HorsesAss.Org

Back in 2003, I was just stretching my legs on the local political scene. I decided to volunteer for Peter Steinbrueck’s reelection campaign. At the 36th District candidate’s forum, several candidates started to mention a rezone of some residential land near Rick’s, the Lake City stripclub. Like most folks, I thought it was no big deal, and didn’t think it would play much of a factor.

How wrong I was.

Three City Council members who voted to override the planning department on a strip club’s parking-lot rezone turn out to be beneficiaries of some $39,000 in campaign contributions that the club’s owners allegedly funneled through various contributors to get around donor limit laws. The rezone is then revoted and rejected. The council members return the money and pay fines. Two of them are promptly ousted at the next election.

It’s worth noting that the city council people involved never faced any charges for wrongdoing themselves. That said, the whole thing stank to high heaven.

But what struck me about the whole affair is how small ball this was. Seattle is not like Chicago, Miama, LA, or Boston, and certainly not like New Orleans.

Our corruption is nothing like that of those cities. For example, Richard McIver had to pay a fine for allowing former Govenor Albert Rossellini to buy him lunch at Quizno’s. Quizno’s, for God’s sake. McIver got nailed for a six dollar sandwich.

So, suffice it to say I wasn’t blown away by today’s news:

With a touch of defiance, Seattle strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Jr. and a longtime associate pleaded guilty today to criminal charges related to the so-called “Strippergate” campaign-finance scandal of 2003.

His father, Frank Colacurcio Sr., was also expected to plead guilty to the same charges, but the longtime strip-club magnate, who is 90, did not appear in court due to health problems. His attorney said Colacurcio Sr. will enter a plea by Monday.

In a plea bargain that avoided jail time, Colacurcio Jr. agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and one year of probation. His father is expected to accept an identical deal.

Those penalties are in addition to a $55,000 civil settlement approved Wednesday by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

[…]

Gil Conte, a former lounge singer and longtime Colacurcio associate, also pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor conspiracy charge and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine.

After the sentencing, Conte did a quick soft-shoe dance step for a throng of reporters, and said, “I didn’t do nothing.”

Lame.

“I didn’t do nothing.” What is this, Goodfellas? C’mon.

A headline at the Times website:

Amtrak cancels Seattle-LA service temporarily

Who takes a train from Seattle to LA? I’d rather fly some shitty cattle-call airline like Southwest for $49 and be subjected to screaming infants and douchebags in cutoffs reading Joel Osteen books out loud to themselves.

Amtrak sucks, and it’s not because it’s government run. Railway networks in Europe are awesome, and they’re all government run. Why? Infrastructure investment: they invest in theirs, and we don’t invest in ours.

Once again, Dave Neiwert tears Jonah Goldberg to shreds over his poorly conceived book and his related attempts to equate modern American liberalism to fascism:

No, Jonah, being bad guys alone doesn’t make them fascists. But holding swastika and Dixie banners aloft, shouting “Sieg Heil,” and ranting ad nauseam about how bestial colored people and queers and the Jewish media are destroying the country, and demanding that we start shooting Mexican border crossers — well, that pretty clearly marks them as fascist, dontcha think?

And for a guy who insists irregularly that we not confuse European liberalism with its American version, Goldberg certainly has little compunction about conflating European fascism with its American variant. In fact, American fascists are fairly variegated in their worldviews and resulting strategies: some, like the Posse and the Freemen, are indeed hyper-local, though their version of local government is a white male supremacist ideation in which minorities have no rights and homosexuals and abortion providers are put to death. Others see themselves as largely regional organizations (particularly the Northwest’s “white homeland” advocates) with a national reach, while still others — the Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, Hammerskin Nation — see themselves as national organizations whose ideas for a right-wing authoritarian state do indeed more closely resemble the European model.

The same is true for figures like David Duke, who sees himself as an international role model for neo-Nazism. In recent years, he’s been traveling to places like Russia and the Arab world, spreading his vicious anti-Semitic propaganda. And in both places, it’s clear he’s been gaining audiences and having an impact on the ground. So much for these fascists’ insignificance.

But then, it’s essential for Jonah’s already-shaky thesis that he minimize, downplay, whitewash, and otherwise utterly trivialize these groups, their presence and their activities, because their very existence not only undermines, it completely demolishes his central claim that “fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all” but that “it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left.” Because clearly, American fascists are now, and always have been, a phenomenon of the right, quite unmistakably so.

It’s all about trivializing the monstrous, all to serve his increasingly dubious claim that conservatives are in no way at all even remotely fascist. Indeed, it’s more than evident that the wish to rebut that “smear” is what has animated this entire enterprise (Goldberg has made this clear in numerous interviews, as well as the book itself).

The problem is that it’s much easier to demonstrate the opposite is true. And over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be discussing that.

But you have to wonder about someone who can so easily whitewash the realities of the Klan, dismiss the social and cultural effects of modern-day fascists, and then compare the Nazi eliminationist program to Hillary Clinton’s day-care initiatives. It is not often you get to see the holes in people’s souls on public display, and it’s never pretty.

Syndicated columnist/GOP flagpole Robert Novak predicts Dave Reichert will win the Appropriations Derby:

The most likely winner of the Appropriations derby will be Rep. Dave Reichert, a former sheriff of King County, Wash., who has not distinguished himself during three years in Congress and gets only a 60 percent rating from the American Conservative Union. His sole qualification appears to be that he is the most endangered Republican House member in 2008 and needs to bring home the bacon to Seattle.

I’m not so sure, but either way it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. That the GOP leadership would even consider handing the assignment to such an undistinguished and unqualified member shows you just how scared they are of Darcy Burner’s challenge; I guess they figure Reichert will have to buy off WA-08 voters with pork if he’s to have a hope of saving his job. And with yet another vulnerable Republican choosing retirement over humiliating defeat, WA-08 could end up being the most competitive race in the nation.

To all the urban hipsters who have latched on to the Paul campaign, I give you this:

If elected president, Paul told me he would continue to pursue such a policy.

“I think the Roe v. Wade situation was a big mistake and the states ought to have the right to decide on the issue, so I would deny jurisdiction to the federal courts on abortion issues,” he said.

Roe v. Wade was decided in large part under the doctrine of substantive due process as an issue of privacy. Paul thinks that basis for the ruling is flawed.

When speaking of liberty, I can think of nothing more important than the right a person has to keep the government out of their own body. If Paul is the libertarian he says he is, he’d agree. If the government edges it’s way into the doctors office, it will get itself into everything eventually, and then it’s all over.

As an advocate for progressive tax reform I didn’t have high hopes for the current legislative session. Despite near supermajorities in both houses, the Democratic leadership seemed content to play it safe heading into the 2008 election… the nation’s most regressive tax structure be damned. But it turns out I may have been too pessimistic.

State Sen. Craig Pridemore introduced today SB 6809, a bill that would extend a state sales tax refund to the 350,000 Washington households who qualify for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit, putting an average of $170 annually back into the pockets of working families. Rep. Tammy Green is introducing a companion bill in the House, and word is that the bill has strong support from both Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, and House Speaker Frank Chopp. A tax cut targeted at those who need it most? Who’d a thunk?

Washington’s lowest income families currently pay 18 percent of their income in state and local taxes, whereas our wealthiest pay just 3 percent. The “Working Families Credit” would offer a maximum rebate of $470 (10 percent of the federal EITC,) effectively reducing the recipient’s sales and consumption taxes by about 30 percent. Other states offer similar extensions to the EITC, but Washington would be the first such state without an income tax. The Washington State Budget and Policy Center has issued a policy paper with more details.

It will be interesting to see the response to this Democratic bill, as the federal EITC generally enjoys broad bipartisan support, and tax cuts tend to be the Republican solution to everything from recession to gout. I’m particularly curious to see on which side the Seattle Times editorial board falls; I suppose it is possible they might argue that the bill’s estimated $60 million a year cost is ill advised in this time of economic uncertainty, but that would seem disingenuous coming from a board that recently argued so vociferously for eliminating the estate tax, thus granting a $100 million a year tax break to the children of multi-millionaires.

I’m not sure how one argues against the Working Families Credit… but I’m pretty sure some folks will try.

From The Hill:

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s (R-Colo.) entrance into the contentious battle for the open Appropriations Committee seat pits the House campaign committee chairman against two of his most vulnerable members.

And who is the other “most vulnerable” member seeking to plump up his coffers via a lucrative seat on the Appropriations Committee? None other than our own “Desperate Dave” Reichert.

The NRCC spent $1.8 million to defend Musgrave and $2.3 million defending Reichert last cycle. Both members narrowly won reelection and are once again targets for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Musgrave defeated Democrat Angie Paccione 46 to 43 percent. Reichert faces a rematch in 2008 against his 2006 challenger, Democrat Darcy Burner, whom he defeated 51 to 49 percent.

And that $2.3 million doesn’t even include the god-knows-how-much RNC money Karl Rove spent directing 585,164 voter contacts into the 8th Congressional District, a stunning 41,666 on election day alone!

With Musgrave now in contention for the Appropriations seat, Reichert can pretty much kiss his chances goodbye. Both lay equal claim to the need to prop up a vulnerable incumbent, but Reichert’s call for geographical diversity is trumped by Musgrave’s: currently, no Colorado member sits on the 36-seat panel, whereas Washington is well represented on the Democratic side by appropriations-savvy Rep. Norm Dicks.

Which I suppose explains why Reichert is suddenly changing his tune. On Friday he anxiously told reporters that “I need a seat now. Those open seats for people who are in safe seats will come later.” But in the face of Musgrave’s equally desperate challenge, Reichert spokesman Mike Shields is now touting loftier objectives:

“[Reichert] is the person who will help the conference the most … Dave is for more transparency and accountability.”

Yeah… um… ’cause what could be more transparent than admitting on camera that he votes the way his party leadership tells him to vote, because “I have to do that over here … I have to be able to be very flexible in where I place my votes”…? And really, who should be held more accountable for Gary Ridgeway’s 18-year killing spree than the detective who dismissed him as suspect early in the investigation despite an eyewitness account?

“Transparent” and “accountable”… yeah, that’s Dave Reichert. And nothing could be more transparent than Reichert’s desperate effort to prop up his flagging campaign by securing himself a seat on the lucrative Appropriation’s Committee.

UPDATE: From the Oregonian: Clark County GOP taking national ridicule.

In Vancouver, Wash., the Clark County Republican Party is in hot water for a post based on that ridiculous – and thoroughly discredited – hate e-mail about Barack Obama on the home page of its web site.

Once upon a time, this kind of stuff would have been spread in fliers by some of the wacky people who gravitate to local political party meetings. Now it is getting national publicity – Keith Olbermann slammed the county GOP on his MSNBC show – and doing its little bit to drive people away from the Republican Party (just as now-resigned State Rep. Richard Curtis, R-La Center, recently contributed to the impression that the GOP harbors a fair number of sexual hypocrites).

As I said… behold the awesome power of the Internets, and quake before us.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.

I’m starting my evening at Chocolate for Choice, I won’t be stopping by until a little later. Maybe a nice stout to wash down all that chocolate?

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

***Hilarious response to my earlier post about Rep. Doug Ericksen. GOP bloggers are pissed at the bad press, while the B-Ham Herald’s political guy is just telling it like it is:

For the record, Wally, I generally try to write my own headlines, sir, unless someone else’s is better. Too bad you never seem to realize there is no conspiracy. I promise. You, of course, don’t complain that I’m “slamming” someone when I link to posts on your blog, which I will also continue to do.

***Rep. Geoff Simpson calls bullshit on the anti-light rail attacks dressed up in “governance reform” language:

You hear a lot of talk about “governance reform.” This push is coming from fans of regional financing of state highways and those opposed to light rail. Sound Transit is delivering projects on time and on budget, bringing in hundreds of millions in federal funds and passing audits with the highest grades.

The only thing I regret? That Rep. Simpson represents Kent. You rarely hear Seattle legislators speaking up like this about Sound Transit.

***Rick Steves is my homeboy.

***The P-I interviews tourists about Downtown Seattle:

Convention scouts descended on Seattle to rate its suitability to host major events and pronounced their judgment: The food is good, the people are great, the weather’s a bit of a drag – and could we please do something about all the transients downtown?

Seattle has always had a visible homeless population for as long as I can remember. It is also one of the most needlessly politicized issues we face.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription only) reports on the six-way contest to fill an open Republican seat on the influential House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the chair of the NRCC, argues that an assignment to the committee would help him raise more money for all his caucus members. But Rep. Dave Reichert’s interest in Appropriations is much more personal:

“I need a seat now,” said Reichert, who won his 2006 race with 51.5 percent of the vote. “Those open seats for people who are in safe seats will come later.”

I dunno Dave, that just comes across as sounding a little desperate. I wonder if that’s a preview of his 4Q07 fundraising totals?

When the Clark County Republican Party got caught posting the “Obama is a Muslim” smear on the front page of their official web site, I suppose you could’ve just chalked it up to stupidity or venality or wankery (or all three.) But now that a second county Republican Party has been caught officially peddling the exact same lies… well… that establishes a pattern.

A comment on Slog, (via Jon Devore) points us to a January 19, 2008 opinion piece in Aberdeen, WA’s Daily World, in which assistant editor Dan Jackson rails against the “mostly untrue and hugely inflammatory” email that has made its way into his and millions of other inboxes. But….

The most galling and appalling thing about this e-mail is how it got to my inbox. It was passed on by a local citizen who had received it from Cathy Colley, the chairwoman of the Grays Harbor Republican Party.

If it were just from joeblow@yahoo.com, I’d groan about it and maybe even respond to the writer that it was racist and untrue. I doubt I’d be writing this column.

Clicking the “send” button doesn’t require a degree in law or political science — nor should it — but when you’re the Republican Party chairwoman, you should know better than to forward something inflammatory that hasn’t been vetted.

Or, to forward something inflammatory that has been vetted, and totally debunked both here and here.

Two Republican Party organizations have now been caught officially pushing the same racist lies about Barack Obama, suggesting a common theme, if not a coordinated campaign of hatemongering and innuendo. It is time for state GOP chair Luke Esser to hold party officials accountable for their actions, or be held accountable for his own.

In 2004 Dino Rossi got away without talking about abortion, birth control and sex education by quipping he’s not running for US Supreme Court, but it’s not going to be so easy this time around. And the more voters learn about Rossi’s 19th Century position on reproductive rights, the less he’ll be able to pass himself off as a moderate.

FYI, today is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, guaranteeing a woman’s right to choose, and I will be celebrating by joining the folks from NARAL Pro-Choice Washington at their annual Chocolate for Choice fundraiser. It is a great event for chocolate lovers of all ages, an all you can stuff in your mouth extravaganza featuring the work of some of the region’s finest pastry chefs and confectioners. I’m told a few tickets are still available.

The Dow plummeted 450 points this morning in early trading, as traders responded to a worldwide plunge in share prices over the MLK holiday, and a second straight day of near-record losses in the Asian markets. How concerned are the experts? The Federal Reserve attempted to fend off a US crash by slashing interest rates three quarters of a point just before the opening bell, prompting respected financial blogger Bonddad to describe the Fed as “Wall Street’s bitch.”

The problem is liquidity isn’t the issue — it’s counter-party risk. So long as lenders are

1.) Concerned about getting repaid on existing loans and

2.) Concerned that a party might now repay even a short-term loan

3.) In the middle of writedown hell.

Then loans aren’t going to get made. It’s that simple.

Also note the the effective Fed Funds rate is now negative. The yearly increase in inflation is 4.1% and the Fed Funds rate is now 3%, meaning the effective Federal Funds rate is in fact -1.1%. This is the situation that got us into this mess.

Of course, even an impending worldwide recession has its bright spot, with crude oil prices dropping below $88 a barrel in anticipation of reduced demand.

And by the way, in case anybody is keeping score, the Dow Industrial Index closed at 10,678 on January 18, 2001, the day President Bush was sworn into office. Last time I checked it was still below 12,000 points, even after recovering about half the early morning losses. A 12% return over seven years… below the rate of inflation. Wow. Those Republicans sure do know how to run the economy. (By comparison, the Dow closed at 3,242 on January 20, 1993, the day President Bill Clinton was inaugurated, more than tripling in value over Clinton’s two terms.)

When people talk about the progressive “netroots” the first thing that comes to mind are the plethora of local and national blogs that have grown to challenge the legacy media’s diminishing control over the political narrative. But in fact it is much, much more than that, and one of the most exciting and important netroots developments of the past few years has been the growth of ActBlue, an online fundraising clearinghouse that is beginning to enable the financial power of the people to challenge the entrenched power of corporate America.

The US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that money is speech, and in that context, the special interests of the ultra-wealthy have long spoken louder than the interests of the average Joe, but by democratizing fundraising, introducing efficiencies and creating new grassroots opportunities that flip the traditional top-down model on its head, ActBlue has begun a process that could eventually free candidates from the financial stranglehold of corporate sponsors. The fact is that money, and the media it buys, be it television, radio, direct mail or other, is the primary means by which candidates communicate their message to voters; no realistically achievable amount of doorbelling or coffee klatches can win a congressional district on its own, and no candidate can be expected to compete for votes without securing at least a somewhat level financial playing field. ActBlue provides a tool that doesn’t just enable progressive campaigns to tap into the aggregate resources of the public at large, it enables the people to organize ourselves in support of the candidates we prefer, as opposed to merely those candidates the political establishment would prefer we be limited to choose from.

During the 2006 cycle ActBlue showed its potential, enabling the national progressive netroots community to funnel its collective resources into a handful of high-profile local races… but that is nothing compared to what we have seen so far heading into 2008. In 2005 candidates raised $1,684,797 on ActBlue from 23,816 individual contributors. In 2007 those totals leaped tenfold to $16,872,127 from 169,287 contributors. And were only just now entering the heart of the fundraising season.

Locally, the impact and influence of this populist tool can be easily discerned from ActBlue’s list of Top Ten Candidates in 2007:

Candidate	Race		Contributors
John Edwards	President		53,433
Tim Johnson	SD-Sen		5583
Donna Edwards	MD-04		5582
Darcy Burner	WA-08		4189
Dennis Kucinich	President		3126
Rick Noriega	TX-Sen		3081
Eric Massa	NY-29		2577
Mark Pera	IL-03		2290
Charlie Brown	CA-04		2067
Joseph Sestak Jr	PA-07		2067

While the roughly $140,000 Darcy Burner raised via ActBlue in 2007 accounts for only 16% of her $858,125 total, it played a crucial role in her achieving an early TKO of her primary opponent, and has provided the difference between trailing incumbent Dave Reichert in cash-on-hand versus her surprising lead. Sure, it would take double-max contributions from only 30 Republican fat cats for Reichert to counter the efforts of Burner’s 4189 ActBlue donors, but there are many, many more of us than there are of them, and that is what really puts the fear of God into the political establishment on both sides of the aisle. Burner raised less than $32 per ActBlue donor (compared to an ActBlue average of $119 per contribution in 2007,) tapping into a much broader pool of potential donors than heretofore possible in local races, and virtually eliminating the financial advantages of incumbency: nearly 90% of Burner’s 2007 money came from individual contributions, while about half of Reichert’s money came from PACs and committee transfers.

It would be an overstatement to claim that ActBlue has changed the nature of political fundraising, but it sure does appear to be in the process. (At least for the Democrats. Republicans can’t seem to put together a comparable service.) And candidates like Burner sure do appear to be at the forefront of these changes.