Search Results for: 10,000

As I warned last week, Republicans are flooding the prosecutor’s race with money, with another $38,274 transfered from the state Republican Party into Dan Satterberg’s account just yesterday. That brings Satterberg’s total King County and state GOP cash and in-kind contributions to $74,405, with more to come. Yup, he sure is looking non-partisan to me.

Much of this money is coming from the usual suspects, folks like Bruce McCaw, Martin Selig and Skip Rowley who have given a combined $100,000 to the state GOP over the past couple weeks. Of course, this money was given with no earmark or quid pro quo — that would be illegal — but you can be damn sure that they knew exactly how their dollars were going to be spent… just like senior deputy prosecutor Nelson Lee, who after having his family and his family business max out to Satterberg, suddenly became a major GOP donor, giving $10,000 to the state party on 10/12. (So much for Satterberg’s pledge to keep the office out of politics.) Man… I’ve got to get me one of those high-paid government jobs.

I suppose this is all legal, but it’s money laundering nonetheless, and if Satterberg truly wanted to keep his office non-partisan he wouldn’t stand for any of it. Instead it’s politics as usual in the prosecutor’s race, and partisan politics at that… which I wouldn’t mind so much, if Satterberg was just honest about it.

With a little over a year to the 2008 election, there have already been over 100 statewide polls that pit Hillary Clinton against Republican challengers in a general election match-up. These polls can be combined to give us an early glimpse of the national mood (albeit one likely soured by years of Bush administration’s military misadventurism).

I’ve been collecting these polls for awhile now, and finally got around to an analysis of the Clinton—Giuliani head-to-head state poll outcomes. My analyses differ from the typical national head-to-head polls because (1) I am concerned with estimating the electoral college results from the statewide polls, rather than estimating a national popular vote, (2) I make extensive use of Monte Carlo simulation methods to examine the probability that each candidate wins, and (3) by combining multiple polls the sample sizes are much larger.

For example, here is the result of 100,000 simulated elections using all the 2007 state poll data I’ve been able to find:

The red line is drawn at 269 electoral college votes—a tie. The area to the right of the red line are Clinton wins, those to the left are Giuliani wins. (There are a few ties. A tied election would almost certainly result in Clinton being elected since the House Democrats currently control 26 state delegations, and the Republicans control 20 state delegations. The 2008 election will probably increase the Democrat’s control of the House.)

These results suggest that Hillary Clinton would have a 73% probability of being elected President, but only if the 2007 polls in toto reflect the national mood for election day, 2008.

In reality, attitudes change with time, so it is helpful to restrict the analysis to the most recent polls whenever possible.

Here is what happens if we restrict the analysis to polls taken in October, 2007 (unless there are no polls in a state for this month, in which case we take the most recent poll, or, if there are no polls at all, we give the electoral college votes to the party that took the state in 2004):

After 10,000 simulated elections, Hillary wins 9,991 times and Giuliani wins 9 times. Clearly, over the course of the year, Hillary has become more acceptable, Rudy has become less acceptable, or some mixture of both has occurred. (In fact, further analyses reveal that Rudy has made a bit of a comeback from his worst showing in mid-summer.)

The polls to date put Clinton in an extremely strong position to win the 2008 election. Giuliani has a tough row to hoe just to become competitive. He’ll need a lot more than just fear-mongering over 11 Sep 2001 to pull off a win.

(I provide a more complete description of the methods and results here.)

When Postman asked his readers “What should Rossi say?” when he officially announces his campaign for governor tomorrow, commenters found it awfully damn hard to take the task seriously. Democrats could barely hold back the snark, while Republicans were at a loss for words.

Personally, I’m not sure what Rossi can or should say at his campaign kickoff, but I’m pretty damn sure what he will say tomorrow… the same thing he said back in 2004, and the same thing he’s been saying over and over again on the non-campaign trail this past year or so:

Yup, it’s hard to argue with 210,000 new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in state history, and one of the best business climates in the nation… but that doesn’t mean Rossi won’t try. How? Well, just like in 2004, he could just try making shit up:

At pancake breakfasts and candidate forums across the state, Dino Rossi has invoked his nephew’s name as an emblem for what ails Washington.

Rossi blames Washington’s unfriendly business climate for driving his nephew, Kenny, and his business to Arizona. The gubernatorial candidate also has cautioned that the next Microsoft or Boeing founder could leave for Arizona, just as Kenny did.

What Rossi doesn’t say is that Kenny was a self-employed car detailer and that he left for personal reasons as much as business, according to his nephew.

Oops.

In politics, the truth doesn’t always hurt, but as Rossi is discovering, it doesn’t always much help, either.

More than most, this election season has been dreadful. The ballot measures are bad enough, highlighted by another draconian Eyman eyesore and the shotgun wedding of a good transit package and an awful roads one. But city voters this season also must consider the future composition of the Seattle City Council.

Can we, like, abolish it and start over?

Recent weeks have seen a rash of headlines featuring council members and candidates and their inappropriate behavior. Even when the behavior had nothing to do with the person’s job performance (or prospective performance), the poor judgment shown, time after time, and this year’s seriously weak crop of council candidates, leaves one wondering: is this really the best we can do?

* Before the primary, Councilwoman Jean Godden’s campaign shopped to her old colleagues at the daily papers a “scandalous” story about her main challenger, Joe Szwaja, and a minor 17-year-old domestic violence incident. And then Szwaja obligingly stumbled all over himself responding to the reports.

* In a remark widely trumpeted as “racist” by supporters of opponent Bruce Harrell, candidate Venus Velazquez told a largely non-white crowd at a Hate Free Zone forum to “vote for people who look like you.” It was a dumb remark–especially since Harrell is also non-white–but in this case she’s gotten a bum rap. Velázquez was only reflecting the grim reality of Seattle politics, in which David Della was elected because he was Asian Pacific Islander and Richard McIver would long ago have been retired were he not African-American. Why? Because non-whites perceive, accurately, that in our at-large system the white council majority could not care less about minority interests. Velázquez would be the city’s first Latina councilmember, and she was speaking, however clumsily, to that. But it was still a really stupid thing to say.

* Harrell himself is a disaster, a developer-backed lawyer who–“when I starred for the Huskies in the Rose Bowl…”–trots out more–“back when my grandfather settled in Seattle…”–irrelevant cliches per second than any other–“growing up in a working class Seattle household…” politician I’ve ever met. Ever. (All guaranteed actual quotes. Frequent quotes).

* Sally Clark, who was appointed to the Council last year and still hasn’t had a serious challenger in two elections since, drew as her general election opponent one Judy Fenton, who ran for office because she wants the nude male sculpture at Olympic Sculpture Park covered up to protect our children. I can’t make this shit up. I’m tempted to endorse Fenton for the sheer entertainment value. I think I’ll go lie down instead.

* McIver made headlines this month–and spent two nights in jail–for a drunken brawl in which he allegedly tried to choke his wife. (Okay, okay, “choke” is a harsh word. He allegedly put his hands around her throat and squeezed. How’s that?)

Mind you, McIver is only on the council in the first place because he was appointed in 1995 to replace John Manning, who resigned after his third domestic violence incident. Manning ran for city council this year, too.

* Councilmember David Della, facing a stiff re-election challenge from a guy (Tim Burgess) who spent years advising the far-Christian-right group Concerned Women of America, embarrassed himself twice in the same week. First, Della pulled a Velazquez, injecting race where race need not be, by lashing out at environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation Voters for endorsing his (white) opponent as “someone who looked like them.” Then leaders of the police and firefighters unions reported that they, too, got flack from Della when they endorsed Burgess. Della should’ve expected those endorsements, Burgess being an ex-cop, but allegedly he warned the union leaders that there would be retribution for their choice, since Della sits on the Finance Committee and the police union is in negotiations with the city and has been without a contract for months. Ugly.

* And then Velazquez gets pulled over for DUI, refuses a breath test and generally doesn’t cooperate well with police, then does an about-face and apologizes to her supporters for all the fuss, and then pleads not guilty anyway.

I’ll ask again. Is this the best we can do?

Being on Seattle City Council is a big deal. It’s an over $100,000 a year job, with staff, that controls an annual city budget of well over $2 billion, oversees more than 10,000 city employees, and makes decisions that will affect every city resident for decades to come. One would hope that the position would attract intelligent, articulate, responsible visionaries, with proven records of accomplishment in their fields.

Instead, we have this sorry lot, the survivors of a process dependent mostly on fundraising and name recognition. More and more, we’re coming to recognize their names–for all the wrong reasons. Surely we can do better.

Between helping a friend move on Sunday and playing goalie in my co-rec soccer game last night, I’ve been doing a lot of standing in the rain recently. And that can only mean one thing. Summer is over and it’s time for the baseball playoffs. Here’s some history behind the four playoff matchups:

National League

Chicago Cubs vs. Arizona Diamondbacks

The Cubs were formed in 1870 as the Chicago White Stockings. Also in 1870, the newly named town of Phoenix purchased a 320 acre lot of land that eventually became the city’s business downtown. The last time the Cubs won the World Series, in 1908, the population of Phoenix was around 10,000. In 1915, the Cubs’ new home, Wrigley Field could hold 18,000 spectators. Today it seats 41,000, much fewer than the population of Phoenix, which thanks to the invention of air conditioning, has 1.5 million people, and its own team.

Philadelphia Phillies vs. Colorado Rockies

The Phillies were formed in 1883 and were originally called the Quakers. At the same time in Denver, a con-artist named “Soapy” Smith was able to corrupt officials in the quickly growing capital of the new state of Colorado with the money he made from his infamous soap scam. When the Phillies won their only ever World Series in 1980, the Colorado Rockies were still a hockey team. The Phillies won the NL East Division title this year for the first second time since 1983, the year after the old Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey and became the Devils, and 10 years before the baseball Rockies were born.

American League

Boston Red Sox vs. LA Angels of Anaheim

The Red Sox were founded at the beginning of the American League in 1901 as the Boston Americans. At that time, Anaheim was a small farming community. In 1920, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, allegedly to finance a Broadway play. This action would curse the team for 84 years until they won the World Series in 2004. In 1924, the Ku Klax Klan secretly won 4 of the 5 seats on the city of Anaheim’s Board of Trustees. This action cursed the city of Anaheim for 78 years until 2002, when the Angels won their first World Series. The following year, a Mexican-American named Arte Moreno bought the Angels, changed the name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and began trying to market the team to Hispanic fans. Since that bit of beautiful karma, even Anaheim’s NHL team has been good.

New York Yankees vs. Cleveland Indians

The Yankees and the Indians were both founded at the beginning of the American League in 1901. The Yankees were originally the Baltimore Orioles for two years before the owners were able to move the team to New York. There they were first called the Highlanders because their home field was on a hill. They didn’t become the Yankees until moving to the Polo Grounds in 1913. The Indians also went through a number of name changes. They started as the Cleveland Blues in 1901, but became the Bronchos (1902), the Naps (1903), the Molly McGuires (1909), and finally the Indians in 1911 after the city was allowed to vote on a name. Since then, the success of the Yankees and the Indians baseball teams has pretty much paralleled the fortunes of Yankees and Indians in this country as a whole.

(A weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.)

President George Bush unwittingly embarrasses himself on the topic of Iraq most weeks, but this was a banner week. First, there was an unannounced Labor Day stop in the massive Marine base in Anbar Province known to Marines as Camp Cupcake, owing to its 13-mile perimeter, over 10,000 troops, and complete disconnect from the chaos that is the daily reality outside its well-guarded walls. While there, Bush hinted that he might reduce troop deployments by the end of the year — but on the same day, the AP was quoting unnamed administration officials as saying that his senior advisors have already told Bush that the escalation surge is going swell and not to let up now. (Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday — 9-11! Get it? — and his written report on the escalation surge is due by the end of the week.)

Then it was on to Austria Australia, where, before meeting with OPEC APEC ministers, Bush blithely told Austrian Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile that “we’re kickin’ ass” in Iraq. (My pet theory: Austrian Australian is not Bush’s native language, and in the awkwardness of trying to translate his remarks, he confused the subject and object. What he meant to say was “Our asses are getting kicked.” A totally understandable gaffe. The alternative, that the most powerful man in the world is living in a particularly destructive fantasy world, would be unthinkable.)

Bush was also embarrassed by a New York Times excerpt last weekend from a generally fawning new biography of him, in which the Commander-in-Chief expressed bewilderment that his administration disbanded Saddam’s army in the early days of the occupation, saying, essentially: “That wasn’t my policy. I don’t know how that happened.” The move is now widely regarded as an enormous mistake that put thousands of young Iraqi men with guns out of work and bitter toward the Americans about it — the nucleus of what became the insurgency. Thing is, Bush knew exactly what the policy was, because he ordered it — and Paul Bremer, then the US Viceroy to Iraq, promptly sent the Times the letters, memos, and documentation to prove it. Oops. (One more notch for the “fantasy world” theory.)

Petraeus’ report is expected to praise the military effort, but condemn Iraqi politicians for a lack of progress in reconciliation, signing over all Iraqi oil to American oil companies, and other “benchmarks” dear to US hearts and/or wallets. So, in its first week back after a month-long recess, what did the Iraqi Parliament do to scramble to impress the Americans with their determination to move ahead? They met for exactly 90 minutes, with only 154 of 275 members present — barely a quorum — and read into the record 10 minor noncontroversial bills, none having anything to do with American benchmarks or reconciliation. Most of their time was spent blaming each other for the country’s worsening violence (they don’t seem to share Bush or Petraeus’ view of the “success” of the escalation surge) and complete lack of basic government services or security. It doesn’t look good. At some point American media needs to figure out that the Iraqi government is a fiction outside the Beltway and Green Zone, and barely relevant inside those places, either.

Speaking of barely relevant: Congressional Democrats, in the runup to the Petraeus report, announced that in their negotiations with Bush they were willing to settle for a “goal” rather than “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. (I know: Democrats, Iraq, “negotiations with Bush,” and “willing to settle,” all in the same sentence. Shocking, but true.) And Ret. Marine Gen. James Jones, who headed a special panel looking into the effort to train Iraqi security forces, testified before Congress that his panel found the Iraqi army at least two years away from being able to operate independently, and that Iraqi police forces were so corrupt and so infiltrated by insurgent militia members that they should be disbanded. Gen. Jones concluded that “We should withdraw.” His testimony was essentially ignored by both the administration and national media.

The Brits, on the other hand, did withdraw: the last British soldiers pulled out of Basra this week, leaving Southern Iraq nominally under the control of the Iraqi Army, more realistically under the control of three mutually warring fundamentalist Shiite militias, and almost certainly about to receive American troops trying to push the chaos from one neighborhood, village, and province to another.

One more note, while folks concerned with Iraq await a report that was probably written in Cheney’s office a month ago: the ACLU filed suit this week to try to obtain Pentagon estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths. After denying for years that the U.S. government tracked Iraqi civilian deaths at all (what’s another dead Iraqi?), the Pentagon finally confirmed earlier this year that it does, in fact, produce intelligence estimates of civilian casualties — but has refused to make them public, just as it has refused to make public the secret formula by which it is calculating, in defiance of every known metric, that overall violence is down in the country due to the escalation surge. Perhaps this week they’ll let us in on the secret.

Or not.

Rodney Tom announced this morning that he is withdrawing from the race for the Democratic nomination in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, leaving Darcy Burner as the sole declared Democrat.

“Our fundraising was going great, but Darcy Burner’s campaign has been phenomenal”, Tom said. “Darcy has over 3,200 contributors, an incredible statement to her broad base of support. Reichert’s idea of campaign finance reform is having $10,000 dinners. Democracy was never intended to be limited strictly to millionaires. Clearly, he’s out of touch with the common voter.”

“My purpose from the start was to replace the current Congressman with someone whoactually represents the values of the 8th district. Dave Reichert is completely out of step with the values shared in this district. Darcy Burner’s campaign has proven they have the leadership, strength and momentum to win next November.”

Tom will pay off campaign costs from his own pocket, refund all contributors and urge them to contribute to Burner. In Yiddish, we call that being a mensch.

I don’t mean to gloat, especially considering how gracious Tom has been in withdrawing and backing Burner, but you gotta think that our unprecedented $125,000 netroots fundraiser played a significant role in pushing Tom out of the race. And honestly, that was one of our primary objectives.

As I told Tom shortly after he announced, one can make legitimate arguments for why both he and Burner are a good fit for the district, but I didn’t really see his path toward winning a Democrat primary. I also told him that my aggressive support of Burner was nothing personal, and that we would make up after he got out of the race. I guess that reconciliation starts today.

More thoughts and observations later….

UPDATE:
I talked with Tom earlier this afternoon, and thanked him for his graciousness. He is fully behind Burner, and quite impressed with her grassroots appeal. I think there is no question that Burner’s campaign is stronger for Tom having challenged her.

I’ve been on KEXP-90.3 on Saturday mornings for over a decade, and for the last several years we’ve been running an extremely popular weekly overview of news from Iraq. Since there’s a lot more of it than I have time to run through (and links don’t work well on the radio), for a while now I’ve also been posting the weekly summaries over at Booman Tribune. It occurs to me that it might make sense to post it locally, too. And so, with your indulgence (and hopefully interest), here is the first of a weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous war.

Much of the last week, in D.C. and the Green Zone, was spent by various parties trying to pave the way for their spin on the congressionally mandated report on the escalation “surge” due at the end of next week.

That included George Bush making a surprise Labor Day PR visit to Anbar Province — a profile in courage somewhat undermined in that he stayed protected by a 13-mile perimeter and 10,000 troops, not venturing outside the base to see for himself the wonderful progress he has been touting. But more importantly, days previous, Bush hinted that he’s already made up his mind regardless of what Gen. Petraeus has to say, suggesting that he would send still more troops to Iraq after the 15th and announcing that he would ask Congress for yet another $50 billion “emergency” war appropriation.

Meanwhile, the impartial investigative arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office, released a report that flatly contradicted the White House, finding little progress in Iraq during the escalation surge. Specifically, the GAO looked at the 18 benchmarks set by Congress. Unlike a White house report last month that tortured logic and semantics in order to find “progress” in only eight of the 18 benchmarks, the GAO found progress in only three and declared the war effort to be failing on all the most important ones.

Other indicators that things didn’t have the rosy glow insisted upon by Bush and his apologists: a New York Times report that while deaths this summer are down from their peak in Baghdad — perhaps because ethnic cleansing has progressed so far that there are fewer people left for the death squads to kill — nationwide the rate of sectarian deaths is double what it was in 2006. (Even in Baghdad, it’s still higher than 2006, just lower than the cooler months of Spring.) And the Center for American Progress released a study declaring that American troops can be safely withdrawn from Iraq in one year, again undercutting the war hawks’ argument that without all those American soldiers and weapons the violence would get worse.

Oh, and there was also the little-noticed tidbit that Gen. Petraeus intervened to “soften” the language of the recent National Intelligence Estimate to reflect recent “progress.” (Even so, the NIE basically said Baghdad was somewhere around the seventh circle of Hell.) Plus, the U.S. leaned on five leading Shiite and Sunni exile politicians to announce a “deal” on America’s desired give-Iraqi-oil-to-American-oil-companies oil law, prisoners, and a few other concessions. But it was largely for show, and American consumption: the deal didn’t bring Sunnis back into the government, won’t get any of the agreed-upon items through Parliament, and the remaining Iraqi politicians allegedly running the country are mostly returned exiles with no constituency outside the Beltway and no relevance outside the Green Zone.

On the other side of that wall, a far more damning measure of how the escalation surge is going, namely how it’s affecting actual Iraqis, emerged last week. Over 5,000 cholera cases have now been reported in Northern Iraq, primarily among refugees living in shanty towns in areas of the country without much fighting. (The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated last week that 4.2 million Iraqis, one in every six, has been uprooted by the war.) Why is this important? Cholera is a disease of the extremely poor, normally seen only in areas where poverty is extreme and government services nonexistent. In this case, as in much of Iraq, there is no longer clean drinking water and, of course, no public health sector to speak of. The government has no presence, local militias and tribes can only do so much, and many of the doctors and technocrats have fled the country or been killed. That’s what the escalation surge means to the average Iraqi.

Want more? Iraqis are no longer eating fish out of the Tigris or Euphrates Rivers, in part because there are so many dead bodies in the rivers — which the fish nibble on — that Iraqis are afraid of contracting diseases associated with cannibalism.

In the south of Iraq, 52 people died last week in Karbala firefights (widely reported in the US as “riots”) between members of Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Maliki-aligned Badr Organization, both Shiite militias vying for control (and wider imposition of sharia law) as British soldiers complete their withdrawal from southern Iraq. After the fighting, al-Sadr ordered the Mahdi Army to stand down for six months to try to avoid widening the civil war. We’ll see how long it lasts. Prime Minister Maliki, the great American-sponsored statesman, blamed Sunni clerics from Saudi Arabia for somehow provoking the Karbala bloodshed, in an effort to deflect attention from his Badr friends. This is our voice of political reconciliation during the escalation surge.

Another important front was emerging in coverage of Iraq last week: a widening scandal (finally) over corruption and where all that American money and weaponry I mentioned earlier has actually been going for four years. McClatchy newspapers reported that hundreds of thousands of dollar in U.S. rebuilding money went to insurgents (still only a fraction of the billions that went missing overall). The Army accused Lee Dynamics International of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to US officials to get $11 million in contracts. The New York Times reported that several federal agencies are investigating weapons sales, disappearances, fraud, kickbacks, and black market profiteering by US officials. And one investigation involves senior official who worked with a Gen. David Petraeus — yes, that Gen. Petraeus — when he was heading the effort to arms and train Iraqi militias and death squads army and police units in 2004-05. (Heckuva job, Davie.) Also from the Times: US weapons given to the Iraqi army are being found used by criminal gangs in Turkey. (No surprise there — we’ve flooded the black market in arms the world over by handing out AK-47s etc. like candy in Iraq.) And, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul Brinkley (another political appointee) was accused last week by a DoD task force of mismanaging government money in Iraq — and also engaging in public drunkenness and sexual harassment.

Big picture: The Project on Government Oversight reported last week that the top 50 Iraq contractors paid over $12 billion in fines and restitution for violating various federal laws over the last 10 years. Being scofflaws not only hasn’t disqualified them from the Iraq feeding trough, but seems to be an entrance requirement.

Finally, in the most unintentionally hilarious incident since Larry Craig got Restless Leg Syndrome, the U.S. military characterized as “regrettable” a Baghdad incident last Tuesday in which eight Iranians, including two diplomats, were released hours after being arrested. In a country awash with guns and where security details are essential for normal travel for VIPs, the eight were singled out because the Iraqi security guys they’d hired had an “unauthorized” AK-47 and two pistols in the trunk of their car. Not entirely coincidentally, President Bush was in Reno that day, telling an American Legion convention that Iranians were arming the insurgency, as part of the steadily increasing PR campaign for a military strike on Iran — which several credible reports this weekend, including this one in the Times of London, say will be massive and imminent. Attacking Iran would not only be illegal and immoral, but politically, militarily, and economically disastrous — the time to mount public opposition to this insanity is now.

The big story today will be President Bush’s $10,000/person Bellevue fundraiser for Rep. Dave Reichert, but the real story behind the big story probably won’t make it onto the evening news or into the next morning’s headlines. Oh, you’ll see the usual pictures of rich folk lining up for a few seconds with the president, while protesters wave banners outside in a carefully quarantined “free speech zone.” And of course, there will be the traffic. Lots of traffic. But the real news will be taking place a few blocks down the street in a small conference room at the Westin, where Darcy Burner will be breaking new ground in the realm of electronic campaigning.

You’d think maybe, in one of the most tech-savvy regions of the nation, our media might recognize history in the making when they see it. But no, our newspapers, TV and radio have all but ignored the extraordinary new standards Burner is setting with her virtual town hall and the netroots fundraising drive that has organized around it.

Displaying the vision, leadership, boldness and technical expertise that have made her a netroots favorite, Darcy and her staff have used Bush’s visit as an opportunity to send a message on Iraq by creating an innovative “virtual town hall,” and attracting participants of national stature like Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Meanwhile, the netroots have seized on Darcy’s efforts, organizing around them an unprecedented $100,000 online fundraising drive intended to send a message of our own, that Republican incumbents won’t prosper by toeing the Bush line on Iraq. You will not find a single member of the political establishment who thought we had a snowball’s chance of coming anywhere near our goal, but in the first three days of the drive we have raised over $75,000 from over 2000 donors. Over a weekend. In August. Fourteen months out from the election.

If that’s not breaking new ground, I don’t know what is. And still, our local media refuses to take notice, even as history is being made in their own backyard. Go figure.

Well, somebody will notice… some national journalist will read the headlines at Daily Kos or Atrios today and scoop the Times and the P-I by recognizing that something special is unfolding in Seattle… that the dynamics of political campaigning are changing right before our eyes. Darcy isn’t just another Democrat, she’s a Democrat v2.0. Welcome to the future of politics.

So let the old guard media willfully ignore Darcy’s virtual town hall — you are invited to help us make history with or without them. Go to www.darcyburner.com, submit your question, and sign up to view the live stream. And if you haven’t already contributed via our Burn Bush Act Blue page, please join the 102 HA readers who already have. Let’s blow through our $100,000 target and give the political and media establishment the fright of their lives.

Help Darcy Burn Bush: $

UPDATE:
Howie Klein has a great post on Darcy over at DownWithTyranny!

I’ve devoted a lot of bytes the past couple days to the Burn Bush for Burner online fund drive, because, well, the sad truth about politics is that money talks. And believe me, hitting our ambitious $100,000 target will be heard loud and clear in both Washingtons, so if you haven’t already given, please give now.

Help Darcy Burn Bush: $

That said, this ambitious netroots fund drive was really only an afterthought a few of us bloggers put together around the Darcy Burner campaign’s ambitious plans to hold a virtual town hall on Iraq to coincide with President Bush’s $10,000/person funder for Dave Reichert. And I haven’t written nearly enough about the town hall itself.

The “Send a Message” Town Hall will be held Monday afternoon at 3pm PST at the Bellevue Westin, just three blocks from the Hyatt where Reichert and Bush will be holding their exclusive high-donor affair. Space is very limited, but don’t you worry because that’s where the word “virtual” comes in. The entire event will be streamed live a www.darcyburner.com, throughout Washington’s 8th Congressional District, the nation and the world. You are all invited to sign up, submit your questions, and then watch the town hall from the comfort of your own computer.

In addition to Burner, panelists will include:

Moderator Joan McCarter — Writing under the pseudonym “mcjoan” at DailyKos, where she is also a fellow, Joan is one of the best known and respected voices in the blogosphere. She writes regularly about the Iraq War, campaign strategy and other issues, and recently co-moderated the YearlyKos presidential candidates’ debate in Chicago. She is currently working on a book about the politics of the American West.

Jon Soltz — the co-founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, Jon is a veteran of the Iraq War, where he served as a captain with the 1st Armored Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is considered one of the country’s most authoritative voices on veterans and military issues and is a regular contributor to the MSNBC program “Countdown” with Keith Olbermann. He also blogs on military and veterans issues at the Huffington Post.

Navy Capt. Larry Seaquist (ret.) — a former US naval officer, Captain Seaquist commanded a number of warships including the battleship USS IOWA during his distinguished 32-year career. He also served as a senior security strategist in the Pentagon including an appointment as the Director of Policy Research in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During the period leading up to the Gulf War he was Acting Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. He currently serves in the Washington State legislature and writes regularly for major newspapers and defense journals.

Lorin Walker — serves as vice-president of VetPac, a political action committee dedicated to electing candidates who preserve the values for which veterans have served, fought and died. She is the daughter of Captain Bruce C. Walker USAF, MIA 1972. A resident of Washington State, she is active in veterans affairs and Democratic politics and works at Microsoft.

Professor Clark Lombardi — teaches comparative law at the University of Washington and is an expert on Islamic legal systems. He recently returned from a trip to Iraq, and speaks knowledgably about the difficulties the United States faces in Iraq in creating functioning civil institutions that are critical to the functioning of a stable and effective democracy.

Major General Paul D. Eaton (ret.), who went to Iraq in 2003 to lead the effort to recreate the Iraqi military from scratch, and who since his retirement has stepped forward to speak plainly about the Bush administration’s incompetence in conducting the Iraq War and callousness in treating its active duty forces and veterans, is unable to attend in person but has submitted a video statement for the “Send a Message” virtual town hall. The same is true of Ambassador Joe Wilson, who exposed the administration’s efforts to falsely hype the Iraqi regime’s efforts to acquire nuclear materials from Niger in the run-up to the war and has been forthright ever since in .

The participants will answer questions submitted over the web or via Youtube video clips and will offer their expertise on our current dilemma in Iraq and the impact it is having on our nation, our military, and our reputation in the world.

This first-of-its-kind forum promises to be as innovative and ground breaking as the netroots fund drive that sprang up around it. For further details about how you can participate, visit www.darcyburner.com today, and check regularly between now and Monday for updates.

And oh yeah… be sure to go to Burn Bush Act Blue page, and give whatever you can.

Last cycle it took an immense amount of local support for Darcy Burner to prove herself a national netroots candidate. This cycle, she has that national support right from the start.

Yesterday we launched an ambitious $100,000 fundraising drive to counter President Bush’s $10,000/person funder for Dave Reichert, and to coincide with Darcy Burner’s Virtual Town Hall on Iraq, Monday Aug 27 at 3PM. And while 380 individuals have already contributed over $15,000 via our Act Blue page alone, I’m hoping HA readers will be more than just a tiny asterisk in the final totals.

To that end I have personally donated $100 (and you all know I don’t have a lot of cash to spare,) and I’m hoping 10 of you will make it worth my while by matching it dollar for dollar. And for those who can’t afford to be so generous (or unlike me, are prudent enough not to make a donation you can’t afford,) ten bucks isn’t so much to ask, is it? I’d like to see at least 25 HA donations over the next day, in appreciation of the generous support we’re getting from our friends in the national netroots.

Send a message. Make a difference. Please give generously to Darcy Burner.

Ambassador Joe Wilson asks you to support Darcy Burner

George W. Bush is coming to Seattle Aug. 27 to raise money for his friend and ally, Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-08), and to thank him for his unwavering support of the president’s policy in Iraq. Reichert hopes to raise over half a million dollars from this $10,000/person event, but this is our opportunity to send a message Reichert and his fellow Republicans that toeing the Bush line on Iraq just won’t pay off.

Over the next five days the Darcy Burner campaign will be releasing a series of videos, asking for your participation in a Virtual Town Hall forum on Iraq, scheduled to coincide with the Bush fundraiser. Meanwhile a coalition of national and local blogs is launching a coordinated drive to help Darcy counter the Bush visit. Our ambitious goal: $100,000 in netroots contributions to the Darcy Burner campaign between now and the end of the drive.

Sure it’s a lot of money, but money seems to be the only political currency Republicans understand. Reaching our target will not only send a strong message that we want our troops out of Iraq, it will also teach other Republicans that bringing in Bush isn’t worth the financial and political cost, thus neutralizing the GOP’s most effective fundraiser.

We have created a special Act Blue page just for this event, or you can contribute directly via this embedded form:

Help Darcy Burn Bush: $

As we’ve learned from several recent disappointing votes, it is not enough to just send Democrats to Washington — we need to send progressive Democrats who will stand up for the values and concerns of their constituents. So please dig deep into your pockets and give generously before the Bush fundraising juggernaut gets off the ground, and rubberstamp Republicans like Reichert get out to an insurmountable lead.

In the comments of my last post, commenter Russell Garrard wrote the following:

The Bush-haters will tell us that the supreme head of our government and his minions are supremely sinister and fiendish liars (albeit also moronic bumpkins). Then they turn around and tell us that only government can be trusted to vet what we put in our mouths and bodies. I don’t get it….

The larger argument that Russell is making (and we continued the back and forth in the comments over it) is that the government shouldn’t be trusted to do anything because free market forces will invariably do it better. I’m amazed at how often I hear this considering how much evidence there is that it’s not true in a number of circumstances (see: Larry Kudlow looking ridiculous on his own show when defending free market health care against Ezra Klein). The logic behind it is that companies will be so afraid of the financial ramifications of doing things against the public interest (secretly having bad things in their products or implementing cruel labor practices) that it’s pointless to have any kind of oversight by the government. This ignores a massive amount of history and common sense. Companies pursue profits and there have been many situations where that pursuit of profit has run counter to the general welfare of the citizens.

One of the more common ways in which this has happened is when it comes to addictive substances. From the tonics of the 19th century that secretly contained morphine to the cigarette industry of the 20th, companies have often put their pursuit of profit before the public good. These industries weren’t reformed because the corporations stopped seeing the profit potential of their actions, they were reformed because the government established rules (in the case of morphine, laws were created in the late 1800s that forced manufacturers to identify the ingredients of their tonics, causing many of them to immediately go out of business rather than admit their product contained morphine). Not all of the rules that our government has made over the years are perfect – in fact, some have been terrible – but a society is strongest when it allows for free enterprise, but also ensures that government can act as a corrective mechanism that can establish rules and safety nets for a system that, by design, ends up with winners and losers and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Part of the myth that government is useless and unnecessary is rooted in a belief that any time government spends money, it’s an inefficiency. If there were a real need to spend that money, some say (and please feel free to read through this Sound Politics post and the comments if you think I’m just inventing a ridiculous strawman) that it’s only worthwhile to do if an actual person or company sees a profit potential. In this mindset, no roads, schools, or scientific research should ever be funded unless a company saw profit potential in that investment. Otherwise, it’s a waste. I never imagined that I would encounter so many people believing in such oversimplifications, yet I manage to come across it all the time when looking for things on our local right-wing blogs to make fun of. For all of these people, the moon landing must be the greatest boondoggle of all time, especially since some people still aren’t convinced we really went there.

Like the moon landing, there are valuable things that government can do that don’t provide the kind of immediate direct profit potential that a corporation would be interested in. From building transit to improving park space, there are various things that would give a return on investment for an entire community or even the entire country, but wouldn’t make sense for a corporate bottom line. As a capitalist system grows and matures, I believe that it can eventually allow for more and more of these things to be done by private entities (and this often puts me at odds with many liberals), but a belief that there’s some truism that a corporate entity is always the superior option distorts the proper balance we need to have between having the things we need provided for us by those motivated by money and those motivated by the ballot box.

Going back to the Sound Politics post I linked to, the Edmonds School District administration building obtained an espresso machine. The price tag ($10,000) alarmed the Sound Politics peanut gallery and many wailed about how wasteful government spending has become. The only problem is that the espresso machine was bought so that faculty could purchase their morning brews for less money inside the administration building and the proceeds would go towards the district’s general fund and toward school lunches. The machine was expected to pay for itself in less than two years. If that’s true, and there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t, it was an intelligent use of school budget funds and government doing something smart.

But that’s not how it works among the faith-based capitalism crowd. Whenever government spends money, it’s an inherent inefficiency to them. To demonstrate how this can lead to pure silliness, let’s say there are two cities that each have a park that needs to be refurbished. The first city finds a coalition of business owners and private citizens who pony up the $50,000 for the refurbishing. The second city uses public funds. There’s an argument to be made that the second city is not wisely spending taxpayer money, just as it’s possible that the business owners in the first city might not get what they think they may get back from their investment (good publicity). But what I don’t agree with is the idea that the actual job of refurbishing the park will be done more or less efficiently depending upon which avenue is chosen. The idea that those being paid by a for-profit entity will work harder than those being paid the same rate by a government entity has no basis in any reality that I’m familiar with, yet it’s an article of faith for so many. The issue of accountability usually appears in that theory as well, but anyone who’s ever worked in the private sector can tell you that massive inefficiencies and beaurocracies exist in for-profit entities as well.

Leave it to our friend Stefan to take this idea and go careering over the hills with it.

Last weekend I asked readers to suggest a word to represent the opposite of “Statism”. Thanks to all who participated in the ensuing discussion. Among the best suggestions: classical liberalism, small-l libertarianism, objectivism, Americanism, capitalism. My personal favorite, suggested by Eric Earling, “civic entrepreneurialism”. That best captures the spirit of what I was looking for — civic engagement based on private enterprise, as opposed to state coercion. But I’d still prefer a single snazzy word to represent the concept.

Incidentally, the concept of private initiative in lieu of state coercion is, IMHO, the preferred alternative not only where it is traditionally proposed (e.g. education, social services), but also for traditionally social conservative issues. Take, for example, abortion. This merits a longer post, but if the goal is to reduce the number of abortions, wouldn’t it be more effective for private organizations to deliver positive messages to change people’s minds about the issue, than to expect government intervention to solve the problem?

After I read this post, I sat back in my chair, stroked my goatee, looked up at the ceiling, read it again, thought about driving down the coast this summer, paced around the room a few times, read it a third time, rubbed my temples for a minute and then just turned the computer off. After a few days, I think I’ve got it.

Going back to the example with the parks, Stefan has actually convinced himself that not only can private enterprise refurbish the park more efficiently than government can for that $50,000, but it can do a number of things that government is completely incapable of doing as well.

It’s true that there are a number of things that government can’t do. Following drug policy, I’m well aware of what the limits of government are. Whether it was alcohol prohibition of the 20s or the current drug prohibition, people in our government have been trying to do the impossible. It just can’t deter people from exhibiting irrational behavior, and drug addictions are irrational behaviors. If those irrational behaviors have been shown to be detrimental to others, we obviously demand the government deal with that person, but putting them in jail doesn’t “fix” their irrational behavior – even when the sentence they are given is justified. This is why government-run drug treatment programs have been shown to be very cost effective from a taxpayer standpoint.

But this is very different from establishing rules or openly participating in a marketplace, where people overwhelmingly display more rational behaviors. People may not always make the smartest decisions when it comes to their own finances or running a large corporation, but they tend to have a rational basis for their decisions. As a result, government can be much more effective at using prison or financial penalty as a deterrent and to get people to play by the rules. There will always be a small subset of people who will act irrationally out of greed, and just as those whose drug addictions cause them to violate the freedom of others, they should still be sent to jail (or fined), even it doesn’t deter their irrational behavior without counseling or other psychological help.

For Stefan, and the Sound Politics nut squad, government can’t do anything at all, and beyond that, who knows what things they’ve tried and failed at that the free market can do! People are still having abortions? Hell, we haven’t unleashed the grand power of capitalism at that scourge. A few Wal-Mart funded PSA’s and the abortions just disappear. Haven’t solved drug addiction? Give Bank of America the keys. Can’t defeat terrorism? Try Blackwater (oh wait, we already did that).

Even though government has no ability to make people act responsibly if their motivations are irrational, it does have the ability to be responsible in dealing with those who are acting rationally. In other words, government is mainly useless in changing behaviors done in the pursuit of pleasure, since those behaviors tend to be impulsive or irrational, but it can be useful in dealing with those done in pursuit of profit. The pursuit of profit is a major motivator in life, but it’s not the only one, and government can utilitize other motivators like patriotism, compassion, and scientific curiosity to accomplish things as well. It’s just imperative that we hold the people we put in government accountable for what they’re doing.

Apparently, you can never be too rich, you can never be too thin, and you can never be too wing-nutty. With only three of ten Republican presidential hopefuls displaying the integrity to admit they don’t believe in evolution, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn is considering adding his authentic conservative voice to the GOP debates:

Sen. Tom Coburn is mulling an entry into the Republican presidential primary, according to sources inside and outside the Senate. Coburn, a senator from Oklahoma, is believed to be receiving encouragement from a small group of wealthy businessmen and philanthropists in the Oklahoma-Kansas-Texas region of the country.

Hmm. I wonder if any of those wealthy Oklahoma businessmen include Sonics owners Clay Bennett, Tom Ward and Aubrey McClendon, who have contributed nearly $10,000 to Coburn in the past?

“He’s all about faith, lower taxes, and staying the course in Iraq,” says an adviser outside of the Senate who has been speaking to Coburn.

He’s all about “lower taxes” huh? And, you know, one way to lower taxes is to not spend taxpayer dollars building $500 million hoops palaces for billionaires.

Coburn is believed to have the backing of several low-profile members of the so called “Swift Boaters,” men who financed the ads that doomed the presidential aspirations of Sen. John Kerry.

Yeah, well, I don’t really have anything snarky to add here. I just thought it might say something about the type of folk who support Coburn.

According to Wikipedia Coburn has said he favors the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions, and that homosexuality is the biggest threat to America. The inimitable Cliff Shecter thinks Coburn is just “another whackjob“:

He’s the freaking tool that says lesbians are in the school bathrooms, silicone breast implants are “healthy”, is blocking celebrating Rachel Carson’s birthday and and was against airing “Schindler’s List” on regular tv.

He’ll fit right in.

He certainly will.

Over a month ago, I said this about the race among Democrats to take on Reichert in the 8th CD:

Unlike Goldy, I’m not committed to supporting a single candidate. At least not yet.

Today, I announce that I will be supporting Darcy Burner for Congress.

Democrats need an energetic new voice in Washington. We need a voice from Seattle’s Eastside that will advocate for fiscal restraint and personal responsibility. We need someone who understands not only the high-tech businesses of Bellevue and Redmond, but also the VFW halls of Auburn and Buckley. Darcy Burner meets or exceeds all of these requirements.

While some folks question whether Darcy is the candidate who will lead Democrats to victory, I don’t. Darcy fell just 8,000 votes short of victory in 2006. In New Hampshire, Paul Hodes lost to Rep. Charlie Bass by 20 points in 2004. Two years later, Hodes won, 52-45. The truth is, Darcy is much closer to victory in ’08 than many candidates who are giving it second try.

Darcy Burner isn’t the anointed candidate; if there are challengers, she’ll have to beat them. If Dwight Pelz does what Paul Berendt did in 2004 by finding a celebrity candidate to run in the 8th, Darcy will have to beat that candidate, too. No one is owed a seat in Congress, or even a party’s nomination.

Darcy has learned much from her first campaign, and I see no reason why she can’t get another 10,000 votes somewhere in the 8th District.