HorsesAss.Org

Okay, I’ll try my best to maintain my journalistic “objectivity” so as not to offend any of my friends in the traditional media, but the contrast between today’s Seattle Times and Seattle P-I present one of those classic illustrations of how the local electorate benefits from having two major daily newspapers… and engaged bloggers prepared to critique them. Both papers feature articles covering the current state of the 2008 gubernatorial campaign, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think they were writing about two entirely different races.

The P-I pastes its four-column headline across the top of the fold, boldly declaring:

Rossi run for governor?
All signs point to yes

A photo of Dino Rossi accompanies the headline with a caption quoting a party insider as saying close advisors “feel 100 percent confident that he is in.” And Neil Modie’s lede is equally blunt:

He doesn’t admit it, but Dino Rossi seems to have made up his mind to run again for governor.

Even as the 2004 Republican nominee faces an investigation of whether he illegally used his public policy foundation as a front for a 2008 campaign, he reportedly is moving toward an announcement of his candidacy sooner than he has indicated. Some of his 2004 campaign operatives have been touting his 2008 prospects.

The story? Everybody who is anybody says Rossi is running for governor… except for the candidate himself, who continues to officially hide behind his so-called foundation. The race is on, and “officially,” probably sooner than later.

Ralph Thomas’ story in the Times, on the other hand, appears on B1 (I haven’t yet seen a print copy,) and presents an entirely different take on the governor’s race:

Gregoire gearing up for ’08

OLYMPIA — If money matters — and who in politics would suggest otherwise? — the state Republican Party has a problem.

Though the 2008 election is more than a year away, Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire already has raised nearly $2.7 million in campaign cash. The Republicans, meanwhile, still don’t have a candidate for governor.

The story? Gov. Gregoire is raising big money, but the Republicans… they don’t even have a candidate yet!

It’s not until more than halfway through the article that Thomas even mentions the status of Rossi’s efforts, and when he does, he initially allows Republicans to characterize it in their own words:

Like most Republicans, Esser is hoping former state Sen. Dino Rossi — who barely lost to Gregoire in the 2004 election — will soon announced a rematch. In their last race, Rossi matched Gregoire nearly dollar for dollar in fundraising.

Rossi has said he will decide by the end of the year whether to run.

486 words into the 600 word piece — well beyond the attention span of many readers — Thomas finally mentions that Rossi has not been “sitting idle,” but again allows him to characterize his own efforts:

For months, he has been traveling the state, giving speeches and raising money on behalf of the Forward Washington Foundation, a nonprofit group he formed last year.

Rossi says Forward Washington is simply an effort to engage the public in finding solutions to the state’s biggest problems.

It is only in the closing paragraphs that Thomas briefly presents what “Democrats contend”….

But Democrats contend it is a de facto “Rossi for Governor” campaign. They point out that, at his Forward Washington gatherings, Rossi uses many of the same pitches that he used in 2004.

In July, the state Democratic Party filed a complaint accusing Rossi of using the foundation to sidestep state campaign-disclosure laws. That complaint is being investigated by the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Compare that to Modie, who spends the bulk of his P-I article — and nearly 600 words of bullet points — laying out the evidence that Rossi is in fact running for governor, including a rather definitive quote from Tacoma News Tribune editorial page editor David Seago, who blogging after “an informal ed board” interview with Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, wrote: “McKenna said there’s no doubt Rossi’s going for it.”

Notice that like Thomas and Modie I have up until now attempted to avoid editorializing. As far as I know, neither Thomas nor Modie got a single fact wrong; likewise, I have made a sincere attempt to present an accurate and neutral close reading in an effort to understand how a typical reader’s perception of the governor’s race might be shaped, depending on which paper they read. I do not believe that my characterization of the two articles was any more consciously biased than the articles themselves.

That said, no doubt I prefer Modie’s take, and believe it presents a more accurate, nuanced and useful understanding of the current state of the governor’s race. It probably could have benefited from a paragraph or two on Gregoire’s fundraising lead, but “Incumbent raises buckets of cash” is not exactly a “Man bites dog” sorta headline… which I suppose explains why Thomas’ money-focused article ran on B1 instead of A1.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not intending to impugn Thomas’ motives or his reporting skills, and the Democrats’ impressive statewide money lead is certainly newsworthy; these are two different articles focusing on two different aspects of the same race. But the fact that the Times and the P-I, on the very same day, would so dramatically diverge on the status of Rossi’s candidacy, gives lie to the traditional paradigm that proclaims objectivity as even a possible, let alone worthy journalistic pursuit. Modie’s lede claims Rossi has “made up his mind to run again for governor,” whereas Thomas’ lede says Republicans “still don’t have a candidate.” Both are technically correct, but I’d wager political insiders from both parties would privately acknowledge that Modie’s take is the more accurate characterization of Rossi’s intentions.

Think about it. Rossi will certainly generate obligatory headlines when he finally and officially announces his candidacy, and I suppose the event will be at least as newsworthy as the first half-dozen or so of Mike McGavick’s many campaign kickoffs. But should Rossi shock the political and media establishment by announcing that he will not seek the governor’s mansion, well, that would be a huge story. Modie’s lede acknowledges this on the ground reality. Thomas’ lede does not.

Two newspapers, one governor’s race, two very different takes on Dino Rossi’s intentions. Objectivity just isn’t all its cracked up to be.

Dave Neiwert has a great guest column in today’s Seattle P-I, and while he’s writing about bicyclists, the same holds true for pedestrian and transit commuters as well:

Trier, like a lot of misinformed folks, seems to believe the only road taxes we pay are motor vehicle licensing fees and fuel taxes. But the truth is that those fees largely pay for state and federal highways, and even then only a portion of them. The rest of the costs of those roadways are borne by all taxpayers generally, including bicyclists, through local, property and sales taxes. Local roads, where you find most cyclists, are another story altogether.

Indeed, most bicyclists in fact also own cars, so they’re also paying the licensing fees and gas taxes as well. But by using their bikes in place of cars, the wear and tear (and subsequent maintenance costs) they inflict is exponentially less than that caused by cars and trucks.

A 1995 study titled “Whose Roads?” by cycling advocate Todd Litman laid all this out in detail. The study estimated that automobile users pay an average of 2.3 cents per mile in user fees, including fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, while they actually impose 6.5 cents per mile in road service costs. Who pays the difference? It’s picked up by general taxes and property assessments. So while bicyclists pay an equal share of those taxes, they impose costs averaging only 0.2 cents per mile in road service costs.

The amount bicyclists overpay leaps out when you look at the costs of local roads, the roads cyclists use most. Litman found that only a third of the funds for their construction and maintenance comes from vehicle user charges; local property, income and sales taxes pay the rest. Automobile user fees contribute only about 1 cent per mile toward the costs of local roads but simultaneously impose costs more than six times that amount.

This is the type of clarity that makes Dave one of my favorite local writers, and it highlights an argument that should be raised in the midst of the debate over the controversial Roads & Transit measure on the November ballot. The anti-rail folk often argue that they shouldn’t have to subsidize transit riders, when in fact it is transit riders who have long been subsidizing roads via the sales and property taxes that pay for the bulk of their maintenance. Likewise, relatively light drivers like me — I average less than 6,000 miles a year — get substantially less for our sales, property and MVET tax buck than a more typical 15,000 to 20,000 mile per year commuter.

The idea that automobile drivers pay as they go, while everybody else is a freeloader, is complete and utter bullshit that fails to evaluate our transportation system and tax structure as a whole. But I’ve never before been able to put it into words quite effectively as Dave.

Hey, unfortunately, it’s not This Week in Bullshit, but here’s your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

Well, speaking of Bullshit, Gen. David “Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit” Petraeus spread it thick over Congress last week, touting “success” in Iraq (as did the Ass-Kissee-in-Chief in a nationally televised address) and dominating American media headlines. That’s too bad, because far more important stories were unfolding in Iraq itself, and they tended to directly and badly undermine Gen. AKLC Petraeus’s assertions.

The same day that Pres. Bush made his speech to that remaining fraction of the nation that cares what he thinks about Iraq, the tribal leader Bush had embraced only ten days previous in Anbar Province as an example of heroic leadership, uniting various Sunni tribes to try to rid the province of the widely despised Al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters, was assassinated. Thing is, the Americans are just as despised as Al-Qaeda, and so when Bush embraced the thuggish Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha as his kinda guy — Time Magazine described Abu Risha last week as having “a rather unsavory reputation as one of the shadiest figures in the Sunni community,” with a personal militia, a history of drug running, and a tribe notorious for highway banditry — he essentially signed Abu Risha’s death warrant. He was assassinated the day of Bush’s speech, somewhat undermining the claim that all Anbar is now happy and pro-American. While the White House blamed the murder on Al Qaeda in Iraq (of course), more likely it was a local hit, confirming the first rule of Middle East politics: the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

BBC/ABC/NHK polling last week showed just how unpopular the Americans are after the “success” of the escalation surge in Anbar. The results were grim enough in Iraq as a whole: 70 percent of Iraqis think security is worse in escalation surge areas now compared to before it began (and another 11 percent thought it unchanged, meaning over 80 percent of Iraqis believe the whole exercise has been a waste). A whopping 60 percent now think attacks on US troops are justified; 47 percent want the US to leave now, up from 35 percent before the escalation surge; and 35 percent believe American withdrawal would make further civil war more likely, compared to 46 percent who think it’d be less likely. Pretty damning stuff.

But in Anbar Province it was worse:

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.”

Every. Anbar. Respondent. So much for winning hearts and minds.

Another poll released last week was even starker. The British polling agency ORB, in surveying Iraqi families to find how many families had members who’ve died in the occupation and war, estimated that one in two families have lost at least one member, and that overall a staggering 1.2 million or more Iraqi civilians have killed so far. That number is roughly in line with the widely ridiculed 655,000 number published in an epidemiological study in Lancet last summer, and confirms not only that the civilian death toll has been far higher than official estimates, but that the violence has worsened sharply in the last year.

The escalation surge wasn’t popular in Baghdad, either: on Wednesday, residents of one of the few remaining areas where a Sunni and a Shiite neighborhood adjoin each other took to the streets to protest the U.S. military’s erection of a wall to segregate them from each other. The walls being built to “protect” residents from each other have been fiercely criticized by many residents themselves, who argue that they promote ethnic segregation, are as likely to keep attackers in as out, and separate family from family.

But perhaps the biggest Iraq story of the week got almost no media play here: the oil deal cut by the Kurdish provincial government with Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. Why is this a big deal? First, it means local governments are starting to ignore the Green Zone government entirely and cut their own deals, which is a death knell for the oil “revenue-sharing” law that is perhaps the U.S. government’s biggest benchmark for political “success” in Iraq. It also suggests that Big Oil is now betting on the failure of the U.S. mission in Iraq and the subsequent partitioning of the country. And the deal itself (along with one the Kurds recently cut for natural gas) makes that partitioning more likely, as the Kurds and Shiites have plenty of their own oil resources and need neither the Sunnis nor each other, let alone the phantom al-Maliki “government.”

The last element undercutting Gen. AKLC’s testimony last week was the Pentagon report it was supposed to accompany. That was quietly released just before the weekend, and showed that even with the administration’s extremely generous definition of “progress,” only half of Congress’s 18 benchmarks showed progress, exactly one more than in an interim report in July. That area was in allowing former Ba’athists into the government, and the “progress” there was only in a tenuous deal between a handful of politicians that has yet to be implemented — and that is similar to numerous such deals that have collapsed in the past. Meanwhile, a separate State Department report, also quietly released in a Friday Afternoon News Dump, revealed that — surprise! — religious freedom in Iraq is down sharply in the last year.

Somehow, this all is being spun as “success,” and Bush is now promising a “withdrawal” to celebrate it — next Spring, six months past schedule, back to pre-escalationsurge troop levels because the US military can’t sustain its current deployment without either extending tours (again) or starting a draft. Which is to say Bush is keeping in as many troops as he can as long as he possibly can, and then seeking credit for giving our poor men and women in uniform (the ones that survive his vanity project for a few more months, anyway) a long-overdue rest.

Or maybe he’ll just send them to Iran. That propaganda campaign also continued apace last week, with the US claiming that a fatal mortar attack on U.S. military headquarters was carried out with an Iranian rocket. Even if you accept the curious logic that the Iranian government is responsible for every Iranian-made weapon Iraq — after all, the U.S. has utterly flooded Iraq for the last four years with weapons now on the black market, and you don’t see Washington bombing itself — the evidence to support the claim that the rocket was Iranian-made turned out to be less than compelling. Here’s Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner: “Can I hold up a piece of fragment today that has a specific marking on it that traces this back to Iranian making? At this moment I can’t do that.” THEN SHUT THE HELL UP.

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

7PM: Fire or Ice?
The once fabled Northwest Passage has been open for weeks as the Arctic icecap continues its retreat, and dozens of major American cities are threatened as and Greenland’s massive glaciers prepare to slide into the seas. Meanwhile new science suggests that global warming could shut down or slow thermohaline circulation, triggering a cataclysmic and sudden flip into a new ice age. And yet the ideological deniers continue to ridicule and disparage those of us who give credence to the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Mark Sumner, a contributing editor to Daily Kos under the screen name Devilstower, joins me for the hour to discuss past climate shifts, and disturbing new evidence that the Arctic is melting faster than computer models predicted.

8PM: Greenspan on Bush: “The President Sucks” Who’d a thunk?
In his long awaited memoir to be released tomorrow, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan praises President Clinton, criticizes President Bush, the Republicans and their irresponsible tax and spending policies, and makes the not-so-startling claim that “the Iraq war is largely about oil.” So now he tells us.

9PM: Is conservatism a brain disorder?
A controversial new study released this weeks shows that the brains of liberals and conservatives actually work differently, leaving liberals more flexible to responding to unexpected event… thus angering conservative pundits, who had difficulty responding to such an unexpected event. UCLA researcher Marco Iacoboni, one of the paper’s authors, joins me to explain the results.

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

Independent pollster Research 2000 conducted a recent poll of Connecticut voters:

For whom did you vote for in the 2006 race for U.S. Senate, Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

	Lieberman	Lamont	Schlesinger
All	49	42	9
Dem	34	62	4
Rep	67	10	23
Ind	53	41	6

If you could vote again for U.S. Senate, would you vote for Ned Lamont, the Democrat, Alan Schlesinger, the Republican, or Joe Lieberman, an Independent?

	Lieberman	Lamont	Schlesinger
All	40	48	10
Dem	25	72	3
Rep	69	7	24
Ind	38	49	9

The main takeaway from this survey is obvious. If the 2006 election were held today, Ned Lamont would be the U.S. Senator from Connecticut and Joe Lieberman would be getting ready for afternoons of chasing the neighborhood kids off his lawn. But beyond that, the survey also reveals the continuing disintegration of the frames that have defined (and misconstrued) the reality of our current political debates.

What’s interesting about this slow changing of opinions is that the biggest shifts come from independent and Democratic voters, but there’s almost no difference at all from Republicans. I think Democrats in Connecticut have clearly been disappointed at how Lieberman hasn’t just abandoned Democrats, but is still actively fighting against them. But for independents, there are likely other reasons for the shift. Independent voters tend to see themselves as moderates. They see themselves as being appalled by both extremes and parties and look for candidates with the courage to stand somewhere in the middle. But while there’s certainly extremism at both ends of our political spectrum, the extremism that drove the Iraq War has become the overriding divide in recent elections, and especially in the 2006 Connecticut Senate race. Being somewhere inbetween the two parties was no longer the most anti-extremist position.

As this divide has taken shape, Joe Lieberman occupied a fairly unique space, and his example is a good way to understand the shifting views of independents and moderates. He’s gone from being the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee to losing a Democratic Senate primary in the span of less than 6 years. But his overall view of the world hasn’t really changed that much. He’s always been a staunch authoritarian. But back before 9/11, his main targets weren’t Iran and Syria, they were video games and the music industry. As a college student during this time, it helped cultivate for me the image of left-wing extremism through political correctness.

The Bush Administration’s war in Iraq then completely shuffled the deck on what we consider to be left and right. The right-wing in this country pre-9/11 was defined more by their free market economic outlook, but following the attacks, it began to redefine itself through the war on terror. Joe Lieberman went from being an authoritarian left-wing nanny who threatened the bottom line of big business to seeing his authoritarian outlook fall perfectly in line with a party eager to drop bombs on the enemies of Israel. But while his political philosophies were always rooted in authoritarian extremism, his diversion from the Democratic Party was painted as “moderation” for being willing to stand up to the supposed “far-left”.

And thus the “moderate” Lieberman was seen by voters as being the centrist candidate – a bi-partisan independent who could relate to both Democrats and Republicans – and defeated Ned Lamont. But being a centrist does not make you a moderate. A moderate is just the opposite of an extremist. And a growing number of independents in Connecticut now realize, as Joe continues to cheer on this deeply unpopular war, and begging for another, that he’s no moderate at all. He’s the same crazy extremist he’s always been, and now his extremism is promoting an agenda much more dangerous than restrictions on video games. And in the new political climate we find ourselves in – defined greatly by how we view what’s happening in Iraq – the “left” is where all the moderates are, while the “right” is where all the extremists have ended up.

Locally, the Burner-Reichert 2006 Congressional race took on a lot of the same frames as the Senate race in Connecticut. Reichert was portrayed by many as a moderate and as having an independent streak. He appealed to independent voters in the district and won re-election. Burner, like Lamont, was a young and inexperienced candidate tied closely to the netroots community through their high-tech backgrounds, and was continually portrayed as an extremist, simply by adhering fairly closely to the Democratic Party platform. Yet Dave Reichert has now just returned from Iraq and is still enthusiastically supporting a war that has become deeply unpopular. He has never voted against the president, nor has he spoken out against any of the extremist tactics (secret prisons, warrantless spying, pre-emptive warfare) he’s employed for fighting terrorism. Darcy Burner has never taken any position even close to as extremist as what Dave Reichert now currently supports. Yet I’m sure we’ll continue to hear from the Republicans about how Burner is the more “extremist” candidate. As independent Connecticut voters have started to figure out that the labels of who was a moderate and who was an extremist in 2006 were reversed, it’s not hard to imagine that the independent voters in the 8th District of Washington are doing the same.

ABC News has a new report that displays architectural visualizations of major American cities before and after a 3 to 16 foot rise in sea levels. Here’s Seattle as it currently exists:

And here’s Seattle after a 3 meter rise in sea level:

Downtown Seattle itself is fortunate to be built mostly uphill, but we lose our entire waterfront, including the port and surrounding industrial areas that are so important to our economy. (I say if we build the Sonics a new arena, we put it somewhere in there.)

We can argue all we want about whether climate change is primarily caused by human activity (although the overwhelming scientific consensus is that is,) but even the most vehement, ideologically driven deniers are beginning to admit that our climate is warming. If indeed the climate continues to warm (as opposed to say, shutting off the oceans’ thermohaline circulation, suddenly plunging us into another ice age,) sea levels will rise, and our children and grandchildren will have to deal with consequences.

You’d just think, maybe, we all might want to start planning for this possible future, rather than sticking our heads in the sand, or accusing “alarmists” like me of being dirty commies.

FYI, King County has performed its own analysis of the impact of a sea level rise on the region, which I reported on way back in May of 2006. Take a look at the image showing the Duwamish flooding all the way to Southcenter, and explain to me why the best and most prudent approach to this threat is to simply ignore it.

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

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh
The Stranger’s Josh Feit joins me for our weekly round up of the week’s news, and a look ahead to coming headlines. Tops for tonight include post-hangover report from last night’s Genius Awards, the education of Jane Hague, and Dino Rossi’s non-campaign. But mostly Josh just wants to talk about the Saturday Night Massacre.

8PM: Mandatory sentencing or “tailored” justice?
A Burien family got the justice they asked for when their 15-year-old son avoided a prison sentence for the accidental shooting of his 16-year-old brother. Prosecutors insisted the shooter needed incarceration for his “serious violent crime,” but in sentencing the boy to 24-months of home detention, King County Superior Court Judge Harry McCarthy said that justice “has to sometimes be tailored for each person.” Should justice be blind, or tailored to the circumstance?

9PM: TBA

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

Oopsy…

King County Councilmember Jane Hague, in the midst of an already troubled re-election campaign, said Friday she takes full responsibility for widely circulated reports that she has a college degree that she doesn’t have.

But Hague denied intentionally providing incorrect information and initially said she was puzzled at how several “Who’s Who” books, The Seattle Times, the Municipal League of King County and the National Association of Counties all reported erroneously that she had a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University.

“What is the point here? Are you trying to call me a liar?” she asked at one point.

Um… yeah.

“I’m willing to say that if there were erroneous reports, then you may call me guilty. You can call me guilty because the buck stops here,” the Bellevue Republican said.

Actually, the “buck” never quite “stops” with Hague. It drunkenly weaves for a few miles first, before getting pulled over and blowing a 0.14.

Asked why several “Who’s Who” books said she had a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan, Hague said at first, “Beats me.” She then speculated that her staff members may have inadvertently filled out forms with incorrect information.

Because of course, when she says “the buck stops here,” “here” apparently refers to her incompetent staff.

If that happened, she said, “I didn’t check it closely enough. There you have it. My fault. I should have been a better proofreader. I should have been more careful about it.”

Sober translation: “I’ve got sucky staff, and it’s my fault for not keeping a closer eye on them when they fill out candidate questionnaires I’m supposed to be filling out myself.

“About 20 years ago,” when Hague contacted her alma mater in an attempt to document her credits and get a degree, she learned that credits from the law class hadn’t been transferred to Western Michigan and by then it was too late. She said she never tried to portray herself as a college graduate.

That’s right, Hague never tried to portray herself as a college graduate, except, you know… in a 1993 Municipal League candidate questionnaire, in the 1991, 1995 and 1996 editions of “Who’s Who”, in Seattle Times campaign profiles in 1993 and 1997, and in a published story in the National Association of Counties online newsletter in 2000… all of which occurred after she claims she first found out she never got a diploma. But other than that, never.

I suppose the kerfluffle over a “BS in Business and Economics” that Hague claimed to receive, but never did, wouldn’t be such a big deal if it wasn’t part of an established pattern of disingenuity and blame shifting over the past 15 years. Indeed, as the P-I reports, Hague has a documented history of blaming others.

After being pulled over for weaving dangerously on the 520 bridge, and then twice blowing nearly double the legal limit, Hague verbally berated the arresting officers, blamed her husband, and is now contesting the DUI. After a 2001 collision with a Metro bus, Hague blamed the bus driver, despite his account and those of witnesses, including an off-duty police officer. When found guilty of ethics violations in 1999 she blamed it on bad advice from a county attorney, who denied having given her any advice at all. And just a few weeks ago, in responding to a campaign disclosure violation complaint, her campaign blamed a “volunteer treasurer” for failing to meet state requirements.

Anybody who has ever run for office or worked closely on a campaign knows how candidates labor over their answers on questionnaires and in interviews — and how closely they scrutinize the write-ups, endorsements and evaluations they get in response. For years Hague knew that publications and organizations were crediting her with a BS she did not earn, and she did nothing to correct the record. For years Hague lied about her resume… part of a pattern that clearly suggests that she lacks the integrity and forthrightness voters usually demand from their elected officials.

Actually paying money to have your name printed in “Who’s Who” is embarrassing enough, but exaggerating your profile is just plan pathetic. Are voters ready to remove this embarrassment from the King County Council?

In the weeks leading up to the big arrests by the SPD at Seattle nightclubs, pro-nightclub folks like Tim Hatley and Josh Feit were saying that Seattle had all the laws it needed to go after bad nightclubs. No need to license the clubs, they said.

Then came the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Now The Seattle Police Department, the Mayor, and others are getting knocked for enforcing the law. Go figure.

Josh will be on Goldy’s show tonight at 7:00pm.

[UPDATE]

Uh oh… So I’m getting email about how totally unbelievably wrong I am on this. I think it’s good that clubs are scrutinized, but arresting bartenders and doormen in “political” raids is not good policy.

[UPDATE]

Good points from Paddy Mac in the comments:

Your post also does a great job of ignoring the context. The Mayor has been pushing for vast new powers over nightclubs (in part because the city did a such a chronically poor job when permitting the growth of nightclubs in residential neighborhoods), and then the police just so happen — a total coincidence, really — to delay their arrests until a big sting assists his PR campaign, complete with a show of force utterly inappropriate to the situation.

In the months leading up to an election, candidates vie against each other for political and media endorsements, and in the liberal-eat-liberal world of Puget Sound politics none is more keenly prized than the non-endorsement from my good friend Stefan at (un)Sound Politics. For example, yesterday Stefan publicly threw his support behind Bruce Harrell for Seattle City Council, and today Harrell’s opponent, Venus Velazquez, triumphantly issued a press release touting her victory.

Congratulations Venus, your win in November is virtually assured.

Since rising to prominence with his feverishly paranoid coverage of the 2004 gubernatorial election contest, Stefan has proved a cannily accurate inverse bell weather of local politics, earning his endorsements the well deserved reputation as a political kiss of death. Indeed, considering his track record, the only thing more feared than Stefan endorsing your victory is him predicting it.

Amusingly, Stefan relies on a clip of Velazquez at the Hate Free Zone forum to justify his endorsement of Harrell, arguing that her appeal to minority voters to vote for leaders “who look like you … who come from you,” is inherently and unforgivably racist. Yet Stefan fails to inform his readers that Harrell — who was always Velazquez’s main opponent — is himself half-Asian, half-African American, so that any such appeal would apply to him as much as it does to her. How typically Stefan.

I’ve had the chance to talk one-on-one with both Velazquez and Harrell, and to be honest, I wasn’t excited by either one of them. But to her credit Velazquez actually argued with me about issues rather than just trying to win me over. I’ve heard that Velazquez has a reputation as being a bit brash and hard to work with, and Stefan warns that she’ll be a “shrill… divisive and… toxic presence on the Council.” But… well… that may be exactly the type presence the Council needs to shake things up and provide a little balance to our sometimes imperious mayor.

UPDATE:
Will just called me to remind me of his wise words to Harrell from way back in April:

Don’t let Stefan endorse you. Don’t email him campaign updates. Hope he doesn’t write about your campaign in any way favorable. Make no mistake, Stefan is the “Kiss of Death”. Just ask Robert Rosencrantz and Casey Corr, who both got hammered (Rosencrantz twice!) in city races. I’m amazed that Seattle’s preeminent wingnut blogger doesn’t understand how radioactive he is. Republican Jim Nobles, the first “out” Republican to run for city office since the 1980’s, is too smart to embrace Stefan and his mean–spirited, petulant, race-baiting politics.

While we’re somewhat on the subject, and in the interest of full disclosure, I thought I’d let it be known that I made a public records request this morning regarding the handful of performance audits that Ted Van Dyk seems so jazzed about:

Later this month, state Auditor Brian Sonntag will release such audits of the Washington State Department of Transportation and Sound Transit and, shortly thereafter, of the Port of Seattle. All three audits will precede fall elections and could have important impacts on voter decisions about the Sound Transit-RTID regional transportation package and Port of Seattle Commission races.

The more I re-read that paragraph the more suspicious I got, especially in light of recent rumors and hints that the anti-transit crowd has been leaked information regarding the upcoming reports. Van Dyk seems to think it a great thing that performance audits be timed for release just weeks before crucial votes regarding these agencies, but I can’t help suspect it an overtly political maneuver. It is also potentially the death knell for performance audits as a useful tool in Washington state.

Performance audits are not comparable to financial audits in either scope or purpose. You don’t just bring in a third party to examine the books in search of waste, fraud or abuse, but rather, you observe and analyze the performance of an agency and its procedures for the purpose of recommending changes that could lead to greater efficiencies. While in a worst case scenario a performance audit could conclude that an agency does not fulfill its mission at all, it is mostly meant as a productivity tool, and as such requires the full cooperation of the management and staff being audited if it is to be effective. If instead, performance audits are used as a means to politically punish and embarrass an agency — including, say, influencing elections — then future audits on other agencies will never gain the inside trust and cooperation necessary to conduct them.

Yes, voters deserve to know how well Sound Transit and WSDOT are spending our money before we vote them more of it, but if these audits are perceived to be politically motivated hatchet jobs, their reports won’t be worth the paper they’re written on. And if officials within the auditor’s office or the outside contractors have been improperly communicating with opponents of the Roads & Transit measure, soliciting their input and leaking results, then I can’t see how these so-called “performance audits” can be understood to be genuine performance audits at all, let alone impartial and unbiased.

My hope is that Brian Sonntag’s office has been scrupulous in overseeing these audits and in hiring contractors who are equally scrupulous and unbiased, but the timing of these audits and their reports does give me pause. I’m generally loathe to investigate my sneaking suspicions at taxpayer expense, but I didn’t really see any other choice. My fingers are crossed that my public records request turns up nothing of interest.

I don’t know what’s gonna be worse for WA Republicans… Dino Rossi running, or not running?

According to today’s Seattle Times, the FBI finally has a plan to combat WA’s epidemic of bank robberies:

Special Agent Larry Carr plans to work with Washington state lawmakers on legislation that would forbid banks from doing business with customers who wear hats and sunglasses while inside the bank.

Carr, who heads the FBI’s bank-robbery division in Seattle, said that most bank robbers cover their heads “with a hat, sunglasses or a hoodie [hooded sweat shirt]” to avoid being identified by surveillance photos. With most bank security cameras positioned in front of and above customers, the disguises are often successful because the cameras capture the bill of a cap or brim of a hat, he said.

Yeah, sure… or, they could just, you know… move the cameras. I mean, cameras can be incredibly tiny these days. You could unobtrusively install one at every teller window — from an angle looking up at the customer — and a would be robber would never know it’s there. And I’m not exactly sure how this new dress code would effectively avoid scenarios like this:

Teller:	Excuse me sir, but bank policy and state law require that you remove your sunglasses and hoodie.
Bank Robber:	Put all your fucking money in this bag, or I’ll blow your head off, bitch!

Personally, I wear sunglasses all the time, summer and winter, rain or shine, and as I get older (and balder) I’m more frequently wearing hats to protect my naked scalp from sun and cold. It’s only polite to remove one’s sunglasses when engaged in conversation, and I try to remember to de-accessorize indoors, but I sometimes forget they’re even on. I doubt my personal eyewear habits would eventually lead me to a brush with the law, but one can easily imagine such uncomfortable situations, like when a devout Muslim woman refuses to remove her head scarf.

Hmm. I wonder if the vehemently anti-gun control folks have any problems with law abiding citizens like me being told we can’t wear hats and tinted glasses in banks? I know my sunglasses aren’t specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but it strikes me that eroding our civil liberties, even minor ones, should be law enforcement’s last resort.

Maybe some day, when I’m old and curmudgeonly and stuck in the past enough to get a job writing a column for a major daily newspaper, I can be just like the P-I’s Ted Van Dyk…

One of the most difficult things to do, in any part of life, is to make judgments on the basis of facts and principles rather than on our feelings about personalities.

Yeah, and when you’re talking about facts and stuff, it might be a good idea to actually research them, rather than just kinda-sorta drawing from your personal recollection. Take for example Van Dyk’s defense of Tim Eyman, whose initiatives he both criticizes as “arbitrary” and “disruptive”, and lauds as resonating with an angry electorate.

But wait a minute. Why do Eyman’s proposals gain broad public support, even when losing?

Um… in a democracy, isn’t “losing” an election kinda the opposite of “broad public support”…?

It is because they resonate in an electorate just plain fed up with undisciplined and even mischievous state and local spending and taxing decisions. Eyman’s ballot measures become send-a-message blunt instruments for ordinary citizens.

Eyman’s initiatives resonate with voters? Really? Let’s take a look at Eyman’s electoral performance over the past few years and see how Van Dyk’s assumptions hold up:

	2006:	I-917 — YATDCTB ("Yet Another Thirty Dollar Car Tab Initiative") Eyman spent nearly $738,000 — most of it Michael Dunmire’s money — yet failed to collect enough signatures to qualify this dog for the ballot.
	2005:	I-900 — Performance Audits Passed with 56% of the vote.  By comparison, the other two winning initiatives that year, the "Indoor Clean Air Act" and the totally unsexy "Commission on Judicial Conduct," pulled in 63 and 68 percent of the vote respectively.
	2004:	I-892 — "Slots for Tots" Failed with only 38% of the vote, the worst of that year’s five statewide measures.  Eyman’s I-864, which would have cut local property tax levies by 25% across the board, failed to qualify for the ballot after five months of canvassing.
	2003:	I-807 — "Super Majority for Tax & Fee Increases" Sounds familiar?  Well without Michael Dunmire’s money, this first incarnation of I-960 failed to qualify for the ballot.

So… um… how exactly do you “gain broad public support, even when losing,” initiatives that never even get far enough to lose? Van Dyk imagines he has his finger on the pulse of Washington voters, but if he did, you’d think he might have noticed that Eyman politically flat-lined years ago. Eyman didn’t even manage to qualify a single anti-tax initiative over the previous four years, let alone pass one, and since 2002 has relied almost exclusively on sugar daddy Michael Dunmire and the gambling industry to finance his paid signature drives. In the interim, voters have overwhelmingly rejected both gas tax and estate tax repeal, while local levies routinely passed throughout the state. Yeah… voters are clearly “just plain fed up.”

Van Dyk goes on to berate the rail portion of the coming Roads & Transit measure, warning it will “snarl traffic and harm the economy,” and yet polls consistently show that light rail is exactly the portion of the measure most popular with voters. What exactly is Van Dyk’s definition of an “ordinary citizen”…? Kemper Freeman Jr.?

With logic like that Van Dyke almost makes Eyman seem sensible. Almost.

UPDATE:
Andrew’s got a more comprehensive Eyman Failure Chart up at Permanent Defense.

Courtesy of SeattleJew.