HorsesAss.Org

Good morning, HAers! We hope you had a great weekend fighting the crowds in the malls. Funny thing…people tell me it snowed here. I ran some errands Saturday, came home feeling a little flu coming on and took a nap. Next thing I know it’s Sunday morning and wet and rainy outside. Snow you say? Yeah, right…

I am aware, however, that it is the last month of 2007, entering the thick of the holiday season, which means a lot of snow news days, make that slow news days, are on the way. Not that no news is actually happening. It’s just that the real news, the bare hungry sniffin’ truth, is not likely to be covered during this or any holiday season. There are two reasons for this: First, the real truth is kinda depressing and might serve up a real downer during a season to be jolly. Second, reporting real news would usurp space reserved for contest entries. The Seattle Times is particularly aggressive with prize-based, multi-part series this time of year. After all, the many prizes the industry awards to itself (no one else volunteering for the privilege) translate into respect, leadership and the current booming circulation rates that newspapers enjoy.

So yesterday’s and today’s Times are dominated by a series on old people being victimized by mortgage lenders (the headline says “Seniors prime targets…” shouldn’t that be subprime?), focusing on the trials of 96-year-old Frances Taylor, who lost $2 million in a sort of Ponzi scheme of refinancing during the housing boom. Anyone who owns a house, of course, is aware of the lending vultures eager to separate the gullible or defenseless from their life investments, and one wouldn’t wish Taylor’s experience on even the greediest of homeowners. But cynics like me (who was told repeatedly from 1999 on to refinance my home because equity is “dead money”) scoured the news media rabidly during the boom years for even a hint, a shred, a scintilla of skepticism arguing against leveraging equity. Perhaps The Times and other news media would have better served Frances Taylor and the rest of their reading public with a series on the dangers of the lending market in time to save people their homes. Granted, such unpleasantness might have discomfited the real-estate advertising community and probably not won any awards. But it would have saved a lot of readers a lot of grief.

So hark, the herald angels sing: It’s not too late to report today’s news today! Here’s an idea: How about a three-part series, or let’s not be greedy, just one good, hard-hitting story on the overbuilding crisis (all those condos and townhouses still being built while the ones already in place aren’t selling). Or here’s one: Somewhere there must be someone who is dying or already dead because they could not afford medical insurance. Or their insurance company did not cover what they should have. Or because their insurance company did not pay, they lost their house to predatory lenders. And how about Seattle’s war on the homeless, led by our curiously unreproachable mayor — a story rife with political and societal overtones. Oh drat, it’s the holidays. Let’s do a roundup instead of where the homeless can get turkey dinners. Or how about the huge giveaways to Paul Allen’s Vulcan, millions for a useless streetcar serving the rich while affordable housing goes wanting. Oh wait, the Beacon Hill News and The Stranger have that covered. So instead we have the P-I airing the kvetches of the privileged and wealthy, who are squabbling over downtown condos blocking each other’s views. “What Do You Think?” the P-I Web site asks. Um, er, can’t those guys afford lawyers?

Perhaps in this season of glad tidings we should adapt the cheerful admonition of suspected war criminal Donald Rumsfeld: You read the morning headlines you have, not the ones you might want or wish for. So for now anyway we’re stuck with 8 guys saying they had sexual associations with Larry Craig. That’s 7 more than got Clinton impeached, and Craig is still walking tall, with a spring in his wide stance. If only Monica Lewinsky had been male. We wait breathlessly for Matt Lauer’s call-back to Craig (with special guests!).

Or here’s something: Obama leading Clinton in Iowa? If I could do it, I would make that little Chris Berman “Wha….????” squeak. And what about Kucinich teaming up with Ron Paul? Hey, they could have their own debate, networks be damned. Ah but that would be the news we wish for, not the news we have.

The Bushies have called Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez a dictator and a tyrant… but since when do dictators lose elections?

CARACAS, Venezuela, Monday, Dec. 3 — Voters in this country narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers, the Election Commission announced early Monday.

[…] The outcome is a stunning development in a country where Mr. Chávez and his supporters control nearly all of the levers of power. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.”

“I congratulate my adversaries for this victory,” he said. “For now, we could not do it.”

Our close ally in the “war on terror,” Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, he’s a dictator. Our good friend King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, now he’s a tyrant. But Chávez congratulating his adversaries for winning an election? That’s not a dictatorship… that’s a functioning democracy.

Now if only Bush had accepted the will of the people as graciously as Chávez….

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Radio Kos with McJoan
Joan “McJoan” McCarter joins us for our weekly chat with the folks at Daily Kos. Topics of discussion will include the GOP YouTube debate, a status report on the presidential race, and a look ahead to the issues that will drive the 2008 election.

8PM: Do all kids deserve a shot at a college education?
Polly Trout and Anttimo Bennett join us from Seattle Education Access to talk about their innovative programs to give all kids a shot at college education.

9PM: Is it time for government to get out of the marriage business?
That’s what Evergreen State College history professor Stefanie Coontz argues in a guest column in the Seattle PI. She is the author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

It snowed yesterday in Seattle, apparently for the first time ever! A dusting of frozen water fell from the sky in the form of fluffy, white flakes, making the roads slippery! Who the hell can drive in that?!

And in breaking news, today it is going to rain! A lot. Expect flooding. Again, something apparently that has never, ever happened here before.

Will wonders never cease?

“Or you can drive your car!”

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Special Session or Special Olympics?
Our Democratic leadership sure is “special” aren’t they, if they think a revenue cap below the rate of inflation is either good politics or good policy? The Stranger’s Josh Feit was down in Olympia for Thursday’s debacle and he joins us in studio for his first hand take and a discussion of the inevitable fallout.

8PM: Does WalMart have an obligation to treat its workers fairly?
A class action suit was filed this week, alleging as many as 75,000 were illegally denied overtime pay and work breaks. Tough shit for the workers? Or does WalMart have an obligation to treat them fairly?

9PM: Are we squandering America?
Robert Kuttner is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, and the author of a new book, “The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity,” and he joins us in studio for the hour. With wages stagnating and the gap between the very rich and everybody else growing ever wider, Kuttner argues for a return to the “managed capitalism” that guided the great economic expansion from 1948 to 1973, an era during which the U.S. economy, wages, and incomes flourished, and a rising tide really did lift all boats. Kuttner appears tomorrow night, 7:30 PM at Seattle’s Town Hall, for a book reading and signing.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

It is just another Republican attempt to gain power through tricks and exploitation, rather than through leadership. We all remember previous Republican coup attempts: the Clinton impeachment, Katherine Harris’ illegal disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legitimate Florida voters, the Republican shutdown of recounts in Florida, the illegal mid-term Texas redistricting, the California gubernatorial recall, and even the Republican’s attempt to steal the Washington governors office by suing over made-up charges of election fraud.

This time, the Republicans are gaming the electoral votes in California. Johann Hari’s guest column in the Seattle P-I explains:

…the Republicans are trying to exploit the discontent with the Electoral College among Americans in a way that would rig the system in their favor. At the moment, every state apart from Maine and Nebraska hands out its Electoral College votes according to a winner-takes-all system. This means that if 51 percent of people in California vote Democrat, the Democrats get 100 percent of California’s electoral votes; if 51 percent of people in Texas vote Republican, the Republicans get 100 percent of Texas’ electoral votes.

The Republicans want to change this — but in only one Democrat-leaning state. California has gone Democratic in presidential elections since 1988, and winning the sunny state is essential if the Democrats are going to retake the White House. So the Republicans have now begun a plan to break up California’s Electoral College votes and award a huge chunk of them to their side.

They have launched a campaign called California Counts, and they are trying to secure a statewide referendum in June to implement their plan. They want California’s electoral votes to be divvied up not on a big statewide basis, but according to the much smaller congressional districts. The practical result? Instead of all the state’s 54 Electoral College votes going to the Democratic candidate, around 20 would go to the Republicans.

The effect would be to hand the Republicans an extra state the size of Ohio or Pennsylvania–but without so much as a single extra popular vote going to the Republican candidate. They would simply be gaming the system for a short-term advantage to win acquire the White House in 2008.

At Hominid Views, I’ve been conducting a series of simulation studies for the 2008 election. I’ve used state-wide head-to-head polls pitting, say, Clinton against Giuliani (as well as other match-ups) to repeatedly simulate 2008 elections. The results provide a distribution of electoral college votes that can be used to estimate the probability that each candidate would win if the election were held today.

For example, after 10,000 simulated elections using, whenever possible, polls from the last month, the distribution of Electoral College votes looks like this:

Clinton won the electoral vote 9,530 times, and Giuliani won only 417. (There were 53 ties that would almost certainly be a win for Clinton). In other words Clinton wins about 95.8% of the simulated elections and Giuliani wins 4.2%.

Here is the same simulation, but this time using the “California Counts” rules to divvy up the California electoral votes:

Now after 10,000 simulated elections, Clinton wins only 7,233 (plus 181 ties) and Giuliani wins 2,586. With no change whatsoever in the popular vote, Clinton’s chance of victory decreases to 74.1% and Giuliani is up to a probability of 25.9%.

Giuliani’s increased chance of winning is not attributable to some refinement of democracy, and it doesn’t better reflect the will of the people. Rather, it reflects a trick. Apparently, the Republicans are still not confident in their ability to win through genuine leadership, superior public policy, or popular appeal. That leaves them with little choice but political trickery.

I laughed out loud at this comment by one of the flying monkeys over at uSP:

Oh the Nutroots base will definitely screw it up for Gregoire. Those folks are mostly unorganized anarchy.

Yeah, as opposed to that organized anarchy I keep hearing about, right?

Today I stumbled across this recent Field Poll that shows Californians growing more and more…um…excited about mail-in voting.

Notable finding: “Permanent mail ballot registrants include more registered Republicans than are found in the overall electorate.”

About two months ago, I was at the Northgate Park & Ride helping a UW transfer student from Sydney figure out which bus to take back to the University. She’d just arrived in the U.S. that morning and was buying basic supplies at Target. I recognized her accent and knew she was an Aussie right away. She seemed surprised that people she’d talked to earlier in the day thought she was English. I just replied “Americans are stupid.” She says, “You’re the second person to say that so far.” If what’s happening in Olympia isn’t enough proof, here’s more:

UPDATE: My god, people! Get a grip on yourselves. When I said “Americans are stupid” to her, it was said in a joking fashion to someone who was overwhelmed by being in this great country for the first time. The notable thing was that I wasn’t the first person to say that to her.

The bottom line is that Americans ARE pretty stupid (arguably the better world is ignorant) when it comes to knowing about the rest of the world. Survey are survey confirms this. The numbers are terrifying:

Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel.

Nine in ten couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.

And 54 percent were unaware that Sudan is a country in Africa.

I’m reasonably certain that commenter Puddybud could find Afghanistan on a map of Asia. That means that he’s arguably more knowledgeable about the world than 90% of young adults. If that doesn’t send chills down your spine about what’s going on, nothing will.

I’ll save the venting for tomorrow night’s show when The Stranger’s Josh Feit will join me in studio to give his first-hand account of the proceedings at yesterday’s special session, and the inevitable fallout from the Dems’ boneheaded political blunder. But I just want to take time to thank those Democratic legislators who stood up to the political pressure, and voted against rashly reinstating I-747’s unsustainable and irresponsible one-percent cap on regular levy revenue growth.

Yesterday I wrote, “I’d be surprised if a majority of the Seattle delegation didn’t vote to approve the governor’s plan,” and, well… I was wrong. There are six legislative districts that represent Seattle, for a total of twelve representatives and six senators. Of those, only one senator and four representatives voted for the bill, with two representatives excused and not voting. A total of eleven Seattle legislators cast votes against the bill: Senators Ken Jacobsen, Adam Kline, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Joe McDermott and Ed Murray, along with Representatives Mary Lou Dickerson, Sharon Nelson, Jamie Pedersen, Eric Pettigrew, Sharon Tomiko Santos, and Helen Sommers. I was particularly proud that my entire 37th Legislative District Delegation — Kline, Pettigrew and Santos — voted against the bill.

Only a handful of non-Seattle legislators bucked the governor’s pressure to quickly pass dumb policy. In the House, special kudos go to Rep. Geoff Simpson of Covington, who voted his conscience despite the fact that his district overwhelmingly supported I-747, and despite the fact that he feared this vote could potentially end his political career.

“I’m not here to make decisions based on whether or not I’ll get re-elected,” he said. “I’m here to make decisions that are good public policy … 747 is not good public policy.”

Simpson said local government can’t be expected to provide high quality services when revenues are not keeping pace with the rate of inflation.

While he was aware of the risks, Simpson said he hoped voters in his district would consider the sum of his voting record, not just this one vote.

That’s what representative democracy is all about. In the Senate, Craig Pridemore of Vancouver made a similar principled stand, again, knowing the political risks coming from a district that overwhelmingly supported I-747:

“I’m a former county commissioner. I know the impacts this will have on local government, law enforcement abilities, and all of the other critical local services. I can’t vote yes for that,” he says.

No doubt Pridemore and Simpson’s opponents will attack them as arrogant and out of touch, but this is exactly the sort of principled leadership voters so often decry as missing in our elected officials. If we want our legislators to mimic the polls rather than make informed decisions, we might as well just eliminate the Legislature entirely.

Good morning HAs! On this the final day of the penultimate month of 2007, heading into yet another season of Merry this and Happy New that, I can think of nothing cheerier than just 417 days remaining till 1.20.09, the inscription I wear on the tattered baseball cap I use to cover my aging bald head in the hope that it keeps hope alive.

Good news and glad tidings abound today. We need look no further than Olympia for an inspiring monument to legislative productivity: The “emergency” passage of I-747’s recently ruled illegal 1 percent cap on annual property tax increases. Wow…that was intense. Hey, the next time anyone complains about government lethargy, ineffectiveness and sclerosis, just remind them of Nov. 29, 2007, when in just 1 day, not even that really, 10 hours or so, the Legislature passed and the governor signed into law major legislation affecting the future welfare of the entire state! So let’s not talk about “lazy politicians” and “government inaction” here. Our folks showed they can really get the lead out…provided it’s the holiday season and they’d rather not be working, provided an election year is approaching, and provided political expediency obviates any real need to consider the implications behind what they’re doing. Somehow in all the hand waving and bombast, the real issue of a tax cap in a worsening recession (the P-I quote from the Gig Harbor homeowner who somehow thinks his house is worth more at the end of the day than when he woke up going stupefyingly unchallenged) just never quite made it to radar. Ah well. Gotta get back to the home district and finish the Christmas shopping…

Speaking of housing, we regrettably inflict on you dear readers the latest woeful stab at coverage of the Seattle affordable-housing rat’s nest. Today’s P-I has a long piece on quote affordable housing that somehow never manages to answer the musical question, What Is Affordable? Now you will find, if you stick with the package long enough, a reference to affordability based on median income: “Apartments would be affordable to a single person earning $43,600 a year or a family of four bringing in $62,320 a year. Condos or homes would be affordable to a single person making $54,500 a year or a family of four bringing in $77,900.” But there’s no translation of this to real-life application, e.g., how many square feet for that single person or that family of four? How much of that income is assumed to be for ‘housing.’ And what does ‘housing’ constitute in the income formula.

As HA’s own astute readers have noted, yes I’m talking about you Roger Rabbit (if that is indeed your real name), housing costs a lot more than just a roof and four walls. Do those income figures include property taxes…maintenance…utilities and other costs of being ‘housed’?

The real problem, of course, is that income-based indices in today’s economy are a moving target, moving faster all the time. Virtually all costs of living are going up onerously while income, especially at the so-called “affordable” level, is frighteningly stagnant. Those teachers and firefighters and cops and service workers who cannot “afford” to live in Seattle are finding it harder to afford even the suburbs. The rule of thumb used to be that housing should take up no more than a quarter of one’s take-home salary. Now it’s up to half for many. Which might be reasonable except that other costs are taking up a fatter part of the equation. Transportation alone now accounts for a quarter or more of many worker incomes. In California, some municipalities have to go without police and firefighters because they simply cannot afford to live anywhere near the jurisdiction.

So yeah, let’s start with how big and where an “affordable” unit would be in our fair city. And then let’s pencil out the numbers, and see whether a single on $43k or family of four on $62k…wait a minute, a family of four in an apartment? OK, you see how ludicrous the game already becomes, simply by failing the sniff test.

And the whole fight is over 3 to 7 percent of the housing?

Memo to news desk: All those folks supposed to fill those thousands of new jobs that we’re building these warehouses in the sky for can’t afford to live there. Talk to them about affordability, don’t go by artificial and patently unrealistic bureaucrat definitions. Then you might be able to publish a story that shows some street sense and actually explains issues and conflicts to the readers you are supposed to be serving.

OK, stepping down off the pulpit, it was with sadness that we read of Benella Caminiti’s passing. In my days of yore as an environmental reporter, I had the great privilege (and learning experience) of working with Benella on a few stories. You always knew it was Benella on the line when, without even identifying herself, she launched into her latest update on her current crusade in diction and detail so refined your head began to swirl. You knew letters and boxes of documents soon were to follow. Benella was a reporter’s best resource: Someone with energy and passion and an unswerving belief in the rightness of her cause, but with the dedication and chops to document and source each iota of outrage she imparted. She made our job so much easier, a concept difficult to fathom in today’s world of paid PR spin and the Orwellian doublespeak of officialdom, where the goal is to make a reporter’s task so convoluted, befogged and enervating as to thwart, if not entirely prevent, real journalism from being done at all. RIP Benella. You made a lot of us better people, and the world a better place.

Eli Sanders looks at the Darcy Burner–Rep. Dave Reichert race in Washington’s 8th congressional district and asks, “What makes important people think that Eastside Democrat Darcy Burner can win in November 2008 the same congressional race that she lost last year?”

Sanders asked DCCC chair Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) who was in town to raise money for Burner this week. Van Hollen provides a number of reasons that don’t seem to completely convince Sanders…until he gets to this:

The most significant thing Van Hollen noted during the conference call was that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which last year spent about $2.5 million to help Reichert win, currently has only $2.5 million total cash on hand to help Republicans around the country. Contrast that with the $29.2 million that Van Hollen currently has to offer Democrats and you see not only a snapshot of the hurt that Bush has put on the Republican Party as a whole, but also a clear path to a Burner victory.

The Republican money deficit is far, far more serious than these figures tell. As Andrew Tannenbaum points out:

So far, 22 representatives have announced they are not running. Of these, 17 are Republicans and five are Democrats, and all five Democrats are from safe districts. […] Four of the Republican seats are safe (AL-02, CO-06, MS-03, and WY-AL), but the other 13 will be battlegrounds. In addition, there there are half a dozen seats the Republicans held in 2006 by tiny margins and will have to pour money into to defend. An example is NC-08, in which a totally unknown high school teacher with no political experience, no money, and no support from the national party, came with[in] 329 votes of unseating a wealthy four-term Republican congressman. There are a few Democratic freshmen who come from hostile districts such as Brad Ellsworth in IN-08, but most of them won by decent margins and have voted fairly conservatively in Congress and most are raising money like there is no tomorrow. For example, freshmen Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20), Ron Klein (FL-22), and Joe Sestak (PA-07) have all raised $1.5 million or more already. The median at this point for all 435 representatives is about $400,000.

NRCC chair Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) will have an enormous cash disadvantage with many open, currently Republican, seats to defend. Unquestionably there will be better investments for the NRCC’s limited funds than WA-08.

Dave Reichert is almost certainly going to have to find most of his own money this election. And given that his recent Bush-headlining fund-raiser raised more money for Burner than for his own campaign, he’ll have to find a strategy that doesn’t shoot himself in the face foot.