HorsesAss.Org

Is it time for a 20 cent “rag fee”…?

by — ,

Surprisingly, the Seattle Times comes out in favor of the “annoying” 20 cent bag fee the city has proposed:

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ environmentally friendly green fee on paper and plastic garbage bags will be a hassle for consumers who participate — and an annoying new tax for consumers who don’t. Yet, on balance, the plan is worth the effort.

[…] The mayor goes further by including the fee on paper bags, arguing it takes a lot of energy and resources to make paper bags as well. Might as well make the move on both kinds of bags.

Huh.  Again, not taking a position on the bag fee (worthwhile goal, intrusive and irritating way of accomplishing it), I must say that I don’t often see many paper grocery bags littering our streets, parks and sidewalks.  Newspapers, yes… paper bags, no.  Hmm.

Still, no need for a government mandate to force this messy clean up, as judging from their steadily declining circulation, our local dailies have clearly embraced an innovative voluntary program that more than adequately incentivizes readers to reduce consumption.

The subtleties of political payback

by — ,

The Stranger’s Eli Sanders slogs today about Gov. Gregoire’s last minute endorsement of Barack Obama, just before the WA caucuses…

It was a coup for Obama and smart politics for Gregoire. […] It also established an IOU with the Obama campaign, one they’re paying back—or beginning to pay back—this week. It may be too cynical to cast this as a purely financial transaction, but if you’re wondering how much Gregoire’s endorsement was worth to the Obama campaign the answer, so far, seems to be about $320,000.

Political payback? Huh. Okay, maybe. I suppose that’s how this game is played.

But if a funder with a nominee’s wife is payback for a crucial endorsement from a sitting governor, it makes you wonder what the hell Dave Reichert did to earn payback funders from Tom Delay, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, George Bush, Laura Bush, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani?

But then, Reichert is a conscience driven independent, so I guess it’s inappropriate to ask that question.

Public lands slip sliding away

by — ,

One of the races I haven’t paid nearly enough attention to this election season is Peter Goldmark’s incredibly strong challenge of two-term Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland (R-Weyerhaeuser).

Goldmark is a farmer, rancher, molecular biology PHD, and former state Agriculture Director and WSU regent, who is not only exceptionally well qualified (and simply a great guy) but a rare opportunity for folks on the other side of the mountains to put one of their own in a statewide elected office. Sutherland, on the other hand, has proven himself to be a lax manager who has clearly sided with timber and mining interests over those of us ordinary citizens who actually own the public lands in his charge.

Sutherland’s failure to effectively manage public lands and protect public resources and public safety was highlighted last December, when torrential rains led to over 730 landslides in the Upper Chehalis Basin alone, that wiped out roads, destroyed homes and contributed to flooding that caused more than $57 million in property damage in Lewis County. And as the Seattle Times reports in an extensive multi-part investigative series, 30% of the landslides were produced from steep sites that had been clearcut without proper oversight from Sutherland’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

State forestry rules empower the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to restrict logging on unstable slopes when landslides could put public resources or public safety at risk.

But in Little Mill Creek and elsewhere in the Upper Chehalis basin, a Seattle Times investigation found that Weyerhaeuser frequently clear-cut on unstable slopes, with scant oversight from the state geologists who are supposed to help watchdog the timber industry.

As Boistfort Valley farmer David Fenn told the Times while standing on his debris covered property,

“Well, look in the field. They get to cut trees and make money, and I get to clean up their mess.

Of course, heavy rains cause landslides, so some of this type of damage is always inevitable in our region, but the state has developed strict rules on approving clear cuts on unstable slopes… rules that DNR apparently has not been enforcing for years. Since 2002 thousands of cuts have been approved without timber companies filing geological reports, and without DNR geologists surveying the sites on their own. And many of these cuts occurred on sites which prior surveys had already determined to be highly unstable, this despite the fact that both the science and the rules are absolutely clear.

David Montgomery, a University of Washington geomorphology professor who reviewed The Seattle Times’ findings, believes Weyerhaeuser underestimated the risks of clear-cutting.

He notes that several logged areas included features specifically defined in state rules as potentially unstable.

Logging these areas removes trees that help intercept the rain and bind the soil. Decades of studies, which have been used to help shape state forest-practice rules, show logging such slopes can increase the number and size of slides.

Montgomery wrote some of those studies. His blunt assessments of the connection between logging and landslides have sometimes rankled state and industry officials.

“If the policy is not to increase landsliding, then they have no business cutting on some of these slopes,” Montgomery said. “There is not a mechanistic model on this planet that would predict cutting down those trees would do anything other than reduce stability. The only question is how much.”

And it’s not just private land owners and mud-clogged municipal water companies who have been forced to clean up DNR’s mess at great expense. As the Times reports today in Part II of their series, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) is at wits end attempting to watchdog the DNR watchdogs at proposed logging sites near state roads, often finding itself in the position of forcing DNR to enforce its own rules.

In March, Weyerhaeuser sought permits to cut 49 acres along another site above Highway 101 in Grays Harbor County. State foresters once again noted unstable slopes in an office checklist. But they didn’t ask for a geological review until Eric Bilderback, a state Transportation geologist, relayed his concerns.

A Weyerhaeuser geologist then agreed to withdraw 5 acres that Bilderback cited as potentially unstable.

“We shouldn’t always have to look over the shoulder of everyone else,” Bilderback said. “It’s kind of frustrating that this is not catching on.”

Frustrating yes, and expensive too, with a recent landslide along one portion of Highway 107 alone costing taxpayers over $3 million in repairs and maintenance.

As for Sutherland, he seems pretty nonplussed by the controversy:

“Do we have enough oversight?” Sutherland said. “With the folks available, with the data available. With the technology available. My answer would be yes, we do. Can we improve it? Definitely.”

I agree, we definitely can improve DNR oversight, but things have only gotten worse under Sutherland’s eight years of mismanagement, not better. So if we really want a Commissioner who is willing and able to enforce DNR’s regulations, and protect both public resources and public safety, it is time to elect Peter Goldmark.

The terrorist next door?

by — ,

The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to an ACLU tally based on the government’s own reported numbers.

“Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other `suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon.”

That’s one million names, but many times that the number of people this pointlessly excessive list routinely sweeps up in our nation’s Bushian paranoia. I happen to know one of the thousands of Robert Johnsons on the list, and he has indeed been taken aside by airport security for extra interrogation and inspection. (Though it could have just been his graying hippy ponytail that sparked their suspicion.)

So what exactly is the point of a terrorist watch list that nearly everybody is on? As I once joked after trolls gloated about the consequences I’d suffer for writing a satirical post in response to the clearly bogus plot to blow up JFK Airport… if one really wants to shut down air traffic out of New York City, just put “David Goldstein” on the terrorist watch list.

At one million strong, this list is either inaccurate and overly broad to the point of being useless… or we as a nation need to do some serious introspection about how we’ve managed to piss off so many people to the point where over one million domestic air travelers have dedicated their lives to murdering American civilians. (Though perhaps, domestic air travel itself these days is motive enough.)

UPDATE:
David Cohen emails to say:

You wrote today, “if one really wants to shut down air traffic out of New York City, just put “David Goldstein” on the terrorist watch list.”  Well, the name “David Cohen” is already on the list.  It doesn’t lead to extra searches any more–now they just check my ID to verify that my birthdate doesn’t match the one they’re looking for–but I can never check in electronically any more.  If I try to print a boarding pass at home or even use one of the kiosks at the airport, the screen tells me to slowly back away and put my hands on top of my… well, I have to wait in line at the ticketing area and have my identity checked out.  I wonder how many other David Cohens have to put up with the same thing; and I really pity the ones who share a birthday with the fellow they’re hoping to catch.  Isn’t it surreal?  “David Cohen.”  We’re all terrorists now.

Finding the right enemy

by — ,

Check out the cover that will adorn Monday’s The New Yorker:

New Yorker Cover

The Politico reports:

[Obama] Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

Not to be outdone…

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

For crying out-fucking-loud! This is political correctness gone amuck on the part of both campaigns. The caricature is clearly satire, and done in the best tradition of editorial cartooning. It mocks those who are truly tasteless offensive and, frankly, un-American: those right-wing retards who actually spread the “Obama is a radical Muslim who hates our freedoms and his wife is an angry psychopath who hates America” bullshit.

You know, Wingnut retards like the Clark County Republican Party and the Island County Republican Party.

If you want to express outrage (or even take mild offense), go after the assholes who disseminate such lies…not a magazine using satire to belittle them.

Update: The artist who drew the cover (Barry Blitt) responds.

iPhoneless in Seattle

by — ,

My old cell phone is slowly dying, I’m already an AT&T customer, and (usable) mobile Internet anywhere is almost a must have feature for somebody who does what I do.  So I really want an iPhone.

But I’m not crazy.

There was no way I was going to wait in a line on Friday for something I could walk right in and purchase the next day, but the lines at the various Seattle area Apple stores don’t seem to have shortened over the weekend, even as they’ve gradually run out of the most popular models.  New supplies are scheduled to arrive daily, but in calling around to the various stores they all seem to expect the current iPhone mania to continue unabated for days to come.  Supply is apparently not an issue; they simply cannot sell and activate the phones fast enough to keep up with demand.

Amazing.

I suppose I’ll just have to make due for now with a phone that’s just phone.  But if any of you have scored a new iPhone please feel free to taunt me in the comment threads.

No plans for this afternoon?

by — ,

Go to this:

Join Friends of Seattle for a Celebration of Summer!

Now that summer is here, Friends of Seattle wants you to come out and play. We’re having a Summer Meet ‘n’ Greet to say thanks and to let you know what we’re up to in ’08.

And, with Friends of Seattle working to get the Pro Parks Levy on the 2008 ballot, we’re excited to celebrate in one of our exceptional City parks.

Need more reasons to come? We’ll have hot dogs and veggie dogs, it’s supposed to be 79 degrees and sunny, and it’s free! This is our way of saying thank you for your support.

Where: Golden Gardens Park , Shelter #2
When: Sunday, July 13th, 3:00-5:00 PM
Who: Members and non-members alike
Questions? Contact events@friendsofseattle.org

Hope to see you there!

“There is no Medical Marijuana law in Pierce County”

by — ,

A month ago, I briefly mentioned a visit I’d made to some medical marijuana patients near Tacoma who went through an arrest ordeal that was so over-the-top I felt compelled to follow up. Brad and Kristie Choate are a married couple who live in the Spanaway area. Brad, who is in his late 20s, lost his leg in a diving accident and Kristie, who is in her mid 40s, is partially disabled with a number of serious ailments. After I met with them and recorded an interview, I was told by a patient advocate not to write anything until they put something up online themselves. On Wednesday this week, that happened, as Kristie recounts what happened:

[Read more…]

Better than Hoover a mattress

by — ,

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

by — ,

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

by — ,

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

by — ,

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

by — ,

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?

by — ,

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.

Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?

Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!

Follow Goldy

[iire_social_icons]

HA Commenting Policy

It may be hard to believe from the vile nature of the threads, but yes, we have a commenting policy. Comments containing libel, copyright violations, spam, blatant sock puppetry, and deliberate off-topic trolling are all strictly prohibited, and may be deleted on an entirely arbitrary, sporadic, and selective basis. And repeat offenders may be banned! This is my blog. Life isn’t fair.