Mixed (Up) Nuts

You may remember the union-backed radical group ACORN (appropriate name for a bunch of left-wing nuts) from the "living wage" ordinance for retailers over 90,000 square feet they pressured the Chicago City Council into passing last summer in an effort to keep Wal-Mart out of the city. Mayor Richard Daley ultimately vetoed the ordinance.

A story in today's Seattle Times provides a bit of rich irony.

Hundreds of voter-registration cards submitted as part of a drive to sign up low-income and minority voters may have been forged by paid canvassers, a King County election official said Thursday.

Problems were found with many of the 1,829 forms within a day after they were received from ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose canvassers have been under investigation in some other states for possible registration fraud.

That's bad enough, and shows what kind of organization ACORN is. But that's not the best part.

ACORN's Whelan said at least two paid canvassers in King and Pierce counties were fired last fall because of "quality-control concerns," but he said he had no other details about the firings.

If any registration cards were forged, he said, it would likely have been done by temporary workers "trying to pad their hours."

Most of the registration drive was conducted by 43 paid canvassers, who initially earned $8 an hour but were given a raise to $9 when ACORN needed more workers. Initials on the King County registration forms indicate they were collected by six canvassers, Egan said.

Let me get this straight then. Do we have voter fraud going on because ACORN hypocritically doesn't pay ITS workers a LIVING WAGE????? The Employment Policies Institute concludes:

ACORN may be the single most hypocritical employer in America...ACORN’s history is one of attempting to deny its employees the “living wage” it would mandate for others, seeking legal exemption from paying its employees the minimum wage increases it advocates for other businesses, being forced by the government to pay its employees overtime, completely missing wage payments to its employees, forcing its employees to operate in unsafe work environments, and busting unionization attempts of employees trying to address the preceding faults.

Or do we have voter fraud going on because ACORN is a corrupt extremist left-wing organization that will do anything to get ahead? I suspect its both.

I say it's time for the nuts to be hoisted on their own petard and roasted slowly.

Technorati Tags: wal-mart walmart

Presidential Straw Poll Update

In the Palousitics Presidential Straw Poll, Rudy Giuliani leads John McCain 37% to 23%.

This tracks very closely with a USA Today poll of Republican voters conducted February 9-11 which shows Giuliani leading McCain 40% to 24%.

If you haven't voted yet, please take a moment to do so.

College Republicans Are At It Again!!!

No, not THEM. I heard this reported on "The Glenn Beck Program" on the radio this morning.

'Find the Illegal Immigrant'
College Republicans' event today incites protest from student groups

A contest called "Find the Illegal Immigrant" - a mock hunt for a student posing as just that - is being met with widespread protest on campus and receiving local and national media coverage.

The event, sponsored by NYU's College Republicans, is planned for today in Washington Square Park from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The student posing as the illegal immigrant will wear a name tag saying so. Other students will try to find him or her, playing the part of border patrol agents and wearing nametags that say "INS," referring to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Predictably

The contest's premise has caused an uproar on campus. Student groups - including the ACLU at NYU, the College Democrats and several multicultural clubs - have organized a protest that they expect will draw hundreds of students.

Also predictably, the student newspaper trashes the CRs

The Republicans have an inflated sense of their own marginalization on our campus. Yes, we recognize that most students here are liberals, as are a majority of professors. But that is something different from the liberal tyranny College Republicans think goes on here. It rarely does, yet the College Republicans overcompensate for this imagined oppression by staging excessively bombastic events.

It's so easy to be critical when you are in the majority. These liberals are so blase'. Where are the radicals of the Sixties fighting to stir up the system? "Publicity stunt?" Isn't that what politics is all about? How else would Republicans get out their views? Student newspapers packed by liberals? A seminar that no one would attend? It's guerilla marketing, and it works. The lefties are just jealous because when you are in the majority on campus, you don't get big media coverage for mouthing PC platitudes.

That's right, as happened here, but only on a much larger level as it is New York City, the media capital of the world

In light of the event, TV vans and national news stations swarmed onto NYU's campus yesterday. Many local stations reported live in front of the Kimmel Center, while the story made headlines nationwide, including coverage on CNN, Fox News, NPR and talk radio.

Even the repellent Chuckie Schumer is getting involved

In an appearance yesterday at NYU, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer condemned NYU's College Republicans for planning to stage "Find the Illegal Immigrant," a controversial demonstration set to happen today.

"What I really find obnoxious - and that's how I'd describe what the College Republicans are doing - is it dehumanizes [illegal immigrants],"

The President of the NYU Colege Democrats states

"We're hoping for a peaceful protest that displays our disgust with the event," Toiv said. "If we come out looking crazier than the Republicans do, then we will have failed. But if the protest can go off peacefully, it will be a victory for us."

Good luck with that. The moonbats like Mssrs. Leonard and StreamasALWAYS look crazier. That's why the libs always fail and that's why these events are such fun to do and quite illuminatring for the rest of the country. The left just doesn't understand how regular Americans feel about illegal immigration.

Glenn Beck put it beautifully this morning. No one's saying to the immigrants don't come. We need you. But it's like a store. Don't come in the middle of the night through the side window. Come through the front door during business hours. If you come through the side window often enough, even if you leave money on the counter for the things you take, eventually someone will rob the store blind. That's why the owners have to put bars on the side window.

"Boost in property values means higher taxes"

From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Recent assessments increase property values by about 20 percent

Some people may welcome increased property values, but Pullman resident Lee Staba isn't one of them.

"It's a concern," she said. "It's hard to escape."

Staba is in her 60s and worries each time her house increases in value. The value of her Darrow Street home has more than doubled from the $30,000 she and her husband paid for it 30 years ago.

She knows that increased property values often translates to increased property taxes.

"It has a big impact on our budget. You have to find the money to pay for it, or you lose your house," she said.

Staba and other Pullman property owners will receive their property tax bills in the mail by the end of the month. Recently assessed Pullman properties have increased in value by 20 percent. The increase is reflected as a 20-percent boost to Pullman's assessed value and new construction accounts for an additional 3.5 percent.

The average Pullman home, valued at $175,000 in 2005, is now worth an estimated $210,000.

Whitman County Assessor Joe Reynolds said properties are evaluated for assessment every two years. In 2005, the county primarily assessed rural farmland, then focused on Pullman in 2006.

The market dictates property values.

"They're selling for more. It's all set by the public - they set the market," Reynolds said. "Anytime you raise prices, you raise taxes. That's a gimme."

Property value increases of about 20 percent are relatively low, Reynolds said, noting that values increased by more than 30 percent from a regional standpoint. For instance, property values in Spokane spiked nearly 40 percent in 2006.

City Finance Director Troy Woo said a positive that comes with increased property values is a decreased levy. Levies, or tax rates, are calculated by dividing a municipality's assessed value by general property tax revenue. In Pullman, a roughly $1 billion assessed value is divided by a tax revenue of $3.2 million to total a levy rate of nearly $3.04 per $1,000 of assessed value. In 2006, the levy rate was $3.58 per $1,000.

The Pullman City Council voted to increase property tax receipts by 1 percent - the maximum allowed by law - to account for inflation, Woo said. Additional property tax receipts are estimated for new construction.

Because 2006 was a re-evaluation year, the city now accounts for more of the county's assessed value. The city's assessed value increased by 4 percent and now accounts for 46.4 percent of the county's assessed value.

"That means we have a bigger share of the tax burden," he said of Pullman, noting that increases to taxes often happen in assessment years. It won't spike as high again "unless you see the market grow to that. That's doubtful, I would say."

Woo stressed that a 20-percent increase in property values does not automatically mean property taxes will increase at the same rate.

The city of Pullman collects 29 percent of property taxes - an average increase of $12.60 per household from last year. Levies from the local school district, county and a handful of bonds account for the rest of the increase.

"(The city) can't take all the blame," he said.

Woo estimates average Pullman homeowners will see an increase of about $100 on their property taxes.

Staba braces herself for yearly tax increases to put a financial pinch on her household. Staba and her husband, Nick, rely on Social Security and retirement funds as their main source of income.

"Our income doesn't go up when our house value goes up," she said. "You just have to take money away from something else. There aren't a lot of options."

Woo said increasing valuations can be good or bad, depending on perspective.

"In theory, they can get more from their houses," he said. "But they will pay more taxes. It's a mixed bag."

Staba isn't planning to sell her home. If she did, purchasing a new home would be a headache and a financial burden, as markets throughout the country have skyrocketed.

"I don't know what people do in Seattle," she said. "It's something that's a concern and it's going to have to change because no one can afford it."

This article brings up some interesting points, both of which are being addressed in the Washington legislature at the momemt.

First is the $400 property tax rebate to every homeowner proposed by House Republicans last week. That would take the bite out of the increased property taxes for someone like Ms. Staba.

The other, larger issue is I-747. Initiative 747, passed with 57% of the vote in 2001, applies to all regular levies the state of Washington allows taxing districts to collect, limiting the increase on the amount collected to 1% over the prior year without a popular vote. Before I-747, taxing districts were allowed an increase of up to 6% on the regular levy portion of property tax. That is why the Pullman City Council can't increase property tax receipts more.

Last year, a King County judge ruled that I-747 was unconstitutional because it amended I-722, a law that was declared unconstitutional in September 2001. The only one of Washington's 39 counties that was a party to that suit was Whitman County. Attorney General Rob McKenna is appealing that ruling.

Democrats have introduced HB 2309 to overturn the voter's will and allow property tax increases based on inflation without a popular vote.

Republicans have introduced HB 1170 to preserve the I-747 1% cap, one of the bill's sponsors being our very own 9th District State Representative.

The irony: The Whitman County Commissioners who voted to join in the lawsuit overturning I-747 are Republicans. The reason: Whitman County is so desperately underretailed and suffers such large sales leakages to Moscow, the county is overdependent on property tax revenues.

But if I-747 is overturned for good, what happens to folks like Ms. Staba?

Maximum Exposure

Check out the House Republicans website's new feature Maximum Exposure, which "paints a troubling picture of majority lawmakers' priorities."

Pay special atention to:

HB 2094 - Creating the taxpayer health care fairness act (i.e another "Wal-Mart" bill)

HB 2138 - Regarding fuel tax rate indexing (i.e automatic annual gas tax increases)

SB 5150 - Providing fiscal reform (i.e. state income tax)

HB 1026 - Regulating the sale of firearms at gun shows and events (i.e more trampling of the Second Amendment)

HB 2079 - Concerning use of agency shop fees (i.e. an end-run around the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on politcal use of Washington Education Association dues)

Spinning the Unspinnable

Daily Evergreen managing editor Lisa Waananen is desperately trying to spin the unspinnable on the Evergreen's Editorial Blog.

She writes:

Our position is that if any members of our community perceive racism, it becomes an issue the entire community must address. We’re not judges; we’re proponents of open discussion.

Well, some members of the WSU community percieve that the CES department is filled with intolerant, foul-mouthed, and unprofessional professors. Where's the editorial and open discussion on that? What if some members of the community perceived that Muslim students were potential terrorists? Please, spare us the soliloquy. The Evergreen only editorializes and debates viewpoints which conform to a particular liberal and PC orthodoxy. Not every perception deserves public discussion or debate, particularly if no real proof or evidence can be presented. Often, they are simply solutions in search of a problem.

But you must always remember that perception quickly becomes reality, especially when it is memorialized in newspaper ink. It is an awesome responsibility. A printed public apology would be much better than spinmeistering on a blog.

"WSU wades through stormwater standards"

I wonder what Chuck Pezeshki's reaction to this story from today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News will be? The "avid Wal-Mart groupie" (i.e. me) is not mentioned at all.

Uncertainties abound as to how state’s new permits apply to university’s campuses

Washington State University has roughly 100 acres of parking lots, roads, sidewalks and roof structures on its Pullman campus. Factor in its three branch campuses and research and extension facilities throughout the state, and WSU covers a lot of ground.

WSU’s statewide presence may cause headaches for university officials when it comes to enforcing strict stormwater management standards set by the Washington State Department of Ecology.

The department’s recently issued standards apply to the quality and quantity of stormwater runoff and are intended to reduce pollution and contamination of downstream waters. The city of Pullman was issued the Ecology permit Jan. 17 and WSU-Pullman acts as a secondary permittee, said David Duncan, an ecologist for the Department of Ecology’s Water Quality Program.

WSU is “most unique” as it pertains to the permit, Duncan said. For now, WSU’s many facilities all are classified as secondary permittees with the municipality in which they are located.

Duncan said it is uncertain if WSU’s facilities will remain a secondary permittee with municipalities or take on the role of co-permittee, which would allow the university to jointly apply for the permit with another applicant, such as a small city.

Secondary permittees must abide by codes set by primary permit holder, Duncan said. Permits were issued to 20 cities and eight counties in eastern Washington and 81 cities and five counties on the west side of the state.

Further complications stem from the fact that permits were issued based on region. Pullman was issued an eastern Washington permit, which took into account the region’s low precipitation levels, soil types, topography and threat of erosion.

Some WSU facilities may not have to comply with the permit because they do not meet population minimum requirements, but there still are many unanswered questions.

WSU officials admit the concept is frustrating, and they have decided to appeal the permit.

“This is fairly new,” WSU Director of Construction Services and Quality Assurance Keith Bloom said. “There’s a lot of information. Even the Department of Ecology is not clear about how all of this is going to come together. It’s very convoluted.”

WSU Environmental Health and Safety Director Dwight Hagihara agreed.

“We need to have a common understanding of what’s going on, even though it’s unclear at this time,” he said “We need to know are we in or out in each of our facilities?”

Bloom said talks have touched on the idea of consolidating the entire university system under one permit. The benefit to that would be cost-savings. The university would pay a single permit fee rather than one for every WSU facility throughout the state.

“That’s an option that we’re looking at, but it’s complicated,” he said.

Duncan said Ecology officials are actively discussing the matter with the university to iron out the details. WSU’s mandated notice of intent has been delayed until the group can figure out the logistics to make the permit work on all of the university’s campuses. Workshops will be scheduled to create an open dialogue between Department of Ecology ecologists, municipalities and the public during the educational phase of the five-year permit.

“The answer isn’t simple,” Duncan said. “Ecology is trying to work with them until they figure it out.”

Area officials argue that the Palouse landscape does not fit the confines of the permit. The Pullman City Council recently voted to join a handful of other cities in the Association of Washington Cities to appeal the permit to the state’s water pollution control board.

Pullman City Supervisor John Sherman has said Pullman should not be included because the area’s unique topography, soil types and clay levels make permit compliance difficult.

WSU is appealing independently for similar reasons, said Bloom, who also is a city councilman. He noted that for the last four years WSU has enforced stormwater management tools in all new development as “good practice.”

“We have a lot of room for improvement. No one’s saying we’ve perfected our technique (for cleaning stormwater), not from the city’s standpoint or the university’s,” he said. “We know what the problem is, but we can’t get our arms around the solution because the issue is hard. We’ve got lawyers, we’ve got engineers, we’ve got environmentalists, and we’re all sitting around saying what do we do?”

Municipalities, such as Pullman, have been offered grants to fund some of the costs of implementing the permits. Entities such as WSU are not eligible for the same grants. Bloom said preliminary cost estimates to meet the requirements of the permit on the Pullman campus could be as high as $1 million. The money would pay for additional employees, equipment and infrastructure needed to meet permit requirements.

“While we’re being directed to do this, there’s no money coming in to do this,” Bloom said.

Hagihara said because the process is new, the university intends to work closely with Ecology until the complex permit language is understood.

Working jointly is the “best way to implement the permit until we hear about the appeal,” he said. “We’re all trying to learn about this.”

Adult Supervision Required

There is quite a bit of fallout in today's Daily Evergreen over Martin Boston's column last week in which he accused the Pullman Police department of being racist following the tasering of a UI football player outside Mike's Bar (click here to read the PPD press release on the investigation). Even a staff editorial last Thursday alleged that "there is no doubt that a perception of racism exists in this city."

Today, a letter to the editor from a WSU alum accused the Evergreen editors of bad journalistic practices for allowing Boston, with an obvious conflict of interest as he was personally involved, to write a column on the incident.

Another letter pointed out the observation Scotty made earlier about how one of the officers involved in the tasering is African-American and how it is "asinine to accuse that officer of prejudice when he is also a minority."

Then there is a wonderful rebuttal column (which I'm surprised the Evergreeen allowed, knowing how they feel about "non-student viewpoints" ) from the attorney who successfully defended the Pullman Police Department in the recent Top of China lawsuit. Stewart Estes got right to the heart of the matter:

What Boston failed to disclose is that only days before this incident, he himself was a plaintiff suing Pullman Police officers for race discrimination and excessive force. Boston actually sued the very officer he criticized, and demanded $200,000 from him – for being at the Top of China restaurant when officers used pepper spray to break up a fight. We expect objectivity from journalists, and when they are biased, we expect them to tell us about it. We didn’t get that from Boston’s column.
...

Unfortunately, The Daily Evergreen Editorial Board, in a Feb. 15 staff editorial, compounded this problem by using Boston’s sour-grapes diatribe as a factual basis to assert that racial bias may exist in the Pullman Police Department. This paper chose to ignore the fact that a four-year-long, detailed judicial review of police department practices and actions resulted in the rejection of all claims of racial bias. No department in recent memory has been more highly scrutinized.

Apparently, for this newspaper, the mere fact that a disgruntled litigant makes the same tired allegations means the department is again guilty until proven innocent. Likewise, after admitting that he cannot prove his point, Boston said he “would be interested to hear any proof that their actions were not [racist].” What Boston and The Daily Evergreen are saying is that in our country it is now the accused who has to prove it is not racist. Not only is that legally and morally flawed, but I just spent the last four years of my life disproving just that. The staff editorial asserts that the jury’s verdict “only clears [the officers’] names in the eyes of the justice system.” I would ask: Where else can you go to clear your name? By what logic is a jury verdict – the fundamental basis for our freedoms – to be ignored and the “perception” of an embittered, interested party given greater weight?... Baseless claims of racism, even those based on genuinely held beliefs, are irresponsible and damage the decades of work that we have all put into this issue. While feelings and perceptions are, of course, important, they cannot form the basis for a public allegation of racial prejudice – one of the most damaging claims in modern culture. This requires proof. The proof here is that a court concluded that neither the officers, nor the department, have any racial bias.

Touche', Mr. Estes!

Nick Eaton, Evergreen editor-in-chief, writes on the Evergreen Editorial blog :

We stand by Boston’s column as a valid perception of the indicent that occurred on Feb. 11. He was present at the incident, just as other journalists would be if something happened right in front of them. He wrote his column without deceit. And he wrote it without trying to pass it off as objective repoting (it’s a column, after all). Reporting was what the news article was for.

But the paragraph before, Eaton admits:

...we were unaware Boston was a plaintiff in that complicated case until several days after his Feb. 14 column was printed.

Sure sounds "deceptive" to me, as well as a bit unbelievable. The Top of China suit had been going on for how long? How long has Boston been writing for the Evergreen? You don't think that subject ever came up with any Evergreen staffer?

All this comes at an interesting time. There is a bill making its way through the Washington House of Representatives at the moment (HB 1307) that would give high school and college newspapers complete "freedom of the press" (which is ironic, as the Evergreen editors haven't seen fit to extend that same right to the Pullman community).

Columnist Bruce Ramsey of the Seattle Times, doesn't think that's a good idea. He wrote on February 7 that:

Who owns the student press? The bill's supporters said the people owned it, the readers owned it or the students owned it, or some minestrone of the above. Eddie Reed, math specialist at the Tukwila School District, set them straight: "The school district owns it."

Then it should serve the school district's purposes: education, an activity that requires adult supervision.
...

The students who spoke for the bill said they were willing to take the responsibility. But when a teenager says, "I'll take the responsibility," what does it mean? Maybe not a lot.

The Evergreen's overreaction to the tasering incident might prove Ramsey correct. The Evergreen editors in their youthful ideological zeal, and apparently without the benefit of any sort of legal review, are heading into dangerous waters with completely irresponsible and unfounded accusations of racism against the Pullman police. God forbid any harm to persons or property comes as a result of it. At the very least, it doesn't help with WSU minority recruiting efforts, supposedly such a big issue on campus.

Palousitics 2008 Presidential Straw Poll

For those of you unable to make this Sunday's WCRP Lincoln Day Dinner, I thought it would be fun to gauge conservative opinion here in Pullman/Whitman County/Washington on next year's wide-open Republican Presidential horserace. I figure if you're going to vote for Hillary or Obama, you aren't likely to be reading this blog anyway. Besides, another Clinton in the White House and I'm heading for Greenland. I understand the real estate potential is growing there.

I have found myself getting more and more interested as various candidates have officially declared their candidacy over the past few weeks.

On the right, you can see a new poll that I created. Please take a moment and vote. The results, of course, will be totally unscientific, but please, you partisans in particular, try not to abuse/manipulate it too badly. Feel free to post comments about your choice or to discuss candidates.

This site is a great reference for all known and potential Republican candidates.

"Eating the greens"

This essay, presented a week ago by British writer Austin Williams at the New School in New York, is an incredible critique of environmentalists and is a must read, given all the letters appearing daily in the Daily News skewering Ed Iverson for daring to question the global warming orthodoxy.

I especially agree with Williams when he states:

It’s a confusing complaint for those like me who are interested in more human-centred politics, because, to me, it seems that rather than the eco-message being marginalized, there is in fact an incessant, domineering, environmental orthodoxy that seems to infect every issue under the sun.

The absence of a critically engaged public discourse on environmental matters – and political culture more generally – caused by the closing down of public debate around environmental concerns, means that ‘green’ issues have entered the public domain as mantras rather than propositions to be debated, fine-tuned and rejected/accepted according to their own merits. One of the curious consequences of this un-contended situation is the inability of the environmental ‘movement’ to believe in their own moral high-ground. In truth, their elevated status has been given to them, rather than won.
...

The fact that environmentalists have hyped up the evidence-based justification for their existence (however much the actual science of global warming has been disputed by others) means that they see success through the prism of tangible evidence-based results and have ended up as tick-box, check-off managers of good behaviour.
...

I believe that the logical consequence of an unquestioning acceptance of limits, reduced resource use and individual responsibility - the essential ingredients of the environmental agenda - is a tendency towards small-thinking, while pretending that we're looking at the Big Picture. Unfortunately, without a critical appraisal of the problem and an open-ended debate on possibilities we are simply accepting a new and slightly more cynical spin on the old environmentalist agenda.

Brit Hume had a perfect example of this behavior management foolishness today:

According to a recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, America's meat eaters are a major cause of global warming. American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide than vegetarians every year...According to Noah Mohr of EarthSave International: "Arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products."

Oh brother. And yet

Anthony Leiserowitz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Oregon writes: "Most Americans believe global warming is real but a moderate and distant risk. While they strongly support policies like investing in renewable energy, higher fuel economy standards and international treaties, they strongly oppose carbon taxes on energy sources that put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."