HorsesAss.Org

George Bush likes to think of it as the people’s house:

Well, thank you all so very much for coming to the White House. It’s my honor to welcome you to the people’s house.

But he apparently doesn’t think the people have a right to know who is visiting their house. From the AP:

The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall.
[…]

The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
[…]

The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.

That’s our Bush—always promoting transparency and accountability in government. Really, you don’t want to know if the logs record almost 500 past visits on behalf of someone pleading guilty to fraud and corruption…. Just try not to think about it.

The White House is now using the memo to block a Washington Post request for Secret Service logs identifying visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

Clearly, only freedom hating, terrorist sympathizers would want to know about the comings and goings in the people’s house.

I’ve had my disagreements with some of the individuals at Washington Public Campaigns, but I certainly support their efforts to promote a broader debate about public financing of campaigns.

In any case, they’re holding a “Clean Elections” forum tonight at Town Hall, and any panel that includes David Sirota is well worth the five buck admission.

Washington Public Campaigns is an organization founded to promote the passage of legislation establishing public financing of campaigns. Maine and Arizona have instituted publicly financed campaigns, which, after three election cycles, has resulted in more competitive races and more women and minority office holders. Following a short video narrated by Bill Moyers, author and political strategist David Sirota, Representative Linda Valentino (Maine), and Senator Ed Ableser (Arizona) and a panel of experts discusses how public campaign financing is working elsewhere and how it could work in Washington.

That’s tonight, Friday Jan 5, 7:30 at Seattle’s Town Hall, corner of 8th & Seneca. Admission $5.00 at the door.

While I hate to harp on the kind folks at (un)Sound Politics (um, not really) I thought it only fair to follow up on a post the other day in which I take (u)SP’s Jim Miller to task for taking the Seattle P-I’s David Horsey to task for his final “Burning Question” column.

Horsey asked his readers if our understanding of the world was made better or worse by the “unfiltered cacophony of opinions” that is the blogosphere, and in attacking Horsey as an anti-free speech elitist, Miller made a strong argument (by example) for the latter. But to add irony to irony, only one day after arrogantly defending the superiority of us bloggers, Miller writes a post in which he authoritatively cites Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist known for making shit up about the Iranian government.

Over on Effin’ Unsound (a must read for local connoisseurs of political snark,) theHim thoroughly undresses Miller in a line-by-line deconstruction. It’s hilarious. And instructive.

Senator Patty Murray is now the secretary of the Democratic caucus. That puts her in the number four leadership position in the U.S. Senate.

She outranks Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Sen. Olympia Jean Snowe, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Sen. Barbara Boxer. Senator Murray is now the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Senate.

Before (un)Sound Politics, before the gubernatorial election contest, before he moved to Seattle, our good friend Stefan cut his shark teeth on the Bay area blog NancyWatch, ferociously setting out to destroy the political career of his hated congresswoman, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

And where’s Nancy today? Speaker of the House.

Hey… congratulations Stefan.

Stefan abandoned his ponytail-in-inkwell-like obsession in May 2003 after moving to Seattle, but he quickly added new names to his enemies list, building (u)SP into a politician-killer that has since toppled the careers of Chris Gregoire, Ron Sims and many other liberal Democrats.

No, wait. They all won their elections. As did a near sweep of Democrats in local legislative and council races over the past couple years. Hmm, pretty much every ballot initiative and referendum has gone the other way too. Come to think of it, except for Dave Reichert’s close victory over come from nowhere Darcy Burner, and a couple of Republican favored candidates in supposedly nonpartisan Port Commission races (how’s that going for you?) Stefan’s pretty much been on the losing side of nearly every race over the past two election seasons.

(Not to mention the much vilified Dean Logan, who left King County for a higher paying job administering elections for Los Angeles, the largest jurisdiction in the nation.)

So here’s a tip to ambitious Democrats everywhere: get on Stefan’s shit list, for it certainly seems to be a surefire path towards higher office. Don’t believe me? Just ask Speaker Nancy Pelosi and future cabinet Secretary Ron Sims.

UPDATE:
As fellow HA blogger Will points out, I shamelessly stole this meme without attribution from a post of his right here on HA. Sorry Will. But considering how infrequently you’ve been posting, you can’t really blame me for forgetting that I have co-bloggers.

Damn it. In plotting our conspiracy to violently overthrow the government of the United States, my comrades and I have been careful not to communicate via email or telephone because we know how easily these communications can be intercepted by a Bush administration unfettered by the First Amendment. But now we can’t even rely on old-fashioned snail mail anymore:

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

[…] Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will “construe” an exception, “which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent … with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.”

Yeah… yeah… I know what the righty trolls are going to say. I hate America. I love Osama bin Laden. Lefty wingbats like me are at least as dangerous as the terrorists we mollycoddle.

But I’d just like you righties to pause for a moment and imagine it was a President Clinton (Bill or Hillary) who was asserting the unitary executive doctrine and the power to “construe” legislation as he or she chooses. Imagine it was a President Clinton claiming the power to invade your privacy simply by declaring “exigent circumstances.”

Would you still defend the President? Or might you start wondering if the means by which the administration is fighting the War on Terror might be destroying the very democratic principles we’re attempting to defend?

I’m just askin’.

Phew. For a moment there, I thought I might have to agree with a post over on (un)Sound Politics. But then I followed through the link. What a relief.

Jim Miller takes issue with Seattle P-I editorial cartoonist David Horsey for this week’s Burning Question, blockquoting it for the convenience of (u)SP readers:

Unquestionably, there are good things resulting from the democratization of the media. The best bloggers are delving into issues and information that may be bypassed by professional journalists. But with everyone holding a virtual megaphone, will we be able to hear the wiser voices amid the din of full-throated free expression?

Here’s my Burning Question:

All things considered, is our understanding of the world made better or worse by an unfiltered cacophony of opinions?

Miller calls it a “revealing question” that displays a “dangerous misunderstanding”:

Freedom of speech is not something owned by public officials and “professional journalists”. It belongs to all of us, regardless of how wise David Horsey may think we are. It is up to the listener, or the reader, not some filter, however “professional”, to decide what should be believed — and what should not be believed.

The loss of their monopoly has hit many journalists hard. But to see one half wishing for filters on the freedom of others is still dismaying. I have criticized David Horsey more than once, but I have never said that he should be filtered. But he seems to believe that it might be better if I were.

Uh-huh.

What a pompous, paranoid load of crap.

The fact is, Horsey’s question isn’t “revealing” at all, and the only “misunderstanding” is the one that Miller willfully foists on his readers by presenting the question entirely out of context. If you click through the link and actually read Horsey’s piece (something I’m sure Miller understands a small minority of blog readers generally take the initiative to do) you’d understand that this week’s Burning Question is the final installment in Horsey’s long-running series.

The world of punditry has been democratized. The mainstream media are surrounded by non-professional competitors who employ a wide array of formats to exchange opinions unfiltered by editors or experts.

In this new context, finding a place to express a viewpoint is hardly a challenge. Thus, with that need more than met, Burning Questions will close up shop next Saturday to give way to new things.

Miller tsk-tskingly accuses Horsey of “half wishing for filters on the freedom of others” (totally oblivious to the fact that us bloggers are media filters in our own right,) but a fair reading of Horsey finds that he actually celebrates the new media, openly acknowledging that the Burning Question series has come to an end exactly because us bloggers have made it superfluous and outdated. That said, Horsey then goes on to raise some legitimate concerns about the blogosphere in general, and our comment threads in particular.

Yes, it does seem good that average folk can have their say, just like George Will and Paul Krugman. Yet, most times when I’ve read through a long string of comments posted on an online forum, I have come away with the same doubts I had about the amateur hotel reviewers.

Not just doubts, actually, but worries about the intellect and analytical skills (plus spelling ability) of my fellow citizens. In so much of this populist punditry there is an overabundance of ill-informed spouting off infused with incredible rudeness, paranoia, bias and bile.

Gee, I dunno… that seems to me like a pretty fair description of the comment threads on both (u)SP and HA. I’m not exactly sure what Miller finds so objectionable.

As for the claim that Horsey’s question is “revealing,” Miller ignores the basic conceit of posing a “Burning Question” in the first place. The whole point of the exercise is to spark debate. How could a question possibly be revealing if the very nature of the rhetorical device demands that it be controversial?

Jesus… what an idiotic and/or dishonest critique.

The irony is that by reading between the lines to portray Horsey as a status-quo-defending, patrician enemy of free speech, Miller pretty much confirms all of Horsey’s doubts about the “intellect and analytical skills” of us citizen bloggers. (Though I gotta admit, Miller’s spelling is dead on.) Unpoisoned by Miller’s paranoid analysis, I think the average reader would find that Horsey was actually saying some pretty darned flattering things about us bloggers.

Too flattering.

Apparently, state Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt (R-Walla Walla) didn’t get the message that the phrase “stay the course” is so yesterday.

At an Associated Press Legislative Forum held this morning in Olympia, Pete Callaghan of the Tacoma News Tribune asked the panel whether there was any “resistance” to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposal to delay the math WASL as a requirement for graduation. House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-Seattle) said he supported the governor’s proposal. But at around the 31:10 mark, Sen. Hewitt disagreed:

“Our caucus, and I think probably the House caucus as well, will tell you that we want to stay the course. The WASL scores are increasing, as are the math scores.”

That’s it. No problem here. Nothing to look at. Sure, a huge percentage of the state’s high school seniors are about to be denied a diploma, keeping them out of college and higher paying jobs, but… you know… stay the course.

To be fair, as Sen. Hewitt continues, he starts to sound a bit more nuanced, arguing that we need to evaluate the issue district by district. “One shoe does not fit all,” Sen. Hewitt tells the audience. But the question was straight forward: do you support the governor’s proposal to delay the math WASL requirement? And apparently, according to Sen. Hewitt, the official GOP position is “no.”

Whatever the merits of standards based teaching, something’s clearly not working right here in WA state. And to simply respond with “stay the course” in the face of a growing anti-WASL backlash is the kind of head-in-the-sand policy orthodoxy that has landed Sen. Hewitt and his fellow Republicans firmly in the minority.

A kid was shot to death today at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington.

One of the arguments given by gun control proponents is that handguns make it really easy to take out aggressions on someone. It’s hard to find fault with that claim.

From 1999 to 2004, there were 70,200 people in the U.S. that died of gun-related homicide, which is a rate of 41 gun-related homicides per million people. (And this does not include gun-related suicides.)

Over the same time period, there were 2,927 people who died of terrorism—a rate of less than 2 terrorism-related deaths per million people.

Yet, somehow we’ve chosen a war on terror™ [sic] as our national obsession. And using that “war” as justification, we’ve weakened the Constitution and abandoned other fundamental American values, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the effort, we’ve invaded other countries, and we’ve brought death, injury and violence into the lives of millions of innocent people.

My point is this: if we really wanted to make America safer, wouldn’t it be far more effective to launch a war on gun violence with the same resolve? I mean, that war would involve weakening the constitution, too, but I cannot imagine it would entail all the other bad side effects….

I suppose the PR folks at Microsoft thought it a savvy move to send free computers loaded with Vista software to dozens of tech-industry bloggers. But rather than generating glowing reviews, the Redmond software giant’s outreach efforts have created an online controversy, with charges of “payola” and “bribery” flying in all directions.

Microsoft’s efforts to woo influential bloggers by sending them free computers loaded with the Vista operating system is generating controversy, with some online writers attacking would-be Vista reviewers for taking what were tantamount to bribes, while recipients defend their editorial independence, arguing that journalism-style rules prohibiting such gifts are outdated.

[…] In total, Microsoft and AMD gave away 90 PCs, all loaded with the highest-end version of Windows Vista, the 64-bit Ultimate edition. Most received Acer Ferrari laptops that list for between US$2,000 and $2,400 at retail stores. Others received media center desktops made by Velocity Micro Inc.

Microsoft says it has “no expectation of any editorial payback,” and some of the bloggers who have benefited from the company’s largesse argue that professional journalism ethics simply don’t apply in an online world where many bloggers could not afford to review products if they had to pay for them themselves.

Hmm. If Microsoft were to send me a new Acer Ferrari laptop, I suppose I would be faced with quite an ethical quandary. On the one hand, accepting such a gift might compromise my credibility when writing about Microsoft or its new operating system. On the other hand my current laptop, a time-worn Apple iBook, is now over five years old.

So I guess the only way for me to adequately consider this controversy and determine for myself and my readers on which side I fall, is for Microsoft to send me a free computer too. Personally, I’d prefer a new MacBook Pro. (I understand that Vista runs fine within a copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac.) But I guess I’d take one of those Acer laptops if that’s all you have lying around.

So, hey Microsoft, drop me an email and I’ll give you my shipping address. And I absolutely promise you… no editorial payback.

Don’t you just love irony?

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Rep. Goode — who took Rep. Ellison’s election as an opportunity to warn his constituents that unless we “wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office” — represents Jefferson’s birthplace of Albemarle County Virginia.

Hmm. If we don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there might be more Thomas Jeffersons elected to office.

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

Take a much needed break from the sober realities of the holiday season, and join me for a night of hoppy beer and hopped up political debate.

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

I don’t follow college football all that much but I gotta say, man… what a finish to the Salty Corn Chip Bowl last night between Boise State and Oklahoma. A hook-and-lateral to tie it up with 7 seconds left, and then a Statue of Liberty play on a two-point conversion to win it in overtime.

And then the star tailback proposes to the head cheerleader live on national television. (I’d love to follow up on that story 20 years from now.)

I’m not sure what possessed me to tune in, but I sure am glad I did.

Washington state’s minimum wage went up to $7.93 yesterday — an automatic cost-of-living adjustment — $2.78 higher than the federally mandated minimum wage of $5.15/hour paid just across the Idaho border. And according to an AP story in today’s Seattle Times, that’s great for minimum wage workers like James Randall, a University of Idaho student who lives in Moscow but delivers pizza 30 hours a week in Pullman.

“It’s kinda hard to make ends meet,” Randall said. “I’m just glad the state of Washington has tied the minimum [wage] to inflation. That way it’s advantageous to everyone.”

But of course, this article was written by a professional journalist, and thus there must be two sides (and usually only two sides) to every story. If our state’s higher minimum wage is good for workers on both sides of the border, then it must be bad for businesses here in Washington, right?

Yeah, well, so one Pullman business owner “thinks” while another supposes that it will “catch up to me eventually,” and that’s enough for the AP to spin the other side of the story. Of course there are tons of academic and government reports studying the economic impact of minimum wage hikes here and elsewhere, but why bother with hard facts and numbers when one can report anecdotal suppositions to back up your thesis?

Hmm. Well if this whole debate amounts to little more than a thought experiment, how about this angle: if a higher minimum wage is bad for Pullman businesses because it squeezes profits and forces prices higher, what kind of impact does it have on Idaho businesses who can’t attract and retain qualified employees like Randall while paying them only two-thirds the wage available just across the border? Workers are just as mobile as customers after all, so you think maybe WA’s minimum wage law is forcing wages up in Idaho towns all along the border? So wouldn’t that relieve some of the economic pressure on businesses in WA border towns?

Of course, I could do a little research to find some studies that back up my thesis, but I’m striving for journalistic professionalism here, so I wouldn’t want to stray from pure conjecture and supposition.

In fact, there is pressure on Idaho to raise its minimum wage and tie future increases to inflation, and just such a bill made some progress in the Idaho legislature last session.

Idaho’s minimum wage has been at the federal level of $5.15 an hour for about 10 years. A state bill to increase the wage to $6.15 an hour — and mandate yearly increases tied to inflation, like in Washington — died in an Idaho House committee this spring because some lawmakers feared it would lead to higher prices, increase unemployment rates and reduce incentives for low-paid workers to improve themselves.

That’s right, because we all know that, um… it’s not the employers who choose to pay a sub-subsistence wage that are at the root of the problem, but rather the lazy workers who choose to take these low-paid jobs. I mean, if we pay people like Randall a living wage, he’ll never have the incentive to improve himself. He’ll just drop out of college and deliver pizza for the rest of his life.

Yeah. Right.