Tim Eyman, Chronic Debtor

Tim Eyman has taken out a $50,000 loan to finance his newest anti-tax initiative. This is on top of the still outstanding $175,000 loan from the unsuccessful I-985. (Both come from a $250K line of credit from taking out a second mortgage on his house.)

It seems a lot of people are getting a chuckle out of the fact that the dude who advocates fiscal restraint and living within our means is borrowing so freely. But of course there's nothing wrong with handling your personal finances one way and advocating that the state handles its finances another. And, of course, there's nothing wrong with us wishing that financial ruin knocks Eyman out of the game altogether.

Alas, he likely doesn't have to worry too much about the debt. Woodinville money-man Mike Dunmire has acted as something of a sugar daddy, bankrolling Eyman's efforts. Sadly, the state of Washington doesn't have a sugar-daddy to cover its massive budget shortfalls. Neither do those now finding themselves out of a job and without health insurance. But at least their car tabs are cheap.

Topics: Politics

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Bill! I Love You So, I Always Will

As a cub reporter in Northern New Mexico, I got stuck with the job of rooting through the flight logs for the state planes, looking for trips by Bill Richardson. He loved taking those planes—to San Francisco, opening day at the racetrack, and a personal favorite, Los Alamos—which is about the same distance from the Governor's mansion as the Santa Fe airport. While I was there, he also convinced the state to purchase a new jet for luxury travel. I've been on it (on the ground) and it's pretty swank.

None of this, I should note, is illegal. But it's how he liked to live: much larger than life. And as much as people in New Mexico were frustrated by his tendency to flit off to North Korea while the state school system remained one of the worst in the country and my little town boasted the highest heroin overdose rate nationwide, they also loved having such a heavy at the top.

It's a kind of Huey Long approach to governing tends to breed a touch 'o the graft. New Mexico's had its share of indicted politicians in the last few years. And I can't say it was shocking to find out Richardson now has the long eye of the law pointed his way. He may have done nothing wrong, but when your politicians live like kings, you can't expect them to not rule like one.

Of course, like with Chicago, it's hard to stay very clean and actually get anything done. Politicians there must keep somewhat corrupt company, since that's the leadership in many of the small towns and counties throughout the state. The man he has his arm around in the photo above is a well-connected former county commissioner who just so happens to have been involved in the kidnapping of an AP reporter and a couple of cops in a raid on a courthouse and was once busted with a trunk full of pot (though that might have been a frame job by another shady political patron, according to local legend).

We didn't get along all that well, Richardson hates the paper I worked for, but he's also managed to get some much needed federal dollars for the state and it would be a shame to see him go.

Topics: Politics

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Eyman to File Property Tax Initiative

Maybe it doesn't qualify as news, per se, but as expected Tim Eyman, the man whom Olympia politicians love to hate, will be filing a new Initiative with the Secretary of State on Monday.

Per the press release sent out today...

"We have a proposal for 2009 that aggressively tackles our state's property tax crisis. It's called the Lower Property Taxes Initiative. Our tax burden keeps growing faster and faster and government keeps getting bigger and bigger — the people are losing control. The Lower Property Taxes Initiative is our last, best chance to gain control of our government. Here's an excerpt from its intent section:

This act is intended to protect taxpayers by reducing our state's obscene and unsustainable property tax burden by controlling the growth of government to an affordable level. It is long overdue. This measure would limit the growth of state, county, and city general fund revenue, not including new voter-approved revenue, to the annual rate of inflation. Revenue above this limit would be used to reduce property taxes. This measure permits the growth of Washington's tax burden to increase at an affordable, sustainable rate, allows citizens to vote for higher taxes where they see a need, and uses excess revenues above this limit to reduce property taxes.

During these tough economic times, struggling working families and fixed-income senior citizens desperately need and deserve meaningful property tax relief. Property taxes have skyrocketed for decades and politicians have done nothing to address this very real problem. This measure also provides a much-needed economic stimulus to our state's struggling economy by keeping our tax burden at an affordable, sustainable level and by reducing our state's crushing property tax burden. So, this measure ensures meaningful tax relief, a big boost to our state's economy, and long-overdue reform of government. It is a smart, balanced, reasonable solution to our state's property tax problem. This will be the first real reduction in property tax bills in our state's history.

How much will our initiative lower your property tax bill?

Some years, it'll knock 40% off your property tax bill. Other years, it'll cut it by 1/3. Other years, it'll lower it by 25%. Other years, it'll reduce it 10%. The amount of reduction will be different every year. The greater the excess revenue collected by the government, the larger the property tax reduction that year."

Eyman assures us that a "couple of surprises" have been left out of the announcement, which will be unveiled on Jan. 5.

Story developing... 

Topics: Government Graft and Politics

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Where's the Outrage at Seattle's Snow Shutdown?

Hundred-car pileups on skating-rink roads, unsalted downtown sidewalks with people falling on their asses left and right, bridge closures stranding people at home, a sub-skeletal bus fleet where the coaches fill up too fast to pick up most would-be passengers anyway (and in terms of routing and frequency, is doing its best to mimic Grand Cayman's legalized-hitchhiker transit system) . Look, I don't expect the city to buy a bunch of new snowplows or nothin', but where's the outrage? And where's the mayor? Or Ron Sims? What will it take before "Arctic Storm '08" becomes Mother Nature's version of the WTO politically? Well — and let's hope this situation doesn't worsen — it might take a couple charter buses sliding through an I-5 guardrail, that's what:

Topics: City of Seattle, Politics, and Transportation

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Local Media Agree: Sims Being Vetted for Federal Job

On Friday Dec. 5, Laura Onstot reported that federal agents were in town vetting Sims for a possible appointment in the Obama Administration. Then, this past Monday, Joel Connelly of the P-I reported that federal agents were in town vetting Sims for a possible appointment in the Obama Administration. Now, today, Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times reports that federal agents are vetting Sims as a possible candidate for a federal appointment. Sounds like we can call this a consensus.

Of course many people assumed Sims made a big blunder by getting behind Hillary early on in the race (as Aimee describes in her story). But it turns out that was probably the best way to win Mr. Team of Rivals' heart. Indeed if Sims had only ripped Obama a new one during the campaign, maybe he would be head of the Interior Dept. now.

Topics: Media and Politics

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Citizens to Nickels: Hands Off Our Guns

"Nickels takes fire from gun rights activists". "Second Amendment supporters take aim at City". Make all the cute little headlines you want about last night's public hearing about Mayor Greg Nickels' proposed firearms ban on city-owned property, but the issue has caught the attention of the public.

More than 150 people showed up at City Hall, with the vast majority sporting fashionable anti-Nickels buttons provided by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The irony is that Dec. 15 was also Bill of Rights Day, a fact not lost on on most of those who arrived to defend the Second Amendment and the more clearly defined right to own firearms as provided by Washington's constitution. 

City Hall has received 2,000 messages - phone-calls, letters and mostly e-mails - about the controversy. Approximately 80 percent of these apparently have come from individuals residing outside the city limits.

Continue reading "Citizens to Nickels: Hands Off Our Guns"

Topics: City of Seattle and Politics

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Blago & Rahmbo's Fuckfest

This has nothing to do with anything local, but as my pal Chris Geer says, it's the best transcript of a federally-wiretapped telephone conversation you'll ever read.

Topics: Obamamania and Politics

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Illinois Corruption Envy

I spent the first few months in Seattle after a year in Chicago being constantly surprised at how easily shocked everyone seemed to be by the whiff of political misdeeds.

Don't get me wrong; holding people accountable for following campaign finance rules is a noble and worthy effort. But where our politicians lean more toward overaggressive special interest bargaining or coordinating campaign spending (see yesterday's Seattle Times on Rob McKenna), investigating public corruption in Illinois is shooting fish in the proverbial barrel. In fact, I suspect candidates would have trouble getting elected to state and city offices if voters didn't think they had some kind of mob ties—how would they get anything done?

To illustrate the point, here's a run down of some local political debacles and the much more interesting/shocking/f-bomb laden Illinois counterparts:

Watch Your Mouth
Washington State Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders to Attorney General Michael Mukasey: Standing at a meeting of the Federalist Society: "Tyrant! You are a tyrant!" (Seattle Times).

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on Barack Obama: From the affidavit on his arrest: "ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants are telling him that he has to 'suck it up' for two years and do nothing and give this 'motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him'."

Continue reading "Illinois Corruption Envy"

Topics: Politics

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Elections Director Decides to Fight for Her Job

Topics: Politics

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Medved Puts Finger to Wind

The presidential election is over, the inauguration is nigh, and Seattle's best-known conservative is, ahem, undergoing a realignment with the prevailing political mood. Apparently it's time for right-wing radio pundits like himself to stop with the crazy, take a cold shower, and tone down their election-losing rhetoric? In a blog entry for The Washington Post, Michael Medved writes:

"A radio show (locally or nationally) that draws just 5% of the available audience can achieve notable success in ratings and revenue, but a conservatism that connects with only a disgruntled, paranoid 5% of the public will wither and die."

"During the recent campaign, talk radio looked far less formidable than it did during its glory years. The GOP candidates most relentlessly bashed by leading talkers (John McCain and Mike Huckabee) became the two top vote-getters among Republicans, and the McCain-Palin ticket got 90% of GOP votes despite reluctant support from most prominent hosts."

Topics: Campaign 2008, Media, News, Politics, and Radio

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A Note From Dino Rossi

Last night, the Rossi campaign sent out a mass e-mail to campaign supporters thanking them for their help and giving an update about state politics.

In short, Rossi says "See I told you so" in regards to the state budget deficit. During the campaign he warned that it was projected to pencil out to $3.2 billion. Now the shortfall is at $5 billion.

I guess now is the time to maybe start about raising taxes.

He has no plans to be a candidate in the future (The Weekly is checking to see whether that is 75 percent certain or the full monty) and there are still a couple boxes of his autobiography for sale.

The entirety of Rossi's message is below...

Continue reading "A Note From Dino Rossi"

Topics: Books, Campaign 2008, Dinosaurs, and Politics

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NYT: Hillary Accepts Secretary of State Gig

Way to keep your enemies closer, Mr. President-to-Be.

Topics: Politics

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Local Church Starts "Embryo Adoption" Service

Maria Lancaster with her daughter and Sen. Rick Santorum, an opponent of embryo research.

Six years ago, Maria Lancaster took her first step to becoming pregnant by having a frozen embryo FedExed to a Bellevue clinic. Having been through three miscarriages, the Snoqualmie resident had contacted a Christian group that matches infertile couples with those who have surplus embryos leftover from in vitro fertilization. The embryo destined for Lancaster had sat in the freezer of a North Carolina lab for four years. Her Bellevue clinic thawed it out in a dish, watched it grow from two to six cells and then implanted it into her womb. The result: her five-year-old daughter, Elisha, who likes ponies and ballet.

Now, she is partnering with Cedar Park Church in Bothell to start an “embryo adoption” service, one of only a handful in the country. “Embryos are not simply human material to be used for medical experimentation, vaccine cultivation, or trash to be discarded,” says Cedar Park pastor Joe Fuiten, a prominent evangelical conservative.

Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, counters that embryo adoption will never solve the problem of what to do with the approximately 400,000 embryos that are sitting in freezers nationwide (at a cost per couple of $500 plus a year). “It’s just not going to get that many customers,” he says. In part, he elaborates, that’s because many embryos won’t survive the freezing and thawing out process, and the ones that do may not be that healthy to begin with.

It’s the “second tier” embryos that wind up in the freezer, confirms Angela Thyer, a doctor at Seattle Reproductive Medicine. She estimates that the chance of success using frozen embryos is about half that as with “fresh” ones. Still she says it might be a good option for some infertile couples, and her organization has told Lancaster it is willing to take patients she refers.

Lee Hickock, a doctor at Pacific Northwest Fertility, affiliated with Swedish Medical Center, also believes donated embryos are worth trying. In fact, since its inception three years ago, his clinic has accepted donated embryos and offered them to patients who have failed other treatments. An added benefit, he says: “it’s cheap” — $5,000 as opposed to the tens of thousands it costs to adopt.

For donors, the benefits are less clear. Clinics say that many couples are uncomfortable with the idea of giving away embryos that will become their biological children. So far, Embryo Adoption Services of Cedar Park has one committed donor: Lisa Maritz, an Everett mom who had twins through in vitro fertilization. Then she conceived a third child naturally. “We knew this was a gift,” she says, and now she wants to give a gift in return.

Topics: Politics and Religion

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NY's Seattle-like Plastic Bag Fee

Seemingly inspired by Mayor Greg Nickels' plan, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a fee for use of plastic shoppers' bags, but at a comparatively bargain price.

Under the Nickels' plan - which Seattle residents will vote on likely next August - the fee for both plastic and paper (WTF?) shopping bags would hit 20 cents, while Bloomberg is pitching a fee of five or six cents for plastic bags only.

San Francisco, conversely, bans plastic bags, while legislation for a state-wide fee of 25 cents per bag has been introduced in the California legislature.

The higher the fee, however, the more effective it is. Notes the NY Times:

Just a few weeks after Ireland adopted a similar, though much heftier tax in 2002 — charging shoppers 33 cents a bag — plastic bag use dropped 94 percent, and within a year, nearly everyone in that country had purchased reusable cloth bags.

NYC's fee could generate $16 million in new city revenue - shoppers there use about a billion bags a year - while Seattle's proposal would bring in an estimated $3.5 million in a city that uses about 360 million bags annually.

But just as Nickels' council-backed plan hit a snag when grocers and plastics-makers easily got enough signatures from Seattlites to put the issue to a vote, Bloomberg's plan apparently faces a similar fight.

"Bloomberg is a piece of work," Clemelda Gipson, a shopper, told the NY Daily News. "Food is expensive and now we have to pay for the bags, too? They should try to come up with ideas and solutions and not just more taxes."

Pols prefer to call it a "voluntary fee". As Seattle council president Richard Conlin said, "No one has to pay it. You only have to pay it if you choose not to use reusable bags." But hey, he didn't say they couldn't be plastic.

Topics: Environment and Politics

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Must See TV For GOP

The day before the election, I was flipping through the channels in order to escape the incessant drone of poll numbers and pundit prognosticators in order to wrap my sleep deprived mind around anything that wasn’t election related.

The attempt wasn’t very successful. But the effort did reveal a splendid HBO documentary every down-in-the-dumps Republican needs to watch; “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater”.

The bio is put together by AuH2O’s granddaughter, CC Goldwater and goes into detail about the personal life of not only her grandfather but the grandfather of the modern conservative movement from his rise to power, his humiliating defeat in the 1964 Election to his ultimate redemption in 1980.

Learning from the past is the best way to prepare for the future.

Topics: Film and Politics

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