Archives for June 2009

A lot of folks came out of the past legislative session awfully pissed and/or disappointed about the performance of our Democratic majority, but there is at least one special interest group that is celebrating the results:

Our state’s most vehement conservative lobby, which spent $7.2 million trying to defeat Gov. Chris Gregoire, boasts how the majority Democrat Washington Legislature did its bidding in the just-completed session.

“After coming in like a lion, the 2009 Legislature went out like a lamb,” reports the lead article in “Building Insight,” newsletter of the Building Industry Association of Washington.

The BIAW newsletter lists 14 legislative proposals that it opposed, ranging from solar water heaters in new homes to including climate change in the Growth Management Act. The word “Dead” is attached to 12 of them.

One of the slogans of the progressive netroots movement is “More and Better Democrats,” a motto by which we recognize that the straightest path toward implementing a progressive agenda is through a Democratic majority, but that quantity of representation doesn’t always translate into quality, a truism clearly demonstrated by the near super-majority Democratic control of the Washington State Legislature.

So what’s the solution for frustrated progressives? It sure as hell ain’t electing more Republicans, so vindictively undermining the electoral prospects of conservative Democrats in swing districts, as some have suggested, would be more than counterproductive. No, it’s time for us in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to start targeting “safe” Democrats who have proven themselves to be either ineffective or out-of-touch, or both. That means working outside the traditional party hierarchy, and yes, that means primary challenges.

Let Frank worry about the swing districts, while we focus on electing better Democrats from the party’s urban base. Either that, or be prepared to see the BIAW celebrating their legislative successes for years to come.

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The Seattle Times editorial board has strong words for the Glorious Leader:

NORTH KOREA, which apparently relishes its oddball, unpredictable behavior on the world stage, has another opportunity to zig when everyone expects it to zag. Release two American journalists held without formal charges, and send them home.

Yeah, sure, but… and? I mean, it’s not like even most Seattleites routinely scan the Times’ op-ed page, let alone Kim Jong-il, so what exactly is the point?

I suppose if the Times had used the incident as a springboard to critique the Obama administration’s policies toward North Korea, to argue pro or con on further engagement with the communist dictatorship, or even, in a controversial twist, to berate the two journalists for carelessly sparking an international incident, well, that might have made for an interesting and/or relevant editorial. But why waste precious op-ed space merely stating the obvious?

What’s next? A bold, sharply worded editorial arguing that puppies are cute?

As proprietors of Seattle’s only remaining daily newspaper opinion page, the Times’ editors have an awesome platform from which to drive and shape our state’s public debate, and with it, a special civic obligation to do so—a platform, I’m not ashamed to admit, bloggers like me envy. And yet, too often, there’s nary an opinion of any consequence to be found. For example, from today’s two unsigned editorials, the combined 558 words can essentially be summed up in seven: North Korea bad, Husky women’s softball good.

I can’t argue with the sentiment, but I mean, really, was there nothing more pressing to write about? No important public policy issue on which to educate readers, no compelling controversy on which to opine? That’s it… a glorified sports column and a current events blurb about as challenging as one might find in the Weekly Reader?

All of which makes the Times’ closing sentence a touch ironic, for while it does in fact hit the nail on the head, it’s not exactly the nail they were thinking of:

Mindless, pointless acts of obfuscating petulance serve no purpose and make no point.

Get it? “Pointless acts … make no point.” In both form and content, it’s like they’re writing about themselves.

– The Cannabis Defense Coalition is closely following another trial – this one in Mason County. The defendants, Karen Mower and John Reed, were charged after a police raid on their home found 38 plants. Both are authorized patients. Mower is a terminally ill woman in her 40s who’s been given only 2 years to live by doctors, but the judge has disallowed a medical defense. The next pre-trial hearing is on Monday, June 8 at the Mason County Courthouse in Shelton. The CDC will be arranging for carpools so that concerned citizens can attend the hearing.

– Scott Morgan reminds us that despite what the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle keeps saying, the initial arrest and prosecution of Marc Emery was motivated by Emery’s politics more than anything else. In Emery’s home province of Ontario, lawyers are preparing a case that will challenge Canada’s marijuana prohibition in court.

– New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently posted a query about drug legalization to his facebook account, soliciting feedback for a column this week. It’s great to see some of the most well-respected journalists in the country starting to tackle this question. Here are what I consider the 5 most important reasons the U.S. should go down that path right now:

1. Reducing law enforcement/incarceration expenses – You can just peek ahead to the section below on LEAP’s Howard Woolridge for a good rundown on this one. He talks about the law enforcement side of the equation when it comes to marijuana, but the incarceration costs for all drug users is an even more enormous expense that would be greatly diminished if we invested public funds into treatment. We sometimes think of the economic benefits of ending drug prohibition from the standpoint of how much money would be raised from taxing it, but the real savings come from the amount of money we won’t spend trying to put the 20-30 million Americans who either use or distribute drugs through our criminal justice system. We’re in a very serious economic crisis across the country right now, and while ending drug prohibition won’t solve the problem alone, the problem is virtually unsolvable without reducing the amount of public money that we spend incarcerating as many people as we do.

2. Improving the situation in Mexico – The decades long “war on drugs” had one major effect on drug trafficking. It successfully pushed control of the supply chain to a place where American law couldn’t reach it – Mexico. Now, the Mexican government is completely unable to deal with an illegal industry that pulls in tens of billions of dollars per year from American drug consumption. This has had devastating effects on Mexico’s economy and even more dire consequences for its security.

3. Keeping drugs out the hands of children – Without a regulated market for recreational drugs, the supply chains are run by criminal organizations who have zero incentive to keep drugs out of the hands of children. This has led to a situation where children have greater access to dangerous drugs, and even worse, often become easily dispensible pawns to be used for risky border crossings and other dangerous situations. You can solve both of these problems by setting up regulated markets for drugs.

4. Improving public health – Drug abuse and mental illness are two very costly health problems that feed off of each other. Our emphasis on incarcerating people in order to combat drug addiction doesn’t work and it makes the problem worse. Decriminalization of personal drug use is a vital first step in reducing the public health costs associated with addiction. Allowing doctors to prescribe drugs to addicts is another necessary step on this path, along with needle exchanges and other effective ways to mitigate the effects of drug addiction on our overall public health. In countries where these tactics have been done, they’ve been extraordinarily successful, both at reducing public health problems and lowering drug abuse rates.

5. Setting an example for how other countries can help reduce global organized crime and terrorism – When it comes to the divide in international drug law reform, the United States is on the same side as countries like Iran, Russia, and China, and opposed to countries like Switzerland, Portugal, and Canada, who’ve had greater success in dealing with drug addiction. The result is that the demand for illegal drugs (primarily heroin) is fueling the resurgence in the power of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan in a very similar fashion to how American drug consumption has been fueling Mexican drug gangs. It’s vital that we switch sides in this debate and start working with the countries that are boldly using reason, compassion, and empiricism to deal with this issue and reduce the demand for heroin. As the numbers of drug users rise dramatically in emerging nations like China, an inability to keep that money from flowing to people who view the western world as their enemy will be truly catastrophic.

– Frosty Woolridge, whose brother Howard is a former Michigan police officer and now the main lobbyist for LEAP in Washington DC working to end drug prohibition, posts some of Howard’s most compelling justifications for treating marijuana the same way we treat alcohol:

“Almost all of you reading this will have either been searched for marijuana or know someone who has. My profession has certainly changed its motto from ‘Protect and Serve’ to ‘Search and Arrest.’ A vehicle search will require two officers. Most officers operate alone, thus a colleague must be brought over from a neighboring district to assist. If a 911 call goes out in that district, the response time will be longer than necessary. Ditto for the district where the officer is searching the car. Reduction in Public Safety!

“The average search will require close to 60 minutes of total police time. So 750,000 possession cases equal only ¾ of a million hours, right? Wrong! According to my colleagues back in Bath Township, Michigan who spent most of their 12 hour shifts looking to bust the next Michael Phelps, they search an average of 15 cars to find one with a baggie. Now we are up to about 11 million hours or the equivalent of 5,500 street officers who do nothing but arrest the Willie Nelson’s of the world. Reduction in Public Safety!

…

Using a conservative figure of five hours per dealer bust, we are adding about 1.5 million more hours wasted. The hard number to calculate is how many hours are spent flying around in helicopters, locate an MJ garden and then spend a day cutting down the plants and airlifting them out….all without busting anyone. Now you have a clearer picture of the horrific amount of police time spent. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Wait! We are not done. These 845,000 MJ cases go to the lab that must show that the green stuff really is pot. Labs around the country are over-loaded with drug cases. Since drugs are the most important, guess what cases are not being processed? Rape kits & their DNA. According to National Public Radio and unrefuted, 400,000 rape kits some years old have never been opened. Rapists are running loose as labs process Willie’s last possession with intent to smoke bust. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Pop Quiz. According to our FBI, which crime receives more agent time: marijuana or child pornography? No brainer, right? And you are wrong! When FBI Director Mueller was asked by a not too happy Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz last year in a House hearing about the pitiful number of FBI agents (33 full-time equivalent) involved in kiddy porn crimes, his response was no new agents, no shifting of resources, nothing, nada, zip. IMO the expression on his face was ‘let them eat cake.’ Obviously he was never a street cop like me who has gently interviewed 7 year old rape victims and then arrested their tormentors. My blood is boiling as I write this, BTW. Reduction in Public Safety!

“Who else is unhappy with this criminal mis-direction of police resources? Some members of MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They will admit in private that the millions of street cop hours could be refocused & spent reducing deaths due to DUI by thousands. In public they are forced by funders to support MJ prohibition but in private they told me they support ending marijuana prohibition.

“The No Illegal Entry Into the USA groups are now opening their eyes to the fact that MJ prohibition means millions of extra border crossings. Why? Federal agents like ICE and Border Patrol have as their #1 priority federal (Title 21) drug laws. #2 is the catching of illegal entry. So, they literally will let 100 illegals coming thru without hindrance to stop one guy with a 60 pound backpack of grass. Experienced agents have informed me that absent the smuggling of pot with today’s manpower and technology, they could almost stop illegal entry across the southern border.

The emphasis two paragraphs above is mine. I’m very curious to know who’s actually running MADD and why they have such a strong stake in keeping marijuana illegal.

Dick Cheney passes the torture torch to daughter Liz:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sodIBh_pBs[/youtube]

Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer shows us why he should remain retired from politics:

The King County Executive’s job has become officially non-partisan, thanks to a voter initiative. In seeking the interim job, however, Royer discovered that the council still caucus and think as party members.

“They have not yet learned that they are non-partisan,” he said.

And I keep telling my dog and my cat that they are members of the same family, but they have not yet learned that they are non-enemies.

I mean, duh-uh.

I’m proud of my own contribution to Publicola’s start-up and its early success. But I’m also a little bit jealous.

The cold, hard truth about the right’s reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller—the truth that most anti-abortion activists are reluctant to admit, at least publicly—is that they’re happy he’s dead.

Well, maybe not “happy.” “Relieved,” might be a better word. Or, less succinctly, I think it is safe to say that there are many anti-abortion activists who genuinely believe that the ultimate good that comes from Dr. Tiller’s death far outweighs the inherent evil of his murder.

Our ever-absent blogging partner Will uses an apt analogy (though since he’s too lazy to write the post himself, I probably should’ve just presented it as my own), the oh-so-cliche thought experiment: If you could go back in time to pre-Nazi Germany, would you kill Adolf Hitler?

Murder is wrong; I think that’s a pretty universal moral standard.  But knowing the crimes Hitler committed and the horrors he wrought, few would consider it immoral to preemptively kill a man who would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent men, women and children. And while many of us might lack the fortitude to commit the act ourselves, neither would we mourn Hitler’s death. Indeed, we’d welcome it.

Yes, murder is wrong, but not all killing is murder, and as a society we tend to make moral exceptions in circumstances such as war, executions, and self-defense.

Now let’s look at the rhetoric anti-abortion advocates have used to describe Dr. Tiller, both before and after his death.

Few on the right have publicly condoned Dr. Tiller’s murder (though the crazies like those at Free Republic are always willing to to jump to the defense of any moral outrage), but even in disowning and/or condemning the assassination, some very public figures continue to describe Tiller as a “serial killer,” a “baby killer,” a “mass murderer” and worse.  Even anti-abortion activists and organizations who genuinely disavow violence have referred to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the Killer” and “Dr. Death,” comparing him to the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Many, many people in the anti-abortion movement, mainstream and extreme alike, have used and embraced this sort of rhetoric, and I see little reason to doubt their ingenuousness. These people believe that Dr. Tiller was a serial killer who brutally murdered thousands of babies, and who would have continued his killing spree for years to come… had he not been stopped by an assassin’s bullet.

Undoubtedly, most would have preferred that he were stopped through legal means, and damn few would have had the personal fortitude to pull the trigger themselves. But don’t kid yourselves. They don’t mourn Dr. Tiller’s death any more than I did the deaths of Saddam Hussein and his two odious sons, regardless of my opposition to the Iraq war itself. And they don’t think his killing was particularly immoral, especially when balanced by the thousands of babies who might have been saved in the process.

The cold, hard truth is, political and PR considerations aside, many in the anti-abortion movement are happy Dr. Tiller is dead. Or relieved. Or at the very least, comfortable with a moral calculus that, in their minds, balances the life of one guilty man against the lives of thousands of innocent babies.

And that is a disturbing truth the so-called “pro-life” movement needs to come to terms with.

Perhaps tiring of sucking off Michael Dunmire’s teat, longtime Tim Eyman lackey Mike Fagan has announced his candidacy for Spokane City Council.

“While the city of Spokane braces itself for some lean budget years…the taxpayers of this city deserve to be protected from wanton taxation in order to maintain basic services,” Fagan said in a press release this morning.

Good for him.  I mean, not the anti-tax bullshit, that’s a load of irresponsible crap. But good for him for attempting to be part of the process. I look forward to seeing how (whether?) Fagan intends to maintain basic services while reflexively opposing new revenues.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuTiTfbfy7Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

“I watched with glee

While your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades

For the gods they made.”

It’s Tuesday evening, which means that the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets for an evening of politics under the influence. The festivities take place at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by even earlier for dinner.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqj_e6P9zCg[/youtube]

Not in Seattle? The Drinking Liberally web site has dates and times for 331 chapters of Drinking Liberally sprinkled liberally across the globe.

Over on Fuse’s Dr. Scoop, a reader asks why middle and lower income people so often vote with Tim Eyman and against their own economic self-interest, to which the good doctor rephrases the question:

First, it would probably be more accurate to ask, “Why do white middle and lower income people often vote with Tim Eyman and oppose progressive tax reforms?”  I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest that people of color have this voting pattern.  In fact, my data geek friends at Win/Win did a quick analysis and didn’t find any Eyman initiatives that passed in precincts dominated by non-white voters.

Huh.  Now that’s an interesting bit of data analysis that at the very least says something about Eyman and the image he projects.

The Seattle P-I has an article today supposedly exploring the future of tolling on Washington state roads, but which essentially just ends up serving as a forum for a debate between Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute and Michael Ennis of the Washingon Policy Center… two conservative think tanks.

I’m not saying that Matt and Michael don’t make any reasonable arguments, but really, is this the best we can do? Two conservative think tanks duking it out over creating state transportation policy that will largely impact the predominantly progressive Puget Sound region?

And fuck this terrorist asshole too. After a full and proper trial of course.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man who police say shot two soldiers, killing one, outside an Army recruiting office here because he was upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “would have killed more soldiers if they had been in the parking lot,” a prosecutor said Tuesday at a preliminary court hearing in the case.

The suspect, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, pleaded not guilty at the hearing, and a district judge ordered that he be held without bail.

So in the course of 24-48 hours the country gets to witness twice the barbarity and delusion that infects certain sectors of religion in this country.

People who claim to speak the one and only eternal truth cannot be reasoned with, period, and there is no reason to be civil towards them or pretend they are only interested in debate. They’re interested in control of society based on their own particular warped views, and once they start advocating or using violence towards that end, any pretense of respect or civility is at an end.

Obviously it’s impossible to stop all lunatics, either Christianist or Islamist, but the goal should be continued high-quality law enforcement observation and investigation of those who repeatedly make violent threats against others. It’s a daunting task, but we should applaud the rank and file FBI agents and police officers who try to keep everyone safe while observing the law themselves. Cowards who engage in rhetoric along the lines of “I’m not saying kill people, but I won’t be sad if people get killed” are a pretty low order of scum and earn only contempt.

Engaging in violence-encouraging speech and actions is outside the bounds of legitimate debate in a democracy, and ordinary citizens need to reject those movements and the politicians who pander to them at the ballot box. Yes, it’s a tough line to draw sometimes, and certain movements have a knack for walking right up to that line and stopping, but that doesn’t excuse such infantile behavior. Responsible media figures and political leaders will realize they have a duty to conduct themselves in an above-board fashion, and citizens have a right to belittle and call on the carpet those who won’t.

A group of prominent conservatives have sent a letter to Republican senators urging them to filibuster President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court:

Our national experience in the past decade has changed the standard by which Republicans should cast their confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democrat president.  The benefit of a doubt that once arguably might have justified the indifference over the last two nominees of a Democratic president is no longer tenable.

Huh. Actually, this obstructionist approach might not be a bad political strategy… if Republicans are resigned to remaining a minority party for the foreseeable future. But if they ever plan to win back both the trust of the American people, and/or the White House, well, not so much.

Because, you know, what goes around comes around, and all that.

It wasn’t so long ago, during the Alito nomination, that Republicans reviled Democratic talk of a filibuster as unAmerican and unconstitutional. This was during the heady days following the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2004 elections, a time when Karl Rove was boasting about a permanent Republican majority, and Senate leaders threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminating the filibuster altogether—should minority Democrats put up too strong a fight. They didn’t.

But if a mere 40 Republicans follow this letter’s advice, and do vote as a block to hold up the Sotomayor confirmation over issues of judicial philosophy, then the standard by which senators cast confirmation votes really will have changed. And it will be a standard by which Democrats will measure their own actions the next time a Republican president nominates a justice.

The letter argues that “Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts,” pointing to 2008 exit polls that showed three quarters of voters considered Supreme Court nominations a significant factor in their vote, and 7% the determining issue. But it might behoove the authors to remember that this was an election Obama won by a comfortable margin, capturing electoral votes in every region of the country, and one in which Democrats made substantial gains in the Senate, thus making the “stewardship” argument profoundly self-defeating to the conservative cause.

With Republican presidents having appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and one Republican-appointed Chief Justice after another having run the court for more than half a century, I understand if Republicans feel they have some sort of unique claim on the institution. But they don’t. Obama has just as much of a right to leave his imprint on the court as the presidents who preceded him.

So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come. And I’m guessing that cooler heads in the Republican caucus won’t.