Drew Stokesbary, asshole.
Lauding him for his pragmatism, the Seattle Times editorial board has endorsed Republican Drew Stokesbary for the open state House seat in the 31st Legislative District. Which I suppose is to be expected, because Stokesbary is a Republican, whereas his main Democratic opponent is a local teachers union president. And if there’s anything the Blethenites hate more than a teacher or a unionist, it’s a teachers unionist.
But what the editors ignore, is that in addition to being a tax averse Republican, Stokesbary is also a bigot, a racist, a sycophant, and a lifelong asshole with absolutely no respect for our state’s voter-approved campaign finance and disclosure laws. This is a guy renowned for heckling professional golfer Curtis Strange, and for telling his immigrant classmates to go back where they came from. This is the kinda guy who complains about a teacher forcing him to read a book by a black author.
In other words, Stokesbary is an asshole.
And it’s not like he’s an especially qualified asshole, either. The Municipal League rated Stokesbary merely “adequate,” while his two opponents received a rating of “good.” And yet the editors claim that such adequate assholery is “crucial if deals are to be struck and gridlock avoided.” Oh please.
The truth is, the editors are infatuated with Stokesbary because he, like them, bizarrely believes the Washington Education Association to be “the most corrupt union in the state.”
Shorter Seattle Times: “We hate teachers unions.”
Well, who would you suggest represents the interests of Enumclaw and its exotic horse stables ?
and slowly the link between promoting Uber and union busting is being revealed
detracting from unionization in any form is big (Koch/ALEC) business.
[aside] does Drew Stokesbary want to appear like Elijah Wood in “Sin City”?
Yabbut….
He was heckling a conservative.
Choosing the conservative route, Strange swung…
http://horsesass.org/the-stokesbary-rules/
Heckling? He was soliciting soft money contributions (illegal) and was at the same time an employee of the BIAW (and he was soliciting them). Unethical, and he a sicko racist – but the Times loves him because he is anti-teachers and anti-union.
Heh, so the modern Nazi party doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. Why don’t they just start spraypainting swastikas around town like the old days?
The Stranger has no stories on Stokesbary either. Ignoring the news is practically an endorsement. And you know that the writers over their aren’t unionized too.
@6 Not unionized yet.
I’m not concerned about this clown. He’s a loser and a whiner. I give it a month or so before he comes out with pictures of him eating watermelon and fried chicken to prove how racist he really isn’t.
“crucial if deals are to be struck and gridlock avoided.”
Yes, if nothing else, our beloved Senate Majority Coalition has shown how well nonconsensually adding un-elected Republicans to elected Democrats helps to strike deals and to avoid gridlock.
Then again, fail to write the Blethen Party Line and you’ll be just another print-media discard, so type type type, happy comrade!
Goldy must be able to do better than this. I have no fucking interest in Stokesberry but Goldy’s invective seems overblown.
For example, calling Stokesberry a racist for finding Gordon Parks’ book less than awesome and mentioning that the book’s author was a black man writing his biography, is more than a bit of an exaggeration. For the record, Parks was a MUCH better photographer than a writer. The book is hardly oin a league with The Lonely Man.
As for Goldy’s rant about Stokesberry not liking the AFT, the guy may be a GOP nutcase but he is hardly alone as finding fault with the WA state teachers unions. … remember we are the ONLY state not to meet federal requirements for school and teacher evaluations!
Now of course Goldy will scold me for being kindly t the GOP. That is (in the spirit of HA) horse pucky.
Unions have only two purposes, raising money for liberals and making sure that bad employees are hard to fire.
@11:
@11 And corporations have only one purpose, making the rich even richer.
@ 11
You left off skimming off the top for themselves.
@ 12
Same link, pp 587-8:
“Workmen may combine lawfully for their own protec-
tion and common benefit; for the advancement of their own
interests, for the development of skill in their trade, or to pre-
vent overcrowding therein, or to encourage those belonging
to their trade to enter their guild; for the purpose of raising
wages, or to secure a benefit which they can claim by law.
The moment, however, that they proceed by threats, intimidation, violence, obstruction, or molestation, in order to secure
their ends; or where their object be to impoverish third
persons, or to extort money from their employers, or to ruin
their business, or to encourage strikes or breaches of contract among others, or to restrict the freedom of others for the
purpose of compelling employers to conform to their views,
or to attempt to enforce rules upon those not members of
their association, they render themselves liable to indictment.
It’s cherry-picking season.
That aside, thanks for posting the link.
@14, 15…
Nice vacuous comments from the resident vacuous prick.
@16,
And you are not bottom dweller?
Puuuuuh-lease!
Remember DUMMOCRETIN hero FDR wasn’t a union friend either… http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15445
Remember, the idiots at Daily Kooks claimed otherwise until Politifact called the clueless Daily Kooks on their lies… http://www.politifact.com/wisc.....governmen/
SJ wrote:
“remember we are the ONLY state not to meet federal requirements for school and teacher evaluations!”
Not even remotely true: virtually every state receives a waiver from those pesky evaluations, but our waiver was yanked because we declined to use the results of high-stakes tests as the core component of teacher evaluation. In fact, student achievement IS a component in evaluation in Seattle in particular and in Washington in general, as our current Superintendent pointed out to Arne “I spent the absolute minimum time in a classroom because I know nothing about teaching” Duncan.
A large number of other states do exactly the same, or in fact do considerably less in the way of organized and objective evaluations, but oddly, they have not lost their waivers. The real reason, of course, is charter schools: if corporate hogs can’t get their snouts in the public-school trough, the state must be punished until they can – and while WA now does have a scheme that allows charter schools, there are as yet no charters in the state (although there are a few who claim to be pending; we’ll see).
The _Seattle Times_ also endorsed liar John Koster for the House in 2012. This endorsement happened before Koster, like a lot of other Repugnikans, said some stupid things about rape. I didn’t see an apology or un-endorsement from the _Times_ afterward.