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I was just thinking about Goldy’s post from the other night on the ultra-federalist bills being introduced by Washington’s House Republicans and something occurred to me. Larry Haler’s name was on three of those bills. That would be the same Larry Haler who introduced this bill to overturn the state’s voter-approved and legislature-revised medical marijuana law.

So let me get this straight. In Larry Haler’s world, the federal government can’t:

– regulate the manufacture or sale of any firearms or ammunition
– collect income taxes from Washington state residents
– enact federal fuel economy or greenhouse gas emission standards

But it’s perfectly fine for the federal government to throw people in jail for using a medicinal plant, even though the residents of our state voted to allow people to have access to it, and even the American Medical Association now questions the federal government’s classification.

What?

State Rep. Matt Shea (R-Greenacres)

In case you missed last night’s post, House Republicans have introduced a butt-load of paranoid, crazy-ass, teabagger bills, in a paranoid, crazy-ass attempt to appease the paranoid, crazy-ass teabaggers threatening to challenge incumbent Republicans from the paranoid, crazy-ass right. And one of the common denominators — other than a shaky grasp of the law that makes Tim Eyman look like a Constitutional scholar — is state Rep. Matt Shea, who has not only signed on as a sponsor to all the bills, but appears as the prime on most of them as well.

Of course, this is the type of craziness we’ve come to expect of the Republican from Greenacres (no, really… he’s from Greenacres), but it’s more than a little astounding and embarrassing to see two-thirds of Shea’s fellow caucus members join him in such ridiculous political slop. And it’s hard for the GOP leadership to complain about being excluded from critical budget negotiations when their members appear to have made provoking a second Civil War their number one legislative priority.

(3) Any action by the federal government, or its agencies or agents, including the president of the United States, the congress of the United States, and the federal courts, against any person in Washington state for compliance with the provisions of this chapter is considered a hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens, and the state of Washington will by all necessary measures act to preserve its sovereignty.

Yeah, well, good luck with that, Rep. Shea. It’s one thing to abuse your wife, but it’s another thing to try to push around the government of the United States of America. I mean, to do that you’re going to need lots of firepower… you know, lot’s of unregulated arms, ammunition and accessories, manufactured right here in the Sovereign State of Washington. Which I suppose explains why Shea and 19 of his colleagues would introduce HB 2709, the Washington State Firearms Freedom Act of 2010, which amongst other things, would legalize and deregulate both silencers and cop killer bullets.

Sec. 4. (1) A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Washington and that remains within the borders of Washington is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce.

This in the wake of our recent rash of tragic police shootings.

I suppose I should be amused to see the state Republicans self-destruct this way, but when you really think about how crazy and dangerous their proposed legislation is, it’s more than a little bit scary to imagine what they might do to Washington and its citizens should they ever seize control of state government. You know, through Democratic or other means.

During his years as a columnist at the Seattle P-I, Ted Van Dyk earned a reputation for, um, not responding kindly to editorial feedback, which I suppose explains why the editors at Crosscut don’t even try. For example, take his recent prescription for balancing state and local budgets without raising taxes:

Big capital projects should be put on hold. That would mean, in Seattle, moving forward with both the deep-bore tunnel, to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and the Evergreen Point bridge modernization.

Now that’s the sort of logical, coherent prose that makes Van Dyk a must read for lazy bloggers everywhere.

Yeah sure, if you read further you eventually figure out that he really means that all big capital projects other than 520 and the Big Bore should be put on hold, but from a writerly perspective one could make a strong argument that there’s an entire paragraph missing between the two sentences above.

Which of course distracts from the factual incoherence of Van Dyk’s argument, in that capital and operating budgets actually have nothing to do with each other. For example, Van Dyk surprises no one by arguing that King County Executive Dow Constantine should halt light rail’s Eastside expansion:

Its crushing prospective pricetag ($23 billion and counting) already threatens to displace not only non-rail transportation but other spending for other public purposes in the decade ahead.

But the dedicated taxes to pay for this project were overwhelmingly approved by voters for the express purpose of building rail, not roads. (Remember, the “Roads & Transit” measure failed at the polls one year before the transit-only version passed.) And even if Constantine could halt construction, in clear defiance of the will of the people, it’s not like the revenue could be legally shifted to, say, jails, courts and law enforcement… a criminal justice system that eats up over 70% of the county’s general fund.

So to use an operating budget deficit as an excuse for arguing to halt capital spending on projects you don’t like, is just plain dishonest. Or stupid.

But either way, it makes for juicy blog fodder.

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries, calling them magnets for crime and citing federal laws prohibiting the drug.

Critics say many dispensaries are becoming magnets for crime; they point to some recent burglaries and shootings either at pot shops or near then [sic]

San Diego police chief William Lansdowne, who has generally supported medical marijuana, said that the dispensaries had become “magnets for crime” such as burglaries and robberies.

Knabe said he feared that, unregulated, dispensaries could become magnets for crime and illegal drug dealing and that the region could “become inundated’ with marijuana dispensaries like West Hollywood has.

Previous ordinances have failed to stop the proliferation of dispensaries – now estimated at 800 or more. Some are located near schools and residential neighborhoods and have become magnets for crime.

June 3, 2009

Four years ago, when the Los Angeles City Council started to wrestle with how to control medical marijuana, there were just four known storefront dispensaries, one each in Hancock Park, Van Nuys, Rancho Park and Cheviot Hills.

Now, police say there are as many as 600. There may be more. No one really knows.

December 9, 2009

When the state passed a law allowing for medical-marijuana cooperatives in 2004, Los Angeles never set forth guidelines for how they should operate. That led to the rampant growth of dispensaries: The number in the city is estimated at 1,000, making medical marijuana one of the city’s fastest-growing industries.

So with 1,000 of these “magnets for crime” infesting the city of Los Angeles, what has the result been?

Authorities say the 2009 crime rate in Los Angeles was the lowest in 50 years, with drops reported in everything from homicides to car thefts.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday the number of homicides dropped more than 18 percent last year compared with 2008. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says the 314 reported homicides were the fewest since 1967.

Overall, there was a 10.8 percent drop in violent crimes and an 8 percent dip in property crimes even though the city’s economy sagged and unemployment rose.

Rapes were down about 8 percent and auto thefts plunged nearly 20 percent.

I’m not claiming that the medical marijuana dispensaries are the main cause for the crime drop. It’s certainly possible it played some role, but as the linked article later mentions, crime rate decreases were seen across the nation. But what’s perfectly clear is that the 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries that set up shop within the city limits in only a few short years didn’t become “magnets for crime”. If they did, there’s no way we’d be seeing declines this remarkable.

Earlier today, the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee made history today by approving Tom Ammiano’s marijuana legalization bill. It was the first time that a bill to re-legalize it has moved forward. Tomorrow, it’s Washington’s turn. I think it was fitting that it was their Public Safety Committee that voted for it. The myth that legalized marijuana distribution will lead to increases in crime is way past its expiration date. In fact, legalizing and regulating marijuana is widely expected to do the opposite. Hopefully, we’ll have a genuine debate tomorrow that spares us from the sight of our state representatives warning us that the proposed state liquor and marijuana stores will become “magnets for crime”.

If the Republican caucus has a coherent strategy for narrowing the Democrats’ near super-majority in the state House, you wouldn’t know it from the steaming pile of crazy-ass bills their members have already introduced. Sure, there are always a few extreme or downright bizarre bills dropped each session from both sides of the aisle, but never before has one caucus gone so far off the deep end, and in such overwhelming numbers.

And if Democrats play their cards right, you gotta think that this is gonna hurt the Republican brand next November.

Exactly how crazy are we talking about? While how about HJM 4010, a House Joint Memorial sponsored by Representatives Condotta, Shea, Klippert, Kretz and McCune, that asks Congress to do away with both the Federal Reserve and paper money:

NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that the Congress of the United States, and particularly, the legislative delegation to Congress of the State of Washington, use all of their efforts, energies, and diligence to protect all the citizens of this nation from potential, unprecedented losses in the value of take-home pay, retirement income, insurance policies, and investments as a result of the Federal Reserve’s ongoing inflation of our unbacked paper money by passing legislation (such as H.R. 2756 to repeal our nation’s legal tender laws, H.R. 4683 “The Free Competition in Currency Act of 2007,” and H.R. 5427 the “Tax-Free Gold Act of 2008”) to help restore gold and silver money in accordance with the Constitution, then phasing out the Federal Reserve System and its inflationary paper money, the Federal Reserve Note (as in H.R. 2755).

That’s right… these Republican legislators want our currency to consist entirely of gold and silver coins. Yeah, that’ll get our economy moving.

Now I know what you’re thinking: there’s only five Republican sponsors on that bill. It just isn’t fair to categorize the entire GOP caucus as off their collective rockers based on this one joint memorial.

So how about HB 2709, the Washington State Firearms Freedom Act of 2010 (Shea, Ross, Kristiansen, Haler, Klippert, Taylor, McCune, Short, Hinkle, Course, Dammeier, Parker, Johnson, Angel, Bailey, Orcutt, Roach, Schmick, Fagan and Condotta), which attempts to exempt any firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured and retained in Washington state from federal regulation.

Or HB 2712, the Washington State Sovereignty and Federal Tax Escrow Account Act of 2010 (Shea, Condotta, Kristiansen, Klippert, Haler, Anderson, Taylor, Short, Kretz, Crouse, McCune, Hinkle, Ross, Roach and Schmick), which requires that all federal taxes be remitted to the state, and held in escrow, and includes the rather startling threat that any action by the feds against a WA citizen for complying with the act (you know, like not paying the IRS your taxes) would be considered a “hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens,” against which the state would take “all necessary measures.”

And then there’s HB 2708, the Washington State Energy Freedom Act of 2010 (Shea, Condotta, Kristiansen, Haler, Klippert, Herrera, Taylor, Short, Kretz, McCune, Crouse, Rodne, Hinkle, Parker, Dammeier, Ross, Angel, Bailey, Roach, Orcutt, Schmick, Fagan and Smith), which exempts seeks to exempt Washington state from any federal fuel economy or greenhouse gas emission standards. That’s 23 of the caucus’s 36 members!

And all three of these clearly stupid and unconstitutional bills include the following clearly stupid and unconstitutional provision:

Any federal law, rule, order, or other act by the federal government violating the provisions of this chapter is invalid in this state, is not recognized by and is specifically rejected by this state, and is considered as null and void and of no effect in this state.

That’s right, nearly two-thirds of the Republican House caucus have signed their names onto crazy-ass bills that attempt to assert that state law trumps federal law whenever state legislators say it does. Which raises the question: what the fuck have they been putting into their tea?

Well apparently, “tea” is the operative word here. The crazy-ass teabaggers are rallying in Olympia on Thursday, and this apparently has Republicans running scared… so scared that they’re willing to make themselves look like… well… a bunch of crazy-ass teabaggers.

Republicans apparently fear that unless they appease the teabaggers with the kinda crazy, paranoid, right-wing, pseudo-constitutional bullshit that makes Ellen Craswell look like Dan Evans Lyndon LaRouche look like John Adams, they’ll face a Teabagger Party primary challenger… so much so that some Republicans reportedly plan to put “Prefers GOP/Tea Party” next to their names on the ballot this year.

How else to explain why, with the Legislature facing a $2.6 billion shortfall one year after passing a devastating all-cuts budget, the House Republican caucus has made redefining the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution they’re number one priority this session?

One would have thought that with the crappy economy and the ongoing budget woes and the Democrats already having stretched their majorities to likely unsustainable numbers, the GOP might at least pretend to run to the middle in the hope of winning back a few swing districts. Instead, it looks like what’s left of their party is dissolving like a sugar cube in cup of hot tea.

Man, is this gonna be fun to watch.

So…you say you need a drink? Please join us tonight for some politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier and join me for dinner.

Stop by…it’ll be fun. Honest Injun!

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 341 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

One of the issues debated at last night’s 37th LD Dems meeting was a resolution supporting Mayor Mike McGinn’s decision to suspend the city’s ban on all-day parking lots near Link Light Rail stations. Only it wasn’t really debated, per se… more like passed unanimously without much discussion, let alone dissent

I was kinda surprised, as one of the purposes of the ban is to prevent the neighborhoods surrounding the stations from becoming destinations for park and riders. The purpose of light rail, after all, is more to get people out of their cars than it is to save folks a few bucks on downtown parking, and paving the surrounding properties over with parking lots does little to serve the local community.

But while I agree with the intentions of the ban, there’s something to be said for being flexible, and with many development projects on hold due to the bad economy, and local businesses struggling to make ends meet, a temporary lift of the ban only makes sense. As Martin Duke aptly explains at Seattle Transit Blog:

The reason to oppose park and rides is that they cost a lot of public money ($40k a space in some cases) for not a lot of riders, and because they take up valuable space that could be used for more vibrant development.  In some cases, people who park might otherwise have walked, taken the bus, or biked to the station.

Here we have private lots that aren’t costing a dime of tax money, and are in fact generating parking tax revenue; an abundance of empty gravel pits around all Rainier Valley stations, so that there’s no shortage of TOD locations; and of course, a small parking fee to limit users to those who have really bad bus transfers, live too far to walk, and are strongly disinclined to bike.  It’s a perfect situation.

In fact, anything that gets more people using light rail short term will be good for light rail long term. Just as long as we don’t turn the Rainier Valley into a permanent desert of park and ride lots.

I soldiered my way through the 37th LD Dems monthly meeting last night, a grueling three-plus hour affair that helps to explain why it’s so difficult to bring young blood into these sort of organizations. It’s not that the topics of discussion weren’t for the most part interesting or worthy, and it’s not like I didn’t learn anything from the debate, it’s just that the proceedings would have been much more enjoyable had they been conducted in half the time, and under the influence of caffeine and/or beer.

Sitting next to me near the back of the room was a brand spanking new Precinct Committee Officer who, while one of the youngest people in the room, I’m guessing was still past the age beyond which Jerry Rubin warned us never to trust. Well into the third hour of proceedings I asked him if he had ever actually attended an LD meeting before agreeing to become a PCO, and he said no, that he had only just been recruited last month at the LD Christmas party.

“There was drinking,” he said, attempting to explain his predicament, “it was fun.” I imagined him one of the wayward boys in Pinocchio, transforming into a donkey after a raucous day on Pleasure Island. Later that evening, after he and the other new PCOs were officially appointed by acclamation, I congratulated him by leaning in and muttering “sucker.”

Of course I jest, in that I really do appreciate the hard and necessary work the party regulars perform, and I know plenty of PCOs who find their duties rewarding, gratifying and even enjoyable. I mean, what better way to get to know your neighbors than to knock on their doors and actually talk with them?

And when it comes to incessant rambling about politics, I rank with the worst of them: for all my whining about the length of last night’s meeting, I found myself standing in the rain outside the hall past midnight, continuing the discussions with a couple of my fellow LD members.

But then, I’m self-aware enough to know that when it comes to my fascination with politics, I’m weird, and that if we want to connect with voters, we really don’t want a party populated solely by weirdos like me. Imagine your average, civic-minded twenty-or-thirty-something showing up at an LD meeting, only to stumble out bleary eyed three and half hours later. Now imagine your average, civic-minded twenty-or-thirty-something coming back a second time. Hard to imagine, huh?

And yet, that’s exactly what we need to do if we want to maintain and expand the vitality and diversity of our party.

This is shaping up to be a pretty historic week for drug law reformers in Washington state. On Wednesday, the State House will be holding a hearing on not just a marijuana decriminalization bill, but also a full legalization bill that uses the state liquor stores for regulated sales of marijuana to those over 21. To coincide with that bill, a group called Sensible Washington has filed a ballot initiative to remove all criminal penalties for adult marijuana possession, manufacturing, and sales. If that collects enough signatures, it will be on the ballot this November. If it passes, it would essentially put the onus on the legislature to come up with a system of regulating sales.

In a previous post, I laid out my arguments for why the legislature should be working to pass a bill that legalizes and regulates marijuana. A number of the reasons for doing so are economic ones. Arguing against that rationale – sort of – is Bill Virgin in the Tacoma News-Tribune:

[Read more…]

House minority floor leader Doug Ericksen (R-42, Ferndale) says that if Seattle can’t make up its mind on how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Eastern Washington would be happy to take our money:

“As someone who actually understands that the Eastside means the east side of the state, not the east side of the lake, I get a little bit irritated with the amount of money we spend waiting for Seattle to make a decision on transportation projects,” Ericksen said. “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and spread it to the rest of Washington.”

Notice how he doesn’t say “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and use it to balance the state budget.” No, he’d just be happy to take money from an economically vital Seattle project and spread it around the red counties, whether it’s needed there or not.

Huh. I guess that’s what Republicans mean when they describe themselves as fiscal conservatives.

When I set out to write bluntly about my own health care coverage woes in the individual market, it’s not like I didn’t anticipate the predictable, knee-jerk response from my hateful trolls: “Get a job!”

In fact, this was exactly the response I was looking for, as nothing demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-reform crowd more than their refusal to recognize how our employment-based health insurance system distorts the market and stifles innovation.

For example, just take a look at some of my own varied career choices.

I graduated college in 1985 with a B.A. in History and a passion for musical theater, only to stumble into a proto-Dot.Com career years before the buzzword became vogue. Hired by Philadelphia-based Information Companies of America for the position of “20th Century Renaissance Man” (yes, that was the title I put on my cover letter), my original duties ranged from writing movie reviews to developing and maintaining online versions of health industry publications such as The Medical Letter, and the always entertaining Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

During my three-plus years at ICOA and its sister company, US Fax, I quickly rose to the somewhat inflated title of Vice President of Product Development, in which role I wrote the functional specs for a consumer-oriented online service that was never developed, and the world’s first store-and-forward fax mail and broadcast system that was, but which was never fully brought to market. It was an exciting, creative job that paid well and provided generous health benefits. In fact it paid so well compared to my frugal, post-college lifestyle, that I soon had enough savings to leave Philadelphia and the world of full-time employment to pursue my dream of writing Broadway musicals.

Moving to New York with my songwriting partner (he music, me words), I spent the next few years writing, rewriting and workshopping what eventually became The Don Juan and the Non Don Juan, a chamber musical that with the distance of years I can honestly say was only slightly worse than its title. The show opened in December of 1991 at the respected Vineyard Theater in Manhatten, only to close for good three weeks later. That’s right, I am the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop, and I’ve got the bad review in the New York Times to prove it. Not to mention the bad review in the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and so on.

Oh well. That’s show biz.

During my time in New York, and with the help of my songwriting partner, who was also a software engineer, I expanded my technical skills, taking on odd consulting and programming contracts to supplement my dwindling savings. Together we also developed the world’s first rhyming dictionary software, initially for my own use, but eventually with the goal of finding an interested publisher. After following my new wife to her native Seattle in 1992, she and I decided to publish the software ourselves, and in April of 1993 the newly redesigned A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes hit the shelves to generally positive acclaim. And yes, I have the good review in the New York Times to prove it.

That’s what you call irony.

I don’t necessarily recommend starting a business on credit cards, but that’s what we did, and over the next few years we went on to develop and publish upgraded versions for Mac, Windows and eventually Palm OS, a companion cliche and catchphrase thesaurus, and our best-selling, if most short-lived product, a space-simulator shoot-em-up game for Macintosh, whimsically titled Eat My Photons! At its peak, Eccentric Software had one employee in addition to ourselves, and several hundred thousand dollars a year in sales within the U.S. and abroad. We hired a local designer to create our packaging and sales literature, contracted with Trojan Lithograph in Kent to print, duplicate, assemble, warehouse and ship our product to resellers, and did tens of thousands of dollars of business annually with Auburn based Zones Inc., which for years served a dual role as both our biggest customer and our biggest vendor. (You didn’t think the ads in those software catalogs were free, did you?)

As a mom and pop startup we pumped our fair share of business into the local economy, but while we never operated at a loss, we also never made enough money to pay ourselves a decent wage, let alone pay off our capital investment. By 1997, after Zones unexpectedly stiffed us over a holiday promotion gone bad, we had accumulated a six-figure personal debt.

Oh well. That’s capitalism.

Still, it’s hard to consider either venture a total loss. Sure, I guess my musical flopped Off-Broadway, but how many aspiring writers even get that far? Few artists ever achieve commercial or critical success, and those who do usually do so only after years of struggle. Without so many writers, performers and directors willing to try and fail, there would be no Broadway, no Hollywood, no multi-billion dollar entertainment industry at all.

Likewise, few start-up businesses survive beyond a handful of years, yet even in “failing” contribute greatly to the economy, often while preparing their founders and employees for future success. My then-wife, a former magazine editor, took the skills and experience gained from our business and turned them into a more lucrative job at a young Real Networks, whose stock options (and health benefits) helped us pay off our debt, while granting me the luxury of enjoying the first few years of my daughter’s life as a stay at home dad.

And while our rhyming dictionary software never made us rich, it was more than a little gratifying to know that so many successful songwriters were using it to make their lyrics better. Indeed, for a number of years straight, there wasn’t a single Tony, Oscar, Grammy or CMA presentation that didn’t include at least one nominee who I knew for a fact to be a customer.

Sure, call us failures if you want, but it’s people like us, eager to innovate and willing to take risks who have always been the engine of our economy, and from whom the occasional spectacular success arises. Do we really want to make their struggle even harder? Do we really want to sneer at would-be entrepreneurs, that if they want access to health care they should go get a job?

Or to phrase the question as clearly as possible: why was my salaried position at a venture-backed startup worthy of equal access to affordable health coverage, while my 24-hour workdays at my own startup was not? What is the economic or moral justification in that?

Impoverished by my years as a progressive blogger and activist, I may very well have to give in to my trolls’ admonishment to get a real job—one which hopefully comes with generous benefits—but to suggest that salaried employment should be a prerequisite for access to affordable health care is to ignore the profound complexity and diversity of our economy, while totally dissing the entrepreneurial spirit on which it is supposedly based.

Thus, as an answer to my own health insurance woes, “Get a job!” isn’t just an insult to me, it is an insult to America. And, by stifling innovation, mobility and entrepreneurialism, it is a surefire recipe for economic stagnation and decline.

Today is the first day of the new legislative session, and I can’t tell you how much I dread writing about it.

Last week’s contest had two winners; ‘Finnished’, who guessed the correct city of Helsinki, Finland, and Dave Gibney, who found the exact location. Also thanks to wes.in.wa, who passed along how to get the link of your current view:

the “share your map” envelope icon at the lower left of the screen will give you a URL for the view on your screen at the time

Just post that URL after finding the correct location. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Deuteronomy 23:1
No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.

Discuss.

Continued from yesterday’s roundup, a few more items from this week:

– New York City officials came under fire recently for putting out a pamphlet promoting safety tips for heroin users. The critics of these types of educational efforts are making the same logical error that proponents of teen sexual abstinence education make. They mistakenly believe in both cases that simply giving people information about a moral taboo encourages more people to explore that taboo. As the statistics on abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education have shown, it isn’t true. And it’s just as wrong when it comes to illegal drug use. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition put out their own press release criticizing the DEA for attacking the pamphlet.

– A recent report by the Center for American Progress shows that an immigration reform proposal that provides a path to citizenship for currently undocumented immigrants and relaxes immigration restrictions would boost U.S. GDP by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The worst economic approach possible to dealing with the problem of illegal immigration – by far – is to try to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.

– I’m sure it surprises no one that I agree with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Washington’s felon voter ban unfairly discriminates against minorities. The evidence presented at trial is some of the same evidence I’ve occasionally cited here in order to point out the massive racial disparities that exist in drug law enforcement.

The restrictions on felon voting come from the Washington State Constitution itself. The actual wording of the Constitution states:

SECTION 3 WHO DISQUALIFIED. All persons convicted of infamous crime unless restored to their civil rights and all persons while they are judicially declared mentally incompetent are excluded from the elective franchise.

An infamous crime is defined as:

An “infamous crime” is a crime punishable by death in the state penitentiary or imprisonment in a state correctional facility.

The biggest disconnect that I see is that most felons in this state aren’t guilty of “infamous crimes”. They’re often guilty of non-violent crimes. In fact, before King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg started relegating them to District Court in 2008, two-thirds of his felony caseload were cases involving less than three grams of illegal drugs, the exact kinds of crimes for which the evidence introduced at trial shows clear racial disparities in who actually gets arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.

The State Constitution, with that clause, was written in 1889. At that time, not only was drug possession not an “infamous crime”, it wasn’t a crime at all. Opium, heroin, marijuana, and cocaine were all legally available to people. It’s possible that smugglers who were found guilty of trying to avoid paying opium import tariffs were guilty of “infamous crimes”, but certainly not the man on the street who had a small amount of drugs on him.

After the turn of the century, prohibitions on these drugs were slowly enacted. All along the West Coast, anti-Chinese sentiments led to crackdowns on opium. Across the country, racism against blacks fueled attempts to ban cocaine. And animosity towards Mexicans led to the federal bans on marijuana in 1937. No one anywhere should be surprised that the outcome of nearly a century of these laws – born out of racism themselves – would be overtly racist implementations.

I’m not an expert on the Voting Rights Act. I’m making a logical argument here rather than a strictly legal one – and sometimes the two are not the same – but I have trouble understanding the arguments against this decision that pretend that our criminal justice system doesn’t have glaring racial disparities. If Attorney General Rob McKenna makes that the primary argument in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he deserves to lose the case. After a century of America trying to enforce various drug prohibitions (even alcohol for a while – which New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spoke out against because it targeted certain ethnic groups), these laws have ended up doing exactly what they were intended to do, to disproportionately put larger numbers of minorities behind bars.