HorsesAss.Org

Eric Earling of (un)Sound Politics has given up blogging for a paying gig on the other side of the media relations divide.  Eric was a relative voice of reason on (u)SP (even when, as usual, he was dead wrong), and I genuinely wish him the best of luck.

But I’m not nearly as sanguine toward the blog he leaves behind.

After our friend Stefan burnt out or lost interest or went into rehab or whatever has distracted him from blogging, Eric quickly became (u)SP’s most prolific writer, and his departure will surely leave a big hole.  How big?  (u)SP recently went nearly two days without an update (three if don’t count Pudge’s contributions as actual posts), and one of the first rules of blogging is that you don’t keep your audience if you don’t keep up the frequency.

I know how much I’ve come to rely on my HA co-bloggers to keep the content fresh; it will be interesting to see how Stefan copes with losing his top contributor.

It’s not often I have the opportunity to disagree with The Stranger’s David Schmader and the ultra-conservative American Family Association at the same time, but Family Guy is by far the funniest show currently on broadcast television, and I have absolutely no qualms about watching it with my 12-year-old daughter.  (Children benefit from a robust comedy education.)

Sure, Family Guy is offensive and often way over the top, but it is the near total freedom of the creators to both offend and disappoint that makes possible some of the show’s funniest moments.

[flash]http://www.hulu.com/embed/aSjjHG1uriBTSojiT2dZUQ[/flash]

Gross?  Yeah.  Relentless?  Well, that’s kinda the point.  But man did my daughter and I bust a gut watching this scene.

Nothing says “silly” like dismissing the concerns of regular folks.

SIX Democratic legislators have introduced a bill to stop Boeing from threatening to move out of Washington. That’s right: threatening to move. Such is a silly end to a silly story.

Um, I think those six were trying to make a larger point. But I wager the editorial writers know that.

These editorial keepers of the gate, freshly content with their re-installation of Dave Reichert, probably don’t like how this labor bill issue actually became a big story in the first place. As they admit in their editorial, the newspaper can’t possibly abide a law that keeps corporations from forcing workers to attend anti-union pep rallies against their will. So to them, anyone who cares about the issue is silly.

Have you ever noticed that anyone or anything who isn’t approved by The Seattle Times winds up being portrayed as not serious? And the legacy media wonders why people have it in for them. After nearly four decades of class warfare waged against the earning power of regular citizens, a key worker’s rights issue is demoted to a mocking editorial.

Nothing the Seattle Times editorial board (or most editorial boards, frankly) does comes as much of a surprise, especially when it comes to labor issues. Basically these editorial writers are a sort of mini-derivatives trader of the written word, whose currency is not phony-baloney financial products but the equally phony and intellectually dishonest job of defending concentrated and corrupt economic power while trying to appear compassionate, thoughtful and pro-democracy. It’s getting hard and harder to do without reality smacking them in the face, though.

These derivative-editorialists also must make sure only the “right” kind of people and ideas are allowed into the sandbox of democracy, because after all it’s their sandbox. Only certain types of candidates are truly allowed, and while the will of the people must be respected, it need only be respected to a point, or more accurately, along a certain spectrum of conventional thought. Should anyone question excessive militarism or promote clean energy and worker rights too loudly, they risk being sent packing without their pail and shovel.

In the sandbox, it’s okay for corporate lobbyists to put out the word to kill legislation that was likely going to pass, because the media, economic and political elites of this state deem it acceptable practice. Nothing silly about that, for certain. It’s probably the most not-silly thing I can recall while living in this state for the last 19 years, at least in terms of revealing in very stark terms who pulls what levers.

Sadly for these editorial traders in derivative thought, their market is collapsing as badly as the real derivatives market did, and predictably enough newspaper owners have asked for their own bailout in the form of a tax break.

What would be truly silly is wasting taxpayer dollars on a special tax break for newspapers that relentlessly attack and mock the democratic process itself. Given the budget situation, you’d be better off buying some extra paste and construction paper for the wee kiddies; at least first graders have some dignity and original ideas.

This is America, land of laissez-faire promise you know! If The Seattle Times and the rest truly believe in the business uber alles world view they constantly espouse, they don’t need government help. Neo-liberal philosophy itself says so. The grand results of this philosophy touch Washington state households every day in the form of decimated 401(k) statements, job losses, foreclosure notices and ruinous medical bills.

Or is it “silly” to point all that out?

Yesterday morning, Bruce Olson was acquitted of all charges against him. I’ve been following his case (and his wife’s case) for almost a year, and seeing a jury rule in his favor was extremely satisfying. I’ve never met Bruce personally, but I know several people who have, and each of them were certain of his innocence. Yesterday’s verdict makes it abundantly clear that there were no hidden surprises about what he was doing. Bruce and Pamela Olson were the couple that everyone knew them to be, law abiding citizens growing plants that both of them (and their doctor) had discovered to have medicinal value.

When the Olsons were raided back in 2007, the WestNET drug task force initially threw poisoned meat into their yard, presumably to ensure that their dogs wouldn’t be a hindrance to their invasion. Their two puppies required roughly $2000 in vet bills. At the time of the invasion, the Olsons had no plants that were harvestable (it was their first attempt at growing), yet they were being threatened by Kitsap County prosecutors with very serious drug distribution charges. In the effort to fight these bogus charges, they wound up having to sell their home and move into an RV.

The Kitsap County Prosecutor’s motivations in this case remain largely a mystery. There hasn’t been any information provided about their one “witness,” a longtime drug user named Steven Kenney, who was flown up from Oklahoma for the trial and whose story was clearly not believed by jurors. Where did he actually come from? Did he stand to gain anything from his testimony? The prosecutor explained his discredited testimony by saying that he was “nervous.” Hell, I’d be nervous too if I were perjuring myself.

Considering how Pamela Olson’s case unfolded, there should be even more concern about the behavior of Russ Hauge and the Kitsap County Prosecutor’s Office. Pamela was threatened with jail time if she didn’t take a plea bargain. She feared having to go to prison, so she took the deal, even though the verdict this week makes it clear that she was innocent all along (both Bruce and Pamela were tried separately for the same offense stemming from the same raid). Now she has a criminal record and is still unable to use medical marijuana according to the State Department of Corrections’ policy for those on probation. And since this trial has started getting attention, we’ve been learning of even more Kitsap County patients who have ended up in the same boat.

As I’ve written about in the past, this kind of heavy-handed behavior from prosecutors and drug task forces is not that uncommon, although some of the more alarming incidents we’ve seen across the country have generally involved a racial component. A new movie coming out soon called American Violet is based on the story of Regina Kelly, a black woman arrested along with 28 others in Hearne, Texas. Most, if not all, of those arrested were innocent, but many of them took plea deals to get reduced sentences. Kelly didn’t, and was ultimately successful in exposing the corruption.

What’s happening in Kitsap County right now isn’t quite that pernicious, but Hauge is using the same kinds of scare tactics in order to force plea deals that keep the people he’s targeting out of the courtroom – where a jury might discover that they don’t belong there. One of those people, a quadriplegic named Glenn Musgrove, is scheduled to be wheeled into a courtroom in Port Orchard on Friday.

For a while now, activists and patients within the medical marijuana community have been referring to Kitsap County as “Kidnap County.” Now we have a better idea why. The state’s medical marijuana laws are not being honored by the Prosecutor’s office. Patients who try to grow their own plants have been arrested, presumed to be drug dealers, and forced to prove otherwise to a jury – often at great personal expense. This is not how the law is supposed to work, and I hope that Kitsap County residents remember that the next time they vote for their county prosecutor.

Finally, it’s important to look at the actions of the WestNET drug task force. These sorts of drug task forces exist on the premise that rural areas don’t have the resources to adequately enforce drug laws. Unfortunately, these drug task forces tend to be very common places for overzealous policing and outright corruption. Even worse, the Obama Administration has decided to increase funding for these units in the stimulus bill.

Why the WestNET drug task force is being used to bust medical marijuana patients (and finds nothing wrong with poisoning their dogs) rather than trying to go after real criminals is a question that they – and Prosecutor Hauge – need to answer.

While we’re talking about the budget, I’ve got three words of advice for House and Senate Democratic leaders as they ponder their vision of Washington’s future:  Governor Rob McKenna.

I’m as big a fan of Rep. Jay Inslee as any Puget Sound area progressive, and despite some recent harsh words, I’m not unfond of Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, but in my opinion, either Dem would be the definitive underdog against Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna in the 2012 gubernatorial race.  Really.

Sure, I don’t trust him as far as I can spit, but McKenna is by far the most adept politician in Washington state at the moment.  And while yeah, McKenna is totally in the pocket of Boeing, the realtors, AWB and those corrupt bastards at the BIAW… who in Olympia isn’t these days?

McKenna has meticulously crafted a moderate image despite his conservative credentials and his slavish devotion to the business interests who finance his campaigns, but unlike Dino Rossi, he’s managed to do it without coming off like a used car salesman.  Listen to him on KUOW, or even on my old show on 710-KIRO, and he comes off eminently reasonable and rational… even likeable, in his own gawky, geeky sorta way.

But most importantly, he has made a career out of pandering to a political press corps that lovingly felates him in return.  McKenna’s communications people are good.  How good?  When I lost my radio show, his was the only state office from which I received a personal note of condolence and best wishes.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and all that.

So again, as Democrats in Olympia ponder what to do with their huge majorities during these extraordinary times, I hope they fully understand that their window for effectively using these majorities may soon be coming to a close.  In another few years Republican Gov. Rob McKenna may be setting the agenda and wielding the veto pen.  And if I were betting man, I’d bet he will.

The podcast opens with Joel Connelly discussing his new job at the region’s newest media venture called Seattlepi.com.

Seattle has an upcoming mayoral race, and the big news is that Mayor Greg Nickels will actually have some opponents. Michael McGinn announced his candidacy earlier in the day, and then there’s The Stranger’s Dan Savage with his own announcement, and, maybe, Former City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck will do so. Nickels’ insta-spokesperson, Sandeep Kaushik, helps the panel sort through the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

In what may be the wonkiest half-hour in all of podcasting history, the panel kicks around the problems with and solutions to the $9 billion revenue shortfall in the State budget. Will Goldy save Washington State? Listen and find out.

Goldy was joined by Aisling Kerins of fuse, PubliCola contributor and political spokes-mercenary Sandeep Kaushik, The Other Side’s John Wyble, and Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly.

The show is 54:56, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_24_2009.mp3]

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

Despite the fact that the state now faces an unprecedented $9 billion revenue shortfall—nearly 25-percent of what’s needed to maintain services at current levels—the Republicans and their editorial board surrogates are still demanding that Gov. Gregoire stick by her campaign rhetoric and reject any proposed tax or fee increase.  So… what exactly would an all-cuts budget look like?  Well, we’re about to find out.

This biennium it’s the Senate’s turn to lead off budget negotiations, and word in the Capitol hallways is that an all-cuts draft is being prepared for release early next week.  I don’t have the details—they’re still being nailed down—but it isn’t hard to speculate.  A hundred thousand people cut from the state’s Basic Health plan?  20-percent from higher education?  Elimination of funding for community health clinics and many out-patient programs for the elderly and the disabled?  Temporary closure of many state parks? A dramatic reduction in ferry service?  Early release for non-violent prisoners?

Whatever it is, it’s going to be devastating, and it will be interesting to see the all-cuts proponents’ response.  No doubt some will cynically charge that Senate Democratic Leaders are merely trying to scare voters, but it’s hard to see how a 25-percent revenue shortfall can result in anything but devastating cuts in basic services and elimination of whole swaths of our health and social safety net… especially with about half of the budget completely off the table.

About 45-percent of the state budget is dedicated to K-12 education, with a constitutionally mandated obligation to fund basic education protecting the bulk of its funding.  Sure, the class size and teachers pay initiatives will be suspended, and a few other “extras” slashed or eliminated, but the state has little if any room to achieve substantial cost-savings within the biggest chunk of its budget.  Add to that fixed costs in our prisons, courts, police and other law enforcement and public safety services, and we’re left with only about a third of our state budget that can possibly be considered discretionary.

Thus even if the self-proclaimed fiscal hawks are right that the $9 billion figure is exaggerated, the shortfall softened by a few billion dollars in federal stimulus aid and a billion dollars from our rainy day fund, we’re still talking about 40-percent cuts from the portion of the budget that can absorb any substantial cuts at all.  And don’t kid yourselves that those cuts will be temporary.  The federal aid and rainy day funds are one-off windfalls, and even when the economy starts to recover, it won’t likely recover fast enough or strong enough to make up the difference by the next biennium.

Yes, this budgetary crisis was largely precipitated by a sudden collapse in home sales and consumer spending, but these revenues will never return to former levels.  The real estate bubble, like the dot.com bubble before it, is gone for the forseeable future, and with it the revenue growth that has long masked our state’s long term structural revenue deficit.  The highly regressive retail sales and excise taxes on which we rely for the bulk of our revenues are levied on an ever shrinking portion of our post-industrial, service and information based economy:  the sale of material goods.  Thus unless we raise taxes, or dramatically restructure our tax system to meet the reality of the twenty-first century, state and local government will continue to shrink as a portion of our total economy, and with it,  the services taxpayers have come to expect and demand.

When the Senate budget is released next week we will have an opportunity to examine one vision of Washington’s future… a vision much closer to that of Alabama or Mississippi than the one we hold now.  It is a vision that will surely make many Republicans happy.

And it would be a shame if Democrats allowed the minority to achieve their vision by default.

Maybe if you’re a reporter for ABC Radio sitting at a White House press conference you should be prepared to ask a real question.

Ann Compton of ABC News Radio, who admitted to being surprised that Obama called on her (perhaps because he had already called on Jake Tapper, also of ABC), asked the president a question about race. She wondered whether the subject of race was raised often in the White House as he handled his daily duties and whether it affected how he was judged. Obama responded: “I think that the last 64 days has been dominated by me trying to figure out how we’re going to fix the economy, and that affects black, brown and white.”

He said he contemplated the “seering” history of racial division in the U.S. after his election and that “lasted about a day” before he got to the business of trying to save the economy, and added that he was confident that “right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged” — based on how well he was doing his job, not on his race.

WTF? She was “surprised” at being called upon? This is her freaking job. Everyone should be so lucky. She covers the White House.

I can’t help it, I’m seeing an SNL skit from this. Something like a fake Obama saying—

Why, yes, Ann, while I love my wife and girls dearly, every single day those of us who are African-American contemplate what it would have taken to marry a nice white girl like you.

My only request is that they work Tina Fey and Amy Poehler into the skit.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some folks will show up earlier for dinner.

Tonight we’ll raise a toast to Gary Locke, the new Commerce Secretary.

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 328 chapters of Drinking Liberally spread across the earth.

This sounds like a threat. What am I saying? It is a threat, and a pretty bald-faced one at that:

FedEx could cancel contracts for $10 billion in American-made planes if Congress makes it easier for unions to organize the delivery giant’s workers.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, the Memphis-based company disclosed that purchases of Boeing 777s are contingent on FedEx Express’ continued coverage by the National Railway Labor Act.

The disclosure serves as a warning shot to lawmakers seeking to put FedEx Express workers under the National Labor Relations Act, a move seen as helping the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

And if WATB FedEx doesn’t get its way, along with Boeing and General Electric, they will buy planes from unionized European competitor Airbus! That makes sense, or at least it does to corporate America. This isn’t “deft” as one pinhead analyst puts it in the article, it’s extortion.

Meanwhile, FedEx competitor UPS has been unionized forever and seems to do quite well. Go figure.

Message to Congress–while you were grandstanding, nothing changed. One legal term I can’t recall hearing much, if at all, during the last six months is “anti-trust.” Maybe someone should dust those big old books full of laws ‘n stuff off and give them a read.

(Props to TPM.)

I’m on the air again today, filling in for Ken Schram on KOMO 1000’s The Commentators, 10AM to 2PM.  Tune in to hear me and John Carlson go at it on a number of hot button issues:

1oAM – Why won’t anybody challenge Greg Nickels for mayor?  You know… anybody of course, except Dan Savage, who joins us at the top of the hour to promote his alleged run for the office.

11AM – Is Justice Antonin Scalia a “homophobe”?  And even if so, should Rep. Barney Frank have said it?  What are the limits of religious tolerance?

12PM – Should convicted felons be allowed to vote?  WA state has some of the most restrictive felon voter laws in the nation.  A bill before the legislature might change that.

1PM – Should WA state ban online poker… and if so, is it even technically possible to enforce the law?

Oy.

It sounds like a proposed union organizing bill was in trouble even before a controversial e-mail killed its chances at the Legislature.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday that she would have vetoed the so-called “Worker Privacy Act” anyway, because of its effect on Boeing.

So why did she, House Majority Leader Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown refer the email to the state patrol if she was going to veto it? Good lord.

Gregoire had an entirely different take on things when she spoke to the state labor convention in the midst of her re-election campaign:

Gov. Chris Gregoire, speaking at the WSLC 2008 political endorsement convention in May at the Machinists 751 Hall, says: ““Like you, I believe that employees ought to be able to know they can go to work every single day, they’re not going to be intimidated, they’re not going to be coerced, they’re not going to be shoved around about whether their political rights are intruded, whether their religious rights are intruded, or their right to organize is curtailed. We’re going to make that happen in Washington State. We’re going to lead the nation in that regard.”

Yeah, okay, I get it. Politicians have to be er, flexible. But come on. Regular people call that “lying.” Sure, the economy tanked big time last fall, so if Gregoire thinks a change in circumstances justifies killing the bill, she should just say so.

To make things even more fun, the governor had the following comment at a press conference this morning. From a partial transcription by Kathy Cummings, communications director for the Washington State Labor Council:

One thing is clear, this is not Chicago this is Washington state. I don’t impugn the integrity of the authors of it at all. I simply say that it was an unfortunate email, I don’t regret my actions, Washington state is transparent and clean.

Sigh.

We seem to have a generation of Democratic politicians who have so internalized right wing frames that sometimes they can’t help themselves. I mean, I guess we all do it at times, and maybe the governor was trying to quash the entirely predictable “unions are all criminal” crap the right inevitably resorts to.

Like all human-created institutions, unions had and likely still have their share of problems, but they not only have a legal and moral right to exist, they are also a key part of our coalition, and why any Democrat would bring up “Chicago” like that is beyond me. That is definitely doing the GOP’s work for them.

People didn’t vote for more Third Way neo-liberal triangulation anyhow, they voted to change the goddamn crooked system that favors big business, the wealthy and powerful, over ordinary citizens. The abuse of concentrated economic power is the very reason why we are in a Great Recession right now.

And by clumsily calling off a vote on the Worker Privacy Act, the leaders of the Democratic Party in this state exposed themselves to quite justifiable accusations that they are kow-towing to a large corporation in a way that would make some Republicans blush. It would have been better if they had just killed the bill without the state patrol drama; at least we would know for sure where they stand.

This sorry episode is potentially quite damaging to the Democratic Party in Washington state. Right after the election you heard a lot of concern trolling from traditional media types and Republicans about how “overreaching” cost the Democrats big time in 1994. But what I distinctly remember from that terrible year was a lot of outrage from staunch Democrats, especially labor folks, about NAFTA and other trade deals killing jobs here.

As we’ve seen, the destruction over the last 14 years has been massive. That’s not an argument for protectionism, it’s an argument for making sure trade deals have certain base-line standards on the environment and labor, a demand that was virtually ignored by far too many Democrats for far too many years.

As one long-time organizer I knew put it at the time, the rank and file was just going to sit on their hands. And that’s exactly what they did, as David Sirota pointed out in a column at HuffPo in 2007.

Another troubling aspect is that a vote on the labor bill this year was stopped because it was probably going to pass. I’ll say that again. It was killed because politicians knew they should vote for it, because it’s the right thing to do for workers.

Think about that sad fact for a moment. Your votes, your volunteer time and your small donations don’t mean jack if a corporate lobbyists makes the call, because the bill won’t even see the light of day. Hell of a way to run a democracy.

Court documents filed today, including a declaration from a University of Washington accounting professor, suggest the Building Industry Association may have illegally skimmed millions of dollars from retro-rebate beneficiary accounts over the past several years, and ask for a court order requiring BIAW to retain an independent third party to prepare a “comprehensive trust accounting.”

Professor Stephen Sefcik is a distinguished professor of accounting in the UW School of Business, and currently serves as the Associate Dean of Undergradate Programs at the Michael G. Foster School of Business.  He was retained by plaintiffs to review financial documents provided by the BIAW and its associated organizations, and to identify and estimate economic losses sustained due to mismanagement and other practices.

At this stage of my work, I have completed a sufficient financial analysis to support my general conclusions that a thorough independent accounting is necessary and that substantial interest has been skimmed from the Trust.  However, due to the opacity of the Trust’s bookkeeping, a sigificant additional work would be necessary to precisely quantify values.

How much money are talking about?  Between $600,000 and $1.3 million in skimmed interest over the past four to five years, plus an additional $3.6 million in principal and interest since 2003 due to an improperly calculated and paid “marketing assistance fee.”  That’s a lot of money.  And how did the BIAW accomplish this?

I have found that the Trust has allowed trust assets to be repeatedly placed in the interest-bearing accounts fo its for-profit affiliate, BIAW Member Services Corporation (“MSC).  While in such accounts, trust funds were repeatedly commingled with assets of MSC.

Huh.  How very Tim Eyman of them.

BIAW has long argued that its diversion of funds for political purposes is legal, an assertion contested by plaintiffs in this ongoing lawsuit, but skimmed (ie, stolen) funds are illegal no matter how you spend them.  If a third party accounting confirms Prof. Sefcik’s findings, the BIAW may have a lot more to worry about than a mere civil suit.

Which brings us to SB 6035, a bill which would require increased oversight and transparency for the retro-rebate, and which only narrowly passed the Senate on a 25-24 vote.  The bill is scheduled for a hearing in the House Committee on Commerce & Labor tomorrow morning, but despite known BIAW shenanigans, and recent revelations that retro has been overpaying participants by as much as $15 million a year since 1994 (due to a programming error), many Olympia observers don’t expect the House Democratic leadership to let it even come to the floor for a vote.

Why?  Well, I guess you’d have to ask the House Democratic leadership.