Across the Great Divide

The Wearing of the Green.

Senate 2008 Guru tracks the 2007 environment-related votes of so-called "vulnerable Republicans" who face re-election this year — and notes a move greenward as measured by the League of Conservation Voters' newly released National Environmental Scorecard for 2007.

Vulnerable Republican	2007 Score	'03-'04 Score
Norm Coleman (MN)	33%	16%
Susan Collins (ME)	100%	64%
Gordon Smith (OR)	73%	28%
Ted Stevens (AK)	27%	4%
John Sununu (NH)	53%	36%
Vulnerable GOP Senators' Average	57.2%	29.6%

The shift is even more apparent when you look at all the scores for Senators up for re-election. As whole, the Republicans moved from 11.3% to 23.9% while the Democrats held steady at 70.1% to 73.3%.

Does that mean Republicans are trying to look more moderate by taking positions favorable to the environment? Or were there simply more bills palatable to the GOP?

Hard to say. But Pat Roberts (KS) and Thad Cochran (MS) didn't budge off their 0% ratings, and John Cornyn (TX) and James Inhofe (OK) dropped from 4% to 0% last year.

Forgiving Caucus Chaos.

As an idiot who managed to be out of town Tuesday, I have restrained myself from commenting on the caucuses. I experienced none of the traffic jams, witnessed no cynical manipulation of the process and missed entirely the glorious turnout of idealistic citizens.

I do, however, know a bit about the chaos that ensues when amateurs try to manage unexpectedly large turnouts. Volunteers, many working for the first time, got overwhelmed by bad work flow and by the large number of people who showed up expecting to express their preferences with a minimum of process.

I am inclined to be charitable because I, too, learned this stuff the hard way.

In the early years of what became the running boom of the late '70s and early '80s, I organized distance races around Minnesota. To start, many of them were high-concept, low-turnout events — a Valentine's Day male/female relay, pick-your-distance cross country runs, a run up Lowry Hill and around Lake of the Isles, a Tour de France-style staged series of team races, etc.

Around the state most race directors were like me, putting on one or two events a year out of love for the sport and a desire to give something back. But as running grew in popularity, the numbers made things more complicated. After watching one popular, informally run Wisconsin race melt down, I resolved to do something about it.

For seven years, I served as race coordinator for the Minnesota Distance Running Association. Besides scheduling and promoting races statewide, I developed some new ways to manage the flow of crowds and taught race directors how to set up systems that would yield timely and accurate results. I figured I knew as much as anyone about how to manage a road race — especially the critical finish line.

Then came Get in Gear.

Thirty years ago, it exploded as the first "mega-race" in Minnesota. Until 1978, a big local race was 500 runners. Then sponsors Dayton's and the Star Tribune poured in massive amounts of free advertising,  promotion and incentives, making Get in Gear the first event so highly promoted to the fitness runners and joggers who were just starting to discover the sport.

We knew it was going to be bigger — maybe four times bigger than what we'd handled before. But we didn't realize what those numbers would do to systems that had worked so well at smaller scales.

If we'd looked nationally, we might've been better prepared. The well-established Peachtree 10k in Atlanta had grown steadily over the years, but in 1976 it more than doubled to 2,300 runners when it got newspaper sponsorship. The next year, it nearly tripled to the 6,500 that overwhelmed the City Park where it was staged.

With lots of volunteer help, a good race committee, an experienced finish line crew and state-of-the-art timing equipment, we thought we were ready for the hordes. I was so confident, I ran in the two-mile fun run before the main event, sprinting back to check up on my chute captains who were organizing the troops manning the 10k finish line.

Unlike the clogged caucuses, which broke down immediately under the swell of people arriving for the 7 pm start, things went well for us for some time after the first finishers came in. But as the middle of the pack arrived, we couldn't keep up. If you can't process people fast enough and get them away from the finish line, things back up and disorder spreads. It becomes impossible to match times with individuals, and once you lose it, you can't recover.

In a laborious post-race analysis, I discovered how a simple error contributed to our downfall. We could not simply add four times the finish line capacity to handle the four times larger crowds.

As I plotted my reconstructed data, I could see when the number of finishers rose alarmingly and then quickly reached the breaking point when our chutes began to fill faster than we could empty them.

The vast majority of the 1,500 or so runners we had added on top of the more serious and experienced 500 we were used to handling were not evenly distributed across a bell curve. In fact, we added very few additional  runners to the faster side of the curve; there just weren't that many good runners who weren't already in our events.

Instead of a bell, the distribution looked more like a Devil's Tower, with most of the runners arriving at 8 minutes per mile and beyond.

The process-choking arrivals at the caucuses were even more concentrated.

I learned a lot from that race and spent the next few years making sure others did, too. Eventually, I got out of race directing, though. I got tired of listening to complaints from people who never helped at a race and never did anything to make the sport better.

They just wanted to show up at the last minute, have their perfect experience and leave their trash behind.

Maybe that makes me an elitist, wishing for a return of the good old days, but I don't think so.

It does mean I'll cut some slack for volunteers who were caught in Tuesday's groundswell.

Pat Buchanan & Me.

We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy.

We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called "isolationism."

[...]

America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world.

Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank.

Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore.

Bain Capital [my note: the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney] is partnering with China's Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers.

— "Subprime Nation," Pat Buchanan

I can't remember ever finding common cause with Pat Buchanan before! His interpretation and analysis may be skewed toward Ron Paul, but parts of the warning sound like John Edwards.

I fear some of our Wall Street oriented "change" candidates don't hear this at all.

Cock Crows, Sun Rises Again!

To the best of our ad hoc phone calling and web surfing, it appears that Minnesota is the first state that will have a caucus locator online. It's the kind of "access to democracy" thing that makes Minnesota proud and nation-leading. Way to go, Mark, the SOS staff and all the political party staff who helped the SOS staff.

— Sara Janacek, Politics in Minnesota [via Bluestem Prairie]

It seems only a few sunrises ago that Michael Brodkorb was congratulating himself for shaming the Secretary of State's office into making the February 5th date of Minnesota's precinct caucuses marginally more prominent on the SOS website.

"I feel really good about the fact [emphasis mine] that my post yesterday exposing this problem had a positive impact and now voters can easily find information on Minnesota's upcoming precinct caucuses."

Well, the cock must really be busting his buttons today, since the SOS launched a precinct caucus finder that allows people all across the state to find detailed location information for five party caucuses.

Way to go, Mikey. Surely, without your hectoring, the SOS would never have pulled off this feat, either.

But it's a teensie bit possible that all this effort was well under way and the parties knew all about it long before you "exposed" the problem with the office's supposed inaction.

We've already commented on how bogus your initial claim was.

Today's launch shows the difference between two online tools. One of them is designed to deliver honest and helpful information. The other is MDE.

What the GOP Discomfort is Really All About.

GOP Senate Minority Leader Dave Senjem and Sen. Chris Gerlach (GER'-lahk) said they were uncomfortable with Ritchie overseeing a Jan. 3 special Senate election while the secretary is being investigated by the legislative auditor for alleged use of a state mailing list for political purposes."
– Associated Press

This paragraph from a GOP-press-release-driven nonstory summarizes why I've resisted getting embroiled in the flap over Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's "alleged use of a state mailing list for political purposes."

It's a neat, dark little phrase, with the word choice of "state" versus "public" to describe the list and "political purposes" instead of "a campaign-related mailing."

But the only news apparently is that two partisan Republicans are "uncomfortable" with Ritchie doing his actual job. That is, his job supervising an election called by the Governor at a time that I'd allege was chosen to reduce college student involvement in the campaign.

Of course they're uncomfortable about anything that might broaden voter turnout in the district. But this is really about the election coming up in November 2008. Republicans want Ritchie out in time for a caretaker to exert the desired vote-suppressing effect across the state. Or at least to hamstring him sufficiently.

I first saw this manufactured little nugget quoted by Michael Brodkorb, the GOP functionary and oppo-research blogger. You can see here in microcosm how it works. Ron Carey and the party boys gin up a slight variation on a theme introduced by Bordkorb. Brodkorb repeats it. He scours the web for someone, any one (in this case, the Brainerd Dispatch), careless enough to fill space with the non-news. He repeats the citation in another post.

Someone says bullshit. He says, LIBERALS IN DENIAL ABOUT RITCHIE. Or we say, this is bullshit, but we're not happy with how Ritchie dealt with it, Brodkorb writes, DFLERS UNHAPPY WITH RITCHIE. Or we try to avoid feeding him by ignoring him, and the headline becomes LIBERAL BLOGOSPHERE SILENT ON UNETHICAL SECRETARY OF STATE.

Pundits, not willing to miss an opportunity to pontificate, jump on it. Defenders and critics react to the restatement of the charges and to each other. Little side skirmishes start up.

What starts as a scrap of potato peel mounts into a pile of festering garbage. RITCHIE MESS: A PILE OF FESTERING GARBAGE, ADMITS  DEM INSIDER!! With so many people pointing at the pile, someone decides to write a new story about it, and the cycle repeats. 

My mission is usually to puncture sanctimonious posturing, not encourage it by giving more pixel time, but that's the trap Brodkorb sets. I finally fell for it.

Ritchie apparently committed a minor technical violation by passing on a public list to his campaign instead of simply saying to them, why don't you add those people to our list? Then he compounded the mistake by treating it as a minor technical violation and trying to explain it (poorly) instead of simply admitting it. GROWING CONSENSUS: RITCHIE VIOLATION COMPOUNDED.

Ritchie's office supervises elections, not campaigns or fundraising. The discomfort of his opponents is not about his inability to do that job but that he would do it well.

Let's Raise the Bar for the School Board.

Decades ago right-wing fundamentalists began their onslaught against public schools — not just as a way to influence education in a more Christian direction, but as a way to develop candidates and political networks to take on runs for bigger offices.

The local school board races allowed minimally qualified, single-issue  candidates an opportunity to build a political resume, with far less scrutiny than typically comes with citywide or statewide office. Fewer citizens look that hard at the school board candidates, or even vote in those races, so a determined minority has a good chance to tilt the election.

Even losing such contests has its benefits. U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann got her political start that way.

Teachers unions and administrators have gotten their share of blame for the decline in public education over that period. But they had plenty of help from school board members and funding opponents who didn't have kids in public schools and acted accordingly.

I recently poked at a Colorado candidate convicted of manslaughter and sexual abuse running for the school board. But Minnesota has certainly elected its share of board members on a holy quest to parochialize public education.

For example, Westonka just elected one of those "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" school board candidates:

During the 2006 election, [Tom] Notch -- a self-employed structural engineer who sends his son to parochial school -- led a successful campaign against a proposed $58 million bond and a $480-per-pupil operating levy referendum. The bond was defeated by a 2-1 margin.

A popular Prior Lake superintendent has resigned his post rather than report to a former teacher whose dismissal he approved:

The district said it fired Lind for "job performance and insubordination" after receiving complaints about his talking to students on campus about their sexual orientation and telling a student that the day was "National Pick On Lesbians Day." The district also warned him about maintaining appropriate boundaries with students and the need to separate the role of supervisor of students from the role of friend.

Voters in Minnetonka did turn out an obstructive incumbent — but not for his creationist leanings. According to press accounts, poor attendance and apparently fudging his resume probably brought down Bill Wenmark.

"All of this is a hit piece," Wenmark said in a telephone interview with the Star Tribune. "This is all about taking down Bill Wenmark.

"My current school board members hate me and they want me off the board."

[Note: After being contacted by Bill I've edited this post, removing my long-ago observations. Not because he asked me to, but because they now strike me as unnecessarily mean-spirited. I stand by my main point, which is that he has a tendency toward self-inflation. I think the voters and current school board members had his number.]

I first met Wenmark decades ago, and we crossed running paths in subsequent years. He has been an active promoter of lifelong fitness and has certainly had a positive impact on people's lives. But I can see how his colleagues might consider him annoying, if not insufferable.

You can read his website to get the flavor, as well as see his version of the controversy about whether he misled voters about his connections to the U.S. Naval Academy.

There certainly are places where people like Wenmark and Notch can contribute positively to the world. Too bad they decide it's the school board.

 

Spokane Fire Station Gets a Sign. Anti-Tax Crusader Gets a Win.

In August, I wrote about a signless fire station in Spokane and promised an update if the department accepted the gift of two women who thought the esprit d' corps of their local firefighters deserved a little boost.

The department leaders may have been initially mystified why two citizens would appear out of the blue with an offer to fund a sign, but they gladly embraced it. In October the new $2500 sign went up, and the chief presented special fire captain's helmets to the benefactors.

Sure, this is not a big deal. It's heartwarming, but apparently not heartwarming enough even for local TV. The local Spokane media certainly treated it as a non-story.

Citizens appreciate city services and write a check.

Oh, yeah. We used to call that paying taxes.

In the new age, instead having all the people served by the station pitch in two bits, you have to find someone to write a big check.

You can see how that model for public finance breaks down pretty quickly. The numbers of big check writers are small, and of those, how many would contribute just to see something good for their community? Looking at how campaign finance works, I think we can see the answer.

There just aren't enough people like Fran Watson and Mary Rush.

*****

To which the opponents of increased public spending might say, tough beans. If voters don't want to pay for something, they shouldn't have to.

In the Robbinsdale School District, voters rejected a levy increase, and anti-tax consultant Paul Dorr was given some of the credit:

With results all in, voters rejected the district's proposal to extend the current $13.1 million-a-year levy and add $9.7 million in levy funds a year over the next decade. District Superintendent Stan Mack attributed the loss to the "Dorr factor," which included blizzarding district residents with mailings and phone calls on the last days before the vote.

The campaign calls made reference to Minneapolis invading Robbinsdale schools and lowering their quality.

"He was blatantly lying to the public about issues," Mack charged. "Particularly centering on us serving Minneapolis students. To put it bluntly, there was a fair amount of race baiting."

I'd agree with Mack part way. For any non-Minnesota readers, Minneapolis invading Robbinsdale schools is not code for Lutherans horning in on Catholics or city mice taking advantage of country mice.

But there's another reason Dorr's doublespeak (Say yes to students, Vote no on increases) resonated with the inner ring suburban voters who make up most of the Robbinsdale district. It comes down to money.

Most of the area was built in the great post-war expansion of the late 1950s, and its schools reflected the optimism and public spirit of the times. Throughout the '60s and '70s the Robbinsdale schools were known for quality.

Today, the people who built those homes have retired, died off or sold them. Some of the neighborhoods are relatively less prosperous than they were. The small homes built in that era are now in the price range of entry level buyers who got caught in the housing credit crunch.

Even without the race card, when a community's demographic tilts toward retirees, empty nesters and struggling families, a tax increase will face tough sledding. Paul Dorr may pick up the paycheck, but the state shifting more of school funding onto local property taxes and years of anti-tax rhetoric certainly deserve a lot of the credit for his "win."

I look also to the election results in Golden Valley, of which half sits in the Robbinsdale district.

Incumbent mayor Linda Loomis (whose re-election I supported) received 14 votes fewer than 50 percent of the total, split three ways. Her primary challenger, a "tireless volunteer" (code for pep rally co-chair, not student council president) has in multiple failed campaigns repeatedly demonstrated her tenuous grasp of governance and city finance. But she tapped into some resident's anger over how a sewer improvement program would cost money and violate property rights.

When some people are satisfied and some are angry or paranoid, guess who shows up at the polls?

 

Pathological Nutjob or Man Redeemed?

Mesa County Colorado is solidly conservative, but neighboring Delta County makes this place look indigo blue.

If you want to build your house out of old tires and pickup hoods and start a scrap yard in front because your chickens and llamas already have run of the back, libertarian Delta's the place for you. You can't actually shoot neighbors you don't like, but unloading both barrels in the dirt at their feet would probably be looked upon kindly by a jury, even if they were related to the plaintiff. Supposing, of course, the county would prosecute in the first place.

Okay, I exaggerate, but not by much.

The latest news from Delta County is that one of the school board candidates is a convicted sex offender and did prison time for manslaughter, for setting a fire that killed two women in the halfway house where he was living.

That's all right, because the only restrictions to getting on the ballot are that the candidate live in the county and the sex offense not be against a child. Dale Haag lives in the county and his sexual assault conviction was against a developmentally challenged woman.

Next week, the voters will decide whether Hagg should replace an incumbent. Even in Delta, I don't like his chances. But before you judge him, read the whole story.

Hsu Didn't Understand How Laundering is Done.

Will the trial of political donor and Ponzi schemer Norman Hsu be on a pace to beat the 2008 elections?

We know that Hsu is an advocate of speedy trials after his last experience. And we have reason to believe the Bush Justice Department might possibly encourage certain cases moving toward the front of the line.

Justice will be served. And if there are juicy revelations about how Hsu bundled/laundered political donations to certain presidential candidates, well, so be it.

My sister was one of the federal agents Hsu reached out to in Colorado. I don't know what he said beyond what's been reported publicly. But I do know she'll likely have to testify, and  let's just say I may be watching their family dog sometime in the coming year.

The new complaint said that while in Colorado, Mr. Hsu reached out to federal agents on three occasions and asked to speak to them without his lawyers present. He is said to have told the agents that his business deals involved no real investments but were in fact fraudulent, and “admitted that he made implied threats to his investors to pressure them to contribute to political candidates he supported.” The threats, the authorities said, were that Mr. Hsu would cut the investors out of deals that he described as lucrative.

Hsu apparently  pressured investors to write checks and also funneled some of his "investment money" through Chinatown cooks and dishwashers. Either way, and regardless of party beneficiary, it was wrong. He should suffer the consequences. Fairly or not, candidates who didn't scrutinize his fund raising may also pay, regardless of whether they were legally complicit.

I think that's what the GOP will count on.

Sure, they had their Abramoff and defense contractor scandals. But the laundering on the other side is generally far more genteel. I've written about this before, but allow me to reiterate how it works.

Instead of crudely passing money through their mail carriers and laundry operators, the Bigs call a meeting of their executive team. They describe how candidate so-and-so is sponsoring important legislation or is a good friend of the company. Donations are suggested. Perhaps amounts are bonused back at the end of the year. Very difficult to prove two grand of the amount was for anything but good performance by the executive.

It's reported to the FEC and everything is legal and tidy.

Meanwhile, my sister will be getting on a plane for New York before November 2008, just doing her job, trying to make sure justice is served.

You Say Fraud, I See Freud.

I mention Mitch Berg with some trepidation in my posts. Not because I have a particular problem with the right-leaning blogger. I read him for amusement, insight into the other side of the divide and occasional agreement. However, it is not difficult to attract a pack of steamed comment chihuahuas whenever Mitch or some other local thought leader decides a liberal blogger has committed a faux pas.

(I use the term "comment chihuahuas" with some reluctance, since I do not want it confused with general perjoratives such as "wingnuts," from which I abstain on principle. If you have a beef with someone, you should avoid calling them a name and describe more specifically the offending behavior.

Comment chihuahuas, to distinguish them from trolls, descend in packs stimulated by a common scent. Too puny to sustain their own blogs, they hang around friendly alpha blogger kennels, ready to pounce on unsuspecting commenters. On command, they may be sent afield to chastise offending parties. Each has a speciality. One releases a particularly incessant and piercing yap. One bites ankles, while a pal prefers achilles tendons. Yet another leaps for the groin, over and over, fall just short. If the full complement arrives, there's also the specialist in pissing on your shoes and the one who picks a fight with your dog.

This is relatively harmless, but distracting, of course. You do so want to kick a doggie field goal or two....)

Where was I? Oh, yeah.

Mitch comments on a post by Michelle Malkin about "the worst election fraud in Washington State history."  This horrid crime involved paid voter registration solicitors faking voter registration applications. As was appropriate the offenders were charged with a felony. ACORN, the advocacy group that ran the effort and was responsible for supervising the solicitors, signed a settlement agreement that outlined the controls it agreed to put in place to prevent a recurrence. It also paid a judgment to help cover the cost of dealing with the fraudulent forms.

This is where I put on the shin guards and declare: Not cool. ACORN should run a tighter ship, fire anyone who tries to scam the process and turn in to the authorities anyone who submits false applications. Anyone attempting to vote using a fraudulent registration should also be prosecuted.

But thus far, it appears the fraud was directed at increasing the compensation of the solicitors, not getting unqualified voters to the polls or influencing an election. Washington officials even made clear that "ACORN was victimized because it paid for voter-registration work that was never performed." Neverthless, Mitch apparently thinks we should treat this case of the mercenary solicitors as a different sort of crime.

The leftymedia and the Sorosphere gamboled about like poo-flinging monkeys at the news of the two GOP functionaries in New Hampshire who got caught tampering with elections - but will this story get any coverage outside of the blogosphere and talk radio?

Well, Mitch, if there's evidence that Tom Tancredo, Dennis Hastert, Leon Spinks or Fruto Boy Crispila actually voted in the election using fraudulent credentials, it should get more attention.

But the media have enough problems covering real attempts to influence elections and cover up the evidence.