Goldy

It’s long been in vogue amongst Seattle’s politiscenti to complain about Rep. Jim McDermott’s lack of effectiveness and leadership in Congress.

Of course, what they really mean is that McDermott doesn’t bring home the bacon, and he’s never much bothered to use his safe seat and affluent Seattle district to raise—and spread around—the kinda money generally necessary to climb up the ranks of the party leadership.  No, McDermott often marches to the beat of his own drummer, and he’s certainly no Norm Dicks or Patty Murray when it comes to playing the influence game.

But lack of effectiveness and leadership?  I don’t think so.  And apparently, neither do his colleagues in the House, who have rewarded his tireless work on behalf of expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by giving him the honor of managing the floor time today during final passage of the bill, and who have asked him to attend the signing ceremony with President Obama later this afternoon at the White House.

Beholden to no one but his own conscience and that of his overwhelmingly liberal constituency, McDermott has provided plenty of leadership on a number of issues, often with little regard for the likelihood of public approbation or short term success.  It was McDermott who famously invited national scorn on himself by going to Baghdad in the days prior to the US invasion to argue against the lies of the Bush administration, and it was McDermott who was ultimately proven right about the facts on the ground and the war’s disastrous cost in blood, treasure and prestige.

And it is McDermott who has qixotically fought for universal health care even as the Republican tide made such reforms an impossible dream.

Well… as today’s passage of SCHIP will show, that tide has finally turned.

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer, I asked the 72-year-old McDermott about persistent rumors (and wishful thinking amongst the many local Dems who covet his job) that this might be his last term in office, and he laughed off the suggestion, telling me that he intends to stay in Congress at least until he sees a major health care reform package signed by the President.  It may not be the single payer system that he prefers, but considering where the other Washington has been on this issue for much of his tenure, any reform that leads us down the slippery path toward universal access would be a huge accomplishment, and a giant cherry on top of McDermott’s long political career.

So those of you ambitious pols eagerly waiting for McDermott to step out of your way (and you know who you are), you better cross your fingers and wish Jim Godspeed on his final challenge.

UPDATE:
Rep. McDermott has issued the following statement on SCHIP:

“We speak for the children who are the most vulnerable in our society, especially during this time of economic crisis.  I cannot imagine how anyone could vote against America’s children.  Approving SCHIP is the most humane thing to do and I mean that in the truest sense of the word.  Yet, some on the other side will vote against it claiming they are fiscal conservatives; please note these very same so-called fiscal conservatives squandered a trillion dollars on a needless war in Iraq, and drove the U.S. economy into a ditch.  And now they want to deny children the ability to go see a doctor when they are sick.”

Incumbent Sherril Huff easily won yesterday’s special election for King County Elections Director, garnering an impressive 44% of the vote in a six-person race.  And our good friend Stefan’s spin on Huff’s solid victory?

In 2007 56% of the voters said that it would be a good idea to elect the Elections Director. 44% said it would be a bad idea.

Again in 2008 56% of the voters said that it would be a good idea to elect the Elections Director. 44% said it would be a bad idea.

In 2009 56% of the voters voted for a reform candidate. 44% of the voters voted for a candidate who thought it would be a bad idea to elect the Elections Director; who has repeatedly covered up and lied about problems in the Elections office under her watch; and who wasn’t even eligible to run for the office in the first place.

Perhaps the 44% who voted for her were the same 44% who said it was a bad idea to elect the Elections Director to begin with and were trying to prove to the other 56% that they were right all along!

Yeah, well, Stefan is nothing if not a poor loser.

I’m one of those 44% who voted against electing an Elections Director (and for the only qualified candidate in the race) because I’d rather have somebody who knows how to run elections in the office than somebody who knows how to run for them—but bizarrely picking an elections director in a wide-open, low-turnout, no-primary, special election?  Well that’s just plain stupid and irresponsible.

Yet that’s the gamed system that Stefan and his band of bitter, inconsolable Dinophiles pushed for in an effort to sneak a partisan Republican past voters, and so I find it particularly ironic to hear him whining about the outcome after the fact.  I mean, if Stefan really believes that a mere 44% plurality of voters just thwarted the will of a 54% majority, perhaps he and his fellow “reformers” should have fought for a primary that would have separated the wheat from the chaff?

But then, who am I to question Stefan’s motives, let alone his statistical prowess?

I’m not sure that I’ve ever voted by mail before, and so like a lot of inveterate poll voters it was hard for me to approach this election day any differently than previous ones.  But it is different, and if I don’t get my ballot postmarked today, my vote just won’t count.  And considering the subject of today’s special election, if my vote doesn’t count today, it just may not in the future either.

This is an election for Elections Director, and if you need any evidence of how stupid it is to elect a position that requires very specific technical expertise, just look at some of the names on the ballot:  gadfly, a liar, a right-wing gun nut looking for a six-figure salary….

And then there’s our friend David Irons Jr., the Republican front-runner, a raging bullshitter with a documented history of financial mismanagement and abusive behavior.  But even more pertinent to this election, he’s also a man with a documented history of violating our state’s election laws:

From: Mark Banks
Date: January 25, 2009 1:12:43 pm PST
To: letters@redmond-reporter.com, letters@sammamish-reporter.com, letters@seattleweekly.com, letters@woodinville.com, letters@bellevue.com, letters@duvall.com, letters@covington.com, letters@seattletimes.com
Subject: Special Election of King County Elections Director

Dear Editor,

I am extremely disturbed to see that David Irons, Jr. is running for the important position of King County Elections Director.  David Irons is a thief who I personally caught red handed steeling campaign signs in Sammamish in 2002, when he was running for King County Commissioner.  I was driving by when I saw him dressed in his Sunday best climbing over the road barrier to pick up his opponent’s signs and throwing them in the ditch.  I had heard stories of him steeling signs and loading up his van with them in a previous election, but this was the first time I saw it for myself.  I stopped and talked with him and demanded that he climb down the gully to retrieve the signs from the blackberry bushes, which he finally did.   Do we honestly want a man who would stoop so low to achieve personal political gain in a day and age when election fraud is rampant?

Mark Banks
Redmond WA

You want your elections managed by an unethical, partisan hothead?  Vote for Irons.  But if you want a dispassionate, experienced professional in the office of Elections Director, vote for Sherril Huff.

And by all means, get your ballot in the mail today.

For those of us who really like Ron Sims, yet were dreading the prospect of a campaign for a fourth term as King County Executive, his announcement today that he has accepted the number two position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is a welcome relief.

Fourth terms are difficult for executives to win at all levels of government, as voters and the media tend to grow weary of their executives in a way we don’t seem to grow weary of legislators. It would have been a difficult campaign, and he might have lost, and I’m not sure Ron’s heart was really in it in the first place.  And so this plum position at HUD—overseeing the day-to-day operations of a department with a $39 billion budget and 8,500 employees—is exactly the kind of graceful exit Ron deserves, and for which many of his friends and supporters had hoped.

So congratulations Ron.  (And congratulations to Publicola for sticking with this scoop even while Sims’ office vehemently denied it.)

UPDATE:
From the HUD press release :

"Ron’s track record as an innovative leader with an exciting vision for the future of our nation’s communities make him the perfect Deputy Secretary candidate as we tackle the nation’s housing crisis amidst the biggest economic downturn in decades," said HUD Secretary, Shaun Donovan. "His experience at the helm of a large urban government provides a critical perspective and his collaborative approach to problem-solving has prepared him to effectively lead HUD’s operations as the agency charts a new aggressive course."

[…] "I am thrilled and honored that Ron has agreed to be considered for this role," added Donovan. "He is the perfect person to help HUD return to national leadership on metropolitan planning. Together, we will work with President Obama to ensure HUD is doing all it can to help the nation’s communities recover from today’s economic realities and to better position them for the future."

Word is, the Blethens have enough cash on hand to keep the Seattle Times operating through at least March, but they’ll reach a major decision point by May:

While a bankruptcy filing is not imminent, if things play out as expected (no last minute reprieve for the P-I, no big concessions from the Times’ unions), Times executives believe a Chapter 11 filing is more likely than not. Such a filing would not necessarily mean the paper is doomed; rather, a Chapter 11 reorganization would buy the paper time, allowing it to continue publishing as it restructured its operations, figured out a way to pay off its debt, and renegotiated its contracts in an effort to make the paper viable when the local economy recovers.

In other words, the Times will use bankruptcy as an opportunity to break the unions.

More from Publicola’s News Junkie.

Not surprisingly, the Seattle Times editorial board urges Seattle School Board members to “maintain your resolve” to close five more schools, while chastising affected parents fighting to save the schools they love:

Some families found this process hurried and may mistakenly see the flurry of amendments as a way to prolong the outcome.

So here’s my question to the ed board and other opinion writers at the Times:  how many of you have children who are now attending, or have graduated from Seattle Public Schools?  How many of you even live in Seattle?

And if you don’t have a personal stake in this battle, who are you to tell us how to run our district, or to belittle dedicated parents for doing whatever they can to save their neighborhood schools?

Given the choice between closing more schools and paying a few dollars more on our property tax, I’m betting Seattle voters would choose the latter.  So instead of just presenting a false choice between school closures and budget crisis, here’s a novel idea worth editorializing about:  perhaps the Legislature should give school districts the ability to weather the current economic downturn by granting the authority to temporarily exceed the current cap on the percentage of revenues that can be raised through local school levies?

And since the Times owns property in Seattle, they would be free to editorialize on the subsequent levy vote all they want, without coming off as a bunch of holier-than-thou outsiders.

UPDATE:
Bruce Ramsey answers my question via email:

I was born in Seattle, went to university in Seattle, I live in Seattle and I have a child in the Seattle Public Schools.

Of the four editorial writers, two live in Seattle and two live in the suburbs in King County.

By my count there are six editorial board writers, when you include editors Jim Vesely and Kate Riley, neither of whom live in Seattle.  Not that I think residency should be a prerequisite for commentary, but… well… I’m just sayin’….

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Brian’s post on the new domestic partnership legislation wending its way through Olympia.  (It’s the kinda thorough, original reporting I’m told you’re not supposed to be able to find on the blogs… and that you’re seeing less and less of in the dailies.)

The bill would add over 300 rights and obligations to domestic partnerships, essentially marriage equality in everything by name, at least under Washington state law.  (Federal law would still have to change to allow for true marriage equality, whatever we call it.)  But as Brian points out, the big story here is how noncontroversial this issue has become:

Those blatant displays of humanity aside, [Sen. Ed] Murray commented that one of the aspects most worthy of celebration with the announcement of these bills was the relative lack of fanfare from the other side.

“I would say the most remarkable thing about this bill is that it is unremarkable,” Murray mentioned, explaining that many of the fiercely fought battles that had been fought in the last few decades were inconspicuously absent from today’s atmosphere, even resulting in the aforementioned Republican sponsors of the House bill.

It took decades of bitter political fighting simply to make it illegal to discriminate based on sexual preference (yup, up until a couple years ago, it was perfectly legal to deny somebody a job, a loan, housing or insurance, simply because you thought they might be a little faggy), and now it looks like almost marriage equality is going to sail through the legislature with nary a fight.

Part of this has to do with the Democrats’ near super-majority in both houses, but a lot of it has to do with growing public acceptance of same sex couples.  Hmm.  I guess the rabid opponents of the anti-discrimination laws were right—it is a slippery slope after all.

A slippery slope toward greater freedom and equality, that is.

Those of you trying to read HA and Publicola tonight between about 9PM and 10:30PM (and for about 15 minutes this afternoon) were greeted with the dreaded White Screen of Death.  No error message, no nothin’, just a blank, white screen.

At this point, I don’t know what causes it, or what fixes it.  It’s pretty damn frustrating.

Anyway, if anybody out there has some expertise with WPMU, and would like to offer their help, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks mostly to its bizarre name, HorsesAss.org is probably one of the leading political blogs nationwide… in terms of traffic from Googling pornographic search terms.  And yet, I almost totally ignored the sensational Enumclaw horse story, and the easy page views that would have come with it.  Go figure.

So to make up for that business miscalculation, I thought I’d block-quote this paragraph from an AP story today about an Oregon couple, jailed for sexually abusing their dog :

Chase said Baalbergen performed oral sex on the dog and received oral, vaginal and anal sex. He said Baker received anal sex.

Ugh.  But two thoughts.

First, I’m no dog whisperer or anything, but I’m not sure most dogs would classify that as “abuse.”  And second:

The dog, Max, had to be killed.

“Because of the way it was taught to interact with people, it couldn’t be placed in another home,” Chase said.

I’ve known plenty of dogs who were incorrigible leg humpers, but unless you cooperate by pulling your pants down and getting on all fours, I’m not sure what the big problem is.  Maybe they could have tried a couple squirts from a spray bottle before offing the poor dog?

After reporting a quarterly loss of $56 million ($968 million in its commercial airplane division), Boeing announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs in 2009.

That number includes the 4,500 job cuts previously announced, mostly in the Puget Sound area.  And how many of the remaining 5,500 job cuts will target our region?  According to the P-I, “some“… with the cuts being spread across the company geographically.

Considering that almost half of Boeing’s 162,000 employees are in WA state, I suppose we should expect to absorb almost half of these newly announced cuts.

I few thousand here, a few thousand there… pretty soon this starts to add up to a bad recession.