Archives for February 2013

A bill to let people apply to clear their records of a nonviolent, misdemeanor marijuana offenses has passed the House Public Safety Committee.

As expected, Washington State’s House Committee on Public Safety voted this morning to approve House Bill 1661, moving it towards a full House vote. The bill would allow those convicted of a cannabis possession misdemeanor – up to 40 grams for those 18 and older – to have it removed from their record. The committee voted 6-5 in favor of the bill.

The primary sponsor of the measure, Rep. Fitzgibbon, says the chances are “really good” that it will pass the House. Newly elected Governor Jay Inslee hasn’t stated his position on the bill, but it would be unlikely for him to veto such legislation. Its fate in the Republican-controlled Senate is less than certain, but its passage isn’t an impossibility, especially considering that the measure has several Republican sponsors.

Sounds like a good idea in the wake of our passing I-502. It was illegal then, but it was also unjust. Since the people of Washington recognized that, it’s time to fix the problem for people who got caught up in the system before it got fixed.

So if you’d like to contact your legislators, you can find them here. If you want to ask the members of the Senate Law and Justice Committee to pass this, you can find them here. Something tells me that Pam Roach* will be tough to get but you can at least try with her and the rest of the GOP members.

If Inslee isn’t sure you can contact his office here. Or, I guess you could just ask him to pardon those people. It’s probably better for the bill to pass because it sets up a system, but if it doesn’t pass, that would be better than nothing.

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– I’m a metacommentary aficionado, and this piece on David Brooks is one of the best.

– Seriously, fuck the Yellow Pages.

– Tacoma’s libraries are now lending a hand to help the food banks get back on solid ground. Librarians wanted to hold a food drive, but figured they would get more goods by forgiving overdue fines in exchange for food donations.

– Seattle is going to start taking Chicago’s bikers and the jobs that come with them.

– It’s somehow comforting to know that Washington isn’t the only state with Godawful legislators.

– Taking lefty radio off the air in Seattle and replacing it with sports talk in an already saturated sports talk market isn’t working. Switch back to lefty talk. Although this time, maybe get some local people.

– Good to know the GOP are opposed to authoritarianism.

– I enjoy biking in the snow, but I’m glad we didn’t get a chance to West of the Cascades.

I’ve already had my piece on Pam Roach’s state workers can’t lie bill. I haven’t been following it, and I have no idea if it’s going anywhere. But the Daily O gives her the quote of the day when discussing it.

“It’s good enough for God. He gave us a commandment that said, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.'”

-Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, arguing for her bill that calls for discipline against state employees deemed to have lied.

I, for one, can’t wait for the no coveting by state employees law next. And for that matter why only apply it to state employees if you think you’re doing God’s work? Why not have a Deuteronomy 23:19 law and outlaw interest?

“You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest.

I mean that might be kind of tough for Pam Roach who just today voted (with I think all the R’s and several D’s, but that’s just a quick tally in my head since the website doesn’t break it down by party) to make it easier for payday lenders. As Senator Nelson explains in a press release:

In 2009, we passed payday lending reform. It put safeguards on a predatory lending product, allowing borrowers to make reasonable payments and not end up buried in high-interest loans.

But the payday industry is back, marketing this new consumer installment loan as having a ‘36 percent interest rate.’ In reality these loans include massive fees and penalties that take the rate as high as 220 percent. As a former banker, I’m confident that if a money lender can’t make a profit at 45 percent interest, as allowed in existing law, they have a failed business model.

As a legislator, I am shocked that a majority of my colleagues in the Senate voted to sidestep effective protections for Washington families and instead put high-interest lenders back in charge of people’s lives.

You know, like God intended.

Look, I don’t think the Bible, or any other holy text, is a particularly good guide for legislating. We’re a secular democracy. To say nothing of what version to use, or what interpretation? But if Pam Roach thinks her lashing out at state workers is God’s work instead of the business of a diverse group of people who swore an oath to two inherently secular documents (the US and state constitutions) then we can judge her by her own standards on the rest of her actions in the legislature.

The House Democrats are working on a gas tax plan:

The proposal, from House Transportation Committee Chairman Judy Clibborn, will divide the money between new projects and maintenance and eventually raise the state’s gas tax by a total of 10 cents.

Gov. Jay Inslee, who has said he wants a transportation package that would both build new projects and fix some of its crumbling infrastructure, refused to endorse it Tuesday, saying only that it is “a good start on that discussion.”

The gas tax should be raised from time to time. And dedicating a portion of the increase to maintenance makes sense. Still, we refuse even to close the loopholes on taxes on private jets owners or out of state banks to help the most vulnerable in society, let alone real tax reform. I find it difficult in that situation to get behind a tax to serve only people who can afford a car.

Please join us tonight for another evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally .

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another DL meeting over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. The Longview chapter meet this Wednesday. And for Thursday, the Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet.

With 207 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and two more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

I don’t know why I didn’t get this fundraising appeal from the state party.

On the eve of Washington State Democrats’ annual crab feed in Olympia, the Dems have set out to feed State Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, to the wolves.

Tom is Senate majority leader, head of a coalition of 23 Republicans and two dissident Democrats (including himself) that has taken tenuous control of the Legislature’s upper chamber and started to move a conservative agenda of GOP-backed bills.

“We’ve shown State Senator Rodney Tom the door. Now, it’s time to send him packing,” Democratic State Chairman Dwight Pelz said in a fundraising letter sent out Friday. It asks Democrats across the state to give $5 (or more) to a “Rodney Tom Retirement Project.”

Feed to the wolves is a pretty harsh of a way to describe fundraising to help recruit someone who will caucus with the Democrats. I mean compared to the people who will probably be kicked off social services in Tom’s budget, having to retire to his Medina home with more chances to make money doesn’t seem too bad.

But more to the point, it sounds like a good use of money for the Dems. If you’d like to contribute to the Rodney Tom Retirement Project, you can. It’s a Democratic seat, it ought to be held by a Democrat.

Remember during the 2012 election how Republicans tried to paint Obama as soft on Israel, if not downright hostile to Israel? Here’s Israel’s take:

“Barack Obama is a true friend of the State of Israel, and has been since the beginning of his public life,” Peres and the award committee said in explaining their decision. “As president of the United States of America, he has stood with Israel in times of crisis. During his time as president he has made a unique contribution to the security of the State of Israel, both through further strengthening the strategic cooperation between the countries and through the joint development of technology to defend against rockets and terrorism.”

Consequently, Obama will be awarded a Presidential Medal by President Shimon Peres.

This is shining example of how Republicans will shamelessly lie about fucking anything and everything.

Republicans, as a corporate entity, can only be described as deeply sociopathic. Some individual Republicans may not be sociopaths, but they must lack an ethics enzyme or something. I mean, how else can a person willfully belong to an entity that has no higher principles and simply seeks power through habitual lies?

– Happy Presidents Day. Or is it Presidents’ Day?

– Hanford has a leaking tank of high level nuclear waste.

– Guns were magic and rarely ever were there accidents until hippies ruined everything.

– Well one way to solve the GOP demographics problem would be to repeal the 19th amendment.

– I’m really excited about the forthcoming The International Bank Of Bob.

– What’s inside the smaller womb?

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Gijon, Spain.

This week’s location is somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Matthew 5:5
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Luke 12:49
I came to cast fire upon the earth. How I wish that it was already ablaze!

Discuss.

Maddow: Obama appoints a Commission to look into GOP’s voter suppression shenanigans.

Awesome: I.S.S.:

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

Sam Seder: Republicans jeopardize national security for political points.

Stephanie Miller: Leon Penetta’s comment on mean Washington.

Young Turks: Elizabeth Warren smacks down Wall Street bankers.

Greenman: Minding Nemo.

Tea Party Scandal:

• Freedom Works under investigation for fake Clinton sex tape.
• Thom: The Tea Party is brought to you by Phillip Morris.
• Young Turks: The Tea Party’s Lesbian Panda video

Maddow takes on John McCain for revisionism on Iraq (via Crooks and Liars).

Republicans on the Sequester: Then and Now.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Wyoming Legislature bucks GOP tax trend.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) goes dancing.

White House: West Wing Week.

Bill Maher on being sued by the son of an Orangutan.

STOU:

• The State of the Union Address.
• Colbert: “Socialist stroke job”.
• Young Turks: Obama calls for minimum wage increase.
• Thom’s State of the Union.
• Mark Fiore: SOTU and drones and civil liberties.
• Ed: Obama delivers a ‘command performance’
• Young Turks: Climate change in SOTU.
• Bill Press on Ted Nugent’s attendance.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: How Obama provoked Boehner to stand and applaud.
• Sharpton: NRA’s LaPierre’s lunatic response to Obama’s SOTU
• Sam Seder with John Amato: SOTU
• The Gulp Heard Around the World:
  • Sam Seder: The Gulp Heard ’round the World.
  • Marco desperately goes for the water.
  • Young Turks: Rubio’s epic water break.
  • Sam Seder: Rubio’s thin infomercial
  • Ed: Watered down response.
  • Alex Wagner: The REAL problem was the watered down message.
  • Stephen: Nobody noticed…. (via Crooks and Liars).
  • Jon has some fun (via Crooks and Liars).
  • Conan: Rubio’s secret
  • Maddow: Response to the response and the response.
  • Sharpton: The Big Gulp is late night gold.
  • Sam Seder and John Amato: Obama v. Rubio
  • Thom: Marco Rubio & the Republican Ibogaine problem
  • Ed: Not ready for prime time.
  • Marco Rubio’s other water moments
  • Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: Rubio takes a sip.
  • Sam Seder: Forget minimum wage, everyone should just get rich!

Sharpton: Some G.O.P. Valentines day card ideas.

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

Bill Press: Why Dick Cheney is like Big Foot.

Steve Hartman on Arizona’s dildo rationing laws.

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

Well this is a shitty story.

According to an October, 2012 report issued by the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF)—“Aiding and Abetting: How Unaccountable Fair Trade Certifiers Are Destroying Workers’ Rights”—as soon as Theo management learned of the organizing effort they responded with a campaign of “emotional manipulation, guilt, intimidation, fear and derogatory accusations about unions in general.” On March 3, two senior marketing managers confronted a union supporter in a break room, demeaning her organizing efforts, accusing her of “ruining the family of Theo Chocolate,” and causing her to cry. On March 7 workers met again to discuss their organizing efforts, only to have the meeting disrupted by four Theo managers.

Then Theo brought in the big guns, hiring David Acosta of American Consulting Group (ACG), a firm whose website claims it specializes in “union avoidance strategies,” and that boasts “unparalleled success in designing preventative programs that continues to keep thousands of our clients union-free.”

On March 9, the report claims, Theo CEO Joe Whinney called a mandatory staff meeting at which he attacked the organizing effort and the Teamsters. Employees were told that unions get “commissions” for organizing workers (not true), and that forming a union would damage the relationship between management and employees. Over the next few weeks management repeated these tactics—what workers referred to as “emotional blackmail”—sometimes crying in front of workers, and accusing organizers of selfishly hurting the interests of the poor farmers who supplied Theo its cocoa. “You can’t imagine how hard life is in Africa—your situation pales in comparison to theirs,” the ILRF report quotes one senior manager telling a union supporter.

I didn’t know any of this, I’m ashamed to say. But it’s several years in the past. It’s relevant again because:

And that gets to the heart of the Teamsters’ and the ILRF’s complaint: That Theo management mounted a concerted union avoidance campaign in the midst of its free trade certification process, an international standard that explicitly recognizes the right of workers to “form a trade union of their own choosing and to bargain collectively.” The same rights that the “Fair for Life” logo on its chocolate bars proclaims for its African cocoa farmers, Theo fought to deny the workers in its Seattle factory.

I wish the GOP weren’t blocking Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. It’s a bad precedent in its own right. And, oh by the way, we’re trying to wind down America’s longest war in ways that could be quite difficult. I’m not saying we’re at war should mean that anybody gets through the process. But it certainly shouldn’t mean the GOP invents new ways to dick around.

For the very first time in American history, a cabinet nominee was brought to the Senate floor, filibustered by a minority of members, and came up short of 60 votes.

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, President Obama’s choice to lead the Defense Department, faced fierce opposition from members of own party, and ultimately earned the support of 59 senators, which was one shy of what he needed to advance. (The Senate Majority Leader, for procedural reasons, had to switch his vote, so Hagel technically ended up with 58 votes.)

It appeared as recently as last week to have the necessary support to be confirmed, even in the event of a filibuster, but several GOP senators who said they’d allow an up-or-down vote changed their minds in recent days.

So sure, be upset with the process. Be upset that bullshit beats out facts. Be upset for the republic. But don’t be upset for Chuck Hagel.

The same take something out of context and use it to delay and obstruct tactic that has been used on Hagel is noting new in Washington, of course. And it was nothing new when Hagel was in the Senate, but the GOP advanced the tactic quite a bit with one ambassador in particular. When James Hormel was appointed by Bill Clinton to be the ambassador in Luxembourg, even though it was almost the 21st century, some Senators opposed him simply because he was gay. But others took an out of context clip of him laughing as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence walked by. I remember watching the clip at the time and thinking even in context it seemed fine.

Had Chuck Hagel pointed out that there was nothing wrong, maybe Hormel would have got a vote in the full Senate. Instead he pushed the bullshit line about how Catholics would be offended by laughter and/or gayness and made sure that people don’t pay a price for taking nonsense out of context. If that has come back to hurt Hagel, well that’s one of the few instances of poetic justice in real life. Too bad it had to hurt the rest of the country.

Oh hey! Remember last week when I was called an elitist in the comments of a post where I said that Seattle isn’t the overspending hellhole that many in the state legislature imagine, because I turned the arguments against Seattle on one of those legislators? It turns out what elitist means now is that Seattle has a paid sick leave and safe leave law. Because that’s the I-Hate-Seattle group’s latest target in the legislature.

Senate Bill 5728 would take Seattle’s law off the books by declaring that the Legislature has the sole responsibility for sick-leave requirements. Senate Bill 5726 would scale back Seattle’s law by prohibiting cities from requiring sick leave for employers based outside the city.

Both bills were introduced Tuesday by Centralia Republican John Braun and are supported by Senate Majority [sic] Leader [sic] Rodney Tom, D [sic]-Medina.

No Seattle senators have signed on.

FYI, the Seattle law applies to people who work in Seattle. So if a Bellevue (or out of state???) company has a Seattle branch, they won’t count under the first bill. Both bills are clearly just to punish Seattle for being decent to people who work here. When this — or the parking rate hikes or the head tax or, or, or — pass, local governments in the rest of the state say how they’re going to poach jobs. Now Senators from the rest of the state are putting the lie to that.

But buried in the hatred of Seattle there is a good idea. I’m all for the state getting into the sick leave and safe leave business. If there was a companion bill to make the Seattle requirements statewide, then that would be awesome! But now they’re saying people working in Medina or Centralia who have to work sick or after an case of domestic violence won’t even be able to petition their local governments.

To be clear, while the Seattle Times piece doesn’t mention it, the bill also preempts Seattle’s paid safe leave. According to Seattle’s FAQ on the law (bold in the text):

An employee can use safe leave for the following reasons:

• An employee’s place of business has been closed by order of a public official to limit exposure to an infectious agent, biological toxin or hazardous material.
• An employee needs to care for a child whose school or place of care has been closed by order of a public health official to limit exposure to an infectious agent, biological toxin or hazardous material.
• For reasons related to domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking that affect the employee or the employee’s family member.

Rodney Tom, John Braun, and the rest of the GOP Senate should be demanding those employee protections for the whole state. Instead they’re trying to take it away from people who have been sexual assaulted or stalked who work in Seattle. I get that they hate Seattle, but this is too far.

You can find Tom and Braun at the link (if you want to contact them, the form is kind of a hassle, and you have to make up an address if they don’t represent you so FYI, it’s firstname.lastname@leg.wa.gov). And you can find your legislator here.

– Happy Valentines Day. The only saint’s day where you don’t say “saint” in front of their name, I think. I blame the massacre for that.

– Can we enact mild signature gathering reforms now that there’s evidence of signature gathering fraud?

– Rubio has fallen victim to one of the classic economic blunders. It’s called Say’s Law, and it’s not, in fact, a law. It’s more like a guideline. The idea is that supply creates its own demand, which is true enough during booms, but not so during busts.

– Seattle’s failure to embrace transit-oriented development, even when bribed to do so by a corporate entity to whom they pretty much never say “no,” continues to be maddeningly counterproductive.

– Currently, Washington sends approximately $15 billion each year to out of state oil and gas companies. With a booming clean energy economy, those dollars could be invested with Washington companies to create Washington jobs. States and regions with climate policies in place have seen strong growth in their clean energy economies, including California and New England.

– Loved reading about these Negro Leagues players, especially Hilton Smith.