WhackyNation

This email went out to all state employees a few days before Christmas — well, almost all minus Republican legislators and staff.

Sure is nice to see the Governor wishing all state employees a season’s greeetings by telling them that’s she’s proposed a raise for them in her budget, maintained their health care benefits and protected their pensions.

From: Governor Christine Gregoire [mailto:Governor.ChristineGregoire@GOVERNOR.WA.GOV]
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 9:48 AM
To: ALL-STATE-EMPLOYEES@LISTSERV.WA.GOV
Subject: Season’s Greetings!

Season’s Greetings!

I know that December is often a busy month for those of us in state government – we are preparing for the next legislative session at the same time we are getting ready for the holidays.  I just want to take a few minutes to offer a heartfelt thank you for all your hard work on behalf of Washingtonians.

As Washington state employees, we have asked for nothing less than excellence from you.  Time and time again, you have come through.  You have accomplished so much this year; it is hard to believe that only one year has passed since my last holiday greeting.

It has been my hope that with vision, leadership, cooperation and hard work we can build a future Washington families can count on.  With this as my focus, our proposed budget intends to provide:

• An economy that offers opportunity for family-wage jobs for every Washingtonian; our economy must be based on a philosophy of “Washington grown, Washington owned;”
• An education system that families can rely on; education is the single most important investment we can make for our children, our state, our economy and our future;
• Access to quality, affordable health care;
• An environment where families can thrive; our natural environment is essential to our economy and quality of life, providing good jobs, protecting our air, land and water and safeguarding our recreation areas;
• Communities where families are safe; we must work together to protect families and communities from crime and ensure that we are ready for emergencies;
• Accountability and responsibility; we must spend wisely while we save resources for the future so we can get off the “spend and cut” rollercoaster.

 
To do all this, we must work together.  I am thankful for your continued commitment to the citizens of Washington and know that you deserve recognition for the work that you do.

 
Next year under my proposed budget, state employees will receive a 3.2 percent general salary increase.  An additional salary step will be added to each salary range so that those employees who have been at the top step of their pay range for at least one year can progress to the additional step.  Employees will also receive a two percent general salary increase in 2008.

 
Importantly, the budget maintains quality health care for our employees and a sound pension system that you and your family can count on.

 
I hope you will take time to celebrate this holiday season and, on behalf of all Washingtonians, thank you for your continued work for our state.  Please also remember those fellow workers who have been called to serve and pray that they are brought home safely.

 
On behalf of the entire Gregoire family, I wish you a safe and happy holiday season!

 
Sincerely,

As a public service to my KookAid-drinking liberal friends who read this blog, I am posting a recent editorial from the Wall Street Journal since I know you don’t read a decent newspaper and suffer from an inadequate public education.

The editorial gives us hope that America is once again leading the world on smart, workable environmental solutions, this time on your favorite, fashionable cause: CO2 emissions.

Enjoy!

Europe v. America on CO2
WSJ December 14, 2006; Page A16
Climate-change activists and Democrats on Capitol Hill are gearing up to push the U.S. to limit so-called greenhouse gases. In their telling, America must save mankind from an eco-Apocalypse by adopting the arbitrary targets popular with Europe and other Kyoto Protocol signatories.

Well, let’s look at results in the real world, as opposed to this Kyoto spin. Recent data show that placing artificial limits on emissions hasn’t done all that much to reduce emissions, and may even be counterproductive. Contrary to caricature, the American approach offers more promise than Europe’s.

As the nearby chart shows, CO2 emissions growth in the U.S. far outpaced that of the 15 “old” members of the European Union from 1990-95 and especially from 1995-2000, when Mr. Climate Change himself, Al Gore, was the second-most powerful man in America. But, lo, the U.S. has outperformed the EU-15 since 2000, according to the latest U.N. data. America’s rate of growth in CO2 emissions from 2000-04 was eight percentage points lower than from 1995-2000.

By comparison, the EU-15 saw an increase of 2.3 points. Only two EU states, Britain and Sweden, are on track to meet their Kyoto emissions commitments by 2010. Six more might meet their targets if they approve and implement new, as yet unspecified, policies to restrict carbon output, while seven of the 15 will miss their goals.

Cynics play down America’s improvement, noting that its economy cooled from the earlier years to 2000-04. True, but the EU-15 also had lower economic growth in the latest period and still saw its emissions growth rate double. What’s more, the U.S. economy expanded 38% faster than the EU-15 in 2000-04, and its population twice as fast. So the trend lines, for now, are reversing. That may frustrate the green lobby because so much of its fund raising depends on vilifying the U.S. But facts are facts, no matter how underreported they are.

Europe’s dismal record is explained by its approach to reducing emissions. The centerpiece of the Continent’s plan is a carbon-trading scheme in which companies in CO2-heavy industries receive tradable permits for a certain amount of emissions. If they emit more CO2, they must buy credits from firms that are under quota. The idea is to force companies to emit less CO2 by making it prohibitively expensive to keep the status quo.

All this scheme has done so far is provide further proof that government cannot replicate the wisdom of markets. A red-faced European Commission recently admitted that it allowed more permits than there were emissions in 2005-07, keeping permit prices low and undermining the entire system. When Brussels tried to make amends by ordering several member states to cut carbon permits by 7% more than expected for 2008-2012, industry and national capitals squealed. The market hadn’t priced in such a dramatic reduction. With carbon permits trading relatively cheaply, firms have been able to get by with minimal changes to the way they do business. That has minimized Kyoto’s economic impact.

Once the supply of permits is more in line with the eurocrats’ ambitious environmental goals, though, expect European industry to take a big hit. The number of firms moving manufacturing work to countries without emissions caps, such as China and India, will only grow. That might make Europe’s emissions data look good, but it will have zero net effect on the world’s production of greenhouse gases.

Some companies may elect to purchase cleaner equipment, but the rising cost of compliance — i.e., buying more carbon permits at higher prices once the supply is slashed — will eat into the money available for developing the next generation of clean technology. In short, Europe offers no magic solution for capping greenhouse gases.

America may even have a few things to teach the Old World. The U.S. strategy has been to keep economic growth strong and provide incentives for private industry to develop cleaner technologies. For instance, the Bush Administration has proposed $1 billion in tax credits for nine new coal-fired power plants that will double efficiency and reduce pollution compared with older generations. China is picking up on these tactics. This year it bought $58 million in machines from Caterpillar Inc. that trap methane in coal mines and use it to power electric generators.

If global-warming activists were as interested in lowering air temperatures as they are in expanding the role of the state, they’d understand that the key to reducing carbon emissions lies in unleashing the private sector, not capping it. That’s the real lesson from the policies — and the results — in Europe and the U.S.

Once again, I invite you to read the articles listed as links in the right column.  One of my favorites is article 3 written by the Alfed P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at M.I.T. who blows away your Al Gore myth that there is consensus within the subset of scientists who truly specialize in climate study.  Professor Richard Lindzen exposes the junk science of Al Gore and rightly says,

there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. 

Since I suspect you never were exposed to the minds like Professor Lindzen at Evergreen College I think you may find his views interesting.  Don’t worry, he doesn’t use too many big words.

Now that I am back on line, I want to comment about last week’s news surrounding Governor Gregoire’s budget.

I see her budget as the first shred of good news that might re-invigorate Republicanism in this State. By spending every cent of revenue and then more she has clearly demonstrated she is not a fiscal conservative. Her support for a constitutional amendment creating a rainy day fund is a sham. The amount of money going into the fund is but a small fraction of the increased state revenues, and the fund won’t allow her the laurels of fiscal responsibility.

Ah, Democrats Gone Wild.

So, where are our gubernatorial candidates? Who is surfacing? Rossi seems reluctant. What about Doug Sutherland? Could we talk him into it? He was interested in 1996. This time he wouldn’t have a crowded primary, and his name recognition must be a lot better. I would love to see a poll. Anyone got one?

So, as you wipe the tears during the coming legislature, you can smile to yourself that the D’s aren’t going to get away with it. And credit for that will go to blogs and media and little to the inept state party and party caucuses. Stay tuned.

Just heard the news that President Ford passed away, and it made me nostalgic for old school politicians.

He certainly impressed the nation by being folksy as a president which contrasted with President Richard Nixon’s imperial style.

Ford pardoned Nixon which probably was the reason he lost the 1976 election to President Jimmy Carter. During Ford’s two-year tenure in the Oval Office, he saw the fall of Saigon, a tough recession in 1975, high inflation and energy shortages. Being president he took the rap for these things, although the primary culprits of these troubles were Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.

Tough as times were, he kept a sense of humor. He could laugh at the jokes about his public clumsiness.

As an ex-president, Ford did not go for the headlines and remained respectful of office of the President, something his successor has never learned to do.

The Congressional Quarterly said Ford “built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own.”

That quote typifies a man who saw public service as an honorable profession.

Oh, it’s going to be a very good Christmas for Washington Democrats.  They are learning the state government has almost $2 billion windfall in tax revenue forecasted for next biennium.  Line up, all you special interests!

GOP House Deputy Leader Doug Erikson says he expects Democrats to spend while promising to be prudent.  Right on, as last year’s interim budget process demonstrates.

Governor Gregoire is posturing about setting up a rainy day fund, and House D’s may even back Republican Joe Zarelli’s constitutional amendment to require future legislature’s to fund a rainy day account with one percent of all future tax revenues.  What’s laughable is one percent of next biennium’s revenue is $120 million.  That would leave $1.8 billion of the $2 billion windfall to spend while creating an image of being “fiscally conservative.”

Well, Gregoire, if you want to posture as a fiscal conservative, how about buying down a chuck of the state’s unfunded liabilities?  You Democrats caused a $4 billion unfunded liability eight years ago when you foolishly played around with the PERS1 and TRS1 pension plans.  You have yet to pay anything for your mistake except “interest payments” which will force our children to pay until the year 2024.

And, Gregoire, if you really want to be a leader, I think you need to bring out of the closet the $5 billion unfunded liability for future state retiree health benefits.  Get it on the table early so that the legislature can start working on the problem.

$2 billion of additional tax revenue could make a good downpayment on the $9 billion in unfunded liabilities.

But knowing how you Democrats play, you will do very little in addressing these financial issues and instead reward your special interests generously.  At the top of your list will be education because we all pretty much agree that education is important and that our state has poor student achievement.  But your answer will be to throw more money down a rathole rather than holding teachers and principals more accountable.

Bill Gates says it best: “The Washington Learns report says plainly that we have to set clear goals, and hold ourselves accountable for results.”

Gates has a lot of great ideas, and they all don’t have to cost as much as what you surely will spend in the next budget.

Maybe, if you quit working for the WEA and start working for the parents, you might be able to start fixing the schools and banking a larger chunk of the $2 billion windfall.

House Speaker Frank Chopp is well known for not taking the spotlight so that he can masterfully play power politics without attracting too much attention from the media.

Now the latest … and it’s almost laughable … except, you know, a lot of house Republicans are going to get shoved around by the bully.

Since memory, the reorganization detail assigning office space to legislators has been left to the majority and minority whips.  That was all on track this session as the whips met Friday and came up with a plan.

But, hold everything.  Frank Chopp is lurking in the background …. and, surprise, surprise, he’s going to throw his weight around.  Chopp told the legislature today that he himself will assign office space.  Chopp — the ASSigner.

Knowing what a vindictive prick he is, the R’s are expecting they may end up with the broom closet offices.

In recent sessions, Chopp and his caucus staff have made the partisanship more tense.  This is just another example.  Republicans never treated the D’s with this much disrespect when they were in the minority.

Oh, by the way, Chopp still hasn’t told the Republicans how many Republican members will be allotted to various house committees, so GOP legislators don’t have committee assignments yet except for ranking members.

Thanks to On the Road to 2008 for pointing out the following story: 

Jonathan Tilove of the Newhouse Syndicate has written an interesting story about the religious makeup of Congress.  Here’s an excerpt:

The new Congress will, for the first time, include a Muslim, two Buddhists, more Jews than Episcopalians, and the highest-ranking Mormon in congressional history.

Roman Catholics remain the largest single faith group in Congress, accounting for 29 percent of all members of the House and Senate, followed by Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Jews and Episcopalians.

While Catholics in Congress are nearly 2-to-1 Democrats, the most lopsidedly Democratic groups are Jews and those not affiliated with any religion. Of the 43 Jewish members of Congress, there is only one Jewish Republican in the House and two in the Senate. The six religiously unaffiliated members of the House are all Democrats.

But perhaps the most underrepresented group in Congress is the 14 percent of all American adults who, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by scholars at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, claim no religion at all. Only six members of Congress, all Democrats, identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated: Reps. John Tierney and John Olver of Massachusetts, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Mark Udall of Colorado.

For those who like numbers, you could get lost in this piece.

Okay, so a few days after I pan the Seattle Times for not having a lot of its own reporter by-lines on its front page, the paper today published a great story exposing the corruption of Marshall Alternative School and the failure of the management of the Seattle School District.

The article, reported by Cara Solomon and Emily Heffter, exposed ”No learning going on”: classrooms without teachers, high absenteeism among some teachers, students sleeping in classrooms with instructors present, no attendance taken, and a dismal 24 percent graduation rate.

The shocker, but at the same time the most heartening part of the story, is the whistleblower, an 18-year-old student who had written more than a dozen letters all the way up the chain of command to School Superintendent Raj Manhas.  The student, Kathy Graves is now a senior and has been part of a program to keep teen mothers like her in school.  But school wasn’t there for her.  She complained in her letters that in one eight week period she had a different substitute teacher every day — except for the six days she had no teacher at all.

“It shows a great deal of effort for girls who are pregnant and parenting to get up every morning and come to school,” she wrote to Manhas.  “It would be greatly appreciated if their efforts would be rewarded with an education.”

No one wrote her back.

For letterhead, Graves had used the logo of the federal law that promises an education to all — No Child Left Behind.

When I read this story, I was sickened on a personal level.  I have actually met Kathy Graves and have met her fellow teen mothers.  My Rotary Club, Queen Anne Rotary, has helped sponsor the teen mother program at Marshall since its inception some 18 years ago.  I remember me and my fellow Rotarians providing the elbow grease to clean and paint an old metal shop and convert it into the nursery still in use today.  My club bought the washer and dryer to maintain the children’s diapers and clothing.  Along the years we have tutored, provided career and resume counseling, have bought each teen mother back-to-school kits, Thanksgiving baskets and Christmas baskets.  It sickens me that when we visited their classroom we never suspected these young women needed help from us to help right the wrong that was being done to them by a corrupt school district.  Surely our club could have been the catalyst to correct this wrong being done to them … if only we had known.

I admire Kathy Graves for speaking out not once, but many times until she caused the spotlight of public awareness to shine on the problem affecting her and her fellow students.  Her leadership makes me feel and she and her daughter have a good future in store.  I know my club will be talking about her when we meet tomorrow.

This story is not about the failure of the kids in school but about a very corrupt public education system, a sleeping and biased media and an indifferent and brainwashed citizenry.  It exposes the absolute failure of the liberals who once again prove they are unfit to govern.  It provides amunition for Republicans who have been saying the problem with public education is simply not inadequate funding, but corrupt institutions more interested in job security and public pensions than about providing our children with the best education possible.

When will the public wake up?  Republicans work for the parents.  The Democrats work for the teacher’s union.  Come on, soccer moms, hold your teachers and principals accountable.

Oh, it looked like Seattle P-I Editorial Page Editor Mark Trahant was giving equal time Sunday to those who remain unconvinced that we are any where close to a global warming doomsday, but, in the end, it was Hearst-style junk journalism.

On my first read of his op-ed, Give an ear to the shouted warnings about the dangers of climate change, I was impressed that Trahant was giving his debate’s opposition six column inches to explain media hysteria on the subject.  There were several quotes from Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., the Senate’s outspoken critic of global warming alarmists.  The quotes were taken during Inhofe’s recent hearing about the dangers climate change junk science.

The last paragraph in Trahant’s op-ed concluded:

The hearing was a warning of sorts, telling the media he believes there is no “scientific ‘consensus’ of impending climatic doom.”

This was the first mention of the “scientific consensus” debate, but Trahant from this point on defended his “scientific consensus” argument for the next nine column inches.  It seemed pretty convincing.  A casual reader of his op-ed probably thought, “How could Inhofe be so stupid?”

When I finished reading the op-ed the first time I asked myself, “What happened here?”

On a second read, Trahant’s argumentative trick became clear, and my opinion of Trahant and his newspaper sank even lower.

The trick Trahant employed was creating an illusion of fairness or two-sided reporting by giving his opposition six column inches of coverage but it was not germaine to Trahant’s central thesis.  In short, his opposition did not get a chance to defend its point that there is no “scientific consensus.”  In fact, the quotes Trahant used left his liberal readers feeling once again that Republicans hate the media and they are obfuscating the debate on a critical issue. Bottom line, although it appeared the Republican point of view was represented on the “consensus” debate, it was not.

Cheap trick, Trahant.

Trahant’s writing is a great example of how journalism standards have slipped the past three decades.   His writing which is aimed at a “thinking” Seattle audience is nothing more than red meat propaganda for environmental evangelicals.  The trouble is, if his audience reads nothing more than this type of journalism they don’t get exposed to a different point of view.  I wonder what former P-I Managing Editor Lou Guzzo would have done with a smart-aleck like Trahant.  Knowing Lou, as I did, Trahant would be out the door.  Unfortunately Lou, and other old-style-green-eye-shaded-curmudgeons have long since retired.

Sidebars:

1. Inhofe has published a booklet, A Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Global Warming Alarmism … A Challenge to Journalists Who Cover Global Warming.  Considering the magnitude of this issue I recommend everyone to at least browse this work in order to balance out uninformed media hype like Trahant’s tripe.
2. In the coming days I will be creating a page of global warming articles which I have saved this past year.  These op-ed and editorials from the Wall Street Journal present a persuasive argument that the sky is not falling although Chicken Little is alive and well in America’s media.  I tried appending these articles to my Trahant article when I originally posted it last night, but there is a nasty piece of embedded code in them that caused my blog site to display wierdly.  Check back over the next few days.  I’ll clean the code and post the articles under a link in the right column.  You will definitely find them great anectdotes to our liberal media and enviro-wacko friends all around us in our great state.

Great legwork by David Postman at the Times this afternoon.

Governor Christine Gregoire has raised more campaign money than any previous governor at mid-term, and possible Republican challenger Dino Rossi hasn’t raised any money at all.  Here’s the lead to Postman’s story:

Gov. Christine Gregoire has raised more campaign money than any other governor at mid-term, but she’s putting on one more hard push before having to put her fundraising on hold until April.

Records at the Public Disclosure Commission show Gregoire has raised a bit more than $1.5 million for her 2008 re-election campaign. At this point in former Gov. Gary Locke’s first term, he had raised about $319,000. In 2002, before he decided not to run for a third term in ‘04, he had raised about $412,000. And he was considered a prodigious fundraiser.

This is serious. 

Dino, if you’re serious about a rematch, you need to start beating the bushes, or tell the world you are not in the race so your vacuum can be filled.

Hey, here’s news: a Democrat is finally waking up.  That’s sort of like man bites dog.

The Everett Herald is reporting today that Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon is upset that Sound Transit wants to shift $350 to $400 million in future Snohomish tax money south.  The money at stake would come from a half-cent sales tax increase if voters approve it next year.

Reardon, one of three Sound Transit board members from Snohomish County, would rather see that money spent on getting light rail to Everett.

“I want the dollars raised in Snohomish County to support Snohomish County transportation investments,” Reardon said.

Hey, Aaron, are you starting to get the picture?  The RTA has never had a zero-based budget from the day they opened their doors.  Don’t you think it was suspicious that Doug White and his cohorts convinced voters in 1996 to authorize the $4 billion RTA by simply halving their $8 billion cost figure from their failed initiative two years before?  Do you think that was zero-based?  Or was it a pull-it-out-of-your-ass figure that they felt they could sell voters?

Are you surprised that the RTA hasn’t delivered all the services it promised for the first ten years of its existence?

You shouldn’t be.  Doug White knew the most important agenda in 1996 was getting the RTA established.  Once the bureaucracy was established he would build out whatever infrastructure $4 billion would allow him, and let the RTA go back to the voters in ten years for more money.

But over and beyond that maneuvering, White’s real failure was never delivering on his ultimate promise, i.e., building a regional transit solution.  Lack of adequate tax revenues forced White to compromise the system.

Light rail is not a regional solution for a tri-county area.  Light rail travelling on city streets at best, is a city solution.   A regional soultion would have been high-speed rail on dedicated right-of-way.  By settling for cheaper light rail White could build out more miles of track and sort of look like he was delivering on his pact with the voters.  By the time folks like you, Reardon, would notice he’d be retired.

Back in 1996 and 1997, Norm Rice and Ron Sims were simply too happy with light rail.  They didn’t care about a tri-county solution.  They saw light rail construction and jobs as a tool to revitalize slumming neighborhoods in Seattle, and the folks in Snohomish, Pierce and East King Counties could ride the bus and pay the taxes to build the train to nowhere.

The rest of the board provided little real oversight.  Doug White was a well-liked and respected guy.  The board pretty much rubber stamped his recommendations.

And, God knows, the newspapers weren’t being very good watchdogs (see following story).

Today, White’s successors continue the shell game.   And your taxpayers continue to pay for Seattle’s train.

As a Republican, I have never been against transit.  I want my tax dollars to be spent wisely so I have always been against this half-assed system.

In 1996, Doug White should have sold voters for more tax revenue to do the job right.  He didn’t, and now we are in the deep muddy of building an infrastructure that will never be an efficient regional system.

The best thing for this region would be for you Democrat leaders to stop this foolishness.  Maybe let the RTA build out the light rail to the airport terminal and maybe north to Northgate, but then stop.

It’s going to cost more, but maybe from that point on, the RTA should build out heavy rail and move passengers from Everett to Tacoma to Issaquah in much faster rail cars.

It’s going to take real leaders to sell that one to the voters.  Are you up for the job, Aaron?  Or do you want to go back to sleep?

Update: Island Republican has reprinted an article entitled “The Cost of Sound Transit.”  Written by Michael Ennis of the Washington Policy Institute the analysis examines the three options before the RTA board for voter approval next year.

An excerpt:

Under its larger package, Sound Transit is planning to spend a combined $35.2 billion to move 351,000 people a day. It would be cheaper to pay the same people $100,000 each to stay home.

Another excerpt:

Depending on which option the Sound Transit Board chooses, the combined cost of both phases would cost $27.2 billion, $30.9 billion or $35.2 billion, respectively. The cost for Sound Transit to pull the driver of one passenger vehicle off the existing roadway and into its public transportation system would range from $89,826 to $100,285.

This in-depth analysis is very much worth a read and it underscores my belief that most of my good-hearted Democrat friends never took math in high school.

Update 2: Peter Callaghan at the Tacoma News Tribune laments that Sound Transit currently plans its stage two light rail southern terminus in Fife and not six miles further to link the Tacoma Dome Station.

But wait … he reports an email from Pierce County Execuive and RTA Board Chair John Landenberg indicates that Sound Transit is proposing what sounds like a fast one affecting its debt:

The (Sound Transit) staff presented a plan that would get light rail to the Port of Tacoma, with an extension to Tacoma Dome if money is available. They indicated that we might get to the Tacoma Dome if we lower our sub-area debt-service ratio to allow more sub area borrowing in bad economic times.

Sub area borrowing and sub area equity are big issues. But in order to get to Tacoma Dome at all, we need to just allow “bare minimum” other projects in Pierce, so we took everything off the board except light rail, and Puyallup and Sumner parking. Even with that, it’s close.

The board did not vote on anything and will take the issue up again on the 14th. …

John W. Ladenburg
Pierce County Executive

To be continued ….

Frank Blethen, Publisher of the Seattle Times, laments in an op-ed today how the Federal Communications Commission needs to protect local newspaper owners from the “hungry locusts, the rapacious capitalists” who are consolidating media empires.

“America’s democracy,” the op-ed’s headline reads, is “at risk.”

It is the battle that pits democracy against the powerful.  The powerful, who seek to co-opt our free press, control the news, and control the access to news, journalism and information.

Good journalism, watchdog journalism, local journalism: These are the essential oxygen of self-government.

I agree with you, Frank, that watchdog journalism is essential oxygen of self-government.

But I think you are unconvincing that local ownership guarantees good journalism and absentee ownership cheapens journalism.

Case in point: your own newspaper, 51% owned by your family,  compared to, say, the Oregonian, owned 100% by S.I. Newhouse out of New York.

Your newspaper, under local ownership, has cheapened its journalism coverage the last 20-plus years, whereas the Oregonian, under absentee ownership, has improved its journalism.

On any given day, compare your paper’s coverage to your Portland neighbor.  Compare the number of local reporter by-lines versus wire service or syndicated features.  The Oregonian creams you with local news coverage.  Compare your coverage of local and state government.  Beat reporters were replaced in your paper early last decade by columnists.  The news whole was filled by enlarging type, increasing space between lines, shrinking newstock size, running more pictures and graphics and especially by cheap-to-reproduce wire stories and syndicated features.  Most local news has been replaced by police blotter stories, the difference being a newsroom desk reporter can call local police departments and get news by phone a lot cheaper than putting reporters in local city halls.

Where’s you tough coverage of City Hall? County government? State government? School Boards.  Your paper only covers these institutions when not covering them would be noticeable to your readership.  Your day-to-day beat reporting is non-existant.

And all this has happened under your watch.  Your biggest mistake was relinquishing so much editorial control to editors like Mike Fancher who are more interested in flexing their MBA degrees and running the newsroom for the bottomline than, say, “watchdog journalism.”

Your paper may boast of awards …. but the stories which receive the rewards are, by far, the exception to the daily content of the Times.

What’s happened to media ownership is not much different than what has happened in other business sectors.

Since the end of World War II, local ownership in businesses like grocery stores, gas stations, shoe stores, clothing stores, etc., has switched from local, mom-and-pop ownership to larger chains.  Larger chains can run more efficiently and pass savings to the consumer.  Think Wal-Mart.  Why should media not be subject to the same economic forces?

Actually, the demise of local ownership of the media is more due to the unfair burden of the inheritance tax.  Faced with enormous taxes on media assets, heirs of local media owners have had to sell the family businesses upon the death of the patriarch or matriarch.  Who’s got the liquidity to buy these costly assets?  For the most part, corporations.

Your beef, Frank, needs to be with all those Democrats your newspaper endorsed and who will do nothing to repeal one of the most unfair taxes facing your children.

So, Frank, if you’re looking for someone to blame for the demise of local media, don’t blame the FCC commissioners, take a good in the mirror.

And as far as the future health of America’s journalism?  It’s alive and well right here on the internet.

Frank Chopp told Josh Feit at the Slog this afternoon that the tunnel option for replacing Seattle’s Alaska Way viaduct is dead.

Must be sad at the Mayor’s office now that the Speaker has joined Appropriations Chair Helen Sommers and Transportation Chair Judy Clibborn in opposition to the tunnel.

Chopp told Feit: 

“We can’t afford the tunnel,” he began, scoffing at the current estimate of between $3.6 to $5.5 billion, putting it at $6 billion at least.

Chopp told Feit that two options remain: either a surface option or a redesigned elevated one.

So, I guess the only tunnel experience Greg Nickels will get is from the video produced by the Department of Transportation:

I wonder if the mayor will advocate that Seattle itself will come up with the extra cash to pay for the tunnel option.  Stay tuned.

Jim Camden compiled a list of the top ten independent expenditure organizations from the last election.

Subtracting out the supreme court and Tim Sheldon’s primary races, Democrat candidates received $916,000 in campaign help versus $628,000 for Republicans from the top ten indies.

Here’s Camden’s list:

1. It’s Time for a Change, $1.25 million
(ChangePAC, another independent group which gets half its money from the Building Industry Association of Washington/Spent about $1 million in the state Supreme Court races.)
2. Citizens to Uphold the Constitution, $647,000
(Tulalip and Puyallup tribes, public employees, lawyers /Spent all on Supreme Court races, opposite choices of It’s Time for a Change.)
3. Roosevelt Fund $393,000
(Democratic Party sources, public employees unions, Muckleshoot tribe/Most spent opposing Republican state Senate candidates in King and Pierce counties.)
4. Building Industry Association of Washington $370,000
(Members of the association/About $350,000 spent in state Supreme Court races.)
5. Americans Tired of Lawsuit Abuse-WA PAC $357,500
(All from national group with same name/All spent on State Supreme Court primary supporting John Groen or opposing Gerry Alexander)
6. Harry Truman Fund $334,000
(Democratic sources, Muckleshoot tribe, public employees/Spent on state House races around the state.)
7. Realtors Quality of Life PAC $316,000
(All from main Realtors’ PAC, which comes from members /Mostly spent supporting Republican legislative candidates around the state.)
8. Citizens Action Group $312,000
(From Republican leadership PACs in state House in Senate/Spent opposing Democrats or supporting Republicans in close legislative races around the state.)
9. Working Families Who Have Had Enough $208,000
(Washington D.C. liberal organization, gay rights and pro-choice groups/Spent opposing state Sen. Tim Sheldon or supporting opponent Kyle Lucas in Democratic primary.)
10. Affordable HealthCare Coalition $189,000
(Service employees unions/Supporting Democratic legislative candidates, incumbent state Supreme Court candidates.)

Camden’s list got me curious about how much money was being donated to the party caucus’s in Olympia.  I ran some reports from the PDC database.  The results are surprising:

$1,464,264.42 House Democrat Caucus Campaign Committee

$   653,181.18 House Republican Organizing Committee

$   671,449.59 Senate Democrat Campaign Committee

$   574,986.88 Senate Republican Campaign Committee

The Democrats raised over $2 million compared to $1.25 million for the Republicans.

What’s abundantly clear is the