HorsesAss.Org

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.

[Read more…]

— “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.

Last week’s contest was won by Blue John (with Liberal Scientist getting the actual link). It was (I think) the Wawa in Quakertown, PA where Mitt Romney showed up unannounced to avoid protesters at a different Quakertown Wawa.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!

Proverbs 30:15
The leech has two daughters.
‘Give! Give!’ they cry.

Discuss.

Roy Zimmerman with “Vote Republican,” the Virginia edition.

Sam Seder: Woops! GOP admits voter ID laws are a scam.

Health Care Ruling:

• Ed: The G.O.P. reaction
• Young Turks: The Wingnut Reaction.
• Jim McDermott weighs in.
• Stephen: John Roberts betrayal.
• Ted Strickland: Romney is the inventor of the individual mandate
• Sam Seder: Bill O’Reilly promised to “apologize for being an idiot” if Obamacare upheld.
• Ann Telnaes: Conservatives turn on John Roberts
• Young Turks: Can Romney repeal Romneycare?
• Obama and Romney: dueling SCOTUS reactions (via Indecision Forever)
• How Obama causes unemployment:
• Thom and Pap: Is it a tax?
• Young Turks: Republican threatening armed rebellion over Obamacare
• Jen: Play a little ‘Romney Feud’ with Jennifer Granholm
• Jon on reactions to the health care ruling.
• Young Turks: Rand Paul doesn’t buy the Constitutionality of Obamacare.
• Odonnell: The fallout.
• Al Sharpton: Some Republicans who used to support the “mandate”
• Jonathan Mann: Healthcare (I’ll take what I can get).:
• Al Sharpton covers it
• David Axerod: Penalty was fine with Romney in Massachusetts
• Young Turks: CNN & FAUX News’ BIG FAIL.

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

Jon with Watergate-gate-gate-gate-gate (via Political Wire).

Mark Fiore: Little Suzie Newsykins on free speech—units.

Eric Schwartz brings back a classic.

Opening statements from 1st CD candidates debate 27 Jun.

Immigration Politics:

• Jon catches FAUX News lying through their motherfucking teeth.
• Liberal Viewer: FAUX News creates false Obama contradiction on immigration.
• Ann Telnaes: Scalia’s temper tantrum on immigration.
• Daily Kos Radio: Has Scalia lost his marbles?

Sam Seder: 63% of Republicans still believe there were WMD in Iraq at invasion.

Pap: Fighting the voter suppression tricks.

Ann Telnaes: Supreme Court strikes down Montana corporation campaign spending law .

Clinton and Bush: A Bad Lip Reading experience.

SlateNews: Sen. Rand Paul holds up key flood insurance bill with anti-abortion amendment.

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

RomneyWorld:

• Romney’s business experience.
• Maddow: Republicans see an enemy in their own candidate.
• Vetting Mitt’s Veeps: Gov. Chris Christie:
• Vetting Mitt’s Veeps: Gov. Bobby Jindal
• Actual Audio: Mitt Romney on…um, something.
• Romney retreat: What is he trying to hide?
• SlateNews: Romney raises millions after SCOTUS decision

Young Turks: The bizarre Texas GOP platform.

White House: West Wing Week.

Thom: The “two Black guys in the White House trying to take away our guns” conspiracy theory.

Sam Seder: Rush Limbaugh throws tantrum because you can’t jail someone for free speech

Senate candidate Tommy Thompson mistakes refers to 9/11 As 9/18 while bragging up his experience.

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

When you’re an elected official in Washington State acting in the capacity of your office, you can’t decide who gets to attend your press conferences. They’re open to the public. But Rob McKenna doesn’t seem to realize that.

Yesterday morning, Attorney General Rob McKenna notified media across the state that he would be speaking about the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the Affordable Care Act. McKenna was one of 26 state attorneys general who sued to block the Affordable Care Act. But when Stranger reporter David “Goldy” Goldstein arrived for the press conference at McKenna’s downtown Seattle offices, a guard was waiting for him. Cameramen, radio people, and reporters were granted free entry. Goldy was prevented from entering.

“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.

Of course this isn’t too surprising coming as it does from a man who doesn’t recognize the difference between campaign mode and serving the public. Still, we should expect better from our elected officials.

My questions in bold, Gael Tarleton’s answers are below.

1) The state’s paramount duty is education. Do you feel the state is living up to that duty? If not, what needs to happen to live up to it?

We are not fully funding public education. It is the moral and constitutional obligation we must meet. To fully fund public education, we must think about providing early childhood education through lifelong learning. We need to change the discussion so that we prioritize funding to achieve shared education goals:

– We want 80 percent of high school students earning their high school diplomas 10 years from now. Therefore, we should fund public school systems to help them reach that goal – and that means working with teachers, administrators, parents and kids to help communities with the resources needed to succeed.

– We want early childhood learning centers in every school district in the state to be accessible and affordable. Therefore, we must fund programs in parts of the state with limited numbers of early childhood learning centers.

– We want our higher education system focused on serving our residents who are ready for college-level courses and technical school programs. Therefore, we must fund programs that help high school teachers and college deans and departmental chairs co-develop high school curricula, especially in English, Life Sciences, Foreign Languages, Applied Mathematics, and Sociology/History.

– Our higher educational institutions must have the No. 1 priority of making higher education affordable and accessible to all our citizens for lifelong learning. Any newly available revenues must immediately support hiring new teachers so that more courses are taught, which in turn will allow higher ed to admit more students each year. At a minimum, we should aspire to have 70 percent of incoming undergraduate students at our four-year institutions each year be Washington residents. We should expect and plan for having 90 percent of first- time students in our community colleges and technical schools be Washington residents. We must place special priority in the next decade on having our higher education system serve high school graduates from low-income and immigrant communities, returning veterans, and adults who have lost jobs and are preparing for a new career.

The most important task we face is to set shared goals now, develop a 10-year funding plan, and examine how existing revenues must be more effectively allocated to get to work on these four goals. As new revenues are available from various sources, we will have a strategic plan for how best to allocate those dollars.

We have the following options for public revenues: school bond levies in local jurisdictions; state tax revenues to support low-interest student loans, salaries, operations, capital infrastructure, and programmatic initiatives; federal grants to match state programs for student loans, free- and reduced-lunch programs; and potentially new taxes if the state’s Supreme Court upholds the King County ruling that I-1053 is unconstitutional.

From a budgeting and planning perspective, we must have two scenarios in mind: what we do if I-1053 is overturned, and what we do if it is not. The obligation to fully fund public education is the constant in a sea of uncertainty. How we meet this obligation is up to us. After working for eight years at the University of Washington to help secure millions of dollars in grants and gifts for faculty and students, I know the impact that these investments have on the economy, environment, and quality of life for all Washingtonians. We must meet this funding challenge.

2) Washington State voters recently rejected an income tax. Most of the revenue that the legislature might be able to pass is quite regressive. Will you push for revenue, and if so, how will you make sure the burdens don’t fall on the poorest Washingtonians?

Yes, I will be an advocate for the following kinds of revenue options and reforms:

– Examine the current constraints on how local jurisdictions, especially special-purpose districts, are able to use their existing taxing authority with property taxes.

– Develop strategies for enabling local jurisdictions to enter into time-limited partnerships where they create funding mechanisms for building a 21st Century infrastructure for a clean economy: multi-jurisdictional transit systems; construction and technology solutions to stop toxic runoff from local communities to protect Puget Sound, rivers and streams; shared investment in renewable energy infrastructure such as electric charging networks; and other capital-intensive investments that local jurisdictions cannot handle on their own.

– Develop a rate-paying “environmental infrastructure district” system to have all users pay into the equivalent of a public utilities district. This is the kind of progressive reform that makes all of us responsible for clean air and clean water infrastructure investments.

– Adopt “system tolling” on critical transportation corridors to fund regional transit solutions and safe pedestrian/bicycling corridors that separate freight and autos from bikes and pedestrian users.

– Identify a more fair and equitable way to use B&O revenues to reinvest in what small-business owners need most and do best: to help them hire and retain more employees, reduce the cost of start-up loans, incentivize innovative strategies for clean energy and clean trade; and make them the centerpiece of how we build a modern economy beyond fossil fuels.

– When we pass legislation regarding tax exemptions, we must understand what programs will be most affected by exempting private entities from paying their taxes. State legislators should identify what sources of revenue will be used to protect against the constant erosion of critical funding obligations resulting from tax exemptions.

3) There is a good chance that the State Senate and/or the Governor’s Mansion will be controlled by Republicans after the next election, and certainly most legislators will be more conservative than people who would be elected in a Seattle district. Given that how will you get your agenda passed?

There is an equally good chance that the Governor’s Mansion, State’s Attorney General, and both State legislative bodies will be controlled by Democrats. Recent Elway polls show that the state’s political climate and voter party affiliation are not growing more conservative: voters are instead becoming more independent. Some observers believe independents tend to vote Democratic more frequently than they vote Republican. The 36th District is frequently described as the anchor of liberal, progressive Seattle politics. It is also home to more than 20,000 working-class jobs in the Ballard-Interbay Manufacturing Industrial Center, including 15,000 jobs related to the fishing and seafood processing markets. There are thriving small business communities in every corner of the District. The District is where the working class and middle class co-exist. This strengthens our communities because we believe in teachers, metal workers, fishers, start-up companies, family-owned small businesses, parks for kids, and the dignity of work with living wages, regardless of the type of job a person might hold.

We have an aggressive agenda for job creation, expanding higher education affordability, providing healthcare, and protecting our environment. We are also home to a recreational boating industry that generates $3.5 billion in revenues across the state, as well as home to the grain terminal at Pier 86 that makes Washington’s agricultural firms competitive in a global economy where 90 percent of their business comes from exports through the Port of Seattle. When we focus on creating jobs, expanding markets for Washington companies, and strengthening opportunities for Washingtonians to pursue higher education, we will help legislators from all over the state share common cause.

That said, I’ve learned from experience that solutions to problems don’t happen with group think. I don’t just reach across the aisle; I’ve reached across continents and communities to do the hard work of creating jobs, building bridges, and protecting communities. To help create an international earthquake monitoring network, I worked with Russians and Ukrainians and the International Atomic Energy Agency. To fight human trafficking, I’ve worked with State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-36, and King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert. To help rebuild the South Park Bridge, I worked with the South Park Neighborhood Association, the Machinists, and colleagues at the Port, City, County and State to find the funding. And to build the Rental Car Facility that created more than 3,700 jobs in South King County, I worked with elected officials in the State Legislature as well as Sea-Tac, Des Moines, and Burien.

4) You’re running in a race with many Democrats who share similar positions. What separates you from the rest of the field?

We’re all asking the voters to hire us to do a job. We may share the same values, but we all have different experience and qualifications to do the job of a lawmaker. I’m asking the voters to hire me because I have the experience and skills of working in the public and private sectors creating jobs, solving difficult problems, and managing millions of dollars in budgets. When it comes to solving tough problems with responsible funding strategies, my experiences working in federal, state, and local governments as well as in a technology company and international markets give me a deep reservoir of ideas, lessons learned, and experts to help find solutions. These are the resources that will help me do the work that voters are hiring me to do.

As a Port Commissioner, I have helped create 7,000 living wage jobs through critical public works projects. At UW, I’ve worked with scientists, engineers, historians, political scientists, archeologists, musicians, and cybersecurity experts to help secure millions of dollars in grants and endowments for faculty and students. I’ve worked with legislators from all over the state to help criminalize human trafficking, create more open contracting laws, and build transit and transportation corridors that help our companies compete globally. To accelerate a clean, green trade agenda in Washington, I’ve supported partnerships with the Port of Seattle, WSU, Climate Solutions and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop an aviation biofuels market based in Washington, while also supporting investments in electrification and renewable energy infrastructure. And as a federal government employee, I’ve written policies and run programs regarding critical national security interests and concerns.

5) Seattle and King County give more to the state than they get back. Part of this is reasonable things like the cost of providing education and social services in rural and suburban areas, but part of it is a lack of respect for Seattle and King County with the legislature that treats us as an ATM. How will you make sure your district gets its fair share of revenue without harming education or social services throughout the state?

We all have a stake in the success of our schools and our students, regardless of their home base. We will all benefit if we have affordable access to public health centers and community clinics. We all share a stake in tackling climate change and building the foundation for a clean economy in the 21st century. If we reflect on how the concept of the public commons emerged in Washington, it will help us understand how to think about sharing resources with communities and regions that don’t live in our own backyard.

All property owners pay property taxes to build infrastructure and invest in healthy, safe communities. However, not all people who benefit from investments in the public commons are paying property taxes. Does that mean we stop paying our fair share of taxes? No. It would be short-sighted when we want to collectively improve the quality of life for everyone, not just the District we represent. The state pays only 7 percent of the annual operating costs of the University of Washington, its flagship public university. Just 20 years ago, the state paid closer to 40 percent of the total annual operating costs. Yet UW benefits the public commons of the whole state, Pacific Northwest, the nation and the world. UW’s nursing and public health graduates are the people who staff community health clinics and protect public health systems throughout the state and the Pacific Northwest. The UW School of Medicine receives $700 million a year from the federal government to educate the doctors who will be serving rural, low-income, and underserved communities with safe healthcare. Researchers at UW spawned the life sciences research community that has become home to the Gates Foundation, PATH, and Nobel Laureates – all in our district.

When we talk about who is getting their “fair share” of the tax pie, it is a familiar refrain that another part of the state benefits from King County’s and Seattle’s wealth. But the people in Seattle and King County who like to go skiing in the Cascades, own homes on Lake Chelan, go hiking on Mount Adams, or take weekends sampling wines in Walla Walla are only able to enjoy these benefits because they can fly there, drive there, drink clean water, and benefit from cheap electricity. And they benefit when their kids decide they’d rather go to school at WSU or Central Washington because they like the idea of dry, sunny weather three weeks in a row.

We will create jobs, opportunities, and a cleaner economy if we invest in research at Central Washington University or in social services for returning veterans in Tacoma or Yakima. The 36th District’s small businesses want to hire people who are prepared for jobs in the trades, fishing industry, biotechnology companies, or software start-ups. One of the most important roles I will play in Olympia for my district is making sure we are showing how tax revenues are used to create jobs, prepare employees for high-demand job markets, and give all our communities a chance to live a decent life and pursue affordable education.

My proposal to create a sustainable funding base for public health revolves around this idea of a shared stake in a common network. The “Public Access To Health Services” (PATH) center calls for reforming the way we use property tax authority of special purpose districts in the state. If we allow special purpose districts to share their property taxes to create local health centers, we stand a chance of putting public health services on a sustainable financial path. My district would help lead the way, as we have thousands of public health professionals, caregivers, and small business owners who would be potential partners in making affordable health care, family planning, adult day care, and other essential services available to our communities.

Our district also believes in investing in a clean economy future. Our ideas and know-how for designing and building environmental infrastructure systems for homeowners and small business owners will create best practices for others around the state. When we share knowledge and solutions that help our own communities, we are creating the foundation for helping all Washingtonians live in healthy, safe communities where they will enjoy a better quality of life.

Within a very good post on the consequences of today’s SCOTUS ruling, Adam Serwer writes:

In the court battle over Obamacare, the government had argued that the individual mandate—the part of the health care law that requires Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a fine—was constitutional because the Commerce Clause gives Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. The government’s lawyers said that without the mandate, the health care law wouldn’t work, and because not having health insurance substantially affects the health insurance market (i.e., it affects interstate commerce), it was okay to fine people for not buying insurance. Conservatives argued that the mandate was not really regulating commerce, but forcing people to engage in it. They claimed the Commerce Clause allowed Congress to regulate “activity” but not “inactivity”—a distinction found nowhere in the Constitution itself.

The “activity/inactivity” distinction went from being a laughable attempt to try to distinguish this case from the previous Raich ruling to a serious argument adopted by 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices. But despite the fact that this ruling has weakened the Federal government’s powers under the Commerce Clause, this distinction between Raich case and the ACA is still imaginary.

In the Raich decision, a person growing a marijuana plant was automatically participating in interstate commerce, regardless of his/her “activity”. If a person grew a plant, harvested it, and consumed it entirely himself/herself, it was still considered part of interstate commerce. Their activity or inactivity with respect to any actual marketplace was never the issue, but the commodity itself. With health care, the same situation existed, except that it didn’t just cover a subset of the population. Every single person in America is potentially part of that market on any day – even if they desired not to be – and therefore most people looked at the decision in Raich and concluded that it was well with the Commerce Clause to require folks to either insure themselves or pay a penalty.

There are certainly a number of conservatives who’ve been consistent in their views on the Commerce Clause, and to some extent I’ve been swayed by their arguments. But the intellectual inconsistency of Scalia and Kennedy (and of course Rob McKenna) for supporting Raich, but fighting to have the ACA overturned is appalling.

Later in the post, Serwer also notes that the majority ruling that the mandate is a constitutional tax on individuals potentially leads to the infamous “broccoli scenario” being carried out through a tax. What’s stopping the Federal Government from imposing a tax penalty over any number of consumer choices? Serwer argues that this is a reason for liberals to breathe easier about progressives’ ability to craft good regulations in the marketplace, but I’m somewhat skeptical.

The aspect of this that concerns me the most is the shift from allowing for the regulation of systems and institutions to the regulation of individual behavior. Regulating individual actions is generally an ineffective way to regulate any system. Climate change is a great example. Trying to solve our climate crisis merely by using taxes to influence individual consumer choices isn’t going to have anywhere near the impact of being able to impose strong regulations on the industries that contribute to high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. We’re not anywhere near the point where this is a real legislation-inhibiting concern, but the current court seems inclined to push us in that direction.

I don’t want to be too negative about all this. I was relieved that the ACA was allowed to stand this morning. It certainly wasn’t perfect legislation, but it was a small first step towards moving us towards more cost effective health care in this country. And hell, this decision today – especially with its modified view of the Commerce Clause – might be reversed again the next time to court sees it. Especially if it involves allowing the feds to go after some potheads.

For all of the discussion of how the new arena in SoDo would hurt traffic, you’d think this would be a bigger deal.

Coal trains can easily be 8,000 feet long, which means that it takes more than 6 minutes to clear a street crossing when traveling at 15 mph, a pretty typical speed in an urban area. Then factor in 30 seconds of street closure time for warning signals to sound or crossing arms to stop traffic, plus 30 seconds to re-start traffic after the train has cleared the intersection. Add it all up and you get this: Bellingham’s new loaded coal trains would completely cut off street intersections by somewhere between 105 minutes and 125 minutes of every day.

I don’t want to be disingenuous here. I support more rail infrastructure at the port and oppose the coal trains for non-traffic reasons much more than this. Still, if the trains come, hopefully they come with more infrastructure to mitigate this.