Archives for January 2011

This Thursday, the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee will be having a hearing for the medical marijuana bill introduced by Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36). State Rep. Jim Moeller (D-49) has introduced an identical bill in the House.

These bills have been introduced because of the numerous shortcomings in the original medical marijuana law passed by voters in 1998 and updated in 2007. These shortcomings have been frustrating for patients and law enforcement as it’s given rise to a quasi-legal system of underground dispensaries. Here are the main items that this legislation aims to address:

– Arrest Protection – Under the current law, patients don’t have any formal protection from arrest. Under the February 2010 State Supreme Court decision in State v Fry, courts affirmed that police can conduct searches and arrest even the patients who are following the letter of the law and force them to prove in court that they’re in compliance. In most of the state, this hasn’t mattered as few county prosecutors are willing to drag medical marijuana patients through the court system when they’re clearly in compliance, but there have been exceptions (particularly in rural counties like Kitsap).

– Cooperative Grows – Under the current law, there’s no provision for cooperative grows, which for many is a convenient way to ensure a constant supply of medicine. Under the language of the bill, coops will be limited to 25 people and 99 plants.

– Licensed Producers and Licensed Dispensaries – The most significant part of this bill is the creation of a regulated system of marijuana producers and dispensers. Producers will be licensed and regulated by the Department of Agriculture and dispensaries will be licensed and regulated by the Department of Health. Under the current language of the bill, the licensing would begin on July 1, 2012. In the interim, the bill claims that dispensaries operating under the terms of this law will be able to present an affirmative defense in court. One issue that’s been raised is whether adding these responsibilities to these state agencies can be done in the current all-cuts environment – even with the knowledge that the taxes collected from this bill would be a minor windfall for the state budget.

– Designated Providers – While this bill authorizes dispensaries and coops, it does not dismantle the existing rules regarding designated providers. However, dispensaries have used some creative legal reasoning to maintain that they’re complying with the restrictions on designated providers that they can only provide for one patient at one time (in some cases by having each customer sign a paper denoting that the dispensary is their provider for the duration of the transaction). Under this bill, a designated provider must wait for 15 days to switch the patient they’re providing for. It’s not entirely clear whether the provider will be in violation of the law if he continues to grow plants in that fifteen day period.

– Employment Protection – Earlier today, the State Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Jane Roe v. Teletech. This case involves a woman who was fired from a customer service phone job that she’d just started after she tested positive for marijuana on a drug screening. She’d previously informed them at the time she was hired that she was a medical marijuana patient. The bill includes language that provides employment discrimination protection against cases like this unless the job involves public safety, operating heavy machinery, or handling dangerous substances. It doesn’t provide any protection for those who want to use medical marijuana while at work.

– Probation – There’s language in the bill that allows for individuals (if allowed by a judge) to use medical marijuana while on probation. This is a response to the aggressive attempts (at the behest of Rob McKenna’s office) to prevent anyone on probation from being able to use medical marijuana – even if they’d been an authorized patient for years.

– Patient Registries – What’s arguably the most controversial part of the bill among patients is the patient registry. In order to provide an easy way for law enforcement officials to determine whether individuals are authorized patients, the bill establishes a patient registry. The language of the bill is fairly strong about providing the proper kinds of mechanisms to keep this information secret, but recent news events from other states have shown that promises of confidentiality don’t always work out as expected.

I’ve been typing up this list while at the Cannabis Defense Coalition’s meeting to discuss the pro’s and con’s of the bill. There’s a lot of nervousness among patients that this bill could end up like the bill in 2007, where the strongest aspects of the bill are stripped away, leaving patients in continued limbo. My hope is that the experience of the last few years gives the legislature a greater impetus to provide real fixes for a broken system. On Thursday, we’ll begin to find out where this is headed.

UPDATE: The city of Edmonds is trying to ban dispensaries. They apparently already have one that operates openly there. If Kohl-Welles’ bill passes, however, cities like Edmonds would not be able to override the state law and ban dispensaries outright. They could only use “reasonable” zoning restrictions to keep them from being located in certain areas.

UPDATE 2: Nina Shapiro has more here in the Seattle Weekly.

Please join us tonight for and evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by around 7:00 pm and join some folks for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 234 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

07/15/2008: Young woman quit DNR after being sexually harassed by Commissioner Sutherland

If a statewide elected official were to humiliate a young female employee in front of her coworkers and supervisors by inappropriately touching her—twice—while lewdly remarking on her breasts, and ultimately leading to her resignation… you’d think that might generate a few headlines from a local press corps proven oh so sensitive on matters of perceived personal offense. But apparently, not if that elected official is a likable, grandfatherly type, like Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland.

The incident dates back almost three and a half years, and while hushed whispers have been making the rounds for nearly as long, it was not until March of 2008 that the allegation was substantiated through a public records request that produced a 62-page document detailing a number of eyewitness accounts. (The name of the victim is redacted throughout.) Yet even with this document in hand, multiple news organizations have declined to inform voters of an undisputed incident that portrays a shocking lapse of judgment on the part of Commissioner Sutherland, a management style disruptive to the operations of his agency, and a clear violation of his department’s anti-harassment policies, if not the law itself.

Perhaps no post better illustrates the crucial role of independent bloggers like me than this muckraking expose on then Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland, and his sexual harassment scandal. The story, excruciatingly documented in 62 pages of public records, had been shopped around for months, but no mainstream news organization would run with it. Finally, as a last resort, the documents came to me, and after a couple weeks of further investigation and careful study, I posted. The next day the story hit the front page of the Seattle Times (prompting me to print up Seattle Times business cards with title “Volunteer Ombudsman”)… and Sutherland went on to lose a close reelection race to Democrat Peter Goldmark.

Read the whole thing.

I’m gonna tell you something nearly every Democrat in Olympia knows, but most are too chicken-shit to admit: Washington’s taxes are too low, and without substantial tax restructuring, few if any of the draconian budget cuts being proposed will be temporary.

Remember the boom years of the 1990’s, when our local economy clicked into overdrive and new residents flocked here for great jobs and the good life?  Between 1990 and 1999, Washington’s population increased by over 21 percent, even as state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income swelled to a thirty-year high, peaking at 10.4 percent by mid-decade.

Since then, lawmakers and initiative writers have fed the public a steady stream of tax cuts and business exemptions, ultimately slashing state and local taxes below 8.9 percent of personal income by 2008, a thirty year low. And with revenues dropping faster than incomes as the Great Recession came on, and recovering slower than incomes in its aftermath, new data will surely show our state and local tax “burden” dropping yet a couple tenths of a percent further over the past two years.

For much of the past decade, both tax revenues and our economy were propped up by the real estate bubble, but with that fantasy having popped, Boeing moving production out of state, the Microsoft dynamo reaching maturity, and population growth dramatically slowing, the bill for the past fifteen years of public pandering and disinvestment is finally coming due. Our current level of taxation, and the manner in which its burden is distributed, is simply insufficient to sustain a level of essential services and public investment necessary to maintain our quality of life and assure economic growth.

No state relies more on the sales tax than Washington, which at over 62 percent of total revenues tops out at nearly twice the national average. But the sale of goods as a percentage of the total economy has been steadily shrinking for the past half century, requiring a series of sales tax rate increases just to keep revenues in pace with growth in demand for public services and investment… a demand that closely tracks growth in the economy as a whole.

What this describes is a structural revenue deficit that barring a broadening of the tax base or a steady increase in rates, assures that state and local government as a percentage of our economy will continue to shrink, and with it, its ability to provide the services and investments we want and need. Health care inflation, economic booms and busts and other cyclical factors can merely delay or accelerate the inevitable.

The math is undeniable.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper size and scope of government… but we’re not having it. Instead, even as we continue to elect Democratic majorities, we’re getting the Republican agenda by default. And unless Democrats start providing a little leadership and confronting voters with the hard truth that in government like everything else, you get what you pay for, our state is going to increasingly look less like the Washington of the 1990’s, and more like the Arizona of today… only without all the sunshine and warm weather.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

05/16/2007: Falwell That Ends Well (or An Ode To The Mortal Majority)

Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

Say what you will about my punditry, but I’d wager that there isn’t another political blogger in the nation, left or right, who is more skilled at writing rhyming verse. And yet, in my six years of blogging, this is the only vaguely political poem I’ve written. Huh.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this little bit of verse, be sure to check out my epics: “How the Kvetch Stole Chanukah” and “The Little Black Cat’s Big Catch.”

A group of Bellevue homeowners is alleging that Sound Transit has intentionally increased cost and risk estimates of a proposed light rail alignment, to make it look worse. The agency says it’s just not true, but it’s a sign of how much tension there is in a debate over where trains will travel.

Because as we’ve learned from experience, public agencies always overestimate the cost of large infrastructure projects. The Big Dig came in at a fraction of its original projected cost, and no doubt Seattle taxpayers are due for a big rebate when the deep bore tunnel comes in well under budget. That’s just the way these things work.

(Just more evidence that if you say something loudly and angry enough—and with hand-made signs—our media will eventually report it as news.)

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Had President Barack Obama made this statement, instead of President Dwight Eisenhower (50 years ago today), he would no doubt be attacked by conservative Republicans and their media surrogates as a communist, a weakling and a friend of terrorists.

I’m just sayin’.

Last week’s contest was won by Brian. The correct answer was the church at the end of the movie Sixteen Candles, which is located in Glencoe, IL.

This week’s is a random location in Washington, good luck!

Also, this week’s View From Your Window contest at Andrew Sullivan’s blog looks like it could be from around these parts, but I haven’t pinpointed it yet. Does anyone know?

Zephaniah 1:14-18
The great day of the LORD is coming soon, very soon. On that terrible day, fearsome shouts of warriors will be heard everywhere. It will be a time of anger–of trouble and torment, of disaster and destruction, of darkness and despair, of storm clouds and shadows, of trumpet calls and battle cries gainst fortified cities and mighty fortresses. The LORD warns everyone who has sinned against him, “I’ll strike you blind! Then your blood and your insides will gush out like vomit. Not even your silver or gold can save you on that day when I, the LORD, am angry. My anger will flare up like a furious fire scorching the earth and everyone on it.”

Discuss.

With the Green Bay victory in Atlanta tonight, the Seahawks are playing for the right to host the NFC Championship next weekend. They take on Chicago at 10am tomorrow morning.

Oy…

A Washington Times editorial defends Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “blood libel” in the wake of the Tucson shootings, by calling media criticism of Palin “the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.”

Palin had been criticized for using the term “blood libel” to characterize media attacks against her, because of associations between “blood libel” and persecution of Jews in Europe. The term has its roots in the false charge that Jews would murder children and use their blood in religious rituals.

The choice by the Times to describe media attacks as “pogroms” is even more unfortunate since the term usually refers to destructive riots that targeted Jews during the time of the Russian Empire, and often resulted in massacres.

I’m starting work on the Fiddler on the Roof parody right away. My working title: “Didier on the Roof.”

I just spent most of the day writing a thousand-word examination of waste in higher education spending. And… well… it’s over on Slog, so go check it out.

Clearly, Rep. Filner should be ashamed of himself for demonizing the opposition, and resorting to such inflammatory rhetoric.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

06/03/2005: Dog day afternoon

Yesterday was a bad day for Feisty, my petulant little puppy. We awoke at 6 am to empty her young bladder, but on our way to the backdoor she took a shortcut on the living room rug. Later, annoyed with me for paying more attention to Kirby Wilbur than to her, she made every effort to voice her opinion on the air. The difficult behavior continued. She chased the cat. She dug a hole in the backyard, caking herself with mud. And when not chewing on my hands, ankles and feet, she destructively masticated whatever piece of furniture or household object was most convenient.

Finally, at the end of this long, tiring day, I returned Feisty to the family from whom we had adopted her, locked her in the kennel with her last remaining litter mates, got back in the car, and drove off.

Assuming dogs have the ability to reason (and for rhetorical purposes we’ll leave that assumption unchallenged,) one could hardly blame her for having the impression that, angry and exasperated, I had abandoned her. That would be a logical conclusion… at least, for a dog.

When I asked my co-bloggers for their suggestions as to which posts deserved inclusion into this Best of HA series, Darryl and Carl both nominated the above. It’s hardly my most influential, nor my best written, and in the larger scheme of things, the subject matter is rather inconsequential. But it’s also kind of a classic, both in the way it epitomizes my tendency to forego a proper lede, instead taking my readers on a winding path toward the ultimate thesis, and in the way my trolls are so quick to jump to conclusions… and for the worst.

Anyway, read the whole thing.