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The West Virginia mine tragedy, in which 12 of 13 trapped miners are now confirmed dead, reminds us that throughout the nation, and throughout our history, it is an army of anonymous laborers — not highly paid and celebrated corporate executives — who daily put life and limb at risk to keep our economy running.

While much will be written (after the fact) about the long record of safety violations at the Sago Mine, workers at even the best run mines know that they put their health and safety at risk each time they descend the shaft. The same is true in dozens of other industries and professions, from police and firefighters to commercial fishing to the pesticide laden fields of America’s farm belt.

In recent years the right has stepped up its withering attacks on organized labor, even as the union movement has continued to decline in size and influence, but it should be remembered that workers are only as safe as they are today due to decades of management’s grudging concessions to union demands, and the state and federal regulation that has resulted from union lobbying. When Republicans attack organized labor they are attacking the welfare of workers like the 12 miners who died providing the fuel that runs our factories and power plants.

I don’t want to overly politicize this tragedy, but the next time the anti-union rhetoric flies I hope we all remember who these unions represent, and the sacrifices these workers make every day.

State Sen. Bill Finkbeiner’s reelection prospects just got tougher today, when software engineer and activist Eric Oemig declared his bid for the 45th District Senate seat. In announcing his candidacy Oemig hit on themes which should resonate well in the increasingly Democratic Eastside district.

“Our district needs a leader who focuses on the basics. We need to solve problems in education. We can improve the financial health of our families and our businesses by making health care affordable. Everyone saves money when we waste less time in traffic,” said Oemig. “Our tax dollars should be spent on programs that return more value to families and businesses than we pay in.”

I first met Eric as a fellow classmate in the candidate training track at last year’s Camp Wellstone… and Finkbeiner should be worried. Eric is everything you want in a candidate: he’s smart, passionate, energetic, and personable. And after a career solving problems and creating efficiencies for high-tech companies like Microsoft, he has the personal wealth and freedom to devote to full-time campaigning. This is one Democratic candidate who most definitely will not be outspent.

Eric is also unquestionably progressive, but with a real-world business perspective that 45th District voters should find appealing.

“Bill Finkbeiner has been in Olympia since he graduated from college. Our district wants new leadership. We have things that need to get done. Finkbeiner spends his time flip-flopping trying to appease the right wing of his party instead of addressing the needs of the district,” added Eric Oemig.

“I worked in the private sector to eliminate inefficiencies. I will work to bring that same attention to fiscal accountability to state government. More importantly, I have the integrity to make sure people know how I will vote on key issues,” said Oemig.

Finkbeiner, who recently resigned as Senate minority leader, is being stretched between a GOP leadership that’s moving ever further to the right and his own constituents who are growing ever more moderate. Last year he held party unity in defeating the anti-discrimination HB 1515 by a single vote. This year, all eyes will be on Finkbeiner to see if breaks rank with his party and votes for the bill… just as he did when he was a Democrat in the state House.

For his part, Eric is unequivocal:

“Let me be clear,” said Oemig, “I will be happy to cast the deciding vote to ban this discrimination.”

That’s the type of strong statement that will play well with voters, when compared to a flip-flopping career politician like Finkbeiner.

This is going to be one of the mostly hotly contested races in the state Senate this year… unless Finkbeiner, finally facing a well-financed, well-equipped challenger, decides to drop out.

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

Please join me for some good beer and conversation.

Adult diapers are the hot new fashion accessory on Capitol Hill today, as GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleads guilty and cooperates with prosecutors.

Mr. Abramoff, 46, is pleading guilty to fraud, public corruption and tax evasion, setting the stage for prosecutors to begin using him as a cooperating witness against his former business and political colleagues. In exchange, Mr. Abramoff faces a maximum of about 10 years in prison in the Washington case.

After entering his guilty plea in United States District Court in Washington, Mr. Abramoff will also announce a plea agreement in a related Florida case, in which he was indicted last year. In that case, he is pleading guilty to fraud and conspiracy in connection with his purchase of the SunCruz casino boat line, and will face a maximum of about seven years’ prison time.

The sentences will be served concurrently, but gees… ten years? If ten years was the best deal he could swing in exchange for bringing down sitting congressmen, just imagine how crooked this guy must have been.

UPDATE:
It’s now official, and the Washington Post has all the details, including names of DC insiders who may be caught up in the scandal.

NW Progressive Institute has posted it’s first annual Neiwert Awards to honor NW progressive bloggers (you know… like “Best Muckraker… me.) I’m not sure what the selection process was, but it’s hard to argue with any of the recipients. Even if you’re one of those people who tend to dis awards like this (and admittedly, I tend to be one of them,) it’s worth looking at the list of winners just to learn more about some of our region’s other great blogs.

It’s also hard to argue with honoring David Neiwert by naming the awards after him (though in Judaism, we tend to name after the dead.) David’s Orcinus is one of the best written, best researched blogs bar none, which is why he has deservedly attracted a national audience. Congrats to David and all the other winners.

NW Progressive Institute has posted a diary to Daily Kos. Please recommend so that the rest of the nation can learn about some of our great local blogs.

A poll conducted by Military Times found a precipitous drop in President Bush’s support amongst active-duty military personnel.

Approval of the president’s Iraq policy fell 9 percentage points from 2004; a bare majority, 54 percent, now say they view his performance on Iraq as favorable. Support for his overall performance fell 11 points, to 60 percent, among active-duty readers of the Military Times newspapers. Though support both for President Bush and for the war in Iraq remains significantly higher than in the public as a whole, the drop is likely to add further fuel to the heated debate over Iraq policy.

Bush’s defenders will of course dismiss the relevance of this poll, but that’s not what they said back when the president’s numbers were strong.

In 2003 and 2004, supporters of the war in Iraq pointed to high approval ratings in the Military Times Poll as a signal that military members were behind President Bush’s the president’s policy.

So if USA Today and Fox News thought the poll was significant last year, I assume they’ll think it significant this year too, huh?

Over half of the respondents said they have been deployed in support of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the Commander In Chief starts losing the support of those he commands, I think that tells us a little bit about his job performance.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is sponsoring an immigration bill that could devastate Eastern WA’s agricultural industry. The bill would increase border patrols and build a 700-mile fence along the US-Mexico border. It would also criminalize giving assistance to illegal immigrants, potentially handing out five-year prison sentences to doctors, priests and church volunteers who provide humanitarian aid. But as the Seattle Times editorial board points out, what the bill doesn’t do is actually deal with reality.

Missing from Sensenbrenner’s bill is a legal guest-worker program. With only enforcement and no accommodation of economic realities, industries such as agriculture and construction will get stuck with apples left on trees or buildings unfinished.
…
Washington Republican Reps. Doc Hastings and Cathy McMorris, who represent the state’s two most agrarian districts, voted for Sensenbrenner’s bill even though both support a guest-worker program in concept. They acknowledge this bill’s approach makes for a job only half done.

Once again McMorris and Hastings are voting with the GOP hardline over the sentiment and interests of their own constituents. I’ve watched Yakima Valley farmers plough under fields of ripe tomatoes for want of the farm workers to pick them. I’ve seen orchards littered with fallen fruit as growers failed to round up sufficient labor to meet the narrow window for harvest at optimal quality. The farm labor shortage isn’t hypothetical — it’s happening now — and it will only get worse should Sensenbrenner’s draconian and shortsighted immigration bill pass.

Illegal immigration is driven by economic reality: poverty abroad and the need for cheap labor at home. Nobody is suggesting we should ignore border security, but neither should McMorris and Hastings ignore the economic well being of their own constituents.

New Years Eve party didn’t end until 3 AM. Went to bed. Awoke at 8 AM to piss. Pissed. Pissing woke up the dog, who made it clear she had to piss too. Walked the dog. Dog pissed. Went online to look at headlines; learned that George W. Bush is still president. Really pissed.

The Seattle P-I has posted their “Five to remember” and “Five to forget” from 2005, and lookie who made the list:

And five to forget …

Stefan Sharkansky and David Goldstein

The right-wing Shark and left-wing Goldy have dominated the local political blogosphere, which during the governor’s race controversy sounded like a schoolyard shouting match.

Newspaper reporters dissing bloggers? Imagine that.

(Hmm. I’m guessing that if the JOA goes the way we all expect it to go, it will be Stefan and I who will be forgetting the P-I in a couple of years.)

The last sandbox of 2005. Please feel free to turn it into “a schoolyard shouting match.”

The so-called “Coalition of the Willing” was always a load of bullshit, a flimsy cover for President Bush’s unilateral decision to invade Iraq… and it’s getting flimsier every day. Yesterday Poland announced plans to reduce it’s 1,500-weak force by 40 percent, just days after Bulgaria and Ukraine completed their troop withdrawals. And today the South Korea parliament voted to cut it’s deployment by about one-third to 2,300.

The U.S. has always provided over 90 percent of the foreign troops in Iraq, with most of the rest coming from the British. At 3,200 members the South Korean forces currently comprise the third largest contingent in the “coalition.” To put this in perspective, the U.S. still has over 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea.

For his Iraq War, President Bush’s father managed to put together an actual coalition, but all W could ever muster was a phrase. And an overtly Orwellian one at that.

I’ve been a touch light on posting during the busy holiday season, so yesterday I filled some space with a little joke derived from the death of John Diebold, which prompted a comment near the top of the thread from our good friend Stefan:

Hey, Goldy, joking about the late Mr. Diebold is perfectly tasteless. But I’m glad we have common ground in finding flaws in Diebold election technology. After all, it is Diebold software and a Diebold business unit that help process King County’s mail-in ballots and which helped cause hundreds of ballots to be misaccounted for and illegally counted last year. I’m glad you agree with me that Diebold helped put the wrong person in our Governor’s chair.

As to his first point… um… duh-uh. Joking about anybody’s death is tasteless. But I’m pretty sure that the majority of HA readers prefer posts that taste good over those in good taste.

But it’s his second point I really want to comment on, because it is yet another example of the type of rhetorical bullshit the public has been treated to in its coverage of King County Elections. Stefan correctly states that KC uses Diebold equipment and software to count ballots, but then disingenuously insinuates that this flawed technology was manipulated to “put the wrong person in our Governor’s chair.”

But once again Stefan’s overeagerness leaves his own arguments open to ridicule, for as I wrote a couple weeks ago in reporting security flaws uncovered during tests in Leon County Florida, just because the Diebold system can be hacked, doesn’t necessarily mean it was.

It should be noted that while this is exactly the same type of Diebold system used in King County and throughout much of WA state, our state’s electoral integrity survived the most grueling and definitive test of all: the 2004 gubernatorial hand recount. Apart from the ballots legally added between tabulations, the difference between the hand and machine counts was statistically insignificant, proving that there was no manipulation of the data coming from the optical scanners or the GEMS central tabulator.

To imply that the software was fraudulently manipulated to alter the vote tally is utterly ridiculous… but wait… Stefan really didn’t imply that, did he? Carefully rereading his comment, no… but in the context of my joke about paper trails, that’s surely what he intended readers to infer. And that in a nutshell is really where most of the public’s misconceptions about the 2004 election come from… insinuations, inferences, and various “facts” intentionally misrepresented and taken out of context.

Furthermore, I find his sudden interest in Diebold’s security flaws doubly curious, considering how little attention he has paid to it over the life of the election controversy. GEMS is built on top of Microsoft Access for chrissakes! Who the hell would want to run an election on that? Yet this is the first I’ve heard from Stefan — a computer guy — that he has any concerns about running elections on buggy, proprietary software from companies like Diebold.

Stefan and his fellow travelers at (un)Sound Politics have become champions of election reforms that make it harder for people to vote, yet seem to ignore reforms that actually ensure that these votes are counted properly. Where’s their outrage over the touch screen voting machines in Snohomish County, where the prosecutor’s office received numerous complaints on election day 2004 about machines recording the wrong vote? Where’s their demand for voter verifiable paper trails? Where’s the debate on (u)SP over the merits of moving towards open source software?

No, instead, one of the major reforms promoted by the (u)SP types is to eliminate hand recounts… thus eliminating the one absolutely foolproof audit on our vote tallying software.

The evidence shows that in the wrong hands the Diebold software can be hacked, but the hand recount proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that in 2004 in WA state, it wasn’t. So if Stefan and I really do share common ground in believing the Diebold software to have serious technical flaws, perhaps we can put the rhetoric over the 2004 election aside for a moment, and discuss some real solutions?

I’ll start. Hey Stefan… what’s your opinion on the relative security tradeoffs involved in moving to open source software?

Hey… it looks like annointed GOP senatorial nominee and Safeco CEO Mike McGavick will draw a primary challenger after all. Um… sort of. Fresh on the heals of his surprisingly strong third place finish in the 2004 Republican senatorial primary, Brad Klippert is once again seeking to represent the right wing of his party.

In the 2004 voter pamphlet Klippert wrote:

I, Brad Klippert, am a husband and father. I am a full time law enforcement officer, a veteran and active Major/pilot in the U.S. Army National Guard. I have a Masters Degree in Teaching and I am a licensed minister.

I am a God fearing, Bible believing, Ten Commandment honoring, evangelical Christian candidate. I firmly stand for and fully support traditional family values; the committed marriage between a man and a woman/husband and wife.

I believe that every life is precious and valuable with great potential; including the life of unborn children.

Hard to argue with any of that… that is, if you are a God fearing, Bible believing, Ten Commandment honoring, evangelical Christian. Which raises an interesting dilemma for McGavick, who needs to run to the left of his party to have a hope of capturing enough Democratic and independent voters to beat Cantwell, yet not so far to the left so as to disenchant the right wing of his party.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that Klippert can mount a serious primary challenge, but given the opportunity, his candidacy could serve to help Christian conservatives focus attention on everything McGavick is not. You know… one of them. Sure, he’ll try to pander to the religious right, but to win statewide he’s going to have to run one of those undefined, mushy centrist campaigns with a wink and a nod to the right. (Think Rossi.) But if Klippert forces him on a couple key issues, that won’t be so easy.

Where does McGavick stand on choice? On gay marriage? On teaching Intelligent Design? My guess is that the contrast between the ordained minister and the preordained nominee is pretty stark.

The problem for McGavick is that contrary to popular belief, Christian conservative voter turnout can be pretty soft, especially when the Republican candidate gives them little to get excited about. And as much as McGavick needs to draw votes from Dems and independents, he also needs a strong showing from the GOP base.

McGavick’s strategy will be to pretend that Klippert doesn’t exist, so don’t expect to see any candidate debates. But while the state GOPolitburo will surely treat Klippert like a fringe candidate, I hope the editorial boards give him his say and allow him to draw McGavick out on important issues of the day. Voters in both parties deserve to know where McGavick stands; it would be a disservice to allow him to duck controversial issues the way Dino Rossi did in 2004.

It’s not just McGavick who deserves a primary challenger… it’s the voters.

John Diebold reportedly died the other day, and I was going to joke that doctors won’t confirm his death until they check the paper trail on the EKG… but as it turns out, he had nothing to do with vote fixing counting machine manufacturer Diebold, Inc. Too bad. Would’ve been a good joke.

So… um… rest in peace, John.

One of the things that pissed me off about last year’s over-hyped election contest controversy — I mean, really pissed me off — was the constant abuse heaped on King County Elections about felon voters. Yes, hundreds of ex-felons who had not properly had their voting rights restored voted in 2004, but this happened throughout the state, in every county. But because the state GOP so successfully promoted their cherry-picked list of KC felons, many voters came away thinking this problem was mostly due to negligence and/or malfeasance in KC.

The fact is, felon votes were pretty evenly distributed throughout the state, and were the result of a decentralized and inefficient system of reporting convictions. Indeed, the problem was so well known and so widespread that a federal law was passed in 2002 requiring the development of statewide voter registration databases to help clean the voter roles of felons, dead people, and duplicate registrations.

Well, WA’s database goes online Jan. 1, just in time to meet the federal deadline, and while it’s not a cure-all, it should make a huge a difference. For example, the new database is hooked directly to records from the prison system, State Patrol and the courts, rather than relying on haphazard communications at the local level. And one of the biggest improvements comes in removing registrations due to death…

To remove dead voters from the rolls, county auditors currently rely on reports from the state health department or obituary notices in newspapers. But those sources may be insufficient if a voter dies while out of state.

With deaths, the new system’s reach will be nationwide, Excell said, because of a tie-in to information from the federal Social Security Administration.

“If you’re dead, we got you,” [Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy] said.

Uh-huh.

See, what pisses me off is that King County Elections was publicly crucified for problems that had nothing to do with King County, and for which solutions were already under development at the state level. There was absolutely nothing nefarious or peculiarly incompetent about the way KC handled these registrations… these registrations were the result of a poorly designed system — nationwide — that was in the process of being fixed.

And yet the headlines from last year told a different, inaccurate story… a story that will shape public perceptions of KC elections for years to come.

UPDATE:
It has been pointed out to me that it was Assistant Sec. of State Steve Excell to whom I should have attributed the “If you’re dead, we got you” quote. Ooops.