Archives for January 2010

A longtime reader writes TPM with their personal sob story:

My story: My father is dying of Huntington’s disease. Before he dies in 8 to 10 years, he will need anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and drugs that fight dementia and his tremors and convulsions. He’ll need multiple brain scans and physical therapy sessions.

Current medical treatments can’t save him, but they will give him a few more years before the slow death strips him of his memories, personality and control of his body.

There’s a 50 percent chance the same slow motion death awaits me and each of my three siblings. If I ever lose my job I’ll become uninsurable, permanently. My sister already lost her insurance.

That means whatever treatment is developed for Huntington’s will be unavailable to us. There’s simply no way we could afford it. Not only high tech gene therapies or other interventions, but the medications and treatments that exist now that would buy us enough time to see our kids’ graduations or weddings, and would give them hope of not suffering their grandfather’s fate.

For all of its faults, the Senate version of the health care bill includes provisions that would prevent health insurance companies from denying such people coverage, or canceling their policies. The House could pass this bill as-is, and send it to the President to sign. Or, they could start the reform effort over from scratch and attempt to negotiate with the 41 Republicans in the Senate, who have already said that they would not support such provisions.

After all, most of us did not make the poor personal choice to be born to a father with a terrible hereditary disease like Huntington’s, so really, why should we or insurance company shareholders be asked to share the costs? That would be socialism, right?

[via TP]

The Seattle Times editorial board argues for “Zero tolerance for cyberbullies,” and while I’d agree that schools have rarely taken bullying nearly seriously enough, just the mention of the phrase “zero tolerance” gives me the willies.

McClure, like all Seattle Public Schools, has a zero-tolerance bullying policy. Cruel remarks and threats posted online may be someone’s idea of free speech but they violate school safety policies.

In recent rulings the U.S. Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that students don’t currently enjoy First Amendment protections even for off-campus speech (unless, of course, they incorporate), an unfortunate precedent that has emboldened school officials in the exercise of their authority. And as a former student myself, I just don’t trust that kind of authority.

First we had zero tolerance for drugs, a policy under which a 13-year-old girl could be strip-searched on suspicion of bringing ibuprofen to school. Then we had zero tolerance for weapons, a policy that inevitably lead to a 14-year-old girl being expelled from school for accidentally bringing in a butter knife.

Really. A butter knife.

And now we want zero tolerance on speech?

As ridiculous as the two examples above are, a pill is a pill and a knife is a knife, and I suppose if you want to be an asshole or an idiot about it, both violate the schools’ zero tolerance policies, and well, a rule is a rule. But if even things as concrete and well defined as physical objects can be taken out of context, just imagine the mess school officials can make applying a zero tolerance policy to words.

No context, no subtext, no reading between the lines unless school officials choose to read between the lines, regardless of what the student really meant. If a teacher overhears a student responding to abuse in kind, that’s a violation of the zero tolerance policy, regardless of whether the real bully was the unheard instigator. And if a school official chooses to misinterpret the typically cruel, mutually abusive teenage banter that often passes between friends, that’s a violation of the zero tolerance policy too.

Do I want schools to crack down on bullying? Absolutely. But do I want my own daughter to be subjected to a zero tolerance policy on something as inherently subjective as speech? Hell no!

A zero tolerance policy is the lazy way out of a complex social problem. It’s the cowardly way out. And it’s no excuse for diminishing the rights of students any further.

About two years ago, coyotes started to become a frequent sighting in Seward Park, and cats started disappearing from the surrounding neighborhood. I saw the “lost cat” posters popping up on nearby telephone poles, and heard the grisly stories of mangled cat parts found scattered through nearby yards, but living almost a mile from the park and just couple blocks up the hill from busy Rainier Avenue, I didn’t pay it that much attention… until our cat nearly fell victim to an apparent coyote attack.

Shortly thereafter a coyote casually crossed our path less than fifty feet ahead of us on a trail in Seward Park, in the middle of the day. And only about six months ago, I drove up to my house around dusk, just in time to see a coyote stroll out of my yard and down the sidewalk. (Fortunately, our cat was safely indoors at the time.) Meanwhile, lost kitty posters continue to be a mainstay on neighborhood telephone polls, along with the occasional flyer bemoaning a missing small dog.

When neighbors have called animal control to complain about the perceived threat (real threat, if you’re a cat), they’ve generally gotten the same muted response. Coyotes are part of a natural, healthy, urban landscape, and the city has no plans to trap or kill them. We should celebrate their beauty… and keep our cats safely indoors.

So I was a bit surprised to read that authorities have decided to hunt and kill the coyotes that have recently been making the news in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood:

The state has identified two problem coyotes. “We’ve had some unsettling reports of aggression,” he said. “There’s been lost pets, small dogs and cats, and this has caused us some concern.”

Uh-huh. So why is it that lost pets in Magnolia are such a concern to local officials, yet lost pets in Southeast Seattle are not? What… my cat’s life isn’t as valuable as the life of a Magnolia cat? Is it because of where we live? Is it because he’s black?

Southeast Seattle residents have long complained about getting the short end of the stick when it comes to city services compared to our North end counterparts, and this sort of double-standard doesn’t help. I’ve closely followed the coyote reports coming out of Magnolia, and they’re no different from what’s going on down here. Small pets fall prey to the Seward Park coyotes on a regular basis, and I can testify from my personal encounters that the coyotes showed little fear at my presence. Yet for some reason the Magnolia complaints seem to be taken more seriously.

Personally, I agree with the advice we’ve received from animal control. The coyotes are beautiful to watch, and I take great pleasure in seeing wildlife thrive within such an urban setting. We’re a lot more careful with our cat these days, who no longer spends the nights prowling outdoors… though that probably has more to do with his own changing 11-year-old habits than with our discipline. The coyotes have also performed a notable service, effectively controlling a rabbit population in Seward Park that had threatened to grow out of control without predation.

If city or state authorities proposed trapping and relocating the Seward Park coyotes, I doubt there’d be much opposition from local residents, but hunting and killing them? That just seems a bit extreme, considering the minimal level of threat they pose. Fortunately, I doubt it will come to that, as clearly, our concerns aren’t taken nearly as seriously as those of Magnolia and other North end neighborhoods.

UPDATE:
One of the Magnolia coyotes was trapped and killed this morning on BNSF property.

He said the coyote was caught in a leg trap about 5 a.m. today and was euthanized with a shot to the head.

Caught in a leg trap and then shot in the head. How humane.

FYI, this is what a dead, snared coyote looks like:

And this is what that coyote looked like back when it was puppy.

22-year-old Rebecca Solomon was passing through security at Philadelphia International Airport, when a TSA worker motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

She’d left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile.

Just kidding, he said. He waved the baggie. It was his.

No biggie. He was just kidding. In fact, he was training other TSA workers how to detect contraband. The fact that he reduced this poor woman to tears, well, I guess that’s the kinda sacrifice we all have to make to win this war on terror.

But now that I know that TSA workers have such a great sense of humor, I’ll have to perpetrate a practical joke of my own the next time I go through airport security.

Air America Radio shut off its microphones today and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It will continue to provide affiliates with “encore” programming through 9PM Monday, January 25, at which time its programming will end for good.

I suppose you could call Air America a failure, and from a business perspective it certainly was. It never operated in the black, and seemed to be in the midst of financial and management turmoil since before it launched in April of 2004.

But it helped catapult Al Franken into the U.S. Senate, and launched a then unknown Rachel Maddow on the path toward her own show on MSNBC, and will leave behind dozens of thriving progressive talk stations nationwide. And without the ecosystem that Air America spawned, Ed Schultz and other successful progressive talkers might never have had the opportunity to reach a national audience.

That’s a pretty impressive legacy, and one for which I at least am grateful.

Just to be absolutely clear, I think it is safe to argue that if there’s one thing on which a majority of Americans agree, it’s that corporations don’t have nearly enough influence in state, local and national politics. So we should all thank the courageous justices of the United States Supreme Court for correcting this imbalance.

If there is a Republican wave building momentum heading into the 2010 election, our state GOP caucus seems intent on doing everything possible to sink its own ship. First they kicked off the session with a parade of tentherist nonsense, and now they’re repeating Dino Rossi’s single biggest mistake from the 2008 gubernatorial election by introducing a bill that would reduce Washington’s minimum wage.

I mean, are they stupid, or what?

Yeah, sure, the last thing our state’s families need in the midst of this crappy economy is a cut in wages, but that simple logic aside, as a political strategy, this bill is just plain dumb. Voters overwhelmingly approved our current minimum wage statute via a citizens initiative, and it was Rossi’s public support for the notion of reducing the minimum wage that proved a turning point in the election, and provided Gov. Gregoire with one of her most potent political attacks.

As long as Republicans continue to stick to this losing strategy, it’s hard to imagine them seriously threatening the Democrats’ legislative majorities.

Of course, I’m not plotting to blow up the Supreme Court, despite the intentionally provocative headline, and anybody who would believe for moment that such constitutes an actual threat is a complete and utter idiot. But I wonder if the Republican majority on the Court who just voted to gut our campaign finance laws by throwing out a century of precedent, respect my right to free speech as much as they respect that of corporations?

No doubt there are some of you out there who believe this headline crosses a line for which I should be subject to criminal penalties. After all, to maintain a safe and civil society the First Amendment cannot possibly be absolute; you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and all that. And yet I’m guessing that that those of you who would relish the thought of armed federal agents kicking down my door in the middle of night in response to a mere rhetorical device, are the same folks who are cheering the Court’s 5-4 decision to protect corporate America’s unfettered First Amendment right to corrupt our government through unlimited political spending.

No, I’m not plotting to blow up the Supreme Court, nor do I support or encourage such a radical revisionist agenda, because unlike the Court’s Republican majority, I actually respect the institution. But I fear for a nation whose highest court consistently grants money more free speech rights than speech itself.

I guess you get the Supreme Court you pay for:

In a ruling that radically reshapes campaign-finance law, the Supreme Court has struck down a key campaign-finance restriction that bars corporations and unions from pouring money into political ads.

The long-awaited 5-4 ruling, in the Citizens United v. FEC case, presents advocates of regulation with a major challenge in limiting the flow of corporate money into campaigns, and potentially opens the door for unrestricted amounts of corporate money to flow into American politics.

Good thing too, because if anybody is a victim in our current political system, it’s corporations. Good thing they’ll finally get their voices heard.

This site is preventing me from writing anything more substantial today.

UPDATE: SAFER, a popular Colorado-based marijuana law reform group that has run a number of initiatives, is launching a boycott of Starbucks over their support for an anti-marijuana law enforcement group that promotes and glorifies violence.

So, how crazy is the state Republican caucus in their sloppy embrace of their crazy, tenther, teabagger, state sovereignty agenda? So crazy that state Sen. Val Stevens has introduced a Joint Memorial calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment… the amendment that mandates the direct popular election of U.S. Senators.

In its place, Stevens would have Senators once again appointed by their respective state legislators, only by a plurality vote, not a majority, thus giving Washington’s minority Republicans a better shot at electing a Senator than they do under our current, (small “d”) democratic system.

Really. I’m not kidding.

I guess that’s the Republican idea of “populism.”

The New York Times announced today that it intends to charge readers for frequent access to its website, starting in early 2011.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.

What exactly the NY Times considers “frequent,” and how much they will charge, not even the paper’s executives seem to know, but the move to squeeze subscription fees from online readers doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Will it work? That is, will revenue from online subscribers substantially exceed the online advertising revenue lost due to the inevitable drop in page views? I dunno. The NY Times fills a kinda unique position in our media landscape as our nation’s undisputed paper of record. So, maybe.

But the big question for me is, successful or not, will this prove to be a viable business model that, say, the Seattle Times might follow in an effort to turn around its own declining financial prospects?

I don’t think so.

The Seattle Times simply does not play as vital and unique a role in our local community as their New York counterpart does nationally. While the NY Times consists almost entirely of original content from some of the best and most highly respected reporters and columnists in the nation, the Seattle Times relies heavily on the Associated Press and other newswires and syndication services to fill its pages. For example, two of the four articles on the front page of today’s dead-tree edition are newswire reprints, including an above-the-fold lead story culled from the pages of… the New York Times.

Why would I pay twice for the same story? Indeed, why would I pay at all for a newswire story I can read elsewhere for free?

Well, I might, because part of my schtick is critiquing the Seattle Times, but as an unrepentant news junkie, I’m the exception that proves the rule. Unless the news industry universally adopts the NY Times model, I just don’t see how dailies like the Seattle Times can demand a high enough flat-rate subscription fee to offset the inevitable loss of readership that would come from hiding their content behind a firewall.

Newspapers are kinda like information department stores, presenting a broad variety of content on a range of subjects and issues in one easy to consume package. But the hierarchy of the Internet is flat, and the barriers to entry relatively nonexistent in terms of capital and infrastructure investments, leaving publications like the Seattle Times vulnerable to specialized competitors.

In the old media technology, where folding a bunch of pages together into one convenient bundle was the most efficient means of distributing news and opinion, the Seattle Times merely needed to do everything well to fend off new competitors. But in the new media technology, being merely good is not good enough.

If The Stranger provides better coverage of the music and arts scene, and the neighborhood blogs provide better coverage of the neighborhoods, and Publicola provides more thorough coverage of Olympia, and HA provides more entertaining and relevant political commentary and analysis… what exactly is the economic incentive for consumers interested in those subjects to subscribe to the Seattle Times as a whole? Indeed, ironically, it is specialized news and opinion sites that have the more compelling argument for placing their content behind subscription firewalls, a model that has worked well for the Puget Sound Business Journal and other online trade publications.

I don’t mean to dis the valuable original reporting that the Seattle Times does produce, but I’m not sure there’s enough of it to make a flat-fee, all-you-can eat subscription a compelling product. I don’t subscribe to cable TV for the very same reason. Sure, there are networks I might purchase on an a la carte basis, were I given the option, but I’m not going to pay $60/month for 500 channels of stuff I’ll never watch. Especially not now, with so much equally compelling content available over the Internet.

No doubt Frank Blethen and his bean counters are encouraged by the NY Times pioneering effort, but they shouldn’t be. The Seattle Times simply is no NY Times, and I don’t see how the business model of one easily translates to the other.

I’m not sure what the solution is for the Seattle Times and other dailies. Hell, I’m not even sure there is one.

To repeat a comment I made a couple posts prior, the last thing voters want in their national leaders is weakness, and that’s exactly how Democrats are going to be perceived if they do not pass a health care reform bill after a year of endless talk and debate. President Obama promised change, and as ridiculous and unreasonable as the logic may be, considering that the Republicans have been the obstacle to change, if the Dems can’t produce it, voters will toss ’em out.

So the solution is obvious. The House needs to pass the Senate bill as-is, and then attempt to fix it as best they can through reconciliation and subsequent legislation. There’s no other choice. Anything else would be political suicide.

Progressives need to bite the bullet and pass a bill without a public option, that largely caves to the demands of the health care industry, and conservatives need to give up their demand for tougher restrictions on abortion. To do otherwise is to assure electoral disaster in November, and sacrifice our last best chance to turn this country around.

Not much reason to be optimistic about tomorrow’s votes in the State House. For optimism, though, we can still look to the polling trends.