Last week’s contest was won by mlc1us. It was Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, where a student was fighting to have the Pledge of Allegiance recited in the school.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been highlighting for me a very interesting paradox in how we understand the concept of responsibility:

BP repeatedly disregarded safety problems, according to a new damning investigation from ProPublica that was copublished with The Washington Post. Documents about internal safety investigations leaked to ProPublica by “a person close to the company” show a pattern of neglect and a culture skewed toward silencing whistle-blowers.

The investigations described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections to reduce production costs.

That article was from a month ago, even before Texas Congressman Joe Barton expressed regret that BP was being pressured to take responsibility for the spill with a $20 billion fund set aside to cover the damage.

We often point to how the law treats corporations as equals to individuals as a major problem that creates skewed outcomes within our legal system and a dangerous downstream effect on society. But I’m not sure that that alone captures the depth of the problem. The problem is that we have two separate notions of what it means to be responsible – and that individuals and corporations are held to very different standards.

We make a lot of laws in this country that focus on our individual behavior. We zap speeders on the freeway and set up red light cameras. We fine people for jaywalking or drinking a beer on the sidewalk. We make people wear helmets on motorcycles and seat belts in their cars. The value of these restrictions are sometimes debated (and I certainly don’t like some of them), but they almost always have the broad support of the public – and few politicians dare to challenge the necessity of these laws that require responsibility on our part, both to ourselves and others. Government is seen as being the hammer necessary to force people to be responsible citizens.

But when it came to the years leading up to the devastating oil spill that wrecked both the environment and the economy of the Gulf Coast, the government was completely hamstrung in its ability to get BP or its partners to exercise even a minimal amount of responsibility, or even punish them when their previous irresponsibility led to actual damage (like when the Texas City refinery blew up, killing 15 people).

Part of this happens through outright corruption, but part if it is also from a belief that if we hold companies responsible with regulations, we’ll make it too hard for them to succeed and move our economy forward. Following this idea to an extreme, we now treat corporations far more kindly than we treat individuals. It has become an internalized double-standard that government protects society by holding individuals responsible, but endangers society by holding corporations responsible.

This article from last weekend in the New York Times shows how easy it is for companies like the ones at the heart of the Gulf oil spill to exploit this tendency:

With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.

But an examination of the American tax code indicates that oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.

…

Jack N. Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, warns that any cut in subsidies will cost jobs.

“These companies evaluate costs, risks and opportunities across the globe,” he said. “So if the U.S. makes changes in the tax code that discourage drilling in gulf waters, they will go elsewhere and take their jobs with them.”

Can you imagine if individuals were treated the way we treat oil companies? Sure, your honor, I killed a busload of children while driving drunk, but if you make me pay too step a penalty or force me to stop drinking and driving again, I’ll just take my productivity to another country!

Even within the White House, which is supposedly run by anti-business socialists, this skewed mindset has a foothold:

I was on Good Morning America this not-so-good morning, doing what I could. But I was struck by something that George Stephanopoulos said: he claimed to have been speaking to an administration official who asserted that what we need to get businesses investing is for business to know that the government has stopped — presumably, that means no new spending, no new regulation, whatever.

GS is a careful guy, so this must be true. And it’s shocking — not that people are saying this, but that someone inside the administration is saying it.

It’s garbage, of course: businesses are refusing to invest because they don’t see enough demand for their products. And administration economists know that it’s garbage. But obviously some people in the WH — I’m guessing a political person, but who knows — have bought the right-wing line hook, line, and sinker.

In the meantime, while we cower in fear of potentially spooking these fragile businesses who can’t survive unless government becomes completely subservient to their every whim, we can’t even extend unemployment benefits to the folks who aren’t being hired by any of these great, glorious businesses. And this may highlight the full extent of our double-standard. Politicians see spending money on subsidies for oil companies as being necessary to help our economy, but see spending money on the unemployed as a waste, even though the latter belief is completely baseless. It’s as if we could have the perfect economy by keeping the corporations perfectly happy but jettisoning all these pesky human beings weighing down the system.

David Frum criticizing a Sarah Palin ad today [emphasis mine]:

Here’s Sarah Palin’s new ad. Lots of images of the former governor speaking to adoring crowds, meeting admirers, encountering women and children.

But here’s the remarkable thing. Republicans normally work hard to ensure that their ads feature non-white faces, to present an image of welcome and inclusion.

…

In Palin’s ad — not one. Now listen carefully to the audio, which twice warns of a “fundamental transformation of America,” twice emphasizes a threat to children and grandchildren from malign unnamed forces.

I think she’s talking about healthcare. I hope so. But she never does say so.

David Frum – May 3:

Three years ago, ETS — the people who administer the SAT — released an alarming study. It combined information on test scores with demographic trends to predict that the U.S. work force of 2030 would be less literate, less skilled and worse paid than the U.S. work force of 1990.

ETS reported: “[B]y 2030 the average levels of literacy and numeracy in the working-age population will have decreased by about 5 percent while inequality will have increased by about 7 percent. Put crudely, over the next 25 years or so, as better-educated individuals leave the work force they will be replaced by those who, on average, have lower levels of education and skill. Over this same period, nearly half of the projected job growth will be concentrated in occupations associated with higher education and skill levels. This means that tens of millions more of our students and adults will be less able to qualify for higher-paying jobs.”

Why?

One word: Immigration.

For those brave souls who like to wade through the muck of HA’s comment threads, Effin Unsound is launching a contest to find the stupidest comment left every month either here or at any other northwest blog.

The Wall Street Journal has a really good piece of reporting on a way that the federal government actively encourages local police departments to waste money:

Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there’s one mission on which he’s spending more than in recent years: pot busts.

The reason is simple: If he steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county’s most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but “it’s where the money is.”

Washington has long allocated funds to help localities fight crime, influencing their priorities in the process. Today’s local budget squeezes are enhancing this effect, and the result is particularly striking in California, where many residents take a benign view of pot but federal dollars help keep law-enforcement focused on it.

Read the whole article here.

Last week’s contest was won by Trip – who guessed the correct location of Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra – and wes.in.wa who provided the link here. Last week, Australia welcomed its first female Prime Minister.

Have a happy and safe Independence Day everyone! Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Washingtonians won’t be voting on marijuana legalization this year, but Californians still will. Proposition 19 will be on the November ballot and it picked up a big endorsement this week (via Pete Guither):

Saying that prohibition takes a heavy toll on minorities, leaders of the NAACP’s California chapter announced Monday that they are backing passage of a marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot.

The war on drugs is a failure and disproportionately targets young men and women of color, particularly African-American males, said Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP’s state conference.

This caused a Sacramento minister by the name of Ron Allen to put out a press release attacking the NAACP [emphasis mine]:

Bishop Ron Allen says, “It is time to take a closer look at how decisions are made at the California NAACP and what the contributing factors were that caused Alice Huffman to side with Proposition 19. California NAACP President Alice Huffman is selling out the very people that the NAACP has a history of protecting. She has been bought and paid for by the highest bidder, in this case it is George Soros, his Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation Network. We know Soros is a major contributor to the NAACP and he is a primary funding source for the legalization of marijuana worldwide. With Huffman’s position on legalization, she is destroying the good work the NAACP has done for the African American people, and she is discrediting the good name of the NAACP. She has sold us out for her personal financial gain and I call for her immediate resignation. Alice Huffman, step down as the President of the California NAACP now and restore its good name.”

Allen continues, “As a NAACP member, I call for an internal investigation as to the NAACP’s ties to the marijuana lobby.”

I think Allen might be able to find his answer right here:

A look at booking stats for California’s 25 most-populated areas finds that in Los Angeles County African-Americans have a marijuana-possession arrest rate that’s 332 percent higher than that for whites.

The report, “Targeting Blacks For Marijuana,” was released this week and found that across those 25 largest counties the pot-holding arrest rate for blacks was often at least double that of whites despite evidence that indicates African-Americans use cannabis at a lower rate. In L.A. County the percentage was more than quadruple.

Anyone who’s been involved in drug law reform for some time is well familiar with the odd contradiction that occurs in many African-American neighborhoods. Despite being the most negatively impacted by the downstream effects of marijuana prohibition – from the violence of drug gangs to the disproportionate numbers of people within those neighborhoods who end up in jail – many of the leading voices within these communities cling to the belief that the drug war is both moral and necessary. But the impact of these racial disparities and the increased divide between African-American neighborhoods and the rest of America has made the truth of prohibition’s impact too hard to ignore.

During our failed American experiment with alcohol prohibition, a major milestone in its eventual repeal was when New York Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia began pointing out how devastating it was to New York’s large immigrant communities. The NAACP’s endorsement of Proposition 19 is an important milestone in this fight.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer entered a new level of WTF this week:

Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer suggested earlier this week that law enforcement agencies in her home state have discovered “bodies in the desert” either “buried or beheaded” in addressing crime related to illegal immigration; however, local agencies say they have never come across the cases she described.

Brewer made the claim in during an interview with local NBC affiliate 12 News. “Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she said.

Brewer’s claims are pure fiction, as the Arizona Guardian points out that none of the state’s county coroners have ever heard of such a case.

That didn’t stop Brewer’s spokesman from doubling down on the bullshit:

Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman didn’t waste any time in firing back at the factual challenge to the Arizona Governor’s remarks. “Even a cursory check of news stories on the internet suggests otherwise,” he said.

Senseman is likely referring to incidents like this or this or this, none of which occurred in Arizona and none of which have anything at all to do with illegal immigration. This is just another attempt by Brewer to blur the lines between illegal immigration and the drug war, two very separate problems that have two very separate solutions.

What’s profoundly sad about what’s happening in Arizona is that Brewer’s opponent this year in the gubernatorial election is Terry Goddard, the current Attorney General who has acknowledged that we need to have a debate about marijuana legalization as a potential way to deal with the violence of drug cartels – but is trailing in the polls. Arizonans are rightfully fed up with the illegal immigration problem, but lumping together the failures of our drug war with the problem of illegal immigration in order to defend draconian laws and anti-Mexican sentiment does little to get the rest of the country to sympathize.

Amidst the well-deserved mocking of the Atlantic Monthly’s resident neocon buffoon, Jeffrey Goldberg, I think Jonathan Schwarz succinctly nails the underlying media dynamic that leads to people like Goldberg convincing themselves that they’re the serious ones, and the people who keep pointing out their glaring mistakes and hypocrisies are not.

UPDATE: Just a quick hint to the traditional media folks who can’t seem to understand this Greenwald post; the point wasn’t to equate the invasion of Iraq to the Nazi conquests leading up to World War II. It was to point out that since even the Nazis were able to point to small subsets of the conquered nation’s populations who welcomed them to justify their invasions, that pointing to a small subset of Iraq’s population who welcomed our invasion tells us absolutely nothing about the overall morality or worth of the invasion itself. This shit ain’t hard.

Some of my uber-techy co-workers have been impatiently waiting to get their hands on a new iPhone 4. I’m sticking with my Blackberry for now (I don’t know how I ever lived without that thing), but regardless of what phone you use, a good friend of mine has been working with a startup company that created a web app that reads your cell phone bill and lets you know if you’re getting ripped off by your cell phone company.

– Senator Robert Byrd has passed away at age 92.

– Dave Weigel’s ouster last week was incredibly disheartening. He’d become one of my regular reads in recent months and I hope he finds a new home.

– Greenwald writes about how the McChrystal affair showcases our broken media culture. He also uses the Weigel affair to make some very similar points.

– Arizona’s Governor is even too crazy for McCain.

– State Democrats endorsed I-1068, but not without some consternation:

There was a small political skirmish here in Vancouver this afternoon—delegates made motions to consider 1068 separately, to extend debate, and to officially endorse the initiative. [State Vice Chair Sharon] Smith said that, “we expected this to come to a floor discussion. There are some things that are clearly Democratic party values, and then there are things like this that aren’t so clear.”

I’m not really sure what the heck Smith is referring to with that comment, so I went to the Washington State Democrats homepage to see if my previous notions of what Democrats stood for have changed radically in the past week. Here’s what they have listed on their “What We Stand For” page:

– Maintaining safety and security while seeking peace and cooperation

This is pretty obvious. I-1068 will greatly reduce crime by taking the production, sales, and massive profits out of the hands of criminal organizations. Crime decreased significantly after the end of alcohol prohibition, and it will do the same after the end of marijuana prohibition for exactly the same reason.

– Sustainable stewardship of our environment

The establishment of above-ground marijuana production and distribution will allow for environmentally responsible growing, rather than the environmentally destructive ways that it’s grown today.

– Fairness and economic opportunity, access to quality education and health care for all

I-1068 will finally allow for doctors and patients to openly discuss the benefits and risks of marijuana without fear of arrest or retribution. It will also provide for a large number of new above-ground jobs, just as what occurred when alcohol prohibition ended and legal beer distribution started up again.

– Equal treatment of all before the law

Drug law enforcement is arguably the single biggest problem with respect to ensuring that all people get treated equally within our criminal justice system.

– Fiscal responsibility, integrity, openness and accountability in government

One estimate from UW put the amount of money saved by the state after marijuana legalization and regulation at $105 million per year.

– Personal freedom, security, and privacy

The Democratic party simply can’t claim that they stand for personal freedom if they also believe that marijuana needs to be kept illegal. The two beliefs are directly incompatible. You either believe in personal freedom or you believe that government exists to impose morality over private adult decisions.

I understand that for years this was a topic that voters couldn’t have rational conversations about, but those days are clearly over now. Even Fox News has been running a number of pro-legalization pieces recently. Coming out in support of ending marijuana prohibition doesn’t carry the risks that it once did, and it might even help win elections. It was good to see the delegates at the state Democratic convention take this stand. Hopefully, Sharon Smith and the other holdouts will notice that it’s not 1988 any more.

Last week’s contest was a challenge, but it was eventually solved by Don Joe. It was the FBI office in Pocatello, Idaho, which was one of a number of northwest federal buildings that received a package of white powder sent by some yahoo near Spokane. The white powder turned out to be chalk.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

A volunteer with the I-1068 campaign catches some paid gatherers in Tacoma duping people into signing another petition by telling them it’s the Marijuana Reform Act.

I’ve had several occasions throughout this signature gathering cycle where paid gatherers have expressed frustration over the difficulty for them to get signers for their initiatives. One lady outside of my local Safeway took a few of my I-1068 petitions because people kept asking her if she had it for them to sign. At Folklife, one of the paid gatherers shadowed me for a bit to try to get more signatures from the people who were signing I-1068.

But in the end, those less popular initiatives will be on the ballot while I-1068 may not be. It’s all about having the money to pay people to get the signatures, and that simple fact is something that has made me more fully appreciate the mess that our initiative system has become.

UDPATE: Obviously, if the scam described in the post above is more widespread than just this one incident, there’d be a certain number of people who think they’ve signed I-1068, but really haven’t (and therefore would decline to sign the actual I-1068 petition if offered). With yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, we may be able to have the traceability required to figure out who’s been scammed and who was doing the scamming. You’re required as a signature gatherer to sign your name to the petitions you turn in.