Last week’s contest was won by tomas (who correctly identified it as Tony Soprano’s house in The Soprano’s) and Liberal Scientist, who found the actual location in North Caldwell, NJ.
Here’s this week’s contest, a location somewhere in Washington. Good luck!
Isaiah 34:7
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.
Discuss.
I’m at a hearing for the APALA. I’m here to hear people’s stories, and from elected officials and community leaders. I’ll share them with you as it happens.
… First panel is the education panel. Students who’ve seen cuts at the UW, and are seeing the quality of education go down. SCCC nursing student whose workforce is being squeezed.
… Working with high school dropouts. Wants us to know that getting a GED is an equivalent to a high school diploma. That No Child Left Behind sees a GED as a failure, but that working with people who’ve dropped out, and getting their GED is just as good for everything you want to do.
… High school teachers are being asked to pay for more things for for their students, while at the same time losing wages. They can’t pay for extracurricular activities or to better themselves. Year 4 or 5 many teachers can’t keep up with this.
… Story of an undocumented student. Mongolia had it’s revolution, and her parents started a business, but when it failed, they came into America. She didn’t even know she was here illegally until she started working at 15. She couldn’t get a job except under the table because she didn’t have a Social Security number. Her parents go from low wage jobs to low wage jobs. Her bosses have cheated her out of wages and tips and sexually harassed her.
Nobody says one day, “let’s go to America and live there illegally.” They just want a better life for themselves and for their children. But now she doesn’t know that she’ll be able to use her degree. The immigration system especially hurts children.
… A new panel of government workers. DSHS worker. Sees the difficult lives that people are having especially new immigrants. A postal worker who was injured on the job and has been denied compensation, and the union is working to make sure he can get it. He has a daughter in high school so can’t retire.
… Service Sector Panel. A union steward a Boeing. The language barrier and the accent is an issue for many Asian workers. They are treated like kids (even if the managers are younger than their own children) because of it, and bosses don’t make an effort to work with them. Bosses “think they know more than us because they can talk.” The company forgets they’re part of the team and doesn’t respect them.
… Trying to organize a union at SeaTac. Wheelchair service is hard work but it’s important. People doing it make $8.67 and don’t have good benefits. Management will send people home early when they ask for their 10 minute break. So she wanted to start a union. Managers tried to say that they’ll fix everything, and the union will just take their money, and are punishing her. But she needs the job to support her family.
… A grocery worker who has worked throughout the area. Managers talk to people like they’re stupid. Talk slow and not like other employees, but the workers don’t complain. The language barrier makes it tough to solve problems. Workload is bigger for fewer hours, so there are more accidents: In delis working with knives, and people getting burned regularly. There’s no consistency in work schedule that makes it difficult to spend time with family.
In their last strike, they put out their demands in multiple languages. They presented the Chinese version to their manager to show how difficult it is to work when presented in another language.
… A Walmart worker. OUR Walmart. Organization United for Respect at Walmart. People working for Walmart are exhausted now preparing for Black Friday. They’re suffering to work paycheck to paycheck. They don’t even get $10 an hour when their company is a multibillion dollar company. If we can change Walmart, we can change the world.
… A janitor who was told he has to clean 13 stories of bathrooms in 4 hours. When he told his foreman he would do his best, he was told he’d be fired if he couldn’t. The foreman swore at him, and called other managers down. He’s been told by the company that he’ll be fired if he can’t do that in the future.
… That’s the end of the testimony from workers and students. But there’s still the “Distinguished Panel” of community members. A man from OSHA says that while overall injury rates are going down, it’s going up in health care where there is a lot of lifting and in hotels. People need to know they have the right to come to OSHA and state agencies.
… Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the Seattle office has noticed that working with immigrant populations, employers are going to abuse their workers because of language, because of culture, because of immigration status. People are scared of losing their jobs, especially in this economic climate. Immigrants are abused, are exploited, are raped, but they’re afraid of being fired or retaliated against. But people have a right to go to work and there are laws to protect them.
… To wrap up, I think this was an amazing forum. Letting people give their stories is amazing. It was just the tip of the iceberg, and there are so many more of these kinds of stories all across the state and the country. Thanks for the invite from the organizers, and thanks to everyone who spoke for telling your stories. I’ve edited this post a bit and added links since putting it up.
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
Alyona’s Fireside Chat: SOPA, bought and paid for: .
Senior citizens rap video: Scrap the cap.
Alyona’s Tool Time: Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) wants abstinence only education!
The Republican Primary Asylum:
Patriotic Millionaires meet with Grover Norquist.
Alyona’s Tool Time: Rep. Bachus to combat insider Trading!? WTF?
Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Thanks Bank of America!
Greenman: Lone Star State of drought.
Alyona: National voter intimidation campaign.
Roger Ailes is Worst Person in the World.
U.S.A. Occupied:
Alyona: Do-it-yourself video drones.
White House: West Wing Week.
Gloria Cain is Worst Person in the World.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
It seems to me, the real victim of this season’s bizarre G.O.P. primary season is Mitt Romney.
Here is a guy who has been running for President for a long, long time. He has executive experience. He has business experience. He has lots and lots of money. He doesn’t look like a troll (think Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich). He doesn’t have a “Google problem.” He isn’t a fucking lunatic teabagger (think Michele Bachmann). He lost the suit. He can recite Snoop Dog lyrics. He never worked for Obama.
Yet, here we are with less than two months to the Iowa Caucuses, and where does Mitt stand? Oh…maybe 30%.
A couple months ago, “George W. Bush on Steroids” jumped into the race and became the instant front-runner—until he proved to have the intellectual capacity of George Bush on paint chips. But Romney still couldn’t break out.
More recently he has been polling neck and neck with a serial sexual harasser whose entire platform is a one-word slogan repeated three times. That is, until the heightened scrutiny caused some ideas twirling around in his head to leak out…or not leak out. And still Romney didn’t break out.
And now he is tied (or even trailing) a serial adulterer, who at one time was the most despised man in U.S. politics. And soon people will remember why. And they will despise him even more for being a lobbyist for Freddie Mac. But Romney will still be shunned by 2/3 of a disappointed pack of Republican voters.
That’s gotta sting.
But nothing will sting more than the stain of trailing behind Rick Santorum in the polls—even if only briefly. And I do believe Santorum is next in line for a fling with increasingly desperate Republicans.
– Dwight Pelz’ letter supporting marriage equality in Washington State.
– I know Stamper is talking about nationally, but the police response to Occupy Seattle has been much better than to WTO.
– Although, obviously, still a lot of room for improvement. Lots of room.
– On top of the bike getting you to the story first, bike gloves are the best for typing in Seattle’s cold.
– Keep the birth control requirement in the health care law.
This is almost a week old now, but that’s the only time to call it out. I’m not sure if it gets funnier or less funny each time I ask how can you have a typo like that at the top of your blog for a week. But this gem from Bruce Ramsey has been at the top (emphasis mine) of the Ed Cetera blog since Veterans’ Day. “Nov. 11, Veterans’ Day, is the day tin 1918 the great powers ended World War I, a war America has almost forgotten.”
They should do what I do with typos and either edit them out or (more often) have other posts in the next 6+ days so it falls off the top. One of the most important pieces of web only content from the state’s most important newspaper, ladies and gents.
Tuesday’s DEA raids against medical marijuana providers in the Puget Sound area shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. Similar raids had occurred in Spokane earlier this year, and many were well aware that the U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, Jenny Durkan, was investigating the activities of local medical marijuana providers. In the spring and summer, as the partially-vetoed new law took effect, many former dispensary owners scrambled to figure out how to comply with the confusing new regulations. But the only thing that was clear about the new law was that absolutely nothing was clear about it.
According to Durkan, only medical marijuana providers who were blatantly in violation of state law were targeted. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll get a chance to see how true that really is. Those of us who’ve been following these cases for a while have seen many a medical marijuana provider accused of various misdeeds only to have the case fall apart when it turns out the confidential informant wasn’t reliable. But many of those earlier cases had a common denominator: Roy Alloway – the one-time head honcho of the federally-funded WestNET Drug Task Force who now awaits a prison sentence for illegal gun sales and tax evasion. I’d imagine that many local progressives who were elated to see Durkan in that office would be shocked if we uncovered the same level of reckless arrogance Alloway became famous for. We’ll find out over time.
For all the outrage that this has kicked up (and at a certain level, everything that happens within the drug war is an outrage), it certainly could have been worse. What happened in Montana earlier this year was disgraceful and clearly went against the promises made by the Obama Administration at the beginning of his term not to go after those following state law. By comparison, if local providers are still being profiled in the Weekly, we’re clearly not back to full speakeasy mode and there does appear to be some attempt to only go after those who were violating state law. But that’s not to say there aren’t a lot of concerns with what happened.
For starters, I find it obnoxious when those who enforce these laws say they’re not going after patients. That’s not true. Any time you shut down a provider and confiscate their plants, you’re automatically going after patients. And with the changes to the law this year, it’s even more so. Those in this state who are authorized to get medical marijuana have no way of knowing if a member of their garden is doing something else illegal on the side. And now that we’re forced to have a collective gardens model, patients are now forced to have an economic stake in the dispensaries. It’s not clear from any of the articles I’ve read whether or not plants were seized, but that’s generally what happens during a raid. So according to the way the law is set up, any seized medicine might have been “owned” by some patient out there who isn’t capable of growing their own and probably did nothing illegal. And with all the various places that were raided yesterday, I’d be surprised if that didn’t happen to some patients.
Second, with the current environment that medical marijuana dispensary operators have had to operate in, charging them with money laundering looks a lot like entrapment. The Department of Justice has been aggressively targeting banks and other financial institutions that openly deal with the medical marijuana industry. In this environment, it would seem that this makes money laundering an unavoidable aspect of doing business. As is the automatic disclaimer with any of my posts, IANAL and I encourage our lawyer friends to share their thoughts in the comments.
But that leads me to the last – and probably the biggest – thing I’m bothered by. It’s a quote from a DEA Agent:
DEA Special Agent Matthew G. Barnes released a statement that said the raids were conducted in part because these businesses were in violation of federal laws “for cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana under the guise of state medical marijuana laws and exploiting such activities to satisfy their own personal greed.”
What strikes me about this quote is that it borrows almost exactly from the rhetoric that the DEA has always used when it comes to drugs themselves. Historically, drug use has been the supreme threat to self-control and societal stability that requires these extreme and drastic measures from the state. But as the attitudes towards drug use – especially medical marijuana use – have changed in the past two decades, the rhetoric now focuses on those who make money from providing it. In this new construct, the desire for money is now the force that’s so overpowering that it threatens to destabilize society, just as they once claimed the desire for the drugs themselves would.
But just as it’s always been with drugs, the outrage towards greed by our government’s law enforcement community is pretty bad at identifying the appropriate targets. With an economy that has suffered at the hands of Wall Street firms whose truly reckless greed has cost us significantly, it seems more than a little odd to be focused on how much money people are making providing plants to those who want them – and in many cases, need them for medical reasons. In fact, it makes one look completely crazy.
Jenny Durkan’s two predecessors as U.S. Attorney for Western Washington both support legalizing marijuana for adults. Many people speculate that Durkan herself supports it as well, but can’t say so. Saying it while serving as a federal prosecutor would require a lot of courage, a virtue that folks at all levels of government often suppress for job security or simply lack in the first place. Until that changes, the war on (some) drugs – and it’s mutant spawn, the war on (some) greed – will continue to plow a path of destruction through this country.
Riffing off of Neil’s idea here:
I don’t know how NBA contracts work. But I’m wondering if it would be possible for the players to organize themselves into teams outside the formal NBA organization and make money by playing games.
It seems to me like at least for this year, the player’s union could organize something. My ideal solution would be to find coaches or captains who were agreeable and figure out how many players are willing to play something like this:
Chose teams schoolyard style (or call it a universal draft, or something boring if you like). Everyone is eligible to go to any team and the coaches/captains pick their team. Then they play a short, short, short regular season. Just enough to fairly have seeding for a tournament. Most fans don’t really care about the regular season, but pro basketball players at the highest level playing meaningful games would attract fans and TV even without the NBA.
You can pay the players a percentage of the take based on how well they did in being selected for the team (the first player gets a higher percentage than the second, etc.) and how far their team got in the tournament.
I’m not sure how many players would join a league like this. It would mean less pay and more uncertainty about where they were for a season even than normally in professional sports. But it beats doing nothing.
I’m sympathetic to the proposal by the Washington Association of School Administrators to cut 5 days the school year. They’re responding to the reality that the state almost certainly isn’t going to raise taxes significantly. If we’re not going to figure out how to fund education at the state level, we may as well figure out how to make it work as well as possible at the shitty funding level we’re going to get. And there are worse things than fewer days.
So, yeah, it may not be as bad for state children as some of the other godawful options. It may be that better education can happen in those 175 days than in 180 days spread thinner. And cutting levy equalization will hurt the most vulnerable children.
Still, if Seattle* voters support every district levy for decades, if they support the Families and Education Levy and doubled it last time, and still see their children get a week less of school, I don’t know how much they’ll be willing to support paying for education at the state level. I think we’re still willing to pay state taxes to improve education all over, but we’re not willing to see our children lose out when Seattle hasn’t done anything wrong.
For it’s one thing for Seattle to subsidize the rest of the state. But to hurt our children for that is something entirely new. We’re willing to let the state skim off the top, but I don’t know that we’ll be willing to lose school days to subsidize other districts.
Don’t cut Medicare without getting millionaires to pay their fair share.
– Carrying condoms shouldn’t be used as proof of prostitution.
– Completing a missing link.
– You contact the police
– Lee has already mentioned the inaccuracies in Bill O’Reilly’s book, but this is still funny.
Today wasn’t a good day for me to stay on top of a big news item, so for the latest news on the federal raids that occurred today across the Puget Sound region, check out these links:
Gene Johnson – Police in W. Washington target medical pot shops
Curtis Cartier – DEA Raiding Medical-Marijuana Dispensaries in Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia
Dominic Holden – Why Today’s Pot Raids?
Jonathan Martin – Authorities raid Puget Sound medical-pot shops
Jeremy Pawloski – 17 arrested in raids on five Thurston County pot dispensaries
Russ Belville – DEA Raids Washington Dispensaries In Cities That Often Won’t Prosecute Marijuana Crimes
Stacia Glenn – 18 people arrested in three-county medical pot raids
The Cannabis Defense Coalition has information about the raids here.
UPDATE: Steve Elliott at Toke of the Town has a post up with info about today’s protest in downtown Seattle.
It’s Tuesday. Please join us for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm; a few folks will show up earlier for dinner.
This may be remembered as “The week that Republicans went for the Newtclear Option.” Here are a few clips to commemorate:
Can’t make it to Seattle? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night. Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday. And next Monday there are meetings of the Woodinville chapter the Olympia chapter, and the Shelton chapter.
With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and six more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s one near you.
Glenn Greenwald is following the situation in New York, where a violent, late night raid removed OWS protestors from their encampment, and now NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg are defying a court order in an attempt to keep them out.
I know I already linked to this, but I really quite enjoy the Google Street View of bike trails. I think part of it is the little I’ve explored, people are impressed by this thing. There are people waving and pointing in what looks like giving directions. And yeah, you get that some in the street view, but not as much.
And I think this reflects the best part of riding a bike: the fact that you aren’t boxed into a car. The interactions when you’re at a stop light that you just couldn’t get with other things. The fact that you can slow down and look at something. You get an experience that’s totally different from driving.
It’s not all positive; Seattle’s rain and hills make me glad to sometimes trap myself in my car. And I hate sharing the road with shit drivers. While it’s unnerving in a car or in a bike those thousands of pounds of metal a seat belt and air bags will protect me better than my helmet. Still, I’m glad for the experience biking provides.
I’m glad chat with people about we’re going or the weather. I love exploring nooks and crannies of the city you can’t get to in a car. And I love seeing things I wouldn’t on a car.
One of the saddest things I’ve seen in Seattle was the Pier 91 Trail after nightfall. I was going into downtown after spending some time in Magnolia. It really shocked me, even as someone who lives downtown, how many homeless people there were.* It wasn’t an experience you’d get in a car even passing a homeless camp by the freeway. It’s a different perspective from a bike than from a car.
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