HorsesAss.Org

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.

How useless and dysfunctional does a political entity have to be in order to have a 9% approval rating?

This useless and dysfunctional.

More here.

And here:

And hopefully, the fact that Obama voted for this bill dispels any false notions about his ability to transcend traditional politics. He may be the best empty suit running this year, but he’s still an empty suit.

Danny Westneat kinda-sorta supports the city’s efforts to limit the use of plastic grocery bags…

It’s well-meaning. We chuck too much plastic.

… but Danny chafes at what’s necessary to enforce a new ordinance…

Don’t you think do-gooder Seattle could reduce its bag usage without inspectors? Tax auditors? A small, but new, layer of bureaucracy?

I dunno… maybe. I suppose national supermarket giants Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, along with other chains and hundreds of local retailers might come to the table and work out a viable voluntary plan with the city, and I guess that might be preferable to mandating a 20-cent bag fee. But they haven’t yet, and citing Danny’s Australian example, I don’t see what incentive they would have to do so in the absence of the city threatening to act unilaterally:

There the government and the grocery association hatched a deal to get rid of plastic bags — voluntarily. According to a report for Seattle by Herrera Consultants, 90 percent of big Aussie retailers signed up — in part because if they didn’t, the government threatened a more top-down program. Much like the one we’re about to do here.

Could there be better alternatives to addressing the problem, and would the mayor and the council consider them? Sure. But as of now the industry has yet to step forward, preferring instead to relentlessly complain about the economic impact and consumer inconvenience, while hoping the bag fee proposal ultimately collapses under its own weight.

See, that’s the catch with the kind of voluntary program that Danny prefers: it requires volunteers. So if we want to solve this problem and avoid the expense and inconvenience of a bag fee, it’s time for all those do-gooders in Seattle’s grocery industry to step up and offer a viable plan of their own.

John McCain… he’s such a funny guy.

I’m so glad I don’t have to defend that thing anymore:

Rural property owners fighting a King County law that forbids them from clearing or grading large parts of their land won a big victory in the state Court of Appeals on Monday.

[…]

A three-judge panel ruled that the ordinance — part of a package of laws aimed at protecting streams and other “critical areas” — is an indirect but illegal “tax, fee, or charge” on development. The Citizens’ Alliance for Property Rights and five landowners sued to overturn the law.

Way back when, I lived in the sticks. Most folks I knew were opposed to this on the principle of the thing. They didn’t want to develop their property, but they didn’t want someone telling them they couldn’t.

So for all you tire-burning, car battery dumping-in-the-river, bologna-frying honkeys, this one’s for you:

My friends at Microsoft are understandably aquiver over renewed possibilities of a Yahoo takeover, what with billionaire investor Carl Icahn pushing to replace the Internet search company’s board of directors. But while they’re at it, they might want to spend a little time focusing on their core business, where Mac sales have recently surged 32 percent year-over-year, compared to just 12.2 percent for the Windows-dominated industry as a whole…

Ironically, however, it may be Microsoft driving customers into Apple’s hands. Ongoing jitters regarding bugs and performance in Windows Vista a year and a half after its launch are believed to be driving would-be Windows upgrade customers towards Macs, which are considered by the analyst to be less problematic, simpler, and more secure.

“Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X,” Bachman says. “Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers.”

Personally, I’ve always been a Mac partisan, but our region does rely on Microsoft’s continued success to provide an awful lot of jobs, so I’m hoping their response goes deeper than just an ad campaign. I’m just sayin’…

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We begin at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E, but some of us will be there early for Dinner.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Retired Gen. Wes Clark (former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe) has emailed his rather substantial list, telling his supporters that “when one of our own is down, we have to have their back,” and urging them to contribute to Darcy Burner in the wake of her devastating house fire. He’s even set up a new Act Blue page for the purpose.

At this difficult time, Darcy needs to focus on her family as they work to get their lives back in order. That’s what she should be doing — what any of us would do after a similar tragedy.But in Darcy’s case, that means she can’t fundraise, she can’t campaign. And in an election as important and close as hers will be, every day she’s off the campaign trail puts her at a disadvantage. She needs our help.

[…] Darcy is in a tight race and represents one of our best pickup opportunities in the House. She’s going to be an advocate to bring our troops home from Iraq. She’s going to stand strong to fight warrantless wiretapping and protect the Constitution.We can’t let this tragedy stop us from adding Darcy’s voice to Congress. Though Darcy says she lost “just stuff,” she needs time with her family now.

Help me give Darcy the time she needs. Every donation provides Darcy with more time to put down the phone for fundraising and focus on her family. Contribute to Darcy’s campaign today!

You can read the full text of the email on the WesPAC website. And if Gen. Clark has Darcy’s back, shouldn’t you too? Please give today.

A birdy tells me that the Seattle Times is apparently asking a number of candidates to release their tax returns, as has CrossCut’s Austin Jenkins of Gov. Chris Gregoire and Dino Rossi. Considering the press gave Gregoire zero credit for releasing her returns in 2004, while Rossi refused, it’s hard to see why any candidate would be motivated to comply with the request this time around.

But it also strikes me as a bit hypocritical that journalists, who justifiably hold themselves up as essential elements of our democracy, should righteously demand disclosure of others that they don’t demand of themselves. I suppose I might support strengthening our state disclosure statutes so that they actually require candidates to release their tax returns, but currently… they don’t. So if journalists are going to demand that politicians expose their personal finances to greater scrutiny than required by law, I suggest they lead by example.

So here’s my offer: if Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen releases his 2007 tax return, I’ll release mine, and, I’ll join him in publicly demanding that Dino Rossi release his.

Of course, Rossi ain’t gonna, ’cause he obviously has something to hide. But at least with our returns on the table, Frank and I can mock Rossi in good conscience for his lack of openness.

When Tim Eyman files an new initiative, his buddy in the AG’s office, Jim Pharris, pretty much lets Tim write the ballot title himself, and that’s how the initiative is generally described in the press, because you know, it’s printed on the ballot that way, and you wouldn’t want to confuse voters.  But when hundreds of volunteers work for months to get a grassroots initiative on the ballot, the ballot title suddenly isn’t good enough for the style-setters at the AP.

The AP has decided to refer to I-1000 as the “assisted suicide” measure, which not only is the term everybody knows polls the absolute worst, it is also completely inaccurate.  And confusing, because there is no “assisted suicide” measure on the ballot.  I-1000, which backers refer to as the “Death with Dignity” initiative, will appear on the ballot with the following title:

Ballot Title
Initiative Measure No. 1000 concerns allowing certain terminally ill competent adults to obtain lethal prescriptions.

This measure would permit terminally ill, competent, adult Washington residents, who are medically predicted to have six months or less to live, to request and self-administer lethal medication prescribed by a physician. Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Opponents wanted the ballot title to contain the phrase “assisted suicide” but a judge determined the wording would be intentionally pejorative, which I can only assume is why the AP decided to use it.  And since the AP sets the standard for most other news organizations in the state, that’s how this measure is going to be described to voters.  It’s like handing the measure’s opponents a million bucks in free advertising, and the folks at the AP know it.

Impartial, fair and balanced objectivity… my ass.

Aaron Reardon wants to join Ron Sims in the “Politicians who will never become Governor” club:

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Edmonds City Councilwoman Deanna Dawson, who both serve on the transit board, said they oppose the 12-year plan, partly because it doesn’t bring light rail to Snohomish County.

“I will vote no on it,” Reardon said. “I will actively campaign against it.”

This is why “regionalism” will always fail. King County voters want transit and are willing to tax themselves to get more of it. The nature of Sound Transit’s governance structure makes it necessary to seek Reardon and Dawson’s approval for King County voters to tax themselves for transit. The problem is, the Seattle sub area doesn’t have the tax capacity to build enough light rail to reach their sub area to the north. So unless Snohomish County wants to spend their money building light rail outside their sub area, they won’t get light rail soon.

This highlights the flaws of sub area equity. Expensive projects are slowed because we don’t have flexibility to spend money where it should be spent. Imagine if a massive freeway overpass project in Yakima couldn’t be built because their taxing authority was too narrow? They wouldn’t stand for it, and they would expect, as they always have expected, that parts of the state that pay more in transportation taxes than they receive (hello city folks!) would subsidize their overpass. We do this in our Department of Highways, but it’s impossible to do when paying for transit. This makes no sense.

Starry-eyed regionalists in the legislature (hi Rep. Deb Eddy!) who want to dilute King County’s urban transit-loving majorities should watch Aaron Reardon in action. This guy really knows how to throw the brakes on.

[H/T Seattle Transit Blog]

$100,000. That’s how much we raised for Darcy Burner last week via Act Blue alone, much of it coming over a 48 hour period. Wow. Simply wow.

That’s roughly equivalent to twenty days of early July fundraising, and it has lifted a huge burden off Darcy’s shoulders as she’s taken time off from her grueling campaign schedule to tend to herself and her family after losing their house in a fire. Now, thanks to her many friends online, Darcy can devote the time she needs to getting her life back in order without giving up any ground to Dave Reichert.

So a huge thanks to the dozens of blogs nationwide who joined in this effort, and to the thousands of members of our broader netroots community for this extraordinary show of affection and support. And of course, if you haven’t already given, it’s never to late to help buy Darcy a little extra time.