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Moblogic examines the outsourcing of the government:

(This along with some eighty other media clips from the past week in politics are posted here at Hominid Views.)

It’s been pointed out to me that I haven’t been writing as much, and of course that’s true, as I’ve kinda been immersed in coding these days. Recently, I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to implement a basic Rich Text comment editor, but I’ve given up. If you’re a WordPress jockey who can give me Rich Text comments while automatically stripping out all but the most basic HTML and CSS, I could use your help, but in the meanwhile everybody will just have to get by with the formatting buttons I’ve added to the comment form.

Speaking of hitting a wall, that’s exactly what the Pledge Drive has done over the past 24 hours. We had a great first three days, but as expected, donations slowed to a crawl as we headed into the weekend. 55 readers have now contributed $3,110, and I thank you all, but we’re falling far short of the pace we need to meet our $6,000/150 donor targets.

If I were a righty, I’d have some cushy think tank job or bullshit book deal to pay my bills and keep me blogging. But progressives, well… too often, we’re just expected to volunteer. But you know, I can’t eat passion, and for some reason my bank won’t take page views in lieu of dollars when paying my mortgage, so if you want me to be able to continue blogging full time — and continue developing the all new HA — I need your financial support. Maintaining HA is a helluva lot of work, and I do it for next to nothing. But I can’t afford to do it for absolutely nothing.

So please, show your appreciation by giving whatever you can. An average $40 donation from 150 readers will hit our target, but just five or ten bucks is always welcome. Thanks.

Lee:

I’m totally fine with building fences along the Aurora Bridge, but can we cut out the nonsense that it’s going to save the lives of the suicidal? Fencing off the Aurora Bridge will not save those lives for the same reason that fencing off the Mexican border will not stop illegal immigration.

Normally, Lee is a wellspring of wisdom, but he could not be more wrong. Suicide barriers and border fences serve altogether different functions, and the forces at play in each case have little in common.

When individuals decide to cross the United States’ southern border, they’re reacting to economic conditions. They know that in America they can earn in a day what they can earn in a month in their home countries. There are plenty of low wage jobs in America that will not be filled by Americas. (Or, more accurately, there are plenty of jobs Americans won’t do because the jobs pay so little.) Lee’s right about the U.S./Mexico fence: it’s poorly thought-out, and flies in the face of economic realities. That said…

Suicide isn’t a fungible thing. Ryan Thurston, founder of Seattle Friends, says that suicide is “a very impulsive act.” His group is advocating the installation of a suicide prevention barrier.

More from Thurston’s group:

Why build a suicide barrier — won’t they just go somewhere else?

No. This is a common misconception:

* Two suicide bridges in Washington D.C., the Taft and the Duke Ellington, are located a block away from each other. When officials erected a barrier on one bridge, suicides on the other bridge did not increase.
* Dr. Richard Seiden, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, studied 515 individuals who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Ninety four percent of them went on to live normal and productive lives — a mere six percent attempted suicide again.
* The Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Maine was the sight of 14 suicides before officials erected a safety fence there. After installing the fence, suicides at the bridge fell to zero — and the suicide rate in the entire state did not increase.

We can reduce the number of suicides by installing a fence on the Aurora Bridge. We should, and not only for the benefit of the individuals who will be dissuaded from taking their own lives:

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see them.

“They end up in our parking lot,” said Katie Scharer, one of Edwards’ co-workers at Cutter & Buck, a sportswear company based in the Adobe complex. “Nobody’s ever totally used to it.”

Grief counselors regularly go to Cutter & Buck, paying a visit as recently as a month ago.

I can’t imagine how awful it must be to work in that area, knowing that at any time someone could fall to their death. If a fence can successfully prevent people from killing themselves, then it’s worth building.

UPDATE [Lee]: I’ve responded in the comments and will leave it at that as I’ll be signed off for the rest of the day, but I want to make it clear that I actually do support the fence for the fact that the jumpers are a huge concern for the businesses and residences below.

During a web chat Friday, Washington Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman was asked for his thoughts on the race for WA-08:

Seattle: A Congress question — do you think Washington’s 8th District Rep. Dave Reichert (R) is in a better or worse position to win a rematch against Darcy Burner (D)?

Jonathan Weisman: Worse, way worse. I never count out an incumbent, never. But Darcy Burner is a little more experienced this go-round and a lot lot richer. She’s been raising a ton of money and is getting a lot of help from Democratic Washington.

Darcy’s getting a lot of help from Democrats in both Washingtons… the kinda help Reichert can’t count on getting from Republicans this cycle.

As expected, NBA owners approved moving the Sonics from Seattle to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season.  I’ve got nothing really to add at the moment, I just liked the headline.

Three days into HA’s Second Annual Pledge Week we’re almost halfway toward our $6,000 target and a third of the way toward our goal of 150 contributors. A big thanks to all of you who have given thus far.

But as great as the response has been we’re heading into a slow weekend, and we’re still a long way off, so I’m hoping a lot more of you will pull out your credit cards and chip in. A little over $30 a person from 101 more contributors will get us past both our targets… is that so much to ask in support of a blog that has become a regular part of your daily routine and a critical part of our local progressive media infrastructure?

This morning I posted a preview of the The Ti-Po, a snarky review of Seattle’s two dailies, just one of many new features we’re developing for the expanded HA. Your contributions make this work possible, so thank you in advance for giving whatever you can today.

Just a quick note to our friends at Slog. I’m totally fine with building fences along the Aurora Bridge, but can we cut out the nonsense that it’s going to save the lives of the suicidal? Fencing off the Aurora Bridge will not save those lives for the same reason that fencing off the Mexican border will not stop illegal immigration.

Sure, Darcy Burner kicked Dave Reichert’s ass in the January-March fundraising quarter, but how bad do things really look for Congressman 401? On The Road to 2008 takes a closer look at the numbers:

As compared to Reichert’s numbers from two years ago, he has raised $35,848 less than back then, while spending $20,928 more. He has $26,682 less cash on hand at this point than he had two years ago. Meanwhile Burner has $564,554 more cash on hand than she did at this point two years ago in a race she started as a complete unknown, and that ended with Reichert eking out a 7000 vote margin of victory.

I hate to focus so much on the money race, as I think it dumbs down the political debate, but at this point in the cycle it is usually one of the best metrics for evaluating the relative strength of campaigns. Without sufficient financial resources no congressional candidate can successfully get their message out, but dollars raised also reflects both the competency and efficiency of the campaign, as well as the general enthusiasm for the candidate. Burner received almost 4,900 contributions from individuals last quarter, about ten times that of Reichert, who once again relied on PAC money and high-dollar fundraisers to pad his coffers. And a preliminary analysis of itemized contributions shows Burner expanding her substantial lead in both in-district and in-state contributors.

This fundraising disparity represents a HUGE shift from two years ago, and no doubt is one of the reasons why Congressional Quarterly recently upgraded WA-08 to one of only three Republican held seats rated a “toss-up.” Eventually, once this money starts being spent, we’ll get a better idea of how close this race really is, but you can be sure that it is a helluva lot closer than Reichert and his surrogates are willing to acknowledge.

SurveyUSA has just released a new poll for the Washington state gubernatorial race. The poll of 634 people shows Governor Christine Gregoire leading Dino Rossi 50% to 46%. The 4% spread is an improvement for Gregoire from the 1% spread in the early April SurveyUSA poll and the 1% spread in a late March Rassmussen poll.

Clearly, the current SurveyUSA poll results are within the 4% margin of error for the poll. What this really means is that the probability of Gregoire beating Rossi is less than 95%, based on what we can tell from a relatively small sample. But we can do better than to just dismiss the poll as “a statistical tie.” Instead, we can estimate the probability that Gregoire should win, given the information available from a sample of this size. This can easily be calculated mathematically. But it is more intuitive to simulate elections and simply count the number of Gregoire wins and Rossi wins.

I simulated a million gubernatorial elections of 634 voters each, where each person had a 50% chance of voting for Gregoire, a 46% chance of voting for Rossi and a 4% chance of voting for neither.

The results give Gregoire 859,651 wins and Rossi 132,432 wins. This suggests that Gregoire has something like an 86.7% probability of beating Rossi if the election were held right now, and Rossi has a 13.3% chance of beating Gregoire.

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

The area to the right of the red line are wins for Gregoire and those to the left are wins for Rossi.

Things may change between now and November, but if I had to bet the (server) farm on a candidate right now, my money would be on Gregoire.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted.

Barney Frank has introduced his “Make Room for the Real Criminals” bill

It hasn’t been talked about much, but this is really bad news for McCain.

Two days into our 2nd Annual Pledge Drive we’re more than a third of the way toward our $6,000 target with slightly less than five days remaining. That’s great, and I thank all 33 donors for your generosity. But so far, only 33 of you have contributed, and that’s well below where I’d hoped to be at this point in the fund drive.

Reaching our goal is particularly crucial because it will give me the breathing space I need to continue developing the new HA, bringing you expanded content, new interface features, reader blogs and more. I have rededicated myself toward taking HA to the next level, but I also need to pay my bills; only with your help can I afford to do both.

Only $40 each from 150 donors — less than 5-percent of my typical daily readership — is enough to reach our goal, but I certainly understand that not everybody can afford to be so generous, so please give whatever you can afford. A ten dollar donation brings us ten dollars closer, and lets me know that you appreciate all the hard work I put in to making HA the most widely read and influential progressive political blog in WA state. Thank you for your support.

I’ve been reading through Dino Rossi’s transportation “plan,” trying to figure it out, and for the life of me I just can’t make his numbers add up. Wider bridges cost less than narrower bridges? Tunnels are now suddenly cheaper than elevated viaducts? We can divert $10 billion out of the state general fund to transportation, without raising taxes or cutting services, and still balance the budget?

You gotta give Dino credit though for listening to voters. Polling conducted in the wake of Prop 1’s defeat showed that voters want a transportation plan that does more but cost taxpayers less — and that’s exactly what Dino is promising. Too bad the only way for him to deliver on these promises is to print the money to pay for them.

UPDATE:
It looks like I’m not the only one who can’t figure out Dino’s new math…

“Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington state Transportation Center at the University of Washington, said Rossi’s numbers are ’completely divorced from reality.’ […] ‘He lowballs almost all the estimates and never says where all the funds are going to come from. It’s a political statement. It’s complete silliness,’ Hallenbeck said.
— Seattle Times, 4/16/08

“The Republican candidate for Washington’s governor outlined a number of spending initiatives, from an expensive tunnel replacing Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct to a north-south freeway in Spokane. But when it came to paying for them, he punted. Actually, faked is more like it. […] it’s another something-for-nothing scheme…”
— Lewiston Tribune, 4/17/08

“Can Dino Rossi’s freshly unveiled transportation plan solve our traffic mess? Doubtful. Many of the cost figures cited in it appear to be based more on wishful thinking than thoughtful analysis.”
— Everett Herald, 4/17/08

“…the particulars of his proposal seem a little delusional.”
— The Stranger, 4/16/08

“Of course, his plan to use all that state money has only a snowball’s chance in hell…”
— Tacoma News Tribune, 4/15/08

“Rossi’s ideas run counter to local public opinion…”
— Seattle P-I, 4/16/08

“Further criticism came from the Director of the Washington State Transportation Center, who said in the Seattle Times that Rossi lowballed all of his estimates.”
— KXLY, 4/16/08

Credit: Clifford DesPeaux/Seattle P-I

Honestly, this never would happen on light rail.