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If Oklahoma City really is as small as the hearts and minds of its local sportscasters, Clay Bennett is gonna have a helluva tough time making a profit while meeting the payroll of a competitive team. Just take a gander at the neeter-neeter-neeterism that passed for journalism over at KOCO’s Sports Blog in the wake of the NBA approving the Sonics move:

Why does the city of Seattle want to keep the Sonics for two more lame duck seasons? Why wouldn’t the city want to take a huge lump sum payment and keep the Sonics name?

Why? Arrogance.

Seattle leaders and state legislators never really believed the Sonics would leave. Somehow, someway an arena deal would get done. Why would a team and a league abandon the 14th largest TV market in the country? There’s no way the team would leave the greatness of Seattle for the blandness of middle America, right? For some reason the “haves” in Seattle just thought it would all work out, now the city “has not” when it comes to a NBA future.

The city of Seattle wants to drag this thing out, to make it as painful and costly as possible for Bennett. Hopefully, they think, Bennett will sell the team to someone local and the Sonics will stay. Arrogance at its finest. As we say here in Oklahoma, “That ain’t happening.”

Talk about arrogance. Just remember that in a league where money easily trumps a 41-year history of fan loyalty, what goes around comes around.

And then there’s this thoughtful commentary from yet another KOKO sportscaster, who advises lifelong Seattle Sonics fans to just “deal with it.”

I am getting really tired of everyone else from Seattle crying about this move. If you really cared about the Sonics, then why didn’t you buy a ticket or even better yet approve payment on a new stadium?

One fact of life is that there are always consequences for your actions, and Seattle is now learning that lesson. But, so is OKC: It acted by supporting the Hornets. It acted by saying, “Sure, tax me,” to improve the Ford Center, and now they get the NBA.

Sorry, Seattle, but you had your chance and failed.

Now, we Okies get a shot to prove we really are a “Major League City” and can support an NBA franchise. Don’t worry, though: You still have the Seahawks and Mariners.

Yeah, well, I hope all you Okies enjoy paying a one-percent sales tax to build luxury boxes for the wealthy in your five year old Ford Center… a tax that will no doubt expire right around the time Bennett demands yet another new arena or renovation. Neeter, neeter, neeter.

It’s official. President George W. Bush has united the American people, who have collectively declared him: Worst. President. Ever.

President Bush has set a record he’d presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

The title comes at the end of a long downhill slide from having the record highest approval rating in September, 2001. Bush earned that record by ignoring a daily presidential briefing dated 6 August 2001 titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” (Among other things, the memo pointed out, “…FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”)

Besides the USA Today/Gallup poll, there was an ARG poll released today and a Rasmussen poll released Sunday that included presidential approval.

The ARG poll gave Bush 22% approval and 72% disapproval. This isn’t the worst Bush has done in the ARG poll…in February, his approval was a mere 19% and his disapproval was an astounding 77%. But, then, ARG presidential approvals polls seem to be biased against Bush, and ARG, in general, has something of a reputation for quirky (i.e. highly variable) results.

The Rasmussen approval poll (which is now taken weekly instead of daily) has Bush’s approval at 34% and disapproval at 64%. The Rasmussen presidential approval polls have always been biased in favor of Bush relative to other major pollsters (but consistently and reliably so). We can compare Sunday’s results with past performance in the Rasmussen poll. When the April polls are averaged at the end of the month, this is likely to be Bush’s worst performance to date–easily beating the 36% approval and 61% disapproval from last May. Rasmussen points out:

Sometimes it is difficult to keep the ratings in perspective. In February 2005, at the beginning of the President’s second term, the number who Strongly Approved was roughly equal to the number who Strongly Disapproved. Now, three years later, just 13% Strongly Approve while more than three times as many—45%–Strongly Disapprove.

Aggregates of multiple polls (e.g. Prof. PollKatz or Pollster.com) also show Bush at the lowest point of his presidency.

So…we have a lame duck Worst. President. Ever. But consider this: at this point in the second term, Ronald Reagan was hovering around 50% approval and Bill Clinton’s approval was in the low 60%. It isn’t just a “lame duck” effect.

Does Bush’s pathetic approval/disapproval matter? From Rasmussen:

In March, as the President’s Approval Rating slipped, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Democrats remained near the highest levels ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.

Yeah…I guess it does a little. Besides needlessly sending our soldiers to their death and running up enormous debt for an illegal war that was fraudulently foisted upon the American people, besides the erosion of our civil liberties, the invasion of our privacy, and the approval of torture contrary to our treaties, in addition to causing massive (and, quite possibly, permanent) damage to our reputation abroad, it looks like the Bush administration has also made it downright distasteful (or, perhaps, embarrassing) to be a Republican.

Lee:

I’m totally fine with building fences along the Aurora Bridge, but can we cut out the nonsense that it’s going to save the lives of the suicidal? Fencing off the Aurora Bridge will not save those lives for the same reason that fencing off the Mexican border will not stop illegal immigration.

Normally, Lee is a wellspring of wisdom, but he could not be more wrong. Suicide barriers and border fences serve altogether different functions, and the forces at play in each case have little in common.

When individuals decide to cross the United States’ southern border, they’re reacting to economic conditions. They know that in America they can earn in a day what they can earn in a month in their home countries. There are plenty of low wage jobs in America that will not be filled by Americas. (Or, more accurately, there are plenty of jobs Americans won’t do because the jobs pay so little.) Lee’s right about the U.S./Mexico fence: it’s poorly thought-out, and flies in the face of economic realities. That said…

Suicide isn’t a fungible thing. Ryan Thurston, founder of Seattle Friends, says that suicide is “a very impulsive act.” His group is advocating the installation of a suicide prevention barrier.

More from Thurston’s group:

Why build a suicide barrier — won’t they just go somewhere else?

No. This is a common misconception:

* Two suicide bridges in Washington D.C., the Taft and the Duke Ellington, are located a block away from each other. When officials erected a barrier on one bridge, suicides on the other bridge did not increase.
* Dr. Richard Seiden, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, studied 515 individuals who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Ninety four percent of them went on to live normal and productive lives — a mere six percent attempted suicide again.
* The Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Maine was the sight of 14 suicides before officials erected a safety fence there. After installing the fence, suicides at the bridge fell to zero — and the suicide rate in the entire state did not increase.

We can reduce the number of suicides by installing a fence on the Aurora Bridge. We should, and not only for the benefit of the individuals who will be dissuaded from taking their own lives:

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see them.

“They end up in our parking lot,” said Katie Scharer, one of Edwards’ co-workers at Cutter & Buck, a sportswear company based in the Adobe complex. “Nobody’s ever totally used to it.”

Grief counselors regularly go to Cutter & Buck, paying a visit as recently as a month ago.

I can’t imagine how awful it must be to work in that area, knowing that at any time someone could fall to their death. If a fence can successfully prevent people from killing themselves, then it’s worth building.

UPDATE [Lee]: I’ve responded in the comments and will leave it at that as I’ll be signed off for the rest of the day, but I want to make it clear that I actually do support the fence for the fact that the jumpers are a huge concern for the businesses and residences below.

I’ve been reading through Dino Rossi’s transportation “plan,” trying to figure it out, and for the life of me I just can’t make his numbers add up. Wider bridges cost less than narrower bridges? Tunnels are now suddenly cheaper than elevated viaducts? We can divert $10 billion out of the state general fund to transportation, without raising taxes or cutting services, and still balance the budget?

You gotta give Dino credit though for listening to voters. Polling conducted in the wake of Prop 1’s defeat showed that voters want a transportation plan that does more but cost taxpayers less — and that’s exactly what Dino is promising. Too bad the only way for him to deliver on these promises is to print the money to pay for them.

UPDATE:
It looks like I’m not the only one who can’t figure out Dino’s new math…

“Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington state Transportation Center at the University of Washington, said Rossi’s numbers are ’completely divorced from reality.’ […] ‘He lowballs almost all the estimates and never says where all the funds are going to come from. It’s a political statement. It’s complete silliness,’ Hallenbeck said.
— Seattle Times, 4/16/08

“The Republican candidate for Washington’s governor outlined a number of spending initiatives, from an expensive tunnel replacing Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct to a north-south freeway in Spokane. But when it came to paying for them, he punted. Actually, faked is more like it. […] it’s another something-for-nothing scheme…”
— Lewiston Tribune, 4/17/08

“Can Dino Rossi’s freshly unveiled transportation plan solve our traffic mess? Doubtful. Many of the cost figures cited in it appear to be based more on wishful thinking than thoughtful analysis.”
— Everett Herald, 4/17/08

“…the particulars of his proposal seem a little delusional.”
— The Stranger, 4/16/08

“Of course, his plan to use all that state money has only a snowball’s chance in hell…”
— Tacoma News Tribune, 4/15/08

“Rossi’s ideas run counter to local public opinion…”
— Seattle P-I, 4/16/08

“Further criticism came from the Director of the Washington State Transportation Center, who said in the Seattle Times that Rossi lowballed all of his estimates.”
— KXLY, 4/16/08

Remember this from just before last year’s November election?

I wonder what all the centrist, but-transit-without-roads-just-isn’t-realistic Seattle editorial writers, bloggers and erstwhile environmentalists who say the roads and transit proposal is the “best we’re ever going to get” are going to say when Prop. 1 fails, as a recent King 5 poll indicates it will? Will they band together and fight for a new light rail package that doesn’t include sprawl-inducing highway expansion—or, as their defeatist endorsements of Prop. 1 indicate, will they just give up?

It’s funny how at the last Sound Transit board meeting, it was one of the “sell-out” environmental groups that dropped off a petition demanding that rail be on the ballot this fall. The Sierra Club has yet to “marry” itself publicly to a “transit only” ballot measure this fall. I’m certain many of their members are a “go,” but… When environmental groups have to spend time convincing other environmental groups of the need for a ballot measure this fall, the entire effort is in jeopardy.

Oh man, this lawsuit attempting to force the Sonics to honor their Key Arena lease is gonna be a lot of fun, as city attorneys use the discovery process to reveal the dishonest dealings we all assumed were going on behind the scenes, but our sports-page-hawking editorial boards refused to acknowledge. And it looks like I’m going to get the opportunity for some delicious gloating.

For example, today the Seattle PI reports on recently uncovered emails between Clay Bennett, his fellow Sonics owners, and NBA Commissioner David Stern, that establish once and for all what an unrepentant bald-faced liar Bennett has always been. “I so cherish our relationship,” Bennett breathily wrote Stern on August 17, 2007, after co-owner Aubrey McClendon frankly told Oklahoma City’s The Journal Record that “we didn’t buy the team to keep it in Seattle.” In what can only be described as a digital blowjob, Bennett described Stern as “just one of my favorite people on earth,” attempting to reassure him:

“I would never breach your trust. As absolutely remarkable as it may seem, Aubrey and I have NEVER discussed moving the Sonics to Oklahoma City, nor have I discussed it with ANY other member of our ownership group. I have been passionately committed to our process in Seattle, and have worked my ass off.”

Uh-huh. Yet only four months earlier, during an April 17 email exchange, Sonics co-owner Tom Ward bluntly asked Bennett if there was “any way to move here for next season or are we doomed to have another lame-duck season in Seattle?”

Bennett’s reply: “I am a man possessed! Will do everything we can. Thanks for hanging with me boys, the game is getting started!”

Ward: “That’s the spirit!! I am willing to help any way I can to watch ball here (in Oklahoma City) next year.”

McClendon: “Me too, thanks Clay!”

Those e-mails came during the one-year grace period supposedly earmarked for good-faith efforts to keep the team in Seattle.

Isn’t legal discovery fun? In fact, just two weeks after purchasing the team, Bennett’s co-owners made their intentions absolutely clear :

Corresponding after one partner had dropped out of the group, apparently after deciding a move to Oklahoma wasn’t certain, Ward told McClendon on Aug. 2, 2006, that Bennett was angered by the defection.

“I don’t think that you and I really want to own a team there either, but we are better partners,” Ward wrote.

Shocking, huh? Well, I assume it is to the grownups on the editorial boards at our two dailies, who repeatedly vouched for Bennett’s character and intentions throughout the entire sham arena process. On February 15, 2007, the PI naively insisted that “Clay Bennett deserves credit for sincerity in his efforts to work out a deal that keeps the team in the Seattle area,” while on May 2, 2007 the wise old folks at the Seattle Times went so far as to chide cynics like me for suggesting otherwise:

There have been whispers and shouts that SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is only buying time until he can move the teams to his home state of Oklahoma. This is an unfair claim. Bennett has done nothing to suggest that moving the teams is a foregone conclusion.

“Nothing to suggest that Bennett is being insincere?” I responded at the time…

Um… how about seeking $400 million in taxpayer subsidies on a $500 million hoops palace, just weeks after 74-percent of voters rejected $200 million in subsidies on a $220 million Key Arena renovation? If that’s sincere, it’s sincerely stupid.

And it’s not like I’m puffing up my analysis with the benefit of hindsight. Our local media reliably reported Bennett’s pronouncements at face value, refusing to read between the lines while excoriating those of us who did. But I never believed Bennett ever intended to keep the team in Seattle, and the basis for my cynicism seemed obvious:

Even the most casual observer of Washington politics could have told Bennett that his $530 million hoop dream would be D.O.A., so I can’t help but view it as a disingenuous con game intended to fill Key Arena with gullible fans until the lease expires in 2010.

And…

I’ve never believed that Bennett ever seriously wanted to keep the Sonics in the Seattle area, but rather has always intended to move the team back home to Oklahoma City, where he will be welcomed as a conquering hero. In that admittedly cynical scenario the arena proposal must be just believable enough to keep gullible fans (and editors) in their seats until the Key Arena lease runs out in 2010, but outrageous enough to make the deal politically DOA.

And what if I was wrong, and state lawmakers actually caved to Bennett’s unreasonable demands and gave him his taxpayer funded hoops palace? Well, I always believed Bennett and his partners had that angle covered too:

See, if as expected, taxpayers (and the lawmakers representing them) rejected his extravagant proposal, he could claim he made his “good faith effort,” and then pick up and move the team to Oklahoma City, where he’ll be greeted as a local hero. But if we foolishly caved to his demands, well, he still might end up with an Oklahoma City team… just not the Sonics.

The Renton deal would dramatically increase the value of the team, allowing Bennett and his partners to sell out, taking a couple hundred million dollars in profit… money which could defray the cost of buying a smaller market team, like the Hornets, and moving it to Oklahoma City instead. In that scenario, Washington taxpayers would indirectly subsidize professional basketball in Oklahoma. Sweet.

Yeah, I know, it sounds a little too devious. But the fabulously wealthy generally don’t get that way by being artless and uncalculating.

Which brings us back to those emails, where Ward wrote to McClendon about just such an eventuality:

“I assume that I will be ready to sell there and work on a team here if they build a new arena, but we shall see.”

Bennett and his partners never intended to keep the Sonics in Seattle, and never negotiated in good faith; that not only should be obvious by now, it should have been obvious the day they purchased the team. As McClendon bragged to that Oklahoma City paper:

“We started to look around, and at that time the Sonics were going through some ownership challenges in Seattle,” McClendon told the newspaper. “So Clay, very artfully and skillfully, put himself in the middle of those discussions and to the great amazement and surprise to everyone in Seattle, some rednecks from Oklahoma, which we’ve been called, made off with the team.”

They certainly did. And in the process they played our local media for fools.

Over on Slog, Josh Feit reports that the Waterfront Trolley is dead.

[Deputy Mayor Tim] Cies told me tonight that the waterfront trolley idea “no longer fit into the city’s transportation plan.”

He also cited the fact that plans to revamp the viaduct had thrown the waterfront trolley plans into limbo. Also: too expensive.

“It’s not in our plans, and we’re moving ahead,” Ceis says, saying the new priorities were servicing the transportation grid around the viaduct and around light rail through Capitol Hill.

I dunno, just seems kinda silly that we  spent all this money laying down tracks for the SLUT, with City Hall talking ambitious plans to build a half dozen other trolley lines throughout the city, but we’re just not interested in using the tracks we already have.

As reported by both Postman and the PI’s Politics Team, Congressman Dave Reichert is challenging his Democratic colleagues in the state to join him in opposing House Speaker Pelosi’s attempts to prevent a vote on the Colombian free trade agreement this year. Reichert was one of 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats who traveled to Colombia with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab this past weekend. Here’s what he sent out:

Many times when Republicans were in the majority, my colleagues would call on me to go to my leadership to help the state, for instance when we learned of language that would allow supertankers onto Puget Sound. Today, I urge all of my colleagues in the Washington delegation – including Governor Gregoire – to join together and reject the Speaker’s effort to shelve this vital measure.

Reichert’s premise is that this trade agreement specifically helps the state of Washington because of how dependent we are on global trade. But this appears to be a questionable premise at best. Boston University International Relations Professor Kevin P. Gallagher, who has written a book on NAFTA, takes a look at this agreement:

The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade deal is one of the most deeply flawed trade pacts in U.S. history. It will hardly make a dent in the U.S. economy, looks to make the Colombian economy worse off and accentuate a labor and environmental crisis in Colombia. The Democratic majority in Congress is right to oppose this agreement and call for a rethinking of U.S. trade policy.

According to new estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, the net benefits of the agreement to the U.S. will be a miniscule 0.0000472 percent of GDP or a one-time increase in the level of each American’s income by just over one penny. The agreement will actually will make Colombia worse off by up to $75 million or one tenth of one percent of its GDP; losses to Colombia’s textiles, apparel, food and heavy manufacturing industries, as they face new competition from U.S. import, will outweigh the gains in Colombian petroleum, mining, and other export sectors, it concludes.

There’s a lot more that could be added to this that Gallagher doesn’t mention. Anything that weakens the Colombian economy to this extent will end up with more migrants in search of work and an increase the number of people willing to participate in illegal coca production. The failures of NAFTA in Mexico are likely to be repeated in Colombia, as both nations remain mired at the sharp end of America’s failed drug war, a no-win situation that no trade agreement will ever rectify and will continue to end up with more people fleeing here to find work.

But he does delve into another problem with this agreement, one that many people here in Washington State are likely to find troubling:

The deal amounts to a rollback of previous environmental provisions in U.S. trade agreements. Unlike past U.S. trade pacts, this deal doesn’t provide any new funding for cooperation, clean up, or compliance.

Finally, the deal has a little secret also not allowed under the WTO. It leaves open the possibility that ad hoc investment tribunals will interpret social and environmental regulations as “indirect expropriation.” Under such interpretations, multinational firms themselves (as opposed to states filing on a firm’s behalf such as in the WTO) can file suit for massive compensation from foreign governments. Under NAFTA such suits have been filed against the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Indeed, Methanex Corp. filed a $1 billion suit against the state of California for banning a gasoline additive that was polluting water sources.

The Sierra Club has a page here on the Methanex suit and others that have been initiated within the NAFTA agreement. As Congressman Reichert continues to make efforts to demonstrate his “green” credentials, I’m curious whether he has concerns over whether environmental regulations that come out of Olympia could trigger lawsuits from corporations that are affected by them.

Finally, Reichert spokesman Mike Shields has some words defending our desired trading partner, Colombia:

Is it perfect? No. But it has made improvements and it is our friend and ally in that part of the world, particularly when they have a neighbor who is fashioning himself to be a Fidel Castro for that part of the world.

This is true. Chavez is most certainly fashioning himself as a Castro-like anti-American protagonist, but this gets back to what my main concern over this agreement is. The policies of the Bush Administration, both economic and military, are slowly isolating our Colombian ally while strengthening the hand of Hugo Chavez. And this trade agreement will likely move us further down that path as long as President Bush sees it as a reward for a government whose recent military encroachment on Ecuadorean soil earned widespread condemnation across the region.

UPDATE: Reichert has a column on this in today’s Seattle Times.

I don’t mean to sound paranoid or anything, but for some odd reason, it appears the BIAW’s Tom McCabe and Erin Shannon don’t like me very much. Was it something I said?

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/goldy2.mp3]

Shannon calls me a “profane, ranting, raving lunatic”… and this from the woman who after the 2004 election gleefully told the Seattle Weekly:

“It was a big ‘Fuck you!’ to all the liberals out there. […] We are kicking their ass.”

Um… pot, meet kettle. (Really. Let’s meet up sometime Erin. I’ve always had a thing for trash-talking Irish women. Gimme a call.)

The whole clip is a hoot, with both Shannon and McCabe alternating between abusing me for my inflated sense of self-importance (apparently I’m one of those pathetic guys who “actually thinks he can make a difference and accomplish things” ) and repeatedly bemoaning the extraordinary influence they apparently believe I wield with the local press. Give a listen to this exchange:

Shannon: Yeah, and so you’re so important Mr. Goldstein, that we’d even waste our time. Here’s a guy who thinks that he’s so important and so influential that you’d actually take the time to go beat the you know what out of him with a baseball bat?

McCabe: That’s why I don’t want to talk about him any more.

Shannon: He’s ridiculous.

McCabe: But he is… he is influential in getting the Seattle PI to publish editorials, Erin, we just mentioned that.

So which is it? Am I “ridiculous” or “influential”? Both? (And Erin, as long as you’re wasting time telling me I’m not worth wasting your time, why not waste time together with me over a couple drinks? I understand a fondness for bars is one thing we both have in common.)

And as for that “baseball bat” thing? According to McCabe…

McCabe: Mr. Goldstein says that he believes that one day I’m going to beat him up with a baseball bat, and maybe I might even kill him. This is what he says about me, Tom McCabe. Very odd, odd thing.

Shannon: Yeah, and so you’re so important Mr. Goldstein, that we’d even waste our time.

Oh. So I guess, in context, Shannon was saying that I’m not important enough to even waste their time… beating me to death with a baseball bat. Not that such beatings are entirely out of the question, I’m just not worth the effort. Charming. Perhaps drinks wouldn’t be such a good idea after all.

In fact, I never said I believed McCabe was going to beat me with a baseball bat, or any other blunt object. Here is the quote to which he refers with the same sort of reverence for accuracy that he usual reserves for Nazi historiography:

And believe you me, the BIAW’s violent rhetoric is intended as a threat, and they fully understand the potential consequences of pumping up the anger. One of these days somebody like me is going to get the shit beaten out them by somebody like them — they’ll be waiting for me late at night with baseball bats, or worse — and when that happens our media elite, who allowed the BIAW’s dangerous rhetoric to go unridiculed, unchallenged and unchecked for so long, will be just as culpable as batshit crazy bastards like Tom McCabe and Mark Musser.

“Somebody like me is going to get the shit beaten out of them by somebody like them…” I never wrote that I believed that McCabe would attack me; I was merely repeating my oft stated belief that violent rhetoric eventually breeds violent actions, and that when such violence occurs, the instigators are as culpable as the violators. And if you take issue with that premise, go tell it to Charles Goldmark and Alan Berg.

But then you can’t really expect McCabe to even understand my words let alone accurately represent them, when he can’t even be bothered to learn my blog’s proper domain name, and bizarrely claims that HA is a blog “devoted to pummeling BIAW.” Talk about an inflated sense of self-importance, only 2.5% of my posts — 106 out of 4203 — even mention BIAW, compared to, say, 295 that reference Tim Eyman or 384 that mention Dino Rossi. Perhaps McCabe was thinking of HorsesAss.com, a site I’m guessing he’s much more familiar with?

This week’s podcast featured a panel of highly regarded as well as disreputable northwest bloggers…taking a few potshots at David Postman along the way.

Joining Goldy were Will, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, John Wyble, and mcjoan.

Topics of discussion include Will’s wonderful bus tour, Gov. Christine Gregoire as a retail politician, a follow-up on the BIAW controversy, an update on the Washington legislative races, the Dalai Lama and the lure of commerce, and The Responsible Plan (with a brief journey into the thought processes of Cokie Roberts).

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_8_2008.mp3]

The show is 49:42, and is available here as a 47.7 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Montlake Alehouse in Seattle during Tuesday’s meeting of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

I’ve struggled at times to explain exactly what “net neutrality” is, and why it is so important to the future of the Internet. But Damian Kulash Jr., the lead singer for the band OK Go, has no such problem; read his op-ed in today’s NY Times: “Beware the New New Thing.”

Most people assume that the Internet is a democratic free-for-all by nature — that it could be no other way. But the openness of the Internet as we know it is a byproduct of the fact that the network was started on phone lines. The phone system is subject to “common carriage” laws, which require phone companies to treat all calls and customers equally. They can’t offer tiered service in which higher-paying customers get their calls through faster or clearer, or calls originating on a competitor’s network are blocked or slowed.

These laws have been on the books for about as long as telephones have been ringing, and were meant to keep Bell from using its elephantine market share to squash everyone else. And because of common carriage, digital data running over the phone lines has essentially been off limits to the people who laid the lines. But in the last decade, the network providers have argued that since the Internet is no longer primarily run on phone lines, the laws of data equality no longer apply. They reason that they own the fiber optic and coaxial lines, so they should be able to do whatever they want with the information crossing them.

[… O]utright censorship and obstruction of access are only one part of the issue, and they represent the lesser threat, in the long run. What we should worry about more is not what’s kept from us today, but what will be built (or not built) in the years to come.

We hate when things are taken from us (so we rage at censorship), but we also love to get new things. And the providers are chomping at the bit to offer them to us: new high-bandwidth treats like superfast high-definition video and quick movie downloads. They can make it sound great: newer, bigger, faster, better! But the new fast lanes they propose will be theirs to control and exploit and sell access to, without the level playing field that common carriage built into today’s network.

They won’t be blocking anything per se — we’ll never know what we’re not getting — they’ll just be leapfrogging today’s technology with a new, higher-bandwidth network where they get to be the gatekeepers and toll collectors. The superlative new video on offer will be available from (surprise, surprise) them, or companies who’ve paid them for the privilege of access to their customers. If this model sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s how cable TV operates.

That’s net neutrality in a nutshell: do you want an Internet that operates like the one we have today, or one that operates like cable TV, where Comcast decides which content to carry, and offers it to you only in bundles of its own devising? Most folks simply aren’t going to subscribe to two internets, and those who choose the one with the high definition video on demand, very well may not have access to voices like mine. (Or for those on the other side of the ideological divide, voices like yours.)

You would think this is one issue on which we could all agree.

AND WHAT’S MORE:

Damian Kulash knows ping-pong, too:

Just out from Congressional Quarterly:

Democrats in the state of Washington are increasingly better positioned to keep the Governor’s mansion and to take over a key House district in the state’s most competitive contests this election cycle.

Gov. Christine Gregoire and 8th District candidate Darcy Burner came within a razor‑thin edge of their opponents in their last contests. But analysts now say that the Democrats have upped their chancing of winning as the state GOP party faces structural problems and GOP efforts to appeal to the state’s large number of moderate voters has been hampered by their strong conservative base.

CQ Politics is now changing its rating of the Washington state Governor’s race from No Clear Favorite to Leans Democrat and Washington’s 8th District rating from Leans Republican to No Clear Favorite.

And how has Darcy Burner done it?

In the 8th District, which encompasses the Eastern suburbs of Seattle, analysts say former Microsoft executive Burner’s organization, fundraising, and her views on the Iraq war have boosted her campaign. […] Burner has made the Iraq war, which is highly unpopular in the district, a centerpiece of her 2008 campaign. She initiated an effort to create a plan to end the war. After six months of consultation with retired generals and national security experts, she was joined by nine Democratic challengers in the release of a formal plan March 17. It reiterates many of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and calls for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq (without proposing a specific timeline), enlisting allies to help stabilize Iraq, and improving America’s international reputation.

Dave Reichert is now one of only three Republican incumbents whose race is rated a toss-up, and a lot of the credit goes to Darcy’s leadership in creating a consensus behind the Responsible Plan.

And how’s that plan progressing these days? The Politico devotes a ton of space to it today, reporting:

As congressional Democrats plot strategy for next week’s Petraeus-Crocker appearances, a growing number of Democratic congressional challengers are coming together around something called the “Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq.”

The plan’s author, Washington House candidate Darcy Burner, said that her original goal had been to have 50 candidates sign on to the plan by September. Just 2½ weeks into its life, the plan has nearly that many, picking up six more in the past few days to bring to the total to 48.

Um… as of 1PM today, 52 Democratic challengers had now signed on to the Plan. And counting.

MEDIA ALERT:
Darcy taped an interview with Rachel Maddow today, which will be aired on her show at either 3:30 or 4:30 PM Pacific. Tune in to AM-1090 or stream the audio live from their website.

Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars:

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think this observation might resonate with voters: John McCain could be denied coverage under John McCain’s healthcare plan.

Elizabeth Edwards, whose cancer is no longer curable, was pointed in her criticism at a meeting of healthcare journalists:

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: “Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy.”

Edwards lodged her criticism of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s proposal Saturday at the annual meeting of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists.

Under McCain’s plan, insurance companies “wouldn’t have to cover preexisting conditions like melanoma and breast cancer,” she said.

McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy. Edwards in 2004 was diagnosed with breast cancer, and announced a year ago that it had returned and spread into her bones, meaning it no longer could be cured.

McCain’s plan focuses on offering new tax breaks for individuals who buy their own health insurance. But critics say the Arizona senator’s proposal avoids giving insurers requirements on whom they must cover and how much they may charge.

John McCain, who has received low-cost, taxpayer-funded government healthcare for his entire life, is content to leave millions of Americans uninsured. This is not surprising. (McCain is known for his robust lack of interest in domestic policy.) He used to be one of those Republicans who looked for pragmatic solutions to domestic problems, and even lent his endorsement to this book, in which Democrat Jim McDermott and Republican Jim McCrery came to an understanding on healthcare reform. Both men, liberal and conservative, agreed that any healthcare plan that didn’t cover everyone was a waste of time and money. I hope John McCain could come to that understanding too.

Gov. Gregoire has signed the Working Families Credit, perhaps the most significant piece of legislation passed this session in terms of its real world impact on the 350,000 Washington families who will qualify for this tax break.

A national study released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that Washingtonians with the lowest income pay five times as much as the wealthiest in taxes, as a share of their income.

“The Washington state tax structure is singularly regressive. It is unacceptable for the poor to pay a significantly higher proportion of their income in taxes than the wealthy,” said William H. Gates, Sr., Chair of the Washington State Tax Structure Study Committee. “The Working Families Credit will help bring equity to our state tax system. It’s an investment we really need to make.”

How about that, a tax break for working families for a change, instead of wealthy special interests with high priced lobbyists. It’s a small step toward addressing the most regressive tax structure in the nation… but a step in the right direction.

The Stranger’s longtime reporter and news editor Josh Feit is stepping down and moving on…

It’s ironic, after nine years making a living hating on Seattle (and always with a plan to get back to the East Coast), I actually love it here these days (it has something to do with buying a fancy bike), and I’m angling to stay.

And Seattle will certainly miss hating on Josh. Of course, I’m sure Josh will quickly move on to bigger and better things, as the news biz is a thriving industry these days. (Or maybe he’ll just end up another sell-out, like Sandeep?)