HorsesAss.Org

I’m too old to benefit from the Institute for a Democratic Future’s excellent six-month training program, but many of you are not, so if you’re between the ages of 21 and 36, and looking to make a difference through politics, I highly recommend sending in your application before the November 20th deadline passes.

Training occurs from January through June, mostly on weekends, and includes hands on sessions throughout the state, and in the nation’s capital. This intensive program is an incredible opportunity for aspiring young activists and politicians; alumni include dozens of current and form state legislators, county and city council members, and community leaders from throughout Washington state.

Apply now!

Washington state’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 9.3% in October… well, sorta. That’s the same rate that was originally reported for September, before being revised downward to 9.1%.

By comparison, South Carolina’s unemployment rate currently stands at 11.6%. Hey Palmetto State… how’s that race-to-the-bottom cheap labor strategy working out for you?

Pretty amusing video of an anti-immigration tea party in Minneapolis, where a prankster succeeds in getting the crowd to cheer the deportation of European immigrants. I especially enjoy the enthusiastic changing of “Columbus, go home!”

What a bunch of maroons.

But wait… I thought the King County Council was officially nonpartisan…?

When Constantine is sworn in next Tuesday, that will leave eight councilmembers to decide his replacement: four Democrats and four Republicans.

Five Democrats, including Constantine, voted for the selection process while all Republicans voted against it.

Voters last year made council elections nonpartisan, but members continue to caucus and sometimes to vote along party lines.

And this from the same paper that railed against Constantine for injecting partisanship into the King County Executive race. Perhaps the editorial board at the Seattle Times should try reading their own news section once in while?

Why doesn’t this surprise me?

The state says Washington’s Republican Party is deadbeat in repaying legal fees associated with a failed challenge to the Top 2 primary system.

In a federal court filing Monday, the Attorney General’s Office wrote that while the Democratic Party has paid the $37,700 it owes, the Republicans haven’t made a dent on their $55,000 bill. Furthermore, Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey T. Even says a GOP lawyer told him not to expect payment any time soon.

I guess that’s one definition of what it means to be “fiscally conservative.” I suppose if the Republicans were in charge our state budget crisis could be solved overnight, simply by refusing to pay our bills.

[flashvideo file=http://rawprint.com/media/2009/0911/cnn_am_pledge_rights_091116a.flv height=324 logo=http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/rsvidlogo04.png link=http://rawstory.com/2009/11/10-year-old-wont-say-pledge/ /]

Via RawStory.

So, how’d that endorsing Joe Mallahan go? Oh right, he was ahead until you, the Seattle Times, and the rest of the Seattle bashing institutional players decided to get involved. How’d that work out for you?

Sorry, there won’t be any more gloating in this letter: it’s for advise. If you stop screwing Seattle, then maybe we’ll be more receptive to hearing you out in the future. Perhaps if you’d dedicated less of your time last session trying to stick us with a bill for tunnel we didn’t really want, we’d be more receptive to your endorsements. But when the theme of the last session was any State DOT overruns should be paid for by Seattle taxpayers, how do you expect that not to come up in a campaign the following year?

Simply put, you aren’t that popular with Seattle right now.

Don’t get me wrong, if you run for a third term and survive a primary challenge, Seattle will put aside our differences and support you pretty overwhelmingly. But you might want to consider how difficult it may be to get support in the city if there is a primary. Or support as a city is earned, and shouldn’t be assumed.

Kiss kiss,
Carl Ballard

I was hoping to attend tonight’s forum in Edmonds with travel show host Rick Steves, State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, State Rep. Mary Helen Roberts, former U.S. Attorney John McKay, and former White House advisor Bud Krogh. It starts in about an hour, but I’m stuck at home with parental duties. I was hoping to ask Mr. McKay the following question:

If Marc Emery is successful in his efforts to avoid extradition to Seattle for drug charges (McKay was the U.S. Attorney who initially went after him) and becomes a free man again, what can Americans do to stay safe?

If anyone is in attendance, let me how it went.

UPDATE: Wow, it looks like McKay has done a 180:

“Federal law makes the possession of any amount of marijuana a crime,” McKay said. “So, even if you’ve got a certificate from your doctor, a federal officer could arrest you. … That’s just bad policy.”

McKay faulted Congress for failing to take initiative on the issue. It is not the place of federal prosecutors or law officers to make policy, he said, nor should the White House go it alone.

In the end, he argued, marijuana should not be lumped in with cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin as part of the war on drugs. Marijuana law, McKay said, “should look a lot more like alcohol (regulations) and a lot less like cocaine and methamphetamine (laws).”

Unfortunately, Marc Emery is still sitting in a Canadian jail cell awaiting extradition. Maybe McKay can meet with new U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan and reverse more than just his stance on this subject.

A Moore Information survey released last week shows challenger Dino Rossi leading incumbent Christine Gregoire 48% to 42% in the 2008 gubernatorial contest, prompting the pollsters to speculate about the Washington state GOP’s rising prospects:

The fact that Rossi leads in this match-up is interesting and encouraging for Republicans in and of itself…

Encouraging news indeed… especially for those Republicans living in that alternate universe where contests are decided a year after the election, and solely on the basis of surveys conducted by Republican pollsters.

I mean honestly, could you get any more deluded?

Rossi, of course, led in the polls throughout 2005. And 2006. And 2007. According to Rasmussen, Rossi even led Gregoire by a substantial 52% to 46% margin as late as September of 2008. And yet on election day, he lost 53% to 46%, and by nearly 200,000 votes.

And that’s the only poll that counts.

Yet local Republicans continue to attempt to spin opinion surveys and East Coast gubernatorial races into evidence of some sort of imminent GOP revival, all the while refusing to address the real cause of their party’s recent string of electoral failures: its own failed and out of touch policies. Is it any wonder that merely branding Susan Hutchison a “Republican” was enough to torpedo her chances when the WSRP proudly endorses the likes of I-1033, an initiative rejected by business and labor groups alike, and which was crushed in King County by a 69% to 31% margin?

It’s not all that hard to capitalize on anti-incumbent sentiment in a hypothetical survey conducted years or even months out from an election. But once voters are asked to make a choice with actual consequences, they tend to vote for the candidates who best share their values. And that’s a metric on which Republicans shouldn’t feel encouraged at all.

While Rep. Dave Reichert worked hard to appear more moderate in response to a tough challenge from Darcy Burner, he’s been veering hard back to the right ever since, culminating in his vote against the House healthcare bill, and his bizarre attacks on the AARP for endorsing it.

Of course, all the polling shows that substantive healthcare reform, including a robust public option, remains popular in Reichert’s district, even amongst seniors, which makes the three-term Republican a prime target for a new round of DNC sponsored radio ads aimed at vulnerable Republicans nationwide.

[audio:http://s3.amazonaws.com/apache.3cdn.net/e625269003db69779a_b6m6va813.mp3]

In last year’s historic election, voters in Washington’s 8th Congressional District supported President Obama and his call for change.

But when it came to fixing our broken health insurance system, Congressman Dave Reichert voted for more of the same.

When the U.S. House passed health insurance reform that would provide Americans quality, affordable care, Congressman Reichert stood with the insurance industry, not the people he was elected to represent.

Congressman Reichert voted against ending discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, against reining in skyrocketing premiums, and against expanding health coverage to more Americans.

Congressman Reichert joined Republicans in Washington and voted against real reform. He stood with the health insurance industry instead of us.

Call Congressman Dave Reichert at (202) 225-3121 and tell him it’s time to stand up for reform, not insurance companies.

Reichert is simply out of step with WA-08 voters on this and many other issues. Perhaps when the reconciled bill comes back to the House floor for one final vote, Reichert might “moderate” his stance one more time if constituents remind him that it could him their vote in 2010?

HA contributors were unusually busy over the weekend, a typically slow time of the week when both posting and traffic generally dips, so here’s a brief summary of the posts you might have missed.

Even business guys befuddled about Baird’s vote
Spiraling healthcare costs is the number one issue for small businesses here and nationwide, which according to Jon, has even U.S. Rep. Brian Baird’s constituents in the business community puzzled over his vote against healthcare reform.

Post-Election Analysis Heresy
In which I make the downright heretical suggestion that, campaign strategery aside, perhaps the results of our recent election indicate that local voters are for the most part satisfied with the performance of our local government, and think both King County and Seattle are headed in the right direction.

The Great Mystery of Afghanistan in 2005-2006
Rather than a long, slow decline into chaos, the situation on the ground in Afghanistan didn’t start to take a sharp turn for the worse until 2005-2006. What changed at that time? Not surprisingly, Lee focuses in on our futilely misguided War on Drugs.

Packing Irony
Wouldn’t it be ironic, I mused, if the guy packing a pistol into the West Seattle Community Center had been shot in the process by another gun-toting civilian? (Because guns make us safer, you know.)

Another Domino Falls
Lee reports that even the stodgy, old American Medical Association has adopted recommendations encouraging the Federal government to reclassify marijuana away from being a Schedule I drug.

Grandstanding Reichert really shows them
Jon reports on U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert’s expanding war on old people, and the congressman’s failed efforts to have the AARP regulated as an insurance company in retribution for their endorsement of healthcare reform.

Times ed board outsources ideas to South Carolina
The anti-union/pro-Republican editors at the Seattle Times absurdly advise organized labor as to what’s good for workers and the general welfare of the Democratic Party. I, of course, make fun of the Times in response.

Bird’s Eye View Contest
Lee’s weekly aerial photo puzzle, which I personally don’t really get, but apparently has a loyal following. Go figure.

According to the headline in the Seattle Times, the “Airport link makes Sound Transit line the train to somewhere“…

The airport line is not expected to have a huge impact on near-term ridership, but routing to such a logical place squelches earlier complaints that light rail is the train to nowhere.

But… Central Link stops in my neighborhood. Huh. I guess that means I live “nowhere.”

As do all the other residents near stations in Tukwila, Rainier Beach, Rainier Valley, Columbia City, Mt. Baker and Beacon Hill.

At least, in the eyes of Times editors.

I wonder if that attitude might help explain how little the Times seems to care about issues concerning folks here in South Seattle, and how dismissive the Times editorial board is about the values, priorities and preferences of voters around here? Hmm.

UPDATE:
Um… one more thing:

South Tukwila, where the current route ends, was an embarrassment to transit planners who could not afford and design an airport station in time for the opening of the first segment.

Actually, most of the delay in the airport station was due to the fact that Sound Transit couldn’t start designing and engineering it until after the Port of Seattle had finalized its ever-changing airport expansion plans. The fact that this segment is opening so soon — on time and on budget — is a credit to ST, not an embarrassment.

Steve Elliott takes on the useless waste of humanity that is Frank Chopp. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Mike McGinn can win the mayoral race, but that guy can’t be defeated by an actual progessive in the 43rd District.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky for the second straight week. The correct answer was The Bronx.

This week’s contest should be more of a challenge, good luck!

Now that’s rich… the Seattle Times editorial board advising organized labor on what’s good for workers and the Democratic Party.

THE revolt of organized labor within the state Democratic Party is a kamikaze effort that works against the interests of the Democratic Party and the workers of Washington.

Yeah, because nobody has the interests of organized labor more at heart than Frank Blethen and his union-busting editors. And nobody is a bigger supporter of the Democratic Party than the Bush/Rossi/McGavick/Reichert/Hutchison endorsing Times.

That’s kinda like an ice axe advising Leon Trotsky on personal security.

The Washington State Labor Council and its allies don’t get this. They have their heads in the world of John L. Lewis and Dave Beck, and it is to the peril of the workers they represent.

We saw the same attitude in the International Association of Machinists’ negotiation with Boeing. The union made its demands, and it lost an airplane assembly line to a nonunion plant in South Carolina. It then held a news conference to announce that the loss was not its fault.

To which, really, the only rational and reasonable response is… FUCK YOU!

Do the Times’ editors bother to even read their own business columnist, the excellent Jon Talton? Do they really believe that cheerleading Boeing’s race-to-the-bottom decision to move thousands of jobs out of state is going to endear the Times to local readers?

If you’re ever confused about how to access the SOV lanes to and from Mercer Island, you might want to turn to the Times’ editors for advice. But when it comes to what’s good for workers and the Democratic Party… not so much.