Olympia Time

History, politics, people of Oly WA

Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 109 of 176)

TellDino.com not working (also some possible technical issues)

October 25, 2007 / / 0 Comments

For me, the most interesting part of Rossi’s one hour old campaign is his try at transferring the fun loving nature of his Idea Bank to his new campaign.

Guess what everyone, you can email Dino Rossi. About anything! Anything that’s on your mind, even if you’re a state employee, just type in your concern, hit submit and Dino might even read what you wrote.

Before I get on to the technical fun of this post, I have to point out that the Rossi campaign is implying that by asking Dino something in public, a state employee can face retribution. Are they serious?

I know there are many state employees and others out there who prefer this approach – and I respect their feelings.

This attempt at passing off an email form as some direct connection to the candidate is already lame, but it also looks like the form itself isn’t working. I’ve posted the entire code I pulled at 11:05 this morning below, but this is the interesting part:

  <form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="">

From what I know about html code, if the “action” part is blank, the form doesn’t do anything. You’re literally sending your concerns to Dino into thin air. But, I could be wrong, so check out the code below and tell me if I’m wrong.



UPDATE: I hate probably not being right. My buddy with all the smarts just said the form “probably” works, as the form will just submit to itself (the homepage technically is telldino.com/index.asp).

Anyone else want to chime in on this one?

Rhenda dives into the Olympian comments, does a pretty good job

October 25, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I’m always impressed by elected officials who not only participate in comment threads, but stick with it, approach it maturely and get something good out of it.

The entire thread is worth reading (start at the bottom), but here are some highlights.

Here is her eventual response to a line of questioning:

Yes, I have answers for Scott.

“Does this mean you are one of the ones who support the 50-100% tax increases on homes?”

No.

“Does this mean that you support keeping people from dividing their land as they see fit?”

Yes. I support community planning. Cities like Olympia don’t just happen. They are built by people who put a lot of effort into deciding what sort of development belongs where. The alternative to planning is not just the sort of sprawl you see in LA–which many people here cite as their nightmare planning scenario–the alternative is chaos that endangers not just our quality of life but our health and safety.

“Does this mean that you support halting most construction on private lands if there is a stream nearby that theoretically could contain a salmon?”

No.

And, what her questioner had to say:

Rhenda

Thank you.
scott

Rhenda took advantage of the comment thread not to engage in a pointless back and forth, but to answer the questions that were posed to her quickly and clearly. Its a good thing to participate in comment threads, its a bad thing to get wrapped around the axle. By jumping in she was able to knock down an untruth (that she’s a member of Futurewise) and get another commenter to thank her (bonus points)..

I set up Rhenda’s website for her, and she’s been writing on her blog semi-regularly since then. No one has come by to comment (as far as I know). This gives me hope that after she’s elected, Rhenda might use her blog as a platform for conversation with Olympia citizens.

Rhenda Iris Strub is a genius (vote for her)

October 24, 2007 / / 0 Comments

This is not your average glossy political mailing. It was not expensive — I printed it at home on top of my dining room table. It may not be fancy or colorful, but it is honest and thrifty, and those are the same values that I will take with me to the Olympia City Council.

For the past week or so I’ve been getting glossy fliers in the mail from local candidates. Nothing too out of the box, but I can imagine these candidate’s campaign committees going through the motions a few months ago, figuring out how much money they have to spend on one last mailer before ballots go out.

Sweating out one trite sentence or another, while over here Rhenda sends out a localized (to Southeast Olympia) and informative piece. Not only is it super relevant to anyone around my neighborhood, but it shows that she knows what she’s talking about and actually tells us what she thinks about traffic in SE Oly.

DISCLAMER: Oh yeah, I designed her website.

Thurston County can afford to pay for our ballots to be mailed

October 24, 2007 / / 0 Comments

A follow up to earlier today, I was poking around trying to find out what the savings were when Thurston County went to vote by mail back in 2005. This is as close to a definitive answer that I could find:

There are obvious advantages to make the switch.

– Cost savings. Wyman estimates the county could save $400,000 in poll-site costs by going to an all-mail election.

So, if 100,000 people voted in Thurston County during each election, it would only cost $41,000 to pay for postage. This is of course assuming the county couldn’t get some kind of bulk mail rate, which is sort of obvious that they would.

Why are we even talking about this, why don’t they just do it?

Why do we need to pay for stamps to vote anyway?

October 24, 2007 / / 0 Comments

When Keri and I voted on Sunday night, she wondered why we have to pay for stamps to vote. I repeated my fantasy “If I was running”: I’d mail stamps to likely voters before their ballots arrived.

What if we all just dropped our ballots in the mail without stamps. If we all lived in Thurston County (like I do), seems like they’d get delivered anyway and the county would eventually pay for our postage.

While I’m not totally sure that paying for postage is a “poll tax” (actually going somewhere to vote probably costs something too), the political wisdom of asking people to put a stamp on a ballot is distasteful at least. So says Rep. Williams:

Democratic state Rep. Brendan Williams of Olympia agrees with DeMucha, saying the postage requirement is a poll tax. Williams, who has suggested using state money for postage, also said he thinks county auditors might cover postage using the savings from going to vote-by-mail in 36 of the state’s 39 counties.

A story in the Puyallup Herald from back in May points to the cost, especially since we’re not talking about just once a year in November:

The auditor’s office and school districts are looking at ways to make it a non-issue for voters.

“We’d like to pay return postage,” Cook said, explaining the postage would be part of the election costs.

However the expense may be too great to make it a reality, said Pat McCarthy, Pierce County auditor.

The Puyallup and Sumner School Districts paid $156,000 combined for election costs for the February bond measures.

District officials think the cost of providing postage would be out-weighed by the voter response.

People don’t want to go to the grocery store to buy a book of stamps or go to the post office for a single stamp just to send in a ballot, Cook said.

So what would the postage cost? Assuming we’re talking about full postage, if the 2006 election were held in Thurston County this year, we’re talking about around 85,000 voters. Let’s just say 100,000 for the sake of arguing that free postage would boost turn out. That’s $41,000, which doesn’t sound like very much.

Statewide, the cost would have been just about $864,000 (not assuming a boost in turnout).

Wew: PDC probably won’t regulate bloggers

October 23, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Here’s an important note from WINtegrated Solutions’s blog (hat tip to Fuse):

  • The PDC wants to “not interfere with the free flow of political information via the internet, particularly when the information is provided at no or little cost.”
  • The PDC recognizes the “internet is unique and evolving and warrants a restrained regulatory approach at this time.”
  • Where possible, “state regulation of Internet activity will follow the Federal Election Commission approach” (which does not regulate or require disclosure for uncompensated bloggers, and only requires disclosure on expenditures by people buying ads or paying consultants).

Read the entire post, its a good read.

A lot of the conversation the PDC had earlier this fall about internet regulation seemed to fall around work already done by the Federal Election Commission (movie here).

Save Our Sounders (Saints)

October 22, 2007 / / 0 Comments

The arrival of a top-flight mens’ soccer side to Seattle should not be at the expense of a top-flight women’s side.

Adrian Hanauer, the current owner of the USL-1 Sounders and one of the three investors in the all but official MLS Soccer franchise, has (or did he?) pulled out of the ownership of the W-League Sounders Saints, the womens soccer team in these parts. Without in an influx of revenue, the team that finished in third place nationally this year might not exist in 2008.

Lacking a similar top-flight league as the MLS since the failure of the WUSA, the top womens’ soccer league in the United States has been the semi-pro W-League.

The Seattle Women’s Soccer Initiative is raising funds for the team:

The Seattle Women’s Soccer Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and developing top level women’s Soccer in Seattle by raising grass roots financial support for the semi-pro USL W-League program and development of an amateur feeder program that will provide the best players in the area to face the highest levels of competition available.

Go here to donate.

Although it is sad that investors (Hanauer?) have walked away, it would be great if this effort evolved into a European type Supporters Trust, a fan owned team.

Know anything about SJR 8212?

October 22, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I was embarrassed when I opened up my ballot tonight that I hadn’t heard of SJR 8212, which would open up a larger prison labor program in our state. Here are some links.

Legislative history
Pro and con argument’s in voters pamphlet

It is worth noting that the two Republican lawmakers who wrote the against arguments for the voters pamphlet are from the 4th LD, close by where a company took advantage of prison labor:

In December 1995, the Redmond, Washington company laid off 30 workers earning $7 an hour plus benefits and moved to the Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane. There, five free employees supervise some 40 prisoners who earn $6 an hour. Omega Pacific owner Bert Atwater told the Spokane Spokesman Review that he moved to prison because of the rent-free quarters where “the workers are delighted with the pay; [where there are] no workers who don’t come in because of rush hour traffic or sick children at home; [and where] workers…don’t take vacations. Where would these guys go on vacation anyway?” Atwater was also pleased that he doesn’t “have to deal with employee benefits or workers’ compensation.”

Sarahjane46th over at Washblog writes a defense of 8212, but included this quote that argues against it:

“Although we understand the value for incarcerated people to earn more than 42 cents or $1.10 / hour and we acknowledge the benefits of providing work experience for incarcerated people, we see the prison industries as one of the main cogs in the “Perpetual Prisoner Machine” as described in the book by the same name authored by Joel Dyer. The bottom line is that in the long run, this change support[s] the continuation of mass incarceration in this country.”

A few newspaper endorsements in favor of it:
Put inmates to work for their benefit — and ours
Two ballot measures flashy but necessary

The Olympian’s half-hearted endorsement (Inmate labor program needs oversight) makes a great case:

By supporting SJR 8212 voters are trusting that the Department of Corrections will enforce the law to ensure that there is no unfair advantage to companies operating inside prisons. The Supreme Court record showed that 37 of the 58 inmates working for MicroJet were murderers. While some will be released some day, many others will never be released from prison. That shoots a hole in Sen. Hargrove’s argument about rehabilitation.

Nonetheless, with proper oversight from Corrections and assigning appropriate inmates to the tasks, this program can work.

Which is why I’m probably voting against it. The constitution of the state makes it illegal to use prison labor because of its built-in pitfalls. Prisoners by their nature aren’t employees. They can’t quit being prisoners, and they can be treated as slave labor. It’s better to just not open up a loop hole for abuse.

But, I’m willing to listen to anyone who can argue otherwise.

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