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“The House Republican brand is so bad right now that if it were a dog food, they’d take it off the shelf.”
— Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-VA), former NRCC chair

Things are going from bad to worse for House Republicans, now that Christopher J. Ward — the “gold standard” of Republican campaign finance experts, and the treasurer of 83 GOP fundraising committees — is now suspected of embezzling millions of dollars from his clients. “Several hundred thousand dollars” were apparently stolen directly from the NRCC over a period of years in a financial fraud that could have far reaching consequences.

Ward is now alleged to have falsified numerous FEC filings. The NRCC apparently had nearly a million dollars less cash on hand than reported to the FEC at the end of 2006, and $740,000 less cash on hand than reported just a few weeks ago. But Ward wasn’t the only beneficiary of his crimes:

Officials told The Post that the NRCC’s problems may be more extensive. Republican lawmakers and former committee staff members now allege that Ward fabricated audits and other financial documents for 2003 to 2006, some of which were turned over to a Wachovia Bank branch in McLean in October 2006, when the NRCC borrowed $8 million in last-minute money for congressional campaigns.

That’s right, NRCC money spent on behalf of Dave Reichert in the final weeks of the 2006 campaign was obtained fraudulently, using “fabricated audits and other financial documents.” Loans obtained based on “outside audits” that were never conducted, were used to buy TV ads that helped put Reichert over the top.

And Republicans accuse Democrats of being the party of waste, fraud and abuse…?

UPDATE:
I’ve just started searching through the FEC reports and already found this NRCC expenditure from Oct. 13, 2006:

STRATEGIC MEDIA SERVICES
1023 31ST ST. NW
4TH FLOOR
WASHINGTON, DC 20007

Purpose of Expenditure: Issue Ad Placement
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: DARCY BURNER FOR CONGRESS
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is Washington in District 08
Date Expended = 10/13/2006
Person Completing Form: CHRISTOPHER J. WARD
Date Signed = 10/13/2006
Amount Expended = $424948.80

Notice the name on the form: “Christopher J. Ward”. So Ward falsifies audits and other documents to obtain an $8 million loan, and then turns around and spends nearly half a million dollars of it attacking Darcy Burner. And I’m guessing there’s another million or so more where that came from spent during the following weeks.

Congratulations Frank Blethen… you just won yourself a tax break!

Yesterday the state Senate joined the House in overwhelmingly approving HB 2585 (only Sen. Rodney Tom voted nay), a bill that redefines for B&O tax purposes the term “newspaper” to include its online editions. The result is that revenue from online advertising will now be taxed at the special discounted newspaper rate of 0.484 percent, instead of the standard 1.5 percent rate currently charged. Although this tax cut will cost the state $3 million in the next biennial budget, I’m guessing Gov. Gregoire will quietly sign it into law, rather risk the ire of the state’s editorial boards during an election year.

Kudos to Postman for risking his annual bonus by posting on this issue the other day, and extra special kudos to him for pointing out his bosses’ hypocrisy:

Allied Daily Newspapers, the newspaper lobbying group, has been making the case for the tax cut. Meanwhile, newspaper editorial boards have been urging lawmakers to save money this year to prepare for lean budget times ahead.

The Times said the state could set aside $1 billion-plus and that lawmakers should cut spending until they have reached that goal.” And the P-I, which is in a joint operating agreement with The Times, has said lawmakers have to prepare for hard choices, “even if that means holding back on some of the new spending being discussed …”

Our state’s newspaper industry already costs Washington state and local governments $40 million per biennium with their sales tax exemption for newspapers, so what’s another $3 million, huh? Meanwhile, we can make up the lost revenue by cutting health care for children, or the fat paychecks of our state’s teachers. It’s all about priorities.

But there’s one more nefarious aspect of this bill that Postman and other Olympia observers have missed (or didn’t seem to think it worthy enough to comment on.) Take a look at the language of the bill, and how it defines a newspaper:

What that means is the Times gets the discounted 0.484 percent rate on ads served on Postman’s blog, while dirty fucking hippies like me have to pay more than three times that!

Now, I don’t generate nearly enough ad revenue from HA to pay a B&O tax, but I hope to someday, and this 20th century definition of “newspaper” secured by industry lobbyists is intentionally anticompetitive. Crosscut bills itself as an “online newspaper,” and has gobs of venture money behind it, but because it doesn’t actually print on “newsprint in tabloid or broadsheet format folded loosely together without stapling, glue, or any other binding of any kind,” its owners must pay more than three times the tax rate as Blethen and his buddies. (That is, assuming Crosscut has any ad revenues. Or, um… readers.) Where is the sense in that?

Newspaper readership is relentlessly moving online, and there’s nothing the industry can do to stop it; it’s simply a more efficient and flexible way to deliver and consume content. But this shift in media consumption patterns also tears down longstanding barriers to market entry, creating the opportunity for bloggers like me to nibble away at the dailies’ audience and influence, and the potential for new online news ventures to seriously vie for ad dollars with relatively little upfront investment. And so the newspaper industry has convinced the legislature to discourage and disadvantage new competition by charging them more than three times their tax rate.

I am as good a writer as anybody at the Times or the P-I; it is the quality of my writing that has always been the key to HA’s success. That the Legislature should choose to penalize me and other entrepreneurs for publishing online rather than on dead trees is incomprehensible, especially in a state that has led the nation and the world in commercializing the Internet. It is offensive. It is insulting. And it will not stand.

Wow, talk about Rossi leaping into the conversation:

In a move stunning some of his conservative “family values” supporters, the former state senator Dino Rossi pledged this week that if elected governor he would use less expensive prostitutes than disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer, (D-NY).

“It’s just one more example of people in government spending the people’s hard earned tax money in an inefficient manner.”

Rossi declined to say if he would use prostitutes if elected governor, but said that if he did he wouldn’t spend as much “as that guy from New York.” He went on to blame Gov. Christine Gregoire for rising prices that have earned Washington state a reputation for having some of the most expensive hookers in the nation.

“This is just more proof of the awful business climate she’s responsible for,” added Rossi. “Thousands of whores leave this state every year for states with lower taxes and less regulation. If I’m elected, hookers are going to get the respect they deserve.”

A spokesman for Gregoire couldn’t stop laughing long enough to comment.

Put a little musical political comedy in your life this weekend. Seattle-based comedian Winlar will be performing Love, Politics, and Love this Friday and Saturday evening (14 and 15 Mar). The show starts at 8:00 pm at the Jewel Box Theater in the Rendezvous Bar and Restaurant (21 and older), 2322 2nd Ave, Belltown (441-5823).

Here’s a snippet from the show:

The show is also the long awaited DVD release party for the long-awaited DVD of Winlar’s last show Nothing Controversial: Just Religion, Politics and How to Raise Your Children—A steal at just $10!

Here are a few of my favorite Winlar videos:

• The Terrorist Win.
• The Ann Coulter song.
• If Jesus were here.
• Condoleezza.

Winlar is a former writer for Almost Live!, NPR’s Rewind with Bill Radke and theater’s Kazoo! sketch comedy group.

My walk from the office to the bus in the evening takes me through Pike Place Market. Normally, it’s the same thing. Dodging slow-walking tourists, walking through some family’s photo in front of the original Starbucks, and pretending I can’t hear people asking for change because my headphones are too loud. Today there was some actual excitement:

Crews are shooting various Seattle scenes this week for “Traveling,” a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart.

From about 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Wednesday, filming will be done around the Market and Post Street Alley. Pine, Stewart and Virginia streets between First and Western avenues will be closed most of the day.

They had a crane sprinkler system set up at the corner of Virginia and Western, raining down fake rain on Eckhart (he was the guy from Thank You for Smoking) as he held a briefcase over his head during the one shot I saw. A fake traffic jam filled the market with slightly more cars than there normally are on a nice day.

Hopefully, Eckhart fares better than the last person I saw filming a movie in Seattle.

You’re not dreaming, kids.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proposed today that all of the city’s taxis get at least 30 miles per gallon.

Nickels wants the switch from gas guzzler to climate friendly to be complete by 2013.

Most of the city’s current cabs are Ford Crown Victorias, which average about 18 miles per gallon.

City Council approval is required for the change.

“It doesn’t matter if your cab is orange, yellow or gray. We think they should be green,” Nickels said at a morning news conference under the Space Needle.

I use cabs on a regular basis. I’ve always wondered why the model of car cabbies use has always been the godawful Crown Vics. Eighteen miles a gallon sucks. The big upside to the Prius is that it actually gets better MPG in the city than on the highway. And you don’t have to plug ’em in!

My favorite complaint from the cab drivers?

Driver Gurminder Kahlon, who owns his own taxi, said, “It is very difficult for a driver to buy a $25,000 car,” he said. “There is a recession and Sound Transit opens next year.” He was referring to the planned 2009 start of light-rail service between downtown Seattle and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

But I thought that light rail to the airport would never work, crazy cab driver/monorail guy?

With 24 hours left in the 2008 session, state Sen. Brian Weinstein has issued the following press release:

Today, I communicated to the Speaker’s staff that I’ll agree in principle to Speaker Chopp’s three-point proposal with some minor technical and substantive changes, if he’ll agree to allow a homebuyer to bring a legal action against a builder who has violated a building code after giving the builder notice and an opportunity to fix it.

A builder is already required to comply with building codes, but Washington law affords a homebuyer no rights to enforce the building code. This is a bare minimal right that all Washingtonians must agree a homebuyer should have.

I know the Speaker is a man of his word, and I would only do this with a good faith representation from him that he will work diligently to expand the right of access to the courts to aggrieved homebuyers in the next Legislative Session.

Really… is that so much to ask for? The right to sue a builder if they violate a building code, and refuse to fix it? I invite the pro-BIAW trolls in the comment thread to justify to me why homebuyers should not have this right?

I don’t normally reprint emails forwarded my way without asking permission, but since this email from Attorney Sandy Levy to Rep. Mark Ericks was CC’d to a number of journalists, I think it’s pretty much fair game.

Dear Rep. Ericks:

Boy, was I a sucker. I believed you were an interested, impartial and objective task force chairman, appointed by Speaker Chopp to investigate problems in the homebuilding industry and to report to the Speaker with recommendations. You told me when we met in August of last year that you would convene your committee, bring me in to speak, and bring in homeowners to hear first hand the problems they were having. Instead, you never convened that group, at least not with any homeowners or their representatives.

Now I find out the following article, published today:

While some accounts explain that Chopp (who killed Sen. Weinstein’s bill late last week at the behest of the Building Industry Association of Washington) crafted his alternative proposal (a study!!) with Democratic Rep. Mark Ericks (D-1, Bothell), they fail to report that Rep. Ericks was the guest of honor at last Tuesday’s BIAW fund raiser at the BIAW’s offices in Olympia.

Mark, it’s not as though there were no homeowner groups with real complaints, with visible problems you could have visited yourself. One of them is just a few minutes away from the Capitol, such as the 130 unit Cooper Crest subdivision in Olympia. Yet you and the Speaker misinformed the public that you were leading an independent task force and you were meeting with stakeholders. I don’t know who the stakeholders were, other than BIAW. I know your committee didn’t meet with me, as you had promised. I guess money talks doesn’t it? Homeowners just don’t have the fat wallet that BIAW does to line legislative pockets. From the same article as above comes this illuminating piece of information:

Killing Sen. Weinstein’s bill—which would have guaranteed a warranty for consumers when they buy a new home (allowing consumers to sue contractors for faulty or shoddy work)—was the BIAW’s top legislative priority this year. The powerful conservative lobby—which bankrolls the GOP—also maxed out to Democratic Rep. Ericks last election cycle.

Misleading the public and trying to manipulate public opinion should be grounds for dismissal as a public official. What you have done is a disgrace to democracy. And, my representatives have abetted this trampling of citizen rights. Where is the guiding principle that you disclose any appearance of impropriety, any appearance of a conflict of interest. How do you take money from BIAW, then say you are an independent fact finder on a task force charged with analysis of a problem? Doesn’t that strike you as shocking?

Sandy Levy

The emphasis is Mr. Levy’s.

My personal outrage has never focused solely on the bill itself; there isn’t a session that goes by in which I’m not disappointed by the death of bills that didn’t even get a hearing, let alone a floor vote. Rather, my outrage, like that expressed by Levy, stems from the manner in which this bill has been consistently blocked by the militia-funding orca-killers at the BIAW, without anybody on the Democratic side having the balls to acknowledge the truth. I expect to be disappointed by the Democratic majority either because they genuinely disagree with me on issues of policy or on political strategy; I just don’t expect them to be shills for the enemy. I’ve got nothing against builders or contractors or their industry, but the organization that represents them is viciously anti-Democratic, and politically amoral at best. The BIAW is an organization dedicated to legislating the labor movement out of existence, and opposing all and every environmental regulation. And they have given every indication that they will stop at nothing to achieve their agenda.

If Rep. Ericks has a reply to Mr. Levy, in which amongst other things, he can defend his appearance as a “guest of honor” at a BIAW fundraiser, I’d be happy to post it here. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine what that defense might be.

The DCCC announced today its first round of “Red to Blue” challengers, and not surprisingly, Darcy Burner has made the cut:

Kay Barnes (MO-06)
Anne Barth (WV-02)
Darcy Burner (WA-08)
Robert Daskas (NV-03)
Steve Driehaus (OH-01)
Jim Himes (CT-04)
Christine Jennings (FL-13)
Larry Kissell (NC-08)
Suzanne Kosmas (FL-24)
Eric Massa (NY-29)
Gary Peters (MI-09)
Mark Schauer (MI-07)
Dan Seals (IL-10)

During the 2006 cycle the Red to Blue program raised nearly $22.6 million for 56 House challengers — an average of $404,000 per campaign — three times the total raised in 2004. There’s no reason to expect those numbers not to continue to trend up, depositing a hefty chuck of change in Burner’s campaign coffers.

Our local media prefers to mostly ignore her, but Burner has quietly become one of the most talked about Democratic challengers in the nation, both within the national netroots and the Democratic Party establishment. Expect big things to come.

UPDATE:
Red to Blue candidate Larry Kissell has a diary up on Daily Kos, which gives a great explanation about what this race is really about.

Beer, vulgarity and erudite chit-chat flowed freely last night, as we begin to get back into our Podcasting Liberally groove.

Me (Goldy), Lee, Dan, Carl, and John provide live coverage of Hillary Clinton’s big win Barack Obama’s disappointing 23-point victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary, a philosophical discourse on the intersection (difference?) between politics and prostitution, the tanking prospects of Sen. John McCain in WA state and what this means for Republicans down-ticket, plus a conversation with EOI Executive Director John Burbank, a candidate for WA’s 36th Legislative District. Tune in and find out what would have made the life of this particular downtrodden white boy so much easier and more successful.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_march_11_2008.mp3]

The show is 47:56, and is can be downloaded here as a 43.9 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Darryl for producing the show, and Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

I don’t care what party you’re with, anyone who spends 80 grand on high priced hookers shouldn’t be a governor anymore.

UPDATE [–Goldy]:

I’m not so sure I agree with Will. If patronizing a prostitute were suddenly a disqualification for office, we’d have an awful lot of high profile resignations to report today. And if marital infidelity were made a disqualification, Washington D.C. would become a virtual ghost town. I myself have never been unfaithful, and I don’t have much sympathy for people who have, but it seems to me to be the human condition rather than a peculiar of flaw of folks like Spitzer.

On the bright side, Spitzer will always be remembered for delivering to New Yorkers their first black governor, Gov. David Paterson:

How sad is it that a trailblazing feminist like Geraldine Ferraro is turning out to be a huge goddamn racist?

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

It’s particularly sad to see the old, gas bag feminists of yesteryear attack a man who could be America’s first black president. She’s basically saying that America has jungle fever, that Obama’s blackness has intoxicated his supporters. She’s implying this, and all the while is still with the Clinton campaign.

Obama responds:

“I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd,” he told the Allentown Morning Call. “And I would expect that the same way those comments don’t have a place in my campaign they shouldn’t have a place in Senator Clinton’s either.”

Ferraro is just another sad old fart who sees history being made and is irritated by it.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E—some of us show up a little early to sample from the terrific menu.

Tonight’s theme song? What else could it be but Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott’s One Minute Man:

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.

Much ado has been made recently over a proposal by a group of local business “leaders” to save the Sonics and keep them in Seattle. The local group proposes buying the Sonics and investing $150 million of their money in renovating Key Arena, conditioned on an additional $150 million in matching taxpayer funds.

This is by far the most reasonably reasonable arena proposal pitched thus far, or at least it would be if not for a handful of obvious stumbling blocks: A) the Sonics’ Oklahoma City based owners insist the team is not for sale; B) NBA Commissioner David Stern has promised that Seattle would not get another franchise if they allowed the Sonics to leave; and C) there was no chance in hell the tax authorization legislation could make it out of Olympia this year, coming just a week before the end of the session. And oh yeah… D) a substantial majority of Seattle voters don’t seem to give a shit whether the team stays or leaves.

According to a March 3, SurveyUSA/KING-5 poll which seemed to fly under the media and political radar, 77% of respondents said they opposed spending public funds to renovate Key Arena… about the same percentage of voters who approved Initiative 91 in 2006, a citywide measure that barred exactly that. Only 37% of respondents indicated they even care if the Sonics leave Seattle in two years, and a full two-thirds of respondents believe the team’s move to Oklahoma City is already a done deal. Hardly a popular uproar demanding the Legislature to drop all their current business and push through an arena funding bill.

Not that the folks behind this proposal ever believed they’d get a bill out of the current session. These are savvy folk. Rich folk, who’ve spent plenty of money on Olympia lobbyists in the past. They know how the system works, and they know that any proposal pitched during the final week of the session isn’t a serious proposal at all. Why they pitched it at the very last minute, I don’t know, but before any of you diehard Sonics fans get too excited by media efforts to hype this proposal into genuine hope, take a look at the facts. No bill is going to pass this session to rebuild Key Arena, and until we hear otherwise, no NBA team is available to play in it.

I’m not saying the proposal isn’t for real, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the local group eventually gets the taxpayer money they seek — if they can actually produce a team — but I’m guessing the sudden display of urgency is mostly intended to impress their fellow billionaires at the upcoming NBA owners meeting. And while I suppose it is interesting to watch the intricate mating rituals peculiar to the strange birds who comprise our nation’s moneyed elite, I’m just not so sure that us average folk really care all that much anymore.

When I snarkily commented a while back that while the rest of the presidential field was flying around on chartered Boeing 737s, only Sen. John McCain was campaigning from a French built Airbus A320, I had no idea that McCain’s choice in aircraft was anything more than symbolic. But in the wake of the controversial Air Force refueling contract, we’re learning that McCain’s connections to both Airbus and the tanker contract are closer than anybody imagined.

It was McCain who authored an amendment undermining “buy American” rules that formerly required military equipment to be manufactured in the United States, and McCain who “prides himself in the role he played blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing.” And now we learn that three of McCain’s current top aides have been lobbying the Air Force — and presumably McCain — on behalf of Airbus.

Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain’s campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain’s national finance chairman.

[…] McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, has been a key figure in the Pentagon’s yearslong attempt to complete a deal on the tanker. McCain helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus.

McCain’s campaign claims that “they never lobbied him related to the issues,” so I guess those two letters McCain wrote the Defense Department were purely coincidental.

In December 2006, just weeks before the Air Force was set to release its formal request for proposals, McCain wrote a letter to the incoming defense secretary, Robert Gates, warning that he was “troubled” by the Air Force’s draft request for bids.

The United States had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Airbus unfairly benefits from European subsidies. Airbus in turn argued that Boeing also receives government support, mostly as tax breaks.

Under the Air Force proposal, bidders would have been required to explain how financial penalties or other sanctions stemming from the subsidy dispute might affect their ability to execute the contract. The request was widely viewed as hurting the EADS-Northrop Grumman bid.

The proposed bid request “may risk eliminating competition before bids are submitted,” McCain wrote in a Dec. 1, 2006, letter to Gates. The Air Force changed the criteria four days later.

Rep. Norm Dicks called the removal of the subsidy language a “game changer” that “tilted to Airbus.”

“The only reason that they could even bid a low price is because they received a subsidy,” Dicks said last week. “And Senator McCain jumped into this and said that (the Air Force) could not look at the subsidy issue — which I think is a big mistake, especially when the U.S. trade representative is bringing a case in the (World Trade Organization) on this very issue.”

And it’s not just partisan bloggers like me who are questioning the intersection between McCain’s interference in the tanker contract and his close ties to Airbus lobbyists.

“The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency,” said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. “Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition.”

Damn right they are. (And if any Boeing advocates want to forward me some ammunition, I promise strict confidentiality.)

Meanwhile, as WA’s Democratic congressional delegation has been noisily defending Boeing and cheering on their decision to officially protest the contract, our region’s lone Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, has been awfully damn quiet about the loss of 9,000 local jobs and the role of the man he’s endorsed for president. But then, what do you expect from the 419th most powerful man in Congress… a man who lost his bid for a coveted Appropriations Committee seat to an Alabama congressman who had just days before publicly endorsed Airbus over Boeing?

Geez… the only thing more damaging for Reichert than campaigning with President Bush might be campaigning with presidential wannabe and French aerospace enthusiast John McCain.