Goldy

Flew in late last night (and yes, my arms are tired), but have a meeting scheduled relatively early this morning, so don’t expect much from me until after noon. In the meanwhile, enjoy a little John Stewart.

I hate to dwell on this too much, but I can’t help but emphasize how incredibly dishonest the Seattle Times editorial board is when it misleadingly compares I-1098’s proposed high-earners tax to California and Oregon’s broad-based income taxes:

The new tax created by I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions. That’s not quite the highest rate in the country: Oregon’s, at 11 percent, is at the top. But Oregon has zero sales tax. We would have high rates of sales and income taxes, which would be putting up a sign saying: Don’t invest here. Don’t create jobs here.

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

In fact, it’s not anywhere near the highest rate in the country, because I-1098’s tax is only imposed on earnings in excess of the income threshold, rather than on all income, as in Oregon and California. For example, an Oregon household earning $400,000 would pay $38,274 in state income taxes, while an equally fortunate California household would pay $33,660.

By comparison, under I-1098, a Washington household earning $400,000 would pay… well… zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Absolutely nothing. And according to a new OFM report, the same would be true for 98.8% of Washington households.

So this idea that Washington’s top rate would be one of the highest in the nation is a lie of omission if I ever saw one… you know, kinda like when the Times argued that even high-tax/socialist Sweden eliminated its estate tax, while failing to inform readers that they replaced it with a 1.5% annual wealth tax.

Yeah, and I’m the partisan spinmeister.

In one of what will eventually prove to be many editorials against Initiative 1098’s proposed high earner’s income tax, the Seattle Times warns readers “Don’t Calitaxicate Washington,” which I suppose they thought was a really clever pun, but which merely comes off as just kinda stupid. You know, like the rest of the editorial:

BILL Gates Sr. — father of the famous one — recently dropped $400,000 into the campaign to convince Washington voters to saddle themselves with a state income tax. On Aug. 3, the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., put $200,000 into the same effort to change Washington law. The total raised by Initiative 1098 approaches $2 million.

Um, I’m not sure what the return address is on the check, and there are all kinds of rules about which funds come from where, but the SEIU money going into the I-1098 campaign is coming from SEIU locals and their members right here in this Washington, predominantly SEIU 775NW, which represents health care workers. I mean the Times would like you to think that it’s being funded by evil, out-of-state special interests, but it’s not. It’s the same folks who fund a lot of progressive causes in Washington state… you know, the folks who represent working people.

The cash being poured into the pro-1098 campaign aims to convince you, if you earn less than $200,000, that you will not pay the tax. You may not, in the first years.

Um… you will not pay the tax. “May not” makes it sound like maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But you won’t. Individuals earning less than $200,000, and households earning less than $400,000, will absolutely, positively not pay this tax.

But the tax will be expanded. Taxes always are.

No they are not. And if the income tax is ever expanded to lower income households, it will only be through a vote of the people. I mean, can you think of another major tax increase that hasn’t come before the people via initiative or referendum? Even the legislature’s recently passed temporary, 2-cent per can soda pop tax is coming before voters this November. That’s just the way things work around here.

And even before this happens, you will feel it, because it will sap income, investment, jobs and pay all across the state.

Because… why? The Times doesn’t explain how a tax on the top three percent of households, who would still enjoy one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation, would sap income, investment, jobs and pay for the rest of us. They don’t explain it, because they can’t. They just believe it because the Soviet Union collapsed or something, and thus taxing wealthy people must be bad. Or something.

Washington is one of nine states with no tax on wages and salaries.

Washington also has the most regressive tax structure in the nation, and by far. That means if you earn less than $20,000 a year you live in the highest taxed state in the union, but if you earn over $200,000 a year you live in one of the lowest. And the Times is okay with that.

This is a big advantage in recruiting people to work here, and in keeping people from leaving here. When Gov. Chris Gregoire went to the Paris Air Show in her first term to recruit aerospace companies to Washington, the first item of her sales pitch was: no state income tax.

It may be a recruiting pitch, but there’s no credible study to show that state income tax rates have a substantial impact on individuals’ decision to come or leave. I mean, Nevada has no income tax, and it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. And I don’t particularly see the economy or population booming in South Dakota or Wyoming either. It’s a bullshit argument.

It’s a selling point. An asset. And more than that: It’s a bonus for living here.

Huh. The Blethens sure don’t think much of their home state. I thought the bonus for living here was living here. Who’d have thought the Times would make an even worse tourism board than they do an editorial board?

The new tax created by I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions. That’s not quite the highest rate in the country: Oregon’s, at 11 percent, is at the top. But Oregon has zero sales tax.

Let’s be clear. I-1098 would impose a 5% tax on household income in excess of $400,000 ($200,000 for an individual), and 9% on household income in excess of $1 million ($500,000 per individual). That means a family earning a half a million dollars a year would pay an additional $5,000 a year in state taxes… compared to $46,500 in California, which taxes a household earning $500,000 9.3% on every dollar earned. Of course, state income taxes are fully deductible when calculating federal income tax. So really, you’re looking at an additional $3,250 dollars in taxes a year (compared to $30,225 in CA), out of a half million dollars earned. That’s an effective rate of only about 0.65%. I don’t think anybody’s picking up and moving to Texas over that.

Of course as incomes go higher, so does the effective rate; a household earning $2 million a year would pay an additional $78,000 after the federal deduction, for an effective rate of about 3.9%. But then, the higher the income the less the marginal value of the tax paid, and this would still leave a WA two-millionaire with one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation.

We would have high rates of sales and income taxes, which would be putting up a sign saying: Don’t invest here. Don’t create jobs here.

Of course, what the Times fails to mention is that I-1098 would also slash the state portion of the property tax by 20%, while exempting 80% of businesses from the onerous B&O tax. Oops.

Meanwhile, with I-1098’s top rate still below that of other Western states like Oregon, California and Hawaii, where exactly are folks gonna go? Idaho? Sure, Idaho’s top rate is only 7.8 percent, but it hits nearly everybody, applying to income over $26,418 a year, and to every dollar earned. And… well… it’s Idaho.

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

If Bill Gates Sr. and the SEIU push I-1098 past the voters, they will succeed only in bringing California’s luck here. And that would be a sad day.

So rather than emulating California’s example of a more fair tax structure, the Times would prefer we follow California’s example of decimating its once envied K-12 and higher education systems… the foundation on which the state built its economy into the eighth largest in the world.

I mean, the whole tortured “Calitaxicate” pun is a giant, smelly, red herring. Most states have an income tax. What sets California apart is not how it raises revenue, but how it spends it.

What this state needs is investment in new ideas and new work — and a tax system that smiles upon it.

What this state really needs is investment in our children. Do we want to see the state continue to cut funding for K-12 education? Do we want tuition and fees at state universities eventually rise to the point where we price the middle class out of a college education while financial aid fails to keep up? Do we want to knock tens of thousands of children off the health care rolls? Because that’s what happens if we don’t pass I-1098, and we don’t do anything else.

And that, more than anything else, is what risks turning Washington into California.

Voters are being presented with a stark contrast in this year’s U.S. Senate race, with incumbent Sen. Patty Murray campaigning on her record of earmarking federal dollars for crucial local projects, while Republican challenger Dino Rossi is campaigning against earmarks… you know, on principle.

And yet…

Emergency repairs made last year to the Howard Hanson Dam have reduced the chance the Green River will flood low-lying areas of Kent, Renton, Auburn and Tukwila, the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.

Further improvements planned through mid-2012 should allow the dam to be filled to capacity.

Of course, those further improvements are being paid for courtesy of a $44 million earmark inserted into a defense appropriations bill by Sen. Murray. Some, like Rossi, might call that “pork.” But I’m guessing not the tens of thousands of residents and businesses downstream.

Yet another reason why to reelect a senator who has already proven what she can do for our region.

Seattle Times editorial page editor and crown prince Ryan Blethen elaborates on his page’s surprising decision to endorse Rep. Dave Reichert’s opponents:

In the 8th Congressional District, Reichert has had six years to grow. He hasn’t. His being caught on tape glibly talking about taking votes for the environment so he could stay in office was not a great way to start off an election year. That gaffe was compounded by his voting against fiscal reform and showing up for his endorsement interview woefully unprepared and more defensive than I’ve ever seen a candidate.

The two candidates in the 8th we did endorse, Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon, showed up prepared and were thoughtful in follow-up discussions.

I’m not sure I’ll ever grow tired of reading the Times hurl the same sort of criticisms at Reichert that I’ve been hurling for years, and of course I take great pride in knowing that it was leaked audio exclusively posted on HA that helped flip the Times’ assessment of the three-term Republican incumbent. But this is more than just a delicious “I told you so” moment, for my post, and the broader media coverage it generated, is a beautiful illustration of the sometimes under-appreciated role bloggers now play in the modern, news media food chain.

It is true that much of what I write is derivative, consisting of commentary, analysis and criticism of original reporting and commentary produced elsewhere, mostly from the legacy press; indeed, the first thing I do every morning is scan the Seattle Times for stuff to make fun of. But bloggers like me have also become an important source for “professional” journalists, sometimes in quantifiable ways like the Reichert audio story, but more often in the subtle, less obvious way we tend to steer coverage, create buzz and frame headlines.

Like most of my best scoops, the leaked Reichert audio simply fell into my lap, because my source trusted me to see it for what it truly was, and to frame it in the most damaging way possible, whereas they were concerned that the Times might dismiss it entirely as mere politics as usual. In this sense, my blatant partisanship proved to be a tremendous journalistic asset.

But because my partisanship is so blatant, once the story was out there, other journalists, including the Times’ editorialists, where free to consider it in its proper context, and make their own evaluation. In the end the audio, presented unedited and unexpurgated, speaks for itself, while Reichert’s history of making similar statements establishes that his self-professed cynicism was no slip of the tongue.

The Times recognized that this is information that voters deserve to know, and I have to give them credit for that. But it’s not clear that the Times ever would have recognized this had I not framed the audio in the manner I did at the time I broke the story.

And that gets to another under-appreciated aspect of what bloggers like me do, for the best of us display a talent for seeing in commodity facts a larger truth that sometimes escapes the first round of media coverage. The U.S. Attorney story is a shining example, a major scandal that might have eluded the legacy press had not Talking Points Memo connected the dots that everybody else missed, and then obsessively followed up. Likewise my Mike Brown Arabian Horse Association story, a post that ultimately helped frame FEMA’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina as a debacle of cronyism, leading to Brownie’s resignation, merely highlighted information that was already widely available on his official resume.

It’s not that newspaper and other legacy media reporters don’t engage in the same kind of conceptual journalism, it’s just that our freedom to be passionate, opinionated and yes, partisan, frees bloggers like me to pursue angles that would make other journalists uncomfortable. Plus the sheer number of us energetically plying our trade simply makes it that much harder for important news to escape scrutiny.

While there are some traditional journalists who still dismiss bloggers like me as parasites, the truth is that we’ve been gradually establishing a pretty symbiotic relationship… a relationship from which readers ultimately benefit.

It’s been two months since I first started covering Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s refusal to fulfill his statutory obligation to represent Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark, and six weeks since the dispute (as predicted) exploded into a full blown constitutional showdown. And today the Seattle Times finally covers the story with more than a cursory blog post: “Methow power-line fight turns into Supreme Court showdown.”

Of course, the article comes more than a month after the tiny Wenatchee World became the first (and until now, only) newspaper in the state to assign a staff reporter to cover the story, and it’s kinda frustrating to see environment reporter Craig Welch covering such a complicated legal issue when he easily could have devoted all 1,200 words to the complicated environmental issues surrounding the proposed power-line through virgin Methow Valley land (is there really no full time legal reporter in the entire state?), but the Times did publish the story front page, above the fold, so I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

Still, the article does serve as a reasonable introduction to the story for those readers who don’t frequent either HA or WW, especially the accompanying graphic that illustrates how the entire proposed line runs less than five miles east of an alternate route along Highway 153, much of it less than a mile from the existing highway right of way.

Hopefully Welch will be given the go ahead to delve deeper into the environmental issues surrounding this controversy, but for the moment, here are a few observations and elaborations on today’s piece:

The fight over the future of the shrub-steppe grasslands above the shimmering Methow River has become what few could have predicted: a constitutional feud between the heads of two state agencies.

Well, at least one person predicted it. Way back on June 16 I warned that McKenna was plunging our state into a “constitutional crisis … that could ultimately lead to a Supreme Court showdown.” Yup, HA readers were once again kept way ahead of the curve.

It’s become a political feud — one that Republicans say Democrats simply have manufactured in hopes of tarnishing a possible GOP contender for the 2012 governor’s race.

To be absolutely clear, I immediately saw this dispute as a tremendous opportunity to tarnish McKenna from the moment the first press release arrived in my inbox — that was in fact what sparked my initial interest — but DNR never proved as cooperative as I had hoped. Goldmark’s goal from the onset was clearly to pressure McKenna into providing an attorney, and his office was never willing to furnish me with potentially damning correspondence from the AG’s office. In fact, I’ve never even managed to get Goldmark to provide me a juicy quote. So whatever the “hopes” of me and other “Democrats,” as the only journalist who has covered this story from day one, I can assure you that Goldmark never showed any interest in playing that particular game.

“I believe it’s squarely the duty of the attorney general to carry out legal issues at my request,” Goldmark said, adding that he believes those duties are spelled out in state law.

McKenna argued his duty extends beyond Goldmark. He said his team of lawyers asked the same questions they do for all appeals: Did the trial judge err? Is there a good legal argument? Could new precedent damage other agencies?

I have extensively analyzed the legal issues surrounding McKenna’s statutory duties, for example here, here and here. It’s worth reading if you’re interested in learning more.

Opponents are represented by wealthy Seattle environmental attorney Peter Goldman, a contributor to Democrats who also happens to be one of Land Commissioner Goldmark’s most outspoken supporters. … Goldmark’s critics contend he took on the battle because it was important to Goldman — a charge Goldmark denies.

Um… Goldman is representing opponents because he’s an environmental attorney, and this is what environmental attorneys do. As for Okanogan County born and raised Goldmark, the Methow Valley is his own backyard, and I’m told he’s walked much of the proposed power-line route with his own two feet. So to imply that Goldmark is fighting to preserve Common School Trust Land in his home county as some sort of payback to Goldman is, well, absurd, especially to anyone who has ever spent any time talking to Goldmark. He is most definitely not your typical politician.

It’s Goldmark’s job to manage state public lands, and it’s McKenna’s job to represent Goldmark in that capacity. And that is what the pending Supreme Court case is all about.

It has been suggested to me that it was wrong to accuse the Building Industry Association of Washington’s Tom McCabe of smoking crack, especially without giving him the opportunity to put the pipe down long enough to defend himself. So in the spirit of full and fair civic discourse I hereby challenge McCabe to a public debate in which we can discuss any or all of the following subjects:

A.) His bizarre assertion that environmentalists are the direct and sole cause of the the Great Recession;

B.) The BIAW’s even bizarrer assertion that environmentalism has its ideological roots in Naziism, and that the DOE’s storm water regulations are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust;

C.) The BIAW’s even more bizarrer Initiative 1082, that in the name of reform would actually increase workers compensation costs for the bulk of its own members; or

D.) Tom McCabe’s obvious and debilitating addiction to crack.

You and your lovely if potty-mouthed spokeswoman Erin Shannon know how to reach me Tom, so drop me an email and we’ll set up a time and place.

My slightly more tanned toes wriggling in the hot sand of Longport NJ. Hope you’re all enjoying your sixty-something degree Seafair.

Romans 1:26-27
Women no longer wanted to have sex in a natural way, and they did things with each other that were not natural. Men behaved in the same way. They stopped wanting to have sex with women and had strong desires for sex with other men.

Discuss.

The Building Industry Association of Washington’s Tom McCabe is an idiot, an asshole and a liar:

So this is what it looks like when the extreme environmentalists get their way.

For two decades, enviros in our state have been striving to shut down homebuilding.

No-growthers have argued, litigated, legislated, and lobbied for every law, regulation, tax and impact fee designed to stop homebuilders from building homes.

Enviro groups with righteous-sounding names like Futurewise and Earth First! fight against virtually every single development and every single homebuilder.

State and local government agencies such as the Department of Ecology and the Puget Sound Partnership join the fray as well.

All these self-anointed priests of nature want to stop growth. Well, they succeeded.

Growth has stopped. Housing starts in our state have been reduced 67 percent (from 52,000 to 17,000) since 2005.

The enviros won.

McCabe then goes on to list the litany of economic woes allegedly caused by environmentalism run amuck, including skyrocketing unemployment, a ballooning, multi-billion dollar state budget deficit, a decline in charitable giving, and even the collapse of the newspaper industry. Which begs the question: how confident is McCabe in the rationale behind the BIAW’s political and policy agenda that he and his organization seem so keen on aggressively courting the stupid vote?

Really, how absolutely imbecilic or even anencephalic do you have to be to believe that the Great Recession was caused by excessive environmental regulation rather than, say, the catastrophic, nationwide collapse of the housing bubble and the fantasy-collateralized mortgage industry that inflated it? I mean, doesn’t the minimum mental capacity necessary to read McCabe’s column already make one too smart to fall for his laughable line of unreason? Hell, I feel kinda dumb just bothering to refute him.

For years, the BIAW and its members profited handsomely off an unsustainable housing market fueled by cheap-money induced visions of endless double-digit appreciation, and now that they’ve come down from their trippy, mortgage-fraud-huffing high, they blame the enviros? (You know, just like they blamed the enviros for the Holocaust.) No wonder the BIAW is attempting to pad its coffers with a self-serving, workers compensation privatization initiative; all that crack they’ve been smoking must cost a lot of money.

(And for those of you who have trouble discerning the difference between metaphor and allegory… yes, I am accusing McCabe of smoking a lot of crack. He’s a base crazy, crackerjacked, political bag bride. How else to explain his column?)

I’m just sayin’.

… but I told you so:

DIFFICULT times call for more than a capable caretaker of a political seat. The 8th Congressional District needs a representative with vision, a sharp grasp of the issues and the ability to lead. The task is considerable.

With that in mind, The Seattle Times editorial board takes the unusual step of endorsing two challengers to U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, who is seeking a fourth term in the district spanning eastern King and Pierce counties.

We do not do so lightly. Former Microsoft executive and Democrat Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon, a Republican and member of the Yarrow Point Town Council, demonstrate a depth of knowledge and have compelling ideas.

On issues ranging from the wars to the economy, three-term Republican incumbent Reichert is unstudied and comes up short. After six years in office, this is unacceptable.

Reichert opposed financial reform, but was unable to explain what he did or did not like about the legislation. The 8th District deserves someone who is faster on their feet.

It is with some satisfaction, and perhaps an even greater degree of bitterness, that I read the Seattle Times’ endorsement in the 8th Congressional District primary, in which they dis Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert as cynical, simplistic, unstudied, unknowledgeable and unacceptable. Well… duh-uh. Yet this is a paper, both news and editorial, that has propped up Reichert against his opponents for years.

As our state’s largest daily, the Times played a crucial role in creating the myth of Sheriff Dave as the man who caught the Green River Killer (he most emphatically did not), and who refused to reexamine this oft-exploited, career-defining claim even after he’d creepily taken to framing nearly every utterance with heroic tales of his encounters with Gary Ridgway. It was the Times who virtually refused to cover Darcy Burner’s inspiring, come-from-nowhere, 2006 campaign until spectacular fundraising and tight polls forced their hand, only to cynically and viciously brand her as a “spinmeister” who would make “Karl Rove proud,” while laughably lauding Reichert for his “conscience-driven independence streak,” even in the face of his own public admission that he voted how the Republican leadership told him to vote.

And it was the Times who, when polls showed Burner with both momentum and the lead heading into the final weeks of the 2008 election, intentionally torpedoed her campaign with a bullshit, front page, above-the-fold expose accusing her of lying about earning a degree in economics from Harvard (she earned a degree in computer science with a concentration in economics, a course load that is equivalent to a double major at some colleges, Harvard’s nonstandard terminology notwithstanding), while willfully ignoring the many years Reichert’s own resume claimed a bachelors degree, when he in fact only earned a two-year associates degree from a Lutheran high-school-cum-barely-junior-college.

And now they bemoan that Reichert is “unstudied” …? Um, no shit, Sherlock!

Indeed it’s the Times, who after years of defending and praising the obviously unqualified Reichert, who now appears unstudied.

Dillon says a turning point for him was Reichert’s “willingness to trade core principles on the environment.” He was referring to Reichert’s appearance before a gathering of Republican precinct committee officers when he explained that while he toes the party line most of the time, a few select environmental votes were “certain moves, chess pieces, strategies” he used to keep environmental groups from trying to defeat him. The moment was revealing. This page’s response then and now is “how cynical.”

Damning audio that was leaked to me, by the way, and first posted here in an HA exclusive, because my source assumed from their record of toadery, that the Times simply wouldn’t be interested in exposing Reichert as the conscienceless dependent he really is. So would it be ungrateful or ungenerous of me, now that the Times cites my reporting (without attribution, of course) as the turning point in their own reassessment of Reichert, to respond with a big, fat “FUCK YOU” …?

I mean, it’s not like Reichert hasn’t been caught on tape before, saying nearly the exact same thing! Only back in 2006, rather than calling Reichert on his cynicism, the Times chose to attack Burner for allowing the DCCC to excerpt TVW’s video without permission.

So yeah, I suppose I should congratulate the Times’ editors for finally coming to their senses, or thank them for putting aside their own pathologies for a moment in the interest of the greater good. But their paper’s reporting and commentary on past 8th CD races has been so galling — so utterly and inexcusably insulting — that it’s just hard to let go. For how do we reconcile the Times’ revisionist take on Reichert with this:

The Auburn Republican deserves re-election. The former King County sheriff has an impressive record of public service and has shown a conscience-driven independent streak that reflects his moderate district.

Or this:

[Reichert] has matured in the job and his voting on complicated issues reflects that. His experience as a first-responder has been a strength. … Opponent Darcy Burner criticizes him for changing some positions, but Reichert shows a capacity for appreciating nuance and an appetite for seeking answers himself and making up his own mind.

Or this:

He surprised many recently by saying he’s not convinced about how much global warming is caused by human action. We are convinced it’s a substantial contributing factor.

But Reichert says he’s skeptical, so he’s investigating. That’s a better approach than adopting a ready-made ideology.

I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ… talk about attempting to turn a turd into a tiara. And they accused Darcy of being a Rovian spinmeister? Look in the goddamn mirror, Frank!

Yeah sure, I know the Suzan DelBene campaign would prefer I focus on her qualifications over Reichert’s lack thereof, and she’s certainly smart, thoughtful, well-informed, accomplished and progressive enough to serve the 8th CD well. A helluva an upgrade over Reichert. A Democrat I can proudly support, without reservations. And I damn well know that it doesn’t serve my agenda to reward this editorial gesture by sticking the ed board’s own words in its collective face .

But… well… I have every right to be bitter, so fuck ’em.

Perhaps I’ve underestimated the ideological cravenness of the Seattle Times editorial board, what with their refusal to endorse any Democratic legislative incumbent even remotely tied to organized labor, regardless of their accomplishments or the lack of qualifications of their opponents… but I still think they’re going to endorse Sen. Patty Murray in November.

Why? Well, the more than $500 million she just won for our state in additional federal aid for Medicaid and public schools is just one of many examples of how important she is to our local economy. That’s $500 million  to be spent right here in state. That means thousands of jobs that won’t disappear due to even further draconian cutbacks. That means smaller class sizes, and more kids getting preventative health care.

Had Dino Rossi been senator, he would have stuck to his ideological guns and voted with the Republican leadership to block the amendment. But not only did Murray fight hard to pass the amendment, she’s the one who sponsored it.

Sen. Murray is just too valuable an appropriator, too powerful a defender of Boeing and the thousands of high paying jobs it brings to our region for Frank Blethen to have the balls to instruct his ed board to endorse the light weight Rossi. I mean, he wouldn’t sacrifice the best interests of our local economy just to score an ideological victory, would he?

UPDATE:
In the comment thread, classic HA troll Mr. Cynical poops out some classic GOP bullshit:

Goldy–
All she did was increase the National Debt.
It’s a shell-game the Dems are using.
In the end, the credit card bill will come due…for our grandkids.

Uh-huh. Except, it’s not true. The cost of the Murray amendment is actually paid for through closing several tax loopholes, including one that rewards companies for moving jobs overseas. In fact, the Murray amendment actually reduces the deficit by $1.4 billion.

Which, of course, Rossi opposes, because you know… anything to avoid closing corporate loopholes.

By now I expect you’ve already heard the big news that federal district Judge Vaughn Walker today ruled California’s Prop 8 unconstitutional:

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

Yippee, and all that, but of course the fight for marriage equality doesn’t end there. The ruling is already being appealed to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is, you know, our circuit… which raises the question: if the Ninth Circuit upholds Judge Walker’s ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, wouldn’t that make WA’s Defense Of Marriage Act unconstitutional too? And considering the absolutely compelling logic in Judge Walker’s decision, why didn’t WA’s marriage equality proponents file suit in federal court too?

I’m sure there’s a good reason, but I just thought I’d ask.