HorsesAss.Org

Longtime local blogger (Peace Tree Farm) and HA regular N in Seattle has a post over on Washblog, announcing the 43rd Legislative District’s experiment in “open platform building.” During the week prior to the March 4 precinct caucuses — the Dem’s official first step towards building a party platform — the 43rd will be holding a series of three platform forums to invite more open and direct grassroots participation in the process. As N explains:

The hierarchical structure of 2004 — precincts elect delegates to the LD and county, LDs elect delegates to the Congressional District, CDs elect national delegates — worked well when the ultimate goal was to choose a presidential candidate. But when we’re trying to work on specific points of the party platform, to refine proposed positions on a dozen big issues, starting the process with a couple hundred tiny groups in front of a couple hundred blank slates doesn’t sound like the best way to start.

What N is trying to politely say is that the platform portion of traditional caucuses sucks. Usually, each precinct is just dominated by some loudmouth like me with a bug up his ass about some issue or another, and the LD ends up debating an OCD-like manifesto that reads more like a hijacker’s list of demands than a practical political agenda.

So I’m really looking forward to seeing how the 43rd’s experiment works out, and while I don’t live in the district, I’ll probably stop by the Feb. 26 forum, if only to hear the keynote speech by Congressman Jim McDermott.

For more information, including dates, locations and forum agendas, please read N’s full post at Washblog.

UPDATE:
Writing in the comment thread, Emmett O’Connell informs me that Thurston County is planning similar platform forums. More information here.

One of the many bills that died as the clock ran out in the state House yesterday was HB 2872, which in its amended form would have raised the legal gambling age from 18 to 21 at card rooms and mini-casinos, and would have instructed the state Lottery not to market to teens.

It was a simple, straight forward proposal — backed up by science — that garnered broad, bipartisan support in both houses… yet failed to reach the floor in either. In the Senate the bill was blocked by Sen. Margarita Prentice for reasons only she can explain. In the House… well… I’m not exactly sure what happened in the House, but clearly it was not a priority of Frank Chopp and the Democratic leadership, who opted not to give it a vote.

With little or no public opposition from the gambling industry, I had naively expected some version of this bill to pass this session, but the legislative process is a complex one, and thus often both infuriating and disappointing. But perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of the process is that while a bill’s merits are loudly trumpeted by its sponsors at its birth, a bill’s death is most often left shrouded in the mysteries of the caucus. Good bills die without explanation from those responsible (usually, a committee chair,) and it is this lack of transparency that encourages speculation about ulterior motives.

Personally, I have my own suspicions that (gasp) “politics” may have played a role in the bill’s demise — a not unreasonable thing to suspect of politicians — and I have been openly critical of some of the legislator’s motives. And yet, I not only profess a profound belief in the wisdom of our (small “r”) republican form of government, I am also an ardent supporter of the (big “D”) Democrats who control the state Legislature.

So if a legislative booster such as myself can be inspired to voice suspicions, imagine the paranoid fantasies of some of the anti-government folk on the right. The problem as I see it, is that not only does the leadership do a lousy job of explaining their decision making process, they often make no effort whatsoever.

This may have sufficed in the past when it was almost guaranteed that most bills would die with little if any public scrutiny, for the Olympia press corps operates under time and column-inch constraints that leaves little room for in depth coverage of any but the most controversial or dramatic bills. But times have changed, and bloggers such as myself do not have the same constraints, nor follow the same journalistic rules. Lacking the time, cooperation or even the inclination to conduct a thorough interview, I am not above running with analysis, speculation, and opinion, rather than pure factual reporting. (As if such a beast actually exists.)

The point is, as chair of the Ways & Means Committee, the senate rules give Sen. Prentice the prerogative to kill nearly any bill, without explanation or public comment. But she does so at her own risk, for if she and her colleagues refuse to reveal the back room dealings and other machinations behind their legislative triage, then bloggers like me can’t help but fill the void with speculation. And increasingly the most impassioned and active voters on both sides of the political spectrum are getting their news from bloggers like me and our evil-twin counterparts on the right.

Professional initiative sponsor and renowned horse’s ass Tim Eyman likes to justify his own existence by highlighting real or imagined examples of legislative arrogance, and in truth, many of our legislators are arrogant… even some of those I admire most. After all, it takes a certain amount of arrogance just to run for public office.

But if our legislators want to instill public trust and confidence in the legislative process, they must start making this process more transparent. “Because I know better,” “because I can,” and just plain “because” may be all that is needed to exercise power in the halls of the Capitol, but it is hard to blame voters for resorting to the initiative process when these are the only explanations offered the public.

The gambling age bill died in the Senate Ways & Means Committee without a vote, and without explanation; the House version made it through all its committees, but was allowed to die without a floor vote as the clock ran out. I want to know why, and I shouldn’t have to personally ask Frank Chopp or Margarita Prentice for an explanation.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but the legislative leadership needs to do a better and more proactive job of communicating its priorities and explaining its decision making process. Bills like HB 2872 die for a reason, and the public deserves to know the reason why. If the leadership can’t adequately explain its decisions, don’t blame us bloggers for attempting to fill the void.

Yet another stunning example of widespread Republican vote fraud:

She may be smart enough to earn millions from her acidic political barbs, but when it comes to something as simple as voting in her tiny hometown, hard-core conservative pundit Ann Coulter is a tad confused.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections records show Coulter voted last week in Palm Beach’s council election. Problem is: She cast her ballot in a precinct 4 miles north of the precinct where she owns a home. […] Coulter, who owns a $1.8 million crib on Seabreeze Avenue, should have voted in Precinct 1198. It covers most homes on her street. Instead, records show, she voted in Precinct 1196, at the northern tip of the island.

According to the Palm Beach Post, Coulter registered (as a Republican) on June 24, three months after she moved from NYC to Palm Beach, but signed and certified as true the Indian Road address of her realtor rather than that of her Seabreeze Avenue home.

“She never lived here,” said Suzanne Frisbie, owner of the Indian Road home. “I’m Ann’s Realtor, and she used this address to forward mail when she moved from New York.”

The article implies that Coulter may have given a false address for privacy reasons… hell, if I were Coulter, I wouldn’t want people to know where I lived either. So I’m guessing she’ll probably get off with a warning or a token fine, despite the fact that Florida law makes it a third-degree felony to knowingly vote in the wrong precinct, and punishes lying on one’s voter registration by up to $5,000 and five years behind bars.

Meanwhile, over at the Way-Back Machine, our friend Stefan is still fighting WA’s 2004 gubernatorial election, arguing in part that incorrect registrations — similar to Coulter’s — are proof of widespread voter fraud, and a corrupt, inept King County elections department. To Stefan and his overlords in the state and local GOP, a duplicate registration equals a duplicate vote, and a voter registered at a wrong address is evidence of intentional voter fraud. And they continue to vilify KC elections director Dean Logan as an incompetent and a criminal who refuses to fix the county’s voter rolls.

Stefan likes to talk about public trust, but what he and his fellow travelers fail to comprehend — or at least, refuse to admit — is that nationwide, our whole voter registration system is based on trusting the public. So in case Stefan has missed this point every other time an experienced elections expert has made it, perhaps he should pay close attention to the closing paragraphs from the article on Coulter’s Florida foibles:

“We’re not a policing agency,” says Elections Chief Deputy Charmaine Kelly. “You do not have to show proof that you live at your address. But when you sign the registration application, you also take an oath that everything you wrote is the truth.

“If someone brings us proof that a person falsified a registration, we’ll check into it, then refer the matter to the state attorney’s office if necessary.”

When it comes to voter registration, Palm Beach County has nearly identical policies and procedures to King County… and nearly every other jurisdiction in the nation. And it is quite frankly mind boggling that after 16 months on his OCD-like electoral procedure jag, Stefan still doesn’t seem to have a clue as to how elections actually operate.

If Stefan and the state GOP want to argue that our current registration system results in widespread voter fraud, I say, show me the proof of widespread voter fraud. Don’t just show me the duplicate registrations… show me the duplicate votes. Go ahead, argue the case for making it dramatically more difficult to vote.

But to continue to excoriate Logan for failing to police registrations when it is clearly not his job to do so, is just plain dishonest.

It also intentionally destroys the public trust in elections that Stefan and his cohorts cynically claim they are trying to restore.

My head hurts so much it’s making me nauseous to look at the screen… and I’m not even reading (u)SP. So talk amongst yourselves until the ibuprofen kicks in.

Safeco CEO and former insurance industry lobbyist Mike McGavick first announced his candidacy for the US Senate way back in July, so it came as no surprise when he officially kicked off his campaign in October… and then again for a second time at a big, January 21 campaign kickoff event. Likewise lacking in suspense were the 22 other official campaign kickoff events he held during a 12-day tour following his campaign’s second official campaign kickoff.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see that McGavick is finally, officially kicking off his campaign tomorrow at a luncheon in Bellevue.

That’s right, after seven months and at least 24 campaign kickoff events, McGavick is finally kicking off his campaign. Which raises the question: with all the kicking off he’s been doing, why can’t McGavick seem to move the ball? The latest polls show Cantwell maintaining comfortable approval ratings and a steady double-digit lead… a margin that hasn’t moved for months.

I suppose McGavick keeps staging “kickoff” events to cover up his lack of traction with voters, but I haven’t seen anybody miss the ball so many times since Charlie Brown. At some point he’s going to have to make contact and start running down field.

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, sent out an email earlier today saying tonight’s gathering was cancelled due to Valentine’s Day, but really… screw Hallmark.

Personally, I can’t think of anything more romantic than downing an ice cold beer as Carl says nice things about my ass. So please join me, Carl “you’ve got a nice ass” Ballard, Jim from McCranium (visiting from the Tri-Cities,) and anybody else who has nothing better to do, for “Loser’s Night” at Drinking Liberally.

While the Seattle Times merely cuts and pastes from the wires, the Seattle P-I’s Mike Lewis adds some much welcome local color to his coverage of reaction to Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting “accident.”

Local blogger David Goldstein, on his www.horsesass.org Web site, wrote that Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean’s recent comparison of Cheney to former Vice President Aaron Burr turned out to be prescient. Burr was the last second-in-command to shoot someone while in office.

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

By Monday evening, Goldstein’s posting had 161 responses. The 42-year-old said he knew the shooting would bring traffic, even if it won’t have much of a shelf life.

When he heard about the accident, he first checked to see if the victim, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer, was OK. When he found out the man was in stable condition, it was, um, open season.

“What about the nature of the hunting trip?” he asked in an interview. “Those hunting lodges where they raise the birds are the avian equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. You could do this at a zoo. The guy (Cheney) just likes to kill things.

“(Hitting Whittington) was probably more sporting than the shooting of the birds.”

Man… that Goldstein guy always makes me laugh.

However, I do have one particular nit to pick with the coverage. The Times says Whittington was “sprayed with birdshot,” an official, White House approved circumlocution that Atrios pokes fun at by pointing out the subtle differences between a spray bottle and a shotgun.

The P-I repeats the other popular euphemism: that Whittington was “peppered” with birdshot. Hmm.

Peppered:

Shot:

Just wanted to avoid any confusion over what really transpired.

UPDATE:
Now we learn that Whittington has suffered a “minor” heart attack, due to a piece of birdshot lodged in his heart.

So I’m guessing that next week, when we finally learn Whittington has died (a couple days after his actual death,) the official cause of death will be listed as a “heart attack,” rather than being “shot through the heart by a drunken Vice President.”

No, that’s not Idaho, that’s Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where Dave Niewert of Orcinus reports on a small rally of genuine neo-Nazis that gathered yesterday across from the statue of Lenin. As Dave explains:

One reason that pseudo-fascism is so harmful is that it creates an environment that positively encourages genuine fascists.

Thus, it is no mere accident that we’ve been seeing increasing signs of a genuinely emboldened white-supremacist far right, with recruitment rising among disaffected young people. It’s no accident that they keep getting bolder and bolder and bolder.

Yeah, sure… there’s only a half dozen or so of them, but we now have Brownshirts proudly marching through the streets of Fremont, for chrissakes! Does anyone doubt that these people are emboldened by the mainstreaming of violent rhetoric from the likes of Ann Coulter? Shouldn’t we be at least a little bit concerned about developments like this?

FYI, Dave has spent much of his career chronicling the Northwest militia movement and other right-wing extremists. He’s a thorough journalist, a great read, and one of the pioneering members of our state’s blogosphere. He’s also nearing the end of his annual fund-raising week, and I encourage all my readers to drop a few bucks in his PayPal account.

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.