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Running Again

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It’s no surprise, but Patty Murray will be running for reelection in 2016 (Seattle Times Link). Good to know. Patty Murray has been a voice of reason in an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. She has brought decency and class to the Senate. While I don’t like a lot of the compromises she has had to make — most recently with the budget deal — I have no doubt but that they would have been worse without her there.

I suppose, this also dashes my hope that she would run for president. There was no reason to think she would run, but I had always sort of hoped that she might. I suppose with Hillary Clinton pretty close to a lock on the Democratic nomination if she wants it, that wouldn’t make much sense.

Open Thred 2-10

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– In short, compared to other parts of the country, we don’t go to church that much. Not that we aren’t spiritual, we just as a region don’t go into churches. And, we haven’t for a very long time.

– Hey NFL, Seattle is Gay!

– I don’t know if Lee is going to have a larger piece but on Twitter he noted this piece about the legislature moving to make localities take marijuana businesses.

– The good news is that we haven’t yet seen any evidence that the US is doing this. On the other hand, we’re very good at outsourcing our dirty work when we need to, aren’t we?

– Whatever snow related fun we had over the weekend, I’m certainly glad not to be on the East Coast right now.

– GOP Congress Snake

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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

Science v. Creationism:

Mental Floss: 29 misconceptions about alcohol.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

White House: West Wing Week.

Political Olympics:

WaPo: When politicians lash out at reporters.

Young Turks: Republican birth control jokes probably won’t help them with the female vote.

The federal government legalizes hemp!

ObamaCare means Freedom:

Maddow debunks government weather manipulation conspiracy theory.

Mark Fiore: Wheels on the tech bus.

Stephen: America’s wealthy under siege.

Political Football:

Maddow: Tasers, and Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger announce they will no longer sell new semi-auto handguns in California”.

Rocky Anderson: The US’s imperialist history of undermining democracy.

Sharpton: Now Republicans want to execute a “lawless” Obama?!?

Laura Ingraham is a Bigger Idiot than Anyone Realized!!!

Sharpton: Why do Republicans freak out over contraception?:

The Bromance: Scott Walker on Paul Ryan.

Daily Show: Selling Koch to small towns.

The Christie Minstrel Show:

Farron Cousins with Nancy Cohen: Republican War on Women™ still a losing strategy.

Young Turks: This is why people love Elizabeth Warren.

Thom with more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

The Republican War on the Needy™:

Young Turks: What do the Republicans really think of Cathy McMorris Rodgers?

Chris Hayes: How the Koch brothers are trying to buy the Senate.

Fallon: Reads awful advice and channels Rob Ford on his last night of Late Night.

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

Good Job Seattle Area Transit

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As you might have heard, this Wednesday there was a bit of a parade in Downtown Seattle. Given that the crowd was larger than the population of Seattle, getting to and from the event was no small task. Martin H. Duke at Seattle Transit Blog has the early info on how the systems did: Mostly pretty well but he also suggests room for improvement.

In all, a memorable day for transit. All transportation modes were overwhelmed beyond their capacity. Things might have been much worse had it not been for crowds of riders in good cheer, orderly, and forgiving of systems well beyond their design limits. Moreover, agencies showed uncommon agility in mobilizing for Wednesday on short notice, and the efforts of foot soldiers controlling crowds at Westlake station and other places were nothing short of heroic.

[…]

However well Wednesday made the point that Seattle’s transit capacity is valuable, there were certainly some suboptimal operations. In particular, joint tunnel operations are severely capacity-reducing when demand reaches these levels. Your humble correspondent arrived at Westlake a little before 5 pm; lines criscrossed the mezzanine as police limited access to the platform for safety reasons. These volumes compounded the usual bus friction, with restricted movement on the platform, Metro’ s insistence on adding congestion at the point of maximum stress, and the apparent breakdown of Metro’s sequencing system for southbound buses. It was clear that the surge of novice riders was largely waiting for the train, well in excess of the share of platform time granted Link.

Moreover, the consistent weakness of rider information arose once again. The tunnel message boards spouted useless platitudes. The crowd got restless as train headways widened, with no real-time information to satisfy them. Moreover, the instinct of a savvy rider, knowing that full trains will pass up riders further South, is to head to Westlake, which no doubt added to the overflow there. Sound Transit, in a brilliantly creative move, sent some trains “out of service” through Westlake to clear out the other crowds and ran some trains between Stadium and Seatac only. It might have relieved some of the pressure to let people know that taking relatively empty buses a few stops would not maroon them, and in fact might get them home sooner.

I don’t want to downplay the people who were stuck at stops but still and all, with only a couple days to prep the agencies — some that have faced severe budget cuts recently — got most people who wanted to be there downtown. It is a testament to the agencies and to the individuals who pulled it off.

Given some of the nightmares that came out of New Jersey after the game, it wasn’t a given that this would work. Of course people were able to come in slowly (the route was pretty well attended at 7:00 when I left for work) and were able to enjoy Seattle for a while rather than all going home at once. I don’t think there’s any way this could have run perfectly, but it did run pretty damn well.

No

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Rodney Tom’s Senate — in their continuing effort to keep social issues off the table — have passed a parental notification bill though the Senate Law & Justice Committee. I realize this isn’t going to become law any time soon. I don’t know if it would even pass the state Senate, and if it did, it wouldn’t get the time of the day in the House and if it somehow managed to get through that, it would be vetoed. But it’s disturbing that it has gotten as far as it has.

Now don’t get me wrong: In an ideal world, minors who need abortions would talk to their parents, but there are reasons why minors wouldn’t tell their parents. And while the law proposed recognizes that in some cases, it’s cruel in the extreme to force a 15 year old trying to abort her father’s child to talk to a superior court judge before she can go forward. There are pregnant girls who have legit reasons to not want to have that conversation: Maybe they’re afraid that they’ll be disowned, or sent to one of those troubled teen camps, for example. Even if you want to push some bullshit narrative about those flighty children today, they are still the ones who would have to carry the child and live with it. In an ideal world a parent should help their children out in that situation.

But we aren’t in an ideal world, and ultimately it isn’t the parent’s decision. If a parent wants to be notified in that situation, they should spend the previous decade and a half or so proving that they’re worth the conversation, not having the state force it.

[h/t to WA NARAL who would like you to write your senator here]

Reeding Iz Hurd

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Sometimes as a Seattle resident I’m disappointed that my legislators aren’t as full-force liberal as I’d like. But at least I can take comfort in not being represented by Matt Shea, because here’s what he’s telling his constituents.

Democrats aren’t stopping the assault against our freedom with tax increases. They also want every law abiding citizen who owns a gun to have a background check…. Initiative 594 would require background checks whenever a firearm is sold or transferred between licensed dealers or private parties, with few exceptions. Any sale or transfer of a firearm must be completed through a dealer. If you gave a firearm to your son, a brother or other family member, the proposed law would require them to have a background check or be in violation. It would criminalize law-abiding citizens people, such as Gonzaga University students Erik Fagan and Dan McIntosh, who used a gun last year to scare off a six-time convicted felon when he tried to break into their on-campus house for money.

Christ what an asshole. Hank at Shallow Cognitions takes care of most of the making fun of this. The fact that this was supposedly a bad bill of the week, but is an initiative, the fact that the initiative doesn’t apply to gifts to family (although, I’ll say don’t give a gun to your felon family members if you have any), the fact that the initiative doesn’t have fuck all to do with university rules about firearms. He also has a link to Matt Shea’s road rage incident, that somehow I hadn’t heard about.

That’s all correct, and worth talking about. But I’m curious about the politics? This is an incredibly popular idea. Background checks should be a no-brainer. They’re also super popular. I mean I get that in an off, off year recall in Colorado this can have some resonance. But as an initiative that will almost certainly go to the people and will probably pass, what the fuck? Does he realize he has to be on the same ballot as the thing a supermajority of gun owners support?

Even if you’re trying to just get favor from the gun lobby, this seems like a poor idea politically. I mean, speak at their rallies and answer questions, I suppose. But to announce it to constituents who almost certainly are majority on the other side seems unhelpful. It seems like even if he isn’t worried about reelection (he got 56% last time in a GOP year, but I don’t know about the quality of his opponent or the district more generally), it would make him less trustworthy.

Open Thread 2/6

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– Seattle sure loves a parade.

– Liberals Need To Get Happy

– Not sure Bill Nye should have accepted a debate with Ken Ham given that it might give some people the impression that there’s an actual debate on the age of the earth. But I’m glad he handled it deftly.

– The Times has had this kind of stink coming off of it for years, and as long as its Beltway rot is allowed to continue, it will continue to gangrenize every other media institution it touches.

– Local school measures are coming up.

– Also, stay warm everybody.

Alcohol and Prison Populations

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I went on a short rant about this on Twitter recently, but I wanted to expand on it more here. Last week, Keith Humphrey’s at The Reality-Based Community wrote a post entitled “The Link Between Overcrowded Prisons and a Certain Drug“, where he claimed that alcohol is largely responsible for our prison overcrowding problems, rather than the war on (certain) drugs.

That’s simply not correct, and it’s very easy to debunk. If the effects of alcohol use were responsible for the criminal behavior that swells our prison ranks, you’d see at least some correlation between alcohol use and prison populations among the different countries of the world. But you don’t. It’s not even close. According to this World Health Organization report from 2011, these are the countries that lead the world in alcohol consumption (total in liters per capita per year):

1. Moldova (18.22)
2. Czech Republic (16.45)
3. Hungary (16.27)
4. Russia (15.76)
5. Ukraine (15.6)
6. Estonia (15.57)
7. Andorra (15.48)
8. Romania (15.30)
9. Belarus (15.13)
10. Croatia (15.11)
11. South Korea (14.8)
12. Portugal (14.55)
13. Ireland (14.41)
14. France (13.66)
15. UK (13.37)

The United States consumes only 9.44 liters per capita per year, far behind these other nations. Yet we imprison a whopping 716 out of every 100,000 people. How does that compare to those countries that consume more alcohol? Here’s the same figure for each of the countries listed above:

1. Moldova (185)
2. Czech Republic (154)
3. Hungary (173)
4. Russia (484)
5. Ukraine (311)
6. Estonia (245)
7. Andorra (49)
8. Romania (156)
9. Belarus (335)
10. Croatia (115)
11. South Korea (92)
12. Portugal (134)
13. Ireland (94)
14. France (101)
15. UK (148*)

* Just England and Wales, Scotland is 146 and Northern Ireland is 99

It’s not even close. So is this because all of those other countries don’t put people in jail for homicide, rape, simple assault, aggravated assault and robbery…the types of crimes that Humphries called out as being tied to alcohol use? Of course not. Is it because Americans are somehow more predisposed to commit crimes when drunk? That’s pretty far-fetched as well. One potential difference comes from drunk driving laws, but both Australia and Canada drink more than us, have a similarly car-dependent culture, and still lock up far fewer people than we do.

As much as Humphries and his colleagues seem eager to obscure this fact, it’s the overaggressive way that America wages its war on drugs that leaves us with such a huge amount of people behind bars. Looking solely at the number of people locked up for marijuana offenses and not finding very many is a terrible way to draw conclusions about its impact.

The way that our drug war inflates our prison population is more complicated than just sending people to jail for pot. It’s about the effect that a pot arrest can have for a person down the road. In far too many cases, a pot arrest early in life becomes a wall against future opportunity for many people (mostly minorities). A felony drug conviction (often through a plea deal that allows the person to avoid going to prison initially) makes future educational endeavors and various types of employment nearly impossible. The end result is that significant numbers of people in that situation find that becoming a career criminal is their only path towards survival.

So to really understand the impact of the war on pot, you can’t just look at what percentage of the people in our prison system are there because of a pot conviction. You have to look at what percentage of the people in our prison system had their first contact with the criminal justice system because of a pot arrest. Mix that with massively punitive mandatory minimums for various drug offenses, and you have the recipe for prisons bursting at the seams with people who largely end up there by design.

None of this is to say that the violence and criminality resulting from alcohol isn’t a problem. It certainly is, but it’s very easy to look at the heaviest drinking countries in the world and see that it’s not the reason we have 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of its people.

House Does Another Worthwhile Thing

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The State House passed the Reproductive Parity Act. So now it looks like it will probably go on to not get a vote in the State Senate.

I am honestly trying to not be cynical about the law’s chances in the state Senate. I was just in Olympia lobbying for it on Monday. I believe in the power of people to push the Senate to act. So, please call or write your Senator. If you live in East King County, or somewhere else where there are Republicans in swing districts, that can be important. But even if you’re represented by a Democrat in Seattle, Tacoma, or somewhere else safe, it’s important to let them know you’ve got their back on this one. Or if you live in a red district, your Senator might see what pressure the other members are getting and at least allow a vote.

I don’t think it’ll pass, but it’s possible. In any event, it’s worth trying.

Universal Pre-K

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Erica C. Barnett at Publicola has the info on what the Seattle Pre-K proposal might look like:

Burgess predicts paying for preschool for all (or at least many—the program will be voluntary) of the city’s 12,000-plus three- and four-year-olds, only about two-thirds of whom are currently in preschool, will require a ballot initiative (Seattle’s preferred way of paying for critical needs like parks, libraries, early-childhood education, and now, possibly, preschool).

“It is a significant amount of money,” Burgess says, although he adds that he doesn’t know exactly how much. “One question is, could we start in year one or year two with just general fund money?”

[…]

Most of the kids who aren’t enrolled in preschool now, unsurprisingly, are lower-income or foreign-born.

Burgess says the city will “most likely start with mixed delivery from the beginning”—that is, some public preschools, some private, and some home-based—while the program ramps up.

This and the minimum wage will be the two biggest fights in the city. I suspect both will pass, but it will be interesting to see what forms they take. If they’re the least that can happen, well, that’s still an improvement, and still worth something. But these things can be so much more.

Open Thread 2/4

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– Sorry this is so late. I was out probably too late on Sunday and had to get up early to head down to Olympia on Monday (for this, no report on it since I went as an activist not as a writer). And then I overslept and forgot my computer this morning. Basically, what I’m saying is boo, Carl.

– One thing that I did pick up is that Rodney Tom is a coward. Also, yay there’s someone running against him (Seattle Times link).

– The SNAP cuts, the pathetic minimum wage increase…these are the primary result of over half a century of race-baiting by a small group of well-funded, paranoid, white bigots, hellbent on destroying the one thing that stands in the way of their ability to trample all over the rights of whomever they damned well please: the American government.

– Apparently the Superbowl transit was a mess, and quite avoidable.

– Always nice when a local place gets recognition in a national magazine. Well done Central Cinema (they also had some other NW theaters for food lovers, but CC was the only one I’ve been to).

– I’m not sure exactly what a city needs to buy to have Amazon classify it as romantic, but I’m pretty sure this list is flawed.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottle The Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally had a standing-room-only turn-out for the State of the Union (Bar) event last week. This week we continue our traveling Drinking Liberally tour, in search of a new home.

So please join Tuesday evening at the Wedgwood Ale House and Grill, 8515 35th Ave NE, Seattle for an evening of political pontification over a pint. We meet at 8:00 pm, but show up earlier for peaceful dinner if you wish.


Can’t make it tonight? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week.

The Tri-Cities chapter also meets this and every Tuesday night. The Lakewood chapter meets this Wednesday. For Thursday, the Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet. And on Friday, the Enumclaw chapter meets.

With 213 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Open Thread 2/3

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– Well, that was a W.

– Why the crap does Bill Kristol still get work?

– Time for Oregon’s Democrats to come out of the cannabis closet

– Kissing the ass of the 1% all day is maybe not a way to be a great human.

– Congrats, someone, for being State Dem Chair.

– About Woody Allen and innocent until proven guilty.

– I don’t care one whit about Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber, but this is the greatest opening sentence in history.

– This may be the only post from me today.

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