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Anybody who has ever met the TNT’s Joe Turner knows he’s a cynical, cranky, old curmudgeon of a reporter… you know, in a lovable sorta way.  So what was his take on that controversial WSLC email, once he finally got to read it?

It doesn’t seem that over the top, at least not so bad as the reaction implied.

Huh.  Looks like I’m not the only Olympia observer who thinks the Dems overreacted, and I don’t know anybody who suggests that the WSLC actually faces prosecution.  In fact, I’m so confident that nothing remotely illegal took place, that if charges are filed, I promise to dress up in a dog costume, paint a target on my back, and take a dump on Frank Blethen’s front lawn.

Well, I’ll give RNC chair Michael Steele credit for one thing… there’s certainly no change in his party’s political climate under his leadership:

Michael Steele has taken the GOP’s global-warming denial to a new height: “We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my fingers as quotation marks, is part of the cooling process.”

Yeah, sure it is.   And Steele knows this because of his vast experience as a seminarian, attorney and political hack, whereas the overwhelming percentage of climate scientists who say our planet really is warming, well… what the hell do they know?

A policy debate is one thing, but I mean really… don’t you R’s find it the least bit embarrassing to belong to a party that denies science?

I agree with the Seattle Times editorial board in one respect, silly rules do beget silly results, but the ballot mockery they rail against really is as much their own fault as anybody’s.

[L]awmakers should find a way to close one gap in the law that allows candidates to make a mockery of the ballot. Current rules say a candidate can list political party preference below their name as anything that fits within 16 letters.

In the 2008 election, the net result was candidates who listed themselves as members of parties, such as “Prefers Salmon/Yoga Party” or “Prefers Cut Taxes G.O.P. Party.”

Neither are the names of real parties. Some candidates used the 16-character rule to create a campaign slogan, and in the process, ridiculed the ballot.

[…] The same rule allowed Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi to list “prefers G.O.P. Party,” probably because of the dire state of the Republican brand.

Yup, this sure does make a mockery of the ballot, but I think it worthwhile to point out that this mockery is entirely within the spirit of a top-two primary system that intentionally ridicules the party based system it seeks to replace.  In championing both the top-two primary and the move to “nonpartisan” elections in King County, the Times has repeatedly berated and belittled the rights of political parties and their longstanding role in the American political process—should it come as a surprise that others, without a printing press at their disposal, have chosen to echo this meme on the ballot itself?

(It is a curious irony that when the Chinese Communists trample the rights of political parties we rightly accuse them of being anti-democratic, but when we do the same here it is always in the name of more democracy. Huh.)

Of course I support the rule change the Times urges, but it merely lances a single oozing boil rather than addressing the underlying disease eating away at our body politic:  a profound disrespect for politics itself.  Even after the rule change a Republican could still claim “prefers Democratic Party” on the ballot rather than Dino Rossi’s more subtle deception, for as long as the parties are denied the basic right to officially identify or deny candidates as their own, party identification will remain entirely meaningless.

Parties and partisanship have long played a vital role in American democracy, as a means of institutionalizing dissent, and of encouraging a vigorous public debate.  In the long run, it is the Times and other defenders of civility, through their relentless undermining of a meaningful dialectic, who really make a mockery of our political process.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has announced that tomorrow will be the last day of publication for the print edition.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday, ending a 146-year run.

The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the newspaper, Seattle’s oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

The company, however, said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

And just like that, it’s gone. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of on-line publication will continue. It’s not like having fewer reporters in Olympia has been a good thing.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Last night I went to check “tomorrow’s” headlines in the Seattle P-I, and my usual bookmark produced and error page that resolved to the URL:  “disaster.seattlepi.nwsource.com”.  I guess that was an omen.

There’s outrage.

American International Group, the insurer that has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

And then there’s north Clark County wingnut outrage.

But the 18th Legislative District’s three Republican lawmakers were spending this particular Saturday afternoon deep in the belly of Southwest Washington conservatism — feeling its bile and talking to its ribs.

They were, in other words, at Battle Ground City Hall.

“There are 15 and a half million illegals in this country that are taking American jobs right now!” boomed Chuck Miller of Camas, a flag pin on his Minutemen Border Patrol baseball cap, to applause and murmured amens.

In the audience, small-business owners and retirees passed around John Birch Society literature and chatted about conservative icons like Michael Savage and Maricopa, Ariz., County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Well, I do understand the need for the Birchers to do something about the Soviet Union, it’s a real threat. If we don’t win in Vietnam the dominoes will tumble and there will be commies invading through Central America and Mexico any day.

Wolverines!

Pass the black helicopters, please.

A Seattle Times headline tells us that the “State budget comes down to unpleasant choices.”

Kicking kids off health insurance and out of college, laying off tens of thousands of employees, reducing sentences of state inmates, eliminating social services when they’re desperately needed most… choices like that are merely “unpleasant.”

Oh.  Well, I guess in that case, the Times ed board is right in arguing for a cuts-only budget.  We can certainly handle a little unpleasantness if it means keeping a few more dollars in our wallets.

– Be careful when driving with soap, peppermint, oregano, or any number of other substances that test positive as illegal drugs in widely used field tests.

– Some Oregon lawmakers (2 Republicans and 2 Democrats) are trying to overhaul their medical marijuana law. They want the state to control production and ban private growing. Then, they want to tax medical marijuana patients at $98-per-ounce. That’s twice as much as what was proposed in a California bill for recreational users.

I guess in a time of economic distress like the present, our nation’s cancer and MS patients need to step up and pay their share for once.

– On a similar subject, Josh Farley reports on the Bruce Olson trial in the Kitsap Sun.

– As the marijuana decriminalization bill dies in the House, two University of Washington researchers, Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, explain why they made a mistake:

[Read more…]

Apparently Tim McVeigh was an Iraqi secret agent.

And just when I was working up a good head of steam to quit the Democratic Party. The two party system, what a joy it is sometimes. You get your choice between a conservative, anti-worker, anti-consumer party or Republicans.

No, I’m not turning gay, and God no, I’m not turning Republican, but as Michael has already reported on BlatherWatch, I’ll be filling in for Ken Schram on KOMO 1000’s The Commentators, Monday March 23 and Tuesday March 24th.

It’ll be a bittersweet moment for me, working for the competition.  I got my start at 710-KIRO, when really, I didn’t deserve a shot at all.  With zero radio hosting experience on my resume and a nasally tenor that makes Woody Allen sound like James Earl Jones, then PD Tom Clendening rolled the dice and plugged me in one evening as a last minute fill-in.  A week later, I had my own Sunday night show, and six months after that they added Saturday night to my schedule.

It was great fun, and a tremendous honor, especially those days I got to fill in for the incomparable Dave Ross, and I would have been proud to have continued advancing my radio career at KIRO, but the station was sold, new management came in, and alas, they moved in a different direction.  I was deeply disappointed when my show was canceled, but you can’t really ask for more in life than a chance to prove yourself, and that I had.

I hope Michael’s wrong when he writes that “there’s no going back to Bonneville to fill-in now that Goldy has gone to Fisher”—I figure, I’m not bitter, so why should they be?—but I’ve got to take the opportunities that come my way, and I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to get back on the air than going toe to toe with John Carlson, arguably the preeminent conservative talker in the state.  My first time in a radio studio was on John’s old show back on KVI, and both he and Kirby not only gave me tons of air time, they also provided a lot of off-air support when I decided to pursue a radio gig of my own.

So going up against John again, this time as a co-host, will be kinda like coming home for me.  But don’t you worry about me getting all nostalgic like… I still plan to kick his ass.

Consider this in a report by Brad Shannon of The Politics Blogs at The Olympian:

The names of House Speaker Frank Chopp or members of the House and Senate leadership teams clearly are not among the recipients. Lawmakers who did get secondary copies via the “cc” list include Rep. Mike Sells, Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Sen. Joe McDermott, and Rep. Tami Green.

My source says all are sponsors or supporters of the labor legislation and could not have been “threatened” by the email in any fashion. The source also said the email was the result of a conversation between labor representatives who met Monday to talk about strategy for getting the so-called privacy act passed. The contents of the message were intended for attendees at that meeting, but Johnson appears to have copied others — the mistake that the labor council said it had made in its news release issued this week about the incident.

Just for the record, the primary list of recipients appears to consist of labor people — including representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21, Washington Federation of State Employees, Teamsters Joint Council No. 28, laborers union, and others. The secondary list also has labor people.

Wow, someone hit “send.” Pass the smelling salts. I’ve never sent an intemperate email in my entire life.

So what we’re left with is that the “Big Three,” namely Gov. Chris Gregoire, House Speaker Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown decided to get out of a tough vote on a worker’s rights issue by calling the cops on the labor council. I’m sorry, that’s the only way to read this thing, other than concluding that all three of them need to be committed.

I gotta tell you, the mind boggles. These so called leaders are so much more fucked up than I even imagined. They called the fucking cops on the state labor council.

Tell me again, dear leaders, how progressives should support a tax increase. Because you’re going to have to make a pretty damn compelling argument, and if you drag my kids’ schools into the discussion, I’m going to have no choice but to assume you are bargaining in bad faith.

Because “bad faith” pretty much describes this Democratic state government, despite some movement forward on a few issues.

In justifying the state Democratic leadership’s decision to throw the WSLC under a bus as a convenient excuse for killing the controversial Workers Privacy Act, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown issued a statement saying we have to “draw the line” between the offending email and the “normal process.”

Huh.  Which I suppose begs the question:  what exactly is the normal process?

Back in 2004, House Democrats sent a fundraising letter to business groups that had recently given more money to R’s than to D’s, exhorting them to balance their generosity… 

“As a result of our research, we would like to ask that you consider balancing out your contribution history by writing a donation of $10,000 to the Harry Truman Fund,” concludes the letter obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “We would very much appreciate your generosity and support as we gear up for the 2004 legislative session and impending campaign season.

“Our Leadership team wants to maintain our open door policy with you.”

So, is that the normal process, encouraging the inference that money equals access?  House Speaker Frank Chopp seemed to think so, vigorously defending both the ethics and legality of his fundraising efforts.

“Since when is it a crime to talk about having an open door and bringing people together? … The only limit on me meeting with people is my time,” said House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle. “That’s hardly threatening language. … That’s pretty soft language.

“And that’s pretty common language.”

No doubt.  So if that’s the normal process, when did it become a crime for constituency groups to talk about withholding future financial support from politicians who refuse to support their agenda?  I thought that’s the whole point:  we work for and give money to only those candidates who generally vote our way.  

Of course, Frank knows as well as anybody that this is the way the system works, and for all the effort to make labor look like the unethical bad guys here, it is the business lobby that has recently honed influence peddling into one of Olympia’s most profitable professions.  So profitable in fact, that one of the lobbyists who brokered Boeing’s $4 billion 7E7 tax break, conducts workshops teaching other businesses how to “Turn Your State Government Relations Department from a Money Pit into a Cash Cow.”

The seminar, presented during a portion of the annual three-day meeting of the State Government Affairs Council, taught dozens of corporate government-relations executives how to “Turn Your State Government Relations Department from a Money Pit into a Cash Cow.” Michael Press, national director of Ernst & Young’s Business Incentives Practice, and Robin Stone, former vice president of state and local government relations for The Boeing Company, delivered the Microsoft PowerPoint-supported presentation March 26 in Savannah, Ga.

The presentation includes a long list of “negotiable incentives” along with such such helpful tips as “control publicity,” “avoid legislation if possible,” and “be mindful of the election cycle,” while encouraging businesses to make a “but for” the incentives threat.  (You know, “but for a multi-billion dollar tax break, we’re moving all our jobs out of state.”)

Turning your state government relations department into a cash cow is perfectly legal, and just plain smart business, and from the lack of moralizing on the part of our politicians and opinion leaders, I can only assume that it is perfectly ethical as well.  So what’s so wrong, by comparison, about labor using the resources at its disposal to influence the legislation it wants? Why shouldn’t unions be able to say what we all understand to be true:  “If you don’t support us, we won’t support you?”  

Ethical or not, isn’t that the “normal process?”

So how much of “conscience driven independent” is Rep. Dave Reichert?

“Twice, Representative Reichert could have voted to support major improvements to E Sammamish Lake Parkway, Route 162 in Orting and upgrades to the transit network in Eatonville – and put Washingtonians to work.  And twice, Reichert just said ‘no’ to what’s best for King and Pierce Counties,” said Andy Stone, Western Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Fortunately, the economic stimulus bill passed without his support, so Reichert’s home district will get these federal dollars anyway.  But no thanks to him.

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What does it say about the state of our current news media when the most anticipated and insightful news coverage and analysis of the week is coming from a fake news show? Really… watch the whole thing.

The subject matter aside, what I find most instructive here is the way Jon Stewart’s total lack of pretense and decorum results in one of the most brutally honest interviews you will ever have the privilege of watching on TV.  Unfettered by the journalistic shackles of objectivity and fairness (and even free to employ—gasp—foul language when appropriate), Stewart manages to level a devastating critique of the financial news industry, while demonstrating by example the sort of pander-free directness that is too often missing from traditional coverage.

At one point Stewart rails against “the gap between what CNBC advertises itself as, and what it is,” telling Jim Cramer, “Look, we’re both snake oil salesmen to a certain extent, but we do label the show as snake oil here…” a critique that mirrors some of my own complaints about our local news media.  After years of newsroom cutbacks, the all important space between stenography and opinion has shrunk to the point where news-papers are fast becoming neither, and yet when you hear many of the legacy journalists talk about their own sacred role in our democracy versus that of the barbarian bloggers at the gate, you’d think that nothing has changed but the business model.

But it is not just the Internet or the economy that is driving down both subscription and ad revenues; it is the product itself. Publishers like to console themselves by pointing to their rising online readership, but, well, you get what you pay for… which may help explain why so many readers today prefer to get their news for free.

Back in college, my roommates and I once bought a used, black naugahyde couch, despite the bizarrely sleazy pitch from the aging salesman, who amongst other things, offensively described the couch as a “pussy magnet.”

I guess this is what he was talking about.