Supreme Court Judges

Please vote for:

Susan Owens,
Gerry L. Alexander, and
Tom Chambers.

(Avoid: Groen, Johnson, and Burrage)

Please Defeat Proposed Bylaws Amendment 17

Proposed Amendment 17
Article IV: Appointed Officers
Section 11: Website Editor (Webmaster)
Strike fifth bullet.
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It sounds simple enough. What is the fifth bullet?
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Duties of the Website Editor (Webmaster):
• Maintains all editorial rights (i.e. the right and discretion to edit and/or delete) any and all postings to any electronic lists of the 44th.
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This amendment included no explanatory comment. What was the amendment maker thinking?

This editorial right is critical to the Webmaster's job. It is used on a daily basis. For example, the webmaster deletes 2 or 3 junk email messages by hand almost every day, filtering spam out of everyone's inboxes.

The webmaster may exercise this editorial right to very quickly delete or edit offensive language from a blog posting. This is perhaps the most important reason to keep this bullet item unchanged.

The amendment does not specify where these editorial right are to be vested. If the webmaster doens't have these editorial rights, then who does?

Even though the editorial rights are held by the webmaster, he still has a duty to report the information as accurately as possible. If there is an error, we already have a very simple appeal process: just send the webmaster some email, and it gets fixed.

Same Sex Marriage and Democracy

I am disappointed with the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on same sex marriage. But perhaps in the long run the court has done us a favor. In essence, the court ruled that defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman is an appropriate exercise of legislative authority; but the court went out of its way to point out that to do the opposite would also be an appropriate exercise of legislative authority.

In other words, the court ruled that we must fight this case in the court of public opinion. I think this is a fight we can win there, and when we can win our battles by democratic action it is better to do so than to use the courts to force our position down the public’s throat.

Consider, for example, the fight for abortion rights. Prior to 1973, the proponents were making steady, though slow, progress in the state legislatures. But when they by-passed the legislatures by securing the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the anti-abortion forces were galvanized and have been ever since. I suspect that if the Supreme Court had refused to get involved, a woman’s right to choose would be a long and satisfactorily settled issue.

According to numerous polls collected on pollingpoint.com, the public generally opposes homosexual marriage, if it is called homosexual marriage, 60% to 30% with 10% undecided. But if civil unions are added to the choices, opposition drops to 40%, with civil unions and marriages together receiving 55% support. And if it is called same-sex marriage there is a 5% shift in our favor. (In this paragraph, I am rounding to multiples of 5%, as I am summarizing numerous polls rather than reporting on any particular poll. Moreover, I don’t think the results are any more accurate than that.)

Ten years ago, the opposition to homosexual marriage was more like 70% to 25% with 5% undecided. So we are making progress. Moreover, these are national figures; I suspect that figures for Washington State would be much more favorable.

Representative Ed Murray has announced that he will introduce a bill addressing the Supreme Court decision. Our part is to use this decision to get out our base to effect change. And that’s called democracy.

The anti-neighborhood initiative

Karen Lowe, with others, has an excellent guest column in the Seattle Times concerning I-933, the property wrongs initiative.

Basically, I-933 proposes that when a change in regulations decreases the value of property, the property owner can sue for damages. We will vote to endorse the NoOnI933 position at our Thursday meeting. The NoOnI933 website is here.

Among many examples in Karen’s piece:

Horseman's Trail is a proposed 116-unit subdivision that would be located on 23 acres of steep, environmentally sensitive property in the Picnic Point area between Mukilteo and Edmonds. Many local residents are asking Snohomish County not to approve the subdivision. Under I-933, the county would have only two choices: allow the development, or pay the developer what the subdivision would be worth — potentially millions of dollars.

It seems to me, in the spirit of this initiative, one might ask that when a change in use of a property decreases the value of nearby property, the effected property owners should be able to sue the developer for the decreased value. If I-933 is good, wouldn’t this be even better?

Democrats have more Integrity

Normally, I consider web based polls to be not worth the effort to view. Even so, I was struck by the ratings of U.S. Senators at the New Political Review.

The New Political Review is not a left wing site. The opinion pieces posted on the site are evenly balanced between Republican and Democratic authors, and those I read by Democrats were definitely to the right of my own views. The site has a page that invites readers to rate Senators on traits such as integrity, honor, and character.

With one exception, readers of the Review rate every Democratic Senator above every Republican Senator on these traits!

Currently, the top five Senators are John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Ron Wyden, and Edward Kennedy. The bottom five are Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, Joe Lieberman (the one exception), Pat Roberts, and Ted Stevens. Our own Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray come in at numbers 7 and 15 respectively.

I wonder if Joe Lieberman's showing reflects his recent announcement that he will run as an independent if he fails in the Democratic Primary. Prior to that announcement, I would have rated Joe high on integrity, for sticking with an unpopular stand, even though I disagreed with him.

The Process Debate - Was what I saw what was really happening?

Good Wednesday, all.

I have called for a separation of the debate about process from the debatee about the upcoming State Senate race. Please understand that I don't think that eoither topic should be dropped. Rather, I think they should be different threads. In this posting, I want to talk about the process thread - specifically, what I thought I saw at the April 2006 meeting when the endorsement vote was taken.

In order to understand why I think there is a problem, let's review the bylaws - specifically Article II:Membership, Section 2: Associate Membership, Subsection 1. It states:

An Associate membership in the 44th is open to any person that meets all of
the following:

• Is a registered voter, residing within the boundaries of the 44th,
• Publicly supports the principles and goals of the Democratic Party
• Chooses to be known publicly as a Democrat
• Supports the work of the Democratic Party in the 44th
• Pays annual membership dues
• Has previously attended at least one 44th LD meeting in the last 12
  months.

My concern about the voting that occurred at the April meeting are two-fold. What I saw were a number of people asked to fill out an envelope, enclose a check, or some cash, and hand it to the board members in charge of the vote. The person doing so was then given a blank card which was later used as a ballot. What worries me is that I believe we violated our own rules in three ways:

1. The board members taking the information and money did not appear, at least from what I observed, to verify the current voter registration status of the people signing up that day;
   
2. The board members taking the information and money did not appear, from what I observed, to verify the address of the person signing up to be within the current boundaries of the 44th LD; and
   
3. The board members did not appear to verify the names of the people that signed up against a list of people who had attended a 44th LD general membership meeting in the prior twelve months.

It appeared to me that some of these points were assumed to be a given at the time of sign-up. However, if we're just going to assume this, then why should we even have these points in our bylaws?

I'd love to hear from the E-board membership about this point - can they absolutely guarantee that what I thought I saw was incorrect, that in every case, every ballot, there were no mistakes, either accidental or deliberate? If so, I'll freely apologize, here, on the e-mail list, and at a public membership meeting. If not, then we need to work together to find a solution that prevents even the hint of impropriety from appearing at any of our meetings.

I look forward to the comments.

A belated addition to the debate: What do we stand for as Democrats?

A while back (before the birth of this blog), I posted a call on the Snohomish County Dems for an explanation of what we stood for. I recently came across a response that I had not answered, and which I felt still was relevant enough to deserve an answer. I'm posting my response here for comment and discussion:

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Nancy:

I have had this forever in my to comment folder, but somehow kept missing it.

So, two months later, where are we on your list? Well, let’s see:

- Take a big chunk of the defense budget and put it into really defending America by strengthening our infrastructure, building schools, and re-weaving the safety net.

I agree with some of this. I agree that the DOD has become bloated, and that some judicious trimming is needed. I am not, however, in favor of the wholesale replacement of this organization with some wild-eyed and overly naïve scheme for a Dept of Peace. Show me where, anywhere, that any three functioning governments have such an entity. There is a reason. While the goals are high minded, the execution sucks. You wouldn’t be creating peace, you’d be creating bureaucracy – and worse, a bureaucracy with “ideals” that would believe it had the right to interfere with private citizenry to enforce those ideals.

- Making concrete proposals to get us into a reasonable energy future. Denmark gets 100% of their electricity from wind. Germany gets 40%. We could do something!

Don’t forget Brazil. As a free-market sort of guy, I actually think we may be at a tipping point where the market will demand more of this type of solution. What we need now is an energy policy which promotes this development. By the way, here’s where I depart from the Progressives on this. I think that many of the big oil companies need to follow the lead of BP and start looking at themselves as Big Energy – and start finding ways to bring these technologies to market. They have the money and the brainpower already – they just need to change their focus.

- Universal health care for all Americans! Now! Including a pharmacy benefit!

Agreed. In fact, no argument.

- Rejoining the rest of the world. Join the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and all the other treaties our allies have joined. Stop acting like we are an empire ruling the planet.

OK, some of these I agree with. However, not all world governing bodies are good – for example, I doubt you’ll ever find a progressive who believes in the WTO. (I do, by the way, but not the way it is currently structured). The problem with an organization like that is it gives the same amount of power to small nations as well as big ones – so if 10-15 nations form a coalition, they can basically get their way – no matter what their true social and political influence is. A good example is the International Criminal Court. In some ways, it is admirable – but in other ways, it is downright idiotic. I disagree with entangling our country under the rule of others in a structure where we may suffer.

- Here's my favorite: Make America Number One! We should have the best schools in the world, the best healthcare, the best transportation system, the best retirement system. All we have are the biggest debts and the meanest military.

Concerning Debt, that may be true in dollar amount, but not in terms of percentage of GDP. Additionally, are not Progressives the same group that a decade ago was screaming about being betrayed by the Clinton administration for it’s willingness to cut some pet programs with the overall goal of improved fiscal health of the nation?

As for the meanest military, I am going to assume you meant this as hyperbole. There are scattered incidents in any conflict that do not reflect well upon the force as a whole. But to declare us the meanest is to close your eyes to the atrocities being committed on a daily basis by organized national military and militia groups around the world. For example, In Iraq, we are not the ones exploding car bombs. We are not killing people in Darfur. We are no committing genocide in Kosovo. So please, be a little bit more careful in your choice of words.

- We should be a force for peace in the world, not war. We would have more influence, and everyone wouldn't hate us. Let's be the biggest aid donor in the world. Let's eradicate the most diseases. I don't care how many bombs we have. I'd rather have allies!

You talk of being a force for peace - a sort of Pax Americana. Throughout history, such peace has always come at the price of enforcement – it rarely if ever grows from within, but is instead forced onto a situation either by one group triumphing in a conflict or in some bigger outside agent influencing the situation. We could not do that without a military designed to enforce such a peace…and then, Those the peace was forced upon would be resentful, believing that they could do it better themselves, even if “better” meant renewing decades or centuries-old sectarian feuds so a final “winner” could then enforce their own peace. Loom at those you point to as examples of peace, and ask yourself how effective the implementation of their message has been over time. Me, I’m pragmatic. Yes ideals are nice, but show me how you are going to make them work.

We are among the biggest aid donors in the world. Curiously, some of the richest countries in the world (the Arab oil states) contribute very little of their wealth, either individually or as a government, to crisis regions around the world.

Regarding eradication of disease – doing so will increase the possibility of rampant population growth, at a time when we are already straining the resources to feed, clothe and support the existing population. Do you really want more growth without an avenue for them to take and expand to?

- That's what Progressives are fighting to get the Party to do. Don't you agree? Nancy

Nancy: The problem I have with many progressives (at least the ones I have met to date) is that they seem to be, as a whole, the most intolerant, intractable people I’ve ever met. They seem to believe as much or more in litmus test-based judgments as their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum. I freely admit to possibly being wrong about this, but so far my empirical evidence states otherwise. Perhaps the current rabid temperament is due as much as a Newtonian reaction to the excesses of the other side of the political spectrum. Still, I fear that a pendulum swing too far off balance to the left will be just as bad as a swing too far to the right.

Sincerely,
Don Speirs