HorsesAss.Org

Frank Rich hits the nail on the head once again. In his Sunday column in the New York Times (“The Armstrong Williams NewsHour“), Rich points out that the current Republican assault on public broadcasting is different from those in the past. Nobody’s trying to do away with PBS or NPR, so Big Bird is far from an endangered species. But…

That doesn’t mean the right’s new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers’ expense. If you liked the fake government news videos that ended up on local stations – or thrilled to the “journalism” of Armstrong Williams and other columnists who were covertly paid to promote administration policies – you’ll love the brave new world this crowd envisions for public TV and radio.

Rich advises that if you want to understand the Bush administration’s intentions you must “follow the money”… not the $100 million the House threatens to cut from public broadcasting’s budget, but rather the $14,170 that Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson secretly paid Fred Mann to monitor the political content of PBS and NPR shows.

Now, why would Mr. Tomlinson pay for information that any half-sentient viewer could track with TiVo? Why would he hire someone in Indiana? Why would he keep this contract a secret from his own board? Why, when a reporter exposed his secret, would he try to cover it up by falsely maintaining in a letter to an inquiring member of the Senate, Byron Dorgan, that another CPB executive had “approved and signed” the Mann contract when he had signed it himself? If there’s a news story that can be likened to the “third-rate burglary,” the canary in the coal mine that invited greater scrutiny of the Nixon administration’s darkest ambitions, this strange little sideshow could be it.

Mann’s report monitored the shows of Bill Moyers, Tavis Smiley and Diane Rehm.

Their guests were rated either L for liberal or C for conservative, and “anti-administration” was affixed to any segment raising questions about the Bush presidency. Thus was the conservative Republican Senator Chuck Hagel given the same L as Bill Clinton simply because he expressed doubts about Iraq in a discussion mainly devoted to praising Ronald Reagan. Three of The Washington Post’s star beat reporters (none of whom covers the White House or politics or writes opinion pieces) were similarly singled out simply for doing their job as journalists by asking questions about administration policies.

“It’s pretty scary stuff to judge media, particularly public media, by whether it’s pro or anti the president,” Senator Dorgan said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Not from this gang. Mr. Mann was hardly chosen by chance to assemble what smells like the rough draft of a blacklist. He long worked for a right-wing outfit called the National Journalism Center, whose director, M. Stanton Evans, is writing his own Ann Coulteresque book to ameliorate the reputation of Joe McCarthy. What we don’t know is whether the 50 pages handed over to Senator Dorgan is all there is to it, or how many other “monitors” may be out there compiling potential blacklists or Nixonian enemies lists on the taxpayers’ dime.

It turns out Mann is typical of CPB hires under Tomlinson. One of the two public ombudsmen Tomlinson recruited to monitor new broadcasts for PBS and NPR is William Schulz, “a former writer for the radio broadcaster Fulton Lewis Jr., a notorious Joe McCarthy loyalist.” Tomlinson also paid a $10,000 consulting fee to Brian Darling, the GOP operative who wrote the infamous Terri Schiavo memo instructing Republicans to milk the issue.

And now Patricia Harrison, a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee has been installed as CPB president. As an assistant secretary of state Harrison publicly praised the department’s fake news segments promoting America’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq… some of which have actually been broadcast by local TV stations as real news. Tomlinson’s hires represent a concerted effort to directly control the content of public broadcasting.

Mr. Tomlinson has maintained that his goal at CPB is to strengthen public broadcasting by restoring “balance” and stamping out “liberal bias.” But Mr. Moyers left “Now” six months ago. Mr. Tomlinson’s real, not-so-hidden agenda is to enforce a conservative bias or, more specifically, a Bush bias. To this end, he has not only turned CPB into a full-service employment program for apparatchiks but also helped initiate “The Journal Editorial Report,” the only public broadcasting show ever devoted to a single newspaper’s editorial page, that of the zealously pro-Bush Wall Street Journal. Unlike Mr. Moyers’s “Now” – which routinely balanced its host’s liberalism with conservative guests like Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Paul Gigot and Cal Thomas – The Journal’s program does not include liberals of comparable stature.

THIS is all in keeping with Mr. Tomlinson’s long career as a professional propagandist. During the Reagan administration he ran Voice of America. Then he moved on to edit Reader’s Digest, where, according to Peter Canning’s 1996 history of the magazine, “American Dreamers,” he was rumored to be “a kind of ‘Manchurian Candidate’ ” because of the ensuing spike in pro-C.I.A. spin in Digest articles. Today Mr. Tomlinson is chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal body that supervises all nonmilitary international United States propaganda outlets, Voice of America included. That the administration’s foremost propagandist would also be chairman of the board of CPB, the very organization meant to shield public broadcasting from government interference, is astonishing. But perhaps no more so than a White House press secretary month after month turning for softball questions to “Jeff Gannon,” a fake reporter for a fake news organization ultimately unmasked as a G.O.P. activist’s propaganda site.

The Bush administration and the Republican leadership are intent on turning the US into a one-party state, and nothing is more crucial to their totalitarian vision than complete and utter control of the broadcast news media, either directly, or through their corporate patrons. It may or may not be possible to save PBS from becoming the domestic equivalent of Voice of America, but the very fact that Republicans are attempting to subvert its independence in such a calculated manner is evidence that we can no longer rely on public broadcasting alone to provide balance to the corporate media.

What can we do? We must all come to public broadcasting’s defense, but we also need to create an alternative that is not vulnerable to similar manipulation. So again, I urge you to go to the Independent World Television News website, watch the introductory video, and please make a tax-deductible contribution. We need an independent media that cannot be controlled by corporate interests and government propagandists. And we need it now.

I’m a pretty cynical guy, so it’s damn hard to get me excited about some pie-in-the-sky scheme to save the world. But Independent World Television News has got me excited. So excited, that I’ve actually put my money where my mouth is.

So if you believe that a free and democratic society cannot survive without a free and independent media, then I want you to go to the IWT News website, watch their introductory video, and make a tax deductible contribution. That’s what I did… and anybody who knows me, knows that I don’t part with my cash easily.

IWT News is a visionary effort to create the world’s first global independent news network, without funding from governments, corporations or commercial advertising. Taking advantage of a convergence of technological and social developments, this innovative, not-for-profit broadcast service is using the web to both organize, and raise the money needed to finance its programming, initially $25 million for its inaugural 2007 season. Distribution will be via satellite, cable and of course, the Internet, which over the coming decades will likely become a major television distribution medium, potentially breaking the content stranglehold of the broadcast monopolies.

Sound ambitious? Absolutely, but this is no fly-by-night fantasy of a handful of dewy-eyed progressive dreamers. IWT News is already raising its $7 million start-up budget from individual donors and foundations, including such heavyweights as the MacArthur, Ford and Phoebe Haas Trust foundations, as well as the Canadian Auto Workers Union. And it’s founding committee reads like a who’s who of luminaries, including Jeff Cohen, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Lewis Lapham, Robert McChesney, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn and many others.

Now I know that some of my righty readers are going to whine: “liberal media, blah, blah, blah”… “you already control the press, blah, blah, blah.” And to that sort of commentary I would just like to to calmly and succinctly reply: “Fuck you.”

If IWT News gets off the ground and on the air, it will be because hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens from around the world — possibly millions — believe so passionately in the need for a truly independent television news service, that they are willing to put their hard-earned cash into the dream. So if you on the right really believe there’s a need for a biased, right-wing propaganda network to “balance” things out, then go and create one. Oh wait, you already did… Fox News… only rather than going through the hassle and expense of a grassroots fundraising campaign, you just dipped into Rupert Murdoch’s deep pockets.

The indisputable fact is that broadcast television is controlled by a handful of media giants, and its content is dictated by the needs and whims of its corporate owners. In the US, only PBS has any sort of independence, and now the Republican hegemonists are in the process of taking over that too. Now more than ever we need a news network unbeholden to the powers that be. Our democracy and freedom depend on it.

So please, check out IWT News, and if you can at all afford it, make your contribution today.

Well surprise, surprise. It looks like House Ethics Committee Chair Doc Hastings may have to investigate himself.

Rep. Doc Hastings, already under fire as chairman of the stalled House ethics committee, accepted a $7,800 trip to England in 2000 from a company he championed for a multibillion-dollar contract at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, records released by an advocacy group yesterday show.

In addition, other records released yesterday by a political Web site show that Hastings, a Republican from Pasco, did not file a required travel report for a 2004 trip to a resort on Stuart Island, B.C. That was paid for by another company also working at Hanford.

Hastings was cynically installed as ethics chair to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from accumulating ethics charges. Now it appears that both are at the center of controversies regarding improper reporting of privately paid trips.

Word is that the normally low-profile Hastings is not enjoying his time in the spotlight. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him step down from the chairmanship, and back into the cool, comfortable shadows by the end of the summer.

Ramble on.

I’ll be on the Bryan Suits Show tonight at 6 pm, KVI-570, talking about the Monorail. I assume Bryan wants me on so he can show that yes, even flaming liberals like me oppose the Monorail.

Hmm… this will be a tough one. My position on the Monorail is actually rather nuanced, but as we all know, nuance doesn’t play well on talk radio.

[NWPT55]Even though I voted against it, it really bothers me to criticize the Seattle Monorail, because a) I sorta, really want it, and b) some of its most vocal opponents are vicious, lying bastards, who take great joy in scuttling any public project that doesn’t directly benefit their corporate overseers. But after seeing the SMP’s response to public criticism of the final plan’s financing and less than aesthetic design, I am underwhelmed.

The news today is about the long term interest costs to build the Monorail Green Line.

The newspaper is correct when it adds all of those future interest payments together and gets to around $11 billion. However, the value of these interest payments in 2005 dollars is closer to $1.9 billion, or roughly the same as the total cost of the Project which is just under $2 billion (in 2005 dollars). Keep in mind that most of the dollars added up and presented in the Seattle PI article will be paid 30 or 40 years into the future, when a dollar then is worth about 10 to 15 cents today.

It is similar to when someone buys a home with a 30-year mortgage and the interest payments over the 30 years end up being greater than the initial price of the home.

Well yeah, that’s kinda true… from the financial perspective of the SMP… but not for the individual taxpayers who are being asked to pay off the bonds. Presumably, the SMP will issue bonds with fixed regular payments, similar to a mortgage. So due to inflation, a fixed payment today of $100 might be worth only $0.10 in 2005 dollars, several decades hence. But individual taxpayers’ car tabs will rise with inflation along with the price of cars.

The SMP’s 1.4% car tab tax currently costs me $177.00 a year on my 4 year-old car. Due to wear and tear and changing circumstances, I expect I’ll buy several new cars over the coming decades… and each of those will be purchased in inflation-adjusted dollars. So assuming I buy a new car of similar value every 8 to 10 years, my average annual Monorail tax will remain about $177.00 in 2005 dollars. Thus, at the same time the SMP’s annual bond repayments are worth ten cents on the inflation-adjusted dollar, I’ll be paying $1770.00 a year, not $17.00.

In simple terms, if the car tab is levied for 50 years, not the originally projected 25, the Monorail will end up personally costing me about twice as much… roughly $8500 in 2005 dollars. (Though to be fair, I’ll likely be dead before the bonds are paid off, so my total bill will be somewhat less.)

And that has always been my primary complaint about the Monorail… its financing. We are asking taxpayers to ostensibly pay 1.4% of the value of their cars, every year for the rest of their lives. And I wonder… will taxpayers be willing to pony up additional revenues to fund anything else? Or, as I suspect, will the 14-mile Green Line be the only transportation project Seattle voters build over the next half-century?

The SMP’s response generated one more disappointment. They told us we have only two options:

1) We can move forward with this plan.

2) We can decide to not build the Monorail Green Line at all.

Yes I know… politically, those are likely the only two options. But there is a third, if the SMP board has the patience, fortitude and leadership to pursue it. They could pause from the rush to break ground, go back to the drawing board, and come up with a new proposal that simply makes more financial sense. Lob a few miles off one end or the other, propose a more reliable mix of financing, and give us back the sleek design that will make the Monorail an icon rather than an eyesore. Then come back to the polls for another vote if they have to, but this time with all their ducks in a row, and the fixed price contracts in hand. Sure, it could delay the project a couple more years, and they always risk losing a close vote rather than winning one. But it would be the responsible, creative thing to do given the circumstances.

As a progressive, I believe in the social benefits of public transit, and I’m willing to put my tax dollars where my mouth is. But we should only support those public projects that make sense.

It pains me to write this, because in doing so, I am not living up to my responsibility to parry the rhetorical blows of the right-wing critics who will surely paint any decision by the SMP as the ultimate in bureaucratic bungling and arrogance. The anti-transit crowd is in this battle on purely ideological grounds — they are unwilling to give an inch, and the temptation is to be just as inch-stingy in return. Indeed, if this were a national or even a state-wide issue, I would be much more reluctant to voice my reasoned opposition to a transit project I kinda, sorta want.

But this is Seattle, a bastion of progressivism, and quite frankly the political and rhetorical machinations of a handful of marginal, anti-transit blowhards shouldn’t even enter into the equation. We have the opportunity to build a 21st Century transit system, and the responsibility to build it right.

And I simply am not convinced that the current proposal is the right way to build the Monorail.

There is nothing more un-American than passing a constitutional amendment to outlaw burning of the American flag.

Our flag is a proud symbol to veterans and other patriotic Americans… but a symbol of what? A nation where freedom of speech is amongst our most cherished rights. To contradict this basic human right is both outrageous and absurd.

A few years back I spent $15.00 on an American flag (it was made in China,) and in addition to it being a symbol, it is also a piece of cloth that I own. The day my nation throws me in jail for lighting a match to my flag, while standing on my property, is the day America ceases to be, well… America.

Both the Washington Post and the Seattle P-I report today on the continuing saga of two of Tom DeLay’s croniest cronies with Northwest connections: former Preston Gates & Ellis uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and his good buddy, Mercer Island rabbi and vanity talk-radio host, Daniel Lapin. At a Senate hearing yesterday on allegations that Abramoff defrauded Indian Tribes of tens of millions of dollars — some of it funneled through groups connected to DeLay, Ralph Reed and other prominent right-wingers — an e-mail exchange was introduced in which Abramoff asked the good rabbi to phony up some fake awards to help him gain membership at a ritzy D.C. club.

“I hate to ask you for your help with something so silly but I’ve been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc.,” Abramoff wrote. “Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?”

There were titters in the audience as Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) read aloud the e-mail, then outright laughter as he continued reading: “Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean.”

The rabbi, conservative radio host Daniel Lapin, gave his blessing. “I just need to know what needs to be produced,” he wrote. “Letters? Plaques?”

“The point of all of this,” Dorgan said, “is there’s a lot of deception going on.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Rabbi Lapin’s history of deceit, self-aggrandizement and profiteering is so extensive, he’s even earned his own category over on blatherWatch. It was Lapin who first introduced Abramoff to DeLay, and it was Abramoff who helped Lapin establish his very profitable, theo-con not-for-profit organization, Toward Tradition. Their mutual back-scratching has helped make both men wealthy and politically connected, so really… what’s a fake award or two between friends?

Don’t be confused by the title “Rabbi” before Lapin’s name; it doesn’t automatically make a man moral or wise. Lapin is above all, a self-serving, well-connected, right-wing operative with his fingers in local politics as well as national. He even played a role in drumming up false outrage over last November’s gubernatorial election, using his radio show as a forum for promoting the NW blogosphere’s most famous conspiracy theorist, and even joining Stefan as a featured speaker at January’s ridiculous, Ukrainian-themed “Re-Vote” rally, where he inflamed a crowd already fired up on lies about disenfranchised military voters, by paraphrasing John Merrick: “We are not animals! We are humans touched by the finger of GOD!!”

Oh puh-lease.

Rabbi Lapin shows off “the finger of God.” [photo courtesy (un)Sound Politics]

Our good friend Stefan’s man-crush on Lapin borders on sycophancy (a quick search of (u)SP finds a dozen posts since the beginning of the year mentioning the good Rabbi.) Indeed, not only does Lapin’s angry mix of angry zionism and angry free market determinism appear to drive Stefan’s angry worldview, Lapin has literally driven Stefan himself… chauffeuring “Aluminum Hat Boy” to the Re-Vote rally. (The Rabbi is not only a shrewd political operative who has made himself rich playing the role of the Jewish shill for the Christian far-right, but according to Stefan, he’s also an “excellent driver.”)

That Rabbi Lapin should be assumed to have any moral authority is a joke, given his record of lies, deceit and political machinations. If his career is not actually destroyed by the Abramoff scandal, whatever is left of his credibility should be.

One of the big political issues in Washington state for 2006 will surely be an Oregon style “takings” initiative, that requires state and local governments to compensate property owners for potential value lost due to land-use restrictions. On a somewhat related topic, today a divided US Supreme Court broadly reaffirmed the Fifth Amendment power of eminent domain.

In a closely watched decision the court ruled 5-4 that local governments have the right to seize private property for private development in the interest of the common good. The court said that local officials, not federal judges, are best capable of determining whether a development project benefits the community.

“The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including

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An editorial in yesterday’s Olympian discusses a proposal to elevate multiple drunk driving convictions from a gross misdemeanor to a class C felony. HB 1451, introduced by Rep. John Ahern (R-Spokane), would make a third such conviction punishable by as much as 17 months in jail; under current law the maximum penalty is a $1000 fine and 90 days.

213 peopled died as a result of drunk driving accidents in 2004. That this was the lowest number of such fatalities since 1961 does not lessen the tragedy.

But while I’m certainly not going to argue against getting repeat drunk driving offenders off the roads, I was struck by the cost of the Ahern proposal:

Locking DUI defendants up in prison is a costly proposition. According to officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, approximately one-third of those people arrested for DUI are repeat offenders. Putting three-time offenders behind bars for up to 17 months would force the state of Washington to build another 1,000-bed prison. That would cost about $225 million over a two-year budget cycle.

And that figure doesn’t include the $60-plus million per biennium to house the extra prisoners.

That’s more than $350 million of state expenditures over the next 6 years — all to lock up a thousand or so drunk drivers — and I can’t help but wonder if maybe the problem couldn’t be addressed at less financial and personal expense? That’s not the bleeding heart liberal in me talking, it’s the calculating utilitarian. Certainly there are incorrigible drunks who will never stop drinking and driving, and they need to be locked up to protect the public. But there are others who might be stopped if proper resources were made available for treatment, education and technology. For example, repeat offenders could be required to have their cars installed with devices that require the driver to pass a breathalyzer before engaging the ignition. Such technology is expensive… but a helluva lot cheaper than incarceration.

So while I agree with the Olympian that the bill deserves “additional consideration and refinement,” I hope that lawmakers make a proper cost-benefit analysis, and consider all the options, before passing expensive legislation on what is undoubtedly a very emotional issue. It may be that a little prevention is more effective and less costly than the cure.

My good friend Stefan and I agree on very little, but we have equal disdain for the dumb-ass Top-Two primary. This is a rare issue that crosses party lines, which I suppose explains why both major parties are suing to have I-872 tossed out.

Another example of this curious bipartisanship is today’s guest blog on Northwest Progressive Institute, by Dr. Reed Davis, a former chair of the King County GOP, and the runner-up in last September’s Republican primary for US Senate. Dr. Davis is also an Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific University, and he presents a very cogent defense of political parties, and their partisan primaries.

Read the whole thing.

You don’t get the Seattle Weekly to name you “Best Activist/Hell-Raiser” just by sitting on your ass. No sirree… last year I earned my award by rolling up my sleeves, getting my hands dirty, then washing my hands, scrubbing under my nails, and typing up an email to 700 people asking them to vote for me for “Best Activist/Hell-Raiser.” Yes it was a petty, self-centered, egotistical thing to do… but if it kept Tim Eyman from grabbing the honor two years running, then it was well worth the sacrifice.

Well it’s “Best of” season again, and this year I’ve got some real competitors who are at least as petty and egotistical as I am, but have an even bigger list. The children over at (un)Sound Politics have already posted, asking their 7000 readers a day to cast ballots for their preferred ticket, and well… I just don’t want those lying SOBs to enjoy the tiniest bit of pleasure from this bogus accolade… do you? And so I ask you, my loyal readers, to fill out the Weekly’s online ballot, and mindlessly vote the following slate:

3. Best local talk radio host: David Goldstein
9. Best local blog: HorsesAss.org
11. Best activist/hell raiser: David Goldstein

Um, no… I’m not actually a local talk radio host, but I’d like to be. So this award would look pretty damn good on my resume. The other two should be pretty self-explanatory.

The folks at (u)SP have also posted nominations in other categories, so we need to crush their hopes there too. Feel free to vote your conscience, but if you all vote mine instead, we’re much more likely to come out winners:

8. Best local website: Pacific Northwest Portal
14. Best scandal: Dino Rossi’s meritless election contest
15. Best local cause: ending homelessness
16. Best reform we need: a state income tax

And finally, for old time’s sake, I strongly encourage you all to vote in the following category:

42. Best fish market: Tim Eyman

That’s only eight categories; vote in two more and you’ll be entered in the Weekly’s prize drawing.

Anyway, you have until July 11, so please, please join me in my childish efforts to deny gratification to others while shamelessly pandering to my own inflated sense of self-importance. Vote early, vote often… vote for me.

As Californians get to know Arnold Schwarzenegger a little better as a bad governor, instead of just another bad actor, his poll numbers continue to slide.

According to the Field Poll released Tuesday, 37 percent of registered California voters approve of Schwarzenegger’s job performance, a drop of 18 percentage points since February.

Continuing a trend that began in January, 53 percent of registered California voters said they do not approve of Schwarzenegger’s performance. That’s a jump of 18 percentage points since February.

The biggest decline came among Democrats and nonpartisan voters, but the poll also found Schwarzenegger’s support among Republican voters has fallen.

To all those California voters disappointed with “The Governator’s” job performance, I’d just like to politely point out that he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, for Christ’s sake! What the fuck did you expect?!

[NWPT55]While I hate to disappoint the knee-jerk righties over at (un)Sound Politics, I have to say that I’m not a huge fan of the Seattle Monorail. But as long as they continue to lead their coverage with the headline “Die, Monorail, Die”, it’s hard not to oppose the opposition, despite my misgivings. Monorail opponents seem to have a one-track mind, and that mind has long be set on derailing the project, whatever the final proposal might be.

I voted for every monorail initiative, except for the one that authorized the final project. As much as I believe in public transit, and as much as I believe a fancy new monorail will become an instant symbol of 21st century Seattle, when I saw the details, it just didn’t seem worth the cost, especially given the means of financing it. Still, the people had spoken — however narrowly — and when the incredibly cynical “Monorail Recall” initiative hit the ballot last fall, I voted against it. If we’re going to allow opponents of public projects unlimited opportunities to kill them by plebiscite, we’ll never build anything.

I know, I know… nuance is a weakness progressives simply can’t afford, and with the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-infrastructure crowd attacking the gas tax and the monorail on purely ideological grounds, somebody on our side has to be just as reactionary if we’re going to have a hope of maintaining an informed debate in the middle. From what I’ve seen the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) board is more than up to the task, so I don’t have to be. That’s why I’m going to take a long, hard look at the final proposal released yesterday, before voicing my opinion one way or the other.

But one detail already has me worried. My main reason for voting against the monorail was the huge chunk it took out of voters’ car tabs… this year I’m paying a $177.00 monorail tax on my four-year-old Nissan Altima (the older, anemic model, not the newer fancier one.) My concern was that during the 25 years it took to pay off the bonds, voters would never approve a similar tax for other important transportation projects… you know, like the other half of the financing for replacing the dangerously crumbling Alaska Way Viaduct.

Now we’re told that due to rising costs and lower revenues, the car tab will be needed until 2050… nearly twice the number of years originally estimated. Ouch.

If I were a Seattle City Council member, I would be loath to overturn the will of the voters and reject this proposal… but I would still need to be convinced that it delivers something reasonably close to what voters were promised. I urge the Council to explore the details very carefully, and vote their minds not their hearts.

I’ll come back to this issue with a more informed opinion after I’ve had the opportunity to digest the facts.

As a top diplomat in Britain’s UN mission, Carne Ross was responsible for liaising with UN weapons inspectors. In an interview with the Guardian, he describes his own government’s claims about Iraqi weapons programs as “totally implausible.”

“I’d read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there’s no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too”.

Note, he’s not saying the claims were implausible in hindsight, he’s saying he and his colleagues knew they were implausible at the time. And his criticisms don’t stop there.

“There was a very good alternative to war that was never properly pursued, which was to close down Saddam’s sources of illegal revenue”, he says.

Mr Ross also says sanctions imposed against Iraq were wrong. “They did immeasurable damage to the Iraqi civilian population. We were conscious of that but we did too little to address it”, he says.

Whether the Blair government was lying or stupid, doesn’t matter… the point is, they misled the British public in making the case for war. Can anyone really argue that the Bush administration didn’t mislead the American people as well?