PLEASE attend this town hall and give Adam Smith your input about Obama care! Currently there are not many people scheduled to attend. No RSVP is required, just show up!! Here are the details:

Saturday, MARCH 13 

1:00 PM

Knutzen Family Theatre

Federal Way, WA 

directions from I-5:

Take S 320th exit. Go west on 320th about 3-4 miles.

Turn right on 21st Ave SW 

Left at first light on Dash Point Road (SR 509)

Left at the first stop sign and Knutzen will be on your right.

 Seattle Weekly is reporting some high level murmurings that former King County Executive candidate, Susan Hutchison, as a possible and attractive candidate against Senator Patty Murray. It's getting more interesting with each passing day.....

I know there is a lot of anticipation about whether Dino Rossi will join the race for U.S. Senate. He is clearly the favorite with the most affection and name recognition in the state. At this point in time, he is not a contender, though. Perhaps he's waiting for the March 31 FEC filings, when candidates reveal their financial status.

I still maintain that the only serious US Senate candidate in the race, so far, is Paul Akers. I am not prepared to "endorse" him yet, but at this point in the race, he's the only candidate that caused me to sit up and take notice. What sets Paul Akers apart from the other pool of Senate candidates? 

Marketing. Movement. Energy. Message. Not necessarily in that order. 

Let me tell you why I take him seriously after I first explain my reservations about the current candidates, in general.

My first concern with all the candidates is that they are untested in the all-consuming, corruptive world of politics. It is actually hard to take seriously any candidate whose first run for elected office is the U.S. Senate. At first glance it seems either arrogant, reckless, or naive. That's my first impression.

Even though Patty Murray is known for her now famous "Mom in Tennis Shoes" campaign of 1992, she arrived at that point after successfully getting elected to office in her school district (1985-1989) and then to the state senate (1989-1993). She had been tested and earned serious consideration from her community and the state to represent them in federal office.

Fast forward to 2010 and compare the current crop of candidates vying for Senator Murray's seat. The most visible are Chris Widener, Clint Didier and Paul Akers.

Chris Widener has an active presence on Facebook and founded an organization called "Positively Republican." I've run into him at conservative gatherings and heard him do a nice polite introduction of himself. He is a former pastor. He's a positive guy.

I know less of Clint Didier, but I hear from trusted insiders that he has a very winning personal presence and a bit of the rural "I like folks" charm. His charm, sincerity and celebrity football past make him an appealing candidate. I'd love to have a beer with him and talk politics, for sure. 

I know nothing about two other candidates running, Art Coday and Sean Salazar, other than the people campaigning for them really believe in their candidates. As it should be, I suppose, but nothing has inspired me to stop and listen to them. 

This scenario we find ourselves in is distressing, given that 2010 has the potential to launch a new direction for our state that is suffocating from decades of oligarchy and single party rule. 

Paul Akers is the only candidate that has given me even a moment of hope. I mentioned marketing, movement, energy & message. 

Akers' radio ads are running during the Rush Limbaugh show and at various times on TV. They are positive and interesting. They give a brief introduction to his style (confident), his message (jobs, fiscal restraint) and a little bit of his story (self-made entrepreneur). This is the marketing part. Marketing is more than just having a happy face message. It's moving that message out into public circles for consumption. It's moving into mass media, beyond twitter and social networking sites.

Paul has either raised enough money to promote his candidacy or he has enough of his own to put on the table. At this point he is the only one getting his message out in a professional, high quality venue and the fact that he is willing to lay it out there sets him apart from the others. 

He recently  appeared on the Fox Business network. He was clearly comfortable sitting in the hot seat answering questions and persuading the naysayers and he was a natural with a national audience.

Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 9) he will be a guest on the Lars Larson show. He is constantly moving to the next venue and whoever is scheduling him for these gigs is demonstrating  professional level campaign staff skills. This campaign is kinesthetic. It's got the kind of movement that makes people want to get on the train and wave signs.

Besides moving a message that will echo into the voters' minds, the candidate has to have energy. It's an unfair reality that introverts have a harder time campaigning. Their energy is interior. Paul Akers has extrovert energy. The kind that blows into a room, commands attention and motivates thought and reaction. This is just a personal charism that a person either has or doesn't have. It's not therapeutic, thoughtful, energy, but kinesthetic.

Finally, Akers has the right message and enough of a story to back up his message. His success at creating manufacturing jobs and promoting products without over-spending or acquiring massive debt gives him the kind of credibility that Senator Murray doesn't have. She represents the status quo that is spending our country into oblivion--he represents an example of creating jobs and prosperity for all.

In fact, I'm rather excited to see a Murray- Akers  debate. He'll clean the floor on matters of economic prosperity, job creation and basic fiscal common sense. He doesn't shy away from his conservative views on abortion, either, which has been problematic in this state where the pro-abortion lobby is aggressive. It is NOT a winning strategy to ignore these questions, obfuscate or hope they go away. Nor is it a good idea to evangelize on the issue. An unapologetic, confident stance is all that's necessary.

Senator Patty Murray has benefitted from a solid network of handlers and staffers who are savvy, responsive and smart. She, on the other hand, always sounds as though she is guessing at what to say. She speaks to the public as though she is reading someone else's words, hoping that whoever wrote them really knew what they were doing.

Finally, Paul Akers is showing that he intends to win the race. I received a press release that the Akers' campaign has hired a campaign management software company that has maintained a 98% win rate over the past 30 years. The company teams up with only one campaign per contest with a focus toward winning, not volume.

Akers is working for this seat like a champion trains for a race. He's hired a staff that is motivated, he's put himself on stage and he's invested in high caliber resources to assist his effort. He deserves credit for this and has certainly earned my confidence in his ability to win.

The results of a poll on health care priorities that was taken prior to last year’s general election will be released Monday by The Washington Poll. The group reports that, although only 18 percent of respondents (a pool of 724 registered Washington state voters) stated that health care reform was their top issue of importance, 75 percent affirmed some degree support for a public option and 52 percent approved of paying higher taxes to provide universal availability of coverage.

The Washington Poll is a project conducted in the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Sexuality (WISER). In 2009, in polling regarding the races for King County Executive and Seattle Mayor, The Washington Poll accurately determined an eleventh-hour swing to Dow Constantine in race for county chief but incorrectly projected that Joe Mallahan would take over from Greg Nickels in Seattle City Hall, not current mayor Mike McGinn.

The responses for the group’s recently released survey on health care-related issues were gathered by telephone during the period of October 14-16, 2009. The reported margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percent. The full report can be viewed here.

Three recent national polls conducted regarding the Democratic health care plan have indicated a six to eight-point margin of opposition to the current package. Specifically, the most recent Rasmussen poll, taken after the much-ballyhooed health care summit between GOP and Democratic leadership, registered 52 percent against and only 44 percent in favor. That survey also contained the revelation that 63 percent of respondents felt that passing smaller reforms was a smarter path to improving the health care system, and to that end The Washington Poll may be useful to politicians in identifying what those smaller issues might be.

Skepticism is, however, prudent in considering the weight that should be given to a four-month-old poll reporting strong support for key elements of the President’s health care package. In terms of gauging public opinion on heatedly debated policy issues, a four months aging of the data can be like the difference between sipping Chianti and spitting vinegar. Cynicism may even be warranted considering that its release comes just as Democrats in Washington, D.C. are caucusing to cross the Rubicon and pass a health care bill using the nuclear option of reconciliation.

But capriciously dismissing polls one does not like is a surefire technique for giving Murphy’s Law jurisdiction to sideswipe one’s own cause. An outlier poll can have a strong effect on the minds of voters if the media chooses not to scrutinize carefully or place in proper context the results. GOP strategists will need to be aware of reports like that of The Washington Poll as the full-court press goes into action this week.

If Democrats do opt to send the bill to the president by way of reconciliation, their public relations strategy may be to prominently cite selected surveys to show that their actions were, in fact, popular.

Would a Jedi mind trick strategy like that work to pass healthcare amid low public support by simultaneously informing the public that they were in favor of the measure? In politics, literally anything can happen.

Jon Russell: “When the wealthy get soaked, we all take a bath.”

According to stories published in the past few days, Washington Senate Majority Leader, Lisa Brown, is in favor of a proposal for a State Income Tax “that would hit the wealthy and give everyone a sales-tax break.” This is the second year in a row that Brown has raised this proposal but, this year, there’s actual legislation – Senate Bill 6250 – to go along with it. Although reports are that this “measure’s future is uncertain”, since the legislature has less than a week left in the schedule for their current session and they’re still trying to come up with a solution for a $2.7 Billion budget shortfall, we would all be wise to keep our eyes on these guys … especially the ones who are pitching that a tax on high earners would “bring more fairness” and in return for getting more “fairness” from those evil-hearted “wealthy”, they say they will “give everyone a sales-tax break” in the amount of … are you ready?! … one penny!

When I heard this news, my immediate reaction was, “I can’t think of a better argument for continuing to replace these bozos with people who have a real-world perspective on dealing with life’s priorities. Thankfully, we have a Candidate for State Representative in my area who exemplifies the sort of replacement we need to be sending to Olympia to restore trustworthy representation. His name is Jon Russell. Almost immediately after I heard the news of Brown’s State Income Tax Proposal, State Representative Candidate Russell published a statement on this matter that I felt “hit the nail right on the head.” With that in mind, I’m offering the full-text of his statement, as follows:

###

It should come as no surprise that the state legislature is trying to pass an income tax referendum to tax the wealthy in our state. It is the old political game of class warfare, pitting the majority against a minority. The legislature is trying to close a 2.6 billion dollar deficit in the state budget, but instead of cuts in spending they are raising taxes left and right. Did you know that while Clark County’s unemployment is over 14% & Olympia’s (Thurston County) is only 7.8 %? This shows that while the rest of us suffer the effects of an abysmal job market, government employees are exempt from the rules of the real-world. I say the Washington State income tax should come as no surprise because it flies in the face of simple economics. Most of those in the legislature and in the administration have never worked in the private sector; they do not understand the sweat and tears that go into owning and growing a business; they do not understand the heart ache of employers who must lay off employees for the sake of the survival of that business. The wealthy create jobs by investing their money in companies that hire the rest of us. More taxes means less money to invest and that means even higher unemployment right around the corner.

Oregon voters recently passed an income tax on the so-called wealthy in their State and businesses are already scrambling to move out of state. It’s not that the increase was extraordinarily high, but rather the vote set a dangerous precedent that a simple majority of voters can use the ballot box to take money from one group and give it to another. And, you can bet that, if they can do it once, they will easily do it again.

While some people in our state may believe that taxing the income of the rich would be a good thing, it's important to keep in mind that once you allow the income tax to exist on the wealthy, eventually the politicians will run out of money and they will lower the income level to include taxing the rest of us. I believe the solution for the State's budget deficit lies in cutting State spending and living according to a balanced budget. We should also look at eliminating the Business and Operation tax on our small businesses. This would put more money into the economy, empowering small businesses to create jobs and hire more employees. Controlling state spending and freeing up money to invest in small businesses will go beyond meeting our State's current economic challenges to initiate a boom for employment in Washington State.

###

Conservatives, mark October 6, 2010 on your calendar. Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer will be speaking in Seattle, when he headlines the Washington Policy Center’s gala dinner along with Washington State’s auditor Brian Sonntag.

(You can purchase individual tickets or tables by going to the event page on the WPC website. The seats may be going quickly, and regular WPC contributors have already received notice, so do not waste time if you’re a fan of Krauthammer, Sonntag, the WPC, or any combinations of the three.)

When the WPC nabbed nabbed Ben Stein -- noted commentator and economist -- and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore to speak at the 2009 annual dinner, I felt certain that the 2010 event could not possibly top it. I was fortunate enough to attend the media availability prior to last year's dinner, and – seated immediately beside the paradoxically dry and gregarious Stein – was treated to a critique of the Obama administration while it was still only in its terrible twos. The two men were entertaining and erudite, incisive in their criticisms of progressive economic policies and prescient in their predictions. In hindsight, not a single one of Stein or Moore’s predictions for what lay ahead was anything less than prophetic.

The only way to top that experience will be to hear what Charles Krauthammer -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning dean of American conservatism -- has to say about the current course of the nation.

Krauthammer's dry wit, sharp intellect, and direct style of delivery are well known to readers of his Friday column. I cannot conceive of another pundit working today who has his same gift for exposing fallacies and disemboweling weak arguments as efficiently. The opportunity to see him speak in person is one that should not be missed.

The Washington Policy Center is one of our region’s most important independent, nonpartisan policy research groups. Devoting countless hours annually to analyze, study, and report on the impact of government policy, the group is the think tank equivalent of a Rottweiler with a doctorate, half watchdog and half wonk.

The WPC’s method of approaching issues, legislation, and policy proposals from a pragmatic, yet fiscally conservative point of view have earned them a role in advising policymakers from both sides of the political spectrum.

Good work requires financial support and the WPC has been scrupulous about avoiding the pitfalls of relying on public funding through federal grants to keep its intellectual enterprise active and valuable. One way they accomplish that is by maintaining a lean annual budget of $1.5 million, while still covering all areas of public policy as well as operating the crucial legislative transparency project, WashingtonVotes.org.

An early sell-out of the event would go a long way to increase the WPC’s ability to address the wave of new legislation emerging and to add a layer of context public policy issues that that candidates will tangle about in this year’s crucial federal, state and local elections.