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This weekend, HBO’s The Wire kicks off its final season. After living in relative obscurity throughout much of its run, the show is finally getting a lot of attention for telling amazing true-to-life stories from the inner-city that have long gone untold. The show’s material is based on the experiences of its two creators, former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon and former Baltimore PD Detective and public school teacher Ed Burns. As one of those who found out about this show too long after it began, I’m still catching up on the last few seasons. While the show deals with various aspects of inner-city life, the drug war and its downstream effects are everywhere, demonstrating in full detail the damage being done by a policy that far too many Americans have been fully content to ignore. The final season will focus on the role of the media, and how it fails to tell this story.

Last weekend, I posted a response to a column from the Longview Daily News, written by editor Cal Fitzsimmons. The column was describing a case from rural Cowlitz County where a confidential informant, 40-year-old Tina Rivard, tricked federal drug agents into arresting a man, 21-year-old Bo Jeremy Storedahl of Kelso, on felony drug trafficking charges. The original article on the Longview Daily News site is no longer there, but the Seattle Times article on the case is still up (and another article from The Daily News Online is here).

According to Mike Carter’s account in the Times, Rivard was first arrested in May for forging prescriptions. In return for leniency, she agreed to become a confidential informant (or “snitch”) in order to help build cases against others involved in dealing prescription drugs. After successfully helping to convict one person, she helped the police nab Storedahl, a 21-year-old with no criminal record. She did this in part by tricking the drug agents who were listening in to her calls by quickly re-dialing a different person (her husband) and convincing the agents that they were listening to Storedahl when in fact they weren’t. After Rivard managed to carry the charade further and stage a drug buy at Storedahl’s house, the young man was arrested and charged with a five-count felony indictment. Now that Rivard has admitted to what she did and plead guilty, she faces up to 20 years in jail, while Storedahl was only charged with misdemeanor drug possession for the four pills he had in his pocket when he was arrested.

I initially took issue with Fitzsimmons’ column because despite the tremendous example he had right in front of him that the use of confidential informants can be fraught with problems, he brushed all of that off in order to reassure his readers that snitches are good. There was no desire to explore the world of confidential informants, to look into the role they’ve played in our prison overcrowding problems, or to look at the larger issue of why these drug war tactics are failing – both in large cities and small towns – to actually prevent people from using drugs, while also undermining the level of trust in law enforcement. A few days after my post went up, an interesting comment appeared:

Hey, sometimes it pays to Google your name. I suppose I could complain about your reprinting my column here, though in chunks, but I won’t.

I won’t even engage in an argument about snitches. (Love ’em). But I would suggest you lighten up. Cheers.

Cal | 01.02.08 – 4:45 pm

I wasn’t sure what was more amusing, the fact that the editor of a newspaper had such a poor understanding of Fair Use in the internet age, or that I was being told to lighten up by someone who still fervently believes that we’re achieving something by sending as many people to jail as we can for drug offenses. A second comment, however, was even more interesting:

FYI – Your assumptions about this case are largely wrong. Bo plead because he confessed to the crime and there were other witnesses willing to testify they bought dope from him (without any compensation by LE). Tina wasn’t simply forging prescritions, she was entrenched in the sale/distribution network. You can spin this however you want but you can’t change the facts – Bo was dealing – Tina was dealing – both faced a judge for their behavior. That’s the way its supposed to work.

KT | 01.02.08 – 6:40 pm

KT’s comment was directed at me, but his/her opinion was that I was getting some facts wrong both by accepting what Fitzsimmons had written about this case and through a couple of assumptions I made myself. At this point, I have no way of knowing who’s telling the truth (KT declined to leave any contact info), but some of what he/she says actually makes a bit of sense: if Rivard was just some lone addict forging prescriptions to get her pills, it wouldn’t make much sense to make her an informant. She was likely involved in some larger network of people forging prescriptions and selling oxycodone tablets.

As for Fitzsimmons, his belief that this case represents some grand departure from the normal use of confidential informants has no basis in reality. This outcome is often what happens when people snitch in order to get more lenient treatment. In theory, it’s supposed to yield some kingpin, but that’s rarely what actually happens. What often happens is that the informant rolls over on some easy target like Storedahl. The story here is not that this case is an aberration, it’s that messes like these have become commonplace.

As for Storedahl, commenter KT is not the only person who believes that he wasn’t just some random innocent target, but was just as involved in dealing prescription drugs as Rivard (see the comments at the end of the Daily News Online article). None of this is proof of anything, but it is interesting that Storedahl is a son of a local businessman. There are still a lot of questions in this case that have still gone unanswered. How did the Rivards know Storedahl and had access to his house? Was he a customer? A friend? Who was the first person sent to jail by Rivard and what were the circumstances of his arrest? Why was law enforcement using Rivard as a snitch even though with prescription drug fraud there’s not likely a “kingpin” to take down anyway? Is Rivard getting the book thrown at her because she really tricked the police or because she targeted the wrong person? It seems like the only thing I really know about this case is that the editor of the Longview Daily News wants to me to “lighten up” when it comes to my concerns over what can go wrong when confidential informants are used by law enforcement.

I can only guess at the plotlines in the upcoming season of The Wire, but I’ve gained a very clear picture of how the media has failed to tell us the bigger story behind the drug war. Whether we’re talking about inner-cities or small towns, heroin or OxyContin, young black men dealing on a street corner or wealthy white kids dealing out of their parents’ suburban house, newspapers across the country seem uninterested in doing anything more than parroting the view from law enforcement that the war is necessary, the victims deserve what they get, and the tactics should not be questioned. It’s time for someone to tell this story with the kind of honesty and insight that will finally break down the illusions that have been mistaken for reality for so many years.

And now, for a bit of HA heresy. For a solid year now, people have been asking me who I’d like to see become President in 2009. For most of that time, I’ve offered the same unsatisfying response: it’s far too early, a lot can happen between now and then. But as the fascination with the race among local political types I know has heightened leading up to this week’s Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries next Tuesday, I have slowly begun to embrace a different response: why do you care?

Not that the question of who will try to clean up (or exacerbate) George W. Bush’s, er, messes isn’t important: on multiple fronts, it will influence nothing less than the future of humanity. At present, our likely choice will almost certainly be between two of eight less than inspiring people, who break down roughly as follows (based on their past governing records, not their campaign rhetoric): two liberal members of the bipartisan D.C. establishment (Obama, Edwards); one “liberal” who would have been considered a moderate Republican not too long ago (Clinton); four guys who would for all practical purposes be a third term of Bush (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson); and one charismatic loon (Huckabee). There’s a lot of room between those positions, most of it not good, and it matters a lot which of them will, in slightly over a year, become the most powerful person in the world.

And, of course, there’s a good argument to be made that even the most powerful person in the world can only do so much, and given the country’s political realities, isn’t likely to accomplish much of what s/he is now promising.

Still, it does make a difference who the next president is. It’s a pity Washington state residents will have virtually nothing to do with that choice. Today’s front page P-I headline — “State could turn into big player” (with the subhead “New front-runners might give our caucuses more sway”) — is a truly embarrassing bit of nativist wishful thinking. Sure, our caucuses might have a big impact. Mount Rainier might erupt next week, too.

In the Evergreen State, the presidential campaigns are and will be close to meaningless. Candidates have used our area primarily as an ATM, and that won’t change. Actual visits by candidates will continue to be rare, and any public appearances will be filled in around big stakes fundraising as almost an afterthought, useful almost solely for the resulting free local media coverage.

Of course, we will have a chance to register our opinions in the race next month. Our state’s Democratic and Republican caucuses are on Feb. 9, and the primary vote is on Feb. 19.

Unfortunately, 23 different states and territories, including heavyweights like California, New York, and Illinois (encompassing the country’s four largest media markets) will be having their primaries on “Super Tuesday,” Feb. 5, four days before our caucuses. And six other states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, and Florida) will have decided before that. Voters representing 326 of the country’s 538 electoral college votes will weigh in before we do. (Another state, Louisiana, is on the same day, and three more states follow in the next three days.) The upshot: the party’s nominees will likely be decided before we have our say. It’s certain that most of those eight frontrunners will be gone.

Even then, the Washington state process is something of a fraud. The Feb. 19 Democratic primary vote is completely meaningless; all the party’s nominating delegates will have already been chosen at the caucuses, so unless you’re willing to sign up for a political party, invest half a day at some church social hall, and get fund appeals for the next two years, your opinion won’t matter. The state Republicans, to their credit, at least factor the primary results in with the caucuses in determining their delegates — not that the race is likely to still be much of a race by then.

And, of course, come November, Washington state’s 11 electoral votes will all go to the Democratic candidate, just as they have for every presidential election since the days of Reagan. Regardless of how or whether you vote.

So why does it matter what you, I, or any other local person thinks about the 2008 presidential race? Sure, you could join a campaign and fly to a state where the votes matter. (Most of us won’t.) And we can all send in our $25, $50, or $1000 (or whatever) to the candidate of our choice. That’ll make a big dent in the over $100 million that Clinton and Obama have already raised, or the likely combined total of over $1 billion that the two major party nominees will raise for 2008. And since when did “one dollar, one vote” become the standard for our democracy?

The end result is that much of the fascination with the 2008 race hereabouts reeks of rooting for one’s favorite sports team (albeit with more meaningful stakes). It’s fun, it’s entertaining, but it’s not to be confused with the functions of a healthy democracy. That would require, among other things, a national primary day, abolishing the electoral college, public campaign financing, and allowing more than two competitive parties. Since we don’t have any of those things, locally or nationally, and aren’t about to get them, sure, I’ll get some popcorn and watch the race. But we’re spectators in this race — not participants. And that’s a problem.

Meantime, we also have a governor to elect, a local congressional race likely to be hotly contested, and a lot of other offices and measures on the ballot where we can have far more direct impact. So why all the focus on the White House?

From the Seattle Times: “Phony psychic sentenced for bilking woman of savings“.

You know, as opposed to all those real psychics.

Considering Goldy and Lee are both Eagles fans, it’s up to true blue Seahawk fans like me (and Carl) to fly the 12th Man flag. You see, while Seattle has several pro teams, it will always be a football town. The Seahawks may be a winning team these days, but it hasn’t always been that way.

Back in the early 90’s, the Seahawk juggernaut was grinding to a halt. Chuck Knox was gone, Steve Largent had retired, Dave Krieg was waived. The front office, which was run by the owner’s son, had made some really stupid personnel moves (Dan McGuire! Kelly Stouffer!). The 1992 season quickly went sour.

After managing a single victory, the Seahawks met the Denver Broncos late in the season at the Kingdome on Monday Night Football. With John Elway injured and sitting out the game, the Hawks had a chance. But with their 1st and 2nd string quarterbacks injured, the game was in the hands of the World League MVP. His name?

Stan Gelbaugh.

The sidearm QB didn’t disappoint, tieing the game with no time on the clock. Gelbaugh led the Seahawks to victory (one of two all season!), and was a bright spot in a dark season.

Unfortunately, that victory over Denver guaranteed that the Seahawks would get the 2nd overall pick in the next draft, and not the 1st. (The Seahawks and Patriots both had 2-14 records, but since the Seahawks beat the Patriots that year, that Pats got the first pick.) With that pick the Patriot selected Drew Bledsoe, and were in the Super Bowl four years later. The Seahawks picked Rick Mirer, and weren’t.

Before the 1993 season, Coach Tom Flores announced that Rick Mirer would start, and that Gelbaugh would not get any consideration. To Stan Gelbaugh fans (and there were many), this was a huge disappointment. After watching Rick Mirer flounder, fans were left to wonder how far the Seahawks could have gone with Stan “The Man” Gelbaugh under center.

So enjoy Matt Hasselbeck, Shaun Alexander, Qwest Field, and the winning records year after year. To me, it still takes some getting used to.

Some firefighters are actually for Giuliani:

(This and some 70 other media clips from the past week in Politics are now posted at Hominid Views.)

Winners

Chinese Mind Control Scientists.

The Chinese scientists who brainwashed Lt. John McCain back in the late 60’s, hoping for their own real-life “Manchurian Candidate” to win the White House. Their long term plans to control the American government may finally be falling into place.

Chuck Norris.

Behind Chuck Norris’ beard is another fist, which he uses to beat the delegates out of Iowa. Which he then gives to Mike Huckabee.

Losers

Mormons.

When Sen. Orrin Hatch dropped out of the race back in ’00, Mormons leaders put all their efforts into Boston businessman and liberal Republican Willard Mitt Romney. With Romney’s second place showing in Iowa, the LDS plan to force all Americans to wear magic underwear and drink Sprite will likely be deferred until 2012.

People Who Think That Voters Care About Bill Richardson’s Experience.

When Iowa Democrats send 68% of the vote to a freshman senator and a one-term senator, something tells me that folks are thinking that “experience” is overrated. In any case, the future VP should start picking out some black suits, because he’ll be going to a lot of state funerals and such the next 4 years.

Sen. John McCain wins! At least that’s what you might think from the TV punditry in the immediate wake of McCain’s fourth-place finish in yesterday’s Iowa Republican caucus. The desperation of our media elite to elevate McCain into front-runner status is exceeded only by their lazily dismissive effort to brand Sen. John Edwards as “angry.” Gimme a break.

In fact there were winners and losers in yesterday’s caucus, and some of them not so obvious as you might think.

The Big Winners:

The Democratic Party:
The big news coming out of Iowa was not Obama’s or Huckabee’s somewhat comfortable wins (or McCain’s spectacular fourth-place victory) but the caucus itself, which saw record-busting turnout on the Democratic side and well, not so much for the Republicans. In 2000, the last time both parties caucused, the Republicans turned out 87,000 voters and the Democrats only 59,000. In 2004, the Democrats drew 125,000. Last night Republicans produced 115,000 voters, a modest increase from 2000, while a stunning 236,000 Iowans swarmed the Democratic caucuses. It doesn’t take a Beltway pundit to understand what this energized (and independent engorged) Democratic base could mean next November, up and down the ticket.

Obama and Huckabee:
Yeah, they both won, so I suppose that makes them both winners, though of the two I think Barack Obama goes into New Hampshire in the much stronger position. I came away from his June appearance in Seattle wondering if the polls might be underestimating Obama’s support. The audience was filled with new faces, somewhat younger, many of whom told me they’d never even voted before, let alone contributed to or volunteered for a political candidate, and if these folks actually turned out, the “likely voter” model on which pollsters rely would have to be tossed out the window. Well… they turned out. If that holds true throughout the primary season and into November, nothing short of an assassin’s bullet will keep Obama out of the White House. (I hope Obama has really tough security.)

Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden:
Yeah, they lost, and they lost big. But at least they had the common sense to get out and return to life as almost normal. And while Dodd came away from Iowa with only a single delegate, he’s gained the newfound respect of progressives nationwide, who are already mounting a grassroots campaign to have him replace Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.

Fred Thompson:
He’s rich, he’s famous, and he has a much younger, buxom wife, despite being rather ugly and shriveled himself. How can he lose?

The Big Losers:

The Republican Party:
Evangelical Christians turned out in large numbers to push Huckabee over the top in the Republican caucus, but other than that, what does the GOP have? Not much. This is a fractured party with an extremist base that independents are fleeing in droves. If I were a Republican running in a competitive race anywhere in the nation, I would be very, very nervous right now.

Mitt Romney:
Two years and a kajillion dollars later, and a distant second-place finish behind a preacher from Arkansas is the best he can muster? For a guy whose biggest claim to the White House seems to be nondescript competency, losing Iowa runs counter to message. He’s not out of it, as both Huckabee and McCain are ripe for self-destruction, but even in this pathetic Republican field I’m not so sure Romney’s campaign theme of “I’m not one of the other guys” is enough to garner the nomination.

Hillary Clinton:
Again, not out of it, but this has to be a huge blow. I never bought in to the inevitability meme (or the Hillary can’t win meme either,) but a lot of folks did, and Clinton’s marginally third-place finish will have a lot of voters reevaluating their options. Obama didn’t just win, he won a comfortable majority of women voters, a core constituency Clinton had counted on. If she can come back from Iowa, she deserves to be president.

Rudy Guiliani:
Sure, Guiliani didn’t even campaign in Iowa, but for the man who led in the polls for much of the year to come away with only 3% of the delegates, a distant sixth place behind Ron Paul for chrissakes, well, that’s just pathetic. Expect similar results in New Hampshire, where Guiliani has also declined to campaign, instead choosing to pin his hopes on winning Florida. Sure, I’d rather spend my winter in Florida than in Iowa or New Hampshire, but it’s not exactly an obvious path to White House.

Bill Richardson’s press release writer:
I got a lot of ridiculous spin emailed my way last night, but by far the winner for the most pathetically grasping was headlined: “Bill Richardson Makes Final Four”. Um, yeah… with 2% of the delegates. I like Richardson, and I feel bad for him that he hasn’t gained more traction, but somebody with a conscience had to write that headline, and it is he to whom I offer my deepest condolences.

Bill Richardson, Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter:
As expected, they lost, and they lost big. And yet they don’t seem to have the common sense to get out.

Not Quite So Big Losers:

John Edwards:
Yes, I know even Edwards said he had to win Iowa, but he didn’t really, and beating Clinton I think gives him a little air. Edwards must now pin his hopes on Clinton imploding, while he picks up most of her support; not a likely scenario, but possible. The best spin one could possibly put on Edwards performance is that for most of the past year this was covered as a two-way race between Clinton and Obama, and now it is legitimately a three-way. (Assuming the pundits legitimize that spin.) On the bright side, Edwards has had a huge impact on the race as a whole, with Obama, Clinton and Huckabee increasingly picking up his economic populist message.

Ron Paul:
Sure, he came in fifth with only 10% of the vote, but my God… Ron Paul got 10% of the vote! Paul is a nutty candidate, but he’s running for the nomination of a nutty party, and thus I think he’ll pick up traction before he fades away. With his gobs of cash, his anti-war message, and his psychotically fervent base, Paul could end up picking up enough delegates to give convention handlers a fit next summer. I’m looking forward to it.

Gravel and Kuccinich:
They lost big, but then, neither one is really running to win, so what does it matter?

Sen. John McCain:
No, he wasn’t a big winner (unless he was actually shooting for fourth place) but with Huckabee trouncing Romney, he didn’t exactly lose either. McCain’s strategy must be to outlast Romney and Guiliani, becoming the only real alternative to Huckabee and his Christian soldiers, but it won’t be easy without much money, and well, being McCain. McCain had long counted on independent voters to carry him to a good finish in New Hampshire, but if Iowa is any measure, independents seem to be stampeding to the Democrats, and particularly Obama.

That’s my take on Iowa, and I stand by it, even the parts that are complete bullshit.

Nothing else at all happened yesterday as the world stopped and a smallish-midsized rural state without many delegates apportioned them to this summer’s nominating conventions for the two major parties’ 2008 presidential candidates.

The final tally:

Democrats

Obama 38%
Edwards 30%
Clinton 29%
Richardson 2%
Biden 1%
Others 0%

Republicans

Huckabee 34%
Romney 25%
Thompson 13%
McCain 13%
Paul 10%
Guiliani 3%
Others 0%

(A few obvious notes: on the Dem side, Richardson, Biden, and Dodd all ran hard in Iowa, and have squat to show for it — so much for a fourth “dark horse” being propelled into the race. Dodd and Biden, in fact, dropped out of the race late last night. Among the top three, in the larger scheme of things Obama’s extra delegates over Clinton and Edwards are meaningless, and he is from one state over; this settled nothing.

The Dem caucuses attracted far more Iowans than the Republican side; of the latter, one poll showed 60% identified themselves as Christian evangelicals, which tells you all you need to know about the roots of Huckabee’s rise. Even though he didn’t campaign much there, Guiliani’s showing, for a candidate leading the pack in national polling most of the year, is shocking. And when will people start taking Ron Paul seriously? Exhibit A: This unbylined, condescending Seattle Times article, which fails to mention — as did the entire Times web site Iowa coverage — that Paul pulled 10%, only three percent behind McCain & Thompson, and instead seems shocked that Paul intends to “continue his presidential campaign into New Hampshire and other states.”)

Of course, because this is the first actual contest that counts for anything, after a full year of wall-to-wall polling and breathless analysis of candidates’ haircuts, church attendance, and tipping habits, this morning the Iowa caucuses are getting the sort of news treatment generally reserved for (other) great natural disasters. Savvy reporters are also already filing their what-did-it-all-mean stories and launching your next round of blanket coverage and pointless speculation, hosted for the next five days by New Hampshire.

Welcome to election 2008. It’s going to be like this, in greater and lesser amounts, for another 306 days.

While the earth did, in fact, stop on its axis yesterday, and all six billion of its people held their collective breaths, a few miscreants did generate other news this morning. Our Friendly Mr. Dictator, Pervez Musharraf, made the news (and doubtless lots of new friends) by essentially blaming Benazir Bhutto for her own death. And Rep. Jane Harman released a declassified letter showing that contrary to CIA public statements, the CIA planned to destroy their torture interrogation tapes two full years before they actually did so. Oh, and in a classic bury-outrageous-news-on-a-day-when-it-won’t-be-noticed move,

After a two-year investigation into the killings of up to 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, the Marine Corps has decided that none of the Marines involved in the incident will be charged with murder.

Betcha Iraqis (who consider this case right up there with Abu Ghraib among American outrages) notice anyway. Way to win hearts and minds.

Locally, the P-I gives us “Leaky leaf blower leaves slippery slick on Green Lake path,” the sort of alliterative headline about a trivial story you’d expect in, say, the local Forks paper (no disrespect to Forks). Over at the Times, the breaking local scoop is even better: “A lone coyote was spotted roaming the south parking lot of Discovery Park Wednesday morning.”

(Someone should tell our friends in Bothell that coyotes have been sighted all over town for two full years now. For example, Danny Westneat wrote a column about it six months ago in the, um, Seattle Times. Which in turn followed this story from October 2006 in the, um, Seattle Times. And so on.)

And to add to the local news mix, local TV last night gave us graphic images of our treacherous area highways, and their tragic victims (and near-victims), here, here, and here.

Maybe the Iowa coverage isn’t so bad after all.

How the first round went vs. the results we’re seeing now? (Can it be done?) In other words, what role did the second-guess play in shaping the final results? Because the other primaries aren’t going to be like this, no? You make up your mind and cast your vote and that’s it. No mulligans…

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is not likely to be unsolved for very long.

Dominic Holden has an article in The Stranger this week that deserves as wide an audience as possible.

Also, Jim Miller is not clear on why no Democrats have responded to his request. I think my colleague Carl already covered this when he explained, “Maybe it’s Because You’re An Idiot?.”

Driving home from a New Years Eve party I noticed it was business as usual at one local McDonald’s, where no matter what hour of the day or night the drive-through lane appears clogged with cars, an apt metaphor for the passengers’ arteries. But whatever the health of its customers, this burger joint appeared to be thriving, despite the fact that only hours before, Washington state had raised its minimum wage to a nation high best $8.07 an hour. Our state’s lowest paid workers now earn $2.22 an hour more than their counterparts across the border in Idaho, and yet McDonald’s franchises in both states manage to profitably sell double-cheeseburgers for a buck a piece. Go figure.

When organized labor put Initiative 688 on the ballot back in 1998 — raising Washington state’s minimum wage to $6.50 while mandating automatic annual increases pegged to the Consumer Price Index — our business community, right-wing “think tanks” and Republican establishment warned of dire economic consequences: lost jobs, small business closures and a steady stream of industry moving to greener (ie, cheaper) pastures out of state. I-688 we were told, would hurt those it was intended to help most: unskilled and young workers who would be better off earning a low wage than none at all. Yet since its passage, Washington workers have not only enjoyed the highest minimum wage in the nation, but one of the strongest state economies as well.

While our economy certainly isn’t immune to downturns, Washington has weathered recent economic turbulence well, currently boasting robust job growth, record state budget surpluses and a real estate market that continues to defy the gravity of a nationwide housing bubble collapse. And while it would be silly of me to argue that I-688 deserves much of the credit for Washington’s prolonged economic boom, it would be even sillier still to argue that our state’s relatively high minimum wage has produced any sort of noticeable economic drag. Hell, even Forbes Magazine ranks Washington state as having the fifth best business climate in the nation. What more do the pro-business lobbyists want?

What I-688 has done is made the lives of our state’s 80,000 to 90,000 minimum wage workers just a little bit easier. The difference between Washington’s $8.07 an hour and even the recently raised federal minimum of $5.85 is the difference between earning $16,786 a year for a 40-hour work week versus only $12,168, and it doesn’t take an economist to figure out what an extra $89/week can mean to our state’s working poor. Plus, a higher minimum wage raises the bar for all workers, resulting in larger paychecks for more skilled jobs. No, such policies don’t come free, and at least some of the costs are passed on to consumers. But given the choice between a race to the bottom and a race to the top, Washington’s voters proved wise to choose the latter.

It took ten years and a new Democratic majority to finally raise the federal minimum wage from where it stood back when I-688 went to the polls, and despite Washington’s decade of prosperity in the face of what should have been a competitive disadvantage, minimum wage opponents trotted out the same old dire warnings that failed to hold true here in the Evergreen state. Conservatives used to hold forth states as laboratories for experimentation, but when these experiments disprove their firmly held theses, the lessons learned are quickly dismissed and discarded. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that workers have been harmed by Washington’s minimum wage law or that our economy has been significantly disrupted, while the benefits to our state’s low wage workers are as obvious as the extra dollars in their wallets.

What the other side fears, what they refuse to acknowledge, and what they so vociferously reject in rejecting the minimum wage is that experience tells us that sometimes government regulation of the market does indeed improve the lives of many of our citizens while ultimately costing the rest of us little or nothing of consequence. If the minimum wage, a concept absolutely anathema to the principles of an unfettered free market proves a net benefit to the economy as a whole, what sacred tenet of the anti-government / anti-regulatory ideologues will fall next? First the minimum wage, next “socialized” medicine? If government is given the opportunity to prove it can provide universal health care security where the market clearly cannot, is it Katie bar the door to a new progressive era that re-embraces the principles of managed economy that helped us rise from the Great Depression, irrigate and electrify rural America, defeat the Japanese and the Nazis simultaneously, construct the interstate highway system and build the United States into the greatest military, industrial and economic power on the planet while providing its citizens the highest standard of living average workers have ever known?

Like Social Security, the minimum wage has been a target of the right since its inception, not because it harms workers and business owners, but because its failure to do so refutes the core principles at the heart of right-wing ideology. Eight buck per hour workers producing double per buck cheeseburgers is an example of something that government does right, and as such is a threat to the agenda of those who would see our destiny placed solely in the hands of corporatists and preachers, for whatever reason.

A lot of establishment Republicans, fearing the inevitable ass-kicking should Huckabee or Romney ultimately be the party’s nominee, are crossing their fingers that Sen. John McCain’s recent surge within the media and Beltway elite gets translated into a respectable showing in Iowa and New Hampshire. Why? Because politics is about winning, and McCain’s reputation as a “straight talker” still resonates with voters who haven’t been paying close attention, setting him up as the Republican with the best chance of winning come November. You know, straight talk like this:

The name Shannon Harps rang a vague bell from sustainability circles, so I did a search and there she was in my inbox and address book, in various email threads relating to a Sierra Club project called Kilowatt Ours. Over the next few days other sixth-degree connections will return from ski vacations and holiday excursions, only to open email from the dead. This may be one reason why the community is in such shock. Email and blogs and Flickrs and YouTubes equate to digital immortality far more enduring than anything an obituary can provide. More on Harps, including a sketch of the suspect, in today’s P-I coverage. Yet to be addressed: Is the relative effectiveness of emergency care an issue on New Year’s Eve? Might be a story there.

The Harps tragedy merely builds on 2008’s uplifting theme of death and dying. Over at The Times there is wonderment at whether a mentally ill son who killed his mother has the right to her estate. And the archives continue to swell at both papers with stuff from the Carnation Christmas eve killings, the Christmas Day state trooper shooting and other acts of homicidal holiday cheer.

Also, Seattle police have added surveillance cameras at 18 intersections, which gladdens my bicycling heart (anything to induce paranoia in the few crazy-ass drivers who threaten to give law-abiding drivers like yourselves a bad name) even as I admit these things are not so much for traffic monitoring as just another get-used-to-it data mining of our everyday lives for a plethora of doubtless innovative end uses. Someday we’ll have real-time video of an entire Capitol Hill stabbing and no one will be asking if that’s a good or bad thing.

Apart from that, what’s interesting about The Times opening screen is that a third of it is taken up by real-estate ads. When you’re facing a $6 million deficit, every little bit helps. After all, who knows how many property-ad dollars there’ll be six months from now, as Seattle hits the wall that has squished everyone else (no real-estate ads on the home page of the San Francisco Chron, for comparison). For the time being, we who have no shame humbly point out that HA remains a relative bargain for all you marketers looking to sell to smart investors like the Rabbit.

Perhaps on any other day, oil passing $100 would be Page 1 news. But an anxious nation has the Iowa caucuses to divert its attention. The Times, in one of those “amazing” measures that helped save it $21 million, does not appear to be sending anyone to cover Iowa, something even The Stranger found the wherewithal to do. As for me, pecking away in the quiet comfort of my north Seattle home office, man am I glad someone else has to do tomorrow’s headlines.

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Man, I love caucusing. Voting is a solitary affair; you fill out your ballot alone in the voting booth or at the kitchen table, and then turn on the TV to watch the results. But caucusing is a social event; you vote, you argue, you persuade, you horse trade, you vote again… it’s democracy at its rawest and most exciting. Throw in a little beer and it gets even better.

We got a great crowd at the Drinking Liberally caucus last night; 51 patriotic Americans signed in to help show Iowans what to do tonight, and the first round of balloting contained few surprises:

Candidate:	Votes:	Delegates:
John Edwards	20	3
Barack Obama	15	2
Chris Dodd	6	1
Hilary Clinton	4	1
Dennis Kuccnich	2	0
Mike Gravel	2	0
Bill Richardson	1	0
Fred Harris	1	0

And if this were a primary, that’s pretty much were it would have ended — no second guessing, no second chances for those who threw their vote away on a losing candidate. But caucus goers get the opportunity to temper their votes with reality, and move to their second or third choices if their first choice goes bust. A half an hour of drinking and negotiating and more drinking later, and the Dodd camp leverages their initial strong showing into an even stronger one:

Candidate:	Votes:	Delegates:
Barack Obama	17	2
John Edwards	16	2
Chris Dodd	13	2
Hilary Clinton	5	1

So goes Drinking Liberally, so goes the nation: a three-way tie between Obama, Edwards and Dodd. That’s my prediction for Iowa, and I’m standing by it.

One of the news stories I expect to be following closely in 2008 is the case of Marc Emery, the Canadian marijuana seed seller who faces an upcoming extradition hearing to decide whether he should be sent to the United States to face trial. The effort to extradite him has been led out of the US Attorney’s office right here in Seattle (originally by John McKay, and then by his replacement Jeff Sullivan) and will re-commence in a courtroom in Vancouver, BC on January 21.

As we’ve seen with the Ed Rosenthal case in the Bay Area, prosecuting outspoken drug law reform advocates has been a very high priority for the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. In that particular case, even after the presiding judge urged US Attorney Scott Schools to drop the case, they continued with their futile prosecution attempt, even as it was clear that Rosenthal would never be punished and the number of white-collar crimes being investigated around the country plummeted.

The fact that Emery is Canadian (and that the DEA has openly admitted that he’s being targeted for his political views as well as his business) makes this case extremely important up north. What he does is technically not legal in Canada, but the Canadian government has long felt that it has more important things to do than to try to break up a multi-million dollar industry that isn’t hurting anyone.

Writing in the National Post, Ontario attorney Karen Selick expresses her opposition to the extradition attempt in an open letter to Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson:

Dear Mr. Nicholson: On Jan. 21, 2008 an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada’s pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.

Should Marc be extradited to the U.S.? The Canadian court will almost certainly say yes. It has little choice under the Extradition Act. Marc openly admits selling marijuana seeds over the internet to customers around the world, including the United States, for years. His conduct would have been grounds for criminal charges here, although Canadian authorities never chose to charge him. But that’s enough under the Act to make it mandatory for the judge to commit him for surrender to U.S. authorities.

That’s where you come in, Mr. Justice Minister. Once the court has ruled, the Extradition Act gives you discretion to refuse to surrender Marc if it “would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.”

I’m obviously no expert on Canadian law, but if Selick is correct, there seems like a valid rationale for the Justice Minister to intervene. This could be one of the reasons why there was some discontent in the Western Washington US Attorney’s office over former DEA head Karen Tandy’s politicization of the case. Either way, Emery seems eager for a confrontation and feels destined to become a martyr.

I won’t copy and paste the remainder of Selick’s letter, but she makes one very important point. Emery has dutifully paid over half a million dollars in taxes from his business. He assisted the Canadian government when they needed to implement a medical marijuana program. But now they appear ready to turn their back on him solely because the United States can’t come to terms with the failure of our own marijuana prohibition (which we continue to try to impose on the rest of the world). How can the Canadian government profit and benefit from a man and his business for years, then allow for the United States to put him in jail for life without even a fight?