HorsesAss.Org

Over the past couple years I have had the misfortune of sitting through a number of tedious and infuriating House Finance Committee hearings, where it has become commonplace to watch Rep. “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama) argue vigorously — and, um… angrily — for nearly every tax cut, tax break and tax loophole to come down the pike. The man simply doesn’t like taxes.

This year he championed yet another attempt to repeal WA’s estate tax, a bill that died in committee. So on Tuesday he forced the House to vote on a procedural motion to bring the bill directly to the floor without a public hearing. In a press release issued after the motion failed 53-45, Orcutt whined:

“I’m not content to let small businesses die from having to liquidate their assets to pay one of the most punitive death taxes in the nation,”

Uh-huh.

So here’s my challenge to Angry Ed: show me the small businesses that have been forced to liquidate their assets to pay off WA’s estate tax.

I don’t want an anecdote or a metaphor, and I don’t want businesses where the heirs just decided to cash out… that happens all the time, regardless of taxes.

I want documented evidence of small family businesses, where the heirs desperately wanted to keep it in the family, but just couldn’t wing it… all because of WA’s “punitive” estate tax on non-farm assets over $2 million.

How many have there been over the past few years, Ed? Thousands? Hundreds? A couple dozen? Can you name just one?

I mean, if you’re going to grandstand on an issue like this, I just assume you have the facts to back it up. Otherwise, people might start thinking that your procedural maneuver was just some cheap, political stunt like, you know… the GOP’s cynical effort to bring their sex offender bill to a floor vote — likewise without hearings or debate — just to manufacture a controversy they could use against Democrats.

Oh.

A Republican political action committee is sending automated phone calls to voters in swing districts targeting Democratic incumbents for opposing a vote on a bill to repeal Washington’s estate tax.

Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver, said her constituents began receiving the calls Thursday. “It’s ugly, partisan game-playing that we don’t need,” she said.

Besides, Wallace said, she voted in favor of bringing the bill to the House floor on Tuesday.

Yup, HA regular Kevin Carnes and The Speaker’s Roundtable is at it again. Apparently, Angry Ed’s hopeless procedural motion was just a ruse designed to provide cover for canned attack ads aimed at Democrats in swing districts. And when asked why Rep. Wallace’s constituents were being told she voted against the motion, when in fact she voted for it, Carnes displayed his usual ethical ambivalence.

“If she wants to be pragmatic about this, maybe (Wallace) should encourage her caucus to take a vote on this,”

So… Rep. Wallace is just a metaphor for the rest of her caucus?

So come on Ed, prove to me that you’re not just another tool of your caucus’s political hacks. You claim the WA estate tax — a tax that only applies to about 250 estates a year — forces small businesses to liquidate their assets. Now prove it.

In a letter to the editor in today’s Seattle Times, Susan McAdams poses a question.

The Bush administration has the nerve to state that our citizens must sacrifice in a time of war (a war engineered and utterly mismanaged by the self-same administration).

But not all Americans are asked to make this sacrifice, only the children, only the elderly, only the poor, only those least able to protect their own welfare.

No sacrifice (aside from campaign contributions) has been asked of the wealthiest Americans. The pocketbooks of those most able to assist in this terrible time of war and deficits are protected and enriched by the Bush leadership at every turn.

Is this administration completely without shame?

Well Susan… um… yes.

On CBS’s Face the Nation this morning, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean bluntly compared Vice President Dick Cheney to his predecessor, the infamous Aaron Burr:

President promised two years ago that he would fire the leaker. He hasn’t kept his promise. Karl Rove is not only still working in the White House, but he has security clearance. Now it turns out that the vice president of the United States may have been responsible for those leaks for political reasons. That is the kind of thing that has not been done to my knowledge since Aaron Burr was vice president.

Burr would eventually be tried for treason, but the similarities don’t end there. For today we learn that Cheney has just become the first Vice President since Burr to actually shoot a man while in office.

The Associated Press reports that Cheney “accidentally” shot a man on a quail hunting trip in Texas yesterday. (Former VP Dan Quayle is reported to be resting comfortably.) Why the AP assumes the shooting was accidental, I don’t know.

Burr, as us history buffs well know, shot and killed fellow founding father Alexander Hamilton on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, NJ, in the most famous duel in American history.

Damn… they’re on to me…

The government concluded its “Cyber Storm” wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

Bloggers?

Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose “Web logs” include political rantings and musings about current events.

And we all know what we do with terrorists, don’t we? We hunt them down and kill them.

On the one hand, it’s kind of amusing that the Department of Homeland Security is actually conducting wargames to test its response to attacks from terrorist bloggers. Next thing you know, they’ll be banning the dangerous use of sharp wit and cutting irony.

On the other hand, I find it personally disturbing.

Let’s put this in perspective. In congressional testimony, a top Homeland Security official has already blamed me for disrupting his department’s ability to respond in a crisis:

In the middle of trying to respond to [Hurricane Katrina], FEMA’s press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background.

Ironically, it started with an organization called Horsesass.org, that on some blog published a false, and, frankly, in my opinion, defamatory statement that the media just continued to repeat over and over. […] It came at the wrong time. And I think it led potentially to me being pulled out of Louisiana because it made me somewhat ineffective.

I suppose when Homeland Security prepares to respond to “deliberate misinformation campaigns,” this incident probably comes to mind… regardless of the fact that nothing I wrote was actually false or defamatory.

So what happens the next time a blogger like me posts critical information about FEMA or other Homeland Defense officials in the midst of crisis? Do they shut down the blog? Do they arrest us?

I just hope they show me the same kind of mercy they showed the bin Laden family in the immediate wake of 9/11.

Last night sociopathic, right-wing, hate-mongerer best-selling author Ann Coulter spoke before an overflow crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Amongst the many turds of wisdom she flung at the audience of over 1000 young, adoring activists:

Coulter on killing Bill Clinton:
(Responding to a question from a Catholic University student about her biggest moral or ethical dilemma) “There was one time I had a shot at Clinton. I thought ‘Ann, that’s not going to help your career.'”

Coulter on the Supreme Court:
“If we find out someone [referring to a terrorist] is going to attack the Supreme Court next week, can’t we tell Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalito?”

Yeah I know, I know… she’s only joking.

But… if I were to consistently “joke” about killing, say, President Bush, I’m pretty confident that not only would it generate hyperbolic outrage from those on the self-righteous right, it might also spur the interest of the Secret Service. In fact, even publicly joking about joking about assassinating Bush might be pushing the line. But Coulter, with an audience of millions, is permitted to frequently and publicly threaten the lives of public figures, openly musing how she might murder them with her own hands.

These types of violent, threatening harangues, if aimed at an average, private citizen, and coming from just some nutty neighbor, might be enough to prompt a police investigation, if not a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. Yet Coulter is not only allowed to wander the streets unsupervised, she is lionized by our nation’s political elite, for abusive, harassing tirades that would not be tolerated from the bag-lady at your local ATM.

Furthermore, she repeatedly makes it clear that, far from merely targeting individual victims, her murderous contemplations are genocidal in scope. It was at a previous CPAC convention in 2002 that Coulter made her now infamous “quip” about executing liberals:

“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.”

When confronted by Fox News host Alan Colmes, Coulter not only described the statement as “a huge hit with the audience,” she confirmed that her call for targeted executions was aimed at intimidating the broader liberal population.

Colmes: “You hate liberals. You despise liberals. This is unbelievable. We should execute them to make liberals scared?”

Coulter: “Right. Right!”

Coulter’s fatal attraction towards American liberalism is nothing short of stalking, and should be treated as such. But if federal authorities under Bush refuse to take seriously even a threat against an ex-President, we’re obviously going to have to rely on local authorities for personal protection.

That’s why I intend to seek a restraining order in King County District Court, ordering Coulter to cease her harassing conduct, and barring her from contacting or surveilling me and from coming within 100 yards of me or my place of work or residence. And I encourage all other registered Democrats, or otherwise self-identifed liberal or left-leaning Americans, to join me by filing for similar restraining orders in their own local jurisdictions.

Now I’m sure that Coulter might contest that we are overreacting to her attempts at humor, and of course, she would certainly be free to do so… in thousands of local courtrooms scattered throughout the nation, and at great personal expense of time and money.

But to silently do nothing as Coulter and others continue to transmit eliminationist rhetoric into mainstream political discourse, not only invites further threats of violence… it also invites action.

[Cross-posted at Daily Kos, please recommend.]

My god the comment threads have gone to hell in a hand basket today. That’s what these open threads are supposed to be for.

It took us a while to get this week’s podcast from Drinking Liberally edited, and up online, because, quite frankly… we were drunk. Anyway, our February 7th edition is now available for your listening pleasure.

Joining me this week was Sandeep Kaushik, formerly of The Stranger, Will from Pike Place Politics, Carl from Washington State Political Report, Howie from Howie in Seattle (et al), Molly from Liberal Girl Next Door, Darryl from Hominid Views, and the lovely-but-linkless Emily.

Special thanks again goes to Richard Huff and Gavin Shearer for producing the podcast. I also highly recommend their own podcast, The Confab Show; their February 9th edition should be up online shortly.

The Stranger has reprinted some of the controversial Danish cartoons that have prompted Muslims to protest and riot throughout the world… and I must say, that having finally seen them, I now understand their outrage.

I mean… cartoons are supposed to be funny, aren’t they? And these… not so much. In that sense, I haven’t been so offended by a cartoon since The Family Circus.

Hmm. Shouldn’t we be at least a little bit worried by this?

Some Iraqis are letting their birds loose rather than slaughter them and the lack of a proper shipping container has kept the tissue sample of a man suspected of dying of bird flu sitting in Baghdad despite reports it was being tested abroad.

Poor communications, scarce equipment and the dangers of the insurgency are all plaguing efforts to combat bird flu in Iraq.
…
Officials say containing the spread of bird flu in Iraq may be beyond the capabilities of health authorities in some parts of the country, particularly the volatile Anbar province.

You know, if I were writing a post-apocolyptic novel, this is exactly how I might imagine events unfolding. Should it be Iraq where H5N1 finally makes the jump to human-to-human transmission, history will at least partially blame American arrogance and incompetence for the deaths of hundreds of millions. And rightly so.

Every time I launch into a screed assailing violent, right-wing rhetoric, or warning of our nation’s precipitous slide towards fascism, I do so with the full understanding that some will judge me melodramatic, hyperbolic… or even paranoid. So why do I do it?

Dave Neiwert answers that question well today on his blog Orcinus, where he routinely chronicles the eliminationist rhetoric and actions of the far right:

Regular readers know that the main reason I keep harping on the rise of right-wing eliminationist rhetoric is that history tells us that this rhetoric always precedes action.

Last weekend, Jacob Robida acted out this dynamic in real life: He walked into a tavern in New Bedford, Mass., and, after inquiring whether it was a gay bar — and being informed that it was — began a murderous rampage with a hatchet and a handgun, leaving three bar patrons injured, one of them in critical condition. When pulled over in Arkansas for a traffic violation, he shot and killed a Gassville police officer, launching a 20-mile pursuit that culminated when his car was disabled in nearby Norfolk. He then killed his female passenger, 33-year-old Jennifer Rena Bailey, and then was shot himself when he pointed his weapon at police.

Like all such rampages, this one did not occur in a vacuum. Robida had a Web site on which he posted a number of entries regarding his fascination with all things Nazi and murdering people in general. A search of his room turned up Nazi regalia and literature.

[…]

Jacob Robida’s rampage was all about reminding gay Americans that they are unsafe in our society — that their lives are forfeit because haters like Robida say so. People like this get their fuel from demagogues who claim that inflicting this kind of violence on such outcasts is their right. Not only is it their right, but it is the right thing to do.

Contrary to what some people may think, I do not awake each morning expecting today to be the day my government locks me away in a “detention center,” nor do I lay my head down at night expecting my sleep to be shattered by a right-wing-militia-fueled, 21st century American Kristallnacht.

However… I know my history, and I know that it is possible, if not imminently likely.

Our national reaction to the isolated attack of 9/11 was a preemptive war abroad, and a surrender of civil liberties at home… the quiet acceptance of a “1984”-like scenario in which a unitary executive claims extra-constitutional war powers in a War on Terror that even he admits is likely to extend for decades, if not indefinitely. At the same time, the increasingly violent rhetoric of the far-right continues its steady creep into mainstream politics.

So what would be our response to a major disaster, such as a nuclear, chemical or biological attack on an American city? While 9/11 was a nearly unparalleled American tragedy, there are reasonable scenarios with death tolls 100 times greater… or even higher. What freedoms would we surrender then? What freedoms would our government — or extremist vigilantes — attempt to take by force?

I write about these things now, not because I believe they will happen, but because I know they can happen. I write about these things now, because we need to at least imagine the worst — just like we should have imagined terrorists flying airplanes into skyscrapers — so that if these things do happen, we can at least anticipate the violent, anti-democratic reaction that will surely be generated. I write about these things now, while I am still free to write about these things, without fear of official or unofficial retaliation.

I write about these things because I know my history.

Voters went to the polls mailboxes yesterday throughout the state to vote on school levies and other special elections, and at least in King County, support for our children has been overwhelming. Nearly every school levy in the county is not only surpassing the 60 percent threshold by a comfortable margin, many are passing by well over 70 percent.

For years now, an innate anti-tax sentiment has almost been taken for granted by politicians, pundits, and calculating hucksters like Tim Eyman. Yet homeowners consistently vote to tax themselves to provide essential services like schools, libraries, parks, and public safety. The public may often talk cynically about government, but what greater show of public faith in government is there than voting to raise one’s own taxes?

The steady popular support of school levies (what else consistently garners over 70 percent of the vote?) also demonstrates broad popular support of public education in general. I just wonder when our state’s lawmakers are going to realize this, and finally craft a populist package to increase basic funding of education? Voters are more than willing to pay for it… if you give them value for their money.

Democratic challenger Eric Oemig is going to have a tough time attacking state Sen. Bill Finkbeiner for voting against popular legislation during the 2006 session… because so far, Finkbeiner hasn’t cast a single “no” vote.

Truth is, Finkbeiner hasn’t really cast many votes at all. Of the 35 bills that have come to the Senate floor thus far, Finkbeiner has missed 15 of them, for a lackluster 57 percent attendance record. I guess he wasn’t kidding when he resigned his post as minority leader, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Finkbeiner was widely praised for boldly breaking with the Republican party line (and his own prior voting record) by casting the deciding vote in favor of landmark gay civil rights legislation, but he has been decidedly less decisive the rest of the session. Of the 19 other bills he bothered to vote on — all of them “yes” votes — 13 were passed unanimously, and three more with only 1 or 2 nays.

Indeed, apart from the anti-discrimination bill, the only bill Finkbeiner voted on that could remotely be considered close was Senate Joint Memorial 8039, which passed 27 to 21, and requests that Congress make changes to Medicare Part D. But I suppose that’s not even really a bill.

Finkbeiner may have voted his heart on the controversial anti-discimination bill, but he also voted the sentiments of his district. Other than that one vote he’s apparently decided to avoid making any tough decisions that may come back to bite him during what is sure to be a tough election challenge.

But don’t worry Eric. If want you want to use Finkbeiner’s voting record against him, all you have to do is look back to 2005.

At a 9:30 AM press conference, King County elections director Dean Logan released plans to transition the county to all vote-by-mail elections by the August, 2007 primary election. The implementation plan is detailed in a 30-page document, “Moving to Vote By Mail.”

King County Executive Ron Sims first proposed the move back in December, at which time he instructed Logan to study the issue and come back with recommendations. The resulting proposal was guided by the following planning objectives:

Adopt and implement a vote-by-mail election system to:

• Simplify and streamline election administration
• Be a model jurisdiction for accountability, accuracy and transparency
• Increase voter participation
• Enhance access to voting

Hard to argue with those objectives… though I’m sure some people will try.

Insiders tell me there is council support for the required ordinances and funding, so this move is virtually guaranteed. When the transition has been completed, King County will be the largest jurisdiction in the nation conducting all vote-by-mail elections.

I’m still reading through the document and will update with further analysis later this morning.

UPDATE:
I’ve skimmed through the report, but it’s kind of detailed, so here are a few quick observations.

With 70 to 80 percent already voting by mail, it has simply become too costly and too inefficient to simultaneously maintain two different election systems. In addition to increasing voter turnout, particularly in low profile elections…

Voting by mail means we move to a single, common voting system. It means simpler instructions for voters and more streamlined and efficient systems for election workers. As we move to voting by mail, there will be fewer provisional ballots and decreased dependency on manual processes. Voting by mail offers the opportunity to eventually provide something new for voters that they have told us they want: the ability to track their own ballot.

Again, I’ve repeatedly stated my preference to vote at the polls, but all this is a good thing, and the motivations behind this transition are based on pragmatism.

One thing the report makes perfectly clear is that the complexity of this transition is not being taken lightly; that’s why the final implementation has been pushed back to 2007. This is a very thorough report that realistically discusses the technical, organizational and political obstacles to a successful transition. For example, the report outlines a number of legislative changes that need to be made, and how their failure might impact the transition.

The report also notes the import of getting things right the first time:

In implementing the vote-by-mail system countywide, the biggest concern (and greatest threat to success) is the potential for missing critical path deadlines in a large, complex, and highly visible public process. Though the average voter does not understand the many processes and complexities inherent in running the largest vote-by-mail system in the country, they will know without a doubt if something goes wrong in their individual case, or if the system is implemented in a way that increases the potential for error. We will not get a second chance to make a first impression about how well this was done.

Looks to me like Logan has learned an important lesson from the 2004 election… perception counts. The whole purpose of the move to all vote-by-mail is to make voting more secure, reliable, accessible, and efficient. In doing so, Logan plans to bring in important new technologies like high-speed ballot tabulators, automated signature verification, and voter-verifiable ballot tracking. But when it comes to rebuilding public faith in our election systems, all this will go to naught if KC trips up out of the gate.

I’ll write more on the subject when I have the time to give this report the detailed attention it deserves.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Please join me in the 9PM hour for a live recording of our weekly podcast.

I’m also pleased to announce that Drinking Liberally Tacoma will hold its inaugural gathering tomorrow at 9PM, at Meconi’s Pub near 7th & Pacific, and meet every Wed. thereafter.

“Ching-ching, ching-ching-ching.”

It turns out that slot machines and those ubiquitous Coinstar machines may have a lot more in common than the sound they make when you dump in your change. This morning, Senate Ways & Means allowed SB 6523 to die in committee, largely due to the machinations of Coinstar, Inc. and it’s uber-lobbyist, Vito Chiechi.

Why the hell would Coinstar want to kill a bill that raises the state’s legal gambling age from 18 to 21? And why the hell did state senators allow them to do it?

Well, here’s what I think I know.

In addition to coin-counting machines, Coinstar also has a $5 million a year business on amusement games, like the stupid giant claw you sometimes find near the entrances of supermarkets, enticing children with the elusive promise of a big prize. At the hearing, Coinstar testified to their concern that the bill would also raise the age on carnival and amusement games… testimony which I initially dismissed as silly; the bill clearly defined to which activities it applied, and the giant claw was not one of them.

What I hadn’t realized is that representing Coinstar was the dean of Olympia’s lobbyists, Vito Chiechi, a kind of mini-Jack Abramoff, with strong ties to gambling, alcohol, tobacco and other sin-related industries. Chiechi saw this bill as an opportunity, and he jumped at it.

It turns out that Coinstar has had a running battle with the state Gambling Commission, chafing at requests for financial records and other documents, and yearning to get out from under the Commission’s oversight. So Coinstar and Chiechi had Sen. Jim Honeyford — once described by an industry trade journal as “the best bet for expanding gambling in Washington” — insert an amendment that removed references to “amusement games” from the gambling statutes, thus removing Coinstar’s activities from Gambling Commission oversight.

So today the bill goes to Ways and Means — the last day for a bill to move out of the committee and onto Rules — and it’s “suddenly” discovered that by removing all references to amusement games, the Honeyford amendment may have inadvertently made these games illegal! Rather than fixing the language, Ways and Means chair, Sen. Margerita Prentice decided to table the bill entirely.

On its face, this is an example of Prentice and her senate colleagues sacrificing the welfare of our states’ teens to protect the interests of a large corporation. What started as an effort to raise the legal age on our multi-billion dollar gambling industry, was scuttled due to concerns from Coinstar and its $5 million worth of amusement games.

But perhaps this goes much deeper?

Prentice — a frequent beneficiary of campaign contributions from both tribal and commercial gaming interests, as well as other organizations associated with Chiechi — also sits on the Gambling Commission, and thus is very well versed in the gambling statutes. The bill, as written, only raises the gambling age at facilities where alcohol is consumed on site, and clearly does not apply to any “amusement games” that might be played by anyone under the legal drinking age. She could have amended the bill to reinsert the references to amusement games in the broader statute… but then that would have left Coinstar under Gambling Commission oversight.

Of course the bill’s death must surely please the rest of the gambling industry, none of which wanted to publicly oppose such a commonsense measure, but which certainly had nothing to gain from its passage. Delores Chiechi — Vito’s daughter — representing the commercial card rooms, quietly took no official position on the bill. Perhaps her tepid statements of support were genuine… or perhaps she knew something the rest of us didn’t know? Perhaps this bill has been dead for weeks, but nobody bothered to tell the sponsors?

I also can’t help but wonder what game Coinstar is really playing at? Standing right next to the Coinstar machine in most supermarkets is also a lottery ticket vending machine… could it be that Coinstar plans to be a big player in gambling as well? The Lottery’s own marketing plan describes 18-20 year olds as part of “a key market the lottery intends to pursue”… what role does an innovative company like Coinstar plan to play in deploying new, youth-oriented gambling technologies? How would have SB 6523 impacted its future plans?

Still, whatever the circumstances, it’s hard to blame Coinstar, the gambling industry and the Chiechis for the bill’s failure. It is their job to protect their own self-interest.

It is the Legislature’s job, on the other hand, to protect the interests and welfare of citizens of this state. This was a simple bill with a simple purpose, specifically designed to meet a need defined by the state Lottery’s own problem gambling research… a bill that had earned broad bipartisan support. By allowing the bill to die in committee, for whatever reasons, Sen. Prentice and her colleagues have failed to do their job.

The “legislative declaration” that prefaces our state’s gambling statutes starts as follows:

The public policy of the state of Washington on gambling is to keep the criminal element out of gambling and to promote the social welfare of the people by limiting the nature and scope of gambling activities and by strict regulation and control.

It is now up to the House, where companion bill HB 2872 currently sits in the Rules Committee, to live up to its responsibilities, by forcing senators to live up to theirs.