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Open Thread 10/29

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– A grand bargain is probably a bad idea politically as well as on policy grounds.

– If any of the attorneys have any opinion on the judge who was admonished for not wanting to perform same sex marriages, I’d like to hear it.

– Lindsey Graham is pretty terrible. Doy.

– The deadline for early applications for The Institute of a Democratic Future is coming up. I haven’t done the program, but for everyone I know who did, it has been a positive experience.

– Oh no Canada

– The of course teens should have access to condoms argument isn’t new ground, but Lindy West makes the argument about as humorously as anyone will.

– This Halloween, you could be sexy capitalism.

West Coast Carbon Action Plan

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When I first heard what the West Coast governors (CA, OR, WA, & BC) were going to get together to kick climate change’s ass, um more or less, I was pretty excited. I’m not sure we came away with all that much, but maybe.

Through the Action Plan, the leaders agreed that all four jurisdictions will account for the costs of carbon pollution and that, where appropriate and feasible, link programs to create consistency and predictability across the region of 53 million people. The leaders also committed to adopting and maintaining low carbon fuel standards in each jurisdiction. In a joint statement, the leaders committed to “meaningful coordination and linkage between states and provinces across North America.”

“This Action Plan represents the best of what Pacific Coast governments are already doing, and calls on each of us to do more—together—to create jobs by leading in the clean energy economy, and to meet our moral obligation to future generations,” said Governor Inslee. “Each of the governments here is already taking bold steps on climate change; by joining forces, we will accomplish even more,” Inslee said.

[…]

Under the Action Plan, California and British Columbia will maintain their existing carbon pricing programs along with their respective clean fuel standards, while Oregon and Washington have committed to moving forward on a suite of similar policies. The leaders further agreed to harmonize their 2050 greenhouse gas emission targets and develop mid-term targets where needed to set a path toward long-term reductions.

I don’t want to downplay it, exactly. It’s certainly better than not having an action plan. But I’m not sure that this is going to amount to much in the end. I don’t know how much Washington can do with our jackass legislature. And it’s great that British Columbia and California are committed to doing something, but that something seems to be what they were already doing.

Open Thread 10/28

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– On Friday I had a piece making fun of The Seattle Times for a guest editorial they had poo pooing these kids today in downtown Seattle. But apparently, there are kids today in downtown Olympia too. Horror!

– The new health care law is more than just a website. And people are actually getting insurance.

– The Cruelty of “Medical Necessity”

– RIP Lou Reed

– Just re-read this short bit by Cortazar over the weekend, and you should too.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Emily Heil: What it will take to get more women to Washington?

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

White House: West Wing Week.

Jon does an America apology tour.

ObamaCareWebGlitchyFail Derangement Syndrome:

Inquiring Minds podcast: Science of Tea Party wrath (via Mother Jones.

Maddow: North Carolina GOP having some trouble with their minority outreach program (via Crooks and Liars).

Jon analyzes CNBC’s outrage over JPMorgan Chase ‘shakedown’.

Ann Telnaes: Obama drones.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Daily Show: Sexy Halloween costumes.

The Party of the Stupid

Mental Floss: 28 sweet facts about candy.

Thom: How America could be the happiest country on earth.

Ed: Dick Cheney has the audacity to criticize Obama for “premature” announcement of bin Laden’s death:

Stephen with the word Philantrophy (via Crooks and Liars).

Ann Telnaes: One bad heart away from the presidency.

G.O.P. Voter Suppression:

Bill Maher with some New Rules (via Crooks and Liars).

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

Downtown is Pretty Rad

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Dominic Holden has a link to this piece of shit article in The Seattle Times. Basically, someone moved Downtown recently after being the president of Seattle Pacific and living on campus for almost two decades. They then decided that Downtown is in decline. From what, I’m not really sure since they lived on a college campus down by the Ship Canal for 17 years. It’s overwrought and horrible.

I mean I moved downtown 6 years or so ago, and I had a bit of a culture shock too, but I’m always a bit surprised about things like this:

As my wife and I walk the streets from our new home, we spot the drug deals in the shadows of reeking alleys. We see the vacant eyes of the mentally disturbed, helpless folks dumped on our streets. We see the ravages of addiction sprawled on our sidewalks.

We navigate our way uncomfortably among teenagers who occupy Westlake Park, hanging out with their pit bulls, backpacks and skateboards, lately with their babies, freely smoking their now-legal marijuana. With utter dismay we read the stories of random violence.

I don’t care how Jesus-y SPU is, if you lived on a campus for over a decade and a half, you’re not allowed to be surprised by marijuana use somewhere. Seriously, what the fuck is he comparing it to? I mean I’ve lived in the suburbs and shock, there’s drug use and babies existed (?!) there too. People have troubles (and babies???) no matter where you go, sometimes.

But Downtown is great. I’m glad that I can pick up a Real Change as well as shop at Pike Place (although there are Real Change vendors in the suburbs, I’ve seen them with my own two eyes and everything). The crush of humanity — all sorts of humanity — is what makes cities great.

Westlake Park, to take his example, is a place where there’s too much drug dealing, I agree! But I’ve also taken a book or a paper and just read. There’s a playground where kids and parents are able to go, and it still manages to work even though sometimes people near by are smoking a joint. You can catch a bus, and usually not be hassled. Downtown doesn’t lose its vibrancy because there are all sorts of people there, that’s what makes it vibrant.

Farm Bill

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Joel Connelly has a great piece on the Farm Bill, and what the House GOP’s failure to pass it means for Washington.

The defining program for American agriculture expired on Sept. 30. It should have been renewed by Congress last year. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill by a 68-32 vote earlier this year. The House Agriculture Committee cooperated and produced a bill. But it was stalled by a revolt in the House Republican Caucus by members demanding deep cuts in food stamps.

“Those are the same people who wanted to shut down the government,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in disgust Thursday.

Cantwell and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, held a briefing in a cold Seattle warehouse to discuss the consequences.

I am struck again and again with the cruelty of the GOP position. The fact that they’re willing to sacrifice so much so that they can, what, harm people on Food Stamps? It’s so far away from the ideal that we’re all in this together.

Primary

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I’m generally of the belief that primary challenges are good for the side that makes them. There’s free media, and by virtue of who usually issues a challenge, when the incumbent survives, they can point to it in the general and say how they’re not extreme like those people over there. Over at Blue Oregon, Kari Chisholm has a piece on a brand-new primary challenge to the Eastern Oregon Republican representative.

As I said last month when this challenge started to materialize, stranger things have happened. Walden’s got farmers mad at him for failing to pass a Farm Bill. Walden’s got the Club for Growth mad at him for supporting higher spending in the stimulus. And now, he’s surely got Wall Street mad at him for voting in favor of default.

Sure. If this is a chance to highlight how bad he’s been, by all means people should use it. And of course if the possibility helps attract a good Democrat who can actually put up a challenge, even better.

C’mon folks, let’s do a little crowd-sourced brainstorming. Who are plausible Democratic candidates for Congress in OR-2?

Open Thread 10/24

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– Mars Hill break new ground in lying for Jesus.

– Assorted Thoughts on the Seattle/Tacoma UFCW non-strike

– “Tyson’s story,” and it is indeed quite a story, is hardly an “American original.” The powerful man who spends his life harming women, only to be publicly rehabilitated again and again, is about as routine as American stories come.

– There’s a piece in Grant’s memoir where he says that if the founding generation were alive they would think that instant communication across the Atlantic via telegraph was witchcraft. This Oliver Willis piece is a nice thing along those lines.

– Here’s an Indiegogo campaign for an academy to train women in software development right here in Seattle. Given our worst in the nation gender gap and reliance on tech for our economy, this seems like an important thing.

– The Affordable Art Fair looks like fun.

Light ‘Em Up

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Tom at Seattle Bike Blog reports on an event tomorrow for bike lighting.

Bike lights are not optional. Aside from being required by law (technically, only front light and rear reflector are required), lights are vital if you are going to be visible to folks driving, biking and walking at night and sun-in-the-eyes situations.

Studies have shown that people on bikes naturally feel more visible to others than they actually are. Unfortunately, this leads people to a false sense of security about biking without lights (or with very poor lights).

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The city and Commute Seattle want to help you out. They are hosting an event Thursday from 4-6 p.m. at 5th and Stewart.

It’s a good chance to get the right gear. With the days getting shorter, and the commute in the dark — as well as this fog — it’ll be more and more important to be light up properly.

How Should I Vote For Mayor?

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As promised, here’s a thread about the Seattle Mayor’s race. For the first time that I can remember, I’m undecided on who to vote for in a big race like this. I got my ballot and filled most of it out, but still haven’t filled either mayoral bubble. I’m definitely leaning toward McGinn, but I like both of them quite a bit. Four years ago, when Ed Murray was considering a write in campaign, I wrote that I would support him if he ran because I liked him the best, but that I hoped he didn’t because he would probably take more votes away from McGinn than Mallahan and that I was worried that a self-funded person who was the more conservative would be able to win when he really shouldn’t. He didn’t run, and I eventually volunteered for McGinn’s election.

I really wasn’t particularly impressed with McGinn, but figured at least he wasn’t running a self-funded campaign on “TAXEZ BAD ME SMASH” and (after the post went up) unsure about abortion rights like Mallahan. I mean McGinn was saying the right things about transit and bikes, but everybody says the right things about them around election time, but usually they don’t do anything. He was also talking mostly about things that aren’t really the Mayor’s prerogative: education, broadband, and transit, and usually when people talk about those sorts of things and then get elected, they then ignore them.

Since then, they’ve both done things that I give high marks to. I’ve been surprised that I liked most of McGinn’s tenure as mayor (there are exceptions, like foot dragging on police reform and the Chihuly garden). He pushed a mostly reluctant City Council to put a doubling of the Families and Education Levy on the ballot, and it passed handily. There’s high speed Internet coming to much of the city.* He has also kept social services funded despite the recession and a tax cut from the council right before he took office.

Meanwhile, Ed Murray has cemented his already impressive legacy, passing marriage equality and shepherding it to a vote with a positive result. While he did preside over the loss of the Democrats’ caucus, I don’t really blame him for it. Rodney Tom hates Seattle and Tim Sheldon hates Seattle and gay people (to the extent he knows there’s a difference). So if the problem with him is that he’s from Seattle and gay, well that would be a dumb reason to be upset with him. Given the restraints, he has mostly kept the rest of the caucus from caving to the worst aspects of the GOP.

Finally, there are social issues. There’s some discussion that they’re off the table. And I agree neither of them is going to try zone abortion clinics out of the city or deny gay employees benefits, for example. They’re certainly closer on most of the defining social issues of the day than they are apart. But I have to say it’s been nice that Seattle has had four years where strippers and all ages music weren’t regularly being attacked from the mayor’s office. I hope that will be true of the next four years with Murray, but it’ll almost definitely be true with another four years of McGinn.

So that leaves two candidates I like quite a bit, and a campaign I’m the opposite of happy with, especially on Murray’s side. I don’t like all the third party money and I think it has been unnecessarily negative, and often not factual. Murray has courted the anti-transit and anti-bike people despite his record in the legislature being pretty good on those issues. Part of the reason I’ve been reluctant to decide is that it seems like everyone who has taken a side thinks that their flawed but pretty good lefty candidate is awesome and the other, flawed but pretty good lefty candidate is shit, and I’d rather not take that up. But I can’t really put off the decision any longer, and I’m going to have to fill in a bubble.

[Read more…]

Two Steps Forwards, Two Steps Back

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Since the passage of I-502, the state has been quiet about what they intend to do with the existing medical marijuana laws. Yesterday, that changed. Ben Livingston has the details:

This afternoon the state’s medical cannabis workgroup—comprised of the liquor board, health department, revenue department, and the governor’s office—released their formal recommendations, and they are just as drastic as we initially revealed.

The basic idea is that the voter-approved medical cannabis law would be mostly scrapped, and patients who are accepted into a proposed government registry would be allowed tax deductions exemptions on pot, which could only be purchased at I-502 stores. Among the recommendations:

1. Eliminate patient home growing rights
2. Eliminate collective gardens
3. Eliminate medical dispensaries that don’t comply with I-502
4. Eliminate the affirmative defense for pot patients
5. Create a state-funded patient registry program
6. Require health care professionals to register patients with the state
7. Forbid doctors from running a medical cannabis specific business
8. Remove the right to petition for new medical marijuana conditions
9. Reduce patient possession amounts from 24 ounces to 3 ounces
10. Allow I-502 stores to sell reduced-tax pot to registered patients

Not all of these proposals are bad, but on the whole, this is a big step backwards. We’re moving from a decade and a half of marijuana law reform that carved out exceptions in order to protect the sick and vulnerable to new system that eliminates those exceptions in order to protect government coffers. It’s exactly what the most cynical among us thought the state would do, and if they follow though, it’ll be inexcusable, lazy policy.

A big part of what drives this move is the fact that medical marijuana has been a poorly regulated mess in this state for much of the 15 years it’s been allowed. Dispensaries were never formally legalized, but entrepreneurs would continually come up with ways to stay just within the law. The lack of a registry system often left police and prosecutors frustrated at their inability to differentiate between valid medical users and regular recreational users. And it was always obvious that many people were getting medical authorizations who clearly didn’t have a medical need for the drug.

The state’s reaction to this mess appears to be, fuck it – just blow it up. But this is a mistake. Jonathan Martin at the Seattle Times has some good alternate suggestions for the state, especially this one:

It’s surprisingly hard to grow really good marijuana. Washington’s medical marijuana law recognized that from the beginning, allowing a caregiver to grow for a sick patients. The Legislature should absolutely preserve the ability for patients – real, legitimate patients – to grow their own, have a caregiver grow for them, or allow them to join 10-patient, 45-plant collective gardens. Any grow should be registered with the Department of Health, because police need to know if they’re walking into a legitimate or a black market grow.

This idea would be impossible under the rules proposed above. I think the lack of a home grow provision in I-502 was a mistake, but eliminating home grow even for patients is unthinkable. It certainly comes off as an attempt by the state to maximize tax revenue, rather than an attempt to protect public safety.

A lot of patients will bristle at the idea of having to register collective gardens, but it’s certainly preferable to having them banned. The current law is being blatantly abused in a way that almost no other state has seen. Dispensaries in this state aren’t legal. All those storefronts with green crosses everywhere are supposed to be limited to 10 patients. They get around that limit by constantly rotating who those 10 patients are as customers come in and out all day. Or by ignoring that requirement altogether.

One other requirement I’d add to this is that gardens shouldn’t be allowed to advertise or have storefronts. They should be private entities. Over time, perhaps in coordination with medical facilities, these gardens can work to develop very specific strains that work particularly well for certain ailments – and do so in a cost-efficient way.

People are concerned that the “medical excuse” patients will still find ways to avoid the high taxes of I-502 regulated stores. I’m not buying it. I suspect the vast majority of those folks will end up being unable to match the variety and quality of recreational pot sold in the regulated stores and be content to pay a little more for the privilege. But the regulated stores might not cater to folks with very specific ailments like epilepsy or MS, where the THC content might be too low to get people stoned. Those folks need to have the option to grow their own, or band together with others in a garden.

For years, we had a system that protected (well, tried to protect) medical marijuana users while recreational users continued to remain outside the law. What the state is proposing here could potentially turn that on its head – moving to a system that caters to recreational users while leaving those most in need with fewer options.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleIt’s a late notice today (busy day!), but here is the call to join us tonight for an evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our normal starting time is 8:00pm.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another nearby DL meeting over the next week. With 210 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 near you.

Open Thread 10/22

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– There won’t be a grocery strike.

– The HUGE difference between Davis and Cruz that I want to draw attention to in this post: the support in person of citizens at the capitol in which they stood and talked. Davis had THOUSANDS of constituents who showed up to support her. Cruz barely had any support inside the chamber, forget outside of it.

– Washington seems to be signing up people for health care at a nice clip.

– It’s pretty easy to interview long dead politicians if you just make up their answers.

– I for one am glad that my work station doesn’t look like the bridge of the Enterprise.

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