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Kitsap County Superior Court judge Anna M. Laurie found medical marijuana patient Robert Dalton guilty. Her reasoning was that his pain could have been relieved by other medicines, so therefore it’s perfectly fine to arrest him and seize his property because he was growing marijuana plants. As Dalton’s attorney Douglas Hiatt pointed out, Dalton’s opiates made him sick and are far more addictive than medical marijuana:

Hiatt was “very disappointed” with Laurie’s verdict, reiterating what he’d argued in court: that Laurie was “second guessing” physician Thomas Orvald, who recommended Robert Dalton use marijuana.

“If Judge Laurie wants to be a doctor, she should go to medical school,” Hiatt said. “No patient in this state is safe if she’s right.”

I’m not sure any patient in this state is safe anyway. Dalton is now disallowed from using the most effective medicine for his pain while he hopes to have a potential jail sentence postponed while he waits for an appeal. In the meantime, Washington state taxpayers continue to pay to prosecute someone who can’t possibly be considered a danger to society by any stretch of the imagination.

Look carefully drivers, for more of the handiwork of the Freewayblogger.

Also writing on the Huffington Post, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) offers his own take on our financial crisis and the federal government’s reaction to it:

This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.

And when it comes to socialism, Sanders knows what he’s talking about, being the former socialist mayor of Burlington Vermont.

But Sanders offers more than just criticism, and doesn’t outright dismiss the notion of some sort of financial market bailout.   Sanders notes that it is the wealthiest Americans who have prospered most from our recent anti-regulatory policies, while middle class Americans have seen their incomes steadily decline.  And since it is the wealthiest Americans who benefit most directly from a huge government bailout—and are most able to afford pay for it—a large portion of the cost of the bailout should fall directly on their shoulders.

Specifically, to pay for the bailout, which is estimated to cost up to $1 trillion, the government should:

a) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

Honestly… tell me… are these three concrete proposals any more “socialist” than our rush to nationalize troubled Wall Street firms?  In fact, I’d guess that the majority of Americans would find these proposals fair, reasonable and common sensical.

In addition to the principle that bailout should be paid for by those who benefited most from the policies that created the crisis, and who can thus afford to pay the costs, Sanders puts forth three other principles that should be seriously debated in discussing any bailout plan:

(2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy…

(3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999…

(4) We must end the danger posed by companies that are “too big too fail,” that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist…

Again, reasonable proposals all, that deserve serious discussion as we rush to write Wall Street that giant blank check.  Sanders is not arguing against a bailout, but rather against a bailout that doesn’t have conditions attached that the protect the interests of US taxpayers, help working families struggle through the resulting economic slowdown, and takes concrete steps toward preventing a similar crisis from happening again.

Huh.  That doesn’t sound all that radical, now does it?  So as long as our two major parties are embracing the principles of socialism, shouldn’t we at least listen to the advice of a real socialist?

More Pastor Problems?

(Who needs Saturday morning cartoons when there are some 70+ media clips from the past weeks in politics at Hominid Views.)

The podcast starts off with a Democrat-on-Democrat story, as Goldy and his panel discuss politics and campaigning with Washington 11th CD Senate candidate Juan Martinez in his contest against Sen. Margarita Prentice. The topic turns to initiatives. Will increased traffic congestion and elevated gas prices encourage voters to vote YES on Proposition 1? How is Lyin’ Eyman’s Traffic Congestion Initiative doing? Speaking of him, what can be done to repair the initiative process? Oh…and why does the American Chemistry Council hate Seattle? All this and so much more….

Goldy was joined by Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, Alex Fryer, the communications director for Mass Transit Now!, State Senate Candidate Juan Martinez, initiative specialist Laura McClintock of McClintock Consulting, and Lynn Allen of Evergreen Politics.

The show is 55:00 and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_sep_16_2008.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting Podcasting Liberally.]

Dino Rossi talks a lot about closing the anticipated budget gap without raising any taxes.  But how does he plan to do it?  I’m guessing, he’s gonna pray.

See, that’s the usual faith-based approach Rossi takes toward economic issues, for example, like back in 2003, when he voted for a Senate resolution praying for passage of President Bush’s economic plan:

NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that our elected Representatives and Senators in the United States Congress support and vote to enact President Bush’s 2002 Economic Growth and Tax Relief Plan.

And Rossi didn’t just pray for bill, as Senate Ways & Means Committee chair he shepherded this resolution out of committee and onto the floor.

Well, Rossi’s prayers were answered.  A trillion dollars in government bailouts later, were yours?

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/rossi-bush-pray-ad.mp3]

I like this add too, but for different reasons.  It doesn’t come anywhere near to striking the same sort of emotional chord as the Palin the Wolf Butcherer ad, but it does go after McCain on a key demographic:  white women.

Like others, my instinct, when I first saw this ad last week, was that it was brutally effective.  Well now a national focus group has proved this instinct correct:

“The ad which focuses on Governor Palin’s record regarding the treatment of wildlife in Alaska seemed to strike a chord with voters,” commented Glenn Kessler, president and CEO, HCD Research.  “The recent ads from both parties have had little impact among voters. This is the first ad in over a month that seems to have broken through,” he added.

The ad, from Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, has been running in Michigan and Florida, and word is that it will soon go up in other swing states as well.  Want to keep this extremely powerful and effective ad on the air?  Throw them some change.

(Hat tip Crooks & Liars.)

And of course, it’s more than just the economy on which John McCain mimics George W. Bush; you can learn more at Third Term:  The Movie.

Voters should keep McCain’s role in the savings and loan debacle in mind as they’re asked to once again to pick up the pieces from yet another financial crisis largely created by the free trade/deregulatory policies McCain has ideologically championed throughout his entire career.  Sure, the markets are soaring this morning, but taxpayers’ spirits won’t be when they hear the reasons why:

Congressional leaders said after meeting Thursday evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that as much as $1 trillion could be needed to avoid an imminent meltdown of the U.S. financial system.

[…] “We’re talking hundreds of billions,” Paulson told reporters. “This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get to the heart of the problem.”

A trillion dollars of taxpayer money to buy up the bad debt whose accumulation made Wall Street executives rich beyond your wildest dreams.  And for this we’re supposed to reward McCain with the reins of government?

Those guys with the booze in the funny hats?  That’s McCain partying with Charles Keating in the heady days before McCain pressured regulators to lay off Lincoln Savings, and the S&L’s collapse subsequently cost taxpayers a couple billion dollars, and Keating a few years of his freedom on a fraud conviction.

And this is the guy we’re supposed to trust to keep an eye on Wall Street?  The guy who bills himself as “the greatest free trader” and “the greatest deregulator” ever…?

A trillion dollars, folks.  $1,000,000,000,000.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” said lawmakers were told last night “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications, here at home and globally.”

For all you McCain-style free traders out there, this is what we call a market failure.  Your economic philosophy—your religion—that the market always makes the most efficient allocation of resources, and that it always corrects itself, as if guided by the invisible hand of God?  Well, it’s just been proven wrong.

Again.

And the impact on the rest of us, I mean beside the recession that will bring undue economic hardship on billions of people worldwide, while Wall Street executives become honored philanthropists for giving away a fraction of their ill-gotten golden parachutes?

The solution being proposed by the Bush administration is the most expensive bailout in the nation’s history, sharply curtailing the ability of the next president to push for tax cuts or new spending.

Well thanks a fucking lot.  Once again a Democratic president will be forced to spend his entire eight years, shoving progressive policies like universal health care aside so that he can clean up the mess of the previous administration.

That is, assuming, voters aren’t stupid enough to elect John McCain.

A new poll in the Washington state gubernatorial race has Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) holding a small lead over Gov. Christine Gregoire (D). The race is a rematch of the 2004 contest that Gregoire won by 133 out of 2.8 million votes.

The Strategic Vision poll sampled 800 likely voters. Gregoire received 46% support and Rossi received 48% support; 6% were “undecided”. The poll was taken from 14-Sep to 16-Sep and has a margin of error of ±3%.

Rossi has now led in three of the four September polls. Last week’s Rasmussen poll had Rossi leading Gregoire 52% to 46%. Before that, an Elway poll gave Gregoire a 49.1% to 42.4% lead over Rossi. The first poll of September gave Rossi a 48% to 47% lead over Gregoire. Other recent polling shows a shift from Gregoire’s summer advantage to a very close race with, perhaps, a small advantage for Rossi:

Clearly Rossi’s new lead is well within the margin of error. We can empirically determine the probability that either Rossi or Gregoire would win an election held now using a Monte Carlo analysis.

A million simulated elections of 800 voters gives Gregoire 334,771 wins and Rossi 655,982 wins. If the election was held now, Gregoire would have a 33.8% probability of winning and Rossi would have a 66.2% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of electoral votes resulting from the simulation.

The Strategic Vision poll also looked at the presidential race. Obama holds a surprisingly thin +5% (47% to 42%) lead over McCain. The recent Rasmussen poll showed a tighter +2% margin, the Elway Research poll found Obama with a 7.5% advantage, and a SurveyUSA poll gave Obama a +4% edge. Here is the other recent polling:

As we see in the Gregoire–Rossi race, the Obama–McCain contest has tightened up noticeably since mid-Summer.

Maybe it’s time for Obama to stop back for another slice of Washington state apple pie.

Update: ARG just released a new Washington state poll that gives Obama a +6% lead (50% to 44%) over McCain.

Republicans love to talk about fiscal responsibility, but if they want to walk the walk, they might want to stop wasting taxpayer dollars filing frivilous ethics complaints against Gov. Gregoire.

Back in April, Washington State Republican Party chair Luke Esser filed an ethics complaint alleging the Governor used public funds to campaign for reelection, specifically citing a survey conducted on behalf of the Washington Learns Commission, a six city “listening tour,” and a public relations contract.

Five months later, after the Governor’s office spent countless hours at taxpayer expense providing hundreds of documents to investigators, the Washington State Executive Ethics Board has delivered a 16-page report unanimously dismissing the complaint as “obviously unfounded or frivilous.”

Jesus, Luke… the Washington Learns survey you cited wasn’t even paid for with taxpayer money.  Do your goddamn homework.

The Dino Rossi campaign will no doubt be crowing tomorrow morning about the state’s revised revenue forecast, which now predicts a $3.2 billion budget shortfall for the 2009-2011 biennium, but it should be remembered that the projected deficit is a revenue problem not a spending one, stemming from a long-term structural deficit and a weakening economy.

State spending as a percentage of the total economy has in fact remained flat for much of the past decade, while our antiquated tax structure has continued to rely on an ever shrinking portion of our economy.  Our media and political elite have thus far studiously avoided and serious discussion about tax restructuring—the Democrats out of fear of a voter backlash, and the Republicans secure in the knowledge that to do nothing virtually assures their vision of a dramatically smaller government by default.

No doubt the Governor and the Legislature face tough short term choices during the next session, as they do during every economic downturn.  But if we want to solve our long-term structural deficit while maintaining the quality of life Washingtonians have come to expect, then we need to rely on more than mere tough talk and a rainy day fund.  We need to start talking about an income tax, or some other broad based tax designed to fit the realities of our twenty-first century economy.

By now you’ve likely heard about Sen. John McCain’s bizarre interview with a Spanish language radio station in Miami yesterday, where he repeatedly gave vague answers about Latin America when asked about President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain.

[audio:http://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/cadenaser_mccain_spain_080918a.mp3]

Josh Marshall, who broke the story on Talking Points Memo, reports on the reaction in the Spanish press:

In Spain, there seem to be two lines of thinking. The great majority appear to think the McCain was simply confused and didn’t know who Zapatero was — something you might bone up on if you were about to do an interview with the Spanish press. The assumption seems to be that since he’d already been asked about Castro and Chavez that McCain assumed Zapatero must be some other Latin American bad guy. A small minority though think that McCain is simply committed to an anti-Spanish foreign policy since he’s still angry about Spain pulling it’s troops out of Iraq.

Listening to the audio, I can’t help but side with the Spanish majority in attributing McCain’s apparent snub to momentary confusion, but I don’t think it had anything to do with a lack of adequate preparation.  In fact, an interview McCain gave in April to a Spanish newspaper pretty much blows holes in both of the theories offered above:

Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, is ready to change the policy of estrangement with the Spanish government that was put in place for four years now by George Bush. He declared that he was ready to fully normalize bilateral relations and that Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was invited to the White House. In an interview on board his plane, which had just left Memphis, where he had participated in a ceremony honoring the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and en route to his home en Phoenix, McCain said that “it’s time to leave our differences with Spain behind us” and he added: “”I would like President Zapatero to visit the United States. I am very interested, not only in normalizing relations with Spain, but in developing good and productive relations that address the many issues and challenges that we need to be addressing together,” he said.

McCain surely knows who Zapatero is, and that Spain is part of Europe… that is, when he’s lucid.  But listening to that interview again and again, it sure does sound like the 72-year-old McCain was suffering from a transitory senior moment.

Repeatedly, the interviewer asks him whether he would be willing to invite President Zapatero of Spain to the White House, an invitation McCain had publicly extended months before, and repeatedly McCain wanders off into discussions about Latin America.

INTERVIEWER: Senator finally, let’s talk about Spain. If elected president would you be willing to invite President Jose Rodriguez Louis Zapatero to the White House, to meet with you?

McCAIN: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion.

And by the way President Calderone of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I’m glad we are now working with the Mexican government on the Merida Plan, and I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders to the White House.

Okay… but she was asking about Spain, not Mexico.  Maybe he’s just being evasive?

INTERVIEWER: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government? To the president himself?

McCAIN: Uh, I don’t, I, ya know, I, honestly, I have to look at the situations and the relations and the priorities. But I can assure you, I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

Uh-huh.  Spain is, of course, a NATO ally.  You know, one of “our friends.”  So let’s try rephrasing that question.

INTERVIEWER: So you have to wait and see. If he’s willing to meet with you, would you be able to do it? In the White House?

McCAIN: Well, again, I don’t — All I can tell you is I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region.

Yeah, but you know… Spain is not in “the hemisphere” (unless, even more bizarrely, he’s referring to the northern hemisphere).  At this point the interviewer clearly senses his confusion.

INTERVIEWER: OK, what about Europe? I’m talking about the president of Spain.

McCAIN: What about me what?

INTERVIEWER: OK. Are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

McCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those who are not.

Don’t just read the transcript, listen to the audio, and listen to his halting words, the obvious fatigue in his voice and the confusion in his answers.  He wasn’t simply being evasive or vague, he was disoriented, and while this may have only been a transient episode it should be alarming nonetheless.

There are those who caution that making age an issue in this race could hurt Obama with senior voters, but honestly… it would be irresponsible not to.  McCain may very well have no underlying condition apart from the normal effects of aging—he may even be sharp for his age—but experience tells us that the mind ages just like the body, and anyone who has closely compared the John McCain of 2008 to the John McCain of 2000 has surely noticed an obvious decline in mental acuity, as well as a possible alteration in temperament.

Whether John McCain’s passing señor moment has a permanent impact on this campaign, remains to be seen.  But it should.

It’s good to see some effective advertising coming out of Gov. Gregoire’s campaign.  I’ve long insisted that if voters really understood who Dino Rossi is, and what he stands for, this election shouldn’t be close.  This new series of ads goes a long way toward introducing the real Rossi to voters, at least on one substantive issue.