Goldy

Chronicles 15:13
All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.

Discuss.

Hosea 13:16
The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.

Discuss.

Good for her:

Alison Holcomb, who has been called the architect of marijuana legalization in Washington state, and who is criminal justice director of ACLU Washington, has been named national director of the ACLU Campaign to End Mass Incarceration, according to a release from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Holcomb wrote Initiative 502, the measure that legalized recreational marijuana in Washington state, and led the successful campaign to pass it.

Holcomb had been publicly mulling a city council run against Socialist Alternative incumbent Kshama Sawant, but recent polling reveals Sawant to be in a much stronger position than the establishment types imagined. This new job is a much better fit for Holcomb, and if successful, more impactful:

“We’ve had 40 years of widening the criminal justice net too far and have relied too heavily on punishment to address social and health problems,” Holcomb said in the release. “We’ve drained coffers and cut people off from jobs, housing, and family stability – the very things they need to succeed in society.”

More than 2.2 million adults are in the nation’s jails and prisons, according to the ACLU. The organization says it hopes to cut the nation’s adult jail and prison population numbers in half by 2020.

Congratulations, Alison, and best of luck.

Every election the editorial boards demand that we change the ballot deadline to received by election day, and every election I have to explain—using data and math and stuff—that they don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. It is not the ballot deadline that is the bottleneck. It is the ballot processing:

Take, for example, King County Elections (KCE), which counted 556,083 ballots on election night. That was only marginally more than the 521,786 it had received by the Friday before the election. In fact, it took three more days of counting just for KCE to catch up with the 749,097 ballots it already had on hand election night, let alone begin to work through the 147,744 ballots that arrived the next day. Statewide, Washington tallied on election night only about two-thirds of the ballots it had on hand.

So how could moving the ballot deadline speed up the results? It can’t.

Sure, the piece quoted above is a couple years old, but I’ve been tracking ballot statistics since 2009, and it has proven true year after year: the only way to speed up ballot counting is to spend a lot more money counting them. That’s what Oregon does—we stop on Tuesday at 8pm, while they count ballots 24 hours. It is simply a fact. And one the editorial boards have never bothered to refute. Because they don’t know fuck about ballot processing. Whereas I know this elections stuff inside out. Seriously.

Furthermore, even if moving the ballot deadline would speed up counting by a day or two—and it won’t—to what end? The overwhelming majority of races can be called on election night. I fail to see the harm in being asked to wait a day or two longer to learn the final outcome of a handful of others.

What the editorial boards are pitching is a solution in search of problem—and a solution that simply won’t work.

I’m quoting the theme song to the Poseidon Adventure in my headline because let’s face it, yesterday’s election was a fucking disaster for Democrats, though just like any disaster flick, not exactly a surprise at the end. But I don’t really want to talk about that. Old people voted and young people didn’t. And so Republicans won big, giving America exactly the kind of crotchety, dyspeptic, backward thinking government the crotchety, dyspeptic, backward thinking electorate asked for.

But there was a silver lining here in Washington State and in Seattle in particular. Not for Democrats—they don’t control the state senate either. But with the ballot measures.

With the historic passage of Initiative 594, Washington is now the first state to approve gun control restrictions at the polls, and by an impressive 60-40 margin. And this wasn’t just asshole Seattle liberals forcing our immoral lifestyle on the rest of the state—I-594 actually won a few Eastern Washington counties, and did respectably well in a number of others. Meanwhile the intentionally confusing anti-background-check Initiative 591 is going down to a resounding defeat.

Together that shows up the NRA for the paper tiger it really is, and sets an example for how to defeat the gun-nuts with sensible gun control ballot measures throughout the nation. And once the NRA goes down at the polls a few more times, perhaps our politicians will begin to lose their fear of Charlton Heston’s shadow.

At the same time Seattle voters overwhelmingly approved measures funding both transit expansion and universal preschool. Nobody really expected the former to fail, but with all the public confusion over Metro’s finances, I guess anything was possible. And universal preschool faced a surprisingly hostile and mean-spirited opposition from folks with whom I’m usually aligned, so I figured anything could’ve happened. But the Seattle electorate came through once again, voting to tax itself to fund the programs we desperately need.

Over the past year Seattle led the charge on the minimum wage, and following our success here, voters approved minimum wage hikes yesterday in a number of cities and states. In fact, San Francisco will actually beat us to $15 after voters massively approved a straight-up three-year phase-in for all workers by 2018—not exemptions, no tip credit, no nothing.

We need to remain vigilant as Seattle’s preschool program is implemented in order to fend off the corporate reformers. But my hope is that if we successfully implement a program here, cities and states throughout the nation will eventually follow our lead, just like they are doing on the minimum wage.

So yeah… I’m actually not so bummed the morning after. Dems lost as big as I expected Dems to lose, and that totally sucks. More on what we need to do to turn that around in a subsequent post. But on the ballot issues that will have the most immediate impact on our city—preschool, transit, and gun control—Seattle residents won big.

Focus on the local. That is the lesson—in more ways than one—that progressives should take from yesterday’s election.

I know that there are some states in which the powers that be make it difficult to vote, forcing you to produce documents you might not have, or making you take off from work to stand in long lines during inclement weather. But Washington State is not one of them. Here we vote entirely by mail. All it takes is a couple minutes, a pen, and a stamp. And while I can’t guarantee it, the stamp is pretty much optional.

So really, you’ve got absolutely no excuse not to vote. If you don’t trust the mail, King County Elections has 22 drop boxes and vans located throughout the county. Lost your ballot? You can print a replacement online, and return it by 8pm tonight via mail, fax, or email (though you’ll have to send in a paper copy by the certification deadline in order for your electronic ballot to count).

It’s easy!

As for how to vote, that’s up to you. I’ve voted for I-594 (gun background checks), against I-591 (stoopid NRA initiative), for I-1351 (reduce class sizes), for Seattle’s Prop 1B (universal preschool), and for Seattle Transportation Benefit District Prop 1 (more money for Seattle bus service). Also, for all the Supreme Court incumbents.

As for what to expect, the only contest above that’s likely to be close is Seattle Prop 1. Not sure if it passes, and if it does, I’ve no idea whether 1A or 1B prevails. The only other intriguing local contest is the 43rd LD race between Democratic incumbent House Speaker Frank Chopp and Socialist Alternative challenger Jess Spear. Chopp will win, but he should be awfully embarrassed if Spear tops 30 percent.

I doubt Dems take the state senate, and I’m pretty sure they’ll lose control of the federal one. So that sucks. But whatever. Vote, goddammit. Or don’t ever, ever complain about the guvmint.

Numbers 15:32-36
While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

Discuss.

Well, sorta. I have a standing offer to freelance for The Stranger, but given the nature of my departure I’d still rather write for free here on HA than give them my byline for cheap.

But when the Yes on Prop 1B folks offered to pay me zero to write their guest op-ed on Slog, I put aside any hard feelings and jumped at the opportunity. You know, for the kids. So click on over to Slog and enjoy a thorough fisking of Sally Soriano’s ridiculous Prop 1A guest op-ed.

And remember, it’s a two-part question: Vote Yes on Prop 1, and then vote for 1B on question two.

In the immediate wake of last week’s tragic shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, the chatter on gun rights websites like NorthwestFirearms.com immediately focused on the obvious culprit: a Michael Bloomberg funded “false flag” conspiracy. Because cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing:

And that was one of the more thoughtful posts; at least he prefaced his paranoid fantasy with the word “if.” You should watch the video that attempts to connect the shooting to Bloomberg, pondering “what are the odds” of it happening just two weeks before the election? (Or rather, you shouldn’t watch it.)

The conspiracy theorizing isn’t all that surprising. Some gun nuts are nutty. But it is a little frightening how people with guns are so quick to believe that gun control advocates would happily murder children to advance our political agenda. At least when we demonize the opposition as an imminent threat to our life and liberty, we lack the deadly weapons with which to act on our paranoia.

John 15:6
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Discuss.

Dare to connect today’s tragic shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School to the availability of, you know, guns, and gun rights advocates will excoriate you for politicizing a tragedy. But of course, the immediate wake of yet another tragic shooting is always exactly the right time to debate the wisdom of our gun culture, and the public policies that sustain it.

After all, if someone were to somehow die in a background check gone horribly wrong, you can be sure the NRA crowd would be screaming about it. So there is no shame in pointing out the role of the gun in this tragic shooting.

Our goal should be to make future gun tragedies less likely. If that requires a painful conversation, so be it.

I almost wrote this post a couple weeks ago, after it had been pointed out that once-dominant righty blog (un)Sound Politics hadn’t seen a new post since mid-September, and only a handful of posts over the months prior. Now it appears to be totally offline:

Guess that makes me the last man standing.

Ironically, I owe a fair amount of my own blogging success to u(SP) frontman Stefan Sharkansky, who stupidly got into a pissing match with me immediately following the 2004 election and during the bitter, months-long contest over the gubernatorial results. It was u(SP) that dominated the local political blogosphere early on, but by casting me as the enemy Stefan helped elevate HA into the role of the state’s premier liberal blog. And as Stefan gradually revealed himself to be a little bit crazy and a lot bit wrong, it was HA that ultimately rose to a position of influence as u(SP)’s relevance steadily withered away.

Stefan stopped blogging long ago, but not before destroying u(SP)’s last shred of credibility. I’ll miss his online voter registration database. That was useful. But u(SP) hasn’t been much more than a nasty afterthought for years. So good riddance.

IBM is paying Abu Dhabi owned GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to entice it to acquire IBM’s chip manufacturing division. Yes, that’s right—paying $1.5 billion. So how does IBM make money on deals like this? Volume!

IBM has agreed to pay $1.5bn as part of a deal to shed its lossmaking chip manufacturing arm and avoid the billions of dollars in capital spending it was facing to upgrade its manufacturing technology.

To be clear, it’s not like IBM can’t afford the billions of dollars in capital spending necessary to make its chip manufacturing competitive. The company made $18 billion in profits last year. And it would have reported a $4.7 billion profit this quarter (up from $4 billion in the year ago quarter) had it not been for the $4.7 billion pre-tax charge it took to write off its chip foundry business.

So what is IBM doing with all its money? IBM shareholders will receive roughly $4.5 billion in dividends this year. Meanwhile, the company continues to prop up its share price with stock buybacks—$3.7 billion worth this year, and over $50 billion since 2010.

Yet investing in, you know, making stuff, that’s something that IBM executives can’t be bothered to do.

Next time a righty tells you that we need to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy so that they can accumulate the capital necessary to invest in creating jobs, send them a link to this.

Kshama Sawant’s District 3 seat was supposed to be easy pickings in November, 2015. I wouldn’t exactly call it conventional wisdom, but a lot of Democratic establishment types sure seemed to have convinced themselves that the socialist city council member was a wacky, one-hit wonder who voters would quickly tire of. The chamber was preparing to spend big to take her down, and serious candidates like the ACLU’s Alison Holcomb were being recruited. This was going to be easy.

Well, not so fast. As PubliCola reported last week, a new poll by respected firm EMC shows Sawant with some of the highest approval ratings on the council. Citywide, Sawant enjoys a 50 percent “favorable” rating, second only to Nick Licata’s 51 percent. And within her district, Sawant’s favorable stands at a remarkable 61 percent, well above Licata’s 46 percent second place showing.

Critics will point out that at 30 percent citywide and 21 percent within District 3, Sawant also has the highest unfavorable rating. But at 80/82 percent city/district, she also has the highest name ID as well. Voters know Sawant. And despite all the Democratic eye-rolling, they’ve overwhelmingly made up their mind in her favor.

Personally, I was never all that concerned. District 3 was Sawant’s best district in her 2013 at-large victory, and while she might not match the chamber’s war chest, she’d certainly be able to raise the $250,000-plus necessary to get her message out. From everything I’ve heard, Democratic efforts to peel labor support away from Sawant have so far proven fruitless. And of course, everybody continues to underestimate the impressive (and increasingly sophisticated) ground game that Socialist Alternative is putting together. Really.

A lot can change in a year. But there’s an argument to make that at this point in time, Sawant looks like the least vulnerable incumbent of them all.

Genesis 4:13-18

Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,  east of Eden.

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Discuss.