HorsesAss.Org

Please join us for drinks, conversation, and political prognostication at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet every Tuesday evening at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to stop by earlier than that for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. The Tri-Cities and Redmond chapters also meet on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Spokane chapters meet. The Bremerton and Kent chapters meet on Thursday. And next Monday, the Aberdeen and Yakima chapters meet.

There are 188 chapters of Living Liberally, including seventeen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Don’t remember reading anything about any such initiative, but my god has Sound Transit bumped up the number of fare inspectors on Link Light Rail. I thought maybe it was just freakish coincidence when I got my Orca card scanned six trips in a row a couple weeks ago, but this fare enforcement surge has continued. In fact, this morning, fare inspectors boarded my car twice: at both Othello and SODO stations. Never had that happen to me before.

Is it just me, or has there been some sort of quiet but radical shift in Sound Transit’s fare enforcement policies? And is the extra manpower really worth the cost?

– It still seems to me like a bigger problem that a president is expected to attend a national prayer breakfast.

– Anti-vaxing is a labor issue, too

– Marchers Carry Golf Clubs to Protest the Arrest of William Wingate and Racial Profiling

– I haven’t noticed the unicorn bike in a rack or out in the wild, but now I’m looking for it.

– Valentine’s Day cards for 2015

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Discuss.

Former Congressman reminisces on the start of email in Congress.

The 2016 Clown Parade:

• Sam Seder: Wait. What? Will Mitt get back in?
• Vaccine Trufer Rand Paul has some shushin’ and mansplaining to do
• Daily Show writers riff on the 2016 contenders
• Jon handicaps the 2016 presidential contenders
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Young potheads.
• Chris Hayes: Chris Christie caught receiving lavish gifts
• David Pakman: Mitt is out
• Pap and Sam Seder: Glasses won’t save Rick Perry from prison time

The Ash Carter conformation hearing highlight reel.

White House: West Wing Week.

The Flordo-Texico War of 2015:

• Jon knows who would win a war ‘twixt Texas and Florida
• Oh Nos! Florida Democrat calls the state of Texas “CRAZY” (and he calls his own state “crazy” too).

Mental Floss: More life hacks.

Sam Seder: You’ll never believe what Mitt Romney said to Obama.

Young Turks: FAUX News has a wargasm over King Abdullah in flight suit.

Vsauce: Did the past really happen?

Vaccine Trufers:

• Pap and Sam Seder: Republicans FAIL on the vaccination debate PART I
• Pap and Sam Seder: Republicans FAIL on the vaccination debate PART II
• Mark Fiore: How to avoid maiming and killing children.
• Maddow: Christie and Paul…the Vaccine Trufers:

• Young Turks: Measles killing kids is the new freedom
• Vax-trufer Glenn Beck: Anti-Vaxxers being persecuted like Galileo
• Sam Seder: Republican blames measles outbreak on “illegal aliens”
• WaPo: The politics of the vaccine conspiracy.
• David Pakman: Rand Paul falsely claims “profound Mental Disorders after vaccines”
• Sam Seder: Rand Paul demonstrates he is a genuine QUACK
• Young Turks: Rand Paul goes into Damage Control Mode
• David Pakman: Rand Paul also belonged to a fringe medical group that denied HIV caused AIDS.
• Young Turks: Where do the antivaxers get their information?
• Mitch McConnell is no vaccine trufer. Sort-of…
• Maddow: Anti-Vaxers are an extreme public health risk
• James Rustad: “She don’t use Vaccines”
• David Pakman: Right Winger, “I’m not going to vaccinate my kid so that some female won’t get cervical cancer…
• Sam Seder: Nutjob conservatives misunderstanding HPV vaccine

Greenman: Eric Rignot on Ice Sheet Retreat.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: Sotomayor and Kagan backtrack on allowing cameras at the Supreme Court.

The week in Congressional hits and misses:

Net Neutrality:

• Young Turks: Net Neutrality wins big.
• David Pakman: Wheeler wants FCC to regulate internet under title II
• Chris Hayes: FCC makes the internet a utility
• Sam Seder: The historic net neutrality decision.
• Young Turks: Orwellian “Department Of Internet” ad attacks net neutrality

Sen. Reid: Republicans are more afraid of Dreamers than ISIS (with a cameo by Sen. Murray).

Thom: Why do we need black history month.

Greenman: Elevator pitch for climate change.

Young Turks: Obama at Prayer Breakfast warns of religion twisted to justify war.

Liberal Viewer: Did someone threaten Henry Kissinger?

Sam Seder: Crazy Republican suggests getting rid of Citizen United would destroy the Bill of Rights.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about crime.

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

The ISIS Propaganda Department….

• Young Turks: ISIS owes FAUX News a big thank you.
• Thom: FAUX News is the PR department for ISIS:

Pelosi: Republicans are “baying at the moon” with their 56th ObamaCare repeal vote.

Greenman: Ken Caldeira on what climate models have told us.

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

Oh God how I hate this meme:

Gov. Jay Inslee needs a win. After two years in Olympia, legislative victories on his proposals are sparse, and it’s not looking good this year either.

Instead, Inslee has been primarily a speechmaker-in-chief, and mostly about carbon reduction. In Associated Press style, he’d be Gov. Inslee, D-Climate Change, not D-Wash.

… Heading into his third year in office, Inslee needs a win. Voters in 2016 will want to know: Is Inslee an ideologue or a pragmatic executive?

Really? Jay Inslee is the ideologue here? Why? Because he accepts the overwhelming science of climate change? Because he believes it’s the responsibility of government to try to, you know, not destroy the fucking planet?

The problem with the sort of pragmatic, bipartisan, false-equivalentarianism the Seattle Times espouses is that in the current political environment, there is nothing pragmatic about it. True bipartisanship is only possible either when both sides are already in basic agreement (like when the allegedly “ideological” Inslee called a special session to ram the Boeing tax-break package down our throats), or when both sides are willing to compromise. But in the current political environment, the state senate Republican majority has absolutely zero will or incentive to give a nanometer.

First of all—and let’s be completely frank about this—a goodly chunk of the Republican caucus is filled with science-denying Christianist/Teahadist whack-jobs. Seriously. These people are fucking crazy. Do you really believe that the high-school-student-marrying minimum-wage-worker-hating Rep. Matt Manweller (R-Ellensburg) is even remotely capable of compromise? Do we really want that to be the measure of a “pragmatic executive”: the ability to find common ground with a vile, anti-labor, sexual predator?

Second, the whole notion that Inslee’s performance in office should be judged by his ability to push his agenda through the Republican senate is nothing less than a setup for failure. The Republicans want Inslee to fail! That is the whole of their agenda! Legislative gridlock is a win-win for them because A) preventing the government from doing stuff is exactly what their constituents sent them to Olympia to do, and B) Senate Ways & Means Committee chair Andy Hill is running for governor against Inslee in 2016! So even if this iteration of the Republican Party was capable of compromise (and it’s not), why on earth would it want to hand Inslee a legislative victory?

Sound familiar? It took six long years for President Obama to accept the fact that the entire congressional Republican agenda was: make President Obama fail. What did compromise get Obama in the meanwhile? A half-measure of a health care reform package whose repeal has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party.

“Team of rivals,” my ass.

Inslee at least has been a quicker study. He knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of getting either a carbon tax or a capital gains tax past the Republicans this session. He’s not stupid. So he’s using the power he has—the power of the bully pulpit—to help move the political conversation from where it is to where he thinks it needs to be. That doesn’t make him an ideologue. It makes him a leader.

Sure, compromise is great if both sides are willing to do it. And true bipartisanship is a lofty goal. But to score Inslee “an ideologue” for failing to push his proposals through this senate is to place the scorecard squarely in the hands of Republicans. It is a bullshit meme I hope nobody takes seriously, especially not Inslee.

– A couple different takes on Andrew Sullivan retiring.

– I remain both excited about the future of cell service in the bus tunnel and horrified that more people will be on their phones more times.

– Cathy McMorris Rodgers is not concerned about the millions of people who would lose their health care coverage if this bill were signed into law. Returning back to the days when insurance companies could terminate your coverage for any reason, refuse to cover you for pre-existing conditions, refuse medical treatment, and increase your rates at will does not concern her. Bringing back the rampant increases in health care costs does not concern her.

– While listening to this podcast, it occurred to me that Bertha the drilling machine may well be stuck for more days that Bertha Landes was mayor.

– I’m not sure running against the Kochs worked particularly well last time, but maybe.

– The Unicorn Whose Tears Were 1976 Ford Fiestas

Just as I was wrapping up the last roundup, I saw news that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had passed away. Here’s a video report from Human Rights Watch about his record on civil liberties, which – despite some small improvements – is still somewhere between terrible and horrendous.

I happen to be reading Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court“, a book about how a 19th century American goes back in time to 6th century England to discover a backwards monarchy that celebrated brutality and used religion to exert control over a superstitious population. If Twain had lived long enough to see modern day Saudi Arabia, he could’ve written something similar without any need for time travel.

More news items…
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My state representative, Eric Pettigrew (D-37), has been a vocal advocate for charter schools, arguing that traditional public schools are failing our children. Pettigrew is now also a prime sponsor of a bill in Olympia that would split the Seattle school district in two, arguing that distant administrators are failing our neighborhood public schools. And so given his obvious disdain for Seattle Public Schools, one would imagine that Pettigrew must have had a truly horrible experience sending his own children to school in the district:

Pettigrew said the district has gotten too remote to pay attention to all its schools. He sent his kids to Catholic school because he doesn’t trust the public ones in his area.

“When I looked at Seattle Public Schools, I wasn’t willing to take the risk,” Pettigrew told The Associated Press.

Oh. So Pettigrew doesn’t actually have any hands on experience at all as either a parent or a student in the Seattle Public Schools. Yet he just “wasn’t willing to take the risk” of sending his children to the same neighborhood school where I chose to send my daughter for seven years.* Which I suppose makes Pettigrew a much more loving and responsible parent than me. Either that, or it makes him a knee-jerk, fear-mongering elitist who thinks that his kids are too good for the schools where most of his constituents send their children.

Actually, here’s what I really think is going on here: Psychological projection. As an elected official, Rep. Pettigrew is understandably self-conscious of his decision to send his kids to private school—maybe even a little embarrassed. And so he is justifying his decision—at least to himself—by projecting a crisis upon a district whose schools he never even gave a chance.

* For the record, my daughter attends Mercer Island High School, where her mother now lives. Divorce is complicated. But we loved Graham Hill Elementary, and I’m pretty sure Eric’s kids would have been happy there too.

The House Transportation Committee passed a bill to allow the next phase of Sound Transit to go forward, if approved by the voters in the ST region. Since it didn’t get any GOP votes, and since the GOP control the state Senate, that’s going to be a tough step. Anyway, good news: The most coherent, most decent, just generally best person you’ll ever hear of, Rep. Ed Orcutt, has decided to be an ass about it!

The bill passed 13-12 almost strictly along party lines. All but one Democrat voted yea, and every Republican voted no.

“Okay, Seattle” representative Ed Orcutt (R-20, Kalama) said, “go ahead and tax yourself into oblivion.”

So first of all — and I’m aware that this is me being a broken record — the thing that’s killing us here in Seattle isn’t taxing ourselves and getting the benefits. It’s the state taxing us and sending the money to places like Kalama. Also, that isn’t killing us too badly as we’re doing fine.

Second, what does “Okay, Seattle” even mean when you vote against letting Seattle do a thing? The bullshit paternalistic rhetoric doesn’t match the bullshit paternalistic action. Pick a bullshit paternalistic lane, and bullshit paternalistic stay in it.

Third, it’s the job of a state representative to do what’s best for the state. They really shouldn’t be gleeful about the failure (even if it’s just in their head) of a part of the state they don’t represent. Honestly, if he believes his nonsense, he isn’t fit to serve.

Fourth, Sound Transit isn’t just Seattle. When Seattle needed to tax ourselves to preserve transit service, we just went ahead and did it. This is for a regional transit plan, for goodness sake.

And finally, the whole premise is silly since Sound Transit will almost certainly be a net good for the region.

I wrote most of this post on public transit. In fact, most of the writing that I do for Horse’s Ass is during my commute. If we didn’t have decent public transit, I doubt I’d have the time to write on HA. I also do some actual paid work work on my commute from time to time. I’m not really sure what the economic value of that is, but it’s not zero. It’s certainly more than my output when I drive.

Beyond just me personally, this is a growing region, and we’re going to need to get people around. Better transit isn’t just a luxury. We’re going to have to pay for it somehow, and Sound Transit, while hardly perfect, is the best option we’ve got.

Sorry for the short OT, this is from my phone.

The editorial board of Vancouver’s Columbian—a paper so knee-jerk anti-labor that it makes the Seattle Times look the Union Record—has once again come out opposing the minimum wage, regurgitating the same blow chunks of trickle-down pablum. Literally the exact same sentence in three different editorials. But it’s fascinating to see how their preface has evolved over the past 18 months.

In our view: Skills the Key to Better Pay
Proposals to hike minimum wage to $15 will eliminate jobs – and opportunities
Published: September 8, 2013

… Realistically, the notion of a minimum wage is a job-killing philosophy. If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.

 

In Our View: Minimum Wage Experiment
Here’s hoping Seattle’s gutsy move pays off — but it’s tough to not be skeptical
Published: May 6, 2014

… Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, who sat on the mayor’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee, said: “This is an awesome victory for the 100,000 workers earning less than $15 an hour in Seattle. They will see their lives dramatically improved.” That is, if they still have a job. As The Columbian has written editorially in the past: “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”

 

In Our View: Raise Skills, not Base Pay
Minimum-wage workers’ concerns valid, but hike to $12 could cost them jobs
Published: February 2, 2015

… Yet there is a fine line between helping workers prosper and helping the businesses that employ them to prosper. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, but they require some balance. As The Columbian has written editorially, “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”

So in September, 2013 they categorically claim that the minimum wage is a “realistically… a job-killing philosophy,” in May, 2014 they allow a touch of doubt to seep in, warning it might improve workers’ lives “if they still have a job,” and now they’re willing to acknowledge that raising wages and helping businesses prosper “are not mutually exclusive.” The Columbian is still wrong to repeat their reality-denying zero sum game supply-side bullshit. But for them, this is progress!

It’ll be interesting to see where the editors are in another 18 months when Seattle and SeaTac are both prospering under their higher minimum wages, and Vancouver is still… well… Vancouver.

The Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally meets tonight for food, conversation, revelry, and drinks with a progressive political theme. All are welcome. There are no dues, no initiation, and no items on the agenda. Just show up and say “hello.”

We meet every Tuesday evening at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to stop by earlier than that for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another DL meeting over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and the brand new Long Beach chapters also meet. The Lakewood chapter meets on Wednesday. And for Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets.

There are 187 chapters of Living Liberally, including seventeen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Sen. Sharon Brown has a press release about how she wants to modernize, ahem, what we call clean energy.* Some of it is fine (I think, but anyone with more knowledge of energy issues than me, please pipe in). Some of it is of the oh, let’s count the hydro power toward our clean energy requirements despite the initiative that people already voted on.

“By allowing some of the incremental electricity produced by efficiency improvements to hydro projects to qualify as an eligible renewable resource, we not only save consumers money, but we also help our employers free up the resources they need to hire more employees and give raises and better benefits to those already employed,” said Brown, R-Kennewick.

Efficiencies are awesome! But the good news is that there’s already an advantage to utilities to being efficient. It’s the market. The reason we have regulations like these are because we’re trying to accomplish things the market won’t do well. Also, is there ever a GOP program they can’t pretend is a jobs bill. We need to rely more on hydro than on energy sources with less downside because jobs. Also, didn’t we vote on this already?

Efficiency changes made to hydro projects allow more electricity to be produced from the same amount of water without any new diversions or impoundments. Currently, the I-937 law only recognizes hydro-efficiency improvements associated with projects owned by a qualified utility. Under Brown’s bill, this recognition would be extended to incremental electricity marketed by the federal Bonneville Power Administration.

Will of the people, and whatnot.

“As lawmakers heard from some of those who testified today, Washingtonians who have paid for these efficiency improvements to hydro projects should be able to see the benefits of those improvements,” said Brown. “Instead, Washington is sending its affordable hydropower to other states who consider it renewable, while our utilities are force to purchase costly power required to meet the state’s mandate.

Ignore the typos. This post can’t all just be me making fun of typos, and I’ve already done it once and will do it again. It’s just some intern, probably. Good for you for being here, and I hope you earn credits toward your middle school graduation.

Obviously, the thing to concentrate on here is that our standards for renewable should be rigorous. Our standards should be tough to hit because how we get our energy is valuable!

Also, not for nothing, but energy is incredibly cheap in Washington. For example, my apartment is pretty small, but I paid less than $15 for my December bill,** and that was with a fair amount of heat, what with it being December. A lot of that is, as Goldy has written, our socialist utility here in Seattle. So clearly socialism is a jobs program — QED — and I hope Senator Brown will lead a chorus of The Internationale. Unless she hates jobs.

“With so many families having to make the difficult choice between paying the light bill and putting food on the table, we have an obligation to look for ways to make energy more affordable. My bill would do just that by allowing our utilities to use clean, affordable incremental hydropower and pass any cost savings onto their customers.”

Right, so let’s take out the profit motive from things like utilities. Acknowledge that they make more sense as infrastructure and then everyone who uses the product will have more money. Brilliant! Oh, no, it’s just loosening regulation.

Anyway, one more typo to make fun of from a part of it that I’m basically fine with.

We really need to look at what we are going to use for baseload energy in the future. Wind power cannot replace wind power. Utilities have to balance every minute of our load with our resources and the power that our customers need.

Again, I’m not really one to make fun of typos, but this has been up for several days. And presumably it was a draft at some point. “Wind power cannot replace wind power” is like a riddle in a children’s book.

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– No charges for person who killed man walking his dog in a Kirkland crosswalk

– There are new rules for attending Seattle City Council meetings and after reading this Seattlish piece, I’m also interested to see if they’ll just be used on Zimmerman and Bellomio or if there will be a larger crackdown.

– Tim Eyman’s “analysis” of initiative-related bills and amendments isn’t to be trusted

– Always glad when someone changes their mind to become pro-choice, but yeah, the follow up is important.

– If you were actually worried about the quality of the new Ghostbusters movie and not just of girl cooties getting on a classic, I would think the addition of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy would be the surest sign that it’s in good hands.

– But describing Wing Commander as unsophisticated sci-fi makes it too easy to write off as…unsophisticated sci-fi