Category: Uncategorized (Page 12 of 49)

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.

Getting kind of sensitive over the one big rich guy, Howie Rich, is funding their campaign, Yes on 933 bites back.

Yes on 933 sent out an email yesterday that keeps in the front of your mind just how outside the truth box they need to go to make a point. The headline starts with this:

Enron, World’s Richest Developer Funding ““No on I-933” Campaign

Then a little further down, it gets a bit clearer what they’re talking about:

ENRON ATTORNEY, WORLDÂ’S RICHEST DEVELOPER FUNDING ““NO ON I-933″” CAMPAIGN

Oh, so it wasn’t actually Enron itself, but rather one of attorneys. Probably one of their attorneys who was all down and dirty. And stuff.

Nope.

…the opposition is controlled by California billionaire John Morgridge, Chairman of Cisco Systems, and Texas attorney Carol Dinkins, whose law firm represented Enron. The two are Chair and Vice Chair of The Nature Conservancy, respectively.

By the way, the bold type is theirs, not mine. Whose law firm represented Enron? Pretty far from “Enron funding No on 933” isn’t it?

Not that it turns out that Ms. Dinkins is a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but she isn’t Enron.

And, as far as the “world’s richest” developer, its Paul Allen. Yeah, Paul Allen.

Their point is that since Allen wants to build high density housing, he doesn’t like all that sprawl. Which is sort of the point.

Not a lot going on that was interesting, short of the start of the budget writing process.

What I like though is the idea of Participatory budgeting.

I can’t go, but everyone else should feel free to rub elbows with our next Rep.

It never really died, but after a couple months the idea is moving again. I have a meeting with Rep. Hunt in a couple of weeks and I have some more history of recent legislation on the topic.

Elway Poll says “Yes” responses for 933 are down to 42 percent.

The “Yes I’m voting for that” is really the only thing you should worry about when they ask about initiatives. As noted before, initiatives typically are more popular in August and September and as the “No on” campaigns ramp up, they begin to sink as people become more unsure of their impact.

And, when people are unsure about initiatives, they vote no.

Wooo hoo:

Congressman Norm Dicks of the 6th CD responded positively to the calls that folks made to ask him to contribute money from his campaign chest to Democrats running in more competitive districts. He donated $100,000 + according to Chris Bowers, reporting back on his “Use It or Lose It” program. This was on top of the nearly $600,000 that he raised yesterday for the DCCC from the lunch he hosted downtown for Al Gore. Also today, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy each donated $500,000 to the DSCC. This program is working. We may not get the entire $15 million we are looking for but it will be close.

I feel like I and our readers here had an impact on Dicks’ decision, along with a bunch of folks from MoveOn.org. I called Dicks’ Tacoma office on Friday afternoon and then wrote up a post asking others to do the same. I repeated the plea yesterday. Then I called the Tacoma office again today to ask them how it was going. As soon as I called, they laughed and asked if I was calling about the program. I said I was. The man who answered the phone asked me if I knew that Dicks had already given a lot to candidates. I told him I did and appreciated it. He asked if I knew about the lunch yesterday and how much had been raised. Yes. I said that perhaps they might want to write to Chris Bowers and talk about getting credit for what they’d done. I gave them Chris’ email address and said I’d write about it as soon as I saw the results on Chris’ list.