Archives for 2010

Just days after the controversy over Dino Rossi headlining a foreclosure investment seminar, Hotline On Call’s got the scoop about the Ballard apartment complex the senate-maybe-wannabe and his partners recently bought out of foreclosure.

Why’s this such a big deal? Because Rossi’s surrogates went out of their way to deny that Rossi had anything to do with the lucrative business of making money on other people’s foreclosure misfortune:

That stands at odds with statements some GOPers have made defending Rossi’s decision to headline a foreclosure conference next week. Rossi will be the featured guest, as first reported by Hotline OnCall, a move that has WA Dems giddy; they have trotted out victims of foreclosure to slam Rossi for his involvement.

“The context of his remarks focus on sharing his story about how he got his start in the commercial real estate business,” one GOPer familiar with Rossi’s remarks told Hotline OnCall earlier this week. “They have nothing to do with foreclosures and in fact, Dino has had no involvement with foreclosure investments throughout his real estate career.”

Now Rossi spokesperson Mary Lane Strow is defending Rossi’s foreclosure investments as job-creating economic benevolence, which I suppose would have been a more effective spin had it been made before he denied having any foreclosure investments at all. I’m just sayin’.

A few days back I accused the Seattle Times editorial board of selectively championing taxpayers, “you know, when it suits its purposes,” so it was kinda amusing to see Joni Balter pick up the same exact meme in yesterday’s column attacking Mayor Mike McGinn: “A tax protector when it suits.”

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn worries that cost overruns on the downtown deep-bore tunnel will hurt taxpayers, so he plans to veto formal agreements related to the viaduct-replacement project.

To the uninitiated, the mayor is looking out for us. But the mayor is only a friend of taxpayers when it suits his agenda.

The same mayor said he wants Seattle residents to pay for light rail on the west side of the city — which is so full of pitfalls and unknowns it could cost hundreds of millions of dollars or more. And he wants light rail across the Highway 520 bridge, in addition to already-agreed-upon light rail across Interstate 90. Presumably, Seattleites and Eastsiders would be on the hook for this, though no price or source of revenue has been identified.

A tax protector one day becomes a big spender the next.

Pot, meet kettle.

Balter goes on to lambast McGinn for championing the Parks Levy that was widely passed by voters in 2008, a truly ridiculous argument that I was planning to thoroughly deconstruct before Slog’s Dominic Holden got there first, so I might as well just blockquote him:

She’s got it backwards when she says that McGinn is pushing expenses on taxpayers. Taxpayers signed up for the cost of parks and light rail (that the Seattle Timesopposed). And McGinn says that if residents want more light rail, the taxpayers would have to vote on that, too. But the tunnel tab is being pushed on taxpayers who didn’t sign up for it. In fact, the one time when the public had a say in a tunnel, albeit a different sort of tunnel, they rejected it. McGinn—like or dislike his politics or strategy—is trying to protect taxpayers from something they didn’t commit to. It’s not the same thing and nobody should be duped by this comparison.

See the difference, Joni? The Parks Levy and Link Light Rail, these were both approved by voters, as would be McGinn’s proposed in-city light rail extension, should it come into being. But the Big Bore? Not so much. Yeah sure, McGinn is opposed to the tunnel on ideological grounds, but he’s got a pretty damned good argument to make about protecting taxpayers from shouldering cost overruns from a state managed project they didn’t vote for, and that is the most expensive, least studied and by far the riskiest of the three major Viaduct replacement alternatives.

As Dominic further points out, Balter also dramatically overstates the cost to the city’s general fund of operating and maintaining new parks acquisitions ($160,000 in 2011, not the $750,000 Balter claims), but I think more shameful is the way she conflates by inference general fund revenues with those from special purpose voter approved levies:

In the next month or so, you will hear cries from all quarters about cuts coming to police, fire, libraries, parks and social services. Woulda coulda shoulda. What if we didn’t bless every spending measure that comes our way? What if we deferred park acquisition a few years? How many cops and library hours could we buy with maintenance and operating funds dedicated to new parks — an estimated $750,000 in 2011 and $1.8 million by 2015. A cop costs $100,000 a year and a one-week library closure saves about $650,000.

Perhaps Balter understands the way city budgets work, but I’d wager the majority of voters don’t, and columns like hers don’t do much to educate the public. The voter approved levies and sales taxes dedicated to things like parks and light rail have little or nothing to do with the general operating budget, which is almost entirely funded through the city’s statutory property, sales and B&O tax authority, not through voter approved special taxes. The two have nothing to do with each other.

Like the county, the city’s property tax revenues have been capped at one percent annual growth, thanks to the incredibly stupid and unsustainable limits imposed by I-747, and then reimposed by a cowardly legislature after that measure was tossed out by the courts. This forced the city to rely even more on sales and B&O taxes, thus exacerbating the revenue shortfall during this prolonged economic downturn. That’s the real cause of our budget crisis: a bad economy and an inadequate tax structure.

So to even suggest that our budget problems stem from parks levies and light rail is just plain stupid. Or disingenuous. Or both.

The Stranger was quick to pick up the story, as was Publicola. The Seattle P-I and the TNT covered it, if only on their blogs. And this morning it hit the front page of Daily Kos.

But so far we’ve heard nothing but crickets from the Seattle Times in regards to the leaked audio of Rep. Dave Reichert explaining is cynical environmental votes to a roomful of Republican PCOs.

Huh. Feel free to speculate why.

Last week, an investigation into a Tacoma medical marijuana dispensary (which is still illegal in this state) led to three raids by the West End Narcotics Enforcement Team – also known as WestNET. Two of the raids were in Tacoma, while a third was in Olalla, just west of Vashon Island. The Seattle Weekly reports on the Olalla raid:

Christine Casey, patient coordinator of North End Club 420, tells the Weekly that the detectives from the West Sound Narcotics Enforcement Team (WestNet) who came to her house in Olalla (west of Vashon Island) handcuffed her 14-year-old son for two hours and put a gun to his head. They also told the kid to say good-bye to his dad, Guy Casey, because the dispensary owner was going to prison.

And as the detectives looked for cash to prove that the dispensary was illegally profiting from pot sales, Casey says, they confiscated $80 that her 9-year-old daughter had received from her family for a straight-A report card. Where did they find it?

In the girl’s Mickey Mouse wallet, according to Casey. She also claims that the cops dumped out all her silverware, busted a hole in the wall, and broke appliances. She alleges too that the cops finger-wrote “I sell pot” in the dust covering the family’s Hummer, which the cops then seized. (WestNet did not return repeated calls seeking comment.)

It’s worth keeping in mind that WestNET is the same agency that allegedly tried to poison Bruce and Pamela Olson’s dogs before raiding their home in 2007. The dogs required $2,000 in vet bills. Bruce Olson, also of Olalla, was eventually acquitted of all charges against him after the police informant who claimed to have bought marijuana from Olson was deemed by the jury to have zero credibility.

Once again, WestNET is claiming that a “police operative” repeatedly bought marijuana from the Caseys without showing a medical marijuana authorization. The Caseys deny it. If the Caseys are telling the truth, it’s just another reason to put pressure on our state’s Congressional delegation to eliminate WestNET’s federal funding.

But that’s not the only wrongdoing being alleged here. Sensible Washington, the group running the I-1068 campaign, says that WestNET also seized a number of signed I-1068 petitions:

Sensible Washington has learned that one dozen signed copies of I-1068, the marijuana legalization initiative for Washington State of which Sensible Washington is the sponsor, were seized last week by the federally-funded WestNet drug task force. Our estimate is that 200 signatures are sitting in WestNet’s offices in Port Orchard, apparently seized as evidence during a series of raids against the North End Club 420 in Tacoma. The club is operating as a medical marijuana dispensary.

We have made repeated calls to WestNet’s office, but have yet to receive any assurance that the task force’s personnel have secured the signed petitions and that they plan to promptly return them to Sensible Washington.

I’m trying to determine if WestNET would be violating any specific laws by refusing to turn over signed petitions. I’ll update this post if I get an answer.

UPDATE: Josh Farley is reporting that WestNET will return the petitions.

UPDATE 2: The Port Orchard Independent still has its head in the sand.

CQ thinks Sarah Palin’s Twitter/Facebook endorsement of French-American patriot Clint Didier “puts a little pressure on” HA’s favorite two-time gubernatorial loser:

If Dino Rossi, a former state senator in Washington, gets into the race to take on Sen. Patty Murray (D), it’ll immediately become a contest of Sarah Palin versus the D.C. establishment.

Yeah, I guess. At least that’ll be the media narrative.

Like I said, the top-two format makes it hard to imagine Didier clawing past Rossi in the August primary, but it sure would be fun to watch. And it sure would poison the well for Rossi amongst Tea Party voters in a 2012 gubernatorial primary face-off against Rob McKenna. That is, assuming there still is a Tea Party in 2012.

I don’t mean to rub it in too much to my friends in the environmental community, but following up on yesterday’s piece about Rep. Dave Reichert’s embarrassing leaked audio, I just can’t help but post a copy of this invitation to a Reichert fundraiser held this March, hosted by Washington Conservation Voters executive director Kurt Fritts and a bevy of WCV board members.

Reichert is heard on tape bragging to a closed-door gathering of Republican PCOs about how he’s cynically taken the environmental community “out of the game” in his “50/50 district” with a few well placed, pandering votes, but in fact, he’s being all too modest. Far from kneecapping him, like enviros did to Rep. Pombo in California, the WCV actually held Reichert a fundraiser. And for what? A 64 percent rating on the League of Conservation Voters National Scorecard?

64 percent. Last time I checked, 64 percent was a “D” grade.

Now I’m not questioning the intentions of the WCV folks who attended that funder (well, maybe Bruce Agnew’s), but come on… that’s one helluva curve. Reichert does barely enough to get a passing grade, then brags to Republican PCOs about how he’s duped you… and you give him money!

Me, on the other hand, I passionately and genuinely defend your issues, and yet I don’t think I’ve seen a single WCV board member contribute to my fundraiser.

Huh. So how cynical do I have to be in order to earn your financial support?

Or so she says on her Twitter feed:

Go to www.ClintDidier.org to be inspired by patriot running for U.S.Senate to serve his state & our country for all the right reasons!Go #86

Again, I don’t give the teabaggers much of a chance of denying Dino Rossi one of the top two spots in our top-two primary, but they sure could make life uncomfortable for him should he choose to run, and earn him some lifelong enemies should he later choose to face off against Rob McKenna in the 2012 gubernatorial race.

Yet more gristle for Rossi to chew on.

– This post from Nate Silver was from before Tuesday’s primaries, but it’s worth re-posting up now that the primaries showed anti-establishment candidates winning all over. What Silver finds is that polling is showing that the Democratic anti-establishment candidates are giving Democrats a better chance to win in November, while the Republican anti-establishment candidates have worse chances to win in November. In other words, Rand Paul may have won big in his primary, but Trey Grayson was likely the better candidate to win the general election. But the opposite was true for Joe Sestak, who polled better against Toomey in the days and weeks leading up to Tuesday.

– There’s a rally to protest the extradition and trial of Marc Emery – this Saturday from 2-4 at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building in downtown Seattle.

– Mexican President Felipe Calderon addresses Congress this morning, where they will greet him warmly and then completely ignore everything he has to say and continue to not care about what’s happening in Mexico or how to fix it.

Don’t get the joke? Here’s the original (which is almost as funny as the parody).

Rep. Dave Reichert’s “conscience-driven independent streak” was on display once again last week in a closed-door meeting with 8th Congressional District Republican PCO’s, where the three-term congressman attempted to defend the strategy behind his handful of pro-environmental votes. But before speaking frankly, he had to make sure that he was amongst friends:

Now, first of all, are there any reporters in the room? Does anybody recognize … are there any people in here that you recognize as strangers? So we know that all of us in here are family, right?

Well, apparently not, hence the leak of this secretly recorded audio from the meeting, which I now provide to you, totally unedited:

[audio:https://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/ReichertEnvironment.mp3]

Aren’t full-featured smart phones wonderful?

Rep. Reichert goes on to explain the “certain moves, chess pieces, strategies” he must employ to hold his “50/50 district,” even if it means breaking with his party, and his conscience, to occasionally cast a vote in favor of the environment.

Uh, I just wanted to be honest with you. You know Jennifer Dunn was an environmentalist, uh, in her votes, too. Uh, she was also pro-choice. I don’t know if most of you remember that now. But, but, if you want to hold on to this district, there are certain, there are certain things that you must, uh, do. This is a 50/50 district.

Notice how Reichert distinguishes between being an environmentalist, and being an environmentalist in one’s votes. That’s kinda the whole theme here.

Now if you look at Senator Brown’s race, uh, he took, in order for him to win that race in Massachusetts, it took 60 percent of the independent votes to win. Now you may not get, if you watch Senator Brown’s votes now over the next six years you might say, “What the heck… why did we vote for him?” you know, Massachusetts people. But he’s going to be maybe 70/30, maybe he’s going to be an 80/20, but at least you don’t have a 99 percent/one. You know 99 D, one percent R. Uh, you have a 70/30, 80/20. You have got to pick your battles.

Hear that? You gotta pick your battles. And while Reichert loves to regale his audiences with tales of being shot at, and staring the Green River Killer straight in the eyes (indeed, at almost six and a half minutes, this may be the longest I’ve ever heard Reichert go without mentioning his stint as sheriff), hell if he’s gonna take on those scary, hemp-wearing, granola-crunching, tree-hugging environmentalists.

Uh, if you look at the Pombo race in California – all of you remember Mr. Pombo? – he was a 20 percent. He had 20 percent victory in California. He was a huge roadblock to the environmentalists. They came in – was it two years ago we lost? – two or four years ago he lost. The environmental groups came in with millions of dollars and flipped that 20 percent, 20 points, they flipped that district. He lost.

And Reichert…?

I only have two to three percent to play with, every two years, and I have to raise three to four million dollars to stay in, to do it. I am a 90/10. 90 to 10, if you look at my votes. All the TARP votes are no, all the stimulus package votes are no, the health care I’ve been no all three times.

Let’s be clear: Reichert is no environmental leader, and he sure as hell doesn’t want to be perceived as one, at least not behind closed Republican doors. He votes 90% with his Republican leadership, and that other 10%…? Well, that’s just what he needs to do in order to keep those big, bad environmentalists from kneecapping him the same way they did poor Rep. Pombo.

Wild Sky was a done deal. It was already in its process. It had been worked on for eight years before I even came to Congress. Jennifer Dunn endorsed Wild Sky, and I followed in her footsteps per her advice.

[…] So, uh, you know, it, it, it, was it was a good vote. It was a good move on my part to do that.  … Because I’ve only, I’ve, supported Wild Sky, I’ve supported Alpine Lakes, because of the reasons that I just laid out to you. They are – what I’ve done is taken out I’ve taken them out of the game in this district. They’re out.

Hear that, Washington Conservation Voters and other environmental groups? Reichert has taken you “out of the game” in his district. You’re out.  So… how’s it feel to be played by Dave Reichert?

And it’s not like we all didn’t have a heads up, for this isn’t the first time Reichert has publicly said a little more than he probably should’ve about his brand of pragmatic politics… for example this 2006 speech before the Mainstream Republicans in which he insists on detailing the obvious:

And so when the leadership comes to me and says, “Dave we need you to take a vote over here, because we want to protect you and keep this majority,” I do it.

Of course, less surprising than Reichert’s repeated admission that he blatantly panders to environmentalists in order to maintain his 90% Republican voting record in his 50/50 district, is that the Seattle Times rewarded him for it by outrageously lauding him as a “conscience-driven independent.”

How embarrassing. And not just for the Times. For while environmental leaders may feel like they’ve scored a strategic victory by strong-arming Reichert into compliance, their narrow focus on their own legislative agenda ends up hurting the broader agenda of the progressive community as a whole. WA-08 is a 50/50 district with a congressman who votes 90/10, at least partially because environmental groups have failed to hold Reichert responsible for his hypocrisy.

Were he representing a more conservative district, that might be acceptable, but we could do much better than that in WA-08… if only environmental voters in his district would take Reichert at his word, rather than his vote.

Publicola claims Dino Rossi has finally managed to hire a campaign manager, and will announce his candidacy next week. Huh. We’ll see.

But the speculation gets me thinking.

If Rossi runs, it’s only because he thinks he has a pretty damn good chance of winning, but getting in this late, he’ll have no chance to make this race competitive without an awful lot of independent expenditures on his behalf… you know, 10 to 20 million dollars or so.

So one can only assume that he wouldn’t jump into this race without assurances of substantial independent expenditure campaigns, but, if he already has these assurances, they won’t really be all that independent, now will they?

What they will be is financed almost exclusively by out-of-state interests. National organizations like the ever-meddling U.S. Chamber, or shady, swift-boat-veterans-like groups fronting for wealthy business interests and ultra-right-wing ideologues. You won’t see the Washington Association of Realtors spending big money championing Rossi, or local companies like Boeing or Microsoft. Hell, you won’t even see the lying bastards at the BIAW play much in this race.

Yes, if Rossi jumps in, it’s because he’s damn confident that out-of-state interests will fulfill their promise to spend big money to take out Washington’s senior Senator and the power and influence she brings to the citizens of Washington state. Watch for it.

If Dino Rossi was waiting for yesterday’s long anticipated primaries to augur Republican prospects this cycle, I wouldn’t expect him to jump into the U.S. Senate race anytime soon.

NRSC chair John Cornyn has promised Rossi his full support, but that didn’t work out so well for Kentucky Attorney General Trey Grayson, who got trounced in his Republican senate primary against teabagger candidate Rand Paul. Nobody’s suggesting that Clint Didier or Sean Salazar have much of a chance of clawing past him in our state’s top-two primary, but I wonder if Rossi is up for a spirited challenge from the right, especially when he obviously can’t count on the NRSC to cover his flank?

Meanwhile, if there is a Big Red Wave on the horizon, you sure wouldn’t know it from PA-12, where Democrat Mark Critz beat Republican Tim Burns 53%-45% in a special election to fill the seat of the late Rep. John Murtha. PA-12 is a classic swing district — the only congressional district in the nation to go for Kerry in 2004 and McCain in 2008 — the type Republicans need to easily take away from Dems this November if they’re to produce the big gains they’re promising. Didn’t happen.

And as bad a night as it was for Republicans, it was also pretty good for progressives, with the more progressive Democrat winning senate primaries in Kentucky and Pennsylvania, two states where voters will now have a stark left/right contrast come November, and where arguably, the stronger Democrat was left standing. And in Arkansas, incumbent Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln now faces a June 8th runoff against progressive Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, a race I’d wager Halter stands the better chance of winning.

All in all, I found last night’s election results almost as satisfying as the Philadelphia Flyers 3-0 win over the Montreal Canadiens.

– Specter goes down

– The Korean War – still going on

– Ryan Grim points out that the truly despicable Mark Souder is now seeking forgiveness for moral transgressions after never believing in such a thing as a Congressman.

– Daniel Jack Chasan in Crosscut claims that Attorney General Rob McKenna’s lawsuit against the health care bill isn’t as ridiculous as most legal experts think it is. But what I found interesting was that on page 2, McKenna tries to address the hypocrisy of being outraged by the new health care bill, despite not being previously outraged by the ruling that set the most recent precedent for interpreting the Commerce Clause, Gonzales v. Raich. In fact, McKenna happily used that ruling to go after medical marijuana patients in this state. Here’s what Chasan reported:

McKenna concedes that five years ago in Raich, Justice Antonin Scalia concurred with the majority ruling that the commerce clause enabled Congress to seize marijuana plants being grown legally — allegedly for medical purposes — under California law. (Talk about strange bedfellows: Scalia concurred in the majority opinion written by John Paul Stevens, while Clarence Thomas joined Sandra Day O’Connor’s dissent.) But pot-growing is activity, not inactivity, McKenna notes, and besides, marijuana is clearly traded in interstate commerce.

Here’s part of the ruling from Gonzales v. Raich:

Cases decided during that “new era,” which now spans more than a century, have identified three general categories of regulation in which Congress is authorized to engage under its commerce power. First, Congress can regulate the channels of interstate commerce. Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146, 150 (1971). Second, Congress has authority to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and persons or things in interstate commerce. Ibid. Third, Congress has the power to regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Ibid.; NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 37 (1937). Only the third category is implicated in the case at hand.

Our case law firmly establishes Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. See, e.g., Perez, 402 U.S., at 151; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 128—129 (1942). As we stated in Wickard, “even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.” Id., at 125. We have never required Congress to legislate with scientific exactitude. When Congress decides that the “ ‘total incidence’ ” of a practice poses a threat to a national market, it may regulate the entire class. See Perez, 402 U.S., at 154—155 (quoting Westfall v. United States, 274 U.S. 256, 259 (1927) (“[W]hen it is necessary in order to prevent an evil to make the law embrace more than the precise thing to be prevented it may do so”)). In this vein, we have reiterated that when “ ‘a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence.’ ” E.g., Lopez, 514 U.S., at 558 (emphasis deleted) (quoting Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 196, n. 27 (1968)).

The lines that McKenna is trying to draw here between the two cases simply don’t matter within the context of the Gonzales v. Raich decision. There’s no distinction made between activity and inactivity or any reason to believe that failing to be insured wouldn’t be considered an “activity”. Congress can establish requirements for possessing health insurance because the lack of health insurance by large numbers of citizens would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Second, in the Gonzales v. Raich decision, they specifically addressed the case where the marijuana is not sold and never part of any market. What was decided was that even in that case, price fluctuations could theoretically cause the marijuana to enter the market, therefore it was within the scope of the Commerce Clause to regulate it.

That’s the aspect of the decision that never sat well with me, but there isn’t even an equivalent argument to be made for what McKenna is arguing. In a regulated health care system (which not even McKenna is saying Congress can’t implement), if you establish a rule that health care providers can’t reject people with pre-existing conditions, then you have to implement something to keep people from just waiting until they get sick before they buy insurance. Otherwise, the system goes bankrupt. And that’s done through either mandates or taxes. I don’t see any way that the Supreme Court would rule that one method is fine (implementing taxes), but the other is unconstitutional. And neither do most legal experts from what I can tell.

It’s election night! So, please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics the way God intended it: over a pint of ale. We meet at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.. The fun officially starts at 8:00 pm, but earlier works too.

The polls have closed in tonight’s three primary states. A teabagger has upset the mainstream Republicans in Kentucky. Pennsylvania has a very exciting Democratic primary Senate race that too close to call.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 341 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Well, if Dino Rossi doesn’t end up running for the U.S. Senate, don’t assume it’s because he’s afraid of losing to three-term incumbent Sen. Patty Murray. It may just be that he’s too busy profiting off of the misfortune of others:

Ex-state Sen. Dino Rossi (R), a possible NRSC recruit to take on Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), can’t catch a break these days. The latest: He’s a featured guest next week at an event teaching real estate investors how they can profit off of foreclosures.

An invitation for the May 25 event hosted by Steven Marshall, a partner in the Homeowner Conference, begins thusly: “With the current financial and real estate meltdown an opportunity has been created like never before in history.” So Rossi, touted both as the ’08 GOV nominee and principal of Coast Equity Partners, and a panel of other investors are teaming up for a dinner at the Bellevue Maggiano’s to teach real estate investors some tricks about the market.

Among the tips you’ll learn from Rossi and friends: “How to consistently earn over a 50% ROI per year buying and selling foreclosures.”

Yup, while most of us are just struggling to pay our mortgages and keep our homes, Rossi is leading a seminar on how to get rich quick off the foreclosure crisis. Can’t get much more populist than that.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Washington Association of Realtors endorsed Sen. Murray?