Comments

2
@1 Except the Times isn't asking for the Constitution to be interpreted. They're asking for it to be ignored.
3
Goldy, Goldy, Goldy…
All right wingers hate America. do they support the rights of all Americans to join a union? Do they support the Constitution when it protects the accused from the state? How many are Veterans? Do they support Veterans benefits? Do they support health care for all Americans?
NO.
The right wing hates America, all of the Patriots are on the left and its time they started saying so.
4
That's a rhetorical question, right?
5
Did the ruling for the Gerberding case say anything specifically about negative phrasing and the interpretation of the Washington constitution? That is, did it specifically state that we shouldn't assume more guidelines or specifications than are actually mentioned? I'm asking because that ruling might have been narrowly tailored to the Gerberding case, so that there wouldn't be much precedence for future cases.
6
And you still haven't reported on the future plans by the plaintiffs on this lawsuit that's a further waste of taxpayer money. Can we take it out of their salary if they lose?
7
"The success of that measure should be noted by the court."

So...basically we should do away with the supreme court? Is that what they are saying? Because if we blocked the supreme court's rulings based on popular vote of legislation's constitutionality, why not just have popular vote.

Someone appeals a conviction? Vote on it! The people of the state are clearly well informed, just ask Bruce Danielson.
8
Goldy, I'm impressed by your ability to sustain the kind of rage about and Editirial that is almost 4 months old.
Here is the same shit from 5/31

http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/…
9
If the court says this isn't justiciable because the Legislature has not passed a tax increase with only a majority vote which can be tried for constitutionality, then that will probably be attempted. But it won't work, because the Republicans will not go for it, and probably most of the Dems won't either. So effectively the Court will have ruled that the impossible must happen before a ruling can be made on constitutionality.

If the Court rules 1053 and its predecessors are unconstitutional, then the Republicans will try to float a constitutional amendment (2/3rds vote, then sent to the people for a vote). That would probably be a go, because of the Republicans' ability to train voters that taxes are bad.

So either way, the non-wealthy people of the State of Washington will be screwed, forever.
10
I'd feel more strongly about it if I thought anyone actually read the Seattle Times, let alone their editorial page. It was a terrible paper when times were good, and hasn't gotten any better. The only thing that's keeping it afloat is the old people.

It will be gone in ten years tops. Just bide your time.
11
Hard to believe that Goldy ain't sitting pretty with his K Street con law practice.
12
Goldy can barely feed himself, but his legal skills, despite no formal training, dwarf those of Oliver Wendell Holmes, no less.
13
Goldy, re-read what Catalina wrote in #10, CLOSELY. Does your industry, and you guys specifically, have access to the circulation numbers for the Times? Post them in a slog broken down by year. I'm betting you're going to see a slow death spiral.
14
Here's my suggestion (fwiw): put on the ballot an initiative requiring any future ballot initiatives which set majority requirements to pass by no less than the same majority those initiatives seek to impose. A ballot initiative setting a 2/3 majority requirment for raising taxes would need a 2/3 majority to pass. An initiative requiring a simple majority plus Santa Claus' signature for a bill to become law would need a simple majority plus Santa's signature.

Hoist the bastards with their own petards.
15
The rule of law prevents not just anarchy, but the tyranny of the majority.

There is no greater tyranny than taxes imposed on the middle class by centrists who back scratch and log roll in a never ending escalation of revenue seeking.

It is only right, fair and just that this most home felt invasion of privacy and personal liberty...tax...be applied with only the fullest consensus of all sections of society.

16
@11, @12 I dunno. Folks keep mocking my legal acumen. And yet case after case, my analysis is proven to be spot on.

Gerberding is a fucking roadmap for overturning I-1053, and if this case gets past the justiciability bullshit, that's exactly what the court will do.
17
Catalina and everyone, knock off the stereotyped comments about "old people". Or are you planning to turn into a wingnut when you pass 50?

Goldy's legal acumen is a bit better than most non-lawyers.
18
Sarah dear, you either need to work on your reading comprehension skills or internal projection problems. Perhaps both.

Did I say that old people are wingnuts? No.

I did say - and statistics will back me up - that older people tend to read newspapers, and younger people tend not to. Especially mediocre papers like the Seattle Times.

Older people have a tendency to be called home to Jesus more frequently than younger people, which means less current customers, and fewer new ones.

You do the math, dear.
19
Catalina dear, I'm an old Jew. I'm not going to be called home to Jesus, ever, and I (obviously) read blogs. And your reading comprehension skills could use a brushup: You referred to only old people reading the Times, which is, I'm sure you and everyone agrees, a conservative newspaper. Again, what happens when you get old? Will you read conservative blogs (since newspapers will be dead then)? Will you be fussy and cranky, albeit interestingly so? But then you are that now, ne c'est pas?
20
The Seattle Times Editorial Board is stupider than petrified shit and twice as old. They're pretty much on par with Bill O'Reilly, but more confused. You are not doing your emotional well-being any favors by paying attention to their senile ravings. Just ignore them and let their fossil enterprise die in peace.
21
Goldy should just go blow some rich people that he loves to take my money for; billionaire sports-team owners and their multi-millionaire illiterate violent jocks.
22
Being one of the 'old people' that reads the Times, I take some offense at the implications above. While the editorial opinions are not worth wiping your ass with, they have better comics than the Stranger. And the puzzles help keep my mind agile.
23
Goldy, you contradict yourself. Either we accept the court interpretation of the law, or we accept the plain language of the constitution. They are at odds with each other, and cannot be accepted simultaneously. The plain language sets a floor. Precedent turns that floor into a ceiling as well. You're citing the absence of qualification as clarification of a phrase, thereby reading more words into the plain meaning than are there.

I'm okay with the court doing so, because I think the precedent is clear and the intent was there. However, that's not what the "plain wording" says.
24
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah..... You must try not to be so literal-minded. In the case of newspapers, it's the medium as much as the message.

Mother Vel-DuRay is a Roosevelt Democrat: she'd sooner have the itch than watch Fox News, yet she subscribes to the "Omaha World-Herald" - which makes The Times look like "The Socialist Worker" -and "The Council Bluffs Nonpariel". She reads both of them, and is a big fan of the letters-to-the-Editor page (which can be a surreal experience). It's just what people of that generation do. When she wants her kind of politics, she turns on Ed Schultz.

Hers is the only house in that affluent-for-there neighborhood, smack dab in stupid country (her Congressman is Steve King), that subscribes to the papers. The W-H is down to 24 pages, and The Nonpareil might as well be an ad circular with obituaries.

Her sister, Auntie Marilyn Vel-DuRay, has a computer and is stridently liberal (think "Maude" with a walker). She also takes the World-Herald and reads the whole thing. She also looks at lefty blogs and watches Rachel Maddow.

So my point is not that old people are conservative, but that a dying medium is being kept on life support by it's elderly subscribers, many of whom read them out of habit (and, sadly, to see who of their friends have died). The Times has a dwindling subscriber base that skews elderly, and I suspect that not many of them read the editorial page. Mention a newspaper endorsement to the average young person, and they will give you a blank look. More and more, editorials and endorsements exist for a small group of people to either flatter or scold another group of people while the rest of us go about our business. As their subscriber base dwindles, so does their influence.

25
@23 The plain language of my post does not say what you say I say. Here's what I wrote:

The court should take note of the plain language of the Constitution and the settled law concerning negative phraseology it is obliged to respect under the legal principle of stare decisis. The court should take note of the history of this provision as debated at the 1889 constitutional convention, and of the full context of the Constitution in which various majority thresholds are specified no less than 74 times. (Actually, far fewer than this, but I'm following the Seattle Times' lead in relying on my readers to be too lazy to look up the actual figure for themselves.) The court should take note that when the authors intended supermajorities they specified supermajorities, and that when they wanted to establish a mere floor they specified it as such.

The court should take note of all these things in coming to its decision. But it most definitely should NOT take note of either the policy implications of I-1053 or its popular support!


No contradiction there.
26
Catalina: The Seattle Times "will be gone" not because of a lack of "old-people" - take a few moments to examine U.S. census data:

http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/brief…

The Seattle Times is threatened for a host of reasons related to its practices and the transformation that was wrought by cable television and the internet.

The latter being most influential - not because we can get better journalism online, but because an essential source of advertising revenue has been lost.

The Seattle Times has a problem with a guy named Craig.

http://socialmediaseo.net/wp-content/upl…

27
I never said we were going to have a shortage of old people. It's just that the "new" old people aren't going to want to read a newspaper. That, in turn, is what drives ad revenue down. Yes, Craigslist has decimated the classifieds, but it goes much deeper than that - if Macy's,etc can't get the eyeballs they used to get, they will go someplace else.

.Just look at a Sunday Times now compared to ten years ago. There's probably half the regular advertising there once was, including the big box circulars.
28
I love it when you link to actual court opinions: keep it up!
29
The "people" have the right to change the Constitution by changing the Legislature to have it propose a constitutional amendment to the people to change the vote required. The people have consistently NOT thrown out the legislators who have refused to bring such a constitutional amendment before the people. The people are entitled to be inconsistent in what they do and the courts should take that into account in following the Gerberding precedent and telling McKenna and Eyman to stop wasting their time.
30
Catalina, dear, I find it remarkable how you don't read the Times yet you know so much about its decline in quality. How does that work exactly?

And Goldy, is the Times' pro-gay marriage campaign and endorsement of Obama also evidence of how they hate America? Or did those things somehow escape your attention?
31
It's not a decline in quality, flan dear. It's a decline in circulation. It was always a crappy paper. I used to have to read it when I worked at The Olympic, to see if there were any mentions of the hotel.
32
@30 The Times being on the right side of some issues does not give them a free ride on their stupid and dangerous insistence that initiatives should trump the Constitution.
33
@25, "The court should take note of the plain language of the Constitution and the settled law concerning negative phraseology it is obliged to respect under the legal principle of stare decisis. "

The plain language and settled law are at odds. The settled law says "negative phraseology should be considered positive limitations". The plain language is that various majority clauses set floors, not ceilings.

I repeat: I think the precedent is clear and the intent was there [to set a floor and ceiling]. However, that's not what the "plain wording" says.
34
Catalina, darling, so you do read the Times? Or don't you? It's simple question, dearest.

Goldy: sorry, but that is a lame response. Who said they should be given a free ride? They shouldn't. But you write that they "hate America" in the middle of their gay marriage campaign and a day after their endorsement of the President. You should be able to explain that.
35
No flan, dear, I do not read the Times. At least not on a regular basis. In fact, I hardly ever see the Times anymore, even though I work in the downtown core. No one refers to it in conversation. About the only time I even think of it anymore is when Goldy gets worked up about it.

A simple answer to a simple question.
36
@34 Sigh. Um... irony? Accusing their opponents of hating America is a favorite trope of the right. That's why I find it funny to use it.

And of course, what could be more American-hating than undermining the rule of the law?

Please wait...

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