HorsesAss.Org

From today’s Seattle Times:

If money is any indication, this year’s race for governor is going to make the 2004 contest look like a low-key affair.

You have no idea.

The article focuses on money, which both Gov. Chris Gregoire and real estate salesman cum motivational speaker Dino Rossi are raising at a record clip — over $7.5 million combined thus far, with some observers predicting a $20 million-plus race.

“This is one of those things that never ceases to amaze me, the amount of money in politics,” [former state Dem Party chair Paul] Berendt said. “Certainly the rematch is a factor here. But it’s not the dominant factor. There’s just more money in politics.”

But money is only part of the reason the 2008 campaign will be a helluva lot different than the last time around. The big difference, in my opinion, will be the lessons learned from 2004, a race in which an overconfident Gregoire allowed Rossi to get away with running as an amiable tabla rasa, on to which voters could project a fanciful image of the Rossi they’d like him to be.

First rule of political campaigning: if your opponent refuses to define himself… define him for him define your opponent. And you can be damn sure that a substantial chunk of Gregoire’s (and her surrogates’) war chest will be spent doing exactly that. Rossi is simply too conservative for WA state, on both social and economic issues, and this time around he’s not going to get away with refusing to talk about issues that don’t poll well for his campaign. There are also character issues regarding Rossi — his dubious business ethics and his documented reputation as a downright mean spirited campaigner — and in 2008, voters are going to be informed of that too.

Since Rossi’s near miss in 2004, David Irons, George Nethercutt and Mike!™ McGavick have all tried to duplicate the Rossi model — a low-key, likable, issue-less run toward the middle — and all with disastrous results. That strategy simply won’t play here anymore… at least not if your Democratic opponent is awake. And I don’t believe even Rossi is willing or able to duplicate the Rossi Strategy in 2008.

Sure, Rossi’s going to attempt to avoid those many issues where he’s clearly out of step with WA voters, but we’ve seen a different Rossi — a meaner, angrier Rossi — on the campaign trail thus far. No doubt he truly believes he was cheated out of the governor’s mansion four years ago (cognitive dissonance is a powerful drug) and thus he’s understandably pissed off. And it shows. He likes to joke that at the start of the last campaign most folks thought that “Dino Rossi” was a brand of wine. Add an “h” after the “w” and you’ve pretty much described Rossi’s 2008 campaign thus far.

The point is, it’s going to be a much nastier campaign from both sides, which in this particular race, I think is a good thing, because it will leave voters much better educated about who the candidates are, and what they stand for, than in 2004. And as little influence as Rossi uber-patron BIAW wants you to believe bloggers like me have, in their heart of hearts they know that a lot has changed since 2004 in the way the media covers political campaigns, and that the emergence of the blogs as media watchdogs has a lot to do with it. Perhaps I give them a little shit, but there isn’t a single political reporter I have met who is not a dedicated professional, and while they may chafe at our criticism (and the tone in which we offer it), as long as it is substantive, well-supported and relevant, it generally doesn’t go unheeded for long. Much of what I do as a blogger is the media equivalent of complaining to the refs, a time honored sports tradition that yields real, if hard to quantify results.

So hold onto your hats. This won’t be the same Rossi. This won’t be the same Gregoire. And this won’t be the same passive media environment in which the 2004 campaign played out into a virtual tie.

The world’s most widely read blogger:

(There are some sixty other media clips from the past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

To everyone who donated during my fund raiser, thank you. I really appreciate it. I was meaning to post this a week or so ago, but I’ve been so busy.

To everyone who bought me a beer, or pizza, or Indian food, or very nicely bugged people for dough on my behalf- thank you. It means so much.

If you you were meaning to donate but never got around to it, click here. To the folks who donated, again, thank you.

Sometime this weekend I’ll upgrade HA with an all new look and a handful of the new features I’ve been working on.  Just thought you should know.

Other than that, talk amongst yourselves.

Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun, as city attorneys use the discovery process to reveal the dishonest dealings we all assumed were going on behind the scenes, but our sports-page-hawking editorial boards refused to acknowledge. And it looks like I’m going to get the opportunity for some delicious gloating.

For example, today the Seattle PI reports on recently uncovered emails between Clay Bennett, his fellow Sonics owners, and NBA Commissioner David Stern, that establish once and for all what an unrepentant bald-faced liar Bennett has always been. “I so cherish our relationship,” Bennett breathily wrote Stern on August 17, 2007, after co-owner Aubrey McClendon frankly told Oklahoma City’s The Journal Record that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.” In what can only be described as a digital blowjob, Bennett described Stern as “just one of my favorite people on earth,” attempting to reassure him:

“I would never breach your trust. As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group. I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off.”

Uh-huh. Yet only four months earlier, during an April 17 email exchange, Sonics co-owner Tom Ward bluntly asked Bennett if there was “any way to move here for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?”

Bennett’s reply: “I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!”

Ward: “That’s the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here (in Oklahoma City) next year.”

McClendon: “Me too, thanks Clay!”

Those e-mails came during the one-year grace period supposedly earmarked for good-faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle.

Isn’t legal discovery fun? In fact, just two weeks after purchasing the team, Bennett’s co-owners made their intentions absolutely clear :

Corresponding after one partner had dropped out of the group, apparently after deciding a move to Oklahoma wasn’t certain, Ward told McClendon on Aug. 2, 2006, that Bennett was angered by the defection.

“I don’t think that you and I really want to own a team there either, but we are better partners,” Ward wrote.

Shocking, huh? Well, I assume it is to the grownups on the editorial boards at our two dailies, who repeatedly vouched for Bennett’s character and intentions throughout the entire sham arena process. On February 15, 2007, the PI naively insisted that “Clay Bennett deserves credit for sincerity in his efforts to work out a deal that keeps the team in the Seattle area,” while on May 2, 2007 the wise old folks at the Seattle Times went so far as to chide cynics like me for suggesting otherwise:

There have been whispers and shouts that SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is only buying time until he can move the teams to his home state of Oklahoma. This is an unfair claim. Bennett has done nothing to suggest that moving the teams is a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing to suggest that Bennett is being insincere?” I responded at the time…

Um… how about seeking $400 million in taxpayer subsidies on a $500 million hoops palace, just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected $200 million in subsidies on a $220 million Key Arena renovation? If that’s sincere, it’s sincerely stupid.

And it’s not like I’m puffing up my analysis with the benefit of hindsight. Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did. But I never believed Bennett ever intended to keep the team in Seattle, and the basis for my cynicism seemed obvious:

Even the most casual observer of Washington politics could have told Bennett that his $530 million hoop dream would be D.O.A., so I can’t help but view it as a disingenuous con game intended to fill Key Arena with gullible fans until the lease expires in 2010.

And…

I’ve never believed that Bennett ever seriously wanted to keep the Sonics in the Seattle area, but rather has always intended to move the team back home to Oklahoma City, where he will be welcomed as a conquering hero. In that admittedly cynical scenario the arena proposal must be just believable enough to keep gullible fans (and editors) in their seats until the Key Arena lease runs out in 2010, but outrageous enough to make the deal politically DOA.

And what if I was wrong, and state lawmakers actually caved to Bennett’s unreasonable demands and gave him his taxpayer funded hoops palace? Well, I always believed Bennett and his partners had that angle covered too:

See, if as expected, taxpayers (and the lawmakers representing them) rejected his extravagant proposal, he could claim he made his “good faith effort,” and then pick up and move the team to Oklahoma City, where he’ll be greeted as a local hero. But if we foolishly caved to his demands, well, he still might end up with an Oklahoma City team… just not the Sonics.

The Renton deal would dramatically increase the value of the team, allowing Bennett and his partners to sell out, taking a couple hundred million dollars in profit… money which could defray the cost of buying a smaller market team, like the Hornets, and moving it to Oklahoma City instead. In that scenario, Washington taxpayers would indirectly subsidize professional basketball in Oklahoma. Sweet.

Yeah, I know, it sounds a little too devious. But the fabulously wealthy generally don’t get that way by being artless and uncalculating.

Which brings us back to those emails, where Ward wrote to McClendon about just such an eventuality:

“I assume that I will be ready to sell there and work on a team here if they build a new arena, but we shall see.”

Bennett and his partners never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and never negotiated in good faith; that not only should be obvious by now, it should have been obvious the day they purchased the team. As McClendon bragged to that Oklahoma City paper:

“We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle,” McClendon told the newspaper. “So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.”

They certainly did. And in the process they played our local media for fools.

Over on Slog, Josh Feit reports that the Waterfront Trolley is dead.

[Deputy Mayor Tim] Cies told me tonight that the waterfront trolley idea “no longer fit into the city’s transportation plan.”

He also cited the fact that plans to revamp the viaduct had thrown the waterfront trolley plans into limbo. Also: too expensive.

“It’s not in our plans, and we’re moving ahead,” Ceis says, saying the new priorities were servicing the transportation grid around the viaduct and around light rail through Capitol Hill.

I dunno, just seems kinda silly that we  spent all this money laying down tracks for the SLUT, with City Hall talking ambitious plans to build a half dozen other trolley lines throughout the city, but we’re just not interested in using the tracks we already have.

I get email:

Subject: RACIST ACTIVITY ON UW CAMPUS 4/15/08

Greetings to All,

I am emailing you all to alert you of an event that will take place on the UW-Seattle campus next Tuesday, April 15, 2008 from 10am-2pm. The event is called “Find an Illegal Immigrant Tag” and will be held on the HUB lawn. The UW College Republicans will be tabling from 10:00am to 2:00pm and the game itself will be held at 12:20. According to a message from the CR president, the event is intended to send a a “clear statement that we need to get serious and crack down on illegal immigration and secure our borders.”

I am inviting you all to attend this event and TAKE A STAND AGAINST anti-immigrant messaging on campus [and everywhere]. We all agree that the immigration system is broken and is in need of reform. However, fair and just immigration reform does not entail the scapegoating of immigrants and/or hateful actions–both of which thwart efforts to create open discussions on real solutions to immigration. Instead of engaging in divisive politics/ conversations, we should be uniting to promote justice, acceptance, and opportunity.

Oh, College Republicans! When will they ever learn?

As you know, I’ve been immersed in code recently, developing a new version of HA for your reading and poo-flinging pleasure. I’ve started to upload some of the new plugins and templates for testing, and while I had hoped that none of it would go live before I flipped the switch, it seems that some of my plug-ins have a mind of their own. For example, it looks like the new visual rich text comment editor is now live. So have fun with it, and let me know if there are any problems.

Larry Grant, who ran a strong Democratic campaign in 2006 in Idaho’s blood red 1st Congressional District, has withdrawn from the 2008 contest, and endorsed fellow Dem, Walt Minnick:

“My campaign has never been about my personal ambition. I have spent the last three years on the campaign trail doing my very best to build the Idaho Democratic Party from the ground up. I’m proud of what I and my campaign team have achieved.

“There isn’t ten cents worth of difference between my view of the world and Walt Minnick’s. That’s why we need to be working together to beat Bill Sali, not spending valuable time and resources in a contentious primary.”

Word is that Grant’s decision was all about the money. Minnick had raised an impressive $410,000 by the end of 2007 compared to Grant’s paltry $65,000, and the disparity is expected to dramatically worsen when first quarter results are reported next week. But you gotta admire Grant’s willingness to put the interests of the Party and the nation ahead of personal ambition. (Hmm… I wonder when that’s going to happen in the Dems’ presidential race?)

I’m sitting in the Ruth Fisher room at Union Station, which houses Sound Transit. If I’ve learned anything from observing local government, it’s that nothing attracts cranks and looneybirds like these two words:

“Public Comment”

I won’t name names, but Sound Transit has it’s own nuts.

That’s the message being sent by all of the citizens who signed petitions with Transportations Choices Coalition and Fuse Washington.

These petitions are being submitted during today’s Sound Transit Board meeting at 1:00pm.

As reported by both Postman and the PI’s Politics Team, Congressman Dave Reichert is challenging his Democratic colleagues in the state to join him in opposing House Speaker Pelosi’s attempts to prevent a vote on the Colombian free trade agreement this year. Reichert was one of 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats who traveled to Colombia with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab this past weekend. Here’s what he sent out:

Many times when Republicans were in the majority, my colleagues would call on me to go to my leadership to help the state, for instance when we learned of language that would allow supertankers onto Puget Sound. Today, I urge all of my colleagues in the Washington delegation – including Governor Gregoire – to join together and reject the Speaker’s effort to shelve this vital measure.

Reichert’s premise is that this trade agreement specifically helps the state of Washington because of how dependent we are on global trade. But this appears to be a questionable premise at best. Boston University International Relations Professor Kevin P. Gallagher, who has written a book on NAFTA, takes a look at this agreement:

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade deal is one of the most deeply flawed trade pacts in U.S. history. It will hardly make a dent in the U.S. economy, looks to make the Colombian economy worse off and accentuate a labor and environmental crisis in Colombia. The Democratic majority in Congress is right to oppose this agreement and call for a rethinking of U.S. trade policy.

According to new estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, the net benefits of the agreement to the U.S. will be a miniscule 0.0000472 percent of GDP or a one-time increase in the level of each American’s income by just over one penny. The agreement will actually will make Colombia worse off by up to $75 million or one tenth of one percent of its GDP; losses to Colombia’s textiles, apparel, food and heavy manufacturing industries, as they face new competition from U.S. import, will outweigh the gains in Colombian petroleum, mining, and other export sectors, it concludes.

There’s a lot more that could be added to this that Gallagher doesn’t mention. Anything that weakens the Colombian economy to this extent will end up with more migrants in search of work and an increase the number of people willing to participate in illegal coca production. The failures of NAFTA in Mexico are likely to be repeated in Colombia, as both nations remain mired at the sharp end of America’s failed drug war, a no-win situation that no trade agreement will ever rectify and will continue to end up with more people fleeing here to find work.

But he does delve into another problem with this agreement, one that many people here in Washington State are likely to find troubling:

The deal amounts to a rollback of previous environmental provisions in U.S. trade agreements. Unlike past U.S. trade pacts, this deal doesn’t provide any new funding for cooperation, clean up, or compliance.

Finally, the deal has a little secret also not allowed under the WTO. It leaves open the possibility that ad hoc investment tribunals will interpret social and environmental regulations as “indirect expropriation.” Under such interpretations, multinational firms themselves (as opposed to states filing on a firm’s behalf such as in the WTO) can file suit for massive compensation from foreign governments. Under NAFTA such suits have been filed against the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Indeed, Methanex Corp. filed a $1 billion suit against the state of California for banning a gasoline additive that was polluting water sources.

The Sierra Club has a page here on the Methanex suit and others that have been initiated within the NAFTA agreement. As Congressman Reichert continues to make efforts to demonstrate his “green” credentials, I’m curious whether he has concerns over whether environmental regulations that come out of Olympia could trigger lawsuits from corporations that are affected by them.

Finally, Reichert spokesman Mike Shields has some words defending our desired trading partner, Colombia:

Is it perfect? No. But it has made improvements and it is our friend and ally in that part of the world, particularly when they have a neighbor who is fashioning himself to be a Fidel Castro for that part of the world.

This is true. Chavez is most certainly fashioning himself as a Castro-like anti-American protagonist, but this gets back to what my main concern over this agreement is. The policies of the Bush Administration, both economic and military, are slowly isolating our Colombian ally while strengthening the hand of Hugo Chavez. And this trade agreement will likely move us further down that path as long as President Bush sees it as a reward for a government whose recent military encroachment on Ecuadorean soil earned widespread condemnation across the region.

UPDATE: Reichert has a column on this in today’s Seattle Times.

I don’t mean to sound paranoid or anything, but for some odd reason, it appears the BIAW’s Tom McCabe and Erin Shannon don’t like me very much. Was it something I said?

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/goldy2.mp3]

Shannon calls me a “profane, ranting, raving lunatic”… and this from the woman who after the 2004 election gleefully told the Seattle Weekly:

“It was a big ‘Fuck you!’ to all the liberals out there. […] We are kicking their ass.”

Um… pot, meet kettle. (Really. Let’s meet up sometime Erin. I’ve always had a thing for trash-talking Irish women. Gimme a call.)

The whole clip is a hoot, with both Shannon and McCabe alternating between abusing me for my inflated sense of self-importance (apparently I’m one of those pathetic guys who “actually thinks he can make a difference and accomplish things” ) and repeatedly bemoaning the extraordinary influence they apparently believe I wield with the local press. Give a listen to this exchange:

Shannon: Yeah, and so you’re so important Mr. Goldstein, that we’d even waste our time. Here’s a guy who thinks that he’s so important and so influential that you’d actually take the time to go beat the you know what out of him with a baseball bat?

McCabe: That’s why I don’t want to talk about him any more.

Shannon: He’s ridiculous.

McCabe: But he is… he is influential in getting the Seattle PI to publish editorials, Erin, we just mentioned that.

So which is it? Am I “ridiculous” or “influential”? Both? (And Erin, as long as you’re wasting time telling me I’m not worth wasting your time, why not waste time together with me over a couple drinks? I understand a fondness for bars is one thing we both have in common.)

And as for that “baseball bat” thing? According to McCabe…

McCabe: Mr. Goldstein says that he believes that one day I’m going to beat him up with a baseball bat, and maybe I might even kill him. This is what he says about me, Tom McCabe. Very odd, odd thing.

Shannon: Yeah, and so you’re so important Mr. Goldstein, that we’d even waste our time.

Oh. So I guess, in context, Shannon was saying that I’m not important enough to even waste their time… beating me to death with a baseball bat. Not that such beatings are entirely out of the question, I’m just not worth the effort. Charming. Perhaps drinks wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.

In fact, I never said I believed McCabe was going to beat me with a baseball bat, or any other blunt object. Here is the quote to which he refers with the same sort of reverence for accuracy that he usual reserves for Nazi historiography:

And believe you me, the BIAW’s violent rhetoric is intended as a threat, and they fully understand the potential consequences of pumping up the anger. One of these days somebody like me is going to get the shit beaten out them by somebody like them — they’ll be waiting for me late at night with baseball bats, or worse — and when that happens our media elite, who allowed the BIAW’s dangerous rhetoric to go unridiculed, unchallenged and unchecked for so long, will be just as culpable as batshit crazy bastards like Tom McCabe and Mark Musser.

“Somebody like me is going to get the shit beaten out of them by somebody like them…” I never wrote that I believed that McCabe would attack me; I was merely repeating my oft stated belief that violent rhetoric eventually breeds violent actions, and that when such violence occurs, the instigators are as culpable as the violators. And if you take issue with that premise, go tell it to Charles Goldmark and Alan Berg.

But then you can’t really expect McCabe to even understand my words let alone accurately represent them, when he can’t even be bothered to learn my blog’s proper domain name, and bizarrely claims that HA is a blog “devoted to pummeling BIAW.” Talk about an inflated sense of self-importance, only 2.5% of my posts — 106 out of 4203 — even mention BIAW, compared to, say, 295 that reference Tim Eyman or 384 that mention Dino Rossi. Perhaps McCabe was thinking of HorsesAss.com, a site I’m guessing he’s much more familiar with?

This stuff bugs the hell out of me:

With rising condo towers and disappearing green space in Seattle, City Council members say the city needs more parks. A levy aimed at building new parks expires this year, and several on the council say the public would support renewing it.

But there’s one member of the public who does not support it — the mayor. Every voter-approved city levy since 2001 has originated with him. The City Council approved putting those levies on the ballot, but Mayor Greg Nickels proposed the property-tax increases, organized supporters and raised the money to fund the campaigns.
[…]

“We believe that this data indicates there is in fact pretty strong public support,” said Conlin. After eight years, the expiring $198 million parks levy has not met all of the city’s needs for community centers and parks, said Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the parks committee. Neighborhoods such as Belltown still need a park, he said.

Council members are now putting together a 20-member advisory committee to come up with a list of parks projects the public wants funded.

It makes me crazy that my neighborhood, neglected and ignored Belltown, is being used to justify millions in taxes that will ultimately benefit lots of other neighborhoods. Such was the case during the last parks levy. The project list shows just a single project in Belltown. Of course, Belltown has been promised a community center for years. What assurance do I have that another levy will get around to building it?

And what about my basketball court?

Meanwhile, for similar dollars per household, Sound Transit wants to build light rail north, east, and south. When surveyed, most folks around here find transportation to be a more pressing concern. While I’m concerned about not having a basketball court, the region’s economy doesn’t rest on my hook shot. (We should all be glad that it doesn’t.)

This is a city that does important small things (plastic bags) and important big things (fighting climate change). Raising everyone’s property taxes NOW, in the same year Sound Transit could very well go to the ballot with a transit-only package funded by a sales tax, isn’t a great idea. See the update below.

If renewing the parks levy is so important, why don’t they already have a project list compiled? Here’s my plan: Find ten really important, we-can’t-live-without-them projects, and go to the voters with that list. In fact, combine it with funds dedicated for the remodel of the Seattle Center. (That might be the least appealing public space in the city, and could use some new resources.)

A while back, a prospective city council candidate went down to City Hall to find out what the council’s priorities were. They gave him a binder full of hundreds of “priorities.” Of course, if you have a hundred “priorities,” you don’t have any.

City Council candidates, when they stand for election, like to talk about making transportation a priority. This year, they can really do it.

UPDATE

I get email clarifying the tax issue:

Just to clarify, the Council is not looking to raise anyone’s taxes –
any levy that the city council is considering will cost the same or less
to taxpayers (when combined with the Mayor’s Pike Place Market levy) as
they’re paying now for the current Pro-Parks levy.

This week’s podcast featured a panel of highly regarded as well as disreputable northwest bloggers…taking a few potshots at David Postman along the way.

Joining Goldy were Will, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, John Wyble, and mcjoan.

Topics of discussion include Will’s wonderful bus tour, Gov. Christine Gregoire as a retail politician, a follow-up on the BIAW controversy, an update on the Washington legislative races, the Dalai Lama and the lure of commerce, and The Responsible Plan (with a brief journey into the thought processes of Cokie Roberts).

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_8_2008.mp3]

The show is 49:42, and is available here as a 47.7 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Montlake Alehouse in Seattle during Tuesday’s meeting of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]