HorsesAss.Org

In the comments of my last post, commenter Russell Garrard wrote the following:

The Bush-haters will tell us that the supreme head of our government and his minions are supremely sinister and fiendish liars (albeit also moronic bumpkins). Then they turn around and tell us that only government can be trusted to vet what we put in our mouths and bodies. I don’t get it….

The larger argument that Russell is making (and we continued the back and forth in the comments over it) is that the government shouldn’t be trusted to do anything because free market forces will invariably do it better. I’m amazed at how often I hear this considering how much evidence there is that it’s not true in a number of circumstances (see: Larry Kudlow looking ridiculous on his own show when defending free market health care against Ezra Klein). The logic behind it is that companies will be so afraid of the financial ramifications of doing things against the public interest (secretly having bad things in their products or implementing cruel labor practices) that it’s pointless to have any kind of oversight by the government. This ignores a massive amount of history and common sense. Companies pursue profits and there have been many situations where that pursuit of profit has run counter to the general welfare of the citizens.

One of the more common ways in which this has happened is when it comes to addictive substances. From the tonics of the 19th century that secretly contained morphine to the cigarette industry of the 20th, companies have often put their pursuit of profit before the public good. These industries weren’t reformed because the corporations stopped seeing the profit potential of their actions, they were reformed because the government established rules (in the case of morphine, laws were created in the late 1800s that forced manufacturers to identify the ingredients of their tonics, causing many of them to immediately go out of business rather than admit their product contained morphine). Not all of the rules that our government has made over the years are perfect – in fact, some have been terrible – but a society is strongest when it allows for free enterprise, but also ensures that government can act as a corrective mechanism that can establish rules and safety nets for a system that, by design, ends up with winners and losers and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Part of the myth that government is useless and unnecessary is rooted in a belief that any time government spends money, it’s an inefficiency. If there were a real need to spend that money, some say (and please feel free to read through this Sound Politics post and the comments if you think I’m just inventing a ridiculous strawman) that it’s only worthwhile to do if an actual person or company sees a profit potential. In this mindset, no roads, schools, or scientific research should ever be funded unless a company saw profit potential in that investment. Otherwise, it’s a waste. I never imagined that I would encounter so many people believing in such oversimplifications, yet I manage to come across it all the time when looking for things on our local right-wing blogs to make fun of. For all of these people, the moon landing must be the greatest boondoggle of all time, especially since some people still aren’t convinced we really went there.

Like the moon landing, there are valuable things that government can do that don’t provide the kind of immediate direct profit potential that a corporation would be interested in. From building transit to improving park space, there are various things that would give a return on investment for an entire community or even the entire country, but wouldn’t make sense for a corporate bottom line. As a capitalist system grows and matures, I believe that it can eventually allow for more and more of these things to be done by private entities (and this often puts me at odds with many liberals), but a belief that there’s some truism that a corporate entity is always the superior option distorts the proper balance we need to have between having the things we need provided for us by those motivated by money and those motivated by the ballot box.

Going back to the Sound Politics post I linked to, the Edmonds School District administration building obtained an espresso machine. The price tag ($10,000) alarmed the Sound Politics peanut gallery and many wailed about how wasteful government spending has become. The only problem is that the espresso machine was bought so that faculty could purchase their morning brews for less money inside the administration building and the proceeds would go towards the district’s general fund and toward school lunches. The machine was expected to pay for itself in less than two years. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t, it was an intelligent use of school budget funds and government doing something smart.

But that’s not how it works among the faith-based capitalism crowd. Whenever government spends money, it’s an inherent inefficiency to them. To demonstrate how this can lead to pure silliness, let’s say there are two cities that each have a park that needs to be refurbished. The first city finds a coalition of business owners and private citizens who pony up the $50,000 for the refurbishing. The second city uses public funds. There’s an argument to be made that the second city is not wisely spending taxpayer money, just as it’s possible that the business owners in the first city might not get what they think they may get back from their investment (good publicity). But what I don’t agree with is the idea that the actual job of refurbishing the park will be done more or less efficiently depending upon which avenue is chosen. The idea that those being paid by a for-profit entity will work harder than those being paid the same rate by a government entity has no basis in any reality that I’m familiar with, yet it’s an article of faith for so many. The issue of accountability usually appears in that theory as well, but anyone who’s ever worked in the private sector can tell you that massive inefficiencies and beaurocracies exist in for-profit entities as well.

Leave it to our friend Stefan to take this idea and go careering over the hills with it.

Last weekend I asked readers to suggest a word to represent the opposite of “Statism”. Thanks to all who participated in the ensuing discussion. Among the best suggestions: classical liberalism, small-l libertarianism, objectivism, Americanism, capitalism. My personal favorite, suggested by Eric Earling, “civic entrepreneurialism”. That best captures the spirit of what I was looking for — civic engagement based on private enterprise, as opposed to state coercion. But I’d still prefer a single snazzy word to represent the concept.

Incidentally, the concept of private initiative in lieu of state coercion is, IMHO, the preferred alternative not only where it is traditionally proposed (e.g. education, social services), but also for traditionally social conservative issues. Take, for example, abortion. This merits a longer post, but if the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, wouldn’t it be more effective for private organizations to deliver positive messages to change people’s minds about the issue, than to expect government intervention to solve the problem?

After I read this post, I sat back in my chair, stroked my goatee, looked up at the ceiling, read it again, thought about driving down the coast this summer, paced around the room a few times, read it a third time, rubbed my temples for a minute and then just turned the computer off. After a few days, I think I’ve got it.

Going back to the example with the parks, Stefan has actually convinced himself that not only can private enterprise refurbish the park more efficiently than government can for that $50,000, but it can do a number of things that government is completely incapable of doing as well.

It’s true that there are a number of things that government can’t do. Following drug policy, I’m well aware of what the limits of government are. Whether it was alcohol prohibition of the 20s or the current drug prohibition, people in our government have been trying to do the impossible. It just can’t deter people from exhibiting irrational behavior, and drug addictions are irrational behaviors. If those irrational behaviors have been shown to be detrimental to others, we obviously demand the government deal with that person, but putting them in jail doesn’t “fix” their irrational behavior – even when the sentence they are given is justified. This is why government-run drug treatment programs have been shown to be very cost effective from a taxpayer standpoint.

But this is very different from establishing rules or openly participating in a marketplace, where people overwhelmingly display more rational behaviors. People may not always make the smartest decisions when it comes to their own finances or running a large corporation, but they tend to have a rational basis for their decisions. As a result, government can be much more effective at using prison or financial penalty as a deterrent and to get people to play by the rules. There will always be a small subset of people who will act irrationally out of greed, and just as those whose drug addictions cause them to violate the freedom of others, they should still be sent to jail (or fined), even it doesn’t deter their irrational behavior without counseling or other psychological help.

For Stefan, and the Sound Politics nut squad, government can’t do anything at all, and beyond that, who knows what things they’ve tried and failed at that the free market can do! People are still having abortions? Hell, we haven’t unleashed the grand power of capitalism at that scourge. A few Wal-Mart funded PSA’s and the abortions just disappear. Haven’t solved drug addiction? Give Bank of America the keys. Can’t defeat terrorism? Try Blackwater (oh wait, we already did that).

Even though government has no ability to make people act responsibly if their motivations are irrational, it does have the ability to be responsible in dealing with those who are acting rationally. In other words, government is mainly useless in changing behaviors done in the pursuit of pleasure, since those behaviors tend to be impulsive or irrational, but it can be useful in dealing with those done in pursuit of profit. The pursuit of profit is a major motivator in life, but it’s not the only one, and government can utilitize other motivators like patriotism, compassion, and scientific curiosity to accomplish things as well. It’s just imperative that we hold the people we put in government accountable for what they’re doing.

Here’s hoping my liberal friends get off their “Ron Paul fixation.”

Rep. Paul voted against the “Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.” What is it?

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representatives John Lewis (D-GA) and Hulshof (R-MO) today reintroduced legislation which would give the Department of Justice and the FBI the ability to reopen Civil Rights-era criminal cases which have gone cold. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was named after teenager Emmett Till who was murdered and mutilated while on a summer vacation in Money, Mississippi in 1955. Public outrage surrounding the case helped to propel the inception of the modern-day Civil Rights movement in America.

But he’s against the war! Right? Right?

I’m sure he’s got some phony-baloney reasoning for his vote (like his desire to privatize most of the federal gov’t, perhaps even the Justice Department), but I hope the “Ron Paul Infatuation Fest, 2007” can finally be brought to a close.

[Don’t know what “jump the shark” means? Find out here.]

I’m told the Seattle Weekly’s Rick Anderson really isn’t a nitwit — that he’s an experienced reporter and all around good guy. But you wouldn’t guess that from his recent crusade to expose Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels as an environmental hypocrite.

Among those still not heeding Mayor Greg Nickels’ advice to use their cars more sparingly is Mayor Greg Nickels. The mayor’s vehicles consumed more than 1,130 gallons of gas, costing $3,500, in the 12 months since he urged Seattleites last year to find alternative transportation to save the Earth, according to newly released City Hall figures.

The thesis: Mayor Nickels has made a name for himself challenging America’s mayors to have their cities voluntarily meet or beat the Kyoto standards, and yet he still drives a car. A lot.

The figures show the mayor has consumed about three times as much gas since putting his economical hybrid SUV into service last June as he did for a comparable period when his previous car, a 17-mile-per-gallon Cadillac limousine, was in service.

Oh gee. Where to start? Hmm. How about simple math? Or maybe, the English language — for when Anderson calculates gas consumption over “a comparable period,” it is instructive to understand exactly what he means by “comparable.”

The new records show that from Oct. 1, 2006, to April 1, 2007 (the billing period covering the time after the Cadillac was retired), the mayor charged more than 800 gallons of gas, costing $2,400. That compares to 260 gallons at a cost of $870 for the shorter, five-month March 2–Aug. 6, 2006, billing period, when the leased Cadillac was in service.

Uh-huh. Anderson’s spelling is impeccable, but I think he might want to yank out his dictionary and look up the meaning of the word “comparable.” I’m no professional journalist, but if you ask me, “a comparable period” to October, 2006 through April, 2007, might be, gee… I dunno… the same exact seven-month period during the previous year? And when we actually compare these two periods, we find that, oops… the mayor only charged 835 gallons of gas during the hybrid era, compared to 995 for the limo.

Not exactly the “three times as much gas” Anderson rails about. In fact, it’s actually… um… less.

While the hybrid switch … may have helped clear the air in several ways, the mayor wound up using more money and gas than he did when he cruised around exclusively in the limo, according to city records.

No he didn’t. And I know this, because I know how to do math. And, because I acquired additional data. Of course, to be fair to Anderson, he didn’t really have a large enough data set to make any sort of reasonable, vehicle-to-vehicle comparison. But if Anderson wanted to be fair to Nickels, he never would have implied that he did.

(Our good friend Stefan — a self-proclaimed Excel spreadsheet savant — lauded Anderson’s reporting. Hmm. Given the same mathematical expertise he used to so accurately predict the contested 2004 gubernatorial election, you’d think Stefan might have at least taken pause at Anderson’s less than scientific analysis of “comparable” periods.)

Apparently, Anderson had a gotcha story in the works, and he was gonna run with it come hell or bad data.

City officials repeatedly warned Anderson that they didn’t keep the records required to make the sort of calculations Anderson wanted. But that didn’t stop him. Indeed, even in acknowledging his inability to track the hybrid’s gas consumption, he sneeringly blamed the city for any inaccuracies in his futile attempt to do so.

Schubert-Knapp this week said she was referring to her “sincere doubts” about my ability to accurately report the data. That’s maybe understandable, given the confusing mess of records her department released, showing they can’t even track how much gas is used by each of the mayor’s two and sometimes three cars.

And while Anderson makes clear that the seven-month period from October, 2006 through March, 2007 also includes trips made in the mayor’s backup vehicle, “a Ford Explorer SUV that gets 11 miles to the gallon,” he glosses over the fact that the vast majority of the Explorer trips weren’t actually made by the mayor.

“The Explorer is now the backup car, and is also the car the mayor’s security takes home each night.”

That’s right, the Explorer is not just a “backup” car; it’s driven almost every single day, and usually, sans mayor. And all of its fuel receipts are mixed in with those of the hybrid.

So what exactly is Anderson’s point? That the mayor’s hybrid gets crappy fuel economy?

The EPA has already lowered the Highlander’s mpg rating from 31 to 27, and some consumer road tests come in at 20 mpg.

And he tells us this twice. But instead of trying to extrapolate the MPG from incomplete data, or implying a worst-case scenario by authoritatively citing “some consumer road tests,” Anderson could have just used his noodle and asked the right question. Like all hybrids, Nickel’s Highlander has an on-board computer that definitively records actual fuel economy. Nickels spokesman Martin McOmber told me it currently reads about 24.5 mpg.

Not quite the EPA rating, but a helluva lot better than the typical, full-sized SUV, and possibly as much as twice the MPG of the limo it replaced. (I’m not sure where Anderson plucked his number, but according to the EPA, the supposedly “17-mile-per-gallon Cadillac limousine” actually rates 11.9 city/18 highway.)

Or maybe Anderson is simply implying that the mayor is driving more miles now than he did a year ago?

Perhaps. I don’t know. Not knowing which receipts were for which car, or the exact fuel economy of each vehicle, or even what percentage of fleet miles were actually driven transporting the mayor, it is impossible to extrapolate from this data an accurate mayoral mileage report. But what we do know is that the mayor’s fleet cut its year-to-year fuel consumption by about 16-percent over a comparable seven-month period.

If every household and business in Washington state were to cut their motor fuel consumption by 16-percent, we’d save about 500 million gallons of fuel annually, putting over $1.5 billion back in our pockets, and 10 billion fewer pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That sounds like a pretty good start to me.

But I suppose what Anderson is really implying is that the mayor simply drives too much: if Nickels wants us to use alternative modes of transportation, he should lead by example, I guess, and hop on the bus himself.

Hmm. How do I best explain Nickels’ driving habits to Anderson? Oh. I know: um… he’s a FUCKING MAYOR! Of a major American city. It’s his job to rack up tens of thousands of miles a year traveling from one constituency group to another, and he couldn’t possibly do it relying on our region’s bus system. You couldn’t ask him to give up his car any more than you could ask a traveling salesman. (In fact, politicians and traveling salesmen have an awful lot in common.)

Still, all of this nitwitpicking is beside the point, because Anderson’s entire thesis — whatever it is — is a complete and utter load of bullshit. It is little more than a local variant on the same intellectually lazy frame that attacks a jet-setting Al Gore as a hypocrite for emitting copious greenhouse gases while advocating that these emissions be cut.

Sure. Gore could stay at home, bicycling around the family farm. But by stingily counting his own carbon emissions he couldn’t have anywhere near the impact he has traveling the world, persuading others to make modest cuts of their own.

The same holds true for Mayor Nickels. He makes an effort, however imperfect, to bring greater awareness to what municipalities can do locally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and Anderson thanks him by devoting two whole “news” articles and a blog post toward trashing him as a hypocrite.

Apparently it takes a nitwit to ask whether the self-professed “green” mayor is practicing what he preaches – as the records show, he doesn’t.

No, it takes a nitwit to misread a spreadsheet, and totally dismiss the warnings from those who gave you the data. It takes a nitwit to focus your contempt on those who at least attempt to do good, while giving a free ride to right-wing nutcases like Kemper “Transit Equals Communism” Freeman Jr. and his lifelong campaign to kill rail in this region. It takes a nitwit to echo the hate-filled, partisan rants of a science denier like Stefan, and then dare to call it journalism.

At the risk of Postman calling me a meanie, I just want to point out that if Dan Satterberg plans to run on his experience as Norm Maleng’s longtime chief of staff, it is only fair that he take credit for some of the not-so-good things that transpired in the Prosecutor’s Office under his administration.

A former King County Prosecutor’s Office employee who is already serving two years in prison for trying to lure teenage girls on the Internet must now serve three more months for embezzling money from his boss’ re-election campaign.

Larry Corrigan was charged with first-degree theft last week. He quickly pleaded guilty and was given the low end of the standard three- to nine-month sentence, his attorney, John Wolfe, said Wednesday.

Soon after he was arrested in an unrelated Internet sex sting in December, Corrigan, 54, admitted to stealing more than $72,000 from the campaign of Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

I fully expect that if I’m ever caught embezzling money from the King County Prosecutor, I’ll get the low end of the standard sentence too.

Corrigan was Maleng’s budget officer, working in his office from 1979 until 2005.

Hmm. A convicted embezzler/sex offender was also Maleng’s budget officer, huh? I wonder if any of those “professional” journalists have bothered to examine the Prosecutor’s Office’s books from those many years during which Corrigan worked under Satterberg?

I’m just sayin’…

Kemper Freeman Jr. doesn’t like the fall roads/transit ballot measure. In fact, he’s funding the opposition. He’s been vocal for years about how he sees transit as a waste of money. Recently, he compared transit supporters to commies and terrorists.

But don’t think Kemper Freeman Jr. isn’t thinking for himself. See, Junior has his own roads plan.

The engineers found that if we simply increased the capacity of the overall road system – 6 percent more lane miles, half of which would be additional lanes on existing freeways, the other half would be additional lanes mostly on existing arterials – we would reduce congestion from today’s level by 36 percent. And it would fully accommodate the 45 percent increase in trips expected over the next 30 years.

Hmm… Only 6 percent more lane miles? But isn’t there another way to reduce congestion the “Freeman Family Way”? I got to thinking.

Kemper Freeman’s Jr.’s grandfather, Miller Freeman, was a renowned racist and white supremacist.

“To-day, in my opinion, the Japanese of our country look upon the Pacific coast really as nothing more than a colony of Japan, and the whites as a subject race.”

Or this:

“My investigation of the situation existing in the city of Seattle convinced me that the increasing accretions of the Japanese were depriving the young white men of the opportunities that they are legitimately entitled to in this State.”

In fact, when Japanese Americans were herded into internment camps, nice businessmen (not unlike Miller Freeman) were kind enough to hold onto their property for them. In fact, some of them still do!

So is there a way to mix Miller Freeman’s racist vision for a “white’s only” region with Kemper Freeman, Jr.’s vision for wide-open freeways? Simple.

Intern The Asians. Stay with me, people.

Asians comprise 12.9% of King County, 7.4% of Snohomish County, and 5.7% of Pierce County [check out the scary facts here]. That means Asian people are more than 6% of the population of the three counties served by Sound Transit and the RTID.

Taking 6% of the region’s drivers off the road will free up highway space for loyal, hardworking Caucasians like me. Also, interning Asian people will be cheaper than building new highways, and we can lock them up quicker than pouring new concrete.

Instead of 6% more highway, how about 6% fewer drivers? As a loyal American, isn’t that my birthright? Isn’t it yours, too?

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for another exciting evening of politics under the influence. This is an excellent opportunity to support your favorite local blog by buying Goldy a beer. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Drinking Liberally’s Seattle hosts are Nick Beaudrot of Electoral Math and HorsesAss contributer TheHim (also at Blog Reload and EFFin’ Unsound).

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area, check out their Drinking Liberally; Jimmy will have the details.

The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 210 chapters in 44 states (plus DC). And if you don’t find a chapter near you…start one!

The rats are jumping ship:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced tonight that he is quitting the Republican party and changing his affiliation to independent.

The announcement came after Mr. Bloomberg gave a speech denouncing partisan gridlock in Washington, stirring renewed speculation that he is preparing to run as an independent or third-party candidate in 2008.

Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat before switching parties to run for mayor in 2001. He is also a kajillionaire, with more than enough personal wealth to self-finance an independent campaign. Hmm.

Via The General.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been hearing rumors of Republican wags bragging that Dan Satterberg has a $180,000 head start in the race to replace the late Norm Maleng as King County Prosecutor. Seemed like an awful lot of money to raise so quickly. But now I understand what they were talking about.

According to a press release issued today by the Washington State Democratic Party:

Top Democrats today responded to widespread rumors that the Republican Party is planning to funnel the $194,000 remaining in the campaign coffers of late King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng into partisan attacks intended to influence the special election this fall to name Maleng’s replacement.

Under state law, it is illegal to transfer so-called “surplus” campaign funds – the money left over after retirement, loss, or death – from one candidate’s accounts directly to that of another candidate. It is, however, legal to donate to charity, or to a party organization— but if the funds do go to a political party, any quid pro quo understanding that the funds will then be donated to or spent in support a particular candidate would run afoul of Washington State’s campaign finance laws.

In the case of the prosecutor’s race, State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz says that if large amounts of cash from Maleng’s campaign coffers are funneled through the Republican Party back to the GOP nominee for the position, Republican Dan Satterberg – as some Satterberg backers have been whispering is likely – it would be tantamount to the sort of illegal and unethical political money laundering that Republicans have become known for on the national level.

“A fair minded leader like Norm Maleng should not have his campaign cash laundered through a Tom Delay-style money machine,” said Pelz, who worked with Maleng during his eight years on the King County Council. “Out of respect for Maleng’s legacy, that money should rightfully go to charity, not to fund attack ads or earmarked to help anoint a partisan replacement.”

Maleng gets a lot of well-deserved credit for having kept politics out of his office, and both Satterberg and Democratic frontrunner Bill Sherman have promised to build on that legacy. But I don’t see how Satterberg can fulfill that pledge if he allows his handlers — such as two-time Bush-Cheney WA State chair Mike McKay — to help him win office by sullying Maleng’s memory through creative accounting.

On the other hand, the rumor I heard may only be just that. Maleng was the co-chair with Gov. Chris Gregoire of the Seattle chapter of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network (CAN). Seattle CAN is holding a long-scheduled fundraising breakfast next Tuesday, June 26, at the Washington Athletic Club, and I’ve also heard rumors that Maleng’s wife Judy will not only be attending in his place, but will announce a “large donation” in his honor.

Now that would be a non-partisan use of surplus campaign funds worthy of Maleng’s legacy.

FYI, tickets for the Seattle CAN breakfast ($100 to $5000) are still available.

UPDATE:
Mike McKay responds:

“No money will be spent directly or indirectly to help (acting prosecutor) Dan Satterberg,” Seattle attorney Mike McKay said unequivocally Tuesday. He said Judy Maleng, the late prosecutor’s widow, “has made that clear.”

That’s good to hear.

Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA5) likes to pitch herself as a family values candidate. In fact, she values her family so much that she’s paid her brother and father almost $60,000 out of campaign funds over the past two elections. Sweet.

That’s according to a new report, “A Family Affair“, issued by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which found that 41 Democratic and 55 Republican representatives have put family members on their campaign payroll over the past three election cycles.

Although it is illegal for members of Congress to hire family members on their official staff, nothing stops them from paying them from campaign funds. So I guess it’s okay because, like, everybody’s doing it, right? Just take a look at the Washington state delegation, where Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Sheriff) paid his nephew Todd $4,281 out of campaign funds, and… um… well… that’s it, apparently. Just McMorris and Reichert.

Yeah, so when I ask for contributions to help pay for the enormous amount of time I put into this blog, I’m a deadbeat. But when McMorris’s father gets paid to work on his own daughter’s campaign, well, I guess he’s just being entrepreneurial.

I suppose that’s the difference between being a Democrat and a Republican.

For a second week in a row, I report on the bullshit that just won’t report itself. And in fact it’s been a bit of a banner week for bullshit. Locally and nationally.

First, Kemper Freeman thinks that transit is for terrorists.

According to the Discovery Institute conservatives are more generous than liberals. They have one source for this who is a bit suspect and who relies on surveys that are inherently difficult to judge, so that’s good. Then they cite a study showing that foreign born people living in the United States give a lot of money to their relatives in the old country to show that Americans are generous with our foreign aid.

Jim Miller shows his unfamiliarity with the concept of time. See, Al Gore said that Saddam was a bad person in 1992, so that’s totally proof that he’s a hypocrite for opposing a war in 2003.

Nationally, Oh my. Oh. So. Um. Yeah.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wouldn’t like the British press to be censored. But if those wacky Brits are going to do it, well, they brought it on themselves didn’t they?

And as awful as bloggers can be, I keep hearing that you need a background in journalism to know anything about anything blah blah blah. But you know what, if being a columnist for the Seattle Times for a few years can let you think that installing foot sinks in a Midwestern airport leads to Holocaust denial, count me the fuck out.

Also, us wild and crazy lefty bloggers don’t, um, go out of our way to write letters defending outing a CIA agent and obfuscating the investigation.

When I first glanced at the headline of today’s Seattle Times editorial opposing pre-ballot review of Tim Eyman’s stunningly unconstitutional Initiative 960 (“Careful, initiative tampering is dangerous“), I was initially pleased. I had predicted this unselfconscious fit of hypocrisy. And there’s nothing I like better than being right, especially at the Times’ expense.

Indeed, the only surprise in this entirely predictable piece of sanctimonious sophistry, was how genuinely angry I got reading it. I was personally offended. And you should be too.

The editorial was sparked by a lawsuit filed by Futurewise and SEIU 775, seeking to keep I-960 off the ballot because it is outside the scope of the initiative process. The Times argues such pre-ballot review is dangerous:

We believe their lawsuit should fail because it would undermine the rights of the people to petition their government.

The courts have an obligation to rule on the law, not policy or public opinion, and the fact that the Times once again attempts to influence a judicial decision tells you everything you need to know about how deeply flawed our system of electing judges really is. But that’s a subject for another post.

What I find most offensive about this editorial is not the arrogant judicial bullying or the inherent hypocrisy, but the fact that the Times chooses to shamelessly lie to its readers in order to score a cheap rhetorical point.

A few initiatives have been tossed off the ballot. […] The only statewide example was an initiative years ago that tried to change the U.S. Constitution.

That is simply untrue. There was another, more recent example of a statewide initiative tossed off the ballot on a scope challenge, and the Times knows it. In fact, four years ago they editorialized in support of using pre-ballot review to deny the people the right to petition their government.

Of course, I’m referring to I-831, my initiative to officially proclaim Tim Eyman a horse’s ass. The Times wrote:

David Goldstein has accomplished something. The Seattle computer programmer has successfully placed the phrase “horse’s ass” into dozens of family newspapers.

As if I held a fucking gun to their heads. But I digress.

Goldstein calls I-831 an attempt to reform the initiative process by highlighting Eyman’s abuse of it. Goldstein abuses it himself. The sort of law that names a citizen and condemns him by proclamation is called a bill of attainder. It has been forbidden for 200 years. Calling someone an animal part may not strictly be called a bill of attainder, but it leans that way. Taken seriously, a court would have to throw out I-831.

The Times knew that I-831 was tossed out on a scope challenge. It was cited as precedent in the Futurewise/SEIU complaint. The Times editorialized in favor of the scope challenge, and reported on the court’s decision. Just last month I even challenged the Times:

I dare you to prove me wrong. Four years ago you editorialized against a joke initiative, urging the court to bar I-831 from the ballot simply because it offended your delicate sensibilities. Do you have the balls to stand by your defense of pre-ballot scope challenges as a legitimate legal exercise?

They knew that I knew that they knew all about Goldstein v. Gregoire — and they surely must have known that I would publicly excoriate them if they pretended it never happened. And yet, they simply didn’t give a flying fuck.

I have in the past attacked Times editorials for lies of omission, but this was an out and out, deliberate lie of fact. They wrote that the “only statewide example” was the Philadelphia case, when they knew that it was not, and they did so because it was more convenient than acknowledging the truth. It was a rather trivial lie, but a lie nonetheless, and in telling it they disrespected me, and they disrespected their readers.

Not that the rest of the editorial is a paragon of virtue, consistency or logic.

There is a contrary idea that initiatives are junk that somebody wrote on the back of a napkin. They may start that way, but all of them go to the Code Reviser’s office, where they are put into legal language. The ballot title comes from the Attorney General’s office, and is subject to challenge in court.

I-831 went through the Code Reviser’s office, without a single change suggested, and its ridiculously non-descriptive ballot title came out of the Attorney General’s office and a court challenge. Yet according to both the Times and the court, my initiative was perfectly ripe for pre-ballot review.

The Times ridiculed me by name for attempting “to reform the initiative process by highlighting Eyman’s abuse of it,” while the AG spent pages warning against the dangers of using the initiative process merely to send messages. Yet that is exactly what the Times now lauds Eyman for with his wildly unconstitutional I-692:

That is how car tabs were lowered: the people voted to lower them, the court threw the measure out, and the Legislature lowered them anyway. The political message got through.

Surely the Times couldn’t be arguing that some people should get to use the initiative process to send political messages, and some should not?

And while the Times now frets that the lawsuit seeks to expand scope challenges “from a narrow set of voter initiatives” to those that “violate the Constitution in other ways,” that was exactly what they urged the court to do in regards to I-831:

The sort of law that names a citizen and condemns him by proclamation is called a bill of attainder. It has been forbidden for 200 years. Calling someone an animal part may not strictly be called a bill of attainder, but it leans that way. Taken seriously, a court would have to throw out I-831.

Hell, the Times didn’t even argue that I-831 should be tossed out because it was unconstitutional, but simply because “it leans that way.”

(And FYI, I never called Eyman “an animal part,” I called him a fool. Anybody who doesn’t know the difference between metaphor and analogy doesn’t deserve to be writing op-eds for a major American newspaper. And anybody who intentionally blurs the difference doesn’t deserve to be either.)

The Times claims to “defend the right of initiative,” arguing that the lawsuit “would expand the power of political groups to shrink the people’s choices before an election.”

Yeah, right. Because apparently, the only people who should have the right to “shrink the people’s choices before an election” are stick-up-their-ass assistant AGs and the sanctimonious serial liars at the Seattle Times.

Glenn Greenwald’s new book is now available for pre-order. The book is called A Tragic Legacy – How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. Anyone who’s ever read Greenwald’s fantastic blog knows that he’s one of the sharpest critics of the Bush Administration, and this book appears to be aimed right at the heart of why this band of fools has done so much damage to the country. From his post today:

The central purpose of the book is to examine what has happened to the United States for the last six years under the Bush presidency. That is the “Bush legacy” — our national character and national identity have been fundamentally degraded, our moral standing and credibility in the world eroded to previously unthinkable depths, our government engaged in the very behavior which, for decades, we have collectively deplored, our trust in America’s governmental and journalistic institutions reduced virtually to zero, and our country placed on a plainly unsustainable course as a result of the militarized, imperial role we are choosing to play in the world.

At the heart of this process lies a binary moralistic view of the world, one which seeks to define every conflict and political challenge, both foreign and domestic, as a battle of Good versus Evil. The crux of this mindset is the continuous identification of an Enemy, one which embodies Evil and which must be stopped, typically destroyed, at all costs. No competing considerations, no rational arguments, no counter-balancing objectives, not even constraints of reality or resources, can compete with the moral imperative of this mission. The mission of destroying Evil trumps all.

In support of this ideology, they’ve been masters of using fear to rally support for their particular causes, regardless of whether that fear is valid. They used 9/11 to get us to fear Saddam and support the most boneheaded military excursion in U.S. history. They use the fear of drugs to fill our jails with minorities and strip away our 4th Amendment rights. They use a fear of “socialism” to try to dismantle government safety nets. They’ve won elections by using the fear of immigrants and gays to rally a nativist base that identifies with the Good vs. Evil mentality. But it’s finally backfiring as the administration is forced to deal with the nuances of the immigration problem and the high percentages of younger voters who are appalled by homophobia and sick of neverending wars. I’m looking forward to seeing how Greenwald put together this narrative.