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It’s Tuesday…so please join us for an evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets tonight. On Wednesday, the Burien and Bellingham chapters meet. On Thursday the Woodinville chapter meets. And on Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 206 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and two more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

– No, I’m sure we can freeway our way out of any problems we have.

– Awesome endorsement, WCV.

– I’m sorry, Carl Ludwig Sherburne, but you’re wrong. You’re among the most disgusting and horrible things on the internet, and a woman posting her baby photos doesn’t even come close.

– If you take people’s guns away, they’ll just use a rock or something.

– Oh Iran, women can wear clothing without sleeves and it’s fine.

– Chris Hayes won’t go to CPAC.

– The BS approach will solve any problems.

The Seattle Times is a private entity, and they have a right to run their business however they want. But The Seattle Times also wants, and gets, special treatment because of their value to the community. Sure, they didn’t always live up to their ideals, but who does? Maybe it was excusable when it was just the nepotism of having an editor who maybe can’t write a decent sentence in English because he was the Publisher’s son. Maybe it was excusable when The Seattle Times went after Darcy Burner with lies. Maybe even when they ran their free ad for their preferred candidates and ballot positions, they deserved a pass because they were providing news that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

But when The Seattle Times makes a decision that they’ll deny access to their website to most potential readers it seems like they’ve abandoned the idea of keeping the public informed generally. When they reduce access to their web page, well they’re providing less of a public good, so it may be time to reconsider their B & O tax exemption.

Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t think newspapers should have that 40% exemption in the first place. But as more and more papers move to the paywall model, I’d like the legislature to strip the exemption from papers that hide their content behind a paywall. It’s probably too late to do that in this session (unless there’s a special session) but it’s one more place for our cash strapped state to look once newspapers stop providing a public good.

– That, unfortunately, is what a lapdog press corps looks like.

– In an effort to continue their slide to irrelevance, The Seattle Times will go to a pay wall light model in mid March. I’ll have a longer piece about it this evening, but people are talking about it already, so I thought I’d link to it in the open thread.

– I don’t know what’s worse, McCain trying to put a woman who lost her son in a shooting in her place, or the crowd cheering.

– One take on this map is that Washington rides the bus a lot. The other take is, I guess, that our buses are full of desperate people.

– Bees sense flower’s electric fields. (h/t)

– I realize that most people don’t care, but I really like this Kim Baxter song.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky in an impressive 6 minutes. It was Pasco.

This week’s is related to something in the news from February. Good luck!

(Note: this image is NOT at the default ‘North is up’ orientation)

Luke 19:29-34
As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.

Discuss.

A few weeks back, the state legislature heard some testimony regarding the new DUI provisions enacted into law with the passage of I-502. These provisions were the most controversial aspect of the initiative among traditional drug law reformers, but throughout the entire campaign, there were very few actual numbers around to convey what the actual risk was.

For instance, how easy is it to be at the 5ng/ml limit? How long do people usually stay there? Is it an accurate measure of impairment? There have been a few studies on this, but far from any kind of consensus.

Also, how many people get marijuana DUI’s already? How many more are likely to get them now that prosecutions could be easier to obtain under I-502?

From the Seattle Times, here was what we learned about the latter set of questions from the testimony:

There has been no jump in “green DUIs,” said the Washington State Patrol’s toxicologist, Dr. Fiona Couper, at the hearing in Olympia Wednesday of the House Public Safety Committee. Seattle DUI attorney Patricia Fulton reported “absolutely no effect” in her defense practice.

This runs contrary to what other DUI attorneys have been saying.

A Seattle attorney whose practice consists solely of medical marijuana cases said more people are coming to him for help fighting charges of driving under the influence of marijuana, even before the new limit took effect.

“I’m seeing one to two a month and have been for a year,” attorney Aaron Pelley said. “Prior to that, I didn’t see really any.”

Pelley believes state patrol officers had been ramping up their enforcement of “green DUIs” in anticipation of the passage of I-502, the law making possession of up to an ounce of marijuana legal. And, now that it’s on the books, he suspects there’s been a “huge spike of number of people being tested.”

What’s the truth here? My guess is that Pelley, who’s been outspoken publicly about the DUI provisions, is generating more business for himself as a result, not that there are more people getting nailed.

So there isn’t much evidence the worst case scenarios are taking root, there’s still a concern with the basic effects of the new law:

Blood testing is not new and not done casually. It’s done at a medical center, and takes money and time. Couper said 1,000 to 1,100 drivers were tested last year statewide, with the median result slightly below 5 nanograms. About one-third also tested positive for alcohol.

If those numbers stay constant in 2013, it would mean that about 500 people tested for marijuana will have a much harder time defending themselves in court against a DUI charge than before I-502 became law. It’s possible that many of these are egregious cases where the DUI is deserved. But it’s also possible that many of them involve innocent medical marijuana patients being harassed. At this point, without more specific numbers, it’s not clear how much of each case we’re dealing with. And assurances from the police that they’ll only go after impaired folks requires a lot of skepticism given the history of DUI enforcement. What’s promising is that this issue has been generating a lot of media attention and that we’ll hopefully be able to highlight any cases where people get trapped in a truly unfair prosecution.

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Going back to the first set of questions above, how much is 5ng/ml, and what level of impairment does that really imply? Kiro7 recently aired an investigative report where they took 3 volunteers, had them smoke a popular and potent strain of marijuana, and let them drive around on a closed course. The video is here:

There are a couple of takeaways from this, but the main one is that even at 4, 5, and 7 times the new 5ng/ml legal limit, these volunteers drove fine. This was after consuming .3g. Of course, once they started smoking more than what people normally smoke in a sitting, their abilities tailed off.

Another key point is that even after these volunteers smoked themselves silly on nearly a gram of high quality marijuana and were driving like complete idiots, they all knew full well they were too stoned to drive (even the medical marijuana patient who was a heavy user). This is one of the main differences between alcohol and pot. People who drink too much alcohol become uninhibited along with their impairment, while marijuana users often become timid and cautious (although it was interesting to see that the medical marijuana user was a bit of an exception once they let her get behind the wheel). This is why alcohol-related reckless driving deaths are a frequent occurrence while it’s difficult to find too many instances of them with stoned drivers, even though impairment can occur from the over-consumption of each drug. People who are too stoned to drive often become reluctant to do it, and even if they do, they tend to drive really slow. People who are too drunk to drive often disregard the risks and drive very aggressively.

I’ve written in the past (sadly, the old Reload site is retired) about my own history with marijuana and driving, but didn’t discuss it much during the DUI debates of the I-502 campaign. My main reluctance has always been that it’s a difficult subject that generates mostly gut-level responses that don’t get us anywhere. This exercise provides enough data and visual evidence to at least begin discussing it rationally.

To recap, in my mid-20s for about 2 years, I smoked a small amount of pot at the beginning of nearly every drive I took (except for morning commutes, of course). There were two reasons for this. One, I was doing the hellish 520 commute from Seattle to my job at Microsoft and basically inched home at 2mph every day. And two, I’m a naturally fast driver and I found that pot would make me calmer and more relaxed as I drove. By that point, I’d already gotten somewhere around 7 or 8 speeding tickets in my life and was sick and tired of getting pulled over. Taking a hit off of a one-hitter made it far easier for me to obey the speed limits. In those two years, I was never pulled over for speeding – or for anything else – while stoned.

A one-hitter is a small smoking pipe, often made to look like a cigarette. Compared to what the volunteers in the Kiro7 experiment initially consumed, it probably only held about 1/3 of that, maybe .1g. I’d been wondering if the small amounts I was consuming in those days would even put me over the 5ng/ml limit. Looking at the data shown in the video, it probably was, but maybe not by a lot and probably for not very long.

From a safety standpoint, how safe this was is a matter of perspective and an interesting paradox. I always recognized two drawbacks to this. One, my navigational skills declined somewhat, so in the rare case where I was going somewhere new and was concerned I might get lost, I wouldn’t smoke. Two, my ability to react quickly and intelligently in the face of an emergency was also lessened. Thankfully, this never happened.

But to the outside observer, I was clearly a safer driver when I was stoned. Instead of being the guy weaving through traffic at 80 on I-5, I became the guy driving 55-60 in the right lane listening to some Percy Hill with a big fucking smile on my face. In my normal sober driving mode, I know I can drive safely at those high speeds, but to other drivers, I probably scare the shit out of some of them. And I draw the attention of the police, who like to give me very expensive speeding tickets.

After two years of this, I finally said “fuck it”, sold my car, and started taking public transportation for a little over 7 years. In 2010, after moving out to the suburbs, I once again have a car, but no longer smoke pot, so I have a radar detector in my Prius as I once again weave through rush hour traffic on I-5.

——————————————————

The rationale behind the inclusion of DUI language in I-502 was always clear, even if the result in Colorado showed that it probably wasn’t necessary to win at the ballot box. But the political implications of having drug law reformers concede too much on this point continue to worry me. Other states are considering and even implementing proposals far worse than what we ended up with here. And when there’s an unchallenged notion that stoned driving and drunk driving are the same, it’s difficult to avoid any of these outcomes.

The point of my story wasn’t to argue that stoned driving is good or bad, but to recognize that the issue is a lot more complicated than many people initially assume. From a regulatory standpoint, doing things that have worked or been accepted for drunk driving may not be the correct approach at all for stoned driving.

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

Jon takes down Graham and McCain for holding up hagel nomination over fake Benghazi outrage (via Crooks and Liars):

Young Turks: FAUX News’ crazy Al Jazeera theory.

Haggeling:

• Stephen on “Friends of Hamas”.
• Sam Seder: How “Friends of Hamas” joke became wingnut reality.
• Ann Telnaes: John McCain’s Iraq war fairy tale.

Maddow: Half of Michigan Blacks disenfranchised by GOP war on Democracy.

Young Turks: The GOP cat fight, staring Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.

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

Sharpton: Is wacko Sen. Ted Cruz the new GOP savior?

Washington’s own Fukushima.

Thom: The establishment GOP versus the grassroots GOP.

Maddow: Indiana bill would force women to endure TWO transvaginal ultrasounds, before and after abortion:

Ed: Republicans are demonstrably out of touch with America.

Young Turks: How crazy is Sen. Ted Cruz?

Stephen on his sister.

Seattle Labor mobilizes for immigration reform.

Sam Seder: The Donald threatens blogger over Dump Trump petition.

Young Turks: Drunk tweets from Scott Brown?

White House: West Wing Week.

Greenman: Dark Snow Project.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: The week in intelligence.

Young Turks: Seven Craziest bills in the nation:

Maddow: No stigma for Sen. Ted Cruz for his McCarthy ways.

Pope Affairs:

• Red State Update: The Pope quits.
• Mark Fiore: Pick-a-Pope.

Sharpton: Obama’s approval up; GOP still hell-bent on destroying him.

Stephen: Horse meat (via Slog).

#StopTheSequester.

Thom: Single biggest driver if income inequality.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Who will be the next Republican savior-o-the-month?

Sam Seder: MO GOP lawmaker proposes making it a felony to propose gun control legislation.

Ann Telnaes: Congress takes a recess.

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

I’m not thrilled with Publicola’s “Isn’t It Weird That…” segment as a segment. I’d prefer they do straight reporting rather than shoehorn some (often supposed) hypocrisy into a post that doesn’t need it. But the actual reporting in this piece is worthwhile.

No statewide tax measure can pass without Seattle’s support, yet the proposal state house transportation director Judy Clibborn announced yesterday included zero dollars for the new 520 bridge (whose west side remains unfunded) and zero dollars for the new Alaskan Way tunnel (whose estimated revenue from tolls has been slashed from $400 million to just $165 million)?

It’s disgraceful that we’re having this conversation while even the barest discussion of raising revenue for education or social services is verboten, but it is the conversation we’re having. And I want to support this, I do. A car tab would probably be the most progressive piece of taxation in the state, the backlog is real, and the need to invest in our infrastructure is real.

But the need is real in Seattle too. At a certain point, Seattle isn’t going to be a piggy bank for the rest of the state unless they throw us a bone every once in a while.

Via The Spokesman–Review:

Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan, in a fundraising letter for his anti-tax efforts, called Washington Gov. Jay Inslee “a lying whore.”

Fagan, and his co-lying whores, accused Gov. Jay Inslee (D) of lying about vetoing “any tax increase”:

“Candidate Inslee repeatedly promised to veto any tax increase. He said no way to higher transportation taxes in 2013….What a lying whore he turned out to be. In recent weeks, he’s made it clear he’ll sign any tax increase the Legislature unilaterally imposes.”

Holy shit…there are a couple of lies in this brief excerpt alone!

Prior to accusing someone of lying about some action (like not vetoing a tax increase) one really ought to wait until they take the action that contradicts their words. Inslee has not signed any tax increases into law. It is possible that Fagan is a victim of childhood lead consumption and, therefore, doesn’t have the IQ to really understand this distinction (if so, I’d blame his father). However given that two other people signed the letter—his father, Jack Fagan, and admitted liar and initiative whore, Tim “Biggest Lie of My Life” Eyman, it seems more likely at least one of them was aware that Inslee has taken no such contrary action.

Fucking liars!

Secondly, Inslee did not promise to veto “any tax increase.” This is so easily debunked, that even The Seattle Times gets a piece of the action of making liars out of the Fagans and Eyman:

While running against GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna last year, Inslee said, “I would veto anything that heads the wrong direction and the wrong direction is new taxes in the state of Washington.”

However, Inslee never ruled out increasing taxes for transportation and did say he supports sending a tax measure to the ballot to raise money for transportation.

He also has opposed new taxes, although he’s been open to extending existing taxes.

Man…what a bunch of Fucking Liars!

And given that Fagan was lying in order to raise money…that pretty much makes him and is co-liars LYING WHORES.

Fagan and his co-lying whores have even embarrassed the state Republican party:

“There is no question that’s beyond the pale and is uncalled for. No matter what the issue is, it’s uncalled for, and I would condemn such a thing,” GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur said.

Eyman promises no apologies:

“Kirby Wilbur, thanks for the advice, but no he (Inslee) doesn’t deserve an apology,” Eyman said.

Queue the tearful, “Second biggest lie of my life” apology from the lying whore in three, two….

A bill to let people apply to clear their records of a nonviolent, misdemeanor marijuana offenses has passed the House Public Safety Committee.

As expected, Washington State’s House Committee on Public Safety voted this morning to approve House Bill 1661, moving it towards a full House vote. The bill would allow those convicted of a cannabis possession misdemeanor – up to 40 grams for those 18 and older – to have it removed from their record. The committee voted 6-5 in favor of the bill.

The primary sponsor of the measure, Rep. Fitzgibbon, says the chances are “really good” that it will pass the House. Newly elected Governor Jay Inslee hasn’t stated his position on the bill, but it would be unlikely for him to veto such legislation. Its fate in the Republican-controlled Senate is less than certain, but its passage isn’t an impossibility, especially considering that the measure has several Republican sponsors.

Sounds like a good idea in the wake of our passing I-502. It was illegal then, but it was also unjust. Since the people of Washington recognized that, it’s time to fix the problem for people who got caught up in the system before it got fixed.

So if you’d like to contact your legislators, you can find them here. If you want to ask the members of the Senate Law and Justice Committee to pass this, you can find them here. Something tells me that Pam Roach* will be tough to get but you can at least try with her and the rest of the GOP members.

If Inslee isn’t sure you can contact his office here. Or, I guess you could just ask him to pardon those people. It’s probably better for the bill to pass because it sets up a system, but if it doesn’t pass, that would be better than nothing.

[Read more…]

– I’m a metacommentary aficionado, and this piece on David Brooks is one of the best.

– Seriously, fuck the Yellow Pages.

– Tacoma’s libraries are now lending a hand to help the food banks get back on solid ground. Librarians wanted to hold a food drive, but figured they would get more goods by forgiving overdue fines in exchange for food donations.

– Seattle is going to start taking Chicago’s bikers and the jobs that come with them.

– It’s somehow comforting to know that Washington isn’t the only state with Godawful legislators.

– Taking lefty radio off the air in Seattle and replacing it with sports talk in an already saturated sports talk market isn’t working. Switch back to lefty talk. Although this time, maybe get some local people.

– Good to know the GOP are opposed to authoritarianism.

– I enjoy biking in the snow, but I’m glad we didn’t get a chance to West of the Cascades.

I’ve already had my piece on Pam Roach’s state workers can’t lie bill. I haven’t been following it, and I have no idea if it’s going anywhere. But the Daily O gives her the quote of the day when discussing it.

“It’s good enough for God. He gave us a commandment that said, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness.'”

-Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, arguing for her bill that calls for discipline against state employees deemed to have lied.

I, for one, can’t wait for the no coveting by state employees law next. And for that matter why only apply it to state employees if you think you’re doing God’s work? Why not have a Deuteronomy 23:19 law and outlaw interest?

“You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest.

I mean that might be kind of tough for Pam Roach who just today voted (with I think all the R’s and several D’s, but that’s just a quick tally in my head since the website doesn’t break it down by party) to make it easier for payday lenders. As Senator Nelson explains in a press release:

In 2009, we passed payday lending reform. It put safeguards on a predatory lending product, allowing borrowers to make reasonable payments and not end up buried in high-interest loans.

But the payday industry is back, marketing this new consumer installment loan as having a ‘36 percent interest rate.’ In reality these loans include massive fees and penalties that take the rate as high as 220 percent. As a former banker, I’m confident that if a money lender can’t make a profit at 45 percent interest, as allowed in existing law, they have a failed business model.

As a legislator, I am shocked that a majority of my colleagues in the Senate voted to sidestep effective protections for Washington families and instead put high-interest lenders back in charge of people’s lives.

You know, like God intended.

Look, I don’t think the Bible, or any other holy text, is a particularly good guide for legislating. We’re a secular democracy. To say nothing of what version to use, or what interpretation? But if Pam Roach thinks her lashing out at state workers is God’s work instead of the business of a diverse group of people who swore an oath to two inherently secular documents (the US and state constitutions) then we can judge her by her own standards on the rest of her actions in the legislature.

The House Democrats are working on a gas tax plan:

The proposal, from House Transportation Committee Chairman Judy Clibborn, will divide the money between new projects and maintenance and eventually raise the state’s gas tax by a total of 10 cents.

Gov. Jay Inslee, who has said he wants a transportation package that would both build new projects and fix some of its crumbling infrastructure, refused to endorse it Tuesday, saying only that it is “a good start on that discussion.”

The gas tax should be raised from time to time. And dedicating a portion of the increase to maintenance makes sense. Still, we refuse even to close the loopholes on taxes on private jets owners or out of state banks to help the most vulnerable in society, let alone real tax reform. I find it difficult in that situation to get behind a tax to serve only people who can afford a car.

Please join us tonight for another evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally .

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out another DL meeting over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. The Longview chapter meet this Wednesday. And for Thursday, the Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet.

With 207 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and two more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.