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Light blogging for me today as I fill in for Ken Schram on The Commentators, 10AM to 2PM, KOMO 1000. Tune in as John Carlson and I butt heads on… well… I don’t yet know what topics we’ll be taking up, but no doubt there will be some head butting.

Goldy declares it “Line Item Veto Day” in Washington, and the panel rips into the state’s electeds for treating progressives like a cheap date. Yeah, there were some progressive victories—the ones that didn’t cost anything!

A domestic partnership bill was signed into law this week, giving registered same-sex and senior partnerships legal near-equality to marriage. The panel, including Equal Rights Washington’s Josh Friedes, discusses the law, the referendum it spawned, and the future prospects for same-sex marriage in Washington state and elsewhere.

Journalist and Blogger Dave Neiwert discusses his most recent book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right (2009, Polipoint Press). The panel ponders today’s crop of racists, haters and right-wing extremists.

Goldy was joined by SeattlePI.com columnist Joel Connelly, author and managing editor of Crooks and Liars Dave Neiwert, advocacy director of Equal Rights Washington Josh Friedes, and Seattle Drinking Liberally host and donkeylicious contributor Nicholas Beaudrot.

The show is 59:09, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_may_19_2009.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

In honor of the 545 bus (the last bus of the night back to Redmond!!!) that never showed up on Saturday night, Seattle will no longer be the “Emerald City.”

It will now be called “The City That Sleeps.” Because a transit system that stops working at midnight on a Saturday is totally Squaresville, baby.

Ho hum. Another election cycle, another gaping money pit in WA-08 for the NRCC:

The National Republican Congressional Committee is launching a revamped incumbent retention program designed to help vulnerable House Republicans raise cash for their reelection campaigns — and warning members that the committee will not bail out those who are insufficiently prepared for competitive races.

The NRCC plans to unveil the first 10 incumbents who qualify for their Patriot Program at a Tuesday briefing to political action committees. … Among those on the list are Reps. Dan Lungren, Ken Calvert and Brian Bilbray of California, Judy Biggert of Illinois, Anh “Joseph” Cao of Louisiana, Thad McCotter of Michigan, Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, Leonard Lance of New Jersey, Christopher Lee of New York and Dave Reichert of Washington.

No doubt I’ve been disappointed and indeed depressed by Darcy Burner’s failure to close the deal these past two elections against the profoundly mediocre Rep. Reichert, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t make a huge contribution toward the Democrats achieving their House majority. Every dime Darcy forced the NRCC to spend propping up the financially floppy Reichert is a dime they couldn’t spend in another district. That’s how the 50 state strategy works.

In Jennifer Dunn’s hands WA-08 was a cash cow for the Republican Party, exporting dollars into competitive races nationwide, but even after three terms, the ever vulnerable Reichert is still sucking at the party teat. And while that may not sound like much of a victory, it still provides some genuine consolation for those of us who understand the bigger picture.

Republican RNC member Jeff Kent of Washington state is running into some resistance to his proposed resolution “re-branding” the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party” or “Socialist Democrat Party” or whatever the hell it is.

It seems even a maroon like Michael Steele can sense (yet another) public relations disaster in the offing for the GOP.

Party Chairman Michael Steele and others say the party should also drop the renaming resolution and focus on more serious problems. To avoid a party dispute over the renaming, Republicans were trying to compromise on milder language that would simply criticize Democrats for what they call socialist tendencies.

Some party leaders described the initial resolution as “stupid” and “absurd.”

Jeff Kent, a Washington state Republican who helped spearhead the effort, declined to comment on a potential compromise, saying he is still working to pass the resolution.

How bad is your idea when leaders in your own party are openly calling it “stupid?”

Stick to your guns, Jeff. The country needs to be protected from horrible “socialists” like me who advocate free, fair democratic elections, respect for the Constitution and human rights. I wouldn’t want to face a Republican Party that puts forth a logical argument about marginal income tax rates or health care, that would be too…logical. Your way is much funner.

There’s a reason why babies cry… it works:

State Auditor Brian Sonntag won a scarce commodity today – more money for his budget.

Gov. Chris Gregoire and Sonntag reached a deal that’s expected to give Sonntag an additional $14 million for performance audits, giving him around $26 million to spend on the program over the next two years.

Tim Eyman and the editorial boards went ape-shit when Sonntag’s office was asked to absorb the same sort of cuts everybody else was enduring, and so of course the Governor caved. But even worse was the related veto…

The budget contained a provision that would have allowed Sonntag to recoup some of the money if he could prove his audits actually save the state money. Performance audits are aimed at finding efficiencies in state and local governments. Sonntag blasted the Legislature, saying the move would make him a bounty hunter.

“What a dumb idea and a stupid way to manage,” he said recently.

Get that?  The guy who argues that performance audits are so important that he’d rather deny kids health care and education than scale back his office for a couple years, thinks it is “dumb” to audit his own audits.  Let’s hear it for accountability.

Clark County bubble still not coming back.

The 13.4 percent is the highest jobless figure for the county since at least 1980, said Scott Bailey, southwest regional economist for the state Employment Security Department.

Apparently having one’s economy heavily dependent on endless real estate development isn’t a good idea.

But it’s just a blip, things will go back to the way they were any day now.

Me, I’m thinking I need a 5,000 square foot house with granite counter tops, full of furniture paid for with unsecured credit. I mean, a dog or a baby can get a credit card, right?

It’s Tuesday evening, so grab your spouse or legally-equivalent registered domestic non-spouse person and join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier for dinner.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB_V6-oH7z0[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 332 chapters of Drinking Liberally sprinkled liberally across the globe.

Seattle Times heir apparent Ryan Blethen will replace Jim Vesely as editorial page editor, the paper announced today, and while I guess I should feel disappointed to have been passed over for the job without so much as the courtesy of an interview, I’m not at all surprised, and in fact, I’m actually a little bit pleased.

Ryan’s not the most compelling writer you’ll find in a major newspaper, but I agree with Sandeep that he comes off as quite a bit less ideologically reflexive than his father or the board as a whole, and so I’d say there’s a helluva lot more potential upside from his appointment than there would be from say, Kate Riley. And while some might criticize as nepotism a publisher naming his own son to run the ed board, I think there’s something inherently more honest about this arrangement than we had with Vesely serving as a beard for the Blethen family interests. Gone are the days when the board could proclaim its editorial independence with a straight face.  And that’s a good thing.

So congratulations Ryan on your new position. Now get out there and give me something good to blog about.

“He’s definitely destroyed his working relationship with the council,” Seattle City Council member Jan Drago insisted to Publicola’s Josh Feit when asked about her apparently imminent plans to challenge Mayor Greg Nickels.

“One of my motivations,” she said, “is that he [Mayor Nickels] has destroyed every relationship—with citizens and neighborhoods, with regional leaders, with state leaders … I’m the one who was sent down to lobby in Olympia [for the tunnel]. They’re [Team Nickels] toxic down there.”

It’s a theme I’ve heard repeatedly from politicos, politicians and pundits over the past year or so.  Nickels is arrogant and autocratic, a political tyrant who forces his will on the Council, fires popular agency heads, and who seems intent on creating a political vacuum that sucks the air out of all voices outside the gravitational pull of his immediate orbit. Deserved or not, he has earned a reputation, at least in the eyes of many fellow elected officials and their aides, for not working and playing well with others. And whatever Machiavellian instincts the Mayor lacks are more than made up for by the amoral political machinations of Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis and the rest of his ruthless henchmen.

Or so I’m told.

Quite frankly, there are a lot of political insiders who just can’t stand the Mayor’s style, and more than a few who don’t like the man himself.  Okay, I get it.  But the question remains: is process and personality really an effective platform for mounting a challenge to a scandal-free, two-term incumbent?

Perhaps Mayor Nickels’ style truly is as destructive and divisive as his critics allege, I dunno, but the rub for Drago and the other challengers is that the biggest insider issue in the mayoral race isn’t really an issue at all, at least not from a practical, electoral prospective.  The typical voter neither knows nor cares whether Nickels is buddy-buddy with Nick Licata as long as he’s getting the job done; and as for being “toxic” in Olympia, well, after the recent legislative session I’d be tempted to wear that scorn as a badge of honor.

Does he share our values? Where does he stand on the issues? Has he delivered bread and butter services? What is his political agenda, and can we trust him to successfully implement it? Those are the kind of questions voters ask of incumbent executives.

And the answer?

“You can’t win a race against this mayor based on delivery,” Drago said. “It’s hard for me to conceive of running a campaign based on process and personality if you have a good record. I think that’s the dilemma.”

That was the dead-on political analysis of Drago herself, back on March 2. Huh. Before deciding to challenge the mayor, perhaps she should hire herself as a consultant?

The truth is, Seattle city government has long been at least a tad dysfunctional, and never the idyllic setting for a Norman Rockwell painting. Nor should it be. Democracy is by its very nature a messy endeavor in which conflict is a necessary if painful part of the political dialectic. Does Nickels’ aggressive style piss off council members and other stakeholders? No doubt. But if anything, the problem is not that the Mayor is too mean, but rather that the Council is too nice!

How may times have we heard council members whine about the Mayor’s unilateral style… then vote to approve his proposals by 7 to 2 or better margin? Seattle government isn’t a “strong mayor” system by charter, it’s just appeared that way during the Nickels regime, partially due to his forceful style, and partially due to the endemic weakness of the council members themselves. You want a more effective and politically inclusive city government, and a more responsive mayor, Jan? Then why haven’t you stood up to Nickels while you’ve had a chance?

In the absence of forceful leadership on the Council it has been the Mayor who has largely set the agenda over the past seven years, and for the most part, achieved it. Nickels embraced light rail; we got light rail. He turned his back on the monorail; the monorail died. He fought hard for a Viaduct tunnel, while a new, taxpayer-funded Sonics arena, not so much… and we all know how those two battles turned out. On issue after issue, and levy after levy, the Mayor tends to get his own way. Disagree with him if you want—and I often do—but if you deny him credit for his political acumen you have to acknowledge the incredible weakness of the opposition.

In truth, it’s a combination of the two. Mayor Nickels’ style can seem relatively autocratic and abrasive, but only by the passive-aggressive standards of our frustratingly sclerotic “Seattle Way.” Plunk Nickels down in the midst of a real political machine, like that in Chicago or Philadelphia, and I wonder if he’d survive past sundown before being eaten alive by the Morlocks?

Now some might counter, if Nickels is so strong, why are his polling numbers so weak? But that’s a question for another post… and another opportunity to lambast the mayoral challengers for failing to enunciate a winning message.

But for the moment, anybody expecting a 35% approval rating in April to automatically translate into defeat at the polls in November should heed Drago’s circa March 2nd warning. With few notable exceptions, Mayor Nickels does have a track record of delivering services, and of clearly enunciating and enacting a policy agenda. And like him or not, voters will choose competence over process, if that’s their only choice.

We live in a state where the governor called a special session to restore Tim Eyman’s 1% cap on property taxes, a cap that mindlessly and relentlessly hamstrings local government, no matter the local circumstances. You see, it’s all about local control, except when it’s not.

But college students, most of whom presumably have yet to embark on careers that will make it possible to afford stuff, well, here’s how the governor treats them:

The measure removes the current 7 percent cap on annual tuition increases for Washington state resident undergraduates. The state budget, scheduled to be signed by Gregoire on Tuesday, puts the new tuition cap at 14 percent for each of the next two years.

No special session for you, kids.

Tough choices yadda yadda yadda. Not only was nothing meaningful done about the plethora of special interest tax breaks in this state, they added a 40% tax break for newspapers, apparently so many of them can continue to advocate for the Grover Norquist position of dragging government to the bathtub and drowning it. The only allowable “moderate” position in this state is that things must be destroyed rather than even discuss an income tax or even a temporary measure for education.

Chris Gregoire made a no-taxes pledge, you see, and while it was a foolhardy thing to do, the bidness guys ‘n gals and the newspaper boards are going to make sure that not one red cent is raised to help restore education funding that plummeted due to the Bush Recession.

In the Orwellian world of conservative business lobbying, handouts to corporations are incentives and a very proper use of public resources, while public education, health care and other services that benefit the wider society can be given short shrift. And since the business point of view prevails no matter which party has a majority, or a super-majority, the regular citizen also gets short shrift and comes to have a jaded, cynical view about government not operating in their interest. Hard to imagine why initiative-touting charlatans have done so well here.

We haven’t even seen the full impact on K-12 yet. Should be interesting once parents find out in the fall what’s really happening. You haven’t seen angry until you’ve seen a parent who is expecting certain programs and teachers to be in place, basically because education is virtually the only direct service most of us get from the state government in return for our tax money, and now tuition is soaring out of sight and teachers are going to be laid off.

On the other hand, there’s absolutely no political risk in alienating parents of students. Just ask Terry Bergeson.

I just finished playing soccer at Twin Pond Park in Shoreline. No bears, but lots of rain.

I’ll be back arguing with John Carlson again on The Commentators, filling in for Ken Schram, Thursday, 10AM to 2PM on KOMO 1000.  Just thought some of you might want to know.

The editors at the bankrupt Columbian wrote a staff editorial about performance audits. Which, you know, is fine and all but notice the conventional mindset and needless carping. Why, it’s downright shrill.

Back on Nov. 4, most voters did not send the governor back to Olympia just to be a good Democrat. They returned her to office to be a good governor, party notwithstanding. That kind of independence can be suicidal among legislators, whose intense caucus meetings are led by seniority, where favors are traded like a commodity and entire careers are determined by loyalty litmus tests.

Not so with the governor. Gregoire wandered off the extremists’ playground back in December when she proclaimed a no-tax-increases stance, and then produced a budget to back it up. Blatant heresy, in the minds of many Democrats, we’re sure.

If you thought that in the face of the national economic calamity we should at least pass a few taxes for education, you’re an “extremist.” The default “moderate” position, as always, is basically the Grover Norquist position–taxes are always bad, no matter the circumstances and no matter the need or possible benefit to society.

It’s not like there was a wide-spread debate in this state about whether taxes should be on the table. Sure, there were a few brave op-eds and such, but meaningful discussion about the broken nature of the tax system in this state occurred mainly in places other than newspapers. Funny how that was.

That certain newspapers get their taxes cut 40% and bitch and moan about “left wingers” tells you all you need to know. It’s all about tribalism, and the newspaper boards fancy themselves part of the respectable bidness guys and gals tribe, even if they have to compose their screeds in between appearances in bankruptcy court. Please patronize us some more, that’s a great technique for generating customer loyalty.

I can’t find any editorials on the Seattle Times web site with a publication date more current than May 15, so naturally, I have absolutely nothing to blog about. Who knew shutting me down could be that easy?

UPDATE:
Lacking fodder from my favorite smorg-ed-board, I’ve been reduced to dumpster diving in the op-ed pages of some our region’s smaller papers, finding this tasty tidbit in last week’s TNT, which warns South Sounders to “keep a hand on their pocketbooks” in the face of King County’s rapacious appetite for digging tunnels:

Seattle’s transit taxes, plus federal grants, are covering its Beacon and Capitol Hill tunnels. No problem there. The Legislature has committed to pay $2.8 billion for the underground Alaskan Way replacement. That’s OK, too, as long as the Legislature continues to insist that Seattle – which demanded the tunnel – cover any cost overruns.

Yeah, except, just to be clear, Seattle did not demand that tunnel; in fact voters rejected a tunnel option when it was put to the ballot for an advisory vote.  Had the governor and the rest of the Olympia leadership embraced the much less expensive surface/transit option at the time it was fast building consensus on the ground in Seattle, that is the alternative that would have been chosen, and happily so.

And one other quibble:

[T]here must be an understanding going in that Bellevue itself will have to find either the money or economies needed to pay for a tunnel without delaying or jeopardizing rail expansion into Snohomish County and Federal Way.

The impression given, that extravagances in King County have come at the expense of Snohomish and Pierce County residents is simply false.  For better or worse, thanks to “sub-area equity,” what’s been raised in the South Sound has stayed in the South Sound… which of course is why Sound Transit told Bellevue on Friday that if it wants a tunnel, it’s gonna have to come up with the extra money itself.