HorsesAss.Org

One more thought on the WSJ/NBC poll that shows Republicans with a huge generic edge in the South, but trailing Dems in every other region. Is it possible that the so-called “enthusiasm gap” is actually exaggerating what advantage the Republicans have?

For example, let’s take a look at 2008, arguably a good year for House Dems, in which Washington state Republicans garnered almost 41% of the vote (almost identical to McCain’s share of WA’s presidential tally), but only 33% of our nine U.S. House seats. Of course nine seats only divide up so many ways, so you’d pretty much expect 41% of the vote to get you either 33% or 44% of the seats.

But now take a look at 2002, a pretty good year for Republicans nationwide. In that election, Washington Republican House candidates pulled in over 46% of the votes cast between the two major parties, but still only won 33% of the available seats.

Perhaps WA Republicans really are more enthused than WA Democrats this year, which would surely show up in generic ballot surveys. But as 2002 shows, unless that enthusiasm is distributed in the right districts, it might not have that much of an impact on the final result. I mean, does it really matter how much shoe-ins like Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, Doc Hastings, Norm Dicks and Jim McDermott win by? Does it have any impact on WA-03 how much more Republicans in WA-04 hate Democrats this year than last?

I suppose before the GOP became a regional party, mostly confined to the South and Southern-like rural and ex-urban districts — you know, like back in 1994 — the generic ballot might have been a pretty damn good predictor of congressional results, but now…? I’m not so sure.

But I guess in a few more months, we’ll find out.

A new WSJ/NBC poll (via Daily Kos) reinforces my sense that our nation’s profound regional divide is just one of the reasons why 2010 won’t be like 1994:

The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%.

Heading into the 1994 election the Dems held roughly 59% of House seats in every region of the nation, and while they ended up losing big everywhere, they got walloped in the South. Heading into the 2010 election the Dems control the exact same number of seats they did heading into 1994, but the regional disparity is startling, ranging from 82% in the Northeast to 43% in the South.

Here in the “Far West” the Dems hold a pre-1994-like 63% majority, but it’s hard to imagine 1994-like results. Back then Washington alone flipped from 8-1 D to 7-2 R, but this time around WA-03 is the only truly promising GOP pickup opportunity in the state, and even that’s gotta be ranked a toss-up. I suppose Rep. Rick Larsen needs to look over his shoulders in WA-02, but by that measure so does Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in WA-08. So a safe prediction might be a net one-seat Republican pickup here in Washington compared to a six-seat pickup in 1994. Maybe two at the most. Maybe none.

As for the rest of the West, Republicans can maybe count on picking up a seat in Idaho, one or two in California, and two or three more throughout the rest of the region, while almost certainly losing their recent special election pickup in Hawaii. Maybe. That wouldn’t make for a good year for Democrats, but it’s far from an electoral repudiation.

Of course the poll analysis does include this regional caveat:

Many of the congressional districts Republicans are targeting outside of the South resemble some of those Southern districts they’re hoping to win back in November — where you have whiter and older voters.

True, but this just serves to further point out the difference between 1994 and 2010, at least here in this Washington, for back in 1994, two of the six WA seats the GOP picked up were WA-04 (Jay Inslee) and WA-05 (Speaker Tom Foley)… exactly the kinda older, whiter, more conservative districts the R’s are now targeting. But, you know, you can’t win back a seat you’ve never given up.

The point is, the 45-seat pickup necessary for a Republican takeover this time around is made all the more difficult by our current regional divide. The Republican’s generic advantage is staggering in the South, but there is so much less low-hanging Democratic fruit down in Dixie than there was 16 years ago, the R’s simply can’t take back Congress without a somewhat comparable national wave. And at the moment, I just don’t see that sort of wave reaching the Pacific.

While riding light rail downtown to a morning meeting, I had some time to think about my transportation choices, and the sometimes not-so-conscious cost-benefit analyses we make on a daily basis.

Of course, this morning’s ride was a no brainer, the four buck round trip fare less than the cost of a parking meter, let alone a downtown parking lot. Plus, the cool, overcast morning made the 15 minute walk to Othello Station a pleasure, at least in the sense that I didn’t arrive at my destination completely covered in sweat.

But let’s say my daughter was with me, which would double that $4 fare to $8. If we’re gonna be downtown for more than hour or two, that makes economic sense, but for a relatively quick trip, not so much… especially considering that I still have to amortize the cost of owning a car, regardless of how much I use it.

The anti-rail folks complain about the high cost of the public subsidy, but I can’t help but wonder if the subsidy simply isn’t high enough. For in a city designed to virtually require car ownership, and in a nation where the public subsidies for our automobile culture are largely hidden (you know, things like the BP oil spill, the Iraq War and global climate change, let alone more obvious stuff like roads), it can be hard to justify the added cost of using mass transit when there’s a perfectly good car sitting idle in your driveway. In fact, I personally tend to use light rail more out of convenience (parking/traffic) than any real cost saving.

So my question for the rest of you is this: why do you or don’t you use mass transit, and would lower or higher fares change your behavior?

Flew in late last night (and yes, my arms are tired), but have a meeting scheduled relatively early this morning, so don’t expect much from me until after noon. In the meanwhile, enjoy a little John Stewart.

Goldy may hate to dwell on this, but I’m going to keep piling on. The Seattle Times’ “Calitaxication” editorial is one in a long series of deeply misleading claims they’re making about the crisis here in California. In order to ensure that Washington doesn’t follow California’s path, it’s necessary to do as thorough a demolition job as possible on the Times’ editorial as possible.

I think Goldy’s done a good job of hitting the flaws of the Times’ argument that I-1098 would somehow replicate the taxes found in Oregon and California. But there’s a deeper point that needs to be made: California’s budget woes aren’t due to too much tax – instead the issue is that taxes aren’t high enough on the upper end.

One piece of the Times’ editorial that needs further attention is this:

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

This isn’t really true. And since it’s at the core of the argument against taxing the wealthy – that doing so would cost jobs and lead skilled workers to leave – it’s important to show how this too is a flawed statement.

Despite the reputation the Times gives California, the Golden State isn’t actually all that tax happy. After Republican Governor Pete Wilson pushed through an income tax increase in 1991, the top tax rate was 11% for high earners (individual incomes of $200,000 and above). Those expired at the beginning of 1996, but did not prevent California from coming back from the severe early ’90s recession by that time – nor did they lead to any mass exodus of the rich and the skilled from the state. In fact, the numbers of people paying the higher rates under the Wilson tax increases in the 1990s rose, according to research from the California Budget Project:

The number of California’s joint personal income tax filers with incomes of $200,000 or more rose by 33.4 percent between 1991 and 1995 – a period in which California temporarily imposed 10 percent and 11 percent tax rates on high-income earners. In contrast, the total number of joint filers declined by 6.7 percent.

In the late 1990s Wilson pushed through a massive tax cut, including to personal income taxes, justified by the dot-com boom. By 2002, this lost revenue played a key role in producing the state’s large budget deficit that ultimately brought down Governor Gray Davis and gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his opening to become governor in the 2003 recall.

In 2004, however, California voters approved Proposition 63, which raised the tax rate to 10% on incomes over $1 million in order to fund mental health services. It passed with over 53% of the vote.

According to the Seattle Times, this should have destroyed the state’s economy and caused a flight of the rich. It did no such thing. The numbers of people who paid that tax rose after it was enacted, just as it did in the 1990s (again from the CBP):

The number of millionaire taxpayers – those with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million – increased by 37.8 percent between 2004 and 2006, after voters approved an additional 1 percent surcharge on taxable personal income above $1 million, which took effect on January 1, 2005. During the same period, the total number of personal income taxpayers increased by 4.2 percent.

As we well know, California’s bubble burst in 2007-08, and again revealed the underlying weakness of the state’s budgetary system. But the problem isn’t high taxes – instead it is the legacy of the notorious Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which capped property taxes and forced state and local governments to rely on more volatile sources of revenue, such as the sales tax. This legacy was compounded by the extremely reckless Wilson dot-com era tax cuts that I mentioned above.

So are skilled people leaving California as a result of these tax increases? As we saw above, the opposite seems to be happening: tax increases on the wealthy if anything have been accompanied by an increase in the number of people paying the tax. California’s boom and bust economy has many causes – an overreliance on real estate, a lack of public services to help secure and grow the middle class – but taxes on the wealthy aren’t one of them. Skilled workers continue to come to California to start businesses, work at our leading corporations, and to innovate the 21st century economy.

Neither are these taxes leading businesses to flee the state. Jed Kolko of the Public Policy Institute of California debunked this notion back in June 2010:

Rhetoric aside, California loses very few jobs to other states. Businesses rarely move either out of or into California and, on balance, the state loses only 11,000 jobs annually as a result of relocation—that’s just 0.06 percent of California’s 18 million jobs. Far more jobs are created and destroyed as a result of business expansion, contraction, formation, and closure than because of relocation. Business relocations, although highly visible, are a misleading guide to the overall performance of the California economy. The employment growth rate, which takes into account job creation and destruction for all reasons—not just relocation—is a much better measure of the state’s economy.

There’s no doubt California faces serious challenges. Our unemployment rate is 12.2%, much worse than Washington’s 8.7%. But that is due largely to the much more severe impact of the housing market bust than the impact of taxation, as shown above.

Here in California, we’re all too familiar with the impact of tax cuts, which have destroyed our public services and our ability to balance our budget. It’s not for nothing that some of us call this state “Failifornia” (in fact, it was the title of my Netroots Nation panel on California politics). As someone with a lot of family and friends left in Washington State, I urge you to not believe the BS that the Seattle Times is trying to sell you as they try to turn Washington into Failington by adopting the insane anti-tax policies that have devastated California.

(Oh, you might be wondering who I am. I lived in Seattle from 2001 to 2007, but now live in Monterey, California, where I work as Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign, a 700,000 member organization working to make California more progressive. I also write at the website Calitics, the state’s leading political blog. I’ve also written several articles at the Olympia Newswire earlier this year on state budget and tax issues.)

I hate to dwell on this too much, but I can’t help but emphasize how incredibly dishonest the Seattle Times editorial board is when it misleadingly compares I-1098’s proposed high-earners tax to California and Oregon’s broad-based income taxes:

The new tax created by I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions. That’s not quite the highest rate in the country: Oregon’s, at 11 percent, is at the top. But Oregon has zero sales tax. We would have high rates of sales and income taxes, which would be putting up a sign saying: Don’t invest here. Don’t create jobs here.

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

In fact, it’s not anywhere near the highest rate in the country, because I-1098’s tax is only imposed on earnings in excess of the income threshold, rather than on all income, as in Oregon and California. For example, an Oregon household earning $400,000 would pay $38,274 in state income taxes, while an equally fortunate California household would pay $33,660.

By comparison, under I-1098, a Washington household earning $400,000 would pay… well… zero. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Absolutely nothing. And according to a new OFM report, the same would be true for 98.8% of Washington households.

So this idea that Washington’s top rate would be one of the highest in the nation is a lie of omission if I ever saw one… you know, kinda like when the Times argued that even high-tax/socialist Sweden eliminated its estate tax, while failing to inform readers that they replaced it with a 1.5% annual wealth tax.

Yeah, and I’m the partisan spinmeister.

In one of what will eventually prove to be many editorials against Initiative 1098’s proposed high earner’s income tax, the Seattle Times warns readers “Don’t Calitaxicate Washington,” which I suppose they thought was a really clever pun, but which merely comes off as just kinda stupid. You know, like the rest of the editorial:

BILL Gates Sr. — father of the famous one — recently dropped $400,000 into the campaign to convince Washington voters to saddle themselves with a state income tax. On Aug. 3, the Service Employees International Union in Washington, D.C., put $200,000 into the same effort to change Washington law. The total raised by Initiative 1098 approaches $2 million.

Um, I’m not sure what the return address is on the check, and there are all kinds of rules about which funds come from where, but the SEIU money going into the I-1098 campaign is coming from SEIU locals and their members right here in this Washington, predominantly SEIU 775NW, which represents health care workers. I mean the Times would like you to think that it’s being funded by evil, out-of-state special interests, but it’s not. It’s the same folks who fund a lot of progressive causes in Washington state… you know, the folks who represent working people.

The cash being poured into the pro-1098 campaign aims to convince you, if you earn less than $200,000, that you will not pay the tax. You may not, in the first years.

Um… you will not pay the tax. “May not” makes it sound like maybe you will, maybe you won’t. But you won’t. Individuals earning less than $200,000, and households earning less than $400,000, will absolutely, positively not pay this tax.

But the tax will be expanded. Taxes always are.

No they are not. And if the income tax is ever expanded to lower income households, it will only be through a vote of the people. I mean, can you think of another major tax increase that hasn’t come before the people via initiative or referendum? Even the legislature’s recently passed temporary, 2-cent per can soda pop tax is coming before voters this November. That’s just the way things work around here.

And even before this happens, you will feel it, because it will sap income, investment, jobs and pay all across the state.

Because… why? The Times doesn’t explain how a tax on the top three percent of households, who would still enjoy one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation, would sap income, investment, jobs and pay for the rest of us. They don’t explain it, because they can’t. They just believe it because the Soviet Union collapsed or something, and thus taxing wealthy people must be bad. Or something.

Washington is one of nine states with no tax on wages and salaries.

Washington also has the most regressive tax structure in the nation, and by far. That means if you earn less than $20,000 a year you live in the highest taxed state in the union, but if you earn over $200,000 a year you live in one of the lowest. And the Times is okay with that.

This is a big advantage in recruiting people to work here, and in keeping people from leaving here. When Gov. Chris Gregoire went to the Paris Air Show in her first term to recruit aerospace companies to Washington, the first item of her sales pitch was: no state income tax.

It may be a recruiting pitch, but there’s no credible study to show that state income tax rates have a substantial impact on individuals’ decision to come or leave. I mean, Nevada has no income tax, and it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. And I don’t particularly see the economy or population booming in South Dakota or Wyoming either. It’s a bullshit argument.

It’s a selling point. An asset. And more than that: It’s a bonus for living here.

Huh. The Blethens sure don’t think much of their home state. I thought the bonus for living here was living here. Who’d have thought the Times would make an even worse tourism board than they do an editorial board?

The new tax created by I-1098 would top out at 9 percent of adjusted gross income, with no deductions. That’s not quite the highest rate in the country: Oregon’s, at 11 percent, is at the top. But Oregon has zero sales tax.

Let’s be clear. I-1098 would impose a 5% tax on household income in excess of $400,000 ($200,000 for an individual), and 9% on household income in excess of $1 million ($500,000 per individual). That means a family earning a half a million dollars a year would pay an additional $5,000 a year in state taxes… compared to $46,500 in California, which taxes a household earning $500,000 9.3% on every dollar earned. Of course, state income taxes are fully deductible when calculating federal income tax. So really, you’re looking at an additional $3,250 dollars in taxes a year (compared to $30,225 in CA), out of a half million dollars earned. That’s an effective rate of only about 0.65%. I don’t think anybody’s picking up and moving to Texas over that.

Of course as incomes go higher, so does the effective rate; a household earning $2 million a year would pay an additional $78,000 after the federal deduction, for an effective rate of about 3.9%. But then, the higher the income the less the marginal value of the tax paid, and this would still leave a WA two-millionaire with one of the lowest effective tax rates in the nation.

We would have high rates of sales and income taxes, which would be putting up a sign saying: Don’t invest here. Don’t create jobs here.

Of course, what the Times fails to mention is that I-1098 would also slash the state portion of the property tax by 20%, while exempting 80% of businesses from the onerous B&O tax. Oops.

Meanwhile, with I-1098’s top rate still below that of other Western states like Oregon, California and Hawaii, where exactly are folks gonna go? Idaho? Sure, Idaho’s top rate is only 7.8 percent, but it hits nearly everybody, applying to income over $26,418 a year, and to every dollar earned. And… well… it’s Idaho.

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

If Bill Gates Sr. and the SEIU push I-1098 past the voters, they will succeed only in bringing California’s luck here. And that would be a sad day.

So rather than emulating California’s example of a more fair tax structure, the Times would prefer we follow California’s example of decimating its once envied K-12 and higher education systems… the foundation on which the state built its economy into the eighth largest in the world.

I mean, the whole tortured “Calitaxicate” pun is a giant, smelly, red herring. Most states have an income tax. What sets California apart is not how it raises revenue, but how it spends it.

What this state needs is investment in new ideas and new work — and a tax system that smiles upon it.

What this state really needs is investment in our children. Do we want to see the state continue to cut funding for K-12 education? Do we want tuition and fees at state universities eventually rise to the point where we price the middle class out of a college education while financial aid fails to keep up? Do we want to knock tens of thousands of children off the health care rolls? Because that’s what happens if we don’t pass I-1098, and we don’t do anything else.

And that, more than anything else, is what risks turning Washington into California.

Hendrik Hertzberg writes about the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan, a few blocks from Ground Zero:

Like many New Yorkers, the people in charge of Park51, a married couple, are from somewhere else—he from Kuwait, she from Kashmir. Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Columbia grad. He has been the imam of a mosque in Tribeca for close to thirty years. He is the author of a book called “What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America.” He is a vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. “My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists,” he wrote recently—in the Daily News, no less. He denounces terrorism in general and the 9/11 attacks in particular, often and at length. The F.B.I. tapped him to conduct “sensitivity training” for agents and cops. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which she co-founded with him. It promotes “cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women’s empowerment, and arts and cultural exchange.”

As someone who often trolls the right-wing blogs, this proposed center (which sounds a lot like the Jewish Community Center where I used to go to day camp when I was 6) is seen by many as some kind of threat. Coincidentally, these are the same people who talk about how Obama is going to take away their “freedom” and how much they care about the Constitution. Every day that goes by and every issue that comes up just lifts the veil on that charade. America’s right wing is motivated primarily by one thing – an irrational fear of our multicultural society. Everything else is just talk.

It is election night in Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota and Georgia, and there’s a lot of teabaggery at stake. So please join us for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Some folks will be there early for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 276 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Voters are being presented with a stark contrast in this year’s U.S. Senate race, with incumbent Sen. Patty Murray campaigning on her record of earmarking federal dollars for crucial local projects, while Republican challenger Dino Rossi is campaigning against earmarks… you know, on principle.

And yet…

Emergency repairs made last year to the Howard Hanson Dam have reduced the chance the Green River will flood low-lying areas of Kent, Renton, Auburn and Tukwila, the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday.

Further improvements planned through mid-2012 should allow the dam to be filled to capacity.

Of course, those further improvements are being paid for courtesy of a $44 million earmark inserted into a defense appropriations bill by Sen. Murray. Some, like Rossi, might call that “pork.” But I’m guessing not the tens of thousands of residents and businesses downstream.

Yet another reason why to reelect a senator who has already proven what she can do for our region.

Seattle Times editorial page editor and crown prince Ryan Blethen elaborates on his page’s surprising decision to endorse Rep. Dave Reichert’s opponents:

In the 8th Congressional District, Reichert has had six years to grow. He hasn’t. His being caught on tape glibly talking about taking votes for the environment so he could stay in office was not a great way to start off an election year. That gaffe was compounded by his voting against fiscal reform and showing up for his endorsement interview woefully unprepared and more defensive than I’ve ever seen a candidate.

The two candidates in the 8th we did endorse, Suzan DelBene and Tim Dillon, showed up prepared and were thoughtful in follow-up discussions.

I’m not sure I’ll ever grow tired of reading the Times hurl the same sort of criticisms at Reichert that I’ve been hurling for years, and of course I take great pride in knowing that it was leaked audio exclusively posted on HA that helped flip the Times’ assessment of the three-term Republican incumbent. But this is more than just a delicious “I told you so” moment, for my post, and the broader media coverage it generated, is a beautiful illustration of the sometimes under-appreciated role bloggers now play in the modern, news media food chain.

It is true that much of what I write is derivative, consisting of commentary, analysis and criticism of original reporting and commentary produced elsewhere, mostly from the legacy press; indeed, the first thing I do every morning is scan the Seattle Times for stuff to make fun of. But bloggers like me have also become an important source for “professional” journalists, sometimes in quantifiable ways like the Reichert audio story, but more often in the subtle, less obvious way we tend to steer coverage, create buzz and frame headlines.

Like most of my best scoops, the leaked Reichert audio simply fell into my lap, because my source trusted me to see it for what it truly was, and to frame it in the most damaging way possible, whereas they were concerned that the Times might dismiss it entirely as mere politics as usual. In this sense, my blatant partisanship proved to be a tremendous journalistic asset.

But because my partisanship is so blatant, once the story was out there, other journalists, including the Times’ editorialists, where free to consider it in its proper context, and make their own evaluation. In the end the audio, presented unedited and unexpurgated, speaks for itself, while Reichert’s history of making similar statements establishes that his self-professed cynicism was no slip of the tongue.

The Times recognized that this is information that voters deserve to know, and I have to give them credit for that. But it’s not clear that the Times ever would have recognized this had I not framed the audio in the manner I did at the time I broke the story.

And that gets to another under-appreciated aspect of what bloggers like me do, for the best of us display a talent for seeing in commodity facts a larger truth that sometimes escapes the first round of media coverage. The U.S. Attorney story is a shining example, a major scandal that might have eluded the legacy press had not Talking Points Memo connected the dots that everybody else missed, and then obsessively followed up. Likewise my Mike Brown Arabian Horse Association story, a post that ultimately helped frame FEMA’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina as a debacle of cronyism, leading to Brownie’s resignation, merely highlighted information that was already widely available on his official resume.

It’s not that newspaper and other legacy media reporters don’t engage in the same kind of conceptual journalism, it’s just that our freedom to be passionate, opinionated and yes, partisan, frees bloggers like me to pursue angles that would make other journalists uncomfortable. Plus the sheer number of us energetically plying our trade simply makes it that much harder for important news to escape scrutiny.

While there are some traditional journalists who still dismiss bloggers like me as parasites, the truth is that we’ve been gradually establishing a pretty symbiotic relationship… a relationship from which readers ultimately benefit.

I will donate money to Rand Paul’s campaign if he promises to kidnap GOP Senators and force them to take bong hits.

UPDATE: The General suggests a campaign sign:

UPDATE 2: In more important news today, Google and Verizon have proposed a framework that attempts to eliminate the principle of net neutrality for wireless broadband networks. The key issue is over whether the internet will function the same on your portable device as it does on your home network. This agreement would open the door to having the the internet on your cell phone function more like cable TV – with content limited to those who can pay to have their content carried, rather than like the rest of the internet where everyone’s webpage is treated equally. Joan McCarter and Andrew Villeneuve write more.

It’s been two months since I first started covering Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s refusal to fulfill his statutory obligation to represent Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark, and six weeks since the dispute (as predicted) exploded into a full blown constitutional showdown. And today the Seattle Times finally covers the story with more than a cursory blog post: “Methow power-line fight turns into Supreme Court showdown.”

Of course, the article comes more than a month after the tiny Wenatchee World became the first (and until now, only) newspaper in the state to assign a staff reporter to cover the story, and it’s kinda frustrating to see environment reporter Craig Welch covering such a complicated legal issue when he easily could have devoted all 1,200 words to the complicated environmental issues surrounding the proposed power-line through virgin Methow Valley land (is there really no full time legal reporter in the entire state?), but the Times did publish the story front page, above the fold, so I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

Still, the article does serve as a reasonable introduction to the story for those readers who don’t frequent either HA or WW, especially the accompanying graphic that illustrates how the entire proposed line runs less than five miles east of an alternate route along Highway 153, much of it less than a mile from the existing highway right of way.

Hopefully Welch will be given the go ahead to delve deeper into the environmental issues surrounding this controversy, but for the moment, here are a few observations and elaborations on today’s piece:

The fight over the future of the shrub-steppe grasslands above the shimmering Methow River has become what few could have predicted: a constitutional feud between the heads of two state agencies.

Well, at least one person predicted it. Way back on June 16 I warned that McKenna was plunging our state into a “constitutional crisis … that could ultimately lead to a Supreme Court showdown.” Yup, HA readers were once again kept way ahead of the curve.

It’s become a political feud — one that Republicans say Democrats simply have manufactured in hopes of tarnishing a possible GOP contender for the 2012 governor’s race.

To be absolutely clear, I immediately saw this dispute as a tremendous opportunity to tarnish McKenna from the moment the first press release arrived in my inbox — that was in fact what sparked my initial interest — but DNR never proved as cooperative as I had hoped. Goldmark’s goal from the onset was clearly to pressure McKenna into providing an attorney, and his office was never willing to furnish me with potentially damning correspondence from the AG’s office. In fact, I’ve never even managed to get Goldmark to provide me a juicy quote. So whatever the “hopes” of me and other “Democrats,” as the only journalist who has covered this story from day one, I can assure you that Goldmark never showed any interest in playing that particular game.

“I believe it’s squarely the duty of the attorney general to carry out legal issues at my request,” Goldmark said, adding that he believes those duties are spelled out in state law.

McKenna argued his duty extends beyond Goldmark. He said his team of lawyers asked the same questions they do for all appeals: Did the trial judge err? Is there a good legal argument? Could new precedent damage other agencies?

I have extensively analyzed the legal issues surrounding McKenna’s statutory duties, for example here, here and here. It’s worth reading if you’re interested in learning more.

Opponents are represented by wealthy Seattle environmental attorney Peter Goldman, a contributor to Democrats who also happens to be one of Land Commissioner Goldmark’s most outspoken supporters. … Goldmark’s critics contend he took on the battle because it was important to Goldman — a charge Goldmark denies.

Um… Goldman is representing opponents because he’s an environmental attorney, and this is what environmental attorneys do. As for Okanogan County born and raised Goldmark, the Methow Valley is his own backyard, and I’m told he’s walked much of the proposed power-line route with his own two feet. So to imply that Goldmark is fighting to preserve Common School Trust Land in his home county as some sort of payback to Goldman is, well, absurd, especially to anyone who has ever spent any time talking to Goldmark. He is most definitely not your typical politician.

It’s Goldmark’s job to manage state public lands, and it’s McKenna’s job to represent Goldmark in that capacity. And that is what the pending Supreme Court case is all about.

Jane Hamsher from Firedoglake.com and the national organization Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) have launched a new project called Just Say Now, focused on supporting marijuana law reform around the country, particularly in California where voters will be voting on making it the first state to allow legal sales for non-medical use.

The effort includes an impressive Advisory Board, including former Reagan Administration attorney Bruce Fein, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, former Baltimore anti-narcotics officer Neill Franklin, and University of Vermont College of Medicine professor Dr. Joe McSherry. The organization is quickly becoming a presence within the national media, something that previous campaigns of this nature have never had the connections or resources to accomplish.

I’m often challenged in the comment threads of my posts about why I put so much emphasis on this issue. People often dismiss it as a fringe cause that doesn’t matter. And even worse, they assume that my advocacy for the issue is rooted merely in a desire to buy pot. The latter accusation is the most ridiculous and insulting considering that not only have I had no desire to buy pot since I became a father last year, but even if I did, the current prohibition doesn’t prevent me from buying it. It only forces me to buy it from a person who’s willing to break the law to do so. And there’s no shortage of those people here – or in any other American city. People in this country who want to buy pot can already buy pot.

The reason that former government attorneys and police chiefs are going on TV right now in an effort to end marijuana prohibition is because the issue has become important, even if many of us don’t recognize its importance.

Friday night, I was watching the NBC Nightly News and they reported on the violence in Mexico, where drug cartels are now using car bombs as a way to protect their profits. But in that entire report, it was never explained to the viewer why there’s so much violence. The connection between the billions of dollars in marijuana profits and the cartel’s military and operational superiority was never made. There was no mention of Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s call to have a debate about drug legalization. The most dire impact of our marijuana laws – the deaths of tens of thousands of people south of the border – is effectively hidden from the average viewer by the inability of our traditional news outlets to provide context for the stories they report on.

America’s brief experiment with alcohol prohibition came to a crashing halt after only a decade. By the end of the 1920s, with organized crime making astronomical profits and wielding enormous power over major cities, few would have argued that the issue of alcohol prohibition had no impact. But with marijuana prohibition, much of the impact has been outside of the U.S., making it easier to pretend that the dynamics aren’t the same and the impact isn’t as severe.

The violence and chaos in Mexico alone is a sufficient reason to regard marijuana prohibition as an important issue that needs to be discussed and dealt with, but that’s only part of the overall impact that this insane policy has had. The economic impact is also wide-ranging and difficult to quantify. The enforcement of marijuana laws runs into the billions of dollars per year – and does absolutely nothing to impact the willingness or the ability of Americans to buy marijuana.

And beyond the massive cost of enforcement, arrests, and incarceration for marijuana offenses, the effect on the economy of having a legal and regulated market for the drug – similar to alcohol, would be substantial. Not only could you tax it, but taking the control of the industry away from the cartels and handing it over to organizations who can compete and win in a well-regulated environment is a tremendous way to create new jobs all over the country. Think about alcohol, and the amount of people that are employed, from truck drivers to bartenders to brewery workers. Granted, more people use alcohol than marijuana, but it’s still a drug enjoyed by over 20 million Americans.

The reality is that no one knows the exact amount that marijuana prohibition costs us. Beyond the obvious things that I’ve already mentioned, it’s difficult to measure how much it affects us when police officers across the country bust into homes with guns blazing in the name of stopping the “evil weed”. It’s difficult to measure the impact it has when thousands upon thousands of promising young college students are arrested and forced to carry a criminal record that makes it impossible for them to get further along in their studies – or to step into certain jobs. It’s difficult to measure how much safer we’d all be if police officers dedicated to marijuana law enforcement were focused on far more threatening things like identity theft or child pornography. It’s difficult to measure the damage being done to the environment by having marijuana supplies grown clandestinely in national forests. And it’s difficult to measure how much the prohibition-fueled crisis in Mexico impacts the willingness of those living there to buck our immigration laws and cross the border seeking out work.

One of the most ingrained myths of our nearly 75 year war on marijuana (it was made illegal at the federal level in 1937) is that keeping it illegal for adults is the most effective way to keep it away from children. Anyone arguing in favor of removing the criminal penalties for marijuana will inevitably be accused to putting our young people at risk. And for years, that emotional argument often trumped any attempt at reason. Having been a child in the “Just Say No” era, however, it’s hard to put into words how incredibly flawed that belief is. Not only did marijuana prohibition make it easier for young people to get their hands on marijuana, but the overwrought hysteria over the dangers of marijuana actually reduced the credibility of those warning us about far more dangerous drugs.

Today, I find myself with a child of my own, and with as strong a desire as any parent to keep my child from being exposed to potentially addictive substances (whether its alcohol or pot) before he’s old enough to understand the responsibility of being an adult. But unlike my parents’ generation, I have no illusions about what’s the most effective method for doing so. The “Just Say No” era believed that government-mandated abstinence by adults was the most effective way. Instead, that merely handed over the distribution to people who had minimal interest in the welfare of young people. It had the opposite of its intended effect, moving sales of marijuana away from a regulated environment where a young person could be prevented from buying it to locations where they couldn’t – and where young people themselves often became part of the distribution chain. If there’s one purely selfish reason I have for my advocacy on this issue, it’s precisely that. I don’t want the schoolyard to still be the local drug store when my son goes to school.

Finally, we often toss around the words “freedom” and “liberty” as we discuss politics and demand things be done accordingly. People clearly have their own notions of what those two words mean, but I find it very difficult to define them in any way that doesn’t boil down to a belief that government should not exist to protect us – as adults – from our own moral choices. Marijuana prohibition has long been premised on the idea that it’s necessary for our own well-being, the well-being of our children, and the well-being of our nation as a whole, to do exactly that. And after all of these years, it should be painfully obvious that this premise is tragically flawed. No one’s well-being is served by this policy. It has left in its wake an enormous path of misery, failure, and destruction, and the only sane response at this point is to speak up and demand that it ends.

Just Say Now.

UPDATE: Philip Smith writes about the monumental waste of resources that has become a yearly ritual in California.