HorsesAss.Org

Is “The Straight Talk Express” really headed straight for the White House in 2008?

McCain’s political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero — a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to “shut up,” called his fellow Republican senators “shithead,” “fucking jerk,” “asshole,” and joked in 1998 at a Republican fundraiser about the teenage daughter of President Clinton, “Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.”

I’m just askin’.

As of next month I will no longer be employed by Entercom. Unfortunately for the righties who would like to see me off radio altogether, my paycheck will simply be signed by another company.

In what I suppose is a big shakeup in the Seattle and San Francisco radio markets, Entercom is trading KIRO, KTTH and KBSG to Bonneville for KOIT, KDFC, and KMAX. I’m not really sure what this means, but after the meeting today in which Entercom CEO David Field delivered the news, there wasn’t any wailing and gnashing of teeth in the office.

So I suppose this could be good for KIRO. Or bad.

State and city leaders met for hours yesterday to decide the fate of the Alaska Way Viaduct, but couldn’t come to a decision. That’s pretty much because city leaders refuse to accept the rebuild option, and state leaders refuse to pay for anything but that. But as recalcitrant as the participants were, one new idea did emerge from the meeting:

The joint statement says there are two options, build an elevated replacement or, “Reprogram funding to the 520 replacement project.”

I think this was supposed to be a threat or something, the implication being that the city risks losing $2.2 billion in state funds if we don’t budge on a rebuild. But if the governor does repurpose the Viaduct money towards the 520 bridge, it could actually end up saving local taxpayers a ton of money.

Stick with me on this one.

The region needs to replace both the Viaduct and the 520 bridge, but the total amount of money thus far committed by the state towards construction of the two projects combined is less than the projected cost of the 520 bridge alone. Who makes up the difference? Local residents, via various city, county, port and RTID taxes. And possibly tolls.

If the governor forces through a rebuild, not only would Seattle get a double-decker freeway it doesn’t want, but we’d be forced to tax ourselves to pay the difference between the state share and the total cost. Talk about adding insult to injury. And then we’d also have to tax ourselves to make up the difference between the cost of a new 520 bridge and the state share of the project.

But… if Governor Gregoire were to repurpose the state’s Viaduct commitment towards the 520 bridge, local taxpayers would pay much less for their share of that project. And then freed from the strings that come with state money, Seattle could choose a surface-plus-transit alternative that costs much less money than a Viaduct rebuild.

Think about it. The state share of the cost of the two projects remains the same, but the combined cost is substantially slashed. This saves local taxpayers money.

As far as I’m concerned, this might be the perfect political compromise. The state refuses to pay for any Viaduct replacement that reduces capacity. Fine. Don’t. We’ll use our own money to tear it down and do what we want with it. It is our city afterall. But as long as the state keeps the money in the region, local taxpayers don’t actually lose a dime. Indeed, by choosing a less expensive surface alternative, we actually save money.

Sounds to me like a win-win situation.

These days, when local Drudge wannabe Orbusmax takes offense at one of my posts here on HA, he describes me as a deranged “710 KIRO talk show host” rather than merely as a deranged “liberal blogger.” I suppose his hope is that if he wakes up enough people to the awful danger I pose, perhaps KIRO will fire me.

It’s kinda flattering.

Well yesterday conservative radio industry blogger (and former KIRO host) Brian Maloney picked up the Orb’s lead with the screaming headline “MORE ‘EXECUTION’ TALK: Second KIRO Host Calls For Presidential Death Penalty.” (The first, he claims, was Mike Webb, who’s been off the air since 2005.)

Now, a second KIRO host has kicked up the rhetoric several notches, going even further by posting such thoughts on the Internet. In two examples found at HorsesAss.com, David Goldstein (known as “Goldy”) has called for Bush Administration executions.

Hmm. Nice fact-checking Brian. I suppose you didn’t link to these “two examples” because, um, you couldn’t actually find them, huh? (Hint: they don’t exist.) And… uh… it’s HorsesAss.org.

In fact, I’ve never called for Bush administration officials to be executed. Hell, I oppose the death penalty on principle. All I snarkily asked was that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld be treated humanely, so I’m not really sure what Brian is getting at when he accuses me of “kick[ing] up the rhetoric several notches.” But I’m pretty damn sure I understand what he’s trying to achieve by branding me an unhinged, hate-talking, fringe extremist:

Here’s the big question: if lefty talk didn’t pan out for Air America, why does KIRO believe going even further to the fringe extremes will fare any better?

Well… the national audience for Brian’s Radio Equalizer may only be about the same size as my puny, fringe, local blog, but there’s no denying the respect he commands from industry insiders. Yesterday he questions the business sense of KIRO putting a kook like me on the air. And today… well… I just got notice from KIRO management that… they’ve doubled my weekly airtime.

That’s right, starting this week “The David Goldstein Show” can now officially be heard from 7 to 10PM on both Sunday and Saturday.

(Hey Brian… wasn’t that your old time slot on 710-KIRO?)

Brian claims to be some sort of radio industry expert, but he seems to have missed the most basic lesson of Talk Radio 101. If I succeed at KIRO, it won’t be because of my politics — it will be because I have a knack for entertaining and engaging my audience. If Brian understood this simple rule — and had the talent to act on it — then perhaps he’d still have the radio show and I’d be the one blogging about him, instead of the other way around.

I’m a bit late on this story from December. Local GOP activists are elated, I’m told.

King County Executive Ron Sims was released from the hospital today following weekend surgery to remove his gall bladder.

According to his office, Sims was admitted to Virginia Mason Medical Center Saturday afternoon after complaining of abdominal pain. Doctors removed his gallbladder on Sunday.

The laparoscopic surgery is a common procedure, according to a statement from Sims’ office. The doctors expect a full recovery. Executive Sims will rest at home over the next week.

It’s hard to fathom now, but he was totally beatable in ’05, what with the Critical Areas Ordinance, the election stuff, and the whole Southwest Airlines thing at Boeing Field. The GOP then nominated a guy who allegedly whomped on his momma and lied on his resume. Nice!

The GOP’s new plan to oust him is clear: they’re going to take him out organ by organ.

“Stefan has an accuracy rate that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf would envy…”

That’s what Ron Sims spokesman Sandeep Kaushik told me when I asked about Stefan’s suggestion on (un)Sound Politics that the King County Executive was “actively seeking” the Port of Seattle director’s job.

Sims’s candidacy for Port director sounded fanciful. But I’m told Sims was actively lobbying for the job (The annual compensation is over $350,000, more than twice that of County Executive). Sources familiar with County Council backroom dealings report that several Councilmembers were already jockeying for the appointment to succeed Sims.

“Sources”…? Uh-huh. Stefan should stop listening to those voices in his head.

Besides, councilmembers are always jockeying to succeed Sims. (Sources tell me that Larry Phillips and Bob Ferguson actually carry carpet swatches with them whenever they visit the Executive’s office.)

Kaushik described Sims as a little annoyed that this rumor persists despite his blunt denials to several members of the press. According to Kaushik, Sims said that he never sought the position, never put his name in for consideration and never asked anybody to recommend him on his behalf. “I’d swear on a library full of bibles,” Sims told Kaushik.

From what I hear, Sims not only fully intends to fill out his term, he has not yet completely ruled out running for reelection in 2009. Of course… a cabinet secretary appointment from a Democratic president could cut Sims’ tenure short. So Bob… Larry… keep those carpet swatches handy.

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

Our fearless leader Nick tells us that the Alehouse is open, and DL is going on as usual. I’ll be there if I can manage to get my car off the Graham Hill Glacier.

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.

Amazing how this stuff works out, huh? Just a few months ago he wasn’t on the radar, but looky here!

Obama filed paperwork forming a presidential exploratory committee that allows him to raise money and put together a campaign structure. He is expected to announce a full-fledged candidacy on Feb. 10 in Springfield, Ill., where he can tap into the legacy of hometown hero Abraham Lincoln.

Obama’s soft-spoken appeal on the stump, his unique background, his opposition to the
Iraq war and his fresh face set him apart in a competitive race that also is expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

His middle name is Hussein, and he did coke once, and he’s religious and talks about his faith openly. He’s going to piss off a lot of folks on the secular left as well as the Muslim-hating right. I hope he’s ready for it, because every candidate will be gunning for him. If Howard Dean taught us anything, it’s to not peak early.

I can’t wait for Campaign 2008!!

Article IX, Section 1 of the Washington State Constitution is pretty damn clear:

It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.

“Ample” is not synonymous with “adequate” — it means “more than adequate,” “abundant,” “liberal” or “copious.” And a “paramount duty” is one that is “chief in importance or impact”… “above others,” and “superior in power or jurisdiction.”

Attorneys might semantically nitpick over the subjective meanings of these words, but us normal folks understand that when our per-student education funding ranks amongst the lowest in the nation, our state can’t possibly be living up to the spirit of Article IX, Section 1.

A suit was filed last week challenging the state’s inadequate funding of K-12 education, and I agree with the Seattle P-I editorial board’s assessment:

While it is regrettable that public dollars will need to be spent on lawyers, experts and depositions, it is more important that words in our state constitution have real meaning. The state can’t win this suit. One way to limit legal expenses would be to negotiate a settlement that honors the words and intentions of the state’s founders.

But it is not enough for our state’s editorialists to simply join the civic-minded chorus demanding more education funding. It is time they start laying the groundwork for the type of tax restructuring necessary to assure that the state has the resources to live up to its paramount duty.

Gov. Christine Gregoire’s new budget already provides several hundred million dollars more for education. But even though this is still at least a billion dollars a year short of the mark, her spending “increase” has already generated faux outrage by those who either refuse to, or are incapable of understanding the true nature of our state’s long term structural budget deficit. It’s not state spending that is out of whack — it continues to steadily decline as a percentage of the overall state economy. The problem rather, is the antiquated, early 20th Century hack of a tax system that simply cannot grow revenues at a pace sufficient to keep up with the demands of our post-industrial service economy.

Both the governor’s mansion and the state legislature are controlled by Democrats. Does anybody really believe that the Democrats wouldn’t spend amply on such a popular item as K-12 education if they had the money to do so? For all the recriminations we continue to focus on the wrong end of the problem, and the Democratic leadership is just as guilty as the obstructionists across the aisle.

We need to start having a grown-up, mature and informative debate about tax restructuring. We need to be willing to broach the idea of an income tax without fear of political retribution.

But we’re never going to get that debate unless our state’s editorial pages start leading the way.

***Note to Goldy: Sure, go ahead and do radio bits, but don’t do this one.

***File this under “Things That Will Never Happen”:

George Bush is preparing to make a historic shift in his position on global warming when he makes his State of the Union speech later this month, say senior Downing Street officials.

Tony Blair hopes that the new stance by the United States will lead to a breakthrough in international talks on climate change and that the outlines of a successor treaty to the Kyoto agreement, the deal to curb emissions of greenhouse gases which expires in 2012, could now be thrashed out at the G8 summit in June.

***More Republicans are freaking out about boys kissing each other.

***Evergreen Politics is extra wonky today. Transit and roads will be on the ballot this fall, and both have to pass for either to be law:

There are those in the environmental community who oppose the coupling of Sound Transit 2 and RTID into a single ballot measure. Opposing this marriage is a fight not worth fighting. The Legislature took the action to put the former adversaries of highways and transit in bed together just last year.

I think the fight is worth it. Transit funding is more popular than roads funding. Polls have been done showing the roads package may actually drag the transit element to defeat. Methinks Ezra Bason short changes us transit dweebs.

***I’ll just link to the blog (there’s too much good stuff). Make Erica C. Barnett a daily stop on your blog wanderings.

***New blogger in Central Washington!!! It’s Darci (no, not that Darcy) and she’s opened up shop at McCranium.

Presidential candidates have a way of poking their noses where they don’t belong:

Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful joining fellow Sen. Christopher Dodd at Martin Luther King Jr. holiday events, said Monday he thinks the Confederate flag should be kept off South Carolina’s Statehouse grounds.

“If I were a state legislator, I’d vote for it to move off the grounds — out of the state,” the Delaware senator said before the civil rights group held a march and rally at the Statehouse here to support its boycott of the state.

Oh jeez… There’s more:

Jim Hanks stood across from the Statehouse with about 35 Confederate flag supporters.

“We love this flag. We love our heritage,” said Hanks, of Lexington.

Some carried signs saying: “South Carolina does not want Chris Dodd,” referring to the Connecticut senator who, along with Biden, attended the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People rally at the Statehouse.

Hanks said that Dodd, Biden and other Democrats running for president “would probably say most anything if it would get them votes.”

I’m not a fan of the “stars and bars,” but I think it’s incredibly silly for candidates to inject their views in what is a very sensitive state issue. Whether a flag is flown on the dome or on state grounds, it’s up to the residents of South Carolina to decide. Jim Hanks is a racist; that’s clear enough. But that’s not his worst sin. You see, folks in the South are supposed to be considerate. The southerners I know would never display a flag that would make folks feel unwelcome. It’s called “manners,” and Jim Hanks would do well to learn some.

It’s a candidate’s right to pander like a “mofo” on the campaign trail (remember this?), but it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it. Senators Dodd and Biden should pay attention to getting the American flag out of Iraq and less to getting the Confederate flag out of Dixie.

Whoops…

As Tikriti fell to the gallows, his head was taken off by the rope noose, and the body and the head fall to the floor while Bandar swings on the rope.

My only hope is that when Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney are held accountable for their war crimes, that they be punished more humanely.

…I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

[…] The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

— Martin Luther King Jr., April 4, 1967

(Hat tip to The General.)

After years of fawning coverage in local media, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was backpedaling last week. It had help.

The reason was a two-part investigative story by the Los Angeles Times, begun on Sunday, 1-7-07, and reprinted on the front page of the Seattle Times, which reported that

“…the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices…. hundreds of Gates Foundation investments – totaling at least 41% of its assets – have been in companies that countered the foundation’s charitable goals or socially concerned philosophy.”

The practices of many of those companies, we learned, “are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help….”

The high-powered local executives running the world’s largest charitable organization, with some $70 billion or more in existing or pledged assets, might not have paid much attention to bad ethical investing. But they act quickly when bad publicity strikes. Wednesday, in an exclusive interview, we learned in the Seattle Times that:

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is planning a systematic review of its investments to determine whether it should pull its money out of companies that are doing harm to society…”

So far, so good. Only one problem: the Seattle Times pulled a major punch. It made no mention of one of the major threads of the L.A. Times stories:

“…investing in destructive or unethical companies is not what is most harmful….Worse is investing purely for profit, without attempting to improve a company’s way of operating.”

Gates, in responding to the bad publicity, made no mention of whether it would join the movement in American philanthropy to push companies to change their business practices. By their silence, we could presume the foundation would continue to keep its highly influential hands off the companies it invested in. And the Seattle Times let Gates get away with it.

And, it turns out, there was another problem: talk is cheap, and, it quietly emerged, fully retractable. Two days after that, on Friday, the web site NewsCloud.com broke a story bluntly headlined “Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio.” Our beneficent local philanthropists got their message out, and then changed it. Or, as NewsCloud put it:

“Shortly after that [Seattle Times] interview, the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this [from their web site] and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them and that they need to focus on their core mission: ‘There are dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which are outside the foundation’s areas of expertise.’…”

The Seattle Times, however, was not done making up for the error of its ways. Yesterday, our local apologist for all things Bill Gates featured what seemed to be something like an official’s makeup call in sports: a makeup feature for having reprinted the L.A. Times expose the previous Sunday. Sympathetically titled “Gates Foundation faces multibillion-dollar dilemma,” the article literally let our heroes have it both ways:

“As the Gates Foundation embarks upon a review of how its $32 billion endowment is invested, officials insist they won’t change their basic investment philosophy.”

Aside from greatly understating the Gates’ endowment, this sentence raises a rather basic dilemma of its own: what’s the point of “a systematic review of investments” if foundation officials “won’t change their basic investment philosophy”?

Let’s review, then: caught in a well-researched investigative piece, published by one of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, that looked (and was) really bad, a beloved local institution scrambles to put a good face on things. It announces this good face through the ever-pliant hometown paper, which already has probably fired an editor or two for reprinting the expose in the first place. It then promptly issues a meek, Gilda Radneresque “Never mind!,” which our local paper utterly ignores in a makeup feature devoted to those hard, hard, hard choices wealthy philanthropists must sometimes make.

What we have, then, is a massive investment firm (embedded in a multi-billion dollar philanthropy) smoothly reassuring the public while changing its odious practices not a whit; and the hometown paper first publicizing the odious practices and then, obediently, helping make it all right and sunshiney again.

The only losers are the millions of people around the globe victimized by the practices of firms invested in by the Gates Foundation; and local news consumers who think that the Seattle Times, for once, cast an unfettered, critical eye on a feelgood local institution. In both cases, it’s bad news.

The American Constitution is a heck of a thing. The power it guards for the power is great. Like this:

“the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”

Regular people get to have guns! What’s more:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The state doesn’t get to mess with the church(es)! Journalists are protected by name, as are lobbyists! Amazing!

When it comes to military power and the use of it, an especially large amount of power is vested in the executive branch. The President is also the commander of the military. This means that when President Bush decides to deploy US forces, he can do so with little conversation with Congress.

When folks cast votes in 2004, I don’t think a great many folks who were concerned by the “homos” getting married in San Francisco were thinking about the lengths Bush would go to extend our involvement in Iraq. With Saddam executed and no WMDs found, even those who never identified with the “anti-war Left” now see the mission as “accomplished.” There is a heavy majority of people in nearly every state who are now against the war and favor bringing home troops with the end of the year.

Do so-called “NASCAR dads” of the ex-urbs now see their votes against gay marriage, stem cell research, and other phantoms as votes that support President Bush’s goals in Iraq? What about Naderites? Is John Kerry still as “pro-war” as they said he was in 2004?

The truth is, elections matter. Congress has a limited role in changing the facts on the ground in Iraq. Presidents get to send more troops; Congress can fund them or not. There is limited appetite by folk like Rep. Adam Smith and others to deny troops the ammo and armor they need should they be deployed. President Bush, being so out of touch with reality, is unlikely to blink should Congress throw down the gauntlet. He’s so far down the rabbit hole, so divorced from what’s happening, I don’t see any rational argument penetrating the White House. Perhaps our best chance to make a big change will come in 2008, when the GOP will hopefully be crushed in the House and Senate. Any GOP nominee for president will be forced to answer for the Bush agenda.

Presidents have power, that’s clear. Elections matter and their consequences are clear.