HorsesAss.Org

Drop a backpack in a garbage can on a Washington State ferry, and you will shut down the system for hours, as officials evacuate the ship and X-ray the suspicious bag for explosives. So what happens when you leave a 40-foot shipping container, unattended by a highway overpass?

This is a Hyundai container, destined either to or from Terminal 5, but is not going anywhere. There is no semi-tractor in sight, and the container is parked next to the highway 99 overpass, just a few hundred feet from the West Seattle bridge, which are two main highways that connect all of south and west Seattle, to downtown via the Viaduct. I find these things from time to time stretching along the main drags that run through Georgetown. This container is sitting on a patch of gravel across the street from Terminal 25 on East Marginal Way, just a stone’s throw from their gate security office.

Perhaps this is the real Port scandal… the 95-percent of containers that go uninspected, and the lax security and lack of accountability throughout our entire shipping and trucking industry?

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on Newsradio 710-KIRO:

7PM: Is our food safe to eat?
Um… no. Weeks ago I warned that melamine-tainted wheat gluten had likely made its way into the human food supply. Now with the USDA preparing to spend millions paying farmers to destroy melamine-tainted hogs, and California officials revealing that about 45 people are already known to have eaten contaminated pork, my journalist friends are beginning to realize that this is more than just a “pet food recall” — humans are at risk. And I fully expect the news to get much worse over the next week or so, as the extent to which adulterated protein concentrates have poisoned livestock feed and other products starts to become known. Worried yet?

(FYI… be sure to frequently check Itchmo.com for the latest news in this developing crisis.)

8PM: Is the 2nd Amendment absolute?
Again… no. But every time I mention my discomfort with the notion of living in a locked and loaded society, the gun folks react as if I’m more dangerous than an armor-piercing bullet. What’s the greatest threat our personal safety? Armed nutcases? Or people like me who lampoon them?

9PM: TBA

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

PROGRAMMING NOTE:
Tune in tomorrow night at 7PM, when Rep. Jay Inslee will join me to discuss food safety and his bill to save Internet radio.

Over a month ago, I said this about the race among Democrats to take on Reichert in the 8th CD:

Unlike Goldy, I’m not committed to supporting a single candidate. At least not yet.

Today, I announce that I will be supporting Darcy Burner for Congress.

Democrats need an energetic new voice in Washington. We need a voice from Seattle’s Eastside that will advocate for fiscal restraint and personal responsibility. We need someone who understands not only the high-tech businesses of Bellevue and Redmond, but also the VFW halls of Auburn and Buckley. Darcy Burner meets or exceeds all of these requirements.

While some folks question whether Darcy is the candidate who will lead Democrats to victory, I don’t. Darcy fell just 8,000 votes short of victory in 2006. In New Hampshire, Paul Hodes lost to Rep. Charlie Bass by 20 points in 2004. Two years later, Hodes won, 52-45. The truth is, Darcy is much closer to victory in ’08 than many candidates who are giving it second try.

Darcy Burner isn’t the anointed candidate; if there are challengers, she’ll have to beat them. If Dwight Pelz does what Paul Berendt did in 2004 by finding a celebrity candidate to run in the 8th, Darcy will have to beat that candidate, too. No one is owed a seat in Congress, or even a party’s nomination.

Darcy has learned much from her first campaign, and I see no reason why she can’t get another 10,000 votes somewhere in the 8th District.

Bill Maher listed off some New Rules yesterday.

In doing so, Bill pointed out that a recent poll showed 25% of Americans think the second coming of Christ would happen sometime this year.

Those 25% may be on to something. You see, way back in the early 1990s, televangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson predicted, based on happenings in the Middle East and using some good old biblical numerology, that the world would end this year. In fact, he predicted that it would end tomorrow, on Sunday, 29 April 2007.

Its been nice knowing y’all. So long, and thanks for all the hits.

Kudos to Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) for filing legislation yesterday to reverse a federal Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decision that threatens to kill Internet radio.

The CRB decision would charge webcasters $0.0019 per song per listener in 2010, increasing rates by between 300 and 1200 percent, depending on the current size of audience. It would not apply to terrestrial broadcasters on the AM and FM bands, but would apply to their web streams.

The Inslee-Manzullo Internet Radio Equality Act would provide royalty parity, vacating the CRB’s March 2 decision and applying the same royalty rate of 7.5 percent of revenues to commercial Internet radio, satellite radio, cable radio and jukeboxes.

“This Titanic rate increase is simply untenable for many Internet radio broadcasters,” said Inslee, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

“You can’t put an economic chokehold on this emerging force of democracy,” he added. “There has to be a business model that allows creative webcasters to thrive and the existing rule removes all the oxygen from this space.”

Rep. Inslee will be my guest on “The David Goldstein Show” this coming Sunday at 7PM, on Newsradio 710-KIRO. We will be discussing Internet radio and food safety.

Oh no… our unfettered right to keep and bear arms is under attack!

Simultaneous raids carried out in four Alabama counties Thursday turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition belonging to the small, but mightily armed, Alabama Free Militia.

[…] Agents encountered booby traps at one site. They found trip wires and two hand grenades rigged as booby traps at the Collinsville camper home of 46-year-old Raymond Dillard, who holds titles of both militia major and fugitive from justice on an unrelated federal case in Mobile.

Of course, we’d all be freer and more secure if we’d just arm ourselves like that patriot, “Major” Dillard. Damn you ATF! “Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches!”

Another of the 2nd Amendment martyrs arrested yesterday was 30-year-old Michael Wayne Bobo, who lives with his parents, and drives a red pickup truck displaying bumper stickers such as “Welcome to the South, Now Go Home,” “The Second Amendment: You do not know you need it until they come to take it away” and “Work Harder, Millions on Welfare Depend on You.”

Hmm. Sounds like a frequent commenter here on HA.

I just thank God we live in a nation where it is legal to carry a concealed weapon, but illegal to wear a gas mask to a street protest.

I’ve sometimes been accused of undermining my own credibility and sullying the reputation of the progressive netroots through my occasional, joyful use of profanity. Hmm. Well, if that’s true, and my foul mouth and I eventually wear out our welcome in the blogosphere, at least House Majority Leader Michael Lange has shown me that with “honor and integrity and diginity,” I’ll always have a home in the Montana State Republican Party.

What matters are your integrity and your honor and your values. […] So my message to the governor is, “Stick it up your ass!” That’s my message to him, “Stick it up your ass!”

Oops.

David Huckabee, a son of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, was arrested at an Arkansas airport Thursday after a federal X-ray technician detected a loaded Glock pistol in his carry-on luggage.

When asked if he thought this incident might hurt his father’s presidential chances, Huckabee responded, “It shouldn’t.” Hmm. Was his usage intended to be imperative or indicative?

Whatever.

Nugent said David Huckabee had a .40-caliber Glock pistol in his black carry-on bag. Eight live rounds were in the gun – none in the chamber – and a nine-round clip was also in the bag. The weapon and ammunition were detained by Little Rock police while David Huckabee’s gun permit was seized and given to the Arkansas State Police.

Mike Huckabee said his son grabbed the bag on the way to the airport and didn’t realize the gun was inside.

“It’s one of those stupid things,” Mike Huckabee said. “He knows better.”

Yeah… so, here’s a guy, so well trained that he has a license to carry a concealed weapon, and he just leaves bags stuffed with loaded guns lying about the house, willy-nilly. And you wonder why I’m left feeling just a tad nervous by the dystopian dream of a heavily armed society?

The USDA and FDA announced today that meat from hogs fed melamine-tainted “salvaged” pet food would not be approved for human consumption, indirectly raising the specter of a much wider contamination of the nation’s pork and chicken supply.

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2007 – The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today notified State authorities that swine fed adulterated product will not be approved to enter the food supply. […] Because the animal feed in question was adulterated, USDA cannot rule out the possibility that food produced from animals fed this product could also be adulterated. Therefore, USDA cannot place the mark of inspection on food produced from these animals.

Approximately 6,000 hogs from eight pork producers in California, Kansas, North Carolina, New York, Oklahoma and South Carolina are under state quarantine or are voluntarily being held by producers. The USDA is offering to compensate producers who euthanize swine, and to provide assistance in carrying out “depopulation” and disposal.

While the USDA’s actions impact only a tiny fraction of the 100 million hogs slaughtered annually, the 6,000 affected hogs represent only those traced to a single batch of salvaged pet food made from contaminated rice protein concentrate imported by Wilbur-Ellis during the week of April 2, 2007. During a conference call with reporters this afternoon, FDA Office of Enforcement Director, Captain David Elder would not rule out wider adulteration from earlier batches of melamine-tainted, salvaged pet food.

“We are still tracking salvaged pet food from other manufacturers,” Captain Elder told reporters.

A spokesperson for Diamond Pet Foods, the source of the salvaged pet food eaten by the 6,000 adulterated hogs, explained that “it is a common regulated practice for animal food facilities to provide salvage product to farms with non-ruminant animals.” For example, at Diamond, food mixture from the beginning of each production run is routinely sold as salvage because it is “too high in moisture content to run through the manufacturing process.”

Assuming that Menu Foods, Purina and Del Monte also sold salvaged food as livestock feed, the number of affected swine and chickens could increase exponentially. Menu Foods alone manufactures hundreds of different recipes at its three facilities, and has recalled over 60 million cans and pouches manufactured from November 8, 2006 through March 6, 2007. Menu Foods would not make itself available for comment, but if it follows practices standard at other manufacturers, salvage from its multiple production runs could have contaminated feed fed to hundreds of thousands of animals over a four-month period. Much of the resulting adulterated pork and chicken would have already made it to supermarket shelves before news of the first round of pet food recalls broke on March 16.

While the FDA and USDA continue to downplay the risk of melamine exposure in humans, they are obviously concerned enough to compensate farmers to destroy thousands of affected pigs. FDA Chief Medical Officer, Dr. David Acheson voiced particular concern over how melamine and other related, contaminating compounds such as cyanuric acid might interact: “This mixture may be more toxic than melamine alone.”

With no prior studies of the toxicity of ingested melamine in humans, the exact danger is unknown, but with no established safe level of melamine and related compounds, it seems likely that recalls, quarantines and other precautionary actions will continue to expand.

Yeah. Right.

Port of Seattle commissioners Tuesday voted to refer the dispute over former CEO Mic Dinsmore’s retirement pay to the Port’s Board of Ethics, an independent three-member panel.

The panel will investigate whether any “laws, procedures or ethical standards were breached” when Commissioner Pat Davis signed a memo authorizing Dinsmore to receive his annual salary of $339,841 for one year past his retirement date, according to the commission’s motion.

As one Seattle political insider quipped to me, “The Port has an ethics committee? Who’s on it… the Maytag repairman?”

Word is that there had been a push to demand Davis’ resignation, but the commission wimped out, and the issue has already been pretty much settled at a closed-door meeting. So much for accountability and reform. But then, why bother investigating at all, when it’s really just another one of those “he said, he said, he said / she-said / he wouldn’t say due to pending litigation” situations?

No official word on who will man the Port’s “independent” ethics panel, but here’s a list of the nominees.

Oregon state Rep. Dennis Richardson puts current events in their proper perspective in his latest constituent newsletter:

A Tragic Week in Review
This past week has been like no other. On Monday the world witnessed the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. On Tuesday Oregon witnessed the passage of Domestic Benefits for same-sex couples (HB 2007) and Civil Rights based on sexual orientation.

Um… in case you’re wondering, Richardson is a Republican.

Candidate Bruce Harrell stopped by Drinking Liberally last night. He’s the second of Michael Grossman’s clients to visit our Tuesday night lift-cup sessions. Other consultant’s candidates are no shows thus far.

Big props to Grossman for reaching out to a 3rd tier political gathering. The local bloggers and activists who meet up at the Montlake Ale House have been visited by all sorts of folks- congressmen, county council folks, state reps- but the city has been mostly absent. Boo! Tim Ceis was a highlight, but Mayor Nickels has to visit us soon.

Bruce Harrell seems like a very civic-minded guy. He’s really concerned with fixing the schools. (This is a tough one, because City Hall has very little sway over the district) He sees the nine on the council as go-along, get-along types who don’t take a stand. Then again, all challengers say this. I’m curious to find out what he wants the city to look like in 40 years, not just 4 years. But he is willing to listen. I almost turned him from being anti-districts to pro-districts. (In Seattle, the council is elected at-large, which is dumb) Next time I’ll seal the deal.

One big piece of advice to anyone running for city council:

Don’t let Stefan endorse you. Don’t email him campaign updates. Hope he doesn’t write about your campaign in any way favorable. Make no mistake, Stefan is the “Kiss of Death”. Just ask Robert Rosencrantz and Casey Corr, who both got hammered (Rosencrantz twice!) in city races. I’m amazed that Seattle’s preeminent wingnut blogger doesn’t understand how radioactive he is. Republican Jim Nobles, the first “out” Republican to run for city office since the 1980’s, is too smart to embrace Stefan and his mean–spirited, petulant, race-baiting politics.

Words to the wise, candidates.

“Disintermediation.” It’s a big word. Kinda wonky. One of those jargony terms sometimes used to make one feel smarter or better informed than one really is. Borrowed from the world of finance, the word more broadly describes the act of removing the middleman, or intermediary.

I just plain love the word. Especially when talking about the Internet and how it is changing the way people consume news and other information.

The other day I used the word “disintermediation” to kvell about Darcy Burner’s new Trail Mix videos, an online video diary the candidate is currently producing and editing herself. I wrote:

First the Internet enabled politicians to connect directly with voters, disintermediating the legacy press out of the equation. Now tech savvy politicians like Darcy Burner are attempting to use the Internet to connect directly with voters, disintermediating political advertising out of the equation… and the high-priced, professional media consultants who create it.

To which the Seattle Times’ David Postman responded:

We’ll see about that. The spots are refreshing and obviously something very different and much more personal than what we see in a campaign. But at this point they’re just sidelights. Burner worked closely in ’06 with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and her campaign showed plenty of signs of being shaped by “high-priced, professional media consultants.”

Self-produced YouTube ads in the spring before the election year are one thing. There are plenty of examples of creative use of the Internet in campaigning. But I’ve yet to see a major candidate commit to Goldstein’s “disintermediation” once they become serious contenders.

Hmm. I suppose I allowed my enthusiasm to get the best of my rhetoric, for I want to be clear that I am not for a moment suggesting that Darcy can or should entirely disintermediate the consultancy class any more than she can entirely disintermediate professional journalists. Postman is right that it is still quite early, and as we head into the heat of the contest Darcy’s campaign will surely take on a more traditional and “professional” look and feel.

So I am not advocating that Darcy entirely “commit” to disintermediation. I’m merely suggesting that she should not abandon it.

It is hard to be disappointed in Darcy’s amazing, come-from-nowhere, 2006 campaign… I mean, apart from the obvious fact that she didn’t win. But I share Postman’s take that her “personality was largely lost in some of the ads.” Her paid media may have been well produced, and the strategy entirely defensible in light of her number one perceived weakness — her youthful appearance and her supposed inexperience — but the end result is that few voters got to know the candidate as the smart, funny, wonky, passionate, personable, hard working, and occasionally quirky Darcy who us bloggers grew to know and love.

At the start of the campaign it was all about beating Reichert. By the end of the campaign I couldn’t imagine another person who I would rather have representing me in Congress.

That admittedly emotional attachment to a political candidate is not something one can create through a traditional campaign. The medium of 30-second TV spots won’t allow it, and the stodgy, solemn gatekeepers of the legacy press simply won’t permit it. Yet for all the usual complaints about our elections — the venal, nasty tone of the campaigns and the shallowness of our political dialogue — it is this failure to establish an emotional connection between the candidate and the voter, this lack of trust and affinity, that is the largest obstacle to conducting a real public debate.

For if you do not trust the candidate, if you cannot establish an emotional connection, then you can dismiss everything and anything they say as just another cynical, disingenuous, political sound bite. That in fact was the strategy of the Reichert campaign and the Times’ viciously dishonest editorial. And to some extent, it worked.

And that is why disintermediation is such an important tool, because it is the best means for candidates in large districts to directly reach a larger number of voters, and the only opportunity for some voters to truly get to know their candidates outside the reality distortion field generated by paid and earned media filters. What could be more honest than a campaign video filmed and edited by the candidate herself? Given the choice between that, and Frank Blethen’s opinion or an adman’s pitch, why would any voter want to choose one of the latter?

No, the vast majority of voters this cycle will not follow the election on YouTube, and so yes, Postman is somewhat right in describing these videos as a sort of sidelight to the real campaign. But in doing so I think he underestimates the collateral benefits of efforts such as these. Disintermediation does not replace traditional campaigning, it augments it, and in so doing, helps shape the way the traditional media shapes the public perception of the campaign itself.

In writing about Darcy’s homemade videos, Postman, arguably the most influential and widely read political writer in the state, is introducing these clips to a much broader audience than they might otherwise garner, and perhaps more importantly, finds himself covering Darcy within a context she chooses to define. Likewise, he is engaging HA — one of the WA progressive community’s premier tools of political disintermediation — in a dialogue about the notion of disintermediation itself.

I know… very meta. But it illustrates the point that disintermediation is not simply about removing the media middleman, it is about forcing the remaining middlemen to acknowledge the role they play, and to adjust their coverage accordingly.

The more people who get to know Darcy for who she truly is, the harder it becomes for a Kate Riley or a D.C. media consultant to caricature her one way or the other. And that’s good for both Darcy and the voters.

Back in 2003, when Mad Cow Disease was discovered in a single, 4-year-old Holstein cow on a diary farm in Mabton, WA, China was quick to react, banning all imports of U.S. beef, a move that cost U.S. ranchers $119 million a year in lost sales. To this day, China has yet to fully lift its ban.

And yet faced with a massive, and apparently intentional contamination of imported Chinese wheat, corn and rice gluten — an “economic adulteration” that has already poisoned thousands of dogs, cats, pigs, chickens and probably humans — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stubbornly continues to allow the import and sale of suspect Chinese gluten and protein concentrates.

We have no idea exactly how toxic melamine is in humans, or whether it was the only industrial chemical used to spike nitrogen levels, or for how long and on how many imported Chinese products this dangerous fraud has been perpetrated. What we do know is that melamine is an impurity that should absolutely not be in our pet, livestock and human food supply — and yet, there it is. It is killing our cats and dogs, contaminating our livestock, threatening the public health, and potentially costing American producers and retailers hundreds of millions of dollars in recalls and lost sales. What we know is that this poison has been introduced into our food supply via three different products imported from three different Chinese manufacturers, that the practice is widespread, and that it continued even after the news of the first melamine-tainted wheat gluten broke worldwide.

Given what we know, there can be only one response: it is time to ban the import of all Chinese gluten and protein concentrates.

If China could impose a four-year (and counting) ban on imported U.S. beef due to a single sick cow, then the U.S. is certainly more than justified to ban imported Chinese gluten and protein concentrates in light of the evidence already known. This is a product tampering case of massive proportions, and only an import ban on suspect Chinese products can start to restore public faith in the safety of our food supply.

It is also the only legal and economic tool available to force the Chinese government to fulfill its obligation to assure the safety and purity of the billions of dollars of agricultural and manufactured food products it exports annually to the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of widespread and intentional adulteration, the Chinese government has refused to accept responsibility, and refused to let FDA officials into the country to inspect the manufacturing facilities in question. This is simply unacceptable, and only a broad and immediate ban can send a strong enough message to the Chinese government that their total and complete cooperation is absolutely required if they are to retain the U.S. as an open market. Only a costly ban can incentivize China’s honest brokers and producers to pressure their own government to crack down on those cheaters who are undermining the integrity of their industry.

It is time for the FDA to stop dithering and prevaricating, to stop protecting the identity of distributors and manufacturers at the expense of consumers, and to stop focusing on allaying public fears even as the known risk to public health steadily expands. It is time for the FDA to stop promising costly border inspections it simply does not have the resources to thoroughly carry out.

It is time to impose a ban on Chinese imports.