Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. That’s 3 out of the last 4 for wes, who’s become the man to beat recently. The correct location was Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Saskatchewan, home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the CFL.
Here’s this week’s, good luck!
Blue Texan at Firedoglake, after noting that the disruptors at a Texas town hall last week were organized by the Travis County Republican Chair, and how the disruptors seemed also to opposed Social Security and Medicare:
They’re just throwing a temper tantrum over “SOCIALISM!” — which in their wingnut brains applies to everything from TARP to the stimulus bill, and yes — to Social Security and Medicare.
They’re fringe, anti-government nihilists and they’re not interested in the government reforming health care, or anything else. The media, however, continue to frame these events as a referendum on health care reform, which they are not. One side wants to reform health care, the other wants to lynch the federal government.
This kind of sums up the key points we need to understand about the disruptors. It’s not really about health care to begin with, and it’s being inflamed not just by far-right front groups funded by corporations, but the Republican Party itself has deliberately decided to encourage and organize people to throw gurgling, babbling hissy fits.
So while some on the right put on their Chesire cat grin and proclaim that Democrats are somehow against ordinary Americans expressing themselves, it’s pretty clear which side is trying to prevent real debate. Their claims that we did such things to them are false and the result of the fevered imagination born of right wing victimhood, a necessary and ever-present mental contortion they use to justify wrong actions. A few Code Pink and such protestors here and there are simply not the same thing. Anyone can go pick out random incidents and make a false equivalence, a favorite tactic of the right.
Imagine, if you will, that during the lie-up to war the DNC and labor had adopted a deliberate strategy of shouting down Republicans at their district meetings, or anywhere else they appeared. Imagine that they hired tons of lobbyists and spent millions of dollars to do so. Imagine the airwaves, mainstream and not, filled with crazy-ass claims that George W. Bush was actually from another country and thus not the president. You get the idea.
As we all know, not only did that not happen, progressives had to show Democrats that they could win at the ballot box by vigorously defending basic Constitutional principles and at least talking about real problems like health care.
The only protestors I recall, for the most part, were individual Americans forlornly taking to the streets of our cities while many Democrats went along with the madness, and the protestors were often met with pepper spray and derisive cries of “traitors” from the right. What so offended the righties is that anyone would dare to oppose their madness, and they have now conflated peaceful, non-violent protest with their desire to destroy civil discourse once and for all.
As many have noted, it was only a few years ago that some Oregon teachers were removed from a Bush rally for daring to wear pro-Constitution t-shirts. I recall a public lecture series here in Vancouver during the Bush era, held on public property, at which a few anti-war protestors who desired only to silently hold small placards were escorted out of the venue, at the mayor’s insistence, by uniformed police, because their views were “insulting” or some such nonsense. Public resources were used to squash free speech, and the local newspaper didn’t seem to have much problem with it.
Yet here we are being lectured at by some of the same fools who couldn’t stand to have their eyeballs scalded by the searing sight of someone else’s views about the wrong-headed invasion of Iraq. Forgive me if I have had enough of the lies, the double standards and faux outrage.
What we did to the Republicans was beat them at the polls, and they can’t stand it. They can’t stand it so much they are throwing yet another magnificent, reprehensible hissy fit, mostly because it makes us mad. I guess we should get mad easier.
While it’s understandable that individual constituents may be confused and angry because of right wing distortions, or even not confused and angry for good reason, reasonable people will agree that a major political party deliberately shutting down public meetings as a strategy is petulant at best and dangerous to democracy itself at worst.
Leaving aside the real possibility that mentally unstable people will do bad things, here we have the remains of a reactionary conservative movement that built itself on “law and order” in reaction to the excesses of the 1960’s now behaving in the very manner it supposedly found so loathsome. History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it hardly seems like a winning strategy.
Sure, the obvious thing to do would be to shut down Republican town halls at every opportunity, if you can find any, up and down the ticket, but that’s well, too obvious. Far better to find creative ways to have real discussions, with or without the disruptors, and see if we can’t somehow make the health care system less nuts for regular people. I guess people who want to are going to yell and scream no matter what, but after they get done shouting and being rude there will still be the matter of tens of millions of Americans who have no health care insurance.
If this is the path Republicans continue to follow in their struggle to regain even a modicum of respect from most Americans, I’d have to say that in the long run we’ve already won.
Free Viagra.
Conservative impotence is a problem that can no longer be ignored.
I was able to attend the media presser this morning following Jay Inslee’s meeting with Office of National Drug Control Policy head (and former Seattle police chief) Gil Kerlikowske. The meeting was about legislation being pushed by Inslee to promote the safe disposal of prescription drugs, an initiative that I support. During the Q&A, I was able to ask our “Drug Czar” about the situation in Mexico:
Lee: President Obama is going to Mexico this weekend to meet with Mexican officials – and they’re dealing with an enormous organized crime problem fueled in big part by American consumption for marijuana. I’m wondering why is the equation for dealing with the problem different than it was in the early 30s when dealing with alcohol? Why isn’t setting up a regulated market the right way to go?
GK: Well, because they’re criminals and they’re terrorists. And they are creating huge amounts of havoc.
Lee: What I’m saying is…
GK: Let me finish. [One part is that anyone looking] at prohibition doesn’t realize the crime suddenly ended or changed drastically before or after. The other part is, we see with these criminal narco-terrorists and the violence that they’ve done that suddenly they’re not going to change and say “you know what? I think I’ll get a job out in the field growing potatoes”. They’re going to continue to be criminals and terrorists.
Lee: But how are they going to, can I follow up to this? How are they still going to still make money if we’re not buying marijuana from them?
GK: Extortion. Kidnapping. Theft of auto parts. Etc.
I was relying on my MP3 recorder, so I missed a few words of Gil’s second answer, so the part in brackets is a paraphrase from memory, but there were a number of video cameras there, so I’ll try to update as soon as I can. The general point he’s making here is clear though. And he’s making an invalid assertion. Crime rates did change drastically as a result of alcohol prohibition. Homicide rates steadily increased throughout the 1920s to much higher levels than before, and then began decreasing again within a few years after prohibition was repealed in the early 1930s. What makes these statistics even more extraordinary is that you’d think that the Great Depression would have had the opposite effect on those numbers.
Kerlikowske is right that the criminal organizations in Mexico aren’t going to just give up. But neither did the other criminal organizations that once benefited from alcohol prohibition. During the 1920s, they used their position in charge of Chicago’s thousands of speakeasies to control city government:
Chicago was a “wide-open” town. Police and judicial corruption were so widespread that the Better Government Association petitioned the United States Congress to intervene in the internal affairs of the City, stating that its leaders were in league with gangsters and that the city was overrun with protected vice (Woody, 1974:136). The alliance between corrupt government and organized crime was made clear by Big Bill Thomspson’s return to City government. Promising that he “was as wet as the Atlantic Ocean”, Thompson was returned to the Mayor’s Office in 1927 with strong support from Chicago’s criminal element (Nelli 1970:232). In fact, a number of Capone gangsters reportedly worked in Thompson’s campaign headquarters (Wendt and Kogan, 1953:269). It is also said that Capone, himself, donated $260,000 to Thompson’s reelection fund (Hoffman, 1989:2). With the advent of Thompson, Capone returned to the Levee, setting up headquarters in the Metropole Hotel at 2300 S. Michigan and in 1928 one block north at the Lexington Hotel. Speakeasies and vice again flourished in the First Ward, but they were not under the control of Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin (Wendt and Kogan, 1974:351). Vice remained strictly in the hands of the Capone syndicate. In fact, the Aldermen were called into Capone’s office and told that their future would depend on their usefulness to the Capone organization (Nelli, 1976:191). To this Coughlin was said to have replied, “We’re lucky to get as good a break as we did.”
After alcohol prohibition ended, these groups didn’t just disappear either. But without the ability to control a commodity as popular as alcohol, they had to resort to prostitution, racketeering, and other narcotics, trying to maintain this level of influence they had during the prohibition era. I’ve never encountered anyone who believes that ending alcohol prohibition didn’t allow for law enforcement to have more success in fighting these groups and to weaken their grip on our government.
Well, maybe I just did. Kerlikowske seems to think that ending marijuana prohibition won’t help in our effort to defeat Mexico’s drug cartels. And he appears to justify it by saying that ending alcohol prohibition didn’t help in our efforts to fight organized crime syndicates. It certainly did, even if it took a number of years for the power of those groups to diminish. Mexico’s drug gangs make billions of dollars per year from American marijuana consumption. There’s simply no way they can recoup that level of income through extortion or stealing car parts. Setting up a regulated, legal market for marijuana will be a major blow to these groups, and it’s time that the Obama Administration start to seriously consider it.
The real implication of this story is that we’ve most likely uncovered another illegal felon vote for Dino Rossi.
Sheesh…will it ever end?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9td6dk_lzw[/youtube]
(There are some eighty other clips from the past week in politics posted at Hominid Views.)
I’m shocked but not surprised. From The Hill:
The Secret Service may investigate a fax sent to a Democratic lawmaker that depicts President Barack Obama as the Joker and warns of “death to all Marxists.”
The black-and-white fax portrays Obama in makeup similar to that worn by actor Heath Ledger in his portrayal of the Joker in last summer’s “The Dark Knight.”
On Obama’s forehead is a communist hammer-and-sickle insignia, and beneath the image is the text: “Death to All Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) received the fax and passed it along to U.S. Capitol Police.
I’m sure the state’s editorial boards will renew their calls for civility on the left.
One little fact that is consistently being overlooked, even by some traditional media reporters, is that Baird had never scheduled any in-person town halls in August to begin with. A right-wing Portland radio host and a Republican blogger from Clark County started demanding that he do so, for obvious partisan effect. And if there’s one thing we know about Baird, it’s that you don’t get anywhere by pushing him.
I listened to his telephone town hall, and he took calls from quite a few Republicans, including some party chairs and the very same right-wing blogger who has teamed up with the Portland radio host. Much to my surprise, the format actually seemed to work pretty well.
Today’s batch of R-71 data has been released. The total signatures examined is now 35,262 (about 25.6% of the total).
Today, there were 4,721 invalid signatures found that were rejected on the first pass. Some of these decisions may be reversed by the “Master Checker.” The preliminary invalid signatures include 4,110 that are not found in the voting rolls, 146 duplicates, and 465 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 101 signatures at various states of processing for a missing signature card.
If all 146 duplicates hold, there is a duplicate rate of about 1.56% for the petition. But some of the duplicates may be deemed valid signatures. What we know now is that 31,199 signatures have been accepted and 4063 rejected. We don’t know exactly what category each rejected signature is classified under, but the daily totals give us some idea. (See Dave Ammons post and the comment thread for more details about today’s surprising revelations from the SoS office.)
Using the best numbers available, I’ve run three different scenarios, making different assumptions about invalid and duplicated signatures. The raw numbers suggest 658 previously rejected signatures have been “saved” by the “Master Checker”. In all three scenarios, I first deduct the 465 from the total number of mismatched signatures (Ammons points out this is the most likely way a rejected signature is “saved”). The remaining 193 are deducted from duplicates and signers not found on the voter rolls (“not founds”) as follows:
I use the V2* estimator to find the expected number of valid signatures. Here are the results:
The truth lies somewhere between scenario 2 and 3. As I found earlier today, the fate of R-71 depends almost entirely on the actual number of duplicates found. Until we get the real numbers, both proponents and opponents will be on pins and needles.
Updated twice
The 6th batch of R-71 data was delivered this morning. The SoS office is pooling numbers from the morning and evening counts, but I’ll treat them separately just so that we can look for big swings in the “semi-batches”. Also, the SoS totals don’t seem to match the daily totals today, but what’s a signature-validation watcher to do? I’ll use the daily counts.
The total signatures examined is now 29,937 (about 21.7% of the total). There have been 3,968 invalid signatures found, for an cumulative rejection rate of 13.25%. The invalid signatures include 3,506 that are not found in the voting rolls, 113 duplicates, and 349 that did not match the signature on file. There are also 89 signatures at various states of processing for a missing signature card (by now, some may be good and some rejected–I’ll treat them all as good until I learn otherwise).
The 113 duplicates suggest a duplication rate of about 1.74% in the total petition. Using the V2* estimator, the number of valid signatures is expected to be 117,049 leaving a shortfall of 3,528 signatures from the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot. The overall rejection rate should be about 14.99%.
Here is a snapshot of the trends:
Still no unexpected deviations as the counting continues. R-71 continues on track for failure.
Updated
Dave Ammons has posted some new information about the signature validation process and the numbers that have been posted by the SoS.
Elections Division has decided that a more accurate cumulative error or rejection rate (currently 11.63 percent) should reflect the sizable number of signatures that have been going from the rejected pile to the accepted stack after a master checker reviews the checker’s decision to reject. That is 409 so far. As previously discussed, also nearly 100 signatures that have been set aside because there was no voter signature on file will be shifted over to the “accepted” stack once the counties send the person’s electronic signature.
In other words, the SoS office wasn’t giving us the number of invalid signatures. What they were giving as “invalid signatures”, were only invalid in a first-stage of checking. A second-stage check has resulted in some signatures being considered valid again. All I can say is unbefuckinglievable!
I’ve already been treating the “missing signature” counts as valid signatures. But without knowing the ACTUAL number of invalid signatures by category, it is difficult to project whether I-71 will make the ballot.
Update 2:
I’ve run three scenarios based on incomplete numbers posted at the SoS site.
We know there were 409 signatures that failed at the first checking phase that were subsequently accepted in phase 2. We don’t know which of the bad batches they came from (signatures not found on voter rolls, duplicate signatures, or signature mismatches) .
If I had to guess, I think the majority came from the signature mismatch pile. But there were only 349 signature mismatches, so we have 60 that were either considered duplicates or not found on the voter rolls. Subsequently, they were considered not duplicates or found on the voter rolls. Both seem equally likely (or unlikely) to me, but I don’t really know what the “Master Checker” does.
So here is what I did. First, I assumed 349 of the 409 came from the signature mismatches. The remaining 60 I dealt with in three ways:
Remember, 120,577 signatures are needed to qualify. Here is what happens using the V2* estimator:
Obviously, the biggest determinant of R-71’s fate is the number of duplicate signatures in the phase one check that are subsequently accepted in phase two. With any luck the actual number of signatures rejected in each category will be released.
So, predictably, conservatives are attacking Democrat Brian Baird, WA-03, for refusing to play their stupid “mob rule” game and will have telephone town halls instead of the rugby scrums desired by the tea birthers.
Which got me to wondering who else has used telephone town halls.
From a 2007 post by former Seattle Times reporter David Postman.
About 400 people pressed “1” and joined Reichert for his first district-wide “tele-town hall.” It was about an hour-long conference call that for Reichert has replaced the old-fashioned, in-person, town hall meeting.
Actually, Reichert, a two-term Republican, has never held a traditional town hall meeting. Early in his first term he convened a panel discussion to talk about Social Security. But that didn’t go well.
“People started chanting and yelling,” Reichert’s chief of staff, Mike Shields, said this week. The forum was moderated by Times editorial page editor Jim Vesely. He wrote afterward that the event turned into a “hockey game.” That was the end of any plans for open-door town halls for Reichert.
Go figure. It’s okay for Republicans, as always.
The Columbian reports on the findings of an audit concerning the failure of Bank of Clark County. The whole article is worth a quick read if you follow the financial meltdown, because the FDIC during the Bush administration appears to deserve some of the blame. But so do the “best and the brightest” of Clark County’s bidness guys ‘n gals, as they got caught in a death spiral of declining property values.
The report lays the bulk of the blame on bank management, which in several instances ignored the FDIC’s warnings. In its 2008 examination, FDIC examiners discovered the bank had failed to provide current appraised values on at least 11 of its loans, causing regulators to underestimate the bank’s need for backup funds.
“They were hiding appraisals — that’s pretty damning stuff,” said Scott Jarvis, director of the Washington Department of Financial Institutions, on Thursday.
One thing that still gripes me about this case is how certain bank customers were tipped off about troubles at the bank, and others were not. What’s troubling is that it appears, from best I can tell, no laws were broken.
It may be legal, but that doesn’t make it right. The local bidness guys ‘n gals ran this bank into the ground in their effort to secure huge profits from excessive development that was not justified by population growth nor demand. When the bubble burst they were screwed, as were customers who didn’t get the word to bail.
You’d think someone would do something, in addition to an audit. At the very least releasing insider information to some customers and not others should be illegal.
I started blogging in May of 2004, and within my first two weeks I had already been driven near the point of aneurism by our local media’s refusal to do simple math. Far from a recent obsession, my focus on numbers and the failure of the press to consistently present them accurately and in proper context, has actually been a recurring theme here on HA since the early days of the blog.
Yes, it’s true that even accurate numbers can mislead (“lies, damn lies and statistics” and all that), and so it’s not always easy to separate the truth from the facts. But what frustrates me most is when journalists simply regurgitate the numbers fed them, without ever bothering to run the equations for themselves.
That’s what happened with the early reports on R-71 signature verification, creating a false impression that the invalidation rate started off low—well below the maximum error threshold—only to rise steadily as the count continued. As a result there are some R-71 backers who now suspect foul play on the part of the Secretary of State’s office, accusing them of toughening up the standards in an effort to keep the measure off the ballot, when in fact the projected invalidation rate, from the very first batch, has consistently remained in the 14.5 to 15 percent range, well above (statistically speaking) the 12.43 percent maximum.
Yes, I know, it was the SOS who initially reported a “clean” count, and who misleadingly juxtaposed the early raw rate against a supposedly 14 percent cushion. But those numbers simply didn’t add up if you took the time to add, subtract, multiply and divide them, and even when I did the math for them, and showed my work, I was mostly ignored by reporters who obviously assumed the SOS had more credibility on these matters than some partisan blogger.
No, I’m not a statistician, and my formal math education never extended much beyond Algebra II & Trigonometry, but I know how to use a calculator and I have some experience with the process stemming from the drama over Tim Eyman’s I-917, and I knew that duplicate signatures always comprise a significant portion of the total errors, and that the number of duplicates always increase at a predictable rate as the sample size is expanded. I also knew that total invalidation rates never fall outside a certain historical range, and that there was absolutely no reason to expect R-71 to do so. These facts were indisputable.
Darryl could run simulations showing a 92 percent chance of R-71 failing to qualify after the first batch, and a near 100 percent chance of failing thereafter, but I didn’t need a PhD in statistics to know what I knew. R-71’s failure was apparent from the very first batch, even if HA was the only site to report it. Okay, maybe my intuition, my expertise and my math wasn’t enough to convince newspapers to write headlines declaring R-71’s failure, but it should have been enough discourage writing headlines and ledes implying the opposite.
While my complaints may come off as petty bitching at least, or gloating at worst, as I’ve written before, numbers do matter, and especially when it comes to elections. Since the excruciatingly close gubernatorial election of 2004, and the highly contentious dispute that followed, public faith in the integrity of our electoral process has been undermined by hyperbolic, selective and downright erroneous reporting. And unfortunately, misleading reports like those we’ve seen regarding R-71, do absolutely nothing to restore public confidence.
It is ironic that a press corps that is often so cynical of government and the words and actions of government officials, can at the same time be so credulous when it comes to the numbers these government officials feed them. And it is an unfortunate disservice to the public as well.
The goddamn, knee-jerk liberals on the Seattle Times editorial board endorsed “Yes” on the bag fee yesterday, constituting in my mind, my only 100% unqualified, no caveat miss in predicting their editorial endorsements this primary season:
We do not reach this conclusion lightly. This editorial page is uncomfortable with a City Council always seeking to raise the property tax for pet projects, and always — name the reason — imposing higher rates for just about everything.
But the mayor got the idea from faraway Ireland, which has had a very good experience with its “plastax.” Ireland was able to reduce litter significantly and cut plastic bag use by about 90 percent.
Of course, how could they take the bag fee lightly, when somehow inexplicably conflating it with property taxes and Ireland?
Will says that I was an idiot for predicting a “No” endorsement, that if I had read their editorials on the subject closely (and I admit, I hadn’t) they had clearly telegraphed their position.
But here’s what I think really happened. They were all set to endorse “No”, but they switched to “Yes” just to fuck with me. I do take this conclusion likely, and I have absolutely no evidence to support it, but it makes me feel better, so I’m sticking with it nonetheless.
The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill to get rid of the infamous crack-cocaine sentencing disparity.
Oregon becomes the latest state to allow hemp farming.
Russ Belville writes about the hypocrisy of television networks who happily air shows about marijuana that are entertaining, but censor content about marijuana when it’s about legalization.
Media Matters breaks down the recent lame attempt by the health care industry to scare old people away from reform. More here.
Bill O’Reilly is still terrible at math.
Publius at Obsidian Wings looks at the new Net Nuetrality bill.
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