Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

More Blethen donations for I-920

The Stranger's Josh Feit notices a campaign finance report involving free newspaper ads for Initiative 920. (Yeah, it's the Seattle Times Co. Did you really have to ask?)

Feit also remembered that Frank Blethen, the publisher of The Seattle Times, told reporter/blogger David Postman that he wouldn't be making political donations to I-920. From The Seattle Times on Aug. 3 of this year:
Blethen said he doesn't plan to make any political donations to Initiative 920, which would repeal the state estate tax. But the corporate side of The Times is involved.

"Jill has been having some conversations with some of the folks who are putting together the campaign," he said. "We may be involved on the periphery because people keep calling us. But we're not going to make any political donations, and I may do the things I normally do, which is talking to groups like minority groups."
I suppose we could parse this all out, and talk about what is and is not a political donation, but nah, don't think so. In-kind, cash, whatever. Free ads are worth a lot, in this case around six grand or so.

Obviously Blethen's earlier statements were rubbish. He lies to his own reporters?

What the heck, let's do some parsing. Technically Blethen said he "had no plans," so maybe he changed his mind. (Probably because I-920 is getting spanked.)

And it was "the corporate side," so even though Blethen owns the newspaper, he is technically not a corporation. So Blethen could have been planning all along for the corporate side to make in-kind donations.

OK, that's enough parsing for now, there's enough parsing going on in the political world right now.

Baloney is baloney. I-920 is baloney. Vote no.

UPDATE: David Postman reports the free ads for I-920 are running in Times-owned newspapers in Walla-Walla and Yakima.

The first paragraph of this post has been changed to accurately reflect that it is the Seattle Times Co. giving the free ads.

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