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

7PM: Is our pet food safe to eat? Hell, is our people food safe to eat?
Ben Huh from Itchmo.com joins me for an update on our nation’s biggest pet food recall, and what it means for the safety of the human food supply?

8PM: Are kids having sex to young?
A new study shows abstinence only sex education doesn’t work, but even more shockingly, that the average age at which kids first have sex is on 14.9 years! Is that too young? Or was I just a really boring and uptight teenager?

9PM: Don Imus: racist or sexist?
Fellow blogger Natasha Celine from Pacific Views joins me for the hour to talk about Don Imus and other issues.

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

Today is Goldy’s birthday!

That makes it a good day to raise a toast to Goldy for his political activism—for using his sense of humor, writing skills, and his ability to engage in thoughtful and intelligent debate, to change the world for the better. I suppose there are others who will see it differently—who see Goldy as a foul-mouthed, treasonous, political hit-man, who probably organizes and practices election fraud while being paid by the Democrats. Whatever.

You are reading this. You probably came here hoping Goldy left something to entertain, inspire, educate, or outrage you. So take a moment to leave a comment for the birthday boy.

And, while you’re at it, today is an excellent day to buy Goldy a birthday beer. (It’s easy using the tools on the right sidebar.)

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

7PM: Rail or Roads?
Joel Connelly joins me for the hour to discuss our region’s transportation planning (or as some might say, the lack thereof.) A recent poll shows 61-percent of voters support the $17.5 billion Sound Transit/RTID “Roads & Transit” package scheduled to be on the ballot this November, and I’m going to look Joel in the eye and make him like it too.

8PM: Is Karl Rove liability?
I mean, to the Bush administration. (He’s always been a liability to the American people.)

9PM: What’s goin’ down in Oregon?
TJ from Loaded Orygun joins us for our monthly update on what’s going on south of the border.

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

Over on Slog, Josh Feit picks up on my post about a recent poll that showed substantial support for the Sound Transit/RTID $16.5 billion Roads & Transit package.

The numbers, about 61% in favor after a dose of messaging, are pretty positive, and so Goldy seems to be saying, everybody should stop complaining and fretting about a joint measure.

Hmm. I don’t think I seemed to be saying that, but Josh is a pretty good editor, so maybe I’m wrong. I thought I was only blowing holes in the common wisdom that the Roads & Transit package was politically DOA.

Like Josh, I’d prefer to see the transit components separated from the roads components so that I could vote for the former while douching the latter, but given political realities I’m not willing to scuttle transit improvements simply because I don’t like much of the roads package. On the other hand, Josh seems to be saying that the package is fatally flawed, whatever its current support at the polls:

Goldy’s contention that polling looks good doesn’t address my biggest fear—in fact, it confirms it: It’s going to pass, and we’re going to undo the benefits of voting for transit by simultaneously voting to expand roads.

Indeed, here’s the polling I’d like to see: light rail on its own and RTID on its own. I’d bet light rail would pass and RTID wouldn’t.

Well Josh, I’m not sure it provides much consolation, but the survey did indeed poll the individual components of the combined package, and for the most part, transit consistently out-polled roads. In fact, here are the top scoring components within the Sound Transit District:

Disagree with my analysis? Read the full poll results and topline summary for yourself. (Oh, and as it turns out, if you read the poll results from 2005 and 2006, voters have been pretty damn consistent.)

UPDATE (FYI):
The survey was conducted on behalf of Sound Transit to help evaluate the 8000 public comments generated through their public involvement process, and is intended to aid the Sound Transit Board’s deliberations as they finalize details of the Sound Transit 2 package. The survey was designed under a partnership with Evans McDonough and Moore Information, and with input from RTID consultants. Moore fielded the survey to 800 respondents within the Sound Transit district, which gives the survey a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

The King County Republican Party celebrates the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination tonight with their annual Lincoln Day John Wilkes Booth Day Dinner. And who better to deliver the keynote address, than the GOP’s most ruthless character assassin, Karl Rove.

The reception with Rove starts at 5:30 PM, but the King County Dems are organizing a welcome party of their own at 4:30 PM, outside the Hilton Seattle Airport & Conference Center, 17620 International Blvd. in Seatac. Bring a sign and a loud voice, and help us give Rove a big, WTO-style* Seattle welcome.

* NOTE:
Carla over at Loaded Orygun makes note of yet another dishonest righty accusing me of “inciting violence” with my “WTO-style” reference. Yeah. Right.

Anybody who took part in the WTO protests knows that they were largely peaceful, orderly, and well organized. The violence was incited by a handful of self-described “anarchists” and facilitated by a stunningly incompetent reaction by the Seattle police, who at first refused to step in and stop the anarchists, and then later overreacted by tear-gassing and arresting peaceful protestors and innocent bystanders.

Righties like Ted and the Orb should understand that words do indeed have consequences. Continue to convince your paranoid readers that unarmed liberals like me are seeking to incite violence, and eventually some nutcase might try to take us out preemptively.

It virtually (in the neologistic sense of the word) sinks.

Washington State Department of Transportation has the videos:

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.