Archives for October 2013

– Mars Hill break new ground in lying for Jesus.

– Assorted Thoughts on the Seattle/Tacoma UFCW non-strike

– “Tyson’s story,” and it is indeed quite a story, is hardly an “American original.” The powerful man who spends his life harming women, only to be publicly rehabilitated again and again, is about as routine as American stories come.

– There’s a piece in Grant’s memoir where he says that if the founding generation were alive they would think that instant communication across the Atlantic via telegraph was witchcraft. This Oliver Willis piece is a nice thing along those lines.

– Here’s an Indiegogo campaign for an academy to train women in software development right here in Seattle. Given our worst in the nation gender gap and reliance on tech for our economy, this seems like an important thing.

– The Affordable Art Fair looks like fun.

Tom at Seattle Bike Blog reports on an event tomorrow for bike lighting.

Bike lights are not optional. Aside from being required by law (technically, only front light and rear reflector are required), lights are vital if you are going to be visible to folks driving, biking and walking at night and sun-in-the-eyes situations.

Studies have shown that people on bikes naturally feel more visible to others than they actually are. Unfortunately, this leads people to a false sense of security about biking without lights (or with very poor lights).

[…]

The city and Commute Seattle want to help you out. They are hosting an event Thursday from 4-6 p.m. at 5th and Stewart.

It’s a good chance to get the right gear. With the days getting shorter, and the commute in the dark — as well as this fog — it’ll be more and more important to be light up properly.

As promised, here’s a thread about the Seattle Mayor’s race. For the first time that I can remember, I’m undecided on who to vote for in a big race like this. I got my ballot and filled most of it out, but still haven’t filled either mayoral bubble. I’m definitely leaning toward McGinn, but I like both of them quite a bit. Four years ago, when Ed Murray was considering a write in campaign, I wrote that I would support him if he ran because I liked him the best, but that I hoped he didn’t because he would probably take more votes away from McGinn than Mallahan and that I was worried that a self-funded person who was the more conservative would be able to win when he really shouldn’t. He didn’t run, and I eventually volunteered for McGinn’s election.

I really wasn’t particularly impressed with McGinn, but figured at least he wasn’t running a self-funded campaign on “TAXEZ BAD ME SMASH” and (after the post went up) unsure about abortion rights like Mallahan. I mean McGinn was saying the right things about transit and bikes, but everybody says the right things about them around election time, but usually they don’t do anything. He was also talking mostly about things that aren’t really the Mayor’s prerogative: education, broadband, and transit, and usually when people talk about those sorts of things and then get elected, they then ignore them.

Since then, they’ve both done things that I give high marks to. I’ve been surprised that I liked most of McGinn’s tenure as mayor (there are exceptions, like foot dragging on police reform and the Chihuly garden). He pushed a mostly reluctant City Council to put a doubling of the Families and Education Levy on the ballot, and it passed handily. There’s high speed Internet coming to much of the city.* He has also kept social services funded despite the recession and a tax cut from the council right before he took office.

Meanwhile, Ed Murray has cemented his already impressive legacy, passing marriage equality and shepherding it to a vote with a positive result. While he did preside over the loss of the Democrats’ caucus, I don’t really blame him for it. Rodney Tom hates Seattle and Tim Sheldon hates Seattle and gay people (to the extent he knows there’s a difference). So if the problem with him is that he’s from Seattle and gay, well that would be a dumb reason to be upset with him. Given the restraints, he has mostly kept the rest of the caucus from caving to the worst aspects of the GOP.

Finally, there are social issues. There’s some discussion that they’re off the table. And I agree neither of them is going to try zone abortion clinics out of the city or deny gay employees benefits, for example. They’re certainly closer on most of the defining social issues of the day than they are apart. But I have to say it’s been nice that Seattle has had four years where strippers and all ages music weren’t regularly being attacked from the mayor’s office. I hope that will be true of the next four years with Murray, but it’ll almost definitely be true with another four years of McGinn.

So that leaves two candidates I like quite a bit, and a campaign I’m the opposite of happy with, especially on Murray’s side. I don’t like all the third party money and I think it has been unnecessarily negative, and often not factual. Murray has courted the anti-transit and anti-bike people despite his record in the legislature being pretty good on those issues. Part of the reason I’ve been reluctant to decide is that it seems like everyone who has taken a side thinks that their flawed but pretty good lefty candidate is awesome and the other, flawed but pretty good lefty candidate is shit, and I’d rather not take that up. But I can’t really put off the decision any longer, and I’m going to have to fill in a bubble.

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Since the passage of I-502, the state has been quiet about what they intend to do with the existing medical marijuana laws. Yesterday, that changed. Ben Livingston has the details:

This afternoon the state’s medical cannabis workgroup—comprised of the liquor board, health department, revenue department, and the governor’s office—released their formal recommendations, and they are just as drastic as we initially revealed.

The basic idea is that the voter-approved medical cannabis law would be mostly scrapped, and patients who are accepted into a proposed government registry would be allowed tax deductions exemptions on pot, which could only be purchased at I-502 stores. Among the recommendations:

1. Eliminate patient home growing rights
2. Eliminate collective gardens
3. Eliminate medical dispensaries that don’t comply with I-502
4. Eliminate the affirmative defense for pot patients
5. Create a state-funded patient registry program
6. Require health care professionals to register patients with the state
7. Forbid doctors from running a medical cannabis specific business
8. Remove the right to petition for new medical marijuana conditions
9. Reduce patient possession amounts from 24 ounces to 3 ounces
10. Allow I-502 stores to sell reduced-tax pot to registered patients

Not all of these proposals are bad, but on the whole, this is a big step backwards. We’re moving from a decade and a half of marijuana law reform that carved out exceptions in order to protect the sick and vulnerable to new system that eliminates those exceptions in order to protect government coffers. It’s exactly what the most cynical among us thought the state would do, and if they follow though, it’ll be inexcusable, lazy policy.

A big part of what drives this move is the fact that medical marijuana has been a poorly regulated mess in this state for much of the 15 years it’s been allowed. Dispensaries were never formally legalized, but entrepreneurs would continually come up with ways to stay just within the law. The lack of a registry system often left police and prosecutors frustrated at their inability to differentiate between valid medical users and regular recreational users. And it was always obvious that many people were getting medical authorizations who clearly didn’t have a medical need for the drug.

The state’s reaction to this mess appears to be, fuck it – just blow it up. But this is a mistake. Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times has some good alternate suggestions for the state, especially this one:

It’s surprisingly hard to grow really good marijuana. Washington’s medical marijuana law recognized that from the beginning, allowing a caregiver to grow for a sick patients. The Legislature should absolutely preserve the ability for patients – real, legitimate patients – to grow their own, have a caregiver grow for them, or allow them to join 10-patient, 45-plant collective gardens. Any grow should be registered with the Department of Health, because police need to know if they’re walking into a legitimate or a black market grow.

This idea would be impossible under the rules proposed above. I think the lack of a home grow provision in I-502 was a mistake, but eliminating home grow even for patients is unthinkable. It certainly comes off as an attempt by the state to maximize tax revenue, rather than an attempt to protect public safety.

A lot of patients will bristle at the idea of having to register collective gardens, but it’s certainly preferable to having them banned. The current law is being blatantly abused in a way that almost no other state has seen. Dispensaries in this state aren’t legal. All those storefronts with green crosses everywhere are supposed to be limited to 10 patients. They get around that limit by constantly rotating who those 10 patients are as customers come in and out all day. Or by ignoring that requirement altogether.

One other requirement I’d add to this is that gardens shouldn’t be allowed to advertise or have storefronts. They should be private entities. Over time, perhaps in coordination with medical facilities, these gardens can work to develop very specific strains that work particularly well for certain ailments – and do so in a cost-efficient way.

People are concerned that the “medical excuse” patients will still find ways to avoid the high taxes of I-502 regulated stores. I’m not buying it. I suspect the vast majority of those folks will end up being unable to match the variety and quality of recreational pot sold in the regulated stores and be content to pay a little more for the privilege. But the regulated stores might not cater to folks with very specific ailments like epilepsy or MS, where the THC content might be too low to get people stoned. Those folks need to have the option to grow their own, or band together with others in a garden.

For years, we had a system that protected (well, tried to protect) medical marijuana users while recreational users continued to remain outside the law. What the state is proposing here could potentially turn that on its head – moving to a system that caters to recreational users while leaving those most in need with fewer options.

It’s a late notice today (busy day!), but here is the call to join us tonight for an evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our normal starting time is 8:00pm.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another nearby DL meeting over the next week. With 210 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– There won’t be a grocery strike.

– The HUGE difference between Davis and Cruz that I want to draw attention to in this post: the support in person of citizens at the capitol in which they stood and talked. Davis had THOUSANDS of constituents who showed up to support her. Cruz barely had any support inside the chamber, forget outside of it.

– Washington seems to be signing up people for health care at a nice clip.

– It’s pretty easy to interview long dead politicians if you just make up their answers.

– I for one am glad that my work station doesn’t look like the bridge of the Enterprise.

Hey to the Washington voters, who are you supporting for various races around the state? Is there some county or city race that you’re excited about? Is there some initiative or county charter amendment that you feel needs some attention? Is there a hospital district or school board that you want to reflect on? Some cemetery commission candidate who you want to rant about? Well, the ballots are out, so here’s a chance to do it.

(I have some thoughts on the Seattle Mayor’s race, so I’ll have a post up specifically about that. Feel free to comment on it here if you want, but FYI, there’s a dedicated one coming up probably Wednesday.)

You may have heard, here and elsewhere, about the hotly-contested Senate election in the 26th Legislative District (Pierce and Kitsap Counties). The seat is up this year because Derek Kilmer resigned after being elected to Congress (WA-06).

The appointed incumbent is Democrat Nathan Schlicher, an ER physician. And attorney. Who graduated from high school at 14, college at 18. Who was an Eagle Scout and is now a Methodist lay preacher. Not too shabby for a 30 year old. His Republican opponent is current Representative Jan Angel.

Piles and piles of outside money (over a million bucks) has poured into this race, not entirely because a party switch would cement the current Tompublican cabal’s control of the Senate more firmly, with all the implications therein.

So why the title of this post (and why am I burying the lede?)? Because of this (emphasis added):

Angel’s spokesman said she wasn’t giving any more media interviews between now and next month’s election. But he noted that she’s been elected by voters in the district three times, most recently with 59 percent of the vote.

Two weeks from Election Day, Angel has gone mum. Why is she hiding (and what is she hiding?)?

Maybe it’s this — in addition to the usual reactionary Republican characteristics, Jan Angel is a Washington state co-chair of ALEC.

Behind that pleasant-sounding acronym and the equally-innocuous title it stands for (American Legislative Exchange Council) hides the source of most of the disastrous right-wing laws seen in all corners of the country. Voter suppression, anti-immigrant, “stand your ground”, “tort reform”, school privatization, and more such insults emerge from ALEC’s “model legislation”. In many cases, exactly the same “model” text appears in laws passed by conservative legislatures in a range of states.

ALEC is (of course) partially funded by the Kochs. There’s also Scaife and Coors money behind it. Many corporations also back ALEC, as do trade groups, conservative special interest non-profits … it’s a who’s-who of the far right. And Jan Angel is at the top of ALEC’s (dung)heap in the Evergreen State.

This Senate race is probably the most important item on any ballot in Washington in 2013. To learn more about Nathan Schlicher’s positions on the issues, go here. And to join me in making a donation to his campaign, use this link.

– The list of companies trying to make sure you don’t know what’s in your food is about what you’d expect but it’s good to have it confirmed.

– All-day training session for anti-KXL activists in Tacoma — Sat., Oct. 26

– I really like Dean Nielsen, but this is below the belt and he should apologize.

– There are those small town values that make people proud that they don’t have to lock their door at night… …and then there are those small town values that make a body wonder how anyone sleeps at night.

– The 26th District race between Democrat Nathan Schlicher and Republican challenger Jan Angel has already seen a combined spending of $1.9 million, with about half of that money being spent by third-party groups. (Tri-City Herald link to an AP story. Not sure if they have a cap on the number of articles)

– What the Fuck Should I Be For Halloween (h/t) Also, it knows me pretty well because it came up with a pun for me (lewd zeppelin, that I’m not doing but that I appreciate).

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This week’s contest is somewhere in the state of Arkansas, good luck!

Genesis 9:20-25
Noah farmed the land and was the first to plant a vineyard. One day he got drunk and was lying naked in his tent. Ham entered the tent and saw him naked, then went back outside and told his brothers. Shem and Japheth put a robe over their shoulders and walked backwards into the tent. Without looking at their father, they placed it over his body.

When Noah woke up and learned what his youngest son had done, he said, “I now put a curse on Canaan! He will be the lowest slave of his brothers.”

Discuss.

The government shutdown was not only a disaster for Republicans, it was also a costly disaster for all Americans.

For example, we paid federal employees during the shutdown, but they were prohibited from working. (So…the next time you hear a Wingnut complain about how inefficient the government is, be sure to point out that the government isn’t the problem…Republicans are!)

How much damage did Republicans do to the U.S. economy by shutting down the government for 16 days? Try $24 Billion.

To put that $24 Billion in proper perspective, consider this: the direct damage from the September 11th terrorist attacks is estimated as follows:

The four civilian aircraft that were lost: $385 million.

Replacement costs of the World Trade Center buildings: $3 to $4.5 billion.

Damage to the Pentagon building: up to $1 billion.

Cleanup costs: $1.3 billion.

Property and infrastructure damage: $10 billion to $13 billion.

With some adjustment for inflation, the costs to our economy from the Republican terrorist attack on the U.S. government is, essentially, same as the direct costs of the al Qaeda terrorist attack on our country.

Now I understand more fully what’s meant by “all enemies, foreign and domestic” in the oath of office taken by congresscritters and other federal officials.

Sam Seder: Comrade Louie Gohmert’s Soviet Plan (Episode 1).

Young Turks: Hilarious, awkward concession speech

Lawrence O’Donnell: Meet hypocrite Greg Collett (R), Idaho State Representative.

This is Obamacare.

Ed: Teabaggers cost us $24 billion in shutdown.

Chris Cillizza: Third party time?

Red State Update: Podcast #48.

Kimmel: The Week in Unnecessary Censorship.

Political Dictionary: What is the “Hastert Rule”.

Mental Floss: 23 Unusual Animals.

Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican 50.0–South Dakota:

Mark Fiore: Internal Patriot Discovery Smart Probe.

Hostage Crisis Aftermath:

• Obama: Open for business….
• Ann Telnaes: Americans are losing…
• Sharpton: GOP Tea Party no more popular than The KLAN!
• Young Turks: Shutdown fiasco slaps GOP in the face.
• Thom: How the press extended the shutdown.
• A simple explanation of the Government Shutdown:
• Maddow: What government got done during the shutdown?
• Chris Hayes: Total capitulation
• Young Turks: Obama does victory lap….
• Sam Seder: What the Republicans didn’t get in the deal
• Maddow: It’s over Part I
• Maddow: It’s over Part II
• Maddow: It’s over Part III
• Ann Telnaes: What Ted Cruz is all about.
• Chris Cillizzaa: Who had the worst week in Washington (D.C.)?
• Thom and Pap: What madness lurks in the teabagger brain.
• Ann Telnaes: Republicans look for cover.

Ed: Tea Party stupidity.

Sam Seder: Does Obamacare increase your health care costs?

You had me at NSA.

Stephen Colbert’s Al Smith Dinner Speech.

White House: West Wing Week.

Chris Cillizza: Mitch McConnell is in a run for his money.

Kimmel’s Kids Table.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Sharpton: VA nutjobber Ken Cuccinelli is in trouble.

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

Goldy points to The Seattle Times’ endorsement of the repeal position on the estate tax advisory vote. We just voted for an estate tax like a few years ago, didn’t we? Whatever. But what I find interesting is The Seattle Times’ insistence on calling it a “death tax” as if that’s a thing.

Reading that got me thinking about their other insistence regarding taxes. Specifically, that taxes harm whatever you’re taxing. So they’ve been taking the line for years that you can’t increase taxes during a recession/recovery because it will harm the economy.* But if that’s true, they should support a “death tax” because it will stop people dying. By The Seattle Times’ logic, The Seattle Times wants more death. QED

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Greg Walden, who represents Eastern Oregon in Congress, is one of the few Representatives from Cascadia who voted to continue the government shutdown and to have the US default on its debts. After Blue Oregon wrote about it, former Labor Commissioner Jack Roberts left a comment:

I think it’s fair to say that Greg knew how the vote was going to turn out before he cast his. Sort of like Obama’s vote against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator.

Kari at Blue Oregon has some interesting things to say about what that means in terms Walden’s honesty. But I’d add that there was a major difference: The Democrats weren’t in the majority when Obama took that vote, and the minority party typically has more room to make those types of symbolic protest votes.

When Republicans whine and whine and whine and complain and whine and moan and shriek and whine about how Democrats weren’t willing to make any concessions, this puts the lie to it. When most of the votes to keep the government open had to come from the minority party, well, that’s more of a compromise than ought to have been necessary to keep the lights on. That’s meeting the Republicans more than half way by doing something that wasn’t typically the job of the minority. It meant that the GOP didn’t have to whip its caucus as much as they might otherwise, it means that Democrats might have to eat shit in some districts for blah blah debt ceiling. If the GOP wants to be in the majority, they ought to use it to fucking govern.