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For those of my regular readers who are also members of the Federal Way Chamber of Commerce (hey… it could happen), I urge you to join me tomorrow at the chamber’s “Initiative Forum” luncheon, where Tim Eyman will be defending I-892 against… me.

I’ve had a number of opportunities to debate Tim on the radio, but this is the first time we’ll be doing it face to face. In fact, last time we were in the same room together, Tim wouldn’t even make eye contact with me, so this should be fun.

Assuming he shows up.

And while we’re on the subject, I direct your attention to the editorial in today’s Seattle P-I: “I-892 a sucker’s bet.”

Regular readers already know my opinion on parking fees at public parks (“Putting the public into public parks“)… those who can afford the fees the least, are those who need the parks the most. And by saving tax dollars, we waste tax dollars: for what is the use of a public park that nobody uses?

Now Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has announced a new budget propped up by parking fees at city parks. This is a cowardly, myopic proposal, that undermines the entire concept of public parks. This Nickels-and-dime approach to funding public services will also, in the long run, undermine support for future tax levies.

Am I exaggerating the impact? I don’t think so. Nickels’ budget also includes a $5 fee for the Volunteer Park Conservatory:

The proposed $5 fee is expected to raise about $450,000 for the parks department next year. That assumes a 40 percent drop in attendance because of the fee, park Superintendent Ken Bounds said. He said the conservatory had about 140,000 visitors last year.

A 40 percent drop in attendance! It’s simple economics. You charge an admission fee for city parks (and that’s what a parking fee amounts to for most of the visitors) and the parks will be used less. Much less.

Councilman Nick Lacata seems to get the point:

We are in danger of becoming more of a closed society, filtering out those who can afford to visit urban amenities, and those who can’t.”

Damn right, we are!

One of the parks to get parking meters is Seward Park, which serves me, and the rest of South Seattle. Walking through Seward Park is the closest you’ll get in Seattle to the multi-ethnic experience of riding the New York subways.

While the park may be surrounded by million-dollar homes, many of those who use it come from the working class and immigrant communities of the Rainier Valley. Public parks like Seward, are physical representations of our nation’s grand democratic vision, where people of every color and every language and every economic strata can join with their more affluent neighbors as equal citizens.

And from a more selfish perspective… hell if I’m going to fill a meter for the privilege of taking my daughter to my local playground for 30 minutes! I pay my taxes! I’ve voted for every damn parks levy the city has put on the ballot! And I don’t want the city sticking its hands into my pockets every time I use my neighborhood park!

This is exactly the type of crap that creates Eymans. People don’t mind paying taxes when they think they’re getting something in return. But if these new fees go through, I bet you dollars to donuts, the next park levy fails.

Yet another major poll has come out showing Bush’s late summer lead in the polls to have been illusory, this time from Zogby International, which reports Bush 46%, Kerry 45%. Of course, the Zogby polls have been much more consistent than most of the others, never showing Bush with a lead outside the margin error.

And while you’re skimming the Zogby site, I strongly recommend you read the pre-debate column from John Zogby, in which he reaffirms his predictions from last May that Kerry would win in November: “The Race Is Still Kerry’s To Lose]”.

Zogby argues that Bush’s negatives amongst undecided voters are simply too high:

From there we see a startling statistic: only 16% to 20% of undecided voters feel that the President deserves to be re-elected. Forty-percent of this relatively small group feel that it is time for someone new.

To win, Kerry needs to give undecided voters a reason to vote for him. And last Thursday’s debate was an important step.

Remember those bizarre Gallup polls that showed Bush with as much as a 14 point lead? Well guess what… according to their latest, post debate poll, it’s now a dead heat. Not a statistical dead heat, but an actual dead heat: 49% to 49%.

So what’s more fickle, voters or the Gallup Poll?

Meanwhile, as the NY Times reports, voter registration rolls continue to swell, undermining the “likely voter” model used by all the national polls. [As Deadlines Hit, Rolls of Voters Show Big Surge]

In Montgomery County, Pa., the elections staff has been working nights and weekends since the week before Labor Day to process the crush of registrations – some 32,000 since May and counting.

I grew up in Montgomery County, Pa., and I can tell you, this has never happened before. And I can also tell you that it’s not suburban Republicans that are registering in record numbers… they were already registered. It’s Democrats who are driving this surge in Montgomery County, and across the city line in Philadelphia.

More from the NY Times:

It is harder to say what is driving the registration increase in Montgomery County, which is still considered “a Republican town” even though it went for Mr. Gore in 2000 and Bill Clinton before that. One of the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania, it has had a lot of new building in recent years. But it also has working-class communities and is about 10 percent minority, and the community organizations say they have worked hard to register people here.

Some people registering have lived here for years but have not voted.

“I’ve been too lazy,” said Kurt Saukaitis, 43, who was registering at the county office. He and his new wife, Candy, both have 16-year-old sons. “The thought of a draft is scary,” Mr. Saukaitis said.

It is one thing to oppose the war in Iraq. It’s another to send your own sons to die there.

My stomach turned as I read Thomas Shapley’s column in today’s P-I, describing George Nethercutt’s despicable ads comparing Patty Murray to Osama bin Laden. I don’t know what is more disgusting… that a politician would air such an ad, or that voters are so stupid as to be swayed by them?

This is a sign of a desperate campaign. And a shameless one.

Last week I told you not to pay attention to the polls showing Bush with a substantial lead over Kerry. They lie.

As evidence, I cite the latest the Newsweek poll, taken in the wake of Kerry’s thumping of Bush in Thursday’s debate: Kerry 47%… Bush 45%.

Now, do you really believe that Kerry had a slight but steady lead through most of the summer, and then Bush jumped ahead by 10 points on the basis of his convention, only to see it evaporate entirely after a single debate?

The polls are crap.

One thing I am willing to bet money on… by 2000 standards, this election won’t be close (at least in the popular vote.) Whoever wins is going to win by greater than a five percent spread. And I believe it’s going to be Kerry.

Here’s my quick spin on the first Kerry-Bush debate: Kerry won.

In fact, I think Bush came across as surprisingly petulant. (Not that I’m surprised by his petulance, just that he’d allow himself to come across that way.)

I’ll leave more detailed analysis to others, but I did have one curious little observation. Note the following line from Bush’s closing statement:

In the next four years, we will continue to strengthen our homeland defenses, we will strengthen our intelligence gathering services, we will reform our military – military will be an all-volunteer army.

Notice the little stumble there as he tried to emphasize “all-volunteer”?

This tells me two things. 1) The Bush team knows that if the the public believes we’re headed for a military draft, he will lose this election, and 2) … we’re headed for a military draft.

Recruitment is down. More importantly, quality recruitment is down. And yet there seems no end in sight for our military commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If I were 18, I’d be awfully anxious.

(Okay… I was awfully anxious as an 18-year-old, but you get the point.)

A quick and emphatic link to Joni Balter’s column in today’s Seattle Times: “I-892: a game of chance we should walk away from.” Joni describes an extraordinary documentary film made by students at Shorewood High School, that shows underage teenagers — some as young as 12 — gambling at local card rooms.

According to a 1999 WA Lottery Commission study, more than 1 in 12 teenagers in Washington state is a problem gambler… a higher percentage than the adult population. As access to gambling increases, so does addiction. Indeed, a national study shows that people living within 50 miles of a casino have twice the incidence of problem gambling.

Initiative 892 would put 18,255 slot machines into over 2000 locations, scattered through nearly every community in the state, putting all our families at risk.

Kudos to the Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly for unearthing a transcript of a 1992 speech delivered by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney before the Discovery Institute in Seattle. [Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America in blood]

A companion piece ran on the front page of the P-I, providing even more details. [Cheney changed his view on Iraq]

In the speech Cheney defends the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power at the end of the first Gulf War:

“I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

“And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don’t think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the (1991) conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war.

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.”

At last count, 1,046 Americans have been killed, and 7000 injured… the majority since President Bush famously declared “mission accomplished.” And as Joel points out, you can’t get much bigger of a “flip-flop” than this.

Thanks Joel, for doing the kind of hard-nosed, old fashioned reporting, we don’t always see from local columnists. (Yeah… I’m looking at you Collin.)

An article in Wednesday’s Seattle P-I reports that Dino Rossi’s campaign has been referring to him as a commercial real estate “broker” when he is in fact an “agent.” [Rossi clarifies professional status]

The state requires brokers to meet more stringent licensing requirements, including additional testing and training, and forbids real estate salespeople from referring to themselves as brokers.

That’s right… Rossi’s just a salesman. Why should we care?

Rossi, a former state senator from Sammamish, said yesterday that he has never referred to himself as a broker. He said other people wrote his legislative biography and campaign finance reports to the state that mistakenly described him that way.

Asked why he didn’t correct the record earlier, Rossi said, “If I saw it, it didn’t register.”

Yeah Dino, that’s the kind of hands on leadership we want from a governor… just blame your staff.

Maybe, as Rossi claims, the distinction between agents and brokers really is no big deal. But that would be all the more reason to just accept responsibility, and move on to more important issues.

Or maybe the campaign didn’t feel “real estate agent” was a weighty enough profession for somebody running for governor? Though it could have been worse — he could have been a car salesman. (Excuse me… commercial vehicle broker.)

I’m guessing the campaign stretched the truth, and it really “didn’t register” with Rossi. Just like it doesn’t seem to register with him that it’s kind of disingenuous to run as an Olympia outsider while simultaneously claiming to have singlehandedly balanced the state budget.

Whatever.

The point is his campaign was caught in a lie, however small, and Rossi passed the buck… behavior unbecoming of a licensed real estate broker.

On Sunday we made our annual trek to Wapato to pick tomatoes and peppers to bring home for canning. Timing (and my seven-year-old daughter) didn’t permit stopping at any wineries, or my favorite brewery, Grant’s, which alas, is closed on Sundays. But the highlight of the day is always the picnic that follows the picking.

Every year we meet friends at Yakima Sportsman State Park, for an extravagant spread of Italian meats and cheeses and breads, topped off with freshly picked produce. The tomatoes should require no description, but just imagine the prosciutto and melon, when the melon is still warm from the fields.

Yakima Sportsman is an oasis along the Yakima river, in an otherwise desert area. It is lush and green, with generous shade provided by a variety of deciduous trees. And its facilities are top-notch, allowing us effete city-folk to wash up after a morning in the fields.

In past years, the park would be teeming with families enjoying the Sunday afternoon, many of them the farm workers that fuel the local agricultural economy. (Our U-Pick tomatoes were $0.10/lb, so you get an idea of the value of labor.)

But last Sunday, like in recent years, we’ve had the park to ourselves.

It was 85 degrees and sunny, and yet the park was deserted. No boisterous BBQs, no music blaring from boom boxes… and apart from my daughter, no hoards of screaming children chasing the ducks and geese away from the picnic tables.

The park’s abandonment can be traced back to the imposition of parking fees, currently $5 per vehicle (discounted from the usual $7.) The campgrounds, which always required a fee, still appear to be used, but apart from our own cars, the day-parking lot was empty.

Now I can afford the fee, although $5 for a two-hour visit is a bit insulting after paying 12 bucks for a year’s worth of tomatoes. But clearly, many of the families who used to share the park with us, cannot.

I blame Tim Eyman, and the myopic voters who have supported his tax cutting initiatives.

Yakima Sportsman has become the definition of “penny-wise and pound-foolish” — a wonderful park maintained by taxpayers, for the use of the privileged few. By saving tax dollars, it has become a waste of tax dollars, for what is the use of a public park that nobody uses?

Tim and I (especially Tim) can afford an extra “user fee” here and there, but the quality of life in Washington state is slowly dying a death by a thousands cuts. Reduced library hours, deferred road maintenance, increased class sizes, fire and EMS that fails to keep up with population growth, a growing backlog in the courts… the impact of our perpetual budget crisis is spread so thin across so many services that it almost seems imperceptible.

Almost.

There is a reason why Eyman has failed to qualify a tax-cutting initiative for the ballot two years running (and no, I-892 doesn’t count.) Voters understand that you don’t get something for nothing, and they see that many state and local agencies have already cut to the bone.

The vast majority of voters reject Tim’s radical libertarian vision. We don’t want to privatize public infrastructure. We don’t want access to essential services determined solely by market forces.

And we don’t want to exclude the public from our public parks.

Initiative 892 — the gaming-industry-in-Eyman’s-cloak gambit to plant slot machines on every Main Street in the state — is so clearly flawed and dangerous, that I don’t expect a single editorial board to come out in its favor. The Seattle Times, arguably Washington’s most influential paper, is leading the chorus with a strongly worded editorial: “Reject I-892’s state gambling expansion.”

Initiative 892 is a crass attempt to expand gambling in Washington by exploiting uncertain promises of property-tax relief and animosity toward the recent economic success of Indian tribes.

This comes on the heals of an article in the Sunday Times that exposes the lies Eyman has been using to promote the initiative. [I-892’s tax savings in dispute] As we have frequently pointed out, I-892 is not revenue neutral, and will not provide the tax savings Tim promises.

In fact, between loss of revenues from other taxable activities, and rising costs from problem gambling, I-892 will likely cost taxpayers more money than it saves them. Indeed a Maryland study (whose citation eludes me at the moment) suggested that slots would cost the state $3 for every $1 raised in taxes.

I-892 is a sucker’s bet. And the more voters know about it, the less they’ll support it.

Several readers have pointed out that my bold prediction that The Seattle Times would endorse Kerry, is not all that bold considering they already did endorse Kerry back on August 27.

Oops.

So I’ll just feebly attempt to reclaim some dignity by making another bold prediction: The Times will endorse Kerry a second time.

Remember, you heard it here first.

According to an article in today’s NY Times, new voter registration in Democratic areas of Ohio and Florida are far exceeding similar efforts by Republicans. [Both Parties See a Big Increase in New Voters]

In Ohio, new registrations in Democratic areas have increased 250 percent over the same period in 2000, compared to a 25 percent increase for Republicans. In Florida, the Democratic advantage is 60 percent to 12 percent. Registration drives have added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls of these important swing states.

The precise impact of the swell in registration is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

As I wrote the other day, you’ve got to take the national polls with a grain of salt, and keep on fighting. Don’t get discouraged when the polls show Bush with a lead… these polls are underestimating Democratic likely voters.

I smell victory.

Tim Eyman got to speak yesterday on behalf of Initiative 892 — unopposed — before the Association of Washington Businesses. His comments were picked up in the Bellingham Herald and the Olympian… and they were lies all! At least the headline was accurate: “Eyman touts his initiative for gambling.”

Timmy continues to call I-892 “revenue neutral.” It is not. According to Office of Financial Management estimates the initiative will cost state and local governments at least $69 million a year in lost revenues from other forms of gambling. And that doesn’t even begin to calculate the lost revenues from other taxable activities that will surely result from this $1.2 billion shift in consumer spending.

Tim continues sell I-892 as “leveling the playing field” by allowing other businesses to compete with the tribes. But the “fairness” issue is a racially-loaded load of crap.

Fairness for whom? The handful of out-of-state and foreign gambling conglomerates who own most of the card rooms… who got into this business knowing the rules, and now want to change them?

Or fairness for the two thousand bars, restaurants and bowling alleys who will be allowed to put slot machines in every community in our state? As I’ve said before, a bowling alley claiming they need slots to compete with the tribal casinos is like Chuck E. Cheese’s saying they need a liquor license and strippers to compete with the Deja Vu.

And of course, Tim continues to say that I-892 is “good for taxpayers.” My ass!

An owner of a $200,000 home will save less than $23 a year! Meanwhile, direct costs to taxpayers from problem gambling — which already approaches $100 million a year — will surely skyrocket as this $23 billion in new wagering increases state gambling over five-fold!

The only winners from I-892 are the big gambling companies that have written and financed it. For example, the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, will suck $20 million a year in new profits north of border… not a bad return on their $200,000 investment.

Tim Eyman is an admitted liar, and the media needs to do a better job of evaluating his factual claims before repeating them.