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David Irons Jr.’s mother has mixed emotions about her son. On the upside, she says he’s “very good with his hands.” On the downside, she claims he’s used them to beat her.

I’m almost embarrassed to start with such a flippant lede… for my hour-long conversation with Janet Irons was both sad and disturbing, and the genuine pain she expressed surely deserves more respect. But this is a story that apparently demands the most shocking prose possible in order to be heard, for it is also one of those stories that everybody in the media seems to know, yet nobody wants to talk about.

In an era when pundits and reporters can soberly chronicle the impeachment of a president for lying about a blowjob, it seems inconceivable that our local media could ignore the character testimony of a candidate’s own parents. But that is exactly what the MSM has done for years, most recently with Joni Balter’s timid, almost-apologia of a column in the September 29 edition of the Seattle Times. [”Irons’ Burden? It’s all relative“]

Balter starts by asking the obvious and pertinent question — “Who is David Irons Jr. and why is much of his family unwilling to vote for him…?” — yet she amazingly leads readers to believe that the family feud is merely rooted in politics.

That is not the story the Irons family told me, nor the one they claim they told Balter. Irons’ mother, father and younger sister won’t vote for him because they believe him to be “dishonest”, “devious”, prone to violent outbursts, and “totally unqualified” to serve as King County Executive. The family cites a number of incidents, many dating from long before Irons’ 1999 run for county council, that call into question his fitness for office and paints the picture of a troubled, unstable man with a vastly inflated resume, a penchant for dirty tricks, and dubious ethics.

“Wouldn’t I like to be the proud mother and say yes,” Janet told me when I opened the interview by asking whether she supports her son’s candidacy, “but that just isn’t the case.” She then went on to recount the sad tale of David Jr.’s gradual estrangement from the family, whichculminated in his council run, rather than started from it as Balter implies.

Of course, the fact that Irons’ family refuses to vote for him is old news. During his 1999 campaign against Councilman Brian Derdowski, he not only smeared the reputation of his family’s longtime friend, but his victory also put his sister Di Irons, a Derdowski staffer, out of a job. Di’s write-in campaign against her older brother during the general election became amusing fodder for political writers nationwide, but the MSM has remained curiously uncurious about the private circumstances that led to this very public family split. Take for example Balter’s description of Janet’s refusal to endorse her own son, an oddly expurgated bit of reporting:

Irons’ mother is an independent who votes for — or in this case against — individual candidates. Angry about a different family matter years ago, she won’t support her son.

A “family matter”. How concise.

As tearfully recounted to me by Janet, the “family matter” involved an incident that occurred back during the early 1990’s at her office in the family cable company, when David Jr., during one of his frequent fits of rage, hit his mother, knocking her to the floor… and then ripped the phone off the wall when she attempted to dial 911. Frightened, shocked and in pain, Janet fled in her car, hiding several blocks away, “afraid he was coming again.”

Janet has never again allowed herself to be alone with David Jr. since the day the “family matter” occurred. More than a decade later she remains frightened of her own son, even fretting to me that “something might happen” should he read her account in the papers.

As for David Jr., he never denied to his family that something happened that day… he never straightened the office to hide signs of the struggle, nor picked up the typewriter, papers and other objects he angrily swept off his mother’s desk. However, he did deny to his father and sister that he actually hit his mother, incredibly claiming that she ran into his arm… an account that reads like those laughable accident reports where stunned drivers insist that the tree hit their car.

If this were but a single, isolated incident it still would be inexcusable, and in my opinion disqualify him from higher office. But the Irons’ family has many tales of David Jr.’s “violent temper” and his abusive, cuss-filled rages in which he would push his father and poke him in the chest, and occasionally fling objects in blind anger. In one such fit he threw a wrench at his nephew, Di’s son Chris, who afterwards went to his grandfather and refused to ever work with his uncle again. Even the hard-nosed crews who laid cable for the family business complained of working with David Jr., finding it unsettling to have the boss’s son indiscriminately toss obscenities and tools in their direction.

“David billows up easily,” his mother told me in her understated fashion, “and people ought to know.”

Well… many who have worked with him apparently do know. At Brigadoon.com, a former officer tells me that Irons had a reputation as a “bully” who many colleagues avoided entirely. According to council scuttlebutt, Irons has a similar reputation for bullying staffers — particularly women — several of whom reportedly played for colleagues recordings of abusive voicemail messages left for them by the choleric councilman. Derdowski says an unnamed council staffer complained to him that Irons was “abusive and rude”, while another former staffer recalled to me a copy machine mishap that ended in a door-slamming screaming fit.

None of this shocks David Jr.’s mother, who describes her son as “very difficult to get along with.” If anything, she seemed most surprised that he hasn’t shown more of his temper in public. “He sometimes goes bonkers,” she said.

But if Janet is at times understated in describing her son’s explosive temper, it is nothing compared to Balter’s muffled reporting of the family’s assessment of David Jr.’s character:

The candidate’s dad is a Republican likely to vote for Sims because of the vague term, veracity, or in his view, his son’s lack of it.

There is nothing vague about the term “veracity”, and what the family has bluntly told both Balter and me — and anybody else who will listen — is that David Jr. is a liar.

“David lies about all of us,” his mother lamented. According to family members, acquaintances and co-workers, David Jr. has lied to reporters, he’s lied to voters, he’s lied to his family, and he’s lied to the police. Derdowski, who has plenty to be bitter about, is particularly disturbed by what he sees as easily refuted “outlandish lies” from which Irons’ had little or nothing to gain.

“I don’t have the professional experience to diagnose him as a ‘pathological liar’,” Derdowski told me, “but there is a pattern of making false statements where David apparently doesn’t seem to know the difference. I find it chilling.”

Of course, the easiest lies to document are those on Irons’ resume, and at the very start of our conversation Janet immediately made a point of refuting some of her son’s educational claims. In a 1999 candidate survey, Irons — who has no undergraduate degree — described his college education as “Economics/Math, Bellevue Community College, 1971-1973; Economics/Math, Oakland University, 1973-1975.” Unprompted, Janet pulled out her son’s Oakland University transcript, which shows “Intro to Math for Social Studies” I and II, plus a math lab. “Those were the only math courses he ever took,” his mother told me. “David was never very good at math.”

But exaggerating his math education is nothing compared to some of the other doozies on his resume. While Irons’ campaign website biography now describes his involvement in the family business as simply “VP & co-owner All Points Cable TV — 1982 to 1995″, a 1997 resume was considerably more creative.

Both Janet and Di actually laughed at the suggestion that David Jr. was involved in the day-to-day operations and management of the company. “David…?” Di chuckled, “He maintained the trucks.” She says her brother also occasionally liked to operate the equipment out on cable laying jobs, “but mostly he worked alone in the garage.”

Janet echoed her daughter’s account, describing her son’s resume as an exaggeration: “99 percent of what he wrote, there’s not one bit of truth to it.” According to Janet, her son had no office, had absolutely no role in the management of the family business, and while he once accompanied his father on a business trip, he had no involvement in any negotiations. Still, both Di and Janet agree that David Jr. was good at what he did. “He’s an excellent mechanic…” his mother kvelled, “… good with machinery… very good with his hands.”

While his years at the family business may have prepared Irons for a job in the maintenance facility at the county motor pool, it most certainly did not provide the vaunted business experience he touts in his quest to be county executive. Even the one-line reference on his current bio, “VP & co-owner”, is intentionally misleading.

“At a small company like ours, everybody gets a big title,” explained his mother. And if Irons was a co-owner of All Points Cable TV, then I am a co-owner of Apple Computer… and any other corporation in which I might own stock. According to his family, Irons never invested money in the family business, never had a say in its operations, and only came to work for his parents years after the company’s founding. Because David Sr. wanted his children to have a financial stake in the company, he gave David Jr. a raise a couple years into his tenure, but paid the difference in stock instead of cash. When the family sold out in 1995, David Jr.’s take was a couple hundred thousand dollars… not a bad windfall for the company mechanic, but only a small fraction of the multimillion dollar deal.

But lying on your resume is nothing compared to lying to the police. In what his family considers to be but one of his many dirty campaign tricks, they claim David Jr. filed a false police report about a week before the 1999 election, accusing his nephew Chris, the son of his opponent/sister, of vandalizing his car. The family adamantly swears that Chris was at home at the time of the alleged incident… a fact of which they insist David Jr. was well aware. Chris even used his own money to pay for a polygraph test, but when he tried to clear his name by presenting the results to the Sammamish police a few weeks after the election, he was told that his uncle had quietly dropped the charges, claiming Chris had admitted to the crime and agreed to pay restitution… both of which were out and out lies.

To file a false police report about your own nephew was a fitting conclusion to a campaign that had been built on lies and dirty tricks. This was a campaign engineered by the Master Builder’s Association, but one in which Irons ironically campaigned against the eminently green Derdowski for not doing more to control sprawl. It was a campaign where Derdowski signs mysteriously disappeared, and when a local resident, Sara Ulrich, saw Irons himself removing a Derdowski sign she had planted, and asked him what he had done with her sign, he unapologetically replied he had “lost over 14,000 signs.”

This is the David Irons Jr… the tool throwing, obscenity spewing, resume faking, police report falsifying, mother beating, lying, cheating campaign trickster for whom his father, mother and sister refuse to vote.

By all accounts the Irons family had once been very close… bizarrely close… dysfunctionallyclose… all living together on the same Sammamish cul de sac… her parents to one side of Di’s house, her brother to the other. The family used to live together, work together, rent houses by the ocean together, but over time their relationship with David Jr. slowly deteriorated. The brooding David Jr. moved away from the family enclave, and eventually stopped attending family dinners and other events, feigning illness or using some other excuse.

To claim as Balter does, that “a private family squabble spilled into the public realm’’ only after Di ran against her brother as a write-in candidate, is a bizarre misreading of the sequence of events, for it was David Jr., after years of gradually distancing himself from the family, who chose to bring the “squabble” to a head and take it public by running against a close family friend, and putting his little sister out of work. It was David Jr. who estranged himself from his parents and sister, and who has repeatedly gone public with attacks against the family.

A former council staffer describes Irons as nearly appearing sympathetic, almost teary-eyed around the holiday season as he lamented the fact that his children could not enjoy Christmas with their grandparents and cousins. But according to his family, David Jr.’s exile is self-imposed. In 1999 he told his parents that if they did not support him politically, they would never see their grandchildren again… and much to their surprise he actually followed through on the threat. He even forbade his parents to send his children birthday and holiday cards, leaving a voicemail message saying that his girls had shredded their gift checks. (A year later, two of the checks cleared.)

Irons of course, blames his estrangement on his family, once complaining to the Issaquah Press that they never let him know that his 97-year-old grandfather was sick and dying. But according to Di, he hadn’t called or visited the man for over five years, and so they assumed he had as little interest in seeing his grandfather as he did in seeing his own parents.

In telling this story — a story Irons’ mother, father and sister want to be told — I know full well that I am going to piss people off. There are those of you who will say that I have sunk too low… that I have inappropriately brought a man’s private life into the public realm. But to you I ask… since when has a man’s character not been the subject of political campaigns? Just last year John Manning was virtually dismissed as a serious candidate for Seattle City Council because of a prior domestic violence conviction… a conviction Irons might share if he had not had the foresight to tear the phone off the wall before his mother could dial 911.

And to my friends in the media, who have thus far failed to cover this story, I ask you this: how is it possibly responsible journalism to tell the amusing tale of a candidate whose own mother won’t vote for him… yet refuse to attempt to explain to voters the reasons why?

If you reject this story as just another case of he said/she said, then why not reject the entire story, instead of just the part that requires a little elbow grease? How hard is it to research a candidate’s resume to determine if his claims are based in fact? How hard is it to interview former co-workers, employees and neighbors to see if they corroborate the family’s charges? How hard is it to look up a damn police report? Isn’t that your job?

Irons’ own family — the people who know him best — have made devastating charges against his character and qualifications… doesn’t the public have a right to know?

And finally, to those cynical amongst you who question the timing of this post, appearing just as the absentee ballots are dropped in the mail, and thus positioned to have maximum impact… I want to personally assure you that this is absolutely intentional. This is not merely a strategic move on my part, but one which appeals to my unique sense of irony.

You see, back in 1999, when Irons first entered the council race, Derdowski went to the Irons family, who were longtime friends and backers, and said he would not want or expect them to support him in opposition to their son. And so Irons’ mother and father stayed quietly on the sidelines, despite their misgivings about David Jr.’s qualifications.

The night before the absentee ballots dropped for the primary election, Derdowski and Irons’ attended a candidate forum sponsored by the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce, at which the Irons’ family was in attendance. Much to his surprise, the first written question posed to Derdowski was “Are you under investigation by the FBI?”

As it turned out, Derdowski had been under investigation by the FBI during much of the campaign (he’s not sure for what), but the investigation had recently come to a close without indictment or comment. And so Derdowski truthfully answered “No.”

It was a setup. At this point, as Irons’ mother Janet describes it, notorious Eastside developer Skip Rowley exclaimed “We got him! We got him!” while gleefully wringing his hands. Irons immediately stood up and charged that Derdowski was indeed under investigation. An unusually heavy media presence in the audience (apparently tipped off that something would happen) hit the story strong the next day, and by the time the truth played its way through the press a week or so later, the damage had already been done. Derdowski lost the early absentee ballots big, and went on to lose the election.

For months, David Jr. had been bragging to his family that he had a “secret weapon” in his race against Derdowski, and that night they realized what it was. Shocked and offended by what they perceived to be a dirty trick, it was only then, a few weeks before the primary, that Irons’ parents finally came out in public support of Derdowski and in opposition to their own son.

“I’m not proud of my son,” Janet sadly lamented about his political success, “because he didn’t do it the right way. I’m disappointed that he approaches the level he does, and that I didn’t do a better job raising him.”

What started years before with Irons’ violent outbursts, and continued through his brooding, gradual disengagement from his parents and sister, culminated that night in the family split that continues to this day. It was not their son’s politics that prompted his parents to go public, but rather his tactics — specifically, the unfair, public maligning of an old family friend — a dirty trick that to those who knew David Jr. best, must have seemed tragically, unfortunately, and entirely in character.

And so tonight, as I prepare to air Irons’ dirty laundry on the eve of the absentee ballots being mailed, I do so without remorse, and without regret. What goes around comes around.

UPDATE:
N in Seattle of Peace Tree Farm, has a diary up on Daily Kos, and Darryl, usually of Hominid Views, has a very funny letter to David Irons posted over on Jesus’ General.

Oh… and I’ll be talking to Kirby Wilbur tomorrow morning at 7AM, 570-KVI.

Light posting today as I work on something big… I probably won’t be done until later tonight. In the meanwhile, feel free to use this post as an open thread.

As federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald brings his investigation of the Plamegate scandal to a close, indictments look more and more likely:

The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.
…
By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury’s findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.

Rumors are rampant, with some speculating as many as twenty-two indictments on far ranging conspiracy charges, going as high up the White House ranks as Vice President Dick Cheney. My fellow liberal bloggers seem almost giddy with anticipation. This could be history in the making. (Then again, it could just be a lump of coal.)

The Iron’s folk are touting a new SurveyUSA poll showing David Irons leading Ron Sims 46 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent going to Green Party candidate Gentry Lange, and 4 percent undecided. Good for them. Tout it all they want. Maybe they’ll knock some sense into the heads of the stupid, arrogant fucks on my side of the political spectrum who’d rather send a message than… um… win.

So to all you proto-Naderites out there, I’d like to take this opportunity to invite you to pull your heads out of your asses and join me in the real world, where believe it or not, there really is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. You want to elect more progressive candidates? Then roll up your sleeves and do some heavy lifting by joining organizations like Progressive Majority in recruiting, training and supporting progressive candidates at the local level, so that we can build a progressive farm team from which future political superstars will rise. But if you’re just too lazy to do what it takes to win… or you really want to hand King County over to a bush league Bush-Republican like Irons, then you go ahead and cast your precious protest vote… just like the Republicans want you to do.

See, this race really is too close to be either complacent or stupid, and while I’d still rather be in Sims’ shoes right now, Irons could definitely win if enough Democrats and moderate independents don’t take him seriously. And an Irons victory would be a travesty, not just for the county, but for Democrats… giving the GOP an undeserved advantage heading into the 2006 election season and beyond.

So let this poll be fair warning, we have a choice this November between two candidates, Sims and Irons: an experienced executive who shepherded the county through tough economic times, putting it on its most secure financial footing in its history… versus a pathological liar with a fictionalized resume who will surely serve the gambling and building industry interests who finance him. You may not be happy with that choice, but that’s the choice you have.

And to my friends in the Green Party, whose ideology I mostly embrace, I remind you that the blood of 2000 American soldiers and untold thousands of innocent Iraqis is on your hands, not mine. I think I speak for many of my fellow progressives in saying that you lost our respect in 2000 when the pigheaded Nader campaign gave the White House to George Bush…. but should Lange prove the difference in the county executive race, this time you will earn my contempt. For in the immortal words of the first Green president:

“Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me… you can’t get fooled again.”

Don’t get fooled again: a vote for Lange is a vote for Irons.

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

I plan to be there at least some of the time, but it’s not clear whether I’ll be there early, late or the whole time.

71 percent… that’s the proportion of the general fund devoted to the criminal justice system in the 2006 King County budget proposed yesterday by Executive Ron Sims. And that’s a percentage pretty typical for counties throughout the state.

You hear a lot of jabber from the anti-tax folk about all the things government spends its money on that it shouldn’t spend its money on, but when it comes right down to it, local governments spend the vast majority of their money on the essential public services and infrastructure that the vast majority of citizens want. Another 15 percent of the general fund is spent on general government operations — a fairly typical overhead for a business or a government — and that leaves very little left over for the “liberal nanny state” stuff that the right likes to whine about.

Which of course is why, in the middle of a tight election, the Republicans could muster little criticism of Sims’ proposed budget, for if they controlled the Executive’s office, they wouldn’t know what to cut.

How ironic, that the GOP, which still claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, is driving the federal government into historic deficits, while the much maligned liberal Democrats controlling Seattle and King County have managed their budgets so well as to receive the highest bond ratings available. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why traditionally pro-business areas like Bellevue and Mercer Island are trending Democratic?

King County Executive Ron Sims delivered his 2006 Budget Address before the Council this afternoon, and one little tidbit that immediately jumps off the page is the news that Standard & Poor’s has upgraded the county’s general obligation bond rating to AAA. For the first time in its history, the county now enjoys the highest rating of financial stability awarded by all three major ratings agencies… and one of the highest municipal ratings in the nation.

In announcing the upgrade last week, S&P lauded the county’s “exceptional financial management through the spectrum of economic climates.”

“From 2000 to 2005, King County experienced economic fluctuation; it was also during this time period that a significant statewide property tax limitation initiative was introduced,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Gabriel Petek. “In the midst of these challenges, the county has effectively achieved ongoing structural budget balance while continuing to incrementally increase its reserve levels in recognition of the need for financial cushion in an environment of limited revenue flexibility,” he added. “Moreover, the county has taken steps to address potential challenges to its very strong fiscal position. For instance, the county is facilitating the incorporation or annexation of unincorporated-but-urban areas within its limits–areas that are effectively subsidized by county services under the current regime.”
…
A structural challenge the county has grappled with is the pressure that Initiative-747 (I-747) places on county finances. In 2001, Washington voters approved I-747, which limits the growth of tax revenues to 101% of the previous year’s revenues, plus newly constructed development. Early in the current decade, this and other limits on revenue growth combined with regular growth in expenditures to produce a structural budget gap between recurring revenues and expenses. In response to the loss of tax revenues from I-747, the county budgets conservatively by assuming low growth in sales tax revenues and by reducing expenditures. In addition, management and staff have been creative in developing ways to make operations self-supporting and by contributing to projects that will provide increases in revenues other than property taxes.

According to an article in The Bond Buyer Online, King County joins Seattle as the only other municipality or school district in the state to achieve an underlying AAA rating from S&P… an impressive accomplishment by any measure.

Challenger David Irons says he wants to run the county more like a business, touting his exaggerated resume as preparation for running a government larger than that of thirteen states. But when voters go to the polls to choose who’s best qualified to manage the county’s $3.4 billion budget, I’m guessing they’ll stick with Sims, the executive who has led King County to the highest bond ratings in its history, at a time when many other municipalities around the state are bordering on bankruptcy. While Irons and his GOP allies are reduced to rehashing the 2004 election contest in a trumped up effort to cast doubt on Sims’ managerial skills, the financial experts — S&P, Moody’s and Fitch — all give Sims the highest grade possible on the executive’s most important management responsibility of all… drafting and executing the county budget.

If Sims had achieved these AAA ratings during an economic boom, today’s news would be a footnote rather than a headline. But by setting the county on such a sound financial footing at a time when revenues were shrinking and costs were skyrocketing, Sims deserves just as much credit as he’s earned for the county.

Darcy Burner has a new diary in the recommended list on Daily Kos: “Winning the House could stop the Iraq War and prevent more.” I urge you to read it and recommend it, not only because it’s great national exposure for a potential Democratic nominee, but because she makes some excellent points about why we need to take back Congress, and what we can all do to achieve this.

For those who don’t know, Darcy is seeking the Democratic nomination in WA’s 8th Congressional District, the seat currently held by Rep. Dave Reichert. I have had the opportunity to talk at length with both Darcy and the other declared candidate, Randy Gordon, and while they present very different personalities, I would be proud to have either represent me in Congress.

The 8th District has been trending Democrat for years. We can win this seat in 2006.

The gambling industry wants David Irons elected King County Executive…? Who’d have thunk?

Well, if you are a regular HA reader, you‘d have thunk, because I wrote about the $10,000 in campaign contributions he received from gaming interests, way back on September 8: “David Irons… gambling industry lapdog?” Now, thanks to an article in today’s Seattle Times (“Minicasino owners donate to Irons’ campaign“), a couple hundred thousand other voters are aware of what they might lose should Irons win.

A soon-to-open minicasino opposed by King County Executive Ron Sims has given more than $4,000 to David Irons, Sims’ opponent in the Nov. 8 election.

Kingsgate residents who oppose both the cardroom business and its efforts to obtain a liquor license are pressing Irons to detail his position on this cardroom, to be called Casino Caribbean, and on any expansion of gambling in unincorporated King County.

“We’re waiting for him to take a stand,” said Brad Roetcisoender, a neighbor of the casino and an organizer of the opposition group, Stop Neighborhood Casinos.

Don’t hold your breath, Brad. Irons is not going to come out and publicly support expanding gambling, but you know he wouldn’t be the beneficiary of such gaming industry largesse if he hadn’t privately assured his donors that he would, at the very least, step out of their way. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying that a political contribution is necessarily an indication of a politician’s stand on one issue or another… but in Irons’ case, he has a proven track record of privately telling donors and supporters what they want to hear, even as he maintains public silence.

Of course, Irons could prove me wrong, and unequivocally state that he opposes expanding gambling, and that he will work as hard as Ron Sims did to block the Kingsgate casino — which stands in the midst of a residential neighborhood, 500 feet from a day care facility and 700 feet from a community swimming pool — from getting a liquor license.

But he won’t.

Anybody who lives in the Kingsgate community, who opposes this casino, but votes for David Irons, is voting against their self interest… as would be every other King County resident who would object to having a casino or cardroom in their neighborhood. The decision to locate Casino Caribbean in a residential neighborhood is not accidental or unusual… it is part of an industry strategy that another Irons contributor, the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, describes in a video to investors as “community based gaming.”

In the video, Great Canadian CFO Anthony Martin explains that people tend to game “in close proximity to where they live,” and so they have placed their casinos in the “bedroom communities” surrounding Seattle. He goes on to explain how these “local community casinos” were all purpose built to accommodate the slot machines that I-892 would have allowed. Last year’s failed Eyman initiative was entirely sponsored by the gambling industry, and Great Canadian was its largest donor.

What should be absolutely clear to voters is that the gambling industry — tribal and commercial — has a long history of using its money to manipulate WA’s state and local politics… and they wouldn’t be backing Irons if they didn’t expect to get something in return. That something may in fact be nothing, for all they need is a county executive, unlike Sims, who is willing to quietly sit back and not interfere with their efforts to expand gambling into our local communities.

Quite frankly, the residents of Kingsgate and the rest of King County simply can’t afford to gamble on David Irons.

Friday I attended opening night of the Intiman’s new production of The Grapes of Wrath, based on Frank Galati’s Tony Award winning adaptation of the John Steinbeck classic. Back in 1990 Frank Rich was the New York Times’ main theater reviewer, much feared for scathing reviews that were often more entertaining than their subject matter. However Rich was atypically effusive of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s “majestic” production:

“[Frank Galati’s adaptation] is true to Steinbeck because it leaves one feeling that the generosity of spirit that he saw in a brutal country is not so much lost as waiting once more to be found.”

It is hard to watch a production of The Grapes of Wrath without unfairly comparing the performances to that of the 1940 film adaptation or the original Steppenwolf production (available on video), but while audiences accustomed to Henry Fonda or Gary Sinese may have trouble envisioning another actor in the lead role of Tom Joad, the Intiman cast did a wonderful job overall. And as always, the Intiman delivers a top notch production, including a piece of clever stagecraft that prompted my 8-year-old daughter to loudly proclaim “Cool!”

(While the show is ably directed by Seattle Children’s Theater Artistic Director Linda Hartzell, this is by no means a kid’s show, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend taking the typical 8-year-old to see it. However, mine loved all 2.5 hours of it… though she’s still asking questions about the ending.)

Now I don’t generally do theater reviews, but I bring this up for two reasons. First, I wanted to plug tonight’s Open Minds/Open Dialogue panel discussion at the Intiman, “Soil, Salmon and Survival“, which explores the connection between The Grapes of Wrath and the land and water of this region. The discussion will be moderated by The Stranger’s Charles Mudede, and will include farm labor organizer and former migrant worker Rosalinda Guillen, salmon recovery expert and advocate Barbara Cairns, travel writer and novelist Jonathon Raban, and Millie Judge, who manages the Land Use and Environmental Law unit of the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Civil Division.

The discussion starts at 7:30 PM, and is free to the public… but please RSVP via e-mail, or by calling 206-269-1901 Ext. 395. I wish I could be there, but my very busy daughter and I will be attending an equally engaging Girl Scout troop meeting instead.

The second reason I bring up The Grapes of Wrath is because as I was watching this classic story of the Joad’s struggle to survive in California after fleeing the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930’s… I couldn’t help but wonder what the arch-righty trolls on HA would make of Steinbeck’s infuriating tale of the abuse and exploitation these refugees suffered at the hands of greedy landowners. We have grown so accustomed to hearing angry, anti-union vitriol coming from the right, that we sometimes lose sight of the kind of brutal economic (and physical) injustice workers might still fear today if not for the efforts of organized labor. And it is also curious to note how seventy years later, the right is still employing the same red-baiting rhetoric.

The mark of a classic is timelessness, and The Grapes of Wrath is as relevant today as it was the day it was published. If you like great theater, go see the show.

It really sucks that the New York Times has put its columnists behind a firewall, but for those of you with access to their “select” service, I hope you read today’s column by Frank Rich: “It’s Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby.” As the headline implies, Rich once again gets to the heart of the Plamegate scandal, that this is much more than just the story of a strategic leak intended to payback a whistle blower… this is about an administration that lied the nation into a disastrous war.

Now, as always, what matters most in this case is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove’s boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby’s boss, Dick Cheney.

Rich delves into the little known White House Iraq Group (WHIG), set up by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card in August of 2002, and whose members include Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Condoleeza Rice, Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Their mission: market a war in Iraq to the American people. Of course, WMDs were always the focus of the sales pitch, which explains the attempt to discredit Wilson and his debunking of the yellow cake uranium story.

And as usual, it’s the coverup that’s causing WHIG all it’s troubles.

It’s long been my hunch that the WHIG-ites were at their most brazen (and, in legal terms, reckless) during the many months that preceded the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel. When Mr. Rove was asked on camera by ABC News in September 2003 if he had any knowledge of the Valerie Wilson leak and said no, it was only hours before the Justice Department would open its first leak investigation. When Scott McClellan later declared that he had been personally assured by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby that they were “not involved” with the leak, the case was still in the safe hands of the attorney general then, John Ashcroft, himself a three-time Rove client in past political campaigns. Though Mr. Rove may be known as “Bush’s brain,” he wasn’t smart enough to anticipate that Justice Department career employees would eventually pressure Mr. Ashcroft to recuse himself because of this conflict of interest, clearing the way for an outside prosecutor as independent as Mr. Fitzgerald.

“Bush’s Brain” is the title of James Moore and Wayne Slater’s definitive account of Mr. Rove’s political career. But Mr. Rove is less his boss’s brain than another alliterative organ (or organs), that which provides testosterone. As we learn in “Bush’s Brain,” bad things (usually character assassination) often happen to Bush foes, whether Ann Richards or John McCain. On such occasions, Mr. Bush stays compassionately above the fray while the ruthless Mr. Rove operates below the radar, always separated by “a layer of operatives” from any ill behavior that might implicate him. “There is no crime, just a victim,” Mr. Moore and Mr. Slater write of this repeated pattern.

THIS modus operandi was foolproof, shielding the president as well as Mr. Rove from culpability, as long as it was about winning an election. The attack on Mr. Wilson, by contrast, has left them and the Cheney-Libby tag team vulnerable because it’s about something far bigger: protecting the lies that took the country into what the Reagan administration National Security Agency director, Lt. Gen. William Odom, recently called “the greatest strategic disaster in United States history.”

Whether or not Mr. Fitzgerald uncovers an indictable crime, there is once again a victim, but that victim is not Mr. or Mrs. Wilson; it’s the nation. It is surely a joke of history that even as the White House sells this weekend’s constitutional referendum as yet another “victory” for democracy in Iraq, we still don’t know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war.

The consensus in the other Washington is that there soon will be indictments in the Plamegate investigation, but either way, it will be nothing compared to the scandal that prompted the leak: President Bush led the nation into war, based on a lie. No coverup can hide that ugly truth.

UPDATE:
Reader Kevin points out that Truthout has posted the full text of Rich’s column here. Don’t know if it’s legal or not, so read it while you can.

Of course I’m generalizing, but when cynics ask me the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party — implying that there isn’t much of one — I like to point out that us Democrats actually believe in government, whereas Republicans… really don’t. Democrats believe that government of the people, by the people, for the people is a positive and necessary tool for improving the lives of all our citizens in a complex, modern society. Republicans believe that the government that governs least, governs best.

Again, this is a generalization; both parties have their contradictions and both represent a spectrum of ideology, but this hands on vs hands off philosophy is a convenient and useful metaphor. And I think Ron Sims’ announcement yesterday that he is proposing $20 million in next year’s county budget to buy land for greenbelts, open space and trail corridors is a great illustration of these two competing ideologies.

I’m not suggesting that many Republicans are going to come out against preserving open space, though I’m guessing some will object to the cost of the proposal. However, such proposals are really antithetical to the conservative ideology that professes a “free market” solution to nearly every problem. Take for example the proposal to buy the last remaining chunk of private land in the heart of Discovery Park:

The largest chunk of the county’s proposed funding — $2.7 million — would go toward helping the city of Seattle buy 24 acres of military housing in Discovery Park, which the Navy sold to a private developer last year.

Under a proposed $9 million deal, the city will buy the Capehart property that park advocates feared could have been turned into luxury homes or condos and permanently protect it as open space.

It is hard to argue that using taxpayer money to protect valuable land from private development is consistent with the Republicans’ “free market” ideology, yet our region would not boast the quality of life it does, if our forefathers had not shown the foresight to do exactly that. Public parks, greenbelts and trail corridors benefit all of us, but without an activist government to protect us from the tragedy of the commons, they simply would not exist.

It is convenient for Republicans statewide, and especially in King County, to complain that it is corrupt elections departments that prevent them from winning at the polls, for their real obstacles are much more daunting. Both the county and the state continue to trend Democratic, because more citizens agree with our ideology than with theirs. Voters want parks and greenbelts and trail corridors. Voters want better schools and libraries, and safer, more efficient roads and public transit. Voters want effective police, fire and EMS. Voters want the essential public services that only government can provide.

Democrats win because we share voters’ values.

Ick… what’s that smell? Oh… it’s open thread time.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid announced today that Washington Senator Maria Cantwell will lead the Senate Democrats’ efforts to achieve energy independence by 2020.

“I am thrilled that Senator Cantwell has agreed to lead the Democratic caucus in this crucial effort to make America energy independent by 2020,” said Reid. “Her experience fighting for consumers during the Enron scandal and Western energy crisis make her the right choice to continue our effort to break our dependence on foreign oil and put working families ahead of the special interests.”

Sen. Cantwell was an early champion and national co-chair of the Apollo Alliance, whose mission is to build towards a sustainable and clean energy economy that will create millions of jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. She has led congressional efforts to seek consumer relief in the wake of Enron’s fraudulent market manipulation schemes, and sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

“I look forward to tackling the task of making our country energy independent by 2020,” Cantwell said. “When the likes of Enron are allowed to gouge prices and manipulate markets, the only way to truly protect consumers from sky rocketing gas prices and jolting home heating bills is to diversify our energy sources.”

Sen. Cantwell has never been one of the most visible members of the Senate (hell… she’s not even the most visible Senator in WA state), but she has quietly earned a reputation amongst her peers as a leader on technical issues such as energy and the environment that have an enormous impact on the quality of life of the Northwest and the entire nation. The more voters know about Cantwell’s accomplishments in the Senate, the larger the margin they’ll give her in reelecting her for a second term.

Head on over to BetterDonkey.org to watch their new No on I-912 video… great concept, great script, great production values… great video. Really.

Just make sure to buy your viaduct tape at a true blue retailer like Costco.