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I had to laugh last year when Tim Eyman obliquely referred to the troika of me, activist Steve Zemke, and NW Progressive Institute founder Andrew Villeneuve as his “longtime opponents.” Steve and I had only been nipping at Tim’s heels for about a year; Andrew was the veteran of the group, launching his anti-Eyman website, Permanent Defense, back in February of 2002.

And here’s the funny part… what Tim didn’t realize was that the longest of his longtime opponents first entered the fray as a freshman in high school.

I often plug Andrew’s NW Progressive Blog and his incredibly useful Pacific NW Portal. What I don’t usually tell people is that he’s only 18. While Andrew never denies his age, he doesn’t promote it out of concern it might detract from his credibility. But since Frank Sennett dwells on Andrew’s youth in a column in today’s Spokane Spokesman-Review (“Young progressive schools state’s right wing“), I thought I’d take the opportunity to toss Andrew a compliment.

I am proud of the way Andrew has matured these past few years, both as a writer and an activist, and am honored to have had the opportunity to play some small role in his political education. Andrew’s dedication and energy is truly impressive — if at times annoying — and while I kinda wish he’d stop calling me at all hours of the day and night, I’d rather have a dozen Andrews incessantly badgering me than none at all… as long as they didn’t all have my cell phone number.

Even more impressive than his activism are his accomplishments. Lot’s of teenagers have energy to spare, but few channel it into something as constructive as Andrew’s multiple websites, all of which have played a role in influencing media coverage of political events. Sennett calls Andrew a “role model”, and the description is well deserved.

One of the truly gratifying aspects of this blog is the expertise offered by readers, both in the comment threads, and through private email. For example, my analysis of the legal issues surrounding the election contest lawsuit would not be nearly so coherent (or accurate) without the invaluable help of Lawyer X. Likewise, I have been greatly aided in understanding the intricacies of the GOP’s proposed “proportional deduction” by a reader whom I would call Statistician X… if not for the fact that you all know him as DJ, a frequent contributor to the comment threads.

In recent days, the Rossi camp’s spin has veered away from the felon vote, and back towards the “total mess” thesis… an unsurprising tactic considering the number of offsetting illegal votes the Democrats have alleged. But this shift is also likely due in part to the report recently issued by the Democrats’ expert witness, Christopher Adolf, who effectively exposes the Republicans’ data as “unrepresentative”, their methodology as “flawed”, and their entire case as “hopeless”.

DJ has graciously summarized Prof. Adolf’s report for me, and not surprisingly, found that his arguments largely echo the same arguments DJ has made in the comment threads here and elsewhere. As DJ modestly explains, any statistician doing an objective analysis should reach the same conclusions. But I’ll just let DJ explain it in his own words… think of it as a kind of guest blog.

Professor Adolph states the first flaw this way: “Use of a non-random, non-representative, and incomplete sample of invalid votes … is useless for answering questions about the net effect of all invalid votes on the state-wide election outcome.”

The take home message is that the Republican’s invalid voter data are not suitable for any type of statistically or scientifically valid analysis.

Essentially, there were systematic biases in collecting the invalid ballots. The invalid votes are not drawn randomly or representatively across the state. Adolph did a very simple analysis to demonstrate this fact using the Republican and Democrat invalid voter lists. The Republican list was certainly cherry-picked. The Democrat list was cherry-pocked, too, but that is partially an artifact of the Democrats going to the precincts that the Republicans ignored.

Adolph points out that “[o]nly a complete statewide census, or a random or representative sample, has any hope of offering an unbiased estimate of the effect of invalid votes.” What should the Republicans have done? “Only if the Rossi campaign put as much effort into searching for invalid votes in precincts they won . . . as in precincts they lost can we begin to trust the experts’ reports.” (This is identical to the “equal scrutiny” argument I was making.)

Professor Adolph goes into much detail on the ecological fallacy in both Professors Katz’s and Gill’s analysis. He points out that “Modern, accepted [statistical] methods would provide strong warnings to the researcher that ecological inference in this case is impossible.” In other words, Katz’s and Gill’s arguments constitute an ecological fallacy. Both of the Republican expert witnesses make a single critical assumption that vote choices within any sub-population in a precinct are the same as the average vote choice in the precinct as a whole. “This assumption is strong, implausible, and unwarranted. Moreover, it flies in the face of decades of warnings from social scientists and statisticians. . . .” (Adolph).

To demonstrate this, Adolph first provides some technical background on Gary King’s solution to the ecological inference problem (which is state-of-the-art social science). I will skip the technical details, except to say that ecological inference can work under some conditions. One condition is that the groups about which we wish to make inference are represented in high enough numbers to provide mathematical limits (or bounds) on their characteristics.

For the 2004 election, it would be necessary that a reasonable fraction of the votes within precincts were invalid votes in order to infer the limits of their voting behavior from the aggregate voter data. Such is not the case. In all 1,344 precincts in which invalid votes have been identified, none of them have a high enough fractions of invalid votes to set these “bounds” and infer felon voting patterns out of the aggregate patterns. This is mathematical fact, not opinion. “The bounds [test] show[s] it is possible that every invalid vote in every precinct was cast for Rossi. Alternatively, every vote may have been cast for Gregoire

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I’ll be back on the Kirby Wilbur Show tomorrow morning (Friday) at around 7:30 a.m., 570-KVI. Kirby and I will be discussing the upcoming election contest trial, which starts Monday in Chelan County Superior Court. And maybe I’ll throw in a few more digs about the gas tax repeal initiative.

UPDATE:
Okay… not one of my best performances. The puppy was very vocal last night in voicing her opposition to crate training, so I was a bit a groggy. I’ll try to be better rested next week.

According to Democratic attorneys, 200 of the individuals on the GOP’s felon list, are alleged to be convicted felons, solely on the basis of a “Convicted Felon Report” (CFR). Now that might seem reasonable considering the report’s title, but apparently these documents list the information with which an individual was charged, but not necessarily the crime for which the individual was ultimately convicted, nor whether that conviction was for a felony or misdemeanor.

Here’s just one example of how these reports might be misleading:

To a layman, the CFR clearly shows that Ms. Steinman was convicted of a felony. But in a sworn declaration, the Skagit County Clerk’s Office states that Ms. Steinman was only convicted of a misdemeanor. (She apparently cut a deal, pleading to a lesser charge.)

Ooops.

How could the GOP attorneys make such a mistake? Well, one hint can be found in the email correspondence between GOP attorney Eric Martin and Dem attorney William Rava. During one exchange on this subject, Martin admits:

“I don’t practice criminal law, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.”

Ooops.

You’d think maybe with all the money the GOP has thrown at this case, they might have thought to hire a criminal attorney to advise them on the whole felon thing, huh? But then, the Republicans have always enjoyed a powerful sense of confidence that only their unique blend of ignorance and arrogance can bring.

Anyway, the Democrats have filed a “Motion to Clarify“, asking the court to rule that a CFR alone is not sufficient proof of a felony conviction. They have requested that Judge Bridges rule on the motion first thing Monday morning, before the trial starts.

In testimony before a Senate panel yesterday, top officials from the FBI and ATF bizarrely claimed that animal rights and environmentalist extremists are the nation’s most worrisome home-grown, terrorist threat, comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan. In response, Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe went even further:

“Just like al Qaeda or any other terrorist movement, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media,” the Republican senator from Oklahoma said.

Inhofe said there was “a growing network of support for extremists like ELF and ALF,” and he singled out People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for giving money to members of both groups.

A US Senator is equating PETA with al Qaeda? Is he out of his fucking mind?

No… he’s a fascist, that’s what Sen. Inhofe is… and in his party’s calculated effort to stir up public support for a one-party state, he’s now equating environmentalism with terrorism. Let’s see now, Democrats are “enemies of faith,” and environmentalists are “just like al Qaeda”… what’s next? Will people who protest the Iraq War (or whatever war follows) be labeled “insurgents”? And will liberal bloggers like me be called “seditious” for writing about it? While I am still free to speak my mind, I have one thing to say to the Senator:

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

According to state party Chairman Paul Berendt, the Democrats expect to spend up to $3.5 million defending the election. That’s a lot of money that could have been spent on other things, like… gee… I dunno… maybe helping Sen. Maria Cantwell win reelection? So the state Dems are going to have to raise a few extra million dollars in the current election cycle, and I have the perfect idea of where to start.

Despite the fact that state law makes primary losers ineligible, even as a write-in candidate, Ron Sims received over 500 write-in votes in King County alone. It’s a safe bet that most, if not all, of these people surely would have preferred Gregoire over Rossi… so, since 500 votes turned out to be the difference between a close election and an interminable lawsuit, these 500+ people must be feeling pretty fucking stupid by now.

So my suggestion is that if they want to make amends, each and every one of them should pony up $7,000 to the state Dems.

Yeah, I know… everybody has the right to throw away their vote on a symbolic gesture… but then I have the right to call you fucking stupid for doing so.

[NWPT47]No doubt, there has been a lot of anger in some quarters over the Legislature’s decision to raise the gasoline tax 9.5 cents over four years. The question, however, is anger over what?

There’s been talk about legislative “arrogance”… you know, like the arrogance of the Legislature for actually passing legislation. But really, much of the opposition to the gas tax is simply based on the fact that people don’t like paying higher taxes. Hell… who does? Still, while 9.5 cents tacked onto our existing 28 cent gas tax seems like a lot of money, I couldn’t help but wonder how high our gas tax really is, in real dollars, relative to historical levels. My preliminary research might surprise some people.

The chart above plots three lines, the Nominal Gas Tax in pennies per gallon, the gas tax in year-2000 dollars, adjusted using the Gross Domestic Product Deflator, and the gas tax expressed as a sales tax rate (tax per gallon / national average for regular gas.) I’m working on a more in-depth report, and will make my raw data, references and methodology available at that time, but while the specific numbers may adjust slightly in the final analysis, the trends will remain the same.

As you can see, while the nominal gas tax rose from 6.5 cents per gallon in 1950 to the current 28 cents in 2005, the actual cost of this tax both in real dollars, and as a percentage of the price of a gallon of gas, has substantially declined over the past 55 years. Once the full 9.5 cent increase is implemented in 2009, the total nominal gas tax of 37.5 cents per gallon would only come to 32.2 cents in year-2000 equivalent dollars, according to current GDP projections. That figure is well below historical highs, and will decline steadily in the years that follow, as inflation eats away at its value.

This is, after all, the nature of excise taxes. Because they represent fixed dollar-values per unit, rather than a percentage rate like most taxes, inflation causes the revenue per unit to decline over time, unless the tax is periodically increased. For example the nickel a gallon hike in 2003, only brought the gas tax (in real dollars) back up to 1991 levels… the last time the tax had been raised. Yes, revenues continue to rise with consumption, but the gas tax is a user fee, mandated by the state constitution to be spent on roads only, so increases in consumption also represent increased wear and tear on existing roads, as well as increased demand for new infrastructure.

So as we continue to discuss the gas tax, and the initiative to repeal it, I think it is important to understand that we’re not really talking about raising the gas tax, as much as we are adjusting it to keep pace with inflation.

Ho-hum… Chris Vance is alleging fraud again. At a press conference yesterday, the GOPolitburo Chair put forth the following curious piece of logic:

“If the books don’t balance and you can’t figure out why, you have to assume fraud took place.”

Um… no, Chris… if the books don’t balance you have to assume that the books don’t balance. If you’re going to allege that Democrats stuffed ballot boxes (which is what he’s doing,) you’re going to have to find some actual evidence of Democrats, uh… stuffing ballot boxes. At least if you plan on winning in court.

In fact, part of Vance’s fraud claim is based on an alleged 875 vote “discrepancy” between the absentee ballots counted and the number of voters credited. But Judge Bridges has already ruled that the voter credited records would not be accepted as evidence of ballots cast, so really, all Vance is doing is talking. This is all old news, being rehashed in a press conference, in the hope of stirring up a little voter outrage.

Vance is essentially accusing Democrats of being criminals, without any evidence to back up the claim. Well I’ll tell you what: I’m a Democrat, and I’m not a criminal, and I resent being called one. On the other hand, while I certainly wouldn’t want to generalize about all Republicans, I think I have collected ample enough evidence to definitively state that Chris Vance is an asshole.

A cute puppy… who’d of thunk?

My cat isn’t too happy, but my daughter’s thrilled.

Speaking of Tim Eyman, the initiative he’s shilling for the 2005 season would implement performance audits, which might actually be a great idea, if the Legislature hadn’t already done so. (And if Tim hadn’t written his initiative so stupidly. As usual.)

WA State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s office has already put up a web page dedicated to explaining the new legislation, and allowing citizens to follow along with its progress. Sonntag promises to enable citizen input via the web page, but if you really want to get involved, they have posted an application form with which you can apply to join the Citizen Advisory Board yourself.

My suggestion to all you “waste, fraud, and abuse” righties out there is to put your money where your mouth is, and apply for the Board.

Every child deserves a puppy, and my daughter is every child. So I’m headed out to pick up a crate, some puppy food, a few chew toys, and oh yeah… a puppy. I’ll post a picture of “Feisty” later today.

In the meanwhile, I’m bound to be distracted, so expect some light posting. I’m working on a historical analysis of gasoline prices and the WA state motor fuels tax, adjusted for inflation, so that we can all have a fair, balanced and totally unprejudiced discussion of the incredibly stupid and misleading gas-tax-repeal initiative that was filed last week. I’ve also got some interesting observations in the works about last November’s poorly written “Top-Two Primary” initiative.

In the meanwhile, I think I’ll just take the easy way out and point you towards The General’s advanced preview of the coming line-up for Republicanized public broadcast: “Tonight on GOPBS.”

Andrew Villeneuve of NW Progressive Blog has a guest column in today’s Seattle P-I, rebutting yet another Tim Eyman $30 car tab initiative. [“Eyman out to destroy representative democracy.” Andrew wrote his column on behalf of Permanent Defense, but he is also the force behind the ever-useful Pacific NW Portal. Busy guy.

It’s been nearly three years since Eyman has managed to qualify one of his “grassroots” initiatives for the ballot, and I think it’s time to acknowledge that he has officially gone pro. For April, Timmy raised only $5,000 from his core group of contributers, but raked in another $75,000 from Woodinville “investment executive” Michael Dunmire, whose total contributions to I-900 now amount to $315,000 of the $415,000 raised thus far. Within the past year, Dunmire also gave $20,000 to Tim’s personal compensation PAC.

The good news is that Eyman’s grassroots fundraising has nearly dried up, his longtime contributors finally tiring of throwing good money after bad. The bad news is that there are still wealthy people stupid enough to bankroll Eyman’s follies. Last year Eyman spent $700,000 of gambling industry money to qualify I-892 for the ballot, but crapped out at the polls. Eventually, Dunmire will learn the same thing Eyman taught the gambling industry: his initiatives are a bad investment.

My guess is, Washington voters have learned that lesson as well.

Pigs are flying, they’re throwing snowballs in Hell, and I’m about to agree wholeheartedly with the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF).

Gov. Christine Gregoire had modestly proposed eliminating a handful of tax loopholes, valued at more than $50 million annually, to help close the state’s yawning budget gap, but as the Seattle P-I reports this morning, the Legislature failed to repeal a single one. That leaves 503 tax breaks — over $32 billion a year — still on the books. The Legislature also failed to enact a bill that would have required periodic review of tax exemptions, a “good government” issue I felt so strongly about, that I actually drove down to Olympia to testify before the House Finance Committee on its behalf.

While I don’t remember seeing Jason Mercier testify at the hearing, from his quotes in this morning’s P-I, the EFF’s budget analyst and I apparently agree that all of the state’s tax exemptions should be reviewed, and in a perfect world, revoked.

“From our perspective, you shouldn’t have any tax exemptions at all. The state should have a uniformly low tax rate that allows businesses to prosper or fail based on the free-market system, and not corporate welfare,” he said. “The answer is not to pick and choose the state’s winners and losers based on the power of a firm’s lobbyist, but to treat everybody equally with a uniformly low rate.”

He said that addressing problems with the tax code by granting exemptions is a solution for one business, “but not for the rest of the employers and employees who are being harmed by that problem.

“That was the biggest frustration with the state’s Boeing thing. Boeing wouldn’t have needed this massive tax break if the state had been addressing the legitimate business climate problems over the last decade,” he said.

“It’s a vicious cycle now because you have a bidding war between the states, trying to out-subsidize each other instead of trying to make the best business climate.”

I couldn’t agree more (which is really saying something, considering I vacillate between thinking the EFF’s political agenda is either stupid… or just shy of evil.) And considering Jason’s comments, I can’t help but wonder why the EFF didn’t join me in supporting Ron Sims’ Tax Plan, which would have met both of their stated goals: it eliminates business tax exemptions by eliminating business taxes entirely. As I wrote back in August:

While I personally had some initial reservations over this aspect of the plan, I have grown to appreciate it’s subtle brilliance. Eliminating corporate taxes is not only a clever political move in regards to the plan’s passage, it also eliminates one of the most corrupting forces in Olympia… the annual feeding frenzy of corporate lobbyists influencing legislators to pass billions of dollars of special interest sales and B&O tax exemptions. Without corporate taxes there can be no corporate tax exemptions. While the Sims’ plan is sure to be a job creator over all, it is certain to put more than a few lobbyists out of work.

To be fair to Jason, Sims’ plan was met with a stunning lack of imagination from both the right and the left. Sims proposed to eliminate the state portion of the B&O and sales tax, and replace the revenue with a graduated, personal income tax. This would have left the state with no direct tax on business operations, a thought so shocking to some of my fellow liberals that it sent many to orthopedists with tragic knee-jerk related injuries. Meanwhile, for people like Jason, the thought of even thinking about considering discussing the thought of the remotest possibility of a debate on an income tax, is apparently analogous to clutching a copy of Das Kapital to your breast, while belting out a rousing chorus of The Internationale.

I, on the other hand, have my eyes firmly on the prize: correcting Washington’s cruelly unfair tax system… by far the most regressive in the nation. And that is something the Sims Plan would clearly do, in spades.

If fully implemented, the Sims’ proposal would transform Washington’s tax structure from the most regressive in the nation to one of the least. That it would also create the most pro-business state tax environment in the US, while eliminating the economic distortion generated by our tangle of tax exemptions, is a definite bonus. Believe it or not, it is possible to be both liberal, and pro-business, and I’m confident that if more people took the time to seriously consider the Sims Plan, it could garner enthusiastic support from both sides of the aisle.

But I’m guessing that’s not what Jason and the EFF really want. For when they talk about eliminating taxes on businesses, they’re not particularly interested in replacing the revenue from somewhere else. Their goal is not just to eliminate taxes, but for the most part, to eliminate much of government as well.

So enjoy the porcine aviation while it lasts, for I’m guessing it will be cold day in Hell before the EFF and I voice agreement on tax policy again.

In a decision that could be a huge boon for Washington state’s wine industry, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down laws in New York and Michigan banning direct shipments of wine from out of state. The 5-4 decision called such laws discriminatory and anticompetitive, and puts in doubt similar laws in 22 other states.

With over 300 wineries, 30,000 acres of vines, and $628 million in retail sales, Washington state now ranks as the number two producer of premium wines nationally, second only to California. The industry creates 11,250 full time jobs, and has an estimated $2.4 billion impact on Washington state’s economy.

The decision could be particularly advantageous to the state’s many small wineries, who do not have the distribution prowess of their larger competitors. Without an interstate ban on direct shipments, a functioning website and some good reviews could open the market to higher margin, direct, national sales.

It’s not often I get to be out in front of Frank Rich on an issue, but as usual, my favorite New York Times columnist, manages to make his point more eloquently and persuasively than I could ever hope to. [“Just How Gay Is the Right?“] Ah well, I suppose that’s why Rich is an Op-Ed columnist for the paper of record, whereas I’m… well… just some blogger.

Rich uses the DVD release of the 1962 political potboiler “Advise and Consent” as a springboard for discussing the right’s war on the judiciary and the violently anti-gay rhetoric that fuels it. The movie focuses on a McCarthy-era confirmation battle, and the gay secret of a conservative Senator from Utah. It depicts the gay-baiters as the real menace.

That message remains on target now. But in the years since, even as it has ceased to be a crime or necessarily a political career-breaker to be gay, unprincipled gay-baiting has mushroomed into a full-fledged political movement. It’s a virulent animosity toward gay people that really unites the leaders of the anti-“activist” judiciary crusade, not any intellectually coherent legal theory (they’re for judicial activism when it might benefit them in Florida). Their campaign menaces the country on a grander scale than Drury and Preminger ever could have imagined: it uses gay people as cannon fodder on the way to its greater goal of taking down a branch of government that is crucial to the constitutional checks and balances that “Advise and Consent” so powerfully extols.

Rich goes on to present a rogues gallery of right-wing notables “whipping up homophobia” including Jerry Falwell’s “Declaration of War” against homosexuality, Pat Robertson’s claim that activist judges are a greater threat than Al Qaeda, and former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore (of Ten Commandments monument fame) who has suggested the state has the power to prohibit homosexual conduct at penalty of death. And of course, Rich points out the irony that I have been somewhat dwelling on recently.

What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. Allen Drury would have been incredulous if gay-baiters hounding his Utah senator had turned out to be gay themselves, but this has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man, ran the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which as far back as 1980 was putting out fund-raising letters that said, “Our nation’s moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).” (Dolan recanted and endorsed gay rights before he died of AIDS in 1986.) The latest boldface name to marry his same-sex partner in Massachusetts is Arthur Finkelstein, the political operative behind the electoral success of Jesse Helms, a senator so homophobic he voted in the minority of the 97-to-3 reauthorization of the Ryan White act for AIDS funding and treatment in 1995.

But surely the most arresting recent case is James E. West, the powerful Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose double life has just been exposed by the local paper, The Spokesman-Review. Mr. West’s long, successful political career has been distinguished by his attempts to ban gay men and lesbians from schools and day care centers, to fire gay state employees, to deny City Hall benefits to domestic partners and to stifle AIDS-prevention education. The Spokesman-Review caught him trolling gay Web sites for young men and trying to lure them with gifts and favors. (He has denied accusations of abusing boys when he was a Boy Scout leader some 25 years ago.) Not unlike the Roy Cohn of “Angels in America” – who describes himself as “a heterosexual man” who has sex “with guys” – Mr. West has said he had “relations with adult men” but doesn’t “characterize” himself as gay. This is more than hypocrisy – it’s pathology.

Some of my readers have criticized me for trying to tarnish the image of the far-right Christian movement by focusing on the personal hypocrisy of a few of its leaders, but as Rich points out, this is more than just the ironic tale of a handful of secretly-gay gay-bashers… it is politics, pure and simple.

A likely inspiration for the gay plot line in Drury’s “Advise and Consent” was the real-life story of a Wyoming Democrat, Lester Hunt, who shot himself in his Senate office in 1954 after the Republican Campaign Committee threatened to make an issue of his gay son’s arrest in Lafayette Park on “morals charges.” Those were the dark ages, but it isn’t entirely progress that we now have a wider war on gay people, thinly disguised as a debate over the filibuster, cloaked in religion, and counting among its shock troops politicians as utterly bereft of moral bearings as James West.

People have always hated gays, but anti-gay sentiment is now being politicized, much in the same way the Nazis politicized long standing anti-Jewish sentiment to help secure Hitler’s ambitions in the early 1930’s. So if you think I’ve just been writing about sex or religion or hypocrisy, you’ve missed the point entirely. I’ve been writing about the politics of hate, and warning about the dire consequences to our republic should it be allowed to triumph.