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Better than Hoover a mattress

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average continued its bearish slide, closing this week at 11,100, near a two-year low, and inching ever downward toward the 10,587 mark where the market stood the day President Bush was inaugurated. For those who are keeping score, that’s a seven and a half year return of 4.8%, or only 0.65% annually.

To put that in perspective, had you invested $10,000 on inauguration day in an index fund that tracked the DJIA, it would be worth $8,568 today in inflation-adjusted 2001 dollars, compared to only $8,175 had you simply stuffed that money in a mattress.

What with no bottom in sight to the housing, banking, automotive and other industries, and one of the largest bank failures in US history making headlines yesterday, that mattress is beginning to look like a pretty savvy investment. Our Republican administration on the other hand… not so much.

Senator Murray Responds

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For the record, here’s the relevant portion of the form letter I got today in response to this. For what it’s worth, she voted the right way on the bill and on all the amendments.

As you may know, H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, is the most comprehensive overhaul to the nation’s electronic surveillance laws in thirty years. The bill also provides retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the president’s warrantless wiretapping program. Though it was an improvement over previous legislation in many ways, H.R. 6304 offered blanket retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have illegally allowed the government to spy on innocent Americans, and I voted against it.

New poll in the Gregoire—Rossi race

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Rasmussen has just released their July poll for the Washington state gubernatorial race. The poll of 500 people shows Governor Christine Gregoire (D) leading Dino Rossi (GOP-Party) 49% to 43%.

(Oddly enough, I was one of the 500 randomly selected Washington state voters who was called and chose to participate in this poll.)

The +6% spread in this poll shows the race tightening slightly from the +9% found in the late June Elway poll, but better than the +3.5% found in an early June SurveyUSA poll, and on par with the +7% found in last month’s (early June) Rasmussen poll.

As usual, I use a Monte Carlo analysis to estimate the probability that Gregoire would win if the election were held now. I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 500 voters each, where each person had a 49% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 43% chance of voting for Rossi and a 8% chance of voting for neither.

Gregoire won 900,804 of the simulated elections and Rossi won 90,599 times. This suggests that Gregoire has something like a 90.9% chance of beating Rossi (if the election were held now) and Rossi has a 9.1% probability of winning. A statistician would point out that Gregoire’s lead in this poll is within the margin of error (i.e. her probability of winning is less than 95%).

Here is a plot showing the distribution of votes in the million elections:

Rasmussen Gregoire--Rossi July poll

Blue bars are wins for Gregoire and red bars are Rossi wins.

This current poll makes this the ninth consecutive poll in which Gregoire has led Rossi. It is highly unlikely that Gregoire’s lead is due to chance (sampling error).

Rasmussen also polled a head-to-head match-up between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. Obama lead McCain 48% to 39%. Tomorrow I’ll provide my usual Monte Carlo analysis of the presidential election that incorporates the new Rasmussen poll.

It can’t happen here

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More signature fraud in Oregon:

Among their many examples: use of carbon paper to transfer signatures from one petition signature sheet to another, the apparent use of “writing circles” in which groups gather to manufacture signatures, and scores of signature sheets in which the address and printed name of the purported signer are written in a different hand from the signature.

So what’s the difference between Oregon and Washington that accounts for the annual signature fraud crime spree down there while there’s nary a whisper of fraud up here? Um, nobody’s looking for it here.

DOT chief to vote no on Sound Transit

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Word is that state Secretary of Transportation Paula Hammond is planning to vote against putting a revised Sound Transit rail proposal on the November ballot. Hammond reports directly to Gov. Chris Gregoire, and is thus her surrogate on the Sound Transit board.

Gee, I dunno, sure sounds to me like Gregoire is going against the interests of her base… not necessarily a smart political move if she wants to pump up her margins in the Seattle metro area.

UPDATE:
What can you do?  ST board members and staffers will be on both KUOW and KIRO this afternoon, and they need to hear from you that you want rail now. The anti-rail camp is afraid to put this on the ballot in 2008 because they are afraid it will pass.  And should we not get a proposal this year, there very well may not be an ST to run one by 2009.

Did McKenna intentionally fail to request a stay?

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Yesterday I accused state Attorney General Rob McKenna of negligently putting the legitimacy of our entire 2008 election at risk—an assessment, I’ve been advised, that may have been too harsh… given that Secretary of State Sam Reed, perhaps, may in fact be equally culpable.

Perhaps. But first a little background on the case itself, and the legal rules at play.

As has been explained to me by actual attorneys, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure clearly state that an injunction issued by a district court is not automatically stayed upon successful appeal; in fact, the rules require that a party with standing must explicitly request the district court (or the Circuit Court of Appeals) to dispose of or modify the injunction. And as has been previously noted, since the state has yet to ask either court to stay or modify the permanent injunction barring implementation of the top two primary, the existing court order remains legally in force.

So why, after an apparent victory before the Supreme Court, did state attorneys not take the obvious step of asking the lower courts to modify the existing injunction so as to allow Sec. Reed’s headlong implementation of the top two primary? Why not attempt to clear this up at the outset, when they could?

As I suggested in my previous post, it could have just been a monumental mistake: either McKenna simply forgot there was an injunction, or given his utter lack of prior courtroom experience, he just doesn’t quite get how these oh so technical court order thingies work. And, well, either explanation would be pretty damn embarrassing.

Or… perhaps state attorneys intentionally failed to ask the court to modify the injunction… because they were afraid it wouldn’t?

Attorneys familiar with the case have pointed out that both Judge Zilly and the 9th Circuit have expressly noted in their opinions that their rulings were not based on all the issues before them, a position echoed by the Supreme Court, which merely ruled on the facial aspect of the appeal while remanding the other issues back to the lower courts. Just because the Supremes rejected the single basis on which the injunction was initially granted, doesn’t mean there aren’t other grounds to support one, and as Judge Zilly expressly indicated in this week’s order, the case, as far as he is concerned, is still pending, barring a mandate from the 9th Circuit to dispose of it.

The Seattle Times editorial board’s absolute confidence notwithstanding, the appeal has clearly yet to run its legal course, and even if the courts were to decide to modify the injunction, that does not necessarily mean it simply goes away. The existing permanent injunction was issued in place of a requested preliminary injunction, and had a stay been requested the court might very well have decided to replace the former with the latter, at least for the time being.

So if McKenna and Reed were really convinced this case was over, as they publicly stated at the time, the question reporters should be asking them is, why didn’t they just dot their i’s and cross their t’s by asking Judge Zilly to modify his injunction way back in March? Was this an inexcusable legal brain-fart, as I first suggested? Or, was it perhaps a calculated legal bluff intended to force implementation of a top two primary in 2008, in willful violation of a standing court order?

I’m not sure which is the more disturbing scenario: that our Attorney General doesn’t understand the legal basics of court orders… or that he and the Secretary of State have so little respect for them? But then, that’s the sort of extralegal gamesmanship we’ve come to expect from Republicans in the Age of Bush, so no wonder our local media seem so uncurious about the circumstances that have led us to the precipice of an electoral disaster. You’d think some journalist might ask our AG—the guy they keep pumping up as the good Republican—why he never bothered to ask the court to lift the injunction, but then like McKenna and Reed, perhaps our press too is afraid of the answer they might get?

This is not, as the editorialists would have you believe, a question of whether the top two is good policy, or whether the voters deserve to get the primary system they approved by initiative, or even whether the Secretary of State might ultimately prevail in court. This is a question of the rule of law, and why our state Attorney General and Secretary of State are unable or unwilling to following it. The questions reporters should be asking Rob McKenna are why did you fail to request a stay and what was the legal advice you gave Sam Reed? And they should keep asking those questions until “Mr. Sunshine” gives them a straight answer, attorney-client privilege be damned.

If indeed this was a legal gamble rather than a catastrophic blunder, my guess is that the bluff will ultimately pay off, as it’s nearly impossible to scrap the top two at this late stage, and I can’t imagine the court being willing to allow this election to fall into legal limbo. But who knows? McKenna and Reed have just publicly dissed a federal judge, arrogantly dismissing a valid court order as a mere “technicality,” and if I were Zilly it would be hard to resist the urge to allow McKenna and Reed to wallow in the dire consequences of their own ignorance of and/or disrespect for the law.

Friday Morning Links

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Could you imagine the shrieking if any Democrat in this country did what Karl Rove did yesterday?

This is why the Taliban is coming back in Afghanistan.

Alabama’s strongly anti-gay Attorney General (the guy who was ridiculed for trying to ban sex toys) was caught being gay.

The Seattle PI has printed two good editorials on the upcoming Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment vote that would prevent Attorney General Rob McKenna from receiving federal assistance in arresting the state’s registered medical marijuana patients.

I found the dumbest anti-pot column I’ve seen all year. At the other end of the spectrum, the Swiss may move to full legalization this year.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is still unsolved.

Historic landmark, my ass!

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I began this week serving on Jury duty at the King County Superior court in downtown Seattle. At lunch time, I made a beeline to Ivars on the waterfront for some fast, delicious, and artery clogging seafood as only Ivars can make it.

To get there from the courthouse, I have to pass under the monstrosity known as the Alaska Way Viaduct—a noisy, ugly mass of concrete and steel that sits just east of the waterfront. On this beautiful Monday I ate my fish and chips in a little park a couple of blocks due south of Ivars, while enjoying the spectacular view and, of course, bathed in the deafening sound of traffic on the Viaduct.

I don’t spend a lot of time in downtown Seattle, so maybe I just don’t “get it.” But to me, the Viaduct completely and utterly destroyed any sense of beauty and serenity that might otherwise be found on the spectacular Seattle waterfront. Really…it stinks.

Apparently not everyone shares my opinion:

The 2.2-mile viaduct is viewed by many as an aging waterfront misfit but was considered unique and “very clever” as a structure and a highway bypass when it was opened in 1953. That makes it ‘historically significant,’ ” said Art Skolnik, a land use consultant.

Skolnik, a longtime advocate of repairing and preserving the viaduct, said he’ll ask the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation to on Friday nominate the viaduct for placement on the National Register of Historic Places.

Historically significant my ass! It’s an ugly, dirty, noisy blemish on the landscape. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anything more disturbingly invasive, or more destructive of the potential for the Seattle waterfront, aside from, say, using the space to store dead bodies or nuclear waste (maybe…I mean, nuclear waste is much quieter).

At the time it was opened “it was a big solution to a difficult problem,” Skolnik said. “Back then it was cheered.”

…until people actually thought about being pedestrians on the waterfront!

We can learn from our mistakes. Tear the fucking thing down! And vow to never, EVER make that mistake again!

Why won’t Dino Rossi tell the BIAW to stop dissing Seattle?

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As reported by KXLY yesterday, the party responsible for those mysterious “Dino Rossi, Don’t Let Seattle Steal This Election” signs is none other than (surprise) the BIAW! The Orca-killing association hopes to divide the state by putting up 61 billboards throughout Eastern Washington at a total cost of $168,000.

Jill Strait, a spokesperson for Rossi’s campaign, said this is the first time they’ve heard about the billboards…

… you know, except for three weeks ago, when she spoke to Postman about the signs. But other than that, this is absolutely the first time she’s ever heard anything about it. Really. You can trust her on this.

As for the signs themselves, they’re not proving universally popular with Eastern Washington residents, as evidenced by the rather emphatic graffiti gracing this sign in Winthrop:

So… how badly did Rob McKenna fuck up?

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Lost in all the news coverage and self-righteous editorializing over the most recent misstep in Washington’s drunken stagger toward a “top two” primary, is what could amount to the most monumental legal fuck up in state history… one which puts the legitimacy of our entire 2008 election in jeopardy.

Sure, Secretary of State Sam Reed deserves some of the blame for rushing to implement top two while a permanent injunction was still in place, but ultimately it is Attorney General Rob McKenna’s responsibility for signing off on Reed’s overeagerness without having first dotted and crossed all the legal i’s and t’s in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s recent decision.

“The Supreme Court order speaks for itself,” [Deputy Solicitor General James] Pharris said. “It would just be a technicality to go back and have that order dissolved now.”

No, the Supreme Court order does not speak for itself — under federal rules a “permanent” injunction remains in place until it is dissolved, and until that time, conducting a top two primary remains a violation of a valid court order. And if Pharris and McKenna were doing their jobs (competently) there would be no need to “go back” and address a so-called “technicality” just one month before the primary.

See, this is what you get when you elect an Attorney General who has never really been a practicing attorney. To date, McKenna and his office have never asked Judge Zilly to modify, dissolve or remove his injunction; they either plum forgot there even was an injunction, or simply do not know how court orders work. (HINT: They are orders, and as such one must comply with them until the court or a higher court says differently.)

For the AG’s office to dismiss a standing court order as “a technicality” is downright laughable coming from practitioners of a profession built entirely on technicalities. That’s what our legal system is: codified technicalities. Hell, rapists sometimes get off on technicalities, and this technicality has the potential to screw every voter in the state.

And how screwed could the state be? HA regular Richard Pope has outlined a pretty devastating worst case scenario in a letter to the Secretary of State’s office… devastating, that is, if you are a minor party candidate like Dino Rossi, seeking a prominent (or any) spot on the November ballot. Dismiss it as hyperbole if you want, but there are hundreds of races on the ballot throughout the state, and should the top two primary proceed in violation of a standing court order, Pope’s analysis would provide a legal basis for discontented voters to contest every single one of them. That’s the sort of electoral chaos to which McKenna and Reed’s monumental fuckup could potentially lead.

I wouldn’t be surprised, given what’s at stake, if Judge Zilly expedites these matters ahead of our August primary, but that doesn’t excuse McKenna for failing to do his job in a timely and professional manner. Our state’s editorialists miss the mark by attacking the parties and their attorneys for the precarious legal limbo in which we now find ourselves, when it is in fact their beloved media darling, Rob McKenna, who is to blame for an egregious error that is nothing short of legal malpractice.

Podcasting Liberally – July 8th Edition

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The episode begins with an air of disappointment and disgust as the panel anticipates today’s Senate FISA/Telco-immunity bill vote. The topic changes mid-stream to Plum Creek and the raping of the Montana environment. From there, they take up rural land use issues in Washington. The panel revisits the assisted suicide death with dignity initiative, and then switches tracks to a discussion of light rail. Next they reveal the secrets behind the not secret ballot currently in use in some Washington state counties.

This week Goldy was joined by HorsesAss’ and EFFin’ Unsound’s Carl Ballard and HorsesAss’ (and now Slog’s) blogger Will, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, DailyKos uber-blogger Joan McCarter (mcjoan), and Mr. Tim White.

The show is 61:31, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_july_8_2008.mp3]

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

What’s Dino got to hide?

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You know, watching this video, I just couldn’t help but be reminded that Italian mobsters are secretive too. I sure hope nobody is offended by that obvious connection.

UPDATE:
YouTube’s pulled the video, I assume due to some copyright complaint concerning the music.  Gee, that was fast.  Shows you just how secretive the Rossi folks are, that they don’t even want you to see how secretive they are.

“No one has any faith in the Air Force”

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The Pentagon announced today that it will rebid the controversial Air Force refueling tanker contract, with a decision coming before the end of the year.  Notice how I wrote that the “Pentagon” will rebid the contract, not the “Air Force”:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that his office — not the Air Force — will oversee the competition between Boeing and the team of Northrop and Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co.

The plan, which hands control to the Pentagon acquisition chief John Young and sets up a dedicated source-selection committee, shows that senior civilians at the Defense Department have lost confidence in the Air Force’s ability to manage the contract.

“I think it’s better,” said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash. “No one has any faith in the Air Force.

So to all those of you who vehemently defended the Airbus contract (you know who you are, Sen. McCain), don’t you feel a little foolish right about now?

It should also be noted that Sec. Gates has ties to our region, owning a vacation home on Orcas Island, and formerly serving on the board of directors of Bellevue based Vote Here Inc., and while I don’t really expect him to show Boeing an favoritism, his local connections couldn’t hurt.

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