HorsesAss.Org

Washington ski resorts may be suffering for want of snow, but folks are hitting the slopes in Hell this week, as I once again toss kudos in directions I usually fling insults. A couple days ago I blogged in support of a forward-looking higher-ed funding proposal from two of the state GOP’s best legislators. And today I’m enthusiastically linking to a piece posted on (gasp…) Sound Politics!

Matt Rosenberg quite rightly ridicules State Sen. Don Benton (R-Vancouver) for missing the first 17 meetings of the Early Learning, K-12 and Higher Education Committee, before suddenly showing up at a hearing to grandstand on one of his own bills. And there’s plenty more to ridicule Benton for, as Columbian Watch so aptly chronicles here, here, here… and here.

Reading the comments on Matt’s blog entry, it appears some of (u)SP’s regulars have taken umbrage at Matt for daring to criticize one of their own… but their outrage is misdirected. Benton is more likely to appear on the side of a milk carton than at a committee hearing, and as Elizabeth Hovde points out in The Columbian, he simply isn’t doing the job for which he was elected.

Critics of Benton must be giddy. Not only has the senator made himself an easy target, giving fiscal conservatives a bad name, he isn’t around to exert his influence on various issues. As a person who would vote the way Benton does much of the time, especially on spending issues, I find it maddening that Benton foes are getting a better deal out of his re-election than his fans.

Matt deserves some credit for criticizing Benton’s job performance — however much he may agree with his ideology — and for doing so on a forum that tends to denounce Republicans only for perceived violations of party loyalty. I don’t generally agree with his politics (and I thought his take on my “Horse’s Ass” initiative to be particularly humorless,) but Matt has always struck me as more intellectually honest than most of his fellow unSounders.

Well, the bad news for Republicans is, that in contacting names on their list of 1,100 allegedly illegal voters, the Associated Press found that two out of three claim to have voted for Rossi. The good news is, it turns out none of these three actually voted illegally. Or maybe that’s the bad news. I’m confused.

The Associated Press contacted three of those on the alleged felon list. Two said their voting rights had been restored and one said he was pulled over for drunken driving in 2003, but the charge was reduced. Two of those three said they voted for Rossi.

The Seattle Times reports finding three more people wrongly included on the list, including a 57-year-old disabled man, who had his voting rights restored in 1994.

“You make one mistake in your life,” the man said. “It’s something that happened 21 years ago, and then to have it come up again; it’s devastating. I’m in tears.”

Oh yeah… he voted for Rossi too.

In fact, news organizations around the state started finding so many inaccuracies in the list that according to the Seattle P-I, the Democrats hastily called a press conference to accuse the Rossi camp of releasing a list that “smears the names of innocent people.”

“I think it’s time that people start asking Dino Rossi, ‘When are you going to do your homework, when are you going to stop damaging people’s names in your quest for power,’ ” said David McDonald, an attorney for Democrats.
…
McDonald said it took only “a matter of minutes” for his team to quickly discern that the supposed illegal votes on that list could easily be explained. To illustrate the point, the Democratic lawyers showed blown-up copies of pages from various King County poll books.

In one example, a copied page appears to show that a woman who the GOP alleges voted twice only signed for one ballot. A poll worker’s notation under the woman’s signature apparently got counted as a second signature.

In another example, the Rossi camp claims someone voted in the name of a dead woman, but a copied poll book seems to show that a voter accidentally signed on the wrong line — one line below his correct space.

Of the 15 names initially turned over by Republicans last week, the Democratic lawyers said, they’ve yet to verify a single illegal vote.

You mean Rossi’s people still haven’t looked in the poll books?

Man… and Republicans accuse Democrats of being incompetent.

As most of you know, I have been forced to crack down somewhat on pointless, off-topic comments that were making the threads unreadable. Nobody’s been banned, per se, but you’ll notice a certain individual hasn’t been around since I started to hold his comments for approval.

To balance the unaccustomed order, I’ve decided to create a weekly “Open Thread” where you are free to post on whatever subject you want. I hope you will all play nice, and use this as a forum for real debate — however angry and vitriolic — but this is your sandbox, so shit in it if you want.

In exchange, I ask you all to try to stay on-topic in the other threads. I understand that debate sometimes wanders in unexpected directions, so tangents are fine. But if you feel the need to hijack a thread for your own personal agenda, this is the thread to hijack.

We’ll see how this experiment goes.

The Democrat who Republicans most love to hate, Seattle’s own Congressman Jim McDermott, is now “the world’s least senior blogger.” Check out is diary on dailyKOS, “Social Security: Don’t buy the Fear Factor!“

One of the elements of this ongoing election dispute that I have found most difficult to wrap my mind around, is the passionate and apparently genuine belief by some on the other side, that Democrats are all lying, deceitful thieves, willing to do anything to get their candidates in office.

Well, our friends at the BIAW suggest one possible explanation for this delusional group-think: projection.

According to The Seattle Times (“Builders group uses trickery to check out voters’ signatures“), the BIAW sent out a “housing trends survey” to 400 King County residents, along with a $10.00 “thank you check.” Only, it wasn’t really a survey, and those 400 “residents” just happened to be the 400 absentee voters for whom Democrats collected signature affidavits during the initial count. Oh, and that check… that was just a clever way of capturing their signatures.

It was an out-and-out lie… a sham… exactly the kind of dirty, end-justifies-the-means deceit that the BIAW-backed Rossi camp clearly expects of Democrats. They think that we can’t be trusted, because quite frankly, they can’t be trusted. Classic projection.

“Boy, those BIAW people are so devious.”

That understatement comes from the rarely understated Paul Berendt, who appears in shock and awe at the depths to which his opponents will stoop. But he shouldn’t be so surprised… the BIAW wants to see him behind bars. Indeed, they truly believe he should be behind bars, and regularly fantasize about gleefully popping corks the day Paul is led away in leg irons.

He was after all, the real target of the BIAW’s little fraud. They weren’t just fishing for evidence to help Rossi; they hoped to dredge up criminal charges against Berendt and the Democratic volunteers. So deep is their hatred — and so shallow is their own moral and ethical framework — that they cannot help but assume the absolute worst of those who oppose them. In their eyes, Berendt is a criminal, and they’ll find the evidence if only they look hard enough. In the words of BIAW Executive Vice-Bastard Tom McCabe:

“Scientists say that you shouldn’t do an experiment if you have a conclusion already. I had a conclusion. I thought they had cheated.”

That’s right, he thinks Berendt is so corrupt and so brazen — and apparently, so stupid — that he would orchestrate a fraud that could so easily be traced back to him. That’s projection, and it suggests to me that it’s the BIAW’s own activities that warrant a criminal investigation.

Ironically, their efforts have only managed to shed light on more innocent explanations for why signatures don’t always match. The BIAW claims “about 20” signatures have raised suspicions, and the Times’ David Postman interviewed a few.

Christina Spears-Bartunek said her husband endorsed the check, and she was not happy about the deceptive survey: “I think it’s crappy.”

Cheryl Triplett said she has a “generic signature” and an “official signature.” The survey got the generic. The affidavit got the official.

She does that out of fear of identify theft, she said. She doesn’t want to put anything through the mail with her official signature.

In fact, that’s what got her ballot tossed initially. She used the generic signature on the absentee ballot because it was going through the mail. When it didn’t match her signature on file at King County, her ballot was rejected.

She said she thought she had been tricked into giving her signature.

“I think you should be honest about it. If the Republicans would have come to my door, I would have said, ‘This is my signature.’

“I just think that’s an underhanded way to go about things.”

“Crappy,” “underhanded,” “deceptive”… it’s all that and more. It also demonstrates how fundamentally distrustful the Rossi camp is, of not just Democrats, but the voting public in general. They couldn’t “be honest about it” because every irregularity or mismatched signature, is in their eyes, evidence of official corruption or the insulting paranoid fantasy some right-wing bloggers call “distributed vote fraud.”

The sad truth is, the BIAW and other lunatic-fringe Rossi diehards expect the worst of Democrats, because that is what they expect of themselves.

The Election Reform Task Force released its report (download PDF,) calling for the following improvements to the state election process:

• Moving the date of the primary election at least four weeks earlier to give election supervisors sufficient time to certify the primary results, mail the general election ballots and prepare for the general election.
• Requiring voter identification to get a ballot at the polling site. Voters without identification would be issued a provisional ballot.
• Improving voter registration records. To assure the voter rolls do not include illegitimate voters or duplications, the task force recommends a strong effort to bring a new statewide voter database online as soon as possible.
• Improving military ballots. Moving the primary date earlier would improve the ability of service men and women to participate in elections. The task force also recommends a system of deployment notification and ballot delivery tailored to those members called up and expected to be away from home on Election Day.
• Assuring statewide procedural consistency by giving the Secretary of State a stronger role to bring about a more consistent election process between counties.
• Providing clearer warnings and stronger enforcement of voter fraud. The Legislature should evaluate whether current penalties are enough of a deterrent to voter fraud and whether sufficient funding is provided to investigate and prosecute this type of fraud. The task force recommends clearer warnings in voter material and on the back of ballot envelopes.
• Setting a consistent date for certifying results. To minimize the perception of impropriety, the task force recommends that all counties certify their results on the same day.
• Modifying provisional ballots. Provisional ballots should be a different color than regular ballots and provisions made to halt such ballots from being read by the optical scanners at the polling sites.
• Providing for mandatory review or audit. The task force believes that, to restore trust in the elections systems, a strong, structured review or audit program should be conducted by the Secretary of State’s Office.

The only one of these recommendations I have any qualms over is the one requiring ID, for pragmatic reasons I intend to get into later. But the rest of the reforms seem pretty uncontroversial.

In fact I’m sure the biggest criticism of the report will be that it doesn’t go far enough. For example, I believe it is critical to mandate voter verifiable paper trails for electronic voting machines, whereas some of you on the right would probably prefer much tighter voting procedures… you know, like restricting the franchise to propertied, white males.

I’d like to take some time to really explore election reform in detail, but before I start pontificating, I thought I’d open this thread as an opportunity for all of you to tell me what kind of election reform you want to see. I want to hear your suggestions. Really. Even all you righties. (Well… most of you righties.)

So let’s try to keep this relatively civil — by HorsesAss.org standards — and on topic.

I don’t know what’s going to flummox some of my readers more, the fact that I’m about to endorse a piece of state legislation authored by a couple of Republicans, or the fact that I’m largely agreeing with an editorial in The Seattle Times? [An idea for higher-ed going, going, gone]

Reps. Fred Jarrett (R-Mercer Island) and Skip Priest (R-Federal Way) are struggling to get a hearing on HB 1434, a bill that would inject a long-term perspective towards funding our college and university system. According to the times:

House Bill 1434, and its companion Senate Bill 5868, would establish a framework for funneling new revenue to higher education as the state economy improves.

By 2012, the current higher-education budget of about $1.2 billion would increase by about one-third. The difference would pay for another 30,000 student spots and more state investment in research. While the bill would permit tuition to increase dramatically, it would add in a more aggressive financial-aid component. The bottom line is, no family would pay more than 30 percent of a student’s education cost.

I’m not necessarily convinced about all the specifics, but then, this is a bill, not an initiative, so there is plenty of opportunity for deliberation and compromise. And I’d caution that The Times’ ebullient description of the bill as “THE best, most forward-looking” higher-education proposal, should include the caveat that HB 1434 may be the only forward-looking proposal being actively pitched at the moment.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the bill’s main principles, as outlined in an editorial Rep. Jarrett wrote, and forwarded to me:

HB 1434 has four guiding principles: Any reforms must be based on long-term strategic plan; they must address both the changing needs of today’s students and our economy; they must make higher education more affordable and accessible for all Washingtonians, and, most importantly, they must establish a system of accountability for taxpayers so we can be confident the first three principles will be met.

Yeah, yeah, sure… all that stuff is good. But the part of the proposal that intrigues me most involves the shift of state funding from flat per-slot subsidies to more of a financial aid model. HB 1434 would result in substantially higher tuition, but would provide financial aid grants to assure that total tuition eats up no more than 30% of any family’s income. This is a change I have long supported, indeed, way back on July 17 I wrote:

We need to move away from subsidizing all students equally, towards a means-tested system where tuition approaches market prices, and students receive generous financial aid based on need.

In fact, while I’m quoting myself, I’d like to point out for the umpteenth time that education is our state’s single most important economic engine, and well… you get the economy you pay for:

Just as individuals invest in their own future by attending college, our state invests in our future economy by making college more accessible. Education consumes the single largest chunk of our state and local taxes, so when Tim Eyman talks about eliminating “government waste” this is what he has in mind.

You get what you pay for. If we buy ourselves a second-rate educational system, our children will inherit a second-rate economy.

Reps. Jarrett and Priest should be commended for their forward-looking proposal, and for championing some solutions which likely won’t be greeted with much enthusiasm from either side of the aisle. My hope is that it generates genuine bipartisan dialogue on a higher-education funding crisis that is putting our future economy at risk.

A quick link to Knute Berger’s Mossback column in the current Seattle Weekly: “It’s All Downhill.”

Knute scales the “slippery slopes” of Seattle politics, from publicly financed stadiums, to sweetheart land deals, to the monorail, before planting his flag atop City Hall, where he sees few council members willing to question the city’s priorities.

But the problem is bigger, and I’m not talking about the mayor’s girth. Greg Nickels is heading for re-election virtually unopposed. The neighborhoods have no local hero to put forward; the town’s newly energized Republican minority seems satisfied with being blog blowhards; and liberals are willing to accept Nickels’ No Billionaire Left Behind policies as long as he says “yes” to everyone.

Hmmm… Republican “blog blowhards.” I wonder who he could be talking about?

But I found Knute’s final comment most intriguing:

How far have we slid down this slippery slope? There isn’t even an amusing gag candidate on the horizon.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Naaaah… what would I do if I won?

Longtime readers know that problem gambling is one of my pet issues. That’s why I am so pleased to see Senator Maria Cantwell taking the lead on our nation’s fast growing epidemic of underage gambling.

In a letter sent Monday to Surgeon General Richard Carmona, Cantwell lays out the relationship between underage gambling and “other risk behaviors” such as alcohol abuse and smoking. According to Cantwell, as many as 8 percent of young people may have a gambling problem, and nearly half start gambling before the age of ten. She asks the Surgeon General for his help in raising pubic awareness of youth gambling addiction.

Children are also three times more likely to become addicted to gambling than adults. I am particularly concerned that childhood exposure to gambling is increasingly widespread — exposure that may tragically result in later compulsive gambling addictions. For example, games of chance are used to market many products that also have public health consequences, such as the consumption of high calorie foods and soda. Children are exposed to gambling every time there’s a scratch-off card at a fast food restaurant, or a prize under a soda bottle cap liner.

Not to mention the youth poker craze, that is being fed by ESPN coverage of poker tournaments.

Cantwell is working on this issue with Senator John McCain, who has previously sponsored legislation restricting gambling on youth athletic events. I expect underage gambling and addiction to become a high profile issue over the coming years, as the fast growing gambling industry develops a new generation of its best customers: compulsive gamblers.

In Washington state, legal gambling has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, and gambling addiction has grown with it. And yet Washington currently does not spend a penny on problem gambling treatment or prevention. As a result, the state has only a handful of licensed counselors, and not a single treatment facility.

The Gambling Commission also provides inadequate oversight and enforcement. As I have previously reported, the Gambling Commission conducted a sting operation at seven Seattle-area card rooms, and was surprised to find that a “very young looking” sixteen-year-old was able to gamble and purchase alcohol at three of the seven.

The Legislature is currently considering HB 1031, a bill that would permanently fund treatment and prevention programs, but at about $500,000, the proposed appropriation was little more than symbolic. Hopefully, Sen. Cantwell’s national leadership role will help push the Governor and the Legislature to seriously address this public health crisis at home.

My 7-year-old daughter’s favorite political website is, without a doubt, the recently launched Whack a Loophole. She enjoys its informative content, whimsical production values, and “hitting things with a hammer.”

Yeah, sometimes it takes a little humor and creativity to get a point across, and that’s exactly what this fun little parody does. Oh… and it’s a very serious point.

The Legislature is struggling to close yet another multi-billion dollar budget gap; if they’re going to consider further cuts in funding for education, health care, and other essential services, then it’s only fair to put billions of dollars in tax breaks on the table too.

Some of the tax breaks Whack a Loophole makes fun of are incredibly stupid, but relatively small, like exemptions for bull semen insemination ($954,000) or the sale of gold bullion ($5 million.) Others are much more substantial and require some careful consideration, such as the $1.8 billion in revenues lost by not extending the sales tax to professional services like stockbrokers, lawyers, and lobbyists.

The truth is, our tax structure is irreparably broken, and eventually even Republicans are going to have to make the choice between an income tax, or becoming Mississippi. In the meanwhile, we need some temporary fixes to help ease our perpetual budget crisis. The sale of goods is becoming an ever smaller portion of our economy, and if we’re to continue relying on the sales tax for the lion’s share of government revenues, then we’re going to have to extend it to those things that 21st century Washingtonians actually sell… you know… services.

Some people — like the ever-ornery Rep. Ed Orcutt — may object to calling these tax thingies “loopholes”, but by any other name they still have the same impact. Huge portions of our economy currently go untaxed, and it only makes sense to consider whether these “tax preferences” are both fair and productive. Are we getting our money’s worth from these exemptions, and is it fair to the low-income families who shoulder the highest tax burden? Is it fair to our high school graduates for whom there are no available slots at our colleges and universities? Is it fair to the children who are losing their health coverage?

These are all questions that legislators need to ask themselves before whacking another $2.2 billion out of our state budget.

Martin Ringhofer wanted me to post something about his efforts to recall Secretary of State Sam Reed. I promised him that if I did, I wouldn’t say anything nice, but apparently Martin subscribes to the Tim Eyman school of PR: all coverage is good coverage… even the really, really bad coverage.

I can’t begin to tell you how stupid I think this recall is. It’s not just misguided and ill-conceived, it’s also totally hopeless. In fact, the recall is so hopeless, that even Stefan of (un)Sound Politics — our state’s leading promoter of hopeless efforts to unseat elected officials through the courts — went out of his way to distance himself from this particular futile exercise of partisan anger and frustration.

You see, in Washington, you can’t just recall an official because you decide you don’t like him anymore. You actually have to prove that there was some malfeasance or misconduct. And what really pissed off hardcore Rossi supporters about Reed, is that he so narrowly followed the law, not that he broke it.

Look, I didn’t vote for Reed. I thought he did little to recommend himself during his first term, and I was disappointed that he didn’t provide more leadership during the first couple weeks following the November election. But more than any other elected official in this state, Reed managed to remain mostly non-partisan at a time when non-partisanship was most needed. And that is really what Martin and his handful of cohorts are angry about… Reed could have used his office to Rossi’s advantage, but he didn’t.

For that, Reed should be praised, not recalled.

So Martin, don’t let anybody ever say I’m not a man of my word. I promised to say unkind things about your recall effort, and I delivered. I appreciate the fact that you have always been polite in your emails, and welcome you to continue contributing to HA’s comment threads.

I’m always looking for creative ways to promote political activism, and so when I saw a post on another blog mentioning the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, I just had to check it out for myself. So last Tuesday I had myself a pint of Guinness and some good conversation with a bunch of like-minded strangers.

The name of the organization is pretty much self-explanatory. They’ll be meeting tonight (and every Tuesday) at 8 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th AVE E. Alas, I cannot attend (my 7-year-old daughter hates Guinness,) but I encourage those unencumbered non-teetotalers of you to stop on by.

The other day I blogged on Republicans’ misplaced enthusiasm in a recent Rasmussen Poll, by suggesting that in the wake of an unprecedented post-election PR campaign, the numbers really weren’t all that bad for Governor Gregoire and the state Democrats. (“Crow all you want, eat all you crow.”)

I had failed to find an earlier poll to use as reference point, but apparently I didn’t try hard enough. A helpful reader has pointed me towards a five-week-old poll, and the trends should definitely give Rossi’s political strategists some pause.

The poll was conducted January 24-26 by Republican pollsters Strategic Vision. Compare its results to those of Rasmussen’s February 22 poll, and it clearly looks like any advantages Dino Rossi may have gained from his coordinated propaganda campaign are fading fast.

          Favorable Ratings
               Jan. 24-26     Feb. 22
 Rossi          50%            55%
 Gregoire       38%            50%

     Who really won the election?
               Jan. 24-26     Feb. 22
 Rossi          53%            44%
 Gregoire       37%            42%
 Undecided      10%            15%

Of course, these polls have a substantial margin of error, and are for the most part, complete and utter bullshit. But if the Rs were hoping to see some sort of permanent lift from trashing the electoral process, they’re not seeing it here.

An even less scientific, but more dramatic, indicator of the public’s flagging interest in this interminable election contest, is the substantial drop in traffic to right-wing blog (un)Sound Politics. Many of the unsubstantiated allegations echoed by the Rossi camp, originally slithered out of (u)SP’s primordial soup of rumor and innuendo. While their site statistics remain impressive, their average daily visits are off by 60% from the post-election high. (By comparison, HA continues to trend upwards.)

All this suggests to me that interest in the election dispute continues to fade, along with the outrage. We all know Rossi is losing the battle in the courts… now it appears he may be losing the battle in the court of public opinion as well.

I’ve been real, real busy, so here’s a digest of highlights from some other worthy local blogs (in alphabetical order):

blatherWatch
Hear any lies today? blatherWatch needs your help:

If you hear a dubious fact, a sleazy assumption, an outrageous non-sequitur, a wild conclusive leap, or an out-and-out whopper by host or caller; a lefty or righty on Seattle talk stations–drop us an e-mail.

Here’s a lie, Michael… Sharkansky called me “sweet.”

Speaking of which, why not take a gander at blatherWatch’s account of my non-showdown with the toothless Shark on the John Carlson Show. Michael sucks up to me a little, but that’s okay, I enjoy being sucked up to once in a while.

Evergreen Politics
Jon Stahl and Jeff Reifman dig into Bill Gates’ recent education speech and are shocked to find hypocrisy coming from the richest man in the world, when it comes to funding for education.

Microsoft takes advantage of huge corporate tax loopholes to dodge paying its fair share of the taxes that fund our public education system.

So, whatever Bill’s ideas for fixing our high schools might be (and they could no doubt use some fixing), I suggest he start by looking at the behaviors of his own corporation that have contributed to the problem.

That said, I just want to point out that his father, Bill Gates Sr., is one of WA’s most passionate and eloquent proponents of a state income tax, a change that would largely correct our obscenely regressive state and local tax structure, while costing him and his son butt-loads of money.

NW Progressive Inst. Blog
While I’m digesting the other blogs, NPI is digesting a bunch of interesting articles and columns in Monday’s Seattle P-I.

OlyScoop

Only 18 percent of proposed legislation actually becomes law, I read in a report last year. Whew! Thank goodness.

As always, OlyScoop is one the best places to learn about the other 82 percent.

On The Road To 2008
Daniel Kirkdorfer considers a recent Harris poll, and wonders if we’re a nation of idiots:

– 47% of adolts believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
– 44% of adolts believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis.
– 36% of adolts believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.

Progressive Majority for WA
I apologize for calling Stefan a “prick.” I clearly should have included the BIAW as well. Stefan called Rep. Jeannie Darneille (D-Tacoma) an “imbecile” for mentioning the recent death of her father in an email explaining her opposition to a “re-vote.” But the BIAW stoops even lower, by trying to squeeze partisan advantage out of her personal tragedy.

Darneille Sr. had a 60-year history of voting and in recent years had done so absentee. The BIAW found a Charles Darneille had signed the poll voter sheet, however, and suspecting a scandal ripe for exploitation, fired off a public records request to the Pierce County auditor, demanding to know how an absentee voter who died the day after the election could have signed the poll voter sheet. I’m sure the PR hacks in the Republican party were slavering with glee over this apparent example of democratic cronyism and ballot-stuffing.

Turns out, there were two Charles Darneilles. What a bunch of pricks.

Pacific Northwest Portal is only a few weeks old and has already become one of the most bookmarked websites for regional progressives. Today it launches a revamped home page, expanded Blogs and Websites Directory, and other new features.

This a great way to keep an eye on dozens of progressive blogs; please check it out if you haven’t already.