HorsesAss.Org

It often seems the surest path to winning a seat on the Washington State Supreme Court is to have the last name “Johnson.” So I wonder if instead of Stan Rumbaugh we had run, say, John Thomas, we might’ve had a better chance of removing that dick Jim Johnson from the bench?

As Joel Connelly reported yesterday, Dino Rossi is a big proponent of extending the budget-busting Bush tax cuts:

Rossi argued that 2 1/2 million people in Washington benefit from the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the extension of which will be a major issue in Congress this fall.

Rossi described as “this class warfare program” the Obama administration’s plan to extend the cuts enjoyed by middle-income taxpayers, while repealing tax cuts for high-income households.

Huh. I’m not sure what’s more distorted, Rossi’s view of the lifestyle of your average Washingtonian or Rossi’s definition of “class warfare”…?  As Think Progress explains:

There are about 6.7 million people in Washington state, so for Rossi’s number to be accurate, he’s either claiming that Obama and Murray want to raise taxes on people that they don’t, or he is claiming that more than one-third of the state’s population is making more than $200,000 per year. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 105,209 households in the state that would be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (or about 1.6 percent of the total population). So Rossi inflated his state’s wealthy population by 24 times. Also, as The Wonk Room explains, Rossi’s push to extend the tax cuts for the rich would definitely help one Washingtonian: Dino Rossi.

I guess when you pretty much only hang out with folks making over $200,000 a year, $200,000 doesn’t seem like all that much.

I’d like to propose a compromise in what FOX News tells us is the most important issue facing America today: Muslims can build a mosque just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, if we can build a Burlington Coat Factory Outlet in Mecca. Agreed?

What with our lack of both party ID and a statistically useful track record with the top-two format, the only thing we really learned from yesterday’s primary election was who made it through to the November general. But since I’m one of those bullshit pundits of sorts, who folks come to the morning after for bullshit punditry, I’ll do my best to oblige.

U.S. Senate race surprises analysts by producing no surprises
Had either Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray or her Republican real estate speculator challenger Dino Rossi scored five or more points higher or lower than either one did, it might really tell us something about what to expect in November. But at roughly 46-34 in a 15 person race… not so much.

Would Murray have liked to have topped 50 percent? Sure. Would Rossi have liked to have garnered at least half the number of raw votes he tallied in his 2008 gubernatorial primary? You betcha. Both numbers will rise as the ballots are tallied and the big counties catch up with the rest of the state, but neither really tells us anything we didn’t already know heading into Tuesday.

Coffee-swilling Washingtonians brew weak tea
For all the huff and puff of our state’s teabaggers, they sure as hell didn’t blow my house down with their candidates’ performance in Tuesday’s primary. Clint Didier looks like he’ll break double digits in the final tally, but with all the Palin winks and free press he got, that’s not saying much. And while he did well in Benton and Franklin counties, there just aren’t that many people there, while he couldn’t even carry his home county of Kittitas.

Meanwhile down in WA-03, teabagger favorite David Castillo, who many had predicted to shock establishment GOPers by sneaking into the top-two, looks to finish a disappointing fourth behind two other Republicans. I mean, what’s up with that?

Let’s just say, except for the comparable size of our respectively immense, illicit pot-growing industries, Washington is no Kentucky.

Our regions voters are out of touch with the Seattle Times editorial board
In a bold and surprising move, the Seattle Times endorsed Democrats Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon in the WA-08 primary, abandoning former ed board heart throb, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert. And while absolutely nobody is surprised to see Reichert and DelBene face off in November — they were the only serious candidates in the race from an organizational and fundraising perspective — it was kinda amusing to see Dillon come in fifth, behind some guy named Tom Cramer and the very, very, crazy teabagger, Ernest Huber.

What were voters thinking to diss a candidate the Times lauded as… um… not as unstudied or unacceptable as Reichert?

Or, I guess the real question is, if they believe Reichert is so undeserving of reelection, why didn’t the Times just give their sole endorsement to DelBene, who they surely knew would be his November opponent? Huh.

Roaches check in but they don’t check out?
A collective groan arose from the state’s political press corps last night, as early results suggested that gun-toting, flower-speechifying, blog-foddering Republican State Sen. Pam Roach may actually find herself in serious trouble this November. It’s not just that she only scored 40% of the vote, but that it looks like her top-two opponent is going to be a fellow Republican. Ouch.

Olympia without Pam Roach would be like the Asylum of Charenton without the Marquis de Sade. (Or some other, less literary analogy.) Say it ain’t so!

Meanwhile, a bit of irony elsewhere in the 31st LD, where Roach’s son, State Rep. Dan Roach, and Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney had a gentleman’s agreement to swap offices. (Word is that, underpaid at his wife’s gym, Roach needed the money that comes with the more lucrative council seat, while Bunney, apparently having never visited the place, longed for the glamor and excitement of the State House.) Well, the best laid plans and all that, because Bunney currently finds himself in third place, behind fellow Republican Cathy Dahlquist and fellow Democrat Peggy Levesque.

However, should Bunney manage to hop Levesque in the final tally, 31st LD voters won’t see any Democrats in any of their three legislative races in November. (And no, I haven’t forgotten about Rep. Chris Hurst.)

Checking the latest election results from the Secretary of State’s website, I find that it’s not only down, but apparently has been since August 19, 2008. Huh. Maybe that’s why they call it the SOS?

Anyway, last time I saw, Patty Murray was winning with about 48% of the vote or something, which is about where I expected her to be. Meanwhile, Tea Party wunderkind Clint Didier is having trouble breaking into double digits. Ooh… I’m scared. And Dino Rossi? Whatever.

UPDATE… Color me Didier:
Apparently, not only is the SOS running their website off an old TRS-80, but due to budget cuts, they can only afford two colors on their county maps. So while you wouldn’t know it by looking at the top of the page, Didier has actually won at least two counties, Benton and Franklin. Yeah for him!

UPDATE… Gruber Wins!
Huge upset brewing in Snohomish County:

It is a primary election night in Washington State. So please drop off your ballot and then join us for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Some folks will be there early for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 276 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Mark Kleiman once again lays out his “grow-your-own” idea for legalizing marijuana use while keeping the sale of the drug illegal. This is an argument he’s made before, and one in which I’ve written about my disagreements.

This time around, E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice does a superb job of addressing the shortcomings of Kleiman’s proposal. I don’t really have anything to add to what Kain wrote (or to Pete Guither’s long post here). Yet I noticed today that Adam Serwer, an excellent blogger on civil liberties, attempts to defend Kleiman’s idea:

E.D. Kain doesn’t like the idea, and prefers outright legalization and commercialization:

Furthermore, I’m much more afraid of violent drug dealers, over-eager SWAT teams, and the whole awful black market cycle of violence than I am about the lobbying arms of a few big corporations which apparently fill Kleiman with fear. I’ll take lobbyists over drug cartels any day.

I think Kain is missing at least part of Kleiman’s point. The whole idea behind decriminalizing marijuana possession is to eliminate the “black market cycle of violence”; since people wouldn’t necessarily be dependent on dealers, dealers would have a hard time plying a lucrative trade, and paramilitary SWAT teams wouldn’t be shooting dogs and old ladies trying to get at the hidden cannabis stash of a 72 year-old with cataracts.

And I think Serwer isn’t quite grasping Kain’s point. To clarify, I’m assuming that Serwer is talking about more than just decriminalizing possession here (which was already done back in the 1970s in a number of states and won at the ballot box in Massachusetts in 2008 with nearly 2/3 of the vote); he’s talking about fully legalizing the ability for someone to grow marijuana on their own – or as part of a co-op. Serwer thinks that this would put the drug dealers out of business. Kain is arguing (correctly, in my opinion) that it won’t.

As Kain points out, you will still have large numbers of marijuana consumers who have little interest in growing their own or being part of a co-op. They simply want to buy their marijuana like any other product and they’ll prefer to buy it from a grower who knows how to produce a quality product. On the flip side of that, there will always be people who see growing marijuana as their preferred avenue for making money and will become very good at it. These two forces simply won’t be outweighed by armies of marijuana consumers being proactive in order to comply with the law. This should be obvious. In the end, sales of the drug will still occur, and law enforcement will still be tasked with stopping it. And as long as that combination exists, we’ll still see paramilitary SWAT teams shooting dogs and old ladies because the police thought that they were going after an illegal seller.

Second, while I’m not quite sure where I stand on the choice between legalization and criminalization, I do think that marijuana abuse is a relatively minor problem. I’d like to preserve that status quo while eliminating the draconian penalties and absurd amount of law-enforcement resources devoted to preventing people from toking. But I think Kain is being a bit to dismissive in arguing that there would be no adverse consequences from the mass marketing of marijuana. It seems entirely possible to me that commercializing the drug could create a problem where none really exists — businesses have to make a profit; someone growing their own doesn’t. A world where a smaller, less profitable illicit market that continues to exist looks a lot like our own without the outsize penalties and adverse consequences of over-enforcement. I’m not sure what a world with a fully commercialized marijuana industry that profits from turning people into potheads looks like, but it makes me nervous.

We currently have a commercialized alcohol industry that profits from turning people into alcoholics, and we’ve grown quite accustomed to it. Hell, it’s impossible for me to go through a single day where I’m not exposed to some form of marketing for booze. Despite this barrage, and despite the relatively non-minor problems caused by alcohol (car accidents, domestic violence, liver disease, alcoholism), people in this country remain far more concerned about Muslims building swimming pools in Lower Manhattan than they do about alcohol.

I completely agree that a legalized marijuana market could lead to companies engaging in bad behavior. I’m rather certain it would happen. But there are ways to deal with that other than by resorting to an unrealistic prohibition-lite. You could make laws against advertising. You could even have the state control the distribution. Either of those proposals are far superior to continuing to enforce a ban on the sale of the drug.

That’s the Ballot Drop Box outside King County Elections Tukwila offices, and somewhere in the background of that image you can see a glimpse of Air Force One.

Anyway, still time to vote.

It felt and sounded like something hit the roof, the whole house shuttering in its wake, followed a few moments later by another, equally loud bang and rattle. A sonic boom? Maybe… but I’ve never heard one here before.

I’m in South Seattle, on the western edge of the Seward Park neighborhood. Anybody else hear/feel it, and if so, any idea what it was?

UPDATE:
Unconfirmed report that it was a couple F-15’s going supersonic. Um… but why? I mean, we always have a bunch of military aircraft in the area, but we only rarely have U.S. President. Any connection?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Latest report, two F-16’s scrambled when somebody violated the airspace over President Obama in Seattle. So there was a connection.

UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE:
It was F-15‘s after all. And float plane pilot Lee Daily now has an amusing anecdote to tell over dinner.

As Washington voters cast ballots today to elect one, and possibly two State Supreme Court justices, it’s time for all of us to seriously consider the concerns of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has taken up the cause of reforming state judicial campaign and election systems, writing that the “crisis of confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary is real and growing.” If left unaddressed, said O’Connor, “the perception that justice is for sale will undermine the rule of law that courts are supposed to uphold.”

[…] “We all expect judges to be accountable to the law rather than political supporters or special interests,” writes O’Connor. “But elected judges in many states are compelled to solicit money for their election campaigns, sometimes from lawyers and parties appearing before them. Whether or not those contributions actually tilt the scales of justice, three out of four Americans believe that campaign contributions affect courtroom decisions.”

Or to put it less judiciously… electing judges is just plain stupid.

Yes, I know it would take a constitutional amendment to end judicial elections, and yes, I know such a proposal contradicts my axiom that nobody votes for less democracy, but our current system is gradually being co-opted by wealthy special interests. From District and Superior Court elections, where the winning candidate in a contest for an open seat is most often the one who puts the most of their own money into the race, to the millions of dollars now spent on attack ads in Supreme Court races, the current system is simply no longer serving the purpose for which it was designed.

Better would be a nonpartisan nomination and appointment process along with public retention votes, the details of which could be worked out by folks more expert than me, but which would surely be better than what we have now, in which the average voter is asked to elect judges given very little if any information about the candidates other than the gender and ethnicity of their names, and whatever propaganda the candidates (and third parties) can afford to provide. Hell… I’m not qualified to vote in most judicial races, and I’m about as informed a voter as you’ll find.

I mean, what good can you say about a system that virtually assures the election of any judge named “Johnson”…?

Some folks advocate for public financing of judicial elections, but the best way to take politics out of the judiciary is to simply stop electing them. And it’s past time to start seriously having this conversation.

As always, the Daily Show nails it.

Today is primary election day, and if you haven’t yet cast your ballot, well… um… cast your goddam ballot! If you can’t get to a post office to assure a proper postal mark, King County ballots can be dropped off at one of three accessible voting centers (you can also use the machine to vote in person there; that’s what I do out of a misplaced sense of nostalgia), and in the ballot drop box at the King County Administration building in Seattle. All other ballot drop boxes have been eliminated.

And I know what you’re thinking: outside of a handful of legislative primary challenges and perhaps WA-03, nothing will be decided in the primary, so why bother? Well, I’ll tell you why: The Washington State Supreme Court.

There are only two candidates in the race for Justice Jim Johnson’s seat — the Eyman-loving, BIAW-shilling Johnson, and his progressive challenger Stan Rumbaugh — and that means whoever gets to fifty+one tonight wins.

Vote for Rumbaugh.

Congrats to the Auburn All-Stars for making it to the Little League World Series. They play Fairfield, CT on Friday at 10am to start off the tournament.

Via West Seattle Blog:

[The following] video is getting West Seattle a bit of national attention tonight in the ongoing controversy over Target’s donation to a Minnesota candidate with a history of opposing gay rights. The musical protest took place in the Westwood Village Target store on Saturday, apparently around 11 am

Internal emails obtained via a public records request by environmental attorney Peter Goldman, reveal a concerted effort by Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna and his staff to mislead the media regarding crucial legal issues in the Goldmark v. McKenna dispute, even after an Assistant AG alerted her colleagues to the inaccuracy of their public statements, in her words, “in case accuracy is important.”

Well, apparently, it is not, because McKenna himself went on KUOW the very next day and repeated these inaccurate assertions at least three times, in a performance that questions both McKenna’s integrity, and his ability to credibly represent his client, regardless of the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision on the AG’s statutory duties.

In a 6/10/2010 email with the subject “FYI: Natural Resources legislation from 2010 session,” ATG Communications Director Janelle Guthrie calls attention to SB 6838, a bill that would have prohibited political subdivisions from condemning by eminent domain state trust lands, and for which DNR supervisor Lenny Young was the only person to testify in favor at a 2/5/2010 Ways and Means hearing. Writing to a list of recipients that included ATG spokesperson Dan Sytman, Chief of Staff Randy Pepple, Solicitor General Marnie Hart and Legislative Affairs Director Hunter Goodman, Guthrie used Young’s testimony as the basis for a line of attack that McKenna and his office have relied on ever since:

This is helpful in our talking points as well because it demonstrates that the Dept. of Natural Resources recognized the law allows their trust land to be condemned and they tried to change the law but the Legislature did not move forward with it.

Rhetorically, it’s a powerfully simple argument — why would DNR seek to change a statute that it believed already supported its position? — and it’s an argument both Guthrie and Sytman repeated to members of the press over the weeks that followed, and as recently as today. But legally, it’s an utter load of crap, a point made clear to Sytman in more polite, though only slightly less emphatic terms, in a 6/21/2010 email from Pamela Kreuger, the Assistant AG who represented DNR in the underlying eminent domain case:

Dan,
I noticed your quotes today and just wanted [you] to know the statements you made are not accurate, in case accuracy is important. The testimony on 6838 was not on point — DNR’s testimony on it had nothing to do with believing the PUD already had condemnation authority. That bill (which itself was not DNR request legislation and which we advised DNR about, by the way) would have exempted all state trust lands from condemnation, however, the arguments we made in the appeal below did not deny the express language existed — instead, the case below was about the fact that “state lands devoted to a public use” could not be condemned. So, the failure of the bill had no effect on the case because the bill did not alter existing condemnation law that lands devoted to a public use are protected from condemnation. Also, the law is not clear that a PUD can condemn state land “devoted to a public use” (you left out the last part) — your statement effectively is the opposite of what we argued below by leaving out the key substantive element. These statements, by the way, have broader implications that could negatively impact any state agency’s ability to defend against condemnation for lands that are already devoted to public use.
Pamela

The fact that Kreuger even raises the question of whether “accuracy is important,” clearly suggests that she suspects it is not… a suspicion confirmed the very next day when McKenna himself repeated these inaccurate claims on multiple occasions in his 6/22/2010 interview with KUOW’s Steve Scher, including these two clips in which he virtually mimics the words of his public affairs officers:

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/McKennaOnGoldmark.mp3]

“In fact the statute’s quite clear that public entities, including public utility districts, ports, cities, counties, can in fact condemn property held by other public entities, including trust lands, the statute’s pretty clear about that. And I think that’s why the Department of Natural Resources went in and testified on a bill that was before the state legislature in the 2010 session, which sought to change the law…

[Goldmark] must realize that, because he sent the Natural Resources Supervisor Lenny Young to testify before Senate Ways and Means Committee on February 5th, in favor of Senate Bill 6838, which would have changed the law had it been voted out of committee and passed by the legislature. It was not. In fact, Lenny was the only person to testified in favor of this measure to prohibit the use of eminent domain on trust land.”

June 10: Guthrie and McKenna’s other top lieutenants formulate their attack. June 21: Assistant AG Kreuger refutes the argument as misleading, harmful and “inaccurate.” June 22: McKenna goes on the air and repeats the claim again and again and again.

Now perhaps Sytman never forwarded Kreuger’s strongly worded concerns to their boss, and perhaps none of the other attorneys on Guthrie’s seminal email ever bothered to speak out, or even pay it much attention. And yeah sure, this is a fairly technical legal issue.

But McKenna is the Attorney General for chrisakes! He should know this stuff! Especially since Kreuger explicitly addressed this very same issue in court, a case that McKenna assures us that he and his top attorneys personally reviewed before concluding it unworthy of appeal. From Section II of Kreuger’s Reply in Support of Summary Judgment:

The PUD also seems to rely on recent failed legislation related to the condemnation of trust lands. It is axiomatic that a bill that does not pass cannot be evidence of legislative intent. More to the point, the bill the PUD references did not relate to the question at issue here — the bill did not include any language regarding state lands already “devoted to or reserved for” a public use by law. Instead, it involved eliminating condemnation authority over all state trust lands irrespective of whether or not they were devoted to a public use by law. The Legislature’s failure to adopt the bill, which was not legislation requested by DNR, only indicates that if an entity has the authority to condemn state lands, they still have that authority. If, on the other hand, the entity does not have authority because of the current judicial interpretation of the limits of that authority, which the Legislature has acquiesced to by not amending the applicable statutes, that entity still does not have authority. The status quo has not changed. The PUD’s assertion that this bill is somehow relevant to this case ignores the body of condemnation law that has focused very precisely on state land already “devoted to a public use” as a matter of factual inquiry.

The final emphasis is mine, and I add it to highlight the irony that the very factually and legally inaccurate and irrelevant argument McKenna has chosen to use to discredit Goldmark in the court of public opinion is one which the Okanogan PUD first attempted to use in a court of law… and which McKenna’s own attorneys summarily eviscerated.

It was not just former right-wing talk radio host Dan Sytman who, in Kreuger’s words, attempted to argue “the opposite of what we argued below by leaving out the key substantive element” (the key substantive element being that the land in question is already devoted to public use), but Attorney General Rob McKenna himself. Which raises the very uncomfortable question of whether McKenna really is that bad an attorney and/or that uninformed about the underlying case, or whether, confirming Kreuger’s earlier suspicion, accuracy just isn’t all that important.

These emails reveal a truly stunning culture within the AGO’s leadership that demands further investigation. As DNR’s lawyer the AG’s office should not be developing arguments about what their client “believes” is the law, let alone feeding these musings to the press, nor should it be scheming ways to undermine the legal arguments that their own attorney made in support of her client. And the AGO certainly shouldn’t be making one argument in a court of law and the opposite in the court of public opinion.

More specifically, while there is some controversy as to whether the Rules of Professional Conduct strictly apply to an attorney general due to the conflicts inherent in the office, it is certainly reasonable to argue that McKenna and his attorneys have clearly violated key provisions of the RPC:

RPC 1.2 (a) … a lawyer shall abide by a client’s decisions concerning the objectives of representation…

RPC 1.8 (b) A lawyer shall not use information relating to representation of a client to the disadvantage of the client unless the client gives informed consent…

RPC 3.6 (a) A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.

Back in June when I wrote that McKenna has pursued “a media strategy that borders on legal malpractice,” I clearly understated the situation. Of course, most attorneys I’ve consulted doubt that the Washington State Bar Association would have the balls to touch this controversy should a formal complaint ever be filed, but then, that’s why we have a free press, isn’t it…? To watchdog the powerful, especially when the powerful refuse to watchdog themselves?

For incredible as the AGO’s words and actions have been, even more incredible has been our media’s near total lack of interest in the political intrigue underlying this story. Prosecutable or not, our attorney general has likely committed legal malpractice in pursuit of a broad redefinition of his office that would deny other state agencies access to the courts except by his grace and his consent… in a fundamental sense assuring that the machinery of the state would only function through him.

You’d think there might be a big story there. But I’m just some partisan blogger, so what do I know?