HorsesAss.Org

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has spent a busy summer trying to line developers’ pockets, most notably with a proposal in June to expand property tax exemptions for builders for median income condos and (if any remain by 2008) apartments. But Hizzoner topped himself in the dog days late last month with a quiet proposal to gut permitting and environmental review requirements for new projects — a new pinnacle of cynicism not just because it’s another giveaway to developers that encourages the teardowns of what’s left of this city’s semi-affordable housing stock, but because of how he sold it.

From the mayor’s press release, entitled — I kid you not — “Mayor Nickels proposes ways to encourage smart growth: Changing SEPA thresholds to meet today’s climate change challenges:

Mayor Greg Nickels has submitted legislation to the City Council this week that will encourage environmentally friendly growth in Seattle neighborhoods, promote housing affordability and reform out-of-date land use regulations. “Every decision facing us today has a direct impact on climate change and our planet,” said Nickels…

The mayor’s proposal will change the threshold for SEPA review for downtown residential zones from 20 to 80 units, from four to six units in low-rise duplex/triplex projects; from 20 to 30 units in designated urban villages and urban centers. Thresholds will remain the same for industrial projects. Under the new thresholds, all parking will increase from 20 to 40 stalls.

Larger projects will be subject to the SEPA thresholds based on the size and location of a proposed project. The proposed changes will help to streamline permit review for new development, and reduce barriers that add delay, cost and risks to development of new housing and businesses.

SEPA, for those of you not up on your bureaucratese, is the State Environmental Policy Act, Washington’s equivalent to the federal Environmental Impact Statement. SEPA allows local municipalities to determine how large a project needs to be before its size triggers a SEPA review, and what Nickels is proposing is increasing that threshold by from 150 to 400 percent. If approved by City Council it would be a massive gift to developers.

It warms the cockles of one’s heart to think that Nickels is proposing such measures not because he’s in bed with their beneficiaries, but because he wants to save the planet. You see, according to Nickels, anything that makes more money in Seattle for developers by definition discourages sprawl, and therefore helps stop global warming in its tracks. Your new high-end condo could save a polar bear’s life.

But why stop there? Saving the planet is serious business; it won’t be accomplished simply with a tax break here and a gutted regulation there. Nickels needs to think bigger, and undoubtably he is. Look for these proposed measures soon:

* What’s this 20 to 40 stalls nonsense? Abolish parking. Cuts CO2 emissions (except for those clueless out-of-towners circling the block for hours…) and eliminates developers’ need to provide parking.

* Cut down all trees in the city. “More good, socially conscious projects get held up by some stupid old tree than any other single factor,” Nickels will say, before promising to minimize CO2 by replacing each tree with a new twig on a one-to-one basis.

* Abolish all height limits and setback requirements on new buildings. It’s the only conceivable way to save the Inuit way of life.

* Ban back yards.

* Bulldoze all environmentally sensitive areas. (Happily, the city has already gotten a head start on this one.) Lots of potential for new townhomes here.

* Have Seattle taxpayers pay for all construction costs. Expensive, sure, but so is building a levee to save downtown from rising sea levels.

* Rather than paying bothersome, expensive relocation fees to tenants whose homes are being destroyed, developers may simply pass the tenants along to the city, which will shoot them. (They didn’t want to live in Auburn anyway.)

These sure-fire environmental winners are a slam dunk to sail through city council. Just ask newly minted environmentalist Jean Godden, who, when asked for comment on the mayor’s planet-saving proposals, rolled on her back and asked to have her tummy rubbed.

The fact that these ideas, like the mayor’s current proposals, would help to make the mayor’s rich buddies that much richer, is strictly a coincidence. And the fact that they will force still more poor, working, and middle class people out of the city is — well, look, do you want to save that polar bear or not?

A former most-wanted fugitive, Kenneth Freeman, is returning to Washington State to face charges:

An American man accused of raping his daughter and posting the videos on the Internet has agreed to be extradited from Hong Kong to the United States, his lawyer said Monday.

Kenneth John Freeman, a former reserve sheriff’s deputy on the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s most-wanted list, has been challenging the extradition request since he was arrested while traveling in Hong Kong in May.

“After due consideration, Freeman decided he will consent to surrender and be sent to the United States,” Freeman’s lawyer, Giles Surman, told a Hong Kong court on Monday.

The extradition is expected to take 3-6 weeks. For those who don’t read Effin Unsound religiously (you know who you are!), Freeman was my boss at the time he skipped bail and fled the country. And yes, I was creeped out by all of this more than you could possibly imagine.

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

7PM: Is Gen. Petraeus “dead flat wrong”…?
Gen. Petraeus will testify before Congress tomorrow, and dollars to donuts he’ll tell America that progress is being made on the ground in Iraq, the “Surge” is working, and that he expects troop levels to start coming down next spring. I’ve already lost faith in President Bush’s newest military scapegoat… have you?

8PM: Can Richard Pope, um… win?
Perennial candidate Richard Pope is taking on drunk driving Jane Hague for King County Council… a classic battle between a gadfly and a barfly. Richard Pope joins us for the hour to explain how he can win, and what we can expect from him in office.

9PM: TBA

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

(A weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.)

President George Bush unwittingly embarrasses himself on the topic of Iraq most weeks, but this was a banner week. First, there was an unannounced Labor Day stop in the massive Marine base in Anbar Province known to Marines as Camp Cupcake, owing to its 13-mile perimeter, over 10,000 troops, and complete disconnect from the chaos that is the daily reality outside its well-guarded walls. While there, Bush hinted that he might reduce troop deployments by the end of the year — but on the same day, the AP was quoting unnamed administration officials as saying that his senior advisors have already told Bush that the escalation surge is going swell and not to let up now. (Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday — 9-11! Get it? — and his written report on the escalation surge is due by the end of the week.)

Then it was on to Austria Australia, where, before meeting with OPEC APEC ministers, Bush blithely told Austrian Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile that “we’re kickin’ ass” in Iraq. (My pet theory: Austrian Australian is not Bush’s native language, and in the awkwardness of trying to translate his remarks, he confused the subject and object. What he meant to say was “Our asses are getting kicked.” A totally understandable gaffe. The alternative, that the most powerful man in the world is living in a particularly destructive fantasy world, would be unthinkable.)

Bush was also embarrassed by a New York Times excerpt last weekend from a generally fawning new biography of him, in which the Commander-in-Chief expressed bewilderment that his administration disbanded Saddam’s army in the early days of the occupation, saying, essentially: “That wasn’t my policy. I don’t know how that happened.” The move is now widely regarded as an enormous mistake that put thousands of young Iraqi men with guns out of work and bitter toward the Americans about it — the nucleus of what became the insurgency. Thing is, Bush knew exactly what the policy was, because he ordered it — and Paul Bremer, then the US Viceroy to Iraq, promptly sent the Times the letters, memos, and documentation to prove it. Oops. (One more notch for the “fantasy world” theory.)

Petraeus’ report is expected to praise the military effort, but condemn Iraqi politicians for a lack of progress in reconciliation, signing over all Iraqi oil to American oil companies, and other “benchmarks” dear to US hearts and/or wallets. So, in its first week back after a month-long recess, what did the Iraqi Parliament do to scramble to impress the Americans with their determination to move ahead? They met for exactly 90 minutes, with only 154 of 275 members present — barely a quorum — and read into the record 10 minor noncontroversial bills, none having anything to do with American benchmarks or reconciliation. Most of their time was spent blaming each other for the country’s worsening violence (they don’t seem to share Bush or Petraeus’ view of the “success” of the escalation surge) and complete lack of basic government services or security. It doesn’t look good. At some point American media needs to figure out that the Iraqi government is a fiction outside the Beltway and Green Zone, and barely relevant inside those places, either.

Speaking of barely relevant: Congressional Democrats, in the runup to the Petraeus report, announced that in their negotiations with Bush they were willing to settle for a “goal” rather than “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. (I know: Democrats, Iraq, “negotiations with Bush,” and “willing to settle,” all in the same sentence. Shocking, but true.) And Ret. Marine Gen. James Jones, who headed a special panel looking into the effort to train Iraqi security forces, testified before Congress that his panel found the Iraqi army at least two years away from being able to operate independently, and that Iraqi police forces were so corrupt and so infiltrated by insurgent militia members that they should be disbanded. Gen. Jones concluded that “We should withdraw.” His testimony was essentially ignored by both the administration and national media.

The Brits, on the other hand, did withdraw: the last British soldiers pulled out of Basra this week, leaving Southern Iraq nominally under the control of the Iraqi Army, more realistically under the control of three mutually warring fundamentalist Shiite militias, and almost certainly about to receive American troops trying to push the chaos from one neighborhood, village, and province to another.

One more note, while folks concerned with Iraq await a report that was probably written in Cheney’s office a month ago: the ACLU filed suit this week to try to obtain Pentagon estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths. After denying for years that the U.S. government tracked Iraqi civilian deaths at all (what’s another dead Iraqi?), the Pentagon finally confirmed earlier this year that it does, in fact, produce intelligence estimates of civilian casualties — but has refused to make them public, just as it has refused to make public the secret formula by which it is calculating, in defiance of every known metric, that overall violence is down in the country due to the escalation surge. Perhaps this week they’ll let us in on the secret.

Or not.

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

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh and Erica
Charles Mudede previews the Genius Awards.

8PM: Time to cut taxes in WA?
Should FlexCar drivers pay 19% tax? Should a two-thirds majority be required for all tax and fee increases?

9PM: The Blogger Hour with Will

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

On Friday, I called in to KUOW’s Weekday program. The second hour features a journalist round table, where the likes of Danny Westneat and Knute Berger talk about whatever it is that they talk about.

Having commented on Westneat’s column about the worst piece of public art in the city, I felt obliged to call in.

(You can find the program here, or on iTunes. It’s free! Fast-forward to the 41 minute, 10 second mark.)

I have not, nor has anyone else, ever claimed that removing the bench will solve the problems of Belltown. The “artinistas” of Seattle, who dump godawful public art on my sidewalks, can go suck lemon.

[UPDATE] Here’s the bench in question:

George Bush…making America sooooo proud:

Other videos from the past week in politics can be found in the Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza.

I guess, what I don’t understand about newspaper editorial boards could fill a book:

We were startled today to get a request for an editorial board meeting with Darcy Burner, the Democratic challenger itching for a rematch next year with Eighth District U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert.

It’s way too early, we told Burner’s eager scheduler. Call us next year.

“Startled”…? Really? They were actually startled? You know, like when somebody sneaks up on you from behind, or like when Jason Michael Myers from Halloween suddenly comes at you with a knife?

I dunno, I’d think it should be pretty obvious that Burner would want to start talking to opinion makers now that she has dispatched her only rival for the Democratic nomination, and I’d also think TNT editors might be eager to talk with her considering that many of the issues at the heart of her campaign are issues they’ll surely be editorializing about over the next fourteen months. If Reichert, a sitting congressman, were to come to them and ask for a meeting, would they tell him to “call us next year” as well? Would they be just as startled? (Well, probably, but only because Reichert carefully avoids unscripted conversations with the press.)

It is not uncommon for journalists to bitch about their lack of access to one public official or another. You’d think TNT editors might want to extend to candidate Burner the same sort of courtesy they’d expect a Rep. Burner to extend to them.

I’m just sayin’.

This is from Kemper Freeman Jr.’s goofball organization, who are lying their asses off in this obviously illegal campaign piece pamplet.

The real number? About 250 bucks a year, per household. To compare, it would take 376 years for this package to cost you anything near $94,000, and that’s total.

I’m no economist, but 250 is a lot less than 94,000.

At last, I have vindication, and oddly enough I somewhat have Tim Eyman to thank for it. Back in 2003 Assistant State Attorney General Jim Pharris priggishly and selectively brought a scope challenge against I-831, my initiative to officially proclaim Tim Eyman a horse’s ass, and got an equally priggish Thurston County Superior Court judge to unconstitutionally bar me from delivering petitions to the Secretary of State. Pharris assumed that I would lack the financial resources to appeal the case, and he was right.

But this morning, in unanimously rejecting a pre-ballot review of Eyman’s clearly unconstitutional I-960, the Washington State Supreme Court made it absolutely clear that it would have rejected the lower court’s “unwarranted judicial meddling” and allowed the people to decide on Eyman’s well-documented horse’s assedness.

Preelection review of initiative measures is highly disfavored. The fundamental reason is that “the right of initiative is nearly as old as our constitution itself, deeply ingrained in our state’s history, and widely revered as a powerful check and balance on the other branches of government.” Given the preeminence of the initiative right, pre-election challenges to the substantive validity of initiatives are particularly disallowed. Such review, if engaged in, would involve the court in rendering advisory opinions, would violate ripeness requirements, would undermine the policy of avoiding unnecessary constitutional questions, and would constitute unwarranted judicial meddling with the legislative process.

That Pharris would selectively and vindictively prosecute a scope challenge against I-831, and then argue the reverse a few years later in defending I-960, just shows what an ethically rudderless, stick-up-his-ass hypocrite he really is. But then, he’s a lawyer, so that’s his job. The Seattle Times editorial board on the other hand has no such excuse for their blatant hypocrisy. They smugly urged I-831 be tossed out, and then bemoaned a similar challenge to I-960. I expect an apology any day now.

I was a bit surprised that the political press didn’t comment more last week on the stunning success of the “Burn Bush” netroots fund drive. $125,000 from over 3,200 donors. 14-months before the election. Over a weekend. In August. Unprecedented.

But with the sudden withdrawal of state Sen. Rodney Tom only seven weeks after he jumped into the race, the pundits are starting to take notice. In a brief post on TIME Magazine’s political blog Real Clear Politics, Reid Wilson describes WA-08 as “a great pickup opportunity for Democrats,” but for “one major problem … a competitive primary.”

Well, it turned out not to be much of a problem for Burner after all, and Wilson puts his finger on one of the reasons why:

One source close to Tom said the decision was made all the easier after President Bush came to the state to raise funds for Reichert. During that time, Burner used her credentials with the netroots to attract 3200 new donors, raising more than $125,000 over three days. A Burner strategist said it was conceivable that she could raise as much — or more — than Reichert did from the Bush visit. Tom raised about $100,000 in a month, though the source admitted Tom couldn’t compete with Burner’s national fundraising potential.

That’s pretty much also the lede from the Associated Press, which credits Burner’s “Internet-fueled” campaign for her “early victory.” And in the Seattle Times, Tom himself puts it quite bluntly:

“You have thousands of people giving twenty, thirty bucks. It’s how campaigns should be run.”

Absolutely.

It may be premature to say that the rules have changed, but there is no doubt they are changing. New technologies now enable progressive candidates with broad netroots support to run a “people-powered” campaign capable of matching a handful of rich folks dollar for dollar. And by so effectively merging the old campaign paradigms with the new, Darcy Burner is fast becoming a model for congressional candidates nationwide.

How did she do it? That’s what a number of bloggers and congressional campaign staffers have asked me after the stunning success of Burner’s virtual town hall and netroots fund drive, and our conversations always seem to devolve into the same question: “Who is handling Burner’s netroots outreach?” But unfortunately for those hoping to quickly replicate formula, the disappointing truth is… nobody. Burner has no “netroots outreach.” The netroots are an integral part of her campaign.

You could almost say that Burner has “gone native,” except that would wrongly imply some sort of personal transformation. In fact Burner has always been smart, driven, progressive, passionate, technically savvy, and well… a bit of a geek who famously installed the phone system herself in her first campaign office. Burner is the netroots, except rather than just blogging about politics and contributing money, Burner decided she could make more of a difference by running for office herself. And had the local and national netroots been as mature two years ago as they are today, I’m pretty damn sure Burner would be running for reelection right now rather than Reichert.

Now, I know there are some, like Democratic state Rep. Deb Eddy, who worry that Burner’s close identity with the netroots might be as much a liability as it is an asset:

Primaries bring out the party faithful, said Eddy, and “Darcy was more left wing than [Tom] is.”

However, the 8th District, which stretches from Duvall to Eatonville, is not as liberal as Burner is, Eddy said, and that could spell trouble in a race against Reichert. While Burner is popular among left-leaning bloggers, that may not translate to the average voter.

“One thing that worries me is she has not naturally gravitated to more nuanced positions,” Eddy said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get perspective or distance from the net roots. They can create a lot of smoke.”

Hmm. The “Burn Bush” campaign generated fire, not smoke; that’s what drove Tom so quickly out of the race. And if Eddy is going to lazily adopt the Republican frame that Burner is somehow out of touch with her district, perhaps she could explain exactly what it is about Burner (and us “left-leaning bloggers”) that is “too liberal”?

Is it “too liberal” to fight for a responsible close to our occupation of Iraq? Is it “too liberal” to support reproductive rights, and the civil rights of all citizens regardless of race, creed, gender and sexual preference? Is it “too liberal” to oppose warrantless wiretapping, torture and suspension of habeas corpus? Is it “too liberal” to offer a quality public education to all our children and affordable health care to all Americans? Is it “too liberal” to consistently oppose drilling in ANWR, to accept the scientific consensus on evolution and climate change, and to reject estate tax repeal?

According to opinion polls and recent initiative tallies, Burner is smack dab in the mainstream of 8th CD voters on these and many other issues, and while I’m sure there must be some issues on which at least a slight majority of district voters side more with Reichert than with Burner, none immediately come to mind. If Burner were so liberal, so out of touch with the needs of her district, she had the perfect opportunity to prove it during a recent live chat on the progressive blog FireDogLake, where she was all but begged to pander to the audience on the issue of H1B visas. She refused. So in the future, when Eddy publicly frets that Burner is “too liberal” for the district, reporters might want to ask Eddy for some specific examples before repeating the claim unsupported. And it is ironic that Eddy would accuse Burner of not gravitating toward more “nuanced positions” when it is not at all clear from her comments that Eddy has studied Burner’s positions at all.

The fact is, it is Reichert who is out of touch with his constituents, who is too conservative for his district on Iraq, on FISA, on children’s health care, on reproductive rights, on Social Security reform, on estate tax repeal and on any number of high profile issues. It is Reichert who refuses to address climate change because the overwhelming scientific consensus somehow threatens his political ideology or religion or both. It is Reichert who only four years ago — in the wake of the invasion of Iraq — was recruited by both parties, yet chose to be a Republican.

Burner’s critics routinely accuse her of being “too liberal,” while never offering a single example to back up their claim, and yet Reichert is demonstrably outside the mainstream of 8th CD voters on issue after issue after issue… not the least of which being his almost sycophantic support of our profoundly unpopular president and his disastrous occupation of Iraq. By comparison to Reichert, Burner may indeed be liberal, but then by that measure, so is the 8th CD.

Last year Karl Rove and the Reichert campaign (with the active cooperation of the Seattle Times editorial board) were somewhat successful at defining Burner, simply by calling her names. This time around it won’t be so easy. Burner is better, smarter, and more experienced than she was two years ago, and so are the netroots who have her back. We’ve already seen everything the other side has to offer, but they clearly have no idea how to parry the growing strength of our people-powered movement. As Burner stated in a recent video, “There are more of us than there are of them.” And in electoral politics, that’s ultimately all that matters.

From The Stranger, who have been putting the screws to city council candidate Tim Burgess over his smarmy guest column in the Seattle Times (printed after the ’04 election):

However, he acknowledges that he would not push his own pastor to perform gay weddings or lobby the leaders of his own denomination to allow them. “I’m just not there yet,” he said, adding: “I’m running for city council, not city theologian.”

To this, “Switzerblog” adds:

Why should he? Same-sex marriage in the church is irrelevant in this conversation; the separation of church and state means that churches can refuse to acknowledge or perform marriages for whoever they want. It’s relevant to the voters what he wants the state to do about the issue – not whether he’ll hassle his pastor.

Right on. I don’t care who churches decide to marry. It doesn’t affect me. What matters is that King County should be able to issue a marriage license to two consenting adults of any sex. Whether a specific church wants to bless the union is all up to them. I’m sure, being that this is Seattle, that there are plenty of “rainbow” churches.

Two items this week have really demonstrated the limitlessness of how inept and clueless those in the traditional media can be.

Lou Dobbs, in his weekly tirade against all things Mexican, says the following [emphasis mine]:

Calderon can’t have it both ways. He cannot fail his citizens at home and then act as the Great Imperialist Protector of his citizens who are driven by poverty and corruption to enter the United States illegally. The United States provides Mexico with an annual surplus of $65 billion in trade, an estimated $25 billion in remittances from Mexican citizens living and working here illegally, and at least another $25 billion generated by the illegal drug trade across our southern border.

Considering that Lou has previously praised Calderon for how he’s gone after Mexico’s drug lords, I know that he has some awareness that the $25 billion he’s talking about there doesn’t go to the Mexican government, but instead to criminals who are fighting the Mexican government. But somehow, he still uses that figure as if its money that the Calderon government is simply wasting. It’s as ridiculous as criticizing Hamid Karzai’s inability to strengthen the Afghan government by pointing out how much money the Taliban makes from poppies. How this man has a TV show is a complete mystery to me.

The second item has been all over the internet already, but it’s a beauty. The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, in what appears to have been an attempt at humor, writes the following:

A survey of political bloggers showed that 94 percent of them had never been out of the country or read anything other than a Harry Potter book.

Something tells me that if every Washington Post columnist was blindfolded, put in a van, and driven 2 hours west of Washington DC and dropped off, 94 percent of them would think they were in a foreign country.

21st Century Democrats will release a new poll later today, showing Democrat Darcy Burner with a 44% to 39% lead over Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s highly competitive 8th Congressional District. 17% of voters remain undecided.

The robo-poll of 509 registered voters was commissioned by 21st Century Democrats (who endorsed Burner in July) and was conducted on August 28, the day after President George Bush came to Bellevue, WA to raise money for Reichert. 85% of Democrats support Burner and 82% of Republicans support support Reichert, but independents break decidedly toward Burner by a 40% to 24% margin.

President Bush remains exceedingly unpopular in the district, with only 30% of respondents rating his job performance as good or excellent. 96% of Democrats and 83% of independents rate the president’s job performance as fair or poor, along with a substantial 36% of Republicans.

Yes it’s early, and yes this is an internal poll from a partisan ally. But it shows that Burner’s message of fighting to bring the occupation of Iraq to a responsible close is resonating not only with Democrats, but with unaffiliated voters as well.

UPDATE:
21st Century Democrats has issued a statement:

“Darcy’s Burner’s phenomenal success in using the web to reach voters with her message about ending rather than extending the war is clearly resonating with Democrats and Independents in the district,” said Mark Lotwis, executive director of 21st Century Democrats. “These poll results and Sen. Rodney Tom’s decision yesterday to drop out of the primary race and enthusiastically endorse Burner demonstrate that Burner’s courageous and principled leadership on progressive issues is not just the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.”

Last night was one of my favorite annual events – our fantasy football draft. Our league started out in 1998 with a bunch of recent college grads who relocated here to work for Boeing. Now, we’re starting up our 10th season. More than half of us are now married, and a few have kids, but we still have one night a year where we revert to shameless bachelorhood, talking trash, drinking cheap beer, and picking the players whose successes or failures our hopes will ride on for the next four months.

In the past, I’ve made pretty elaborate NFL predictions at the beginning of the season, only to debate with myself in November whether I can go back and delete the post. Like fellow Philly-native Goldy, I’m a huge Eagles fan, but I’ve also grown to like the local team here, and really enjoy how much the Seahakws’ recent success has brought some excitement to the games at Qwest Field.

As the Saints and Colts get it all started this evening, what do you expect to see this year? Can the Seahawks make it back to the big game? Were the Saints a fluke last year? Can the Colts win it again? Will Donovan McNabb still be healthy when the Seahawks head into Philly in December? Will Joey Harrington make everyone in Atlanta forget about Michael Vick? Can anything possibly happen this season that’s more embarrassing than what happened to my alma mater last Saturday?

Enjoy the games everyone!