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As I briefly mentioned earlier today, we got a new Rasmussen Poll in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Dino Rossi (R). The poll shows Murray leading Rossi 51% to 46%. The poll surveyed 750 likely voters on the 14th of September.

With this new poll, we have now had seven polls taken (and released to the public) over the past month:

	Start	End			%	%	%
Poll	date	date	Size	MOE	D	R	Diff
Rasmussen	14-Sep	14-Sep	750	4.0	51	46	D+5.0
CNN Time OR	10-Sep	14-Sep	906	3.0	53	44	D+9.0
Elway	09-Sep	12-Sep	500	4.5	50	41	D+9.0
Rasmussen	31-Aug	31-Aug	750	4.0	46	48	R+2.0
DSCC	28-Aug	31-Aug	968	—	50	45	D+5.0
SurveyUSA	18-Aug	19-Aug	618	4.0	45	52	R+7.0
Rasmussen	18-Aug	18-Aug	750	4.0	48	44	D+4.0

In what follows, I’ll ignore the DSCC poll. Not that I have any reason to doubt the poll. Rather, the poll was specifically released because the results favored Murray, thus clearly violating a statistical assumption used for the analysis.

Murray leads in four of the remaining six polls. As usual, I’ll begin with a Monte Carlo simulation analysis of the most recent poll (FAQ). Taking just the new Rasmussen polls there were 728 respondents who went for Murray or Rossi. Following a million simulated elections, Murray tallies 835,577 wins to Rossi’s 158,253 wins.

The evidence offered by this most recent poll suggests that Murray would have an 84.1% chance of beating Rossi if an election had occurred two days ago. Here is the distribution of outcomes from the simulated elections:

With three polls released over three days, we might as well combine all of ’em. Of the total of 2,156 individuals sampled, 2,061 go for Rossi or Murray. Murray gets 51.6% and Rossi gets 44.0% of the “votes.” The simulation analysis gives Murray 994,327 wins to Rossi’s 5,404 wins.

Thus, these three polls offer evidence that Murray would have a 99.5% chance of beating Rossi in an election held over that past week.

Rossi does a little better if we combine the last month of polls (all but the DSCC poll in the table). Now we end up with a sample of 4,274 respondents, of which 4056 are for Murray or Rossi. The raw percentages are 49.0% Murray and 45.9% Rossi. The Monte Carlo analysis gives Murray 933,103 wins to Rossi’s 65,250 wins.

If the past month of polling is representative of Washington state voters, the evidence suggests that Murray would win an election held now with a 93.5% probability.

Going back a month or two things did not look nearly so rosy for Murray. This is clear from a graph of the polling in this race:

See that dip that occurs over the summer? When the early September Rasmussen poll came out showing Rossi leading Murray 48% to 46%, I offered a theory:

There is another reason I am not (yet) too concerned. August 31 is still in the “dog days of summer” around here. In my many years of following polling in Washington state, I’ve learned that Washingtonians become very negative in the summer, only to perk right back up in the fall. I can’t really explain it…I’ve just observed it in approval numbers. Murray probably gets the worst of if from the summer malaise. That is, Murray doesn’t really have to worry about close results like these for another month….

I’m such a pessimist…it only took a couple of weeks.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views.)

Former Tacoma News Tribune political reporter (and avid Philadelphia Eagles fan) Ken Vogel reports for Politico on the sudden plethora of political events scheduled for this 9/11 compared to recent years.

Some, like dueling New York City rallies over the proposed Burlington Coat Factory Mosque, are specifically timed to commemorate the day, while others, like Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s Razorbacks tailgate party just treat the date like any other Saturday. But one event in particular stands out for its willingness to cheapen the memory of the attack by expropriating it for political gain:

Washington GOP Senate nominee Dino Rossi’s speech at a Tacoma-area Republican women’s club fundraiser dubbed “Let’s Roll on to Victory” (a take on the exhortation of a passenger on a doomed flight who fought back the hijackers during the 2001 attacks)…

Diana Landahl, president of the Gig Harbor (Wash.) Republican club that is holding the “Let’s Roll on to Victory” fundraiser, said “it was kind of coincidental that we ended up on 9/11, but once we realized it, we decided to make note of this.”

Landahl told Politico that “people seem to be forgetting what happened to us on 9/11,” and of course, what better way to keep this memory fresh than to hold a closed-door, high-donor, political fundraiser at a private residence behind the closed gates of the exclusive Canterwood Golf & Country Club?

When Todd Beamer yelled “Let’s roll!” as he and his fellow passengers heroically stormed the cockpit of United Flight 93 in a suicide mission that ultimately ended in ashes in a field in Pennsylvania, I’m sure this is exactly what he had in mind. Hell, perhaps next year, Rossi should celebrate the day by making the phrase a theme of one of his real estate seminars, as in: “Let’s Roll on to Profits in the Lucrative Foreclosure Market!”

Admittedly, I’m not that sentimental a guy, and I don’t really expect candidates to forever take the day off, especially this close to such a contentious election. But let’s be honest: had it been Patty Murray who shamelessly scheduled a “Let’s roll”-themed fundraiser on 9/11, Rossi’s people would have been all over her for cheapening both a national tragedy and the personal suffering of the victims and their families. And no doubt our local media would have obliged by covering the “controversy.”

But Rossi, well, we all hold him to a lower standard, so don’t expect to see his thoughtless fit of poor taste mentioned on the 11 o’clock news.

NY Times

The $83 million local taxpayers still owe on the Kingdome, ten years after it was demolished, gets a mention in today’s New York Times article on the extraordinary bad deal publicly financed stadiums turn out to be, but that’s nothing compared to the most Giant boondoggle of them all:

It’s the gift that keeps on taking. The old Giants Stadium, demolished to make way for New Meadowlands Stadium, still carries about $110 million in debt, or nearly $13 for every New Jersey resident, even though it is now a parking lot.

And that’s just the debt on Giants Stadium alone. Three and a half decades after workers first broke ground, New Jersey taxpayers still owe $266 million on the entire Meadowlands project.

So I guess we got off relatively easy with the Kingdome. How many years we taxpayers will be paying off the bonds on Safeco and Qwest fields after they’ve been abandoned or demolished, now that’s another question. And what more useful or productive purposes we might have put that money to, rather than padding the pockets of billionaires, well, we can only speculate at this time when city, county and state governments are facing unprecedented deficits.

As the NY Times article concludes:

With more than four decades of evidence to back them up, economists almost uniformly agree that publicly financed stadiums rarely pay for themselves. The notable successes like Camden Yards in Baltimore often involve dedicated taxes or large infusions of private money. Even then, using one tax to finance a stadium can often steer spending away from other, perhaps worthier, projects.

“Stadiums are sold as enormous draws for events, but the economics are clear that they aren’t helping,” said Andrew Moylan, the director of government affairs at the National Taxpayers Union. “It’s another way to add insult to injury for taxpayers.”

An interesting side note, the new $1.6 billion dollar Meadowlands Stadium both the Jets and the Giants will inaugurate this fall, was built entirely with private money, so it can be done. By comparison, taxpayers picked up the cost for 71% of Paul Allen’s Qwest Field. Go figure.

If you haven’t already read it, you might want to celebrate this Labor Day by reading Citigroup’s infamous 2005 Plutonomy memos, in which they advise investors that America is no longer a democracy as much as it is a plutonomy in which “economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few.”

At the heart of plutonomy, is income inequality. Societies that are willing to tolerate/endorse income inequality, are willing to tolerate/endorse plutonomy.

That pretty much describes the United States in the 21st century. The rich continue to get richer, consuming a larger and larger chunk of the GDP, as wages for working and middle class families continue to stagnate or drop, largely due to the global labor pool keeping wage inflation in check, and profits rising. And according to Citi, it’s only getting worse (or in their eyes, better).

But it’s not inevitable.

RISKS — WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfranchisement remains as was – one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on globalization – either anti-immigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments.

“One person, one vote.” That’s what the very wealthy fear most… that one day “labor will fight back” against the growing economic imbalance that is destroying our nation for the other 99% of us. Chew on that as you’re enjoying your Labor Day BBQ.

The Seattle Times’ editors just seem to love stories like this — “Online ranters increasingly pay a price” — apparently drooling for the day when uppity bloggers like me are put in our place.

The Internet has allowed tens of millions of Americans to be published writers. But it also has led to a surge in lawsuits from those who say they were hurt, defamed or threatened by what they read, according to groups that track media lawsuits.

[…] “Most people have no idea of the liability they face when they publish something online,” said Eric Goldman, who teaches Internet law at Santa Clara University in California. “A whole new generation can publish now, but they don’t understand the legal dangers they could face. People are shocked to learn they can be sued for posting something that says, ‘My dentist stinks.’ “

I’ve never claimed that bloggers and commenters should be free to defame their subjects with impunity, but the example above shows why your typical online citizen journalist/participant needs more protection from defamation suits, not less. Obviously, anybody should be allowed to go online and say “my dentist stinks,” because that is a statement of opinion for which one would likely never be found liable in court. I think the Seattle Times editorial board stinks; good luck winning a defamation suit over that.

But just being sued for defamation by a determined plaintiff is enough to crush one financially, thus chilling public discourse via the mere threat of legal action. Yet this is exactly the kinda fearful mindset the the Times seems to be cheerleading.

Times Crown Prince Ryan Blethen, in a previous opinion piece, blames bloggers like me for this very real and imminent threat to online speech, warning that they should “learn to check themselves, and use a modicum of restraint” before, you know, some deep-pocketed asshole decides to make an example of us. But the plaintiff’s side of our defamation laws seems an awfully odd position for a future newspaper publisher to stake out… unless, of course, you view it within the broader context of the industry’s dramatic decline, and Blethen’s documented history of blaming his paper’s woes on external forces rather than, say, his own boneheaded idea to leverage the family business by buying newspapers in Maine. (I’m just sayin’.)

The problem as I see it is that defamation laws that evolved to address the unique circumstances of print and broadcast are simply not well suited to the realities of our more democratic, online media landscape, a nuance that, as I’ve written before, appears to escape Blethen the Younger:

And that is what Blethen, heir to a dead tree publishing throne, obviously doesn’t understand about this new medium. HA isn’t a “publication,” and my words aren’t “spun off the press” in some inviolable, datelined tome. A blog is an ever evolving dialectic, a give and take, a living conversation between writers and readers, and readers with each other, and between one blogging community with the blogosphere as a whole. HA may be my own personal realm, but the world is my fact checker.

Under the old paradigm, where the scarcity of the airwaves and the huge financial barriers to market entry left the bulk of the media in the hands of a powerful and wealthy few, the libel laws were often the best or only defense against the indiscriminate, negligent, and malicious misuse of the power of the press. But in this new medium, this distributed, democratic and decentralized paradigm of the Internet, the best defense against bad journalism is more journalism, the best remedy for falsehood is the truth, and aggrieved parties should only look to the courts as a desperate and last resort.

… [For] in a media landscape increasingly dominated by freelancers, contractors and lone wolves outside the protection of deep-pocketed corporate overlords, the mere threat of costly legal action to resolve disputes threatens the viability of the medium itself, potentially shielding those able to afford attorneys from legitimate criticism by those of us who cannot.

In other words, our defamation laws evolved to protect the average citizenry from powerful publishers like Blethen, not the other way around.

It is, in fact, not reckless bloggers but this blogger-beware meme that presents the real threat to the viability of the Internet as a meaningful and credible medium for disseminating dissent and facilitating public debate. Blethen argues that a lowly comment troll can and should be held to the same defamation standards as a Rupert Murdoch or a, well, Ryan Blethen, but this would be the legal equivalent of hitting a nail with a pile driver.

Unlike Blethen I don’t have attorneys on staff or on retainer, and thus I lack the opportunity to take every potentially controversial post I write, and run it past legal. Neither can I afford to defend myself against even the most frivolous of SLAPP suits. The alternative, which Blethen seems to advocate, is that I write fearfully.

Media-law experts repeat the advice that bloggers and e-mailers need to think twice before sending a message.

“Before you speak ill of anyone online,” Baron said, “you should think hard before pressing the ‘send’ button.”

What an utterly oppressive and ultimately undemocratic sentiment.

The balance that needs to be struck, and that needs to be reflected in our laws, is the balance between the individual harm that can come from truly reckless and malicious free speech, as opposed to the societal harm that comes from crushing dissent. Personally, I’d argue that a legal standard that puts one at risk of financial ruin for posting the words “my dentist stinks,” clearly strikes the wrong balance. But Ryan Blethen and his newspaper apparently disagree, otherwise, I suppose, they would he would be advocating for the law to be changed, rather than for bloggers like me to fearfully mind it.

If they’d made this up on The Wire, critics would have laughed at how unrealistic it was:

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

And it just made me think of this:

The winners of Tuesday’s top-two primary for the Washington state Senate race were Sen. Patty Murray (D) and real estate speculator (and perennial candidate) Dino Rossi (R). Little surprise there. Late last week, Washingtonians got a double dose of post-primary polls matching up Murry and Rossi.

Rasmussen released this poll on Thursday showing Murray leading Rossi 48% to 44% in a poll taken the day before (18 Aug). The sample of 750 is large for Rasmussen—their samples are typically 500 likely voters.

On Friday, Survey USA released a poll taken on the 18th and 19th of August, on a sample of 618 likely voters. The results? A stunning 52% to 45% lead for Rossi!

What is going on? First let me wander off-topic for a minute to point out that in my analyses of past elections, I have found both Rasmussen and Survey USA to be pretty good polling firms for head-to-head general elections. Rasmussen has a bad reputation among liberals, but that is mostly based on their presidential approval tracking poll that IS biased slightly in favor of Bush and against Obama (relative to comparable polls) for the seven years that I have been following it. But approval tracking polls are not the same type of poll as a head-to-head election poll, and Rasmussen does just fine with the latter. Survey USA is sometimes dissed as a liberal polling firm by conservatives. Whatever…their track record is pretty good. Going on just the numbers from state polls during to 2008 presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial elections, I can’t really tell Survey USA and Rasmussen apart.

During the 2010 election season, some big differences I see is that Rasmussen has greatly increased the number of statewide polls they do; Survey USA has decreased the number of statewide races polled. I have no idea what to make of it. Anyway, onto the race.

Since these two polls were in the field simultaneously, I’ll simply combine them and do my usual Monte Carlo analysis to determine the relative probabilities of each candidate winning based on these polls. Of the combined 1,368 “votes”, Murray and Rossi got 1,289 of them; 46.6% went to Murray and 47.6% went to Rossi. When we normalize these so that they sum to 100%, Murray gets 49.5% and Rossi gets 50.5%. Even with this relatively large sample size, this is clearly a statistical tie.

After simulating a million elections using the observed frequencies and sample sizes, Murray wins 392,801 simulated elections and Rossi wins 599,396 simulated elections. In other words the two polls suggest Murray has a 39.6% probability of beating Rossi. Here is the distribution of wins:

Objectively, those are the results. But, as a Murray supporter, I am not overly daunted. This graph of the polling in this race shows why:

Notice anything odd?

Both of the Survey USA polls conducted for this race favor Rossi uncharacteristically strongly. Most other polls either tend to favor Murray, or show a very slight advantage to Rossi. That’s odd. In fact, when the first Survey USA poll came out, neither camp believed it. I wonder if the Rossi camp believes it now?

Personally, I’m skeptical about the poll. It seems like something is going wrong for Survey USA. And looking at the cross tabs doesn’t help. As N in Seattle points out in the Horses Ass comment threads:

If you take a look at the very last column in the survey’s crosstabs, you’ll see that they show Murray and Rossi tied in “Metro Seattle”.

Really? Murray and Rossi tied in Metro Seattle? I doubt it. N in Seattle shows why:

Based on the population proportion, I assume that means King/Pierce/Snohomish Counties.

We’re now counting a rather more comprehensive “survey”, the primary election. In those three counties, Patty has 53% of the vote to Dino’s 30%. SUSA is asking us to believe that in the general election:

a) about 10% of Patty’s primary voters will switch to Rossi, and

b) every primary voter who chose someone other than Patty will vote for Dino, and

c) the voters who sat out the primary but will vote in the general election (about 1/4 of the electorate, and more strongly Democratic than primary voters) will follow the same pattern as in a) and b)

All of the above would have to happen in “Metro Seattle” for Dino to tie Patty here. It ain’t gonna happen. In fact, it ain’t even gonna happen in the rest of Democratic western Washington either.

I suspect even Dino Rossi would agree with N’s analysis.

Notice that there are two other fairly recent polls on the graph. The earliest is another Rasmussen poll of 750 likely voters taken on 28th of July, and showed Murray up 49% to 47%. That is pretty close to tied. The second (in blue) is from Public Policy Polling (PPP) taken on 27th of July to the 1st of August on 1,204 registered voters. This poll showed Murray leading Rossi, 49% to 46%.

The PPP poll surveyed both the primary election and the general election, which gives us the chance to do a little accuracy-checking. For the primary, PPP found that Teabagger Clint Didier would get about 10% of the vote, Murray would get 47% and Rossi would get 33%. As of Sunday evening, Diddier is at 12.6%, Murray is 46.4% and Rossi is 33.3%. Pretty much spot on, considering it was taken about 18 days earlier.

One last exercise for your consideration. If we combine all four polls taken within the last month, and do the same Monte Carlo analysis, things turn around. There is a total of 3153 votes for either Murray or Rossi, Murray gets 50.6% of them,and Rossi gets 49.4%. Now, Murray wins 682,212 simulated elections, and Rossi wins 313,150 of them. In other words, these four polls give evidence that Murray would win with a 68.5% probability. And that includes the Survey USA poll! Here is the distribution…

The take-home message is that the contest, at this point, is pretty close. But I think the more interesting question that arises from all this is…what the hell happened to Survey USA?!?

(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)

I have to say that I have newfound respect for Clint Didier and his campaign after reading spokeswoman Kathryn Serkes response to Dino Rossi’s predictably mealy-mouthed evasion of Didier’s prerequisites for endorsement:

“So is Dino saying, ‘Fuck you’ to those people [who supported Didier]? ‘Fuck you, I don’t need your votes? I can win with 33 percent.’”

Ah, I love a woman who talks dirty to me, especially about politics. The BIAW’s equally foul-mouthed Erin Shannon better look over her shoulders, as she may have new competition for my unwanted affections.

The truth is, Rossi’s response was a “fuck you” to Didier and his supporters, and Serkes should be applauded for using the most accurately descriptive term available. This is the way real people speak, and while there are certainly times and places that demand more formal language, politicians and their spokespeople make a mistake by abandoning the vernacular in favor of vague politenesses. Voters crave authenticity, even if that comes with the occasional F-bomb.

Of course, such rhetorical bluntness is not without its risks, especially in a media landscape where the boundaries of public discourse are still rigidly defined by the sticks shoved firmly up the asses of the editors at our once-dominant  “family newspapers.” Indeed, back in May of 2004, in my very first post, it was a risk I clearly anticipated when I warned readers what to expect from HA:

Now I know some might find this split between the politically prankish Goldy and the politically earnest David a little arbitrary… or even weird. So to those upstanding members of the political and media establishment who insist I cannot possibly expect to maintain my credibility as an activist while producing an irreverent and outrageous blog, the Goldy half of me respectfully says: “fuck you.”

And I’ve been saying “fuck you” ever since, despite frequent admonitions from critics and fans alike that I would be taken more seriously, and reach a wider audience, if I would only clean up my language. But… you know… if folks can’t tell the difference between being serious and being solemn, well, fuck that.

Ironically, I don’t actually swear all that much. Of my 5,732 posts since May 10, 2004, only 336 have contained some conjugation of the word “fuck.” That’s less than six percent of my posts… fewer than five per month on average. In fact, despite my reputation for foul-mouthed muckraking, the bulk of my posts are neither.

But sometimes a “fuck you” is a “fuck you,” and no other euphemism would be quite as honest, so if politicians, spokespeople and other public figures seem more willing to speak truthfully theses days when speaking truth to power — even when the truth involves, say, calling a sitting state senator a “pig fucker” — then I hope my example has served to help raise the level of public discourse to a more accurate, truthful and honest level.

I’m glad this article in Saturday’s New York Times got written.

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

Interesting stuff. While I don’t think it’s the strongest reason to support the rights of Muslims to build cultural centers with prayer rooms, it is certainly worth noting.

So, while I don’t want to be too nit picky, there’s one word in a paragraph toward the end of the piece that really gets my goat.

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, said in a Fox News interview that “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” a comment that drew criticism for appearing to equate those proposing the Islamic center with Nazis.

Really? The style guide precludes you from just saying “drew criticism for equating the Islamic center with the Nazis”? You couldn’t make a declarative statement? That metaphor was too layered and complex?

As Joel Connelly reported yesterday, Dino Rossi is a big proponent of extending the budget-busting Bush tax cuts:

Rossi argued that 2 1/2 million people in Washington benefit from the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the extension of which will be a major issue in Congress this fall.

Rossi described as “this class warfare program” the Obama administration’s plan to extend the cuts enjoyed by middle-income taxpayers, while repealing tax cuts for high-income households.

Huh. I’m not sure what’s more distorted, Rossi’s view of the lifestyle of your average Washingtonian or Rossi’s definition of “class warfare”…?  As Think Progress explains:

There are about 6.7 million people in Washington state, so for Rossi’s number to be accurate, he’s either claiming that Obama and Murray want to raise taxes on people that they don’t, or he is claiming that more than one-third of the state’s population is making more than $200,000 per year. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 105,209 households in the state that would be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (or about 1.6 percent of the total population). So Rossi inflated his state’s wealthy population by 24 times. Also, as The Wonk Room explains, Rossi’s push to extend the tax cuts for the rich would definitely help one Washingtonian: Dino Rossi.

I guess when you pretty much only hang out with folks making over $200,000 a year, $200,000 doesn’t seem like all that much.

Mark Kleiman once again lays out his “grow-your-own” idea for legalizing marijuana use while keeping the sale of the drug illegal. This is an argument he’s made before, and one in which I’ve written about my disagreements.

This time around, E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice does a superb job of addressing the shortcomings of Kleiman’s proposal. I don’t really have anything to add to what Kain wrote (or to Pete Guither’s long post here). Yet I noticed today that Adam Serwer, an excellent blogger on civil liberties, attempts to defend Kleiman’s idea:

E.D. Kain doesn’t like the idea, and prefers outright legalization and commercialization:

Furthermore, I’m much more afraid of violent drug dealers, over-eager SWAT teams, and the whole awful black market cycle of violence than I am about the lobbying arms of a few big corporations which apparently fill Kleiman with fear. I’ll take lobbyists over drug cartels any day.

I think Kain is missing at least part of Kleiman’s point. The whole idea behind decriminalizing marijuana possession is to eliminate the “black market cycle of violence”; since people wouldn’t necessarily be dependent on dealers, dealers would have a hard time plying a lucrative trade, and paramilitary SWAT teams wouldn’t be shooting dogs and old ladies trying to get at the hidden cannabis stash of a 72 year-old with cataracts.

And I think Serwer isn’t quite grasping Kain’s point. To clarify, I’m assuming that Serwer is talking about more than just decriminalizing possession here (which was already done back in the 1970s in a number of states and won at the ballot box in Massachusetts in 2008 with nearly 2/3 of the vote); he’s talking about fully legalizing the ability for someone to grow marijuana on their own – or as part of a co-op. Serwer thinks that this would put the drug dealers out of business. Kain is arguing (correctly, in my opinion) that it won’t.

As Kain points out, you will still have large numbers of marijuana consumers who have little interest in growing their own or being part of a co-op. They simply want to buy their marijuana like any other product and they’ll prefer to buy it from a grower who knows how to produce a quality product. On the flip side of that, there will always be people who see growing marijuana as their preferred avenue for making money and will become very good at it. These two forces simply won’t be outweighed by armies of marijuana consumers being proactive in order to comply with the law. This should be obvious. In the end, sales of the drug will still occur, and law enforcement will still be tasked with stopping it. And as long as that combination exists, we’ll still see paramilitary SWAT teams shooting dogs and old ladies because the police thought that they were going after an illegal seller.

Second, while I’m not quite sure where I stand on the choice between legalization and criminalization, I do think that marijuana abuse is a relatively minor problem. I’d like to preserve that status quo while eliminating the draconian penalties and absurd amount of law-enforcement resources devoted to preventing people from toking. But I think Kain is being a bit to dismissive in arguing that there would be no adverse consequences from the mass marketing of marijuana. It seems entirely possible to me that commercializing the drug could create a problem where none really exists — businesses have to make a profit; someone growing their own doesn’t. A world where a smaller, less profitable illicit market that continues to exist looks a lot like our own without the outsize penalties and adverse consequences of over-enforcement. I’m not sure what a world with a fully commercialized marijuana industry that profits from turning people into potheads looks like, but it makes me nervous.

We currently have a commercialized alcohol industry that profits from turning people into alcoholics, and we’ve grown quite accustomed to it. Hell, it’s impossible for me to go through a single day where I’m not exposed to some form of marketing for booze. Despite this barrage, and despite the relatively non-minor problems caused by alcohol (car accidents, domestic violence, liver disease, alcoholism), people in this country remain far more concerned about Muslims building swimming pools in Lower Manhattan than they do about alcohol.

I completely agree that a legalized marijuana market could lead to companies engaging in bad behavior. I’m rather certain it would happen. But there are ways to deal with that other than by resorting to an unrealistic prohibition-lite. You could make laws against advertising. You could even have the state control the distribution. Either of those proposals are far superior to continuing to enforce a ban on the sale of the drug.

Via West Seattle Blog:

[The following] video is getting West Seattle a bit of national attention tonight in the ongoing controversy over Target’s donation to a Minnesota candidate with a history of opposing gay rights. The musical protest took place in the Westwood Village Target store on Saturday, apparently around 11 am

A new WSJ/NBC poll (via Daily Kos) reinforces my sense that our nation’s profound regional divide is just one of the reasons why 2010 won’t be like 1994:

The GOP has a HUGE generic-ballot edge in the South (52%-31%), but it doesn’t lead anywhere else. In the Northeast, Dems have a 55%-30% edge; in the Midwest, they lead 49%-38%; and in the West, it’s 44%-43%.

Heading into the 1994 election the Dems held roughly 59% of House seats in every region of the nation, and while they ended up losing big everywhere, they got walloped in the South. Heading into the 2010 election the Dems control the exact same number of seats they did heading into 1994, but the regional disparity is startling, ranging from 82% in the Northeast to 43% in the South.

Here in the “Far West” the Dems hold a pre-1994-like 63% majority, but it’s hard to imagine 1994-like results. Back then Washington alone flipped from 8-1 D to 7-2 R, but this time around WA-03 is the only truly promising GOP pickup opportunity in the state, and even that’s gotta be ranked a toss-up. I suppose Rep. Rick Larsen needs to look over his shoulders in WA-02, but by that measure so does Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in WA-08. So a safe prediction might be a net one-seat Republican pickup here in Washington compared to a six-seat pickup in 1994. Maybe two at the most. Maybe none.

As for the rest of the West, Republicans can maybe count on picking up a seat in Idaho, one or two in California, and two or three more throughout the rest of the region, while almost certainly losing their recent special election pickup in Hawaii. Maybe. That wouldn’t make for a good year for Democrats, but it’s far from an electoral repudiation.

Of course the poll analysis does include this regional caveat:

Many of the congressional districts Republicans are targeting outside of the South resemble some of those Southern districts they’re hoping to win back in November — where you have whiter and older voters.

True, but this just serves to further point out the difference between 1994 and 2010, at least here in this Washington, for back in 1994, two of the six WA seats the GOP picked up were WA-04 (Jay Inslee) and WA-05 (Speaker Tom Foley)… exactly the kinda older, whiter, more conservative districts the R’s are now targeting. But, you know, you can’t win back a seat you’ve never given up.

The point is, the 45-seat pickup necessary for a Republican takeover this time around is made all the more difficult by our current regional divide. The Republican’s generic advantage is staggering in the South, but there is so much less low-hanging Democratic fruit down in Dixie than there was 16 years ago, the R’s simply can’t take back Congress without a somewhat comparable national wave. And at the moment, I just don’t see that sort of wave reaching the Pacific.

Goldy may hate to dwell on this, but I’m going to keep piling on. The Seattle Times’ “Calitaxication” editorial is one in a long series of deeply misleading claims they’re making about the crisis here in California. In order to ensure that Washington doesn’t follow California’s path, it’s necessary to do as thorough a demolition job as possible on the Times’ editorial as possible.

I think Goldy’s done a good job of hitting the flaws of the Times’ argument that I-1098 would somehow replicate the taxes found in Oregon and California. But there’s a deeper point that needs to be made: California’s budget woes aren’t due to too much tax – instead the issue is that taxes aren’t high enough on the upper end.

One piece of the Times’ editorial that needs further attention is this:

California did that. Its state income tax on high earners is 10.8 percent, and its sales tax mostly ranges from 8.75 to 9.75 percent. Such high levels of tax have not brought wealth and balanced budgets to California. Skilled people are leaving.

This isn’t really true. And since it’s at the core of the argument against taxing the wealthy – that doing so would cost jobs and lead skilled workers to leave – it’s important to show how this too is a flawed statement.

Despite the reputation the Times gives California, the Golden State isn’t actually all that tax happy. After Republican Governor Pete Wilson pushed through an income tax increase in 1991, the top tax rate was 11% for high earners (individual incomes of $200,000 and above). Those expired at the beginning of 1996, but did not prevent California from coming back from the severe early ’90s recession by that time – nor did they lead to any mass exodus of the rich and the skilled from the state. In fact, the numbers of people paying the higher rates under the Wilson tax increases in the 1990s rose, according to research from the California Budget Project:

The number of California’s joint personal income tax filers with incomes of $200,000 or more rose by 33.4 percent between 1991 and 1995 – a period in which California temporarily imposed 10 percent and 11 percent tax rates on high-income earners. In contrast, the total number of joint filers declined by 6.7 percent.

In the late 1990s Wilson pushed through a massive tax cut, including to personal income taxes, justified by the dot-com boom. By 2002, this lost revenue played a key role in producing the state’s large budget deficit that ultimately brought down Governor Gray Davis and gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his opening to become governor in the 2003 recall.

In 2004, however, California voters approved Proposition 63, which raised the tax rate to 10% on incomes over $1 million in order to fund mental health services. It passed with over 53% of the vote.

According to the Seattle Times, this should have destroyed the state’s economy and caused a flight of the rich. It did no such thing. The numbers of people who paid that tax rose after it was enacted, just as it did in the 1990s (again from the CBP):

The number of millionaire taxpayers – those with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million – increased by 37.8 percent between 2004 and 2006, after voters approved an additional 1 percent surcharge on taxable personal income above $1 million, which took effect on January 1, 2005. During the same period, the total number of personal income taxpayers increased by 4.2 percent.

As we well know, California’s bubble burst in 2007-08, and again revealed the underlying weakness of the state’s budgetary system. But the problem isn’t high taxes – instead it is the legacy of the notorious Proposition 13, passed in 1978, which capped property taxes and forced state and local governments to rely on more volatile sources of revenue, such as the sales tax. This legacy was compounded by the extremely reckless Wilson dot-com era tax cuts that I mentioned above.

So are skilled people leaving California as a result of these tax increases? As we saw above, the opposite seems to be happening: tax increases on the wealthy if anything have been accompanied by an increase in the number of people paying the tax. California’s boom and bust economy has many causes – an overreliance on real estate, a lack of public services to help secure and grow the middle class – but taxes on the wealthy aren’t one of them. Skilled workers continue to come to California to start businesses, work at our leading corporations, and to innovate the 21st century economy.

Neither are these taxes leading businesses to flee the state. Jed Kolko of the Public Policy Institute of California debunked this notion back in June 2010:

Rhetoric aside, California loses very few jobs to other states. Businesses rarely move either out of or into California and, on balance, the state loses only 11,000 jobs annually as a result of relocation—that’s just 0.06 percent of California’s 18 million jobs. Far more jobs are created and destroyed as a result of business expansion, contraction, formation, and closure than because of relocation. Business relocations, although highly visible, are a misleading guide to the overall performance of the California economy. The employment growth rate, which takes into account job creation and destruction for all reasons—not just relocation—is a much better measure of the state’s economy.

There’s no doubt California faces serious challenges. Our unemployment rate is 12.2%, much worse than Washington’s 8.7%. But that is due largely to the much more severe impact of the housing market bust than the impact of taxation, as shown above.

Here in California, we’re all too familiar with the impact of tax cuts, which have destroyed our public services and our ability to balance our budget. It’s not for nothing that some of us call this state “Failifornia” (in fact, it was the title of my Netroots Nation panel on California politics). As someone with a lot of family and friends left in Washington State, I urge you to not believe the BS that the Seattle Times is trying to sell you as they try to turn Washington into Failington by adopting the insane anti-tax policies that have devastated California.

(Oh, you might be wondering who I am. I lived in Seattle from 2001 to 2007, but now live in Monterey, California, where I work as Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign, a 700,000 member organization working to make California more progressive. I also write at the website Calitics, the state’s leading political blog. I’ve also written several articles at the Olympia Newswire earlier this year on state budget and tax issues.)

Hendrik Hertzberg writes about the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan, a few blocks from Ground Zero:

Like many New Yorkers, the people in charge of Park51, a married couple, are from somewhere else—he from Kuwait, she from Kashmir. Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Columbia grad. He has been the imam of a mosque in Tribeca for close to thirty years. He is the author of a book called “What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America.” He is a vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. “My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists,” he wrote recently—in the Daily News, no less. He denounces terrorism in general and the 9/11 attacks in particular, often and at length. The F.B.I. tapped him to conduct “sensitivity training” for agents and cops. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which she co-founded with him. It promotes “cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women’s empowerment, and arts and cultural exchange.”

As someone who often trolls the right-wing blogs, this proposed center (which sounds a lot like the Jewish Community Center where I used to go to day camp when I was 6) is seen by many as some kind of threat. Coincidentally, these are the same people who talk about how Obama is going to take away their “freedom” and how much they care about the Constitution. Every day that goes by and every issue that comes up just lifts the veil on that charade. America’s right wing is motivated primarily by one thing – an irrational fear of our multicultural society. Everything else is just talk.