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Ooops… I almost forgot to stick it to Tim Eyman:

Tim Eyman and his treasurer created a sham corporation in 2000 to hide salary payments to the Mukilteo initiative king, a Snohomish County judge ruled Friday.

The Everett Herald reports that Timmy’s former treasurer, Suzanne Karr, was ruled to have participated in a deliberate attempt to circumvent state disclosure laws (hmmm… that’s a “conspiracy” isn’t it?) Guilty of six specific public disclosure violations, Karr could face up to $22,000 in fines, plus court costs and legal fees.

Which is kind of a bummer for her, considering that while Tim was secretly growing fat on diverted contributions, Karr didn’t take a dime for herself. Indeed, she was the one who tipped off the media after Tim continued to publicly deny he was making money off his initiative campaigns.

Karr, who was in tears after the ruling, said the state once offered to settle with her for a $2,500 fine, but she “couldn’t do it because I didn’t do anything wrong.” Hmmm. While she didn’t personally profit from her actions, she obviously did do something wrong (you know… violate the disclosure laws,) and some sort of penalty is called for.

For is part, Timmy settled out of court a couple years ago, agreeing to $53,000 in penalties and a permanent ban on handling political action committee money. Considering he paid himself about $250,000 through his sham corporation (with Karr’s help,) and raised over $100,000 in unregulated contributions to his “legal defense fund,” I’d say he got a pretty sweet deal.

If Tim were to take full responsibility for his actions… if he were a gentleman… if he were a mensch… Tim would pay Karr’s penalty and court costs out of his own pocket.

It’s the least he can do for the individual who was perhaps most personally victimized by his selfish, fraudulent, shameless scheme to secretly enrich himself on campaign funds.

I apologize for frequently calling the BIAW a bunch of “bastards.” Such a reference unfairly impugns the reputations of other, more respectable bastards. So as a point of fairness, I’m going to try to be more precise.

Anyway… it looks like those fucking bastards at the BIAW are up to exactly what I’ve been saying they are up to: destroying organized Labor in Washington state.

The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW), one of the state’s most powerful conservative voices, is considering sponsoring a so-called “right-to-work” initiative that would prohibit mandatory union dues.

Gee… I wonder if the Seattle Times could have been any more understated?

The fucking bastards at the BIAW virtually own Dino Rossi, spending $750,000 on his behalf before the election, and God knows how much since. They are the financiers of the failed orange revolution, an effort to overthrow our elected governor through lies, deceit, and bullying. They have printed propagandistic newspaper ads, bumper stickers and fliers, mailed out postcards promoting the right-wing blogs, and launched an unprecedented post-election paid-media campaign.

These are the fucking bastards who fraudulently obtained the signatures of hundreds of voters by sending them sham surveys with $10 “thank you” checks… who devoted their entire staff towards producing a felon list that carelessly defamed the names of hundreds of innocent voters… and who sources tell me have hired private investigators to dig up dirt on public officials and other “enemies.” (I’ve noticed a suspicious inquiry on my own credit report.)

A “powerful conservative voice”…? The BIAW has the loudest, most partisan and mean-spirited conservative voice in the state… and millions of dollars to back it up. Funded by a loophole in our workers compensation system, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying themselves Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson… and just to be on the safe side, bankrolled Attorney General Rob McKenna to boot.

And now these bastards… these fucking, fascist bastards… angered by their impotent failure to shove Rossi into office by any means possible, are preparing to spend their millions on their long threatened “right-to-work” initiative… a Goebbels-esque phrase that offends the sensibilities of anybody with an ounce of love for the English language.

“Right-to-work” is union-busting short and simple… the organized labor equivalent of the tragedy of the commons. When individual workers can enjoy the benefits of a union contract, yet are given the “right” to choose whether to pay union dues, individual self-interest guides many to opt out, eventually defunding and decertifying the union as membership declines. It is like a bridge whose maintenance is paid for by an optional toll; does anybody believe it would not eventually collapse out of disrepair?

This is not only exactly what has happened in states that have enacted so-called “right-to-work” legislation, it is also the exact purpose of the legislation… long a part of a Republican strategy to defund the Democratic Party by destroying one of its most powerful political allies. It is also integral to a corporate strategy that seeks to compete with low-cost manufacturers abroad, by creating a low-wage, no-benefit workforce at home.

The BIAW’s Tom McCabe claims a right-to-work initiative would be retaliation for Democratic efforts to fix workers compensation, preventing the BIAW from using premiums as a cash cow for funding conservative politicians and causes:

“They’ve thrown down the gantlet, and we have to respond.”

That’s not only childish, but a complete and utter load of crap. The BIAW has been threatening this initiative for years, and if anything, Labor’s unsuccessful effort to undercut BIAW funding was a preemptive strike. McCabe and the BIAW will stop at nothing to achieve their political goals, and it would be suicidal for Labor if they failed to provide an equally strident opposition.

Just as much a load of bullshit are protestations from business leaders that mandatory union dues “violate individual workers’ rights and give unions unfair advantages in the workplace and in politics.” That’s right… they say they’re doing this for the workers. And unions have an unfair political advantage? Gimme a break! As the Times also reports today, business is doing just fine for itself in the political arena, thank you very much.

Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half-century.

What the fucking bastards at the BIAW really want is to eliminate Labor’s counter-balance on business’s otherwise unchecked power in the workplace, and in politics. To pretend for a nanosecond that right-to-work is about workers’ rights to anything, is a cruel, underhanded joke. Business leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to serve the interests of their shareholders… not their customers, not their communities, and certainly not their workers… and without organized labor around to create some sort of balance of power, we’ll all soon be obediently working for Wal-Mart wages… or else.

What does the BIAW want in return for the millions of workers comp dollars it spends on behalf of right-wing politicians and causes? Cheap unregulated workers to build cheap unregulated houses… and then tort reform to prevent homeowners from suing them for the resulting shoddy workmanship. These are greedy, selfish, self-righteous, fucking bastards. And while I’ve never been a member of a union myself, I promise you that if the BIAW ever runs their union-busting initiative, I’ll be out there on the streets, side by side with Labor, shadowing the BIAW’s paid signature gatherers, and picketing the businesses who contribute to their sham campaign.

[Editor’s Note: for those of you offended by my foul language, please address your complaints to the BIAW’s potty-mouthed spokesperson, Erin “fuck you” Shannon.]

So here’s a question: are right-wing “news” hosts like Fox’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough stupid, lazy or just plain liars? Both hosts repeatedly touted Dr. William Hammesfahr as a “Nobel Prize nominee,” Hannity eight times during a single hour-long program, and Scarborough four times. But according to Media Matters:

Hammesfahr, a Florida neurologist disciplined in 2003 by the Florida Board of Medicine who claims he can help Terri Schiavo, testified during an October 2002 court hearing on the Schiavo case that his claim to be a Nobel nominee is based on a letter written by Rep. Mike Bilirakis (R-FL) recommending him for the prize. But Bilirakis is not qualified to make a valid nomination under the Nobel rules.

Reading the so-called “nominating letter,” I’m not sure Rep. Bilirakis is even qualified to be a congressman:

It is my distinct privilege to present to the Committee, Dr. William M. Hammesfahr, for the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine.

“The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine”…? What a ditz.

Anyway, seeing as all you need these days to get a nomination is a letter from a slightly confused Floridian, my mother has written a letter nominating me for the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine too. She always did want me to be a doctor.

Okay, I’ve heard enough bellyaching already from editorialists whining about legislation to amend Initiative 601’s spending limits. Passed in 1993, I-601 uses population growth plus inflation to calculate increases in the state spending cap; any spending above the limit requires a two-thirds vote in both houses.

In practice, it only takes a simple majority to amend or suspend I-601 (as has been done in the past,) and thus the super majority provision is utterly toothless — not to mention, undemocratic. And it has probably always been unconstitutional to boot, as only the state Constitution can dictate the majorities required to pass legislation. Complain all you want about removing this provision, but if you really want to require a super majority vote, you need to do it by constitutional amendment.

Yesterday the Tacoma News Tribune chimed in, criticizing SB 6078 for seeking to change the way the cap is calculated (the new formula would link growth in spending to growth in personal income): “Gutting I-601 spending limits a bad idea.”

Gutting? Gimme a break.

As has been explained by the Gates Commission, and nearly every reputable expert on these issues, the economic metric that most close tracks growth in demand for public services is aggregate growth in personal income. This is because most government services are commodities, and like most commodities, consumption increases with income. (Hey… that’s free market economics for you.) As the TNT points out, a growth in personal income calculation would indeed result in a higher spending cap than the current formula.

But to continue to impose a spending limit calculated on population plus inflation, is to ensure that over the long run, government services simply cannot keep pace with demand. And that is exactly what has happened since I-601 passed in 1993: expenditures as a percentage of personal income have declined steadily. And with non-discretionary spending like health care rising much faster than inflation — and thus eating up a larger portion of the budget — the impact of the spending limit is exaggerated on essential services like K-12 education.

K-12 Expenditures per $1,000 Personal Income
(State & Local Government)

In fiscal year 2002, Washington ranked 41st among states in state and local government K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income, down from 36th in 2000. As long as we continue to rely on a structurally inadequate tax system, and tie our spending limits to unrealistic economic metrics, we can expect the level of essential services to continue to decline.

I’m a big proponent of balanced budgets, and I’m not necessarily opposed to spending limits as a guideline for writing them. Indeed, I’m a helluva lot more fiscally conservative than most of my righty critics would imagine (or my liberal cohorts might like.) But my main complaint with I-601’s spending limits calculation, is that like our current tax structure, when projected out into the future, it guarantees that we will have a smaller and smaller government providing fewer and fewer services… without ever asking voters if this is what they truly want!

I welcome a knock-down, drag ’em out, no holds barred public debate on the proper size and scope of government, because I believe that most voters want safer streets, better schools, and all the other essential services that government provides. But the Republican leadership refuses to talk about the real issues, because they understand that the status quo will eventually produce their libertarian dystopia, without debate, if only they show a little patience.

Attacking SB 6078 as “gutting” I-601, ignores the whole purpose of imposing spending limits in the first place. I-601 was not intended to shrink the government, it was intended to keep government growth in line with our economy… and to this end the limit factor should reflect an accurate economic metric. It’s simple math.

To support the current formula is to support the Republican effort to dramatically shrink government by “starving the beast,” a disingenuous strategy to impose a radical vision of government they couldn’t possibly win at the polls. It is a stunningly clever act of political legerdemain, that distracts the eye by focusing exclusively on taxes, while ignoring the services they finance. Then, while voters aren’t looking, tada… government services disappear.

But there’s nothing magical about I-601’s population plus inflation calculation; it simply does not allow our government to keep pace with the growing demands of our growing economy, and thus necessarily results in diminished services over time.

Math may not be as entertaining as magic… but it’s a damn more reliable way to predict the future.

By a 2-1 margin, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to order reinsertion of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, saying her parents “failed to demonstrate a substantial case on the merits of any of their claims.”

One can only hope that our Supreme Court justices — who routinely refuse to grant stays of execution for prisoners whose cases have likewise exhausted all other legal appeals — act as judiciously as the lower courts, and allow Terri Schiavo to die in peace, ending this ordeal for her and her family. A quick and decisive ruling would place an exclamation mark on the shameful efforts of Republican lawmakers to exploit this personal tragedy in order to curry political favor with conservative Christians.

But the Schiavo case is only one example of the Bush Administration’s crusade to impose the morality of a powerful constituency onto the majority of Americans. The Seattle P-I reports today on the ongoing legal battles of a young Navy wife from Everett, who had to sue the military to pay for an abortion of her anencephalic fetus. Two years later, the woman’s attorney is shocked at how aggressively the federal government continues to appeal the case, seeking to force repayment of the $3,000 cost of the procedure:

“I can’t understand the impetus behind the government pursuing this case.”

I can. This is a culture war, and like all wars, the aggressors are willing to sacrifice a few innocent bystanders… even a 19-year-old woman carrying a fetus without a brain.

The so-called “right to lifers” are so absolute in their moral certitude, that they cannot distinguish between a real human life and a brain-dead or brainless person with no consciousness whatsoever. To them, promising medical research on a clump of cells is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, were Nazis conducted vicious medical experiments on fully-formed and fully-conscious Jewish children.

One wonders if extraordinary measures were used to save the empty shell that Ronald Reagan’s body became after Alzheimer’s cruelly withered his brain, and how his family might have reacted if the courts or lawmakers had imposed them? These are the types of painful, personal decisions that families must make for their loved ones every day… and these decisions should remain personal, no matter what somebody else’s bible may say on the matter.

The same people who speak so loudly about the “defense of marriage” are the same people fighting to deny Michael Schiavo one if its most basic legal rights: the power to make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse. Court after court has affirmed that Michael Schiavo has this right, and that his decision to remove the feeding tube was both medically proper and ethical.

To deny the Schiavo family the right to make its own medical decisions would not only be hypocritical, it would be a dangerous sign of a government increasingly willing and able to impose itself into our personal lives.

UPDATE:
By an 11-2 decision, the full court upheld a decision by a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, to deny Terry Schiavo’s parents’ request to have her feeding tube re-inserted. Meanwhile, the Florida Senate once again rejected a bill, 21-18, that would have prohibited patients like Schiavo from being denied food and water.

Next stop, the US Supreme Court, which has already refused to hear the case on three separate occasions.

FYI: TJ over at Also Also has some nice analysis of the legal machinations behind the recent court rulings.

The front page of Sunday’s Everett Herald featured a story about the Snohomish County town of Gold Bar, and how it is struggling to stay incorporated in the aftermath of tax-cutting initiatives. [Cash-strapped town could fall off the map]

The reason Gold Bar and numerous other cities around the state are struggling financially can be traced to the passage of the car tab initiative in 1999, which lowered licensing fees to a flat $30 rate. Since then, Gold Bar has lost about $707,000 in revenue, according to the Association of Washington Cities. That loss is bigger than the city’s 2005 general fund of about $508,000. The city already has tightened its belt, cutting expenses on staff training, laying off staff and restructuring the police service contract with the county, which has saved the city about $194,000, said Hester Gilleland, the city’s clerk and treasurer.

Gold Bar Mayor Collen Hawkins realistically acknowledges that the deepening financial crisis could force the town to disincorporate, forcing Snohomish County to take over services. Residents would lose local control of local services, while facing uncertainty over who would run the local water system, which counties are simply not set up to do.

And they’ve got nobody to blame but themselves.

Hawkins said she finds it ironic that even she voted for Initiative 695 – the major cause of the city’s financial headaches.

The town’s registered voters supported the initiative by a vote of 354-138. Courts eventually struck down the measure, but state lawmakers heeded the will of the people and adopted $30 license tab fees anyway.
…
In 2002, voters approved a second car-tab initiative, which eliminated a $15 license registration fee that Snohomish County and several other counties had been charging. That money was earmarked for street repairs. As a result, the street fund in Gold Bar dropped from $17,200 in 2002 to nothing in 2004, Gilleland said.

“Even though these initiatives are appealing, they are giving a death warrant for local government,” Hawkins said.

Some might argue that these are the unintended consequences of ill-conceived initiatives like I-695, but I’d say it was intentional. While many voters — and even some mayors — didn’t realize the local impact of these statewide measures, many of their strongest and most vocal proponents knew exactly what they were doing.

We are witnessing the gradual devolution of state and local governments. Small towns across the state will be forced to disincorporate as tax revenues continue to dry up, possibly pushing some Eastern Washington counties into insolvency as they struggle to provide additional services.

Meanwhile, the structural deficit built into our antiquated state tax system has created a cycle of perpetual, multi-billion dollar budget gaps that makes it impossible for Olympia to lessen the blow, or assume more of the burden itself. When Republicans talk about cutting government waste, they’re no longer talking about making government more efficient, they’re talking about cutting programs entirely. They’re not interested in convincing the public to embrace a dramatically smaller and limited form of government… they know that if they just sit back and patiently defend the status quo, they will achieve this vision, with or without public support.

It is time for the Republican leadership to come clean about its agenda. If they don’t believe in shuttering city halls across the state, if they don’t believe in denying health care to tens of thousands of children, if they don’t believe in mediocre public schools and a university system that can’t possibly grow to meet the needs our rising population… then they need to tell us how they intend to pay for these and other basic services without raising taxes. But if what they truly believe in is minimal government and zero regulation, then they need to let voters decide on this agenda for themselves, instead of dishonestly relying on our broken tax structure to enact it by default.

The Tacoma News Tribune editorial board has come out strongly in favor of HB 1226, a bill that would extend the current cap on individual campaign contributions to “non-partisan” races, including judicial campaigns. (“Good for the politicians, good for the judiciary.”) This is a common sense proposal, but Republicans are opposing it because they have recently used this glaring loophole to their advantage.

At the center of the controversy is Jim Johnson, who won a November election to the state’s highest court with the help of $232,000 in contributions from the GOP-allied Building Industry Association of Washington. If Johnson had been running for another statewide race

We think money set aside in the public trust to promote worker safety should be spent on worker safety.

So say Sen. Mark Doumit (D-Cathlamet) and Rep. Bill Fromhold (D-Vancouver) in a must read guest column in Tuesday’s Seattle P-I: “State’s ‘retro’ program needs repair.”

Doumit and Fromhold do an excellent job of explaining what retro is, how it works, and why the BIAW has been able to exploit its inequities to finance their partisan political agenda. To summarize, employers can choose to pay their worker’s comp premiums into “retro groups” run by associations like the BIAW, who pool the funds, and forward the money to the Department of Labor and Industries. At the end of the year, rebates are paid back to associations with favorable safety records… savings that are supposed to be passed on to the members.

But the size of the rebate is based as much on the size of the group as it is on the its success at preventing injuries. The largest groups get the largest rebates, even if their safety records are mixed.

The BIAW runs the state’s largest retro group.

It is also one of the greatest beneficiaries under the current system. In one year, 96 cents of every dollar the group paid into workers’ compensation was paid out to injured workers. But because the group is so large, it received 24 percent of its premiums back in the form of a rebate.

In other words, the association received a rebate of more than $25 million even though the difference between premiums paid in and losses paid out amounted to a little more than $3 million.

Then, the association turned around and charged its own members a 20 percent fee, generating millions of dollars more than the cost of administration. This money could have been used to promote worker safety or to reduce workers’ compensation premiums. Instead, it was funneled into political campaigns.

This is the money that bought Jim Johnson his seat on the State Supreme Court, and that financed $750,000 of independent expenditures on behalf of Dino Rossi before the election, and god knows how much since. This is the money that paid for those $10.00 checks the BIAW used to defraud voters of their signatures.

But reforming retro is more than just partisan retribution — although the BIAW certainly deserves any retribution it might get. As Doumit and Fromhold point out, this is about fixing inequities in the program and returning to its original intent of helping small and medium-sized businesses.

Despite an unenviable safety record, the association was able to draw millions of dollars away from groups that had shown more commitment to safety simply because it runs one of the largest retro groups in the state. Calling the money the association received a “rebate” is misleading, since it never actually belonged to the association.

This is inherently unfair. Companies that uphold their commitment to worker safety should be rewarded. Money dedicated to worker safety should be spent on worker safety, not funneled away as a cash cow for organizations that have no right to it.

Republicans like to talk the talk about helping small businesses. It’s time they walk the walk, and join Democrats in reforming retro, so that more of the savings go back to the businesses to which it belongs.

UPDATE:
The Seattle Times editorializes on the BIAW’s “political sleaze.”

I don’t feel like brewing up a pot of insightful, clever commentary this Monday morning, so here are some links to freeze-dried, instant commentary from some of the Northwest’s more caffeinated bloggers.

(un)Sound Politics: Democrats are crazy!
Okay, we all know Stefan at (u)SP is a partisan flame-thrower, and we strongly suspect he’s a little unstable… but I never expected he could be so shamelessly derivative. Only hours after I poke a little fun at his mental health, he’s throwing my rhetoric back at the Democrats. I write that Stefan inhabits “the middle of the lunatic homeland” and he refers to “the Democrats’ lunatic mainstream.” I call Stefan a paranoid delusional, and he calls Paul Berendt a paranoid schizophrenic. If he had actually referenced my slam-piece as a springboard, I suppose this laziness would have been excusable by context, but it appears he’s not only a lying, hate-mongering, nutcase… he’s also a plagiarist.

Also Also: King County complied with all state requirements
TJ has posted Part II of his report on his extensive interview with Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell, who assured him that a certain paranoid delusional blogger is full of shit. (Though not exactly in those words.) This interview goes a long way towards explaining the certification process, the role of the SoS, and the fact that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a bunch of lying, partisan bastards. (Again, not exactly in those words.) I plan to comment in more detail on this later, but I thought it deserved a heads up.

blatherWatch: Dave Ross outs BIAW grifters
It looks like it was Dave Ross who first broke the story about the BIAW defrauding voters of their signatures through a sham housing survey. While the BIAW told the Seattle Times that they had found “about 20” questionable signatures, a BIAW spokesperson told Ross that they found no suspicious signatures among the 120 checks returned. Oh my… could the BIAW have been lying?

Columbian Watch: Land use initiative creates chaos in Oregon
Looking to Oregon’s “Measure 37” as an indicator of things to come in Washington? “If the states are laboratories, then unfortunately Oregon has fallen victim to some mad scientists when it comes to land use. We can’t ever let it happen on this side of the river.” ‘Nuff said.

Pacific Views: Stop the bankruptcy boondoggle
I’ve always appreciated Pacific Views for providing a sober, thoughtful, constructive forum on issues of national importance… freeing me up to spew obscenities and insults from my usual drunken stupor. The credit card industry is in the midst of sliding a cruelly selfish bankruptcy bill through Congress. While the provisions reinstating debtors prison and public floggings were softened in committee, the main thrust of the bill is intact: protecting the banks from the inevitable result of shamelessly pushing credit cards on people they know can’t handle them. Pacific Views provides the details, and asks you to contact your representatives.

Preemptive Karma: Harsh reality television
Carla takes a break from gardening, watches TV, and slaps the tookus of litter-bearing, fertility-treatment couples, for not selectively aborting a few of the backup fetuses. Man, that’s not a politically correct thing write… which is more than enough to deserve a link from me.

WA State Political Report: Don’t piss off Goldy
Carl Ballard points to an amusingly mean-spirited critique of Stefan… by me! (How meta.)

Longtime readers know that problem gambling is one of my pet issues. That’s why I am so pleased to see Senator Maria Cantwell taking the lead on our nation’s fast growing epidemic of underage gambling.

In a letter sent Monday to Surgeon General Richard Carmona, Cantwell lays out the relationship between underage gambling and “other risk behaviors” such as alcohol abuse and smoking. According to Cantwell, as many as 8 percent of young people may have a gambling problem, and nearly half start gambling before the age of ten. She asks the Surgeon General for his help in raising pubic awareness of youth gambling addiction.

Children are also three times more likely to become addicted to gambling than adults. I am particularly concerned that childhood exposure to gambling is increasingly widespread — exposure that may tragically result in later compulsive gambling addictions. For example, games of chance are used to market many products that also have public health consequences, such as the consumption of high calorie foods and soda. Children are exposed to gambling every time there’s a scratch-off card at a fast food restaurant, or a prize under a soda bottle cap liner.

Not to mention the youth poker craze, that is being fed by ESPN coverage of poker tournaments.

Cantwell is working on this issue with Senator John McCain, who has previously sponsored legislation restricting gambling on youth athletic events. I expect underage gambling and addiction to become a high profile issue over the coming years, as the fast growing gambling industry develops a new generation of its best customers: compulsive gamblers.

In Washington state, legal gambling has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, and gambling addiction has grown with it. And yet Washington currently does not spend a penny on problem gambling treatment or prevention. As a result, the state has only a handful of licensed counselors, and not a single treatment facility.

The Gambling Commission also provides inadequate oversight and enforcement. As I have previously reported, the Gambling Commission conducted a sting operation at seven Seattle-area card rooms, and was surprised to find that a “very young looking” sixteen-year-old was able to gamble and purchase alcohol at three of the seven.

The Legislature is currently considering HB 1031, a bill that would permanently fund treatment and prevention programs, but at about $500,000, the proposed appropriation was little more than symbolic. Hopefully, Sen. Cantwell’s national leadership role will help push the Governor and the Legislature to seriously address this public health crisis at home.

In the wake of the Seattle P-I’s devastating deconstruction of King County’s so-called discrepancy as a “red herring, a flap over a postelection file-maintenance chore that has no bearing on the accuracy of the election returns,” Rossi supporters have started to respond by questioning whether King County actually followed the law, and reconciled election returns at all. Indeed, the always magnanimous Snark downright dismisses us “prolific fabulists from the lunatic-fringe blogs,” accusing us of delirium.

Gregoire’s delirious fans read this as conclusive exculpatory evidence. Those of us who inhabit the world of facts see this as the doughnut hole that it is: If this year’s ballot/vote credit discrepancy of 1800+ is incommensurate with the 2000 reconciliation discrepancy of 20, then what is the 2004 reconciliation discrepancy that is commensurate with the 2000 number? The article doesn’t say. As far as I can tell, King County has never released this number nor has it released any documents with precinct-by-precinct ballot reconcilation.

Gee, I dunno Stefan, if you really wanted to know if King County has made documents available on their precinct-by-precinct reconciliation, perhaps you might take a break from peeling that thick, orange skin off your “apple”, and… um… ask them? That’s what I did; I emailed KC Elections Director Dean Logan, and while I still have more questions to follow up, I think his answer sheds quite a bit of light on the subject:

Regarding the precinct/poll site reconciliation process, this is one of the upfront processes I have spoken about. We employ a canvassing crew that goes through the reconciliation worksheets in the poll books and compares the data to the precinct/poll site vote totals after Election Day. The 20+ canvassing crew members compare the totals generated from the vote tabulation system to the data provided by the poll workers. Where there is a discrepancy noted in this process, we “zero out” the vote totals for that location, retrieve the ballots (from sealed containers secured by the poll workers at the closing of the polls) and re-run those precincts. The crews worked 10-hour days, seven days a week in this effort.

Additionally, a notebook is maintained that tracks the count of signatures in the poll books, number of provisional ballots cast/submitted, number of absentee ballots returned at the polls, etc.

According to KC Elections Communications Specialist Bobbie Egan, in addition to the poll books, there is a “big binder” down at the office that contains all the reconciliation data Logan cited above, for all 2616 precincts. Unfortunately, there is no compilation of the data, but this is somewhat understandable considering the complicated and subjective nature of the reconciliation process itself.

“Subjective?” Well before my righty readers indignantly accuse me of a whitewash, let me explain.

King County has 2616 precincts, an unusually high number even considering our population, and most polling places serve multiple precincts. According to Egan, one of the most common polling place errors is for a voter to sign into Precinct A, only to have the little old lady hand him a ballot from Precinct B. (Yes… each precinct has its own distinct ballot.)

During the reconciliation process, this shows up as an extra voter in Precinct A, and an extra ballot in Precinct B.

Of course there could be a more nefarious explanation for such a discrepancy… for example, corrupt election workers might have stuffed an extra Gregoire ballot in Precinct B, and destroyed a Rossi one from Precinct A. Thus, in the snarky world of the right-wing blogs, this single error might be “evidence” of two fraudulent acts in favor of Gregoire.

Fortunately, there are additional controls in place. A ballot number is recorded in the poll book, and from this, the precinct number can be determined. (The number is detached to retain ballot secrecy.) To reconcile Precinct A, canvassers must go through the poll book, check all the ballot numbers, and find the voter(s) who received the wrong ballots. Then they must go to the other effected precincts and attach an explanation. But the end result is that there is still a discrepancy… an explained discrepancy, but a discrepancy nonetheless.

The Rossi camp would have you believe that this is all quite simple: just added up the numbers and see if they match. But that’s the easy part. There are many different reasons why discrepancies might creep into the reconciliation worksheets, and the part of the process that took two weeks of ten-hour shifts to complete, was figuring out exactly what these reasons were.

When a discrepancy could not be resolved or explained by the reconciliation worksheet or the ballot count or the poll books, the canvassers actually interviewed the poll workers to try to discern what happened. Logs and notes are kept of the entire reconciliation process, and stuffed inside that big fat binder. So yes, KC election workers put an incredible amount of work into precinct-by-precinct reconciliation, as required by law, prior to the initial certification date. But whether an individual discrepancy was sufficiently explained, so as to be considered more or less reconciled… well, that can indeed be somewhat subjective.

In talking with elections officials I had hoped that they might have a firm variance number, but they don’t. A county-wide number simply was not compiled, and to do so would require laboriously pouring through the binder and related data and documentation. And even then, what would the variance number represent, when a discrepancy sufficiently explained to my satisfaction might not satisfy the Snark?

Still, this binder and the poll books are sitting down there at KC Elections for anybody to inspect. And so I asked Egan if anybody — Rossi’s attorneys, the BIAW, know-it-all right-wing bloggers — had actually asked to see this binder, and she answered yes… a single Seattle reporter.

Which raises an important question. If Rossi supporters are so suspicious about whether King County actually reconciled the results of this election, why aren’t they interested in examining the actual reconciliation records? Why instead do they insist on focusing on voter creditation, a process that has absolutely nothing to do with precinct-by-precinct reconciliation?

The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Apparently, the Rossi folk are only interested in getting the answers they want to hear.

Thanks to Washington State Political Report for pointing me towards a press release from state Sen. Margarita Prentice (D-Renton), announcing proposed legislation to impose a 10 percent tax on the state’s 125 commercial mini-casinos. SB 5287 would generate about $20 million a year for the general fund.

Prentice is also the prime sponsor of SB 5037, the Senate version of a House bill that purports to establish permanent funding for problem gambling treatment and prevention programs. Unfortunately, the bill would appropriate less than $600,000 a year, an amount Jennifer McCausland of Second Chance Washington calls “grossly inadequate.”

As I mentioned last week (“Scratch this! Lottery plans for big expansion“), neighboring Oregon, with a population half the size of Washington, dedicates 1 percent of lottery revenues to treatment and prevention programs… about $3.9 million annually. McCausland has advocated spending at least that much on Washington’s epidemic of problem gambling, and recently presented a proposal to Governor Gregoire’s office that would start off by appropriating $2 million a year of lottery revenues.

But wait… if we took 10 percent of the $20 million in revenues generated from SB 5287, and combined it with an additional $2 million from the lottery… we could fully fund SB 5037 to the tune of $4 million a year. It’s so crazy, it just might work!

According to a 1998 study, problem gambling already cost the state over $70 million a year, and the industry has doubled since then. It’s time the industry starts chipping in to clean up the public health mess it has helped to create.

[NOTE: It’s nearly impossible to post a comment about gambling without getting trapped in my blog spam filter… so please be patient if your comments are held for approval.]

Last year, not satisfied with simply opposing Tim Eyman’s stupid-ass initiatives, I decided it was time to make some constructive proposals of my own. And so I sat down with Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington’s Future to explore creative alternatives for providing real tax relief to those families who needed it most, without exacerbating our state and local governments’ growing fiscal crisis.

After much research and deliberation, we settled upon a relatively simple proposal, a Property Tax Homestead Exemption, similar to that offered in 37 other states. Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-37) was quick to embrace the proposal; a bill was soon drafted, and introduced as HB 3076.

Although last year’s bill died in committee during a short session, Rep. Santos has reintroduced the bill this year as HB 1744, with bipartisan support. The bill is scheduled for a hearing before the House Finance Committee, Wednesday Feb 16, at 1:30 PM… and I’m hoping many of you will join me in voicing your support.

HB 1744 exempts from all local property taxes a portion of your primary residence equal to 20% of your county’s median property value. Additionally, it exempts from the state property tax a portion equal to 20% of the state’s median property value.

The result is substantial property tax relief targeted at middle- and low income homeowners, while remaining absolutely revenue neutral.

How substantial? Well, last year the Department of Revenue estimated the following average savings based on a flat $30,000 exemption:

CY 2005		Number of		Average		Average		Percent
Assessed Value		Homeowners		Property Tax		Relief		Relief
< $50,000		97,433		$331		$267		81%
$50,000-$100,000		201,473		$993		$312		31%
$100,000 – $150,000		313,395		$1,650		$270		16%
$150,000 – $200,000		307,384		$2,255		$221		10%
$200,000 – $250,000		265,383		$2,772		$168		6%
$250,000 – $300,000		153,709		$3,383		$119		4%
$300,000 – $400,000		187,325		$4,144		$59		1%
$400,000 – $500,000		76,746		$5,179		-$13		0%
> $500,000		80,761		$9,191		-$326		-4%
All Homeowners		1,683,609		$2,741		$171		6%

As you can see, the vast majority of homeowners would pay lower taxes, with only a 4% increase on homes over $500,000. Note that since the actual bill adjusts the exemption to county median values, the break-even point shifts to a higher property value in higher valued counties. And since 82% of wealthy homeowners itemize their federal tax returns, their net tax increase is substantially reduced by their federal tax offset.

While home value and household income do not necessarily correlate, they tend to on average. And thus a Homestead Exemption would target tax relief to those homeowners who need it most.

To achieve this desperately needed property tax relief, HB 1744 modestly shifts tax burden from low value property to high value property, and from homes to non-residential property. This shift only partially corrects a trend that has been moving in the other direction over the past 20 years, and still leaves Washington with the most regressive tax structure in the nation (although it brings us much closer to number two, Florida… which happens to have a Property Tax Homestead Exemption of its own.)

A more detailed FAQ is available on TaxSanity.org, and from the Permanent Defense Homestead Exemption Center. You can also read the full text of the bill and the House bill analysis, from the Legislature’s website.

Steve and I, along with Andrew Villeneuve of Permanent Defense will be down in Olympia tomorrow, testifying at the hearing (1:30 PM, House Hearing Rm C, John L. O’Brien Building.) We hope some of you can make it.

And we urge all of you who support further debate on this bill to contact the members of the House Finance Committee and ask them to send the bill to the floor. Click here to send an email to the Committee members.

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment thread, and I will answer them as best I can.

Part I of this exciting series on today’s plodding King County Council meeting can be summed up as follows: the military ballots went out on time, ballots were enhanced legally, and yes, some ineligible felons voted, but no it wasn’t due to corruption or negligence on the part of elections workers.

(Hmmm… perhaps Part I was a bit verbose?)

In this installment I will address the 348 improperly scanned provisional ballots, the 735 “no signature on file” ballots, and the incredibly overblown issue of the so-called “discrepancy.”

Provisional Ballots

As has been widely reported, KC Elections determined that 348 provisional ballots had been improperly scanned into the AccuVote machines at the polling places, before they had been properly canvassed to see if they were legal votes. Of these, 341 have been traced to specific voters, and 252 are confirmed to have been cast by valid, registered voters.

The proper procedure is that you sign a poll book, fill out a ballot, place it inside an envelope, complete the envelope, and deposit it in the slot in the side of the AccuVote machine. Once back at the counting center, election workers verify the envelopes, just like an absentee, before adding the ballot to the count, or rejecting it.

KC elections was able to determine who cast most of these polling-place-scanned provisional ballots by comparing the poll books with the provisional envelopes received from the polling place; those who signed the poll book but for whom there are no envelopes are assumed to have fed their ballot directly into the machine.

It should be noted that they cannot directly associate a specific ballot to a specific voter (secret ballot and all that), and just because a ballot has not been confirmed to have been valid, doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t. But it is clear that we have as many as 96 provisional ballots in KC that might not have been counted, had they been caste properly… and there is no way to sort them out of the mix.

Can we attribute this to election worker or administrative error? I don’t see how not. While nearly 99 percent of the over 31,000 provisional ballots were cast properly, this is an error for which there is an easy technical solution. In fact, it is so easy, that KC just implemented it in last week’s special levy election: provisional ballots had stickers placed over their barcode so that they could not be scanned at the polling place. Well, duh-uh! I suggest that a more secure solution would be to print provisional ballots with different barcodes, so as to avoid potential tampering with stickers.

Councilmember Steve “The Executioner” Hammond, believes the only way to restore public faith in elections is for “heads to roll,” but as Councilmember Julia Patterson pointed out, King County Elections only has 43 full-time employees… the polls are actually staffed by over 4000 part-time volunteers (they get nominal pay for a 12-hour day), “average citizens who come forth to engage in the democratic process.” These are the “grandmothers” that some council members talked of, and Patterson warned that talk of “heads rolling” would discourage engagement.

Personally, I’m well familiar with these grandmotherly poll workers. My South Seattle polling place has been staffed by the same table of little old ladies since I started voting there seven years ago. If Hammond is patient, I’m sure many of their heads will fall off on their own in short time.

Anyway… while it may not be satisfying to say that “mistakes were made,” and leave it at that, mistakes were made by poll workers — with about one percent of provisional ballots — and now KC Elections has devised a procedure to prevent such mistakes in the future. Problem solved.

As to what this means to Rossi’s contest, well, I’m not sure it means all that much. Remember, in addition to the grandmas, the polls were watched by observers from both parties, including an army of attorneys. If there have been any reports of massive election day fraud regarding provisional ballots, I haven’t heard it. Rossi can’t prove who the 96 ballots were cast for… at the very best, maybe a judge might value average them, taking away about 18 votes from Gregoire’s margin. But I doubt the courts would even go that far.

The 735 No-Signature-On-File Ballots

Isn’t it curious that of all the errors supposedly committed by incompetent KC election workers, the Republicans never mention this one? 735 absentee ballots were improperly left out of the first two counts because signatures had not been scanned into the computer for those voters. After these votes were discovered, the canvassing board verified and counted 566 of them (backed up by a unanimous Supreme Court decision.)

Keep this in mind… part of the Republican mantra (stupid as it may be) is that Rossi “won” two out of three counts. But if these ballots had been properly canvassed the first time around, Gregoire would have won the machine recount… leaving Rossi to pay for a hand recount. As Councilmember Raymond Shaw Reagan Dunn profoundly pointed out, “perception is reality.” Imagine how different public perception of this election might be if Gregoire had “won two out of three” counts?

In any case I didn’t hear Hammond asking for heads to roll over this one.

And finally… “The Discrepancy”

What a load of shit.

I was talking to a reporter before the meeting, and he said I had to admit, that intuitively, it looked suspicious. And I did have to admit it… intuitively it does. But only if you don’t understand any of the underlying facts. In fact this “controversy” is based on a false assumption that these two lists were ever intended to reconcile with one another.

To put this in the proper perspective, Councilmember David Irons (hmmm… what’s he running for?) repeated his “recollection” that the 2000 discrepancy at certification was only 17 as “confirmation” that the 2004 number is out of whack. When asked about this after the meeting, Dean Logan questioned what Irons might have been recalling, considering the fact that the voter list isn’t compiled until after certification. (And I’m totally ignoring the bizarre notion that Iron’s 4-year-old “recollection” is more accurate than the actual numbers recorded on file.)

Remember the cries from the right that it was criminally irresponsible to certify this election if the voter list didn’t reconcile with the ballots cast? Kind of hard to make that a condition of certification when the crediting of voters doesn’t occur until afterwards, huh? As Logan made absolutely clear, there is “no legal reconciliation process,” an assertion that has been repeated to me by every auditor’s office I have talked to. The voter list is compiled out of an entirely different process than the count of ballots cast, and for entirely different purposes.

In addition to recording about 600,000 absentee voters, the list is compiled by hand scanning the barcode next to each signed line of over 2600 poll books. If KC Elections could fail to scan the signatures from 735 registration cards, imagine what kind of human error a hand-held scanner introduces into the process. 1,800 misscanned voters is not only understandable, it’s completely consistent with past elections and other jurisdictions. So there.

I don’t really want to expend many more pixels on this issue, as really, it is a legal non-issue… however much the public may have swallowed the righties’ propaganda. But the ever earnest Councilmember Bob Ferguson spent some time trying tease out of Logan that if one precinct had 10 extra voters and another had 10 extra ballots, then that should be a net discrepancy of 20, not zero. (The Snark nodded his head hungrily at this, so I’m sure we’ll be hearing this thesis from the dark side.) But Logan wouldn’t bite, as it ignores a fundamental aspect of voter accreditation.

Over 28,000 provision ballots were counted. And for each one, the ballot was counted in the precinct in which it was cast, where as the voter was credited for voting in the precinct in which he is registered. But if Ferguson’s logic is followed, these 28,000 provisional ballots would create a 56,000 vote discrepancy on their own!

That’s what happens when you try reconcile apples with oranges.

Ah well… I’ve run off at the fingers again. I’ve got a few more observations and comments to make, but I guess I’ll have to save them for Part III.

Stefan Sharkansky is an arrogant prick.

Now, I don’t say that because I think it somehow raises the level of political discourse, or out of an attempt to refute his arguments, or even as a gesture meant to personally offend him. I say it, because it makes me feel good.

And, because it is true.

Take for example his prickishly arrogant attack on Rep. Jeannie Darneille (D-27) for an email she sent to constituents. In his typically measured, analytical style, Stefan opines:

I don’t say it lightly that her reasons for opposing a revote would have to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen come out of the office of any elected official. If Rep. Darneille is not an imbecile herself, then she would have to believe that her constituents are all imbeciles if she thinks this e-mail is not going to cause severe and permanent damage to her reputation in the district.

This in response to Rep. Darneille writing about the recent death of her father.

Wow. What a prick!

And it’s not just Stefan’s stunning lack of empathy that bothers me, it’s his arrogantly prickish dismissal of Rep. Darneille’s reasonable and well-thought-out opposition to a “re-vote.” While she backs up her rationale with personal anecdotes, her logic is sound:

It will be impossible to recreate the confluence of situations that existed on November 2nd. A re-vote could, in fact, never exist… it would be a new vote. The premise that “every vote should be counted and every vote should count” will never exist again.

That is exactly the point I made a couple weeks ago. We’re talking about an entirely new election… new year, new campaign, new voters, new issues… and as has been pointed out to me, possibly… new candidates.

Annulling the election will merely vacate the governor’s office, putting Lt. Gov. Brad Owen in charge until a special election is held, possibly not until next November, or even, November of 2006. At that time, Owen might choose to run for governor, as might any number of major and third party candidates. In the meanwhile, tens of thousands of voters will be added and stricken from the rolls. There will be absolutely nothing “re” about this vote.

But does Stefan bother to address these issues or refute Rep. Darneille’s own arguments? Nah… he just calls her an imbecile, and arrogantly threatens electoral retribution. You know why? Because… he’s a prick!

Yes, Stefan’s the kind of arrogant prick who’s not above a shamelessly racist smear (“ King County Executive Ron Sims, the Robert Mugabe of Washington politics“)… or of repeatedly referring to our governor as “Christine Fraudoire” without ever once alleging a single act of fraud on the part of her or her campaign.

This is a guy who gloats about getting a protester arrested after provoking him into smashing his $10.00 disposable camera.

Stefan is a mean-spirited, intellectually dishonest, rhetorical-schoolyard bully… kind of like a short, ugly Tim Eyman. Only smart. And that is what is most unforgivable, for unlike Tim, every statistic he distorts, every lie he tells, every reputation he disparages… Stefan knows exactly what he is doing.

He is, in short… a prick.

Now some of you may find the tone and content of this essay a bit shocking, for I have recently made an effort to shift some of the focus of this blog from partisan invective to a more thoughtful — if equally partisan — discussion of the issues. I can be pretty damn devious, and I certainly could choose to engage the other side in their fanciful number crunching and vicious slander… but when I look in the mirror, I don’t want to see Stefan Sharkansky staring back out at me.

The truth is, the sort of personal name-calling I choose to match Stefan with today, achieves absolutely nothing except riling up those who already agree with you. I want to change minds, not pander to them.

But hell if I’m going to shy away from calling a prick, “a prick” — and when you arrogantly ridicule an elected official for talking about her dead father — that’s exactly what you are.

So call me arrogant, if that’s what you want. Or call me a prick, or even a horse’s ass.

Just don’t call me a Stefan.