I leave bright and early tomorrow morning (as soon as the polls open — I’m one of those hopelessly old-fashioned people that likes my polling place) for Denver — with stops en route to meet with activists and bloggers in Boise and Salt Lake. Goldy and Darryl fly out to join me early Saturday. Look for some exciting new wrinkles in HA coverage from us at the Denver convention!
So what would you like to see us report on?
That series of four-page mailings many of you have been getting from the Washington State Republican Party, attacking Gov. Chris Gregoire and urging you to “vote for Dino Rossi”…? Not only are the mailings deliberately misleading and factual incorrect, but according to a complaint filed today with Public Disclosure Commission, they are also a blatant and massive violation of campaign finance laws prohibiting the use of soft money for direct advocacy. In other words… Dino Rossi and the Republicans are cheating.
And having obtained a PDF of the complaint from Seattle attorney Kyle Olive, I’ve gotta say that the charges within are pretty cut and dry. The WSRP most definitely spent $150,000 of “exempt” funds on a last minute, “non-exempt” smear campaign, and they barely even tried to hide it.
The Washington State Republican Party (“WSRP”) has recently sent out several large mailings containing direct advocacy on behalf of its gubernatorial candidate, Dino Rossi. The advertisements not only directly attack Governor Christine Gregoire, but explicitly ask voters to “vote for Dino Rossi.” It appears from WSRP filings with this agency that these mailings were paid for with “exempt funds,” in plain violation of RCW 42.17.640.
So what does all this mean, and what makes the violation so clear cut? Well, as Olive explains in his complaint, our campaign contribution and expenditure limitations were imposed via initiative in 1992, with the stated goal of ensuring equal opportunity “to influence the elective and governmental processes,” and to restore “public trust in governmental institutions and the electoral process.” These rules thus limit the ability of a single wealthy individual—say, McCaw Cellular co-founder Rufus Lumry—from personally bankrolling a candidate’s campaign.
There are exemptions though, for certain party-building and get out the vote activities, as specified in RCW 42.17.640 (the emphasis is mine):
(15) The following contributions are exempt from the contribution limits of this section:
(a) An expenditure or contribution earmarked for voter registration, for absentee ballot information, for precinct caucuses, for get-out-the-vote campaigns, for precinct judges or inspectors, for sample ballots, or for ballot counting, all without promotion of or political advertising for individual candidates; or
(b) An expenditure by a political committee for its own internal organization or fund raising without direct association with individual candidates.
Exempt contributions to parties fall outside the normal contribution limits and must be deposited in a separate “exempt” bank account from which only “exempt” expenditures can be made. And the statute is pretty damn clear that “exempt activities” may be paid for with exempt funds only if they are done “without promotion of or political advertising for individual candidates,” and “without direct association with individual candidates.”
And if that’s not clear enough the PDC spells out in its rules (WAC 390-17-60) that promoting or advertising “one or more clearly identified candidates do not qualify as exempt activities”, while definitively stating that…
A candidate is deemed to be clearly identified if the name of the candidate is used, a photograph or likeness of the candidate appears, or the identity of the candidate is apparent by unambiguous reference.
Well, you can’t get any more unambiguous than this, an image that appears in one form or another in each of the three illegal mailings on which the WSRP spent $150,311.10 of exempt funds:
Let’s see now… name of the candidate? Check. Photograph or likeness of the candidate? Check. Unambiguous reference to the candidate? Check and mate.
Oh… and most of the rest of the content of these illegal mailings are devoted to trashing Gov. Gregoire by name and by likeness (and by lies), an activity that on its own disqualifies the use of exempt funds:
For purposes of RCW 42.17.640 and this section, activities that oppose one or more clearly identified candidates are presumed to promote the opponent(s) of the candidate(s) opposed.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s Campaign Finance 101. All the political candidates, consultants, committees and parties know damn well what is or is not allowed. And yet the WSRP chose to blatantly violate campaign expenditure laws that have been in place for the past 16 years.
Why? Because there are no limits on exempt contributions, and given the Republican Party’s tarnished brand, that’s about the only sort of money they seem to be able to raise these days: large, lump sum contributions from wealthy individuals like Rufus Lumry ($80,000) and Eastside developer Skip Rowley ($30,000), and from powerful special interests like the National Electrical Contractors Association ($50,000) and Walmart ($25,000). If they could have raised non-exempt money I suppose the would have, but they can’t, and the WSRP’s non-exempt committee is now virtually bankrupt. So instead they illegally used these lump sum “exempt” contributions, on their benefactors’ behalf, to directly influence the gubernatorial race… exactly what Initiative 134 was intended to prevent.
Meanwhile, Dino Rossi and the WSRP continue to make hay about tribal contributions to the state Dems’ exempt committee, monies which, as far as I can tell, have only been used for exempt purposes. Perhaps the reason why the R’s seem so suspicious of the D’s use of these exempt funds, is that the R’s misuse these funds themselves?
In psychology, that’s called “projection,” but in politics we just call it “cheating.”
Let’s be clear, this is no mistake or accidental oversight; WSRP chair Luke Esser, allegedly a lawyer, deliberately and knowingly violated the law, feebly attempting to disguise these illegal expenditures by mislabeling them as “member communications” (a label that would not make these expenditures exempt, even if true.) The WSRP could have run the mailing past the PDC ahead of time—campaigns do this all the time—but they knew the answer they would get. Which of course is why they never asked.
No doubt the WSRP fully understands that it faces a substantial penalty for such a flagrant and deliberate PDC violation, but that won’t come until after the election, so no harm done. No, if there’s a penalty to be paid ahead of this election it will have to come at the hands of the local media, but whether they’ll give this story the scrutiny it deserves, or merely brush it off as another “he said, she said” between two feuding camps, remains to be seen.
This e-mail alert really was sent out, exactly like this:
From: Washington State Ferries [mailto:WSFAlert@wsdot.wa.gov]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 4:40 PM
To: WSDOT-WSF Alert Recipients
Subject: Ferry Alert: Edmonds / Kingston – Late BoatsBoth vessels are running 15 to 20 minutes behind schedule. We apologize for any incontinence this may cause you.
This alert was sent on 8/8/2008 at 4:39PM to subscribers of the Edmonds / Kingston route.
A reader reports from the campaign trail:
Last night, I was listening to a bartender out in Quilcene who was completely in love with Rossi after his recent visit. In a moment of unintentional irony, she noted that he made a joke about Gregoire’s budget-cluelessness:
“If you’re going to hand a woman the checkbook, you’d better make sure she knows how to balance it.”
Ouch.
Yeah, sure, it’s only a third-hand account, and I would prefer to verify a macaca moment like this against an audio or video transcript of the August 9 event at the Olympic Timber House, but since Dino Rossi doesn’t allow video cameras into his events—apparently out of fear he’ll be caught saying something stupid, mean spirited or sexist (or all three)—I guess I’ll just have to run with it as a rumor.
And a very believable rumor at that, as it seems entirely in character from a man who opposes the right of a woman to control her own body, who opposes medically accurate sex education, and who quite frankly has come off as angry and bitter throughout this campaign, his patented shit-eating-grin notwithstanding.
Of course, if Dino would like to confirm or deny this third-hand account, and clarify his position on whether women are or are not inherently deficient at balancing checkbooks, I’d be happy to print his response in its entirety. Or… if somebody else in attendance at the event in Quilcene can confirm or deny the accuracy of the statement, I’d be happy to print that too.
Late last week, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that a recall effort against Port of Seattle Commissioner Pat Davis could proceed as planned. The unanimous ruling, which found that there was evidence of official malfeasance in Davis’s secret 2006 guarantee of a lucrative golden parachute to retiring Port CEO Mic Dinsmore, was pretty unequivocal:
“We can infer from the record that Comm. Davis understood her duties as Port Commissioner and the legal necessity of voting in public session before potentially obligating the Port in any monetary agreement, and, for purposes of recall, intentionally acted outside the scope of these duties by signing an agreement with Dinsmore.”
But the issue here isn’t just the contract for Dinsmore. For decades, the Port of Seattle, secure in its separate taxing authority for King County, has been the most corrupt and arrogant public agency in the state, which is saying something. The cronyism, back-scratching, sweetheart deals, and corporate welfare know almost no bounds. And during each of her 22 years on the Commission, Davis has championed that cronyism and staunchly resisted any efforts at accountability and reform. (It was also her initiative that brought the WTO ministerial to Seattle in 1999, a brainchild that alone should disqualify her from further public service.) For years, Pat Davis has exemplified everything wrong at the Port.
After last week’s court ruling, Davis immediately announced that she wouldn’t seek re-election when her term expires at the end of 2009. But she should still be recalled before then, for several reasons.
First, she can still do a lot of damage (and cost taxpayers a lot of money) if left in a position of power for another 16 months.
Second, Davis deserves to pay some price for her malfeasance — not simply to have a nice retirement party while her fellow commissioners name a wading pool after her. Or give her own secret golden parachute.
Third, even after a scathing performance audit by State Auditor Brian Sonntag — and an ongoing criminal investigation — the Port has been dismissive, defensive, and bitterly resistant to meaningful changes in its cronyist culture. In that context, get a load of this quote from fellow Port Commissioner Gael Tarleton — who ran on a reform platform last year, despite questions about her own corporate conflicts of interest — in arguing against the recall effort. Davis and Tarleton, it turns out, are working together to “implement” some of Sonntag’s demanded reforms. In other words, now that the fox has eaten every hen and destroyed the henhouse, she is standing, hammer and nails in paw, and undoubtably hungry again, ready to build the new henhouse. And, according to Tarleton:
“If we did not have her [Davis’s] knowledge about how things did not work in a transparent and open way in the past, we would not have been able to make many of the most important revisions to the delegation of authority,”
Words. Fail. Me.
Fourth, beyond making sure Davis can do no more damage, as Tarleton and the response to the performance amply demonstrate, Davis is scarcely the whole problem at the Port. And that audit barely scratched the surface: it only looked at the Third Runway project. It did not examine other airport projects, anything in the marine division (where SSA and other corporate contractors have bankrolled many a Port Commissioner campaign), or the Port’s lucrative waterfront real estate development projects. And the audit wasn’t looking for fraud (though it found plenty anyway).
What all this suggests is that there’s an ingrained, corrupt culture at the Port of Seattle that needs to be uprooted. The staff, commissioners, and CEO must all be held accountable. Recalling Pat Davis demonstrates that there’s a price to be paid for betraying the public trust — and maybe, just maybe, some of the other foxes at the Port will either change their own behavior, or get turned out themselves, if the precedent of recalling Davis moves forward.
The public has had enough of this nonsense. It’s time to fight back. Petitions to recall Pat Davis are available here.
There are rumors that Rob McKenna is a Podcasting Liberally aficionado. Go figure!
The rumors have come to light following a smear campaign against Democratic Secretary of State candidate Jason Osgood, who is running against Sam Reed. The tale is long and somewhat convoluted, but I have an unimpeachable source for the rumor: me. And the source of the smear campaign? Well…as the producer of Podcasting Liberally that rumor traces it back to…me. Or, stated more concisely, the smear originated from Rob McKenna’s misunderstanding of a podcast I produced, which McKenna is rumored (by me) to regularly enjoy.
Allow me to explain.
Last Friday, Washblog front-paged a diary by jeffuppy that traces the origins of the smear, so we begin our rumor/smear adventure last Wednesday at, of all places, a meeting of the 34th District Democrats:
Part of the night’s agenda included approval of proposals to donate money to Democratic candidates for statewide office.
…I stood and introduced a motion to contribute to Democratic Secretary of State candidate Jason Osgood. I expected little or no opposition….However, to my surprise, King County Council Member Dow Constantine stood to speak in opposition. Constantine was clearly upset with Osgood, and proceeded to trash him before the group. His anger was focused on public statements he claimed Osgood has recently been making to the effect that King County uses bar-codes on ballots which allow votes to be tracked back to voters. King County uses no such system….
[…]…Jason Osgood has never said any of the things about King County ballots that he was accused of saying. In fact, Osgood has consistently and publicly said the exact opposite – that King County does not use bar-codes and that this is a good thing.
The donation motion did not pass, likely on account of the information rumor that Constantine had been so helpful in sharing spreading.
Afterward Jeffuppy asked Constantine about the rumor, and he produced an email to the King County Council from Sherril Huff, the King County Director of Elections:
…misinformation has been shared at local public meetings as well as editorial boards regarding how timing marks on ballots are used in King County. Unfortunately a candidate running for office publicly misstated that King County ballots can be traced back to the voter using a bar code on the ballot.
Not fully satisfied by this email that was all spiced-up in bureaucrateese, Jeffuppy asked Huff for a plain-language translation including when and where she had heard Osgood make these statements. But she had not actually heard the statements. Rather, Nick Handy, State Director of Elections (an office that under the Secretary of State’s office), had shared this information with her.
So Jeffuppy asked Handy the same “when and where” question. Remarkably, Handy didn’t have firsthand knowledge either.
He had simply been told about them, he said, by Attorney General Rob McKenna and by Eastside State Representative Fred Jarret. They had in turn been told about them by unnamed citizens.
That adds two more generations to the rumor.
Chad Shue writing at the Seattle Examiner summarizes the chain rumor thusly:
So there you have it. Based on unchecked statements by “unnamed citizens” allegedly passed on by Republican office holders to the chief deputy of the incumbent Republican candidate for the office that oversees state elections, the Director of Elections for King County has (hopefully unwittingly) aided in the effort to undermine the credibility of the Democratic candidate for that office.
Or, more succinctly: it was a “he said that she said that he said that they said that people said that Jason Osgood said…” chain rumor.
Last June 10th, just as his campaign was starting up, we had had Jason Osgood on the weekly Podcasting Liberally panel. If he was going to make a misstatement on the record, this early appearance would be the place. I’ve pulled out the relevant segment where Jason discusses King County and the bar code controversy (which is really about San Juan county):
[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/secretballot2.mp3]Osgood does mention King and San Juan counties in the same breath. I can see how someone might mistakenly think that Jason was flagging King county as one of the problem counties…particularly, if that someone is a closeted Podcasting Liberally buff secretly listening to the podcast in the privacy of men’s room stall in one ear while maintaining vigilance with the other ear. (As an aside, the “men’s room” stuff isn’t officially part of the rumor…I just threw that in as a hypothetical.)
Such an interpretation of Osgood’s words would be mistaken, as is clear from the transcript:
You know, I have studied King County the most, and Washington to a lesser extent. And nationally, I’m not very interested in Florida, New Mexico. I know that there are problems, but we are looking at King County. We’re looking a San Juan county and the issues that we’re facing here.
We have a constitutional right to a secret ballot. That means no one can determine how we vote—should not be able to determine—not possible. And in San Juan county and other counties using the same system, they have a unique bar code that is linked to your voter ID which is tracked—your mail ballot is tracked—all the way through to tabulation.
Jason mentions King county in passing but only before he raises the secret ballot issue, after which he only mentions San Juan county.
As long as politicians blissfully pass along unverified, fifth-generation rumors that tangibly cost a candidate money and support, I’d like to get in on the game. So, based on a simple plausibility argument (i.e. with no violations of the laws of physics), I offer a new rumor that sheds shocking new light on the fifth generation rumor about Osgood. My rumor is that Rob McKenna is a huge fan of Podcasting Liberally. That explains everything, because he obviously listened to our podcast, and simply misunderstood what Osgood was saying. McKenna started the Osgood rumor chain by passing his misunderstanding on to Handy and Huff.
Yeah, sure…I’ve got no real proof that Rob McKenna really enjoys the podcast—perhaps that is a stretch. By the standards of our esteemed politicians, however, spreading a rumor that McKenna enjoys the podcast is pretty tame stuff. And let me say, it is a real honor to have Rob as a fan of the podcast…I appreciate the patronage, even if it occasionally catalyzes a false rumor.
Oh…and Rob McKenna is a Muslim.
Everybody seems to be tamping down expectations for this week’s first ever “top two” primary in Washington state, but the biggest loser Tuesday night may be the top two primary itself. While Secretary of State Sam Reed and his cheerleaders on editorial boards throughout the state have hailed the advent of the top two as a huge victory for Washington’s voters, it’s proving much less popular in practice, with the 27% ballot return rate thus far significantly trailing Reed’s rosey turnout predictions.
Hmm. I wonder why?
In most cases, the outcome from Tuesday’s vote is in little doubt.
Yeah, it’s hard to get voters excited about a meaningless election, but that’s exactly what we have in almost every race on the ballot, where even the handful of hotly contested races will inevitably result in rematches come November. Indeed, with the exception of the State Treasurer’s race, where a field of three legitimate contenders will be winnowed down to two, I can’t think of a single meaningful result to watch for Tuesday night.
(Yeah, sure, some judicial races will be decided Tuesday night, but that was true of previous primary systems too.)
Oh, if one candidate substantially trounces another, it might tell us something about their prospects for the general, but absolutely nothing will be decided; the same folks facing off against each other Tuesday will face off against each other again eleven weeks from now. So why bother voting?
Well, the majority of WA’s registered voters won’t bother, which is a shame. And, inevitable.
The lesson to be learned from all this is that the top two is about as close a substitute for our old blanket primary as Cremora is a substitute for half and half. Sure, primary voters can split their ticket, choosing candidates from both parties without ascribing to any party identification themselves, but with the absence of party labels and the absence of any race with nomination battles in both parties, what’s the point? I suppose it could be argued that top two does have the advantage of eliminating the possibility of third party candidates serving as spoilers, but doesn’t that put control of our elections even more firmly in the hands of the two major parties? That’s not exactly what voters were promised.
And what happens in an off-year election, when Seattle’s 20-percent strong Republican minority finds itself in November with no Republicans on the ballot? Top-two has the potential to reduce turnout in a general election as well.
I suppose the solution favored by the wise old folks on our ed boards would be to simply make all our offices non-partisan, thus covering up top-two’s reduction in choice by reducing the relevant information available to voters. Sure, if they really wanted to give voters more choice they could push for innovative electoral reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, but honestly, all our ed boards really seemed interested in doing was delivering a big, spiteful “fuck you” to the parties for challenging the beloved blanket primary in the first place.
Job well done. Now let’s deal with the consequences instead of pretending there aren’t any.
And yet, partisan political bloggers like me, we’re the ones who aren’t credible. Sheesh.
Bradley Marshall is an attorney, sports agent and adjunct law professor. He is also a pussy. A vain, effete, caterwauling pussy.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. My entirely non-libelous, constitutionally protected, personal opinion. But I think you’ll agree with me that it is pretty damn well supported by the facts.
So what makes Marshall such an incredible pussy? This cease and desist letter to fellow blogger Michael Hood:
Over the course of the last several years you have published the “Blatherwatch,” a conservative political blog site.
Approximately two years ago, you published a defamatory and slanderous blog of the undersigned in connection with a story of the famed talk show host, Mike Webb. […] The story you published concerning me was inaccurate, denigrating, and placed me in a false light. The purpose of this writing is to formally request that you remove the article from the BlatherWatch website and cease any further negative reporting concerning the undersigned.
[…] It is not my desire to seek redress through the courts, but I will do so if you and I are unable to reach an amicable resolution.
As Darryl has previously pointed out over at Hominid Views, A) a defamatory post would be libel not slander; and B) there is absolutely nothing defamatory about a post that reports facts, no matter how unflattering or how secondhand. Hell, Michael would have a better chance of suing Marshall for libel for his clearly false and defamatory claim that blatherWatch is “conservative”… though I guess Marshall could always fall back on the defense that he was merely expressing an opinion… you know… like my characterization of him as a dainty, dickless pussy. (It would be worth the lawsuit just to see Marshall definitively prove in a court of law that he does indeed have a dick.)
The December 27, 2005 blatherWatch post that Marshall is attempting to bully Michael into removing (and which I have appended in toto at the end of this post) is titled “mike webb’s attorney no stranger to ‘dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation’,” a factual claim I haven’t bothered to independently verify, because under US law, I don’t have to. I am merely reporting that Michael reported it, an inherently non-libelous act within the context of covering a threatened libel suit, regardless of the accuracy of the original statement. (Think about it… one could never report on libel suits if repeating the charges is an act of libel itself.)
Likewise, Michael’s headline was merely quoting the conclusions of the Washington State Bar Association from a Disciplinary Notice he blockquotes in its entirety. In correspondence with Michael, Marshall disputes the WSBA’s findings, but as a legal argument that’s neither here nor there, for Michael has every right to report on the WSBA’s Disciplinary Notice, again, regardless of its accuracy. The WSBA found Marshall to be in violation of its Rules for Personal Conduct (RPC), including the subsection that prohibits “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”… an undisputed fact (the finding itself) that Michael duly reported. It is also a fact that Michael reported it, and I could not possibly report on the dispute between Michael and Marshall without reporting this particularly fact as such.
See, this isn’t Canada where litigious pussies like Marshall can attempt to bully the press and citizen journalists alike with harassing libel suits that place the burden of proof on the shoulders of the defendant. This is the United States of America, where the First Amendment protects freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and where the courts have firmly placed the burden on the back of the plaintiff… a burden of proof, by the way, that Marshall already failed to meet when the WA State Supreme Court handed down an 18 month suspension of his license as punishment for the exact same RPC violations he is now threatening to sue Michael for reporting.
What a pussy.
And what an idiot, for if his goal was to rid the Internet of an unflattering blog post that ranks near the top of Google searches on his name, Bradley Marshall has achieved the exact opposite, not only attracting subsequent posts by Michael and a highly ranked post by Darryl that only further elaborate on their subject’s reported ethical failings, but now a post by me, one that will surely settle near the top of Google’s rankings, where it will forever inform potential clients that Marshall is a frivolous, conscienceless, unscrupulous pussy. (At least, in my opinion.)
As it so happens, today is the day the pussy has set as a deadline for Michael to pull his post:
I am prepared to execute a settlement agreement, wherein I will release you personally, Blatherwatch and its writers from all liability. This proposal may be accepted on or before August 15, 2008. Thereafter, I will file the lawsuit against you personally, any writer who contributed to any slanderous story about me, Blatherwatch, the Seattle Magazine and any other publications you may have been affiliated with during the time the subject storie(s) were written.
See Brad, I mention this because I wanted to make it clear that I got my post in under the deadline, and that I have no intention of pulling this post or any other, short of a court order… and possibly not even then. So if you really intend to file a lawsuit that you have no possibility of winning, under the bizarre belief that this will somehow clear your reputation as a lawyer, you better sue me too.
Some may find my bravado stupid or irrational, but Marshall’s whole attempt to intimidate Michael was based on the expectation that he would do the rational thing, and quietly pull a two-year-old post rather than risk the expense and hassle of even a clearly frivolous lawsuit. The problem is, once bloggers start caving in to litigious pussies like Marshall, we’ll find ourselves inundated with cease-and-desist letters from every litigious pussy who has ever been the subject of an unflattering post, and who happens to have access to a lawyer or a law license (suspended or not).
So sue me, Brad. Sue Michael. Sue Darryl. And sue the dozens of other bloggers, local and national, who will surely follow up on our posts should you choose to follow through on your pussy threats. Turn us into netroots heroes and I can all but guarantee that “Bradley Marshall” will become the equivalent of a Google bomb for the words “dishonesty,” “fraud,” “deceit,” “misrepresentation” and “pussy.” Or, you can do the rational thing, accept the fact that we called your bluff, and walk away from this dispute before you sully your own reputation to the point where you become legally libel-proof.
It’s not about me, Brad. It’s not about you. It’s not about Michael. It’s about the integrity of our medium. And damn if I’m going to allow a pussy like you to turn bloggers like me into pussies too.
APPENDIX:
Following is the original blatherWatch post that prompted Marshall’s bullying tactics, reproduced in its entirety. (Nice job expunging any record of your ethical lapses from the Internet, Brad. Let this be a lesson to anyone else who thinks they can use bullshit cease and desist letters to chill online discourse.)
I want to follow up on Goldy’s post from yesterday on the strong push by Catholic Church dioceses and archdioceses to fund the opposition to the Death with Dignity Initiative, I-1000.
In the comments, and on Catholic web sites, there continue to be accusations that the I-1000 movement is displaying anti-Catholic bigotry. Let’s be very clear about this. Pointing out that the Catholic Church has had an alarming problem with not only allowing pedophiles to hold positions of power within their organization, but also actively trying to shield them from the law, is not anti-Catholic bigotry. It’s the truth. I don’t think that individual Catholics should be held responsible for these actions, but the organization as a whole still carries the weight of this tragedy.
The Catholic Church is allowed to lobby and donate money to certain causes. But that does not mean that what they’re doing is reasonable or fair. And when people are wary of what this organization is pushing for, this is not automatically evidence of bigotry. The Catholic Church can impose any sort of rules they want upon their own membership. But in a nation that truly has freedom of religion, they should not be able to impose rules that extend beyond their membership, as they have tried to do in the past by trying to restrict the sales of birth control or to ban abortion.
As has been pointed out here, the current way that end-of-life treatment takes place has not kept up with the realities of a plural, modern society. Doctors are put in uncomfortable situations in dealing with terminally ill patients who desire a dignified and less painful way to exit this world. The correct solution is to ensure that people have the legal right to make their own choices and for a doctor to be legally allowed to respect that choice and evaluate whether it’s being made freely. The safeguards in this bill ensure that the old, the depressed, and the disabled won’t be coerced into ending their lives prematurely. The bill has worked exactly as expected in Oregon for 10 years.
Why does the Catholic Church oppose it? That’s not for me to be concerned with. I’m not a Catholic, and while I respect their right to practice their religion, it’s not for me. Many Catholics in this world are inspirational people who do far more to benefit humanity than the average person. And if deciding that it’s a sin to take your own life along the parameters of I-1000 makes someone a better person, more power to them. But for the Catholic Church, as an organization, to expect that this paradigm be enforced on everyone crosses a line that should not be crossed. Supporters of I-1000 aren’t attacking the Catholic Church, we’re defending ourselves from it.
UPDATE: There’s quite a bit of carnage in the comments below already, and it highlights a very important point here. If you accuse someone of bigotry, as many people have been overly inclined to do on this issue, it helps to have proof. For instance, in the past I’ve accused SeattleJew of bigotry, but instead of just lobbing baseless accusations, I’ve linked to the proof. I hope that makes it clear.
It’s not something the campaign likes to talk about, but when Darcy Burner first started pushing her Responsible Plan to end the war in Iraq, the folks at the DCCC weren’t exactly supportive. Sticking your neck out on a controversial issue like that is just not the sort of thing that challengers are supposed to do, so you can be damn sure that the DCCC didn’t encourage any of Darcy’s colleagues to sign on. And yet, over 50 fellow challengers did anyway.
And now we House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Stefan’s girlfriend) not only recording a video in support of Darcy, but mentioning the plan by name.
You want a guy with great hair and big biceps representing you in Congress, faithfully supporting the Bush policies on Iraq and the economy? Vote for Dave Reichert. But if you want a smart, energetic representative, willing and able to challenge the establishment in both parties, and still come out on top, your only choice is to vote for Darcy Burner.
Cold days=no global warming. Ergo….
Today’s forecast from The Oregonian:
It’s already near 70 at 5 a.m. and the thermometer is headed for 104. Today’s forecast also calls for north northeast winds 5 to 9 mph. The low tonight is a balmy 65.
There’s no relief on Saturday, with the high expected to hit 104 again. Winds kick up a bit 10 to 13 mph. The low dips to 59. Sunday remains sunny with a high of 91. Temperatures cool next week, with highs in the mid 70s and hey, a chance of rain on Wednesday.
I got an iced mocha and global warming went away! But then I had a toasted sandwich and it came back.
This climate change stuff sure is confusing, which is why I try to ignore it and drive around a lot to think about it while listening to talk radio. Paris Hilton!
The most polled gubernatorial race in the country this election season, hands down, is Washington state. The rematch between Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) and Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has had 36 polls taken, starting in August of 2005, just two months after a court declined to overturn Gregoire’s victory.
And now we have one new SurveyUSA poll to add to the collection. The poll of 714 people, taken on the 11th and 12th of August, shows Gregoire leading Rossi by a slim 50% to 48%.
The +2% advantage for Gregoire is smaller than the +4% found a week ago in a Rasmussen poll. It is much smaller than the +12% found in a late July Strategic Vision poll. But it matches the +2% found by a late July Strategic Vision poll.
That makes four polls all taken within the last three weeks. As can be seen in this figure of polling over the last three months, the race has scarcely moved provided one ignores those Elway polls.
Mr. Elway has offered a defense of his poll numbers, perhaps in response to a somewhat “underinformed” Eric Earling commentary. Elway discusses sampling differences (registered, known voters versus random digit dialing used by national pollsters), different modes of communications (humans used by Elway versus computer used by SurveyUSA and Rasmussen), question wording, and party identification (Elway uses the Washington state ballot labels). I think Elway’s arguments are all reasonable, and given Elway’s smaller sample size, I am not surprised to see this magnitude of difference between Elway compared to Rasmussen and SurveyUSA. Still, I’m not going to declare that Elway is “right” and the others are “wrong.” There is simply no way to know which pollsters have (statistical) bias until one can observe the performance against a number of actual elections. My preferred strategy is to take ’em all, and combine multiple polls that are close together in time, and hope any biases cancel.
A Monte Carlo analysis of just the current SurveyUSA poll (methods) suggests that, if an election were held now, Gregoire would have a 66.6% chance of winning and Rossi would have a 33.4% chance of winning. Here is the distribution of vote outcomes based on the polling information:
The more interesting analysis, however, includes all four of the polls taken in the last three weeks. This seems reasonable if we are allowed to assume that voter opinion has remained relatively static over these three weeks (i.e. no breaking scandals, “Macaca” moments, natural disasters, etc.)
The four pooled polls mentioned above give Gregoire 49.3% of the “votes” and Rossi 44.5% of the “votes”, with 6.2% undecided. There were 2,272 people surveyed who selected either Rossi or Gregoire. The Monte Carlo results suggests that Gregoire would win an election held now with a 95.9% probability and Rossi would win with a 4.1% probability. Here is the distribution of vote outcomes for the combined analysis:
Here are a couple of observations that back up these results. The last time Rossi led in a poll was in February. There have been 16 polls taken since then. One of those polls was a tie and Gregoire led in the other 15. Before that, one has to go back another seven polls, back to November 2006, before finding this poll in which Rossi led.
The take-home message is that (1) Gregoire has repeatedly held the lead in this race. It is highly unlikely that this has happened by chance (i.e. the lead is almost certainly real). (2) There has been very little movement in the polling numbers for Rossi or Gregroire over the last 1.5 years. (3) If the non-movement continues, Gregoire will almost certainly win a second term.
When parishioners in far flung Catholic dioceses from Portland to Denver to Toledo to Newark and points in between pass around the collection plate on Sundays, I suppose they expect their charitable donations to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and care for the sick—or at the very least pay off the hundreds of millions of dollars of legal settlements stemming from decades of covering up child sexual abuse on the part of priests. But I’m guessing very few of the faithful expect their charitable donations to end up buying TV ads opposing a ballot initiative here in Washington state.
But that’s exactly what is happening as the Catholic Church has started pouring in hundreds of thousands of dollars from dioceses and archdioceses across the nation to fight I-1000, Washington’s Death with Dignity initiative modeled on the very successful measure in neighboring Oregon. In fact, over the last few weeks alone, I-1000’s opponents have hauled in over $70,000 from out-of-state dioceses, five of which are involved in a total of 28 criminal investigations, 86 civil lawsuits and 56 additional accusations of child abuse. And if history is any indication, the bulk of the no campaign’s money will ultimately come from the Catholic Church, as it has in nearly every other state where this issue has come before voters.
I fully appreciate that the Catholic Church is consistent on issues concerning life, opposing capital punishment as vocally as it opposes abortion and measures like I-1000, and they certainly have every right to spend their money on behalf of the causes that they support. But parishioners also have a right to know how their money is being spent, and I bet if they knew that some of it was being used to buy political ads in faraway Washington state, those collection plates might not fill up quite as readily.
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