HorsesAss.Org

Brewster’s blowing the lid off the scandal of the century.

Politicians? Raising money this early? Shocking, I tell you! Simply shocking!

Here we are two years away from the next Seattle city election, and already it appears that Mayor Greg Nickels is raising money and building up his inevitability. Neighbors for Nickels reports a relatively modest $72,493 in its account (as of a Nov. 17 filing with the city). The Mayor Greg Nickels Web site doesn’t play coy, touting, “Re-elect Greg Nickels Seattle Mayor 2009.”

I too was surprised by the “Re-elect Greg Nickels Seattle Mayor 2009” headline. I was also surprised to hear that hookers aren’t in it for the health insurance, or that the sun comes up each morning.

The peculiar new timetable for American politics is that you start raising money for the next election just a few weeks after getting elected. The real campaign takes place right about now in a four year cycle — 18 to 24 months before the actual election. Raise enough money now and line up enough early big names, and by the time a serious opponent gets organized, it’s too late.

There’s nothing peculiar about it. It’s called politics. It’s common for politicians to keep in touch with their supporters through low-dollar fund raisers. Besides, any candidate who is considering running for mayor should decide soon. Last cycle, the media elites whined incessantly that Nickels wasn’t drawing a serious candidate, as if some poor city councilman is obligated to spend a year campaigning only to be creamed in the general election. Nickels’ eventual ’05 opponent, former UW professor Al Runte, was quite comical on the campaign trail. At one of Runte’s many Drinking Liberally visits, I heard him say:

“Hi, I’m Al Runte, and I’m running for Mayor. No really, I’m running for Mayor.”

Media big dogs like Brewster wonder why Nickels is getting an early start to his next campaign. I’m sure that in December of next year, he’ll wonder why no one wants a piece of him. Eventually, somebody is going to connect the dots.

From Daily Kos:

In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: “I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention.” What was in the family statement from the SBC? “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

The ad wasn’t just a blanket, “we support the SBC statement,” but rather highlighted details. The ad Huckabee signed specifically said of the SBC family statement: “You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership.”

Huh. If my wife had “submit[ted] herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband,” I suppose she never would have divorced me. Now that’s what I call a Defense of Marriage.

I know it’s not particularly sensitive nor PC of me, but I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw this headline and accompanying photo in today’s Seattle P-I. Lighthouse is a great organization and all, but shouldn’t somebody clue in those blind people that they’re working in a manufacturing plant?

Folks down in Lewis County were already struggling to cope with the aftermath of last week’s devastating floods, when President Bush added insult to injury yesterday by signing an emergency declaration making renters, homeowners and businesses eligible for up to $28,800 in cash grants… this in a county whose residents reliably approve anti-tax/anti-government ballot measures by 20-plus-percent margins. Can’t we just git gov’ment off our backs?

God knows the flood victims could use the help, if only to find temporary shelter and give them the breathing space they need to get their lives back on track, but it’s hard to imagine folks who just voted 63.2% in favor of I-960’s government crippling provisions looking kindly on any sort of government handout. After all, these are the kind of upstanding citizens who voted 61.4% in favor of I-912’s fuel tax repeal, 68.7% and 72.9% respectively in favor of I-776 and I-695’s $30 car tab provisions, 73.6% in favor of I-747’s one-percent cap on growth in regular local levies, and a whopping 79.1% against R-51’s transportation improvement package… so it seems unlikely that they would ever accept the food stamps and emergency unemployment compensation the disaster declaration makes available. I mean, this is a county that voted 60.5% in favor of I-933 at the same time the “takings” initiative went down to defeat by a healthy 17-point margin statewide, so one would think that voters so adamantly opposed to government regulations that might, say, prevent a land owner from building a Walmart in a flood plain, would also be adamantly willing to take full personal responsibility for the inevitable consequences of doing so. I’m just sayin’.

(Whenever I hear righties bitch about gov’ment it reminds me of that old Catskill’s joke about the woman, who after complaining about the terrible food at a resort, adds “and such small portions.”)

The rest of the headlines are filled with equally horrid tales of government intrusion. A burning ban is now in effect for King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, and on Hanukkah, no less; advocates want to take away our constitutional right to discriminate against gay people; and in perhaps the ultimate indignancy, the EPA is nosing around in our bathrooms, urging us to switch to a new generation of 1.3 gallons per flush toilets:

All of the WaterSense toilets flush at least 250 grams, or about 10 ounces of matter. In the industry, that’s considered the average weight of adult human solid waste.

Yeah… well… I eat a lot of fiber, so I’m not so sure. Besides, the one thing I’m not flush with right now is money, so unless the EPA or SPU wants to give me the same free toilet they’ve been giving apartment complexes and businesses, I’m sticking with the old guzzler that came with my house.

Damn gov’ment.

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

7PM: Clinton vs Guiliani? Obama vs Huckabee? Romney vs Jesus?
Daily Kos front page editor Miss Laura joins us by phone for a conversation about the current state of the presidential campaigns and a report from the ground in New Hampshire. Oprah’s speech, Huckabee’s record, Romney’s come to Jesus speech, and more.

8PM: Who’s to blame for last week’s floods? (And what to do about it?)
Was clear cutting in the watershed and overdevelopment in the flood plain responsible for last week’s record floods in Lewis County, or were incompetent government officials to blame? Or maybe it was just the inevitable result of global warming? Those questions and more, but first, Patty Kaija from Friends of Lewis County Animal Shelter joins us by phone to talk about some of the floods most helpless victims, and what you can do to help.

9PM: Is Seattle ready to ride the SLUT?
Driving to the studio today I passed the South Lake Union Trolley gliding by in preparation for it’s inaugural run this week, and before this $52.1 million SLUT even picks up its first paying passenger, there’s already talk of building a network of streetcar lines to connect Seattle’s neighborhoods. South Lake Union to the UW? The Waterfront to Capitol Hill? Are we about to become a city of streetcars… and do we want to be?

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

FYI, rumor has at that documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (What Would Jesus Buy? and Super Size Me) has found Osama bin Laden. I guess we’ll find out in January when his new film, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, premiers at Sundance.

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

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh Feit
The Stranger’s Josh Feit joins us for a recap of the week’s news, and a look ahead to what’s coming up. Are North Seattleites NIMBYs? Is Dave Reichert reaching out to labor? Should Tim Eyman have been tased? All that and more, plus your calls.

8PM: What’s up with Cathy Sorbo’s teeth?
Local comedian and Seattle P-I columnist Cathy Sorbo joins us for the hour to share her own unique take on current events, plus an illuminating update from the world of dentistry.

9PM: Regional Blogger Roundup
TJ from Loaded Orygun and Jimmy from McCranium join us by phone for our monthly look at Northwest political news outside the Seattle metro market.

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

I’m not prepared to argue with the main thesis of Alicia Mundy’s piece in the Seattle Times today, which posits that the US Senate Republican caucus is moving even further to the right in the wake of Sen. Trent Lott’s retirement.

This year, when Senate Republicans dropped into the minority, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Lott and their caucus began losing control to four conservative members with clout among several large and vocal interest groups — John Kyl of Arizona, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.

[…] Coburn, for instance, has held up many bills that involve earmarks and new spending. One, worth about $7 million over the next few years, would increase regulations on pool makers because of accidental deaths of children attributed to pool drains.

Kyl and his allies also strongly oppose issues related to birth control and stem-cell research, infuriating Murray.

On Thursday, Kyl was elected to take Lott’s place in January, as the new No. 2, the enforcer. He told Roll Call that he “can’t be a patsy.”

Are Kyl, Coburn, DeMint and Cornyn really further to the right of Lott, who infamously claimed that “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years,” had Strom Thurmond been elected president in 1948, running on a segregationist platform? Well, maybe, and Mundy certainly deserves credit for raising the question. But her closer… oy:

That leads to the question: How does a legislative caucus function with an ideologically driven group in the driver’s seat?

Democrats have grappled with that themselves.

Really? The Democratic caucus has grappled with an ideologically driven group in the driver’s seat? And when exactly was that? Surely Mundy’s not implying that Sen. Harry Reid operates as a liberal ideologue, or that the House Democratic caucus under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Rahm Emmanuel has in any way pandered to the liberal extreme of the party?

Of course, I guess centrism can be as much an ideology as the radical neo/theo conservatism that drives the likes of Kyl and Coburn, but it is this kind of media obsession with equivalency that ends up distorting the political debate, and driving our policies ever further toward the right. If “Democrats have grappled with” the same sort of “ideologically driven group,” readers might logically conclude then that Democrats must be as ideologically extreme. It is in this way that Mundy’s lazy attempt at balance achieves the opposite, branding by inference Reid and Pelosi’s relatively centrist agenda as equally “ideological”.

The fact is, Kyl and Coburn are extremists who don’t represent the mainstream of American political thought, whereas polls show that the majority of voters consistently align with Democrats on the majority of issues. To imply equivalency only serves to enable this right-wing fringe.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) gives FCC Chairman Martin hell:

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

My good friend and former Seattle Weekly colleague, Philip Dawdy, writes one of the best mental health blogs in the country over at Furious Seasons. And today Philip is trying to figure out how he’s going to meet January’s rent — and at the same time file a complaint with the state AG office — after Google Adsense cut him off, and apparently stiffed him on $600 in revenue already earned, over an apparent malware incident Dawdy has no responsibility for. The kicker: Philip can’t even get anyone at Google to tell him what he supposedly did wrong, only an anonymous (and probably automated) response instructing him that

…your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.

So this is how bloggers are supposed to monetize the Web?

Turmoil in the Puget Sound housing market receives front page attention in both Seattle dailies today, as the Times and P-I fish the data for dramatic headlines.

The median housing price, we’re told, “has fallen four months in a row,” is “back where it was the previous November,” and “last month fetched nearly 10 percent less than the typical sale in July.” Wow. That sounds like the nationwide housing collapse has finally hit Seattle, except, you know, “it’s typical for monthly house prices to fluctuate,” some of the median price decline is surely from “the influence of condominiums, which have been making up more of home sales and generally cost less,” and of course the well known fact that “home sales are highly seasonal.”

To further complicate the reader’s job this morning, both articles liberally intermix data for detached homes and all housing, as well as trends from Seattle, King County and the surrounding areas. Ironically, the result of all this muddle is probably a fairly accurate picture: the regional housing market is soft — certainly softer than it’s been in years — but exactly how soft, how widespread, and how entrenched, well… we really don’t know. Gone for the moment are the bidding wars and double-digit annual appreciation to which we’ve all grown accustomed, but at least for us Seattle homeowners (and buyers) what we’re witnessing looks more like a return toward normalcy than an actual slump.

Which of course raises a question that seems to be missing from all the typically breathless local coverage of the region’s housing market: is a flattening or modest decline in prices actually a bad thing?

Self-appointed guardians of Seattle’s quality of life have long decried the loss of our city’s middle class heritage, but arguably the number one culprit in this trend has been the dramatic rise in housing prices that created such enormous wealth for those lucky enough to get into the market early. It was a struggle to buy my house for $187,000 back in 1997, but at a likely price of about half a million dollars today, it would be impossible. Average wages have not doubled and tripled over the past decade, but Seattle’s housing values have, pricing many families out of the market.

The equity in my house is my only substantial asset, so I have great empathy for homeowners watching their property value decline… or at the very least, not appreciate nearly as quickly as anticipated. But as someone with the experience of buying in the bidding war era — I joked at the time that I spent more time picking out a head of lettuce than I did deciding to make an offer on my house — I welcome a more rational housing market. And while the Ye Olde Seattle establishment bemoans the threat “vertical density” poses to our neighborhoods, the only realistic and palatable path toward “affordable housing” is to build more condos, townhouses and apartments… that is, short of a regional economic collapse.

So which is it? Do declining housing prices represent a crisis or an opportunity? I look forward to next month’s coverage to learn the answer.

It’s a little more expensive to die in King County now:

A $50 fee for cremations goes into effect Nov. 20.

A Seattle-King County Public Health manager, Gareth Johnson, says the money will help pay for the medical examiner’s office to review all deaths. It will determine if they should be investigated before the body is destroyed.
[…]

…John Rolfstad [director of the People’s Memorial Association] says the fee could be a burden for the poor or discriminate against people who chose cremation for religious purposes.

Sounds to me like a pall tax.

The Yakima Herald-Republic’s article about Tim Eyman being escorted out of the Yakima City Council chamber was pretty amusing. But I found something else to laugh about in it (my emphasis):

In addition, Eyman complained that his request for a guest commentary on the Ensey blogging issue had been denied by the Herald-Republic’s editorial board. He argued that his sympathetic-to-Ensey perspective would be valuable because he once had been nailed for not telling the truth about receiving monetary compensation for his political work on initiatives.

On Wednesday, Herald-Republic publisher Michael Shepard said the paper’s editorial board denied Eyman a guest commentary on the grounds that Eyman was neither a member of the community nor had any special expertise on the subject.

“Tim having been reared in Yakima doesn’t give him standing on City Council issues, nor is he an expert on blogging ethics,” Shepard explained. “We offered him the same letter-to-the-editor opportunity that Bill Lover and Rick Ensey took as well as 98 other readers. We would still consider a letter from Mr. Eyman.”

Wait a minute. Eyman was seriously arguing that he has expertise that warrants a guest commentary because…he was caught lying?

That’s rich!

You may recall that Eyman previously stole money donated to his initiative campaign, and used it to pay himself a handsome salary. Worse yet, he repeatedly said he wasn’t doing this. Essentially, he was lying his ass off to his donors: “The biggest lie of my life,” he finally admitted.

Later on, he was found by the PDC to have violated multiple parts of RCW 42.17 (Campaign finance and disclosure laws). As a result, Eyman was fined $50,000 after stealing over $200,000 from his donors.

So…come to think of it, Eyman actually does have a point. As an admitted liar, he can certainly comment with some authority on the ethical shortcomings of others.

And, apparently, the Herald-Republic came to the same realization. According to a comment left in the Horses Ass comment thread, Mr. Eyman claims that a limited guest commentary has now been accepted.

Unless, of course, Tim is lying again.

Yakima Mayor Dave Edler had a police officer remove Tim Eyman from council chambers Tuesday when Tim refused to shut up after the council voted 5-2 to cut off his rant against Councilmember Ron Bonlender.

Eyman started by arrogantly introducing himself as Yakima’s “highest ranking unelected representative,” and then went on to attack the Yakima Herald-Republic for their coverage of the recent sock puppet scandal in which Republican Rick Ensey’s wife Diane effectively used an anonymous blog to defame Bonlender during the campaign. Diane Ensey’s identity was not revealed until after her husband’s victory, prompting bipartisan calls for his resignation.

Pissed off that the Herald-Republic wouldn’t give him a guest column, Eyman called the Herald-Republic’s coverage of the Ensey’s admitted deception a “witch hunt,” bizarrely comparing it to that of the media storm surrounding the Duke Lacrosse rape case — only the Herald-Republic’s offense is apparently much worse, because….

“… that was about an alleged rape; the Ensey thing involves a few lines on a blog that maybe six people read. For years I’ve been libeled, denigrated and insulted by anonymous people on blogs, but blogs are little stray comments like you’d hear in any lunchroom, they’re mosquitoes in the alligator infested swamp of politics.”

Uh-huh.

In fact, Tim is lying as usual. Yes, he’s been insulted and denigrated by me and other liberal bloggers, but not a single one of us is anonymous, and, if he really believes I have libeled him, I urge him to sue me before I sue him first for making such a slanderous allegation. Eyman hopes to diminish our credibility and influence, but what “the Ensey thing” makes clear in the exception is that the blogosphere does indeed subscribe to a set of ethical standards… standards the Ensey’s shamelessly violated to the detriment of both the blogo- and political spheres. As a blogger I do not shy away from using strong language, but I never lie, and I certainly don’t hide behind a pseudonym like those cowardly Enseys. I have standards. Folks like Eyman and the Enseys obviously don’t.

Given that he too is a fraud and admitted liar, Eyman’s impassioned defense of the Enseys is not surprising. That some newspapers still give him valuable free space on their op-ed pages, is.

The P-I just posted a pretty good rundown of the latest stats, cheerily buoyant if you really believe the realtor “now is the time to buy!” malarkey that the story’s author does little to countermand, grimmer if you check out the better-informed Soundoff section. The reality, as we’ve noted before, is that our trailing-edge market is just catching up with other meltdowns, notably the Bay Area. Subprime numbers are not as relevant here because a lot of the boom was fueled by actual wealth. Example: A townhouse on the market for nearly three months here is owned by a guy living in Arizona who bought it two years ago with no intention of ever living in it. Purchase price then: $420,000. Selling price now: $590,000.

Sure, he’s dreaming. He may unload the thing, but if I was negotiating, my pitch would be, Hey, I can only go $450k. I know that’s low, but I’m taking it off your hands and you’re gonna take a bath if you don’t flip it now. Etc etc. Would such a sale translate into housing values going down? Not really. But from a perception standpoint, oh yeah. And that cycle is just as potent downward as the boom cycle was upward.

Fasten your safety belts, we’re in for a ride. Still to be addressed: Now that the crash has begun, why is so much building still going on???? Might be a story there…