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In defending her failure to report the use of a four bedroom Laurelhurst house as her campaign headquarters, Susan Hutchison merely shrugged off allegations by claiming it was “the residence of my campaign manager.”  Of course, that’s neither here nor there, as she’s still required to account for the use of the house as either an expense or an in-kind contribution.

But as I previously pointed out, her dismissive explanation is also clearly a bald-faced lie, as there’s no way her young campaign manager could afford the $2300 to $4000 a month comparable homes in the neighborhood are renting for. Either he’s not paying rent at all, or… well… or this particular scam is part of a larger money laundering scheme Hutchison’s consultant, Dresner Wicker is using to funnel tens of thousands of dollars of illegal, excess contributions into the campaign.

Of course, there would be one way for Hutchison to help clear up the confusion. She could actually live up to her pledge of transparency and have her campaign manager make public both his pay stubs and his rent checks, so that we can see exactly how much he is earning compared to how much he is shelling out for his so-called “residence.”

Or, of course, Hutchison could just continue to lie the public and the press.

In the comments of my last post about the epic saga of the empty jail in Hardin, Montana, Jason Osgood asks:

Is anyone else disturbed that a new jail was someone’s idea of economic development and jobs creation?

Yeah, me too. And while there was a lot in that story to gawk at, that was certainly a big one. Why the hell did a small town in Montana with no immediate need to house prisoners build a huge jail? TPM’s Justin Elliott looked into it:

But an investigation by TPMmuckraker into how Hardin ended up with the 92,000 square foot facility in the first place suggests that, long before “low-level card shark” Michael Hilton ever came to town, Hardin officials had already been taken for a ride by a far more powerful set of players: a well-organized consortium of private companies headquartered around the country, which specializes in pitching speculative and risky prison projects to local governments desperate for jobs.

Elliott shines a welcome light on the way private prisons make their money. Private corrections firms aren’t talked about much as one of the industries that have tremendous power in this country, but they should be. As America has become the world’s most prolific jailer, this is an industry that has been driving it and profiting from it.

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear when it comes to drug laws is that we can’t change them because of public opinion. This tends to be widely accepted as fact wherever you go, but it really isn’t true. Ron Paul continues to get re-elected in a conservative part of Texas every two years even though he has advocated for legalizing marijuana since the 1980s. The reality is that most people don’t pay much attention at all the drug war, and those who do overwhelmingly want it to end. Things like needle exchanges create mini-uproars from a small fringe of drug warriors, but after they’re enacted, they work exactly as expected to reduce the spread of diseases and no politician ever loses their job over them. Aside from small attempts to minimize the damage of drug prohibition, though, we still remain completely unable to shift away from one core aspect of the drug war – the idea that putting large numbers of people in prison will fix the problem.

This isn’t just a national mental block on the part of voters. We’re nearing a national majority of people being in favor of having marijuana sold legally to adults. In survey after survey, people tend to understand that putting people in jail for drug crimes doesn’t work. Instead, it’s the private corrections industry (and other special interests) that have a very strong interest in continuing the status quo. Prison overcrowding is their life-blood. The more people we arrest, the more prisons have to be built, and the more the American taxpayers can be soaked to house them all. This desire dovetails perfectly with the interests of law enforcement unions and prosecutors as well.

But in one way or another, all this insanity comes out of our pockets. Putting people in prison isn’t an investment. It produces nothing of value. In fact, it compounds taxpayer expenses in a number of ways, from the costs of trying to re-integrate former prisoners back into society to the downstream effects of having large numbers of single parent (or no parent) households in low-income communities. Putting people in prison should be seen as a necessary evil in society, an unavoidable side-effect of human nature that’s required to provide justice for the victims of crime. It shouldn’t be seen as an opportunity for government to invest in job creation. I believe that governments at all levels can and should provide stimulus for communities with high unemployment. But building a new prison that relies solely on the premise that we don’t have enough people locked up in our society already is the most counterproductive way of doing it.

As reported earlier today on Publicola, an “independent” expenditure campaign on behalf of Susan Hutchison is about to hit the airwaves. As Erica reports, the group has booked $135,000 on cable and TV, but sources tell me that may only be the initial ad buy.

And who is behind the man behind the curtain?

That’s unclear, but one rumor has it that it’s Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman.

And that’s what I’m hearing too.

So, even though Hutchison says she supports light rail, she enthusiastically endorses the Washington Policy Center’s anti-light rail screed, while benefiting from a large IE paid for by a man suing to prevent light rail from crossing I-90.

Huh.

Live by the PDC complaint, die by the PDC complaint, that’s the painful lesson the Susan Hutchison campaign ironically learned yesterday after a press conference was derailed by questions regarding alleged reporting violations.

PDC complaints are a dime a dozen during election season, a standard campaign tactic intended to discredit the opposition and distract the press. Our disclosure requirements are complicated and time consuming, and mistakes are made, unintentional or not, and thus there’s rarely a top of the ticket campaign that hasn’t had a PDC complaint filed against it, and/or had a PDC complaint filed on its behalf. Hell, even I’ve filed a PDC complaint or two… that’s how common they are.

In that spirit, Hutchison and her surrogates have been pushing a complaint against the Constantine campaign for weeks, accusing it of illegal coordination with an independent expenditure campaign with which it shares treasurers, Jason Bennett. Illegal coordination is a pretty damn serious charge, but like many such complaints, this one is also pretty damn unsupported by the facts. Bennett serves as treasurer for dozens of campaigns, a role that largely consists of, well, filing PDC reports. In fact, it was Bennett himself who first notified the PDC of the potential conflict after he saw the IE come through from his other client.

And that’s the kind of thorough attention to detail Hutchison could’ve used from her own campaign treasurer, judging by the 81 reporting violations contained within the PDC complaint filed yesterday by the King County Democrats. To be fair, individually, the bulk of the violations are of the piddling variety, normally attributable to sloppiness and incompetence, though taken together they sure do come off as a general disregard for our public disclosure laws. Chronically late reports… missing employer information and sub-vender detail… these are the kinda things the PDC tends to try to work with campaigns to resolve, though given the extent of the violations, I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least a minor fine come down, if many months after the election. Or maybe not. The PDC can be inscrutable this way.

But buried amidst all the apparent sloppiness are a couple of doozies Hutchison will find much harder to explain… as she did at yesterday’s press conference, when she first refused to answer reporters’ questions regarding the four bedroom Laurelhurst house she uses as a campaign headquarters, but doesn’t report as either a contribution or an expense, before proceeding to dig herself even deeper by spinning an obvious fib.

Finally, Hutchison told [KIRO-TV reporter Essex] Porter the home was “not donated” and that it was “the residence of my campaign manager.”

[Jordan] McCarren, who works for a California-based Republican consulting firm,  is not from Seattle.

McCarren tells PubliCola that he rents the property. “I have a rental agreement with the landlord.” However, asked who the landlord is, he says, “Honestly, I would have to look that up.”

You don’t know who you pay rent to? “We have offered all that information to the PDC.”

As Publicola uncovered, the rental home is managed by a company owned by wireless mogul and Republican moneybags Bruce McCaw, who has already double-maxed to Hutchison to the tune of $1,600 in contributions. And as for the claim that McCarren pays the rent, well, that’s hard to believe, at least not at fair market value.

Numerous searches of Craigslist and various rental services have shown similar houses in the neighborhood renting for between $2,300 and $4,000 month. That’s a pretty typical range for an $800,000 home, and far beyond the reach of a campaign manager in a county executive race.

As noted, Hutchison’s expenditure reports are a bit of a mess, but the only reported expense that appears to match his position is a $4,500/month recurring “communications consultant” fee, of which McCarren’s employer, Dresner Wicker, certainly takes a piece. So it begs credulity that McCarren would blow the bulk of his after-tax salary renting a four bedroom house in Laurelhurst for six months. Clearly, either McCaw’s company is renting Hutchison’s campaign headquarters to McCarren at well below market rates, which constitutes an illegal and unreported campaign contribution, or the rent is being illegally subsidized in some other fashion. And even if McCarren was paying market rent out of his own pocket, Hutchison still couldn’t use it as campaign headquarters without reporting it in some manner.

(And there’s no doubt the house is her campaign headquarters; that’s how it’s identified in her KCTS profile, and that’s what the campaign calls it in their own email.)

But whoever is paying the rent, it’s a pretty damn serious charge — amounting to as much as $20,000 in illegal contributions — and a damn sight better supported than the merely speculative complaint lodged against Constantine and Bennett. Combine that with the other $20,000 in late primary expenditures the complaint alleges the campaign also failed to disclose, and Hutchison has some serious ‘splainin’ to do.

The irony is, if the Hutchison camp hadn’t so emphatically pushed their complaint against Constantine, our fair and balanced media might not have felt quite so empowered to aggressively question Hutchison about her own alleged reporting violations. “Let she who is without sin cast the first stone” and all that… now that’s a Biblical verse Hutchison should be familiar with.

But more than just ignoring a Bible lesson, Hutchison also failed to learn from a Nixonian one: it’s the coverup, stupid.

I don’t doubt that McCarren may sleep there, but it’s “the residence of my campaign manager” does not answer the question as to why she didn’t report the use of the house as either a donation or an expense. She could have just said “Oops, my bad,” and promised to work with the PDC to clear up any discrepancies; a final determination on the complaint, and any accompanying fines wouldn’t come until months after the election, so little harm done.

But for a candidate who has made transparency a central theme of her campaign, her transparent lie yesterday didn’t do much to shore up her own credibility.

With Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay already promising to vote against approving Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy the St. Louis Rams, it is time for other NFL owners to step forward and vow the same… and time for local fans to lobby their team owners to break their silence.

A controversial and divisive figure, well known for his racial slurs, Limbaugh is a poor fit and even worse role model for a league that has worked hard to make off-field racial harmony as much an emblem of the sport as its brutal on-field competition. It would be an insult to the players to approve Limbaugh as an owner, and an insult to fans, better than fifty percent of whom Limbaugh routinely characterizes as cowards, imbeciles, traitors or worse.

Seahawks owner Paul Allen is not known for his civic leadership, but with other owners so far reluctant to follow Irsay’s example, this is a golden opportunity for him to step forward and show that he cares as much about the integrity of the league as does about its ability to turn a profit. And so I urge Seahawks fans to urge Allen to publicly oppose Limbaugh’s ownership bid, and I urge my friends in the media ask him to make a statement as to where he stands.

As much as I appreciate Danny Westneat’s column today on how I-1033 is “a windfall for the rich,” there is one point on which I feel the need to elaborate.

(Eyman’s initiative doesn’t apply to school, fire, park and library districts, which could continue to levy property taxes as always.)

Well, not exactly true. While I-1033 does exclude junior districts from its limitations, it is misleading on two counts to say that it doesn’t apply to school districts, and would allow them to levy property taxes as always.

First of all, I-1033 only reduces taxes from regular levies, that is, that portion of your property tax bill for which local and state governments do not require the approval of voters. The state constitution limits regular levies to a total of no more than 1% of your property value, and this maximum levy authority is divvied up by statute between the various senior and junior districts. (Due to I-747’s arbitrary one-percent cap on regular levy revenue growth, few if any districts are anywhere near their statutory cap at the moment.)

Local school districts however, have no regular levy, and must therefore go to voters every few years for all the property tax they raise. Thus far from benefiting from a rare fit of responsibility on the part of Eyman, school levies are only excluded from I-1033 by their very nature.

But that said, I-1033 does not in fact allow school districts to continue to levy property taxes as always, as Westneat implies, and to understand why, you need only read his column a little further:

In August, the state Office of Financial Management estimated that in 2015, Eyman’s initiative would force the state to refund $1.8 billion in property taxes. What the fiscal note didn’t say — and which got no mention that I could find anywhere — is that the state only collects $1.8 billion in property taxes.

It all goes to public schools. In Olympia they call it the “state school levy.” What this means is that state economic forecasters have predicted Eyman’s initiative would eliminate most if not all of the state school levy in five, maybe six years. That would be 25 percent of state school funding — gone.

And since state funding accounts for about 75-percent of K-12 education spending, any substantial cut in state revenues results in a substantial cut in education spending at the local level… and a steeper cut than one might immediately imagine.

As I’ve repeatedly explained, the amount of money school districts are allowed to raise via local levies is capped by statute at 24% of the total they receive in combined state and federal funding (as high as 33% in a handful of districts). That means that if state funding drops 25%, so too will the amount of money local districts are allowed to raise.

For districts that don’t currently levy anywhere near their statutory lid, a cut in state funding would not affect their ability to raise local revenues at current levels. But for the many districts whose levies are currently at or near their lid, a substantial cut in state funding would necessarily reduce local property tax levies as well, producing a double funding whammy for these schools. That is the nature of local school levies in Washington state, and so it is misleading to say that I-1033 would have no impact on funding at the local level.

Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty technical distinction, but an important one nonetheless, and one which unfortunately our media has totally glossed over in reporting on the impact of I-1033.

As I explained the other day, one of the impacts of I-1033 would be to reduce regular property tax levies in many taxing districts to, well,  zero, and as Danny Westneat astutely points out in today’s Seattle Times, this would only make our already regressive tax structure even more regressive, amounting to little more than a giant tax break for the rich.

• Eventually give the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, up to a $571,000 break on the $1 million in annual property taxes he pays on his Medina mansion.

• Slash the taxes on billionaire Paul Allen’s waterfront home, on Mercer Island, by up to $150,000.

• Over time eliminate $1.7 million of the annual property taxes that Bellevue mogul Kemper Freeman pays on just one of his malls, Bellevue Square.

Not that this should surprise anyone, as the net effect of all of Tim Eyman’s tax-cutting initiatives has always been to favor the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. Take Timmy’s hallmark I-695, which essentially eliminated car tabs, which, imperfect as they were, at the time constituted our only truly progressive tax on the books. Households with expensive, fancy cars (like Eyman’s) saved thousands of dollars, while those driving junkers actually saw their car tabs go up. Meanwhile, ferry riders saw fares rise and service decline, while rural cities and counties saw the sales tax equalization payments they once relied upon virtually disappear, resulting in loss of essential services, and in some cases, insolvency and unincorporation.

Likewise, Eyman’s I-747 has had an equally devastating impact, particularly on rural and poorer communities, and especially those without the rash of new construction that somewhat buoyed tax rolls here in King County until the recent housing market collapse. Limit your local fire district’s revenue growth to one-percent a year, and you could end up saving tens of dollars annually on your property tax bill, but see your Public Protection District rating drop a couple notches in the process, and your homeowner’s insurance might double or even triple. That’s the sort of hidden tax on working families that Eyman’s rhetoric hides.

According to Eyman’s favorite source, the Tax Foundation, Washington state and local taxes have steadily fallen over the past fifteen years, from 10.4% of personal income in 1994 to 8.9% in 2008, and yet given what support there is for I-1033, many Washingtonians obviously don’t feel the cuts. Why? Because for the most part, they haven’t received them. Not because legislators and other elected officials have ignored the mandate’s of Eyman’s initiatives (to the contrary, they’ve slavishly obeyed the measures, even when they were thrown out by the courts), but because under Eyman’s pro-wealthy tax policies, Washington’s tax structure has grown even more regressive.

Is this an accident or an oversight or an unintended consequence? Hardly. Eyman could have targeted our highly regressive sales tax, or even unit-based “sin taxes” like alcohol and tobacco, the most regressive sort of tax of all. But instead he’s focused entirely on those tax cuts that would benefit the wealthy the most, all the while spewing his familiar faux-populist rhetoric about defending the average taxpayer.

It is ironic that if I-1033 is to pass, it can only do so with the overwhelming support of those it will harm the most. But then, that’s been the way of all of Eyman’s initiatives.

Minutes ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 10,000 mark for the first in over a year… yet more evidence, I suppose, of President Obama’s failed economic stimulus policies.

Frank Schaeffer isn’t exactly your typical bleeding heart liberal. He is the son of Dr. Francis Schaeffer, one of the founders of the religious right movement, and he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a prominent speaker and writer on the evangelical political circuit. So when he warns of increasingly violent Christian right rhetoric escalating into actual violence, he well knows the sort of people he’s talking about.

“Since President Obama took office I’ve felt like the lonely — maybe crazy — proverbial canary in the coal mine,” Schaeffer said. “As a former right wing leader, who many years ago came to my senses and began to try to undo the harm the movement of religious extremism I helped build has done, I’ve been telling the media that we’re facing a dangerous time in our history. A fringe element of the far right Republican Party seems it believes it has a license to incite threatening behavior in the name of God.”

[…] “Sadly that line from the ‘Godfather’ sticks in my brain about the fact that anyone can be killed,” Schaeffer told Raw Story. “The scary thing is that there are a number of pastors on record as saying they are praying for the President’s death. Can you imagine what some gun-toting paranoid who hears that in a sermon is thinking and might do? And to them the fact that ‘the world’ likes this black man is reason enough to hate him. You wait. The reaction to Obama winning the Nobel Prize will be entirely negative from the far Religious Right. ‘See the world, all those socialists like him that just proves he’s a — fill in the blank — communist, secret Muslim, the Antichrist, whatever.'”

No doubt with so many on the right inciting violence, there will be violence, whether it’s an assassination attempt or another Oklahoma City, or just some of your run of the mill hate crimes. The willingness to raise arms against perceived domestic enemies is, after all, what some on Left Behind inspired far Christian right imagine when they talk about God and country.

A report was released last week showing that New York City’s menu labeling law hasn’t been working to get people to reduce their calorie intake. The study involved a number of fast food restaurants in low-income areas of the city. Receipts from before and after the calorie figures were posted were compared to receipts from a comparable low-income area in Newark, NJ, where there was no labeling at all. In the end, the researchers found that despite the fact that people reported seeing the calorie info and saying it influenced their decision-making, the average amount of calories ordered actually went up.

Those who oppose menu labeling laws are claiming victory, and while I’ve tended to agree with them that menu labeling isn’t going to influence most people’s eating habits, I think there’s a bigger picture here. And I think the issue is more than just about getting people to make better choices, it’s also about gravitating towards an end where people’s overall set of choices gradually improve by having the calorie information out in the open.

As for the study itself, I think it was way too narrow to draw any large conclusions. Lower-income people are those least likely to be concerned with calorie intake over price. In fact, the uptick in the amount of calories consumed might be happening because people get higher calorie items in the belief that they’re getting more for their money. It’s very possible that studies of higher-income consumers in different types of restaurants would show declines in caloric intake. On the other hand, the result of this survey requires some reconsideration of the meaning of previous surveys cited by labeling supporters that showed that people notice the calorie information and that it influences their decision-making. The New York study found the same thing – 90% of the people said so – yet it wasn’t leading to lower calorie choices in the end.

Where I tend to agree with supporters of menu labeling is that having the calorie information out in the open often spurs the restaurants themselves to provide healthier choices. As Corby Kummer notes here, Starbucks has already modified some of their higher-calorie items in response to the laws and even some fast food chains have been altering their menus. In the end, I see this as a worthwhile benefit to the labeling laws. While the vast majority of people aren’t going to change their eating habits, if restaurants are motivated to reduce the calorie counts of their offerings in various ways, there will certainly be a positive downstream effect of that.

That said, my concerns about menu labeling haven’t changed much either. Will these requirements be imposed on all food outlets, potentially making it difficult for smaller restaurants to comply – especially ones who rotate their menus a lot (in King County, the requirements only apply to large chains)? Will the calorie measurements themselves be accurate enough to be trusted? Are they simply inaccurate for places like Subway, where you custom make your own sandwich? None of those are serious enough concerns for me, but my main concern is what happens to restaurants with higher calorie items (because there’s legitimate demand for it) who then become targets for overzealous public health officials. When the supporters of menu labeling move from simply trying to inform people’s choices to trying to limit them is when I hop the fence and start yelling with the libertarians.

But unless that point is reached (and maybe I’m somewhat naive for not thinking it’s guaranteed to happen), I’m ok with having restaurants forced to post the calorie totals on menus. It doesn’t influence my decision-making now, but I realize that it might in the future. I think what rubs me the wrong way about the opposition to these laws is how overt the astroturf nature of it is. For instance, here’s a release on last week’s study from the Center for Consumer Freedom. They proudly refer to themselves as the most vocal opponent of New York’s menu labeling law. But why? Posting calorie counts doesn’t threaten consumer freedom in any way. In fact, provided that the counts are relatively accurate, it arguably expands consumer freedom, by giving people better information to make choices. But in the PR world, buzzwords like “consumer freedom” have often been used to make people feel like they’re fighting for their own liberty when in reality they’re fighting to keep corporations from having to do extra work.

From this point, I think there are two directions this can go. Either the public health advocates are right and restaurants will slowly improve the healthiness of their offerings, or the libertarians and the restaurant lobby are right and this is only the beginning of a more aggressive effort to make our choices for us.

Wells Fargo is jacking up its credit card rates.

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD), which was passed by Congress earlier this year, will limit how credit card companies can raise interest rates on consumers when the second part of the legislation takes effect next year. But before that can happen at least one bank has chosen to increase consumers’ rates in a step many feel is in response to the new law.

Last week Wells Fargo announced that it would be raising the rates on many of its customers by 3 percent, but the company says the rate change is not a reaction to the legislation.

“This is something we’ve been contemplating for quite a period of time,” Kevin Rhein, head of card services for the bank told Bloomberg, following the announcement.

This at a time when interest rates are at or near near zero.

Rates on three- and six-month bills have been below 1 percent for months, reflecting a campaign by the Federal Reserve to push down short-term borrowing costs in an effort to help the economy emerge from the longest recession since the 1930s.

Fed officials at their meeting last month left the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, at an all-time low of zero to 0.25 percent. The funds rate has been at that level since December.

Obviously, the best consumer advice anyone can heed is to just not use credit cards, or when you do, pay them off. Easier said than done for a lot of folks during bad economic times.

If you want to understand the populist outrage that exists in this country, the financial sector is a good place to start looking. Whether Wells Fargo is acting ahead of new laws or not, it’s acting directly ahead of the Christmas shopping season. That can’t be good for retailers.

It’s not the responsibility of ordinary consumers who play by the rules to help gigantic banks gain profits to offset the financial calamity caused by the housing bubble or the absorption of failed institutions. I’ve never cut up a credit card and mailed it back to a bank, it’s easier to just not use it. Sure, consumers are sometimes pretty much forced to have a credit card when renting a car or hotel room, but other than that, cash will do.

I still don’t understand why there seems to be little questioning of the right of big banks to pay incredibly crappy interest rates to regular depositors, yet charge consumers multiples of 10 or twenty times that interest rate. Then they tack on fees that more than negate any interest rates they pay to regular folks. But I guess you need an MBA to understand why this is good for business, because it seems to be good for only one set of businesses, and that would be the big banks.

Sure, banks should make some money on the interest rate differential, but wouldn’t logic dictate it be more like five percent or something? Would ten percent be enough? I mean, it’s all gravy, they get the gravy for being big and being a bank and getting to borrow money for free.

Where’s the gravy for the little people? I would please like to borrow eleventy trillion dollars at zero percent, and then I will be a big bank and I will charge people five percent interest, and I will be rich beyond my wildest dreams. I’ll even throw in free toaster ovens, maybe some calendars. The Fed knows where to find me, I’m sure.

Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju5GhNCz_yY[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 340 other chapters of Drinking Liberally for you to shoot for.