HorsesAss.Org

I have a dirty little secret that likely disgusts the Seattle Times editorial board as much as it nauseates me: I sometimes agree with them.

Take today’s editorial in support of newly appointed Seattle School Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, simply titled “Give the supe a chance.”

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more.

Though, if we really want to give Goodloe-Johnson every chance to succeed, we need to give her the tools to succeed as well, and that means giving her (and every school superintendent) adequate funding to teach our children.

How much extra money are we talking about? PTSAs at some of the most sought after public schools within Seattle and its surrounding suburbs raise about $1000 per student to pay for essentials like smaller class size, classroom assistants, art, music, PE, tutoring and other enrichment programs. And rarely do they raise much more than that, no matter how well-heeled the parents. It seems to me that the market has spoken — our wealthiest and most demanding consumers of public education have determined that we’re spending about $1000 less per student than necessary. Don’t all public school children deserve the same opportunity as theirs?

$1000 per student. About a billion dollars more a year. Roughly a 10-percent increase in state K-12 education spending. A thousand bucks extra per student plugged straight into the classroom, where each school can determine how to spend that money best. Just the way it works at the public schools in our wealthiest neighborhoods.

And so I am asking the Times to join me in leveraging what influence we have, to give Goodloe-Johnson the one tool she can’t possibly bring to her new job: adequate funding. Public opinion and politicians are influenced by editorials — the Times knows this — thus if the editors at our state’s largest newspaper truly want to give Goodloe-Johnson the chance to succeed, it is incumbent upon them to use the full force of their soapbox to relentlessly persuade the Legislature to fulfill its paramount duty to the children of our state.

No, money isn’t the only solution, but it is certainly part of it. And perhaps if the Times had devoted as much talent and energy to increasing spending on education as it has devoted to cutting taxes on millionaires, Goodloe-Johnson’s challenge wouldn’t be as daunting as it now seems.

Oops…

A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members yesterday that the RNC is missing at least four years’ worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

[…] In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Waxman said the RNC lawyer, Rob Kelner, also raised the possibility that Rove had personally deleted the missing e-mails, all dating back to before 2005.

But… well… I guess all this is okay, because, you know… Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob.

Washington isn’t a state with a reputation for achieving consensus, but if there’s one thing on which nearly all the political insiders agree, it’s that the $16.5 billion Sound Transit/RTID Roads & Transit package that’s headed to the ballot this coming November is as good as dead.

I’ve heard it from Democrats and Republicans, from liberals and conservatives, from package supporters and package opponents. I’ve heard it from politicians I trust, and from politicians I emphatically don’t trust. And everybody agrees that the package is just too big and too expensive for our skeptical electorate to approve at the polls.

But… um… I guess I should’ve asked some actual voters, because a new poll shows quite solid support for the package, both before and after respondents are informed of the details.

61% of respondents supported the package when presented on an “uninformed basis” with no persuasive messaging:

“A transportation package has been proposed that would increase the sales tax by 6/10 of 1%, and the car license tab by 8/10 of 1%. It would fund $16.5 Billion dollars in road, highway, and mass transit improvements in Pierce, King, and Snohomish Counties”.

When respondents were informed of the package’s costs, but not its elements, support dropped to 49%:

“This package will cost the typical household $150 in additional sales tax each year, plus $80 in license tab tax for every $10,000 of your car’s value.”

Not surprising. But then once voters are informed of the major components of the package, support rebounds to 63%, and remains at this level after positive (66%) and then negative (61%) messaging is presented. (FYI, the poll was conducted by Moore Information and EMC Research, April 1-4, and consisted of 800 registered voters with a 3.5 percent margin of error.)

The imminent, inevitable failure of the Roads & Transit package has become a rallying cry for supporters of creating a new regional transportation commission. “We’ve got to do something to restore the confidence of voters,” I’ve been told on more than one occasion. But if these poll numbers are even remotely accurate, it looks like a substantial majority of voters are confident enough in our current transportation planning to spend $16.5 billion expanding light rail and making other critical transportation improvements.

So much for the common wisdom.

Hmm.

I am NOT Huan Hsu’s co-worker. I’m his BOSS. Another reason why he has my sympathy.

Posted today at 5:30 pm by Mark Fefer

From the Seattle Times:

The Summit at Snoqualmie, a family-oriented ski resort where many of Seattle’s skiers got their start, has been quietly bought by a Florida real-estate investment trust.

CNL Income Properties paid almost $35 million in January for The Summit, as part of a $170 million deal for four ski properties.

Olympia sources tell me that CNL has privately threatened to move The Summit to Orlando unless WA state legislators authorize funds to build it a new mountain.

Okay, let’s see if I can explain this without getting too meta.

A few days back, former Seattle Weekly columnist Geov Parrish posted to HA a kinda-sorta expose of an expose of an expose, highlighting a blog post by Real Change executive director Tim Harris, criticizing an anticipated hit piece in the Weekly. Harris wrote:

So this is what journalism at the new Seattle Weekly has come to. The paper owned and staffed by out-of-towners is out to do an expose on the fact that three or four vendors make as much as $24K a year selling Real Change. With no benefits.

At that rate, they can afford a cheap apartment. Hold the fucking presses!

This apparently pissed off Weekly managing editor Mike Seely, who dismissed Harris’s post as a “singularly bizarre pre-emptive diatribe,” and poked fun at the “sheer presumptive idiocy” of an angry letter aimed at an article that had yet to run.

Well, Huan Hsu’s article is now online, and… it’s not so bad. But then, it’s not so good either. In the end, there really isn’t much there there, though despite Seely’s pre-emptive prickliness, it’s pretty much what Harris predicted: “Not All the Peddlers of Seattle’s Homeless Paper Are Homeless.”

Hmm. To steal a line from Harris: hold the fucking presses.

It hadn’t occurred to me that some customers might feel cheated to learn that their Real Change vendor was not actually homeless. Personally, I would find it gratifying to know that my occasional purchase helped some unfortunate fellow off the streets. Call me naive, but I thought that was the whole idea.

So I’m not sure I get what Hsu is getting at. Some vendors are successful? A handful actually earn enough money to pay the rent? And that’s a bad thing?

I suppose I didn’t know that Real Change called its turf system a “turf system,” but it was pretty obvious that something like that existed. And I now know that most venders make 65 cents on every 1 dollar sale, but that the three top vendors each month get a nickel discount. Um, all in all, not exactly what one might call an “expose.” I mean, imagine if Real Change had done a 1600-word “expose” on how the Weekly used trucks to drop off bundles of papers at area coffee shops… that would be about as fascinating as this piece was.

Still, I think Geov’s presumptive sentiments hold true:

What pisses me off is when anyone – anyone – tries to make a buck or ingratiate themselves (e.g., with dimwitted readers) by pissing on the powerless. It’s one thing to lampoon the idiocies of Seattle liberalism; I might not agree with it (or think it’s well done), but it’s fair game. But trying to manufacture a “scandal” involving one of the few activist-initiated social service projects in town that truly does help people and change lives, all the time, is pure bullshit. Or, in Harris’ words, “What the Fuck”?

What the fuck indeed.

See, there’s a reason why you never read scathing reviews of small, inexpensive, family-owned neighborhood restaurants. What exactly would be the point? The regular patrons already like it well enough to keep coming back, while few outside the neighborhood are ever going to stop in anyway. So why waste column inches slamming some mom and pop lunch shack?

Likewise, absent a genuine scandal or a profound disagreement over the strategy (or goal) of helping the homeless get back on their feet, why on earth would you ever want to do anything but a fluff piece on Real Change? Maybe — just maybe — the Weekly might have succeeded in getting a handful of readers to think twice before forking over their dollar. But to what end? Hsu clearly set out in search of a controversy, and didn’t find one. That’s okay. Lots of stories don’t pan out. So why run the piece?

There is no shortage of important stories to write about, and plenty of worthy targets out there to skewer, but the Weekly chose to pursue an angle they knew could damage public support for an organization dedicated to helping the homeless. Huh. I have nothing against slaughtering sacred cows, but I’d hope the Weekly would view it as more than a blood sport.

Which brings me back to the springboard of this post, and one final observation. Seely sniped at Harris for his “singularly bizarre pre-emptive diatribe,” but from a PR perspective, there was nothing bizarre or singular about it. If Harris was expecting a negative piece in the Weekly (and from his questions, Hsu clearly wasn’t writing fluff,) why on earth should he wait until after it runs to refute it? Harris successfully got his message out in advance of publication, and quite possibly may even have succeeded in softening Hsu’s final edit.

That’s just smart PR. That’s being proactive.

And considering the fact that Harris’s efforts generated two supportive posts on HA, a handful of presumptive letters to the editor, and a preemptive prepublication post by Seely, I’d say it worked.

UPDATE:
Chuck Taylor chimes in over at Crosscut:

We’ll never know how Harris’ preemptive spin helped shape the article — there’s no way it didn’t. If I was the editor, I’d have made extra damn sure there weren’t any problems with it, that it was factually ironclad and fair.

Exactly. Erica also picks it up over on Slog.

So all in all, a pretty effective “pre-emptive diatribe” on the part of Harris.

When I was twelve years old I picked up a dog-eared copy of “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater,” and for the next ten years or so I read and reread everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote. Vonnegut was my first novelist, and as such, I suppose he couldn’t help but have an influence on making me who I am today.

Kurt Vonnegut died today. He was 84.

Fuck Don Imus. But you know what…? Fuck civility. And fuck the Seattle Times.

Really… who the fuck do they think they are pontificating about who should or should not have access to the public airwaves? [“Airwaves no place for Imus and his ilk“] And who the fuck can possibly take seriously this colorless, bland, bourgeois cabal of towheaded ho’s anointing themselves arbiters of “diversity and decency”?

I mean… what the fuck is up with that?

Does Imus come off as a racist, misogynistic, insensitive, mean-spirited prick? Hell yeah… that’s his whole schtick! That’s his stock in trade! What part of “shock jock” doesn’t the Times understand?

No doubt Imus should be raked over the public coals for his awful comments, and he deserves whatever punishment the marketplace delivers. But calling on the FCC to pull WFAN’s license? That’s censorship, pure and simple. That’s state control of the media. That’s fascism. And the Times — a newspaper for chrissakes, that owes its very existence to the unfettered rights enunciated in the First Amendment — should be just as ashamed of its offensive statement as Imus should be of his.

What’s next? Who else should be yanked from the airwaves and denied their livelihood because they offend the Times’ oh-so-sensitive sensibilities? If radio hosts should be held to standards exceeding FCC regulations, how far should the purge go? How careful must we tread? Should KIRO, as some angry letter writers have demanded, dump my show because I (gasp) repeatedly use the word “fuck” on my personal blog? Well fuckity-fuck, fuck, fuck to that!

And don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou bullshit about radio stations having a legal obligation to “serve the community.” That lie gave up the ghost back during the Reagan administration with the death of the Fairness Doctrine and the birth of an anti-regulatory crusade that inevitably led to the relentlessly homogenizing, profit-driven, media consolidation we have seen ever since. Today, the vast majority of commercial radio stations fulfill the totality of their community service with a handful of PSAs and a weekly test of the Emergency Alert System.

At least WFAN airs local content, as opposed to the hundreds of radio stations in small markets nationwide, whose absentee, monopolist owners would continue to obliviously broadcast their automated, computer-controlled, top-McForty programming, uninterrupted, while a chlorine gas-leak slowly smothered their uninformed local audience in agonizing death. If that’s what they mean by community service, then the Times editorial board has its swollen head stuck so far up its tight little ass it makes the Enumclaw horse incident look like a prostate exam.

What kind of goddamn fantasy world is the Times living in? For decades now, right-wing talk radio hosts have villified liberals like me, questioning our patriotism, smearing us as traitors, cowards and terrorists, and accusing us of treason… a crime they repeatedly make clear is punishable by death. Ann Coulter publicly “jokes” about executing a few liberals to keep us in line, calls for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to be poisoned, and laments that Timothy McVeigh didn’t blow up the New York Times building instead… but I don’t hear the Times complaining about her frequent appearances on FOX News. And G. Gordon Liddy once infamously instructed his audience how to deal with ATF agents: “Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches!” Hmm. No FCC licenses revoked; no fines issued. Is that what the Times means by serving the community?

And what the fuck is “decency” anyway? Polite language? Polite lies? Does anybody but a fourth or fifth generation Blethen really want the standards of civic discourse to be defined by literary somnambulists who can’t discern the difference between seriousness and solemnity, and who wouldn’t recognize nuance if it jumped right out in front of them and shot their dog?

I’ve got news for the Times: there’s a reason why assholes like Imus and Howard Stern have millions of fans, while former newspaper subscribers flee to the blogs in droves, no matter how foulmouthed, uncivil or indecent some of us might be. It is because anything is better than the stultifying, turgidly-written, equivocating prose that often passes for journalism these days, and the arrogant, moralistic grammarians who apparently revel in using as little of the English language as possible. The Times’ market keeps growing, and yet its circulation keeps shrinking — and they have the nerve to lecture others on how best to serve the community? Give me a fucking break!

Criticize to your heart’s content. Excoriate the trash-talkers and hate-mongers for their hurtful and violent words — even do so selectively if that is what your conscience allows. But when you call for using the power of the state to silence others, you abdicate any and all of the moral authority you believe your printing presses confer upon you.

If that’s civility… if that’s decency… then I want nothing the fuck to do with it.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Come joins us for some hopped up conversation and hoppy beer.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

I’ve made a habit of abusing the state’s media recently for constantly repeating the Sonics’ misleading number that they are only seeking $300 million in taxpayer subsidies… when in fact they are really seeking $400 million (not to mention another hundred million or so in road improvements):

The Times continues to repeat that $300 million figure when in fact the Sonics’ plan calls for $400 million in taxpayer subsidies: $300 million from the sales tax, and $100 million from Renton. I’m not sure what the correct answer would be on the math WASL, but the last time I checked, 300 plus 100 still equals 400. (Wait… let me check my calculator. Yeah. 400.)

Well, it looks like the Times finally took my criticism to heart and whipped out their calculators, for in today’s edition we finally see the number change:

The Sonics still are not sure if state lawmakers will support a bill that would provide $200 million toward the new arena.

Oops. You were supposed to add $100 million onto the public cost, not subtract.

Unless… maybe the Times knows something about the Sonics’ rumored new financing plan they weren’t supposed to tell us?

On March 20, HA readers learned that acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan once called undocumented immigrants “wetbacks,” and that he was admonished from the bench for blowing a murder-consipiracy case by withholding evidence from the defense.

On April 10, Seattle Times readers learned that acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan once called undocumented immigrants “wetbacks,” and that he was admonished from the bench for blowing a murder-consipiracy case by withholding evidence from the defense.

Sure, the Times piece was more thorough and evenhanded than mine (though to be fair to me, I did link to all my source material,) but still… three weeks?

I’m just sayin’.

Dino Rossi was interviewed by Liz Mair at the oxymoronically titled GOPProgress.com. And Rossi is sure sounding like a 2008 gubernatorial candidate.

Two things struck me about the interview. First, Rossi is no moderate. He is a typical voter-disenfranchisin’, truth-twistin’, anti-guvmint, gimmicky Republican. All tricks and no leadership—just like we’ve come to expect from Washington state Republicans.

But what struck me most of all is that Dino is still a sore loser:

We won 34 out of 39 counties, all the non-Seattle, King County ones, Snohomish County–first time in 20 years for a Republican, Pierce County–first time in 40 years for a Republican, and we were certified the governor-elect–first Republican governor-elect in 24 years, twice, actually…[laughs] Apparently, as a Republican, you have to win three times.

Yeah…34 out of 39 counties…as if it was counties that voted instead of, you know…voters!

The other bit of sore loserism is the suggestion that he had to win “three times.” As Judge Bridges so elegantly put it, Rossi led after the initial count, he led after the first recount, and Gregoire led after the manual recount. There was only one person declared the winner of the 2004 gubernatorial election, and that was Christine Gregoire.

Does Rossi really not understand the election process? Or is he intentionally being disingenuous? Either way, man…what a sore loser!

Later on, Rossi offered this remarkable claim:

In the end, we ended up with hundreds more votes that were counted in King County than they could attribute to human beings who actually voted. Which is why we said, and I don’t think I was going too far out on a limb by saying this, but that maybe each vote should have a voter. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

I mean, yeah, we expect this kind of bullshit from a blatant propagandist like Stefan Sharkansky. But Rossi is supposed to be a real politician. To make such an outrageous claim suggests that either Rossi is such a sore loser that he would knowingly perpetuate a blatantly dishonest statement to undermine the electoral process that hurt his feelings in 2004, or else he suffers from delusions.

Rossi was whining about the voter crediting process. During the election contest trial, it became amply clear that the voter crediting process has a higher error rate than the ballot counting process. As Bridges stated in his oral opinion (pg. 6):

The crediting system in Washington is not an accurate reflection of the number of persons who actually voted.

Presenting a credible challenge will be tough enough for Rossi in 2008 if only because many of the issues that gave his campaign strength in 2004 won’t even be relevant anymore. (And the tarnished Republican brand name won’t help.) But could it be true? Will Rossi Mk II be running on a “we wuz robbed!” platform?

Yes! Please, go for it, Dino! I want to see the Rossi 2008 “We Wuz Robbed” campaign tour!

Look out! The sore loser express is coming through, and you better get out of the way. Whooo woooo!

Hey…I hear that Mike!™ McGavick even has a mobile home available for the tour.

The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t keep epidemiological data on dog and cat illnesses and deaths… but the nationwide veterinary chain Banfield does. And according to an extrapolation of data from its 615 veterinary hospitals Banfield estimates that as many as 39,000 cats and dogs may have been sickened or killed by contaminated pet food.

The hospital chain saw 1 million dogs and cats during the three months when the more than 100 brands of now-recalled contaminated pet food were sold. It saw 284 extra cases of kidney failure among cats during that period, or a roughly 30 percent increase, when compared with background rates.

“It has meaning, when you see a peak like that. We see so many pets here, and it coincided with the recall period,” said veterinarian Hugh Lewis, who oversees the mining of Banfield’s database to do clinical studies.

There are an estimated 60 million dogs and 70 million cats nationwide.

In other news, one person has died and more than three hundred have fallen ill in two separate incidents in China, after eating porridge suspected of containing rat poison. According to Wikipedia:

[…] canned and jarred gluten is commonly eaten as an accompaniment to congee (boiled rice porridge) as part of a traditional Chinese breakfast.

Hmm.

The White House lawn was abuzz with children and a giant rabbit this morning.

The annual White House Easter Egg Roll, started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, typically has been a rite of spring in Washington. But on Monday, it was afflicted by winter’s parting bite — cold air and even colder grounds. Undaunted by any of this, the young guests sprang into action under the watchful eyes of their families, hostess Laura Bush and several Bush administration Cabinet secretaries.

Vice President Dick Cheney even made a brief appearance:

Billionaire Microsoft Word developer Charles Simonyi’s civilian space trip nearly ended in tragedy yesterday when his Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft unexpectedly crashed with an “Internal Error” shortly after takeoff.

Accustomed to frequent backups, Simonyi successfully relaunched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after a clean reboot. The fifth civilian to rocket into space, Simonyi, 58, is expected to link up with the International Space Station sometime Monday night.