Blogging break

Both for the weekend and due to the computational device needing to go to the computational device hospital for a stay of undetermined length. Might be back next week sometime. It is very ill.

If you need to contact me, you could try the email address on this blog, but no promises. I'll likely turn off comments during the interim.

Or send me a smoke signal.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

17th LD may not endorse in senate race

David Postman noted five or six days ago some of the growing unhappiness in Democratic legislative district organizations about having to endorse one candidate for the top-two run-off system now in place thanks to a recent US Supreme Court ruling upholding it. This seems to be happening, of course, when there is more than one quality Democrat running. You can't really call it a primary any more because it's strictly a run-off in August.

Well, the dissent appears to be spreading. From The Columbian:

Democrats in the 17th Legislative District don’t want to get burned again.

That’s why they are considering defying a directive from state Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz, who has ordered all legislative district central committees with two or more candidates to “nominate” one by May 23 — three months before the Washington “top two” primary.

Instead, several elected precinct officers in the 17th want to let voters choose between two Democrats who are challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Don Benton — software developer Martin Hash and university economics instructor David Carrier.

Pelz says if 17th District Democrats don’t choose, he will. And he can, under a rule the state party adopted in 2005 to deal with the situation it now finds itself in after a recent Supreme Court ruling cut the political parties out of the state primary system.

As the article notes, Hash is willing to spend up to $300,000 of his own money, but Carrier seems to have a lot of grass roots support.

The 17th is a hard case considering recent history there. In 2006, former Vancouver City Councilman Jack Burkman lost the primary to Pat Campbell, as local readers might recall. Despite Burkman being well funded and well-regarded by those who know him, Campbell's improbable primary victory shows that the 17th is a fairly unpredictable place.

While some may cast the issue now as one of the grass roots versus the state party, and there's no denying that tension exists, as a practical matter the voters aren't going to give a hoot either way. Either candidate would doubtless crave a little earned media from a 17th LD endorsement, but since one candidate (Hash) can self-fund and the other (Carrier) has some early hallmarks of a true grass-roots up-and-comer, it's hard to see how not endorsing serves much utilitarian purpose.

The entire purpose of this ordeal is to preserve the state party's legal options, so they can go back to court and claim "harm" under the top-two system. That's all well and good until it starts messing up races like this.

If there were much real money at stake, I guess I could understand refusing to pick a candidate, but as far as I know that's not the case. The endorsement would basically be a feather in someone's cap, and a pretty darn small one at that, at least to the general public.

Sometimes lost amidst all the talk in the traditional media about how primaries somehow reward "extremist" candidates, a supposition generally not borne out to any great degree in the Democratic Party, is the basic "weeding out" function that primaries served under the old system. In other words, good candidates are rare and great candidates can be extremely hard to find. The ones who can't or won't work hard tend not to fare well, and (at least in theory) party organizations could choose to just sit back and await the results of the primary and back the winner.

Since both Carrier and Hash are relative newcomers to the political scene in Clark County, it's impossible to really size them up from afar. The usual method for party activists is to meet with the candidates and size them up in person, and while that is valuable, it's no substitute for winning a primary election by doing all the annoying, time consuming and expensive things that comprise campaigns. So the 17th members who wish to see a real competition have a point, too.

Naturally, the decision is up to the 17th LD members, but if I still lived over there I might give some thought to just going ahead with the endorsement vote and letting people vote their conscience, if for no other reason than having the state party pick a candidate would be fertile ground for hard feelings and cries of "top-down" politics. Granted, whomever comes up short on a locally-produced endorsement might feel slighted, but that's politics. It's a tough call and I don't envy the PCO's in the 17th.

Oy. What a minefield. Now I want my blanket (primary) back.

Rossi's transportation plan virtually ignores Eastern Washington

Jim McCabe of McCranium writes a guest editorial in The Tri-City Herald pointing out that Dino Rossi's transportation plan is rather one-sided for a guy who hopes Eastern Washington will be a key part of his gubernatorial campaign:

Rossi's proposal is to spend $15.5 billion on transportation projects. Just $3 billion - or 15 percent - would be spent on eight projects east of the mountains.

If you subtract Spokane's north/south freeway from that figure, the total dwindles to $129 million spread across seven projects.

That comes to less than 1 percent of the total taxes proposed under Rossi's plan, leaving out 14 of the counties in Eastern Washington.

It's no secret that Republicans love to fuel resentment in rural counties, not just in this state but around the country. So to see Dino Rossi, who carried most Eastern Washington counties by heavy margins in 2004, put out such a bad plan is pretty sad. His Western Washington numbers are fantasy and now he's insulted what should be his base.

Personally I'm fine with subsidizing roads and community services in Eastern Washington because we're all Americans. It's called "being a citizen." It's too bad the talk radio types and GOP operative like to encourage a visceral dislike, if not hatred, among rural citizens towards the more urban areas. That's called "demagoguery."

Poor Dino Rossi, this campaign is off to a pretty rocky start for him. It's going to take more than a sense of political martyrdom amongst the GOP faithful to provide a raison d'être this go round.

Bad, bad loans

Atrios has been linking to Irvine Housing Blog, whose tag line reads "Chronicling ‘the seventh circle of real estate hell’ since September 2006." Today it features what is titled "The Ultimate Post" detailing so-called HELOC abuse. (HELOC stands for Home Equity Line of Credit.)

Basically, it seems many people just kept getting second mortgages, refinancing and taking out equity lines as a form of income, and the banks are left holding the bag. The house in question today was purchased for around a half million dollars in 2000.

Total Mortgage Equity Withdrawal: $1,490,000 - $400,000 = $1,090,000.

What can you say about that? Does anyone care to opine on how this was an investment or a medical issue? I think we can rule those circumstances out. Let's be real here: this guy's house was making $200,000 a year, and he took it out and spent it. It is what it is.

Lenders are stupid. What else can you say about that? How can you loan this guy so much money only to find your collateral is worth $600,000 less than the loans you made? There are bad loans, there are really bad loans, and then there are loans like this one. It boggles the mind. If this property sells for its asking price, the total loss to the lender will be $648,700 assuming a 6% commission.

I wonder how this guy is adjusting to the loss of that $200,000 a year extra income? I will bet it is not as much fun as spending it was.

Certainly, the housing bubble seemed worse in parts of California than here, but no market operates entirely in a vacuum. There has to be a spillover effect here, given the proximity. For a long time Californians ranked right behind Oregonians in number of people moving to Clark County.

It's anecdotal for me to state this, but I think ordinary homeowners are quite worried right now.

Danger Will Robinson

No big thing, but the computational device here has been acting kind of funny. Seems good now after 40 or 50 restarts, but if the blog goes slow for days and I'm not responding to emails, that could be why. Try a message in a bottle or light a bonfire on your tower, I'll send back a semaphore signal.

Where is Richard "DB" Curtis?

Via Aneurin comes this report from KXLY out of Spokane:

Cody Castagna, the man charged with extorting a former state lawmaker last fall, has won the opportunity to face the star witness in the case. The only problem is that person - Richard Curtis - is nowhere to be found.

Defense Attorney Dave Partovi filed a motion late last month requesting that he be allowed to question Curtis in preparation for his client Cody Castagna's trial. Curtis is both the accuser and the star witness in the case and the Spokane Superior Court ordered that interview between Partovi and the former state representative take place prior to Castagna's upcoming trial on charges of theft, extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion.

Aneurin supposes this could be the stuff of legend:

Many years from now, there will be reports of Richard Curtis sightings, and yarns will be told of his legendary escape from Washington State, where the stockings ran and the heels broke. Cormac McCarthy will option the rights to write a movie script of a down on his luck Republican state representative who heads south, down Mexico way. Brand Republican wishes this story would just go away, but like DB Cooper, it keeps popping up, just in time for election season.

I'm certainly no attorney, but it might be kind of difficult to prosecute a case when your star witness won't even show up.

It's almost as if Curtis never existed. Funny how that worked out.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the ratings

John King on CNN wants to know why Gary, Indiana is making him stay up late. The mayor is telling him it's because lots of people wanted to vote, but King seems to be having a hard time with this concept.-30-