brian Sonntag the kind of legislation he wants:

We believe the intent behind the initiative is good, however, we also firmly believe that there is a better way. We were nearly successful in getting a measure passed during the 2004 session of the Legislature… In our view, the optimum means of accomplishing an independent, comprehensive performance audit function is to have the Governor and Legislature embrace it and enact authorizing legislation and funding to support it.

Sonntag nearly got the legislation he asked for last year… it had the votes to pass the Democrat-controlled House, but was blocked in the Republican Senate. Now that the Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, and the Governor’s Mansion, it seems likely that responsible performance audits legislation will be signed into law, preempting Eyman’s initiative, regardless of his rhetorical gamesmanship.

But even if the Legislature grinds to halt in the partisan meltdown currently being promised by Republicans, and nothing is passed, this initiative still doesn’t have a snowball’s chance. Over the past few years Eyman has demonstrated that he lacks the grassroots support to finance both an initiative campaign and his standard of living. If he couldn’t rile up money-in-my-pocket fervor with last year’s “25% tax cut” initiative, performance audits is guaranteed to be a fundraising dud. And without directly benefiting a greedy special-interest like the gambling industry, he has no sugar-daddy to bankroll his efforts.

Makes you wonder, what with all the money he’s wasted proposing and running failed initiatives… isn’t it time his contributors conduct a performance audit on Tim Eyman?

An Ellensburg, WA man has filed a lawsuit contesting the results of the Seattle Seahawks’ 27-20 loss to the St. Louis Rams in the first round of the NFC playoffs. The suit alleges malfeasance, misconduct or errors by referees resulted in nine penalties on the Seahawks, “several of which kept Ram drives alive when they would have faced fourth down situations.”

Apparently inspired by the unsportsmanlike manner in which failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi has blamed his own loss on the officials, longtime Seahawks fan and political blog connoisseur John Slyfield claims that failure to replay the game “could harm the integrity of the game, by not allowing mistakes to be corrected.” Impartial observers — like Seahawk Cornerback Ken Lucas — apparently agree:

“The refs made some very questionable calls today,” Lucas said. “There was one call I thought I did, and that was the hands to the face. The other two I thought were questionable. But they made the calls, and that’s been the story for us this year, calls made against us.”

The lawsuit comes in the wake of a rising tide of public opinion in favor of a new game, fueled by inflammatory rhetoric coming from local sports radio. Radio hosts and callers are particularly irate about a “phantom” fourth-quarter illegal contact call on cornerback Marcus Trufant, that set up the Rams with a first down at the Seattle 30, on a drive that eventually led to a tying touchdown.

Seahawk boosters have reportedly reserved the domain “replaywa.com”, but rumors of a planned “victory parade” through downtown Seattle could not be confirmed.

According to an article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post (“U.S. paid journalist to tout law“), the Education Department secretly paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to help promote President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

In taking the money, funneled through a public-relations firm, Williams produced and aired a commercial on his syndicated television and radio shows featuring Education Secretary Rod Paige, touted Bush’s education policy and urged other programs to interview Paige. He didn’t disclose the contract when talking about the law during cable-television appearances or writing about it in his newspaper column.

Democrats immediately accused the administration of trying to bribe journalists. Well duh-uh! It’s standard practice for the US to bribe journalists around the world… what makes anybody think they’re not doing it at home?

This is blatant propaganda that would make Goebbels proud — and at taxpayer expense, no less. When critics like me reluctantly use the word “fascism” to describe the tactics of the Republican leadership and their corporate patrons, this is exactly the kind of undemocratic crap we’re talking about.

Alex Jones, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein media center, said he is “disgusted” by what he called “the worst kind of fakery and flackery” on Williams’ part. “It’s propaganda masquerading as news, paid by government, truly a recipe from hell,” he said. “It would make any thinking person hearing any pundit speak want to say, ‘OK, how much did they pay you to say that?’ ” The contract also shows that “the Bush administration neither understands nor respects the idea of an independent media,” Jones said.

Hmm… makes you wonder how much Dori Monson got paid for his right-wing conversion, huh?

Much has been made by the Rossi campaign over the alleged “felon vote”, with the slanderous implication that it would heavily favor Christine Gregoire. Well, I can think of at least one convicted felon who most likely voted for Dino Rossi: his longtime mentor, Melvin Heide.

As was widely reported in The Seattle Times, The Stranger and other publications, Rossi’s rags to riches story is a little ragged around the edges. Rossi got his start at a real estate company owned and operated by Heide, that engaged in fraudulent business practices, bilking millions out of clients. As scandals and bankruptcies unfolded, Rossi’s colleagues fled to more reputable firms, but he stuck with Heide, following him to two other companies.

On August 18, 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Heide on 18 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and making false statements. In exchange for other charges being dropped, Heide eventually pleaded guilty to bilking a Tacoma couple out of $400,000 — and on July 20, 1990, he was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution.

However, Rossi’s eight-year business relationship with Heide only ended in 1992… in the middle of his first political campaign. Even then, Rossi remained close to the Heide family, indeed, Rossi’s first campaign treasurer was none other than Heide’s son, Ralph. (A tip of the hat to Pleasing to Remember for that tidbit.)

Perhaps this explains why several Republican readers took such offense by the technically accurate description of Rossi in my previous post? In light of the shady companies he worked for, the only thing worse than describing Rossi as an “unemployed real estate agent” would be to describe him as an “employed” one.

Gregoire spent most of her professional career putting felons behind bars, while Rossi spent much of his working for one. So who do you think is more deserving of the “felon vote”?

“Glass houses,” and all that.

One of the more curious rhetorical choices coming out of today’s press conference from Dino Rossi’s Charlotte Bellevue headquarters, was former-Senator Slade Gorton’s odd attempt to point to North Carolina as a role model for setting aside an election whenever the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory.

In a hotly contested Agricultural Commissioner race that saw the Democratic incumbent defeated by only 2,287 votes out of 3.3 million cast, the North Carolina courts ordered a new election after it was revealed that Carteret County had accidentally erased 4,438 votes from electronic voting machines. (Oops.) The decision came despite that fact that Carteret split 60-40 for the Republican, suggesting that these missing votes would have only added to the margin of the winner. Gorton uses the North Carolina example to support his argument that if the GOP can prove there are more illegal or improperly canvassed ballots than Christine Gregoire’s 129 vote margin, her election should be tossed out too.

Problem with that argument is… we don’t live in North Carolina.

At the risk of boring you with more wonkish legal stuff, take a look at the pertinent section of the North Carolina election statute:

 

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Unemployed real estate salesman Dino Rossi announced today that he has filed a lawsuit contesting the gubernatorial election.

“These things happen in every election.” That’s what Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed said this morning on KUOW. And that’s why Dino Rossi, in his wisdom, voted for a major revision of our election code, including a contest statute with such a high burden of proof:

An article in today’s Seattle Times debunks yet another GOP lie, that Christine Gregoire’s victory was somehow aided by hordes of Democrats illegally voting from the afterlife. [Voting by dead people isn’t always a scam]

Dino Rossi, the GOP, BIAW, and right-wing blogs and talk radio have been urging Rossi supporters to contact their legislators and urge them to vote against certifying Christine Gregoire’s gubernatorial election. Even Tim Eyman has gotten into the act, emailing the 3,600 names on his list.

Once again, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed has proven himself a man above the partisan rancor. While his party is busy tearing down the public’s faith in our electoral system, Reed is working to build it up.

In my previous post I debunked Dino Rossi’s shameful lies about disenfranchised military voters. In King County — the focus of an intense Rossi/BIAW/GOP propaganda campaign to undermine public faith in the electoral process — military ballots not only went out on time, but over 83% were returned by the deadline… a rate equal to the turnout of all registered voters.