HorsesAss.Org

I don’t disagree with this piece in the Yakima Herald that combating crime is important.

Have you ever been a crime victim? Have you ever felt the violation of having your home broken into? Do you know someone who’s been mugged or murdered? If you have been lucky enough to have escaped victimization, then look around you; look to your immediate family and neighbors and ask yourself if any of them have been victims of crime. At this point, the numbers shrink pretty close to zero. Yakima is one of many cities in America where crime is a sad fact of life.

I don’t dig this second person construct. But yes, crime is bad, and we should do what we can to stop it. OK, so what should we cut? Or will this argue for tax increases? OK, what taxes? Oh it doesn’t? It just says public safety is good. So is education.

Public safety, along with education, must be the foundation of any civil society. Don’t take my word for any of what I have written. Do the homework, then ask yourself what the possible consequences of such draconian budget cuts will be. Too many of us have already been victims of crime. Are we safe enough to allow the bar to be lowered even more? I think the answer must be a resounding no.

Right. And a social safety net is also important. We’re long past the relatively easy things to cut. We need to raise taxes, and to do so in as progressive a way as we can. But even when an article begging no to cut corrections and education can’t mention raising taxes, we’re not going to have that discussion.

– Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

– Zombie Jurnolist

– On high tech lynchings.

– Godden had actually filed the public records request for the performance reviews, and we posted about them to show she was digging for a smear that didn’t exist..

– I’ve never even been to Ohio, and I know don’t say this.

– Parallel Earth Primary.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Hilo, Hawaii.

This week’s is another random location somewhere in the world, good luck!

Deuteronomy 14:18
You must not eat bats.

Discuss.

I’m going to delve into a bit of poll wonkery here, so if this kind of thing doesn’t trip your trigger, go check your email or something.

There are a lot of polls I’ll not bother to write about.

For example, the Zogby Interactive polls are pretty much bullshit because the samples don’t come close to approximating a random sample of eligible voters. Likewise, I usually ignore polls conducted on behalf of candidates or a party. In that case, the polls may use perfectly fine methods conducted to professional standards. The problem is that the results may be released strategically—that is, released if the findings are favorable to a candidate or party and kept private otherwise. In other words, the poll itself isn’t representative.

Yesterday I came across a new type of poll from SurveyAnalytics . Here are the sampling methods described in the top-lines:

SurveyAnalytics conducted an online survey of 2,001 voters in King County, including the City of Seattle. All of these voters were determined to be likely to vote in the November 2011 General Election. SurveyAnalytics recruited respondents from a voter list purchased from Labels & Lists, which included citizens who had voted in 2, 3 or 4 of the most recent General Elections. Respondents were contacted via e-mail following an e-mail matching process also conducted by Labels & Lists. Voters completed the survey online using SurveyAnalytics’ CityFeedback platform.

Okay…the methods sound interesting, although I don’t know how the “email matching process” works. Older folks are likely underrepresented because many still don’t have email addresses or computers. But traditional land-line polls under-represent young voters, who are more likely to have only a cell phone for a telephone.

SurveyAnalytics compares their sample to a SurveyUSA poll of King County taken in 2009, and they find very similar results for sex and ethnicity, as well as crudely categorized education and income variables. But the SurveyAnalytics sample is, as expected, slightly younger compared to SurveyUSA’s poll. An alternative interpretation is that the SurveyUSA sample—based on robocalling land-lines—was too old!

I cannot vouch for the representativeness of this poll. I do find the methods intriguing. With that…here are some results from their survey of 2,001 King County likely voters (MOE 2.24%) taken from October 29 to November 2:

• Obama 52%, Romney 24%, Neither 13%
• When asked for names of people running for Governor, McKenna’s name was given by 68%, Inslee’s by 57%
• A head-to-head match-up gives McKenna 36%, Inslee 35%
• Cantwell is at 54% to the sum of all other Republicans at 35%
• I-1183 (liquor privatization): 61% yes, 33% no
• I-1125 (Eyman/Freedman anti-tolls/anti-transit): 50% no, 38% yes
• I-1163 (background checks, training on long term care workers): 60% yes, 25% no

Again, keep in mind that these results are for King County only.

Out of curiosity, I’ve compared the SurveyAnalytics poll to the “Puget Sound” sample from the recent Washington Poll. I’m not sure what “Puget Sound” is defined as in the Washington Poll, but keep in mind that the samples in the two polls are not strictly comparable.

Obama does marginally well in King County by this poll at 52%. But the total of all Republican candidate percentages is only 24 36%, with Romney at 24%. The Washington Poll has an Obama—Romney match-up giving Obama 55% to Romney’s 37% in “Puget Sound”. The difference may largely be the number of undecideds, perhaps reflecting how the question was asked.

The most interesting finding is that McKenna and Inslee are practically tied in King County. This isn’t as bad as it looks for Inslee, as McKenna had an extra 10% of people who could say he was running. The Washington Poll found Inslee leading McKenna in “Puget Sound” 45% to 40%. As I mentioned earlier, Inslee probably does better relative to McKenna as more of the undecideds decide. And to win, he’ll have to do much better in King County in November 2012….

The I-1183 findings are more favorable at 62% Yes, 33% No compared to Washington Poll’s 52%, 42% split for “Puget Sound”.

Initiative 1125 loses by a whopping 50% to 38% in King County; the Washington Poll’s Puget Sound sample rejected the initiative by a more modest 43% to 42%.

It will be interesting to compare the actual vote in King County for the initiatives this election to these poll results, if only to assess whether this particular internet-based polling method is any good. And whether future polls of this type are worth our attention.

Alyona: Today is “Bank Transfer Day”:

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

Conan does a same-sex wedding on his show (via Slog).

Ann Telnaes: Seven Billion.

Daily Show on how a bill donsn’t become a law.

America Occupied:

• Thom: OWS vs. Koch-ville
• South Park takes on the Occupy Movement.
• Young Turks: OWS-inspired Constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United.
• Gov. Scott Walker gets a taste of the human microphone (via Slog).
• Sam Seder: Anatomy of an OWS smear.
• The Occupy Main Street movement:
• Liberal Viewer: FAUX News blames protesters for police violence.
• Thom on revolutions
• Stephen tries to buy OWS
• Stephen isn’t done trying to buy OWS
• Thom: OWS is America’s first general strike in 65 years.

Sam Seder: The Republican “God” job plan.

Alyona: Mass corporate tax dodging.

Ann Telnaes: China to bail out the Euro.

Thom with some more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

The Republican Primary Asylum:

• Mitt’s spending plan.
• Thom on the Mitness protection program.
• Why Mitt Romney is very bad for women.
• Mark Fiore: Zero-zero-zero.
• Liberal Viewer: FAUX News bias on Ron Paul poll.
• Stephen: Herman Cain’s foreign policy experience.
• Herman Cain’s innocent gesture.
• Newsy: Cain supporters call it a high tech lynching.
• Stephen on the impending sexual harassment allegations against him.
• Actual Audio: Rick Perry has an awesome tax plan.

Alyona’s Tool Time: John Boehner on Norquist.

Obama: On investing.

Glenn Beck is just happy to be noticed as Worst Person in the World.

Jon the Racist:

• Jon on The Donald’s charges of racism.
• Alyona’s Tool Time: The Donald on accusing Jon of being a racist.

White House: West Wing Week.

Judge William Adams (Arkansas County Court-at-Law, Texas) is Worst Person in the World.

Sam Seder: Ann Coulter’s, “Our blacks are the best blacks.

Twilight: “Say it”:

Are the Koch brothers denying your vote?

Alyona’s Fire Side chat: Escalating drone war unnoticed.

Thom: The secret list of 14 words.

Sam Seder: How do you debunk a Libertarian? Let ’em talk.

G.O.P.’s Big Job Creation Idea:

• Alyona’s Tool Time: The GOP’s “In God We Trust” resolution
• Jon: In God We Trust resolution.

Sam Seder: How racism still influences American politics.

Ann Telnaes: The McFib.

Ed and Pap: Tea Party is okay with sexual harassment.

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

Bruce Ramsey seems awful upset by a press release from Mike O’Brien that says, “I got sick of all the fees and hassle of the big banks, making life difficult for customers while reaping record profits.” He takes issue on the fact that Bank of America (who O’Brien didn’t name as his bank) didn’t make a profit for a few years, showing their profits and losses from 2006 to 2010:

2006 $21 billion
2007 $15 billion
2008 $2.6 billion
2009 ($2.2 billion) loss
2010 ($3.6 billion) loss

So, how much did B of A to make in the third quarter of 2011, you ask? Oh, $6.2 Billion. Still, I don’t think O’Brien begrudges the banks their profits, I think it’s more the hassle and fees that he cites that are the problem.

Ramsey is also upset about the fact that O’Brien is sharing this in a press release. But it seems to me, it’s information his constituents might want.

– Olympia is Occupied

– At Occupy Seattle and in general, I’ve only had positive experiences with Seattle police. But this is unacceptable.

– The liberal media’s reputation is coming out of this a whole lot healthier than the conservative media’s reputation, isn’t it?

– If it turned out that Kardashian is actually a performance artist deftly exploiting American’s patriarchal fantasies and hang-ups, I wouldn’t really be surprised.

– Surely they all deserved it.

– #OccupyTemple

During Roads and Transit the no vote basically went 3 ways: Taxes bad, don’t spend the money on rail, or don’t spend that money on roads. This is, obviously, wildly simplified but the don’t spend that money on roads faction told people that the transit portion was good, but we should come back with just the Sound Transit. People are comparing that to the current debate on Prop 1. The programs are worthwhile but the funding mechanism isn’t as progressive as it could be. And lots of the opponents of the measure are saying come back with a better funding measure.

But the difference now is that there isn’t a plan B if Prop 1 fails. It’s hope the legislature sees a no vote as a signal from Seattle voters that they’d like an MVET or some other more fair tax, then hope Olympia gives a shit about that signal and passes an MVET, then a City Council that just lost a vote puts that MVET on the ballot. Then they’ll support it. Let’s call that unlikely.

They don’t have a fully formed plan only that car tabs are unfair. Contrast that with The Stranger and The Sierra Club who wanted to put just ST2 on the ballot. I mean nobody reading this believes Ted Van Dyk or Bruce Ramsey are going to support a progressive MVET, if it pays for the things the car tabs pay for, right? And opponents of car tabs weren’t pushing for an MVET or anything else when the legislature passed the authority. I don’t recall John Fox lobbying in Oly making the case for a better way for local jurisdictions to pay for these things.

Look, I disagreed with The Stranger and The Sierra Club on Roads and Transit. But at least they had a plan and some skin in the game. The anti-Prop 1 people need to explain their plan B and what they’re going to do to make it happen, and so far I haven’t heard that.

Yesterday morning on KUOW, Darcy Burner announced her candidacy for Washington’s 1st CD. Weekday host Steve Scher interviewed Darcy about her run and her vision for the position. Here is the audio of the interview. It’s worth a listen:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/BurnerInterview.mp3]

Darcy Burner’s campaign web site can be found here.

It is election time in Washington state. Like me, you probably have a ballot and a voter’s guide sitting on the kitchen table.

Sometime this weekend, Kathy and I will sit down at the kitchen table and discuss issues and races as we fill out our ballots. And no, we don’t always vote the same way, but usually. When there is uncertainty about a race or ballot measure, perhaps she’ll pull out her Mac Air while I fire up my my Windows netbook, or maybe she’ll grab her iPhone as I grab for my Android phone and we’ll engage in a friendly research competition. Despite our “platform heterogeneity” we typically end up agreeing politically. The winner gets there first.

One of my favorite on-line resources is Fuse’s Progressive Voters Guide. Their statewide guide can be found here. County-specific and even city-level guides are available as well. So, if you live in King County, check this one out. Seattleites go here.

As much as I lament the demise of the voting booth, I welcome voting as a new and interesting (if brief) family activity.

Make sure you vote this week! It just might be fun.

I’m a little late in commenting on this, but I’m going to risk being called naive and say that I believe this is 100% true:

U.S. attorneys have a message for California’s medical marijuana advocates: Don’t blame Barack Obama. After it was announced that the crackdown on medical pot establishments in the Golden State was a collective decision by the four U.S. attorneys in California and not the result of any directive from Washington, spokeswoman Lauren Horwood emphasized that the administration never even green-lighted the ramped-up enforcement actions.

The only D.C.-based official with whom California U.S. attorneys coordinated, Horwood said, was Deputy Attorney General James Cole, who was chosen by Attorney General Eric Holder, an Obama appointee.

“He’s the one who provided the quote for our press release, and he’s chosen by Eric Holder,” Horwood told HuffPost in an interview. “But we didn’t have direct talks with Eric Holder — not that we wouldn’t, he’s been out and visited — but just the way the Department of Justice works, he’s not that hands-on on these kinds of details.”

After the crackdown was announced, fingers were immediately pointed at Obama. The Young Turks saw this as Obama doing the bidding of the pharmaceutical industry. I’ve heard others theorize that this is happening to prevent medical marijuana profits from funding legalization initiatives in 2012. But if this article is accurate, the reality seems to be far more mundane than that (and I suggested that possibility about a month ago).

Much of the overreaching federal drug law enforcement we see comes from the simple fact that law enforcement bureaucracies across the nation are still filled with people who’ve become ideologically wedded to the failed mentality of prohibition. They continue to see the use of marijuana (whether it’s recreational or medicinal) as a phenomenon driven by those who sell it, rather than by those who buy it. As long as they live in that up-is-down-black-is-white world – and the government still gives them the power to act on their insanity – they’re going to do things as spectacularly stupid as what they’re about to do in California.

This isn’t to say that Obama is off the hook. He’s still the President, and it’s very clear that his U.S. Attorneys are getting ready to make him into a gigantic liar over his promise not to interfere with state medical marijuana laws. Even if he wasn’t the originator of this boondoggle, he has the power to stop it. And a lot of folks on the west coast are going to remember how he handles this when next November rolls around.

I like Darcy Burner, and if I still lived in the 1st district, I might well vote for her in a primary for all the reasons Darryl described earlier today. I certainly made calls and knocked on doors for her both times she ran for Congress before. But I’ve also walked a few precincts for Roger Goodman and I gave money to Marko Liias. And I supported Laura Ruderman for Congress before Inslee got into the race in 1998, and thought it was classy when she got out of that race to run for the legislature to avoid a primary fight (today I’m more pro-primary fights, but that’s another story).

We’ve got a lot of good candidates running in the 1st district who have done a lot of good in government and in the community. I might well vote for any of them if I still lived up North. So here are a few quick stories about some of the non-rockstar candidates in the hope that you’ll give them a look too.

I don’t know how many times I heard that Roger Goodman couldn’t win supporting marijuana decriminalization. How he was out of touch with a supposedly conservative district and that one issue was going to destroy him. He’d be portrayed as a dirty hippie, and it didn’t matter how he came to the issue quite sensibly and that his actual resume was quite impressive, never mind that it’s obviously the right position. He did win, and he has been a leader in the legislature.

Of course earlier than that, the East Side was one of the safest parts of the state for Republicans. So in 1998 when Laura Ruderman won in the 45th district it was quite a big deal. Democrats have followed her lead ever since, making King County east of Lake Washington competitive. It’s true that in the legislature, she tended to stick to more bread and butter things like education. But for a legislator with a target on her back to get those sorts of things passed in the state house that was evenly split is a mark of a good legislator.

Unlike Goodman and Ruderman, I didn’t know anything about Marko Liias until he already was a legislator. But I somehow got wrangled into going to a fundraiser for him. I talked to him briefly and was impressed by the depth of knowledge about and commitment to public transportation from a suburban legislator. As someone who was pretty reliant on public transit growing up on the suburbs, I was glad to hear it.

All in all, first district Democrats have some great choices, and the coming months should be exciting to see all of the candidates stake out positions. It’ll be the first competitive Democratic primary in the district that I can remember, so it’ll be a great chance to define what it means to be a Democrat in the area. As someone who grew up in the district when it was pretty conservative, this is a great development.

– Another reason to Pass Prop 1.

– Um, GOP, just no.

– Shorter Michael Bloomberg: How dare you blame the banks for anything bad when the federal government exists?

– Kenmore Products Are Garbage, and Sears Is Terrible to Its Customers and Employees (and a follow up)

– Good news for Washington State’s working women, but there’s still further to go.

– I love this proposal. But what I love even more is when sports writers suggest a fundamental change to the game, and then are flexible about certain parts of it.

– The Rachel Maddow Show: the name to trust for the latest in meat-based technology (h/t).