Goldy

Former FEMA director Michael Brown has been in the news recently for his bizarre insistence that President Obama purposely created the largest oil spill in history… but then, as the video above shows, Brown has a long history of bizarrely blaming others for man-made disasters.

Still, if Brown wants to blame me for exposing his lack of emergency management experience, I’m happy to take the credit, but… well… you can’t eat congressional testimony — not even Brownie’s — so it’s gonna take an awful lot more than accolades like that to keep me blogging. You know… I need money. Cold hard cash.

I haven’t blogged recently on my ongoing $25,000 fundraiser, if only to make a point that when I don’t nag folks to contribute, I don’t get many contributions. In the three weeks since I launched the fundraiser I’ve now received 109 individual contributions totaling $5427.37, or roughly $50 per contribution. Thank you for your generosity.

But that’s still below the total number of contributors and contributions over the one week fund drive I held two years ago, so I know the HA community as a whole can do better.

In addition to the individual contributions, I’ve also now received institutional donations and pledges totaling an additional $5,200, thanks to $2,500 sponsorships from UFCW 21 and SEIU 775, and a $200 donation from the King County Democrats. I hope to announce more sponsorships shortly.

I know $25,000 seems like a lot of money, but it’s really just the bare minimum I need to keep me blogging full time through the end of the year, and living pretty frugally at that. So if you value the work I do and the contributions I’ve made, please give generously today.

I’d like to pose a hypothetical to those of you who oppose new government restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions… a thought experiment if you will.

Suppose for a moment that climate change is not the obvious hoax that it is, perpetrated by Al Gore and 99% of the scientific community to some mysterious, nefarious end. Let’s just pretend that the evidence for climate change is overwhelming, that the earth is warming, that the environmental and economic impact will be devastating, and that it is absolutely conclusive that not only are these changes largely due to the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, but that an immediate and substantial cut in these emissions could in fact lessen, delay and perhaps ultimately reverse the dramatic climatic shift mankind has set into motion.

Now hypothetically, just for the sake of argument, let us assume that you, being a reasonable and rational person, faced with overwhelmingly conclusive scientific evidence, accept all these (admittedly fantastical) assumptions as fact.

So… would you still oppose government restrictions on carbon emissions? Or, knowing that we are choking ourselves into an environmental disaster, would you still argue that the market should be free to do what the market will do?

Honestly. I want to know whether it is worth even trying to persuade you, or whether you would simply oppose any government interference in the private sector, regardless of the consequences or the facts?

In a bold, visionary editorial today, the Seattle Times strongly condemned the Seattle General Strike of 1919.

Or maybe I misread it, and they’re merely attempting to advise the government of Greece, which I suppose would make sense considering that about as many folks in Athens take the Times’ editorials seriously as we do here in Seattle.

Or perhaps the Times intends the Greek crisis as a cautionary tale for our own budget writers, but that would be stupid considering our own record deficits don’t even come close to the Greeks’ percentage wise, and are temporarily hopped up on the stimulus spending that kept our economy from falling off a cliff.

I dunno. Very confusing.

That half-hour, thousand-point, momentary drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average today? Oops…

In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses—all apparently due to a trader error.

According to multiple sources, a trader entered a “b” for billion instead of an “m” for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble.

During this afternoon’s half-hour ride, P&G fell from $60 to $39.37, then back again, eventually closing at $60.75. But that was nothing compared to Accenture, which over the course of a single minute plunged from $40 a share to one penny. Accenture shot back up to close at $41.09, down 2.6% for the day.

How fucked up is this? Both NASDAQ and the NYSE have announced that they would cancel all trades were a stock moved more 60% from it’s price at 2:40 PM, but there are sure to be parties who will have made or lost fortunes on today’s market… um… “glitch.”

So yeah, I guess the Republicans are right… Wall Street doesn’t just doesn’t need government regulators getting in the way of its smooth operations.

Day four, and I still don’t have my DSL restored.

After several unfulfilled assurances by phone and email, I called Qwest this morning fairly resigned, and the tech support rep I reached wasn’t much more enthusiastic. He didn’t even try to reset my line or reprogram my modem. He just insisted that it was too old and slow to deliver the 7 Mbps service it had delivered reliably up until the moment Qwest fucked with my line Monday morning, and rather than wasting anymore time for either of us, he offered to send me a new one, free of cost.

That means I won’t be back up until tomorrow, or possibly Monday. Assuming the new modem works. But at least that’s better than the status quo, so I accepted.

The main reason I refused to upgrade to 12 Mbps was that I didn’t feel like dealing with the support hassle, and potentially being left without service for a day or more. I guess Qwest showed me.

My trolls like to disparage me as a Darcy Burner fanboy, but I’m much more pragmatic than most folks imagine, for while other local bloggers had quickly lined up behind Darcy by the early fall of 2005, I insisted on waiting until after I saw who else might jump into the race.

In fact, I didn’t merely wait, but rather proactively reached out to then Republican state Rep. Fred Jarrett, urging him to challenge incumbent Dave Reichert… as a Democrat. And Fred’s thoughtful response not only deepened my respect for him, but ultimately convinced me that Darcy’s relative youth was an asset, not a liability:

I’m honored you’d make such a suggestion.  Thanks.  The truth is that I’m too old to run for Congress.  It would be a waste of the state’s time.  We need someone at the oldest in their early 40s (early-to-mid-30s would be best) to be Norm Dicks’ replacement.  Notice what his seniority has done for the state, or better still, look at how the South has been able to dominate national legislative policy through their “seniority strategy.”  All of Robert Caro’s books on LBJ demonstrate this in spades.

I hope that Fred doesn’t mind me publishing our private correspondence these years later, but his words of advice came back to me on news of Rep. David Obey’s retirement, and the likely elevation of Washington’s own Rep. Norm Dicks to the chairmanship of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Like it or not, a substantial segment of our state’s economy has long been dependent on our national military-industrial complex. Turn up your nose at such “pork barrel politics,” but that Air Force tanker contract for example, it’s gonna create jobs — either here in blue Washington, or to a lesser extent in red Alabama — and whatever the technical merits of Boeing’s bid, our aerospace workers would be at a severe competitive disadvantage without a powerful congressional delegation to back them up.

Likewise Washington is constantly competing with other states for billions of dollars of federal grants for education, health care, transportation, and other critical services and infrastructure projects. Again, it’d be nice to be more high-minded about it, but that wouldn’t get us very far in such an adversarial appropriations process.

So while Dicks might not be my favorite member of our state’s House delegation, he’s by far its most powerful, and thus we all have a selfish stake in his ascension to the Appropriations chair, and in assuring that Democrats maintain control of Congress. That’s something voters in WA-03 might want to consider as they fill the open seat down in that swing district; if Democrats lose control of the House, Dicks will lose much of his ability to help his colleagues bring home the bacon. And we all love bacon.

The same, by the way, holds true for Sen. Patty Murray. As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the chair of its subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, Murray has played a key role in securing federal dollars for vital local projects. Billions of dollars for Hanford cleanup? Thank Sen. Murray. $813 million to finish the Link Light Rail tunnel from Westlake to the UW? Sen. Murray has been Sound Transit’s “chief patron.” The federal dollars needed to fix the failing Howard Hanson dam? It’s Sen. Murray who is leading the charge in the other Washington.

It takes years to build up that kind of seniority and power. Decades. Sen. Murray is one of the most powerful Democrats in the U.S. Senate. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that she could even be Majority Leader come January, 2011. So lose Sen. Murray and Washington state stands to lose billions of dollars in desperately needed federal money. That’s just the way the system works.

And that’s why, for example, I expect the Seattle Times to endorse Sen. Murray this November, regardless of her opponent. And I’ve proven pretty uncanny in predicting Seattle Times endorsements.

Yeah, sure, the economy sucks, and it’s always cathartic to send politicians a message. But Washington state simply does not have that luxury when it comes to senior congressional leaders like Rep. Dicks and Sen. Murray, and the Democratic majority that grants them their power. Thus wherever you stand ideologically, it is hard to argue that a Republican wave this November would be in the interest of Washington state.

Just to be clear, the police only found a small amount of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor, but prosecutors tacked on a charge of child endangerment just to be assholes. Of course, what isn’t child endangerment apparently, is having a SWAT team kick down a front door in the middle of the night and shoot a kid’s dogs in front of him.

This is crazy. Absolutely crazy. How can anybody defend a national drug policy that leads to this?

The latest Elway Poll shows Sen. Patty Murray with a comfortable lead over all rivals.

Last week KING-5/SurveyUSA had Dino Rossi leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Patty Murray by a stunning 52-42 percent, a margin both camps dismissed as an outlier. Well, now that the latest Elway Poll has Murray leading Rossi by an even more impressive 51-34 percent margin, it’s easy to understand the insiders’ reluctance to accept SurveyUSA numbers at face value.

SurveyUSA had Murray only garnering 73% of both self-identified Democrats and Liberals, and a paltry 46% of metro Seattle voters… unimaginably low numbers come November. By comparison, Elway found Murray enjoying the support of 92% of Democrats, and 73% of Seattleites.

Further, Elway examines Murray’s job performance ratings, a number often looked to as an indicator of electoral strength, and while incumbents never want to come in under 50%, Elway points out that “Murray’s ratings have historically been mediocre,” and that her current 48% rating falls only slightly below her 17-year average. So Republicans shouldn’t take much encouragement from that either.

What does this all mean for Rossi, who was widely expected to announce his candidacy by the end of April, and who we know to have had lengthy meetings and conversations with consultants and fundraisers in recent weeks? Well, there’s simply no strong evidence that Murray is quite as vulnerable as Republicans would wish her to be. Sure, this is just one poll amongst many, and the election is still a long ways off, but as Elway concludes:

The world is going to turn a few times before voters actually cast ballots, and campaigns make a difference. But no matter how these findings are sliced, Patty Murray appears to be in a formidable position.

No doubt Rossi is still getting a lot of encouragement to enter the race from the NRSC and the Republican consultancy class, even in the face of these daunting numbers, so I hope he takes seriously a bit of free advice from someone with nothing to gain from his decision one way or the other. Nobody has ever profited from underestimating Patty Murray… except, you know, the dozens of pollsters, fundraisers, consultants, media buyers and other political professionals who have made millions off previous failed attempts to unseat her, and who would make millions more off of your campaign.

Remember, politics is just as much a business as real estate, so don’t trust their salesmanship any more than you would trust your own.

Update: [Darryl] I’ve done some further analyses here, including a combined analysis of the two polls today and last week’s SurveyUSA poll.

I’ve now gone over 48-hours without DSL at my house, and seem nowhere closer to getting this fixed. The good news is that Qwest’s automated tech support line reports that I actually have an open ticket. The bad news is that it reports that I’m scheduled to have it resolved by January 1. After 45 minutes on hold, I gave up waiting for a live representative.

Technical breakdowns happen, but the most annoying thing about this outage is that there is nothing technical about it. My line and my modem were fine until somebody at Qwest reprovisioned me to faster, more expensive service without my permission. And despite support’s promises, they’ve been unable to reset my line to the where it was prior to 9:30 am Monday.

I’ve probably wasted five hours over the past two days attempting to deal with this, and many more hours traveling about in search of open WiFi networks. This sort of customer service is inexcusable.

State Rep. Chris Hurst (?-31) has started identifying himself on his campaign website as an “Independent Democrat,” which I suppose as far as bullshit, swing-district, campaign rhetoric goes, isn’t so remarkable. (Cowardly, disloyal and whiny, yes… but remarkable, no). But word is he’s planning to take his pouting subterfuge to the next level by identifying himself on the ballot as “Prefers Independent Democrat Party”… and he’s reportedly urging several colleagues he presumes to be equally cowardly, disloyal and whiny, to join him in pissing on their own caucus.

Yeah, well, that sorta transparent gamesmanship may be acceptable from the lying bastards in the Prefers Grand Old Party Party, but if Hurst and his cohorts want to deny the Democrats, then I say turnabout is fair play. Any candidate who refuses to identify himself as a Democrat to voters simply can’t be trusted to uphold Democratic values and unity, and thus should be denied any party support during the election. Furthermore, should Hurst or others follow through with their petty little game, I wouldn’t mind seeing them stripped of their caucus rank and committee chairmanships.

After all, it would be unfair to voters to allow Hurst to run as an “Independent,” yet serve as a Democrat.

Playing games like this with the ballot is both a disservice to voters and an insult to the rest of the caucus, so if Hurst and others are so disgusted with their fellow Democrats that they can’t bear to identify themselves as one, then I suggest they man up and start their own party.

UDPATE [Lee]: Hurst also happens to be the biggest roadblock to getting even basic drug law reform passed through the House. If being an “independent Democrat” means putting law enforcement union special interests over fiscally responsible and morally sound progressive policy, then it might be worthwhile for the voters of the 31st District to send someone else to Olympia.

My DSL stopped working at about 9:30 am this morning, and I’ve been on and off the phone with Qwest ever since. So I’ve been reduced to pecking stuff out on my iPhone.

Just thought you should know.

UPDATE:
So here’s the scoop.

Last week, a Qwest sales rep called me, trying to sell me their new 12 Mbps service, up from the 7 Mbps I have now. I’m always interested in faster broadband, but the woman didn’t quite seem to have a handle on how much more it would cost, and whether I’d need to spend $70 on a new modem, so I told her to call me back in a couple days so I’d have some time to check out the costs and specs and think about it. The next day a different Qwest rep calls with the same pitch, and I told him I’d already spoken with somebody, and would let them know.

Well apparently, I didn’t say “no” definitively enough, and somebody at Qwest decided to pad their commission by putting through the order anyway.  So at about 9:30 AM, my line was re-provisioned, and no, my old modem doesn’t handle the higher speed connection.

It took about an hour with tech support to figure this out, and another couple hours to try to reprogram my modem to get it working — apparently, they couldn’t just throw a switch and bring back my old profile — at which point the rep promises to get this fixed and call me back. An hour and a half later, I call back Qwest and get tech rep number four on the phone, who assures me that everything has been fixed, the 12 Mbps order has been canceled, and the I’ve been switched back to the 7 Mbps service.

So then, why doesn’t everything work? The modem is now successfully synchronizing, a positive sign, but refuses to actually connect.

Oh, the tech rep explains, that’s because this new order won’t go through until 5 PM tomorrow. That’s just how long it takes to re-provision the line, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

So essentially, I’ll go the better part of two days without Internet service, all because some asshole at Qwest either couldn’t understand the word “no,” or simply didn’t care. (I say “asshole” rather than “idiot” because I assume the latter.) And the land line companies wonder why they keep losing customers?

Honestly… fuck ’em. Comcast offers similar speeds at similar prices (I think… I mean their website is incomprehensible when it comes to ordering broadband without cable TV), and even Clearwire looks like a reasonable alternative, so it’s not like I don’t have options. So if I’m gonna lose a couple days of service at their whim, I might as well lose it playing the special offers, getting discounts to switch from one to the other and back again.

On the bright side, I’m surfing the web now from a window seat at the Columbia City Alehouse, enjoying a $3 Happy Hour imperial pint along with a side order of free WiFi. If anybody reading this is in the neighborhood, stop on by and join me in raising a pint to the demise of Qwest.

Former Washington State Republican Party chair and failed 8th Congressional District candidate Diane Tebelius has a poll in the field testing the waters against 48th Legislative District Democratic incumbent Representatives Ross Hunter and Deb Eddy.

From all accounts the questions are pretty typical for this sorta poll: right/wrong direction, favorables/unfavorables, descriptions of the candidates followed by head to head match-ups and then some demographics. It is being conducted by Fallon Research.

The 62-year-old Tebelius has long been a party drudge with little to show for her efforts, having repeatedly been passed over or urged out of races in favor of fellow Republicans perceived by the powers that be to have more political upside. Following the GOP’s disastrous showing in 2006, a wave election for which Tebelius can hardly be blamed, she was unceremoniously ousted from her brief tenure as WSRP chair in favor of McKenna cabin boy Luke Esser. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” and all that.

I know GOPers are hoping that 2010 might produce a wave that washes in their direction, sweeping a few Republicans back into control of key Eastside seats that until only recently were solidly red, and there are a few vulnerable Dems who come to mind. But neither Hunter, the Times-endorsed candidate in last August’s King County Executive primary, nor former Discovery Institute fellow Eddy, come across to voters as representing the liberal wing of their party, and thus neither would provide much of an ideological contrast for Tebelius. And having watched Tebelius represent the KCGOP during their misplayed 2005 mass voter registration challenge, both Hunter and Eddy just come across as, well, smarter.

I’m not saying that Tebelius would make a bad candidate (though from past performance she hasn’t come across as a particularly good one), but one of the keys to success in politics, as in many other endeavors, is being in the right place at the right time… and once again Tebelius can’t quite seem to line the two up.

No doubt neither Hunter nor Eddy would prefer to draw Tebelius as a challenger, but I’m guessing neither is particularly awed by the prospect either. This may be the most favorable political climate local Republicans have enjoyed in years, but if they’re just going to throw old-timers like Tebelius at the Dems, it doesn’t say much about the WSRP’s strategy for exploiting it.