So when Sarah Palin talks about being a “reformer,” is she talking about this?
A legislative committee investigating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has found she unlawfully abused her authority in firing the state’s public safety commissioner. The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn’t the sole reason for firing Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan but says it likely was a contributing factor.
Once again, A. Birch Steen or Lou Guzzo?
Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert debated again this afternoon, and from what I’m hearing, she kicked his ass. Watch for yourself tonight at 7PM, on KCTS Channel 9.
After a wild ride in which it opened with a 700 point slide, the Dow see-sawed back and forth, eventually closing down only 128 points. So rather than redoing yesterday’s chart to reflect the decrease in the Bush-era return from -19% to -20%, I thought I’d take a stab at charting the NASDAQ, which actually closed slightly up today.
Let’s hear it for our “CEO President.”
Josh Marshall explains the bogus Republican claims of “fraud” surrounding ACORN and voter registration. Well worth a full read, but here’s a sample:
I’ve always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here’s the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won’t count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there’s very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated casing of actual instances of vote fraud.
As McCain’s crowds continue to turn nasty and hateful, the bogus attack on ACORN is simply one more cog in a Republican slime machine that is working overtime. The Swiftboating has little chance of working at this point, both because of the economic scandal and because Americans have seen this crap before and (by and large) aren’t falling for it. People could care less about anything except the ominous threats to their financial well-being.
Epic fail!
When the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) spends hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking Gov. Chris Gregoire for spending too little on foster care children, you just know there’s something suspicious about the ad… suspicions easily confirmed with a modicum of factchecking.
It turns out that Mary Radcliffe, the “child advocate” at the center of the ad, is a long-time Republican Party activist, the former co-chair of the anti-affirmative action Initiative 200, and a WA delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention, handpicked by the Bush campaign to add some color to the proceedings. Her abuse of the title “Court Appointed Special Advocate” for political purposes has repeatedly drawn legal action from the the Washington’s Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children (CASA), and, not surprising, the charges made in the ad have already been debunked as total lies.
But that hasn’t stopped the BIAW from spending its illegal funds to attack one of Gov. Gregoire’s strengths, her unmatched advocacy on behalf of children, and it hasn’t prompted the amen editorialists at the Seattle Times from expressing their moral outrage, despite their patently ridiculous call on Gov. Gregoire to pull a factual accurate ad about embryonic stem cell research, because in their view “the issue is not real.”
Watch the video for all the details.
| Obama | McCain |
| 100.0% probability of winning | 0.0% probability of winning |
| Mean of 363 electoral votes | Mean of 175 electoral votes |
Today there were 17 new polls for 16 states released, but not much has changed with the electoral map, except that a new West Virginia puts Obama in the lead by +8%. On the other hand, McCain leads in a Missouri poll today–following two consecutive leads by Obama in the state.
The Monte Carlo analysis employing 100,000 simulated elections finds Obama winning every single one. Obama receives (on average) 363 to McCain’s 175 electoral votes in a hypothetical election held today.
Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.
Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.
Black Friday. Heh.
Less than 24 hours after The Columbian newspaper reported it is in deep financial shit and will have to move back to its cruddy old building while trying to sell or lease its new, $30 million tower across from Esther Short Park, the city of Vancouver is making noises about purchasing the new building and making it into a new city hall.
The newspaper building at 415 W. Sixth St. could be an ideal resolution to the city’s decade-long effort to consolidate city operations under one roof, said Eric Holmes, the city’s economic development director. He said the building is the right size, in the right place and the price is in line with the $35 million to $40 million the city expects to spend redeveloping the Esther Short Building into a new City Hall.
And it might make sense in more ordinary times.
However, right now this trial balloon is likely to be met with widespread catcalls if not pitchforks. The idea that taxpayers would jump in to save publisher Scott Campbell’s skin in the midst of an historic economic collapse is outrageous on the face of it.
If the city is actually serious, they should wait a year or two and see how much the property is worth, ’cause there’s likely to be a lot of space up for lease in downtown Vancouver. As I’ve noted before, most commercial activity downtown other than the growth industry of criminal justice seems to center around development and related fields, like banking, insurance and engineering. Plus some restaurants who feed the developers on weekdays.
Maybe the new Columbian building would make a nice judicial annex for our fellow prisoners.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down another 679 points today, closing at 8,579, it’s lowest point in over five years. With a return of negative 19%, President Bush has now surpassed Richard Nixon for the honor claiming the worst performing market this side of Herbert Hoover.
By comparison, the Dow first broke the 8,500 mark way back in June of 1998, under President Bill Clinton.
An interesting moment at yesterday’s debate between Rep. Dave Reichert (R-8) and his Democratic challenger, Darcy Burner, came when panelist C.R. Douglas, reflecting on the projected $500 billion federal deficit (not including the $700 billion Wall Street bailout), asked both candidates what they would cut.
Sounding like Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi (and just about every other Republican I’ve ever heard when asked a similar question), Burner did not specify what she would cut. Instead, she sounded a stern note about fiscal responsibility and “economic discipline.” She talked about “performance audits” and “pay-as-you-go” rules.
“If you increase the amount you’re spending,” she said, “you have to identify where you’re going to find the money. I you decrease the amount you’re bringing in, you have to identify what you’re going to cut.”
And she ended with this line: “I demand that our Congress live up to the basic standards that every household in this country has to.”
Certainly, the fact that Burner sounds like she’s reading from the Republican playbook has a lot to do with the failed Bush years. “Fiscal conservative” George Bush has actually saddled the country with the largest debt in U.S. history, between $500 and $600 billion.
For his part, Reichert sounded more like a traditional Democrat. First, like Democrats always do when hit with vague GOP economic tough talk, he criticized Burner for skimping on specifics.
He began: “I think what you didn’t hear from my opponent is what she would cut…”
But then, rather than answering the question himself—and saying what he would cut—he started sounding like Barack Obama (or Al Gore).
“When you talk about what we need to do and what we might cut,” he said (without talking about what we might cut), “what we really need to do is infuse money into new energy. We need to excite our economy by investing money into the newest technology to provide us with the future of energy source that will fuel our economy…”
As his time ran out, he did start drifting back to more traditional GOP talking points, saying sternly that we needed to look at how we were going to pay for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Another issue where Burner sounded like a Republican was on gun control. Audience member (and former Kirkland GOP state Rep.) Toby Nixon asked the candidates if they agreed with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller . Heller upheld the 2nd Amendment.
Burner was emphatic. “I had a stalker when I was in college who threatened to kill me,” she said. She then told the story of how when she went to the police to get a restraining order, they encouraged her to get a gun and “learn how to use it” because “they wouldn’t be able to protect me.”
She concluded: “People who face real threats have the right to defend ourselves. The 2nd Amendment guarantees us that right to defend ourselves, and I agree with the S.C. decision as it applies even in Washington, DC.”
Her last caveat, “even as it applies in Washington, DC” separated her even further from the Democratic line. Many Democrats recognize that gun control in general is a losing issue, but stick to advocating targeted gun control in urban areas.
Reichert, who answered the question first, said simply: “Yes.”
I noticed this post at Calculated Risk regarding mortgage equity withdrawals, or MEW’s, on Monday, and I’ve been meaning to link to it. If you click through there’s a nice bar graph that really illustrates just how much money is being yanked out of the economy. Here it is in words:
Equity extraction was close to $700 billion per year in 2004, 2005 and 2006, before declining to $471 billion last year and will probably be less than $100 billion in 2008.
The post goes on to sort through what this might mean, and I’ll leave those technical details to the trained economists.
But as we keep hearing how consumers used home equity to finance not just lifestyles but in many cases simply to stay afloat through health and job crises, it’s hard not to conclude there’s going to be a continuing ripple effect throughout the economy.
This would seem to add to already intense deflationary pressures, both from the housing bubble collapse and recession-related job loss. As the ripples spread nothing short of a massive government intervention to help fuel demand (as opposed to repeatedly injecting cash into failing corporations) would seem to be worthy of discussion.
Paulson is already pivoting toward nationalization of banks, so who knows? By Halloween we may be looking at the new Treasury Department Works Progress Administration.
Just sayin’.
State Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R- Ridgefield and ranking minority member of Ways and Means, responding to criticism of his 2007 “Convergence Northwest” conference that featured extreme-right speakers and Knesset members:
Zarelli said the conference was open to the public but told The Columbian he did not invite Muslims to make presentations because, “It’s not my purpose or goal to understand why somebody wants to kill Americans.”
I wish I could report that Democrat Jon Haugen was a worthy adversary for Zarelli in the 18th LD, but unfortunately Haugen is about as wingnutty as they come too.
I have submitted Initiative to the People 997
Initiative Measure No. 997 concerns valuation of single-family residences
for property tax purposes. I have spoken with Tim Eyman about this idea
and discussed the uniformity clause of the Washington State Constitution.This measure would limit tax valuation of single-family residences to the
assessed value on December 31, 2005, adjusted annually for inflation but
not greater than two percent higher than the previous year’s valuation.
Should this measure be enacted into law?
Great. An end of times candidate or a Tim Eyman candidate. Some choice.
From the Seattle Times: “Reichert, Burner debate over lunch.”
Huh. Surely they must have talked about more substantive issues than that?
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