Archives for November 2008

The PI had a story yesterday on a Jefferson County medical marijuana patient who was caught up in a Border Patrol roadblock near the Hood Canal Bridge. Under new laws, the Border Patrol can set up checkpoints anywhere within 100 miles of the Canadian border. The man, Stephen Dixon, is a 55-year-old disabled veteran who has a doctor’s approval to use medical marijuana for chronic pain. He was a passenger in the car that was stopped by the Border Patrol and had three grams worth of pot (a paper clip weighs one gram).

Thankfully for Dixon, his case was dismissed because the political environment is forcing even staunch drug warriors to re-prioritize:

In addition to dismissing the drug charges this week, [Seattle’s U.S. Attorney Jeff] Sullivan told the Border Patrol not to bring his office any more small-time pot cases.

“Today, I informed the Border Patrol that all future small possession cases may be referred to state or local law enforcement, but will not be pursued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office due to a lack of federal interest in the prosecution,” Sullivan said Thursday in a statement released to the Seattle P-I and a Port Angeles newspaper.

The Bush Administration’s DOJ has made medical marijuana prosecutions a higher priority than white-collar crime, yet even the man who’s been trying to extradite seed-seller Marc Emery isn’t willing to prosecute these cases now. Sadly though, Dixon’s own Congressman, Norm Dicks, voted to allow federal dollars to be spent to arrest people for medical marijuana in states like Washington where voters have made it legal. Fortunately, the idiots in Border Patrol who try to arrest people for having small amounts of pot on them likely won’t have any place to refer those cases to any more.

Protesters are rallying nationwide today to protest California’s recently passed anti-gay Proposition 8, and of course Seattle is no exception.  Festivities start at 10:30 AM at Volunteer Park, with the rally starting at noon.  Protesters will then march down to Westlake Center, where speeches are scheduled to commence at 2PM.

It is one thing to fail to pass legislation granting marriage equality to gays and lesbians, but yet another to amend a state constitution to take away rights already recognized by the courts. The unexpected passage of Prop 8 has served as a wakeup call as to the level of discrimination that still exists, and the amount of work that remains to be down to achieve true equality.

Nope, not satire. An actual poster from the Drug Czar’s new ad campaign. I wonder if there’s anyone in the Office of National Drug Control Policy who could do my job sober as well as I could do theirs stoned.

[via Pete Guither]

Democrat Mark Begich now leads Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens by 1061 votes.  That may not sound like an awful lot, but as the remaining ballots continue to trend in Begich’s favor, it sure does look like Stevens will be hanging up his Incredible Hulk tie.  And that’s a good thing, as we wouldn’t want to give him the opportunity to hang himself with it in prison.

It’s Friday.  It’s dreary.  I’m unenthused.

The NY Times Timothy Egan takes his “fellow beleaguered journalists” to task for failing to ask hard questions about Sarah Palin’s Alaska:

Between big servings of moose chili and self-servings of blather, Governor Sarah Palin has yet to explain the disturbing message that our 49th state sent to the Outside with last week’s election.

Nearly half the voters want to send a felon back to the United States Senate – you go, crook! And a clear majority is backing one of the most ethically tainted congressmen in the land – power to the porkster!

Oh, and all that stuff about wealth-redistribution: Only one state relies on a truly socialistic model for its welfare, and with falling oil prices, Palin’s People’s Republic of Alaska is facing an enormous fiscal crisis.

This tax-free state, where every man, woman and baby gets an annual check as part of their share of redistributed oil wealth, may have to actually start paying for itself.

But none of this has crossed the glossy lips of the governor. As Palin was spreading a cartoon narrative of herself as a caribou-huntin’ gal on the lookout for creeping Marxism while slaying the bad boys of the Far North, the state that she governs was stepping all over her message.

Is it at all ironic that Seattle’s best journalist doesn’t write for a Seattle publication?

… by implementing universal, single-payer health care.

By recent estimates, health care benefits add about $1,500 to the cost of every U.S. built car, putting the auto and every other US industry at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.  So why not take advantage of this economic crisis to put all the moral, political and ideological arguments aside, and finally implement universal health care simply because the modern economy demands it?

For those of you annoyed at Mayor Greg Nickels’ proposed buck an hour increase at Seattle parking meters, I say enjoy even that bargain while you can, for if the Viaduct is ultimately replaced by the “surface and transit” option, parking will be removed entirely from many of the downtown’s north/south streets.

While I’m told that having cars speeding along the curb poses an increased hazard to pedestrians, eliminating street parking is really a pretty simple and inexpensive means of adding more lanes, and thus more capacity to city streets.  Perhaps one safety solution might be to buffer pedestrians with a narrow bike lane, since urban bikers are already committed to putting their lives at risk in the service of less auto-centric transportation policies?

Retail sales have plummeted.

Retail sales plunged by the largest amount on record in October as the financial crisis and the slumping economy caused consumers to sharply cut back on their spending.

The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales fell by 2.8 percent last month, surpassing the old mark of a 2.65 percent drop in November 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that year.

Name the sector, for the most part it’s not looking good.

Prof. Krugman, you know the one who got that Nobel prize thing, says a massive stimulus package is needed. Like $600 billion worth. It’s a figure well shy of what the batshit insane Paulson bailout (or whatever the hell it is today) received, but it’s real money.

Krugman is undoubtedly correct, but the key political question is how to keep the kleptocratic lobyists from Wall Street and Washington, D.C. from intercepting it.

Everyone probably recalls how the Republican Party ran its infamous “K Street Project” under Tom Delay in order to further its corrupt goals.

Maybe the Obama administration needs to run a “Main Street Project” that seeks to place stimulus funds out of reach of the crooks and liars. It would be far healthier for the economy in the long run to have millions of ordinary Americans make rational spending decisions rather than enabling a small group of executives to do so. They’ll just spend it on seaweed wraps and “vinotherapy” and shit anyhow.

And no, the way to do a stimulus plan is not to mail checks to everyone. A true stimulus plan would start with extending unemployment benefits and increasing grants to the states, where you get your most economic bang for your buck, paying particular attention to community colleges and other places folks can receive career related education and training.

If transportation and other infrastructure projects are quickly funded as well, we’re still not going to avoid some fairly significant economic pain, but getting money out into the real economy is absolutely essential if we’re going to avoid a complete disaster. It sure seems like we’re looking at a year or two of hard times, minimum, no matter what.

Another challenge is to come up with sensible regulations for the banking and wider financial sector so that the crooks and liars can’t get away with this again, at least in our lifetimes. And you have to do this while somehow sorting out the so-called credit freeze, which at times is described as easing in the traditional media and at times appears to still be a significant problem. This is another area where extra attention needs to be paid to Main Street, to make sure the myriad small and medium size businesses in our country can obtain the credit they need to operate.

The burst housing bubble and related mortgage scandal are huge factors here, and while finding ways to help folks keep their homes is an admirable goal, the best way to stabilize housing prices is to ensure ordinary folks can afford to buy them. Programs that offer relief to individuals facing foreclosure might be some help, and are certainly a humane idea, but defining which Americans get that relief is complicated and problematic in practice. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, I’m just suggesting that approach has obvious limitations.

The frightening thing for the new administration, and all Americans, is how many goals need to be achieved in short order.

The more I read about the shooting last weekend in Everett, the fishier it seems to get. Dustin Willard, 31, was shot to death by three Everett police officers last Saturday night after they claim he pointed a gun at them from his front porch and refused to obey orders to put it down. The police were responding to a call from a neighbor who thought they saw someone breaking into Willard’s house.

Willard was a well-liked individual with no criminal record. Normally, people like that don’t point guns at police officers. Something isn’t right with this case, and hopefully we’ll find out what actually happened.

More information than Sarah Palin or you probably want, but I prefer to sleep in the raw.

With late ballots strongly trending Republican statewide, flipping several apparent election night Democratic legislative and local wins into the Republican column, there had been some nervous chatter about the narrowing margin in the race for Commissioner of Public Lands.  Well, with Republican incumbent Doug Sutherland trailing by 17,000 votes with less than 100,000 ballots left to count—40,000 of them in heavily Democratic King County—I think it once again safe to proclaim Peter Goldmark the winner.

Still no concession yet from Sutherland though.

What the hell is going on with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R)? Has he, too, become a shameless propagandist?

Last night (Wed.) on FOX News’ Hannity and Colmes Pawlenty said:

Minnesota has a reputation of clean and fair and good elections. […] However finding 32 ballots in a trunk of a car and supposedly forgetting that they were there is suspicious.

The “32 ballots in the trunk of Minneapolis Elections Director Cindy Reichert’s car” story is a fabrication (or, a bizarre misunderstanding) by one of Sen. Norm Coleman’s lawyers.

David Brauer, a political reporter at MinnPost, documents the rumor’s origin and demise:

Reichert is all too happy to provide an explanation. She says the “car ballot” story is “just not true,” painting a picture of normal balloting procedures twisted into something grotesquely misleading.

The “car ballot” story emerged Saturday from the mouth of Coleman lawyer Fritz Knaak, who, according to AP, told reporters, “We were actually told ballots had been riding around in her car for several days, which raised all kinds of integrity questions.”

Knaak never provided a source and did not return two MinnPost calls for comment. However, he was already backing off his story at the same press event. As that day’s Pioneer Press noted, “Knaak said he feels assured that what was going on with the 32 ballots was neither wrong nor unfair.”

It’s odd that Pawlenty continues to propagate a rumor that was, essentially, retracted by the rumor’s creator on the same day it was created.

At this point, those who continue to spread the rumor are either willfully ignorant, or are happy to lie in order to “catapult the propaganda.” Which is it for Pawlenty?

Earth to Washington, D.C. Earth to Washington, D.C. Come in Washington, this is Earth. Over.

Calculated Risk quotes Campbell Surveys on plunging house sales

According to the survey firm, Campbell Communications, buy-side agents responding to the survey indicated a 19% drop in completed transactions between the months of September and October. Declines were especially severe for sales of non-distressed properties in states where home prices have fallen rapidly during the past year, agents indicated. For example, buy-side agents indicated a 22% decline in non-distressed sales in Florida, a 32% drop in California, and a 51% drop in Michigan.

Washington, D.C., we’ve got a situation here.

The Columbian reports that foreclosures have spiked again in Clark County, which had previously (sorta kinda) weathered the storm okay.

Local foreclosure rates had appeared to be leveling off in September, when 144 foreclosures were filed in Clark County, up just 3 from the same month the year before. But the lull — down from more than 290 foreclosures filed here in August — was short-lived.

The number of Clark County homes in foreclosure in October jumped by more than 63 percent over September numbers.

The county’s foreclosures in October accounted for 5.5 percent of the 4,278 foreclosures filed statewide. Washington had the 17th-highest foreclosure rate out of 50 states, according to RealtyTrac, which incorporates data filed during several stages of foreclosure. Oregon ranked No. 16.

Washington, D.C., you need to stop fooling around now. You there, Washington, D.C.?

Naomi Klein spells things out in an article for Rolling Stone.

Unfortunately, many of the banks appear to have no intention of wasting the money on loans. “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion,” said John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Gary Crittenden, chief financial officer of Citigroup, had an even better idea: He hinted that his company would use its share of the cash — $25 billion — to buy up competitors and swell even bigger. The handout, he told analysts, “does present the possibility of taking advantage of opportunities that might otherwise be closed to us.”

And the folks at Morgan Stanley? They’re planning to pay themselves $10.7 billion this year, much of it in bonuses — almost exactly the amount they are receiving in the first phase of the bailout. “You can imagine the devilish grins on the faces of Morgan Stanley employees,” writes Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil. “Not only did we, the taxpayers, save their company…we funded their 2008 bonus pool.”

Uh, Washington, D.C., we got a lot of citizens starting to turn blue here. Copy?

Reuters reports on higher than expected job losses.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week to 516,000, the highest level since the weeks following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.

U.S. imports fell by a record 5.6 percent in September and exports suffered their steepest drop since September 2001, narrowing the monthly trade deficit slightly more than expected, a U.S. Commerce Department report showed on Thursday.

Come in, D.C. Don’t know if you copy but it looks like people are starting to think about taking matters into their own hands. Situation critical. Repeat. Situation critical.

What would happen if a bunch of people just stopped paying their mortgages in order to get a better deal? Irvine Housing Blog relays admittedly anecdotal evidence from an acquaintance who is a real estate agent:

My friend, a very smart person, math thesis of the year award winner in college, with a masters degree in math, vice principle at a high school making excellent money, expresses to his neighbor that he is upset that his home is worth $100,000 less than he paid for it, however his neighbor then explains that he received a $100,000 principle write down by not paying his mortgage and negotiating a loan modification. Stopping by his house a few weeks ago on the way back from Las Vegas my friend explained this to me and said he thinks that he is going to get a modification as well.

I hope you copy D.C.

Everyone on board, prepare for impact.

Earth out.