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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAkg6G8iXQI[/youtube]

Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) held a press conference this afternoon at Seattle’s Childrens Hospital to announce an agreement struck to correct the dramatic regional disparities between Medicare reimbursement rates, disparities that have penalized Washington’s relatively efficient healthcare delivery system to the tune of tens of of millions of dollars a year. It is also an agreement that, as I will explain later, helps pave the way to a public option.

Above is raw footage of Rep. Inslee’s announcement. Stay tuned for additional footage, selected clips and further analysis.

For some non-local news, there’s an interesting scandal brewing in Alabama. It involves a janitor named Lorenza Hooks at the State House in Montgomery who was busted in 2006 after video footage showed him carrying a backpack (which he admits was his) containing two pounds of marijuana (which he claimed was not his) into a legislator’s office. Not only was Hooks not charged, but he kept his job. Eighteen months later, in May 2008, he became a suspect in a shooting and was put on leave from his job. This May, as the Legislative Council debated whether to reinstate Hooks, a legislator learned about the backpack incident and raised it as an issue, causing him to receive death threats. No reference to the incident was found in his personnel file. After failing to be given his job back, Hooks was arrested earlier this month on drug charges.

Loretta Nall is trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Last week’s contest turned out to be a tough one. It wasn’t solved until Tuesday afternoon when wes.in.wa came up with the correct location of Auburn, Alabama. The building pictured was Cater Hall, on the campus of Auburn University. That’s two in a row for wes.

I’ve generally been treating these posts as open threads, but last week got way out of hand, so I’ll be deleting any off topic nonsense from the threads from now on.

For those new to the contest, you can click the picture below to go to the bing.com map tool. Click the ‘Bird’s eye’ button to switch to Bird’s Eye view and search away.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Everybody knows that Democratic U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) has long had his eye on the governor’s mansion, and is widely expected to give up his House seat to run for our state’s top office in 2012. But who of note has his eye on Rep. Inslee’s coveted House seat, once it becomes vacant?

Word is that noted travel writer and TV and radio personality Rick Steves is seriously considering giving up his globetrotting ways for an extended stay in the other Washington, and is already working the local Democratic circuit in preparation for a potential run. The latest evidence? Steves jumped at the offer to be the keynote speaker at the Snohomish County Dems’ Annual Gala fundraiser on Sept. 12.

Yes, I know, 2012 is quite a ways off, but it wasn’t so long ago that Inslee was a top candidate for the number one or two position in President Obama’s Department of Energy, giving Steves a more immediate opportunity to explore his own political ambitions. And it was during this time, with a potential special election looming, that Steves reportedly firmed up his intention to run.

Through his popular guidebooks, website, radio and TV shows, the ever likable and seemingly unflappable Steves has expanded his Edmunds WA based tour business into a low-key, travel empire, making himself a nationally known public figure in the process. And in recent years, Steves has increasingly leveraged his national audience and stature to insert his own unique experiences into the public debate.

While his website is still largely devoted to his tour business and travel guides, it now contains an entire section devoted to “Social Activism,” including commentary arguing for a “European perspective” on drug control policy (he urges America not to be “hard” or “soft,” but rather, “smart on drugs”), and a link to his controversial ACLU-sponsored video urging the end of our nation’s failed “prohibition on marijuana.” Steves has also recently earned himself the unbridled hatred of many on the knee-jerk right for his thoughtful documentary on traveling through Iran, in which he shows the Iranian people as anything but an axis of evil.

But rather than protect his business by pulling back from his activism in the face of increasingly strident attacks, Steves chose to respond to his critics with a new book, “Travel as a Political Act.” Indeed, it appears that the harsh reaction from the right has only served to further politicize Steves.

For the life me, can’t understand why Steves would want to give up what appears to be one of the best jobs in the world for one which often appears to be one of the worst (I once phrased the same question to KIRO radio host and former WA-08 contender Dave Ross, who genuinely, it seems, believes in something he calls “public service”), and with 2012 such a long ways off, Steves still has plenty of time to come to his senses. But if he doesn’t, I think he’d make a great candidate, and while not everybody will be as thrilled as fellow HA blogger Lee, I know a lot of folks who would welcome Steves to the race.

The initiative campaign against the new jail, I-100, fell short of its signature goal. I-100 wouldn’t have directly prevented the jail from being built. It would have only forced the city to analyze alternatives, examine the racial disparity in the prison population, and then put the question up for a vote. In the failure, however, there appears to be one potential bright spot [emphasis mine]:

The deadline for turning in the signatures is Thursday and theoretically the campaign could ask for a 20-day extension, said campaign manager Natalie Novak.

However, Novak said the campaign raised an issue “no one really knew about before.” Additionally, the county has said it would allow cities to bring people to the jail for misdemeanors beyond 2012. The county had said the cities had to stop before 2012, setting off the debate over building a jail.

I’m not entirely sure what that means for the overall jail debate now. If anyone has more specifics, please feel free to share in the comments or email me directly. I still remain puzzled that with our economy in the condition it’s in that we’re considering such a costly infrastructure investment that hardly anyone wants and is not necessary. And despite what many I-100 opponents have insisted, we’re not diverting anywhere near as many people as we should be. This was made abundantly clear in a report from Nina Shapiro at Seattle Weekly back in January [again, emphasis mine]:

While liberal groups have fought for years for more lenient drug policies, our state’s financial woes are helping accomplish what their arguments alone could not. This is true at the county level as well. Faced with a $5 million budget cut to his office, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in October started kicking felony cases involving less than three grams of narcotics down to District Court, where they are prosecuted as misdemeanors. He says the move affects two-thirds of his caseload.

Meanwhile, the King County jail is already nearly full, and the county has said it will no longer have room for misdemeanor prisoners from the cities as of 2012. So Seattle and several suburban cities have started planning to build a new multimillion-dollar jail of their own.

There just isn’t any ambiguity about this. When two-thirds of our county prosecutor’s caseload involves people with less than .003 kg of drugs or less, our local court systems are being clogged with low-level drug offenders. If you hear any local politician talking about how we already do a good job of diverting these folks out of the system, they’re lying. We don’t. In fact, we shouldn’t be arresting any of them in the first place, which is what Portugal decided to do in 2001, and it’s been an unquestioned success.

This problem is understood in the most morally bankrupt light when we see the affect that aggressively prosecuting low-level drug offenses has on the African-American community:

While African-Americans are represented in King County average daily jail population by six times their percentage of population, five Seattle public schools that primarily serve African-American communities were closed this year to save the school system a meager $3 million.

Somehow, the city of Seattle had $110 million for a new jail, but couldn’t seem to locate $3 million to save some schools. I think that says everything you need to know about how Seattle’s city leadership views its minority communities.

It was hot last night at Seattle’s Town Hall, both literally and figuratively. Outside, advocates of a single-payer healthcare system were chanting and leafleting. Inside, as Gov. Howard Dean spoke about healthcare reform, the crowd was only slightly less boisterous.

Though friendly and receptive as Gov. Dean took the podium, when it came time to take questions from the audience it quickly became apparent that the many of those inside shared the sentiments of those on the street, with some of the questioners filibustering their opportunity at the mic to take an uncompromising stance in favor of single-payer, and opposed to anything less. It was apparently a familiar scene for Gov. Dean, who had just arrived from a similar engagement in Portland, OR, where several single-payer advocates had to be removed from the audience after disrupting the proceedings.

Gov. Dean, a licensed physician and former presidential candidate and DNC Chair, is on tour promoting his new book “Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform,” but for many true believers, Gov. Dean’s prescription—take a public option and call me in a decade—isn’t real enough. What plays out is the sorta classic confrontation between idealism and pragmatism that so often undermines reforms coming from either end of the ideological spectrum, leaving those in the mushy middle so firmly in control. And it’s the kinda confrontation that the insurance industry and big pharma are counting on to stave off reform for another generation.

As Gov. Dean repeated throughout the Q&A, he’d personally prefer a single-payer system, as it’s the only reform that can guarantee universal coverage while quickly providing the level of savings needed to get our healthcare costs under control. But as he also repeated, polling consistently shows that the general public just isn’t there yet, let alone the laggards in Congress, so while single-payer shouldn’t necessarily be taken off the table, it would be unrealistic to expect it to move any further… at this point in time.

And here’s where that confrontation between idealism and pragmatism really comes into play. Public option opponents on the left dismiss the proposal as mere half-measures, while public option opponents on the right attack it as a slippery slope to single-payer. And they’re both right. The question is, will the lack of enthusiasm for the public option from idealists on the left ultimately play into the hands of the pragmatists on the right in their efforts to scuttle any substantive reforms at all?

As I’ve argued before, the public option is a slippery slope to single-payer, if implemented and executed correctly. Now some might characterize this admission as cynical and dishonest, but good policy done right is inherently a slippery slope toward better policy. As it should be. And it’s a slope we slide down only with the approval of a majority of voters.

So after he finished signing books I asked Gov. Dean whether he believed the public option would be a slippery slope to single-payer. I wanted him to say yes, and I sensed that he wanted to say yes as well. But he’s too smart for that… and too pragmatic. Instead, he enunciated what I think is the most rhetorically effective response I’ve ever heard to the right’s slippery slope argument, a response that totally undermines their objection, even without denying it:

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/dean.mp3]

This will be the change that the American people want at the pace that they want it. So the opponents have no right to make that argument. The Republican ability to make that argument assumes that they know better than the American people, that they’re so smart that the American people have no right to make up their own mind.

That’s what this bill is about. This bill is not about whether to have a single-payer or a public option or a private system; this bill is about whether the American people get to choose for themselves, or whether congressmen take it upon themselves to override the will of the American people and do something different. It’s a straight up vote between whether you’re in favor of the health insurance industry, or whether you’re in favor of your constituency. Everybody’s going to have to make that vote, and we’ll be watching.

The same could be said to the uncompromising advocates of a single-payer system.

I may not live to see the bottom, but I still believe that the public option will ultimately set us down that slippery slope to single-payer, and my sense is that many of its proponents believe the same, whether for pragmatic reasons, they’re willing to publicly say so or not. If given the choice, many Americans will flock to the public option, and if private insurers simply aren’t able to compete, I’m alright with that. It is ironic, after all, that those who insist there is no fundamental right to basic health care, also tend to be those who insist that there is a fundamental right to selling private health insurance.

Of course, there isn’t. And if the single-payer advocates can be as patient as they are passionate, I’m confident the American people will ultimately prove them right.

Digby discusses the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and our views of police power.

Republicans are horrified at the thought of the government being involved in your health care. Unless you’re a woman of child-bearing age, or use a non-traditional medicine or face a terminal illness, of course.

Staying true to their suburban sensibilities, the Seattle Times endorsed State Sen. Fred Jarrett for King County Executive today, just as I had predicted way back on June 25th:

Well, no, the Seattle Times hasn’t officially endorsed Fred Jarrett for King County Executive yet, but this morning’s editorial lauding him pretty much telegraphs that they will.

[…] The only question remaining is whether the Times endorses one or two candidates in the August primary, and if the latter, whether they’re crazy enough to endorse Susan Hutchison?

Well, they did do a dual endorsement, and no, they’re not crazy enough to endorse Susan Hutchison. State Rep. Ross Hunter gets the second, equally enthusiastic nod. No surprise there.

I suppose I could fisk the editorial; after all, there are plenty of passages with amusingly twisted logic such as:

King County has had just one executive from the Eastside, who served briefly as interim exec in the early 1980s. It isn’t so important where an executive hails from except it is a good idea to occasionally mix it up to offer different perspectives.

Get it? It isn’t so important where an executive hails from, except that we’d rather he’d hail from the Eastside. Fair enough. Stupid logic, but fair enough.

But you know what? It’s too nice a day to waste much time reading a Seattle Times editorial endorsement, let alone writing about one. What’s really important here is that it keeps my batting average predicting their endorsements near perfect.

And now that I know they’re doing dual endorsements in the primary, I’m ready to go out on a limb and make my next prediction: Joe Mallahan and (surprise!) Mayor Greg Nickels in the mayors race!

“Two assemblymen, three mayors, and several rabbis…”

It sounds like the set up to an old joke, but rather than walking into a bar, the perps mentioned above are behind bars today as part of a money laundering and political corruption investigation that swept up 44 suspects across New Jersey, Republicans and Democrats alike, and implicated many more.

Prosecutors said the investigation, reaching through layer upon layer of government, revealed a “pervasive” culture of corruption.

“New Jersey’s corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation,” said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI’s white-collar and public-corruption investigation division. “Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state.”

See, that’s why I laugh whenever I hear folks accusing Gov. Gregoire of being corrupt for (gasp) taking legal campaign contributions from tribes and unions, or comparing Mayor Nickels’ style to that of some East Coast political boss. Coming from Philadelphia, I know from corrupt political machines, and folks, this ain’t it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy abusing our elected officials as much as the next guy, but as spineless, rudderless and ineffective as they can sometimes be, you gotta give them credit for at least being clean when it comes to the public till. Hell, we don’t even seem to get our fair share of sex scandals around here. Even when it comes to organized crime, the best Seattle can muster are two-bit hoodlums like the Colacurcios, whereas if this were Hoboken or Jersey City, rather than running strip clubs, Frank Jr. would be preparing to succeed his father as mayor.

I’m just sayin’….

A big chunk of Seattle’s spanking new light rail line grinded to a halt for much of yesterday, as problems with the downtown tunnel’s sophisticated control and signaling system (the only one in the world with stations serving both trains and buses) shut down service north of the Stadium station. And yet… no screaming headlines declaring light rail an epic fail.

Crosscut’s Skip Berger wrote on the opening of the line that light rail does not make Seattle a “grown-up” city, but perhaps our media’s calm and muted reaction to the new system’s first major hiccup does?

I thought the Obama Administration was going to put science before ideology:

The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno.

…

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS — Save Our Sierra — a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

What? Here’s what a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine report said in 1999:

“Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation. … For certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [associated with smoking] are not of great concern. … [Therefore,] clinical trials of marijuana for medical purposes should be conducted. … There are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief. … Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications.”

NORML has many more references here.

We’ve had enough of those pesky poppies in Afghanistan:

The U.S. military bombed about 300 tons of poppy seeds in a dusty field in southern Afghanistan Tuesday in a dramatic show of force designed to break up the Taliban’s connection to heroin.

The air strike occurred mid-day in Helmand province and was observed by CNN’s Ivan Watson, who is embedded with the U.S. Marines operating in that province.

The military dropped a series of 1,000-pound bombs from planes on the mounds of poppy seeds and then followed with strikes from helicopters.

That’s right, we dropped “a series” of half-ton bombs on a pile of seeds. Then, apparently because those stubborn seeds hadn’t learned their lesson yet, the helicopters were brought in to completely break their will. Kidding aside, here was the real explanation for this exercise in elaborate destruction:

Tony Wayne, with the U.S. State Department, said the strikes on poppy seeds, that can be used to make opium and heroin, is part of a strategy shift for the military to stop the Taliban and other insurgents from profiting from drugs.

Uhhhh, ok.

So there have been changes recently to our strategy for combatting the opium trade. We’re no longer eradicating opium fields – a move that has done nothing more than impoverish farmers and drive them to the Taliban. Instead, we’re targeting more high level traffickers and trying to root out corruption. We’re also attempting to get Afghan farmers to grow alternate crops.

These strategies will have various levels of short-term success. Those successes will be highly publicized in the media, even as very little will change in the overall picture. As we take out traffickers and corrupt officials, new traffickers will take their place and raise enough money from the heroin trade to be able to corrupt more government officials. And as we are successful at moving some farmers away from growing opium, new ones will take their place (often forced by traffickers and corrupt government officials). In a country where the opium trade is small and the state has some semblance of centralized power, a strategy like this might make a difference over time. In a country like Afghanistan, where the trade in poppies is over 1/3 of the national GDP, and where the central government of Hamid Karzai (whose own brother is involved in the trade) has little power over much of the nation, it likely won’t work for decades, if at all.

So I’m not sure what Wayne thinks this bombing exercise will accomplish. Did they take a bunch of captured drug traffickers to the bombing site and taunt them by saying “look what we’re doing to your precious seeds!”? And even if they did, so what? I’ve occasionally seen news reports that try to equate participating in the opium trade as being a similar dynamic to an actual addiction to heroin, as if people who make money from the trade aren’t people making rational decisions to violate the law to make shitloads of money, but people with a drug problem who can’t help themselves. But there’s no chemical or psychological attachment to those seeds. It’s a commodity that the traffickers have to replace. To them, once American forces confiscate those seeds, it doesn’t matter whether we blow them up or put them on our bagels. They’re gone and they’ll have to find new ones.

There just isn’t a logical explanation for why you would rain massive bombs from the sky like this onto plant matter. It’s just a sign of utter frustration. It reminds me of the scene in Office Space where the three fed-up mouse jockeys take a baseball bat to the printer that never worked right:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfCYzJAgwrw[/youtube]

The frustration is certainly warranted. Afghanistan will remain a no-win situation as long as international drug policies (which have been overwhelmingly dictated by the U.S. over the years) continue to keep the demand for heroin so high and as long as our fragile relations with nations like Iran and Pakistan force us into this failing strategy. But it would be hard to think of a single thing that’s more strategically backwards than this. The Afghan population already thinks we’re too eager to employ aerial bombings. I don’t think bombing a pile of seeds in air raid fashion is a good way to reverse that image. In fact, it makes us look crazy. And perhaps we are.

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