Archives for September 2011

Rob “Cupcake” McKenna has lost control of the multi-state lawsuit against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

McKenna made the unilateral decision to join the lawsuit, against the will of the voters, the Governor, and the state legislature. He then repeatedly reassured us all that the aim of the lawsuit is only to overturn the “individual mandate” while keeping the rest of the law intact:

When Attorney General Rob McKenna signed on to the partisan Republican lawsuit challenging the federal Health Care Reform law, he claimed that he was not trying to overturn or repeal the entire law, only part of it.

In an interview with BJ Shea on KISW, McKenna stated, “We don’t think we can stop this entire bill, we don’t think we can or that we should.”

In a video on his official website, McKenna stated, “There are two provisions that are focused on in this lawsuit. None of the thousands of other provisions in the law are affected because we are just addressing these two provisions. . . . . the individual health insurance mandate. . . .and Medicaid.”

In an interview with KING 5 News, McKenna stated, “We are not challenging the policy, that is not our role.”

McKenna’s official website reads, “This suit will not ‘overturn’ or ‘repeal’ the new health care reform legislation. In fact, this lawsuit will not affect most provisions in this 2,400-page bill.”

Has McKenna been lying to us all along? Or…maybe he just didn’t know what the fuck he was doing by joining the lawsuit. Because the principles of the lawsuit see a larger purpose:

“This health-care law is an affront on Americans’ individual liberty,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who asked the high court to strike down the entire law, not just its mandate that all Americans have health insurance. […]

Bondi’s request to strike down the entire law was at odds with McKenna’s statements when he made Washington state a plaintiff in the case last year.

McKenna, a Republican candidate for governor in 2012, said his goal in joining the lawsuit was not to strike down the entire law, just the provisions he argues are unconstitutional — chiefly the mandate. But the plaintiffs’ legal briefs since then repeatedly have sought to scrap the entire law.

McKenna’s office said he has been overruled on that point by his co-plaintiffs.

So, whether he initially lied or was just too fucking stupid or incurious enough to know what he was signing up for, the one thing we know: McKenna hasn’t been influential enough to convince his fellow AGs to limit the scope to what he promised us.

McKenna should now do the right thing and pull out of the lawsuit.

Nina Shapiro’s profile of former U.S. Attorney John McKay is long, but a very interesting read. As I’ve written about a few times here, McKay has undergone a big transformation from Republican U.S. Attorney to an outspoken advocate of marijuana legalization and other issues important to civil libertarians. It’s very reminiscent of former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr’s transformation earlier in the decade.

Despite my reservations about the New Approach Washington initiative, I’m glad to see McKay lending his voice to the effort to end marijuana prohibition. It’s rare that people make these kinds of radical political changes after a long career, and Shapiro goes back through the last decade to recount the history of how McKay made that journey. Much of it is a tale we’re very familiar with, as the Bush Administration’s DOJ became politicized and expected Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys to be political actors.

More and more Seattle folks are biking to work. From Seattle Bike Blog:

Seattle rose to the number two spot among major US cities in terms of the number of people commuting to work by bike in 2010. The percentage of people using a bicycle as their primary mode of getting to work in Seattle increased 22 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to the annual American Communities Survey conducted by the US Census.

This data confirms the city’s 2010 downtown bike commute count, which measured an increase of 21.4 percent in the same time period.

Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of people commuting by bike in Seattle increased 57 percent. Between 2000 and 2010, it increased 93 percent.

On top of what it says about the infrastructure improvements in the last decade or so, I think there is a cultural aspect that gets lost in the war on cars nonsense. And that’s that most Seattle drivers are perfectly willing to share the road with bikes.

Yes, there are asshole drivers. Yes, the recent spate of bicyclist deaths has been tragic. Yes, several media outlets have invested themselves in a story of a clash between driving and riding a bike. Yes, I’ve read the comment threads whenever there’s a bike story in the paper. But for the most part, drivers are willing to give you a bit of room and to slow down if they can’t. Speaking personally, I’ve had pleasant chats with people in cars with the windows down who just started talking to me when we were both stuck at red lights. Probably more than people yelling at me or honking their horns.

And while I don’t have any hard data, lots of Seattle drivers also ride bikes. There’s certanily some self interest for me when I’m driving and I see a bike. On top of wanting to make sure not to hit the person, I also feel that I’d better give room and slow down, etc. to put kindness to bicyclists out into the world.

– A good primer on how to donate political money to make the most difference.

– HA God correspondent Goldy makes a point over at Slog about the Tacoma teachers’ right to strike even if it isn’t codified in law.

– The most stressful part of my commute is figuring out what to write.

– Cain would probably get a lot of support from Wall Street Republicans if his name was Co.

Jesus Christ, do they ever bother to fact check any Seattle Times columnist? I mean, I’m an idiot and I can spot the problems with the lede.

Someday Seattle needs to vote no on a tax increase. Just to set a limit — some limit, somewhere.

The links added by me, and I swear were just off the top of my head. I know one is King County, but it’s not like Seattle taxes go up if we accept them but the county as a whole doesn’t. And I didn’t include Roads and Transit for the same reason (I’m not even sure if those measures passed or failed in Seattle). Or any Washington State initiatives. And by the by all of the tax cutting initiatives in Washington state over the years: they cut taxes for people in Seattle too, so we can increase our taxes before we hit the “limit” of before Eyman started relentlessly destroying the public good.

Anyway, then Ramsey goes on first to the Families and Education levy:

It is not a school levy. Voters already have approved those. Families and Education is a seven-year city levy that pays for preschool, clinics, tutors and after-school programs. This year’s levy will hit the average property owner at $124 a year. In the amount of money it raises, it doubles the existing seven-year tax, which was a 69 percent increase over the previous seven-year tax.

Preschools, clinics, tutors, etc., have not gone up in cost that much. Proponents want more of them.

Well, the state has been cutting education. They cut it in part because of the economy, in part because things that are dedicated to education like timber have been declining, in part because we rely too heavily on a sales tax that’s a shrinking share of the economy, and in part because of those statewide tax cuts that also cut taxes in Seattle. So it’s not just the cost of those things but the need to fill in the gap the state left (and beyond that the greater need in a recession).

Then while trying to argue that we should reject the car tabs, he makes the case that they should be larger:

One reason is that it is not pegged to anything big. The $204 million it will raise over 10 years will be spread over the city — a spoonful here and there on potholes, a serving of sidewalks, a slice of bus signals and bus electrification, more bike lanes, etc. Many of these are worth doing. Then there is the 9 percent earmarked for streetcars, which appeal to people who judge vehicles on how they look.

Ha, it’s funny because even though the SLUT has been so successful that we’ve had to add another car, streetcars look funny (???) or whatever. But, yes, I agree I’d like more big projects. You get that with higher car tabs, not by rejecting the car tabs.

Also, he enthusiastically quotes people who don’t like the regressive nature of the tax. I agree with that, but somehow, I doubt Ramsey would be for it if we raised the same amount of money (or enough for something big) by basing it on the blue book value with an exemption for the first $500 or whatever. In any event the state, not the city, is the problem here. I think it’s safe to say that if Olympia gave us the ability to raise the money in a more progressive way, Seattle would agree to that.