HorsesAss.Org

– Initiative 1068 has been filed. It removes the criminal penalties for adult marijuana use. If enough signatures are gathered, Washington voters will join California voters this November in deciding whether to make it legal for adults to possess and use marijuana. Pete Guither has an interesting write-up on what the federal government might do in response. For now, the Obama Administration’s current strategy appears to be to bury their heads in the sand and pretend none of this is happening.

UPDATE: There will be a volunteer kickoff meeting in Seattle on February 17 (and in Spokane on February 10) to get people started with the signature gathering process.

– The State Senate passed ESSB 5516, which prevents people from being charged with drug crimes if they are reporting a medical emergency. On a less optimistic note, they passed a stricter law against driving while using handheld cell phones, even though a study this week showed that those laws don’t do anything to reduce accidents. [via Balko]

– The sight of ACORN pimp James O’Keefe – a young man whose ties to white nationalists are starting to be exposed – sitting across from Sean Hannity explaining that his arrest last week was just a “misunderstanding” says pretty much everything you need to know about the state of conservatism, race, and justice among the American right. As I watched that happen, my first thought was “when do the ACORN folks get their chance to sit across from Hannity and plead their case?” Compared to what O’Keefe just got caught doing (even just the parts he’s admitted to), what those ACORN workers did was petty. One can imagine what Hannity would say if four ACORN workers were busted trying to mess with the phones in Senator Mitch McConnell’s office. But that inequity never adds up to anyone in the Fox News alternate universe. Their world is one in which whites live by one set of rules involving the ideas of redemption, trust, and innocence until proven guilty, and everyone else is a potential terrorist.

(And there are some fifty more clips from this past week in politics at Hominid Views.)

I’ve used HA to advocate for moving to a high-tuition/high-financial-aid model in Washington’s four-year universities, pretty much since I started blogging, first in July of 2004, and at least once a year since (for example, here, here, here, and here). Hiking tuition is not a classically progressive policy proposal, and let me tell you, it didn’t win me many fans either in the comment threads or our state Democratic caucus.

But now that the Legislature is close to adopting this model via a bill that would grant “tuition flexibility” to the UW, WSU and Western, I gotta admit that I’m getting more than a little nervous.

See, the concept is rather simple. By mandating low in-state tuition prices, far below the actual cost to the university of providing an undergraduate education, the state has essentially been distributing the bulk of its funds directly to students in the form of a flat, per student subsidy, regardless of means. But under the new system, tuition would be allowed to gradually rise closer to actual costs, while financial aid grants and income thresholds rose accordingly, so as to keep higher education affordable to low and middle income families.

Indeed, with the extra revenue generated from those families who could afford to pay it, higher education could be made more affordable and more accessible. That is, assuming the state maintains its financial commitment to the state university system.

And that’s the assumption that’s making me nervous.

The whole point of this model is to offset higher tuition with higher financial aid, using the extra tuition revenue to help achieve this balance, but if the state uses new tuition revenue as an excuse for reducing its own expenses, that contract is irrevocably broken. My fear is that, with this tuition flexibility reform coming as a response to our state’s current budget crisis, legislators will view it primarily as a money-saving measure, and will treat it as such in subsequent budgets, resulting in a permanent reduction in future state funding for higher education. And honestly, I don’t want to play a role in enabling that.

We already don’t spend enough money to provide access to a quality higher education to all of our state’s young people, and we don’t need an excuse for legislators to spend even less. So while I obviously support tuition flexibility in theory, I cannot support it in practice unless the state makes the financial commitment necessary to assure that this reform makes higher eduction more accessible, not less. And I certainly cannot support it as a mere budgetary device.

DISCLOSURE:
Years ago, her mother and I bought our daughter four years of prepaid tuition through the state GET program, so higher in-state tuition will not impact us regardless of our means, should she attend a state university. Should our daughter attend a private or out-of-state university, higher  in-state tuition would in fact result in a higher return on our investment.

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
— Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 4/29/07

Not wanting to pile on or anything, but, well, you know.

In a decision that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, King County Superior Court Judge John Erlick ruled today that the state has failed to meet its “paramount duty” to make “ample provision for the education of all children,” as required by Washington’s Constitution, and ordered the state to provide stable and dependable funding to do so.

In response, Gov. Gregoire issued the following statement:

“Improving the quality of our schools and the education system has been, and remains, the top priority of our state. I agree with the court that we have a duty to provide a high quality education to our children.

Working with my staff and the Attorney General’s Office, I will be reviewing this decision to determine where we go from here.

Last year we passed significant legislation that would institute major funding reforms to ensure the necessary resources and programs to help every student succeed. That work must continue.

Regardless of whether this decision is upheld, I will continue working with the legislature to improve school accountability, close the achievement gap and ensure we provide our children opportunities for success in the global marketplace in which they will be competing. The legislative process is the best avenue we have available to determine those components.

Right now there is legislation being considered that would reform our education system. In light of this decision, I think it’s even more important that we pass these proposals that will put us in a better position to improve educational opportunities for every student in our state.”

To which I say:  Show me the money!

That was always my problem with last year’s education reform package. It promised improvements that would cost an extra billion dollars or so by 2018, but it never actually provided the funding mechanism to make it happen. Meanwhile, school funding has been substantially slashed in the here and now.

The truth is, education reform without tax structure reform is a hollow promise, and we’ll never be able to sustainably fund K-12 and higher education until we move to a fairer and more adequate tax system. Everything else is just talk.

The good news for Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is that only 34% percent of Seattle voters surveyed disapprove of his job performance thus far. The bad news is that only 40% approve of his performance… that according to a KING5/SurveyUSA poll of 500 Seattle voters.

Well, so much for the honeymoon.

Other tidbits from the poll: Seattle voters don’t seem overly anxious about replacing the 520 floating bridge, with only 23% ranking the project “very important,” and while 62% of respondents prefer a 6-lane bridge to a 4-lane one, there seems to be a modest preference toward dedicating the extra two lanes to light rail over HOV, 46% to 33%. Huh.

Dear Amazon,

You lose money on every Kindle you sell, you pay carriers for every bit you transfer over your Whispernet wireless delivery system, and at $9.99 a pop you even lose money on many of your e-books. And you’re worried about competing with the iPad… why?

Quit wasting your time and money acquiring companies and technologies in hopes of outdoing Apple at what Apple does best, and instead put all your effort into creating a better Kindle app and e-book buying experience for the iPad and other forthcoming tablet devices than Apple has created with its own iBook platform. Think of the iPad as an opportunity to get your e-books into millions more hands, without having to subsidize the hardware and network costs. Yeah, sure, you might only ultimately capture 20 to 30 percent of the e-book market on Apple’s touch platform, but that would still represent a helluva lot of virtual Kindles… and just like in the smartphone market, even a wildly successful iPad won’t be the only major player in the field.

Oh, there’s still plenty of room for your physical Kindle, a special purpose e-book reader with a comfortable e-ink display and incredibly long battery life… and there’s plenty of opportunity to make the Kindle better and cheaper. But multi-touch, app stores, energy-hungry color screens… you’re never going to create a better multipurpose device at a lower cost than Apple. So please, keep your focus.

Kindle is a great product that kick-started the e-book industry, and you deserve to be proud of that. But don’t let pride get in the way of profiting off your initial success.

Best of luck,

Goldy

Now that even Colin Powell has reversed himself and come out in support of lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military, and ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that was implemented on his watch, is there really even much of a controversy anymore?

Top military brass support lifting the ban, and if I understand how the military works, those under them will do what they’re told. No doubt lifting the ban will make for some awkward moments, but what’s the big deal?

Apparently, the only thing that speeds more precariously out of control than a Toyota with a stuck accelerator, is DOT Secretary Ray LaHood’s mouth.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I kinda like Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey… you know, as a person, not as an editorialist for chrisakes. But I’d like him a helluva lot more if he were a bit more consistent.

For example, today Bruce is outraged over legislative attempts to reform the initiative process (reforms that are brought up every session, yet predictably never get out of committee). Applying campaign finance limits to initiative campaigns? Spiteful. Requiring paid signature gatherers to register with the PDC? Punitive. Raising the $5 filing fee from its 1912 cost to something approaching an inflation-adjusted value (about $110)? Well… um… Bruce defiantly stamps his foot down:

[T]he state constitution declares that the people’s right of petition “shall never be abridged.”

Really, Bruce? Huh, I don’t remember you coming to my defense when your own editorial page urged a Thurston County court to bar Initiative 831 from the ballot, and I sure as hell don’t remember you pontificating about my “right of petition” when the judge issued a wholly unconstitutional order barring me from filing my petitions with the Secretary of State.

No, I guess denying me and my tens of thousands of supporters our right to petition our government was okay, because we weren’t taking the initiative process seriously enough for civic leaders like you and your fellow editors. Besides, I guess I should’ve been satisfied enough, having “successfully placed the phrase ‘horse’s ass’ into dozens of family newspapers.” As if I held a fucking gun to your heads.

In the end, a humorless assistant AG and a humorless Superior Court judge denied me my constitutional rights, knowing full well that I lacked the resources to file an appeal. Written in the form of a resolution, the AG argued that I-831 was not legislative in nature because it failed to amend the RCW, and thus was outside the scope of the initiative process. And so for only the second time in our history , the state stooped to pre-ballot review to invalidate a proposed measure.

And you and your paper cheered them on.

So here’s your chance to make amends Bruce. An initiative was recently filed seeking to change our state’s official seal to that of “a tapeworm dressed in a three piece suit attached to the taxpayer’s rectum.” I’m the last person to come out against the use of the initiative process for satirical purposes (even if it’s totally misguided considering that WA hasn’t raised a single tax since 2005), but I’ve read the initiative, and while it seeks to direct the Legislature to change the seal, like I-831, it doesn’t actually amend the RCW itself. Thus under the precedent set in Goldstein v. Gregoire, that should place it outside the scope of the initiative process.

So if you want to be consistent in your advocacy for the integrity of the initiative process, I would expect you and your editorial board to urge the AG to deny this initiative a title, and if it ultimately goes before a judge, to editorialize in favor of denying this petitioner the same fundamental rights that were denied to me.

Or… would that run counter to your impassioned defense of initiative sponsors against any and all obstacles?

I’m confused, Bruce. Perhaps you can explain why it’s so outrageous to, say, bar convicted sex offenders and identity thieves from being hired to gather our addresses and signatures, yet it’s okay to use the full legal resources of the state to harass a petitioner and bar his satirical initiative from the ballot? Or… would you argue that your ed board was wrong in advocating that I-831 be tossed from the ballot?

I await either an explanation or an apology.

I may not be a big fan of the Seattle Times editorial board’s prose, but it turns out it’s better than their verse.

“HOW do you solve a problem like Pamela?” reads the Times’ lede on the latest Pam Roach soap opera, apparently thinking they’ve made a clever reference to the iconic song “Maria” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The Sound of Music.

But they haven’t. Because “Pamela” and “Maria” don’t rhyme. They don’t even share the same meter.

“Maria” is a double or feminine rhyme, with the accent falling on the second to last syllable, whereas “Pamela” is a triple rhyme (or antepenult) with the accent falling on the third to last syllable. To rhyme with “Maria” you’d need a word that mimics its final two syllables, like “Korea” or “diarrhea” or “onomatopoeia.” To rhyme with “Pamela,” you’d need a word that mimics all three syllables, absent the “P.”

Not only doesn’t “Maria” rhyme with “Pamela,” offhand, I can’t think of another word in the English language that does.

And to make matters worse, not only isn’t the Times lede singable as written, nobody but nobody refers to Pam Roach as Pamela. So this supposedly clever reference fails on two fronts. (Not to mention the fact that 95% of non-gay-male readers under the age of 40 probably aren’t even familiar enough with the song to get a properly made reference in the first place.)

Fail, fail, fail.

And even as a fail, the Times’ reference is unoriginal. Indeed, I castigated Newsweek on similar lines just a couple months ago, for attempting to force “Sarah” into the same lyric in a feeble cover headline.

Of course, it is possible to make this lyrical reference work, as I did in a headline not too long ago. My secret? Having the discipline to only make the allusion where it fits.

So my advice to the Times’ editorialists is to leave the rhyming verse to the experts, and stick to… well… I’d prefer they leave the editorializing to experts as well, but I suppose we can’t have everything.

It’s a double-header Drinking Liberally in Seattle this evening. You get two chances to engage in politics under the influence. The early meeting will be at O’Asian Kitchen 800 5th Ave starting at 5:30 and going to 7:00 or 7:30. The later meeting is at the usual place: Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier and join some of us for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 344 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Nobody wins elections they’re not running for like Dino Rossi.

After losing an excruciatingly close race to Christine Gregoire in 2004, Rossi went on to win multiple gubernatorial opinion polls in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, as well as several head to head match-ups with Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2005. Indeed, just about the only poll Rossi has lost over the past five years was the one counted, in November of 2008.

And now comes news that Rossi has defeated Sen. Patty Murray in an opinion survey conducted by Moore Insight.

Encouraging news indeed for those Republicans living in that alternate universe where contests are decided months or even years before or after election day, and solely on the basis of surveys conducted by Republican pollsters.

Well, sorta. The Academy Award nominations came out today, and “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner” was nominated in the category of Documentary, Short Subject. The film chronicles our former governor’s Initiative 1000 campaign, in which voters overwhelmingly approved the “Death With Dignity” measure.

I hadn’t even heard about the film until Will, who worked for the campaign, called me with news. Here’s hoping the shots of him didn’t all end up on the cutting room floor.