Goldy

I’ve been meaning to take a closer look at the the Seattle Times’ post-PI circulation numbers, but Crosscut’s Chuck Taylor has done much of the hard work for me.

But here’s what we know for sure: Today’s Seattle Times average weekday circulation of 263,588 is, by my calculations, 52,085 less — 16.4 percent less — than the 316,673 combined circulation of both papers a year ago.

So while the Times is touting a circulation gain of “an amazing 32.6 percent” and that “84 percent of the non-duplicated daily P-I subscribers are now Times subscribers,” the bigger picture of print newspaper circulation in Seattle is somewhere short of amazing, unless you’re talking about an amazing drop.

And I’d add to that analysis a reported 6-percent drop in circulation for the Times’ Sunday edition, revealing that the paper’s steady decline in readership (at least of the print variety) shows no signs of ebbing.

So what’s the solution? The Times’ braggadocio over its relative success in retaining P-I readers aside, it’s done nothing to address the long term problems that are eating away at its core business, and it can be fairly argued that its continued cutbacks in staff and coverage will only speed its decline. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if a morning paper, delivering yesterday’s news, isn’t as much an anachronism in the age of the Internet as the afternoon paper became during the heyday of TV evening newscasts. I’m not saying that there isn’t a rationale for a print edition, but timely delivery of actual news ain’t it.

To survive in print as a daily newspaper, the Times and other papers like it are going to have to re-imagine the medium, not simply in terms of the technology of content delivery, but in terms of the content itself. For in the end, whatever the market forces, readers are giving up their subscriptions because they just don’t find their local fish-wrappers a compelling enough product to be worth the price.

The P-I’s closure may have delayed the inevitable, but it does nothing to make it any less so.

I’ve been saying for some time that the day Boeing moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago was the day the decision to ultimately move production out of the Puget Sound region became final. Amongst other things, Boeing execs and board members didn’t want to be bad corporate citizens; so they decided to give up their local citizenship.

So I’d be awfully surprised if Boeing doesn’t set up its second 787 assembly line in South Carolina, despite the fact that with 767 production coming to an end, its got the facility and the trained workforce in Everett already available to churn out both 787s and 777s on the same line. As Danny Westneat points out in the Seattle Times, Boeing appears intent on pursuing a cheap labor strategy Washington state simply isn’t able to accommodate. Nor should it.

Take away the heat, all the union-bashing or management second-guessing as Boeing now appears ready to move a major piece of its plane-building operations to South Carolina. At the core of this breakup drama is a cold statistic: 14.

As in $14. Per hour.

That’s the average pay of the local line workers who are building the fuselage of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner in a Charleston, S.C., plant.

Average pay of a Boeing Machinist around here? $28 an hour. Now, these pay averages aren’t directly comparable, say people in the know. Many of Boeing’s workers in South Carolina are younger or less experienced (the plant is only 4 years old). So the average pay there tilts lower.

Still, the average pay at Costco stores around Seattle is $17 an hour. According to PayScale, a Seattle company that tracks wages, the average for a hairstylist in Seattle is $18.24 an hour.

So Boeing right now is paying less to build airplanes in South Carolina than we pay for cutting hair or shelving 3-pound jars of olives.

How can we compete with that?

Of course, we can’t compete with that if Boeing insists that labor costs are the bottom line value in its production decisions, as it apparently has.

Ironically, when Boeing does announce the new line in South Carolina, Danny’s colleagues on the Times’ editorial page will no doubt lambast the unions for driving Boeing away, oblivious to the fact that their own union-busting rants, and that of their publisher, helped grease the skids for Boeing’s union-busting strategy. But it’s hard to blame labor for the loss of high wage jobs that wouldn’t remain high wage if the union were to accede to the demands that Boeing ultimately wants.

No, none of this really makes much economic sense. But who needs to make sense when you have a globalist, free market ideology to fall back on?

A new KING-5/SurveyUSA poll to be released today shows R-71 passing by a 50-43 margin, while Tim Eyman’s vindictive I-1033 is failing 50-38. The poll was of 561 likely and actual voters; further details and cross tabs are not yet available.

These results are largely in line with the Washington Poll released this morning, which showed similar results, if by different margins.

Update [Darryl]: Over at Hominid Views, I’ve conducted a series of Monte Carlo analyses on the Washington Poll and the Survey USA poll, both separately and combined. The Readers Digest Condensed results:

• I-1033: 99.7% probability of failing (using the combined SUSA/WA Poll polls)
• R-71: near-100% probability of passing (using combined polls)
• KC Exec: 98.1% probability that Constantine wins (WA Poll only)
• Seattle Mayor: 89.9% probability of a Mallahan win (WA Poll only)

The full analytical details, in all of their geeky glory, are given here.

A new Washington Poll released today shows Democrat Dow Constantine leading Republican Susan Hutchison 47-34 in the race for King County Executive.

This is a reversal of previous publicly released polls, but is consistent with two private polls I’ve heard word of over the past week. It will be interesting to see if SurveyUSA, which has consistently shown Hutchison in lead, finds a similar reversal in their final survey, which I believe is due to be released later today.

The Washington Poll also shows Referendum 71 passing by a 57-38 margin, while Tim Eyman’s incredibly idiotic Initiative 1033 fails 40-49.

I’d say all of that is good news.

Susan Hutchison will run for the U.S. Senate. (As a Republican, silly.)

If elected executive, who would Susan Hutchison appoint to the Sound Transit board? Erica’s got the scoop.

Once again, isn’t it ironic that it is Darcy Burner, not Dave Reichert, who is playing the bigger role in our national health care debate? According to The Hill:

The head of a not-for-profit organization affiliated with House Democratic liberals plans to raise $1 million next year to give liberals an edge in public policy battles with the conservative Blue Dog Coalition.

Darcy Burner, the executive director of ProgressiveCongress.org, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization, has played a behind-the-scenes role in the healthcare debate, applying constant pressure on Democratic leaders to keep the public option on the negotiating table.

[…] The renamed group, which includes an educational wing organized under section 501(c)3 of the tax code and a 501(c)4 advocacy wing, has served as an important bridge between House liberals and outside groups such as MoveOn.org, US Action, People For the American Way and the AFL-CIO. It has also worked with influential liberal blogs such as Daily Kos and OpenLeft to provide updates of internal Democratic deliberations and keep up a drumbeat of demand for the public option.

But, you know, don’t expect any coverage of Darcy’s efforts in the Seattle Times, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to dismiss her as inexperienced should choose to run for office again.

Those who have criticized my relentless attacks on Susan Hutchison as a Bible-thumpin’, evolution-denyin’, partisan right-wing Republican, have generally missed the point.

I do not argue that any of her beliefs or affiliations, however extreme, should disqualify Hutchison from holding public office. “No religious test shall ever be required…” and all that. That’s a good thing.

I just insist that Hutchison be honest about it, and barring that, that the press hold her accountable.

Take for example the video above, in which I compare and contrast Hutchison’s effort to minimize her contribution to Mike Huckabee, with her obvious infatuation with the most prominently Evangelical of the 2008 presidential candidates. When asked about her $500 contribution to Huckabee during a KCTS debate, Hutchison could’ve just said that she supported his candidacy, and explained the reasons why. But she didn’t.

Instead, she attempted to explain it away:

Well, when I was a journalist, as you know, we don’t contribute to political campaigns. And so when I ended my career, I started to respond to all of those messages that we got in the mail, or phone calls.

And one of them was from a friend of mine who said, “Let’s go hear Mike Huckabee speak… he’s a popular governor from Arkansas,” and at that point nobody had really heard much about him. And she said “He’s got innovative ideas.” And this friend of mine has done a lot of politicking, and so I said, “Okay, I’ll go with you to that lunch,” and I wrote the check. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the lunch, and so, that is the extent of my check writing for Mike Huckabee.

To anybody who watched the KCTS debate, the impression she gave was clear. 1) Journalists “don’t contribute to political campaigns,” so Hutchison was new to the world of partisan politics. 2) Like most everyone else, she hadn’t heard much about Huckabee at the time. And 3) she wrote the check merely at the request of a friend who spoke highly of Huckabee, and invited her to hear him speak. When Hutchison says “that is the extent of my checking writing for Mike Huckabee,” she clearly intends to leave the impression that this was the extent of her involvement with Huckabee as well.

But all three of these impressions simply aren’t true.

First of all, KIRO-TV ended Hutchison’s “journalism” career way back in 2002, while the Huckabee luncheon wasn’t until November 15, 2007. That’s a full five years of responding to all those messages and phone calls, so she couldn’t possibly have been the partisan political novice she makes herself out to be at the time.

In fact, according to PDC and FEC reports, Hutchison started giving to political campaigns as early as September of 2003, with a $500 contribution toward the reelection of President George W. Bush; by 2005, she had become a regular contributor to Republican candidates and causes. Indeed, by the time Hutchison wrote her $500 check to Huckabee, she had already written 23 checks totaling $12,500, to 16 different campaigns and committees… Republican all.

So the image of Hutchison as a naive check-writing newbie? That’s misimpression number one, especially considering her entire career since leaving KIRO had been writing checks on behalf of billionaire Charles Simonyi.

As for the impression Hutchison leaves that she didn’t know much about Huckabee at the time, well the video clips above speak for themselves, but here’s the timeline. The Huckabee luncheon was on Nov. 15, 2007, and her check is recorded on Nov. 19. Yet on Sept. 27, 2007, nearly two months earlier, Hutchison can be seen lauding Huckabee before a packed house at the conservative Washington Policy Center’s annual dinner, an event she’s been emceeing for years:

“As you know, if you’ve been here before, our speakers inform, inspire and predict the future. Anyone who was here last year is not surprised that Mike Huckabee is performing well in the presidential race for the Republican primary.”

Hutchison is talking about the 2006 annual dinner, at which Mike Huckabee was the featured speaker, and she, as usual, was the master of ceremonies. So… even though she implies that she didn’t know much about Huckabee in November of 2007 at the time she wrote him a $500.00 check, she had in fact personally met the man, and had been “informed and inspired” by him, a full year earlier, in 2006… a speech she fondly recalled in September of 2007 at the following year’s dinner.

That’s just plain deceptive.

And finally, that politically involved friend Hutchison refers to… the one who invited her to hear Huckabee speak, and who allegedly gushed about his “innovative ideas”…? That was almost surely Sarah Rindlaub, “one of Hutchison’s closest political allies,” a Washington Policy Center board member.

And the lunch itself? An Evangelicals for Huckabee endorsement event, sponsored by Joe Fuiten and twenty other conservative pastors.

Again, Hutchison has the right to associate with and contribute to anybody she wants, but the public has just as much a right to know about it. And therein lies my biggest complaint with the way Hutchison has run her campaign, and the way the press has covered it.

Knowing the facts, anybody watching Hutchison’s efforts to minimize her support for Huckabee simply wouldn’t find her credible. Yet most voters don’t know the facts, and for that I hold our local media complicit.

UPDATE:
TVW is playing its games again, filing takedown notices with YouTube for what clearly amounts to fair use. So I’ve reposted via Vimeo.  So there.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
TVW has apparently had my video pulled from Vimeo, so I’ve replaced the embed with one from LiveLeak. I’m willing to play this game as long as they are.

Susan Hutchison has made much hay in recent days about an email from County Councilmember Reagan Dunn that allegedly shows he was concerned that he would lose funding for projects within his district if he didn’t vote for a ferry district tax sponsored by Dow Constantine.

In his Nov. 5, 2007 e-mail to County Council attorney Jim Brewer, Dunn asks if “vote-trading” is legal in Washington, and asks whether council members can legally “remove projects located in one Councilmember’s district when that Councilmember refuses to vote in favor of tax increases.”

Dunn said today he was worried that senior centers and other programs in his district would lose funding if he voted against the tax to fund passenger-only ferries.

At first I just wrote off Dunn’s alleged concerns to woosy naivete, or perhaps naive woosiness. I mean, horse trading in politics? Heaven forfend!

But as it turns out, Dunn is just a shameless hypocrite, as evidenced by how proud he is over his councilmanic arm-twisting to restore funding to the King County Fair in Enumclaw:

King County Councilman Reagan Dunn is pushing the issue in Seattle, urging his fellow council members to include at least $318,000 in the 2010 budget to make the fair a reality.  … Dunn said he’s working on the rest of the county council, calling in favors when necessary.

“This is budget politics at its best,” he said, referring to the give-and-take that occurs when nine elected officials must come together to pass a working budget.

So let’s see… when Republican Dunn twists arms and calls in favors to save projects in his own district, that’s “budget politics at its best,” but when Democrat Constantine allegedly does the same, well, that’s a clear sign of corruption.

Uh-huh.

Susan Hutchison continues to deny that she’s ever given money to the far-right-wing BIAW, even though PDC records show she’s given $1000.00 to BIAW’s ChangePAC. I guess in Hutchison’s mind, ChangePAC isn’t BIAW because BIAW isn’t mentioned anywhere in the name.

Likewise, I guess, by this same dishonest standard then, BIAW isn’t funding robocalls in support of Hutchison’s campaign for King County executive:

[audio:https://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/msg0029.mp3]

Yes, that message is paid for by the Affordable Housing Council, which sounds like an advocacy group with a positive enough agenda, until you learn that it’s really just a PAC for, you guessed it… BIAW.

So see… Hutchison has not given money to BIAW, and BIAW is not spending money in support of Hutchison… you know, per se. And if you believe that, I’ve got a deep bore tunnel to sell you.

UPDATE:
As Steve Zemke reports in the comment thread, this is just one of at least two different robocalls BIAW is busy tying up the lines with this week:

I got another call on Wednesday with a different message that she has been endorsed by Rob McKenna and Wes Uhlman also paid for by the “Affordable Housing Council”. I also received the one you have yesterday.

Also, I’m hearing that the calls are going out countywide, both Eastside and within Seattle.