Archives for February 2014

I just can’t with this asshole.

You know where American Democracy™ fails? In little rooms in Olympia where petty politics play out, the poor get trampled upon, and it’s all hidden from view. Yesterday afternoon, after TVW turned off its cameras at a Senate Financial Institutions, Housing, and Insurance Committee hearing, State Sen. Jan Angel (R-27) suddenly, to the astonishment of her colleagues, killed off a bill that funds most of the state’s homeless programs by ending the hearing before bringing it up.

Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom called Angel and told her to table the bill, Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44) says, adding that Tom told him that directly. And rumors abound that Tom did it merely to perturb Speaker Frank Chopp. “There’s those theories out there,” says Hobbs. “He didn’t say he wants to poke Frank Chopp in the eye, but I think everyone knows what Frank Chopp’s thing is.” Housing has long been Chopp’s signature issue.

Now I realize that homeless people don’t give campaign contributions, so why would Rodney Tom give the slightest damn about them? Basic empathy? Human decency? Some tiny sense, somewhere, that we’re all in this together? The merest, most scant, sense of caring about dignity for other people? What the fuck is that to Rodney Tom when there are political points to be scored?

The China News Service has decided to run some hurtful, and frankly sloppy, attacks on Ambassador Locke.

“Gary Locke is a U.S.-born, third-generation Chinese-American, and his being a banana — ‘yellow skin and white heart’ — became an advantage for Obama’s foreign policy,” opened the commentary, written by a person identified as Wang Ping…

“However,” the commentary continued, “after a while, a banana will inevitably start to rot.”

[…]

Then there was this nugget:

“When Gary Locke arrived, the skies in Beijing became hazy. When he left, the skies suddenly became blue.”

First, I’m not 100% sure that’s how pollution works.

But more importantly: What? That was China’s state run paper. I don’t know that much about his tenure. I followed it a bit closer than I might have otherwise since he was governor of Washington for 8 years. It seemed like he was mostly well liked and respected. Seems like some strange parting words.

It would be one thing if that was just someone freelancing. But I guess that’s the thing when the state tries to control the media, they have to own the things that get said.

With all the attention the you can discriminate against gay folks bill in Arizona got, it should be noted that we have our own version, here in Washington.* Sure, ours died this session without a hearing in the Senate, and it wouldn’t have got any traction in the House if it had passed. And a veto would be assured instead of a week of hemming and hawing before it happens.

Still, Senators Brown, Holmquist Newbry, Hewitt, Honeyford, Benton, Bailey, Padden, Braun, Smith, and Rivers all sponsored it. That’s a good chunk of the Senate Majority. All of those Senators have gay constituents, but they care so little about their rights, that they’re co-sponsoring a bill to let people discriminate against them. Imagine!

Imagine being able to look their constituents in the eye and tell them that religious freedom means discriminating against you. Furthermore, unlike Arizona, the laws on the books in Washington currently say you can’t discriminate against gay people, so this would have been a step back. I imagine with Brewer’s veto, and the more national attention this sort of thing is getting, it would be even tougher to pass in the future. But people on the wrong side of these things ought to be held to account.

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I don’t know what’s going on with Mayor Murray. He really has to figure out how to get a handle on the police department. He inherited a mess, but his actions for the past week have not been at all helpful. And it’s still the gang that couldn’t shoot straight (emphasis mine).

(1) The mayor has placed an “indefinite hold” on his police chief signing any further settlements in officer-misconduct cases until further review, Deputy Mayor Hyeok Kim told the council’s public safety committee; (2) the mayor’s office has also decided to reopen those six cases in which the chief decided to downgrade the punishment to “see if appropriate determinations were made,” according to the bureaucratic parlance of mayoral public safety adviser Tina Podlodowski; and (3) Deputy Mayor Kim told the council that city officials cannot find any paperwork confirming that former interim chief Jim Pugel tentatively downgraded discipline in those six cases, as claimed repeatedly in the last week by Chief Bailey and Mayor Murray.

Shit’s important and he’s got to do better. I was worried when the Guild endorsed him that it was because they though he wouldn’t, or wouldn’t be able to, reign them in and so far he hasn’t. The police ought to know what the consequences of their actions will be and they ought to do a better job protecting and serving the city.

And it has really just been amateur hour at City Hall. It was the way he got rid of James Keblas at the office of Film and Music. And now, while I don’t really care about it, the type of thing the press and insiders looooove.

A statement from Mayor Ed Murray on Thursday afternoon mourned the death of Jim Diers, popular former director of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods until then-Mayor Greg Nickels took office and fired him.

“My thoughts go out to the Diers family,” said the Mayor. “He will be missed.”

A few minutes later, a second urgent missive from City Hall regarding Diers: “He is alive and well.”

The Mayor had confused Diers with Joe Dear, a former chief of staff to Gov. Gary Locke and director of the Washington State Investment Board, who died of cancer at the age of 62. Dear was equally popular and warmly eulogized by his longtime friend U.S. Rep. Denny Heck, D-Wash.

Again, I mostly don’t care: Some staffer made a mistake, and it was corrected as soon as they realized it. It’s hardly his finest hour, but it happens. Still, when you run a put-the-adults-back-in-charge campaign, there’s less room for this sort of thing.

And to be clear, I don’t want him damaged. He needs to be able to fight for a strong minimum wage, and for decent universal pre-kindergarden in town. And I suspect that too many more weeks like he’s been having and some of the people who supported him are going to start looking elsewhere. Maybe start looking at the next election, maybe going to the City Council to thwart his plans. Still, it has only been a bad couple weeks, and I think he can turn things around if he gets his head in the game.

– For the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Paul Constant writes one of the greatest love letters to Seattle I’ve ever read.

– Sure, Paula Deen is the Michael Sam of cooking? [h/t]

– I’m opposed to any expansion of gambling (although I recognize that I don’t, and shouldn’t, have any say in tribal gaming). But I’d prefer if people could make better arguments than oh no, it would be near an Air Force base (Spokesman-Review link).

– Finally the Seattle Streetcar gets ORCA readers, and I can not be vaguely confused about what I ought to do even tough I’ve both talked to people and read the webpage.

– The Seattle Aquarium has a new fur seal.

– Ped X-ing

This story has been bouncing around the feminist blogs for a little while now, but I didn’t realize it was in Washington State. It’s pretty grim. I’m not quoting the most explicit parts of the story, but The Longview Daily News has more details. What’s pertinent is:

In October 2012, a woman was held against her will, taped naked to a chair and sexually assaulted. This week, Cowlitz County prosecutors had the same woman arrested to help prove the case against her alleged captors.

The 43-year-old woman — the victim and prime witness in the case — has not been charged with any crime. She just wasn’t showing up for pre-trial meetings with prosecutors, despite promising to do so several times.

So earlier this month they obtained a judge’s order for a material witness warrant.

It’s a little-used procedure under state law that allows police to arrest a witness of a crime to ensure they show up for court. Chief Criminal Deputy James Smith said such warrants are rare and requested only “as a last resort.”

In this case, it had the added irony of using a warrant to hold the woman against her will so she can help convict someone else of holding her against her will.

Prosecutors said they can’t comment directly on an on-going case. Generally, though, Smith said the severity of the charges is always a factor in taking such a serious step.

Like the people I linked to above, I’m horrified that this happened.* The counties should certainly take up prosecutions of this sort, but detaining a rape victim — one who was for the most part cooperating, but had missed a court date — can’t possibly be the best way to go about it.

It certainly feels like an abuse of the material witness statute. I hope the legislature will take up both better ways to help witnesses who might be transient get to court and to reign in this type of use of the statute. And I hope prosecutors who might be in a position to do this will reconsider.

I mean, we certainly want to prosecute rapists to the extent possible. But surely not by locking up victims, and potentially re-victimizing them. Maybe some of the lawyers in the comments section can think of positive changes to the law.

If you want to contact the Cowlitz County Prosecuting Attorney’s office and ask them to do better next time, you can do so here.

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Recently, the quiet neck of the woods where I reside was the scene of a homicide. As things like this are relatively rare, our neighborhood’s Facebook page buzzed and people gossiped about how and why this could have happened. A few days later, we got a partial answer. It was revealed that the owner of the home is also the operator of the medical marijuana dispensary in the center of Fairwood, called the The Solution. And the victim, a 27-year-old named Ryan Prince, was shot as he confronted several burglars. Prince was not the owner of the dispensary or the house, but he was a resident.

The Solution is located in the center of Fairwood, in the same building that used be a law office until the attorney who owned it went crazy and defaced it. The new ownership has kept up the property nicely and I never noticed any strange behavior there (the building is in front of the main bus stop in Fairwood, so I see it quite often). One morning, I noticed a window was shattered. It was fixed very quickly. Otherwise, I don’t know the owner personally and have never been inside the dispensary.

Over the weekend, police announced the arrest of a 34-year-old man in Tacoma in connection with the murder. They’re still looking for more people and a purple PT Cruiser in connection with the murder.

At this point, we still don’t know what the alleged burglars stole – or were hoping to steal. There were no plants being grown in the residence, but did the burglars know that? Were they just after cash? It’s not hard to see that businesses that are forced to be cash-only open themselves up to these types of situations. It’s why it’s so vital to fix the banking issue with marijuana businesses.

The future was already bleak for dispensaries like The Solution. These types of businesses were never fully made legal by the state, and are now in the process of being completely shut down by the legislature. There were smarter middle-of-the-road solutions to cater to those who use marijuana medicinally and might not be served as well by a recreational market, but that battle appears to be lost for now as the ACLU is even throwing its weight behind the effort to remove the idea of collective gardens from the law.

The hope is that once the licensed stores under I-502 open, both recreational and medical users will find what they need. Many are skeptical that it will be so easy, at least at first. But moving towards a properly regulated marketplace is essential for reducing the kinds of tragedies that took the like of Ryan Prince, and continue to take the lives of many in places where all of this commerce is done in the dark.

As a critic of the Highway 99 tunnel, but one who thinks we’re probably stuck with it, I’m still hoping that Bertha gets itself* up and running again. I really do hope that whatever solution to the latest problem turns out to be the last fix. I’d also like to be more sure that Seattle won’t be on the hook for any cost overruns.**

Still, with this new revelation that the Viaduct is sinking, and with Bertha stuck for who knows how long, I say don’t wait on the tunnel to take it down. It’s — as ever — disconnecting the city from the waterfront. The main goal of zooming cars at unsafe speeds through a city their occupants hate has already diminished considerably during construction, without many of the traffic problems we were promised.

Yet, on the ground in the waterfront, it’s still not pedestrian or bike friendly. The bike/walking path below the Viaduct south of Yesler gets used by cars as a turning lane, and various parts of the waterfront sidewalk being blocked off at random push pedestrians into the road. These are normal side effects of construction, but they don’t have to be made worse by the delays to the tunnel.

If traffic is bad, then either mitigate it with more transit and better maintenance of surface streets or, I don’t know, get Bertha fixed. In the mean time, the people who use the waterfront on a regular basis don’t need to be in limbo.

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– If you’re going to have an ACA horror story, it would be nice if that story was based in fact. But that’s probably too much to ask.

– It’s also important to emphasize going forward that the pre-clearance requirement in Section 5 was far from obsolete. Because of the nature of elections, before-the-fact challenges to vote suppression are far more effective than after-the-fact ones. Once a state has conducted an election, it becomes much more difficult for the courts to order remedies. A pre-clearance requirement is not sufficient, but it’s a crucial part of voting rights protection, and Congress should not concede this issue to the Supreme Court going forward.

– The King County Council officially put the measure to save Metro on the ballot.

– Transportation Advocacy Day is coming up. I still haven’t got my Transportation Advocacy Day tree, or done most of my Transportation Advocacy Day shopping.

– Several years ago Washington legislators arrived at a sensible compromise, requiring districts to include measures of student growth in their evaluations of teachers – but leaving it to the districts to decide what that actually meant. It’s a good system that should be given time to be properly implemented. But Duncan insists that teacher evaluations be directly linked to specific test scores, even where states have chosen not to do so.

– I still don’t understand Bitcoin, and I’m genuinely sorry for the people who lost money here, but, you know, there are reasons for regulations on actual money.

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally continues its tour of Seattle’s finest pubs. We are in search of a new place to call home. If you can, please join us this Tuesday evening for some political punditry and pub prognostication over a pint.

This week we will visit the Moe Bar, 1425 10th Avenue
Seattle. We meet at 8:00 pm, but some folks show up early for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meet on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And on Thursday, the Woodinville chapter meets. And next Monday, the Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 215 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

– Did you get any snow? Here are school closures/delays in Washington.

– Despite how amazingly think-about-what-you-did that assignment is, i’s total bullshit that his record remains clean, and ideally his punishment would remain in place and he’d have to make his being-a-decent-human presentation and have to write “don’t be a dick” on the blackboard fifty times.

– Here’s another view of the brand new ship Macaw Arrow, docking at Port of Olympia on it’s first ever journey, to deliver “frack sand” proppants for fracking North Dakota oil shale.

– I’m not really in the habit of linking to sermons here, or listening to them online, really, but this one really got to me.

– The anti-choice movement is up in arms over my play, MOM BABY GOD, and I have a simple message for them: Bring it on. We’re not backing down.

– I’m afraid Goldy was perhaps too irenic to Boeing management here.

Last week’s contest was won by don. It was Dover International Speedway in Dover.

This week’s is related to something in the news from February, good luck!

Luke 12:48
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Karl Marx
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Discuss.

Ana Kasparian: Leave the Rich Alone!!!!

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

White House: West Wing Week.

Cable Cabal:

• Anna Kasparian: Will consumers get screwed by the Comcast—TWC deal.
• Jonathan Mann: I Hate Comcast and TWC.
• David Pakman: Comcast and TWC merger is terrible for consumers.
• Thom: Comcast—TWC is an affront to Public Interest.
• Young Turks: Comcast’s devastating admission about merger

Sharpton: Ohio Republicans pushing new bills to suppress voting:

Jon: ‘Meth Labs Of Democracy’ (via Crooks and Liars.

ONN: Onion Week in Review.

Outrageous Anti-Science Positions of Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC):

• Maddow: Part I.
• Maddow: Part II.

Pap and David Pakman: The Wall Street Secret Society.

Young Turks: Nutburger Tom Delay, “God created this nation. He wrote the Constitution….”.

WaPo: So you want to sue the White House?

Mark Fiore: Jack Gerrard’s American Petroleum Institute.

Discrimination:

• Ann Telnaes: Disguising anti-gay discrimination.
• Ana Kasparian: U.S. Evangelicals spreading the their anti-gay “gospel”.
• Sam Seder and Charlie Pierce: Kansas anti-gay bill legalizes discrimination
• Young Turks: Bad news for anti-gay Christians In Kansas.
• Ann Telnaes: Romney—Don’t let the courts rule on marriage equality.

Lawrence O’Donnell: The Koch ‘polluting’ Brothers are already dishing truckloads of cash to the GOP.

Sam Seder and Charlie Pierce: Why there’s no Republican party anymore.

Pap and Thom: GOP obstruction is killing the judiciary.

WaPo: The debt ceiling deniers.

Scott Walker’s Bridge to New Jersey:

• Richard Fowler: Gov. Scott Walker lies about voting for Reagan.
• Chris Hayes: The Emails that may derail Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI).
• David Pakman: Scott Walker “John Doe” investigation reveals staff’s racist, anti-gay emails leaked.
• Ed: Badger-Gate is a new ‘governor problem’ for the GOP
• Chris Hayes: Is Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) worse than Chris Christie?

The GOP Plan: Repeal, repeal, repeal.

Alan Grayson on Ted Cruz:

Ed: VW sides with UAW after GOP intimidates workers.

Mental Floss: 50 facts about 50 state Capitals.

David Pakman: “Joe” the anti-union “plumber” takes a union job.

The Christie Minstrel Show:

• Chris Hayes: Did Christie misappropriate relief funs?
• Sam Seder and Charlie Pierce: Christie trudges on…but for how long?
• Young Turks: Christie v. Palin…the fur flies
• Maddow: The corruption of NY/NJ Port Authority’s David Samson
• Chris Hayes: Chris Christie meets voters for the first time post Bridge-Gate
• Alex Wagner: The Christie Town Hall
• Sharpton: Gov. Chris Christie holds town hall in ‘friendly turf’

David Pakman: Madman Glenn Beck considers burning the American flag.

Richard Fowler: The GOP civil war rages on.

Thom: The GOP refusal to expand Medicaid is a disaster.

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