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It’s not a good week to be Mitt Romney. The story of how he once drove across New England with his dog on the roof of his car is getting some serious attention, but that’s actually pretty minor compared to what two of his close associates have been involved with:

As The Hill noted last week, 133 plaintiffs filed a civil suit against Romney’s Utah finance co-chair, Robert Lichfield, and his various business entities involved in residential treatment programs for adolescents. The umbrella group for his organization is the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS, sometimes known as WWASP) and Lichfield is its founder and is on its board of directors.

The suit alleges that teens were locked in outdoor dog cages, exercised to exhaustion, deprived of food and sleep, exposed to extreme temperatures without adequate clothing or water, severely beaten, emotionally brutalized, and sexually abused and humiliated. Some were even made to eat their own vomit.

But the link to teen abuse goes far higher up in the Romney campaign. Romney’s national finance co-chair is a man named Mel Sembler. A long time friend of the Bushes, Sembler was campaign finance chair for the Republican party during the first election of George W. Bush, and a major fundraiser for his father.

Like Lichfield, Sembler also founded a nationwide network of treatment programs for troubled youth. Known as Straight Inc., from 1976 to 1993, it variously operated nine programs in seven states. At all of Straight’s facilities, state investigators and/or civil lawsuits documented scores of abuses including teens being beaten, deprived of food and sleep for days, restrained by fellow youth for hours, bound, sexually humiliated, abused and spat upon.

According to the L.A. Times, California investigators said that at Straight teens were “subjected to unusual punishment, infliction of pain, humiliation, intimidation, ridicule, coercion, threats, mental abuse… and interference with daily living functions such as eating, sleeping and toileting.”

You can read more about the history of Mel Sembler’s “rehab” centers here and here. A compendium of links can be found here (a lot of the stories are not for the weak of stomach). When Romney says he wants to double Guantanamo, I believe him. He’ll need the extra room if he thinks we should be sending our kids there too.

When Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels decided to start signing up US cities in the fight against global warming, I don’t think he ever though he’d be this successful:

Mayor Greg Nickels welcomed 52 more cities to Seattle’s climate protection campaign bringing the total to 592 as an influential organization of mayors unanimously supported a national goal of reducing climate pollution 80 percent by 2050.

Five hundred and ninety-two? To think, this whole thing started a few years ago.

“It’s time for the federal government to follow the lead of mayors across this country and begin taking action to address the growing threat of global warming,” Nickels said. “Everyone has a role to play in saving our planet from the effects of climate change. Cities have rolled up their sleeves and now it is time for the federal government to do the same.”

The 52 cities joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement come from just two states, Florida and Iowa. The announcement means 596 cities across America have now joined the Seattle-led effort to cut greenhouse gas pollution.

While conservatives extol the virtues of “local control”, that creed goes out the door when it comes to global warming. Righties mocked Nickels for his DIY approach, saying it wouldn’t add up to much. Hundreds of cities later, their apologies aren’t forthcoming. (I’m sure their congratulatory emails are just stuck in the “tubes”)

Meanwhile, the full U.S. Conference of Mayors today endorsed a resolution sponsored by Nickels that calls on federal leaders to approve aggressive climate pollution reductions as part of an ambitious, five-point climate-protection plan.

Co-sponsored by the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and 24 other cities, Nickels’ resolution calls on the 110th Congress and the White House to set a national greenhouse gas reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, a threshold most scientists say is necessary to stabilize the climate. Coupled with the target is a call for a flexible national cap and trade system and incentives to reward energy conservation and development of clean energy technologies.

The conventional wisdom on global warming is that the American people aren’t ready to makes the changes necessary. With so many mayors signing on to needed legislation, why is Congress so gutless? Folks are ready for the kind of inventive free-market solutions to global warming. It’s just the guy in the White House who doesn’t get it.

Since dropping its racial tiebreaker in the face of a lawsuit by parents, Seattle’s high schools have grown dramatically less integrated. And now that the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a sweeping, 5-4 decision ruling Seattle’s racial tiebreaker unconstitutional, school districts across the nation will swiftly re-segregate.

Indeed, but for some caveats in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s concurring opinion, the Roberts Court has all but overturned the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision that led to desegregation throughout the South and the rest of the nation. Writing in dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer warns that this is a decision we will all regret.

Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? For much of this Nation’s history, the races remained divided. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. In this Court’s finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. For Brown held out a promise. It was a promise embodied in three Amendments designed to make citizens of slaves. It was the promise of true racial equality.not as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nation’s cities and schools. It was about the nature of a democracy that must work for all Americans. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live.

Not everyone welcomed this Court’s decision in Brown. Three years after that decision was handed down, the Governor of Arkansas ordered state militia to block the doors of a white schoolhouse so that black children could not enter. The President of the United States dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 (1958). Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. The plurality would decline their modest request.

The plurality is wrong to do so. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality’s position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.

Seattle is gradually becoming a segregated school district. Those on the right who cheer this decision, and who cheer their success at establishing a rigidly ideological majority on the bench that has no use for the doctrine of stare decisis and no respect for the wisdom of those justices who came before them, will be held politically accountable for the consequences of their agenda. Unfortunately, politics will come four years too late to save our nation from the Roberts Court.

Republicans should beware. This is a court, that should it live up to its principles, will overturn Roe v. Wade. And that disaster would surely lead to the unraveling of the Republican Party, if not its permanent destruction.

The Supreme Court just saved Jesus from peer pressure to try drugs. Today the Court ruled 5 to 4 against a student displaying a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at an off-grounds school event.

I suppose we can call this the “free-expression hits 4 Jesus” case.

The school principal thought the banner promoted drug use and, as a consequence, she confiscated the banner and suspended the student. The student, Joseph Frederick, simply thought the slogan was funny—and that it would attract the attention of TV crews covering the journey of the Olympic torch.

The majority opinion (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito) held that:

[t]he First Amendment does not require schools to tolerate at school events student expression that contributes to those dangers.

“Danger” refers to the harm of illegal drug use—in this case, the harm of drug use by a vulnerable Jesus.

This goes to show that conservatives really are humor impaired. Further studies will be needed to determine if this humor impairment syndrome (HIS) has some genetic underpinnings, is caused by environmental toxins, or whether it reflects a deficient childhood nutritional environment—you know, like being nursed by hyenas to avoid exposing the child to its mother’s breasts. I’m betting on the hyena scenario.

Justices Stevens’ dissenting opinion held that:

…the school’s anti-drug policy “cannot justify disciplining Frederick for his attempt to make an ambiguous statement to a television audience simply because it contained an oblique reference to drugs.”

The majority, apparently, equates promoting drug use for Jesus—a man who was executed in the First World War on Terror some 2,000 years ago, isn’t a citizen of the U.S., would take bong hits in the privacy of his own kingdom which, in any case, is outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.—might have the pernicious effect of inducing HIS-afflicted conservative students to take up drug use. (In other words, Jesus is just a gateway target.)

The same reasoning might prohibit “Bong Hits 4 Hitler,” since it could still provide pernicious inspiration for some HIS-positive conservatives.

Perhaps a safer slogan is “Bong Hits 4 Brontosaurus?” Oh…wait…among science-impaired HIS-positive conservatives, this is tantamount to promoting drug experimentation with family pets.

In the comments of my last post, commenter Russell Garrard wrote the following:

The Bush-haters will tell us that the supreme head of our government and his minions are supremely sinister and fiendish liars (albeit also moronic bumpkins). Then they turn around and tell us that only government can be trusted to vet what we put in our mouths and bodies. I don’t get it….

The larger argument that Russell is making (and we continued the back and forth in the comments over it) is that the government shouldn’t be trusted to do anything because free market forces will invariably do it better. I’m amazed at how often I hear this considering how much evidence there is that it’s not true in a number of circumstances (see: Larry Kudlow looking ridiculous on his own show when defending free market health care against Ezra Klein). The logic behind it is that companies will be so afraid of the financial ramifications of doing things against the public interest (secretly having bad things in their products or implementing cruel labor practices) that it’s pointless to have any kind of oversight by the government. This ignores a massive amount of history and common sense. Companies pursue profits and there have been many situations where that pursuit of profit has run counter to the general welfare of the citizens.

One of the more common ways in which this has happened is when it comes to addictive substances. From the tonics of the 19th century that secretly contained morphine to the cigarette industry of the 20th, companies have often put their pursuit of profit before the public good. These industries weren’t reformed because the corporations stopped seeing the profit potential of their actions, they were reformed because the government established rules (in the case of morphine, laws were created in the late 1800s that forced manufacturers to identify the ingredients of their tonics, causing many of them to immediately go out of business rather than admit their product contained morphine). Not all of the rules that our government has made over the years are perfect – in fact, some have been terrible – but a society is strongest when it allows for free enterprise, but also ensures that government can act as a corrective mechanism that can establish rules and safety nets for a system that, by design, ends up with winners and losers and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Part of the myth that government is useless and unnecessary is rooted in a belief that any time government spends money, it’s an inefficiency. If there were a real need to spend that money, some say (and please feel free to read through this Sound Politics post and the comments if you think I’m just inventing a ridiculous strawman) that it’s only worthwhile to do if an actual person or company sees a profit potential. In this mindset, no roads, schools, or scientific research should ever be funded unless a company saw profit potential in that investment. Otherwise, it’s a waste. I never imagined that I would encounter so many people believing in such oversimplifications, yet I manage to come across it all the time when looking for things on our local right-wing blogs to make fun of. For all of these people, the moon landing must be the greatest boondoggle of all time, especially since some people still aren’t convinced we really went there.

Like the moon landing, there are valuable things that government can do that don’t provide the kind of immediate direct profit potential that a corporation would be interested in. From building transit to improving park space, there are various things that would give a return on investment for an entire community or even the entire country, but wouldn’t make sense for a corporate bottom line. As a capitalist system grows and matures, I believe that it can eventually allow for more and more of these things to be done by private entities (and this often puts me at odds with many liberals), but a belief that there’s some truism that a corporate entity is always the superior option distorts the proper balance we need to have between having the things we need provided for us by those motivated by money and those motivated by the ballot box.

Going back to the Sound Politics post I linked to, the Edmonds School District administration building obtained an espresso machine. The price tag ($10,000) alarmed the Sound Politics peanut gallery and many wailed about how wasteful government spending has become. The only problem is that the espresso machine was bought so that faculty could purchase their morning brews for less money inside the administration building and the proceeds would go towards the district’s general fund and toward school lunches. The machine was expected to pay for itself in less than two years. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t, it was an intelligent use of school budget funds and government doing something smart.

But that’s not how it works among the faith-based capitalism crowd. Whenever government spends money, it’s an inherent inefficiency to them. To demonstrate how this can lead to pure silliness, let’s say there are two cities that each have a park that needs to be refurbished. The first city finds a coalition of business owners and private citizens who pony up the $50,000 for the refurbishing. The second city uses public funds. There’s an argument to be made that the second city is not wisely spending taxpayer money, just as it’s possible that the business owners in the first city might not get what they think they may get back from their investment (good publicity). But what I don’t agree with is the idea that the actual job of refurbishing the park will be done more or less efficiently depending upon which avenue is chosen. The idea that those being paid by a for-profit entity will work harder than those being paid the same rate by a government entity has no basis in any reality that I’m familiar with, yet it’s an article of faith for so many. The issue of accountability usually appears in that theory as well, but anyone who’s ever worked in the private sector can tell you that massive inefficiencies and beaurocracies exist in for-profit entities as well.

Leave it to our friend Stefan to take this idea and go careering over the hills with it.

Last weekend I asked readers to suggest a word to represent the opposite of “Statism”. Thanks to all who participated in the ensuing discussion. Among the best suggestions: classical liberalism, small-l libertarianism, objectivism, Americanism, capitalism. My personal favorite, suggested by Eric Earling, “civic entrepreneurialism”. That best captures the spirit of what I was looking for — civic engagement based on private enterprise, as opposed to state coercion. But I’d still prefer a single snazzy word to represent the concept.

Incidentally, the concept of private initiative in lieu of state coercion is, IMHO, the preferred alternative not only where it is traditionally proposed (e.g. education, social services), but also for traditionally social conservative issues. Take, for example, abortion. This merits a longer post, but if the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, wouldn’t it be more effective for private organizations to deliver positive messages to change people’s minds about the issue, than to expect government intervention to solve the problem?

After I read this post, I sat back in my chair, stroked my goatee, looked up at the ceiling, read it again, thought about driving down the coast this summer, paced around the room a few times, read it a third time, rubbed my temples for a minute and then just turned the computer off. After a few days, I think I’ve got it.

Going back to the example with the parks, Stefan has actually convinced himself that not only can private enterprise refurbish the park more efficiently than government can for that $50,000, but it can do a number of things that government is completely incapable of doing as well.

It’s true that there are a number of things that government can’t do. Following drug policy, I’m well aware of what the limits of government are. Whether it was alcohol prohibition of the 20s or the current drug prohibition, people in our government have been trying to do the impossible. It just can’t deter people from exhibiting irrational behavior, and drug addictions are irrational behaviors. If those irrational behaviors have been shown to be detrimental to others, we obviously demand the government deal with that person, but putting them in jail doesn’t “fix” their irrational behavior – even when the sentence they are given is justified. This is why government-run drug treatment programs have been shown to be very cost effective from a taxpayer standpoint.

But this is very different from establishing rules or openly participating in a marketplace, where people overwhelmingly display more rational behaviors. People may not always make the smartest decisions when it comes to their own finances or running a large corporation, but they tend to have a rational basis for their decisions. As a result, government can be much more effective at using prison or financial penalty as a deterrent and to get people to play by the rules. There will always be a small subset of people who will act irrationally out of greed, and just as those whose drug addictions cause them to violate the freedom of others, they should still be sent to jail (or fined), even it doesn’t deter their irrational behavior without counseling or other psychological help.

For Stefan, and the Sound Politics nut squad, government can’t do anything at all, and beyond that, who knows what things they’ve tried and failed at that the free market can do! People are still having abortions? Hell, we haven’t unleashed the grand power of capitalism at that scourge. A few Wal-Mart funded PSA’s and the abortions just disappear. Haven’t solved drug addiction? Give Bank of America the keys. Can’t defeat terrorism? Try Blackwater (oh wait, we already did that).

Even though government has no ability to make people act responsibly if their motivations are irrational, it does have the ability to be responsible in dealing with those who are acting rationally. In other words, government is mainly useless in changing behaviors done in the pursuit of pleasure, since those behaviors tend to be impulsive or irrational, but it can be useful in dealing with those done in pursuit of profit. The pursuit of profit is a major motivator in life, but it’s not the only one, and government can utilitize other motivators like patriotism, compassion, and scientific curiosity to accomplish things as well. It’s just imperative that we hold the people we put in government accountable for what they’re doing.

Kemper Freeman Jr. doesn’t like the fall roads/transit ballot measure. In fact, he’s funding the opposition. He’s been vocal for years about how he sees transit as a waste of money. Recently, he compared transit supporters to commies and terrorists.

But don’t think Kemper Freeman Jr. isn’t thinking for himself. See, Junior has his own roads plan.

The engineers found that if we simply increased the capacity of the overall road system – 6 percent more lane miles, half of which would be additional lanes on existing freeways, the other half would be additional lanes mostly on existing arterials – we would reduce congestion from today’s level by 36 percent. And it would fully accommodate the 45 percent increase in trips expected over the next 30 years.

Hmm… Only 6 percent more lane miles? But isn’t there another way to reduce congestion the “Freeman Family Way”? I got to thinking.

Kemper Freeman’s Jr.’s grandfather, Miller Freeman, was a renowned racist and white supremacist.

“To-day, in my opinion, the Japanese of our country look upon the Pacific coast really as nothing more than a colony of Japan, and the whites as a subject race.”

Or this:

“My investigation of the situation existing in the city of Seattle convinced me that the increasing accretions of the Japanese were depriving the young white men of the opportunities that they are legitimately entitled to in this State.”

In fact, when Japanese Americans were herded into internment camps, nice businessmen (not unlike Miller Freeman) were kind enough to hold onto their property for them. In fact, some of them still do!

So is there a way to mix Miller Freeman’s racist vision for a “white’s only” region with Kemper Freeman, Jr.’s vision for wide-open freeways? Simple.

Intern The Asians. Stay with me, people.

Asians comprise 12.9% of King County, 7.4% of Snohomish County, and 5.7% of Pierce County [check out the scary facts here]. That means Asian people are more than 6% of the population of the three counties served by Sound Transit and the RTID.

Taking 6% of the region’s drivers off the road will free up highway space for loyal, hardworking Caucasians like me. Also, interning Asian people will be cheaper than building new highways, and we can lock them up quicker than pouring new concrete.

Instead of 6% more highway, how about 6% fewer drivers? As a loyal American, isn’t that my birthright? Isn’t it yours, too?

For the past couple weeks I’ve been hearing rumors of Republican wags bragging that Dan Satterberg has a $180,000 head start in the race to replace the late Norm Maleng as King County Prosecutor. Seemed like an awful lot of money to raise so quickly. But now I understand what they were talking about.

According to a press release issued today by the Washington State Democratic Party:

Top Democrats today responded to widespread rumors that the Republican Party is planning to funnel the $194,000 remaining in the campaign coffers of late King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng into partisan attacks intended to influence the special election this fall to name Maleng’s replacement.

Under state law, it is illegal to transfer so-called “surplus” campaign funds – the money left over after retirement, loss, or death – from one candidate’s accounts directly to that of another candidate. It is, however, legal to donate to charity, or to a party organization— but if the funds do go to a political party, any quid pro quo understanding that the funds will then be donated to or spent in support a particular candidate would run afoul of Washington State’s campaign finance laws.

In the case of the prosecutor’s race, State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz says that if large amounts of cash from Maleng’s campaign coffers are funneled through the Republican Party back to the GOP nominee for the position, Republican Dan Satterberg – as some Satterberg backers have been whispering is likely – it would be tantamount to the sort of illegal and unethical political money laundering that Republicans have become known for on the national level.

“A fair minded leader like Norm Maleng should not have his campaign cash laundered through a Tom Delay-style money machine,” said Pelz, who worked with Maleng during his eight years on the King County Council. “Out of respect for Maleng’s legacy, that money should rightfully go to charity, not to fund attack ads or earmarked to help anoint a partisan replacement.”

Maleng gets a lot of well-deserved credit for having kept politics out of his office, and both Satterberg and Democratic frontrunner Bill Sherman have promised to build on that legacy. But I don’t see how Satterberg can fulfill that pledge if he allows his handlers — such as two-time Bush-Cheney WA State chair Mike McKay — to help him win office by sullying Maleng’s memory through creative accounting.

On the other hand, the rumor I heard may only be just that. Maleng was the co-chair with Gov. Chris Gregoire of the Seattle chapter of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network (CAN). Seattle CAN is holding a long-scheduled fundraising breakfast next Tuesday, June 26, at the Washington Athletic Club, and I’ve also heard rumors that Maleng’s wife Judy will not only be attending in his place, but will announce a “large donation” in his honor.

Now that would be a non-partisan use of surplus campaign funds worthy of Maleng’s legacy.

FYI, tickets for the Seattle CAN breakfast ($100 to $5000) are still available.

UPDATE:
Mike McKay responds:

“No money will be spent directly or indirectly to help (acting prosecutor) Dan Satterberg,” Seattle attorney Mike McKay said unequivocally Tuesday. He said Judy Maleng, the late prosecutor’s widow, “has made that clear.”

That’s good to hear.

Since filing to run as a Democratic candidate for the King County 6th District seat, Richard Pope has been a big hit with both Democrats and Republicans. Wait…I mean, he has gotten big hits from both parties. Goldy recently shared some of the love shown Pope by the King County Democrats.

Last Wednesday, King County Republican Chairman Michael Young, in a weekly e-news update, offered his own moving tribute to Mr. Pope:

I was a bit surprised to see that Republican incumbent County Councilmember in the 6th District, Jane Hague, drew a rather infamous opponent in gadfly [hey!], Richard Pope. Ever since 2002, Pope has been a Republican PCO, only recently discontinuing this status when he didn’t run for reelection in 2006. You can probably understand my bewilderment when he filed as a Democrat against well-liked and longtime King County and national leader, Jane Hague. But then again, his antics over the last decade have proven his willingness to do almost anything for the purpose of self promotion and adulation. I have great disdain for those who cannot pick a side and stay with it. Richard Pope is no friend of the Republican Party and has only succeeded in further diminishing his reputation with both political parties.

(Come on…is it really possible for anyone to “diminishing their reputation” by dropping out of the Republican party? I mean, ‘specially here in Washington state?)

I think the subtext of Michael’s message is, “Thank you, Richard, for your four years of service as a PCO. And thank you for helping us get our finances in order.”

One thing is absolutely clear: Nobody brings people of all political persuasions together in King County as effectively as Richard Pope.

Josh Feit:

Supporting the $904 million on I-405 expansion in this November’s regional transportation plan (the same plan that Seattle voters must vote for if they also want to expand Sound Transit light rail) GOP King County Council Member Reagan Dunn told the Seattle Times:

The I-405 project, especially, will improve traffic for people who must “drive until you qualify” for affordable suburban homes, said King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn. “The benefits are real. It will help young people; it will help our future,” he said.

His point is: People can’t afford to live (“live” meaning big houses, big yards, two car garages) in the city and so, to provide affordable housing we have to provide roads for them.

Josh must not get off the “Hill” much. “Drive Until You Qualify” is not some GOP trick. It’s exists. My folks bought land in what was rural King County, built a house, and raised two kids. My parents weren’t rich; my mom was working in social services, and my dad worked at the gas company. Even back then, gas company wages didn’t get you a house in Seattle. Or Bellevue. Or lots of other places. If they wanted a safe places to raise children, they had to look further away to unincorporated King County.

More Josh:

It’s a clever bit of demagoguery because it plays to the truth that yes, housing is becoming more and more expensive in Seattle. However, the GOP solution is a Catch-22. The more you drive people out to the ‘burbs, the more you keep Seattle from addressing its housing and transportation crisis, because suburban development takes dollars and developers away from transit and in-fill density.

No matter how much Josh Feit protests, young families are not going to buy “in-fill density” in Seattle. Maybe some will, but they are the exception that proves the rule. You can’t force young families into condos. Not when they can buy a house in Algona for the same price.

You can, however, give people options. Let’s build transit- lots more- in the city and elsewhere. Let’s expand HOV lanes. Let’s spend a little less time telling people what they should want and more time giving them options.

Josh has too much passion for correcting other people’s behavior (except when it comes to smoking indoors, in which case Josh is a flaming libertarian!). If Josh thinks the winning strategy is to lecture suburban folks, and to accuse them of defiling the environment, then he’s got another thing coming. People can only be “lectured to” so much. They can, however, be convinced. Perhaps we should try to convince people instead of just pointing fingers at them.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Josh will be joining me on “The David Goldstein Show” tonight at 7PM on 710-KIRO. Will knew that when he posted this. But I guess Will’s not man enough to come down to the studio and say to Josh’s face. He’s afraid of Josh’s passion.

Peter Callaghan of The News Tribune notes that Dwight Pelz sometimes uses baseball analogies when talking politics. And sometimes they’re tortured baseball analogies:

So, Pelz said, having the state’s primary on Feb. 19 is akin to having a ticket to the fifth game of the series – it’s not too late and it’s not too early and it might be just right. Maybe you had to be there. And to think that Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser, not Pelz, is the former sportswriter.

Ahhh…yes, Luke “The Truth” Esser. He began his sports journalism career writing for The Daily, the student newspaper at U-Dub. One of my favorite columns was from 1986, where Luke used an interesting sort of political analogy metaphor allusion in describing a national championship football team:

A prominent associate editor of a great big Seattle paper as much as wrote my name in the loss column after the Husky football team lost to B.Y.U. on national television 31-3. According to Columnist ‘X’ and various B.Y.U. players, some unsavory comments I made about the Cougars the season before (when those polygamists won a national championship there was no way in hell they deserved) were responsible for the 28-point win.

Does this mean Luke isn’t going to be a Mitt Romney supporter?

Immigration is a big, big deal in agricultural communities. Fruit growers, who often vote Republican, know how important immigrant labor is to their industry, so they back common sense reform.

So it’s hilarious to read this about one of Yakima’s state rep’s [From The Other Side] moral quandary:

No part of American agriculture would benefit more from a temporary worker program than our bountiful Yakima Valley – rightfully known as the Fruit Bowl of the Nation.

But apparently Charles Ross, Yakima’s newly elected state representative and lifelong resident of these parts, is a picture of confusion on this vital national and regional issue.

Sunday’s Herald-Republic carried a full-page ad – in purple ink – that delivered this thunderous message: “WE SUPPORT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM.”

The hundreds of names was a list of the pillars of agricuture in Central Washington: the decision-makers, major employers, orchardists, growers, packers and suppliers, many of them members of pioneer families who founded the state’s tree fruit industry.

This impressive group of industry leaders implored Congress to pass an immigration reform package that will strengthen Yakima Valley ag in particular and the American economy in general.

Fast forward to Tuesday’s Herald-Republic and read where Rep. Ross had committed to speak at a rally in downtown Yakima hosted by Grassroots on Fire – a racist organization viscerally opposed to immigration reform of any kind.

Ross canceled his appearance. But the very notion of this legislator playing footsie with the extreme right wing is disturbing to say the least. If he read Sunday’s paper, he probably saw the names of the very people who got him elected last fall – his voter base, solidly rooted in ag.

The GOP doesn’t know who to listen to- their business base or their crazy, racist/nativist base. All the while, the latino/hispanic vote, after flirting with the GOP in ’00 through ’04, is running away from the GOP.

Classic.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is making some very interesting claims:

NATO has intercepted Iranian weapons shipments to Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents, providing evidence Iran is violating international law to aid a group it once considered a bitter enemy, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

“There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN. “It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”

I’ve written a lot about Afghanistan at Reload, and I just want to quickly explain why we should be very skeptical of what Burns is saying. This post will be short on links because I’m on my lunch break, and I don’t have time to look up everything I’ve cited in the past on this.

Long story short, Afghanistan, as we all know, is the major opium producing country in the world – by far. The heroin that’s produced in hidden labs throughout Afghanistan is smuggled out in several different directions, most of which ends up in Europe, but a growing percentage stays in the countries along the smuggling routes (India, Pakistan, Russia, and Iran). Iran actually has one of the worst heroin problems in the world, and this is very clearly something that the theocratic Iranian leadership is not happy about.

The attempts by NATO forces and the Karzai government to destroy the opium production from within Afghanistan is beyond futile. The industry is roughly one half of the entire country’s GDP. You can’t just wipe that out militarily. Even with the unanimous support from outside the country to eliminate the trade, drug smugglers still dominate large areas of Afghanistan – especially in the south. But because the trade is still illegal, and coalition forces still have a mandate to assist the Karzai government in destroying the opium fields, the Taliban have been able to set up a protection racket, where they can collect ‘fees’ from the drug smugglers in exchange for making sure that their fields are spared when the eradication teams come through.

The Taliban doesn’t get paid in stacks of bills, though. Instead, they get paid in something that’s more valuable to them – weapons that they can use to fight the coalition forces. That’s where the Iranians come in. Seeing the massive increase in drug smuggling coming across the Iran-Afghanistan border, the Iranian government began to more heavily patrol the area. The intention was never to arm the Taliban, but that was the inevitable result. The Iranian government is notoriously unable to enforce its own strict laws, and high-ranking Iranian officials were bound to find ways to get in on the massive profits to be made by helping all that heroin make its way to London. This is why Iranian arms have ended up in the arms of the Taliban.

Obviously, these accusations aren’t coming out of nowhere. We’ve got a fleet of warships off the southern Iranian coast and we continue to have dimwitted Congressmen making severe threats against the regime. There’s a strong movement among a small subset of Americans to start a war with Iran, a move that would end in disaster. Those of us who still have our common sense intact need to keep dealing with the facts.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a talk on energy legislation before the Center for American Progress yesterday. He began by offering a few observations about some political colleagues:

My staff told me to make sure that I stayed away from presidential politics today. And I’m going to do that. Other — I’ve learned one thing in listening to all the debates and reading about all these people running for office, and the one fact I’ve learned, I can’t get out of my mind, is that Rudy Giuliani has been married more times than Mitt Romney’s been hunting.…

(Via Political Wire.)

Today’s Seattle P-I covers the candidate filings for this year’s elections. And, once again, HA commenter and political troublemaker, Richard Pope’s name comes up:

Serial candidate and municipal gadfly Richard Pope filed against Councilwoman Jane Hague, R-Kirkland. Although he has run as a Republican in several past races, Pope is a Democrat this time.

Municipal gadfly? What is that supposed to mean? I mean, the papers refer to people as “gadflys” all the time, but municipal gadfly? The term aptly describes Will Baker who has been called that “Tacoma gadfly” (News Tribune, 10 Jun 2004, pg. B06), “[Tacoma’s] most vocal political gadfly” (Seattle P-I, June 5, 2004, pg. B3), and a Tacoma “council gadfly” (News Tribune, 26 Aug 2003, pg. B06).

And then there is Glenn Baldwin who earned the headline “Vancouver Council Gadfly Tosses His Hat in the Ring” in The Columbian (August 03, 1995, pg. A8):

Vancouver City Council candidate Glenn Baldwin says his attendance at council meetings is better than that of the incumbent he’s challenging.
[…]

Once a milk man in Vancouver, Baldwin spent most of his career driving delivery trucks for Blue Bell Potato Chips in Portland. He retired in 1992 and planned to complete several repairs to his house. Instead, he became a City Council gadfly, attending meetings and writing to the council and The Columbian.

The Seattle Weekly once ran an article about dangerous dogs (March 1, 2001, Pg. 16) and mentioned another municipal gadfly:

Mitzi Leibst, a former Army intelligence officer and longtime city gadfly, whose concerns actually extend well beyond last summer’s code changes. “For years and years and years,” she charges, “the city’s gotten away with this kind of fascist mentality on dog bites. Seattle is one of the few jurisdictions in the state that doesn’t allow you to have a dangerous dog. That’s just crazy.”

Crazy, indeed…all we really need is concealed canine permits. Leibst died before a series of high-profile pit bull attacks; she left a sizable sum to the Pigs Peace Sanctuary.

Now those are examples of municipal gadflies.

(Apparently other governmental bodies can have their own fly problem, like former port commissioner Jim Wright, who was called “a port gadfly” by the Seattle Times [12 Sep 1993, pg. B1].)

Richard is an eastsider, and his gadflightery isn’t limited to any municipality, level of government, or even political party. He is more of a generalized political gadfly (and a perennial candidate).

For example, Richard has recently won the love and adoration of State Republicans (like former truck mechanic and failed King County Executive candidate David Irons Jr. and Benton County Republican Party Chair Patrick McBurney) over his PDC complaints about GOP campaign reporting violations. Ever the multi-partisan, Pope has also filed an unsuccessful PDC complaint against the state Democrats, and an ethics complaint against Gov. Gregoire last fall over a dinner date.

And last year, in a move that Ralph Nader could be proud of, Pope threw the election for King County Judge; his candidacy knocked out incumbent Mary Ann Ottinger in the primary and resulted in a victory for Frank V. LaSalata.

Pope is more like his brother-in-perennial-candidacy Michael Shanks, a.k.a., Mike the Mover. Before becoming a perennial candidate, Mr. Mover fought tirelessly (and did some jail time) to get rid of licensing for movers. It earned him his own Seattle P-I (15 Sep 2004) headline calling him a “political gadfly.” The Spokesman Review (15 Sep 2004, A1) referred to him as “perennial political gadfly Mike the Mover.” Most recently Mr. Mover ran against Cantwell for the Senate.

Maybe Pope is more akin to Dale Washam, described as “an unsuccessful office-seeker and political gadfly” by the Columbian (05 Sep 1996, pg. A3). Washam is, perhaps, most famous for suing Newt Gingrich for stealing his ideas when Newt created the “Contract with America.”

Washam, 58, a former Democrat, ran unsuccessfully for the Puyallup School Board in 1991, Pierce County executive in 1992 and Pierce County auditor in 1993.

When Washam won the Republican nomination for auditor, the county GOP chairman said he was voting for the Democratic incumbent.

In each election, Washam filed a notarized “political employment contract” containing campaign promises and a pledge to resign if requested in petitions bearing the names of at least 51 percent of the voters in the last general election. Citizens who felt he violated his campaign promises also could try to oust him with a breach-of-contract suit, he said.

In a complaint, Washam said Gingrich, Eikenberry and the state GOP “plagiarized as their own the plaintiff’s Political Employment Contract idea, concept and contents when drafting their 1994 ‘Republican Contract with Washington State,’ the ‘Contract with America’ and the defendants’ book ‘Contract with America.’ ”

In any case, look for a highly parsimonious campaign from perpetual political gadfly and perennial candidate Richard Pope. Richard is always proud to point out his very high ratio of votes to campaign dollar invested.

Fnarf guest posting over at Slog (yay for guest posters!) has a great post about the Port of Seattle parks. They are a mostly hidden treasure:

For all of the many malfeasances of Mic Dinsmore’s and Pat Davis’s crony operation down on Port 69 (where elected officials and port businesses gather to fellate each other), they did a fantastic and largely unheralded job building a network of waterfront parks. Some of these fulfill the classic parks ideal of picnic tables in a field of grass, but they also don’t shy away from the truth about Seattle’s waterfront. Work goes on there, heavy industrial work, work that is a lot of fun to watch.

These parks are tucked in between working port sites and can be hard to spot. Some of them have sexy, romantic names like “T-105 Park”, but don’t let that put you off. They’re quite pretty, and have lovely river views. The Duwamish lives beneath the radar of most Seattleites, but it is the center of our Indian heritage, our early white settler heritage, and our industrial heritage.

Click over for some great pictures. My only complaint is nary a mention of my favorite Port of Seattle park, Jack Block. The best view of the skyline and some good biking. Near Alki, so well integrated into the Seattle Parks system.

In any event, I’ll have to check out some of the other parks this weekend. If you see someone who seems overdressed, especially given his crazy facial hair, say, “hi” and even if it isn’t me, it’s a nice thing to do.