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Via Charles, ThinkProgress has the story of a Florida man who will escape prosecution for fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back, under the state’s dangerously stupid “Stand Your Ground” law:

In early July, 20-year-old Colt Thriemer shot dead a one-time friend in a Wal-Mart parking lot, saying he feared for his life. Witnesses gathered for a truck meet that night say victim Thomas James Brown, 21, was walking away toward his car when Thriemer fired ten shots. Some say Brown had threatened to kill Thriemer over the course of several weeks. The story as told by prosecutors in a detailed legal memo suggests drug transactions, addiction, and monetary debts all played a role in the scenario leading up to Brown’s death.

But these facts will never play out in a trial, because prosecutors have decided not to charge Thriemer citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

“The Stand Your Ground statute makes no exception from the immunity because Brown may have been walking away from Thriemer at the time the deadly force was used,” the memo from the State Attorney’s office states. “The Stand Your Ground law does not require Thriemer to wait until Brown in fact retrieved a gun before he fired. Under the current state of the law and the facts of this case, Thriemer was legally allowed to use deadly force based on a reasonable belief that his life was in danger and that he was about to become the victim of an armed robbery.”

Okay. So let’s play this legal standard out to its logical conclusion. If, under Stand Your Ground, a reasonable belief that your life is in danger gives you the right to shoot an unarmed man—say, me—in the back, then my reasonable belief that you believe that I present a mortal danger to you, should give me the right to stand my ground and preemptively shoot you first. Note that your belief that I present a danger doesn’t even have to be reasonable—I just need to reasonably believe that you believe it reasonable, to give me a reason to shoot first under Stand Your Ground!

Of course, if you were to believe that I might act upon a belief that you believed that I posed a mortal threat to you, then that might be all the reason you need to shoot me before I preemptively shoot you. And so on.

In this scenario, the very belief that the other party might stand their ground becomes a reasonable defense under Stand Your Ground. And if you don’t believe that the “I believed he believed I was going to shoot him” defense won’t inevitably be tested in court, then you don’t know Florida.

Let’s be honest: most editorial boards mostly endorse incumbents, and the same is as true of the pot-addled Stranger as it is of the Blethen-addled Seattle Times. Hell, even I mostly endorsed incumbents in my caveat-asterisked endorsement post. So if you’re going to measure the influence of an editorial board, it is best to do it in open (or otherwise competitive) races, as well as those in which the editors stuck their neck out to endorse the challenger.

So by this metric, how many elections did the editors at our state’s paper of record sway? Not many:

Prop. 1, Seattle’s Park District measure

The same city government that neglected parks for years now wants voters to approve a new tax that gives them twice as much money and the power to raise rates without voter approval. Voters should reject Proposition 1, a measure to create the new Seattle Park District. Vote against the formation of a metropolitan park district.

With about 60 percent of ballots counted, Prop 1 appears to have won. Seattle Times: 0, Voters: 1.

Legislative District No. 1, Representative Position No. 2

Edward Barton, Republican
Edward Barton, first-time candidate for office, displays the intellect and moderation to be a strong lawmaker from the 1st Legislative District, which straddles the King-Snohomish line. He is the better option for voters over the incumbent, state Rep. Luis Moscoso, D-Mountlake Terrace.

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Luis Moscoso is leading Barton 44 percent to 43 percent, but fellow Democrat Dave Griffin has another 14 percent of the vote, so Moscoso looks good for November. Seattle Times: 0, Voters: 2.

Legislative District No. 21, Representative Position No. 1

Scott Whelpley, Democrat
Scott Whelpley is a former Navy aviator who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star. The Mukilteo Democrat who holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Washington would be learning on the job. But he holds the clear potential for independence from powerful interest groups and his Democratic caucus.

Whelpley has come in third behind Republican Allen McPheeters and Democrat Strom Peterson, so he won’t even make it past the top-two primary and into November. Seattle Times: 0; Voters: 3.

Legislative District No. 31, State Senator

Cathy Dahlquist, Republican
State Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, the longtime lawmaker best known for her fiery temper, faces a sharp and seasoned opponent this year from within her own party. State Rep. Cathy Dahlquist is the easy choice for the 31st District Senate seat.

Can’t really blame the editors for endorsing challenger Cathy Dahlquist over crazy, crazy Pam Roach, yet as of last night, Roach holds a slight 0.9 percent lead. If I were charitable, I’d call this a tie. But I’m not charitable. Seattle Times: 0; Voters: 4.

Legislative District No.31, Representative Position No. 1

Drew Stokesbary, Republican
For the open state House seat in the 31st District, Republican Drew Stokesbary of Auburn is the candidate most likely to be a voice for fiscal responsibility. The incumbent, Cathy Dahlquist, is vacating the seat to run for state Senate.

Stokesbary is a total douchebag. But he is winning over 51 percent of the vote for this open seat. Score one for Team Blethen. Seattle Times: 1; Voters: 4.

Legislative District No. 32, State Senator

Chris Eggen, Democrat
Shoreline Deputy Mayor Chris Eggen, a Democrat, is the better choice over the incumbent, state Sen. Maralyn Chase, D-Shoreline, who is seeking a second term. Challenger Eggen is rated “very good” by The Municipal League of King County, compared to Chase’s “good” rating. Eggen knows what is ahead, especially with education.

Democratic incumbent Senator Marilyn Chase has over 51 percent of the vote, and if last night’s results hold up, third-place Eggen won’t even make it out of the primary and into November. Seattle Times: 1; Voters 5.

Legislative District No. 37, State Senator

Pramila Jayapal, Democrat
In a crowded contest for Seattle’s 37th Legislative District state Senate seat, Pramila Jayapal stands out for the breadth and depth of her civic involvement. The Democrat is a passionate and effective social-justice activist, armed with an MBA and experience in the private financial sector. That said, her election would test her ability to balance a progressive streak with pragmatism and the ability to reach across the aisle to find compromise.

Not sure how to score this one. It was technically an open seat, sure. But Jayapal was a shoo-in. Nearly everybody endorsed her. Hard to divine any influence out of this race. So I’m arbitrarily awarding a point to each side. Seattle Times: 2; Voters: 6.

Legislative District No. 37, Representative Position No. 1

Daniel Bretzke, Republican
The 37th Legislative District’s Position 1 needs a legislator willing to compromise and represent the best interests of a diverse district where many schools are struggling and persistent achievement gaps threaten to leave students behind. That means turning out the incumbent, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, in favor of the promising political newcomer, Daniel Bretzke of Seattle.

Bretzke barely got 9 percent of the vote, pathetic even for a Seattle Republican. Seattle Times: 2; Voters 7.

So there you have it: another spectacularly unimpressive demonstration of influence meddling on the part of the Seattle Times editorial board!

 

I suppose folks are expecting some sort of morning-after primary election analysis, and since it’s the morning after, and I’ve got nothing better to do at the moment, I guess I’ll write it. But there really isn’t that much to analyze.

Of course the big race—and the only one with any immediate impact on how we live our daily lives—was the apparent victory of Proposition 1, authorizing the formation of a Metropolitan Park District with its own dedicated regular levy authority. Hooray! But even if Prop 1’s lead modestly grows as the late ballots are counted (we’ll know more about whether there is any late ballot trend this afternoon at 4:30), the measure’s relatively narrow 52.4 percent to 47.6 percent lead should make good government liberals nervous.

By all rights, Prop 1 should have passed by better than 60 percent of the vote. The outcome never should have even been in question. But an incredibly dishonest No campaign combined with a complicit Seattle Times editorial board, came way too close to burying the MPD under a mountain of anti-government Eymanesque bullshit. Had the other side the money to heavily outspend the Yes camp, amplifying their lies on TV, Prop 1 likely would’ve lost. And that’s a recipe I wouldn’t be surprised to see in future elections. I’m particularly concerned about pro-business forces concentrating their spending into one or two council district  elections, patiently buying themselves a GOP-lite council, one district at a time.

So yay for Prop 1, but beware the process.

In the other Seattle race that got a fare bit of attention, I’m not sure that there is anything to learn from long-term incumbent Democratic speaker of the state house Frank Chopp’s 80 percent to 19 percent primary victory over Socialist Alternative challenger Jesse Spear. It wasn’t a great showing by Spear, but in context, it wasn’t awful. In fact with just over 19 percent of the vote she got more than any Republican running in a Seattle legislative district. In fact she got more than any other second place finisher other than Brendan Kolding’s 19.86 percent in his Dem-on-Dem challenge to incumbent Joe Fitzgibbon in the 34th.

Spear should do better in November—whether she’ll do better than Kshama Sawant’s 29 percent showing in 2012, I don’t know. But throughout much of the city Socialist Alternative is well on its way to establishing itself as Seattle’s second party. And while it’s not likely to win many elections from this position, the fact that 19 percent of Seattle primary voters are willing to cast their ballot for a self-avowed Socialist deserves a little attention and respect.

As for the only open legislative seat, I stayed out of the race in my own 37th, because I didn’t really see the point of alienating any of my neighbors. The second Pramila Jayapal declared her candidacy it was all over. She’s a good fit for the district, and enjoyed nearly all of the Democratic establishment and constituent group support.

If I feel like it, I may offer some thoughts on some non-Seattle races in a subsequent post. But mostly I’m just relieved that enough Seattleites saw through the lies to give the city the extra taxing authority it needs on parks.

8 pm: Polls just closed, and King County Elections should be dropping tonights results around 8:15 pm, so I’ll be madly reloading their web page between now and then. I’ll update this post with the results of the only truly important race tonight—Seattle Prop 1—and then a few times more with other results and analysis. Stay tuned!

8:11 pm: Omigod, the truth wins (maybe), with Prop 1 (Metropolitan Park District) up 52.4% to 47.6%! Yay!

8:18 pm: Incumbent Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp is leading leading Socialist challenger Jesse Spear 80% to 19%, which I’m guessing is a little disappointing for the Spear campaign. She’ll do better in November, and I don’t suppose she was ever expecting to win, but it would’ve been nice to see her over 20% in the primary.

8:19 pm: In what will set up a very tense week for State Senate watchers, incumbent Democratic turncoat Tim Sheldon is in a too-close-to-call three-way in the 35th LD. Real Democratic challenger Irene Bowling leads with 34.2%, followed by Sheldon with 33.7%, and then Republican Travis Couture with 32.1%. The top two are up for grabs! That means depending on late ballots, it is a realistic possibility that Sheldon could be out of a job, potentially shifting control of the Senate back to the real Democrats!

8:34 pm: Republican moneybags Microsoftee Pedro Celis (the GOP’s Great Off-White Hope), is actually coming in third in his top-two challenge against Democratic incumbent Microsoftee Suzan DelBene. DelBene 52%, Republican Robert Sutherland (who?) 16%, Celis 15%. Wow. Republicans sure do hate immigrants.

9:13 pm: So just to be clear, I’m not quite declaring victory for Prop 1. With a 4.8% lead, it will likely win. And the Yes campaign says that they phone banked 40,000 voters late, and they were breaking their way. But it’s close enough that late ballots could turn it the other way. We’ll have a better idea tomorrow at 4:30 pm.

– Light on a dark moment in U.S. history: Bainbridge Exclusion Memorial

– All on social media, people kept telling me I should vote today, but I voted several days ago.

– If people don’t want to be accused of waging a war on women, maybe they should stop.

– TV news sure is car-focused. And specifically angry drivers focused.

– Photos from the Mars Hill Church Protest in Bellevue

– NPI’s 11th anniversary picnic is coming up.

– Good job, Lego.

This isn’t Socialist firebrand Kshama Sawant, or “near insane” zillionaire Nick Hanauer, or tour d’ivoire economist Thomas Piketty, or even some do-gooding liberal thinker at some do-gooding liberal think tank talking—this is Standard & Fucking Poor’s, the non-partisan for-profit ratings service whose job it is to provide reliable research to big-money investors! And they’ve concluded that extreme inequality is hurting the US economy:

Our review of the data, as well as a wealth of research on this matter, leads us to conclude that the current level of income inequality in the U.S. is dampening GDP growth, at a time when the world’s biggest economy is struggling to recover from the Great Recession and the government is in need of funds to support an aging population.

[…] The challenge now is to find a path toward more sustainable growth, an essential part of which, in our view, is pulling more Americans out of poverty and bolstering the purchasing power of the middle class. A rising tide lifts all boats…but a lifeboat carrying a few, surrounded by many treading water, risks capsizing.

Modern capitalists are producing their own gravediggers. The question remains whether mainstream politicians and journalists can admit what mainstream economists have already concluded—that trickle-down economics has failed—before it’s too late to save our economy from steady decline and eventual collapse?

We can argue over the numbers—what kind of rate is too high or too low—but it is now clear that it is in all of our interests to both raise the minimum wage, and to raise the top marginal tax rates on income and wealth, as well as invest in the public infrastructure necessary to support and maintain economic growth.

Seriously not satire. This isn’t The Onion. They mean it:

“Do you think because they’re blind, they’re gonna start shooting in every direction and kill everyone? Fact is it’s been proven that people who lack vision have an increased awareness of their hearing and spatial surroundings.”

“Yeah,” my daughter astutely noted as I played the video, “but they still can’t fucking see!”

It is remarkable how truly lopsided the gun debate is in America, that the NRA feels free to focus on advocacy like this.

[ HAtip: ivoter.net]

This video has been making the rounds, and it’s pretty awful/amazing on a number of grounds. Two young immigration activists approach Republicans Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Steve King at an Iowa fundraiser, offering to let them tear up their Dream Act cards. Rep. King is just the stupid, fucking, immigrant-hating asshole he always is, but watch how Paul—a presidential hopeful—just runs away from the table before he can even swallow his mouthful of food:

Gotta wonder, as president, what else Sen. Paul might run away from if he can’t even look in the face two young Americans he wants to deport to countries they’ve never known?

With the “ballot deadline” just 12 hours away, I thought I’d just string together a few final observations about the dishearteningly dishonest campaign against Proposition 1, which would create a Metropolitan Park District to provide an adequate and stable level of funding to Seattle Parks & Recreation.

• “No on Parks” is a Republican campaign largely funded by Republican donors, being run by a Republican political consultant, and endorsed by the Republican editorial board of the Seattle Times. So if you are a Republican, vote no on Prop 1. But if you are a Democrat, don’t kid yourself that voting “no” would do anything other than advance the Republican agenda of drowning government in a bathtub.
• There is an unspoken class warfare aspect to the No on Parks campaign. In their guest post on Slog, campaign co-chairs Don Harper and Carol Fisher pin their credibility on the fact that they have “volunteered thousands of hours and raised over $2 million for neighborhood parks.” Good for them. And good for their neighborhood parks. But that sort of volunteerism just can’t be relied on in neighborhoods where most folks are working two or three jobs just to scrape by. The same way Southend school children can’t benefit from PTA fundraisers the way more affluent North Seattle school children can. This No campaign just reeks of geographic factionalism—not sure what the particulars are, but opponents sure do seem determined to maintain a status quo that does okay by them.
• Playing dirty works. This has been an incredibly “dirty campaign.” Even Joel Connelly says so, and he’s been covering political campaigns for the PI since the Garfield administration. And if folks are willing to play this dirty in a campaign over how we fund our parks, just imagine how dirty these people are going to play in two years, when all nine city council seats are up for reelection. I warned you about Faye Garneau during last year’s districts campaign, but did you listen, Seattle? No. Speaking of which…
• Our Democratic establishment has totally failed to explain to voters how taxes work, and that has created an uninformed electorate that is an invitingly ripe target for those deliberately attempting to misinform (I’m looking at you, Seattle Times editorial board). If there is a lesson to learn from this campaign it’s that if we ever want to fix our tax structure into something that is both fair and sustainable, educating the public about the way taxes work is a project that our political leaders must pursue at every opportunity—24/7, 365 days a year—and not just during those campaign seasons when we have a tax measure on the ballot. If at that.
• Unforgivable. If you vote No on Prop 1 you are either a Republican or an idiot or regrettably misinformed (not all Republicans are idiots, some are just mean-spirited, selfish, or wrong). That happens. But as for No on Parks’ principals, you have earned my permanent enmity by running such a dishonest and disrespectful campaign. This isn’t about a policy disagreement—I’ve had plenty of those, and have still been able to work with the folks on the other side. This is about tactics and context. You simply cannot be trusted ever again. And any campaign you touch in the future will be tainted by association.

As for what will happen when the ballots drop tonight, I’ve no idea, but I’m bracing myself for disappointment. That said, unless it’s a decisive margin one way or another, who the fuck knows which way the late ballots might break, so it’s likely we won’t be able to confidently call this election for at least a few more days.

Hey…it is primary election day in Washington state. So, you know…don’t be an asshole: vote. Fill out that ballot, drop it in the mail or a drop box, and then join us for an evening of electoral politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight, and every Tuesday evening at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. The starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks show up before that for dinner and the election returns.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets this Tuesday. The Lakewood chapter meets this Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets.

With 204 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state three in Oregon and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

Fuck me I have to do math again. Another Republican state legislator complaining about how Washington’s pollution shouldn’t count when we talk about reducing Washington’s pollution. This time State Sen. Ann Rivers’ opinion piece in the Columbian. I’m not going to do metacommentary on the whole piece, but I will draw you to this paragraph.

Washington is already a low-carbon place — especially when compared to a carbon giant such as China, which produces around 8,000 million metric tons annually compared to Washington’s 96 million. And while China’s carbon emissions are on the rise, Washington continues to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint without layering on new costly and intrusive regulations.

Seems dishonest to say we’re a low carbon state because we pollute as one state less than the most populous and one of the most polluted countries in the world. First because China isn’t a benchmark in that anything below them is somehow inherently good. Also, comparing one state to an entire large country doesn’t seem like a useful metric. It’s like comparing a couple apples to a crate. Or to an orchard.

But again we can do some easy math* to see where we are per capita. When we last checked in with dishonest Republicans we discovered that there are 6,971,406 Washingtonians as of 2013 according to the Census. The above paragraph gives us a number we can use to divide! 96,000,000 tons divided by 6,971,406 humans gets that Washingtonians on average are responsible for about 13.77 tons of carbon per person yearly. China, according to Wikipedia, has a population of 1,363,950,000 humans. Divide that into the 8,000,000,000 tons of carbon in the above paragraph and you get about 5.86 tons of carbon per person.

Each Washingtonian makes more than twice as much carbon than a person in China. So we probably have twice the obligation to fix the problem. Maybe? I’m not sure it works that way. And again, the comparison was facile to begin with. You can’t really compare Boeing workers with a long commute in a single occupancy vehicle to Gobi nomads. But that was the comparison Senator Rivers made hoping to make Washington look like it wasn’t much of an emitter of carbon pollution.

It is also something the Columbian thought was fine having in its opinion pages. I don’t know what the process of getting into the paper is, and I suppose if a local legislator wants some room, you probably give it to them. But surely there must be an editorial process to weed out things like this that are so glaringly obviously obfuscation that even I can see it.

[Read more…]

Yesterday morning I tweeted out a photo of an overflowing trash can at a neighborhood park, admonishing my fellow Seattleites to hike out your own garbage when the park trash can is full. Because honestly—be a mensch. Well, this morning my dog and I arrived at the park to see a Seattle Parks & Recreation pickup truck driving away, and the weekend’s mess completely cleaned up.

Your tax dollars at work!

I mention this because one of the memes in every anti-tax campaign is that government needs to prove that it can be less wasteful with taxpayer money before we give them any more of it—and when we hear that relentlessly coming from the likes of the Seattle Times editorial board, what they really mean is “fuck those lazy, overpaid, unionized public employees.” You know, the lazy, overpaid, unionized public employees whose job it is to pick up our trash.

The problem with increasingly relying on voter-approved levies to run our parks is that these levies must be written in a way to attract voters, and “Pick up the trash after voters’ lazy asses” is not exactly a winning bullet point. Yet routine maintenance is the bulk of what the parks department does. And so rather than writing budgets based on what our parks really need, we’ve been writing them based on what might appeal to voters at the polls—and that, along with our city’s structural revenue deficit, is what has led to the parks’ $270 million deferred maintenance backlog.

Let’s be clear: voter-approved levies represent a relatively new way of funding our parks. Seattle’s first parks levy wasn’t until 2000, and that maintenance backlog has exploded since. So how’s all that “direct democracy” working out for you, Seattle?

If anything, Seattle voters have had too much of a say in how we run our parks, not too little. Give our parks department the stable revenue it needs to do the unsexy everyday work of maintaining our parks. Vote “Yes” on Prop 1.

Omigod, really, Seattle Times editorial board…?

The zoo receives many tens of millions of dollars from public coffers but resolutely refuses to explain how it spends the money. Tax dollars disappear into a void with no transparency or accountability. …

The zoo would be a beneficiary of Proposition 1’s Park District, which only compounds the taxpayer-provided free lunch, and builds the wall of secrecy higher.

The zoo has three unhappy female elephants in cramped space. … How bad are things at the Woodland Park Zoo for elephants? What does cramped space really mean? One of the poor creatures has suffered from urine burns, scalded by her own waste water.

There are no good arguments against Prop 1 other than “we don’t want to pay higher taxes,” so instead the opposition has resorted to, well, anything.

It’s hard to believe that a campaign over parks funding for chrissakes, could turn into one of the most dishonest and fear-mongering campaigns ever. But don’t be fooled. Vote “Yes” on Prop 1. (And mail in your goddamn ballot!)

– Did your bus survive the first round of Metro cuts?

– Why does Ted Cruz hate the Special Olympics?

– In the last few months, Seattle’s chattering class has become enamored of the idea of “regressive taxation,” which they are now tossing off in argument as often as possible, regardless of whether or not it actually applies.

– Corporations are people. The type of people who don’t have to be held accountable for environmental or workers rights violations. Or for paying off death squads.

– What to do if you see a hit-and-run

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Synagogue Don Isaac Abravanel in Paris, where angry protests over the war in Gaza took place. Last week’s contest was also the 300th, so the stats for contests 201 to 300 are down below this week’s image.

This week’s is another random location, good luck!

Wins between contests 201 and 300:
milwhcky – 37
wes.in.wa – 14
Geoduck – 11
Liberal Scientist – 8
Seventy2002 – 6
zzippy – 4
Theophrastus – 2
waguy – 2
Dan Robinson – 2
poster child – 2
Ted – 2
10 winners with 1 (Two dogs, Deathfrogg, ChefJoe, Brian, don, BA1959, Jay S, Ludicrus Maximus, Darryl, Clara)