And it’s Gov. Gregoire whose in the pocket of special interests? Yeah… right.
The BIAW alone has budgeted two to three million dollars this cycle toward electing Dino Rossi. (And if I have that number wrong, they are free to come right out and refute me.)
It’s been a hectic week or so for me, and one of the issues that’s fallen through the cracks has been the manufactured controversy over Tribal contributions to Gov. Chris Gregoire and the state Democratic Party in the wake of last year’s Spokane Tribe gambling compact. Writing in the Seattle P-I, reporter Chris McGann kicked off the recent brouhaha with a lede I would have sworn was penned by WSRP communications director Patrick Bell, if not for its coherence (and the lack of tell-tale food stains).
OLYMPIA — Gov. Chris Gregoire is benefiting from more than $650,000 in campaign contributions from Indian tribes that hit the jackpot in 2005 when she killed a gambling compact potentially worth more than $140 million a year to the state.
Yes, there are a few reporters who actually have a comprehensive understanding of Washington’s gambling industry and the state and federal statutes that govern it… but McGann clearly ain’t one of them. Indeed, apart from the TNT’s Peter Callaghan, no journalist has written more extensively or authoritatively on state gambling issues than, well, me, and so when I tell you that the spin that has dominated recent media coverage of this story is total bullshit, I do so backed up by a four-year history of writing on this subject that is both credible and dare I say, bipartisan in its criticism of both political parties.
I’ll address the issue of campaign contributions in a follow-up post, but in implying that the tribes “hit the jackpot” when Gov. Gregoire rejected the initial Spokane compact, McGann displayed zero understanding of the statutes governing the process, the political machinations surrounding negotiations, and the details of the compact itself. In fact, far from hitting the jackpot, Gregoire’s rejection of the 2005 compact was a huge blow to the ambitions of the entire tribal gaming industry, and an unexpected victory for those of us working to curb gambling expansion statewide.
Let’s be clear… the 2005 compact was the deal the Spokanes negotiated—these were the terms they wanted—and while it would have shared revenue with the state, it would have set in motion a massive expansion of gambling that would forever reshape the face of Washington. In exchange for revenue sharing the state gave up huge concessions, including 24-hour operations, no betting limits, casino credit, and an off-reservation casino. But as I wrote at the time:
… the most dramatic and dangerous concession was granting the Spokane Tribe rights to 7,500 slot machines… as many as 4000 at a single location. Under previous compacts, each tribe was limited to directly owning only 675 slot machines; via leasing agreements with other tribes, as many as 1500 could be placed at a single location. Spokane’s 7,500 slots would be a huge increase over the 18,000 slots currently in operation statewide.
And that was just the beginning. Under federal law, any terms we offered the Spokanes must also be made available to the other 27 recognized tribes, eventually leading to an exponential expansion of slot machines, and the creation of Las Vegas style casinos throughout the state, on and off reservation. The 2005 compact would have led to both a public health and a political disaster, and as I have done throughout my reporting on this subject, I never shied away from warning the governor about the potential consequences.
Whatever the intent, this is a slap in the face of voters who just last year, overwhelmingly rejected Initiative 892 and its flood of slot machines… and if the governor signs this compact, hurling us down a one way road towards unfettered casino gambling, there will be a price to pay at the polls.
Washington state is already suffering from an epidemic of problem gambling, with all the inherent social and financial costs… and the last thing we need is for our state and local governments to become addicted to gambling too. This compact would set a dangerous precedent that would be impossible to overturn. It is bad for families, and it is bad for the smaller, rural tribes who would be shut out of leasing agreements. It is bad for Washington state.
And we need to let Governor Gregoire know that if she signs this compact, it will be bad for her too.
Revenue sharing bad for Washington state? Don’t just take my word for it, listen to State Sen. Margarita Prentice (whose opponent, by the way, I support in the primary) echoing my analysis nearly three years later:
Tribal gaming is almost a billion-dollar industry in our state — all of it untaxed. Revenue sharing with the tribes could represent a potential new source of income for the state worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But in the end, revenue sharing is just a bad idea.
If the governor had approved the Spokanes’ compact as initially proposed, Pandora’s Box would have been thrown wide open. All other tribes would immediately insist on the same deal — including more allotted slot machines and the ability the operate casinos off their reservations.
There are currently around 17,000 slot machines in operation on tribal lands in our state. Can you imagine if all 28 tribes were suddenly allowed to operate 7,500 machines each instead of the current allotment of 675? The effect would be the most unprecedented explosion of gambling in our state’s history — when the public already has said time and again that enough is enough.
Plus, it would be very difficult for the state to regulate the gambling activities of the tribes when it’s also their financial partner.
To imply, as recent press coverage has, that tribal contributions to the Democrats are in any way a payoff for the governor’s rejection of the 2005 compact, is at best a gross misreading of the events, and at worst a deliberate distortion of the facts. The tribes were a signature away from an opportunity to earn billions of dollars in additional revenue, but as Sen. Prentice confirms, there was widespread bipartisan consensus at the time that the state should not get itself hooked on revenue sharing, and that the final Spokane compact should ultimately limit the potential for further gambling expansion, while restricting casinos to reservation lands. And that is what Gov. Gregoire ultimately (if imperfectly) achieved.
I say imperfect, because I am one of the few who publicly urged the governor to reject the 2007 compact as well, although its concessions ultimately proved far less damaging or inexcusable than the press coverage initially suggested. In January of 2007 I called the revised compact a “suckers bet,” warning that…
State Republicans sense the enormous political opportunity this proposed compact gives them, and they don’t even have to resort to lies, hate-mongering and obfuscations to make their point. So hot is the WSRP on this issue that they even made it a primary focus of a recent conference call with journalists and (mostly) right-wing bloggers.
I was so disturbed by the proposed compact that I actually invited Rep. Bruce Chandler (R-Granger) onto 710-KIRO and gave the ranking Republican on the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee some prime airtime in which to trash the governor. In fact, I wrote and spoke out so forcefully against the the compact that Gov. Gregoire’s Chief of Staff Tom Fitzsimmons called me up to explain the terms, answer my questions, and correct some of my misunderstandings. The result…? Perhaps the most lucid and detailed exposition on the Spokane compact you will find anywhere online or in print, a must read for anybody who honestly cares about knowing what this compact does and does not do. My conclusion:
When it comes to the number of facilities and authorized machines, the Spokanes demanded the same sort of deal negotiated by the Colvilles. Given the Spokanes’ favored nation status, the state really couldn’t do anything about that. But this authorization would be totally worthless to the Spokanes without a larger universe of slot machines from which to lease, so while nothing requires the state to bump up the allocation from 675 to 900, there’s a certain irrefutable logic to doing so.
[…] What the state gets from this is an end to the Spokanes’ illegal operations, relatively uniform compact terms across all 28 tribes — and assuming all the tribes seek the same deal — about $2.6 million a year in additional funding for problem gambling treatment and prevention programs.
I still urged the governor to reject the deal because I felt the state held the stronger hand, and could have negotiated a similar compact that did not include concessions like cash-fed slot machines and higher betting limits, but in the context of what might have happened, these complaints constitute a minor quibble. It was the 2005 compact that would have been a “jackpot” for tribal gaming interests, not its rejection. And given the mess she inherited, Gov. Gregoire has done about the best she could in keeping a lid on further gambling expansion.
As Sen. Prentice concludes:
The governor fixed a broken situation she inherited. She wisely rejected the agreement reached between the Gambling Commission and the Spokanes and sent both parties back to the drawing board.
[…] Any questions now being raised about the governor’s leadership role — after two legislative sessions with nary a peep, and right before the gubernatorial election — are not motivated by policy. They’re motivated by politics.
And any suggestion that tribal interests are rewarding the governor for her rejection of the lucrative 2005 Spokane compact, simply runs counter to both logic, and the facts.
It looks like the stock market isn’t the only market suffering under President Bush’s economic stewardship:
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies painted a bleak picture of the housing downturn, pegging it as possibly being “the worst in a generation” in its “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2008” report.
The study noted that housing starts, new-home sales and existing-home sales are at all-time lows since after World War II, while price declines and mortgage defaults are the worst on record.
I’m just sayin’.
Some month ago, when asked what kind of computer he used John McCain responded:
“Neither. I am an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.”
Now the McCain campaign has suggested that Grandpa McCain doesn’t use the computer at all:
…this morning at the Personal Democracy Forum conference, Mark Soohoo, speaking on behalf of the the Arizona senator’s Internet team, was asked whether McCain even uses a computer.
His response: “You don’t need to use a computer to know how it shapes the country.”
Really? The Republicans expect Americans to seriously consider a candidate that doesn’t use a computer?
Soohoo may be right that you don’t need to use a computer to understand its cultural and economic impact.
What bothers me is what this says about McCain’s intellectual curiosity—specifically, his lack thereof. Are we really going to elect into the most powerful office in the world, a man who shows no interest whatsoever in the most powerful product of human collective culture?
And haven’t we just experienced a painful lesson from electing a President who lacks any vestige of intellectual curiosity?
Yup, Dino Rossi’s refusal to identify himself as a “Republican” is so transparently ridiculous that even FOX News is calling his bullshit.
Rossi dismisses the criticism by claiming he used the GOP moniker four years ago (new campaign slogan: “Deceiving voters since 2004”), though that’s not how he identified himself in the voters pamphlet last time around. And if it’s the Democrats who think voters are stupid, as Rossi claims, it raises the question why he’d even bother with this weaselly charade in the first place?
Makes you wish Rossi were a straight shooter like Republican GOP Party unaffiliated Insurance Commissioner candidate Curtis Fackler, the chairman of the Spokane County Republican Party, who publicly frets about folks who “won’t vote for a Republican no matter what.”
“And we wanted to get around that,” he frankly told FOX News.
Huh. With voters so eager to reject Republicans these days, you’d think the party’s standard bearers might want to consider changing their policies, instead of just their party’s name.
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing virtually unchanged at 11,842 today, it is interesting to note that the index is now up a mere 8.8 percent over President Bush’s seven and a half years in office, or less than 1.2 percent annually. By comparison, the average annual returns for Republican and Democratic administrations has been 10.5 and 11.7 percent, respectively. Indeed, over the past century, only Herbert Hoover has presided over a worse stock market than our current pro-business president.
I’m just sayin’.
Gov. Chris Gregoire is up on Daily Kos again with another diary, this time exposing to a national audience cozy relationship between Dino Rossi and his Orca-killing buddies at the BIAW: “Obama and all Democrats face attacks from all directions.”
Each election year, we see more ads from these groups, generally negative attacks, and I have a feeling that 2008 is going to set records. It’s a safe bet that John McCain’s campaign, unable to compete with Sen. Barack Obama’s broad, grassroots support, will receive millions in support from 527 groups in this election.
In Washington state, my Republican opponent has already given the green light to his special interest friends. The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) is the most powerful special interest lobby in Washington. Despite their benign name, the BIAW’s tactics and policies are anything but.
The BIAW’s values don’t match up with the voters of Washington. As you can see here, here, and here, local bloggers agree. The BIAW has opposed cleaning up toxics in the Puget Sound, opposed fighting global warming and even opposed protecting orca whales. My opponent voted with them 99% of the time while he was a State Senator.
This special interest lobby is my opponent’s biggest backer, and has already spent spent $500,000 on radio attack ads that distort my record, and challenge my integrity as a governor and a mother – and it’s only June.
Please read the whole thing and take the time to recommend Gov. Gregoire’s diary; the longer we keep this in the recommended list, the louder her message.
Currently gracing the front page of HA, Darryl highlights a recent poll that shows Darcy Burner trailing Dave Reichert by six points, Lee accuses Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress of being “pretty pathetic” on protecting our Fourth Amendment rights, and Will shows some love to King County Councilman Larry Phillips, a local Democratic politician who I have nothing particularly against, but quite honestly, have nothing particularly for… especially in a potential face-off against Executive Ron Sims, a man I openly admire (if often disagree with.)
But then, that’s the sort of ideologically rigid, uncompromisingly partisan amen blogging you’ve come to expect from HA. I suppose you can just write it off as one three of those “rare occasions” when we dare to stray from party orthodoxy.
George Carlin, comedian, actor and hero of First Amendment advocates (and English language enthusiasts) everywhere, died yesterday at age 71.
Last week I wrote about my cat’s apparent near death experience at the hands jaws of the coyotes rumored to be inhabiting Seward Park.
Well, it’s no longer a rumor. Friday afternoon my daughter and I were walking our dog along the trails atop the park, taunting Feisty that the scent she was furiously sniffing was of the coyotes that had invaded her territory, when what should cross the path about 50 feet ahead of us, but a coyote. It stopped in the middle of the path, looked at us for a moment then scurried off into the woods.
I never doubted that there really were coyotes in the park, but I sure didn’t expect to see one, and right on cue, just a few minutes into our hike. It was about 50 pounds or so, maybe a little bigger than our dog, and damn beautiful.
I get mail from County Councilman Larry Phillips.
William-
Lately it seems that every place I go I am asked the same question: “Larry, you are running for King County Executive, aren’t you?” Whether it’s a small business owner, a Democratic precinct committee officer, a County employee, a teacher, or a doctor in a public health clinic, they all want to know if I will run for the County’s top post.
Today, they get their answer: I am announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to consider a run for King County Executive. This committee will provide me with an organized structure to not just talk with citizens, but to hear what they have to say about how King County can best serve their needs.
Running for County Executive is a big undertaking and one I do not take lightly. I have a deep respect for the incumbent, as he’s done many good things in King County, and I realize that it’s hard to move on. But 13 years in office – with an unprecedented fourth term on the horizon – is a long time. The times are changing, the problems are changing, and too often they are left unattended and without effective Executive leadership.
There are County concerns that have turned to problems and then to crises. Transportation, light rail, computer systems, animal control and now the budget. Police coverage, basic public health, jail services – you name it, it needs focused attention.
So to all of those who have asked me to run, I say, let’s see how broad a team we can build in the coming months. And once the will is there and we’re an established force to contend with, we’ll take the next steps.
Within weeks, we will launch “GoForItLarry.com” – a web site for your thoughts about why we need change and what you are willing to do about it. Go on the record, send a contribution, enlist your friends and address books, and help make the change we need.
With the new “Top Two” elections system, the opportunity presents itself even more – there’s plenty of room for two from the same party to run.
Now it’s up to the people who want new, effective leadership in the Office of King County Executive, the people who have asked me to run, and many, many more. And with your help, I will be adding to that already growing list everywhere I go.
If you have any questions, please contact Abbot Taylor at (206) 218-3108 or at GoForItLarry@mac.com. I hope to hear from you soon, and thanks for all you do.
Larry Phillips
It’s pretty clear that Ron Sims is bored in his current job.
He rarely shows up at Sound Transit board meetings, and when he does it’s to fight the expansion of light rail. When an independent consultant found animals at King County’s Animal Shelter wallowing in their own shit and piss, Sims lashed out. (When pressed by the County Council, he reversed himself.) After declaring that “the era of deficits is over”, King County faces a significant budget deficit this year. Sims isn’t entirely to blame, but for him to be proved wrong so soon is disappointing.
Ron Sims should have to defend his record during the course of a campaign. For that reason, I hope Phillips runs.
The Seattle Times editorial board today urges the state Utilities and Transportation Commission to “Block PSE sale,” arguing that the highly leveraged proposed buyout of Puget Sound Energy would be “hazardous to ratepayers.” And, well, I don’t disagree.
Why do this transaction? For shareholders, the answer is easy: They get $30 a share, in cash, immediately, for a stock that traded recently in the lower $20s, with the profit taxable at the 15 percent capital-gains rate.
For Puget’s CEO, Stephen Reynolds, who has options on 300,000 shares priced at $22.51, the attraction is obvious. He also gets a payment of $4.4 million from the acquirers, with the tax paid by them.
[…] And then there are the people who rely on Puget for their electricity and gas. As a result of this deal, they get a utility burdened with $1.4 billion in extra parent-company debt, a mortgage that buys the ratepayers nothing of value to them. And it is not a mortgage really, but a medium-term debt that will have to be refinanced a few years hence at an interest rate no one can now determine.
Last week I kinda-sorta debated uber-conservative Grover Norquist on the limits of governments, and it’s issues like this that really test the ideological purity of self-proclaimed free marketeers like Norquist and his ilk. No doubt, this is a deal that is good for shareholders. And no doubt the unchallenged doctrine of the invisible hand would argue that the market always makes the most efficient allocation of resources. But it’s hard to see what if any benefit would accrue to ratepayers by having foreign investors mortgage PSE’s assets to facilitate a leveraged buyout?
PSE is after all a monopoly throughout most of its coverage area, leaving consumers no alternative supplier of electricity or natural gas. Given a deregulated market (the conservative ideal), it would be equally foolish to expect investors to build competing power lines in response to rising rates as it would to believe that competing power grids could somehow constitute an efficient allocation of resources.
One can reasonably argue with specific regulations and the specific decisions of government regulators, but there are simply some products and services for which a regulated monopoly—or God forbid, a government agency—provides the most efficient and beneficial economy of scale. To inflexibly argue otherwise—that regulation is always harmful and that the public sector is always less efficient than the private—is to argue that PSE should not only be free to sell out to whomever it pleases under whatever conditions most benefit shareholders, but that it should also be free to raise utility rates as high as consumer demand will bear… which in a natural monopoly for a crucial commodity can be pretty damn high.
Imagine electricity rates quadrupling the way gasoline has done, with no end in sight, and imagine what havoc that would wreck on our local economy. That would be an unregulated free market at work.
I expect there are arguments to be made against recommendations that the UTC block PSE’s sale, but I’m wondering if anybody can cogently argue against giving UTC the power to do so?
Washington Post political blog The Fix has bumped WA-08 up a couple notches to list it as the 17th most likely US House seat to flip parties this November:
17. Washington’s 8th (R): Every Republican strategist we talk to insists on the one hand that Rep. Dave Reichert is the only GOPer who could possibly hold this Seattle-area seat but on the other acknowledges that Reichert’s time may be up. Barack Obama at the top of the national ticket is bad news for Reichert, as the Democrats’ presidential candidate will roll up the vote in metropolitan Seattle. Darcy Burner, who took 49 percent of the vote in 2006 against Reichert, is, by all accounts, an improved candidate. The political environment is everything in this district. If Obama wins big in the 8th, he is likely to carry Burner along with him. (Previous ranking: 19)
Yeah, but then what do you expect from an amen blogger like Chris Cillizza?
The Seattle Times editorial board just loves the King County Sheriff’s Office’s crackdown on underage drinking, which resulted in 143 arrests or citations over the first weekend of its annual “Party Patrol.”
Every year, parents are nabbed in the act of willfully ignoring the party they know is being thrown in their absence. A few genuine idiots get caught trying to be the cool mom and dad who host an event and provide alcohol to minors.
Yeah, well, it was certainly a different era, but my mom and dad hosted a couple high school parties at our house where they provided the beer, and they certainly didn’t do it to be “cool.” I suppose you can argue with their judgment, but they were pragmatic enough to know that the kids where going to drink regardless of the party’s location, and they’d rather it happen under their close supervision.
Ironically, the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving was started by the angry mother of a classmate of mine, after my parents called her to pick up her daughter, who was in no condition to drive home. It wasn’t the first or last time I saw this girl get drunk, but it was the only time I saw anyone prevent her from getting behind the wheel of a car.
Illegal, underage drinking only became more normalized in college, where the university actually threw a kegger for us during freshman orientation, and the RA’s made a point of explaining which local bars served undergraduates and which did not. Attitudes started shifting near the end of my senior year (1985) after a study revealing a serious binge-drinking problem on college campuses (duh-uh) was reinforced by a string of alcohol related campus tragedies.
Ominous headlines led to crackdowns by both local university and law enforcement officials… but that only drove the parties off campus. In one memorable example of the media hysteria of the time, a group of Rutgers students held a clandestine end-of-semester kegger outdoors in a wooded area near campus, where the metal keg was subsequently struck by lightning, killing one student and injuring several others. Newspaper headlines the next day trumpeted “another tragic alcohol related death” at a local campus.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate of underage boozing—especially of the binge variety—but having been a teenager myself I seem to recall that kids will be kids, and I find it hard to believe that arresting a few teens or their parents is going to have much of a long term impact on the problem. I hate to get all libertarian on you (that’s Lee’s job) but it strikes me that law enforcement provides exactly the wrong approach to what is at its core a public health issue, and thus I’d much rather the Sheriff’s office focus their resources on apprehending and punishing drunk drivers, rather than waste their time on efforts that may draw flattering headlines, but really do little to address the larger societal problem.
We, as a nation, have an unhealthy attitude toward alcohol and other drugs, that leads to the sort of binge consumption that truly puts our youth at risk. And I don’t think an annual police crackdown, or a couple of rah-rah editorials, does much to promote a thoughtful discussion on the issue.
SurveyUSA released the first poll of the season in the 8th CD race between Darcy Burner and Rep. Dave Reichert.
The poll surveyed 679 likely voters on June 16th and 17th, and showed Reichert leading Burner 51% to 45%.
As usual, I try to assess these poll results by a simple Monte Carlo analysis. I simulated a million fictitious elections between Burner and Reichert, using the observed percentages and the number of people polled.
Reichert won 948,339 of the elections and Burner won 48,199 times. In other words, the poll results suggest that, for an election held right now, Burner would have a 4.8% probability of winning the election and Reichert would win with a 95.2% probability.
Here is the distribution of outcomes (percentage of votes) from the million simulated elections (Reichert victories are those to the left of the red “tie” line, Burner victories are those to the right):
At risk of coming off as just another amen blogger, the poll results don’t strike me as particularly bad for Burner. Yeah…she is -6% down, but Reichert, as the incumbent, starts out with the advantage. The poll’s cross-tabs look reasonably positive for Burner. Among other things, of those who said they could change their mind, 50% were Reichert supporters and 39% were Burner supporters. Also, Reichert holds 35% of the pro-choice vote. It’s hard to imagine that the Burner campaign won’t make in-roads into that group.
This poll comes on the heels of massive mailings of campaign flyers franked informational pieces from the Reichert campaign congressional office. The Burner campaign, to my knowledge, has not made any media purchases.
Furthermore, Reichert has recently gotten a lot of well-deserved publicity for eco-friendly votes. I say “well deserved” because, clearly, Reichert’s handlers have developed a brilliant strategy that has rendered the local media stupifyingly blind to Reichert’s strategy of full participation in Republican obstructionism in Congress during procedural votes, only to switch his vote when the results are certain passage. Daniel Kirkdorffer has meticulously documented this rather cynical strategy. It is hard to say whether Reichert’s people will be able to maintain their spell over the media through November.
(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)
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