Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 136 of 176)

Diary over at Washblog about some stuff in the last few days. Maybe its just the end of campaign season, but I’m glad I got voting out of the way first thing. Not sure I feel like it now.

How can we claim to be for the “common good,” any of us?

The difference between Mike Stark being put in a headlock and tackled and Mike Stark being told to “shut up” or ignored is that he wasn’t a credentialed reporter. Granted, a reporter probably wouldn’t have shouted a question, but reporters all the time ask questions that are “innapropriate.”

So, count up to two politicians in the last few days who “don’t take questions from bloggers.” Allen just does it a bit more forcefully.

“It forces taxpayers to pay bad neighbors to just follow the law.” Spot on. Hat tip to Jon.

Most people may care about farming, in some distant way. They aren’t farmers themselves, but sure, farms are good. Though the Yes on 933 folks are using the farmer argument too, which just muddles it.

The High Taxes argument is better, but it doesn’t hit the issue on the head, which is bad neighbors suck. Why give in to them?

He can put out negative, untrue ads. But, he can’t take true negative ads. He gets all bunchy about Mike Rechner’s new ad:

A Democratic challenger’s televised blasting of Rep. Richard DeBolt, the state House Republican Leader from Chehalis, has grabbed some attention in Thurston County.

…

DeBolt said the ad has a “negative, nasty tone,” and he disputed its claims. Rechner said it informs the voters.

…

DeBolt said Rechner and his party are avoiding issues in favor of a negative campaign, noting that the Thurston County Democratic Party also filed a complaint over his campaign finance reporting this year.

“I guess personal attacks are OK with them, but when you attack issues, they don’t want to do that,” DeBolt said.

Here’s the ad:

The funny part about this ad, and Debolt’s reaction to it, is that the second part of the ad is about Debolt using untruths in ads he funded earlier this year:

Democratic lawmakers were livid Tuesday over a Republican-backed ad campaign blasting them as being soft on sex predators.

The latest salvo in the $75,000 radio, TV, phone and mail campaign by The Speaker’s Roundtable has been a wave of postcards that blanketed five legislative districts over the weekend. Republicans, who are outnumbered by Democrats in the statehouse, say the ads are their way of pushing for tougher sex-offender laws.

…

Marked “SEX OFFENDER NOTIFICATION,” the cards picture a real child rapist. “This violent predator lives in your community,” the cards say. They also list the names of local Democratic lawmakers and urge people to call and tell them to “protect children and not violent sex offenders.” At least seven Democrats in five legislative districts have been targeted in the mailings.

As it turns out, the 57-year-old man pictured in the photo actually lives in Pierce County’s Gig Harbor, not in Vancouver, Walla Walla or most of the other cities where the postcards were received.

…

Several of the Democrats blamed DeBolt, R-Chehalis, who helps raise money for The Speaker’s Roundtable. In a letter Tuesday, they demanded an apology.

“Sometimes, I guess, Rep. DeBolt thinks he’s having fun, kind of a junior-high mentality,” said Rep. Bill Grant, D-Walla Walla.

Groan. I know she was talking about Sharkansky, hell I wouldn’t want to take questions from Sharkansky. Justice Susan Owens should have said something to that effect, that she just didn’t like the person asking the questions. Instead she ended up sounding snobbish and elitist, to say the least.

Uninformed is getting a bit more accurate.

I’m still glad I voted for her, Steven Johnson would be a disaster on the court. She’s still a grade A turd though.

Good lord:

I don’t answer questions from bloggers, and that was apparently the moderator’s only credentials. They didn’t want to get a regular journalist to do it. I have other reasons to, I’m working as a justice and we had a full slate of cases on Tuesday. So I said no — in my view it wasn’t a big deal. I apologize for any inconvenience for anybody. But Sen. Johnson and I have been all over the state, together and alone, even when gas was at its highest price. I had hoped to hit all the counties….

I don’t take questions from bloggers. I just don’t blog and don’t read them. Every forum we’ve been at has been moderated by an attorney or a credentialed journalist, and one by the state president of the League of Women Voters. I personally did not know who this other moderator was. My people might have agreed to that, but when I found out the reality, I said no.

By discounting not only the entire medium, but everyone who isn’t a lawyer or a journalist, she is drawing an arbitrary line. I know Joel Connelly is a nice and smart man, but there isn’t anything about him that makes him any more qualified to ask questions then a few experienced, smart and nice people I know.

At this point, I know I’m reading into it a bit too much, but it seems like she’s almost spitting the word “bloggers” out.

As election day continues (since most of us got our ballots more than a week ago, is there really an election “day”?), we continue to see the polling on 933 drop through the floor. For the first time, the No responses beat out the Yes responses. Even on the better question for “yes.”

See here and here also.

Election Day is only just over a week away, so there wasn’t much for me to do except for create some Election Day Bingo 2006 cards.

I did up two, which pretty much cover the interesting House, Senate and Governor races (except Virginia in the Senate races) and some local stuff.

Two sets of cards, so all results taken into account.

Here’s one
Here’s the other

Make your own right here. And, have fun.

Norm does his part and so does Jay.

Now, even though Jay Inslee doesn’t meet the criteria laid out by Chris Bowers in the “Use it or Lose It” campaign (opponents with less than $10k spent), he gets credit for sending his money where it will do the most good.

Is it worth it to nudge Brian Baird too?

Brian’s opponent has about twice that which Jay’s does ($100k compared to $50k) and Brian has just under what Jay does. I know it isn’t very likely that Brian will lose with an almost 7 to 1 cash advantage, but how much can he really afford to send out?

Might still be worth a visit or a call though: 10411 NE Fourth Plain Blvd, Vancouver and (360) 696-1993.

* * *

What is so funny about this is that a couple of days ago I heard an ad for Norm on KGY. This is funny because Norm doesn’t even have an opponent who is raising any money. At all. Doug Cloud will be on the ballot, but it isn’t like he’s promoting himself all that much.

That said, KGY would be a pretty cheap ad buy. Most radio out here would be a pretty cheap ad buy.

This is a thought I’ve had running through my head since a few Thanksgivings ago. Why on the day after Thanksgiving, a free Friday for most of us, is our public life pretty much closed down? I mean all the stores are open, duh, but everything else, libraries, museums are closed.

I don’t like shopping (at all really), and two Black Fridays ago I wanted to hit the library, and it was closed. I scratched my head about it, thinking it would be open because it is open any other weekend day. That got me looking into alternatives to Black Friday, the mother of all shopping days (not really, but it gets the best press).

Buy Nothing Day is pretty much it, and I don’t think that is really good enough. “Buy Nothing” is a negative action, pretty much asks you to do nothing but sit on your hands and not be a shopper. Not at all inspiring. The day after Thanksgiving should be more than that, it should be a day that asks you to give back more than thanks.

Do we have a volunteering holiday? I’ve heard some folks using MLK day as a “day of service,” but since not everyone gets MLK day off, I think we should add the day after Thanksgiving.

Randy at Ridenbaugh press has a well intentioned post about a restoration of the initiative process. He says we should ban paying signature gatherers. Just like we can’t force spending or contribution limits onto initiative campaigns, we also can’t ban paying signature gatherers.

We might be able to ban paid per signature model, but not pay outright.

My point (here and otherwise) is that we can’t create more limits to the initiative process and expect the process to improve. Creating higher hurdles to participation will only decrease participation, and increase the advantage wealthy folks have in using the system:

More regulation just means that initiative proponents will just spend more money to overcome these hurdles. The loser in this scenario is the average citizen. They do not have the resources to overcome these hurdles and therefore are locked out of the process. If legislators are concerned about wealthy individuals and special interest being the only ones using the process, then they should make the process more accessible to those individuals without access to large sums of money.