HorsesAss.Org

Jacob Sullum writes in Reason about the reasons to be skeptical of the recent reports claiming that Obama will have a shift in drug policy in his second term. Jesse Walker has also written about it here and Mike Riggs here. The reality is that Obama could be doing more to move us away from waging a war on drugs, but he’s not. He hasn’t even been able to keep the promise he made on the campaign trail about respecting state medical marijuana laws.

These “leaked reports” feel like a half-assed attempt to pander to the left-leaning folks like myself who are considering supporting Gary Johnson over Obama’s horrendous record on all types of civil liberty issues. And they’re also very detached from what the reality is very likely to be in November. Both Washington and Colorado have full legalization initiatives on the ballot, and both are ahead in the polls. And Oregon may join them.

If any of these initiatives pass – and Obama wins a second term – we’ll know pretty quickly whether or not he’s going to “pivot” on the drug war. The federal government has the power to shut down any state marijuana regulations, but despite what Marc Ambinder claims about Obama’s powerlessness, his DOJ clearly has some discretion about what it considers a priority, and Obama is certainly free to appoint someone to head up the DEA who actually knows if heroin is a more dangerous drug than marijuana. Even if Obama doesn’t take a position in favor of legalizing marijuana at the federal level, he can take the position that he’ll tolerate a state’s voters making it the law. If he’s not taking that position, there’s no pivot.

Do you have an offshore bank account?

The Health Care Killing Floors:

• Bill-O-The-Clown fesses up….
• Ann Telnaes: The Republican solution to fixing our health care system.
• Susie Sampson: Health Care and Independence Day.
• Young Turks: MittFlop #1,712, “Obamacare mandate a tax”.
• Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, Rhode Island edition:
• Sam Seder: “Katherine Harris” calls to chime in on Obamacare, SCOTUS + More!
• Even Bill-O-the-Clown mocks Rep. John Boehner.
• Mark Fiore: RepubliBliss.

Maddow: Ron Paul not out until Nebraska sings.

Obama kicks off a campaign tour.

Pap: The fracking industry’s dirty secrets.

Tom: The Good, The Bad and the Very Very Nasicornously Ugly!

Growing Up:

• Young Turks: FAUX News rips kid for turning liberal.
• Lawrence O’Donnell talks to fallen conservative Jonathan Krohn.
• Young Turks: Conservative Kid Jonathan Krohn evolves into a Liberal.
• Sam Seder: 13 YO conservative kid pundit Jonathan Krohn…now a 17 YO liberal.
• End of a Teen Dream (photo essay): The Conservatives who once loved Jonathan Krohn (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Slate News: Jonathan Krohn responds to the responses.

The Daily Show explains Wall Street.

Alyona: Rhode Island’s new disclosure act.

Young Turks: Conservative Judge says GOP has become ‘goofy’.

Slate News: Ron Paul’s new crusade.

Sam Seder: Florida Congressman Bill Young (R) pulls a McKenna; tells minimum wage worker to, “Get a job”.

The Onion Week in Review.

Romney’s Romper Room:

• Slate NewsRomney’s Spanish advertisement FAIL.
• Thom: Mr. 1% and his offshore millions.
• Mitt explains the free rider provision.
• Pap: Romney is in deep with oil lobbyists.
• Newsy: Murdoch criticism suggests rift with Romney.
• Sam Seder: Lemon. Wet. Good.
• Gov. Strickland calls on Mitt to release tax returns.
• Young Turks: Romney’s abortion clean-up service…investment
• Roy Zimmerman: Vote Republican, Washington state edition:
• Thom: Pirate capitalist Romney vs the average Joe.
• Newsy: Romney camp confused in tax penalty.
• Sam Seder: Everyone deserves a fair shot if they can afford it.
• Ann Telnaes: Mitt Flips.
• ONN: Romney’s numbers skyrocket after prostitute reveals she paid him.
• Young Turks: Murdoch tweets on Mitt.
• Liberal Viewer: MSNBC’s false edit of Romney immigration stance.

Obama likes the kid’s hair.

Sam Seder: Rush Limbaugh, “The country went downhill when we let women vote!.

Young Turks: Anti-tax movement burned in Colorado fire.

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

Mother Pitt:

• Young Turks: Brad Pitt’s mother.
• Buzz60: MOOoooOmmm!
• Slate News: The strange case of Brad Pitt and his mother.

White House: West Wing Week.

Maddow: Thaddeus McCotter resigns… weirdly.

Young Turks: Koch brothers helped by ear marks from tea party Congressman.

Thom: Will RI disclosure bill keep out the super PACs?

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

I assume most people reading this blog are already registered to vote. But if you’re not, and you’re eligible in Washington, go here. As Shaun says, “Don’t suppress your own vote!” You’ve got until Monday.

If you’d have told me a Washington State city had the 4th worst gap between the rich and poor, my first guess would have been Seattle. Maybe Tacoma or Everett. Possibly one of the gaudy suburbs has a large needy population hit by the economic downturn. So I was surprised to read:

Using the Gini Index, a statistical measure that determines the amount of economic equality within a community, Cle Elum was ranked the least equal of any Washington community, and fourth most unequal in the nation, in terms of the gap between the wealthiest and poorest residents.

The article doesn’t do much to explain why that might be the case. It may have something to do with the housing bust in a former drive until you can buy community. But that still doesn’t explain the wealthy part of the equation.

In this post (the third in my series on LD redistricting), the topic is still another Seattle-area Legislative District with an open seat. I have a lot of connections with the 36th, not least of which is that my sister and her family live there. Also, as we’ll soon see, my own precinct used to be — but is no longer — right on the border between the 43rd and the 36th.

NOTE: a click on the “Click to continue” link below will open the key to definitions of the meanings of the various colors and other symbols on the maps.

Location — northwest Seattle, from Belltown to Crown Hill
   Senate: Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D), 2014
   House 1: Reuven Carlyle (D)
   House 2: Mary Lou Dickerson (D), retiring

The 36th District is quite compact, and its borders didn’t change very much in the recent redistricting. It still encompasses most of Belltown and all of Queen Anne, Interbay, Magnolia, and Ballard. Like the 43rd to its east, but now unlike the 46th to its northeast, it lies entirely within the city of Seattle. Not only that — the 36th LD is also entirely within Jim McDermott’s Congressional District (WA-07) and entirely within Larry Phillips’s King County Council District (KC-4). The map below displays the 36th District as it was defined on the 2001 map, prior to the recent redistricting. The map’s scale is 60,000:1.

It is immediately obvious that the new version of the 36th LD is quite similar to the 2001 map. Given the homogeneity of Seattle, and understanding that the LD’s and the city’s population growth was much the same as the state as a whole, there was little reason to make many changes there. We can’t look into the collective mind of the Redistricting Commission, but it appears that they generally chose to concentrate whatever changes took place in Seattle in the redrawn 46th District.

The map of 2011’s 36th District displays the boundaries of the Congressional Districts in its vicinity. Only one of those dashed blue lines is particularly interesting … the small piece of border in the lower right corner of the image. It demonstrates that the edge of WA-07 comes close to the 36th, but doesn’t quite get there. That piece of the CD’s border (WA-09 is southeast of that line) actually separates the 43rd District from the 37th; the core of Seattle is divided among the three LDs.

The great similarity between the 2001 and 2011 maps of the 36th Legislative District is quite evident when the two are superimposed on one another. Except for some very slight rejiggering in Belltown, the alterations consist of losing its portion of Fremont (to the 43rd) and gaining those parts of Greenwood and Phinney Ridge (from the 46th) that weren’t already in the District. The new 36th might possibly be a wee bit less Democratic than the old one — the western hillside of Fremont might be a tad bluer than the eastern hillside of Phinney Ridge — but there will be little change in the political nature of the LD. It remains a solidly Democratic bastion.

As a Fremont resident myself, I’m happy to see the new boundaries. Under the 2001 map, my precinct was smack-dab on the line between the 43rd and 36th, and at least one of the first-draft redistricting maps would have moved the border eastward, thereby transferring me into the 36th. Instead, the new 43rd covers 14 precincts that are home to quite a few former stalwarts of the 36th District Democrats, including a former LD chair and nearly half a dozen former Executive Board members of the old 36th. My precinct is now well inside the boundaries of the 43rd Legislative District, which extends around 10 blocks to my west.

When Mary Lou Dickerson decided to relinquish her House seat, a crowd of aspirants arose immediately. Of the seven declared candidates, one is a self-declared Progressive, one is a Republican (Paulista, actually), and the other five are Democrats. Sounds pretty typical for this solid blue LD.

There is general agreement among the Democrats on the issues. So perhaps the crux of the matter will come down to the candidates’ personal backstories. In alphabetical order, the Democrats are:

• Evan Clifthorne, legislative staffer for Senator Paull Shin (D-21) and native Washingtonian
• Sahar Fathi, staffer for Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Iranian-American woman
• Noel Frame, state director of Progressive Majority, former campaign manager, native Washingtonian
• Brett Phillips, green building/energy efficiency expert, son of County Councilmember Larry Phillips, native of the 36th District
• Gael Tarleton, Port of Seattle Commissioner and national security analyst

In a very real sense, this election reminds me of the 2006 open-seat House race here in the 43rd. Back then, we had six excellent Democrats competing for the seat then held by Ed Murray, who was running for the State Senate. In that primary, Jamie Pederson won the Democratic nomination with just 23% of the vote. One difference between then and now is that in 2006 we were temporarily operating under the sensible Open Primary, Private Choice methodology (called Pick-a-Party by Sam Reed) rather than the ridiculous Top Two favored by the inane majority among us. Thus, winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to winning the general election. There was a Republican primary as well in 2006, wherein the winner drew far fewer votes than the sixth-place Democrat … but appeared on the November ballot.

There was no hint of negative campaigning in our 2006 primary in the 43rd. I’ve detected a hint of non-collegiality in the 36th, though there hasn’t been anything close to real mud-slinging. Perhaps the large number of candidates has prevented a repeat of the 36th’s ugly two-way 2008 race. Races actually, since the Top Two forced it to carry over from the primary to the general election. When there are lots of near-equivalent choices available, it wouldn’t be sensible to alienate any of the electorate. Assuming that two of the Democratic candidates will continue on to the November ballot, could the gloves come off post-primary? We’ll see…

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This is very interesting indeed [h/t].

[Alexander Hamilton] duly makes an appearance as the judges are warming up to denounce the individual mandate as constitutional overreach because it dragoons healthy young individuals into buying health insurance they do not want.

If Congress can do that, the dissenting justices write, “then the Commerce Clause becomes a font of unlimited power, or in Hamilton’s words, “the hideous monster whose devouring jaws … spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low, nor sacred nor profane.”

Those are indeed the words of Alexander Hamilton, but, as they’re quoted here, it seems that he must have been warning against the ever-present tyranny of the federal government. But that was not what he was saying.

…

The relevant clauses of the Constitution, Hamilton wrote, had been “the source of much virulent invective and petulant declamation…” He castigated his political opponents who had criticized the powers the Constitution gave to the federal government “… in all the exaggerated colors of misrepresentation as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous monster whose devouring jaws would spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low, nor sacred nor profane.”

Hamilton did not decry the federal government as a constitutional Godzilla. He denounced the Anti-Federalists for their distortions and lies.

I don’t really know what to make of that. I’m not a lawyer, so maybe someone who is can help me out. It seems like the argument Ian is making is that the justices wanted to overturn the act so they turned to some dubious history. Still, shouldn’t some clerk have verified what the quote meant before it got to the opinion?

– Higgs

– Democracy itself is under attack. I don’t think Thomas Jefferson had this sort of thing in mind when he wrote the great document.

– Romney wasn’t so much a captain of industry as a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits for his firm (and himself) by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society.

– What to do with disused parking lots is one of those questions.

– Words will never break your bones. But also, they shouldn’t make you numb. You can’t feel everything all the time — nor should you — but don’t forget how to feel altogether.

– I did a fair amount of cleaning yesterday, but I think this may be my strategy going forward.

NPR reads the Declaration of Independence:

[audio:http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2012/07/20120704_me_01.mp3]

Martin Bashir’s Top Lines: Independence day political fireworks.

Keb Mo:

Buzz60: Best 4th of July fails.

Young Turks: Epic Politics Man goes looking for an American-made American flag to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Morgan Freeman:

Big Eddie’s (Ed Schultz’s) barbecue and Obamacare tips for July 4th.

Newsy: July 4th fireworks being cancelled across the U.S.

Note: Tune in at 10:00 AM today on KUOW (94.9 FM) for a one hour Capitol Steps “Politics Takes a Holiday” program.

When a liberal reads the first paragraph of this press release (opinion piece?) like this:

On June 20, the state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council released its quarterly budget outlook. Tax collections remain flat, but what was more telling is that private-sector job creation is slow, and the outlook is that job growth will continue to slow down.

The thought is how can we speed up job growth. And you’d think that a state representative who is doing this opinion piece (press release?) would think the same. But no, the GOP position is actually something else. Private sector job growth is vitally important. But it’s only part of the picture. They say they’re focused on jobs, jobs, jobs, but ignoring (at best) public sector jobs.

It’s bizarre. Really, really bizarre.

Rob McKenna has largely been a cautious politician. He has mastered the technique of being as inoffensive as possible—an absolute necessity for a Republican running for statewide office in Washington state. So, when asked to comment on an inflammatory partisan issue, McKenna skillfully responds with the most vacuous, inoffensive answer imaginable.

But the façade has been showing cracks. They became apparent during McKenna’s gubernatorial kick-off event, when Goldy was barred from entry to the press conference. The campaign was specifically targeting Goldy or The Stranger for exclusion.

What the fuck?!? That’s the kind of petty shit I expect from Tim Eyman, not a serious person asking to be the next Governor of Washington. My impression at the time:

There are warning signs here. The McKenna campaign, right out of the starting gate, is engaging in thuggery. “Open government champion,” my ass.

Two days after McKenna’s kick-off, The Stranger’s Eli Sanders ran into McKenna outside the KUOW studios and asked him about excluding Goldy. McKenna responded:

“I don’t think David Goldstein qualifies as a journalist,” a miffed McKenna told Eli. “He’s a hack. He’s a partisan hack. He’s just there to parrot points from the other side.”

Legally, McKenna is simply wrong. Goldy is a journalist under the laws of our state.

You would think the Attorney General would know that!

(*Crack*)

Then there was the cupcake incident, where McKenna was to give a speech before the King County Young Republicans:

McKenna was about 40 seconds into his talk—he was outlining the state’s dismal job numbers—when a young man in a blue Cougars baseball cap, blue sweat jacket, jeans, and Tevas walked in, sat in the front row, took out a camera and started filming.

McKenna stopped and asked the man who he was with. The man gave his name, Zach Wurtz, and said he was with the Washington State Democrats. The Young Republicans club president, Jennifer Fetters, asked him to leave. Nope. McKenna told Wurtz to turn off the camera. Wurtz refused. McKenna’s voice got sharper, “You need to put the camera away. Now!”

Through the cracks is revealed a peevish—and possibly paranoid—man.

That same mix of peevish and paranoia was seen when he barked, “Get a job!” to Kendra Obom, a woman asking him questions about his position on the Reproductive Parity Act:

McKenna first tried to blow off her question, stating that as a lawyer for the state — he is currently Washington’s attorney general — he wasn’t allowed to comment. Then, apparently flustered, he went after Obom personally, asking her if she thought she was being honest and accusing her of trying to gain a political advantage.

Despite Obom identifying herself as a youth worker, McKenna ends his interaction by telling her “Why don’t you go get a job?”

A candidate has the right to be dickish, of course. Perhaps McKenna was picked on too much in school. Or maybe being a partisan Republican in a moderate’s clothing has rendered him a little skittish and paranoid. But these events strongly suggest that McKenna has serious character flaws that are, at the very least, unseemly in a Governor.

It becomes totally unacceptable when a candidate’s character flaws infect his judgement as a public official. This is precisely what happened last Thursday, when McKenna’s staff specifically targeted Goldy for exclusion from an AG press conference. Goldy’s news editor, Dominic Holden, the person who had assigned Goldy to cover the conference reported:

“They are physically blocking me from entering,” Goldy told me by phone, seven minutes before the 11:30 a.m. press conference was scheduled to begin. A spokesman for McKenna, Dan Sytman, had told Goldy a few minutes before that Goldy wasn’t a journalist and then blocked him from entering. A McKenna staffer had also grabbed Goldy by the shoulders and turned him away from the door.

(*Snap*)

Goldy offers two competing hypotheses:

1. McKenna wasn’t aware of the legal issues of barring a member of the press (or even the public) from public meetings.
2. Our State Attorney General, out of some mix of personal vendetta and sense of invulnerability, used his office to illegally intimidate a citizen into giving up his rights.

This latest episode goes beyond “warning sign.” It’s a danger sign. Rob McKenna has some serious flaws in his temperament that make him paranoid and vengeful—to the point of abusing his office.

It is something voters really ought to know about.

It’s Tuesday. So please join us for an evening of politics and conversation 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 of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night, and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday.

With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, including eleven in Washington state and four more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

– I love the Donald Verrilli meme.

– And I love the over the top reactions to health care being upheld from conservatives.

– #Noshame

– It must be tough to switch what you believe when you were thrust into the spotlight at a young age.

– Why can’t Democrats just get behind Obama, admit ACA is a big win, admit Obama’s election was a big win? I’m a mopey, pessimistic, anxious, depressive person, but I still can’t understand it.

– How people see conservatives.

– Health care reform glossary

– There are going to be a lot of sappy Olympic profiles. So far, this is my favorite.

The Seattle Times endorsed Rob McKenna. I’m not sure how much I can add to Eli Sanders and Joel Connelly‘s pieces. But it’s sort of my thing, so here goes.

WASHINGTON state is at a crossroads. The people’s selection of their next governor will set a direction toward prosperity and quality of life or constant crisis and decline. Washington will follow California — or set its own course.

The voters’ choice is clear.

It’s an important election. But California is in trouble largely because the initiative process made it near impossible to raise taxes. They’re the logical conclusion of the tax policies The Seattle Times supports. Also, seriously, what? California? Why are we talking about California? Also, too I know technically there are more than the two people, but why endorse at all now? It’s going to be Inslee and McKenna making it through to the general.

Rob McKenna, the Republican, is our state’s twice-elected attorney general. He grew up here; he went to high school and college here, and was elected student body president at the University of Washington. He knows our education system, what is good about it and what isn’t. He has spent his entire career in local and state government, having to work with Democrats as well as Republicans, and knows it inside and out.

First, what does “it” refer to in the last sentence? I think Rob McKenna’s entire career. That’s the only single noun that makes sense. If they meant “local and state government” wouldn’t The Seattle Times have said “them”? I think they’re saying we should vote for Rob McKenna because he knows Rob McKenna’s career.* Second, most of that litany is true of Jay Inslee. We should vote for someone who sent his kids to school here and grew up here as opposed to Inslee doesn’t make a lot of sense.

For the past seven years he has held the second-highest management position in the state.

Come on! The AG’s office is a perfectly reasonable stepping stone to governor. But read that sentence and tell me it doesn’t sound like resume padding. Seriously, how do you define a management position? I’d think people in the governor’s office would qualify. If it’s by order of succession, it’s a silly way to leapfrog over Lieutenant Governor. If it’s not by order of succession, there’s no reason to put it ahead of any other elected executive position. Is the AG’s office an inherently more managerish position than Treasurer or Commissioner of Public Instruction? None of the reasoning is explained as this is the rest of the paragraph:

He has a deep understanding of state issues. Ask him what should be done about state employee pension plans, environmental review of proposed coal ports, on and on, and he has a practical, detailed answer.

A practical, detailed, shit answer where the math doesn’t work.

Jay Inslee, the Democrat, is also a local product but chose a much different career. He went to Washington, D.C. For the past 13 years he has been a congressman, which is not a management position. He has the right positions on reforming the financial system, limiting the consolidation of media companies and opposing the pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a stronger vision about fighting global warming than McKenna does.

Do you know of anyone in the delegation who doesn’t come back to this state just about every weekend? Who hasn’t met with countless constituents? Who hasn’t held town halls and the like? There’s more of this for a while and then.

State government’s overriding problem is not having enough money for all the things it is trying to do. The current administration has responded by cutting too much where it was politically easiest, in higher education, and too little where it was immediately painful, in employee head count and contracts with state employee unions. But this is short-term thinking. It sacrifices the future to the present. It is a strategy for Washington to slide back to the level of Mississippi.

Mississippi’s problem is that their unions are too strong? The fuck? Seriously, if you’re going to reference other states as cautionary tales, you have to know goddamn something about their problems.

The way out is education, and McKenna and Inslee both say they want to invest in it. They are right; Washington needs a world-class education system, including prekindergarten and higher education, so that the next generation can have the best possible chances in life. The question for voters is who can deliver.

They are both wrong, actually. I mean not that we need to invest in education, but that they don’t offer a way to do it. Inslee is better, but neither of them are going to raise the revenue necessary to solve these problems.

Part of the answer in the public schools is reform, including allowing more innovation. Note that McKenna supports charter schools and Inslee does not.

Neither have Washington voters whenever they’re given the chance. Charter schools could theoretically work, but in the real world they’ve failed. In the real world they’re just another way to corporate up our schools. Anyway, having asked for something that voters have regularly rejected, please demand we don’t do something the voters have regularly rejected:

Part of the answer is providing more money. Some suggest a state income tax is the answer, but that would remove one of the state’s competitive advantages, and scare away investment in technology companies. In any case, Washington’s voters have said no to an income tax.

You know what, there’s more, but I don’t have the strength.

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— “Port of Seattle Commission delayed a final vote on an Eastside rails-to-trails agreement because of a dispute over the proposed Sodo arena.”

— Markos Moulitsas endorses Darcy Burner for Congress at Townhall Event on Sunday.

— Oh, the Humanity! Seattle’s plastic bag ban begins.

— Kangaroo traffic alert in Pasco, WA.

— The General reports on the deadliest weapon in the Left’s War on Women: Condoms.

— Space Shuttle trainer lands in Seattle.