Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 140 of 177)

Up until about May I was involved in my neighborhood association, that had come together to try to stop the upsurge in development in south-east Olympia. This part of Oly had been pretty rural up until recently, and a lot of long time residents had a hard time understanding why this muddy wet part of town was a good place for a few thousand more homes.

This fight though is a good example of the arguments surrounding I-933, balancing the rights of long time landowners to their rural setting, low volume traffic and property values, with the rights of developers to do what they do.

Earlier today the VP of the neighborhood association sent out a reminder for folks to donate to No on I-933 (to the credit of Dan Stonnington and other folks at the Community Protection Coalition, they were in contact with my neighborhood association early on). I’ll call her Neighbor A has been pretty vocal about I-933, specifically how it would prevent folks like her and her neighbors from stopping development from happening.

Neighbor B, also very active in the association, replied in contrast:

We need less government interference and more accountability to the people. Any and all government (and each person!) should be held accountable for it’s actions. Period.

…I am surprised that you aren’t concerned about the fact that plans are showing a road going thru your house in the future. I would think you would expect to be reimbursed by the government taking your home as they see fit without your intent to sell or input from you. You are campaigning, voting and contributing to the government not having to pay you fair market value when they decide to take your land for a more direct route to downtown. Where ‘they’ go to spend more of our tax dollars on stopping food and medical supplies from getting to our troops fighting for our freedom of speech, way of life and religion.

What does I-933 do for Washington property owners?

Yes On I-993 means that if government regulation damages the use or value of your land you are entitled to compensation for your loss.

How much will I-933 cost?

Nothing. If the government doesn’t damage someone’s property, it owes nothing. No damage, no cost. That’s fair.

Does I-933 eliminate zoning laws and environmental protections?

No. Only regulations applied to individual properties are addressed by I-933. Zoning doesn’t change and the environment is still protected.

My main contention is with the logic that she seems to be employing that “if the rules stay on the books, what is the harm?” The harm is that the rules aren’t enforced, they practically don’t exist.

She also seems to be confusing the concepteminentient domain with so called “takings.” If Neighbor A’s house was taken out to build a road, then under the Constitution of the United States and Washington, she’d be paid. If they downzoned her property from one house per one acre to one to five, there would be no payment (as it stands today). The fiscenarioerio iseminentient domain case, the second is so-called “takings.”

Anyway, I could spend a lot of time countering her logic, but rather, I just want to reflect on if we couldn’t reach someone whose home is being surrounded by new developments, who can we reach?

The only reason there is a halt in development in SE Olympia is because the city was able to enact a rule to put a temporary halt to development until they reconsider their overall rules. If all of those rules can be called into question when they obviously will lessen the commercial value of their properties, how can they be effective at all?

From the PDF:

…that is because it shifts power away from the center of organizations out to the edges. Millions of us now can speak on a much more level playing field than anything that has ever existed before. By definition that is bad for elites and insiders. Which can’t be good news for the incumbent party in Washington.

I think pluralism is also hard-wired into the net, and especially into Web 2.0, where everyone is one click away from everyone else and (contrary to the fears of some), you are far more likely to encounter opposing viewpoints online than elsewhere. This again, it seems to me, means the web is inherently friendlier to people who value civic debate and engagement.

This is not to say that the web is full of liberals. It still trends to the wealthier, especially if you are looking at broadband users. And given the huge technosphere, which is as big or bigger than the political blogosphere, a lot of its politics is more libertarian than traditionally left or right. But even if it’s not by design, it does seem Cox is right, and the right is losing the online future.

That’s because the culture of Web 2.0 favors dissenters and creatives over conformists. If you are uncomfortable with free expression, you’re not going to like YouTube. It’s not “who builds what,” as Cox puts it, that “means everything,” it’s what is the web good for and what do people like to use it for, that means everything.

This is why calling wired citizens the nutroots, is well, nuts.

A good local conversation on this is right here.

I also agree with Micah (I didn’t quote this part) that the right has a good hold on off line networks, such as mega-churches and gun groups. That isn’t to say, though, that these offline networks have to stay with Republicans. One thing I learned while reading Applebee’s America (I loved that book, if you read this blog with any regularity, you’re going to have to settle with that), is that while these networks may be 60 or so percent GOP, by not focussing on them, we’re loosing the 40 percent Dem/Progressives that attend mega-churches, attend gun club meetings, etc…

Though, as the online networks spawn offline networks, we’ll have a greater advantage there.

But, as a reason to vote against, not for the initiative. Goldy points to the obvious two-faced nature of Dan Wood, who would promote I-933 as a way to get the government off the backs of good folks like us, then testify that a fish processing plant was ruining the value of his rental properties down on the harbor.

That Wood would testify before the Hoquiam City council points to something: the way to argue against 933 is to say it will destroy your property values. Not because of government action, but because of your neighbors screwing with you.

or: f*#k Mark Shattuck.

Four years ago Sheldon gave the GOP about $10,000. Now, after his victory over Democrat Kyle Taylor Lucas, they’re begining to return the favor.

Citizens Alliance for a Legislative Majority, a new PAC in Washington funded mostly by seed money from the Republican State Leadership Commitee, gave $500 to Sen. Sheldon earlier this month.

Not that he needs it.

(The Republicans really considered him one of their own anyway)

If Republicans are giving money to Sheldon, who is donating to his Republican opponent, Mark Shattuck?

That’s right, two people for a total of $400 have donated to Republican Shattuck’s campaign, $100 less than what the State Republicans gave to his opponent Democrat Tim Sheldon.

Former California Congressman and current Gig Harbor resident (boy I like him already) Burt Talcott (say that with your teeth clenched) has a very energetic defense of of current primary system in the TNT recently. Actually he seems to be defending primaries in general, and attacking the idea of an IRV system, which would do away with primaries.

Both major political parties, although often adversarial on most issues, strongly oppose IRV.

Now, why would both the Democrats and the Republicans oppose IRV when they disagree with each other on so much? Probably because they’re the two major parties and fear losing their positions to lesser parties. Defending a duopoly.

That isn’t to say that some Democratic county organizations don’t like IRV. Whatcom county put it in their platform this year, and Thurston did two years ago.

Party workers conduct workshops for voters, informational public forums, candidate debates and “get-out-the-vote” campaigns. They monitor elections and hold election officials accountable. They sponsor conventions and neighborhood meetings to develop and explain public policy positions.

These essential functions inform the electorate in ways that the government, individuals and narrow interests do not and cannot possibly accomplish; their value far exceeds the costs of conducting primary elections.

Voting a different way won’t stop parties from doing these things. Not that parties do this sort of stuff anyway. A lot of local parties don’t do a lot of voter education forumy type of stuff. It would be great if they did, but a lot more effort is put into raising money for candidates, not good-for-the public education events.

Primaries enable candidates to demonstrate their political skills and permit thousands of citizens to participate in the nomination process – rather than relegate nominations to a few closeted elite.

This is the most base argument for public primaries, that if we had nominating process within the parties it would be back to the bad old days of Boss Tweed and smoke filled rooms.

It would only be that way if the parties let it be that way. The fact is it has been almost 100 years since the first primaries came along and nearly 40 since they became common. Since then communication technology has, to put it bluntly, has changed a bit. It is possible today to run a nominating convention online (as they’ve done in Arizona).

Defending the current voting system should not be done by saying “We’re trying to save the parties.” I’m all for the parties, and one in particular, but the parties’ fate will be on how well they address the issues of the day and how well they encourage participation, not on how we vote.

Ward is running against paleo-conservative Sen. Pam Roach up in King County. She has a new ad, an imitiation of a great Rainier Beer ad that I think we all remember. It turns out to be a deeper statement on growth and where we’ve come from as a region.

Her ad:

The original Rainier ad:

When you look at it side by side to the original Rainier Beer ad, you can see that the same bend in the road is no longer fields, but rather suburban homes.

I had a meeting with Sen. Karen Fraser today to go over he role as a moderator for this event.

I have to say, I probably have one of the nicest elected officials in my district, she spent a lot of time with me, and I’m happy I voted for her.

Anyway, since talking about a public forum doesn’t take very long, our conversation wandered into the topic of blogging (a topic I like talking about), and it sounded like she might get into it herself. I mentioned Rep. Dave Upthegrove’s Uptheblog, which I hope gives her a good impression of an elected official blog.

A few weeks ago the Washington blogoshere on both sides of the aisle were all a twitter with the Sheldon v. Lucas race for the 35th LD Senate seat. Mostly that statewide Dems were trying to get rid of the Dem in Name Only Tim Sheldon.

There was a bit of sniping on the conservative side of things that the Democratic Party was out for ideological purity, not popular candidates. Which may be true. But, at least we try to get candidates we don’t like out during a public election.

The Republican Party tries to fight them off even before they get on the ballot. Seattle Times in 2005:

But state Republicans also adopted rules for a Montana primary — rules state GOP Chairman Chris Vance says are now in effect — that assert the party’s “right to grant permission to use the Republican name … only to candidates who demonstrate significant support within the Republican Party.”

In most cases, the rules require a candidate to have received 25 percent of the vote at the county convention. Candidates also could have qualified by submitting to the party by last Friday a large number of voter signatures, but Vance said he knew of no candidates taking that route.

Democrats have adopted no similar rules.

In the second election with the pick-a-party system, voter turnout went up four points from the last non-presidential year primary election. Since 2004, turnout was down seven points.

There are probably many other factors impacting turnout than the primary system, but it seems that the only thing the system changed was how people talk about the primary, not whether they vote or not.

I’d be interested to see how many people turned in non-partisan ballots compared to partisan ballots the last two times around, and see how that compares to party ID in the state.

Andrew’s post from today on “catty blogs” reminds me of something we should all be doing. Reading right wing blogs and keeping them honest.

Maybe they’ll do the same thing to us.

I started reading Thurston Pundits awhile back, and started righting writing about it when I noticed that my comments on the blog weren’t being accepted. Andy doesn’t accept any comments (despite keeping the line of code that implies he accepts comments) so I don’t take it personally. So, I just started typing my comments in my own blog and linking back to his post.

Its kind of sad though, if you check Andy’s technorati profile, I’m one of the few who cares enough to actually write about what he’s writing about.

Effin’ Unsound is a much larger effort to do this. Maybe Carl should open that blog up a bit and let the rest of us play.