Archives for July 2005

One of the more reaffirming internet stories of the past year was that of the way the online community rallied to the aid of Seattle voting rights activist Andy Stephenson, raising $50,000 in 11 days to pay for surgery to treat his pancreatic cancer. One of the more disturbing internet stories of the past year was the way some vile righties deflated the feel-good story — and successfully slowed both donations and Andy’s treatment — by launching a vicious, heartless smear campaign charging that Andy scammed his donors by faking his illness.

Well, I suppose Andy has once again proven his detractors wrong. He died Thursday at the age of 43.

I never met Andy, and was only peripherally aware of him and his activities. From all accounts he was a great guy, and a tireless activist. I share my sincere condolences with his family and friends.

But I also share their anger, as Andy’s illness and the right-wing response is a vivid example of how dirty politics can have potentially deadly results. In a post to Democratic Underground entitled “Say hello to a bottomless rage,” William Pitt displays what I believe is an appropriate response to right-wing tactics that delayed Andy’s treatment, and possibly cost him his life.

Throwing sand into the gears of the PayPal donations blew Andy off the surgery rotation, causing him to have to wait a lot longer for his operation.

Spewing the claim time and again that the whole sickness was a fraud, very publicly and on as many blogs and boards as you could find, robbed Andy of the hope and will he needed to overcome this thing.

I think you fuckers should be forced to dig his grave. I think you should be buried with him.

I kept my mouth shut about you these last weeks because every time I said something about you or to you, you got a stiffy from the attention and ramped up your viciousness again. That’s over with now.

I am going to make you famous in all the worst kinds of ways. I know your names, I know your addresses, I know your IP numbers, I have screen shots and copies of every vile statement and threat you ever made. I know everything I need to know. Get ready for the ram.

Frankly, I hope William can follow through on his threats.

A memorial service for Andy will be held at Town Hall in Seattle at 1119 Eighth Ave., on Saturday, July 16, at 2 p.m.

Enjoy your sandbox.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, Florida Governor Jeb Bush showed exactly what kind of vindictive, mean-spirited, conscienceless prick he really is, when he responded to Terri Schiavo’s autopsy by asking a state prosecutor to launch a criminal investigation of whether her husband Michael called 911 promptly. This was harassment, pure and simple.

Of course, there was nothing to the allegations, so….

Gov. Jeb Bush has declared an end to the state’s inquiry into Terri Schiavo’s collapse 15 years ago, after Florida’s state attorney said there was no evidence that criminal activity was involved.
…
“Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed,” Bush said in a two-sentence letter.

Hmmm. I wonder if the other sentence included an apology for wasting the state attorney’s time on a personal vendetta? I kinda doubt it.

I spend way too much time blogging, and when asked how I can afford it, I usually rationalize away the financial hardship by saying I am investing in my future. At some point I hope to make a living in politics or media — or in that nether-world that lies in between — and to that end I have made no secret of my desire to pursue a career in talk radio, a medium to which I am ideally suited for all the right and wrong reasons.

And so with this career goal in mind, it was with some ambivalence that I approached the controversy over KVI’s shameless promotion of I-912, the anti-road maintenance initiative. On the one hand, I was one of the first “media watchdogs” to publicly express outrage over how blatantly John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur used their shows to actively advertise, organize and fundraise for I-912; without them, the initiative campaign simply would not exist. On the other hand, I’m no dummy — when I get my own radio show I plan to take a page from the KVI playbook and be just as active in promoting progressive initiatives, causes and candidates. It’s not only good politics, it’s damn good for business.

Last week Kirby and I discussed this issue on the air, and I admitted that I had great empathy for his situation, and certainly wouldn’t want the hassle myself of filing PDC reports based on my on-air activities. And before Judge Christopher Wickham ruled last week that KVI would indeed have to report their efforts on I-912’s behalf as an in-kind contribution, I expressed strong reservations to a fellow activist, that such regulation would skate dangerously close to violating the First Amendment.

That said, I think today’s editorial in the Seattle Times defending John and Kirby totally misses the point… perhaps intentionally. [“In support of free speech, and KVI“]

Two years ago, when the federal campaign-finance law reached the U.S. Supreme Court, dissenting justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas warned that something like this would happen. We doubted it; it seemed clear to us that the law applied to ads, not editorial content. We thought Thomas was over the top when he said campaign-finance law was leading toward “outright regulation of the press.”

Judge Wickham has made a step toward just that. It is a dangerous, unconstitutional ruling. The losers need to appeal it and the appellate courts need to reverse it.

But this case is not simply about freedom of the press, for two reasons. First, John and Kirby are neither journalists nor editorialists… they are partisan political operatives who just happen to have their own radio shows. And second, it appears to reasonable people (like an elected, Thurston County judge) that in so blatantly promoting I-912, John and Kirby crossed the line from editorializing — or even advocacy — to advertising.

John and Kirby actively organized the I-912 campaign, using the public airwaves to raise the money and sign up the volunteers needed to get the initiative onto the ballot. In so doing they turned long segments of their radio shows into little more than extended, political infomercials. Now that’s their right. But the people also have a right to demand full disclosure of political advertising, as required by the Public Disclosure Act… which was enacted by initiative with an overwhelming electoral majority.

To uniformly deride Judge Wickham’s decision, as the Times does, as “outright regulation of the press,” is to argue that corporations or wealthy individuals should be exempt from our campaign finance and public disclosure laws, by virtue of owning a TV or radio station… or even a “family newspaper.” Which may explain why the Times is so vociferous in their defense of KVI.

Disturbed by the financial implications of his own mortality, Times publisher Frank Blethen is one of the nation’s most vocal and angry opponents of the death tax estate tax… every time Frank sneezes, his snot shows up on the op/ed page in the form of an editorial demanding the tax’s repeal. Now we learn that a conservative business group is planning an initiative for the 2006 season to repeal Washington’s estate tax. (Or so the Times wants us to believe.)

As it is, the Times editorializes monthly for the tax’s repeal, and there isn’t a reporter or editor on staff who doesn’t know that the quickest way to the boss’s heart is to pander to his pet political project. So we can only imagine what kind of support an estate-tax-repeal initiative might garner from Frank and his minions.

Should such an initiative receive a disproportionate amount of flattering, biased coverage, well, that wouldn’t be all that unusual for a newspaper of the Times’ stature. And of course, a steady stream of anti-estate-tax editorials is already the status quo.

But where might the Times be tempted to cross the line in support of an actual initiative? Frequent sidebars instructing and encouraging readers to contribute time and money, or informing them of the locations where petitions can be signed or picked up? A daily tally of the campaign’s fundraising target or signature gathering totals, with a call to action? Actually printing a copy of the petition on the op/ed page itself?

While I admit that the line between advocacy and advertising is blurry, and that I am uncomfortable at the thought of a bureaucrat or even a judge having the power to determine when this line is crossed, there is no question that the line exists, and to ignore it is to open our system to inevitable abuse. If media outlets can use their enormous power to run political campaigns outside the established regulatory framework, they will.

And in fact… KVI has. John and Kirby crossed the line, and to make matters worse, they used the public airwaves to do it. The people of Washington have a right to know the true value of KVI’s in-kind contribution to the I-912 campaign. Filing these reports may be a hassle, but then, so is democracy.

UPDATE:
Initiative 912 has apparently qualified for the ballot with over 420,000 signatures, which just goes to show the political power and influence a station like KVI can have. This is just another example of why progressives need their own local talk radio hosts who are willing to be just as entertaining, just as partisan, and just as politically strategic as John and Kirby. It’s time to even the playing field.

Seattle has been very lucky to have Foolproof’s American Voices series bringing some of the nation’s top progressive speakers to local audiences, including President Bill Clinton, Bill Moyers, Gov. Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, Dr. Cornel West and most recently George Lakoff. But as critically successful as the series has been, ticket sales cover only 70 percent of the costs.

Now Foolproof needs your help to keep these great speakers coming to Seattle audiences. A core group of American Voices supporters has made a challenge… they will match dollar for dollar all individual contributions made by July 30, up to $50,000. I urge you to go to Foolproof’s donations page, and give what you can. And with a donation of $100 or more, you may choose to receive a CD of a recent American Voices presentation: Bill Moyers, Michael Eric Dyson, Robert Reich, Arianna Huffington, Paul Rusesabagina or Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

And a reminder… Congressman Barney Frank will speak on Aug. 3 at Benaroya Hall as special benefit for American Voices. Tickets are on sale now.

Earlier today I raised the question of whether our “War on Terror” had actually made us safer, and if perhaps it might be time to start discussing some other strategies. The response from some of my righty readers was that we should not discuss other strategies, and that they wouldn’t mind seeing me die in a terrorist attack, just for raising the issue.

Yeah… well screw you, too.

In addressing my questions, I thought it might be useful to point out that the number of major terrorist attacks worldwide have actually tripled between 2003 and 2004.

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed Monday on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials.

650 is an awful lot of terrorist attacks, but according to the Financial Times, it’s not quite as large a number as 3,200.

In April the US State Department had said there were 651 “international” terrorism incidents last year. But using a broader definition to include attacks that “deliberately hit civilians or non-combatants” the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) on Tuesday raised that number to 3,192. The incidents resulted in the deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people.

Of course the number of terrorist attacks in the US was nearly zilch, a number the Bush administration claims represents the success of their anti-terrorism policies. But apart from the occasional abortion clinic bombing or animal rights nutcase (yes, the left has a few crazies of its own), terrorist attacks on US soil are exceedingly rare, and almost always of domestic origin. Eight years passed between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the devastation of 9/11, and for the life of me, I can’t think of another attack on the homeland by foreign terrorists.

But the “War on Terrorism” is a world war… a war we are openly fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and covertly fighting throughout the world. So the best measure of the war’s progress is the number of terrorist attacks worldwide. And the trends just don’t look so good for our current policies.

The chart above was created by BTC News using the Terrorism Knowledge Base. And what it clearly shows is that the number of terrorist attacks declined throughout the Clinton years, and have increased year by year since Bush took office.

And so again, I think it is fair to ask: has the Iraq war made the world a safer place? And isn’t it time we have a reasonable discussion over whether military might alone is enough to defeat international terrorism?

From Kos:

The big DC rumor is that Rehnquist will announce his retirement tomorrow between 10-11 a.m. ET.

If that happens, would Bush split the difference — Gonzales and some winger to pacify the Dobson brigades?

And if so, which one would be nominated as Chief Justice?

I will be on the John Carlson Show this afternoon at 4:30 pm, KVI-570. I believe we will be discussing the London bombings.

At least 33 people have died and hundreds were injured, as four explosions ripped through London’s Underground and a double-decker bus. Al-Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility in a statement posted to an Islamist website.

The terrorist attacks were likely timed to coincide with the G8 Summit currently taking place in Scotland.

London is perhaps my favorite city. I have walked those streets and ridden those trains and busses and have enjoyed the hospitality and friendship of Londoners… the images of death and destruction are as painfully real to me as those from New York City, where I lived for four years. So I don’t want to appear to be cynically exploiting this terrible tragedy, but, I think it is fair to ask, nearly four years after 9/11… how is the “War on Terror” going? Has the enormous amount of blood and treasure we have spent in Iraq really made us any safer? Are American cities any less vulnerable to this kind of horror than London, or any less likely to be a target? Are we seeking vengeance abroad at the expense of providing real security to our citizens at home?

Can we really defeat an international, jihadist, terrorist movement with brute force alone, or is it time reasonable people can start talking about supplementing our conventional arms with unconventional strategies — diplomacy, aid, economic development, etc. — without instantly being attacked as cowards, appeasers or traitors?

Just thought I’d ask.

The sponsors of I-912, the “Pricks for Potholes” initiative, turned in 232,000 signatures today; 224,880 are needed to qualify. Over on (un)Sound Politics, our friend Stefan celebrated the event with the headline “No New Gas Tax to make the ballot.” Um… yeah, maybe… but considering this is the same guy who predicted Dino Rossi would win his election contest lawsuit just days before the case was “dismissed with prejudice,” I’d take his prognostication with a grain of salt.

Large numbers of signatures are routinely disqualified, so the Secretary of State generally recommends a cushion of about 20% over the number of signatures required. I-912 sponsors would have to bring in around 40,000 additional signatures by Friday to meet that target.

Considering the fact that there is an organized opposition that will be monitoring the signature verification process, you can be sure that every signature that can be challenged, will be… so at this point I’d say that I-912 is still too close to call. If enough signatures are disqualified to keep I-912 off the ballot, some supporters might be tempted to cry foul, but I’m confident Stefan would never want to dilute the process with double signers, people not registered to vote, and signature mismatches.

We’ll have a better idea of the initiative’s status on Friday, but we likely won’t know if it qualifies for the ballot until mid-August.

As it turns out, there are so many liberals in Seattle, and so much beer, that our fair city hosts two Drinking Liberally chapters. The West Seattle branch meets tonight, and every Wednesday, 7 pm, at West 5, 4539 California Ave SW.

I intend to stop by tonight and see if the West Seattle folk drink any more liberally than the Montlake folk. Hope to see some of you there.

(Oh… and just so you know, the Spokane chapter also meets tonight, 7:30 pm, at the Red Lion Pub, 126 N Division St.)

A survey by the National Association of Counties shows that methamphetamine has become the number one drug problem in most communities, surpassing heroin and cocaine.

Of the responding law enforcement agencies, 87 percent report increases in meth related arrests starting three years ago. Fifty percent of the counties surveyed estimated that 1 in 5 of their current jail inmates were housed because of meth related crimes. Seventeen percent of the counties indicate that more than half of their jail populations are incarcerated because of meth related crimes.

Finally… a homegrown American industry that knows how to compete with low-cost foreign producers.

The survey notes that for every meth lab shut down, 10 new ones are created. If true, I suppose that poses a problem for Pierce County, which according to the Tacoma News Tribune cleaned up 542 labs in 2004… over a third of the 1399 discovered statewide last year.

Generally, my libertarianism doesn’t extend much beyond the First Amendment, but the utilitarian in me can’t help but acknowledge that our “War on Drugs” is a dismal failure that has done nothing to reduce addiction, and has merely diverted market share away from heroin and cocaine to other destructive drugs like meth and Oxycontin. The meth crisis is a classic example of market forces at work… if we do nothing to diminish the demand for drugs, it is near impossible to diminish the supply.

Prohibition is prohibition — it didn’t work with alcohol, and it’s not working with drugs — and it’s utterly ridiculous that our elected leaders can’t engage in a serious debate over reexamining our drug policies without putting their careers at risk. Perhaps it is too much of a shock to ask the American people to accept a legal (if highly regulated and taxed) drug industry, but at the very least we need to consider shifting some of the huge amount of resources we spend on interdiction and incarceration, to efforts that work… like education, prevention and treatment.

UPDATE:
A reader in the comment thread pointed out the following interesting tidbit from the Washington Post:

The report comes soon after the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy restated its stance that marijuana remains the nation’s most substantial drug problem. Federal estimates show there are 15 million marijuana users compared to the 1 million that might use meth.

Yeah, that’s right… those local sheriffs don’t know what they’re talking about. The biggest threat to public safety and health is pot smoking. And you wonder why our national drug control policy is failing?

As we embark on what is likely to be a vicious political war over Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement, I think it important to take a quick a look at the issue that will be at the heart of much of the vitriol coming from both the right and the left: abortion. There is no question that President Bush is being pressured by his patrons in the religious right to appoint a justice who will vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, and so it is instructive to explore the likely, practical impact on American women should their right to choose be denied or narrowly restricted.

Writing in The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy in May of 2003 (“Envisioning Life Without Roe: Lessons Without Borders“), Susan A. Cohen did exactly that, compiling historical data on abortions and maternal mortality for the pre- and post-Roe United States, as well as that for a number of nations with either liberal or restrictive abortion laws. The conclusion is clear:

The American pre-Roe experience, just as that in the developing world today, demonstrates quite clearly that liberal abortion laws do not cause abortion, unintended pregnancy does. Indeed, some of the world’s lowest abortion rates may be found in countries with the most liberal abortion laws, where services are easily available and even subsidized; by contrast, high abortion rates (and, generally, high maternal mortality rates as well) may be observed in countries where the procedure is severely restricted.

As Cohen points out, illegal abortion was quite common in the US prior to the 1973 Roe decision, with as many as 800,000 procedures a year estimated to have taken place during the 1950s and 1960s. While affluent women could travel within the US or overseas to seek safe, legal abortions, poor women, mostly young and minority, often suffered severe health consequences. Even after the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s dramatically reduced abortion-related maternal deaths, maternal mortality rates remained high compared to current levels.

Before and after comparisons like that in the US can be repeated country by country, but perhaps the most striking example is that of Romania, where abortion was legalized in 1957, outlawed in 1966, and legalized again after Ceaucescu’s fall in 1990.

When abortion was against the law in Romania, from
1966 to 1989, abortion-related deaths soared.

Romania’s abortion-related death rate soared after abortion was outlawed in 1966, and plummeted after it was relegalized in 1990. The lesson in Romania and elsewhere is that women will seek abortions whether they are legal or not; restricting access merely makes them less safe. According to the World Health Organization, unsafe abortions are responsible for about 13% of the half million annual deaths worldwide from pregnancy-related causes… in the most restrictive nations of Latin America, the rate is as high as 21%.

Indeed, not only do restrictive abortion laws uniformly increase maternal mortality rates in developed and developing countries alike, some of the nations with the most restrictive abortion laws also have some of the highest abortion rates.

ABORTION LAWS, RATES AND MATERNAL MORTALITY
Country	Abortion rate per 1,000 women, 15-44	Maternal Deaths per 100,000 live births
Where abortion is Broadly Permitted
Australia	22	6
England/Wales	16	10
Finland	10	6
Netherlands	7	10
United States	21	12
Where Abortion is Severely Restricted
Brazil	38	260
Chile	45	33
Colombia	34	120
Dominican Republic	44	110
Mexico	23	65
Peru	52	240
Note: Most recent data available. Sources: Abortion data — AGI, Sharing Responsibility, Appendix Table 4, p. 54; Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Abortion incidence and services in the United States in 2000, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1):6-15. Maternal mortality rates — United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), The World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics, New York: UNSD, 2000/updated 2002.

While the consequences of having an abortion depend on whether it is safe and legal, the cause is universal: unplanned pregnancies. 28% of the 210 million annual pregnancies worldwide are unplanned, and 22% end in abortion. Reducing unwanted pregnancies through wider and more effective use of contraception is the only effective means of reducing abortion rates… making our abortion laws more restrictive will only make abortion less safe.

In the three decades since Roe became law, Americans have forgotten their history and grown complacent about the very real human costs of illegal abortions, allowing the debate to increasingly focus on moral and religious beliefs rather than the public health issue that abortion really is. Abortion foes have successfully struck an emotional chord by illustrating their arguments with images of the undeniable horror of dead and mangled fetuses. Meanwhile, pro-Choice forces have tended to make a more intellectual appeal, arguing a vague and unwritten constitutional right to privacy.

But if Roe is overturned and Congress or the States narrowly restrict access to legal abortion, the public health calamity will be very real and very bloody. Thousands of young women will die of sepsis from botched, back-alley abortions. That is the undeniable conclusion from studying the impact of abortion laws at home and abroad. And that is the emotional, rhetorical appeal supporters of Roe must make if we are to educate our fellow Americans as to what is really at stake.

It is time to fight horror with horror.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

I will be there, and I invite you all to join me for a beer or two.

Can Rove spin himself out of trouble? (“Photo” courtesy Democratic Underground)

When you’re dealing with a spinmeister like Karl Rove, reading between the lines is the only place you’ll find any useful information. And that’s exactly what Lawrence O’Donnell does in his latest Plame/Rove update on The Huffington Post.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, finally admitted that his client did indeed talk to Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper, prior to Robert Novak blowing Valerie Plame’s cover. But O’Donnell focuses on the words with which Luskin chose to defend Rove’s actions.

Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client “never knowingly disclosed classified information.” Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.

Not coincidentally, the word ‘knowing’ is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent ” knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States.”

So, Rove’s defense now hangs on one word

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