Darryl

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 10:00 AM, Rep. Jim McDermott will host a “Coffee with your Congressman” event in West Seattle (more info) at C & P Coffee; 5612 California Avenue Southwest. “Please RSVP if you can to 206-553-7170.”
Also tomorrow is a community festival and fundraiser for Seattle’s Alternative School 1—Pinehurst:

I’ll be at the festival playing bass with the Flying Blind Blues Band (we’ll be on stage about 5:00 pm).
Another school fundraiser…the Lakeside school spring rummage sale on Saturday (9:00 am to 4:00 pm) and Sunday (9:00 am to noon).

Enjoy your weekend!

Buyer’s remorse

by Darryl — Thursday, 3/24/11, 3:48 pm

Here were are, just a few months past the great G.O.P. gubernatorial ~~invasion~~ sweep. And we are already seeing evidence of widespread buyer’s remorse:

It’s not like they weren’t warned about overreach.

(This counts as an open thread.)

Did Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME) fail an art exam or something?

by Darryl — Wednesday, 3/23/11, 3:56 pm

Under the guise of “budget crisis” measures, anti-worker legislation is popping up all over the country. But this mean-spirited move shows the arrogant contempt with which Republicans hold workers:

Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine’s labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor.
[…]

Acting labor chief Laura Boyett emailed staff Tuesday about the mural’s pending removal, as well as another administration directive to rename several department conference rooms that carry the names of pro-labor icons such as Cesar Chavez.

According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed “one-sided decor” not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.

Umm… Removing a mural and renaming conference rooms is going to fix Maine’s budget problems?

Pure and simple…this is another salvo in the Republican War on Workers™.

The mural was erected in 2008 following a jury selection by the Maine Arts Commission and a $60,000 federal grant. Judy Taylor, the artist from Seal Cove, said Tuesday that her piece was never meant to be political, simply a depiction of Maine’s labor history.

Why are Republicans threatened by Maine’s history? Let’s examine the threat. From the web site of the artist, here is a selection of captions from the eleven mural panels:

1. The Apprentice: Here, a Cobbler trains his young Apprentice. In the background, are scenes from that era.

Oooooh…cobbler apprentice. Scary. (And, Donald Trump…this doesn’t look good for your presidential aspirations…)

2. Lost Childhood: Child labor was common in Maine. They frequently performed dangerous tasks for long hours.

That is offensive to LePage, who is trying to roll back child labor laws:

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Debra Plowman (R) and “backed by” LePage would roll back the state’s child labor laws…. Her original bill would have removed all protections on the number of hours 16 and 17 year olds could work during the school week, and allow them to work until 11 PM.
[…]

In response to opposition from labor and education groups, Plowman revised her bill to cap hours at 32 per week….

3. The Textile Workers: Young women were often sent to the mills by their families, who could not, or would not support them.

Clearly, this is offensive for the same reason as the previous panel. A young woman’s place is in the sweatshop.

4. The Secret Ballot: For the first time, workers were allowed to vote anonymously in 1891.

Yeah…Women’s suffrage still gets under their skin.

“Wait. What? Vote?!? We thought ‘suffrage’ meant something else.”

5. First Labor’s Day: In 1884, Maine celebrated it’s first “Labor’s Day”, a day for the workers to celebrate.

This factoid, no doubt, is a great stain on the psyche of Maine Republicans.

6. The Woods Workers: A member of the IWW or “Wobblies” tries to organize the Maine woodsmen.

History lesson be damned…I’m pretty sure Republicans consider the word “organize” a vulgar obscenity.

7. The 1937 Strike: Scenes from an unsuccessful strike attempt to create better conditions for women workers.

Ewwww…”strike”? “better conditions for women workers?” For the G.O.P., the vulgarity of it all must trump any potential historical interest.

8. Francis Perkins: FDR’s Labor Secretary, and untiring labor activist, a Maine Labor icon.

You can imagine how a mural of the first woman appointed to a Presidential Cabinet could induce in Republicans indigestion, foaming at the mouth, and the heartache of psoriasis.

9. Rosie the Riveter: Maine’s version of WWII women workers participated as ship-builders.

You see…in the eyes of the wingnuts, Rosie the Riveter is the kind of uncomfortable situation that leads to Rachael Maddow.

Hey…you know another leader who took down art that he found threatening?

Hitler.

Happy birthday Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

by Darryl — Wednesday, 3/23/11, 1:28 pm

Today is the one-year anniversary of the contentious health care reform law. How do American’s feel about it? The story you get depends on (1) your media source, and (2) how carefully you scrutinize the numbers.

David Weigel points out that the following two headlines are simultaneously true:

Most Favor Health Care Law or Wish It Was More Liberal

Time Doesn’t Change Views on Health Care Law

Headline 2 is from a CNN article about its new poll released today:

Thirty-seven percent of Americans support the measure, with 59 percent opposed. That’s basically unchanged from last March, when 39 percent supported the law and 59 percent opposed the measure.

But that is only half the story:

“In 2010, about a quarter of the health care bill’s opponents disliked the bill because it was not liberal enough – the same as today. That works out to 13 percent of all Americans who oppose the bill because it did not go far enough. Forty-three percent oppose it because it was too liberal.”

The final tally from the poll (pdf here) is that an estimated 50% of Americans want the law or a more comprehensive version of it, and 43% want the law gone. Seven percent have no opinion. The pattern is the same in three previous CNN polls taken over the last year—thirteen percent “disapprove” because the law doesn’t go far enough, and 37%-43% oppose the law as “too liberal”.

One must keep the “liberal 13%” in mind with looking at polls that do not distinguish between those who think the law doesn’t go far enough and those who think it goes too far. So when a Gallup poll with a somewhat different question reports that 46% find the law “a good thing” and 44% find it “a bad thing” (with 10% offering no opinion), I have to wonder what fraction of the 44% wanted universal health care, single payer, a public option, or just think the law is a big giveaway to the insurance companies.

Also, I have to wonder how much of the ~40% who oppose the law do so because they were sucked into the bullshit that it “includes death panels.”

Besides being the one year anniversary of the law, it is also the one year anniversary of the Republicans offering no alternatives. Even Juan Williams has a hard time not noticing:

…House Republicans have not passed a single alternative health care reform bill since they have been in charge but they have passed bills to repeal and defund the law. All of these bills, however, are dead on arrival in the Senate making the whole exercise futile and symbolic.

At a meeting of the nation’s governors last month, President Obama called the GOP’s bluff on health care. He challenged GOP governors […] to come up with their own health care plans that meet the goals of the Affordable Care Act.

He challenged the governors, saying, “I am not open to re-fighting the battles of the last two years, or undoing the progress that we’ve made. But I am willing to work with anyone — anybody in this room, Democrat or Republican, governors or member of Congress — to make this law even better; to make care even better; to make it more affordable and fix what needs fixing.”

That includes not driving up the deficit. So the president opened the door to the states, as what he called the laboratories of democracy, putting their own ideas on the table for reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality.

Since then, the silence has been deafening and the American people are beginning to see that the GOP really doesn’t have any alternative ideas on health care that fit the bill.

A shorter Juan Williams: Republicans…all Repeal an no Replace.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 3/22/11, 5:52 pm

Spring has arrived! And that’s the only excuse you need to join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to join some of us earlier for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 217 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

How to repeal Washington’s “tax preferences”

by Darryl — Monday, 3/21/11, 1:10 pm

State Sen. Phil Rockefeller (D-23) makes the case for ending some of the 567 special tax preferences on the books in Washington:

Faced with a deep state deficit and deep cuts to vital services we should look first at ending unjustified tax breaks.

Many breaks on the books subsidize a privileged few at the expense of ordinary citizens. The notion of tax fairness, that everyone pays his or her fair share for core services that benefit everyone, has been trampled under the feet of special interest lobbyists.

These tax breaks are conveniently embedded in obscure tax law and routinely ignored, yet they divert billions of dollars into wealthy pockets. As a result, essential public services like education and health care are starved for funding.

Rockefeller admits that passage of I-1053 make the task more difficult. Given the widespread opinion that the 2/3 majority requirement of I-1053 would not pass Constitutional muster, if only we could get into the courts, why not use the budget crisis to force a showdown?

Here’s how it works. Declare that the projected revenue shortfall, following a biennium where spending has already been cut to the bone, makes it impossible for the legislature to pass a budget that lives up to the spirit of Article IX, Section 1 of the State Constitution:

It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.

The constitutional requirement of “ample provision for education…” simply isn’t happening.

Article IX, Section 3 gives lawmakers broad authority to do what is needed to fund education. If we cannot provide “ample” funding for education via existing taxes, lawmakers should provide short-term revenue for education through the repeal of tax preferences, using a simple majority to pass the legislation.

The mandate and the authority to accomplish it as spelled out in the Constitution trumps a law enacted through the initiative process. If Republicans believe the law trumps…they can sue.

But would they sue? The reality is that I-1053 is most potent when it stays out of the courts. The threat to I-1053 is serious enough that, perhaps, a bill to repeal tax preferences might just get that 2/3 majority as a way to avoid Judicial scrutiny.

As a certain Mayor-elect puts it:

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”

Open thread

by Darryl — Saturday, 3/19/11, 7:19 pm

I didn’t see this in time to put it in this week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza, but here is an interview from NPR”s On the Media with James O’Keefe—you know, that kid who keeps releasing surprising sting videos that later turn out to be misleadingly edited.

At the end of the interview, On the Media has a little editing fun of their own.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by Darryl — Friday, 3/18/11, 11:57 pm

The Republican War on Workers:

Thom: latest protest in Wisconsin.
Young Turks: Maine Governor — Screw teachers, help rich.
Pap: GOP’s Union busting is theft.
Newsy: Dems not allowed to vote in Wisconsin.
Dane County Judge puts restraining order on Walker’s bill (via Crooks and Liars).
Old Walker ad shows him supporting recalls (via Crooks and Liars).

Red State Update catches up with things.

Going after NPR:

Newsy: House votes on fate of NPR.
Dems launch Punny defense of NPR (via TalkingPointsMemo).
Rep. Weiner objects that NPR defunding bill doesn’t follow house rules.
Rep. Anthony Weiner smacks down Republicans over NPR defunding (via Baloon Juice):
Young Turks: Rep. Weiner nails it!
Cenk on Rep. Weiner on NPR

Thom: Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s tax on millionaires and billionaires.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Michelle Bachmann fails history.

Young Turks: New tax rates for the rich?

ONN: Man becomes GOP frontrunner after showing no interest in government:

Liberal Viewer: Daily Show asks if Gitmo is prison or zoo.

Young Turks: Big God, Small Government — Senator DeMint (R-SC).

Libya:

UN Security Council backs intervention against Gaddafi (via Crooks and Liars).
Obama on Libya.
Young Turks: Gaddafi on top in Libya again.

Newsy: Republicans go sour on Sarah Palin.

Pap with Joshua Holland: GOP’s Union Busting is Theft..

The Beauty of Donald Trump:

Young Turks: Donald Trump’s $600,000,000 presidential aspirations.
Donald Trump comes out as a Birfer (via Crooks and Liars).

Lawrence O’Donnell to Glenn Beck viewers on the apocalypse: It’s not happening.

Cenk: Glenn Beck claims “Obama sympathizes with terrorists”.

For those with vaginas:

ONN: Panel of caged average Americans weigh in on economy.

Tragedy in Japan:

Obama offers condolences and thoughts for Japan.
Cenk: Glenn Beck jokes about Japan.
Rush laughs about destruction in Japan.
Newsy: Japan’s nuclear plant workers hailed as heros.
Mark Fiore: Disaster.
Obama standing with Japan.
Newsy: New tactics emerge in Japan.
Japan’s nuclear plant explodes.
Ed destroys FAUX News’ “no looting in Japan” meme (via TalkingPointsMemo).
A second nuclear plant explodes.
Maddow: what survival looks like (via Crooks and Liars).
Lawrence O’Donnell: On radiation.
Radioactive plume headed for the West Coast.

TYTUniversity: Wingnutcase David Horowitz ‘Nazi, racist’ Muslims speech & student interview.

Shooting Illegals like Pigs:

Young Turks: Shooting illegals like pigs.
Pap: Republicans say let’s kill immigrants like wild pigs.
Lawrence O’Donnell: shooting brown people like hogs.

Young Turks: Sarah Palin destroyed by conservatives.

Bill Maher: Governing with the G.O.P. is like rooming with a meth addict (via TalkingPointsMemo):

White House: West Wing Week.

Sam Seder: Tim Pawlenty’s amazing vocal stylings.

Ed and Pap: The The Republican court-packing scam.

Young Turks: She’s baaaaaaaak…Sharron Angle runs for congress.

Newsy: Will Hillary Clinton exit the political stage?

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

Republicans were right about the army of IRS agents collecting personal medical information!

by Darryl — Friday, 3/18/11, 1:48 pm

Remember when the nutcase Republicans were saying stupid shit about the IRS collecting personal health information in order to enforce Obamacare? Take, for instance, this doozy from Fox Nation:

IRS Hiring Thousands of Armed Tax Agents to Enforce Obamacare?

[…]
Under the new law, the IRS is required to fine taxpayers thousands of dollars if they do not purchase health insurance. In order for the government to enforce compliance, tax authorities will need information, for the first time, about people’s health care.

Wow…you can just envision an IRS agent pointing a gun at your head telling you to divulge intimate medical details about yourself. Gosh…that sounds scary.

(I’m only surprised they didn’t claim that Agents would be armed by mass confiscation of guns following passage of Obama’s next legislative assault on America: new gun control laws.)

At least there were no gun-wielding IRS agents in the congressional Republican’s take on it:

A new analysis by the Joint Economic Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee minority staff estimates up to 16,500 new IRS personnel will be needed to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses in the ‘reconciliation’ bill being taken up by the U.S. House of Representatives this weekend.

“When most people think of health care reform they think of more doctors exams, not more IRS exams,” says U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee. “Isn’t the federal government already intruding enough into our lives? We need thousands of new doctors and nurses in America, not thousands more IRS agents.”

Of course, the whole thing was a lie manufactured to capitalize on fear of the IRS in order to sway public opinion against health care reforms.

Or was it a lie? (Via MoJo):

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

Wait…this is just hyperbole invented by MSNBC or spewed by a flawed analysis from a minority party House committee, right?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans’ “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they’d have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.
[…]

“Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest,” says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. “If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it.”

Keep classy, G.O.P. congresscritters!

The expression may be hackneyed, but…this really is a classic case of Wingnut Projection.

Remember folks…when the Republicans accuse Democrats of something outrageously over-the-top, you can be pretty sure it’s because they are planning to do something similar. (Or are actually doing it already…You know, like Newt Gingrich going after Clinton for adultery.)

And that, oddly enough, leads to my financial tip of the day: If Republicans make gains in 2012 in the Senate or the Executive-branch, then before they are sworn in…take out a big fat live insurance policy on Granny.

Radiation “emissions are 10 times higher”

by Darryl — Wednesday, 3/16/11, 9:58 am

No…this isn’t about Japan. It’s about SeaTac and American travelers:

The Transportation Security Administration is re-analyzing the radiation levels of X-ray body scanners installed in airports nationwide, after testing produced dramatically higher-than-expected results.

The TSA, which has deployed at least 500 body scanners to at least 78 airports, said Tuesday the machines meet all safety standards and would remain in operation despite a “calculation error” in safety studies. The flawed results showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.

You know who is going to be gloating over this, don’t you?

Goldy:

I, for one, will refuse to allow my daughter through one of those scanners, and will refuse to walk through one myself. […] I mean, honestly… would you trust TSA to bombard you or a loved one with ionizing radiation?

You know who is laughing over this, don’t you?

The “terrorists”. You know…the ones who “hate our freedoms.”

“They” have scared the living shit out of politicians, driving them to a state of frenzied security overreaction. It isn’t just the trillion dollar wars, the costly military build-up, the absurdly bloated domestic security infrastructure…those things that have drained our coffers with little substantive return on investment. It isn’t just the disgrace of our government getting caught committing torture in our names and starting wars under false pretenses that have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

For our dignity, it’s also a “death” by 1,000 cuts. We’ve succumbed to ludicrous restrictions and procedures for air travel and we’ve accepted those increasingly invasive inspections.

We’ve taken it to the extreme of “mainstreaming” the use of full body scanning using ionizing radiation administered by non-radiologists on equipment that, it turns out, was being inspected erroneously.

Ultimately we, the American electorate, by putting up with this shit, are self-terrorists.

I always opt out…and go for the free TSA massage.

Update:

Commenter Oxbrain takes me to task for fear-mongering. I’ll respond here, because I believe it will add some clarity to a post that was minimally about radiation and more about overreaction to terrorism.

“Your title is “Radiation “emissions are 10 times higher”” Taking the quote out of context as it is, this is a blatantly false statement that is obviously intended to strike at a fear of radiation.”

The title is not a statement. But I understand the point. The title is alarmist…I mean, given the context of concerns over the situation in Japan. But the purpose of the over-the-top title was to draw eyeballs. Incendiary titles are a tradition in blogging. I just wish they could all be as good as “Asshole inflamed over anuses”.

“I can’t imagine the mental disconnect required to try using an irrational fear of radiation as an argument against our irrational fear of terrorism.”

I appreciate your point, I really do. But what is rational about fear of radiation is that mistakes can, and will, happen. (Yes…even by a government agency.) That the particular mistake (one of several) highlighted in the article was not a radiation health threat, as the article made explicit, isn’t much comfort. It was still a mistake. The tests yielded numbers 10 times too high.

Apparently, someone at the TSA charged with reviewing the test results from the contractor, wasn’t surprised, or even curious about readings that were, apparently, ten-times too high. That’s not good.

And that wasn’t the only mistake. The TSA report cited other problems with the inspections:

Lack of notation for the latest calibration date for the machine being tested or the most recent calibration date noted had expired on survey meters
Information missing regarding warning labels and required labels
Calculation errors not impacting safety
Missing survey point readings
Inconsistent responses to survey questions
No reading of background radiation noted
Missing other non-measurement related information

(For context, I’ll just note that a missing placard on an aircraft renders it legally unairworthy.)

These errors add poignancy to Goldy’s question: do you trust the TSA to expose you to ionizing radiation?

So…yeah, I think it works using the irrational fear of radiation as an argument against the irrational fear of terrorism. Clearly people’s irrational fear of terrorism is so…well, irrational, that people succumb to it over their irrational fear of radiation and their rational fear that mistakes can happen.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 3/15/11, 4:28 pm

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to show up earlier for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 215 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

eElection day

by Darryl — Tuesday, 3/15/11, 12:19 pm

In case this passed under your radar, there is an election today:

Online voter applicants who have received an emailed confirmation of voter eligibility may vote online until 9 p.m. Tuesday. The King Conservation District is also providing an “in-person” voting option from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.Tuesday at the district’s offices located at 1107 SW Grady Way in Renton.

That’s right…a King County election with email voting and a single polling place. Goldy rants about it here.