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With the near-complete absence of actual news this morning — an
escaping tiger killed someone (and was in turn killed) at the San Francisco zoo! A man who ran onto I-5 in Federal Way attacking cars was hit and killed by a speeding state trooper bullet! Holiday shopping was down this year! Several flakes of snow fell in Seattle on Christmas Day! — newspapers and TV stations in town are turning from the last drops of heartwarming holiday feature stories to year-end reviews in their use of fill material prepared ahead of time while reporters and editors take the week off.

You’ve been warned.

Christmas is a big day on my baby’s momma’s side of the family, and my baby’s no exception. I got my wakeup call at a relatively humane 7AM to join Katie for the unwrapping, and patient girl that she is, she even gave me the time to shower. I can’t be sure if she really liked all her gifts, because she’s always politely appreciative regardless, but by far her favorite present was the one she unwrapped last week: a kitten.

I cooked them breakfast, cleaned up, gave the dog a run, and now I’m getting ready to head off and embrace my Jewish heritage for a couple hours: I’m going to the movies: Sweeney Todd. (And yes, it is possible to be a huge Sondheim fan without being a great big faggot like Dan Savage.) Afterwards I’ll head up to the ex-in-laws for Christmas dinner and yet another round of gift unwrapping.

I hope the rest of you are enjoying your holiday, or at the very least, enjoying time-and-a-half holiday pay.

I’m hoping that Governor Gregoire doesn’t really believe that she will actually be stopping people from committing suicide by doing this:

Gov. Chris Gregoire is hoping to take the Aurora Bridge off the list of most popular spans for committing suicide, by putting $1.4 million in her supplemental budget proposal to begin building an 8-foot suicide-prevention fence on the historic landmark.

…

“Installation of an 8-foot suicide-prevention fence with illumination on the Aurora Avenue Bridge will help make the bridge safer and can help prevent suicides,” the governor said in budget documents released Tuesday.

Considering that the Aurora Bridge jumpers can land on buildings, I see some justification for this expenditure, but you have be even crazier than Lou Guzzo to believe that this is something that will save people from killing themselves.

If you want today’s headlines you’ll have to tune in to 710-KIRO this morning, where I’ll be filling in for Dave Ross from 9AM to Noon, bringing drive-by liberal propaganda to the masses.

9:00 AM: Are the elderly too old to know better?
The elderly have long been a juicy target for scam artists and “legitimate” salesmen alike, now families are fighting back with civil suits seeking to void legal contracts and other transactions, even those made without intimidation or deception. Should the elderly be treated like adolescents, who are not fully responsible for their decisions? Or should the elderly be held accountable for their own financial blunders, whatever the ultimate cost?

10AM: Are your tots toys toxic?
Millions of kids will eagerly rip the wrapping paper off their Christmas gifts tomorrow morning, but how many will come away with lead and other toxins on their hands? According to a series of free tests conducted by WA-08 challenger Darcy Burner, about 10-percent of toys and other children’s products contain lead above safe levels. Burner joins us by phone to discuss her findings, and talk about what Congress needs to do to address this growing problem.

11AM: Christians who don’t celebrate Christmas? Reverse shopping?

Tune in (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: TBA
Liberal propaganda.

8PM: Reproductive rights at risk?
When the Seattle Times’ David Postman asked Dino Rossi to explain his support of a court ruling allowing pharmacists to refuse prescriptions due to religious beliefs, Rossi declined an interview, his spokesperson saying “this is not a topic he has been campaigning on.” If NARAL/Pro-Choice Washington executive director Karen Cooper has anything to do it about, reproductive rights will remain a hot issue throughout the 2008 gubernatorial campaign, and Rossi will be forced to answer reporters questions about his very anti-choice positions. Cooper joins me by phone for the hour to take your calls.

9PM: Blogger roundup with Andrew Villeneuve
Andrew Villeneuve from Northwest Progressive Institute joins us in studio for more liberal propaganda.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
I’ll be filling in for Dave Ross this week (except for Christmas Day) 9AM to Noon, spreading my drive-by liberal propaganda to the masses.

The headline says it all: Fatal crash, new DUI record prompt WSP to step up patrol.

This month alone King County has had over 500 DUI arrests and Snohomish County has had 370 DUI arrests.

I wonder which county will end up with more convictions? Here in King County, while the police step up enforcement of the drunk driving laws, King County District Court Judge Peter Nault is working hard to reduce the number of successful prosecutions. Woodinville is fighting back, but it is not clear a victory will really change Judge Nault’s courtroom standards.

Ultimately the voters will have a say about Judge Nault’s fitness to serve. I am not a big fan of judicial elections, but as long as we have them, let’s put ’em to good use.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Megan and Jonathan
The Stranger’s Megan Seling and Jonathan Zwickel join me to say goodbye to the Crocodile Cafe, which closed this week after 17 years of featuring some of Seattle’s biggest bands.

8PM: TBA
Liberal propaganda.

9PM: TBA
More liberal propaganda.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Yesterday I wrote about three Washington state politicians working to overturn FCC Chairman and all around punk Kevin Martin’s changes to media ownership rules. Here is another Washington state politician who took a strong stand on the issue:

This and some 70 other media clips from the past week in politics are now posted at Hominid Views.

Also, check out Lee’s (still unsolved) Bird’s Eye View Contest.

You know that old “Did I just say that out loud?” trope, like when Homer Simpson reverses his inner and outer monologues to comic effect? Well, that’s kinda what happened to Ted Van Dyk when he absentmindedly revealed the true objective of “governance reform”:

It would not stop light rail construction in place, but it would limit construction to a line running from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to either Convention Place, Husky Stadium, or Northgate. Future funding would be focused more greatly on express bus, bus rapid transit, and normal bus service; dedicated transit lanes; HOV lanes; tolling; and selective repair and expansion of long neglected local roads and lifeline highways. Citywide trolleys definitely would not be part of the scheme.

See, that’s the sort of honest discussion of governance reform you might hear over foie gras and Chateau Lynch-Bages at the Rainier Club (or some crank and a dead hooker at the Discovery Institute,) but it wasn’t really meant for public consumption. Publicly, the goal sounds laudable — the creation of a four-county, elected, regional transportation commission “better able to make independent, cost-benefit-based proposals for balanced transportation systems” — while privately our region’s power elite have always understood governance to be a scheme for shifting infrastructure dollars from rail to roads.

Well, thanks to Van Dyk and his inability to distinguish between consensus and wishing, it’s gonna be a tad harder for backers to sneak governance reform through the legislature this session. My fellow bloggers are all over the issue (here, here and here) while Josh over at The Stranger has aptly labeled it “the New Prop 1.” Driving a stake through the heart of light rail is the kinda thing muckraking bloggers like me hold grudges over, especially now that the goal of governance reform has been clearly spelled out, so you can bet that politically ambitious legislators would be wise to think twice before blindly signing on to this pro-roads/anti-rail vision of our region’s transportation future.

In fact, what we really need to solve our transportation problems is less regionalism, not more, a thesis I intend to lay out in some detail over the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned.

Geov thanks Tim Eyman for I-900, the ballot measure under which the scathing Port of Seattle performance audit was conducted, but I just have to point out that I-900 was largely redundant, a bit overreaching, and merely superseded a long fought for performance audit bill that had just been passed by the legislature the previous spring. Yes, it was by far the least toxic of Eyman’s measures, but it was unnecessary, and thus I don’t think Tim deserves any thanks at all.

My main complaint about the I-900 is that its effectiveness entirely depends on the willingness of the State Auditor to use it, and use it judiciously. Performance audits can be a bitch to comply with, yet require the full cooperation of the target agency if they are to achieve the stated goal of uncovering new efficiencies. If agency employees perceive an audit is being used punitively or politically, it can quickly become a waste of taxpayer money in itself. Under I-900 there is little or no oversight of the Auditor’s office, a failing that could undermine the entire process should the office become heavily politicized. One can easily see a partisan auditor using his power under I-900 to harass public agencies and influence the public debate.

That said, I have long supported performance audits in theory, so much so that I made the trek to Olympia to testify on behalf of the bill that eventually passed. In fact, I would like to see the practice taken even further by routinely subjecting tax “preferences” (you know… tax breaks, exemptions, loopholes, etc.) to the process. If Tim weren’t such a hypocrite, I’d expect him to join me in that quest. I’m not holding my breath.

OK, now that I have your attention, let me point out that it was Eyman’s one genuinely non-toxic initiative, I-900, that gave State Auditor Brian Sonntag the authority and resources to go after the Port of Seattle, resulting in the performance audit released Thursday.

Yes, Goldy is right; the “$97.2 million waste” figure is a shot in the dark (the actual figure is probably much, much higher, because corporate corruption isn’t being counted as “waste” here); performance audits are necessarily subjective; and the news that the Port is an arrogant cesspool of waste and cronyism is no news to anyone who follows local politics. But the latter point vastly underestimates the impact of this report, for two reasons. One, not that many of us weirdos closely follow local politics — not compared to the number of people who will see today’s (and subsequent) headlines.

And secondly, the Port’s abysmal performance is intimately wrapped up in an Old Boy (and Gal) network of privilege and you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours winking (and smirking) that also implicates our local media. For far, far too long, every journalist in town has known what the Port of Seattle, with its own independent taxing authority, is doing to taxpayers (hint: it’s not “serving”). To date nobody has mounted the sort of investigative initiative needed to drag the sewage into the light in the way that, say, the P-I has relentlessly gone after the King County Sheriff’s Office. The material is undoubtably there, but it requires a commitment from the management that hasn’t been forthcoming, ever, because at the top our local dailies and TV stations are part of the same local elite. Even if they don’t play golf together with the Port of Seattle and its “friends,” how ever would they face them at the parties?

Editorially, the Times and P-I (especially the Times, not surprisingly) have favored business-backed Port commissioners and candidates and not reform-minded candidates. That and the lack of public education (i.e., media coverage) are a major part of the reason why the Port has been bad news for years, if not decades. They’re not named in Sonntag’s report, but they’re still culpable.

So where now? Sonntag’s report at minimum legitimizes and in all probability forces more media coverage (though look for the damage control efforts to begin soon as well). Sonntag’s report recommends several steps be taken in the state legislature; legislators are already talking about the need for more oversight. Relatively new Port CEO Tay Yoshitani came in last year, replacing the relentlessly corrupt (and well-compensated for it) Mic Dinsmore, promising a changed culture. There’s no time like the present. The same applies for the two newly elected commissioners, the business-backed Bill Bryant (who narrowly ousted reform leader Alec Fisken, a result that probably wouldn’t be repeated now) and Gael Tarleton, who ran as a reform candidate but whose own potential for cronyism has been widely questioned. We’ll be watching.

It’s only a shame that Sonntag’s report was released a few days before Christmas, when news is generally slow and not as many people are paying attention. The Port of Seattle deserves the widest possible scrutiny.

Thanks, Tim.

If anybody wonders why newspaper readership is inexorably moving away from print and online, one need only look at Seattle’s two dailies today for a crystal clear illustration of at least one major factor: the online editions simply appear more informative.

Both papers devote their two right columns — fully one third of their available front page real estate — to the same big story: the $97.2 million wasted by the Port of Seattle… or so says a performance audit commissioned by the State Auditor and conducted by an out of state firm. Neither article actually bothers to explain what a “performance audit” is, its intended purpose, or that it’s not by nature as objective or uniformly defined as the more common financial audit. People read the word “audit” and they think of ledgers and spreadsheets and absolute mathematical facts, but more than just an examination of the books, a performance audit is intended to analyze whether an agency is performing its actual task, and recommend procedures to increase efficiency. It’s kinda subjective.

Not that I mean to dismiss the audit or defend the Port, which has in recent years been wracked by scandal, boondoggles, and administrative arrogance, it’s just that the big news isn’t all that much news to even the most casual Port observer, and that headline-friendly $97.2 million figure is more printed in soy-based ink than chiseled in stone. The Port’s problems are well-known and long term, and what both papers neglect to tell readers is that in each of the past two cycles, efforts to elect a reformist majority to the commission have been thwarted when the business community successfully targeted one of the reformist incumbents.

As for the other headlines, the P-I fills up the entire rest of its front page with a dire warning not to inhale buttery flavor, a disturbing and important story, but again, not actually news, while the Times matches by following yesterday’s story about lead in children’s jewelry with a “special report” revealing that few children in WA state are ever tested for lead poisoning. You’d think that with all this focus on lead poisoning, the Times might have mentioned the results of Darcy Burner’s free lead tests? (Hmm. I bet if Rep. Dave Reichert had conducted this innovative public service he would have warranted a headline and a congratulatory editorial touting his bipartisanship.) But no, it’s more important to tell us that Americans like iPods and BBQ, but that beer consumption has fallen 12-percent since 1980… a statistic entirely explained by the fact that I graduated college in 1985.

Read the front page of the dead tree edition of either paper, and you’d think apart from the big story about the Port, it was a pretty slow local news day… but go online and you’ll actually find plenty of hard news stories to accompany your morning cup of joe coffee-flavored steamed milk. Gov. Gregoire will be doing what she does best, suing the powerful on behalf of the people, this time the EPA for denying states the right to set their own auto emissions standards… A groundbreaking wave-energy project has received a first in the nation license to begin construction in Makah Bay… The downtown bus tunnel will remain closed through Monday due to computer problems (did they upgrade to Vista?), snarling holiday traffic… And despite our supposedly crappy congressional representation, the new 2008 federal budget includes an additional $24 million for Puget Sound cleanup, and $88 million for building light rail:

Sound Transit officials said Thursday the money, allocated on a competitive basis and more than initially expected, is a vote of confidence in the rail extension. The allotment also bodes well for Sound Transit’s chances of winning a $750 million grant, which the agency will seek in January, officials said.

(Shhh. Don’t tell Ted Van Dyk.)

It’s all in the P-I and the Times, and more. You just wouldn’t know it glancing at the newsstand.

(Yep…this would be an official Open Thread, too.)

UPDATE (Lee): Rather than add another open thread, I’ll just post a link to this week’s Birds Eye View Contest from here.