HorsesAss.Org

As the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act once again, this time tying it to the budget, Cathy McMorris Rodgers is taking a more active role in pushing it. I’ve really noticed that they aren’t pushing for anything. It’s been repeal, repeal, repeal, and now it’s defund and delay.

“To get the entire bill repealed, or defunded, is probably not realistic,” McMorris Rodgers said Thursday following a spirited town hall discussion in Spokane Wednesday night in which the Affordable Care Act took center stage. “But I do think there are provisions in the law that we can get delayed, or provisions in the law we can get defunded.”

[…]

“I think there’s growing recognition that … portions of the law are not ready,” McMorris Rodgers said, citing recent votes in the House in which Democrats joined Republicans to delay the mandates in the law requiring employers and individuals to sign up on subsidized health insurance exchanges.

They are complaining and obstructing. They are demanding delay and attempting to defund the law. What they aren’t doing is proposing any alternative. The House GOP plan is to go back to before the health care law passed.

If you remember back when George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, the House and Senate Democrats were consistently opposed to his plan without offering any plan of their own. In that way, they made the status quo on Social Security their plan. They made Social Security the Democrats’ plan and privatizing it the Republican plan.

In the same way, the GOP plan for health care in America is how things were before Obamacare. The GOP plan is preexisting conditions and HMO’s. It’s tens of millions of Americans without health care coverage. It’s kicking kids off their parents’ plan. It’s shrinking of Medicaid and dissolving the other ways to make sure the poor can afford to be covered. It’s making it so that the power of the market doesn’t bring down costs in exchanges. It’s the out of control health care inflation that marked the period before the law passed. They ought to at least own up to that.

Competition Versus Community

by Carl Ballard — Friday, 9/20/13, 8:02 am

I’m glad to see that one of my favorite podcasters is going to end his hiatus soon. I’ll be glad it’s back. Still, struck me most when reading it was this:

At the annual Netroots Nation Conference that was held in San Jose I was backstage with Jasiri X and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos. I jokingly mentioned I was digging the weather in the Bay Area (I visited our West Coast Bureau Chief in Oakland right before the conference) and considered moving, but then what about TWiB!? Markos said that he had office space available in Berkeley if we wanted it.

I think that speaks well of Markos first and foremost. That he’d be willing to say that to someone who is ostensibly the competition for lefty political attention is rather incredible. But I think it speaks to a larger sense of community that animates liberals. The idea that we’re all in this together.

Obviously, Markos isn’t just handing out office space to anyone who wants it. But the fact they are part of a community meant that he had extra and Elon James White needed it was easier to arrange. Whereas, if they were conservatives, it probably would have been competition and maximizing profit at the expense of each other.

Tumwater Bag Ban

by Carl Ballard — Thursday, 9/19/13, 5:14 pm

The city of Tumwater becomes the latest Washington State municipality to have plastic bag ban. They’ll be doing it similar to what Seattle does with an outright ban on plastic bags and a 5 cent fee on paper ones. Plastic bags are awful, and since Thurston County won’t be able to recycle them anymore soon this may have been a necessity. It also could be larger than just Tumwater.

Once the ban takes effect in Tumwater next July, shoppers who don’t bring their own reusable bags will pay 5 cents per paper bag to offset stores’ costs. Plastic bags that are used for meat or produce, and thicker plastic shopping bags provided by some retailers, are exempt from the ban, as are newspaper bags, doggie bags and dry cleaning bags.

The Thurston County Commission could approve a bag ban as early as next week, and the City of Olympia is expected to follow.

I’d like to see the whole state get rid of plastic bags sooner or later. They’re bad for the environment and tough to get rid of. They’re unsightly: there’s a bag in the tree near my apartment that has been there since before the Seattle ban (I remember writing about it, but can’t find the link), and will probably be there for some time to come. For now, the localities will have to take up the lead. Hopefully with Thurston County as a precedent, other counties can take it up.

Open Thread 9/19

by Carl Ballard — Thursday, 9/19/13, 8:01 am

– The R is going to be back where it belongs (Seattle Times link).

– We’re going to get a government shutdown aren’t we?

– Bike Cages at Rainier Station sound pretty good, as someone who had his bike stolen from another station.

– I’m glad Seattle is doing pedestrian emphasis patrols but when I read about them, I’m always worried that it’ll just be tougher to jay walk in those areas.

– Money laundering is a harsh term, but I do hate how and how much the anti-522 people are raising their money.

– The hearing inspired by one shooting has been bumped because of another shooting.

– Vladimir Putin is a crusading columnist for the New York Times.

She Can Still Do The Right Thing

by Carl Ballard — Wednesday, 9/18/13, 7:10 pm

Dominic Holden links to this Jonathan Martin piece on Sally Clark not putting forward a resolution condemning the Russian anti-gay legislation. Holden hits most of the salient points, but I want to add a few things.

It’s mystifying to see Seattle City Council President Sally Clark’s Twitter account has blown up with criticism from gay activists, thanks to an off-hand comment from Mayor Mike McGinn. Mystifying, because Clark, the first openly gay council president, co-sponsored council resolutions in support of same-sex marriage in 2012 and donated to the campaign to affirm its legality. Her record on LGBT issues is rock-solid.

Well her record was pretty much the median Seattle City Council member on this issue, since they all have supported gay rights for, like, ever. Even Republican voting, “We value the sacredness of marriage between a woman and man” Tim Burgess is solid on LGBT rights issues compared to the rest of the state. So, sure, she’s been good on those issues up until now. Now is the problem.

Now is what activists are responding to. Gay rights activists have been on the defensive with the Russian law until Dan Savage and others in Clark’s home town started boycotting Russian products. You can debate how much of a difference that made, but between that, possible protests of the Olympics, and actual protests here and around the country, enough of a difference was made that it put Russian officials on their heels, and got the letter written.

Also, Clark has been one of the more conservative members of the council, generally. These things are relative within Seattle, of course, but it’s not that surprising that lefty activists more generally would go after her when she does the wrong thing. The good news is even though McGinn’s letter has been sent, there is still time for Seattle to do the right thing, and she can start taking the lead on it if she wants.

OK, a few more things from the piece:

Seattle City Council was once famous for far-afield resolutions over the decades — condemning the treatment of circus elephants, calling for removal of Eastern Washington dams, condemning Burma and apartheid — and got rafts of justified criticism for being distracted from its core work.

It got plenty of criticism, sure. I don’t think that criticism was justified for the most part. I mean the Burma and apartheid regimes they criticized fell. Obviously, there was a ton more than City Council resolutions that caused that, but Seattle should be proud that our City Council was on the right side of history, and did our part. The Snake River dams provide some good, but given the amount of money Seattle spends on salmon restoration, it’s lazy to pretend that expressing an opinion on them was a distraction “from its core work.” So that leaves cruelty to circus elephants. It was one of the quickest things the council did, but you’d never know that from all the criticism it got over the years. I’d guess if you add all of the criticism of how much time it wasted and compare it to how much time it took, the time it took would be less than the criticism. Also, maybe, don’t be cruel to circus animals is a good position to hold?

In any event he never gets around to saying why the criticism is justified, because it’s so obvious. I guess whenever he has a conversation about them at the WAC, or at the boardroom of the Seattle Times, everyone agrees, so no need to spell it out any further for the plebes.

Last thing I swear. He concludes:

Better yet, the council should stick to it’s core work, which currently includes writing a budget.

The City Council has a huge role to play in the budget process, of course. But they don’t, strictly speaking, write it. That’s part of the Mayor’s job, according to this timeline. I get what he’s saying, but they don’t actually write the budget. For an article saying it’s important to know what the job of the City Council is and isn’t that sort of seems like an own goal.

Can We Do Better Next Time?

by Carl Ballard — Wednesday, 9/18/13, 8:03 am

I think a lot of people who read these sort of things are mystified as to how it happens.

The owner of the construction business told police he believed Alexis was angry over the parking situation around the work site. Several workers reported Alexis staring at them prior to the shooting.

Seattle detectives ultimately arrested Alexis a month later. According to police, Alexis told detectives he had been “mocked” by construction workers and said they had “disrespected him.” Alexis also claimed he had an anger-fueled “blackout,” and could not remember firing his gun at the victims’ vehicle until an hour after the incident.

Alexis also told police he was present during “the tragic events of September 11, 2001″ and described “how those events had disturbed him.” According to police, detectives later spoke with Alexis’ father, who lived in New York at the time, who told police Alexis had anger management problems, and that Alexis had been an active participant in rescue attempts on Sept. 11, 2001.

Seattle detectives referred the case to the Seattle Municipal Court for charges. Court records indicate Alexis was not charged.

I certainly am not in a position to place blame for this, but clearly something let him fall through the cracks. And we can see where that ended up. Obviously, most cases like this won’t end up as mass shootings, but when things don’t get resolved, they escalate. And when they escalate with a gun around, there is more chance things will go badly. When someone shoots tires, that should be the best time to take their guns.

We should really as a city and as a state see if there’s anything we could have done differently.

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 9/17/13, 6:07 pm

Please join us this evening for a pint peppered with political prognostication 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 one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters meet. The Lakewood and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. And for Thursday, the Spokane and Tacoma chapters meet.

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 9/17

by Carl Ballard — Tuesday, 9/17/13, 8:02 am

– The first ads for both sides of I-522 have been released. Is Ken Eikenberry really much of a spokesperson for anything these days?

– Jean Godden and Tim Burgess take a look at why the city of Seattle is falling down in regard to its women employees.

– Let me make this abundantly clear, to you and to the other men reading this: when you comment on a woman’s appearance, you are not doing it for her. You are doing it for you. It’s not some great way to make a woman feel sexy and appreciated. It’s not flattery, even if you mean for it to be. The only thing it is is a great way for you to create a shitty power dynamic, by which you have announced yourself as the arbiter of her value, and you’ve deemed her fuckable, and she is supposed to be happy or impressed by that.

– Good on McGinn and Murray on the protest of the Russian anti-gay laws. Boo on our City Council.

– A Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism (h/t)

– The results of the study may seem little more than an exercise in confirming the obvious, but that’s an exercise the country needs. It needs to have the obvious — guns kill people, health-insurance helps keep them alive, large banks are all thieves, economic oligarchy is incompatible with political democracy, Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs.

– You had me at musical penis.

And I Thought The Thunder and Lightning in Western Washington Was Impressive

by Carl Ballard — Monday, 9/16/13, 5:15 pm

But it seems like Eastern Washington got less water and all the dust (Spokesman-Review link).

Though few raindrops fell during Sunday night’s storms that swept through Eastern and Central Washington, howling winds kicked up choking dust in downtown Spokane and downed power lines as far west as Othello, where classes were canceled Monday. The gusts caused three trees to tumble like dominos in the Filos’ yard along South Adams Street near High Drive, crushing one of their neighbors’ four-door Subaru sedan.

[…]

Airway Heights reported wind gusts topping out at 60 mph around the time the pine fell, according to figures from the National Weather Service. Visibility in downtown Spokane was reduced to less than a quarter mile, thanks to dust picked up by the high winds.

Apparently newer farming techniques are making those sorts of storms rarer. But still, yikes.