Archives for November 2011

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated 48 years ago on this date. My memory of that day, of the following weekend, is clearer than my recall of yesterday’s lunch.

Some small part of this phenomenon might be benign senile forgetfulness [jokes and insults at my expense expected, and welcomed]. But CRAFT syndrome, as it’s commonly known, explains, if anything, only the second half of the comparison. The vivid immediacy of November 22, 1963 in my mind’s eye is something else entirely.

For Americans of my age group (I was 13 at the time), the shocking murder of JFK is the seminal moment of our lives. That day irrevocably altered the way the world worked for us. In my opinion, every single one of the 17,532 days since then exists on the continuum that began that afternoon. What Pearl Harbor was for my parents’ generation, what 9/11 probably represents for more recent generations, 11/22/1963 was the “where were you when … ?” moment for me and my fellow Baby Boomers.

For the record, where I was was Heritage Junior High School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Along with the other members of the school band, I had just returned from outdoor practice — we were going to play at the next day’s high school football game, a contest that never happened — and was stowing my instrument when the principal informed us of the shooting over the PA system. The news was too much to process immediately, so we mostly sat in stunned silence. The school was on the far side of the township from my home, but I have no real memory of the long ride home with a passel of fellow adolescents in that yellow school bus. I do remember the weekend, as the whole family stared endlessly at the TV news reports. We watched the lying-in-state at the Capitol. We watched Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on Sunday. We watched the state funeral on Monday. We were in shock throughout.

We had made plans to spend Thanksgiving with relatives in the DC suburbs that year. It was a very somber holiday indeed. While there, we went to Arlington Cemetery to pay our respects to the President. On a bright, cold, and windy afternoon, we joined a long line of our fellow Americans, shuffling slowly and silently (except for the sobs) past the freshly-dug gravesite. It was so soon after the event that we had to carefully step over the eternal flame’s gas line, which had not yet been buried.

Over the years, I’ve written a number of November 22 essays on my blog, Peace Tree Farm. In addition to a version of the 2008 DailyKos diary linked above, they are: Forty years (2003), The end of the innocence (2004), and 43 … and 46 (2006).

For me, the death of JFK marks the day on which “The Sixties” began. The idea of a counterculture was inconceivable on November 21, all but inevitable on November 23. We can argue about when The Sixties ended (probably somewhere between the 1972 election and the first Rolling Stone article about disco, in September 1973), but I think it would be a real reach to put their birth anywhere other than the Kennedy assassination.

Ken Schram is upset about McGinn’s apology for his police using pepper spray on peaceful protesters. Not for the police using pepper spray, but for the apology.

What is it that we expect of police?

To protect people and property throughout the community. Professionalism. Integrity. They don’t always meet those standards, of course. No group of people will 100% of the time. So I assume this will be a post about how we better handle that? Awesome! We rarely have the chance to discuss that at that level.

I ask that rhetorical question in light of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn apologizing for cops who pepper-sprayed Occupy Seattle protestors last Tuesday because there were some who refused to obey their legitimate orders.

Really you think, “What is it that we expect of police?” is a rhetorical question? It’s not foundational? It’s not the basis for how media folks like Ken Schram ought to deal with the police?* Anyway, if you’re wondering what we can reasonably expect from Seattle police, well good news, there’s an SPD Manual (large .pdf). We can judge them against that, for starters.

So let’s play this out.

Would Mayor Mike have issued a mea-culpa if it had been a Ku Klux Klan demonstration and some elderly racist had taken a face full of pepper spray for ignoring police orders?

I would hope so. Everybody has a right to protest. And even despicable people don’t deserve to be pepper sprayed. It’s impossible to know, except presumably YOU COULD HAVE ASKED HIM. What with you being a TV and radio personality, and all.

I don’t think so.

You’re on TV, for Christ sake, you don’t really have to just guess. Call him up and throw the hypothetical at him. That’s what we expect of our news people.

Also, are there lots of demonstrations that McGinn disagrees with that are getting pepper sprayed? If so how about write about them? If not, then it sort of disproves your point, doesn’t it?** Finally, your analogy doesn’t hold up since the Klan have never, to my knowledge, made a commitment to nonviolence, as Occupy Seattle have. So, really, awesome metaphor all around.

What’s obvious here is that police need to be given a list of protesters that we absolutely won’t tolerate breaking the law, and a list of protesters that we give a wink and a nod to when they do something illegal because we agree with what they’re demonstrating against.

Or how about a specific set of standing orders. Like in the Manual linked to above that says (OC Spray is what’s commonly referred to as Pepper Spray, bold mine):

Personnel assigned OC spray, Patrol C.A.R.T or TASER less lethal force options are authorized to use these agents or devices during Unusual Occurrences (UOs), consistent with Department policy, unless otherwise directed by a Supervisor or the Incident Commander. Officers should weigh the capabilities and limitations of these force options in a crowd control setting. Less lethal force, specifically OC spray (Oleoresin Capsicum) or other riot control agents, shall not ordinarily be used to overcome passive resistance by nonviolent and/or peaceful protesters, absent additional compelling factors, or unless previously approved by the Incident Commander.

So it’s true that anyone, regardless of ideology, shouldn’t get pepper sprayed by the cops when they’re acting nonviolently. That seems like the logical thing.

If Mayor Mike would just inform police which illegal actions deserve his dispensation then SPD could save their pepper-spray for those whose protests genuinely offend his sensibilities and political points of view.

Nobody is saying don’t do anything. They’re saying don’t pepper spray people when it goes against procedures, and when you do, it’s right to apologize. People were willing to get arrested, and the police should have complied, but this is beyond that.

Also, Ken Schram often complains that the government is too big, wasteful, and out of control. Take for instance his most recent commentary that there must be waste out there somewhere in Washington State. Really, how someone like that says if you don’t obey police orders, you should be pepper sprayed is beyond me.

If Mayor Mike wants selective law enforcement, the least that should be expected of him is to do the selecting.

You still haven’t proved that he wants selective enforcement; you’ve only had a pointless hypothetical where you compared nonviolent protesters to people who engage in lynching. If McGinn supported selective enforcement, I think there would be camping at Westlake, the food tent wouldn’t have been removed, the city wouldn’t have ticketed people who honked in support, and the police wouldn’t have cleared the nonviolent protests at various places at all, pepper spray or no. Here, to cite one example, McGinn makes the point that he isn’t going to make specific exceptions for Occupy Seattle. “But when it comes to free speech, government does not get to do that. We are not allowed to favor one type of speech over another. That is anathema to the Constitution.”

With that, we’ll all be clear on exactly what we expect of police.

We should expect professionalism from them at all times. We give them a gun, we give them TASERS, we give them pepper spray, and we expect them to use it in a manner consistent with the rules. It doesn’t look like the officer who used pepper spray on peaceful protesters did that, but there will be an investigation. I support the due process rights of the officers who used pepper spray, and if there were orders, to use pepper spray, etc. I’d like to know that.

[Read more…]

– Yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

– I can’t understand why Wenatchee area property owners who benefit from the project can’t pay for their own town center. Also, the 2/3 stuff is a good point. Also, also, Reuven talks a good game, but if I had to put money on it, I say he’ll support bailing it out.

– The stupid party.

– Responding to peaceful protests and other expressions of growing citizenry unrest with brute force is a direct by-product of what we’ve allowed to be done to America’s domestic police forces in the name of the War on Terror (and, before that, in the name of the War on Drugs).

– Who is against giving children good food for lunch?

– David Attenborough was once a young man.

Last week’s contest was won by tomas (who correctly identified it as Tony Soprano’s house in The Soprano’s) and Liberal Scientist, who found the actual location in North Caldwell, NJ.

Here’s this week’s contest, a location somewhere in Washington. Good luck!

Isaiah 34:7
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.

Discuss.

I’m at a hearing for the APALA. I’m here to hear people’s stories, and from elected officials and community leaders. I’ll share them with you as it happens.

… First panel is the education panel. Students who’ve seen cuts at the UW, and are seeing the quality of education go down. SCCC nursing student whose workforce is being squeezed.

… Working with high school dropouts. Wants us to know that getting a GED is an equivalent to a high school diploma. That No Child Left Behind sees a GED as a failure, but that working with people who’ve dropped out, and getting their GED is just as good for everything you want to do.

… High school teachers are being asked to pay for more things for for their students, while at the same time losing wages. They can’t pay for extracurricular activities or to better themselves. Year 4 or 5 many teachers can’t keep up with this.

… Story of an undocumented student. Mongolia had it’s revolution, and her parents started a business, but when it failed, they came into America. She didn’t even know she was here illegally until she started working at 15. She couldn’t get a job except under the table because she didn’t have a Social Security number. Her parents go from low wage jobs to low wage jobs. Her bosses have cheated her out of wages and tips and sexually harassed her.

Nobody says one day, “let’s go to America and live there illegally.” They just want a better life for themselves and for their children. But now she doesn’t know that she’ll be able to use her degree. The immigration system especially hurts children.

… A new panel of government workers. DSHS worker. Sees the difficult lives that people are having especially new immigrants. A postal worker who was injured on the job and has been denied compensation, and the union is working to make sure he can get it. He has a daughter in high school so can’t retire.

… Service Sector Panel. A union steward a Boeing. The language barrier and the accent is an issue for many Asian workers. They are treated like kids (even if the managers are younger than their own children) because of it, and bosses don’t make an effort to work with them. Bosses “think they know more than us because they can talk.” The company forgets they’re part of the team and doesn’t respect them.

… Trying to organize a union at SeaTac. Wheelchair service is hard work but it’s important. People doing it make $8.67 and don’t have good benefits. Management will send people home early when they ask for their 10 minute break. So she wanted to start a union. Managers tried to say that they’ll fix everything, and the union will just take their money, and are punishing her. But she needs the job to support her family.

… A grocery worker who has worked throughout the area. Managers talk to people like they’re stupid. Talk slow and not like other employees, but the workers don’t complain. The language barrier makes it tough to solve problems. Workload is bigger for fewer hours, so there are more accidents: In delis working with knives, and people getting burned regularly. There’s no consistency in work schedule that makes it difficult to spend time with family.

In their last strike, they put out their demands in multiple languages. They presented the Chinese version to their manager to show how difficult it is to work when presented in another language.

… A Walmart worker. OUR Walmart. Organization United for Respect at Walmart. People working for Walmart are exhausted now preparing for Black Friday. They’re suffering to work paycheck to paycheck. They don’t even get $10 an hour when their company is a multibillion dollar company. If we can change Walmart, we can change the world.

… A janitor who was told he has to clean 13 stories of bathrooms in 4 hours. When he told his foreman he would do his best, he was told he’d be fired if he couldn’t. The foreman swore at him, and called other managers down. He’s been told by the company that he’ll be fired if he can’t do that in the future.

… That’s the end of the testimony from workers and students. But there’s still the “Distinguished Panel” of community members. A man from OSHA says that while overall injury rates are going down, it’s going up in health care where there is a lot of lifting and in hotels. People need to know they have the right to come to OSHA and state agencies.

… Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the Seattle office has noticed that working with immigrant populations, employers are going to abuse their workers because of language, because of culture, because of immigration status. People are scared of losing their jobs, especially in this economic climate. Immigrants are abused, are exploited, are raped, but they’re afraid of being fired or retaliated against. But people have a right to go to work and there are laws to protect them.

… To wrap up, I think this was an amazing forum. Letting people give their stories is amazing. It was just the tip of the iceberg, and there are so many more of these kinds of stories all across the state and the country. Thanks for the invite from the organizers, and thanks to everyone who spoke for telling your stories. I’ve edited this post a bit and added links since putting it up.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Alyona’s Fireside Chat: SOPA, bought and paid for: .

Senior citizens rap video: Scrap the cap.

Alyona’s Tool Time: Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) wants abstinence only education!

The Republican Primary Asylum:

• Jon: They really cannot decide (via OneGoodMove).
• Mitt and Rick’s Oops
• Ann Telnaes: The fluid dynamics of the Republican race
• Campaign in 100 seconds: Bomb, bomb, bomb…bomb, bomb Iran (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Jon on the foreign policy debate.
• Stephen defends Bachmann against media bias (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Stephen on the accidental Michele Bachmann email.
• Actual Audio: Michele Bachmann knows how to fix the economy.
• Ann Telnaes: Cain and Bachmann on torture.
• Young Turks: Herman Cain, “I don’t know what I’m doing”.
• Jon: Herman Cain’s mental meltdown.
• Young Turks: Herman Cain’s spins his interview disaster.
• The Cain Brain.
• Alyona: Gingrich-style corruption is systemic.
• Young Turks: Newt’s Freddy & Fannie problem.
• Stephen: Newt’s Booze Cruise.
• Barney Frank on Newt the Historian (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Young Turks: Rep. Barney Frank slams The Newt.
• Bad Lip Reading with Ron Paul:
• Mitt Romney: Our vets deserve better.

Patriotic Millionaires meet with Grover Norquist.

Alyona’s Tool Time: Rep. Bachus to combat insider Trading!? WTF?

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Thanks Bank of America!

Greenman: Lone Star State of drought.

Alyona: National voter intimidation campaign.

Roger Ailes is Worst Person in the World.

U.S.A. Occupied:

• Stephen: The removal of OWS protesters
• Thom:
• Olbermann: The Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt on the violent scene at Zuccotti Park during the Day of Action
• Sam Seder: Bloomberg lies
• Young Turks: Bloody OWS.
• Mark Fiore: Contagionex.
• Young Turks: 84 year old woman pepper sprayed at Occupy Seattle
• Alyona: 84 year old activist pepper sprayed at Occupy Seattle.
• Olbermann with Occupy Seattle’s octogenarian activist Dorli Rainey on being pepper sprayed:
• Jonathan Mann: This is what a police state looks like.
• Sam Seder: First hand account of the Zuccotti Park raid.
• Thom: Journalists enter at your own risk
• Young Turks: OWS raid media blackout
• Alyona: News blackout
• Daily Show on the class struggle within Occupy Wall Street.
• Olbermann: Special comment on OWS:

Alyona: Do-it-yourself video drones.

White House: West Wing Week.

Gloria Cain is Worst Person in the World.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

It seems to me, the real victim of this season’s bizarre G.O.P. primary season is Mitt Romney.

Here is a guy who has been running for President for a long, long time. He has executive experience. He has business experience. He has lots and lots of money. He doesn’t look like a troll (think Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich). He doesn’t have a “Google problem.” He isn’t a fucking lunatic teabagger (think Michele Bachmann). He lost the suit. He can recite Snoop Dog lyrics. He never worked for Obama.

Yet, here we are with less than two months to the Iowa Caucuses, and where does Mitt stand? Oh…maybe 30%.

A couple months ago, “George W. Bush on Steroids” jumped into the race and became the instant front-runner—until he proved to have the intellectual capacity of George Bush on paint chips. But Romney still couldn’t break out.

More recently he has been polling neck and neck with a serial sexual harasser whose entire platform is a one-word slogan repeated three times. That is, until the heightened scrutiny caused some ideas twirling around in his head to leak out…or not leak out. And still Romney didn’t break out.

And now he is tied (or even trailing) a serial adulterer, who at one time was the most despised man in U.S. politics. And soon people will remember why. And they will despise him even more for being a lobbyist for Freddie Mac. But Romney will still be shunned by 2/3 of a disappointed pack of Republican voters.

That’s gotta sting.

But nothing will sting more than the stain of trailing behind Rick Santorum in the polls—even if only briefly. And I do believe Santorum is next in line for a fling with increasingly desperate Republicans.

– Occupy Sammamish.

– Dwight Pelz’ letter supporting marriage equality in Washington State.

– I know Stamper is talking about nationally, but the police response to Occupy Seattle has been much better than to WTO.

– Although, obviously, still a lot of room for improvement. Lots of room.

– On top of the bike getting you to the story first, bike gloves are the best for typing in Seattle’s cold.

– Keep the birth control requirement in the health care law.

– There once was a pine tip moth from Nantucket

This is almost a week old now, but that’s the only time to call it out. I’m not sure if it gets funnier or less funny each time I ask how can you have a typo like that at the top of your blog for a week. But this gem from Bruce Ramsey has been at the top (emphasis mine) of the Ed Cetera blog since Veterans’ Day. “Nov. 11, Veterans’ Day, is the day tin 1918 the great powers ended World War I, a war America has almost forgotten.”

They should do what I do with typos and either edit them out or (more often) have other posts in the next 6+ days so it falls off the top. One of the most important pieces of web only content from the state’s most important newspaper, ladies and gents.

Tuesday’s DEA raids against medical marijuana providers in the Puget Sound area shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Similar raids had occurred in Spokane earlier this year, and many were well aware that the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, Jenny Durkan, was investigating the activities of local medical marijuana providers. In the spring and summer, as the partially-vetoed new law took effect, many former dispensary owners scrambled to figure out how to comply with the confusing new regulations. But the only thing that was clear about the new law was that absolutely nothing was clear about it.

According to Durkan, only medical marijuana providers who were blatantly in violation of state law were targeted. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get a chance to see how true that really is. Those of us who’ve been following these cases for a while have seen many a medical marijuana provider accused of various misdeeds only to have the case fall apart when it turns out the confidential informant wasn’t reliable. But many of those earlier cases had a common denominator: Roy Alloway – the one-time head honcho of the federally-funded WestNET Drug Task Force who now awaits a prison sentence for illegal gun sales and tax evasion. I’d imagine that many local progressives who were elated to see Durkan in that office would be shocked if we uncovered the same level of reckless arrogance Alloway became famous for. We’ll find out over time.

For all the outrage that this has kicked up (and at a certain level, everything that happens within the drug war is an outrage), it certainly could have been worse. What happened in Montana earlier this year was disgraceful and clearly went against the promises made by the Obama Administration at the beginning of his term not to go after those following state law. By comparison, if local providers are still being profiled in the Weekly, we’re clearly not back to full speakeasy mode and there does appear to be some attempt to only go after those who were violating state law. But that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of concerns with what happened.

For starters, I find it obnoxious when those who enforce these laws say they’re not going after patients. That’s not true. Any time you shut down a provider and confiscate their plants, you’re automatically going after patients. And with the changes to the law this year, it’s even more so. Those in this state who are authorized to get medical marijuana have no way of knowing if a member of their garden is doing something else illegal on the side. And now that we’re forced to have a collective gardens model, patients are now forced to have an economic stake in the dispensaries. It’s not clear from any of the articles I’ve read whether or not plants were seized, but that’s generally what happens during a raid. So according to the way the law is set up, any seized medicine might have been “owned” by some patient out there who isn’t capable of growing their own and probably did nothing illegal. And with all the various places that were raided yesterday, I’d be surprised if that didn’t happen to some patients.

Second, with the current environment that medical marijuana dispensary operators have had to operate in, charging them with money laundering looks a lot like entrapment. The Department of Justice has been aggressively targeting banks and other financial institutions that openly deal with the medical marijuana industry. In this environment, it would seem that this makes money laundering an unavoidable aspect of doing business. As is the automatic disclaimer with any of my posts, IANAL and I encourage our lawyer friends to share their thoughts in the comments.

But that leads me to the last – and probably the biggest – thing I’m bothered by. It’s a quote from a DEA Agent:

DEA Special Agent Matthew G. Barnes released a statement that said the raids were conducted in part because these businesses were in violation of federal laws “for cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana under the guise of state medical marijuana laws and exploiting such activities to satisfy their own personal greed.”

What strikes me about this quote is that it borrows almost exactly from the rhetoric that the DEA has always used when it comes to drugs themselves. Historically, drug use has been the supreme threat to self-control and societal stability that requires these extreme and drastic measures from the state. But as the attitudes towards drug use – especially medical marijuana use – have changed in the past two decades, the rhetoric now focuses on those who make money from providing it. In this new construct, the desire for money is now the force that’s so overpowering that it threatens to destabilize society, just as they once claimed the desire for the drugs themselves would.

But just as it’s always been with drugs, the outrage towards greed by our government’s law enforcement community is pretty bad at identifying the appropriate targets. With an economy that has suffered at the hands of Wall Street firms whose truly reckless greed has cost us significantly, it seems more than a little odd to be focused on how much money people are making providing plants to those who want them – and in many cases, need them for medical reasons. In fact, it makes one look completely crazy.

Jenny Durkan’s two predecessors as U.S. Attorney for Western Washington both support legalizing marijuana for adults. Many people speculate that Durkan herself supports it as well, but can’t say so. Saying it while serving as a federal prosecutor would require a lot of courage, a virtue that folks at all levels of government often suppress for job security or simply lack in the first place. Until that changes, the war on (some) drugs – and it’s mutant spawn, the war on (some) greed – will continue to plow a path of destruction through this country.

Riffing off of Neil’s idea here:

I don’t know how NBA contracts work. But I’m wondering if it would be possible for the players to organize themselves into teams outside the formal NBA organization and make money by playing games.

It seems to me like at least for this year, the player’s union could organize something. My ideal solution would be to find coaches or captains who were agreeable and figure out how many players are willing to play something like this:

Chose teams schoolyard style (or call it a universal draft, or something boring if you like). Everyone is eligible to go to any team and the coaches/captains pick their team. Then they play a short, short, short regular season. Just enough to fairly have seeding for a tournament. Most fans don’t really care about the regular season, but pro basketball players at the highest level playing meaningful games would attract fans and TV even without the NBA.

You can pay the players a percentage of the take based on how well they did in being selected for the team (the first player gets a higher percentage than the second, etc.) and how far their team got in the tournament.

I’m not sure how many players would join a league like this. It would mean less pay and more uncertainty about where they were for a season even than normally in professional sports. But it beats doing nothing.

I’m sympathetic to the proposal by the Washington Association of School Administrators to cut 5 days the school year. They’re responding to the reality that the state almost certainly isn’t going to raise taxes significantly. If we’re not going to figure out how to fund education at the state level, we may as well figure out how to make it work as well as possible at the shitty funding level we’re going to get. And there are worse things than fewer days.

So, yeah, it may not be as bad for state children as some of the other godawful options. It may be that better education can happen in those 175 days than in 180 days spread thinner. And cutting levy equalization will hurt the most vulnerable children.

Still, if Seattle* voters support every district levy for decades, if they support the Families and Education Levy and doubled it last time, and still see their children get a week less of school, I don’t know how much they’ll be willing to support paying for education at the state level. I think we’re still willing to pay state taxes to improve education all over, but we’re not willing to see our children lose out when Seattle hasn’t done anything wrong.

For it’s one thing for Seattle to subsidize the rest of the state. But to hurt our children for that is something entirely new. We’re willing to let the state skim off the top, but I don’t know that we’ll be willing to lose school days to subsidize other districts.

[Read more…]

Don’t cut Medicare without getting millionaires to pay their fair share.

– Carrying condoms shouldn’t be used as proof of prostitution.

– Completing a missing link.

– You contact the police

– Lee has already mentioned the inaccuracies in Bill O’Reilly’s book, but this is still funny.

– We need the debate audience to help Michelle bring her campaign back to life by clapping their hands to show they believe in her.

Today wasn’t a good day for me to stay on top of a big news item, so for the latest news on the federal raids that occurred today across the Puget Sound region, check out these links:

Gene Johnson – Police in W. Washington target medical pot shops
Curtis Cartier – DEA Raiding Medical-Marijuana Dispensaries in Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia
Dominic Holden – Why Today’s Pot Raids?
Jonathan Martin – Authorities raid Puget Sound medical-pot shops
Jeremy Pawloski – 17 arrested in raids on five Thurston County pot dispensaries
Russ Belville – DEA Raids Washington Dispensaries In Cities That Often Won’t Prosecute Marijuana Crimes
Stacia Glenn – 18 people arrested in three-county medical pot raids

The Cannabis Defense Coalition has information about the raids here.

UPDATE: Steve Elliott at Toke of the Town has a post up with info about today’s protest in downtown Seattle.